Crocheting

I've been crocheting quite a bit since my semester finished.  I'm working on a blue and green blanket that I hope to use on our bed.  Right now it looks like a bunch of scarves in various states of completion.  When the panels are done, I've got to figure out how to whip stitch them together.  Wish me luck.

Reading List Progress

The reading list that I've posted, with those that I've read crossed out:

1. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
2. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
3. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
4. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
5. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
6. Ulysses by James Joyce
7. Beloved by Toni Morrison
8. The Lord of the Flies by William Golding
9. 1984 by George Orwell
10. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
11. Lolita by Vladmir Nabokov
12. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
13. Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White
14. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
15. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
16. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
17. Animal Farm by George Orwell
18. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
19. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
20. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
21. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
22. Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne
23. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
24. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
25. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
26. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
27. Native Son by Richard Wright
28. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
29. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
30. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
31. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
32. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
33. The Call of the Wild by Jack London
34. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
35. Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
36. Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin
37. The World According to Garp by John Irving
38. All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren
39. A Room with a View by E.M. Forster
40. The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
41. Schindler’s List by Thomas Keneally
42. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
43. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
44. Finnegans Wake by James Joyce
45. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
46. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
47. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
48. Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence
49. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
50. The Awakening by Kate Chopin
51. My Antonia by Willa Cather
52. Howards End by E.M. Forster
53. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
54. Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger
55. The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
56. Jazz by Toni Morrison
57. Sophie’s Choice by William Styron
58. Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner
59. A Passage to India by E.M. Forster
60. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
61. A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor
62. Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
63. Orlando by Virginia Woolf
64. Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence
65. Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
66. Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
67. A Separate Peace by John Knowles
68. Light in August by William Faulkner
69. The Wings of the Dove by Henry James
70. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
71. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
72. A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
73. Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs
74. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
75. Women in Love by D.H. Lawrence
76. Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe
77. In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway
78. The Autobiography of Alice B. Tokias by Gertrude Stein
79. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
80. The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
81. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
82. White Noise by Don DeLillo
83. O Pioneers! by Willa Cather
84. Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
85. The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
86. Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad
87. The Bostonians by Henry James
88. An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
89. Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
90. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
91. This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald
92. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
93. The French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowles
94. Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis
95. Kim by Rudyard Kipling
96. The Beautiful and the Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald
97. Rabbit, Run by John Updike
98. Where Angels Fear to Tread by E.M. Forster
99. Main Street by Sinclair Lewis
100. Midnight’s Children by Salman Rush

18/100: Not too shabby.

Commitment

Ah commitment, the C word that fills many with fear and dread.  Clearly I have issues committing to posting on a blog with any semblance of regularity, but I had trouble writing in a journal more than once or twice a year growing up as well.  I couldn't help it, we wrote so many papers for school and living in Florida means that the beach is never more than a couple hours away.  Who can resist that?

I am going to attempt a commitment to this...we'll call it a creative outlet, shall we?  I can commit to a man, why not a weekly or bi-weekly post?  That way I can keep track of my reading lists, my crocheting, my scrap booking, all sorts of things.  Here's to giving it the ole college try, eh?

The Bet

Before Ryan and I moved in together, we said that we both wanted to lose weight and live a healthier lifestyle.  So when he left, we made a bet...winner is the one who loses the larger percentage of their body weight.  It helped that the first week he was gone I got strep throat and lost 7 pounds because I didn't want to eat anything more than my Mom's soup.  He's been eating rice, chicken, and vegetables for the past three weeks.  We'll see who wins.

Granted, I have no idea what either of us wins, should we win the bet.

When Ryan decided that he's going to stay offshore for two months rather than one, he sent me a little something...

That's right, he was all at once a sweetheart and made me laugh, yet left with this inexplicable desire to box his ears.  They are delicious, though!

Even though I want to win the bet, I couldn't help it!  They look soooo goooood.  And they are!  Milk chocolate with wafers and hazelnut filling, by Lindt- one of the most amazing chocolates ever.

Un-Valentine's Day

I hate Valentine's Day.  I worked at a candy store that made bouquets out of candy.  A Valentine's gold mine, eh?  We saw pink and red and hearts and cherubs from the day after Christmas right up to February 14th.  After a month and a half, it felt like I would be vomiting pink for the rest of the year. 

I stopped celebrating after I was in 8th grade and I got a birthday present and then three days later I got a Valentine's Day present.  Poor bugger, thought I needed two presents because there was a "holiday" right afterward, and his wallet got the shaft.  Since then, I haven't celebrated Feb. 14th as anything but another day of the week and am pretty adamant about not making a big deal of it or even celebrating at all.  My Mom would get my sister and I cards and little stuffed white and red animals that she would set on our bedside tables as she left for work so that we could find them when we woke up.  But that is the extent of my Valentine's Day.

So last year I threatened Ryan that if he got me anything for Valentine's, we were over.  Harsh, no?  So the day passed and we celebrated my 21st birthday with a dinner out, nothing red or pink and no hearts or chocolate. 

This year, since Ryan left before my birthday AND Valentine's, and armed with the knowledge of my loathing for the holiday, I thought I was in the clear.  No presents, no fuss, no surprises (I hate surprises), *phew*.  Little did I know that I was wrong.  Oh, how wrong I was.  Tuesday, Feb 15th, I get a call at my internship wanting to know where in the hospital I am...well who wants to know?  They have a delivery for me.  This is what I got...

A dozen roses and a vase that came with a card wishing me a very happy un-Valentine's Day.


Yup, this one's a keeper.

Projects

So, my main goal is to stay busy while Ryan is away.  To that end I've been crocheting a scarf and a baby blanket (not for me), working, and trying to make our apartment look like an apartment and not a storage closet.

The brown and maroon is the scarf and the green is the very beginning of a baby blanket.

 My best friend and I rearranged the living room, put together new furniture and cleared out the office (FINALLY!).

Doesn't that new entertainment center look spiffy?

 Aaaaaand the office....

I know the desk is still messy, but we ran out of time and I ran out of patience.  Imagine.

Next up, after I clear off that silly desk, I am tackling the closet.  Something that needs to happen fast because I am going to need to pack next week for my fabulous trip to LONDON!