Am I the last person in the known universe to find out about the Twilight series? I’ve been spotting excited bloggers talking up Breaking Dawn on their blogs and I hadn’t bothered to pay much mind (who has time to read?, I asked myself), but then the mister gave me a copy of Twilight (Book 1) for my birthday last weekend. As of today I’m about a third of the way through Eclipse (Book 3). When I went to pick it up yesterday, I also grabbed Breaking Dawn because the thought of finishing one and not having the next on hand for immediate gratification was too painful a notion to even consider. As for that “who has time to read” voice, all I can say is it’s keeping me up far too late (2.30 last night, 2 the night before, 3 the night before that) as I steal whatever reading time I can before bed.

If it turns out that I’m not the last person in the known universe to have discovered them, then I commend them to you enthusiastically! With exclamation points even! But, caveat lector: do yourself a favour and don’t start in on this series unless you have a few hours a day to feed the impulse. It’s absorbing, heady, get-under-your-skin stuff, folks.

Once the excitement over 42-minutes-to-dry wore off (OK, so it hasn’t really worn off yet), I turned my attention to other house matters. What other home-related annoyances have we been putting up with? If a dryer can bring me so much joy, imagine what some new bedding can do! I started making a mental list, and before we knew it, we had new bedding (which was, indeed, overdue — my favourite whites were threadbare, literally), a couple of rugs, and a lamp. Then I decided that it was time to get rid of the rug in the living room (an OK-ish sisal with a dreary blue border — the mister picked it up for a song at a sample sale a few years ago and it did the trick well enough, but I’ve never liked it much) and move the rug from under the dining table to the living room. Then we brought home a couple of dining chairs from the mister’s parents’ basement and I covered the well-used seats with a layer of batting and a delicious print (that has a tiny hint of orange!).

Then this past weekend I got a brilliant early birthday present — a pair of Bertoia Diamond Lounge chairs (deeply discounted, from Morba, for the locals). I’ve been coveting the side chairs for the dining room for a while, but when we saw the diamond chairs (deeply! discounted!) this weekend, we knew we couldn’t pass them up. So, into the living room they went, but that meant the whole room required re-envisioning, so we moved the coffee table out and into the basement and the ottoman (which has been a cat-bed for the last 5 years) is now the coffee table. The cats are beside themselves but the humans are quite happy with it.

Whew. Are you still with me? I wasn’t kidding about The House Talk.

So, now, I’m making some new cushion covers for the couch, sewing up some chair pads for the new chairs (ours didn’t come with any, and replacement pads for $220+ a piece? I don’t think so!), and rethinking the fireplace. It’s not a functional fireplace, so we’ve had some candles in there for a while, with a tired brass grill (scored from a garage sale) in front of it. I think we’ll toss the candles and find a new-old cover for it. Or something.

Also? Last night, I caught the mister browsing Flickr for bathroom renovation ideas. Uh-oh.

Bought some begonias for the garden today. I mostly dislike gardening, but then I start doing it and it usually turns out being OK. Not big fun, but, you know, fine.

Thought I’d pop in before June fizzled away entirely. If I visited my own blog once in a while, I might have actually been prompted to post sooner, given that I’ve had a raccoon at the top of this page for, oh, weeks. Oh, sure, he’s a cute raccoon, but his cuteness is ever so slightly tempered by the knowledge that the Humane Society undoubtedly fattened him & his brothers up and brought them right back to our neighbourhood to settle in, find some mates, and have more cute raccoon babies in our walls. Ah, circle of life.

So, here we are with half the year gone. You know how time seems to speed up as you get older? Well, a colleague speculated the other day that it’s because time is relative, and when you’re young, every day occupies a larger percentage of your life, compared to when you’re older. Best explanation I’ve heard yet. Summers felt like they lasted forever when I was younger, but that’s probably because when you’re 13, you’ve only really known 13 summers, and you actually remember fewer.

The mister and I have been trying to make the very most of this summer (”Summer of Us”, we’re calling it), which means we’re doing a lot more than our usual home-body selves are used to. For us, this means less couch surfing/movie watching and more getting out into the world and seeing people. It’s remarkably enriching and makes me feel like we’ve already had a very full summer, and there’s still 2 months of it to go. I feel younger just thinking about it.

Oh, and? I’ve perked things up around here with a little redesign. I finally tired of the minimal sidebar and added some content (current blog reads coming soon!). I’ve only tested it on Mac/FF3, so let me know if anything looks broken on your end.

I can think of a few other things I’d rather do, but there you have it.

Lean in close and inhale deeply for full effect.

I have this on-going dream of an imaginary vacation that consists of 2 weeks in a remote cabin on a lake, a bag full of yarn, no TV, a stack of books, fine crisp air, and no commitments. I recently stumbled upon this meme at Not an Artist and I’ve since seen it in a bunch of other places, and for some reason, my imaginary lakeside vacation springs to mind every time I see it. Must be something about the indulgence of having the time to read all those books I’ve never read or started but didn’t finish.

This is a list of the top 106 books most often marked “unread” by LibraryThing users. The rules: bold the ones you’ve read, underline the ones you read for school, italicize the ones you started but didn’t finish. Pop a note in the comments if you’ve done this one (and help me keep the dream alive).

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno (and Purgatory and Paradise)
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

That’s me reflected in the bean in Chicago. I was in Chicago for a couple of days last week, at a conference, and wow, I can’t wait to go back.

I’ve been reading a few tidbits about personal branding and online presence lately and, I have to say, it freaks me out just a little. Although, perhaps this blog wouldn’t be as badly neglected as it is if I had, you know, a Publishing Policy and I paid more attention to the way in which I Brand & Represent Myself Online.

Is there any way for those words not to sound slimy? Is it just me?

So, the last time I was here I talked about going to Charlottetown for a quick conference presentation. The conference was swell, my talk went well, Charlottetown was tiny and quite nice, my luggage didn’t get there with me so I hit a couple of stores on my way into town to get enough stuff to get me through 2.5 days. All I ended up needing was a couple of things from the drugstore and a stop into the first clothing store I saw (where I scored a cute skirt, yay emergency purchase) so I wouldn’t have to present in my totally comfortable and utterly presentation-unworthy cords. I got some sort of perverse delight in knowing that I could get by in a strange town with not much more than a laptop and a small grocery bag full of essentials.

Despite that perverse delight, last week in Chicago was much more civilized. My suitcase got there when I did (I cringed a fair bit over checking it in the first place, but it turns out that I don’t own any luggage that is suitable for on-board travel, plus the whole 3-1-1 thing causes me some stress), the closing plenary I spoke at was loads of fun, I got to meet a bunch of brilliant and fun librarians I previously only knew online, and Chicago charmed the pants right off me. Truly. I’m taking the mister right back there, someday soon. A scant collection of pictures is here.

So now I’m back, staring down a couple of months of NO TRAVEL, about which I am delighted. Project No proceeds apace, although I have made a couple of minor exceptions for really local talks that I should be able to pull of with minimal stress.

Also? I’m reading some good stuff, knitting another pair of socks (with this), picking lilacs off our tree out front, swapping yarn leftovers thanks to Brainylady, anticipating a concert, and generally enjoying the daily plug.

How about you?

Being surrounded with yummy sock yarn is oddly comforting. Isn’t it?

I’ve embarked on a little something called “Project No” for the months of June, July and August. I figure that if I don’t make a concerted effort to say “no” to library-related stuff (which is mostly conference presentations and workshops of late), I’ll keep saying yes and drive myself a little crazy with due dates and deadlines and traveling (which is quickly becoming more annoying than enjoyable). May, however, is going to be crazymaking for just those reasons. I head out to Prince Edward Island in four days, which has all the potential to be a lovely trip, except it’s going to be practically a fly-by. I have around 8 hours on Saturday to explore Charlottetown (got ideas?) before flying home to more tight deadlines, then another fly-by to Chicago for more conference action and maybe a little socializing with library-type friends. Also? I’m teaching my grad course again, starting tomorrow.

Friends, I can’t wait until the effects of “Project No” start to kick in.

Sebastian is not spotting celebrities. He’s watching the leaves sway in the wind. It’s a lot more riveting than celebrity-spotting, see.

Claire over at Loobylu started it: take the “six unimportant things about me” meme and add celebrities. Truth is, I’m not much of a celebrity spotter — all the sightings below are the result of other people pointing out the celebrities to me. Seriously.

My sister and I were hanging out downtown, taking in a few used bookstores, when she happened to spot Roger Ebert on the sidewalk in front of us. We walked over, got autographs, and my sister had the presence of mind to ask him how he was enjoying the film festival. He said something like, “it’s always good.” I don’t think I realized who we were talking to until after we walked away.

Walking out of the Buddha Bar in New York, having just had dinner with the mister and some of his work colleagues, we spotted Beyoncé Knowles walking out right in front of us. Or, I should say, one of the mister’s colleagues spotted Beyoncé Knowles. I didn’t fix my eyes on her until we were outside and she stepped into her massive Hummer limo. In fact, it was such a quick glance that I couldn’t tell you what she was wearing.

I almost got run over by Jeanne Becker crossing Yonge Street at King. A few months later, she bumped into me (literally — with her shopping cart) at an overpriced grocery store in our old neighbourhood. I was already mad at her over the Yonge Street incident, so when she didn’t apologize for the shopping cart incident, I was supremely incensed and vowed never to watch Fashion Television again (even the reruns!). If you don’t know who Jeanne Becker is, you’re probably not Canadian, in which case you can just move on to the next sighting because she’s not worth Googling.

Standing in line waiting to get into a movie at the film festival a few years ago, Olympia Dukakis grazed my arm as she tried to get by me on a crowded sidewalk. She graciously stopped, turned around, touched my arm, and apologized. Jeanne Becker could learn a thing or two.

Other uneventful film festival celebrity sightings: George Clooney, Robert Downey Jr., Robin Williams, Jeff Goldblum. George had his tabloid smile on, Robert looked tired, Robin was in a mad rush, Jeff was tall, really tall.

And two more local celebrities to round out the list: Rex Murphy said “hi” to me while crossing Front Street, and Ben Mulroney checked out in front of me at the grocery store. Rex is short and professorial, Brian is tall and really should have washed the make-up off his face (after what I assumed was a taping of eTalk Daily) before exposing himself to the unforgiving fluorescents at the grocery store. Yeouch.

And that’s it, how totally lacking in “wow”. I could tell you about the time the mister chatted with Larry Flynt outside an LA restaurant, or the time he ate dinner a table over from Angelina Jolie, but those aren’t my stories, so I won’t. Instead, I’ll let you regale me with six unimportant things about you involving celebrities! Remember, Claire tagged everyone, and that includes you!

Totally inspired by this.

How is everyone? It’s Saturday morning and I’m nursing my first cup of tea and dreaming of crawling right back into bed. Instead, I’m confronted with mounds of laundry (of this magnitude), other related house-cleaning, a piece of exercise equipment that needs to be built, taxes to file, and an article to write. What better time to blog?

Here are some things:

• Hey, knitters: ever had a yarn emergency while traveling? Or perhaps a stash crisis that required immediate remedying? Non-knitters are likely scoffing at this line of questioning, but the knitters? They know what I’m saying. Well I just learned of KnitMap (via infodoodads, which BTW, is a nice little example of my librarian & knitting worlds colliding). I do hardly any planning before traveling anymore, so I often find myself in a new province/state/town wondering where the nearest yarn shop is for a bit of, you know, browsing. How awesome is it that I can now pop over to KnitMap for the necessary coordinates? I am beside myself, people.
• You might know Moni for her inspiring knitting tales and other excellent commentary (I particularly enjoy her often scathing political commentary!) on her blog Blatherskite. Well, she went and made my day today! Thank you so much, Moni! I’m looking forward to doling out my own “Blog of Distinction” awards, but not today. I need to spread out the goodness.
• I’m knitting a pair of socks with this yarn, and boy howdy, it’s a good time. I had forgotten how much I enjoyed working with the Cherry Tree Hill until my sister reminded me that I made her a pair out of it a couple of years ago. I’ve decided that handpainted sock yarn is my favourite type of yarn ever.
• Our local transit union is on strike. Not much more to say about that.
• If you read not martha you’ll know that she recently ran a contest (one of many — her blog is full of contest-goodness!) for some reusable shopping bags from Delight.com. Well, guess who won a set? Once again, beside myself. To-day is turning out to be rather brilliant.

I hope your day turns out to be brilliant, too.

More spring flowers. Can you stand it?

It hasn’t taken me a week to come up with this final 20. I’ve been in the throes of conference prep and my to-do lists have tended to be far more short-term and pedestrian, that’s all. You know, “work on presentation, do laundry, pack an umbrella, water plants”, that sort of thing. And, while I’m still working on that mundane list, what better means of procrastination than to finish up this list?

100 Things to do before I go (81-100)

81. Live smaller
82. Learn to crochet
83. Play with a baby tiger
84. Get better at returning phone calls
85. Hand paint my own homespun yarn
86. Learn to fly
87. Live a whole year buying only what we need
88. Write a million dollar cheque to a charity
89. Go on safari in Africa
90. Knit shawls for all the women I know & love
91. Farm
92. Mardi Gras in New Orleans
93. Sky dive
94. Participate in a protest
95. Make a quilt for every bed in the house (+ a few to spare)
96. Climb a glacier
97. Blow glass
98. Draw more
99. Build a tree house
100. Raise a child