Saturday, August 10, 2013

Miscellaneous happenstances

The past few weeks have been filled with horrible, awesome, wonderful, and fun events and activities.

The horrible: my beautiful cat, Ginger, went missing on July 15, 2013.
This cat is one of the sweetest, smartest, friendliest creatures you are ever likely to meet.

While I haven't completely given up hope, I've come to accept that she's probably not coming home.

The awesome:  I had an opportunity to spend a week of my life as a camp counselor for a fantastic organization that reunites siblings separated in the foster system for a week of activities. 

Camp to Belong was both one of the best and loneliest weeks of my life.  The camp organized typical summer camp activities such as archery, bb guns, swimming, and zipline.  But it also organized special events that separated siblings don't often get to do with each other such as birthday shopping, a joint birthday party, a trip to the beach, and a carnival. The kids also got to make pillows for each other and scrapbooks for themselves to remember the week.

I can barely wait for camp to begin next year.

You can watch a segment produced by NBC news about it here.

The wonderful: I adopted two kitty cats from the animal shelter on Thursday!

I've tentatively named the black one "Sheytoon" for now, which means "mischevious" in Farsi.
 I've tentatively named the brown one "Hassood," which means "jealous," since he likes to do whatever his brother does.
They are both incredibly sweet and loving.  I have a feeling that Sheytoon is going to be a handful, though.

They both let me sleep throughout the night, which a welcome surprise.  But started running around and exploring the moment I opened my eyes. 

 Sadly, I'm not keeping both of them.  I'm most likely going to keep Hassood and give Sheytoon to my boss.  While the cats will live at our respective houses, we'll both bring them into work each day so they can see each other and play.

  
The fun: I bought a spinning wheel!  While it was a little challenging at first to remember how to spin (I took a class close to two years ago), it came back to me relatively quickly and easily.





I've got about three hanks(?) of yarn ready to be washed to set the twist.  I just haven't had the time/energy to do it yet with this crazy work week.

I can't wait to spin some more!


Friday, April 12, 2013

Goodreads

 I recently signed up for Goodreads, a social networking sites for bookworms.  Although I've seen it pop up occasionally over the years, I was never terribly interested since I've rarely obsessed about books for more than a few weeks at a time.

I finally joined up when I realized that I've gone about five months with voraciously reading everything in site, partly due to bookclub (which I'm terrible at attending even though I read 90% of the books) and the discovery of a few favorite bookstores in the LA and La Jolla areas.

Goodreads isn't for everyone but I'm enjoying it right now.  And since one of my goals for 2013 is to read 26 books this year (which I am way ahead of schedule for), it seems like a fun way to do so and get other book recommendations.

Happy Reading!

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Books Books and More Books

One of my goals for 2013 is to read at least 26 books this year.  Although I would love to read 52, some weeks, I would rather veg out to Babylon 5 and knitting or spending way too much time learning Spanish through Rosetta Stone.

I've made pretty good progress on this goal so far: Books read in January:
City of Dark Magic by Magnus Flyte       (thumbs down)
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn                       (thumbs up)
Bring Up the Bodies by Hillary Mantel * (thumbs down)
The Postmistress by Sarah Blake              (thumbs way up)

Also on my bookshelf:
Rules of Civility by Amor Towles
Going Clear by Lawrence Wright *

Regeneration by Pat Barker
Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

I'll write reviews of these books later.

* denotes bookclub selection 


The rest of the books I read in 2012:
Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Red House by Mark Haddon *
The Portrait of the Young Man as an Artist by James Joyce
A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
Fated by S.G. Browne
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Faranheit 451 by Ray Brandbury
The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
The Hangman's Daughter by Oliver Potzsch