Long Weekend!!!

I love these long weekends. Especially when I get a halfday on the Friday before. So, today I get to leave work early. Yay.

I finished "Sirens of the Titan" by Kurt Vonnegut yesterday. Great. It was a spectacular read. I love the wit and sarcasm. Always a good break from the memoirs and other more intense readings. Don't get me wrong, a lot of thinking is required for Vonnegut novels, but it's definitely a different kind of thinking. I like the humor and subtleties.

I'm going to go back to my memoirs next. The last one for a little while I think. I finally am going to read "The Liar's Club" by Mary Karr. I've been wanting to read this one for a few months now, but couldn't seem to get a hold of it. My friend let me borrow it.

I don't have much planned for the long weekend. I am liking that it's dismal outside though. Beats the 100+ degree weather of last weekend.

That's all I got for now...Nantucket Countdown though...4th of July!

My Name's Elizabeth & I'm a Book Addict

I finished "The Glass Castle" by Jeannette Walls. It was awesome. What a great read. Another great memoir. I'm a roll lately with memoirs. My next book is a Vonnegut novel and then I think I'll read another memoir. I'll read the Harry Potter books one of these days soon. I'm being bugged to read them all. My excuse used to be that I had to wait until they were all out. Well, now they are. We have all of them at home, except we're missing the 6th one. Apparently it's in Tahoe. Once we get that one and the series is complete, I suppose I will embark upon the Harry Potter adventure.

I'm listening to Tegan & Sara, "So Jealous". It's a great album. I'm awaiting the newest album of Death Cab for Cutie. I ordered it a few weeks ago & still hasn't arrived. I'm hoping for Monday. It's funny how the wait for my CDs & books is unbearable sometimes. I don't really know why. I just get so excited for it all. It's weird.

This weekend is supposed to be really hot. I'm not looking forward to it. I don't like it when it gets this hot. Granted it's not humid, just dry. I'd rather be in a dry heat. I think I'd rather it be cooler period. Oh well, not really up to me.

My work gave me a blackberry. While it's kinda fun to be out of the office and still be able to check emails, it's still a bit odd that we have all this technology. I mean I had a pager in high school and my friends & I had "pager code" a language we devised where each letter had a corresponding number or numbers. We had it memorized so well, that we could just glance at it and know what it said. Now it all looks just like numbers and I can't see the letters in it. Now we can text each other with the entire alphabet and punctuation. We've definitely come a long way in a rather short period of time. I'm waiting for the time where I can hook up a wire to Grr's head and her thoughts are output onto my blackberry...what would she say? "Feed me". :)

Grr's namesake:

Circus Act

I took Grr to the vet on Saturday, for her annual check-up. She now weighs in at 18 lbs. She's a big cat to start with, I mean she's really long. Add a little bit of fat and fur and there she is at 18 lbs. So I'm thinking she could be a heavyweight, if there were such a thing as "cat boxing". (By the way, my cat would kick your cat's ass!). Or maybe she can tour with the circus as the "Amazing Jumbo-Sized Grr Pickles"! Hmmm.

I finished "Water for Elephants" by Sara Gruen yesterday. Damn, that was a good book. It had something to do with the Circus (could you tell?). I thought it was very compelling and well-written. I think I'll have to recommend it to people.

Well, Margaret left on Sunday and has not returned. And there aren't any eggs in the nest. So, we don't know what happened. It's pretty sad.

I'm now reading "The Glass Castle" by Jeannette Walls. It's a memoir and it sucks you in from the first page. I'm enjoying it. I'm still trying to get a hold of a copy of "The Liar's Club", a memoir that I really want to read. My friend has a copy, so I'll borrow it from her.

I finished "Under The Banner of Heaven" by Jon Krakauer a few days ago. It was good. He's a great writer and you can tell the amount of research he put into it. I really liked how well planned and thought out the book was. The quotes at the beginning chapter were great too. If you're intrigued by the latest news of that Texas polygamist compound or you don't know anything about LDS, especially the fundamentalist sects and want to, this is the book for you. Definitely a worthwhile read.

Then I started reading "Water for Elephants" by Sara Gruen. I've heard good things about this book and know that it's been on a bunch of bestseller lists. I wasn't so sure about it, didn't really know the plot or much more than people saying it was a good read. I guess I was a bit skeptical. Anyways, I saw it at Target and decided to try it out. I have to say that was a good decision as I'm loving it. I'll tell more about it later.

Margaret is still keeping her eggs warm. We should have baby birds soon though. I can't wait!!
My Mom is going to NY to visit some friends in a month I'm really excited for her. Should be fun. I just booked her plane ticket on AAA. Worked out nicely. I even got her a nonstop flight on JetBlue. I think she'll enjoy it.

That lame "wind tunnel" boy is back at my Martial Arts class. I just wish he wasn't so creepy. I don't think he understands the concept of personal space either. It's annoying. I guess it's not so much that I wish he wasn't there, I just wish our teacher wouldn't let him lead us in warm-ups or other exercises. He's just weird. Creepy. Sigh.

New Pet

For about a week or so there have been these birds scoping out our balcony. Now one of them has decided to make one of our hanging plant's pots it's nest. She's been there for a few days nonstop. We named her Margaret. She's really safe there as she's hidden behind the plants and she's high enough up that Grr doesn't even know she exists. We're thinking that we're going to have baby birds soon. Pretty funny. This is Margaret:

In book news, I finished "Survivor" by Chuck Palahniuk. It is now one of my favorite books. It was wonderfully written and a great story. I'm amazed at how great it was.

Now I'm reading "Under The Banner of Heaven" by Jon Krakauer. This is the author that wrote "Into the Wild". This book is about how this woman and her baby were murdered on 7/24/1984. It's about Mormonism and the fanatics of the religion. It's very interesting as he is giving a full account of the history of the Mormon faith and how these brothers "received a revelation from God to kill this woman and her baby daughter". Strange. I'm enjoying it and it's truly fascinating.

I got my stitches out last week. Didn't hurt at all. In fact, I didn't even feel them removing the stitches. Pretty cool. The biopsy came back clean and I'm back to kicking ass at my martial art class. All good.