The family I married into.

They are really, really great -- in four hour doses.  

The food was good, the conversation was mostly good (and I held my own and then ducked out on the one with the Conservative Christian BIL), the booze was good, the weather was good, and two-thirds of the dogs were good.

I'm going to take a nap now, and recover from Easter.

26 years, 7 months, 29 days

That's how long I worked at the last job.  My first job.  The job I fell into out of college when I was a (literally) hungry English major with a fresh new degree, and no prospects.  I still remember the name of the woman who recommended me as a part-timer, and my first manager, and even the name of HIS boss, the woman who said "I don't like to hire college graduates, they think they know everything."  

All those years, so many new things to learn and do and be, so many changes.  The last change was one too many, though, and it was time to move on.

I hope this new job works out, the one I start next week, and I expect it will.  I'm smart and loyal and hard-working and generally everything an employer loves.  I also hope I'm not still there 26 years, 7 months, and 29 days from now!

27 miles

It was a fantastic day for a ride, and a really, really great venue!  I knew Sacramento had a bike trail, but I didn't know Sacramento had a fucking AWESOME bike trail.  Totally worth the drive up there.  It even made me hate Daylight Saving Time with slightly less than my normal burning passion of a thousand white hot stars.  

We just did 27 miles RT, my friend and I, since it was nearly my first ride of the year, and it was her inaugural ride on a new bike.  

Even though DST sucks (and blows) at least it will be light when I get home from work, and I can start getting mileage again. I need to take the bike in for a routine check up, and also buy some WD40 to keep the chain lubed.  And I need some decent bike shorts (not a Men's Large, whodathunk it?).  And new hand grips.  And a new rear view mirror.  Most of that can wait, but the check up and the WD40 are non-negotiable.

New floors start going in next week, hopefully TOMORROW.  I'm so looking forward to getting rid of this crappy ass carpet, you have no idea!

Books. Yum, books!

The BBC did a search on the best loved novels and came up with 100 books, the theory is that most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books. How many have you read?

Bolded are ones I've read - 66.  How is it possible that an American or British adult has only read 6???

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen X+

2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien X+

3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte X+

4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling X+

5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee X

6 The Bible X+

7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte X

8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell X+

9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman

10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott X

12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy

13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare

15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier X

16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien X

17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks

18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger X

19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell X

22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald X+

23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens

24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams X

26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh

27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck X

29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame X

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis X

34 Emma - Jane Austen X

35 Persuasion - Jane Austen

36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis X+

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne X

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell X

42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown X

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving X

45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery X

47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy

48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood X

49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding X+

50 Atonement - Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel

52 Dune - Frank Herbert X

53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen X

55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens X

58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley X

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck X

62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov X

63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt

64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas X

66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac

67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy

68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding

69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie

70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville X

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

72 Dracula - Bram Stoker X

73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett

74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses - James Joyce X

76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath X

77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

78 Germinal - Emile Zola

79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

80 Possession - AS Byatt

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker X

84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro

85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert X

86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

87 Charlotte's Web - EB White X+

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Alborn

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad X

92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery X

93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

94 Watership Down - Richard Adams X

95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas X

98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare X

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl X+

100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo X

Beautiful day

Well, really, so far it is just a beautiful morning, but it is quite a fantastic one.  From my windows I can see (straight ahead) one red camellia nestling against the fence, and the hydrangea with its leaves just beginning to burst out.  To the left, the bright yellow mustard, soft green grass, and brown stumps of the vineyard, with the hills and sky beyond.  

I appreciate this view every single day, because no matter the weather or the season, it is always stunning.  It's the reason we bought the house.  It what I will miss the most if we ever move away.  The inside is fine, a little messy and not well organized, and let's face it -- without any real Interior Design.  When people say "You have a beautiful home," what they are really saying is "You have a beautiful view."  And I'm okay with that.

Hope for Spring

Finally, the sun/rain combination is enough for the mustard to start blooming in the vineyard!   Not that you can tell from the crappy cellphone picture, but trust me, it's there!  And not a minute too soon, either...this is the time of year when I lose all hope that spring will ever come, and 2009 has been no different in that regard.

Good things are on the bubble however -- 

1) new electric wheelie is in the house, with car lift to come soon.  Going to check out new flooring options this afternoon, because between the dogs and the mud-tracking boys and aforementioned new electric wheelie...the carpets are shot to hell.  I'd love to have people over, but the thought that they might actually look down and see the AAAAAHHH!! that is our carpets keeps me from inviting anyone.

2) mysterious job-related things

3) the very edible Tom Cavanaugh has a new show, and I am keeping my fingers crossed that this one will last.  Please watch Trust Me on USA on Mondays, people, keep Tom working!

4) the Oscars are tomorrow.  Pretty dresses and sexy tuxes and interesting hair, plus Slumdog Millionaire is bound to win a bunch of stuff.

5) I deleted the entire history of this blog and have started over.  Fresh starts, mmmmm, good!