…more drop-in visitors

My parents came to visit today. I wasn’t quite expecting them. I mean, they call and say “Maybe we’ll be up next week, if we feel okay and the weathers not bad and nobody is visiting us here” and then they say nothing about it until the day before they’re coming and then it’s all “What do you mean you’re busy with other stuff? We said we were coming!” I find this interesting because we have some friends that do the same thing and it completely horrifies my parents when those people do it, but they don’t see that they’re doing the same thing to us.

So we went and hung out over there this afternoon and had dinner with them. My dad made his special spaghetti sauce (yum) and my mom made her garlic bread (mmm…real butter…) and fortunately there was fat-free dressing there as well (from my house). I ate tiny portions of everything (except the salad, which I had a double portion of) and nobody seemed to notice, which was good. While my mom would like me to lose weight, she doesn’t like to see me not eating what she considers decent sized portions (her regular portion is about twice my regular which is again twice what I’m eating now).

The kids watched “Night of the Twister” which is a movie based on a book that I read when I was a little girl. The author, Ivy Ruckman, came to our school to talk to us, which was my first time meeting an author of a book. I was supposed to have my copy of the book with me that day to get it autographed, but I’d forgotten it at home. I called my mom to bring it up to me, and she did, but not til after the author had already left. I never told her that I didn’t get it signed, so she told the kids that I had an autographed copy of the book at home. Hehe.

Originally published at tigersquirrels.net.

TBR Challenge 2009

I’m joining the To Be Read Challenge this year, reading those 12 pesky books on my TBR pile that I manage not to get to year-after-year finally in 2009.

Main list:

  1. The Brontes: A Life in Letters by Juliet Barker *
  2. Pleasure of Ruins by Rose Macaulay *
  3. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
  4. The Rainbow by D.H. Lawrence*
  5. On the Damned Human Race by Mark Twain
  6. The Book of the New Sun (vol 1) by Gene Wolfe
  7. The Dragonbone Chair by Tad Williams Letters to a Young Poet by Rilke*
  8. Real Boys: Rescuing our sons from the myths of Boyhood by William Pollack, PhD.
  9. A God Who Looks Like Me: Discovering a Woman Affirming Spirituality by Patricia Lynn Reily*
  10. In the Devil’s Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Trials of 1692*
  11. The Chronicles of Amber (vol 1) by Roger Zelazny
  12. Queen’s Own Fool: a novel of Mary, Queen of Scots by Jane Yolen & Robert J. Harris

Alternates:

  1. The Book of the New Sun (vol 1) by Gene Wolfe
  2. The Stone of Farewell by Tad Williams – Special Topics in Calamity Physics
  3. Mind Siege by Tim Lahaye*
  4. Boyhood and Beyond by Bob Schultz
  5. The Brontes by Rebecca Fraser
  6. The Cat’s Pajamas by Ray Bradbury
  7. The Weighers of Souls by Andre Maurois
  8. Laughing Dog by Dick Lochte*
  9. Babbit by Sinclair Lewis*
  10. Loud & Clear by Anna Quindlen
  11. More Wandering Stars: An Anthology of Jewish Fantasy & Science Fiction*
  12. The Book on the Bookshelf by Henry Petroski

So now I just have to decide where to start. 🙂

(Books crossed out are read, books with stars were started, but not finished, books with new titles next to them mysteriously disappeared during the year & had to be replaced with other books)

Originally published at tigersquirrels.net.