Siege

Neti Pot

Have you heard the good news?  It's Neti pots!

I've heard about these little things for many years.  You put a little salt in the pot and fill it with warm water.  Then you tilt your head over the sink and wash out your sinuses.  Yes - the spout goes in one nostril and the water goes up your nose, into your sinus, then out the other nostril.  Then you do the other side.

Does it feel weird?  Yes.  Does gunky gross stuff come out of your nose afterward?  Yes.  Can you breath better after you do it?  YES!  I finally broke down because this spring the pollen allergies have hit me with a vengeance.  I figured "what could it hurt to try it"?  Seriously, if you have allergies ... get one.  You'll thank me.

Book Meme

I'm never one to pass up a good book meme. 

What we have here is the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing’s users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded. Bold the ones you've read, underline the ones you read for school, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish.

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 (shouldn't other Melville count?)
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 (on my shelf)
War and Peace

Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma (on the shelf)
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 (on the shelf)
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 (on the shelf)
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo (in French!)
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King

The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel (on the shelf)
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno (and Purgatory and Paradise)
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility (on the shelf)
The Picture of Dorian Gray (on the shelf)
Mansfield Park (on the shelf)
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 (on the shelf)
Northanger Abbey (on the shelf)
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 (used to have a copy of it somewhere)

The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

I'm not sure whether to be embarrassed or amused at the number of things I probably should have read, but just haven't gotten around to it. 

If I may vent for a moment, I've had allergies all my life.  They don't make me sneeze and have a drippy nose, they make me itch.  This is fine with me.  I never have to make sure I have tissues in my pockets or assure people that "it's just allergies".  This year, I have apparently "grown into" eye allergies.  I've been wishing I could dig my eyes out of my head to rinse them off.  Not only do they itch constantly, I look like I have a nickel-bag-a-day habit.  Even the eye drops aren't doing it for me.  I was so happy to see spring come and now I'm completely over it.

Sorry Beth

Apparently, I cannot even manage one post a month.  However, since it seems that spring has finally come, I promise to come out of my cave a little more often.  It's been a very long winter and lately a cloud has come over me in the form of a jackass employee.  I'll say no more, but send good vibes my way - I have a feeling I'll need them in the next couple of weeks.

Am I the last person to post pictures of the amazing March Year of Lace kit?  It came while I was gone on a business trip and was piled in with the rest of the mail.  I was sorting through everything and saw a small white envelope and thought, "Now what can that be?"  I think I actually squealed when I realized what it was.  I handed it to hub and said, "Hand this to me and say 'Merry Christmas' in a big happy voice."  He obliged.  I think Amy and Sandra were channeling me when they chose the color.

I've been intimidated by the hank of yarn (it's teeny, tiny silk) for the last couple of weeks.  I signed into Ravelry this morning and saw that someone had already finished hers!  Plus it was her very first lace project!!  I had to get it out and wind it up.  I'm happy to report very little dye crocking and only two knots in the skein.  I can live with both. 

I'm searching around for a needle and I'll be swatching this afternoon while we watch cycling on TV.  {As an aside, the Cameron Shawl is currently in time out.  It seems that every time I think of placing a life line and then think "in a couple of rows" I screw it up.  I don't have the heart to rip out 17 rows right now, so I pull it out and look at it every couple of days and then put it away again.}

Is There Anybody Out There?

I'm having a weekend.  It involves my in-laws and it's making me tired.  So, I'm doing what I always do when stressed out and just want to veg.  I pulled out some DVDs and I'm having a TV marathon.  Since, it's the season, I'm watching West Wing.  Good goddess, I love that show.  There are several reasons why:

1.  They're so smart!  This is how I want the people in government to behave.  Everyone has a well-informed opinion and they all listen to each other and debate those opinions.

2.  The characters have amazing back stories.  They aren't shadow people who have no history.  I really get a sense of where they came from and why they are the way they are.

3.  The intensity of the writing sweeps me into the story and I hate to be interrupted.  I feel like I'm a fly on the wall watching what's happening.  It's a feeling I usually get when I'm reading and it rarely happens for me with TV.

4.  At least every other episode, something happens that makes me tear up at the end.

And honestly, when there's so much in my husband's family that makes me want to cry for real, it's very nice to be able to shed a few tears about a story and not have it come back to bite me in the ass.  I do love me some escape TV.

Freddy?  You're up.

American Gladiator

I remember this show the first time around and I have to admit that I loved it.  Hub and I would watch on Sundays and just howl.

Now Little Big Man and I are watching it and howling.  How times have changed.

Heirloom Knitting's Cameron Lace Shawl

As promised, knitting content.  Not just knitting content, but extremely pissed off knitter knitting content.  Can I first tell you that I have 27 rows completed?  That's not a typo.  Twenty-seven rows.  In three days. The Ornaghi Filati  Merino Oro I'm using is giving me trouble.  I cast on with Addi Turbos - fast right?  The problem is the join.  The yarn is so fine that each stitch lands in the tiny space between the needle and the cable and gets stuck.  This made me fight the yarn and have to pick every stitch over the canyon.   Plus it made me really cranky.

So, I switched to an Inox circular.  Same problem.  Additionally, the stitches weren't sliding over the needles like they usually do.  I believe this is my own problem as I was gripping the needles a little too tightly.

I had a pair of bamboo jump needles and while the join was fine (big sigh) the bamboo grabbed the yarn so tightly, I still wasn't having any fun.  Tired of struggling with this, yesterday I asked Hub if he wanted to drive into town and get another set of needles.  I figured I'd go for some 10" straights and see if that solved my problem.  It did - yippee!!

Today, I decided I was going to get a chunk done on this shawl.  I'm knitting along and getting the hang of the pattern and all is well.  Until I reach over to pull more yarn out of the ball in the middle of a row.  I hear your collective intake of breath.  Yes.  I.  Did.  Pulled 10 stitches off the needles and into oblivion.  I tried to grab the stitches and then unknit back to where they were (about 2 rows).  I can't make head nor tail of these stitches.

The thing is, I was just thinking, "I'll get 30 rows on the needles and then thread a life line."  Okay, I'm gritting my teeth and telling myself "it's only 27 rows ... it's only 27 rows ..."  Yeah, that's going to work.

Born Standing Up

I know, I know, it's a knitting blog, not a book blog.  I have to say, this is my last day of vacation before my last weekend before going back to work again.  I can't say when I've enjoyed 2 weeks off more than I just have.  It's been day after day of deciding whether to read, knit, spin, or nap.  Heaven.

So, I've finished another book.  I heard Steve Martin talk about this book a couple of weeks ago on NPR and he was brilliant.  He's so low key about his celebrity it makes me want to sit and have a cup of coffee with him.

In Martin's own words this book is "a biography, because I am writing about someone I used to know."  It chronicles his childhood entrance into show business and follows him all the way through playing stadiums in the 1980s. 

What interested me most is his approach to doing stand up.  I've often wondered what it's like to essentially create your own job out of nothing.  Martin didn't want a new routine to flop, so he would break it down into tiny pieces and begin by putting the tiniest piece into his act.  If it worked, he would add another piece.  If it continued to work, it continued to grow; if not, he dropped it.  This is such a common sense approach to creating an act.  I guess I assumed that many comedians worked more like Robin Williams does - movement and zaniness until you drop.

Martin also talks about the downside of fame.  How once he was playing to such huge audiences, he worried that the people in the back could only see him as a white dot on a stage very far away.  It stopped being fun - there was no time to do something new or to experiment.  I guess that explains why it seems like he just disappeared.  I can understand just wanting to be done.

At the end, he talks about writing the book and listening to some of his old routines.  He wondered if they were even funny anymore.  I have to say, Little Big Man LOVES Steve Martin.  He jumps up and down when the new phone book comes in.  We joke back and forth about "cup-a-pizza".  Hub will look at me every now and again and say, "...and then we throw dog poop on their shoes" and laugh like a maniac.  Yeah, it's still funny.

Bo's Lasting Lessons

I finished my second book of 2008.  In the interest of full disclosure, I have to say that I received an undergraduate degree from UM ('87) as well as my Masters ('06).  I saw Bo Schembechler coach and I remember thinking that he was old school and didn't care who knew it.

When I was a freshman, my mother forced me to buy season football tickets, so I slogged to almost every game that year and sat in the student section.  This was about the time the wave was becoming popular and let me tell you, when 100,000+ people start screaming in a giant bowl - it makes a big noise.  The players on the field couldn't hear the audible calls and it was a problem.  Bo sounded off and the next week, we were all supposed to be more controlled during the game.

When a particularly important play was being run, the students used to pull out their keys and jangle them (key play - get it?).  The Saturday after the "too much noise" game, we all reached into our pockets and pulled out ... nothing.  We shook our hands and were (relatively) silent.  The student newspaper even ran the words to Coach Schembechler's "new" fight song - it was an empty box on the front page.  He was a hard ass.

My mother has always been a fan.  She knows more about football than a lot of men I know.  When this book came out last fall, I sent her a copy.  She read it in less than a week - which is a huge feat for my slow-as-molasses reading mother.  The next time I saw her, she said, "I'm giving you Bo's book.  You should read it and then you should give it to your boss to read."

The subtitle of this book is "The Legendary Coach Teaches the Timeless Fundamentals of Leadership".  I have to tell you, I've read a lot of leadership books in my time.  This one feels real.  Not only does the old coach talk about what it means to be a leader, he gives example after example after example of how he dealt with staff, players, administration, alums, press, and anyone else who managed to fall into his orbit.  He knew how to pick people, how to motivate them, how to set goals, and how to meet those goals.  This books feels like Coach Bo is sitting in the room with you talking (okay, sometimes shouting). 

I must admit, I'm a Wolverine and I'm proud of my connection to the University, but I've never been a giant Bo fan.  I never made an effort to go to a book signing or attend any of his speeches.  I'm a little sad now that I didn't meet him while he was alive.  I think I really missed something.  I am grateful that someone was paying attention and managed to get this man to put his secrets down on paper.

Buy this book if you're interested in leadership.  Buy it if you're a former Wolverine.  Buy it if you're not a Wolverine.  Buy it if you hate the Wolverines ... buy the book.  You're bound to find something in here you can apply to your own life and work.

The Early Arrival of Dreams

I've finished my first book of 2008.  Okay, so I started it in 2007, but finishing is what counts, right?  The Early Arrival of Dreams:  A Year in China, was my last Rosemary Mahoney book, but the first one she wrote.  Mahoney traveled on a cultural exchange to teach English at Hangzhou University.

Her style is a little confusing because she moves forward and backward in her narrative quickly and frequently.  It took me a while to keep up with her without having to flip back several pages to remind myself where she was.  What she is brilliant at, is description.  There is nothing I like more about reading a book than feeling like I'm walking into someplace I've never been before.

The room was so vigorously swept I thought I could see the tracks of the broom's bristles in the hard cement floor. (page 159)

Like their teachers, the students had dim light bulbs and cold showers, and they washed their clothes in long sinks in the bathrooms.  On clear days the dorms were brilliant with laundry draped on drying-racks outside the windows.  (page 49)

Her descriptions of traveling within China made me question my desire to travel there.  I've always felt that there are things one should see in China (the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, the Emperor's Terra Cotta Army, etc) and have a half-baked itinerary that I've carried around in my head for several years.  What has put me off is every packaged trip includes a 3-day cruise to see the Three-Gorges Dam.  I'm not interested in seeing a dam, or spending 3 days cruising up a river.  I figured as long as I could get the visas, I'd be able to design the trip I wanted to take without the Chinese government showing me what they wanted me to see. 

Mahoney's descriptions of travel within China are making me re-think this plan.  On a weekend trip to Shanghai, she and a couple of colleagues were so packed into a slow moving train that the passengers without seats simply took to lying down to sleep on the filthy floor.  Another time, she took a trip to Tokyo with a fellow teacher and returned alone just before the Chinese New Year.  Her 3 day ordeal of being trapped in Guangzhou and trying to get a ticket back to her university made my stomach hurt.

In addition to the descriptions, Mahoney also has an amazing ear for dialogue.  She makes much of strangers approaching her wherever she goes to "practice their English" on her regardless of what she's doing or where she is.  While it tends to be annoying, she makes the most of it on several occasions by engaging with these strangers and asking them questions about their own lives.  Her students open up to her and connect with her in a way that is breath-taking and heart-breaking at the same time. 

I'm still in love with the idea of traveling in China, but I feel a bit better prepared at this point.  It's a worthy read and I gave it 3 stars on Goodreads.

Another One of Those Summary Posts

So, it's the new year.  Thank the goddess.  While it hasn't been a terrible year, it certainly could have been better.  I do believe that 2008 will be a good year.

I want to take just a moment and detail the things I've been able to cross of my Life List:

1. I've visited 2 new states in the US.  I spent almost a week in Oklahoma City for business (the best beef I've ever had).  We also took a road trip to Chapel Hill, North Carolina to see a friend get married.  I was surprised at how gorgeous the Duke campus is.  (My state rule is that I have to have spent at least 1 night to be able to cross the state off the list.)
2. Began taking singing lessons in August.  While I won't be on American Idol any time soon, I have gained an appreciation for how much fun it is to sing and discovered that I'm not half bad.  Scheduling conflicts stopped the lessons in November, but we'll be starting up again in January.
3. Set foot on the Appalachian Trail (part of the road trip to NC).  We hiked almost a mile and it seemed like it was all uphill.  We're already planning a longer trip for next fall when Hub returns from Alaska.  He wants to hike for 4 days - which means I have to sleep outside for 3 nights.  Truly, this will be a test for me.  It also means that I need to hit the elliptical machine so that I'll be able to keep up.
4. Managed to read 54 books last year.  Granted, I did a lot of reading while laid up with a broken leg, but I did read a ton after I healed.  Some highlights:  Laurie King's Sherlock mysteries, Jaqueline Winspear's Maisie Dobbs series, the last Harry Potter, Rosemary Mahoney's writings, graphic novels, and Tales from a Female Nomad, by Rita Golden Gelman.

What's up for this year?  I'm not really sure.  I know I'll be reading, knitting, and spinning.  Here's the preliminary list:

• Reading:  I'll begin reading Shakespeare's plays this year with a goal of one per month.  There are 37 plays, so this Life List item will take a little over 2 years.  I've just started the Elizabeth Peters Egypt mysteries (19 books), so those will continue.
• Knitting:  I joined IndiAmy's Year of Lace.  The kits begin arriving in March, so I'll be all set to knit me some serious lace.  I joined a knit-a-long on Ravelry to knit Bombshell from Big Girl Knits starting this month.  We have plans in the works to visit my friend Lynne in Tennessee and pick her brain for dying, spinning, and knitting projects.
• I'd like to become proficient in reading tarot cards this year.
• Find a yoga class and just get started already.
• I need to pick a state to visit.  I'd like to be able to cross at least one state off the list each year.  There's a chance I'll be going to San Diego on business next fall and we may start our AT excursion in Georgia.  A couple of good possibilities there.
• I'd also like to find a beginning drawing class in the area.

Those are my preliminary thoughts, but I'm sure I'll be expanding on them in the coming months.  I sat with a work friend at our holiday party and talked about having quarterly dinners to discuss our lists.  Her idea was to create a group, rather like a book club, where everyone could compare lists and offer encouragement and a place to talk about what you're doing or planning on doing.   I really like the idea of gathering a couple times a year to see what's in the works for everyone else.  Way more fun than a book club.