Beached Seals and Books
I'm back from The North! It was great for the first week. Then it snowed. A lot. For days. After that working outside all day ceased being pleasant and enjoyable.
But we saw wildlife: rutting moose, cariboo, and a grizzly bear (from the safety of the helicopter ... recall I didn't have my bear banger *giggles immaturely at the name*). We found wolf tracks the size of my hand stamped over our boot marks from the day before. We also had an owl following us around for four days. It would perch on the topmost branch of the spruce trees above us and just SIT there and hoot at us. One day, one of the guys hit the tree to scare it away but it looked down at all of us in a very annoyed fashion as the tree swayed back and forth. The native men we had on our crew informed us that it was extremely unlucky to have an owl hanging about (apparently if it "calls your name" that means you're going to die soon). After that I wasn't so keen to see the owl, especially because we were working with explosives. Oo. Luckily there was no "death". At least not yet; native legends don't have concrete time frames for what constitues dying "soon". ;)
There were government biologists working in the creeks, studying the bull trout (a threatened species). They were great, but I couldn't stop laughing everytime we saw them (gosh, how rude am I?). They were snorkling in the creeks and were outfitted in full-body dry suits, flippers, gloves, masks etc. and carrying around nets and cameras and their tagging devices. Now that's not too funny, but considering we're in the middle of the mountains being helicoptered in and the creeks were about a foot deep, it was amusing. Seeing them lying face-down like beached seals, literally pulling themselves up the creek through the rocks and gravel with their arms had me sputtergiggling quietly into my hand more times than not. Even they thought it was pretty ridiculous. See what happens when you work for the Canadian government! ;)
So I'm at home now cooking up a storm, doing laundry, and lurking on the computer--pretty much procrastinating shamlessly because I'm supposed to have something written for a local writer's group I'm a part of by Tuesday. I'm hopeless. But after I run to the grocery store and erm ... make dessert, I SWEAR I will write something. It will be original and not fanfiction. And it will probably be horrendous. *headdesk*
On a last (fannish) note,
hugemind's and my cinematography community,
spnematography, is up and running. There are four days remaining until SPN S3 starts. Not that I'm counting the hours/minutes/seconds or anything. ;)
kjpzak, you'll be delighted to know that while at Barnes and Noble yesterday, I happened upon a book of essays about "Firefly" (yes, published meta). Do you know what I did? I read it. Then that night I made my husband watch episode 1 (actually he wanted to watch "the boys" but I steered him toward 'Firefly" *gasp*). Being that you swear BSG is a million times better than "Firefly", are you sure you want me to get hooked on it? Downward spiral, my friend, downward spiral, and I might just take you with me (unless, of course, you're already there). *evil grin*
Here's a fun meme from
sigune that demonstrates the degree of my illiteracy, how I can't seem to focus enough to finish a book, and the extent of my "to read" list. BTW, does it annoy anyone else that most of these titles are erroneously capitalized (or not capitalized)? Maybe it's just me and my freakish, anal tendancies...
These are the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing's users (as of today). Bold what you have read, italicise what you started but couldn't finish, and strike through what you couldn't stand. * what you've read more than once. Underline what is on your to-read list.
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
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and prejudice
Jane Eyre
A tale of two cities
The brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and peace
Vanity fair
The time traveler's wife*
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The kite runner (I'm reading this now)
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 (I'm reading this now)
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
Frankenstein*
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A clockwork orange
Anansi boys
The once and future king
The grapes of wrath
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel*
1984
Angels & demons
The inferno
The satanic verses
Sense and sensibility
The picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
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 (I'm reading this now)
Persuasion
Northanger abbey
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
The Hobbit
In cold blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The three musketeers
But we saw wildlife: rutting moose, cariboo, and a grizzly bear (from the safety of the helicopter ... recall I didn't have my bear banger *giggles immaturely at the name*). We found wolf tracks the size of my hand stamped over our boot marks from the day before. We also had an owl following us around for four days. It would perch on the topmost branch of the spruce trees above us and just SIT there and hoot at us. One day, one of the guys hit the tree to scare it away but it looked down at all of us in a very annoyed fashion as the tree swayed back and forth. The native men we had on our crew informed us that it was extremely unlucky to have an owl hanging about (apparently if it "calls your name" that means you're going to die soon). After that I wasn't so keen to see the owl, especially because we were working with explosives. Oo. Luckily there was no "death". At least not yet; native legends don't have concrete time frames for what constitues dying "soon". ;)
There were government biologists working in the creeks, studying the bull trout (a threatened species). They were great, but I couldn't stop laughing everytime we saw them (gosh, how rude am I?). They were snorkling in the creeks and were outfitted in full-body dry suits, flippers, gloves, masks etc. and carrying around nets and cameras and their tagging devices. Now that's not too funny, but considering we're in the middle of the mountains being helicoptered in and the creeks were about a foot deep, it was amusing. Seeing them lying face-down like beached seals, literally pulling themselves up the creek through the rocks and gravel with their arms had me sputtergiggling quietly into my hand more times than not. Even they thought it was pretty ridiculous. See what happens when you work for the Canadian government! ;)
So I'm at home now cooking up a storm, doing laundry, and lurking on the computer--pretty much procrastinating shamlessly because I'm supposed to have something written for a local writer's group I'm a part of by Tuesday. I'm hopeless. But after I run to the grocery store and erm ... make dessert, I SWEAR I will write something. It will be original and not fanfiction. And it will probably be horrendous. *headdesk*
On a last (fannish) note,
hugemind's and my cinematography community,
spnematography, is up and running. There are four days remaining until SPN S3 starts. Not that I'm counting the hours/minutes/seconds or anything. ;)
kjpzak, you'll be delighted to know that while at Barnes and Noble yesterday, I happened upon a book of essays about "Firefly" (yes, published meta). Do you know what I did? I read it. Then that night I made my husband watch episode 1 (actually he wanted to watch "the boys" but I steered him toward 'Firefly" *gasp*). Being that you swear BSG is a million times better than "Firefly", are you sure you want me to get hooked on it? Downward spiral, my friend, downward spiral, and I might just take you with me (unless, of course, you're already there). *evil grin*
Here's a fun meme from
sigune that demonstrates the degree of my illiteracy, how I can't seem to focus enough to finish a book, and the extent of my "to read" list. BTW, does it annoy anyone else that most of these titles are erroneously capitalized (or not capitalized)? Maybe it's just me and my freakish, anal tendancies...
These are the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing's users (as of today). Bold what you have read, italicise what you started but couldn't finish, and strike through what you couldn't stand. * what you've read more than once. Underline what is on your to-read list.
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
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and prejudice
Jane Eyre
A tale of two cities
The brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and peace
Vanity fair
The time traveler's wife*
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The kite runner (I'm reading this now)
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 (I'm reading this now)
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
Frankenstein*
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A clockwork orange
Anansi boys
The once and future king
The grapes of wrath
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel*
1984
Angels & demons
The inferno
The satanic verses
Sense and sensibility
The picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
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 (I'm reading this now)
Persuasion
Northanger abbey
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
The Hobbit
In cold blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The three musketeers