Even MORE books!

Smitty posted the Modern Library list of 100 top books, so let's do it again! Bold for read, italics for mean to read.

I find this list equally flawed. (Only 17 for me.) Looks like they just compiled syllibi from college English courses -- let's see, how many books can we list by the same author? And crazy, Death Comes for the Archbishop as the only Cather? I was a Cather fiend in high school, and My Antonia was much better. Maybe they just picked it because it was short.

Of course, reading this one makes me realize who wasn't on the other list, and wow, how do you not include Faulkner? Or Cather, for that matter.

Anyway, books are fun!

1 Ulysses – James Joyce
2 The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
3 Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man – James Joyce
4 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
5 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
6 The Sound and the Fury – William Faulkner
7 Catch-22 – Joseph Heller
8 Darkness at Noon – Arthur Koestler
9 Sons and Lovers – D.H. Lawrence
10 The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
11 Under the Volcano – Malcolm Lowry
12 The Way of All Flesh – Samuel Butler
13 1984 – George Orwell
14 I, Claudius – Robert Graves
15 To the Lighthouse – Virginia Woolf
16 An American Tragedy – Theodore Dreiser
17 The Heart is a Lonely Hunter – Carson McCullers
18 Slaugterhouse-Five – Kurt Vonnegut
19 Invisible Man – Ralph Ellison
20 Native Son – Richard Wright
21 Henderson the Rain King – Saul Bellow
22 Appointment in Samarra – John O'Hara
23 U.S.A. – John dos Passos
24 Winesburg, Ohio – Sherwood Anderson
25 A Passage to India – E.M. Forster
26 The Wings of the Dove – Henry James
27 The Ambassadors – Henry James
28 Tender is the Night – F. Scott Fitzgerald
29 The Studs Lonigan Trilogy – James T Farrell
30 The Good Soldier – Ford Madox Ford
31 Animal Farm – George Orwell
32 The Golden Bowl – Henry James
33 Sister Carrie – Theodore Dreiser
34 A Handful of Dust – Evelyn Waugh
35 As I Lay Dying – William Faulkner
36 All the King's Men – Robert Penn Warren
37 The Bridge of San Luis Rey – Thornton Wilder
38 Howard's End – E.M. Forster
39 Go Tell it on the Mountain – James Baldwin
40 The Heart of the Matter – Graham Greene
41 Lord of the Flies – William Golding
42 Deliverance – James Dickey
43 A Dance to the Music of Time – Anthony Powell
44 Point Counterpoint – Aldous Huxley
45 The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway
46 The Secret Agent – Joseph Conrad
47 Nostromo – Joseph Conrad
48 The Rainbow – D.H. Lawrence
49 Women in Love – D.H. Lawrence
50 Tropic of Cancer – Henry Miller
51 The Naked and the Dead – Norman Mailer
52 Portnoy's Complaint – Philip Roth
53 Pale Fire – Vladimir Nabokov
54 Light in August – William Faulkner
55 On the Road – Jack Kerouac
56 The Maltese Falcon – Dashiell Hammett
57 Parade's End – Ford Madox Ford
58 The Age of Innocence – Edith Wharton
59 Zuleika Dobson – Max Beerbohm
60 The Moviegoer – Walker Percy
61 Death Comes for the Archbishop – Willa Cather
62 From Here to Eternity – James Jones
63 The Wapshot Chronicles – John Cheever
64 The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger
65 A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess
66 Of Human Bondage – W. Somerset Maugham
67 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
68 Main Street – Sinclair Lewis
69 The House of Mirth – Edith Wharton
70 The Alexandria Quartet – Lawrence Durrell
71 A High Wind in Jamaica – Richard Hughes
72 A House for Mr. Biswas – V.S. Naipaul
73 The Day of the Locust – Nathanael West
74 A Farewell to Arms – Ernest Hemingway
75 Scoop – Evelyn Waugh
76 The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie – Muriel Spark
77 Finnegans Wake – James Joyce
78 Kim – Rudyard Kipling
79 A Room With a View – E.M. Forster
80 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
81 The Adventures of Augie March – Saul Bellow
82 Angle of Repose – Wallace Stegner
83 A Bend in the River – V.S. Naipaul
84 The Death of the Heart – Elizabeth Bowen
85 Lord Jim – Joseph Conrad
86 Ragtime – E.L. Doctorow
87 The Old Wives' Tale – Arnold Bennett
88 The Call of the Wild – Jack London
89 Loving – Henry Green
90 Midnight's Children – Salman Rushdie
91 Tobacco Road – Erskine Caldwell
92 Ironweed – William Kennedy
93 The Magus – John Fowles
94 Wide Sargasso Sea – Jean Rhys
95 Under the Net – Iris Murdoch
96 Sophie's Choice – William Styron
97 The Sheltering Sky – Paul Bowles
98 The Postman Always Rings Twice – James M. Cain
99 The Ginger Man – J.P. Donleavy
100 The Magnificent Ambersons – Booth Tarkington

Books! Books everywhere!

The Big Read is an NEA program designed to encourage community reading initiatives. They've come up with this list of the top 100 books, using criteria they don't explain, and they estimate that the average adult has only read 6 of these. So, we are encouraged to:

1) Look at the list and bold those we have read.
2) Italicize those we intend to read.
3) Underline the books we LOVE
4) Reprint this list in our own blogs

I've read 38, which isn't bad! I could say I've read more, but I guess watching BBC versions of Austen doesn't count, huh? And what can I say, I don't care for fantasy, never have.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare -- well, not complete ...
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
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
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
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
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
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
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
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
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Giant-sized excitement

Fathers Day and the momentous foray into the world of kiddie rock are a bit in the past now, but I still thought I'd share, as any proud parent would.

Abigail and I put on our coolest rock concert clothes -- a pink, polka-dot sundress for her -- and hopped on the Lynx to head Uptown. Riding the light rail was just about as much fun as the concert! Charlotte is still new at this effective-mass-transit thing, so it's exciting to see how well it works. We arrived Uptown with the coolest of the cool Charlotte tots and their parents who were all reliving their youth. Like me! It was a good show. Not very kiddie, actually. More like a toned-down regular TMBG concert where fans could bring their kids. It was quite loud. Abigail could suck it up, but there was many a wailing baby in the crowd, and I just don't think I would have submitted infant ear drums to that much volume. But the kids did like it and the parents were thrilled! They played "Clap Your Hands," which is great to dance to, and the song all about how they don't want to work. Sadly, no "Sleepwalkers," by far my favorite kids' song to dance to. And for all the big-kid fans, they played "Istanbul" and "Particle Man" and "Birdhouse in Your Soul." Hooray!! No conga lines like in 1995 in Pittsburgh, but they did have confetti canons, by far Abigail's favorite part of the show.



Abigail took this picture (though I helped zoom).



I also spotted A.'s kids across the theater. A.,If you still read this, I can't believe how big they are! Especially I.!!!! He's HUGE!

And here's a gratuitous photo for Rambling. Abigail was playing dress up and wandered into my room announcing that she was Kelly. There is a princess Kelly in her make-believe world of Pipcot, where Abigail the Rescue Princess lives with all her princess friends, saving the cowardly Prince Heroic from himself. But I like to think its her homage to another Kelly :)

Just 24:59 to go

So I'm stuck in the abyss of waiting for gigantic photos to upload to an FTP site. I've been doing this for HOURS today. And I am burned out on my normal Web sites. I've never been a good surfer, either. And I'm honestly done with everything else for the upcoming issue. Well, then, I must blog.

But I have nothing to say.

It's been hot. I can definitely say that. I don't know if it officially hit 100 today, but it sure as hell felt like it. And yesterday. And for the next week. It's JUNE for crying out loud! If it's this oppressively hot now, will it be 120 in August?! Ugh, and Abigail is going to want to play outside this summer. I was not made for Southern living. You sure you want to move here, Smitty?

Hmmm, what else ... I want a new car. I probably won't get one for two more years, but I am suddenly quite tired of this one. The sun visor has dry rotted to the point of holes. The reflection of the Honda symbol has burned off a square of paint on my bumper. My automatic door locks do not work if the driver's door is open. The antenna is disconnected somewhere in the car frame so I have no radio. There are small rust spots on the hood from parking under oak trees at the last apartment. And I just noticed yesterday that the top of the back seat is also dry rotting. I loved my little car, I will probably get another Civic, but this current Civic is tired. As Brad and I have been saying all week due to heat and lack of sleep, my little car is o-pressed. It still runs fine, only has 103,000 miles, but it has parked in the full sun for four years and it is o-pressed. As I have told Brad, I will consider us made when I have some kind of structure to park my car in.

And I think that's it for now. Hopefully I will have much more interesting things to say another day.

The History of Love

I just finished reading "The History of Love" by Nicole Krauss. I've been wanting to read it for a long time, intrigued by reviews and the premise: a young man falls in love and writes a book just before the Holocaust; the book is published by a different man; years later, a girl named for the woman the author loved and wrote about wants to find her namesake. The novel is written from several different points of view as the characters' lives intertwine -- common in modern fiction, but I love it.

So it was an excellent book, and I must say the ending has really given me pause. It wasn't what I expected, though I don't know what I expected. I had to just sit there and reread it several times, flipping back through the book to see exactly how it fit with the rest of the story. I wouldn't call it a twist, really, just surprising. I often wish books weren't over, but this one really left me not quite knowing what to do with myself. I definitely recommend it for my more literary readers.

One passage really jumped out at me as truly beautiful:
Even now, all possible feelings do not yet exist. There are still those that lie beyond our capacity and our imagination. From time to time, when a piece of music no one has ever written, or a painting no one has ever painted, or something else impossible to predict, fathom, or yet describe takes place, a new feeling enters the world. And then, for the millionth time in the history of feeling, the heart surges, and absorbs the impact.

Huh. In looking up the book link, I discovered that Krauss is married to Jonathan Safran Foer. I haven't read "Everything is Illuminated," but from the movie, it seems they have similar styles. And topics. And Polish heritage.

On my honor, I will try ...

Oh my, I have agreed to co-lead a Daisy Girl Scout troop. What have I done?!

Well, I know what I've done. Abigail was a Daisy this year, but two complications have come up: Girl Scouts has reorganized how the different levels are determined, and we're holding Abigail back in kindergarten. So either she has to find a new Daisy troop, or she moves up to Brownies and is there for FOUR years. Someone at my church is starting up a new Daisy troop, but she needed a co-leader. Some of Abigail's church friends may join the troop, and the meetings will be mid-week rather than Saturdays like the Brownies, which would rule out soccer in the fall. So to make the new troop work, I said okay.

I'm kind of worried that Abigail will get upset when all of her Daisy friends move up, but she also said she really wants to do soccer again. She's thrilled at the thought her best church friend may join, and I'm sure if I tell her I'll be there she'll be ecstatic. It'll probably be fine, but it just ads to all the repeating worries. I don't want her to feel punished and start to dislike Scouts.

Deciding to repeat kindergarten was really tough. Abigail is super smart, and I'm really not just saying that as her mom, but she's emotionally very immature. She breaks down almost daily at school, crying over something other kids take in stride, and she still parallel plays rather than really interacting in a shared game. The immaturity has cropped up in a few places: she didn't make any really close friends this year, and she's been getting more and more discouraged about being the youngest and smallest and slowest. As the teacher said, if she went to first grade, she would either struggle and succeed or struggle and fail, but either way she would struggle. There's no WAY my kid would sit through a whole day with just one recess! Sit still and pay attention and do work more independently? Not yet.

I was worried about how to broach the topic, but Abigail actually brought it up on her own. She was worried about other first graders being 7 and about tests and work and still being young. I was able to tell her what Brad and I agreed on: that we started her a little early in kindergarten because we knew she was ready to learn and play, but it just wasn't time for first grade yet.

Her teacher next year taught first grade this year, so I've been able to play that up and make it more like kindergarten-and-a-half. And whenever Abigail starts to talk about first grade as if it were next year, I'm able to bring her back easily by asking, "But didn't you want to be 7 in first grade?" We'll really have to watch to make sure she doesn't get bored, especially with reading, but having a different teacher will make the science and social studies different, and she still isn't crazy about math and could handle the review. We're really hopeful that this will boost her confidence and make her like school again -- at the moment, school can be really frustrating since she loses recess time either to finish work or because she was talking or playing around.

I'm still really wary of the transition, and I'm sure the first week will be difficult, but after that I'm pretty sure it'll smooth out quickly.

Anyway, adding the changes in Scouting at the same time we're repeating, it's been stressful. Brad doesn't quite understand why I'm so concerned, especially about Scouts, but I just want Abigail to be happy and thrive and not feel that she's at all not good enough.

Not in vain

My father-in-law WILL be out of town on Fathers Day! Hooray! Off to my little one's first rock concert!

And I FINALLY finished "Vanity Fair." It was pretty good but quite a slog through six parts. I liked the adaptation, but I don't know if I liked the ending. Probably faithful to the book, but I'm iffy on it.

But they really might be!

I have a dilemma. There is an amazing mother-daughter bonding opportunity that I don't think I'm going to be able to have!

They Might Be Giants is giving a free children's concert in Charlotte on June 15. How exciting! How thrilling! What, you didn't know they did kids' music? They're up to three CDs now, and it's such a refreshing change to most kids' music. I mean, these are the men who taught my little girl exactly what a conifer is! I really want to go! (As does Abigail.) So I quickly made a reservation last week for the 4 p.m. show at Charlotte's mega-cool children's library -- then realized that's Fathers Day!! Egad! Who schedules a children's concert for Fathers Day?!?! There's also a 1 p.m. show, so I finally called back yesterday to see if I could change my reservation -- we'd skip church for a rock concert. But both shows are now sold out!

I have a very slight hope that we could do a Fathers Day lunch rather than dinner, but it's very slight. My non-blood relations are rather stuck in their ritual of holiday observances, and I don't think lunch will fly. But I really want to go!! And I wouldn't have time to go to the 4 p.m. Uptown and then get back in time for a festive, generally slightly strained family meal.

Is it horrible of me to hope my father-in-law will be out of town?

TMBG is key to some of my favorite 17- and 18-year-old memories. There's the conga line in high school. And the immediate bonding with Rambling the first night college. "I wanna go!!" the little girl whined.

On a side note, I just heard that Barenaked Ladies now has a children's CD. Gotta have it!

It's a gas

So driving along the interstate yesterday, I noticed a billboard for a truck stop. $4.19 per gallon for diesel. I also live in the state with just about the cheapest gas. And to think that 10 years ago this summer, I was buying gas for $.75 per gallon at the Hess on College Ave., totaling maybe $6 a tank.

Austen it isn't

So, who's read/seen "Vanity Fair"? I watched the first episode of the A&E version, and wow, that was odd. Are the characters really such stereotypes in the novel? Interesting. I'll keep watching, of course. I chose this over the Reese Witherspoon version since I heard it completely veered from the novel, though at lease the Mira Nair film would be pretty. This one so far is very, very brown. Hmmm.

Not the capital of Alaska

I finally watched "Juno" and that was a great film! I loved that everything didn't go perfectly! And while Ellen Page and Jennifer Garner were perfectly cast, as a former West Wing junkie, I ADORED Allison Janey as a nail tech stepmom!!

My favorite line from the movie, thanks especially to Allison Janey's delivery: "Somebody else is going to find a precious blessing from Jesus in this garbage dump of a situation."

Sadly, some of the teenage banter went totally over my head. Even when I WAS a teenager, I probably wasn't up on all the lingo, but wow, at 30 I'm clueless.

The first time down the aisle

My little girl took her first practice run down a wedding aisle last weekend as flower girl for the wonderful Smitties. It was a beautiful wedding and a great time with dear, old friends. And of course, there were pictures.

Here she is in her beautiful yellow dress, which like all the dresses, was made by the bride.



This could be counted as her "first dance" if she does indeed marry Wyatt, the 3-year-old nephew of the groom. As far as they were concerned, they were married with the Smitties. Poor little Wyatt, it broke his heart leaving Abigail.


And these are her "aunts."


The happy couple was happy and glowing and in their finest, but sadly my pictures were all out of focus. Hopefully someone will come to my rescue.

Oh, and I should add the middle two aren't even mine. Other friends had a much better camera and a much better vantage point!

Almost well rested

And with this Monday morning, Spring Break ends. Abigail was at the beach all week with Nana, and was I productive? Of course not. Well, I was with the magazine, but not with the house. I read a book -- in one night. The husband and I went out to eat and saw a movie in a place called a "theater". I napped a lot. I slept every morning until at least 8 a.m. I call that a good vacation.

The book was "My Sister's Keeper," and it was surprisingly good. I'm giving my book club till the end of spring since they're nice ladies, but the book selections leave something to be desired. But this was actually good. It tackled lots of interesting ethical dilemmas and didn't try to say one side was right or wrong -- which really, in the cases presented, there wasn't a right, just varying levels of wrong and painful but necessary. The writing was decent, though not many amazing passages, but it was a compelling story. I just wish the author hadn't copped out finally and ended an otherwise complicated story with something too pat, too "deus ex machina."

The movie was "Stop-loss." It was pretty good, some flaws in continuity and some unbelievable side stories, but definitely a powerful view of the torment soldiers may be going through. And it was interesting to hear Brad's thoughts as a man, about under what conditions he would fight and why.

Farty machines

A pack of Harleys has been perched outside of my office for five minutes now sounding like they ate 12 cans of beans apiece. I do not see the appeal. I just don't get it. They are annoying and need to drive away NOW.

Just for Jenny

Well, okay, and Mom and Auntie Manda, if not others. We went to Children's Day on the Farm at Historic Brattonsville today and had a wonderful time. I may have a future interpreter on my hands.

Movie plug

This will not count as an official movie review, since I have become lazy in my old age and just don't write that much in blogs anymore. Sorry.

But you simply must see "Death at a Funeral"! Brad and I were in hysterics the whole time. The drugged fiance should win an Oscar, and the bit with the dwarf and the drugs and the coffin ...!!!!! Oh, it was good.

Developments

The first designer is back. I'm not happy about this, but there was a long meeting and we'll see what happens.

Last night, I started a book at 8:30. I finished it at 10:30. Okay, okay, it was kiddie lit, a book called Stargirl, and believe it or not I was reading it for a book club I'm in where the average age is probably 45. The book was about individuality in high school, and it was actually quite good. I always wanted to be the quirky individual in high school, but I never stood out. Now I'm accepting that I find quirky individuals fascinating, but I am just not that quirky. I like jeans, solid colored shirts, simple makeup, even simpler hair, and that's fine. I will admire the quirky folk, hopefully even befriend them, but I will just have to be the straight man in the relationship.

If you know an adolescent, though, it was a very good book. A., they even have a teacher's guide for it.

The golden time

Lately, Abigail has taken to asking for cuddle time after breakfast. To say she is an active kid is an understatement, so these few minutes of quiet together are really sweet. This morning, when she asked to cuddle, she went off on one of her monologues and pointed to a gold star sticker she has and said, "This gold star means that this is the golden time. It's going to tell me when the golden time is over. Only I will know when it is over." Which of course wasn't true because nagging Mommy finally had to break it up or we'd be late for school. But it is such a golden time. She's 5 and a half and getting so big. All too soon she's going to be too big for my lap, and I'll miss looking at her little face while she "dreams".

Puerto Rico

So I'm still lazy, but I'll dutifully avoid working to post some pictures!

We went to Puerto Rico about three weeks ago already and had a wonderful time. We were just in San Juan most of the time, but there is so much to see and do! And the flight was really reasonable from the States, so we highly recommend it. Brad's already talking about taking Abigail back with us -- or moving there all together. We'll see about that, but I did have fun!

We stayed out near the airport just a block from the beach, but city beaches aren't the most spectacular, so we spent the first couple days in Old San Juan. It's obviously very Latin, but there's also a LOT of American influence and everyone speaks excellent English -- so good I really didn't try much Spanish. It was a good first time abroad for Brad. The colonial city was stunning, and the food was delicious (especially the rice and beans, and pineapple juice at Cafe el Punto -- most amazing juice ever).





Then the third day, we went on a day trip, sailing on a catamaran to go snorkeling off uninhabited Icacos Island. Using the snorkel was disconcerting at first -- you felt like you had to take huge, quick breaths, which only made you feel like you were smothering -- but after you adjusted, it was the most peaceful, amazing thing to be floating over a coral reef. If you float very still, these yellow and black striped fish will swim up to maybe a foot from your hand to see what the strange thing is up there -- you can see the curiosity.



Our next stop is central Florida, though I don't think Tampa Bay will be quite so exciting. But at least we'll see lots of friends, and Abigail will have the once-in-a-lifetime chance to make the Smitties' wedding truly memorable, heh, heh, heh :)

Happy happy, joy joy!

I have a new designer!!! And it's someone I've know for years and have worked with and have absolutely no qualms abut using! Yaaaaaaaaaaaaay!!!!! A huge load of stress has been lifted.

We have been to and obviously returned from Puerto Rico. We had a wonderful time and I have wonderful pictures, but sadly I am lazy! I will post this week, though. It was an amazing trip.

An appetizer: