My Book List

1. Jeffrey Eugenides Middlesex – Done
   
2. Sarah Hall Daughters of the North - Done
   
3. Alan Weisman The World Without Us – IP
   
4. Lester R. Brown Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization – IP
   
5. David Wann Simple Prosperity: Finding Real Wealth in aSustainable Lifestyle – IP
   
6. Steve Solomon Gardening When It Counts: Growing Food in Hard Times - IP
   
7. Margaret Atwood Alias Grace
   
8. Isabel Allende Ines of My Soul
   
9. Khaled Hosseini A Thousand Splendid Suns
   
10. Nancy Horan Loving Frank
    
11. Mark Danielewski House of Leaves
    
12. Andre Dubus House of Sand and Fog
    
13. William McDonough Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things
    
14. x
    
15. x
    
16. x
    
17. x
    
18. x
    
19. x
    
20. x
    

Chickened out???!!??

Well, I didn't think I had been doing anything on my list, but I actually have a few updates.

91. Hold a Chicken: I am so mad about this one. Last night I took my daughter to Callahan's to show her the baby chick room and she was holding one. If I would have taken it for even a second I could have counted this one finished. Darn it!! :-)

10. Clean my bookshelves: I've cleaned out 2/5 - not too exciting...

45. Lose 10 pounds before school starts: I've been doing really good on this one. I've lost 6.5 pounds already!! yay!!

68. Take the kids to Zilker Summer Theater - we went to see Beauty and the Beast last weekend. It wasn't as good as other years because we've all seen the Disney movie 100 times so no surprises... It's also a lot easier to make a guy into a talking candlestick in an animated film then on the stage...

96. Make a book list - well I've been reading a lot this summer so I've added a post for my book list so I can start keeping track. Need to find a few more to add, but here's what I have so far.

Horses!!

I guess it’s about time for an update. We just got back from vacation in Casa Grande, AZ with my mom and I didn’t have internet access the whole entire time.

#90 – I actually rode a horse! We went to my step great uncle’s house/ranch because the kids love it out there. He lives in Gila Bend, AZ and is a real cowboy. He’s 71 years old and he’s still out every day herding cattle and other cowboy-ish activities. What a character! I’ll see if I can figure out how to post a picture once I get them downloaded. The kids rode too, but it was sooo hooottt that we didn’t ride long. I thought I might be able to take care of #91 at his place too (hold a chicken), but they only have horses, cows, and goats.

#3 – I went to my yoga teacher’s house when we got back from Arizona and had a session of Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy. I didn’t know what to expect, but she is working to get certified and needs guinea pigs. It was really strange and intense. You keep your eyes shut the whole time and the instructor moves your body around for you. I didn’t really know what was going on so I was kind of anxious the whole time, but I would like to try it again.

#4 - I brought my portable watercolor set and drew a really cool picture with a burnt sienna watercolor wash. It is about 90% finished and turned out really good. Maybe I'll post a picture once it's complete.

Going Public

Well, I did it today.  I told Christina and Amanda that I found their lists and gave them this link, so they can prepare to be wowed and dazzled with my blog!! J  Bobbie and Christie are going to make their lists too, so let’s get with it girls!  I told Mira, Maria, and Becky about it but they thought it was crazy and didn’t want to make a list. L

OK, back to serious stuff.  I don’t think I’ve done anything from my list this week.  I felt like crap since Monday morning.  Woke up with a really sore lower back.  I went to the chiropractor and it’s still been hurting all week.  Now I go to Arizona on vacation tomorrow, so I hope it straightens itself out…  Skipped yoga this week too because my back hurt too much.

Things I’m going to work on next week (or when I get back from AZ):

·       Learn illustrator – I’m going to bring my laptop and the tutorial DVD with me on the airplane.  I started last night and it is so cool!!  I need to finish the rainwater assessment for the Wildflower Center and the drainage map of winedale, so I need to learn it fast!!

·       Clean the living room (July)

·       Fix Alex’s bathroom tiles

·       Replace downstairs flooring

·       Lose 10 pounds

·       Make my lists – 20 books/20 movies/100 things that make me happy

·       Get divorced – I need to find the email from my lawyer and read the updates to the paperwork.  This summer I should finish this one.

Failure:  Draw something every week.  I really need to get serious about this one.  I’m going to bring my sketchbook and my watercolors to Arizona and DRAW SOMETHING!!

Bloody Friday

Today I finished another one!! We had a blood drive at work and I went down to donate. I didn’t faint either!! J

Today is also my last day of vegetarian week. It wasn’t that hard, so I’m seriously thinking about going full-time vegetarian. I don’t care about it enough to be 100% fanatical, but I think it would be good if I only ate meat as a conscious choice because it was something extra good, not just because of convenience or habit. For example, I don’t want to stop using my grill and the kids don’t like grilled veggies very much, but we only use it 2x’s per month max anyway… What do y’all think? Is that good enough? J

I read today that going vegetarian will save more carbon than buying a Prius, and it’s definitely cheaper!!

Vegetarian!!

Good news.  Without even thinking about it, I didn’t eat any meat on Saturday so I decided to launch right into my vegetarian week.  So far I’ve gone three days without eating any meat and it has been pretty great.  Of course, just knowing that I can’t have meat has my mouth watering about bacon and sausage and ham…  I always obsess about what I can’t have.  On the other hand, I feel so virtuous and healthy about being vegetarian this week.

I found a copy of a magazine someone gave me on campus last semester.  It was called “vegetarian starter kit” and I think it’s from PETA.  That is what motivated me to start.  It is so disgusting the way we treat the animals in those factory farms and it is just gross and unhealthy to eat that meat.  They had quotes from celebrities about why they are vegetarians and the one that really inspired me said that they were a vegetarian because they didn’t want to economically support the factory farm business.

I would like to go vegetarian permanently and maybe occasionally eat meat if it is free-range/antibiotic free/artificial hormone free/ etc.  That kind of meat is pretty pricey, so it would have to be once in awhile.  I don’t think it would be too hard to do because I don’t eat a lot of meat anyway and it’s not my favorite thing.  The hardest part would be the kids, but I think they would be OK about it because they could eat meat when we’re in restaurants or when they’re with their dad.  The other difficulty is restaurants.  I think it would sometimes be hard to find something that was good, so a meat dish would be tempting.  A lot of restaurants around campus have vegetarian options though, so during school it would be OK.  I would also like to eat in restaurants less often, so that would motivate me in that direction.

Impacts of going vegetarian:

·       Reduce my carbon footprint

·       Improve my health

·       Save 100 animals per year

·       Lose weight (hopefully J)

·       Do my part to put factory farmers out of business

·       Save money

Anyway, my goal is to go 1 week so I’ll see if I make it or not.  Wish me luck!!!

N ative P lant S ociety meeting

Well, I finally made it to a NPS (N ative P lant S ociety) meeting last night. I don’t want to be rude in case anyone there sees this blog (doubtful, but…) I had to bring Arianna with me and I thought that would be fine because the meeting was at the library. We got there early and I had Ari pick out some books to read during the meeting in case it was boring for her. I should have found some for me too!! I am interested in native plants, but we did not fit in with this group. Apparently, native plants are an interest of the retired set from Sun City or something… It was kind of nice being the youngest one in the room though ;-) That doesn’t happen all that often anymore.

Ari was very offended at one point. The speaker was discussing historical uses of native plants and she mentioned that Jimson weed is very dangerous and that there are even reports of children falling into a coma after just smelling the flowers. Everyone kind of got a chuckle out of that, but Arianna couldn’t believe anyone would think that was funny!

Some of the other cool plants discussed were:

• Flame leaf sumac – you can make jelly or a tart drink from the berries
  
• Milkweed – you can use the floss in the seed pods for candle wicks or to replace down for pillows/clothing
  
• Prickly pear – for fruit / food / moisture
  

Ari will probably kill me if we ever go back again. Maybe I’ll join up in 20 or 30 years when I retire and have lots of free time on my hands… J

The list is done!!

Well, I guess making the list wasn’t as difficult as I thought.  It is done and now I keep thinking of more things to add to it…

Next I’ll work on getting the list sorted out a bit and plan which things to tackle first.  Feeling a bit overwhelmed, but lots of the things are fun stuff I’ve been wanting to do anyway…  Wish me luck!!

Drowning in Magazines!!

I was just reading on the Happiness Project Blog (www.happiness-project.com/) about magazines.  It seems that the author, like me, feels a sense of doom and gloom whenever she looks at her mountain of unread magazines.  I don’t know why I subscribe to so many.  It seems that I get halfway through one and then the next one arrives and it goes on the stack.  I have a pile about a foot thick of magazines in my living room and about 3 or 4 in my bedroom closet.  I just can’t bear to throw them away before they are read, because I LOVE them.  It’s really stupid though, because it just adds to my stress.  Here are the magazines I currently subscribe to:

·       Landscape Architecture (have to get this one and need to keep them for reference)

·       Sierra (free with Sierra Club membership and really good!)

·       Nature Conservancy (something like that…  also free like above)

·       National Geographic

·       National Geographic Traveler (I got this one for Alex b/c she wants to go to Europe after graduation)

·       Cooking Light (I hate this one.  I don’t remember why I subscribed…)

·       Domino (I kind of like this one, but it is about to expire)

A couple of years ago, I bought binders and I was going to tear out all the good articles/recipes/etc. and put them in the binders for future reference.  This turned out to be a huge time-waster and not fun – kind of like making scrap book pages but even less fun…  My binders are mostly empty and I NEVER look at them, so I don’t think I should go back to that idea..  However, I have thought that it would be a good idea for travel articles.  I could group them by location because when you actually take a trip somewhere you can never find the articles from your stack of magazines…

The Happiness Project chic said just throw them all away if they are stressing you out.  I wish I could do that….  I think  should do something like I do in my closet.  I have a certain amount of hangers so when I buy something new I have to get rid of something old…  That system has also kind of self-destructed since school started, but it’s a good idea.  If you set a certain amount of space for magazines and when something new comes in you pick what old ones get tossed.  That would at least keep it managable and not take a lot of time.

Making the list

OK, I was working on the list and I had added a lot of items and so I decided to add the numbers to the front of them to see where I was...

I only have 35 things listed!!!!!!! I didn't realize how long of a list 101 things would be.... I think I need to make the things easier to accomplish or else just accept that I won't finish them all... I need to do one thing about every 10 days to finish on time, and I know that once school starts again, I won't have much time to even look at this.... Oh, well. I have a couple more days to finish the list.

I shouldn't let the list seem so daunting. One thing I really need to work on is quieting that inner nagging voice that is constantly reminding me of things that need to be done. Not sure if making this list will make that better or worse... I'l let you know when I find out. "-)

Crazy!!

This is so weird and a good sign. I gave myself 1 week to get my list ready and then I calculated when my 1001 days would be over and GUESS WHAT???!!?? It's on my birthday!!

101 in 1001

OK, time to get started on my 101 in 1001. That's a list of 101 things to complete in 1001 days. I found this idea by sleuthing about on the internet looking for updates on a friend who moved away a few years ago. I found a web page that had something about him with a link to another co-worker, and she had a link for her 101 blog.