Tagged!

Here I was, on vacation, wandering about on beaches looking at critters, all unprepared for serious work, and along comes Clare, from The House & other Arctic musings, to hook me with a meme. And a difficult one, too. And I'm a sucker for memes, so this afternoon, as we dug through tidepools, I kept thinking about his questions. I still don't know the answers, so I'm going to wing it.

Rules are simple, answer five questions posed by the tagger, create five of your own and tag five others.

Simple, he says!

1) You seem to have an intense curiosity of the natural world, how did that curiosity come about?

That one's easy, at least. Maybe. As far back as I can remember, I was always poking around, taking things apart to see how they worked, lying face down on the wharf to peer through the cracks and see what was swimming underneath, examining entrails of fish and clocks and flowers. "Stop daydreaming, Susie!" my teachers were always saying. I wasn't daydreaming; I was wondering what the world looked like from up there where the seagulls were flying.

But then, the question; how did that come about? I was always curious, but why? No idea. Got it from Mom, maybe. It's catching, I think.

2) What would you change about your home, your neighbourhood, your corner of the world? What one thing would you change to make it a better place?

I would call a moratorium on "development", which in my neighbourhood means destroying the farms and forests to pave them over and build houses far too big for their residents; resource-hoggers, energy-guzzlers. (Sure, they say they're "energy-efficient", because they have the latest heaters, etc., but why do they want to heat all that empty space? And why do they need parking for 5 or 6 cars? For one family?)

Especially, I would halt the Gateway project, which is a network of truck routes being built across the farmland of Delta, crossing Burns Bog (the largest domed peat bog in North America, and a stopover for over 200 species of migratory birds), and paving and/or polluting a major wildlife habitat, fouling our air and wiping out heritage sites.

(I keep deleting paragraphs here. Get me on the topic of Gateway, and I tend to rant.)

3) Describe your most profound encounter in the natural world?

Difficult. I keep thinking of another and another and yet another. "Most" profound? I don't know. That's like asking, "Which is the most important pillar under that bridge?" All of them.  I know that who I am is built on a lifetime of conversations with my cousins, human and non-human.

One little event stands out in my memory. I was about 13, living in a "town" of a dozen or so residents, on Nootka Island. One day, when we arrived in our schoolroom (one room, 4 students), we found a mouse there before us. A jumping mouse. It leapt from desk to desk, to the floor, back to a chair ... We caught it, and I took it home, put it in an old, leaky fish tank. I named it Pete.

Mom put up with Pete for a while, but eventually released him when we were at school.

A couple of weeks later, I was roaming around under the house, which was on pilings to keep it above the high tide line. And there was a mouse, running along a pipe. He saw me and came over, stood nose to nose with me, twitching his whiskers. And then turned slowly and walked back to a crack in the floor supports and vanished. A little thing, but I knew he was reassuring me; "Don't worry, I 'm fine." 

Why do I remember this, after all these years? Maybe because this was the first time I realized that communication with wild things could go two ways.

4) If you could have a conversation with any person in history who would it be, and why that person?

Anton van Leeuwenhoek. I'd have to learn Dutch first, but it would be worth it. He was another intensely curious person, who developed a method for making powerful lenses, with which he examined everything he could get his hands on, eventually writing enthusiastically to the Royal Society of London to tell them of his discoveries. He was the first to discover micro-organisms. "Animalcules," he called them.

He scraped the plaque off his teeth, and examined it. Here's what he told the Royal Society:

“I then most always saw, with great wonder, that in the said matter there were many very little living animalcules, very prettily a-moving. The biggest sort had a very strong and swift motion, and shot through the water like a pike does through the water." (September 17, 1683)

I remember reading that when I was a kid. It has stayed with me since then.

5) What advice would you give to anyone wanting to better experience the natural world?

Slow down. Look again. Be quiet.

That's for starters. Then, learn as much as you can about what you've seen. The more you know, the more you are able to see. Even learning the names helps you to see. (There are spiders, just spiders, all the same; or there are jumping spiders, wolf spiders, cross spiders, and so on. Learn their names, and you become aware of the characteristics that distinguish them. The next time you see a spider, you'll notice the number of eyes or the shape of the abdomen, the pattern on the back.)

Then go back and look again.

Underwater flower? Seaweeds, just below the lowest tide line.

Look again; there's a kelp crab in that red seaweed.

That's it for the first part of the meme. Now I have to tag five people and give them five new questions. I think I'll sleep on that. I'm on vacations, after all.

At least, I'm not tagging anyone

First primrose of spring.

I'm going to be really lazy. I spent a good part of yesterday and the night before on Facebook, writing, posting, reading, and commenting on a meme that's going around.

Now I'm posted out.

So, I'm going to paste my Facebook note here, and call it a day.

It's the "25 things about you" meme. More than we usually do in our blog memes, and since it came to me via family, it was a bit more personal and in depth than usual.

I'm being dilatory because I am chicken.

Here goes:

"1. I'm a sucker for these memes. But I never think I have anything to say.

2. And then I say it, at length. I "talk" too much.

3. I am astounded, amazed, humbled by my kids and grandkids. So brilliant, clear-eyed, talented, beautiful, decent, ... When I grow up, I want to be just like them.

4. I haven't grown up yet.

5. I'm a people-watcher. I find them, all kinds of people, endlessly fascinating. I have learned a lot, just seeing what they do, and how they go about it.

6. I like bugs, and all kinds of tiny beasties. I have a spider living in a jar in the living room and I feed it fruit flies that I breed in another jar. When I was a kid, I used to dream of being a researcher into diseases and their insect vectors, then in University, my favourite course was Microbiology. Too bad I never was able to finish.

7. I read all the time. (That's cheating. Everybody who knows me, knows that.) These days, it's mostly blogs, biology, historical mystery fiction (Ellis Peters, for example), some sci-fi. Donald Westlake just died a few weeks ago, and I've been re-reading all of his books that I still have. (That's crime capers, mostly humorous, other fiction, and "Kahawa", historical fiction.)

8. Only 8 so far? On we go ... Deep down, I'm terrified of people, especially people I know well. Strangers are ok; if they think I'm weird, so what? But with people I know, it's different. I care what they think. But I force myself to ignore the fear. It's irrational, anyhow; if I hide from people, then all they will know is the mask, not me.

9. I only learned that last bit about 20 years ago.

10. I eat strange things. At strange hours. I make concoctions with chocolate and fake sugar, with oatmeal and powdered milk and coconut and other odds and ends, to substitute for the chocolate bars I don't dare eat because of what they do to my blood sugar levels. Some of my creations aren't all that good. Some are, though.

11. I never, ever buy anything on the phone. I never buy anything I see advertised on TV, at least until I've long forgotten that I saw it. I never buy anything I see on a billboard.

That saves me a lot of money.

12. Every place I have lived has been beautiful. I want to go back. I love the deserts, the ocean, the rain forest, the fjords, the Chilcotin, Bella Coola, Vancouver, Mexico, Oklahoma, even Texas.

The log cabin in Bella Coola was the best; I remember the smell of it, the old logs, the view out the window at the golden field across the way, the goats tap-dancing on the roof of my car. I remember the long drive up-valley, with every curve a new revelation.

But the cabin in Silverdale was the best. I loved the view out my front door; the deep valley and the mountains beyond, the silence except for the murmur of the trees, the loft, the beautiful slant-laid wood floor in the bedroom, the frogs in the pond.

Or the house on the shore of Nootka Island, with the creek running under my bedroom and the big double living room, with the oil lamps and the wood stoves, and the view out my window, boats, seagulls, the beach, and once a whale. ...

13. At this rate, I'll never get to 25.

14. I burn kettles. And pots. I get too involved in what I'm doing, and forget. And I'm always finding cold cups of coffee in the microwave.

15. But no, the house in Mexico City was the best. The thick adobe walls, built a hundred years previous, the tall, skinny doors, the balconies and ivy, the courtyards, the magnolia tree over the fountain... I want to go back. To them all.

16. I can't remember names of people I meet. I used to blame myself, and try harder. I've tried all sorts of mnemonics, I've tried repeating each name dozens of times. Nothing works. If I remember the name, I can't remember the face it goes with. (I remember one guy from when I was a teenager; a Mr. Wallace. The name was stored with a sentence: "What A Loud, Loud, Awful Cravat. Eek!" I have no idea what he looked like.)

17. Sometimes I can write poetry. Mostly, I can't. I don't know what turns on the poetry generator.

18. But I can always write doggerel. Bad doggerel.

19. I'm getting on in years, and my body is not as reliable as it used to be. But the days are still good, and the world is wonderful. I enjoy life, even when things hurt. And there's always something new to see, to learn, to record, to do.

20. To collect. I seem to attract oddities. Antiques and dried grass stems. Dishes and round stones. Saltshakers and seashells. Old wood and feathers, boxes, tins. I can't limit myself to one thing. Everything is so interesting!

21. I don't have a favourite music, singer, movie, artist, school of art, colour, food, or author. There are too many good ones, and my mood varies from day to day.

22. Today, Laurie was singing Bob Dylan. My favourite for today.

23. I don't have a TV. I don't miss it. I've discovered that most people who make the first statement, follow it up with the second.

24. I'm a bit of a geek. (Actually, I registered fairly high on the geekery scales when I took a couple of tests.) I like to know how and why things work, and be able to tweak them, so that they do what I want them to. And I think that the Web is the Real World. Laurie disagrees.

25. Whew! Last one. I give names to the squirrels that live in my back yard. And to my spiders. Not to the birds, though; there are too many of them. Those names, I usually remember. Go figure."

I added, on Facebook, a photo of Brownie, the spider. But she's been discussed here already. Instead, here's a bit of early spring colour:

Catkins

.

Everyone's doing this!

(I never believed it when my kids said this. I was right not to.)

However, this voluntary meme is going around, and I've caught the bug. The idea is to copy this list of 100 things to do, and highlight everything on it that you have done.

Here's my list; I've counted some partials, and not others, based on criteria I can't explain, even to myself.

1. Started my own blog
2. Slept under the stars
3. Played in a band
4. Visited Hawaii
5. Watched a meteor shower
6. Given more than I can afford to charity
7. Been to Disneyland/world (1950s.)
8. Climbed a mountain (But not to the very top. Does that count?)
9. Held a praying mantis
10. Sung a solo (No. And the world is better for it.)
11. Bungee jumped
12. Visited Paris
13. Watched lightning at sea
14. Taught myself an art from scratch
15. Adopted a child (Foster parented, only.)
16. Had food poisoning
17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty
18. Grown my own vegetables
19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France
20. Slept on an overnight train (Long, long ago. On those old trains that wailed their mournful songs along the valleys.)
21. Had a pillow fight
22. Hitchhiked (Picked up hitchhikers. Up north, where we are all neighbours, whether we know each other or not.)
23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill
24. Built a snow fort (And stockpiled snowballs, and absolutely wiped out my brothers' pitiful defense of their own fort. At least, as my memory tells it; their mileage may differ.)
25. Held a lamb (Not a lamb, but a baby goat, a kid. Same diff. Same heart tug.)
26. Gone skinny dipping
27. Run a Marathon
28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice
29. Seen a total eclipse
30. Watched a sunrise or sunset
31. Hit a home run
32. Been on a cruise
33. Seen Niagara Falls in person (Twice, once in the 1950s, once in the 1990s. What a difference! And not for the better.)
34. Visited the birthplace of my ancestors
35. Seen an Amish community
36. Taught myself a new language
37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied
38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person
39. Gone rock climbing
40. Seen Michelangelo’s David
41. Sung karaoke
42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt (1950s, again. Unforgettable!)
43. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant (If MacD's counts as a "restaurant". Because that's where I was, and where the stranger was.)
44. Visited Africa
45. Walked on a beach by moonlight
46. Been transported in an ambulance
47. Had my portrait painted
48. Gone deep sea fishing
49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person
50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris
51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling
52. Kissed in the rain
53. Played in the mud
54. Gone to a drive-in theater
55. Been in a movie
56. Visited the Great Wall of China
57. Started a business 
58. Taken a martial arts class
59. Visited Russia
60. Served at a soup kitchen
61. Sold Girl Scout Cookies
62. Gone whale watching (Or, at least, stood at the rail on a two-day and return ferry trip, watching whales.)
63. Got flowers for no reason
64. Donated blood, platelets or plasma
65. Gone sky diving (I wish. But I was chicken.)
66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp
67. Bounced a check
68. Flown in a helicopter
69. Saved a favorite childhood toy
70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial
71. Eaten caviar
72. Pieced a quilt  (Very badly.)
73. Stood in Times Square
74. Toured the Everglades
75. Been fired from a job
76. Seen the Changing of the Guards in London
77. Broken a bone
78. Been on a speeding motorcycle
79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person
80. Published a book
81. Visited the Vatican
82. Bought a brand new car
83. Walked in Jerusalem
84. Had my picture in the newspaper
85. Read the entire Bible (Many times.)
86. Visited the White House
87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
88. Had chickenpox
89. Saved someone’s life
90. Sat on a jury
91. Met someone famous (Mario Moreno Cantinflas. And three Mexican Presidents, and too many actresses and beauty queens. But Cantinflas was the one who counted.)
92. Joined a book club
93. Lost a loved one
94. Had a baby
95. Seen the Alamo in person
96. Swam in the Great Salt Lake
97. Been involved in a lawsuit
98. Owned a cell phone
99. Been stung by a bee
100. Ridden an elephant

46/100. Not bad. But I still wish I'd gone in for the sky-diving.

.

Half a post is better than none.

I like memes. I know some bloggers grumble about them; some even refuse to pass them on. But I think that the exercises add a more personal aspect to the blogging world, in that they round out our on-line personas with those little details that we so take for granted in our "real-world" acquaintances.

And often, it turns out that we have more in common than we thought. I love those moments when someone says, "I do that, too!" or, "I was there!" Hey, if we didn't live half-way around the world from each other, we'd be meeting for coffee at Tim Horton's, showing off the latest vacation pics, and grumbling about the traffic and the rain. The business of the day usually comes later; on the blogs, it comes first. Memes help to remedy that situation.

I especially like memes that come with awards. Someone likes what I do! Wow! That puts a smile on my face for the week.

Last week, I received two smile-makers. First, Huckleberry, at Huckleberry Days, gave me the Superior Scribbler Award.

Thanks, Huckleberry! What a nice thing to say!

And then, Dawn sent the Butterfly Award.

Thanks, Dawn. (And yes, the wording sounds strange to me, too.)

Now, here's the problem with memes; they come with rules. They have to be passed on. And that's not easy.

For the Scribbler award, I must:

1. Pass The Award on to 5 most-deserving Bloggy Friends.
2. Link to the author & the name of the blog from whom I have received The Award. - Done
   
3. Display The Award on my blog, and link to This Post, which explains The Award. - Done
   
4. Visit This Post and add my name to the Mr. Linky List. - Done
   
5. Post these rules on my blog. -Done
   

So I only have #1 left to do.

And for the Butterfly Award; I am pasting the rules, along with Dawn's wonderful escape clause:

These are the rules I am following and the rules that I pass on to you all.
Though I know a few of you personally and know that you probably wont pass it on..that is ok...It is like a chain letter, you wont die, blah blah blah if you don't do it..

1. Put the logo on your blog, you can right-click and copy it from above. - Done
   
2. Add a link to the person who awarded you. - Done
   
3. Nominate other blogs for this award (about 10). (About 10! Eep!)
   
4. Add links to those blogs.
5. Leave a message for your nominees on their blogs.
6. Give a reason why you consider their blogs cool.

That makes 15 new award-winning blogs; 5 Scribblers and 10 "Cool" bloggers. Links, explanation, and message to the bloggers.

The difficulty is not in finding the blogs; it is in pruning the list down to 15 bloggers, none of whom I have passed on any memes to recently.

I think I need more time. Like a couple of days, or three.


Day's end. I'm off to bed. 'night, all!
.

Brief interruption

I have been tagged for the six random things meme. By PZ, who cheated; he never got around to step 5. (Let each person know they have been tagged, and leave a comment on their blog.) I had to find out all by myself.

When you are raising an army of cephalopods, you can afford to do that, I guess.

'nuff grumbling. The rules are:

1. Link to the person who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Write six random things about yourself.
4. Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them.
5. Let each person know they've been tagged and leave a comment on their blog.
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

So that's 1 and 2 taken care of. Now, the six random things.

1. I love driving, even in the city. Especially at night. Nights after a rain are the best, when the air is clear and all the lights are sparkly. Or on the highway, when the moon plays hide-and-seek behind the evergreens.
2. I have a Mexican straw hat that has hung on my wall (in many houses, and three countries) since 1959.
3. Long ago, back in the early 1980s, I swore I would never, ever, have anything to do with computers. (I'm a lousy typist; how was I supposed to handle programming on a keyboard? And I like books. On paper. That I can throw in my bag and carry with me, slip little scraps of notepaper into, even write in the margins of.) Then I house-sat where they had a tape-driven Commodore, with games for little kids, and was hooked for life.
4. I make lists. Like this one. But not shopping lists; I always lose them, anyhow.
5. I have a live spider in a plastic container in the living room. Not for the first time. I usually have some sort of multi-legged "pet" around.
6. Yay, the sixth already! I am a fairly decent Mexican cook. But I can't eat beans and tortillas any more. (I cheat, sometimes.)

Rule # 4: Tag 6 people.

PZ sort of cheated with this one, too; he just grabbed the last 6 commenters on his blog. Way to discourage your minions!

Let's see ... who's on my Google Reader? How about these:

1. Clare, at The House and other Arctic Musings,
2. Pablo, at Roundrock Journal,
3. Shawn, at Prairie Preacher,
4. Bug Girl, at Bug Girl's Blog,
5. Christopher, at Catalogue of Organisms (you've been working too hard, Christopher; time for a bit of silliness),
6. and Nina, at Nature Remains.
   

Rule 5: Notify these bloggers. Will do, in the morning.
Rule 6: Notify PZ. Ditto.

There! Now I can get back to the Crawl photos. 'bout time.
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Caught by a Meme

You have to watch out, wandering the web these days; you never know when a meme is going to leap out at you and sink its fangs into your mouse hand. I've fallen victim, again.

So, of course, I'm passing it on. It's the only way to get it to leave go of me. Sorry about that. Blame it on Stranger Fruit, where it ambushed me.

This meme is a list of 100 food items, some a bit on the exotic side, others not really. You are supposed to bold the ones you have eaten and strike-through those you'd never try.

The remains of the Mole Poblano, con arroz blanco y frijoles.

The List:

(Some of these I didn't recognize by their name. I Googled them and discovered that they were old favourites. I added an asterisk to these.)

• 1. Venison
• 2. Nettle tea No, not as a tea. But we used to eat the plants as a vegetable in the spring.
  
• 3. Huevos rancheros Yum!
  
• 4. Steak tartare
• 5. Crocodile
• 6. Black pudding
• 7. Cheese fondue
• 8. Carp
• 9. Borscht
• 10. Baba ghanoush
• 11. Calamari
• 12. Pho* Vietnamese soup; noodles and sliced beef, in a beef broth. A staple in Vietnamese restaurants.
  
• 13. PB&J sandwich
  
• 14. Aloo gobi* A dry potato and cauliflower curry.
  
• 15. Hot dog from a street cart
• 16. Epoisses
• 17. Black truffle
• 18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes Pear.
  
• 19. Steamed pork buns
• 20. Pistachio ice cream
• 21. Heirloom tomatoes
• 22. Fresh wild berries Every summer.
  
• 23. Foie gras
• 24. Rice and beans
• 25. Brawn, or head cheese
• 26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
• 27. Dulce de leche
• 28. Oysters I had a can in my cupboard for ages and ages. I finally gave it away.
  
• 29. Baklava
• 30. Bagna cauda
• 31. Wasabi peas
• 32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
• 33. Salted lassi
  
• 34. Sauerkraut
• 35. Root beer float
• 36. Cognac with a fat cigar
• 37. Clotted cream tea
• 38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
• 39. Gumbo
• 40. Oxtail
• 41. Curried goat No. But barbecued, roasted, and stewed goat, yes.
  
• 42. Whole insects (chocolate covered ants/grasshoppers/crickets) Ants and grasshoppers. The grasshoppers were toasted, served on a tortilla with fresh lime juice. Mmmm - good!
  
• 43. Phaal
• 44. Goat's milk I used to make cheese out of this. But I drank a bit, too.
  
• 45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
• 46. Fugu Not that brave. Or foolhardy.
  
• 47. Chicken tikka masala
• 48. Eel
• 49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
• 50. Sea urchin Raw, on the half shell. The other half walked across the table and fell off the edge. Spoiled my appetite.
  
• 51. Prickly pear
• 52. Umeboshi Pickled Ume fruits.
  
• 53. Abalone
• 54. Paneer* A milk/lemon unaged cheese.
  
• 55. McDonald's Big Mac Meal
• 56. Spaetzle
• 57. Dirty gin martini
• 58. Beer above 8%
• 59. Poutine No. But I should have; I'm Canadian. Just not fond of gravy.
  
• 60. Carob chips
• 61. S'mores
• 62. Sweetbreads
• 63. Kaolin As an ingredient in a medication only.
  
• 64. Currywurst
• 65. Durian
• 66. Frogs' legs Cooked up a batch. And my silly kids started hopping around the table.
  
• 67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
• 68. Haggis One taste was plenty.
  
• 69. Fried plantain
• 70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
• 71. Gazpacho
• 72. Caviar and blini
• 73. Louche absinthe
• 74. Gjetost, or brunost
• 75. Roadkill
• 76. Baijiu
• 77. Hostess Fruit Pie
• 78. Snail
• 79. Lapsang souchong
• 80. Bellini
• 81. Tom yum* Thai soup with lemongrass, those little slippery mushrooms, chili, cilantro, chicken and/or seafood.
  
• 82. Eggs Benedict
• 83. Pocky
• 84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant
• 85. Kobe beef
• 86. Hare
• 87. Goulash
• 88. Flowers
• 89. Horse
• 90. Criollo chocolate
• 91. Spam
• 92. Soft shell crab
• 93. Rose harissa
• 94. Catfish
• 95. Mole poblano
• 96. Bagel and lox
• 97. Lobster Thermidor
• 98. Polenta
• 99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
• 100. Snake

I've eaten 59 of these. I'm not likely to try the cigar, and I'm sure not to try the fugu. Anything else -- well, I've eaten balut; after that, it's all uphill.

And there you have it; squirm out of its clutches, if you can!
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Interlude: Books, read and unread.

My immune system has been overpowered once more; I've been felled by a meme.

Blame this one on Christopher, at Catalogue of Organisms. I'll let him explain it:

Supposedly, this is a list of the 106 top books that people have lying around at home because they think they should read them sometime but have never got around to reading. Needless to say, it's a list that is heavy on the "classics" and other pretentious wank. As John Wilkins did, I've bolded the books that I've read, and italicised the ones that I've started reading but never finished.

And I will follow suit. Bold, I've read. Italicised, I've started on.

• Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
• Anna Karenina
• Crime and Punishment - I read this in Spanish when my Spanish was iffy at best. All I can remember of it is struggling with the dictionary.
  
• Catch-22
• One Hundred Years of Solitude
• Wuthering Heights
  
• The Silmarillion
  
• Life of Pi : a novel
• The Name of the Rose
• Don Quixote - Read this one in Spanish. Started it in English, and gave up. It didn't "sound" right.
  
• Moby Dick
• Ulysses
  
• Madame Bovary
  
• The Odyssey In a kid's version, long ago, in English. In Spanish as an adult.
  
• Pride and Prejudice
  
• Jane Eyre
• The Tale of Two Cities - I read this first when I was 12, and re-read it several times around that time. Much later, I started on it again, found it too artificially dramatic, and gave up.
  
• The Brothers Karamazov - In Spanish, because it was required reading for my college Lit. class. Otherwise, I think I would have dropped it half-way.
  
• Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
• War and Peace - I read maybe the first three or four pages. Looked at the thickness of the book, imagined another 400 pages like the first, and put the book away.
  
• Vanity Fair
• The Time Traveler’s Wife
  
• The Iliad
  
• Emma
  
• The Blind Assassin
  
• The Kite Runner
• Mrs. Dalloway
• Great Expectations - My son loved this, so I read it. I was disappointed.
  
• American Gods
• A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
• Atlas Shrugged
• Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
• Memoirs of a Geisha
• Middlesex
• Quicksilver
• Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
• The Canterbury tales - I read bits and pieces. The tale of the Wife of Bath, several times.
  
• The Historian : a novel
• A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
• Love in the Time of Cholera
• Brave New World - Twice.
  
• The Fountainhead
• Foucault’s Pendulum
• Middlemarch
• Frankenstein
• The Count of Monte Cristo
• Dracula
• A Clockwork Orange
• Anansi Boys
• The Once and Future King - I think it's still on my shelves, unread.
  
• The Grapes of Wrath
• The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
• 1984 - Several times.
  
• Angels & Demons
• The Inferno - Attempted it several times, always got sidetracked.
  
• The Satanic Verses
• Sense and Sensibility - It seems that I've read all the Jane Austens, some twice.
  
• The Picture of Dorian Gray - English and Spanish. Wilde, writing in English, produced prose that translates as if it were meant for Spanish. Unusual, that.
  
• Mansfield Park
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
• To the Lighthouse
• Tess of the D’Urbervilles
• Oliver Twist
• Gulliver’s Travels - Another I've read several times.
  
• Les Misérables
• The Corrections
• The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
• Dune - I always meant to re-read this, but never have. Yet. I followed up with Dune Messiah, was disappointed, and never read any of the others.
  
• 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 - I started this at a bad time, couldn't finish it. I should look it up again.
• 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
  
• 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 - Kid's version, in English, regular version, in Spanish.
  
• Watership Down - Bits and pieces.
• Gravity’s Rainbow
• The Hobbit - What Christopher says explains some of the difficulties I have with Hobbit.

  "Problem is, Tolkein started on The Hobbit as a story for his kids before he realised the possibility of linking it into his "Elven lore" compositions. As a result, The Hobbit doesn't know whether it's supposed to be a light children's story or a serious piece of pseudo-mythology, and there's definite signs of strain."

  I loved the Lord of the Rings series, and re-read the whole series about once a year for a long time. I recently bought a new set; my old one was in tatters held together with duct tape.
  
• In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
• White Teeth
• Treasure Island - That, and Kidnapped, were frequent re-reads for a while.
  
• David Copperfield
  
• The Three Musketeers - In Spanish. Quite a lot of the vocabulary was still unfamiliar to me at the time; it added to the romance. Long ago and far away, it seemed. Good escape literature.

Some of the books on this list, I have never heard of. They would not qualify as books I "have lying around at home because (I) think (I) should read them sometime but have never got around to reading."

I do have others that would fit, though. A good shelf full. Someday, I'll sit down and read them. Or take them to my favourite second-hand book store and exchange them for ones that I will read.

No, I haven't seen any on screen.
.

Miles to go

I've been tagged, twice, with the same meme. So does that mean I have to do it twice?

"Cis" at Cicero Sings, and Seabrooke, at The Marvelous in Nature, have passed on the 6-word memoir meme, started 6 weeks ago by bookbabie. The challenge is to write your own memoir, but using only 6 words.

I once did an autobiography in the form of a limerick*; that was hard enough. But only 6 words? Could I do it?

Well, I'm cheating. After all, I was tagged twice; I'm entitled to a double count, aren't I?

A line from Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" has always meant a lot to me, not necessarily for any reason that I could identify, but just because it resonated with me. "And miles to go before I sleep." (That's where I cheat; I used the quote in my title.)

Thinking on that, I remembered an old photo that I have carried around for almost 60 years.


I was 7 years old. We were coming back from Toronto (via the US, including Yellowstone National Park), and drove on this highway just after it had been opened, in November of 1949. I remember Mom telling us about it while Dad drove. Back home on Vancouver Island, I cut this photo out of a travel brochure, and stuck it in my new Yellowstone Park photo album with Scotch tape. I didn't cut it quite straight; I was still little, and clumsy with those horrible blunt scissors they made us kids use.

I added three more photos from the same brochure, but this was the one that I have always remembered.


Many years later, I transferred all my own photographs to a newer album. But I kept the old album cover with the page of brochure photos; I could not steel myself to part with them.

It seems to me that I have spent most of my life "going places". On the road. In boats, planes, motorhomes, buses. I learned to walk on the train crossing Canada, they told me. And I am still wandering. There is so much to see, so much to do; there is always something new and interesting around that next corner. I rejoice in the feel of a highway unfolding ahead of me, the mystery of where it will lead, the scent of future discoveries.

So here's my memoir: "Slept in the car trunk. Etcetera."

True. Travelling alone, in a small Datsun, I stopped in a rest area to spend the night. The seats were too small and the gear shift was in the way, but the trunk had a flat bottom. I slept there, with the top open a crack, and tied down from the inside, to discourage bears.

Another of the photos. The car in front is a 1948 Dodge, I think.

Over to you: I'm tagging Jean, Robin Andrea, Celeste, Shawn, and "Mike". Here are the rules:

1. Write your own six word memoir

2. Post it on your blog and include a visual illustration if you’d like

3. Link to the person that tagged you in your post and to this original post if possible so we can track it as it travels across the blogosphere

4 .Tag five more blogs with links

5. And don’t forget to leave a comment on the tagged blogs with an invitation to play!

*The limerick? Here it is:

When anyone asks where I come from,
How I wish that my life had been humdrum!
I am known, as a fact,
By how fast I can pack,
And for sleeping in truckstops to thrum, thrums.

Canadian Content

Hi, there!

So Bloglines appears to be down today. There is no message to that effect; it just hasn't updated any of the blogs on my list. It remembers which ones I read, and who I am, and all that; just gives me no updates.

But I must have my fix!

I called up my list and went on down, clicking on each one to bring up the old posts, then on their "home" page for the new ones. Slower going than usual; I abbreviated the process, going only for the "must-reads".

One of the first was Cicero Sings. Where I found she'd awarded me the . Thanks, Cis! You made my day!

"Cis" remarked that she had passed on the award before to Canadian bloggers, and was continuing along the same lines. Which got me noticing how many of my "must-reads" are Canadian.

And now I must pass on this award; it's burning my fingers. So here are my day-makers, Canadians all:

First; a few I've linked to before, sometimes often:

Hugh, at Rock, Paper, Lizard. He's just across the river from me, and we end up comparing notes frequently. (Hey, Hugh, we saw a couple of pairs of red-winged blackbirds today, too!)

Jean at A Mountain Too High.

Botany Photo of the Day, from UBC Botanical Garden. Beautiful, if not exactly daily.

Prairie Preacher. Such enthusiasm! (Even in despair, he's 110% about it.) I liked his joke today.

And a few I check out often, but haven't linked to before:

Ontario Wanderer. Photos and commentary.

The Interpreter. Fiction; the square peg in a round world. Funny and heart-warming. When you go there, look at the URL. It defines the personality of the interpreter.

Existential Existence. One photo a day. Mostly wordless. But some people just don't need words.

A bit more wordy: Sandwalk. Biochemistry, Tim Horton's, life in general. Right now, he's in Paris, misbehaving.

And one final blog; Primordial Blog. Home of "The Sexiest Animal on the Planet" series. He says the post you must read is the one on Porcupines. Warning; this blog may not be to the taste of some.

Captured by a meme, again

This end-of-the-year meme has been going around the blogosphere, and I thought I wouldn't catch it. But I guess I'm not immune, after all.

The instructions say to take the first sentence of the first post of each month, and post them. But I do have a mind of my own (if ever so weak), and I chose another sentence, instead, of the designated posts.

So here goes the list:

• January 1, 2007: Recently we spent a couple of nights at my daughter's house in Strathcona, house- and cat-sitting. (First Post of 2007)
  
  
• February 1: Oh, for the talents of a cat! Who can sleep any time, any place, any position. (Why is it...)
  
  
• March 1st: (With a tint of pink. Some hanky-panky with flamingos back in his ancestry?) (Beacon Hill Park)
  
  
• April 1, April Fools' Day: Lemon jelly slime. (Or maybe Witches Butter, a mushroom.) (Two Slime Molds)
  
  
• May 1, MayDay: A red-headed woodpecker shouted out from a tall cottonwood; although we looked from all angles, we couldn't see him. (Just a Peaceful Walk)
  
  
• June 1st: Except, of course, for the roar of waters, the crashing of rock, the ping! of splitting ice. And probably the howl of wind. (A Terrible, Stark Beauty)
  
  
• July 1, Canada Day: Beside the road, a young bear was grazing in a bed of clover. (Home again, Home again, Jiggety-jog)
  
  
• August 1st, BC Day: (I don't touch jellyfish with fingers; one never knows if they sting.) (Remembering King Canute)
  
  
• September 1st, Labour Day weekend: A photo post, so here's one of the pics.
  
  
  
  
• First of October: The next day, I noticed a green caterpillar nibbling on the tiny yellow flowers at the tip. (Astounding!)
  
  
• November 1, Mexican Day of the Dead: Head decor, this Hallowe'en. (Three Horns and an Axe)
  
  
• And December 1: But aren't they great? I especially like the big curly one. (Mushrooms at the Quay)

Hmm... Birds and bears, cats and caterpillars, scenery and 'shrooms.

It's been that kind of a year.

Procrastinating Blogger

6 weeks ago -- 6 weeks! Where did they go? -- Christopher Taylor over at the Catalogue of Organisms favoured me with the Thinking Blogger award. Which I greatly appreciate, even as I modestly refrain from blowing it up and framing it for my wall.

I am supposed to pass it on to 5 other bloggers, bloggers who think, or who make me think. Which set me thinking. (Maybe I can pass this award back to Christopher?)

Who makes me think? Well, most of the bloggers on my blogroll. Not specific enough.

Why and how do they make me think? Better question. I find that I can divide the ways into categories. And choose a representative of each. So here goes, in no particular order.

From the first time I ran across Julie Zickefoose's blog, with her tale of skipping out of a kid's baseball practice to wander in the woods looking for wildflowers, I have been a regular reader. She reminds me, time and time again, of the romping delights of just plain daily life. Thank you, Julie!

A more sobering blog, one I discovered recently, A Mountain Too High, chronicles the life of a courageous woman dealing with the Alzheimer's disease of her husband. Jean's posts are heart-wrenching and -warming at the same time, and give me an anchor for my memories of my family's struggles with the disease, and for strategies for dealing with it in the probable future.

I just realized that I have 117 feeds on my Bloglines list. And it is almost impossible to say which are the "thinkingest".

On with # 3. One of the specialist "looking at nature" blogs. Which? Which? Which? So many useful ones ... How about Hyphoid Logic? "Mentations of a Mad Mycologist". Mushrooms, commentary on "whatever I'm pondering at the moment that I write in it. That may include anything at all." And a cute, punny name; Mike O'Risal.

Theological musings. A topic I used to spend a fair amount of time on. Debunking Christianity, with its stable of thoughtful writers and commenters (pro and con) gives me plenty to mull over.

And back to the simple life. Cicero Sings. (She says, "Every spring there is a little bird that visits our yard and his never ending song is: "tse tse tsicero". Voila! A name to use.") A normal, sane, cheerful life in BC's Chilcotin; a human diary, filled with cooking, family, plants and weather. Something to keep me grounded.

And that's 5. Whew!

Now to wander off and notify everyone that they've been tagged. :)

Ain't that the Truth!

Truth.

#2 on Google. #1 in Canada.

Whatever that means.

And the meme goes on ...

I've been tagged with the 8 facts meme. I don't know whether to thank Cathe or not. It's sort of like a chain letter, isn't it? But I remember falling forparticipating in the Friendship Bread one, years ago; for a while, every house in the area had a batch going. And it was fun.

So here goes.

The rules are as follows:

• We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
  
• Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
  
• People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
  
• At the end of your blog post, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
  
• Don't forget to leave them each a comment telling them they're tagged, and to read your blog.

So, my 8 facts, randomly chosen, are:

1. I have a pen holder on my desk made of an animal horn of some kind, covered with inscribed aluminum. I have no idea why anybody would do this.
2. I was kicked by a deer when I was a pre-schooler.
3. Sometimes I temporarily manage to break my habit of biting my nails.
4. I have a vintage log-cabin design quilt, quite tattered, on my bed. I don't think it is particularly valuable, but I like it.
5. I have lived in three countries and in villages of less than a dozen people as well as in a city of over 10 million at the time. (Mexico, DF.) I loved both extremes.
   
6. I dream of hang-gliding, but I never will actually do it.
7. I am a night-owl and have always been, from baby-hood.
8. I re-read my favourite books, sometimes many times.

And that's the eight. Next step: tag eight more people. (Will this earn me eight enemies? I hope not.)

Here are 8 from my blogroll:

1. Celeste, from Dzonoqua's Whistle.
2. Hugh, from Lulu Island Blog.
3. Oaksong's Nemeton. Because he is a "once and future goatherd."
4. Carolyn from Roundtop Ruminations.
5. Bug Girl, from Bug Girl's Blog.
6. Cicero Sings, up in Williams Lake. I just discovered this one today.
7. A Mark on My Wall.
   
8. Jeenybeen on Ginkgo Leaves. Because I love his (her?) photography.

And that's it. Whew!

Back to my normal blogging. But not tonight.

Well, since everyone's doing it:

... posting photos of their coffee mugs, that is.

David, at the World's Fair, asks:

1. Can you show us your coffee cup?
2. Can you comment on it? Do you think it reflects on your personality?
3. Do you have any interesting anecdotes resulting from coffee cup commentary?
3. Can you try to get others to comment on it?

Well, #1, yes. #2, ditto. #3, not exactly. #3 (what, again?) That's up to the rest of you.I know: that's three mugs. One for the road, a small one and a large one for around home. Oldies, all.

I like old things; they have history behind them.

(And now my keyboard has gone stark raving mad, asasdasding lqwettqwerasd asnasd asdpaszxcqweasd no rqweasasdon. I think that's it for tonight. Unless I get this fixed. Anybody know how?
HQWELP!) (Edited, next morning; I think I've got this fixed. For now. Took it apart, shook it, blew on it, dusted it with a paintbrush, put it together. And it's working. Yay!)

Pardon the interruption; back to talking about coffee mugs.

I'm a follower of the 3 Rs; Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. But even better than recycling, is to Refrain from buying new when the old will function just as well (if not better, sometimes.) So, the 7-11 cup has been my companion since last century, 1995 or thereabouts. My son bought it for me, then to match his, now long since lost. It holds two cups of coffee, keeps it hot long enough, fits my car. What more could I ask?

The old "hotel-ware" cups are from the 1960s. They bring back memories of trips with the family, when Dad would drive through the night while Mom and my brothers slept. I never did, but sat behind him with my eyes on the road magically unfolding out of the dark. At some point, he would stop at a truck stop and we -- he and I -- would go in for coffee and hot chocolate. A strange, foreign world that was, with brassy waitresses and chatty truckers eating huge stacks of hotcakes, middle-of-the-night breakfasts. And me, the only girl; the only kid.

The cups were like these; thick, heavy, durable. They held the heat well; on a cold night, I would warm my hands on my cup in between sips of chocolate. I still do that, now with coffee, mainly.