Rainy Halloween

26 books, 27 weeks

Back in April I challenged myself to read 25 books by my birthday, which was 28 weeks away. I ended up exceeding that goal, completing 26 books a week early.

Was it a success? Mostly. I read a lot of things I'd had on my list for years that I'd get around to "someday," and to actually get to them felt like bonus weeks of life. On the other hand, I didn't really fall in love with any author that I wasn't already a big fan of (Danny Wallace, Anne Lamott, Frederick Buechner); I'd sort of been hoping to find another rich vein of books to lose myself in. Another failure: I put off reading several books that were particularly long or complex in an effort to keep pace, so I'll remove that pressure from my reading list for the next six months and not worry about quantity. However, all in all I was happy to have done it rather than not. It felt good to be intentional.

Here's the final tally:

"Pride and Prejudice," Jane Austen

"Survivor," Chuck Palahniuk

"The Year of Magical Thinking," Joan Didion

"Prayer and Temperament," Chester P. Michael & Marie C. Norrisey

"Patience with God," Frank Schaeffer

"You Shall Know our Velocity," Dave Eggers

"Breakfast of Champions," Kurt Vonnegut

"Time Out of Joint," Philip K. Dick

"Suck it, Wonder Woman," Olivia Munn

"From Eternity to Here," Frank Viola

"The Yellow Leaves," Frederick Buechner

"A Princess of Mars," Edgar Rice Burroughs

"The Fallacy of Creative Thinking," Alan Abel (as Dr. Bruce Spencer)

"Round Ireland with a Fridge," Tony Hawks

"The Gun Seller," Hugh Laurie

"The Mysterious Affair at Styles," Agatha Christie

"Slaughterhouse Five," Kurt Vonnegut

"Ubik," Philip K. Dick

"The Guinea Pig Diaries," A.J. Jacobs

"The Untold Story of the New Testament Church," Frank Viola

"Imperfect Birds," Anne Lamott

"S*** My Dad Says," Justin Halpern

"Join Me," Danny Wallace

"Friends Like These," Danny Wallace

"Revolution," George Barna

Summer photos

Now up at SteveandAmanda.com:


Corin, June 2010


Corin turns 3!


Planting the garden


Friends on beaches


Corin, July 2010


Franklin Falls, part one: the woods


Franklin Falls, part two: the waterfall


Arrrr… the fourth annual mingling of the pirates


The total ZooTunes experience


Popcorn on the stove

English lessons

Corin was asking for a second slice of bread & butter, and our friend Lindsey was in the kitchen helping him get it. After getting the bread for him, she asked, "Do you want to put the butter on yourself?"

To which he answered, "No, I want the butter on the bread."

Autumn, pt. 2

1000 words

I promise this will be the only time on my blog I show you a picture of something that's been peed on.

Autumn

Unclear on the concept

Corin received a thank-you note in the mail today for a friend's birthday party gift. The four-year-old had drawn a picture in purple marker of two curly-haired stick figures, which we assumed to be the birthday girl and Corin, both who have curly hair. But when we suggested this to Corin, he burst out in tears, seriously upset.

Once we got him calmed down enough to speak, he finally told us what was wrong:

"I'm not purple! I'm not purple!"

Cut short

There's a story you tell yourself,
a narrative of your life
that is braided together out of single, tenuous strands.

As you grow, learn, and age,
the thread gets stronger, reinforced —

to the point where you see not only where you've been
but also where you're going, the story's end.

Except — you'll never get there.

The rope will snap, the story unravel,
the fiction shown up as fraud. Left with nothing
but a handful of lies —

grasping, gripping, hoping, flailing, drowning in freefall.

Correction

The other day we were waiting at a light for a long while, and I absentmindedly said to myself "Man, that light took forrrr-ev-ah!"

Corin piped in from the backseat: "Don't say it like that, Apa?"

I wasn't quite sure what he was talking about, so I asked him what I should say.

"Ev-er," he enunciated, crossly.

He's not going to like Boston.

Bacon-Corn Zucchini platter

I don't have any photos of this, because it was literally an attempt to clear out leftovers from the fridge, and it wasn't until afterward that I appreciated how good it was. Perhaps I'll need to make it again just for some photos.

Ingredients:
3 zucchini (or 2 enormous ones fresh from the garden, as in our case)
1/2 sweet onion
2 ears sweet corn
10 or so basil leaves
3 strips bacon
grated parmesan cheese
coarse salt and fresh pepper to taste

1. Cut bacon strips into small pieces, and in large pan cook over medium-high heat until crisp. Set aside bacon to cool but save some of the grease in the pan.

2. Chop zucchini and onion in fairly large chunks and saute in the grease, with salt and pepper.

3. Cut corn off the cobs and set aside cold kernels. Finely chop basil and set aside.

4. When zucchini and onion are done (just slightly soft), pour onto two large plates. Dust with as much parmesan cheese as you like. Top with a layer of basil, then corn, then bacon. Add another sprinkle of salt on top, and serve with bottom layer hot and top layer cold.

The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball

Full post on our latest ballpark outing here.