Websurfing finds

On my Sunday hopscotch through the blogosphere, I stumbled upon some new gems and rediscovered a couple that had been languishing unread amongst my soon-to-be-pruned bookmarks. I thought I'd share them with you.

Older, but no wiser
I haven't visited this blog for ages, but now remember why I bookmarked it. I'm accustomed to reading personal and introspective blogs from women, but Andy's was the first I found from a middle-aged man. He has been blogging since 2003.

Serendipity Luminescent
Interesting photos from an old acquaintance I met on a forum years ago. It's so long since I checked his blog that this one (Serendipity) is a re-direct from the original which he stopped in June 2006.

Woolgathering
Elizabeth Perry is an artist and author living in Pittsburgh, PA. and Woolgathering is where she posts her daily sketchbook and notes. It's a glimpse into daily life through the eyes of an artist. She also does a fair number of watercolours –one of my favourite mediums. This one is going onto my bloglist.

She also links to some of her other projects, the most interesting being:

Museum Drawing Project of which she explains:
From October 1, 2006, through June 30, 2007, my plan was to visit the public spaces of the Carnegie Museum of Art and the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, every day the museums were open. I drew something in a small sketchbook in response to each day's experience, and posted that drawing here, with short written reflection or response. Anyone was welcome to visit and comment. I was particularly interested in exploring what happens when my work moves from private (small sketchbook) to public (website) as it is experienced by an audience both in public (museum spaces) and in private (computer screen).

A Walk In My Shoes
Darlene posts beautiful, sometimes whimsical photos accompanied by poems, observations and commentary about life.

National Blog Posting Month (or NaBloPoMo)
Taken from the idea behind NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), the goal of NaBloPoMo is to post daily on your blog through the month of November. Yep, all thirty days. I'm too late for this year, but if I can remember, I may try this in 2008.

Gipsy Life
I found Gipsy Life from a link on Out of the Cube
and what caught my eye on first scanning was a mention of Vancouver. On further exploration, I found out she has applied for immigration to Canada to fulfill her long time dream of living in Vancouver. Beyond that, she is a wonderful writer. Her honesty, clarity and ability to share her hopes, dreams and fears is rather breathtaking.

And lastly,

Out of the Cube
I can't remember how I stumbled onto this site by Verna Wilder. All I recall is that I read her post, It's A Choice and felt it embodied so much of my own life philosophy that I bookmarked her site. (BTW, I found both Gipsy Life and Woolgathering through links on Out of the Cube.)


Hope you enjoy these as much as I have.

Reading Queue - redux

Okay, after posting this --> Is this cheating?, I felt the tiniest bit guilty.

I realized I wasn't really giving the system a chance. I'm going to give it another try and this time I'm going to choose at least one of my current reads with this method.

Last week I came up with The Barclay Family Theatre on the random number generator and finished it over the weekend.

The next number up is 15, Captain Alatriste by Arturo Perez-Reverte.



And when I finish it, I'll remove it from the queue.

So now I've done it; put it down in writing, right here on my blog for all to see. Let's see how long I can keep it up.

Is this cheating?

As some of you may have noticed, I started a Reading Queue on my sidebar as a follow-up to this post based on C Max Magee's article on The Millions.

The unread books on my shelves were getting out of hand and I needed a better method of choosing the next book to read. I stumbled onto Magee's method and decided to give it a go. I've had mixed results.

I listed all the unread books on my shelves; I alphabetized them by title; I put them all on a spreadsheet and numbered them; I fed the data into the Random Number Generator (actually, it's called the Integer Generator, but who except mathematicians would call it that); et voila, out spits the number of the next book I'll read.

One little problem. There's a try "Again!" button. When I'm not in the mood for the book that comes up, I tend to hit "Again", again and again. Is that cheating? Methinks it is.

Top 10s

While perusing someone else's site, I ran across a bunch of top 10 lists. Naturally, I started thinking about what would go on my own top 10s.

So here are a few lists with the proviso that they are subject to constant flux, as is my brain:

Most memorable childhood books:

• The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe - C. S Lewis
• The Secret Garden - Frances Burnett
• A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court - Mark Twain
• Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
• Winnie the Pooh - A. A. Milne
• The House at Pooh Corner - A. A. Milne
• Legends of Vancouver - Pauline Johnson
• Sue Barton Nurse; series of about 6 books - Helen Dore Boylston
• Pippi Longstockings - Astrid Lindgren
• Heidi - Johanna Spyri

Sci-fi and Fantasy books:

• The Foundation Series - Isaac Asimov
• Dune - Frank Herbert
• A Canticle for Leibowitz - Walter Miller Jr.
• Oryx and Crake - Margaret Atwood
• The Martian Chronicles - Ray Bradbury
• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
• The Moon is a Harsh Mistress - Robert A. Heinlein
• The Lathe of Heaven - Ursula K. Le Guin
• The Once and Future King - T. H. White
• The Hobbit - J. R. Tolkein

Films

• Jaws
• Shawshank Redemption
• The Joy Luck Club
• Lawrence of Arabia
• Glory
• Raiders of the Lost Ark
• Das Boot
• The Princess Bride
• Gone With the Wind
• A Fish Called Wanda

Favourite foods/snacks:

• Chocolate-covered macadamia nuts
• Linguine with white clam sauce
• Sushi - in particular, Uni
• Salmon - poached, oriental style, drizzled with a ginger-green onion-soy-oil mix
• Grand Marnier souffle
• Winter melon soup
• Rocky Road ice-cream
• My grandmother's steamed lemon chicken with garlic and black bean
• Roast turkey with mushroom/giblet gravy
• Creme brulee