I need to finish more books

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 (all)

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 (all)

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

15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier

16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien

17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks

18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger

19 The Time Traveller’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 (all)

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 Berniere

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


bold = read
italics = started but never finished

knobs and such

I am all about colour wheels these days. I saw these little drawer knobs at Anthropologie a couple of weeks ago and if I had any need for some knobs I would have bought up the lot of them. I guess I would also have to have a few dollars in my pockets as they are not cheap.

Hairdid

This happened awhile ago, I forgot to share.

19th Century hipsters, as promised. Recto and verso of a stereocard made by a NYC photographer in the late 1800s. I had to have it.

image from Magic Pony website

Sometimes I wake up in the morning with the most random thought on my mind. This morning it was "those poppy pins made by Julie Moon". After a little poking around online I found her poppy earrings in the Magic Pony Shop along with some other great finds.

Trillium pin by Julie Moon

Colour Wheel Necklace by Yellow Owl Workshop

Air & Water pendant by Yellow Owl Workshop

1920s Cigarette Pendant Necklaces by Erica Weiner


Terrarium Necklace by Erica Weiner


Infinity ring by Erica Weiner


Herkimer Diamond ring by Erica Weiner


Imagined Memory Locket Necklace by Erica Weiner


Lucky 1892 Altered Penny Necklace by Erica Weiner

Mnemosyne Necklace by Erica Weiner

Antique Enamel Mourning Locket by Erica Weiner

If you know anything about me, you know that I enjoy gin. Recently, I have come to terms with that fact that I will not be going on our class trip to France this year. So, instead of spending the $5000+ to fly across the ocean (which is totally worth it, I know) I will put some of my money towards a collection of gin and other liquors I fancy. I started it off this evening with the purchase of Bluecoat American Dry Gin, a tickle too patriotic for my tastes but hopefully this stuff tastes delicious. Other things I have my eye on include:

Root Organic Liquor
Snap Organic Liquor
Red Lillet
Pimms
Aviation Gin
Blackwoods Small Batch Gin
Bols Genever Gin
Cadenhead Old Raj Gin
Crop Famer's Organic Gin
Death's Door Gin
Right Swedish Gin

good news, finally

Things have been a little shitty the past few weeks, after Thanksgiving my Dad told me that he would be going in for surgery to remove a tumor in his bladder. The surgery went down yesterday and it looks like everything is going to be okay. I think everyone was quite worried but everything should be fine from here on out and I'm extremely grateful and relieved. This weekend I'm going to write up some papers that are due next week, bake some bread and some shortbread cookies, have a celebratory drink and finish reading a novel I picked up last week.
Too much fun.
I am listening to and loving this song (it's a horrible video, I apologize).

Mt Hope Cemetery, Rochester, NY.

I might have found my thesis topic today, I'm not saying anything more because I don't want to jinx it.
I'm crossing my fingers.
I'm going back to Toronto this weekend to see some friends, drink some coffee and spend time wandering around the city to get my fill.
A friend is coming to visit me tomorrow and we are going to visit the library, drink some dranks, take some photos and catch up in general.

[heard] sigh, an old favorite (NSFW)

[watched] Tina Fey answering a few questions on the occasion of her Mark Twain Award for Comedy (P.S. I love her)

[read] a lot about photographs on gravestones. I even found a publication called "Markers" that is devoted to the research of cemeteries and headstones. I also discovered The Graveyard Rabbits.

[started] writing a big(ish) paper for my History of Photo II class. No big deal. Nothing interesting.

[finished] sending out some mail and sorting out my shitty banking situation

[drank] a fine pint of Guinness

[ate] Ben and Jerry's Mint Chocolate Chunk Ice Cream, it was well deserved

[planned] my make-believe winter vacation to costa rica, this will not be happening this year but it killed some time in class one morning

[acquired] a super, awesome stereocard. I will scan it and post it up, priceless.

[fancied] so many books! I'm considering writing out a Christmas list for my parents so I can optimize my book collection this year.

M-word

I found this on the 100 Layer Cake blog and saved in a secret file on my computer for future reference, if needed. I don't have the photographer's name to credit but I love the wedding dress

I'm still on the fence as far as my feelings towards marriage are concerned but it seems that as I get older the idea appeals to me more and more. My parents have been together for over 25 years (it turns out they are celebrating their wedding anniversary today!) and they seem to like each other still. This summer I found a small notebook with a few "to do" lists my Mum had left for my Dad in his truck before he went up north as she wouldn't be there until after midnight. The first list was of things to buy from the grocery store, the second list was things she needed from the boat to go to the cottage and the third page in the book was a note that read "Thank you! I love you, you big stupid head". It was a nice find, kind of warmed up my heart a little.

A friend of mine just announced that her and her long-time boyfriend are engaged and that also warmed up the old heart. I think marriage was something I decided to reject "as an institution" early in my undergrad, perhaps I felt it appropriate to do so as I had just discovered feminism on a larger scale, became an "artist" etc. But now marriage seems like it could be an okay idea, mostly just because I'd get to host an awesome party that may or may not be held in a barn.

My feeling towards having children however, has not wavered and probably won't any time soon. Children and I do not mix and the thought of having to deal with a screaming thing that craps a lot is absolutely horrifying. Also, that screaming, crapping thing has to come out of you first....really not looking forward to that. I'd rather spend my time and money on European vacations, a great book collection, good food and drink, and the hundreds of cats I'll eventually have when I'm old.

Here are a couple great wedding blogs that I love. I seriously think they are the reason my mind has been changed on the whole wedding thing.

100 Layer Cake

Once Wed

Glorious

From 1896, the Lumière silent film of the serpentine dance which was invented for the stage by Loïe Fuller. This dance was huge in France at the time and on stage the dancer's garments would achieve colour transformations with the use of projected stage lights. In this film each frame was hand tinted to get a similar affect on the original black and white film, this being one of the best examples of hand tinting for it's time.

Turning that shit around

School is kind of sucking right now and I think the majority of my classmates would agree with me on this one. We have to come up with out thesis topics and it seems like anyone who can help us with this is on vacation. It's too much to get into as far as how this program works but we basically go to school at a museum and rely on people like the head archivist, librarian, curators and other staff to help us access the collection in order for us to understand what there is available to us to do work on and what needs to be done within the collection, however, all of these people are on vacation and it seems like no one can help us right now.

I'm also really trying to like Rochester but it just hasn't charmed me yet. Coming from a big city I was happy to live in a smaller, slower-paced place but it is actually quite boring, not to mention cold, dreary and everything is too far to walk to.

So, in the theme of "being positive" (please refer to my previous post) I have decided to quit complaining and focus on some good things. I'm going to take the initiative and do some pre-thesis research, do a little personal research as well, mail away some packages and letters, cook and bake, and try a few new cocktails.

If I have to live in this crappy place I am going to my hardest to make the best of it.

Also, this:

[heard] Deerhunter - "Nothing Ever Happened" from the album Microcastle

[watched] thinking of going to see a screening of "Metropolis" tonight at GEH. I'm not sure if I can sit still for 3 hours though

[read] checking out the U of Rochester library this weekend and perhaps I'll purchase a few books online as well

[started] sourdough starter, it's living on top of my stove right now. I hope to bake a loaf from it this weekend

[finished] my granny square crochet blanket! (pictures to come)

[drank] Pimm's no. 1 cup and this will be tested out tonight, tres exciting

[ate] found my new favorite lunch place in the West End of Toronto, Zocalo is fabulous. I went there two days in a row when I was home last weekend

[hated] nope, I refuse to be negative right now!

[pondered] thesis thesis thesis thesis thesis thesis thesis thesis thesis thesis thesis thesis thesis

[planned] baking a cake for Chantal's birthday

[forgot] how amazing the fall can be when the sun is out and the leaves are all over the ground

[found] a 35mm Canon point and shoot camera, I just finished my first roll of film

[purchased] a real, honest-to-goodness winter parka. I have a responsible adult winter jacket now

[fancied] all of these

Blood types have always been somewhat fascinating to me, the fact that our cells can be classified into different groups and are either compatible with each, or not, made me wonder for a long time which group I was part of. A few years ago I went to my doctor for a routine blood test to make sure my iron and folic acid was alright and I decided to throw in an HIV screening as well. I asked the doctor if it was possible to find out what blood type I was just for the hell of it and he ticked off a box on the laboratory requisition form and told me to come back in a few weeks.

Now, I was quite certain that HIV was not something I had to be worried about at that time but I'm sure that everybody has a little anxiety when they are getting tested for HIV as it is such a life-altering and frightening diagnosis.

A few weeks later I was back at my doctor's who had the test results waiting for me. He walked into the exam room looking rather somber and started telling me something along the lines of "Andrea, life is hard and there are moments when things don't really make sense or can seem hopeless and awful". At this point I was shitting my pants, afraid that he had bad news for me that I was, in fact, HIV positive, riddled with cancer or terminally ill with some untreatable disease. He paused for a brief second and then went on to say "So when life is hard I always want you to remember your blood type, and be positive".

As it turns out my blood type is B+ and HIV free.

Needless to say I found a new family doctor.