I'm horrible at updating this.

Quickly since the last update:
1. sold my new sewing machine - didn't like it. especially the reverse button.
2. old trustworthy machine is broken - need to take it somewhere to be serviced.
3. got engaged... officially, I guess. the jerk bought me a ring too - even though I told him not to :P
4. we're trying to move up to the Burlington, VT area. right now we're applying for jobs without too much luck... well, I'm not having too much luck. Ryan pretty much has a job once the employer has more money roll in with some anticipated contracts.

ok, and now since I'm bored:

Bold the ones you've read COMPLETELY, italicize the ones you've read part of. Watching the movie or the cartoon doesn't count. Abridged versions don't count either. BTW, according to the BBC if you've read 7 of these, you are above the average.


1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings-JRR Tolkein
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter Series- J.K. Rowling
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
10 Great Expectations-Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Ubervilles-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 Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’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 Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy- Douglas Adams
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 Bernieres
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 - 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 (though I'm not sure if it was the abridged version or not)
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 Inferno - Dante
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 Madam 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 (I read the French version!)
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

...

I'm bad at actually updating this thing.

I went on a vacation with two cousins during 4th of July week - Amy and I flew down to West Palm Beach, FL to spend some time with our cousin, Mike.

Here we are at Juno Beach - hours before Amy and I got back on the plane to Manchvegas.

The rest of the pictures from the trip can be seen here:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/kcroteau/sets/72157606028187686/

Other than that, not too much has been happening. Ryan hasn't been feeling well at all so I haven't been sleeping much lately. But hopefully he'll be feeling better this week.

Last night we went to see the Mighty Mighty Bosstones and Dropkick Murphys at McCoy Stadium with my cousin Amy and Ryan's friend Dennis. It was a good show. Ryan and I went up into the seats after the Bosstones so we could sit - neither one of us were in any condition to stand for the rest of the show but Dennis and Amy stayed down on the lawn for the whole thing. Oh, and Dropkick was making a CD last night, so I'll definitely have to get that one when it comes out. :)

I haven't done any sewing lately. :( Besides altering clothes for a friend. I need to finish the pillow shams I'm working on for someone - I need to experiment with my ruffler foot first, though.

oh! AND yesterday before meeting friends for Indian food, (I'm a busy girl) I went down to Thompson, CT to pick up an old sewing machine and its cabinet. It's still in my truck because I can't get it out myself and Ryan can't help me right now, so I'll take pictures later. I got it mostly for the cabinet, but the woman said the machine still works fine - and it has paper bobbins. Word.

Before I left for Florida, I was at my parents' house for a few hours and was bored so I took some pictures of wall quilts my mom has in the house and some more pictures of her gardens.

Cousins.

On my dad's side of the family, there are 17 grandchildren including myself and my siblings and there are 3 great-grandchildren.

A few weeks ago Crap. Almost a month ago now, my Pepere died. His memorial service was the first time ever that all the cousins were together in the same room at the same time.


This picture, unfortunately, doesn't have everyone. The only person missing is our cousin Cathy. She left a little early...

And it doesn't have the great-grandchildren... but there we are. Then my Auntie Di wanted us to line up by age so after we figured out who was older than who, this was the result:

It was also the first time in a loooooong time where all the siblings (my aunt & uncles & my dad) were in the same room at the same time. Here they are with their mother (my Memere):

That night a few of us went out to Jillian's in Manchvegas:

The next day we had some more fun before 2 of the cousins had to fly back home to Florida - I dragged Ryan back up to NH with me this time and we went to hang out with a couple of my uncles at Hampton beach.

We played minature golf:

And us cousins stood in the frigid New England ocean:

In less than 2 weeks now, Amy and I will be flying down to Florida to visit our cousin Mike. All of us are really excited and it should be a good time. :)

A Borrowed List

This was on PaperMenagerie's blog (aka Angela) and I'm bored/procrastinating, so here are my answers:

What were you doing 10 years ago?
I was graduating from 8th grade, just about to go into high school. At that point, I was still going to Girl Scout camp for a few weeks during the summer as a camper, not as an employee (that was the next year).

What were you doing 1 year ago?

A year ago wrapped up one of the most hectic times in my life and I still don't know how I did it or how I survived. From March - May/June of last year I was... renovating the house with Ryan, going to roller derby practice 2-3 nights a week, working full time (40 hours), and being a full-time graduate student (3 classes, usually meeting once or twice a week each). So most days would be work, class, derby practice, work on house, go back up to Worcester to sleep. Yikes.

Five snacks you enjoy:
tortilla chips and salsa
Edy's strawberry fruit bars
ice cream
pretzels
animal crackers

Five things you'd do if you were a millionaire:
the usual - pay off the rest of mine and my parents' loans
travel. travel travel travel.
build a house out in the woods where no one will be able to find me very easily
sit home and sew/make things all day
send random people money since I always wish that would happen to me (so get on that, Oprah!)

Five bad habits:
on Etsy too much during work
chewing the inside of my cheeks/lips when I'm anxious
being lazy when I should do something productive like laundry or the custom order I have to finish
eating too much ice cream
not reading enough (for pleasure)

Five things you like doing:
sitting on my comfy couch out on the screen porch
meeting Etsy people in real life (I went to dinner with SecretLentil the other night!)
reading
eating ice cream
watching a movie on a rainy day with Ryan

Five things you'd never wear again:
stirrup pants
turtlenecks
heels (but not by choice) :(


Five favorite toys:
sewing machine
kenmore heavy duty mixer
mac laptop
wii fit
sharpie markers

oh yeah

I got a Wii Fit.

I don't want to pay a lot of money to go to a gym that I'll barely use because my stupid foot won't let me.

So I bought a Wii Fit to help me get somewhat back into shape or maybe at least back to the flexibility I had pre-surgery. And it keeps track of your weight and estimated BMI each day.

The part that isn't surprising is that it tells me I'm Unbalanced (on my feet, not in my head dummies)... yeah, that could be due to the fact that my left foot has a mind of it's own. A stubborn mind of it's own.

But the yoga, aerobics, and muscle strengthen parts are pretty cool. I suck at all the balance games, so I think I'll be staying away from those.

Yup, gas prices are a leeetle ridiculous.

Driving south on 495 on a Friday afternoon in the summer can be an absolute nightmare.

Driving south on 495 on the Friday before Memorial Day Weekend makes you suicidal.

However, with gas at an average of $3.90 in Worcester for Regular (but I did pass one station that had Regular for $4.09 on my way home), I didn't think it would affect Cape traffic too much. I mean... it's The Cape. *cue heavenly music*

I was totally wrong.

I decided to take my chances and travel down 495 to get to Milford (from my office in Westboro). At 3:15pm (usually the time when Cape traffic starts backing up), the road seemed like I was driving home on a Tuesday. During school vacation.

This snapshot of Google maps (taken at 7:18pm) shows that 495 is still moving at a normal pace. Normal, I mean, for 7:20pm on say, a Wednesday night. During school vacation.



However, it is NOT school vacation week. Nor is it a Tuesday... or Wednesday. It's the Friday before Memorial Day Weekend.

I'm doing my part to help the gas companies continue to reach their gazillion dollar profit goals by making a trip up to NH for the 3rd weekend in a row. And I have to go up to the Granite State again next Friday - for my Pepere's memorial service. So that's 4 weekends in a row, Exxon. How about a little of the profits thrown my way? I know a great gal whore named Sallie Mae who will gladly take away anything you give me so don't worry - I won't go spending it on frivolous things like groceries.

busy busy little bee

We've set a date for our housewarming/belated graduation/belated birthday party. So now we need to make sure the house is actually finished. But this means the other half of the basement ceiling will be finished (i.e. I'll finally have real lights over my sewing area).

My "little" brother turned 16 last week. "Little" because although he is younger than me, he now outweighs me and is taller than me.

My Pepére has been in the hospital and things aren't looking too good - he was read his last rights on Sunday. Right now I'm indifferent about the whole thing, but that's another story.

I didn't get a job I interviewed for back in March. The only part that sucks about not getting it is now I have to start looking again and start interviewing again. I hate interviewing with a passion. I just freeze up if they ask me those stupid typical HR questions. Even though I know they're gonna ask them in 97% of the interviews. I just can't do it. I'd rather sit there and have a conversation like a normal human being.

Oh and if anyone is feeling extra generous today, I'd like one of these, please:

my Google reader

Just in case anyone is interested in seeing what I read on a daily basis, here ya go. ;)

♥