Happy Canada Day!

Well, I started this post a few days ago, but since I haven't finished it yet and since today is Canada Day, it is now the official Canada Day Post. BF and I mosied on down to the Canadian Embassy this morning for their Canada Day pancake feed - this year's theme was the Calgary Stampede, so it was country-music-a-go-go. We didn't stay very long because, alas, the line for pancakes was never-ending--we never did actually find the end of it--and we were starving, having traveled in the heat of the morning to get there. But still, it was nice to be among Canadians and fans of Canada once again.

And now, since it's officially summer, and since I haven't bored you with a list for at least three posts, it's summer reading list time! Hurray! It's also I Don't Have Anything Interesting to Write About Time! Hurray!

These are the books that I think are good beach reads, and there will probably be nothing other than that concept to thematically link them. I haven't really thought that far ahead, so I don't know, we'll see what I come up with. (Incidentally, you know what movie I love? High Fidelity. The sheer number of lists alone is enough to make me drool, and then you add in John Cusack? Plus Jack Black? Love.) Anyway.

Good Summer Reads

1) Bag of Bones by Stephen King. I love to read horrors in the middle of a bright, sunny summer afternoon. This one is particularly well-suited for a summer read because it's set in the summer (if I remember correctly) and because it's not your typical Stephen King demons-and-possessed cars book. It's more creepy than outright scary, and believe me, after awhile it will creep you out. I can't remember all of the plot, but I know it revolves around racism, jazz, and Maine. It evokes the movie Skeleton Key in my mind for some reason.

2) To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Again, much of it is set in the summer--hot, sticky southern summers--and there's just something about summertime that makes me ultra-nostalgic for childhood. Which is of course what this book is about, in part - the innocence of childhood.

3) Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson. A nice, light summer read. Bryson has a great sense of humor and writes with a very light touch, but isn't shallow. This one is about his efforts to hike the Appalachian trail with an old friend who maybe isn't in the greatest of shape and maybe doesn't quite have his life together.

4) Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler. It's about people who get together and read Jane Austen books and look to them for inspiration in their love lives. Light, breezy, perfect to read in like two sittings.

5) Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris. Funny yet pointless little essays. If you haven't read the one about the Macy's elf you will pee you pants from the humor of it all. Just read it.

Extra Bonus - My Picks for Top Summer Movies

1) Wet Hot American Summer - Parody of all those '80s teen summer movies. Quite funny and dead-on.

2) Scream - The horror thing again.

3) Top Gun - Only applies if you are a heterosexual woman (and Tom Cruise is really wearing out his welcome - may have to rethink this one...)

4) Walking and Talking - Good indie movie with Liev Schreiber, Catherine Keener before she was famous, and Anne Heche. Actually, I don't think any of them were famous yet, but it's such a great depiction of people just being friends.

5) Swimming Pool - British film starring Charlotte Rampling and some French actress whom BF informs me is Very Hot. You think it's gonna be all stuffy and boring, and then it turns dark and mysterious. I love the mystery and the darkness, what can I say.

Welcome to The Misanthrope, where it's Boring Vacation Photo Day

This is me at Titlow Beach in Tacoma. In the background you might be able to faintly see the Tacoma Narrows Bridge.

This is Crater Lake, supposedly the deepest and bluest lake in the United States.

Ditto.

The Oregon Coast.

By the way, you may have noticed that I changed the name of the blog - I'm not sure yet if I'll change the URL, but for now it will stay the same.

The big news

So guess what. I'm going to have to change the name of the blog, because I am no longer either unemployed or underemployed. Yep, you inferred that correctly. I got an offer from the place where I had a really good interview, didn't hear back for two months, got a vaguely worded email asking if I was still interested, didn't hear back for another month, and then BOOM, last week I got an official offer. Though this place isn't my first choice as far as type of library, location and work environment, at least its something. Of course, I have my theories that this job offer is life's little way of whispering in my ear: You thought you had problems when you were poor? How about hating your job and living in dread of going to work every morning? Not that I'm gonna hate it, but I'm just saying. The universe likes to teach me funny little lessons like this. (That's just my pessimism rearing its ugly head - pay it no attention.)

But never fear, oh my vast readership - I shall continue writing the blog for as long as I can think of anything vaguely amusing to say, and probably way after that, too. In fact, I may have reached that point already.

In other news, I'm still on vacation in the Northwest and am actually blogging from the Oregon Coast right this minute. And all I have to say about this whole week is: If I had not just gotten a good job offer, there's no way in hell I would getting back on that plane to D.C. It's going to rip my heart out to leave as it is, and I feel wrenching pangs of remorse that I did not more fully appreciate the natural beauty and down-to-earthness of this place while I had the opportunity to partake of it. And now I swear this oath, Never Again! I bow to you, O Grand Pacific Northwest! Take me back unto your bosom of plenty! Pleeeeeeeeaaaaaaaase!

Alas, it is not to be this trip. Perhaps someday soon...

P.S. Stay tuned for photos.
P.S.S. It was great to see my friends in Seattle - I miss you and I wish we could see each other more often! Soon, soon, my pretties.

I'm back, bitches!

Or will be soon, anyway. That's right, I'm going back to the Northwest for a short vacay in less than a week and I can't wait. Unfortunately life has been pretty much same ol' same ol' for the past few weeks, with the exception of the sudden arrival of ass-sucking humidity and heat, which is what we here in the South like to refer to as Summer. I had forgotten how disgusting the humidity here can be, although I vaguely remember describing it at length in this very forum; I figure it's sort of like childbirth in that it's the kind of pain that makes you want to kill yourself at the time, and yet a few months later it's only a hazy memory. So the point is, I'm looking forward to ten days in the NW sans humidity and possibly sans heat as well. Yay rain and mild conditions! You can expect a full report when I get back, although I can't say we'll be doing anything too exciting - much of the time will be spent driving a rental car back and forth between Oregon and Washington. Which is fine - yay anything that's not the Beltway! (Not that I would know since I don't drive around here, but I hear it's hellish.)

Other items of business:

The BF and I have become obsessed, along with the rest of North America, with Lost. Only we just now started watching, so we've only made it through the first season and are having a hell of a time trying to NOT hear what went on in the second season finale. (Please just tell me that the blond bitch whose name I cannot even remember but who slept with her step brother either dies, or Sayid comes to his senses and realizes that he is a hot Iraqi who could have any woman on the island, and Step-Brother Whore is a herpes-ridden skank who cannot act? Please?) But we plowed through all the episodes in season one in about two weeks, so no doubt we'll be caught up pretty quick, and then we'll be forced to watch each new episode in agonizing week-by-week one-hour spurts with commercials, which will not be cool. I have a feeling we'll just wait it out until season three is on DVD. We're not really ones for appointment television (when will we get a TiVo? when? nobody knows...), excepting, of course, the Simpsons.

And the TiVo thing brings me to the next item of business, which is really more of a question: has anyone else noticed that somewhere in the last two years television programming suddenly and inexplicably got exponentially better, better even than the current Hollywood dreck in movie theatres? In the past few months there have been very few movies I've felt like shelling out cash to see, yet there are so many TV series that I want to watch. I just wish watching TV could be more like a movie experience, because 1) I hate being at home and 2) I hate commercials. And 3) I hate being one of those losers who says, "I have to be home by 8:00 so I can watch the next episode of America's Top Home-Makeover Idol." As explained in no. 1 above, I don't like having to be home, ever, and I don't need that kind of stress in my life.

What else, as long as I'm boring the bejesus out of everyone? Last weekend BF and I went around to bookstores in DC and found a used bookstore that was selling a selection of hardback books for $4 each, or 6 for $20. Naturally, we being the shrewd business people we are, went for the 6 for $20 deal. So now I'm reading Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld, who sounds like a boy but is really a girl. I'm only a few pages in, so can't really explicate on it yet, but am continuing in my Reading-Lite vein. Oh well, I'm a moron. So shoot me.

OK. That's it. If any friends or well-wishers would like to get together with me while I'm in the Seattle/Tacoma area, send me an email so we can plan and/or so I can give you my cell phone number (yes, I finally bought a cell phone).