Merry Christmas

I've sent out Christmas cards the past three years, but decided I'd just post one on my blog this year. Call me lazy, but that's what I'm going to do. Sorry post office. So enjoy the digital card. If you insist on getting a Christmas card, I might rethink my policy.

Sunset at 3:30 p.m.

So here is the sunset in mid-afternoon from the view of the Rainbird Trail this past Saturday. Enjoy:

Big Box

So Santa delivered the Big Box to my apt last night. Hmm. I wonder who it could be for ....

Better Off Ted

This newish comedy returns to TV on Tuesday; the first 13 episodes aired the last TV season and I missed out on them all. But thanks to Hulu.com was able to watch them all and they were funny, a comedy about corporate America. Ted is the research and development boss at a heartless corporation, Veridian Dynamics, that makes pretty much anything you can ever think of and even tries cryogenics on one of its employees.

The rest of the cast includes Linda, a product tester, who would like to go out with Ted; Veronica, Ted's no-nonsense boss; Phil and Lem, the best scientists; and Rose, Ted's daughter.


Veridian Dymanics, in their own words


Veridian Dynamics, the environment

Perdidos

For those Spanish-speaking blog readers, or really any Lost fan, here's a Spain promo for Lost season 6.



And my cousin Eric posted this video on facebook, thought others would like to enjoy in some Dylan Christmas spirit:

Night and Day

Yes, as I write this, I am listening to the popular song Night and Day, I resisted all the time while reading the novel of the same name by Virginia Woolf. This, I believe is the first novel by Woolf that I have read, although I have To The Lightouse on my bookshelf and have watched The Hours.

Night and Day, a novel set at the time of the beginning of the 20th century and the changing times within London. The novel centers around Miss Katherine, the only daughter of the Hilberys, and her courtships and her friendship with Mary Datchet a woman involved in the early woman's suffrage movement.

Katherine desires to be someone more than she is perceived or expected to be. The granddaughter of a great poet, she is expected to like literature and helps her mother write a biography of her grandfather. But, secretly Katherine loves math and would like to remain an independent woman.

Mary, on the other hand, is involved in the woman's movement but falls in love with Mr. Denham, a lawyer with a hand for writing, but refuses him because she knows he is in love with Katherine, who is engaged to a Mr. Rodney. (No novel is ever complete without some love-triangle drama).

In the middle of it all, is Katherine's mother, the literary buff who is obsessed with Shakespeare:

"Yet it all goes on: lawyers hurrying to their work, cabmen squabbling for their fares, little boys rolling their hoops, little girls throwing bread to the gulls, as if there weren't a Shakespeare in the world. I should like to stand at the crossing all day long and say: 'People, read Shakespeare!'"

The mother even goes to Shakespeare's tomb and brings flowers back from there and after which resolves the love triangle to everyone's satisfaction, excepting Mary, who had, by that time already solved her own feelings for Mr. Denham. Mary seemed to bear the brunt of everyone's problems and the line that summed her up for me: "And Mary walked slowly and thoughtfully up the street alone."

Katherine and Mary, contrasts, such as the title depicts, each find their own way through life, ending up in different, but situations.

Here's something that I found interesting and thought it could be applied to some cable news networks anchors, if not all.

"It's curious," Mr. Hilbery continued, agreeing with his daughter, "how the sight of one's fellow-entusiasts always chokes one off. They show up the faults of one's cause so much more plainly than one's antagonists. One can be enthusiastic in one's study, but directly one comes into touch with the people who agree with one, all the glamour goes. So I've always found."

And a good testament of literature:

"The power of literature, which had temporarily deserted Mr. Hilbery, now came back to him, pouring over the raw ugliness of human affairs its soothing balm, and providing a form into which such passions as he had felt so painfully the night before could be moulded so that they fell roundly from the tongue in shapely phrases, hurting nobody."

Other favorite lines:

• "I think being engaged is very bad for the character." — Katherine
• "Perhaps marriage, will make you more human." — Henry to Katherine
• "I can't wander about London discussing my feelings." — Katherine
  
• "'You've not read the The Idiot!' (Cassandra) exclaimed. 'I've read 'War and Peace', William replied a little testily. 'War and Peace!' she echoed, in a tone of derision. 'I confess I don't understand the Russians.'
• No one works harder than a woman with little children.
• The idea of living alone in a cottage was ridiculous.

So, one more novel for me this year, and of course, I couldn't just pick a short one: Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes.

And keep your picks coming for Readers Choice July 2010 Novel!
Also Happy St. Andrew's Day!

July Reading 2010

So the selection of my reading goal 2010 is going to be decided by You! Remember when You were Time's Person of the Year? Well now You get to help me pick the selection that we are going to read in July.

I've narrowed the selection to five choices, I hope You don't mind. I've made sure the choices are not long, like some of the 1,000 page novels I chose to read this year, but short, easy reads. Remember, this will be in July at the height of summer, the Con and of family togetherness.

So You can leave your pick in the comment section below, within the next couple weeks, I'll compile all the comments You left and come up with a winner. And don't worry, if Yours doesn't get picked, You can still read it.

I haven't ready any of the books listed below. So I'm just basing my short synopses from things I've read on the Internet or heard from others. All of the picks are books I'll probably read anyways, so let me know which one You want to read.

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
The author of Coraline and the Sandman comic series won the Newberry award for this book. This 320 page book chronicles the story of Nobody Owens, who after his parents are murdered, is raised and lives with the occupants of a graveyard.

The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein
This novel comes from the perspective of Enzo, an aspiring race car driver's dog. A lab terrier mix, Enzo provides his memoirs of his time with Denny and family in 320 pages as he is nearing death.

Percy Jackson and the Olympians, The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan
This 400-page story is the beginning of a five-part series of Percy Jackson (A film is coming out in February) of Percy Jackson, who discovers he is the son of a god. Percy is constantly expelled from schools and finally gets sent to Camp Half-Blood, a school for other kids of gods and while there is accused of stealing Zeus' lightning bolt.

The Monstrumologist by Rick Yancey
There hasn't been a Yancey novel that I haven't enjoyed, from his Collections of a Tax Collector, Highly Effective Detective to his Alfred Kropp series. Told from the view of a journal (as all good horror stories are) 12-year-old orphan Will Henry describes his apprenticeship to 19th-century monstrumologist Dr. Pellinore Warthrop in this 448 page novel.
To see it explained in video form go here: http://www.rickyancey.com/monstrumologist/home.php

Marcelo in the Real World by Francisco Stork
Francisco. That's just fun to say.
I stumbled across this book, looking at Amazon's best books of 2009. It's a tale of Marcello, who has a developmental disability and often can hear music no one else can hear. His father makes him get a job at a law firm mail room so he can experience the real world. This 320 page story depicts how Marcelo finds the real world.