Sunday, December 30, 2007

procrastination and gratitude

did i already thank whatever hotel is connected to the bangor airport for their free internet yesterday? if not, thank you, whatever hotel is connected to the bangor airport.


while i'm dishing out gratitude, let me also thank expedia for setting up the three hour layover in detroit yesterday which, by the time we made it to detroit, wound up being only an hour and a half.


i'd also like to thank my seatmate on the bangor flight for not pointing out the horrible stench in our row. had he done it, i would have said something about hw rude it is for people to eat broccoli and cheese sauce the night before flying. however, since he was too classy and restrained to point it out, i merely have to make a mental note to never, ever, do that again. i mean, on a standard flight, with the cloth seats, these things are easily stifled, however, my northwest flight (operated by pinnacle) featured vinyl seats, which do a terrible job of stifling flatulence.


not that i know from experience, mind you. but really, whomever may have been guilty of befouling the air on that flight should have realized that broccoli and vinyl seats are a bad combination.


who else to thank? ah yes, aeropostale for making jeans that fit me, although i think i should have stuck with the smaller pair today. there's room in these jeans for me, SO, and possibly the inhabitants of a small village.


oh, and i should thank vickie's for having a sale on foundation undergarments last week. it almost takes the sting out of the realization that i've lost enough weight to land in a smaller cup. i haven't been a vowel since late in my middle school career.


while i was in maine, i managed to finish reading 3 books, in addition to the two i wiped out on the way back to south carolina yesterday:


lolita - needed to work on my goal of reading 3 banned books before i hit 30, and this one has been on every list i've come across. (could be because of that whole pedophilia thing....)


the taste of a man - i borrowed this from mama for our drive down to freeport and back up the maine coast. it's a classic "boy meets girl, girl falls in love with boy, girl decides to kill boy and eat him" tale. i finished it as we were pulling into a restaurant in ellsworth for dinner. is it any wonder i wasn't hungry for any sort of red meat?


the foreskin's lament - this was a recommendation from david sedaris when i saw him in charleston back in october. excellent book.


love in the time of cholera - the movie was out when i left columbia, so i figured i'd read the book and then catch the movie when i got back home. guess what's no longer in theatres? it's a pity, because the book was really good.


gods behaving badly - i saw this reviewed in a people magazine the last time i went to the dentist. (i'm still pondering how less than five minutes of work cost me $120, but i suppose that sort of thing is explained in those advanced math classes i avoided in high school and college.) since i used to be quite the greek mythology geek, i was thrilled to find it at the borders in bangor. i'm hoping the author's working on a sequel. another excellent book.

and speaking of books, i should probably abandon this and get to scribbling on the backs of the avon brochures that i've been avoiding since before the holidays. my current motivation? finish them, and then i can kick back and work on reading memoirs of a geisha, which is shaping up to be another good one.....

3 comments:

Callie said...

Hope you have a Happy New Year, Duff!

read_vote said...

Julia,
I enjoyed reading your yearly news letter and thanks for remembering me again. My banned book reading suggestions if you haven't gotten to them yet are Grapes of Wrath and Brave New World. Imagine me having to defend GOW 6 years ago. Steinbeck and I prevailed. Have a wonderful new year!
-a teacher from your past

duff said...

callie: thanks, callie. hope you have a great one, too. :~)

divine ms. m.: suggestions noted. so far, i've finished lolita, but haven't selected my other two banned picks yet. i think grapes of wrath is on another list of books i'm working on, so that'd give me the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone.

by the way, memoirs of a geisha was absolutely excellent.