Tagged, The Book Meme - For Anna

1. Total number of books I've owned:
In my lifetime? That would number in the 10,000 range. Maybe more. I have more books than some small libraries. Currently? Probably about 3000.

2. Last book I bought.
See, now I don't buy books singly. And I don't know which one was the last one the cashier rang up so:

Anne Rice Boxed Set including Interview With The Vampire, The Vampire Lestat, Queen of the Damned, The Tale of the Body Thief
Steven Erikson "Memories of Ice"
Fred Rosen "Needlework"
Anne Bishop "Shadows and Light"
Anne Bishop "The Pillars of the World"
Rick Mofina "Blood of Others"
Anne Bishop "The House of Gaian"
Michael Christopher Carroll "Lab 257"
Helene Hanff "84 Charing Cross Road"
Helene Hanff "Q's Legacy"
Claire Naylor "Dog Handling"
Anne Bishop "Dreams Made Flesh"
Mark Z Danielewski "House of Leaves"

3. The last book I read. Whatever Happened to Janie - Caroline B. Cooney Finished it about 15 minutes ago.

4. Five books that mean a lot to me.
This one is difficult, I've read so many over my lifetime, it's hard to pick just five.

Bambi - The book that started me on reading. When I was three, my mother says she thought I had memorized it because she read it to me so many times, that was until I picked up something else and started sounding out the words.
Wilson Rawl "Where the Red Fern Grows" - This book still makes me cry. I read it over and over until it fell apart. And I wanted to live in the country and own a coonhound so bad.
Stephen King's "It" - Read this when it first came out in 1986 when I was 14. It scared the crap out of me, but more importantly it was my entry into horror fiction.
Bruce Campbell "If Chins Could Kill" - I love Bruce Campbell, and it was extremely gratifying to find out that, at least according to his book, he's a "real person". His account of the making of Evil Dead was absolutely hilarious, the budget was something like $20 and a couple buckets of chicken.
Douglas Adams "The Last Chance to See" - I loved his Hitchhiker's series, but finding out that one of my favored authors had cared enough about endangered species to write a moving, but humorous and not preachy account of his travels which might encourage other readers to care also, was absolutely amazing. It also contains one of my alltime favorite quotes:

I've never understood all this fuss people make about the dawn. I've seen a few and they're never as good as the photographs, which have the additional advantage of being things you can look at when you're in the right frame of mind, which is usually about lunchtime. --Douglas Adams, Last Chance to See

5. Which five people would you most like to see fill this out in their blog?
I can never answer this question, I'd like to know everyone's answers.

Well, Dave discovered a workaround that allows me to see my blog from home. He still hasn't figured out what's wrong, since it appears that only my home computer has this problem. We can both access it from work, and the five or six people who read the blog haven't voiced any complaints.

I still haven't really touched my cross stitch. It may be because I'm not really enjoying working on my current project. I still have a couple of hours to go on this slot on my rotation, and I really want the finished piece, but it is on a large count Heatherfield using six strands of thread. I much prefer smaller, finer work.

I have also been spending much more time reading. Since I started becoming more active with Book Crossing and Book Relay and now Paperback Swap I've had to pick up the pace on the reading because I've promised so many of my books.

Dave will tell you that I need to pick up the pace on the reading even more because it seems for every book I mail out, five more come to the house. I don't know how I've managed it (ok, yes I do, the trips to Half Price Books), but the entire office is covered in unread books. I guess he just needs to hang the bookshelves in the front hallway like I've been asking him to do. (Dave, I know you're reading this. Hint, hint.)

I'm sorry I haven't been keeping up with posting lately. I can never seem to access my website from home to upload anything, and I can't really use the internet for personal reasons at work. So, I've been slacking off on updating. Besides that, I don't really have anything to write about.

I've hit a crafting slump. I haven't touched my cross stitch in almost two weeks, and I've been knitting the same pair of socks for over a month. I'm not exactly sure where all my time is going, but I sure don't have anything to show for it.

So, now my dilemma is, if I don't have any projects to talk about, what exactly am I going to blog about? I intended the blog to be a record of projects, worked on and completed, so now what? I'm going to have to think on this for a while.

Well for some reason today it's working. Now if only I can get the photos loaded up on this slow-ass connection we're in business.

First the SSRP box:

This is what it looked like when I first opened it. I wish I had something that could show the scale of the box. It's enormous! I almost couldn't carry it to my car at the post office.


These are a couple of views of what it looked like partially unpacked. I had to pack and unpack a couple of times to get everything to fit, and because I found a stray ball of yarn all by its lonesome when I thought I was finished.



This is what I put in:


For some reason, the photo of what I took out didn't come out. I'm not sure if I feel like digging it out and taking another picture.

The frog cross stitch I finished at the retreat:


And a couple of cute pics of the animals:

Where Elmo thinks he's a dog


And Elmo and Abe having a nap. Who says you can't have greyhounds and cats?

I have no idea why in IE my side panel has slid downwards. I've adjusted several settings and I still can't figure it out. I use Firefox at home, and when I can log on it looks fine. Then I come to work and it looks like hell.

The SSRP box arrived at my house last night to much rejoicing. It had been held hostage at the post office for several days because they neglected to leave a slip in my mailbox. This box is huge, there is a ton of great stuff inside. I forgot to bring the list of what I'm putting in and taking out, and I left the disk with the pictures at home also. Duh! Hopefully tomorrow or Monday, I can update with photos.

If Dave remembers, he is going to try to get the box to the post office for me today, otherwise it will have to wait until Wednesday when I have a day off. I will post here and also send an email out to the group when I know for sure. Next stop, Austin.

I am really, really getting tired of only being able to access my website from home on a random basis. Like right now, I can't see it, I know it's there but I keep getting a blank page. I can access Blogger, and I can post from here but I can't get into my files so I can't post the new cute photos of Hanna, my finished froggie cross-stitch, or the latest of Elmo pretending to be a dog.

I have barely touched my cross stitch since I got home from the retreat. I started a Lizzie Kate freebie Santa Stop! and I've got a bit of it stitched, but I've mostly been reading. I mentioned bookcrossing and between reading all the forum postings, signing up for bookrays, and adding more and more books to my shelf, I discovered another great bookcrossing website Book Relay which is a great way to trade books and very addictive. So, most all of my free time has been spent staring at a computer screen instead of stitching or knitting.