drank beer at avondale brewery last night
went to brunch with friends today
otherwise the weekend has been full of reading and laundry
while uploading pictures of jason & amanda’s wedding i found this one, taken in boston, and think it is one of my favorites.
strange but true.
It took me forever to finish this book. (The book is 688 pages, so I don’t feel too badly about it). The book is a very detailed story of two twin brothers born to a nun (a nun!) in Ethiopia. The nun dies in childbirth and their father, a highly esteemed surgeon, runs away. The two boys are raised by the hospital staff, and come of age as Ethiopia survives a bloody coup. I enjoyed the last part (part four) of this book more than any of the others. A part of me wishes the book would have been shorter. The other part of me wonders if the last part would have been so marvelously riveting if the first parts had been abridged.
688 pages
3.5/5
it was a pretty solid show
nothing groundbreaking or terribly inspired
although you know i am a sucker for harmony and melody
i couldn’t really tell you what any of the songs were
or what the lyrics were
they totally reminded me of this weird looking
red tide bioluminescence in san diego
the opener to the show was van dyke parks, who is 68 years old and still banging it out,
utah phillips on acid style,
if utah phillips were on acid and had a box set of 7inches to sell.
i’m glad i went.
i did a lot of awesome things this weekend
friday was my birthday, i am so old (34)
you may not think that is old, but
i almost called the cops on our downstairs neighbors
who had a stompy loud party thursday night/friday morning from 3am-5am.
but i don’t like talking to cops
and who calls the cops on their neighbors, anyway?
for lunch i went to the greek festival with my coworkers
i ate delicious lamb and bought some baklava for emily
whitney brought a chocolate cake by my office
and i got to leave early
with only a few exceptions
everyone i love called me to wish me a happy birthday
emily bought me roses and a funny card and made delicious swiss chard/goat cheese baked pasta.
we watched multiple episodes of my favorite brazilian tv show
and went to bed early
saturday was football and tamales
and i bought a bike
it is very shiny and pretty and fast
then we went to eat sushi with old friends
who brought me birthday beer prizes
we all stopped by the package store after dinner
found they have a cool little secret bar in the back of the package store
with hookahs and cigars and you can buy & consume anything you can drink
so we drank and watched the alabama game
sunday i rode my new bike into work
mostly for the excuse to ride my new bike
although i did work for a couple hours
then emily & i went paddleboarding on one of the lakes at oak mountain
it was amazing
i did not fall down once
my feet did hurt afterwards
but i would definitely do it again
i talked to my brother and mom over skype
ended the weekend by drinking too much woodchuck fall cider
and watching breaking bad
my very favorite tv show
here we go, another year.
when there are no waves, boogie boards make the perfect flotation device.
yesterday we were swimming in the ocean
playing with a borrowed yellow frisbee
spotting crabs and fish in the crystal clear water
minding our own business when we
heard some shrieking from the shore
(the excited kind, not the scared shitless kind)
looked out to the horizon to see three dolphins leaping
in great big arcs out of the ocean
splash splash splash
for ten minutes before disappearing
they were playing
we were playing
it was an awesome way to end the weekend
Emily’s brother Jason got married to Amanda this weekend in Gulf Shores. It was a very pretty ceremony on the beach near sunset. Super hilarious thing: Emily’s ex was having his wedding ceremony on the beach 30 minutes before Jason! Everyone was cordial – friendly even – and it was just one of those weird coincidences. After the ceremony we took some more pictures, then went went to louisiana lagniappe afterwards for dinner, drinks & cake. I’m super happy for Jason & Amanda (and Conner, Amanda’s son) and hope they have a very happy life together. I’m glad to have her as a sister-in-law!
The subtitle of this book is “my adventures as the world’s most wanted hacker” – and adventures is an apt description of Kevin Mitnick’s life. It’s actually a hilarious account of his hacking activities, which were curiosity-driven and not meant to be exploitative. He was (probably still is) a master at social engineering; that is, cold calling someone & pretending he is someone he’s not to get information he’s not supposed to have (usernames, passwords, server names, dialup numbers). When he starts evading the FBI – that’s even more hilarious. It’s not a very technical book…non-geeks won’t have trouble reading it. I’m still working my way through the coded bits at the beginning of each chapter. A puzzle *and* an entertaining book? Awesome.
432 pages
4.5/5
it was so delicious and reminded me of lunchtime when i was a kid
in elementary school i would walk to her house for lunch
sit at her tiny lovely kitchen table and she would cook meat and onions
and put a potato in the microwave, or maybe i’m making that last part up.
sometimes i would bring a friend and there would always be enough
get a jar of peaches from the root cellar for dessert
(the root cellar was literally underneath the kitchen floor).
i’ve been thinking about my grandmother a lot lately
the way she would wash her hair with raw egg and oil in the kitchen sink
so it would be shiny for church.
she would slip me a twenty for mowing the lawn with strict orders not to tell my mom
she would crochet these intricate collars for her shirts to make them pretty, she loved pretty things and i am not sure anyone saved any of those crocheted collars.
i miss her.
Outliers: The Story of Success is another one of those straightforward “why didn’t I think of that” books. The premise of the book is that success is something that can be cultivated, but that circumstances surrounding a person can influence “success” a great deal. For instance, if you want your son to be a successful hockey player, you should try to have them born in January, February or March. That gives them a slight advantage physically when they are playing junior league hockey – a kid born in January will be bigger and faster than a kid born in December, but they will play on the same team. That slight advantage will turn into a larger advantage as the kid grows up – obviously the kid has to have talent, but if he does have talent, being bigger than other kids his age is a definite advantage. Gladwell also talks about the 10,000 Hour Rule – basically, it takes ten thousand hours to master a skill. Professional musicians? They practice their asses off, so by the time they reach college they have amassed more practice time than their peers. Same thing with athletes and technology gurus.
This book is an easy read because it is filled with interesting stories of people’s lives. And also plane crashes.
3.5/5
309 pages
P.S. I have been a reading fiend lately. We’re on week 38 of the year, so I’m only 18 books behind. The race is on!
The Outlander tells a story of a widow being chased through the mountains of the northwest by her creepy ginger headed twin brother in laws. She is unapologetically mad – she sees visions and hears voices and is generally unkempt. She survives although she probably shouldn’t, mostly based on the generosity (or naivety) of strangers.
This book is a fast, exciting read. I couldn’t put it down once I got started (although it stayed on my to-read stack for longer than it should have).
400 pages
4/5