The Zereps

i’ll be honest…i’ve been reading dostoevsky’s the brothers karamazov at work, but i just haven’t brought myself to open it up here at home. thus my unimaginably slow progress. soooo, i was forced to seek out something else for home – yesterday i started reading sarah blake’s grange house and just now finished it.

i would normally quote something from the jacket, or from amazon, but i’m lazy today. the novel is summed up fairly well by simply stating that it is a gothic romance/ghost story written by an author with a doctorate in victorian literature. 🙂

i enjoyed it quite a bit (hence the less than 24 hour reading period) and i recommed it to others who enjoy victorian books, etc (this one being on the lighter side). it had lots of references to the bronte sisters, jane eyre and the mill on the floss (which i just picked up yesterday, btw, and am eagerly anticipating!). the author’s blend of styles was a bit confusing at first, making me think of it as an obivious ‘first work.’ but after a hundred pages or so, it blossomed into a mature novel, with a very enjoyable and well-told story.

anyhoo…i liked it! 😀 great read for a rainy day!

OK, so we had the sushi last week, but didn’t have time to write about it until now. As you may have gathered from the title, it is raining outside and it’s sunday, and thus the extra time right now for blogging. 😉

So, last Sunday I also spent most of the day at home; I love cooking, and I’d had a hard time finding nori (dried seaweed sheets) for making sushi and I finally found some at a health food store around here. As I don’t eat any type of dead fish and I find most sushi is rather overpriced, I wanted to make some of my own, ’cause it’s cheap and fun. So, exactly what do you put in ‘vegetarian suhsi’? Well, let’s see I usually put in cooked broccoli, carrots, water cheshnuts, baby bamboo shoots, bean sprouts, and this time I also used zucchini from our CSA share (organic vegetables we get every week straight from the farmer.) I set up one of our side tables with bamboo placemats, made some green tea, and made up some packaged miso soup to go along with our sushi. Here are some pics:

Nothing too exciting going on this weekend w/ the rain and all. It’ kinda nice to be able to stay home and relax sometimes though. Have a great weekend.

last night we celebrated jabba’s second birthday. 😀 i made him ‘fleas-navidad nibblers’ for breakfast and ‘let them eat cake’ cupcakes for dessert (recipes from the three dog bakery cookbook ). they were pretty tasty. we also spoiled him with a new bed and harness. you can check out all the action over at jabba’s blog.

notice jabba’s little bow tie and shirt front…very dapper.

more pictures over at jabba the pug!

yes sir…it took me a little longer to finish (due to an altered work schedule), but i have finished gabriel garcia marquez’s one hundred years of solitude.

here’s what the back jacket had to say: “one hundred years of solitude tells the story of the rise and fall, birth and death of the mythical town of Macondo through the history of the Buendia family. inventive, amusing, magnetic, sad, and alive with unforgettable men and women–brimming with truth, compassion, and a lyrical magic that strikes the soul–this novel is a msterpiece in the art of fiction.”

this was such a wonderful and beautiful book…i completely loved it. it’s definately one that i’ll keep around and reread, not sell for quick cash on half.com. i had to keep referencing the family tree page to keep track of the characters, since all the men’s names are interrelated, but it all made sense eventually. if you have time, i definately recommend that you read this one, if you haven’t already!

(don’t buy the ‘oprah’s book club’ version…screw you oprah! this was a masterpiece long before you picked it for your precious book club!)

i haven’t decided on what to read next. there are several more books of marquez’s that i would LOVE to read, including memories of my melancholy whores, the autumn of the patriarch,  and especially love in the time of cholera. we’ll see! that would require a trip to the bookstore, though. maybe i’ll dig up something i have laying around…

“thezereps.com” and all of its affiliates will not be held responsible for lost work time, low-productivity levels, or inter-office fueds resulting from the viewing of following link:

cute overload.

i also personally apologize for the cheesy-ness of the above link. the bunnies and puggies made me do it. i am very weak-spirited.

Continuing my on-going series of touristy trips I’ve taken while Candice is at work (and is too cool to come with me on…)

Yesterday I took a trip down to the New York Aquarium–the only only (and therfore biggest, coolest, and greatest) aquarium in New York City. Talk about a long subway ride–it took me almost one-and-a-half hours to get from Astoria to Coney Island in Brooklyn, where the Aquarium is located. Luckily for me though, Coney Island is at the south end of the N Line track, where Ditmars Blvd. in Astoria is the last stop on the northern side. Although it was far away, I didn’t have to transfer to another train to get there, so that was nice.
Once again, in my continuing forgetful tradition, I forgot to bring any sort of camera along with me on my excursion. (d’oh!) I really, really need to get a cell phone with a camera built in to it.

Basically, for those of you in Sacramento, it was like a scaled-down, lamer, but still pretty fun and not as corporate, version of Marine World. There were ‘California Sea Lion’ shows, Penguins, Sea Otter and other outside exhibitions and shows, but the more interesting stuff to me was the actual aquarium fish in tanks.

The aquarium had a very wide variety of fish for viewing pleasure. One of their new exhibits is called ‘Alien Stingers‘, which highlighted sea animals such as anonomes, jellyfish, corels, and others such as eels, that protect themselves and catch prey using some sort of ‘stinger’ mechanism. I had to push and shove my way through droves of little kids running around, but that was pretty much expected. I only spent $20 the whole day for admission, transportation, and a snack, so I consider a Sunday-on-the-cheap well spent.

I’ve got a list of a couple other tourist spots I’d like to hit before moving… not sure which one will be next, maybe City Hall or the New York Library. Anybody got some suggestions?

here it is! my latest read, which i *just* now finished.

gregory maguire’s confessions of an ugly stepsister.

this, i’m merely speculating, is the book which maguire wrote after wicked: the life and times of the wicked witch of the west (which i loved *loved*, btw…). in ‘confessions’, like ‘wicked’, maguire takes a different view of your basic fairy tale. ‘confessions’ is told from the perspective of one of the ugly sisters and paints a more realistic picture of events.

the thing i like most about maguire’s books (the ones i’ve read, at least) is the raw edginess he gives the stories. he add the dirtiness of real life to these little ‘la de da da’ fairy tales and it’s a real kick in the pants. they’re *hardcore* fairy tales, man…i love ’em! 😀

in other book-y news, i’m eagerly anticipating the paperback-arrivals of both eldest by Christopher Paolini, and knife of dreams by robert jordan (it’s book 11 of the wheel of time series, and having read the previous 10 plus the prequel…i’m anxious to say the least).

however, the next book that i will be reading is gabriel garcia marquez’s one hundred years of solitude.

toodles!

i’m sure you’ve noticed the alarming uneventfulness of our blog lately…so have we…and since it’s summer there’s just not much to do (unless we put out large amounts of cash to escape the city, which we’re not likely to do). so i thought it might be nice to start blogging about the books i’ve read or am reading. now, i don’t read nearly as much as i’d like to, nor do i read all the books i would like, either, but i hardley ever read a bad one.

so….without further ado….the book i have just finished is Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried.

Here’s a small phrase from the book, “They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing–these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight. They carried shameful memories. They carried the common secret of cowardice…. Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to.”

i was surprised by how extraodinarily excellent this book is. i only picked it up from the book corner at work because i had finished another book, but after 3 pages i couldn’t put it down. i recommend it *very* highly. i actually had to take it home to read because it was way too heavy to read at work. so go out and buy it! i’m going to make eric read it, i think he would really like it. i generally don’t recommend books so highly, but this one deserves it…so go out and buy it!! (or get it from the library)

i’ve also finished a couple good reads in the last week or so that are worth mentioning.

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby was a great book. i don’t know why i haven’t read it sooner, since it’s *the* book that defined a whole generation. i will definately read it again sometime in the future, too.

George Eliot’s Middlemarch was also an excellent book. it’s a supurb look at 19th century english provincial life. i throuroughly enjoyed it and look forward to reading more books by her.