The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them ;-)

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman - I REALLY didn't like these books.
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare - ok, not ALL of it but the vast majority of the plays and more than a few sonnets too.
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (this is part of the Chronicles of Narnia, how literate is the person who made this list?)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare (which is also part of No. 14 – the Complete Works of Shakespeare)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

We're eating sugar snap peas, spinich, pak choi, and lettuce all out of the garden for several weeks now. The first few yellow snap beans were harvested today. Flowers on all the melons, cukes, squash & tomatos. There are even a couple of little baby yellow zukes growing. Brassica's survived their transplant, only lost one.

We've lost several momma bunnies over the last few weeks, don't really know why. No sign of disease, some were old though. We're down to just two from like seven a year or so ago. One kindle of babies is growing up now, another one due, but our entire rabbit meat program is in trouble at the moment. We have to get some new stock in I guess.

I'm not really here... really really haven't had time to read or write.
Can barely see straight.

Saw our garden for the first time in weeks yesterday evening. Transplanted out the rest of the brassica seedlings and helped J remove the walls'o'water from melons and squash that were growing out the tops of them. They have really been a goodness though, protecting the plants from the ongoing unseasonable wind. We had so many of them up it looked like that was what we were growing in the garden. It really finally quit blowing about 3-5 days ago when it should have quit the first week in May. Climate is definitely shifting. Monsoons are predicted to start early this year. That would be a blessing anyway.

I have a new wiki at work. Gonna port all our documentation and procedures to it. It is a huge job. We also got approved grant funding for the Onbase EDMS project so those will be my summer projects at the courthouse.

Reading the Twilight books series, up to book 3. Zarah devoured them. Definitely popcorn but I am enjoying. Perhaps I'll try her adult oriented book that is out or due out soon.

The kittens have gotten big and independent. Theodore Good Cat will be staying with us. Goliath went home with Patrick and Mel. Runty Screamer just got a home with Kevin and Donna, he'll go with them in a couple of weeks when they get back from vacation. Rosalee is going to Kathy and Bill I think. That just leaves Little Brother and he is a bad tempered scrappy little cat and will end up outside with the barn cats most likely. They have been fun, but we are to the part where they are tearing stuff up, not using the litter box regular like they should and generally are causing a lot of trouble. I will be glad to see them head to their various homes.

The AOBA show went fairly well. I could write a LOT more about that but this is a quick dash. Learned a lot. Made a couple of boo-boos that I found to be mortifying but nobody else seemed too upset about, learned a lot, got a lot of complements too. Tons of additional development to do on the software but what I had built performed well. Also need to get back to the online software. I can seem my summer disappearing before my eyes. Everything seems too big, too much, how will it all get done?

We're headed to California for a week on July 1st for a long overdue visit to Garee the Wizard and other friends there. We have a free day pass to Disneyland while we are there courtesy of a dear friend who runs their pyrotechnics. A real vacation which I am now kicking myself for scheduling but we really need the down time. Maybe we will come back refreshed and all that.

I'm broke and poor as a church-mouse; the month to month is ok but big periodic bills going unpaid until the show pays me, the tax refund comes, and the insurance settlement arrives. Timing is all bad. Flat tire on the car has to be replaced immediately. Tires on the trailer have to be replaced before we head for CA. Vet bill for Pearly's C-Section, propane bill, 1/2 breeding fee for Opal, there's more too. Pretty sure I can cover it all and more once the money rolls over but I hate having things pending and waiting like this. Makes me anxious.

We've sent 3 more bids out for shows. None pay as good as AOBA, but a thousand dollars at a time for me isn't bad either.

Headed to the art gallery for our first art show opening without Taurin. That will be bittersweet. At least Fran is doing what she can to keep the place going.

I'm out of time... gotta go.

Tuesday - Worked.

Rescheduled our shearing weekend to May 31 / June 1 to leave me another weekend to work on the show. That will be the latest we have ever sheared. We are doing it ourselves this year so it is quite an adventure.


Wednesday - stayed late attempting to move database and other functionality from one server to another. Failed attempt due to issues with the portion of the SQL dbase that does replication. Have to reinstall SQL on the server from scratch. Server move rescheduled for May 12th. No big deal, just a very long day I didn't really need.

Ordered a new printer that will talk to my Vista computer and do everything except the dishes. HP J series, less than $200. I sure hope it works.


Thursday - I'm tired. Don't remember much other than going to work.

Evening - Got the final download of AOBA show data from the online reg pulled down and into interim table for further normalizing / dbase processing. Email message out to everyone reminding them we need paperwork if they haven't sent it yet.


Friday
Morning on my way to work - found premature baby alpaca born, 4 weeks early. She looked great but just wasn't ready to be here yet. Baby found dead in the alpaca pen with mom Jelli standing over her, no way to know when she had been born. Looks like she never moved so unlikely we could have done anything for her even if we had been there when it happened. Poor mama. She was so sad and looked for the baby a long time after we took her away. Absolutely no idea why this happened but apparently there has been a rash of these premature births amongst ranches we know. Weather? A virus? Solar radiation? Who knows. What I do know is that is two of our four babies for the year lost. This is a tough business. I have a rebreed and it is local but now I have to wait another year for the baby.

Mattie was out so I ran the scanning desk. I have no idea what I might have needed to do at my own desk. It is all a blur. Worked a short day Friday to take off comp hours accumulated.

Fell asleep on the couch in front of a Stargate episode after dinner. Apparently slept there oblivious to all else for two hours before Jonathan coaxed me to move to bed. I was so incredibly tired.


Saturday - slept in late.

Cleaned up the Paca pen.

Worked on the alpaca show database, good progress against the functionality list. Built the 'Program' output for the actual halter show.

Zarah off to visit with Kevin for part of the weekend.

Celebrated my eighth anniversary with Jonathan, out to The Chalet for dinner, delicious and lovely and expensive - thanks to Dad & Carol for cash anniversary gift that bought this meal out. Checked out a dance club but didn't stay, maybe we'll go back some other evening. Short shopping trip to the Evil Wal-Mart for things we can't get elsewhere then home.

Was unable to find red nylon string to use to crochet hummingbird feeder hangers. Still looking.
Did get nice metal pans for the goats to eat grain out of.


Sunday - stayed in bed late this morning with Jonathan. That was LOVELY.

Planted cilantro, parsley, thyme and tarragon seedlings J & Z purchased the other day. Also additional seed of cilantro and parsley, hoping for a big crop. Cilantro sells like crazy at the farmer's market.

Designed Quantum Show Services business card and promotional post card for the AOBA show. Sent off to Dave for approval.

A little more Alpaca database done this morning, pulling data for the Show Program print out. More to do when done typing this post.

Still have to pack for an all-week business trip next week too. And shower.

Zarah bought 6 snap dragons about a week ago. They are pretty much her favorite flower. She makes them open and close their jaws and talks about how fairies live inside them. It had been too windy to plant them, but the weather has improved dramatically in the last three days.

I knew she wanted to plant her snap-dragons. I also knew it wasn't as many flowers as she really wanted, and they aren't blooming yet. So I bought some pansies and carnations on the way home from work today at the feed store. Had to have some goat grain, and there were the pretty flowers and I thought of Zarah. The yellow and lavender pansies look just like flowers she draws with her pencils. She asked me all about carnations just a few days ago when she saw one in a vase.

She has been making so much effort and good progress at becoming a responsible young lady.
She is lonely and really wants to spend more time with me. I'm way too busy with other stuff.

So I bought the flowers for her and this evening when I got home we planted them. Jonathan just so happens to have finished fixing up the bed where the mullein, rosemary and sage are planted in the corner of the garden, so now we have some flowers there too. They look very pretty. There is still space to add some more.

Zarah was overjoyed. She thanked me so many times. She did a lovely job with the planting task and we did it together in the warm spring sunset. Jonathan came out and watered the flowers for us and admired.

I got a tour of his new compost piles too. Very sexy. The whole garden area looks great, he has been working on the soil and tidying up. The seedlings in the greenhouse will be ready to come out soon.

It was a really lovely family evening.

	Alice and a Kitten Alice had five kittens born April 25, 2008
	Momma Alice, Auntie Serendipity, and five kitties You can see they are going to be striped cats when they get bigger.
	Auntie Serendipity loves the kittens

Our house cat Alice had five beautiful little baby kittens yesterday. I got hourly reports via telephone while I was at work. She tried to have the first kitten sitting in Zarah's lap! Jonathan got her a nice box for her and she seems happy with that. Took her quite a few hours to have all the kittens with big spaces in between.

Three are grey, one has some tan markings on her face and will probably turn out tortoise-shell like her mother. The other two are sort of orange tan and I think they are going to develop stripes. So as I suspected, Alice's daddy almost certainly WAS one of the orange striped tom-boys.

The orange striped cat line continues!

We are pretty sure one tan/orange kitten is male and one female. I know the big grey one is a boy and the tortoise-shell one is a girl. One last grey one I haven't looked at yet.

The kitten box is in the back of the trailer in the closet area. It is out of the traffic zone and nice and warm. They are doing very well.

Alice is an attentive momma but is happy to let us pet her and the kittens. One I had out this morning got kind of fussy and Alice came running to see if things were ok. She tried to take the kitten back to the box carrying it by its hind leg so I carried it back for her which was much better for everyone.

The kittens are healthy and darling with their little squished ears and their eyes closed. They hiss at you sometimes when you pick them up... very fierce and scary let me tell you. One of them is very vocal any time Alice gets up to move around or leaves the box for a few minutes. I think it is one of the orange ones. Even though they are just tiny helpless infants they already have some personality of their own.

The house-cat tribe is dealing pretty well with the event and additions. As of this afternoon, the white kitten Serendipity (appx 9 months old) is officially an Auntie and is in the box with Alice licking the kittens as I type this. Brutus likes to sit by the box and peer over the top and look at Alice and the kittens, just keeps them company very peaceably. I think he is waiting to be able to play with them, he loves to run and chase.
Jack is cranky, territorial, and hissing at everybody else. He does this for a little while any time a new cat comes into the house, and then he gets over it. I think the hours he spent locked up in a big dog crate with Brutus and Serendipity while the kittens were being born put him in a really bad mood and he hasn't gotten over it. He is also jealous at the extra attention Alice is getting I'm sure.

In a few weeks we will be overrun with kittens bouncing about and it will be just marvelous. I think we have good homes for two of them. The others can join the barn brigade when they are weaned. We like to have lots of cats about. Keeps the rodents down.

Pictures to come.

We watched a movie last night that we enjoyed so totally thoroughly that I must recommend it to all of my friends.

Across the Universe

We sang along with the Beatles music and ran the gamut of emotional feeling through the stories and situations from the 1960's. Bono and Eddie Izzard make fabulous cameo appearances.

We LOVED it. I think we are going to purchase and own this one so we can watch it again.

(Brumbys... this is a MUST see for you!)

I stayed home from work today. Slept late, moving slowly, don't feel great but got some stuff done anyway.

The wind was actually just a breeze today and it was warm and lovely. Thank goodness!

Carrots and melons planted in the garden this morning. Melon hills are in walls'o'water.
Jonathan finished turning over the newest garden bed with fresh set of manure in it.
He also planted the beans and some greens a few days ago.
Sproutlings in the greenhouse are doing great. Only the tomatoes, peppers and eggplant have not yet represented and they always take a little longer. There is a tremendous crop of volunteer dill in the greenhouse this year. We'll see how much I can just let grow. Oregano & majoram seedlings are apparent today for the first time too.
Got the paca poo scooped - we usually do it on the weekend but the wind drove us inside so it was good to get that done.

Also got a letter written to the ABA Show event manager about my level of volunteerism for the coming year. Basically I'm NOT volunteering. I require trade or payment to continue to render my professional level skills on behalf of the show. They may not accept any of my proposals (pay for the web site / sponsorship trade for the male sale catalog) but if not, that is ok. I can just not do those things at all and recover a ton of time towards other projects and efforts.

Now I am tackling another really tough project of writing a contract that is overdue to get done.