Books I Read In May (and probably April)

I suspect I actually read some of the books on bottom of this list in April (hence the title).

Mort's also on the 100 book list, taking me to 44 :)

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Total: 7 books.

Chasing Harry Winston (Lauren Weisberger)
An Utterly Impartial History of Britain: (or 2000 Years of Upper Class Idiots in Charge) (John O'Farrell)
Mort (Terry Pratchett)
An Egg on Three Sticks(Jackie Moyer Fischer)
The Girl With The Pearl Earring (Tracy Chevalier)
Son of a Witch (Gregory Maguire)
Two Caravans (Marina Lewycka)

Chasing Harry Winston (31/05) was mostly disappointing. I liked The Devil Wears Prada a lot and Everyone Worth Knowing wasn't bad but this was pretty bland. Dull.

I think I've been reading An Utterly Impartial History of Britain: (or 2000 Years of Upper Class Idiots in Charge) (29/05) for almost the entirety of May. It's quite amusing and contains all sort of fascinating bits of trivia. I'm not sure I could face reading it again in a hurry though, there's so much in it. Have made it available on BookMooch.

My Discworld of the month, Mort (29/05) is unsurprisingly clever and amusing. I did get a bit confused at the end though.

Borrowed from the library on a trip to find 'something' so I could renew my others to the same date, An Egg on Three Sticks was an excellent find. A compelling novel. Not much more to say really :) It's good.

Having mooched it ages ago (from mil:UK) I've finally read The Girl With The Pearl Earring this month. Took it away on the canal holiday when I went with Hobnob and his parents. I really enjoyed this book. It's historical fiction which is usually a pretty good marker in my eyes but this is unusually short :) It's a beautifully told story - maybe that'll prompt me to read the others I mooched by the same author sometime soon :).

Having been horribly excited to find it in Waterstones last month I've now finished Son of a Witch. Another great book by the author of Wicked. I wish I had his imagination and general cleverness. I shall keep it and see if Dad wants to read it.

I never really got the excitement that came with A Short History of Tractors in Ukraninian, for me it was an average read and vastly overhyped. Two Caravans, on the other hand is much deserving of the hype associated with Marina Lewycka's previous novel. This book has all the warmth and enjoyment I felt was missing from the previous novel. I'm hanging on to this one for now :)

Funky T-Shirts

Mental Floss are good for t-shirts but today Gmail also linked me to TorsoPants - I like their balloon animals tee :)

Sadly TorsoPants won't tell me their postage costs unless I actually try and buy the t-shirt and I really don't need any more clothes at the moment anyway.

The Weather

Today is grey and muggy. I keep thinking I might have a shower to feel better but I haven't done it yet. I'm not really sure what I have done actually... something sure :)

I've been sorting out stuff a bit, trying to make sure I'm packed to go to Liverpool tomorrow after union council. I have a dentists appointment at 10:10 on Friday morning :(

Film in Four Words (Juno)

Just good. Excellent soundtrack.

Women's Bus

Caught the Women's Bus home for the first time today. Was about the only good thing that happened after Hobnob went away :(

I couldn't seem to get tonight's breakdown to work at all. I've done two reels at stupidly slow speed and I'll have to ask Chris where the rollers go for the middle platter tomorrow. *sigh*

My driving lesson was OK though, I think I'm happy with doing the whole turn-in-the-road thing slowly so hopefully I'll pick up some speed over the next few lessons. We also did a "controlled stop" (or seven).

Film in Four Words (Lust, Caution)

Beautiful. Intelligent. Too long.

Too Many Food

I am full I think. Or maybe I ate too fast.

Mangos - what to do with them?

I'm trying to find savoury things to do with a mango and they were BOGOF in Sainsburys. We've been having a very nice mango curry recently, but for two people that's only half a mango and so the remaining one and half sit in the fridge. I've found two other nice-looking recipes on the Internet so far:

• Lime and Mango Grilled Chicken Sandwiches
• Caribbean Turkey Burgers

They're not really proper mango recipes as such but I might take that back if they turn out to be fantastic. I think I might also try mango sorbet.

Opticians and Shopping

Had an appointment at the opticians today at 11 so I went shopping beforehand for some holiday oddments.

Wet Socks and New Glasses

We let Kirkby (one of Hobnob's new cats) out the back for the first time today whilst I was cooking tea. I went out to see her as she adventured and now I have wet socks. She came back after a wander but wanted to go out again straight away - bit disappointed that we'd closed the door :)

Also I collected my new glasses today. Bit odd to begin with but I'm getting used to them.

(The picture is Kirkby being unadventurous inside).

Time Out

Not just a good chocolate bar :) Today Hobnob helped me to fix the times on my more recent blog posts. Sounds like something that shouldn't challenge a student of computer science, but still... Since the beginning of time I've been altering the times as I post to make sure I get the hours in GMT format - turns out it was hidden in the options all along. Wouldn't have mattered at all until Blogger introduced this new scheduling posts thing only then it started scheduling my posts to be displayed in 7 hours time because he time hadn't happened yet!

Anyway, new posts will be in GMT because I've fixed my timezone setting. Unfortunately because I modified the times of posts to reflect GMT before this they all seem to suggest I'm a bit nocturnal :)

Back in the World!

Back from our holiday in sunny Stoke :) Been on the canal with Hobnob and his parents and had rather excellent weather. We saw Lizi today on our way home too which was lovely. I had some coursework due in today so I hastily finished it off on the train and submitted it when we got back. I also managed to pay for my driving lessons ~£450 :( but then didn't have one because my instructor never showed up. Oh well, made the evening longer.

New PJs!

Bought some new PJs and socks today for our holiday tomorrow. Took a bit of effort to find some that were summer-y (not trousers) but also something I'd be happy wearing in the company of Hobnob's parents (or anyone else I didn't know pretty intimately!) It seems lots of people go for the vest and knickers thing - I do like them but I don't feel so happy wearing them with other people around to see!

Bit of a shoppingy moment these last few days :)

Working hard :)

Or maybe just playing with Kirkby the Cat :)

Books I Read In April

I so read more books than this.

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Total: 5 books.

Jesus Freaks (DC Talk)
The Art of Undressing (Stephanie Lehmann)
Nineteen Minutes (Jodi Picoult)
Equal Rites (Terry Pratchett)
Summertime (Rafaella Barker)

I bought Jesus Freaks from the Barnardos bookshop, Lancaster when Dave came up recently.

The Art of Undressing was a Bookmooch wishlisted book that became available from Canada recently.

Nineteen Minutes is finally out in paperback - picked it up as a Waterstones half-price offer of the week. Started it on Friday 4th after finishing Equal Rites and took it way with me when we took the Guides to London. Finished it on the Monday night (07/04) whilst tucked up in bed. Unsurprisingly I enjoyed this book - not sure I was quite as pleased with it as some of her previous novels but it was good. Put it on Bookmooch and it went straight away to Sophie Clarke (UK).

Number three of many - I got through my Discworld book early this month (04/04). I think Equal Rites may have been my favourite so far, maybe. I'm almost tempted to read more than one this month :)

Another library read, I've had Summertime on loan since the end of November last year. Having rediscovered it after a few abandoned attempts I did enjoy this. It's a light, very real, colourful read. Was slightly disappointed to discover at the end of the book (which I reached on the 3rd) that this was the second book about the characters but it stands more than well enough on it's own. Will look out for the other book to read when I get the chance.

Interesting...

Stumbled across this whilst taking a revision break this evening:

PTeq - USB Pregnancy Test
The process starts off like most pregnancy tests. You pee on a stick, specifically the absorbent test strip at one end. But everything's different after that first step. Remove the cap from the other end of the stick (cleverly provided to keep you from accidentally contaminating the wrong end) to reveal the USB connector. Pop it in your computer. The power from your USB port starts the electrospray ionization process, creating a spectrograph of the various masses for your analysis.

(from this item on ThinkGeek.com)