Busy day

At least, as busy as it could be after staying in our PJs until past noon.

But I got some knitting done. I've turned my very first heel! I also broke my first knitting needle. Right in the middle of a row. Thank god I managed not to drop any stitches. Luckily it was a set of five double-points, so I finished what I could on the four needles I had left. Michael's didn't have any in that size, so I'll have to wait until tomorrow to get more. I did also knit a wee little owl, though. He's blue, with beads for eyes, on a berry-pink clip. He's the fastest knitting project I've ever done. So I'll probably do another sometime soon, maybe in a different color.

Other than that, I went to the grocery store, and forgot to buy rosemary, so I went twice. And then I cooked a nice dinner.

Anyway. Booklove!

In the last couple of weeks, I finished Confederacy of Dunces. I liked it, but not as much as I thought I might. It reminded me of Kingsley Amis' Lucky Jim, which I also only sorta liked. I think if Lucky Jim was the post-WWII modernist view of academia, Dunces was the post-modern view of how the role of the academic was changing. And that's all the big, fancy college talk I'll throw out tonight.

I also read Anne Fadiman's Ex Libris. A short, light book about booklove. My favorite was the essay about compulsive proofreaders. As one of their ranks, I'm one of those people that can't stop myself from thinking "They should have used a hyphen," or "Their, not they're!" When Mom and I first met my brother's girlfriend (or friend who was a girl, or whatever she was. He was vague about it), we liked her because she told us how she went around a grocery store once with a red pen, correcting all the little signs and labels on all the shelves.

Anyway, now I'm only reading Richard Dawkins. Still working on Unweaving the Rainbow. It's been slow going, because I haven't had a ton of time to read. Plus, I like to go a little slower with non-fiction. Especially with science writing, to try to absorb as much of the information as I can. And Dawkins really packs it in, so there's a LOT to absorb.

I probably won't get much time for reading in the next few weeks, either. I've got just over two weeks left at work, and about the same amount of time for us to get packed up and out of the apartment! By this time next month, we should already be in New Orleans! So I'm going through my clothes and things, getting rid of as much as I can, and as with most moves, the books and DVDs will be the first things to get packed. I've been thinking about what to leave unpacked, to read in the meantime. I've been thinking it'll probably be Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. But we'll see. I can never tell what book I'll be in the mood for, until it's actually time to start it.