Plinky asked, “Do you cel­e­brate Earth Day?”

Earth Day

Not real­ly. I do my best to be envi­ron­men­tal­ly respon­si­ble every day, instead of sav­ing it for one day of the year. I recy­cle, use mass tran­sit, buy local­ly pro­duced food as much as pos­si­ble, and take oth­er steps so that I real­ly have a very small car­bon foot­print these days.

Plinky asked, “What’s the most inter­est­ing biog­ra­phy or mem­oir you’ve read?”

Dreams are nec­es­sary to life~Anais Nin

Anais Nin’s books come to mind right away, hon­est­ly. They’re so intense and sen­su­al that they’ve stuck in my mind, although I only read them once and my copies dis­ap­peared 20 years ago.

Cam­ryn Man­heim’s auto­bi­og­ra­phy was quite good, too. I don’t read many of that genre (or haven’t since child­hood), so I don’t have that many books to choose from here.

Plinky asked, “Break­fast for din­ner: Are you a fan?”

IHOP Bis­cuits and Gravy

Absolute­ly! Break­fast is my favorite meal of the day, but I don’t usu­al­ly take time for the great big meal that I remem­ber fond­ly from Sun­day morn­ings at my par­ents’ house. But­ter­milk bis­cuits, sawmill gravy, eggs, bacon, sausage, and grits are a “real break­fast” and that’s just too heavy for the first meal of the day most of the time. They’re great for sup­per, though, if there are enough peo­ple around to share!

Plinky asked, “What’s your favorite place to grab a cup of cof­fee?”

Star­bucks Cof­fee

I’m pret­ty hap­py hav­ing cof­fee at home, but if I’m out and about, I’ll swing by Star­bucks with the rest of the mob. It’s nice and pre­dictable, and I’m admit­ted­ly not a cof­fee snob. I just want my rasp­ber­ry-vanil­la mocha with the whipped cream on top, and that counts as dessert treat as much as any­thing else.

Plinky asked, “What was the last thing you got real­ly excit­ed about?”

Home­made Ukule­les

My ukulele! I wish I had a pho­to of her to post, but I don’t. She’s a trav­el tenor, which means that she’s a bit big­ger than the “stan­dard” (sopra­no) ukulele most peo­ple are used to see­ing, but also thin­ner than a nor­mal tenor. She has a love­ly voice, a lit­tle deep­er than a sopra­no uke. She isn’t a toy like the one on which I orig­i­nal­ly learned to play, either. And she’s mine all mine!

1) Fun book chat with Jeanne
2) Good work­out at the Y today
3) Love­ly din­ner with fam­i­ly

Plinky asked, “What famous mon­u­ment do you hope to see one day?”

mont st michel.JPG

I’d like to go back to Mont St. Michel some day and spend more time there. I vis­it­ed the place briefly dur­ing a trip while I was in high school, and a small part of one day sim­ply was­n’t near­ly enough time to spend in the clois­ters, much less the rest of the place. There’s so much his­to­ry there!

I would have been hap­py to wan­der up the wind­ing road lined with shops at a leisure­ly pace had we not been on such a strict sched­ule, but as it was I was rac­ing to make it to the top.

Of course, all vis­i­tors are on some­thing of a sched­ule, because the tide cov­ers the road to the island every day, and I’m not cer­tain vis­i­tors are even allowed to stay past a cer­tain time. It might be nec­es­sary to stay near­by and spend sev­er­al days explor­ing, con­cen­trat­ing on a dif­fer­ent bit of the island each time — the clois­ters one day, dif­fer­ent stages of the cathe­dral con­struc­tion on dif­fer­ent days, the shops anoth­er — to tru­ly do the place jus­tice.

Plinky asked, “Do you have a favorite work of art?”

artist

No, I don’t have a favorite work of art. My favorite artist is a young lady named Katie Armis­tead, and I could­n’t pos­si­bly choose just one of her works as a favorite.

Oth­er than her work, I have sev­er­al favorite artists, from the well-known ones like Mon­et to less­er-known peo­ple such as Carl Lund­gren and Lucy Synk. I’ve gone into more detail about them at http://technomom.com/sff/art.shtml .

I also enjoy Susan Sed­don Boulet and Susan Van Cam­p’s work, and Ansel Adam’s pho­tog­ra­phy among oth­ers. Some of the Raphaelites also appeal to me.

Plinky said, “Pick a new pet to take home for free.”

Great Pyre­nees

There’s no such thing as a free pet, as any respon­si­ble pet own­er knows! Beyond the costs of hous­ing and feed­ing the ani­mal, you have to pro­vide for health care such as pre­ven­tive med­ica­tion for heart­worms and oth­er par­a­sites (for dogs and cats, at least), reg­u­lar vac­ci­na­tions, and check-ups. That’s with a healthy, young ani­mal! If the ani­mal gets ill or injured, of course, there are more expens­es.

How­ev­er, if I had an appro­pri­ate home and could afford all the con­comi­tant expens­es, I’d love to have a big dog. I’ve nev­er stopped miss­ing Kar­li, the Great Pyre­nees cross who was stolen from our fam­i­ly. She had a love­ly tem­pera­ment, and I adore large dogs in gen­er­al.

Plinky asked, “About how many books do you read each year?”

Books behind the bed

Last year is the first time I ever tried to track them, and I think it was 150+ accord­ing to GoodReads. I don’t know how to see the num­ber again, right off. That was prob­a­bly about aver­age.

I’ll prob­a­bly read less this year because I’ve been stitch­ing more, as well as spend­ing time on the ukulele. I’m also con­sid­er­ing try­ing to get my piano skills back, which will take up more leisure time. So I’ve set a goal to read just 60 books this year (GoodReads is ask­ing peo­ple to set goals for that now) and I’m 13% ahead at the moment. That’s a fair­ly low goal, but I’d rather go over than not meet my goal.

My “to be read” pile is elec­tron­ic these days, but it con­tains thou­sands of books and it just keeps grow­ing, so I expect that I’ll nev­er run out of books to read.