Friday 5: MVP

What’s the most important single ingredient in trail mix?

Here's my typical trail mix:

Image of M&Ms from Anitapepper on Morguefile.com

What’s the most important single topping in a taco?

Shredded cheese!


What’s the coolest instrument in an orchestra?

I'm going to go with the harp. A deep and abiding love for The Marx Brothers, and Harpo in particular, has left me enamored with this particular instrument.

What’s your favorite animal at the zoo?

I love giraffes and how cute-awkward they are.

I also love okapis, which aren't quite so common in zoos, but I'm going to count them anyway because they're relatives of the giraffe and they also have a tough time, so they can use some extra love. (Donate to the Okapi Conservation Project if you feel like helping them out!)


Which are the best pieces in a sampler box of chocolates?

The ones that don't mix unholy abominations into chocolate, like nuts or peanut butter. Anything else is great, but nuts? Peanut butter? Why would you do that to perfectly good chocolate? Why??

What I Watched: Wonder Woman

I never got around to binge-reading all things Wonder Woman like I set out to do I don't know how long ago. First I was lazy, and then I had a sinking feeling in my gut when I realized Zack Snyder was set to write the script, and then when willow-y and superlatively gorgeous Gal Gadot was cast. Wonder Woman does not need or deserve the Suckerpunch treatment.

(Me: Ugh, can you imagine if Zack Snyder had directed Wonder Woman?
JV: "Suckerpunch 2: The Wonder Years.")

I was ready to be disappointed, so I didn't invest any of my time going full-on fan mode. I mean, I still want to get my hands on the New 52 run of Wonder Woman because I hear it's really good, but that's a "whenever" sort of goal. Still, June 2 rolled around and I hadn't seen a movie in theaters since the Ghostbusters reboot, so why not?

But script doctors had happened and the good sis Patty Jenkins stepped in and all was right and good with the world.

I am not really interested in superhero ensemble movies, so I'm not going to be seeing the Justice League movie anytime soon; Wonder Woman's brief appearance in Batman v Superman was not enough to get me to watch at all, let alone in theaters. And when (and it's almost definitely a "when," not "if," at this point) Wonder Woman 2 happens, if it's an excuse for a Justice League movie I probably won't see it either. But in this one glorious moment, Wonder Woman gets her own damn movie and it's great, and Gal Gadot was great. I might have cried a whole bunch of times for assorted reasons. I might go see it again.

Newly Listed: Pink Quartz Speed of Light Bracelet

The third entry in my podcast bracelet series!

Pink Quartz and Rhodonite Speed of Light Bracelet by Kokoba

These are some more chips reclaimed pieces from Kokoba alpha releases: rhodonite, rose quartz, and cherry quartz.

I love the blend of pinks in this one. It's like a little bit of strawberry and cream to wear on your wrist!

The chips spell out the digits of the speed of light (in meters per second). The round rhodonite beads are the spacers between each digit. Most of the ones I made during the podcast binge-crafting session ended up featuring the speed of light. I tend to default to pi, so I have to consciously try to branch out into other fields/numbers.

Friday 5: Malfunction Junction

When have you had a wardrobe malfunction?

I lost a skirt to a motorbike gear while I was in Indonesia. Nothing too mortifying, but we needed to stop and get a new one for me. Going to Indonesia with a regular peasant skirt from the US and leaving with a batik print one from Indonesia isn't a bad deal, though!

Before...

...and after.

When did you last have a problem with your alarm clock?

Yesterday, actually! Either I slept through it, or the alarm doesn't automatically override the headphones if they're plugged in. It's set for 7:30 and I didn't wake up until almost 10.


What was your most recent computer problem, and what was the fix?

Well, one of the hinges on my laptop is breaking, which seems to be a common denominator in a lot of HP laptops. I'm not sure what the fix is, since at this point it's no longer under warranty and I can't really afford the time it would take to send it off for repairs.

As for software, once in a while I need to restart Word or OpenOffice because they slow down, but that's about it.


What’s something about cars you know specifically because you had to have one repaired?

Nothing, really.


Have you had any brain malfunctions this week?

For once in my life, no! I was pretty on the ball.

What I Read: Classics Club Update

I was in a reading slump for a long while, but No-No Boy might have kicked me out of it. Regardless, I figured that now's the time to update my Classics Club list. The last time I updated it was back in February.

Changes Made

1. I decided to take off The Berlin Stories in favor of A Tale for the Time Being. Maybe I'll get around to reading The Berlin Stories one day, or maybe not, but I think A Tale for the Time Being deserves to be on this list.

2. I also apparently had taken out Farewell to Manzanar in favor of We Need New Names. I don't regret this alteration; I just forgot I made it. But in keeping with the spirit of Farewell to Manzanar's original inclusion, I'm replacing An American Tragedy with No-No Boy.

Books Left to Go

1. The Man Who Loved Children, Christina Stead (I'm slowly reading an ebook version right now, and I'm not impressed, but Adam over at Memento Mori really loved this book and I trust his taste, so . . . I'm conflicted!) (I was "slowly reading an ebook version" back in February; it's almost June and nothing has changed.)

4. Play it As it Lays, Joan Didion. I found a copy at The English Book Shop in town! So I bought it, and now it's mine to read whenever I want to.


The Whole List
(with links to reviews when possible!)


1. The Adventures of Augie March, Saul Bellow
2. All the King's Men, Robert Penn Warren
3. American Pastoral, Philip Roth
4. No-No Boy, John Okada
5. Animal Farm, George Orwell
6. Appointment in Samarra, John O'Hara
7. Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, Judy Blume
8. The Assistant, Bernard Malamud
9. At Swim-Two-Birds, Flann O'Brien
10. Atonement, Ian McEwan
11. Beloved, Toni Morrison
12. A Tale for the Time Being, Ruth Ozeki
13. The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler
14. The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood
15. Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy
16. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
17. The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Thornton Wilder
18. The Radiance of the King, Camara Laye
19. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
20. The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger

20 / 20


21. A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess
22. The Confessions of Nat Turner, William Styron
23. The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen
24. The Crying of Lot 49, Thomas Pynchon
25. Cry, the Beloved Country, Alan Patton
26. The Day of the Locust, Nathanael West
27. Death Comes for the Archbishop, Willa Cather
28. A Death in the Family, James Agee
29. The House in Paris, Elizabeth Bowen
30. A House for Mr Biswas V. S. Naipaul
31. The Mandarins, Simone de Beauvoir
32. The House of the Spirits, Isabell Allende
33. The French Lieutenant's Woman, John Fowles
34. Martha Quest, Doris Lessing
35.Giovanni's Room, James Baldwin
36. The Gravedigger's Daughter, Joyce Carol Oates
37. The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
38. Please Look After Mother, Shin Kyung-sook
39. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
40. The Jungle, Upton Sinclair

20 / 20

41. The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers
42. Native Speaker, Lee Chang-rae
43. The Namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri
44. Housekeeping, Marilynne Robinson
45. The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver
46. I, Claudius, Robert Graves
47. Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace
48. Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison
49. Light in August, William Faulkner
50. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, C.S. Lewis
51. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
52. Lord of the Flies, William Golding
53. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
54. Kokoro, Soseki Natsumi
55. Lucky Jim, Kingsley Amis
56. The Man Who Loved Children, Christina Stead
57. Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie
58. Money, Martin Amis
59. The Moviegoer, Walker Percy
60. Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf

19 / 20

61. Naked Lunch, William Burroughs
62. Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco
63. Native Son, Richard Wright
64. Neuromancer, William Gibson
65. Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro
66. 1984, George Orwell
67. On the Road, Jack Kerouac
68. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kesey
69. The Painted Bird, Jerzy Kosinski
70. The Last Word, Hanif Kureishi
71. A Passage to India, E.M. Forster
72. Play It As It Lays, Joan Didion
73. We Need New Names, NoViolet Buwayo
74. Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami
75. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark
76. Rabbit, Run, John Updike
77. Ragtime, E.L. Doctorow
78. The Power and the Glory, Graham Greene
79. Red Harvest, Dashiell Hammett
80. Revolutionary Road, Richard Yates

19 / 20

81. The Sheltering Sky, Paul Bowles
82. Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut
83. Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson
84. Possession, AS Byatt
85. The Good Earth, Pearl S. Buck
86. Your Republic is Calling You, Kim Young-ha
87. The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, John le Carre
88. The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
89. Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston
90. Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe
91. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
92. Sons and Lovers, D. H. Lawrence
93. Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller
94. Ubik, Philip K. Dick
95. Under the Net, Iris Murdoch
96. Villa Incognito, Tom Robbins
97. Watchmen, Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons
98. White Noise, Don DeLillo
99. White Teeth, Zadie Smith
100. Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys

20 / 20

98 / 100

Newly Listed: Peridot and Jasper Avogadro Bracelet

This is another one of my podcasting bracelets. I was working on this while JV and I listened to an episode of The Adventure Zone's "The Suffering Games" arc. Who ever thought that a D&D podcast would hit you right in the feels?

Peridot and Jasper Avogadro Bracelet by Kokoba

This bracelet features Avogadro's number in peridot chips, with jasper (pretty sure it's poppy jasper, but I'm not 100% on that, to be honest). It's a little longer than I like to make, but it's good to have a variety of lengths. Everyone's wrists and tastes are different.

Whatever kind of jasper this is, it has a lot of rich texture and details.

I like using toggles for bracelets (when I'm not just making memory wire bracelets). They're so much easier to manipulate when you're trying to get something on or off with only one hand. This one is base metal, but a sterling version can be switched if needed/wanted.

Friday 5: Guestimation

How well do you adjust to sleeping in an unfamiliar place?

Very well. Sleeping in strange places never disturbs my sleep.

When were you recently someone’s guest, and when were you recently someone’s host?

I traveled around the northeast US last fall while I was home for a wedding, and my parents and a few high school and college friends were excellent hosts. The last time I was a proper host was maybe two years ago? A friend of mine came to Stockholm for a few days during an epic around-the-world tour.

What’s the ickiest place where you’ve ever showered or bathed?

I don't know about showering or bathing, but I've had to use some really questionable toilets over the course of my travels. I think the worst would have to be the squat toilets you occasionally find throughout Korea (and elsewhere, I can only assume).

What’s something you don’t need but insist on taking when you travel?

I always, always, always take too many books. The age of the ebook reader has helped a lot with this bad habit--now I can carry an entire library in my pocket!--but still, by all accounts I don't need to load up my Kindle app with all of those books. I'm just very optimistic about how I'll use all of that dead time while I'm in the air (or on the road).

Who’s got a comfy couch?

The couch in my parents' basement (if it's still there) is one of the most comfortable I've ever encountered. The friends in Albany that I visited during the aforementioned trip also have a fantastic, sleepable couch.