All made out of ticky tacky.

I don’t often recount hour-by-hour activities to anyone. It’s somewhat vapid and of interest only to me. But let me give a slight breakdown of yesterday, if only to gloat that I had one of the greatest single days of my life. Simple and perfect.

9:30 a.m. Woke up after a considerable sleep. I didn’t go out Saturday night, just watched a few episodes of The Office and called it an evening.

10:30 a.m. Made breakfast for myself and Matt Howard. Ate and departed for Chautauqua Marina.

11:00 a.m. Matt & I took two rented kayaks into Chautauqua Lake. Three hours for $20 is a lovely deal. We stayed near enough to the shore to remain out of heavy wake and made good time cutting around the west end of the lake. When we spied the Institution bell tower on the horizon, we opted to challenge ourselves to make it all the way to the grounds. Being who we are, we assumed the quickest, easiest way to get there would be to simply cut across the lake.

Bad plan. I felt like I was riding a tricycle on a highway of 18-wheelers. Power boats, racing boats and jet skis were coming from all directions, and even if the wakes from the major horsepower had cut down, the wind was still whipping. But the sun was gorgeous, and it wasn’t too hot. We just happened to be caught in a water treadmill.

Where the hell is my iPod?

Briefly:

• I’m disgustingly busy. Hence not posting and keeping this one to simple bullets.
• I started reading Green Hills of Africa. Hoping Hemingway can do for big game hunting what he did for big fish fishing.
• I went swimming last night in the clouds and dusk. Makes me curse my six days per week in the office when the sun beats all day long. Summer? What?
• We got a new propane tank. I grilled successfully. This weekend: shellfish.
• A woman called today to inquire about her daughter’s job application. Sorry, that shit doesn’t fly.
• I still haven’t seen The Dark Knight
• I watched The Darjeeling Limited last night. Entertaining, yes, but Mr. Anderson, I don’t think you’ll ever do better than Tenenbaums. And that’s OK.
• I finished every season of Weeds. Now I have the munchies.

This fulfills my duty to post. Back to writing press releases. This most recent one, by the way, is for A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which the director has set in pre-industrial Germany. If I can make that sounds whimsical, by George, I can do anything.

The Poisonwood Bible

Finally finished the book. In terms of metaphors, research, word choice and overall story, Barbara Kingsolver is one of the greatest contemporary authors I’ve read. Now, I realize I fall in love with nearly everything I read, but this is quality I will only ever aspire to — never reach. To spend 550 pages on the Belgian Congo/Zaire/The Republic of Congo and its many horrific political takeovers — through the eyes of a strict Baptist family, no less — and actually get it factually correct? This was a dream.

And since I’m finally making a conscious effort to do a book journal, I’ll be copying down the following (some of my favorite excerpts).

“If God had amused himself inventing the lilies of the field, he surely knocked His own socks off with the African parasites.” – Adah, “The Genesis” p. 76

“And what red-blooded American boy will look twice at a Geography whiz with scabs on her knees, when he could have a Sweater Girl? I suppose I’ll just have to wait and see. God must know his arithmetic. He’d plan it out well enough to plunk down a husband for every wife that He aims for to have one. If the Lord hasn’t got a boyfriend lined up for me to marry, that’s His business.” – Leah, “The Revelation” p. 150

“‘…I’ll tell you a secret. When I want to take God at his word exactly, I take a peep out the window at His Creation. Because that, darling, He makes fresh for us every day, without a lot of dubious middle managers.’” – Brother Fowles, “The Judges” p. 248

“They left me. And my mirror, strewn all around, reflecting moonlight in crazy shapes. Just left me flat, in the middle of all that bad luck and broken sky.” – Rachel, “The Judges” p. 302 (emphasis added)

“Where is the easy land of ice-cream cones and new Keds sneakers and We Like Ike, the country where I thought I knew the rules. Where is the place I can go home to?” – Leah, “The Judges” p. 309

“It’s just lucky for Father he never had any sons. He might have been forced to respect them.” – Rachel, “Bel and the Serpent” p. 337

“We were all cut down together by the knife of our own hope, for if there is any single thing that everyone hopes for most dearly, it must be this: that the youngest outlive the oldest.” – Leah, “Bel and the Serpent” p. 371

“To live is to change, to acquire the words of a story, and that is the only celebrations we mortals really know.” – Orleanna, “Exodus” p. 385

“I was allowed to have an interview with a gentleman named Dr. Holden Remile, whose job I think was to discourage people such as myself from asking for interviews with people such as himself. His desk was immense.” – Adah, “Exodus” p. 409

“When I’m nervous or sad I also fall prey to the awful itch from filaires, tiny parasites that crawl into your pores and cause a flare-up every so often. Africa has a thousand ways to get under your skin.” – Leah, “Exodus” p. 456

“Tall and straight I may appear, but I will always be Ada inside. A crooked little person trying to tell the truth. The power is in the balance: we are our injuries, as much as we are our successes.” – Adah, “Exodus” p. 496

“I wake up in love, and work my skin to darkness under the equatorial sun. I look at my four boys, who are the colors of silt, loam, dust, and clay, an infinite palatte for children of their own, and I understand that time erases whiteness altogether.” – Leah, “Song of the Three Children” p. 526

So, you know, check it out.

I’m just happy to get a 550-page hardcover beast out of my purse. This at least creates more room for the excessive copies of TIME and National Geographic I’ve been collecting.

Work can wait; there are keys under the library.

No wonder I’m a writer. God has given me the best subjects. I can’t make this up. Be prepared for a long, journal-style entry that provides nothing but the greatest entertainment.

Yesterday, Matt Howard turned 23. The most ideal way to spend a birthday? At St. Bonaventure University, of course. He picked me up around noon. It was my one day off this week; we had to drive home early this morning so I could get into the office at a normal hour. After a semi-uneventful car ride during which we called everyone within a 100-mile radius to come join us (no one came), we arrived at Townhouse 21, my former residence and the place my wonderful roommate Jennifer was living.

Ain’t much, it’s only everything.

I understand it’s that time in my life–and the lives of my colleagues–that we’re spazzing out, desperately panicking over the impending fall. In a time of year overflowing with back-to-school shopping, first graders wearing index cards with their names and addresses pinned to their shirts and parents warily examining 60-year-old dorm rooms, for the first time, we’re not involved.

Wait, I take that back. I’m not involved. Many of my dearest, closest friends are heading back to Bonaventure.

It makes me wonder if it’s because the Bona Bubble is so conducive to keeping people comfortable that they’re scurrying back to safety rather than exploring the unknown.

I think the call from Jason was the worst.

no subject at all, really.

I read this great line in “The Poisonwood Bible” this morning that I was all prepared to come and regurgitate here, but I forgot the book. Ho hum.

My family visit was phenomenal. They loved the play, and my mom, daughter of the 70s she is, recognized Stuart from “Love American Style” immediately. Silly silly.

Oh, they forgot my fishing rod. I think it’s about time I take matters into my own hands — literally – and just start snagging pike like a bear would a salmon. Of course, it would be much easier if there existed 1. a current and 2. a fervent pike spawn in Chautauqua Lake. Again, ho hum.

In ridiculously glamorous news, I had a job interview this morning (he called 15 minutes late; i was pacing and sweating like a schoolboy…haha “i desperately want to make love to a school boy.” stream of consciousness, sorry.) and i think it went brilliantly. So much so, in fact, that I have a flight booked and ready to take me to Madison Avenue in a few weeks to meet him in person and see the office for myself. I’ll be spending the time until then working diligently to learn Chicago Style.

Thanks to a new photo spread in National Geographic, an excursion to Bolivia is now on my bucket list. Right below seeing the Northern Lights and right above reading Finnegan’s Wake.

Tomorrow Jenny turns 23. And then Matt Howard turns 23 on Saturday. What is with this aging thing? It’s such crap. I’d desperately like to remain comfortably in Clare College and under my parents’ health insurance for quite some time. Eh, actually, I take that back. I just don’t want to be penniless. What an odd word. Anyway, I bought them both books. Tremendous shock there.

“There’s always somebody who is paid too much and taxed too little – and it’s always somebody else.” – Cullen Hightower

Distractions so I don’t break things

I’m “hate-the-world Tanya” today. This happens every now and again, and people know to stay away. I don’t have the world’s worst death stare for nothing. So to zonk my brain out, I stole this from my LJ friends:

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

Well,

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) Put a star next to the ones you’ve started but never finished.

The List!

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
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 (so i’ve probably missed one or two..)
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 (why didn’t they include this…?)
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
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
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
51. Life of Pi – Yann Martel
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 Bryson
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
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables – Victor Hugo*
 

So 35? More than 1/3. Still have some work to do. They should add Charley.

Sigh, back to work.

…and still be on my feet.

It seems like July 3 is just as great for watching fireworks as July 4. That is, if one doesn’t mind that most of them are roadside-purchased bottle rockets.

I sat out on my dock after finishing season 2 of Weeds (to which I say, “omg, omg, omg!”) and jumped out of my skin a few times as my neighbors shot their fireworks out over my head. The sky was clearing, the bats were swarming, it was 10 p.m. in America and I couldn’t wait for today. Mayville and Chautauqua is a magnificent Fourth of July haven.

So today I’m leaving work early, making baked beans and cornbread, grilling, entertaining my parents and some friends, swimming in the lake, casting for a few fish and watching fireworks displays all around the lake from my perfectly positioned dock.

And it’s going to feel magical to sit under a sky full of stars and a banner of stars and stripes with a popsicle and a beer and be truly a Summer American.

Stereotypical, movie-style holidays are necessary every once in awhile. When I spend my summers in a town strewn with American flags and ma-and-pop shops, a dreamlike Fourth is essential.

Enjoy, everyone.

Back to Clare 110.

I’m about to send out our latest press release. I gave it one final readthrough, just to be sure I didn’t miss anything dire, and I found this: 

“A published poet as well as playwright, Ziegler’s play BFF was hailed….”

Argh! Not only does the sentence go on to be passive, it begins with a seemingly obvious dangling modifier. However, this is included in all of our press information that I’ve read through and found no problem with until just now. I suppose I can’t beat myself up too badly (for sanity’s sake), but I’m irked. And I feel like such a rookie.

Eggs and baskets

Hi, I’m Tanya, and I have my first job interview Tuesday morning.

 

eeeeeeeeee!