From jupiter9, the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing’s users. Bold for read books, underline for books read in school, and italics for started but didn't finish.

( Jump for the list )

For oddprofessor and anyone else who wants it, here's the broccoli rabe alfredo recipe I mentioned over in willendorf5761's CSA post. It's from The $50 Dinner Party, and it really is astonishingly simple:

1 1/2 lbs. spaghetti
1 large or 2 small bunches broccoli rabe, trimmed and coarsely chopped
1 1/2 c. heavy cream
1/3 - 1/2 c. chicken or vegetable broth
1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg, or more to taste
1 tsp. kosher salt
1/2 tsp. black pepper
3/4 c. freshly grated Parmesan, plus more for garnish

Bring a large pot of water to a boil.

Add the spaghetti and cook for 5 minutes (it will not be done). Add the broccoli rabe and cook until the pasta is al dente, about 7 minutes. Drain and place in a large mixing bowl.

When you add the broccoli rabe to the spaghetti, place the cream and broth in a small saucepan and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Reduce the heat to medium and cook, stirring occasionally, until the mixture has reduced by half, about 5 minutes.

Add the nutmeg, salt, pepper and Parmesan cheese to the cream and stir until well blended. Pour over the spaghetti-broccoli rabe mixture and transfer to 6 heated shallow bowls. Serve immediately. Garnish with additional Parmesan.

Needless to say, I've never bothered heating the frickin bowls. I also tend to use whatever long stringy pasta I have around, spaghetti or linguini, and adjust the first cooking time accordingly.

Last night I moved the polar fleece blanket over to the other side of the futon so I could sit on the last spot not covered with a thick fuzz of spring-shedding cat hair. Today, the cat has spent all afternoon curled up on the bare spot. She is nothing if not thorough in her methods.

From frivolity:

You are about 20 years old

The teen repellent will no longer foil you, but you can still hear some pretty high tones. The highest pitched ultrasonic mosquito ringtone that I can hear is 16.7kHz

Find out which ultrasonic ringtones you can hear!

Happy Leap Day, everybody (well, except you antipodeans -- sorry I missed you).

At the library yesterday, one of my student workers asked, "Isn't February 29th supposed to be unlucky or something?" I responded, "I never heard that it was unlucky. But I learned growing up that it's traditionally the only day of the year when women are allowed to propose to men, like Sadie Hawkins' Day."

He looked at me like I was crazy. "Really? One day every four years?? That's so messed up."

A lot of the stuff that comes out of the mouths of my students makes me cringe, even here at my elite, enlightened, august university. Every now and then, though, there's an immediate, unforced reaction like this one that gives me hope for the future.

I was talking on the phone with my brother last week, and he mentioned that he'd gotten back into Kingdom of Loathing recently. I laughed and said I was sure all my old accounts were long since expired from the system, since I hadn't touched them in a couple years at least.

Uh-oh. Turns out they're still right where I left them. And now I've been sucked back in, too. Maybe I'll call F back and see what clan he's in...

Apparently my musical taste is more obscure than I'd thought. That's good in a way, I guess, but not so good for playing guessing games, so I've added some audio hints to the unsolved songs in my previous post.

This game always reminds me of high school, when my buddy Dave Kalil and I played Guess the Lyrics every afternoon while waiting for government class to start. He was much better at it than I was -- I kind of sucked without any melodic or rhythmic context to tie to the words. Hopefully hearing will help here, too.

Our library mascot, Mr. Wigglesworth, has entered Mason-Dixon Knitting's "Teeny Project Runway" contest. Here he is lounging at the foot of the John Harvard statue in Harvard Yard, nattily attired in a crimson letter sweater designed by my colleague Melanie:



Please vote for Mr. Wigglesworth (entry #44)!

One vote per IP address, and please ignore the multiple poll boxes -- all the candidates are being considered as a single field. The deadline for preliminary voting is this Thursday, February 28, at 12:34pm Central Daylight Time. The five finalists will have a runoff after that.

Full details about the contest and photos of all the entrants.

Many thanks!

...is brought to you by the letter lauredhel and by the number lignamorren.

Now with new audio hints! Okay, first I didn't bother to strip ID3 tags, because I didn't realize LJ would be so *super-smart* and show them as soon as you moused over. But now I've gotten rid of them all, deleted my cache, and refreshed this page, and LJ is *still* mysteriously divining the ID3 tags. I don't know how to get rid of them, and I apologize, but if you want to listen to the clips, the only thing I can suggest is to just click really quickly, before the tags can come up.)

You know the rules: 20 random consecutive songs from my library, first lines given here (or second lines if the first contains the title). You identify the song, and I'll cross it out. Googling is cheating. N.B.: Items in italics are instrumental only, included here to preserve the consecutivity principle.

I lucked out spinning the iTunes wheel of fortune; I think most of these are pretty accessible. (Update: Well, okay, then. Not so accessible after all, it seems. Sorry about that.) I've given a little more context for the ones that seem harder to me, and I'll add more as needed. There is one that I believe is practically impossible for anyone here to get, with maybe one exception.

1. Now I'm waking at the crack of dawn
   to send a little money home
   from here to the moon
   is rising like a discotheque
   and now my bags are down and packed for traveling
   looking at happiness, keeping my flavor fresh
   nobody knows how far I'll go
   


2. At the villa of the Baron de Signac,
   where I spent a somewhat infamous year;
   at the villa of the Baron de Signac,
   I had ladies in attendance,
   fire opal pendants
   


3. Oh, my name is Jock Stewart,
   I'm a canny gun man,
   and a roving young fellow I've been.
   So be easy and free when you're drinking with me
   lauredhel correctly guessed The Pogues -- what song?


4. I had a match but she had a lighter,
   I had a flame but she had a fire,
   I was bright, but she was much brighter
   I was high, but she was the sky
   Oh baby, I was bound for...


5. You'd better shut your windows tight,
   they're sharpening their cleavers and their knives
   and taking all their whiskey by the pint
   'cause everybody knows, if you don't mind your mother's words,
   a wicked wind will blow your ribbons from your curls


6. Contrapunctus 4, Bach's Kunst der Fuge


7. I was driving down a lonely road on a dark and stormy night,
   when a little girl by the roadside showed up in my head lights
   I stopped and she got in back, and in a shaky tone,
   she said, "My name is Mary, please won't you take me home?"


8. There's coming a time on the great judgment morning
   when the Savior will welcome you home
   Will you be prepared for the journey to heaven?
   On the great ship that carries God's chosen ones home?


9. I am the fountain of affection, I am the instrument of joy,
   and to keep the good times rolling
   I'm the boy, I'm the boy
   Great Big Sea, "When I'm Up (I Can't Get Down)"


10. Well met, well met, and I know true love,
    well met, well met, said he.
    I'm just returning from the salt, salt sea,
    and it's all for the love of thee
    
    Come in, come in, my own true love
    and have a seat with me.
    It's been three-fourths of a long, long year
    since together we have been
    Natalie Merchant, "The House Carpenter"


11. At least you know you were taken by a pro,
    I know just how you feel,
    she talked a perfect game, deflecting all the blame,
    you took the jack and changed the flat and got behind the wheel


12. Gymnopédie 1, Satie


13. Ahi! Sciocco mondo e cieco! Ahi! cruda sorte!
    che ministro mi fai de la mia morte


14. Delia, Elizabeth Cotten


15. The waves spin round, trip me to my feet,
    rising up to face the wave there are memories complete.
    I touch the world, it turns to gold, and it crumples in my hand,
    underestimate the waves and they turn rock to sand


16. The summer sunset a vicious circus when shadows held the world in place,
    but today i felt a chill in my apartment's coolest place
    Fuggi regal fantasima


17. The phone calls always left me unsure,
    they'd never say things of their own accord.
    I am preoccupied, I can't get him out of my mind,
    they are terrified


18. You can hear the boats go by, you can spend the night forever,
    And you know that she's half crazy
    "Suzanne", Judy Collins cover version


19. Breaking rocks in the hot sun, I needed money 'cause I had none
    The Clash, "I Fought the Law (And the Law Won)"


20. Lomir geyn mit shtile trit, keyner zol nisht hern;
    lomir nicht dem zisn shlof fun di mide shtern.
    Efsher troymt an alter man, vegn yunge yorn


21. Old woman, old woman, don't treat me so mean,
    You're the meanest old woman that I've ever seen
    "Hit the Road, Jack", Ray Charles


22. ...knew all the answers, although her relatives and friends were perfect dancers,
    she swore she'd never dance a step until she died.
    
    She said, "I've seen too many movies, and all they prove is
    too idiotic -- they all insist that South America's exotic
    whereas it couldn't be more boring if it tried!
    She added firmly that she hated the sound of soft guitars beside a still lagoon,
    she also positively stated that she could not abide a southern moon.
    
    She refused to begin the beguine when they requested it,
    and she made an embarrassing scene if anyone suggested it,
    for she detested it


23. When I was younger, just a bad little kid
    "Dentist", from Little Shop of Horrors

I just finished reading Geraldine Ferraro's op-ed in today's NY Times.

I found the first section, an insider's history of how the Democratic superdelegates came to be, fairly interesting. ( But... )

Sad -- my grand return after long hiatus, and it's a meme. But it's a meme with an excuse to mess around in PhotoShop, and thus impossible to resist. Plus, I got really good results:

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first article title on the page is the name of your band.

2. http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four words of the very last quote is the title of your album.

3. http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/
The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

4. Use your graphics program of choice to throw them together, and post the result in your own journal.

I celebrated Reverse April Fool's Day this year. My dog really did scarf down two-thirds of a bottle of Trader Joe's glucosamine chondroitin supplements while I was at work, and my neighbor (whom I've spoken to only one other time in two years) really did walk up to me on the street to tell me he'd found my pocketbook that was stolen two months ago in the trash at his other property across town.

I was telling my sister about my unlikely day on the phone last night, and I kept waiting for her to butt in to say, "But that's an April Fools, right?" (She didn't, but she admitted later that she was waiting for me to shout "April Fools!" at any moment.)

Honey's going to be just fine, by the way, though it took a phone call to the local animal poison control center and a consultation fee of $55 to be sure. She's got a mild case of the runs, but otherwise seems to feel none the worse for her binge. And she must have the most robust joints now of any cocker spaniel in Massachusetts, right?

Whoa, I haven't posted in a long time. Nothing major to report in the meantime, just the usual unexciting life stuff.

I spent four lovely days last weekend in Wintergreen, VA, just outside Charlottesville, with my sister, my dad, and (sometimes) my brother. There's a resort there, but the real goal was to find a pretty little not-too-expensive place in the mountains close enough to C'ville that F could come up for a while on his day off. Of course, since there was a spa right there, P and I took the opportunity to get ourselves all spaed up on Sunday, which was lurvely. The rest of the time we generally just lazed about, talking, reading, watching DVDs and basketball, and teaching P and my dad how to play Bone Wars.

On Sunday night we drove down to C'ville and had dinner at the C&O, since F was bartending that night. We sat right at the end of the bar, and F not only took our orders and made our drinks but actually kept darting into the kitchen to prepare bits of our dinner, including P's whole salad and the torch job on my creme brulee. A splendid time was had by P, Dad and me, and F seemed to be getting a kick out of it, too.

Before I headed back to Mass., I also met up with my mom and spent an overnight with her and my sister at the farm. We saw six early buttercups, and we caught the daffodils in full bloom at Bennie's; it wasn't quite as vast a Wordsworthian host as I remember from my childhood, but I'm not sure whether the difference is just in my memory or if it's because it's because no one's divided the bulbs in at least fifteen years, probably more. In any case, there were still hundreds of them, and we picked a few for Bennie's grave. Back at Ingledew, we had just enough daylight to gather up the past couple months' accrual of fallen branches from around the yard, and to clear a lot of the ivy that was choking the front lamppost. Then we visited with my Uncle Frank over a motley supper of barbecue, fried chicken, macaroni, and bourbon.

Spring really arrived while I was in Virginia. We gauged it by the Bradford pears, which we kept seeing all weekend everywhere we went -- on Friday they were still only budding, but by Sunday the buds had burst into big, poofy white blossoms. I wore the same short-sleeved shirt all weekend because it was the only one I'd thought to pack back in sub-freezing Somerville. Now that I'm home again, of course, I'm back to my sweaters, but I'm starting to notice a difference here, too -- it's 48F instead of 33F, and the air feels different.

I hate double-pointed needles. Pointy, sticky-outy, nasty, awkward things. I hate, hate, hate them.

But I like socks.

Darn.

Now that I've grabbed all the data I want from my two old laptop hard drives, I'm deciding what to do with the rest of the hardware, a Dell Inspiron 7000 (ca. 1999) and a Winbook XP (ca. 1995).

I'd originally planned to toss them both, or whatever the environmentally friendly disposal option is. But I made the mistake of checking eBay, and so discovered that there are an awful lot of these guys still being put up for sale for use or parts, which makes just chucking them out seem terribly wasteful.

On the other hand, neither of them is working in its present state. The Winbook was a marvellous, marvellous computer (in 1996), but it needs a new keyboard, plus the Win95 installation is kind of flaky. The Dell was a lemon from the start, and I'm pretty sure it needs yet another motherboard (it was already on its third). And it's not like anyone's making money with these things on eBay, even split up for parts (though hope springs eternal, as always).

They're both dead boring looking, too, so I can't even make a fishtank out of them (and my even older Mac SE, lord love it, still runs great).

So, LJ friends, what to do?

Student knocks on the open door to the library office (where I'm cackling with glee over the smooth transfer of my old hard drive contents... oops, wrong post, never mind). She has a woebegone look on her face and anxious eyes.

Student, agitated: "Excuse me, but can I use your phone for a minute? It's an emergency."

Eeminy, concerned: "Oh dear, what's the emergency? Does someone need help?"

S: "I was on the phone with my friend and she was telling me something, and then my phone died."

E: "I'm sorry, but I'm really not allowed to let folks use the library phone except to dial 911."

S: "But she's all the way down in the Yard*."

*The Yard is a ten-minute walk from here, and that's if you walk slowly.

I got a coupon flyer in the mail a couple weeks ago, from Microcenter, offering me my choice of a free store brand 2Gb flash USB drive or flash card. No purchase necessary; I guess they just wanted to woo me back because I haven't bought anything there in a while.

So yesterday I went in to pick it up, and figured it would only be polite to buy something else while I was there. ( Not much to see here, just gawking at the nifty tech stuff )

This was running in the back of my mind when I was posting last night, but I didn't manage to crystallize the thought until today.

The Harvard kids who ignored my plight last night aren't just anyone. They're the elite of tomorrow's generation. They're the ones who will graduate and go on to make the kinds of salaries that metaphorical wrote about in his most recent post. More than anyone else, they need to jump in and help out the community around them -- not just their own cliques, or even organized philanthropy toward an anonymous Other class of "poor" or "underprivileged", but the many layers of human interaction in between. If they don't, what does that bode for how they'll go on to use their influence and money later in life?

For every Howard Ruby who notices something wrong and does something about it, there are dozens who don't notice, or who, noticing, just aren't in the habit enough to do anything. That's the problem.

(Oh, and if you want a laugh, be sure to read the last paragraph of that Washington post article about Ruby.)

Well, my collective opinion of Harvard students has just taken a nose dive, at least for the moment. I spend most of my working life dealing with Harvard students, so I'm particularly distressed.

I drove to work this afternoon, since it was Sunday and I could park on the street across from the Quad driveway. By the time I got back to the car at 11pm, though, the deep slush puddle I'd parked in had hardened into perfect bowls of ice that gently but inexorably cradled my haplessly spinning front wheels. Of course I didn't have much in the car to help extricate myself -- usually I keep a bag of kitty litter in the boot for just such an occasion, but I think I must have taken the last bag up to the apartment at some point and used it for, you know, kitty litter instead. I used to have a shovel in there, too, but it wasn't there either, no clue what happened to it.

It took me fully half an hour to get myself out. During that time, I was passed by at least 20 students on their way home from the Square -- singly and in groups, a few on bike, most on foot. Just about all of them slowed down at least a little to watch me struggling alone, spinning my wheels, alternately pushing and trying to slip various less slippery bits under the wheels to get some traction. Not one so much as called over to ask if I needed any help.

The thing is, there's a good chance I would have said no -- certainly at the beginning, before I realized how stuck the car was. I had my own cell phone with me, so I was fine for communication. And even after I'd been struggling for twenty minutes or so and would have accepted a push with gratitude, if no one had happened to come by it wouldn't have been a disaster to leave the car there overnight and take the bus home. The outcome isn't really the point. It's making the offer that counts.

I can't think of a single time in my life, since I hit my teens anyway, when I haven't stopped to offer a push to a stranger with a car stuck in the mud/snow/ice. Sometimes I haven't been able to stick around for more than one or two tries, if I was in a hurry on my way somewhere or dressed inappropriately for the task. But you make the offer. You just do.

But apparently Harvard students don't. And yet these are good kids, whom I see every day in the library chatting with each other and making the most stupendously generous gestures toward one another without thinking twice.

And yes, I realize I sound a little like a little old lady whining about how kids today don't have any respect for their elders, or a lady, or something. Again, not the point. I'm a healthy young(ish) adult, too, and gender doesn't really come into it. Most of the folks I've ever offered to help with their stuck cars have been just as strong as I am. But some things take two or three strong people. I worry that we're rearing a generation that has no awareness of community beyond the little bubble they consider their own world.

I've been jokingly nagging my mom to come up and visit me for more than a year -- she's all the time moaning about how seldom I get down to Virginia, it's hard not to point out that I get there a heck of a lot more often than she comes to Massachusetts.

Before Christmas my mom proposed that she come up for our birthdays -- arriving on my birthday, staying the weekend, and going home on her birthday three days later. She only half-believed I'd go for the plan; she enjoys daydreaming about adventures, but she gets a little nervous when it comes down to actually taking them. She's not timid, but she doesn't do impulsiveness on a big scale much, and she certainly doesn't see herself in the role of a jetsetter, even when the jet is just the shuttle to Boston. And I think, too, she feels a little guilty about taking time off from what she feels are her responsibilities at home. But when she does gear up to take a trip, she gets caught up in plans and anticipation, and it usually turns out to be a big hit in the end.

Anyway, during nearly every phone call I've had with her in the past month, she's semi-jokingly said, "Now you have to promise me that there won't be any snow, okay? You can have all the cold and snow you want for the rest of the winter, but NO BLIZZARDS while I'm there. And not too cold, either." And I've laughed and responded, "Sure thing, I've it all arranged with the weather bureau." It's been a fun little running joke, except that she's not joking about the no snow part.

Given that setup, I suppose it's inevitable that we had our first and only real snow-ice storm of the winter yesterday, a day and a half before my mom gets here. And while we didn't get as much sheer snow accumulation here as lots of y'all did, it was the worst kind of mix of heavily packed snow and freezing rain, followed by a solid freeze, that has resulted in four inches of solid ice on nearly all the sidewalks still and even many of the streets. I scattered half a bag of salt just on the patch in front of my house this morning, and even with the sun shining all day it barely made a dent in the ice. And, of course, my roof is still leaking (when the sun is out, anyway).

Welcome to Boston, Mom.

Literally. The roof fell in. Well, okay, not quite literally, in the, um, literal sense of the word. But close enough, and I have a feeling the rest is only a matter of time.

I live on the 3rd floor of a classic Boston triple-decker. Most of the time I like the height -- I see trees out my window rather than the semi-ugly street; I'm buffered from the noise; I can watch the Boston fireworks from my front porch window. The only problem is when a ton of snow, sleet and freezing rain -- winter mix, they call it, like a finely blended tea -- lands on the roof and decides that gravity is its best friend.

As happened tonight. A little while after I got home from work I thought I heard a trickling sound, but I'd just turned the heat up and I assumed it was water running through the radiator, or maybe just the weather outside interacting with my windows. But then I went into the bathroom, and found the floor sopping wet, huge damp spots ringing the ceiling, and water dribbling enthusiastically from the central light fixture.

Fortunately my landlady lives downstairs and stays up late, so it was no problem to call her and let her know what was going on. Now we're both waiting for the call back from the roofing guy, who was already out on another emergency call when Dolores tried to reach him. In the meantime I mopped up the floor with towels, unscrewed the water-filled glass cover from the ceiling light, and put the kitchen trash bin to work catching the leak. My most immediate concern is that the leak is coming down pretty much right over the toilet, which is annoying. That and the Chinese water torture of the drip... drip... drip.

In a sense I'm just living through the other half of the saga that started right after I moved in, when the bathroom ceiling crashed down into the bathtub as an aftereffect of a previous leak (that was supposedly fixed before I moved in, with a ten year guarantee -- this repair should be under warranty, not that that helps me much). So now I get to experience Son of Leak.

The bad news is that my mom's coming up to visit on Friday, and now some of the time that I'd planned to spend on straightening the apartment will certainly now be rerouted into dealing with this. But it could have been worse -- the bathroom's the best place for this to happen, and fortunately the rest of the house is sound enough.

Addendum: the roofer has responded; he'll be over in the morning. And so to bed.

Create your own visitor map!


The only problem with this is that in order to see any results myself, I have to let the whole world see how few people read my LJ. Ah well, curiosity wins out.

All the headlines seem to claim that Bush admitted mistakes in his speech tonight. And yet the soundbite quote is a classic non-apology apology: "Where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me."

Just, you know, wherever they might be, if there even were any, and who can say for sure? Passive fucking voice nested snugly in a conditional clause.

Conditional owning-up (up-owning?) is a pet peeve of mine whatever the context, and when it's our fearless leader talking about decisions that have cost thousands and thousands of lives (so far), it's sickening.

Today at the LaundroMutt, Honey and I met a golden retriever named Jake who's nearly 16 years old. I was bowled over -- having seen Jake saunter in, I would have guessed maybe 9 or 10, and that only because of his white face and calm demeanor. He's big and handsome and active and alert.

His people said that they'd gotten him when he was 12 1/2, after his previous owner died. They figured they could give Jake a good final six months or maybe a year, but Jake had other plans. They clearly love him to pieces and take wonderful care of him.

Happy New Year, everybody.

It's been a pleasant few days despite feeling crummy.

( Two very different outings: Jordan's Furniture and Body Worlds 2 )

This past Tuesday I spent three hours sitting in a small car with my brother, who had a sinus infection, and my sister, whose bad cold was even then in the process of turning into a sinus infection, as we drove down to join our mom and the rest of the clan on the farm for a holiday meal and gift exchange.

I guess the incubation period for one of them was four days. (Three and a half, actually; I could feel it coming on yesterday.)

Snagged from my library school pal Michael's blog, a press release from Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility:

HOW OLD IS THE GRAND CANYON? PARK SERVICE WON’T SAY — Orders to Cater to Creationists Makes National Park Agnostic on Geology

Washington, DC — Grand Canyon National Park is not permitted to give an official estimate of the geologic age of its principal feature, due to pressure from Bush administration appointees. Despite promising a prompt review of its approval for a book claiming the Grand Canyon was created by Noah's flood rather than by geologic forces, more than three years later no review has ever been done and the book remains on sale at the park, according to documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).

( Read on )

My favorite quote: "As one park geologist said, this is the equivalent of Yellowstone National Park selling a book entitled Geysers of Old Faithful: Nostrils of Satan."