Category Archives: Lists

Nov16

Starting to Plan for Thanksgiving

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I go a little crazy at Thanksgiving time. I love to cook for people, and I tend to cook for my family on the day itself, then do another meal with friends soon after.  I make an insanely huge amount of food, too.

This year, I am thinking about skipping the friend Thanksgiving meal. I do love it, but I may be taking on too many things for the holiday season. I need to ask the kids what they think and do a small poll of my friends to see if they will be available on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. I have taken on so many other things, though, I am not sure about taking on a full day of cooking. I am not sure about skipping it, either, though, because it makes me sad to think about missing it.

Regardless, I need to do some planning about the upcoming Thanksgiving time, both food-wise and time-wise. I am taking some time off leading up to the big day, plus the day after, so I want to make sure I am using the time wisely. I will be off this Friday, and every day except Tuesday next week, but I will be working at home on Tuesday, so I could do some baking, in theory. I like to spread the cooking out for a few days so that I am not running around like crazy on the day itself, especially since I like to do a late lunch-time meal. I also want to make sure I use my time off wisely to do some other tasks. So this is another post of lists.

Food for Thanksgiving day (subject to change after I consult my family—or not)

  • Dill dip and rye bread with veggies
  • Cranberry sauce
  • Butternut squash risotto (or possibly cornbread stuffing)
  • Roasted potatoes
  • Roasted Brussels sprouts
  • Turkey
  • Steamed green beans
  • Tropical sweet potato casserole

I have no idea how I am going to do the turkey. I am not sure I have ever made a full turkey, between a spotty history of vegetarianism and just having other people make it (my ex-husband or my dad, usually.) However, the boy is excited to make the turkey this year, so I said we would. My dad did offer to come over and do it on the BBQ grill, though, and I may take him up on that.

I am thinking about doing the risotto instead of my usual stuffing this year for a couple of reasons. First, I have been experimenting with going wheat free lately, and I am thinking it is going well. I have eaten wheat a few times and felt that I was having symptoms related to that, although I have not been systematic about it. A much bigger factor, though, is that I am the only one who likes the stuffing I usually make. I love it, and eat enough to make up for everyone else, but I am thinking I may be better off going to the risotto that I know at least 4 of the 6 of us love. I am considering trying out a cornbread stuffing recipe though, so we’ll see.

I am not sure what to do about dessert this year. I might do a crustless pumpkin cheesecake, or some kind of pudding. This gluten free and dairy free pumpkin pudding looks good. I may have to try that out this weekend to taste test.

Things I can make ahead

  • Dill Dip
  • Cranberry sauce
  • The pumpkin pudding up to baking
  • All the chopping
  • Roasting the butternut squash

Writing Tasks I would like to do in my time off

  • Complete Gaming Angels Holiday Guide
  • Complete The Cult of Lego review
  • Posts for ever day
    • Another budget set up post
    • List of gifts to make
    • Menus
    • <More planning needed here>
  • December Convention post for Gaming Angels
  • A few other Gaming Angels things—featured web magazine, featured web comic, talk to other Pulp Angels team members for ideas and schedules

 Crafts I want to work on

Does this seem like too much? I hope not, because I haven’t even gotten to cleaning and reading and gift shopping.

What are your Thanksgiving plans?

Nov11

To Do List for This Weekend

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I have a lot of things I would like to get done this weekend, now that I am finally feeling better. I have writing to catch up on, housecleaning, and outside projects. On top of this, we are having friends over tonight, and going to my parent’s house tomorrow night. If I don’t make a list, there is no way I am going to get to even half of what I want to do.

A note on my philosophy of list-making: I make a much bigger list than I am likely to be able to accomplish. I find that I don’t finish any list, no matter how many things I put on it, but I do usually get a majority of the tasks done, again, no matter how many things I put on it. So, I think of my to do lists as more of a wish list and forgive myself in advance for the items that don’t get checked off. It is better to have too many things on the list than to end up with some free time and no choices for how to fill it, anyway. Also, the kids will be helping with some of these tasks.

House

  • Vaccuum living room, family room, my room
  • Clear off dining room table
  • Clear off buffet
  • Go through the papers on my desk
  • Kitchen cleanup
    • Clear off table
    • Clean out refrigerator
    • Clean and organize top shelf of the pantry
  • Declutter bookshelves in living room
  • Spend some time cleaning overgrowth out of the creek
  • Cleaning bedrooms

Writing

  • Write two blog posts for this weekend
  • Plan next week’s blog posts
  • Review The Cult of Lego for Gaming Angels
  • Start looking at December conventions
  • Start tabulating gender breakout for Hugo Awards for Broad Universe statistics

Holiday planning

  • Plan Thanksgiving menu
  • Have kids write a Christmas wish list
  • Determine whether I will be able to make any gifts for Christmas presents this year
  • Talk to kids about what holiday events they would like to do this year

I also have a book to finish, and I think I am ready to start practicing another stitch in my crocheting practice, so it will be a busy weekend!

What are your weekend plans?

Nov10

The Surprising Benefits of Being Busy

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As I wrote yesterday’s post on finding time to read books, I got to thinking about time organization. I listed a lot of time-consuming things that I have been doing more of–home organization, cooking, writing, more social activities–and I realized that this was a lot to add into my schedule, and I haven’t even added in things like crocheting, yard work and some DIY projects I have taken on.

If you had asked me before I started really focusing on these things, I would have said I was already busy. After all, I did do some housecleaning and cooking, and I have a full time job and two busy kids. But as I started adding things to my schedule, a surprising thing happened; each time I added a task that I had been convinced I didn’t have time for, I discovered that I had no trouble working it into the schedule. One day I realized that I was now doing a long list of things I had previously said I could not fit into my schedule–not even one of them! Here are some things that helped me make the switch to being more productive:

  • Developing one habit at a time. Rather than trying to add every single thing I wanted to do into my day and getting burnt out really quickly, I concentrated on one thing at a time. Once that was a habit, it didn’t seem so overwhelming to add one more little thing.
  • Giving up perfectionism. It is better to do something than nothing, for just about any task. Forgiving myself in advance for making mistakes meant I could take things on without too much anxiety.
  • Learning to do a little bit at a time. Going through a clutter pile for 15 minutes a night may barely touch the job, but if I do it for a week, I can conquer most messes easily.
  • Learning to prioritize. While reading less books was an unintended consequence of trying to do more of other things I wanted to do, I am not at all sad about watching less TV. I never realized how much time I would spend mindlessly watching whatever was on to kill time. I still watch tv, but I make sure it is something I really want to watch, and I enjoy it more for the sense of reward I get from getting other things done first.
  • Enjoying the results of my labors. Having clean clothes all the time is so nice, it isn’t hard to keep my laundry routine going. Eating healthy delicious food every night and not worrying about the cost of eating out makes it easy to sit and do a menu each weekend. Getting some feedback from readers or even consulting my menus or lists on my blog makes me feel that the time I spend writing is useful.
  • Keeping the momentum going. When I am productive in one area of my life, I tend to be more productive in other areas. I am going along, getting stuff done, so I do a few things in other areas, too. I am sure that the medication I am taking for the ADD helps a lot with this one, but it is a nice feeling to get several things done on my ongoing list of To-Dos.
  • Planning ahead. If I have a lot of things I want to do, I can’t just wait for inspiration to strike, I need to have at least a rough plan of when I will get things done. I used to forget what I wanted to do a lot, getting to the end of a week or a weekend and then thinking of everything I could have done with my time. Now, I think ahead, what I would like to get done in the next day, week, month, sometimes even year. I rarely have time when I don’t know what to do with myself. I may decide not to do a particular task, but not because I have not even thought of it.
  • Applying the Do It Now principle. If I have something to do that takes less than 5 minutes, I just do it right away rather than letting things pile up for later. So, sorting the mail every day, taking glasses into the kitchen when I leave the living room, jotting down an outline for a blog post, or just writing down a quick to do list all get done when I think of them, and then I either don’t have to worry about them later, or I’ve already started a longer task.

Some of my problem was with the entropy of every day life–I resented the time it takes to just stay where you are. Cleaning, eating every day, even exercise, when done just to be exercising (as opposed to doing physical activity you enjoy) don’t move you forward in life, they just keep you from falling behind. I hated the time spent on this sort of activity. I had to learn to embrace it, and also to realize that this sort of thing doesn’t take away from what you want to do if you learn to manage your life correctly. What a freeing concept!

Have you done anything to add more into your day?

Nov6

Things I Have Done Today, and Things I Would Still Like To Do

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I am finally feeling better today, and can get a few things done. I have a lot of things backed up though, from all the time that I was just not feeling up to it all. I want to make sure I don’t forget it all, and also see if I am trying to pack too much into this one day, so it is list time again.First, things I have already done (for the sense of accomplishment):

Now, what I would like to do still:

  • #FeministSF chat moderation
  • Finish GA post
  • Clean up the menu, type it up, schedule it to post tomorrow
  • Empty all trash and recycling and take the bins to the curb
  • Go to Trader Joe’s
  • Wash dishes
  • Clear off dining room table and buffet
  • Repot mums on front porch into a more sturdy pot
  • Cook dinner
  • Make some cole slaw for weekly lunches
  • Put together shelves I bought for my closet

That doesn’t look too ambitious, does it? I also want to read some more blogs from my fellow NaBloPoMo-ers, and I am thinking about taking on a new organizing challenge, so I am doing some thinking about that.

Am I the only one who finds weekends more exhausting that the workweek?

Oct27

Decorating Projects: Living Room

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I have decided to start my decorating project list in my living room for two reasons:

  1. It is the first room people see when they come into the house, and the room where we spend a lot of our time.
  2. It needs the smallest amount of work (because, see reason number 1).
I already got a head start on this one. I have a couch set up in the room in such a way that there is in empty space behind it. When you put things back there, you can’t see them when you are sitting and relaxing in the room, but it is practically the first thing you see when you walk into the house. This is a spot that tends to collect stuff. The reusable grocery bags waiting to go back to the car and the kids shoes, while not strictly great looking, are not a huge problem, but the stuff I am decluttering out of the rest of the house does contribute to a mess back there. I go through other rooms in the house, bagging up extra clothes, books, old toys, whatever, and it all goes behind the couch. In theory, I am supposed to take this stuff out to the car the next time I go, but in practice, it piles up until it drives me crazy. Then, it seems to collect granola bar wrappers and dirty socks, which make me crazy every time I make any attempt at cleaning it up. So, a couple of weeks ago, I cleared it all out one more time. It is beautiful back there!
Now, for the rest of the room.
  1. Wash the couch. The dog likes to sit on the couch, and it doesn’t really look very nice anymore. I need to figure out what to do–I think I can take the slip covers off and throw them in the washer, but I am not sure.
  2. Declutter–end table, storage cube, bookshelves. There is not a huge amount of clutter in these areas, but they aren’t clear and peaceful, either.
  3. Hang picture. I have a picture that hung on my wall using 3M’s velcro picture hangers for two and a half years with no problem. Then suddenly, it fell down, scaring the heck out of me. I figured the velcro was just old, so I got new hangers, but apparently the picture has gotten heavier over the years, because it fell again within a week. Time for some serious picture hanging, I think. Also, maybe I should dust more. Ahem.
  4. Get some sort of shelving unit for behind the couch to hold our stuff. Or table. Something. One idea is this set of shelves I saw at Office Depot. I could get some canvas baskets to hide the clutter, and the kids could put their shoes and school stuff on the shelves, so it would look like an organizational system rather than a big pile of junk.
  5. Get new cords for the wall sconces so that they actually work.
  6. Consider a coffee table. On the one hand, I like the openness in the middle of the room. On the other hand, we have no place to set drinks down.
  7. Fix handle on the outside door. The kids have let this door bang shut behind them so many times that it doesn’t work correctly anymore. Pushing on the handle from the inside or turning it from the outside doesn’t pull in the stopper so that the door opens. The only way to open it is to carefully push the little lever in and gently push it past the door jamb, so we have to prop it open using the lock when we leave the house so that we can get back in.
  8. Re-cover the chair cushion in which the dog has torn a hole.
  9. Think about painting. I like the wall color in there, actually. When I first looked at the house, I thought it was a strange color, but once I moved my furniture in, I liked the color a lot better. I am okay with leaving the wall color alone for awhile, but I would like to do something about the ceiling. It is painted white now, which is nice because the ceiling in the living room, which was a late addition to the house, is a bit lower than the other ceilings on the first floor. However, there are nice beams that I think would benefit from some kind of contrasting color to make them stand out. I actually have a few different ideas for what to do with the ceiling:
    1. Paint the beams a dark brown, possibly with some kind of wood grain effect.
    2. Leave the beams white, and paint the insets navy blue, with some kind of star effect. GloNation has glow-in-the-dark paints and powders, plus a tutorial on how to create various effects on their site. I think this could be very fun, but I don’t want it to look too cheesy. The zodiac stenciling kits lmight be a cool way to do this, but I wonder about using a stencil on a textured ceiling. How hard is it to keep the paint from bleeding out when the stencil cannot get flush to the entire surface?
    3. Leave the beams white, paint the insets silver.
  10. Replace the ugly ceiling fan. I like having a fan in the room, but I really hate the way that this one looks, plus, I couldn’t fit the globe over the light once I replaced the incandescent bulb with a CFL bulb. So, I need a nicer looking fan with a light, but it still needs to not hang down too far, because of the low ceiling in there.
  11. Get some plants. Plants make a room healthy, by creating more oxygen, but also by removing toxins from the air.
  12. Organize coat closet.

As I went through the room deciding on every little thing I could do to make the room nicer, I found a lot more to do than I thought I would! This is one of the nicer rooms in my house, one that I have spent more time decorating than most others, and there are still a lot of things to do. Honestly, I could have come up with even more tasks, but I want to create a list that I might finish in some reasonable period of time. It makes the room sound like a disaster, but I actually think it is a pretty nice room. I like the furniture, I kind of love the copper colored insulated curtains, and I found the perfect metal sculpture for above the TV right after we moved in.

My plan for now is to start with the cheap and easy items: declutter, hang the picture, wash the couch somehow, organize the coat closet. It will be nice to knock a few items off the list, and it will give me some time to make some decisions on things like what to do with the ceiling and whether or not to buy a coffee table.

Also, I think I need to change this project name–it started out looking at decorating, but as I started making lists, I realized that this is also a maintenance list. Things like replacing a door handle or getting new cords for my wall sconces will make the room look nicer, true, but they are not strictly speaking decorating. This is a great place to keep track of them, though.

Aug7

To Do List 8/7/11

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  • Housekeeping
    • Clear off dining room table
    • Girl to finish cleaning kitchen
    • Laundry
    • Vaccum living room, family room rug, bedroom rug
    • Help boy clean his room
    • Assemble closet shelving thing and put shoes away more neatly
    • Bathrooms–with boy’s help
    • Send girl out to weed creek
    • Make menu/grocery list for the week
    • Take some things to good will
  • Writing stuff
    • Review blog categories–how do they work, set them up
    • Plan gaming angels posts
    • Review story outline, start first draft
    • Attend feministsf chat on Twitter
    • Work on women in SF statistics
  • Friend stuff
    • Figure out what I did with Barb’s Magic Jack number, so I can call her in Australia! For Free! Magic Jack is cool!

Too much? Maybe, but this is what I would like to get done today. Some of it is just starting things–for instance, I doubt I will finish setting up blog categories today, but I would like to at least figure out how to do it and do some planning. Vacuuming could be moved to tomorrow, if necessary. I need to make a better weekly list to make sure that things get done around here, but this will be a nice start. We need the house clean before school starts, so we can get back on schedule.

The Twitter chat may seem like a big time suck in a busy day, but I did this for the first time last week, and it was awesome! Talking to other people about a topic forces me to think things through and become more clear, which I like. Also, I get to meet cool people, so that is good. It is a nice fun thing to put on my list, too. I like things that I really enjoy and that recharge me while at the same time helping me to improve my writing indirectly.

Apr4

What I got done this weekend

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  • Blog redesign (technically, I started this Thursday, but it was something I have been meaning to do for a while now, and I did more work on it this weekend, so I want it on my accomplishment list)
  • Wrote a blog post on cultural attitudes toward fathering
  • Massive refrigerator purge—I could not believe how old some of those condiments were! Or, how much room I had to put my groceries away
  • Wiped down fridge shelves
  • Made a menu ( I only went through Thursday, because the weekend will be a daddy weekend, and I expect I will have leftovers to get me through Friday)
    • Saturday: Cheese pizza, Italian sausage pizza, sloppy joes pizza, baby carrots, sliced red bell peppers, mini cucumbers, sugar snap peas (S had two friends over for a sleepover, hence the three pizzas)
    • Sunday: Stir-fried quinoa, pan seared cod (cooked with some of the Island teriyaki sauce I used in the quinoa), steamed sweet potatoes
    • Monday: The girl is making Chickpea Noodle Soup from Veganomicon, I will probably make a salad for my mother and me
    • Tuesday: Lima Bean and Brussels sprouts curry, with either brown rice or quinoa, depending on my mood
    • Wednesday: Chickpea Cutlets, a frozen potato/green bean/mushroom mix I got from Trader Joe’s, steamed broccoli
    • Thursday: Scallop Risotto, salad
    • Lunch stuff: Muffalletta sandwich (from Veganomicon again), light and sassy slaw with maple sesame tempeh
  • Bought all the groceries, except the scallops, which I will get closer to the actual day I use them, and eggplant, which was inexplicably absent from both grocery stores where I went to shop
  • Put away all the groceries—easy in my cleared out fridge, a bit of a jigsaw puzzle in my freezer, which needs its own clearing session
  • Cleared out the area behind my couch in the living room; in theory, this is a launching pad for things that need to go to the car, or that will be donated when someone calls up and offers to take stuff off my hands, and even come to my house to do it, in practice, it is that plus whatever the kids dump there, and stuff rarely makes it out to the car
  • Attacked the bathtub, got a lot of caulk stripped, thought I was done, but I will be doing a bit more stripping today before recaulking
  • 4 loads of laundry
  • The girl trimmed the ornamental grasses, and we all helped bag up the resulting straw, or take it to the compost pile out back—about half went into bags, and half on the compost pile—I am not convinced this straw actually breaks down in a timely manner, but I didn’t have enough bags to put it all at the curb 
  • Both the girl and I did dishes, but there are somehow still lots of dirty dishes; stupid entropy
  • Made cappuccino chip muffins from Vegan Brunch; they were very popular, and are almost all gone now
  • The boy cleared sections of the family room floor underneath the couch and the chaise; his normal cleaning style is to shove things under furniture in the hopes that I won’t see them, so there was some corrective action needed
  • The girl spent a lot of time re-cleaning the family room after the sleepover; the girls stayed in there because of the fold out couch, the tv, and the ability to stay up far too late by not being in the room right next to mine
  • Cleaned the downstairs half bath
  • Finished a book (Unnatural Causes, by P.D. James)

Looking over this list, it looks like a lot, but not as much as I thought it would be. I feel compelled to add that last weekend, I finally got new batteries for my cordless phones, a task I had been needing to do for literally months, just to convey the sort of catching up on responsibilities I have been doing lately. But really, I was busy all weekend, and so was the girl. The boy is only 8, he can only tolerate so much busy-ness, but he did work, too. The girl owed me extra chores, thanks to her habit of putting away only some food when she is sent into the kitchen to clean up (as I tell her, when we eat it, it is food, when I throw it away, it is money), and I feel like she delivered. It just kills me how much time it takes just to stay standing still in house cleaning, much less get ahead.

Mar12

Some lists

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Things I would like to do with my free time

  1. Read a lot
  2. Write a lot more (than I do now)
  3. Spend time with my children
  4. Spend time with my friends and extended family
  5. Keep up with all my social media (Twitter, Facebook, email)
  6. Learn to crochet and really start to make things
  7. Learn to draw and paint 
  8. Learn to preserve my garden produce 

Things I actually do with my free time

  1. Read a lot, less than at some (obsessional) times, but more than when I was trying to stay current with Twitter
  2. Try to skim through my social media and not miss the big stuff (lately–I used to try to keep up all the time)
  3. Spend time with children, friends, family
  4. Watch TV
  5. Think about the garden 

What I can do to change my second list to more closely align with the first

  1. Realize I cannot do everything I want and prioritize
  2. Keep reading
  3. Plan ahead with friends and family, and fun outings for the children
  4. Keep with the skimming of the social media
  5. Make a regular time to write, and stick to it
  6. Carry a notebook in my purse so that I could write at any time when I unexpectedly have some down time
  7. Consider getting a small notebook computer for myself
  8. See if the girl would like to learn crocheting with me (bonus, crocheting can be done while watching TV!)
  9. Consider taping all tv shows during the week for watching on the weekends
Feb19

Feminist Science Fiction

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I went on a book buying spree last weekend, with a focus on Feminist Science Fiction. I went to my favorite used bookstore (right around the corner from my favorite brunch place, hooray!), pulled up the basic recommended list on feministsf.org, and started looking through the shelves. I was thrilled to find many books that were either on the list or by authors on the list. I know this is not a definitive list, but it is a good place to start, and I do love me some lists! Here is what I got:

Shore of Women, by Pamela Sargent

Inventing Memory, by Anne Harris

Dreaming Metal, by Melissa Scott

Black Wine, by Candas Jane Dorsey

Double Feature, by Emma Bull and Will Shetterly

Kin of Ata Are Waiting for You, by Dorothy Bryant

Daughters of Earth, by Judith Merrill

Venus Plus X, by Theodore Sturgeon

Sister Light, Sister Dark, by Jane Yolen

Doomsday Morning, by C.L. Moore

Other books on the list that I have or have read:

, by Margaret Atwood

Parable of the Sower, by Octavia Butler

The Furies, by Suzy McKee Charnas

Dhalgren, by Samuel Delaney

“The Yellow Wallpaper” and Herland, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Always Coming Home, The Left Hand of Darkness, Tehanu, by Ursula K. Le Guin (plus a lot of other things she has written)

Dreamsnake, by Vonda McIntyre

The Female Man, by Joanna Russ

Shadowman, by Melissa Scott

, by Mary Shelley

A Door Into Ocean, by Joan Slonczewski

Beauty, The Gate to Women’s Country, by Sheri S. Tepper (plus most of her remaining sf titles)

I just read Shadowman on my new Nook Color last week, and it was very interesting. The idea of intersexed people as a relatively common minority in humanity does make some of the issues around our current views of sexuality and gender differences both more complex and more strikingly obvious. I read Venus Plus X and found it particularly interesting to read such a femeinst work coming from a man writing in the 1950′s and ’60′s. I am reading Black Wine now, and really enjoying it, even though I am not yet entirely sure what is going on. I am looking forward to finding out!

I will be writing a separate post about what I have been reading so far this year, but I did want to get this list out here. I was very excited to find so many books on the list when I went looking last weekend. I have been reading science fiction for nearly 30 years, and it never fails to surprise me how much I haven’t read, even as I think I have read a lot. It is helpful to have a focus for the kind of books I am looking to read. I am already interested in dystopias, post-humanity, and what might be called “hard science fiction,” which can many things, but in my case, it tends to mean dealing with the harder, more objective sciences. But a feminist viewpoint is another helpful lens that can encompass all of these.

Nov12

67-70

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67. The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Twelfth Edition, Edited by Gardner Dozois

Always a great collection, this one was particularly good. There was one story I didn’t quite get, but many I really loved.

68. Eden Close by Anita Shreve

Short, a bit predictable, but gripping. I mean, I guessed what really happened the fateful night when the titular character was blinded in a tragic scene, but not every detail. I had trouble putting this one down.

69. The Terrorists of Irustan by Louise Marley

I really enjoyed this, in an appalled sort of way. The book was frightening in it’s parallels to our world, and in seeing a genuinely good person driven to commit terrible crimes because she really had no other way to affect the course of her own life or the lives of those she loves. I liked the way the end was both tragic and hopeful, although it was probably more hopeful than such a situation would be in real life, sadly. I thought the whole situation was handled very well, with things not being as black and white as they could be. This was definitely a book about male oppression of females, but the men weren’t all bad, either. Some were good, some did terrible things without really thinking it through, but were capable of learning. Highly recommended.

70. The Marlow Chronicles by Lawrence Sanders

This was an interesting little book about a dying man and the effect of his death on his friends and family. I was expecting something different from this one, because Sanders generally writes about big conspiracy type things, like corporations or governments, but this was an intimate group. It was a fascinating look at how people get along with each other, how someone knows who he is, really, and what people who are close to each other really mean to each other. I really enjoyed this.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Let’s see, between now and the end of the year, I am having a housewarming party, hosting Thanksgiving dinner, getting ready for Christmas with the kids at my house for the end of the year vacation this year, plus all the normal work, cooking, seeing friends, house-cleaning (and must finish unpacking!). I think that I am not going to read as many books as last year (93) or the year before (83). Still, I think I am doing quite well for someone who bought a house in the year! I will at least get to 73, within shouting distance of 2006, I believe. Sounds good to me.