Food, books, etc.

Last night, for dinner, I slapped together some noodley goodness and also made a yogurt strawberry smoothie concoction. Both were quite good, I even photoshopped the picture I took of them!



I am in the midst of several books. Two audiobooks have pooped out on me for various reasons, and I'm also entrenched in reading a few others.

First off, I got all the way to disk 7 of 8 of Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman. Library books on tape are usually not too problematic - if they're gonna be messed up, it's usually with disk 1 or disk 2 at the latest. Not with this one. It's as if someone rubbed steel wool all over disk 7. No good at all. So either I need to procure a different audio copy, or I need to just get it from the library. In any case, I have mixed feelings about it. Maybe it's the british guy reading it, but I keep wanting there to be more comedic elements. I think I'm not as concerned with caring about or identifying with any of the characters if something is funny, as being funny can often help compensate for all sorts of things. Thing is, I don't think this book is meant to be all that funny, aside from the occasional bits of amusement, and so I find myself being frustrated that I just don't care about the characters as much as I could. Also, I never know when something's gonna get all fantasy or when it's gonna be lodged in reality, it's rather disconcerting. Still, I've not finished it yet, so we'll see how it goes.

I'm also somewhere near the end of Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk. I've only read Fight Club by him up until this point, which I rather enjoyed, and found it better then the movie. But Haunted is weird. There's all of these stories about all of these people that are all trapped inside this theater for 3 months, where they're willfully sabotaging everything and hurting themselves and being all crazy in the hopes of a movie being made about it when they get out. It's really really weird. And makes me woozy during all of the disturbing bits about intestines and chopping up people, etc. etc.. Some of the individual stories are interesting, but I can't help but feel that the story holding it all together is a bit contrived. In any case, I got to the end of Disk 8 of 8, but no end to the story, it's like it stopped in mid sentence. Another bad audio experience. So I'm gonna get the book from the library in an effort to finish it.

Finished listening to The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. It was very reaffirming of my agnostic faith, or something like that. Alot of interesting stuff in it, but I'm not sure if I was a fan of the voice of the text, maybe a little too mocking? I enjoyed it, though. I am still not very far into The Selfish Gene, as it's rather a bit denser of reading then this other book.

And, I'm about about halfway through Suburban Nation - The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream. Thus far, it is interesting and informative (not to mention recommended reading by Orson Scott Card). It really puts into words the vague dislike I've always had of the suburbs, and gives me solidarity in my strong appreciation of being able to walk and bike to almost everything I need. Well, minus work.

My legs hurt, jogging tonight with Carolyn was good times, hope to make it a habit. I figure that if I wanna learn Parkour, I really need to learn how to run, first. Kinda helps, I hear.