a quick question and some lists

Happy New Year!

The question: The last two books I listened to while erging were The Prizoner of Zenda and Captains Courageous. They were so good that I listened to the former twice in a row and read the latter after listening to it once. Can anyone recommend other books that good for erging to, preferably in the public doman and available at Librivox.org? (I also like H. Rider Haggard for that purpose but have heard most of his already.)

Good things about the holiday, not in any particular order:

1. My books! (No, I didn’t roll in them. But I did read a bunch.)
2. Slept as late as I wanted to, even though that always turned out to be 7 or 8. For some reason I kept falling asleep early.
3. Presents, always a good thing! Also, the spotting scope my in-laws gave us for watching rowers and waterbirds on the lake turned out to be capable of turning the Pleiades from a luminous cloud into a pincushion of individual stars.
4. The sweater I made for Ted fits him perfectly.
5. The cooking that we did for Ted’s family was greatly appreciated. It’s nice to work hard and have both the effort and the results appreciated. (That may have come out wrong – it’s not in the least meant to imply that my family wouldn’t be equally appreciated.)
6. The house is terrifically comfortable, whether for two poeple or five.
7. I completed the Concept 2 Holiday Challenge, again.
8. This is going to sound terrible, with a cityful of European restaurants around me, but I confess I *really* enjoyed eating at some of my old favorite US chain restaurants: PF Chang’s, Abby’s Pizza (an Oregon thing), BJ’s Brewey and even Outback.
9. Getting to cook with a kitchen stocked full of my choice of kitchenware, not someone else’s idea of what a cook needs. (Well, we bought our own kitchenware in Taiwan, but when you need to buy a bunch of stuff at once and you’re aware that it’s all duplicates anyway, it’s not the same as the kitchen you’ve stocked over a decade and a half. It will be even better when we get to combine it all and add things like the wok and dumpling-lifter from Taiwan and the Le Creuset pan I bought here to our kitchen.
10. Spending Christmas and New Year with Ted’s grandfather. He’s in his 90s, so memories made with him are becoming increasingly limited-edition and thus increasingly precious.

The bad things about the holiday: traveling there and, to a lesser extent, traveling back. The pilot had a famliy emergency so our flight was delayed three hours while they rousted a new one out on New Year’s Day, and there were toddler triplets two rows ahead of us on the place. They were adorable, but it seemed like they took turns crying the entire flight.

Some things I did in 2010, both good and bad:

– Traveled to South Africa, where I got surprisingly up close and personal with the local wildlife, and got outrageously pampered between game drives.
– Moved to the Netherlands in April. Lived alone for 7 months, for the first time since 2001 (three months) and before that 1989.
– Moved apartments by myself (plus movers).
– Broke my Kindle. Twice. (Had to pay for one, Amazon replaced the other.)
– Published one free knitting pattern on Ravelry, a blanket with foot-pocket.
– Completed one sweater for me, one for Ted, one small shawl, two pair baby socks, one holiday present (washcloth + stitch markers), and approximately 2.75 pair of socks for me.
– Written a number of poems and submitted 13 of them.
– Got anthologized for the first time (The Best of Every-Day Poets, Vol. 1, became available Dec 30.)
– Became a slush reader for Every Day Poets (this may not be entirely good, as it eans I can’t submit there any more).
– Traveled to London twice, once alone for Stitch Nation and once with Mom.
– Saw Avenue Q in the (London) theater and Richard Thompson in concert.
– Got back to rowing on the water (only not right now, because it’s frozen).
– Went on blood pressure meds. 🙁
– Bought a house (our third – the first two were in Texas in 1993 and Arizona in 1997 or so).

Ten things I’ve Done That You Probably Haven’t (another meme going around):

1. Slept on the continent of Antarctica
2. Coxed the Head of the Charles.
3. Been asked to hold a banjo while its player used the portajohn, then been told afterwards it was worth many thousands of dollars. ($5K? $10K? It was a long time ago. The musician was Roger Sprung, I believe.) And speaking of banjo players,
4. Saw Elizabeth (Libba) Cotten play “Freight Train”, live.
5. Seen lions and elephants from about ten feet away, with no wall between us.
6. Been technically inside North Korea (the DMZ).
7. Flown the Space Shuttle Simulator (the Fixed Base one astronauts train on) and ridden back seat on the Motion Base one.
8. Eater jellyfish and duck tongue (not together).
9. Hiked around Uluru / Ayers Rock, not up it.
10. Flown aerobatics, in an open-cockpit plane (Pitts S2B).