@ Home in the World

As if I didn't already have enough on my plate...

I've decided to participate in the Russian Reading Challenge 2008 at ExLibris.

Time is of course, part of the point. I'm going to have to make time to read things like War and Peace. For the last several years, all I've really been reading is travel and food essays. It's great for a little escape in between sibling fights, I want to read actual stories again.

I was thrilled to find this advertised on Typepad's main page (where I almost never go, so it had to be fate) because I had just picked up Crime and Punishment on CD (hey, I commute a lot, and it's unabridged, so it counts), this weekend.

Thankfully, this challenge is not a book a month, but a minimum of four books for the year. I've already read Dr. Zhivago (and seen both versions of the movie), and Anna Karenina, so I have to pick something else. Pushkin perhaps?

My list so far:

Crime and Punishment - Dostoevsky

War and Peace - Tolstoy

Eugene Onegin - Pushkin

Something non-fiction - Massie's Peter the Great? Any number of the Russia in WWII histories I have upstairs?

If you are interested, you can follow the discussion here. The actual challenge doesn't kick off until January, but you can start to read other people's lists there or request an invitation for yourself.

Make Way for ... Aaaaaaghhhh!

So I'm driving down the highway to get the the grocery store (because Shaw's feels justified in charging nearly $5 a gallon for non-organic milk because we live on an island and are essentially a captive audience). I'm driving at a pretty good clip because I have to get the groceries and try to make one other stop before I have to pick up the Pumpkin at 2pm.

I realize there's something small moving on the road ahead of me, like a bag or a piece of plastic wiggling around in the breeze. When I get closer, I realize it's a family of ducks! Yep, Mrs. Mallard and her 10 little ducklings are trying to cross a major highway.

Now ducks are some of my favorite creatures on earth (yeah, me and Tony Soprano, go figure), and it would have absolutely killed me to hurt the little things. Thankfully, there was no one in the other lane and I swerved just in time to avoid them.

Luckily (and this may be the only time I feel lucky about such a thing), there's a State Trooper cruising along behind me. He sees what I swerved to avoid, stops, puts his lights on, and gets the rest of the cars to stop while the Mallard family crosses.

All right, so it's not Mike or Clancy in Louisburg Square, but it will do.