Citizen Beta

For a short period of time, my friend Mandy and I were in a book club together. We read some good stuff and had a nice time chatting with the other ladies of the club, meeting for dessert and coffee or Mexican food and beer. I have been thinking a lot about that book club and how I really want to get back into one. Right now I am lucky enough to have a huge stack of new, used and library books, not to mention books to review. This stack will keep me busy and happy for a while. Still, it is nice to share books with friends after you read them, to see what other people think and to have a book chosen for you that you may not have otherwise read on your own.

Mandy moved back to Portland a while ago (booo!) and I stopped going to the book club. I am not sure if it continues on or not.

I guess Mandy was thinking about the book club too because she mentioned it to me and we briefly brainstormed about doing something online. So, here is what I propose and while I am not sure it will work, I think it is worth a try.

For our first and hopefully not last cyber book club, hosted by but not run by CitizenBeta, we will read How The Dead Dream by Lydia Millet.

We will “meet” here in a month (starting February 24^th) to discuss the book and find out about the next selection.

Before the 24^th, send me your initial comments, thoughts or reactions to the book and I will post those as a blog entry and then we will spend the next week or so discussing the book in the comments section.

How does that sound? Please feel free to “invite” anyone to join us.

I realize this is not a very good shot but I think it captures some of the strangeness (perhaps creepiness?) of the city.  Last week while driving around I saw this dude in a Chewbacca suit on the corner of a busy intersection.  His sign reads “9.99 for Anything.”  He wasn’t, as far as I could tell, working for anyone but himself.  What a Wookie!

(as always, click on an image for better quality)  

So it is back to reality today.  Classes are underway and the break is over.  The week started out with a visit to the dentist for L because she lost TWO teeth this week (her first two, so exciting!) and as she was missing a baby tooth we needed to make sure all the adult teeth look okay.  They do.  And the panoramic x-ray they took was super-cool: you could see all her baby teeth and the adult teeth underneath them.  Science!

This week is also full of meetings and appointments and deadlines and a dreaded trip to Costco so I was tickled that Raine tagged me because I didn’t have to come up with anything for this blog post!

I am not going to tag anyone but feel free to play along.

Here are six things about me you probably don’t know (or maybe you do because I am far from mysterious):

1. My eyes are actually brown with a layer of blue over them…That is why, I guess, some people think they are blue while others say green or hazel or gray…They pretty much look blue with brown mixed in the center.
2. The longest I have ever lived in one residence is about 5.5 years.
3. I have nightmares a lot
4. I like green, purple and brown but not orange or yellow
5. I am trying to learn to identify wild birds
6. I can’t get rid of this cough.

I am really not one of those when life gives you lemons make lemonade kind of people. I am more of a wallow in it, kvetch and moan about it, pour lemon juice in your paper-cuts kind of person. So, when our car broke down this week I didn’t see it as a sign of anything: I don’t think the universe was trying to tell me anything or that this was an expensive lesson of some kind. Instead, I think it was a pain in the ass. But, when I started out the door to take it to the shop in the neighborhood, I had the presence of mind to grab my camera so I could take a cityscape image or two on my walk home.

Inspired by Keri Smith’s How To Be An Explorer of the World which is sitting on my bedside table, spine barely cracked, but inspiring nonetheless. I looked for patterns and interesting bits. In fact, I actually tripped on the sidewalk because I was basically walking with my camera up to my face. I didn’t end up taking that many pictures and none of them came out that great so I didn’t file them away for future cityscape images. Here are a few in any case.

Here’s to a year of seeing things differently.