2011 Summer Reading List = Fail.

Hi there, readers (that is, if I still have any readers...)! 

It has definitely been quite a while since I last posted.  I'll blame that on grad school, moving back to MN, wedding planning, and Pinterest.

I feel a little bit bad about leaving the whole "Summer Reading List" series hanging last summer.  Eventually, I did get around to reading six of the nine books.  So, I will finally finish my reviews here.  Though, be warned, it has been a while and I can't promise that I remembered everything all that well.

1. "No Apparent Danger" by Victoria Bruce
 **** (4 Stars) = Very good.  I strongly recommend this book.  See the full review I gave it here.

2. "Side Jobs" by Jim Butcher
*** (3 Stars) = Pretty good, but it's not the best (still worth reading).  Again, see the full review here.

3. "Ghost Story" by Jim Butcher
*** (3 Stars) = Pretty good, but it's not the best (still worth reading).  Like the other Jim Butcher book, I recommend that you read the rest of the series before getting to this one (otherwise, HUGE spoilers!).  And because of those spoilers, there's not a whole lot I can say here other than this book was way different then the other Harry Dresden books.  This made it interesting, but, to me, not as fun.  With that said, I'm always looking forward to next book in the Dresden Files.

4. "Traveling Mercies" by Anne Lamott
Unfortunately, this was one of the books that I have yet to read.  It's still in my (growing) pile of books to read.

5. "The Meaning of Wife" by Anne Kingston
 ** (2 Stars) = Eh... I'm not a fan.  This book took me a while to get through; but, I should say that any book without a plot takes me a long time to read (which is why I mostly stick to fiction!).  Some of the early chapters that recounted "the meaning of wife" through history were interesting.  The later chapters, however, just pissed me off all the time.  Why?  I didn't think that this book fully addressed the modern meanings of wife.  Unless, of course, your only definition of wife is a stay-at-home-mom ready to get a big divorce settlement from her CEO husband...  Again, I'll note it's been a while since I read this, but certain chapters left me fuming.  But maybe that's a good thing?  I like books that make people angry, because they (hopefully!) make people think.

6. "Circus of the Damned" by Laurell K. Hamilton
*** (3 Stars) = Pretty good, but it's not the best (still worth reading).... if you're into vampire/crime/fantasy fiction in the first place.  Like the Jim Butcher books, I'd recommend reading the series from the beginning, but this was still an enjoyable read.  That's about all I can say because I don't remember much of it, which is the case (for me) for the other Laurell K. Hamilton books I've read as well.  I like fantasy/crime books, but I'm just not as sold on this series as I am on the Dresen Files.

7. "Heat Stroke" by Rachel Caine
** (2 Stars) = Eh... I'm not a fan.  This was book #2 of the Weather Warden series (book #1 is "Ill Wind"), and I think it definitely fell short of the first.  I started reading the series because Jim Butcher (author of the Dresden Files) recommended the series according to the book cover.  In this series, wardens are tasked the the responsibility of taming weather/earth/fire in order to keep disasters from destroying humankind on an everyday basis (but they're secret, so we ordinary humans don't notice).  Unfortunately, with how the first book ended, I can't say much about this one without spoiling the first.  As a book, I recommend "Ill Wind," but I just don't think I can recommend the series.  As an FYI, I'm currently reading the third book "Chill Factor," so I'm saying this based on reading three of her books (okay... technically 2 & 5/6 books), not just the two.  What? The world is about to end unless Joanne (the protagonist) saves us all? Eh... sorry, don't really care.  I'm pretty sure I should care, but I just don't think I connect with the main character, and thus, have no vested interest in her successes or failures.

8. "The River of Doubt" by Candice Millard
I didn't get around to this one.  It sadly gets pushed back into my "To Read" pile every summer because I am always craving fiction instead.

9. "The Well of Lost Plots" by Jasper Fforde
Also still in my "To Read" pile.

Meet Murphy

I'd like you all to meet Murphy, our newly-adopted, 10-month old cat.  We adopted him from The Animal Foundation in Las Vegas shortly after visiting the cat adoption center with some friends of ours who adopted a cat.  Once you walk into the room, your fate is pretty much sealed.  If you are a cat person who wants a cat, you will find a cat you love and you will find a way to adopt them.  At least, that's what happened to us.  We fell in love with a little orange tabby female, but she was adopted before we could return.  When we came back, we met this little fella who was just bursting with love for us.  We couldn't wait this time, and we signed the adoption papers for "Skittles" (who we re-named Murphy because we didn't feel he was rainbow-y enough to be a Skittles).

He's pretty much the sweetest cat ever (even after his neutering surgery the vet tech told us he was the sweetest cat she saw all day).  I hope you enjoy these pictures of him (I know I do!).

"Thanks for adopting me!"

He's a weirdly long cat, especially when he stretches.

Play time!

He likes to attack the beams of light coming in the window in the morning. :)

Our blue-eyed sweet Murphy

Summer Reading Series: Side Jobs

“Side Jobs” by Jim Butcher

*** (3 Stars) = Pretty good, but it's not the best (still worth reading).

“Side Jobs” is a compilation of short stories about Harry Dresden, a private investigator in Chicago.  Harry Dresden also happens to be a wizard, so the cases he deals with are usually quite interesting and involve run-ins with vampires, werewolves, faeries, and evil sorcerer types.  This book is made up of short stories that happen in-between the other Dresden Files (12 books in the series, with the 13^th due out on July 26^th!!).

I really enjoyed this book, but I wouldn’t recommend it unless you’ve read all of the other books in the series first.  You’ll run into spoilers otherwise.  It was really fun to see a lot of the back story that isn’t included in the regular books.  The only downside to it, for me because I’ve read all of the books, is that some of the plots were a bit predictable (e.g. So-and-so can’t die because so-and-so is in xxxxx book later on in the series and such).

One of my favorite parts was the additional character development when two of the short stories were written from other character’s points of view.  It was fun to get to see the inside of someone else’s head.  My other favorite part is that some of the stories were very light-hearted.  They weren’t all about catching the bad guy, and that was a fun change of pace.

So once again, I call this a good book.  If supernatural mystery sounds interesting to you, or if you’re looking for something to fill in the gap after Harry Potter, I recommend the Dresden Files (first book is “Storm Front”).  “Side Jobs” did a great job helping get my Dresden Files fix while waiting for the next book (can’t wait until Tuesday!).

Summer Reading Series: No Apparent Danger

“No Apparent Danger” by Victoria Bruce

**** (4 Stars) = Very good.  I strongly recommend this book.

In the book, Victoria Bruce pieces together eye-witness accounts of two tragic volcano disasters in Colombia.  First are the accounts of the eruption of Nevado del Ruiz in 1985 in which mudflows killed over 23,000 people in the surrounding area.  The second part of this book details the 1993 eruption of Volcán Galeras which took the lives of nine people (including six scientists) who were in the crater at the time.

Whether or not you’re a geologist, I think you’ll find this is an interesting and thrilling read.  Even though this is a historic event where you know the end result, Victoria Bruce did a great job of recounting the events and filling the pages with suspense.  Bruce knows enough about geology to accurately describe the science involved (she has an M.S. in Geology), but she also explains the terms for any readers who are not scientists.

I think one of the take-home messages of this book is that science (and funding for research/technology/etc…) is extremely important.  And even when the scientists have the technology, it’s imperative that they know what to do with that knowledge and being able to bridge the gap between pure science and public policy. 

I enjoyed reading this book, and I would definitely recommend it.  It’s probably not one I would read again (I rarely re-read non-fiction books), but it’s worth a read.

(And, Brittany, thanks for suggesting this book and for letting me borrow it for so long!)

Homemade Vegetable Broth

Last weekend, Erik and I made vegetable broth (based on an idea I read at The Simple Dollar).  We made the broth for next to nothing, because we made it with leftover scraps of vegetables.  In our pretty frugal life (you have to be as a grad student), we were excited to save money by not buying vegetable broth at the store, but also because we were putting scraps of vegetables to use that would have otherwise been thrown away.  (Note: We'd love to compost, but we live in an apartment in the desert.)

So, how did we go about making this?  Over the course of three to four weeks we made sure to save all of our veggie scraps that would have been thrown away.  Examples of this include:

• The outside layer of onion that's too dry to eat, but still packed with flavor (not the papery outer-layer).  We also kept the ends, or bits of onion core that were too tough for our tastes.
• The ends of a celery stalk and the leafy parts of the celery.  (You can can also see in the photos that we included some celery slices.  They weren't very crisp anymore, and neither of us would eat them).
• Carrot peels.  I like my carrots peeled and cut, so this was a good way to use those peels.
• We also included a tomato that was about to go bad (but it hadn't gone bad yet!) that we knew we wouldn't eat in time.

It's also a good idea to make sure that all of the scraps are washed really well.  The end of the celery stalk, for example, trapped a lot of dirt so it had to be washed well.

We kept a gallon-sized plastic bag in our freezer where we would deposit these veggie scraps whenever we had them.  It really didn't take that long to fill up!  

Once the freezer bag was full, we pulled out our crock pot and filled it with frozen vegetables.  That red brick on the top is frozen tomato paste (left over from when we made spaghetti bolognese).  Ahh! I loved seeing all those scraps that would have been in the trash go to good use!!

Once all of the veggies are in the crock pot, we filled it up with water to the level of the vegetables.  Then we had some fun.  We added in a splash of olive oil, two garlic cloves, some salt, pepper, thyme, and a bay leaf.  (We had thought about adding some parsley and a bit of white wine, but forgot about it at the time.)  Then we put the lid on, set the heat on high, and waited four hours.  Mmmm.... vegetable smells filled the apartment!

After four hours, we poured the veggies and broth through a strainer into a pot (Oven mitts are a MUST because your crock pot will be very hot!).

Here is the delicious broth that we were left with!  It's so red because it's a bit heavy on the tomato because of the whole tomato and tomato paste.

When we put the broth into containers I was shocked to see that we got 12 cups of broth out of this!  We froze the three smaller containers for later use, and we used the large container of broth to make risotto yesterday.

It was so much fun to make our own veggie broth!  I am looking forward to doing it again (we had too many veggies to fit in the crock pot this time, so I'm sure it won't be long before we fill up another bag in the freezer).  It just felt really nice to know what exactly was going into our food, and to know that (while we weren't reducing any waste--the vegetable scraps still got thrown away afterward) we were getting an additional use out of scrap veggies before throwing them out.  No worries though!  When we move back to MN we will be composting those scraps afterwards.

Birthday, Mother's Day, Anniversary

Here are some cards that I've made over the last year that I just never got around to posting.  Enjoy!

Summer Reading List

I still have a take-home final to do, thank-you notes to write (for a conference I was in charge of), and thesis work to do... but it's practically summer vacation.  Sure, I'll be working full-time on my thesis, but I feel much less guilty about reading for pleasure during the summer than I do during the school year.

I'm also going to make it a goal to write a short review of each book on here.  This will be my rating system:

• ***** (5 Stars) = Loved it! A favorite I could read again and again!
• **** (4 Stars) = Very good.  I strongly recommend this book.
• *** (3 Stars) = Pretty good, but it's not the best (still worth reading).
• ** (2 Stars) = Eh... I'm not a fan.
• * (1 Star) = Not worth your time.

And so, without further ado, here is my summer reading list (in no particular order):

• "No Apparent Danger" by Victoria Bruce
• "Side Jobs" by Jim Butcher
• "Ghost Story" by Jim Butcher (comes out July 26!!)
• "Traveling Mercies" by Anne Lamott
• "The Meaning of Wife" by Anne Kingston
• "Circus of the Damned" by Laurell K. Hamilton
• "Heat Stroke" by Rachel Caine
• "The River of Doubt" by Candice Millard
• "The Well of Lost Plots" by Jasper Fforde

"Vegables"

Spring Break is drawing to a close now, and I'm not gonna lie... we ate a LOT of food this week.  Erik's friend Jacob and his friend Anthony were in town visiting for the week.  It was a lot of fun, but we ate so much food!  We went out to restaurants for all but one dinner, had leftovers pretty much every day for lunch (or fast food), and we introduced them to our guilty pleasures of cupcakes and frozen yogurt shops. Once they were introduced to these tasty treats, we may or may not have gone back every day.

This is pretty much what I ate this week:

Delicious? You bet (mmmm... cheese curds)!  Did I ever have the chance to get hungry? No, it just happened to be time for the next meal.  Oiy.

Our guests left town today.  While it was a lot of fun, I'm glad at the chance to get back to healthier eating.  All I want to eat today is fruits and vegetables.  Or, as I was whining today when Erik asked what I wanted for dinner... "I just want vegables.... mmm... vegables."  I'm predicting a week full of salad, fruit, and greek yogurt, and that's fine by me!

Photo credits: Cupcake images (www.thecupcakery.com), all others are the result of a super quick Google image search.

Create a Vacuum Day

Vacuum desiccator

According to holidayinsights.com, last Friday (February 4) was Create a Vaccuum Day.  Man, if only I had known that sooner!  I would have celebrated on time.  Instead, I guess I celebrated a week late.

Today I vacuum-impregnated my rock core samples from the Klamath Mountains.  You might be thinking, "Huh??"  One of my office buddies (a PhD student) showed me how to set my samples in epoxy and then put them in a vacuum chamber so that all of the tiny little air bubbles get sucked out.  Thus, I'm left with a nice (and bubble-free!) sample to look at under the Scanning Electron Microscope.

Yep, I think this is my nerdiest post to date.  And, by the way, I had no idea that Create a Vacuum Day existed until I stumbled upon it this evening. :)

Thesis stuff...

from PhD Comics

Mine's only a master's thesis, but the folks at PhD Comics are genius.  The goal is to defend my thesis in the summer (assuming I get it mostly written this semester).  But... it's hard to schedule anything with faculty during the summer (let alone 4 of them) due to busy schedules and field work.  And... things always take longer than anticipated.  The other day, I agreed to let my adviser request a TA spot for me in the fall. :(  I don't want to be in Vegas in the fall, but I guess if that happens, it would be nice to be able to pay rent.