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Aug. 8th, 2014 09:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tvordljNearly the weekend. Three weeks and Graham will be here and three weeks from tomorrow Staci gets married!!! My sister is nearly beside herself with excitement. My mother is so anxious that she had my nephew drive her to her cousin's place so he knows how to get there and when she and I went to my aunt's last weekend, I drove her down to where the marina is where the wedding's going to be so she knows how long it takes to get there. She's not taking any chances that she'll be late and if she has her way leaving when she says she might to make sure there's enough time, she'll end up there an hour early! We're staying overnight in a hotel not far from where my mother's cousin lives actually but it's a bit closer to the venue than from where i live which is a good 40 minute drive at least. It'll only be about 15 to the hotel from the venue.
Then we'll head out on the road to the US on the Monday. I must schedule my traditional pedicure and get my hair done as well. I also have to get a blue tie for Graham to match Staci's colours as most of the men in the family will have similar. It's a kind of violet blue, "periwinkle" is what it's called, or similar to a wedgewood blue. Graham just throws his hands up and says he'll never figure out the right shade so asked me to get it. I think i'll head over to the mall after work today and have a look around there. It'll be cheaper than shopping on Spring Garden Road.
It's been pretty quiet at work the past couple of weeks with full on vacation season. There aren't any requests coming through for report fixes etc. Does make the days go by slowly.
I ordered my wedding napkins and thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
acey who will receive the shipment and send on to me since the website doesn't deliver outside the US. I looked elsewhere and couldn't find what I wanted that could be personalized with our name and date on it as well as the "Keep Calm and Say I Do" logo. :) Graham will also pick up a few packages of British flag napkins as well. We will be meeting with the event guy at the hotel while he's here to finalize the menus and go over things like the napkins and getting cakes and flowers and stuff delivered. Timing and stuff like that. Graham's going to do the artwork for the invitations and I want to have them printed before Christmas so i can send them in the new year. Since we can't invite everyone we'd like to, I thought what I could do is let people know when the ceremony is and at least some might come to that. That might be a good compromise. I just need to note that the hotel sets up more seats than what we're expecting from the rsvp list.
Catching up on my book list:
53 -Fragments - Monique Martin - Another one of those time travel things. This time Simon and Elizabeth go to WWII London to rescue another time traveler and they get tangled in a race to find an artifact before the Nazis do. It's all spies and double agents. It was a ebook trilogy so i decided to finish it. Don't think i'll read more in the series. It was ok, but not great. Easy reading though.
54 - Family Matters - Rohinton Mistry - An elderly man, ill with Parkinson's Disease has a fall and injures his ankle. His selfish step daughter and son manage to offload him to his daughter and her family who are living in a very tiny flat. The story is mainly about the daughter, her husband and two boys living with the old fella and about the Mumbai culture (Bombay when this book was written). It's not bad but I had a hard time getting through it.
55 - Good Omens - Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett - Loved it! witty and sarcastic, it's the coming of the Apocolypse but somehow the child that is meant to be the Anti Christ isn't the one the demons thought he was. They have to find him but in the meantime, he's living his own life with his best friends and a demon dog that looks like a Jack Russell and is finding life as a dog more and more awesome :)
56 - The Girl Who Just Appeared - Jonathan Harvey - In present day, Holly, adopted as a baby, is trying to find her birth mother. In the past, Darren is a teenage boy with a prostitute for a mother and trying to deal with his own issues. There's a connection and more than one journey. Enjoyed this.
57 - Home in the Morning - Mary Glickman - The story of Jackson Sassaport, a Jew from Mississippi, his relationship with his wife and two old friends through the racial upheaval of the 1960s. It jumps back and forth in time which I find a bit annoying sometimes. Some books are ok with that but some would be better off just telling the story from start to finish. This may be one of them or at least would benefit from less jumping about.
58 - 53 Farthing - Jo Walton - An alternate history - England has made peace with the Nazis who continue their insidious Aryan nation plans on the contient. The government is highly influenced by a group of people called the Farthing Set. The daughter of one of them has shocked society by falling in love with and marrying a Jewish banker. There is a weekend party at Farthing and one of the guests is murdered. It seems like the Jewish banker is being set up to take the fall. The book is filled with anti-Semitism and all kinds of other nasty ideals but the idea of it is to show what things might have been like in that alternative timeline. The values of the Nazis, barring the violence, seem to be seeping into the rest of the world and maybe things will end up just as bad as if the Germans had continued the war and won. The story is told from two points of view, the wife of the banker who is a shallow and vapid debutant and from the pov of the police inspector. The debutant bits are really annoying, I found and don't really add much to the overall story aside from showing how naive people can be. Apparently this is a series, mainly to do with the inspector so at least the debutant won't be in it again but i don't think i'll bother.
59 - Child of the Phoenix - Barbara Erskine - I like her books, great detailed historical novels. Most of them jump back and forth from the present to the past but this keeps to the past only and tells the story of Eleyne who is a daughter of one of the princes of Wales in the 13th century. She marries four times to four very different men and falls in love with a king, a man who won't let her go even after he's dead. She's got a mad woman for a nurse and though she has the Sight, she can't stop things from happening and can't see her own future very well. I read this years ago and liked it a lot. On second reading, it's still good but parts of it seem a bit much (the dead lover's continued presence). Still a good read, and she's based on what may be a real person, according to the author's notes.
60 - Persuasion - Jane Austen - I thought I'd read this before but i don't think i have. It's probably my favourite Jane Austen story, though, having seen the movie (or maybe it was a BBC drama) with Ciaran Hinds as Captain Wentworth. Excellent. I've seen another version and the cast wasn't nearly as good. I liked the book quite a bit, as well.
Then we'll head out on the road to the US on the Monday. I must schedule my traditional pedicure and get my hair done as well. I also have to get a blue tie for Graham to match Staci's colours as most of the men in the family will have similar. It's a kind of violet blue, "periwinkle" is what it's called, or similar to a wedgewood blue. Graham just throws his hands up and says he'll never figure out the right shade so asked me to get it. I think i'll head over to the mall after work today and have a look around there. It'll be cheaper than shopping on Spring Garden Road.
It's been pretty quiet at work the past couple of weeks with full on vacation season. There aren't any requests coming through for report fixes etc. Does make the days go by slowly.
I ordered my wedding napkins and thanks to
acey who will receive the shipment and send on to me since the website doesn't deliver outside the US. I looked elsewhere and couldn't find what I wanted that could be personalized with our name and date on it as well as the "Keep Calm and Say I Do" logo. :) Graham will also pick up a few packages of British flag napkins as well. We will be meeting with the event guy at the hotel while he's here to finalize the menus and go over things like the napkins and getting cakes and flowers and stuff delivered. Timing and stuff like that. Graham's going to do the artwork for the invitations and I want to have them printed before Christmas so i can send them in the new year. Since we can't invite everyone we'd like to, I thought what I could do is let people know when the ceremony is and at least some might come to that. That might be a good compromise. I just need to note that the hotel sets up more seats than what we're expecting from the rsvp list.Catching up on my book list:
53 -Fragments - Monique Martin - Another one of those time travel things. This time Simon and Elizabeth go to WWII London to rescue another time traveler and they get tangled in a race to find an artifact before the Nazis do. It's all spies and double agents. It was a ebook trilogy so i decided to finish it. Don't think i'll read more in the series. It was ok, but not great. Easy reading though.
54 - Family Matters - Rohinton Mistry - An elderly man, ill with Parkinson's Disease has a fall and injures his ankle. His selfish step daughter and son manage to offload him to his daughter and her family who are living in a very tiny flat. The story is mainly about the daughter, her husband and two boys living with the old fella and about the Mumbai culture (Bombay when this book was written). It's not bad but I had a hard time getting through it.
55 - Good Omens - Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett - Loved it! witty and sarcastic, it's the coming of the Apocolypse but somehow the child that is meant to be the Anti Christ isn't the one the demons thought he was. They have to find him but in the meantime, he's living his own life with his best friends and a demon dog that looks like a Jack Russell and is finding life as a dog more and more awesome :)
56 - The Girl Who Just Appeared - Jonathan Harvey - In present day, Holly, adopted as a baby, is trying to find her birth mother. In the past, Darren is a teenage boy with a prostitute for a mother and trying to deal with his own issues. There's a connection and more than one journey. Enjoyed this.
57 - Home in the Morning - Mary Glickman - The story of Jackson Sassaport, a Jew from Mississippi, his relationship with his wife and two old friends through the racial upheaval of the 1960s. It jumps back and forth in time which I find a bit annoying sometimes. Some books are ok with that but some would be better off just telling the story from start to finish. This may be one of them or at least would benefit from less jumping about.
58 - 53 Farthing - Jo Walton - An alternate history - England has made peace with the Nazis who continue their insidious Aryan nation plans on the contient. The government is highly influenced by a group of people called the Farthing Set. The daughter of one of them has shocked society by falling in love with and marrying a Jewish banker. There is a weekend party at Farthing and one of the guests is murdered. It seems like the Jewish banker is being set up to take the fall. The book is filled with anti-Semitism and all kinds of other nasty ideals but the idea of it is to show what things might have been like in that alternative timeline. The values of the Nazis, barring the violence, seem to be seeping into the rest of the world and maybe things will end up just as bad as if the Germans had continued the war and won. The story is told from two points of view, the wife of the banker who is a shallow and vapid debutant and from the pov of the police inspector. The debutant bits are really annoying, I found and don't really add much to the overall story aside from showing how naive people can be. Apparently this is a series, mainly to do with the inspector so at least the debutant won't be in it again but i don't think i'll bother.
59 - Child of the Phoenix - Barbara Erskine - I like her books, great detailed historical novels. Most of them jump back and forth from the present to the past but this keeps to the past only and tells the story of Eleyne who is a daughter of one of the princes of Wales in the 13th century. She marries four times to four very different men and falls in love with a king, a man who won't let her go even after he's dead. She's got a mad woman for a nurse and though she has the Sight, she can't stop things from happening and can't see her own future very well. I read this years ago and liked it a lot. On second reading, it's still good but parts of it seem a bit much (the dead lover's continued presence). Still a good read, and she's based on what may be a real person, according to the author's notes.
60 - Persuasion - Jane Austen - I thought I'd read this before but i don't think i have. It's probably my favourite Jane Austen story, though, having seen the movie (or maybe it was a BBC drama) with Ciaran Hinds as Captain Wentworth. Excellent. I've seen another version and the cast wasn't nearly as good. I liked the book quite a bit, as well.
