books I'm reading

So, being unemployed has drastically improved my reading for fun AND workout habits. Silver lining! Here's a few books I've been inhaling recently.

His Dark Materials Trilogy (The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, The Amber Spyglass) by Philip Pullman

Ok I first read these in junior high and The Golden Compass is one of my favorite books of all time. The main character is a twelve year old so it's easy to lump them into "young adult fantasy," but the themes are really intense-- we're talking religion, politics, science, plus the literary quality puts them more on the Narnia end of the spectrum than the Twilight end. And there is no cheesy romance factor, in a good way! I have no idea how I even comprehended these when I was 12. Definitely worth a re-visit. And the movie is pretty good too.

Tara Road by Maeve Binchy

This was my "pretty cover" grab from the library, and it is a typical heartwarming Oprah choice. Two women faced with tough life challenges decide to swap houses. One goes to New England and one goes to Dublin, and they encounter many entertaining and deeply developed characters and ultimately discover great things about themselves and work through their challenges to get to a happy ending. I liked how it was written, kind of in a vignette style like the movie Love Actually that lets you become involved with all the many many many characters without feeling really overwhelmed with sheer number of them. One quirk that I COULDN'T get over though was the inability of the author to create believable American dialogue. So, the Americans talk like the Irish. Good thing that the majority of the book took place in Ireland.

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

I love love love Steinbeck. And I'm making a big effort to mix some classic quality literature into my fun entertainment reading. The Grapes of Wrath is probably the best novel about the Great Depression that has ever been written. Steinbeck alternates chapters of plot with chapters that describe the land and create the atmosphere of the dust bowl. Our issues these days don't even come close. Confession: I didn't finish this book before it was due back to the library and I gave it up, mainly because it was so vivid that I could practically taste the dust and despair in my mouth and I haven't been in the mood for soul crushers lately. BUT I will finish it someday!

Have you read any good books lately?



my tree job

I guess I never really posted about my job in Oregon. It's a dark drizzly day here, so why not share some warm sunny pictures? This was my "office" last summer and fall.

Lots of people I know seem to have trouble describing or understanding what I do. Well, this project is to develop a fire history of old-growth forests in southern Oregon, and then show how the forest has changed since the "white man" moved west and started putting out the forest fires.

We look for fire scars in cut stumps of pine trees that were logged in the past, and use the tree rings to assign dates to each fire scar. Fire scars are pretty obvious:

Basically, small fires used to burn in these particular ponderosa pine/mixed conifer forests every 10-15 years until the 1900's, when the fires stopped. No fire allows lots of flammable trees to grow, so when there IS a fire it tends to be a lot worse than it should be.

I study old-growth forests to see what needs to be done to restore them to more stable conditions. That's basically it. Fun science, yes. Scary confusing hard-to-understand science, definitely not.

happy birthday mama

My mom was born on Groundhog's Eve. AKA today. So was Ben's mom!

**Insert grandmother telling all the family birthday coincidences she knows of**

I was perhaps most excited to have an excuse to make this amazing ruffle cake ...  it is deceptively easy for how professional and ridiculous it looks! As long as you have enough buttercream (I ended up using almost 3 sticks of butter and then beat in a whole bag of powdered sugar with some vanilla and milk to thin it out. Paula Deen's legend must live on.)

Not pictured: me covered in butter-- because of course I ran out of frosting midway-- yelling at the poor souls who tried to do something in the kitchen while the pastry chef was at work.

p.s. I love how cute my cat is