Well She Sure Ain't No Leaf Blower

Looking to set some goals and get some outdoor work done today? Let me presumptuously recommend the Susie Geissler approach: 

1) Take out lawn cart and swear all the way across the lawn because it's colder than you thought.

2) Place one dead item in cart and start thinking about tacos. Why tacos? WHY NOT TACOS.

3) Feel a sense of accomplishment for one dead item placed so exquisitely in cart but realize there has to be a tool that does this for you.

4) Go inside and reward yourself for hard work by making a nice freshly ground cup of French Roast. Go the extra mile and froth the whipped cream with a bit of raspberry because, let's face it, you've earned it.

5) Go back outside and find the Fed Ex man left the new guest bed frame on the porch but did not have the courtesy to place a dead item in the cart for you. Fed Ex men are selfish.

6) Sit down and contemplate who you will ask for help assembling said bed frame. Most likely the one who got a power drill for Christmas. You know who you are.

7) Place an additional dead item in lawn cart, swear across the lawn as you put cart away and...

8) Call it a day.

Reading Books Adored By People I Adore

Breakfast of Champions III - January 2013 | Susan Geissler

One of my New Year's Resolutions for 2013 was to Read Books Adored By People I Adore. I talked in a previous blog post (Crowdsourcing Your Friends About Books) how this list evolved. The full list is included in the post and I removed all the works I previously read except for two that need revisiting (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes). 

Thank you to all my friends who helped put this list together for me via Facebook, text message, phone call, slips of paper, napkins, the back of your business card, mailing me the book, slipping the book into my home undetected, physically hitting me in the forehead with the book after you had too many cocktails, informing me that the main character is a total disaster and you suspected I wrote the book under a pseudonym, or that this may be the book to help me make sense of senseless things that have happened in life thus far.

I will think of each of you as I read all 52 of them, one for each week of 2013. And if you are looking for inspiration from me, here are my 100 favorite books ever: Susie's Top 100

1. Breakfast of Champions - Kurt Vonnegut*
2. A Thousand Splendid Suns - Kahled Hosseini 
3. The Devil of Nanking - Mo Hayder
4. Armed to the Teeth With Lipstick - Blag Dalia
5. The End of Your Life Bookclub - Will Schwalbe*
6. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert Pirsig
7. John Dies At the End - David Wong*
8. Assholes (a theory) - James Aaron
9. Kiss Me Judas - Will Christopher Baer
10. Mere Christianity - C.S. Lewis
11. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle*
12. Life on Planet Rock: From Guns n' Roses to Nirvana, a Backstage Journey Through Rocks Most Debauched Decade - Lonn Friend
13. Such a Pretty Fat: One Narcissist's Quest To Discover If Her Life Makes Her Ass Look Big, Or Why Pie Is Not the Answer - Jen Lancaster
14. The Contortionist's Handbook - Craig Clevenger 
15. Redeeming Love - Francine Rivers 
16. Same Kind of Different As Me - Ron Hall
17. 1Q84 - Haruki Murakami
18. You're Not Doing It Right: Tales of Marriage, Sex, Death and Other Humiliations - Michael Ian Black
19. The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail - But Some Don't - Nate Silver
20. Guilty Pleasures - Laurell K. Hamilton*
21. The Gunslinger (The Dark Tower #1) - Stephen King*
22. Discovery of Witches - Deborah Harkness
23. The Color of Magic - Terry Pratchett*
24. The Memoirs of Cleopatra - Margaret George
25. Triggerfish Twist - Tim Dorsey
26. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller*
27. Assassination Nation - Sarah Vowell
28. Cheat: A Man's Guide To Infidelity - Bill Burr, Robert Kelly, Joe DeRosa
29. Traveling Mercies - Anne Lamott
30. A Game of Thrones - George R.R. Martin*
31. The Demolished Man - Alfred Bester*
32. Definitive H.P. Lovecraft - H.P. Lovecraft*
33. The Prince of Tides - Pat Conroy
34. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test - Tom Woolf
35. Anansi Boys - Neil Gaiman*
36. A Perfect Day for Bananafish - J.D. Salinger
37. Women - Charles Bukowski
38. World War Z - Max Brooks*
39. Confessions of an Economic Hit Man - John Perkins 
40. Amazing Things Will Happen - C.C. Chapman
41. Lit: A Memoir - Mary Karr
42. The Lightning Thief - Rick Riorden*
43. Middlesex - Jeffery Eugenides*
44. Outlander (Outlander #1) - Diana Gabaldon
45. The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver*
46. We Were Soldiers Once...and Young - Harold Moore
47. Storm Front - Jim Butcher*
48. The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho*
49. Ellen Foster - Kaye Gibbons
50. Towing Jehovah - James K. Morrow  
51. The Places In Between - Rory Stewart
52. The Art of Happiness - The Dalai Lama XIV*

* Denotes books I already own. 

Breakfast of Champions I - January 2013