Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Lunch With Barry


Had another lunch metting with my brother Barry. We went to De Leon's. This place is really cool. It is a couple blocks off Division on Francis. I discovered this place sometime this last summer. They advertised "tortilla made fresh daily". I love Mexican food so I had to go in and check it out. Ever since then I have been hooked. They have this great marinaded steak called Ranchero Marinada or something similar to that. They also have a deli but I had never tried it out. My brother suggested we go there to the deli for lunch. I had asked him previously to look at a presentation on vision impairment that I had to give in class. He agreed to listen and give me pointers and we scheduled a time for lunch. The food was great and after spending an hour at De Leon's we left to go take pictures of this frozen waterfall I had seen the night before. The night before the snow was falling heavily and the waterfall glowed in the night. Coming back in the day it looked less magnificent and someone had put antifreeze in the water to help melt it and so it had a pink hue to it. Regardless, I really love this picture of my brother. He seems to be glowing. Maybe he stole the glow from the waterfall I had seen the night before. Below is a close up of the icicles. You can see the pink at the tip whcih give's it a strange appearance.



Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Free Rice

I just recently found this website. It seems legitimate, but you never know these days. What you do is you go to this website called Free Rice and they give you a word and you have to choose the correct synonym. Every time you get one right they donate 10 grains of rice. They monitor your vocabulary level and how much rice you have accumulated. I think it is pretty cool because you get to improve your vocabulary and help people at the same time. Check it out!

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

My New Obsession

I am very busy in school, but one thing I make sure I always have time for is a book. I recently started reading The Cat Who... series by Lilian Jackson Braun. The stories focus around a man in his 50's with two Siamese cats. One of the cats has "psychic" abilities. The man lives and writes for a stories for his small town newspaper and for some reason people are always getting murdered around him.

There is something about these books I really love.There usually is no sex, which is something I usually always have in my books. That isn't why I read those other books though ( I read horror, and murder/mystery books which usually always contain sex).I don't even like cats that much. The main character is in his 50's and doesn't like children so I don't relate much to him. There is so much I don't like about the books but I am so hooked. I go all over town trying to find cheap used copies. I have about 10 more out of 29 to collect. I am getting kinda worried because the author was supposedly born in 1913, she probably will not be around for much longer. She could be dead by now for all I know. I guess that is kinda of selfish but I will miss it when these books are no longer made.

If you scroll further down I have posted several different pictures of the same book. I put these on because I was so amazed at how different each book cover was from country to country. I thought international books looked all the same but just in a different language. I find this so interesting. I feel each book cover shows a little bit about what that country finds exciting/interesting. If you look, the main focus on the U.S. book is a knife with bloody footprints. But, in the other country's books,except Germany, the main focus is on the man in or the cat. The French one is just plain strange, the cats look nothing like how the cats are in the books. Enjoy examining the books, I sure did. Tell me if you get any impressions about them.

Book Covers of The Cat Who Could Read Backwards

United States

French



Italian


Dutch


German



UK