(no subject)
Jun. 26th, 2008 09:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lenora_roseNothing by way of an answer yet on why SMD dropped me like a hot rock. Theories so far include:
- The guy from the temp agency suggested it was a speed-of-data-entry issue, because that's common. My objection is simply that since I had been at the office a total of 6 days, one of which was a conference, they hadn't time to make that absolute a judgement unless I was WAAAY behind, and even then, they should have talked to me first. Also, I am sure I was not waaay behind, or even behind at all - and if my progress at the task was insufficiently satisfying, I dare to suggest they have unrealistic expectations.
- Two different people have suggested someone's daughter needed a summer job. Objections: it seems out of character for the people I met at the workplace. Also, they wanted me until December.
- The probable incompatible hours in July were too incompatible. Again, though, an issue in the works, not resolved, not even overly discussed.
Whatever the problem, I *still* think there's soemthing off about the complete lack of discussion.
However, right now I'm much more interested in resolving the 2 days of pay that got lost in the mail... at least I know they cut and issued the cheque. I also KNOW it didn't get to me and my bank account. This makes me grumpy.
_________________________
More deer!
About three weeks ago, I came in to RCC to hear that the day before, a doe had given birth on the riverbanks - someplace where at least one person could get close enough to get pictures. This morning I came into the office, looked out the window, and the three of them, mom and 2 beautifully speckled fawns, were perfectly set up in an open grassy spot. They disappeared and reappeared a few times through the morning, including some no-S*** gamboling on the part of one fawn. Then, no doubt, lay down to nap in the summer swelter. Between that and being brought an Tim's Iced-capp for no particular reason whatsoever, it was a happy morning. Alas, the work is pretty steeep, so the afternoon was stress.
__________________________
The Challenge: - Post 3 things you've done in your lifetime that you don't think anybody else on your friends list has done. - See if anybody else responds with "I've done that." If they have, you need to add another! (2.b., 2.c., etc...) - Have your friends cut & paste this into their journal to see what unique things they've done in their life.
Let's see....
1) I appear in an episode of Sesame Street.
2) I have made earnest attempts to learn both Finnish and Welsh. (The Finnish lasted less time, but that's because we had a Welsh teacher. The Finnish only had a language tape and book.)
3) I helped drive sheep (badly; I was nine) in New Zealand. (At least one person on my F-list does this regularly in France, thus the caveat of location; in a country I don't even live in)
___________________________
The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed.
1) Bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them
First, yes, there are no few things in here I have on my anti-to-read list, as in books I mean to never read. Probably most of us do. Also things I've kind of considered but don't feel I should italicize: a prime example would be Little Women. I see it cited often enough to feel I'm likely missing something not to have read it, but I still don't think I'll get to it.
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (Liked lots, but not with the passion of many Austenians)
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (Parts of it - well, book three - I love...)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman (I've read the first two and mean to read the third...)
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens (For school, but I liked it more than most seemed to.)
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy (I read the Mayor of Casterbridge for school, and that was enough drear, thanks. i didn't hate it the way some people hate Hardy, but I didn't like it much.)
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (I suspect I've made more headway than many, as I've read some outside school for fun.)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams (I'm not sure love is the term, but valued hugely, yes.)
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame (I loved bits of this. But as a whole? I think it may be weaker than the sum of its parts.)
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis (The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and the Silver Chair.)
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (AS rarelytame said: "isn't this a Chronicle of Narnia?... Why is it counted twice?")
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne (Just some of the poetry.)
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (This is close to being on the anti-to-read list.)
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (The one Marquez novel I read put me off his long work, but I've read a couple short pieces I liked.)
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood (Curious, but not enough to italicize.)
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon (These last two I don't know enough about to judge my actual interest level.)
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (If I did try one of his in spite of In Evil Hour's horribleness, it would be more likely this one.)
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt (I know nothing about this.)
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas (I read an abridged version... but didn't know that until much later. It was still as long as the Three Musketeers. I want to try the whole sometime.)
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding (I have no idea why I'm curious about this.)
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker (Started it... got halfway. I think I was 16. I keep thinking I should try again, I have better tolerance for older prose styles.)
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (Supposedly she wrote a pile of books. Three seem to still be known, and ONE - this one - Is really good. A Little Princess is bearable, never tried LIttle Lord Fauntleroy.)
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill (Never heard of it; the title is intriguing.)
75 Ulysses - James Joyce (ON the anti-to-read list. Bad me.)
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath (Was supposed to read it for a literature class. Got halfway and punted the rest. Did NOT like.)
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (I've read some of them.)
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare (Once again, a repeat entry...)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl (James and the Giant Peach and the Witches were better.)
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo (There's a weird little rewrite of the story called Jean Valjean done by a Canadian priest in I think the 1800s that I have read.)
- The guy from the temp agency suggested it was a speed-of-data-entry issue, because that's common. My objection is simply that since I had been at the office a total of 6 days, one of which was a conference, they hadn't time to make that absolute a judgement unless I was WAAAY behind, and even then, they should have talked to me first. Also, I am sure I was not waaay behind, or even behind at all - and if my progress at the task was insufficiently satisfying, I dare to suggest they have unrealistic expectations.
- Two different people have suggested someone's daughter needed a summer job. Objections: it seems out of character for the people I met at the workplace. Also, they wanted me until December.
- The probable incompatible hours in July were too incompatible. Again, though, an issue in the works, not resolved, not even overly discussed.
Whatever the problem, I *still* think there's soemthing off about the complete lack of discussion.
However, right now I'm much more interested in resolving the 2 days of pay that got lost in the mail... at least I know they cut and issued the cheque. I also KNOW it didn't get to me and my bank account. This makes me grumpy.
_________________________
More deer!
About three weeks ago, I came in to RCC to hear that the day before, a doe had given birth on the riverbanks - someplace where at least one person could get close enough to get pictures. This morning I came into the office, looked out the window, and the three of them, mom and 2 beautifully speckled fawns, were perfectly set up in an open grassy spot. They disappeared and reappeared a few times through the morning, including some no-S*** gamboling on the part of one fawn. Then, no doubt, lay down to nap in the summer swelter. Between that and being brought an Tim's Iced-capp for no particular reason whatsoever, it was a happy morning. Alas, the work is pretty steeep, so the afternoon was stress.
__________________________
The Challenge: - Post 3 things you've done in your lifetime that you don't think anybody else on your friends list has done. - See if anybody else responds with "I've done that." If they have, you need to add another! (2.b., 2.c., etc...) - Have your friends cut & paste this into their journal to see what unique things they've done in their life.
Let's see....
1) I appear in an episode of Sesame Street.
2) I have made earnest attempts to learn both Finnish and Welsh. (The Finnish lasted less time, but that's because we had a Welsh teacher. The Finnish only had a language tape and book.)
3) I helped drive sheep (badly; I was nine) in New Zealand. (At least one person on my F-list does this regularly in France, thus the caveat of location; in a country I don't even live in)
___________________________
The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed.
1) Bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them
First, yes, there are no few things in here I have on my anti-to-read list, as in books I mean to never read. Probably most of us do. Also things I've kind of considered but don't feel I should italicize: a prime example would be Little Women. I see it cited often enough to feel I'm likely missing something not to have read it, but I still don't think I'll get to it.
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (Liked lots, but not with the passion of many Austenians)
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (Parts of it - well, book three - I love...)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman (I've read the first two and mean to read the third...)
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens (For school, but I liked it more than most seemed to.)
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy (I read the Mayor of Casterbridge for school, and that was enough drear, thanks. i didn't hate it the way some people hate Hardy, but I didn't like it much.)
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (I suspect I've made more headway than many, as I've read some outside school for fun.)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams (I'm not sure love is the term, but valued hugely, yes.)
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame (I loved bits of this. But as a whole? I think it may be weaker than the sum of its parts.)
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis (The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and the Silver Chair.)
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (AS rarelytame said: "isn't this a Chronicle of Narnia?... Why is it counted twice?")
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne (Just some of the poetry.)
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (This is close to being on the anti-to-read list.)
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (The one Marquez novel I read put me off his long work, but I've read a couple short pieces I liked.)
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood (Curious, but not enough to italicize.)
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon (These last two I don't know enough about to judge my actual interest level.)
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (If I did try one of his in spite of In Evil Hour's horribleness, it would be more likely this one.)
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt (I know nothing about this.)
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas (I read an abridged version... but didn't know that until much later. It was still as long as the Three Musketeers. I want to try the whole sometime.)
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding (I have no idea why I'm curious about this.)
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker (Started it... got halfway. I think I was 16. I keep thinking I should try again, I have better tolerance for older prose styles.)
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (Supposedly she wrote a pile of books. Three seem to still be known, and ONE - this one - Is really good. A Little Princess is bearable, never tried LIttle Lord Fauntleroy.)
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill (Never heard of it; the title is intriguing.)
75 Ulysses - James Joyce (ON the anti-to-read list. Bad me.)
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath (Was supposed to read it for a literature class. Got halfway and punted the rest. Did NOT like.)
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (I've read some of them.)
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare (Once again, a repeat entry...)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl (James and the Giant Peach and the Witches were better.)
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo (There's a weird little rewrite of the story called Jean Valjean done by a Canadian priest in I think the 1800s that I have read.)
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no subject
Date: 2008-06-27 01:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-28 05:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-29 05:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-29 05:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-29 05:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-06 09:09 pm (UTC)Other stuff that leaps to mind as deserving a place on this list more, at least, than The DaVinci Code: Frankenstein, Cry the Beloved Country (!!!), maybe Flowers for Algernon.
no subject
Date: 2008-07-08 07:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-09 12:59 am (UTC)I didn't think The Kite Runner was that great either, to the point where I traded my copy at a used book store. I still have The Lovely Bones, if anyone wants to borrow it. Its well worth reading.
I think I used to read to you both from Wind in the Willows. I own or at least used to own, a copy that was darn near worn out.
One of my all time favorites was To Kill a Mockingbird and I remember you were totally turned off it by having to take it in school.