Heat Rave

A couple of you mentioned Bryce Courtenay’s The Power of One in yesterday’s comments. That just happens to be the book I bought in the thrift shop a couple of weeks ago. I read the book when it first came out in hardcover (about 18 years ago), and loved it. So I agree with Sunshyn and Michael. And, Mary, thank you for your recommendations. I’ve added The Once and Future King to my list. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a great movie. Is the book even better? Does anyone else have any recommendations? (Other than Mad magazine, my dear LA!)

In other news, I saw the new pain management doctor yesterday. She prescribed Lidoderm patches, Cymbalta (anti-depressants taken in small doses have been found to be helpful for pain), and the anti-inflammatory, Naproxen. The pharmacy bill for these meds came to a staggering $65. That might not seem like a lot of money to some of you, but it sure is to me, especially considering that I won’t be earning a paycheck over the summer.  The potential side effects are pretty alarming, as well.

Besides the medication therapy, I also have to go back for trigger point injections.  Dr PM could have performed the procedure yesterday, but said she will only do the injections if someone is there with me.  I explained that I didn’t drive, and had taken the Dial-A-Ride bus, but that wasn’t good enough for her.  She insists that someone has to accompany me when I have the injections.

I don’t want to take any more time off from work (other than on the 20th, when I am scheduled for the second series of Epidural Steroid Injections), so I’ll go back for the trigger point injections after school gets out.  (June 27th is our last day.) However, the way my back feels (it took a turn for the worse yesterday), I don’t know if I’ll make it until then…

Speaking of work, school will be dismissed at 11:30 this morning because of the excessively high temps. I’m hoping to catch a ride home with My Friend so I don’t have to walk in this god-awful heat.

Song of the Day: Too Darn Hot from Kiss Me Kate

So Many Books, So Little Time

Saw this over at Hil’s place and couldn’t resist doing it myself, being the book lover that I am.

Meme: The top 100 or so books most often marked as “unread” by LibraryThing’s users. Bold the books you have read, underline the ones you read for school, italicize the ones you started but didn’t finish.

Note: I can’t remember which, if any, I read for school – The Catcher in the Rye, perhaps…

Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov (One of my favorites!)
Guns, Germs, and Steel
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged (Eww - Ayn Rand!)
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West (This is on my “To-read” list.)
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead (My least favorite book. Honestly, I hated it.)
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange (Loved the movie but never got around to reading the book.)
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible
1984
Angels & Demons
Inferno
The Satanic Verses (It’s on my bookshelf, but I haven’t read it yet.)
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse (No, but I did read Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own.)
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere (This one is also on my “To-read” list.)
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrel

I’m curious about how many of these books others have read. Leave a note in the comments, if you feel so inclined.

Currently Reading: The Third Angel by Alice Hoffman and The Awakening by Kate Chopin (The latter is a re-read)

Song of the Day: The Book I Read by Talking Heads

The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men Often Go Astray

My plans for spring break didn’t go as expected. I only made it to one appointment (with the pain management specialist. The first facet joint injections are scheduled for May 2nd.). That was on Tuesday. I haven’t been out of the house since then because I’ve been laid low by a pretty nasty cold. Every day I feel worse instead of better.

I had been counting the days until spring break for weeks. I can’t begin to tell you how much I was looking forward to it. To add insult to injury, the weather has been spectacular. And I’m stuck in the house, sick. It’s just not right.

Yesterday, I had to decline an invitation to go to the Botanical Gardens with my cousin. On Sunday, I might have to bow out of a trip to NYC to see Spamalot. This really sucks.

Thank goodness for books. I read (and very much enjoyed) Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, and then moved on to The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs (much lighter fare, but still enjoyable enough).

When I haven’t been reading, I’ve been knitting. This is a shawl-type scarf I’m working on. (It looks lacier in person. The yarn is 100% natural silk. By the way, I also made that afghan.)

I feel pretty miserable right now, so I’ll have to cut this short. I hope that everyone else is having a better time than I am.

Song of the Day: Adelaide’s Lament from Guys and Dolls

A person can develop la grippe,
La grippe.
La post nasal drip.
With the wheezes
And the sneezes
And a sinus that’s really a pip!

From a lack of community property
And a feeling she’s getting too old
A person can develop a bad, bad cold!

Tagged and Bagged

I was tagged by our favorite mad cheese maker, Goat Barn Witch.

The challenge:

1. Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages).

2. Open the book to page 123.

3. Find the fifth sentence and write it down.

4. Add three more sentences of your own.

5. Tag five people & post a comment here once you post it to your blog, so
I can come see.

The book I reached for, by the way, is Emma, by Jane Austen.

Mr. Elton then turned back to accompany them.

When he reached the two men, Mr. Elton said, “After the Loving, Mr. Engelbert and Mr. Elvis, I urge you to check out of Heartbreak Hotel and say Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. Then, along with The Madman Across the Water, mount Les Bicyclettes de Belsize and pedal onward into the bright lights of the city that never sleeps.  Viva Las Vegas!

I’m not going to tag anybody, but if you do it, let me know in the comment section.

In other news, I had an appointment with my rheumatologist yesterday. I told her that the pain in my right shoulder blade is driving me to distraction. That constant throbbing ache, (along with the pain in my lower back ) really is sucking the life out of me. Last evening, I was in such agony, I could barely speak to Daniel when he called from Canada. (His mother will be celebrating her birthday this weekend, so he decided this would be a good time to take a vacation and visit his family.)

Anyway, Dr. Rheumatologist wants me to go for an x-ray of my right scapula. She also recommended that I see another Orthopedic Surgeon for my shoulder problems (fluid, cyst, bone spur and tear of the rotator cuff) – one with a more aggressive approach than the last orthopod I saw, who wanted to go the conservative route (physical therapy). That didn’t work out so well for me, so I will give a second opinion some thought.

My father just called to tell me that my grandmother’s sister died. I’m outta here.

Song of the Day: I’m Still Standing (barely) by Elton John