sun, sky, sleep.

[harborshore]

At the cottage. We have a little bit of internet, which is nice. I had some tiresome news, which was less nice. More tilting at the windmills of Swedish university bureaucracy, woot.

But I sat on the cliffs in the sun today and unraveled a couple of the really knotty thesis knots, and I played tennis and I cuddled with my cat, and I wrote about 800 words of a story, edited a friend's medical school statement that she sent me last week, and I got somewhere with the translation I'm working on (and will be paid for!). All in all, I can deal with the tiresome.

Also, my favorite meme is going around again.

Gacked from torakowalski:

Ask me my Top Five Whatevers. Fannish or literary or otherwise. Any top fives. Doesn't matter what, really! And I will answer them all in a new post (or in comments). Possibly with pictures.

PS: ♥

Comments

[x_dark_siren_x]

*hugs* I hope the news wasn't too bad? :/ Because I know that's kind of the last thing you need right now. ♥

Um. Okay, top five female characters to write (fannish, original, girls in RL or not), top five poems right now, and top five feminist writers/thinkers/theorists (if that isn't three separate lists).

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

Oooh, those are all very good. I'm going to start with the first one!

Top Five Female Characters To Write

1. Veronica Mars
   
2. Z Berg
   
3. Laena Monroe
   
4. Lyn-Z Ballato
   
5. Barbara Gordon

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

This one is a difficult list, because there are a LOT of them. But. Here is a list that mixes genres pretty heavily.

Top Five Feminists
1. Virginia Woolf, because she's funny and intellectual and still goddamn relevant
2. Evelyn Fox Keller, brilliant feminist science historian
3. Anne Carson, poet and translator
4. Jane Austen
5. Mary Woolstonecraft

And then a whole bunch of others. &feminists;

[x_dark_siren_x]

...

Okay, that does it. As soon as I get my loan, I'm going to pay off my library fines and get out the uni's copy of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Fuck any of the reading I actually have to do, I've been thinking about reading this for a long time, and you just clinched it.

&Jane Austen; indeed. But I will be checking out the others too. Just, y'know. After Woolstonecraft.

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

She is well worth it, she really is.

[torakowalski.livejournal.com]

Ugh, stupid university bureaucracy. *smites it for you*

Top five Shakespeare plays and top five things things you did in London. ♥

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

Those are tough! But great!

Top Five Shakespeare Plays
1. A Midsummer Night's Dream
2. Much Ado About Nothing
3. Romeo and Juliet (for the language more than the love story)
4. As You Like It
5. Henry IV Part 1

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

Top Five London Things
1. Bloomsbury bookstores with YOU (no, seriously, that was a great day)
2. Ice cream and then sushi with kickingrad and my friend M
3. Henry IV Part 1 and 2, god (also Margaret, the awesome British lady)
4. Getting introduced to Ben's Cookies
5. Hyde Park with my friend Michael--trees and spirited conversation

[bunnymcfoo.livejournal.com]

Top five places to find inner peace (or just a minute to relax)

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

Top Five Places For a Moment To Think
1. The cliffs out here (the cottage)
2. The woods near my grandmother's summer house
3. This cafe in Phoenix, AZ (and don't I wish it was closer)
4. My own bed *grins*
5. Next to the water (the sea) where it comes into the park near where my parents live

[nokomis305.livejournal.com]

Top five albums!

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

Oh jesus. This is NOT an exhaustive list, okay?

Top Five Albums
1. Regina Spektor's Far
2. Subterranean Homesick Blues
3. The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill
4. Aretha Sings the Blues
5. Goodbye Blues

ETA: Just noticed three of those albums have 'blues' in the title. Uh, I swear I'm not as melancholy as it looks!

[nokomis305.livejournal.com]

Aww, you edited that in before I could tease you about it!

But this is a lovely, lovely list! All of thsoe are FANTASTIC albums.

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

You ask FIENDISH questions, lady. What are yours?

[nokomis305.livejournal.com]

Thank you for turning it around on me and MAKING ME STRUGGLE HORRIBLY. These are all albums I've listened to millions of times and still love with a passion and were formative for me; my answers would be wildly different if I were picking by genre or as my current top five or anything. THERE ARE A LOT OF ALBUMS NEAR AND DEAR TO MY HEART.

1. Nirvana's Unplugged in New York
2. A Perfect Circle - Thirteenth Step
3. Hole - Live Through This
4. David Bowie - Sound + Vision (this compliation thing I can never stop listening to.)
5. Metallica - Garage Inc

[sansets]

Top five favorite recipes!

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

Ha, okay, so I couldn't figure out how to respond to this question without narrowing it down, so here goes (and feel free to ask other specific ones, such as Top Five Pastas):

Top Five Favorite Baking Recipes (in no particular order)

1. The following Peanut Butter Chocolate Chips Cookie Recipe

1 3/4 c. sifted all-purpose flour
3/4 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp salt
1 egg
1 1/4 c. brown sugar, firmly packed
3/4 natural peanut butter
1/2 c. butter
3 tbsp milk
1 tbsp vanilla
chocolate chips, eyeball it to your liking

1. in a small bowl, combine flour, baking soda and salt.
2. in a large bowl, combine sugar, peanut butter, butter, milk, and vanilla until well-blended.
3. add flour and chocolate chips to wet mixture, stir until just combined.
4. form into balls on cookie sheet, flatten somewhat.

bake at 375F for 10-12 minutes or until just set and beginning to brown. remove from oven and let cool on the sheet for 3-5 minutes before removing to let cool on a wire rack.

recipe claims it makes 24 cookies; i make 1/4 recipe at a time and get 8 per batch, so that would be 24 huge cookies or 32 more reasonably-sized ones. 10 minutes in the oven is perfect for my 1/4 batch of 8.

2. This recipe for soft oatmeal cookies

3. These Chocolate Cookies

4. This cake, except I make the filling using instant coffee stirred into a paste with about three drops of water or so instead of vanilla sugar

5. Vanilla Roasted Pears--MY GOD.

[sansets]

Oh my GOD - I want to go and make them all now! *bookmarks with glee*

And since you offered - how about your top 5 favorite one pot/pan/dish recipes?

[mahoni.livejournal.com]

I hope the windmills go down hard. :(

Top 5 favorite articles of clothing? Top 5 comfort foods/drinks?

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

They will wither and die or else I will take a totally different turn, it's all good.

Top 5 favorite articles of clothing
1. My green flowery dress that is my mom's old stage costume
2. My stripey purple Gap cotton underwear
3. My black arm warmers
4. My stripey grey/silver high top Converse
5. My new plaid button-down that has ruffles ♥

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

Top Five Comfort Foods/Drink
1. Dad's lasagna
2. The cup of tea jamjar made me in the morning in London
3. Cinnamon rolls
4. Mom's hazelnut chocolate cookies
5. Hot chocolate

[kickingrad.livejournal.com]

Love for you, bb ♥

Top 5 places you've been! Top 5 artists! Top 5 colours!

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

Lovelovelove. *clings*

Top 5 places I've been
1. Fourni, Greece
2. London
3. San Francisco (or rather, the vineyard we borrowed and stayed at about thirty miles outside of the city)
4. Altea, Spain
5. The Swedish archipelago ♥

I have to think about the Top 5 artists, but the Top 5 colors:

1. GREEEEEEEEN.
2. Black (unlike my heart, baby)
3. Blue, same as the sea, so greyish, really, but mostly blue
4. Currently I am a huge fan of purple, the kind that is a bit pinkish--I own a lot of Gap underwear with this color
5. The sort of yellow that's in sunflowers

[turps33.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry about the bad news.

Top 5 stories and books.

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

Eh, it'll work out, it's mostly just tiresome. I'm done with bureaucracy, basically.

Do you mean stories as in fic? And books as a separate list? Or the same one? :D

[turps33.livejournal.com]

I hope it does work out.

Sorry for the unclear list. I meant one list for fic another for books.

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

Not to worry! Dear god, I frequently give my students unclear instructions, you know?

You ask tough questions. I shall ponder and return.

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

Books!

In no particular order and with an attempt to choose different genres:

1. Women and Apple Trees by Moa Martinsson
2. Homecoming by Julia Alvarez
3. Arcadia by Tom Stoppard
4. The Brothers Lionheart by Astrid Lindgren
5. A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf

[turps33.livejournal.com]

Thank you for that!

I always like knowing about the books people love.

[kyasuriin.livejournal.com]

top five tv kisses! or tv couples! or top 5 shows i should be watching right now :D

(also hope the news isn't too bad and things turn around soon. ♥)

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

Top Five TV couples (or couples who have a lot of UST and aren't actually dating yet) in no particular order

1. Parker and Hardison from Leverage
2. Bones and Booth from Bones
3. Josh and Amy from TWW
4. Willow and Tara from BTVS
5. Logan and Veronica from VM

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

Oh, and I don't know that I can do Top 5 shows, because I am woefully out of touch, BUT.

1. Leverage. Leverage Leverage Leverage.
2. The 5th season of DW, yes.
3. The BBC version of Emma that came out last year was fantastic.

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

OOOOH. This list could have been a lot longer, but these were the ones that came to mind first.

1. The dessert at the restaurant in a teeny-tiny town outside San Francisco that looked like a set from a Western movie: vanilla/lavendar pannacotta. Like sheer heaven in a cup.

2. The ice cream I had at this tiny cafe in Rome--it was just plain chocolate, lemon sorbet, and hazelnut, but Jesus fucking CHRIST, I've never had better ice cream.

3. The chocolate orange cookie they sold me at Ben's Cookies at Kensington High Street in London last week.

4. That time we were backpacking in Greece and I had fried fish at a restaurant on a tiny tiny island called Fourni and it was basically that day's catch...

5. This one time my sister and I made pizza with arugula, mozzarella, avocado (we added that after it was done), roasted peppers, and our own chili tomato sauce. Unf.