I don’t think it is fantastic. The wings aren’t aligned correctly, the head is slightly turned, and the neck feels weak to me, but I ran out of time to make a completely new second dragon, so it will have to do. I would definitely make another dragon for friends with kids and think that the next time around I will be able to correct some of the mistakes I made this time around. Hopefully despite its flaws it’s well received.

Why yes, that is a quilt! It’s something I’ve been working on for about a year.

What you see in front of you actually started out as the back for a different quilt. When I was done making the back, I realized that I liked it a lot more than the original quilt, and started on a new project with a better quilt top.

I’ve “made” other quilts before. What I mean is that in the past, I have made a quilt top, put it in a plastic bag, delivered it to my quilting mother, and maybe a month or two later, a blanket would appear that looked vaguely like the thing I’d started with, but a billion times cooler and more useful. This time around I did everything.

Which is why this quilt is tied. I don’t really have the time or patience to actually quilt. Sewing a sandwich together for months on end seems like something I wouldn’t thrive at. I almost had a little meltdown when Mom told me I had to hand stitch the binding. (Binding is the border around the outside that glues it all together in one pretty little package.)

One of the nice things about the tying and hand stitching process was that it involved many hours of standing in front of a television. I watched all of the first season of Downton Abbey and most of Misfits which doing the hand tying. The hand stitching was mostly done while watching Archer.

Another nice thing for me about having a quilting project is that I spend my days moving form fields around on a computer screen; making something more blue; or possibly inserting, updating or selecting data from a database. When I go home at night, I can’t really pick anything up and say “This is what I did today”. I guess I could put the subversion repository on a USB stick, but it’s not the same thing. This thing takes up physical space. You can pick it up, throw it across the room, wrap yourself up in it, pretend you’re a quilt monster. Read books under it. That’s kind of cool. I can’t do that with my medical billing software. No matter how cool that database query was.

Now I just need to figure out what to do with it. I don’t really need another quilt, and I probably shouldn’t start on another project until this one is out the door. Bonus points to those of you who stopped to look at what books were on our bedside tables.

Watchmen
by Alan Moore

The Sandman
by Neil Gaiman

Serenity
by Joss Whedon

The Walking Dead
by Robert Kirkman

Leave a comment in order to vote. Vote as many times as you want, even if those votes cancel each other out. Remember, you don’t have to know anything to vote. Just pick one at random, or judge the book by its cover. I will read it when I’m done with the current Pierre Berton book, which falls about midway in the Pierre Berton Quality Spectrum, which is something that I just made up.

Big News
February started with a little more excitement than January. My brother was offered a teaching job at this new international school in Okinawa in Japan, and after much debate, decided to take it. I admire his willingness to jump at an exciting opportunity. His little girl is completely adorable and we will miss them all a lot. Everyone has Skype and we will figure out a schedule for chatting. Alan and I are trying to figure out how we can get there for a visit sometime early in 2012. Being helpful mooches, Alan and I have inherited a very lovely black leather couch, glass dinette set and other random smaller items. They leave on Wednesday.

Hobbies & Projects
I read a grand total of one book in February. That’s super pathetic, and I don’t really have a good excuse as to why I didn’t read more. I will post a review of the book soon. Maybe. As well, I will post a new Bookstravaganza list soon. Maybe. We’ll see. I did some more book buying by proxy, inherited a whole lot of my brother’s books, and forced someone to buy me a book. All of this doesn’t feel like cheating on my no-book buying rule, but it does mean that I have more books on my to-read list now than I did on January 1st.

I finished the “back” of my quilt top that I started this summer. After looking at both, it was decided that the “back” was a new quilt top and that I hated the one I started in the summer. My Mom and I discussed a strategy to finish the quilt, and then I haven’t done a thing since the first weekend of February. I have abandoned the original top and it no longer exists in my life. All in all, it seems like I made have made negative progress in February.

Social Life
My weekends were full of mostly family stuff. The first weekend, I went to Sarnia to help my Mom and Dad work on the house they randomly bought in December. I painted and helped pull staples out of floors and made my Mom tell me how to finish my quilt(s). Two other weekends involved significant amounts of niece time along with the rest of the family. I can’t get that little girl to fall asleep on me, but I can make her smile, and that’s possibly better.

The Windsor Weekend of Awesomeness was pretty good. It was weird travelling with people who weren’t Alan, but Natasha and Garry were fun in the car, and we had a great time with Esther. We hit up all our favourite restaurants and some of our other haunting grounds and general funness ensued. I actually got to meet up Esther and go to the ROM with her while she was on reading week as well. We made dinosaur noises and talked about how great Arrested Development is. We had dinner with different friends a few times and generally were sort-of social people.

Work
Continues. Scope creep is epic. I got to write one module three different times this last month as our clients changed their minds about what they wanted that many times. We’re hoping for beta testing in about five weeks. I think it’s more likely seven weeks.

Family
I think I’ve covered most of it. Mom and Dad bought a house in December and are busy fixing it up to hopefully either rent or sell it. My brother was in Japan, then was here, and is leaving again very soon. My niece is cute. My Alan is great. I like him a lot.

Other Random Stuff
Alan and I are putting our Ottawa trip on hold until the fall. Possibly Thanksgiving weekend. Scope creep has ruled out the first week of April as a viable option. I learned what RRSPs are. We haven’t done our taxes yet. Fancy new furniture. There are 3 fewer broken chairs in my apartment.

If you’re not watching Community I urge you to do so. I have told everyone I know to watch it. Three have done so and thanked me for the recontamination. Nobody has disliked it so far. Also, Fringe. I think Olivia is a great character. Both of them.

Health
When I last checked in, I was just starting in on my weight loss plan. I’d been referred to a local weight management clinic, and was still figuring out what the hell I needed to do. I’ve about six weeks in now and I think I’ve done pretty well. I have certainly improved my eating and am starting to see the results of that work. I am down about 15 pounds since I started, and more importantly, my clothes are starting to fit better. I still suck at getting exercise, but this week has been better than the last.

So that is my February in a nutshell. I wonder what the rest of March has in store for me.

Stop buying books
We’ve already talked about this. Right now, my To Read has about 130 books on it. I’ve gotten into a bit of a funk about what I read, and so I’m letting other people pick my books. That’s why I’m doing the Bookstravaganza and why I started reading A Tale Of Two Cities yesterday morning. If I can make it through another 20-30 books this year, I’d be happy with that. Ultimately, I’d like to institue a zero-sum rule for books where if one come into our home, one goes out to someone else, but we’re going to start small.

Go for more walks
Last year’s vague ‘reach some weigh loss goal’ was a complete and utter failure. I’m at roughly the same place I was last year in this respect, and it’s not a good place. I want to get this part of my life under control and I know it can be done. I need to start making better decisions and making those decisions consistently. Seems like a good first start would be going for a brisk four days a week. These will be scheduled into my calendar, as I’ve started finding accumulating task lists and schedules effective in getting shit done.

Go on a fun trip
In 2009, The Alanator and I got married and then a month or so later went to Ireland. I’m not expecting to do anything quite so epic, but we’re hoping to do something for four or five days around our anniversary or his birthday (early spring). Current suggestions are a trip to a semi-nearby city full of museums and other fun things. Potential cities: Ottawa, Chicago, Montreal, or NYC. Also I hear there’s a Kirland Lake weekend scheduled for early April, and those are always fun. I loves me my Brad and Lem time.

Make more local friends / Hang out with existing ones more
We don’t have a lot of friends who live within an hour’s drive of us. I’d like to change that. Additionally, I’d like to hang out more frequently with the people we do like. We have large quantities of friends that live within a 2-3 hour radius, and we don’t see them nearly enough.

Get new blog theme
I still like the red and black, but it’s time for something new. Thinking about changing the name as well.

Figure out finances
Pay off the remainder of my car loan and start socking away money for a rainy day.

Finish another quilt
I have the top of one made but not the bottom of it, and I like having a project that I can hold up at the end of the day and show my progress. Web app development isn’t really conducive to that sort of thing.

2011 will only be as good as I make it. The last month or so has been a little bit rough for me, so I’m hoping a bit more focus will help get myself back into a proper frame of mind and productive again.

It looks like the first book I will be reading in the 2011 Bookstravaganza will be A Tale of Two Cities. I have another dozen or so books to add to my To Be Read list due to Christmas and will be posting a new voting list as I get to about halfway through A Tale of Two Cities. You can still vote (or re-vote) on the original post. Votes will be considered until midnight tomorrow, when I shall start the book. The next voting list will have two or three books from the current list as well as some new stuff. I’ll keep trying to mix it up for y’all.

Here’s what you’re to do: Vote in the comments for as many of the above listed books as you feel. Previous votes will count, but everyone can vote again or opt to change their votes. I’ve added a few notes about my feelings on these books and how the ended up on this list, so I hope you enjoy. If you want me to read something that’s not on my epic to-be-read list, you need to give it to me, as I cannot buy books for the calendar year 2011. Want to know what to buy me? I have an Amazon wish list.

Oryx and Crake (Fiction)
Margaret Atwood
Has been recommeneded to me by many people, including my friend Jana who doesn’t seem to vote for things on my blog cause she’s busy with having a life and a kid and going to school. Seriously, she should just sit around pining for my next blog entry. Like I know the rest of you do.

The Windup Girl (Fiction)
Paolo Bacigalupi
One of 2010′s most awarded science fiction novels. Won the Nebula in 2009 and the Hugo in 2010. My mom bought this for me for my birthday and she’ll be sad if you don’t vote for it. And we don’t want to make my Mom sad cause she’s a nice lady and buys me books even though it’s quite apparent I don’t really need any more.

The Wild Frontier (Non-Fiction)
Pierre Berton
Shut up, I’m a history nerd and this is my list so I can put boring history books on it. Pierre Berton is great. He’s the Carl Sagan of Canadian history. I bet at one point he dressed like him, too. However, I promise that I will never read a book about searching for the North-West passage again, because my goodness, it was boring. Like six hundred pages of not finding what you’re looking for.

World War Z (Fiction)
Max Brooks
Already voted on by Courtney and Erin. Zombies are apparently the new vampires. Alan read it and loved it. I don’t really love zombies. Or vampires even. Though I hear the next big thing will be robots, and robots are awesome. Hopefully the zombies are okay with this or we’re all in trouble.

And Then There Were None (Fiction)
Agatha Christie
I’ve wanted to read some Agatha Christie ever since that episode of Dr Who where she was a character and a giant annoying bee-human-preacher thing terrorized a 1920′s garden party. Also in that episode was MY doctor, David Tennant, with his amazing hair (and everything else to be quite honest), and the lovely Catherine Tate, the least annoying companion in the RTD years. Like seriously, what’s with the new guy’s hair?

A Tale of Two Cities (Fiction)
Charles Dickens
Remember that episode of Dr Who with Dickens? I do. Eve Myles, who went on to play Gwen Cooper was in it. I’ve already tried to read this once and I didn’t get through the first page, but someone said that I need to read this with a British accent and then everything would be better. Willing to give it a shot. Which brings me to a new rule: I don’t have to finish the book if I don’t want to. Life is too short to read horrible things.

Preludes and Nocturnes (Graphic Novel)
Neil Gaiman
Sandman #1. Now that we have our Sandman books back from Courtney, it’s time to get into this epic graphic novel series. If you so choose.

Burning Chrome (Fiction)
William Gibson
I just listened to Friday’s episode of Q with William Gibson and I now heart him. Voted onto the list by Kat.

Catch-22 (Fiction)
Joseph Heller
Recommended once upon a time by my sister in law. I have no idea what it’s about but she hasn’t steered me wrong yet. Except for The Left Hand Of Darkness, which I have to admit was a little meh.

No Logo (Fiction)
Naomi Klein
Seems like one of those hipster books but I want to read it anyways.

The Physics of Star Trek (Non-Fiction)
Lawrence M. Krauss
You know you want to read it too.

Watchmen (Graphic Novel)
Alan Moore
I hear there’s a big blue naked man in this.

Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World (Fiction)
Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami is awesome. Everyone should read Dance Dance Dance and Norwegian Wood. You know you want to. You know you want me to read this. Vote!

Cosmos (Non-Fiction)
Carl Sagan
Have you ever read Contact? No? Then you don’t get to vote. Ever dressed like Carl Sagan? OK, I guess you can vote again.

The Kraken Wakes (Fiction)
John Wyndham
Loved Day Of The Triffids. Seriously one of the best books I read last year. Liked the Chrysalids. Hope I like this one too!

Now vote! Vote like your blog-reading entertainment depends on it!

I have to add jquery to get my table sorter going on this and to be honest it’s Friday night and I need a drink. I’ve used up all of my technical ability on doing my regex-fu.

	Title	Author	Genre
	Souls in Metal: An Anthology of Robot Futures	Ashley, Mike	Fiction
	Earth is Room Enough	Asimov, Isaac	Non-Fiction
	The Mammoth Book of Vintage Science Fiction	Asimov, Isaac	Fiction
	The Solar System and Back	Asimov, Isaac	Non-Fiction
	The Universe: From Flat Earth to Quasar	Asimov, Isaac	Non-Fiction
	Today and Tomorrow and	Asimov, Isaac	Non-Fiction
	View from a Height	Asimov, Isaac	Non-Fiction
	Oryx and Crake	Atwood, Margaret	Fiction
	Surfacing	Atwood, Margaret	Fiction
	The Blind Assassin	Atwood, Margaret	Fiction
	Emma	Austen, Jane	Fiction
	The Windup Girl	Bacigalupi, Paolo	Fiction
	Too Close For Comfort	Barlow, Maude	Non-Fiction
	My Country	Berton, Pierre	Non-Fiction
	Smug Minority	Berton, Pierre	Non-Fiction
	The Last Spike	Berton, Pierre	Non-Fiction
	The Promised Land	Berton, Pierre	Non-Fiction
	The Wild Frontier	Berton, Pierre	Non-Fiction
	The Nudist on the Late Shift	Bronson, Po	Non-Fiction
	World War Z	Brooks, Max	Fiction
	The Wealthy Barber	Chilton, David	Non-Fiction
	And Then There Were None	Christie, Agatha	Fiction
	Death Comes as the End	Christie, Agatha	Fiction
	Shadowdale	Ciencin, Scott	Fiction
	Tantras	Ciencin, Scott	Fiction
	Patriot Games	Clancy, Tom	Fiction
	City and the Stars	Clarke, Arthur C.	Fiction
	Earthlight	Clarke, Arthur C.	Fiction
	Expedition to Earth	Clarke, Arthur C.	Fiction
	A Tale of Two Cities	Dickens, Charles	Fiction
	The City of Ember	DuPrau, Jeanne	Fiction
	The People of Sparks	DuPrau, Jeanne	Fiction
	The Prophet of Yonwood	DuPrau, Jeanne	Fiction
	Wild at Heart	Eldredge, John	Non-Fiction
	Measure and Construction of the Japanese House	Engel, Heino	Non-Fiction
	The Great Gatsby	Fitzgerald, F. Scott	Fiction
	Preludes and Nocturnes	Gaiman, Neil	Graphic Novel
	The Wake	Gaiman, Neil	Graphic Novel
	The Doll’s House	Gaiman, Neil	Graphic Novel
	Dream Country	Gaiman, Neil	Graphic Novel
	Season of Mists	Gaiman, Neil	Graphic Novel
	A Game of You	Gaiman, Neil	Graphic Novel
	Fables and Reflections	Gaiman, Neil	Graphic Novel
	Brief Lives	Gaiman, Neil	Graphic Novel
	Worlds’ End	Gaiman, Neil	Graphic Novel
	The Kindly Ones	Gaiman, Neil	Graphic Novel
	Smoke and Mirrors	Gaiman, Neil	Fiction
	The Alien Dark	Gallagher, Diana G.	Fiction
	Virtual Light	Gibson, William	Fiction
	All Tomorrow’s Parties	Gibson, William	Fiction
	Neuromancer	Gibson, William	Fiction
	Burning Chrome	Gibson, William	Fiction
	Idoru	Gibson, William	Fiction
	Perpetual Motion	Gibson, Graeme	Fiction
	Memoirs of a Geisha	Golden, Arthur	Fiction
	Boy Meets Girl	Harris, Joshua	Non-Fiction
	More Adventures in Time and Space	Healy, Raymond J	Fiction
	Doppelgangers	Heard, Gerald	Fiction
	Between Planets	Heinlein, Robert A.	Fiction
	Expanded Universe	Heinlein, Robert A.	Fiction
	The Number of the Beast	Heinlein, Robert A.	Fiction
	Catch-22	Heller, Joseph	Fiction
	Musings of an Inquisitive Mind	Hevelka, Jaroslav	Non-Fiction
	The Book Of Negroes	Hill, Lawrence	Fiction
	The Two Faces of Tomorrow	Hogan, James P.	Fiction
	Days Gone Bye	Kirkman, Robert	Graphic Novel
	Miles Behind Us	Kirkman, Robert	Graphic Novel
	Safety Behind Bars	Kirkman, Robert	Graphic Novel
	No Logo	Klein, Naomi	Fiction
	The Physics of Star Trek	Krauss, Lawrence M.	Non-Fiction
	Ahead of Time	Kuttner, Henry	Fiction
	The Magician’s Nephew	Lewis, C.S.	Fiction
	The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe	Lewis, C.S.	Fiction
	The Horse and His Boy	Lewis, C.S.	Fiction
	Prince Caspian	Lewis, C.S.	Fiction
	The Voyage of the Dawn Treader	Lewis, C.S.	Fiction
	The Silver Chair	Lewis, C.S.	Fiction
	The Last Battle	Lewis, C.S.	Fiction
	The Tiananmen Papers	Liang, Zhang	Non-Fiction
	The Lucifer Key	MacPherson, Malcolm	Fiction
	The Ship Who Sang	McCaffrey, Anne	Fiction
	Damia’s Children	McCaffrey, Anne	Fiction
	Angela’s Ashes	McCourt, Frank	Fiction
	Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man	McLuhan, Marshall	Non-Fiction
	The Book of Ti’ana	Miller, Rand	Fiction
	Watchmen	Moore, Alan	Graphic Novel
	The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle	Murakami, Haruki	Fiction
	SATURDAY AT M.I.9	Neave, Airey	Non-Fiction
	Black Wizards	Niles, Douglas	Fiction
	Darkwell	Niles, Douglas	Fiction
	Access All Areas	Ninjalicious,	Non-Fiction
	Inside the Whale and Other Essays	Orwell, George	Fiction
	The Family	Puzo, Mario	Fiction
	Basic Endgame Stratgy: Queens & Rooks	Robertie, Bill	Non-Fiction
	The Kimono Mind	Rudofsky, Bernard	Non-Fiction
	Cosmos	Sagan, Carl	Non-Fiction
	Queen of Candesce	Schroeder, Karl	Fiction
	Japanese Inn	Statler, Oliver	Non-Fiction
	The Grapes of Wrath	Steinbeck, John	Fiction
	Inside the Soviet Army	Suvorov, Viktor	Non-Fiction
	The Animal Wife	Thomas, Elizabeth Marshall	Fiction
	The History of the Peloponnesian War	Thucydides,	Fiction
	The Fellowship of the Ring	Tolkien, J.R.R.	Fiction
	The Two Towers	Tolkien, J.R.R.	Fiction
	The Return of the King	Tolkien, J.R.R.	Fiction
	Sources of Japanese Tradition	Tsunoda, Ry-Usaku	Non-Fiction
	Journey to the Center of the Earth	Verne, Jules	Fiction
	Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea	Verne, Jules	Fiction
	Cat’s Cradle: A Novel	Vonnegut, Kurt	Fiction
	Player Piano	Vonnegut, Kurt	Fiction
	The Sirens of Titan	Vonnegut, Kurt	Fiction
	Timequake	Vonnegut, Kurt	Fiction
	The Purpose Driven Life	Warren, Rick	Non-Fiction
	Filth	Welsh, Irvine	Fiction
	Trainspotting	Welsh, Irvine	Fiction
	Those Left Behind	Whedon, Joss	Graphic Novel
	Better Days	Whedon, Joss	Graphic Novel
	Notes on the Underground	Williams, Rosalind	Non-Fiction
	The Kraken Wakes	Wyndham, John	Fiction
	Dead and Buried	Yarbro, Chelsea Quinn	Fiction

Oh well, we will still go on with the show!

I will post the full list over the weekend. Working on a way to display the list that isn’t stupid and doesn’t take hours to set up. Maybe I’ll just steal the goodreads layout; it’s sort of pretty. Maybe I can divide into fiction / graphic novels / non-fiction. That might be best.

I knew I had a lot of unread books, I just didn’t realize it was this many.

The problem is that when I hang out on the two with many of my friends, a trip to at least one bookstore its inevitable.  We’re not really shoppers, but we are all readers, and very good at egging each other on. I have no restraint in bookstores and usually come home with two or three books.  I don’t read these books as fast as I buy them and my TBR pile might hurt someone if it fell on them. To combat this, 2011 will be the year without bookstores.  I will not buy any new books.  Except at the Guelph public library book sale in October, cause seriously people, odds are I’m not going to make it until October anyways and it’s so awesome that it skipping it would be like missing out on sunshine.

In addition to not buying books, I’m also not going to be choosing books to read. I will be having you pick the books I read via the comments section. 

In about a week I will be posting my entire TBR list and I’ll be reading all comments about those books while preparing a short list. I’ll come up with the short list based off the suggestions you make.

I will pick a book based off your suggestions, and then when I’m done post a really rambling, probably not really book-related, book review for your blog reading enjoyment. Then it’s time to vote again. It’s the 2011 Bookstravaganza!

I’m pretty sure this means Courtney and Erin will be picking my books for me this year, and I’m mostly okay with that.