Sew On and Sew Forth

Sewed my brains out today. Finished the back for a large quilt. Made the binding for it. This makes 3 finished tops/backs/bindings in the pile to go to the machine quilter. Sew, I tackled another UFO in my pile which is to make storage bags for all my quilts. Well, that will happen one at a time, but at least I can start with the 3 in the pile. And maybe the 1 of mine that is currently at the quilter's shop. I started one after dinner.

Dinner. Yes. Fish and chips at Pier 46. I love the food there. And I sewed a lot. Did I mention that I sewed a lot?

Leftovers Again

But you'll hear no complaints from me! There was plenty of the bean gratin for dinner tonight. Since we're still in asparagus, I'll go through all the ways Alice teaches to cook them. Tonight? Boiled. Briefly. Then served at room temperature with a blood orange vinaigrette. We had a few pieces of Pier 46's wonderful pickled herring as an appetizer. Is there a cuisine on the planet that doesn't have pickled fish?

Gorgeous here today, although windy and chilly. But the air is crystal clear and you can see forever. Gawd, I love this place. And Randy reports that the Lonesome Turkey who's been hanging around here for the last couple weeks finally has a girlfriend. You go, Guy!

I'm shooting for completing the back for another UFO quilt, which will make it a total of 3 ready to be quilted. Yeah!

Back Is Finished!

Yeah! I have finished the back for The World's Ugliest Quilt! I'm getting these babies finished and in a pile to take to the machine quilter, one by one. She has 2 right now. I have 2 more ready to go in the pile now. And at least 2 more that are very close to ready to add to the pile. I AM the Queen of UFOs!

Photography

Probably no cooking today. Our kitchen designer and her hubby are coming around dinner time to photograph the kitchen and laundry room. They're bringing pizza! I'm so looking forward to seeing John and Jan since it's been way too long.

Otherwise, it's chilly today and alternately cloudy/sunny. Shasta Sue Latte has become my very best friend, hanging out with me at the computer all the time I'm there. I'm combing Maizie and Fannie and Nicholas today since they all need it.

Otherwise, I WILL finish that back for The World's Ugliest Quilt today! I will, I will, I will. As soon as I eat lunch.

I'm within the end of reading The Iliad, too. I guess this is making me a better person, but mostly it just makes me hate war all the more. Pretty deeply rooted in our western culture, isn't it? You'd think we could get past such things, but the growing competition for resources, combined with human population explosion, will ultimately only make things worse.

Day 87 - Beans at Their Best

Cranberry Bean Gratin - pg. 80

Toasted Breadcrumbs - pg. 63

Alice is really into cranberry beans, although I have to admit I don't know why. They are cute, but lose their cuteness when cooked. Alice also prefers that they be fresh, not dried, but I gotta tell ya -- it took me months of searching to finally find them dried, never mind fresh-in-the-shell. They were found in Berkeley, of course, although even then it took a trip to an obnoxiously upscale market to find them. Anyway, the bean gratin, not only vegetarian but also downright vegan, was absolutely delicious. I would make it again and again and again. With other beans. With bits of (gulp) meat. With other veggies tossed in perhaps.

The best part, purely from an emotional point of view, is that the toasted breadcrumbs (well worth the little bit of work) were made from Acme bread brought home from Chez Panisse. We had lunch at the Cafe Saturday, a belated birthday gift from Randy. As we left I mentioned something about seeing where the loaves of bread were stashed in the servery to our busboy. Sweet kid asked if I wanted to take any home since lunch time was over and they had a number of pieces cut up already that would only be (argh!) thrown out. Yes, yes, yes! We bought cheese across the street and had 2 of the bread hunks in our room for dinner later that night. The other 2 hunks I brought home, perfect for breadcrumbs.

Since we're in the heart of the season, I oven-roasted asparagus, too for dinner tonight. We'll be eating a lot of 'em while they are in season. I love 'em cooked that way and it's so easy, it's criminal.

Yup, we're home from a long weekend in Berkeley and San Francisco. Food, as always, was big on the activity list. Dinner at Ajanta, lunch at Chez Panisse, grocery shopping at some fancy market in Rockridge (boy! did we ever score some great hard-to-find stuff!), and lunch at Inka (a totally authentic Peruvian restaurant) in San Francisco.

And we shopped 'til we dropped. We filled up the back of the CRV at a plant sale at the UCBerkeley Botanical Garden. New hiking boots for both of us at REI. A couple of David Marsh end tables for the library, and 1 more ordered for June delivery. Books from Moe's. A food mill and a spiffy red-and-white striped apron from Sur La Table. Then we took the long scenic route home past Pinnacles National Monument, home to 27 California condors, none of which we saw.

Now? Back to real life. It's raining again. It doesn't rain here in April. Heck, it doesn't even rain here in March. But, it's raining. And the lupines still smell like heaven.

63 down; 242 to go

What My Mother Taught Me...

1. My mother taught me TO APPRECIATE A JOB WELL DONE.
'If you're going to kill each other, do it outside. I just finished cleaning.'

2. My mother taught me RELIGION .
'You better pray that this will come out of the carpet.'

3. My mother taught me about TIME TRAVEL
'If you don't straighten up, I'm going to knock you into the middle of next week!'

4. My mother taught me LOGIC .
' Because I said so, that's why.'

5.My mother taught me MORE LOGIC .
'If you fall out of that swing and break your neck, you're not going to the store with me.'

6. My mother taught me FORESIGHT.
'Make sure you wear clean underwear, in case you're in an accident.'

7. My mother taught me IRONY.
'Keep crying, and I'll give you something to cry about.'

8. My mother taught me about the science of OSMOSIS.
'Shut your mouth and eat your supper.'

9. My mother taught me about CONTORTIONISM .
'Will you look at that dirt on the back of your neck!'

10. My mother taught me about STAMINA
'You'll sit there until all that SOUP is gone.'

11. My mother taught me about WEATHER ..
'This room of yours looks as if a tornado went through it.'

12. My mother taught me about HYPOCRISY
'If I told you once, I've told you a million times. Don't exaggerate!'

13. My mother taught me the CIRCLE OF LIFE .
'I brought you into this world, and I can take you out.'

14. My mother taught me about BEHAVIOR MODIFICATION.
'Stop acting like your father!'

15. My mother taught me about ENVY.
'There are millions of less fortunate children in this world who don't have wonderful parents like you do..'

16. My mother taught me about ANTICIPATION.
'Just wait until we get home.'

17. My mother taught me about RECEIVING .
'You are going to get it when you get home!'

18. My mother taught me MEDICAL SCIENCE.
'If you don't stop crossing your eyes, they are going to get stuck that way.'

19. My mother taught me ESP .
'Put your sweater on; don't you think I know when you are cold?'

20. My mother taught me HUMOR .
'When that lawn mower cuts off your toes, don't come running to me..'

21. My mother taught me HOW TO BECOME AN ADULT .
'If you don't eat your vegetables, you'll never grow up.'

22. My mother taught me GENETICS.
'You're just like your father.'

23. My mother taught me about my ROOTS.
'Shut that door behind you. Do you think you were born in a barn?'

24. My mother taught me WISDOM.
'When you get to be my age, you'll understand.'

25. And my very favorite:
My mother taught me about JUSTICE
'One day you'll have kids, and I hope they turn out just like you '

Wildlife at the Hacienda

Since moving into our new house in west Atascadero, we find ourselves surrounded by wildlife. Our area is one of steeply rolling oak woodland hills. Lot sizes run around 3 to 8 acres, and there is still a fair number of undeveloped lots around.

Sooooo-- we are a haven for birds of all kinds, deer, bobcats, coyotes and turkeys. The deer and turkeys and birds we see every day. The carnivores less often, but still regularly. There are certainly a whole lot of other creatures about that we don't see very much. I know we have skunk about. Great horned owls hang out occasionally. I've seen mice. Lots of little lizards sun themselves on the south-side boulders, tantalizing the cats.

Yesterday we watched a new little guy in action. A gopher. Lucky for him he's excavating in an "allowed" area near the lizards' favorite sunning rock. I think he's kinda cute, but I don't really want to get close enough to see for sure. I've heard that the Macabee gopher trap is quite effective, so the little sucker better stay out of our flower garden. He's got acres of allowed ground to tear up as much as he wants.

Cold, windy and rainy again. Dinner was strictly crappy-weather comfort food. Nachos. A bag of corn chips. A can of Cuban-style black beans. A bag of shredded cheese. A container of fresh salsa. I call it dinner, even if Alice Waters would never eat such a thing. God bless Trader Joe's.

My Life's Biggest Disappointment

Is me.

I wish I had leadership qualities. I do not. I wish I didn't piss people off all the time, but I do. There is so much I would like to do, so much I would like to accomplish, but if it means that I have to connect with another living human being to do it, it ain't going to happen. It's so frustrating. I've just never in my whole life been able to put all the pieces and parts together.

This reality doesn't freak me out like it used to. Just makes me sad. Makes me sorry for the waste that I am, wanting to make something somewhere better and unable to do so.

Dinner? Fennel and red pepper gratin. Pan-sauteed fish. Tossed green salad. A little weird all the way around, but it did use up some of those (ugh) leftovers in the frig. For which we are eternally grateful.

Lost in Space

That's how I'm feeling today. Lost in space. Let's see, last night I made oven roasted asparagus and salmon together on the same baking sheet. How easy! How tasty! Thank you, Alice, for teaching me how to do these things.

I'm sewing like a madwoman to finish the ugliest quilt I have ever made. Okay, it will be done. Then I can move on. This sucker is bad looking. Seriously. Someone out there want an ugly quilt????

I watched Rachel Maddow's special while sewing madly-- "The Timothy McVeigh" tapes. About the Oklahoma City bombing. The one thing I can say with certainty: Timothy McVeigh was a very boring person. Very boring. He was just a nothing. The fact that he thought he was really something was just a part of what made him such a boring nothing.

And in the rest of my life I'm feeling confused and adrift where I was recently feeling secure and filled with purpose. Oh well, this too shall pass.

Day 86 - Carrot Puree with Caraway and Cumin

Carrot Puree with Caraway and Cumin - pg. 298

What is so rare as a day with peace. At least peace in my little corner of the world. I love it.

Thursday afternoon I took Roxanne W. Furrperson to the vet for a check-up. In spite of having heart disease, she's doing great. She'll be 12 in August. Here's the good news! After several years of giving her heart medicine compounded in a triple-fish flavor base served on top of wet food twice a day (which gets to be miserably tedious), those nice Greenies people have invented pill pockets for cats. Pop a pill in a pocket (a cat treat in disguise). The cat greedily snarfs up the pill pocket. And the pill is now in the cat. Roxanne, bless her, loves pill pockets. Our lives have just become simplified. I like simple.

Yesterday afternoon Megan and I presented Puff as the pet-of-the-week on Dave Congalton's radio show. Puff was a star. I've never seen a cat so relaxed and confident in Dave's studio. Puff just explored and said hi to everyone. He (yes, Puff's a boy) even rolled over on the floor and asked Dave to rub his tummy. While we on the air. Puff is 10 years old and is a perfect cat for our Seniors for Seniors program, and Puff previously lived with a senior mom. I hope Puff gets a good home and an appropriate home.

This morning Randy and I went to farmers' market and then went shopping for the rest of the pots we need to pot up our cacti and succulents. And potting medium. Compost, perlite, bone meal.

And tonight I actually cooked again! My favorite old stand-by tuna spaghetti. And Alice's Algerian-inspired carrot puree with caraway and cumin. Lacking any fresh lemon juice (poor planning on my part), I added a bit of fruity red vinegar at the end. Muy tasty. I'm getting into this vinegar thing. A whole world of previously undiscovered flavors. There's more to vinegar than salad dressing. Who knew.

In the meantime, I'm working furiously to finish one of my many, many UFOs. This one, a quilt from 1996 for heaven's sake. Very corny. But, the top is very nearly done. Persistence occasionally pays off.

61 down; 244 to go

My New Favorite Cookbook

Although I haven't actually made anything from it yet, Randy brought home from the Smithsonian the coolest cookbook: "One Fish, Two Fish, Crawfish, Bluefish: Sustainable Seafood Cookbook." I've shared it with Eric and Tony at Pier 46, my favorite local purveyors of seafood. They're pretty excited about it.

No one's taking me up on my contest offering yet??? Maybe I'll try it on Facebook.

Oh Crap!

And I'm not kidding.

Monday promised to be a long day in any event. Randy out of the house early to take his car in for some work and wouldn't be home until late. Refrigerator repairman scheduled to come in the a.m. Emergency meeting of the NCHS Board at 5 p.m. to discuss a difficult matter. Oh sigh. And then it got a whole lot worse.

How can I make this long story short? Well, after showering and starting a load of laundry, the plumbing suddenly developed a serious problem. Toilets wouldn't flush, sewer gas came up through the kitchen sink, and (gulp) there was suddenly sewage in both downstairs showers, complete with those little floating brown bits. There ensued several panicked calls to our project manager and a panicked rush to the neighbor's house to use their toilet. Back to the house to await the refrigerator repair guy who, bless him, was understanding, supportive, AND fixed the frig!

Now some background information. When we were first beginning to design our house, I had 2 books that were my main design inspiration, my bibles as it were. One was The New Strawbale House by Catherine Wanek. Catherine's photos are inspirational, moving, and just plain gorgeous. I couldn't help but think, "If I ever had a beautiful house that Catherine would come and photograph, I'd just die and go to heaven." As the project moved along, we learned that our builder is a close friend of Catherine's. When Randy and I were last in New Mexico, we stopped in to meet Catherine's husband and mother. Catherine was away at the time, but we enjoyed touring their B&B and Catherine's mom's strawbale house which appears in TNSH.

So, right in the middle of the shit-in-my-showers situation, waiting for the project manager and the septic pumper to arrive, the project manager calls to tell me that Catherine Wanek is in his office and wants to come up to my house, camera in hand. WTF!!?? Fine, just tell her to pee first. Catherine Wanek is coming to photograph my house and I have shit in my showers. Fine.

Well, I can go with the flow. So to speak. Catherine came and photographed. The refrigerator guy did his thing (the frig is now quiet as a church mouse). The pumper arrived. I left the house to get some lunch and find a place to pee. The project manager cleaned up the showers and toilets (bless him, all you gods and goddesses, bless him). Everyone left and I prepared for the meeting.

And we all got through our meeting, successfully. After which I was a puddle. Take-out from Mickie D's. Sewed some when I got home. Randy joined me with his take-out burrito to watch the end of Dancing with the Stars. And I read some Iliad.

This morning Catherine came back to photograph for another few hours. She's a terrific woman. Nicholas, our big white cat, was a very cooperative model throughout the whole photo shoot. He's social and loves being the center of attention. I think that the chance of Nicky NOT being in Catherine's next book is somewhere around zero.

This afternoon I was able to run a couple errands. NCHS got a great first-page above-the-fold article in the last edition of the Paso Robles Press. Two adorable 5-day old kittens, one of whom is Larry. I tracked down a copy of that paper. Then I took 2 quilts to a quilter for quilting. This is a woman I haven't worked with before, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed. Again, I'm just going with the flow.

Came home, took a nap, and made dinner, which was a variation on the last dish I prepared.

Oh yes! Here's a contest! Randy and I have booked our big fall adventure. Two weeks in one country followed by 1 week in an adjoining country. Any guesses where we're going? Guess right and I'll bring you a special present from one of the countries.

I Still Hate Drama

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Borderline personality disorder. That's the diagnosis. I researched it. Drama queens have borderline personality disorder. Swell. Is there some kind of pill I can slip those people to cure it?

To get my mind off the drama queens in my life, I went to the French film A Prophet. Two and a half hours of subtitles for Farsi, Corsican and French. Maybe more. Hard to tell. It was an interesting bit of entertainment, but totally lacking in characters I could care about. Mostly just a bunch of male drama queens with knives and guns.

We did have fun at the shelter this morning, training staff and then showing a troop of Girl Scouts how to bottle feed tiny kittens. We have a total of 27 of them right now, all out in foster homes. All between the ages of a few days and about 2 weeks. Oh my! I'll be drug into the action soon, I just know it. I'm on the list.

In the meantime, I'm reading The Iliad, but not cooking. Why can't a day be 30 hours long? Why can't I survive on 3 or 4 hours of sleep a night? Why won't the drama queens all go away and pester someone else? Why do I keep griping about them?

I Hate Drama

I hate drama. I've spent the last 2 days dealing with drama. Want details? You won't get 'em. Not from me. That would merely fuel the drama. And I hate drama.

Now we return to our regular boring blog. Randy and I picked up his new aquarium stand today. It's in the back of the CRV and it's heavy. I have no idea how it's going to get upstairs and into his office. Magic? Will it sprout wings and fly? Beats me.

We are surrounded by wildflowers here this spring. There are so many lupines that the scent is nearly overwhelming when I go outdoors. And there is a new batch of little blue things and little white things on the north side of driveway where Randy put out seed. Very cute.

Otherwise, I'm drained and have nothing to share today. We had take-out hamburgers and fries for dinner. I've started The Iliad, with the assistance of Cliff Notes....

Day 85 - Fusilli with Greens and Sausage

Fusilli with Greens and Sausage - pg. 267

Ha! Guess you thought I'd quit my Alice Waters project, eh? No way! I made this dish with penne and kale, which Alice allows. She has a cool idea for using Italian sausage. You remove the sausage from the casings and form it into little meatballs. The dish was good, but hardly news for me since I've always made stuff like this. OTOH, I made it better this time. Didn't make a lot of pasta, just a little. And served the "sauce" over the penne instead of mixing it all together. It all looked quite gourmet and tasted pretty good, too.

Leo was adopted by a family. A man and wife and their teenage daughter. At any given time there are always several cats at NCHS I want to bring home. It's worst right now because we are getting kittens. Newborns with their eyes still closed. I've been visiting some of them nearly every day, especially little Larry. He's white and tabby. His eyes are just opening right now. His foster mom brings Larry and his 3 (so far) buddies in every day when she comes to work so she can continue to feed them every 2 hours. The last little buddy is a tortoiseshell. True to form, she is a total diva.

My Big Adventure today was the search for blankets. You wouldn't think it would be that tough, but it is when you have something specific in mind. I found 'em. Target.

60 recipes completed; a mere 245 to go

I Chickened Out (Chicken Salad, That Is)

Dear Hubby wants to switch cars sometime this week to bring home his new fish tank stand, probably Thursday, so I decided I'd better go do my shopping errands today, since that stuff tends to fill up the back of the CRV.

I found 2 green Adirondack-chair style side tables to put out on the balcony with the wicker chairs. If it ever quits raining. There are 2 end tables that actually go with the wicker chairs, but they will stay inside since the cats like to sleep on their bottom shelves. How could I possibly take away kitties' napping places? Can't do it.

Had to get a whole bunch of stuff from Costco. Kleenex, paper towels, walnuts, soy milk, canned cat food, garbage bags. Great fun stuff, eh? About as exciting as the cat food and kitty litter I brought home at the next stop, Petsmart, where all the guinea pigs were sleeping together in a pile in one of their little houses. So cute.

No time to cook, unfortunately. So I indulged us in one of my favorite guilty pleasures, Costco's Sonoma Chicken Salad. On lettuce. With some slices of orange and grapefruit on the side. Quick, relatively healthy, and tasty. I called it dinner.

Which doesn't directly, but does indirectly, bring me to one of my pet peeves. Why the hell can't people take their bloody shopping carts back to where they belong? These days every parking lot has remote parking stations for carts. Why are 98% of people too damned lazy, narcissistic, rude and stupid to put carts where they belong after they unload their stuff at their cars? Would it kill them? No wonder we're all so damned fat. Just another sign of our collective contempt for our fellow man. Not to mention that loose carts damage landscaping and vehicles, block parking spaces, and just generally pose a safety hazardous for both both drivers and pedestrians. Look, I have a permanent disabled parking placard (which I often, but not always, use) and I can manage to put my empty cart where it belongs every time. If a crip can do it, why can't everyone else?

That's Leo at the top of my post today. Leo got adopted from North County Humane Society this week! Yeah!

Ancient Gratin

This learning-to-cook a la Alice project is starting to pay off. Tonight I made Ancient Gratin, a vegetarian entree of my own invention, based on some potatoes, cauliflower and butternut squash that had to be used up now. I mean NOW. I sliced, floretted, parboiled and layered with some shredded gouda in there somewhere. Salt and pepper. A little cream poured over the top. Convection baked at 375 for 30 minutes. Pressed down with a spatula. Baked for another 10 minutes. Goodness, it was delicious! Randy made a salad to go with.

I sewed all day, making serious progress on the current UFO by figuring out the details of the sashing. Started in 1996 for heaven's sake, it's not a quilt I would ever make today, but I somehow managed to make 36 appliqued heart blocks and this is probably the only hand-applique project I'll ever make, so I'm determined to finish it. You'd laugh to see it. Pink and red, light blue and dark blue, it's all hearts and flowers with that nauseating country feel. It's about one step away from pale blue and dusty rose country geese. Okay, maybe it's not quite that bad. But it does remind me of Texas. Need I say more....

While watching "Dancing with the Stars" (the worst season ever, by the way), I finished hand quilting, primitively, a small wall quilt. Everything except the binding. It, too, is one of those strange things in the UFO pile. Plaid. "Primitive." Lots of buttonhole-stitched applique, depicting the 4 seasons. I remember making one for a small quilt auction, and apparently decided to make one for myself, too. Well, it will go somewhere. Like, somewhere on the planet.

I continue my reading preliminary to the Iliad. Like Cliff Notes. Seriously. Whatever it takes.

Sort of a "Me" Weekend

You celebrate Easter your way; I'll celebrate it mine. Yesterday was a "me" day. Randy and I went to farmers market and stocked up on great spring goodies, including flavorful strawberries and 2 pounds of English peas. The spring stuff is coming on strong now. There is also an ongoing dog obedience class at the same park every Saturday morning. It's such fun to watch for a while. The dogs are just adorable.

Then I took Fannie Foxtail to NCHS's Blessing of the Animals. Our cat care coordinator is an ordained minister and does this wonderful event every year, blessing each and every animal with water from the River Jordan and her loving prayers. Sherry Chapman. That's her. She had me in tears.

After lunch I went into SLO on a major book-shopping trip. I spent quite awhile at our wonderful used book store, Phoenix, getting all my books for an exploration of ancient Greek literature. I'm still reading Durant for historical background. It's beginning, just beginning, to make sense to me. I enjoyed comparing translations at Phoenix, but I'm not going to get hung up about it. I'm looking for readability and will let the scholars worry about the details.

Then I saw a German movie, North Face, that made a big impression on me. I'm a sucker for those mountaineering tragedies. This story was very well told.

Afterwards I found a historical atlas at Barnes & Nobles, and stopped at their Starbuck's for a mocha and cookie before heading home. When I left B&N around 10:30 I encountered a bride and groom walking somewhere. They were very formally dressed and totally gorgeous, although in her strapless gown, I'll bet the bride was freezing. I wished them congratulations. Such a strange thing, but so like SLO.

Today, the weather is icky. Rainy, cold and windy. Bleck. My Big Project (which took only a little while) was to set-up my little "sound system" in my studio. Otherwise I've just picked-up and cleaned-up and read and watched TV and contemplated the universe today. Quite the wasted day. Some days are like that. I guess it's basic housekeeping, basic lifekeeping. Rest, renew and recharge. I'm looking forward to a productive, exciting week. To cooking, to reading, to doing NCHS work and to (hopefully) finish another UFO quilt project.

Finished!

I've been making a quilt for my friend Scott to give to his sister. It has ladybug fabric in the center of variable stars. Said ladybug fabric was the lining of their childhood sleeping bags. The front is finished. The back is finished. The binding is made and ready to go. Yippee!! So now I can take it to the machine quilter, and can then bind it and pass it on to Scott. Yippee!!

Now I can get on with the rest of my jillions of UFOs. (UnFinished prOjects)

Last night I made fried rice for dinner. But I did it correctly and it was really good. Tonight Randy made our old favorite fallback position dinner: tuna spaghetti.

Here I am with the top while it was still in progress. (Photo by Cameron Taylor-Brown)

Clifton Fadiman's "The Lifetime Reading Plan"

Clifton Fadiman was the kind of guy I wish we had more of these days, a witty, intellectual media personality, author, editor, and for awhile, a judge with the Book-of-the-Month Club. All of this just shows my age. I used to actually belong to the Book-of-the-Month Club.

Fadiman wrote "The Lifetime Reading Plan," which I came across a few years ago at a used book sale. I'll quote from the dust jacket: "A stimulating and irresistible guide to one hundred books and authors -- from Homer to Hemingway -- which will help you, over the whole of your lifetime, to understand what the greatest writers of western civilization have thought and felt." I was so intrigued that I decided to tackle the project, although I may not live long enough to finish it.

Before tackling the ancient Greek and Roman writers, I'm brushing up on history of those eras with Will Durant's "The Life of Greece," which is Part II of his epic "The Story of Civilization." It's really entertaining reading. Who knew.

I'm sure this project seems downright quaint in our time, but what the heck. Once you hit age 61 you're pretty downright quaint anyway. I'm having fun.