Good Faith by Jane Smiley

I read this during the March hiatus from the blog - it was from the library.
Jane Smiley is really good at depicting realistic and complicated families, especially with an idiosyncratic patriarch. Gordon, one of the supporting characters in this book and father of the woman that the prototagonist is having an affair with, is one of these interesting patriarchs.
He's a more benevolent one than the father in "A Thousand Acres" though.
There's a lot of real estate wheeling and dealing in this book, which at times can get a little bit tedious. Maybe I don't connect to it as well as I think I connect to the farming in A thousand acres, even though I haven't lived on a farm or ever bought any real estate.
The book seemed to end pretty abruptly although it was long and dragged a bit in the middle. It was enjoyable but not sure I would re-read it...

The Tale of Urso Brunov: Little Father of All Bears

Dave and I fell in love with this book several months ago when we saw it in a little store in Oakland. Apart from the confident story, it also has an animation on the upper right corners of the pages of Urso trudging along!

Urso Brunov is "The Little Father of All Bears" and sets off on a rescue mission when four of his bears are found missing when he wakes up from his hibernation a little early.

At every point he faces up to foes much larger than himself, and states to all who might not believe his might, "Believe me, for I am Urso Brunov!"

After buying the book, I read it out loud to Dave (and to Kevin when he got home) as Dave was cooking in the kitchen. It was really fun to do the voices, and by the end I was really getting into the "Believe me...!" refrain.

Urso fighting a large goat by bending its horns backwards!

Urso in a rare moment of low control!

This all inspired me to create a very beloved City of Heroes character, named Urso Brunov also.
His picture is below:

Birthday at The Tech

I went to the Tech Museum in San Jose today to see my friend Michelle and tour her exhibit she designed - NetPla@net.
This picture is linked to a webpage I made while I was at the Tech - visitors log into the exhibits with bar code arm bands and so each person can make a webpage with pictures of them using the exhibits, etc. Michelle's cat is on one of the default page backgrounds for the website creator program.
This picture is me winning a virtual arm wrestling - I arm wrestled with someone at the Tech, but I could have arm wrestled against people at museums across the country.
I also had fun playing with the Virtual World, which is the kid version of Linden Labs' Second Life online world for adults.
Kids can sit around a circular table, each with their own terminal, playing the game. They didn't seem to be using the "chat" feature much, instead just yelling out "where are you!" and "Look, someone's swimming!"
One kid figured out how to "fight" by throwing objects at other people.
This was my character:

There is a catapult in the game which was pretty fun - a pig is nearby to catapult and you can also catapult yourself or other people. Kari may enjoy this virtual verson of the Monty Python catapult I gave her for Christmas.

Solveig's Polysyllabic Spree - March

This is the running Books Bought/Books Read log in homage of Nick Hornby - see posts in February 2005 on his book "The Polysyllabic Spree" where he did the same thing.

March 2005
Books Bought/Checked out from Library

• Good Faith, by Jane Smiley. Checked out from Library, 3/2.
  
• White Doves at Morning by James Lee Burke - checked out 3/2
  
• Etymology for Everyone by Kati's former prof, Anatoly Liberman
  
• Dark Fields of the Republic book and tape - by Adrienne Rich. I can't find my tape of this so I am ordering a new copy.
  
• an anthology book/CD of Adrienne Rich reading her poetry (forget the title)
  

Books Read:

• The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger (omigosh, good book to kick off the Month of March. Finished 3/1/05.)
  
• John Dunning's latest Bookman novel - in progress
  
• Get a Financial Life by Beth Kobliner - I read bits of this at various times along with Smart Women Finish Rich by David Bach for inspiration.
  

The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger and Victor/Victoria

This is a time travel story but it is really primarily a love story. Henry De Tamble is a man with "Chrono-Displacement" disorder - causing him to suddenly shift into a different time period of his life, appearing naked because he can't take any objects between times with him.
Claire Abshire is the woman who eventually becomes his wife - although they first meet (for Claire) when she is 6 or 7 and he is in his thirties. For Henry, they first meet when he is 28 and she is 20 (in real time) - he is flabbergasted to meet this beautiful woman who knows so much about him, but whom he has never met (yet...)

The story is told in 1st person switching off between Claire and Henry which makes it very personal, and it can get pretty mind-boggling as each chapter is in a new time frame, but Niffenegger really ties it together with the romance between the two of them, pushing you further and further into the story.

Speaking of awesome marriages, I also watched the DVD commentary for Victor/Victoria by Blake Edwards and Julie Andrews who are married to each other and apparently had a great time while making the movie too. I know the movie so well that I could almost say the lines myself while listening to the commentary, and it was quite fun to laugh and hear Julie chuckling at the same time.
They talk of various bits of knowledge that Blake took advantage of while directing Julie, including her true fear of cockroaches and her susceptibility to crying during Madame Butterfly (there's a scene at the opera when she is just _weeping_ and they say in the commentary that Blake just set her in front of that opera and that was it.)
Anyway, it's such a relaxing and positive movie.