The worst day of the year to be called for jury duty is the Monday morning after Daylight Savings Time kicks in. Particularly when you have to show up at 8 a.m. (really 7 a.m.) when you aren’t used to getting up until 8:30.

Do I need to be awake to complete my civic duty?

Mia shared this meme on her blog earlier this week and it seemed like a perfect antidote to a rainy weekend:

Bold the ones you have read, italicize the ones you are interested in, and leave the ones you don’t care about reading alone.

1. The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien)
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
16. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (Rowling)
17. Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King)
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling)
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
21. The Hobbit (Tolkien)
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
28. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
30. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)
31. Dune (Frank Herbert)
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
34. 1984 (Orwell)
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
42. The Kite Runner(Khaled Hosseini)
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
45. Bible
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
50. She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Dickens)
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
59. The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrey Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Tolstoy)
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
69. Les Miserables (Hugo)
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding)
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78. The World According To Garp (John Irving)
79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
80. Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White)
81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)
83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
84. Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
85. Emma (Jane Austen)
86. Watership Down (Richard Adams)
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
91.The Skin of the Lion (Ondaatje)
92. Lord of the Flies (Golding)
93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlem)
96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100. Ulysses (James Joyce)

I can’t figure out what these books have in common to put them on a list together. Books all sitting on someone’s shelf perhaps? Weird…

I was walking along the Mall coming back to work from my dentist appointment on Wednesday when I thought to snap these shots. It was a sunny day, about 50 degrees with a breeze.

First I offer you a true glimpse into the interseason of winter transitioning to spring:

These were taken at the Sculpture Garden Ice Rink. After this weekend, and continuing through the spring, the rink is actually a large fountain in a park outside the National Museum of Art. During Friday night jazz concerts, you’ll find us in a corner of the park with a delicious picnic.

And I leave you with this final quintessential D.C. shot. The man skating in the foreground of the shot? Obviously a businessman on his lunch hour because he’s wearing suit pants, a collared shirt, and a tie in addition to his protective sun hat and skates.

I’m a little unclear as to how today got to be Thursday already. I feel like it ought to be Wednesday, but I’m certainly not going to turn down tomorrow being Friday. So let’s all pretend that today really is Thursday, like the calendar says, okay?

In that vein, I offer you three beautiful things from the last week:

1. Rudi and I went to a meeting last night about the future of our local library. It felt good to learn how many other people cared about it being a viable community center well into the future.

2. After my dentist appointment was over yesterday, I took a long meandering walk back to work from Cap Hill. It was a lovely sunny spring day and it felt great to be outside in the middle of the day. (Expect pictures soon.)

3. After bottling the last of our 2007 beer on Saturday, I decided I had to stop in at the Pan-American Bakery & Grill next door. We came home with two giant coconut pan dulce, which are fluffy South American sweet rolls, and some ridiculously cheap spices. The owner of the store, a Bolivian man, talked to us about why he was committed to using trans-fat-free ingredients in his cooking and the difficulties of marketing a business to two communities who speak different languages and who have different expectations for their local restaurants. We’ll definitely be back.

Not mine though.

But it’s so much cuter than mine would have been, I don’t think you’ll mind:

This is Daisy.

This is Daisy with my coworker (and fellow conference traveller) Heather and the soon to be introduced Charlotte Jane.

A close-up shot. The sweater is knit in Rowan Handknit Cotton, so it’s washable, because the only thing a new mother ought to have to handwash is her baby.

Adorable buttons bought at Webs.