Warning: Long Post!

I know it's been absolutely forever since I've posted anything. I had to get settled into life and school and not feel like blogging was just another chore to get through. Hopefully, I'm back on a regular basis now! Here's a sampling of what I've been up to since I last wrote:

Music
I found Wichita's classical station (90.1-- just like OKC) which also plays NPR news in the mornings, so I have my dial locked to it in the car. I don't know why all the regular music stations only play ten songs. It's really aggravating! Anyway, driving home from class last week, Radio Kansas was playing instrumental selections from The Fairy Queen by Henry Purcell, of whom I am a fan. I thought it was funny that we had just read Spencer's The Faerie Queene in my Major British Writers class, but it turns out that Purcell's opera is based on Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream instead. Oh, well. Here's a clip from YouTube:


Physical Activity
My most important physical activity this semester is my ballet class. I absolutely love it. I'm so much more mentally attuned to it than when I was a child. It requires an awful lot of thinking! I also think that it's much more elegant than other forms of exercise (even though I don't always look particularly graceful...) Speaking of other forms of exercise, Paul and I have started playing golf and tennis. I'm not abysmal at the driving range, but my tennis needs a lot of work! Yes, we do only participate in country club sports (only not at the country club).

Reading


Some of the books I've been reading since my last post (from top): The Mysterious Affair at Styles (Agatha Christie), Tous les matins du monde (Pascal Quignard), Le Chef-d'oeuvre inconnu (Honore de Balzac), Northanger Abbey (Jane Austen), Carmina (Catullus), Thyestes (Seneca), The Moneypenny Diaries (Kate Westbrook), Arthur Gordon Pym and Benito Cereno (Edgar Allan Poe and Herman Melville, respecively), and The Old Curiosity Shop (Charles Dickens)

I've just decided to provide a chart of my recent (finished) reading, including books I've had to take back to the library:

Awesome:

• Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte
  
• The Mysterious Affair at Styles
• Taste: The Story of Britain Through its Cooking by Kate Colquhoun
  

Good Enough:

• Le Chef-d'oeuvre inconnu
• Looking for Anne of Green Gables by Irene Gammel
  
• Murder of a Medici Princess by Caroline P. Murphy
  
• Northanger Abbey
• Pierre et Jean by Guy de Maupassant
  
• Thyestes
  

Eh... :

• Kim by Rudyard Kipling
• L'Amant de la Chine du Nord by Marguerite Duras (Her L'Amant is slightly better.)
  
• Tous les matins du monde
  

Knitting
I got really lucky and found a copy of A Stitch in Time from Alibris for $2.95. The book is a collection of knitting patterns from the 1920s, '30s, and '40s. I want to make the sweater below as my first A Stitch in Time project:

In other knitting news, I've done all but weaving in the ends for my shrug from Big City Knits:

Food
I haven't done much original cooking (or cooking at all, for that matter) since school has started. However, I did buy a yogurt maker and have made two (moderately) successful batches of yogurt. I'm trying to clone my beloved Fage Total which, at $1.79 per carton, is an obscene expenditure. I also made red beans and rice (here in its Pyrex ready to go into the fridge):
These snickerdoodles from How to Be a Domestic Goddess went with Paul to his office (after we ate a few ourselves):
That's all the news that's fit to print. I hope you are all having a great October!