The zoo, books, bands & new tattoos!!

On Sunday I took myself to the zoo & spend a lovely afternoon wandering around, looking at animals & feeling relaxed. The zoo was surprisingly large & pretty crowded, but I enjoyed watching all the families there. I didn’t see any other foreigners & I don’t think I attracted too much attention, so it was nice to feel inconspicuous for a while.

As always, many more pictures on my Flickr page.

My friends’ band, Natural Monuments, just came out with a few digital singles. Their first album, For Sanity’s Sake, quickly became one of my favorites & got a lot of play. It now brings back vivid memories of driving around Jackson, MI in the summer, windows down, singly loudly.

You can download the new songs for free from this website & check out some of their older stuff on their Myspace.

Here’s the press release they’ve written up:

On their first release since 2007′s For Sanity’s Sake EP, Natural Monuments have added a slight punk edge to their summery pop hooks. The drumming is still precise and quirky, but their guitars have upped the amount of chime and jangle ala R.E.M., The Feelies and The Byrds, creating a sound somewhere between classic Kinks and Slumberland Records bands

I’m lucky to have such talented friends!

Back in January, I made a challenge to myself – read 50 books in 2010. Excited, I made a Twitter account for reviews, complied a long “to read” list, began winter semester & promptly stopped reading.

Well, now that I’m here all alone in Egypt, I’ve started reading quite a bit – 5 books in the two & a half weeks I’ve been here so far! My total is up to 7, which is a long ways off track, but I’m hoping to have 25 books read by the end of July. It’s a lot, but I have a significant amount of time on my hands, so it shouldn’t be too hard.

Lastly, I’m not sure I ever put up pictures of my newest tattoos. A lovely birthday present from my husband, my half-sleeve is nearly complete. I added a skull, another book & some flowers. It truly has become an “information sleeve” – a card catalog representing libraries, a skull & book representing archives & birds from a book representing dissemination of information.

more ink

more ink

All of it’s been done by Frank at Depot Town Tattoo – I high recommend you check out the shop if you’re ever interested in getting tattooed, they’re all amazing artists & wonderful people!

Break time’s over – back to work!

xoxoxo

Related posts:

  1. The beauty of books
  2. High Five for the Mitten
  3. Books & libraries as targets of destruction
  4. Books & Archives & Things to Share!
  5. Experiments in crowd sourcing
  • http://bananagrab.wordpress.com daniel

    Hi, I noticed that you were a fellow midwesterner living in Cairo. I went to the University of Illinois in Champaign (but don’t worry I’m actually a closet Wolverine fan…most of my family went there). I’m an architect and I’m here for a year on a contract working for a hotel developer. I was wondering if you ever wanted to meet up. It would be nice to talk to someone from the same region as me, most of the people I’ve interacted with here are Egyptians from work.

    -Daniel

  • http://backtothestacks.wordpress.com/2010/12/06/library-decor-home-edition/ Library Décor: Home Edition | Back to the Stacks

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