The Tax Season Blues

It's March which means one thing for me. The Tax Season Blues. The main reason for my serious lack of posting is my serious lack of a life. You'd think I'd be used to this by now coming from a family of accountants but I'm not. I don't think I ever will. Bottom line, I can only take so much of my husband coming home at late hours completely exhausted mentally and physically. This may sound selfish, but it's totally boring. I eventally resort to lots of reading and lots of shopping and lots of cleaning. Unfortunately, the urge to clean hasn't hit me yet as it doesn't feel like spring here in Utah. It snowed last night. One popular ski resort received a heaping 16 inches last night! A radio announcer commented on this and said we'll probably be able to ski there into July. JULY!!! That fact does nothing for my case of the blues. Anyway, I digress. Here are some of the things I've been up to while my husband is away, a slave to our future.

BOOKS! I recently saw this on another blog and found it really interesting. It is BBC's list of the top 100 books. The BBC estimates that on average, most people will have likely read about six of these works. So, I scanned the list and was glad I had read more than six, but depressed with how many I HAVEN'T read. So I've started to reread some of my favorites, and gear up to read some new ones. I'm currently on Persuasion by Jane Austen, I have read and love this book, but it sounded the best when I started out on this venture. I'm slowly working through the rest of the list! I've bolded the ones I've read and starred the new ones I've purchased to read.

Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (some, not all)
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
The Bible Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Great Expectations - Charles Dickens Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
Complete Works of Shakespeare (I've read most, I went through an obsession stage in highschool)
Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
Middlemarch - George Eliot
*Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell*
The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
Bleak House - Charles Dickens
*War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy*
The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
*Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy*
David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis Emma - Jane Austen
Persuasion - Jane Austen The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Berniere
*Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden*
Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
Animal Farm - George Orwell
*The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown*
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
Lord of the Flies - William Golding
Atonement - Ian McEwan
Life of Pi - Yann Martel
Dune - Frank Herbert
Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
*Brave New World - Aldous Huxley*
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
*Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez*
Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
*Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov*
The Secret History - Donna Tartt
The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
On The Road - Jack Kerouac
Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
*Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding*
Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
Moby Dick - Herman Melville
Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
Dracula - Bram Stoker
The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
Ulysses - James Joyce
*The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath*
Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
Germinal - Emile Zola
Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
Possession - AS Byatt
A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
The Color Purple - Alice Walker
The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
*Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert*
A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
Charlotte’s Web - EB White
*The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom*
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
Watership Down - Richard Adams
A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
Hamlet - William Shakespeare Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

I'm also getting so excited for summer, so I'm buying summer/tropical fragrances for my house, sunglasses and of course sandals! My next purchase will be a pair of these fabulous gladiators by Sam Edelman.Seriously, how cute are those? Have I ever mentioned how much I love summer?

And lastly, Banks and I are getting ready to move again. We are trying to figure out if we should sell the house or just rent it. If any of you have any opinions on that please let me know as we need all the help we can get on this particular decision!!