In March I thought I’d make it through the 60+ books that were on my booklist before the new Best-Book-Read-In-The-Last-Year list of Powell’s Bookstore came out (which was – and probably will be – around March, as far as I remember).

In October I’d lowered my expectations to 52 books read by the end of the year. (52, get it? One book a week.)

Now with only three days left of the old year, I’d say, I’d probably manage 42 books, if I finish Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere in time.

Still I think that’s quite impressive, considering that Vanity Fair aka The Book That Still Owes Me Four Freaking Months Of My Life was among those books.

I’m still not sure what book I will choose to be my favorite of last year. 2004 was easy, because it was the year I read „The Time Traveler’s Wife“ and practically bawled my eyes out over it. Hello? I didn’t even have to think about it. This year, the choice is not so easy. Since „Neverwhere“ is still in the race for Best Book I Read In 2005, I can’t say anything for sure yet anyway.

What was your favorite book of 2005 and why should I put it on my reading list for 2006?

It’s been a great year for TV show addicts like me. There were some disappointments, yes, such as the unexpected decline and following cancellation of „Joan of Arcadia“. Or the non-existent decline but still-following cancellation of „Kitchen Confidential“. But all in all, I think we can be satisfied. Veronica Mars didn’t get cancelled, we got a third – though – short season of Arrested Development and with „How I Met Your Mother“ I got a new favorite sitcom that I’m just completely in love with.
So, here they are, my nine favorite TV show episodes of the year 2005, counting down from 9 to 6.

9. Joan of Arcadia: Common Thread (2×21)
Oh, Joan. You had to go too early, though it was partly your fault. While the first season was a miracle disguised as a TV show, the second season lost its drive all too quickly. Though there were never any real bad episodes, there werenâ??t any great ones either. â??Common Threadâ? stands for the three or four last episodes of a show that recovered too late and couldnâ??t even save itself from cancellation by giving its viewers a great and touching finale. Too little, too late. But know that I hated to see you go.

8. Smallville: Commencement (4×22)
So what? Yes, I do watch Smallville and enthusiastically so. The fourth season had at least one story-arc too many (although it feels more like three or four too many) and occasionally left the realms of the Superman myth for other weird territories that I didnâ??t like too much. Yet again, it is way too good to be my guilty pleasure show.
As always, Smallville doesnâ??t disappoint when it comes to a season finale, so I had to sit through another meteor shower and several cliffhangers before they would go off into summer break and leave me alone with my questions and my WTFs.

7. Supernatural: Bloody Mary (1×05)
Supernatural manages to avoid the ungrateful â??guilty pleasureâ?? label just by a hairbreadth. Fortunately The WB remembered what it does best and gave us a show that â?? despite the rather conventional synopsis â?? is actually pretty brave. After all, it has an extremely limited cast with only Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki as main cast, who both must have been mightily unchallenged in their previous shows. And itâ??s those two guys we have to thank for making this show so good.
For me itâ??s the creepiest show on air these days. Thereâ??s not a single episode where I wonâ??t cover my eyes at one point, so I donâ??t have to see whatâ??s going on on my TV. â??Bloody Maryâ? was a real highlight so far and I havenâ??t been this creeped out because of a TV show since Smallvilleâ??s â??Scareâ?.

6. Weeds: Fashion of the Christ (1×04)
Weeds is just the show that Desperate Housewives wants to be, and maybe the reason why no episode of the former made it into my Top Nine. I wouldnâ??t even dare calling this show a comedy, even though the format and the setting point there. Weeds is just so much more. â??Fashion of the Christâ? represents a whole season of TV show heaven because Andy makes his debut and because of the great last scene (a cargo of coke, anyone?) amongst other things.

Here’s to my favorite recipe ever. Or at least my favorite recipe for cake ’n‘ stuff. I’m still really really fond of my pasta salad.

One of my cooking magazines had a recipe for Cheesecake-Muffins and I finally tried to make those on Christmas day. It’s one of the easiest recipes ever and the result is twelve tiny, but perfect, cheesecakes, each and every one of a delicious yumminess.

I would show you a picture, but unfortunately my mother needed the camera back before I had the chance to capture the pretty results of my housewifey efforts for generations to marvel at. Bummer.

They are served with a strawberry sauce, but I forgot to defrost the strawberries before my aunt and two cousins came to see us this afternoon, so I made frozen strawberry sauce which works and can only be more delicious than an unfrozen strawberry sauce could have ever been. In fact, there’s half a Cheesecake-Muffin left, but no sauce at all. My cousins saw to that.

For the second time now I recognized William Mapother in his less than 10 seconds appearance in a major movie. At least in „Minority Report“ he had something to say (as far as I remember, that is).
In „Vanilla Sky“ he’s just That One Guy In A Club That Sits Next To Penelope Cruz And Is Just Vaguely Visible For About Five Seconds. But my Mapothadar is always on it appears. There he was, The Poor Guy Who Happens To Be Tom Cruises’s Cousin And Therefore Seems To Be In Every Goddamn Movie Tom Stars In, I saw him rightaway and imdb confirmed it.

If William Mapother ever disappears, they just need to contact me. I have this strange ability to make him out in a crowd in a split second. At least I’m really good at something.

This night I had a very strange and creepy dream about a (the?) tsunami. Today I realized that it was exactly one year ago that the tsunami happened. I hadn’t thought about that at all. How strange is that?

How do I know?
Because he gave me this for Christmas (mine doesn’t have the remote, though, but I’m too lazy to search for a better picture).

I wonder if he was aware that this means that I will be playing my music non-stop in every fucking room of our apartment.

Oh, I love you
I wish you got the flu

Get Sick Soon – Hello Saferide

I hope my husband knows that if he’s not going to watch the Muppets Christmas Carol with me today I’m going to be cranky for… at least five minutes, that’s for sure. I’m really bad at grudges, especially when it comes to him.

After all I just brought him coffee and Stollen¹. Such devoted love should be rewarded.

—
¹This is one of the very original German Christmas dishes that I just won’t eat. No way. If this would be the only choice for some afternoon coffee and cake, I would without hesitation refuse and not eat anything.

Success! We got our tree.

It was the first thing we did this morning and we were successful at the second place we stopped by.

Now here’s what we got:

And here is part of the decoration close up:

Now our living room smells like Christmas and I can finally get into the spirit of the season.

We just came back from tree hunting. Without a tree. Because we are stupid people who actually think that they will get a nice tree on the night before Christmas. Yeah, right.

So, tonight I will set the alarm clock, and the first thing we’ll do tomorrow morning is drive back to all the places we saw that still had Christmas trees to sell but were closed when we got there.

Spontaneity is overrated.