Pop quiz; or, why I haven't posted for a while.

Time for a pop quiz!


Which of these situations contains actual irony?

1. Rain on your wedding day.

2. A traffic jam when you're already late.

3. You grow up in Utah and love it there. Love the dryness, love the seasons, even love the snow as long as you don't have to shovel it or drive in it too much. You marry a guy who grew up in Florida. He complains about the lack of humidity in Utah and any hint of a snowflake (what he terms "the enemy from above") causes him to frantically scour the Internet for job openings in Florida. This goes on for seven consecutive winters, you watching him search for jobs that are in close proximity to palm trees while you're curled up on the couch with a blanket, a good book and some hot chocolate as the snow falls gently outside. Every winter, you worry a little bit about what would happen if he actually found a good job in Florida, because, as previously stated, you love it in Utah. And then the eighth winter comes along and . . . it's like winter forgot to arrive. Christmas is brown and green and dry. You get a little bit of slushy flakes in January but no real snow until late February/early March. For the first time, your husband isn't constantly searching for jobs in Florida, because the snow isn't driving him to extremes. And then, out of the blue, a sister company for the company he works for says, "Hey, we have an opening for a job in Tampa. Do you want it?"

4. You live in Utah where it usually snows all the time. You have a toddler who likes to play outside. You'd rather keep the toddler and the snow from having too much direct contact so you start shopping for snowpants (he's already got a coat and mittens and a hat in the shape of a penguin). You find the exact kind you want—cheap, durable, not pink or purple—and the store is ALWAYS out of his size. You wait and keep checking because it hasn't snowed much yet this winter so it's not urgent that you have these snowpants right now and by waiting you can avoid having to pay shipping by ordering through the store's website because paying for shipping just kind of seems immoral to you now that you've got Amazon prime (and why doesn't Amazon make it easier to find size 18m snowpants in non-girly styles, anyway?) but finally there's a forecast for a big storm and you really want your little guy to be able to build a snowman so you just bite the bullet and order the boots and the snowpants and pay the shipping and then they arrive and the snow sort of comes and you build a snowman with your waterproof toddler once. The snow all melts the next day and within a week and a half your husband calls you and says that a sister company for the company he works for has just told him out of the blue, "Hey, we have an opening for a job in Tampa. Do you want it?" It snows a couple more times in the next few weeks but the snowpants don't see any more use either because you're frantically packing for a cross-country move or your toddler is sick or both.

5. A sister company for the company your husband works for tells him out of the blue that they have an opening in Tampa and asks if he'd like the job. You say yes and start planning for a quick but organized cross-country move. Then your toddler gets a major ear infection, contracts the stomach flu, and gives that flu to you and your husband. Your family spends the better part of a week and a half recovering. Then your husband is flown out to work in Tampa early, leaving you alone with a toddler and a house to pack. Your babysitters get a nasty bout of illness. Your son gets RSV and ends up in the hospital overnight so they can observe his difficulty breathing. Husband comes home the night after toddler is discharged from hospital. All semblance of organization in packing and moving goes irrevocably down the drain; the only overarching theme of this cross-country move is "If it can go wrong, it will." We should just call it Murphy's Move to save time. The day you start packing the moving van, you get the worst cold of your life (because, let's face it, it's probably actually your son's RSV) complete with nasty cough (like unto one which hacks up a lung) which hangs on and hangs on and hasn't left yet.

6. You somehow manage to get to Tampa with your husband, your toddler, two cats, and the bare essentials which you took on the plane with you to tide you over until your furniture and other stuff arrives hopefully on Tuesday. Immediately your air mattress springs a leak.

7. You have a palm tree growing outside your bedroom window and a tiny lizard lives on your deck. Your toddler loves the new apartment and even though you have uprooted your entire life, have no idea where anything is in this town, have to learn an entirely new city, have no friends and are miles away from your family, your home and everything you've grown up with, you start thinking, hey, maybe living in Tampa is going to be fun after all.

8. Ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife. (Note: you are not in any kind of silverware factory.)





Hint: By my count, only one of these is actually ironic. The others involve bad timing, bad luck, Murphy's law, odd coincidences, frustration, facepalms, and, thankfully, a bit of fortuitousness.

Ungh.

I've been really lucky since the Little Guy was born in that I haven't needed to take very many "sick days," as it were. The problem with that is that when I *do* need one, it feels like several sick days all saved up at once.

Which is what today has been like. Seriously, it reminds me of the first trimester except I can absolutely guarantee that's not what's going on. But it means that all I want to do is curl up in the bed and sleep it off.

That's not exactly the Little Guy's idea of a good time, though.

He's just learned to walk and he's in the process of giving up afternoon naps and isn't exactly impressed with the brand-new-and-definitely-not-improved model of Mommy, The Lump! So I've barricaded us in the study (the smallest room in the house aside from the bathrooms, which makes it the easiest to keep warm), which incidentally has tons of books, a desk, a TV and a Love Sac, so I can sort of nap and sort of keep an eye on the Little Guy without going over the line into neglect. He loves the chance to sit on the Love Sac and eat animal crackers and watch PBS Kids (okay, seriously, Martha Speaks? THAT'S NOT HOW ANATOMY WORKS), so it's really not as rough for him as you might think.



So with any luck, we'll both survive until Daddy gets home from work. And with any more luck, tomorrow will be better.



And now, if you'll excuse me, I need to get back to solving the puzzling question of why on earth that dog is still alive if she's got alphabet soup stuck in her brain.

Do you think they have a customer loyalty program?

I recently received the following email in my spam folder. My spam folder is a source of frequent amusement, and this did not disappoint:

I find several things interesting about this:

- The fact that Nigerian con artists apparently have found a way to get repeat customers. They are nothing if not resourceful!
- They are gutsy enough to put a warning at the end not to trust anyone else (but we're TOTALLY legit!).
- Judging by the total amount of money that has been set aside and the fact that "every affected victim" gets $3.4 million, only about 59 people have been affected. This is actually a lot better than my faith in the human race would have led me to believe.
- If you read the first sentence literally, it looks like the president of Nigeria is the one who rated his country the most corrupt in the world.

I think my favorite thing about this message, though, is the fact that, according to my research, the current president of Nigeria actually really and truly is named Goodluck Jonathan. Well, actually, it's Goodluck Ebele Azikiwe Jonathan, but I think that only makes it better. (Unfortunately, Dr. Silver Okoli appears to be an illegal fiction.)


This is right up there with the one where the sender claimed God had revealed my name to him as someone who was righteous enough to help him out.

2010, at last.

Yes, yes, I know I'm a month late for the year-in-review game. Just live with it.

Here are some of the awesome things that happened in 2010. As I suspected, it was a MUCH better year than 2009. (Although, let's be honest, it wasn't hard to do.) As always, if I didn't list something you thought was awesome, it doesn't mean I didn't enjoy it; I just can't remember everything.

*The new year began with what was probably the best party we've ever had or ever will have at our house. New Year's Eve: Geek Style brought awesome Jenga, lots of laughter, great conversation, and just enough craziness to ensure that none of those present will ever be elected for public office.
*Beginning the final semester of law school and feeling great about my schedule, even though it involved an 8:00 a.m. class three days a week.
*Actually making it to class on time for the first several weeks of class.
*Getting Baby (our car) repaired after she sat in the cold and snow for a month and a half after the big break-down in November '09.
*Having to repair a flat tire in the snow and gunk of our parking lot before we could actually take Baby in.
*Steve's Intermountain is the best mechanic's shop in Provo. Just sayin'. He's honest, doesn't talk down to me just because I'm a woman, and is genuinely nice.
*Staying home all day one Wednesday while feeling sick and crampy and reading.
*Aubrey's wedding with Kat and KEY.
*New red coat, yo.
*Rejoining ILMR and editing a really horrible article, but at least the head editors were much better.
*Working at WSP with an awesome team of editors and friends.
*Geek Night X. The second-best party we've ever had here.
*Making Mario cupcakes with KEY for Geek Night X. Yeah, I'm still proud of those.
*Shallow Man finding the trauco in an old box while KEY and I were decorating said cupcakes.
*Our already-decrepit fence blew halfway over in a major windstorm and we had no choice but to pull the rest of it down to avoid damaging the siding.
*More Just Jane, including the expansion to 10 members, with the inaugural meeting of the new, improved club also being the first non-Austen-themed, but still Jane [Eyre].
*Lunches with KEY, when they happened. And even when they didn't, the weekly "I'm so sorry for being a flake, but . . ." conversations.
*Starting to feel a little weird the last week of January/first week of February, but knowing it wasn't what it felt like.
*Buying cruise tickets with the Cruise Crew on Friday, Feb. 5th.
*Taking that test on the morning of Saturday, Feb. 6th, just to prove to my body that it wasn't pregnant so it could stop acting like it.
*Ten minutes later, when I could think again, wandering dazedly into the bedroom and, after staring at the ceiling for several minutes, saying to Shallow Man, "So . . . I think I'm pregnant."
*Driving to Walmart that evening to buy another test just to make sure, and having the car start acting really funny again as we drove there.
*While shopping, thinking of the most hill-free route to take home to save the car from going up any hills while it was on the fritz, then getting out to the car and finding out that it would no longer shift into reverse. This officially bumped the two days of Feb. 5th & 6th, 2010, into "Most expensive weekend yet in our family."
*Riding in a tow truck.
*Our ever-growing collection of Steve's Intermountain keychains. Finding out it was not the whole transmission, thank goodness, just the sensor. FINALLY having a functioning car, but being afraid to accelerate or go up hills for the next (okay, I'll be honest) three months.
*Walking to the Student Health Center on Monday afternoon to get the blood test and trying to figure out how far along I was.
*Getting the quantitative results back and wanting to sing.
*Feeling great until placement break (of course!) and then getting hit with morning sickness, big time.
*Working from home. A lot.
*Missing a lot of class. (My professors were all in on the secret and very supportive.)
*Going to a lot of different wards (our 9:00 a.m. meeting time didn't gel with my hours-that-I-am-not-hunched-over-the-toilet schedule).
*Julie and Julia for Valentine's.
*Telling the rest of my family (my parents already knew) at my birthday party. Much rejoicing.
*The tree in our backyard had to be cut down before the HOA would replace the fence (we at least got them to pay for the removal). It ended up being removed on the morning of my birthday.
*And thus we were introduced to the power of the pregnant sobbing. (Confession: I would have cried about the tree anyway. But I wouldn't have been reduced to blubbering.)
*Trying to make dinner for one of the pregnant sisters in the ward without looking at any of the ingredients, all of which made me sick.
*The saddest day of all: Baby decided not to let me eat bacon for the rest of the first trimester. This is especially sad when you consider that I had just discovered The Pioneer Woman's Fancy Macaroni the first week of February.
*Shallow Man took me to see 12 Angry Men performed at PTC in Salt Lake for my birthday. I snuck in trail mix and managed not to get sick during the performance. Lots of fun!
*Olympics! So much fun to watch. Also, they helped me discover the joys of pregnancy emotions (I have never cried so hard during a commercial).
*Bar applications. Yuck.
*Hire's and the Roquefort Bacon H. "Whatever that is."
*Cousin party and Rayman's Raving Rabbids. Whoa.
*Going to the first doctor's appointment in March and having everything look good. But, just in case, he scheduled a sonogram for the next week.
*Coming back to work after that appointment just to find out that the company had apparently imploded (not literally) in our absence and that all but a handful of employees were being laid off.
*We were not included in that handful. Actually, everyone from me down.
*Which meant that I got to break the news to all of my friends that they were being laid off. This included going to the homes of two of them who hadn't been in the office to let them know before they heard it from somebody else.
*Fortunately, seven horrible days later, we saw Baby for the first time, and heard the most beautiful sound ever: a strong, healthy heartbeat.
*Spilling the beans to everyone and seeing all our friends get so excited for us. (I put it on Facebook, and then it was true!)
*Viewing party for New Moon (mocking commentary mandatory!) and the Team Jacob t-shirt.
*Morning sickness escalation and the first prescription, which made it worse. Lost five pounds in one weekend alone.
*Getting the second prescription and starting to feel human again.
*Except for the only being able to eat Easy Mac part. But HEY, if that looked appetizing, it should give you an idea of the amazing effectiveness of that second prescription!
*Going to Cracker Barrel because spoiled pork chops made me cry. (Yeah, not fun.)
*SLA night II, which ended up being me, Motion deSmiths and Megan watching "She's the Man." Awesome.
*Going in for our 12-week appointment the day before my last law school classes. I had nightmares for the whole week leading up to it about the last time we went in for a 12-week appointment. But he found the heartbeat instantly. I may or may not have cried.
*Holy cow, I do not even know HOW I finished that last semester of law school. But I did.
*Last class of law school.
*Last final of law school (which is the closest I will ever get to living that nightmare where you have to take a final for a class you didn't realize you were enrolled in).
*Substantial writing, aka Major Paper (neigh!). It nearly killed me, but I did it.
*Last papers of law school, for the most useless class ever, and the professor who I'm pretty sure gave me a lower grade because I had the audacity to be pregnant while taking his class, even though I can't prove it. He was the only professor who wasn't 100% supportive and willing to work with me. He did work with me, but under protest and not without accusing me of unprofessionalism first. Blech.
*Graduation! I am so glad we got to walk in the Provo Tabernacle! We were the last class to be able to do so, as there was a fire in December and the roof collapsed.
*Partying, relaxing, and lots of sighs of relief.
*Hitting the second trimester two days before graduation, and briefly thinking that the morning sickness would stop. (It did leave me alone for graduation, thank goodness.) This turned out to be a lie—the sickness wasn't going anywhere for the next few months. But at least I could eat bacon again.
*Being re-hired by the publishing company as a part-time independent contractor.
*Mother's Day wasn't traumatic for the first time in several years.
*CRUISE!!!
*The toilet of lost souls.
*"Aw, hell."
*Balcony!
*Cruise director Gary.
*Dennis, our waiter. ("Denniiiiiiiiis!")
*I ate escargot for the first time ever.
*Only having to send one plate back because I nearly gagged just looking at it (roast beef, of all things, which I love. Weird.)
*Cruise ship entertainment. ("You can't pay money for those shows!") The big talking purple couch.
*The Land Whale. ("Freeeeennnnnncch Toooooooooast!")
*Our seven-year anniversary, spent in Grand Cayman, with the most beautiful beach I have ever been to.
*The group excursion in Honduras—snorkeling, good conversation, yellow fish, not enough sunscreen despite reapplying frequently and liberally.
*Feeling Baby kick for the first time that I could definitely say was Baby and nothing else while standing waist-deep in the beautiful blue water at the beach in Honduras.
*Banana slug blisters. Apparently my pregnant skin does NOT react well to sunburn. (I haven't blistered since I was maybe 12, and never like THAT.)
*Magic shows with lame final tricks that rely on fictional sob stories.
*Piggy banks made out of coconuts, discovering ice cream and cinnamon, and an amazingly choppy boat ride in Belize.
*Karaoke and attempted dancing.
*Delicious food in Cozumel.
*Floppy hat!
*Trying to figure out what the heck the towel animal of the evening was supposed to be, and sometimes feeling glad that we didn't know.
*Renting a van and driving around Miami.
*Horrible service at Bubba Gump's, which I didn't notice because Baby had started the first-ever round of kick the bladder.
*Worst ever TSA experience at Miami international.
*Weather delay in Miami led to missing our flight in Dallas. After a mad dash across the airport on what ultimately turned out to be a wild goose chase (more Kick the Bladder ensued), we and the Smiths were given vouchers to a surprisingly nice hotel.
*Finally getting home, and the cats gluing themselves to our sides for the next day or so. ("Never leave again!")
*Early morning Spanish.
*Helping friends move.
*The most awkward dinner visit we've ever been forced to endure. (If you're reading this, it wasn't with you.)
*So much Gloria's.
*Camping for Memorial Day with our AWESOME NEW AIR MATTRESS. Seriously, it's amazing.
*Motion deSmiths left us. How we wept, precious!
*The Ultrasound on June 3rd. Despite having a feeling that Baby was a girl the whole time, as well as having a girl's name already picked out, baby very clearly showed us that he was a boy. He also was sitting curled up like a potato bug, blocking the technician's detailed view of his heart, thus necessitating a follow-up visit six weeks later (oh, darn!).
*GIVE MY SON THE JUICE!!!
*Family camping trip. Lots of fun with Kick the Bladder and pit toilets. Wind so strong we felt like our tent was going to blow away with us in it. Being the cool hangout for our nephews because with the huge air mattress our tent was like a carnival bounce house.
*I remember we got our oil changed in June because the sticker they left on our windshield said that the date for our next oil change was the day Baby ended up being born.
*Southern Culture Night. Hands on a Hard Body. Lots of good food. Very Yes.
*I finally finished reading Great Expectations, and it was better than I had expected.
*Lots of fun trying to change our car battery. Riiiiight.
*But we got the car inspected and registered and such WAY before the end of the month. No sneaking around backroads like last year.
*Fireworks with the family for the fourth.
*Bar study all the time. Post-traumatic stress and such.
*Follow-up ultrasound, where everything still looked perfect. :)
*One year later, and thinking what a long way we'd come, and being happier on that day than I would have thought possible a year before.
*Actually getting to go to my mom's birthday party this year.
*Having to get a doctor's note in order to take food into the bar exam. ("Because not all pregnant women need to eat.")
*The Dreaded Bar. Two days of UNGH in which my feet swelled up to ridiculous sizes.
*BUT—my magic spreadsheet predicting the essay question topics was pretty much spot on. The only one I didn't predict was Property, but that was okay because it was still an MBE subject. Yeah, I felt good about that.
*IT'S OVER!!!!
*Dinner at the Mayan with Megan and Mr. G, just because it was there. It's still as cheesy as I remembered, although I was greatly angered that the chocolate pot was no longer a dessert option.
*Finding out that E was pregnant and S was adopting, and we were all having boys. Hello, three musketeers!
*Being able to say that we were now "After the Bar."
*Failing the other test I took that week. (Nasty glucose test.)
*Failing the other nasty glucose test I took the next week.
*Hello, gestational diabetes.
*Hello, sore fingertips.
*Possible pre-eclampsia (what is with these whale-sized feet?). Fun sample collecting.
*Celebratory post-bar pedicures. (So at least the whales had cute toenails.)
*Inception. Twice. Even though my feet hated me for it later.
*We bought a car seat and stroller! That felt like a major accomplishment, somehow.
*Trying to find a suitable crib.
*Trying to figure out what the heck to name the Little Guy.
*Tensions between Barrie and Joyce.
*Weekly and sometimes bi-weekly non-stress tests, as well as another couple of ultrasounds. Which do, incidentally, help ME de-stress, because I get to see the Little Guy and hear his heartbeat on a regular basis. We find out baby has a big noggin.
*Reunions and birthday parties.
*Reading The Hunger Games Trilogy and being very glad, as I hit the end of the second book, that I waited until all three were out before I started them.
*Pre-natal classes with uncomfortable chairs and videos.
*Blood pressure acting sketchy.
*Geek Nights, Just Janes, more tense moments.
*Bar results come out and WE BOTH PASSED. Holy cow.
*Baby shower!
*The crib FINALLY arrives and we start putting it together Thursday night after our class.
*Friday morning I go to my 36-week appointment, planning to run some errands afterwards and then wait at home for the delivery man to show up with the new camera we've ordered. Instead, the nurse looks at my blood pressure and sends me to labor and delivery.
*Did I mention I was planning to pack my hospital bag later that day?
*Shallow Man's wonderful co-worker brings him to the doc's office and we head to the hospital. My angel sister heads to our house and packs bags for us, arranges for a neighbor to sign for the camera and bring it to us (she was headed to a concert in SLC and couldn't wait for it herself, which only increases her angelitude in my opinion), and even cleaned up the boxes from the crib (which we were too tired to throw away the night before) and fed the cats. At some point in the next few days she even did laundry for us, and I don't know what all else. Let me take a moment again to emphasize that she is amazing and an angel. Thank you so much, sis!
*The short version here is that after 30 hours of labor, I had a c-section on Saturday night and the Little Guy made his entrance to the world. Shallow Man and I fell instantly in love with him and it's only gotten better.
*Adventures in hospital staying. I found out that morphine is awesome. And I have never been happier to eat a milkshake in my life.
*Finally made it home the next week, although I had to get a prescription for blood pressure meds because mine was still higher than they liked.
*Having a moment of panic when I had to sign the "Parent/Guardian" line on the hospital release forms.
*Near-daily visits to the hospital lab for bilirubin counts. We were nearly on a first-name basis with the nurses there.
*One night with the Little Guy on bililights and I hope I never have to do that again.
*A fun trip to the emergency room for me because my blood pressure was reading something like 201/120. Yeah. When we got there and it was only reading 175/105, they couldn't understand why that made us so happy. Meds were upped and things turned out okay.
*Tripping down the stairs one of my first days home alone with the baby. Not recommended.
*Shallow Man having to work till 11 p.m. most nights the week after we came home. Also not recommended.
*Much pain and suffering and frustration and tears (on both ends) trying to figure out the whole nursing thing. Thank goodness for the lactation clinic.
*Being sworn in as lawyers and actually getting to go to the ceremony. Wahoo!
*Oh, losing, like, 40 pounds in the first three weeks after the birth. I was back in pre-pregnancy pants two weeks after he was born. I don't know how it happened, but I'm not complaining!
*Making a Hiccup (from "How to Train Your Dragon") costume for the Little Guy for Halloween, even though he maybe should have been Mount Vesuvius.
*The arrival of two more geeklings (one before, one after the Little Guy, and both girls).
*Slowly and gradually healing.
*The Little Guy's blessing day. I've been waiting for that one for a long time. (Yes, I cried.)
*Going to the funeral for my great-aunt, the last surviving member of my grandmother's family. Losing one of the Little Guy's socks at the graveside service.
*Thanksgiving. And pie. But mostly thankfulness for being so blessed.
*The Little Guy's two-month appointment. He is a string bean—long and skinny, but very healthy and cheerful.
*Completing 30 blog posts in 30 days for NaBloPoMo.
*Going to the Christmas party for Shallow Man's work at La Caille. Delicious food, even if the atmosphere is a bit silly. Two of his team members (sitting at our table) won prizes. We enjoyed the juxtaposition of our car being brought up by the valets at the fancy restaurant.
*The failed attempt to see my sister's quartet perform, and the encore just for us.
*Getting to see Red and Harry Potter in theaters when awesome people baby-sat the Little Guy for us.
*Finally leaving the publishing company for good and all.
*Working with Shallow Man again, only this time he's my supervisor, sort of.
*Little Guy's first smile.
*Little Guy's first laugh.
*Little Guy just being awesome in general.
*Another cousins party at the end of the year, this time with three new babies. :)
*We are a three-stocking family now!
*Spending Christmas at my parent's house along with my sister and her family because they were moving out of state on Christmas afternoon. Packing up their house in the days before Christmas.
*The best Christmas ever.
*Also the most tearful as we all gave our last hugs and goodbyes and my sister and her family packed up and drove off for four years of school in the South.
*One wonderful week of having a bread maker before it died.
*First eye appointments since the beginning of law school.
*Oddly, all of our invited guests for New Year's Eve ended up having to cancel, so we rang out 2010 as a family, with just the three of us. It was a good end to a good year, and I think the vast difference between the beginning and the end of 2010 were in keeping with the other surprises and changes that came along the way.

Yeah, all in all, I think 2010 is my favorite year yet. As the Little Guy grows and develops even more of a personality and gets even cuter (if such a thing is possible), I'll be excited to see what comes next!

You're on notice, 2011. You've got a lot to live up to.




I have to say, seeing as this post is a month and a bit late, that so far 2011 has not disappointed. Onward and upward!

Really, now.

If Hulu Plus is supposed to be so great, why don't they have all of the episodes for the current season of Psych?

I'm just sayin'.



Day 27 and I miss Shawn Spencer already. . . .

After these messages . . .

So today is kind of a cop-out post. Again. But that's okay.

I think I may have done this before, but books and book lists are always worth revisiting. (Like Brideshead, I guess, although I'm not sure since I've not read that one.) But I've definitely read more than 6.

I've seen this list go around several times and it always makes me wonder:

1) Why does the BBC thinks people have only read 6 of these books? Do they really have that low of an opinion of the reading habits of the modern adult? And who came up with the number 6? I even have my doubts that the BBC is actually involved in this at all, but that's another story.

2) Who chose these books? What was the criteria? Why do we have The Da Vinci Code but not Don Quixote? And why include the complete works of William Shakespeare as well as Hamlet, and didn't anyone notice that The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is actually part of the Chronicles of Narnia? (Another reason why I doubt the BBC's involvement. Surely they would know better.)

3) So which six of these books does the BBC expect people to have read?

4) What does this say about my book and movie habits?

The answer to these questions is a pretty firm "I have no idea." But it's still fun to look at lists of books, right?

So, without further ado, here's the actual meme with my answers.:



Have you read more than 6 of these books? The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here.

Instructions: Copy this into your NOTES.
Bold those books you've read in their entirety.
Italicize the ones you started but didn't finish or read only an excerpt.
Put an asterisk after the ones you've seen a film version of.

Tag other book nerds. Tag me as well so I can see your responses! Feel free to add comments too.

1 *Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 *The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 *Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 *Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 *To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 *The Bible
7 *Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 *Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 *Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 *Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 *Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 *Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 *The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 *Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 *The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 *David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 *Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 *Emma - Jane Austen
35 *Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 *The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 *Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 *The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 *The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 *Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 *Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 *Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 *Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov (I've only seen part of the movie, though.)
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 *Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 *Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 *Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 *Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 *The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 *Possession - AS Byatt
81 *A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 *The Remains of the Day - Kazu Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 *Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 *Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 *The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 *The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 *Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 *Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 *Les Miserables - Victor Hugo


So that makes . . .

44 I've read in their entirety,
13 more I've read excerpts or abridged versions (or just didn't finish), and
42 movie adaptations I've seen. (I've seen brief snippets of several more, but I only included movies I've seen all or nearly all of.)

Which, I guess, makes me not-completely-uncultured. Or something.



Day 20! She could . . . go . . . all . . . the . . . way!!!

De-Lurk Day 2010

There's a blog I read which sports the saying "I don't hate comments" on its sidebar. I can agree with this sentiment. Another blogger has explained the reasons why it's okay to be a blog stalker.

I freely admit to stalking blogs and am well aware that there are some people who stalk my blog. I know this mostly because Google Analytics—which is one of my favorite toys, just by the way—shows some regular readers in places where I do not know anyone (or at least, I'm not aware of knowing anyone from these locations).

Which I think is pretty awesome. I like the fact that I can get to know a little bit about someone I've never met, or that I'm sharing my quirky little random stories and thoughts (because, let's face it, that's about as "themed" as this blog gets) with others that I wouldn't have had the chance to share them with otherwise. I like the way the blogging world shrinks the real world in some ways.

But in other ways, I'm a little sad that it tends to be so anonymous. I've found some really cool blogs from people who comment on this and other blogs, and I wonder how many more I'm missing because people are lurking and not commenting. I admit that I frequently lurk at blogs without commenting, usually because I don't want them to freak out about the fact that I happen to be lurking. It may take months of lurkage before I post a comment.

So I don't want any of you to feel worried about this. Following the lead of yet another cool blogger, I declare today to be official De-Lurk Day at The Scritchy Nib. Please leave a comment and let me know if you're reading the blog, where you're from, your favorite dessert, any requests you have for future rants well-thought-out commentaries, any questions you have for me, or anything else you feel comfortable sharing.

I love comments and I love finding new blog friends. Let's make this a day to celebrate both.

(And if you are a regular commenter, please know that I already hold you in the highest esteem, and feel free to continue in that excellent vein.)

Please note: In keeping with the theme, all of today's blog links are brought to you by blogs of people I do not personally know, and at which I have lurked and subsequently de-lurked and commented.




Wahoo! More than a week down and I'm still on track (and, I might add, posting well before midnight)! Help me stay on track with lots of awesome comments! (Yeah, okay, now I'm just shamelessly begging.)

The big day; or, A Poll.

So folks, today's the big day. We're getting our ultrasound this afternoon and get to find out what flavor of baby we're having. So place your bets! I'll let you all know when we find out.

Story time! And time for a VOTE!

And again, this isn't a real post. But it will be, WITH YOUR HELP!

So many great and blog-worthy things have happened in the last couple of weeks. Well, some not so great, but still blog-worthy. But the upshot is that with all the time I've spent actually living through these things (and the rest of my time being spent doing ridiculous law school stuff *cough*edits*cough*), I haven't had time to actually blog about them. And now I'm just too tired to blog about them all.

So I think I'll put it to a vote. Do you want to hear about:

1. The night we did epic battle with the fence in the massive windstorm with 40 mph gusts?

2. The epic saga of Doooooooom! that is our car, beginning with a failed attempt to see my little sister's play and ending, most recently, with us being stranded at Walmart this evening?

3. A love song to mac and cheese and my newfound domesticity?

4. An ode to my car's left turn signal (not to be confused with the epic saga of Doooooooom!)?

5. A well thought-out and intelligent book review of an awesome book I just finished reading?

6. A tale of adventure on the high seas?

7. Or an introduction to a new blog?


Leave a comment with your top three votes, and I'll write a blog post on the winner, and possibly the runners-up, sometime this week.

Until then, I think I'm going to take another nap.

Quick Thought

So I'm watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade (woot!) and one of the performing acts is announced as "Boys Like Girls."

And I've just gotta ask...

Is that a verb or a preposition?

Because inquiring minds want to know.

Happy Thanksgiving!


Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go eat a staggering amount of good food. Trytophan, here I come!