A Meme and A Confession

I finally figured out the right combination of user name and password to unlock my Blogger account. Yay!

So I'm feeling like the worst sort of person today. First I got slapped down on someone's blog for a comment I had posted. I thought it was just an innocent comment, sort of self-deprecating even, but apparently I came off as being superior and snobbish. Which I did not mean to. But maybe I'm really like that and don't realize it.

And then, I just got back from helping a friend dig her car out of the snow. We were about three-quarters of the way done when a couple of guys pulled over and asked if we wanted them to tow her car out. Heck ya! So they attached a chain and pulled her out of the spot. Once they were done, they half joked about us buying them a beer. Which we probably should have done. But neither of us had showered, we had just been digging snow for an hour, we both have a ton of homework---basically, neither of us really wanted to go out for a beer at that moment. And unfortunately we didn't think to offer to walk down to the store and buy them a six-pack until after they had left. So I feel like an ungrateful jerk for that.

So now I'm feeling like a completely rude snob.

Anyway, even though I really do have a ton of homework to do, I'm exhausted from digging snow so I'm going to steal a meme from Bearette, who has read way more than me.

The rules are, you bold the books you've read, italicize the ones you want to read, and leave unchanged the ones you're not interested in.

1. The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
5. Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien)
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
16. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Rowling)
17. Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King)
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling)
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
21. The Hobbit (Tolkien)
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
28. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
30. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)
31. Dune (Frank Herbert)
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
34. 1984 (Orwell)
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
45. Bible (parts, but not the whole thing)
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. Angela's Ashes (Frank McCourt)
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
50. She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Dickens)
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
59. The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrew Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Tolsoy)
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
69. Les Miserables (Hugo)
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. Bridget Jones' Diary (Fielding)
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78. The World According To Garp (John Irving)
79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
80. Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White)
81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)
83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
84. Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
85. Emma (Jane Austen)
86. Watership Down(Richard Adams)
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
92. Lord of the Flies (Golding)
93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100. Ulysses (James Joyce)

Oh, and my latest theory on my upstairs neighbor is that she's making porn flicks. That's the only explanation I can come up with for why she insists on playing the same gawd-awful techno "song" over and over and over. Gah! Soon no more whining from me about that---I'm putting in an offer on a condo this week!

Happiness Is . . .

Yeah, there's not gonna be a whole lot of school reading getting done this weekend. The Vanity Fair Hollywood Issue is here! I'll need all of Saturday and part of Sunday just to find the content among all the ads.

Thursday Thirteen: Things I've Learned Today

1. Walking a mile in sub-zero weather will not, in any way, warm you up.

2. Denim is really not a very heavy fabric.

3. Bus = warm goodness.

4. I'm officially addicted to gossip. I'm way too interested in the details of Anna Nicole's death.

5. I would be a terrible mother. I learned this at 3.32 a.m.

6. There is no limit to the number of freaky noises that my upstairs neighbor can make.

7. Sunny is not the same thing as warm.

8. I'm lazy. Not that I didn't know this before. But it has been repeatedly reinforced today.

9. iTunes is evil. I used to have no problems with it, but lately, I can't watch a downloaded show for more than about 3 minutes before the video part gets stuck. I've cleaned off my hard drive, thinking that the lack of memory might be slowing it down, but even that hasn't helped. Grrrr. How am I supposed to get my weekly Heroes fix?

10. My dog hates me. She'd rather nap in the disgustingly dirty bathroom than curl up next to me on the bed.

11. "There is a basis for trade whenever the relative price of goods in autarky of the two potential trading partners are different."

12. I'm not a big fan of the tomato bisque at the Sunroom Cafe. And their chocolate-chip cookies aren't so great, either.

13. It's February. Who knew?

Cold, Damn Cold, and Wisconsin

At least one of us is enjoying all this wintry weather.

Go Bears!

And here's why:

"Little did anyone know on December 18th 1983 the Colts had played their final game in Baltimore. Almost after the season ending win at Memorial Stadium; Colts owner Robert Irsay began talking to other cities about moving the club. On February 13th he toured the Hoosier Dome in Indianapolis. The Colts also spoke to officials in Phoenix, as the Maryland legislature tried to use eminent domain laws to force the franchise to remain in Maryland. On March 28th Phoenix dropped out of the bidding, at Irsay called up officials in Indiana saying he was on the way. However, he kept the move secret until just after midnight when by cover of darkness on a cold snowy night he used Mayflower moving trucks to pack up the Colts offices, and relocate them in Indianapolis. By the time anyone realized what had happened it was too late to stop. The NFL feeling they could not win in court did not fight the move, as Maryland put up a futile fight before the Colts agreed to support Baltimore getting an expansion team. The city of Baltimore would fail in several attempts at landing a NFL franchise, and even entered the CFL, before landing a new NFL franchise named the Ravens in 1996. However, the Irsay family would not relinquish the name Colts, as they once promised. Many Colt legends were angered by the move including legendary QB Johnny Unitas who refused to acknowledge the franchise for the rest of his life."

From the Sports Encyclopedia.