HAHAHAHAHAHA

I am so glad that I didn't put "Write more blog posts" on my list of New Year's Resolutions. I'm not a big fan of setting myself up for failure.

With the end of my semester (NTS: taking two classes while working full time is DUMB) approaching quickly, I would like to take this time to remind myself of things that I like and will get to enjoy the second that I finish the busy work that Dr. Idiot Professor is requiring. Call it procrastination motivation, if you will.

1. Introducing Beej to Wishbone.
Wishbone was a PBS show that came on when I was in middle school. It features a Jack Russel Terrier who reenacts classic books with himself in the title roles. There's humans in there too, but honestly, who cares? B.J. mocks my love of this show and thanks to a DVD from Sams, we are going to make him love it through total immersion. I wonder if he'll notice if I switch his ringtone to the theme song.


2. Oscar Nominated movies
This past year was unusual in that a lot of movies were released that I wanted to see. Of course, I'm cheap, and refused to go see them in the theaters like a normal person. Thanks to Netflix and the library, I am planning on taking in Black Swan, the King's Speech, Temple Grandin, and a few extra showings of Inception.

3. Actual sleep in an actual bed for actual hours > 6.

A good day

I love lists. (My entire family just went "duh".) One of my favorite things about the start of the year is the cultural endorsement of massive amounts of list making. As one of the things I'd like to keep up with in the new year is blogging, here's some of my favorites:

Movies that we will watch in January (from the AFI list)
1. Cabaret
2. Star Wars
3. American Grafitti

Home Improvements we will make
1. Shelf in the bathroom
2. Bar stools
3. Repaint B.J.'s office

Today was my last day of vacation. I celebrated by getting things done. To wit:
1. Laundry washed, folded and put away
2. Christmas lights taken down and (mostly) put away
3. Four miles on the exercise bike (starting small and working my way up)
4. House vaccumed
5. Library e-book app installed and working, with two Jan Karon novels downloaded.
6. Blueberry lemon scones baked
7. First two lessons of math homework completed
8. Art project completed and hanging on the wall
9. Husband's choice of movies watched*
10. Lunch packed and things gathered for work tomorrow.

* The Fountain, Animal House, and Bad News Bears

When I get the chance, I like to volunteer with high school and younger kids and try to get them interested in careers in math and science. To this end, here is my list of awesome things about engineering/math/science:

1. Engineers often get to wear jeans to work.
2. If you are a female engineer, there is never a line for a bathroom.
3. If you go into math and science, people will always think you're smart.
4. You will never have a problem calculating a tip in a restaurant.
5. Starting rumors about the Large Hadron Collider ending the world.
6. The Big Band Theory (tv  show) and Dilbert make sense.
7. Engineers have the funniest jokes.*
8. Breaking things can be part of your job.
9. You will look stunning in black rimmed plastic glasses.
10. Money.
11. Nobody cares that you can't spell and have bad handwriting.
12. Running nuclear reactors
13. Driving bulldozers.
14. Doing 12 and 13 before you can legally drink.


*Why do computer people get Christmas and Halloween mixed up? A: Because Dec 25 = Oct 31.

Today I am

I know that I have a lot to be grateful for. Growing up in the church, that gets beaten into your head on a regular basis, especially whenever a missionary on sabbatical comes to visit. Clean water, food, not having to be mutilated when you forget a hat--despite everyone's best efforts, these aren't things I'm grateful for; they're things that I pity others for not having.  Maybe not the best attitude, but beyond going to a third world country for a few months, I don't know that there's much that I can do to change that.

Recently, I've had an upsurge of gratitude about the little things, which feel more meaningful to me than all of the big things put together.

For example, my husband and I went out to dinner tonight. I know that is a luxury that my parents and grandparents didn't have often (if ever) in the early days of their marriages. I'm grateful that we have jobs that let us indulge occasionally, and I'm especially grateful for the sacrifices of my parents that got me an education (and a myriad of free meals along the way).

It looks like our duplex is going to be rented sometime this week. Not only will this save us two month's rent, but the timing is so perfect that we won't have to rush moving. I'm grateful first for the savings, but I'm also grateful that B.J. and I don't have to live paycheck to paycheck, and that two month's rent isn't going to break the bank. I'm also thankful that God's timing is better than mine; if I'd had my way, we would have been moved into the new house two weeks ago and wouldn't have the time to organize things the way that we want.

Yesterday was my Grandpa's 80th birthday. I called to say hello, and we spent 45 minutes talking about our memories of camping trips, the most recent news from the family, and the good things that are happening in my life right now. I'm thankful for the relationships in my family--I have siblings who all like each other, and the older I get, the more I realize what a gift that is.

Overall, I'm grateful for all of the answers to prayer that I've experienced over the past weeks, and thankful for the things that I have, without even having to ask for them.

Another book meme

Slightly better than the last book meme, but still several duplications and way too much Jane Austen.

An X indicates a book that you've read. Italics indicate one that you've started but haven't finished.

[x] 1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
[x] 2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
[x] 3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
[x] 4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
[x] 5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
[x] 6 The Bible
[x] 7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
[x] 8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
[x] 9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman X
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
[x] 11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
[x] 13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (I'm sure I've missed a few sonnets)
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
[x] 16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
[x] 18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
[x] 19 The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger 
[x] 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
[x] 25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams X
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
[x] 28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
[x] 29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
[x] 30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
[x] 33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
[x] 34 Emma – Jane Austen
[x] 35 Persuasion – Jane Austen
[x] 36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis X - (DUPLICATE of number 33)
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
[x] 39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
[x] 40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
[x] 41 Animal Farm – George Orwell
[x] 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
[x] 46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
[x] 48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
[x] 49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding
[x] 50 Atonement – Ian McEwan
[x] 51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel
[x] 52 Dune – Frank Herbert
[x] 53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
[x] 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
[x] 58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
[x] 59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
[x] 61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
[x] 64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
[x] 66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
[x] 68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
[x] 72 Dracula – Bram Stoker
[x] 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
[x] 79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession – AS Byatt
[x] 81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
[x] 87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White
[x] 88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Alborn
[x] 89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
[x] 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
[x] 97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
[x] 98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare DUPLICATE
[x] 99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

As there are two obvious duplicates and at least three too many Jane Austen books listed (and probably too many Dickens novels too), I'd offer the following substitutions:
-Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand
-Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury
-Watchmen - Alan Moore
-The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
-Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card
-Flowers for Algernon - Daniel Keyes
-A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess

As the list stands now, I've read 52. You?

Requiem

In paradisum deducant te Angeli: 
in tuo adventu suscipiant te Martyres, 
et perducant te in civitatem sanctam Ierusalem. 
Chorus Angelorum te suscipiat, 
et cum Lazaro quondam paupere æternam habeas requiem.

May Angels lead you into paradise;
may the Martyrs receive you at your coming
and lead you to the holy city of Jerusalem.
May a choir of Angels receive you,
and with Lazarus, who once was poor, may you have eternal rest.