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

100 Books

Put an (X) next to the ones you've read and (N) next to the ones you haven't. (O) means you have the book but have not read it yet.

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 1984 - George Orwell -X
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman - N
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens - N
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott - X
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy - X
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller - X
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare - X
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier - N
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien - X
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk - N
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger - X
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger - N
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot - X
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell - N
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald - N
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens - N
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy - N
25 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams - X
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh - N
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky - O
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck - X
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll - X
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame - X
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy - N
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens - N
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
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini - N
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres - N
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden - X
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne - X
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell - X
42 Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown - X
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez - O
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving - N
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins - N
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery - X
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy - N
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood - X
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding - X
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan - N
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel - X
52 Dune - Frank Herbert - N
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons - N
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen - X
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth - N
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon - N
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 - X
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez - N
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck - X
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov - N
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt - N
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold - X
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas - X
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac - X
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy - N
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding - N
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie - N
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville - N
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens - N
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker - N
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett - X
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson - N
75 Ulysses - James Joyce - O
76 The Inferno - Dante - X
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome - N
78 Germinal - Emile Zola - N
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray -X
80 Possession - AS Byatt - N
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens - X
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell - N
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker - N
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro - N
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert - N
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry - N
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White - X
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom - X
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - X
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton - N
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad - X
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery [in french counts double] - N
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks - N
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams - N
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole - N
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute - N
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas - X
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare - X
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl - X
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo - N


A few observations:
- You don't need to list the Complete Works of Shakespeare and Hamlet on the same list.
- Somebody loves Thomas Hardy to excess.
- If one must include Austen, one is sufficient.
- It follows from the previous that this list was compiled by a woman, and probably a single one.
- I am astoundingly remiss at reading the Russians.
- And apparently modern literature as well. My total score was 50/100.

Things I need to complete today

1.  Clean room.

2.  Finish loan paperwork with B.J.

3.  Write out Christmas cards.

4.  Investigate where you can buy those little padded envelopes for sending things through the mail.  (Does it have to be at the post office?)

5.  Figure out why I have a check engine light on my car.

6.  Pick up photos at Walgreens.  Purchase frame and a box of popcorn.

7.  Sync iPhone.

8. Download NIN song from brother (thanks!)

9. Wrap gifts.

10. Remember whatever it is I feel I'm forgetting.

Things that have made me happy this morning:

All of the innuendos that I thought of while the light poles were being raised/installed
Fiona Apple's lyrics
An expense check
Labor Day = three day weekend
My new clipboard - aluminum, with a compartment for my Important Papers (plus, bought with job's money, so I get to keep it)
Answering a vendor question by myself
Remembering that I have MASH and Gilmore Girls on dvd at the apartment
Lunchtime is coming very quickly
Twitter

A coyote ate your baby

Things that I have done in the mornings this week:

Assure myself that I did indeed just see a coyote cross the road.
Fail miserably at coyote/chicken parallels.
Spell 'coyote' on the first try.
Stare at my engagement ring for long moments.
Attempt a cup of the generic office coffee.
Drink Tazo Wild Sweet Orange Tea.
Really want to like Jack Johnson.
Find Jack Johnson boring.
Hum along anyway.
Make a to do list for after work that I was too tired to complete.
Swear that I will eat the frozen dinner that I've stored in the work freezer for a week.
Practice Hebrew and Greek alphabets and a Greek paradigm.
Fantasize about buying a space heater or electric blanket for my desk.
Silently despise Port-a-Potties (for the smell, not the utility).