Stolen from my counsin's facebook page:

The BBC believes most people will have read only six of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?


1. Pride and Prejudice -- Jane Austen..........................................Yes
2. The Lord of the Rings -- J.R.R. Tolkien.....................................Yes
3. Jane Eyre -- Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series -- J.K. Rowling.........................................Yes
5. To Kill a Mockingbird -- Harper Lee.........................................Yes
6. The Holy 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...........................................Yes, and most of her other works
12. Tess of the d’Urbervilles -- Thomas Hardy
13. Catch-22 -- Joseph Heller
14. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (all the plays)
15. Rebecca -- Daphne du Maurier...............................................Yes
16. The Hobbit -- J.R.R. Tolkien...............................................Yes
17. Birdsong -- Sebastian Faulk
18. Catcher in the Rye -- J.D. Salinger........................................Yes
19. The Time Traveler’s Wife -- Audrey Niffenegger.............................Yes - one of my favorites
20. Middlemarch -- George Eliot
21. Gone with the Wind -- Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby -- F. Scott Fitzgerald....................................Yes
23. Bleak House -- Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace -- Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy -- Douglas Adams......................Yes
26. Brideshead Revisited -- Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment -- Fyodor Dostoyevsky.................................No, but it's sitting on my nightstand waiting for me.
28. The Grapes of Wrath -- John Steinbeck
29. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland -- Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows -- Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina -- Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield -- Charles Dickens
33. The Chronicles of Narnia -- C.S. Lewis
34. Emma -- Jane Austen.......................................................Yes
35. Persuasion -- Jane Austen.................................................Yes
36. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe -- C.S. Lewis........................Yes
37. The Kite Runner -- Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli's Mandolin -- Louis de Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha -- Arthur Golden......................................Yes
40. Winnie the Pooh -- A.A. Milne.............................................Yes
41. Animal Farm -- George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code -- Dan Brown............................................Yes
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 -- L.M. Montgomery...................................Yes, and all the sequels
47. Far from the Madding Crowd -- Thomas Hardy................................Yes
48. The Handmaid's Tale -- Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies -- William Golding......................................Yes
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..................................... Yes
55. A Suitable Boy -- Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind -- Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale of Two Cities -- Charles Dickens...................................Yes
58. Brave New World -- Aldous Huxley..........................................Unfortunately, Yes
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time -- Mark Haddon..........Yes
60. Love in the Time of Cholera -- Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men -- John Steinbeck
62. Lolita -- Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History -- Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones -- Alice
65. The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On the Road -- Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure -- Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones' 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..............................Yes
74. Notes From A Small Island -- Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses -- James Joyce
76. The Inferno -- Dante Alighieri
77. Swallows and Amazons -- Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal -- Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair -- William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession -- A.S. Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol -- Charles Dickens......................................Yes
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
87. Charlotte’s Web -- E.B. White Yes
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven -- Mitch Albom.........................Yes
89. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes -- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle...............Yes
90. The Faraway Tree Collection -- Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness -- Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery.............................Yes
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..........................................Yes
97. The Three Musketeers -- Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet -- William Shakespeare.............................................Yes
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory -- Roald Dahl...........................Yes
100. Les Miserables -- Victor Hugo

Tell me your favorite bad/silly/punny/groan inducing joke, then ask the same on your blog/journal/diary/whatever...

Here's mine:

"Constipated mathematicians have to work it out with a pencil."

Yep...sick and wrong. Bad mental image.

From Audrey: "You can pick your friends and you can pick your nose, but you can't wipe your friends on the sofa."

Posted to the "phone dog" wireless phone review comments:

Hey Noah, I am 10 years old and I"m in a hard disition weather or not I should get the voyager titanium or the env2. Please put this in the mailbag and email me back. I watch all your videos but I am torn from the voyager titanium and the env2. Please email me back and put in mailbag. Also tell me when you will be doing the mailbag. When I see your videos it makes me want to go to the verizon store and hold the phone but my mom thinks we go there to much and the people think we are weird. Please don't put this in the comments I couldn't email you so I just put it in the comments. Thank You

I finally made it to see a specialist in immunodermatology at the U of U. He's the guy they send you to when no one can figure out what you have. For 8 years I've had symptoms of some sort of autoimmune disorder similar to Lupus, but with other symptoms not explained by Lupus. This doctor was awesome! He read the 5 pages of notes I brought and looked at the 5 pages of pictures before he even got into the room. And then he spent another 45 minutes or so asking very pointed questions which he gave me plenty of time to answer. After pondering each question for a while he'd move on to another. There was no rush, no "15 minutes and move on". I felt like he was compassionate and very proactive.

Even without a final diagnosis, he is starting me on Colchicine. This is apparently the first line drug for Behcet's Disease, which is what he thinks I have, but won't say for certain til all the tests are back. He ordered 7 vials of blood and two biopsy's along with x-rays from my elbows to my hands. I was so relieved to have someone listen and believe me that I started bawling in his office. I feel like he's covering all the bases and that I will have a diagnosis, or at least a good plan for treatment very soon.

If you want to read more about the visit from Shawn's point of view, go to http://purg.atory.org and scroll back a couple of posts. He has two posts, a day apart on what's been happening.

Behcet's Disease is rare in the United States. There are fewer than 20,000 people diagnosed here, which is probably why it's taken 8 years to figure out. My opinion is that there are probably many more cases, but they've been caught in the umbrella of "Connective Tissue Disorder Not Otherwise Specified." This is a limbo land where treatment is guesswork and patients aren't taken quite as seriously. I saw a Reumatologist 2 months ago who, without doing any tests, said "I think it's Fibromyagia. The symptoms kind of match with a disease called Behcet's Disease, but it's virtually impossible in the US, so that can't be what you have." This seemed pretty presumptive on his part. Fibromyalgia is supposed to be a diagnosis of exclusion meaning they rule everything else out first. But this was the second rheumatologist who decided that's what I had on the first day they ever saw me. I'm so tired of the assembly line practice of medicine so common today.

Anyway...more going on with kids and their depression/anxiety/asperger's/ADHD, and my brother the alcoholic, and my sister who hasn't spoken to me in 3 months...but I'm pretty sure that should be saved for a different post.

I've been sick since just after Thanksgiving. It started like the flu; monster sore throat, headache, spiky fever, muscle aches etc. Like the flu, it took a couple of weeks to get better but by then we were into Christmas preparations and I was doing too much and out in the cold too much and I ended up with pneumonia. I've had that before, so I know better than to try to fight through it and just really slowed down after Christmas. Shawn was home so I slept and slept and he kept my humidifier full and by last week I was starting to feel really good again. Except for the stupid cough! I'd get this little catch at the back of my throat and just cough and cough and cough til I felt like I was going to black out.

Finally, last night, I realized that even trying to speak a whole sentence in one breath would send the room spinning and my body gasping. Even though it was our anniversary and we were going out to dinner, I decided it really might be good to go see an after hours doctor first. So the doc in the box says that I have Reactive Airway Disease which is kind of like saying "you have asthma even though you don't have asthma".

I guess this is fairly common after pneumonia. Basically, the cough I had just kept irritating the entire respiratory tract which made it swell. The more it swells the more I cough which makes the whole thing worse. So, until I stop the cough and get the swelling down, I'm going to feel like I'm having an asthma attack.

the doc prescribed Promethazine with Codeine, which is a GREAT cough medicine (though not great tasting) which knocks you senseless for hours. He also gave me Augmentin for the sinus infection I've got. And he recommended a good expectorant and prescription strength ibuprofen to help with the inflammation. Other than that I need to sleep and not cough which means not much talking, and nothing that makes me breathe hard which at the moment is everything. In theory, a couple of good days of complete rest followed by a few days with no over-exertion and I should feel a lot better.

The only sad thing about the whole episode is....SuCasa was closed by the time we finished with the doctor so we didn't get our very tasty anniversary dinner. We went to another place, but I didn't like it much. *sniff*

In about 15 minutes, I will have been married to Shawn for 8 amazing years. It's hard to believe it's gone by so fast. It's wonderful to know that even though we change and grow, we're always going the same direction. It's fantastic that when he reaches out to hold my hand, it still gives me tingles. I'm still completely smitten!

He's my favorite person in the world, my best friend, my better half, my mentor, my shoulder to lean on, cry on, or cuddle up with. He makes me laugh and laughs at my jokes. He builds me up and won't allow me to tear myself down.

Shawn, I love you more that I can express. Thank you for being my husband!

Conversation with my daughter yesterday:

Me: So, tell me about this boy who asked you out?

Audrey: Well, he's someone who eats lunch near me and he has "anger issues" and he swears a bunch. So, we just happened to be walking next to each other on the way to 7th period. Then all of a sudden, out of the blue he said, "Oh screw it, physical appearances aside, will you go out with me?"

Me: *laugh* Oh, is he really ugly?

Audrey: No, I think he meant me.

Me: Tell him your mom won't let you date until you're 20.


Grrrrr!!! Stupid kid!

I've been infected.

It's like this!

Stolen from "The IT Crowd"

For a friend whose clock is missing or broken. Hope this helps more than my last post.

Most of you know how much I love being a mother. Often the reasons are so numerous and so personal that I can't find the words to express them. But tonight I think I've nailed a few down and thought I really ought to reiterate why being a mom is the greatest job on earth.

I love being a mom because I never have to sit down at an empty table. With seven in the family, I'm pretty sure to have the company of at least a dozen dirty dishes, half drunk glasses of kool-aid, a fully congealed gravy boat, and some green beans that Ben tucked under the edge of his dish so that I would think he'd eaten them. It's so lovely not to have to eat alone.

My kids must think I'm something special too because they're always leaving me small gifts that show me their high regard. Tonight I was treated to a chair full of demolished Doritos that I didn't see until they made a crunchy coating all over my arse. And then just as I leapt from my nacho cheesy chair, I found another small present; a slice of ham that had so generously been left on the floor to help our poor cat, Sparrow, who is so abused by our purchases of dry food that the children would be tragically remiss if they did not step in and see to her dietary health. The cat, who is not actually fond of ham, took two bites and left the lunch-meat to shrivel into an odd colored, crispy crumple that looks nothing like the other white meat it had once resembled. Sparrow then departed the kitchen and saw to her own dietary health by downing two Christmas cards and an advertisement for carpet cleaning. So, I was the lucky end recipient of the meat crinkle when I found it with the soft underside of my bare foot which, at this moment, still contains small pointy pork shards which ought to gangrene quite nicely once they've settled in.

To be sure, the ham wasn't really much and my kids must have recognized the lack of a truly special homage to motherhood because before they finally stopped screaming at each other and went to sleep they came up with one more special treat. It took me a while to find; those sneaky kids do like a good treasure hunt. But in the end my craving for fruit finally led me to a pile of lovely tangerines. Nothing makes my mouth water like the anticipation of succulent citrus. Each little orb looked beautiful and juicy in the bowl. But when I picked one up it was quite squishy and lifeless. Indeed, each fruit I checked felt like the stress balls give out at conventions; sort of deflated with a strange mushy friction when squeezed. It was only by closer examination that I found the quarter inch holes. No, they had not been ravaged by some horrible insect. They had had the life sucked out of them through bendy-straws and had then been callously tossed back into the fruit bowl like yesterday's bananas. Well, all right, the bananas yesterday only had a couple of bites taken out of them before they were chucked back. But they died nonetheless.

Every now and then the joys of motherhood make me feel like someone has taken a bendy-straw to my brain. Zombie movie anyone?

My cat loves the Christmas cards that hang on the front closet door.

More specifically, she likes knocking the cards off the door so she can eat them.

I knew I was a little slow removing the Christmas decor, but really!!

After all the get-togethers of last week, I decided that I would spend a couple of days resting hoping to beat off this congestion in my lungs. What I ended up with is the stomach flu. Alas!

Didn't stop my "resting" though, so all afternoon yesterday and part of today (at least when I haven't been sleeping) I have been watching BBC "Materpiece Theater" adaptations of books from the 19th century. Yesterday it was Dicken's 'Bleak House' and today it was 'He knew he was Right' by Anthony Trollope. So here is my short-ish review of both films

In both cases, I would have to say that the casting, costuming and set designs are amazing! I'd expect nothing less from the BBC and they have not disappointed.

The screenplays were both by Andrew Davies, who is in his element with this historical period, were very well done, though I cannot vouch for their accuracy, having never read the books.

As for the plot and the characters...I'm not sure 'He knew he was Right" is worth watching. The only truly likeable character is Emily, who marries a wealthy young man, Louis, whom she loves dearly. They're the epitome of happiness for about three years until gossip and rumor start to be spread about Emily and her Godfather, who visits her often and who is known to be a bit of a rascal. Instead of trusting his wife, Louis is quick to believe the worst in everyone and after a year of moving his wife and son from place to place to 'keep an eye on her', he steals his son away from his wife and travels to Italy to be free of her forever. With the help of friends and family, she finds her son in good health with his father, who is dying from his own inner torment. She brings them both back to England and at the last moment before he dies, he lets Emily know that he now believes her.

Well, fat lot of good that does her now!!

There were a couple of other plot-lines that were sort of interesting, but that didn't really further the main story in any way. And the main story was so depressing that I didn't care if everything worked out well for any of the other characters involved. Overall I'd give it about a D+.

The Dickens' adaptation was, by comparison with other Dickens I've read and seen, quite a bit better than anticipated. There were three different plot lines in play all intertwining, but centered around a court case which will decide the beneficiaries of a very valuable Last Will that had multiple copies, several of which were not intact and couldn't be accurately dated. As the characters wait to find out if they may be rich or not, their lives go on in several different ways depending on the virtues of the characters, since Dickens was always fond of pointing out the flaws of his fellow man and making sure that virtue was rewarded.

The most central plot line is a mystery that unfolds slowly and carefully. I'm not going to mention any of the details here because I'd like others to be as intrigued as I was. Suffice it to say that I was impressed with Dickens' ability to write a good mystery even though he couldn't keep it under 600 pages. Dickens always had the right words but damned if he could keep them short and sweet. I'll recommend it at a B+ with a hearty cheer going out to actress Gillian Anderson (Scully from X-files) who played her part AMAZINGLY. I was commenting on how flawless her accent was, so Shawn did some investigating and discovered she lived in England for over ten years as a child. Who knew?

*sigh* I suppose when it comes to short and sweet, I'm not much of one to talk! :)

Apparently I have a live journal fairy who gave me a paid account and extra userpics for Christmas. I'm DELIGHTED. Thank you, thank you live journal fairy! It's already encouraging me to be more vigilant about posting.

I apparently also have a lurker. Which I'm glad to have, because this is a person I hope will have an enduring presence in my life. However, it makes me a little bit self conscious about what I'm writing. It's lovely to be read by people who also put their thoughts out there because you get to know what they're thinking too. But with a lurker, you never get to find out how they feel or what they think about you or what you write. So, dear lurker...it would be lovely if you'd create your OWN free Live Journal account in which you could write all about your feelings on important subjects such as baby barf or what you had for lunch today. And I'd love to read all your amusing anecdotes and inner gripes or anything else you might have to say. At the very least, you could e-mail me any thoughts on any subject. I'm delighted to have you reading, but it's a bit one sided at the moment.


In other news: Shawn and I ditched the kids and went to SuCasa for lunch this afternoon. It's been months since we ate there and just the smell of the room made my mouth water when we walked in. Today was a special occasion because one of our regular waitresses, who moved out of state a while back, was in town for the holidays and had picked up a shift while she was here. She called to let me know and I couldn't NOT got see her. You may question why a waitress would be calling me, and why she would be so important that I'd drop everything to make sure I got to spend 45 minutes being her customer, but I can only say that the explanation lies in the magical power of meat and cheese on a tortilla. Ok, not really...but I do seem to have an awful lot of good friends who were waitresses at SuCasa...so explain that???

After lunch I got my hair cut for the first time in six months. Oh how I have missed the joy of being rotated and raised in the haircut chair. How I have yearned for the smell of products only the professionals can buy. I've taken for granted the happiness I feel when my bangs are not hanging in my eyes. More than anything though...I realized I really missed my haircut lady! Granted, she's more friend than haircut lady, but since she lives a fair distance from me, if I don't schedule a haircut, I almost never see her. I can't let it wait so long again!

Finally, I have a tale of the trepidation one feels when one is about to see someone from the past for the first time in 15 years. To say I was a little nervous would be like calling the London Symphony a few fiddlers. Thankfully, the moment this person appeared I realized that it didn't matter so much that my hair is thinner and my waist is fatter. I forgot to be embarrassed and was just really glad to see him again.

So, all in all....it was a very good day to be alive.

Stolen from my husband's blog post on Christmas Day:

"Those of you who follow me on twitter will already know what I'm writing about, but I thought it needed a little expansion.

I'm not sure why it was even turned on, but this morning at 8 AM, the alarm clock woke me up. We had put a sign on our door telling the kids to wait until at least 7 AM before going downstairs or waking us up, because ordinarily they are up at the crack of 4 AM wanting to get Christmas underway. This morning, I got downstairs and I was the only one awake in the whole house, including my in-laws who stayed the night with us.

When I got downstairs, I raised the blinds to look out, because I knew those silly meteorologists had cooked up a snowstorm for us, and I wanted to see where the clouds were. It turns out that the snowstorm was well underway, blowing sideways and already accumulating quickly.

Christmas went well, the kids got some awesome stuff this year that they'll actually truly enjoy. I got my first ever MP3 player, a 4GB Sansa e260 that I bought in triplicate from woot.com. The other two went to one of the boys and Kathy.

Four hours after waking up, I took a picture of the blizzard, which you'll find below:




That picture was taken about noon, it's about 12:30 as I write this. I've been told by people insane enough to go outside that there's over 2 feet of snow drifted up next to the house. The storm doesn't look like it's going to let up anytime soon, either.

We've got Christmas dinner planned with much of the family. I hope they can all make it."


So that's the Christmas blizzard of '08. 30 hours later it's still been snowing steadily, though with less accumulation today.

Christmas dinner was fantastic. Not so much the dinner, though it was quite good, but the company made it quite a little celebration. We had both my older brothers, one's wife, and their combined 11 children along with Shawn and I, 4 of our kids, and my parents. It was crazy with all those little people, but they're really well behaved and I'm glad they all get to come over at the same time once in a while.

Merry Christmas and God bless us, everyone!

Dear live journal,

Thank you for making it possible for me to reconnect to people I haven't seen in a dozen years. I'm sorry I ignore you so much. But I'm so very grateful you're around.

Kathy

"Biyah" is the what my brother (her first grandson) called her in his little 18-month-old way. He couldn't say "grandma"

And Biyah she was to over 40 children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren when she passed away last Sunday, October 12 at 10:50am. She was 93.

At her age her passing was obviously not a big shock. She had been in and out of two hospitals and three nursing homes in the past 8 weeks as she slowly lost her ability to swallow and constantly fought pneumonia. My mother and aunt brought her home the Monday before with the help of hospice care. Grandma was thrilled, but she knew she was going home to die.

The hospice nurse came a couple of times last week, but it was up to the family to provide most of her care. My mother stayed with her constantly for seven days and several of us took shifts to make sure there were at least two people there for her 24/7 during that last week of her life. At the end she was shrunken from her inability to eat or drink, her mouth was so dry and she was so weak that even speaking was difficult. She was in tremendous pain, but to her last day she smiled and appreciated what we were doing for her. Late on Friday, after helping care for her that day, I kissed her on the forehead and said "Good night Grandma, I love you." With a tremendous effort she quietly said "I love you too." That's really the whole point of it, I think. That we love and are loved.

She was in so much pain that her passing was a relief. She had been able to say good-bye and she died in her own room with two of her three children by her side. Within an hour of her death, 15 of her grandchildren, and great-grandchildren had arrived to support one another and mourn together.

She was an amazing woman. Her passing is truly the end of an era.

So, I raise a glass to my grandmother.

Constance Jane
1915-2008

I realized it's been almost three weeks since I caught up on my LJ or posted. Time slips by much too quickly. I'm not going to comment everywhere I wanted to, so just a couple of notes:

Mom-in-law: I hope you're having a blast in Alaska. I made my own jaunt to Juneau about a year before I married Shawn and I'll never forget it. Such a lovely place! Tell the cowboy I said "hey". Also, we got some mail with your name on it...is that regarding the computer...should we open it?

Soozy: I sent an email to an address you had about 4 years ago. Not sure it's even active anymore. If it's not, will you send your current mail to sparks@elyograg.org? I really REALLY need to talk to you about the Jordan School District and asperger's and what you don't want to do about Junior High next year. I have the name of the woman you want to talk to and I had to get it the hard way so if I can spare you some hassle, I'd sure like to.

Everyone else...so sorry I'm ignoring everything. Hope all is well!

I know that certain fast food mega-corporations to remain un-named are geared toward doing their hiring among the younger/less educated field of potential employees. But I found it just a little bit surprising that they were handing out this advertisement with their happ....er....cheerful meals the other day. Heaven forbid they should let those pesky child labor laws stand in the way keeping costs down.



And speaking of being too young...Shawn and I were discussing the sting operations used to catch child predators and the feeble excuses they offer to try to get out of trouble. Shawn came up with this brilliant line.

"But officer, the IOC said she was 16 years old."

At least the Chinese gymnast age scandal has given us something to laugh at.