Archive for July, 2008

I suppose it’s actually time to return (for real) to the world of blogging

Tuesday, July 29th, 2008
  
Currently Reading: America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction
Currently Listening: Greatest Hits - The Red Hot Chili Peppers

I don’t have internet in my apartment *quite* yet, but I do have plans for it to be installed next week.  August 4th is rapidly becoming, for many reasons, an important day.  In the meantime, I’m feeling that anxious feeling that usually means there has been an absence of lists in my life.  Which undoubtedly means I need to make some.  And one of my new goals is to make my blog more reader-friendly & interesting, as it kind of took a backseat to…well, everything that is life…this past year.  But in an effort to actually discipline my writing a tad, and to broaden my own interests, and really, just have a chance to appropriately run my mouth on whatever I find interesting (because what place is better for that task than the all-accepting internet?) I am re-committing to my blog.  How silly and technological of me.  So, apologies for the dryness and sheer lack of postings for the 2007-2008 academic year, and cheers to high hopes for 2008-2009 :) Look for changes on a variety of levels.

Sidenote: Isn’t it interesting that I still find a need to timeline my life according to the academic year rather than the calendrical one?  So silly.

Brief status update

Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008
  

Clearly, have not resolved the internet situation yet.  Honestly, have been too busy to really focus on it.  But soon!

Apartment life = fabulous.  Don’t have all of my stuff yet, but have unpacked everything as much as possible withouth additional things to put them in lol.  But all of the boxes are gone!  And hopefully everything should be down by the end of August (it will be nice to have more than 2 forks…and a table…and a desk…etc.)  But I have bookshelves, and a wonderful boyfriend bought me a microwave as a housewarming present :)   It may not *sound* like a romantic surprise, but it totally was, trust me.  Speaking of, I’m actually enjoying using my oven/stove and cooking!  I’ve mostly been sticking with things I already knew how to make, but I did make “easy” chicken & dumplings (thanks Bisquick) which I think turned out pretty good.  Then again, I’ve never had them before, so who really knows.

As for work, I’m almost done with pre-service training…and I actually start on Saturday.  8am-10pm.  Nothing like jumping in feet first, eh?  But I love everyone I’ve met so far and am excited about who I’ll be working with…make no mistake about it, though, this will be an incredibly difficult job.  And I’ve already learned so much, and I know this is nothing compared to what I’ll have to pick up from experience.  But it should be an amazing opportunity.

So, all is well!  Love to all.

So so brief

Wednesday, July 16th, 2008
  

First and foremost:  I need to work on setting up internet in my apartment ASAP.  This sketchily hanging around campus in my random  bouts of free-time that I don’t spend exhausted or unpacking (or both) is just not conducive to good web communication.

So, super-brief update as I have to get back to training: I have moved to Winston!  Just moved Friday.  Started training at The Children’s Home for position of Residential Counselor on Monday.  Training is until the 25th, and I start work on the 31st.  I work every other Wednesday (beginning the 6th) and Thursday-Saturday in the second shift, which means my schedule falls somewhere in 2-12 range.  Crazy!  Learning so much in training.  Love the organization and the people more and more each day I’m there.  Mildly terrified of how hard this job will be (and depressed by how little it will pay) but overall excited :)   Still dating Michael.  That’s wonderful.  And in my spare time, I am trying to get ready for my sister’s wedding in September – so exciting!

Phew.  Hopefully will update more later!

I know this doesn’t excuse my lack of a real entry, but it’s a fun survey…

Thursday, July 10th, 2008
  

1. Bold every book that you’ve read.
2. Place brackets around those books you were required to read in school.
3. Underline every book that you’ve read and loved.
4. Italicize every book that you intend to read.
5. Strike every book that you started but never finished.

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] *read partially?

15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier

16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien

17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks

18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger

19 The Time Traveler’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 Meany – 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

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

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 – Kazuo 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