Back!

I haven't been able to access Blogger for, like, ever.

It appears to be cooperating again, and now I find that I have nothing to say.

I'll work on coming up with some witty observation tonight if you'll reassure me that you're still out there after such a long hiatus.

I stole this from Sarah.

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed. Well let's see.
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Italicize and bold the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own blog so we can try and track down these people who've only read 6 and force books upon them. (If you have not read The Handmaid's Tale or A Prayer for Owen Meany, please go to your local library right away.)



1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austin
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 - God
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. 1984- 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
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveller'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 Hitchhiker'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 Meaney - 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' 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 Bryson
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

Not sleeping

It is almost 3:30 a.m. and I am awake.

Again.

I can sleep - during the day.

For now, I will content myself with watching a documentary on bears (thanks Hulu!) and waiting until dawn, at which point I'll probably drift off. Again.

Any tips on removing myself from the land of nocturnal creatures would be appreciated.

NOW what do you think about global warming?

Scientists from the National Snow and Ice Data Center are quoted on CNN as saying, in reference to global warming, "Not to say I told you so...but I told you so."

The North Pole is melting, people.

Here, kitty kitty

So I am a huge sucker for animals. Especially if they're small. Especially if they're hurt. ESPECIALLY if they're small AND hurt.

This has gotten me into trouble before. Like the time a couple of years ago when I was driving back to Kansas City from Manhattan and saw what I thought was a litter of kittens on the side of the road. I stopped to investigate, thinking that I would load the tiny, helpless, mewling creatures into my car and drop them off at the no-kill shelter, thus saving their lives and providing several area families with the Perfect Pet.

It turns out that when one is driving 70 mph at night, it is fairly easy to mistake a group of baby possums for a litter of kittens. And possums do not take kindly to the idea of being bundled into the car and taken to the shelter.

I was out running this morning and saw a bedraggled black-and-white cat limping along the sidewalk. You know where this is going, don't you?

I approached him, crooning, "Here, kitty kitty..." trying with all my might to look like a friendly cat-lover, one who had pockets full of tuna and catnip. I just wanted to HELP him.

I'm not really used to being around cats, but I'm guessing that flattened ears and hissing means that they probably don't want to be approached.

Because I did not feel like explaining to either Andrew or my mother why I came home from this particular run looking like a scratching post, and also because I'm fairly sure that a series of rabies shots can't be added to the gift registry, I abandoned this particular mission.

But I still hope the little guy finds his way home safely, and that there's tuna waiting for him, and that someone will fix his hurt paw.

One of us

Dear Chicago,
Thank you.

You see, it's been a bit of a rough year. I've lost a few good friendships, and the process of those losses has caused me to question myself. Am I REALLY that funny/smart/interesting/good at using proper punctuation?

What if I'm selfish and boring and have been using semi-colons incorrectly this whole time?

You, all of you, made me feel entirely wrapped up in and surrounded by and connected with love. You're all such amazing, wonderful, (insert complementary adjective here) people - and spending the weekend with you made me realize that maybe it wasn't my fault that I lost those particular friendships - maybe it was just part of the process that happens when two people are growing, but their relationship is not. And not to go all Hallmark on you, but this past weekend really gave me a lot of hope for new and healthy relationships in the future.

So thank you, Chicago. You were more healing than you know. And also, you have really great hotdogs.

Love,
Erin

Author's note: The term "Chicago" includes but is not limited to Minnesota, San Diego, Massachusetts, Haifa, and Los Angeles.

"Someday, the light will shine like a sun through my skin & they will say, What have you done with your life? & though there are many moments I think I will remember, in the end, I will be proud to say, I was one of us." - Brian Andreas

Things I Am Terrified Of, Part I

So I live relatively close to a pond. Said pond is in the "yard" of a big corporate office building, and is thus on the corner of a really busy intersection.

Across the street from the pond is a hill full of juicy young clover blossoms and succulent, delicious grass.

Neither of these facts are of any importance until you add in the geese.

The pond is filled with several Canadian geese and their too-cute-to-be-believed little goslings.

Several times a day, the geese take it upon themselves to leave their watery home and meander across the street (and by "street" I mean "six-lane road close to the interstate") for a delicious snack.

I am terrified that I am going to be driving down Metcalf, changing the radio station or sending a text (dear Officer Dad, of course this is just for illustration - I never text while driving, no, no!) or taking a bite of granola bar or doing something else that may require that I take my eyes off the road for a second - and in that second, I will plow through the line of geese, thus incurring the wrath of all Canadian geese everywhere (those suckers are mean!) and making it look as though my Honda just lost the world's largest pillow fight.

These are the things I think about, dear readers. These are the things I think about.