You're prodding me out of not posting, slinksgirl, especially because I HATED the Time Traveler's Wife. I started out loving it, but the fact that they telegraphed the ending made it painful and tedious to finish. Anyway...

These are the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing’s users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded.

Bold the ones you've read,
underline the ones you read for school,
italicize the ones you started but didn't finish.
add * beside the ones you liked and would (or did) read again or recommend. Even if you read them for school in the first place.



The Aeneid
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
American Gods
Anansi Boys
Angela’s Ashes: A Memoir
Angels & Demons
Anna Karenina
Atlas Shrugged
Beloved
The Blind Assassin
Brave New World
The Brothers Karamazov
The Canterbury Tales
The Catcher in the Rye*
Catch-22
A Clockwork Orange
Cloud Atlas
Collapse: how societies choose to fail or succeed
A Confederacy of Dunces
The Confusion
The Corrections
The Count of Monte Cristo
Crime and Punishment
Cryptonomicon
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
David Copperfield
Don Quixote
Dracula
Dubliners
Dune
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
Emma
Foucault’s Pendulum
The Fountainhead
Frankenstein
Freakonomics: a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
The God of Small Things
The Grapes of Wrath
Gravity’s Rainbow
Great Expectations
Gulliver’s Travels
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
The Historian: a novel
The Hobbit
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
The Iliad
In Cold Blood: a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
The Inferno
Jane Eyre*
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
The Kite Runner
Les Misérables Okay, I listened to the unabridged book on tape during one long ass trip to Tennessee, but it was unabridged so hey, that counts.
Life of Pi: a novel
Lolita
Love in the Time of Cholera
Madame Bovary
Mansfield Park
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlemarch
Middlesex
Mrs. Dalloway
The Mists of Avalon
Moby Dick Watch the Husband's head explode on this one
The Name of the Rose
Neverwhere
1984
Northanger Abbey
The Odyssey
Oliver Twist
The Once and Future King
One Hundred Years of Solitude
On the Road
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Oryx and Crake
A People’s History of the United States: 1492-present
Persuasion
The Picture of Dorian Gray
The Poisonwood Bible
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Pride and Prejudice
The Prince
Quicksilver
Reading Lolita in Tehran
The Satanic Verses
The Scarlet Letter And yet I managed to do a report on it, junior english in high school.
Sense and Sensibility
A Short History of Nearly Everything
The Silmarillion
Slaughterhouse-five
The Sound and the Fury
A Tale of Two Cities
Tess of the D’Urbervilles*
The Time Traveler’s Wife
To the Lighthouse
Treasure Island
The Three Musketeers
Ulysses
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Vanity Fair
War and Peace
Watership Down
White Teeth
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
Wuthering Heights
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

One of my handmaidens came in to work this morning and I was telling her yesterday's "What are all those cowboys doing?!" story. I got to the what are the cowboys all doing part and she shouts out, "Oh! Oh! I know why they were closed! It was President's Day!!!"

*facepalm

I should also throw in that she missed work on Tuesday because having MLK day off confused her so she was off by a day and missed a lot on Tuesday. Yeah. I love her, but sometimes she makes me do the slow head shake.

slinksgirl called this morning to see if we'd like to have lunch with her and Sami Brady. Because we are shameless whores we said yes. While we were sitting there waiting for our food Slink told us about Sami Brady's experience this morning with the preschool they're considering and how afterwards, because she'd been so good, they were going out for lunch. As they were driving down the street Slink was asking Sami Brady if she wanted to go to this place they were passing or that place. As they passed Texas Roadhouse, she asked Sami Brady if she wanted to go there. Sami Brady asked what kind of place it was and Slink said it was a cowboy place. That made Sami Brady excited and say she wanted to go there, so Slink pulled in so they could go there for lunch. Unfortunately, Texas Roadhouse doesn't open for lunch. Neither does Outback. As Slink was telling us this story, she asked "What were all those cowboys doing?!" I came up with mourning Heath Ledger.

The best part of this story is that as I was telling my mom the story, she got all excited and said "Ooh! Ooh! He died yesterday!" *facepalm

Okay, first off let me say that I was at the reference desk and some girl was talking on her cell phone for about 20 minutes. No one seemed annoyed and since we don't have a cell phone policy I didn't say anything. The best part, though, was when she was writing something down and asked the other people at the computers around her how to spell Cincinnati. It went a little something like this...

Cell Phone Girl: Okay, okay wait, let me write this down. Uh huh, uh huh, wait. Can you spell that? Oh. Hey! Anyone know how to spell Cincinnati?
Girl 1: C-i-n-n
Girl 2: No! It's not like that! C-i-n
CPG: C-i-n-n?
Girl 2: No! One N! One N! C-i-n-c-i-n-n
CPG: You said one N!
Girl 2: C-i-n-c-i-n-n-a-t-i!
CPG: Woah. You just spelled that too fast for me. Hold on. C-i-n-n...

That was awesome. I was chatting with a friend online and we tried to spell Cincinnati the craziest way we could, which led to my Google Chat message saying "Cinsanattee! Take that, cell phone girl!"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Last night we had friends over and were talking about things we'd read when we were children. The Giving Tree came up and my friend, who is a children's librarian and frustrated Cincinnati speller, mentioned that you either love The Giving Tree or you hate it. It's either a wonderful love story and a tale of ultimate sacrifice, or else it's a terrible parable of how people take and take until they've exhausted their resources and then they still want more and can't understand why the well has run dry. This led us to create a game.

The object of this game: Take a children's story and turn it into a snarky comment.

For example: Putting vegetables in other peoples' beds can really come back to bite you in the ass.
Answer? The Princess and the Pea.
Another example: Hey! What the hell is that cat doing in here, screwing up my house?
Answer: The Cat in the Hat.

It was an amusing game and we had a lot of fun trying to come up with other examples. We decided we were geniuses for coming up with it. Because, you know, we are!

Back here is my "Hey, look at me, I'm doing 10 things in 101 days!" post. Since the 101 days ended yesterday, let's take a look at how I did.

1- Start ironing.
Well, that's a no. However, we're going to Ikea tomorrow and I think we might just come back with an ironing board, because Ikea has tall tall ironing boards, so there's still a chance.

2- Go to either a pumpkin patch or an apple orchard. If we go to a pumpkin patch, I'm totally going to buy pumpkins and roast and mill them.
We did go to an apple orchard. When the Husband's cousin moved back in October her apartment ended up being about five minutes from this big orchard that we'd visit when I was in elementary school. It was a lot of fun getting to show it to the Husband. He fell in love with the cider- and he's a cider snob, so that he loves this cider that much is pretty awesome- and we got a bunch of apples and things. It was quite nice and I'm really glad we did that.

3- Exercise at least once a week.
That's a big old no too. I did actually start exercising and then I was sick for two weeks and that killed it. The holidays and all the running around that required also didn't make me motivated either. Sigh.

4- Roast two of the three following meats- beef, chicken, pork. If I roast a whole chicken, then make my own chicken stock.
I did do a pork roast with a recipe from Cooking Light. That ended up really tasty, it got a mustard and herb rub before it roasted. I had to do a few modifications because it called for a tenderloin and we had an honest to goodness roast, but surprisingly that didn't end in tears. Quite tasty. I did get the chicken out of the freezer to thaw and I have a recipe to do it in the crockpot so I'll be finishing this one, albeit a bit late.

5- Read a grown up book.
Done! I read American Band: Music, Dreams and Coming of Age in the Heartland. Yes, I am a band geek. The book follows an award winning high school marching band from Indiana for a season and highlights a couple of the students and tells their story as well as the story of the director and a little bit of the program. It shows how things evolved slowly in the Indiana town and highlights the place faith has in their community. The penultimate chapter was really hard to read, because it followed what happened to the lead trumpeter after state contest and he went through hell, personally. So yes, I do read grown up books again. I also have Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, by Barbara Kingsolver and need to get moving on that before it goes back to the library.

6- Bake a carrot cake.
I still haven't done this. Of course, I baked a hell of a lot for our holiday party, so between that and two weeks of sick, maybe I get a pass? I would like to do this, though, really!

7- Start taking my clothes in for alteration.
That's a no. I don't know why? I think I had meant to ask my friends if you were supposed to tip tailors, because I don't want to find out they get tipped 25% after I take things in and pay for them, then the next time have them remember me as that bitch who didn't tip and they purposely hem one leg an inch shorter than the other just to get back at me. Meanwhile, that leg of my black pants just keeps dragging and the heel on my red sandal is still broken.

8- Have breakfast with my mom like we did when I was in school.
Done! We went last week, after Christmas, to Cracker Barrel and shared the pancake breakfast, just like we used to when I'd have days off in high school. I drove us out there, which wouldn't have happened in high school days because I didn't have my license- thanks mom and dad for driving stick shift cars! We talked a lot that morning, about everything and nothing at all, and while it wasn't like in high school (probably because I didn't have that "I'm missing school right now, yay!" feel. I had the day off work) it was still really nice. I felt like my mom and I had a close moment and we don't get that too often anymore.

9- Plant tulip bulbs.
No. Then again, who knows if we'll be in our apartment next spring? This may be the year we get a house, or they may raise our rent some obscene amount, or we might get tired of the upstairs neighbor bullshit and move. Then someone else would be seeing my tulips. Sigh.

10- Help the Husband weatherproof the house for winter.
Well, sort of. This was really kind of a bullshit one in the first place. We did go out to Lowe's and get the pipe wrap for our hot water pipes. We wrapped them, then realized we needed more wrap, which we got the other day. He covered the windows, and when we got the extra wrap we got some stuff to help seal the front door, which leaks like you wouldn't believe. So this one's a sort of.

How did I do? I did three of the ten completely. Three more I made half ass attempts at, or only partially completed. That means I had four flat out nos. I think after a couple weeks I can probably raise that to three more yeses, once we get the ironing board and I make that chicken and maybe I'll get a carrot cake done too.

Now that I've pointed out my failures, I'd like to mention a few things. What did I do that wasn't on the list? Well, I did pay off my credit card, although that was before I made this list. I also managed to raise my credit score by 60 points in the last year, year and a half. I got a violet and managed to not only keep it alive, but have it flourish. I repotted it over the summer and it needs it again, but I guess I can't do it now because it's blooming? It's blooming a lot, too, there are about four or five stalks with lots of blooms on them. Pretty awesome. I also threw one hell of a holiday open house. So, you know, it's not like I didn't do anything.

* Drama llama flounces. Uh huh. Y'all know who I'm talking about. If I haven't talked to you in a year, then don't be trying that crap with me.

* In that same vein, family drama. Uh huh. Yeah. Do not. Want. To get involved.

* Our big public library's switch over to AquaBrowser. The former ed major in my head understands the need to cater to those who think in words vs those who think in pictures. The librarian in my head is saying nasty words and kicking things.

* The writers strike. Because I am a tv whore. The sad truth is, it's not even letting me get caught up on the dvr. Yep, whore.

* Our upstairs neighbor. Stop being such an inconsiderate noisy douchebag.

* It's two weeks till Christmas? When the hell did this happen? Time should not be moving this fast.

* People who bitch all abstractedly in their LJ just so they have something to write about because they haven't been writing a lot. Whoops! Guess that's me!

edited to include
* Google groups holding onto messages so I miss half my e-mail

Tuesday night coming home from choir the Husband was right behind a guy who hit a skunk. When it gets down to "mother FUCK it's cold", you can't exactly leave the windows cracked so he got home and forgot about it. Until the next morning, that is, when we opened the car doors and omg did it smell. Gah. This morning when we got into the car and it still smelled I went back into the house and put some vinegar into a plastic cup. That's riding around in our cup holder right now. Don't worry, I only filled the cup about halfway so it's not going to splash out. I hope. Sweet baby Jeebus, do I hope.

Also, when I went to get into the car this morning? The lock on my door had frozen. Love. It.

These are all small potatoes compared to yesterday's fun, though. Monday night when we went to bed we noticed that the bathroom sink was draining really really slow. The next morning the water was still in there so the Husband called the landlord. He came out last night while I was making dinner and tried to clear the clog. We've been having issues on and off with the sink for a good long time, but the Husband's usually been able to fix it by Drano-ing the hell out of it. Not this time! There's nasty black gunk splattered in places around the pipes in the sink and at one point he had to leave for a while because he'd broken the pipe and had to go get a new one. When he finally left last night around 9:30 he said he was going to have to rent an electric snake because his manual one wasn't working well enough. Wow. Today when we left for lunch the Husband said the landlord called and said that a plumber would be coming out between five and six today to look at the sink. Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuck. Right now the bathroom is like a war zone. Stuff is all over the place and there was no easy way at all to take a shower this morning so I feel all skanktastic. I really hope this gets fixed by the weekend, otherwise quite a few people are going to have to wash their hands in our kitchen sink.

My mom and dad didn't make turkey until today (Friday), so we decided to visit the Husband's family on Thanksgiving and then drive home, and then we'd drive up to my mom and dad's the next day. While finding information about Jeni's for hannunvaakuna I pulled up the cupcake bakery page to see what they had on Fridays. The banana, coconut and chocolate peppermint were enough to make us think that stopping there before we headed north.

We were driving up the huge hill on the way to the cupcake bakery when we heard the honking. Who the hell was honking so much? The Husband looked in the rear view mirror and asked, "Who do we know that drives a van and has kids?" Answer? No one. We're not old enough to know people with multiple kids. The people in our friend group either have one kid or else don't drive a minivan. We laughed as we headed towards the cupcake bakery, because weren't those people going to feel stupid when they finally realized that they were honking and waving at the wrong people?

That's when we stopped for the light and realized it was The Professor, Mrs Professor and their three kids. Whoops!

Since the light had just turned red, I jumped out of the car, ran back to their van and said "We're going to get cupcakes! Do you guys want to stop and have cupcakes with us?" They said yes so I yelled "Follow us!" and sprinted back to the car as the light turned green. When we all got out of the car at the cupcake bakery and hugged, The Professor and Mrs Professor said they'd been following us since the mall, but a couple cars back and before we hit the two lane portion of road they'd been trying to pull up next to us so they could wave. Apparently they'd been debating- is it them? It has to be them. How many other cars like our would have a man in a hat, a college alumni sticker and a college parking tag and not be us? We laughed because we'd been wondering what they were up to and wouldn't it be fun if we got a bunch of cupcakes and stopped by their house up north on the way to see my parents?

A fun time was had by all, eating cupcakes and catching up. Next time they know to call so we can take them to Jeni's.

The Husband and I were looking at Myspace and guess who has a Myspace page? Better yet, guess who has their own LJ? Check this out. I think my eardrums shattered upon clicking. I think it's been about a million years since I thought about her.

Now that I've scarred the Lemur, seeing this and other people I knew from school on Myspace made me wonder why the hell I haven't friended more people on there. I mean, part of why I don't is I'm never on Myspace anymore- I think I'm on Facebook more and I'm not on Facebook that much either- but every time I see someone I know on either place I think oh! Cool! Really cool trumpet chick! She was awesome! I wonder how she's doing? I should totally friend her. Then I think of her getting the e-mail and most likely going "Who?! Oh, wasn't she that wierd bassoon girl in college that always had Pez? Yeah, I guess I'll friend her. Whatever." I don't know, I guess I don't want to feel like I'm forcing people to friend me. Yeah, that's my drama today.