Books O Rama

What do the books I've read say about me? What would your list look like?

I borrowed this from someone in the blog-o-sphere since it reminded me of books I want to add to my reading list. Look at the list of books below.

• Bold the ones you've read
• Italicize the ones you want to read
• Leave blank the ones that you aren't interested in.

Do with this information what you will. I don't tag people, but feel free to play along. I guess I'm cheating a little, but I'm also counting books on tape. I figure it's still "reading" if you're stuck in traffic enjoying a book. Plus, it's really the only way that I gotthrough the LOTR trilogy. Those are starred and bolded...

1. The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen) -- mmmmmm....Darcy....
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)*
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)*
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien)*
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery) -- read the wholeseries too...my favorite chapter is the last one of the last book.
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)*
16. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (Rowling)
17. Fall on Your Knees(Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King)
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling)
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
21. The Hobbit (Tolkien)*
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger) -- SHOCKING, I know!
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
28. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck) *
30. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)*
31. Dune (Frank Herbert)
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)* -- word to the wise, don't listen to this in the car. I almost got into an accident in South Carolina because I was crying so hard.
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
34. 1984 (Orwell)
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom) -- LOVEIT!!
45. Bible -- Most of it.
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. Angela's Ashes (Frank McCourt)
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
50. She's Come Undone (Wally Lamb) but I don't remember anything aboutit.
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens) -- It was the best of books, it was the worst of books....
53. Ender's Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Dickens)
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
59. The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. The Time Traveller's Wife (Audrew Niffenegger) -- it's up next
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Tolstoy)
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
69. Les Miserables (Hugo)
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. Bridget Jones' Diary (Fielding)
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez) -- I just found out this was a real book.
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78. The World According To Garp (John Irving)
79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
80. Charlotte's Web (E.B. White)
81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)
83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
84. Wizard's First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
85. Emma (Jane Austen)
86. Watership Down(Richard Adams)
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
92. Lord of the Flies (Golding)
93. The Good Earth(Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford) -- Another great series that I need to read the rest of....
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100. Ulysses (James Joyce) -- I tried once and got over it.

New York

I know everyone's wondering...especially after those ultra-cryptic and very tired messages left on Friday. Yes, I was zonked, and yes, I'm zonked this morning because I was up late watching the Oscars last night. I thought Ellen was good, but I miss Billy Crystal. Plus, when Al Gore as the best line of the night, you kinda know you're in trouble. I only wish he really truly had announced his intentions!!

But I digress.

As for this weekend. OMG, you all have to see Avenue Q. It's positively amazing. I mean, it's no Wicked, but I can totally see how it beat the girls from Oz for Best Musical. Wow, I really am slow...I just realized that Hugh Jackman won that year for Boy From Oz, and Wicked is about a
Girl from Oz. Yes, I'm totally serious. Hey, did you guys know that the Red Sox won the World Series in 2003?

So, yeah, Friday. I didn't sleep on Thursday night. Maybe I shouldn't go out for pizza before bedtime. Maybe I shouldn't work a 12 hour day. Maybe I shouldn't combine cold meds with beer. Maybe I shouldn't fall asleep with the news on talking about Prince Harry's deployment to Iraq. Whatever the reason, I kept having a truly disturbing dream that I kept waking up from. Every. Half. Hour. And the problem with knowing that you have to be up at a certain super-early time the next morning is that you try to get back to sleep as quickly as possible. Unfortunately,
while this never happens with the dreams where I'm hooking up with Clooney, I tend to hop back into nightmares/the truly weird stuff right away. This means that I'm usually woken up again. And well, it's a vicious cycle.

At 3, the alarm went off. I finished packing, grabbed some tea, and called a cab (3:30). CabLady said that it'd be there within 15 minutes. If it wasn't, I was to call back. I gave him half an hour, and then had this conversation with the same lady:

ME: Hi, I called a cab half an hour ago, and it's not here yet.
CABLADY: You already called?
ME: Yes, you told me to call back in 15 if it wasn't there. I gave you half an hour.
CABLADY: Oh, well we cancelled it. You should have called back in 15 minutes.
ME: You cancelled the cab?? So, can I have another one please?
CABLADY: Yes, but if this one doesn't come in 15 minutes, call back. We use that to judge if you really want one.
ME: Fine.

Fifteen minutes later (it's 4:15, the train leaves at 4:45), I call back and, this time, apparently reach Sybil. Same voice of course, but...

ME: Hi, it's me again.
CABLADY: WHY YOU CALLING??????
ME: You told me to.
CABLADY: WHO TOLD YOU TO? WHO ARE YOU?
ME: You did... (WTF???) I called 45 minutes ago about a cab. It hasn't come yet. I have a train at 4:45, and really, if I miss it, it's entirely your fault. (Slightly unnecessary to point that out, I guess, but come on)
CABLADY: [Unintelligible, but it sounded like it ended with "itch"], I HAVE NO IDEA. IT AIN'T MY FAULT. NOW YOU QUIT CALLING ME, AND I'LL GET YOUR CAB WHEN I FEEL LIKE IT. GOT THAT LINDSAY?
ME: Um, ok (making a mental note to check all locks one more time -- after all, this person knows where I live and that I'm going to be out of town for a few days). One question though: how did you know my name when I didn't give it to you on this call, and you claim we haven't
talked yet this morning?
CABLADY: ... CLICK

At 4:30, I give up. I race to the train station and arrive just as the train is being announced for boarding. Thanks to my super-strength (ok flirty muscles), I make it.

I arrive in NYC at 7:15, make my way to Julia's and then lose like three hours. I have no idea seriously what I did beyond watch Thursday's Greys and lie awake staring at the ceiling. I tried to nap, honest, I just couldn't.

After passing myself off as my sister at the gym (this twin thing is good for some things!), I make my way home for a shower. I'm freezing when I get there, but then again, it's totally my fault for leaving the house and running for 5 blocks in a cute t-shirt, a thin hoodie, and crops in the middle of freaking February. Work out, watch the Anna Nicole Channel (AKA Court TV), and gain a whole new appreciation for the DAC and it's opportunity for Gov. O'Hottie spotting. On the way home, this very nice man offered to block the wind for me as I braced myself against the wind tunnel that is 10th Avenue. I appreciated that more than you know.

The afternoon was full of manual labor at my sister's office. They're moving cross-town and things needed to be packed. I worked my ass off, Jules, Theresa, and Merita worked theirs too. James sat on his all afternoon pretending to check accounts. As a result, no one felt bad about slipping me extra bottles of Bombay as I left (they're one of James'!).

Sadly, I still had to trek them (plus the tequila, the Pernod, two bottles of wine, my new cute clothes, and two rolodexes) home and thus began my second cab-adventure of the day. I waited on 43rd and 2nd for twenty minutes. Waiving my clawed hand (heavy bags, thin straps) like a
tourist and seriously considering jumping out in front of something to ensure that it stopped. If my reaction time wasn't as slow as it was, I probably would have gone for it, but as it was, I was having a hard enough time not walking into people. Cars would have been a nightmare. :(

Finally, though a cab came for me. I crawled in, heaped compliments on my knight in yellow armor, and told him my destination. We got about half a block down when a man with a gun tried to take it.

(I'm pausing for dramatic effect, but to be honest it's not as much fun when I can't see your faces. So, um, yeah...moving on....)

He was a NYPD Cadet who sort of confused our stopping at the light for stopping for HIM. He was halfway in the door when he realized I was sitting there, and I think I scared him. Hee.

At 4:30, I finally got my nap. At 5:15, Jules came home and I spent the next half hour talking to the roommates and the hairless wonder (no, not Britney...Charles' sphinx cat). Then, we went to this great wine bar and had shots of Rum and Coffee Tequila (interesting) with Nikki and the
Scottish bartender who looked like one of The Pretenders. I don't remember what we did after that, but I'm sure it was fun!

Saturday, we shopped and saw the show. Freaking awesome. Seriously, dirty puppets can give a girl a whole new appreciation for Sesame Street and the Electric Company. The "George Bush is only for now line" got a huge HUGE cheer.

Sunday, we went to the Moondance Diner (the place where Jesse L. Martin and Jonathan Larson used to work). I thought Victoria Jackson was behind us because this chick's voice was dead on. Turns out it was just two people who were higher than a kite and drunk off their asses. Still, majorly squeaky voice. They were slurring words and asked the "matre d'" for directions to a hotel three times. After the third time the guy waved him over and hit me on the back of the head, I seriously considered sending them on the subway up to 125th street (you know,
Harlem) just to watch them get their asses kicked. Mean? A little, but I think it would have been worth it.

Then, I loaded my booty into the backpack (haven't had that much liquor in there since college, and even then it was all plastic -- there are definite perks to having a sister who reps alcohol!), and the rolling bar and I hopped an early train thanks to the weather. I got back to B'more around 12:30 and drove home in one of the cutest snow storms I had ever seen. Can a snow storm be cute? I sure think so. :)

All in all, a great weekend. Though, I'm looking forward to the sunshiny goodness that should be Phonenix next week!!!

One word on last night's Greys

AAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!

We don't know them...

But we should.

They were doing their job.
She was on vacation.

They spent their last days surrounded by the sands of a desert that they never asked to go to.
She spent hers ordering desserts and drugs.

They leave behind families, children, lovers, and friends.
She leaves behind a little girl and at least three known baby-daddies.

They were defending our country.
She was defending her weight-loss secrets.

They were part of a senseless situation of someone else's creation.
She was a sensless creation all her own.

They were an incomplete press-release.
She's front-page news.

All four died on Thursday.

We don't know them...
But we should.

Beep Beep!

We've all done it. We may not admit to doing it, but somewhere in our past history, we've all done it.

No, not that. Seriously, get your head out of the gutter!! I'm talking about throwing someone "under the bus" to save ourselves.

Anyone who's read my friend Bea's blog in the last week knows what I'm referring to, but since I've promised her no direct links, let me catch the rest of you up:

Last November, Bea and I went to a party at our friend Ginger's house. Great time. Lots of people. Lots of distractions, if you know what I mean. I hooked up with a friend from the past, Bea made a new friend.

Now, being that I was "otherwise engaged," I can honestly tell you that aside from Ginger's boyfriend, Elle's boyfriend, and my friend from the past, I couldn't pick the guys at that party out of a lineup. Seriously, all hell could have broken loose that night, and I would have been blissfully unaware of my surroundings.

Yes, the party was that good.

So fast forward to Tuesday night. I'm at a meeting and so are Bea and Ginger. Ginger's brought a friend who looks slightly familiar, but I think that it's because he bears a strong resemblance to David Sutcliffe from Gilmore Girls. I introduce myself, and NotChristopher says, "We've met."

Ginger then jumps in with, "Yep, he was at my party in November."

Being slightly embarrassed (I'm great with faces, terrible with names), I'm laughing as I grab Bea and go, "Oh so you must remember Bea too. Bea, this is NotChristopher."

Sure, I guess you could say that I threw her under the bus at that point (I didn't recognize him, maybe she wouldn't either. We'd all have a good laugh and move on). But it wasn't that simple. See, I was thinking it was like a bicycle. Bea, however, saw it more like a mack truck.

Reading her blog on Wednesday, I got the full story. To paraphrase (again, not linking because I promised not to, but I did tell her I was telling this story here, so I'm not tossing her under again if that's what you're thinking):

Last night, ran into a boy I made out with months ago. Linds laughed was laughing as she reintroduced us. That was a nice touch.

Photo by Flickr user Freja McQueen

Seriously. No. Clue. Whatsoever.

I immediately started explaining the laughter to her, and we've gotten some of our own shared-meaning laughter out of the whole situation. I'm just worried about what poor NotChristopher thinks!!!

Super Bowl 41

Like most of you, I watched the game last night (ok, so maybe I fell asleep on Ryan's hawsome recliner during the third quarter, but DUDE I need to get one of those couches), and I was sorely disappointed in the offerings of some of my favorite yearly pitches. For example, did you know that there was absolutely NO Clydesdale commercial? I count on my horsies to make me cry like they did in 2002 and 2006 or laugh like they did in 2003, 2004, and 2006!! They made a quick cameo in a lame dog-centric commercial this year, but Bud, if you're listening, please bring back the horses.

My favorite commercial last night, hands down, was the Rock, Paper Scissors ad by Bud Light, with the wedding being a very close second. Nonetheless, it didn't quite live up to the Magic Fridge from last year.

Since I want to assure you that my favorites from years past don't strictly focus on beer (though it does help), these two are also classics in my book.

Of course, my all-time favorite sports-related commercial wasn't a Super Bowl spot at all. It aired just after the conclusion of the 2004 World Series, and I get chills every time I see it.

Got some favorites? Share them in the comments. As a special bonus (and just because you know you remember it from your childhood):

Just remember: as of today, they're all undefeated.

July 21, Baby, July 21!

A couple of weeks ago, my sister wrote this post on her blog that summed up her own feelings about the end of the Harry Potter books. Anything I'd write about it at this point would just sound like I'm ripping her off, so I'm just going to add, "Yeah, what she said," and be done with it.

I will tell you, however, that if anyone here is looking for me the weekend of July 21, traditionally a busy weekend for me for a variety of reasons, you will find me curled up on my front porch with a Witches Brew in one hand and a book in the other. I will laugh, I will cry, and I will finish the book -- quite possibly in a single sitting. Don't worry, when I emerge from my diluted haze, kleenex in hand and crying over the death of probably a much-beloved character (Anyone care to wager? I'm sensing that Dean Thomas and Seamus don't walk out of Hogwarts alive.), I won't give anything away. A prefect always keeps her promises.

Oh, random thought! I should probably preorder at the B&N in Annapolis or at the one next to Hopkins. That way, I can get it on the way home from work instead of having to bust all the way around the beltway to Towson. Someone remind me I said that later, ok?

Confidential to JC: At least we're not going to be listening to it on tape at Laura's wedding after all. I know we were joking, but the idea of us busting out with commentary while the minister's going "Any objections?" still cracks me up.