Pink Curve

Guest post from NavyGuy... enjoy!

Mugs is getting a new phone! Ok, well, I’m the only one who’s excited about this, but she asked me to write another guest blog post on the new electronic device I’m “forcing” on her. So, lets set out from the start the difference between Mugs and I when it comes to electronics. My whole life I’ve hungered for and been excited about the newest coolest electronics, always going to the “next” thing. Mugs, on the other hand, has no interest in that fabled “next” thing. If a particular piece of electronics works for her, she’s perfectly happy to continue using it well after the next three generations of the same device have come out, something I would be horrified to accept.

This brings us to cell phones. I recently got a new Blackberry to replace my previous smartphone, and Mugs has a slightly older, well used simple phone that she’s used for almost two years. Because I bought the phone, and our provider is doing a promotion this month allowing us to “Buy One Get One Free” on another Blackberry, and Mugs phone is getting on in years, she’s able to get any Verizon Blackberry free. Now, if this opportunity were presented to me, I’d of course go for another of the same model as mine, the newest, most advanced Blackberry Verizon offers. When I presented the suggestion to Mugs, her response was slightly different. She didn’t want a new phone at all to my astonishment!

“But my phone works fine,” she said.

“Yeah, but these are newer,” I responded, thinking that would of course convince her of the superiority of my plan. All I got back was a blank stare as if I’d just spoken Mandarin.

Never one to be deterred in the face of new technology, after about a week of continually discussing and incessantly pestering her with pictures and talking about all the superior features of any Blackberry over her current phone, Mugs capitulated and gave in on one condition: she had to get the pink one, and not the newest one, either, the one generation old Pink Curve. This is the price I pay, . At least now she and I can Blackberry message together, and I can have the fun of getting to set up a new phone and make it do all the neat computer-y things that I think are endlessly cool and Mugs probably won’t even realize happen.

In any case, come March 11^th, Mugs will be getting a new phone, and will hopefully be joining the ranks of Crackberry addicts just like the rest of us!

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BBC Book List

As a fan of all things book-y and British, this Facebook note caught my attention:

Apparently the BBC reckons most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here.

Instructions:
a. Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read.
b. Tally your total at the bottom.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen x
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien x
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter - JK Rowling x
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee x
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell x
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman x
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens x
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott x
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 x
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger x
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald x
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 x
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame x
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis x
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis x
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini x
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Berniere
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden x
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell x
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown x
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving x
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery x
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding x
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan x
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel x
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 x
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon x
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck x
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tart
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold x
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 x
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 x
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 x
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro x
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White x
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom x
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad x
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupéry
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 x
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Hmmm... 36 of 100. I don't feel too embarrassed (except for perhaps the fact that I've read Narnia and Harry Potter but not Hamlet or the Bible). Too bad it doesn't count if I've seen the movie :) Count up your total and post it in the comments! Any major book oversights?

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There Will Be Blood

NavyGuy and I finally got around to seeing this flick from last year. Daniel Day Lewis is intense as ever, but overall the movie is just kind of weird.

What made the two and a half hours worth it? Fond du Lac - my hometown, booming metropolis of 40,000, oft mocked and under appreciated - yes, that Fond du Lac, Wisconsin - got 4 (count 'em) FOUR mentions in the film!To that I say, I drink your milkshake.

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Glory Be and Praise Someone

May choirs of angels rejoice... we* sold my car!!

(Isn't she pretty... and the cupholders were grand.)

Why would we try to sell a perfectly good car in a perfectly pitiful market? Well, somehow between NavyGuy and I, we ended up with three vehicles for two people. Last summer during the Great Shuffle (I moved to Florida, then we moved to Washington), it became apparent that my car was going to be a casualty. NavyGuy had an SUV already paid for, and his cute sports car, so a third was quite unnecessary. As my vehicle had more miles and more dollars owed, we put it up for sale.

"Shockingly" it took more than a few days for someone to snatch it up. Over Christmas break, we decided to move it from Fond du Lac to Madison in the hoops that a bigger audience might appreciate it's virtues (all the while continuing to make a monthly car payment... ouch). Luck shined down on us last week though, when a nice couple decided to take my baby and give her a new home.

Seemed only fitting to show off a thank-you card I made recently. This card is color-coordinated in real life (no clue why the ribbon looks yellow in the photo), and features one of my newest Stampin' Up stamp sets - Pocket Silhouettes. I'm a big fan of the flowers in this set; this might be my favorite of the four patterns. The colors featured are Certainly Celery and Night of Navy.

* we being a combined effort of actual work by NavyGuy, his parents, and my mom coupled, with significant moral support on my part.

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Book Review: Water for Elephants

Water for Elephants
Sara Gruen
c2006, Algonquin Books, 350 pages.

The Least You Need to Know... fiction, set during Great Depression; story of a young man who joins a traveling circus train; told through flashbacks by the man when he's 93.

Reminds Me Of... The Devil in the White City, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan.

Pros... the writing, characters, and story quickly suck you in; fascinating details about circus life during the 1930s; satisfying ending.

Cons... lots of the book is set on a train, and the descriptions of the physical layout of the train cars is confusing; a few gratuitous sex scenes that could have accomplished the same purpose with more innuendo and less in-your-face.

You'll Love It If... you're a history geek; you enjoy somewhat intellectual fiction (more depth than Sophie Kinsella, not as "thinky" as Ian McEwan); you have a burning desire to run away and join the circus.

You'll Hate It If... you'd rather not spend your free time reliving the Great Depression; elephants or clowns creep you out.

Bottom Line... I really enjoyed the book. Included with each chapter is a historical photo of circus life that helps bring the words to life. Gruen more than did her homework researching the era - the book is ripe with great details (ex. people living in hobo jungles would tie their shoes around their ankles while they slept to avoid having them stolen...). How long will it take for the movie trailer to show up...?

Recommended by... Mom's bookshelf (yes, I'll bring it back when I come home in May).

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Late Oscar Fashion Round-Up

Still busy unpacking and sorting out life here in Washington. However, for your amusement: high-larious blog post about the dresses at the Academy Awards this year. I found this through a friend of a friend's blog (you know how it is when you're putzing on the computer while Lord of the Rings replays for the 72 millionth time on TNT and you can't fall asleep because your body is totally flummoxed as to whether it actually feels like two hours earlier or two hours later or maybe tomorrow... er... I digress...).

Anyhoo, no clue who the author is, but she's got fabulously saucy commentary on just about every red carpet dress - enjoy!

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I {heart} Target

Having spent the past week with babies and toddlers on my radar (sooooo loving playing with my friends' little ones... then passing them off once the wailing and thrashing begins), this week's Target item goes out to TWP and HistoryGirlie. Despite their best efforts, their little girls are both thriving, and rapidly growing into toddlers... who will need new toddler rooms! Complete with - small sized bean bag chairs!I remember the blue bean bag chair I had as a youngster. I'm sure every parent actually hates them because they inevitably rip and those tiny little beads start trickling out and infesting every corner of your house, but mine was so comfy to snuggle up in with a good book. The bean bag chairs are on sale this week at Target for just $16! According to the website, they're available in pink and red (and an illusive pink and green polka dot pattern which I can't find a photo of... boo).

If only I was a little more compact, I might have to add that pink one to our house...

Of course, I'm no parenting/safety expert, so I'm not recommending you allow your 16 month old to play in the bean bag chair alone. I'm sure you could google the topic and find horror stories involving choking on the beads or suffocation, so let's use some common sense people - here lies my official warning: if you buy a bean bag chair for your toddler, I'm am SO not responsible for what happens once you get said chair home...

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