Reminiscing via music

This post will not be for those with little ears running around but on this fine New Year's evening I have been on a You Tube video kick with old school songs that really strike a code with me. Hope you enjoy some of them too....

A remix but hits on some others.....

Again a remix but still does it...

Well, I think that is enough for now.....seriously memories, some good, some not so good but still there.

Hey y'all...too funny

Interestingly sad....

Created by Online Education

Electromagnetic Spectrum in chart form

Totally geeking out here but this really is cool. How/why did I find it? Looking for rainbow images for my daughter's powerpoint.

Holding myself accountable....

This post will be somewhat embarrassing for those who know me personally but I am posting it b/c I am proud and I want to continue on my weight loss journey and I am hoping this will help me by celebrating my success so far. I love how the WW site allows me to track it with this cool graph too but maybe that is just the science nerd in me.

This is going to be bad......

A friend and IB/AP English teacher in my building posted this as a note on her FB. I do not have those kind of cajones as I know this is going to be ugly.....maybe the truth will scare me into doing something about it in my infinite spare time..... (mind you when copying from her site I had to take off about 90 of her Xs).


Books I have read:
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series (at least 2 count)- JK Rowling (Not yet but I own and plan to!)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee X (Junior year in high school and reread)
6 The Bible X
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell X (senior year HS)
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens X (senior year HS)
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 Faulk
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 TolstoyX
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck X (senior year HS)
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 HosseiniX
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis de Bernières
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 X (Middle school)
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 - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck X (senior year HS)
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 Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno – Dante
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 FlaubertX
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

Did a lot of reading in Mr. Wheeler's class.
Why isn't the Twilight series on here? :P

MLIT

A friend pointed me in the direction of this site. (Thanks Chemguy!) I have been reading and cracking up all evening. Hope you like it too!

My next endeavor???

I have thought about doing this for years (even with a 5-ish year hiatus from Jazzercising) but after reading this, maybe becoming an instructor isn't worth it. Hmmm.....

Throwing myself another pity party....

I will try to make this a short post (lol).

After having my Mom here all of Thanksgiving break (which was actually a good time....post more later), school resumed this past week. The Mister left early Thursday morning to head up north to get our last Uhaul of belongings and place them in storage here. All that will be left to selling the house is actually signing on the dotted line by all parties (waiting on the loan/first time buyers stuff to go through - seems to be a clog in that paperwork, really? You're "giving" thousands of dollars away and everyone wants their cut, really Mr. President? duh.) I am playing the role of single parent which is stressful enough but of course in the true fashion of my life Thursday evening the oldest calls from gymnastics practice to tell me her throat is red and swollen and she cannot breathe through her nose. I go get her and decide to head to the dr. The twilight pediatrician with her office is cheaper than Urgent care so I decide to go that route but the office is in the next city about 30 minutes away. I got home and mapquest the directions. I realize I forgot to drop off the payment to the gym while picking up sicky girl. I then head to day care to get the two well girls since I knew there was no way I'd be back to get them before the daycare closed. Then back to the gym to drop off the check then finally on the road to the Dr. or so I thought. At that point the toddler says she needs to potty. I lost my mind for a brief moment. I pulled into McDonalds and the girls all went potty and I ordered dinner. (Sorry WW, the stress was too much. I was not sensible, nutritious or considerate in what I ordered and consumed. I biggie sized and devoured under shear survival mode. Not a proud moment on this healthy lifestyle change of mine but....it happens. I weighed in this morning and was down 4.3 lbs but last week I was up 3 so....I guess I am still winning on the deal.) Back on the road with mouths chewing artery clogging goodness. Made it to the office. Waiting about 15 minutes to see the Dr. She said the asthma sounds good but the gymnast has the "new germ" that is going around, no flu or strep, but a a head/nasal congestion, and terribly sore throat. Some kids have a cough to boot but not mine. I was told to treat the symptoms and have her rest (no school Friday) and would have to wait and see about the state competition Sunday. Came home and after a few melt downs by various and sundry ladies of the house every one was finally in bed (maybe not their own but a bed) by 9:30ish. Friday I taught all day, had an annoying parent conference after school (will vent about this singularly later....) and came home to sicky. She had only eaten 1/3 of a bowl of ramen instead of the chicken noodle soup I laid out for her. She had consumed NO liquids even after being told to drink as much as she possibly could (she claimed she could not find her water bottle...well, we only have 6 that are NOT being used in the cabinet right now. grrr....she also said she could only watch tv as the rain was too distracting to read. grrr....translation: I was sucked in my the Disney goodness on tv all day so she did not even sleep to help matters.) Early this morning as the toddler drug me out of bed to turn on Dora, I met the sicky in the bathroom. She said she was sick to her stomach now b/c she tried to drink so water. I tried to explain that is was b/c she has nothing else in her stomach but what do I know. Since then she has slept all day (no tv on by the mean Mommy that I am) but is still not getting any better. I have no idea if we'll be at the state gymnastics meet tomorrow or not nor how I will survive that 4ish hour drive with sicky (or pseudo-sicky if she is feeling decent enough to try), little drama and the toddler. I am stuck in what-do-I-do-now mode and can't accomplish anything b/c I don't know what I should try to do or get done because I don't know if I am leaving on a long car trip or not. ARGH!

Right now it sucks to be the Mommy. It sucks to be the only parent around. It always sucks to not be able to make things better especially when is has to do with a sick kid. And I hate to think of how hard she has worked all season in gymnastics to have this happen with such a stigmatic meet and the last one of the season, like her super bowl.

*sigh*

A Christmastime Survey

With in the past couple days and with the Mister going north to wrap up the final stuff at the old homestead, I have had some pretty dramatic happenings. I am trying not to only blog about my whines and complaints (maybe that is why my following is so small, lol) so I am trying to save those for another post (you know, everything turns out for the best and you can look back and laugh about it?). So today I am "re-gifting" this Christmastime survey from a blog I follow. Thanks Jo-lynne. Feel free to re-gift from me as well. :)

1. Egg Nog or Hot Chocolate? Hands down, chocolate. It will always win. I like mine hot enough to metal the marshmallow's but cool enough to actually drink while leaving some cilia on the surface of my throat's cells.

2. Does Santa wrap presents or just sit them under the tree? We have never taught our girls about Santa. A a personal choice we feel we need to teach the 'reason for the season' as Jesus's birth and there is no white man in a red suit who magically makes things appear. They know not to destroy other kid's thoughts on the subject so all you other parents reading this can rest easy. We also figured childhood was traumatic enough to not add to theirs with the my-parents-lied-to-me-about-Santa-and -here-is-how-I-found-out drama. As far as gift wrapping goes, due to the science teacher in me I choose not to wrap as it is really wasteful. Due to the laziness in my I choose not to wrap as it is too time consuming. And most importantly due to the cheapskate in me I choose not to wrap because it cost too much money to buy paper for the purpose of tearing and then throwing away. Each girls has a huge red velvet bag with their name embroidered on it and all their gifts are housed in there.

3. Colored lights on tree/house or white? When I am feeling uppity I would say white. When I am feeling redneck-ish I would say multicolored. Right now the only tree we have up in the 4ft pink monstrosity in the girls' room which my Mother bought while here for Thanksgiving (see I told you I have lots of happening to talk about....later....). So for now I say pink.

4. Do you hang mistletoe? No. I steal my fair share of kisses without it. :)

5. When do you put your decorations up? As soon as Thanksgiving festivities are over.

6. What is your favorite holiday dish? Buckeyes or my aunt's red velvet cake.

7. Favorite Holiday memory as a child? Christmas was not really fun for me as a child being the youngest and only girl so it always ended with me being teased unmercifully and usually my favorite toy destroyed by my brothers during the teasing. In the last 6 years we started a tradition of taking a timed family picture. That has been fun and probably the highlight of the evening. Last year there were 13 people and 2 dogs. I am sure you can imagine - organized chaos.

8. When and how did you learn the truth about Santa? We always opened gift Christmas eve after church so I never bought into the whole Santa thing. It was not forced on me and another reason why I do not do it to my girls.

9. Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve? See above question. We open ALL gifts then.

10. How do you decorate your Christmas tree? This year (the only year we have had a Christmas tree, my grapevine tree substituted in years past) the pink monster has pink lights and princess lights with a silver star. Not really room for anything else. It is a tiny tree. Not to mention I have to be selective with the toddler tornado running around here.

11. Snow! Love it or Dread it? Love it as long as I am home and no where to go. Hate it when I would have to drive to work as our school would be the only one NOT to close. Now....don't have to worry about snow. :P

12. Can you ice skate? Yes. Ever earend credit in classes for a series of 3 ice skating classes. I also took belly dancing in college.

13. Do you remember your favorite gift? Not really.

14. What’s the most important thing about the Holidays for you? Spending time with family and friends and reflecting on the birth of our Savior. (Staling Jo-Lynne's answer here b/c I could have posted it myself.)

15. What is your favorite Holiday Dessert? See #6.

16. What is your favorite holiday tradition? Church and opening gifts Christmas eve.

17. What tops your tree? Sparkly silver star.

18. Which do you prefer giving or Receiving? Yes. Both please.

19. Candy Canes: Yuck or Yum? Ok. Filed under whatever.

20 Favorite Christmas Show? A Christmas Story. I remember seeing it in the theater (yes, I am that old) and my Mom laughing her butt off when the dogs took the turkey.

21. Saddest Christmas Song? ??????? Grandma got run over by a reindeer. ????

22. What is your favorite Christmas Song? Gosh, I can't pick one favorite....Carol of the Bells tops my list as well as O, Holy Night and Little Town of Bethlehem. I love the Nutcracker music as well.


Let me know if you take this survey....I am probably already stalking your blog anyway.....so I would know...like Santa. lol