"It's like an iPod for my books"...

Yeah, I'm special...
BUT, I CAN'T WAIT!!!!! :)

...The countdown begins...

Much Love,

j

Day: The Fourteenth...

Day 14 - put your ipod on shuffle and write ten songs that pop up...

 

YAY!  Today is the day that I've been waiting for!  I have over 7000 songs and books and scripture and videos and happy things on my iPod...it should be interesting to see what surfaces...  ;)
 
10 Totally Random Bits of iPod Bliss:

1. Magical Mystery Tour - Cheap Trick, Greatest Hits
2. All That's Yet To Come - Glen Burtnik, Welcome to Hollywood
3. Suite From The Polar Express - Alan Silvestri, The Polar Express
4. Kryptonite - 3 Doors Down, The Better Life
5. X-Ray Eyes - Kiss, Dynasty
6. Ch. 03 Acts (New Testament).  Yep.  The Bible.
7. Mother Dear - Styx, Equinox
8. Ch. 24 Matthew (New Testament)
9. Simple Man - Lynyrd Skynyrd, (Pronounced Leh-Nerd Skin-Nerd)
10. Here Comes Santa Claus - .38 Special, A Wild-Eyed Christmas Night

I LOVE that two Christmas songs and two New Testament chapters pulled up! 

Here's some fun info: I absolutely ADORE song #2 (and was chosen to add a blurb of ME on Glen's opening song when this happy CD is plugged into a computer!). I can play a bit of song #4 on my guitar, and song #9 is on my top 10 list of all time favorite songs. And of course, band #7 is my fave of faves...always and forever.  I heart Styx.  SO much...

Much Love,

j

Day: The Thirteenth...

Day 13 - a picture of someone/something that has had the biggest impact on you...

Easy.

My Mom: for showing me what being a good mom, teacher, friend, wife, teacher, and awesome, creative person really looks and acts like.

My Dad: for my absolute love for music, teaching me about tools-and letting me know it's okay to use them, and for helping me figure out just what I'm looking for in a hubby.

B, seriously, the best brother anyone could ask for: for teaching me something new daily, for his love of the Gospel, for opening a new world for me, and for being the one who says, "Here's what I think you should do."

Andrea: for loving my B, loving me, her creative spirit, listening ear and hugs...and for the important job she's doing right now...

I love you all SO much.  Thank you...

Much Love,

j

So Many Books...

{30}

I found this list on a link on my new favorite blog: M Christine Weber.  I was surprised to see how many I actually HAD read! :)

***


The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?

Instructions: Look at the list and put an '*' after those you have read. Title your post with the number you've read.
***

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen *

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 - Too Many Cooks

7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte *

8 Nineteen Eighty Four - 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 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 Tolstoy

25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky

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 X

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 Nighttime - 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’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 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
 
***
30...and theres many more on this list that I WANT to read...
 
Much Love,
 
j

My New Favorite Thing...

SO bad...SO funny...





;) Much Love,

j

Day: The Twelfth...

Day 12 - someone you didn't want to let go, but just drifted...

 

This boy.
(Sorry about the sad, small, blurry pic...it's a crop of a scan of a REALLY old original...)

This is his First grade picture.  Back then, I thought we'd ALWAYS be friends-or maybe...more? (Giggle!!) He was my first crush.  He was the name I carved in hearts on trees and doodled on paper.  He was the one I wanted to wear dresses for.  He was the one that I got into fights over (and got in trouble for).

This boy is still my friend...and even though "more" didn't happen, I'm sure I'd still blush if we were in the same room... 

...And I'm sure I always will...  :)


Much Love,

j

Day: The Eleventh...

Day 11 - a favorite book...

I LOVE to read.  I'm always reading...and usually I'm reading three or four books and a couple of magazines at the same time.  Right now, I'm reading:

A Single Voice by Kristen Oaks
Outliers by Malcom Gladwell
Once Upon a Crime by Michael Buckley
Craft Inc. by Meg Mateo Ilasco
The Handmade Marketplace by Kari Chapin
and Blogging For Bliss by Tara Frey (which is full of brilliantly fab ideas, that I plan to use to make this place that much more magical!)
...and Martha Stewart Living, and Women's Health, and Lucky...  :)

I've read hard classics for my AP English classes, the books EVERYONE MUST READ, the books that EVERYONE currently is reading (yep, count the Twilight Saga, The Hunger Game Trilogy and The Maze Runner books on that list.), religious books, dirty books, mystery books (hello, Mr. Bond...), and countless children's books...
But nothing I've read will ever be held as high as
The Catcher In The Rye...

To be honest, I'm not too sure exactly why I love this book as much as I do.  It's just one of those things in my life that is part of me, one that I love because deep down I feel it has somehow flipped a switch and created the person I am today.  This book, this harsh, difficult book that has been linked to many odd, sad and scary events and seems to be on every one's Conspiracy Theory list, has somehow become so much more for me.

I read it for the first time in tenth grade for my AP English class.  I fought a lot of the books I had to read that year, but this one felt easy and relatable...which is funny, because Holden Caulfield and myself are NOTHING alike.  It was the words of J.D. Salinger and the way he wove them into the story of Holden that I loved the most, I think.  My personal copy of Catcher is falling apart and faded and dog-eared and underlined, and loved, and it smells just like an old, loved book should. 

Much Love,

j

Some of the reasons I adore Catcher:


'What I was really hanging around for, I was trying to feel some kind of a good-by. I mean I've left schools and places I didn't even know I was leaving them. I hate that. I don't care if it's a sad good-by or a bad good-by, but when I leave a place I like to know I'm leaving it. If you don't, you feel even worse.'
-Holden Caulfield


'What really knocks me out is a book, when you're all done reading it, you wished the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it.'
-Holden Caulfield


'Among other things, you'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You're by no means alone on that score, you'll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them - if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn't education. It's history. It's poetry.'

-Mr. Antolini



Day: The Tenth...

A gorgeous image...of one of my least favorite things...

Click for more amazing pics!

Day 10 - top ten pet peeves...

1. Wet Socks
2. Having to wear socks.  Period.
3. Wet pant legs
4. Mayo
5. Tattling
6. Drivers that DON'T use their turn signals
7. Fingernail biting...Gah...
8. Squeaky snow boots
9. "Teacher!" Poke, poke.  "TEACHER!" Poke, poke, poke...
10. Bogie licking.  (Yes, I see this about 40 times a day!)

...Much Love,

j


I am giddy...

I love these men.

Not just a little bit of love.   LOADS.

I heard once that, "girls aren't supposed to like Monty Python".  I suppose I'm the exception.
I.  ADORE.  THEM.
I have always loved dry British humor.  The dry British everything.  But Monty Python was different.  My first exposure was in 7th grade-when we got to skip band and watch Holy Grail in the library after our first concert.  I was hooked...and have had secret crushes on all the guys since. (Shhh...Eric Idle is my fave... ;) )  It doesn't matter what mood I'm in when I start a show...I'm always, ALWAYS happy when I finish.  My face hurts from smiling, and my stomach hurts from laughing.  Hard.

Yesterday, I asked one of my fave people at Liberty if I could maybe, just maybe, possibly borrow her stash of Flying Circus, IF I promised to take ever such great care of them. (Because I was very much in a Flying Circus sort of mood.) She said she'd have to ask her hubby.

Today, she met me in the hall with this:

She said, "For keeps...to make you happy." 

Leslie, I can't tell you how stinkin happy you've made me.  I am thrilled and giddy and happy and I can't WAIT to plug one in.  YOU, my friend are amazing. 

Thank you.
(I promise to take good care of them and love them and NOT to bug you with TOOO many quotes...just a few...Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, say no more, SAY NO MORE!)

Much Love,

j



Day: The Ninth...

Day 9 - something you have to forgive yourself for...

Ugh...this is hard...

While preparing to graduate HS, I thought a lot about what I wanted to do and be when I..."grew up".  I didn't really WANT to grow up, but the funny thing was that I never actually acted my age to begin with.  I was the one doing homework and reading the hard books and studying all hours of the night.  Mom and dad were the ones telling me to get out of the house, call a friend and to get into some trouble.  I took AP classes, hard classes, art classes, science classes and a Japanese language class that I couldn't quite get the hang of...I also took an internship at the ECEC: Murray School District's preschool. 

I LOVED IT.

Every single second of it. 

I got to be everything I wanted to be-and was in the eyes of the kids I was with.  I had an awesome trainer, and learned then why my mom was so different than all my friends.  She actually knew what she was doing and was insanely good at it.  She knew how to talk to kids, how to treat kids and how to get them to do what she needed them to do...all while they thought it was their idea.  I wanted to be just like her. 

So I studied and learned and threw myself into that work. 

And it stuck. 

I was lucky enough to be hired on as a sub my Senior year of High School and had a job in the Special Ed. classroom before I graduated.  I fell in love with this, too.

One year turned into two.  Then three.  Then four...

Then amazing Kaydee and I were asked to start up a new three year old room...  With Kaydee's natural, amazing ability, and my SPED background (I was pretty amazing, too, actually!) we kicked it.  It was amazing. Our 3's were the happiest, brightest, well-rounded three-year-olds in the state.  Guaranteed.  :)

During this time, I met and fell in love with some of the most amazing kids...with some pretty hard challenges.  Kaydee and I learned how to care for and support lots of difficult special needs...and we both felt very much like...we were needed. 

I didn't feel that I could leave that work...for anything else.

EVEN the U.  Even if it would make me a better teacher.

I wanted to go to the U.  BAD.  I thought about it.  I prayed about it.  I read about it... 
And always, I got the same answer:  The kids at the ECEC NEEDED me. 

So I never went.

I forgot the U.

Fast forward almost 11 years.  I am now counting down to my 30th birthday (which is incredibly scary!) and am working at Liberty Elementary as the aide for the all day kindergarten class (we were just approved for ANOTHER year!!! YAY!!)

I LOVE my job.

But I want to be better.

So...the thing that I get to forgive myself for???


The fact that I'm almost 30...and don't have my degree.


But...


I also know that what I was doing in the meantime was VERY important.

I just get to remember that...and move on... 



Much Love,

j

Day: The Eighth...(sort of...)

Sorry friends.  I've been a slacker.  But really, who's surprised? ;) Between The Bachelor and food poisoning and movie dates...I've been SO swamped! HA!!!

Now, ON with the show...

Day 8 - A picture of you and your friends...

Brienne and I at the Jet concert. 

I.  Look.  MANIC...

Courtney, Colette and I at...

WICKED!!! :)

At the Orpheum in San Francisco.

My Loves...



Much Love,

j

Day: The Seventh...

Day 7 - have you ever thought about giving up on life? when and why?

Here's what I know:

Life is hard.  Sometimes.  

But...everything happens for a reason...and ends up being an awesome life lesson...if you take the time to look for it.

So...no.  I've not had that thought...nor do I believe I ever will...

Besides, it's not up to me when I leave.  That is in the hands of my Heavenly Father.

Much Love,

j