Angelic

Angelic, originally uploaded by soelo.

Reading

I realized I haven't been listing the books I've read since I finished my list of 33 from the 101 things project in October of 2008. Here are 27 of them haphazardly categorized, but I might be missing a few:

Four Stars
Beneath a Marble Sky - John Shors
Eat, Pray, Love - Elizabeth Gilbert (The movie was good but not as good as the book. Believe the hype on this one.)
Midnight at the Dragon Cafe - Judy Fong Bates
My Name Is Memory - Ann Brashares (an unexpected birthday gift, but a great book)
The Birth of Venus - Sarah Dunant
The Other Boleyn Girl - Philippa Gregory
The Private Papers of the Eastern Jewel - Maureen Lindley (just finished today)
The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger (another one where the movie was good but the book better)

Three Stars
Breaking Dawn - Stephenie Meyer
Devil in the Details : Scenes from an Obsessive Girlhood - Jennifer Traig (so funny that I forced Aaron to borrow it)
Digging to America - Anne Tyler
Eclipse - Stephenie Meyer
Goodnight Nobody - Jennifer Weiner
Plan B - Emily Barr (Backpack is still my favorite book by Barr. They need to make at least one of her novels into a movie.)

Two Stars
Bookends - Jane Green
Cuba - Emily Barr
Driving over Lemons : An Optimist in Andalucia - Chris Stewart
Goddess for Hire - Sonia Singh
Jemima J - Jane Green
Notting Hell - Rachel Johnson (I need to read the sequel Shire Hell)
Tell Me Lies - Jennifer Cruisie
The Flawless Skin of Ugly People - Doug Crandall
The Last Summer of You and Me - Ann Brashares

Don't Remember Enough to Rate
Irish Girls About Town - Various
Scottish Girls About Town - Various
The Idiot Girls' Action-Adventure Club - Laurie Notaro (All I can remember is most of the stories involved drinking too much.)

Hated it
Wanderlust - Chris Dyer (The "e-mail message" style was annoying and the characters were way too shallow.)

Thanks to paperbackswap, my To Be Read shelf is overflowing.

Fall 2010 Television

Show	Channel	Day and Time	Premier Date
Survivor	CBS	Wednesday 7 p.m.	Sept 15
How I Met Your Mother	CBS	Monday 7 p.m.	Sept 20
Chuck	NBC	Monday 8 p.m.	Sept 20
Mike & Molly	CBS	Monday 8:30 p.m.	Sept 20
Raising Hope	FOX	Tuesday 8:30 p.m.	Sept 21
Running Wilde	FOX	Tuesday 8:30 p.m.	Sept 21
Parenthood	NBC	Tuesday 9 p.m.	Sept 21
The Middle	ABC	Wednesday 7 p.m.	Sept 22
Better With You	ABC	Wednesday 7:30 p.m.	Sept 22
Modern Family	ABC	Wednesday 8 p.m.	Sept 22
Law & Order: Los Angeles	NBC	Wednesday 9 p.m.	Sept 22
The Big Bang Theory	CBS	Thursday 7 p.m.	Sept 23
Community	NBC	Thursday 7 p.m.	Sept 23
My Generation	ABC	Thursday 7 p.m.	Sept 23
$#*! My Dad Says	CBS	Thursday 7:30 p.m.	Sept 23
30 Rock	NBC	Thursday 7:30 p.m.	Sept 23
The Office	NBC	Thursday 8 p.m.	Sept 23
Grey’s Anatomy	ABC	Thursday 8 p.m.	Sept 23
Outsourced	NBC	Thursday 8:30 p.m.	Sept 23
The Simpsons	FOX	Sunday 7 p.m.	Sept 26
The Amazing Race	CBS	Sunday 7 p.m.	Sept 26
Family Guy	FOX	Sunday 8 p.m.	Sept 26
No Ordinary Family	ABC	Tuesday 7 p.m.	Sept 28
The Good Wife	CBS	Tuesday 9 p.m.	Sept 28

Midseasons: Parks and Rec and Mad Love

Jem and the Holograms

My sister and I were big fans of Jem and the Holograms when we were little.We didn't have this car, but we did have the Star Stage:

You could put some of the dolls on the pegs (they had little holes in their feet if I remember right) and there was tape player so you could play the tapes that came with the dolls. It's all explained here in this commercial.

We watched the cartoon, we had some of the dolls and lots of the clothes, and I even wrote out the lyrics to some my favorite songs. You see kids, back before the interwebs brought us lyrics websites, we had to get lyrics using the listen, pause, write, listen, pause, write method.

World Cup

IMG_0628, originally uploaded by soelo.

Congratulations Spain!

Mall Cops: Mall of America

I've been watching Mall Cops: Mall of America on TLC. I found it so very Minnesotan when, on the last episode, the "No Pants" group was told they couldn't come into the Mall and they responded by simply saying, "Okay, we'll turn around!" It was really odd that the narrator called them protesters at one point, since I am pretty sure they were just a group of Improv Everywhere readers.

Doctor Palmer

Ingredients:
Ten ounces of diet dr pepper in a twenty ounce bottle
One lemonade mix packet
Water

Mix lemonade packet into dr pepper. It will fizz, but it shouldn't
overflow. Hold it over a sink anyway. Replace cap and shake. Taste the
mix and add enough water to make it drinkable, three ounces or so.

Awful TV

It's not surprising that this page is the third result when you search for "girl robot", but I am surprised the show was on for four seasons.
This show ran that long as well, but I had no idea that Burt Reynolds did the voice of the father.
There are still times when I can't get theme song to this show out of my head.

Further proof that the Internet is not just for wasting time

You may have heard me drone on about how cool Ask MetaFilter is, and this question is a perfect example of just how cool it can be sometimes. The short version of the story is that a guy who used to teach in Russia was contacted by a former student who is from Russia and here on a J1 Visa. She and a friend were essentially stranded in D.C. after being told there were jobs for them there. The "jobs" fell through and they were told they had to meet another potential boss in a bar in Brighton Beach (New York City) at midnight. The asker and lots of others felt this was a set up for them to be trafficked. The asker was on the road and not really able to physically step in and help them, but he got lots of offers of assistance. There is a parallel thread here that talks about the original thread.

2004

I started playing Kingdom of Loathing six years ago today.

Wisdom from Joe vs the Volcano

"My father says that almost the whole world is asleep. Everybody you know. Everybody you see. Everybody you talk to. He says that only a few people are awake and they live in a state of constant total amazement."

*If you haven't seen this movie, I highly recommend it. It is better than the other two Meg Ryan/Tom Hanks movies.

Dreams

Last night's dream started with Tanya and I moving into an apartment. Mom and two women from the apt office were in the kitchen with us. We were signing some things when one of them demanded the rent. We explained we had already paid the first month when she started yelling that it was $4,000 per month. We were all arguing and she tried to run away with some of the papers. We got them away from her and ran off. The other woman was upset but told us we were right. Then she said that she was worried the other woman would be mad at her. She explained that they were two of the brides in an upcoming five-couple wedding.

Back from Spain

I've been back now since Wednesday. Spain was beautiful, of course, and the food was excellent. Still working on going through my pictures and enjoying being home.

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Health Care Reform

CBO: Health package costs $940 billion
Democrats are lauding a CBO report that found their health care package will cut the deficit by $130 billion.

Did you know

that the highest point in Pennsylvania is lower than the lowest point in Colorado?

Spain 2010

I booked our flights today! We fly to Madrid on Sunday, March 28th and we fly back from Barcelona on April 7th.

Did You Know

that there is a spaceport in South America? The European Space Agency, CNES and Arianespace all use the Guiana Space Centre in French Guiana.

Winter TV

Chuck - back January 10th
Lost - back February 2nd
Parenthood - Premieres March 1st

Weekdays

You probably know that Sunday is named for the Sun and you may know that Monday is named for the Moon, but what about the rest of the week? They took their names from various gods: Tuesday is named for Tiw or Tyr, Wednesday is named for Woden, Thursday is named for Thor, Friday is named for Frige, and Saturday is named for Saturn.