Tag - You're It!

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.
If you are reading this, tag your it!

1.The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown) - hated the movie
2.Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen) - loved all movie versions, but especially the one with Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy.
3.To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell) - how can you not love the movie?
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien) - movies were great
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) - been to the actual town of Anne of Green Gables...does that count?
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10.A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11.Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling) - Loved
12.Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13.Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling) - loved all 'arry Potta
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden) - made me homesick for Japan
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)
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel) - i hated this book
26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte) - high school english teacher made me hate this book.
28. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis) - all time fav
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
30. Tuesdays with Morrie(Mitch Albom)
31. Dune (Frank Herbert) - loved the movie with Sting and the Sci-Fi channel movie version.
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks) - saw the movie, bawled my head off.
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand) - a tome...long
34. 1984 (Orwell) - i liked animal farm better
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) - the most influential book at a significant time in my life.
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)
45. Bible (not in it’s entirety)
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt) - his nephew was my scuba instructor in Bali
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
50. She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Dickens)
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald) - back before redford turned into "leatherman"
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) - didn't like this one
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand) - always get this and Atlas Shrugged mixed up in my head...both are long reads
63. War and Peace (Tolsoy) - speaking of long reads...
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice) - Lestat...i miss him
65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez) - fascinatingly magical
67. The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller) - i love that Alan Arkin just one an oscar and starred in this.
69. Les Miserables (Hugo)
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding) - british version is so much better
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)
73. Shogun (James Clavell) - i lived in japan for a total of almost 8 years...it is required reading.
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje) - if you didn't read it before the movie you must after.
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) - in spite of my hatred for Gwynnie Paltrow, this was also a great movie
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) - same high school english teacher ruined this one
93. The Good Earth(Pearl S. Buck) - i cried
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum) - like matt damon as Jason
96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100.Ulysses (James Joyce)

Error Proof?

I screwed up at work today pretty bad. I mean, no one died, but it was a pretty big mistake. Obviously not on purpose, but it really doesn't make me feel any better. I know that I'm harder on myself than anyone else would be...but I still can't help beating myself up over it. I hate making mistakes, not that anyone loves making them. And in this day and age of email and blogs and the internet your mistakes can really come back to haunt you.

I was researching a local company recently and the President, back in 2001, sent a real nasty-gram to his management team saying all kinds of foolish things and making stupid threats if productivity didn't increase - his measurement for this was how full the parking lot was before and after formal work hours. Well, his email is public knowledge now. As a matter a fact, it is currently being used as a case study at a Florida university - I found all of this out just by going on Google.

Used to be your mistakes faded away, now they could live on out on the internet on someone's blog, myspace page or facebook page.

Salvation

I moved to NYC when I was 20 to pursue a career in fashion. I had an internship with a designer, Joseph Abboud (basically a smaller scale wanna be Ralph Lauren) and I moved up there with another girl from university named A. We lived in a women's dormitory run by the Salvation Army called Parkside Evangeline. I loved that place. Basically you paid for room and board. You got 2 meals a day plus a studio with a bath. A and I shared a room - it was larger and less expensive. It was very safe and in on of the best neighborhoods in NYC, Gramercy Park. Hard to believe, but we also had access to the private park. Gramercy Park is the last private park in NYC - you have to have a key to enter it. I just found out that the Salvation Army sold it and the building is being turned into condos. It makes me sad.

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So grad school is going okay. I'm way ahead on the current course because I don't have a whole lot going on at work these days. I really like my group, I feel very connected to both J & C, but not as much to H. C is one of those people who I don't think I would be friends with normally, but for some reason we really click. She speaks in what I would call a very California way - all about intuition and destiny - but for some reason coming from her it doesn't seem ridiculous. What is ridiculous are some of these assignments we have such as: write a 3 - 5 page essay on your leadership style. Ugh. Talk about boring. I also have to interview one of my managers...so much busy work and it doesn't feel like much substance. I'm hoping all my classes aren't like this.

As it's a hybrid class, I've met all the people in my classes, but the majority of our interaction is online. Because I've been working from home quite a bit, I am able to have my work laptop up as well as my school one at the same time. There is a bit of an unspoken contest between me and another girl J in the class as to who can be the first one to respond to questions from our teacher. I don't think of myself as being really competitive but I don't particularly care for J (she's the one who popped her gum all the time) and I think it really chaps her ass that I put my responses in before she does. So really, it's not my goal to be first, it's my goal to beat her. I know, I'm pathetic and need a hobby.

The Perfect Score

I have a 4.0!!!! Granted it is for the distance learning course - basically an extended orientation, but I had to write 2 papers and create a constitution and do a presenation. I've never been what I would call book smart. My mom on the other hand, very book smart - she graduated either magna cum or summa cum...so this may be the last I see of my 4.0, but as for now I'm very excited.

Bedlam

Okay, so I was a bit to eager about the techno freaks moving. Perhaps it was a techno freak friend visiting them as a halfway point during a move. I'll never know...but the sight of the big yellow moving truck being gone and the poor puppy yelping outside was a big clue that they are still there; that and the damn porch light and shines in my eyes while I'm trying to sleep. I have shades up, but whenever Becks, the Terrorist, decides to peek out the window, he moves them aside and I get blinded.

But, I love my bed. I love sleeping in my bed. I lived in Japan for 3 years and slept in a single futon on the floor and vowed that upon returning to America, I would buy the biggest, highest bed I could possibly find. This is how I have ended up with a king size bed. I remember my brother and flaky friend going with me to purchase said bed. My brother kept insisting I did not need a king sized bed. I didn't care, it was my money and I was buying it. It is blissful.

On top of the pillow top mattress, I now have a feather bed with a mattress pad on top of that (who wants feathers stabbing them while trying to sleep?). I have 7 pillows - all down as well as a down comforter. My bed is my safe haven. I love it. But recently I've come to the conclusion that it is too small. That's right, too small.

My bedroom is maybe 12 x 10 or something so my bed barely fits. I've thought about moving the bed around so that I wouldn't have the damn porch light in my eyes, but if I move the bed then I lose access to both windows in the room instead of just one because I would have to put my bedside table in front of the other window and then the Terrorist, would just knock everything off the table in order to look out the window and chatter at nothing.

The bed is too small because I have two cats that like to sleep with me. It is also too small because I have a weird habit of sleeping in an "L" shape or even sleeping sideways across the bed. The sideways sleeping makes me think I should have gone for the California King...which I did toy with for about 15 minutes before making my purchase but both my brother and flaky friend said I was insane.

Now when I travel and I get stuck in a room with 2 queen beds or (gasp) even 2 double beds, I can't stand it! I feel claustrophobic, trapped! There aren't nearly enough pillows and even if there were, where the hell would I put them as they would clearly fall off the too small bed.

My furnace decided to finally bite the big one on Saturday and the crappy service that I have doesn't do weekend calls (did not know that when I purchased said service and will not be purchasing new furnace from said company this summer). So I was torn between sleeping in what had become an igloo, my bedroom, but it contained my amazing bed that I love or sleeping in the room that is an addition, now my study, that has it's own furnace (very small that only heats that room) on a twin futon on the floor. How could I possibly leave my bed? My alternative was to put on the warmest sweater that I own with a hood, fleece pants and fleece socks. I may have woken up with snot-cicles, but I happily slept in my bed.

Thank you God as they finally found the part to fix my furnace today, otherwise they would have had to next day air it and guess who was going to pay for that? As tonight we are getting another blessed snow storm, I was not looking forward to going through the dilemma of where to sleep again. But now I'm worried...when I was recruiting two weeks ago, we lost power and heat. Now I've lost heat in my house...I believe that bad luck comes in 3s. I was speaking with a colleague about both issues randomly and she freaking JINXED me by saying, you should be careful with your car!!!!

So, I carefully backed Suzy into the garage this afternoon and have faith that she won't let me down. And now, I'm for bed...for my blessedly large, yet not large enough bed.

Won't You Be My Neighbor?

I'm so excited, I'm so excited, I'm so excited!!!! I think the techno freak neighbors are moving!!!!! Woot woot! My house, which faces north, is situated in such a manner that I am sort of the corner lot, but then you turn the corner and there are houses that are facing east. So, my techno freak neighbors and I have literally about 6 feet between their backyard and my bedroom!

When I first moved into my home I was very optimistic about neighbors. I have since learned that the idea of good neighbors is a joke. I have barely received so much as a wave from most of my neighbors. The neighbor on my west side is an elderly man who is now in a much need assisted living center - but ended up going kicking and screaming. He was also a "hoarder" and I believe the reason that I had the most GINORMOUS rat that decided to bless me with it and her babies death for Christmas last year right under my bathtub. Very Merry Christmas to me.

My neighbors directly across the street from me, the husband - aka The Criminal - does nothing but skateboard with his what looks like his step-son and his son all day long and they use my driveway and the "end game". I went over one time around new years to let them know they had left their car lights on. He answered the door and I said, hi, I'm your neighbor from across the street - as we had never been formally introduced. He says, yeah I know. Full Stop. Just stands there, no hey, nice to meet you. I barely get a wave from the wife. Happy New Year to me.

The woman and her kids that live next door to the Criminal is a complete and total B*tch. I don't believe I have ever seen the woman smile. She is also the woman who called the authorities on my old neighbor for not having his lawn manicured - he's freaking 82!!! I mow our joint side and the neighbor on the other side mowed their joint side! Seriously, cut the old man a break.

THEN! The neighbors behind me sat outside one summer and watched their boys throw a baseball back and forth across the lawn. It flew over our then crappy fence twice. And wouldn't you know it, but the third time, they broke a storm window. The woman was such a jerk about it. Told the son he would have to pay for it out of his allowance, to which the son replied, I don't get an allowance. Hee! They insisted on repairing the storm window themselves instead of my getting an estimate, etc. It took them the entire summer to get it done. I left 4 messages on their answering machine only to never have a returned call. One day I came home to find my storm window propped up against my front door. So when I had a new fence put in, as the old fence was mine to do with as I wished and just because they were using it too wasn't really my concern, I didn't bother to tell them when it was being demo'd. Oopey...too bad they had just gotten a new dog, so the man was out there late one night putting up a temporary fence.

I'm not saying I expected a freaking fruit basket or anything but a freaking wave or a smile wouldn't hurt! So, when the techno freaks moved in, I was all excited to prove I was a better neighbor than everyone. I made cookies and tried to bring them over to their home on 3 separate occasions but they were never there, until the night they had their celebratory move in party.

It was a school night and I had to be up at the crack of dawn the next morning to catch a flight to Europe. I knew I wasn't going to get much sleep anyway from being keyed up about the trip, but around 1am I was woken up to the sound of horrible techno music, tskugh tskugh tskugh. I laid there for a good hour trying to decide what to do. I grew up in military base housing or rented an apartment my entire life. Previously I would have just banged on the wall.

Now there is a city ordinance, but this isn't exactly a 911 issue and have you noticed how difficult it is to find the non-emergency police number? So I decided instead of calling the cops, I would go over and ask them to turn it down. There I go, in my Winnie the Pooh pajamas, to their front door. I ring the doorbell and to get in their home you have to step up - so when the guy answers, he's already taller than me as is most of the world, but he's at least a foot taller due to the step. Upon opening the storm door, a wave of smoke pours out of the home - and mostly your left handed variety smoke, wink wink, nudge nudge.

So I'm standing there in my PJs and introduce myself, Hi, I'm your new neighbor. I had hoped to meet under better circumstances, but my bedroom is literally 6 feet from your house, could you please turn the music down? I thought I was very nice and considerate...but that little episode did little to help our relationship.

Over the last 3 years, they've been pretty good about not playing their music too loud until recently. As well as they just got a puppy, who clearly doesn't need to be supervised whilst outside doing it's business. Clearly just the outdoor porch light that shines into my bedroom window suffices as company enough.

Needless to say, I'm not exactly top on the block party list. Tonight I'm driving home from grad school (another post) and I see a moving truck in front of their house! Woot woot!! But after my dance of joy and my rant, I'm sitting here thinking, you know sometimes it's better the devil you know than the devil you don't...God only knows who my new neighbors will be...I just hope they have better taste in music.

Funky Cold Medina

The last couple of weeks I've been in a funk. I don't know if it's winter blues or just that so much change is happening at work, the new year, or what. All I really want to do is hibernate and stay out of the cold weather. It got up to 50 yesterday and I was excited. Now it's back down in the freezing temps. I know it could be worse, I have a colleague who is up in Milwaukee and it's been like -20 and snowing like crazy! I saw Up State NY got 5 feet! 5 feet not inches of snow! We've had snow but nothing like that.

Part of my funk may be as a result of starting grad school and having a bit of buyers remorse. But I've realized that grad school, like anything else is really just a silly process of steps you need to take in order to check the box off. I'm not sure I'm really going to learn anything over the next 22 long months. If this first orientation course is any indication, I'm only going to learn how to become a better BS'er and frankly, I think I'm pretty damn good as it is.

My company does some tuition reimbursement, but their policy is misleading. It states they will pay up to 80%, but cap it at $5000/year. These days $5000 doesn't buy you much - and it doesn't even buy you half of graduate school. So, I'm now going through the whole process of trying to scrounge around for grants/scholarships and/or loans. Not many people give out grants or scholarships for graduate school - well for an MBA. They do if you are studying nanotechnology or something obscure, but not for an MBA.

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I'm going out for a cocktail tonight with a friend. And while I'm happy to go and excited to see my friend, I'm not excited about going into a smoke infested bar in the middle of winter. You freeze your ass of going from your car to the bar because no one wants to bring a coat in so it can be all smokey and nasty. Then, because I'm so completely and totally lazy, I don't want to have to wash my hair tonight! But I refuse to go to bed smelling like an ashtray. I can't believe this town hasn't passed the anti-smoking bill yet. The business owners claim it will harm their profits, I'd like to submit NYC as exhibit A - they've been smoke free for quite some time and it hasn't hurt them! Oh well, off I go to figure out what to wear as I don't want to stink up a nice sweater. Puff Puff...

MBA - Mother of a Boring Accomplishment

I am officially a graduate student. I started classes on Jan 26 at a smaller local university that offers a hybrid online MBA. What hybrid means is that you have part "on ground" and part online courses. So, that Friday, we had our first class - Successful Distance Learning, i.e., an excuse to add 2 extra credits to my degree. It's basically an extended orientation. Friday evening we had 3, count 'em, 3 intro/get to know you exercises where we did basically the same thing. Boring.

The way they have set up the curriculum is that if I continue on the calendar that they have set up for us, I can get my degree in 22 months. So the same 20 people I'm in class with now, will be my classmates for 22 months.

For our 4 hour class on Saturday we had to do some pair work and some random team work. They also told us we had to pick out our teams - these same teams that we will be stuck in for 22 months. I still don't have a good reason as to why we are stuck in the same team for 22 months. I was told it is because most people only work with the same team members for the span of their job. I think my professor made that up. Granted, that might be true if you work for a very small company. I work for a huge corporation. I work in different teams and with different people all the time. I don't like the idea of potentially getting stuck with some slack-ass loser for 22 months.

The professor also said the majority of teams "self-select" usually by how close they live to each other or where they sit in the classroom. Well, I couldn't stand either person who sat on each side of me. The woman, popped her gum the entire class - first of all, gross; second of all - annoying! The man on the other side of me was completely and utterly helpless in all tasks and just expected me to help him out. Nu uh, so NOT happening.

We had a pair assignment and the man on my right and I had to work together. We had to find the answers to 10 questions in a document about the university policies. We were all given laptops - he had brought his own, which is fine. But, he couldn't seem to get the document to "save" to his desktop - why he needed to save it is beyond me. So he says, I can't get it to save, so we have to use yours. I said, no, you're going to close the document and try to reopen it and I'm going to do the last 5 questions and you are going to do the first 5 questions. He just stared at me...I stared back until he opened the doc again. So, I find the answers to my 5 questions and when I'm done I ask him he is as well. He hasn't even found the first answer! I said, how are you looking for it...he says, the table of contents. Now, I did mention we have laptops, therefore we are searching through an electronic document. There is a nifty feature in any program, regardless of whether or not it is Word, Excel, Powerpoint or even Acrobat - it's called SEARCH or FIND. So as you can imagine as we are on a time crunch, I end up doing 8 out of the 10 questions because even once I explain the feature to him, he is not searching under the most obvious words. For example: the question is if you drop a course after the second class how much in tuition will you be refunded? Instead of searching under "tuition" or "refund", he's searching under class. You may as well search the word "the". Since this example typifies his attitude, I thought oh hell to the no if you are on my team.

We then had to do another exercise, but this time as a random team. In this exercise we had to create a presentation in 15 minutes on what we would do if there was a slacker on our team. My idea was to designate one person to speak with the slacker to find out what was going on to see if there could be a resolution. One guy on our team said, no, we should confront the person as a team and explain that they better step up and do their work. There again, I thought oh hell to the no if you are on my team. Yes, let's confront the lazy bastard as a group to intimidate and make the person defensive. Way to alienate even further. Go Team.

My team consists of 2 other women and 1 man. C & H are the women and J is the man. They are all married with kids. We are still in the process of playing the getting to know you in terms of style. I was voted as team leader. I'm not sure how I feel about this as it clearly means more work for me. Was it because they think I'm potentially a good leader or because they know I'm single and assume I have no life. A true assumption, but they don't know that yet!

Our assignments for the Successful Distance Learning course are quite hokey. In undergrad, I was a fashion major. We didn't write papers and we didn't have team projects. We had individual projects such as make a sweatshirt by the end of the quarter. I have now had to write 2 papers: 1. Path to Success and 2. Learning Styles. I think both assignments are fluffy and boring. The first one, I am to write about how I plan to succeed at achieving my MBA...I'm thinking by flying by the seat of my pants. The second one, I have to write about what type of learner I am and the pitfalls of being that type and how I plan to overcome it. Again, fluffy and boring.

I've now seen the syllabus for the second course which starts next Saturday and frankly I'm underwhelmed. I had heard from my friends who've gotten their MBAs that it is all team projects. This next course is on organization management and consists of 6, count 'em, 6 modules that require many chapters of reading, essay questions on that reading and 6 papers - 5 individual and 1 team. So not what I was expecting for an MBA course.

Have I mentioned that this will go on for 22 months?

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I was out of town last week recruiting on at a large university in the Midwest. It was freezing. To get to this university I had to fly through Indianapolis - which was a nightmare thanks to Mr. Manning et al landing them in the Superbowl. It's so cold at this school that they actually have tunnels to get across campus so you don't have to go outside and freeze your ass off. But, in the middle of our career fair, the entire campus loses power - for a freaking HOUR I had to stand outside in 7 degree weather (I'm not even sure what the windchill factor was). Then, once the firemen gave us the all clear to go back in, there was no heat for another two hours in the school because it turns out the fire was in the steam room/boiler room of the school. So needless to say, I'm not a fan of this particular university and also am eternally grateful that I went to school in the south and therefore never had to walk through scary tunnels to get to my classes.

The best part of the trip was hanging out with my two colleagues. One of them is on the leadership program that I manage. I love this kid. He is such a star. He turned me on to this band - as it is pretty clear that I am officially OLD and had never heard of them - called O.A.R., which apparently stands for Of A Revolution. I'm sure everyone else has heard of them, but I hadn't. I like their latest album - check it out.