100 Books that British People Love

Circulating on facebook at the moment is this list, with the information reading "Apparently the BBC reckons most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here."
Instructions:
1) Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read.
2) Add a '+' to the ones you LOVE. NOTE HOW I PUT PLUSSES AFTER ALL OF THEM. THIS IS BECAUSE I AM A 'TARD AND DIDN'T READ THE INSTRUCTIONS.
3) Star (*) those you plan on reading.

As for that BBC reckons that peeps will have only read 6, the BBC reckoned no such thing. This was a list compiled over a year of BBC subscribers' favorite books. As such, having only read 6 out of 100 of people's CURRENT favorite books actually means you a) are illiterate, b) read only trashy romance novels (female) Star Trek books (male and my sister), c) are an American Youth, d) only watch movies once they make it onto the big screen. I say big screen because the only people who watch books that were made into TV series are the people who have already read those books (i.e. nerds and romantics).


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 +
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 (WORKS!? That's 37 books, not to mention collections of poetry. Plus, Hamlet is listed again later. I refuse)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier+
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien+
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger+
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell +in progress
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+
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
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 (Again with the multiples)+
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis THIS IS THE SAME AS 33!!
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Berniere
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 + I LOVE THIS BOOK
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
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-time - 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 Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
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 (Isn't this in his "Collected Works"?)+
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl +
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo (I've tried. I've failed)

45 out of 98. Not bad. Let's just consider the rest to be *starred* for future reading, except Les Miserables. I've watched that movie, at least. Mmm.... Liam Neeson.... I've been looking for a list of classics (and apparently Harry Potter) that I ought to read, and if the BBC readers love these books most, well... I'll take that into consideration.

Purchased Pincushion (due to lameness)

I finally just bought a damned pincusion. This is Katie the Cactus. I purchased her from the Etsy store of Crystal's Creations and Gifts, and I LOVE her. I haven't even gotten her in the mail yet, but when I do... let me tell you. I'm going to stick her like a voodoo doll.

Sorry for the Lameness

I haven't posted in a few days (some peeps I'm sure are thinking PHEW!). Mostly due to lethargy, a little bit due to it being the weekend and not having anything interesting happen, and the last bit due to my attempting several times to make a mother$#*&ing pincushion in which to put my pins and failing miserably EVERY DAMNED TIME.

I was going to make an adorable hedgehog pincushion with the pins being the spikes and name him Prick in honor of Jesse, but I ended up with this fraying abomination that could be bested by a 5 year old in a special needs kindergarten class. It's hideous. It's terribly embarrassing that these hands that can produce the tiniest solder joints can NOT produce something from a pattern with instructions written for above-mentioned 5 year old. It's sitting in the bedroom because Jesse, for some reason that I'm sure includes "ammo for future blackmail", is apparently so in love with it that he won't let me put it out of its misery. No, you cannot see it. Ever, regardless of how good of friends you really think we are. Not ever. If Jesse offers to show it to you, know that it will be the last time you see him with both testicles. Just think of that when he says something about the hedgehog pincushion. SAVE HIS FUTURE BEES.

Then, I tried making an adorable cupcake pincushion like these, but I ended up instead with something that resembled my efforts when I was 5 to microwave flour paste in my pink plastic (insert 80's doll that came with a) muffin pan. Large, overblown, pasty-white, and completely useless. Finn can attest - he witnessed the frustration and ugliness.

Then, I thought to myself, "maybe I'll just do what I did for my very first pincushion when I was 5." I could cross-stitch something cheeky and/or snarky in a general square and then sew it together. Then I remembered: I'M IN ADULT BEGINNING SEWING: THE APRON". I can't sew things together yet. Even if I could, I'd have to wait until class ANYWAY, which is what I need a stupid pincushion for ANYWAY. UGH.

Although, in searching for cheeky and/or snarky things to stitch onto a pincushion, I happened upon this, from the blog author of Snarky Stitching, which in turn led me to watching Dr. Horrible's Singalong Blog, which I think is the best thing that has happened to humanity since the advent of Neil Patrick Harris being cool again. SRSLY - if you haven't watched it yet, you're not one of the cool kids like the whole rest of the United States and probably France. I knew I should have watched it sooner, and NOW it turns out you only have until July to watch it, at which point it will be gone forever. I don't know why.

Now, go watch Dr. Horrible and make sure not to think about Hedgehog Pincushions, because Jesse's future reproductive capabilities depend on you.

Because 5am is Where All the COOL Kids Hang Out

Jesse and I have discussed, and agreed upon (!), a new schedule. Seeing as we have the social lives of certain predatory birds, it makes no sense to stay up late and just wait around for bedtime by playing video games/facebook and spooling out that last reserve of energy until we're drained like a functional bathtub.

SO.

Starting Tuesday of this week, we are instead wasting our time in the morning, at FIVE O'CLOCK. Voluntarily. This is of about the same normalcy level as Jesse getting pregnant. With a gerbil. These past two mornings, I have spent my reserve three hours doing the following: facebook and crafts. The selfsame things I did in my post-work three hours. HOWEVER, I did these things without feeling guilty about not actively pursuing house-cleaning responsibilities instead. Because NOW, I can justify not unloading the dishwasher with "that would be so noisy for Jon and Margaret. I wouldn't want to wake them up with clanking dishes at (5am - 8am)." So I don't. I facebook without shame. Though at the same time, I am prevented from hammering on crap for the same reasons. Because I'm nice.

I thought I wouldn't like this super-early hour. Instead, I find I REALLY LIKE IT. I like having a cup of coffee or two and/or spilling it on my leg before brushing my teeth. I like sitting quietly across from Jesse while he reads and I do tiny things while I still maintain a semblance of good vision and not-carpal-tunnel hands. Someday I'll have old-lady-claws, so I'd best get this in before my knuckles look like tree knobs.

American Teenage Slaughter of English (as evidenced by Taylor Swift)

I won't even go into the likes of English slaughter by the genres of "Rap" and "Hip-Hop", because it seems as if they are barely speaking the language in the first place, and that the whole point is kind of "who can make the biggest mistakes on purpose?" OOH. I KNOW. I'LL THROW MY HANDS IN THE AYER, AY-AYER, AYER. Because "air" now has two syllables.

Anyway. I've spoken of KIIS FM, Ryan Seacrest in the Morning, which is where I heard "Love Story" by Taylor Swift. She has it all - fame, fortune, a body worthy of posing on Women's Health even though she hadn't but barely reached her legal maturity. Look at this! female readers of a health magazine! This could all be yours! If you only but had the metabolism of pubescence that you wasted eating pizza in high school with your friends and forging lasting bonds instead of touring the country on a bus and connecting through myspace! I don't actually mean to bust on Taylor Swift, though. I think that she's rather talented, all considered.

BUT!

"You were Romeo, I was a Scarlet Letter?"

I just about scowled aloud at that. "You were the most romantic hero of all written history" - which I can dig - "I was the flamboyantly embroidered punishment symbol of a puritanical harlot who cuckolded her husband and brought about the death-by-shame of the man I loved and sinned, who was the heart and spirit of a whole town?" Does she know what "The Scarlet Letter" was about? And then the next line is "and my Daddy said 'stay away from Juliet'". So she's both aforementioned parole punishment and also the Shakespearean romantic heroine who saved herself only for Romeo? You can't be both.

Pardon my irritation. I know it's a dumb subject for a blog. It just drives me insane. Also - please notice that she switches audiences in the last stanza. Bah!

Also also notice: I knew all the words without looking them up. Guess who hums it to herself in the car?

First Attempt at Bead Embroidery. Maybe Last.

I have spent so many hours sitting in my little "mod" chair creating this damnable, yet beautiful bracelet. Whilst I am proud of myself for not giving up, my shoulders do not thank me. Neither can I forgive myself for making it a little too big so that it's hard for me to wear. NEVERTHELESS! An artiste is never completely satisified, so that is what I must be. For another moment of self-gratification, here's a side view where I had glued another cabochon on each side until I remembered that glass doesn't bend. Obviously, I had to rethink my strategy:

Shallow Like Spilled Milk (there's no use crying about it)

I've developed a recent interest (that's a less-creepy word for 'obsession') with reading blogs and looking at pictures on the internet of eternally shallow subject matter, i.e. fashion and blatant narcissism. (Speaking of the narcissism word, I hear Madonna has an upcoming 48 picture spread in some magazine). This comes after a past 'interest' in reading magazines and looking glossy spreads of eternally shallow subject matter. What else is there to do as the receptionist at a large fashion company with time on my hands and Italian Vogue on the table? P.S. Italian magazine are totally down with nudity as a fashion statement.

There's one blog in particular that I won't link to because a) it's embarrassing to admit, and b) I don't want anyone else to get sucked into that kind of narcissism that features a thirty-something LA woman eternally talking about what she's wearing to work that day, and things she has worn in the past, and how she does her makeup. Each post features at least 6 - 10 photos of hers truly posing in today's outfit, many of which are horrendous but are carried solely on her own pomp and good hair. And even though I can't stand her horrific and embarrassing obsession with her own external self, I can't help but look at her blog every few weeks and ogle all the strange things she has done with a thrift-store sequin dress. It's like listening to Ryan Seacrest in the morning.

I don't know why I consistently subject myself to people who are like "look at my new (insert $700 purse name) bag for this week! It's so now!!" and then doing the same thing the next week. I hope I never develop this need for an over $10k/year shoe budget (Jesse - never let me do this). Perhaps I just look to see what looks I can create from shopping at Ross and Nordstrom's Rack and Payless Shoe Source. And the whore stores, which are great! I just make a pact with myself to never buy anything in them that involves the following: Ruffles, nylon lace, neon colors, metal trim, really big rhinestones (unless in belt buckle form), sequins, see-through-ness, plunging necklines, miniskirts/shorts, or those jumper-dress-things that are like a skirt with suspenders that seem to be popping up in windows everywhere. So that leaves me with about 4 things to choose from, which is a pretty good narrowing-down, I think.

Just a side note on the purse thing above: I have had the same purse for 3 years. And before that? The same purse. I just replaced it with a new the same purse. It has a cell phone pocket on the outside, which is all I really want in an accessory. I mean really. How do you find your new uber-cool cell phone when it's buried in a bag that would serve well as a parachute in a plane-crash emergency? Jesse need not worry about making a bag budget in the future. Just EVERYTHING ELSE.

Work Blog

I just got done sitting my ass through a 45 minute "Survey Review" meeting at work. "Survey Review" means just just that. There was a survey in October. They made a powerpoint of the results, and it was narrated by an exceedingly soft-spoken hispanic woman who mostly said "umm" and read off the screen. And the survey says.... people want better training, but they would like to keep their jobs. Jenny says... duh.

I did find out that my sister has to take the same survey because right in the middle of the "Review", the survey company was all "LOOK WHAT WE CAN DO" and listed her major corporation along with the other major corporations they survey. After all this surveying... shouldn't this company pretty much know what people want? I think the corps just want to be able to say "in the last 18 months, 1% of our employees are more likely to stay for plus or minus another 2 to 3 years".

The "Survey Review" was so traumatic and cold that I had to buy myself warm food instead of cold salad at the uber-hip lunch truck, so called because the little old Asian man who hasn't been cutting his hair recently and wears 90's-era "sporty" sunglasses with reflective lenses and a camouflage dollars apron listens solely to KIIS FM, the same station that plays mostly Chris Brown (not anymore!!) and Lady Gaga all day. It also plays Ryan Seacrest in the Morning, a show so terrible and shallow that one cannot HELP but listen to it. There will be another blog about this. I wanted so badly to segue to a completely different subject, but then I'd have to think up a title that would encompass cold misery + delicious pasta + my love/hate relationship with Ryan Seacrest in the Morning.

Pasta = orgasmically good. Not any pasta. Most is boring. But uber-hip truck pasta is almost worth letting myself go for. The only reason I refrain from buying it everyday is because then I would blow my budget for hookers and blow.

So I'm eating my pasta at my desk, (pathetic? maybe), writing a blog, and researching the bizarre names that people in Turkey and Italy think up for their denim fabrics. In English. I mean, it would be understandable if they named things oddly because Turkish is an odd language - I think. But to name a certain line of denim one of the following is just... oh, ESL:

MARVEL LIZARD

DRAKE HAZZARD

SKUNK CRISPY

DICKERSILVER (ITALY)

And, my personal favorite:

COWPUNCHER SECONDHAND STRETCH (TURKEY)

:The Apron :The Fabric

:The Apron

I just signed up for an account with the Long Beach Parks and Recreation, so that I can take an "Adult Beginners Sewing:The Apron" class. I just missed ":The Tote Bag", which I would maybe have rather made than :The Apron, but then again maybe not because

1. the husband has an obsession with :The Tote Bags, and I would NEVER have been able to get rid of it
2. I think we could use a :The Apron around the house, and
3. I bet that sewing a :The Apron would involving making :The Ruffles, and since my recent interest in sewing is long and convoluted and like a ruffle (also involving potential ruffles), it might be a little more apropo.

My recent (ruffly) interest in sewing came from one picture on a friend's facebook page of her attending a faerie faire wearing two fabulous costumes with exceedingly pretty, jealousy-inducing wings. Which led to the following thought process:

I want to wear pretty wings somewhere too! (furious internet searching). Hm. I'd have to find somewhere to wear them to. (more searching, coming up empty). Hm. HALLOWEEN. Also, questions to husband about his interest/loathing of Renaissance Faires. He would only go if there was mutton involved - no joke.

Then:

I can't wear ONLY wings. I want to wear a PRETTY DRESS. (furious internet searching, coming up with whores and fat ladies, and one good website with ideas) There is a dearth of non-prostitution-related dress availability - I will have to MAKE one! Yay!! (more furious searching for patterns). WAIT. I don't actually know how to sew more than a semi-straight line, usually not actually attaching the fabric pieces to each other. UH OH.
HENCE, the current furious internet searching for local sewing classes, and my future :The Apron. I'm hoping that I get the pin number RIGHT NOW, so that I can sign up for classes RIGHT NOW, and by October or so, I might be able to actually understand how to attach a sleeve to anything. Also, so that I won't lose interest when next week I decide that I'd rather take a crash course on applying facial tattos.

What the Funch? (Lameness, past and present)

Funch, by the way, is a substitute curse word I found on this website:

Utah Baby Namer

Which was brought to my attention by my Texas bff, who found a link from Dooce, the most entertaining blogger in the world.

This website in motherfunching hilarious. Be sure to click on the "Polygamy Pin" link.

I've since been renaming all of my friends Mormonames on g-chat. I now hold frequent conversations with Bridger A-10 Grandfield, Merzaydee Williams, Jnard Stimatze, and Abcde Mack. I'm particularly proud of the names selected for myself: Jennyfivetina, and Jessit, both of which are exceedingly appropriate, I think.

I don't know where this penchant for renaming things temporarily in a social'tard manner comes from, but I've been doing it my whole (adult!) life. Two particular other instances stand out: at one point, for a reason I cannot remember, we all named ourselves after beans. I was Pork'n, if I recall. I had friends Navy, Pinto, and Lima. We never once used these names, but I distinctly remember this happening.

The other time, I remember, was for a very specific purpose: a friend was having a competition with some myspace ninny to see how many people they could each give to re-title their myspace moniker with a name involving bread or bread products. The group was called the "loaf legion". I was Wry Bread (CLEVER!!!), with friends Flat Bread (guess her general cup size :), Loafthansa, Stale Crusty Loaf, Pita Bread, Banana Bread, and the most clever name: I Like Bread. I know there were more, and more clever, names, but this was so many years ago I can't recall. I know he won, and interninny never showed her face on his profile again.

What does this say about me, this naming of things and friends in clever-yet-socially-restricted ways? Prolly that I wasn't popular in high school. (So true!). It also says my pets will always have ridiculous names, though they may be repeated once I get old. It says that if I'm willing to blog about it, I must STILL be a little bit of a social retard on the inside, while floundering in my small-town sense of style on the outside.

The MotherFunching Facebook 25 Things.

You know you like it. You know you read it already on facebook. Now it is recorded here for future "posterity" and not wanting to write two things in one day:

Random Facts:

1) Both sets of my grandparents, maternal and paternal, have named their dogs serially since I can remember. I.e, Dad's have had Racci 1-4, and Mom's have had Pixies 1-8. This forebodes poorly for my future pets.

2) I have no middle name. This was ostensibly so I could take my last name as my middle name once I got married. Only now, if I were to combine the names, I would be Jennifer Crist Smith. Say it out loud. I dare you. Preface it with the first name "Mary." Not plausible if I ever wanted to be taken seriously.

3) As with Megan, when I first started Lindy Hopping, I would stay out and practice and cavort at a house with a dance floor until 3 or 4 in the morning 3 or 4 nights a week and then work the next day, leading to a lethargy I didn't even know I had until I actually started sleeping. I toned it down in later years, but those times were INCREDIBLE. That's also where I met Jesse for the first time.

4) I had a breast reduction when I was 21. I lost 8 pounds.

5) I lived in Paraguay for 6 months right after I graduated high school, not having ever taken a Spanish class. It was culture shock, and looking back now I can't believe I jumped into that not knowing the basics of how adulthood worked. I didn't know anything about boys, about socially acceptable behaviour, about saying "no", about true and real boredom, or about myself. While I learned one or two of those things while I was there, the rest were regrettably learned much later in life than ought to have been the case. **Note: the Spanish remains handy.

6) I worked in private aviation for 4 years right after that. Let me tell you! Being cute and working near airplanes gets you places, literally. One time I flew to San Diego, ate at Claim Jumpers, and flew back. Another time, I got a crush on a crew member of a WWII bomber - a B-24 - that was flying around the country. After he left on the other plane - a B-17 - while the B-24 stopped for repairs, I decided it would be fine to just hitchhike on a WWII bomber with a bunch of semi-strange men to meet said crush in Oregon, with no real idea of a way home. It was AWESOME. Another other time, I rode passenger in a helicopter that could fly sideways. We chased cows.

7) I can squirt water through the gap in my teeth over 6 feet.

8) I have the worst hand-eye coordination of anyone you've ever met. I can't catch, and I sure as dirt can't throw. It is the bane of my father's child-rearing days, that he spawned children and one of them is utterly useless when it comes to anything that involves aim. You can ask anyone who's ever seen me - it's like I'm trying to throw it at the target, and my hand thinks otherwise and tosses it weakly across my body, only to spin lifelessy and angrily at least 35 degrees off from the direction I intended.

9) My sister are nothing alike except for our intelligence, we both have freckles (but they're different), and the line of our nose in profile. And yet, we never fought.

10) I have never been to Disneyland within memory

11) My favorite friend at work calls me Whoaday, because her daughter at one point decided that yelling "Put me down, Whoaday!!!" was the polite way to ask. The moniker has just stuck since then.

12) The only people from high school who would recognize me on the street are Jonathon Wolheim because we live together, and Sy Olson because we had lunch a couple of times in college. And Jeremy Walsh, because we developed a mutual friend. I was friends with none of these people in high school.

13) I work at a high-end fashion denim company, but I never wore jeans before I started there. In fact, most days I feel like an utter frump because my creativity with clothing does not extend beyond "things that generally match." This was never a problem anywhere else in the world, but now I look like what I am: from a small town. It makes me self conscious sometimes, until I go home.

14) I took ballet for 7 years until I developed human hip dysplasia. Not really, but something went wrong up in there. Who knows why dancing swing isn't as lethal as ballet, but I won't complain. I've been swing dancing on and off for 8 years - I knew Cid when he had his anime haircut and TA'd at Chico State.

15) One of the reasons I know that forces outside of just humans are working in the world is the little old lady we take care of. Story: Back when I worked as a jewelry designer in Chico, I did a diamond upgrade on the wife-ring of a prominent chiropractor in the area. Small-talking, which is my forte, I mentioned that my boyfriend was thinking of attending the same college in LA that he had attended. Fast forward a month or two, to a visit back home. Jesse is talking about going and meeting some chiropractors to get his foot in the door and learn some things, most specifically about this chiropractor who is friends with the jewelry store owner, because of his impressive resume and seemingly great practice, and the fact that he knew the owner-man. He never did it, but he always was thinking about it. Fast forward again to 7 months later, when I receive a call out of the blue from an utter stranger. Who is it? You guessed it (or not) - THE chiropractor. He remembered me from my small-talk prowess and utter trustworthiness and boyfriend going into chiropractic. His mom lives in the same town as the college, and needs a little takin' care of. So now we take care of her, and have dinner dates with the (exceedingly wonderful) chiropractor and his wife on visits to Chico. If this random series of events an occurrences does not evince some sort of supernatural fate-meddling, I don't know what does.

16) When I was youngish (16), I always imagined I would die before my 21st birthday because I literally could not fathom a life beyond that. I was convinced that my fate was short, and had accepted that. My lack of imagination did not kill me, as I thought it would.

17) I have a trade degree in Advanced Jewelry Design and Manufacture (II). I can solder very tiny things with very high melting points very well. Prolly not so well anymore, as it's difficult to maintain your soldering equipment in a second-story apartment.

18) I watch only about 10 or fewer movies a year, because I hate going to movies or wasting my at-home time watching them. Apparently, making facebook lists is less of a waste of my time.

19) Even though I have only been in his presence for a total of maybe 4 or 5 months over the span of 4 years, and communicate solely via g-chat, I would still count Glen Hinkle as one of my best friends. He's seen me grow up, and vice versa.

20) As gregarious as I can seem, on the inside I am still very shy and only let people so far in for fear that they will not accept what's underneath. This is, sadly, true for most everyone I know.

21) My husband REALLY didn't like me when we met, and for a year or two thereafter. I grew on him, apparently.

22) I have a serious addiction to craft supplies. I always want more, as if there were some way I could actually USE all of it at any point in my life. As if there were a natural disaster, and my preparedness plan would include 5 kinds of glue, infinite marking utensils of infinite colors, paper scraps, a length of aquarium tubing, some barbie parts, a tiny hammer, and a box of acrylic paint with a broken french coffee maker for a brush holder. Also some fabric for a fairy costume. Lookout! Someone is bombing Los Angeles! OH NO! LET ME USE SOME OF THIS WATER-BASED (archival quality) GLUE TO SAVE YOU! I'll make a rope out of this airy, silver fabric and you can lower your children to me! I can entertain them for DAYS!! I can use this non-toxic acrylic paint to staunch the bleeding!

23) My husband has never given me a single item. Not even a wedding ring.

24) I did not wear pants from the age of 6 to the age of 14. Not once. Not even when it snowed. I wore those cable-knit tights under my dress.

25) Sometimes I feel like my love for other people is a palpable blanket that extends from me to them. I don't know why I think this, but it seems like something I can tangibly feel, and that they ought to be able to feel it too.