Literature (167 of 365)

My favorite book is "To Kill A Mockingbird." My Kindle has become my favorite electronic gadget. It goes where I go.

Sunday Six: Week 49

Okay, so I'm late again, but at least it's here! I will preface last week's Sunday Six by saying that this might be my weakest set of the year. I was just not feeling that great last week, and creativity was not flowing. So, that being said, here is last week's Sunday Six.


Over Thanksgiving, my Dad and I sat and went through part of his vinyl collection. I hope to get to look through the rest of it the next time I'm at his house. He tells me there are original Beatles albums. I'm determined to find them, and confiscate them for my own. Here are a few of my albums. My collection is definitely small, but it'll grow.


Part of the artwork on the new Dave Matthew Band album. It has some pretty fun art.


Recently delivered Christmas presents. These are for my Dad and Step-Mom.


Homemade corn and potato chowder. Yum!


One of several books I'm currently reading. It's been a long time since I've been reading just one book.


A shot of my super warm duvet cover. I snapped this just before crawling into my freshly made bed for the night.

This week's Sunday Six will be up later. Only three to go . . .

Sunday Six: Week 36 (Dragon*Con Edition)

Today's Sunday Six is going to be a Sunday Nine, simply because I have extra pictures and I don't want to pick between them! This weekend thousands of folks are visiting Atlanta for Dragon*Con 2009. Dragon*Con is billed as North America's largest Science Fiction/Fantasy convention. Two of this year's biggest speakers were William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy (a.k.a. Captain Kirk and Dr. Spock). In addition to the convention there is a huge parade with tons and tons of fun costumes. For example . . .


The Mad Hatter from Alice in Wonderland was there.


The Blues Brothers danced their way down Peachtree Street, too!


Captain Jack Sparrow from "Pirates of the Carribean" was present via pirate ship.


This guy was there, too! Although, I have no idea what character he is. If you know, please speak up in the comments! I'm sure I'll feel like a dummy when I find out who this is.


Almost always present at an Atlanta parade is the Seed and Feed Marching Abominable Band. They are so wacky! They're always lots of fun to watch!

Finally, as you would expect with any Science Fiction/Fantasy themed parade there were a lot of Star Wars characters present.


Darth Vader was there along with his security forces. Dark Helmet and the SpaceBalls crew were also there. Sadly, I didn't snap the shutter quick enough to get their costumes!


Stormtroopers were everywhere! Y'all, I kid you not when I say there was an Indianapolis Colts Stormtrooper! Who knew they liked football?!


This was probably my favorite of the Star Wars costumes, simply because I'd never seen someone dressed up as Chewy.


And, finally . . . does anyone recognize this guy? Two of the guys behind me were positive this was George Lucas. I think it's just a close likeness. If George had really been there, surely that would've made headlines around here!

Until next week, which will certainly have far less wackiness!

Hair (230 of 365)

The Bride of Frankenstein is known for her wacky hair. Here she is with her hubby during the DragonCon 2009 parade in Atlanta.

Sunday Six: Week 31

I have a New Six today, again, all from inside. I snapped all six of these playing with my 60mm lens.


I bought these little green beads the last time I visited Miss Allison. They're actually air fresheners and the scent is green tea. They don't smell so much anymore, but they're still pretty.


An inside shot of the book I'm reading. I made sure to focus in on the subject. ;)


This is the corner of one of my favorite picture frames.


Make-up powder. I accidentally spilled the last bit of my powder. I decided to turn my frustration into a photo op!


This jar holds air freshener. The scent is a mixture of cranberry and sandalwood. I still have yet to figure out how much I like it.


These are the reeds that sit in my diffuser jar! This turned out to be my favorite photo of the day. It was a complete whim, too!

See you next week!

Reading Material (210 of 365)

A glimpse of the book I'm currently reading, High Crimes: The Fate of Everest in an Age of Greed. It's pretty interesting so far and discusses many of the tragedies, thefts, violence and hoaxes that have recently occurred on Mount Everest.

Recessionary Economics (105 of 365)

Okay, this one is a bit of a stretch. These two books* aren't really about recessionary economics, but they are about economics in general! ;) These are both actually still on my "to read" list. Maybe I'll take them with me to the beach.

The top book is "Reefer Madness", but I was afraid removing the sale sticker would mess up the cover.

Classic (93 of 365)

Recognize these, by chance? It's a bookshelf full of Little Golden Books! "The Poky Little Puppy" and "The Little Red Hen" were two of my favorite books when I was a little girl. So, for me, these are classic children's books.

They've been around since 1942 and have an interesting story behind them. I had no idea that many of the now famous children's book authors also created, or illustrated, Little Golden Books.

Famous Authors (73 of 365)

I have shelves upon shelves of books. Many of them have been read, but there are quite a few on my "to read" list. This stack includes both, all from famous authors.

366 Pictures: #52 Secret

Okay, this was seriously one of the only things I could think of for this theme. I've actually not even read all of this. Imagine that, me switching back and forth between several books. :lol: So, I suppose I've not yet discovered what "The Secret" is.

Date: November 15, 2008.

The Big Read

From Mel.

The Big Read thinks the average adult has only read six of the top 100 books they've printed below.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicise those you intend to read
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own blog so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them.

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
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
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
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - C.S. 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
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' 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
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

* A note on my italicized books. Each book is currently on one of my "to read" shelves.

Home at last . . .

I'm home! I'm exhausted and have spent the day catching up on email. Who knew a person could receive so many emails in one week? It's crazy! I'll be posting about the trip soon. I've got close to 200 pictures, not that I'll make any of you suffer through that many. I'll get a post together in the next day or so, with pictures if I can get it to work. I'll also probably post a link to all my pictures in case anyone is interested in sifting through all of them. We did get some beautiful shots.

Among the news that happened while I was away was this: http://www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060818/NEWS03/608180439/1017
Perry March was found guilty in the murder of his wife Janet March. I moved to Nashville the year she went missing, 10 years ago. They have never found her body. It was all over the news the entire 6 years I was living there. Dateline did a couple of reports on it and CourtTV covered the trial. Their two children have been through so much over the years, including a vicious custody battle between the Levines (Janet's parents) and Perry March. His father helped him dispose of the body and in hiring a hitman to have the Levines killed. It's very sad. I'm relieved the Levines have found some measure of justice for their daughter.

On another note, what is happening in the world of baseball? I leave for a week and my Red Sox get swept by the Yankees AT FENWAY! We're now 6.5 games back in the AL East and 4.5 games back in the AL Wild Card. This does not look good!

I read one of the best books ever while in Barbados, The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. It was wonderful. I honestly don't know how long it's been since I've cried reading a book, and I cried more than once reading this one. The characters in the book are wonderful and the issues brought up are emotional and timely. It's an amazing book. To me, it seems like one that you could read over and over and discover a little something different from it each time. If you haven't read it, do so. I put off reading it for a long time, but I'm glad I finally sat down with it.

I've started Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer, but I can't seem to get into it. I'm only a few chapters in though. I've heard good things about it so hopefully I'll get into it soon. Any other book recommendations? I'm all ears!

Until I get the post regarding my trip set up, how about one beautiful picture. It might be my favorite of all the ones I took.

I love sun . . .

I'm back from Florida! I'm sad and happy at the same time. I had a lot of fun with my family at the beach this past week. My sister-in-law and I get along great and laugh constantly. My nephew is a blast, although a little loud. The weather was perfect, it couldn't have been better. No rain, a steady 90 degrees all week long. We spent the days on the beach, went to dinner, and then after my nephew was in bed asleep, we played cards. Usually just Phase 10, which is such a fun game with a group, but we also played poker -- which I won! I've decided I'm ready for Vegas -- ha ha.

We went to a water park in Jacksonville one day, which was a lot of fun. We didn't know if my nephew would ride any waterslides but he did. He had so much fun and never hesitated on the slides. He would go down them with a huge grin on his face -- and he's 3 1/2! We were very proud! I think he would've stayed until they closed if we would've let him and this morning he wanted to go there instead of the beach.

I read a really good book while at the beach. It was "The Ruins" by Scott Smith. I usually don't read horror books but for some reason this one caught my eye. It was very intense and freaky. I can totally picture it being a very scary movie, at least psychologically, if it were made well. If you like the genre, I definitely recommend it.

I'm relaxing tonight, and washing clothes. My Mom is driving down tomorrow and then we leave for Barbados early Sunday morning. I'm so excited! I'm so glad that I didn't get sunburned in Florida. It should help be from getting burned in Barbados. I'll take bunches of pictures in Barbados, so expect a post all about the trip when I return!