Nacwolin’s Neighborhood

1. No matter how far you travel or how much you run from it, can you ever really escape your past?
   Becky Hartman Edwards and Michael Patrick King, Sex and the City, Escape from New York, 2000
2. It’s very strange when the life you never had flashes before your eyes.
   Terri Minsky, Sex and the City, The Baby Shower, 1998
3. Maybe coming clean is the ultimate selfish act. A way to absolve yourself by hurting someone who doesn’t deserve to be hurt.
   Cindy Chupack, Sex and the City, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, 2000
4. When real people fall down in life, they get right back up and keep on walking.
   Michael Patrick King, Sex and the City, The Real Me, 2001
5. The universe may not always play fair, but at least it’s got a hell of a sense of humor.
   Michael Patrick King, Sex and the City
6. That’s the thing about needs. Sometimes, when you get them met, you don’t need them anymore.
   Michael Patrick King, Sex and the City, The Good Fight, 2002
7. I admit it’s tempting to wish for the perfect boss, or the perfect parent, or the perfect outfit, but maybe the best any of us can do is not quit. Play the hand we’ve been given and accessorize the outfit we’ve got.
   Allan Heinberg, Sex and the City, A ‘Vogue’ Idea, 2002
8. Maybe our mistakes are what make our fate. Without them, what would shape our lives? Perhaps, if we never veered off course, we wouldn’t fall in love or have babies or be who we are.
   Michael Patrick King, Sex and the City, I Heart NY, 2002
9. That’s the key to having it all: stop expecting it to look like what you thought it was going to look like.
   Cindy Chupack, Sex and the City, Plus One Is The Loneliest Number, 2002
10. There’s some things that people don’t admit because they don’t like the way it sounds.
    Cindy Chupack, Sex and the City, Plus One Is The Loneliest Number, 2002
11. The fact is, sometimes it’s hard to walk in a single woman’s shoes. That’s why we need really special ones now and then to make the walk a little more fun.
    Jenny Bicks, Sex and the City, A Woman’s Right To Shoes, 2003
12. Nothing else exists when art does.
    Michael Patrick King, Sex and the City, An American Girl in Paris: Part Deux, 2004
13. You can’t surprise a man with a dog.
    Cindy Chupack, Sex and the City, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, 2000

- Source

Which one is your favorite? :)

In the next day or two, I hereby solemnly promise to blog about the following:

1. My new house (I took photos, but some turned out blurry. I'll see if I can take some more this evening).
2. The second half of my trip to Chicago.
3. My "angry dreams."

But first...

It's been a while since I posted some book reviews. But I'm feeling really lazy as the list gets longer and longer, so here is a quick synopsis of what I've been feeding my brain:

 

Born on a Blue Day by Daniel Tammet was the fascinating story of an autistic savant who clearly maps out what its like to live with his condition. My Rating: 8 out of 10 for being really interesting. The man can recite 22,512 digits of pi for goodness sake! I can't get past 3.14...

 

Bertie Wooster Sees It Through by PG Wodehouse is another fun romp by the incomparable Wooster and Jeeves, this time at Aunt Dahlia's house. When Wooster and Dahlia get together, it's pure hilarious magic! My Rating: 8 out of 10 for being such a good diversion from life. I want to live in a Wodehouse novel! 

 

I listened to the audio version of this book -- the Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff -- and really wish I'd read it instead. It's the story of a girl who comes home looking for answers, and it is interwoven the stories of her ancestors. The main character, Willie, came off as whiny and immature. Grow up! But I did enjoy the stories of her family. My Rating: 6 out of 10, but that might be higher were I to read the paper version.

 

Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë -- the lesser-known Brontë -- was the story of a young woman who becomes a governess to help out her family, which is in financial dire straits. My Rating: 7 out of 10 for making me wish Anne was more prolific -- her writing was lovely. As a side note, the book could be renamed The Nanny Diaries: Kids Were Brats in 1847 Too.

 

Jasper Fforde's fifth book in his Thursday Next series is First Among Sequels. It's been several years since I finished the fourth book, so it took me a while to get back into his crazy literary world. My Rating: 6 out of 10 for being a little flat and harder to follow than the first four books.

 

I read Joan Didion's the Year of Magical Thinking for my June book club. I felt the retelling of her husband's death and her daughter's illness was very clinical and not emotional enough. But I can understand that's how she experienced it all. My Rating: 5 out of 10 because I was annoyed that she sort of named dropped. In random news, my old apartment was a block away from her childhood mansion (which was for sale for 1.2 million dollars, if you're interested).

  

In Notes from a Small Island Bill Bryson travels around England, Scotland, and Wales, complaining about the weather, hating modern architecture, but altogether loving Britain. My Rating: 7 out of 10 for being pretty funny, but somewhat competitive and a wee bit whiny.

 

The Gathering by Anne Enright was De. Press. Ing. It was my July book club book, and it was only for the book club that I finished the thing. It featured light-hearted subjects such as suicide, child molestation, alcoholism, child neglect, sexual repression, near-infanticide, attempted murder, affairs, deranged anger, and running away from your problems. Woo! My Rating: 5 out of 10 for being way too dark for my taste, although Enright's writing was very good. But it doesn't matter how good the writing is if I want to gnaw my own arm off while reading it.

I am a hopeless daydreamer, seriously, sometimes it is such a problem. Like when the teacher is talking about synk flash and I drift off to a time long ago and reenact some embarrassing moment and start to relive it in a different way, one that makes me the victor rather than the idiot. Unfortunately my mother is so socially awkward and this is what I get from her. I watched and learned form a bad teacher. I am not quick witted, my best come back lines happen long after the offending statement. I often obsess over a days social networking and kick myself all over for saying certain things, and not saying other stuff. what was I rambling about? Oh yeah, daydreams...
I remember how many flies are dead in the fluorescent light covers in my classromms growing up, there was another wonderful world in those lights from my 3rd grade classroom. (this was the grade where my daydreaming became a problem, well it was called out as a problem then anyway, it has alwyas been there) I saw a different wonderful place in those lights, that is where the flies were trying to get to, but they were not allowed, flies are kind of annoying even for imaginary worlds.
It was a land where parents got along well, no yelling or screaming, no leaving me behind for a new exciting life outside of my mothers world. No laying in bed all day long and crying expecting me, to get my sister up and ready for school, clean a house that was out of control, no following around my mother in tears wanting someone to help me practice for the spelling bee, I just did not want to be the first one to sit down this year.
In the Fluorescent light world, I was good at everything, I did not even need to practice spelling words. My pants fit me instead of being too short, my socks had heels built into them instead of always feeling backwards, I was proud of who I was, my teeth were white, and I could jump rope double dutch style without getting tangled up in the ropes lined with painful plastic beads. I was not ashamed of having to explain for the 100th time that my religion does not celebrate this holiday, in fluorescent light world, I got to make a valentines box with glitter and the paste that always smelled so much better than it tasted. I got to open all the hand made cards and read of love and friendship rather than knowing that I was that one kid that everyone labled as weird. I was not strange in fluorescent light world, I was just like everyone else, normal. We had enough money to buy regular food, not the black and white labled stuff with the stars across it for some sort of attempt at decoration. My clothes were new, I could take the tags off of them with scissors instead of carefully removing the staples from the thrift store tags, hoping that the strange smell from the previous owner would wash away. Most of the time they stayed with me for a while. In fluorescent light world I had a regular lunch ticket, not the special manilla colored free lunch one, I wanted the pink one like everyone else, I would also have the cute pencils like the other girls had, with all that glitter and cute animals on them. I would have a sticker book filled with google eyes and sparkles, glitter and puffiness, pizza stickers that smelled much better than what we had to eat at home and grape ones that smelled like lip gloss, kitties and puppies. My real sticker book was 6 pages of lined notebook paper stapled together and filled with banana stickers and the ripped smile face ones I would tear off of my classwork, if I got one at all.
In Fluorescent world I was happy.
*SLAM!!!!* I look down slightly to see my teachers scornful eyes in front of my desk. Here I was, embarrassed again. I can hear the snickers of the other kids laughing because I was drifting off again and after having my name repeated several times, I did not respond. I was somewhere else. I begin to cry, because I was that girl. I cried a lot. I would be sent to the principals office again, he would threaten to give me a swat with the giant wooden paddle if I did not pay attention in class. He would start to lecture me about what I needed to do differently, then out of the corner of my eye I see it, the pattern of dead flies on the inside of the plastic light cover. I stare into it and I am embraced by all, I am again in fluorescent light world. Happy.  

The Scene: Grocery store check-out line.

Unknown Woman in Line: [leaning over and rubbing Sister's belly] So how far along are you?

Sister: [leans over and rubs Unknown Woman's not-pregnant belly] Oh, about 5 months?

Unknown Woman: [jumps back, startled that Sister touched her.]

End Scene.

Well, no kidding.  The rules of personal space shouldn't change just because a woman is pregnant!  I'm so proud of my sister.  :)

(I'm proud of you, too, Logan!)

Finished Zombie Blondes by Brian James--and seriously, this is a really fun book. :)  Like the Twilight series, it involves the undead except this time, the undead are a little...um...juicier than vampires.

 

I prefer zombies to vampires anyway, I think.  Incredibly fun book and I think most people could read it in a few hours.

Next up?

 

Another zombie book, this time by Daniel Waters.  This is his first book, I think, but he's better known (to me anyway) as the guy who wrote Heathers.  (If you have not seen Heathers, rent it immediately.  If you don't like it, don't ever let me know.)

Meanwhile, weekend plans.  I have two episodes of 90210 (the ninth season is winding down, which means I only have one full season and a handful of episodes to go before I can say that I've seen every episode) in my DVR and Netflix sent me 21.  I have a load of clothes in the dryer. 

(90210 and 21 must be dealt with today as I am spending much of tomorrow in the movie theater.)

Have I mentioned that I love my kids? I have? A lot? Whatever, deal with it.

This morning I got on my laptop and opened Word. I saw a document called "Christmas Wish List" and even though it wouldn't be unheard of for me to start making a Christmas wishlist in July, this time it wasn't me. I swear.

So I peeked inside and saw that Jesse had not only made a list of items he wants for Christmas, but he had justified his choices. First on the list was "The Rachet and Clank PSP pack" and his reasoning follows. "Universally well reviewed"? "Countless hours of fun on an otherwise boring car trip"? The boy, who is only eleven I have to remind myself, has a career in marketing ahead of him. I mean, I'm convinced.

Why it’s on the list.

      1. The pack contains National Treasure 2 on a portable format that can be played on the go, as well as memory card so I could save TV shows and movies onto it and play them in a car or on a plane. As well as these great features it comes with Ratchet and Clank Size Matters, part of my favorite game series, universally well reviewed. As well as an awesome single player there are online and local multiplayer mode.  The local multiplayer would be extremely useful as I could play with Connor whose asking for the pack and Kameron whose asking for the game. I could also play a multiplayer online with people around the world. The games story line is meant to be replayed, finding armor looking for gold bolts, which can be used to unlock things, then play the game with those things. The reason I mention this is that as I replay it I get countless hours of fun on an otherwise boring car trip. Then there’s the PSP it self. With the ability to play games, watch movies, save movies on, listen to music, view pictures on, and connect to the Internet when in a wifi hotspot, as well as play games on I think that the PSP would be perfect for every situation.

 

Show us your key chain. How many keys are on there?
Submitted by Strive2Be.

I bought this key chain at a book store in Changi Airport Singapore for myself. Bought some for my parents and my friends too when I saw their names there. I love personalized gifts, I love my parents and my friends, and I always remember them when I travel around. I'm good like that.

By the way, you can count yourself how many keys are on there. Again, do not question my intelligence.

Sorry. I am so moody at the moment. This moving out thing is consuming my energy and patience.

I am a farmer who raise ducks and cows. The animals have a total of 9 heads and 26 feet. How many ducks and cows do I have?
Submitted by The BlueTie.

4x4 = 16.
5x2 = 10.
A normal cow has 4 feet.
A normal duck has 2 feet.
Just like me, as I was the ugly duckling.

4 cows and 5 ducks, assuming they are all normal.

Please do not question my intelligence. I wasn't good at math in school, but I know how to count. And I am too pissed off at the moment.

Yeah, no horses. My face looks like a horse right now as I am being too upset. You need not a horse. You need not a pissed off person like me.

Happy now?