The Blind Assassin

I finished this book by Margaret Atwood last week, which I read with a reading group on LibraryThing. It's a story within a story within a story which made it a little confusing at first, but once I got it all sorted out in my head I liked it more. Although it was well written, this book was too depressing for me to ever read again; it's the tale of an old woman looking back on her sad, messed up life. Everyone in her family is dead, everything she once had is lost. What a great cover though!

My favorite part was when she went to a park and got flashed by a stranger. She simply said, "I'm sorry, I'm just not interested" which cracked me up!

This book qualifies for the What's In a Name Challenge as a book with a profession in its title.

Today a bird pooped on my arm.

I was minding my own business, picking weeds under the mesquite tree in our backyard, when I suddenly felt something wet on my arm. I wondered, why does my arm feel wet? and when I looked it was bird poop. I looked up and the culprit had already flown away. Corey washed it off with the hose. Although we have a few hummingbird friends that visit us throughout the day in our backyard, I think it was too much poop to be one of them. Do you think being pooped on by a bird is good luck?

One time when I was a kid I was sitting under the hummingbird feeder on our back porch. I looked up when a hummingbird came and it pooped in my eye. I can't remember if it gave me good luck.

P.S. The Key is by Tiffany Bozic.

Yesterday was also the windiest day since I lived in Flagstaff.

Lucy On a Windy Day
by Emily Martin
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"In March the wind blows down the door
and spills my soup upon the floor.
It laps it up and roars for more.
Blowing once, blowing twice blowing chicken soup with rice!"

Today is Purple Day!

I first heard about purple day on Designer Jots which then inspired me to look it up on the internet. The premise is that if you wear purple today it is to inspire people to learn first aid for seizures and be aware of epilepsy. Even though over 50 million people worldwide have epilepsy I don't know a single one of them. But one time in high school during a basketball game a girl got knocked down and had a seizure and it was pretty freaky.

I've taken first aid classes before and I feel like I remember what to do, but to be sure I'll ask the school nurse next week.

P.S. This purple picture is by pesare on deviantART.

Drink, Play, F@#k: One Man's Search for Anything Across Ireland, Las Vegas, and Thailand

If you read Eat, Pray, Love and didn't like it (like me and a few of my friends) then this book is your answer. Without spelling it out for the reader, the author presumes to be the ex-husband of the woman in EPL and tells you of his post-divorce adventure. It was more uplifting, funnier, and truer to life than that "other story" which is silly because EPL is non-fiction and DPF is fiction. I only wish I got to read it right after I finished EPL so I could have compared them closer.

My favorite quotes from the book were:
"You want to know how easy it is to play craps? I have played craps before, and I have already gone on record saying I have no idea how to play craps."

"I will not waste your time or my meager brainpower trying to describe how insanely amazing the Grand Canyon is."

I think this is the final book I can fit in for the Well-Seasoned Reader Challenge which asked that you share which book was your favorite from the challenge. I read:
~ Blessed are the Cheesemakers by Sarah-Kate Lynch
~ Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver
~ Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
~ Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
~ Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
~ Drink, Play, F@#k: One Man's Search for Anything Across Ireland, Las Vegas, and Thailand by Andrew Gottlieb

and although I enjoyed each and every one of them I would have to say...Water for Elephants was my favorite!

Some people make scrapbook pages about their kids.

The last challenge at ScrapMojo was, "We want to see a page telling us what you would do if you ruled the world. The second part of the challenge is to use stars."

Instead I did what it would be like if Ratatouille ruled the world, and she herself is a star. Everyone at school knows who she is after all.

Whenever Corey and I go to a salad bar I imagine how much fun it would be to let the piggies loose in there.
Corey said if Ratatouille ruled the world he would never go to a salad bar again.

Water for Elephants

For the past year practically everyone I know who reads has been telling me, "You have to read Water for Elephants!" I don't know why, but so many people telling me I would like the book made me afraid I wouldn't like the book. Instead I've read 2 other books Sara Gruen wrote, Riding Lessons and Flying Changes, horse stories which I enjoyed greatly but...not as much as I relished Water for Elephants!

This is the story of a vet who runs away with the circus around the time of the Great Depression. The circus travels the country by train. Really I feel that's all I can say about it without giving anything away. But if you are an animal lover, you will like this book too. Don't be scared. Read it!

I am counting this as yet another story about one (or more) person's travel experience for the Well Seasoned Reader Challenge.

And here is a bonus cute elephant picture:

In her spare time, Ratatouille enjoys long walks on the beach and surfing the web.

If I had wings

I've been having all kinds of crazy dreams lately. This morning I accidentally woke up at 4:30. I told Corey my dreams right away, so now I can remember them a little better than I usually can. But it was when I went back to sleep that I had a dream that I could fly.

I've always been a little jealous of people who have dreams about flying, because I can't remember having one. I suppose since it was my first time dreaming of flying, that would explain why I was only learning to fly. I couldn't fly really fast, and could only fly as high as a one story building. It was good for a first timer, I think, and was still quite enjoyable. Maybe the next time I dream of flying I'll be a little better at it since I've had practice now.

According to my dream book it's usually a bad thing to dream of flying. There isn't a blanket description for any old flying dream; you have to be specific. Very specific.
"To dream of flying through a space..." no
"To fly over muddy water..." no
"To fly over broken places..." no
"To dream of seeing the sun while flying..." i was told to never look straight at the sun
"To dream of flying through the firmament passing the moon and other planets..." no, but I wish!
"To dream that you fly with black wings..." no
"For a young man..." no
"For a woman to dream of flying from one city to another, alighting on church spires..." not even close
"For a young woman to dream that she is shot at while flying..." no, but at one point I think I was chased
"To fly low, almost to the ground..." {kinda} "...indicates sickness and uneasy states from which the dreamer will recover." I did have a headache all day, and it's gone now! Weird. Part-psychic.

I liked thinking about my dream today, and imagining myself flying. I wish I could fly.

P.S. If I Had Wings was made by Anne-Julie Aubry at TheNebulousKingdom.

Blessed Are the Cheesemakers

It only took me a week to read this cute, fun story about 2 quirky, old Irish cheese making men. Their dairy farm/cheese making sanctuary is where people who have nowhere else to go wind up. I liked reading all of their little stories, and appreciated the 3 farm cats named Jesus, Mary, and All The Saints. There is a bit of magic a la Chocolat which I thought was neato.

My least favorite part was a weird romance plot between a man taking a stab at sobriety and is 3 months widowed, and a woman who is only weeks out of a crappy, long marriage. Sounds like a disaster to me, but in a book I suppose it has a fair shot at working. Behold, the power of cheese!

My favorite quote was, "Ah, the secret's not in following tradition, it's in knowing when to change it."

It's not a keeper but I will probably read other books by Sarah-Kate Lynch. I can use it toward my Well Seasoned Reader Challenge because it has a food name in the title, and toward my What's In a Name Challenge because it has a "profession" in its title.

Who loves Flight of the Conchords?

I haven't been scrapbooking for awhile so I decided to do a few challenges to help me get going again. At ScrapMojo the challenge was to, "...use one of these as your title on your page...For the love of ______(fill in the blank) or My heart belongs to _______ (fill in the blank). The second part of our challenge is to use heart(s) on your layout."

Then at The Art is Found the challenge was to use lace. As of late I have had more than one dream that I had to make something with lace that shouldn't be made with lace, and then part way through the dream I figured out that I should just use the proper material. Wackadoodle. My dream book says, "If a woman dreams of lace, she will be happy in the realization of her most ambitious desires, and lovers will bow to her edict. No questioning or imperiousness on their part." Whoa.
So anyway, when I saw they were having a lace challenge I realized I'm actually just part-psychic.

Is it a faux pas to combine 2 challenges into one scrapbook page?

I also ordered something for a friend on etsy from a gal named elloh who was kind enough to include a few bonus gifts, including the above scrapbooked Flight of the Conchords calendar, which I dismantled to use for this scrapbook page. Isn't she nice?

Did anyone see the episode where Murray asked if the guys wanted to move to the friendship realm? And he had a friend agenda and called it a Frienda?! That was my favorite episode. It made me think of my friend Stephanie when she called us "Work-to-Life-Transition-Friends."

Does my class go to the left or the right?

Obama won by a landslide during our mock election, but when it comes to the issues, are they truly democrats? Scholastic News provided a letter starter to President Obama for classes to finish, and last week I gave it to them. The letter begins:
Dear President Obama:
We learned in Scholastic News that you will be President for the next four years. Here is what I hope you will do for our country:

I let my students brainstorm what they would like before we began the letters. When they were done sharing their ideas, I brought up some of the things that are in the stimulus package to see if they would like for him to do those things. I asked if they wanted to write the President asking him to cut taxes. That was a big "no." 1 point for democrat.

Here is what they asked for in the end:
6 asked for new schools
2 asked him to end the war
2 asked for a pool on our playground (the heart wants what it wants)
2 asked for new bridges
1 asked for new jobs
1 asked for free dress (we wear uniforms)
1 asked for more money so we can buy food
1 asked him to fix the world

One student went home and wrote him a second letter, and gave it to me sealed in an envelope that says, "Barack Obama are winner he is the Best President in the White House of the Unites States of amerrca" Cute, right?

Although I'm not sure if swimming pools and free dress are republican or democratic issues, judging by most of their requests, I think they "voted" for the right man. I'll mail their letters tomorrow.

P.S. Thank you dreamygiraffe for the use of your sweet painting which can be found here.