Well, xanga, I have not updated since last year!!!  I know, why sooo long???  I dont have a good reason, I guess just not enough time.  Earlier today, I was catchin up on a months, yeah ONE MONTHS, worth of xanga readings.  Well, I am back, and it seems like im still up to the same old things.  Church, ministries, work- with overtime, some wanted and some NOT wanted, Bible study, Dland, fun with family, friends, bdays, and everything else.  Well, I dont have much to update, its either a fast overview like that OR my superlong posts, you decide.  I just wanted to say hi and tell you that I have not disappeared. 

This is copied from Kenny, I thought its cool that I have read more of these books than an English lit major. 

According to the BBC, most people have only read 6 of the following list of 100 books.

Instructions:
Look at the list and put an 'X' after those you have read. Make sure you delete my X's! When you've finished, tag 15 people to do it too, and put your total in the header.

OK fellow bookworms, let's see what you've got!

X  1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen - Read like 2 chapters, but still managed to write an essay/book report for it and pass the class, stupid jr year high school.
X  2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien - Read in jr high, tried to reread after the movies, but couldnt get back into it.  
     3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte -
X  4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling - Really liked them, entertaining fast read.
X  5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee - Great book. 
X  6 The Bible – OF COURSE, read it everyday. 
    7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte -
X  8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell - Disturbing story.
    9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman –
X 10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens - Dont remember much, just Miss Havinshom
X 11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott - Dont remember much either except that JOE is a girl and LAURIE is a boy, go fig. 
   12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles -
   13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller - i should read it, but still havent
   14 Complete Works of Shakespeare – have read and love his trajedies
   15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier -
X 16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien - Nice book
   17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks -
X 18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger - Dont see what is sooooo good bout it, both this and Great Gatsby, dont really get why everyone loves them, theyre both boring to me.
   19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger -
   20 Middlemarch - George Eliot -
   21 Gone With the Wind - Margaret Mitchell -
X 22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald - Look above
   23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens -
   24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy -
X 25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams - Liked it a lot, but am surprised its here
   26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh -
   27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky -
   28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck - hmmm, dont know why i havent read it. 
X 29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll - Very odd story
X 30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame - Read it in college.
   31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy -
   32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens -
X 33 Chronicles of Narnia (all books) - CS Lewis - Loved them tons, but sad about Susan.
   34 Emma - Jane Austen -
   35 Persuasion - Jane Austen - 
X 36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis - Didnt I just say yes to Narnia?
   37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini -
   38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres -
X 39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden -
   40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne –
X 41 Animal Farm - George Orwell - Didnt like it that much
X 42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown - Didnt like it much, liked Angels and Demons way more.
X 43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez - Read it in Chicano studies.
   44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving - I wanna read it
   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 -
X 49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding - Read in jr high, I still say SUCKS TO YOUR ASMAR!!!
   50 Atonement - Ian McEwan –
   51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel -
X 52 Dune - Frank Herbert - Read in high school, and its OK, dont see the whole, greatest sci fi novel, but its ok.
   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 -
X 58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley - Really liked this one a lot, more interesting for me than 1984.
   59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon -
   60 Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez -
X 61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck - Very sad book.
   62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov -
   63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt -
   64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold -
X 65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas - Very exciting, albeit, long novel. 
   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 -
X 72 Dracula - Bram Stoker - Thought it would be scarier.
X 73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett - Not bad story, though it was only for girls til I read it in college
   74 Notes From a Small Island - Bill Bryson -
   75 Ulysses - James Joyce - Read his other book and didnt "appreciate" it-Portrait of an Artist as Man
X 76 The Inferno - Dante - Very interesting concepts, and actually pretty frightening.
   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-
X 83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker- Read in high school.
   84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro-
   85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert -
   86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry -
X 87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White - Love this book, and still holds up as an "adult", hadda read it for a childrens lit class.
   88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom-
X 89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle- Really cool stories.
   90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton -
X 91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad - Dont like it, really boring for me.
X 92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery - Didnt like it, read it for that childrens lit class.
   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-
X 97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas - Liked this a lot.  I enjoy Dumas.
X 98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare - Not too bad for a play.
X 99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl - This is way better than that stupid, scary movie that everyone loves.
   100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo –


21

But...seriously: who chose these?

I can see some of them [Les Mis, The Bible, Hamlet, etc]...  Read More

But...like...The Chronicles of Narnia AND The Lion The Witch And the Wardrobe are both in there? And ATONEMENT is in there?

/shrug

SO I got 35!!!  Not too shabby.  I have a top 10 list to put up too soon, in Entertainment Weekly, they have a top 20 heroes and you know that I have to correct them in that. 

Had a great and family filled Christmas weekend that had, food, tons of coffee, POUNCE, spoons, spades, OH HELL, gin (yeah FIVE card games!!!), DS games, singing my heart out complete with a smile, presents, shopping for a whole day, movies, and of course tons of laughing, especially while playing pounce and me and Mark dying. 

Then today I have work, which wasnt too bad.  Some holiday acting out, which I was actually expecting a whole lot more.  But then I head home and hear that Dennis has been called home by the Lord tonight.  I have learned soooo much from you and will miss you tremendously.  But I know that I will be able to see you again.  Til we meet again.

Man, so much as gone by and my xanga hasnt recorded any of it!!!  There was Thanksgiving which was filled with work, woohoo???, LETTING my cousin win at pounce, many DLand trips with snow fireworks fantasmic and yeah even splash mountain at night, Ash going to Congo, surprise bday parties that fell flat but were still totally fun, killer bunnies bang we hafta watch KCET and ham, Christmas program in all its glory but were you even able to hear our jr highers??? and I think thats about all I can remember.  So yeah, thats a whole lot of stuff.  AND there is things that I wanted to post up here, top 10 scary books Ive read, top 10 things Im thankful for, top 10 Michael Crichton books/projects-in honor of his death (hes my favorite author ever!!!, second to God that is), missed Disney bday, and of course TERI HATCHERS BIRTHDAY!!!!!! 

 (all of these were taken this year too)  OK, Ill put up one from her days as SUPERMANS girl LOIS 

Well, here are some pix of my jr highers, courtesy of Bethos.  We did the song from HSM3 A Night to Remember, and we were looking at how the shephards reacted after seeing Baby Jesus when He was born. 

Oh, and I know that a few of you guys have gotten these, and I finally got one too cuz of Esther, thanx!!!

Gregs day

Well, I think thats all for now.  I shall try hard now to update weekly or at least biweekly???  We shall see.  Have a great one, and try to stay dry and warm. 

Man, I drunk like tons of coffee and im like peeing every 10 minutes and am not quite jittery but definately awake.  Made coffee and breakfast for my small group prayer partner, and he didnt drink much of it.  Sooooooo, ive done a few things at home, like fix da gate in my backyard. 

This weekend was busy, as always.  Halloween, had fun at work, woohoo???  The residents were asking why they didnt get pizza when other dorms got it, and why there was still VOP group, and tons of other questions.  But oh well.  Then on Saturday, had work again, and stayed late, as usual.  Then went over to Amys and watched NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS, which I toally love.  Then we watched Elf, sooooooo I guess everyone is in the mood for Christmas now?!?!?! 

Sunday had church, and went to both services.  Did church school, and its wierd, this is like the third week I mentioned SEX in a row.  This week was David and Bathesba and explaining what a concubine is for Solomon, last week was Samson, and the week before that was Abraham.  Im doing an overview of the Bible, and yeah, there are a lot of stories that have sex and violence in it.  Then I went to second service cuz there was a ETC reunion, even though technically Im too young (85-95).  It was pretty small, not too many peeps. and only me and Christie were my year, there it was nice to see a few others that I havent seen in a long while.  Heard Kenny Wada speak, played ice breakers, ate, and saw old pix from back in da day.  Afterwards, went to see HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL 3 AGAIN!!!  Yeah, it was tons of fun still, and the second time, was still awesome.  We then ate with peeps and yeah, Fuch totally scared the peeps behind us by flinging a paper right at the window that was right by them, for shame.  Other things, sparkles are my thing, yeah, its based on a real movie, i wanna do the slide, and then me doing the Kevin James slide. 

Soooooo, a few things that I wanna just write out here.  Like I mentioned earlier, man, the Bible has tons of sex and scando things about it.  I compared Davids sins with Sauls sins, and humanly speaking, Davids are far worse.  I mean, David lied, cheated, stole, conspired for murder, adulteried (if thats a word and if not, committed adultry), and for Saul, he spared someone from death.  But look at the responses of them.  David repented and asked for forgiveness.  Saul tried to rationalize it out, and then placed the blame on others, not taking full responsibilty for what he did.  And then Gods reaction to this, David, not gonna kill you and imma forgive you, even though you still hafta face the consequences (which includes more sex!!!  Absalom and Davids concubines on a rooftop and Amnon raping his sister Tamar).  With Saul, no longer king, and then often controlled by a spirit.  Sounds harsh.  but then its all about our attitude with God and how we react when told we are wrong.  How are we when we are shown our sins???  And what do we do when God tells us to do something??? 

Another thing, when Raynold was sharing about his time in ETC (which is Eternally Trusting in Christ), it just got me thinking if I am like that with the junior highers and how they view what I do.  Am I getting the across what I am teaching with my actions???  Then later on, I was talking to a parent and some of my questions were answered with what she was sharing.  How can I make peeps feel welcome after they have been gone for a while?  Do they percieve me as someone they can talk to no matter what, like Kenny Wada???  I am praying that I am and that He can help me go towards that way.