There's something you should know about me. I'm very fancy. I love pretty, sparkly things. I spent a good deal of time--from the time I was 15 until I was about 26 trying to deny my girly pinkness. I can't really 'splain it, but I did. Then I became BFFs with Jillian and she helped me shake off the shackles of the past and claim my inner princess.

So, for the past few years I've had a secret inner desire: I want a chandelier over my bed. Yes, a full blown, crystal covered, big honkin' girly chandelier. To be completely and brutally honest, I'd like a bedroom a little like this one:



There are a few problems with this. I don't have the money for a room like this, and I rent my apartment. These two things limit my ability to be as fancy as I'd like.

My mother has embraced my desire for a chandelier even though she cannot imagine how she of all people had a daughter who wants one. She's suggested a few alternatives, but nothing has worked until now.

A couple of weeks ago we were in a little antique store in Hurricane, Utah when I found these beaded wall sconces:



for a really reasonable price. They're a good alternative considering how portable they are while still giving me the sparkly fanciness I crave.

So here they are in my room on either side of my window:



They look good, huh? I also want to share my other bit of fancy:



This wall was made with four sheets of wrapping paper from Papyrus and cost me $10 total. You see, I'm not only fancy, I'm also kinda crafty. And cheap. Another example of my cheap craftiness is this wall:



Where I turned a broken door to an Ikea cabinet into a frame for three pictures I took in England.

You may now be asking yourself, "Why is she telling us this? Does she just want to brag?"

My answer is this: I live alone and only had my dog to share it with. When I asked him if he thought it was pretty this was his response



Which means, "I don't do pretty."

So all I have is you. So, do YOU think it's pretty? Please respond, 'cause I'm not only fancy, I'm also needy.

Not so tough as you look, hey Judge Judy?

Yesterday's 5.4 earthquake apparently hit while an episode of Judge Judy was being filmed. Although it's the normal human reaction to crawl under your desk while the earth is a shakin' I guess I expected something more from our Judy. Maybe something like "You stop shaking NOW! You don't come into my courtroom and start shaking things around! Oh, and earthquake, Sir, you are LYING TO ME! Shut up and sit down!" Something like that.



(found via Bestweekever.tv)

Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, Can't Lose!

Not since my high school and college obsession with the 49ers has football meant so much to me. I'm hooked on the television show Friday Night Lights and I think you all should run right out and watch seasons 1 and 2 (available here or here or anywhere fine films are rented)and get ready to watch season 3 this fall so that it doesn't get cancelled 'cause I'm seriously in love with this show.

If you're turned off 'cause it's just a show about football, try it anyway. Yes. It is about high school football, but it's also about life. One of the most surprising things to me was that even though this is a "sports" show, the female characters are as important and interesting (and I might argue, at times more interesting and important) as the male ones. Also, even though the show is based around a high school team, the adult characters are as important and complex as the teenagers. Finally, it's the first show that I've ever seen get high school right. As a high school teacher I have a hard time with most depictions of it on tv. This show is pretty close to dead on. As I watch, I find myself rooting not only for the team to win, but also for the characters themselves.

Oh, and I watched seasons one and two in a two week period (hey, I'm done with UNLV and don't go back to work until next month. THIS IS WHAT I DO DURING THE SUMMERS. I'VE GOT TIME ON MY HANDS! I LIVE ALONE! DON'T JUDGE ME!) and now I'm walking around with an inner voice with a west Texas accent and a HUGE crush on Kyle Chandler, 'cause I mean. . .



Oh please. You have a crush on him now too, don't you? Just from LOOKING at his picture? Don't try to deny it, and don't EVEN get me started on his accent. Really. Don't. 'Cuz then I might gush or something, and I NEVER do that (nudge nudge wink wink).

And then to top it off there's Timmy Riggins:



or darling Matty Saracen:



or Brian "Smash" Williams:



I mean, COME ON!! This show has it all, sports, real life issues, incredible writing, powerful female characters, a sense of humor, and CUTE BOYS!! There is quite simply, something for everyone.

Added to all of that, you get inspirational speeches from Coach Taylor:



Doesn't that just make you want to go out and reach your potential? It certainly does me. . . right after I finish laying in bed and rewatching season 2.

***I'll be posting actual facts about my actual life soon. I promise. But tonight I just needed to give a little time to Coach. That is all.

So cute it might make your head explode....

I relate to this more than I'd like to admit

(From the Vicar of Dibley 2006 Christmas special)

The Big Read, or Blowing your illusions about English Teachers

Hey all, I got this from my sister who got it from her friend who got it from another friend who got it from the UK, and as you all know anything from England has the ole' Pessimistic Optimist seal of approval.

So here goes...Apparently this is a list voted by the British people of their favorite books, and the theory is that the average adult has only read 6 books from the following list. Although most of my students believe I've read every book ever written, I'm afraid it's not true. I'm going to be honest here, even if it makes me look like an illiterate clod.

I'm interested in what books from the list you've read. Copy and paste it into your blog and let me know!

1. Bold those books you've read

2. Italicize those you intend to read

3. Underline those books you LOVE.


Ready? OK!

1. Pride and Prejudice - I love Jane Austen. This is the BEST Austen there is. I was in love with Mr. Darcy even before Colin Firth lept into the pond in that white shirt.

2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien. Love the story, hate the writing style. I've tried at least 5 times to read these. Can't do it.

3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte I can't even begin to describe the love I feel for this book and its heroine. We could all benefit from being a little more like Jane. I force this one on my sophomores. They love me for it.

4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling.

5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee. Quite possibly my favorite book in the entire world. That's a hard choice for an English teacher, but I'm going with it.

6. The Bible. Set a goal in high school to read it all, did it.

7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte. Yuck

8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell. Yuck Yuck. I have to teach this one.

9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman.

10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens.

11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott. I read this book approximately 1,000 times in the fourth grade. I'd read it, finish it, and start it over again. I just love this book.

12. Tess of. the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy I've never finished it. It just makes me so sad.

13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller. My beloved high school English teacher loved this book and I've always planned on reading it. I bought it at a thrift store for 25 cents and haven't ever read it.

14. Complete Works of Shakespeare. I must confess I haven't read every single play, although I'm close. I love Measure for Measure most, Julius Caesar least.

15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien. See Lord of the Rings above.

17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks.

18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger. This book totally rocked my world as a 17 year old. I need to re-read this one to see if I still feel the same.

19. The Time Traveler’s's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger.

20. Middlemarch - George Eliot. Watched the BBC miniseries, but haven't yet read the book.

21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell I read this out loud to my roommate in college. We didn't get all the way through, but I did.

22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald. The most beautiful opening and closing pages in all of literature. I love this one. And, bonus: Toby Stephens stars in the most recent television adaptation.

23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens. Yeah, I like film adaptations of Dickens, but notsomuch his novels. Does that make me a bad English teacher?

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 I've read excerpts, but not the whole thing. This does make me a bad English teacher.

28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck. My dad's favorite book, and one of mine. The closing scene makes me cry like a baby every time I read it.

29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll.

30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy The Russians are just so sad!

32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis. I can't bold this 'cause I've never read them all.

34. Emma - Jane Austen. I've never actually read this entire novel. I need to turn in my English teacher card. It's on the list. I'm on it.

35. Persuasion - Jane Austen Anne Elliot speaks to my soul. Unfortunately, I have no Fredrick Wentworth waiting in the wings.

36. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini. Loved it.

37. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

38. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

39. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne. Not all of it.

40. Animal Farm - George Orwell Yuck. Not a fan of Orwell.

41. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown. meh.

42. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez I feel like I should read this one.

43. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving. BEAUTIFUL! I have to thank my friend Jill for turning me on to this one.

44. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

45. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery. These remind me of college and my dearest Jaci Claire.

46. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy

47. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood.

48. Lord of the Flies - William Golding Love reading and teaching this novel.

49. Atonement - Ian McEwan

50. Life of Pi - Yann Martel I tried over and over to read this one and wanted to blow my brains out. What happened with the boy and tiger on the raft? Do I give a darn?

51. Dune - Frank Herbert

52. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

53. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

54. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

55. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

56. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

57. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley.

58. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon

59. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

60. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck. This is the book that made me love Steinbeck.

61. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

62. The Secret History - Donna Tartt

63. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold.

64. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas.

65. On The Road - Jack Kerouac. Couldn't handle it. I'm with Truman Capote who said, "That isn't writing at all, it's typing"

66. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy. THE most depressing book in the history of the world. I couldn't make it through.

67. Bridget Jones' Diary - Helen Fielding. I just told a friend today that Bridget is my id. I swear, if I weren't Mormon I'd be a slutty ummm friendly drunk.

68. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie.

69. Moby Dick - Herman Melville. I know it's supposed to be the great American novel and all that, but (I'm sorry Mr. Tilson) I hate Melville.

70. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

71. Dracula - Bram Stoker

72. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett. One of my mom's favorite books and just a delightful read.

73. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson This is the first book by Bryson I read and it got me hooked. Of course, his being an American born Brit speaks to me. Even if you don't usually like nonfiction I urge you to pick up this one or A Walk In the Woods and give it a try.

74. Ulysses - James Joyce. I don’t know...has anyone ever actually finished Ulysses?

75. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath.

76. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

77. Germinal - Emile Zola

78. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

79. Possession - AS Byatt. I started this one a few years ago, but life got in the way. I need to put it back on the "to-read" list.

80. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens.

81. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

82. The Color Purple - Alice Walker.

83. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro see #79

84. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

85. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

86. Charlotte's Web - EB White I've read and cried over this book for most of my life.

87. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom This one made the list?

88. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

89. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

90. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad. Yuck. No.

91. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery

92. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

93. Watership Down - Richard Adams. I just could never get into the whole "bunnies at war" idea.

94. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

95. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

96. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

97. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

98. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo. I love this story and want to put it on my to-read list, but it's just too darn long. I'm sorry. I know myself, and while we're at it, if I'm going to be honest the same thing goes for Crime and Punishment.

apparently 99 and 100 have been lost.

As I look over the list I realize that I've read about a third, not too shabby. I'm definitely above the 6 they believed the average adult had read.

So, take a crack at it. I promise, I won't judge. I'm not that kind of English teacher. Really.

Free at last!!

After five weeks, two reams of paper, three pens, six baseball novels, five baseball films, three books of mythology, four tests and one 10-page paper about Roger Maris and Babe Ruth, I'm done with UNLV until the fall. So, how does it feel, you might ask? kinda like this:





(Samantha, that was for you!)

Ain't it the truth?

Thanks Meliss, for introducing me to this wonderful wonderful man.

There's not enough room in this apartment for the three of us.

I watched my brother's bassett hound Bo this past week. I would like to say right off the bat that I really like Bo. He's mellow, sweet, funny, and so good with my puppy that I can almost get past the drool. Yeah, the drool. I could dedicate an entire post to Bo's drool alone. I swear that drool has mythical properties including omnipresence: you do NOT want to put your hand under his mouth EVER, unless you enjoy getting covered with slime; and indestructability: Bo drooled on the back seat of my car 5 days ago and it's still there in its original form.

The following is a close up of Austen's bed after Bo slept on it a few times. Those white spots you see are the drool he left behind. I don't yet know if his super drool can be removed by simple human means, but I'll keep you posted.



I must say that there were some really fun things that happened during my week of Bo. He and Austen have a pretty adorable bromance going based almost entirely on the fact that Bo isn't in the least annoyed by my very annoying puppy. Unlike my parents' dog Charlie who is REALLY annoyed by him


(**actual footage of Charlie being annoyed by Austen)

They spent a lot of time playing and sleeping in each other's beds



Chewing on and stealing one another's rawhide



and just generally having a great time with each other.

Sounds just rosy, doesn't it? For the most part it really wasn't bad at all. But there were a few things that helped me to know that I'm a one dog woman, and that dog won't ever be a bassett.

Reason #1: The drool. I've already mentioned this, so I don't need to go into detail here.

Reason #2: Bassett poo is REALLY REALLY big. You'll be happy to know that I don't have photographic evidence. Just trust me on this one.

Reason #3: Bassetts are REALLY REALLY strong. Add to that their phenomenal sense of smell, proximity to the ground, and stubborness, and you've got two sore shoulders after 1 week of walks.

Reason #4: Bassett hounds are HOUNDS (duh!) and with hounds you have barking. And more barking. And finally some barking. At night I had to cover Bo's bed with a black sheet so that he didn't bark at every flicker of the outdoor security lights of my condo complex.

Reason #5: Bassetts are just too darn long. Yeah, I said long. I know this sounds strange coming from a girl who owns a corgi, but I offer you the following photographic evidence:



see what I mean?

Reason #6: I am apparently able to only watch one dog at any given time. You see, not long ago, Bo tried to kill himself by biting off and swallowing the knot end of a rope chew toy. You'd think he'd have learned something from this whole ordeal, contemplated the precious gift of life and all that, but maybe his depression over never being able to keep up with the beagles at the dog park or having ears long enough to trip over got to him or something, because he tried to kill himself last week at my house by eating a wash cloth. Luckily (ha!) he barfed it up on my livingroom carpet. This is clearly proof that I can only effectively watch one dog at any given time.

So, even though my boy is moping around the house two days post Bo's visit, and is bugging the crap out of me to throw his ball against the front door for the 5,000th time today, he's just going to have to deal with being an only dog. There's just not enough room in this one bedroom apartment for the three of us.

Fun Facts!™ #2

1. Fenrir is a wolf from Norse mythology who was so vicious that the gods tied him up with an unbreakable rope and imprisoned him in the otherworld. At the end of days he was said to break free and fight against the gods on the side of chaos.

Fenrir Greyback is a werewolf in the Harry Potter books who fights on the side of Voldemort.



Cool, eh? I love this woman. I tell you what.

2. Ty Cobb may have been the greatest baseball player of all time. In 1936 when the Baseball Hall of Fame opened, he recieved more votes than any other player.



Cobb is widely credited with setting 90 Major League Baseball records during his career.He still holds several records as of 2008, including the highest career batting average (.367) and most career batting titles with 12 (or 11, depending on source). He retained many other records for almost a half century or more, including most career hits until 1985 (4,191 or 4,189, depending on source), most career runs (2,245 or 2,246 depending on source) until 2001, most career games played (3,035) and at bats (11,429 or 11,434 depending on source) until 1974, and the modern record for most career stolen bases (892) until 1977. (Source: Wikipedia)

He was known for sliding with his feet high in the air so that he could spear opposing players. He called it "showing steel" and there is a legend that may or may not be true that he actually sharpened his steel cleats so that a player would think more than twice about attempting to tag him out.

From what I've read and seen, I can easily tell you that Ty Cobb was a disgusting human being: racist, elitist, sexist, abusive, and violent, but you have to admire the stats.

Does a bear dance in the woods?

I suppose it does.