God, I love a good meme. Thanks Andi.

1. My uncle once: tried to teach me how to play guitar, unsuccessfully.

2. Never in my life: have I done any recreational drugs. Ever. Surprising, right?

3. When I was five: I was a know-it-all.

4. High school was: a waste of my time, except for a handful of good friends I made there.

5. I will never forget: seeing Boyfriend for the first time.

6. Once I met: Toni Morrison and I was so star-struck because I have loved her since I was 16.

7. There’s this girl I know: who crochets like nothing I've ever seen.

8. Once, at a bar: I watched a severe homophobe sweat when he realized it was a lesbian bar... and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

9. By noon, I’m usually: ready to go home!

10. Last night: I went to a new gelateria with Boyfriend.

11. If only I had: a kitty cat.

12. Next time I go to church: should be interesting.

13. What worries me most: is death and loss.

14. When I turn my head left I see: a crooked sign Friend From Work threw together for a trade show last year.

15. When I turn my head right I see: Email/phone list taped to the wall and my mini Van Gogh calendar with X's on it.

16. You know I’m lying when: ...ever I'm lying. It's totally obvious.

17. What I miss most about the 80s is: innocence and Punky Brewster.

18. If I were a character in Shakespeare I’d be: Cordelia.

19. By this time next year: I'd like to have a job I care passionately about.

20. A better name for me would be: .... Don't think there is one. My name is so very me.

21. I have a hard time understanding: Republicans.

22. If I ever go back to school, I’ll: study something I love to death.

23. You know I like you if: I invite you to the random things I organize.

24. If I ever won an award, the first person I would thank would be: Boyfriend.

25. Take my advice, never: leave things left unsaid until it's too late.

26. My ideal breakfast is: a big fat Migas taco.


27. A song I love but do not have is: ... Don't laugh, but most of the songs from my copy of City on a Hill: Christmas. I have no idea where the CD is.

28. If you visit my hometown, I suggest you: keep an eye on your wallet. Ha, ha, just kidding! (Somewhat.)

29. Why won’t people: live and let live?

30. If you spend a night at my house: you will be uncomfortable on my couch, but my wit and grace will make up for it.

31. I’d stop my wedding for: something that's life or death, but that's about it.

32. The world could do without: nuclear weapons.

33. I’d rather lick the belly of a cockroach than: go skydiving.

34. My favourite blonde(s) is/are: Feminist Friend

35. Paper clips are more useful than: most things.

36. If I do anything well it’s: show affection.

37. And by the way: is it 5:00 yet??

How it’s done:

* Answer each of the questions below.
* Surf over to Flickr and type your answers (one at a time) into the search bar.
* From the choice of pictures shown only on the front page, click the one that moves you (edited to add: unless they are lousy, in which case dig a little deeper).
* Once the page with your picture opens, copy the URL.
* Surf over to the Mosaic Maker, set up your mosaic, and paste in your URLs.
* Click “Create!”
* Save the image, upload it to your favorite picture site (if it’s not Flickr), and blog away.

Here are the questions:

1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food?
3. What high school did you attend?
4. What is your favorite color?
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. What is your favorite drink?
7. Where would you go on your dream vacation?
8. What is your favorite dessert?
9. What do you want to be when you grow up?
10. What do you love most in life?
11. Choose one word to describe you.
12. Your Flickr name?

Took this from Mo, the funniest lady in cyberspace. Go check her out.

You've gotta note the very white, very American cultural vices you are willing to admit to.

#92 Book Deals - I don't have one, I just want one.

#91 San Francisco - Never been but would love to go.

#90 Dinner Parties - My apartment's too small but I want to give them and I enjoy going to them, so I'm gonna bold this.

#89 St. Patrick's Day - I'm Irish, but not a big drinker. Eh.

#88 Having Gay Friends - Woohoo! I wear my "Fag Hag" sign with pride.

#87 Outdoor Performance Clothes

#86 Shorts

#85 The Wire - Never saw it.

#84 T-Shirts

#83 Bad Memories of High School

#82 Hating Corporations

#81 Graduate School - Plan to go.

#80 The Idea of Soccer

#79 Modern Furniture

#78 Multilingual Children - Yes, dammit!

#77 Musical Comedy

#76 Bottles of Water - I drink tap out of bottles, but I don't think that's what they mean.

#75 Threatening to Move to Canada - Um, it has crossed my mind. Don't even think about a draft, Bushie.

#74 Oscar Parties - I don't even watch.

#73 Gentrification

#72 Study Abroad - Yee ha! Send me back!

#71 Being the only white person around

#70 Difficult Breakups

#69 Mos Def

#68 Michel Gondry - Don't know who this is.

#67 Standing Still at Concerts - That is very me.

#66 Divorce

#65 Co-Ed Sports

#64 Recycling

#63 Expensive Sandwiches

#62 Knowing What's Best for Poor People

#61 Bicycles

#60 Toyota Prius

#59 Natural Medicine

#58 Japan

#57 Juno - Didn't see it.

#56 Lawyers

#55 Apologies

#54 Kitchen Gadgets

#53 Dogs

#52 Sarah Silverman -Nooo, she is like nails on a chalkboard to me.

#51 Living by the Water

#50 Irony

#49 Vintage

#48 Whole Foods and Grocery Co-ops

#47 Arts Degrees

#46 The Sunday New York Times

#45 Asian Fusion Food

#44 Public Radio

#43 Plays

#42 Sushi

#41 Indie Music

#40 Apple Products

#39 Netflix

#38 Arrested Development

#37 Renovations

#36 Breakfast Places - I could live on breakfast tacos. And french toast. And omelettes. And coffee. So... yes to this one.

#35 The Daily Show/Colbert Report

#34 Architecture

#33 Marijuana

#32 Vegan/Vegetarianism

#31 Snowboarding

#30 Wrigley Field

#29 80s Night

#28 Not having a TV

#27 Marathons

#26 Manhattan

#25 David Sedaris

#24 Wine

#23 Microbreweries

#22 Having Two Last Names

#21 Writer Workshops

#20 Being an expert on YOUR culture

#19 Traveling

#18 Awareness

#17 Hating their Parents

#16 Gifted Children

#15 Yoga

#14 Having Black Friends

#13 Tea

#12 Non-Profit Organizations

#11 Asian Girls

#10 Wes Anderson Movies - Don't think I have seen any.

#9 Making you feel bad about not going outside

#8 Barack Obama

#7 Diversity

#6 Organic Food

#5 Farmer's Markets - I never go, though.

#4 Assists

#3 Film Festivals

#2 Religions their parents don't belong to

#1 Coffee

Five Strengths

Musing Woman tagged me for a meme. I have to name five of my strengths as a writer/artist. For some reason we hate pointing out positive things about ourselves. And when I say "we," I mean "me," but here goes.

1. I have a wealth of material and resources; my best stuff is based on people I know and things I've been through.
   
2. I have the ability to pack a lot of feeling and description into relatively small space. I've written some pieces that were only a few paragraphs long but got incredible feedback, that readers felt like they really knew the characters and such.
   
3. Poetry comes easy to me. It's not always good - I would say 50% of my poems are crap and 50% are good, but the good ones (like the bad) just come to me. I can sit down and write a poem I'm really proud of in five minutes, and rarely need to edit more than a word here and there.
   
4. I am a very sentimental writer. My work has made people cry (mainly things I write about a person will make that person cry).
   
5. I can come up with really great imagery. I wish I could do it more often - I feel like you can read several pages and then be struck by this one great sentence, and I wish I could sprinkle them more liberally throughout. But I appreciate that I get them at all.

I tag my writer friends: Wolverine, Andi

I'm stealing a meme from Andi, as always...

Booked By 3 Meme:

Name up to three characters...

1. ....You wish were real so you could meet them:

- Pilate from Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon is perhaps the coolest character in the entire world.

- Cannie from Jennifer Weiner's Good in Bed; we would so be best friends.

- Mma Ramotswe from Alexander McCall Smith's The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series. She's smart, grounded, old-fashioned but anti-sexist and "traditionally built." She also values the right things in life.

2. ....You would like to be:

- Arwen from Lord of the Rings. She gets to live in that crazy fantasy world, marry Aragorn and be royalty. Although that whole giving up immortality thing would probably be a scary decision to make.

- August Boatwright from Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees. She's got it all together in life, one of those nearly perfect characters that you love rather than hate.

- Lucy from Jamaica Kincaid's Lucy. It's been a while since I read it but I zipped through it in like two nights. Can't remember if the character was sarcastic or just had an amazing turn-of-phrase.

3. ....Who scares you:

- Dick and Perry in Capote's In Cold Blood. Even scarier that they were real.

- Randall Flagg in Stephen King's The Stand. Okay, so I only got about 400 pages into a 1,000+ page book, but I watch that movie religiously. Eight hours long and I must have seen it at least five times.

- T-ray from The Secret Life of Bees again. He scares the crap out of me.

My Visual DNA

Read my VisualDNA™ Get your own VisualDNA™

Nothing much going on at home except family drama. Everything is okay I suppose, just stressful. I cancelled all my plans with friends because I couldn't get myself to leave the house. *Shrug* I will catch them next time I'm in town, I guess. I need to take some "me" time and some exclusively fam time as well.

But since I'm here, why not a meme??

Multiples of Five

Name one thing you do everyday.

Wake up.

Name two things you wish you could learn.

How to be a better writer and how to change what I don't like about the world.

Name three things that remind you of home.

Mom's Italian sauce. Children. Woody Allen movies.

Name four things you love to eat but rarely do.

Halvah bars. Brownies. Calzones. Indian food.

Name five things that make you feel good.

My love. My fam. My friends. Books. Sweets.

Book meme

Look at the list of books below: *Bold the ones you’ve read* Highlight in red those books that you've read part of. Italicize the ones you want to read* Leave blank the ones that you aren’t interested in. (I'm going to make the ones I've read larger because it's hard to tell what's bolded in this whitish-grey font.)

1. The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien)
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
16. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Rowling)
17. Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King) - I will finish this one day, I love the movie too much not to.
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling)
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
21. The Hobbit (Tolkien)
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
28. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (C.S. Lewis)
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
30. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)
31. Dune (Frank Herbert)
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
34. 1984 (Orwell)
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant) - One of my top 5 of all time, I looovvvved it.
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
45. The Bible - Yeah, I read the whole thing when I was 16 or 17. The part with directions for building the temple was rough, man.
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
50. She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Dickens)
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
59. The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood) - I enjoy it every time I pick it up but can't finish it for some reason. Am somewhere in the middle but it has taken me two years to get there!
60. The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrew Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Tolstoy)
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
69. Les Miserables (Hugo)
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding)
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78. The World According to Garp (John Irving)
79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
80. Charlotte's Web (E.B. White)
81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)
83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
84. Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
85. Emma (Jane Austen)
86. Watership Down (Richard Adams)
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
92. Lord of the Flies (Golding)
93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck) - I was like 15, it was too much for me, all the working in the fields and bloody childbirth.
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100. Ulysses (James Joyce)

It's a meme!

The deal is you have to write 10 things that you like beginning with the letter bestowed upon you. Andi gave me the letter 'H.' So I give you, in no particular order:

- Hot chocolate - Boyfriend recently bought a "Smores" flavor that is seriously yummy. I scarf it at work every day when I am feeling cold. It's my coffee alternative.

- "Hannah and Her Sisters" - My favorite Woody Allen movie of all time! I love the religion/searching for the meaning of life aspect.

- Hugs - Enough said.

- "(A) Hard Day's Night" - Classic. It introduced me to the Beatles, who gave my life meaning at 17.

- Henry David Thoreau - I'll be honest, I can't read "Walden" straight through without getting bored at times, but the guy was a genius and I have a serious crush on his brain.

- Harry Potter - I'm not a crazy fan, have only read three so far so you know I'm not obsessed, but I really enjoy them. The movies, not so much, but definitely the books.

- History ... as much as I love literature.

- Healthy food ... if done right. Tofu and veggies and all that knocks me out. I never would have made it as a vegetarian for over a year if all I was eating was salads.

- Halvah bars - *Salivates*

- Hair ... as in facial hair on men. Always drove me crazy and still does ;)