Firstly, thanks to elsaf and girlycomic I now know where the list of 200 books came from. The BBC had a survey asking for the best books and compiled it in The Big Read. So, now ya know! (And knowing is half the battle…)

Secondly, I did order the camera last night. I shall soon be the proud owner of an Olympus Camedia (yes, turns out it is a Camedia) D-560 and a 256MB xD video card. If any of you are at the Gallifrey One convention this February, you might well see me with it!

Thirdly, I have decided to let Student Painters paint my house this May. They’ll paint the house and garage using Sherwin Williams 20-year warranty paints and stain the cement blocks too. Should run me just over $2000 (so half the cost of my new roof). Good thing I’m getting money back from the feds!

Fourthly, it’s interesting to note that the most popular time to eat a banana (with the group who responded to my poll) is while there’s still a bit of green on it. Glad to know that I’m in the majority for once. 🙂

Fifthly, with this entry comes my first full month of posts to LJ. Woohoo! Well, now that I’ve done it successfully once, I don’t have to TRY and do it again. So if it doesn’t ever happen again, at least I did it once!

Sixthly, there is no sixthly! Hell, I don’t even know if fifthly is a word. Filthy is, of course. But I don’t think I was filthy in this LJ post.

OK, I’m closer than ever to getting the camera I’ve had my eye on. Saw it in Staples and it works for me, holding wise. The Nikon Coolpix just isn’t long enough. I think I’m a two-fisted photographer and only being able to use one hand to take photos just doesn’t work for me.

Tonight was BW3s and I went there after going to Curves. (Well, it’s in the same area in Troy! However it’s Cold Beer and Cheeseburgers that’s next to Curves.) It was after then that I stopped at Staples. The camera’s $50 more at Staples and the memory chips are over $20 more. So I think I’ll stick with newegg.com.

girlycomic and shebit recently did this book meme of the 200 best books ever (according to whom, I’m not entirely sure) and I’ve decided to bold the ones I’ve read. As it’s rather a long list, I’ve put it behind an LJ cut.

1. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
3. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
4. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling
6. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
7. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne
8. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
9. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis
10. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
11. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
12. Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
13. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
14. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
15. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
16. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
17. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
18. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
19. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
20. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
21. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
22. Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone, JK Rowling
23. Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling
24. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling
25. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
26. Tess Of The D’Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
27. Middlemarch, George Eliot
28. A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
29. The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck (no, but I’ve seen the movie.)
30. Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
31. The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson
32. One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez
33. The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett
34. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
35. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl (the sequel’s better, IMO, but this book is brill)
36. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
37. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
38. Persuasion, Jane Austen
39. Dune, Frank Herbert
40. Emma, Jane Austen
41. Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery
42. Watership Down, Richard Adams
43. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
44. The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
45. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
46. Animal Farm, George Orwell
47. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
48. Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
49. Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian
50. The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher
51. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
52. Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck
53. The Stand, Stephen King
54. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
55. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
56. The BFG, Roald Dahl
57. Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome
58. Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
59. Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer (read this, but I don’t see what all of the fuss it about.)
60. Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
61. Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman
62. Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden
63. A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
64. The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough
65. Mort, Terry Pratchett
66. The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton
67. The Magus, John Fowles
68. Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman (another book that I don’t get the fuss)
69. Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
70. Lord Of The Flies, William Golding
71. Perfume, Patrick Süskind
72. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
73. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
74. Matilda, Roald Dahl
75. Bridget Jones’s Diary, Helen Fielding
76. The Secret History, Donna Tartt
77. The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins
78. Ulysses, James Joyce
79. Bleak House, Charles Dickens
80. Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson
81. The Twits, Roald Dahl (Gah! This is Dahl’s worst book! Still, his worst is better than some people’s best…)
82. I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith
83. Holes, Louis Sachar (Hate to say it, but the movie’s better… Still a great book, however.)
84. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
85. The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
86. Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson
87. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
88. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
89. Magician, Raymond E Feist
90. On The Road, Jack Kerouac
91. The Godfather, Mario Puzo
92. The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel
93. The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett (Notable for being the first of the Discworld books, but I’m glad I didn’t start with it – I don’t think I would have been interested in reading the rest of the series.)
94. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
95. Katherine, Anya Seton
96. Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer
97. Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez
98. Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson
99. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot (Mmmmm, Julie Andrews! Fun movie, just never read the book.)
100. Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie
101. Three Men In A Boat, Jerome K. Jerome
102. Small Gods, Terry Pratchett
103. The Beach, Alex Garland
104. Dracula, Bram Stoker
105. Point Blanc, Anthony Horowitz
106. The Pickwick Papers, Charles Dickens
107. Stormbreaker, Anthony Horowitz
108. The Wasp Factory, Iain Banks
109. The Day Of The Jackal, Frederick Forsyth
110. The Illustrated Mum, Jacqueline Wilson
111. Jude The Obscure, Thomas Hardy
112. The Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4, Sue Townsend
113. The Cruel Sea, Nicholas Monsarrat
114. Les Misérables, Victor Hugo
115. The Mayor Of Casterbridge, Thomas Hardy
116. The Dare Game, Jacqueline Wilson
117. Bad Girls, Jacqueline Wilson
118. The Picture Of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
119. Shogun, James Clavell
120. The Day Of The Triffids, John Wyndham
121. Lola Rose, Jacqueline Wilson
122. Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackeray
123. The Forsyte Saga, John Galsworthy
124. House Of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski
125. The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver
126. Reaper Man, Terry Pratchett
127. Angus, Thongs And Full-Frontal Snogging, Louise Rennison
128. The Hound Of The Baskervilles, Arthur Conan Doyle
129. Possession, A. S. Byatt
130. The Master And Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov
131. The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood
132. Danny The Champion Of The World, Roald Dahl (This has probably the best movie adaptation made for it with Jeremy Irons and his son Sam playing Danny’s father and Danny himself.)
133. East Of Eden, John Steinbeck
134. George’s Marvellous Medicine, Roald Dahl
135. Wyrd Sisters, Terry Pratchett
136. The Color Purple, Alice Walker
137. Hogfather, Terry Pratchett
138. The Thirty-Nine Steps, John Buchan
139. Girls In Tears, Jacqueline Wilson
140. Sleepovers, Jacqueline Wilson
141. All Quiet On The Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque
142. Behind The Scenes At The Museum, Kate Atkinson
143. High Fidelity, Nick Hornby
144. It, Stephen King
145. James And The Giant Peach, Roald Dahl
146. The Green Mile, Stephen King
147. Papillon, Henri Charriere
148. Men At Arms, Terry Pratchett
149. Master And Commander, Patrick O’Brian
150. Skeleton Key, Anthony Horowitz
151. Soul Music, Terry Pratchett
152. Thief Of Time, Terry Pratchett
153. The Fifth Elephant, Terry Pratchett
154. Atonement, Ian McEwan
155. Secrets, Jacqueline Wilson
156. The Silver Sword, Ian Serraillier
157. One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey
158. Heart Of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
159. Kim, Rudyard Kipling
160. Cross Stitch, Diana Gabaldon
161. Moby Dick, Herman Melville
162. River God, Wilbur Smith
163. Sunset Song, Lewis Grassic Gibbon
164. The Shipping News, Annie Proulx
165. The World According To Garp, John Irving
166. Lorna Doone, R. D. Blackmore
167. Girls Out Late, Jacqueline Wilson
168. The Far Pavilions, M. M. Kaye
169. The Witches, Roald Dahl
170. Charlotte’s Web, E. B. White
171. Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
172. They Used To Play On Grass, Terry Venables and Gordon Williams
173. The Old Man And The Sea, Ernest Hemingway (I tried to read this one once, but never succeeded.)
174. The Name Of The Rose, Umberto Eco
175. Sophie’s World, Jostein Gaarder
176. Dustbin Baby, Jacqueline Wilson
177. Fantastic Mr Fox, Roald Dahl
178. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
179. Jonathan Livingstone Seagull, Richard Bach
180. The Little Prince, Antoine De Saint-Exupery
181. The Suitcase Kid, Jacqueline Wilson
182. Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens
183. The Power Of One, Bryce Courtenay
184. Silas Marner, George Eliot
185. American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis
186. The Diary Of A Nobody, George and Weedon Grossmith
187. Trainspotting, Irvine Welsh
188. Goosebumps, R. L. Stine
189. Heidi, Johanna Spyri
190. Sons And Lovers, D. H. Lawrence
191. The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera
192. Man And Boy, Tony Parsons
193. The Truth, Terry Pratchett
194. The War Of The Worlds, H. G. Wells
195. The Horse Whisperer, Nicholas Evans
196. A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry
197. Witches Abroad, Terry Pratchett
198. The Once And Future King, T. H. White
199. The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Eric Carle
200. Flowers In The Attic, Virginia Andrews

Interesting list – very Britcentric, which is probably why I have so many books that I’ve read. (So far, read everything by Pratchett and I’ve read every children’s book by Dahl, even The Gremlins.) Some books that I’d’ve put in that list would be Tom Jones by Henry Fielding, Billy Budd by Herman Melville (we didn’t read about the fish, we read about the martyr instead), Vurt by Jeff Noon, and The Brother’s Karamazov by Dostoyevski (despite the lack of juggling). At least, if they’d’ve been in the list, I could have highlighted them. 😉

So the tally was, of that list of 200 books, I’ve read 51. And there’s a few on that list in my “to read” list, so it might go up. Since I’m lousy at ranking, I don’t think I could come up with the best 200 books. My most favorite book of all didn’t make the list (though its prequel did). Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator is still my most favorite book ever. 🙂

Well, I did some searching last night on cameras. Looks like the term “Camedia” doesn’t show up on the latest Olympus cameras, but I think I’ve found the one that I want. newegg.com is selling it for $209 and free shipping. Then I can search around for xD cards for the best buy on the higher capacity versions. It is the Olympus D560, 3.2MPixels, 3x optical and has USB out. The biggest complaint users have had about it is the battery life. But it does take AA, which is nice, and you can get rechargeable AAs (which I have). Unless someone posts to this LJ post bitching about newegg or the Olympus D560, I might order it tonight or at least by tomorrow. And hopefully it’ll be here before the Galley convention. 🙂

While typing that, I was eating a banana that had (for me) sat too long. So that got me thinking it’s Poll Time!

In my family, there’s a nice spectrum of banana lovers. I’m of the “still a bit green” variety, mom likes yellow but doesn’t mind a bit of brown, and dad fights the fruit flies off when eating his. And when he can’t eat ’em? It’s time for banana bread! Yum!

Well, I filed my taxes tonight. Getting money back from the Feds & the State and, surprise surprise, even the school district (all of $2 on that one). Most of that money will be going to help pay for my roof (currently sitting on a 0% interest credit card) but I’ve also decided to join the 21st century and will spend some of it on a digital camera. Woohoo!

I’ve decided that I’m going to get myself an Olympus Camedia, but not which one yet. It needs optical zoom and USB but as for megapixels, I’ll probably stick with 3 and under. Unless I find a bargain in one that’s higher. Hoping to spend ~$250-300 including memory card(s).

You may ask yourself why an Olympus Camedia – but you probably don’t know the answer to that. So I’ll tell you instead. My folks have one of the 2 megapixel ones and I used it during the Disney trip. It’s a nice camera and did what I needed (most of the time – the rest of the time it’s cuz I didn’t know what I was doing with it). judiang and elsaf both have slightly higher “editions” of the 2 megapixel one my folks have, and they also did a fabulous job. Thus, I’m going to stick with what I know. (The only other digital camera I ever considered was a Nikon Coolpix, but that’s cuz I know how nice Nikon is, growing up in a household with a professional photographer and his Leica and Nikon collections.)

Oh, and as for the icon that I’m using for this entry – it’s thanks to theta_g that I have it. He recently watched The Three Kinds of Heat and felt compelled to make me some icons. The other one was of Major Shan saying “Freeze, Mama F*cker” (but without the asterisk). As fun as that icon is, it’s not Sylv (or Leo) so I won’t be using it. I’ll need to make a decent capture of Shan just for Thete so he can make himself one. 🙂 Thanks for the icons, Thete!

Not getting a lot of snow today (alas) but we got plenty of ice this morning. At 6am, I got a phone call saying we were on a 2 hour delay. Around 8am, I got the second one telling me school was canceled. Worked for me. I was already up by then, but I’ve been alternately goofing off and cleaning the house/doing laundry, so it’s been a good day.

paygem had an interview meme in her LJ that intrigued me, so I asked her for some interview questions myself. Here are the details, her questions, and my answers.

THE RULES (so I’m told)
1 – Leave a comment, saying you want to be interviewed.
2 – I will respond; I’ll ask you five questions.
3 – You’ll update your journal with my five questions, and your five answers.
4 – You’ll include this explanation.
5 – You’ll ask other people five questions when they want to be interviewed.

paygem asks:

1. What is the most important scientific fact (in your opinion of course) and why?

The most important scientific fact is that scientists are human too. When scientists continually challenge each other and test other scientists’ results, we end up learning more about the world. People make mistakes, even the most brilliant scientists do, and since science encourages skepticism (instead of fearing it), the mistakes are eventually discovered and refuted. Then progress can commence.

2. Sylvester McCoy, Paul McGann, and Mark Strickson… (pick a different one for each). One you get to go to dinner with at some famous restaurant. One you get to interview for an entertainment news program on national television. One you get to invite over for Scrabble. (and why, of course).

I’d go to dinner with Mark because he’s got a million stories to tell about his producing animal documentaries, and he’d be fun to listen to. I’d interview McGann (though on national TV? eek!) so that I could be the envy of one Miss Judith A Grant, Esq. And I’d play Sylv at Scrabble because I’m sure I could beat him. 😉

3. (stealing a question from the list I gave Tim) if you won a TARDIS for a day, how would you use and it and who would you take with, pick up, or go and visit?

I’d use it to go to the future just to see if we ever do get all the neat gizmos that I read about in science fiction and to see if we ever do get to explore other worlds and meet other alien species. To find the answers to things I’m never gonna find out in my lifetime. Would I take anyone with me? Since the TARDIS is infinite, I’d take as many friends and relatives as wanted to come. If I was limited to one person, I’d probably take Dad, who encouraged my love of sci fi and deserves to see the future as much as I do.

4. What is your favorite holiday of the year and why?

Christmas! Presents! (Well, and family and snow and friends and presents and the music and the kitschy TV movies and presents and stuff like that.)

5. If you could be a character out of any book, who would it be?

When I was a kid I wanted to be Willy Wonka (or Charlie Bucket). I think I’d still like to be Willy Wonka. 🙂 He’s got the coolest place to live – and he’s got Oompa Loompas!

Last night, as I was headed for bed, I decided to check out the current school cancellations on channel 2. I managed to get there at the start of the alphabet, so I saw Covington (the school to the direct north of us) early on, and a bit later Milton Union (the school just south of us). Sure enough, when the N’s showed, Newton was there. So I headed back online to chat with the girls. And minutes after that, I got the phone call letting me know that school was canceled. How nice. 🙂

Actually, in just looking outside but not actually going outside (yet), it looks like we may have missed out on the freezing rain. That would be nice if that were the case. Either mom or dad (I’m thinking dad, myself) had to shovel a little to help mom get her car out of my garage. (Their garage door is broken again, so mom uses my garage when she needs to go to work in the morning that bad weather’s been promised.) Once I get a move on, I’ll shovel my walk (and maybe dad’s, if his isn’t done yet).

Since I’ve got some time, I’ll answer two more questions which have been asked of me. You can still ask me a question, any question. Just click here. So far, none have been of the variety that I’d prefer not to answer (except Judi’s, but I handled that one pretty well).

kalibex: There are many things, actually. For one thing, I can speak English and he can’t. The whole opposable thumb thing seems to allude him, but I’ve mastered it since I before my first birthday. I can turn the bathroom faucet on and off – he can only turn it off (but he rarely tries). Ditto the bathroom lights. He betters me in few areas – the whole hiding under the bed and running quickly from room to room, plus the fact that he can jump more than twice his height would seem to be it.

drake57: Well, I went to google and here was the first entry: http://www.io.com/~arcangel/. So I guess she would be it!

bob01: Who do you think you are? Mr Morden????

After complaining to friends that I’d only gotten one question so far, I managed to get 2 more. So, here we go:

capriuni: Well, what sort of answer are you looking for?

elsaf: Well, they’re good for telling different components apart, even when said components have the same IP address. Watch out for components manufactured by fly-by-night companies because sometimes they reuse the same ones over and over. Not good.

Oh, and in the weather department, we’ve got snow – woohoo! Supposed to turn icy & shitty by the morning, which might mean a snow day. That would be nice. 🙂 (Well, the ice isn’t nice, but snow days are!)

Oh, be sure to ask your questions here!

judiang: Well, only at Monopoly. Then again, we don’t compete against each other a lot. He beats the hell out of me at “go fetch” because I’m just too lazy to chase after toys.

Be sure to ask your own questions here. I’ll answer as I get ’em! Oh, and if you think you can figure out what the original question is, reply to the LJ post and I may let you know if you were right or not. 🙂

Now that the hubbub has died down on the “ask me a question, any question” poll that was going around in LJ, I decided I’d try one myself. Since my first poll was a success (heh), I’ll do this one. So, as the thing says below, ask me a question, any question. I intend to answer them. (Whether my answer will actually answer the question asked is another matter….) What’s the interesting thing to do when reading the answers, I think, is to try and figure out just what was the original question. (Being a teacher, I try to get my students to answer questions using complete sentences, so that the reader knows what the question originally was. I am not going to do that here, however.)