Ah, books. I love books. I don’t read enough books. I gacked this from indefatigable42.

1. I’m currently reading: Grandmothers of the Light by Paula Gunn Allen in the reading room and Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott in my purse.
2. Next I’ll read: One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez in the reading room and The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman in my purse.
3. The best book I read in the past year was: Monstrous Regiment by Terry Pratchett.
4. The book I’m most looking forward to reading is: Whatever the next Terry Pratchett novel is. 🙂
5. My favourite author is: Roald Dahl forever! But I’m also fond of Pratchett.
6. My favourite book from childhood is: Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator by Roald Dahl.
7. My favourite book from when I was a teenager is: Ditto.
8. The first western I read was: I don’t think I’ve yet to read a western.
9. The first romance I read was: I’ve tried reading romances, but I never finish them. However, I (and judiang, my backer) paid good money for an autographed copy of Elusive Paradise by Eleanor Frost (the penname of our dear friend elsaf.)
10. The first mystery I read was: The Ten Little Indians by Agatha Christie (though I did read old Encylopedia Brown books before then).
11. The first coming-of-age story I read was: Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume.
12. The first “ethnic” writer I read was: Maya Angelou (if that counts for “ethnic” – I mean, she’s not my ethnicity… I know that surprises you, Judi!) – her book Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry Like Christmas.
13. The first science-fiction/fantasy book I read was: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl.
14. I wish I spent more time reading: Yes indeedy doo. I envy Granny who gets a truckload of books from the library every two weeks and gets them all read and then goes back for more.
15. The book I think was the greatest waste of my time to read was: Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler. I didn’t get more than one chapter read and more than half of that was footnotes. Dreadful man, that Hitler.
16. The person who most encouraged me to read was: My parents – they used to read to me while I took my bath. I still picture one of them (either mom or dad) sitting on the toilet seat and reading something by Dahl or someone else.
17. The book I’m embarrassed to admit I liked is: Storm Harvest by Perry & Tucker (a 7th Doc BBC book).
18. I think people could be encouraged to read through: finding books with characters that resonate with them. Heck, I read the book Nobody Likes Trina by Phyllis A Whitney several times because there was actually a character in it called Trina! Do you know how special that was for me?
19. My current favourite genre is: mystery and quirky fantasy (Pratchett, Fforde and the like).
20. The one book that I’d recommend to almost anyone is: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddon.

And YAY – for now, my new animated icon is working. Woohoo! (I may have to tinker with it a bit – the words may be going too quickly.)

[Edit 9:35pm – With input from elsaf I decided that it was, indeed, too fast. So I went back to Animation Shop and I think it works much better now. Animated icons are EASY – once you know how. ;-)]

I spend all this time to make my first animated LJ icon and LiveJournal can’t seem to take it. Not only that, but my old Valentine’s Day icon seems to have disappeared. Grrrrrrrrrrrrr!

(The animated .gif is only 23kb, so it’s under the 40kb limit. Heck, the Valentine’s Day one was only 5kb.)

Happy Spring to all (in the Northern Hemisphere, that is)! We actually had a nice Spring-like day, too. Bit of sun, bit of rain, warm enough for open windows, cool enough to require a jacket. Leo enjoyed the open windows and was severely ticked off when I finally shut them all this evening.

dark_pheonix, another Sylv fan, sent me some fan art that she made of Da Man so that I can put it up on the Sylv site. I have done that this evening. Go check out her fabulous fan art at my Sylv Image Archives.

In the Music Listening stakes, I’ve tried a number of groups now. I’m afraid The Hives did not pass the audition (so far, they’re the only group I actually stopped listening to and moved on to the next group). I couldn’t work while they played. The Strokes were like the Ramones in that I didn’t mind having them on in the background, but I don’t need to listen to them a lot. Barenaked Ladies, Norah Jones, P. J. Harvey, and Siouxsie and the Banshees have all made the grade. I might end up purchasing some of their music later on. Got Mudhoney playing now and it’s not doing anything for me. Not quite as distracting as The Hives, but not as in the background as The Strokes. I listened to The Sugarcubes, but don’t remember any of their music, so I guess they’re in the “good background” group. Hmm, maybe when I’m done I can do a tabular summary. Or maybe I’ll forget who all that I listened to and have to start all over again. Heh.

Ah, it’s Friday! TGIF! And after my rough 3-day work week (ha!) I could used to this schedule: Work a Day. Day Off. Work a Day. Day Off. Work a Day. Two Days Off.

Anyhoo, after 2 Fridays without a BWs gathering, we met today. Good thing I brought my folks – it more than doubled the number of us there. And since dad was driving us home, I actually got a non-virgin daiquiri. I went with the vodka in place of rum (light on vodka) and it was yummy. So I had a second. Mom had an amaretto sour, which I tried, and was shocked when I didn’t get that awful alcohol aftertaste that I associate with most drinks. I might have to try an amaretto sour on me own some time. (Well, provided I’m not driving.)

When I got home, I started chatting with Judi who was being grumpy – turns out the new Doctor Who has been cast! Alas, it’s not Paul McGann (not that any of us seriously thought he would be), but instead Christopher Eccleston. As soon as one of my friends mentioned he was in Cracker, I remembered who he was (the “police chief” or whatever you want to call it that Cracker worked for/with). Cool, I always liked him. I seriously doubt he will oust Sylv from my favorite Doctor position, but I shall welcome him to the fold! (If you’re curious to know my complete order, it goes Doc7, Doc5, Doc6-Doc1-Doc2, Doc8 (I’d like him more if he were given better audios), Doc3, Doc4. I like ’em all, though – so even being “last” is not a bad thing.

Yes, in Ohio we get fog days from time to time. Today’s fog is not only nasty for visibility, it’s also precipitating as ice. So most of the schools in Miami County are closed. I wouldn’t be surprised if the other schools close after a bit. We started with a 2 hour delay, but I just got the call that we were closed for today. Cool. This March was going to be a long one with no days off, but now we’ve had two. I’ll just have to find some things to do to entertain myself here. Heh. 😉

PS, trying out Violent Femmes as suggested by Mags – and you know, I’ve heard “Blister in the Sun” before. And liked it. Cool. (Had no idea who did that song until now.) You know, like the Barenaked Ladies, there don’t seem to be any women in this group… 😉

I hope everyone had a fun day today. I’m just off to watch the sequel to Leapin’ Leprechauns. That would be Spellbreaker: Secret of the Leprechauns, for those of you who didn’t know. (I would suspect that was most of you.) Still, if you ever get a hankering to see Sylvester McCoy play a Leprechaun, these are the movies to watch! 🙂

YAY! We got snow! And plenty of it. Heck, enough snow so that, not only is Newton closed today, but every other school in the county, plus every other school in the surrounding counties. Even Dayton City Schools are canceled, and that only happens every decade or so. There was one school that was in the list o’ closings/delays that was only set for a 2 hour delay. After 20 minutes of all the school/business listings it repeated and this time they were closed.

Yesterday at lunch, one of my co-workers predicted that not only would school be closed today, but would also be tomorrow. I’m happy enough with today’s closure, but if I get another day tomorrow, I think I’ll enjoy it as well. 🙂 (What can I say? I’m easy to please!)

They’re predicting 3-6″ of snow for tomorrow. So stay tuned to find out if the weatherman was lying or telling the truth!

PS: Hope you had a fun Ides of March! (I’m sure you did, unless your name was Julius Caesar.)

InMotionHosting responded to my support e-mail – turns out they’d suspended the account because of some spurious .php code that was threatening to crash the entire server. They’ve reinstated the account, so that’s good. And the .php code? Well, I’d been playing around (unsuccessfully) with their MySQL database option and I think I screwed it up. That’ll teach me to not start building a MySQL database before I know anything about it.

So the reason for the website being down was my fault, not theirs… Go figure. 🙂

No, it’s not me that’s down, but my website. Currently, Pagefillers isn’t working. Gah! That means my main e-mail isn’t working. And my various pictures and files that I link to with LiveJournal aren’t working either. I’ve put in a request to InMotionHosting’s tech support. Now to see how long it takes ’em to sort it out. I hate the wait…

Today’s been a nice, lazy day. It started out going off to the UU Church in New Madison to listen to dad preach about the Pharisee and the Publican. It lead to a wonderful discussion afterwards with the congregation. I like dad’s parable sermons – good stuff. Like parables themselves, his sermons makes you think. We went to Wendy’s for lunch and I had the Mandarin Chicken Salad (ok, and fries…)

After church, it was naptime. Leo sometimes sat with me, but mostly he played around the room. Around 3:30 mom came over and we popped popcorn and watched The Italian Job (the remake). Then I got online to discover my site was down. Grrr. So now I’m eating supper (just a mix & match of stuff – starting with peach Fruit on the Bottom yogurt – yum!) and listening to Rhapsody.

Speaking of the music listening bit, I’ve listened to the Von Blondies, but should probably check out their entire collection since the sampler had few songs. Also listened to Bowie and Kate Bush – got some good stuff there. Then the Ramones, where I discovered half of their songs all start the exact same way. But the music is catchy (and hey, you get to learn the tunes pretty easily ;-). The Dixie Chicks were next and I liked what I heard there (and I did think of hergrace when “Goodbye Earl” was playing). I think mom would really like them too. Just enough “pickin’ and grinnin'” to satisfy her Bluegrass Gospel love. I’m now going through the two Hothouse Flowers albums I found on Rhapsody (a group I first heard on Lovejoy and have been moderately interested in since). After them it will be The Cramps then The White Stripes. I can’t remember now who suggested the Cramps (drake57?), but I know that elsaf likes The White Stripes.

I’m still taking suggestions, so if you can think of someone you think I should give a listen to, let me know and I’ll seek them out.

Anyhoo, back to growling at InMotionHosting. OK, so this is the first downtime I’ve ever had with them, but it’s still frustrating.