When I first started blogging I manually entered in my updates on gURLpages a long, long time ago.

After that I switched to Blogger about a year after it came out and was hosted on there for a while, then switched to being hosted on Geocities (before Yahoo! took away free ftp access). I hated how Blogger kept eating my posts though and I also hated the need for remotely hosted comments.

Several years after that I got my own host and used Greymatter for awhile. I started chaffing though when I saw all the cool plugins that Movable Type had, and it seemed like Greymatter was being abandoned. Then our hosting company did a fly by night and I lost all of my archives from the past four or five years. It was very devastating.

We switched to a new host, Dreamhost, and installed Movable Type there and I've been using it for years now. That being said, I am looking to switch to WordPress, because once Movable Type started charging for installs their user base dried up and all of their plugins now require way more work than I strictly require for my little set up here. So, WordPress it is.

They all had their pluses and minuses, but I have to say I'm looking forward to WordPress and what it can do. I'm ready to go fully php and maybe throw in some flash while I'm at it.

2. How did you get into blogging? How long have you had a blog?

Well, I got into blogging thanks to a little site called Full Moon Graphics. They made the graphics that I used on my site on gURLpages all those ages ago and I was quite a fan of the artist. She got into blogging and using Blogger and I decided to tag along. I have been blogging on and off for eight or nine years now. I don't have my original archives but I started coding websites in 1998 and I know that I must have gotten my first blog in late 1999 or early 2000.

3. Why do you blog?

It was a nice place to write and easily publish updates on my thoughts and what was going on in my life. Later it became stress relief during school, and a great way to connect with people and let off steam about classes because I was to shy to do so in class. During 9/11 blogs were the only way I had to find out what was going on as all the major news sites and search engines were either timing out or crashing from the load of people just as worried and scared as I was.

Now? I'm far more careful about what I blog. When I started I could honestly say I was probably the only girl in the school who had a blog. I posted my essays and stories on my blog and had it get picked up by search engines and then was accused of plagiarizing from my own website by teachers that couldn't believe that a girl my age knew what a computer was let alone had coded her own website and blog. But, things have changed and now everyone and their mother has a myspace/xanga/livejournal type thing where they post far more personal things than I ever would have risked and then some. It's become passe. People ask why I don't have a myspace or facebook account and they don't seem to understand that I've been "myspacing" for nearly a decade now on my own terms and in my own way.

When diaryland came out I stayed away because it wasn't why I was blogging, I was blogging for me and not for other people and diaryland (regardless of the word diary) seemed more like a way to fight with people in RL with words and by posting slanderous and scintillating things about themselves and others. Then the "new thing" because livejournal, then deadjournal, then xanga, then myspace and now facebook. Same shit, different site. I said no 10 years ago to diaryland and I'm still saying no today. No, way. That's not why I blog.

I blog for me, really. To hold myself accountable to my goals, to organize my thoughts, to answer some questions for myself outloud. I have other blogs for other purposes, but really this one is just for me. That's probably why it's so neglected, actually. When I want community I go to a forum, but (aside from the stray commenter) that's not really what my blog has ever been about.

4. Do you have theme blog (i.e. crafting, cooking, deployment, pregnancy, etc.) or is it all in one?

I broke down my blogs into several different groups. There's this one which is my main one, my photo blog Graphica, my book blog Fabula, my video blog (which might or might not survive the restructuring) Pixi Agito, and my Sims 2 blog Somnium. Each blog does it's own, pretty self evident, thing and the only place where they overlap really is here.

5. Do you let it all hang out on your blog, or do you keep it light?

I keep it pretty light for now, I have a personal RL journal where I really let go. But here? If I have something I'm ready to say to someone, I'd rather say it to their face. Like I said, I'm not into the passive aggressive online back stabbing.

My blog has always been my way of getting away from the heavy stuff in one way or another.

6. What is your favorite thing about your blog? What has it given you?

It's helped me learn a lot about web design to the point where, when I went to college, there wasn't much new to learn until junior year. It's given me a place to be organized, to be publically accountable for my goals and dreams, and even a place to enjoy telling some stories for the Sims 2, to share some of my photography and post some bits of code that might help someone else with their site.

Even if I have no readers at all I still feel like I'm heard just because my thoughts are now out there. Whether that's true or not is beside the point. Just posting helps you feel not so very alone after all.

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Autumn is starting (here in the US, anyway), and kids are heading back to school–does the changing season change your reading habits? Less time? More? Are you just in the mood for different kinds of books than you were over the summer?

I think every season might affect what I read a little bit. But, I always thought this was especially true in fall. It's been ingrained in me for many years that fall equals back to work. I think that's why I decided to rush the 101 in 1001 when I discovered it in mid august. I wanted to start it on the first day of september because that's when you go back to school.

A large part of my 101 in 1001 is reading. I have a habit of squirreling away good reads but then never get around to that long stretch of time when I feel I can devote hours to reading them. So they are unread. Mine is especially ridiculous because there are over 100 books in my 400 book collection that I haven't read. Eep!

But, now that I "have" to read them I'm finding enjoyment in reading books again. Even if does feel just a teensy bit like an assignment. It doesn't hurt that I'm rewarding myself with more books as I go. Before now the only thing I was reading was fanfiction of various works that I had already read. It was because I knew the characters and already cared about them and so there was less effort to get into the story, both on my part and on the writer's part. Now that I'm reading new books I find that, while sometimes its hard to care for these new characters, through poor writing or poor characterization, other times the writer makes it all too easy and I'm glad I made the effort to read the book.

So, is this a habit for autumn? Yes and no. I normally find myself gearing up for a back to work mentality in autumn regardless, whether it's organizing things for work or play, doing fall cleaning to get ready to shut up the house for the winter, or looking for a new reading list or new recommendations, I always find something new to focus on for fall. My reading habits often, but don't always, get impacted. I guess I just feel like it's time for a change and a change of season is a good enough reason as any to go ahead with it.

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So we decided to *gasp* try a different pizza place. We tried out Pizza-Ria. And, since we were trying out a new restaurant anyway, I thought I'd go ahead and try a new type of pizza while I was at it. So my husband ordered a half ANSE standard, half canadian bacon with pineapple. He loves this type of pizza and has been hoping I'll try it and love it too.

It was fully as weird as I expected it to be. It didn't taste bad or anything. It was just... weird. I guess I would be open to it as a breakfast/brunch option because that's what it tastes like to me, a breakfast food. If I'm in the mood for something sweet I might go for it, but otherwise just give me my ANSE standard.

As for Pizza-Ria in general I have to say, meh. The crust was really dry, they didn't have canned mushrooms as an option and the pizza was served in squares in the size we normal get (16") instead of in pie slices. They are an okay emergency option but I think the next time Two Brothers is closed we'll just try some place else.

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We got a phone call that was automatically sent out to everyone in the suburb advising us that sand bags were available for our drive ways, that flooding was severe, and that Salt Creek had been allowed to empty out into the abandoned quarry. This sounded interesting, a river flowing into that huge empty quarry! Naturally we headed out to see just what this looked like and we weren't the only ones. There must have been about a dozen people there checking things out at any given time. Slow Sunday, and with all this rain, what else is there to do?

The above is the first part of the quarry where they had made a drain off of Salt Creek and a small river bed to lead to the quarry. Those little "bushes" in the river bed are actually trees!

And, here's the quarry. It wasn't a lake before, I can tell you that!

Next we drove to a nearby park to see how bad the Salt Creek itself was, only to find the parking lot completely flooded. Those concrete lines in the water are the parking bumpers.

Here's the rest of the parking lot.

Hopefully whatever is in that storage unit is water proof. Also, check out the dumpster in the background. Flooded all the way up to the holds that the dumpster trucks use to pick it up by!

We went to a different park because the first one was a) flooded and b) had boarded up fences all the way around so you couldn't get to the Salt Creek at all. We ended up on a bridge that went over it that is part of the Illinois Prairie Path.

The poor trees were flooded up to their branches.

The current was moving incredibly fast. Between that and the dark day it was hard to get good pictures.

That and the sun was starting to set. With the drop in temperature we decided to head home.

It was probably a good thing it all went into the quarry. Don't want to think about how bad the flooding would have been otherwise!

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So many people I know have been affected by this virus and the way that it is implemented and done is so incredibly sleazy and takes horrible advantage of people that only use computers and don't know them. If you don't know what this is, you are incredibly lucky (and probably have a good ad blocker).

Antivirus 2008 is a "product" that advertises itself through pop ups on sleazy websites. It looks like a normal windows xp type window that is advising you that there is a problem with your system. It tells you that you have a virus and they have detected it and to click here to get it taken care of. It's fairly obvious that this is totally bogus, if you take a moment to consider how your computer works.

How long does it take a regular antivirus program to scan your computer? 10 minutes? 20 minutes? 30 minutes? How long does it take this totally bogus ad to tell you that you have a virus? What? In the time it takes to load a page? Really? What makes you think, for even a second, that it isn't totally lying to you then? Though, the fact of the matter is, I know that people do think the pop up tells them the truth and click on it and download this software to their computer. You've just opened a big can of worms.

So, next the virus installs itself. It is a virus, or more specifically malware. AVG, Avast and Computer Associates can (usually) all pick it up. The .exe for the virus is constantly updated though and all three main antivirus programs are struggling to keep up. Sometimes it does not detect it, though often an adaware or spyware program will, to little effect, as they can't uninstall it.

What does this virus do? Essentially it just seems to be a bloated trojan that you can't uninstall through conventional means, there is generally a keylogger involved as well so that when you give them your credit card number it can send it off to them since this software is in no way legal or accredited. Lovely. Don't make any credit card purchases using your computer until this is out of your system.

How do I get this damn thing off? The way they want you to get it off is by paying them to take it off. This is why I am labeling this as a market tactic. I bet they are making a fortune right now off of this with all those stolen credit card numbers. The better way leaves you with two options. One, you do this yourself. Two, you take it into a shop and have a professional do it for you.

So, you want to try and uninstall this monster by yourself.

Step One, if you have AVG, Avast or Computer Associates, run an update on it and then run a full scan. If you have done this and it hasn't found Antivirus 2008 wait an hour, run an update and do it again. If it still hasn't found it skip to Step Three. If it picks it up you may be lucky and get that virus out of there on your first go. Reboot and run the scan again, full scan. Then run any adaware type program such as Adaware and/or Spybot. If it's truly gone then go to Step Four.

Step Two, if you have crap like Norton or McAfee in your system, uninstall it. It's crap. You can reinstall it later if you really feel strongly about having crap on your system but for now we need to take the kid gloves off and use some real software to fix this problem, ok? Install any of the three above antivirus programs I mentioned, two are free for personal use, one has a free trial so all three will work for our purposes. Once it's installed, update it to the latest version and run a full scan. If you have done this and it hasn't found Antivirus 2008 wait an hour, run an update and do it again. If it still hasn't found it skip to Step Three. If it picks it up you may be lucky and get that virus out of there on your first go. Reboot and run the scan again, full scan. Then run any adaware type program such as Adaware and/or Spybot. If it's truly gone then go to Step Four.

Step Three, the virus scanner didn't pick it up? You must have a very recent copy of the virus. Try using Malwarebyte's Anti-Malware and this guide. Reboot and run the antivirus scan again, full scan. Then run any adaware type program such as Adaware and/or Spybot. If it's truly gone then go to Step Four.

Step Four, preventive measures. Finally, install Firefox along with a decent Adblocker and delete the IE icon from your desktop, quick launch bar, etc. That way there is no chance that any user of your computer will ever do anything like that ever again. If it happened once, it will happen again, spammers, scammers, and worse are getting better and better at tricking the average computer user into compromising their passwords, their system and their pocket book. You need to get better too and having none of their stuff ever display for you in the first place works to that end.

The best way to avoid an annoying marketing tactic is to not give it a chance to market to you in the first place.

This was a participation in Monday Peeves.

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35) Read all unread books in personal collection (not including reference, text books, supplemental).

I only ended up getting two books read this week. I am in a long stretch of boring books that I am determined to get through. I am just very glad that I decided to reward myself and, for every five books that I get through, I get myself a book off of my wish list, whether through book mooch, amazon, or other means. It has been a god send in a dearth of good reading, like I'm experiencing now.

40) Go out on a date with Matthew once every other week.

Our first date ended up being a stay at home date due to the heavy rain that has been bombarding Chicago all weekend. We watched the BBC's Pride and Prejudice (the 1995 rendition). It definitely had it's differences from the 1985 one which we already own. The 1995 one was more human (the actors expressed a wider range of emotions and touched more on the improper scenes of Wickam's debauchery, etc in Pride and Prejudice). It also had children, which 1985 lacked, and depictions of other classes than the rich and the lesser rich. And yet, at the same time, Lizzie's parents were depicted as more inhuman and selfish than they were in the 1985 movie.

In the 1985 movie it was all for humor and the characters were more like characitures of themselves. Yes, the father was distant and spent more time laughing at his family than raising them, yes the mother was thoughtless and simple, but they still clearly loved their children, if not each other. In 1995 they were more in earnest and the mother appeared far more self centered then I like to think of her as. In the 1985, yes, she was silly, but she still loved her daughters and had their back, so to speak.

Anyway, enough of the review. We had a lot of fun eating popcorn snuggled up on the couch and, as it was a made for TV Series that we started late, we ended up staying up until nearly 2AM. It was still lots of fun though.

53) Finish unpacking from the move.

We got no where with this this week. I managed to sort through a stack of some 100+ CDs we had. Mostly programs, old course CDs, burned CDs, back ups, music, games, and more Linux versions than you could shake a stick at! As for the rest. Well... we did get several things listed on Freecycle and we shipped off several books that had been hanging around to people on Book Mooch. We also got our other bulletin board up, but Matt's clothes still haven't been sorted and his art supplies have still conquered the dining room table. Alas. Maybe this week.

66) Clean out my inbox.

Made some progress on this. Managed to get through 2002 and 2003. The strange emails I came across in my work though. There were old emails from my high school teachers and principal, stuff from the reporters who did articles on me when I graduated, stuff from Scholastic from when I won that award for my senior writing portfolio. There were strange forwards from friends, and even stranger memes from the same. One was so idiosyncratic that I had no idea who it was from and couldn't guess even after reading a whole survey about them. Well, two years down, only five to go.

68) Finish and organize this list.

I made two more goals this week. Only 25 more to go. Any ideas at all would be greatly appreciated.

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To understand how amazing it is that I am trying cold tea you have to understand that in Pennsylvania we have Turkey Hill Iced Tea. It is the iced tea. It is what we mean when we say iced tea and it is absolutely delicious and, generally speaking, can only be found in Pennsylvania. I can only imagine what it would be like if the rest of the world discovered this amazing drink. Anyway, I've gone without for several months, living in Illinois I can only partake of Turkey Hill Iced Tea once a year, if that. So desperation drove me to try something else.

Normally I hate anyone elses attempt at iced tea because it just isn't sweet enough, or interestingly tasted enough. It tastes bland and bitter. This tea did not. With the addition of honey and it's own Magic Moon mix of ingredients (floral, sweet and a bit fruity) it was delicious. Not quite Turkey Hill, but a close second. I enjoyed it very much and loved having it as a cold alternative to my morning tea over breakfast.Yum! I'm glad I gave it a go.

That makes four! I have to keep count here on my blog or else I think I will lose count very quickly.

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Today is the 7th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. I know that not all of you who read are in the U.S., but still, it’s vital that none of us who are decent people forget the scope of disaster that a few, evil people can cause–anywhere in the world. It’s not about religion, it’s not about politics, it’s about the acknowledgment that humans should try to work together, not tear each other apart, even when they disagree.

So, feeling my way to a question here … Terrorists aren’t just movie villains any more. Do real-world catastrophes such as 9/11 (and the bombs in Madrid, and the ones in London, and the war in Darfur, and … really, all the human-driven, mass loss-of-life events) affect what you choose to read? Personally, I used to enjoy reading Tom Clancy, but haven’t been able to stomach his fight-terrorist kinds of books since.

And, does the reality of that kind of heartless, vicious attack–which happen on smaller scales ALL the time–change the way you feel about villains in the books you read? Are they scarier? Or more two-dimensional and cookie-cutter in the face of the things you see on the news?

At first I was a bit insulted to think that such a large thing as 9/11 and similar terrorist attacks could affect something so unrelated as reading habits. But, when I thought about it I realized it was true. As my mother pointed out, 9/11 changed everything. It was a whole new world afterwards and reading habits, yes, were changed as well. As were writing habits now that I think of it.

I would have to say that one of the things that I no longer find palatable are two dimensional bad guys. Villains that are just bad for the sake of being bad. If anything the terrorism of the times has taught me that there are more reasons behind evil deeds then just the desire to be evil and that it is important to know them, to understand them, and to use that knowledge to better defend against them.

So, I find any books that have people be evil just to be evil (my recent reading of Paris Trout comes to mind) just isn't enough anymore. There has to be reasons, there has to be logic, there has to be more. I guess I can't stomach mindless violence and thoughtless evil. I never really could, but I think it's become more so since 9/11.

As to villains being scarier, I have to say yes and no. It depends on how they are portrayed. Mindless terror is frightening, but terror with purpose and thought that cannot be stopped, that cannot be defended against due to the protagonists' unpreparedness or ineptitude resulting in inevitable death, that is even more frightening.

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Assam (Fatikcherra Estate) Tea, as it says on its label, is made from Assam from India. It smelled interesting enough and so I decided to go one morning without Liptons to give it a try. The final verdict? Meh. It was palatable, slightly spicy, and good enough that I could drink a whole mug without issue but, when it comes right down to it, I prefered my Liptons over it and probably would only fall back on it as a last resort. All in all, not very impressed.

Well, that makes three!

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The trail we chose was one we had always promised ourselves we would finish exploring at a local park. It's probably not officially marked state hiking trail (it's not paved for one thing and all the ones around here seem to be paved). It also kept resulting in the final product being some parking lot or another. We also were continually reminded we were never far from civilization. Lots of beer bottles, broken glass, and trash were strewn wherever there was ample seating. And, of course, people felt they needed to make their mark wherever there was a chance to do so.

That being said there was a lot of natural beauty to be found, and it had been so long since I hiked I ended up enjoying myself anyway. There were large stretches without trash strewn about them, and a surprisingly large number of (small) wildlife that scampered about as soon as they heard me coming. The trail also followed along a river for a ways, though I only found one stream leading into it.

There was also a stretch next to small valley which had been allowed to grow wild with prairie wild flowers.

There were also several flowers along the trail path. Have I mentioned how long it's been since I've been along a trail path? I wish I had gotten more pictures!

Along with the flowers there were signs that fall is setting in.

On our loop back we crossed over a ravine. Here is the view from the start of the ravine towards the river. The trail passes over it.

We hiked along it a ways, past more trash, and finally clamored out onto another parking lot. Along it was more flowers as we hiked on the other side of the small valley.

Then we ended up finding a path through the little valley and decided to take it so that we could get back to the other side and head home.

This is just to show how huge the plants were that grew in that little dip. I'm not crouching, I'm standing full height!

On the other side and heading back towards the car we stopped at the pond for a bit to watch the antics of a duck trying to show how big and strong and manly he was. While we stood there most of the ducks swam away, save for three young ducks who hadn't yet learned that humans != food.

There was a big duck and two little ducks. The little ducks followed the big ducks example, and the big duck seemed to accept this responsibility and keep a close eye on us.

Here are the two little ducks. They all looked hopefully at us and the big duck even quacked at us as if miffed that we weren't giving him food. But, all we did was snap pictures of him and his siblings.

They went back into the water and swam around nearby still looking hopeful for a bit.

Then they all swam away in a huff, though the littlest duck kept looking back hopefully. Cute little ducks.

They finished the trip off nicely. Even almost made up for not knowing our mileage. Almost.

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Towards that end, this week I think I will only focus on reading unread books (as that pretty much has to be ongoing) and unpacking from the move. I will also try and get my pedometer to work properly in time for next weekend's hike. If I have more time on my hands next weekend I will worry about working out what goals I need to work on then.

35) Read all unread books in personal collection (not including reference, text books, supplemental).

One of the things I discovered this week was this goal was going to be one of the hardest of the lot. I knew there were a lot of books I hadn't read thanks to brown bag book sales. A whole grocery bag of books for $5? How could I resist? But, doing the math, I found that my unread books totaled 210, which would have meant reading one book every five days. Then I unpacked several more books since. At least another half shelf of which I haven't read.

That being said I am still being stubbornly positive. I did a bit of a test run before this started and in two weeks managed to read seven books. So far I have read ten books towards this goal, though I haven't reviewed them all yet. To check my progress and see what I have just finished reading and my thoughts, check out my book blog Fabula.

Only 200+ books to go! I'll have an exact number once I get around to cataloging and indexing the lot.

53) Finish unpacking from the move.

We made great progress on this over the weekend. The office is mostly unpacked save for one box and all of Matt's art supplies which are currently taking over the dining room table. We also took all of the stuff destined for the basement down to the basement and I reorganized our holiday decorations into neatly labeled boxes instead of just in a variety of crates strewn about with most of it not fitting in them. Stuff continues to disappear nicely and I am very glad we are now in a much larger apartment. This place is a perfect fit for us.

Pictures will be posted as soon as the last of the office disappears to their away places and as soon as those people from Freecycle kindly take the stuff we don't want off our hands. The porch, also, is nearly clear. I have been looking forward to having tea out there since day one, hopefully that can happen soon before it gets too cold!

42) No TV or computer the first weekend of every month.

The first weekend could have gone better. The problem was we had so much work to do and it was in the way of doing anything fun (unless it involved the computer) so when we finally pooped out there was nothing to do to pass the time until we worked again. We did end up doing a lot of reading. I finished reading When You Are Engulfed in Flames and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes to Matthew, both books which I had started a while ago with him. I also started reading Strength to Love to him and we got about half way through.

We also broke out a card deck at one point and played for awhile. Hence the reason there is a new goal to learn three new card games. Matt doesn't like Speed, or I Declare War and neither of us are too fond of Fish, which leaves Kings in the Corner and Crazy Eights, and the later is too much like Uno for us to enjoy with a limited deck.

Hopefully the next weekend we do this we will have a clear dining room table so we can work on one of the puzzles, play RISK or break out some other board game. Without a mountain of boxes to bog us down the next weekend might be more fun that the first one was.

27) Learn to cook five meals from start to finish more or less from memory and have them turn out consistently.

Ugh. This one crashed and burned pretty badly this weekend. At least not literally. For my first recipe I decided I wanted to do spaghetti. Problem, none of our extensive collection of cookbooks has a recipe for just spaghetti in it. So, Matt decided to teach me how to do it his way. The big issue with this is our respective learning and teaching styles are in direct opposition to each other.

Problem one, I am a visual learner. If I don't see it in writing I can't retain it worth a darn. Problem two, Matt is an oral teacher. He expresses himself so much better in speaking than in writing, and the timing of switching teaching styles and deciding to write the recipe out while I'm in the middle of trying to cook it and need supervision the most probably could have been better. Problem three, the fact that while he may know I know nothing about cooking I don't think he realizes I know nothing about cooking. Like he has been in denial this whole time, or perhaps, more sweetly, he doesn't think I can possibly be that stupid about something he can do so amazingly well. I can and I am. It was doomed to failure.

At one point in the proceedings I was told to brown the meat for the sauce. At my blank look he gestured towards the pan vaguely and made a chopping motion with his hand. As I continued to look at him blankly he got frustrated and said, "You know... like you do when you brown chicken!" I love the man, but sometimes I honestly think he has no idea who he's talking to.

Matt's mounting frustration made my pride take even more of a battering and finally we both gave up and he finished the meal by himself. Yes, I'm really that bad. I think my next attempt will be out of a cookbook and I will find explanations for all the words I don't know well in advance. That was the large problem. Telling me to do something and then realizing he needs to explain it without using cooking terms and that he needed to often demonstrate it, like how to stir with a spatula and how to throw noodles. It was quite an eye opener I think.

68) Finish and organize this list.

Towards this end I now have made six new goals last week, bringing my total up to 74, you can find the list here. If you have any other ideas for goals that I could do feel free to leave a comment or drop me an email or an IM.

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I was looking through books yesterday at the shops and saw all the Twilight books, which I know basically nothing about. What I do know is that I’m beginning to feel like I’m the *only* person who knows nothing about them.

Despite being almost broke and trying to save money, I almost bought the expensive book (Australian book prices are often completely nutty) just because I felt the need to be ‘up’ on what everyone else was reading.

Have you ever felt pressured to read something because ‘everyone else’ was reading it? Have you ever given in and read the book(s) in question or do you resist? If you are a reviewer, etc, do you feel it’s your duty to keep up on current trends?

It's pretty easy for me to resist popular series in the works because I really dislike putting up with unfinished work. Just because I have so many unfinished series that I've read and am trying (and failing) to keep track of. It's mostly mangas, but for a while I tried to keep track of the Wheel of Time series too, which was a nightmare (I gave up). Once I know that the Twilight series is finished I'll most likely start picking up copies from the library. Is it?

Usually when I see a book that's become popular, either from Oprah's book club or because it's being made into a movie, than I'll see what it is about and what people have to say. If it piques my interest I'll pick up a copy from the library to come to my own opinion about it. Depending on how interesting it is I either pick it up from the library or go out and buy it.

On the one hand I've read The Alchemist because of all the hype, checked it out from the library. As a concept book, it worked. As a novel, for me, it didn't. It would have been much better a non-fiction presenting life theory then as a fiction that tried to awkwardly force characters to do it for them. On the other I also read The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants that I went out and bought, years before it became a movie, and I loved it. I'm glad that I didn't miss out on it just because it was a popular book at the time. Now insanely popular because of the movies.

So, I guess what I'm trying to say is a book has to be more than popular to get me to read it. It also has to have that certain something that interests me personally. And, an even more certain something to get me to buy it! Though, I have to admit, it being popular will help me overlook some faults I might not have otherwise, particularly the popular books that come from the library. I figure, what's the harm? It's free.

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(Sally on Sep 4, 2008 12:54 PM) Welcome to BTT. You make a good point: wait until you can get it from the library! That way it doesn't cost you, if you don't like it.

(Lyn - A Blog in the Rough on Sep 4, 2008 2:31 PM) Library reading is always the best, FREE! I too have trouble trying to keep up with unfinished series, I end up forgetting where it left off since I read so many other books in the meantime!

This food contains one food I know I don't like (celery), one that I'm ambivalent about (peanut butter) and one that I do like (raisins). So, I thought I'd give it a go, in the interest of expanding my culinary horizons.

I hated it. The celery was very bitter, almost acrid to me. My husband claimed it was particularly sweet celery too. I could only handle one bite and barely choked it down. The peanut butter and raisins did nothing to hide the nasty taste of the celery underneath it all. Yuck.

Two down, ninety-nine to go.

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So in my quest to try new foods and and expand my repertoire we went shopping at a Wild Oats (or at least that's what it used to be called, I think they might have changed it). Actually, we went there to see about getting some chinese noodles to make homemade lo mein from. I'm using "we" in the broadest sense as I don't cook at all, my husband does.

Now that all of the technicalities are out of the way, I was there in the hope of finding something new and interesting and not disgusting and my husband pointed to these little cheese wheels and said, "you've got to try these, they are so fun!" Food is rarely fun for me, but I decided to give it a go.

I loved them. They are okay by themselves, but they are really best served with a lunch of other things to eat: a bite of cheese, munch some chips, a bite of cheese, munch on a sandwhich. I am so glad I tried these little things. They also are a little fun because of the cool wax seal the wheels are in that you get to take off in much the same way the bubble tape bubble gum dispensers came off of that food. Only you take it off entirely in this case!

One down, one hundered to go. This one turned out to be a plus. A good omen! Here's a pic, along with a little flower that my husband made with the leftovers of wax from his cheese. He's so artsy. :)

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Tasks must be specific (ie. no ambiguity in the wording) with a result that is either measurable or clearly defined. Tasks must also be realistic and stretching (ie. represent some amount of work on my part).

THE MISSION

Complete 101 preset tasks in a period of 1001 days

WHY 1001 DAYS?

Many people have created lists in the past - frequently simple goals such as new year's resolutions. The key to beating procrastination is to set a deadline that is realistic. 1001 Days (about 2.75 years) is a better period of time than a year, because it allows you several seasons to complete the tasks, which is better for organizing and timing some tasks such as overseas trips or outdoor activities.

Continued reading 101 Goals in 1001 Days...

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