A Fresh Batch of Names!

I love names! Here's some more from You Can't Call It "It"! 

Dali-reminds me of the Surrealist painter (who was a little bit screwy) but I like it as a first name

Magnus-another solid name

Xander-no need for the "Ale-" in front, this is fine by itself

Zephyr-a strong wind? I like it as a first name, nonetheless

Condor-another solid name

Thoreau-like Henry David's last name, makes a good first name

Conon-I just like it.

These are all boys' names on account that I didn't see any girls' names that I really liked. I'm still really liking Atlas, despite what certain people may say about it. 

I Want

Vanity Fair, Thackeray

To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee

War and Peace, Tolstoy

The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne

Pride and Prejudice, Austen 

Little Women, Alcott

The House of Seven Gables, Hawthorne

The Complete Works of Charles Dickens

I want this so much. 

This lady in Washington, D.C. makes wallets and purses out of old, used books. It's beautiful. I think it's kind of funny that my copy of War and Peace has the same cover as the one she made the purse out of.

Anyone have an extra $160 they'd like to give me to get one of these? :)

Casino Royale

I've decided to give a weekly movie review. Hopefully I can keep up with it. I know you're all so very excited. Please, try to contain your excitement and do not pee your pants. 

This week's review: Casino Royale (2006). 

Fact #1: The James Bond series by Ian Flemming has made more money movie/book wise than any other series. It's probably soon to be surpassed by Harry Potter. But it still holds that number one spot. 

This movie was just a little bit.....ridiculous. I was really looking forward to seeing this movie but other than Daniel Craig in the lead role I was let down. I mean, so much of the whole plot line was completely implausible although for a James Bond movie I guess that is pretty typical. In one scene the guy was applying an AED to himself...while he was still conscious. Ok, you should be unconscious if you need an AED and have no pulse. It means your heart has stopped and usually by then you can't really attach an AED to yourself. Please correct me if I'm wrong. It just blew my mind away. 

Overall, it was great action-wise and a pretty good movie if you like a thriller/action flick. It was classic Bond with a good-looking guy with a British accent to play him. Then he always falls in love with one (or sometimes more) beautiful woman. The plot had a nice pace and I liked the fact that you saw two sides of James Bond as opposed to this superman you had seen in earlier films. 

Overall, it was fresh. 

My Five-Year Plans

Stalin had fiver-year plans so I figure since Stalin had them, I should have them. However, mine have nothing to do with increasing industrialization and the amount of farms in my country. Mainly because I don't have a country. 

In five years I want...

...to be in the MTC if not already in the mission field.

...to have a high school diploma.

...to have visited at least Germany.

...to have been to MOMA. 

...to be fluent in German.

...to have two years of college done and possibly a nursing degree. 

...to have read all of Shakespeare's plays.

...to have actually read a play by Henrik Ibsen. 

...to have been to the Rijksmuseum.

...to have been in a hot air balloon. 

...to be content. 

Stalin did it and so can I. (I like Stalin.)

My One-Year

Today is my one-year anniversary with Axel. 

For those of you who don't know Axel, he's the steel rod attached to eight inches of my spine. 
Before my surgery, I always thought I would feel differently with a rod in my spine. I don't. I sometimes feel less flexible but then again, I was never very flexible. 

Reflecting back on my surgery, I guess it wasn't all that bad. I don't remember a lot of intense pain but I do remember some. I suppose it helped that I had a morphine pump in my hand...

The worst memories I have about my surgery are the sneezes. Harmless sneezes,  right? 

Wrong. I remember being afraid that I was going to sneeze. 

Sternutaphobia-the fear of sneezing.

The second worst memory is about my third(?) night in the hospital. They had just taken me out of the ICU (ahhh, probably my best memory) and I was sharing a room with some other little girl. There was a partition in between us but we could still hear her talking and what-not. So this particular night, I couldn't get to sleep. It's hard to get comfortable when you're used to sleeping on your side but you're forced to sleep on your back. It's also difficult to get comfortable when a nurse has to come in every hour and put this foam wedge underneath your back and rotate you from side to back to side, etc. Basically, I had gotten no sleep at all. So it's early in the morning and my mother finds this t.v. channel that plays soothing instrumental music and shows panoramic views of lovely countrysides. Just as I'm drifting off to sleep, the girl on the other side decides to wake up and ask her dad to find some cartoons for her. He flips on the t.v. and instead of people talking or whatever, there is this loud static sound coming from the t.v. The dad fiddles around with it for a while and finally turns it off. The little girl whines and insists he put on some cartoons and so he turns the t.v. back on. Once again, static noise. By this time, I'm wide awake and starting to get a migraine. Forget falling to sleep, this little girl wants to watch cartoons. 

Vicodin is also another bad memory. 

So now I have a thirteen-inch scar on my back and I beep when I go through the metal detectors at the airport. 

So what should we do, Axel? Watch Double Indemnity with my new Netflix account that can play videos instantly on X-Box Live? Yes. 

Tutoring and Tori

First matter of business: a Torus (Tori for plural). AKA, a doughnut. I thought it might be called a torque but that's a force that has something to do with physics. Wikipedia tried to explain it to me but I wasn't really following. Anyway, to be technical, a torus is a "surface of revolution generated by revolving a circle in three dimensional space about an axis coplanar with the circle, which does not touch the circle". Just think of a doughnut. ("Doughnut? OH! You mean a torus!" That is what I'm going to say from now on.)

Secondly, today at tutoring we named our smoke detector Peter. The detector keeps making all these beeping noises (probably because we need to change the battery) and the girl I was tutoring, Marissa, was getting a headache from it. So, I decided that since it was making random noises we should name it Peter. She liked it. From hence on, she would say every time it beeped "Stop it, Peter! I'm going to throw you out a window if you don't stop!" 

It was fun. 

Let the Easter Egg Hunt Begin!

Today is Easter. We had a pretty epic egg hunt. Of course Colby and Abigale are totally into it and running around everyone as Leah drifts between the back and front yards, picking up the more obscure eggs that Clayton hid.  But Colby and Abby are pretty good hunters, too. It also helps when my mother pulls Leah and Colby aside and tells them to leave the more obvious ones for Abby to find. 

Overall, Easter is a great holiday. It seemed to kind of come quickly this year but to me, Easter is relaxing. It's also a time to reflect on the meaning of Easter and I'm glad that it's here to help remind me of the sacrifice Christ made.