I love books!

Random Friday Post:
I'm a fan of books. I'm also in need of a list of new ones to read. So, here's a random little quiz I found. How many of these have you read? What's your favorite book of all time? (Really, I need to know. I'm keep a list.)

The BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?

Instructions:
Put an X next to the ones you've read.

X1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
X2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
X3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
X 5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
X 6 The Bible
X7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 1984 - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
X10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
X11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
X15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
X16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
X21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald X
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
X27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
X28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
X31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
X33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
X34 Emma - Jane Austen
X35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
X36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
X37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
X39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
X42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
X45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
X46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
X49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
The Game
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
X54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
X57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
X60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
X65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
X70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
X73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno - Dante X
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
X83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
X87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
X92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
X98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
X99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

I've never been so excited to go to bed in my life!

My parents delivered my new mattress to me tonight! I am beyond excited about it. My old one was starting to dip in the middle which translated into me not sleeping all that well. So, when the government gave me back some money a few weeks ago I decided that I would save it and spend it on a mattress. I didn't have to wait long. When I was in Wisconsin last weekend I noticed that a store nearby was having an amazing sale on mattresses so my dad and I headed over there to see what the catch was. Well, there was no catch, I picked out my new mattress, handed over my money and they told the warehouse to start stitching! They didn't deliver all the way to Chicago but thankfully my dad can be bribed with ice cream and he agreed to bring it down tonight and even take away my old one for me. (Extra bonus, my mom brought be an Easter basket and my dad bought everyone dinner!)
So, I have now upgraded to a queen size pillow top European something or other mattress that is like my own little piece of heaven. I think that I am going to need to invest in some new sheets soon though. The one set of queen sheets I have aren't quite deep enough. Oh well, I've been contemplating changing that up anyway. Also, I think that I might need to get a step stool in order to get into bed each night. This thing sits up high! And, it's only on the cheap frame that comes with it. I don't even know what it will be like when I actually get a real bed frame!
Anyway, if you can't find me sometime in the next week or so, it's likely that I am hiding away in my room. Good night!

Um, Really?

Seriously, there are some women with very poor bathroom etiquette in my office. I am sure that you all really wanted to hear about this but it's really bothering me today. The bathrooms in my office get cleaned about once a day or so but that still means there is a 24 hour period where we are on our own to keep it neat. I walked into one stall this morning to a toilet that hadn't been flushed completely. Really, is it that hard to hang around for 2 more seconds to make sure everything is taken care of? Later in the day I walked into one stall where it looks like someone had put toilet paper on the seat like a seat cover. Ok, fine, whatever you need to do. However, when you are done can you please be sure that the cover gets flushed so that I don't have to be the one to get rid of it for you? Is this how these people act at their own homes? If so, I wish I knew who it was so that I could be sure to never go to their houses.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

That's really all I got for you today...

I am SO not a morning person!

Me and mornings have never been friends. As long as I can remember, I have never liked going to bed but once I finally went to sleep, I never wanted to wake up either. Alarm clocks try in vain to get me up at the appropriate time each day. I am the master at snoozing without really even knowing I'm doing it. I'm pretty sure my dad had to wake me up most mornings growing up. And, I'm really not a lot of fun in the mornings. I have had roommates who thought for months that I really didn't like them. Then they figured out that I just didn't want to talk to them in the morning. Anytime after about 10am was much better.
So, you can imagine how much fun I have been today when I had to get up early to be out in the suburbs by 8am. It's not pretty! I'm with a co-worker so I am forcing myself to be civil enough. But, I almost cried when my alarm went off this morning. And to top it all off, I'm stuck sitting inside a printing plant waiting for them to print off more proofs of some letters and hoping that they are right so that I don't have to stay here even longer. The fact that there were doughnuts waiting here for us did help soften the blow a bit.
I'm happy that tonight I am heading up to Wisconsin to do a little free laundry and hang with my parents. And, tomorrow, there is nothing on the agenda. That means I can sleep in my very quiet room for as long as I want! Woo Hoo!
On another random note, I am very proud of myself for doing something very brave the other day. It was scary, but it all turned out fine. And now, I have random butterflies in my stomach and keep giggling to myself every once in awhile. You'll have to e-mail me separately if you want that story. I won't be posting anything about it for awhile.

It's the Thought that Counts, Right?

Many times in the last couple of weeks I have thought of blogging. I really, truly have. But, I just haven't had the energy. I used to take a few minutes out of a day at work to post something. My computer at work was faster than mine at home and it was a nice little break. With the new job, I really don't have time for it and don't feel comfortable doing as many personal things on my computer there (yet). When I get home at night, I think about sitting down to a post but usually get distracted and decide that I'll do it later. So, here's a short list of the things that I have thought about blogging. Maybe this will inspire me to give you more information. Let me know if you actually want to hear more about any of these.
1. I could give you a general update on the new job.
2. I could talk about the thousands of times I have had to travel down to the south side since I have started.
3. I could tell you about my really awesome financial planner dude and how I'm on the right track to retire well. Seriously, he's awesome. If you live in Chi-town and need someone, let me know and I'll get you his digits.
4. I could talk about my Friday night two weeks ago where everything I ate was in the shape of a cupcake.
5. Do you want to hear the story of the huge cockroach roaming my office today? It was gross.
6. How I'm having to learn self-control now that I work in one of the best shopping areas in this country. Seriously people, I have to walk by some of the best looking shoes I have ever seen!
7. How on my first day of work our office manager apparently described someone as being 'about as useful as tits on a nun' and I totally didn't hear her.
8. I made my first major mistake of my job the other day and lived to tell about it.
9. Do you want to hear how frustrating it is to still be paying rent in my current apartment when all I want is a place of my own? Really, is it that hard to find a subletter?
10. I went to Ohio for the first time in my life and went to a wedding of two people who I didn't know.
11. On said trip to Ohio I came down with a really nasty cold that almost lasted two weeks. I've since shared it with a couple of my co-workers. Whoops!
12. I did make the minestrone soup I talked about in my last post. It's not very exciting. I probably won't make it again unless I can figure out how to make it more interesting. I still have some in my fridge it you want to try it.
13. I did make some amazing macaroni and cheese last weekend. I wish I still had some of that in my fridge.
14. Did you know that it's still pretty much winter here in Chicago? I'm over it.
15. I've thought about doing my taxes 342 times. I still haven't done them.
16. I won $6 in the lotto today. Too bad I have to share that prize with 10 other people.

In the Kitchen

I got this cookbook as a Christmas present this year. Actually, I got a gift card that allowed me to get this cookbook but whatever. I love it, but I have yet to make anything out of it. (Well, except for the night that I discovered that this book had ever even been written. I was at a friends house and she had just gotten the book and we made one of the recipes for dinner that night) Silly, I know. there are some great recipes in here! Some are very complicated but many of them seem to be pretty simple and don't take hours to prepare. So, I have decided that it's time to try a few of them out. Since I'm going out of town this weekend and don't want to buy any more groceries before that, I will start next week. I think that first up on the list will be minestrone and then beef and brocolli in oyster sauce (which is what we made at my friend's house. it's tasty and quite simple.)