Summer Movies 2011 Part 1

I've been hanging around trailers.apple.com. I love this site! There are so many movies I want to see!

The Descendants 

General Orders No. 9

50/50

The Perfect Host

The Whistle Blower

The Tree of Life

Memorial Day - First Day of "Summer"

For me, Memorial Day marks the first day of summer! I've already had a great weekend and I ended this weekend with a bang. "Thor" in 3D. Not the best movie, but great company! My best friend Tone and I went to go see it. I'm so glad that I was able to go to a movie this afternoon, since my morning was spent sorting, cleaning, straightening, and organizing my room.

I ate way too much popcorn, but the ICEE was great. The first non-vegan fare I've consumed all day!

What are you doing for MEMORIAL DAY? Does this mark for you the "first day of summer"?

I even devoted a whole shelf on my one of my three bookcases to books I haven't yet read. It's going to be a great busy summer!

Now, I get to spend my evening serving people greek food. Hopefully, The Parthenon is busy tonight.

Have a great rest of your 3-Day weekend!!

Lauren

PS. Have you seen "Bridesmaids"? I did on Friday! IT was HILARIOUS! You have to go see it if you haven't yet!

What I Did Today

I had a blast today! I got to spend some much needed time with my friend Angel! She rocks btdubs!

We hung out at cafe indigo/indigo bridge books. I love that place. We ate soup and had bread and talked and read... and snuck out (left our stuff) and went to a local vintage store! I wanted all the old nancy drew books, jadite, and pyrex items there! Too bad I have no spending money!!!

Then, I got to spend some quality time carting my sister around town taking her to her various lessons. We even made a trip to the local library after dinner. 

I read, I cleaned, I listed. I'm in the process of creating a master list of everything under the sun I need to do! It's ridiculous how things creep up on you when you haven't written them down! This master list is going to be massive!

I work tomorrow and Friday at AE and my last Saturday shift at The Parthenon this week! I have a bachelorette party this Friday... We're going to see Bridesmaids. I'm super pumped! I also have a free movie pass... So, it's cheaper on me. Another exciting thing on Friday: PAY DAY!! I hope it's at least 100 bucks between the two places... I'm low on funds and I need to replenish... So I can get an awesome gift for the wedding girl... Yes, I did just say that!

My sister and I went to visit a local "shopping mall" because I wanted to see what The Yarn Shop was all about. Since I'm all about local and I'm wanting to expand my knowledge of knitting and crocheting we took a quick peep. This is an excellent place to start.  Much better selection then any Joann's, Michael's, or even Hobby Lobby. There was also a store called Pages in Time, it was an amazing Scrapbooking store. I'm not a scrapbooker, but I saw a lot of neat things that would lay nicely in a journal!! But wait, there's more! There was a third store that caught our eye Sew Creative! It was a sewing/vacuum repair store! If I hadn't thought to look, that Sutter Place Mall would still be a mystery. We also drove to The Quilted Kitty upon my sister's request, but it was closed. I've been there once with my mother, and we loved it. I'm excited to share it with my sister! I see a lot of those projects milling in my head. I better get busy actually doing them, instead of milling them about.

If the camera phone was working on my phone, we would have had a lot of lovely photos to accompany this post... But that story is for another post!

What did you do today?

the 100 books list

Image via wehearit.com

I found this post on SUNDAY MORNING SUGAR called "100 books to read before you die" and I thought I would share how many I have read or am planning on reading! 

Bold means I've read it. Star (*) means I want to read it.

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen* (I have started this book so many times, it will be on my summer reading list)

2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien

3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte* (I need to add it to a list)

4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling 

5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee*

6 The Bible* (I've read the entire New Testament - this year)

7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte

8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell (Favorite book of all time)

9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman

10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens

11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott (tried reading it when I was in middle school... I couldn't)

12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy

13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (I've read a majority)

15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier

16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien

17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulk

18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger*

19 The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger

20 Middlemarch – George Eliot*

21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell

22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald (Just read it this year)

23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens

24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy*

25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams*

27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky*

28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck*

29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll*

30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy*

32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens* (Again started it many times... I will conquer it)

33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis*

34 Emma – Jane Austen*

35 Persuasion – Jane Austen

36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis* (wait... wasn't the chronicles of narnia number 33??)

37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini*

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres

39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden

40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne

41 Animal Farm – George Orwell (GREAT BOOK!!)

42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez (I've read about 75% of that book for a class... I hated it with a passion)

44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving

45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins

46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery* (one of those I've started many times...)

47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy

48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood*

49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding

50 Atonement – Ian McEwan*

51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel*

52 Dune – Frank Herbert

53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons

54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen*

55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth

56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens

58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley*

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night – Mark Haddon (started it... not sure if I'll ever finish it)

60 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

65 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

70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville

71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens

72 Dracula – Bram Stoker*

73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett

74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses – James Joyce*

76 The Inferno – Dante*

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 (every Christmas I say, I'm going to read the whole thing...)

82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell

83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker*

84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro

85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert*

86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry

87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White 

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom* (I received this book on a blog gift exchange... Can't wait to read)

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle*

90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton

91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad

92 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*

98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl

100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo*

Summary: Alright, I've read only 7 out of 100 books on this list (technically 11 if you count all the harry potter books separately, but then the list would be longer than 100). And I want to read 36 out of the 100 (93). That's not that daunting of a task!

I had originally decided to make a list of books I wanted to read for the summer. But, I think I'm going to go with a more organic approach. Give myself a goal of 25 books and pick and choose. Because, sometimes I really am not in the mood for a book on the list, or it is just awful... But, I will have a wish list of books I would like to conquer in the year of 2011! Stay tuned!

Queen of Unfinished Projects

This title holds true for me... And I'm sick of it!

I have unfinished projects all around my room, or saved to my laptop...

So, this summer, I've decided to finish those started projects or to lay them to rest...

This also means my blog. This past winter I had so many awesome ideas that never came into fruition...

I'm ready to commit!! So my features are coming back and maybe some new stuff...

This is the SUMMER OF UNFINISHED PROJECTS! This needed to happen...

Tuesday's Task List:

1) Bathroom 

2) Put away the rest of my clothes

3) Clean out car

4) Light Laundry

This is all before noon 10:30am!! I better get crackin'!

What are you up to??

Why is when I'm content and completely happy and not looking, I get totally shaken and disappointed... Here's the deal... I'm not interested... I have way too many goals in my life to be distracted.

Looking up Plane tickets

I thought it would be muy expensivo... Turns out it's not that bad. I'll spend about $1000 on all my trips this year to visit Grad Schools this year. Let's hope the plane ticket prices stay down, and that I find some great deals!

School Updates

Well, I've narrowed down the places at least that I'm interested in...

New York

Chicago

Denver

Seattle

Portland 

Los Angeles

D.C.

Nashville

So far, Denver nor Nashville did not have any TESOL programs. But, that's alright. That just means I will have to find a time to visit those places another time. There are some awesome schools listed in the cities above. I'm still researching schools in New York and maybe I'm narrowing my options. But, I do want to be in a more metropolitan area. And all of these cities would be a great place to study!

Sorry to bore you with this, but, I for me this is very exciting!

Hope you had a wonderful blessed day.

Hmmm...

I've decided to postpone Summer School for the time being. But I'm still going to continue teaching myself and learning new things. 
Here are my goals to learn and advance in this summer:

Yoga

Bike Riding

Running

Calligraphy

Working with Modeling Clay

Painting

Knitting

Crocheting

Sewing

Vegan Baking

Guitar

Violin

Piano/Keyboard

Reading

This is a long extensive list, but these are my summer goals. I will write each one as the days go...


Today we are going to talk about: Yoga

Image via weheartit.com

Today I had the opportunity to go to a local yoga studio for free community yoga. The average age of the class was my age and there was also one male. I realized how out of shape I was. I am definitely going to practice yoga on a regular basis. I have a few dvd's but they seem too fast paced for me so here are some basic goals I want to work on this summer:

1) Be able to hold all basic poses

2) Work on Yoga breathing (my favorite part of yoga)

3) Be able to complete one of my yoga dvd's without getting dizzy or light headed

Are you into yoga?

Any suggestions?

Questions?

I found a couple of websites that have great yoga clothing and gear:

gaiam.com

athleta.gap.com

lululemon.com

Maybe I'll make a treasury this week...