Friday Five, #20

1. I can’t believe we’re at the final day of NaBloPoMo! Congratulations to all who completed, better luck next year to the few who weren’t able to, and thanks to those who cheered us on! And a special THANKS to Eden for hosting the entire thing! She really knows how to throw a party, doesn’t she?

2. The best part of NaBloPoMo has been finding several new blogs to read and starting to build some new friendships! Thank you to everyone who has stopped by here or my NaBloPoMo page to say hi!

3. I updated my Blogroll page a week or so ago with some of the new blogs I’ve found, so be sure to check it out. I’m sure my list isn’t complete, however, so if your blog isn’t listed, please leave a comment and I’ll add it.

4. Don’t forget to send me your favorite holiday party recipes! Tomorrow, December 1, is the deadline. See the Holiday Recipe Exchange page (upper left) or this post for all the details.

5. Could someone from Blogger please tell me why I can now only leave comments as “anonymous”? Is this a new “feature” that was implemented to alienate commenters? Because it is working.

Feeling good

Yea! My three days of meetings are over, my work is (pretty much, sorta, as much as it ever can be) caught up, and I am now off work until Tuesday! Well, rather, I am off work until I have to log on tomorrow and and then again on Monday because of “oh my gawd, you can’t be unavailable NOW because there is fall-out from the three days of meetings, don’t you know?” activities.

But other than that, things just couldn’t be peachier.

And my headache stopped just about the same time that our meeting ended. Coincidence? I wonder.

Movie meme

I’m on Day 3 of all-day meetings and Day 2 of The Headache that Wouldn’t Die so a meme is about all I can handle today.

Rules: Go to the AFI Top 100 list and select:

1) Your favorite five movies that are on the list.
Casablanca
Singin’ in the Rain
To Kill a Mockingbird
The Philadelphia Story
An American in Paris / Fargo / Pulp Fiction / Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner / Citizen Kane
(This is already too hard — I can’t pick just five)

2) Five movies on the list you didn’t like at all. (I can’t say I didn’t like these at all — they just didn’t live up to the hype.)
Annie Hall
Jaws
Fantasia
Raiders of the Lost Ark
The African Queen (I’ve never been able to watch it all the way through, I’m not sure what this says about me.)

3) Five movies on the list you haven’t seen but want to.
The Grapes of Wrath
The Maltese Falcon
A Clockwork Orange
A Place in the Sun
Taxi Driver (Haven’t seen it all the way through.)

4) Five movies on the list you haven’t seen and have no interest in seeing.
2001: A Space Odyssey
Apocalypse Now
King Kong
All Quiet on the Western Front
Close Encounters of the Third Kind

5) Your favorite five movies that aren’t on the list.
The Hours
The Big Chill
Happy Accidents
I am Sam
Crash / 21 Grams / Traffic
(Again, can’t stop at just five)

Tagging: Consider yourself tagged if you’re interested. Be sure to leave a comment so I can come check out your movie lists too!

Make it stop

Yesterday was one of those types of days where you’re sitting in a meeting and you look at the clock, and then it feels as though at least four hours have passed, and you look at the clock again…and it’s five minutes later than the first time you looked at it.

I do not care for that.

And it was only Day 1 of a three day meeting.

Today, I have a headache the size of Texas. I can only imagine that this will not help me in my mind-over-matter exercise in which I attempt to mentally push the clock ahead several hours.

I do not care for that either.

Oh well, bring on Day 2.

And the Tylenol. Please.

Monday Memory #3 (but on Tuesday)

I remember an old woman coming in to my father’s grocery store when I was young. I don’t remember her name but I remember that she always bought a couple of bananas, a loaf of wheat bread, and a bottle of prune juice. She bought other things too, but I seem to remember those items as being her staples.

It was my job to bag people’s groceries (once I was tall enough to reach the counter) and I used to love snapping open the brown paper bags. We didn’t have plastic bags back then, just the thick brown paper. She, however, didn’t want me to put her things in paper bags. She brought her own crocheted mesh-style bags and I was supposed to put everything in them.

I didn’t like those bags. They had no structure so things wouldn’t sit up nicely and everything just sort of sat jumbled up together in those little net enclosures. I always prided myself on my quality grocery bagging abilities and she and her silly crocheted bags ruined all that for me.

One day, when I was particularly fed up with trying to find a harmonious arrangement for the eggs, bread, and two large cans of crushed tomatoes she had purchased, I asked her if she wouldn’t rather have me put things in a paper bag for her so that everything would stay put and arrive at her home in good condition.

She leaned over the counter and looked intently in my eyes and told me that paper bags were frivolous and that people were becoming entirely too wasteful and greedy and no matter what I thought, there might not always be trees for people to destroy and make into paper bags.

In my twelve-year-old wisdom, I thought she was loony and never brought up the subject again. Finite resources? What a crazy concept. She probably reused glass jars and bread wrappers too. She had to be batty.

Today, I’m the one carrying my eco-bags into the grocery store and helping the bagger nestle the bananas in beside the oatmeal and cans of black beans. It took thirty years but I finally heard what the old woman was saying.

And I may be slow but I learned my lesson. On every trip to the nursing home, I keep my ears open. You just never know when you’re going to learn something.