Reading Challenge...

I came across this Reading Challenge on the interwebs somewhere and I wanted to see how long it would take me to complete. I started it in Winter of 2015 (November/December-ish). I am hoping to be done by the end of 2018.

A book that became a movie: Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand  
A book published this year: Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult
A book with a number in the title: 19 Minutes by Jodi Picoult 
A book written by someone under 30: The Mothers by Brit Bennett
A book with non-human characters: Pictures of Hollis Woods by Patricia Reilly Giff 
A funny book: Dad is Fat by Jim Gaffigan
A book by a female author: Why Not Me by Mindy Kaling
A mystery or thriller: The Last Juror by John Grisham 
A book with a one-word title: Room by Emma Donoghue
A Biography: Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson  
A book of short stories: The Help by Kathryn Stockett  
A book set in a different country: Nightingale by Kristin Hannah
A nonfiction book: Breaking Free: How I Escaped Polygamy, The FLDS Cult, and my Father Warren Jeffs by Rachel Jeffs 
A popular author's first book: Talk Before Sleep by Elizabeth Berg (Ok, technically this is her 2nd book, but I'm counting it unless I read something that will replace this pick.)
A book from an author you love that you haven't read yet: The Hypnotist's Love Story by Liane Moriarty  
A book a friend recommended: Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain 
A Pulitzer Prize winning book:
A book based on a true story: So, You've Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson
A book at the bottom of your to-read list: The Rest of Her Life by Laura Moriarty
A book your mom loves:
A book that scares you: 
A book more than 100 years old: Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
A book you were supposed to read in school but didn't: Animal Farm by George Orwell 
A memoir: Beneath the Surface: Killer Whales, SeaWorld, and The Truth Beyond Blackfish by John Hargrove
A book you are able to finish in a day:  
A book with antonyms in the title: Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty
A book set somewhere you've always wanted to visit:
A book that came out the year you were born:
A book with bad reviews: The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
A trilogy: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
A book from your childhood: Summer of the Monkeys by Wilson Rawls
A book with a love triangle:The Weight of Silence by Heather Gudenkauf
Your best friends favorite book: The Hididng Place by Corrie ten Boom 
A book set in high school: Lies We Tell Ourselves by Robin Talley
A book with a color in the title: The Witness Wore Red by Rebecca Muser
A book that made you cry:
A book with magic: A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
A book that is currently on the bestseller list: Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin
A book by an author you've never read before: Attachments by Rainbow Rowell
A book you own but have never read: Out of Sync by Lance Bass
A book that takes place in your hometown: The Chosen One by Carol Lynch Williams (How about home state? Cause it took place in Utah)  
A book that makes you laugh:
A book in a genre you don't usually read: 
A book written by an author with your same initials: Lost Boy: The True Story of One Man's Exile from a Polygamist Cult and His Brave Journey to Reclaim His Life by Brent Jeffs (Ok, so once again I am breaking the rules a little bit. Authors with the initials JB is tough. But this is BJ, which is the opposite of my initials, so that is what I am going for with this one.) 
A book to help you understand a different culture: Walk 2 Moons by Sharon Creech
A banned book:
A book set at Christmas: The Mistletoe Murder by P. D. James 
A book based or turned into a TV show or Movie: My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier
A book you started but never finished: The Chronicles of Narnia 

Key: 

Finished! Yay! 

2018 goals 

Need a good pick: 

Also, for my own organization, here is a list of books I wanted to read. I made this list back in 2011. I am going to refer to this as I work on the above list.

Alan Bradley: The sweetness at the bottom of the pie

Anita Diamant: Day after Night

Beth Hoffman: Saving Cee Cee Honeycut

Catherine Clinton: Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom

Chris Cleave: Little Bee

Christian Moerk: Darling Jim

Christina Baker Kline: The way life should be

Cleon Skousen: The Naked Communist

Colm Toibin: Brooklyn

Cornelia Nixon: Jarrettsville  

CS Richardson: The end of the alphabet

Dan Chaon: Await your reply

David Cristofano: The girl she used to be

Dolen Perkins-Valdez: Wench

Eileen Goudge: Woman in red

Elizabeth Berg: Dream when you’re feeling blue

Elizabeth berg: Talk before sleep

Elizabeth Berg: The last time I saw you  

Elizabeth berg: The year of pleasures

Elizabeth berg: What we keep

Elizabeth Strout: Olive Kitteridge  

Emma Donoghue: Room

George Orwell: Animal Farm

Harry Bernstein: The invisible wall: A love story that broke barriers

Heather Gudenkauf: The weight of silence

Helen Simonson: Major Pettigrew’s last stand
Hester Young: The Gates of Evangeline

Jacqueline Tobin and Raymond G. Dobard: Hidden In Plain View: A Secret Story of Quilts and The Underground Railroad
Jandy Nelson: I'll Give You The Sun

Jeanette Walls: The Glass Castle

Jerry Seinfield: Sein Language

John Grisham: The Client

John Grisham: The Last Juror

Jonathan Tropper: This is where I leave you

Kate Braestrup: Marriage and other acts of charity

Kathleen George: The odds

Kathryn Stockett: The help

Kristin Hannah: Firefly lane

Lance Bass: Out of Sync

Larry Schweikart: A Patriots History of the United States

Laura Hillenbrand: Unbroken: a WWII story of survival, resilience and redemption

Laura Moriarty: The rest of her life

Lisa Grunwald: The irresistible Henry House  

Marisa De Los Santos: Belong to me

Michelle Hoover: The Quickening

Mildred Armstrong Kalish: Little Heathens: hard times and high spirits on an Iowa farm during the great depression
M. L. Stedman: The Light Between Oceans

Murial Barbery: The elegance of the Hedgehog

Neil Gairman: Anansi Boys

Nick Hornby: An Education

Nick Hornby: Fever Pitch

Nick Hornby: Juliet Naked

Nick Hornby: Slam

Nora Ephron: I remember nothing and other reflections

Patricia Reilly Giff: Pictures of Hollis Woods

Paul Harding: Tinkers

Ree Drummond: Black Heals to tractor wheels

Rick Braggs: The prince of Frogtown

Robert Goolrick: A reliable wife

Sophie Hannah: The wrong mother

Steve Martin: Born Standing Up: A Comics Life

Susan Gregg Gilmore: Looking for salvation at the dairy queen

Susan Richards: Chosen by a horse

Suzan Colon: Cherries in Winter: My family’s recipe for hope in hard times

Tess Callahan: April and Oliver

Todd Johnson: The Sweet By and By

Tom Franklin: Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter

Willo Davis Roberts: The view from the cherry tree  

Yoko Ogawa: The housekeeper and the professor

Updated Life List.

I don’t blog much anymore, but every now and then I get the urge to update something. And today I am experiencing that urge. 

About a year and a half ago, I wrote a Bucket List. And it's changed since then… 

These are the things I've accomplished:

#7. Buy a house.

33: See Memphis on Broadway {Again}.

#80: Play on another water polo team. 

#104. Have a fire pit in my backyard

#50: Get fortune told to me by a fortune teller/psychic.

#79: Shoot at and hit a clay pigeon.

#37: Ride a bike across the Golden Gate Bridge

#85: Own a pair of legit cowboy boots.
#40. Grow an herb garden. 
#68. Grow a vegetable garden.

#28: Ride my bike around Central Park.

#88: Ride a mechanical bull for 7 seconds.

#73: Have a concealed weapons permit. (I'm packing now. Don’t mess with me.)
#9. See Les Misérables on stage.

#94: Re-Read the entire The Work and the Glory series.

#44: Ride a street car in San Francisco.

#55: Learn to sew on a sewing machine.

#24: See Wicked on Broadway {Again}.

#16: Tell Walter Fife “thank you” in person.
#38. Spend a week in Belize and go cave tubing again. (Okay, So technically I didn't spend a week there, but I did go cave tubing there again. And thats good enough for me to consider this one checked off.)
#19: Swim with dolphins.
#4. Marry my soul mate. 

#6. Start a book club. I LOVE THIS BOOK CLUB. Started when Oakcrest Elites were flaky. 

#57. Teach a Russian class. Thanks Winterim. 

Look at me go.

I must say I am quite pleased with my progress 

These are the things I changed my mind on, and don't care about accomplishing:

#10: Live in San Francisco for a year. (I wrote this before I’d ever been to San Fran. I thought it would be an enchanting city to live in… Now that I've been there… Not so much.)

#34: Live in San Diego for a year. (Same reason as above.)

#41: Go to culinary arts school. (I pretty much taught myself how to cook already. And I rock at it. So I don’t need some culinary certificate to prove that. Just come over and let me make you dinner.)

#48: Have lunch with Ashley. (While I still love her and her blog, she is not my favorite blogger anymore nor is she someone I admire so much that I’d like to meet her. She has disappointed me from time to time. Now I’d say the blogger I admire most and would like to have lunch with is La Vie Petite)

#70: Get my house decorated by a professional. (I’ve since discovered Pinterest. With all the DIY stuff online, who needs to pay anyone to decorate anymore?)

#72: Read the original Les Miserables book by Victor Hugo. (For some reason this 1000 page book doesn’t appeal to me anymore. I get the story enough from all the video’s I've seen depicting it.)

#75: Have my very own crafting room. (I'd love a room of the house to myself still I guess, but I don’t craft really much anymore so that would not be its purpose…)

#21. Own a real expensive camera. Like the ones photographers use. (I just don't care. Technology these days gives me more than adequate photos.) 

#71. Take a photography class. (I'm just not that into photography anymore.) 

And the remaining ones: 

1. Cook a Thanksgiving dinner {turkey and all} all by myself.

2. Become a foster parent {after my own children are grown.}

3. Own a horse. Name him Whiskey Pete.

5. Own a truck. A hot one.

8. Ride in a rodeo.

11. Make my own baby food {for future babies}.

12. Hit a homerun in softball.

13. Travel to all 50 states and photograph myself at every “Welcome to ___” sign.

14. Live in Manhattan for a year.

15. Ride a motorcycle all by myself.  

17. Watch a MLB game in every MLB stadium in the country.

18. Take a road trip with no predetermined destination.

20. Ride on a camel.

22. Spend an entire day at a spa getting every treatment available.

23. Travel the country in a giant RV.

25. Take a trip to England.

26. Go Marlins fishing in Cabo San Lucas. {And make-out on Lover’s Beach}

27. Take a boat tour of Venice Italy.

29. Go to the Temple in Ukraine.

30. Take a 30 day cruise around Australia.

31. Take my babies to Disneyland.

32. Go on the Sound Of Music tour in Austria.

35. Write a thank you note every day for a year.

36. Take a trip to Africa.

39. Live in a home on the beach for at least a year.

42. Take a trip to Niagara Falls.

43. Attend a World Series game

45. Master the art of couponing and budgeting.

46. Learn to sail on a real live sailboat.

47. Take a trip to Coney Island. 

49. Be in a musical theater production again.

51. Ride a century bike ride {100 Miles}.

52. Be able to see my abs.

53. Organize a ginormous family reunion in Lake Tahoe when I have babies.

54. Take a trip to Catalina Island.

56. Eat in a restaurant that Robert Irvine saved in a Restaurant Impossible episode.

58. Be a SAHM.

59. Learn to dance.

60. Watch the birth of a baby horse.

61. Become a mother.

62. Go on a weeklong river rafting and camping-on-the-beach trip.

63. Spend a summer living and working on a dude ranch.

64. Host an adult dinner party every month for a year, without repeating guests.

65. Ride on an elephant and have said elephant pick me up in his trunk. 

66. Go to Disneyworld.

67. Organize a fundraiser for Operation Smile.

69. Have a walk in closet.

74. Be in better shape at 40 than I am at 30.

76. Read the {entire} Bible.

77. Adopt a child from Ukraine or Russia {Preferably a teenager}.

78. Be the coordinator/planner for a good friend checking off something on his/her bucket list.

81. Go to Mardi Gras in New Orleans.

82. Have a hammock in my backyard.  

83. Take a road trip by myself.

84. Do this bike ride around Lake Tahoe.

86. Put 1500 miles on my bike in one season. {Roughly 12-15 miles a day. Cake.)

87. Create a family tradition that husband, kiddos and I can do for every holiday of the year.

89. Make Husband’s dreams come true.

90. Keep a houseplant alive for at least a year.

91. Become a Carnival Elite cruising member. (After 16^th cruise)  

92. Take my babies to Ukraine.   

93. Catch a foul ball or a homerun ball at a major league game.

95. Go to Mt. Rushmore.

96. Learn how to cook a lobster.

97. Go help clean up somewhere after a natural disaster.

98. Go an entire year without repeating a recipe.

99. Go topless at a nude beach.

100. Ride my bike from Northern California to Southern California
101. Go to Alcatraz

102. Take my Hubby to Ukraine

103. Go to the Nationals Rodeo held in Las Vegas

105. Watch a plane land at the St. Maartin Airport

106. Go to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Ohio

107. Teach an institute class

108. Go to a SYTYCD audition at the Capitol Theatre

109. Go on a tour of American History cites in Virginia, DC, Gettysburg etc.
110. Learn how to surf
111. Read a biography of each President of the United States
112. Go to Broadway Con
113. Do this Disneyland Scavenger Hunt (CityRace Disneyland) 

Number Sixteen

Today I checked #16 off My List. 

My soul needed that. 

Number 16 was probably the most enriching that I have checked off thus far. 


Thanks again Brother Fife. You have literally changed my life. 

Dear Daniel,

Boy I knew this song was yours the minute I heard it. 6:00 AM on Saturday.
Still groggy and trying to wake up, this song came on and I knew the tears were on their way.
Tears are usually only a few memories away. Still. 7 months and 6 days later.
I will always hate that you still mean so much to me. I wish I was over you.

This song-- it was written for me and my LB. And I hate every minute of that reality. 

And it only gets worse with every date I go on. 

They are nothing like you.
I'm so tired of comparing every other guy with you.
It's not fair to them.
It's not fair to me.
But the fact still remains.
They are nothing like you.



I will never forgive you for the choices you make that keep us apart. 

Socialism… Good or Bad?

An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had recently failed an entire class. That class had insisted that Obama’s socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer. The professor then said, “OK, we will have an experiment in this class on Obama’s plan.” All grades will be averaged and everyone will receive the same grade so no one will fail and no one will receive an A… (substituting grades for dollars- something closer to home and more readily understood by all.) After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. the students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy. As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little...

The second test average was a D. No one was happy. When the third test rolled around, the average was an F. As the tests proceeded, the scores never increased, as bickering, blame and name calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else. To their great surprise, ALL FAILED and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great.  But when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed. It could not be any simpler than that.

Remember, there IS a test coming up. The 2012 elections.

These are probably the best 5 sentences you’ll ever read and all applicable to this experiment:

1. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity.  

2. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. 

3. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.  

4.You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it. 

5. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation.

--- By Bill Essmann. 

This Kid.

You know what he said to me last night? He said: "I was just thinking about how making out with a girl at a Star Wars movie is every nerd's fantasy."

Well, I'm glad I could make at least one of your dreams come true. Cause heaven knows you've made one or two of mine come true. 

Doesn't his blue steel face just make you want to kill yourself? 

How did I ever get so lucky? 

30 Days of Photographs. Day 5

Some of you may remember, most of you will not remember that 100 years ago I started this 30 days of Photographs. {Back in April to be exact is when I have designated as 100 years ago. FYI, consult your calendars and make necessary adjustments.} Back in May was when I posted Day 4. I said it wouldn't be 30 consecutive days, but even this is embarrassing. Sorry to my millions of avid fans who hang onto my every word. :) I have been busy this summer. But now that the school year has started back up I have much more time to blog. And I am back with a fury vengeance. Ready to blog about hundreds of things that inspire me.

With that said, lets move right along to Day 5.  

Day 5: Most embarrassing photo. 

This may or may not be THE MOST embarrassing photo of me that I could find, but while the jury is still out on that, this picture is one that I found to be quite embarrassing and worthy of the Day 5 Spot. 

First of all, don't let the date fool you. I took a picture of a picture and my current camera put that date on this photo. It was really taken a LONG time ago. I am going to make an educated guess 1997. I think I am pretty darn close. That baby in the photo is 14 years old now. I may be off by a few months but you know... 

So, how hilarious is this look? Was I like trying to be borderline goth or something? I was 12 in 1997. You know those 12 year old phases… And scrunchy bracelets were SO in back then so get off my back. :)

This was at the airport, sending my Grandparents off on a mission to South Africa.
I am the one on the far right, in case you don't know what a goth is or what a scrunchy bracelet is. :)

What a dork. A dork with fabulous red hair, I must say.Oh, and a doggie tag.