Oooh! A literary meme!

Andrea of Andrea's Buzzing About... hath tagged me with a meme about books, and you know I'm a sucker for books, a fanatic, even, so here goes.

The rules are as follows:

Go to page 123 of the nearest book.
Find the 5th sentence.
Write down the next 3 sentences.

So, I have been re-reading the Tuesday Next series by Jasper Fforde, whose imagination I greatly admire, and so here is a selection from page 123 of Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde. Now if someone can tell me where my copy of Something Rotten is, so I don't have to go buy a new one so that I can read the latest book (Tursday Next: First Among Sequels,) I would be much obliged.... People moving my stuff really bugs me, honestly....

And it was either this, or a history of the Ecumenical Movement.

"Your father is a washed-out clock jockey. I think you over-estimate his talents-- and his chances. Besides, we've got the summer of 1947 locked down so tight not even a transtemporal gnat could get back there without us knowing about it."

So I am going to tag anyone who wants to play, because I really like being turned on to new books. But leave a comment to let me know you played along. I will leave a link here if you say you played.

Seven meme

Matt Johnston at Going to the Mat hath tagged me with the "7 things" meme and.... well you know the rest.

Here are the rules: - Link to the person that tagged you and post the rules on your blog.
- Share 7 random and or weird things about yourself.
- Tag 7 random people at the end of your post and include links to their blogs.
- Let each person know that they have been tagged by leaving a comment on his or her blog.

My 7 things:
1. I am a big proponent of prayer and meditation. I read Compline from the Book of Common Prayer every night. I also pray Psalm 91, verses 1-4 and 9-12 for several of my beloved friends who are suffering from cancer and other serious illnesses. I invite anyone who reads this to read it with me at 10 pm CST each night and pray for your loved ones who are ill.

2. I love British comedy. I am currently enjoying the Vicar of Dibley Immaculate Collection, that I bought as a splurge from amazon.com. That Dawn French is a genius! I was watching an episode in an airport earlier this month, and not only did I laugh so hard that tears came out of my eyes, but people started coming over to see what I was watching.

3. My children provide my heart with most of the aerobic exercise I receive. The Preeteen Daughter especially has made my heart race a lot lately-- and not always in a good way.

4. I have read 7 books thus far this break: Starman Jones, (an old favorite) by Robert A. Heinlein, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, by J. K. Rowling, The Memory Keeper's Daughter, by Kim Edwards, How to See Yourself as You Really Are, by the Dalai Lama, Evil and the Justice of God, by N. T. Wright, The Bill of Wrongs, by Molly Ivins (God bless her), and Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen. I hope to read a book for every day of break.

5. I am a big sports fan. I love to watch football, baseball, and soccer, especially. I play softball and racquetball, and am going to promise myself to start walking and running again this year before I start influencing the tides more.

6. I enjoyed Rome and Weeds and Six Feet Under, but the really repetitively obscene language grates on me after a while, and I am no prude. Do people really talk like that all the time? Outside of fraternity houses, I mean? It just seems boring and indicative of a lack of imagination.

7. I cannot watch horror movies and even the CSI shows are too much for me. Although I have no moral qualms with it, I could never go see one of those exhibitions of preserved human bodies. The images stay in my head for years-- and I mean years. I foolishly went to see Se7en with my husband at the theater, and I have regretted that decision many times. Yuck.

And I now tag:
AprilMay
Dr. Bad Ass
ButterflyAngel
Happychyck
Mike in Texas
Isabella
Ramblin' Educat

The Pharyngula-Mutating-Genre Meme

Here's a meme that's been mutating around the blogosphere from the real mac daddy of science bloggers, Pharyngula, and I got tagged.

Okay, Mommyprof, I accept that bet!

First, the rules:
There are a set of questions below that are all of the form, "The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is...".Copy the questions, and before answering them, you may modify them in a limited way, carrying out no more than two of these operations:

You can leave them exactly as is.
You can delete any one question.
You can mutate either the genre, medium, or subgenre of any one question.
For instance, you could change "The best time travel novel in SF/Fantasy is..." to "The best time travel novel in Westerns is...", or "The best time travel movie in SF/Fantasy is...", or "The best romance novel in SF/Fantasy is...".
You can add a completely new question of your choice to the end of the list, as long as it is still in the form "The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is...".
You must have at least one question in your set, or you've gone extinct, and you must be able to answer it yourself, or you're not viable.
Then answer your possibly mutant set of questions. Please do include a link back to the blog you got them from, to simplify tracing the ancestry, and include these instructions. Finally, pass it along to any number of your fellow bloggers. Remember, though, your success as a Darwinian replicator is going to be measured by the propagation of your variants, which is going to be a function of both the interest your well-honed questions generate and the number of successful attempts at reproducing them.


So, without further ado:
My great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparent is Pharyngula.
My great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparent is Metamagician and the Hellfire Club.
My great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparent is Flying Trilobite.
My great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparent is A Blog Around the Clock.
My great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparent is Primate Diaries
My great-great-great-great-great-grandparent is Thus Spake Zuska.
My great-great-great-great-grandparent is a k8, a cat, a mission.
My great-great-great-grandparent is Monkeygirl.
My great-great-grandparent is DancingFish.
My great-grandparent is Dr. Brazen Hussy.
My grandparent is Addy.
My parent is Mommy/prof.

The best short story in SciFi/Fantasy is: "Jerry Was a Man," by Robert A. Heinlein.
The best cult movie in comedy is: This is Spinal Tap
The best children’s novel in classic fiction is: The Phantom Tollbooth
The best high-fat food in Greek cooking is: Saganaki (flaming cheese)
The best recent movie in comedy is: Mean Girls
The best humorous song in folk music is: "Sensitive New Age Guys" by Christine Lavin.

And I tag:
The Science Goddess
Guusjem
Graycie
Aisby

Eight! Ocho! Huit! Yodul! Hachi! VIII!

On the Edge and Casting Out Nines have both graciouly tagged moi to reveal 8 random things about myself. Now, if you read this blog at all, you know it's pretty damn random anyway, but okie-doke!

1. I never wear nail polish on my fingernails. I remember when the Husbandly Unit was courting me, and I had been buying into all that gotta-paint-your-nails-if-you-want-to-catch-a-fella crap, and, like the engineer he is, he pointed out what an absolute waste of time it was to do it, so I very thankfully stopped. I am sure it was actually all a part of his nefarious plan to marry a low-maintenance (please read that word as "inexpensive") woman since he was also quite, um, frugal. But I never get a manicure. Of any sort. French, Korean, Russian or any other nationality. When you play stringed instruments, what's the point?

2. I used to drink 7-8 Pepsis a day, beginning early in the morning and going into the wee hours. I now allow myself maybe one a day during the school year. It was a wrench.

3. I only gained 8 pounds while I was expecting. When you start off looking like a lady weight-lifter, you don't need to go far. And my feet actually decreased a size by the time I had my last kid.

4. I used to be addicted to romance novels. I liked the funny ones-- not so much with the Danielle Steele. My favorite one was also a mystery-- It was Crocodile on the Sandbank by Elizabeth Peters. I read that often, even today.

5. Complete strangers ask me for help or advice in stores and on the street. All the time. They will pick me out of a crowd and make a beeline for me, ignoring cops and concierges by the score. My husband has finally gotten used to it, but it used to freak him out.

6. I could clean up on that new show "The Singing Bee." I can remember song lyrics from songs I haven't heard for years. On our vacation, we discovered that, apparently, radio stations in the Carolinas don't play any music other than oldies and country. I sang the lyrics to every song I heard for hours to keep myself awake. After three notes, I can start belting out, "When the sun comes up on a sleepy little town/ Down around San Antone/ And the folks are risin' for another day/ Round about their homes...." Pity me.

7. I don't get hangovers. Ever. The secret is to drink a glass of water for every glass of alcohol. And come from a long line of moonshiners.

8. I was a Camp Fire Girl. Not a Girl Scout; a Camp Fire Girl. All the way from Blue Birds through Horizon Club. And I loved it. I wish there was a group nearby for my girls, but they are Girl Scouts instead, poor things.



Now, this meme has been around for so long, I hereby tag anyone who hasn't gotten to play along yet if they want to. Just let me know, and I'll read yours!

Four!

Polski tagged me on Saturday with the Four Meme, and so here is the frightening truth:

Four Jobs I've Had:
Wedding musician
radio station board operator and recorder of commercials
Santa's elf and photographer
newspaper delivery person

Four Movies I Can Watch Over and Over:
Groundhog Day (ironic, no?)
The Quiet Man
The Princess Bride
Casablanca

Four Places I've Lived:
Oklahoma
Elsewhere
(That's it. I really hate moving.)

Four TV Shows I Love:
Northern Exposure
ER
King of the Hill
Commander in Chief

Four Places I've Vacationed:
Yokohama/Tokyo, Japan
southern Ireland
Utah/Arizona/New Mexico/Colorado
Jamaica

Four Places I Want to Visit/Vacation In: (thanks, Polski)
New Zealand/Australia
northwestern Ireland
Kenya
Tibet/India

Four of My Favorite Foods:
Thai food: Pla Nua- spicy beef!
Lebanese food: Chicken Tawook-- garlic!
Sushi, especailly ebi and dragon roll-- subtle!
Mexican: Chile Colorado

Four Blogs I Visit Daily:
EdWonk
Scheiss Weekly
World of Pig
Lots of teacher blogs that don't post daily, like Polski and Fred and Mike in Texas and Amerloc and k and graycie and an old soul and shut up and teach and you can see my compulsiveness now, can't you? You see it on my blogroll? I read it-- even if it pisses me off....

Four Places I'd Rather Be Right Now:
Hawai'i
Italy
England
Bahamas

Four Bloggers I Now Tag:
Queen of the Cottage at Life in the Mobile Learning Cottage
Writingsam at clean up on aisle life
Smithie
elementaryhistoryteacher at historyiselementary