Unconscious Mutterings

This is a fun "free association" exercise passed on by Lisa at Lisa's Chaos. In case you want to play along I'll leave the list blank here, you can copy it and paste it to your blog with your own matching words, or put it in a comment here. Either way, let me know if you've done your own list. It's great fun to see how others think, too. Scroll down to see my matches.

1. Magical ::
2. Shrimp ::
3. Project Runway ::
4. Economy ::
5. Porch ::
6. State of affairs ::
7. .com ::
8. Fifty cents ::
9. Ripping ::
10. Bull ::

1. Magical :: Mystery Tour
2. Shrimp :: Scampi
3. Project Runway :: Not in my closet!
4. Economy :: A plot for a whodunnit book
5. Porch :: Swing
6. State of affairs :: on which soap opera?
7. .com :: .org
8. Fifty cents :: two coins to rub together
9. Ripping :: up junk mail
10. Bull :: well, I've sworn off profanity in my blogs, so my second thought was Durham

That was fun! Give it a try!

Heidi's Meme --- Now Barb's Meme

Heidi at Heidi's Moment created her own meme, which looks like a lot of fun. I like Heidi; she is a fellow Iowa native and a creative soul. It's fun getting to know her. So here is a little about me using her meme. This was challenging; I had to really understand who I am to find the answers to some of the questions!

BARB'S MEME
1. If there was a movie made of your life, who would you want to play the part of YOU? Unfortunately Katherine Hepburn is no longer with us, and if she were she would be MUCH older than I. So. I think Emma Thompson. I don't have an English accent, though I always wanted one. But Miss Thompson is so versatile and can play roles from the sublime to the ridiculous.
2. What book do you wish you could jump into and experience? Why? I do a lot of reading and sometimes I can relate to a character, but mostly wish I was a particular character. I would like to be more like Claire Beauchamp Fraser in Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series. She is a strong, determined, brave and brilliant woman who finds the love of her life on another continent in a century before she was born!
3. Who would make up your ultimate dinner party? (famous, not famous people... whoever you want to name) I'm not big on having a lot of people in the house at once --- or cooking for them. So my ultimate dinner party would be someone who can fill a room with warmth and laughter --- and can cook. Paula Deen comes to mind.
4. If you had to choose just one channel on TV to watch for the rest of your life, which one would it be? TCM for the classic movies.
5. Are you the "photo taker" or the "photo subject"? The photo taker, definitely.
6. There is a headline on the front page of the newspaper today about you! What does it say? Barb's Book Hits Bestseller List on Same Day As Her Paper Arts Company Goes Public (Ya gotta think big, baby!)
7. You have won a car! But you have to pick from the following colors: pink, lime green, baby blue. Which one do you choose to be your ride? Baby blue, tho' would prefer navy blue. Some hot graphics could give it some attitude.
8. Are you more of a singer, an actor, or heckling audience member? Probably the heckler because I have stage fright, but expect a good performance from the singers and actors.
9. The Road Runner... tastes like chicken or wise as an owl? Seeing the demise of a flock of roadrunners in the parking lot at work in Phoenix we began to wonder what that mystery meat was in the cafeteria. They said it tasted like chicken. eewwww
10. Tell us something about yourself that will make us say, "Dude, are you alright?!?!" Ok, here goes: McDonald's french fries dipped in a chocolate milk shake; pizza dipped in ranch dressing; sugar on tomatoes and cottage cheese. But the best: hot buttered toast dunked in hot chocolate and getting it just right so the toast doesn't get real mushy and fall into the cocoa --- or my lap.

In Heidi's own words: So, there it is... do try it! You'll like it!!!

A Fine Book Meme

I do a lot of reading, but not always what is on the New York Times Bestseller List. Even in High School we didn't read the usual classics, the teachers opting for more current cult tomes (it was the late 60's after all). Heidi at Heidi's Moments posted her list HERE and, curious about how well read I think I am, I thought I'd go through the list.

This is the list of top 100 books that the The National Endowment for the Arts came up with. It's estimated that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed on this list. (Well, that is how this whole thing came about then... )Here's what you do if you want to play:
1) Copy and paste this list into your own blog post.
2) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
3) Italicize those you intend to read.
4) Bold and [bracket] the books you LOVE.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 [Harry Potter series - JK Rowling[
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 [The Bible] (Have not read the entire thing in order, but am pretty sure I have covered most of it in one way or another.)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
[9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman], i.e. The Golden Compass
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
[11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott]
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
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
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy (I must confrss --- not ALL of it)
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
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
[33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis]
34 Emma - Jane Austen (just bought it)
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
[36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis]
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
[42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown ]
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
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 --- currently reading it
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-time - Mark Haddon
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 (does seeing the movie count?)
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 Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
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
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro (again, saw the movie)
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
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 (movies --- both versions)
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

I am surprised to see that I have read 30 of these! I've tried to catch up on the classics. My son encouraged me to do that. When he was in China for a month he ran out of reading material, so went to the book store --- foreign language section --- and all they had were the English language classics. So he got started on them that way. My treat is to spend hours at Barnes & Noble, Starbucks in hand, browsing and relaxing. More than the Starbucks goes home with me!

Let me know if you do this meme. I am always like to see how what others are reading!

Mosaic About Me Meme

Linda over at Straight Up and Slighty Dirty passed on a very fun meme that she "swiped" and I found too irresistable not to do the same. The fun part is browsing through many fabulous photos on Flickr in order to find a match to each of 12 questions about me! The finished product is very interesting --- actually right for framing. This is great fun. Grab your favorite beverage, sit back and enjoy. Here's how it goes:

Answer each of the questions below. Surf over to Flickr and type your answers into the search bar. From the choice of pictures shown only on the front page, click on the one that moves you. Once the page with your picture opens, copy the URL. Surf over to the Mosaic Maker, set up your mosaic, and paste your URLs. Click Create. Voilla!

The Questions:

What is your first name?
What is your favorite food?
What high school did you attend?
What is your favorite color?
Who is your celebrity crush?
What is your favorite drink?
Where would you go on your dream vacation?
What is your favorite dessert?
What do you want to be when you grow up?
What do you love most in life?
What is the one word that describes you?
What is your Flickr name?

1. Santa Barbara Blacklight, 2. Brown bear and salmon, 3. halls of east high school, 4. Blue rose, 5. Trace Adkins at the Tomb of the Unknown Civil War Soldier, 6. The Original Irish Cream, 7. Fra / From Bud (Photomatix version), 8. Chocolate Cheesecake, 9. My personal photographer, 10. I love books!, 11. creative, 12. gadgets

A click on the links will give credit to the photographers.

After weighing the choices for each question I was able to select fun matches for each question except #12. My Flickr name is my name, so I used "Gadget" since my husband calls me GG for Gadget Gal.

Please come back with your comments and share your Mosaic!