100 must read books

So I found the list of 100 must read books according to the NEA "Big Read" program on a friend of a friend's blog. Yes, I blog hop and see what other people are up to. It's called "creeping" on Facebook. I believe the rest of the world calls it "cyber-stalking", though I don't know if that's really what I'm doing, or if it's just a way to fight boredom. Ha! Anyway, I decided that I would try to read all of the books on the list. I have already read some of them, but I'm going to reread them anyway. Some of them are series, so those will take a little longer. Some individual books might take a couple of years to get through! I have no time-line to get this done, and I might not ever finish. I'm skipping #14, which I think everyone will understand. Anyway, I'm just going to start with #1 (which we picked up at the library tonight) and work my way down to #100. Matt said he would read some along with me, too.

Without further adieu, here's the list:
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
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
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 This is just way too vague. Maybe I'll read one of his plays instead.
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller'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
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
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
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
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
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
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Effects of Fay

We were very lucky to not have any damage from Tropical Storm Fay, though there really isn't wasn't much damage in Jacksonville. There was some flooding, but all of the water was gone in the morning.

Here are some pictures we took in our yard and in the street:

A golf ball on our porch half way under water:


Water coming up our driveway. It didn't get much higher:


Looking down our street from our driveway:


Water coming from the overflowing retention pond behind our neighbor's house:


At the end of our street, facing right:


At the end of our street, facing left:

Fay Friday

We are finally getting the bad weather that the meteorologists were predicting for days. If we were really honest about it, we could have gone to school Wednesday and a half day yesterday. I'm not complaining about the days off, I'm just saying that we could have gone to school.

Matt got the call that he has been waiting for from him boss who told him that power was out where the office is, so don't worry about working from home. We are so glad that this storm came after August 1st and Matt is a full time employee and rather than an hourly contractor losing money because he can't work.

Our power did go out last night and came back on at 1:15 am. It couldn't have been out for long, though. I was in the living room watching men's beach volleyball, but fell asleep until 12:30 and went to bed. I doubt the power was out for 45 minutes because it wasn't hot when it came back on. They annoying this is that when the power does come back on, our overhead light comes on. Maybe that's why the previous owners didn't have the light on the remote.

Fay

School was closed again today due to Tropical Storm Fay. I wonder if city officials were kicking themselves about closing down schools yesterday. We did get some rain, though "heavy sprinkles" is more like it. Obviously Fay is not cooperating and following the storm path the meteorologists predicted. Clay county did not close the schools yesterday and parents were complaining about that. I just know the kids will be crazy whenever we do go back to school. Seems like any change in the schedule will throw them into fits of craziness. I will say, though, that I have seen our Mayor more the past couple of days than I have since he's been elected. Of course, that could just be because I usually change the channel whenever a press conference comes on because they aren't usually talking about closing schools!

Matthew has also been able to work from home yesterday and today. His boss emailed yesterday to come in to work today if the weather today is like it was yesterday. Matt has to go over a bridge to get to work, and with the high winds expected later today, he could probably get to work just fine, but not be able to come home. It seems like half of his office went in to work and half are working from home. It's nice to have him home with me, even though he's working.

Hello Fay!

I'm sure it's wrong to be excited about missing a day of school when it is only the second week of school, but I'm excited! I really don't think that tomorrow will be all that bad, but we'll be getting a lot of rain in the afternoon. The weather maps show Fay crossing over and coming back by us, so Thursday and Friday are probably going to be worse than tomorrow. Duval county has already canceled school for tomorrow and Thursday, so hopefully MCS will follow suit. At least I will have time to get things done around here tomorrow while we still have electricity and water. Hopefully we won't lose either!

Juliet's new toy

I saw Juliet pouncing on something on the porch. At first I thought it was a lizard, but then I saw how long the tail was. Yup, it was a little snake, probably not even a foot long. This after she found a spider in the bathroom and a frog last night. We had left the kitty door open last night, so I'm sure the frog was out on the porch until Juliet found it. The not nice thing was that she dropped the frog on my foot, but I didn't have the light on, so I didn't know what it was at first. I flushed the spider down the toilet, but I caught the frog and let it out the front door. Next time I'm waking Matt up so he can deal with her!

P.S. - I took the picture of the snake through the sliding glass door!

179 days to go!

Today was the first official day of school. It went really fast, and it was overall a good day. The 8th graders always crack me up, because they already know me and what to expect. The 7th graders barely crack a smile, even when I am joking. They don't realize that I'm not a teacher to be scared of. I like that about them! The 6th grade students are scared about everything and always have a hard time adjusting to the new schedule, plus dealing with lockers. Kind of makes me glad I don't teach 6th grade. It's crazy to see how much some of them have grown over the summer. One of my male students looks the same, but his voice is much deeper. The first time I heard him talking I had to do a double take! I did keep encouraging them to find a new student and make sure he/she knows where to go. I know friendships can't be forced, but I try to help them along when I can!

We are going to Kan Ki, my favorite Japanese steak house, for dinner because I got some gift certificates at the end of the last school year. I haven't been in a long time, so I'm excited about going tonight.

Since blogs really are better with pictures, below is Simba under Matt's computer bag. I don't know why he got under there, but he did and it's cute! I'm just glad he stayed there while I went to get the camera.

Back to work

Monday was my first day back to work. Where has the time gone?? Our first day is always up at the church, and I sat there amazed thinking "this is my fourth time doing this!" Of course, that's probably why I knew I could be 10 minutes late and not worry about it! We also had lunch in the fellowship hall with the church staff which was fun because 2 of the girls in my Bible study work at the church.

Three of the staff kids have been at school all week helping us teachers do what we needed to do. They did all 3 of my bulletin boards, put together orientation packeds, arranged my tables, vacuumed, cleaned off the tables, found new chairs to replace cracked chairs, and that's just stuff for me!!! They were in high demand and one of the teachers did say that I was hogging them. :) I can't help it that they like working for me. We did treat them to lunch at Chili's yesterday to say thank you. I really don't know how I would have gotten it all done because I spent at least half of my days roaming around and talking to people. I'm sure that surprises no one!

Matt talked to his mom last night. She is back from England. Apparently there was a bad storm on the second half of her trip and they were late getting back. Matt's dad and his family will come back this weekend as well.