The Power of Positivity #2

So today I got this email from my mother-in-law. Normally I HATE forwards and I get so many of these all the time, but this one I actually really liked! I SO needed it at the time too! So I pass it on to in hopes that you too will have a day full or "ordinary miracles"!

Today...I wish you a day of ordinary miracles-

A fresh pot of coffee you didn't have to make yourself.

An unexpected phone call from an old friend.

Green stoplights on your way to work or shop.

I wish you a day of little things to rejoice in.

The fastest line at the grocery store.

A good sing along song on the radio.

Your keys right where you look.

I wish you a day of happiness and perfection-little bite-size pieces of perfection that give you the funny feeling that the Lord is smiling on you, holding you so gently because you are someone special and rare. I wish You a day of Peace, Happiness and Joy.

They say it takes a minute to find a special person, an hour to appreciate them, a day to love them, but then an entire life to forget them.

Oh, and hey, while I reread that I DID have a couple of ordinary miracles the past few days. I got my fave Mexican food for lunch yesterday which was a surprise AND a got a Christmas card from a friend I haven't talked to in a long time. Cool!

Cool Word Game!

I wanted to stick with spooky, Halloweenish posts for the next few days, but I had to share this site I came across!

Would you like to play word games AND help end world hunger at the same time? If so, (or even if no!) check out this cool, but slightly addictive word game! (Click HERE for game.) For every question you get right, they will donate 10 grains of rice to the UN World Food Program. (I donated 2000 grains in just a couple of minutes!) Pretty cool! You can test your verbose while helping to feed people on the other side of the planet! Love it! (And thanks to the Nestie on the Nest Book Board for posting this site!)

Happy Halloween!

To celebrate Halloween today, check out some of these spooky ghost pictures and video! You decide -- fact or fiction?

To more Halloween fun, check our the videos and spooky stories below! :-)

Books You Must Read Before You Die

So while cruising the net, I ran across this article which lists the top 30 books that all people should read before they die. I've included the list here for your viewing ease!

1. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
2. The Bible
3. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by JRR Tolkien
4. 1984 by George Orwell
5. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
6. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
7. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
8. All Quite on the Western Front by E M Remarque
9. His Dark Materials Trilogy by Phillip Pullman
10. Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
11. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
12. The Lord of the Flies by William Golding
13. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
14. Tess of the D'urbevilles by Thomas Hardy
15. Winnie the Pooh by AA Milne
16. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
17. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham
18. Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
19. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
20. The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
21. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
22. The Prophet by Khalil Gibran
23. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
24. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
25. The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
26. Life of Pi by Yann Martel
27. Middlemarch by George Eliot
28. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
29. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
30. A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzenhitsyn

My thoughts...

Hmmm, The Bible is #2?! Okay... So anyhow, I think I should change the title of this list to, "Books I'm Ashamed to Say I've NEVER Read!" Some of those books in fact (like #13,) I've never even heard of! Yikes! Actually, I have read parts of the Bible (all of the New Testament and part of the Old,) and I've read Jane Eyre, Lord of the Flies, and Great Expectations in their entirety. The last three I read all in high school. Jane Eyre was indeed one of the best books remember reading. What's funny is that I found my old copy a couple of months ago and tried to read it again and put it back down after just 5 minutes! The story itself was still wonderful, but you have to totally change your mindset to prepare for the langauge and writing style used in books of that time. I wasn't ready to exert that much mental energy that day! Maybe I'll try again sometime. Lord of the Flies I remember quite well and agree it is a great book. Great Expectations...hmm, I'm sure it's great, but honestly, can't remember a darn thing about it! Anyhow, I guess I have a lot of other books to start reading!

There are some books I was surprised to not see on the list. How about the Adventures of Huckelberry Finn? Is that not one of the greatest works of American literature? Hmmm. Oh well. I know this next book is a pretty current book, but it's one that I think should make the list -- The Kite Runner by Khalled Hosseini. What books do you think should make the list?

Swamp Monsters and Such

My husband bought my a Nike+iPod for my birthday last year. Overall, it's pretty cool because you can just hook it up to your iPod and it tracks your distance, time, and pace while you run using a footpod you attach to your shoe. Well, as great as it is for road running and asphalt paths, I've discovered my Nike+iPod is completely inaccurate on any soft surface. On any run I've had in the snow, (which is inevitable in Ohio,) it is completely off! I've run some courses that I know are 3 miles and looked at my iPod only to have it say 4.99. Yeah right! Then once I went running on a track that had some snow on it. After 3 1/2 laps, it said I completed a mile! Uh...last time I checked, 4 laps = 1 mile. Grrrr. Well, I've had it today. I needed to run an LSD run of 7 miles and decided to try a new trail. The trail wasn't marked, but as long as there wasn't any snow on it, I figured I'd be fine. Well, after a mile or so into the run, I found the trail to be very wet and soggy, extremely soft in spots. I didn't think much of it. I decided to run until my iPod said 7.4 miles just to be safe. Well, I just got home and checked on some trail maps only to find out that I only ran 6.6 miles! WTH! That's almost a full mile off and I did NOT reach my goal today because of it! I am fighting mad. I have my 10-mile race in a few weeks -- I can not afford to be wasting my once a week LSD run on just 6.6 miles. That's not enough! (Yes -- you've probably figured it out by now -- I am insanely anal about numbers. 6.6 is NOT close enough. As far as I am concerned, 6.99999999 is not close enough! I wanted to do 7 miles!) GRRR.

And to top that off, my run was not fun. I tried the Towpath since so many people I know seem to like it. Well, I'm not one of them. First, the trail was so soggy, I felt like it was going to suck my shoe off in spots. Then I ran about 3/4 mile past this marsh like swamp thing. It was scary! I kept imagining some swamp like creature straight out of some Scooby Doo episode jumping out and chasing after me. Then once I got past that, the trail led under a highway overpass that they were doing some heavy construction on. I felt like I should be wearing a hard hat! After that, the trail led into some pretty open land. I thought, "I haven't seen a person or any living thing in miles. Where AM I? Wait...what are those things? OMG, there are vultures circling over me. This place must be where animals come to die!" That thought alternated with, "OMG, if someone were hiding out, just waiting for an innocent, unsuspecting little person like me, I'd be a goner. Nobody would even hear my screams!" I couldn't wait to reach the safety of my car. But now I find out that all that terror was for not! Oh, I am so mad. Oh well, I guess I'll just have to try to redeem myself next weekend as I attempt 8 miles...on my normal, asphalt path! No swamp monsters for me, thank you!

It's a New Year!

Happy New Year everyone! Did you do anything fun to celebrate? I wish I could say that we did something amazingly fun to celebrate the new year, but I'd be lying. All we did was hang out at home. My husband played his new computer game that he got for Christmas and I worked on altering those mailboxes I got. (BTW, I finished one, but I'm giving that one as a gift. I'll post pics after I give it away.) We turned on the tv around 11:30, watched the ball drop, screamed and carried on, then went to bed. woo hoo. party animals. What can I say?!

Anyhow, as the new year is upon us, many of us start thinking about..."resolutions"! I don't know if I want to make any resolutions only because the word itself = failure to me. I like "goals/wishes/hopes" better. So, here goes:

Every year, I go through phases of different hobbies but never really staying consistent on any one thing. (For example, spring and summer I spend working out and reading. Fall and winter, scrapbooking and crafting.) This year, I hope to change that by setting some personal goals...

1. I am going to complete a half-marathon by the end of the year: I used to run all the time. I'm usually pretty good about it during spring and summer. Once school starts though, I hit a wall and don't find/make the time for it. That'll have to change if I expect to meet my goal. I've never run a half marathon though. A 5K is the most I've done. A few if my friends have done it though, so if they can, than I can!
2. I am going to keep up with scrapping and card making by completing at least 2 layouts and 1 set of cards a month. Some people do that much in a day. I'm a slow poke though. (One wish I have connected to this is to sell some of my stuff. I'm looking into starting an Etsy account. Anyone have tips on this? We also have a local store that sells nothing but crafted items. I'm looking into selling there.)

Now here are the things I hope to do this year...

1. Go on a vacation!
2. Get an actual job: Right now I'm a long term sub, which is fine because I still advance on the pay scale and still get benefits, but the past two springs and summers I spent wondering if I'm going to have a job the following year. I look forward to that stress being over.
3. Get the basement finished.
4. Spend more time with friends.

Hmm, that's all I can think of for now. For me, that's plenty! :-)