evespeer

01:26 am - books

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list on your own blog.

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 (Hey, you got to be informed to be a true atheist, I figure)
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
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
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
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

Thanks Alisha for this great list! There's a lot of these books that I'd love to read, but I'm too lazy to mark them. And as for the books I love--I am too lazy to underline them. There's a lot of reading I need to do though!!

If you're interested I've been blogging at www.allaboutevey.blogspot.com

Later friends!

12:38 am - Holes

Today I feel old. I am tired. I am tired of being old. I've been old for a very long time.

I'm disappointed in my inability to grow past my circumstances.

I have got to change somethings about how I live my life. I need a deep cleansing change. I need a paradigm shift. I keep feeling the need to hide in a hole and disappear for a while, and even as I type it--it almost seems suicidal--but it's not. It's more like the butterfly and the cocoon. I need to sink into me for a while in order to gather enough strength to make the necessary changes.

I need a hole.

I believe Christmas will be my hole this year.

It hurts that I won't be with family, but I am looking forward to spending time in the hole. And who knows--maybe this New Year won't be quite as depressing as years past have been!

08:51 am - catching up

Lots of things happening. It's always easier to list these things:

Singing in 2 choirs. We're performing at church on December 16th. It will be amazing! I keep breaking down in tears at the rehearsals because the music is so fantastic.

2nd Choir--I'm singing a solo on December 18th and 19th. Great stuff! We performed at the Washington DC Temple Visitor's Center on Sunday night. It could've been better, but people liked it--so that's good!

Winter's Tale reading at MSF. I'm playing Hermione. Wahoo! Love that part! We perform on the 16th--same day as the choir performance. Very stressful.

Teaching online Advanced English now and working in Bethesda at Commercial Realty investment corp.

Quitting job in Bethesda in January.

I'm teaching 2 Ethics classes and 1 American History class at Stratford U starting in January.

Possibly directing Midsummer this summer. Nothing's in stone yet, but talks were very productive last night.

Had a blowout Christmas party last weekend.

Have discovered television on the internet and am quite enamoured with Chuck and Life right now.

And now I am going back to work. Consider yourselves caught up on the inner workings of my life!

Wahoo!

03:11 pm

I'm giving myself a day off. I have a day to accomplish anything I want. I can redo my website, read up on the short stories I've assigned my English class, move a dresser up to my room from the basement, go shopping for Christmas decorations, vacuum, go see a movie, study lines for Winter's Tale. I can do anything I want to!

And so on this day of days--this day of pure freedom--I choose to sit on my couch and revel in nothingness.

My ambition astounds me.

10:19 pm - Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

I got off work at 2:30 today and was home by 4pm! Glorious day!

I'm thawing the turkey and trying to not feel sick.

Sometimes my body just gets sick whenever it knows I have some time off.

Oh well. It's gonna be a great day of eating turkey and going to movies. I wish I was home, but I think I'm going to enjoy being sad that I'm not at home. That doesn't sound right. I love my family, and I'm sad I'm not there, and that's a healthy feeling.

So, I won't be home for the holidays this year--but I'm going to have a good time. And next time I see everyone, I'll appreciate everyone that much more!

(This probably makes no sense.) I'm feeling a little dippy right now.

12:50 pm

I saw Michael Clayton this weekend.

I have to say, I liked it. It was intriguing, and although it took on the methodical quality of a good intellectual thriller--there was always something happening. The specificity of the actor's choices made every single scene it's own masterful universe. At the beginning of the movie, a boy describes the plot of a fantasy he's reading, and this idea permeates the movie. It's incredible.

And George Cloony is masterful.

I don't know that I've ever watched an actor "not" cry. I don't know how to describe it. He doesn't connect, and you can see this choice to almost break and shut it down. It's so minute and so incredibly specific. And I think that only actors who have an amazing confidence in the power that film has to capture such minute moments would ever leave the moment so "undone". He is fantastic.

So yeah.

Good movie.

Go see it. And look for the moment(s) when Clooney doesn't cry. Brilliant!!!

03:53 pm

For the love of PETE will someone PUHLEASE post about what's going on with the King Lear Auditions!! Good grief people! I'm dying here!!

09:16 am

Much has occurred over the last week.

Congratulations to the baby begetters! John and Jenny had a baby and Jeremy and Nan! Wahoo! little carbon copies of good people running around. Or rather, smelling around. But someday, they will run!!

I spent last weekend in Stauntonia. Ah sweet Stauntonia. I think I love it's centrality more than anything. Everyone is drawn to the same central location, so you're bound to see people you know and love within minutes of being there. And I did!

There is way too much to write. As a result no topic will get it's fair due.

But I'll ramble on.

Speaking of babies-James, Marie--you're child is adorable and looks completely different from her 5 month old self. It's like you swapped the old model for a new one. It's amazing!! Both versions of the model are very cute though.

I saw 3:10 to Yuma and died and went western heaven. Nuff said.

I went to Love's Labours Lost at ASC--and I loved it! It's come together so nicely! I'm going to rant a little here about snobby theatregoers . . .you know who you are . . .

Throughout the audience were actors who had come to town to audition for the upcoming Resident Company. How did I know this? Because they were all sitting on the stage, or in "visual" positions, and they would laugh before the end of the jokes in order to "show" the audience that they knew what was going on. It was a crack up. Now granted, it was nice to see people so engaged, and they certainly brought a great energy to the performance, but puhlease.

This would have been perfectly adequate, and frankly, quite wonderful--IF when everyone else in the audience stood to give the actors a much deserved standing ovation--THEY HADN'T STAYED SITTING IN THEIR STOOLS.

oh my word. You're falling out of your chair laughing the whole time. Everyone can see how much you enjoyed the show, and when it comes time to applaud, you politely clap from your seat. You're sitting on the stage, and you're the ONLY ONE in the audience not standing. I get it. You're thinking in your head, "I can count on one hand the times I've stood. The first time was when I saw Anthony Hopkins play Antony. And the second was when I saw Juliet Stevensen in The Caucasian Chalk Circle. I can't waste my ovations unless it's PERFECT."

But you know what the actors are thinking, "What cheeky bastards. I worked my ass off up here, and they can't be bothered to get out of their stupid stools. Idiot know-it-alls."

And that's what I was thinking.

So, if you're one of THOSE audience members, the kind that takes and never gives--I hope these thoughts rattle in your brain the next time you're tempted to advertise your vast theatrical wisdom by withholding your gratitude at the end of a hard fought play.

And now I'm done ranting.

I'll write about the rest of my week later.

10:29 pm

Things I did this weekend:

Took a bath in a huge bathtub, where I shaved my legs for the first time in a LONG time.

Bought a futon and my roommate's Fiance assembled it! (yay for people with mechanical skills!)

Bought two folding tables that serve is wonderful desks!

Bought two tv trays that serve as wonderful end tables!

Went camping up near Camp David!

Laid in the grass for inordinate amounts of time gazing up into the trees, stars, clouds, whatever was up there to see.

Sliced a ginormous chocolate cake.

Went to church outside in the woods.

Went to Germantown to the Amish Market and enjoyed a warm pretzel and a fresh strawberry shake.

And otherwise had a wonderful time!

Yay Labor Day!

01:12 pm - money is the root of all

I have reached a momentous milestone.

I am finally making enough money to do a budget.

For the past few years, I've lived my life with the hope that I will get by. Sometimes I do . . . and most of the time I live with a constant knot in my stomach hoping that the $26.50 will last me for two weeks and that my phone won't be shut off for the umpteenth time.

But today I made a budget! I decided what money to spend in what places. And I had enough to actually cover my expenses!!

It may seem difficult to imagine how you would live without making a budget, but i'll try and elaborate.

Here's an example of what my budget used to look like:

Loan Check: $4,000 (incoming money)

Bills (combined for 4 months)
Rent: $1,640
Credit Card (minimum): $200
Credit Card 2: $200
Phone: $400
Credit Card 3: $200
Electric: $150
Gas: $100
Internet $150
Food: $600
Gas: $200
Insurance: $250

That comes to $4,090.00.

Okay, so on paper it works. But you add in books, parking tickets, and any kind of fun and the whole thing just kinda falls apart.

What normally happens is that the loan check would come in so late that I would have to pay late fees on everything, and it would throw the whole thing out of wack.

And then there were plane tickets, new shoes, and undoubtedly I spent more than $150 a month on food.

Toiletries got expensive!!

BUT NOW!! NOW MY LIFE IS A SONG! IT IS A BLISSFUL DREAM AND I LOVE LOVE LOVE IT!

I did a budget, and I have money leftover!!!

Although the nature of this message is as shallow as the topic of money, this little thing has such power of my sense of well-being. My stomach isn't in knots at the thought of what going out will do to me. I can go shopping without feeling nauseous.

On the otherhand--and I'm not asking to have this feeling again--there is a real sense of faith that comes when you can't see on paper how on earth you're going to survive the next month--and somehow you do. People need pictures taken, they need babysitters, friends pay for dinner, the landlord lets you pay rent late--all sorts of miraculous events occur to make the impossible possible.

Right now, as I sit on the otherside of the fence, I am grateful for the times that have made me so grateful for my pitiful little salary. I still don't have a bed. My drawers are cardboard boxes, but I have enough to sustain me. And as the past 3 years have shown--I have always and will always be taken care of.

So thanks.

03:17 pm

Last night's Ethics class was too precious for words. I gave them a mid-term because I wanted to see where they were at as students, and if our crazy discussions were helpful in their learning. Most of my students are from different countries and as nice as they are, I have to make sure that I'm not confusing them.

They were wonderful! Ethics is such a broad topic that I have decided to conduct my classroom in a way that will help us to cater the class to their interests. Every week, instead of quizzing them on their reading, I have them turn in 3 questions. 3 things they want to discuss and are interested in learning about.

The midterm consisted of two sections. Mine and theirs. My section was 12 terms that I needed to know that they understood. All they needed to do was match the definition with the term. done and done.

For the writing part of the test, I put together a list of all the questions that they had submitted and typed them up and told them to choose 5 questions from the list and answer them as thoroughly as they were able to on the back of the test. They could use the book, their notes, whatever would help them to support their ideas.

Some of my favorites were:14) In your own opinion do you think that people from other countries should be able to practice their own cultural beliefs even if they are against the laws of this country?

19) The US is the melting pot of the world and the country is peaceful to live in while the middle east doesn’t have so many cultures, and there is so much turmoil. Could the problems be solved? What ethics/morals do you think they’re “missing”?

63) If one derives satisfaction from helping others does is make one selfish? Why or why not?

I wish I could list them all, but you get the point. I am so happy with them!

They sat and wrote forever on the the 5 questions that they chose from the list of 68.

My heart is so happy right now. The goal of the class is to encourage them to embrace their own ideas and allow them to evolve as they hear about other's experiences and read other ideas.

Next weekend we're going to visit the Holocaust Museum. Last night after the mid-term they each wrote out the laws of their world if they were going to rule the world. In the world our class lives in, everyone seemed gung ho that anyone who made under $30,000 should pay no taxes, marijuana should be legalized, and everyone should have health insurance.

It's great fun. I love teaching. I hope I get to teach again next quarter.

02:27 pm - I don't quite know what to say to this.

11:53 am

On friday, I was walking up Wisconsin Avenue on my way to the metro after my regular old day at work. I noticed what appeared to be a couple. The problem was the guy was walking faster than the girl, who was wearing very cute shoes that made it difficult for her to walk at his pace. Instead of slowing down, he would turn back to her from his place about 2 feet ahead and continue having a discussion while she was obviously trying her best to catch up to him. He only ever let her get within about 2 feet. This happened for three blocks. At the street, rather than waiting with her, he left her behind and ran across the street to wait for the elevator. The two of them stood there on opposite sides of the street, waiting for the elevator. She crossed the street just in time to get on the elevator with him.

Who does this? What kind of a man treats a friend, possibly a girlfriend with such disrespect?

I ended up sitting behind them on the metro. He got off on the stop just before hers, so I can only HOPE that they weren't together. But I have this haunting suspicion that they were. And that makes me mad at him, and disappointed in her.

In other news, I came down to Charlottesville and saw red umbrella's production of romeo&juliet. The whole production left me feeling better about the world.

R&J is not my favorite play. It has some of my favorite characters--but as a play, I think they should retitle it "A Series of Unfortunate Events that lead to the deaths of Romeo and Juliet"

I usually just sit and become progressively frustrated at the stupid things that happen that lead to the inevitable conclusion. And then we have to sit and relive the stupid events during the Friar's interminable speech.

In this production, they owned the connection between the events and completely streamlined everything from Mercutio's death. It's difficult to describe, but the effect was wonderful! And as for the Friar's stupid-ass speech---cut! Wahoo!

Needless to say, I was able to just sit back and enjoy the characters and even though they still die--but the way they died was almost magical.

I left Paul and Jessica's place in DC, moved back to Rockville, and I'll be moving permanently to Springfield (not Springville) this weekend.

Life moves on. I'm excited about taking care of my temporal needs so I can on with the business of taking care of my spiritual/creative needs!!

I miss circuits. I miss Hamlet. I miss Staunton. I miss you!

04:54 pm - well of course!

11:34 pm - Thursday night too.

red umbrella is doing a show on Thursday as well.

So the dates are Wednesday at 8pm, Thursday at midnight, and Friday at midnight.

check out www.livearts.org for directions to the theatre.

12:37 pm - red umbrella theatre--at Live Arts! Go see it!!

Lesley Larsen, Colleen Sullivan and Sarah Holdren's company

red umbrella theatre presents romeoandjuliet.

performing at Livearts 4th floor space on Wednesday August 15 at 8pm, Friday, August 17 at midnight, and/or Saturday, August 18 at 2 pm.

Visit www.livearts.org for more information. I'm not sure if the dates are accurate on the redumbrella website.

If you saw their Winter's Tale show two years ago, then you can imagine what this show will be like. If you didn't see it-- you can look forward to physical theatre with lots of music and lots of heart.

I will be at Friday's midnight show. How can you beat Shakespeare at midnight!!

The show is pay-what-you-will.

I hope I'll see you there!

09:10 pm - feeling the need to repeat myself... to repeat myself. Feeling the need!

I'm still broke. I lost my driver's license so I can't cash checks anywhere but through the mail, so I'm waiting, just waiting for my check to snail mail to my bank account in Iowa. Sigh.

This means that I was unable to leave town and go and see certain productions that I really wanted to see. Being broke sucks. But, I heard great things through the grapevine!

I'm trying not to think about the implications of my lost Driver's License. I don't have a passport. This sucks soooo much.

But I had a great weekend! I went to a Luau with my new roomies and watched Polynesian dancers from all over the South Pacific performing. My favorite dancers were the fire dancers and the little kids following along in the background. Sooo cute!

And may i say, there is nothing more manly than the Slap Dance. Ohmy. So lovely.

After watching the dancing, there was a huge dance. I love dances. This does not come as a surprise to those of you who were in Hamlet, seeing as how I could not control myself whenever music was playing. I love dances!! I just danced and danced all night. I didn't know there was going to be a dance, so I came straight from swimming. I was in this great cotton skirt and ripped tee-shirt, with my hair up and still wet from the pool, no make-up, sunburnt. I felt radiant. And I just danced.

I've been reading Harry Potter this weekend because my dad couldn't stand that he couldn't talk to me about the book, so he sent me his copy. Whoopee!!

I love it. I love it.

I don't care what you think about her writing, this woman is a brilliant storyteller. I just love all the little details that make the world wonderful. This isn't so much a spoiler, but just in case, you're warned--- I love that they travel by flushing themselves down toilets!! How absolutely lovely! There were so many moments like that when I just giggled! I love that I don't care how long the book is--I'm not reading to get to the end, the whole journey is just lovely. And I'm going to reread it!

But, I should probably get to work on my lesson plans since I start teaching next Monday! It's just one class, but I'm so happy!

Except for the lost driver's license of course. Which sucks.

But, I'll find it. Somewhere stupid i'm sure, and I'll think, "good grief EVe!!"

And then that trial will be over and another one will surely step in and take it's place. And so it goes. And so it goes.

11:22 pm

I watched a documentary on catching cat fish with your hands. Okie Noodling is the official name of it.

Tee hee.

Fun times!

Oh, and I get to teach Ethics!

05:46 pm - oh so fitting

My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is: Her Most Serene Highness Lady Genesis Eve the Indecisive of Grasshopper in the Hole Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title

11:18 pm

I auditioned for Studio Theatre in DC today. It was an open call, but they called me--so I felt both special, and not so special.

Then I read the part description as I sat waiting for my turn to audition:

Eve, 20s-30s, overweight, dreams of being a pole dancer.

I got this baby in the bag!!!

Wahoo!