Once more, with feeling... (10 answered, 0 to go!)

(3/9/08 update: THANKS EVERYONE, WE DID IT!)
(3/7/08 update) I don't think I've ever worked so hard on a meme...

Okay, Sarah at Lemony did it. Kim at All Consuming did it. Blackbird at SayLaVee did it. Badger did it. So, because memes are silly and right now I need silly, I give you...


The Movie Meme:

1. Pick 10 of your favorite movies.
2. Go to IMDB and find a quote from each movie.
3. Post them here for everyone to guess.
4. When someone guesses, put who guessed it and the movie.
5. GUESSERS: NO GOOGLING/using IMDb search functions. I mean, you can cheat if you want, but is it really that important?
6. One movie guess per blogger. Give people a chance to guess before you steal all of the awesome!*
6.5 try to not badger your friends to answer...
7. Thanks for playing, everyone! Just a few more, you know you can do it!!


The movies:

1. Marian the Librarian got this one, The Cutting Edge. Well, and she should have, she's the one that got me addicted to this movie about a hockey player turned figure skater.
(Father) "What about Spindler?"
(Russian Coach) "Spindler? Spindler say before he skate with her, he wear garlic from neck and sleep with cross. Who is left? I am at bottom of barrel."
(Father) "Then you find another barrel."

2. Em got this one, Almost Famous:
William: I'm glad you were home.
Lester Bangs: I'm always home. I'm uncool.
(the second Cameron Crowe movie on this list, and we are done!!)

3. Katy got this one. Home Alone. Bless this highly nutritious microwavable macaroni and cheese dinner and the people who sold it on sale. Amen. (Kevin)

4. Katrina got this one: Jerry Maguire: "Don't cry at the beginning of a date. Cry at the end, like I do." (Laurel) (the first of two movies on this list by Cameron Crowe.)

5. Katrina got this one: About a Boy "Suddenly I realized - two people isn't enough. You need backup. If you're only two people, and someone drops off the edge, then you're on your own. Two isn't a large enough number. You need three at least." (Marcus) (the first of two Nick Hornby books turned into a movie.)

6. Em got this one, A Knight's Tale. "Hope guides me. It is what gets me through the day and especially the night. The hope that after you're gone from my sight it will not be the last time I look upon you." (Sir Ulrich, in a letter to Jocelyn.)

7. Sarah O. got this one, woo hoo! High Fidelity.
"I can't fire them. I hired these guys for three days a week and they just started showing up every day. That was four years ago." (Rob) (and the second of two Nick Hornby books turned into film on this list.)

8. Katrina also guessed this one, which I wondered if anyone would. Persuasion. (The BBC one from 1995.) "Anne? You want to marry Anne? Whatever for?" (Anne's father)

9. Katrina got this one too (thanks! I was getting worried that noone had seen my ten favorite movies!) Enchanted April
Caroline: I want to just sit and not talk and not have to be the centre of attention all the time. You know what that's like don't you?
Rose: No.

10. Em also got this one. That thing you do. "When was the last time you were decently kissed? I mean, really, honestly good and kissed?" (Guy to Faye)

*I'm using Kim's asterisk thing--go for it, guess away, because I have no idea if anyone knows these (btw, GREAT) movies...but these are the ones I've watched again and again...

Update as I struggle with a bit of insomnia as I just added Katrina's answers: thank you both to Katy and Katrina for making me smile.

11. Katy got this one: Metropolitan, which is a great movie that I had to purchase because I could never find it even at video rental stores back in the day when we went to video rental stores...a wonderful movie!! When it came out at my college's movie theatre, the year I was a junior, I went to all three showings and from then on wanted pearls! Which I got in 1995 when my friend Sally became a Mary Kay consultant. (Back in the day when you got Majorcan pearls if you brought someone into the company.) (Now you just get a pearl pin.) Apparently this whole movie thing (and this vapid cold) is making me babble...

Audrey: What Jane Austen novels have you read?
Tom: None. I don't read novels. I prefer good literary criticism. That way you get both the novelists' ideas as well as the critics' thinking. With fiction I can never forget that none of it really happened, that it's all just made up by the author.

*******

(3/6/08 update:) Now, as you can see, I do not watch high profile movies. Geesh, I'm glad I didn't pick Picture Perfect! So I'll give out some hints, because you probably have seen these movies, maybe just not a gazillion times, like I have.

Pizza heals all...

Marian (the librarian) and I went to a NoHills pizza joint after work and talked loudly (as the Stillers played in the background). I didn't know I could eat half a medium pepperoni, but I did. She ate the other half. Good friends are worth their weight in gold.

So I'm feeling a little better than I was this morning. Well, actually, a lot better. (Oh, internets, I was a [sob, sob] mess.)

And my therapist cracks me up--she bleeds black and gold like most Pittsburghers and so on game day, (today) (I had an emergency session) she is always wearing team colors, as she was today. Her necklace is black and gold. Not black bead, gold bead but black beads (like 10 in a row) and then gold beads (like 10 in a row.) The only place you could get away with this unusual beading style is in this here town where I live.

Oh, and I got a book in the mail! It's a reader's advance, woo hoo! Oh, and Slam, Nick Hornby's YA novel, is waiting for me at work. (I forgot to check it out, so it's still on my desk.) But I actually want to save it for my mini-holiday down South.

I think it's off to bed. My computer thinks it's 8:38 pm. I know that it is really 5 til eleven. Tomorrow is a full day (I gotta pack!!)

Hugs to yins, SL

(You might have noticed that I didn't mention the C word in this post at all--I am in denial that there is a gift giving, family traveling holiday coming VERA VERA SOON.)

Do not adjust your dials...

Yes, I have done yet another purge--my conscience got to me again. I'm not saying I won't write more posts like I did in the past week (and then pull them) but for now, I feel that I need to be careful, as my blog is not airtight and fully anonymous.

Stay tuned!

(Untitled)

I hate anything untitled. It's like, you made something, but you couldn't come up with a name? Or when people send emails with no subject line. I generally write "subject lines are their own art" just to put something up there. But I'm a writer. Writers do crazy stuff like that. Artists get upset about titles and crap. (Or they get super crazy happy--like, can you believe I came up with a title High Fidelity, which is about music, duh, but you know, also about fidelity, in the relationship sense?) I wonder if Nick Hornby has a blog...

I've gotten all introverted on yins, and I'm actually journalling. Yes, I am pouring out my deepest secrets to me, instead of the Internet at large. It's a bizarre turn of events, I know, but it feels good.

But I do miss you, and so here I am.

So I've been on this Nick Hornby binge and I'm 3/4 (or more) through his first, High Fidelity and I just had to share this brilliant line with you.

"So now what? It feels as though I've come to the end of the line. I don't mean that in the American rock'n'roll suicide sense; I mean it in the English Thomas and the Tank Engine sense. I've run out of puff, and come to a gentle halt in the middle of nowhere." (225)

In some universe, I would love to be friends with Nick. I'd call him that, too, just like I call Jen Weiner Jen, even though her books are clearly by JENNIFER.

Funny thing about having friends with people named Susan. Being one, and having gone by Susie most of my life, I generally only was friends with Susans. (I currently am friends with two and work with one.) (So then you have to use last names.) But after 35 years of life, I've now managed to grab a few Sues into my life as well. And so then you have the awkward experience of calling one of the Susans Sue or one of the Sues Susan. This doesn't happen if you name your children something like James. I mean, it's Jimmy, or James. Well, I guess it's also Jamie, so there you go. Robert can be Rob or Bobby or Bob. (Rob is the main character in High Fidelity.)

It's unbelievably eleven in the morning and I have gotten so into Nick Hornby that I almost said eleven in the f**ing morning, cause that's how his characters talk, just as if they walked off the set of Good Will Hunting. I'm sitting here in my nightshirt, still unshowered. I did eat something about an hour ago. Yes, I'm back in that place where I'm scared to eat for wondering if it will stay in me long enough to properly digest. And I haven't dusted in eons and so my allergies were doing a beautiful showing of it this morning.

And I really should be off getting my oil changed, since if I wait til Saturday, that's when EVERYONE is getting their oil changed. But I think that's what I'm doing. I never have Saturdays off, so I never end up doing anything, because no one expects me to be off. I'll have to do something...because most of the day I should be packing, but I have all of Sunday to do that, too, even though my Puritan sense of Sunday says "Packing? on a Sunday? For shame!" Actually, I think NH Sally is free--and I was supposed to stop by to see her last night after work, but yesterday was a day I hardly got through without Gatorade at my side most of the time, so after work I just packed it in and went home.

Well, I think I could finish High Fidelity before it's time to go to work, so that's my goal for the day. I know it doesn't sound like much, but it really is.

Tomorrow is the Stuffed Animal Sleepover. Wish me luck.

All of a sudden I want to know what kind of tree it is that is outside my window.

I have been wanting to find this poem for some time: The River Merchant's Wife, translated by Ezra Pound:

If you are coming down through the narrows of the river,
Please let me know beforehand,
And I will come out to meet you, As far as Cho-fu-Sa. From the Chinese of Li Po.

You are not surprised... (updated)

Well, I'm going on vackay next week and guess which visitor has come to tempt me off the path of efficient preparations of packing my meds, doing laundry, sorting through which books to take, etc...

You guessed it, PROCRASTINATION! Well, and I didn't have a day off yesterday, and I was so grumpy last night as a result.

I MAY have found a sofa on Craig's List (a new experience to me) which would then require organizing burly men with trucks and me offering lots of pizza. It's been twelve years, yo, since I've had to coordinate something as big as a sofa out of my third floor walk up and a sofa back up. But I have Saturday, since I have set that aside for vackay after the Stuffed Animal Breakfast.

I wonder if it's my monkey mind, though, looking for something to do that doesn't involve the gruel of packing. I mean, once I get down to it, packing doesn't take very long, because I do a million procrastinatory (is that a word) things first and then I have to hustle--wouldn't it be more efficient for me to PACK first and then I'd have time to do other stuff?

And I'm not leaving until Monday morning...but if I did it now, I wouldn't have it hanging over my head...

And if you saw all the books I've amassed in my car and requested through the library online...you'd think I was going away for weeks and weeks instead of five days.

And because of schedule changes, I am eating dinner at 4. Or maybe at 4 I'll have a snack and then I'll have dinner at 9:30.

I have 45 min before I have to be at work. I'm not really hungry, but if I eat lunch now, I'll get that out of the way...and then I can at least bring my bag out and do a rough draft of packing... (besides, if I'm going to be hungry for ANYTHING at 4, eating something now behooves me...)

The pills are the worst. I mean, I take meds 4 times a day and I usually set pills out 4 days in advance...I guess if I was able to do it for Yellowstone n'at I can do it again--that was for 7 days.

Okay, the writing helps. Thanks for reading about the minutia of my life. I promise, once summer is over, I will start posting pictures again. Also, I need to figure out how to transfer my Picasa account and make it an online account...but NOT THIS WEEK.

FOCUS, thy name is packing for vackay. Which this time, I am very excited about. It's the Lake, and the woods! (Now, admitedly, I am a sea and shore girl, but this has been our family tradition for over 20 years...)

Oh, and soon enough I'll write about Nick Hornby's latest novel, Long Way Down, which is AMAZING!!!

Okay, so lunch will make me want to work...and if you believe that, I have some ocean front property in Arizona...

*********

Well okay, so while my lunch was microwaving I pulled out my bag and put a few things in it. And now, I'm reading About a Boy again (reading and eating lunch go together and High Fidelity must be in the car...oh, no, there it is...so I'm on a Nick Hornby binge I guess...)

"I just want to be alone" (Greta Garbo) (with one more quote)

So I have one week until vackay with the family. I hope to do a lot of things BY MYSELF, as in ALONE.

Nothing personal, I just had a week of jampacked-ness. It was a lovely week. I spent it with my friends, and they are all lovely people. But I did more in the past seven days than I did some months this past spring...

Sunday I had coffee at Tazza with a friend. Then I rested for a bit, went into work, and then came home and slept. Monday, I went for a walk at 7:30 with a friend. Then I went to therapy. Then I came home, showered, and went to Sandcastle, with a friend.

Tuesday, I worked. Max called me at work to say he'd gotten home (he went away for the weekend) and when I got home from work (it's so strange that "home" is the same address for us, BUT SEPARATE APARTMENTS) we went for a walk, and then hung out for a bit.

Wednesday, I had lunch with Marian the Librarian, ran some errands after work, and went to Bible Study at Kelly's. Thursday, I ran some errands, had lunch with Babelbabe and Katy (Babs and I had never met Katy before: she is very nice.) Then I went to work. Marian and I had dinner together. Then I came home, Max and I had Italian Ices, and hung out for a bit, because today he went dahn Sauth to visit family and then take a road trip through Canada and back to da Burgh. So he'll be gone for two weeks, so we'll be getting back to da Burgh about the same time.

I think I'll get a manicure after work tomorrow. I haven't had one for a long time.

For some reason, the line from the movie Home Alone just came to me "When I grow up and get married, I'm going to live alone!"

And of course, the line from Jerry Maguire, where Renee Zellweger says, "And I can see this is a time when you need to be alone, to think about stuff. Alone, alone, alone." And Tom Cruise says, "Would you like to go out to dinner?" And RZ says "I know of a great place!"

Tonight it was just lovely to drive to Taco Bell (I have got to start cooking again), listening to A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby (which I am still loving), and then coming home to finish watching Metropolitan. How I love that movie, let me count the ways...cha cha cha.

So I read some of your blogs tonight, but commenting just seems too sociable. So if you're looking for me, I'll be in a cave, reading or something.

I guess I need to figure out which books I'm taking on vackay...

Oh, and Friday is the Second Annual Stuffed Animal Sleepover!! It feels great to not be stressed about it.

**********

one more quote, for good measure:

"Jeff's life in the tenth grade year became suddenly crowded, with people he liked, with things he wanted to do. Sometimes he caught himself protesting to himself: life is too rich...Life is so rich, Jeff said to himself, gratefully." (from A Solitary Blue, by Cynthia Voigt)

Sarah Louise goes to Sandcastle (updated)

Sandcastle: a water park just outside the Pittsburgh city limits.

Woo hoo! Steubenville Kelly and I are going to pray that the 20% chance of thunderstorms stays away.

I feel a post about "Jerry Maguire" coming up--I love that movie! Why I don't have the soundtrack is a mystery to me.

And I can't find my soundtrack to "Almost Famous." Yesterday at Tazza they were playing one of the songs off it.

Am reading Nick Hornby's Long Way Down. It is wonderful.

Okay, gotta go!