Because I don't have the mental energy to come up with something more creative to post... I found this on Aine O'Hare's Facebook page, and I'm pretty sure my responses are disgraceful for someone with an MA in English. I also want to know who says these are the 100 greatest novels because I see some pretty big gaps. (In my humble opinion, of course.)

This is a list of the 100 Greatest Novels Of All Time.

1) Copy this list into your blog or journal (or Facebook), including these instructions.
2) Bold all the books you've read.
3) Pat yourself on the back for your pretention and perspicacity.

1. “The Great Gatsby,” F. Scott Fitzgerald
2. “The Catcher in the Rye,” J.D. Salinger
3. “The Grapes of Wrath,” John Steinbeck
4. “To Kill a Mockingbird,” Harper Lee (this is one of my favourite books EVER)
5. “The Color Purple,” Alice Walker
6. “Ulysses,” James Joyce
7. “Beloved,” Toni Morrison
8. “The Lord of the Flies,” William Golding (Gr. 10 English; I despise this book)
9. “1984,” George Orwell
10. “The Sound and the Fury,” William Faulkner
11. “Lolita,” Vladmir Nabokov
12. “Of Mice and Men,” John Steinbeck
13. “Charlotte’s Web,” E.B. White
14. “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,” James Joyce
15. “Catch-22,” Joseph Heller
16. “Brave New World,” Aldous Huxley
17. “Animal Farm,” George Orwell
18. “The Sun Also Rises,” Ernest Hemingway
19. “As I Lay Dying,” William Faulkner
20. “A Farewell to Arms,” Ernest Hemingway
21. “Heart of Darkness,” Joseph Conrad
22. “Winnie-the-Pooh,” A.A. Milne (only gets better as I get older)
23. “Their Eyes are Watching God,” Zora Neale Hurston
24. “Invisible Man,” Ralph Ellison
25. “Song of Solomon,” Toni Morrison
26. “Gone with the Wind,” Margaret Mitchell
27. “Native Son,” Richard Wright
28. “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” Ken Kesey
29. “Slaughterhouse Five,” Kurt Vonnegut
30. “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” Ernest Hemingway
31. “On the Road,” Jack Kerouac
32. “The Old Man and the Sea,” Ernest Hemingway
33. “The Call of the Wild,” Jack London
34. “To the Lighthouse,” Virginia Woolf
35. “Portrait of a Lady,” Henry James
36. “Go Tell it on the Mountain,” James Baldwin
37. “The World According to Garp,” John Irving
38. “All the King’s Men,” Robert Penn Warren
39. “A Room with a View,” E.M. Forster
40. “The Lord of the Rings,” J.R.R. Tolkien
41. “Schindler’s List,” Thomas Keneally
42. “The Age of Innocence,” Edith Wharton
43. “The Fountainhead,” Ayn Rand
44. “Finnegans Wake,” James Joyce
45. “The Jungle,” Upton Sinclair
46. “Mrs. Dalloway,” Virginia Woolf
47. “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz,” Frank L. Baum
48. “Lady Chatterley’s Lover,” D.H. Lawrence
49. “A Clockwork Orange,” Anthony Burgess
50. “The Awakening,” Kate Chopin
51. “My Antonia,” Willa Cather
52. “Howard’s End,” E.M. Forster
53. “In Cold Blood,” Truman Capote
54. “Franny and Zooey,” J.D. Salinger
55. “Satanic Verses,” Salman Rushdie
56. “Jazz,” Toni Morrison
57. “Sophie’s Choice,” William Styron
58. “Absalom, Absalom!” William Faulkner
59. “Passage to India,” E.M. Forster
60. “Ethan Frome,” Edith Wharton
61. “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” Flannery O’Connor
62. “Tender is the Night,” F. Scott Fitzgerald
63. “Orlando,” Virginia Woolf
64. “Sons and Lovers,” D.H. Lawrence
65. “Bonfire of the Vanities,” Thomas Wolfe
66. “Cat’s Cradle,” Kurt Vonnegut
67. “A Separate Peace,” John Knowles
68. “Light in August,” William Faulkner
69. “The Wings of the Dove,” Henry James
70. “Things Fall Apart,” Chinua Achebe
71. “Rebecca,” Daphne du Maurier
72. “A Hithchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” Douglas Adams
73. “Naked Lunch,” William S. Burroughs
74. “Brideshead Revisited,” Evelyn Waugh (thank Liam for that one)
75. “Women in Love,” D.H. Lawrence
76. “Look Homeward, Angel,” Thomas Wolfe
77. “In Our Time,” Ernest Hemingway
78. “The Autobiography of Alice B. Tokias,” Gertrude Stein
79. “The Maltese Falcon,” Dashiell Hammett
80. “The Naked and the Dead,” Norman Mailer
81. “The Wide Sargasso Sea,” Jean Rhys
82. “White Noise,” Don DeLillo
83. “O Pioneers!” Willa Cather
84. “Tropic of Cancer,” Henry Miller
85. “The War of the Worlds,” HG Wells
86. “Lord Jim,” Joseph Conrad
87. “The Bostonians,” James Henry
88. “An American Tragedy,” Theodore Dreiser
89. “Death Comes for the Archbishop,” Willa Cather
90. “The Wind in the Willows,” Kenneth Grahame
91. “This Side of Paradise,” F. Scott Fitzgerald
92. “Atlas Shrugged,” Ayn Rand
93. “The French Lieutenant’s Woman,” John Fowles
94. “Babbitt,” Sinclair Lewis
95. “Kim,” Rudyard Kipling
96. “The Beautiful and the Damned,” F. Scott Fitzgerald
97. “Rabbit, Run,” John Updike
98. “Where Angels Fear to Tread,” EM Forster
99. “Main Street,” Sinclair Lewis
100. “Midnight’s Children,” Salman Rushdie

Yeah, 19 out of 100 isn't great. The problem is, most of these aren't even books I really want to read. I might have to make my own list.

Sometimes I am extremely gullible. In case you needed proof, here is a recent conversation I had at a Shoppers Drugmart after I kept setting the alarms off every time I tried to go out door:

Roseanne: I'm really sorry; I promise I haven't stolen anything.

Cashier Guy: No problem. We'll just have to give you a quick blood test. [Reaches for his cash drawer.]

Roseanne: [In a very high-pitched voice] A blood test?!

Liam: [Whispering] I think he's joking.

Last October Dee and I stood on the sidewalk across from the CBC building in Halifax and cheered on our friend Emily in the CIBC Run for the Cure. I had started running the week before, and wasn't even able to huff and puff my way past jogging for about ten minutes in two minute intervals, but as everyone waved and yelled encouraging words, I decided that next year I would be one of the runners decked out in pink. I wanted a number to pin on the front of my T-shirt, and I wanted to prove to myself that I could run 5K without dying. And of course, raising money for cancer research would be great too.

Yesterday, after a year in which I wimped out of running during the winter because it was too cold and icy outside and struggled to get out of the house on days when I just wanted to curl up on the couch, I did it. It was a crisp, sunny morning. I was exhausted because I had gone to a birthday celebration the night before and accidentally gotten quite tipsy. Some people pushed strollers; some people ran with their dogs. There were three different bands playing along the route, and everyone was excited to be there. Annie and Liam finished before me, but I did it! As a member of the Librarians Run for the Cure team, I ran 5K. And my number was 7660.

Next up: the Salvation Army's Santa Shuffle in December. I hear people run wearing Santa hats and jingle bells…

Oh. My. Gosh. Kahlua just showed up at our back door at home. I can't believe it! I'm so happy!

She's been gone almost a month, and my parents have no idea where she was. She was very hungry and thirsty and a little skinny, but still in one piece.

Now there are three cats at my house, and I'm even more anxious to get back to PEI than I was before. SO HAPPY!!!!!

Having resigned ourselves to the fact that Kahlua is not coming home again, my family has adopted a new kitten. Three-month old Friday arrived yesterday. She's all black with curly whiskers and a very loud purr.

She is also a master of concealment. She'd only been home for half an hour when she disappeared for the entire afternoon, leaving me frantically wondering if she'd been able to slip outside and how I was going to explain to my mother that I had lost her new kitten. She turned up at supper time, but when we left her alone for ten minutes to eat dinner she disappeared again!

We thought she'd reappear when she got hungry, but she still hadn't come out by the time everyone was going to bed. Then we thought if the house was quiet for the night she might come out when we were sleeping. Morning came, and still no Friday. I got home from my run this morning to find my mother in the living room with one hand to her ear: she thought she could hear the kitten in the chimney.

Sure enough, when I got a flashlight and looked inside, there, behind the damper, was a tiny little black kitten gazing at me with glowing eyes. She was very eager to be petted, but she was stuck and couldn't get back down again. I ended up inside the fireplace for an hour or so, trying to coax her out. Unfortunately, this didn't work, so next I tried hammering the damper screw, trying to make the hole bigger so Friday could jump down. Still no luck. (And I was extremely dirty. I have a whole new respect for Bert the Chimney Sweep from Mary Poppins.)

We didn't want to leave her there because she still has stitches in her belly, she hadn't eaten in over 24 hours and she had a cough from all the soot in the chimney. Thankfully, when my brother came home he was able to get her out. She was filthy and shaking, but she purred and I think she was happy to leave her ashy hiding place.

Currently she's curled up in the bookcase. She did a bit of grooming and now she's taking a little nap. After all, it's been an eventful day and a half.

And that is how I spent the only sunny day of my vacation wedged inside a chimney.

I'm heading home tomorrow for a whole week of relaxation and socializing. Vacation, here I come!

Life in Halifax has been good, but I've hit a rough patch this week. First I had a nasty run-in with a big bully and now my kitty, Kahlua, is missing back home. I've been trying for a long time to mentally prepare myself to hear bad news about Socks just because he's such an elderly guy, but I'm not prepared at all for something to happen to energetic little Kahlua. Not knowing where she is and not being able to be at home doing something about it completely and totally stinks.

I'd like to introduce you all to the newest member of our household. We've adopted a cat!

Violet is about one year old and has had a rough go of it until now. She became pregnant too young, and when she gave birth her uterus prolapsed, which led to an emergency c-section and spaying. Unfortunately, only one of her kittens survived. She was abandoned at the vet clinic and ended up at the SPCA.

She's hit the jackpot now though, and we intend her to lead a life of feline luxury. Judging from the way she was lolling in a sunbeam on the couch this afternoon, it doesn't appear we're going to have a very hard time persuading her living here is a good idea. Be prepared: I predict many postings of cat pictures in the future!

My first day at work as a new professional did not go exactly as I imagined. Actually, this whole week hasn't really gone the way I imagined.

Originally, I wasn't supposed to begin work until next Monday, but when some issues arose that meant I might not be able to get all my orientation and training finished before I was on my own, it wasn't a big deal for me to start a little earlier. I agreed to come in this Monday and Wednesday, and then spent the weekend celebrating the end my of MLIS.

I had a tickle in my throat when I woke up Monday morning, but because I've already been sick five (FIVE!) times this winter, I figured I had just been sleeping with my mouth open or something. By part way through the morning I definitely knew I was starting to get sick. Sometime between noon and 1:00pm, I got really dizzy and could feel myself starting to faint. I managed to stagger to a chair instead of falling on the floor, and ended up having to go home. I had to go home from my first day of work as a professional librarian. What an auspicious start to my career, eh?

But it got even better: my fever kept going up and and up, despite copious amounts of Tylenol, and my throat got so sore I could barely swallow. On Tuesday night Liam took me to the Health Centre on campus, where I was diagnosed with a raging case of strep throat. Then I threw up in the doctor's office. We took a cab the three blocks back to our apartment because I couldn't walk, and I just got sicker and sicker. Eventually my fever went up to 104.5 and I started seeing inanimate objects move. It was very disturbing, and I really don't recommend it.

However, antibiotics are marvelous, marvelous things, and by the next morning I was already starting to feel better. Yesterday my fever was much lower, but in comparison to the night before, I felt a million times better. I even ate an egg! And all the furniture stayed where it's supposed to! Unfortunately, when I called work to say I was still ill and couldn't come in, I found out that Wednesday had to be the last day of work for the person I'm replacing. This means I'm going to be running a library by myself with four hours of orientation.

On top of all this, I've missed almost all of the good-bye activities for my darling Dee, including ice cream cake and her Last Supper. She leaves today for a job interview in Ontario tomorrow and then heads back to Manitoba. I'm going to miss her like crazy, but thankfully she and all her family will be here in May for convocation.

In the meantime, as I store up my energy for Secret Friend farewells and Stars on Ice (which I'm going to tonight if Liam has to carry me), I'd like to send Laura a big congratulations on a huge academic achievement! I'm so proud of her!

Today was my last day of class at SIM. We celebrated the end of an era with an afternoon in the sunshine, Tin Roof Brownie Blizzards from DQ, and a trip to the Grad House. I won't feel completely done until my last two assignments are handed in, but as people begin to talk about their travel plans and get excited about new jobs, it's hard to ignore the fact that two of the best years I've ever had are almost over.

That being said, I'm really looking forward to starting work as an actual professional and becoming a real grown-up (which Lynda assures me isn't that bad). Right now it feels like there's a world of possibilities out there. I can't wait to tackle them: hopefully the best is yet to come.

I love birthdays, and I'm a big proponent of spreading them out so the fun lasts as long as possible. This year, I had my family celebration (complete with The Birthday Cake) in February when I was home for Reading Week, even though my actual birthday wasn't until this week. Festivities on the day itself were pretty subdued because Liam was sick and I had six hours of class in a row (from 2:30 pm until 8:30 pm), but between Facebook, emails, and e-cards, I still felt an awful lot of birthday love. Thanks to everyone who got in touch - you guys totally made my day!

Unfortunately, I caught Liam's cold and have been lying on the couch in a feverish haze since Wednesday afternoon. I did watch Mary Poppins yesterday though, which never fails to make me happier. Today I'm finally starting to feel a bit better, so it's time to return to assignments: only five more to go before I'm a professional librarian!

Ladies and gentlemen, I will not be unemployed when the school year is over!

I just found out this morning that I will be working as coordinator of a resource centre for a Faculty of Education at a small university in the city. It's a one-year contract, which is perfect because I can stay with Liam while he finishes school, but still be flexible about moving next spring.

I can't even describe what a huge relief it is to know that A) I will still be able to pay my rent after graduation, B) someone actually wants to hire me, and C) I'll be doing a job I'm going to enjoy for the next year.

Hurray!

Still sick. Liam is my hero. On the weekend he brought me home a bag of mini-eggs, which I haven't been able to eat yet because my throat is too sore. Tonight he went out in the snow to the grocery store to buy me some strawberry Jello. He is certifiably awesome.

It started in January. First Liam got sick. Then he broke his arm. Then I got sick. Then he got sick again. Now I'm sick again. Vinny's theory is that we have fungus in our apartment, but I think we live in a plague house. Who wants to come visit?

This week someone left a random penguin coffee mug in my mailbox at school! The little guys are wearing red bow ties and have the cutest yellow flippers. It was a lovely surprise and just another reminder of why I'm going to miss SIM when I graduate in May.

It snowed beautiful Christmas card snow here this evening. Liam took this picture of our apartment building at about 10:30 pm. We're the three lighted windows right at the top. You can't zoom in enough on Blogger to tell, but Orla is sitting in the window sill on the left.

I handed in my evil cataloguing assignment, and I think my cold is starting to clear up a little. I'm going to have some Twix ice cream to celebrate. Life is good.

Main entry: Still sick.

Added entry: My cataloging assignment is evil.

I'm sick. Boo.

Talk about school stretching my brain! Last night I submitted a webpage for my E-Text class. That's right: I made a webpage. From scratch. Using codes and stuff. I feel so smart!

Here it is: http://myweb.dal.ca/rs918039/index.html

It's one week later and Liam can almost completely extend his arm again. The poor guy also came down with a cold the day after our trip to the hospital, so he hasn't had the greatest week.

Nothing else exciting is happening here (although lots of good excitement is happening to some very dear people!). I sit in front of my computer and do lots and lots of homework. And worry about getting a job. Thankfully, Liam is a fantastic cook, so at least I don't have to worry about eating well! Mmmm cheesy potatoes.

Well, that was an eventful weekend.

Friday night Dee, Liam, Stephen (a classmate), and I went to the Seahorse to see Old Man Leudecke (an awesome banjo player) and the Tom Fun Orchestra (a neat band from Sydney). The music was great, but unfortunately the bar was freezing. As in I-wore-my-hat-and-coat-and-scarf-and-still-couldn't-feel-my-fingers freezing. Also, several members of the crowd appeared to not believe in personal hygiene.

Last night Aine came over for dinner. She left for three weeks in Rome this morning, and Orla is staying with us while she's away. I'm more than delighted to have a kitty for a while, even if it means sticking all my plants in the bathroom and keeping the door shut. Unfortunately, Liam took a spill while running to catch the bus to pick up Aine and broke his right arm at the elbow. We ended up spending most of the evening at the hospital and now Liam is iced and Motrin-ed within an inch of his life.

Here's hoping things calm down for the rest of the week!

I've been somewhat lax in posting the last few weeks, and, unlike Lynda, I don't even have a good excuse. Here are some of the highlights of Jaunary thus far:

1. School started again -- my last semester at SIM. Although I'm excited to be an actual professional, I'm sad that this part of my life will be over in a few months. Job hunting is pretty unpleasant as well.

2. Lynda came to Halifax last weekend. We went shopping and I bought the most gorgeous pair of pants ever. Even I can tell they make my behind look incredible! And they're professional wear too, so the purchase was completely justifiable. We also baked The Birthday Cake for Dee. Thai food was consumed. Saturday night Dee, Aine, Lynda, and I went to the Neptune to see White Christmas and it was wonderful. There was lots and lots of tap dancing, and it snowed in the theatre!

3. My brother and his girlfriend were here for a night.

4. Liam creamed me at a game of Scrabble with "czar" on a triple-word square. That's 45 points! Don't play Scrabble with someone who likes to spend his spare time reading the OED.

5. Dee and I went to see Atonement. Even though it was depressing and waaay more graphic than I was expecting, I thought it was a good movie.

6. Tonight Liam and I team-cooked a roast beef dinner and had some people over for supper. Liam was responsible for the meat and gravy, while I made the Yorkshire puddings. Not only was it very tasty, it was Vinny's first ever roast beef dinner. Who gets to be twenty-five without having had a roast beef dinner?! His excuse was that his family is Italian. I'm not sure if that's a good excuse or not; after all, we're talking about the same guy who's never been sledding either.

That's all for now!