Tag I'm IT

So Emma tagged me, and I think I've already done this one, but no fear. I will do it again for the sake of friendship.

Twenty Years Ago...
1. I was six and getting ready to go to first grade. I don't really remember much about it, but I am sure I was excited. I was a school geek even then
2. I was living in Orem at 1214 N 1160 W and my phone # was 224-6812. Don't ask me how I still know all that.
3. Was trying desperately to play with my older sisters, who were trying desperately to get rid of me.

Ten Years Ago...
1. I had just finished me Sophomore year.
2. I had the biggest crush of my life, (an utter waste of time, and one of the biggest regrets of my life. Poor Emma. She had to hear all about it. I am sincerely and utterly sorry!)
3. I was living in Lehi. Lame. I know, but I can't think about anything that happened back then that didn't relate to #2. Pathetic. I know, I know. Remember how I said it was the bigget regret of my life?

Five Years Ago
1. I was taking some summer courses at UVSC so I could graduate in the spring of 2004.
2. I was starting to get really nervous for student teaching
3. I was attending the single's branch in Lehi--some of the best fun I ever had.

Three Years Ago
1. I was engaged, and counting down the days to my wedding! YAY! We even had a paper chain hanging across my cabinets for the countdown.
2. I had just finished my first year of teaching.
3. I was living in my condo, that I bought all on my lonesome the previous December. And I was kicking out my old roommate for my new one.

One Year Ago
1. I finished my third year of teaching at Lehi High
2. We went to Seattle for a week and ate at Iver's, the best seafood I've ever had in my life!
3. We got baby news that changed our lives forever

So far this year...
1. We are trying to have a baby--now with better chances than ever! Things are looking up.
2. I attended a conference in Park City that got me really excited about teaching.
3. I have not entirely enjoyed my calling with the 11 year old scouts.

Yesterday...
1. I slept in until 9:00
2. I did the dishes and folded laundry
3. I watched So You Think You Can Dance and rewound the Workaholic/Wife dance to the Leona Lewis song like fifity-twelve times. I LOVE DVR.

Today...
1. I just woke up
2. I have to go to weight watchers and weigh in. I am really scared because I ate so much of the yummy catered food last week in Park City.
3. I have to go to the gym...again. Why did Rory have to get married right now?
4. The results show for So You Think You Can Dance!!!

Tomorow...
1. I have to go the gym.
2. I should probably unpack from Park City
3. Is Friday! That means a whole weekend with Joe. And I will also have to start getting ready for the Lehi Roundup Saturday morning parade (it's become a tradition with my family. Joe even changed his work schedule because he wanted to go so bad. He's cute!)

In the next year...
1. I (hopefully) will finally get pregnant! (cross your fingers and say some prayers!)
2. The new high school will get finished and Lehi High will split and finally get some relief!
3. Start looking for houses, probably in Sandy or Riverton. If I had it my way, we would be going to Idaho or Montana...Sigh.

I tag...no one. Almost everyone I know has done this tag, so....you can do if if you want.

The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood

So, as promised, I finished reading The Robber Bride a few days ago, and here is the reveiw.

First off, let me just say that I have only read two of Margaret Atwood's books, the aforementioned Handmaid's Tale, and now The Robber Bride. Atwood's style is very fluid, but not overly done. There is a lot of description, but not to the point where I get lost in it (most of the time). Ms. Atwood has this weird thing with words, though. For example, in Handmaid's Tale, the main character is constantly deconstructing words until they no longer have meaning. And in this book, one of the main characters, Tony (Antonia Fremont) is ambidexterous, so she reads words backwards. She calls herself Tmonerf Ynot. A little strange. But it's interesting. And this Atwood woman has a creepy ability to accuratly pin point the future. For example, near the beginning of the book, one of the characters, Roz, asks Tony if what she thinks about the war in Iraq (the setting is Canada in early 1990s--she's referring the Gulf War, not this war...whatever this one is about). Tony's response is that that long term consquences will in all eventuality lead to the downfall of the nation. Although I won't go so far as to say that our country is currently seeing a downfall, there is quite the economic strain...anyway, back the book.

So there are four main characters the book focuses around, all women. There is Tony, who is a Professor of History, specializing in battles and war. The description of Tony in the book reminds me of that lady on The Incredibles--you know, the one who makes the outfits? Or even that lady who with the really bad haircut who used to play one of the judges on The Practice. I'll see if I can find a picture. Found one. This is how I pictured Tony.
Anyway, that's Tony. Then, there is Charis (pronounced care-is), formerly knows as Karen. In the heighth of the hippy movement, Karen became Charis. She is a very Pheobe/Darma hippy-dippy person. Her story is the most...dark. Then there is Roz, a very large woman who is very loud, and very rich. Finally, there is Zenia. the one woman that brings all these other women together. It is because of Zenia that all of these women are friends, and it is Zenia whom all of these women hate.

The book begins with the women in a very strange bar for lunch, The Toxique. It is there that Tony, Charis, and Roz meet approximately once a month to discuss...whatever. More recently how glad they all are that Zenia is dead. And then, right in the midst of celebrating this woman's death (she's been dead about 5 years), Zenia walks in the door of The Toxique. It floors them. They leave. And then they all go home. And then the book begins.

The first story we hear about is Tony's, how she met and fell in love with her husband, how she was the first to be sucked into Zenia's spell, and Zenia hurt her. Then we move to Charis's story: her childhood, her mother, her grandmother, what happened to make her the way she is, her life with her live-in boyfriend, and her friendship with Zenia. And how Zenia ruined her life. And then we move on to Roz, her marriage, her youth, her college days, and her friendship with Zenia. And how Zenia ruined Roz's husband. And then the end.

The ending is about how each of these women cope with this force, this woman who exists only in kinky spy movies, this woman who seems to know everyone's vulnerability, a woman who uses and discards without a thought. A woman who is both abhorred and irresistable to men and women alike for reasons which are unknown. Zenia is an enigma.

I was totally engaged in this book. Even though I got lost in a lot of Tony's war babble, I found myself being sucked in, and almost sympathetic to Zenia, but I was even more committed to Tony, Charis (even though she was very strange) and Roz. Three women who were of the baby boom, came to adulthood in the sixties, and have lived through Zenia to tell the tale. I would say that this book is one of the really good, intellectual books that I have read so far, but it was still entertaining. My brain has kind of shut off right now, so I bet there was a lot of symbolism, extra meaning, and sense to be made out of this book that I have missed, but even with out all of that literary nonsense, the book was just good entertainment. I recommend it. But, like I said last time. A few F words here and there, medium sexual content, and adult themes. Probably a PG-13. But very, very good.

Paranoia...or Prophecy?

So lately I have not been doing much except sitting around and reading...which might sound like the enth degree of hell to most people, but I have come out of this very relaxed--even if does ruin my vision.

I have read two books in the past two weeks, which is actually pretty slow for me. I must be getting slower in my old age. The first book I read was called Feed. I read this for a very specific reason. I have this kooky idea that I might want to do a futuristic fiction unit with my English 11 Honors students next year, taking a page from a class I took in college. The class was titled, "Futuristic Fiction: Paranoia or Prophecy?" In all honesty, the class did little else but scare the sh** out of me. We read fiction that was set in the future; all stories were in communities where the government had tried to perfect society by using a number of frightening devices, most frightening of which was brain washing. We read A Brave New World, 1984, The Time Machine, The Handmaid's Tale, Frankenstein, and a few others that I didn't get to. Then, this professor (a beatnik-poet-version of Bruce Willis--I had a slight crush on him), who was an extremely dynamic lecturer, would flood us with articles from Newsweek, Time, and the newspaper of instances that were parallel to these dystopian societites that we were reading about. It was a very harrowing hour and a half. Several times I left convinced that we were being brainwashed on every side, that 9/11 was a scam by the government to get the idotic, patriotic citizens to voluntarily forfeit their constututional rights (just like in Handmaid's Tale), and that the Pledge of Allegiance is actually a governmental ploy to brainwash all of us into a flag-waving frenzy. And I was further convinced that we didn't realize this was happening to all of us, becuase the government was feeding the media all of this "we have to be beautiful to matter" propganda to get us sidetracked and to believe that beauty is the only thing that mattered in the world. It was an intense class. In fact, one day, after a very heated discussion of A Brave New World, where the people in this society were bred to be beautiful, and anytime anyone questioned anything other than the newest fashion trend they were given a shot of feel-good meds, and were obsessed with sex, I left class only to go to a friend's house to watch American Idol. The first thing I saw on the screen was a gelled Ryan Sechrest with a shirt that read "Beauty Qualifies Me." I began to hyperventilate.

Anyway, the point is, the class sincerely scared me, and apparently left an impact. Why wouldn't I want to freak my students out? So I think I'm going to talk about perfect socities, and all that jazz, complete with a chopped down reading of Plato's Republic. I want the students to read YA literature in the same vein, so I was trying to develope a list of dystopian books. After a short Google search, I found Feed. So, like any good teacher, I read it first.

I was apalled. And I don't apall easily. F-word here, F-word there, the story was disjointed, and the characters were deplorable. The sad thing was, I could picture any number of my students sounding and acting like these teens. Anyway, the book was gross. I don't recommend it, unless you are already VERY desistized--I thought I was. Aparently not. Anway, I was going to write about the other book I read, but I got off on a tangent...the other book, The Robber Bride, is really good. A few F words there, but not excessive, and not gratuitous. I'll leave that book review next time.