Hello again

Hey so I haven't written in a while but I decided it was about time to update you all although I do admit that my life rarely changes much. So here are the major fronts:

The Home Front:
Well not much changed here. More problems with landlords (to be expected). Did a lot of cleaning yesterday so the house is looking pretty good. We went out and I bought Bren Rent on the first day it was released so eat your heart out world. The puppy is no longer really a puppy, he is full grown now and a year old (unfortunately the vet told Brenda that he may be full grown at a year but he won't mature until 2 so one more year of this puppy attitude) Jessie is doing well. We decorated as well as cleaning yesterday so there are new pictures of Jessie around. My family in white plains is doing well... I assume I must admit its been a little too long since I got down there. Nana is in rehab but she should be getting released on wednesday so that will make her happy. I guess that's really all that is new on the home front.

The Work Front:
Well there is some good news to report from this front. A couple of weeks ago I started working one day a week in the YWCA office and I must admit it is a lot different than I thought it would be but at least we are supposedly heading towards a full time position by next school year. I have written out a bussiness letter, two surveys, proof read a survey someone else wrote and made a bunch of phone calls to different colleges... all in a days work I guess. Edu kids is going well too. I love those little munchkins. I really enjoy working with the little ones. They are only 2 years old and they are sooo adorable and all. So besides the fact that I am putting in 11 hour days 5 days a week it seems to be going well. Money on the other hand is still tight.

School Front:
Well this front is unfortunately right where it was when we left off, no I have not graduated, I have a little more done on my thesis than I did before and my incomplete in nutrition has gone nowhere :( Sorry those 11 hour days are killing me if you think I want to come home to school work you would have to be kidding me. I did however finally make contact with my thesis advisor again and she said that she is willing to grade my paper as is because "she knows how incompletes just hang over your head and all" well I would gladly take her up on this offer if it wans't for two things A) My pride... I feel like I need to give this paper my all and I really want it to be good and to impress you know. and B) The only part that I am missing is my conclusion and we all know that I can not very well turn in a paper that comes to no conclusion so I guess I have a little more work to do before I get it graded. I am thinking I should be able to do what I need to do and contact her again at the end of this weekend or possibly the next at the latest.

This is a very important add in on the home front and I hope that some of you bloggers out there will see this before it is too late. The SUNY board and the University at Buffalo is trying to do away with the Women's Studies Department. They have already changed the name to Women in the Global Community and now they are in the process of firing all of the adjunct proffessors as well as many of the Graduate Student professors. Well these are the first steps at undermining and eventually eliminating the WS department as a whole from the UB campus. There is something that we can do however. The Women's Center is holding meetings about this issue and is right now focusing on trying to save our adjuncts. There is a petition cirrculating and there is also going to be a letter writing campaign and an email campaigne. If anyone is interested in more information about this or wants to help save WS at UB please let me know and I will try to get you in contact with the right people.

Ok well I guess that is all for now Please, Please, Please get involved in saving the WS department... I dont know where I would be right now without it and I know a lot of people who feel the same way. Please do what you can... every little bit helps. We can make a difference.

This one's for you Jen...

You're Sophia!

"Picture it. Sardinia, 1932. I was on a tour of the great caper factories. I was a cookie kid going through my piccata period -- a wedge of lemon and a smart answer for everything. Anyway, I was slicing an onion when, suddenly, a big basil tree fell. I don't have a story about taking advantage of a dead guy. I have a story about a Moroccan and a monkey. But that falls under the heading of lust." You're Sophia, the wisecracking know-it-all with a past as zesty as your famous marinara and a penchant for dating the famous (Picasso, Julio Iglesias and all three members of the Yalta Conference, to name a few).


Which Golden Girl are you? Find out now!

Hurricane

Ok so I have been spending a lot of time working on my thesis which happens to be about the construction of race in this country. So I have also been watching the news to keep up on the Hurricane in the south. Boy has that given me something to write about. Did anybody else see the pictures of the black woman and the white woman coming out of the stores with baby formula... maybe someone can explain to me why the white woman was "doing what she needed to do for survival" and the black woman was "looting and rioting." I don't get it. I have had many conversations with people recently about my thesis and about the Hurricane and sombody please tell me why nobody can see how racially charged this Hurricane experience has been. Letting alone the incident on the news which I just spoke of above but New Orleans and the surrounding areas are heavly populated with African Americans and for some reason, it took days to deploy the coast guard down there for emergency rescue, the emergency rescue missions were stopped because peope were looting.. of course they are looting... they have NOTHING to survive on. What did you expect them to do. The stores are all flooded anyway does it really matter much if a woman is taking formula to keep her baby alive and more importantly is that really a reason to stop trying to rescue people who are drowning. There have been more and more reports about how big a catastrophe this is and how many people are going to be dead at the end of it... not hundreds but thousands... oh well what a shame maybe we should go tend to the looters instead of pulling people out to the water. How does someone's brain work like this. Is it more important to arrest people for doing what they need to do to survive or to save more people. I dont' get it. When is the madness going to end. When are people going to wake up and smell the coffee. Alot of what happened could have been avoided... alot of the damage and definitly a lot of the deaths but when you are dealing with a bigoted gov't headed by the biggest bigot of our time and you are talking about a place that is mostly african american people... i guess I see how it happened. Oh well I got to go... more to come... I hope.

Lori and Brenda's top 10 list of ways that Six Flags makes you feel OLD!!!!

Ok so on the way back from Darien Lake tonight Brenda and I came up with a list of about 25 ways that Six Flags can make you feel old.... here are our favorite 10... hope you enjoy and keep in mind that all 10 are true...

#10 The lazy river doesn't seem so lazy any more

#9 Going to the Park no longer leaves you energized and excited... instead it leaves you utterly exhausted

#8 You find yourself packing a cooler and sandwiches to avoid the extremely overpriced food items that your parents always tried to avoid buying

#7 You have become the person who buys the waterproof canister necklass to keep your money (and your cigarettes dry)

#6 You find yourself willingly making conversation with people twice your age

#5 You find todays bathing suits more than a bit too revealing

#4 You find yourself shaking your head numerous times at "the youth of today"

#3 You find yourself critiquing the safety of every ride you go on

#2 The water slides don't hold the same appeal for you because there is no way you could possibly make it up that many stairs 2 times in a row nevermind carrying the raft with you. (this applies to smokers and non-smokers alike)

#1 Your FAT ASS can't fit in the seats of all the rides!!!

Ok I will update as I usually do.. .

So here is life in a nutshell... well possibly a fairly long nutshell...

school...
Ok so as far as school is concerned everything is going alright. I have about 15 pages done on my thesis so that is about half done. Beth is supposed to be finding out whether masani is reading and grading my paper or if she is this week so she can let me know next time we meet. All i have to say is that if it is the new chair and beth is wrong there is going to be hell to pay.. I do not like this lady. So far she has... cut beth from teaching, the 213 collective was shut down which was the class that most people entered the major through, she has Voichita teaching 101 which will have to take over that spot and draw people in.. but the curriculum for that course is drier than dry and at least I don't find Voichita to be the most welcoming of teachers, apparently she is thinking of canning Caroline (the assistant to the chair of our department), the nicest sweetest person you will ever meet, while Masani was trying to make her full time. Well I guess I will stop there... enough is enough of this shit. I am so glad that I am getting out of the department now and that I will have nothing to do with this chair. Besides she is a sociologist.. .that is how she made a name for herself not through women's studies and from what I and the people around me have seen she doens't hold true to any feminist ideologies. I still have to do and get in my nutrition labs because to be honest I really just haven't had the time to sit and get those done with all the other stuff I am doing right now in fact nutrition is worrying me the most out of anything that I have to get done this summer. Spanish is actually going pretty well. A friend of mine told me that it was going to be really dificult to do in the summer because of the amount of stuff you have to learn and the short time in which you have to do it but right now from my figuring I should have an A right now. So that about wraps up school right now...

Job...
Ok so I have been giving this a lot of thought lately. what am I going to do when I finally get done with school? Beth said that she can help me out in finding a job within my major and I am hoping that she comes through with that. In the meantime however I have an application that I am debating dropping off at the Wilson Farms across the street. For now it will at least be something and it will be convenient enough considering bren and I are working on one car. I have had the application for a couple of weeks now and I just haven't brought myself to turn it in yet. I guess I am just debating whether or not it's something I want to do. I mean a job is a job but at the same time I am about to graduate from college do I really want to be working a cash register again? Well only time shall tell how that pans out. I guess it wouldnt' be all that bad until I find something better.. .a little extra money in my pockets.

Kids...
Well we just dropped jon and jessie back off at grandma's last night after a fun trip to Darien Lake with them. (check out my livejournal for my personal opinion) I think Jon enjoyed it and I know Jessie did. I just feel bad that we didn't get to stick to our plans and take the kids on monday like we wanted to but Bren's mom decided that Jon had to be back up earlier than she originally said. Oh well thus is life. Jessie either has really bad heat rash or really mild chicken pox but they don't seem to be getting any worse so I think we are deciding that it is heat rash. Oh well... i kinda wish it was chicken pox because at least then it would be over with it's better for her to get them when she is young and during the summer so she wouldnt' miss any school. Well I guess that is about it for the kids right now.

I guess that's about it for the update too... later

Yikes

Ok so this is disgusting. I know that brenda blogged about this a couple of days ago and I am a little bit behind the ball but I'm sorry I can't just let this one slide by. Ok first of all the "gay panic" defence is just the same as "white fear" and I am writing a paper dealing with that right now. It's just amazing to me the things that can hold up and even be legitamate defences in our courtrooms. "White Fear" is basically a defence that says that the defendant was so afraid of said non-white (usually black) person that they felt as if they had to kill them. This is basically self-defence against someone's race. This defence can be and has been used and successful before in courts. I don't know what everybody else seems to think but to me... claiming this defence is basically confessing to a hate crime which should buy you more time in prison not get you off. If I am saying to you that I am so afraid of black people that I had to kill the one that was in front of me at the time... isn't that basically saying that you killed him because he/she was black? The same thing goes for "gay panic"... it goes something like this "oh my god I thought that guy was hitting on me so I killed him" or in this case "I thought my son might be gay so I beat him until he slipped into a coma and died" hmmm... doesn't that just scream hate crime!!! He KILLED HIS SON BECAUSE HE THOUGHT THAT THE 3 YEAR OLD WAS GAY!!! Come on people does anyone else see where I am going with this. First of all I wouldn't be surprised if he has or would be involved in ANOTHER hate crime against a gay person and lets be real either this guy has some pretty intence gaydar to pick up on a 3 year old OR he is a little too touchy about this issue. Ok so I guess that's it on my rant on this guy but there are just three words for this story... Oh My God!

Stuff

So here it is... I have about 5 minutes if that to write. It's Angela's birthday and we are all going out for a while. I have decided that my blog is not living up to it's name so I am going to focus on more radical things with the occasional update on my life too. So since I don't have the time now this is just an update but that is the future plan. Hopefully once I get done with all this school shit I will have the time to really look at the news and critique it but until then... alas I am stuck. Anyway, school is going pretty well. I didnt' get nearly enough done tonight.. too many interruptions but I am hoping that the quiz tomorrow will be ok anyway and then I will have some time to work some more on my paper before meeting with beth tomorrow night. Yes that's right I am meeting with beth and she is finally getting a look at all the work I really haven't gotten around to on my thesis yet. Oh well I have been working on it the last couple of days and pounding out some more pages of the actual paper at least. I guess we will see how it all goes. I didn't get through the books that I was supposed to be looking at for her but I did get through some of them and I have notes on them of stuff I want to plug in and if I finish plugging them in than I guess maybe I don't have to bring any evidence of how much I didn't actually read... I dont know maybe it is just me but I really felt like a lot of this stuff just wasn't relevant at all but then again I guess Beth knows better than me. Tara is buckeling down and she has gotten quite a bit done on her thesis so I am proud of her... I just wish I could do the same... I am so focused on being done with school that the things that have to get done before I can be done just aren't on my mind for some reason but you know what... Bren you are right... I just have to focus on this stuff for another 2 months and I am done with it so I guess I really have to put all that work energy that I have into the schoolwork for the time being. So yeah that's it about school I guess because quite frankly... I dont want to even talk about it anymore :(

So incase you guys didn't see it I now have a link up to my puppy's new blog... he's so cute so if you guys want to take a look at how the puppy is going and all the fun little things like pictures etc... check it out. If for some reason you can't use my links... the website is www.darkanddevious.blogspot.com check it out and let me know what you think... comments are always welcome lol... unless you are going to say that Bren and I are too obsessed with the dog... cause we already know that lol. Ok well I guess it is time to be going and meeting up with those friends of mine that I rarely see anymore... Off I go and a good night to all. :)

School

So here I sit at school again killing time before it is time to run off to abnormal psych. We have a test today so that should be fun. That means at the very least that I should be getting out a little bit early.. yay. Oh and lets see... I have a quiz in Mythology tomorrow... well every friday and they suck... I definitly failed the first one.. it was ridiculous.. i wish I was taking it with the same professor everyone else took it with... at least I hear he was fun.. .but no I have the graduate student.. dude look like a lady ;) so I don't know what I am going to do. I guess that means I am going to be studying my ass off after I get out of psychology tonight because I don't know anything that she wants us to know. I have to have a response paper in to her by monday and that class is just driving me nuts.. I mean it's really interesting and it would be a lot of fun if I wasn't too busy stressing over her insane expectations of what 90% of the class who have never had a greek nor mythology class in their lives are supposed to know... she is filling every class to the brim with stuff with a ton of reading every night and she expects us to know and absorb every tidbit from it for these damn tests... and we are not talking have a general knowlege... no she wants the specifics... it's crazy... excuse me for not knowing the greek word for truth.. what relevence does that have... ahhh... ok so enough ranting about that class.. I have about 15 minutes to get to my other class and then decide where I am going to go to study afterwards... stupid summer hours... the library is only open til 9... wtf. Ok so Jessie is with Jessica again and that's great... gives me a little bit of a break and some free time ... well if you consider classes and studying to be freetime. So I ran her in to Aunt Ellen's and Uncle Ken's house tonight and Aunt Ellen stopped me to let me know that we are going to be their bowling partners for the upcoming season... starting in like late august early september.... haha I'm going to be in a bowling league.. should serve to be interesting. Ok well I really should go but just a little reminder to everyone out there as to why I am SOOOO excited about this upcoming weekend... PRIDE!!!! Enough to put anyone in a better mood.. at least if you ask me. Love you baby.... hope you are having fun at work and hopefully I will have gotten enough studying done by the time that I pick you up that we will be able to get some stuff done before we go to sleep... the house is a disaster... ok bye for now :)

Peace

Ok so I am currently sitting at the computer at school trying to print my hw for the night. Yes that's right... summer classes have begun and are in full swing already. The computer is being stupid... whenever I try to print I am getting a message saying that the document exceeds the # of pages allowed or some shit like that. I didn't write it I'm just trying to print it... ahh not fair... If I don't get this to print I dont know what I am going to do because I need it for tomorrow. Anyway so here is what's new in life. I started classes today. Fun stuff as usual. bren is at work right now and we have a babysitter for Jessie so that I can have some time for hw and thesis and stuff of that nature. I have a feeling that I am in for a very full summer. Ok well what else... it feels so good to be out of the house. I am convinced that I was completely losing my mind because there was just nothing to do anymore and Jessie although I love her to death was driving me nuts... just too much time in the house I guess so hopefully school time and stuff like that will help. Midnight is doing well. He is listening a lot better, sleeping through the night and all... it's great. Very few accidents.. again a plus. Bren is doing well too. Even though today was the first day I think that she is really enjoying her new work schedule. It gives her a little bit of time to be home during the day and get some stuff done that she needs to do and god knows that I love not having to get up at 4:45 every morning. So that's working out well all around. Jessie has field day tomorrow at her school so bren and I are going and we are competeing. That should be fun. I told bren we are probably the best parents to be competing so we signed up lol. Ok well I guess I really should try to figure out a way to print this so I will talk to you all soon. Lots of Love... Peace

that's me

You Are a Plain Ole Cup of Joe But don't think plain - instead think, uncomplicated You're a low maintenance kind of girl... who can hang with the guys Down to earth, easy going, and fun! Yup, that's you: the friend everyone invites. And your dependable too. Both for a laugh and a sympathetic ear. What Kind Of Coffee Are You? Take This Quiz :-) Find the Love of Your Life (and More Love Quizzes) at Your New Romance.

update

ok so here it is... we figured it out!!! Last night we figured out a routine for midnight that helps him to sleep through the night. If you don't let him nap between 8 and 11 and you play with him a bit then by the time 11 o'clock roles around he is so tired that he sleeps through the night... success. We had a our first decent nights sleep in a while thanks to that oh yeah so good a nights sleep that Jessie was a little late for school cause we all over slept. Hey I think we needed it and she'll only be like 5 mins late anyway. So Bren and Jessie are on their way to school and I am using this time to catch up on the things that I wanted to do... like blog. The puppy is definitly doing so much better. He hasn't been having the accidents in the house really and now with the sleeping through the night that we are keeping our fingers crossed that he continues to do ... all is well. We bought some flowers yesterday to plant in the front yard to spruce it up a little bit but I think we got a frost last night so we had to pull all of the flowers in and off the porch for now. This weather is crazy I mean it's 80 one day and like 30 the next... something has to give. Bren works today from 2-10:15 and I am going to have jessie and Dolores. Dolores is the 3 year old daughter of one of Bren's coworkers and she needed somebody to watch her today so that she could work some extra hours.. we figured since they have watched Jessie for us more than once... why not. So that should be fun... I bit exhausting cause that means a 3 year old, a 6 year old and a puppy but all is good... and it shouldn't be that bad. Ok well as a sims update cause that is what I am about to do... bren and I are both old now... we have a kid named Jamie and Jessie is an adult. We moved into a huge house but don't have the money to furnish it.. oh well.... such is life. Talk to you all later. it's SIMS TIME!!!!

so...

Ok.. tired oh so tired. Dog kept me up all night last night and then Jessie kept me up this morning. I can't wait for brenda to start working nights... this 5:30 bullshit has got to go. So I am sitting here after taking brenda to work at 5:30 and Jessie to school for 9:00, took Brenda from breakfast at work and now it is a little bit of blog time for me then school work. So speaking of school.. in order to graduate this summer here is the list of things I must do...
1) Finish incomplete for Colins and hope that she grades it (doing that today)
2)Take classes over the summer
3) Finish up my incomplete for nutrition over the summer
4) Get in my paperwork by the begining of July
5) And last but definitly not least, what promises to be the hardest part of my summer... my senior thesis. There is something really daunting about writing a 50 page paper... I don't know if it is just me but damn.

Ok so that wraps up school... as for last night.. the couple of hours that I did actually manage to sleep I had a really bad dream... well if you want to know what it was ask and if I deam you worthy... I shall tell you but believe me when I tell you it sucked.

The house is coming along nicely... I am quite pleased. I love having a porch and a yard... it's great. Jessie is enjoying the time she gets outside too which is always a good thing.

Oh and then there is this... because of the new computer I have been able to rediscover sims but this time it is in the form of Sims 2... ok well first things first... brenda hates it... mostly because I play it ALL THE TIME! but as usual I am addicted. Right now Bren and I live in a 2 bedroom house. Jessie is completely grown up but is still living with us and we have a brand new baby girl... Jamie. It's really cute they grow up in this version... man it's great... oh and in case I forgot to mention Bren and I are also only 5 days away from being considered elders but lord knows that by our lifestyle that won't be much of a change... Let me know if you want to be added into the sims game... it could happen. Oh another interesting thing that came out of the sims game. Bren and I discussed baby names and we have successfully named our first born son. Robert Edward Dean-Stein. So if you know us well enough I am pretty sure you can figure out where these names came from. If not... well keep guessing and maybe we will tell you. Luv you lots
Lori

110 Banned books, Well... yes if I've read it .... no if not
#10 Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman... no
#11 The Prince by Niccoli Machiavelli ... no
#12 Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe... of course
#13 Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank... yupper... and I own it
#14 Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert... no
#15 Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens... I think so
#16 Les Miserables by Victor Hugo... no but I have seen it does that count?
#17 Dracula by Bram Stoker parts... no
#18 Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin... no
#19 Tom Jones by Henry Fielding....no
#20 Essays by Michel de Montaigne... no
#21 Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck ... no
#22 History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon... no
#23 Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy... no
#24 Origin of Species by Charles Darwin... I'm sure I have read parts of this... well I know I have
#25 Ulysses by James Joyce...no
#26 Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio... no
#27 Animal Farm by George Orwell.... of course... doesn't everyone read this at some point
#28 Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell.... yeah but as much as I know it's a sacralige... I didn't really like it.
#29 Candide by Voltaire... no
#30 To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee... read it... own it
#31 Analects by Confucius... I think I might have it but I haven't read it yet
#32 Dubliners by James Joyce... no
#33 Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck... no
#34 Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway... no
#35 Red and the Black by Stendhal... no
#36 Das Capital by Karl Marx... no
#37 Flowers of Evil by Charles Baudelaire... no
#38 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle... no
#39 Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence... no
#40 Brave New World by Aldous Huxley... no
#41 Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser... no
#42 Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell... actually no
#43 Jungle by Upton Sinclair ... I have at least read parts of this... very disturbing
#44 All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque ... no
#45 Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx ... no... maybe parts
#46 Lord of the Flies by William Golding... no but i own it
#47 Diary by Samuel Pepys... no
#48 Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway... no
#49 Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy... part of it... maybe all of it
#50 Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury ... no
#51 Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak ... no
#52 Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant.... no
#53 One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey... yes, yes, yes... I loved it
#54 Praise of Folly by Desiderius Erasmus... no
#55 Catch-22 by Joseph Heller... no
#56 Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X... no
#57 Color Purple by Alice Walker... no but I think I am going to... saw the movie :)
#58 Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger ... one of my absolute favorites
#59 Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke... I dont' think so
#60 Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison... no
#61 Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe....no
#62 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn... no
#63 East of Eden by John Steinbeck... no
#64 Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison... no
#65 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou... no but I want to
#66 Confessions by Jean Jacques Rousseau.... no
#67 Gargantua and Pantagruel by Fran?ois Rabelais... no
#68 Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes... no
#69 The Talmud... no
#70 Social Contract by Jean Jacques Rousseau...no
#71 Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson... yes... why is this banned???
#72 Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence...no
#73 American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser... no
#74 Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler... no
#75 Separate Peace by John Knowles... yes... but I didn't know this was banned.. why??
#76 Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath ... no
#77 Red Pony by John Steinbeck... no
#78 Popol Vuh... no
#79 Affluent Society by John Kenneth Galbraith... no
#80 Satyricon by Petronius... no
#81 James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl... no but I didn't know it was possible for Roald Dahl to be banned lol
#82 Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov... no
#83 Black Boy by Richard Wright... yes
#84 Spirit of the Laws by Charles de Secondat Baron de Montesquieu.... no
#85 Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut .... no
#86 Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George.... no
#87 Metaphysics by Aristotle... no
#88 Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder... no
#89 Institutes of the Christian Religion by Jean Calvin... no, maybe parts.. I'm really not sure
#90 Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse... no
#91 Power and the Glory by Graham Greene... no
#92 Sanctuary by William Faulkner... no
#93 As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner... no
#94 Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin... no
#95 Sylvester and the Magic Pebble by William Steig... no
#96 Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe... no
#97 General Introduction to Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud .... no
#98 Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood ... I love this book... read it... own it
#99 Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Alexander Brown... no... but it's a great song
#100 Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess... no
#101 Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest J. Gaines... no
#102 mile Jean by Jacques Rousseau... no
#103 Nana by mile Zola... no
#104 Chocolate War by Robert Cormier... no
#105 Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin... no
#106 Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn... no
#107 Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein.... no
#108 Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck... no
#109 Ox-Bow Incident by Walter Van Tilburg Clark... no
#110 Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes.... yes... great book... read it... own it

Okay... so the conclusion that I have come to after going through this list... I have my work cut out for me... I have a lot of reading left to do... I have read Heather Has Two Mommies though.. I know that was banned... does that count?? And Jessie Owns it :) yay for banned books!

more updating... copied from live journal

Ok so I am just chilling, waiting around for Bren to get out of the bathroom so that we can finish are card game (yes, I know, laugh all you want. We're old) and then it is off to bed. Well this week is looking up actually. Tomorrow is probably going to be the longest day ever let's see... 1st Take Bren to work for 7:00 get Jess off to school by 9:00, me to class by 11:00 then it is over to talking leaves and back to campus reading the book I buy at talking leaves inbetween. Class at 2:00 that goes until 5:00 then get Bren from Alumni and back home to pick up Jessie and finish puppy proofing the house. That's right I said puppy proofing. Bren and I picked out a dog on Friday... very exciting... and he comes home on Tuesday. His name is midnight. We got him at the spca in angola and he is the cutest friendliest little guy you will ever see. And he absolutely adores Brenda. He cried everytime she walked out of sight. So we have been spending the last 3 days shopping for puppy stuff which I must admit... although it is expensive it's a ton of fun. So now we are all set for the new addition to our family and you all have to come over and see him. He is a Lab and they think Terrier mix. I will admit that his head is slightly out of proportion to his body right now but all kids have big heads right. lol He is only 2 months old and he is all black with just a couple white hairs on his chest (hence the name). I just can't wait til he is home. Jessie is really excited. She has been helping to clean up and get ready for the dog. She shopped with us and she is counting down the days. It's great. Puppies are fun. The best part is that I told her we could walk it down to the bus stop every morning with her and she was so excited. She hasn't seen him yet except for his picture online which I must be honest does not do him justice at all. Just wait until you all see him. So, moving on from there... considering that he is estimated to get to be about 50 pounds and does not therefore fit into our landlord's category of a small dog I guess that means that we are moving this summer. We have already started to look and if anybody has any ideas let us know. Of course... it must allow pets and we are looking to rent like the lower of a house or something with a yard... preferably fenced in for both Jessie and Midnight.... aww every kid should have a dog... this is going to be great. I just hope that he ends up likeing me as much as he apparently likes Brenda or I might feel just a tad bit left out. Oh well, other than the dog everything is going well. This saturday was penguin days which is always fun. We took Jess to the aquarium and that was fun than we headed down to anchor bar for some wings... it doesn't get much better than that let me just tell you. Today was kind of a quiet laid back kind of a day. Complete with cleaning and shopping. The house is looking pretty good. Well not including the bedroom of course... I dont think we will ever get to the bottom of this bedroom no matter how hard we try.. and believe me on occasion we try and that just leads to me getting discouraged. Ok well I guess that is enough for now even though bren isn't out of the tub yet... I guess it's time to wake her up.. something tells me she is sleeping in there.. leave me some love :)
PS... It looks like everything is working out school wise and with a little bit of hard work it looks like I will pass all of my classes and be able to graduate this summer.... THANK GOD!!!

Fun times

Lori Anne Stein's Aliases

Your movie star name: Cookies Al

Your fashion designer name is Lori Venice

Your socialite name is Baby Dyke New York

Your fly girl / guy name is L Ste

Your detective name is Dog White Plains High School

Your barfly name is Nachos Long Island Iced Tea

Your soap opera name is Anne David Terrace

Your rock star name is Rieces Pieces Jaguar

Your star wars name is Lormid Stebre

Your punk rock band name is The Ok Computer

The Amazing Meganame Generator

midnight

hehe.. puppy, tuesday, rock on.. isn't he cute. This picture does not do him justice at all though.
http://www.petharbor.com/get_image.asp?RES=Detail&ID=A108147&LOCATION=ERIE1>

Cookie Monster

Ok so Bren read me something last night about how Cookie Monster is essentially going to learn how to eat cookies in moderation due to the new sesame street kick on health this season. I for one am very dissapointed. There was a lot of talk saying that childhood obesity is higher than ever and that it is a way to teach kids that "cookies are a sometimes food"... NO. What the hell is this world coming to that even kids tv show characters can't eat tons of cookies anymore. Ok here is my real WS approved problem with this. First of all... the government has been making such a big deal about the amount of people who are obese etc... but what they don't tell you is that they changed the standards on obesity not so long ago and using their standards my father is obese and believe me if you met him you would think that that was obsurd. So yeah obesity rates are climbing and the requirements for being considered obese are dropping... hmmm correlation there maybe. Ok so moving on to argument two, we already live in a culture that is absolutely saturated with body image problems due to media, 7 year olds dieting to be as thin as the models they see, people having gastric bypass surgery and literally stapleing their stomachs to lose weight. Do we really need to add to this? I think not. These inane ideas about putting puppet monsters on essentially a diet is teaching kids the wrong message. It's making kids that are 5 and under think about what they eat and what it can do to your body... essentially making them a new generation of kids that are going to grow up with even higher rates of eating disorders and such because of poor selfesteem and body image distortion. I never thought I would see the day when sesame street was contributing to this phenomena. ahhh it's just not right. We want our lovable monsters from old school television back on... they didn't do us any harm!!

Pride Baby

Marriage is love.

Dyke Rating

You're butch. You have little use for femininity
because frankly, it never got you anywhere.
Guys may find you intimidating, but once they
get to know you, you're not so bad. You're
empowered and sometimes stand up for women's
and gay rights. If you own a motorcycle, you
probably also know how to strip it and perform
your own repairs. If something bugs you about
your house, fixing it is no problem. You may be
a little shy about decking, tile work,
electrical work, plumbing or hanging windows.
Once you figure out how to do it, there isn't
much holding you back.

What is your Dyke Rating?
brought to you by

survey

Seven things in your room:
1: Tv
2: computer
3: desk
4: dart board
5: lamp
6: bed
7: dried roses
Top seven things you say most:
1: I love you
2: you suck at life
3: I miss you
4: stuff
5: shit
6: fuck
7: crap
Do You:
Smoke? yes
Do drugs?: I’ll admit it but not as much anymore
Read the newspaper?: not usually
Pray?: nope
Have a Job: I'm a student and I am helping to raise a five year old... job enough for me
Attend Church: no
Attend Synagouge: no
Have you ever:
Gone skinny dipping?: nope
Had a medical emergency?: yes... asthma attack
Had surgery?: no
Swam in the dark?: no
Been to a Bonfire?: yep
Got Drunk?: definitly have 21st birthday was a killer
Ran away from home?: no not really... I was all set to once though
Played strip poker?: yep
Gotten beaten up?: not unless you count my sister and the neighbors when we were little
Beaten someone up?: nope
Been on stage?: yep
Slept outdoors?: yep
Pulled an all nighter?: yep
Been on radio/tv?: yep
Been in a mosh-pit?: yep
Do you have:
Any gay/lesbian friends?: gee this is a tough one... I would have to say yes
A wallet?: yep
Coffee?: not right now
Cologne/Perfume: yes... eddie bauer baby
In the last 24 Hours have you....:
Cried: nope... but I did a whole lot this past week
Bought someting: nope
Gotten sick: nope
Sang: yea I think so
Been kissed: yupper
Talked to an ex: yes
Talked to someone you have a crush on: if you can count my gf here than yes
Missed someone: yep
Hugged someone: yep
Sex with someone: hell yeah