Goal Achieved!

I made it! I've read more than 50 books so far this year! Here's the updated list:

1. Confessions of a Part-time Sorceress: A Girl's Guide to the D&D Game by Shelly Mezzanoble
2. The Colour of Magic
3. The Light Fantastic
4. Equal Rites
5. Mort
6. Sourcery
7. Wyrd Sisters
8. Pyramids
9. Guards! Guards!
10. Eric
11. Moving Pictures
12. Reaper Man
13. Witches Abroad
14. Small Gods
15. Lords and Ladies
16. Men at Arms
17. Soul Music
18. Interesting Times
19. Maskerade
20. Feet of Clay
21. Hogfather
22. Jingo
23. The Last Continent
24. Carpe Jugulum
25. The Fifth Elephant
26. The Truth
27. Thief of Time
28. The Last Hero
29. The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents
30. Night Watch
31. The Wee Free Men
32. Monstrous Regiment
33. A Hat Full of Sky
34. Going Postal
35. Thud!
36. Wintersmith
37. Strata
38. Making Money
39. Mind Meld (Star Trek: The Original Series #82) by John Vornholt
40. GURPS Discworld (RPG manual) by Phil Masters
41. The Ashes of Eden (another Star Trek novel) by William Shatner
42. Pawn of Prophecy
43. Queen of Sorcery
44. Magician's Gambit
45. Castle of Wizardry
46. Enchanter's Endgame
47. Dead Until Dark
48. Living Dead in Dallas
49. Club Dead
50. Dead to the World
51. Dead as a Doornail
52. Definitely Dead
53. All Together Dead
54. From Dead to Worse
55. Dead and Gone

• Numbers 2-38 are Terry Pratchett's Discworld series.
• 42-46 are David Eddings's The Belgariad.
• 47-55 are Charlaine Harris's Sookie Stackhouse/Southern Vampire Mysteries series. This is the series that the HBO T.V. show True Blood is based off of. After I finished reading the books, I got caught up on the show.

This morning, I started re-reading Freedom's Landing by Anne McCaffrey, so that will be #56, followed by the other books in that series.

Maybe I'm Not So Burned Out After All . . . *SPOILERS*

Not much happened from the 18th to the 20th.

Saturday, however, started with a bang--or rather, the ringing of a doorbell.

It was Jason and Nathan O, come to pick up Kayla for a YSA tubing activity at around 8:15. I had opted not to go--it was friggin' Harry Potter day! I opened the door for them, told Kayla they were here, and then went back to bed.

Not more than 20 minutes later, however, the doorbell rang again. I was a little annoyed (I REALLY wanted to sleep some more), but since it turned out to be my copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows at the door, I didn't stay annoyed very long.

I took the boxed-up book to my room, and promptly read the last chapter of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince before tearing open the box. As I was shucking the dust cover off of the book, I happened to glance at the clock: it was 9:11 a.m.

SPOILERY PARAGRAPHS AHEAD! READ AT YOUR OWN RISK!

I read the book straight through, not even stopping for decent meals. I did, however, munch on the last of my Mini Nilla Wafers (I've still got an unopened box of the regular-size kind), and water. It was SO AWESOME! For books five and six (which now tie for my second-favorite, with the other books in the same order they were before, just one down), I admit, I cried the last few chapters of each. But for book seven! Book seven had me in tears from the time Hedwig caught a stray Killing Curse, past Fred's death, and on to just before the epilogue! WOWZA!

I was also somewhat surprised by how many of the possible plot speculation theories I'd seen in fanfiction turned out to be correct. Especially, since many of the theories I'd seen had already turned into fanfiction clichés before even Half-Blood Prince came out! For instance, I guess having Professor Snape harboring an unrequited love for Harry's mum really was the only way to redeem him in Harry's eyes.

END OF SPOILERY PARAGRAPHS! IT'S SAFE TO READ AGAIN!

Now, for those of you who do not wish to be spoiled further (not to mention those who didn't want to be spoiled in the first place), I shall move on. I finished the book at precisely 11:34 p.m. that same night. For those of you who are clock-mathematically challenged, that's 14 hours and 23 minutes (863 minutes). So, my reading speed is roughly 9/10 of a page every minute (there are 759 pages in the book). I don't know even an estimated word count for the book, so I can't really calculate the words per minute.

Sunday, I found myself re-awakened to reading books. I spent most of the day re-reading Freedom's Landing by Anne McCaffrey. I'd read my dad's copy within the last year or two, and I actually bought the whole quartet (Freedom's Landing, Freedom's Choice, Freedom's Challenge, and Freedom's Ransom) after I moved, but hadn't had a chance to read it yet.

I went to dinner on Sunday, as usual, and since it was the day before my birthday, we had Nasi Goreng--my favorite! Kayla liked it too, and Anna brought me leftovers yesterday, which I totally forgot about until I typed that just now.

Monday, I had the day off, and read some more of the Catteni Cycle (that's what the series is called) after running the errands I hadn't done while I was reading on Saturday.

Tuesday, it was back to work, and so were yesterday and today. Tomorrow will be too. Only, I've finished all four books, so I don't have any new books to read. But I have downloaded quite a few e-books (I've put them on my Palm, since it has an Adobe Acrobat Reader program on it), which should occupy me for a while, starting with How to Write Sci-Fi and Fantasy by Orson Scott Card.

I think I wanted to say more, but I can't for the life of me remember what it was, so I'll go to bed now.

Whoops! It's been a few days.

Let's see . . . what's happened since I actually posted something that wasn't the FoLC map?

On Thursday, Smallville was a re-run, so I actually *gasp!* went to Institute. It was pretty fun. Sister C. was teaching though, so I didn't see Brother M, who taught Institute when I went before.

Something I need to remember:

I can never remember all of the apostles, so I decided to make a list and put it here so that I can look at it more often.

1. Boyd K. Packer
2. L. Tom Perry
3. Russel M. Nelson
4. Dalin H. Oaks
5. M. Russel Ballard
6. Joseph B. Wirthlin
7. Richard G. Scott
8. Robert D. Hales
9. Jeffrey R. Holland
10. Henry B. Eyring
11. Dieter F. Uchdorf (spelling?)
12. David A. Bednar

There. Maybe I'll remember them all now.

The lesson in Institute was about Paul, and the first group of letters that he wrote, which was to the Thessalonians. I've got a bunch of notes about the chapters 2, 4 and 5 of 1 Thessalonians, but I don't feel like typing them all out. It's pretty much a lot of encouragement and advice for missionaries and stuff.

I finished Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets while I was at work on Friday. Since I was only a little more than half-way through when I left for work that morning, I hadn't brought another book with me, so I didn't get to read anymore after that.

After work, I called Comcast to figure out why our wireless network had disappeared from the list of available networks, but they didn't have anything to do with it. It was LinkSys. I called LinkSys, and the techie guy helped me to re-establish a network from our wireless router using Kayla's computer. I had to use her on-screen keyboard though, because the one on the desk was broken.

That evening, Anna and I went over to Jason O's house for movie night. Kayla and Cassie came too, but Patrick J. and Kendra (or is it Kendall?) didn't.

We watched a couple of movies while we played Twenty Questions the board game, and then played three different kinds of Scene It! -- Harry Potter, regular, and Disney. It was Me, Jason and Devon against Anna, Kayla and Cassie. Cassie was pretty much their "mascot," and Devon just sat there, so it was really just me and Jason against Anna and Kayla. Anna and Kayla won all three games. Anna won Twenty Questions.

When we first got to Jason O's house, I slipped down the stairs to get into the TV room, and my right foot ended up underneath me, bent with my toes pointing up toward the top of the stairs. It throbbed for a minute or two, then it felt better.

Yesterday when I went to check the mail, I was coming back upstairs after getting it, but then I realized I forgot something. So I started to go back down to the entry way, and must've missed the step, because I slipped off that step too. And my right foot ended up twisted on its side that time. It throbbed for a couple minutes and I limped for a little bit. Other than a twinge every now and then, it's feeling mostly better though. But two twistings in two days is kinda painful.

I went over to Mom & Dad's house yesterday to get Anna so she could help me with my grocery shopping, since Kimba was borrowing her Cabrio and the Fairlane wouldn't start. I got a keyboard from Dad's spares so that Kayla would have a working keyboard on her computer again. I left a note for her on Notepad too. Anna helped me get a lot of stuff while not paying too much--and thank goodness too--as it was, the bill was $111 and change!

Today was the 2nd day of General Conference. I didn't watch though--I was doing other stuff. I got up around 10:30, got something to eat and checked my online places for updates. Then around noon-ish, I went upstairs to start on Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

I got through Chapter Three before my eyes wouldn't stay open. I had a pretty long nap--about two hours' worth--and then decided to get some sort of snack. I had some toast and a couple sweet pickles, then got ready to go to Mom & Dad's for dinner.

When I got there, Dad asked me whether he should make meat balls or meatloaf. I said meatloaf. Then, Jason and I played Dragonriders (a computer game based on the Dragonriders of Pern series by Anne McCaffrey) on his computer, which Dad finally got up and running correctly.

After a bit, Dad asked us to peel and cut potatoes for dinner, so we did that and got back to the game. Then we had dinner and played until 9pm, when it was time for Jason to go to bed. We got pretty far and got quite a few quests done before we had to stop. We've decided to play every week, and Jason said he'll either not play during the week, or create a new game for playing on his own so that he and I can play the game we started today together.

Next Saturday, I have to remember to go to the pool house between 10am and noon so that I can get my picture taken for a pool pass. Then early next month, the neighborhood is having a community yard sale, so I've been going through my catalogue at LibraryThing to see which books I could stand to get rid of. I've tagged them all "to sell," and there are 209 of them.

Sometime this week, I'm going to look at the physical books on that list (I printed it out) and decide which ones are in "read 'em and pitch 'em" condition, which ones are in fair condition, and which ones are in great condition. Then I'll price them $0.25, $0.75, and $1, respectively. If there are any hard-backed books on the list, they'll be $3 each.

After I've gone through the books, I have to go through my other stuff and see what I want to get rid of. There's probably a bunch of clothing that can go, and I have three towels I never use (I have two that are much fluffier, which I just switch when I do my laundry each week) . . . but I'll figure the rest out later.