Since I didn’t get a chance to post any words of the week last week, I’m going to post ten words instead of five this week.  Here are this week’s words:

1. Germane: closely or significantly related; relevant; pertinent.
2. Gossamer: something extremely light, flimsy, or delicate.
3. Gourmand: a person who is fond of good eating, often indiscriminately and to excess.
4. Grandiloquent: speaking or expressed in a lofty style, often to the point of being pompous or bombastic.
5. Halcyon: calm; peaceful; tranquil.
6. Harbinger: a person who goes ahead and makes known the approach of another; herald.
7. Hirsute: hairy; shaggy.
8. Ignoble: f low character, aims, etc.; mean; base.
9. Ignominious: marked by or attended with ignominy; discreditable; humiliating.
10. Imbroglio: a misunderstanding, disagreement, etc., of a complicated or bitter nature, as between persons or nations.

6 Names I Go By

1. Jennifer
2. Jenni
3. Cutie
4. Sweetheart
5. Aunt Jenni
6. Jennilucifer

3 Things I am Wearing Right Now

1. Shirt
2. Slacks
3. Shoes

2 Thins I Want Very Badly at the Moment

1. Slanket
2. The Hunger Games

3 of My Favorites Things I Did Last Night

1. Played with Dax
2. Had Fun on Facebook
3. Read

4 Things I Ate Today

1. Oatmeal
2. Soup
3. Jell-o
4. Apple Sauce

2 People I Last Talked to on the Phone

1. Customer
2. Corey

6 Things I am Going to do Tomorrow

1. Work
2. Read
3. Exercise
4. Go to a Scentsy Party
5. Spend Time with Corey
6. Sleep

3 Favorite Beverages

1. Gatorade
2. Milk
3. Lemonade

5 Things I am Grateful for Today

1. Corey
2. My Kitties
3. My Job
4. Prayer
5. Sleep

3 People Who Will Fill This Out (in other words, I tag you)

1. Amber
2. Debbie
3. Megan

Happy birthday, Brian and Wendy!

As some of you know, one of my goals this year is to lose 100 pounds.  Basically, I want to get back to a size 10–the size I was when Corey and I were married. I’ve had some struggles with losing the weight, getting healthy, and not living my life so half-assed (excuse my language, but it explains perfectly what I want it to).  I’ve come up with a few things to help me:

1. After work, I won’t sit down to read, watch TV, or play with my computer until after I’ve exercised. Even if I don’t feel well, I’m going to exercise because I always feel better when I do.  I have too sedentary of a lifestyle.  My exercise is going to be an hour of DDR or following my Billy Blank “Boot Camp” DVD. The only time I’m allowed not to exercise is if I’m on my deathbed or extremely ill (e.g. puking, pneumonia), or it’s Sunday, my mandatory day of rest.
2. I’m going to go to bed at 10:00 each night. I do much better when I get enough sleep. My biggest problem is that I lose track of time so I have my cell phone alarm set to remind me when it’s 9:45 pm.  Now, I just need to treat my cell phone alarm like it’s the law!
3. I’m going to get up at 6:40 each workday and be to work by 8:00 when I should be there, instead of between 8:45 and 9:30. And, I’m going to get up at 9:00 on Saturday and Sunday (unless church starts at 9:00). I know I may be tired for the first little bit, but I’ll get used to it, especially if I exercise.
4. I can only eat out once a week, whether that be lunch with my co-workers or dinner with Corey.  Normally, Corey and I eat out for dinner three to four times a week.  That’s just too much!  (Dinner’s where I have the most problems in eating healthy so that’s why I’m targeting it.)

I think if I can do those things, then my life will start to have some order to it.  I’m sick of disappointing myself and not feeling like I’m as reliable as I used to be.

Happy birthday, Bret!

I’ve been thinking about something a lot lately.  As I read more and more books, more get added to my list of favorites.  I know that seems logical.  However, it seems almost every book I read ends up as a favorite.  What is it about a book that classifies it as a favorite?

So that you can be on the same page as I am, here are my favorite books, in no particular order:

1. Twilight Saga by Stephenie Meyer
2. The Host by Stephenie Meyer
3. The Harry Potter series by JK Rowling
4. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
5. These is My Words by Nancy Turner
6. Dragon Prince trilogy by Melanie Rawn
7. Dune by Frank Herbert
8. His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman
9. You Are Special by Max Lucado
10. Fox in Socks by Dr. Seuss
11. The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ

On my profile at Shelfari and Goodreads, I say the following about how I rate books:

5 stars: I use this prestigious rating only for books that belong on my Favorites shelf. Books on my Favorites shelf are books I can read over and over again.
4 stars: I use this rating for books I liked a lot, definitely recommend to others, and I will read again.
3 stars: I use this rating for books I liked, which I may or may not recommend to others and I may or may not read again.
2 stars: I use this rating for books I’m glad I read, but I didn’t like and I will probably never read again.
1 star: I use this rating for books I absolutely detested, do not recommend to others, and I will never read again.

If I think about it, the 24 books I’ve deemed as being a favorite do fit in the category of “books I can read over and over again,” even though I haven’t read all of them more than once yet.  It seems they do belong as one of my favorites.

I guess I just wonder if these books become favorites because I’ve only read 96 novels.  Do the books I’ve read just happen to be that good?  Or, do I not know what I’m missing, so I deem them as being a favorite when they should just be books I really, really like?  Or, could it be that I’m not critical enough of the writing or the story?  Am I just too easy to please?

Some of my favorite books are favorites because they got me to read.   Some of the books have sentimental value.  Others are because I love their story.  And, to be perfectly honest, I love The Book of Mormon, but it’s a favorite only because I’d feel guilty if it wasn’t.

None of my favorite books are great works of literature, like A Christmas Carol or The Iliad.  (Actually, I’ve never read either of those, although I do know the stories.)  No, my favorite books have more of an entertainment value rather than an educational one.  Is that wrong?

I just finished reading These is My Words by Nancy Turner.

These is My Words is amazing!  My friend Rachel told my friends and me about the book and we all decided to read it as a group.  It’s on the library waiting lists so each of us have read, or are reading, it at different times.  My friends that had read it before I did told me the book was one of their favorites, but I had no idea how good it really was until I read it myself.

Like I said in the post Literacy and Karaoke, These is My Words is about Nancy Turner’s great-grandmother, Sarah Agnes Prine.  It’s written in a diary format and spans twenty years.

The book follows the life of Sarah as she grows from a 17-year-old girl to a woman and a mother.  There’s romance, heartache, adventure, and humor. As I read the story, I felt like I was right in the middle.  I cheered when Sarah cheered.  I smiled when she smiled.  I laughed when she laughed.  I was mad when she was mad.  I was in love when she was in love.  And, most importantly, I cried when she cried.

The back cover says the following:

A moving, exciting, and heartfelt American saga inspired by the author’s own family memoirs, these words belong to Sarah Prine, a woman of spirit and fire who forges a full and remarkable existence in a harsh, unfamiliar frontier.  Scrupulously recording her steps down the path Providence has set her upon–from child to determined young adult to loving mother–she shares the turbulent events, both joyous and tragic, that molded her, and recalls the enduring love with cavalry officer Captain Jack Elliot that gave her strength and purpose.

Rich in authentic everyday details and alive with truly unforgettable characters, These Is My Words brilliantly brings a vanished world to breathtaking life again.

I definitely recommend this book.  Not only do you get a little bit a history, but a heart-warming, inspiring story as well.

My rating:

When my sister LeAnn came up last summer, she showed me Starz Bunnies Theater.  Basically, it’s a site that reenacts movies, using bunnies, in 30 seconds.  Some of them are pretty funny.

Anyway, they put up their reenactment of the Twilight movie and I had to share it! It’s almost better than the actual movie. (Unfortunately, I couldn’t embed the one from the actual site so I had to embed a copy from youtube.)

A word of warning: If you don’t like language or stuff like that, steer clear of the R-rated reenactments because they pretty much remain R-rated.  LeAnn told me Die Hard and Kill Bill are like that.

Happy birthday, Megan!

I’m not much of a history buff.  I guess I enjoy learning about history a little, but not a lot.  However, there’s one era that I do enjoy, if you could call it that (you’ll understand in a second), learning about.  I’ve always had an interest in World War II, or more specifically, the Holocaust.

When I was younger, I didn’t really enjoy watching war movies with my parents.  But, if it was a story about the Holocaust, I always watched it with them.  The Holocaust has always moved me in ways I don’t understand.  I guess it speaks to my soul, but not in a happy manner if that makes sense.

Anyway, Corey and I saw Defiance tonight.  It’s the story of the Bielski Brothers, a Jewish family from the Nowogrodek ghetto. They helped over 1200 Jews from Belarus and Poland survive during the German invasion of the Soviet Union and Poland.  It was a very moving story and I cried many times.

I understand that you may not want to see the movie since it has an R rating.  And, the point of my post isn’t really about the movie anyway.  The point of my post is more about the Holocaust in general.  There are some incredible stories of courage, defiance, and a will to survive that came out of the Holocaust.  I’m just sad that the Holocaust had to happen for those stories to come about.

One of the things I don’t understand as I learn more, read about, or watch anything related to the Holocaust is how people can believe it didn’t happen.  There’s no question in my mind that it happened and it angers me that people try to minimalize it.  It was an awful event in our world’s history.  I’m just glad there are stories to support the courage of the Jews, and those that helped them, during the Holocaust.

Whether or not you see movies like Defiance or Schindler’s List or movies about the Holocaust that aren’t R-rated, I think it’s important to learn all we can about the Holocaust.  Our children need to learn about the atrocities so it’s never forgotten.  The men, women, and children who died during the Holocaust deserve that much.