Literary Explorations

So since I don't really have anything to post, I'm gonna do one of these facebook things, because, well, why not? Pageantry is on hold until March when Miss Moses Lake happens, and nothing is happening in the horse world. So here goes nothing!

Have you read more than 6 of these books? The BBC believes that most people have only read 6 of the 100 books listed here. Bold the books you've read in entirety. Italicize the books you started and did not finish, or read an excerpt from.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien

3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling

5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

6 The Bible

7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell

9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman

10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott

12 Tess of the D'Ubervilles - Thomas Hardy

13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare

15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien

17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk

18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger

19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchel

22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis

34 Emma -Jane Austen

35 Persuasion - Jane Austen

36 A Wrinkle in Time- Madeleine L'Engle

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

40 Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell

42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving

45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery

47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy

48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood

49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding

50 Atonement - Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel

52 Dune - Frank Herbert

53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt

64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac

67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy

68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding

69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie

70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

72 Dracula - Bram Stoker

73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett

74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses - James Joyce

76 The Inferno - Dante

77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

78 Germinal - Emile Zola

79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

80 Possession - AS Byatt

81 A Christmas Carol -Charles Dickens

82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker

84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro

85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

87 Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery

93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

94 Watership Down - Richard Adams

95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

So that's 9 in entirety and 6 incomplete. I thought I was more exposed to literature than that. Hmm... Ah, well. I guess I know what I have to do now.

I've been bad

I know, I know, I’ve been really bad about posting. I thought I’d be better about it what with having rehearsal every Sunday, but apparently that hasn’t made me any better about keeping up with my blog. I’m sorry to all you loyal followers (all what, one of you?). I keep promising that I’ll try to be better about it in the future, but as my English professor says: “There are no absolutes, only broken promises.” Perhaps if I stop promising it will begin to happen.

And now for something completely different.

Miss Seattle 2011 will be crowned in just 5 days. This is the most excited I have ever been in my life, but also the most terrified. The emotions that flowed through my body yesterday at rehearsal were too numerous to count as everything happened all at once. My interview improved ten-fold in my opinion from the first mock to the second, I just need to brush up on some political topics. I feel so much more confident in my walks and the opening number dance. I can’t believe that it’s less than a week away, the time has flown by, it’s ridiculous.

The worst part about all of this is that after next week I won’t be seeing this amazing group of girls every week anymore. We’re more than just competitors, we’re friends. We’re all cheering for each other, and I’m sure we each have a favorite selected in our minds (I know I have mine). I don’t want to give up weekly rehearsals, and by the sounds of it, everyone else has the same feelings!

Erin flies into Eugene on Wednesday and I have so many things to do before Friday’s dress rehearsal, as well as finding time to go to class! I’m not sure I’ll have time to sleep this week, but I’m going to try to find time for myself and make this week about just making myself happy and feeling like me. If that means listening to Taylor Swift 24/7, then so be it! By the way, her new Speak Now album is AMAZING. Just sayin’.

Well, that’s about all I’ve got. I’m not going to promise to try to be better about posting, but I’ll say that I’ll try to THINK about posting more. How’s that sound?

Rehearsal Numero Uno

We had our first Miss Seattle rehearsal today, and I'm even more excited than I was before. They brought in McKinley Smith (reigning Miss Seattle, and 1st Runner Up at Miss WA 2010) as a guest speaker, as well as Devanni Partridge (Miss Seattle and Miss Washington 2009), and hearing what they had to say was amazing. I felt so star struck, but the girls were so friendly and willing to answer anything we had to ask. They said we could win them over with coffee or happy hour appetizers if we wanted to meet with them one on one and that they were looking forward to getting to know all of us.

We got our schedule for a general idea of what we'll be doing over the next couple months, and everyone mark your calendars! We're hoping for October 16th for our first annual fundraiser entitled (drumroll please) "Miss Seattle's Got Talent." Last I heard it'll be a talent preview and dessert auction, and it will raise money for the program which goes directly back to us girls in the form of scholarship money. So I expect to see some people I know there!

That's about all I have for now. I'm planning on going shopping for an evening gown on Tuesday, and I never knew it'd be so hard to find a swimsuit! Until next time.

Orientation

Pageant orientation was Sunday the 29th, and I have to say, I've never been in such a positive competitive atmosphere. Every single person associated with the pageant wants every single girl to succeed as best they can. There's no weeding out the weak ones or sabotaging the ones they don't like. All the girls are friendly towards each other and helpful. So far there's one girl who has done this particular pageant before, and a few who have done other pageants. Either way, everyone is so friendly and I was so flabbergasted at the atmosphere that was in the room. I absolutely CANNOT wait until rehearsals start and I get to be with these people all the time. The program truly is a gift to young girls.

This and That

It has been a while since I have posted so I will update everyone on what I have done in the last few months. I had some personal problems and decided to take Spring 2010 Quarter on Campus at Oregon State instead of online, thus forcing me to move to Oregon for 3 months. I loved it beyond all belief, and I got to take Lipton with me, however it forced me to give up my Young Rider dreams for the year. I had been under so much stress to do well that I had forgotten why I loved riding in the first place, so it was nice to just spend some time at school with him and re-develop our relationship. We moved home for the summer and I have been working for Carolynn Bunch taking pictures and doing office work just as I have since she began her business in 2007. I have made the decision to forego Young Riders for 2011 as to me it is not worth the pressure and my education is more important, especially with a Masters Degree now in my sights.

While I was at school I made the inevitable decision to participate in the Miss Seattle beauty pageant this coming November. Yep. You read that right. I'm going to be in beauty pageants. Whomever wins the Miss Seattle pageant goes on to compete for Miss Washington, which feeds into Miss America. For those of you saying "That doesn't sound like her," well, you clearly don't know me very well. This is something I have wanted to do for a very long time and it has never been the right time. MAO offers thousands of dollars in scholarship money to help pay for undergrad and graduate school later on, and I get to do it all while wearing dresses and promoting things I believe in.

In order to compete in the pageant we need to choose a platform - an organization to volunteer for that we would like to bring awareness to and promote as something that people should donate their time and money to. Most girls choose Donate Life or The American Cancer Association, but I decided to think outside the box (as usual) and chose The Youth Suicide Prevention Program. Suicide is always something that people view as taboo to talk about when really is something that can be avoided in much larger proportions than people believe if more friends and family would pay attention to behavior changes in youth and adults.

I will be sure to post more and keep updates on how hair, makeup, dresses and everything else girly is going, as well as how Lipton is holding up.

Not Much to Say

There really isn't a whole lot new in my life, but I'm bored and do not feel like doing homework. The Seahawks lost today, not a surprise. I just hope they come back stronger next year.

I can't help thinking how excited I am to go to school in the Fall. Online stuff has been great, getting to set my own schedule and do homework whenever I want, but there's something missing. I don't really feel like I'm in college yet, I guess. I can't go to Football games or be on the IHSA/IDA team. I know all of THREE people from OSU, and only one of which I've really stayed in touch with. I follow James Rodgers on Twitter, does that count? But the whole social aspect of college is missing. Message Boards just aren't the same.

I guess that's about all I have. I'll go back to watching The New York Jets beat the pants off of the Cinncinatti Bengals, now.