Observations on Cereal (while shopping at Costco)

Of these cereals, which is the least expensive?

• Cheerios
• Corn Flakes
• Frosted Flakes

Of these cereals, which does NOT contain High Fructose Corn Syrup?

• Froot Loops/Apple Jacks (combo pack)
• Corn Flakes
• Frosted Flakes

The answer to question one is Frosted Flakes. The answer to question two is the Froot Loops/Apple Jacks combo pack.

MS and I came up with an explanation of Why Frosted Flakes Might Be Cheaper: Inferior ingredients masked by the sweetness of HFCS.

We thought that the lack of HFCS in FL/AJ might be due to being Kosher for Passover? But all the cereals were marked with a K. And aren't the grains used in cereals trayfe for Passover anyway?

In any case, we're paying more attention to ingredients. And, where possible, we're avoiding HFCS. Which means no Corn Flakes. HFCS! IN CORN FLAKES! Sheesh.

Quiz Answers

1. "The eastern seaboard is crammed with dead people". Charlaine Harris, An Ice Cold Grave. Charlaine Harris is the Guest of Honor this year. I love her work. She's got several series, all of which are well-written and as delicious as a box of Godiva Truffles. She also has some stand-alones which, while satisfying, leave you wishing she would make them into series because the characters are so engaging.



2. "By nine o'clock that Thursday night, there was little outward indication that murder had occurred six floors above the busy midtown Manhattan avenue." Margaret Maron, Death in Blue Folders*. Y'all know how much I love me some Margaret Maron. She's moderating the panel on the best new novel nominations this year. Nominated for what, you ask? I'll get to that in a moment.



3. "Late at night when the dreams woke him, he would lie in the dark and try to forget the faces of people he'd watched die." Earlene Fowler, Steps to the Altar. Earlene Fowler writes a great series set in the California horse country with a richly-drawn set of characters. Her main character, Benni Harper, curates a quilt museum. All the titles in the series are based on quilt patterns.



4. "It was five o'clock on a winter's morning in Syria." I think you might count this as cheating...It's Agatha Christie. Murder on the Orient Express. Agatha "attends" Malice Domestic every year. The annual awards that are given out at their banquet are named for her. See? I told you I'd come back to what they were being nominated for!

I'm sad to also be missing Carole Nelson Douglas. I love her Irene Adler series (beginning with Good Night, Mr. Holmes). I didn't see her name on the program at first, or I'd have included her in the quiz.

I'm gonna be there next year!

*You people have no idea how much it irritates me that this book is out-of-print. The idiocy of publishers astounds me.

Book Quiz! I'm Missing Malice Domestic Edition

Sigh....

I have class Saturday morning and it's just too much money to spend on something I'm not going to be able to attend all of.

To the Quiz!!!

1. The eastern seaboard is crammed with dead people.
2. By nine o'clock that Thursday night, there was little outward indication that murder had occurred six floors above the busy midtown Manhattan avenue.
3. Late at night when the dreams woke him, he would lie in the dark and try to forget the faces of people he'd watched die.
4. It was five o'clock on a winter's morning in Syria.

Now, to be fair, I have to say that one of these books is out of print. Three are by authors who will be AT THE CONVENTION. And one is by an author who is always at the convention.

Thanks guys!!! I'm all verklempt.

I'm feeling much better and loving 39 so far. Is it just me, or does each year get better and better?

Here are more first lines for you (famous authors, less filmed works):

1. No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy would have supposed her born to be an heroine.
2. My godmother lived in a handsome house in the clean and ancient town of Bretton.
3. The house in the hollow was "a mile from anywhere" - so Maywood people said.
4. Who is there who has not felt a sudden startled pang at reliving an old experience or feeling an old emotion?

Hints: Each of these authors has at least one book that has been made into a movie more than once. Only one of the books whose first lines I've given has NOT been made into a movie or tv series of some sort.

Answers to the small quiz and the Sappy Romance quiz

The Small Quiz

1. There is no lake at Camp Green Lake. Yes, it is Holes.
2. It was January in northern New York State, sixty-seven years ago. Farmer Boy is right!
3. Even when the last of the medicine bottles were cleared away and she was supposed to have "had" convalescence, Harriet did not get well. Skating Shoes by Noel Streatfeild. I love this book. LOVE. IT. And though the two main characters are girls, one of them has three brothers and they are really strong characters too.
4. She scowled at her glass of orange juice. The Blue Sword by Robin McKinley. Read it. You'll thank me later.
5. Once when I was six years old I saw a magnificent picture in a book, called True Stories from Nature, about the primeval forest. People, this is The Little Prince. Genevieve got it!

The Sappy Romance Novel Quiz

1. Wife For Hire by Janet Evanovich (yes, the mystery author)
2. Beyond Eden by Catherine Coulter
3. Venetia by Georgette Heyer (I may have mentioned her once or twice).
4. The Royal Mess by Maryjanice Davidson (alternate reality. Alaska is an independent nation with a hereditary monarchy).
5. The Shuttle by Frances Hodgson Burnett. What, you didn't know she wrote romance novels?
6. Plains of Passage by Jean M. Auel (guilty pleasure)
7. The Lady by Anne McCaffrey (yes, the author of the Pern novels).
8. Little Earthquakes!
9. One on One by Tabitha King (basketball and romance by the wife of Stephen King).
10. Die for Love by Elizabeth Peters. This one is the inside joke. It's a mystery and the detective is a romance writer.

I can do that.

Debangel said: "You know what would be a great "April Fools"-type idea in this theme? The first sentence from a bunch of sappy romance novels!" Well....some of these are more sappy then others. There are a few that you probably never heard of. There are a few you definitely have heard of. And there is a joke in here. See if you can find it!

1. At the turn of the century the Bigmount Brick Company hired new arrivals from Eastern Europe to work in the New Jersey clay pits.
2. The sirens were shrill.
3. "A fox got in amongst the hens last night, and ravished our best layer," remarked Miss Lanyon.
4. Dear King Alexander, My name is Nicole Krenski, and I am your illegitimate daughter.
5. No man knew when the Shuttle began its slow and heavy weaving from shore to shore, that it was held and guided by the great hand of Fate.
6. The woman caught a glimpse of movement through the dusty haze ahead and wondered if it was the wolf she had seen loping in front of them earlier.
7. Follow the coast road to Greystones, turn right at Blacklion, and watch out for the traffic haring up from the town -- some of the drivers buy their licenses at the post office.
8. I watched her for three days, sitting by myself in the park underneath an elm tree, beside an empty fountain with a series of uneaten sandwiches in my lap and my purse at my side.
9. An iridescent confetti of snow tarnished by sodium arc light sifts from the void over the glowing horizontal bulk of Greenspark Academy.
10. "When Blaze awoke she found herself lying on a silken soft surface amid the seductive scent of strange perfumes."

Answers to St. Quiz the Obscure and a new small quiz

1. Indian Captive.
2. Theatre Shoes by Noel Streatfeild.
3. Sorrow's Song by Larry Callen.
4. Roller Skates.
5. Alan Mendelsohn, The Boy From Mars by Daniel M. Pinkwater.
6. The View From Saturday
7. Cornelli by Johanna Spryri.

Good job to those of you who got these and boo hiss to me for going a bit far on the obscurity scale for some of them.

New Quiz!

1. There is no lake at Camp Green Lake.
2. It was January in northern New York State, sixty-seven years ago.
3. Even when the last of the medicine bottles were cleared away and she was supposed to have "had" convalescence, Harriet did not get well.
4. She scowled at her glass of orange juice.
5. Once when I was six years old I saw a magnificent picture in a book, called True Stories from Nature, about the primeval forest.

St. Quiz the Obscure

Since y'all got all eight of the books last time, here's a few I don't think you'll get as easily*:

1. "Molly-child, now supper's done, go fetch Neighbor Dixon's horse."
2. It is very difficult to look as if you minded the death of a grandfather who, though you may have spent your holidays in his house, seldom remembered you did.
3. The Zoo Man came riding into Four Corners on a coal black wagon pulled by a coal black mule.
4. It was Patrick Gilligan in his hansom cab who took Lucinda around from the old Gedney House to the Misses Peters' apartment, two flights up.
5. I got off to a bad start at Bat Masterson Junior High School.
6. Mrs. Eva Marie Olinski always gave good answers.
7. Spring had come and once more the young beech trees beside the rushing Illerbach were a tender green.

*same rules as last time except that some of these books came out more recently than 30 years ago.

Quiz!!!

Here are first sentences from some children's books* I happen to have lying around...Tell me which book the sentence comes from!

1) When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle, everybody said she was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen.

2) It was Mrs. May who first told me about them.

3) Cedric himself knew nothing whatever about it.

4) The little old kitchen had quieted down from the bustle and confusion of midday; and now, with its afternoon manners on, presented a holiday aspect that, as the principal room in the brown house, it was eminently proper it should have.

5) The primroses were over.

6) "Did Mama sing every day," asked Caleb.

7) Ba-room, ba-room, ba-room, baripity, baripity, baripity -- Good.

8) The first Wednesday in every month was a Perfectly Awful Day -- a day to be awaited with dread, endured with courage and forgotten with haste.



*Children's books, in this context means one or both of two things, either it is a book written for children, or it is a book that I read and enjoyed before I was 12. You may disagree with my definition. All the books used for this quiz existed 30 or more years ago and are republished frequently, though I don't guarantee that they are currently in print.

As seen at Overread

What Kind of Reader Are You? Your Result: Dedicated Reader You are always trying to find the time to get back to your book. You are convinced that the world would be a much better place if only everyone read more.
Obsessive-Compulsive Bookworm
Literate Good Citizen
Book Snob
Fad Reader
Non-Reader
What Kind of Reader Are You? Create Your Own Quiz

Now it's your turn

Let me know in the comments of this post if you'd like to be next to be asked 5 questions! I think YT asked some great ones, gonna be a hard act to follow.

Question 5: What keeps you blogging regularly?

I find there are three things that keep me posting regularly(ish):

1. I have something I really want to say. These posts are somewhat infrequent, but they're the ones I like best.
2. Procrastination. I have other things I really need to do but I don't wanna. Some of these posts come out well. I end up saying something of substance at least.
3. Fear that I'll look like I'm forgetting about you. These are my least favorite posts. Mostly it's "Hi! Still here!"

Speaking of which, I'm going to be posting less regularly for the next couple of weeks. Two papers due and (gasp!) Finals.

Yes, my friends, it's the last week of classes of my fourth semester at Nearby U. My, that went fast! A year from now, I'll be graduating!

Question 4: Who is your best friend in the whole world, other than Mr. Spock, and why?

I have several. Y'all know who you are! Some of you I've never met IRL, others I've shared curry with or gone to hear play at little funky venues.

But if I must pick one, I think it has to be This friend, who I've known now for almost 6 years. Oh my god, the hours we've spent laughing over misery. Not to mention the hours I've teased her about this. She's in school for her undergraduate degree, doing it online while working full-time at a company that sucks all the joy from a job (I should know, I used to work there). She's one of my heroes.

Question 3: How fulfilling is your current education path and what is your ultimate goal with it?

I love what I'm doing at school. LOVE. IT.

I wish I could do the school thing forever and yet will be very glad to see the end of the undergraduate thing next May (a little over a year from now!)

After I graduate, I'll be going to grad school for an MSW (er...Masters of Social Work). What I'd really like is to be a family therapist in private practice. That means I need to get an MSW and then do 1000 supervised hours. I should reach my goal about the time MM starts High School. (That bang you heard was me falling over in a dead faint).

Amazingly, I'm not going to mention the "D" word

Question #2: what was the most significant event in your childhood?

Again, not mentioning the "d" word, though that was pretty fireplacing significant. But it was so significant and happened so early that there's no way I can cover it here. My whole life would be different. I'd have half the family I do now. I can't even imagine it.

Instead, I'm going to talk about Grandma Sylvia. Did I ever tell you about my Grandma Sylvia? My step-mother's mother (I wouldn't have known her if not for the "d" word!)

She had beautiful long silver hair that she kept up in a bun. She taught me to play "The Bear Went Over the Mountain" on her piano. She baked the most wonderful chocolate cakes. She taught me to braid hair and let me do hers. I loved staying with her in her little house in New Jersey. I would eat windmill cookies and drink weak tea in her kitchen. My cousin and I would white wash her basement (such fun!). I would cozy up in her recliner. She was so playful and charming and fun to be with.

One weekend...near my birthday...she and I were staying at her sister's (Aunt SoLittleAndCute) apartment as a special birthday treat. I went next door to the neighbor's apartment to practice the piano. When I came back, Grandma Sylvia was sitting stiffly on the couch. Unconscious. Aunt SoLittleAndCute had just finished calling the ambulance. Grandma had had a stroke. A neighbor came and sat with me while Aunt SoLittleAndCute went to the hospital with Grandma. I remember spending some time in the waiting room with my step-mother (Grandma was her mother) and my father. I never saw my grandma again. She died a few days later. It was the first time I'd ever seen someone so close to death. The first time death really touched me, though my grandma Hilda (of the bosoms) and my Grandpa Jack (step-mother's father) both had died a few years before I wasn't as close to them and, also, I was younger and didn't really get it. For years my memory was that she had died that day, that very day, it was only later that I really remembered that she hadn't.

I still miss her.

YT's questions (one at a time)

YT has sent me some great questions, which I'm going to answer one post per question so as to fit it into my studying/paper writing/parenting/class-going/interning schedule.

Question #1:

If you were to choose right now the perfect profession for Muffin Man in 25 years, what would it be?

Well, he loves to color...so maybe an artist or graphic designer? He loves playing with his knights and horses...so maybe a F&SF writer? He loves swimming and running and riding his bike...so maybe he'll be a triathelete? He loves to eat sushi and pho and ice cream and shrimp and beet greens (along with the usual beige, white, and yellow foods 5-year-olds adore)...so maybe he'll be a famous food critic or a chef. He loves putting together puzzles, playing on the computer, learning new things at school...so maybe he'll be a scientist or an academic. He loves "reading" and being read to. He loves writing. Maybe he'll be a blogger!

He's somewhat bossy...so maybe he'll be a CEO. He's VERY silly...so maybe he'll be a stand-up comic. He's kind and loving...so I know he'll be a good man. Please, God, let him grow up to be a good man.

I'd love for him to become the first Jewish (ish) President. I'd love for him to become the first person on Mars.

I'd love for him to just be happy - raising a family, doing something he loves to do.

Words of one syllable

scrounged


10 letters9 letters (thanks APL!). Can you come up with one that's longer?

Winter Holiday Extravaganza Answers

If I could, I'd invent a Transporter, like they have on Star Trek, and damn it, the world needs one because, that way I'd be able to visit my sister more often, not to mention seeing all y'all face-to-face.

I sometimes buy organic strawberries, because it is/they are more like the me I want to be than the me that I am.

If you came over to my house to play and touched my laptop without asking me first I'd be a little bit mad at you forever. (Not really, but it's the only thing I could think of that doesn't live in my underwear drawer.)

The colour/s that my high school used to paint the classrooms makes me want to shave my eyeballs with a cheese grater.

The colour/s of the water off Kauai is/are so beautiful that when I see them, a beam of light comes down and I hear a choir sing.

Most tv shows that in any way include eating bugs makes me gag, feel it in my mouth for a minute, and then swallow it back down rather than spit it out (or else I just don't like it, but I'm too nice to say it.)

I might get sick or die if I touch or ingest cilantro, or look at Paris Hilton.

The Doodlebops gives me the willies and I might need to consider a frontal lobotomy if I even think about it further.

I love the feel of flannel so much I want to hump it like a puppy on a sofa pillow.

No one should have to watch me eat Ben & Jerry's Chocolate Fudge Brownie Ice Cream, because then I might consider being polite enough to share (not!), and I don't want to share it.

I'm a grown-up now, so I don't have to eat beets any more, and you can't make me.

If I could invent a way to permanently coat my nostril hairs with this scent, I'd be my own biggest customer: chicken soup simmering on the stove (but I'm really an unscented kind of a girl.)

Three things I like that anyone might like: I'm going with Andrea's answer here (and I do like the Bing Crosby Christmas stuff): european chocolate, classical holiday music (classical as in the musical style, not as in 'the classics' like Bing Crosby or whatever--I mean, I like that stuff too, but who else does?), and homemade baked goods.

Three things I like that nobody else in the world likes: Liver and onions, having grey hair, Frances Hodgsen Burnett's books for Adults.

I have TOO MANY/TOO MUCH OF clutter around the house, and not enough time or motivation to clean up.

Okay, we know the best things in life aren't things, but these are the best things in life if there are going to be best things: books. Lots and lots of books.

When people have kind, sweet and nice things about me, they're usually talking about Muffin Man. When they say I'm very silly, they're usually right too.

It's true, I'm a good student. I'm learning to be proud of believe it.

If I could have any talent in the world, I'd choose cooking and hosting like Martha Stewart.

You are given a day and a no-limit credit card to spend in one of these places, childfree. Choose one, or write your own:

A gourmet food store, because you are what you eat. It's all about feeding yourself and your soul. (and a book store. with every book ever in print.)

And here's the last chance to make sure that you're not going to get a "Jelly of the Month" club membership when you're expecting your bonus for a swimming pool:

It is important to me that the items chosen for me be fun for you to get.
(Examples: respect my Wal-Mart boycott, are vegan, aren't made by child or sweatshop labour, can be stuffed down my pants)

And

If I could suggest that you read only one post from my archives, this would be it: Dreaming of a Ham Sandwich

And

If I were to name the Holiday of my choice for this exchange, it would be:
Christmas, even though I'm Jewish, I'm completely a Christmas girl! (Please feel free to make one up - but this is your chance to say "Um, I'm Jewish but that doesn't mean give me dreidels!" or "More Santa decorations please - I only have thirty-seven now." or "Winter and gifts yes; religious denominations, no - if only all cards could be like those politically correct corporate holiday wishes!" if you want to.)

As seen at KLee's

HowManyOfMe.com

There are: 5,959 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

But no one in the US currently has my birth name. Which I knew without the quiz since there are only about, what, 25? people in the country with my birth last name and I know all of them personally and none of them have my first name.

As seen at Raising WEG

You've Changed 40% in 10 Years

Ah, the past! You may not remember it well - because you're still living in it.While you've changed some, you may want to update your wardrobe, music collection and circle of friends.

How Much Have You Changed in 10 Years?

I said my circle of friends had not changed much because I'm still really good friends with Jim (of Jim and Jenn) but the truth is that aside from him (and Mr. Spock, of course), I do have a totally new circle of friends. All of YOU. Thank you for being my friends, for being here for me, and for letting me be here for you.