The Monday Morning Mix-Up: The Ha Ha Ha Edition

Well welcome to the Scribbler's Nook for this very festive and fun edition of the Monday Morning Mix-Up! I recently read an article that Santa, when he is in Australia can no longer use the phrase "Ho, Ho, Ho" for risk that he might offend someone. Instead, he is to say "Ha, Ha, Ha!" So for the big man in red and white, I present the Ha, Ha, Ha Edition!

• Trans-Siberian Orchestra - Christmas Nights in Blue : It's Joe Cocker meets New Orleans blues and Ray Charles soul.
• LeAnn Rimes - Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas : A great voice who has only improved with age singing a classic song.
• Kelly Clarkson - Oh Holy Night : One of the must's for any Christmas CD, and sung a capella with such a powerful voice
• Brian Setzer Orchestra - Dig That Crazy Santa Claus : A fun song to listen to, dance to, whatever you please
• Chris Botti - Santa Claus Is Coming To Town : Great trumpeteer and a great rendition of this classic!
• Bette Midler & Johnny Mathis - Winter Wonderland : A fun version of this song that is sassy, brassy and everything else that Bette is!
• Jo Dee Messina - A Joyful Noise : I'm usually not a fan of "new Christmas" songs that artists create, but this song is just magical, and Jo Dee's voice just soars on this song!
• Mariah Carey - Joy To The World : One of those definitive Christmas albums is Mariah's and this song is just fantastic!
• Spice Girls - Christmas Wrapping : I know it sounds odd to have the Spice Girls doing a Christmas Song, but it is actually a cover of an older song, but very catchy!
• Jewel - Silent Night : A very nice and subtle yet folksy cover of another perennial favorite.

Well that is it for this "Ha, Ha, Ha Edition." Look for many more Christmas themed lists over the holidays!

All's Not So Quiet

Well hello all Scribbler Fans in the realms of the blogiverse! It has been far too long since I have posted, but it was all for a reason. Right now, literally, my bathroom and bedroom are being renovated. Thats right...the project is finally getting done. (Folks, this is 2 years in the making...if not more!)

Well, most everything for the rooms are purchased and the workers began on Monday and they said it should take 2-3 weeks to complete! So the breakdown of what they are doing:
- Tile all 4 walls in the bathroom
- New tile on the shower floor
- New tile on the floor of the bathroom as well as into my bedroom
- New shower & sink fixtures
- New shower doors
- Pocket door to replace door into bathroom
- New commode
- New vanity & counter top
- Baseboards in bedroom removed, sanded, re-stained, and clear coated
- All 4 bedroom walls re-plastered, smoothed, primed, and painted
- New electrical wires run so that all my equipment works properly
- Possibly, the removal of all popcorn from the ceilings.

So while all of this is going on...I am sharing an office with my mother, and my temporary bedroom is my fathers office, and, oh yeah...currently all three of us are sharing a bathroom (not all at the same time) while my parents have their fixed.

It is only day 3 and I want my room back!

On another note, some new events over the past 2 weeks! I have purchased a nice new television for my nice new room. It is a 32" LG LCD HDTV (man, that is a lot of letters). It will look very nice up on the wall once it is mounted! I have yet to name it so I will take all suggestions.

Also, yesterday I went and interviewed for a temporary position at Killian High School, taking over a Language Arts class for a teacher who is going on maternity leave around the end of January.

Besides that, everything else is Quiet in the Scribbler's Nook.

The Week-End Wrap-Up & Review

Well everyone in blogworld...it has been a very productive week here at The Scribbler's Nook...and now, let's review:

What I Saw: This week actually gave me the chance to catch up on some television that has been sitting on my TIVO for what seems the past month. (Even though, now with the writers strike, maybe I should of waited to watch all those episodes of Bionic Woman!) So, I've watched Bionic Woman and Moonlight and I am all caught up. Both shows are okay, but they are more of something to have on in the background while I get other work done!

What I Heard: I have actually had a mixture of CD's or songs playing on the iTunes here at home. Much of what I have been listening to is Robert Plant & Alison Krauss' CD Raising Sand. Alison Krauss is probably one of my top two or three female voices, and now to hear her singing with a legend...it really is amazing! I have also been listening to Carrie Underwood's new CD Carnival Ride, which is really a delight to listen to!

What I Read: Well, if you have read my blog earlier in the week, you would of noticed that I have started a new book, John Conolly's The Book of Lost Things. I am only a chapter into it, but I am completely enthralled by it. The idea behind it reminds me of Alice in Wonderland or Pan's Labyrinth. A full review will come when finished!

That's it for this week...got a busy weekend ahead of me. I really want to go to the book fair, but my normal book fair buddy is out of town, so trying to convince mother to go. Besides that I have to get a new TV as mine is fading fast! Hope everyone out there in blogworld has a happy and safe weekend, and a Happy Veterans Day to all the Vets out there, THANK YOU FOR ALL YOU DO!

106 Books...Oh My!

These are the top 106 books most often marked as “unread” by LibraryThing’s users, as of I don't know what day -- the original said "today" but I got this a week or so ago. As usual, bold what you have read, italicize that you started but couldn’t finish, and strike through what you couldn’t stand. Add an asterisk* to those you’ve read more than once. Underline those on your to-read list.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi: a novel
The name of the rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler's Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran: a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The historian : a novel
A portrait of the artist as a young man
Love in the time of cholera
Brave new world
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A clockwork orange
The once and future king
The grapes of wrath
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
1984
Angels & demons
The inferno
The satanic verses
Sense and sensibility
The picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One flew over the cuckoo’s nest
To the lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s travels
Les misérables
The corrections
The amazing adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The curious incident of the dog in the night-time
Dune
The prince
The sound and the fury
Angela’s ashes : a memoir
The god of small things
A people’s history of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A confederacy of dunces
A short history of nearly everything
Dubliners
The unbearable lightness of being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an Inquiry into Values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In cold blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The three musketeers

What Makes Me Different Meme

So I found this meme over at The Mind Wobbles and decided to "borrow" it for my blog! If you want to use it, feel free, just let me know or The Mind Wobbles....

1. Name a CD you own that none of your friends do - I have a very eclectic collection of CD's! So, something that I have that no one else I know has...the 2 CDs that Minnie Driver has put out...both are very good...folksy!
2. Name a book you own that none of your friends do - "Without You" by Anthony Rapp ... I am a huge RENThead...a person who loves the musical RENT, and this book is written by the original Mark, about his life and how RENT had changed it
   
3. Name a movie you own on DVD/VHS/whatever that none of your friends do -"Tideland" directed by Terry Gilliam...I think Terry Gilliam is a genius, in both comedy and not...the former Python, creates a great magical drama about a girl who loses people around her and enters her own "realm"
   
4. Name a tourist attraction in the US that you have visited that none of your friends have - Hmm...The National Buffalo Museum outside of Tulsa,Oklahoma. I think it was the buffalo museum, all I remember was that there were a lot of buffaloes as well as a bunch of Native American artifacts
   

The Decision Has Been Made

I have chosen the next book that I will be reading, and it is...

It's That Time Again...The Monday Morning Mix-Up!

Well, here it is folks, the new, time-shifted (one week late thanks to Mr. Monkey in the White House) Monday Morning Mix-Up!

• Evanescense - Lithium : Amy Lee has a great voice and makes even a harder rock band sound angelic (which I am sure is not what they were going for!)
  
• Luke Bryan - Country Man : A fun song, drinking and doing the things a city boy can't!
  
• Meatloaf - It's All Coming Back To Me Now : Finally a Celine Dion song that is enjoyable to listen to (because it's not sung by Celine Dion!)
  
• Chicago - Stay The Night
  
• Rockapella - Dancin' In The Street : This is a great band! If anyone remembers the PBS show Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego? This is the band that did the theme song! They do not use instruments at all...it is all beat-boxed and it sounds great!
  
• David Bowie - Blackout
  
• No Doubt - New
  
• Duran Duran - Skin Trade : A very interesting song, to say the least!
  
• Big & Rich - Drinkin' 'Bout You
  
• Jewel - Deep Water
  

The Week-End Wrap & Review

What I Saw: Well, since I was in bed a lot of the week, or just hanging around the house, I did get to watch some movies. I saw The Reaping, which I thought was a really good religious suspense movie! It has Hilary Swank as a woman who de-bunks miracles and religious phenomenon, but cannot in a town where the 10 Plagues are occurring! Very Good! I also watched Mr.Brooks, which I enjoyed, but wasn't overly impressed with. It had a good story, and a good idea, I just wish it would of had more suspense or action.

What I Heard: Been listening to a bunch of country this past week. Mostly it has been LeAnn Rimes newest disc Family. It really is a great CD! Also, been listening to Reba's Duets CD and Faith Hill's Hits CD. All of these are great...especially in a week filled with Britney buzz!

What I Read: Still reading the Ellen book, got about thirty or forty pages left. Trying to decide what book to start next. Thinking about finally reading The Lovely Bones or another Chuck Palahnuik book.

Just An Update

Hello all in the blogging world! Here's a quick update:
- Just been hanging around with friends and family
- Got real sick last Friday, thought it was just a stomach bug, but after an entire weekend of mild abdominal pains and nausea I decided to go to see the doctor. The doctor prescribed 3 medicines - one for pain, one for nausea, and one just in case it is an infection. He also requested that I have a CT scan done. Well I got the results of the CT scan this morning and it was negative for apendicitis, which was one main thought. Now comes the time to try and diagnose what exactly this might be! Fun fun fun!
- Have to work on Saturday, but shouldn't be too bad...home by 5!