29 Things Events that happened in 2009

Why 29? Well, I'm 29 years of age and the digits 2 and 9 are derived from 2009. It works out decently!

1. Sully Sullenberger floated a plane.
   
2. Girl Scout program grew and thrived.
3. Mom and I saw King Tut in Dallas.
4. I finished my rookie year at Freeman.
5. My transmission broke down while I was on I-45.
6. Mom and I discovered many ancestors on MyHeritage.com.
   
7. I went to the TLA Conference.
8. I turned 29.
9. I went to San Diego, CA.
10. I went to DisneyLand.
11. Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson died on the same day.
12. I saw New Kids on the Block in concert.
13. I saw The Proposal.
    
14. I finished The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane.
    
15. I was busted for breaking curfew the first time in my life.
16. Patrick Swayze died of pancreatic cancer.
17. Genealogy on iHCPL.
    
18. Dave Letterman was nearly extorted.
    
19. I saw U2 in concert!
    
20. I went to Baylor Homecoming in Waco.
    
21. Someone backed into my parked car.
    
22. Mom became sick.
    
23. Ft. Hood Shooting.
    
24. My car was in the shop for 10 days.
25. Thanksgiving 2009 - Brady's Landing.
26. I got an iPhone with a Starry Night cover.
    
27. Dad showed me that vinegar works on car batteries.
    
28. Mom became better!
    
29. I took vacation. . .
    

Let's see what happens in 2010!

DNA Testing - Ancestry.com

A big thanks goes to my dad! He agreed to do Ancestry.com's DNA test. I just ordered the test kit. To find out more about, check out this link.

I plan to post much about this experience. If this proves to be a positive experience, then I might do the maternal lineage test (I lack the "Y" chromosome to see about Dad's side of the family on my own).

From these tests, we hope to answer the following questions:

1. My paternal grandmother is said to have descended from Italian gypsies. Some discrepancies about my great grandfather's life and records have kept this a mystery.
   
2. We've arrived at numerous dead ends about Great Grandmother Nissen's family, the Rays.
3. Family lore says that Great Grandma Sargent's family, the McMinns, immigrated from Poland to the British Isles.
   

While DNA testing goes back to ancient roots, it doesn't often provide names or records. However, this may give us a platform in discovering our heritage.

29 Things for which I'm thankful. . .

1. My salvation through Christ
2. My parents
3. My friends
4. A job doing what I studied to do
5. A roof over my head
6. Good transportation
7. The Internet
   
8. Instant means of communication
9. Fast travel
   
10. My iPod
11. Music
12. Good food to eat (Thanks, Mom!
13. The Cowboys won today! (Right, Dad?!)
    
14. DVDs
15. The library system
16. Books
    
17. A friend who let me stay with her in San Diego
18. A friend who let me stay with her in Waco
19. Electricity
20. My weight loss
21. Freedom of expression
22. People defending my rights
23. $1 Cokes this past summer
24. Connections made through MyHeritage.com
    
25. My coworkers
26. My cats
27. The VCR
    
28. A/C
29. AARP tax help :)
    

Animoto.com

BU Homecoming 2009

Book Log

Rules: Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you've read that stay with you. Tag fifteen friends, including me because I'm interested in seeing what books my friends choose. (To do this, go to your Notes tab on your profile page, paste rules in a new note, cast your 15 picks, and tag people in the note -- upper right hand side.)


1) The Bible
2) To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
3) The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
4) The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
5) In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez
6) The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles
7) D'aulaire's Book of Greek Myths by Ingri d'Aulaire and Edgar Parin d'Aulaire
8) Life of Pi by Yann Martel
9) A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
10) The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
11) Number the Stars by Lois Lowry
12) Night by Eli Wiesel
13) The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
14) Othello by William Shakespeare (a play, not a book, I know)
15) Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

31 down, 69 more to go. . .

Book dare

The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books here. How many have you read?
How do your reading habits stack up?

Instructions: Copy this into your NOTES. Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read.

Tag other book nerds

1 Pride and Prejudice
2 The Lord of the Rings
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte X
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee X
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman X
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott X
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare:
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurie
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien X
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger X
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaet Mitchell X
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald X
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams X
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 X
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis X
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden X
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown X
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 X
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 X
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel X
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen X
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens X
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley X
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck X
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold X
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac X
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding X
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 X
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno – Dante X
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 X
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert X
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White X
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 X
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 X
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory- Roald Dahl X
100 Les Miserables — Victor Hugo

First Time for Everything

1.Who was your FIRST prom date?
Ultimately, I did not have a prom date. It's a very long story. . .


2. Do you still talk to your FIRST love?
No, I don't.


3. What was your FIRST alcoholic drink?
I believe it was beer.


4. What was your FIRST job?
My first real job (not babysitting) was at Dollar Tree.


5. What was your FIRST car?
I shared a 1990 Chevy Cavalier and a 1987 Mercury Topaz with my mom when I was in high school.


6. Who was the FIRST person to text you today?
I think it was Laura.


7. Who is the FIRST person you thought of this morning?
It was my optometrist.


8. Who was your FIRST grade teacher?
I had more than one but I'll say Mrs. Lundquist because she was my favorite that year.


9. Where did you go on your FIRST ride on an airplane?
Jackson, MS


10. Who was your FIRST best friend & do you still talk?
I'm guessing it was Amber and no, we don't talk anymore.


11. Where was your FIRST sleep over?
I think it was at Michelle S.'s house.


12. Who was the FIRST person you talked to today?
My mom


13. Whose wedding were you in the FIRST time?
I was in the Vlahakos - Butler - Motter wedding.


14. What was the FIRST thing you did this morning?
Well, I believe that was waking up.


15. What was the FIRST concert you ever went to?
Oddly enough, I think it was The Bangles.


16. FIRST tattoo?
I have no tattoos.


17. First piercing?
I have one per ear. I got the holes when I was six for Christmas.


18. First foreign country you've been to?
Mexico


19. FIRST movie you remember seeing?
I think it was E.T.


20. When was your FIRST detention?
Even though I had a hall pass, this psycho hall monitor/teacher with too much time on her hands threw me into D-Hall when I was a sophomore. Apparently, my hall pass didn't meet her obscenely high standards.


22. Who was your FIRST roommate?



23. If you had one wish. What would it be?
That I could have more wishes??? (Good answer, Amanda!)


24. What is something you would learn if you had the chance?
Spanish


25. Who was the first person to ask for your hand in marriage, and did you marry them
It was my preschool boyfriend and no, I didn't marry him.


26. What is the first sport you were involved in?
Swimming


27. What were the first lessons you ever took?
Swimming


28. What is the first thing you do when you get home?
Pull out my work keys and put them in the box on top of our antique radio.


29. Who do you think will be the next person to post this?
I have no idea.