Archive for February, 2009

I had a placement interview at Ballerup Sprogcenter today, which is a language (sprog) school in Ballerup, two train stations away.  The woman who interviewed me, Bodil, determined that I was between two levels and she decided to put me in the harder level because she thinks I can catch up.  I want to do the eLearning, which is mostly online, but she thinks I’m not quite at the level required to do that.  So I’m doing evening classes twice a week until I catch up which should be in a couple months.  I’m not thrilled with that but it’s temporary and I need to learn Danish so I’m willing to get this over with.  I start Monday.

For my very first Wardrobe Wednesday, I present…
my beautiful daughter in her $3 overweight neon butterfly costume!

Is there anything in the world cuter than that?  Really?  No.  There’s not.  It’s adorable.  AND she’s sitting up without support.  My little girl is that cool.  For more about my irresistable sugar muffin, be sure and check out The Dagmar Diary.  And for more cool clothing-related blog entries, check out Wardrobe Wednesday.

SUPPOSEDLY if you’ve seen more than 85 films, you have no life. (I wonder who decides these things.) Mark the ones you’ve seen. There are 239 films on this list. Then, put x’s next to the films you’ve seen, add them up, change the header adding your number, and click post at the bottom. Have fun!!!

Edited because Thomas reminded me of a movie we saw together.

(x) Rocky Horror Picture Show
(x) Grease
(x) Pirates of the Caribbean
(x) Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man’s Chest
(x) Boondock Saints
(x) Fight Club
( ) Starsky and Hutch
(x) Neverending Story
(x) Blazing Saddles
( ) Airplane
Total: 8

(x) The Princess Bride
(x) Anchorman
(x) Napoleon Dynamite
(x) Labyrinth
( ) Saw
( ) Saw II
( ) White Noise
( ) White Oleander
( ) Anger Management
(x) 50 First Dates
( ) The Princess Diaries
( ) The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement
Total so far: 13

(x) Scream
( ) Scream 2
( ) Scream 3
( ) Scary Movie
( ) Scary Movie 2
( ) Scary Movie 3
( ) Scary Movie 4
(x) American Pie
(x) American Pie 2
( ) American Wedding
( ) American Pie Band Camp
Total so far: 16

(x) Harry Potter 1
(x) Harry Potter 2
(x) Harry Potter 3
(x) Harry Potter 4
( ) Resident Evil 1
( ) Resident Evil 2
(x) The Wedding Singer
( ) Little Black Book
( ) The Village
(x) Lilo & Stitch
Total so far: 22

(x) Finding Nemo
( ) Finding Neverland
( ) Signs
( ) The Grinch
( ) Texas Chainsaw Massacre
( ) Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning
( ) White Chicks
(x) Butterfly Effect
( ) 13 Going on 30
( ) I, Robot
(x) Robots
Total so far: 25

(x) Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
( ) Universal Soldier
( ) Lemony Snicket: A Series Of Unfortunate Events
( ) Along Came Polly
(x) Deep Impact
( ) Kingpin
(x) Never Been Kissed
(x) Meet The Parents
(x) Meet the Fockers
(x) Eight Crazy Nights
( ) Joe Dirt
(x) King Kong
Total so far: 32

( ) A Cinderella Story
( ) The Terminal
( ) The Lizzie McGuire Movie
( ) Passport to Paris
(x) Dumb & Dumber
( ) Dumber & Dumberer
( ) Final Destination
( ) Final Destination 2
( ) Final Destination 3
( ) Halloween
( ) The Ring
( ) The Ring 2
( ) Surviving X-MAS
( ) Flubber
Total so far: 33

(x) Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle
( ) Practical Magic
(x) Chicago
( ) Ghost Ship
( ) From Hell
(x) Hellboy
( ) Secret Window
( ) I Am Sam
( ) The Whole Nine Yards
( ) The Whole Ten Yards
Total so far: 36

( ) The Day After Tomorrow
( ) Child’s Play
( ) Seed of Chucky
( ) Bride of Chucky
(x) Ten Things I Hate About You
( ) Just Married
( ) Gothika
(x) Nightmare on Elm Street
( ) Sixteen Candles
( ) Remember the Titans
( ) Coach Carter
( ) The Grudge
( ) The Grudge 2
( ) The Mask
( ) Son Of The Mask
Total so far: 38

( ) Bad Boys
( ) Bad Boys 2
( ) Joy Ride
(x) Lucky Number Slevin
(x) Ocean’s Eleven
(x) Ocean’s Twelve
(x) Bourne Identity
(x) Bourne Supremecy
( ) Lone Star
( ) Bedazzled
( ) Predator I
( ) Predator II
( ) The Fog
(x) Ice Age
( ) Ice Age 2: The Meltdown
( ) Curious George
Total so far: 44

(x) Independence Day
( ) Cujo
( ) A Bronx Tale
( ) Darkness Falls
( ) Christine
(x) ET
( ) Children of the Corn
( ) My Boss’ Daughter
( ) Maid in Manhattan
(x) War of the Worlds
(x) Rush Hour
( ) Rush Hour 2
Total so far: 48

( ) Best Bet
(x) She’s All That
( ) Calendar Girls
( ) Sideways
( ) Mars Attacks
( ) Event Horizon
(x) Ever After
(x) Wizard of Oz
( ) Forrest Gump
( ) Big Trouble in Little China
(x) The Terminator
(x) The Terminator 2
(x) The Terminator 3
Total so far: 54

(x) X-Men
(x) X-2
(x) X-3
(x) Spider-Man
(x) Spider-Man 2
( ) Sky High
( ) Jeepers Creepers
( ) Jeepers Creepers 2
(x) Catch Me If You Can
(x) The Little Mermaid
(x) Freaky Friday (It doesn’t say which version but I’ve seen both)
( ) Reign of Fire
( ) The Skulls
(x) Cruel Intentions
( ) Cruel Intentions 2
( ) The Hot Chick
(x) Shrek
(x) Shrek 2
Total so far: 65

( ) Swimfan
(x) Miracle on 34th street
( ) Old School
( ) The Notebook
(x) K-Pax
( ) Krippendorf’s Tribe
( ) A Walk to Remember
( ) Ice Castles
( ) Boogeyman
(x) The 40-year-old Virgin
Total so far: 68

(x) Lord of the Rings Fellowship of the Ring
(x) Lord of the Rings The Two Towers
(x) Lord of the Rings Return Of the King
(x) Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark
(x) Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
(x) Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
(x) Baseketball
( ) Hostel
(x) Waiting for Guffman
( ) House of 1000 Corpses
( ) Devils Rejects
(x) Elf
(x) Highlander
( ) Mothman Prophecies
( ) American History X
( ) Three
Total so far: 78

( ) The Jacket
( ) Kung Fu Hustle
( ) Shaolin Soccer
( ) Night Watch
(x) Monsters Inc.
(x) Titanic
(x) Monty Python and the Holy Grail
(x) Shaun Of the Dead
( ) Willard
Total so far: 82

( ) High Tension
( ) Club Dread
(x) Hulk
( ) Dawn Of the Dead
(x) Hook
(x) Chronicles Of Narnia: The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe
(x) 28 Days Later
( ) Orgazmo
( ) Phantasm
(x) Waterworld
Total so far: 87

(x) Kill Bill vol 1
(x) Kill Bill vol 2
(x) Mortal Kombat
( ) Wolf Creek
( ) Kingdom of Heaven
(x) The Hills Have Eyes
( ) I Spit on Your Grave aka the Day of the Woman
( ) The Last House on the Left
( ) Re-Animator
(x) Army of Darkness
Total so far: 92

(x) Star Wars Ep. I The Phantom Menace
(x) Star Wars Ep. II Attack of the Clones
(x) Star Wars Ep. III Revenge of the Sith
(x) Star Wars Ep. IV A New Hope
(x) Star Wars Ep. V The Empire Strikes Back
(x) Star Wars Ep. VI Return of the Jedi
( ) Ewoks Caravan Of Courage
( ) Ewoks The Battle For Endor
Total so far: 98

(x) The Matrix
(x) The Matrix Reloaded
(x) The Matrix Revolutions
( ) Animatrix
(x) Evil Dead
(x) Evil Dead 2
(x) Team America: World Police
( ) Red Dragon
(x) Silence of the Lambs
( ) Hannibal

Grand total: 105

Yesterday was Thomas’ 29th birthday! I love birthdays, and I think it’s very important to start one’s birthday off on the right foot, so I made breakfast a little extra special for Thomas yesterday. I made French toast, which is a favorite. (Surprising, as it has no meat!) Real butter (already soft, thanks to the butter bell) and real maple syrup are essential for French toast in my household. Extra cinnamon-sugar blend is on the table, if desired. Mmmm.

But merely making a delicious breakfast is only part of making a special start to the day. Nothing says special quite like food coloring. My French toast is normal-colored, but HIS is RED. Now that’s special! And his is covered in sprinkles and surrounded by strawberries, and on a plate that even TELLS him he’s special.

In Denmark, Danish flags are typically used in abundance on special days like birthdays, so even if it seems really strange to you to have all those flags on the plate… trust me, it’s not. I could have used a lot more and it would have still not been strange. So that’s why I chose red food coloring and sprinkles.

So there’s this meme going around where you post the fourth picture in the fourth folder of wherever pictures are stored on your computer and then explain it.  This was clearly thought up by a PC user because we Mac users don’t store our pictures in folders.  We are so beyond that.

I went to my iPhoto library in Finder, and showed the package contents so I could see the folders that actually do exist in there (and because I’m a nerd).  The fourth folder was empty, so that was a bust.  I opened iPhoto, and then had to decide what should be a folder.  I decided to pick the fourth picture from the fourth Event in iPhoto.  I was hoping it would involve one of my trips to Oslo, or my road trip across the midwestern United States.  Something cute from Dagmar or my own childhood, maybe.

Unfortunately, what I got was this:

*Sigh.*  I guess I should have gone with something else.  I apologize to Lindsay and… the girl in the middle whose name I can’t remember for this meme.  This isn’t the most flattering picture of any of us.  They were really hot that night, seriously.  But anyway, as you can probably guess, it was Hallowe’en of whatever year that “Charlie’s Angels” movie came out, and someone (other than me) decided it would be fun to do this.  I figured I was too overweight and butch-haircutted to participate but got prodded into it anyway.  We went to some typical drunken college party where Lindsay and… dang, what is her name?… were hit on a lot and I was ignored, which was totally fine by me as I had a boyfriend at the time and I was never really into the drunken college party scene anyway.

What this picture reminds me of, though, is a conversation I had with Lindsay shortly before we got dressed.  I was telling her I didn’t have anything sexy to wear, and she said that anything can be made sexy.  I pulled out one of my favorite shirts, which was a too-big-for-me button-up in a fish print.  Yeah, the fabric had these life-size mackerals swimming all over it.  Sadly, I don’t have it anymore or I’d take a picture.  Lindsay was able to make it sexy by leaving it unbuttoned and knotting it at the waist.  I was impressed.

I stand corrected.  My recent post with a list of books is using the wrong list of books.  That explains some of the silly things like having both Chronicles of Narnia and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.  I was wondering….  On to the real BBC’s list!

1. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien x+
2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
3. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman x+
4. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams x+
5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling
6. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee x+
7. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne
8. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell x
9. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis
10. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
11. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
12. Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë x
13. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
14. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
15. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
16. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
17. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
18. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
19. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
20. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
21. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
22. Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone, JK Rowling x+
23. Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling
24. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling
25. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien x
26. Tess Of The D’Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
27. Middlemarch, George Eliot
28. A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
29. The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck
30. Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
31. The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson
32. One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez
33. The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett
34. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
35. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl x+
36. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
37. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
38. Persuasion, Jane Austen
39. Dune, Frank Herbert
40. Emma, Jane Austen
41. Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery
42. Watership Down, Richard Adams
43. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald x
44. The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
45. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
46. Animal Farm, George Orwell x
47. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
48. Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
49. Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian
50. The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher
51. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett x
52. Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck  x+
53. The Stand, Stephen King
54. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
55. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
56. The BFG, Roald Dahl
57. Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome
58. Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
59. Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer
60. Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
61. Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman
62. Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden
63. A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens x+
64. The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough
65. Mort, Terry Pratchett
66. The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton
67. The Magus, John Fowles
68. Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
69. Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
70. Lord Of The Flies, William Golding x
71. Perfume, Patrick Süskind
72. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
73. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
74. Matilda, Roald Dahl x+
75. Bridget Jones’s Diary, Helen Fielding
76. The Secret History, Donna Tartt
77. The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins
78. Ulysses, James Joyce
79. Bleak House, Charles Dickens
80. Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson
81. The Twits, Roald Dahl
82. I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith
83. Holes, Louis Sachar
84. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
85. The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
86. Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson
87. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley x+
88. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
89. Magician, Raymond E Feist
90. On The Road, Jack Kerouac
91. The Godfather, Mario Puzo
92. The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel
93. The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett
94. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
95. Katherine, Anya Seton
96. Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer
97. Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez
98. Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson
99. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
100. Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie

I’d count them but I’m too busy wanting to shoot myself from the construction noise and its keeping my daughter from napping.

I’m sure you’ve all heard the saying, “there are no stupid questions, only stupid answers.”  Of course that’s not true.  There are stupid questions.  Ed over at Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub makes an excellent case for why, “do you believe in evolution?” is a stupid question, although he doesn’t frame it in those terms.  I just read another stupid question, and unfortunately the forum on which it was posted is currently down (I got a notification email about it, in case you’re wondering how I was able to read it), so I’m going to address it here.  It’s actually two questions, but they’re both the same kind of stupid.

Do Danes hate foreigners?  Does racism exist in Denmark?

Saying “Danes hate foreigners,” or “Danes don’t hate foreigners” for that matter, would be exactly the kind of sweeping judgment that someone supposedly concerned about this would want to avoid.  This makes asking a yes/no question that can only be answered with a sweeping judgment a stupid question.

Racism exists everywhere.  This is kind of like asking, “do people breathe oxygen in Denmark?” or “are there trees in France?”  Plus, this question is being asked in response to several posts where people have described the racism they’ve encountered in Denmark.  So even if you have some valid reason for thinking that an entire country can exist without any racism, the fact that you’re on this particular thread on this particular message board should have cleared away any doubts you might have had about Denmark being one of those magical wonderlands.  Therefore I dub this one a stupid question.

You might try to defend this person by saying that while literal interpretations of these questions are stupid, we can tell what they really want to know, and an appropriate conversation can follow from these questions.  I disagree.  Asking these questions puts any Danes or “Dane sympathizers” on the defensive.  It would be unremarkable if I felt the need to clear my husband’s good Danish name of these accusations of hate and racism, but it would also be an unproductive conversation.

It also isn’t clear exactly what information is sought.  Do they want to know if racism is government sponsored or legislated?  Do they want to know what areas of the country are the most racist?  Do they want to know what kinds of racism they can expect to encounter on a typical day?  I’m not being snarky here.  I’ve seen too many online conversations that go something like this:

Person A: Is the sky blue?

Person B: Right now, I look out my window and see a greyish sky with clouds.

Person A: No, no!  I mean is the SKY BLUE?

Person B has every reason to believe that upon submitting that response, the question has been answered, however person A had some particular kind of answer in mind and it hasn’t been given.  For some reason, person A doesn’t want to actually help person B figure out what kind of answer that is.  Wouldn’t it be a lot easier if person A had asked what was really on their mind, e.g. “My dad told me the sky isn’t really blue, but it’s every color except blue and I don’t know what he means.  If you know what he’s talking about, can you please explain it to me?”

I could spend half an hour composing a post about racism I’ve encountered in Copenhagen only to be told that’s not what they wanted to hear about.  Instead I decided to rant about stupid questions because I’m in a bad mood today and there’s a lot of loud construction going on right above me.

I guess this list is from the BBC or something, and if I’m an average person, I’ll have only read six of them.  I used to read a lot, but it’s been a while, so I’m kinda curious how I do.

ETA: Leave it to Kristjan at Pro-Science to point out that this list has nothing to do with the BBC at all.  I’ll do the real list too, in another post.

1) Look at the list and put an ‘x’ after those you have read ENTIRELY

2) Add a ‘+’ to the ones you LOVE.
3) Star (*) those you plan on reading.
4) Tally your total at the bottom. 

Here’s my response:

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien  x
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee  x+
6 The Bible x
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte x
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell x
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman x+
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien x
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
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+
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
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 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis
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 – AA Milne
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell x
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 x
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 x+
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley x+
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 x+
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  x (only non-Hemingway novel I detest, to my memory)
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 Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
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 – EB White x+
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Alborn
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 (I think we went through it in French class, but both my memory and my grasp of French are poor enough not to count it)
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 x+
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

That makes 18.  Not too bad, but nothing to write home about.  You might have noticed I didn’t star anything.  I do actually have the desire to read something by Jane Austen, but I haven’t decided which one.  There are a few on the list that I’d be up for reading, but I haven’t really made plans to do so, so it doesn’t seem right to star them.  Perhaps one day I’ll work out a book budget for myself and get into reading again, but it won’t be today.  Sorry.

I think my favorite is New Year’s, because the day itself doesn’t actually hold much meaning, but we have made it into an excuse to party and set off a ton of fireworks.  No one even pretends the day has a bunch of significance that it doesn’t.  It’s just a day we choose to party on.  How cool is that?

I made bacon cheeseburgers and fries for Valentine’s, and then drank wine.  That’s a decent holiday too.

Hat tip to Melaina.
Answer these questions about you and your significant other:

1:: What are your middle names? Mine is Lee.  Thomas doesn’t have one.
2:: How long have you been together? 4 years 
3:: Do you have any children together? yes, Dagmar Lee, cutest baby ever 
4:: What about pets? yes, two kittyloves, Lidja and Tycho
5:: Did you go to the same school? no
6:: Are you from the same hometown? not even close
7:: Do you live in the same town now? in the same flat and everything
8:: Who is the smartest? he is
9:: Who is the most sensitive? he is
10:: Where is the first place you went to eat as a couple? not sure, probably Arby’s, haha 
11:: Do you wear matching clothes? The thought has never crossed our minds.  Do people do that? 
12:: Where is the furthest you have travelled as a couple? We’ve gone between Copenhagen and Panama City, Florida a few times.
13:: Who has the craziest ex[es]? me
14:: Who has the worst temper? me
15. Who does the cooking? me
16:: Who’s more social? sooooo me
17:: Who is the neat freak? neither, but his messy threshold is higher so I guess I’d be closer
18:: Who is the most affectionate? he is
19:: Who is the most stubborn? tough call… probably him
20:: There wasn’t a #20, but I just can’t skip it.
21:: Who wakes up earlier? him on weekdays, and me on weekends
22:: Where was your first date? We met in person at the Minneapolis St. Paul airport, I guess. lol
23:: Who said “I Love You” first? me
24:: How did you spend your 1st year anniversary? We went to Berlin to celebrate, though it wasn’t on the day of. 
25:: Who has the bigger family? He has a lot more cousins.
26:: Who is younger? him, by just under two years
27:: Who is the life of the party? neither of us, at ALL
28:: Who do you hope your kids turn out more like? I hope they get the best qualities of both of us!
29:: Who wears the pants in the family? He gets final call.
30:: What’s your favorite thing to do together? explore the world
31:: Do you have the same political views? on most stuff
32:: Who has the most stuff? He’s a massive pack rat.
33:: Who controls the remote? him 
34:: Who does the driving? Neither of us drive, but he fancies himself a navigator when we go out.
35:: Who takes out the garbage? both of us, but him more often
36:: Who does the cleaning? me
37:: Who does the laundry? me
38:: Who is the funniest? him