A Little About Me

Well, I was born in a small town. I was educated and raised in a small town, and though I’ve left that small town, who I was is still basically who I am. I love my family, my friends, my country, and most importantly my God. I’ve been married for almost five years to a wonderful man, and we’re the “parents” of a sweet golden retriever, Lucy. I love comments, so please feel free to leave them!

My Interests:

I’m a self-proclaimed gadget-whore. If it’s little and electronic, I love it. Actually any new technology has always interested me.

Gardening: There’s nothing quite as relaxing as toiling away in good, clean, fertile soil. The smell of freshly tilled earth always puts me in a good mood, and the results of hard work are beautiful flowers.

The Internet: I started a forum devoted to the works of L. M. Montgomery called “The Tangled Web,” I also maintain a MySpace account.

Pictures: I’m far from being a good photographer, but I love taking pictures. You can see some at my Picasa Web Album.

Reading: I like to read the great books of yesterday, historical fictions, biographies, and historical nonfiction.

Writing: I like to write a little when “the flash” hits me.

Politics: I love politics. I don’t understand people who have no interest in the goings on of our country.

Books:
The Anne of Green Gables Series, All L. M. Montgomery books, All Jane Austen books though Pride and Prejudice is my favorite, Edward Rutherford books, John Jakes books, A History of Britain – all volumes, Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities, David Copperfield, Rebecca, Jane Eyre, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Guns of August, What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew, Middlemarch, The Mill on the Floss, Tom Sawyer, The Great Gatsby, Little Women, The House of Seven Gables, Edgar Allen Poe’s Works, The Last of the Mohicans, The Canterbury Tales in Middle English, and many, many more.

Television:
Gilmore Girls, How I Met Your Mother, Brothers and Sisters, Desperate Housewives, South Park, 30 Rock, Pushing Daisies, and most things on The History Channel until recently.

Music:
I am a fan of many different types of music, but my favorite genre has to be classical soundtracks from motion pictures. Sometimes it’s easier to talk about the music I don’t like. I hate rap. I can’t stand twangy country, but like some with less twang. Most of today’s pop music is horrible too. Current favs are: Jack Johnson, Josh Kelley, John Mayer, the Solids, Sara Bareilles, James Morrison, James Blunt, The Decemberists, Matchbox Twenty, Mandy Moore, A Fine Frenzy, Marie Digby, Ingrid Michaelson, Josh Ritter

Movies:
The Philadelphia Story, A Christmas Story, While You Were Sleeping, Pride and Prejudice, Anne of Green Gables, Back to the Future I, II, and III, Meet Me in St. Louis, Our Vines Have Tender Grapes, My Favorite Wife, Goodbye Mr. Chips (1939), Sleepless in Seattle, Man of the Year, Wedding Crashers, Mean Girls, Emma, Sense and Sensibility, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Sixteen Candles, Beaches, Goonies, Christmas in Connecticut, Miracle on 34′t Street, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, It’s a Wonderful Life, Over the Hedge, Secondhand Lions, Stranger Than Fiction, etc.

Favorite Quotes:

“I love mankind, it’s people I can’t stand.”
- Peanuts, Linus Van Pelt

“It seems it always happens. Whenever we get too high-hat and too sophisticated for flag-waving, some thug nation decides we’re a push-over all ready to be blackjacked. And it isn’t long before we’re looking up, mighty anxiously, to be sure the flag’s still waving over us.” -James Cagney as George M. Cohen in “Yankee Doodle Dandy”

“Without shedding of blood there is no anything… Everything, it seems to me, has to be purchased by self-sacrifice. Our race has marked every step of its painful ascent with blood. And now torrents of it must flow again… I don’t think the war has been sent as a punishment for sin. I think it is the price humanity must pay for some blessing – some advance great enough to be worth the price which we may not live to see but which our children’s children will inherit.” – Rilla of Ingleside Chapter 5.

“There are lots of ways of being miserable, but there’s only one way of being comfortable, and that is to stop running round after happiness. If you make up your mind not to be happy there’s no reason why you shouldn’t have a fairly good time.”
- Edith Wharton

“If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant: if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.”
- Anne Bradstreet

“Everybody likes to go their own way–to choose their own time and manner of devotion.” – Jane Austen, Mansfield Park

“The third-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority. The second-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the minority. The first-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking.”
- AA Milne

“The important work of moving the world forward does not wait to be done by perfect men.”
- George Eliot

“There is no feeling, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find relief in music.”
- George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss, 1860

“The strongest principle of growth lies in the human choice.”
- George Eliot

“Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously…. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us.”
- Jane Austen (1775 – 1817), Pride and Prejudice, 1811

“Anyone who has gumption knows what it is, and anyone who hasn’t can never know what it is. So there is no need of defining it.”
- L. M. Montgomery, Anne of the Island, 1915

“In this world you’ve just got to hope for the best and prepare for the worst and take whatever God sends.”
- Lucy Maud Montgomery quotes (Canadian Writer, 1874-1942)