Number 62
Watched "All Quiet on the Western Front" with A this week. I'm not generally very keen on war movies, but it was refreshing to see a war movie that didn't make soldiers out to be heroes. Not that it vilifies soldiers, but it makes the point that soldiers are grunts, out doing things that will likely damage them for the rest of their lives because someone in power decided that they should be done. Really interesting. Of course, the film is set in WWI, so the omnipresent media that we have today didn't exist, but I thought it very effectively made the point that the propaganda that is presented to people when a war is going on is often a crock. Really a poignant, touching movie. I'm glad to have seen it. Oh, and one of the most violent movies I've ever seen, but no/very little blood.

Numbers 1 & 63
Read Chinua Achebe's "Things Fall Apart" again, and it's still heartbreaking. In ways that I can't really even describe because there are so very many bits of heartbreak in it. It is a beautiful book, though.

Also read "I Capture the Castle" by Dodie Smith, which is instead sweet and light and airy and funny. Highly recommended fluffy stuff for warm days.

Number 33
Andy and I went to the Bahamas (an all-inclusive resort outside of Freeport on Grand Bahama Island). He needed a passport, so the letter of the goal is filled, and there were a great many Europeans there so there were lots of cultural differences to be amused by, but I still think it may not be quite the same. I'm calling this one complete, though. And it was a fantastic little getaway.

Numbers 90 & 91
Why yes, this is a new hat.

Number 33
We have a vacation booked for the Bahamas at the end of this month. A will indeed leave the country. For somewhere other than Canada - places that are 15 minutes away do not qualify as leaving the country.

Numbers 1, 63, 59 and 60
I read "The New Rules of Lifting for Women." Ok, some may claim that it doesn't qualify as a real book, since it's rather self-helpy, but I say it does. Anyways, I really enjoyed reading it. Lots of good information that I didn't find idiotic (at no point do the author's recommend against eating any particular real food, one of my pet peeves of diet and nutrition writing). And I'm really interested in lifting "real" weights. The book presents a 6 month lifting program, and I think I'm going to try it. I just need to get over my fear of looking like a fool over in the "real" weight section of my gym, which is not separated from the rest of the gym. And try to figure out just which contraption is the "squat rack".

Numbers 65 and 91
EVERYONE SHOULD GO TO A MIREPOIX TASTING! A and I went last Thursday, and oh my, what fun. We drank much wine, all in convenient little 2 ounces tastes, and discovered 3 new tasty wines that sell for less than $10. The atmosphere is great, with live music at an appropriate volume and lots of chatter. Great date. I wore my red and black hounds tooth hat, which got a compliment and, I think, convinced people that I must be very friendly so they chit-chatted with me.

Number 100
I was a pint lighter Saturday afternoon. The phlebotomists at the Berkley Donor Center do a fine job.

Number 62
I challenge those of you who enjoy musicals to watch The Broadway Melody. Seriously, this must have been made when making talking picture was not considered real acting, thus good actors wouldn't do it. I can't imagine how it could have been the best anything of 1928-1929.

Entertain me!

Number 62

We watched the first film to ever win Best Picture last night - it was a silent movie, "Wings". Surprisingly, it wasn't as difficult to get through as I had anticipated. I did doze off during one of the battle scenes (it's a World War I flyboy movie), but it held my interest pretty well for an 80 year old movie that was 2 hours and 16 minutes long.

Numbers 1 & 63

(I've decided that since I'm not likely to write longhand in an actual journal, this blog can also fill the role of reading journal.)
I finished "The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of The Oxford English Dictionary" by Simon Winchester this evening, and I'm rather shocked that this was as well received as it was. Maybe it's just because I was so much more interested in the details of the OED's creation that I didn't enjoy it. The first half of the book dragged, devoted to the backgrounds of Drs. Murray and Minor, and the details of the project and Dr. Minors special contributions were too quickly explained and then set aside to continue with the biographical stories. I'd have enjoyed more specifics of Dr. Minor's contributions - quotes that he provided, more details on his correspondence with Dr. Murray. And, like many nonfiction stories, it's just damn sad. At the back of the book, though, there is information on the ongoing revision of the OED - and there's a website here http://www.oed.com/readers/. Might be good for another goal list down the road!

Number 100

Made an appointment to donate blood at 11:15 AM on Saturday at the Berkley Donor Center, Woodward and Catalpa - any joiners??

Number 33
Off to cruise the web and see if I can't find a cheap spring break...

A little research and compilation of info today. Of the 80 movies ever awarded Best Picture, I've already seen 16. Of Hitchcock's 50 films, I've seen 2. I'm knocking these off the list now - 112 movies is plenty, and I've got a lot of other stuff to do!

BEST PICTURES (I've seen the films that are in bold):
1927-1928 Wings
1928-1929 The Broadway Melody
1929-1930 All Quiet on the Western Front
1930-1931 Cimarron
1931-1932 Grand Hotel
1932-1933 Cavalcade
1934 It Happened One Night
1935 Mutiny on the Bounty
1936 The Great Ziegfeld
1937 The Life of Emile Zola
1938 You Can't Take It with You
1939 Gone with the Wind
1940 Rebecca
1941 How Green Was My Valley
1942 Mrs. Miniver
1943 Casablanca
1944 Going My Way
1945 The Lost Weekend
1946 The Best Years of Our Lives
1947 Gentleman's Agreement
1948 Hamlet
1949 All the King's Men
1950 All About Eve
1951 An American in Paris
1952 The Greatest Show on Earth
1953 From Here to Eternity
1954 On the Waterfront
1955 Marty
1956 Around the World in Eighty Days
1957 The Bridge on the River Kwai
1958 Gigi
1959 Ben-Hur
1960 The Apartment
1961 West Side Story
1962 Lawrence of Arabia
1963 Tom Jones
1964 My Fair Lady
1965 The Sound of Music
1966 A Man for All Seasons
1967 In the Heat of the Night
1968 Oliver!
1969 Midnight Cowboy
1970 Patton
1971 The French Connection
1972 The Godfather
1973 The Sting
1974 The Godfather Part II
1975 One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
1976 Rocky
1977 Annie Hall
1978 The Deer Hunter
1979 Kramer vs. Kramer
1980 Ordinary People
1981 Chariots of Fire
1982 Gandhi
1983 Terms of Endearment
1984 Amadeus
1985 Out of Africa
1986 Platoon
1987 The Last Emperor (末代皇帝)
1988 Rain Man
1989 Driving Miss Daisy
1990 Dances with Wolves
1991 The Silence of the Lambs
1992 Unforgiven
1993 Schindler's List
1994 Forrest Gump
1995 Braveheart
1996 The English Patient
1997 Titanic
1998 Shakespeare in Love
1999 American Beauty
2000 Gladiator
2001 A Beautiful Mind
2002 Chicago
2003 The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
2004 Million Dollar Baby
2005 Crash
2006 The Departed
2007 No Country for Old Men

HITCHCOCK FILMS:
The Lodger (1926 - Silent)
The Ring (1927 - Silent)
Easy Virtue (1927 - Silent)
Champagne (1928 - Silent)
The Farmer's Wife (1928 - Silent)
Manxman (1929)
Blackmail (1929)
Juno and the Paycock (1930)
Murder! (1930)
Skin Game (1931)
Rich and Strange (1932)
Number 17 (1932)
The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)
The 39 Steps (1935)
Secret Agent (1936)
Sabotage (1936)
Young and Innocent (1937)
The Lady Vanishes (1938)
Jamaica Inn (1939)
Rebecca (1940)
Foreign Correspondent (1940)
Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1941)
Suspicion (1941)
Saboteur (1942)
Shadow of a Doubt (1943)
Bon Voyage & Aventure Malgache (1944)
Lifeboat (1944)
Spellbound (1945)
Notorious (1946)
The Paradine Case (1947)
Rope (1948)
Under Capricorn (1949)
Stage Fright (1950)
Strangers on a Train (1951)
I Confess (1953)
Dial M for Murder (1954)
Rear Window (1954)
To Catch a Thief (1955)
The Trouble with Harry (1955)
The Wrong Man (1956)
The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956)
Vertigo by Alfred Hitchcock (1958)
North by Northwest (1959)
Psycho by Alfred Hitchcock (1960)
The Birds (1963)
Marnie (1964)
Torn Curtain (1966)
Topaz (1969)
Frenzy (1972)
Family Plot (1976)

Day One!

And so it begins! I've lined up 101 goals to accomplish in the next 1001 days. I've embarked on this little adventure largely because things that I want to do tend to slip my mind. I get caught up in the everyday, and the things that spark my interest get forgotten. I'm also looking forward to many of these small goals leading to bigger and better goals!

Things that are already in progress:
50. Pay off the credit cards.
51. Pay off the car.
99. Donate 1,000,000 at freerice.com.

Favorite word that came up on freerice this morning - chelonian = turtle-like. Good to know that there is a word for turtle-like.

The party starts...

in three days. Many thanks to Gracie for mentioning this project and getting me inspired!