A StoryCorps Adventure

Have you ever heard of StoryCorps? It's an amazing project "whose mission is to honor and celebrate one another's lives through listening."

Basically, you can record your life story, tell about a certain time in your life, record "life lessons" for future children, or words of wisdom to pass along to your family. What a cool idea!!!

StoryCorps has a booth at the library right now, so my friend A and I decided to make an appointment and talk about The List and about our FMRNS and our experiences with that. We decided that 5 years and almost 250 movies was definitely a good thing to get on a CD!

The session was 40 minutes. We took a copy of The List, and just talked! We started out talking about how we met (working at the library!), and how the movie night got started ("What do you mean you've never seen The Color Purple?!"). After that, we went through all the movies that we have watched, picking out a couple of the ones that really impacted us or we found particularly funny or moving. I tell you what - 40 minutes sure didn't take long!! We could have talked for hours. It was like time just stopped.

After the session was over, they took our picture (I'm ready for my close-up!). The woman who was in charge of running the booth told us how cool she thought what we were doing was, and that we reminded her of some of her favorite movies, and inspired her to see some of the others we talked about! See, movie night is all about inspiration and bringing joy! We also found out that our CD will be cataloged at the Library of Congress!!

We listened to the CD a couple days later, and it was even better!! There were moments while we were listening when we remembered what was happening in the booth at that time (like when I was waving my arms because I couldn't think of something to say!), and we LAUGHED!! Which made the whole experience even better. Those are the things that we are going to remember and we will be able to look back and laugh.

As you can probably tell, my friendship with A is one of the most important things in my life. To be able to do the StoryCorps thing with him (chronicling one of the coolest things ever - FMRNS) just feels so amazing - I don't even know if I could find the words to describe it.

Anyway, if you have a story to tell, want to interview your grandma, have some things you want to share with your unborn child, or just want to talk with your friend, PLEASE take this opportunity to get your thoughts on CD.

Find out all about StoryCorps at their website, where you can also Listen to Stories!

Vroom!! A truck story time

Happy Tuesday!! I can't believe it's been a week since my last post - I am slacking! I have a couple cool things I want to blog about, so I'll have more posts this week!

Anyway, it's TUESDAY, which means it's Story Time Day!!! HOOOORAY!!!!! A great new book about Trucks came in last week, so that inspired a Truck story time! Here are the books I read:

Five Trucks by Brian Floca


A Truck Goes Rattley-Bumpa by Jonathan London


Tip Tip Dig Dig by Emma Garcia


And, of course, it's FMRNS!!!!! Since yesterday was Memorial Day, and both A and I had the day off (my poor DH had to work - boo!), we decided to do a Double Feature Monday!! However, we were only able to watch one movie. The DVD for our second feature, which was to be Barbarella Queen of the Galaxy, was all messed up (and we forgot the back-up copy on VHS at work!). But it's all good, because we finished up School House Rock instead!! The feature that we DID get to watch was Private Benjamin, a comedy from 1980 with Goldie Hawn (LOVE her!), Eileen Brennan and Armand Assante.

Tonight's feature is going to be Twin Peaks. We are not watching the whole TV series, but just the 2 hour long Pilot episode. We had been having major problems finding this (the library copies were unavailable, and we couldn't get it through ILL, either), so my good friend Lauren (aka Wilma) offered us the use of her NetFlix (Thanks Wilma!!!). She was able to get both Twin Peaks AND Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (also on the list). A and I are so excited for this feature!! We'll probably get into Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me next Tuesday.

Who's ready for a story?

At long last (well, a week...) it's finally Tuesday again!!! With the help of my friend A, we came up with the theme of Shoes!! I had been struggling to come up with a theme this week, but luckily A happened to call me right when I was needing to make a decision. So without further adieu - here are the books about Shoes that I am reading this week!

Flip Flop Bop by Matt Novak



New Shoes, Red Shoes by Susan Rollings


Whose Shoe? by Margaret Miller


And, of course, it's FMRNS!!! I am excited that it's Movie Night, but not terribly excited about tonight's feature. But only because it's a horror... We tried once before to watch An American Werewolf in London (a horror from 1981 with David Naughton and Jenny Agutter), but our library's only copy was damaged. We just got it in from ILL, so we'll now have to watch it. *sigh*


Last Tuesday, we decided to go with WarGames, a drama thriller from 1983 with Matthew Broderick (LOVE him!), and Ally Sheedy . We also had Double Feature Friday this past week, where we watched Blackboard Jungle, a drama from 1955 with Glenn Ford and Anne Francis, and Escape to Witch Mountain, a family adventure from 1975 with Eddie Albert and Ray Milland.

Rough Monday

Ugh. It's been a long day. Here is a list of the people who have annoyed me - in the last 20 minutes alone:

~~ The man talking on his cell phone so loudly that the people across the street can probably hear him.

~~ The woman (who needs a better bra!!) with the three kids who keeps yelling at them to be quiet. (The kids aren't bothering me, though - they are actually being fairly quiet and polite when asking questions).

~~ The man on the computer who has the volume up so loud that I can hear whatever hip hop song he's listening to. And the fact that he's boppin' with the music kinda just makes me want to smack him.

~~ The mom who is letting her 3 year old climb the library shelves.

~~ The college student who thought that I was going to plan her curriculum lesson plan for her - HA!

~~ The man who was just on his cell phone at the beginning of this list who just smirked at me and said "shhh!" Ass hole.

Anyway - I am going to blame all this on the fact that I have been here for 10 hours. I am SO ready to go home. With a nice bottle of wine...mmmmmm...

Down at the end of Lonely Street...

So last weekend, my dear hubby and I decided to take a little road trip to Memphis! It was such a great time!!! DH is a huge Elvis fan, so we definitely wanted to hit up Memphis and Graceland before we moved away from the South.

We left Friday morning and went straight to Graceland. We toured the mansion, and all the museums (including the Car Museum, and the airplanes - The Lisa Marie and The Hound Dog II. Here is an Overview of the tours and exhibits). It was so fun!! Even though I am not a HUGE Elvis fan (don't get me wrong - he IS the King!), I totally felt his vibe and spirit all over the place. My DH was especially moved by the experience, which was very exciting for me! He was so happy to be there and so excited - seeing him like that was so fun!

Here are some pictures from Graceland!!

The living room:

The kitchen:
The dining room:
The TV room:
The Pool room:

The Jungle room:

The Racquetball building - this held hundreds of awards (this pic doesn't even do it justice), records, as well as a couple of Elvis's famous suits:




The meditation garden:





A couple of things from his Car/Motorcycle museum:



After some fabulous recommendations from a fabulous friend, DH and I went to Central Barbecue for the BEST BBQ in Memphis!!

Later that evening, we went to Beale Street!!! There was a huge street fair kind of vibe going on! Music pouring out of everywhere, people walking around, dancing, drinking - it was a BLAST!!!



To top it all off, we stayed down at the end of Lonely Street - at the Heartbreak Hotel!!


It was the most awesome little trip!! It came at the perfect time - I have actually been itching to get out of town for a while.

Thanks for coming along to the recap!!

Little bitty story time!

Hooray!!! It's Tuesday!!! I decided to have a "Little" story time today - should be fun!!! The books we are reading are:

Little Pea by Amy Rosenthal

Naughty Little Monkeys by Jim Aylesworth


Ten Little Ladybugs by Melanie Gerth

And, as always, it's FMRNS!! WHOOOOT!!! So, we're down to the top three of American Idol - how exciting!!! We'll definitely be watching that tonight. And we've also kinda gotten into Hell's Kitchen - that Gordon Ramsey, he's an ass, but fun to watch! After AI and HK, we'll be watching last weeks episode of America's Next Top Model, which I taped on my VCR (yes, I am still in the stone age!). And THEN, even after all that fabulousness, we STILL have our FMRNS Feature Film!!!! Could the evening get ANY better?!?!?

We watched Girl With a Pearl Earring last week (amazing!! Scarlett Johansson was perfect in that role!!). We still have a stock pile of movies, so there is a lot to choose from! I don't think we've officially decided, so I'll give you the rundown of what our options are.

Blackboard Jungle, a drama from 1955 with Glenn Ford and Anne Francis.
Private Benjamin, a comedy from 1980 with Goldie Hawn (LOVE her!), Eileen Brennan and Armand Assante.
Escape to Witch Mountain, a family adventure from 1975 with Eddie Albert and Ray Milland.
Yankee Doodle Dandy, a musical from 1942 with James Cagney and Joan Leslie.
Barbarella, Queen of the Galaxy, a sci-fi adventure from 1968 with Jane Fonda.
WarGames, a drama thriller from 1983 with Matthew Broderick (LOVE him!), and Ally Sheedy.
Fail-Safe, a sci-fi/drama/thriller from 1964 with Dan O'Herlihy and Walter Matthau.

What to watch, what to watch?! Our last comedy wasn't too long ago (The Gods Must be Crazy - also from 1980), and we just watched a movie from the 50s (The Day the Earth Stood Still- also a sci-fi), a movie from the 70s (The Spy Who Loved Me) and a musical (Hair - and also the 70s!). I'm guessing it will either be WarGames or Fail-Safe, but who knows what we'll be in the mood for!!

P.S. We also have School House Rock to watch - but those we watch in between movies and after the feature. I had seen a few, but not a whole lot. They are terribly fun and very informational all at the same time!!!!








Stay tuned for an upcoming post!! My husband and I took a little road trip to Memphis this past weekend!! I'll be sharing tons of pics from our adventure - including pics of Graceland!! Thank you, thank you very much!!