Pride and Prejudice

First of all, I am sitting at Panera, these ladies behind me are playing with dominoes and I swear it sounds like they are just throwing the porcelain dominos up in the air and letting them spill onto the wooden table. It's so loud! Piercing! I looked around the back of my booth and gave them a look that said, "What the heck are you women DOING back there!?" I don't know how to play dominos. But I don't think it should be this noisy...

Anyway, I am reading Pride and Prejudice... for the first time.

AHHH! (**flinching because I'm afraid you're going to hit me**)

Yes, it's the first time I've ever read it. And here's why:

When I was in high school, and encouraged to read the classic books of our time, I decided that any book endorsed by a one Mrs. Kathy Korty would be a waste of time. You might say I was a bit of a slacker... On the day that a book report was due, one of my friends would say, "Caitie, did read the book yet? Hahaha!" Everyone would laugh because no, of course I hadn't, and I would skip choir and lunch, go into the library and log onto the following websites; www.pinkmonkey.com, www.gradesaver.com, and my personal favorite, www.anti-study.com, to start my report. I would read summary after summary of the book, review themes and character descriptions and then write a 6 paged book report in 37 minutes flat. My most memorable book report was in poem form. Yes, I totally iambic-pentameter-ed "The Color Purple". I was pretty proud. :) And I think Mrs. Korty secretly loved it!!

Point of the story; when it was time to read Pride and Prejudice, I gladly skipped out and spent 1 hour and 37 minutes in the library on the day the report was due. No harm done, right?

No. Years later Mikey and Laura were watching Pride and Prejudice (BBC style) at our apartment. I passed through the living room and gave them a look, similar to the one I just gave the old woman behind me who just dropped some of those dominos all over the tile floor, and continued to look for that bottle of Jack Daniels that I had hidden in the couch. See, Mrs. Korty was also a big fan of the movies that were adapted from these classic books. And as a movie fanatic, I was even more opposed to the movies that she so dearly enjoyed. Heck NO! was I going to waste my time on THAT! So, I slept through each one; at one point moving to lay on the ground on my coat each day we watched "The Importance of Being Ernest" (no, I haven't read/seen that one either).

But after weeks and weeks of the 2-disc set sitting there; the only movie in our collection that I hadn't devoured 22 times, over and over, did the unthinkable. I watched it. The whole thing. In one sitting. I laughed. I cried. I really had to go to the bathroom. But I watched it.

And I LOVED it.

Since then I've watched it a million times. I've seen the new one with Kiera Knightly (which was great, but who can blaspheme their first P&P by being a traitor to a commercial version?). And I make references to the characters regularly.

I owe Mrs. Korty an apology. She was totally, absolutely, 100% right. The classics are classics! I have to make up for lost time now and read the books as well. Does anyone have Mrs. Korty's old book list? If so, find me at Panera. I'll be the one grabbing handfuls of dominos and throwing them at old women.

Again.

Re-cap from my myspace blogs..

Wow... my last post on blogspot was a little over a year ago! But don't be too disgusted! I have been blogging; it's just been via myspace. I started myspace awhile ago, recruited a few people to the site, then got my first myspace stalker! Have you had one!? They are a lot of fun... in a creepy, annoying, always looking over your shoulder kind of way..

Anyway! I will recap the last year of blogs.. A friend of mine convinved me to start blogging about the times that I "pulled-a-caitie". Actually, the phrase has caught on! So, here we go.. just a couple "Caitie" moments for you:

June 25th, 2006 - the sixth time that i pre-paid for gas, then got into my car and left without getting any! Same day: bumped into a display at CVS, knocked over the shampoo, then stepped on one of the bottles, spraying shampoo everywhere. When I tried to jump away from the other bottles, stepped in the shampoo and was flailing around, looking like a bad Nancy Kerrigan impersonator. The lady who had to come help me clean it up said it was like a movie.

July 1st, 2006 - Went to drive through at Starbucks. Was wondering why no one was taking my order until I realized my window was still up.

July 13th, 2006 - Used our babysitters car and crashed it.

July 15th, 2006 - Went to concert at Deer Creek and got stuck at security when they found a butter knife in my purse.. that is one that you have to read the whole blog..

August 3rd, 2006 - This one was an incident that happened awhile before.. an oldie but still a goodie.. "when i was moving from muncie my dad told me to tie the mattresses to the top of the suburban. so i was lifting up the mattresses, throwing the rope and bungee cords underneath, exerting myself much more than neccessary because as we pulled out of the driveway, the mattresses slid right off the car. i had tied them to each other, not the car. "

September 5th, 2006 - Left WalMart, drove halfway home before I realized that I didn't bother to return the shopping basket that I had used. I still have it. I wondered at what point would I have noticed if I had used a shopping cart...

So, that's just a couple. I have many more where that came from...