You are a Porsche 911!

You have a classic style, but you’re
up-to-date with the latest technology.  You’re ambitious,
competitive, and you love to win.  Performance, precision, and prestige -
you’re one of the elite, and you know it.

Take the Which Sports Car Are You? quiz.

Stole this from several folks:

This is a list of the 50 most significant science fiction/fantasy novels, 1953-2002, according to the Science Fiction Book Club. Bold the ones you’ve read, strike-out the ones you hated, italicize those you started but never finished and put an asterisk beside the ones you loved.

The List

1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien***
2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
3. Dune, Frank Herbert***
4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein***
5. A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin
6. Neuromancer, William Gibson
7. Childhood’s End, Arthur C. Clarke
8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
11. The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe
12. A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr.
13. The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov***
14. Children of the Atom, Wilmar Shiras
15. Cities in Flight, James Blish
16. The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett
17. Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison
18. Deathbird Stories, Harlan Ellison
19. The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester
20. Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany
21. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey***
22. Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card***
23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson
24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
25. Gateway, Frederik Pohl
26. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, J.K. Rowling***
27. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
28. I Am Legend, Richard Matheson
29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
30. The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin
31. Little, Big, John Crowley
32. Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny
33. The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
34. Mission of Gravity, Hal Clement
35. More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon
36. The Rediscovery of Man, Cordwainer Smith
37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute
38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
39. Ringworld, Larry Niven
40. Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys
41. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
42. Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
43. Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson
44. Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner
45. The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester
46. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
47. Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock
48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
49. Timescape, Gregory Benford
50. To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer

I’ve never started a book I didn’t finish.  I’m either masochistic or overly optimistic -  keep thinking that it’s *got* to get better.  Let’s see, that’s 34 out of 50 (or 68%).   I’m a geek.

Had a lovely, lazy day yesterday.  Took the day off work and just recovered from the weekend.  Had lunch with one of my old law firm partners, did a bit of shopping and driving around, went home and napped.  Didn’t check my work emails once (I’m getting better!).  Now, off to start a new week at work – a short one, thankfully!

Not that I didn’t have a wonderful time, but can I express how really damn happy I am that Defenders of the Rose II is over?  Yippee!!  Things went *very* smoothly this year (unlike last year, I did not get sent out of town on business for the entire week before the event), and the local groups could not have worked any harder or possibly have made things any easier than they did.  I never had to ask for something twice, and all the planning we did two weekends before when we all met at site made all the setup and tear-down go almost seamlessly.  They did a great job!

We (the Roses) had an interesting meeting on Saturday night to discuss the event, why we’re doing it, whether we wanted to continue doing it and what other things we might want to do.  When asking someone why they thought chivalric fighters weren’t showing up to the event, I’d gotten some feedback that some folks thought the event was just the Roses grandstanding, saying “look at how wonderful we are,” “worship us” and things along that line.  We did a go-around-the-circle thing, with each lady describing what the event meant to her, why she wanted to do it in the first place, how she felt about it after two years, etc.   With 12 different Roses, it was *very* interesting to see the similarities in our answers.  We all pretty much agreed that we’re going to do it again next year, but maybe try to adjust some things to make more clear what we’re wanting to accomplish with the event.

I’m not going to talk much about what everyone said here, but the one thing we do want to make more clear is that we want the event to be a celebration of what we’ve shared and hope to continue to share with the communities that we’ve ruled over, watched over, feel protective of and love.  You just cannot have gone through what we all went through as Queens and not feel a deep attachment to the people of your Kingdom.  And, even though I ruled elsewhere, I’ve been here so long now that I count myself an Ansteorran Rose and feel that same protectiveness the home-grown ladies do.  We want to throw an event that we actually *work* at (with lots of support, of course), that will allow us to give something back to the people who make us feel special – to make them feel special.  I don’t know that we’ve conveyed that well enough, so we’ll make a few changes next year to take some of the focus away from “Roses” and more toward “Roses celebrating *you*.”  Bah.  It’s hard to put into words. 

Anyway, we’re also going to try doing other, smaller things throughout the year, especially trying to be a presence for the two groups who have been supporting this event the past two years.  We’ll do some fundraisers for the Rose Tourney breakfast at Gulf War and perhaps for donations to the Kingdom travel fund.  We’ll likely go to an every-other-year format for Defenders – it’s just so much work, and there are other things we’d like to focus on as well.  But, if Defenders has done nothing else, it has definitely brought the active Roses closer together – it has given us the chance to get to know each other and work together in a way that I don’t think we really expected it would.  Who’da thunk so many alpha women could get along so well together?  In the meantime, I think this Defenders was a success – despite the cold weather on Saturday!  Thank the gods it’s over!

Now I get to redecorate my house!!