There are two siblings, Mary and Jack. Mary has Jack house sit and watch her cat while she is on a business trip.
After a few days, she calls to check in.
"How are things going? House still standing? How's Brody doing?"
Jack paused a bit and said, "Um, yea. Your house is still standing. Nothing to report, but I really hate to tell you this, though, but Brody died chasing a bird."
"What?" Mary said. "Dammit, Jack. You just can't tell someone that their cat is dead like that. You have
to break it to them slowly. When I first called, you should have said that Brody is on the roof, trying to catch a bird. The next time I called you
should have said that he fell trying to catch the bird as it flew away, and
now it's at the vet. The next call should be to tell me that the
vet says that it's not looking good for Brody, but he is not in any pain. Finally, you tell me that Brody died peacefully in its sleep."
Jack apologized and said he won't break news that way again. They continue about everything and at the end of the conversation Mary asks, "How's Grandma doing?"
Without missing a beat, "Well, Grandma's on the roof trying to catch a bird."
I always liked this joke and I always approach giving news to people in phases like that, especially, if it is bad. Some people think it is better to get to the point, but I think they are going to hear more before you get to bad news than anything you say once you tell them. Also, if they have an active imagination they are going to think something way worse and will be relieved when you tell them the real news since it won't be nearly as bad as the conclusions they jumped to.
So, if I am going to be blogging about something that is along these lines and you see the title "The cat is on the roof" then you will know that this is building up to some news.
Saturday, April 27, 2013
Sunday, April 7, 2013
Quests and Mini-Missions
As the saying goes, "I was born with a reading list I will never finish."
Being a geek/nerd/fangirl, this gets extended to movies, television, graphic novels and of course, more books. The only way to get through them it to have a plan. Plans are boring so I make them quests and mini-missions. It is fun and can be completely customized by you as to which ones you want to do. However, part of all good quests involve some risk so even if you hit a book or a movie you don't want to watch or read, you have to suffer through.
The first quest I ventured on and have since conquered was to watch all the movies on the AFI list of Top 100 Movies of all Time. It took a few years to do, but totally worth it. I ended up watching and loving a lot of movies, I wouldn't have seen otherwise. My favorites that I discovered were The Third Man, Network, The African Queen, The Philadelphia Story, 12 Angry Men and The Apartment. The only bad movie on the list (that I have no clue why this movie was on there) was A Place in the Sun.
The second quest, which is ongoing and much slower, is to read all the BBC Must Read Books. There is a lot of controversy about the list, but I thought it was a good jumping off point. I have posted a few updates on this and will continue to do so. When I started, I had only read 17 of the 100 and now I am almost up to 50. I have been liking most of them, but every now and then I hit one that just endlessly drags and has been a pain to read. I'm looking at you, Wuthering Heights. Why can you be more like your sister, Jane Eyre?
These are more epic quests that long and have peaks and valleys, but in the end are totally worth it. Then there are mini-missions. These are more like short jogs with less grand end results and are more for a general sense of accomplishment.
One mini-mission was one to read all of Chuck Palahniuk's books and stay up to date. I just recently posted how I finally got caught up on that one.
Another mini-mission is one I do at the beginning of every year. I make a blog post for books I read, movies I watch and television I watch for the new year. I make the categories up and add to it as I finish reading or watching them. For the movies, I start with a list of all the movies that I hear about or see trailers for that are supposed to be coming on that year. I realized recently that for 2011 and 2012 I still had movies on the list of wanting to see, but hadn't yet so I made made that a mini-mission to knock those out.
The point of all this is to explain what and why I do so you can do quests and mini-missions as well!
Being a geek/nerd/fangirl, this gets extended to movies, television, graphic novels and of course, more books. The only way to get through them it to have a plan. Plans are boring so I make them quests and mini-missions. It is fun and can be completely customized by you as to which ones you want to do. However, part of all good quests involve some risk so even if you hit a book or a movie you don't want to watch or read, you have to suffer through.
The first quest I ventured on and have since conquered was to watch all the movies on the AFI list of Top 100 Movies of all Time. It took a few years to do, but totally worth it. I ended up watching and loving a lot of movies, I wouldn't have seen otherwise. My favorites that I discovered were The Third Man, Network, The African Queen, The Philadelphia Story, 12 Angry Men and The Apartment. The only bad movie on the list (that I have no clue why this movie was on there) was A Place in the Sun.
The second quest, which is ongoing and much slower, is to read all the BBC Must Read Books. There is a lot of controversy about the list, but I thought it was a good jumping off point. I have posted a few updates on this and will continue to do so. When I started, I had only read 17 of the 100 and now I am almost up to 50. I have been liking most of them, but every now and then I hit one that just endlessly drags and has been a pain to read. I'm looking at you, Wuthering Heights. Why can you be more like your sister, Jane Eyre?
These are more epic quests that long and have peaks and valleys, but in the end are totally worth it. Then there are mini-missions. These are more like short jogs with less grand end results and are more for a general sense of accomplishment.
One mini-mission was one to read all of Chuck Palahniuk's books and stay up to date. I just recently posted how I finally got caught up on that one.
Another mini-mission is one I do at the beginning of every year. I make a blog post for books I read, movies I watch and television I watch for the new year. I make the categories up and add to it as I finish reading or watching them. For the movies, I start with a list of all the movies that I hear about or see trailers for that are supposed to be coming on that year. I realized recently that for 2011 and 2012 I still had movies on the list of wanting to see, but hadn't yet so I made made that a mini-mission to knock those out.
The point of all this is to explain what and why I do so you can do quests and mini-missions as well!
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