Six Random Things About Me

Ok, I was tagged for this one by Trish, so here goes… six random things about me…

1.  I have a group of girlfriends that I’ve been friends with since 7th grade (we are all 23 or 24 now).  We consider each other one anothers’ best friends, although after middle school we went to two different high schools between the six of us, then five different colleges (one of the girls and I went to the same school), and now we live in four different states.  We are still really close friends even though our lives have taken six completely different paths.

2.  I am married, but we don’t have any kids yet and aren’t planning to for at least another 4-5 years.  That said, my younger sister has a 7 month old daughter, and I am basically obsessed with her.  I love my niece like you couldn’t believe.  It’s actually kind of nice that I don’t have kids of my own yet so I can really give her time and attention and spoil the heck out of her.

3.  I put myself through college by waiting tables and bartending.  Working in the restaurant business is crazy like none other, it is some of the most fun I’ve had in my life in addition to some of the most stressful days/nights/hours/minutes of my life.  I’m so glad I don’t have to deal with that kind of unpredictability anymore, but sometimes I really miss doing it and seriously consider getting a part time bartending job just for the heck of it.

4.  I love burritos from Chipotle (if you don’t have Chipotle in your part of the country, I am sad for you).  It is probably my favorite food in the entire world.  I could easily eat one every day and still crave them.  I also like Qdoba but I’m not sure I like it quite as much.

5.  I hate, hate, HATE winter.  I hate snow, I hate ice, I hate any temperature below 45 degrees. I live in Chicago, and if you are from or live near this part of the country, you know that winters are cold, windy, and LONG.  In fact, it’s May 8th as I type this and the temperature was only about 50 degrees today.  I get super depressed in February/March and as soon as it starts to get warm, there is a noticable change in my personality.  My husband and I would one day like to move to Miami (or someplace else equally beautiful and warm) and every winter I just think of the fact that one day, I won’t have to deal with this crap anymore.

6.  I got my bachelor’s degree in Psychology and Sociology, and currently I work as a Personal Banker at a large financial institution.  Not exactly my dream job, or anything even remotely close to what I had planned on doing with my life, but for now it simply pays the bills (and pays them pretty well, too, actually).  Eventually I’d like to go back to school and get my master’s in Social Work, but for now it’s just not economically feasible.

Well now you all know a little bit more about me!  I’ll go ahead and tag a few people for this meme, but if you don’t feel like playing, no hard feelings… I’ll get over it.

Sooo… Teale from Teale’s Meals, Lisa from Books on the Brain, Kristen from Book Club Classics, Sadie-Jean from Sadie-Jean’s Book Blog, and Wendy at caribousmom, consider yourselves tagged!

Here are the rules:

• Link to the person that tagged you
• Post the rules somewhere in your meme
• Write the six random things
• Tag six people in your post
• Let the tagees know they’ve been chosen by leaving a comment on their blog
• Let the tagger know your entry is posted

Review – ‘Tis

‘Tis by Frank McCourt

From the book jacket -

Frank lands in New York at age nineteen, in the company of a priest he meets on the boat.  He gets a job at the Biltmore Hotel, where he immediately encounters the vivid hierarchies of this “classless country” and then is drafted into the army and is sent to Germany to train dogs and type reports.  It is Frank’s incomparable voice – his uncanny humor and his astonishing ear for dialogue – that renders these experiences spellbinding.

When Frank returns to America in 1953, he works on the docks, always resisting what everyone tells him, that men and women who have dreamed and toiled for years to get to America should “stick to their own kind” once they arrive.  Somehow, Frank knows that he should be getting an education, and though he left school at fourteen, he talks his way into New York University.  There, he falls in love with the quintessential Yankee, long-legged and blond, and tries to live his dream.  But it is not until he starts to teach – and to write – that Frank finds his place in the world.  The same vulnerable but invincible spirit that captured the hearts of readers in Angela’s Ashes comes of age.

My thoughts -

As many of you probably know, ‘Tis is the sequel to Angela’s Ashes, Frank McCourt’s first memoir about growing up poor in Ireland.  While I liked this continuation of McCourt’s life, it didn’t come anywhere close to living up to his first memoir.  AA was just amazing, I fell completely in love with that book and reading about McCourt’s family and his life completely captivated me.  With ‘Tis… well not so much with the captivation this time.  I mean, I was definitely interested to find out what happened to him after he left Ireland, so it was especially enjoyable to read about all the good that happened in his life.  And McCourt definitely has a way of writing his life that makes it read like a novel; he can obviously understand and relate to all types of people, which is why he can write the characters in his own life so well.  So this is not a bad memoir, by any means, it’s just difficult to live up to something as magnificent as AA and do as great a job.  Just didn’t quite get there, in my opinion.

6.5 stars.

**To continue with Weekly Geeks, if anyone has read and reviewed this book (or any others that I’ve reviewed, including Speak!) please send me your links and I will post them on this page.**