keris stainton

Funny peculiar (and ha ha)

2008-07-19T07:01:48+01:00

Harry has been cracking us up the last few days. Everything he says is either said with indignation or with a twinkle, like he knows he's funny and he wants to make us laugh. You probably won't think much of this is funny, but I'm saving it here for posterity anyway!

First thing yesterday morning

Harry: [Very aggrieved face.] "No! Daddy does NOT have wings!"
Me: "Er, okay then."

Breakfast time

Me: "Do you want some Cheerios?"
Harry: "No... I want to eat one more... one more Tuc cracker."

After preschool
(Waiting at the bus stop, I was trying to help Harry with something.)

Harry: "Get a grown-up to help?"
Me: "It's fine, let me just--"
H: "Get a grown-up to help!"
Me: "If you'd just let me--"
H: "GET A GROWN-UP TO HELP!"
Me: "I AM A FLIPPIN' GROWN-UP!"

Bedtime
(Harry has recently decided that, along with his glass of milk, he must have a "bedtime banana")

Harry [holding banana]: "What's this?"
Me: "A sticker."
H: "A sticker?!!!"
Me: "A banana sticker."
H: "A banana sticker?!!! [considers] Hmm. I've had an idea ... a good idea! We can draw the banana sticker ... on a piece of paper!"

Still bedtime...

Harry: "I'm scared in the cinema."
Me: "Okay. Well we don't need to go to the cinema. But I thought you wanted to see Wall-e..."
H: "Wall-e not AT the cinema. Wally on the TV!"
Me: "Yes, but that's just an advert for the cinema."
H: "NO! Wall-e on the TV!"
Me: "Well, yes, in a little while. We can get it on DVD. Who is Wall-e anyway?"
H: "He's a little robot."
Me: "Is he?"
H: "He's the s'vanced robot IN THE WORLD."

("The most advanced robot in the world." He's seen that advert too many times.)

The second Dr Horrible ... so good.

2008-07-18T16:54:58+01:00

Keris Stainton

Fanilow

2008-07-18T08:08:48+01:00

Does anyone want to come and see Barry Manilow with me at the O2 Arena in London in December?

Yes, I am serious.

I've seen him on my own loads of times, but I thought it would be nice to go with someone else ... if I can find anyone else who likes him.

Also, I'll be eight months pregnant and will probably need to be winched in and out of my seat, etc.

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

Dr Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

2008-07-17T16:08:54+01:00

Have y'all watched it already?

I just watched it and it's just gorgeous. I loved it.

And the "Bad Horse" and "Dr Hammer" bits are way too funny for someone whose ribs are still hurting from throwing up on Tuesday night. Gah.

Dream Home: Bedroom

2008-07-17T12:43:53+01:00

kathrynireland, originally uploaded by Keris.

I've realised since I've been collecting these pictures, that I love white walls with colourful accessories. I've never considered white for the bedroom (it seems too cold), but I'm thinking about painting every wall in this house white, *starting* with the bedroom since we haven't done a single thing to it since we moved in almost four years ago. Oh, I tell a lie, I've replaced the short yellow curtains with long chocolate brown ones.

Our bedroom has lemon walls. A pale blue and white swirly shaggy carpet. A full wall of fitted wardrobes with brown wood louvre doors (and I'm sure you can imagine how dusty *they* get, except when you do dust them, the dust just flies up in the air and then settles back on the slats).

The other thing I love about this bedroom is the tidiness. Our bedroom has clothing on pretty much every surface. Sigh.

Stranger With My Face

2008-07-17T08:48:52+01:00

Last week's Fine Lines on Jezebel was Lois Duncan's Stranger With My Face, which I read as a teenager more than once. It's about a girl who finds that she has an evil twin she knew nothing about. Astral projection is also involved (I was gutted when Luisa reminded me of this, since I thought I'd written the first teen astral projection novel!).

Anyway, this struck me:

....it was a good thing Jeff did have that summer, because halfway through the next one a can of lighter fluid exploded and burned off half his face...

The left side of his face was fine. If you saw him at a certain angle, you'd have thought he was the best-looking guy you'd ever seen. If you saw him from the right, you had to stop and swallow hard.

I have always remembered that, but had no idea where I was remembering it from!

I also love the comment:

"Oh, and the first time Laurie astrally projects and doesn't feel the snap back into her body? Because someone else was in it? Has to be the worst feeling ever."

I bet.

Stardust

2008-07-16T14:01:43+01:00

I'm feeling a bit better. A packet of Softmints seem to have sorted me out, which doesn't bode well for the you're-a-fat-knacker-so-you-have-to-have-this
-glucose-test, but what they hey?

Since the films that you don't like have got you all riled up (Most. Comments. Ever.), I thought I'd do a post about a film I watched recently and absolutely loved: Stardust.

I tried to watch it a little while ago, but David said something like, "Yeah, put it on, but it'll probably be shit." So I said, "Well if that's your attitude I don't want to watch it with you." And he said, "Oh, go on, put it on." And I said, "No, you'll ruin it for me." And he said, "Don't be daft, put it on." And I said, "No! I'll watch it on my own." And then probably flounced out.

So last Saturday night, David had gone off to a stag do, so I watched it. And I loved it. And now I really want to read the book. Think I might take it on holiday.

Another book meme

2008-07-16T10:53:46+01:00

Am feeling rough today, so a meme it is! Linda tagged me on this book list, which I've seen on lots of blogs and may even have done once before, but what the heck.

You are supposed to:
Look at the list and:
1) Bold those you have read.
2) Italicise those you intend to read.
3) [Bracket] the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list on your own blog.

1 [Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen]
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 [Harry Potter series - JK Rowling]
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch-22 - Joseph Heller (started it more than once; didn't get past the first chapter)
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (I've read quite a lot, but certainly not all)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 [The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger]
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy (started it, couldn't finish it)
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 [Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres] (apart from the ending ... and the beginning)
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie-the-Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (started it, thought it was dreadful; read Angels & Demons instead)
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
45 [The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins]
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan (started it, got bored, gave up halfway)
51 MISSING
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 [A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth] (gorgeous book!)
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 [The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon]
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 [Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding]
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie (tried and failed many times)
70 Moby-Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 [Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson] (want to re-read it, but can't find it; if I've loaned it to you, can I have it back?!)
75 Ulysses - James Joyce (well, I say "read"; I studied it at uni. It's unreadable)
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - A. S. Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 [The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton]
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

So 56/100. That's not so good, is it? But I have at least *tried* to read quite a few more.

I'm not going to tag anyone, since you've all probably done it, but feel free to nick it if not.

Politics

2008-07-15T09:29:45+01:00

I've just been reading on Jezebel about the New Yorker's sexist, racist, damaging and ill-advised Barack Obama cover...

Which led to me reading this (warning: contains the strongest possible language!)...

And then this, which made me cry.

I must admit that, based mainly on the fact that Jon Stewart seems to respect and admire him, I wasn't too worried about the prospect of McCain winning. Obviously I'd prefer it to be Obama, but I just can't see it happening and I rather felt that McCain was a better option than the current president. Now I'm not so sure.

Surely we're (and it is "we" since everything over there affects us over here) not in for another 4-8 years of the same. Surely.

Dream Home: Beach house

2008-07-15T08:16:54+01:00

beachhouse, originally uploaded by Keris.

What's the weather like with you today? It's so miserable and dingy here that I've got practically all the lights on because it's giving me the creeps.

I wish I could spend the day in this beach house from an old issue of O At Home magazine instead.

UPDATED: Ooh! It's brightened right up since I posted this! :)