12.  The Orphanage – If you know me at all, you know that normally I would NEVER have the patience to sit and watch a foreign film.  But this movie was so darn scary, and so darn good… I was willing to put up with it.  I even forgot I was reading subtitles about 20 minutes in.

11. The Departed – Leo in my home city at the time.  Doesn’t get much better than that!  Plus, it was just a darn good movie!

10. Lord of the Rings – The first movie (and the following two) had me enthralled.  And this is also when I officially developed a small crush on Orlando Bloom.

9. Forgetting Sarah Marshall - Probably the funniest movie of the decade.  If you haven’t watched it, you are really missing out.  In my opinion, much better than “The Hangover”.

8. The Dark Knight - A masterpiece of Heath Ledger’s, a well deserved posthumous Oscar.  Bravo!  I can hardly believe it’s an action hero movie.

7.  Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - For me, this is when the films started to get really really interesting.  A turning point if you will.

6.  Match Point – It doesn’t end the way you think it should, and I really liked that!

5. Bewitched - I love Nicole, and this is when she’s at her silliest.  Too bad I contracted meningitis the day after seeing this, it kind of ruined the experience.

4. Pirates of the Caribbean - I remember leaving the theatre thinking… “Wow!  I hope they make a sequel!”

3.  The Prestige – Brian and I rented this one night, and watched, and were completely silent during the entire film.  Then we had a lot to think about after it was over.  One of the best movies I’ve ever seen.

2.  The Devil Wears Prada – Surprisingly enough, it was much better than the book!  I really learned to respect Meryl Streep and saw what all of the fuss about her was for after this film.

1. Pride and Prejudice – I only need to say one thing… Mr. Darcy  *sigh*
“You have bewitched me, body and soul”.  I asked Brian to say that to me on our wedding day, and he looked at me like I had two heads.  Oh well, a girl can dream!

Honorable Mention: 
Center Stage
Troy
Mean Girls

Tomorrow:  Top 20 Songs of the Decade

So Brian and I will be going to a New Year’s Eve party this year.  We have an agreement that we alternate going out each year.  Last year we did nothing, the year before that we went to a party, the year before that we did nothing, the year before that we went to a club…. etc.

He’s already dreading it because the couple is having that party at their house and they have a dog and he’s “allergic”.  I told him the only reason we’re going is because I already spent $400 on my outfit and that’s not going to waste.  It’s not like I can wear a sequin dress and 5 inch platform heels any other day of the year without looking like a stripper.

Anyways, I hope you have a wonderful New Year’s Eve, and enjoy the festivities!  Here are my all time favorite New Year’s that I can remember…

2000 – Going from party to party, and passing out by 11:30 from drinking a little too much

2007 - My friend had  a party that turned out to be pretty fun.  Although we did have to drive around her complex for an hour looking for a parking spot because we left the house a little bit late.  Lesson Learned.   This was the first New Year’s Bri celebrated in VA. 

1991 – Staying up late with my best friend at the time, drinking sparkling grape juice, playing Truth or Dare, and eating pizza.  Doesn’t get much more innocent and fun than that!

2003 – My two friends came up to Boston and needless to say it was a VERY crazy night… I won’t go into details because I don’t know if my parents read this blog or not.

2005 – My first New Year’s with Brian.  He was deejaying at this club in Southie and we had a wonderful time, and he made $600!  Score!

Am I the only person afraid of raccoons and monkeys?  I mean, everyone knows I hate animals, but monkeys scare me, and raccoons TERRIFY me!

Look at how scary they are!  The other day, when I was leaving the car wash, a raccoon walked in front my car, crossing the street and he took his sweet little time.  I mean, he was sauntering, and giving me the stink eye at the same time.  Then he crawled under some poor unassuming person’s car and chilled out.  I would absolutely freak the f*ck out if I went to open my car and a raccoon came running out from underneath it.  WTF?!?  Why did God create these animals?  Yikes!

I know my husband got me a kindle for Christmas.  For those of you who don’t know, I give my husband a list of what I want, and he usually goes out and gets it for me.  So a kindle was at the top of the list.  Here’s the thing, I’m being pretty cheap with my book buying right now because I don’t want to buy a paper book only to have my kindle in my hand in 1 short week.  So instead of reading, I’ve been lying in my bed at night staring at the ceiling, making a mental list of the books I want to purchase when that piece of electronic is in my greedy little hands.

But this has also got me thinking about books I’ve loved over the years, specifically the books of my youth.  Here’s a list of books I absolutely LOVED growing up.

Are you there God?  It’s me, Margaret (Judy Blume) - What girl didn’t love this book?  It epitomized growing up and “becoming a woman”.  Personally, I think every pre-teen girl should read it, so she knows just how normal all of the feelings she’s experiencing are.  Although I will confess I was completely confused by the whole idea of sanitary napkins being on belts.  Wahhhhh?

The Babysitter Club’s series (Ann M. Martin) – Apparently the series FINALLY ended.  Ms. Martin must have gotten tired of writing that same intro over and over again.  My favorite was always Stacey.  She seemed to be the most chic, and also got the most boys.  Although, I did appreciate MaryAnn, though sometimes her shyness got on my nerves.

Will the Nurse Make Me Take off my Underwear? ( Joel Schwartz) – Although this title is somewhat risque for a child’s book, it actually was very interesting.  I wouldn’t necessarily classify as children’s literature, more young adult.  It was like a boy’s version of “Are you there God….”  but it went into much more detail, which every young girl would find fascinating.

V.C. Andrews books – I know now I was probably much to young to read those books when I was 11 years old.  But since my sister was reading them, I took it upon myself to start as well.  I certainly learned alot very quickly!  I still remember the first book I read was “Darkest Hour“  and I quickly fell in love with the gothic horror style of “Miss Andrews”.  In fact, I still read her books from time to time.  I highly recommend the Wikipedia entry on her novels.  Whoever wrote them must have been a bigger fan than me!  I will issue a warning: stay away from the later books and short stories.  They just got weird after awhile!  Stick with the classics.

So I got quite a little surprise this weekend.  During my holiday party (which was tons of fun, quiet and low key, but still good), my friend Julie announced to everyone that she enjoys my blog and finds it quite amusing.  I was so surprised because even though I can see based on IP address anyone who takes a look at my blog, I just assumed it was always weirdos in Toronto googling things like “Juicy Couture Leoonardo Dicaprio” and somehow ending up at my site. 
So anyway, woohoo!  People (beside those who always comment   thank goodness for you folks!) actually read this thing!  All of my hard work isn’t totally in vain (again with the exception of your lovely folks who comment).

Anyways, here’s yet another list of my pet peeves.  This time regarding facebook…. if you are an offender, don’t take offense, just the way I feel….

1.  Status update type number 1 – “Pray for me tonight….”  – Why?!?  are you seeking attention for something?  What happened?  Why are you being so vague?  Yes, you want attention.

2. Status update type number 2 – “Jane Doe is sleeping”  No you’re not!  You’re on FB updating your profile!  Don’t lie to me about what you’re doing.  Especially if it’s a dumb lie.

3.  Profile Pics – in this case, two’s a crowd – Ok, sometime I don’t mind other people in your profile pic.  If it’s amusing, or super cute (kids) I don’t mind.  But please don’t put up a profile pic of you making out with your man, or you in a crowd holding up a beer.  Not cute.

4.  Alcohol pics in general – White people are especially guilty of this (sorry white folks).  Why put a pic of yourself with beer online?  It’s never flattering.  I’ll stop myself right now before I say anything that is offensive (I probably have already, but oh well).

5.  Facebook games – NO I DO NOT WANT TO PLAY!  Ok, I will admit when I first first first joined FB, I may have sent out a request for Mob Wars, a game I was obsessed with for about three minutes.  But now, it’s old news people!  I don’t want to play Farmville, Sorority Wars, Fashions Wars, Mafia Wars, and whatever other war game out there. 

K, I think that’s about it.  Do you have any FB pet peeves?  And FYI frequent responders (Al, Big Sis, and BriDil), I don’t write these questions at the end for the hell of it.  GIVE ME A PET PEEVE DARN IT!

Before I begin, let me just say, that Lisa is back people!!!  And she’s better than ever! 
Ok, now on to my pointless writing….

How do you know if you’re boring someone in a conversation?   Generally I know because they kind of stop making eye contact.  My husband (the lovely man that he is) just flat out interrupts me and changes the subject.  I, in return, let him down a little more gently and say something along the lines of….  “I don’t want to hear about this”. 
Anyway, I was reading an article about how you can tell if someone is bored, but the most interesting part was at the end when they listed the most boring topics people tend to talk about:

1. A dream. – Okay, I just did this last week with my poor friend Jose.  I went on for about 10 minutes about this dream I had about a former high school classmate of ours.  We’re pretty sure she’s an Iranian lesbian (which according to the president of Iran, an oxymoron).  So anyway, in the dream she was my college roommate and officially in love with me and I…. oops, here I go again

2. The recent changes in your child’s nap schedule. – I have no kids, and luckily my sister has never really started talking about this.  If Owen all of a sudden stopped napping during the day, I’m sure she would complain, but I would NEVER want to hear the details – hint hint “Big Sis”

3. The route you took to get here. - Unfortunately, my husband tends to go on about his commute to work on a daily basis.  Yes, I know it sucks, I used to do it myself.  I’m sympathetic to your plight,  but I still don’t want to hear about it.

4. An excellent meal you once had at a restaurant. - Again, my husband is such a foodie, he has gone into detail about meals he has had (Bistro Bistro ring any bells?)

5. The latest additions to your wine cellar. - I don’t know anyone rich enough to have a wine cellar. 

6. An account of your last golf game. – Husband – guilty again

7. The plot of a play, or movie—in particular, the funny parts. - Ok, back to me.  I do tend to this sometimes.  But can I just say, FOR THE RECORD, my brother in law used to REQUEST that I recap any Buffy the Vampire episodes he missed back in the day.  I (as you all know) have an excellent memory and could recount the episodes in extraordinary detail, to the point that he knew everything that happened as if he had watched the show.  So there!

(this girl is supposed to look bored, but I think she kind of looks like she’s daydreaming)

HAPPY 1 YEAR WEBLOG ANNIVERSARY TO ME!!!!! 

Are you like me? Do you browse Wikipedia when you get really bored during the day? Have you stumbled across articles that you favor over others? I’ll admit, some of them are very poorly written, and that could be part of the reason why it’s my favorite, but some are just darn interesting! Here’s a list of my top 5:

Hatfield-McCoy feud
I’ve always heard about this family feud.  According to the article, the show “Family Feud” even did a reunion of the two families and had them duke it out to find out what the “survey says”.  But I never knew what they were fighting over.  After reading the article, I was elated to find out it was over something completely stupid…. a pig! (and some murders)

Jheri Curl
The quality of this article has improved vastly over the years.  It used to read like something off the back of a ghetto hair salons warning signs…. “Sunlight is deadly to your activator!”  But someone took it upon themselves to re-word the article and clean it up to meet “wiki standards”.  Too bad, I liked the older version a little bit better.  This is still, nonetheless, fairly interesting.

People who have myseriously disappeared
This article is slightly creepy, especially the more current the events.  I really was creeped out by Amy Lynn Bradley.  I’m going on a cruise in February for goodness sakes!  I probably shouldn’t be reading things like that…

List of Twilight Zone episodes
I never watched the show, but came obsessed with reading these short little descriptions of every show that ever aired.  It’s like the ultimate collection of short stories.  My recommendation – skip the opening narration, closing narration and preview for next week’s story.  The good stuff is in the plot summary.

Eye Color
Yes, I realize this one is completely out of the blue and perhaps even a little bit boring compared to the other articles on here, but I did find it interesting.  Not exactly sure why.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed my wiki recommendations.  Do you have any articles that you especially enjoy?