Happy Anniversary!

Today is the 50th anniversary of the publishing of the book "To Kill a Mockingbird."

I first read this book in high school and absolutely fell in love with it. In fact, I started a "Boo Radley Fan Club" (our logo was a bloody pair of scissors) and even dressed up as Mayella Ewell for my 10th grade yearbook photo.

This was way before the band "The Boo Radleys" was around -- I must admit that once they came on the scene, it took the wind out of my sails (people would think I was a fan of the group, not the book).

Recently, I read the book again for my book club. It was just as great as I remembered it. For our book club discussion, we watched the movie. The movie is almost as good as the book. Who cannot love Gregory Peck as Atticus?

Anyway, happy anniversary!

Freecycle Follies

If you don't know what Freecycle is, it's a Web group where people in a certain area post items that they want to give away or items that they would like to get (and everything must be free). Most people just check the posts on the Freecycle Web page, but I somehow signed up to get all the postings e-mailed to me. This is becoming a pain because every day I get about 200 e-mails from people who are either trying to get rid of stuff, want stuff, received stuff, or are waiting for people to pick stuff up. The bad thing is, the Web site no longer recognizes me as a "freecycler," so I can't change my settings!

Anyway, the fun part is that while I'm wasting precious minutes of my day deleting all the e-mails, I come across some very amusing ones. Granted, they're not amusing in what they're trying to give away (it's always baby clothes or furniture or non-working computers), but what's amusing is how it shows up on the truncated subject line of my e-mail list.

Here are a few of my favorites:

Wanted: Electric Hair

Offer: Bag of various boys

Taken: Slightly used woman