Top Ten Movies, Take 2!

Back in 2004, I made top 10 lists of my favorite movies. Clearly, I have seen quite a few movies in the past five years, so I thought I’d update the lists to see how everything has moved around.

Live action comedies: 1. The Princess Bride 2. Office Space 3. National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation 4. Monty Python and the Holy Grail 5. When Harry Met Sally 6. Napoleon Dynamite 7. Mallrats 8. Dumb and Dumber 9. Beetlejuice 10. Empire Records

Live action non-comedies: 1. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind 2. Almost Famous 3. Garden State 4. Roman Holiday 5. American Beauty 6. Requiem for a Dream 7. Moulin Rouge 8. Across the Universe 9. What Dreams May Come 10. Lord of the Rings

Animated: 1. The Little Mermaid 2. WALL-E* 3. Lilo & Stitch 4. Sleeping Beauty 5. Aladdin 6. The Lion King 7. Finding Nemo 8. Cinderella 9. Toy Story 10. Monsters, Inc.

Movies I might put on the list, but I’ve only seen them one time: Juno, Once, Beauty and the Beast, Gone with the Wind, The Notebook, and Interstella 5555. (Hint: This means I wouldn’t mind having them on DVD.)

You can see that comedies and animated films didn’t change alot, but the dramas did. Probably because I watch way more of them.

*Clearly, this has disrupted my car naming, since Ariel was my first car and Lilo was my second. I guess I’m going to have to name my next one EVE instead of Aurora.

Redesign in progress.

I haven’t actually come up with a new design yet, but I’m reorganizing the site right now. You may have noticed that the blog is now the first thing you come to if you go to www.sweetvenus.org. The photo gallery has also been updated and is drawing directly from Facebook. This also means that all the photo galleries that were here before may not all be on the site now. This is for privacy purposes. Basically, the photos on this site are the ones that are visible to non-friends on Facebook. All other galleries are friends only and only viewable via Facebook. Make sense?

Because I’m reorganizing the photo gallery, some photos on the blog may not appear, especially those on posts before 2006, since that’s about as far as I’ve gotten on replacing them with the new URLs.

I’ll also be adding the calendar back in, but in a nicer more calendar-y format.

I’ll be redesigning the website soon.

I need to update my Wordpress version (I’m still using version 2.0.4 here…). Then I have some plans to try to integrate my Facebook account with the website. You may have noticed that the photos and videos links take you over to Facebook now, since I’ve pretty much uploaded everything over there. However, I’m going to integrate everything better so that it looks more seamless. Or at least try to. We’ll see how that goes. I know there’s at least a Wordpress plugin for Facebook photos.

I may or may not merge the old wedding blog’s posts in with these. I haven’t quite decided. But if you’ve tried to get to jessicaandben.com (or you subscribed to the RSS feed over there), you may have noticed it’s now pointing here.

I hope to be done with all of this in a month or so. We’ll see how motivated I am.

More goal progress…and a new list.

If you haven’t heard, Ben and I called off the wedding. Obviously, this presents a problem for a few items on my “30 Things” list. Namely, getting married and having babies. So I’m going to have to rework the list a little. But, at least I can mark off a few things!

Before I’m 28, I will:
• watch “Citizen Kane”. (Still sitting on my entertainment center. I’m really, really going to try to watch it this week.)
• read at least five books on my books to read list. (Yeah, nowhere close yet.)
• get a passport. (In progress.)
• see a live musical. (I really want to see “Wicked” later this year. We’ll see if I can get/afford tickets.)
• make a new friend. (Yeah, still working on this.)
• buy (or acquire) a dSLR camera and learn how to use it.
• volunteer for something. (I’ve got the applications. I just need stamps to mail them.)
• watch a sunrise.
• take a class of some sort. (I bumped this one up, since I did it already. I took both a photography class and a cooking class.)
• travel to Europe. (This one got bumped up too, since I am planning a trip as we speak.)

Before I’m 29, I will:
• kiss under a waterfall. (I bumped this one down, since I was expecting this to happen on our honeymoon, and, well, now it won’t.)
• read at least ten books on my books to read list.
• hold a formal 4-course dinner party.
• do landscaping on the yard.
• hire a maid. (I’m debating on whether I should replace this with something. Kind of silly for just little ol’ me to have a maid.)
• go skydiving.
• learn to knit.
• build a snowman. (Still hasn’t snowed enough.)
• write to a congressperson about something that’s really important to me.
• travel to a beach I’ve never been to. (Like Tahiti! As if I could ever afford that.)

Before I’m 30, I will:
• get a promotion.
• read at least fifteen books on my books to read list.
• write a novel. (Heartbreak does at least give you some good story ideas.)
• pay my parents back. (This one got a little more feasible without having to pay for a wedding.)
• pay off all student loans and credit cards. (This one too.)
• put 10% of my paycheck into my 401k.
• buy land to build a house. (I’m tempted to remove this one, as what’s the point of needing a bigger house if I don’t have a family.)
• stop thinking of 30 as old.
• see at least one of the following bands/artists in concert: Tool, Coldplay, Nine Inch Nails, Jack Johnson, or Daft Punk.
• travel to California. (I’ve never been and I want to.)

I was tempted to throw “get married” onto the last section of the list, but it’s probably better not to give myself a deadline for that. But you probably noticed all my new stuff involves traveling, which, as I said when I made the list, I wanted to include more of anyway.