It always makes me want to live in a little cottage with girlfriends and go to college. And be proposed to.

Exactly! And also have a great-aunt Jamesina to "keep house."

It's interesting how, up until Anne's House of Dreams, these books practically never mention the ocean. Anne of Green Gables has like one line about the Americans visiting the beaches at White Sands, and Anne of the Island has a bit about the sailors buried in the old cemetery and a line about a pathway lined with quahogs, but it's not until Anne's House of Dreams that people who have anything to do with the sea are really mentioned at all.

My Aunt Jamesina totally keeps house for me. But she has been ridiculously lax about things like laundry, litter boxes, vacuuming, dishes, and making meals. Excellent figurehead though. But what's more fun is that Gilbert is talked about a ton in all those books, and I was deeply in love with him. Oh, and then there's Rilla! Who had a baby in a soup tureen! And The Great War.

ETA: I was just catching up on COMM, and for the record, if I ever end up in the slammer, y'all are obviously the last people I'm going to try to call now. Geez.

And disappearing Shirley! I swear, in Rilla of Ingleside, Shirley goes off to war and is never mentioned again until he comes back. Everyone weeps over Jem and Walter, but Shirley's just kind of stuck at the end of the list of "Blythe family members who are off fighting," and he doesn't even get that all the time. He was also barely mentioned in Anne of Ingleside and Rainbow Valley, but it got really weird in Rilla of Ingleside.

Okay, admittedly it's been 15 years since I've read those books, but from what I remember (and sadly the soup tureen is what sticks out the most in my mind because I hadn't the faintest what a tureen was. And I've still yet to hear anyone ever actually use the word outside of those books.), the Rilla book might as well have been in a different series. It was really unrelated to all the other books in almost every way. That said, it was probably my favorite, in a tie with Anne of the Island. I guess I like weird.

Also, no one likes Shirley. Every family has that guy.

Yeah, the Rilla book was really separate from the rest. And it was also one of my favorites. I also kind of loved how "Don't kiss anybody else until I get back from the war" counted as a marriage proposal. And knitting socks for the soldiers! When I first read that, I was disappointed that there wasn't anything tangible like that that a bunch of teenage girls could do anymore. They knit socks and tore sheets into bandages and sewed shirts and all kinds of things like that.

correct playoff stats

They were having a decent first half of the decade, then, in combo with basketball. I'm assuming their football and baseball sucked.

Ali, I'd go see it with you, if I could get a ride...

Hey, if I were a guy named Shirley, I'd have made myself scarce, too. Maybe he was hanging out with the unmentioned sailors and fishermen?

I woke up this morning with a super-stiff lower back. Sitting down and standing up are suddenly very, um, interesting and difficult maneuvers. But I can't think what the hell I did yesterday to set them off!

I woke up all stiff today, too. I finally realized it was due to Wii boxing, which I played on Sunday. WTF? How does it skip a day like that?

And the Wii totally kicked my ass, too.

Hey, if I were a guy named Shirley, I'd have made myself scarce, too.

I'm still confused by guys called Shir (which becomes more and more common).

The gender of the word (as a noun) in Hebrew is male, but mostly girls are called Shir (for it means poem, or song). And then came the 90's unisex plague of names, yay.

This isn't a good day. But Nilly and ice cream and books will hopefully make it better.

I just opened Anne's House of Dreams, and on the first page, she mentions that you can see the bay from Anne's window at Green Gables. I'm nearly positive that was never mentioned until then, and that's the fifth book.