While we're on the topic...

While we're on the topic of people who are shockingly still alive...

There are several authors who are still alive, whom you'd think would be dead by now. Especially since their books and stories were classics when you read them in school.

J.D. Salinger is still alive and is living in seclusion in New Hampshire, and writing books he refuses to publish. He's in his eighties and partially deaf.

Ray Bradbury is alive.

Kurt Vonnegut is alive.

Harper Lee, who wrote To Kill A Mockingbird, is also alive and lives a very quiet life in NYC and Alabama. She never wrote another book after that. Strange but true.

What the four of those authors have in common is that their work is so straightforwardly written. A pleasure to read.

I am always grateful to the authors whose classic works wrapped me up in their verbal winter coats, keeping me warm with their words and insights.

I am not grateful to the authors (who shall remain nameless) who pounded me over the head and made me feel stupid. Hey, just because I was an English major doesn't mean I like to read paragraphs that run on for three entire pages. There's no excuse for it! None!

While I'm rambling, Sunday is the Super Bowl (two words, ok, Bunny?) Go Bears...no, go Colts...oh, who cares. I want my hard limeade.


If you can make it there, you'll make it anywhere...

Former trivia co-host Jessica wrote this entry (scroll up) about how her expectations and lifestyle have evolved since moving to NYC six years ago, and how her life no longer resembles a chick-lit novel. Pretty interesting, and I think it's that way for a lot of people I know. Maybe someday I'll write about my own experiences and evolution since moving up here. Hmmm, eventually.

One thing's sure - the internet really changed things, allowing me to meet people whom it would have been harder to meet otherwise, especially because it helped publicize trivia and other ways to connect.