I spend time at our TNR clinics, where three or four volunteers spend the day helping the vet sterilize feral cats.I love going thrift-store shopping, especially with my kids and/or my sister. We find incredible bargains.I also enjoy writing, and won 2nd place in the college literary review magazine for my fiction. Writing, and reading, can open up ways of looking at yourself, others, and the world as it relates to you that you may never have seen otherwise.
I mostly lean toward rock, alternative, and metal. I'm really into Disturbed, Breaking Benjamin, Three Days Grace, and Rob Zombie at the moment, just to name a few. However, I have a serious Kenny G obsession, and like lots of classical and acapella music. Country music is a newfound interest. The Wreckers, Billy Currington, Little Big Town, Rascal Flatts, and Dierks Bentley are awesome.
Breakfast Club would be way up there in my list of favorites. Who in the world could not love Judd Nelson in that? YUMMY. Walk the Line was a recent good flick mostly because of Joaquin -- who is hot plus he can act, Kramer vs. Kramer an oldie but goodie, Finding Nemo, Tadpole, The Graduate, 40 Year Old Virgin. Chicago was everything I could want in a movie. Humor, music, superb choreography and dance, Richard Gere...
I like the Food Network. Have been known to watch Oprah. Upset with the recent NBC cancellation of Four Kings. My Name is Earl is pretty cool as well as The Office. Love the Simpsons, Family Guy, and the Oblongs -- which comes on so late I hardly ever catch it. Bob and Margaret was an awesome show, as was Mr. Bean. Thin Blue Line is hilarious when I can find it; a real treat. Guilty pleasures: some of the Lifetime shows.
There's not enough room here to list them all. So I'll just put down a few. Anything by T.C. Boyle. His short stories are masterpieces of literature. I dare anyone to find a funnier story than "Carnal Knowledge." Stuff by Lorrie Moore, Rick Bragg, Frank McCourt, David Sedaris. The Dollmaker, Change Me into Zeus's Daughter, The Man in Black, Follow the River. I've also been known to read romance novels -- LaVyrle Spencer reigns supreme in this genre.
I think this is an overused and overrated concept. Most people just do what they can to get by and get through life. Who is more the "hero" -- a firefighter that saves a child from a burning building (which is, technically, his job) or a guy that gets up every morning for 45 years and goes to work at a dead-end sucky job to provide for his family? That's his job, too, but he never gets recognized for it. Doesn't make him less important. I'm frankly sick of the celebrity/hero craze in our culture. The minute we start comparing ourselves to others we find ourselves lacking and that's a shame.