There is a great quiz here that gives you advice on what cities would be a good match for you. My list is long...and strange. Some of them make sense, but fucking Las Vegas is first! Las Vegas?

My list:
Las Vegas, Nevada
Las Cruces, New Mexico
Portland, Oregon
Little Rock, Arkansas
Sacramento, California
San Diego, California
Orange County, California
Henderson, Nevada
Long Beach, California
Honolulu, Hawaii
New Orleans, Louisiana
Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Oakland, California
Los Angeles, California
Shreveport-Bossier City, Louisiana
Corvallis, Oregon
Natchitoches, Louisiana
Salem, Oregon
Riverside, California
San Bernardino, California
Alexandria, Louisiana
Monroe, Louisiana
Eugene, Oregon
Baltimore, Maryland

I am a "Grammar God." Go here and see how grammatically sound you are.

This is from Pinky, and it amuses me.

My month color is marigold and my day color is apricot. I am very happy about this, as both are orange-y, and I love orange.

(From Zoe.)

In other news, my middle name, which I have never heard of anyone having, is the 4232rd most common female name in the U.S. Apparently about 1275 people have it. My last name? 41st most common. There are around 400,000 of us in the U.S. alone.

According to this, I have done 5/10 Things to do in Portland before you die and 2/10 Things to do in Austin before you die. Not terrible, but not great, for cities I have lived in.

For cities I have visited, I'm a measly 1/10 Things to do in New York before you die and 1/10 Things to do in Cleveland before you die.

Even though I have been to the cities, I haven't done anything on the list for San Francisco, Baltimore, Boston, Los Angeles, Minneapolis-St. Paul, or Philadelphia.

Guess I'd better get on it.

**To check out your city, go here.

This is a super cool toy.

Baby Name Wizard

The huge spike recently in the popularity of my name, however, is not that cool.

But it's like my favorite:

create your own personalized map of the USA
or check out ourCalifornia travel guide

This is much more depressing:

create your own visited country map
or check our Venice travel guide

I got this from Squid, and I think everyone should try it.

I got 76%. Not too shabby.

One of my favorite Internet time wasters, the How Well Do You Know Me quiz, has popped back up. Mine is here if you want to take it (you don't have to use your real name or email). I hope all of my blog buddies will make one up too!

So it's cool that so many of you have taken my quiz, but did you almost all have to be anonymous! I want to know who you are! I know you don't want to tell the spambots who you are, but can you tell me? Puhleeze?

And congrats to Siobhan and Sofiya, the current leaders. What does it say that the high scorers are at 60%? Did I make it too hard?

Most importantly, has anyone else made one?

As promised, the answers to my How Well Do You Know Me? quiz:

1. OK, we'll start with something easy: What animal do I most identify with?
Elephant. I have a thing for elephants. It is connected, I think, to being so large my whole life. I admire the grace elephants have at their size, and also the way they look cooler the older they get.

2. Another simple one: How many siblings do I have?
Cracks me up how many of y'all got this wrong, even those of you who know me IRL. I have TWO siblings. My half-brother, Mitch, is 20, my step-sister, Angie, is in her eary 30's and is the mum of my two nieces, who are 11 and 8, I think.

3. Maybe a bit tougher: What is my political affiliation?
This was a little bit of a trick question, because in Oregon I was registered as an Independant. Here, though, I figure the party of my heart can use all the help it can get, and being able to vote in the Dem primary doesn't do any good anyway. I'm a Socialist.

4. On which of these social/political issues do I sometimes take a surprisingly conservative stance?
The majority of you guessed capital punishment, which I think is really odd, since I am adamantly against it and am more liberal than most liberals on that subject. Unless maybe you were thinking my position was conservative in a Christian sense? I dunno. Anyway, it's environmentalism. Growing up in a timber family, being an environmental liberal doesn't come naturally to me in a lot of cases, and sometimes I think the environmental movement is just plain wrong.

5. This one will be a bit easier for those of you who have actually met me in real life. What color are my eyes?
Hazel. Probably should have given partial credit for green. I think they are more yellow than anything, myself.

6. On which celebrity do I have a semi-psychotic crush?
Funny, nearly everyone got this. All hail Angelina! (Note: It disturbs the hell out of me that when I Googled for a picture of her, most of the ones on the first page that came up were not work-appropriate.)

7. Where do I most want to travel?
This one was hard, because everywhere on the list is somewhere I want to go, but the correct answer was Vietnam.

8. Another one that will be easier if you've actually met me: How tall am I?
I'm 6'0". Much as I wish that were not the answer, it is, and I don't say 5'12" anymore.

>9. If my house were on fire and I could only save one material object, what would it be?
Much as I love my mixer, it would be The Sunshine Bear. I was so happy when they brought them back...I have two, both from the original go-round, and I think I'll get another one. They have big ones now...

10. Finally, one that's a bit tougher: Which noise can I just not stand?
I don't like any of the noises listed, but the one I really can't stand is the vacuum cleaner. As in, I won't use it unless there is a dire emergency. I always feel like someone is going to sneak up behind me when it's on. I hate it.

Once again and as usual, I am driving myself crazy trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up, or at least what I want to be next. So I'm taking online job/career aptitude tests. Which are proving to be 99.9% worthless, as far as I can tell, but maybe you'll see something in them I don't.

My "LiveCareer Profile" has this to say about my aptitudes:

Your highest score was on Writing, which means that you enjoy creative or technical writing. You are also likely to be interested in a broad range subjects, so finding occupations that allow you to exercise these interests would lead to higher work satisfaction for you. You also scored highly on Assertive, indicating that you prefer working situations in which it is appropriate to assert authority over others and to direct and monitor their work. Your high score on the Administration scale means that you enjoy the financial or day-to-day operations of a business or institution, supervising the activities of others, planning work schedules, and maintaining records.

To help illustrate, they give me a handy chart!

Basically, I like to write and I like to be in charge? Gee, I didn't need to answer 100 (or even 10) questions to figured that out...

The Career Focus Inventory tells me that I have "strong" interest in Communication and Social Science careers and "moderate" interest in Business Administration and Management. Again, not exactly rocket science.

Another site, I forget which one, suggested I might love being a technical writer. That's when I gave up.

This bit of silliness was swiped from Delany.

These fabulous (and less fabulous) men and women share my height:

Allison Janney
Barry Manilow
Bess Myerson (though she's oddly listed as 5'12")
Boy George
Brooke Shields
Burt Lancaster
Carrie Nation
Charles Schultz (again with the 5'12")
David Duchovny
DeForest Kelley
Dom DeLuise (dammit, 5'12" again...this is bugging me)
Jerry Brown
Elle Macpherson
Elvis Presley
Frank Zappa
Geena Davis
George Peppard
George Reeves
Grace Jones
Harrison Ford
Jeff Foxworthy
John F. Kennedy
John Travolta
Kathleen Turner
Kristen Johnson
Lee Majors
Leonardo DiCaprio
Margaux Hemingway
Mario Cuomo
Mary, Queen of Scots
Maya Angelou
Mickey Dolenz
Neil Young
Richard M. Nixon
Terry Farrell
Uma Thurman
Wayne Gretzky

Some of those are obviously wrong, but some of them are quite nice. Margaux Hemingway was, in my opinion, one of the most beautiful women ever. And I had no idea Maya Angelou was even tall.

If you want to see how you stack up, go here.

This bit of silliness is from Rahel over at Going Dutch.

Instructions: Google "*your first name* needs" and see what the Internet thinks you need.

Grace needs:

• to see what she has helped cause (um, globally?)
  
• no help to perservere (wow, that's pretty self-sufficient sounding)
  
• to find her will (hrm...find her willpower, maybe...)
  
• a new home (I do?)
• a shrink (yeah, like that's news)

• a lodger to help restore her house (that will be news to Mark...)
• to be reading from books (to read from fewer books would actually be better)
  
• to learn how to be a little more graceful (this is a lost cause)
  
• to touch up (I like this, it's mysterious--touch up what?)
  
• to find someone (news to me)
  
• to access a file given with a relative pathname (right, but that would be, like, work)
  
• external libraries (as opposed to internal ones?)
  
• to be recalled (because her parts are defective)
  
• more one on one time to be properly trained (many would agree with this)

• to be a star (I'll say!)
• no such help (not sure what this one even means)
  
• a computing platform that supports Java (I think I have one, actually)
  
• a man (um, no)
  
• to be exercised (true)
  
• to close down shop (I think not!)
• that human foundation (I'm pretty sure I'm human down to the foundation)
  
• new servants (ha!)
• to be cultivated (it's gonna be an uphill battle)

• as much healing as a Pilgrim (are Pilgrims in particular need of healing?)
  
• to hide a terrible secret (makes me sound very mysterious...)
  
• to stop worrying about Chloe (the only Chloe I know is an 8-lb Yorkie-Poo--I don't spend much time worrying about her)
  
• to be read and taken to heart (in an ideal world, that's what the blog is for)
  
• to find some class (again, a long uphill battle)
  
• Tender Loving Care (I'm actually pretty good in that department)
  
• to assemble a subcommittee (not if we have to have meetings)
  
• to see *everything* (no shit)
  
• to find out fast (again, true)

• an assistant (probably wouldn't hurt, but man I'd be a pain to work for)
  
• to be experienced (this would certainly help with the job hunt)
  
• constant care (I don't think so, but Mark would likely disagree)
  
• help with the simplest chores (only if it involves cooking)
  
• a Guide (like a guide to life?)
  
• big money (sure!)
  
• to be seen and felt (definitely)
  
• a family committed to immediate obedience training (OK, that one is just funny)
  
• immortality (not really a big desire of mine)

• our cooperation (that would indeed make things easier)

This super-fun bit of silliness came from The Princess.

Go here to make your own.

Courtesy of The Princess, I just took the Ecological Footprint Quiz. If everyone consumed what I do, we'd need 3.5 planets. My total ecological footprint is 4 acres for food, 2.5 for mobility, 4.4 for shelter, and 4.7 for good/services, for a total of 16 acres. The average American's footprint is 24 acres, but there are only 4.5 biologically productive acres per person available on the planet.

Gives you a lot to think about.

I couldn't help it.

About that break from the Internet I was taking? Apparently I lied. Take away my venue and just see how much I have to say!

Today, as you no doubt are aware, is Shrove Tuesday, or Fat Tuesday. That makes tomorrow Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent. Something inside me has drawn me to Lent this year even more than usual, and I have decided to observe it in a church, going to all of the Lent services. I am currently deciding which church to attend, but will likely choose the local liberal Episcopalian church. I had a long talk with Mark over the weekend about my striving to find faith, and I am now reenergized in that mission.

Curious as to if my results would differ from my last go at it, I decided to check out the Belief-O-Matic, all powerful as I know it must be. The results I got, fairly unsurprisingly, were that my beliefs best match up with:

Taking it a step further this time, though, I decided to also take the What Kind of Christian Are You? quiz, to further edify me. This one was tougher, as most of the questions didn't make much sense to me or were regarding things on which I really have no strong opinion. However, I answered as best I could, and it proclaimed me a "Bishop Spong Christian" aka a Biblical Revisionist. This apparently describes me:

You think the Bible is a powerful metaphorical narrative and believe that Jesus was a heroic figure similar to Gandhi. You believe in God as a loving creator and that She will forgive you for just about anything. You're willing to admit that you don't believe in the resurrection. You go to church for the sense of community and the music and because you like to hector your fellow Christians about their backward ways. You read Toni Morrison, Elaine Pagels, and Bishop Spong, the controversial Episcopalian prelate. You enjoyed the "The Da Vinci Code" as a thriller and found its ideas about Christian history thought-provoking, if not always historically accurate. Though you probably didn't see it, you're sure that "The Passion of the Christ" presented an utterly backward version of Christianity. You ardently support gay rights and feel guilty that you yourself are not gay. (If you are gay, you're in a loving, committed relationship). You live in a leafy university town, order Chai at the local coffee house (never Starbucks), and subscribe to The New Yorker. You watch TV so you can talk disdainfully about how bad TV is. You give to charity, preferring the local homeless shelter to those bureaucratic national charities. For you, the crux of Christianity is Jesus' revolutionary message of empowering "the least of these."

Could be worse...

Anyway, I am going to be documenting my feelings and thoughts as the Lent season progresses here, for my own edification and for that of anybody else who cares. If me talking about looking for faith turns you off, you don't have to read it. I'm sure I'll have plenty of mindless filler as well. After all, I still gotta be me.

Ooooh, this is fun...

Go here to do your own.

Nyarly posted today about this fun toy. Makes me feel all official and stuff...

While peering at the Lizard Kingdom, I noticed the link to the Social Security Administration's baby names site. In 1979, when I was born, my name was the 343rd most popular female name in the U.S. I am so OK with that. Go Mom. In 2005, it was number 14. Fucking 14. Slightly less popular than Alexis, slightly more popular than Sarah. The female popularity equivalent of David. So not OK. I liked having a name that only old ladies had. I liked being not only the only Grace in my grade, but the only one in my school. No more.

Number 343 for 2005? Tatum. Maybe I should switch.

I'm having a less-than-stellar day. If you are too, go here.

My personal favorite has to be the dysfunction lithograph, followed closely by the meetings one. You?

Yesterday, as I was whining about not having any place online to store a running list of books I want to read, I decided to try and find something. Everything exists online, so why not a list tool? Well, I didn't have to look very hard before I found Ta-da Lists, which is exactly what I'd been looking for. It's free, simple to use, and allows me to make multiple lists, which can be either public or private. Perfect!

My Books to Read list is here (also down on the sidebar). Check it out and tell me what needs to be added?

Somewhere (and I honestly can't remember where) and I saw this interesting little thing--a survey about your blog readership, kind of demographic type stuff. I thought I'd try it here. Be forewarned, the sucker is long and kinda random, but you can do as much or as little of it as you want and whatever you've done previously will be saved, so if you feel in a survey-taking mood, please click:

Please take my Blog Reader Project survey.

In the spirit of New Year's goals/resolutions, I'm making a 43 Things list. It's here, if you are interested. I only have 14 things so far, but I imagine I will be adding to it.

And, on Jenny's recommendation, I'm going to use All Consuming to track my movie watching this year. So far, I've seen two flicks, and am about to head out to another one. Watching more movies is a goal for this year!

So, because I am an awfully spoiled little beast, I got several of the items on my wish list as Christmas gifts. And because I am review-happy, I thought I'd share with all of you how wonderful they all are.

Mark surprised me with several of my wish listed items. One was a hammered silver circle and sea glass pendant from Twigs & Heather. It is absolutely gorgeous, but unfortunately came on a chain too short to comfortably go around my super sized neck, so it is going to have to be fixed/exchanged. He also got me a funky address book and the Alpha Bitch thermal I was lusting after, which I've barely taken off since I got it (though it did garner me some strange looks in the airport).

Family members showered me with red KitchenAid items, including a coffee grinder and a 14-cup coffee pot. I will soon buy the red tea kettle (using the Amazon.com gift card my boss got me, perhaps?) and then my evil collecting will be complete!

Finally, my lovely friends got me a patchwork messenger bag from Textile Fetish. It is truly awesome, but unfortunately not sturdy enough to hold up to everyday use. So it's going to have to be a bit of a special occasion bag.

I also got some cash for Christmas, which I am tempted to use to buy myself a couple of the other things on my list (specifically a piece of paper sculpture and a Broken Plate Pendant). But really, I should just start off the New Year right and put the Christmas cash towards my outrageous credit card bills...we'll see.

Have you heard of Six Word Memoirs? The concept is pretty simple--tell your life story in only and exactly six words. Some of my favorites:

1. I slept through most of it.
2. I asked God. He said nothing.
3. Hoping for just one extra day.
4. I'm beginning to think it's me.
5. Dotted i's, crossed t's, now what?
6. Inspired hired fired tired retired expired.
7. Suddenly, something happened... No, false alarm
8. Suggestions wanted for new interesting vices.
9. 78. 45. 33. 8-track. MP3. Next.
10. THIS IS JUST MY DAY JOB.
11. God Called, you have 1 message.
12. Being a grown-up is more fun.
13. Zoloft daily, beer often, fuck yoga.

I am trying desperately to think of a clever one of my own, but coming up totally blank.

So, hard as it may believe for most of you to believe, there is actually at least one person out there who is interested in my music taste and endless play lists. And I totally love her for it. And I have a new toy now. Something that can show you, in more-or-less real time, what I am listening to. You'll be able to find it on the sidebar anytime you're interested.

Turns out that if I wore a whole lot of carefully applied and expensive make-up, I'd look like this.

Go to Taaz to do your own.

Thanks to Jenny for the toy.