It feels so weird to be blogging right now, because I went from posting every single day to not posting at all for nearly an entire month.. This is strange.

Swearing off soda was so easy and yet so hard at the same time. Like I said at the beginning of the month when I set the goal, it is only recently that I really started drinking a lot more of it. But I have such easy access to it now. I get all the free soda I want at both of my jobs. And sometimes a cone cup of sprite or whatever is really refreshing, and water doesn't always cut it.

So of course the moment I decided to cut it out, I wanted it. When I grabbed my cone cup and looked at the soda machine, getting water (or occasionally lemonade) was a lot less appealing when soda was not an option.

Oh well, I resisted all temptations and didn't have a drop of soda all month. Mission accomplished. Though I did end up drinking a lot more chocolate milk.

Tune in tomorrow for June's goal. It's a doozy.

I am determined to continue with my monthly goals. If I succeed in May that will be two months! I actually decided on May's goal last week, but I almost quit before I started tonight.

My goal for May is no soda. At all. I did really want some tonight though. I was at work and so thirsty and water just was not cutting it for me.

I never used to drink soda much as a kid. Root beer with pizza and that was about it. I don't come from a family that drinks a ton of it. But then I started working in restaurants, where you basically get all the free soda you want while you're working. Bad news.

And then for some reason when I moved to Pennsylvania last year, I just started drinking a lot of soda. It was like I flipped a switch and just wanted soda. Weird stuff too, like I went on this grape soda kick for a month or two. That got old fast though.

So no soda will enter my system all month long. It's OK though, my all-time favorite drink is still chocolate milk, which I would never even attempt to give up.

And this makes 29 consecutive days in a row, so this is technically a BEDA blog to make up for missing April 1st. If I blog tomorrow that will make 30 consecutive days.

In case you aren't all in my head, that title is to the tune of The Four Seasons song "Bye, Bye, Baby (Baby, Goodbye)", which is a great song. So go back and re-read/hum the title to the appropriate tune. Done? Thank you. Moving on.

OK, now I have to listen to my Best of Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons CD while I write this. Alright I'm ready. I feel like a little kid who is stalling before he goes to sleep; I've been to the bathroom, heard a bedtime story and had a drink of water, there's nothing left but to go to bed. Or BEDA in this case.

Once again it seems I am the last of my BEDA buddy group to do a post like this, but I'm OK with that. I really enjoyed reading Becky, Nicola and Christina's posts first before writing my own. Honestly, I felt really touched reading all of them and I feel pretty lucky to have been part of this.

I happened upon BEDA by accident and decided to be a part of it on a whim. I had heard of Maureen Johnson through my best friend the YA librarian, but had never read any of her books. Sorry! But I've since rectified that by reading Devilish this past week. And I am in line for Suite Scarlett at the library. I am very grateful to both her and Jordan Cwierz for conceiving BEDA; they really are sort of our BEDA parents. MJ even commented on my first BEDA post offering encouragement.

Personally, BEDA was good for me in many ways.

• It got me writing more again, which I haven't done a lot of since graduating college.
• It forced me to think more to generate blog ideas.
• It also forced me to finish several half-written posts from months and months ago that might have remained unfinished for years.
• It got me out there more reading other people's blogs. I follow my college friends, but I don't often go out and find random blogs to read. This changed that.
• I wrote some posts I really thought were great. Not all of them, that is for sure, but some. There are a few toward the beginning of the month that y'all should go back and read. Definitely.
  

And then there were my BEDA buddies. I will repeat what they have all said, and that is how eerily well MJ did at matching up at least our group. We all have a lot in common so far and it's great. I really enjoyed getting to know the ladies in my group and reading their blogs and "talking" to them.

I know we've only known each other a couple of weeks, but I get the feeling the end of BEDA won't be the end of us. Between our blogs, Twitter and now Facebook, I hope these online friendships we've begun will continue. I'll keep reading ladies if you will (well, even if you won't)!

Thank you all for a wonderful month of blogging.

P.S. I've been told that since I missed April 1 and 2, I should continue into the next two days to make up for it. So stay tuned, I just might do it depending on my schedule.

Tomorrow is the last day of BEDA. I don't work at all, which is good because it means I have time to figure out something really good for my last BEDA blog entry. I hope. So since I worked two different jobs today and just got home, I am going to use today's entry to report on my two monthly goals.

First off is BEDA (Blog Every Day April). I didn't find out about BEDA until April 3rd, so I lost two days at the beginning. But beginning April 3rd, I have produced some sort of blog entry every single day. They weren't always interesting or great, but they exist. I can't believe I did it, when before I was posting once a week max, most often less.

I do have to admit that I am probably not going to be much better once BEDA is over. I do want to do better, but if I have nothing to say of any import, I won't say anything that day. I am looking forward to that part.

So I get a big pat on the back for BEDA.

Second, here I made a personal goal for April about not going out to eat. I am proud to say that I succeeded in the goal to the letter. I did not spend a single dollar on food or drink outside of a grocery store. I went out to eat a total of three times the entire month. I went out once with my dad, once with my mom and once with my mom and sister (Yeah, I have no real friends in Omaha).

I am pretty proud of myself because this was hard. If you read the post I linked to, you'll see that going out to eat is how I survive. It's easy and I can grab it on my way to/from work. What did I eat all month? I don't really know. A TON of mashed potatoes for one thing. Each afternoon before work if I had no idea what to eat, I made mashed potatoes. So many potatoes were sacrificed to this project of mine.

So overall April went well for me, as hard as it was. I am tempted to start making a new resolution each month to see how I do. Small exercises in self control, which is something I often lack.

For now though, I am definitely getting Chinese on Friday. I miss that stuff!

Look. It's right there at the end of the word.

My name is important to me - my full name: Autumn Lee Hill. It flows so well, but it almost sounds made up. Like a stage name or a nom de plume. Take out the middle name and it sounds like a housing development or a housing complex, especially if you pluralize my last name.

When I was a child I had an aversion to my first name because I went through this phase where I wanted everything personalized, and my name wasn't always easy to find. I felt the frustration keenly. But I quickly got over it. It's not so rare that people mispronounce it or get confused, but rare enough that people pause and remark on.

Yes I do get a lot of dumb jokes, mostly from older men when I am waiting tables, and no one seems to be able to spell it even though it's a noun, but these are fairly minor irritants.

But I highly doubt losing my first name will ever be an issue. The part of my name most in jeopardy is my last name. It's a pretty great last name. Short, simple, easy to spell. Another noun. I have no intention of changing it. Ever.

I could spout out all these feminine ideals as my reasons, but I won't. While I do consider myself a feminist in many ways, that's not truly the reason I want to keep it. I don't even know if I could tell you the reasons why it is so important to me; it just is.

Part of it is that I have spent about a quarter of a century now trying to figure out who Autumn Lee Hill is. I still don't have a full handle on it, and I don't see a reason to try and change who I am and start the process over again just because I get married.

Now this might be a moot point altogether. I really have no strong inclinations toward marriage. I have nothing against marriage; most of my friends are all married and seem happy. I just can't really see Autumn getting married. It's just not me. Who knows? I know my parents hope I eat my words and tie the knot someday.

I once entered into a mock engagement with this guy I worked with. I honestly don't remember how it came about. One of the first things I asked him was whether or not he would have a problem with me keeping my name. When he said he was OK with it, I knew I'd found the perfect "fiancé".

I have an announcement to make.

I already posted that there is a new car in my life. Over a week into the relationship things are going well. I am getting rid of that new car smell I don't like and making my Rav my own. There was only one problem. My car needed a name, and it was really bugging me.

Now I didn't grow up in a family that named cars. I wasn't even aware people did it until I got to college. My first semester I had a roommate whose car was named Clyde. Her family also had an old Bonneville, so they named their cars Bonnie & Clyde. I thought that was pretty cute.

I didn't have a car my freshman year, so naming my own wasn't an issue. I didn't think about it again until that summer. That was when my parents helped me get my first car: a 1998 Honda Civic.

I was working at a restaurant over the summer, and there was this busboy who firmly believed in naming cars. He had a whole reasoning behind it that I no longer remember. He was insistent I name my car, and I had nothing against the idea so I did. I named her Isabelle, Izzy for short.

Then the summer after college I was tired of Izzy and ready for something new. I didn't set out to get a Land Rover, and that was probably one of the larger mistakes I've made to date, but I won't go into how or why that happened here. Long story short, I traded Izzy in for Murdock: a 2002 Land Rover Freelander.

Since Murdock was a bigger car, he just didn't seem like a girl to me. A Land Rover felt like it had to be a boy car. I wanted to name him Hannibal, but after the main character in The A-Team not Hannibal Lecter. I knew no one would think of the right Hannibal if I did that, so I stuck with The A-Team and named him Murdock. I should NOT have named my car after a crazy person.

That brings us up to the present. I am assuming you've all figured out by now that my announcement pertains to my new car's name. It does. I was having a problem because I really wanted to name it Ingrid, but it just did not feel like a girl. I toyed around with a few butler-type names like Jeeves and Godfrey, but driving in my car it just was not a Godfrey.

Someone, I think my mom, mentioned this name in casual conversation, and it just clicked in my mind; it fit. So after that very long introduction, I am announcing that I have officially named my car Otis! Woot!

OK. Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't it true that practice makes perfect? Shouldn't you get better at things over time? That's the way it works for normal people right? Right. So it's just me then.

Tonight did not go super well at the restaurant, and lately I've felt like I've lost my touch a bit serving. It's probably in my head, and I don't feel it every shift, but I still feel it sometimes. Mostly I just blame it on working in La Vista. Everything was much better when I worked in Omaha itself!

But it did get me to thinking about my athletic history. Now I am not the most graceful of people. In any way. I get along OK, but I don't dance through life. I stumble, trip and run into lots of walls and sharp corners. Let's just say I am not a natural born athlete. I can catch decently well if I am focused, but that's about all I have going for me.

Anyway, the reason I was thinking about sports tonight is because with many such activities I tend to get worse the more I practice. Once summer when I was in high school my mom enrolled me in a tennis camp that lasted a couple of weeks.

The first day the adults in charge (coaches I guess) told me I was a natural. I was doing well and feeling good. But as the camp progressed, I just got worse and worse the more we played. By the end of the camp I was just awful at tennis. And I didn't understand it.

Also bowling. It's not technically a sport, but it's another fine example of my ability to unimprove (I'm getting a red line for that word, but I say it is a word). Now I took a bowling class in college and I didn't have the same problem as I did with tennis. I actually improved over the course of the semester.

However, outside of that, I have found that the more often I bowl the worse I am. If I haven't bowled in a long time, I tend to do pretty well. But if I bowl several games, or if my bowling excursions occur closer together, I get a lot worse.

Why is that? Does that make sense to anyone? I have accepted that I am quirky and a little weird; that doesn't bother me. But I just don't get that. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

What I like about this image is that it has that one way sign in the background, which is very prophetic. I think others like me will agree: Once you fall in love with Broadway, there's no turning back.

I've made it pretty clear that I love musicals. I LOVE musicals. As in I am OBSESSED with them. I have been for about a decade, if not longer. I remember when I was 15 and my dad and I went to New York City just the two of us and he took me to The Phantom of the Opera. I can pinpoint that incredible experience as the moment I was hooked. From there on out it was just love love love love love.

I get asked a lot which ones I like, and that is such a hard question because there are so many and that is a lot to bombard someone with when I know they just want a short answer. So I decided to give you an idea of how much musicals consume my life. I'm going to provide you with a couple of lists to peruse at your leisure.

First off cast albums. To put this in perspective, iTunes says I have 116 albums that I've classified as musicals. Some of these are only one song, but you get the idea. I've collected these albums through various means throughout the years. And as with any collection, there are "pieces" I prefer above others, albums I don't listen to so much anymore. I decided to group them by the people who wrote the music and lyrics because it made sense as I was doing this and I think it is just as important to know who wrote the song as it is to know who sings it.

OBC/OOBC: Original Broadway/Off-Broadway Cast, BR: Broadway Revival, L: London

Full Albums:
Adam Guettel: The Light in the Piazza (2005 OBC)
Alan Menken, Howard Ashman & Glenn Slater: The Little Mermaid (2008 OBC)
Alan Menken, Howard Ashman & Tim Rice: Beauty and the Beast (1994 OBC)
Andrew Lippa: The Wild Party (2000 OOBC)
Andrew Lloyd Webber & Charles Hart: The Phantom of the Opera (1986 OLC)
Andrew Lloyd Webber & Tim Rice: Evita (1979 OBC & 1996 Film)
Arthur Sullivan & W. S. Gilbert: The Pirates of Penzance (1981 BC)
Benny Andersson & Björn Ulvaeus: Mamma Mia! (1999 OLC & 2008 Film)
Charles Strouse & Martin Charnin: Annie (1977 OBC)
Clark Gesner: You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown (1999 BR)
Claude-Michel Schönberg & Alain Boublil: Les Misérables (1985 OLC & 1988 Complete Symphonic), Miss Saigon (1989 OLC), The Pirate Queen (2007 OBC)
Cole Porter: Anything Goes (1987 BR), Kiss Me, Kate (1953 Film & 1999 BR)
David Yazbek: Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (2005 OBC), The Full Monty (2001 OBC)
Duncan Sheik & Steven Sater: Spring Awakening (2006 OBC)
Elton John & Bernie Taupin: Lestat (2006 OBC)
Elton John & Tim Rice: Aida (2000 OBC), The Lion King (1997 OBC)
Frank Loesser: Guys and Dolls (1992 BR)
Frank Wildhorn, Don Black & Christopher Hampton: Dracula (2005 Concept)
Frank Wildhorn & Jack Murphy: The Civil War (1998 Studio)
Frank Wildhorn & Leslie Bricusse: Jekyll & Hyde (1994 Concept & 1997 OBC)
Frank Wildhorn & Nan Knighton: The Scarlet Pimpernel (1998 OBC)
George Forrest & Robert Wright: Kismet (1955 Film)
Harvey Schmidt & Tom Jones: 110 in the Shade (2007 BR)
Henry Krieger & Bill Russell: Side Show (1997 OBC)
Henry Krieger & Tom Eyen: Dreamgirls (2006 Film)
Irving Berlin: Annie Get Your Gun (1946 OBC & 1999 BR), Easter Parade (1948 Film)
Jason Robert Brown: The Last 5 Years (2002 OOBC), Parade (1998 OBC), Songs for a New World (1996 ONYC), 13 (2008 OBC)
Jeanine Tesori & Dick Scanlan: Thoroughly Modern Millie (2002 OBC)
Jerome Kern & Oscar Hammerstein II: Show Boat (1951 Film)
John Du Prez & Eric Idle: Monty Python’s Spamalot (2005 OBC)
John Kander & Fred Ebb: Chicago (2002 Film), Curtains (2007 OBC), Kiss of the Spider Woman (1993 OBC & 1993 Other Cast)
Jonathan Larson: Rent (2005 Film), tick, tick…BOOM! (2001 OOBC)
Jule Styne & Stephen Sondheim: Gypsy (1959 OBC & 2008 BR)
Laurence O'Keefe & Nell Benjamin: Legally Blonde (2007 OBC)
Leonard Bernstein: Candide (1989 Cast)
Leonard Bernstein, Adolph Green & Betty Comden: Wonderful Town (1999 L Studio)
Leonard Bernstein & Stephen Sondheim: West Side Story (1961 Film)
Lin-Manuel Miranda: In the Heights (2008 OBC)
Lisa Lambert & Greg Morrison: The Drowsy Chaperone (2006 OBC)
Marc Shaiman & Scott Wittman: Hairspray (2007 Film)
Mark Hollmann & Greg Kotis: Urinetown (2001 OOBC)
Mary Rodgers & Marshall Barer: Once Upon a Mattress (1996 BR)
Matthew Sklar & Chad Beguelin: The Wedding Singer (2006 OBC)
Meredith Wilson: The Music Man (1962 Film)
Michael John LaChiusa: Marie Christine (1999 OBC), The Wild Party (2000 OBC)
Paul Gordon: Jane Eyre (2000 OBC)
Richard Adler & Jerry Ross: The Pajama Game (2006 Br Rev)
Richard Rodgers & Oscar Hammerstein II: Oklahoma! (1955 Film), The Sound of Music (1965 Film), South Pacific (2008 BR)
Sherman Edwards: 1776 (1969 OBC)
Stephen Bray, Brenda Russell & Allee Willis: The Color Purple (2005 OBC)
Stephen Flaherty & Lynn Ahrens: Lucky Stiff (1993 Studio), Once on This Island (1990 OBC), Ragtime (1998 OBC), Seussical: The Musical (2000 OBC)
Stephen Schwartz: Wicked (2003 OBC)
Stephen Sondheim: Assassins (1991 OOBC & 2004 BR), Company (2006 BR), Into the Woods (1987 OBC), Merrily We Roll Along (1993 Cast), Passion (1994 OBC), Sunday in the Park With George (1984 OBC), Sweeney Todd (1979 OBC)
William Finn: The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (2005 OBC)

Partial Albums:
Frederick Loewe & Alan Jay Lerner: Brigadoon (1954 Movie), Gigi (1958 Film)
Jason Howland & Mindi Dickstein: Little Women (2005 OBC)
Jerry Bock & Sheldon Harnick: Fiddler on the Roof (1971 Film)
John Kander & Fred Ebb: Cabaret (1972 Movie)
Jonathan Larson: Rent (1996 OBC)
Lucy Simon & Marsha Norman: The Secret Garden (1991 OBC)
Maury Yeston: Nine (2003 BR)
Mitch Leigh & Joe Darion: Man of La Mancha (2002 BR)
Peter Allen: The Boy From Oz (2003 OBC)
Richard Lopez & Jeff Marx: Avenue Q (2003 OBC)
William Finn: A New Brain (1998 OOBC)

Also, I wanted to list just a few of the voices of Broadway that I have come to love so much. Many of these albums I got because of who was in them, and grew to love the rest of the music later.

Leading Men: Adam Pascal, Anthony Crivello, Brent Carver, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Douglas Sills, Hadley Fraser, James Barbour, Mandy Patinkin, Matthew Morrison, Norbert Leo Butz, Norm Lewis, Raúl Esparza and Robert Westenberg

Leading Ladies: Audra McDonald, Bernadette Peters, Donna Murphy, Joanna Gleason, Julia Murney, Kelli O’Hara, Kristin Chenoweth, Laura Benanti, Lea Salonga, Linda Eder, Marin Mazzie, Patti LuPone, Sherie Rene Scott, Stephanie J. Block and Sutton Foster

There, that should give you an idea of what a big part of my life this is. I hope you are duly impressed/afraid/jealous! And I didn't even list which shows I've seen and where and when: I keep a list of that too.

As Becky and Christina did already, I am stealing this survey from Nicola, who said she stole it from Book Travellers Inc. Apparently we are a group who all love books. Yay!

Bookmark or bent page?
Paper clip actually. I started it a few months ago and love it. There was a learning curve where I scratched a few pages :-( but I worked out the kinks.

Have you ever been offered a book?
Not really. I guess it depends what you mean. I've received books as presents from friends before. That's the closest I've gotten to being offered a book.

Do you read in your bath?
The last bath I took had Strawberry Shortcake bubbles and a rubber ducky. I don't like baths, so no. But with me water and a book is just asking for trouble.

Have you already thought about writing a book?
I did for awhile in high school, after I took this great creative writing class. I even had a plot planned out. I was going to write a modern version of the Good Samaritan story, and apply it to this project I had to at my parents' church. I even had some of the characters and little plot devices worked out. I got excited about it again briefly in college when I found a Samaria Road not too far from there. But it faded quickly. I bet I have all that on my computer somewhere still.

What do you think about books in several volumes?
Bring it on. When I love a book, I go through withdrawal when it's over, so going back in again is perfect for me. Just looking over at my bookshelf now I see a lot of groups of three or more.

Do you have a cult book?
I guess Harry Potter would be my biggest cult books that I read. I got sucked in like everyone else.

Do you like to re-read?
Yeah. When I was younger I had this one book, I don't even remember which anymore, that I read over and over, at least a dozen times. Couldn't get enough. That's my record though. I do re-read books, especially if it's a series where a new one is about to come out. More often I will go back and just re-read sections of books, parts I really liked.

What about meeting or not with the authors of the books you've liked?
Never thought about it much. I think getting some of my books autographed and meeting the authors would be cool, but it's not so much a priority.

Do you like to talk about the books you read?
Yes and no. I love to recommend books to others, but I've never been big on in-depth discussions. Like I don't think I would like being part of a book club. It takes me back to the two semesters I spent as an English major and reminds me why I switched to journalism.

How do you pick your books?
Recommendations of course. I like to walk into a bookstore and just browse. I take notes and then go home and then look them up. And Amazon. I will go to the page of a book I liked and check out all the links there to other books and lists and I have found some great books that way.

Something you read, hard to confess?
Sometimes I don't like to tell people I read the Twilight books. I love them, but there is such a hysteria surrounding them now that I don't like to be grouped as another obsessed fan. I'm not. I read them before they were such a phenomenon.

Best places to read?
Anywhere cushy. I like taking a book and a blanket to a park and lying under a tree. Otherwise just in bed or a really comfortable chair.

The ideal book would be...?
That is not a simple question. Is there such a thing as an ideal book? All I need is an interesting plot and characters I don't want to say goodbye to by the last page and I'm content.

Read over people's shoulders?
With newspapers sometimes, never with books.

TV, computer games or book?
Books, then computer games, then TV. But I am guilty of indulging in all three to a degree.

Read and eat?
Shouldn't, but do sometimes. More read and munch. I don't read while I'm eating a real meal.

Read with music, in silence, whatever...?
It depends. I can listen to jazz or classical or anything without words and read. Anything with lyrics and I can't focus on both. I sing along and get distracted from what I'm reading.

E-books?
Not a fan. Half my love of books is the actual physical packet of paper. I wouldn't give that up.

Borrow or buy?
Both. I love libraries a ton, but I love owning books. Oftentimes I end up borrowing a book from the library, then liking it enough that I buy my own copy after that.

What book are you reading now – which one is coming next?
At the moment, Devilish by Maureen Johnson (our BEDA guru!). Up next is either The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, Bound by Sally Gunning or Graceling by Kristin Cashore.

Have you already dropped a book?
Literally? All the time. I'm such a klutz. I do occasionally, but not too often. I remember the first time I read the 5th Harry Potter I couldn't get into it. It starts slow. I went back a year or so later and then had no problem reading it.

What's the first book you just fell in love with?
As a kid? My earliest favorite was Princess Furball by Charlotte Huck. I still have a copy and bought one for my first niece shortly after she was born. Great illustrations. Later I loved The Boxcar Children and, of course, The Baby-Sitters Club.