Update

Greetings, cyberspace. I've neglected this blog for quite a bit and decided it'd be nice to update again. Hopefully said updates will be somewhat regular.

I'm preparing to go away to college soon (yikes, I know) and have acquired a much-coveted red stapler for this purpose. It's pretty divine, and I'm looking forward to sharing a desk with it in the near future.

In other news, I got four vaccines the other day. My arms are still somewhat sore, but it's nothing too bad. My family and I just finished rewatching the entire Star Wars saga for the umpteenth time. It was a multi-night endeavor and smashing good fun, as always. I've also been watching a lot of Star Trek lately since it's now readily available via instant play. I'm mostly watching the original series (as opposed to TNG), but only because I haven't seen a lot of the original episodes. With TNG, on the other hand, I've seen the majority if not all of the episodes multiple times. I still love them to pieces, though, and thoroughly enjoy rewatching them.

I'll keep this post short since I haven't the time to do a proper one at the moment. I just wanted to say hello, let you know I haven't migrated to Mars (yet), or abandoned the blogosphere. Until next time, then!

Deathly Hallows Ahead

Hello, blogsie. I've been messing with my blog design lately, trying to find something that looks nice, isn't blatantly stock, and is pleasant to read. The design as of now isn't fantastic, but it'll do for the time being.

Any guesses as to what I'll be doing this Friday? Yes, going to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I in all its 2 hours 26 minutes of epic glory is the correct answer! Now that I officially have my ticket, I feel like I can fully allow my enthusiasm to go wild. I have high expectations (as I do with every Potter film). Even if it's on the lousy side, I'll probably be content to moan about it until Part II comes out next year. I sort of have a love-hate relationship with many of the HP films. I still remember being disillusioned when I saw Sorcerer's Stone as a wee munchkin. When Hagrid said, "Harry, you're the boy who lived," I seriously thought the entire movie would pause and announce that chapter title and all the subsequent ones. This was before I came to the realization that movie adaptations of books actually, you know, cut quite a bit most of the time, and were not the meticulous word-for-word renditions I had envisioned them to be. All the same, I was still bummed Peeves never got to make an appearance. I'm excited for Deathly Hallow all the same.

What else (if anything) is going on besides HP, then? I've actually been, and continue to be, exceptionally busy. College applications are due at the end of the month, and I still have to come up with a personal statement. Super fun, right? I'm hoping to get it done this weekend so I don't have to stress about it over Thanksgiving. In addition, the homework monster has been especially beastly lately. Pfft, I actually should be doing homework instead of blogging right now, but oh well.

This afternoon, I was very excited to find the Twitter feeds of both LeVar Burton and Brent Spiner! Now, I have to take a paragraph to describe the impact these two have had on my life. Anyone who knows me knows that reading is possibly my favorite thing to do. When I was a kid, I used to love this fantastic show called The Reading Rainbow. LeVar Burton was the host, and I still remember some of the books and poems on the show. It was truly a magical program and I'm always thankful for its existence. When I got a little older, I met Burton again on Star Trek: TNG as Geordi La Forge. At this time, Brent Spiner also came into my life by means of Data, who remains my favorite android to this day. Geordi and Data were friends, too, and they were always my favorite characters. Seriously, I was the little kid who had an immense crush on Data and spent her school lunchtimes recounting TNG episodes to my friends. Anyway, I now follow both of them on Twitter. It's such a nice feeling when good things from your past pop up to say hello.

Pretty shibby music has come my way lately. I've been listening to some Defiance, Ohio, specifically Share What Ya Got. A number of my friends dig this band, and-- after checking it out-- I now dig it, too. I really need to explore some more folk punk. It's wonderfully refreshing and makes me want to go build a treehouse or hand-make a backpack. Defiance, Ohio also has most, if not all, of their music on their website, which is really awesome. It's good stuff, I tell you. Escúchala. At the more mellow end of the spectrum, I've been swooning to the Zombies' (or as my English teacher would prefer, Zombies's) Odessey and Oracle. If anyone is looking for the definition of euphonic, look no further. This album is absolutely amazing. There is not dull track to be had; from beginning to end, this album is aural excellence. I highly recommend giving it a listen. If you somehow aren't blown away, I think we need to have an intervention. On a different note: every once in a while, I find some sort of musical guilty pleasure, and the band of the season happens to Placebo. Please don't make fun of me; I need me some "Nancy Boy" and "Every You Every Me" once in a while. I was listening to their self-titled album on the ol' Sony Walkman, too, which brought back the '90s in full force. Oh, the nineties... if I were in junior high in the late '90s, I would want Stefan Olsdal and Brian Molko's children. You probably didn't need to know that, but I doubt anyone's still with me at this point and therefore I am shameless. I wonder if there's a word limit on these posts. If there is, it is damn long.

Well, that's about all for now. I actually have more I could blog about, but I'm posting this leviathan as is. Besides, I have a heap of homework still to do. Anyway, I hope you're all well and looking forward to Deathly Hallows. Until next time, then!

¡Tengo pelo corto!

Today, I got my hair cut short! I've been wanting to do this for a while, and I feel so good now that I have. My head is liberated! Seriously, though, this was long overdue. I've had my hair more or less shoulder-length for the entirety of my life, and the most drastic hair decision until just recently was to grow out my bangs in the fourth grade. I can't stop running my hands through it to feel the shortness; it'll be so weird to shampoo it. Anyway, I'm extremely pleased with the way it turned out, and it's exciting to see someone new in the mirror.

A new season of Project Runway premiers tomorrow! Needless to say, I'm shamelessly stoked. Yes, it airs on Lifetime, thrives on ad hominem drama, and is basically a vessel for product placement, but I thoroughly enjoy it. I love me a dose of trashy pop culture every once in a while. Speaking of television and film and whatnot, I saw Inception last week. I thought it was a good film, especially compared to the endless stream of awful movies that seem to dominate the cinemas. Although I don't feel it was quite as smart as it purported to be, it was definitely of the thoughtful, mind-bending sort. Trying to keep track of what was a dream and what was reality-- and then seeing how reality became increasingly relative-- was one of the most engaging aspects of the film. While some movies with an all-star cast don't rock it, Inception definitely did. While I'm not in the mood to do a full review, I do recommend that you see it if you get the chance.

Set your heart at rest

I had a fantastic weekend ^_^

On Saturday, I went to a lovely movie theater and saw Ponyo, Hayao Miyazaki's newest film. Ponyo is about a goldfish princess who longs to become human and befriends a human boy who lives on a cliff by the sea. Like all his films, it was beautiful, enchanting, pure, and imaginative. Hayao Miyazaki is definitely one of my biggest heroes in life. His films have always had and will always continue to have a profound effect on me.

On Sunday, I went for the first time to Shakespeare Santa Cruz. It was fantastic! I've always wanted to go, and this year I was familiar with one of the plays (A Midsummer Night's Dream). The stage was in a beautiful redwood grove. Although Puck was my favorite character (in the written play and at SSC) all the actors and actresses were phenomenal. It was a truly magical performance and I hope to attend SSC in future years.

To top it all off, there was delicious vegetarian food the whole weekend. Veggie pizza, veggie sandwich, sweet potato fries, veggie lasagna, salad, bread, carrot cake... of course, I didn't eat all that at once. I spaced it out over two days. In short: living in an area with an abundance of vegetarian restaurants fills my heart and stomach with love.

All that said, I had a beautiful weekend. I hope you did, too. Now, I have a lot of work to do in preparation for the coming school year and I am going to start that as soon as I post this and brush my teeth. Still, when daydreaming of faeries and underwater cities it surely can't be that bad...