so apparently it's new year's eve. my exciting plans for the evening include trying to sleep and comforting a teething nine month old. i'm sure you're very jealous. i'm going to come back next week and do some sort of yearly round-up just because this was a big year, and i'm too tired to write anything right now, but i felt like i should post something tonight.

so.

a few days ago i watched the new star wars movie. now, i had somehow managed to not watch any star wars movies before then, and i don't know if any of you are familiar with those youtube videos where they ask someone who hasn't watched a movie to describe the plot of the movie, but i was pretty much one of those people. i knew very little, and what i did know was very mixed up. (i found out after the movie that anakin skywalker turned into darth vader, and i think i should have known that? maybe i did know that and forgot? anyway.) SPOILER and i dunno, but at the end of the movie, when a character died, i felt really jipped (gypped) because i just got to know you how dare you die already? and now i feel like i need to watch all the other star wars and i'm kind of annoyed by that because i don't have time for that.

anyway, hope you all have a great start to the new year. 

i should have known better

tomorrow morning i have a meeting with my stat professor from undergrad. she seems willing to join my committee... IF we feel like a good match in person. if she does join my committee, then i will have all of the IT/engineering/mathy type people that i need and i can get my last person from ANYWHERE. and people outside of my realm of sciencey tech geeks relate to me so much more, like me so much more, think my project is awesome. i feel like i should prepare for this meeting. i should brush up on my statistics and reread everything i have for my dissertation and read her biography and know her interests. i really need her to join my committee. this would mean the end of so much suffering. (it would also mean that i would suddenly have a full committee and zero excuses left so i would need to actually work and research and write and ugh i've gotten real used to not doing anything and blaming my circumstances. but i'm not thinking about that. at least not yet. for now i am only allowing myself to feel positive vibes about this. i will not allow myself to not want what i want, or what i am pretty sure that i think i want, or what i should want.)

my brothers are sleeping over, though. and i am so so tired. and i need to procrastinate now before i won't be able to procrastinate again. and so instead of preparing for this meeting i watched harriet the spy with my husband and brothers. because that felt like the right thing to do at the time. and i mean, i could start preparing now, but i would much rather go to sleep. plus, the work i have finished is depressing me. when i look at it, all i can think is, as sport would say (from harriet the spy obviously), "this is worse than crap. this is what crap wants to be when it grows up."

anyway. just in case this meeting miraculously works out (do you remember when i walked into these things confident and hopeful? i was such a young, naive idiot), i felt like it should be mentioned here. since i have filled this blog with years of whining about my lack of a committee. it's only fair. 

*I Should Have Known Better - The Beatles

at first, when i see you cry, yeah it makes me smile

a few weeks ago i watched the fault in our stars with a friend. it was... an experience. it was the first time i had ever been in a situation with so many teen fangirls in one place without being a teen fangirl myself. (because, yes, we went to a ya book's movie adaptation on the saturday night of its opening weekend and were then surprised that we were outsiders in the theater.) i can only assume that it was the feeling you would have gotten going to a harry potter midnight book release if you liked the books, sure, but were the type of fan that did not have every character and their house and patronus memorized. the type of fan that didn't own nor particularly care to own any potter-world merchandise outside of the books. it was awful because at the point where the plot turns sad and the tears started building up, the entire theater burst into sobs, and my friend and i completely lost it. it was hilarious. and also completely distracting. the girl sitting in front of us had a little bun on the top of her head that bobbed up and down as she sniffled non-stop through half of the movie. the girls to the left had a frantic passing out of tissues moment when the lights went down. a girl behind us got up, said "i can't stay here," and ran out of the theater crying. one of the boys in her group, after asking the rest of the group if she was okay, went out to bring her back in and she spent the last ten minutes or so of the movie just sobbing. loudly. heart-wrenching-i-just-saw-my-entire-family-murdered-in-front-of-me sobs. it was completely over the top. (oh, and they clapped after every. single. scene.) i was biting my lip so hard to keep from laughing out loud that i'm surprised i didn't go right through it. my friend and i were shaking with silent laughter, because obviously we couldn't risk being killed by a theater full of over-emotional fangirls for having the wrong emotions. it was bad. 

but we made it through, and after leaving the theater and laughing for fifteen minutes straight, we started to discuss the movie. my friend, who hadn't read the book, thought the plot was pretty predictable. if you haven't read/watched it, you may want to just skip down to the next paragraph. you know it's a sad movie so you're expecting something bad to happen. the movie starts with hazel "dying" and then things just continue to get worse for her so you kind of assume that she's going to make it out okay, because there's no way it could be that obvious. gus, on the other hand, seems to have everything going for him, so you figure that he's screwed. it's just the way of books and movies and whatever. so when he dies, it's really sad, but it was also a bit expected.

anyway, i told her that it was less obvious in the book. but something i just read online made me realize that i was wrong. it wasn't just about reading the book vs watching the movie, it was more about when you read the book. i read the book before it exploded into something popular enough to warrant a movie. and i think that made all the difference in the world. because now, everyone knows that the book, and by extension the movie, is Sad with a capital s. you're in that mindset from the beginning, subconsciously preparing yourself for grief from the minute you start it. and when i read it, i had no idea that it was a Sad book. i knew it was about cancer kids, so i kind of thought that it would have a sad ending, but it was touted so much as Not a Cancer Book that i wasn't entirely sure. there was still that little thought that, "this might actually turn out good. there may be a happy ending after all of this." when you know that a book is Sad, there is no hope of a happy ending which makes it less sad then when that hope is crushed and spit on and then run over by a car. twice. 

and that's why i like to read books before the hype. that's what gets me. it's not about that weird hipster-real-fan mentality that is running rampant around the internet. (if i hear one more person tell me that they're a real fan of whatever book because they liked it before the movie, i will scream.) it's about the expecting. and i'm not talking about expectations not being met because it was overhyped or whatever, i'm talking about going into it with a particular mindset. i'd rather someone tell me that something was good/bad than sad/scary/happy. when you go in with a clean slate, everything is sharper. i like to have my feelings crushed and spit on and then run over by a car. twice. i like the feeling of realizing something is laugh out loud funny when i had no idea it would be. it's always funnier than when you expect it to be funny. i like that feeling when you have to pause reading to take a deep breath because this is totally not what you expected. i think that's why i'm having so much trouble getting myself to read any of the books that are becoming movies soon, despite actually wanting to read them. (well, that and the fact that i am in a serious reading slump still and oh my gosh i can't read anything these days.) 

*Smile - Lily Allen

the drop dead dream, the Chosen One

this weekend, which was supposed to include me doing some actual work, helping a student (oops), and reading a book that i need to review, somehow ended up including none of those things, and instead was filled with harry potter. it was awesome.

i used to read the series with my brothers when they were younger, but what with me getting married and moving out and my younger brother getting impatient and just reading them on his own, well, it just sort of fizzled out somewhere in the middle of the fourth book. this resulted in one brother having a semi-complete knowledge of the wizarding world (it's amazing how much you forget when you only read the books once) and one having even less than that. (the older one's knowledge of everything post quidditch world cup-ish comes from the lego harry potter video games. you can understand how upsetting that has been for me.)

anyway. i've spent the past few years trying to get the older brother to read the books (which he hasn't) and then finally decided to go the second-best route and just watch the movies.

(completely unrelated side note: i just had to go outside to transfer my mom's and my pottery stuff from the trunk of her car to the trunk of my car and oh my god why the hell is it so cold outside? i thought we were into spring and warm weather and blossoming flowers. my hands are burning. you know that burn-sting feeling from the cold? yeah. and they feel sore all the way down to the bones. i wasn't even out that long. ugh.)

but back to harry potter. a few weeks ago i decided to do a harry potter movie marathon with my brothers because a) they hadn't watched all of the movies which is ridiculous because abc family throws a marathon every three weeks, b) they needed a refresher slash basic education of the world and characters, and c) it's been a while since i had a harry potter marathon despite abc family's broadcasting tendencies mentioned in (a).  the problem with this, though, is that my parents do not know how to marathon, and since we were watching them in their living room, this cut into our fun. it took us about a month to get through the first three movies. (which sounds worse than it was. we were only watching when i visited on sunday and one of the sundays we were unable to watch anything because of some football or soccer or other organized sport thing that i do not remember.) but then my parents left to connecticut and i moved into their living room and my brothers and i were finally able to get through them. my youngest brother was half watching-half playing minecraft up until the deathly hallows movies  because he claimed he had seen them all (though i am almost positive he hadn't), but the older one got really into them. which was awesome.

there was the usual disgruntlement that everyone has after watching a movie adaptation for a book they have read. for example, he was super excited for the quidditch world cup and that was pathetic in the movies. they were both outraged after watching the first movie that they cut out dumbeldore's "nitwit oddment blubber tweak" speech, and after the final one they said, "man, i was really hoping that they were going to put that speech into one of the later movies. they missed a golden opportunity with that." and then of course there were the usual comments that you would expect boys that age to make dealing with butts and other similarly pleasant subjects *rolls eyes*. turns out that my brother is a harry-hermione shipper, but i forgave him for it because of his deep loathing of snape. his hatred for him was beautiful.

i think my favorite comment of his, though, was during the fourth movie when the weasley twins have just dropped out of hogwarts and there are fireworks going off everywhere and the entire student body is in the courtyard cheering them on as they fly away and harry gets the vision of sirius being tortured by voldemort. he groaned and said, "god! whenever anything good happens, he has to make it bad." which i think sums up the series pretty well. (he was a huge fan of harry's, though. liked him way more than i did when i was his age.)

the weekend, though, left me really wanting to reread the series. it's been something ridiculous like two years since i read them last. i was planning on getting to them after finishing the stack of need-to-reads i have, but i may just bump them up to the top of the list.

*Read My Mind - The Killers

a long time ago we used to be friends

i have never really had a problem with mondays. like, i know that they are universally known as the worst day of the week, but aside from the occasional, "ugh i don't want the weekend to end" dread during my school years i never had an issue with them. until now. why is it that the universe is suddenly conspiring to make mondays the worst day of the week? i mean, really. i suddenly find myself relating to garfield in a way i never thought i would. i don't know what it is, but suddenly mondays are the embodiment (can a day embody something?) of everything awful and my usual grit or whatever it is that allows me to get through the rest of my life seems to take off sunday night and saunter in tuesday mornings slightly disheveled and looking like it slept in its clothes all the while acting like it didn't completely abandon me the day before. ugh.

but anyway. that's all of the attention that i am willing to give to mondays until they get their act together. they don't deserve any more words.

instead, let's talk about the fact that i really like to introduce characters. like, i love to sit down to an empty word document or compose blog post box or blank sheet of paper or whatever and start writing out a character. i'll be happily typing out their basic introduction, deciding what kind of narrator they will be, figuring out what their voice sounds like, and then, a few paragraphs in, it gets to the point where it's no longer enough to have a character. i need a plot, too. and then i sit there for a minute, realize that i have nothing for this character - who happens to be quite awesome - to do or talk about, and i stop. they'll be in the middle of running away (though from who/what/where i don't know and please don't ask about a why) or they'll be about to tell you about the really cool thing that happened that day a year ago when they woke up thinking that their life was just normal and boring enough to be a commercial for car insurance and then nothing. i close the document or the notebook or go back to my blogger dashboard and never see these characters again. it's kind of sad, but i have hopes that one day i will go back and write all of their stories. (i'm thinking that in the future i will probably realize that a few of them belong in the same one.) that is my new life goal. 

i think this love of developing characters is the reason that i have so little patience for books that are all plot and no character. like, yes it is great that this massive war is going on and aliens are about to suck this guy's brain out with a straw, but i would care a lot more if the guy wasn't a cardboard character that talks in cliches and i'm told to like. i'm still working on balancing character and plot in my own writing, but that is neither here nor there. 

in other news, i feel like i should document the fact that i watched the veronica mars movie. [it is highly possible that you have little or no interest in veronica mars and will have no idea what i am talking about in the following paragraph. if this is the case, feel free to just stop reading here. you won't miss anything. i promise.] i used to watch it on tv with my sister. then it got cancelled. then years went by with nothing. then i backed the kickstarter for the movie. then i rewatched all of the episodes and fell in love with it even more. (my fangirl capabilities have grown so much in the past seven years. i don't think i was capable of being a true fangirl at the time of its tv airing.) and then i finally watched the movie friday night. (and am currently debating whether i should buy the books coming out if they aren't in the library or save the forty five dollars i have left to spend on books for the year for something else.) i was going to write a whole post about my movie thoughts, but i don't think i will. i will say that the first words out of my mouth when the credits started rolling were, "what the hell, rob thomas?" but i liked the movie more the more i thought about it afterwards. i feel like i need a rewatch to properly assess it. no matter how many times i rewatch it, though, i will never be okay with how they dealt with the piz story line. (and this is coming from a person who watched it on her couch wearing a team logan t-shirt because yes i am a huge dork thanks for noticing. i was also eating marshmallows.) 

*We Used to Be Friends - Dandy Warhols

now you're stuck in a moment, and you can't get out of it

i woke up today at nine o'clock. nine. and then i stayed in bed until nine:thirty. (i feel like i should mention that the only reason i woke up at all was because my sisters decided to have a whatsapp conversation in our group and i have this thing where i cannot silence my phone before bed because we have no landline and what if there is an emergency, i ask you. and my sisters have this thing where one has to be at work by nine and the other has kids and lives in a different time zone and neither have any consideration for their less-responsibility-ridden sister.) but anyway, nine. it was wonderful.

i've been having some struggles with the stuckness of my life. i think it was the red queen who said, "it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place. if you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!" (yes, i realize that being on the internet means there is no excuse for "thinking" anyone said a quote. two seconds and i could know for sure. but then i would also get sidetracked and this post would never be written. also, random fact: i first fell in love with this quote enough to memorize it not after watching/reading alice in wonderland, but after watching phoebe in wonderland. that movie, guys. it gets me every time.)

for a while now, it's felt like i was doing all the running i could do and, i guess predictably, i've been staying in the same place. still in school. still struggling for this degree. still not really doing much of anything. no kids. no house. no nothing. just... stuck. while everyone else seems to be moving forward. (before anyone tries to give me the whole you're-comparing-your-behind-the-scenes-to-their-highlight-reel or the just-'cause-it's-on-facebook-doesn't-mean-it's-real thing or the everyone-moves-at-a-different-pace-along-a-different-road speech, let me just say, i know. and i'm not actually comparing myself to other people because i got over that years ago. sorry guys, but for the most, i just really don't want your life, even if i might think it's fabulous. that is not the problem. the problem is the stuckness. them moving forward is just not giving me enough distraction from it.) and i couldn't figure out how i could possibly run any faster. (don't let the "couldn't" fool you into thinking i have everything figured out now.)

these past few weeks have been especially stressful and a whole roller coaster of stuff that i am not going to go into right now but that left me feeling very... something. raw? drained? constantly anxious? beat up and left on the side of the road to die? something like that. but at the same time they have been really good weeks filled with family and nightshirts and bunnies and laser tag and golf. and it's funny how that happens sometimes.

anyway, the point is that some days it's nice to stay in bed late not because of anything or despite anything. and even if your stomach still feels like its taken on a side job as a butterfly garden, sometimes, the stuckness doesn't feel so bad.

*Stuck in a Moment - U2

give it a try

this is a christmas related post that really actually has little to do with christmas and is coming to you the day after christmas. although, i typed it up on christmas. (four christmases in two sentences.) but i already posted that lovely and pointless post that was sort of about hope but mostly just my way of saying that i have that feeling that something big is going to happen. usually when i have that feeling, nothing happens, but it doesn't make it any less exciting. and i kind of like the fact that i can't quite quell the excitement when i feel it even though i know it's probably just nothing. it's kind of disney-esque, only mostly just inside my head. it's hard to explain.

but anyway. back to christmas. well, sort of.

being muslim, i don't celebrate christmas. (except for those years when my sisters and i were growing up and we did the whole christmas thing every year. the whole nine yards with tree and lights and stockings and christmas music and paper chain countdowns and waking up at dawn to open presents.) i, however, love the christmas season. christmas lights are without a doubt one of my favorite things in the world. there is something about the small colored lights that fill me with magic. i also love christmas music (although it is really annoying when you are trying to sing along to the radio and every singer changes the song just enough to make it sound like you are way out of tune every single time). i also love stocking stuffers. i have this really bad problem with buying stuff that i don't need or want because it is either on sale or a good price. dollar stores and drug stores and the sale aisle of craft stores are my weakness. stocking stuffers fall under that umbrella. but that's neither here nor there.

despite not celebrating christmas, i do have my christmas season (which lasts a little longer than most people's) traditions. like, gingerbread cookies. every year, between the end of thanksgiving and martin luther king (jr.?) day, i have to bake gingerbread men. at least once. and every year i have to watch the santa claus. you know, the tim allen one. (the radio the other night told me that the movie has been out for nineteen years and that made me feel so old. ninteen years guys. i could have raised a child to voting age in that time. i could have raised two children to voting age (given they were born in consecutive years) in that time. there is something about the word consecutive that makes me think of math problems.) i used to watch all of those christmas tv shows (santa, rudolph, frosty, etc) that have been on for generations and are actually pretty terrible and incredibly sexist/racist/generally politically incorrect, but i stopped those a couple of years ago. mostly because i kept forgetting to watch them and time became a lot harder to come by. i also love to go on  drives through neighborhoods to look at christmas lights. my older sister and i used to that a lot during our college years before she up and moved to the other side of the world. my husband just does not see the appeal in it. it's not as fun going alone, and so i opted to skip it this year. sad, i know. this is not the point, either.

(i guess this really has turned into a christmas post.)

but what i really came here to say, though, was that, during my read-through of the blog posts from the last two months, someone mentioned that they had already watched elf twice, and i have never seen elf. not even once. ever. i never even really wanted to. but it is often listed as one of the christmas movies that you have to watch every year, and i'm thinking that maybe i should take the plunge. a different blogger wrote about how she makes chocolates for all of her friends and family for christmas, and i kind of want to try that, too. what other christmastime traditions should i try out while i'm at it?

*Give it a Try - Badfinger

trying to decide

so i'm probably going to stick with this whole school thing. mostly because i was born with three times the normal amount of inertia - maybe more. but i can't help weighing the pros and cons of staying and going all the time. it's like some weird kind of masochistic addiction where i tease myself with the idea of freedom and release and then go to class. i think i've really developed my cases for and against post-grad school, though. i'm super analytical and deep.

[case for dropping out] i've thought about this, and dropping out would mean i would have time to do something meaningful. or important. or just really big. like, maybe watch the entire netflix collection. i'm talking about every single movie, show, and whatever else is on there. streamed and dvd. you know how you can get sponsors to do something crazy like climb mount everest and swim across a shark-filled ocean? when you think about it, neither of those things give any more to society than sitting on the couch watching tv, right? but they get media coverage and money and other stuff that is probably really cool. and i've been seeing tons of articles lately about binge tv watching (as if this is some new thing). this would be the ultimate binge. totally newsworthy. i bet there would be tons of companies willing to sponsor me. orville popcorn, nestle chocolate chips, peeps, any rootbeer company... really, the possibilities are endless. i could make history, you guys.

[case for not dropping out] there's this professor - not one that has been especially helpful to me or really even cares much (or at all) about what i'm doing - but he agreed a while ago that he would be on my committee and he reagreed yesterday morning. and this professor is just... there's really no way to describe him besides giggle giggle swoon. really. there is just something about this guy that makes people (i'm not the only one, i promise. there are others.) giggly and swoony and it's really not healthy. i can just imagine me trying to defend my dissertation and getting caught in a fit of giggles because this guy. i'm not even a giggly person. at all. i don't think a single crush of mine in my life made me giggly. and i grew up with two sisters. we went through a very long boy crazy phase and had a million and four crushes. never giggled. so this is big, guys.

as you can see, this is a very tough decision. movies or giggles? suffer though watching stuff that i know i will hate or embarrass myself during my dissertation defense. i just cannot decide.

(i know i just posted about school and dropping out/staying, but my brain. it's tired.)

*Sahara - Relient K

at least i'm moving forward

so i said i would write about my bad luck with movies, but the post was dragging on and putting me to sleep just writing it, so here's the short version: whenever i want to see a movie in theaters, like really want to see it, i don't. something happens, or a whole bunch of things happen, and it ends up leaving everywhere before i get a chance. it's sad really, and has been going on for years and years and years. some recent notable misses were the great gatsby (i know! i feel sorry for me, too) and the bling ring. the therapist i saw in tenth grade felt that it had to do with my constant putting everyone else before me and my habit of seeing that other people had stuff on their plates while simultaneously ignoring the fact that i had stuff on my plate. or, something like that. (i really wanted to watch ella enchanted that year because it was my favorite book since i read it in fourth grade. she would ask me every week if i saw it. you can probably guess my answer. the first time i watched it was when i bought myself the DVD.)

anyway.

i have added twenty-nine thousand, seven hundred and forty words to my novel so far, and i recently read the prologue again and i found myself liking it. sure, it's not perfect, but it has potential and it is definitely stronger than it used to be. it has also maybe sort of become the first in a potential trilogy? i mean, i can take out the newly added last chapter and it will be a standalone book. i can leave in the newly added last chapter and suddenly there are follow up books. it's magical, really. the newly added last chapter was added today (but thought of earlier) so starting tomorrow i will be going through it randomly and inserting the things i want to. hopefully these things will add up to another ten thousand words or so. i still think that i suck at the whole editing thing and i'm not even sure if you can count what i'm doing as editing at all, but i am making progress and that is all that matters.

(i am not making any progress on the academic front, though. not even fake progress because i am so over the situation that i refuse to do anything for/about it. it's really bad. whenever i start to feel good about novel progress or blanket knitting progress (i have about a quarter of the patches knitted so far), i like to remind myself of my epic failure with school to keep myself grounded.)

*Moving Forward - Hoobastank

let's waste time

finals week. and i do not want to study. so obviously it becomes imperative to find time to blog because blogging is super important and neglecting my blog is just awful. blogging is so important, in fact, that it is my number one priority. really. who cares if i pass another batch of classes if my poor blog goes unupdated? (let's pretend that once a week updates has not become the norm here. let's pretend that these are the days when i would update daily. or better yet, the days that i would post multiple times a day.)

so my grandma is in town again, and that is always fun. of course, it would be more fun if it was not finals week, but that's what next week is for. familial gathering and enjoyment of the schoollessness of summer. (except that i have to figure out a bunch of school related stuff this summer and get my act together, but that can wait until the week after next week.) my grandma is awesome, and we share some sort of telepathic connection, i swear. for example, remember way back when when i said i wanted those novel posters that reproduced the text of a work into some design? well, the delivery man just delivered the pride and prejudice one to my house. it was a gift from my grandma, and i never even told her that i wanted it. this isn't the first time that she's done this, either. one of the teapots she got me when i got married was one that i was drooling over online for months.

i am still reading cassandra clare, and she and her editor should be stoned. there is not much that i can not tolerate in writing, but inconsistencies make me suddenly want to do strange things like drive my fist through a wall and egg people's houses. i'm not talking about those inconsistencies like when your super clumsy protagonist suddenly moves with all the grace of a ballerina when the need arises. i'm talking about when you make a big deal about a character's bright yellow pajamas and then somehow forget that he's wearing yellow pajamas and describe him as wearing striped pajamas in the next scene. or when you spend a paragraph talking about how a character was not wearing makeup and how she looked younger and her eyes looked bigger and blah blah blah, but somehow in the process of her moving from the window to the bed, her eyes become smudged with mascara making her look like a french model slash actress. things like that distract me. they pull me out of the story and ruin any momentum that you were building. i don't like it, and someone should catch them before the book becomes a best-seller. there are other things that have started to annoy me about clare, but if i started with those i would never stop typing. and i do eventually need to get to a final exam. maybe even study for it.

also, reading all the stuff about the harry potter fandom has made me really want to read fanfiction, and i am adding hours of fanfiction reading to my summer to-do list. another thing, netflix kind of really sucks. a bunch of the titles that i was planning on watching over summer were suddenly taken down in their recent "let's lose 1800 titles" thing. i mean, i know that it is less netflix's fault and more the fault of the stupid copyright holders who want to start their own streaming services and charge us directly to watch their titles so that eventually we'll be paying for twelve different streaming services or watching everything illegally, but it's easier to blame netflix. so netflix sucks.

*Chasing Cars - Snow Patrol

trying hard not to smile though i feel bad

the other day i went back to my old high school to watch my brothers participate in an islamic competition game show thing. it was pretty awesome, even if it did end up starting an hour and a half late and the computer died halfway through the game. when the game show questions cd froze three times in a row, the teacher switched to just asking the questions orally. now, i don't know how many of you are faithful watchers of nickelodeon, but there's an episode of victorious (the one where jade and beck break up for the second time) where cat tells jade not to forget two when she counts to ten, because apparently some people forget it. anyway, the competition consisted of multiple choice questions, and every time the teacher would give the possible answers (he used one, two, three instead of a, b, c) he would forget the number two. it reminded me of cat. i found it hilarious.

it is possible (read: probable) that you won't find this as funny as i did, partly because, well, i'm the kind of person that laughs at the wrong times (after the game show they had a little prayer/remembrance thing for my sister's friend's mom that recently passed away. when the speaker stood at the podium crying for a minute and then ran out of the auditorium and we all just sat there in awkward silence, i was fighting a really strong urge to break into laughter. yup, i'm the kind of girl that laughs at funerals.) and partly because i'm not sure i have full control over this whole words to sentences to story process this morning.

i stayed up later than usual last night to watch ten things i hate about you, because come on, if there was ever a movie to ward off sleep for, it's one where heath ledger sings can't take my eyes off of you. apparently my body didn't get the memo that i was going to make up missed sleep this morning, though, because it woke up at seven like usual and then fell into a really light, half-sleep until eight:thirty. i don't feel tired, but i don't feel not tired, if that makes any sense.

anyway, i have an exam to get ready for and an apartment to clean. fun day ahead of me. but tomorrow night i will be officially done with my first semester of my phd program and good riddance i say.

*One Week - Barenaked Ladies

my love has drifted out to sea

[one] the other day my mom, sisters, and i went out to watch titanic. when it first came out a million and seven years ago, my sisters and i weren't allowed to watch it (some parents just don't understand how unfair it is to deprive your nine year old daughter of seeing a movie that everyone else in her fourth grade class has seen). as i got older, i just didn't want to watch it as much as i originally had. i mean, i knew the story, had had all of the best parts reenacted for me countless times, and could probably quote half the movie already. i didn't actually get around to watching it until college when it was on sale at walmart and resulted in a spur of the moment buy. since then, i've watched it more times than is probably healthy. it's just such a great movie for when you're in a feel-like-laughing and a feel-like-crying mood.

[two] for field day in high school, we would get some "extra cool" activity to go along with the usual relay races and water balloon tosses. one year we got a dunking tank. another year we got a giant titanic slide. when i watched titanic for the first time, it felt so wrong watching the people slide down the length of the ship into freezing water as it sank and knowing that we got a sinking ship to slide down for for fun. (granted, i never actually went down the slide, but it wasn't because of some moral sense that it was wrong. i just didn't feel like waiting in such a long line for a slide. even if it was really big and looked like a ship sinking into the grass.) watching the movie on a big screen where everyone is pretty much life size or bigger made the titanic guilt worse.

[three] to move on from the titanic, i've talked a few times on here about helping people (namely my dad) with their computers and how it can get frustrating at times. but i will never again complain about being roped into tech support the second i walk into my parents' house because now i know that it could be so much worse. my dad is in the desert at the moment, and the other day i let myself into the house to see my mom and suddenly found myself trying to fix his computer from halfway around the world using a faltering skype connection for communication. not fun. trust me. it is so much harder when i can't even see the screen and there's a three second lag in the conversation and i'm constantly being yelled at to speak slower.

*Where We Went Wrong - The Hush Sound 

dressed up like a princess

[one] considering the facts that the majority of what i wear consists of jeans and hoodies and my go to shoes are flip flops, you may be surprised to learn that if i could, i would wear evening gowns all day every day. (more princessy than slinky because to be quite frank, i don't have the body for the latter.) i would get dressed up to fill my car up with gas. i would wear a full length ball gown to get taco bell and another one to go to the park with my brothers and nephews. i would wear pretty dresses to school, to hang out at a friend's house, and to pick up eggs and butter. i love them that much. (i guess because when i was four i never truly appreciated them and lost the only chance i had at this being acceptable?)

[two] i read this article yesterday entitled "the problem is not the books." it's countering a new york times article that, as is so often done, complains about how there are no books out there for boys which explains why there are fewer boy readers. this article puts the blame back on society which belittles boys who like "girl things" and consider books written by or about girls as "girl things" that a boy couldn't possibly relate to. as the article pointed out, in our society male is neutral and female is specific. i agree with the article. if i could get my brothers into books like ella enchanted and the secret garden then it just goes to show you that raising a reader is one thing, and raising someone who likes to read boy books is something entirely different. anyway, the article was interesting - nothing too earth-shatteringly ground-breaking, but still worth a read.

[three] last night my husband and i went to watch the three stooges. i wasn't one of the people super excited to watch the movie, but i also wasn't one of the people adamantly refusing to ever see it. i thought it was okay, not bad but not one of the best movies i've seen. pretty much what i expected going in. what was awesome about it was the soundtrack. they had some really good songs playing in it that i would not have expected to hear in a three stooges movie. oh, and a lot of the kids were really cute.

*Something in your Mouth - Nickelback (i mist confess that i've never heard this song before)

it doesn't matter much to me if it doesn't matter much to you

[day twenty-seven: your lunch]

goodness gracious but this challenge likes meals. i'm not an organized eater. in the sense that i generally don't have three meals a day at designated times. a lot of the time i'll have one meal and a couple of snacks. some days i'll eat dinner at two in the afternoon and call it a day. other days i'll eat twelve and a half meals by four and then go searching for dinner. names for meals have no meaning for me. i eat. does what it's called really make a difference? for example, it's eleven in the morning and i just ate four pieces of candy corn and a chocolate chip cookie. it's the first thing i ate today so is it my breakfast? or because it's eleven should i call it brunch? lacking the nutritional basis of a real meal is it just a snack? if i don't eat anything else until dinner with my family at five, does that make their dinner my lunch? my breakfast? or does time have priority over order?who decides these things?

moving away from the challenge for a minute, the hunger games movie is coming out tomorrow. one of my first posts on here way back in march 2009, mentioned that lionsgate had just bought the movie rights. it feels a little surreal to me. on one hand, i feel like i just posted that yesterday. (although in that post i apparently loved jane eyre [the character]? i remember not liking her. i think it's time to reread the book.) on the other hand i feel like i've been waiting for this movie forever. i have a feeling that plans will fall through and i'll end up not seeing it for weeks. that's usually what happens with me.

*A Matter of Time - Foo Fighters

you love me but you don't know who i am

i hate when formspring emails me telling me to check out what my friends have been up to, and i go to the site and there's been no new activity since the last time i signed in like a month ago.

another thing that has been bothering me lately, which i must admit i used to do all the time, is thinking that character a should just love character b because character b is good and loves character a. it doesn't matter if these characters are in books, movies, or tv shows, the same principle applies.

one of the top examples in my mind is from the hunger games because someone just mentioned this, but i could find examples from a hundred different things. in the hunger games, though, you often find people getting annoyed with katniss for not immediately falling for peeta when he says that he loves her. throughout the entire first book, they just can't stand her because she's pretending to be in love, and she's confused, and he is just so sweet (the main, more important plot of killing children aside of course). and then when she has to get engaged and married and everything, they're just so annoyed that she's not happy to be spending forever with him. and of course it just boils down to the fact that she doesn't deserve him and he's so much better than her.

but who said that, just because someone loves you, you have to love them back? who decided that what katniss wants (to be alone forever) doesn't matter because what peeta wants is so much more sweet and romantic? character b may very well be a fantastic person who deserves all chances at happiness, but that doesn't mean that character a should give up their own happiness for them. character a should not be expected to be swept off their feet just because character b has a really cool broom.

i find myself watching movies now that i watched years ago, and when before i was thinking, "oh my god just get together already," now i find myself hoping they stay apart because there is no way they should be together. maybe i'm just becoming even more cynical, but it annoys me.

i think that's what's really great about 500 days of summer. the girl goes off and finds her own happiness, despite the fact that the guy really wanted to be with her. and i know a lot of people hate her for that, but these are the same people that don't seem to realize that he was one of those people that fell in love with an image of her and refused to let go of it, even when it no longer fit her.

i'm starting to ramble. and i can't find a song lyric that goes with this.

*Let Me Go - 3 Doors Down

with all this fever in my mind, i could drown in your kerosene eyes

blogging is momentarily really hard. that is all the time i am going to waste talking about my current inability to blog regularly. the following were originally going to be posts by themselves, but i keep starting one and never finishing it. this way's better.

[one] i would like to be annoyed that the movie industry has completely given up on even pretending to put out new movies. remakes are one thing, but it seems like just bringing an old movie back to the big screen is getting more and more popular. the thing is, i completely get it. when times are tough, no one wants to risk spending fifty plus dollars to take their family to a movie which might very well completely suck. bringing back the classics is a way to guarantee an audience. bringing back the classics in 3d is a way to guarantee an audience to shell out an extra five bucks or so per ticket for nothing special. and the thing is, most of the movies i am excited for this year are either ones i've already seen or remakes of ones i've already seen. with movies like the lion king (which held two top spots at the box office when it was out for both the 2d and 3d versions), beauty and the beast, titanic (the preview for which kills me because it says from the director of avatar), finding nemo, and star wars all coming back with virtually no changes to them, you have to wonder if they'll just stop making new movies altogether. and you know, maybe they should. 

[two] last friday i had written, "it is friday the thirteenth, and i have nothing to say." not sure if i was going anywhere with that, but there it is. 

[three] in the days where all the energy i could afford to use was spent turning on my ipod, i was listening to a lot of bob dylan and bruce springsteen, because why the hell not, right? and then a friend posted a video of a song by the tallest man on earth, and i fell in love. you should go check out some of his music. you know when you like a singer and think that you're the only one who knows him and one day you realize that they're really super famous and you're just completely out of the loop? it was one of those kind of feelings with him. you see, i had a song of his on my ipod, but it was a cover and i always thought that he was just one of those random people that put out a good cover and disappeared. you know the type? it was awesome finding he had his own stuff, too. 

[four] i feel like i should mention the sopa and pipa bills, though i'm sure most of you already know about them since the internet is on strike today. (you may have noticed that a bunch of sites are blacked out today.) you know, the bills that want to be laws that will basically destroy the funness of the internet in an attempt to stop piracy? yeah, those. you can go here to sign petitions and send emails to congress and stuff to let them know that you think the bills suck. 

[five] i have friends who work at hospitals and are constantly posting pictures of children that they particularly like who are treated at their hospital. this could just be me, but it makes me extremely uncomfortable. i mean, it's one thing plastering pictures of your own children hooked up to tubes and sitting on hospital beds all over the internet, but another thing entirely to post pictures of other people's children. i mean, doesn't that go against some code of ethics or something? or am i just overreacting here?

[six] i feel like my blog needs a makeover. finding the motivation, time, and energy to give it said makeover is at the top of my to-do list. it's really too bad that i suck at keeping to to-do lists. 

*Where Do My Bluebird Fly - The Tallest Man on Earth

you're so good and you're so bad

you know what one of my favorite parts of the christmas season is? (aside from all of the christmas lights and the same three christmas songs repeated nonstop on the radio by a hundred and fifty different singers, that is.) the sudden influx of lifetime and hallmark movies. i mean, lifetime movies on a normal day are pretty great, but nothing comes close to being as truly, horrendously awesome and cliched and a christmas movie. and the minute december starts, we are bombarded with them.

one of the funnest things to do with these kind of movies, along with mocking the dialogue and counting the number of cliches they fall into, is trying to guess the famous actor/actress that the stars of the movie look like. because, if you watch enough of these, you'll notice that they all look like someone. for a lot of them, i'm guessing it's the only reason they are hired, because they sure weren't have been chosen for their nonexistent acting skills. and then there are the actors that are really not bad, but mixed in with the bad plot and dialogue, they don't stand a chance. i like to imagine why they stooped to doing the movie.

anyway, the other day i was watching my first one of these movies of the season, and the main female character was a dead ringer for kiera knightley. not just in looks, but also mannerisms. she had the same facial expressions and way that she moved. it was kind of creepy after a while because all i could think of was her spending her whole life trying to be kiera knightley. remember that show they once had when they would give people plastic surgery to look like their favorite star? yeah, she would be one of those people who went too far. but the movie was great: predictable with accents suddenly appearing and disappearing, which is always fun. and i generally liked the actors. i'm looking forward to this month.

so thank you lifetime, for your wonderfully bad movies that never fail to put a smile on my face. this year especially, i think i need all the cheesiness you never fail to offer.

*Kiss and Tell - You Me At Six

i'll play guitar and knit and cook and basically just wonder when will my life begin?

so yesterday i went to get my hair cut, and i almost had a heart attack. with every clip of the scissors breathing became more and more difficult. i usually just take a few inches off the bottom, but yesterday i cut off an entire foot (possibly more?). i mean, it's still technically "long" in the sense of the word that any hair under the shoulder blades is long, but it feels so short. last night i was braiding it and half of my braid was missing. i don't know how people can cut their hair short.

also, yesterday we had snow. in october. it was weird. and today it is sunny. the weather is obviously on crack. but i got to wear my koala hat and an old man complimented me on it. you can guess how cool i felt.

on another note, i didn't want to be reading a book when nanowrimo started because i've noticed that my mind tends to unintentionally transfer stuff from the story i'm reading to the story i'm writing. not plagiarism or anything, but i was reading the help the other day and all my characters stared to talk with a southern twang they didnt have a week before. plus, it's harder to write crap when you're reading something that is not crap. very discouraging. so anyway, after i finished my last book i didn't pick up another and to fill the time i've been knitting. and washing dishes. and doing laundry. and baking. and i feel like rapunzel in the beginning of tangled. minus the book reading.



has anyone else noticed that october is taking a really long time to finish? usually september is the long month and october flies by. maybe only having one class this semester is messing with my [insert proper word here cause i can't think of it].

*When Will My Life Begin? - Mandy Moore

you're a star in nobody's eyes but mine

i was watching moulin rouge! last night, and don't you just love that movie? i think it may be one of my absolute favorites of all time. which is why it always surprises me when i can't get anyone to watch it. it took me four years to get my cousin to watch it. four. years. and even then i basically tricked her into it. but she liked it, like i knew she would. my sister would never watch it because she "doesn't like sad things." another cousin doesn't like things that are "about old times." and hardly anyone i know will watch a musical with me.

but this isn't a post about the stubbornness and bad movie taste of people i know.

when i was watching the movie, falling even more in love with ewan mcgregor (a common side effect) i decided that he is way to underrated. he has acting talent, an amazing voice, and good looks (though i know a lot of people who would argue with me on that one). but yet, he just never seems to make it to the top lists of most people. and i find that sad.

on another note completely, i recently read geek love and while i was reading it, especially at the beginning, i was more repulsed and disturbed than anything else. now that it's finished, i just want to go back and reread it. that's been happening a lot with me lately. i'll be reading a book and think it's great, and then put it down at the best part for no apparent reason. i'll wash the dishes and fold the laundry and there's really no pull to go back to reading. and other books i feel underwhelmed by, i feel like they're not living up to the potential of the story or the characters, and yet i can't seem to put them down without wanting to pick them right back up.

*Andy, You're a Star - The Killers

where'd you go? i miss you so. seems like it's been forever since you've been gone

so yesterday we took the boys to see the lion king at the movies, and can you believe that they had never seen it before? i felt like i had failed my duties as an older sister. they had seen lion king one and a half. it came out when they were younger and when i bought it they would watch it on repeat all. day. long. over and over and over again for months. they had seen lion king two recently on the airplane. we used to have it taped off the tv, but then ali recorded free willy over the last fifteen minutes or so when he was small. but they had never seen the original one, the best one. we had it on vhs, but it got lost in one of our house moves. i was devastated naturally, because along with beauty and the beast and aladdin, it's up there with my favorite disney movies of all time. if you haven't already, i suggest you go watch it on the big screen before it stops showing. it's a guaranteed good movie in a time when a lot of what is being shown is just mindless crap that makes billions of dollars anyway.

while i was watching the movie, listening to baby simba talk, all i could think about was where did jonathan taylor thomas disappear to? he was my first celebrity crush - well, him and aladdin, but he was my first non-animated one - and i definitely wasn't the only one. i remember him taking off time from acting to go to college or something, good role model as he is (it was the biggest news of my elementary class), and then he came back and did a few guest spots on shows that he would probably be starring in if he didn't leave, and then he fell off the face of the planet. where did he go?

**UPDATE**: shortly after posting this, i did a quick google search and found this, an interview with him from the home improvement reunion (which i didn't know about?) about a week ago. apparently he's been "going to school, and traveling quite a bit, getting to read a lot of books [he's] wanted to for quite some time." basically a very me-sanctioned way to spend his time out of the spotlight. twenty three year old me approves of eight year old's me choice in crushes. eight year old me feels validated.

i'm going to go find my slap bracelets now and continue reliving my childhood.

*Where'd You Go - Fort Minor