A Bedtime Story

Ah, love them. Too funny. And since I am just now heading off to bed myself, I figured it was a fitting time to share this video. Sweet dreams, everyone!

(What's sad is that, judging by the state of America today, I fully expect this to become a reality within a couple of generations . . .)

Redgauntlet is a lovely book, by the way ;D

Half-awake Nonsense

I should not be awake yet. Not judging by the amount of sleep I snatched last night. But now that I am awake, I dare not go to sleep again, for fear of missing when I need to take my medicine. Bah.

I fill the dull intervals with blogging. And, hopefully, writing on more creative topics as well. My two Faerytales are still coming along, and I really do want to get my novel more organized and further along this summer. I had wanted to do some art too, but I do not know now if I shall . . . I find there are so many things I want to do, I scarcely know where to begin! I have promised my youngest brother a batch of cookies, so I'll have to do that sometime. I found a recipe for white chocolate macadamia nut pineapple cookies online, that sounds interesting and tasty, doesn't it?

Right now I am lying curled up on my top bunk of the bed I share with two of my sisters, and I have a pillow under my feet for no real reason that I can think of. It is strange, after sleeping on an air mattress at my grandmother's apartment all semester, to sleep so close to the ceiling. Some childish part of me is absurdly pleased with the fact and enjoys stretching up a hand to touch the ceiling just because it can; the more mature, grown-up part curses inwardly every time I wake up in the morning, forget the ceiling is right there, and crack my head against it. I could extend this into a philosophical ramble, but I am too sleepy to seriously contemplate it long enough, so I just leave the issue to your very capable pondering. I only wish to add that it certainly illustrates the fact that there are two very different ways to look at everything.

As to my illness, as some of you already know, it now looks as though surgery will not be needed, but that extensive antibiotic treatment will continue for some time. Still, most of the swelling and essentially all of the pain is gone now, which is an immense relief. Thank you, Lord. It looks like the Irish Dance National Championships are on the table again, although considering that due to exams and ill health I have not dance in about three weeks, I am not as optimistic about my chances of placing as I could be. However, I shall devote myself to working hard all summer until competition, and will just be grateful for the health that allows me to dance at all.

I have two hats and a set of fairy wings hanging from my bedpost, as well as a large collection of medals. The hats fit me; the wings do not. I bought the wings for my sister back in the days when she wanted to be a fairy princess. Now, I believe, she wants to be a teacher. She's eight years old and starting to grow up.

On a completely unrelated note, I believe the ending of Devdas is among the best endings of any film ever. 

On another completely unrelated note, I'm thinking of trying to cook some soup today, if my back will be able to handle me standing and walking to and fro in the kitchen for a couple hours.

. . . Sorry, I'm just getting randomer and randomer.

See, this is why I shouldn't post as soon as I wake up in the morning. My head is still too full of dreams for coherence. I'll try to post something sensical later to make up for this, okay?

Kal Ho Naa Ho

This is a great song from a great film. I never thought I'd start liking Bollywood, but now that I've given it a chance . . . it's catching :)

And this film helped make today bearable. Sorry I haven't posted anything in quite a while now, but my life has taken an unexpected change for the worse, thanks to a really nasty infection that may (though I pray not) require surgery and has kept me in excruciating pain for almost a week. So. Anyway. Have a good Memorial Day, y'all!

I'm Home!

Summed up in the title, pretty much. I am really, really tired, as I had only about two hours of sleep last night and slept not on the plane. I got a lot of writing done, but not as much as I might otherwise have: Slumdog Millionaire was showing on the plane, so I watched that instead. I still got about three hours of writing in, though. 

And now I'm home. The kids are all very happy to see me, which is gratifying, and my room is rather a mess. It's dispiriting, as I just finished cleaning my room in Hawaii, but I'll just buckle down and clean up here too. It's like an alternate reality.

Tomorrow, however, is definitely a sleeping-in and not doing much of anything productive sort of day, huzzah! I haven't had one of those in a looooong time.

Farewell, sweet earth and . . . Pacific sky?

Freshman year is over, everyone! I'm going home!

This time tomorrow I will be . . . let me think . . . well, it'll be a different time, a different place, a different everything. I do get a little melancholy thinking about it, oddly enough, but at the same time I am so delighted to be going home to my family. I'll be able to spend the next three months doing nothing but reading, writing, art, dancing, cooking, sewing, going on walks with little children, being crazy with my crazy siblings, watching Star Trek again with my dad and maybe my mom and maybe my brother (heh heh), chatting late at night with my parents while doing the dishes and things . . . ah, bliss. 

I will think of Hawaii fondly, though. The place really is beautiful; it's a whole different world. There's this huge sense of community in Hawaii that the mainland really doesn't have; a feeling of cultural unity that is a little intimidating even as it's admirable. I have learned a lot here: about the classroom environment, about getting things done on time, about bus travel, about cockroach mafia, about how Waikiki isn't an island (oops), about myself. I will definitely miss the libraries here, and Zippy's, and the small scale of everything which makes it so easy to move around independently without a car. I wouldn't say that I'll be looking forward to coming back--home and family are too dear to me for that--but I will say that once I'm back, I won't be sad to be back.

As it is, my summer plans are filling my mind with glee at the moment. The only set work I really need to do is exercise; I'm going to be on a heavy exercise schedule for the National Irish Dance Championships in July. Ah, I get to dance again! I am looking forward to it A LOT right now, but I probably won't be feeling so enthused when I actually am in the classroom . . . I predict a lot of pain for the first couple classes, and then I'll get back into the swing of things and it will be okay.

Today I finished the last of my exams, a ridiculously long but boring English exam. I mean, two essays? Two? To be written--along with other things--in two hours? Yuck! My fingers were cramped by the time I finished, and I very nearly nodded off during my second essay. I guess I need to handwrite more. But assigned essay topics, on books I'm not particularly fond of *coughJaneEyrecough* always put me to sleep anyway. I think I did a good job; I guess I'll just have to wait and find out if the professor agrees with me. I don't know that he will; his grading is really messed up. But he's the professor who wasted about eight classes just showing us random Youtube videos, so I'm not really valuing his opinion very highly anyway. And I hope he doesn't read this blog . . . or if he does, that he doesn't realize I'm talking about him until after the exams are graded. *Looks around nervously*

Tomorrow I leave for the airport extremely early. Six o'clock, I believe, but the plane actually leaves at 8-something. I should be actually able to watch the 'wrinkled seas' doing their 'crawl'ing, but I'm not sure yet if the thought pleases or terrifies me. (If you know what I'm quoting, you get a cookie.) Oh, and get this, Linden: Next Saturday they'll be showing Inkheart on the plane! Why couldn't they have shown it this weekend, huh? Instead, they're showing some lame-sounding movie. But I guess it's just as well, because then it'll be easier to ignore. Y'see, I hope to get a lot of writing done on the plane--a lot of writing. Most specifically, The Three Sons of Cwendor writing, but hopefully some novel too. That's going to be my focus. If it doesn't get done, well, that'll be because I fell asleep, because I'm amazingly exhausted at the moment. 

And still not quite packed. Oops.

I guess I'll write more later. Next time you hear from me, I'll be back home, probably sprawled on the floor of my room or sitting at my beautiful desk, next to my enormous bookshelf, with the dragon kite swinging above me and a baby on my lap. I'm even looking forward to seeing Lathspell again! If that ain't homesickness, I don't know what is ;)

Farewell for now, and good night! 

(PS- I hope all you fellow Tolkien fans forgive the butchering of Beren's song. It's bad. I know.)

Sonnet 130 As You'll Never Hear It Again

I think this might only work--really work--if you 

1) Watch Doctor Who

2) Understand British/Scottish accents

3) Like British humor

But hey. Even if you don't fulfill all the above criteria, give it a go. Doctor Who outside of his Doctor Who universe, a cute Scottish accent, Catherine Tate, and Shakespeare, all in the same six minutes. What more can you ask for in a comedy sketch, really?

PS-I actually posted two videos in a row instead of posting about going to watch Star Trek yesterday, what's up with that?? I guess it's the Final Exams, I got no time to actually type anything. Maybe next week!

Prettyful

This is the most beautiful skating I have seen since I found that Michelle Kwan 'Fields of Gold' performance. Absolutely lovely . . . 

Monday of Finals Week

After studying obsessively all of Thursday, all of Friday, and all of Saturday, my brain gave up on me. I guess it just had enough and abandoned ship, because I suddenly came back to my senses late Sunday night and realized that I had just spent the last five or six hours watching Doctor Who and Star Trek episodes. Six hours of quirky science fiction . . . my brain must have really needed that catharsis. 

As to the exams themselves, I have now completed two--my Russian test (could have been worse) and my first English class' exam (a six-page essay I just sort of frantically scribbled during the allotted time. Thank goodness I'm fairly good at frantic scribbling. It was like an SAT flashback). Now all I have to worry about is my last English exam (piece of cake!), History exam (no problem!) and Economics exam (. . . help?). 

And about preventing any further science fiction binges from sabotaging my studying further.

Speaking of which, I plan to go watch the Star Trek movie tomorrow . . .

Rogue!

http://www.play.vg/games/87-Rogue.html

SO. MUCH. FUN.

Yes, this is how I spend my time when I am suffering from a miserable cold. Playing old text adventure games, drinking tea, eating soup and saimin, and reading Tolkien books. And pretending that final exams are NOT speedily approaching. Oh, and post more blog posts in one day than I did in the entire month of April.

Hm, I don't know if I ever mentioned that I love text adventure games before?

Finite (Almost)

School officially ended today. After a limbo of final exams next week, I'm free! Home is just around the corner!

http://americanchestertonsociety.blogspot.com/2007/10/dr-thursdays-thursday-post.html

And I found this very interesting, entertaining, and well-written.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go blow my nose and cut up more lemons . . .

Mission Accomplished

Soooo . . . after breezing through the world's easiest final exam this morning, I realized that instead of finishing school at my usual time of 2:45, I was actually free to go at 11:30 in the morning due to some professors getting lazy at the end of the semester and canceling class on this last week of instruction. It's only three days long, as we get Thursday and Friday off, so I guess they figure, What's the point? Me, I'm not complaining.

But anyway, I found myself with waaay more free time than I've seen in many moons. And so I decided to do something with it. And bethought myself of the newest Tolkien book being published posthumously, The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrin. And decided that I would use this heaven-sent freedom to go on a quest to find and purchase the book.

Now, as some of you know, I can't yet drive; sure I'm old enough, but I just haven't gotten around to getting my license yet (I've been hindered my more important things, like writing fiction and doing homework and dance). Luckily for me, Hawaii has an extremely good bus system set up--so good, it's pompously named TheBus--and I had some money in my pocket, along with my omnipresent Barnes and Noble gift card.

My grandma took time out of her lunch break to ride the bus with me to the book store; I guess she thought that I might somehow miss the whopping big shopping center and get off at the wrong stop. That sarcasm is only partly intended, because stranger things have happened with me and navigating, believe you me. But the trip went off without incident, I vanished into the book store, and Gma went in a different direction, to grab something to eat before catching the return bus back to the school, I think.

Now, for someone who spends a vast majority of her life in bookshops, I have an incredibly bad sense of direction once in them, and tend to invariably miss whatever book it is that I am searching for. Remember that Inkdeath post? Yeah, I've since done similar things with Heroes of the Valley and Broken Spears since then. So I entered the store only with this vague idea that hey, it's a Tolkien book, surely there'll be a big 'n' bold display filled with Sigurds and Gudrins right at the entrance, waiting to greet me.

Well, there wasn't. I'm still a little steamed about that.

So then I thought, well, I'll find the 'New Releases' section, then. And after much searching, I did find it, only after perusing its contents with some dismay, I realized that it was 'New Teen Releases', which explained all the, erm, silly titles and indecent cover illustrations, to put it mildly.

After more tracking, I found more and more 'New Releases' sections, but none were what I wanted. Who knew that the category of 'New Releases' was so varied? New Teen, New Romance, New Non-fiction, New Biography (which is Non-fiction, but I'll let it pass. On the plus side, I found a book about the Wonderfulness of Obama which was on the Fiction shelf--Well, okay, it must have been a mistake, but it still made me rather cheerful).

In some desperation, I decided that I would just find the Tolkien section instead. Make things easier on myself. So I set off to find his books . . .

In the 'Fiction and Literature' section of the store. Where, incidentally, they were not. I'm a little steamed about that too, but really I should have known better.

So I finally found the Professor in the 'Fantasy/Sci Fi' section. And lo and behold, there was ONE copy of The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrin there, sandwiched between The Hobbit and The Tolkien Reader. I snapped it up. And wandered around the store for another hour or more, exploring, before finally heading to the cashier's counter.

Incidentally, as I did, I walked right past the 'New Fiction' section (found it!), and saw that there was an entire shelf full of shiny Legends, plain as day. Ugh. Well, mine was prettier.

Once made lawful owner of the book, I went back to the bus stop to catch the bus which would take me to my apartment. Or, well, part-way there; I needed to remember where to get off to transfer buses. It took about forty minutes for my first bus to arrive, just as I was deciding that it was a phantom bus and didn't exist. I managed to get off at the right stop, and remembered that I needed to cross the road to get to the stop where I would wait for bus number two. As I set off on my walk to the nearest crosswalk (which was admirably far away), I noticed the bus I needed to catch trundling happily past me on the other side of the street, soon lost from view. 

Well, darn.

So I ended up having to wait for fifteen minutes or so for my bus. It was broiling hot, but fortunately I had a nearly finished bottle of water with me in my bag. I drank what little remained and tossed the bottle in the trash bin, and yes, I do admit that the 'Frodo and Sam finish all the water' scene from "The Return of the King" did come to mind, haha. Well, it was hot.

The bus eventually did come, however, and it did stop, and so I was taken home at last. And now I'm putting a can of soup in the microwave and chugging cold water (did I mention it's four-thirty and all I've had to eat today is a yogurt at seven-thirty this morning?), feeling a little drained and wobbly, but very happy. Quest complete. Mission accomplished.

*Cough Cough*

So . . . I woke up this morning after a scant thirty minutes of sleep to the horrible realization that I have a cold. This just isn't fair. I suppose staying up all night studying so battered and abused my antibodies that they abandoned their posts, allowing the evil germs to win their way past the walls. Rally to me, little microbe soldiers, and drive the illness away! I do not want to be sick when I get on the plane to go home, especially with this Swine Flu panic that's going around.

I'm trying to find the bright side of getting sick right at this moment, which is a hard task, but marginally more entertaining than feeling sorry for myself. And by 'bright side' I mean other than the imagining-a-full-blown-epic-war-being-fought-for-my-health part. Though I have to admit that is entertaining. It always has been, ever since I caught the stomach flu when I was seven and spent a few days cheering myself up by naming my white blood cells and imagining their heroic knightly deeds as they desperately fought the nefarious black-magic wielding germs to make me well again. Heh heh. Of course this isn't a sign that I have ego problems!

However, it's nice to find pluses on reality's turf as well. So, I've been thinking, trying to find any.

Well, when I have a cold, I can use said cold as an excuse to eat soup and drink hot tea and read The Lord of the Rings. Sounds good. The only issue with this plan is that I currently  have final exams threatening me from the shadowy precipice of Next Week, where they skulk in preparation for an evil ambush. So, unfortunately, long Tolkien novels are *sniffle*, with a huge effort of will, to be put aside for the moment. If I'm going to be sitting around with tea and soup, the only books I can read for the next week are school books. And I can't have my tea and soup in bed, because air mattresses are too unstable for spillable foods. And the weather just took a turn for the better recently, so the apartment where I live is currently far too stifling and baking to make tea and soup a comfortable meal.

All right, so there are problems here. One should know what one is up against before formulating a plan. In order to find the plus side, I must find out what is in my way between getting some enjoyment from my cold and sniffles.

1) Final exams

2) The weather

3) The imminent plane flight

4) Homework

. . . .

. . . . Oh well. Who says reality is necessary to cheer oneself up? I'm going to retreat into my fantasy world now and watch my white knights whup the evil black-mailed germ army. 

The Hunt For Gollum

If you love The Lord of the Rings--watch this film. And I will not make plain which LotR I mean, because, fortunate peoples, it does not much matter. If you love how the films were made: the cinematography, the soundtrack, the visuals--You will be delighted. If you love Tolkien's books enough to read the Appendices and know the story of how Aragorn hunted Gollum and brought him to Mirkwood--You will be delighted. It's a win-win situation. I spent my happiest forty minutes in quite a while this morning watching this non-profit, 3000 pound film. It is, quite simply, brilliantly done for such a tight budget and a crew and cast entirely of volunteers.

Don't believe me yet? Watch this.

Power to the fans!!

The film is available for viewing here as well as on the film's official website, www.thehuntforgollum.com. Added perks on the website include wallpapers, screenshots, and soundtrack downloads.