It's September Already? Wow.

Hello again, everyone, it's been a while! Life's been keeping me busy--mostly battling off one infection after another, it's ridiculous--but I hope to start blogging more regularly again now. If I were back in Hawaii now, this would be my second week of my Junior year; as it is, I am keeping the brain cells busy by writing, dancing, studying for my driver's license, and, of course--reading!

Sadly, I have STILL not managed to snag any new reading material. An entire summer without one trip to the library--I just might explode with the frustration. As a result I STILL have no Book of the Month feature to regale you with. I will, however, list for you all the books that I have been reading. I've read them before, which is why they don't count for my list of new books read this year, but they were good enough for me to read them again--some for the second time, some for the umpteenth time--so perhaps you'd be interested to have a list of titles:

• The Shield Ring, by Rosemary Sutcliff
• The Amulet of Samarkand, by Jonathan Stroud
• The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, by Terry Pratchett
• Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman
• The Pearls of Lutra, by Brian Jacques
• The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho
• Watership Down, by Richard Adams
• The Book of Three, by Lloyd Alexander
• The Last Unicorn, by Peter S. Beagle

So, as you can tell, I've been re-reading a lot, and mostly lighter books too. Perhaps that is what comes from being around kids 24/7 now; I lapse back into enjoying books written for young adults and children instead of centuries-old literature. This is in no way a bad thing, as all the above books are among my favorite books ever (or at least most of them are) and settled snugly on my shelf next to my Iliad and War and Peace and Moby Dick, but it's still interesting. I go through 'reverting back to obsessing over childhood favorites' phases at time. I guess this is one of those times.

Dance is going well, but I'm trying to figure out a design for my new competition dress; mine is about 4 years old now, and in a competitive arena where dresses go out of style in mere months . . . yep, I'm wearing a relic. My family and I always design and sew my own dresses instead of shelling out a fortune on designer dresses like most other people do, so my dress has lasted longer than most, but it does look old now. Sigh. I've also promised my little brother that I'll dress up as Toothless the Dragon for Halloween so he can ride on my shoulders as Hiccup, so I have that to figure out too!

(Absolutely not-relevant side note here: I'm currently watching Star Wars on my computer as I type this, and just realized that one of Vader's officers is the same actor who played that American rocket captain in "Tomb of the Cybermen"! The one with the annoying fake accent who kept calling Victoria 'Vic'! This just made my day.)

I've been writing a lot, and even though it's pretty hard considering I've got a spot of writer's block, this means my novel is coming along now almost despite itself, haha. Yesterday I baked banana bread; my six year old sister was disappointed initially, but now says she loves it, especially with cream cheese. My little four year old brother however loves banana bread, and basically was asking me if he could eat it every five minutes after it came out of the oven until it was cooled enough to be cut. I do like baking! And making soups, too. I really want to make this lentil soup from a recipe I found recently; I like lentils almost as much as I like baking :)

That's enough rambling from me from now, so I leave you now only with a promise that I'll try to post more regularly and interestingly this month. Oh, and I've been drawing and doodling a lot, so I'll start posting those too.

And I'm 19 1/2 today. I should have made a cake or something, haha. Does this mean I get a wish half-fulfilled today? Hm.

Sun In My Eyes

My littlest sister--she's two--just came over to me where I'm sitting on the floor of my bedroom working on a story. She took my face in her hands and very gently and solemnly turned me to face her. Then, with a very sweet look of concentration on her face, she told me "Here, take the sun--" and very carefully mimed putting something into both of my eyes. And with a satisfied smile, she walked away.

This is part of the reason why I love spending time with my littlest siblings--their imaginations are so strong and boundless and joyous, they can come up with a beautiful idea like placing pieces of the sun into people's eyes. What a powerful notion, and one I know I could never have thought of on my own. Just like the time my four-year-old brother wished me goodnight and then added 'I will go find sweet dreams for you!" I have a little sister who puts the sun into my eyes, and a little brother who spends his dreamtime collecting sweet child-dreams to give to me, since I am now too old, alas, to find any of my own. I am so very fortunate to be their older sister.

Inception - 12. Time

Such good music in this film . . . I really want the score now. Augh. I have these two tracks playing in my head constantly, haha. Not a bad thing, I suppose, but I want this music on my iPod so I can play it constantly throughout my day ;)

INCEPTION

I finally got to watch it yesterday! And I love it. I had high hopes, but was as unspoilered as I could manage, and the film both surprised me at times and met and even exceeded those expectations. I didn't find it confusing, since the pacing was excellent and the levels of the story seemed pretty clear-cut to me. It was just a captivating mind puzzle and adventure and (in the tradition of "The Prestige") pulled the very mind trick of its title upon the viewer by the end. I don't often say this, but--I want to watch it again!

I don't want to say any more about it, because then I'd end up spoilering, since I'd start gushing. But it's my favorite movie of the year, along with "How to Train Your Dragon" and "Toy Story 3".

A quick note about my 'Book of the Month' feature: Due to a really busy dance schedule and my eye infection last month, I didn't actually get to finish any new books. I did however get my dad to read "Til We Have Faces" for the first time, so I suppose that can be July's official book on my blog, although I won't be posting a review of it since I've read it many times before. But I'm already reading plenty this month, so hopefully I'll be able to make up for July's dearth in August.

MORE Videos (And Links)!

Ain't you all just the luckiest blog-readers in the world? Hehe.

I'll get the link out of the way first. This is a really awesome reimagining of the "Fringe" theme music played on piano. It's about 6 minutes long, and available for download (for a price), but listening to it on the website is absolutely free. Go to the following link:

http://torley.com/the-fringe-equation-new-piano-performance-of-that-theme

To have a listen and a download if you like it. As a person who wishes she could play the piano but aside from teaching herself 'Scarborough Fair' has no gift with the instrument whatsoever, I really enjoyed it.

I also found a remix of the "Fringe" theme that was pretty good, if a bit long:



This vid makes me sad every time I watch it, the editing's great. Spoilers if you haven't watched "Supernatural", though.


A pretty cool "Primeval" fanvid set to a song by one of my favorite bands on the planet ("Poets of the Fall", if you were wondering ^_^):

Man, I miss Nick Cutter. Still looking forward to when the show returns, though.

And lastly, one of my favorite songs after watching "500 Days of Summer":


In other news: My eye finally started getting better today! I am almost pain-free for the first time in over a week! Which might account for my excessive vid-posting tonight. I'll wake up tomorrow and wonder what I was thinking as I posted this, probably. Definitely one of my more random posts.

I finished making a birthday card for my second brother yesterday, and it turned out really well! I'm excited to give it to him, because it's a bit of a prank card, hehehe. I'll post photographs of the card later; it'd need a full post to explain itself, I think. Cheers, all!