Curse & Compliment

me when I'm angry with you:

me when I'm happy with you:

May you never step on a lego

Things That Keep Me Up At Night: Famous People Edition

Famous people and twitter, to be exact.

We all probably know a crazy fangirl personally or at least have heard of them. A couple of my friends in high school were absolutely obsessed with boy bands COUGH one direction COUGH, which is absolutely fine. I happen to enjoy math and nerdy things and sports, they happen to love a band. But it went so far that they even had twitter accounts whose sole purposes were just to talk about the dudes in the band and make speculations about every aspect of their life and to defend them against anyone who would dare say something bad about them.

This is where I stop understanding the logic. Their main goal in life was to be followed by Niall or Harry or whomever because it was a thing that happened. These boys followed thousands of people and a lot of them were just fan accounts. What celebrity would want their twitter timeline to be absolutely filled with random people only EVER talking about said celebrity? I don't think anyone would want to check twitter and just see updates about themselves.

Obviously it's really nice of the famous person to follow their fans and pretty much make their entire life so, if I were one of these famous people, I'd have a secret account where I could follow whoever I wanted in peace and check that timeline instead. I'd still tweet from the verified one and reply to people via that one but there'd be the secret side one.

I wonder if any celebrities do that? What do you guys think? Or am I the first person ever to have this idea (I think not)

Things That Keep Me Up All Night: Catching Fire Edition

This is super trivial but I guess that's just how my brain works.

As you know, I saw Catching Fire a couple weeks ago. But seeing it reminded me of something I had wondered after reading the book. Namely, what were the remaining sections of the clock arena??

According to the Hunger Games wiki, the known sections were: lightning storm, blood rain, poisonous fog, monkey mutts, jabberjays, beast, giant wave, insects. That leaves 4 mystery sections.

More were mentioned in the book than in the movie but we still don't know the full 12 and will most likely never know. And it is completely unimportant to everything but some little part of me really wants to know what the gamemaker would have put.

What do you guys think? What things would have been horrendous enough to be included in the clock arena?

While we're on this topic, I need to get something else off my chest. I never fully understood how the arena could be controlled so well from so far away. How in the world do you control a poisonous gas so that it doesn't infiltrate another sector? And how do you make it dissipate so quickly. I get that it's a futuristic society but some sort of logic would be helpful. For example, the blood rain could come from sprinklers set into the trees. The monkeys have been mutated and could have hardware programming when to go bananas if you'll pardon my pun.

Homestretch

It's the final countdown...

There are only 2 more days until school is over and then I'll only have exams to worry about, hallelujah! I can see the finish line coming ahead and am pretty much functioning on adrenaline and pure will power right now. I still have about 4 more assignments and a paper to whip out before I can fully immerse myself in cramming the whole semester back into my head.

But I can't complain because my sister who's still in high school still has two more months of this semester and will probably be stressing about her summatives during the break while I get to go school supplies shopping!! Can you believe I actually filled up my notebook with notes? (What else would I fill it with, notes?) But it had almost 400 pages in it and practically all of them are covered in my semi-comprehensible scrawl.

I'm kind of scared for exams, three hours of sitting down and writing while being stressed out is not my cup of tea, especially because I can't stay still for that long. They only exams in high school that even got close to the three hour mark were my grade 11 and 12 physics ones and I was literally dancing in my seat trying to finish up. And what even is checking over your answers; that never happened. (that semicolon usage thanks to my technical report writing class. I did learn some useful things there apparently.) BUT that is not the attitude I'm going into them with, no sirree I love sitting and solving math problems it's what I live for.

Kind of embarrassed to say this so imma shove this paragraph in between the others and hope you non-existent readers don't notice it. I'm really going to miss my engineering mechanics discussion group because for one it was a really small class so I didn't feel overwhelmed and could actually ask questions and then secondly my TA was certifiably hot and that is a thing that I will miss.

Weird to think that more than half of my new friends will be leaving for a while once exams finish since they're all from "Toronto" and by "Toronto" I mean a tiny town that is anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour and a half away from Toronto. I'm not used to everyone not being from Ottawa. Oh well, that means I'm obligated to hang out with fewer people over the holidays and can spend the time not working insane holiday hours destressing and doing pointless things like knitting mittens.

Sorry about this mind dump, I don't post very much personal stuff here so let me know if this is a good thing or if you just want my book reviews and list posts and things like that.

me sprinting away once school is over

Reactions

As you all may or may not know, I am a girl in mechanical engineering. I'm not making myself to be special or superior to any other person in any other program but it's just a fact of life that you don't see that every day.

When you meet people, you obviously have to go through the small talk of school and what program you're studying. It's inevitable. I think asking people what book they're currently reading is a much more interesting form of small talk. I am going to make that a thing. But of course, when I tell people what I'm studying, I get THE BEST reactions. They're usually extreme and there's always the typical ones but I've gotten some pretty atypical ones. Since I get a kick out of them, I figured you dudes might too and this is what the rest of this post entails.

1. Wide eyes. This is usually when they're trying to mask the fact that they had a reaction altogether and go on to regular answer like "Oh, are you liking it?" and "Are you living in residence?"

2. "I'm so glad there are people like you..." This comes from people who can't believe anyone would want to continue doing math voluntarily. They kind of make a joke where they're thankful that "people like me" exist because if it were up to them to do what I will be doing once
I graduate the world would start crumbling in on itself.

3. Genuine questions. There are people who know a few things about the classes I'm taking and ask how I'm finding them and all that. I like giving them feedback.

4. The future-thinkers. These are the same people that always asked what you were going to major in back when you were in high school. Now that you've got that pretty much cemented in, they move on to the next big milestone: your career. You are asked what you plan to do with your degree and where you'd like to live and basically all the questions that make you want to go back to kindergarten where everything was safe and certain.

It's always the creepy old people too

5. BOYS. WINK. This reaction is by far the creepiest and kind of the most insulting. This is where they point out that engineering is mostly filled with people with XY chromosomes. They ask for ratios of girls to guys in your classes, and, inevitably, talk about how easy it will be for me to find a boyfriend. Like whoa, who has time for a love life when you're taking these kinds of classes. That is definitely not my number one priority.

6. Doom predictors. These people know of other people who also decided that they could handle becoming an engineer but ended up doing really badly or dropping out or switching to a different program and on the outside I'm all like cool story bro but on the inside I freak out because it's not like I was a child prodigy or anything I've had to work hard and what if it's not enough and my entire life falls to pieces before my eyes.

Your turn! Tell me about the funniest or most insulting or best reactions to whatever you're doing with your life!

The Fire Has Caught

My thoughts are incoherent now.

I just spent two and a half hours in the theatre absolutely glued to that massive screen literally watching the contents of the second Hunger Games book play out. Yes, I have just finished watching Catching Fire.

There was so little deviation from the actual thing, I couldn't believe it. I must admit, I haven't read the book in a couple years and went into that cinema not really remembering the actual plot line at all. BUT I remembered as the movie progressed and man was it accurate. There may have been some things that were missed or changed and someone somewhere on the internet has probably pointed them out but they were not stupifyingly obvious so I'd cut the movie some slack.

So since it was exactly the book in movie picture format, we don't have to worry about the plot. Plot was amazing, and it still ended with a crazy cliffhanger so all the people who hadn't read the book in the theatre were all in shock about that. Guess what book's sales are going to suddenly skyrocket??

Finally, I really fell in love with the characters, all over again with the repeats and for the first time with the newcomers. Peeta and Gale man, both so selfless. And the character development that happened with Effie was phenomenal! She's beginning to realize how screwed up the system actually is. And I felt so much for all the victors that were reaped for the second time. They did not deserve that to happen to them. Johanna and Beetee were my favourites. They were just so cool to get to know, y'know?

I really needed to get all this out of my head and into words so that I could go back to enjoying regular life. It almost seems unfair that the world is still going and there isn't a mandatory recuperation time where there are no responsibilities to worry about after watching Catching Fire. That should definitely be a thing. 

Hey! A song from the Hunger Games soundtrack just started playing on my laptop! That's fitting.

Let me know if you already have or are planning on seeing Catching Fire and say what you think in the comments!

Sneak Peek

I have zero time to write but I'm still bursting with ideas aka the worst state of being to be in.

SO I have decided to give you a look into what's to come. Not saying that they'll be like in the coming week or even the coming month but that they're there and when I have some spare time that I don't use towards watching How I Met Your Mother, I'll be working on them! They're pretty great ideas, if I do say so myself.

Here you go.

Halloween A Few Days Late

I totally forgot to tell you guys about my halloween costume this year!

I had the brilliant brainwave a few months back to be Rapunzel for halloween since I've got the hair and eyes so might as well. I had started to piece together my costume, long purple skirt paired with a medieval-looking purple shirt, flowers for my hair and was in the process of looking for a Pascal BUT THEN I saw that I was scheduled to work that night so all my plans fell apart.

(Yes, I know I'm 18, but that doesn't mean I can't go trick or treating. I was going to go with my friend and we were going to be the first Disney princess, Snow White, and the last! You may know tell me that is an amazing idea.)

hippie me

So I settled for wearing a flower headband and being a hippie since work has a uniform that purple skirts somehow doesn't comply with.

My coworkers dressed up as well. Highlight of my night was the dude who ironically dressed up as a cat.

Poll Results: Fandoms

This poll was courtesy of spending the majority of my life on Tumblr. Fandoms run rampant over there and this was a way to see which type of people peruse my blog.

6 people voted which is not too shabby for my restart up of this blog! But obviously no one is part of only one fandom thus the option to pick as many options as you needed.

No surprise to me that Harry Potter won. It kind of reinforces the fact that everyone is in the Harry Potter fandom, whether you've only watched the movies or have your very own time turner. Harry Potter will always be around.

That got pretty philosophical.

As for the rest, I picked fandoms that were pretty popular so I think it's more interesting to look at the ones that didn't get votes. Hannibal is a fairly new fandom so that's understandable, Avengers seem less obsessive than most so maybe its fans don't spend their time on some nobody's blog to vote on a poll. Supernatural is kind of surprising since it usually goes hand in hand with Sherlock and Doctor Who which both have three votes each. Oh well, maybe they were crying somewhere.

Oh, you want to know my fandoms? Okay! I'm a fan of all the books listed here, Hunger Games, Harry Potter and John Green are all amazing reads. And then there's Sherlock which I became addicted to as soon as I first watched it. Smart move on my part because I totally love waiting and waiting and waiting for any news or new episodes.

Polls are bimonthly now, if y'all didn't notice so November and December's topic is: what's your favourite fruit? Why do I want to pry into your soul with this very revealing question? I am eating grapes at the moment.

Go forth and vote! Tell your friends! Tell your grandma! (But seriously, if you do that, tell me and I will give you infinite respect)

My Plea From The Dark

I watched a movie today.

(irrelevant but it was City of Bones. Let me know if you want a review cause that it a thing I can do!)

Besides making comments about the casting, singing songs that would have been super relevant to the scene and giggling at the puns made, my friend and I noticed a thing. And that thing was that it was really hard to see what was going in.

I kid you not, 1/3 of the screen was, in general, quite dark at any given moment. Yes, I understand that they're in a pre-electricity era mansion and that every single fight scene must be done in the dark and/or while it's raining but do you really have to make it so realistic that it is hardly possibly to tell that the protagonist's hair colour is red, let alone what she's up to?

At first we thought it could be the angle that we were viewing it from thus came the moving around the room and standing on the couch to try and get a better perspective. Which, in retrospect, would have been funny to walk into. It was kind of like Sherlock in The Blind Banker. And in that moment, we were Sherlock. (Can you tell that it is past midnight and I just ate a handful of those mini m&m's?)

well that was quite the tangent

Our efforts were futile and we were subjected to finishing the movie squinting at the screen and having to ask each other what just happened every 46 seconds.

To end this, I know that all the famous movie lighting directors follow my blog religiously so I'm talking to you guys. PLEASE make movies have better lighting. You can make it blue light to make everything seem all dark and depressing but please just give the viewers something to work with and let everything in the shot be visible. We came for a story, not to be awed by the realism of "it's pretty much exactly what it would look like if I was in a cave!"

Thanks.

Book Juggling

Imagine that literally?

In this case, I'm talking about being in the middle of reading multiple books at a time. This is a thing that I do. My average is 3 books at a time.

Why exactly I do this is because I have different moods for what I'm reading. Sometimes I just really want to breeze through a mindless chick lit novel while other times I am so down for complicated subplots and dragons. There are even times when the main character of a book will just be annoying me too much and I will set that book down and pick up another because there is never a shortage of books in my house.

Another reason that just popped into my head is convenience. I am the kind of person that will just start a new book if the one I was reading at the time was in my room and I was on the couch. This way, I can just leave a book in all my reading locations and not have to wonder where I set it down last. You could come into my house and find a book on the kitchen table, beside my bed, on the floor near the couch, in my backpack and even sometimes in the bathroom.

It almost feels weird to only have one book on the go but that rarely happens anyway. There's nothing worse than not knowing what to do with yourself once you've finished a book so being in the middle of two other stories makes the brain shift that much easier. Just as long as no characters have the same name, it's quite simple to keep everything straight in my head.

Question: what are your book reading habits? Are you a big book juggler? Do you have any weird reading locations? Please share in the comments!

Capslock Dilemma

I've done quite a bit of typing in my time as a human being. I've gained the power to type at the speed of light, have discovered all the shortcuts and have felt the pain of attempting French accents on an English keyboard.It's all good: the letters, the formatting, the keyboard. BUT there is one thing that has irked me since the dawn of time.

This thing is that you cannot highlight a portion of text then press a button and either capitalize all of it or uncapitalize all of it. This would be extremely helpful if you had capslock on by accident and didn't notice your mistake until after you had typed a lot already. In this scenario, you'd have to erase everything you wrote, triple check that capslock is indeed turned off them rewrite it all. Now wouldn't it just be super convenient if you could transform it into something else just like you can bold a passage or italicize a phrase.

Seriously, it has always killed me that this is a thing even though it can totally be fixed.

Books I'm Annoyed At Myself For Not Reading The Second They Came Out

This list is bigger than it should be. What usually happens is I'm super pumped for the book but the release date is in like 6 months and since I don't want to go through the emotional trauma of actually thinking about the book and its non-releasedness, I just shove it to the back of my mind and forget about it.

Of course, me being me, I go ahead and forget about the very existence of the book (unless it is constantly shoved in my face and reminders pop up everywhere AHEM John Green books) and it enters the world without me noticing. Suddenly reviews and people raving about it pop up and I'm late to the party. I have to order it at the library and then wait for it to come and then add it to my To Be Read pile and then I can finally join the club of "I have read this book and can now form an opinion about it".

Currently on this list:
Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell
Like why did I not just sit inside a bookstore with this book until I finished it on its release day not caring about the looks the workers give me?? Tumblr is obsessed with it and I am obsessed with Rainbow's books so it would make sense but not I'm just sitting here in confusion while the internet goes on about a Cath and a Simon Snow?

Clockwork Princess by Cassandra Clare
This I'll admit I have just been lazy. I'm not too obsessed with The Infernal Devices books but still, it's the last book in the trilogy. Is it that hard to pick it up, power through the 500 pages and finally get an ending? And then I can make a judgement on whether the ending was too vague and non-conclusionary or completely perfect and two thumbs up. (I'm a major critic of endings. They must be just right or I will be grouchy. Maybe I should delve into that in a later post.)


Inheritance by Christopher Paolini
Again with the endings thing. This is the last book in an intense series so why don't I just read it? It's literally been out for years so the library line can't be that long but I still cannot manage to make myself do it. This one has a common sense reason: it's too long. Yes, I am funny capable of reading something of that length but do I want to expend the effort it will take to read it? Do I want to get stuck in the rut where I've read more than 300 pages yet I'm still not halfway done the book? Or worse, do I want to get sucked into the book and disregard the rest of my life just so I can devour it? The answer is no. My brain is rationalizing all these thoughts and it really doesn't want to go through all the effort and I don't blame. What I'm thinking is that when I have zero responsibilities aka once this semester is over, I will jump into this book. For sure.

I Hunt Killers by Barry Lyga
I literally know nothing about this book except that it's semi popular and it sounds like it would be Dexterish which is a thing that I like. But even though it really intrigues me, I haven't picked it up mainly because I don't know what do expect. Most books I read have been read by many other people that I know and there is usually a general consensus of what to expect from the book. Maybe I haven't done enough research but this book really isn't popping up on my radar enough for me to get the gist of what is going to go down in it. I will read it some day because I would be so upset with myself if I didn't discover a major good book in my own without just sheeping it out and reading the latest bestsellers only. (Example of this happening was Graceling by Kristin Cashore which was one of the best decisions I ever made so doing it again with this book would not make me sad at all.)

If you want to know more about me and my relationship with books, check me out on Goodreads and Booklikes!

New-niversity

I am so pleased with that punny title. Let's all take a moment to appreciate it.

*appreciation*

A thing has happened in my life. I thought it would be a scary thing, but it's not as bad as I imagined. I might even like it!

Frosh Week: Couch Carry (I'm the blonde girl on the right)

My life as a first year mechanical engineering student started four weeks ago and so far it was been going great. I participated in frosh week and got to do weird things, met friends and even made it on the local news! I don't know how it is wherever you are but here, the engineers are crazy and slightly full of themselves. Our frosh leaders painted their entire bodies purple since purple is our unofficial colour throughout many universities and we got to do weird activities such as a picture scavenger hunt with a couch.

This whole experience is exponentially different than high school! For one, I have 5 classes per semester (0 electives though, engineering is that kind of course.), not 4, and they happen sporadically throughout the week with 2 hour and a half lectures plus an optional but super helpful at times discussion and then a three hour lab on top of that for some courses. Making my schedule almost made me cry. Seriously, it was so hard to fit everything in and not have like five hour gaps or super early or late classes. But I managed to have an average of three classes per day, which is a crazy amount, especially compared to literally all my friends who are in some kind of arts program (communications, psych, history, etc.) and complain about their one day with three classes.

Woah, tangent. Anywho, other differences are not having set hours for class. For example, I managed to get most of my classes to start at 11:30am which lets me sleep in to a wonderful time and also get things done in the morning hours. And then there's the thing of my place of education NOT being under 10 minutes away anymore. I used to literally roll out of bed half an hour before class started and get there on time but now I have to check the bus schedules and plan my life around that. The bus takes about half an hour to get to university which isn't actually that bad compared to other people that live at home as well.

Speaking as a shy person, I was immensely pleased with myself for how many friends I made! I think it helped that nobody knew each other; the pre-made cliques were non-existent. Still, I was a little worried since I wasn't living in residence that I wouldn't make any friends but I managed to prove myself wrong. You end up talking to the people around you in your classes, usually just about the teacher and stuff, but then you walk out of class together and realize you have a break together and suddenly you're always sitting together and have each others' numbers and bang: friendship. And before you ask, those phone numbers are pretty much all girl numbers. Just because there's way less girls in engineering doesn't mean that I'm suddenly a hot commodity.

So this concludes my happy post. I'm sure everything isn't going to be this easy going for my full five years but I really don't mind it being this nice right from the beginning.

Jokes On You

Q. What's brown and sticky?
A. A stick.

_______


Q. What's square, green and as flat as a pancake?
A. A square, green pancake.

In The Presence Of Presents

My mom likes to do this thing where, if I'm with her while she buys a present for me, she will keep that present hidden until she thinks I've forgotten all about it and then can surprise me at the next present-giving occasion.

The thing is, I don't usually forget. I'm just waiting for it to happen. But sometimes, my mother will keep it hidden past like 3 to 4 gift-giving occasions. And I'm stuck with the dilemma of wanting to remind her and not wanting to because she'll keep it tucked away for even longer.

Right now there is a DVD of Fantastic Mr. Fox (which I've never seen but it is one of my favourite Roald Dahl books so I really want to see it.) somewhere in my house and it has been there for at least a year and I'm dying.

Literally My Favourite Joke

this is a shih tzu not appreciating my joke

A man walks into a zoo. The only animal in the entire zoo is a dog. It's a shih tzu.

Reasons It's Good To Have A Messy Room

Instead of cleaning my room, like I should be doing, I have decided to use my time to make a post about why it's actually a good thing to have a messy* room. Makes sense. Maybe this is my teenage rebellion. Never really had one of those so I guess I'm due.

*Now, by "messy" I mean clothes a little all over the place and an unmade bed and random paper everywhere. I don't mean anything gross like food and garbage everywhere and all that extreme stuff.

1. It's a time saver. If you have to put every single thing away, all the time, it takes up your time to do that. To make sure your floor is completely spotless, your bed is made and everything in its place is a lot of effort that you can spend doing other things. (Yes, I know there are arguments on the other side of this one but we're just going to ignore them because that is not the point I am trying to make.)

2. Natural parkour course. You may laugh but it's true! Coming home and trying to get into your bed but having to avoid piles of papers and a random box you have out is no easy feat. There is a lot of jumping and balance required. This is not only fun but also improves agility and foot-eye coordination.

3. It's more "you". Seriously, you don't want your room to look like it just came out of an IKEA magazine. By having your collection of paint samples or all the make up you use on a regular basis out in the open, you give your room personality and make it your own.

4. Improves memory. It's like having all your contacts saved on your phone. Do you actually know your best friend's number or do you just know what button to press on your cellular device? That's the same with having a spot for certain things in your room. You won't even think, you don't even have to turn on your brain to find whatever you're looking for. Now if it's just ~somewhere~ you'll have to recall where you last saw it or what you were doing while you had it to discover its location. A great workout for the mind!

Once your read all these arguments, there is no way you could go back to having a regular ol' cleaned up living space, it's inconceivable!

(EDITOR'S NOTE: You don't even know how much I died laughing alone in my room while writing this. If I could have a job that involved thinking up plausible reasons for dumb things, I would die happy and so pleased with myself.)

HP Fandom Emerges

The Harry Potter fandom. They are basically just like Fawkes the phoenix. The last book came out July 2007. The last movie came out July 2011. Everyone thought the Potterheads were done for since no new material was being made. Sure, there were musicals and puppets and references to turning 11 and not getting their acceptance letter still floating around but it wasn't the same. It was the same as being dead. But no, thanks to some wonderful news, the Harry Potter world lives on. They have risen from the ashes and are at full power once again.

What could this wonderful news be? JK Rowling is taking a stab at screenwriting and making Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them into a movie. It follows the life of Newt Scamander and his quest to gain more knowledge about all the magical creatures in the wizarding world. It is set in the 1920s New York so the setting and cast will be brain new (With the exception of perhaps the oldest such as Dumbledore!) but the magic and world will be familiar still.

Another beautiful thing that many people pounced on was the fact that JK mentioned that it would be the first in a series. We're not sure if it's all about this particular book mentioned in the Harry Potter series or if maybe all the other books, such as Quidditch Through the Ages and Hogwarts: A History, are going to get their share of the screen as well.

This is amazing news that no one saw coming but that everyone is ecstatic for because, let's face it, who isn't a fan of Harry Potter?

Guess Who's Back

(back again)

me abandoning ship

Hello all! You've probably thought I abandoned ship by now. I know I thought I did. Life got too hectic with graduating from high school and working all summer at camp to keep up with a blog. Although I'm kind of sad about that, I was doing okayish!

Now that I've started university, I kind of want to document my life again maybe with shorter posts that happen more often that are mainly me rambling. I thought about starting a whole new blog for that but what's the point since I've already made this one and people (like 4) actually know about it.

So this is me getting back on track, the monthly poll will get updated again, you will get to read my super interesting thoughts and get updates on my life. How's that sound? Perhaps I'll play around with my theme and get all weirded out whenever I look at my blog until I've gotten used to the newness because change is good. No matter how much I hate to admit that.

I have a wackload of stories from camp this summer and have just started a new chapter (how poetic) how my life in university studying to be an engineer so you shall be hearing from me!

Thanks for putting up with me,
Karen

But What If I Like Math?

"If money wasn't an issue, what would you do with your life?"

^This is usually the opening line for people to start conversations about not being boxed in to what society wants you to do with your life, to be free and do what it is you really want to do deep down inside like paint pictures of pandas all day.

I really hate this line because it makes me feel bad about liking what I do. I'm a math and science person. I love logic and using my brain and concrete facts. Open-ended questions, like the ones you get all the time in English class, scare me. This obviously doesn't mean I am a robot. I love reading and writing and being creative quite a bit, but not enough to interest me in a whole career centered around that.

Just because I want to go into a field that does make a respectable amount of money doesn't mean that I'm selling my soul for material wealth and not actually doing what I really love. What if the thought of using formulas to solve problems actually makes me happy?

I'm not hating on anyone who's dream it is to be an artist or dancer or anything of that sort. I'm just saying that it's not for me and I feel kind of judged for it.

May The 4th Be With You

Happy Second-Best-Day-of-the-Year! (The best being my birthday, obviously. Only 4 days away!)

In case you didn't know, it's a reference to Star Wars's classic line: May the force be with you.

I have a confession to make now. I have never actually seen the movie in which they say this line. Seriously. I have only seen the first movie made (so that's the 4th in chronological order) a couple years ago when she found out I had never watched Star Wars.

But get this: I had been having whole conversations and debates with her on the subject with her many times and she never suspected a thing.

It's the same with SO MANY other things. I just haven't gotten around to watching/reading these things! But that doesn't stop me from knowing many of the inside jokes and major plot lines. It's a skill I guess.

I'm wondering if anyone else does this? They know so much about things with huge fanbases from internet jokes or casual conversation that they really don't have to see it themselves to know what they're talking about.

Poll Results: April

I'm really sad that not many people participated in this poll. Tree preferences genuinely interest me! Not to make myself sound even weirder than I already am...

Of all the two people that voted, all of them like willow trees.

Willows are on my favourite tree list, but they are in second place. But who could beat out a willow? Trembling aspens are pretty much the most awesome trees out there. When the wind blows, the cradle will not fall. Instead, all the leaves do this really cool shake-y thing and it's pretty nifty to look at. Plus the bark is white which is a thing that I like. Probably why birch trees are my third favourite.

Now, for the month of May, which happens to be the best month and also my birthday month (happy coincidence, eh?), I have decided on a poll that has to do with yet another weird thing that interests me. (I bet everyone has these weird interests, maybe not the same as mine but still very random I'm just the only one right now that's putting them out there, ok?) 

I want to know if you are right handed, left handed, cross dominant or ambidextrous. I'm betting you know three out of the four which gives you a pass but I'm also betting you want to know what the fourth is. Cross dominance is when you use each hand for different things but you can't do everything with both hands, capiche?

I'm cross dominant myself. I use my right hand to write but I do lots of sporty things with my left. It's fun!

Fun at Work

If you actually care about me and this blog at all, you'll have noticed that I haven't posted anything in about forever. I have just been super bogged down with life and school and work and the future and people in general. But I'm still alive! And I still have no time to write a whole big post so I will leave you with pictures of what I do when I'm bored at work.

Yes, they're sorted by colour

And so are these

NO ONE can resist Darth Vader in a Groovy Girls bed

Absolutely Smashing

I'm super pumped therefore I will make a blog post about it. The thing that is making me pumped is the fact that I made my school badminton team!

Badminton is one of my favourite sports because, for one, I'm actually good at it and also the fact that it is both mental and physical just rocks my socks. You have to be good at delivering the power shots and everything but you also have to play with the other person's mind like knowing their patterns and intentionally messing them up as well as just taking forever to serve to psych them out.

My official position is Senoir Girls Singles which means I get the court all to myself which is the way I like it. I'm not one for sharing the birdie with someone else. I like singles so much more than doubles because:
1) There is a lot more running around and that is one of my favourite things to do
2) You can only disappoint yourself, there's no partner to get annoyed at for missing a shot and vice versa you don't feel guilty for messing up the game for your teammate
3) You get all the glory (Only slightly kidding)
4) You can beat people by moving them around the court it doesn't have to be smash after smash to win

Of course, I am in no way saying I am The Badminton Queen. I'm good enough to make the team when only 4 people got cut and I can beat people that are better than me because I am sometimes determined enough to return every shot they make but I only play at school, not outside of it competitively like a whole whack of the people in tournaments do.

 No matter what, I love the sport (and yes it's a sport we can get into this discussion later) and would rather lose horribly every time than never be able to play again.

The tournament that counts was on April 2! I trained hard, played hard and crashed hard when I got home, of course. I didn't move on, which is what I expected but I did attain my goal, which was to win more than I lost. I won all of 3 games and only lost 2! I think that puts me up to the quarter finals which is not too bad. I sure am feeling the soreness now!

That last paragraph had a plethora of exclamation marks, but I don't really care!

Definitely me.

Poll Results: March

Totally the lamest poll to date. My question was Do You Like Polls? and obviously the only people who voted on a poll were the ones who liked them. But maybe they were just being nice. All 4 of them.

First totally unanimous answer so party hats for everyone and let's celebrate!

Right now I'm contemplating this month's poll but I don't know what direction to go towards. Should I be really random? Should I go straightforward? Why don't you comment on what you want next month's poll to me so that I can do what my "audience" wants instead of what my brain randomly decides!

As for April, it's when vegetation is starting to grow again so why not figure out what everyone's favourite tree is!

Go forth and vote!

treeeeeeeees

What I Google

Sometimes, when your twitter feed is updating too slowly and no one feels like texting you but you still need something to do while procrastinating homework there's only one thing to do. Google random things. Hands up if you do this so that I know I'm not the only one. Like please tell me because my friends aren't backing me up that it's a Normal Thing People Do.

These are my go-tos on Google Images:

Baby Animals. Who can resist the dewy eyed looks of baby hippos and sloths and tigers and...

Albino Animals. They're just beautiful and strange all in one.

Baby Albino Animals. If you can handle the overload of cute, that is.

Nebulas. Space is awesome not even a question.

Exploding Objects. Pretty nifty to look at.

With that lineup, you can guarantee that your homework will stay undone!

Feast Your Eyes (Warm Bodies Review)

It went like this: my friends and I needed to see a movie and there was hardly anything good playing in the theatres. We picked Warm Bodies even though I have an aversion to zombies since they just don't make sense. (See my rant here: Why I Hate Zombies)

I AM SO GLAD THAT HAPPENED. Seriously, I loved the movie. Sure, there were some flaws like the science was not working for me but I got over that quickly since it wasn't the point of the movie. Here are my thoughts in blurbs about the movie:

There were some hilarious parts in it. Like the entire inner monologue of the main zombie, R, at the beginning really caught my attention and made me giggle. It showed you that while he was full out zombie on the outside, on the inside he had thoughts but just couldn't communicate them.

"I'm so pale. I should get out more."

"I am lonely, I am lost. I mean I am literally lost, I have never been in this part of the airport before."

 Since we're speaking about R, why don't we just continue talking about him. I don't know how Nicholas Hoult did it but he made a zombie look hot. Props to his parents for creating this guy. At the beginning he was pretty gross, veins showing and eyes sunken in but as he became more "human" after he met Julie, they subtly started lessening the make-up and he started looking more like his incredibly attractive self.

And while he is nice to look at, I'd say he is extremely talented as well. He went for whole scenes without blinking and I have to say his zombie shuffle was very convincing. It looked kind of fun to do actually. His posture was so bad though, perfect for a zombie but horrible at the same time because it made me feel super self conscious about my own terrible posture.

The number of times I reminded myself to sit up straight...it was a lot.

For anyone who has seen it, did you notice all the Romeo and Juliet references? For anyone who hasn't, dudes zombies and Shakespeare how can this be? To be fair, it is very hidden, only made obvious to me when a balcony scene happened. But when you get the idea in your head, you start noticing all the other pieces of the puzzle and it all makes sense. It was mainly the characters that matched someone from Shakespeare's play:
R - Romeo
Julie - Juliet
M - Mercutio (Romeo's bestie)
Perry - Paris (Juliet's supposed to be husband)
Nora who wants to be a nurse - the Nurse
AND if you want to get all deep into the meaning of it, in Romeo and Juliet they both end up dead (spoiler alert) but in Warm Bodies they become alive at the end, both physically in his case and mentally in hers.

And while we're on the topic of noticing things (man am I good at segues right now) the actress who plays Julie, Teresa Palmer, looks so much like Kristin Stewart from Twilight it's insane. Just dye her hair brown and you're good to go.

Lastly but not leastly, DAT SOUNDTRACK. The music went perfectly with what was going on in each scene and really made things more memorable. I actually have some of the songs on my ipod now and when they shuffle on (pun NOT intended but still happily there get it shuffle like zombies but also shuffling your music) I can imagine the montage or whatever that went with it. Good job sound people. Pat on the back. Gold star. I just really enjoyed all the songs, ok.

All in all, this ZomRomCom was pretty sweet and pretty funny.

Say NO to Mind Reading

If you are randomly asked which super power you'd want if you could have any one, chances are that mind reading comes to mind. And who wouldn't love to know exactly what your friends thought or all the deepest darkest secrets of your coworkers. In theory, it's pretty sweet.

Now, think about what this actually means. You will be able to hear in your own head whatever is running through the minds of however many people who are within a certain radius of you. All those thoughts will be piled up on top of each other as each person's separate inner monologue takes place within your brain. And they never go quiet, do they?

Here's an example of what is literally running through my brain while I'm in the middle of typing this:

what if I have don't have anything interesting to say I mean think obviously cause it's in my brain but anyway oh snap I need to study for my math test it's in let's see today is friday because I have youth group tonight and we're doing something with toilet paper kinda interesting sounding I hope Jason is there but then the next day is saturday then sunday then monday so technically three more days and I totally forgot what happened before christmas break was that trig functions or maybe rates but we did rates with every type of function but we had to learn it at some point wait wasn't there that thing with an h that equaled zero what if it's on the exam and I can't remember how to use it

This has probably gone on long enough for you to get a glimpse of how you just literally think things non stop and they run into each and overlap and jump all over the place. And that's just the main part, there's other things like the song you have stuck in your head plus maybe a part of you that's processing what's going on around you.

I really don't think a person could stay sane with all these intimate thoughts from so many people they might not even know happening inside their head. Would you even be able to distinguish your own thoughts amidst the foreign ones?

ALL the words

Not to be the party pooper, I was just thinking of how seriously unfun that super power would be when it comes down to the finite details that no one actually thinks to think about.