Saturday, July 30, 2011

c-a-l-i

I am currently on family vacation in California, so I will be on hiatus for a little while. We went to San Diego and, consequently (and a little unfortunately) Seaworld, yesterday and have now just arrived at our quaint little beach town of Cayucos, where my friends and I spent spring break just a few months ago. It's a little different spending time here with my family, since I am a) not trashed and b) am considering going to bed at this very moment because I'm absolutely exhausted. I'll be posting pictures, comics, and stories in a few weeks.

Also I'll be turning 21 in a week tomorrow too, so look forward to probably some really embarrassing stories from that

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

yo guys, science be whack (plus summer sundries)

Here is a public service announcement:

Science is hard. And writing up my data that I gathered what seemed like ages ago in Arizona is even harder. And tearing myself away from friends, summer weather, and X-Files to write it is like torture.

But this is yet another SUMMER SUNDRIES post

Playing with a real machete and pretending that I'm Scully in Africa





Forcing my dog to wear sunglasses because it amuses me



Going to the Farmer's Market with Natalya and calling the dog "Clementina"







We also got DELICIOUS ciabatta bread and honey butter for lunch, shared a tiny and fucking delectable berry pie, and then shared a freshly squeezed lemonade that I got FO FWEE because Lysey gave me her free punch card last time we went together. So excellent. We made a list of crafts we want to do as well, inspired by the craft part of the market. So excited to start.

Finally, finally, FINALLY beating this level in Donkey Kong Country and moving up in the world. Also screaming every time we actually passed a level



Seeing THIS FUCKING SHIRT and being poised to buy it, and then having someone SNATCH THE LAST ONE AT THE LAST SECOND AND THEN WEEPING FOR HOURS. This wasn't a very happy one. BUT it leads into a happy revelation



I'M GOING TO MAKE MY OWN NERDY T-SHIRTS! Discovering how to use freezer stencils and fabric paint to make your own awesome T-shirts without the expensiveness of a screenprinting press.



Basically I'm going to make thousands of nerdy ass T-shirts (many of them X-Files themed) and then no one is going to want to be my friend, but that's okay.

The one I'm definitely going to make first is going to say "Sure. Fine. Whatever." (Scully's quote of choice from the episode with the crazy girls who kill everybody with telekinetic powers)

Going to The Decemberists concert in the park completely trashed and only remembering small fragments of time



Apparently I barked at a lot of people.

Going to Lagoon with my socially awkward 13 year old cousin, who I got revenge on for his pouring water down my back at my brother's Eagle Ceremony



Seriously though, Lagoon's so fun. Love me some roller coasters.

I've had a very full, exciting week. Now I get to pack my bags and finish up this scientific paper because I'm going to C A L I F O R N I A!!!!

Only the first three photos are mine, the rest I stole from other people.

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

my history with harry potter

I'm assuming anyone who reads this has finished all of the Harry Potter books or does not care if I reveal the plots, so just be warned that there are spoilers about the Harry Potter franchise in these anecdotes

(p.s. all pictures are from weheartit.com because I am too lazy to draw anything and all my pictures from the Harry Potter (book) years are from polaroid cameras and are packed away right now and this ain't a post about the movies son)



I was first introduced to Harry Potter in sixth grade, about two years after Sorcerer's Stone graced the bookshelves of millions. I remember I was at my elementary school book fair (god I loved book fairs) and spotted a paperback of The Sorcerer's Stone on the top shelf. I had never even heard of Harry Potter before, but both of my parents had and decided that we should get it. I never say no to a new book, so we went home with my new paperback tenderly tucked in my lap. I have nothing but corny things to say about my feelings for that book. I loved it like a newborn child. That night, my father read us the first chapter aloud. We always gathered in my brother's room to read Harry Potter together. He had a wooden bunk bed, so I would climb to the top bunk while Gabe snuggled in his covers below and my parents both sat on the floor. We had a strict one chapter a night rule, which drove me absolutely nuts but which might have had something to do with the fact that my parents always sat on the floor. Because the bunk bed was wooden, I would often chew on the edge of the barrier protecting me from falling to the floor when times got tough at Hogwarts for Harry and his crew. There were teeth marks in that banister that my mother was not happy about when she discovered them a year later. We read the entire first book chapter by chapter, discussing theories about what could be in store for us the next night. I remember one particularly awful night when we finished the chapter preluding the climax, where we would discover who it was who was trying to steal the Sorcerer's Stone.

WHO COULD IT BE????

I flipped my shit trying to convince my parents to just read the rest of the book that very night. They told me no. So instead we all gave our two cents about who we thought the figure in the room was if it wasn't Snape. My dad thought it was Bane, the angry centaur from the Forbidden Forest. I don't remember who my mom and brother thought it was, and I know for sure that I didn't get it right. When we discovered it was Quirrel we were all blown away. What? WHAT?! How did JK Rowling do that? How did she pull the fleece over our eyes so easily? We were all duly impressed.

When we were done with the book, I demanded everything Harry Potter. I was obsessed. I wanted to eat, drink, and BREATHE Harry Potter. I had a Harry Potter journal, stickers, blanket, wand, and an extra copy of the first book from when I thought I'd lost my original copy and I threatened to do something drastic if I didn't get a new one. I pretended that I was a wizard who was being kept at a muggle's household for my safety (myself disguised as her with polyjuice potion) and that the real Otter was being kept in a storm drain in a local park. I am not lying. I also created my own Harry Potter alter-ego, Daffodil Potter, who was Harry Potter's twin sister. She was, in my little mad child dream-world, the more powerful of the two and had to be super protected from Voldemort because he wanted to raise her as his own child to be his prodigy. Instead of going with Harry to the Dursleys, she was raised by Snape in a suburban household. Everyone was in love with her. I pretty much just made her into what I wanted to be: Harry Potter in female form and with all the unwanted attentions of every single male in the world. One car trip I plagiarized the entire first chapter of Sorcerer's Stone but with some added changes that included Daffodil in them and then worried that JK Rowling would find out and have me arrested.

Please don't arrest me Jo...

The second book was read in the same manner as the first, chapter by chapter. I remember begging my mom to buy it immediately as soon as I discovered it was out and then dying inside because it took her a week before she went out and got it. By the third book, I was beginning to feel incredibly antsy about the whole reading one chapter at a time thing. I asked my parents slyly where the book was after school, but they hid it from me knowing that I would read ahead if I found the book. In the end I found the book and did read ahead secretly, then suffering a re-read of the chapter that night. It was during the third book that we discovered the true pronunciation of Hermione's name, which I discovered by reading an American Girl magazine (before we pronounced it Hermiown).

The fourth book was when I started going to the midnight releases. For the fourth book I dressed up as a French spy (on accident, I wore all black plus a turtleneck and a black beret for some strange reason). Since I had gone to the midnight release, I got a headstart on reading it. And by headstart, I mean I read through the entire night and well into the next day, finally passing out at 9 PM. My parents discovered this and finally FINALLY let me read them on my own. It was at this time that I and my friends joined a Harry Potter roleplaying site. YES FRIENDS I was indeed one of those kids. I was, at this point, well past the days of plagiarizing and believing that I was actually going to go to Hogwarts, I just hadn't received my letter yet. So I decided to live in a virtual world where it was real. My character was named Norbert and was a dragon-girl hybrid (three guesses as to what kind of dragon she was).



The story was that Norbert and her pixie sister, Margot (don't ask me how that happened), were both a couple of tricksters living in the Hufflepuff house. Other people who roleplayed with us included Railyn, an elf in Ravenclaw (also not sure how that happened, though to be fair I was a dragon-hybrid creature), Kopolyn, a Slytherin, Daphne, a bitch from Slytherin, Bane, a werewolf who sort of just ran amuck, Shmendrick, Margot's and Norbert's older brother, and a bunch of actual characters from the series such as Hagrid, Malfoy, Cho Chang, etc. There was a huge, ridiculously elaborate story line that involved Norbert and Margot being spies against Voldemort's death eaters and in the end, Shmendrick and Margot were killed in the line of duty (because those people got sick of roleplaying all the time). Going back to that site and re-reading some of those posts is still a hilarious past-time.

The fifth and sixth book were both well-received at the midnight release and read within the first 48 hours upon receiving them. The day of the Deathly Hallows release is the one I remember the most clearly. My friend and I both dressed up really strangely with mismatching colors in order to be wizards hiding among muggles (we decided she looked sort of like an herbology professor because she had a plant theme going on). We went to a local book store and took pictures of ourselves in those wooden face cut-outs where it looks like you're the character. We made Harry Potter themed snacks. We watched the movies while we anticipated standing in line for hours to get the final book. That night, the line for the book went on for a mile out the Barnes and Noble doors. It wrapped around the block twice. People in line told us their theories about the book, about characters, we swapped trivia, some people threatened to read us the last lines of the book when they emerged victorious with their own copies. Somebody actually did read us the last line I remember, but since it was "All was well" it was sort of lame because I could have guessed that the ending would have been happy.



That night I didn't read Deathly Hallows, I read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Want to know why? BECAUSE I COULDN'T HANDLE IT! I DIDN'T WANT IT TO END. EVER. When I told me mom she was furious and told me that if I wasn't going to read it, she wanted to. So I started the book and fell in love. The Deathly Hallows is my very favorite one out of them all. I adore the relationships, the signs of affection, the characters, everything. The loyalty. That's what appeals to me. The epilogue was disappointing to me, but everything else was perfection in my eyes.



Harry Potter has been a major component of my childhood. Harry was my hero, and still is. Every time I had to do something that scared me, like get my teeth pulled or confront someone, I would think, "Well Harry had to go up against a Hungarian Horntail in the Triwizard Tournament, so I can handle this little bit of pain." Harry Potter helped me get through times in my life when I was depressed or homesick at camp. There was always a Harry Potter book tucked in my suitcase when I went anywhere away from home. My development of my own characters based off of Harry Potter have spawned their own children and have continued on my fantasy realm throughout childhood and into the beginning stages of adulthood. I promised myself that I would never stop being so in love with Harry Potter. The fires have cooled (so that I don't become a raging psychopath if people claim they like Harry Potter more than me, which was a common theme of my preteens), but I still get excited about it and love to read and re-read and re-read the books.

I seriously am getting slightly weepy over this. My childhood was Harry Potter. JK Rowling took an idea and made it into a culture, a culture that I was a part of.



I wanted to make this post due to the finality of it all. Harry Potter is officially over. But he lives on. IN MY HEART



Sunday, July 10, 2011

nobody puts baby in a corner



I haven't said anything for awhile, so I'll just make a list of things I've done or discovered lately (some of them are enjoyable, some of them...meh)

-iced tropical green tea
-choked down lemon-lime 4 Loko, which is the exact same color of toxic waste
-Arnold Palmers are super delicious
-Lisa and I had 80s night where we drank the aforementioned 4 Loko, made amazing melon and guava drinks, and then made some weird concoction out of club soda, limes, vodka, and mint leaves. We also watched Hot Tub Time Machine and it was hilarious.
-Great white buffalo
-Thus far this entire post has been about drinks. Also sometimes I use punctuation and sometimes I don't
-I got yelled at for not turning in a library book that wasn't my responsibility and I don't have it in my possession, so I had to learn to let go and not worry about it
-Funding opportunities for next semester are stressing me the fuck out
-But this post is not supposed to be stressful
-I went to a birthday party yesterday that involved (surprise!) more drinking with Maddie and Kristi and then I watched X-Files while drunk
-I'm now almost halfway through Season 5 of X-Files. Just two movies and four more seasons (and only two of those have my favorite character in them consistently). I don't know what I'm going to do with myself when it's all over. Either go outside or watch it again. Probably the latter.
-I've been playing in photoshop with pictures I found from several summers ago and my tablet



Smallpox beeeees!

-Coloring in my jumbo dinosaur coloring book. I created a hipster dinosaur yesterday
-When the fries at Village Inn are especially crispy
-Finding movies you really want to watch on Instant Play
-Watching Dirty Dancing for the thousandth time and still cooing over it
-Going through my X-Files picture/screenshot folder and brimming with pride



One of the more recent episodes I watched. Mulder, how I adore thee

-My bed is six feet off the floor (literally) and I know that when I go back to having a normal sized bed I'll become disoriented and confused.
-New tank tops
-The soundtrack to my life right now


Get a playlist! Standalone player Get Ringtones

Yeah there are only four songs on it. And really, the only two I TRULY listen to at all times are the first two.

Welp Dirty Dancing is over, time to get ready and actually venture out of the house.



Tomorrow I have to start writing papers. SCIENTIFIC papers. Ugh.

Monday, July 4, 2011

summer sundries

Looking fierce as hell in pictures



(let's just pretend that all of my pictures look like this, and that I wasn't completely un-photogenic for the rest of the wedding)

Well okay, I will show you one gem of a picture.



WHAT AM I DOING??? I photo-bombed all of their cake shots like this. Unintentionally. Amazing.

Going to Bird World (a local pet store) and playing with baby cockatoos











I look drugged in half of these because I was drugged with love for these adorable little bebes. They are in the ballpark of 2K each though, so when I asked how I could make that much money Natal said I should sell my eggs. I just might.

Touching moments between Scully and Mulder in X-Files



This scene killed me. KILLED ME. I have said this before and I will say it again, I FUCKING LOVE THE X-FILES! Good God.

Wading in water in any way, shape, or form



Library Square, which is where the Arts Festival is held, is covered in fountains that I love to frolic in. I also love pools, puddles, lakes, oceans, and reservoirs. Not picky, will be magnetically drawn to the water in any scenario. This was, unfortunately, the high point of the Arts Festival.



I forgot to add rivers to my list. I also love rivers.

Drinking iced tea from my hand-painted mug



Ya'll are going to have to imagine what my mug looks like since I'm too lazy to actually take a picture of it right now (aka too drunk because it's the 4th of July!)

Late night Village Inn runs with Maddie



Their grown-up grilled cheese makes me want to sing.

Honorable mentions:
-swallowing liters of pool water because I am physically unable to close my mouth due to extreme happiness
-my blue fairy lights that cast alienrific lighting (CUE X-FILES THEME MUSIC)
-X-Files all day every day <3
-having people side with me when they know the other person in the argument is in the wrong
-snow cones