There's nothing in the rules that says I can't be a wizard.
So my birthday (almost two weeks ago now, sorry I've been slacking on the updates) went well. I went out to a coffee shop on Main Street with a couple friends from APO and drank fruit smoothies and listened to the open mic singers. My library friends made me a card and then Lani and I spent an hour looking up horrifying doll commercials and pictures of Barbie houses we used to have. That Friday night my family went out to dinner at 54th Street Bar & Grill, which is always delicious, and we bought two tubes of cookie dough at the grocery store and mushed them together and baked our own cookie cake. Tim bought me a bar of handmade soap and a little stuffed monster toy, and made me a fake newspaper with the headline "World's Greatest Sister Turns 21!" On Saturday I went out with my friend Annie and her boyfriend to get pumpkin concretes at Fritz' frozen custard, and then to Target to buy nail polish. Afterwards I went over to Sam's. We were supposed to go to Fast Eddie's, a 21+ restaurant I've always wanted to go to, but it was insanely crowded. She ended up taking me to Red Lobster instead, which was fine by me. Cheddar bay biscuits and coconut shrimp! We killed time in Slackers, then her godfather picked us up and we went by the grocery store and bought a cheesecake. And I got some birthday cards in the mail this week, a cute one with birds from Flossie and a fantastic Team Rocket drawing from Liz.
My dad bought me a Blu-Ray player, which I'd been wanting so I could build up a nice collection of Blu-Ray sets of animated films. He didn't buy me any actual Blu-Rays, though, just the player and the HDMI cords, so I have to save up for those myself. I want to start with the Toy Story trilogy, and grab the Diamond Editions of The Lion King and Beauty & The Beast before those go back in the Disney Vault. I thought I would keep my Blu-Ray player in my dorm room, since it has a hi-def TV, but I couldn't get it to connect to the internet, which means no Netflix. So I took it back home, connected it to the big living room TV with the AV cables instead of HDMI because the TV is old, so it lost the good quality, but at least I would have Netflix. Except that Netflix runs very slow for some reason, it took me 15 minutes to load a 44 minute episode of Merlin, and then another 10 minutes of buffering in the middle. My laptop runs the internet, Netflix included, fairly well in that room, so I'm not sure why the Blu-Ray player is so slow.
School's been going well. We're learning about the life cycle of stars in Astronomy, which is more complex than what we've covered before, but it's still interesting. Our last project in Graphic Design was to create a t-shirt for the school's Founder's Day, which I was iffy about at first because the "rocking it out" theme sounded so corny to me, but I ended up liking my design. We just finished Chekhov in Modern Drama and now we're starting A Streetcar Named Desire, which I already watched the movie for in my drama-writing class last year. The next project for Video Production is to make a music video. We watched some good examples from previous semesters, including ones from back in 2002 when the students had to edit videotape, and it seems like the professor is really open and casual about what your video has to be, so that's nice. Cinema Arts class has had some fun projects too, we just had to write a scene analysis on anything we wanted. I did the opening long-shot from Serenity.
I went to my first real haunted house last week! Jessy took me to Creepyworld, the biggest one around here. There were like eight different areas (including a hayride ans a Saw-themed section in 3D) and it only cost $20, so it was a pretty good deal. Every area was full of details, and the actors were all fantastic. There were lots of surprises and some of the settings and props were rather gruesome, but it wasn't really scary. I had a lot of fun, actually, I went through the whole thing giggling and going WOW and GOLLY and trying to be friendly to all the cast members. And then I went to another haunted house this week with some friends from APO, a little place called Night of the Living Morgue that just started up in some small town about half an hour away. That one was really cool too, even though it was a lot smaller and didn't have as big of a budget. There were more actors than rubber dummies, and there were large parts of it where you were in a completely dark area, groping around to try and find the path out, which was a neat experience.
I babysat my nephew over the weekend. Well, not really babysat, he is 12. We watched The Addams Family and Monster Squad and made mini pumpkin pies. On Sunday I went to Torrid to use my $10 off birthday coupon, and there was an in-store promotion for 25% off, so I got two pairs of jeans for $80, which is really good for me. I only had three pairs of jeans that really fit well, all the other ones were too big. I bought my first pair of skinny jeans (the tag says they're jeggings, but I really can't tell the difference - are they stretchier?) and I'm liking them a lot more than I thought I would.
My dad bought me a Blu-Ray player, which I'd been wanting so I could build up a nice collection of Blu-Ray sets of animated films. He didn't buy me any actual Blu-Rays, though, just the player and the HDMI cords, so I have to save up for those myself. I want to start with the Toy Story trilogy, and grab the Diamond Editions of The Lion King and Beauty & The Beast before those go back in the Disney Vault. I thought I would keep my Blu-Ray player in my dorm room, since it has a hi-def TV, but I couldn't get it to connect to the internet, which means no Netflix. So I took it back home, connected it to the big living room TV with the AV cables instead of HDMI because the TV is old, so it lost the good quality, but at least I would have Netflix. Except that Netflix runs very slow for some reason, it took me 15 minutes to load a 44 minute episode of Merlin, and then another 10 minutes of buffering in the middle. My laptop runs the internet, Netflix included, fairly well in that room, so I'm not sure why the Blu-Ray player is so slow.
School's been going well. We're learning about the life cycle of stars in Astronomy, which is more complex than what we've covered before, but it's still interesting. Our last project in Graphic Design was to create a t-shirt for the school's Founder's Day, which I was iffy about at first because the "rocking it out" theme sounded so corny to me, but I ended up liking my design. We just finished Chekhov in Modern Drama and now we're starting A Streetcar Named Desire, which I already watched the movie for in my drama-writing class last year. The next project for Video Production is to make a music video. We watched some good examples from previous semesters, including ones from back in 2002 when the students had to edit videotape, and it seems like the professor is really open and casual about what your video has to be, so that's nice. Cinema Arts class has had some fun projects too, we just had to write a scene analysis on anything we wanted. I did the opening long-shot from Serenity.
I went to my first real haunted house last week! Jessy took me to Creepyworld, the biggest one around here. There were like eight different areas (including a hayride ans a Saw-themed section in 3D) and it only cost $20, so it was a pretty good deal. Every area was full of details, and the actors were all fantastic. There were lots of surprises and some of the settings and props were rather gruesome, but it wasn't really scary. I had a lot of fun, actually, I went through the whole thing giggling and going WOW and GOLLY and trying to be friendly to all the cast members. And then I went to another haunted house this week with some friends from APO, a little place called Night of the Living Morgue that just started up in some small town about half an hour away. That one was really cool too, even though it was a lot smaller and didn't have as big of a budget. There were more actors than rubber dummies, and there were large parts of it where you were in a completely dark area, groping around to try and find the path out, which was a neat experience.
I babysat my nephew over the weekend. Well, not really babysat, he is 12. We watched The Addams Family and Monster Squad and made mini pumpkin pies. On Sunday I went to Torrid to use my $10 off birthday coupon, and there was an in-store promotion for 25% off, so I got two pairs of jeans for $80, which is really good for me. I only had three pairs of jeans that really fit well, all the other ones were too big. I bought my first pair of skinny jeans (the tag says they're jeggings, but I really can't tell the difference - are they stretchier?) and I'm liking them a lot more than I thought I would.