birthday resolutions.

Remember when I told y'all last year about how I make resolutions every year on my birthday (instead of New Years')? Well, that whole picture-a-day thing only lasted about 100 days. I'd like to say I'm trying it again this year, but who are we kidding? I've already missed the first (and only) two days. So, this is my 20 year resolution instead. Whatcha think? :)


(Obviously, inspired by the "Keep Calm and Carry On" posters.)

MIA

My brain has been kind of MIA the past few days. I feel very... out of it. Constantly. As a result, I have gotten almost nothing done. And midterms start next week! AHHH!

But, I have been chipping away at that good ol' 101 in 1001 list, and I figure since it's been roughly a month since I posted it, I'll let you see how it's going. :)

• The whole not cursing for a year thing? Gave up. I'll start again in a little while when I'm not feeling so angry and resentful and MIA all at the same time.
• I'm reading Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov right now! This book is intense and disturbing, but good. Read it. Also, it's on the list of 50 banned books, which is #25 :)
  
• #23 -- Lead a Bible Study. Roomie and I are. It starts tomorrow. I'm pretty excited.
  
• On the 22nd, I'm (hopefully) driving up to Lubbock to go see Techie. :) I'm pretty excited about it.
• I made Puppy Chow last week! It was delicious. :) And this week, I'm trying out making cookie brownie bars. I'll let you know how that one goes. That's 1 of the 20 new recipes I'm supposed to be trying. :)
• Also, do y'all remember when I said I'm going to take a picture every day for a year? Well, I'm doing really well! There have been days when I've forgotten and such, but I'm making up for it by taking really good pictures on days when I don't remember to. One of these days, I'll post some highlights. The picture in today's post is definitely today's picture of the day. :)

Really, I'm 19?

Birthdays are so lame now. I don't feel even kind of different than I did on Sunday when I was still 18. Oh well.

Despite what I just said about birthdays, go wish my good friend Kevin a happy birthday! He's twenty now and feels just like me -- no different than he did yesterday, haha.

So far, I've been doing well with the photo-a-day thing. On the 14th, I took one with the ever-wonderful Cyndi (whose really artsy shoes you should go check out, by the way) at a local coffee shop that we frequent (and where I'm sitting to write this). Look, you can see the bangs that I cut myself and that my mom almost killed me for! Later, we went to the midnight release of Harry Potter together -- we're HP nerds and proud! I think we both agree on the movie pretty well -- it's one of the best done ones (though I still think the first was the best) and they really made good use of light moments to offset an otherwise incredibly dark movie. My only complaint would be that the movie is called Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince and a central part of the book was trying to find out who the Half Blood Prince was, yet in the movie only a few moments were dedicated to trying to figure it out. At the end, when the identity of the Prince is revealed I was actually like "Oh, right, that's what this movie is about." But it was good. And my picture for the 15th was actually a picture of something we saw at the movie theatre (it would have been of the movie tickets, but they weren't very cute). That "for humans only" theme went throughout the whole theatre -- on bathrooms, on the doors into the actual rooms with screens. It was pretty funny. You can't tell in the picture, but the bottom of the signs says "Call this number to report any non-humans!" It was pretty great.

Other than that -- life has been okay. I got really really sick yesterday so all my evening plans had to be cancelled (but don't worry, I still took my picture!). But it gave me time to rest and I'm back on my feet today! But I should sign off so I can go teach a private swimming lesson.

Have a great day everyone! Have y'all seen Harry Potter yet? If not, go see it!

Happy New Year

So, I'm kind of quirky, and instead of doing those New Year Resolutions on January 1, I do them on my birthday every year. I do this because I figure, hey, it's a new year for me, you know? So, this year, my 19th year, I've made my resolution -- take a picture everyday. It doesn't have to be of me, or of nature, or of anything in particular, it just has to be a picture of something that was a part of my day. To the left is today's picture of my birthday presents -- Rosetta Stone for Mandarin Chinese and a bottle of Chance by Chanel. Love them! My parents are so wonderful. I wish I'd gotten to take a picture of the wonderful cake my boss and coworkers surprised me with (it said "Happy Birthday, Valorie! Go Aggies ([I guess]!" He's not an Aggie, haha), but people started digging in way before I got the chance to grab a picture. But it was really sweet of them to do. :) I probably won't post my daily picture every day, but I'll post thes one I really like.

Anyways, the only other thing I'm really thinking about tonight is how badly I want to see 500 Days of Summer! It looks like *the* cutest movie of the summer. Hooray for the Sundance Film Festival! But yeah, hopefully I'll be able to see that when it releases on Friday.

Do y'all have any quirky things you do like me setting resolutions for my birthday?