Weekend Whoop!

First of all, Happy Easter everyone! To those of you who celebrated, I hope you had a great day with family/friends/whoever, to those that didn't, I hope you had a wonderful Sunday doing whatever. :)

Thursday: I used my morning off to write the Change in Direction blog post that has people all a flutter. Check it out to get a new link to a new blog. After class, I drove home for a wonderful three-day weekend with the family and friends. That night, Mr. Man surprised me with tickets to the midnight premiere of Clash of the Titans, which was pretty awesome. Whoooop! Check it out!

Friday: I spent the whole morning running errands, among them finally finally finally getting around to quitting Mary Kay like I said I would months ago. Whoooop! I went and got snocones with a few friends that afternoon, which was fun. They hated me for taking pictures though.

It was really really sunny out so some of the pictures came out totally washed out-looking. Sad.Gotta love funny faces pictures. :) Whoooop!

That night, I hung out with Mr. Man and two of our close friends from high school, one of which is in Aggieland with me and the other of which escaped off to California like I hope to someday do. We made a late night IHOP run, which seems to be becoming a habit for me. :)

Saturday: Had lunch and went shopping with my friend Sydney, yes, the one that's engaged. It was great seeing her. Mr. Man took me out to a fancy dinner that night, which was really awesome. That boy makes me laugh so much. Whoooop! After that he had to go do something, so the two girls from the previous picture and I had a girl's night. We saw The Last Song, which was good but made me feel kind of stabby. Not because I disliked it, but because I'm been writing a story super similar to it and now I have to scrap it. Tssssss. But it is good, so go see it. :) We made an IHOP run that night too and became the best table ever, because we had a crapton of Easter candy with us and were giving it out to the waiters. Yes, Easter pinatas were involved. Whoooop!

Sunday: Easter! My family and friends had a big brunch together, then at noon I left to go hang out with Mr. Man for a last hour before I had to leave. :( He's still in the market for a new car, so we went and walked around a few car lots and chatted a bit. It was nice to get some relaxed alone time. Whoooop! I then drove back to Aggieland, and somehow got stupidlost on my way, which makes about zero sense since I make this drive at least twice a month. I have no idea how I managed it. Tsssss. There's also some drama going down tonight, which is not. fun. Bigger tsssssss.

Don't forget, you should TOTALLY participate, Aggie or not. Whoooop! is for awesome things that happened, while tssss is for lame things that t-sips do. :) Leave a comment with a link to your blog post if you do.

How was your weekend?

HEY, Etsy owners! Feel like hosting a giveaway for my blog-oversary celebration? Click here!

Weekend Whoop!

I'm thinking about making the Weekend Whoop! a weekly tradition. A way to bring a little bit of Aggieland to the blog. What do y'all think?

Whoooop! = RED ASS AWESOME EVENTS.
Tsssss = Lame events that sound like things t-sips would do.
Feel free to join in, Aggie or not! :)

So, this weekend started a little early for me -- Thursday. But not for a good reason. :( I was super stinkin' sick and couldn't even get out of bed for class on Friday. Tsssssss. But, the ever awesome Mr. Man came in to town on Friday and nursed me back to health so that by Saturday I was ready to LIVE again. Whoooop!

On Saturday Mr. Man and I went out and grabbed lunch and saw the movie The Wolfman, which is pretty darn good. Check it out. It wasn't quite what I was expecting, but there's a pretty good twist in it. Mr. Man and I always compete to see who can call the ending of a movie first, and I'm ashamed to say he called it first this time, but there's always next time. Challenge: Can YOU call the twist? That night, we went to a birthday party for a friend, where we ate pizza and sang karaoke. Yup, #80 done! Whoooop! We went out dancing after that and had a bunch of fun. Every time I don't go dancing for more than a week, I forget how much I enjoy myself when I do go out, so I'm glad I went. I'm getting pretty decent at country-western dancing too! It's exciting! Whoooop!

Sunday, well, it was Valentine's, and while I normally moan and groan about how stupid that holiday is, I had better things to say this year. :) Whoooop!

How were y'all's weekends?

(img cred for the wolfman photo [the other is mine!])

Weekend Whoop!

This weekend started early for me, on Thursday. It was necessary -- school was being stupid and stressful (not that it WON'T be stressful this week, but whatever), and job applications (ie job rejections) are taking their toll, so Mr. Man and I drove up to Waco that night for dinner and a movie. Dinner was all right (Fazoli's was not on their game that night), but the movie was pretty good. We saw Ninja Assassin, and let me tell you, if you're in the mood for action/gore with almost no plot and a muscular man, this is the movie for you. Also, moms, if you really think your precious son needs to take up jiu jitsu/karate and/or be obsessed with ninjas/jump around the house acting like a maniac for a few weeks, this movie is a must-see. Mr. Man for one is definitely claiming that he's going to train to be a ninja warrior now. (I think he's mostly joking.) Seeing him was the best part of that night. I knew what I was getting into with a long-distance relationship, and that we wouldn't be able to see each other every single week, but getting to see him so soon after getting together and knowing that I get to see him again on Friday, makes getting through my crazy hectic week so much easier. Whoooop!

Friday: I finished out classes, then went and saw Dear John with my roomie and a friend of ours. Wow, that movie was incredible. Whooop! The storyline was very powerful and sweet and made it so easy to see how transformational love can be on a person. Definitely see it, but be warned -- it is so not a first date movie. If your man knows you cry in movies, then you're a little safer, because even I cried, and I never cry in movies.

Saturday: I worked out, went shopping with the roomie and the same girl we saw Dear John with, studied with a friend from high school, then came home and watched American Dreamz (which has to be one of the weirdest movies I've watched to date) with those two girls and Kassie! Then we played Apples to Apples, and well, you know the rest of the story. We had a lot of fun and laughed a lot, so all was good. Whooooop!

Sunday: Church, pancakes, coffee. This needs to become a tradition. Whoop! Unfortunately, because my weekend started so early, it was over pretty early too -- I made my To-Do List for the week and it spans two columns of an 8.5X11 inch sheet of paper. It's also color-coded, I thought you other OCD people might appreciate that. :) I should probably get onto finishing it... Tssssss!

Classic Christmastime

I'm finally getting a chance to sit down and email in a post about how wonderful Christmas was. Six hour drives will do that.

We visited Dad's family as we always do, and with five kids running around funny moments are always bound to come up. Yesterday, the
youngest, Austin (10), managed to somehow get a splinter in his finger. His dad and Grandma were trying to get it out when his older
sister Grace (14) started antagonizing him. I don't remember what she said first, but I know we were all laughing at it, which Austin took as laughing at him. He lunged at her, but luckily his dad caught him before he could attack. He said, "Come here, let's look at this thing in the light." to which Austin replied, "Hold ON, I have to beat her up!" It was hysterical an a classic family moment. :)

We also saw Sherlock Holmes that night, which was good. I definitely recommend it for anyOne in the mood for some fun action and a little mystery. Plus, you really must see Rachel McAdams and Robert Downey Jr act alongside each other, it's great.

How were your Christmases? Any funny stories?

Hello, my name is Summer Finn

Someone told me they think the writers of (500) Days of Summer stalked me and based Summer Finn off of me.

[For those of you that haven't seen the movie, this post will make no sense to you. So, go see (500) Days, then come back and read this. Also, it will contain spoilers and I don't want to ruin the greatest movie of all time for you.]

See, there's a scene in the movie where McKenzie (Geoffery Arend), Summer (Zooey Deschanel), and Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) are in a bar, and McKenzie asks Summer if she has a boyfriend. She says no, she doesn't want one. A humorous moment passes as McKenzie asks if she's a lesbian until Summer explains herself -- "I like being on my own. Relationships are messy, people's feelings get hurt. We're young, we live in one of the most beautiful cities in the world, why don't we just have fun and save the serious stuff for later?" (I may have misquoted that -- it's been over a week since I saw the movie.)

Now, College Station may not be one of the most beautiful cities in the world by most standards (though I love it), but I can see where my friend was going. That first sentence, I like being on my own, was part of why Kevin and I broke up -- I'm independent and don't like committing my time to anyone or anything. I like being able to do spur-of-the-moment things without owing anyone something, and that wasn't fair to him. And the people's feelings get hurt part? Yeah, too true, and more times than not it wasn't worth it. I've been in my share of relationships, but life always got in the way. For instance, I'm going to China soon, and I'll be there a long time -- now isn't exactly a great time for me to be getting too attached to anyone. That's just how life is these days.

So maybe I am like Summer Finn. I think I'm okay with that though. For now I'm willing to just be friends and have fun, and maybe someday I can wake up and realize what I've never been sure of up until now.

I'll leave you with one last quote from Summer and Tom:

Tom: So what happened, why didn't things work out?
Summer: What always happens; life.

Inglourious Basterds

I give this movie two thumbs down. For those of you that follow me on Twitter, you probably saw my opinions of this movie at about 1 am CT this morning when it finally ended and I tried not to rip my eyes out and/or find Quinten Tarantino and punch him in the face. For those of you that don't know the plot, it's basically about a group of Jewish-American soldiers in Nazi-occupied France during WWII. They're sent over to spread fear throughout the Third Reich by brutally killing (and by their own accord, scalping) Nazis. There's also a story that eventually intertwines with theirs about a Jewish woman who escaped being massacred with her family and ends up owning a cinema that is forced to host a Nazi movie premiere (oh, sweet irony). It sounds like a decent enough plot, but having seen it, I'm finding myself asking (not for the first time) why Tarantino's so revered as a great movie-maker.

• It's not funny. At all. One of the "funnier" characters, Col. Hans Landa (played by Christoph Waltz), is simply annoying. He doesn't make any sense as a character, one moment appearing slightly homosexual, the next a womanizer, the next a ruthless murder, the next a nice man that loves good French cuisine, and the next a babbling idiot. There's no continuity to his character and his lines that are supposed to be funny simply aren't.
  
• Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) really grated on me the most, I think. He's supposed to be this American Hero from Tennessee, killing Nazis (or as he'd say nat-si's) and disturbing the order of the Third Reich. However, he comes across as a dumbass who's only interest in life is senseless killing. I understand that death is a necessary by-product of war, blah blah blah, but that doesn't mean that soldiers are bloodthirsty. Pitt's character certainly is violent and bloodthirsty, though, and it's to a point of being slightly disgusting. I mean, I can handle blood (I wanted to be a surgeon for a while) but parts of this movie that made me gag. On top of that, I was actually kind of insulted at the portrayal of American military men as all being bloodthirsty, not very intelligent, cruel, and so ethnocentric that they refuse to learn another language. His treatment of Diane Kruger's character was also less than wonderful, bordering on torturing her for something she couldn't have controlled. The only redeeming quality of this character had nothing to do with the movie -- instead, it proved once again that Brad Pitt is a great actor. If I didn't hope for better, I would be tempted to think that this movie was made entirely to show off Pitt's acting skills, and not to actually be worthwhile entertainment.
  
• Also, I'm slightly disappointed in Diane Kruger's role in this movie. She seemed an utterly pointless character, serving only as a pretty face to differentiate from the endless supply of annoying men and a big name to draw more viewers in the US. If they wanted her for that that, they could have had her play Melanie Laurent's part (though Laurent is pretty enough to play Kruger's) and had her kill two (or three) birds with one stone -- being pretty, drawing viewers, and actually moving the plot along.
• That reminds me -- this movie is painfully long. Length wouldn't be bad if it were like Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, which has an endless supply of explosions and running to keep you entertained for the 150 minutes it's playing. Inglourious Basterds though, even at a mere three minutes longer, felt hours longer because it's mostly people sitting around chatting. There's a lot of planning in this movie, which while it would have happened in real life (if this movie were remotely true to history), is incredibly boring to watch.

All this is to say -- please don't waste your money seeing it. Because I'm a student, I luckily only wasted $4, but I still wish I hadn't;I could have spent that $4 on a grande iced white chocolate mocha with soy from starbucks and read a good book for three hours (Freakonomics, Atlas Shrugged, This Child Will Be Great...), which would have been an infinitely better way to spend my time.

6:50 am

Yes, that IS what time it is as I write this. I wish I could say it's because I was somewhere east of me and my body was still mentally in that time zone, but no, it's because I had crazy nightmares and my mind forced me to wake up to escape the torture of my dreams.

Unfortunately, I'm back from San Diego. This means lots of real-world-type things like work and packing to move on August 15th; the latter sounds much more exciting. I've bought some art for the walls in my bedroom and I think I'm going to start shopping for living room art soon -- Ayla has apparently decided to leave most of the decorating up to me, which while I think is a bad idea (I will have too much fun with it) I also appreciate that she trusts me with that kind of an undertaking. :] But anyways, I'm actually leaving home this Friday afternoon and start moving in at 9 am Saturday morning. That's going to be a LONG day. But there will be pictures. Oh, lots and lots of pictures. Speaking of pictures, I uploaded the ones from San Diego, CA, so go mosey on over and look at those. They're cool. :]

Quick follow-up: In my last In The News post, I talked briefly about pro-democracy voice Aung San Suu Kyi and the whole hearing thing. Well, early this morning she was convicted of violating state security laws by allowing that American into her house after she swam there. Her sentence? 18 more months of house arrest (aka: Don't take part in the 2010 elections).

Here, to tide me over to your next post (it's possible that they'll be sporadic now that I'm moving), here's a little movie trailer that I only discovered thanks to Accidentally, Kle. Enjoy!

Reasons why your next week will be spent in movie theatres

In the past week, I've finally seen Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Harry Potter for the second time, (500) Days of Summer, The Ugly Truth, and The History Boys, which I found for $5 at Sam Goody. And I loved all of them so much, I'm giving you reasons to go see them.

Transformers 2: I got exactly what I expected out of this movie. I'll be honest, what people say about plotholes is pretty true -- I was left with a lot of questions at the end: What happened to the really annoying guy? Or the little mini Decepticon turned Autobot? Robot heaven...whaaat? Are those really that close together geographically? Etc. However, the total tomboy in me loved the plethora of giant explosions and superb animation (except at one point). The girl in me also liked seeing Shia Lebouf really prove once again that he's a great actor (as well as extremely attractive). Megan Fox was cool too -- though I did note that her right forearm never ended up on camera -- must have been to hide her ridiculous tattoo. Anyways, the movie was great, and I recommend it to everyone. It's also a great date movie. :)

Harry Potter: I've discussed this one before, but I have a few more comments on it: Tom Felton is such a wonderful actor. I knew that in every movie, but this movie kind of hit you over the head with it repeatedly. He doesn't really talk much in the movie, but just his acting alone shows you what a complicated character Draco Malfoy is. Mmm. :] <3 style="font-weight: bold;">[SPOILER ALERT] JK Rowling didn't make it totally obvious Ginny Weasley and Harry would end up together at the beginning of the series because otherwise the people that did the casting would have made sure the girl that played Ginny would have been extremely gorgeous (red-headed Megan Fox?) instead of the wonderfully adorable Bonnie Wright who I actually respect as an actress. While Bonnie is really pretty, she's perfect for it because Harry doesn't fall for Ginny because she's a supermodel, it's because she's very real. [End spoilers.] Rupert Grint is also proving that he's a great actor as well as a very interesting person, though really he started to prove his famous actor status in Prisoner of Azakaban. Anyways, though the movie leaves things out (like introducing two very important characters -- Bill and Charlie Weasley), but it's great and totally worth seeing.

(500) Days of Summer: This movie is different. As it says on the website, it's not a love story, but a story about love. Boy meets girl, boy falls in love, girl doesn't. It's about searching for "the one" and how unnervingly easy it is to be incredibly wrong about him/her. Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel give it so much life and make it quirky and refreshingly different. Everything about the movie is so different, and even knowing the plotline upfront, it was still powerful. And the music is great. I've said the least about this movie so far, but I urge you to see it the most. (I got to see it at the Angelika Theatre in Dallas, hence the picture.)

The Ugly Truth: I saw this one with Cyndi and I think we both agree that it was cute. Like Transformers, I got exactly what I expected out of it. Self-proclaimed man-whore "love is a lie" guy falls for the beautiful girl who's dreams about prince-charming were never shattered. The whole story was obvious from the previews, but we all knew we weren't going to find out what happened. Go because this movie is funny. It's a chick-flick, but it's one I could see guys going to and enjoying because it's look on falling in love is hilarious.

The History Boys: This movie is based on a play by Alan Bennett and actually came out a few years ago, but it's awesome. It's about some boys at an all-boys grammar school in England and their teachers that are preparing them for the Oxford and Cambridge entrance exams. But, of course, the movie covers their lives outside of school -- it covers every teacher's relationship to the boys and to each other and whether or not they've crossed societal boundaries in them, and it shows the boys' search for lust, excitement, and importance before they're separated and sent off to university. It's a great movie, every actor is wonderful, and I highly recommend it for your next night in. Though, if you're at all homophobic, I would suggest you watch it with the knowledge that there are homosexual overtones. It's not over-the-top or anything, but it's clear. I can see why the play won the Tony Award and the Olivier Award.

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?