Thankful

So, things in my life have been completely awesome lately. Everything is just going really well, and I’ve never been happier in my whole life. It’s a great feeling. School, work, friends, and family… it’s all-fantastic. Since the other day was thanksgiving, I thought I would say why things are so awesome and how thankful I am that they are.

First, I am so happy that I got to see my parents this week. I haven’t seen my mom since the first week of August and my dad since September. It was so great to see them. I picked them up from the airport on Saturday night, and then we went out to eat and went up to Surprise for the night. Sunday we went shopping and saw In Time and then I had my GRL banquet. Tuesday and Wednesday we were out of town. We stopped in Sedona on the way to Monument Valley. It was fun. I forgot my camera, which I was really mad about. I am just really glad they came and I cant wait to see them again in December. J I wish that they didn’t have to leave.

Wednesday, Britton arrived in AZ. So exciting!! I am very happy he’s here and I can’t wait for Elizabeth to come also!

I am officially a sister of Gamma Rho Lambda. I love it so much! I have so much fun and I love all of my brothers and sisters. I am so excited that I actually did it and I can’t wait to really get going with stuff.

It’s hard to organize my thoughts, but really and truly, I am so happy. I am so grateful that I got the chance to come back out here and get my life back on track. And all the bullshit at the beginning of this move was totally worth it because now things could not be better.

AND in LESS THAN A MONTH I get to go home for Christmas. I cannot wait. I’m going to work at Morrissey a little bit and I can’t wait to see all of them J, and I am so excited to be able to just be home and relax. I can’t believe I haven’t been home since August. Yaaay!!

Busy Doesn't Even Begin to Cover it...

         The past month of my life has been absolutely crazy. It's hard to describe the amount of work that has gone in to my days. I feel like it's all I do, and now, of course, as soon as I finally have time to write about what's been going on with me, I can't remember it all. But basically, my "pledge" process is over!! and the last little bit of it was the WORST. But I've been getting to spend a lot of time with my sisters and brothers and have been loving that part of the whole thing. <3 BITCHES AND RHOS. These past two weeks have been racked with bullshit and me, as well as most of the others, wanting to quit. But, through all of the stress I was experiencing, I did really well and I feel a lot better about the whole thing now. I got all (well, most of) my stuff done and I was actually proud of the thing we had to turn in. But that was over last night, and then it's for REAL over on Saturday when I'm a real sister. Crazy how fast this semester has flown by.

In other way, way, way exciting news. ELIZABETH AND BRITTON ARE MOVING HERE!!! Britton applied for a job here in Tempe and he got it!! Congrats to him on the job but mostly I'm excited for him and Elizabeth to be moving here. He actually comes in a couple weeks right before Thanksgiving, and Elizabeth comes in the beginning of January. I can't wait to have roommates. Carl will really appreciate them, and I won't have to be so stressed out about how busy I am. We're all growing up so fast. Now, if a couple more people would move here, including all the people from Morrissey, I won't have anything in Illinois.

Umm... what else? I sprained my ankle on Monday walking down some stairs at my friends apartment. I don't really know what happened, except that me falling was so loud that people came out of their apartments to see what the hell was going on. I didn't really think it would be that big of a deal. That night my big came over and helped me take care of Carl and take him outside, but I figured it would be better overnight. WRONG. When I woke up on Tuesday morning, my ankle was in so much pain that I crawled to the bathroom and out to the living room. Carol came and took me to the doctor. He gave me crutches (which are incredibly painful. It's hard to decide which is worse sometimes-- walking or crutching). It's getting better and better, but I had to call off work today because it's just not plausible for me to stand and walk around for eight hours. First time I've called off since I started working at Starbucks. Anyways...

School has been going okay. I just had a rough couple weeks with like a million things being due. But one a positive note, I read my screenplay pages in class and everyone said that they were really good. :). It's been harder and harder to find the motivation to go to class. I missed class on Tuesday because of my ankle and most of them on Monday because I had to finish a paper. And one yesterday because of my ankle and getting things done for my sorority stuff. Boo. I'm going to really buckle down these last couple weeks of the semester. I really need to get Geology to count so I don't have to take a science again. I signed up for classes yesterday... I didn't get all the ones I wanted, but I'm taking a class on documentaries and an ethics class and also a multimedia writing class. Should be fun, I hope.

I have just been going going going. I took today to just do nothing, but that also just stresses me out because my apartment is a mess because the dumpster is too far away to walk to on my ankle. And also I feel like every time I take a break, school just comes crashing on me. But things should calm down now since the "pledge" process is over. Yayy. And my parents come in a week from saturday. Super excited for that.

Also, I saw In Time since the last time I wrote. GO. SEE. IT.

Ahh, Real Monsters!

Went on kind of a scary movie binge this weekend. Yesterday I went to see Paranormal Activity 3, and before that I watched John Carpenter's The Thing on my computer. (NOT the one in theaters.) Both really good. I wouldn't say that The Thing was scary, but entertaining for sure. Paranormal Activity, however: terrifying. I have to say that I don't know if I have seen a more suspenseful movie in my whole life. In fact, the entire franchise is built on suspense, and I think they've cornered the market. I don't know if my muscles relaxed the entire last hour of the movie. Or if my hands came down from my face. They had this camera that was set up on an oscillating fan, so it went back in forth between two rooms. It was set at the exact speed to drive you CRAZY but not make it excessive. That was genius in my opinion. In fact, waiting for that camera to rotate to the other room was practically painful. It was so much fun to watch, I couldn't believe it was over when it was. I wanted to keep watching. I'd say the scariest part was the Bloody Mary scene. Ho. Ly. Crap. One of the best things about this one compared to the others is that it actually had some comic relief. I know the first one attempted it with the banter between the couple, but this really was funny. It made it so much better, in my opinion. I will say, that while the ending was mind-blowingly surprising, I was disappointed. I think it ended in a really weird spot (obviously setting up another one come next October, but hey, I ain't mad). And it ended so suddenly, I felt like this was the climax of the movie and it got cut short. I don't know, maybe I'm just complaining because I wanted the movie to be longer. Who knows. The funny thing about this entire franchise is that after the movie, after I thought about it... not much happened, but I was terrified the whole time. Crazy how a movie can do that.
The other movie I watched, The Thing, was pretty good, too. I first became interested in it when we watched a clip of it in my screenwriting class. Then a guy in another film class was talking about how awesome it was. He was right. It's pretty freaking awesome. When it came out, it got slammed by critics. Which I can understand, it's a stupid horror movie. Cheesy and funny in some ways, but I like those kind. I usually like either really scary horror movies, or ones that don't take themselves too seriously. That was The Thing. I feel like it was meant to have that cheese factor. I loved it. The best/ most impressive thing about the movie is that it was made before all of the CGI bullshit, and it has some pretty great effects. I'm not saying they're completely realistic like it would be in a computer, but it's damn impressive knowing that they didn't have really any computers to make the thing transform. I'm going to put a video up, but be forewarned, IT IS GRAPHIC. So, if you don't like that stuff, don't watch.

Next Semester

YAAAY! The class schedule for next semester posted today (TWO whole days earlier than it was supposed to). I don't know about anyone else, but I love making my schedule. I'm glad I went to my advisor on Monday. She helped me out a lot. I'm basically done with my core requirements for my major. yipee. So I had four classes that I could basically pick whatever I wanted. Two had to be in my major, but same thing. Anyways, these are the classes I picked:

• FMS 300- Television and Cultural Studies
• FMS 440- Los Angeles: Movies and Culture
• FMS 394- Hollywood Musicals
• WST 313- Women and Sexuality
• THP 482- Theater for Social Change

Suuuuper excited for all of them pretty much. The LA teacher really sucks, I have him right now for my Race and Gender class. It's not so much that he sucks, he is just a prick. And I've heard great things about Theater for Social Change. Very exciting. School is actually going okay. I'm not doing so hot in my Geology class, but I emailed the TA and he said that not all hope is lost. So that's good. If I pass, I will be DONE with science and all Gen Eds. And that is just the best news ever. I guess I don't feel as far behind as I probably am. So that's nice. I also started filling out my study abroad application the other day (Rome, here I come!!!). Just thought I'd share all of this with everyone while I'm waiting around for my next class to start. 

George Clooney for President?

I saw The Ides of March over the weekend. It's really good. I'm so excited. I think it's safe to say that this movie marks the beginning of Oscar Season....YAAAAAAAAY!! I love when the good movies come out, and when there is a movie you want to see coming out every weekend. I personally am very behind in the movies I want to see, as well as an ever-expanding Netflix Queue. Anyways, this movie was really fantastic. I'm not normally a fan of political thrillers (i.e Manchurian Candidate). A lot of them go over my head to begin with, and then they're just not really thrilling. Ides of March was truly suspenseful. It was interesting how suspenseful it was considering the fact that the stakes aren't really tangible. I was totally invested in the story the whole time. So much so that I was ready to bunch my ballot to make Mike Morris our next president. Seriously though, he had some great ideas...and George Clooney was a great face for the campaign. (Clooney/Gosling 2016?? Just a thought).
Okay, I don't know if I've ever given full credit to Ryan Gosling in the past, but this is me jumping on the bandwagon. He is AMAZING. And what's better: he's YOUNG. We are going to be experiencing his awesomeness for a long time coming. It's so weird that he was in The Notebook (A mediocre movie at best, in my opinion. Feel free to boo and hiss), and then he was in Lars and the Real Girl, and now he is in this mainstream, hollywood powerhouse of a movie. Not only that, he was awesome in it. Right in stride with all the veterans around him, outshining a few. He was nominated for an Oscar a few years ago, but had no chance. I seriously think he has a good chance. I know it's a little early to call it, but whatever. Rest of the cast was great. Let's face it, has George Clooney ever performed badly in a movie? I will say that the movie used just the right amount of Paul Giamatti. He's really talented and I like him, but I really can't stand to listen to him speak for very long.

50/50

Last week I saw 50/50, and I loved it!! It was way funnier than I was expecting and also not nearly as sad as I was expecting, both very good things. I loved how it wasn't some super depressing movie about cancer, as many movies featuring cancer are. One thing that bothered me throughout the movie was that he was SO unemotional about it. I am an emotion junkie of sorts, and I was kind of let down by his reaction. That being said, all of his lack of emotion made when he actually did break down even that much more heartbreaking. I thought Joseph Gordon-Levitt was perfect. His emotional range was great. Going from absolutely nothing to completely losing it-- which is what is expected of him. I also thought the movie was funny in all the right parts. It wasn't inappropriate and when the situation called for serious conversation, that's what there was. At the same time, it was extremely funny. 

The cast was absolutely amazing. Like I've already said, Joseph Gordon-Levitt was fantastic, and a great choice by the casting director. I'm excited to see him be in more movies; he's really underrated and super talented. I hope that this movie helps him get even more parts. Everyone was really good. It was good to see Angelica Houston. I can't believe how good she looks! She's got to be at least, AT LEAST, 60. Bryce Dallas Howard was good, too. Who knew she was good at playing the bitch? I will say that I'm getting a little sick of Seth Rogen playing the same person over and over again. I mean, he is hilariously funny, but I would just like to see him do something different. 

Master Procrastinator

I'm putting off working on my 3-4 page paper thats due Monday. I haven't even started it. Bad News Bears. Anyways, since I last posted, I have been extremely busy. Which is both good and bad. On Sunday, I had a sorority class/meeting and they told us all the stuff we have to do for the new member process. There is tons to do...All while working and going to school and hanging with Carl. Needless to say, it's definitely overwhelming. And on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, I was definitely feeling the pressure. Mini anxiety attack to the point of tears on Wednesday. I talked to my mom and my big, Ashley, about it, and as of right now I'm feeling better about the whole thing.

After my class on Sunday, I went to hang out with people from work. I had SUCH a great time. I can't wait to do it again. There's so much stuff I want to do and just not enough time in the day.

Lately, I've been thinking about the past couple years of my life. It might have a lot to do with my Screenwriting assignment, but whatever. I've been thinking about how sometimes, I would still like to go back to how things were. Even though it was over a year ago. And it bothers me that I still think that. I don't think about it very often, but just lately it's been creeping into my mind. Another thing that bothers me is that I. STILL. CARE. What the hell is wrong with me?? I need to stop it. Seriously. I don't know why I care because it's obviously not reciprocated. And I don't know why I care because right now, I am happier and more well adjusted than I ever have been. I am doing exactly what I want to be doing. I'm doing well in school, making my own friends and maintaining my old ones, and I got out of Bloomington. I am way better off. And I wish these feelings would just be gone for good. I'm done with them.  And I'm going to be dramatic on this one and sum this up with a lyric.

"You can take back your memories, they're no good to me"