Even if you could wish for a unicorn...

Oh Merlin. This show is way too optimistic for me. I seriously thought SOMEONE had to get killed off in the first season finale, I mean, COME ON, it's all about the balance of life and death, yadayada, either Gaius or Merlin's mom had to go... but no. Apparently I have grossly underestimated the unflagging determination of this show to end every single episode on a happy note. Good grief. But yes - one season down! One more to go! And Merlin and Arthur's relationship continues to not be any less... odd, shall we say. (Not that I am complaining...)

TODAY WAS AN AWESOME DAY. I spent the first half with Andrea, and then for the second half Andrea's boyfriend and his friend joined us, which was actually really fun and not awkward at all, so hooray. Today I:

- saw New Moon (OH MY GOD SO RIDICULOUS - I was a big fan of the color choices and visual intrigue of this movie, but everyone took effing FOREVER to say their lines, because they were being all angsty and dramatic, but that was okay, actually, because it just meant I spent extra time admiring Taylor Lautner's impeccable chest muscles, seriously, NO ONE CAN POSSIBLY BE ON TEAM EDWARD AFTER SEEING THIS MOVIE, TAYLOR LAUTNER IS TOO HOT FOR THAT)
- went to Uwajimaya's for lunch and then walked around looking at amusing Japanese stationary and books
- picked up Andrea's boyfriend and his friend from the ferry, and then went to Spagehetti Factory because they hadn't eaten yet (Andrea and I drank a lot of water and ate a lot of bread)
- drove around in absolutely terrible traffic for half an hour just to get from the waterfront to Pacific Place, because we didn't realize that the tree lighting was tonight and that this was therefore a REALLY BAD IDEA
- went to Gameworks and played DDR and racing games (Andrea and I actually kicked ass at DDR, or rather, she did, while I hung in there best I could - we actually got halfway through the difficult level until we apparently sucked too much and got kicked off)
- saw Where The Wild Things Are (because we played video games for too long and missed seeing Ninja Assassin, and so went to Wild Things instead, because I suggested it - luckily, everyone really liked it and thought it was brilliant, so... hooray!)

So yeah. Fabulous day, and now I have stuffed myself with Thanksgiving leftovers and watched a ton of Merlin and should probably head to bed, so that tomorrow I can start actually being productive, because I HAVE A LOT OF HOMEWORK and should probably have started it a while ago. Mm.

It's Thanksgiving! WOO! We've not even got to the full-out dinner yet and already I feel like I have been eating way too much. I dunno, I like Thanksgiving because we eat certain things that we get no other time of the year, and I especially like how my whole family is together for the whole day, usually with minimal shouting, but those are really the only two reasons I like it. I'm not a big fan of anything that makes me eat way more than I need to - I just don't see the point in eating something if you're not going to actually enjoy it. But I guess that's why in my family we then have leftovers practically spilling out of the fridge (and onto the porch) for about a week afterward.

Okay, I don't know why I'm being all thoughtful about this - seriously, my only intention for this post was to come up with fifty things I am thankful for, because surely I am thankful for hundreds and thousands of things and writing down fifty of them should not be terribly difficult.

Note: These are in the order that they pop into my head, not my magnitude of thankfulness. I mean, obviously I am more thankful for my family than I am for Merlin's awkward slashy sexual tension. But just in case you were wondering otherwise.

( Fifty things I am thankful for! )

And I could go on, I am sure. Anyway, I hope everyone had a great Turkey Day, if you celebrate it, and I hope you had a great normal day too, if you don't.

I GET TO SEE NEW MOON TOMORROW MORNING WITH ANDREA AND IT WILL BE SO AWESOME AND HILARIOUS I CAN'T EVEN STAND IT. Now off to watch more Merlin. YES. (I'm actually moving through this show at a terribly slow speed, it's kind of embarrassing. Alas, Christmas present making is very taxing, what can I say.)

OH MERLIN. This show is... ridiculous. AND FABULOUS. And, coincidentally, greatly improved by three glasses of red wine.

I AM SO GLAD TO BE HOME. I love my cat and Thanksgiving decorations and new books (including Vergil's poems, because I am just that much of a nerd, YES) and new music and having my parents around and the piano right outside my bedroom and MY CAT.

Okay, maybe the last glass of wine was one too many. But really - I find an intriguing irony in the fact that I have had no alcohol at all at college... and yet can have as much of it as I want whenever I come home. There's something wrong there, I feel.

Anyway, I should probably go to bed, since I maxed out on Megavideo for the next hour, and I cannot wait that long to find out just how, exactly, Merlin saves Arthur from being drowned by the Random Lady Of Magical Pretty. Oh, how I wish I had these on dvd and did not have to suffer the trials of Megavideo time limits.

YES MY ULYSSES PAPER IS DONE. Oh god I thought I would never finish that thing. One the brightside, I can definitely say that I have a new found appreciation for Joyce through writing this paper and having to read the same chapter about ten different times. Unfortunately, I sincerely doubt that I will be able to carry that appreciation beyond this one chapter. Oh well. In other news, I still want to punch Odysseus in the face. WILL I NEVER BE RID OF THAT MAN.

So, yeah - ONE MORE CLASS AND THAT IS ALL. To my dismay, this class happens to have a listening literature test of all Mozart piano sonatas... WHICH ALL SOUND THE SAME, BY THE WAY. (Or at least are impossible to distinguish merely by 10 second clips.) So I'm pretty sure I'm going to be failing that, but honestly, I could care less at this point.

Seriously, I am so glad to be done with this paper, it's kind of ridiculous. And now I'm going to go watch more Merlin because apparently I cannot get enough of this completely absurd and hilarious show.

Oh god I've gotten hooked on yet another tv show. This time it's British, though - Merlin! Holy mother of god this show is so ridiculous, AND YET SO AWESOME, I am only three episodes in and already I am deeply in love with it. Honestly, my only complaint - aside from the slight overuse of dramatic violins - is the unrelenting unintentional agonizing amount of slashity tension between Merlin and Arthur. Just... cute and adorable young wizard! Hot and badass young prince! Their relationship is full of snark and banter and trying to one-up each other and Merlin dressing Arthur and Arthur occasionally giving Merlin a smack! And Merlin is all, "He's so annoying, why do I keep saving his ass, jeez," and Arthur is all, "There's something about you, Merlin. I cannot quite put my finger on it," and that last one was indeed an actual quote, not kidding. Oh, and don't even get me started on the Dragon of Destiny that won't shut up about hearts being unable to deny that which makes them whole. (No, srsly, that's what he said.) And it's just ridiculous, because then they throw in a bit of Morgana being all, LET ME DISTRACT YOU MOMENTARILY WITH MY SEXINESS, only it doesn't really work, because even then she's all, "You're not like Merlin. He's a lover," and Arthur is all, "Yeah, maybe that's because I haven't found the right person to love," and I am just like... OH GOD STOP IT PLEASE. Gwen is cool, though, especially since I heart awesome chicks, and I think the same can be said for Morgana.

So... yeah. I love this show, weird sexual tension and cheezy plot lines and crap CGI and all. Merlin's neckerchiefs just get me all steamy, what can I say.

THANKSGIVING BREAK IS SO NEAR! If only I could bring myself to get started on my stupid Ulysses paper, but no, I choose now of all times to start a new tv show and oh god that paper will not get written until, like, 2 am tomorrow. Goddammit.

OH MY GOD NERDFIGHTER GATHERING SO MUCH MORE AWESOME THAN I COULD HAVE PREDICTED.

I don't think it had actually hit me that I was going to see Hank Green - someone I have been watching in a tiny YouTube box for probably a couple straight weeks' worth of my life now - until Alex and I were walking towards the stairs and I glanced through the window of the building's basement and immediately went, "OH MY GOD THE BACK OF HANK GREEN'S HEAD."

Yes.

I am such a nerd. AND SO PROUD OF IT.

It was unbelievably awesome seeing Hank Green in person - he is slightly less insane and random in real life, which is... kind of nice. He is still just as hilarious, though! And the story about the one time he accidentally ate rat poison was pretty amazing.

Okay, I sound alarmingly rational describing this, but seriously, IT WAS TWO AND A HALF OF THE BEST HOURS OF MY LIFE, it was all awesome songs and Hank being fantastically funny and also talking about really interesting and important things (like, the five minutes spent discussing the phenomenon of Owl City, which I found awesome for obvious reasons) and there was a guest appearance by Molly Lewis who is FANTASTIC and then I bought both of Hank's albums and Molly's album and they are all signed and my Hank ones have DFTBA written on them in giant letters and OH MY GOD SO AWESOME.

I mean... HANK GREEN. I now have pictures and videos of him ON MY CAMERA, what am I talking about, I HAVE A PICTURE WITH HIM ON MY CAMERA, I can't even deal with this.



Nerdfighters and non-Nerdfighers alike, just... DFTBA!

Last night I actually had my first proper Friday night ever since leaving high school - doing incredibly random crap with friends until 2 am rolled around and I realized that I should probably walk back to my dorm then or I would never get there at all. Most of the evening was just... talking, so that's not very exciting to describe, but the highlight was definitely when the Diversity House started playing Stay Away, Joe, which is a movie of Elvis playing a Navajo. Seriously. Every "Native American" has bright blue eyes and so much skin paint on that they are as orange as Oompa-Loompas, Elvis included. IT WAS BRILLIANT. Just, if you are ever in a bad mood... watch this film. It will light up your life.

NERFIGHTER GATHERING TODAY! I am so excited. But first I must get to work on Anna's b-day present, because that's tomorrow and I feel like drawing a sparkling picture of Edward Cullen may be more difficult that I would have previously thought.

THERE ARE WAY TOO MANY SNAKES IN INDIANA JONES AND THE RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK FOR MY LIKING. WAYYYYYYYY TOO MANY.

Other than that, great movie, though. I do love me some Harrison Ford, so you'd think I would've gotten around to seeing the Indiana Jonese movies by now, but... no, apparently not. I'd seen about half of this one when we were doing a movie tour thing in Kauai (basically taking us around to all the different places famous movies had been shot on that island), but apparently the sheer number of snakes colonizing that floor had somehow slipped my memory. That, or I have grown more phobic as the years have gone by, which is a good possibility.

I have too many phobias, just, seriously. Being scared of everything is no fun at all.

I spent all of today feeling like you feel right before you get sick but you can't tell if you're really sick or you're just having an off day. So... that's cool? I guess I'll find out in the morning whether or not I'm actually ill. I just wish I could know now, since it would help me plan out my weekend a bit better.

Speaking of which-- OMG NERDFIGHTER GATHERING THIS SATURDAY. Hank is coming to Seattle! (I do wish it was John, but, hey, Hank is still awesome. Just... insane.) Alex and Shelby and I are all heading up, and it should be AWESOME, just, SO FANTASTIC. (Although I do wish I knew Hank's songs better. Ohhhhhh well. At least I know Accio Deathly Hallows pretty well, and that's sure to be in the mix somewhere.)

Just one more paper to write and then Thanksgiving will be here! I can totally do this, yes.

This episode of House was... sad. And baffling. So, Chase and Cameron got married less than a year ago? AND ALREADY THEY ARE APART? What the hell. At least Chase remains out of prison and in the main eye of the show, not to mention Thirteen is back, so I guess I cannot complain that much. But still, I mean, what?

In other news, I LOVE OCEAN'S 11. Particularly ( this screencap ).

The mercurial tendencies of the weather here at the moment are driving me utterly insane. I walked to my music theory class this morning in the pouring rain, thereby thoroughly drenching any part of my body that was not covered by my coat... only to walk out into brilliant sunshine just thirty minutes later. This does not bode well for the nature of this year's winter.

Today was awesome, not only because I had time to watch Ocean's 11, but also because I finally got to chat with Julia on the phone after nearly six months of not hearing her voice. As one might expect, this was very exciting. (If expensive. Why do I have this cellphone plan if it costs me a ridiculous amount to call anyone? I should probably ask my dad about that.)

Now I must go read more Donne poetry. WHY ARE WE READING SO MUCH DONNE POETRY. We are reading as much Donne as we read Shakespeare, and I have never even heard of this guy before. (And no, I am not only annoyed because I find a small but significant percentage of Donne to be completely incomprehensible, though that may be a contributing factor.)

This weekend was really nice. Just, in general. The voice concert I went to Friday night was fabulous, the viewing of Dr. Strangelove afterward with all my friends was terrific fun, Saturday was spent reading in bed (because doing college reading turned out to be much easier than anything else I was supposed to be doing that day), Alex and I went to see the Repertory Dance Group performance and Julie & Julia Saturday evening and both were wonderful, and then today I mostly just worked on fun stuff.

( Like this. )

Oh, and then my roommate decided she'd like to see Atlantis: The Lost Empire, since I love it so much and she'd never seen it, so that was fantastic. And then! Right after we finished she said she'd also be interested in watching Treasure Planet, since she knows I love that one too and, once again, she'd never seen it... SO WE WATCHED TREASURE PLANET TOO. Best day ever. I mean, at least in my top forty.

I should probably think of heading to bed now, though. I guess this weekend was just too good to last. (Hopefully the next one should be just as amazing, though, since all my friends and I are planning to go see New Moon for Anna's birthday. Um... I MIGHT JUST DIE I AM SO EXCITED. THIS WILL BE LOLARIOUS AND FANTASTIC.)

Sometimes I feel like every single friend I make in life will end up living incredibly far away from me. Elementary school? Every friend except Tamrin. Junior high? Actually did pretty well there, they were all actually pretty close by. Unfortunately, that didn't really last. High school? All my darling choir friends live anywhere from half an hour to an hour away (depending on traffic), and I do nothing with my school friends outside of school until we have all graduated and high school is already over. Italy? All my friends were exchange students, who lived anywhere from half an hour away to five hours away, but at any rate needed a lot of traveling on somebody's side in order to get together. College? EVERY SINGLE FRIEND I HAVE (apart from my roommate) LIVES IN THE HONORS HOUSE ON THE OPPOSITE SIDE OF CAMPUS. This would not sound like a big deal and something that should affect my social life that much, but oh, it does.

It would just be awesome if, for once in my life, one of my fantastic friendships was not accompanied by some kind of problem - a problem which is worth the friendship, obviously, but a problem nonetheless.

And I should be happy right now, because I just had a great time chatting with my Honors friends for three hours... but now they're all going to the dance performance thing that's sold out, so I can't go with them, because I didn't know they were going until just this afternoon. And if they decide to watch Return of the King when they get back, they are supposed to give me a call so that I can run across campus and watch it with them... and then go back across campus again at 1 am when it's done.

I just feel very apart sometimes, which is weird, because they're all super nice and have made it very clear that I am always welcome in their house and all, but I just can't get rid of it and I wish I did not have to feel forever like an outsider. That would be nice.

But anyway - made it through another week! Hooray! Even though I finished that paper at 2 am Wednesday night, that kind of sucked, but what can you do. (Start earlier, that's what.) Oh, and we all read our poems re: nature vs. society today in my writing class and people liked mine about pandas very much. Fantastic.

GO WATCH AND THEN BUY THIS SONG IT IS CUTE AND FOR CHARITY AND A FUN INTERNET EXPERIMENT YOU CAN SPARE A DOLLAR COME ON:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYDRWXjJlB4

On the subject of music that originated from the internet, is it horrible and selfish of me to feel oddly bereft now that my favorite band, Owl City, is number one on the song charts? Like, I am very glad that he's had such success, as he totally deserves it and his music is awesome (obviously), but... it was such a personal thing for me, and now it's like everyone and their mom knows his music. Um. Alright, that's probably not true, but you know what I mean. And now it's just really weird for me to be watching Brotherhood 2.0 and have Hank Green randomly sing part of Fireflies as a transition into talking about the song I linked to up above, since my brain still goes, ... how the hell does Hank Green know that song?

So, basically my point is that sometimes I would really like to give my brain a solid kick and tell it to stop being so weird and obnoxious. But what can you do.

I've been making icons for most of today, despite having a five-page paper to write for Thursday and various things to read for tomorrow. But! They are looking so nice and lovely and I have not made icons in forever! So yes, I will probably carry on with this regardless for the next five hours until midnight rolls around. Ah, procrastination - I have missed you so.

I am sorry you are sick, Abbey! (And yes, I apparently must say that here, rather than taking the time to actually leave a comment on your journal. Sorry, it seems I am just that lazy.) I unfortunately cannot really send you get-well flowers or anything (especially since they would arrive in about two weeks and be all shriveled and dead anyway), but I can link you to this video, which will hopefully cheer you up, because British men's a capella groups are (not surprisingly) totally fabulous.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKvOsN1Q9EU

Back to the world of 100x100 pixel boxes!

I MISS MY TABLET. Seriously, I almost feel like that's the worst thing about this whole computer issue - that I am now unable to use my tablet, and so all my icon-making must be of the five-million-clicky-clicks type, and painting is just a ridiculous notion, why would you even bring that up. At least I now have Photoshop again, having downloaded the 30-day trial version until I can reinstall my own, but... it's still not quite enough.

(Oh, remember the days when I hadn't even heard of tablets before? Not surprisingly, I recall that all my computer-reliant "art" from that time unquestionably sucked.)

To add to my chagrin, I have discovered that all my icons on my icon journal, much like the icons of most icon makers it seems, have been compressed by Photobucket, rendering them grainy and crap-looking, requiring me to reload them all to an alternate server and then go through and reprogram all the html in every entry. Just... WHAT THE HELL. What kind of a bitch move is that? I've spent about five hours on this so far, and I'm less than halfway through.

(I don't really know why this icon stuff is so important to me, since hardly anybody (aside from Thremedon patrons) seems to use the icons I make, but... yeah. It is, and I can't really explain why. But I do love Thremedon, and a fair number of people there seem to use my icons there with stunning regularity, so... I guess it's for those people and my own sense of personal satisfaction? I dunno.)

At least I can make icons again, though, so I should not complain. And the rest of my life is going quite well, though nothing particularly fascinating has happened, so I'm not going to go on about it any further than the end of this sentence.

(I feel like this entry has been fantastically boring, so... sorry? Staring at a Photoshop window for four hours or more tends to make me a bit scattered and spacey.)

Okay, so, I should have made this post two days ago, but--

I have a new sparkly new laptop! And it is fabulous! And named His Grace, His Excellency, Duke of Ankh, Commander Sir Samuel Vimes of the City Watch. (My roommate insisted that, were I to only name my electronics, I would never have problems with them again. I doubt the verity of this statement, given how much she seems to whisper angrily at her laptop (named Doc Holliday), but I figure it cannot hurt.) Vimesy is bronze with a fancy raised texture and is basically gorgeous all over, from mere appearance to the beautifully minimal amount of time it takes to accomplish anything on it. I could not be happier, and that is the truth, especially since I have now finally finished transferring over my 70 GB worth of files from my old laptop. Hooray!

Various fun and exciting things have happened this week (like getting thoroughly drenched during an excursion to the farmer's market this morning with my friends, or going to see the utterly fabulous opera scenes class performance this evening), but I am really tired and should go to bed and have no idea why I started writing this now anyway. (Apparently drawing one piece of Kagerou fanart of everyone's favorite suicidal schizophrenic is enough to wear me out nowadays.) So I'm just going to leave this here and go crash. G'night, all.

p/s. My roommate has started reading Shoebox Project. YESSSSSSSS.

Just got back from They Live, the second movie of the Honors film series this year - OH MY GOD SO FANTASTIC. Classic b-movie/cult-film right there. OH THE HILARITY. And the best thing about it is that I get to laugh like none other AND feel intellectual at the same time! WIN.

And I feel bad that I haven't used this icon in forever (since I tend to associate particular icons with particular emotions and... I haven't pwned anything in a while?), so I'm cracking it out now, because I feel pretty proud of myself for just getting through today. Sight-singing test in music theory, guest appearance in one of my professor's other classes to talk about a Hemingway story (this makes me sound more important than I actually am - basically I had to read this story and go, "No, that does not make much sense when read apart from the collection that's it is part of!" and maybe make a few comments on fishing, since it is Hemingway, after all,) finishing my Dante essay, getting my schedule approved for next semester by my advisor, poetry presentation in my crazy writing class, and, last but definitely not least, singing Bel Piacere for studio class in front of a bunch of peers.

Surely this constitutes a use of my pwnage icon. Yes?

NEW COMPUTER TOMORROW! I am so excited, it's kind of ridiculous.

Have you noticed how everyone you know seems to have birthdays right at the same time? I mean, May is Birthday Hell for me, I'm not even going to talk about that, but also this week - three birthdays! I mean... you can't spread it out a bit? At least two of them are already out of the way, but I am still at a complete loss as to what to give Julia and her birthday is on Friday. At least I had the brilliant idea of making her Shoebox-Project-themed mix cds, one for Sirius and Remus and one for Lily and James. Unfortunately, ideas for anything else are not particularly forthcoming. I will probably just be lame and send her chocolate or something, because everyone on the planet loves chocolate except for me and that is therefore always a good idea present-wise.

There is so much happening this weekend. I really... almost can't deal with it. Oh well, I will take as it comes - carpe diem, etc.

I got onto one of the dorm computers today to work on editing my Dante essay, which I did do for about, oh, twenty minutes. Of course, then I got distracted and went around looking for hi-res pictures of Tom Felton for the next hour and a half. Perhaps this is a fair reason as to why I shouldn't have a computer of my own, if this is what I am going to spend my time on.

Yeah, the computer guys have had my laptop for more than a week now, and seem to have solved one problem, been unable to solve another problem, and have created another problem for themselves on top of it all, so, unless they can miraculously come up with something in the next day or so, I'm just going to give up and buy the new (gorgeous and shiny and oh so fabulous) Vaio, because... not having a computer sucks, basically.

Other than that, things have been good, though - this week has been considerably better than the last one so far, and I am liking it. (And surely this has nothing to do with the fact that we have FINALLY FINISHED DANTE, YES.) Everyone seems to be getting deathly ill on this campus, though, including my roommate, so am I just kind of waiting in terror for it to strike me. Fingers crossed, though.

Happy Halloween everyone! Sorry for the radio silence this past week, but I took my laptop into the computer help place on campus on Tuesday and they STILL aren't done with it and won't be for at least a couple more days. Not surprisingly, I'm a little annoyed. But anyway, I've been using my roommate's laptop to check my email once a day and that's about all, so... lj's been a bit neglected, as you might expect. But yeah - just popping in, sorry I haven't been commenting and such, I swear I'll be back on it when I actually have a computer again.

This whole week has been a bit hellish - the mild insomnia came back (though after a few days I simply couldn't take it anymore and so started using sleeping pills - I'd rather not start requiring those to get to sleep, though, so hopefully it'll have stopped now), and I had about three events happening every day, and my passaggio (which I had finally managed to pin down) CHANGED SPOTS in my voice (so now I have to figure it out all over again), and on Friday I had a minor nervous breakdown during our piano playing quiz. Oh, and then there's the whole still-unresolved laptop thing.

Unfortunately, next week does not look to be any better, especially since now I also have an essay to write... without my laptop, on some unknown topic, on an exceedingly lengthy poem that I care absolutely nothing about. Woo. But, what can you do.

On the brightside, I've had a truly excellent time with all my friends this week, so I'm really glad for that. Honestly, even on Friday (which was the worst day of all), I was just dying of laughter during lunch and I felt so comfortable and happy and it was just... kind of amazing, really. So I guess not everything this week was terrible. (Oh, and they were showing HP6 this weekend with Campus Films and my friends and I won the costume contest and got free popcorn! YES!)

My Halloween was a good but rather exhausting one - I helped out with the Honors haunted house, so I was on my feet for four hours letting people in and counting up money and basically dying in the freezing cold. But! I got free pizza and Dr. Pepper afterwards, and it was a hell of a lot more fun than chilling in my dorm room all evening, so I guess the fact that I completely lost feeling in my toes for the last hour was worth it in the end. (And we raised $237 for charity! Hooray!)

But now I'm super tired, so I think I'm going to bed (or at least, huddling under my covers reading, because I am STILL COLD). Hope you're all doing well!

p/s. Is it just me, or has there been an extraordinary amount of posting this week over at Thremedon? Crazy. Of course, if I'd had my laptop, I would have been posting Shadow Magic (and possibly more Havemercy) quote icons this week (since it is my goal to make a batch of icons once a month), but alas, it was not to be.

Woke up this morning to find out that my laptop has gone into epic fail mode. Not really what I needed after being kept up until 4 am last night by my ridiculously loud neighbors, but, y'know, that's life. So, the thing is that everything still works. It just works very, very slowly. Once I get something open, then it's fine - I'm typing this at normal speed, and I assume the same would be true for a Word document. However, getting this page to load, or getting a Word document to open take about, oh, three minutes. Which seems just a little ridiculous. Oh, and my computer won't go into standby. And let's not even talk about the fact that I use Adobe Photoshop for half the stuff I do on this computer, and that takes up so much RAM I haven't even dared trying to use it today, in the fear that my computer will just give up on me completely. I've restarted about ten times and run a full virus and spyware scan and deleted unnecessary programs and yet nothing seems to have had any effect.

So it looks like my faithful three-year-old computer might be getting replaced before anything gets worse. I dunno, it's like, I could live with my computer the way it is right now... but I don't want to wait too long and end up with a disaster to the point where I can't rescue any of my files or, say, all our family photos from the past three years (which are all on my computer, for some reason).

I spent about three hours today researching laptops (trying to research laptops on the very laptop that you are trying to replace? not recommended.), and I've settled on a Sony Vaio NW model. (The computer I have now is a Vaio and I love it, so I would really like something similar in design. The HP computers are too finicky to maneuver and I'm not even going to talk about Macs - Mac lovers, I've got nothing against you, but I just need my Windows and that's all there is to it.) If I can find the model I want at Best Buy tomorrow, it'll come to $650, which seems pretty reasonable and will not clean out my entire bank account, or it'll be $780 if I have to order from the Sony website, which I guess still isn't too bad. Fingers crossed, anyway.

Of course, who knows. Maybe my laptop will magically recover overnight, in which case, you know, holy cow, fantastic, drinks all around. But somehow I doubt it. I really do love this laptop, though, and I'm actually kind of saddened by the idea of parting with it. Okay, I'm actually getting a bit teary, I'm just going to stop here before this gets any worse.

I have just finished reading Feed by M.T. Anderson and I swear that book is one of the scariest books I have ever read, but not in the horror movie way, more like the "oh god what will happen to society" way. I mean, I actually also finished reading Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale today, and I figured, Hey, I could do with some more dystopian fiction, why not? and cracked open Feed.

So now, four hours later, I sit here, feeling terrified and alarmed with myself every time I use Wikipedia to look something up or check my f-list or my inbox and my roommate is watching a tv show online and I am typing this into my internet journal and just, just-- THIS IS SO SCARY. Like, how is this not terrifying? It's scary as hell! I mean, okay, so we don't all have feeds hooked directly into our brains, but that doesn't mean we don't seem to almost depend upon the internet for entertainment and information and connection to our friends and family. Much like Hank Green said, Feed is a bit like having Wikipedia wired up to your brain, only I would say it's more like having the entire internet wired up to your brain, actually.

OH MY GOD THIS BOOK IS TERRIFYING. AND SO GOOD. Seriously, take four hours and read this book. It's incredible and has a hell of a lot in it worth thinking about. (And, I feel, much more worth reading that Margaret Atwood's dystopian genre novel, which actually took me much longer to read. Just sayin'.)

Anyway, I went to the opera last night with a bunch of my friends for the Honors fall cultural event. (Seriously, that's what it's called. Apparently last year they went to see Phantom of the Opera, which just makes me laugh. Am I the only person in the world who thinks Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals are basically the opposite of cultural? I feel like there must be some other people out there, and yet I consistently fail to find them.) It was Verdi's La Traviata and it was WONDERFUL, even though we were all the way back on the second tier in the corner (ie. we had the worst seats ever) and the leading soprano was actually a bit under the weather (they told us this), so she was a bit hard to hear at times over the orchestra, but it was still lovely and fantastic and I had SUCH a great time.

Mostly I was just happy because--alright, so, I eat lunch and kind of hang out with the same group of people from Honors everyday, but the only reason I started doing this was because of my friend Shelby, who lives with all these people in the Honors house and so that kind of... well, gave me a way into their posse without it being too odd. Of course, being me, I have been a bit worried about whether all of them actually wanted me there or if I was just there because Shelby was there. However, since last night I got put on the late bus with Joe, Nathan and Kyle, and not with Shelby... I kind of got to find out if this was the case or not.

And yes. As I am sure you have guessed, I had a great time hanging out with all of them, and it was tons of fun, and actually they were all really nice and declined going with everyone else from the bus to eat at Dick's and went instead to eat at the Center House with me, since I am vegetarian and Dick's would have really worked out for me. Just--IT WAS A VERY TOUCHING MOMENT FOR ME, OKAY? Don't laugh.

But yeah - opera, good times. And now I think it would be really nice if I could get rid of this constant urge to throw my laptop out the window, because this thing did cost my parents a fair amount of money and I would probably regret it tomorrow morning. Oh, M.T. Anderson, why do you write such amazing books that do such horrible things to my mind?

I just went to a lecture about surviving a zombie apocalypse. WIN. Seriously, it was the coolest thing - Max Brooks, the guy who wrote The Zombie Survival Guide, came to speak, and it was that awesome combination of hilarious and yet totally useful. However, I have found that I am woefully unprepared for the arrival of the living dead.

My Zombie Survival To-Do List:
- get a bike (the only reliable form of transportation)
- decide on my zombie fighting weapon of choice and keep it handy (I'm thinking a crowbar, or maybe a machete, because guns still scare me)
- figure out my hideout position (I dunno, I feel like Canada is pretty unreliable, since they'll close the borders immediately - maybe one of the tiny islands right off the coast? - I mean, I do know how to kayak)
- build up my survival skills (currently all I have is the ability to grow edible plants and the fact that I have been camping many times - I'm thinking knitting, for a start, and maybe identification of edible food in the wilderness)

I got to see Where The Wild Things Are in IMAX last night, and that movie is SO AMAZING. Just absolutely gorgeous and not really happy but not exactly sad either, but thoughtful and beautiful and simply fantastic. It's definitely not for kids, though, which apparently some people didn't understand - like, I had been getting the sense that it was targeted more for adults, and I thought everyone else had picked up on this too, but apparently not, since it sounds like some parents are really upset about how their children were bored or didn't understand it. Just... what the hell, so your kids didn't understand a movie, I'm sure they're scarred for life, how horrible. I dunno, I do think it might be a bit touch-and-go on whether or not each individual person will enjoy it - I mean, I really did, but maybe you wouldn't, if you couldn't connect with Max or hadn't had those kind of feelings when you were a kid. But I think everyone should try to see it, even if you're not sure you'll love it or not, because it's really a beautiful film and it's so incredibly well done. Fantastic.