Paris

Heard this song and fell in love.

Take Me Home, Country Roads

It's getting harder to find open fields around my town, and that makes me really sad.  I'm a country girl.  I liked my community when I only had one next door neighbor, and I had to walk a couple miles across a field to get to my other neighbors.  I liked my home town back when there was a lot of this:

You know you're in the country when people make their old, rusty farm equipment into landscape decor.

The canal.  It's ridiculously full right now.

All of these were taken on my bike ride with Sarah today.  There's still country out here, but you have to look for it in between all the stupid suburbia.  People build in the swamps, and then their houses flood.  And they get upset about it.  Well, then don't build in a swamp!  I could go on ranting about why I hate suburbia, but I'll save it.  Suffice it to say that I'm glad I can still go on a bike ride and find places like these.

Eurovision 2011, Coming To You Late Again

Coming to you once again on a ridiculously late schedule, since it was in mid-May . . .  here's Eurovision highlights!



I think I have a thing for this song partly because of the good looking guy that sings it.  You have to hand it to Russia for choosing good looking guys to sing their songs.



So, this is the same girl that did the Satellite song that won Eurovision last year, the one that I didn't like.  However, I liked her song this year.  It was actually probably my favorite song.  Funny how that works sometimes.



Azerbaijan won the whole thing with this song, though.  The vote was really close.  Italy came in second and Sweden came in third.

I thought Italy's song was okay, and I thought that Sweden's song was really annoying.  Eric Saade is Europe's Justin Bieber, just better looking and with more annoying songs.  Feel free to look him up, but I'm not going to be tainting the good with the bad here on my blog.  The same with the UK.  Poor guys, they need to get their act together, because I feel bad that 'my country', that's good at so many things, just can't hack Eurovision.

So, there you go.  There's 43 countries that competed, and I can't put them all on my blog without cluttering things up, so if you want more you'll just have to youtube it.

Short Rant, but a True One

My teacher gets everyone else back their drafts for fine-tuning, and I'm left waiting, so I think he's accepted my draft as a final draft.  I get an email at 9:25 tonight from him, telling me that he'll give me back my draft tomorrow at the final so I can fine tune it and hand in a final paper, but after I get it I still have to have it in the same day.  Sure, he probably had legitimate excuses, at least I can't refute the ones he gave me, but if I were to give the same excuses I'd just fail the class.  I think that the rules that apply to students should also apply to teachers.  I think that's first class jerkiness, to give everyone else help before the due date, and make me work doubly hard just to get my essay in on time because he didn't feel like editing it until it was too late to give it back to me.  And, now I know that I am going to have troubles with my final, because it was based on a draft, not my final paper.  Yup.  Fuming right now.  Don't get in my way.  I'm on a rampage.

Thor

So, Thor was really good.  And that's coming from someone who had a lot of doubts about whether the movie was even going to be mediocre.  I wouldn't have even gone if I hadn't had a free movie pass, and it would have been a shame to miss out on a good movie.  These are the reasons* why I liked it:

• The movie wasn't too long.

• It had a decent plot line.  It respected where it came from.  I think that Kenneth Branagh wouldn't have directed the movie if it hadn't had a decent plot line.

• Thor's home planet felt a little bit like Gallifrey.

• It wasn't your typical superhero movie.  Given, Thor is a God, but most of the time he was on Earth he was mortal, and couldn't lift his hammer, so it felt more like a "coming of age" story than a superhero one.

• Thor isn't all powerful.  He has to sacrifice what he loves to save the world.

• It doesn't have a happy ending, at least not in the sense that the audience expects.

• There was space between action scenes.

• Thor wasn't a stupid brute.  He understands how the space travel system he uses works.  What Jane calls an Einstein-Rosen Bridge.  And he's willing to help out with things, not just the "I kill that person for you" type of thing.

• He doesn't go for the silly, self-obsessed political science major.  He goes for the intelligent scientist one, Jane.  

• Tony Stark is referenced because something that looks like his machinery comes down to earth.  It was funny, and it made me laugh.  Good ol' Tony.

So, I would probably give it 3 1/2 stars, and that, remind you, is coming from a person who wasn't even sure it was worth wasting a free movie pass on.  It was a fun watch, and not what I expected.  

*I'm pretty sure I had more reasons for liking it, but I typed everything up, hit publish, and I got signed out of blogger, and the draft wasn't saved because apparently I hadn't been signed in the whole time, so I lost it all.  Oh well, I think I did a pretty good job remembering my points.  The main ones have to be there.

Things I've Been Up To

I've gotten into painting my toenails and doing cute designs on my big toe.  It's hard to see them, because I have a hard time focusing the camera on the little painted decal.

If you click on this one, you can get a pretty good view of the flowers on my toes.

It says kiss me above the lips.

And for Megan's birthday I pulled out my card making skills and made a couple to choose from.  I gave her the one that says 21 on the front.

I gave Megan The Spirit Thief, by Rachel Aaron, an Arctic Monkeys cd, and a gift card to Barnes and Noble and FYE.  We had yummy cake at her house (which we made), and then went to see X-Men First Class.  It was great.

Brandon Campbell enjoying the swing.

Mindy Celli and Megan Moulding loving the cat, Velcro.

Then there's Hot Tub Tuesdays, and The Mentalist, and books.  That barely offsets the crappy last week of school before finals, which will probably also be a crappy week.  So, I'm probably going to go see Thor either tomorrow or Friday to help lower the bad scale of the week.  And, if I get really into telling everyone how it is, I might post a review.

Yup, I think that's it.

HAAY #9

Presenting the hot men from X-Men First Class:

Michael Fassbender

Alex Gonzalez (who may warrant another HAAY, given his extreme good looks)

James McAvoy

Nicholas Hoult

I am really tempted to just keep posting pictures of these men, because I think they're so good looking.  I've spent plenty of time on Google images looking.

Update on Resolutions 5

For the month of May:

1.  I just hung out with her last night.

2. My creative writing teacher raised my grade in his class from a B+ to an A-.  So I now have a 3.35.  I'm so close to reaching this goal I can taste it!

3.  My ballroom dance class is almost over, but it's a blast.

6.  I got my Mom's afghan done this month.

11.  I've done good on keeping up on eating well.

14.  I planted okra, beets, potatoes, and onions.

16.  I've done pretty good at getting everything done and finding time to relax this month.

20.  My book list for this month is pretty long.  I managed my time well enough to be able to read a lot.  I read The Spirit Thief by Rachel Aaron, The Spirit Rebellion by Rachel Aaron, The Spirit Eater by Rachel Aaron, and A Dance Through Time by Lynn Kurland.  Obviously, I've become a little obsessed with Aaron's character, Eli Monpress, because I told myself I was only going to read the first two books in May and save the next for June, but hey, my curiosity got the better of me.  There's a fourth book coming out in August, The Spirit War, so I'm pretty excited about that.

You and I

This is the contender song for favorite on the album.  Stupid VeVo wouldn't let me post the actual song.  Something about it being "restricted" to play outside of youtube, even though you can embed it on your site.  So, here's a live version.  It's still good.  I get the feeling I'll be blasting GaGa from my speakers for the next couple weeks.  I'm glad I bought her new album.