New Year New (m)YOU(vies)! Update #1

  GOAL: watch 50 new movies in 2025.

• Spirited (2022)
• Recommended by some students.
• Liked: when it ended. Jkjk. It made me laugh more than once and it didn't demand much attention to follow.
• Didn't like: Surprise, it's a musical. But not a good one. I'm starting to wonder if I even like musicals. Who wrote these songs? AI? Boo. With Will Ferrel and Blake Lively's husband pairing up, I expected too much.
• This was by default my favorite movie of the year until I watched anything else.
• 4/10
• Belle (2021)
• Jazon's recommendation.
• Disney's Beauty and the Beast (1991) meets Ready Player One (2018).
• Liked: The beautifully animated, interesting story that integrated two fully fleshed concepts into one seamless one that at times felt a little fanfiction-esque, but is that always a bad thing?
• Didn't like: Surprise, it's also a musical. It's good enough music and it isn't too overbearing, but coming at this movie from "Spirited" made me feel a little anxious, especially at first.
  
• New favorite of the year.
• 8/10
• Elizabethtown (2005).
• One of Jazon's favorite movies.
• Liked: Roadtrip vibes and death jokes = yes
• Didn't like: Kirsten Dunst is creepy AF.
• 2nd favorite of the year.
• 7/10

• Alien Romulus (2024).
• Student "assigned" me to watch this and I feel like if I give him homework then he can give me homework too, ya know? Within reason, of course.
• This felt very much like a remake of Alien (1979), but that's not a bad thing necessarily. 
• What I liked: I liked the practical effects, which, we just don't get enough of these days. I liked the very real feeling of the sets, costuming, and props. I liked a modern re-visit to a classic, too. That's not bad every now and then and it's not like it was trying to say it was anything else. The elevator scene was bae. Sure there were lots of call backs, but it wasn't too tongue-in-cheek for me.
• What I didn't like: The timing of the suspense sequences was a little off for me. I felt it was rushed when it shouldn't be and not enough time was taken to let us settle into complacency at the beginning. I felt it was an error to have the movie launch from a place of anxiety where the main character was already feeling anxious, the jump up into alien anxiety didn't feel like as much of a leap as it could have been with a different couching story surrounding the expedition.
• 3rd favorite of the year. Better than Prometheus (2012), not as good as the original. Maybe I should watch the rest of the franchise? Maybe not though. I'll think about it.
• 6/10

Reading List: A Beginning

I feel compelled to read.

I want to be "widely read," but I am not. I have read a lot of Robin McKinley, Shakespeare, and other popular books, but my classical foundation is shakey at best. So, I have written a list of books "to-read" that I feel will make me a more mature and experienced reader.

As you read this list, answer me this question: Have you read any of these books? Is this a good list? What is missing? What shouldn't be there?

1.      Brave New World

2.      Catch 22

3.      1984

4.      Slaughterhouse 5

5.      The Golden Bowl

6.      The Sun Also Rises

7.      Heart of Darkness

8.      The Return of the King (I've already read The Fellowship and The Two Towers)

9.      Wuthering Heights

10.   Little Women

11.   Dune

12.   This Side of Paradise

13.   The Art of War

14.   The Count of Monte Cristo

15.   A Christmas Carol

16.   Anne of Green Gables

17.   Devil in the White City

18.   Siddhartha

19.   Les Miserable

20.   The Picture of Dorian Grey

21.   Romeo and Juliet (This one is a little embarrassing.)

22.   Winter’s Tale (Shakespeare)

23.   The Last of the Mohicans

24.   The Road (Cormac McCarthy)

25.   The Bell Jar

26.   The Hunchback of Notre Dam

27.   The Book Thief

 

 

What do you think? I honestly want some feedback, here. Once I get some feedback, I'll update the list and then give you reviews as I read!

Buckets of 42

There are a couple of things that I really want to do with my life before I die. Here is my actual bucket list:

1. Own a horse.
2. Own a dog.
3. Write books.
4. Own a farm. (These are obviously in no particular order).
5. Be on Conan O'Brian's show as a guest.
6. Meet Tina Fey.
7. Run a half marathon.
8. Hike the Appalachian trail.
9. Go to Germany.
10. Have a baby.
11. Learn to play a string instrument.
12. Fall in love one, last time.
13. Get a photograph into the National Geographic.
14. Be the voice of a cartoon character.
15. Have a vegetable/herb garden or greenhouse.
16. Have an orchard.
17. Learn to speak Spanish REALLY and fluently.
18. Learn to speak German, too.
19. Have grandchildren.
20. Die laughing.

A Day of Accomplishments!

1. I finally finished reading all 548 pages of Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austin! Wow, that only took me.... forever.
2. I got an honest-to-goodness, cancer producing sunburn! Yay for sunburns!
3. I fed missionaries! And I fed them real food, too! And it wasn't even poisoned!
4. I did one of those things that grown ups do to make little girls realize that they are loved, but never really comprehend exactly how excessive that love must be in order to actually compel a grown person to endure. You guessed it! I watched Monte Carlo with my 9-year-old cousin!
5. I wrote a blog post!

**********AND**********

6. I got a car.
7. I got a car!
8. I got a car!
9. I got a car!
10. I got a car!

Food I LOVE.

Some foods you eat because it's what is being served. Other foods, because you think you should eat it. Or maybe it's good enough for consumption.

Other foods, you LOVE.

This is the food that you get excited about eating. Maybe you can only get it from a certain place, or during a certain time of the year. One thing is for certain: it is delicious.


Here is my list of foods I love:
(In no particular order, but ice cream really is first.)
1. Ice cream (Especially raspberry, butter pecan, and Phish food (thanks to Enoch).).
2. Watermelon!
3. Raspberries.
4. Milk. Also chocolate milk. Also strawberry milk.
5. Walnuts.
6. Ice cream cake.
7. Kiwis.
8. Cheese.
9. Yogurt.
10. Bananas
11. Ok, most fruit.
12. Coconut cream pie.
13. "Hawaiian Wedding Cake"
14. Cucumbers

and

15. Cool whip! Haha!

Basically.... fruit and dairy. Yep. Fruit and dairy together is heavenly, have you noticed? IE, a smoothie made from milk and/or coconut milk and fruit (or juice concentrate)? Strawberries dipped in milk chocolate? Bananas cut up in vanilla ice cream? Or Blueberries buried in yogurt?

Divine!

10 Things I Will Not Miss When I Am No Longer a Student

1. Phenomenal academic power . . . itty, bitty living space.
2. 80 hour weeks, split 17 different ways.
3. Reading thousands of pages per week.  At gunpoint.
4. Oh, you want to go somewhere? Forget about it. You can't afford a car, fool!
5. Feeling guilty for not doing homework after 11pm.
6. Forgetting to eat.
7. Ten different teachers with ten slightly different policies about class.
8. "You must write an academic paper about something to do with this class. You also must feel passionately about it. If you do not feel passionately about your thesis, which must be completely unique and your own (despite the fact that yes, Shakespeare has been studied for centuries, and no, there is no possible way you can look at Shakespeare in a unique, passionate way, but I do require that, so if you can't, you fail, and yes, you absolutely can't, because like I said, it has literally (HA!) all been done before), then you must allow yourself to be publicly ridiculed at least eight times, preferably at the beginning of class, so we can make it last all two hours."
9. Your body is not your own. You have surrendered it to academia. You may think you can eat well and exercise all semester long, but the truth is, there is no freaking way you can manage that. So get used to the fluff, peach. And the gross feeling of being habitually sedentary, because that is not changing. No, ma'am.
10. WHAT DOES "MLA" EVEN STAND FOR?!

Purposeful Living

Lately, I've been contemplating my life, how I live it, and wondering what I can do to calm down a bit. I'm anxious. I'm stressed. I hate it.

So, as a transcendentalist, I've decided to take some advice from Thoreau. Here is a little list of how to make my life simpler:

1. Deactivate facebook. It is pointless, meaningless, and time consuming.

2. Kill my texting plan. It is distracting.

3. Watch no television.

4. Quit taking long, hot showers.

5. Cook all my food/stop buying food from vending machines/Papa John's.

6. Quit playing solitaire.

So far I have done #1, resolved to do #2 to a certain extent and #3 during the week, #4 not at all, #5 I've been trying to do with some success, and #6 is gonna be hard.

Here's hoping.

Be Envious, Because My Life Rocks.

I'm going home in July! Of course, the main purpose is to go to Tabbi's wedding. However, these are the other things that I really, really look forward to doing/going to while I'm home:

1. The Hill Cumorah pageant!

2. Rita's Italian Ice

3. Knoebel's grove

4. Marino's OIP

5. Wegman's subs

6. Ricket's Glenn

7. Montour preserve

8. Drive in movies

9. AVATAR THE LAST AIRBENDER!!!

10. Grandma's house

The best part? I'll be doing these things with all of my FAVORITE people ever, my brothers and sisters!! I miss my family so, so, so much. I have the best times when I'm with them. I think about them every day.