A Year Behind

This year was the happiest and the saddest of my life.

This year was the busiest and the most introspective of my life.

This was the year I got a job and a drivers license.

This was the year I went to Greece and met Norwegians.

This was the year I looked ahead to life and found myself small and inadequate.

This was the year I looked behind to memory and found strength.

This was the year I had a Christmas in Curacao.

This was the year I looked at my friends and found goths and nerds and druggies.

This was the year I listened, and felt the words of others.

This was the year I spread my wings, shook them out, and folded them again.

This was the year I lied and snuck into a bar.

This was the year I walked the city of Mainz alone and without English.

This was the year I stood on a stage without shaking.

This was the year I won a sports trophy.

This was the year I twice loved and was twice wounded.

This was the year I couldn't count on a smile.

This was the year I felt the sunlight.

This was the year I faltered from my path.

This was the year I kept walking.

The Parking Lot

I love you and I hate you as you come out of your huge SUV with your Supersized Burger shouting curse words into your cell with a smile, filling the cool air of a winter noon with the sight of your enormous red coat and flushed cheeks.

I love you and I hate you, you teenage girls with skinny, shapeless forms and five-colour-highlighted hair, whispering and smirking and staring and pointing, congregating for half an hour before you leave in a savvy hurry.

I love you and I hate you, you are my family and you are strangers. I mock you and then I follow you into Quiznos.

Borders

I went to Borders today for the first time in a while. I was planning to buy more than I did, and I had the money too, but I figured I had to save some for the rest of the week in case I go out. I really wanted Teach Yourself Finnish, but it was about 30$, and I only had 90$ total. I ended up buying a European Phrasebook (with Finnish, German, Norwegian, Spanish, and some less important languages all bundled into a TINY little Berlitz book), another all audio Italian course (I finished the last one... the first foreign language course I've ACTUALLY finished?), and Eragon (for some mindless, clean reading).

I had to park a long way from the mall, as it's still Holiday season. That was fine walking in, the weather was really pleasant. It's very cloudy lately, with muted, colourful sunlight, which makes for absolutely gorgeous skies. When I came out, however, it was pouring down rain, and I ran all the way to my car. It was a good thing I had brought my grocery shopping bag to fill with books, because it rebels water a little, but my jeans and shirt were absolutely soaked. Still, I was happy, which goes to show that personality, circumstances at a whole, and some mysterious X factor have far more to do with mood than comfort and other fleeting things. I sang the approximately one-fourth appropriate Dido song "Thank You" and dreamed of a nice hot bath on the way home.

Scary Movie Night

Work Yesterday was a little meh, I need to get back into the rhythm, I guess. The hardest part about working in a library is that it leads to lot of sneak peaks at cover summaries, and sometimes if there isn't a cover summary you're forced to flip through the book, and even if you resist it leads to daydreaming... Oh well, I sped up towards the end. :P

Mr. Mina is in Egypt, so there was no Arabic Church and Maddy and I took the opportunity to have our scary movie night. I was really proud of myself - I drove to her house on directions. My first time driving on directions, actually!

We watched Texas Chainsaw Massacre first. It wasn't brilliant or anything, but I guess it served as a decent introduction to the genre. I thought the best part was the ending; a blurry still frame of the killers face that produced a far more effective after image than the girl getting away or even the last moments of the chainsaw guy chasing her.

After that we watched Frailty. The movie goes on for most of its duration with a man telling the story of his childhood, when his father suddenly started claiming god was sending him messages to kill 'demons', who were ordinary people. God then sent him 'magic weapons' and lists of names. The boy resisted and tried to tell the sherrif, etc, the dad locked him in the celler for two weeks until he pretended to have a vision from god and go through with his dad's plan. He turned at the last minute and killed his dad. This was all alright, but the most interesting part of the movie was the plot twist at the end. In short, the demons were real, secretly murderers and rapists, and the little boy in the story was also a demon who later became a serial killer.

After that we were considering watching What Lies Beneath or The Ring, and I wasn't tired yet. BUT, I had to drive home, so I didn't want to wait until I was tired. So we watched a couple episodes of Laguna Beach... awful. They were so real... I hated them all. :P Who would want to watch something like that? Of course, it seemed even more shallow in juxtaposition with the horror films. Then we talked for about an hour, and then I drove home in the rain and the dark and didn't crash and die. ^^ Yay!

Eragon

I saw Eragon the other day with Christina, Gwen, Sabrina, and Stephanie. The best part of the movie was hanging out with them, of course. It wasn't absolutely terrible, either. The bad guys were HORRIBLY acted... at points I was close to laughing out loud at them. The ending was terrible, too. But, I didn't mind the main charector, even if most people say he's acted blandly and always looks blank. Hey, he's a teenage boy, so it's realistic. And hey, he's cute, so it's forgivable. One minor thing that did bother me was the dragon egg... it sounded really metallic and hollow, looked dull, and basically reminded me of a huge jelly bean left out for a year and glazed over.

Honestly, though, the movie was passable, if quickly moving and stereotypical. The scenary was gorgous, somewhere between The Lord of the Rings breathtaking vistas and the Thomas Kincaid Panoramas of The Chronicals of Narnia. And, it won points with me with the language being the focal point of magic. Everyone says the book is better, so next time I'm looking for a clichéd and mindless fantasy read, I'll pick it up. It can't be worse than Urshurak...

Self Absorbtion!

I made a Quiz. Try it out! ;)

http://www.quizyourfriends.com/quizpage.php?quizname=061219232919-636191&

Layla and Harvard

I haven't posted since the crap with Layla really started. I guess that dates both things.

Anyway, I was really depressed and sad today, because I waited with Layla and listened to all of her angst rants and I was so worried and hopeful about her getting into Harvard. Well, she did. Yay for her. Party!

But I was the last one to know... Even the Principal knew first... and I couldn't hug her or anything... I could barely just smile and say, "Congratulations".

Life is Hell. Humanity is Hell. Pride is the lowest level of Hell.

Mail to Finland

Never send a Christmas Present to Finland. I don't care how nice the person is, or how perfect the present is, or how cheap the present was, or how much you owe the person, or anything. Just don't do it.

I considered grabbing my babysitting money from a few weeks back, but decided the ten in my wallet would cover postage. I show up with this little bitty pound-and-a-half package, and they're like,

"Finland? Oh boy, Finland and Russia are expensive..."

Yeah, I was digging coins out of my ash tray.

Killer Dolphins!

http://snopes.com/katrina/rumor/dolphins.asp