The sun's still shining when I close my eyes.

I'm enjoying a perfect morning. After sleeping in, which was a godsend, I'm enjoying my second breakfast (hey, who am I to refuse a fresh apple muffin from my favorite bakery?). Also painting my nails to match my costume for tonight, and listening to country music on Pandora. Lovely, lovely morning.

I've been planning a Halloween party with a couple friends for a month or so, and the excitement has been gradually building. I'm so glad the day is finally here! Goofing off with my friends (in costumes, no less) is one of my favorite occupations.

What else...oh yes, NaNoWriMo starts tomorrow, and I've decided to give it a try! I was lamenting my lack of creative outlets when I found out about it. I think it'll be a good experience for me in creativity and endurance. 175 pages in 30 days-woohoo!

I will surely blog about the party later, complete with pictures.

Happy Halloween!

Oh! Materialism.

You know when you listen to a song and it reverberates through your soul? Well, Viva La Vida by Coldplay is my soul music of the moment.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44xirQ55IgA

Even though the lyrics are kind of sad, it somehow still gives me a hopeful feeling that things will be alright.

...I love when songs do that. (:

So, in other news, I finally ordered Deathly Hallows on Amazon (I know, what kind of crap HP fan am I, buying the book two years after it was published?! Nevertheless...) and in order to get free shipping I had to buy $25 worth of items, so I bought a cd as well. It's called Limbs and Branches by Switchfoot's Jon Foreman. I've only heard one of the songs on it, House of God Forever, but it, too, is One of Those Songs, so I just had to buy the album. I listened to clips from the other songs on the cd, and they sound good too, so...yippee! I love waiting for packages to arrive-it makes me feel like a kid at Christmastime. :]

And Paramore's new cd, Brand New Eyes, comes out in 9 days! I can't wait to hear it.

Since apparently my mind is on shopping...in other GREAT news, I got the Bargain to End All Bargains. A $70 dress-of-my-dreams discounted to $26. At Macy's. Pricey, fancy, ridiculously expensive Macy's.

...sweet!

And with that thought, I bid thee adieu.

Ensalada Deliciosa

Howdy, folks!

Today I thought I'd share with you my favorite salad recipe, one of my own culinary creations, which I wittily dub "Spinach Apple Salad." It's so simple to throw together, yet it hits the spot every time. It's great as a side salad but can be filling enough to be a meal in itself.

Ingredients:
1/3 to 1/2 bag of spinach (don't forget to rinse it off if it's not pre-washed)
1 apple, sliced into bite-sized chunks (can toss apple chunks w/ cinnamon for added flavor)
handful of walnuts (or substitute your nut of choice)
handful of raisins (or two handfuls, if you're me♥)

Toss together in medium-size bowl and serve!

♥Y♥u♥m♥m♥y♥!♥

My first day of classes went well, by the way, although my hopes of a short lab were utterly put to shame. (2 hrs & 50 min. Good thing I like my professor.)

YouTube, Ghibli and Reptiles (oh my!)

On Thursday my friend Kelli spent the night at my house (I haven't had a "sleepover" since high school at least). We had fun eating, watching movies, more snacking, painting our nails, snacking, and the next day we filmed a Youtube video that we had planned to do some time ago. Won't you give it a look?



Today I saw the Studio Ghibli film Ponyo. It was way better than I thought it would be, and definitely up to director Hayao Miyazaki's (Kiki's Delivery Service, My Neighbor Totoro, Howl's Moving Castle) legendary standards. I highly recommend that you see it while it's in theatres! Another benefit to supporting this film is that if it does well more Japanese movies are likely to be dubbed for English-speaking audiences. (Note: I usually avoid dubs at all costs, but this one wasn't cheesy like most dubs usually are.)

Here's the trailer:

Also, while adding annotations to our video on Thursday, I spotted a funny sight:

A lizard (brought inside and missing its tail, thanks to my two cats) had taken refuge in a stand-up fan in my living room!

My dad later took it outside, where hopefully it is safely out of reach of the devious felines.

In other news, my fall semester begins tomorrow! I'm so not looking forward to waking up early and fighting for a decent parking spot. I also hope/beg/pray that my anatomy teacher is merciful and decides not to use all three of the allotted hours for our lab. [Pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease.] Science labs are the bane of my existence.

Alrighty, I'm off to prepare my things for tomorrow!

Angela

Literary Storm

It's really windy and thunder-y and generally stormy outside right now.

This makes me very happy as we almost never get to experience this kind of weather in AZ, even during what we dub "monsoon season" [overreaction much? haha].

Well lately I've been reading a bunch of teen chick lit and now I'm addicted to its fluffy predictable-storyline goodness. This week I've read:

Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging by Louise Rennison

its sequel, On the Bright Side, I'm Now the Girlfriend of a Sex God [neither are as raunchy as they sound, I swear!]

The Queen Geek Social Club by Laura Preble

and just finished today: The Actual Real Reality of Jennifer James by Gillian Shields

This weekend I need to go to the library [in order to further indulge my new addiction] and buy my textbooks for school, which starts on Monday[!!!] I'm not quite ready for it to start, but oh well.

Guess that's all for today!

Angela

I hope you dance.

This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.

-Shakespeare, Hamlet

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Sometimes I'm clueless and I'm clumsy/ but I've got friends that love me/ and they know where I stand"
In a contemplative mood this evening. I'm realizing more and more lately that I need to cherish the friendships that I so often take for granted.

"Everything I am/ everything I long to be/ I lay it down/ at Your feet"
I'm finally at a point in my life where I'm content with who I am and have learned to accept my imperfections. But, like anyone, I still wonder and worry about the future. What will I be doing 5, 10 years from now? What will my life be like? Will I still be close to the friends I have now? Will I be married, dating, single? Where will I be living? Will I have a job that I love? Will I have a better relationship with God?

"I want your symphony/ singing in all that I am/ at the top of my lungs/ I'm giving it back"
I'm uncertain and wish I had all the answers, but I know from experience that worrying only invites fear and depression.

"I hope you never fear those mountains in the distance/ never settle for the path of least resistance/ living might mean taking chances, but they're worth taking"
So here's to living in the moment and letting the future come at its own pace-God's own pace.

Angela

Harry Potter and the Incredible Cakepod

Lately I've been reading a lot to pass the time (and to maintain my sanity while taking a month-long summer course-2 days left!). With the release of the sixth Harry Potter movie (Half-Blood Prince) coming up fast (two weeks from tomorrow, in fact) I decided to re-read the last 3 HP books, since I have read them less times than the first four and am a bit fuzzy on the details. The problem is that when I read the last two for the first time last year (long story why I hadn't read them sooner) I read them in quick succession, so I didn't give myself enough time to absorb the details. This time around, however, I'm determined to pace myself...somewhat. I may even wait until after I see the movie to start the seventh book (I'm 3/4 through the 6th at the moment). I was thinking of reading this book, which basically goes over the different theories of what would happen in Book 7 (obviously written before Deathly Hallows was released). One of my biggest regrets is that I missed out on the last chunk of HP fandom. I stopped reading HP after the 5th book came out for personal reasons, which took me a few years to come to terms with, by which time the hype had passed. Sigh. But I'm trying to make up for missed time now. (: Next year will mark ten years-a whole decade!!!-since I first read Harry Potter. That's a bit mind-boggling.

In other news, I finally succumbed to the pressure, got with the times, jumped on the bandwagon, sold my soul...however you'd like to think of it. I got my first MP3 player. Until recently, I had held steadfast to my cd collection and trusty battery-sucking cd player. Why should I go digital when my cds work perfectly fine? Well, the last straw was a frustrating experience in which I tried unsuccessfully to burn all of my favorite songs on a cd. So for my birthday, my parents told me they'd pay for an mp3 player of my choosing! They gave me a gift certificate to Costco for $94 (which they had received for free), and said they'd pay the rest. As you can see, I ended up choosing an iPod Nano. I wanted to compare different brands, especially the Zune, but Costco only had iPods and a 2GB Sandisk player, so I went with an 8GB Nano. It's quite pretty! With the gift certificate, it was only $50-much preferable to the $130+ it costs elsewhere. It didn't take long to figure out how to use it, and I've since purchased a clear case so it won't get scratched up. Now I can listen to podcasts! So exciting.

And on that note, I must share a sad/disastrous moment of mine:

If you'll pardon the overused reference, my cake was...a lie. I kind of broke it, you see. Let's just say I am investing in a new set of cake pans before I attempt to make cake again. >_< Anyway, it turned out all right; I just frosted the other half and served it with ice cream. My original intention was to make an ice cream cake by spreading ice cream between the layers and then freezing the cake before frosting it, but you see how easily that plan was foiled. Sigh. Another time, perhaps.

Oh yeah, I'm 20 now, by the way...no more teenagedom for me! Sayonara.