15 Day Challenge: Day 15

It's the last one!!!!

How sad, now I'll have to go back to writing about books and things. Don't worry, I have quite a few to review from March so there should be a nice build up.

On to the challenge!

Day 15: What is the best compliment you've ever received.


So way back when, when I was still in high school, my mom's side of the family would come together and throw a massive Thanksgiving Dinner party for the city of Calistoga so that those without family or friends in the area at the time could enjoy the day as well at no cost.


The idea was born from my grandmother's soup kitchen, and the troops rallied and came forth. My mom's side of the family is fairly large, so we had a staff of anywhere from 18 to 27. 

For a year my job was to go around and help take orders/serve people but my Gramma got it into her head that there should be live music. Since I was the only one who diligently practiced for piano lessons and didn't suffer from crippling stage fright I got put in charge of that.


For at least a month before, I would carefully select/practice songs that weren't too depressing or too distracting, despite the fact that those tend to be my favorite songs to play and came easiest to me. The evening was about them and not me.

I received many compliments those nights (I was in a room full of grandparents, I could have been playing super badly and would have still gotten compliments) but by far my favorite one was when a little old lady came by in the middle of a song and told me that she enjoyed my playing and  really appreciated my song selections because it was perfect for the mood of the dinner - not too distracting but not completely bland either.

This meant a lot too me because it means she 1) payed attention for more than a song, 2) noticed something that I wasn't advertising (I wasn't like "guys, appreciate me because I"m NOT being "focus on me"  right now)  and 3) approached me during a song I knew well so I could talk to her and pay attention and not stop playing.

We don't do those Thanksgiving Dinners as a family anymore, the event was taken over by other members in the community, but those were very fun times in my life and I appreciate my Gramma  so much for making it happen and my family for being game to do it.


I know that was long, but hopefully you got a good feeling from it! I'm glad I found some new blogs to follow and got to know some older faves better!

Have a great July!

15 Day Challenge: Day 14

Day 14: If you were only allowed to watch one movie for the rest of your life, what movie would it be and why?

This is what I get for not reading all the prompts ahead a time!

There are two movies right now that would make the cut of watching on repeat for the rest of my life. (assuming I can't sneak in a DVD set of a TV show).

Megamind, because I don't think I'll ever get tired of that wascally blue villain pronouncing "school" "schhhhooool" and it has good music so i can fast forward through parts and make it like a CD.

And the other one would be the Kiera Knightly version of Pride and Prejudice. I may have watched that on repeat for a few days. People knew I liked it so much that I got two copies of the DVD and both of them got lent to people and then never returned (I presume, I wish I remembered who I lent them to).

The reason for that one is mostly the cinematography and the soundtrack. Everywhere is so beautiful and the music fits so perfectly and it's just a  perfect combination for if you want a watch a movie but you're not sure you'll be able to pay attention to it, but you don't have to pause because a) you know what's going to happen and b) you won't get distracted by it still going on in the background , and c) it will unconsciously help mellow you out.



That was a really long sentence. Forgive me, I got carried away.

I'm definitely interested in seeing what everyone else wrote for this one! I'm on the lookout for new movies to watch!

Hope y'all enjoy your weekend!

15 Day Challenge: Days 12 and 13

Hi everyone!

Sorry I'm so late on this, I've been busy at work and then spending hours exploring Seattle with new eyes while my cousin, Kelly visits me!


I just got home and am devoting a half hour to getting my internet shizz together!

So on to business!

Day 12: What are you most looking forward to in the next 6 months.

I have two trips to LA that I"m super excited for. One in October to go to Disneyland with my cousins Kelly and Angela. We're going to stay at a hotel over there and everything because when I was a kid we always had to drive in from house (I know, I sound so spoiled)

The second thing is my mom got us tickets to see the Book of Mormon musical when it comes to LA and Shauna's going to come down with me and meet everyone!!!! woohoo!!!


Day 13: List your Favorites:

Kitten: Toms. No, Nox. No, Toms. Oh I can't pick, I like them both so much! Here's some pictures :)

                        



Book: My go to with this is Pride and Prejudice but I haven't been able to read it through for a few years (I think I burnt myself out). I'm still really diggin' The Magicians by Lev Grossman. If you didn't believe me the first billion times you should read it. Then go forth and read it.


Musical: This changes a lot. Right now I'm going to give a shout out to Next to Normal since the ones I think will be my favorite I haven't really seen yet.


Movie: MEGAMIND!!!! It's such a good feel good movie. Tina Fey is amazing, as usual and Will Ferrel is not annoying since you can't see his face.

Current TV Show: The Newsroom

Cancelled TV Shows: Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip

Color: Purple!!!!

15 Day Challenge: Day 11

Day 11: What is one thing that you would never change about yourself.

Personality-wise: I think I'm a fairly patient and kind person (most would say too kind), especially to strangers. This backfires a lot on me, but I wouldn't want to avoid those situations if it means I have to be ruder/meaner/less open minded.

Physically: I'd never dye my hair. It's so pretty as it is, and no matter how much I want to cut it all off and dye it with streaks of blue/purple, I definitely won't seriously consider doing that until I start going grey. 

I'm excited to see what everyone else is writing.

Also, If you noticed I missed 10, I did.. I unintentionally worked myself into a really bad mood trying to think of a good one (and thus remembering all of my other humiliating experiences that weren't also adorably cute and funny) that I decided to cut my losses and bypass it. I'm sure as soon as this one is over, a perfect situation will come out and I might decide to revisit.

15 Day Challenge: Day 9

Day 9: Describe the best day of your life, to date.

One Christmas/New Year season my entire family decided to go to Disneyland. I grew up in Southern California, so I went to Disneyland a lot as a child. (It's one of the things I miss most about SoCal) but whenever my extended family would come it was extra special. 

First we always get a hotel in the area whenever there's more than 8 of us. Kelly, Angela, and I were old enough to have our own room at this point and tall enough to go on all the rides so the trip in itself was already special.

 On New Year's Eve I remember going on Splash Mountain three times in a row (Because everyone was at the parade and there was no line) and then running over to California Adventures to see the Aladdin show and getting out just in time to get to Main Street to watch the fireworks display. No waiting, no fighting, it was awesome. 

Talking to the adults now, you realize trips like that were stressful, but since we were old enough to go off on our own and young enough to not worry about things, it was the perfect day for me! 

So there you go, pretty simple but it doesn't take a lot to make me happy!

15 Day Challenge: Day 8

Thank you for all the wonderful Birthday Messages guys! I really appreciate it! Now on to today's post.

Day 8: Describe "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" of yourself

The Good

I am really good at accepting all the hiccups in life, saying "C'est la vie",  and moving on and not looking to blame someone else. Sometimes things just happen.

I'm an overachiever and will continually go the extra mile for friends/clients/strangers. 

I love reading! I feel like it helps me be empathetic with other people and situations that I would not normally understand.

According to my cousin "I'm a crazy fast typist".

The Bad

I let people take advantage of me, but I know they're doing it and let it happen anyway. And  then I decide that I'm never really going to like them.

I don't make the effort to be really good friends with more than 5 people at once. I like people, and I'm nice but once I have a good friend I'm like...I don't really need another one. So thanks Shauna, you filled my quota. 

   The Ugly

I can be really fretful about things that I'm not sure of yet. If I'm running late, I worry about it (like tap my foot/stomp my feet worry) until I"m actually late and then after that I'm like "what's another 15 minutes"

I have no idea how to do my hair/make up. Sometimes it works/ sometimes it doesn't

It takes me MONTHS to work up the nerve to go to a hair stylist. I hate small talk. I also usually go to students because then I don't have to commit to going back to them.

15 Day Challenge: Day 7

So...it's my birthday.

Happy Birthday, Me!

I'm 24 today and since my blog is about Books and Musicals, I thought I'd start it off right by blogging about a book and end my day by going to see Les Mis with three of my hands down favorite people!!!

Day 7: Recommend a book for us to read. Why do you think it's important?

So I'm not going to cheat and lift a book from my blog (although go read The Magicians by Lev Grossman, now!)

 I'm sure all of you are very different and therefore my recommendation will have to accommodate many varying tastes. A daunting task, indeed.

 So here's a book I recently found for Shauna's husband, Tim,  that I think will have something for everyone.

It's called What Lies Beneath the Clock Tower by Margaret Killjoy

The reason I think all of you will find something to like about this book is that it's a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book! For readers above the age of 7! So depending on your mood or day or personality, you'll be taken somewhere new.

I feel like you learn a lot about yourself from these kinds of books. That life doesn't always lead you down a linear path and that sometimes you have to move backward in order to move forward. That a choice you made 5 decisions ago could've been the one to save your life (or kill you). That in order to get the most fulfilling experience, you sometimes need to step a little out of your comfort zone.

And, you know, aside from all that semi-deep stuff, it's a choose-your-own-adventure-book! How fun!!!

Have a wonderful Saturday blog world!  See you tomorrow!

15 Day Challenge: Day 6

Day 6: What's something you've always wanted to do but haven't? Why not?

Alright so I know this is totally cliche, but I've always wanted to go skydiving (not bungee jumping that's terrifying). 

I haven't done it yet because I want to do it with people I know and care about and the opportunity hasn't arisen  yet. I'm the kind of person that will be all gung-ho about something if someone else expresses a wish to and needs encouragement.  But if it's just me that wants to do it, it becomes sort of meh. Hmmm maybe I'll make everyone do it for the big 2-5 that's coming up in exactly a year and half a day.

Also recently, I've decided I want to go paddle boarding. Hopefully, I'll get around to it sometime this summer.

Have an excellent Friday y'all! 

15 Day Challenge: Day 5

Alright so I'm back on schedule!

                        

Day 5: If you could have dinner with any five people, who would they be?

So I'd want to have all three of these guys at one dinner. And yes, I'm about to completely nerd out over here. You have been warned.

1. Augustus - So yeah, I was a classics minor (shoulda been major) who loved Roman classical history.  Augustus, aka Octavius Caesar, gets a lot of crap about being some little whiney upstart with good publicity. (And he might have been, I don't know because I've never met him.) But this little whiney upstart also united all of Rome after his uncle Caesar went and pissed off some people and made his BFFs have to kill him which bothered them so much that they committed suicide. So I want to meet someone who can bring a whole empire out of that kind of negative thinking. I think that would be awesome.

 Plus, isn't he super cute in this sculpture?




2.  Ovid - Ovid's Metamorphoses is amazeballs if you've taken Professor Butler's class on it, or if you're a very astute reader. There are so many layers, I can't even think about it without getting excited. Augustus, however, had a problem with Ovid and exiled him from Rome for "mysterious" reasons. I think it would be cool to sit them  down at a table together to get to the bottom of their falling out and maybe mediate a reconciliation.


3.  William Shakespeare - Good ol' Will Shakespeare was inspired by both of these men (Octavius Caesar appeared in a couple of his plays and Ovid's story of Philomela is laced throughout Shakespeare's most bloody tragedy, Titus Andronicus.) I'd like him to see what they were both really like. (I'd also like to see what all three were really like.) Plus I think he would coin a bunch of awesome phrases throughout dinner that I could use around my friends later. And I would teach him both awesomesauce and amazeballs. I feel like he would like those.


4. Sydney Carton - So I haven't read this in awhile, but Sydney Carton is a character from A Tale of Two Cities. To refresh your memory/introduce you, Sydney was the one to say "It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done;..."and he says that when he deliberately takes the place at the guillotine for a heroic but unfortunate stranger that happens to look like him. He dies in the book. I think he deserves a "you're a good guy" meal.

5. Woodrow Wilson - Only the best President ever!



So yeah, that was my super geeky list. I can no longer pretend to be cool.

15 Day Challenge: Day 4

Linking up again with Sar over at Life of Love again. I know I'm late guys! I just spent the whole day chillaxing with Shauna on the 4th that I completely forgot!

                                        

So Day 4: What's your favorite childhood memory?

I have a lot of good ones (which is definitely a good thing, not everyone can say the same). If I had to pick only one...I'm not sure what I'd do. hmmmm....

Ok. So I've thought some more and stopped doing a free write and my favorite childhood memory would have to be the hours and hours I spent by my sitter's pool in the summer. My best friend at the time, Lizzy, and I would invent stories about mermaids and pirates that we would make up throughout the whole day and it was just so relaxing and carefree and creative. Pools now just seem so empty.

On that note, Summertime's the best and I definitely love it here in the PNW. I should definitely be doing more water related things!

15 Day Challenge: Day 3

Linking up again with Sar over at Life of Love for her 15 Day Challenge.

Day 3: Tell about an article of clothing that you're deeply attached to.

So when I lived at home, every couple of years my mom would make us purge half of our closet for goodwill. If I had been left to my own devices, I probably would have like 70 tee shirts that I could write about because I wore them at some vacation I went on with family, etc.

But since I wasn't and I've moved a lot in the last few years, I've severed a lot of my attachment with clothes.

However, I still have two I can talk about! Aren't you excited! 

The first is a really really cheesy, not at all attractive, shirt I bought from Hot Topic. it's made like a prison shirt and it has Sirius Black's name and his wizarding prison number stamped on it and Azkaban on the back. I wore it to all the HP movies after that and to my trip to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter like two years ago.

The second one is more sentimental. My grandfather passed a few years ago and every few months or so my Gramma has a giant give-away of stuff in her house that she no longer needs (She disguises these as white elephant Christmas parties were she provides all the presents and no one wants to participate because most of it is junk). Anyway, my brother picked up this robe that belonged to my grandfather and was the one thing everyone was kind of jealous of. Apparently Grandpa Pete bought a lot of these mickey mouse robes so that when one got too frayed to use anymore he didn't have to worry about finding another one. 

Long story short, my bro passed it on to me because he knew I'd appreciate it sentimentally whereas he'd use it for a cape or something and ruin it. 

So there you go! 

Hope you're all enjoying this challenge as much as I am!

15 Day Challenge for Day 2

Day 2: Write a [few] six-word memoir[s]

Oh em gee, I did three! These were difficult to arrive at. Six-word sentences rule the day. (you see what I did there?)

Born a Bruin, always a Bruin.


Striving for flexibility, not for breakability.


Innate caution can't stop my leaping.

15 Day Challenge: Day 1

Hi world! So, in case you haven't noticed, I've kinda maybe stopped posting. Don't worry guys, I'm still reading and singing up here in the awesome Pacific Northwest. I just got tired of writing about it. To rejuvenate myself a little, I'm going to link up with Sar over at Life of Love for her 15 Day Challenge.

Hopefully I'll continue with the book reviews and musicals from there!


(also I changed my blog name! what!)

Day 1: List 15 fun facts about yourself!

1.  I moved from Los Angeles to Seattle on a whim. I knew I needed to get out of L.A. and the only thing stopping me from throwing a dart at a map was my friends random comment of "I can totally see you in Seattle".

2. My short term (like 10-15 week) memory is stellar. After that, if I don't use it it gets locked in some filing cabinet in my head and I have yet to find the master key.

3. I love swimming but I am terrified of flying insects. Unfortunately, most bodies of water have this super crazy habit of attracting bees and mosquitos and June Bugs, etc.

4. I went to Space Camp when I was 11. It was awesome. We built rockets. Sorry, I'm fun.

5. I pronounce psuedo as "suede - o" and brusque like "brush" with a k instead of an h. Apparently, I learned to read faster than I learned to talk.

6. In all of Aaron Sorkin's TV shows, there is a character I would happily marry if they were real. He gives me hope that a guy for me is out there (Here's to you, Dan Rydell, Joshua Lyman, Danny Tripp, and Jim Harper). On the flip side, I don't really identify with any of his female characters.

7. When I first read Pride and Prejudice (and it was totally because Meg Ryan raved about it in You've Got Mail) I stayed up all night reading and then when I finished, I immediately opened it up to start it over again.

8. While I did the same in number 7 with Jane Eyre, After the third re-read I realized that Mr. Rochester was really messed up and the book was never the same for me again.

9. I hate the telephone. I love communicating with people, but there's something about talking through a telephone that is so disconnecting (in my opinion, much more than in text or chats).

10. I've wanted to be (in this order) a detective, President, a librarian, a lawyer, a teacher, Chief of Staff to the President, a detective , and a teacher. Who'd a thunk that I love my job as a Data Analyst.

11. My favorite movie is Megamind.

12. I don't know how to drive. I have a sense that if I learn, I'm going to accidently kill someone, and since I don't think I'd be able to handle that I decided not to learn.

13. I'm in a band called A.K.A with my cousins, Angela and Kelly. We've never performed anything, but staying up that one night writing songs was fun and we never officially disbanded.

14. My favorite Harry Potter was the third one. The introduction of Sirius Black and Reamus Lupin sparked so many imagination branches that I was entertained for many a road trip.

15. Sometimes, I like the movie better than the book.