Hark how the bells/ Sweet silver bells/ All seem to say/ Panic today

Here is how my Christmas break has gone:

1) Get home from college a week before Christmas after packing my entire college room in one day (on almost no sleep).

2) Sore throat within two days of being home

3) Minor oral surgery

4) Full-blown cold

5) CHRISTMAS!

6) Back to sneezing 

7) Start seriously working on summer research applications.  Panic. 

8) Take care of other work necessary to fully start in on research applications.  Lose two days in Excel spreadsheets.  

8) Start to fully realize will be leaving the country to study abroad on January 4th.  Panic.

9) Begin to comprehend the massive amounts of work it's going to take to complete all the applications and pack optimally in the next four days before I leave *brain asplodes*

Dear Universe, please return my work ethic.  I think I left my Windows 7 version back in senior year of high school.  I've been making do with Vista ever since, but it just suffered a bad virus and is having trouble getting back on its feet.  Help?

Warning: Angst Below

This is just a heads up to those of you who haven't read it yet - my previous post, the one I wrote last night, is pretty angsty.  It was also written around 2:00 AM, and it probably shows.  I could take it down, but I'm not going to, because I think there isn't enough emotional honesty in the world.  Too many people ask, "How are you?" and don't expect a real answer.  So the entry below is pretty much me at my lowest and most melodramatic.  That's okay.  It's a part of who I am that doesn't make public appearances very often, and I feel like I don't want to hide that part of myself away anymore.

I'm being taken over by the fear

I'm a procrastinator.  I hate it, but it's true.  Any kind of work that feels forced or has a deadline just gets pushed off, even if I don't really mind it or want to get it done.  Unfortunately, and somewhat ironically, there is one topic my brain works constantly to take care of in advance - mourning, death, and disaster.   This has been true all my life. 

When I was seven or eight, I used to have recurring nightmares about my house catching on fire several times a week.  Before I went to sleep every night, I even made sure I had everything on hand that I needed to grab so I could get out quickly if a fire hit.  By the time I became clinically depressed in high school (a period which has thankfully passed), my fears had matured to include the deaths of my parents, my friends, even myself (mostly as an afterthought, because few teenagers can really conceptualize themselves dying).  Nearly every night I would lay awake in bed, thinking of all the ways my parents could die.  What would it feel like?  How would I find out?  How could I live without one of my parents?  How could I keep going under the crushing agony?

I can feel it, you see.  I have felt in my heart a miniature version of the pain I know will come when they die.  It stabs and it burns.  I can't imagine what the real version will feel like.  But that's not the point.  The point is that I have mourned the death of my parents a thousand times when there has been no reason to even think they were in danger.  So much of my life has been spent wasting time investing in a sadness that won't decrease later for all that I'm putting into it now.  So why?  Why do I live with this?  

The truth is that I love my parents more than anyone else in the world.  I have amazing friends who I love dearly, but no one can compete with my mom and dad.  They are truly amazing, loving, smart, kind, and good people.  They have given me so much love, great advice, and every opportunity to be the best person I can be.  I can never thank them enough, and I can't imagine my world without them.  It is for this reason that in the dark hours of the night after the best Christmas I can ever remember having - sitting with my parents and exchanging gifts and love and stories - that I have fallen into a deep sadness.  I remember exactly how much I have to lose.  And I'm not being randomly paranoid - without being too specific about  my mother's age, I can tell you that both my parents are early baby boomers.  They're not old, but they aren't spring chickens either.  

I guess I also think my life has been too good and my luck has to run out soon.  I've never really suffered in any way that counted, and I feel like it's got to bite me in the ass any day now.  My mother once got in bad bicycle accident and another time we thought she was having a heart attack, but both turned out okay.  My father has had to go to the hospital several times for heart problems to get his heart set right with the paddles - maybe that counts.  I think that problem will kill him someday, and every hospital visit carries the risk that his heart will just stop and not start again.  Do the suicides of an aunt and a cousin count?  The deaths of three grandparents?  The amazing grandmother I don't remember because strokes rendered her entire body unresponsive?  I don't know.  I don't know what will satisfy the universe.  

These days, the depression is gone but the fears are not.  The nighttime terror only hits every month or two now, but it hurts terribly when it does because I know that whether I have suffered enough to satisfy fate or not, my parents will die.  And on the nights when the terror strikes, I see car crashes.  I see flat lines.  I see The Big One (the massive 9.0+ earthquake that's long overdue) hitting Seattle and crushing my parents in their beds or making the bluff under the house slide away, carrying my parents with it.  I hear one parent calling me to tell me the other has been diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer.  The list goes on and on.  And I know that I will see the deaths of my parents come to pass one day unless I die before them.  That is an unacceptable alternative because one of the worst things a person can suffer is to bury their own child, and I know my parents love me at least as much as I love them.  Therefore the only hope that I have is that my parents live to a truly ripe old age in good health, and that when they die I'll have a husband and a child of my own to give me the love I'll need to make it through what will hopefully be the worst times of my life.

Great.  This means that logically I have to get married and pregnant ASAP to help get my fear under control.  That seems like a bad motivation.  Also, I'll then be even more terrified about the safety of my husband and kid.  I feel like I'm playing fear Whack-a-Mole where hitting one more just makes the next one bigger, angrier, and rabid.  I'm gonna need a bitter mallet.  

If you made it through that entire entry, thank you for reading what must have been one of the most morbid and depressing blog posts you've ever seen.  Maybe some of you saw yourself reflected in it, and if so, I'm sorry.  

P.S.  Mom, Dad, I love you, and I fully expect one of you to come at me crying as soon as you read this.  Sorry.  

Vampire Pimp

This is probably the last you'll hear from me before Thanksgiving.  SO MUCH WORK. 

Chicken Soup For the Paranoid Soul

(and now for a copy-and-paste of my video description on YouTube)

 Hello, everyone! You might be thinking to yourself, "Wow, what an ungrateful person! Rootsays spends half a video plugging her and she doesn't even mention it!" The truth is, I filmed an entire video just for that purpose (filmed it twice, actually), but when I was almost done editing it, my editing software crashed and now appears to be broken for good. It's actually quite fortunate that this video was already saved to my computer when it happened.

Basically, the lost video said three things:
1) Rootberry/Rootsays: totally awesome. (for all 16 of you who were subscribers before they/he sent the rest of you over, http://www.youtube.com/rootberry and http://www.youtube.com/rootsays
2) Thank you to everyone who subscribed, particularly those who went from my channel to blkfrhwk's and then subscribed to her. Blkfrhwk a.k.a. Jude was the first person to, uh, "discover" me on YouTube and has been an incredibly supportive and awesome friend ever since. Check her out if you haven't already: http://www.youtube.com/blkfrhwk
3) The promised "coolest responses for ways to die": Mister Flask: teleporter accident CallieLauren: flying a spaceship into a black hole DampRabbitVideo: being hit by a meteor Zjeli: having a heart attack onto the letter k (my Cliff's notes version)

Anyway, I don't know how long it's going to be until I get my new editing software, but despite that problem and all the homework I'm about to get slammed with, I'll be back as soon as I have any time to give.

P.S. Bet you five imaginary dollars that while they were watching the video, my parents were shaking their heads and thinking about how I was talking too fast.

P.P.S. For those of you sharp-eyed people who noticed a slight audio desync in certain areas, that was the fault of my now-dead editing software. I spent hours fixing as much of it as I could stand.

P.P.P.S. I don't want any debates about the definition of irony.

(end YouTube copy-paste)

And now for exclusive content!  Which boils down to -  ARG EDITING PROGRAM ARG.  Before it crashed, the editing software gave me another problem - when it imported a clip, it gradually desynced the audio and the video over time.  Identifying, learning how to fix, and fixing the problem ate up about a day of my weekend.  And right after I learned how to drive the metaphorical clunker, it died on me.  Oh well.  C'est la vie.

How I want to Die (as the coolest grandma ever)

7/11 is good for more than Big Gulps.

Sons of Admirals "Here Comes My Baby": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vR5wKL...

Band Members:

Charlie McDonnell: http://www.youtube.com/user/charlieis...

Alex Day: http://www.youtube.com/user/nerimon?b...

Tom Milsom: http://www.youtube.com/user/hexachordal

Eddplant: http://www.youtube.com/user/eddplant?...

How to look suspicious at night.

Because I felt like it, that's why. I love how much accidental innuendo snuck into my discussion of nerds. And no, I really couldn't see where I was going. It was a very interesting experience, particularly when a whole herd of cars drove past multiple times. I have never seen so many cars in this area in my life. It's like they knew I was outside doing something stupid.

I mentioned someone named Toby in this video. He's a really fun vlogger and you should check out his channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/TobyTurner

I feel so weird linking to him like that because he's the famous vlogger and I'm just a young rapscallion with a camera, but if I know my audience (and I do know 90% of you personally), you probably have no idea who he is.

Time Travel

New video, new understanding of how to make YouTube HD work for me, new room to film in.  More videos will be coming soon.  I'm looking forward to not having to put a framing device in again, but hey, I like this one.  Also, why does dry ice only come around when you have no idea what to do with it?

It's been a while!

Hey everyone!  I'm not dead, but classes are slowly blinding me with science (I see what I did there).  I have four videos all filmed up (well, one was pretty extemporaneous and it might get re-filmed to increase transmission of what I wanted to say and decrease transmission of emo) and I'm now actively working to start getting them edited and posted.  I hope to get the first one up by tomorrow, but no later than Friday.

I'm actually getting a little distracted from homework because I keep wanting to go edit my videos and script and shoot new ones.  This is not necessarily great for my academics, but I'm still keeping ahead of my homework, so Mom, Dad, don't get too worried.  This is, however, really encouraging for me, as I like this hobby (as I have written, facebooked, and talked about to no end for the last few months) and would like to invest time into practicing and improving and creating quality output.

Also, I've just been reviewing the footage of the video that even I recognize is emo and a little melodramatic, and you know what?  I like me.  Once again, I've probably said that before, and I know it must be getting old, but it's always a great feeling to get, especially for a person whose self confidence is so small it could win any limbo competition in the world.  Every time I watch a video I've made and find myself laughing or smiling, I feel some childhood wounds make progress on their final healing process.  Now I just have to wait for the first troll to find my videos on YouTube and start tearing them apart with hate comments.

Actually, I'm somewhat looking forward to my first troll, if he/she ever comes (yay awkward political correctness!).  It will hurt, but it will also a sign that random people are actually watching.

Alright, back to homework or video editing.  Like I said, keep an eye out for tomorrow or Friday.  It's gonna be totally awesome.  Or mildly awesome.  Or maybe just mild.  :)

Update: The first edit of the video is complete.  It will almost definitely be ready by tomorrow, and I'm pretty pleased with how it's shaping up.

Fun with Post-Its

Probably no video tomorrow.  So appreciate what I have today!

100th post Bonanza!

And by bonanza, I mean the standard video.  Woot?

The good news is that I've started to pick up on a verbal tic I have that's rather annoying.  The good news being that I found it, not that it's annoying.  Luckily, it's pretty easy to edit out, but I apparently didn't do a very good job of it on this video.  Can you spot the easily editable verbal tic?

Cow poop.

First off, to explain the title, I was working with compost that contained cow manure for 7 hours today.  Glad that's all cleared up.  Shoveling, wheelbarrowing, and spreading compost for 7 hours is a very good way to make oneself very tired.  This is why I shall be editing and posting today's vlog tomorrow.  I could stay up and finish it, but I would probably get sloppy quickly, and no one wants that.  I've already got tomorrow's vlog planned and plenty of time to do it in, so I shouldn't fall behind again.  

Godzilla! (a.k.a. Obooma!)

It was just one of those days when you feel and hear giant earthshaking noises outside your house and think you might die. Pretty standard. Apparently, it's gone down in Twitter history as Obooma. Awesome.

I'm really happy with how much more natural I sounded on camera in this video.  Also, the whole experience was just kind of exhilarating.  This is the first time that I've been really happy that YouTube seriously messes up my video quality, though, because I had no makeup throughout the entire video and I had been in the sun all morning.  Not an attractive combo in HD, trust me. 

Time (Warp) Capsule.

And no, there is no relation to the Rocky Horror Picture show, I just love the time warp song.

ugh

I've been working on a video for hours and it's all uploaded to YouTube but it's not participating so I'm just going to finish it up tomorrow after I wake up early in the morning and do a lot of yardwork.  The good news is the large amount of work I'm doing tomorrow means that I probably wasn't going to be making a video tomorrow anyway, so at least you'll get something tomorrow.  Apologies for incohesiveness.

Hey, did I just live up to the title of this blog?

SCIENCE!  But not scary science, I promise.  *shifty eyes*

Also, it's A REAL VLOG THINGY that I made for my own purposes!  Finally, after all these weeks.  I still need a lot of work to become a decent vlogger, but practice makes perfect!  Hope springs eternal and whatnot! This paragraph needs more exclamation points!

FANCY DINNERS = TIRED

So I just got back from Oregon last night and found myself prepping for a fancy dinner with family friends all day.  I got some stuff filmed just now, but none of it's really good except for me messing around a bit on camera.  Since I'm not going to upload for the sake of uploading, I'm going to start my video-a-day marathon tomorrow.  And I may take a cue from Dr. Noise and make weekend vlogging optional.  Don't worry, I have a definite video planned for tomorrow along with a stupidly long backlog of ideas, so I really will get on it tomorrow.  I just have to finish my yardwork in the morning, nap, shower, and hit the ground running on my vlog.  And since I'm going to be up tomorrow at 7:00 to do yardwork, sleep time is NOW (another reason why I'm not going to put time into a so-so vlog entry for today).  Goodnight, all!

An Excuse and a Lot of Awesome

So you may have noticed I still haven't posted a video after Life in a Day.  Well, I might not have done my own video recently, but I did shoot and compile footage for another person's compilation video.  That person is known as RoxinPunch on YouTube, and she is awesome.  I'm really sad that I didn't cross paths with her at VidCon, because I really would have liked to talk to her about vlogging and building an audience (she just broke 1000 subscribers).  Anyway, she should have a video coming out soon and it's possible that some of my footage will be in it.  Whether or not it is, you should keep an eye out for the video, and if you are a subscribing type of person, subscribe to her channel.  I think you'll be happy.  She's got quite a persona. http://www.youtube.com/roxinpunch

Now if your name is Lizzle, you've been sitting around for two weeks wondering WHERE ARE THESE VIDEOS JULIA SHOT AND PROMISED.  Well, bad news, I was moving all of last week, got home from summer research yesterday, and am leaving for a short family road trip five minutes ago.  I'll be gone until Friday, but I promise that I'll upload one video per day (no strict midnight deadline) when I get back, at least for the two weeks until I go back to school.  It's a short term way to clear out some idea clutter and get some vlogging practice.  And the reason that I didn't edit and upload a video yesterday was this: http://www.fanfiction.net/u/2269863/Less_Wrong  This is the profile page for the author of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, a fanfiction where Harry Potter, due to certain circumstances, grew up to be very much like Artemis Fowl.  It is scientific, rational, silly, and absolutely hilarious.  There's a whole section that reads rather like Ender's Game.  And it is AWESOME.  I linked to you the author's profile instead of directly to the story because I encourage you to click the PDF download link from that page.  If you download the PDF, it looks almost EXACTLY like an actual Harry Potter book.  Be warned, it can be very hard to put down.

Okay, I'll be back on Friday or Saturday to start my video-a-day marathon.  Have a great week, everyone!

Life in a Day

After fighting with Adobe Premiere Elements 4 for a few hours, I finished my project.  More to come soon now that I've re-overcome my mild distaste for editing video (to be fair, I think I shot more than 80 video clips for this project.  I had a right to not want to deal with that).  I still haven't figured out why YouTube is lowering the quality of my video, but I'm going to work that out ASAP and re-upload when the problem is fixed.  Anyway, this is my life in a day.

I'm hoping to get less awkward on camera with time.  I think I'm on my way, though.  Just got to take myself a little less seriously, because it worked when I did.

I'm in love with vlogs and I feel fine

Okay, so you all are probably wondering why I've been radio silent so much recently after PROMISING that I would have videos up ASAP and after I had already filmed four like a week ago.  There are four primary reasons for this:

1) I have been busy.  This ranges from standard work hours through my entire Sunday (and I mean ENTIRE Sunday) being suddenly and completely unexpectedly taken up by the most awesome (well, only) session of D&D I've ever played (more tomorrow, yay!).  I'm so glad I've found an RPG setting that suits me.  Also, I've been plowing through books that were due back at the library today (I think I'm going to do a full video on The 4-Hour Workweek).  However, I was busy when I was doing daily blogs before, right?  What's different now?  Well...

2) Once something becomes a responsibility instead of a diversion, I start avoiding it like the plague, no matter what it is.  This, combined with my fear of success, fear of failure, and general tendencies toward procrastination make it nearly impossible for me to get anything done.  Fortunately, this is slightly countered by the fact that I now feel guilty about wasting time watching online videos because it reminds me that I have videos of my own to make, driving me back towards the work at hand.  

3) I hate my video editing software.  It's Adobe Premiere Elements 4, and it runs about as smoothly on my computer as Velcro on carpet.  

4) Life in a Day.  That is the big project going on right now (http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2010/07/07/youtube-film-life-in-a-day-to-employ-user-generated-content/).  All Saturday I was running around with my camera trying to shoot interesting video of my life.  Unfortunately, my friend's cool event got delayed by a few days and my office was locked so I couldn't film my kissy-face crayfish interactions.  However, I got some footage and answered the Life in a Day questions, so now all I have to do is edit my video together by the end of this Saturday.  This video is really the wrench in the works.  Not only does it preempt my other videos, but it falls into the traps outlined in numbers 2 and 3 above.  

The good news is that Life in a Day has also convinced me that vlogging is the path I want to take.  Just a few minutes ago, I started reviewing the footage.  Even as I watched myself bungling lines, I found myself smiling, and I mean really smiling.  This statement comes from a girl who suffered a great deal of self-hatred during a bout of clinical depression which has left a rather significant scar, so please realize that this is something of a big deal.  I like watching my videos, even unedited.  I think I'm fun to watch, at least for me.  That's all that counts, really.  No matter who ends up watching my videos, whether it's 5 people or 5,000, I will always be able to look back on them, see myself as I am today, and smile.  Vlogging is my path, and I'm getting back on the bandwagon ASAP (well, after a full day of work and D&D tomorrow).  I'll have to have my Life in a Day video up by Saturday, anyway (well, that may go unlisted, but we'll see).  

DFTBA,

Julia

I'm back (and will be back more shortly)!

I've just gotten over myself and my self-consciousness to film four videos that will be making their way on to YouTube over the next fortnight or so.  My hair doesn't look up to snuff, but that's part of the point.  I can't wait for all of the stars to align to make a video; that kind of attitude is what's been keeping me from working on any so far.  It's time to make the leap into YouTube head on in HD, even if my head is covered with what are now highly-visible acne scars.  For anyone who cares, here are the topics of the videos I shot tonight:

1) General news about vlogging and VidCon
2) Indiana Jones
3) An analysis of the song "Belle" from Beauty and the Beast (this one may or may not make it to YouTube)
4) A personalized video for one of my blog readers (it could be YOU, but statistically probably not).

Anyway, the videos may not be perfect, but I'm going in knowing that the only way to get better is to PRACTICE.  Stay tuned for the actual videos!

DFTBA,

Julia

The End of an Era

Okay, I came to a realization today.  A multi-part, rather verbose revelation.

1) Putting myself on a daily blogging schedule/midnight deadline is really cutting down my quality.
2) I'm involved enough in my blogging/vlogging now that removing the one-a-day limitation is NOT going to cause me to go into a slippery spiral of not posting anymore.
3) When I write blogs, I am now starting to see them as vlogs in my head.   This is because, as I have been told, I write like I talk.  I can't script, but I can blog.  I SEE A SOLUTION.

In combination, this tells me that many of the blog entries I write from now on are going to be turned into vlogs.  I'm not going to stop blogging - not by a long shot - but there's going to be a shift.  This shift includes no more one-a-day blogs, at least not in an enforced manner.  Midnight deadlines will be flouted.  Time will be spent planning and editing blogs and vlogs.  Quality will increase.  And everyone will be happier (honestly, how many of you wanted to read something by me EVERY SINGLE DAY?  It's a little overwhelming).

Thank you all for supporting me thus far.  I hope you'll all stick with me through the transition.  I really look forward to what comes next - I have been planning it since at least April, after all.

DFTBA,
Julia

VidCon Day One, Part One:

I'm not going to record every awesome moment here - that would just be mean.  Instead, I'm going to try to make this concise (the first paragraph after this fails - sorry) and keep the rest of this in a journal somewhere. You don't need all the gory details.  

So after staying up way too late watching Twilight: Eclipse, I woke up around 7:30 to shower, wash my hair, and pack my bag.  For the record, I got about 4.5 hours of sleep that night.  This will become more important as these posts go on, trust me.  Around 9:40 I picked up my carpool buddy and off we went to VidCon.  The drive was about an hour long, so we got to talk a little bit.  Apparently she's kind of a big deal with the higher-ups at http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org/ and had friends who went to Disneyland with Charlie McDonnell the day before.  Yeah, she's kind of connected.  It was really cool listening to her talk about her experiences with the online community - she really inspired me to follow in her footsteps.

We arrived.  She had places to go - she got recruited to help out by her friends - so after registering, getting my badge, and picking up my VidCon bag with my shirt and various goodies, I was alone at VidCon.  At first, I was a little overwhelmed.  This wasn't helped by the fact that within about two minutes of arriving I saw this guy:

and this guy:

just standing out in the lobby area in real life and 3D.

Now I'll admit, I've never actually watched Chocolate Rain all the way through, but that was one of the early defining videos of YouTube.  That guy is legend.  The second video, though, that's one of my all-time favorites.  I used to have it memorized (probably still do).  I knew that video well enough that I remembered that the guy who made it is named Corey Vidal even though I hadn't seen it in months.  In fact, when my friend heard the video playing out of another friend's room back in winter, she knew instantly that I was responsible.  That's how much I love this video.  So when I saw a familiar-looking tall guy hanging out in the lobby area of the conference and then suddenly realized who he was, I may have goggled slightly.  When he looked over and caught me staring, I got supremely embarrassed and couldn't work up the courage to talk to him for the rest of the day.  

I did, however, see someone who I had not heard was going to be there.  One of the very first people I was ever exposed to on YouTube.  One of my original YouTube idols, you might say.  If you know me, you probably know him from this video:

Hell yeah.  Joe Bereta (the one with the beard in the video.  Sadly, I never found Luke, but apparently he was totally there.  Argh).  I walked up to him and told him how much I loved his videos and how big "Bible in a Minute" was at my high school.  He seemed genuinely happy to talk to me.  I even got his autograph.  And that, my friends, was when VidCon's awesome began to fully manifest.

I'm going to cut the story off here for now because it's already way too long.  To be continued tomorrow.

***

Now onto non-VidCon related items.

Finally, I would like to point out that I can't hold any of you responsible for not subscribing to my YouTube channel, as it was apparently on private.  However, I can hold you accountable for not figuring this out and telling me.  Now a stranger in the Nerdfighters chat room gets the privilege of being my first subscriber.  

My new camera arrived today and I know exactly what I want my first few videos to be.  Well, almost exactly.  It's going to require a bit of scripting, but I think I've laid the groundwork for a YouTube series, at least in the notes I've taken in the spare seconds I find during work.  I love the title I came up with, too.  I just hope it comes out as I envision it and that other people find it worth watching.  I really think it has potential, after I spend a few episodes ironing the wrinkles out.  I'll get to do two things I love - be informative and entertain people.  The only reasons I'm not filming right now is that my cold in combination with my slowly receding acne attack make me look like Rudolph after acupunture gone horribly wrong.  

Also, I haven't ordered the ukulele yet, but it still seems like a likely thing to happen.  Can't remember if I've already written this, but I figure the worst thing that happens is I can't songwrite/sing to save my life and I end up still knowing how to play ukulele.  

SHAMELESS PLUG http://www.youtube.com/tropegirl SHAMELESS PLUG

Sorry, VidCon posts are being delayed by a day.

I am currently ill/indisposed in two or three different mild but annoying ways plus my laptop is currently required for a viewing of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog.  Ergo, no VidCon posts tonight.  But by tomorrow hopefully I'll have more video clips to add, so hooray for that.

DFTBA,
Julia

VidCon: The Aftermath

Best time of my life.  Maybe Disney World tied for best.  Maybe.

The next several days are all going to be about documentation.  Tomorrow I compile all my memories and post about the first half of day 1.  Then I'll post about the night of day 1.  And so on.

The most important thing you should know is that I'm serious about the YouTube/Nerdfighter community now.  As soon as I get my new camera, I'm going to start posting video.  Good quality, planned out, well-edited video.  I've been writing down ideas for ages.  I hope that you all will support me in my endeavors.  I really can't remember the last time I was this driven to do anything.  I may even buy a cheap ukulele off of Amazon and learn how to play it so I can try my hand at songwriting (Dear Mom and Dad: Yes, I have a guitar.  No, I never really learned to play it.  But it's at home and not very portable.  Also, right now I have time to learn ukulele and it's more conducive to the type of songs I'm thinking about.  And I'm going to practice the guitar when I get home in a few weeks).

I'm on Twitter now in a serious fashion at twitter.com/tropegirl.  Follow me there if you'd like, but don't feel you have to.  And I'm not going to lie, I'd feel a little better about myself if my YouTube channel had some subscriptions and/or comments (youtube.com/tropegirl).  BUT DON'T FEEL FORCED INTO ANYTHING.  The last thing I want is to pressure you guys.

DFTBA,
Julia

sleeeeeeeeeeeeeep

Day 2 of VidCon also amazing.  Got shirt signed by many amazing people.  Awesome concert.  More details later.  Sleep now.  Will sleep after get back from conference also.  Probably no new blog entry until Monday proper.  Continued bad luck in Callie's car - that will be a blog in and of itself.

*MIND BLOWN*

First day of VidCon was amazing, bizarre, and wonderful.  Best day of my life that I can think of.  Also most stressful.  Will write more when sleep less urgently critical.  Highlights:

• Hugging my favorite "celebrity"
• Moshing with some of my favorite YouTubers (mostly Hank Green and Tom Millson, with a few others sometimes in the mix
• Dancing to Numa Numa with people who were really excited about it
• Being in a crowd of people singing along to Charlie McDonnell singing "Exterminate, Regenerate"
• Having serious car troubles in LA at night.

Eclipse: A review.

It was actually quite entertaining, but probably not in the way it was supposed to be.  Warning, here there be minor spoilers.


***


Best line in the movie:
Jacob: "Well, I *am* hotter than you."


Also, I swear that Edward and Jacob were just shy of flirting in that scene.  It was ever so slightly awkward given the context.


Second best line in the movie: 
Edward: "Isabella Swan, I promise to love you every moment of forever."


Wow, Edward, what are you, twelve?  (I think I may be quoting the Buffy crossover video now, but I'm too tired to look that up).


Also, I don't get why so many girls love Edward so much.  He's boring.  And awkward.  And kind of ugly.  I also don't get why everyone in the Twilight universe loves Bella.  She's also really, really boring.  I guess they're perfect for each other.  


Oh goodness, time to sleep now.  I have a long weekend ahead of me.  

How do I get myself into these situations?

I'm going to Twilight: Eclipse tonight.  I wouldn't go because I have work and it costs money and I have PRINCIPLES, but there's a whole group of people going who are going to make it totally awesome.  We're going to have an amazing Parody!Edward and Parody!Jacob and several Parody!Fangirls.  To let you all know that I'm still pure of heart, here is the Buffy vs. Edward video that made Twilight even more hilarious.

P.S.  I learned from my friend who was drawing Jacob abs on another friend that apparently you can blend Sharpie on skin.  *The More You Know*

A Vid Before Vidcon

In which I discuss Toy Story 3 and how VidCon is going to be the best thing since YouTube.

My most sincere apologies for the drunken sailor nature of the camera. Apparently video stabilizing can only do so much when both the camera and the rather bouncy subject are sitting on a springy bed.  Never.  Again. 

Yet another placeholder

Hey all, I know I promised that I would post a vlog today, but I realized that I really wanted a second try at recording it (the footage yesterday was, in retrospect, more rushed than I would like).  So I'm about to try recording again at a slower pace with more time for editing.  This means that the video probably won't be loaded until after midnight.  Ergo, placeholder post!

Losing my memory already

So apparently when I linked to Minesweeper the Movie yesterday, it was not the first time I had done so on this blog.  Next thing you know, I'll be forgetting what I ate for breakfast.  Wait...oh right, a bagel.  Anyway, today I'll make up the repeated video with another old classic video suggested to me by Lizzle: The Mantage.

In other news, I've recorded a vlog that I'm not going to be able to post until tomorrow.  I may or may not be going to Toy Story 3 tonight, so time is slightly crunchy right now.  But the good news is that this may be one of the last vlogs I film on my webcam.  I've decided on a camera that I'm going to get from Amazon which should make the video product much better in both audio and video quality.  Not only that, but once I get the camera I'll feel more urgency toward actually getting my video projects done.  Productivity!

Finally, I'm going to link you over to today's Hyperbole and a Half at http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/07/dog.html.   I found it particularly hilarious today for some reason.

All right, time to get things done in the real world now.  GERONIMO!

Change is coming

Some of you may have noticed that this blog has slowed down a bit.  It's not just laziness on my part.  You see,  I've started to set aside some of my better material for my vlog.  I have long intended to start up vlogging again, but life has gotten crazy busy recently, and I just got a roommate a week ago.  As you might guess, having a roommate makes filming a lot harder.  But now, I'm deciding on a camera to buy.  A real camera, not just a webcam.  And I'm going to make things with it.  I've had plans since a month before the school year ended, and they are not going to waste.  The videos are probably going to be much more structured than the blog has been thus far and probably more time consuming.  Therefore the next few weeks before the camera arrives and I fully adjust to it are probably going to be the tail end of the daily posting era.  Quality over quantity, right?

Anyway, boring post is boring.  So to make it a little less sleep-inducing, here's one of my all-time favorite YouTube videos.  Most of you have probably already seen it, but it's still brilliant.

Who are you? What do you want?

Okay, here's the thing.  This post is important to me.  I've spent more time trying to figure out how to best present it than I have with any other blog post.  But I've come up with nothing so far, so I'm just going to be as straightforward as possible.  

Babylon 5 is a damn good show and you should watch it.  

For those of you who have never heard of it, it's a science fiction show from the mid-nineties about a space station which acts as an intergalactic United Nations in the middle of the 23rd century.  WAIT, DON'T STOP READING YET.  I know that for most of you, this probably sounds about as interesting as watching paint dry.  But it's not.  Babylon 5 is a truly epic story.  It is about love, war, telepaths, betrayal, redemption, and many other things that I want to say but can't because it would ruin the show for you.  Best of all, the story was written as a television novel, or five-year miniseries.  The creator, J. Michael Straczynski, had been planning the story for years.  Every apparent loose end and unanswered question created in the first season is resolved and woven back into the story by the end.  In other words, this is a show for those of you who loved Lost or Battlestar Galactica but felt let down by the finales or the general sense that the creators had been making it up as they went along (Note: I love BSG AND the most of the finale, but it was slightly disappointing that the creators had clearly not planned some things out in advance).  

Now, the show isn’t perfect.  I’ll be the first to admit that.  The acting is sometimes questionable and the first season is not that gripping.  The fifth season was also weakened by the un-cancellation of the show.  But don’t let that turn you away.  The first season may be slow, but it is critical to setting up the rest of the series.  The sometimes shoddy acting is compensated for by the lead actors.  And the story is worth all of it.  Seasons 3 and 4 in particular kept me on the edge of my seat the whole time in a way that nothing else ever has.  The finale, which I had high expectations for, didn’t disappoint me.  I sobbed for the last twenty minutes or so at the understated beauty of it.  I can’t remember crying that much for any other work of fiction in my life.  And the character development in the show is subtle but powerful – some of the best I’ve ever seen. 

Like I said, the show has its flaws.  Don’t go in expecting greatness - you will be sorely disappointed.  Let yourself get immersed in the world and then slowly, over time, the greatness will become apparent.  The story unfolds gracefully, the characters evolve, and the ending is beautiful.  

The show in its entirety can be viewed legally at http://www.slashcontrol.com/free-tv-shows/babylon-5.  Alternatively, the first two seasons are available on Hulu.  I find Hulu slightly less frustrating.

If this post has not convinced you to watch Babylon 5, you should think about viewing the write-up about the show at http://aria.dreamwidth.org/82959.html.  Though I love what she has written, I would actually recommend not reading it except as a last resort.  There are some minor spoilers there which I would rather keep new viewers pure of.  You might also notice that my post title and her entry title are almost the same.  That’s because if you want to write about Babylon 5, that’s pretty much the best title there is. 

Now the only thing left for me to do is decide whether to re-watch it now or later.  

Classes for the Masses Part 2: Religious Studies

I'm not a religious person, but I went to a Catholic high school.  I was drawn there by the fantastic general academics the school offered, but I was initially slightly wary of the four-year sequence of required religious classes.  In retrospect, two of those classes have been some of the most important courses I've ever taken, at least in terms of being a member of society.

The class I took in freshman year was an overview of the major modern world religions.  This included, but was not limited to, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism.  That class really opened my eyes.  Understanding the major religions of the world is key to understanding the dynamics of the world as a whole.  That may sound hyperbolic, but it really isn't.  Religion can act as a path to peace or to war, and misunderstandings between religious groups tip the balance toward the latter.  This is why I think that everyone should have a basic understanding of world religions.  I firmly believe that if everyone took a class like this, these misunderstandings and their consequences would drop drastically.  The problems wouldn't go away entirely - people are people, after all - but there would be a difference.

The class I took in sophomore year was an in-depth study of the Old Testament.  This is another area of knowledge that I believe everyone should have some experience in.  The Old Testament is a key document for three major world religions - Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.  Because these three religions also happen to have millennia of history of members warring with each other over religious disputes, it is especially important to understand the text that they hold as relatively common ground.  The Old Testament helps to give perspective on many things that happen throughout history up through today because it is so crucial to three religions that have shaped the modern world.

The areas of religious studies are not the only ones that are interesting or useful.  For example, I took a class just last semester which examined the role of bodies in early Christianity which gave me a totally different perspective on the early Church than my high school had.  However, I believe that some basic religious studies knowledge, particularly in the areas outlined above, is important for everyone to have so that communication between members of different religions is effective and so that mutual respect and tolerance is maximized.

Okay, I just looked back on what I wrote and I realized something a little creepy.  This four-paragraph blog post shares some striking similarities with the highly structured four paragraph essays I wrote back in high school.  STOP HAUNTING ME, JANE SCHAFFER AND YOUR BLASTED ESSAY FORMAT.

Classes for the Masses Part 1: Computer Science

I am a student of the sciences, so I could have gone to a science-oriented college and just generally avoided the humanities.  However, I chose a liberal-arts college for a reason.  I believe that the tools for a happy and successful life are scattered throughout many disciplines and subject areas.  Because of this, I'm starting a series of posts on subject that everyone should have some experience in.

First up is computer science.  Admittedly, computer science might seem like a bit of a cop-out for my first post.  I am a scientist, after all, so computer science is something I should be taking anyway.  My major (Molecular Biology, in case you don't read the blurb at the top of the page) doesn't require it, though, which is slightly baffling to me.  Just a few days ago I found my coding skills suddenly necessary for a summer job doing biology research.  What shocked me was that a semester of intro computer science a year ago was sufficient to problem-solve a real data-interpretation problem.

Computer science can be useful in ways other than just sciences, though.  Want to make your own digital Connect Four game?  It's really not that complicated (okay, three hours of coding with some guidance.  But still!).  Need to do a lot of repetitive calculations for something in your everyday life?  Write a simple code and save yourself a lot of time.  Python is a simple, friendly programming language and it's free for download on the internet.  Free.  There is a lot of power just sitting there waiting for you to use it.  Seize the opportunity!  Whether you want to code something useful or something fun, computer science is an invaluable tool in today's world, and you never know when it will suddenly save your butt in a tight situation.  If you're still in college, take a computer science class.  You won't regret it.

How to watch The Last Airbender

1) Check Rotten Tomatoes.  See that the movie has a 7% fresh rating.  Rapidly readjust expectations from Twilight ha-ha bad to Manos the Hands of Fate horrible.  Feel better knowing that you can't be disappointed now.
2) Realize that the whole group of people you're going with is dressing up for the event.  Get a Facebook message telling you which characters have already been taken.  Tear apart your room and Google Images looking  for a way to create a non-taken costume.  Fail miserably.  Figure that if you can't go in character, geek it out.  Put on your science-y M.I.T. shirt and Triforce belt buckle.
3) Watch seven episodes of Avatar: The Abridged Series while you're waiting.
4) Meet up with the group and tell them that you wanted to be Zuko, but couldn't quite pull it off.  Get attacked with eye-scar make-up and put your ponytail a little higher on your head.  Instant costume.  Zuko is now a nerd, but you realize that The Legend of Zelda probably doesn't exist in the Avatar universe.  Remove the belt buckle.
5) Drive to the theater.  Plot with the group about how to kidnap an Aang - a surprising omission in a group of nine costumes.
6) Arrive at the theater.  Get stared at a lot.
7) Watch as the movie begins.  Realize exactly how bad it is when it starts with a badly-written text scroll paired with a badly-acted narration.  Settle in for a bumpy ride.
8) Cringe every time they mispronounce a word or name, which happens at least once a minute.  Console yourself with the fact that you had enough foresight to watch Avatar: The Abridged Series first so that you can transfer some of the mocking humor from that to the horribly dull and unfunny movie in front of you.
9) Continue cringing.
10) Resist throwing things at Katara.  The theater might kick you out.  Actually, that might not be a bad plan...
11) Exit the theater and make fun of the movie with friends.  Discuss how it was a miracle that the movie got a whole 7% on Rotten Tomatoes.
12) Continue complaining and mocking during the car ride home.
13) Fall asleep feeling contented.  You had a good bonding experience over a bad movie.  Victory.

The Times I Know I am a College Student Part 3: What a college party should be

My life has continued to go well recently.  Last night, for the first time, I experienced what I consider to be a nearly ideal college party.  There were between 10 and 15 total people in a common room of a suite.  The first order of business was a quick round of four-player Bomberman 64 (something I have dreamed of doing since childhood - I only have two controllers at home) while people were still arriving.  Then, once almost everyone had arrived, it was beer pong time.  I was a little nervous about that because I don't drink and had never seen much of beer pong before, so I thought that I would end up left out in a room full of loud, drunk people.  Not so.  Apparently about half of the people there didn't drink either and the game was a very laid-back two vs. two match.  It was actually quite fun to watch with all of my non-drinking comrades, and it took so long that no one got hammered.

So after beer pong, what then?  Why, what else but charades?  No seriously, the party went straight from beer pong from charades.  I can't make this stuff up.  But it was fun.  I had to act out Apocalypse Now really early on, and it would have taken hours if my roommate wasn't psychic or something.  I gave as good as I got though, with Zardoz, Manos the Hands of Fate, and Hercules.  Other memorable ones were A Scanner Darkly and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (both of which were surprisingly easy).  Everyone was legitimately having fun playing charades at this party.  It was strange but wonderful.

The night ended with about ten of us (including two random people from the suite who joined in sometime during charades) sitting around swapping riddles.  At that point it was 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning so everything was absolutely hilarious.  The party finally ended at 3:00 in the morning.  Did I have work the next day?  Yes.  Do I regret it?  No.  I'd gotten plenty of sleep for two nights before and I strive to live well when I get the opportunity.  That party was a rare gem that I was not going to toss away before its time.

I feel it is important to note at this point that the people I was hanging out with weren't all recluses like I am.  The two random guys from the suite looked like they had probably seen their share of pretty wild parties.  No one really expected the party to go the way it did, but everyone had fun.  That really was my ideal college party.  The people who wanted to drink got some beer from the beer pong but they didn't actually get drunk (at least not enough for there to be problems), no one who didn't want to drink got pressured to or felt left out because they didn't, everyone got to know each other better, and there was a real whole-group dynamic (by which I mean there weren't small groups of people all doing their own thing).  It was great and I hope I get to experience that again before I graduate.  I really love this little group of summer friends I'm growing.

Now I'm off to a midnight showing of The Last Airbender.  This is probably a very bad life decision in many ways (I really don't need two late nights in a row and it's supposed to be a terrible movie), but I'll be going with a group of cool people, so there's only so bad it can be.  Allons-y!

The Times I Know I am a College Student Part 2: Does duct tape fix people too?

The first time I really felt like I was in college was in October of my freshman year.  I was hanging out in my room with my roommates and two of their friends late one school night when we suddenly heard singing from outside.  We looked out the window and saw a whole group of guys singing "Build Me Up Buttercup" to the second floor of the front of our dorm.  We all assumed that they were serenading some girl on the floor above us and thought that it was a really cute gesture, so we opened the window to listen and then applauded them when they were done.  To our surprise, they turned and looked right at us as intently as predators studying their prey.

"Come outside, we have a gift for you," one of them said.

All of us stared back out at the boys, confused as to whether or not they were actually speaking to us.

"Come out here, we have a present for you."  Definitely talking to us.

We started to run to the front door, but one of the girls warned, "Be careful, they're college boys.  We don't know what they're up to."  We all nodded our understanding and then walked out the front door.

The crowd had dispersed.  All that remained was something lying on the ground.  We moved forward to get a closer look.  It was a boy, stretched out lengthwise on the ground with his arms stretched far above his head.  He was duct taped to a wooden post.  And it wasn't just a few pieces of duct tape, no.  He was strapped throughly onto the post in at least five places.

I sighed and turned back toward the front door.  "Okay, I'll go get the scissors."

It shouldn't have been hard to find my scissors.  It really shouldn't.  But for some reason that day my scissors had decided to disappear permanently and never return.  I spent at least five minutes digging through my part of the room to no avail.  Finally, feeling the time pressure from knowing that the poor boy was still bound up on our lawn, I ran to the back of the dorm, happened upon some friends in the hallway, and gasped out some garbled pleas for scissors I could borrow.  A few minutes later I booked it back to the front of the dorm with two pairs of scissors clasped in my hand.  We were finally able to cut him loose.

I don't remember much of what he said, but I think that he had lost a drinking game and his friends decided that he really needed to meet new people.  I forgot his name and his face almost instantly, so I think we can all agree that their plan didn't quite work.  However, I still have a clump of duct tape that I pulled off his foot nearly a year and a half ago as a souvenir of the first time I felt like I was a college student.  

Two months in and I already have grandchildren.

Okay, I know that I promised the second installment of my "Times I Know I am in College" posts today, but something else has come up.  Today is the two month anniversary of this blog!  Now I know what you might be thinking: "Two months?  So what?"  Well here's a question.  Have you ever tried blogging every day?  For most of you, the answer is no.  It's often somewhat difficult and takes a bit of planning and thought.  However, some of you out there have taken up the challenge of blogging, and therefore this post is about you.

One of the reasons that I started blogging is that I wanted to make some sort of mark on the world.  Now it could be that this is as big as my blog ever gets.  That's fine.  I like doing this for fun and I have enough readers that I feel motivated to maintain my daily posting schedule.  However, my blog has gone on to reach a little beyond itself.  One of the things that makes me happiest in the world is when someone tells me that they have started a blog and that Methyl Ethyl Aldehyde helped to inspire their action.  This has happened several times.  A few of my friends have recently started small blogs that update infrequently but accomplish the purposes that their authors set out to do.  Some other friends have followed more closely in my footsteps.  I would like to point these blogs out.

The first blog that cites Methyl Ethyl Aldehyde as one influence is Business as Usual, a daily blog by The Artful Dodger (T.A.D.) over at http://workingsofbrilliance.blogspot.com/.  It tends toward somewhat philosophical reflections on life and societal expectations, and T.A.D. does it quite well.  I am quite proud of her and the thoughts she puts on the internet.  Her blog has also inspired another person to give blogging a shot and, since I sort of consider bloggers to form a strange kind of family, I like to think of that blog as a kind of internet grandchild.  It puts a smile on my face whenever I think about it.

The other daily blog is The Zeppelin Diaries by Mister Flask at http://twentyfivehour.blogspot.com/.  I think the fact that this is one of my favorite blogs reflects quite strongly on the type of person I am, but I believe that Mister Flask has produced some genuinely hilarious posts.  The Zeppelin Diaries is mostly about RPGs like D&D, but it is also about BEEEEEEEEEEEEEES.  Two of my favorite posts so far are this and this.

I really hope that neither of these authors has a problem with me linking their blogs, mostly because I think that they are worthy of a few more readers taking a look at them.  I'm proud of these bloggers who looked at M.E.A. and decided to jump in head-first and give daily blogging a shot.  They are producing quality stuff and in many ways have already surpassed me.  I love it.

Once again, I would like to thank my readers for continuing to spend a little of their valuable time reading this blog.  It has been a great two months so far and I hope this blog continues to take me wherever it may go for a long time to come.  Allons-y!

The Times I Know I am a College Student Part 1: SoCal in the Summer

I've probably made this clear before, but even though I am a college student, I've never lived much like one.  Well, at least not like the type of college students movies and popular culture love to portray.  I've only been to a few parties, I don't drink, I don't smoke, I don't hang out in the campus café, and you can probably fill in the rest.  My life is basically eat, sleep, class, homework, YouTube, Hulu, Google Reader, blog, and maybe play some video games.  I do have some very good friends, but they normally fit somewhere within the comfortable rhythms of my life.  Truth be told, it gets rather boring sometimes.  It's not that I don't like adventure, it's just that most of the experiences college students "should" be having don't appeal to me that much.  Wild parties aren't my scene.  

My whole life has kind of been this way, actually.  From the time I was very little I have been a recluse not so much by choice as by vicious cycle.  Example: because I don't go to parties, when people ask me to go to parties with them, I tend to say no because I don't know how to handle myself at a party.  This then makes people less likely to invite me to a party next time, which is unfortunate because the only way I would go to a party at that point would be if someone I knew invited me and/or went with me.  

The thing is, though, that I want to go out and have fun.  I want to really feel like I'm a college student instead of a high school student with more homework and a dorm room.  And sometimes, I do.  When this happens, I remember it as an event of great importance.  I can really savor it because of its rarity in my life.  Take, for example, yesterday.  I went with six other people to a friend's house to hang out and watch the World Cup.  We shouted at the television, ate burgers, mourned our team's loss, then tossed some people in the pool to cheer ourselves up.  Then we went to the beach.  Now remember how I said that I tend to be a recluse?  Despite loving the ocean and having lived in SoCal for the last two years, I have not been to a California beach since the first time I went to one in seventh grade.  Fail.  But I was redeemed yesterday when I went into the ocean with my fellow college students and we messed around and had fun.  When we got tired of the water, we played frisbee on the beach.  It was perfect.  It was an experience I hadn't realized I needed until I'd had it.  I felt like a real, proper college student for the first time in a long time.  It was also the first time that I really appreciated the advantages of living in SoCal and that there are experiences I can have here that aren't possible in my native Pacific Northwest (I'd still rather live there, though; my home state is simply the best).  

This isn't the only time that I've felt like a college student.  The very first time was less glamorous and more filled with duct tape.  But that's a story for tomorrow, for now I must prepare for a round of five-hour laser tag.  If I actually get to do this tonight without some unforeseen problem throwing a wrench in the works, this will go down in history as one of my coolest weekends ever.  

Not what you would call a great first impression.

If there is one thing that is really reliable about my behavior, it is that unless I do a semi-time-sensitive task immediately, it won't get done until the last minute.  For example, if I do the laundry and I don't put it away within a few minutes (or hours at the maximum) of the dryer spitting out the clothes, the clothes will almost certainly not get properly folded or hung up until the next time they get washed.  As you can probably guess, this behavior is not very conducive to living an organized or responsible lifestyle, particularly because I am usually able to convince myself that I can put the task at hand off for just a little while because this time it will be different.  It almost never is.

So with this in mind, it is perhaps understandable that yesterday my floor was filled with my still-unpacked suitcase from my New Jersey trip and all the no-refrigeration-required groceries that I had bought four days before.  There were also several empty boxes of Honey Nut Cheerios and Cheez-Its scattered around with two small boxes I had never bothered to collapse from moving day as well as miscellaneous items haphazardly pulled out my backpack.  There were dishes on the unoccupied dresser and desk of my double and books on the empty bed.  Even my vlog station - the four boxes I stack on top of each other to make my webcam high enough - was fully set up in the middle of the room.  

I arrived back at my room on Friday a little after 5:00 with the knowledge that I had to have my room somewhat clean by 5:30 so that it would be presentable when my friends arrived to hang out.  It was a daunting task, but I went in armed with the knowledge that it didn't have to be perfect - just not a pigsty.  After a few minutes of cleaning I noticed a brown suitcase on the floor.  I couldn't figure out who it belonged to.  None of my friends had told me they were planning to stay in my room; then I realized that none of them had a key.  I looked around, noticing a pair of boots by the empty bed, a backpack on the desk, and a few other small items that suddenly told me exactly how much trouble I was in.  My roommate had finally arrived, and her first impression of me was that I was a total slob.  Crap.

After a few seconds of shocked processing, I started to clean frantically.  Luckily, the mess was exactly what I expected it was - ugly, but not difficult.  I managed to clean it all up in time for my friends to arrive.  There were, however, a few minutes when I ended up lying on my bed because I was feeling a bit dizzy from the non-stop cleaning and slightly-panicky breathing.  In that time I realized what changes were going to take place in my room.  No more free reign on when I got to shoot my vlogs.  Headphones instead of computer speakers.  Eating breakfast quietly outside the room.  But the most worrying thing of all was that my roommate could be a jerk who had a horrible first impression of me.  

After my friends arrived, we hung out until about 1:00 AM with no sign of the mysterious roommate.  But after they left she came back to the room.  I was, and am, lucky.  She seems like a great person.  Totally cool about the whole mess earlier.  She even told me that when she saw my collection of books and DVDs she knew we were going to get along.  She's a Molecular Biology and Physics major (which actually sounds really fun.  Too bad I didn't figure out my majors sooner or I might have done a minor in Physics).  She's so awesome that when I woke up from a nightmare in the middle of the night (I dreamed I that had crushed a mantis), forgot I had a roommate now, and turned on the light to check myself for a mantis corpse, she was totally cool and forgiving about the whole thing.  I think we're going to get along.

I have to run to the beach now, so apologies for typos.  I'll fix them later, but I have to post this now because I don't know when I'll be getting back.

A different kind of heiress

When people hear the word "heiress", the first thing they think of is probably this:

And her little dog too.

The general perception of an heiress is that she must be a person who stands to inherit a great deal of money from her older relatives and, in cases like Paris Hilton's, is already reaping the benefits of said family money.  However, I would argue that things like money and property are perhaps the least important things one can inherit from one's family.  They are not trivial by any means, but, unless you are living near or below the poverty line, they do not strongly influence your happiness.  What matters most is what your inheritance gives you as a person.

If I am still alive by the time that both of my parents pass away, I know what I'll value most in my inheritance.  It won't be their money, even though they've worked so hard and saved so well throughout their lives that the amount will probably not be inconsequential.  It won't be their house, even though it and the environment around it are beautiful.  No, what I will be most grateful for is the little bits of themselves that they've embedded in me.  I have my mother's drive to meet self-made goals (for her, it's Wii Fit every day, for me, it's blogging).  I have my father's love of math and physics.  They have both given me a deep-rooted morality and an overbearing perfectionism (a trait which has its negative qualities greatly amplified by the tendency for procrastination I get from my mother).  They have taught me that store-brand is usually just as good as name-brand and that a Roth IRA is the best retirement savings plan for a person my age.  They have taught me love and compassion and responsibility.  When they die, I will carry on the best of them in how I act and who I am to the best of my ability.  

Just like Paris Hilton, I am reaping the benefits of my inheritance now.  But money is fickle; as we've all seen recently, a few screw-ups made in smoke-filled rooms can rob anyone of the material worth they have.  My true inheritance, though, is made of hardier stuff.  No fickle quirk of fate will take away the gifts my parents have given me.  Therefore, I do consider myself an heiress.  Perhaps I am not the kind of heiress society would deem as such, but I would not trade my inheritance for the world.

The Vacations of Doom Part 1: My Mother Scares Children

My family used to go to Maryland each summer for two weeks of sun, ocean, and mini-golf.  There was a streak of at least three summers, however, when it wasn't all fun and games.  Those three summers tended to bring strange injuries and usually ambulances.  This is what I believe to be the story of the final summer, by which time my mother had apparently become immune to pain in Maryland.  Hopefully the other stories will be told in time.

My mother always enjoyed going for walks while in Maryland.  One day, however, everything went more than a little wrong.

From the tone of her voice, I stood up to help her expecting a small, run-of-the-mill scratch.  Alas, it was not to be.

I don't think that was the minor injury that ended up requiring stitches, but I'm not sure.  I would also like to add that I'm pretty sure there was actually that much blood on her shirt.  I feel so bad for that little kid, standing in an elevator with a perfectly calm woman drenched in blood in an area near her mouth.  I think that the thoughts "VAMPIRE!" and "WEREWOLF!" must have sprinted back and forth across his brain several times.

The Chameleon Actor

I have a real story to tell you all that I've been planning all day, but I woke up early to watch the World Cup and it's catching up to me fast.  When I tell my stories, I want to do it right.  So here's a few thoughts instead.

First, I never appreciated how beautifully quiet my college is during the school year until this summer. Currently, it is a strange night when there isn't loud drumming or music leaking through my window for hours at a stretch in the late evening.  During the school year, my college takes a great pride in keeping things quiet for studying/napping students.  I think I will appreciate this fact much more after sleeping in a noisy dorm room all summer (even the room I stayed in during vacation last week was right next to an oddly noisy road and morning construction).

Second, I would like you to figure out who this actor is.  I don't care so much about his name as I do that you should really be able to place the most famous character that he's played:

The reason I'm asking is that this man, despite having played one of the most quoted characters in history, is apparently some kind of ninja (but not the same kind as Sea World).  I was recently introduced to Dead Like Me, a show that used to run on Showtime.  I knew who this actor was before I saw him because I recognized his rather distinctive name in the opening credits, but if I hadn't known this, I probably wouldn't have recognized him.  I know this to be true because everyone I know who watches the show (okay, only three people, but at least one really liked the show and had seen all of it) didn't realize who he was until I pointed it out.  Apparently he disguised himself so well in his character that he didn't even trigger any sort of nagging partial recognition feeling in any of them.  Take a look here starting at around 1:25:

If you still haven't figured it out, here's a hint - the character in question has a problem with the word "inconceivable" when it's used incorrectly.  Have most of you figured it out now?  "Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya.  You killed my father.  Prepare to die."  Apparently, what we didn't know about Inigo Montoya is that he is a master of disguise.  Also that he isn't really from Spain.  It's just so interesting to me how well a haircut and an accent change can hide a person.  I should try that sometime...