Link Recs and LoK

I thought today I'd just share a few funny/enjoyable things I've found on the internet that you might like too. Spread the love.

1) How Not To Clean A Window. This is basically a bunch of pictures showing people defying death in order to get their windows cleaned. It's hilarious and a little scary, which is the best kind of hilarity. The sad part is that I looked at some of the photos and thought, "Hey, that's not so bad! I would do that!" I tell ya, I'm a Darwin Award waiting to happen.

2) I believe John Green from the Vlogbrothers on Youtube mentioned this in a video of his, but I think it's worth sharing that there is an island called Luzon which is an island, in a lake, on an island, in a lake, on an island. This is where I'm escaping to in the event of the zombie apocalypse if you want to join me. Space is limited.

3) Do you like famous paintings? Do you like cats? Then you'll love Famous Paintings Improved By Cats! Seriously, go check this out. Now. I probably shouldn't have laughed as hard as I did at it, but I can't regret it. It was the best 5 hours of my life.

4) This is a youtube video that I find lovely. It's kind of a fan-made music video to the song Little Lion Man by Mumford and Sons with Ron Weasley. It is really well done and I feel like the song fits Ron very well. If you're at all a fan of Harry Potter or Youtube, it's worth a look.

5) One of the places to visit on my bucket list is the Gum Wall in Seattle, WA. Follow the link to the Wikipedia page about it and be amazed. The wall fascinates me in a way that partly makes me want to vomit but mostly makes my insides go mushy at the creativity of our species. As well as the sense of community it takes for everybody to band together in sticking their gum on a random wall and for nobody to come out and scrape it off.

6) Babies Tasting Lemons For The First Time. Am I a bad person for laughing at this? Then you're probably a bad person too. Go check it out.

7) OH MY GOD this just about made my life when I saw it. Disney Face Swap. Basically, some genius Disney fan swapped the characters faces. Hilarity ensued. Another thing that probably shouldn't' have entertained me as much as it did.

8) Youtubers Lucke Conrad, Alex Goot (Goot, really?), and Tiffany Alvord did a cover to Chris Brown's song Next To You. I'll admit to never having heard the original (I'm a fan of Chris Brown's face, not his music) but the cover is amazing. I bought it on itunes and it's a member of my Writing Papers playlist, which basically consists of about 10 songs that I listen to on repeat while I write papers. If you didn't get that from the title.

9) Here are some beautiful Disney wallpapers by alicexz that take my breath away. The one of Rapunzel with the gold and the purple is the background on my computer. It used to be a picture of my friends and I, but they got booted out for Da-Punzz.

10) Last but not least, 50 Unexplainable Black And White Photos. It's what it sounds like, but trust me, it's good.

In unrelated but very exciting news, an article came out announcing that Legend of Korra has been picked up for more episodes! YES!!!!!! From what I understand, Season 1 will be book one (which we just saw) and book two (which will come out in 2013). That is all they were originally planning for. Now they have added a Season 2 which will contain books three and four for an extra 26 episodes!

I'm really excited to see what the creators do with all this extra time. I've heard around that they pretty much already have book two finalized as far as plot and everything goes, which disappoints me a little because I enjoyed Avatar so much more because it was more spread out and...thorough, I guess. I wish they had known about the extra season earlier so that they could have incorporated that extra time into their plot lines.

But hey, I'm talking like this and the freaking thing isn't even close to being out yet. For all I know, they guessed that Nickelodeon would pick it up for another season and planned ahead. Who knows.

I'm just really curious to see what happens next. Korra's got her bending back, including air, Republic City is saved, she can give other people's bending back, she and Mako are in love, the baby is all right...what's next?!?!

I'm not so good at the patience.

What Have I Been Doing?

So, I've been in Virginia for a month now and I wanted to give a little update on what I've been doing. I started this whole blog with the intention and promise to Do Something--capital letters and all. I'm not sure how much progress I've made Doing Something in the manner I meant it when I made myself that promise. My main goal was to not waste so much time. Instead of re-watching my favorite videos on Youtube or stalking pregnant acquaintances I would be doing something more productive. I'd be learning a new skill or hobby, volunteering, reading, and ideally writing.

I'm an expert procrastinator, so I knew this would be a challenge--and it has. I still spend a lot of time on Youtube and I haven't read a book since my internship started. To be honest, I come home at the end of the day, help make dinner, and basically just collapse on my bed watching Youtube videos. And while part of me is like "It's okay, you've had a long day. Relax, don't worry about doing something right now. Have you watched that new Vlogbrothers video yet?" the other part of me is disappointed in myself.

That's not to say I've been completely lazy, and that's what I'd like to focus on today. Call it a self-given pep talk, if you will. I need some motivation right about now.

1) Internship: As I mentioned before, I've been interning with FEMA for the summer. So far the job is...well, pretty boring to be honest. I don't feel like I'm earning my keep because nobody ever has anything for me to do. Most of my day is spent secretly playing bejeweled on my ipod and hoping someone comes by with something (anything) for me to do. The problem is that the people I'm working with deal with a lot of classified material, and I have zero clearance. So I literally can't help out with much. But hey, if they're paying me to sit in my own office with my own bathroom and drink tea all day that's fine with me. Even if it is extremely boring.

There was one fun aspect of my internship this week. I got to go on a site visit! Basically, some of the roofs needed to be replaced throughout the facility. I got to go around with the contractors working on the roofs and inspect them. This means that I was climbing up and down ladders and traipsing across scorching hot roofs all morning with a bunch of old men in work boots. These were the good kind of old men. The kind that call you ma'am and say things like, "Don't be afraid of that ladder; you don't weigh enough to do anything to it," I just smiled sheepishly at that and tried not to think of the 4 sprinkle donuts I'd eaten that morning.

Other than that the internship has taught me about tea. I've always wanted to be a tea drinker. I can't stand the smell or taste of coffee, but I felt like I needed to be able to order something besides a smoothie or a cookies-n-cream milkshake at a coffee shop, and now I can order tea. My aunt is a tea fanatic and has a whole cupboard of different kinds of tea at work. I've been trying a new one each day to find out what kinds I like. So far chamomile, green tea, and blueberry-flavored green tea are my favorites. I know this doesn't sound like Doing Something, but I think it counts as expanding my horizons. Right?

2) Family Stuff: I've been spending a lot of time with my extended family since I came to VA. I hardly ever get to see them all, so I've really appreciated this opportunity. I spent a weekend with my aunt and uncle and their two little girls in Arlington, which was lovely. The girls are brats thought (don't tell them I said that!). I went to two separate Father's Day dinners with a father that wasn't my own. One was at the Peking Gourmet Inn where we all pigged out on delicious duck. I'd only been there once before and I was younger so it was lovely to go back and be able to really experience the new food. Also, they had Jasmine tea, which was wonderful.

The second Father's Day dinner was at my uncle's parents' house. They are from Switzerland and have the most incredible house there with an amazing view of the Matterhorn. They also have a ping-pong table in their basement, where my cousin Erich and I played before dinner.

The most exciting family event I've participated in was a bridal shower. The bride was already married by the time we through this shower (apparently I come from a whole family of procrastinators) and she wasn't even present. Instead we all filmed the shower and my uncle is going to edit the film and send it down to her. It was my first bridal shower ever, I didn't know the bride, and she wasn't even there. It was unusual, to say the least. 

What was so fun about the bridal shower was that it was thrown in a house just three doors down from where my Great Granny raised her thirteen children. That's right, 13 kids. And you should see this house! So small--and no air-conditioning! I don't know how she did it. We took a walk down to her old house and she told us stories and those of her children that were present reminisced. Being so far away from my family I don't get to hear many of these stories, so it was an experience I'm really grateful for.

3) Sandwiches: I helped make 1,780 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches today. I had to wear gloves and a hairnet and everything. A bicycle tour is coming through this middle-of-nowhere town in VA. It is a very scenic town, but I'm still surprised so many people are coming. Anyway, my uncle happens to be the mayor of this very small town and so is in charge of providing a snack of all these cyclists. My aunt, uncle, and I and about 10 other volunteers spent our Friday night making sandwiches, cutting up fruit, and probably wishing we lived somewhere else--but then again, maybe not. There was a great sense of community there. Or that could have just been peanut butter. Tomorrow is the day of the ride where we actually pass out the sandwiches. I have to wake up extra early for a Saturday. Wish me luck.

4) Italy: I bought my plane ticket to Italy. I'm officially broke, but hopefully I'll get paid soon. Buying the ticket kind of solidified how real this is in my mind. It's happening. I'm really going to Florence--for a whole semester no less. Crazy. My mind can't even process this right now.

Well, that's all I've been doing for now. My plan is to start writing for realz on Sunday--did I mention how good I am at procrastination.

J.K. Rowling Makes Me Nervous

Okay, so J.K. Rowling is Made of Awesome. There is no denying it. Harry Potter is beautiful and Real For Me and one of the things that has truly touched and shaped my life in so many ways. That being said, I'm nervous, because she's...writing! Yes, writing! I am so incredibly excited but also really, really nervous. I'm nervous simply because it's Not Harry Potter. Whatever she's writing, it's completely different--it's for adults, for one thing. And she's already said that if she were to write again it wouldn't be anything involving witches and wizards or anything because she'd be worried about drawing too much from the Harry Potter Universe. It's going to be completely different.

This makes me nervous for two reasons. First of all, I am so in love with the Harry Potter series, the way she wrote it, her plot, her characters, the world--everything. BUT...but what if it's not so much her that I love as Harry Potter? What if she can't write anything besides HP to save her life and everything else is crap? That would be so depressing. I mean, the book is guaranteed to be a bestseller so it'll be a success for her no matter what, but I would hate to stop loving her writing like I do now.

My second concern is that even if the next book is fantastic, what if it just isn't good enough? A tweet from Nathalie Summers in this article sums it up best when she says, "J.K. Rowling announcing a new book is almost like God announcing a follow-up to the Bible." And it's true. How can anything compare, no matter how good? I guess overall I'm just worried that I'll be disappointed, which is completely irrational and a little bit selfish of me because I should be optimistically supporting her no matter what, but that's how I feel.

Either way, whatever book J.K. Rowling comes out with, I will buy it and probably read it in one night. I am extremely interested in seeing her write something completely different from Harry Potter and am crossing my fingers for the best.

On a side note, if Pottermore doesn't open up soon I'm going to drown in a pool of my own tears and sweat.

Keeping with the Harry Potter vein, there is some great artwork y'all should go check out. The artist, Viria, has some amazing artwork for Harry Potter but also for a couple different fandoms as well. I think I saw some for Dr. Who and one for Bones. I love her style and she captured the Ginny in my head perfectly. She also draws a lot of the Marauders time period, which I love, because we just need to see more of the marauders!