It's A New Year Already!?

Damn. I agree with whomever says that each year goes by faster than the one before. December especially flew by insanely fast. I think work distorted my perception of time. 


Speaking of work...Friday was my last day. I got to end the year with losing my job. Oh joy. I have an interview with the General Manager on Wednesday, but I know that there are no cashier spots opening up. Every seasonal employee does the interview, so we'll probably be told how well we did over the holidays and things of that nature. I'm extremely sad to see it end. I really enjoyed the people there. 


Yesterday night wasn't very exciting. I actually took a nap shortly after I got home since I was stupidly tired. About an hour and a half till midnight my grandma and I went over to my cousins house and snacked on chips, dip, and drank some sparkling grape juice I picked up. We watched the ball drop in New York on the TV and then I played WoW till four in the morning. Haha. 


One of these years I want to go to New York to bring in the New Year. The atmosphere seems amazing and just seeing all the people and music would be extremely awesome. 2012 would be a good year to go there since it'd be after the whole "world is ending" thing. 


I haven't really been on my desktop yet, so I'm still unable to update with postcards and swaps that I've received. I'm actually trying to get back into swapping and sending postcards more since I almost stopped over this past months. Everything slowed down though from the holidays. 


I did watch an instant movie through Netflix on my Wii tonight though. It's a foreign movie that came out in 2008 in Sweden. Obviously the actors/actresses talk in Swedish, so I watched it with the English subtitles. America just did a remake of it though that came out in October (I believe it was) in 2010. Here's my review:





I gave it 3 out of 5 stars. 


Since the English version of this movie was released all I've heard is that the original is a lot better and a must see. I have not seen the English version, so I am unable to compare the two, but Im not extremely impressed with the original. I had absolutely no problems with watching a movie in a foreign language. The subtitles were easy to read except in a few snowy scenes. White on white isnt exactly the greatest. 


One thing that I believe took away from the movie was the way the scenes flowed. They were choppy and sometimes I caught myself saying "What just happened?" Some snippets of scenes I didnt understand and actually read a bit about it so that I could fully understand the movie. The snippets were shown so quickly that I really had no idea what was even shown. 


Overall it was an alright movie. I think they should have thought about how they were going to move through the plot more carefully so that more necessary information was included. Id recommend it to anyone who enjoys old vampire laws, a slower pace, and books turned into movies.


I headed over to Best Buy today and they almost didn't have the movie I was looking for again. There was three or four left and today was the last day it was on sale:





I saw this movie in theatres when it first came out. It's definitely really good and I'll probably be watching it tomorrow or within the next few days. I also watched Beauty and the Beast last night, which was quite a nostalgic ride. 


There's only about a week left of winter break now, which means I really need to get in gear to buy my textbooks. The college reopens on Monday, so I'll most likely get everything ordered then. Other than that things are pretty mellow right now. 

HAPPY FIRST DAY OF THE YEAR!

WoW, That's Interesting...

Well so much for updating often. I've been meaning to write up a new post everyday since the semester ended, but I've just been ridiculously tired when I get the chance to finally do this. I can say that this will most likely be another huge ass post though.


Winter break is now half way over and it's just flown by! Last week I was called in two days, so overall I worked 5 days and clocked in around twenty nine hours I believe it was. I worked Christmas Eve as well from 7a-1:30p, which was not very fun since seven was extremely early for me. I was only supposed to work until 1, but was asked to stay the extra half hour so someone could take a lunch break....I never even got my fifteen minute break.


Friday I work as well from 2:30p-7:30p and it's my last day as a seasonal employee. I seriously thought there was another week left, but turns out there isn't. When I checked my schedule on Monday there was only my half hour interview with the General Manager on it, so Friday is it. I also don't think there are any cashier positions opening up, so sadly I'll be without a job in two days. It really sucks that it's ending...I've talked with some cool people and have even kind of made a friend.


I mentioned in one of my previous posts how I exchanged cell numbers with a coworker at Best Buy...Well we met up last night and grabbed a shake at the Baskin Robbins/Dunkin Donuts hybrid place. Which reminds me that half of my shake is still in the freezer. ANYway, he's seasonal as well so he's in jeopardy of not having  a job soon too.


Speaking of endings, the semester's been over for a week and a half now. The last day of Sculpture class I took pictures of almost everyone's sculptures. We were putting the patina on them, which is like a glaze. Here they are:



This is my only completed sculpture. I know it looks like crap. I've never gotten along well with clay.



This is one of Melanie's completely finished sculptures. At least I think that's what her name is. Her's were definitely the best out of the group.



Melanie's second one.



This is Nicole's. She was in Sculpture II, so she chose to sculpt a skull. It's not finished, but it's extremely cool.



This is one of Kinsey's finished ones. She took her other one home before I took pictures.



This is one of Mija's. (I think that's how you spell her name, I believe she's from Korea) She wasn't there the last day of class, so her's is unfinished. I also forgot to take a picture of her other sculpture.



This is Terrance's. His second sculpture is better, but it was in the other room when I took the pictures real quick.



This is one of Jane's sculptures. She's older and apparently works with clay pretty regularly if I'm remembering correctly.



Jane's second one.


We had pizza and pop while we finished up our sculptures, but the next day was my Calculus test. It took me three hours to finish that thing and I thought it was alright. There were several questions that really confused me, but other than that I thought I was going to get a decent grade. Apparently I thought wrong since I ended up getting a D on the final exam. I couldn't believe it when I checked the grade. It brought my overall grade down dramatically and I ended up with a 79.something % It really pissed me off since it made me end with a C. I'll be taking Calculus II in January, so I'll have to up my concentration in that class.


Besides work and school, I have watched a few more movies. It hasn't been as much as before due to being busy and tired though. They are:


   


I'd prefer not to talk about how my Christmas was, but I only got a $25 gift card to Meijers of all places from my mom's side of the family. The next day I went there and bought:





I used to watch that movie five times a day when I was little. Best Buy also had Toy Story 3 and Inception on sale for $9.99 so on break I went to snatch those up, but we were out of Toy Story 3. I might have to check if there's more tomorrow.


I do have some postcards to put up, but since I'm on my NEW laptop it'll have to wait until I'm on my desktop again. I went to make a payment on this laptop last Monday and my dad offered to pay the remaining balance as a Christmas gift. Of course I agreed so I was able to take it home that day. It's absolutely amazing! I had to wait a day to really mess with it though since I downloaded World of Warcraft and that was a ridiculously huge download.


 At first I had only bought the WoW Battle Chest that has the original game and first expansion, but then the second expansion was $20 off and this week Best Buy has the newest expansion, Cataclysm, on sale for $10 off, so I picked that up as well. WoW is now fully upgraded and I am loving getting back into it. I think I'll be making a second character soon, but for right now I'm playing as a Draenei Paladin and am lvl 31, which is a higher lvl than any of my characters ever got to when I played two years ago.


I do have some postcards to put up on here as well as a few other pictures I'd like to post, but I still need to go through my stuff and scan everything. I might hop on my desktop later tonight to update with those, but for now I'll keep it as is.

It Feels As If The World Is Slowing Down

The past two days have felt a little strange to me. It seems like a lot has happened, yet it also seems like nothing has happened. I blame the cold that decided to hit me last night.

Sunday night the weather took a turn for the worse, so come Monday morning every single school and college was closed, as well as many businesses, except for the one I attend. Of course. Here are a few pictures I took on the way to the college:




Someone spun out on the off ramp of the highway. Not exactly the best spot to be.







As you can see it wasn't the snowfall that was making travel difficult, but the wind. We had 40 MPH winds that day, so I wasn't exactly happy that college was still in session. Plus I had a Calculus test, so having two extra days to study would have been amazing. When I got to the college though I saw why it hadn't been cancelled. Here's how the sky looked near the college:





Without driving on the highway it takes ten minutes to get to the college. There is no way there should have been this huge of a difference in the weather. Ridiculous.

Surprisingly everyone showed up for the Chapter 6 test. It turned out to be the most difficult test of the semester (So far...there's still the final on Friday) and of course it was the one where my brain refused to use any of its power. I thought I blanked out on the Chapter 3 test...well this one was about 1000 times worse. I couldn't remember how to do things that I have been doing all semester, so I most likely failed this test. On the bright side I did answer all but one of the questions, but they are all most likely wrong. I also had my mom to thank for distracting me a bit...

That morning my mom sent me seven pages of text. I don't like mentioning her shenanigans on here, so I'm just going to say that she's gone so far past insane this time that I can't even comprehend it and thought that she was joking at first. I suppose I'll find out more details at the family Christmas party this Saturday. One's things for sure; I'm not holding back my thoughts on her actions anymore. If she brings it up at the party I'm going to tell her exactly what I think. I doubt it will do any good, but she needs a serious wake up call. Especially since she's dragging my brother along with her.

Monday night I watched a documentary by Michael Moore called Capitalism: A Love Story. I had actually watched it Sunday night, but watched it the next day as well with my dad and grandma. It really shed some light on some things and I found it extremely interesting. Here's the cover:



Of course throughout the whole thing my dad was making comments. He enjoys shows that confront corruption and conspiracy, so this was definitely his cup of tea. If anything that movie is motivation to get the hell out of this country. Especially since a lot of what they showed was in Michigan...the state where I live. I think Michael Moore sums it up perfectly by saying "What the fuck happened?"

I watched this documentary using the instant view feature thing on my Wii. I've also watched two other movies using the DVD format:

 

I really love Robert Downey Jr's character in Sherlock Holmes. I know that the whole movie is completely different from the stories, blah blah blah, but I enjoyed the movie pretty well. It didn't hold my attention as much as I thought it would, but the ramblings of Holmes entertained me.

Date Night was just a brainless movie to watch. I don't want to watch anything sad or dramatic since it's finals week and I don't want to feel depressed, so I figured a "comedy" would be a good change. There's definitely more action than comedy, but my favorite part of the movie was the car chase, so I suppose the action enhanced it rather than detracted from it.

Through everything I now officially have a cold. My throat has been bothering me for weeks, but last night I started getting a stuffy nose and by the time I went to bed my throat felt swollen and I couldn't breath through my nose at all. By morning my ears felt clogged as well and I now feel a pressure in my head. After a trip to Walgreens we now have the knock off of Sudafed and a bottle of NyQuil. I took two of the pills several hours ago, but I haven't noticed any difference. I'll probably be taking the NyQuil soon, which I have never had before in my life, so we'll see how that goes.

Tomorrow is study time in Calculus class and then the post-assessment for fitness. I'll need to write a paper for that class as well as for sculpture. Then on Friday there's the final exam and I'm free. However, I have work on Friday from 3:30p-11:00p I am seriously hoping that my cold is a bit better by then. Being a cashier and having a cold is not a good thing at all.

Wish me luck, since so far this week has just been getting worse and worse. There's a light at the end of the tunnel though.

And It's Almost Coming To A Close...

Well there's now less than a week and a half of the semester left. Thank God. One quiz and two more tests in Calculus and then I'll be free for a month. I don't remember if I mentioned it in my last post, but I currently have a B in the class. I took the Chapter 5 test last Friday though and felt extremely good about it, so hopefully I won't be disappointed.


Geez, we're already over a week into the month of December and I still haven't written about my Thanksgiving. I've actually been stupidly busy, so I'll catch up on everything right now, including pictures.


Overall my Thanksgiving seriously sucked. I got to my Aunt Tammy's at around 3:45 P.M. My mom hadn't even gotten there yet. Turns out my grandpa got pissed off at some ridiculous thing and went home. My mother showed up just a few minutes after me...with her room mate in tow. Instantly everyone was voicing their disapproval considering she never even told anyone that she was going to bring her along.


The dinner was short and it was strange not having the whole family there. Everyone's become so disjointed and are holding so many grudges that I'm not even sure who's still talking to who anymore. There was a lot of arguing since my mom decided she was going to flaunt her online boyfriend collection. I was very close to saying something to her, but I hate stirring things up even more than they already are.


My brother and I decided to go see the movie "Tangled", but of course even that couldn't go smoothly. We misread the time and ended up going into the theatre a half hour late. We didn't realize it though until we walked in and saw that the movie was already playing and people were everywhere. Turns out we didn't miss much at all and it ended up being an extremely good movie. It doesn't end here though.


The car I drive is a 1978 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme...A.K.A: Old and doesn't want to run. It takes a long time to warm up, otherwise it'll stall. Normally if it does stall it will the first time I hit the gas. Well this time it decided to do things a bit differently.


I was taking my brother back to my mom's house when a red light came on in the dash. It said "GEN", which means generator apparently. Immediately my car started to deaccelerate. I was not a happy camper at this point, especially since I was going 75 MPH on the highway. Obviously I pulled off to the side, which was when my car decided to not allow me to steer anymore either. Here is a picture I took while stranded on the side of the highway:





You can kind of see part of my car and the window on the door that's open. My mom, dad, and grandma all ended up coming out to get us. My dad and grandma came in the same vehicle so that my dad could drive the Oldsmobile. Of course it was fine for him all the way home. My dad used to be a mechanic, and according to him the Oldsmobile stalled. I don't think I've driven it since then.


Of course with it being Thanksgiving and all the next day was Black Friday. My original shift at Best Buy was supposed to be 4:30 A.M. - 1:00 P.M. I ended up getting there at 4 in the morning and found out they extended my shift until 2:30. The good news is that it wasn't near as bad as I expected it to be and only one customer yelled at me. Apparently an employee was telling people that we were doing price matching that day when we had a meeting that morning that specifically told us that we WERE NOT doing price matching on anything. Hell, we weren't even matching our own website. So the customer got pissy and threw the items around. Oh well.


What was kinda funny is that even our lunch breaks were all scheduled, yet they had people taking them early anyway. My "lunch break" was at 9:30 if I'm remembering correctly. I also ended up getting out of there at 1:30. One of the supervisors let me leave since I was originally only scheduled until 1. I would have stayed if I could, but I honestly could not take much more. I was dead tired and completely exhausted, so I snatched up the chance to leave.


Besides the terrible holiday and the end of the semester coming up, I have been finding time to relax. Almost every night I watch a movie. I signed up for Netflix a few weeks ago, and it is seriously the best thing ever. I only tried out the instant watch thingy the other day since I wasn't sure how it would go with my craptastical internet, but it works amazing and I have already watched three instant movies:


   


Here are the ones I've watched using DVD's:

      

Since I'm posting quite a lot of pictures right now, here's another one from the night I went to the midnight showing of the new Harry Potter movie. Hopefully you can see it, but it looks like there's a rainbow above the moon. The picture really didn't capture much of it since I was using a phone, but in person it was truly amazing:



Now that it's December it seems like it's opened the doors to all the good ol' lake effect snow. Here's after the first snowfall of the month:



And here's on the way back from work on Sunday:





And finally on the way to the college I attend on Tuesday:







On the way to school I actually saw my art teacher in a vehicle going the other direction...away from the college. Turns out class wasn't cancelled, but he was just 5 minutes late. One whole side of the art room is windows, and at times the visibility out of them was zero. It was just pure white outside. I have no idea how these geese and swans tolerate it:



I do have a few postcards to post, but I have yet to scan them so I'll just wait until next time. I do, however, have some pictures I'd like to share of my cats:


This is Charmin...


...He loves boxes


Jack also loves boxes.

My computer is now starting to get very angry with me from all these pictures, so anything I've forgotten will have to wait. Hopefully I'll be able to post more often, but it might have to wait until the end of the semester.

I'm still hoping for an A in Calculus. Hey, miracles do happen.