This Thanksgiving....

I'm thankful for:


- God
- life. :)
- my family-Though they do drive me crazy sometimes (especially my brother), I can't imagine living without them. They support me, and encourage me through my hard times, and keep me on track in life.
- my friends- Who else laughs at my sometimes not-so-funny jokes and helps me out when I need help in Algebra? ;)
- laughter
- love
- good health
-My high school- Yes, like my family, it sometimes makes me want to rip my hair off my scalp, but I'm thankful that I go to a place where everyone cares about giving the students a valuable education and life skills to help us in the future. All of the staff are super nice and funny (even the security people). It's an overall great place, and I'm glad that I'm going there. (Oh, and our school has houses :-D.)
- music
- books, of course!
- ...and movies!
- coffee shops that are homely, warm, and smell great
- Google (because their google reader, docs, mail, and other products are so efficient!)
- the holiday season :)
- funny people and things
- sleep. Getting more sleep time is great.
- scarves
- tasty food
- my home
- this blog- I started it for book reviews, but it later turned into a place where I can post some random thoughts, so it sort of turned into a journal/review blog. Now I have this deep attachment to this blog.
- you! Thanks to anyone who visits this blog! :)
- my "giving thanks" mood.
- anything else I forgot to write in here but I know I'm thankful for it.

Hope you all have a delightful Thanksgiving!

What's this? A new book cover?

While I was looking around Amazon for a few things, I came across this:

While the picture on the cover makes for an epic billboard, it, sadly, doesn't look that great as a book cover (even if it does have Logan Lerman on it :P). The image was meant for bigger things than a paperback book, and it's a tad bit too movie-posterish, too hollywoodized for this. It feels as if the effect that the picture is supposed to have on you is getting suppressed. (Err...do I make any sense?) It does have many similarities to the original cover though: the back of Percy's head, who's in a body of water, facing an overcast New York City. Doesn't the title font look the same too?

Whimsical Thoughts #3

- A few weeks ago I saw that little interesting Caterpillar, which I named George, crawling on a sidewalk on my school's campus. Since it was black with this big red stripe going through the middle (I'm sorry for the bad quality of this picture), I had to take a picture of it. It was quite an exotic Caterpillar. :P

- Thanksgiving is coming up in two weeks! The good new about that: A few of my family members are coming to visit from India. That'll be fun. :-D The bad news about that: Our first term ends the day we go back to school from Thanksgiving break. Unfortunately, that means our finals will be the week after Thanksgiving, which means I'll have to find time to study for all my classes while my relatives are here wanting a tour of the place I call home. Talk about bad timing.

- Everyone seems to talking about the end of the world lately; even in my church. We had a service on that last week, and 2012 the movie comes out today. I don't believe the world's going to end in 2012, but if it does, I'll be very annoyed. 2012 is my graduation year, and all that effort we're putting into school is going to be for nothing. But like I said before, I highly doubt the world's going to end, so that's that.

- My brother and I took my mom out to see Where the Wild Things Are for her birthday two weeks ago. I absolutely loved it. It was a fresh, very raw film and Max's characterization was great and lovable. The Wild Things themselves were great characters, but at the end, they got a teeny bit scary. Maybe it's just the big sister in me, but I kept wanting to jump in there and protect Max whenever they had their wild temper tantrums. The only negative thing I would have to say about this movie is that it felt a little slow a couple of times. But that's it though. It's a beautiful film, and I highly recommend watching it.

One last thing- I have a twitter now! I've actually had to start one for journalism last year, but I've never started using it until a few days ago. I put the link for my twitter on my sidebar. I think I'll be able to update that more than this blog, and have a little fun putting random things on there.

I'm sorry for the lack of any interesting things, but I do have a couple of reviews coming up this weekend. :)

Happy Halloween!

This year instead of taking my neighbors out for trick-or-treating, I'm just going to stay at home and watch all the Halloween specials on TV, while passing out the candies to everyone. That way, I can steal some candy from our stash in the pantry whenever I feel like it, and I won't need to put together a costume at the last minute! Muhawhahhaw! (Yes, I can be very evil sometimes. :P)

Anyway, hope you all have a safe, fun Halloween! Don't get too scared by all the witches, ghouls, skeletons, pirates and fairies walking around your neighborhood. :)

(image from google images)

In honor of the lovely, cold rain today

Here, it's pouring down heavily. So for that, a short poem for everyone:

First Winter Rain by Matsuo Basho


First winter rain-
even the monkey
seems to want a wintercoat

Fear of the Orthodontist

At the beginning of my orthodontia, I always laughed when my friends told me of their fear of their orthodontists. What's so scary about them? I mean, sure, sometimes they accidentally whack your teeth with their tools, but it never hurts that much, and the orthodontists I go to are pretty cool.

Now, the word orthodontist strikes fear in my heart too...

Well, the main thing is, they keep on giving me all these treatments. After the school year ended in June and I went for my monthly check-up/tightening, they announced that I had to get my wisdom teeth taken out (and I did). Yesterday, they told me I had to start wearing rubber bands and they're quite painful. I can't open my mouth correctly, and my face looks different. They also broke the news that I'd probably have to start wearing a headgear a few months from now. Who knows what they're going to say when I go next month. I know they're doing it for the good of my mouth, but it's a little irritating, and my mouth hates it.

*Sigh* I can't wait for the whole braces thing to be over.

On a positive note, I had no school today! I studied a little bit, finished the Thief, watched a little bit of Pink Panther on TV, and thought about cleaning my room but didn't. Now I think I'll go drink some hot chocolate.

Whimsical Thoughts #2

- I love 12 Angry Men. We're reading the play in English right now, and it's soo much fun! Each of us get assigned a part (if we want to read), and we just act it out. (I'm the Foreman, the person who trys to keep things under control when the jurors start yelling at each other.) I watched the old black-and-white movie, back in 7th grade in this class called Mock Trials, where we learned about law, and pretended like we were lawyers (I ended up really liking that elective). Anway, 12 Angry Men is intense. The debates between the jurors are riveting and you really have to pay attention to get what's happening. It's amazing. After I watched the movie, and finished Mock Trials, I badly wanted to become a lawyer when I grew up.

- The prospect of college is becoming real to me and everyone else I know. So are the PSAT, SAT, ACT, and the MME. Some people I know are freaking out about all of the tests (including me), and are frantically signing up for prep classes. I'm taking the PSAT tomorrow.

- I need to get better with not saying "ummm..." or "uhh..." or "like..." whenever I have a presentation to do in class. In Business, we had to interview a local entrepreneur, make a powerpoint about them, and present it to the class. I would've gotten a perfect score, but I got one point off because of my bad habit of saying "umm". I hate it when I make silly mistakes.

- Question: In Pride and Prejudice, don't Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy both have prejudices? I've been having these debates with one of my friends, this past week, about whether or not they both have prejudices. I say they both have them, but my friends says that only Mr. Darcy has prejudices. (FYI, we both never read the book. We did watch the movies though. :P) So, don't they both have prejudices? Elizabeth against Mr. Darcy, and Mr. Darcy against the lower class...right?

- Yesterday on the bus home, my friends and I came to the conclusion that Taylor Swift's Love Story is a combination of Romeo and Juliet, the Scarlett Letter, and Pride and Prejudice. The beginning is R&J ("We were both young when I first saw you..."), the middle is the Scarlett Letter (we think), and starting from the part when she says "When I met you on the outskirts of town," it's P&P. (Ok, so it's not very important, but we were bored!) Our debate about P&P evolved from this discussion.

- I love Prada and Prejudice. I don't want to return it to the library...

- Goodreads is awesome! I can't believe I've never heard of that site until I started this blog! It's so book-oriented, has quotes from almost every book and influential person you can think of, and you can be friends with authors!! I have Sarah Miller, the author of Miss Spitfire, as a friend! Wow.

- I'm very happy and relieved about this. I'm so glad he was found (I was very scared for him yesterday), though it's a little weird how his brother never mentioned that he saw Falcon Heene go in the box right away. Lesson to learn from this: Don't run away and hide in a box when your parents yell at you. You never know when there's a search party looking for you (not to mention people watching TV will get worried).