I Think This Means He’ll Get Coal

Yesterday we decorated the church for Christmas.  My brother, one of my sisters, two of my friends, my high school art teacher, and I were assigned to carry the huge, heavy, ceramic manger scene from the basement to the front steps of the church, where we were to set it up.  We were all pretty afraid of breaking them, but we successfully got all of them up, except baby Jesus because we were going to wait until Christmas to put him out.

After that we were told to get the huge fake Christmas tree that takes three hours to put together and set it up in the Fellowship Hall.  We all groaned and joked that we could just stick the branches in randomly so it was an abstract tree.  The tree was in a few different bags that were all packed in a box.  My brother pulled all the bags out while my art teacher held the box.  He got a few out and handed them to my sister and friends and they went upstairs with them.  Then my brother tripped over something and collided with a rickety wooden cradle upon which Baby Jesus was sitting.

Yeah, you can guess where it went from there.  I dove and tried to catch Baby Jesus, but didn’t get there in time and he slid across the cradle and crashed onto the floor, sending pieces flying out the door.  All three of us just looked at each other, unsure of what to do.  Then my brother just said ‘Oh, shit’.

Then the guy who bought the ceramic manger scene came downstairs and my art teacher goes ‘I think we have a problem’.  He looks at the pieces and says ‘Oh, it’s no big deal’.  We were kind of surprised since it had cost so much.  Then he explained that that Jesus wasn’t the one that went with the expensive set.  That Jesus was in a box surrounded by packing peanuts.  Apparently the Baby Jesus that my brother broke was one that one of the old pastors got for free in NYC.

After that we went to assemble the tree.  The directions were lost so we had to make an abstract tree.

December Can Arrive Now

I have officially won NaNoWriMo for 2009!  My novel hit 50K words the other day, but since the NaNo site’s word validator is vastly different than the one on my word processor, I had to keep writing.  The NaNo site said I had 1,500 less words than I actually did.  This is kind of irritating since most people just have a difference of a hundred words or so.  Some people even get words added onto their word count when they put it in the validator.  Lucky, lucky.

 

Today I wrote the extra 1,500 words and put my novel into the validator, and officially won!  However, my novel isn’t finished.  It’s almost finished, but I really don’t know when I’ll finish it.  After writing so intensely for nearly a month, I’m kind of tired of it.  It’s time to get back to fan fiction for a while.

Team Lupin- My Thoughts on New Moon

When I read the first three Twilight books I thought they were decent enough and I enjoyed the time I spent reading them.  I was excited about the fourth one and went to the midnight release party.  However, I was sorely dissipointed in it.  There were many aspects of Breaking Dawn that I disliked, but I am not going to discuss them right now.  I saw the Twilight movie when it came out and was unimpressed with both Kristen Stewart’s acting and Catherine Hardwicke’s directing.  I enjoyed the movie overall because I had enjoyed the book.  I realize that the movie can never even come close to the book.

 

There has been this on-going argument between Harry Potter fans and Twilight fans that occasionally makes me mad but most of the time I just find it hilarious.  If I had to pick I would without a doubt pick Harry Potter, but I prefer to say that people can easily be fans of both.

 

I saw New Moon a few days ago with a few of my friends.  Being the die-hard Harry Potter fan I am, I decided to wear my Team Lupin shirt, which was clearly designed after the Team Jacob shirts.  I felt somewhat rebelious as I sat in a theater full of teenage girls wearing Team Edward and Team Jacob shirts.  However, no one besides my friends noticed it.

 

The movie itself was far better than Twilight.  The scenes were less choppy, everything flowed together, and the fact that Taylor Lautner was shirtless throughout most of the movie just made it all the better.  There were also quite a few funny and witty lines, something that Twilight was severely lacking.

Benny, Meet Benny

Yesterday my dad told me about Benny’s encounter with himself.  Apparently he decided to jump up and put his front paws on the sink counter in my parents’ bathroom.  There’s a huge wall size mirror above the sinks and as soon as Benny jumped up, he noticed the ‘other dog’ in front of him.  He stood there for a bit just staring at himself and then when he decided to jump down, he saw the ‘other dog’ doing the same and stopped.  He kept watching the ‘other dog’ doing everything he did and then he started growling.  I wish someone had gotten it on video so I could have seen it.  I’m going to try to get him to do it again the next time I’m home and if it works I’ll definitely get a video!

Let the Insanity Begin…Again

NaNoWriMo has begun yet again and I am just crazy enough to yet again write an entire novel in a month.  I got off to a bit of a rocky start yesterday between having to switch points of view a chapter in and then having to drive back to school after being home for the weekend.  But as of right now I’m on track.  My current word count is 4,272 and my goal for today is 5,000.  So, two days in, I am on track!

 

My sister is doing amazingly this year on her NaNo.  She’s written just over 7,000 words.  I’m so proud!

I Love Being a Psychology Major

Every student begs for extra credit at least once during the semester, usually after you bomb a test or write a truly atrocious paper.  You usually hope for a one page write up of some extra lecture someone is giving on campus, or an extra homework assignment or something.  Anything that will help boost your grade.  It doesn’t matter what it is or how long it takes, most students will do anything for a few extra credit points.

 

I am no stranger to the begging for extra credit thing.  I do it all the time.  It’s just a bit different for me, being a psychology major.  Sure, I’ve done the occasional extra paper or movie write-up, but most of my extra credit does not involve anything more strenuous than circling numbers on a survey.  Nearly every single psychology professor I’ve had will give us an extra credit point for participating in some sort of study another professor is running.  I’ve had my grade boosted an entire letter grade just for agreeing to be in a few studies.

 

Yesterday I got an email from my Animal Behavior professor.  She’s still sick and told us that if we wanted to get an extra point tacked onto our final grade at the end of the semester, all we had to do was show up to class today and fill out a survey.  Seemed easy enough, so I went.  The research assistant passed out the survey and it took me ten minutes to complete.  The class is an hour and a half long.  So not only do I get an extra credit point, I got to have nearly an entire class canceled.  Ten minutes for a point?  Yep, totally worth it!

 

I love being a psychology major.

Professor’s Away, Students Will Play

Today I walked into Animal Behavior and the Psychology Department’s secretary was standing in the front of the room.  My professor had canceled the last class and the one before that didn’t take place because of mid-semester break.  So we hadn’t had class in nearly two weeks.  The TV projector was on, so I figured the professor had given the secretary some sort of movie for us to watch.

 

I was right.  The secretary put the movie in, stood in the doorway for about ten minutes, and then left.  Then everyone took out their phones/laptops and started to go online, text, and talk.  Hardly anyone was really paying attention.  I was on Twitter and AIM on my iPod and was Tweeting about all of this.  About halfway through the movie, one person just got up and left.  Another girl fell asleep.  A few minutes later two more people left.  Then three more left.  It was really funny.  My friend whom I was IMing told me to leave, but I wanted to stay to find out how many people would leave.  No one else left and the girl who had been asleep woke up.

 

At one point the movie screen when blue and then it got really fuzzy.  Everyone started talking and when it fixed itself a minute later, everyone groaned.  We left as soon as the credits started rolling, though.  I was impressed by how many people actually stayed for the whole thing.  Only six of about 40 people left.

Dorm=Paradise?

Today in Fiction Workshop we were critiquing a story a girl wrote about someone who was stranded on an island.  The island was described as very calming and a sort of paradise.  However, the teacher felt like the story was more about the girl’s relationship with her mother (and I agreed).  He then suggested that the story could have taken place elsewhere, such as a college dorm.  The teacher then goes on to say that a dorm could be considered a calming sort of paradise for the student who lived there.  We were all giving him strange looks and then one girl goes, while giving him an incredulous look, “Have you ever lived in a dorm?” He said yes and the whole class burst out laughing.  Dorm a paradise?  Not so much.

New Phone

I picked out my new phone last night and it’s supposed to arrive sometime next week.  I took advantage of AT&T’s 3-day free Pantech Matrix offer.  I’m getting the red one.  It’s a pretty cool phone, although I’ve never had a Pantech.  I like the slide out keyboard, even though I rarely text on my phone.  I text on my iPod for free.  But it’ll still be useful.  I’m the world’s slowest texter, so for those few times I text with my phone, it’ll be nice not to have to take five minutes to send a five word text.

Apparently, At&T’s free upgrades aren’t really free.  The phone was free, but they’re charging us a $15 ‘upgrade fee’.  They always sneak a fee in somehow.

The Good and the Bad, Mostly the Bad

After a few weeks of not having much to blog about, I all of a sudden have quite a few things to blog about.  I’m just going to put them in one entry to make my life easier.

I woke up today to the lovely sound of my phone making a crackling noise that sounded somewhat like my alarm clock tone.  I hit snooze to see if it would do it again and it did.  Then I messed around with the ring tones and now my phone seems incapable of making any sort of ringing noise, choosing only to vibrate when someone calls me.  This really wouldn’t be the end of the world if it chose to happen while I was home and not while I was at school.  I’m long since due to a free upgrade and just kept this phone due to its excellent battery life.  However, since I’m not home I can’t get a new phone right away.  The phone’s in my dad’s name and I can’t just go into the AT&T store and get a new one without him.  So, he’s going to email me a list of phones that I can get for free and I’ll choose one.

I’m also sick, which doesn’t help matters.  Just a cough/sore throat, no fever, so that’s a plus.

The one good thing that happened today is that I discovered that I do not have to take anymore French classes in order to graduate!  Turns out only incoming freshmen needed to take two semesters worth of foreign language, not transfer students, so I’m in the clear after taking that one class over the summer.

Then I had to get my story critiqued in fiction workshop today.  The actual critique wasn’t bad.  My class seemed to like my story and had constructive things to say about it.  But then I got my grade.  C+.  Mostly due to mechanics!  It’s a fiction class, not a mechanics class!  He liked my story, just not the mechanics.  I don’t think mechanics should lower your grade that much.  I’m so pissed off about it.  It’s going to kill my overall grade which will then kill my overall GPA.

I’m so ready for this week to be over.  I wish mid semester break was this weekend instead of next.  I need a break.