Thursday, September 26, 2013

Dusty Reads: Blue Bloods by Melissa de la Cruz

Dusty Reads is a weekly post featuring a book that has been sitting unread on my home shelf for some time.

Title: Blue Bloods
Author: Melissa de la Cruz
Pages: 302
Publication: March 27, 2009
Publisher: Hyperion
Summary taken from goodreads:
When the Mayflower set sail in 1620, it carried on board the men and women who would shape America: Miles Standish; John Alden; Constance Hopkins. But some among the Pilgrims were not pure of heart; they were not escaping religious persecution. Indeed, they were not even human. They were vampires.The vampires assimilated quickly into the New World. Rising to levels of enormous power, wealth, and influence, they were the celebrated blue bloods of American society.  
The Blue Bloods vowed that their immortal status would remain a closely guarded secret. And they kept that secret for centuries. But now, in New York City, the secret is seeping out. Schuyler Van Alen is a sophomore at a prestigious private school. She prefers baggy, vintage clothes instead of the Prada and pearls worn by her classmates, and she lives with her reclusive grandmother in a dilapated mansion. Schuyler is a loner...and happy that way. Suddenly, when she turns fifteen, there is a visible mosaic of blue veins on her arm. She starts to crave raw food and she is having flashbacks to ancient times. Then a popular girl from her school is found dead... drained of all her blood. Schuyler doesn't know what to think, but she wants to find out the secrets the Blue Bloods are keeping. But is she herself in danger?
A couple of my friends have been fans of this series for a few years now, which was one of the main reasons why I bought the first four books in a bundle a while ago--by which I mean two or three years ago, lol. The funny thing is that one of my new friends from college is also an avid fan, so I am randomly reminded about how much I should read the series whenever we talk about books or pass the books section at Target.

I think the main reason why I didn't want to start the series when it first came out was because everyone said that it's kind of like GOSSIP GIRL in that you get sucked in by the characters' drama. And I think there were major cliffhangers? I definitely didn't want to start a new series at the time, lol.

One of these breaks, I'm gonna read the series because I know that my friends have almost the complete collection so I won't be kept hanging with every book. It's only because of college that we've all lost time to read, let alone catch up on all of our series. :( Hopefully the series will end soon so that I won't have to deal with a major cliffhanger for a year before losing interest in continuing the series once college starts up again. :P

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

New Series on The CW

While I was reading about The 100's TV show a while ago, I stumbled upon an article that had the trailers for The CW's new TV series. I read the little blurbs before all of them (they were right, there's a lot of attractive people on the shows, lol) and watched all of the available clips, and I generally liked all of them, so I'm gonna talk about the most of the shows because who knows; you might be interested. :P

I'm going to skip The 100 because I've already posted my thoughts about it. But before I do, I just want to point out that it's finally got a premiere date for January 1, 2014!

I'm the most excited for The Tomorrow People because it seems like my type of show. You've got clueless teenagers learning that they've got special powers, ambiguous bad guys, lots of action and adventure, and hot people. XD I'm just hoping for some real nice character development and relationships between everyone and no cheesey lines or huge plotholes. 

Check out the clips!



The series premiere is Wednesday, October 9th at 9 PM.

Reign is about the teenage Mary Queen of Scots, and while I'm not a huge fan of period dramas, I might give this a chance because of my obsessive love of Teen Wolf, which had Adelaide Kane playing as Cora in it. I'm assuming this is the TV show that made her leave Teen Wolf since there was news that she was leaving the show to play the lead in another TV show. In Reign, she plays Mary, the main character.

It looks like the show is going to focus on her romantic interest a lot so I don't know if I'll watch it. Probably give the first few episodes a shot before deciding to quit.

Anyway, here's the clip! For some reason, they disabled sharing for the preview, so click here to see the preview on its YouTube page.


The series premiere for Reign will be on Thursday, October 17th at 9 PM.

Star-Crossed seems to be yet another Romeo and Juliet teenage show about two people falling for each other even though everyone else disapproves: this time, it's with humans and aliens who enroll in high school on Earth.

I don't know. The alien aspect definitely seems cool, but if most of the show is going to be about the two main characters pining for each other... I'm not sure if I'll be able to stomach it. :P

Anyway, here's the clip!


Star-Crossed doesn't have a premiere date yet. It just says that it'll premiere midseason.

The last show that the article talked about was The Originals, which is a spinoff of The Vampire Diaries, which I have never seen. I used to snub the show because it seemed like the supernatural version of Gossip Girl, but if Teen Wolf has taught me anything, it's to not judge a show until you watch it. XD So one day, when I'm not busy watching 139903942 different TV shows, I will give The Vampire Diaries a shot. :)

Tuesday, September 24, 2013

it's gonna be a long week

I'm sleep deprived (have been all weekend), busy doing homework, busy studying for two tests and a quiz, and procrastinating all week. 

It's not going to end well. :\


If I don't post much this week, it'll be because of one of the things I mentioned above. (Except for this weekend, I won't be posting because I'll be at AWA :D)

Sunday, September 22, 2013

Weekly Haul (76)

I had to order some stuff for my family off of Amazon, and I needed a couple more dollars before I could get free shipping, so I bought this book since I've been wanting it for a while. Didn't know that it was the first in a series though...


Bought:
Pirate Cinema by Cory Doctorow

Saturday, September 21, 2013

Busy Weekends of September

The weekends of this month has been/will be busy. I've got so much stuff to do every weekend, I feel like I have no free time for myself except for late at night when I should be catching up on sleep (I don't, and I my body won't even let me sleep in.). :\

Don't get me wrong, I've said it myself: I like to be busy, but man, it seems like I can't catch a break. I'm surrounded by too many people with not enough time to recharge before having to go be social soon after. Most of the time, I'm usually around one or two people, usually my friends, but even with them, I need to take a break eventually because my introverted self needs alone time that doesn't involve studying or homework. 

And lately all I seem to do on here is complain complain complain. -__-


Really, I started writing this post with the intention of explaining where I've been these past weekends since I rarely update about my life anymore--besides talking about upcoming tests. :P

On the first weekend of September, I hung out and spent the night at my friend, Cam's, apartment. Because Meethu and I have never went to a hookah bar before, and Cam was an avid user of it, he took us to his favorite place, and we tried and failed to do it properly, lol. 

Well, Meethu failed since she ended up coughing every time she tried to exhale since she kept on breathing out too quickly while simultaneously inhaling, making her choke. I say that we failed because we didn't really breathe in the smoke that much to feel its effect; we were more interested in exhaling the biggest smoke cloud we could or trying to do other tricks, lol. But it was still fun. I wouldn't mind going back and doing it properly. XD

Then Meethu went home and I went back to Cam's apartment where we played with Meethu's kitten that Cam was babysitting while her family got ready to leave their apartment complex (they didn't want to pay a $400 pet fine for the kitten when they were moving out in a week). We tried watching Adam and Steve, but the acting was so bad and the lines so corny that I couldn't take it anymore, and we ended up watching Brokeback Mountain since we both have never finished watching the movie before. 

I guess it was a combination of it being a long week and the movie being really slow that we were both really tired, so we went to bed around midnight. We woke up the next day early-ish and wasted a lot of time being indecisive about where to eat lunch before finally going to this Italian place in Riverside that I have never been to before, because I am all for trying out new places, especially since Cam has eaten almost everywhere in Macon before so his recommendations are always good. XD

It was really good, but Bucca di Beppo is a family restaurant, so their servings are really big, which was why we shared a meal, lol. I thought that the salad that we ordered was going to be a small serving for each of us, but they gave us this huge bowl of it that it was impossible to finish everything, no matter how starving I was. 


Then we walked around the mall to walk off the feeling of exploding from eating too much, lol. Then we rushed back to Cam's apartment to get our stuff since Cam had a meeting at two, and I was also meeting Raymond at two to workout, hangout, and do homework for a couple of hours. 

On Sunday, I goofed off for the majority of the day before finally doing last minute homework. -__-" I think I finished the fourth season of Supernatural that day, lol.

So yeah, that was how that weekend went. Last weekend, Mercer had Midnight Movies on Friday night, so I stayed on campus hanging out with Cam and Raymond after classes were over and having dinner at Roly Poly's since I really wanted a wrap. Cam decided to not go to the movies since he was really tired from not being able to sleep until four that morning, so I watched The Collection and part of Dante's Inferno on Netflix with Raymond at his dorm until my sis picked us up, since we were carpooling with her and her boyfriend to the movies. 

Raymond and I watched We're the Millers, and Shelle and Justin watched The Family since they both had already seen We're the Millers. The movie was hilarious, I really liked it, lol. I didn't even mind driving home at 2:30 in the morning, lol.

The next day, Shelle and I had to go back to Mercer because she wanted to hangout with her boyfriend (and because she left her car there since we carpooled home in my car last night) and because I had to meet with my group to work on a project. We finished our first draft in a few hours, and I left to go do some other homework with Raymond since Saturdays are our workout/hangout/homework days. 

Sunday, I had to help Shelle wash her car since it's been looking extra dirty for a while now. Lol, I cleaned off one half of her hood, and it was like looking at a teeth whitening commercial: one side nice and white, while the other was a darker gray color. 

Then she made me go to Wal-Mart and Best Buy to look for a VGA to HDMI cable since our parents needed it to hook up my mom's old laptop to our tv. We couldn't find it, so I had to order it online later. Then Shelle went back to Atlanta, and I read for a couple of hours before finally working on my essay that was due the next day for my Gender and Communications class that would count as the essay portion of our upcoming exam if we chose to do it that weekend.

And that was my busy weekend last week.

This weekend, I stayed on campus until 11:30 because I told Josh that I would help him set up the telescopes for the Astronomy Club even we were having that night. We decided to set up some telescopes near the movie on Cruz Plaza to help gain interest and publicity for the club since it's Family Weekend, and a lot of people were on campus watching Monsters University on Cruz Plaza that night, so it was a good way for them to stop by afterwards and look at the full moon while we told people about the club. 

We had finished setting up both telescopes 10 minutes before the movie ended, so I ended up taking a lot of pictures of the moon on my phone, because it looked freakin' incredible. 

Check them out!


A lot of people came after Josh made the announcement as people were getting ready to leave once the movie ended, which was cool. Everyone was amazed to see the moon so closely, and a lot of freshmen were interested in the club and the class in general. That is until we told them that the class involved math, and then they were like, I'm mathphobic! O__O

Overall, it was a nice turnout.

Since my classes ended at two that day, and I got out of work early at 3:30, I started watching Game of Thrones since Lauren invited me to watch it with her and Alejandro later that night. They had only watched the first three episodes last week, and I had a lot of time to kill until then, so I decided to catch up on it since the first episode was pretty good. 


I had read the first book in the series a few years ago, I think it was the summer before sophomore year of high school. I had liked it, but the book was so thick and the series so long, that I didn't want to continue it, lol. The tv series is proving to be really good and well-adapted from the book as far as I can remember.

Lauren ended up joining me halfway into the second episode since her research was cut short since something wasn't working and her and her partner couldn't figure out what was wrong with one of the equipment, and their professor wasn't answering their calls. 

So yeah, she hung out and semi-rewatched the episodes with me while playing around on her laptop and got dinner at the UC before Alejandro texted her and said that he got off of work half an hour early. I had already caught up by then, and we were watching stuff on YouTube, so we went to his dorm to start watching Game of Thrones together. I had to leave around nine since Josh texted me earlier saying that they were meeting an hour earlier to get everything ready, so I need to catch up on Game of Thrones again before our next marathon, lol.

Then, today, I had to go back to Mercer for a couple of events. I met up with Raymond to do some homework before going to the Tift social that we do every year. It's a mandatory meeting that we're all required to go to if we want to keep our scholarship. It wasn't bad. I ended up briefly talking to a lady that I talked to last year for a while before talking to a couple of other alums who were really cool. 

One alum even told me about an engineer she knew who did astrophotography as a hobby who lived also graduated from Mercer with her and still lives in Macon. I'm going to talk to Dr. Marone about him because he probably knew the guy since he was a Mercer student, and we could probably contact him and have him be a guest speaker for our club eventually or something, that would be so awesome! 

Then I went back to the library to do some more homework until it was almost time for the Phi Eta Sigma induction ceremony at 3:30. We went back to his dorm to drop off our stuff, and it started to lightly rain as we left. It got worse once the ceremony was over. By the time we made it to his dorm again and got our stuff, it started pouring, so we went back to his dorm and I did homework while he played Halo Reach since he didn't want to study Spanish anymore, lol.

By the time I went left around six, the rain had let up, but there were streams of water everywhere. When you're walking in sandals with no traction between your feet and your soles, walking in streams of water and being blasted with rain on whatever whim the wind decides to blow on, you learn to walk with a funny gait while simultaneously cursing the whether. :P

And tomorrow, I have to go back to Mercer to go to leadership training since it's a requirement for one of my honor societies. :\ I still haven't decided if I want to go to the 9:30am one and stay on campus to study for my tests for a couple of hours afterwards or the 5:30pm one where I'll study at home before going to the training and going home right afterwards. 

We'll see if I don't fall back asleep after my alarm goes off. :P

Also, next weekend is AWA! Anime Weekend Atlanta! It's supposed to be a club event, but everything was last minute so I'm basically going with my friends even though other club members are also going, but since we're all staying at different hotels and stuff, I'm not even sure if we'll really see them that much.


But yeah, we're leaving on Friday after we're all done with our classes, and we'll be coming back on Sunday, so I'm excited for that. There are a lot of panels I'm interested in going to, and even though I don't really have a cosplay this time, I'm not really sweating it. I just need to make sure to do most of my homework before Friday.

So yeah, very busy weekends. I don't think October will be this busy. I hope not, lol. I would really like to catch up on all of my tv shows before the new series premieres all start. 

Thursday, September 19, 2013

Kpop Appreciation Post: EXO

I started writing this post over a month ago, but since I'm so behind on Kpop, I'm just gonna post this as is since I don't have time to talk about all of the new music videos that's come out recently. Keep in mind that this was written on August 3rd, so "Growl" has been out for a while now, lol. I will get around my incredibly long YouTube subscriptions eventually! :P

EXO recently released their follow-up mv called "Growl", and I totally love it!

While it took me a few listens to warm up to "Wolf", I loved "Growl" immediately. Like, I knew I'd like it after listening to the first few seconds of the mv, lol. Watch and be hooked yourself! :P


I just loved the beat and the attitude and the dance, oh man, the dance... XD Everything was just so smooth and arrogant and hot. But seriously, I can't get over the dance. It's so freakin' good! Just check out these gifs!



Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Tumblr Pics 41

Today feels like it should be a lazy day...probably because I hung out with my friend for a couple of hours after my last class ended today, which we got let out early, lol. XD

I don't really have any homework due for tomorrow since I basically finished them already, but I've got a group presentation tomorrow that I should be getting ready for and lots of studying to do for tests next week and a homework assignment due next Tuesday... :\

Imma read my manga for a little bit more. :P











Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Top Ten Tuesday: Books On My Fall 2013 TBR List

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature hosted by the Broke and Bookish.

Haven't really read or bought many books lately, so I'm pretty behind on any new releases. That's why this list is about book I'm planning on reading some time this fall. Hopefully. XD

Top Ten Books On My Fall 2013 TBR List:




Sunday, September 15, 2013

Always Tired, Always Busy

It seems like I've been saying this ever since I started high school, and it becomes even truer as the years go by: I'm really busy. It sucks, but I don't totally hate it, lol.

On one hand, I'm so busy that I rarely have any free time to do anything for fun. I hardly ever have any time to hang out with my friends or just have some me time to catch up on my many fandoms and obsessions. The only time I can do that is late at night when I'm done doing homework or studying, sacrificing sleep in place of much needed entertainment. 

I'm pretty sure that's why I'm so tired all of the time now. I usually sleep around 12-2 AM every night, and my body's become accustomed to waking up around eight every morning, no matter how little I sleep (even on weekends; I can't just go back to sleep! ;__;), so I can never get more than seven hours of sleep. 

On the bright side of being so busy, I like knowing that I can't procrastinate as much anymore in order to go to bed at a somewhat decent hour. Not having enough time to do everything has definitely made me prioritize and plan better even if I feel like the dead half of the day. :P At least I know that I basically pass out as soon as I lay in bed every night now. XD


Plus, ever since I got a job last year, I've become used to working and earning money, so even though I have three part-time jobs, they're not that difficult since I don't have regular hours for two of them. And anyway, I enjoy my jobs for the most part...even though I don't seem to be saving any money up since I keep on spending it on food and gas. -__-"

But yeah, I guess I just wanted to explain why I haven't been updating much lately. Besides work and classes, I've been swamped with homework while trying to find time to hang out with my friends. It seems that only my guy friends and my schedules' seem to work out well enough to find time to get together a couple of times a week. My girl friends are too busy since they're commuters, too. :\

And now I have to go write an essay for tomorrow so that I don't have to write an essay for our next exam in Gender and Communication. :P

Saturday, September 14, 2013

Mini Reviews: Fallen from Grace (Dark Mirror 0.5), Strobe Edge Vol. 1 (Strobe Edge #1), World War Z

Title: Fallen from Grace (Dark Mirror 0.5)
Author: M.J. Putney
Pages: 27
Publication: March 15, 2011
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Summary taken from goodreads:
Fallen From Grace: A Bonus Dark Mirror Short Story 
Allarde, a gorgeous, wealthy noble has hidden his true nature. Discover his diary and witness his sudden fall from grace.
2 STARS - IT WAS OKAY

MY REVIEW:

Meh. It was like an abridged male version of what happened to Tory.



Title: Strobe Edge Vol. 1 (Strobe Edge #1)
Author: Io Sakisaka
Pages: 200
Publication: November 6, 2012
Publisher: Viz Media
Summary taken from goodreads:
Having no experience in romance, the vibrant Ninako curiously explores the meaning of what "love" really is, and is surprised to feel a colorful range of emotions as she grows closer to the school heartthrob, the quiet yet gentle Ren, who also happens to be involved in a longtime relationship. With every intention of keeping her head held high, Ninako prepares to face the mental pain of this one-sided love that she had allowed to take root, facing a series of trials that would either contribute to her growth as a headstrong woman, or break her as it did with other girls. However, is this really a one-sided love? Or had something been silently sown in the most hidden part of Ren's heart?
3 STARS - I LIKED IT ENOUGH

MY REVIEW:

The heroine is a bit of an idiot, so it's a bit of a stretch to believe someone to be so naive about so many things in life. However, she grows and experiences love and heartbreak, and she's so wholehearted about it that it's sweet.

There are many stereotypical characters, the cool love interest, the other guy who likes her, the group of girls who like the cool character, but even they aren't that stereotypical. The cool guy actually thinks about his actions (the phone charm part at least), the other guy doesn't totally lack a backbone, and the girls aren't totally unrealistic--they admire the cool guy, but they're not delusional about him ever liking them back.

All-in-all, not a bad read if you want something quick and not too vapid.



Title: World War Z
Running time: 116 minutes 
Release date: June 21, 2013
Rating: PG-13
Summary taken from IMDb:
United Nations employee Gerry Lane traverses the world in a race against time to stop the Zombie pandemic that is toppling armies and governments, and threatening to destroy humanity itself.
4 STARS - I REALLY LIKED IT

MY REVIEW: 

Even though I've had the book WORLD WAR Z for almost over three years now, I have yet to actually read it. However, after watching this movie, I think that I'll try to read it soon since I liked the movie so much. Plus, I think that the movie strayed from the book since the book was about several stories, and the movie only hit a couple of them.

But yeah, since I haven't read the book yet, I had nothing to compare the movie to, which is probably why I liked the movie so much. It was an ingenius take on zombies with solid acting and great characterization. Also, unlike THIS IS THE END, the special effects was amazing. Everything looked life-like and in great detail.

Thursday, September 12, 2013

look, i have free time today~


That means watching Supernatural for the rest of the day. Aw yissss. XD

(I think I'll finish reading chapter three for Microecon first... ^^)

Wednesday, September 11, 2013

I made a thing

So we're learning how to use Photoshop in my Visual Communications class. Luckily for me, I still remember how to use the program pretty well because of my Beginning Digital Imaging class last semester. So while the teacher was showing us some basic stuff, I made a picture for Lauren because she loves Grumpy Cat. XD


On another, somber note, I have so much homework due tomorrow, and I've been procrastinating for the past hour and a half... D: I just want to flip a table and say NO. >:|

Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Top Ten Tuesday: Books I Would Love To See As A Movie/TV Show

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature hosted by the Broke and Bookish.

Now, this is only set in a perfect world...in which movies don't butcher the books we love. XD This topic was actually kind of hard since a lot of books that I love have already been made into movies, are in the process of being made into a movie/TV show, or are about to be made into one or the other. 

Top Ten Books I Would Love To See As A Movie/TV Show:

Movies: 




TV Shows: