Last post of the year!

I can't believe how fast this year flew by. I really can't. It seems like spring semester was only a month ago, let alone fall semester. This winter break is flying by as well. Shelle and Kyle are home, and I've been busy with them and David ever since, lol.

But so much has happened this year! Anime conventions, late night adventures, pickup line wars, boyfriends, Never Have I Ever, Atlanta trips, Fancy Schmancy Get Togethers...this has been a good year. Good and bad, I'm ready for next year. :)

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Nothing super exciting has been happening since the semester ended. I've mainly just been trying to do everything on my to-do list. I think I'm a third done already. :D

Other than that, I've mainly been hanging out with David. Lol, I've seen him almost everyday this past week. I wasn't planning on seeing him yesterday since I thought that he was going to hang out with his friend from out of town, but my mom told me to invite him over, and his friend had work, so he basically spent the whole day and night with me, since my parents went to the farm later that night. 

But yeah, we've mainly been watching movies and anime on Netflix whenever he's over with my parents. I think I've watched four movies in the past week as it is, lol. 

Because he's been over so much, I haven't had time to blog anything, so I'll try to find some more time to do that this week. But I really like how relaxing this past week has been. I didn't have to worry about anything. :D

My to-do list this break

This semester has been so busy and hectic that I haven't had a chance to do a lot of general maintenance around the house and chores that has accumulated into a pretty long list of things that I need to do. Lol, I pretty much created this list during finals week as a form of procrastination.

I figured that I'd post the growing list of things to do on here like I did last time during Spring Break as a way to motivate myself to accomplishing all of them. Granted, I think I only did around half of my to-do list I created earlier this year, but I'm happy that I even got that much stuff done. So here is my list of things to do over Christmas Break. :)

• vacuum
• wash sheets/blanket
• return American Eagle clothes
• sort out/wrap Christmas gifts
• get David's gifts
• get parental birthday presents
• clean car
• make emergency car kit
• sell books (Gotwall's, Ebay)
• return textbook
• order textbooks
• fill out health insurance waiver
• sort out notes/school supplies
• try out new makeup
• download music/movies
• update iPod
• email Geneva
• plan fancy schmancy get together
• catch up on anime/shows
• Sword Art Online
• Free!
• Legend of Korra
• Full Metal Alchemist
• Elementary
• The Tomorrow People
• organize/cleanup laptop
• read at least one book
• write at least one review
• look for internships

Dusty Reads: Ink (Paper Gods #1) by Amanda Sun

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

Title: Ink (Paper Gods #1)
Author: Amanda Sun
Pages: 369
Publication: June 25, 2013
Publisher: Harlequin Teen
Summary taken from goodreads:

On the heels of a family tragedy, the last thing Katie Greene wants to do is move halfway across the world. Stuck with her aunt in Shizuoka, Japan, Katie feels lost. Alone. She doesn’t know the language, she can barely hold a pair of chopsticks, and she can’t seem to get the hang of taking her shoes off whenever she enters a building. 

Then there’s gorgeous but aloof Tomohiro, star of the school’s kendo team. How did he really get the scar on his arm? Katie isn’t prepared for the answer. But when she sees the things he draws start moving, there’s no denying the truth: Tomo has a connection to the ancient gods of Japan, and being near Katie is causing his abilities to spiral out of control. If the wrong people notice, they'll both be targets. 

Katie never wanted to move to Japan—now she may not make it out of the country alive.

I remember how excited I was about this book when just the summary was released a while ago. It sounded so cool and interesting that I wanted to read it immediately. However, I am pretty sure that the summary I read last year was a little different compared to the current one on goodreads, because I don't remember the love interest being such a big part of the summary. Then again, it's been a while, so I could be wrong.

And when the cover art was revealed, I was even more excited about the book, since it looked so pretty. Granted, you should never judge a book by its cover, but it doesn't hurt if a book looks nice. :P

Either way, I've always loved learning about Japanese culture, so any book that involved Japan in any way has always caught my interest. Hopefully the author has done her research and is accurate with her depictions of Japan.

What stumps me is why I haven't already read this book when I got a free copy to review from Harlequin Teen last year. Judging from my initial excitement about the book, you'd think that I'd have read it almost immediately. Unfortunately, I think I was too busy to read it at the time since it was near the end of the semester, so I was too busy with that to read anything. Hopefully I will have time to read this book soon since my semester's almost over.

it's finals week...

Last week was pretty crazy since it was the week before finals, so there were a lot of projects due, and this week is crazy because it actually is finals week. -__-" Like, I had two finals on Monday, a project and take home test due today, two more finals on Thursday, and a final on Saturday. 

It's been a busy week where I just don't want to do anything, lol. I've actually finished some anime that I started watching over the summer and completed watching a couple new anime series these past few days... And David and I had originally agreed on not seeing each other until Saturday since we both had finals on different days and needed to study, but we have actually seen each other for the past few days, which is really bad, lol. We should have been studying or doing our homework, but we'd do that for a little bit after goofing around for a lot longer time. -__-"

But yeah, just thought I'd inform you on what's been going on since my blog's been pretty dead for the past few weeks. On the bright side, I have a lot of blogging ideas since I've been procrastinating, so I might be able to write them up sooner or later while I'm not studying, lol. Or after finals; I have lots of things I plan on doing after finals are over, lol. 

The first thing is going to Shena's Christmas party right after my last final on Saturday. My final ends at 5, but hopefully we'll all finish by 3-4 because the whole class is planning on going to Margarita's with our professor afterwards like how we did it last semester. 

Since Shena's party starts at 6, I was planning on leaving around 5:30-6 to go and enjoy the end of the semester with friends for the rest of the night. It's also a white elephant party if you bring a present, so I'm debating if I want to do that as well since we're all required to wear a tacky Christmas sweater as well, and I need to find one asap. I'll prolly go to Goodwill later today and look for one when I take a break, lol.

And now I need to stop procrastinating and start studying. D:

Books I Want to Read This Month

I will have a couple of weeks off since my finals end on the 13th, so I will try to actually read at least one book off of this list this month! >:|

1. The Girl of Fire and Thorns by Rae Carson
2. The Young World by Chris Weitz
3. Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi
4. Clockwork Prince by Cassandra Clare
5. Clockwork Princess by Cassandra Clare
6. The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater
7. Ketchup Clouds by Annabel Pitcher
8. The Goddess Test by Aimee Carter
9. Spark by Amy Kathleen Ryan
10. The Geography of Me and You by Jennifer E. Smith
11. Insignia by S.J. Kincaid
12. Fall for Anything by Courtney Summers
13. Nevermore by James Patterson
14. Divergent by Veronica Roth
15. Insurgent by Veronica Roth

November in Retrospect

I basically just finished a manga series and watched a bunch of things this month, lol. We ended up watching a bunch of movies over Thanksgiving Break. 

I read:

• Maid-sama! vol. 16 by Hiro Fujiwara
• Maid-sama! vol. 17 by Hiro Fujiwara
• Maid-sama! vol. 18 by Hiro Fujiwara

I reviewed: 

• From What I Remember... by Stacy Kramer & Valerie Thomas

I watched: 

• Drumline: A New Beat (2014)
• Farewell My Concubine (2001)
• Big Hero 6 (2014)
• Kung Fu Hustle (2004)
• The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 (2014)
• 300: Rise of an Empire (2014)
• 22 Jump Street (2014)
• Mulan (1998)
• Pain & Gain (2013)
• White Chicks (2004)
• Internal Affairs (2002)

It's Crunch Time

As I expected, I did not do any homework over the break, lol. I was really hoping that I would be wrong, but I was unfortunately right. And since I lost all motivation to do any homework before the break since our internet went out, I have to do all of my homework today, which sucks because I have to do errands as well.

I actually could have at least started doing some of my homework last night after I got home from Atlanta, but I was really lazy and in a daze. Is it just me, or does this happen to many people, but after I come home from a break, I always feel lethargic and in a daze. So yeah, I spent the longest time online shopping for Christmas presents and watching YouTube videos instead.

And instead of starting on my homework this morning, I continued watching this anime called "The Irregular at Magic High School" that I started watching over the summer. It was still ongoing when school started, so I kind of forgot about it, but it was recently added onto Netflix, so I started rewatching it over the break since I forgot what happened. I'm halfway done, so I won't be wasting so much time watching it before finals start (hopefully).

I'm blogging right now because I'm rationalizing my procrastination, lol. My mom's making lunch, so we're going to eat soon, and we're going out to do errands after that, so I don't think I'll get around to doing any homework until four or five. 

Ironically, that's usually the time I start doing homework on Sundays anyway, so I don't feel that bad for procrastinating. However, I have a shitload of homework to do, so I really should be maximizing all of the free time that I have so that I don't have to stay up late for the next few nights. :\

an accurate description of this weekend, lol

But yeah, it's the week before finals, which means that everything's due this week, so I really should have been at the top of my game instead of procrastinating last minute. Let's see if I can survive the next two weeks. :P

On a different topic, my Thanksgiving Break was really enjoyable. Since we were taking my car to Atlanta, I had to drive since David isn't on our insurance, so that was my second time driving to Atlanta. We ran into some traffic, which was expected, and my phone's GPS froze at one of the more crucial moments, but we managed to navigate correctly while it finally started working again, so it wasn't that bad. 

We drove to Shelle's workplace since we had to pick up her keys to get into their apartment and got a tour of her office. Since she got off work in two hours, we just walked around to get lunch and hung around there so that she could just drive us home. 

We went to Kyle's  Jeet Kune Do practice that night, which was really cool. The instructor was really fast! We were joking around that we should pay attention so we could use those moves during Black Friday, lol.

That night, my phone started acting up. I had left it charging for a few hours since it was almost dead, but when I checked on it later, it said that it hadn't charged it at all. No matter how much I wiggled my charging cord, it wouldn't work, so I decided to restart it. It restarted, but got stuck at this one point in the beginning part of starting up. No matter how many times I restarted it, it would always get stuck on that one part. David told me that I should let it die and try it again the next day, so I did that. 

It still didn't work. :( Kyle tried to fix it since he works in IT and is really good at fixing electronics, but even he couldn't fix it. He said that all of the people who posted about this problem online also had to get a new phone. So yeah, I haven't had a phone for five days, lol. I'm going to Verizon with my mom later today to activate her old phone to use until our contract ends in May. It's not a smart phone, but I don't really care anymore, lol. It has a touch screen, but it also slides to the side so that I have a keyboard as well, which reminds me of my old phone. 

Anyway, the next day (the day Kyle tried to fix my crappy phone), we chilled around the house while Kyle went to work for half of the day before going shopping since Shelle and Kyle had to get ingredients to make their dishes for Thanksgiving the next day. We first went to Walmart, but since they didn't have a mixer that Shelle needed, we went to Target and got it there. 

We ended up going to Best Buy as well since Kyle had a $10 reward gift card. When we got there, there was already a line for Black Friday! There were two or three tents already set up at the side of the front of the store, which was crazy. 

Kyle and Shelle were looking at smart TVs for my dad since he said that he wanted a 65" one. They found one that they thought my dad would like, so they agreed to go back and buy it later that night since they couldn't fit the TV in Shelle's car with all five of us. Brian also ended up buying an Xbox One that night since his old Xbox 360 was acting up. 

So we got back home and put our stuff away before Shelle and Kyle went back to Best Buy. Kyle came back five minutes after they left to take Brian with them so that David and I could have some alone time, lol. 

See what had happen was... David and I did it for the first time on Saturday night, and we'd been kind of frisky since we got up to Kyle and Shelle's place since we got to sleep together in their game room while Brian slept on an air mattress in the living room. I was telling Shelle how I kind of wished that we'd wait to do it at another time since the both of us have been really wanting to do it again since but haven't had the time or opportunity to do it since. And I'd already told Shelle and Kyle that we weren't going to do it at their place since that was disrespectful.

But yeah, Shelle called me on Brian's phone that night while Kyle came back to pick up Brian to tell me that they were giving us some alone time so that we could do it while they were gone. Unfortunately, they didn't have any condoms left, so they told us that there was a Rite-Aid nearby that we could go to really quickly if we wanted to do it. 

We both knew that we wouldn't be able to do it in the time that they were gone since Shelle said we'd have around 30 minutes, but we decided to go get some condoms anyway to use in the future. And here's the funny part: since we forgot where the Rite-Aid was, we used David's GPS, and it told us that the closest one was 15 minutes away. So we went to that one even though we were sure that there was a closer one.

There was. We passed it on the way back to their apartment. -__-" Freakin GPS. We wasted half an hour, lol. Then, Shelle called again when we got back to ask us if we wanted slushies from Sonic and to see if we were busy. I told her about our adventure and she laughed, lol. But yeah, we had some time before they came back, so we just messed around for a little bit.

They came back, and we had a late dinner. Since it was late, and we were pretty tired, Shelle decided to bake her pound cake in the morning. Since Kyle's dad invited all of us to his house for Thanksgiving, Kyle was making a salad and Shelle a pound cake. David was her helper that morning, and I was Kyle's, lol.

We ended up leaving a little late since cooking took longer than expected and because Brian woke up sick. He woke up with a fever and kept on throwing up all morning. We weren't sure if he would even be able to go out, but he felt a little better by the time we left. He didn't eat much food and was drowsy because of the medicine, but he was fine until the very end when we were about to leave. That was when he puked. 

Since we had all stuffed ourselves silly for lunch and had plans to go Black Friday shopping that night, we took a nap when we got back to their place. We napped for a couple of hours before leaving to go to the Mall of Georgia at nine. It was just Kyle, David, and me going since Shelle stayed behind with the sick Brian.

It was pretty fun shopping. There was a lot of people there, but we found some good deals so I got a lot of Christmas presents for my friends that night. And I think I spent around $100, which wasn't bad at all considering they were all mostly gifts.

The next day was a chill day. We played Mario Cart of their Wii U and watched Kyle and David play Injustice while snacking and eating leftovers and watching Netflix for the rest of the night. 

The next day was Saturday, which was when we were going home. We ate at Tin Lizzy's since it was a mexican fusion place that Shelle told me about, which was really good before packing up and relaxing for a bit. Then we hit the road. 

So yeah, that was my break. It was relaxing and fun. Now I have to get out of vacation mode and actually start working on my everything since it's all due this week. Now is the time for stress and anxiety, lol. 

Book Review: From What I Remember... by Stacy Kramer & Valerie Thomas

Title: From What I Remember...
Authors: Stacy Kramer & Valerie Thomas
Pages: 462
Publication: May 15, 2012
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Summary taken from goodreads:

KYLIE: Mexico? What a nightmare! I should be putting the finishing touches on my valedictorian speech. Graduation is TODAY! Wait! Is this a wedding band on my finger?? 

MAX: It started with Kylie's laptop and a truck full of stolen electronics and it ended in Ensenada. It was hot, the way she broke us out like some chick in an action movie. But now we're stranded here, with less than twenty-four hours before graduation. 

WILL: Saving Kylie Flores from herself is kind of a full-time occupation. Luckily, I, Will Bixby, was born for the job. And when I found out she was stuck in Mexico with dreamy Max Langston, sure, I agreed to bring their passports across the border but there's no reason to rush back home right away. This party is just getting started. 

LILY: This cannot be happening. It's like some cruel joke. Or a bad dream. I close my eyes and when I reopen them, they're still there. Max and Kylie Flores, freak of the century. In bed together. If Kylie thinks I'm giving him up without a fight, she's dead wrong.

3.5 STARS - I LIKED IT

MY REVIEW:

While the book had a few drawbacks, I really did enjoy it, especially towards the end.

What initially drew me to the book was its plot. It was definitely similar to the movie, THE HANGOVER, in the fact that crazy things happen to the characters that leave them stranded in another country, and it had its funny moments. However, whereas THE HANGOVER takes its situation to the extreme--past the point of being even remotely realistic--FROM WHAT I REMEMBER... is a lot more believable in its execution (although still not totally believable).

And I liked the characters. They were real, they had their own problems, and they definitely weren't perfect. Seeing their character growth was really.

However, I had a problem with the romance. It went way too fast. They basically got to know each other over the span of 24 hours, and they already know that they're gone for each other? Yeah, Kylie and Max are thrown into some crazy situations where they reveal their true selves to each other, but to already start thinking about being in love and soulmates (although that was only briefly mentioned and I don't think meant seriously) is a real stretch.

Also, the writing is a little awkward at times. There were times when the dialogue near the first third of the book seemed really stilted. It was hard to believe that high schoolers talked like that. And, I thought that the the introspective thoughts toward the first half were also somewhat stilted as they explained something, which was bordering on telling, not showing.

However, once you got halfway through the book, when they finally wake up in Mexico, the pace picks up, and it's all wonderful suspenseful anticipation until the end, which was only somewhat predictable. Even then, it was nice to see how it all played out. 

So yeah, not a bad book, especially if you like movies like THE HANGOVER. :)

Day 5 and I'm Dying

The internet at home has been down since last Wednesday, and Brian and I are dying, lol.

All of my homework requires using the internet, but none of them are due until this Tuesday or after Thanksgiving Break, so I've just been procrastinating and not doing any of it. -__-" I really should have started doing my homework on Monday or Tuesday when I actually had free time. Instead, I put if off thinking that I could do it later in the week. Yeah, that was a great idea...

I've also been neglecting my homework because I've been spending too much time with David. He's been over for the past few days, which has made not having any internet not as bad as it could have been, lol. That, and I've been on the internet at school as well.

Anyway, I've been at Bare Bulb for the past four and a half hours today procrastinating and doing my finance homework, so I feel somewhat accomplished, lol.

I'll update on the situation later when I have the chance. Windstream said that they could send someone over on Monday to check up on our internet, so hopefully we'll have it back by then.

Also, my Thanksgiving Break starts on Tuesday after my last class ends, so things will be busy. Dr. Codone was nice enough to cancel class, so I'll be done by noon, and since we're spending Thanksgiving with Shelle and Kyle, I'm going to pick up Brian after class, go to David's house, and let him drive us up there so that we can make it on time to one of Kyle's classes later that night. All-in-all, it's going to be a busy break even though I have a lot of homework to do. D:

So yeah, I'll get back to you eventually, lol.

Cover Lover 41

Haven't done one of these in a while, lol.

This week isn't as busy as the last few weeks have been, which is pretty surprising. Still, I really shouldn't be procrastinating or else I will have to spend all of my free time during Thanksgiving break doing all of my homework last minute. D:

A few hours ago, Dr. Vo threw for us a thank you dinner for helping out with the Mviet dinner last week, which was really fun. I got to eat a lot of yummy food and play games and hang out with some good friends, lol.

Have some more poetry

I don't know, I keep on finding awesome poetry online randomly, lol.