Binge watching series

If you haven't figured it out by now, I like to binge watch shows. I can't handle waiting every week to watch a show that I like; I have to have it all immediately available to me, lol. Except for a few shows, Teen Wolf and Elementary, I cannot handle the anticipation every week. XD

So yeah, this article on Buzzfeed called 27 Tumblr Posts That Perfectly Sum Up Your TV Addiction basically describes me. All the way to the last post, lol. They're so accurate it's painful, probably because they're all Tumblr posts, and the people of Tumblr understand me on a spritual level. XD

While I was MIA: Internship hunting struggles, Bearstock, reading, and China trip!

I realized that the less time I spend on my laptop, the less I blog. I guess it isn't that much of a surprise when I think about it. I mean, I don't really like to blog in public places, so it makes sense why I only blog on my laptop. However, I don't like to use my laptop as much anymore because it's so slow and laggy half of the time, which is why I use the school's computers a lot more in this past year.

And it sucks, because sometimes, I think about a something to blog about but then forget it by the time I get home. Or I completely forget to blog for a long time because I'm so busy doing homework and such on the computer instead.

Such is the way life is I suppose. :P Hopefully I will get more time to blog and have more interesting things to blog about!

So much has happened these past few months. I've been on the job hunt looking for internships this whole semester since it's a requirement to grade for my major, and this is the only summer I have available to intern if I want to do the 5th year graduate program at Mercer. For the past month, I've had interviews with Blue Bird, ESG, Goodwill, and AT&T.

I feel like, with every interview, I slowly got better. I know that I was totally unprepared for Blue Bird's interview, since it was my first one, so I wasn't surprised when I got rejected. Plus, Patrick, one of my friends in the major who is really good at graphic design, was way more qualified for the job.

Then ESG's interview was full of problems. I realized an hour before the interview that I had accidentally left my dress pants at home, so I was calling all of my friends to borrow some pants, but all of them were at work or off-campus, so I had to go to the mall and buy a pair of pants. By that time, and because of the extra time it took to go back on campus to change and get ready, there was traffic, so I was 15 minutes late to my interview. To make it worse, they gave all of the interviewees a homework assignment that was due a week from that day as well. We had to redesign one of their executive summaries in InDesign, and it was just a lot of effort in a little amount of time. I didn't get to spend as much time as I wanted to work on it, so I knew that they wouldn't pick me, which they didn't.

I didn't think that I made that nice of an impression for the Goodwill interview, but at least I was prepared, and the interviewer was impressed with my work. I guess that's why they wanted to hire me. That reminds me! I need to reject them tomorrow since I got hired by AT&T yesterday! :D

Since Spring Break, AT&T was looking for some Mercer instructional designers, because they heard great things about us. I actually missed the deadline to apply, but thanks to talking to Alejandro the day of his interview with them, he gave them my email when they told him that they were still looking for another instructional designer intern. After going through the application process, I was accepted yesterday! \o/ I still have to finish the paperwork and take a drug test, but I'm in! :D

So yeah, the internship struggle was so real, and I was so busy that I didn't apply to as many places as I would have liked, but I really lucked out with AT&T and am so grateful for the opportunity. I just know that I have to step up my game and do my best while interning with them, because they offer really awesome benefits that I want to keep.

Also, Bearstock was last weekend. Most of my friends weren't that excited for it since the headliners were Relient K and Timeflies. That, and because Shelle was the one driving that day, we kind of had to follow her around, and she didn't want to stay the whole time. 

We got there early to eat at Margarita's, and that was a long affair itself, lol. We told Meethu that we'd meet up with them at noon, but we didn't even get there until one. Then, one of my friends texted me to hangout since he didn't know his way around Mercer, so we spent the longest time trying to find him (he told us that he was at the tennis courts but didn't specify that he meant the tennis courts at the park, not at Mercer -__-"). Then Jackie, who drove separately, since she was running late, finally made it, and I had to instruct her on how to get to Marg's from the Stetson parking lot and meeting up with her near the end since she was getting confused, lol. Then we spent around an hour and a half eating and goofing off before finally leaving. XD

We walked around and bought Bearstock tank tops and shirts and listened to one of the day bands before going to the mall to buy Kyle some shorts and stopping by Sonic's, since it was happy hour and super hot. Then we went back home since we were all tired. It was a really hot day, okay, lol. I do kind of regret missing out of the rest of Bearstock, because I finally listened to Timeflies the next day and saw their Mercer free style rap on Facebook, and they were really good. But it's okay, I've been to four Bearstocks already, and I will probably go to the next two Bearstocks, since I'll still be attending Mercer. :P

I've also been spending an inordinate amount of time with my usability group working on our usability test this semester. We've done work for over seven hours at a time before! There's so much stuff to do for that class! We needed to write a test plan, administer usability tests, give a presentation, and write a formal report. Now we have to do all of that again minus the presentation, and all within one month instead of two like the last one. D:

And in between all of that stuff, I've been spending as much time as I can with Dahveed, because I love him and stuff, lol. It's just fun and relaxing being with him. I can't believe how much of a sap I've become because of him, lol. We've been competing on the sappiest pet names for each other lately. XD

I also got my read on during the middle of Spring Break, lol. I started reading The Iron King by Julie Kagawa during the second half of the break, and continued to read the series once school started up again, but now that things have become even busier, I've stopped reading again. :\ Hopefully I'll start reading again when I'm on the plane to China. 

Oh yeah, I don't think I've ever mentioned it: I'm going to China with my class! We leave the day after the last day of finals and are going to be there for two weeks! It's going to be so fun! We're going to be staying at a couple different cities and touring lots of places. But yeah, the plane tickets have been bought for a while now, and our visas came in a few weeks ago, so we're pretty much set!

So there you have it! Everything that has happened in the past few months! I'll try to keep you updated better, lol. 

Books I Want to Read This Month

I managed to read two books off of this list last month, so hopefully I can do it again this month! :)

1. The Iron Knight by Julie Kagawa
2. The Goddess Test by Aimee Carter
3. The Young World by Chris Weitz
4. Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi
5. Clockwork Prince by Cassandra Clare
6. Confessions of a Murder Suspect by James Patterson & Maxine Paetro
7. The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater
8. Ketchup Clouds by Annabel Pitcher
9. The Goddess Test by Aimee Carter
10. Spark by Amy Kathleen Ryan
11. The Geography of Me and You by Jennifer E. Smith
12. Insignia by S.J. Kincaid
13. Fall for Anything by Courtney Summers
14. Nevermore by James Patterson
15. Divergent by Veronica Roth

March in Retrospect

I actually managed to read a couple of books and novellas this month! Thank you Spring Break and Julie Kagawa's exciting Iron Fey series, lol. Unfortunately, I've been so busy and distracted with other entertainment that I haven't even picked up the next book in the series since I read the last volume. :\ Oh well, hopefully I will be motivated to read again soon. :P

I read:

• The Iron King by Julie Kagawa
• The First Kiss by Julie Kagawa
• Winter's Passage by Julie Kagawa
• The Iron Daughter by Julie Kagawa
• The Iron Queen by Julie Kagawa
• Summer's Crossing by Julie Kagawa

I reviewed:

• The Nine Lives of Chloe King by Celia Thomson

I watched:

• Aziz Ansari Live at Madison Square Garden (2015)
• A Company Man (2012)
• K-POP Extreme Survival (2012)
• You're All Surrounded (2014)
• Mulan (1998)
• Independence Day (1996)

Book Review: The Fallen (Nine Lives of Chloe King #1) by Celia Thomson

Title: The Fallen (Nine Lives of Chloe King #1)
Author: Celia Thomson
Pages: 256
Publication: May 25, 2004
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Summary taken from goodreads: 

Chloe King is a normal girl. She goes to class (most of the time), fights with her mom, and crushes on a boy…or two. But around her sixteenth birthday, Chloe finds that perhaps she isn't so normal after all. There’s the heightened night vision, the super fast reflexes – oh, and the claws. 

As she discovers who she is – and where she comes from – it is clear she is not alone. And someone is trying to get her. 

Chloe has nine lives. But will nine be enough?

2 STARS - IT WAS OKAY

MY REVIEW:

I watched the tv show a a few years ago and thought that it was interesting enough, even with the stilted acting. I heard the the books were very different from the show and was pretty good. 

In all honesty, after reading THE FALLEN, I think that they are both equal in mediocrity. 

The book could have been pretty good, but it just fell flat and uninteresting. The action was okay, and the writing was suspenseful enough, but the author didn't even explain anything important, like why she suddenly had those powers and who the villains are, and I can understand that it's supposed to be answered in the sequel. Because there was nothing concretely answered, and since the book seemed to rely on the love triangle to keep readers interested in the next book, I really don't care to continue this trilogy.

Also, was it really necessary to have a love triangle. I would have been totally fine with her just going after a bunch of guys, having fun, like how it seemed in the beginning, but once she started waffling over Brian and Alyec, I grew bored. She liked and disliked some aspects of each guy and couldn't seem to make up her mind on either. If she couldn't compromise with one guy, why couldn't she just try to find someone else instead that she liked overall? Why was she so desperate to get a boyfriend? Because her best friends were going out?

Also, the whole best friends getting together and leaving her hanging dynamic serves well for the plot, but really, couldn't she just call Amy and tell her what's up? Or tell Amy her real feelings for being basically abandoned instead of bottling it up? Aren't best friends supposed to be able to tell each other anything?

I wished that the characters were more fleshed out. I don't even think that Chloe was that interesting since she turned boy crazy after she turned 16 and was going on dates with Brian and Alyec in between surviving assassination attempts and learning her powers. Amy and Paul were never really mentioned besides being so wrapped up into each other. The love interests were pretty vague in an attempt to appear mysterious, I suppose. Her mom was an interesting character though. 

But yeah, even though the trilogy is relatively short in terms of pages, I can't bring myself to read the next two books after giving both the first book and tv show a shot. 

Top Ten Tuesday: Top Ten Books on My Spring TBR List

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

It's been a while since I've done one of these. -__-" There are lots of books that has came out this year that I'm really looking forward to reading. :)

Top Ten Books On My Spring TBR List:

And my most excited book to read:

Book Nerd Struggles

Buzzfeed had a great article (with gifs!) called 23 Struggles Only Book Nerds Will Understand that I just read. It's great. So so accurate, lol. And awesome use of gifs. XD

Because, man, 1, 2, 4, 7, 9, 13, 15, 16, 18, 19, and 22 are all too real, lol. I basically related to the whole article because it's so true. 

I don't know if I'm lucky or not to have been getting out of the reading phase for the past few years so that I don't read or buy as many books as I used to, but man, those years when I read voraciously and bought as many books as possible... Yeah, I really related to the struggle she mentioned in the article. XD

Books I Want to Read This Month

It's Spring Break, and I am committed to trying to read at least one of these books! >:)

1. The Iron King by Julie Kagawa
2. The Iron Daughter by Julie Kagawa
3. The Young World by Chris Weitz
4. Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi
5. Clockwork Prince by Cassandra Clare
6. Confessions of a Murder Suspect by James Patterson & Maxine Paetro
7. The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater
8. Ketchup Clouds by Annabel Pitcher
9. The Goddess Test by Aimee Carter
10. Spark by Amy Kathleen Ryan
11. The Geography of Me and You by Jennifer E. Smith
12. Insignia by S.J. Kincaid
13. Fall for Anything by Courtney Summers
14. Nevermore by James Patterson
15. Divergent by Veronica Roth