2008 Challenges

I’ve decided to do two challenges this 2008.

• 100 Film Challenge
• 100 Book Challenge

If you want to join, just leave a comment on my latest blog post or email me.

I’ve been running scans on my laptop for the past two days now. Because I’ve spent all day just waiting for the scans to finish, I was able to write a background story for the new original fiction I’m planning to write and illustrate. I got inspired again after reading Sabriel (The Old Kingdom, Book 1) by Garth Nix.

Busy, busy, busybee

All my life I always wanted to fly. I always wanted to live like a hawk. I know you’re not supposed to be jealous of anything, but…to take flight, to soar above everything and everyone, now that’s living. But a hawk is no good around normal birds. It can’t fit in. Even though all the other birds probably wanna be hawks; they hate him for what they can’t be. Proud. Powerful. Determined. Dark. Odin is a hawk. He soars above us. He can fly. One of these days, everyone’s gonna pay attention to me. Because I’m gonna fly too.

~O (2001)

I’ve been so busy lately…

I have so many things to do around Midheaven but I’m going to concentrate on getting all of my upcoming fanlistings up and running. That means I have A LOT of layouts to design and code.

I’m also planning to reopen The Midheaven Cirque which was basically a web directory of sites that are connected in some way to the MH network, either by affiliation with my collectives or personal sites or just by being a fan of me or MH.

Busy, busy, busy… I barely have time to sleep these days.

Sam’s sleeping under my chair again. haha. He’s so sweet. There was a thunderstorm the other day and he was visibly shaking. He was trying to climb onto my lap…he was so scared! Poor Sammy… He’s been on a leash for two days now because he hasn’t been behaving and we have guests. He must have been incredibly bored today while we were out.

Beh, my best friend, bought me a red jacket - which I have yet to see - when she got her first paycheck. Weeeee! She’s so sweet… I’ve missed her so much these past few weeks… She’s really busy with work.

So much schoolwork! I had to do eight plates for HARTDS1 last week - that’s why I wasn’t able to post these past two weeks, the schoolwork just kept piling up - I mean to post at least once a week from now on. I need to work on three plates for COLREND, one major plate for DESPRIN, start my grid drawing (we’re going to enlarge our own portraits) for FREHAND AND study for my midterm exams!

Plus, MIDTERMS ARE NEXT WEEK!

On a happy note, I’m doing REALLY well in BMAT2-X. I have an almost perfect score in the lab component and a perfect score in the lecture component. Yay! I have the highest grade in the class.

HARRY POTTER AND THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX! I’m going to watch with my mom, my sister and my cousins. I’m actually looking forward to that more than the movie. My mom isn’t much of a movie-goer. In fact, the last movie she saw in the theater is Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (she read the books before ever watching the movies) and before that, I think the last time she ever went to a movie theater was the first time I ever went to one. haha. I was probably around three or four then.

Edit: My mom and I went to reserve tickets earlier. It’s going to be just the two of us - the others might cancel and we didn’t want the tickets to go to waste.

No time to read. But plenty of time to buy new books. Yes, I’m going broke because of my passion for books. I just can’t seem to help myself.

Neil Gaiman has a new book out, M is for Magic. I’m probably going to get that soon. I’ve won quite a few books on a local auction site. Must settle those first. One of the books I won is A Passion For Books: A Book Lovers Treasury, a book lovers treasury of stories, essays, humor, lore and lists on collecting, reading, borrowing, lending, caring for, and appreciating books. Edited by Harold Rabinowitz and Rob Kaplan. Foreword by Bradbury. Umberto Eco’s “How to justify a private library”, dealing with the question everyone with a sizable library is inevitably asked: “Have you read all these books?” Robertson Davies’s “Book Collecting”, on the diference between those who collect rare books because they’re valuable and those who collect them because they love books. Anatole Broyard’s “Lending Books” in which he notes, “I feel about lending a book the way most fathers feel about their daughters living with a man out of wedlock.”, Gustave Flaubert’s Bibliomania, the classic tale of a book collector so obsessed with owning a book that he is willing to kill to possess it. Anna Quindlen, John Updike and more!
Edit: I’m going to get M is for Magic along with Interworld next Wednesday before or after my mom and I watch Harry Potter.
AND the last HP book… HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS. Just 15 more days to go! hihihi. I reserved my copy way back in February (4th). I was the second one to reserve a copy at that particular bookstore…I would’ve been the first if I hadn’t forgotten to withdraw - I didn’t have any cash with me. haha. Sometimes I feel like I just want to read the last book, just to get it over with.

LSS: still Gin Blossoms. I’ve just been alternating between these five songs: Follow You Down, Hey Jealousy, Til I Hear It from You, Until I Fall Away and Competition Smile. But I’ll be listening to the artists/bands/songs you suggested.

Thank you so much everyone!

Have any of you ever listened to Dishwalla?

Thank you to all the lovely people who commented on my last post! I’ll return your comments as soon as I can. *hugs*

I’ll try to post earlier in the week..around Wednesday or Thursday.

Someone asked me why I hold on, I smiled. What made me fall for him, I stayed silent. They asked me why of all people, I chose him. I answered, “In this world of lies, he’s only the truth I know.”

~Unknown

Old Friends

There is no friend like an old friend who has shared our morning days, no greeting like his welcome, no homage like his praise.

~Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

There’s nothing like conversations with old friends…

I’ve tweaked the layout. Did you notice? hehe. What do you guys think? I was reading the comments earlier and the theme’s color scheme - actually, the whole layout - seemed so ugly to me..I just had to change it up a little. Basically I just reordered the div layers and changed the font styles. I also installed a new plugin: Name Dropper. Isn’t it spiffy? Now you can bookmark my blog EVERYWHERE! LOL. Anyway, I’ll figure out how to widgetize this theme (Letters) sometime, possibly in the near future, so I can activate the Sidebar Widgets plugin. Gaaaaah! I’m just a bit tired of looking at all those codes. The past week was a bit…crazy. Even for my incredibly uh..weird family.

I’ll start off this blog with what happened last 16 May 2007, Wednesday. I read through ALL of my previous entries in this blog. It seemed like the past year went by in a blur. It seemed like such a short span of time. I can’t believe all the things that I wrote actually happened…and even though it seems like it was just yesterday, it feels like a lifetime away. I feel different. I guess that just goes to show how much can happen in a few months..let alone a whole year. eep! There’s a baby lizard climbing up the curtains in front of me! Waaaaah!

My Jazzy Bear (Je) is in Manila for a short visit - 2 weeks, she and her family arrived last Thursday. She fooled us all! She told us that her friend Jel was the one coming home to Manila but it turned out that she just wanted to surprise us! Anyway, I had a lovely day with her and our old high school friends. It was like a mini-reunion. I’ve really missed her…and I’m so happy because even though she’s been living in the U.S. for over four years now, she’s still the same person she was before. Okay, I know she’s changed a lot but in some ways, she’s still the old Jazel we all knew and loved. It was so great because we could still talk. I know that one of the usual scenarios when friends have been apart for a long time is that conversations become stilted. It wasn’t that way with us. I’m so glad… It’s nice to know that even though you’re all on different paths, the old bond is still there.

I joined a web directory earlier and ran across this site and the entry, Love… what about it? but I don’t really want to blog about love so I’ll just let you ponder on this quote:

Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn’t it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life…You give them a piece of you. They didn’t ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn’t your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like ‘maybe we should be just friends’ turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It’s a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.

~Neil Gaiman

It’s not that related to the post but I just wanted to share it - Neil Gaiman being one of my favorite authors and all… I was just looking for a way to squeeze it in here.

My sister and I finished watching Season 3 of Grey’s Anatomy. I seriously don’t like the ending. But I’ll reserve my thoughts on this (and other GA stuff) for The Pursuit of Happiness. I’ll probably post there on Tuesday or Wednesday this coming week. I might blog about Felicity then too. We’re going to finish watching Season 4 (the last season) this week before school starts. New fave: I’m getting hooked on Bones. I think I’m going to start watching it regularly.

Thank you for the 21 comments! New record (again) for this blog! I’ll return them as soon as I can.

Wattle, Denise, Melinda, Reema, Emma, Ai and Lucy, thank you so much! Simply Precious, the downtime was intermittent which was a good thing except it made updating incredibly difficult and frustrating. LOL. Plus, the forms wouldn’t work. Ugh. Thank you for the birthday greeting and for wishing me luck! I really appreciate it! Fruitoaty, thank you! Yay for potato salad-lovers! Amy, thank you for sharing! I loved the line: “We’ve had a leak from an alternative life and want that life now.” *grins* Oh, and thank you for the advice! I’ll definitely do that. I actually saw one of my old friends from ROTC - she shifted to MMA (I wish I’d gone ahead and shifted then too) - she still has one year of school left so I’ll be seeing her around school though we probably won’t have any classes together. Lav, the trimestral system is incredibly fast-paced. Sometimes I feel like we don’t even have enough time to breathe. You barely have time to digest a topic before another one is presented to you. But it’s still fun! And you get to finish school earlier than most people - I graduated from the university almost seven whole months before all of my high school batchmates. Yoru, aww..that’s too bad. But you should definitely take classes when you have the time and money..I really hope you’ll be able to someday… Besides, no one’s ever too old to learn. Sarah, I can’t believe it either! Didn’t we just turn eighteen? Gaaaaah… Anyway, belated happy 20th birthday too! I hope you had a GREAT one! Kimberly, LOL. I love Grey’s Anatomy too! But how come you don’t like Meredith? Maybe because she’s really messed up? (But I actually think it’s one of the things that make her a lovable character) I can’t wait for Season 4 to start…September’s such a long time from now! Cherrie, yup! My birthday is on the 6th of May. Thank you! I dislike Math too. LOL. Good thing I only have Business Math. No other Math subjects for me, no siree! hehe. Anesthesia, thank you! Oh, and happy birthday to your husband! haha. I was my aunt’s birthday on May 1st then my cousin’s on the 15th. I think I also have a cousin (paternal) who has the same birthday as me. Ang, yay for another GA-lover! Thank you for the birthday greeting! You’re right, getting old feels weird. I like the haircut analogy - it’s definitely true. Trixie, hihi. I’m 20-years-young. You, on the other hand… wahihi! I’m kidding! *huggles* You know I love ya! Carla, thank you! That was really nice to know. I’m still pretty anxious about making new friends. Stacy, I’m actually looking forward to being busy with schoolwork. haha. Can you believe it?! I guess I just really miss school… Pat, I’ve always wondered how some people make friends so easily. It’s so hard to find true friends… I know I’m really blessed (and lucky) to have three in this lifetime. I wouldn’t trade them for anyone or anything! It’s better to have a few true friends than a whole bunch of fair-weather friends.