To Do's...

So, over the past few weeks, I see things and get excited about things and I'm like, "Oh, I should do that!" but then I forget. So, maybe if I blog about a few to do's, I'll be more motivated to them.

My goal to read the first half of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows before seeing the movie didn't work out so well, but I'm still pushing forward and reading it and it's fabulous. There's a lot left, but I'm hoping to finish by this weekend (I'm a slow reader).

I also want to read the Dawn Treader before the next Narnia movie comes out (Dec. 10). The movie looks fantastic. Last Christmas break I read the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and Prince Caspian and they are so good! CS Lewis has a way of painting pictures that is truly admirable.

A girl I went to school with for forever, Caroline, does a cute thing on her blog called Three Things Thursday. I love reading it every Thursday and want to do something similar so I blog at least once a week. Maybe something on a Tuesday? I think Tuesdays are always my off-days in this limbo between graduation and employment (which may be on the horizon but I don't want to jinx it by talking too soon). I always wake up moodier than usual and Glee seems to be the only upside, which I forget about until about 5 every week. Any ideas out there readers?

This is definitely not as important by any means, but I need ideas nonetheless. Ever since I was about 5 or 6, my mom has decorated her Christmas tree in 98% Santa ornaments. Since this is (hopefully) my last Christmas at home, I've started wondering what my future Christmas tree's/trees' theme(s) should be. I recently bought a really cute TCU ornament from a vendor at Mistletoe and Magic, the Tyler Junior League's Holiday Market. In addition, my grandmother gave me a cute star shaped Santa several years ago, so I wonder if I should do all stars.
TCU Star Cloissonne Ornament by Kitty Keller Designs
Definitely not as pressing a matter, but it is something to ponder, right?

Much more pressing than all of the above: I need to save my money! It's the holiday season which means shopping for presents for my family and friends. Holiday season also means college football bowl season and TCU looks to be going to the Rose Bowl. My mom and I have pretty much decided we're going and making this our 2011 vacation since I probably won't have vacation time yet next summer. As one of my first acts of grown-up-ness, I'll be paying part of my way to Pasadena. Basically, what this boils down to is that I need to learn to be more frugal with even more expenses soon to be coming my way if this employment opportunity works out (and I really hope it does).

Oh and Fort Worth: where the East end and the West begins, or the opposite for TCU as it jumps the MWC ship and joins the Big East.

Football Rants and Raves

I won't rant too long. In fact, I'll keep it short and sweet.

I hate the BCS. It is the most flawed part of college athletics. And since they support the BCS, I hate ESPN. The analysts they hire are soooo wrong it's ridiculous. This evening, several analysts declared that despite TCU going undefeated for the second season in a row and being ranked third in all of the polls, if Oregon or Auburn were to lose next weekend, TCU would not deserve a chance at the national championship game.

I'm sorry, what? Unless there is some seriously strange season where every team in the FBS loses at least one game, the national championship should be between two unbeaten teams.



With that said, I'll move on to TCU's football future. This weekend experienced a turn of events: Boise State lost to Nevada. According the the "experts," Boise's win of Nevada would have put them at number 3 in the polls, over TCU. But Nevada pulled through for TCU. With this event, TCU is almost certain to venture to the Rose Bowl in Pasadena (as predicted by USAToday in the pre-season).

The more I think about it, the more I'm willing to drain my bank account and risk my personal space (to go through security) and watch my frogs at their bowl game (which if Oregon or Auburn loses cold be the national title, unless the ESPN "experts" get their way).

Ok, so not so short, but I can't be alone.

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Once upon a time, several years ago, a wonderful website popped up called ElfYourself. My dad discovered it and the family became obsessed. Every year we look forward to the time when ElfYourself reappears and we can be "Elf"-ed. A few years ago, OfficeMax bought it as a sponsor and ever since they've added a new dance or two each year. This year the new dances are 80's and Surfer. Here's my family, "Elf"-ed, dancing to Christmas music 80's style.

Go check it out and ElfYourself!

Perfect

I'm a little in love with Glee newcomer and star of A Very Potter Musical/Sequel, Darren Criss. And when I say a little, I mean a TON. He's so cute and his voice is to die for. So mix that with my love of Kurt (Chris Colfer) on Glee and this song and you get a taste of perfection.



Now if only the Texas weather would follow.

BBC Books

I saw this on Facebook and thought it was neat.

The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here.

Instructions: Copy this into your NOTES.

• Bold those books you've read in their entirety.
• Italicize the ones you started but didn't finish or read only an excerpt.

Tag other book nerds. Tag me as well so I can see your responses! (Or not, after all reading is not a competition! I'm betting that we're all well over 6 books, and I am curious to see the common ground).

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma -Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno - Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

So I guess according to BBC I'm above average? Or maybe they don't understand how intense AP English is in high school?

American vs English

I'm home alone right now, basking in my unemployment glow, and I'm dying laughing out loud at this.

Movie Trailers - Movies Blog

A Very Potter Sequel

Ok, if you agreed with me and thought the first was hilarious, you'll die watching this one. It's a Very Potter Sequel!



Oh and 24 hours from now I'll be seeing Deathly Hallows Part 1. SO EXCITED!!!!!!

A Very Potter Musical

Ummmm, this is hilarious. And yes, that is Darren Criss aka Blaine from Glee. I'm a little in love with him and this.

I Solemnly Swear I Am Up To No Good

With just a few days (we can count on one had now) left until Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part I, I thought I'd pump up any of the readers out there for one of the movies I have been waiting for all year.



My goal over the next few days is to read half of the book to refresh my mind. The book came out 3 summers ago when I was having my amoeba issues and I had a lot of difficulty reading the book even with my little old person magnifier. Needless to say, with that much difficulty reading the book I don't remember a ton of it, just really random fragments. I do recall finishing the book and telling everyone if it wasn't two movies I might have to boycott.



A few weeks ago it was announced that the first part would not be in 3D and I'm a little bummed, but glad that they didn't push the release date to make it 3D. This will be my second Harry Potter midnight premiere and my third midnight movie in this weekend of November (Twilight 2008, New Moon 2009). My group at school made t-shirts both years for Twilight and the group here in Tyler has expressed an interest in dressing up, so I might be making another shirt. If we do, I'm excited about my idea.

Job Search Update

Oh, right there's nothing to update. Currently I'm looking at two of the local college's catalogues to figure out if it's possible for me to take a web design course since every time I look for jobs there are about a million and one listings for a web designer. If only I could rewind a year and tell myself to take that as an elective...

Hoping Glee being on for the first time in two weeks will help me get in a better mood since today's mood has been quite crappy.

Quidditch? NCAA? Shut up.

Just another reason I should have stayed in school and forgotten that whole graduation thing. There are Quidditch leagues in schools and the World Cup is coming up! This is crazy and awesome and ridiculous all at once and I envy the people at these schools playing Quidditch and vying for NCAA recognition.



Countdown to HP7 Part I - 10 days.

In Case You Missed It...

TCU demolished Utah today. At Utah. Ruining a 21-home game winning streak. 47-7. In our last game as MWC's rivals.

This was my view (not my video however, although I do have one somewhere) last year when TCU rolled on over Utah at TCU, 55-28.


So proud of my horned frogs. 10-0, feels good to be back.