I wish I were cool enough to say "werk", but... I'm just not there... yet.

I finished classes today! I'm just a few final projects/essays shy of finishing off my third year. I remember writing a blog post after finishing second year pretty damn clearly, so this post is kind of incredible to me. But, as with all time-flying situations, while it seems like it's been no time at all, when I think back to the beginning of the year, it was a long time ago. I'm a different person now! Third-year me is somehow very distinctive from second-year me and certainly (thankfully) we are all very different from first-year me. Sorry first year me.

Guys, I feel like I finally got my groove back. I've been working hard, handing in some quality essays, and in general I have been in de Zone. We're not counting writing this blog post as procrastinating. But I shouldn't say that, because it's not that I haven't been procrastinating, but that I've gotten a real handle on it. I think at least part of it is that I've been doing work that I genuinely want to do. I've been doing some really cool work lately, some really ballin' essays that are entirely up my alley. From how Wells handled concepts of race in The Time Machine to what we can learn about communicating environmental issues from analyzing John Evelyn's Sylva. Sci-Fi and 17th Century forestry writings! Two of my most favorite things! That wasn't sarcasm, just... nerdgasm (I'm so sorry).I think that a combination of that, and the knowledge that I am so close to finishing this semester off that's really given me a worker-bee kinda mojo.

I can't wait to go home! I keep thinking back to last summer. I mean things weren't perfect, things never are (darn things), but man they were hella tight. I just liked the vibe of last summer. I liked the way I lived last summer. I mean yes, it would have been good to have gotten a job and made some money over the break, but that just didn't happen. So I'm embracing another summer of freeloading with my parents and having some hardcore down time with ye olde self. And like last summer I won't have nothing going on. I've still got work with my student organization, and some training for a job in September. And again, I've got some personal work lined up like researching grad schools, prepping my applications, and I've been starting to develop a summer reading list for my undergraduate research course.

No, I'm serious.

All I have to do is keep at it! Keep going! Home stretch! So c'mon guys- let's GO GO GO!

Loser Tries to Explain Herself, Comes Across Even Sadder

This winter (and last fall) I've been wearing the heck out of my Stark toque, and while I've worn it I've been asked a lot of questions about Game of Thrones. Now, I don't mean like once or twice, I mean like all of the time. Sometimes the people asking me are friends, sometimes complete strangers in line at the grocery store. The most common question is "when's the new season starting?", but I've also had gems like "Is Tyrion (or the funny dwarf guy) still on there?", "What's the name of that cool chick with the dragons?", "How many seasons are there so far?", and "Didn't all those guys die (lol)?".

Kind of an old picture from last September but I didn't want to take a new one. Focus on the hat. The hat. Ignore awkward pose. I was studying. Ignore it. The hat. The hat. 

When I bought the hat, I never would have imagined this result. It's not that weird, but it's unexpected. I thought the hat would be no different from the likes of a STARWARS t-shirt, which seems to go through society without bringing up any questions, but it's not. Maybe just the fact that the word 'Stark' is written across my forehead rather than my chest is enough to call more attention to it, and maybe this speaks to the universal acknowledgement of Game of Thrones that everyone knows about it, and, apparently, has questions. To my credit, I've accepted my role as a compendium of knowledge about the show, and I answer questions about the new season like a walking advertisement, but I still think it's really fucking weird.

Anyway, back to blogging!

Oh, I miss blog time. Did you guys know that I blogged more in 2013 than I have all of the years since I started this blog? I was wondering why that was the case, and I don't think it's just because I was particularly interested in blogging last year, I think it's because my life is more exciting these days. No wait, that makes me sound like a loser. My life just has more happenings. I'm doing more things. This isn't helping, is it?

Reading week has gone away, and I miss it terribly. It's not so much the free time that I miss, but (loser time again) having people around.  Being back in Guelph I keep wanting to tell people arbitrary things about my day, like the other night I swear I felt the ground shake in my kitchen. I know it didn't, but I felt it. It was weird, but not at all important or significant. If I lived with friends/family I would have told them about it. But I don't. It would have made for a really odd and hard to understand text. So I didn't say anything. To anybody. And I miss banal conversations with people around me!

Doughnuts and Buffy. Man, it was a good week.

We also found a T-Rex in the living room. I'm telling you, it was a fucking exciting week.

(Loser time) I'm just  not around people that much anymore... Which sounds... bad? I see people in class, and I talk to them, but... that's it? Kind of. Sometimes. This semester has been reminding me a lot of first year, actually. I guess the main change is that one of my closest friends is away on exchange this semester (it's so cool- she's in England- she's so cool- it sounds amazing). She was my go-to pal for... actually pretty much everything so her absence has impacted my life quite a bit. She also reads this blog. I MISS YOU, MAN.

I'm making this sound really sad and awful, but it's not that bad. I have a lot of experience as a hermit and that is at least partially because I don't mind the lifestyle. I'm not huge on socializing, especially unexpectedly. Not unexpectedly in the "oh no, surprise encounter!" sense but more of a if I'm not in the mood to talk to people and I come across people I'm not very good at people. I am a homebody and I do appreciate time spent by myself, but over the holidays I spoil myself with a constant availability of companionship that I miss when I'm in Guelph. Hopefully that explains my situation a little bit better. I'm not drowning in the loneliness, a lot of the time I'm pretty fond of lone-ness, but I miss my best pal and my fam, which wouldn't be bad if they weren't all gone at the same time. Make sense?

Reading it over I still sound like I'm either crying myself to sleep every night or am in fact a weird sociopath that hates people. I guess I can't express this morning. I'm happy, internet! I swear!

I swear!

Oh, I just remembered that I sat down to write this to update you on my job search. I got one job (for next school year) and didn't get the other. So overall I'm thinking yay! Employment!

Deep Orchid, you are the bloom of my life.

And now, after a rather unexpected return to infrequent blogging, I give you a post. To take up where we left off, my 19th was great, I had so much fun with friends and happiness was had. The mystery gift turned out to be a talking Dalek. When you squeeze him, he says "EXTERMINATE, EXTERMINATE!!!" and "YOU WOULD MAKE A GOOD DALEK!"

Surprisingly the first shot has a way more awkward face than the theatrical grimace below. 

I also feel compelled to mention that I know, I know: power ranger Dalek, but the reality is that they were comical because they were so clearly meant for "collect them all" merchandising, and what better way to embrace that? If Doctor Who is anything, it's corny with a touch of lame, and that's why we love it!

Having a very good Thanksgiving weekend as well, and a lot of happy feelings can be attributed to the fact that I've finally had some real inspiration for writing my novel (trying so hard to say that without feeling like a twat). For a little over a year I've been trying to dig myself out of this plot-planning, world-building hole and get some actual work done. Without a doubt, all of the planning and research is important, but if you don't stop yourself it'll never end. There will always be something that you could probably flesh out a bit more before you put it into the story. No! Sometimes you just have to write the damn thing and see what wordlings come out. 

I like to say that I've been on the road to recovery for a while, but I can attribute a lot of my inspiration to the movie Looper, which I saw Saturday afternoon, and loved it despite the awkward eyebrows on Joseph Gordon Levitt. A lot of the ideas in the movie are present in my story, which I don't feel bad about, because first of all it means that they're probably pretty sweet ideas if they ended up in a cool movie, and second of all I started this story in 2010, so if I wanted to be the first to the idea (which, realistically, I wasn't in 2010) I should have maybe done a little more than I have in 24 months. (If you're interested, this picture is from what is probably the best scene in the movie. Love 'dat snappy dialogue.)

I'm at the stage where I need to turn my writing into a job, with schedules and deadlines and all that stuff, because I know that's the only way I'll ever finish anything at all. I've never been particularly skilled at schedules, but that doesn't mean I'm willing to give up. I can do it!

Also I've started watching Dexter and Andromeda, and I'm quite enjoying them both. Andromeda seems to be a proto-Firefly, so it's kind of an automatic win, and Dexter was a little surprising because ordinarily I'm not very attracted to "cop shows", but my brother insisted, and now I've found a new show!

In blog news, I think I might do a post recommending all of the webcomics I read, because that way I can justify the crazy amount of time I spend reading them.

Good Job, Bruce.

I applied to my first ever real-live (part-time) job today! I'm still not entirely sure whether or not I'll have the time for it what with school and Batman: Arkham City, but I finally decided that if I didn't take the plunge and give it a go, then I'd never have any money for my entire undergrad. So wish me luck!

Something that's been bugging me lately: poorly written textbooks. They cost so much money, and involve so much work, to have to cause so much pain as well? Now that I'm in my  second year of university (I'm in my second year of university!) I've been exposed to enough good and bad textbooks to know that the fifth edition of Vertebrates: Comparative Anatomy, Function, Evolution doesn't need to be the walls of text made of up of endless pages of big, dry terms that it is. It could be exciting. It could have colour! They could even plan out the formatting so that some of the figures and diagrams are on the same page that they're referenced on.

Sometimes I feel like I should be on Facebook more. I like the idea of being able to look back on these undergrad years when I'm livin' it up at 45 (totally gonna be livin' it up at 45) and see exactly who I was. In saying this, I'd like to mention that every time I go on Google+ and see how pretty/cool it is, I desperately wish people used it. So come on, people! Get on Google+! It's like totally super more prettier than Facebook!

Aaaand speaking of life updates, I went to the Legend of Zelda: Symphony of the Godessess concert at the Sony Centre in Toronto last Saturday, and it was totally boss. I got this entirely cute blue dress for it over the summer; it had little butterflies on it. Pictures will be happening at some point. Back to the concert, not only did we get three encores (screw Montreal!), but the awesome Irish conductor used the WIND WAKER to conduct the wind waker songs. My friend and I spent most of the show trying to find an alleged Groose cosplayer mentioned on Twitter, whom we eventually spotted at the bottom of the escalator. After fighting through hoards of fans to get at him we were way too obvious about how excited we were to finally find him and I made the brilliant move of telling him we'd been talking about him on Twitter. I'd post the picture of the guy (t'was a grand cosplay), but I think I freaked him out enough already. Also I got hundreds of hits on streetpass, for realz. You can't really see it, but everyone in that picture is sitting there on their 3DS.