Update

It looks like I've been slacking again, I didn't get around to writing over my midterm break because, well, I was having fun instead of just doing homework and work. So even though I will be home in a week and a half for Thanksgiving I know I won't get to see some of you, plus if I do I probably won't get to spill all of my many details on you. 

School. Like mid-break Thanksgiving break leads to a whole new world of projects. I will be working on the following: a Writing Workshop portfolio, Children's literature bibliography, Trans Media Project examining different medias of the Phantom of the Opera, Critical Analytically paper of the play "The Lesson Plans" by August Wilson, and a Piano audition. A long with all the many other individual homework assignment, quizzes and small exams it will be a long next three weeks of classes before all my exams. 

Work. I will officially be trained behind the bar on Wednesday. However, I have technically been working behind the bar after waitressing for a few weeks. Work is long and tiring, but I am really loving the money, and it's a fun environment to work in. (And i keep getting asked out by a bunch of creepers, it's great fun to turn people down...not!)This week though I will work five days in a row, I'm thinking it is because I won't be here over Thanksgiving break. So I will get trained Wednesday, work lanes Thursday, a party Friday and Saturday, and the bar Sunday. 

Anchor. I had one of my big event on October 30. It was AMAZING! It was a full team efforts this year. Of course I had my stress moments, but never did I feel like it was all on me, and that I had to do all the work. Here are a few pictures!

Pumpkin Carving...She carved one of the campus buildings, Old Main...it was incredible. There were so many great carvings the judges (the family whose farm we were on) had a very difficult time deciding first place. The one that won had four carvings around the pumpkin. 

 Caramel apples, like last year, were a huge hit. Of course I forgot we had heated the caramel last year, so it made it a bit difficult for dipping, but it all worked out because many people just wanted half an apple and it cut up. 

 Pie eating contest! After a long conversation on the phone with mom I was able to figure out a cheap way to make these pies for our contestants. Now they were nothing compared to the family pie recipes but the contestants didn't seem to mind the canned filling and off brand crust.

The contestants

 Some of our pumpkin creation. (Check out the one that is projecting the sun, the front is the moon and stars.)

The family has a DJ service, and they went full out for us. Everyone had a great time dancing, and we even had karaoke. 

A few of our members taught us all how to do some line dancing.

Now this technically was a costume party, so I was required to dress up. So again with a little brain storming with mom, I was able to put together a little 'Grease' outfit. (I went for the made-over Sandy). My hair was all big and curled, but it was INSANELY windy out, so I teased the heck out of it and put in a huge bump.

This was the flyer I made for the event. 

We collected over $500 toward 'Wounded Warriors.' Each year we are hoping to build our number in attendants, but we were pretty satisfied with our turn out, and all we heard was how much fun everyone had.

The list. So since Heather and I are one of the only ones left of our friends (and because we are surrounded by babies in all our classes and on campus), we created this list of things to keep us entertained while everyone is away. We called it the, "Five, fantastic, fun, fabulous, festive, funky, fresh, fierce, fascinating, fearless, flashy, foxy, flawless, free, female, fit, fetching, fancy, fantabulous, fashionable, fixated, found, frilly, full, (f)enominal, (f)ase, film festival. It started by her joining in on the movie watching, and the rest of the list is as follows: 

Minnie-Winnie-Opa (park) 

Rodney's Karaoke night

Twilight Breaking Dawn (see it after break and re-watching all the films)

Library Book Sale

The Cities/Mall of America

Cheese and Wine Night

Homemade Dinner Nights

Thrift Store shopping

Chinese Food

Wine-down

Herman Park Margaritas

Lean Wedding Song (learn a dance we can bust out at a wedding) (Suggestions????)

24-hr - sunset-to-sunset

Collect _____ (We haven't figured out a random item to collect yet) (Suggestions???)

Photo shoot (famous remakes)

Fashion show

Expand our palates. 

That is all we have right now, and it will continue even when everyone else comes back, but it is a lot of fun to have a check-list of things to accomplish. It is very 'Gilmore Girls' of us. So we have accomplished a few things on the list, the biggest one being over mid-term break when we went to The Mall of America, and boy did we do some good shopping.

We tried on a bunch of different hats on throughout the day, these were the least ridiculous.

Vera Bradley. I went in and let me tell you there were SO many patterns it kind of hurt by eyes lol, and way more expensive than the warehouse sale. 

Heather made sure we stopped at this crazy store with all the most random stuff ever. But it had to be one of my favorite stores. Anything and everything could be found here, and it was all so unique. You could walk around for hours and not see everything. (Which we did) I got a game called Don't Drink and Draw, I'm very excited to play it with the family. So this was one of the random books, it reminded me of "Everyone Poops," but this one is all about the science behind passing gas, letting one rip, farting, etc. etc. It was hilarious and I really wanted to buy it, but instead I read it aloud to Heather, and a few others gathered around to listen as well.

This book was so true, it was realism which people may mistake for sarcasm, but in all reality it was just truth.

 A jewelry hanger. I thought it was pretty cool, I love tree like features.

I thought this was a great teaching activity. This man took newspapers and created poems out of the words on the newsprint pages. He would black out all the words he didn't use and the poem would read down the page.

Once again love all the unique wood decorations.

And another. Except these are even better because they are birch trees. I totally would have bought them, but for $65, and no where to put them I figured it wasn't the time for that kind of purchase

And of course there were men everywhere holding bags, sitting around looking bored, or like this guy sleeping.

This was SO cool. This store sold huge bean bags chairs that folded out into mattresses. I want one!

As for the clothes. Well I got a dress, some tops, and a cool new travel duffle that doesn't smell like soccer cleats. We wanted Chinese, so I just started driving away from the city and found one on the GPS. It was super shady so we started driving again and ended up in the cute down town area, so we stopped at a bar and asked for a suggestions and ended up at the best place ever. It also proved my point to her and her boyfriend that Chinese does come in sit-down restaurants and are way better than buffets and take-out places.  

I'm really really excited to come home, it is really weird that I haven't been home yet. I'll be home very early Wednesday morning because Kari has student teaching and I have clinical, so we won't be able to leave till around 5pm. Add 12 hours plus a zone change and it looks like it will be 5 to 6 in the morning that we will be getting back. I'm looking forward to and expecting a delicious Thanksgiving dinner (hint hint), and a few breathing days before stepping back into the last three weeks before Christmas break. 

I guess that is it for this update, I will do a few movie entries tomorrow and get back on top of those movie clues.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

I'm not sure why this film makes me laugh so much. I should be terrified, appalled by everything in this film, and yet I sit and laugh and am happy at the end. This original playwright, for those of you who have never heard of this movie, is about a barber, who lives on the second floor, who murders people and sends their bodies to the basement, where the lady who owns the pie shop below  Mr. Sweeney Todd's barber shop bakes the humans into meat pies. It all happens, one because Todd, who is actually Benjamin Barker, needs to murder someone because he needs to get his rage out because he missed his chance at murdering the man who stole his wife and child and exiled him from the country. Two, meat is very expensive and Mrs. Lovett, the owner of the meat pie shop, needs to make business. She remembers Mr. Barker and is in love with him, so they concoct this idea and make a fortune murdering people and selling the bodies to the towns people deprived of good cheap meat. I don't know if it is simply the fact that Johnny Depp and Helena Carter, who play the barber and meat pie maker, can hold the most serious and unphased facial expressions, or if it just because the whole concept is just so barbaric and ridiculously pouring out with the fakest red blood ever. It is a musical, which adds to the humor, because there are certain lines which are so depression and sad, that it is funny. The costuming and overall seriousness of the film is hysterical. Murder shouldn't be funny, it isn't, and it is terrifying to hear that this kind of thing may have even happened in some way, but making a musical, which usually embodies happy stories, about murder is so ironic that it makes the topic funny. I don't know if I would laugh quite as much if I would have seen this as the play first, but I think that Depp and Carter do add a lot of the humor to the film, but I think that the musical aspect intertwined with the gory mess of murder creates this weirdly funny movie. Or it could be that my friend Kristie and I are just really weird, and have found our dark side in this movie.

Lost in Austen

Jane Austen would roll over in her grave if she saw this movie. I decided to pick a movie suggested to me by netflix...it was interesting. Set in British, Amanda only wants to live the life of Elizabeth Bennett. She gets to do so when one day Miss Bennett comes through a door in Amanda's house. So Amanda goes to Elizabeth's world, while Elizabeth stays in Amanda's. Amanda makes a complete mess of everything that is suppose to happen in Pride and Prejudice. It was a typical "modern person messes up the past" kind of movie, and has to figure out how to get it back in order. And yet I have no idea if I liked it. It was like watching a very cheap version, with very ugly people, of the eloquent and lovely world I've always loved. I had to promptly put in Keira Knightly's 'Pride and Prejudice' to recover from this horrible film. This movie had a great title with terrible results.

Narnia, Mona Lisa Smile, and My Sister's Keeper

Narnia, what a fantastic series! I read these books a long time ago, and now want to reread them all. I think the first movie was made fantastically well, and I've see the second one, but only once in the theater, so I plan to rent it soon. I remember it being good, but that it wasn't completely with the books, which I've heard is true about the other Narnia movies. But the more I read and watch, and study film through my class, the more I learn that the original material for movies comes from books more often than not. So we get mad that a movie changes the material from a popular book, but forget about the little books that didn't make it, but then became something because a movie was made about it. I've learned that I can no longer judge a movie to its book. It will always be different. It is absolutely impossible to create a film completely based off a book unless they want a 8-12 hour long film. Now even though I would enjoy watching that long of a film, I'm thinking sales might go down in the theater. I credit the writers and directors who do their best to follow the books, and honor the authors for creating the original material, but I also know they have to do something to create shorter films while making sense of the material for the audience. It is only when a film follows everything to a T, but then changes the ending that I get a bit upset (My Sister's Keeper). But even with that, I've learned about creative privileges. Time and time again we recreate art. Sometimes the original is better, and sometimes the new is more well liked. Generations determines this, professionals, class, gender, etc. all determine which should be better. We get upset when the new version comes out, but fail to realize that we can never create something original in art again. I was told this once in a English course, that nothing will ever be original again, it has all been done before. Think about it, every story, movie, musical lyric, everything has technically already been created, we just rearrange the original to make something new. It is sad in a way, but then it also gives us that wonderful thing, creative privilege. In 'Mona Lisa Smile' Julia Robert's character pays notice to this pondering thought. "What is art, and who decides?" Her character challenges her students to see view to new ways in life and in art, but in the end are we to conform or be ourselves? So the film maker of, 'My Sister's Keeper', decided to change the ending from the book. I thought it was rude, and inconsiderate, but he took his right to creative privilege and created the ending we all expected in the end, the one we thought would happen in the book, the less shocking and complex for all viewers. Was he right? Was his ending better? Did he create a more realistic film compared to the romantic ending in the book? Look at a film separate from its book, it really can create a whole new meaning, a two sided view on the same topic, and an equally entertaining and enlightening experience.

Update

So I am completely wired form work right now and can't fall asleep so I figured I would knock out part of an update for everyone. I'm sure I'll only get part way through the full update because I know this wind will end soon and I'll want to just pass out, so here we go.

I'm about to hit midterm, and like always I can't believe how fast it has gone by. School is going very well, all my classes I can't really complain. I think the only aspect I am having trouble with is my clinical teacher. It has been interesting to work with her, to say the least. She speaks in this formal condescending tone, and most of the time I feel like I am five years old. She speaks to everyone this way, so at least I know it isn't just me, but so many times I have wanted to talk back to her in the same tone. I have talked to my supervisor about everything, so it is all under control, but it is going to be a long rest of the school year, so please pray for some Tuesday snow days for me.

I play for my first evening chapel service on October 28, so if you want to hear me just go to MLC's website and you can watch it live. (Remember for most of you there is a hour difference, chapel is at 7 p.m.) I will be playing the piano, not organ, but I am actually doing really good in organ, so good that my teacher is now giving me harder pieces, so it is frustrating again, but at least I know I don't suck completely.

Since it is midterm that means tons of exams and projects. I've already had a few and I've survived so far. But midterm also means I get midterm break. Usually I would be coming home, but I decided to take on a few more shifts at work and save money by not coming home. I really wish I would have thought this decision through because home sounds really good right now, but my friend Heather and I are going to visit the cities and have a day of shopping and fun. So I will see everyone over Thanksgiving.

I had an interesting Birthday, it was the first real taste of what it is going to be like when I go off teaching and won't have anyone around to celebrate with. The second round of student teachers left either the day of or before my Birthday. So there are only now a tiny few of us left. So I worked the day of my birthday, but many of the regulars bought me drinks afterwards. The coolest part was getting to skype with mom, dad and Jennie, while having Melissa and Phillip on cell speaker phone. As mom said, "When I was young if I would have been told this is how I was going to communicate with my children, I would have never believed them."

I've got about 20 movies to catch up on writing about over break so look forward to those, I've got some real goodies coming your way.

I've hit the wall of sleep now so another update is on it's way!

Memento

I've been stumped, I know it is surprising, but yes this movie caught me off guard and I didn't see the ending coming. Now I blame it on my cold, it fogged my brain and caused me not to be able to thoroughly contemplate the ending. This was a movie I had to watch for my course and I was told not to read anything about it, or watch the trailer before viewing the film. Though it left me completely unaware of what was going on at first, I liked not knowing what was going to happen. Even though I love figuring out the ending before it happens, I don't like being told the ending before it happens. So don't look anything up, don't watch the trailer, just watch this movie, and you will be left in a daze of stupidity that make you want to hit yourself because you didn't figure out the ending before it happened. Enjoy feeling dumb!

Bridesmaids

Oh the one liners that come from this movie that will make me laugh for years to come. When I saw this in the theater I don't think I have ever laughed harder. Then last week I received a wonderful gift from my darling sister, 'Bridesmaids' on DVD! A complete surprise since I didn't realize it was coming out so soon. I have now watch it five times, and have compiled this list of quotes that crack me up.

You are more beautiful then Cinderella! You smell like pine needles, and have a face like sunshine!

I wouldn't want to make you explain what our relationship is to all those people. That would suck for you.

Do you want to tell a cop about it? We're just like priests except we would tell everybody afterwards.

If I wasn't a cop anymore, I would still go out with a gun and shoot people.

This is the first time I've seen you look ugly, and that makes me happy!

Annie: You read my diary?
Brynn: At first I did not know it was your diary, I thought it was a very sad handwritten book.

Why can't you be happy for me and then go home and talk about me behind my back like a normal person?

I want to apologize. I'm not even confident on which end that came out of.

I'm life Annie and I'm biting you in the a**!

Don't look at me!!! It's pouring out of me like hot lava!!!

Though it is a tad raunchy, and definitely not meant for children's eye, it is funny, it shows girls can be funny, it shows girls are crazy, but that we are wonderful, and that even though the title, content and everything about the film is girly, it does not use girly language or humor. See it, enjoy a laugh, and be thankful or hope that your wedding, shower, bachlorette party, and bridesmaids are never like this.

(I am also having a hard time viewing Gilmore Girls in the same way)