Food Bank Boogie

The volunteer community that I'm in went to the local food bank today! That means that I went, as well. We sorted out food and packed boxes of food for four hours. To pass the time as I packed and passed cans to people, I sang. I got told that I have a good voice; hooray!

After we were finished packing, we got a tour of the warehouse. There was a MASSIVE amount of food. According to the woman who was sort of our "poke you in the right direction if you're doing something wrong" person, that particular food bank provides millions of pounds (I forget the exact number) of food to people every year. At one point she took us through the freezer section; I swear the inside of my nose froze. Everybody ran through that part, and when we got out into the warmer area again, my glasses fogged up. They didn't de-fog after about a minute, so I had to clean them off on my shirt.

Now I am back in my dorm, eating chips and drinking Sprite and working on a Labyrinth music video. I made one about a week back, but the program was SO glitchy the entire time. Or so I thought. It turns out that now that I've converted the video file I'm using to a different format, I'm not having any more problems in that respect. Can I get a "BOO-YAH."

So Cold, but So Alive

I haven't posted anything new in a while; shame on me. Here's a low-down of what went on with me today:

1) I practiced some piano. I've got "To Zanarkand", "Pato no Shounen," and "Eyes on Me" down pretty well. I make a few mistakes now and then, but they're pretty much memorized. Hooray!

2) I was going to go to a friend's voice recital, but then the volunteer community I'm in called my cell and told me to get my rear to a meeting (not in those exact words, but that was the basic gist of it). There I was surprised with a birthday cake and a very nice card signed by everyone in the community. I was quite touched; it was very sweet of them to do something like that for me.

3) I went to an Aztec Dance class, and ended up joining the group. According to one of the co-captains, I'm a fast learner. I was all, "Awesome." Since I'm new and there have been classes going on for a little while, I need to call the co-captain and get a "catch-up lesson." There's some mad fundraising that's going to be going on, since costumes and equipment (such as drums and maracas) are going to total around $7,000. Yes, that much. So we need money, and preferably soon.

4) I was going to go to the Mujeres' Writing Group in the evening, but apparently the building it's normally in closes at five, and now I have no clue where the group is meeting. So I went to Anime Club instead, and watched three episodes of the live-action series of "Sailor Moon." It was horrible in a hilarious way, and I feel less intelligent just from watching it.

In other news, I had a birthday this Tuesday! I am now eighteen. Old enough to get married. Okay, that's kind of a weird thought. Time for a change of subject.

I belong to a group on the website Ravelry called the "Harry Potter Knitting\Crochet House Cup." It is pretty much made of win, and anyone who belongs to Ravelry should check it out. It's a new month, and that means new classes posted! I'm pretty psyched about it, because I can do a knitting\crochet project for every class. Can't wait to get on planning what exactly I'm going to do.

I also need to make an appointment with my adviser for the end of the month in order to decide on my schedule for next semester. I plan to take an English class, perhaps World Literature, and a music class, too, probably Music Theory or something. And continue guitar lessons. I don't know, though; I'm not really feeling it for guitar. Maybe I just need a little more time? I mean, I also don't practice as much as I should, so I should probably remedy that, as well. I might replace guitar with voice? Or piano? We shall see.

I Know What You Did This Weekend

It's me again, to inform you all of what's been going on with me since this past Friday!

Friday night I went to see "Inglourious Basterds" with three other people on my floor of the dorms (one of them my roommate).

(poster image from Wikipedia; they're all scary)

The movie was... Well, it was well made and well done, with good acting and everything. I guess it just wasn't up my alley; there were scalpings and a guy getting beaten to death with a baseball bat. A little more graphic than I'm used to watching. If you mind seeing that sort of thing, then I'd advise not going to the movie (although you could always close your eyes and plug your ears, which is what I did at those parts). If you do not mind, however, then by all means go and see it! It really is a good movie when you get past the violence; there is actual content and plot, it's not just action\gore.

(also from Wikipedia; I hope this guy is nicer in real life than he is in the movie)

On Sunday, I went to see the opera "Madama Butterfly" with some other people in my Honors program.

(from the theatre's website; this isn't how the actors actually look. They did a non-traditional setting, "sometime in the future.")

At first, I had a hard time getting into it, because apparently in operas they sing about EVERYTHING they're feeling. But by the second act I was more into it (perhaps because of the coffee I purchased during intermission). By the third act, I was calling Pinkerton names (in my head, of course, not out loud; by that time I had no desire to get kicked out of the theatre). Because really, the guy was a jerk, using Butterfly\Cho Cho (or Cio Cio, not sure which is right)-san like that. The end was quite sad; I even teared up for a few moments. All in all, the entire thing was really well done; the set, the acting, the costumes, the singing, everything. I thoroughly enjoyed it at the end, and would go see another opera (but only if it had "subtitles" like "Madama Butterfly"; otherwise I deeply suspect that I would be bored to tears, not being able to understand anything).

And now I'm considering which knitting patterns to take on this Fall, whilst listening to my own customized channel (titled "Wanna Chillax?") on the online radio player "Pandora." I'd advise checking it out, since it's pretty awesome. I like it better than Last.fm, because the layout's neater and easier to figure out how to work. Let's see; right now I'm listening to "Turpentine" by Brandi Carlile.

Slither In from Stage Left

Hey there, it's me, posting this very special first blog entry on my shiny new blog! I've just spent a couple days tweaking the template to look all pretty, and I think I've done a pretty good job for a coding amateur. Alright, granted that it didn't take THAT much tweaking, but it felt like it to me. Thank goodness for Google and all the CSS gurus out there who so eagerly blog their own coding knowledge to the world. Speaking of which, I believe some credits are in order, so without further ado:

1. Beautiful Beta gave me the know-how on how to add a second sidebar to this template.
2. Lissa Explains It All very handily explained the basics of CSS.
3. colr.org is a very nifty tool that lets you organize a color template with colors picked out of any picture you wish to upload.
4. PhotoshopSupport.com not only has this nice tutorial with tips on how to build a good-looking blog, but also a plethora of different resources from around the web.
5. My sister-in-law Zofia, a professional New England photographer and website\blog designer, gave me some help when I asked (Facebook. It's for more than just quizzes).

Sooo... For entries I'll be making in this blog, pretty much anything goes. Within reason, that is; I mean that I'll be blogging about pretty much anything, as long as it's kid-safe, etc. The "Weekly Top 5" thing you see there on the left sidebar? Every week I'll be posting the "Top 5" of pretty much anything I feel like. May be websites, may be books, foods, etc. You'll just have to stick around and see.

Without further ado... May I?

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It was raining when I woke up today. I could hear the sound of raindrops hitting the leaves of the trees growing below the window (my roommate and I are on the second floor of the building) long before I was awake enough to put a name to the noise. When I finally could register the world around me as more than an indistinct blob of varying shades of darkness, I realized that it was faintly light outside... Wonder of wonders, could I have possibly woken up before my alarm?

6:53 a.m.

I had! And since I had set the alarm for 7, there was really no point in going back to sleep. So I got up and put on a sweatshirt, hopped on my laptop, and happily began being angry at my blog for not coding properly and at myself for not knowing how to make it code properly. Three hours and a few breakthroughs later, it was off to Math! Which was really quite uneventful, to be honest. Back to my room, more coding before Psychology (also uneventful). Yet more coding before Guitar. You get the picture, I'm sure.

One more class (Honors), and I was class-free for the rest of the day. So what did I do? Yes, you guessed right. MORE coding. And then... And then a LIGHT. A beautiful, radiant, illuminating light, glowing from my laptop screen! A choir of heavenly hosts descended and began to sing a glorious refrain of "Alleluia!"

The coding! It was complete!

I chose to celebrate by procrastinating posting (I know, I don't know why). Later, a knock came on my door, and I opened it, peering out hesitantly (who would be knocking on the door?). I saw a group of the people on my floor of the dorm gathered a little ways away. Looking on curiously, I decided that I must have imagined the knock and retreated back into my room.

Lo and behold, another knock came! I repeated my prior actions, but was stayed from going back into my room a second time by one of the guys calling, "Leah! Leah!"

It turns out that the knocking WAS for me. The group, which was comprised of people who belonged in a "volunteer community" that I, too, am part of, was trying to decide what to do about a class we have tomorrow morning.

Some wanted to skip, since we were supposed to be going to go see a movie about our Ceramics (which was the class) teacher. Some wanted to go see it. Some (including me) did not really have a concrete opinion either way. Numerous votes were held, mainly because we all couldn't really make up our minds, until it was finally decided that we would go for a set amount of time, and if the movie about our teacher was not shown, we would hightail it back to the university, since several of the gathered have classes they have to attend.

With that decided, the group broke up. After this bit of human interaction, however, I didn't really feel like going back to my room so soon, so I followed a few girls who were going to check out one of the girls' movie collections. She was allowing us to borrow movies if we wished; I myself selected Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, since I haven't watched it in a long time and I've forgotten almost everything that goes on in it. Of course I could always read the book. And of course the book would be better. But sometimes you just feel like having that cinematic experience, and that's what I was feeling.

I will watch it later, either on the flat screen in the "common room"\lounge area (HP geek that I am, I prefer the former connotation), or on my laptop if I can't get the TV to work. It has displayed a strong preference to not operate for us dorm residents in the past.

In the wake of a surge of goodwill for my fellow man, I broke out a box of (unopened) cookies and made a round of the floor, knocking on doors and offering them to my dormmates. Most accepted, a couple of them declined. Two of the doors I knocked on were not answered. And so I sit here in my dorm, ready to curl up in bed like a hibernating bear (no joke, the room my roommate and I share is an ice box) and restraining myself from consuming more Lemon Tea Cookies.