A Quick January Wrap-Up

January has been interesting for me. There were a couple weeks there where I seemed to be stuck in a rut and wasn't doing anything but feeling exhausted. Then I used a Easter egg blue bath bomb a friend gave me and I felt like I could handle it, (baby steps). Never underestimate the motivational power of a pretty bath bomb. 

As far as practical things I've accomplished go...

I've been slowly working on a math course. (Officially graduating highschool is a big thing on my resolution list)

I had an eye appointment and got new glasses. (Which was very needed. Surprisingly my prescription didn't change much so that made me feel a bit better.)

I'm on Day 7 of Chloe Ting's 14 day Summer Shred Workout. (I can't wait to be done, but I'm glad I'm doing it. I'm not doing it very well but I sweat enough for it to count for something)

I entered the prompt contest a few times and won the first one. 

 

Movies/T.V.

Season 2 and most of season 3 of the O.C. (I'm enjoying it but I had to take a break from it because watching a bunch of it in a row can get repetitive. The sheer amount of relationship drama they pack in is astounding. I'm not sure there are any other plotlines in this show. Well there are, but still. I'm watching for Seth and Summer mostly. Seth and Ryan's dynamic is great too.)

I introduced my brother to Doctor Who. We watched Eccleston's season and a few episodes of Tennants. 

Rewatched the first season of Anne With An E

Jo Jo Rabbit (so good!! Loved it)

The Broken Hearts Gallery 

(Loved it. Dacre Montgomery is an amazing actor and he doesn't seem to be in many things)

There were a couple other things but they were mostly just rewatches.

Books

Murder on the Orient Express 

(I knew who did it but still. Agatha Christie honestly deserves her title as the 'Queen of Crime')

Mansfield Park 

(For some reason it took me awhile to get through. Jane Austen is a good writer but this wasn't my favourite one of hers)

Currently rereading Pride and Prejudice (Skye gave me a really pretty copy)

Reread I Capture The Castle

Future Projects Hopefully

I'm hoping to start Bullet Journaling. I'm terrible at writing down future plans so I think it's going to be more of a personal record more than anything. Adding in maybe the occasional plan. Who knows how that will go. I got a journal, some tape, and some stickers for it.

Finish Chloe and try to keep doing some of her videos even if it's not following a specific schedule.

Figure out how to fix some of the minor problems with my blog like trying to make black my default text colour. I'd love to change the whole look of my blog but I'm scared to touch anything and I'm too lazy to fix the posts if I did do that. I've been looking at some of my other posts and realizing just how many times I've stated things that I had changed my opinion on like two days after posting. (some examples, Evermore is amazing and I can't separate it from Folklore in my head anymore, upon rewatching the 1996 Emma movie with Gwenyth Paltrow I realized I like the mini-series more than the 1996 version in general. My very first post is no longer applicable either as far as age and family size go.) I'm trying very hard to not erase it sometimes. Anyone else have that problem?

There's been other things this month too but this was a good majority of them. 

How has your guys' January been?

I Generally Hate Ads, Except These Ones

 Okay, so ads are annoying. But some are just so good, bizarre or surreally iconic. I think some of the people that make ads are really passive-aggressively salty and it can be unexpectedly entertaining.  Some of my current annoying favourites are...

There's this ad for this used car dealership and essentially the guy (I call him Karl with a 'K' for reasons that don't exist) says that if you treat your customers well, they'll come back to you. That customers can tell when you aren't genuine. And then a few weeks later they started running this very confusing ad that was him saying that they won the #1 thing or whatever and they're not willing to give that up. Which seems fine, good for Karl. But then he mentions (in a very subdued voice compared to the original ad) that they are working really hard to get the customer's trust back up and I'm just like "What happened at the dealership Karl?"

So now I've become weirdly interested in the drama of a used car dealership. Is it a good sales strategy to admit that you've been shady? Also how do you have such a good award and yet you need to get the general trust back up?

And Karl apparently

There's this other one where there's this couple and the wife is pregnant apparently. Now this ad is being narrated by a guy who says that what's-her-face and what's-his-face have been getting ready for the big day when what's-her-face (keep in mind it's a guy voicing this entire thing) screams "IITTT'S TIIIMME!"

Then they run through their list of things they need and realize they can't find they're car keys so now the guy screams "NOOO!" and then there's something like "Don't worry, something something towing company has your back" (which I think is very rude. They could have at least called an ambulance. A towing company is just rude)

Then the couple is so grateful they're going to name their baby after the towing company or something and then they begin to start scream-spelling the name and the tow truck driver is already gone. 

Essentially nothing about this ad make sense and everytime the man screams that 'it's time', I have a heart attack.

To be fair, even while trying to scream like a pregnant woman,
the guy never even attempted to sound feminine which almost made it funnier.
It was a very emphatic man announcing that it was time.

There's this other ad that I'm actually not sure what it's for but essentially the part I remember is like this..."Some things get better with time, like cheese, wine, your Great Aunt Becky"...like what does that even mean? I'm not sure I particularly want to know. Maybe she gets nicer as she gets older? Maybe you're waiting for her to die because there's money willed to you? Who knows. Why is it so specific?

There's this other ad that played around Christmas and I think it was supposed to be spreading Christmas cheer or something but I got a very aggressive vibe from it. There's this lady who has a son and he LOVES her neighbour Amy's Christmas lights and he's constantly wanting to go over to see them. She says a few things but she jokingly mentions that 'she thinks her son loves the Christmas lights more than her' and she seems to have a subtle grudge against Amy.

 No one else in my family seemed to notice so maybe it was all in my head but I swear that lady needed to talk to someone about that.

This was the general energy the lady was giving off

There's this other one where there's this older guy that sounds like a dad in a 50's radio show and he's like 'We seem to be having some trouble with the car Mary' and then she says in the fakest voice I've ever heard 'Oh no! What's wrong with the car George?' and then he mumbles 'I don't know Mary.'

Again, no effort was made on her part

There's this other one that's not so much an ad as much as someone just briefly talking. He's like 'Kids these days just don't talk anymore. They're always on their cellphone's. But actually my daughter has this group of friends and they calls themselves, like, a 'squad', and they put their phones in a bowl and actually talk to each other.'

He sounded so shocked and trying too hard to be 'hip' and it's really only hilarious to me.

This is an incredibly random and honestly dumb post but it's been weirdly entertaining. We'll see how long I keep this post up. Hopefully this was entertaining to someone else. Anyone else have any weird ads or things that have stuck with you?

I Won A Small Contest Thing

 

Skye told me about a writing contest thing because I've been struggling getting myself to write lately and random contest things are just fun to do. The website has an official contest which I think is closed now for new contestants, but they have a prompt every couple days for anyone that's interested in entering. (The Writer Games Link) It's really simple to enter really, you just write the 150 words (or less? I'm not actually sure on that) using the given prompt and then comment it onto the current Prompt Post before the deadline happens. The first prompt was 'Tell The Wolves I'm Home'. After the initial struggle trying to write something for the prompt that I actually liked, I had fun writing again and honestly, that on it's own was all I wanted. It was definitely a nice way for me to begin 2021.  This was the first time that I've won a writing contest and it gave me a much needed validation boost. It's small, but it meant a lot.

The Judge gave me a couple really nice comments and I can't even...*gestures vaguely*

OH.MY.GOODNESS. I cannot express how much I love your story, except to say that you are the WINNER of this challenge!!!! *throws confetti and chocolate*
I lovelovelovelove this story

MY THOUGHTS: I was hooked from the very first sentence! This story was written in such a beautiful, lyrical way, I knew immediately that it was the winner. The vivid descriptions brought this little girl and her merciless world to life, I love how we're told just enough to feel satisfied, while it still leaves so many questions hovering in the reader's mind. Great job Elizabeth!

A Messy 2020 Wrap-Up Filled With Random Things

 

2020 has been an interesting year. It's been a rough one for many people, but personally it's been a good year. 2019 was kind of a mixed bag in the fact that it was a really rough year but also a good one so this year felt a bit like a glow-up in comparison. I've been incredibly lucky with that, a lot of people were badly affected by it. Some not great things happened this year but it wasn't anything that I couldn't handle. I was affected by it, but I didn't stay mired in it and my mental health has been a lot better this year. So that's character growth, I hope. I've had my share of ups and downs this year but for this post I want to mention some of the highlights I've had. There's been a lot, too many to add to one blogpost really.

My camera roll for this year has come full circle. January started
with pictures of our Christmas lights and now it's ended the same way.

January was very Labyrinth inspired. I painted dead leaves I'd collected from outside and then Skye and me did a photoshoot with them. I also did a 'Starless Sea' by Erin Morgenstern inspired one with a broken plate which honestly made more sense at the time. It's still pretty though. I think Skye had told me about Micarah Tewers on Youtube and I watched her while I painted things. This year has flown past but different things from this year also feel so long ago. It's like I've been several different people throughout this year.

February, Me, Skye, and her Sister did a sort of Galentines thing where we watched To All The Boys: P.S I Still Love You with 'Pink Drinks' from Starbucks. Honestly it wasn't anywhere near as good as the first one but I did enjoy seeing the characters again. 

I don't know how to sum up this year. There's so much I have to say about it and yet I can't seem to be able to express any of it. For the most part this year I think I healed a lot. There's always more to discover, learn, undo and whatever but this year has been such an important one for me and in my own way, I'll miss it. It's been a good year for me overall. Which, again, I'm incredibly lucky to have that, a lot of people have had a really hard time. A big resolution this year was to try to push myself to be intentional. This year I've been trying to live in each season, I took photos, I did things like picnics in the woods, with a blog I've been able to keep a record of it. Not everything that I did always felt like I wanted it to, but I did it. On a not as fun note, I got my wisdom teeth out. It went really well and for some reason I didn't have any pain during the whole recovery so that was unexpected but really nice.

Taylor Swift her Folklore and Evermore this year and they're both so good. Hayley Williams dropped Petals for Armor. I've read a lot of books this year. I read the Lord of the Rings for the first time this year and loved it. I made Strawberry Milk based from a Korean cafe video. I went night swimming quite a few times, once was during a Corn Moon and the water looked like black ink. The last time I went night swimming it was so easy to spot the milky way and I saw shooting stars, and there was that bat that fell into the water and kept floating towards us which kind of marked the end to the whole thing. There were peach smoothies from McDonald's, Cannoli, macrons, chutney and champagne marmalade, just food in general that I got to try for the first time.

I barely read anything last year so that was something I wanted to do more this year. I read too many for me to remember but I read The Lord of The Rings finally this year which was one that I've been meaning to get to for years.

Some top ones that were new to me were...(in no particular order)

The Blue Castle

Fangirl

Lord of the Rings

And Then There Were None

Small Spaces

The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland

I Capture The Castle 

Ocean At The End of the Lane

We Have Always Lived in the Castle

Peter Pan

T.V Shows 

The Queen's Gambit

And Then There Were None (BBC)

Community

The Punisher (season 1) 

Gravity Falls

Are You Afraid of The Dark (the 90's ones)

Umbrella Academy 

Over The Garden Wall

Veronica Mars

The O.C. (most of season 1)

Doctor Who (Tennant's Seasons and Matt Smith's. I'd done Eccleston's a different year. I cried several times. One of the times it was Tennant's last episode and I made an omlette to stress eat and then it started snowing while I was making it and it was a whole ordeal)

It seems fitting right now too

Movies 

(I'll try to keep it relatively short. I watched a lot of good ones this year)

Birds of Prey

Mr. Right

Tolkien

Emma (2020)

Happy Death Day

The Man From Uncle

Knives Out

Split/Glass

Ready Or Not

The Kid Detective

Bridget Jones's Diary

Monty Python and the Holy Grail

The Decoy Bride

Red Eye

Sing Street

I guess this is my farewell to 2020 and here's to wishing for a good 2021.

Happy belated New Year I guess!