Tron, Clone Wars, and Love & Other Drugs
I haven’t written a blog movie related post in a while. And this is pretty much just a small short post to update it a bit before I forget things I’ve seen.
Last night I was invited by a twitter friend to tag along to see Tron on the new Ultra AUX screen in Toronto. It was great. The screen is huge, 3-D, and the bass can be felt in your seat. They also asked some guy to put his phone away when the movie started. That made me happy. The seats are assigned, yet we didn’t sit in our, we jumped to the row in front of us that was empty and sat in the middle. Who follows rules anymore?
Tron was good. I enjoyed it. I’m not putting too much thought into it and trying to make it any better than it was, or I guess trying to pull it apart until it was garbage. It had a plot, a some cute lines from the first film, Garrett Hedlund in a tight outfit, and some awesome music that worked well for the Ultra AUX. I liked the story line, the characters, and the effects. They should have had more games, or really just more crazy lights/glowing.
Last week I was invited by Teletoon to see a special airing of three new Clone Wars episodes, which will air in the new year. I had never seen the show before, but it was pretty good. I like Star Wars, and I like the idea of the show, but I haven’t watched it since. It was good, but I’m either full on cartoons or people watching tv shows, not really “the whole show is computer generated” kind of watching.
Last weekend I went over to the local really small theater to watch Love and Other Drugs with my best friend. Well… there wasn’t much or a plot. There are characters and they have lives and things happen and really it just ended, and was not the great. I won’t want to see it again.
Next movies on my list is How Do You Know and Somewhere.
Sometimes Goodbye is the Only Choice
Friday was a hard day for me. I had to give the okay to have my cat put to sleep. My best friend, my consent of 16 years. She had been with me for all the major things in my life. When I cried in my room, she would sit with me and stare at me until I was okay. When I was sick she would cuddle with me on the couch. She ate breakfast with me (of course on the floor at her own bowl). We had Christmas together. I celebrated her birthday. She was my grade 2 show and tell. A few years ago she had developed separation anxiety disorder from the summer I spent at my dad’s. She licked all the fur off the bottom of her foot, we had to take her to the vets.
Tiny May 1994- Oct 15, 2010
Thursday evening when I got home from work, she didn’t come to the door, so I looked for her. After shaking her treats, and her not coming, I was worried. She always came to them. I found her hiding under my mom’s bed. Right out of my reach. We had to take the mattress and box spring off in order to get her. She wasn’t breathing well but by then all the vets were closed, and none had after hours.
I took her downstairs and placed her on her favourite pillow on the couch beside me and she didn’t move. When I finally told myself that I had to leave her and go to bed, I placed her, on her pillow, on top of towels, in the bathroom with the door shut. Friday morning I woke up around 10, then I went to check on her and just cried while sitting beside her. She was worse. I took her out of the bathroom and put her back on the couch and called my mom. She came home from work and we took her to the vet that could see us the quickest, which was an hour wait.
As soon as we arrived, I was again in tears, they took her downstairs to try to give her some oxygen. Not even five minutes later, the vet came back up stairs to inform us they could do nothing but put her out of her pain. I signed the papers and we went downstairs to say good-bye. It was all over within 15 minutes. Her lungs had filled with fluid and her heart was failing. I had no choice.
That afternoon I spent with my grandma and Aunt at their house. And that evening I canceled my plans and sat at home with our other two cats, one my sister’s and one my mom’s. I would be fine for an hour or so, and then I would just break down in tears. Saturday I woke up and had to remind myself what had happened. It felt worse than actually seeing it happen. I went to my dad’s. I couldn’t be there knowing she wasn’t. Crying and driving is really hard to do. Sunday morning I went into my mom’s room, as I did every morning to see her and I had to stop and remind myself she wouldn’t be there.
It will get better. I know this. Knowing that there was nothing I could do is helping. Having Thursday night to prepare to say good-bye helped. I know she was in pain, and this is selfish, but I needed that time. No animal can ever compare to Tiny.
Under The Dome = 730 pages of Excitement & 36 pages of WTF
The most recent 1000+ page book from Stephen King, Under the Dome, showed up on my e-reader as only 806. Yay for shorter looking books! This was my first King book! My sister has read many of his older novels when we were growing up, but I never showed an interest, until that is I found myself clicking the buy button for Under the Dome. At first I was glad I spent the $10, then when I got closer to the ending, I hated it.
Under the Dome is story about this town, Chester’s Mill, that this un-see-able dome covers and traps all the residents, visitors, and those trying to leave inside. No one really know why this has happened or how to fix it. Even the government. Eventually they figure it out and solve the problem.
I could not put this book down! Ever few books have held my attendance to the point were I am awake on the GO and reading for the while hour ride, or skipping lunch outside to read at my desk. The only books to make me glad I have zero Friday night plans, because then I can read, are the Harry Potter books (yes I loved them!) and I am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe. Then King wrote this, and I found myself missing tv shows, the news, Twitter even just to read more. That was the first 730 +/- pages. Then it took a tangent and I found myself not caring for the ending because it shouldn’t have been this way.
His reasoning for the dome being placed over the town, is pretty much the only logical reason I can see, other than it being the government, which it wasn’t. That isn’t a spoiler, you figure that out in the first ten pages. But the extreme he goes to in the last 30ish pages, I see no reason for it. It broke my reading-heart. I left ripped off, as if he felt he could no longer write and decided that he was done. The wrap-up of the town took place in ten pages. And we are left unsure of if one person lived or not. Wiki had to tell me that he died. Maybe I missed that sentence.
If you plan to read the book, stop reading and head to the comments, if not, this is how he ends it:
The bomb in the drug barn sets off a mushroom cloud of toxic gas that wipes out the entire town and the majority of the residents that did not kill themselves. A group of townsfolk that had made a run for the north part of town on a hill the day or two before are fine. Along with a child that hides in a cellar of another barn.
Was there a point to ending the book this way? I don’t see why the entire town minus 25 people had to die. Am I wrong? Let me know your thoughts on Under the Dome.
Millennium Newbie
Ten years ago this week, I was starting my first day of grade 9. I was scared, who wasn’t the first day. My sister had told me to tell no one we were related, to not go to her for help. That made me even more scared. I remember walking to school with one of my life long friends. A 30 minute walk, no lie, we lived just before the bus border.
The school already had it out for me, but the teachers already loved me. The teachers created their opinion of me based on my sister, who had a ton of school spirit, she was a member of ever club, and I was the opposite. The school had me in the wrong English class. At the end of grade 8, when we were given our grade 9 class lists they had me in the wrong one. They had me in applied, my mom called to change it to academic, which was the advance route. They didn’t change it. So I started the first day in the wrong class and the guidance office. By lunch it was fixed, but a few of my classes had to change to make the fit.
My high school had double the capacity; there were 1400 students from grade 9-12. The cafeteria could only hold 700 students; I was never one of them. We were the Home of the Cougars, which was fitting for the town, which had and still has a ton of Cougar Moms.
High school was entertaining for me. Art was where I met one of my best friends. It was crap a lot of the time. I made a lot of friends. I knew pretty much everyone in my grade, the one below me, and my sister’s (two above me). I was in no way popular though; I just talked to everyone. I was super shy and wore a lot of band t-shirts. I was picked in, had ice balls thrown at my head while walking home, I had teachers yell at me to shut it during lunch, there were teacher that knew I hated to read out loud and would always skip over me, there were teachers that hated me and would make me read more. There were times I skipped presentations, or took a zero, there was one teacher that let me change my place in the presentation line up so that I wouldn’t take the zero. There was the day I lucked out of the Hamlet play because I lost my voice and had to spend three days talking through a piece of paper. Which was hilarious because people felt they had to reply on paper.
There was the entire first semester for grade 12 where I skipped 98% of my first class and still managed a 68%. Which sucks, but for never going and not writing the final, that is pretty decent. There was the fact we read Macbeth twice, grade 9 and 11. Oh that grade 11 English teacher HATED me! I understand why, I never did the homework and I was smart-ass to her. There was that wonderful Grade 11 Chemistry teacher that tried so hard to help me pass and actually understand it. I loved chem. I just didn’t get it. I stayed for lunchtime help, I asked two of my close friends for help, in the end I understood it on Exam Pick-Up day… but I passed and that’s what counts. In the end I am happy with the choices that I made in those five years. I was short a credit at the end of grade 12, due to a computer issues, but I am glad they made that mistake. I was no where near ready for college at 17.
Five years ago, I started College, but that story is for another day.
Vacation Two Weeks Ago
It was dark outside. It was 4am. The only other people awake were my weird neighbour’s oldest son and his friend. They were sitting on the green box at the end of their drive way. It was August 14th, and my mom and I were loading the car up with out suitcases, maps, and cameras. We took a sort, five day, road trip through Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York. We caught a baseball game in Cleveland. The Indians are my favourite team.
We took a tour of the stadium before the game. They are very green. The Club uses solar power to run everything, unless the AC is on. The cups are biodegradable in 60 days, and they recycle as much as they can. Very few garbage cans are set up through the concourse, but there is a recycling bin every twenty feet.
Then we drove down to the Amish area to take in the country side. I drove for a bit and we got lost because my mother can not read a map. That was the only fight we had. We made it to Pennsylvania on the 16th, and spent most of the day trying to drive through half of it. We took a short one hour detour south to Punxsutawney to visit the famous ground hog.
In Punxsutawney
The next morning we headed north on the 15 to Wellsboro, then went west a bit to the Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania. A beautiful site! After that we crossed into New York, visited the grave of Mark Twain and a few other famous people that are located in Elmira. We visited Cooperstown and the Baseball Hall of Fame. On the last day we went shopping and headed home.
Grand Canyon
Others Can Help You, Without Knowing It
Being a friend was never my strong suit. Given I had a few, More that were more my friends because they were scared of me than actually liked me, but I wasn’t a great friend. But when grade 12 hit, I finally had a group of my own, and they made me realize that in less than eight months I would be leaving high school without anything to show for it but a piece of paper. I had never joined a club. I tried out for two sports team, one I hurt my ankle in, and the other I was asked to leave because I hit someone. That is besides the point.
So here was me, an over tall awkward looking girl with hippie hair and band t-shirts and nothing by my class photo in the year book. Figuring out that I have a short time to fix that (at this time I wasn’t award of the computer/teacher mistake that would leave me to not graduating) I looked around at what I could be apart of. There was REACH, they needed someone with sports and movie knowledge, but when put on the spot I blank. that wouldn’t work. I joined some club trying to help third world countries, at the time the UN wasn’t in my sights. I left after two weeks. In the end I joined two groups. The Newspaper, where my best friend and I wrote weekly write-ups about the OC with our own comic books names, for ex. Caption Turtle. I will try and locate those to share, I still get a kick out of them.
And Lunch Buddies.
My high school was the only one in the district that had a Life Learning Skills class, which for those of you that didn’t know, it is for kids with mental disabilities, where they can learn future skills in a normal high school environment. One day a week your buddy would join you for lunch where ever you ate, with or without our friends. I had a great buddy! Her birthday was the day after mine, she loved playing cards. We would sit in the hallways (my school was double the caf limit) with my small group of friends and play go fish, or talk, or walk the halls. I liked it. I was glad I joined. I don’t feel like it was only to help her, I think it helped me, and even my friends. We knew that not everyone had everything we had, but it made us see that kids we didn’t think enjoy school, really did. The LLS program was amazing. It showed the rest of the school that even kids that were different than us, could still receive the same life style that we did.
O Levels!!
Original Photo by D Sharon Pruitt
Two weeks ago I was given some amazing news that I had no one to share with in person, so I called my dad, and then my mom, and then tweeted it, and facebooked it, and was so over joyed I left work early. I passed those damn math tests I took at the end of May/start of June! The two crazy hard ones that I stressed so much about before and after.
I officially have my O Level Mathematics!
Which means that I now have all the qualifications that I need to get into the London School of Economics! We are waiting on the final paper work and to pay the tuition.
My plans for the future haven’t changed much. I still am saving what I can each month, and what I am making from taking photos. I am hoping to complete my schooling in three years, spend one or two years teaching English over seas, and then working for the UN or an Ireland/England sports team. I am no longer planning to move back to Toronto, I want to save as much money as I can, and my mom said she wont charge me rent, or at least not a lot.
My mom is planning to move, and I am hoping she will. I love our house, but since there is only two of us, and we hang out the most in the living room together (in silence, doing our own thing, we just like each other’s company) I see no reason to have the house that we currently have lived in for nine years. I sort of want to stay in this town, but I think moving to the town to the east, although a longer drive, might be a nice change. I have lived here my whole life.
In other news I was in the States last week with my mom. It was amazing! I’ll post about that later.
Ramona & Bezzus
Movie: Ramona & Bezzus
Directed by: Elizabeth Allen
Written by: Laurie Craig and Nick Pustay (screenplay), Beverly Cleary (novels)
Staring: Joey King, Selena Gomez, John Corbett, Bridget Moynahan, Ginnifer Goodwin, & Josh Duhamel
This weekend I went to see Ramona and Bezzus (Joey King & Selena Gomez), I was a bit shocked by the lack of people my age. I couldn’t possibly have been the only kid reading all of Beverly Cleary‘s books. And by all of, I mean between my sister and I, we read every single one of our time. My Sis originally read the Ramona books, and I read the Ribsy and Henry books (Hutch Dano).
The book that the movie is based off is actually called Bezzus & Ramona. Why they choose to change it around, I have no idea. I really loved the movie, and I can’t think of one thing I would change. Maybe the cat being 16 years old when he passes. That is the age of my cat, who is on her down hill in life.
Anyone that read these books growing up, should like the movie. I almost cried a few times, but I kept it together until the end. I was just so happy with it.
Right now you can read the book online for free.
I never finish anything
http://fueledbyphotos.com/
When I was 16, I wrote my first screenplay in four weeks. I have since then written many more that no one knows about. I have a ton of finished, fully edited and ready to been read screenplays that hide away in a hidden folder on my portable hard drive.
The one I wrote eight years ago is the owner of my first award. I won a movie contest that was based in California. I beat a bunch of 18 year olds. After I won, I kept in touch with the main organizer and went to him for help for all my movie questions. He helped me get in touch with the head of the creative department (at the time) of YTV and I was encouraged to submit a Creative Proposal. I wrote it. It is saved somewhere on my hard drive. I never sent it. I couldn’t do it.
Since then every few people have ever seen my writing. I have a finished novel that a few people have seen the first chapter and think I gave up on it. Other than those few screenplays and that one novel, I have a good number of unfinished works.
I never finish anything. I guess I mean, I never finish most things. I give up half way through. I actually gave up on this blog a few weeks ago, for the second time. I have a good number of unfinished drafts that I bet I will never post. I started this blog as a movie review, and then felt that no one cared about what I wrote, so I stopped posting them. I write mainly for myself, and sharing what I write is hard for me. It is the same with my photos. I have been meaning to scan a few of my first photos to share, but I never get around to it, because I’m scared. They are my heart and soul.
In grade ten Drafting, I didn’t finish my ISU project. I did the write up for it, but you were asked to make a prototype. Yeah I didn’t finish it. I actually didn’t even do the presentation. I did somehow manage to receive an 81% over all. One of my college projects was to put on an event… I didn’t do it. We lied about it. No one seemed to notice.
Not finishing things is something I am used to, and something I hate. I just don’t have the drive to follow through on major things in my life. I bet I will be that girl that doesn’t show up to her wedding because I wont finish planning it.
Homer Simpson, Necklace, Frying Dutchman?
jennifercwlee.tumblr.com/post/652418061
Choose least objectionable interest -> Partake in interest -> Begin Friendship!
I love board game nights! A few of my closet friends came over on Saturday night to end my birthday line of events. Yes I had my birthday!! In May… but it was the long weekend and many people were away so it was sort of low key. BFF D and I went to the Birds of Wales/We Are the Take show on Thursday May 20, on the Friday we went to the Taylor Swift show (on my actual birthday), Saturday I lounged around the house relaxing, and Sunday my mom threw a family BBQ in the back yard. Which lead to a few people missing out and the need for a get-together.
It was planned we’d hit the local country club… I’m not a club person… I hardly see my friends as it is, and would rather be able to talk to them, plus I hate dancing. So the least objectionable interest we share is board games! Three rounds of Simpson Clue and one round of Monster Life, with a few Truth/Dare questions in-between. I have a wide array of board games, the normal clue and five versions of Monopoly to add to those, plus scrabble, and a few other random-not-many-people-know-of games. Monopoly is my favourite. So we partook in said interest and continued our friendship!
In other news, I wrote both my math tests, learned that they change there percent for each letter grade after every set of exams, they bell curve it. In that case, I took a jump on my degree program and start reading my textbook for the first class. Yes I jumped the gun, but I’m that sure of myself. I did stress A LOT, but since it is bell curved, which I just LOVE, I’m okay with my answers. Now only have to wait another 4-6 weeks.
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