What would you do?

Okay, yes, I realize I didn't do any of what I promised to do last week. To be honest, I had a feeling that would happen when I said I'd do it. I actually started the one for HIMYM, but it just got too rambly and I got too busy...so it never got finished.

Anyway, after saying goodbye to Thomas today so he could go to work, I stopped off at Big Lots in order to find the paper shredder I felt I should have bought when I was at a different location earlier this week. They didn't have it, but I did end up buying this retro flip clock that I loved the moment I saw it. I was super excited, because I love anything retro and it was only $13, but I was hesitant because money has been a little tight lately. Unfortunately the excitement has started to wear off because it's a pain to set and keep on the right time since, like a vending machine, it doesn't always release the number as it should. Rewind back to when I first bought it now. I stepped out of the store and there on the ground was a $10 bill. There was no one around and it was in the middle of the street, so I just picked it up.

Immediately I didn't really know what to do. I'd always been taught to ask around and try to find out whose it was or turn it into the authorities, which in this case would be the manager of the store I found it in. Since neither of these really applied, I was kind of at a loss. After a while, I migrated to trying to decide what finding such a thing meant. Of course, leave it to me to analyze something so simple.

What I came up with...
1) It could be a sign from God saying I needed to lighten up on myself and just buy stuff I like every once in a while.
2) It could be a test from God, to see what I would do. However, since, from what I remember, I've been taught to believe that God no longer tests us in that way, I feel I can discredit this idea.
3)It was just meant as a gesture to kind of help me with money and I should keep it for when I need it.
4)It was some sort of pay it forward thing....and I should give it away to charity, or some random person off the side of the street.
5)It was just luck.

Yes, I know I was over-thinking it a little too much....but I don't know...it just really struck something inside me. With all of the stress of wedding planning, work, housework, etc. It's been really nice to realize when things kind of fall in place like that. I've had a lot of help from a lot of people lately, especially with the wedding, and I'm so grateful and appreciative of it all. It really makes me feel loved and makes me really feel like this is all meant to be. I hope thats not too sappy for any of you.

As far as the $10 bill, it's still in my wallet...awaiting my decision. We'll just have to wait and see how it get's spent. So, as the title of this post asks, what would you do?

Deconstructing Jane Austen (Literally)

So,  few weeks ago, I was scouring through etsy to try to find things for the wedding, when I came across a listing by anovelamore of confetti made from Jane Austen's Emma. I thought to myself, "What a great idea!" I had it all planned out that I was going to buy hard cover copies of The Time Traveler's Wife, a compilation of Jane Austen's novels, and a compilation of the Bronte sisters' novels. The pages would become confetti, and the covers would become flower girl baskets, in the spirit of some book purses I've seen around the internet. Well, some people weren't so sure about the baskets, and I started to wonder if it was worth the money to buy all three books, so I started to rethink things.

A few days later I went to work at the bookstore and saw that we had received this lovely edition while I was out. The actual cover is white, so I might can use it for something else, and it's thick enough to theoretically make enough confetti. Even if it doesn't, by the time I've punched every page out, I'll be tired of it. The best thing about it of course, was that it was only $7.99. Of course, I felt bad buying the book under false pretenses, if you will, but since I already own almost all of the novels in there, two of which I still need to read, I decided it was better to use this cheap book than the others.


So, for several weeks,  the book just sat on my coffee table collecting dust and what not. The closest Michaels is about 20 minutes away, so I just never really made the time to get over there. I figured I had plenty of time before the wedding, and even partially assumed we'd just do this as a group the week before once everyone was in town and in wedding finishing mode.


Anyway, yesterday we ended up near the store anyway, so I stopped off and got two heart hole punchers, one jumbo sized and one regular. I have to say I was semi confused because jumbo was the second smallest size out of like five different sizes. I guess they slowly expanded the line and didn't feel the need to rename it. Once we got home, I sat the stuff to the side, figuring I'd get to it over the weekend. After a while however, I got kind of bored and thought, "I might as well." So, I grabbed the necessary items, two punchers, the book, and a shoe box to keep the confetti in.



Thomas decided to help me so he took the smaller one and I took the larger one and we went to work. By the way, if you plan on doing this yourself, I'd say the best way seemed to be to fold one page in half, until it was small enough to get two rows of hearts punched out. If you go thicker, than it's too hard to punch, let alone fit in the little slit the puncher allows for paper. Also, you get more hearts for your punch. Oh, and you might also want to make sure they aren't sloppy folds, or you'll end up cutting on the fold and making weird shaped flower-like double heart things.

The first rip. Gasp!             Accordion hearts        I loved this bigger one.

Probably about thirty minutes later, though I really have no clue how long it was, we figured it was time to stop. It was after about one in the morning, so we were pretty tired and ready for bed. To the left is how far we got, 71 pages into Sense and Sensibility...so I guess we got roughly 35 pages punched thoroughly. However many it was, I know it was about a grocery bag worth of trash.

To the right you can see just how little confetti was made from all of that work. It's probably more than I figure since the pieces are so small. All I know is we have quite a bit left to do. I'll try to do as much as I can during the day when I take breaks from work to watch a TV show or a movie. Speaking of, I better get going so I can work.

Cheers!

P.S. These pictures all came from my phone because my camera wasn't charged enough. I think it worked out pretty well. I do have a droid so it is relatively good quality. Thomas did "judge" me a bit for documenting the whole thing.

Boy, I've been slack

Okay, first of all, to add to the last list, I'm also probably going to also write a blog about Kevin Kline's film In & Out. Though it was a silly comedy on the surface, there was a lot in there that was really interesting about in terms of views on homosexuality in the late 1990s. Oh well, we'll see.

Anyway, as you can I changed up the layout a little bit. I'm not completely sure how I feel about it. I might prefer to have a picture background. That's neither here nor there though. I got on here to say that next week, in honor of premiere week, or at least that's what I'm calling it, next week on TV I'm going to make a list each day of ten reasons why I love the show that premieres that night. The only exception is Thursday night because there are so many premiering that night.

Here's the schedule:

Monday: How I Met Your Mother

Tuesday: Glee

Wednesday: nothing...I get my wedding dress that day and hopefully will be going to Mr. Jason Mraz in concert that night.

Thursday: Bones

Friday: nada

Saturday: nope

Sunday: Bored to Death

So yep, that's all I have write now. I've got to get back to work.

What to hopefully expect if I ever get the time....

So, I just read my good friend Katie's blog, featured over in the right column over there, 2010 a Marriage Odyssey, where she used a list to go ahead and go through and talk about all of the things she's been wanting to say.  I don't really plan on doing that exactly, I thought that I might as well post a list of topics I'm dying to write about on here, and then whenever I do find the time to write, I won't have to sit around secretly chastising myself for forgetting.

1. An Education - a few things about the film, as well as the stupidity that allowed me to find the time to finally watch it.

2. Celebrity - My growth from a fanatical teen to an appreciative audience and why the former probably happened in the first place.

3. Briar Rose - Whenever I get around to it, if I still remember enough about the book to write about it thoughtfully and objectively, I will. If not, I'll just write about the other latest book I've read.

4..pending...I know there's other stuff I want to write about, I just can't think of it right now.

If this helps I may periodically edit this post, or just make new ones adding on to the list....I guess it depends on if I've written anything since or not. Oh well, back to work.

Cheers

What makes me smile

I wanted to share this, but it's just slightly too long for a tweet, so here I am blogging. First of all, I won't disclose precisely what I do, because I don't know how much I'm supposed to talk about it, but I work with surveys more or less, for a website. The site itself doesn't have anything to do with film directly, but the survey does ask, "what is you favorite film?", in an attempt to define the character of the person in question. While, in the spirit of DeLillo, I don't know how effective it is to use these sorts of personality markers, or how healthy it is to perpetuate this sort of definition of character, as a film minor, I am usually very interested in what people write as their answer. The question also asks what your favorite film is, which is usually the part people tend to answer.  I've been noticing a great trend here in people putting really only recent films in their favorites. There will be the default classic like Casablanca every once in a while, but usually it's something from the last year or two. I can't quite place why that bothers me...It probably has to do with the fact that I don't really see it as a praise for more contemporary filmmaking, but as an honest and active inability to recognize and remember  the past. I am all for (like seriously adore) new forms of media and everything, so don't think I'm some kind of biased the-internet-is-making-society-dumb imbecile. I really just have a problem with us forgetting the past like it seriously never happened. You can't truly know the world, let alone the human race, if you ignore that kind of thing. I recently heard someone say that the Holocaust bothered them too much, so after high school they completely cut it out of their life. There is just so many things wrong with that kind of mentality that I'm not going to go into it right now. Anyway, the point of this post was not to complain, but actually say how thrilled I am that almost everyone who I've gotten in the last week or so who has answered the question of the last movie they enjoyed, answered Inception. When I watch a really good film, I always want to share it with people and talk about it, and I guess it just makes me happy that so many other people are enjoying it as I did. I usually have to defend the movies I love from people to a certain extent, so not really having to I guess just really makes me smile. Okay, I apologize, that was supposed to only be a few sentences long, but I got into that random tangent. I've got to get back to work, so cheers!

p.s. I do think that the types of movies someone likes does reflect their character, I just don't think it defines it.

Stamps, Stamps, and More Stamps!

So, I really have a tendency to learn how to do something, whether artistically, culinarily, or just whatever, and then go crazy with ideas of how to put this new talent/knowledge to use. More often than not, the interest fades out, or money subsides, halting production on whatever I was working on. For this reason, I own stools that I was refurbishing in my own quirky way that are half sanded and in dire need of another run over with the wood burner, and have recipes that I never wrote down, swearing that I'd remember them, and no, of course, I don't. Most recently, as a by product of trying to find some way  to put our own logo on the back of homemade Harry Potter Apples To Apples cards, I stumbled across stamps at Michaels. Suddenly, while searching for stamps that didn't exist, I saw a few wedding ones and got the idea of making my own wedding invitations. I have currently done two trial invites and think I finally have a good idea as to the design for  the outside, it just requires patience and a few more materials.

Of course, this is sideways, but you get the picture.

Anywho, that led me to my next step, searching Etsy to find someone who will make a single stamp containing all of the information that needs to go on the inside. While I'm still toying with this idea, it turns out to be more expensive than I'd like, so I might have to go back to stamping it letter by letter with a smaller packet of letter stamps. Back to the story however,  this prompted me to search and see just how hard it might be to make your own stamp. After just a few minutes on google and youtube, I was equipped with the knowledge to at least go make my own HP AtoA stamps. In case you're wondering, here's a video on how it's done.                                                                                                                    

So I went to Michaels to purchase either a stamp pad or an extra large eraser.  I found the pads in no time, but they were more expensive than I wanted to spend. When I was about to check out however, I looked over at the $1 bins and saw this huge pink eraser that was perfect for the job, as well as the idea I had brewing in my head about making a stamp for the bookmark wedding favor I'd been trying to design.

I was pretty excited, and thought the quote on the front was kind of funny. If only I knew how true it would turn out to be. Sorry by the way, all of the pictures from my web cam are mirrored, which may or may not be ironic, I can't tell.

 So I went over to Thomas' grandparents' house, cut one of the erasers in half and went to work with my pen and carving tools. Everyone else thought it was pretty neat, with several of the cousins who helped telling me it was sort of therapeutic work. In no time we had two lovely apple-with-a-lightning-bolt stamps reading for the cards we still had to rewrite.

As you can see I even became victim of being stamped myself, as Kallan decided to go around stamping us all while we waited on dinner to be made and could not work on the cards because it would take up too much room. I'm actually pretty proud of how these turned out, except the fact that I should have gotten a better ink pad, and of course, I forgot that it would stamp a mirrored image rather than the one I cut out. Oh well, the lightning bolt works okay on either side.


So today, is when I thoroughly failed. I started to work on the bookmark stamp, and instead of planning it out, which is always my downfall, I got too excited and went ahead and started drawing and carving.

The result is what you see on your left. What is funny is that, using my computer's camera, the image actually looks like it should. However, when you actually see it, I didn't take the time to mirror the writing. I spent something like an hour and a half on this, and had half of it carved out, as you can see. I went to test it since I had a portion big enough to ink and not smear over the parts I hadn't worked on yet, and saw, whoopsy, it was backwards. I wanted to scream and laugh at the same time. Of course, I can go back to the store and get another eraser, and perhaps thinner carving tools to make the letter's a little bit tighter and less matisse font-like. For now, I'm frustrated and am thinking about just using whatever smaller letters I buy for the inside of the invitations, but maybe I'll stop back by and grab another eraser or two and try again soon. If I am I need to do it before they move them and I can't ever find  them again. Even if I give up on this idea, I may make some smaller, simpler ones for the kids at the wedding to play with while the adults are doing their socializing. The lesson after all of this though, is to plan ahead as much as possible. Don't let your excitement get the best of you, or you'll be out of several bucks and a few hours of time you could have been using to not fail at other things.
Oh well, you live and you learn. I'll probably definitely update again soon with how everything's going. Wish me luck!

Cheers!

For you're own tools to for stamp making:
  

Superheroes part dos

So, obviously, I've been meaning to finish this for a while, as I always am.  A lot of stuff has come up and there are some crazy changes going on in my life.   Moving on though, when I think superheroes, I think powers, and which ones I'd actually consider having.  Some of you might be like, "Dude, of course you would want a superpower,"  but on the contrary, I see a lot of them as flawed.  In a way they are almost like a hamartia, a "tragic flaw," though not one the hero can really be blamed for as you might normally would for say, Oedipus.  Lets look at some of the more attractive powers

Super Strength
I think this is probably the most popular power, which is probably due to the fact that I think it was one of the first in the comic book realm.  People didn't really get creative about powers until later. Anyway, Yes, super strength is rather attractive, especially when you think of how much good you could do when things go awry. Just right to your left, Superman is stopping a bank robbery. My only issue is with controlling it.  Is one able to turn it on and off, or do they just make a point to be extra, extra careful when doing anything else in life?  If its the former, than fine, the only issue you might have is if you got really upset and purposefully hurt someone who just made you a bit angry or jealous. If its the latter however, I can't imagine how difficult it might would be to be so gentle.  Unless you got really good with it, you would constantly be hurting those you loved or breaking fragile things like teacups and lightbulbs.  Of course, there are even more picky issues with the power like, how does your skin withhold the pressure of so much force when you use the power, or what density would  your muscles truly have to be (unless of course its just magic)?  These things aren't really of any consequence though because you're suppose to suspend your disbelief on the issue and just accept that the power is a truth.

Healing
So I know there are a lot of different heroes, villains, and other various characters with this ability, but my favorite is Wolverine. I also think he's the perfect example of all that can go wrong with this power. First of all, he's been a horrible lab experiment and had adamantium fused to his skeleton (twice I believe). Not only is that horribly painful, but inhumane. Also, it set him up for the time that Magneto ripped the metal from his skeleton during a battle. There are some forms of injury and pain you just don't want to come back from. Of course, one thing does have a big impact on this issue, the speed of regeneration. If you heal almost instantly, then okay, that's not so bad, but if it takes several days or even weeks, that would be ridiculously painful. Anyway, another thing to refute over with this healing power, is how long it allows you to live. Sure, especially with all of the vampire literature about, living forever does seem to have it's perks, but I think it would be boring after a while. After you've lived to see everything, if you're the kind of person to care about culture and what not, what are you going to do. Yes of course, there are constantly technological advances that one might would want to see, but after a while that might even begin to seem like the same thing over and over again. Unless you're power was recognized in the public, which for someone born even today, that is very unlikely, you'd have to live a secret life of mystery and deception, not ever letting anyone truly closed to you. Also, those that you did let get close to you, would eventually die, or even be killed because of you. You could just become immune to death, but really, would you want to live a life like that and not have any stock in human life?

Telepathy
So I've always been into this power, I guess because I'm extremely aware of my surroundings and am always worried I've made someone think ill of me. Shamefully I have even thought something merely because I was worried someone might somehow hear it, and then immediately worry that somebody has.  I'm not crazy, just a little quirky with an open mind to the possibly paranormal. So, of course I have always been aware, at least partially, of the side effects of this ability. First of all, unless you can turn it off, you run the risk of going a little bit insane. Your mind makes you who you are, excluding you soul for the  moment, and if you lose it, you're nothing. You're just a body, a vessel for a soul that can't express itself because it has no mind to convey any aspect of itself. One thing I hadn't thought of so much until the last few years since I read the first Sookie Stackhouse novel by Charlaine Harris, is how just how horrible it would be and how self conscious you might get if you did hear everything everybody though about you. I had thought about it on the more general level of just hearing what passersby had to say about you, but not that you may never have a healthy, working relationship because of it. What's especially worrisome is the idea of hearing what your loved one is really thinking of while he or she is consoling you, kissing you, or even making love to you. I'm not a prude, but I know that would pretty much scar me for life.

Super Intelligence
This is an ability I would actually like to have, as long as I knew how to keep my ego down and my mouth shut at the appropriate times, which is something Tony Stark definitely needs to work on. If you don't, obviously, a whole ton of crap can happen to you.  You can get kidnapped by the enemy, create vendettas worldwide, and on a smaller level, never have a friend that thinks he's on your level. The only issues I think there would be if you theoretically used the power right, is the distance that would be created between you any anyone you loved because they are not on your intellectual level, as well as the issue of learning too much about the world.  When I say this last one, I mean that you learn about so much evil and pain in the world that you lose all hope in humanity or even the existence of being.

Telekinesis
So finally, this is the power I find the most practical, if thats even what one should be  thinking in terms of having a special ability. Yes, my example to the left, Jean Grey does end up turning evil, but I would argue that that is because she also had mind reading capabilities that made her extra susceptible to being controlled by someone with similar powers. If you simply just had telekinesis, you could definitely do damage if you wanted to, but if used right, it would really just be like being that young wizard who uses his powers to do his chores rather than actually doing them. I guess you could get extra lazy and have develop weight issues, but that already happens. I think telekinesis would be really nice for getting things done on a busy day, or doing those menial chores that would normally take up the time you could be using to do something more important. Really, it would just make things a little easier, like holding a book you're reading or grabbing a really hot pan out of the oven. My fiancé and I had some other ideas the other day, but for the life of me I can't remember what they were. I do think at one time we were playing with  the idea of whether or  not telekinesis would allow you to heal yourself because technically you would be able to connect your veins, tissues and what not back together.  It would all boil down to whether or not you could fuse them back together or not, or if you could, in the time allotted before you passed our or died from a serious injury.

If you have any arguments, feel free to give them.  I do not claim to be a comic book guru or anything of the sort.  I've just read and seen some things that fill me in here and there. You might complain that I left out things like x-ray vision, shifting, or even magic as a whole.  This was a conscious decision made because then I would just be writing for hours about every little power I could think of.  This way, I just took the several powers I thought I could talk about and focused on them. Focus is a main issue for me so I wanted there to me as little leeway as possible.  Speaking of focusing, I need to get back to work and jump in the shower.

Cheers