M. N. S., I love you

M. Night Shyamalan, I love your movies.  I just finished watching The Village and it never gets old.  It's a beautiful love story set in the past...kind of.  If you haven't seen it, you must!  Now, I know there are some of you out there rolling your eyes and thinking, "His movies are lame.  They're unrealistic and over-hyped."  You know what I say to that?  I'm glad you have your own opinion, and I'm glad that you regret rolling your eyes at me just because I am a hopeless romantic.  :)

Seriously though, lovely cinematography, BEAUTIFUL music (thank you, James Newton Howard, as usual), and such a great story of love triumphing through difficult circumstances.  Sigh.

AHHHH!  And on a whim, I decided to IMDB my dear M.N.S. and there's a movie in post-production!!! YAY!  Check it out here: After Earth.

Life (AKA I still exist)

Soooo, yeah, slacking hard core on blogging.  Life just got all sorts of busy and truly, it just never slows.  A lot has happened since July (what?!?  I haven't posted since July?  It's snowing outside right now...), so here are some highlights:

• Moved out of Cambridge and into Quincy.  It's fun to be learning a new city, and my commute is WAY shorter, yay!
• Opened up to my new church community and gave my "life story".  Very scary, but so freeing to be vulnerable in that way and let yourself be known.  Really just loving getting to know this community of believers and growing spiritually together.
• Started getting into Once Upon a Time - fun show for sure, less serious than my old TV love, Lost.  Also been catching up on Walking Dead, which I love and has NOTHING in common with Once.  :)
• Got my first iPhone!!! It's a 4S and I do indeed love it.  :)  Maybe if I take a little time, I can figure out how to do this blogging thing and use the pics from my phone (not that I take that many, but still, pictures always make these blogs more fun to read, right?).
• Had an amazing Christmas with my family - lots of coffee, movies, music, and laughs.  Oh, and I learned what YOLO means.  :p
• My boss and boss' boss quit.  Yikes.  That's been hard to deal with emotionally since I've been working with them for 9 years, but I survived week 1 without them - hope week 2 goes well!!

Alright, consider yourself mostly caught up.  Now, on with life!

Fill it in!

It's Friday and I'm home, so I'm going to take up Lauren on her prompt/fill-in-the-blank question this week (check out her blog on add your own link!):

"If I could get away for the day, I would go...."
to Disneyland!  I say this mostly because my parents and youngest sister are actually there today and I would love to be there with them.  It's so great - I think I fell like this mostly because it's such a family tradition for me.  My dad's from LA, and so growing up, we'd take a road trip every couple of years down there to visit family, and we would ALWAYS go to Disneyland (also Knott's Berry Farm, In&Out Burger, and the horse race track, among others).  I know that some would say I'm too old to really enjoy it, but that's just not true!  The rides are still fun, the mood is just so fun and happy, and there really is just something completely magical about it.  I am a firm believer that everyone should visit at least once (if I could, I'd go once a year).  Favorite ride, you ask?  Well, it's between two - Pirates of the Caribbean and Splash Mountain.  Both are great on a hot day!

Long time, no write!

Oh dear, June was a busy month for me!  Sadly, I don't take photos, so I can't put my month into pictures, but I'll try to sum up the highlights in a few words:

• Alpha Gamma Delta - that's my sorority, and the past couple of years I've been not only doing finance advising (which I feel like I'm still not very good at) but also helping our House Association raise money for a new house.  In the process, I've made friends with one of my chapter's (Zeta Zeta) founding members.  She is FANTASTIC, and I spent a whole afternoon with her just chatting and writing Thank-you notes to alumnae who donated to our cause.  It was fantastic!
• Oregon - that's my homestate, and normally I visit a couple times a year.  This month, I flew out for my baby sister's graduation and it was WONDERFUL!  Admittedly I was feeling not-so-excited about the trip beforehand, since travel plans were a little uncertain, and I thought for sure Baby-Boat (Shannon) would be too busy with her high school friends to hang out much, but quite the contrary.  We bowled, laughed, and hung-out to my heart's content.  I loved seeing mom, dad, Jo-and-the-boys, Catie, Tracy-in-Olympia, and Baby-Boat.  Lots of great memories were made, see Tracy's blog for fun pics.
• Keane - that's one of my favorite bands, and I got to see them live at Boston's House of Blues for a great show with my friend Sonja.  Their new album (Strangeland) was released this year and is FABULOUS!  Check them out and take a listen for sure - You Are Young is a great place to start.
• Shakes and Sarah's wedding - these are two of my good friends and they were just married on June 30th.  Shakes is a good friend from college (WPI), and so the Institute Group (the core group of my friends that all met freshman year in the dorm call Institute Hall) got together for a week beforehand in a rented farmhouse in NY farmland.  AMAZING.  It really was a great trip, filled with lots of food and hanging out.  The week culminated in a beautiful countryside wedding and I already miss my friends.  CONGRATS, SCHUMACHERS!

There it is, June all nice and summed up.  I hope to write more than one blog post this month!

Rainy Saturdays

I love rainy days!  It's extra nice on a lazy Saturday, but I'll take it on a weekday too.  I always tell people that overcast or rainy days put me in a great mood, and I say it's probably because it reminds me of home.  I grew up on the Oregon coast and I think it rained about half the year.  :)  It just makes being indoors so pleasant and cozy!  Right now, I'm just planning on making some tea, reading the last of Devil in the White City, and then probably doing some chores.

This rainy day is also especially making me excited to visit home soon!  My youngest sister is graduating from high school and I'm SUPER excited to see the family.  I'll get to see my nephews, spend time with all four of my sisters, listen to music with my dad, and hang out/drink tea/chit chat with my mom.  I love my Oregon vacations!

Movie night

Occasionally I get on a classic movie kick to catch up on all those movies I really should have seen by now.  Last night = Oklahoma!  The exclamation point is apparently part of the title.  :)  It was so fun!  Lots of good sing-a-longs and great dance sequences.  But...what kind of an ending was that?!?  Since Oklahoma! should be well-past watched on most people's lists, I'm going to type some specifics about the end, but just in case you haven't seen it yet and don't want to read about the ending, here's your final SPOILER ALERT!  Here's my issue:  how does Laurey just traipse off on her honeymoon so calmly the day after Judd was killed by her fiance (okay, it was kind of an accident, and Curly obviously didn't TRY to kill him, but still)!  I found it to be a little bit disturbing.  I mean, she's the one who accepted his offer to take her to the dance!  I don't like to use the term "she led him on", but she kind of did!  I'm not saying Judd was a nice guy, but I found it a little abrupt for an ending.  I guess that's just life on the frontier for you.

After the movie was over, I went to the menu on the DVD and they had a sing-a-long option...so I did.  :)

2000 Miles

...is the name of a Coldplay song - okay, actually it's a cover of a song by The Pretenders, but I ADORE the Coldplay version obviously.  I suppose it's only obvious if you know that I am a Coldplay fanatic.  I LOVE THEM!  The first time I heard them was in the summer of 2000.  I was in London doing my humanities project, and I became great friends with this other young woman from WPI (Heather).  She and I had just finished our big papers and we had a free day.  We went to visit one of the other kids in his flat, and he was watching the Glastonbury festival on TV and this "new band", Coldplay, was up next.  Heather and I were instantly hooked and found our chance to bring back some authentic Brit music back to the US with us.  Little did we know what a HUGE hit they would be!

Anyway, I heard this song, 2000 Miles, on Coldplay's website two years ago during Christmas break, and my soon-to-be brother-in-law saw how much I liked it and found me a copy!  I had some computer issues for a while (it got fried in a lightening storm...seriously) and so I couldn't actually download it, and then all of a sudden today, it came to me - I CAN LISTEN TO IT NOW!  So here I am, just chillin to Coldplay.

I love music.  I can easily just get lost in a beautiful orchestral arrangement, or sad lyrics, or a memory I'm reminded of by a song, and it's wonderful.  Something about it just tugs at my heart strings, and tears (happy or sad!) just start to trickle.  Ahhhh, I love it.  :)  Up next on the playlist - Bon Iver, Bon Iver.  I am still in love with For Emma, Forever Ago, (Wolves is a good one on that album) but I'm ready to learn to love another album!

PS - I don't care that 2000 Miles is technically a Christmas song, I'm still gonna play it again right now.  : p