It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World!

Yes, it can be at times. But I'm not talking about the real world. I'm talking about a hilarious movie my sibs and I finished watching today, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World! It was so long, it needed an intermission. But this is a great movie, full of non-stop laughs, especially close to the end!

This film was made in the early 60's and is chock-full of famous funny actors of the time: Sid Ceasar, Milton Berle, Buddy Hackett, Mickey Rooney and a bunch of other guys I don't know. There was also Ethel Merman, who played a loud and really annoying mother-in-law. I hated her, but she was funny. You know, the character you love to hate.

And there were many, many cameo appearances by different comedians, like Jimmy Durante (HA-CHA-CHA-CHA), Don Knotts (after hearing this guy's name on Animaniacs all the time [he's Wakko's hero, for some reason], I finally got to see him), Jerry Lewis (you cannot miss him! He's the guy who runs over the hat making hilarious faces!), The Three Stooges (they're firemen for about 3 seconds), Jack Benny and Buster Keaton (who I didn't catch, but read on Wikipedia that they were in it). Don't worry if a lot of these names go over your head. I'm a fan of old comedy stars. (They're usually better than the people we have today. :P)

Even if you're not fans of these stars, I bet anyone would love to see this old flick. A run-away criminal flys off the road and when several strangers go down to see if they can help him, the criminal guy tells them with his dying words where a large amount of money, $350,000, is hidden. Of course, everyone forgets about where they were going before (whether it was on a honeymoon or moving furniture or vacation or something) and go full speed ahead in an unofficial race to get to the money before the other people do.

The story was really great, the filming well done. It seemed they were really good about giving each group of characters a fair amount of screen time without you getting bored of their situation. Sometimes I could predict what was going to happen, but it was still always funny. I guess after watching a lot of Animaniacs (we're almost finished with the entire collection! I'm half happy, half sad about it. ^_^|~,~), it seemed to have the timing of a well-made cartoon. I highly recommend this movie to anyone who even vaguely appreciate this kind of comedy. I guarantee that you won't be disappointed.

~~~

In the meantime, I'm still looking forward very much to getting my ARC of The Maze Runner from Dashner! I hope it comes in before the week is out! Ooh, I'm still feeling the excitment of winning such an awesome prize!

The other day at the library, I reserved books with an inter-library loan for the first time. I could have done this at any time I wanted to read a cool, recently published book but couldn't reserve it because it was still too new. I wish I'd known this before! :P. So I put holds on The Hunt for Dark Infinity, by James Dashner (won't have to wait to go to the bookstore again!), The Hourglass Door, by Lisa Mangum (I've heard it's a great book for Twilight lovers ^,^), and Farworld: Water Keep, by J. Scott Savage (also a book I want to read). Right now I feel a little silly, because I forgot about asking about Alvor, by Laura Bingham! I don't know why it slipped my mind. Now that's a book I believe I'd enjoy a lot. Meh. Guess I'll have to do that next time. (Sorry, Laura.)

Much Happiness, Have I!!!

Sorry for the Yoda talk. But as my family and some of my closest friends knows already, I have been incredibly lucky to win a very special contest!!! One of my big-time author idols, James Dashner, set it up. He was giving away a signed and personalized ARC of The Maze Runner (well, at first it was one, but then he saw how many people wanted it and upped the ante a little!) to a lucky, random commenter who followed him and wrote about the last book they'd read. For full details, here are the two relevant links:

Where I found about the contest (I can barely believe the almost 100 comments Dashner recieved... though at the same time I wasn't much surprised. ;P)

Where I discovered that I was a winner!!!

This book has been incredibly hyped up about, especially on James' own blog ;P. It's even already being published in a few foreign languages! It will hit shelves sometime in October, but lucky me, I'll know what happens before most everyone else! I've sent James my address so he can mail the book to me. I can barely wait to get it! I actually had some trouble emailing him, because this message kept popping up. Turns out it was some silly email-filter trouble! 0,o

I'm also feeling pretty good, because I emailed a special someone that I'm probably going to stay close friends with forever... ^,~

Thanks, everyone, for all the support and congratulations I've so far recieved on my big win! It's all certainly made my day, perhaps even my week!!!

***

Must say that I'm also pretty happy that I saw Coraline today for the second time ever. I saw it with my parents this time. I hope they enjoyed it, because I'll admit that in some parts the kids show off some mean attitude. I love these kind of movies, but sometimes I feel funny when I've already seen it and I'm showing it to my parents because I recommended it highly to them. Like, I know what happens, and as I watch I keep wondering if they're getting a good impression from it.

Well, I think that's enough for now. I'm still pretty awful happy!!!

Lots of stuff

I haven't posted in such a long time, it's crazy. I don't know why I haven't made the time to blog until now. I hope this makes up for me missing a lot.

• My birthday is in exactly 6 weeks, as you can probably see from my little countdown clock. I'll be turning 18 on September 7th. Can you imagine? I'm going to be a legal adult for the rest of my life! Yipee! *partyparty* Oh, but you know, when I stop and think about it, it's actually a pretty sobering thought as well as a happy one. Because, well... My official childhood will be behind me. I'm never going to be a kid again. Except in my imagination, of course. I always want to keep the heart of a child.
  
  
• I should have written about it last week, but on Tuesday the 21st, Annette and I joined our mom and brother for a homeschooling meeting at our library, to meet some new families that would be joining our group. There were 2 families, and one of them had a 16-year-old daughter, Abi (short for Abigail. I think that's how it spells. Oh well, Abi is easier). After some awkward starts, me, my twin and Abi got into a good groove of conversation. We talked about movies we liked, our interests, (She likes to draw and write, a combination of both Annette and my talents! Fascinating) and other stuff. She seems like a good new friend. Now I'll have a reason to go to more homeschool meetings, if she's there.
  
  
• Somewhere in our talk about movies, Abi told us about this cool website called TV Tropes. We'd never heard about it before, and she tried explaining what a "trope" actually was, but it's hard to describe. Now that I've checked it out a few times, I can hardly blame her. Here's the link: http://tvtropes.org Just make sure you've got a lot of time on your hands before you check this site out. It's almost more fun than exploring Wikipedia. Just type Harry Potter or something in the search box, and you'll see what I mean. You might even get hooked on it, like I did!
  
  
• Last night my sibs and I finished watching the entire 2nd volumes out of the 3 Animaniacs DVD sets we borrowed from the library. Each volume has 5 discs in it, and each disc contains 5 zany episodes. Can you do the math? Well, I'll do it for you anyway. It means 50 episodes down, 25 to go. I'm loving this. This is just like the time my sibs and I got into seeing the entire 9 seasons of Seinfeld. The only difference is that Seinfeld was a live action show focusing on 4 characters, and Animaniacs was variety show of different, hilarious, semi-regular cartoon segments. The sad thing is that only 75 episodes are on DVD, and there were 99 episodes in the whole show. No one's made a Animaniacs Volume 4 yet. I hope they do.
  
  
• The other week my family wanted to see Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian (I wasn't all that into it, because I've heard from various reviews that it's not all that), but it got sold out, so we had to see another movie. We watched My Life in Ruins, which is a romantic comedy about a tour guide in Greece leading a weird group of tourists who, quoting the Wikipedia article, "would rather buy a T-shirt than learn about Greece's history and culture". Everything seems to go wrong, but eventually the tour guide gets a new outlook on life and starts having a lot more fun with her group. I really thought it was a good film, considering that it wasn't what we expected to see in the theater.
  
  
• Unfortunately, I haven't been working a lot in my story this week. Something I should work on rectifying. My book is certainly not going to write or publish itself. (Oh, if only that could happen.)
  
  
• Last night, instead of going to the beach like we usually do, my dad treated us and we went to my all-time favorite restaurant, Sweet Tomatoes. Over the years, this has grown to be the site of many a birthday celebration or other special occasion. It's fun when we go for no particular reason at all, though. After everyone was finished eating, we went to Barnes and Nobles, where I was finally able to find James Dashner's awesome book, Hunt for Dark Infinity! I haven't been able to read it since Annette and I came back from Boston. For some reason, I can never find it in Borders, which I go to much more often. So I definitely enjoyed reading a few extra chapters. I think on Wednesday I'll go with my mom so she can drop me off at B & N while she shops at our Farmer's Market. I hope to finish it soon!

Okay, I promise that after this I will be much more diligent about blogging. Writing these long, general posts is pretty tiring! ~_~

I'm on a roll

Lately I've been feeling a bit of guilt for not thinking more about my book, Imazia. (The title is still a work in progress, but Imazia is my fantasy country, where a majority of the story takes place. Just so those who didn't know, know now. ^,~)

Uh, maybe I should rephrase that. I think about my story almost all the time. When I'm not thinking about anything else, that is. Like, this story idea is the reason I became a writer. I never had any ideas or thoughts of becoming an author until this story popped itself into my head. I don't have any other pet projects to fall back on. This is my baby. (But wait, I do have plenty of ideas for other stories. Fragments of plots, funny characters. But nothing that makes me as passionate as Imazia does.)

I love my story, and my family does too. But I think I have a kind of love-hate relationship with writing. I love getting inspired and writing lots of new parts and material, but I hate the problems I can't solve at the moment and have to leave for later. I also hate going back and editing, which I put on myself because I'm such a perfectionist. I mean, I don't even have a whole manuscript, for goodness sakes! Why do I keep rewriting myself? Luckily I have most of the story planned out; I just have a problem with putting it into enjoyably expressive text.

Well anyway, it seems my hate relationship is kind of over, because I've recently gotten back to sitting and working for a good amount of time! I haven't done that for many weeks, even months! To keep track of the original stuff I write, I leave the old parts that don't need changing text in black and turn the new, fresh text I write just then into pink. Even sentences, or added or changed words. With the help of the wordcount tool, I found that I wrote just around a thousand words, just today! Like, I was working with an old chapter that I've definitely wanted to change for a while. I took out a whole chunk of paragraphs and replaced them with better ones.

Ooh, it feels so satisfying to cure a story like that, disecting it and padding it up again. And if I do say so myself, I think I did a good job of it. ^_^

I haven't shown it to anyone yet. Not even Annette, who always used to read everything new I wrote. Gee, I haven't let her read anything in such a long time... I guess I'm a little embarrassed of my story still. I want to impress her and not let her find anything wrong with it. Not because she does find things wrong with my writing, just because I'm a perfectionist. *_*

Yeah. I just wanted to share how well my writing was doing. I hope this streak continues. Cross your fingers for me!

Hmm...Now what?

*whistles random tune to self* Feeling pretty lonely here. Not much new happening on Blogger now. No posts from my friends, no comments. I guess everyone's on some sort of vacation or something, huh?

Now that I've finally seen Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (with sadly no one to discuss it with besides my sibs. We've already done plenty of that, though), what do I have to look forward to? How can I keep myself occupied? (Besides blogging, that is.)

Well, at least I've made a few more good edits to my book. Little by little, I just might make it. I think I've finally fixed my prologue. For those who've read it before (it was sooo many posts ago), it has changed quite dramatically. No longer is the prologue about a dark and stormy night, or the Warlock, or even "creeping creepers". I changed it to reference another part of my story, one that I think makes a lot more sense.

Hey, I haven't shown you guys anything Imazia related in the longest time. Maybe it's time I did. For those out there reading this now, here's my prologue. Say anything you want about it. I don't think I want to edit it anymore, because it's as close to perfect as I can get.

And btw, if you have seen Harry Potter 6 by now, please go back a post and comment me afterwards? I really want to talk HP with someone. It was so awesome!

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In the beginning, there had been nothing. But then, something strange had happened. Something different. Why? Why now? And, perhaps more importantly, what for? Magenta Carmine Roberts had no way of answering these questions in her present predicament. All the same, these questions and more continued to buzz around in her head as frantically as they had the first moment she'd fallen into her bottomless pit of despair.

She was indeed, literally, free-falling and tumbling through a pit of total emptiness that never seemed to end. She had no clear perception of time, so she could have been falling for ten minutes, or an hour, or twenty-four hours. She couldn't be a hundred percent sure. Her eyes had been shut in fear for much of the time.

Presently, however, the young teenager realized that she didn't feel like she was falling anymore. Opening her eyes, all the girl could see was that she was surrounded by an infinite expanse of a pure, blank, glowing whiteness. Whether you looked up, down, or all around in any direction you chose, the view looked exactly the same. She could float as easily as if she were underwater. The space around her was so empty that she couldn't even be sure she was facing the right way up.

Magenta looked down at her feet. She was standing on empty air. There didn't seem to be any floor rushing up to meet her. She wondered what would happen if she ever did meet up with the ground. Then she decided she'd rather not think about that. So all she could do was float, and wonder, and wait... wait... wait...

The problem was that she didn't know what she was waiting for. Was she in heaven or something? Barring the absence of iconic angels or pearly gates, it seemed to fit, only she didn't distinctly remember dying at any point. Maybe she was dreaming? A hard slap on her arm told her no, she was not asleep. Like it or not, this was her reality. Her hands slowly clenched into fists.

"Is this what I get? Huh? Is this what I get for trying to help somebody?!" She cried as soon as the empty silence had become too much for her to bear. But she didn't receive an answer. Her words didn't even produce an echo in the emptiness. There were no walls for them to bounce off of. Not a single, solitary sound could be heard in this bottomless abyss. Of course there couldn't. There was nobody there but herself. She was completely alone.

"Okay. Calm down, Maggie. You've gotta pull yourself together now. You'll get through this," said Maggie, taking several deep breaths. Now that the silence had finally been broken, it didn't seem to matter that she was thinking out loud to herself. No one else was around to hear her. Besides, hearing her own, clear voice pierce the emptiness around her had comforted her a great deal. It was the only thing that felt... real to her.

Maggie cleared her throat. "Alright. Gotta think now. What am I doing here? There has got to be a reason why this is happening to me," she reasoned. No one confirmed or contradicted this. No matter. She kept on talking. "Maybe if I can figure out how I got here, I'll be able to find the way out."

So Maggie started to think. What else could she do in that place? She thought and thought very hard. When had been the exact point that everything had turned topsy-turvey? What had been the cause of all this? She started searching through her most recent memories, searching carefully for the event that had started it all...

HP6... Such an Excellent movie!!!

Wow.

Yeah, that's all I can say. Not just because this movie was awesome, but also because I'm pretty surprised that I'm the only one to review Harry Potter first. Oh well.

If you've been unlucky enough to not have seen the movie yet, I suggest you save reading this post for later, like after you do watch the movie, because I'm going to post some spoilers. But if you have seen this latest Harry Potter film, then you are welcome to read through my opinions and perhaps comment to let me know whether we share any of those opinions.

*****SPOILER ALERT!!!*****

After all the previews were through (Unfortunately they were all from movies I've already seen trailers for. Fame, New Moon, Shorts, 2012. 2012 was really scary in the theater. Pretty awesome), I really liked the opening to Harry Potter 6, because it starts out sooo quiet, and then you see the title and hear the music and somehow you know that the film is going to carry out your every expectation. And it did. Well, with some surprises sneaked in, too.

When the Death Eaters are swooping through the streets of England to get to Diagon Alley, it was really cool because the camera's sweeping motions made it seem like you yourself were flying, kind of like in the IMAX movie I saw in Boston. And then the muggle bridge being broken apart so violently, really awesome.

I didn't really get why Harry was trying to look cool with that waitress. But I guess it was to show from the beginning how the wizard boys were starting to think a lot about girls now. Soon after Dumbledore meets him at the train station. I suppose it made a better scene than Dumbledore picking Harry up from the Dursleys. I did really like the scene where we meet Professor Slughorn. He was funny as an armchair. ^_~ I also thought it was cool when Harry goes straight to the Burrow and is hugging Ron and Hermione. Shows how such good friends they are. ^,^

Let's see... Fred and George's Weasley's Wizard Wheezes looked like an awesome wizard joke shop. For some reason, I could hear Umbridge's voice saying, "I will have order." I wonder why? It was funny when Fred and George wouldn't let Ron buy something for less, even if he's their brother. Like, they speak at the same time, "5 galleons." "But I'm your brother." "10 galleons!" Ha ha.

When Harry spies on Malfoy on the train, and Malfoy catches him, it almost really hurt me when Draco stamps on Harry's nose. He definitely wasn't the petty school bully anymore. He was mean. But lucky thing Luna showed up and found Harry. Though instead of fixing his bloodied face, I think she gave him a really bad nosebleed. Ick.

The potion lesson with Slughorn was great. All the girls were attracted to the smell of love potion. ^,^ And when Harry and Ron look in the cupboard for their books, there's a new copy and an old one (the Half-blood Prince one) and they fight over who gets the new one. Obviously, for those who read the book, Harry gets the battered one. With the book's helpful notes, he makes the perfect potion for Slughorn and gets the luck potion. Poor Hermione. She looked so frazzled and tired. And everyone gave Harry such jealous looks.

I was so happy that Quidditch was back after 2 movies without it. (In other words, 5 years with no cool Hogwarts Quidditch games. The fourth one had the Quidditch World Cup, but that absolutely did not count because you never even see the match! What an outrage! Hmph.) It was really funny when Harry pretends to slip Felix Felicis into Ron's drink, and Luna catches it so seems to spoil it. But then Ron drinks it and has such a confident look on his face (quite the improvement to his prior mood) and he's all, "Let's do it, Harry!" And he makes such cool saves as a Keeper.

Soon after though, they cut straight to the victory party. Too bad there wasn't any showing Harry catching the Snitch or anything, to show the game actually ending. Oh well. I liked that Ron and Hermione didn't fight about the fact that Ron didn't drink lucky potion. Harry just whispered it to Hermione, and I guess Ron never found out.

All the lovey-dovey stuff is hilarious in this movie. Harry and Ron's stiff conversations about love are pretty funny. Lavender, Ron's "girlfriend", is absolutely crazy in my opinion. So girly and ridiculous. She lovingly makes that foggy heart on the train...? I wonder why she was ever interested in him anyway? Hmm. And you can tell how jealous Hermione is. So sad. I especially loved it when Ron eats all those chocolates and becomes infatuated with Romilda Vane. He looks absolutely goofy! But then later when Ron says Herione's name in his sleep, it's so sweet.

Oh, and all the dark, serious parts of the movie are awesome too. I can now see the reasoning behind showing just two memories, where Dumbledore meets the young Tom Riddle (even as a little kid, Voldemort is creepy!) and the teen Riddle asks Slughorn about Horcruxes. The scenes with Malfoy in them were fascinating, because you see him actually as a person, with a really tough job to do. When Harry and Draco fight in the bathroom, I was a little scared to see what the Sectum Sempra spell would do to Malfoy, but it didn't turn out to be so bad.

What was really quite funny was when Harry drinks lucky potion to get the memory from Slughorn, and he brightly says, "I'm going off to Hagrid's!" I could tell that Ron and Hermione clearly thought him crazy. Definitely an lol moment is when Harry is at Aragog's funeral. Hagrid says how people don't really take to spiders, probably the eyes put them off. And Harry says, "Yeah, not to mention those pincers. Click click click!" He makes his fingers look like pincers near his mouth, and just looks silly! You've just got to see it to laugh at it!

The best part was near the end, when Harry goes with Dumbledore to get the locket Horcrux. I thought it would be weird with Dumbledore crying and begging Harry to stop feeding him potion, but it wasn't weird. What was strange was that the Inferi (those zombie people) reminded me of the character Gollum from Lord of the Rings. (I never got into LOTR, unfortunately, but I know enough of the characters and parts of the story.)

It was funny; I actually jumped when Harry put his hand in the water and an arm jumps up and grabs him! That was the only time I was ever really scared I could feel for Draco when he has to kill Dumbledore, but he ultimately doesn't. He's no assasin. And I know I was expecting Dumbledore's death, but still, the way Snape kills him... was so sudden. I didn't cry for his death like I thought I would, but it was sad anyway.

Listen, for my first ever viewing of this movie, I thought it went over really well. It soothes the hearts of die-hard HP fans who have waited practically 2 years for something new. Even though a lot of stuff was different and plot points switched around, watching this film felt strangely like reading the book again. I don't think any other movie made me feel that way before. It just felt like it had JK's wonderful mix of humor and darkness that make her books so popular.

*****SPOILERS OVER*****

Sorry I made such a disjointed review of all the parts I liked. I just wrote them how they came to me. Like I said on top, you're more than welcome to comment me and tell me what you thought of the movie yourself. That, or you can put a link to your own review (if you've written one yet, that is).

General news

Hey guys. It's taken a good, long, easy week, but I've finally gotten used to life back at home. My time in Boston with Annette was a lot of fun, but I'm very happy to be back with my family and doing familiar stuff.

(Just so you know, I'm really blogging right now so I'll be able to take my mind off of me going to see Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince with my sibs in a matter of hours. Eeeee! So excited! Don't worry, I'll rant... uh, talk, more about it later. After I've seen it. Then I'll give a whole review on it! Huh. I wonder if everyone is going to write HP reviews in Blogger world. Well, we'll see at the end of the day.)

Okay. Here is a semi-random list of news from my little world:

• First of all, who has noticed that I'm a few posts away from 100 posts on this blog? Anyone? Anyone? Only me? Oh well. I'm probably the only one who would care, anyway. But I think that's pretty neato. In fact, if you added up all the posts I've written since I got started blogging, including the ones from my Book Blog, Travel Journal, and the few I've published on Picture Perfect, I've got 170 posts under my name, all floating around in cyberspace! To quote Wakko Warner, "Faboo!" Plus, since July 12th, I've been blogging for 7 months, so yay me!

• Despite all my pride in my blog writing, I haven't been giving much attention to my Imazia story. But you'll be glad to know that just the other day I did a teeny bit of work on a paragraph. I've got it in my head that I need to change one of my oldest characters, Diggory the Mole, into Diggory the Badger. See? Same name, but different creature. I've thought it over a whole lot, and I truly think it's a good idea.
  
  I don't know why I never thought about it until now. A badger would be a lot better for my story than a mole would. For one thing, he would be a lot bigger, so it will be easier for my main character, Maggie, and therefore my readers, to relate to him. Plus I read that badgers are known to hold their own in fights with wolves, so that's useful for me. And he'll be able to keep a lot of the mole Diggory's characteristics: He will still live underground, eat worms and stuff, be a little on the old side, and speak in a very gruff voice. And he'll be annoyed with those twin squirrels' jokes and pranks, though maybe I'll give him a better sense of humor than the mole had.

• Since it's been so long since Annette and I have had home-made pizza, we're making a couple pies right now, so we can eat them before we go off to see HP6. Yippee!
  
  
• I was a little bugged myself this morning, because it took a really long time before I was able to coax our cockatiels, Sasha and Sammy, back into their cage. It's really weird. While my twin sister and I were away for two weeks, we left our parents and brother to feed them and take care of them. We always asked about how they were doing, and they said the birds were fine. Of course, from what I heard, it was usually hard for them to control our pets without us around. Like, Sasha and Sammy would kind of make hissy noises at them and open their beaks threateningly. I think they were hostile because somehow they knew their "mommies" weren't around.
  
  Well, we've been home for a week, and though I believe our birds are happier now, I think they might be holding a grudge against us or something. Particularly this morning. I've never seen both birds act so mean! (Sammy is usually so easy-going. Sasha's the one you've got to watch out for. Especially in his present state.) I couldn't believe it. If I move my hand to try to pick them up, they'd try pouncing me to bite my finger or something. It was hard showing them who was boss. Well, obviously since I'm able to blog now, I've gotten them back. Without sustaining any bites, either. I hope our boys' behaviour improves soon...

• It's hard to believe it was so recent, but yesterday I made a new friend on Blogger. ^_^ For those who don't follow the Dashner Dude, he put up this awesome post the other day. He told his fans that, just for fun, he'd like to to hear something odd or unique about themselves in the comments, so everyone went all out with their confessions. Turns out everyone's a weirdo. ^,~ Anyway, about my new friend. She was the 7th commenter down, before me, in fact. Her name's Laura. I noticed her profile picture and thought it looked interesting. It seemed to be the cover of a cool-looking book.
  
  So I checked out her blog. I read the entire thing, too. (I'm usually prone to reading a persons' whole blog, so I can get to know them.) I found out that this Laura Bingham is a budding author from Idaho who is trying to get her debut novel, Alvor, known to the general reading public. I think she's a totally awesome person. She's already touched many hearts with her writing, or so I've heard.
  
  A great thing about Laura's blog is that she actually put the entire first chapter of her book at the bottom of her blog, so people can get a sneak peek and decide whether it's good enough to read the rest. I think it's awesome. Even if you choose not to read or follow her blog, you have to at least read the chapter at the bottom. I doubt you'll regret it. Plus it'll make Laura so happy if you'd give her a chance.
  
  Anyway, how did I become her friend, you ask? Well, I wrote her a comment on her most recent post, so she'd find it easy. I told her about how I'd just discovered her and really liked her style and hoped she would be able to give advice to a young writer like myself. So then I had to go to the library so we could pick up some movies, such as Wakko's Wish. (That movie was so funny, even the second time around!)
  
  When I went on a computer to check my emails (yeah, I'm like that. Checking my inbox constantly ;P), I was surprised to discover that Laura had written me back. And she'd commented on my blog, and decided to follow me! Yeah, she seems to be using a different account, but she follows the same people, so I know it's her. I was so happy about this news that I wrote her an email to say how honored I was that she paid attention to me. And then this morning she wrote me a reply! She is so awesome. I think of her almost as a female Dashner.
  
  I promised I would blog about her and her book, so now I did. Hey, here is the picture of her book! Doesn't it look all mystical and fantasy-cool?!
  

Suspense... is... killing me!!!

I have a feeling I'm not alone on this one! But particularly last night I had a binge on Harry Potter 6 trailers. It's Harry Potter weekend, so while my brother watched the old movies on TV, he'd sometimes call out to Annette and I that "It's Harry!", meaning there was a new sneak peek of the 6th movie with interviewing the actors or something, and we'd come running like bullets to catch it. Everything was so cool!

I think this movie has been the most hyped up HP film ever! Not without good reason. Why did it have to be delayed for more than half a year? Oh, but those trailers sure make it look like it is worth the wait. I tell you, I'm going to see it the very day it comes out! July 15th! That's two days away! I am super excited.

It certainly didn't help that I later went on YouTube and saw a few HP6 TV spots. They're only half a minute long, but they tell so much about the movie that it makes you beg for the real thing even more! Ooh, I wish I had James Dashner's will power. He abstains from watching movie previews. Hmm... there's something to think about. Will Dashner go to see Harry Potter the day it comes out? If so, what will he say about it?

Oh, never mind.

*****

I have to get Harry out of my head for a couple days. Umm... Ah! I should write in my story! Ha ha. You know, recently I've had an idea for a character change? I have a mole in the story, Diggory (Do any of you remember when I did that post about Imazian characters?), and I'm thinking I'm going to transform Diggory into a badger. No, not in the story. I'll change him for the story. I think it's a pretty smart move. I learned about badgers on Wikipedia. They're pretty cool creatures when you read up about them.

Catch you later!

(Oh, and btw: my Travel Journal is finally completed! Check it out.)

Hel-LOOOOOO, good old familiar!!!

Whoo-hooo! Hi everybody! It's me! I'm back! Oh man, is it good to be posting on this blog again! Yes, I am using a lot of exclamation points, but only because I'm so excited to be home again!

I got home from the airport really late yesterday, so I didn't blog then. I was too happy spending time with my parents and brother again. Even though it was past 11:00, they'd prepared a nice home-cooked meal for us that was delicious! And then we showed Adam a couple cool Animaniacs clips that he hadn't seen before, and then it was almost 1:00 in the morning, so we called it a night.

Oh, how nice it was to sleep in my own bed! (Not that sleeping with my sister all those nights was bad at all, I liked it. But, you know, to curl up in the bed you're most familiar with, with oh-so-familiar surroundings? Ahhh. ^,^)

Yes, I know, you all must be very happy to hear from me again! Well, I'm very excited to be back. I bet you want to know every detail about what happened to me on my Boston trip, eh? Well, I put it on my last post, but here is the official link to my Travel Journal, where I wrote pretty much every single event that occurred to me.

If you happen to read all the way to the end (and I will be ultra impressed if you do that in one sitting! Not that you have to, but I would be impressed!), you might notice that I've still missed a few days. Don't worry, I'm working on it.

Oh, just so happy! ^__^