I'm falling apart.

I can hardly breathe right now, again. I feel like I've been punched in the stomach, again.

I can't keep repeating myself when there's no one listening.

I can only have the same argument so many times.

You do what you want. Just like always, what you want comes first. You do what you want to do when you want to do it, then you're shocked to find out I'm upset.

How many times are you going to make the same empty promises to me? I've lost count. And faith.

I bear my heart and soul to you, and you try to explain to me why I'm wrong to feel what I feel.

Is it so hard? Is it so terrible to put someone else's needs before your own? It doesn't seem that way to me, but then again, I put you ahead of everything, because you are everything to me.

I just wish it was the same for you. I just wish I could be the most important thing.

Well, I'm alive. I survived 5 plane rides, 3 train rides, 1 ferry ride, Mike driving a rental car on the left side of the road, cab rides, multiple subway systems and various other public transportation rides. London was fantastic, Dublin was great, and Paris was... interesting. We saw phenomenal works of art, legendary architecture, and the Guinness storehouse.

I'd show you pictures but Mike has the camera. I think. I'll get them up at some point.

Right now I'm trying not to fall asleep. Our flight to St. Louis from Philly was canceled, so we had to fly to Chicago then to St. Louis, and arrived in about 7 hours later than anticipated. I still had to go to class this morning instead of sleeping in like I wanted. I think we must have terrible travel karma, because we've only been on 3 trips together where we've flown and out of those 3, we've had our return flights canceled twice. Of course, last time we were "stuck" in Vegas, so it was kind of a win.

I'll recap later when I find the camera, but for now, I'm alive and well. Mostly.

So, apparently, I only read young adult novels now. It started with the Harry Potters and the Twilights, but it's moved on from there. I know I'm an "adult", or whatever, but something about these books as really been drawing me in .Thankfully, I look like I'm 16 most days, so I don't look quite as weird checking armfuls of YA novels out at the library. I highly encourage you to check out books that aren't written just for adults.

Like chick lit and/or romance? Sarah Dessen's there for you. She has a bunch of teen romance novels, with outcast, lonely girls and wounded, sad boys that you just want to save. They're sweet in their innocence and simplicity.

Like action/adventure? The Percy Jackson and the Olympians series is excellent. I was flipping through the pages as quickly as possible to see what happened next. I read most of the series in a week. I can't wait for the movie.

A fan of Twilight? Try the Shiver, by Maggie Stiefvater. It's about werewolves, not vampires, and the quality of writing is a lot better (no murmuring) but a similar compulsive readability and love-at-first-sight plot line.

But nothing has prepared me for the sheer amazingness of the Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins. They're about a dystopian North America, where the government pits young people against each other in a televised last man standing competition. I didn't expect to love these as much as I did. I've never even seen an episode of Survivor. But these books are so freaking good, I couldn't put them down. There's a great love triangle (I love Peeta. LOVE), awesome, breathtaking action, and fascinating look at what the future could hold. I can't wait until August when the third and final book comes out.

I'm doing this again because I love it:

Copied from Avitable:

1. Go to the "Random Article" link on Wikipedia. Write down the title of the article. This is the name of your band.

2. Go to “Random Quotations” and the last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.

3. Go to Flickr and click on “Explore the Last Seven Days”. The third picture will be your album cover.

I've discovered something weird about myself.

Recently, Mike and I have been re watching Pushing Daisies. We watched all the discs in quick succession, until we reached the last disc and suddenly, I didn't want to watch anymore. I wanted to catch up on our tivo'd items, instead. Also, Mike keeps talking (incessantly) about the upcoming, final season of Lost. I'd rather it not come.

Even now, after reading the first four books of the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series quickly, I have the final book sitting next to me. I'm listlessly web browsing instead of reading it.

I find myself doing this sort of thing all the time. If I really love a book, I'll read through it quickly, then put it down and it will take me days to finish reading the final chapters.

Why do I do this? Who knows. I guess I just don't like good things to come to an end. Then it's over, and I won't have it anymore. Sure, you can re read a book, or re watch the tv series, but it's not the same.

I'll only find out whether or not Percy can stand up to the Titans for the first time once. I'll only discover (hopefully) why there are two John Lockes, and what the hell the smoke monster is, and who Sawyer ends up with for the first time as the season unfolds. (Although I'm sure I'll watch Lost again on DVD once the whole boxed set is released)

You just can't rush that kind of satisfaction, for me.

To share with you how I'll be spending my Christmas:




I'll probably eat a lot of food, too. We have breakfast with Mike's parents, lunch with my mom and brother, and dinner with Mike's grandparents/extended family.

Seriously, whatever you do, whatever you celebrate, have an awesome day. Be good to yourself.

Okay, so I saw Avatar yesterday. Apparently my take on it was a lot different than most of yours. My review is spoiler free, aside from the summary from IMDB and I don't think there's anything in there that wasn't in the trailer.

First, here's a short summary via IMDB:

Yes, it was beautiful. Yes, it had amazing, unbelievable special effects. It definitely deserves credit for all that. We saw it in 3D, and I've never seen anything that amazingly beautiful on the big screen before. I definitely recommend seeing it in theaters, especially in 3D, while it's there because I think it will lose a lot at home on DVD.

However.

Avitable wrote in his review "Even with the basic plot and one-dimensional characters, the movie is phenomenal." And not just Avitable's review, pretty much every review I've read has said something like this.

I don't think the beautiful picture should make up for the complete lack of original plot. I mean, really, is that what filmmaking has become? We'll just recycle the same, overused plot but pretty up with groundbreaking special effects? Because I can tell you, I knew what was going to happen 30 minutes into it. I could tell how it was going to end, I could tell how the love story was going to go.

If it took James Cameron this long to make this movie, he should have had time to write an original story to go along with all that CG. I've seen this all a million times before, and at least then it didn't take almost 3 hours to tell the story.

So, I'm finally on winter break. This particular semester was a hard one for me, but I think that had more to do with lack of motivation than actual challenge from the work. We had a semester long project that I did the majority of in the week before it was due. This proved to be a very, very dumb thing to do. (I know, who would have thought?) I was so rushed towards the end that I made stupid mistakes, like forgetting to put my lighting fixtures on the board, and spelling the word porcelain wrong (Hint: there's no "e" at the end). But in the end, I recieved a solid B, so I'm more than comfortable with that. I think it also helped that I was the only one who did my boards on InDesign, so they looked a million times more professional than anyone else's.

I always have a sense of uneasiness when the semester ends. For so long (and especially at finals) I've poured all my extra time, effort, and energy into projects and homework, then suddenly I have nothing but free time.

That, and all my tv shows are on hiatus. That also frees up a lot of time.

I wasn't going to make cookies this year, but I've been awake for about two hours and I'm already bored. It's only the first day of break. So I guess it's cookie time!



Here's a few of my projects from this semester:

My semester long project (the floorplans anyway):





Computer Art Studio:

My first project in Illustrator: (to create a mechanical device)



My second project in Illustrator (Architectural Piece)