This is an archive and may contain old or out-of-date content. Check the date; things may have changed since the time of the original posting. Conversation is allowed on older posts, but be aware that they will not come to my attention as easily.
To be honest, the kind of photos that make me truly happy, like grinning ear-to-ear happy, aren’t exactly the ones that would mean anything to anyone else in the whole world. This is pretty much just on the basis of being intensely personal and would probably give away quite a few secrets I’m not particularly ready to share.
So instead, I’ll give you one of my favorite photos I’ve come across while existing on the Internet.
According to the photographer, this shot is angled very carefully so you can’t see the sand beyond the “horizon” here on this beach in Tel Aviv. Maybe it’s the fact that I know it was taken in Israel, maybe it’s just because this guy looks like he’s walking on water or in amongst the clouds… or maybe it’s because it evokes such a sense of calm inside. I don’t know. I just know I love this photo and it’s been sitting in my favorites for a very long time now.
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“Where the Sidewalk Ends,” a poem by Shel Silverstein
I absolutely love this poem, and for no real concrete reason. Maybe it’s just the way it flows, or maybe it’s the images it puts into my head… I don’t know, but Shel Silverstein is literally my favorite poet of all time, and this is my favorite work of his. It’s just about the only one I’ve got memorized, that’s for sure.
“Random Shoes,” an episode of British TV show Torchwood
The episode this comes from is told from the perspective of a young man who “wakes up” to find himself dead, unable to be seen or heard by anyone, but trying his hardest to help Torchwood members figure out the mystery behind his murder. In the end, he ends up just appreciating how wonderful life was (because that’s what you do in this kind of situation, cliche or no). And I don’t know, when I heard it, I was tearing up for real. LIVE YOUR LIFE, AND LIVE IT NOW. Such an awesome quote.
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I read like crazy, all of the time. When I should be working, when I should be eating, when I should be sleeping… I suppose you get the point. My biggest problem with reading is that I am a very fast reader. I can tear through an 800 page book in a few hours, and I have. This leads to me not taking my time, which leads to me not committing very much to my long-term memory. If you ask me about a book I read a year ago, I probably wouldn’t be able to tell you any details, but I would remember just enough to prevent me from rereading it again.
This being said, I go through WAY too many books, and for a book to really stand out in my mind, it’s gotta be freaking fantastic.
Ted Dekker, I would have to say, is my favorite author. I grew up reading Frank Peretti, and Dekker is just as good (if not, dare I say, even better). Thr3e is a Christian book without all of the overbearing overtones. It breaks it down into basic good vs. evil. The basic story of this book is that Kevin, a young man with a troubled childhood, is driving home when someone, identifying himself only as Slater, calls his cell phone and gives him a riddle. If he doesn’t solve the riddle, or confess his sin, within three minutes his car is going to blow. It really escalates from there, and just as you think you know what’s going on, your head gets snapped in another direction entirely. Best book of all time.
Jane Austen is wonderful but a little overrated, just in the sense that everyone claims to love her books in a way that almost makes it a trend. North and South is similar to Jane Austen’s works, but much much easier to read. It follows Margaret Hale as she moves from idyllic southern England into the industrialized North. She encounters horrible factory conditions and hungry workers and labor strikes and, most importantly, John Thornton, a momma’s boy who runs one of the biggest textile factories in the North. It summarizes like just another last-century English romance, but to me, it really has a lot more going for it. The best part is that I got into this book after seeing the BBC miniseries by the same name. Richard Armitage, anyone?
You can have your sparkly vampires and boy wizards; I’ve got a latino GHOST. It’s not much of a secret that I love YA fiction, embarrassingly so. I loved Meg Cabot’s Princess Diaries books, so I picked up this book at the library. Let me tell you, they’re great. It’s about Suze, a high school girl who moves to an old house in California, only to be greeted by a (VERY nice looking) ghost sitting in her windowsill, who is shocked that she can see him. Suze is a Mediator, someone who is able to see ghosts in order to help them let go of this world and move on. She ends up falling head over heels for Jesse, who grudgingly begins helping to protect her from the more violent ghosts she encounters. Seriously, amazing series, perfect for some lighthearted reading.
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I’ve recently discovered a love for TV shows. My household hasn’t had broadcast TV in years and years, so in order to watch TV, I’ve got to seek these shows actively out myself. My favorite type of show is the kind that reads like a long, long movie; I’m not so much into reality shows or shows that are overly “monster of the week.” I can’t jump in at the middle, either; if I discover a show that’s broadcasting the fifth season, you better believe I’m starting at season one and watching the whole way through.
Needless to say, this causes me to get pretty into the shows I do watch. I’ve managed to narrow it down to four favorites (you should all know I don’t do single favorites on anything!).
Absolutely my favorite of all time. It actually started the first day I got my iPod video, and I discovered I could download TV shows from iTunes and watch them (at the time, my computer would not play the video files on its own, loser). Downloaded the pilot, having heard of this show and thinking it was some kind of castaway-esque drama. BOY was I wrong! By the end of the pilot, when Charlie asks ever-so-poignantly “guys… where ARE we?!” I was like, heck yes, I need to see more of this show. This was right before the fourth season premiered, and let me tell you, I’m crazy amounts of excited now having seen the premiere of season six just the other day. YESS. It’s gone from a plane crashing on an island to a multi-dimensional time-jumping freaking mystery.
My parents watched Doctor Who before I was even born. In fact, I share a name with one of his assistants, as does my sister Tegan (for those of you well-versed in their Who companions, my brother would have been named Nyssa if he had been a girl… we ended up giving the name to our cat, who had a kitten, who we named Zoe. I swear I’m going to have three kids [or cats] and name them Rose, Martha, and Donna). As a kid, I kind of passed it off as one of those funky British things my parents tended to get into. It was only after I started watching Torchwood (incidentally, this was the fifth show on my list!) and realized that it was a Who spinoff that I got into the revived series. And boy is it love.
Funny story with this show; Lonelygirl15 got me into this! Hear me out… the star of LG15 played a minor character in the first season of this show, and then iTunes offered the pilot free, and that’s all it took to get me hooked on this show. I should be honest… it was Scott Michael Foster (Cappie) who really got me hooked, and I haven’t looked back. This show, with their gang-of-friends college antics, fills that hole in my life that Boy Meets World left vacant when they finally wrapped that one up. It’s that kind of show. And for those of you with the fandom know-how, Cappie and Casey are very possibly my OTP.
This one, actually, would probably be in the number two slot if I tried to actually put these in order of amazingness. Seriously, I do not know how you could possibly watch this show and not get hooked on it. It’s created by the same guy responsible for LOST and new!Trek, plus Joshua Jackson is there. It’s a little mind-bending and a lot of crazy… about a tiny tiny branch of the FBI that deals with areas of fringe science. We’re talking spontaneous combustion, multiple dimensions, teleportation, regeneration, all those -ions that make your inner nerd dance with glee. Amazing, amazing show.
This post is part of the 30 Day Blogathon! Leaving a comment will surely help me complete this challenge!
Just like with music, there’s never just one favorite. There’s some movies that really strike your fancy for a time, there’s some movies you love RIGHT NOW, there’s some movies you have to watch over and over just to catch every detail, and there’s some movies that will never stop being one of your favorites. So how about one of each?
Seriously, this is one of the most hilarious movies I have seen in a long time. Yes, it’s stupid funny, and yes, it has its draggy points, but come on, how can you not love it? The basic storyline is that Doug, a man two days from his wedding, takes his two best friends and his fiance’s brother to Vegas. The next thing they know, they wake up the next morning with horrible hangovers, a tiger in the bathroom, no memory of the night before… oh, and Doug is missing. They spend the rest of the movie trying to retrace their steps in hopes of finding Doug, only to realize all of the insane things they had done the night before. It’s one of those quotable comedies, definitely worth a watch if you haven’t already.
I have a confession. I collect Cinderella adaptations. I don’t know what it is about this particular tale, but I love variations of it: Ella Enchanted, Ever After, even the original Disney cartoon. But I think this one is a personal favorite, and I think it has a lot to do with Drew Seeley and Selena Gomez. Both of them are fantastic actors, and they themselves come across as very normal and well-adjusted people. Plus some of the songs really bring out my inner dance-happy thirteen year old self. It’s a cute movie, honestly.
Are you watching closely? James got me hooked on this movie, and I had to watch it two or three times before I fully got every little nuance on what was actually going on. The movie is about two magicians who start out as friends but become enemies as they try to out-do the other’s main act. They go to incredible and terrible lengths to be the better magician. It’s one of those fantastic movies where, just as you think you know what’s going on, you get a curveball thrown straight at your brain. And I love that.
Call me cliche, but I love and have always loved this movie. In my opinion, Julie Andrews is one of the absolute best actresses of all time. Very few people are as classy yet adorable as this woman. Add this to my love of musicals and WWII stories… instant favorite.
This post is part of the 30 Day Blogathon! Leaving a comment will surely help me complete this challenge!