Happy Winter and Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everyone!

I hope you all have a wonderful start of the year and I hope the transition from writing 2012 to writing 2013 is super quick and not-annoying.

New York has, surprisingly, had a wonderfully white holiday season. The snow came in the form of a blizzard and has been coming along since. It's wonderful. There's something about the snow that is so peaceful and quiet. Last night, I poked my head outside for a second around midnight and it was one of the most beautiful moments I've had this year. Outside, it was absolutely silent. You couldn't hear a single car or voice. The sky was slightly pink and was perfectly contrasting to the shadows of trees in my backyard (as pictured in the...picture).

Anyway, this post is very rushed, because I'm trying to get one last post before it becomes 2013. I'm leaving on vacation tomorrow, so I probably won't be blogging much for the next couple of weeks. Who knows?

I do have a New Year's resolution, however. I want to read 35 books, again. I may not have achieved it this year, but it's my goal for the new year.

Enjoy your celebrations! (I'll save all of my random thoughts for another post. Tonight, you're just getting a cheesy one.)

The book-reading, music-listening lunch club

Tonight I watched an episode of Gilmore Girls. In this episode, Rory (a teenage prep school student, for those of you who don't know) was being told by the headmaster of her school that if she wants to get into a good college, she would have to be more social. No more reading a book at lunch while listening to music.

The catch of it all was that Rory did have friends. She had close relationships, but just because it wasn't obvious to everyone, they assumed she was a loner. I thought I couldn't relate to Rory any more than I already did, but I can't get over the relevance of this episode. Since starting (and finishing) my first semester, I've talked about perspectives on this with lots of people. I remember a guy friend of mine saying "do you ever look at some of the people eating alone in the dining halls? It's like you can just tell that they don't have any friends. They look around at other people, and they're so sad."

After that conversation, I got a little paranoid. I mean, I eat alone sometimes. That doesn't mean that I don't have friends. Sometimes I like to eat and read a book, because I enjoy it. I don't understand why our culture places such a big deal on always showing off that we have friends. We live in such an extroverted society. If you're alone sometimes, you're automatically labeled a loner. What's wrong with enjoying a little bit of time a day by yourself?

On the surface, it seemed as if Rory didn't have any friends because none of her closest friends went to her school, a complete misjudgment. I have friends in college, but I don't spend every waking moment with them. I don't need to eat with a big group of people to feel like I have friends, because I do. I have decent social skills, as do many other people who have probably at some point in their life been labelled a loner because they happen to not always appear in public with their friends.

The point of all of this is that we shouldn't be so quick to judge a person's social life based on what we see. We don't know their life. I think, as people mature, they start to care less about their perceptions of others, and more on whether or not they enjoy spending their time with a person.

Or not.

Crazy Stupid Laughs

So many laughs. Ahahahaha.

That is all.

Rise

The last stage of procrastination is writing a blog post.

I'm tired of studying for finals. Just one more. That's it. Then I'm done. Thank God.

Here's a picture of lamp. I don't know why.

Do you ever just watch an adventure movie or read an adventure book and wish your life could be like that? Like, even though the events aren't always good, you just wish you could do something amazing? I'm so bored with everything. I want to explore, find something that no one (or at least almost no one) has seen before. Discover something unusual.

Lately, I've been immersing myself in adventure books and movies. I'm reading The Lord of the Rings. I watch action movies, and I wish my life could be like that. I know it sounds extremely ignorant, but everything is just so monotonous and boring right now that I can't help but imagine something more exciting.

Schedules are difficult. It's hard doing the same thing every day. I want something more than that. I want to explore the world.

So for now, I'm just here. Still at college, days from going home to my boring old town, where I will remain until next month, when I'm carted around on a ship from one tourist trap to another. Maybe if I'm lucky, I'll be able to explore beyond the little boutiques and bars and find something that might inspire me.

Yes, I really did watch 3 movies today.

Well, technically not. Or maybe. I don't know.

I watched 50/50 after my morning exam. It was a great movie, and I admit I teared up at the end.Then I started watching This Means War, but I honestly could not handle that movie, so I didn't finish it. Tom Hardy was just too much. He was so romantic and perfect that I had to stop because I was afraid I would never fall  in love with anyone else. Oh wait, and I hate rom-coms. And Reese Witherspoon (sorry to the fans).

I'M SORRY I'M TRYING TO STOP

Anyway, then I watched Batman Begins, but I didn't finish it because at that point it was midnight and I really needed to get working on my paper. But I still didn't start it, because there was karaoke downstairs and yes, I actually sang a couple of songs. It's been a weird day.

I didn't realize how hard finals week is. I mean, I technically only have two exams, but then I had a final film project (which I finished a couple of days ago, thank God). The premiere is tomorrow, which I'm required to attend. Woe is me. 

I also have that stupid final paper that's supposed to be 6-8 pages long. I don't know why I'm dreading it so much, but I can't stop procrastinating. I just really hate writing papers, especially with this professor that is a horribly stringent grader.

This post is essentially pointless, so I'm really not surprised if no one is amused by it and decides not to read it. Really. It's okay. I just wanted to write it down so that when I look back in 2 weeks, I can laugh at myself for complaining so much.

Sometimes I just can't restrain myself

Tonight I saw the Dark Knight Rises at the movies. The movie was fantastic, though I have weird opinions about it that still need to develop. But no one cares about that. Today we're going to pretend that I'm extremely shallow and superficial by talking about the beauty that is Tom Hardy.

Tom Hardy is irresistible. First, he has an amazing British accent. Second, he is an incredible actor. Third, look at his face. Just look at it.

In all seriousness, I loved him as Bane in the Dark Knight Rises. He completely won me over. He did a great job, which is why I decided tonight that I was in love with him. (What really got me was a certain scene when a single tear rolls down his cheek. Beautiful.). It was a difficult choice too, because Joseph Gordon-Levitt was at the top of my list for quite a while and he was in the movie as well, but honestly, Tom Hardy stole the show. I've never walked out of a movie so obsessed with a villain then I did tonight, because I knew that underneath that mask, there was Tom Hardy.

He's been in 3 movies this past year. Three movies in just one year.

Did I mention his face?

I swear, I swear I am not this insane on a daily basis. But you know, when you find an actor worth obsessing over, it feels good. You feel like you can finally relate to all the 100,000 other girls who gush over their favorite actors.

I'm going to make a post about all of my favorite actors one of these days, because all of a sudden I have a lot. This list has been in the works for a couple of weeks now (in my head, anyway), so this girly obsessiveness shall resume soon.

Vacations (and why I don't like cruises)

Today my mom told me that we're going on a cruise in the beginning of January.

I really should be excited, but I'm not. My sister's practically jumping with joy, but I'm pretty indifferent. I'm not dreading it, but I'm not sure how I feel about cruises.

I've been on two, so I know what they're like, and I don't like the feeling I get on them. I feel extremely isolated from the world. You're putting people on a boat with basically no access to the real world and no way to get off. You reach a destination, but it's a tiny and desolate island.

Well, maybe I'm exaggerating. Things have changed since the last time I've been on one back in 2007. Technology has made the world increasingly open, and the ability to communicate with anyone, no matter where they are, is no longer a problem. And the islands really aren't that tiny and desolate.

But these islands certainly aren't wealthy. People visit them, they take excursions, they spend their money in the fancy restaurants and bars. That's not really what the islands are like. I've been to the poorer parts of some of them, and I saw people living in shacks and huts. Since then, I honestly can't look at those places the same.

It's a world of ignorance, the cruiser's vacation. They pretend these islands are exotic, they gush over the beautiful landscapes and the nice parts of towns, but the people that live there struggle to make a living. And I'm paying money to look at them as if they're an exhibit. As if they're part of the attraction. I'm there for all the wrong reasons.

I'm over-analyzing this to the extreme, but that's honestly my sentiment. I despise feeling like a tourist. I want to be a traveler, not a tourist. And yes, they are entirely different.

So this is Christmas...

It's December! I'm surprised by the amount of Christmas spirit I have this year. Yesterday I even made a Christmas playlist in my favorite new flannel pajamas.

My goal this December is to visit New York City before Christmas. My friend is there, so it'll give me an excuse to spend a weekend there. I really want to see New York decorated for Christmas. But for now, I leave you with these two pictures of my own home during Christmas.

(By the way, I finally got my camera. Pictures galore!)

Christmas song

Breaking Dawn Part II

Tonight I watched it. Yeah, really. My friend downloaded it, so we bought a bunch of food and sat down to watch it. It wasn't that we like the films (or the series, for that matter); we were just extremely curious to see how the series would finish.

It was...interesting. I think what really threw us off was the bizarre battle scene they had at the end. For those who have read the book, you know that the end is annoyingly anticlimactic. I mean, the entire book is building up to this massive confrontation at the end, which never happens in the book. In the movie, there's a hypothetical battle scene, but that's never explained, so you go through it thinking the writers decided to just end the movie completely differently. It actually ends the same, though.

I'm not going to complain much more about it, because everyone already has their opinions on the series. You either like it, or you don't. It doesn't matter to me. Opinions are opinions.

(Though I will admit the baby was very creepy. Apparently they decided to make a computer baby instead of using an actual baby. A bit scary to watch.)