Love is All You Need

Just a quick post of a video that everyone should watch. It is a fantastic display of creating tolerance for everyone! It had me in tears!

More posts probably in the new year!! I promise!

Update on NYR 2013

I haven't written in this blog for a while. I keep coming back to it and updating everything else, but I just haven't sat down and wrote here. I am not exactly sure why, but I believe that I use this blog when I am at another point in my life. Or I am stressed, anxious, sad, or overrun. And I am not those things right now. I am, in some sorts, but for now my life is okay. I still have the everyday stresses that everyone else has, but I have learned to overcome them in a different manner.  So instead of ranting today, I thought I would update everyone on my New Years resolutions, and how my my year will hopefully end.  I had six items on my Resolutions list and I will go through each of them, with my wins, and my utter failure. =)

The first item was finishing my courses for my BA in Psychology. And I am proud to say that I only have 4 more courses to go! I am looking at five different courses at the moment, but that will be narrowed down soon after the first day.  What is next is looking at whether I want to go for my Graduate degree right away or do something else. I am more leaning towards teaching English as a second language abroad, just because it is a way for me to travel. It's just figuring out where to go, and getting used to being okay in a completely different country by my little ol' lonesome self.

The second item on my list was reading 50 books by the time the year is up. I've read 11 books. Sadly. So. I am hoping that this semester isn't too too crazy that I can read maybe 20 more books. But that probably wont happen. I have started a couple different books over the year, but some are weird and confusing. And I've read and LIKED weird and confusing. So that is saying something.

The third is finish writing a novel.... I can say I started a new one. And it takes time. I am hopeful that after this last semester of school, that I can breath and actual complete this. And I think if I put my mind to it, I will be okay. It's different then the previous novel I was writing, but it has more want to be completed. If that makes ANY sense at all. =)

Working out. I bought a bike, and for every day of my summer classes I rode to school. Rain or shine. Then I started getting 40 hours a week at work and my energy went to kaput. When the school year starts up, I am planning on staying and working out at the school for the three times a week.

The next item was Thailand! And I actually have a trip booked! I am heading to Thailand in March 2013 for 16 days! I have paid off $700 so far, and only have to save up another $1400. It sounds expensive, but with everything that is included on the trip it is pretty cheap! I am really excited about heading there. And I just cannot wait to get out and see it.

The last item was volunteering. Which I have done none of. My life is a shame.

It's different having resolutions to look back on. I think in the future I will try harder to make more resolutions and follow through with them.  I will be honest, it has been a crazy year so far. And with everything happening in December (Sisters wedding, final exams, 22 birthday, quitting my job, potentially moving home, etc.)  I hope that with a majority of my items that I can come closer to trying to complete it.

Calgary Flooding

My home is back up north in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.  And a couple days ago there we declared a state of emergency due to excessive water and flooding. I am in disbelief at what has come to my city and to my fellow Calgarians.  However, it is the support that those in need are receiving from all across our province and our country that makes me proud to be Canadian. I do not even really know what to say, but I thought I would share some photos about the devastation that has occurred. All images have been found online, and some may include other areas that have been hit, as a majority of Southern Alberta was also in a state of emergency.

The Stampede Grounds

An aerial view

And this wasn't even the worst

The entire town of High River was evacuated

And Calgarys' very own: Mayor Naheed Nenshi:

Stay safe everyone! 

The Sun and The Moon

Well, May the Fourth be with you. But don't be afraid of Cinco de Mayo, for there is always the Revenge of the Sixth. =) Yeah I'm a nerd. Deal with it.

So I just finished reading a book called "The Sun and The Moon: The Remarkable True Account of Hoaxers, Showmen, Dueling Journalists, and Lunar Man-Bats in Nineteenth-Century New York" by Matthew Goodman.  It was really interesting of how he related all of the different aspects that he was writing about, except I was hoping that instead of just summarizing what the newspaper articles were, that he would have just inserted the actual article. The newspaper article that I am talking about was written by Richard Adam Locke and was about inhabitants living on the moon and the hoax was that New York thought it was all true.  I was hoping to read what he had actually said, but maybe there was copy-right issues. I'll just have to go out of my way to find it. It is really interesting, if you are into that sort of thing. Mind you, I'm a little weird. I read a book all about the underground system in England. And I've never been there, and thoroughly enjoyed it. I even tabbed a lot of pages. Wow. I need to get out more apparently.

This was the hardest semester of my entire University degree.  But it's official  final grades are up! I didn't write for a while because my professor accused me of plagiarism and I may have cried for a week straight.  But now it is all better, and I have a lovely GPA of a 3.43 for the semester. 7 more courses to go and then I am done my undergraduate!!

Anyways, that is all today. Hopefully this summer I will get back to writing more. But we shall see. =) I am taking 3 courses though.

1. Egypt
2. Music Therapy
3. American Popular Music

Hope you all have a good rest of the weekend!

Hello there old friend...

Procrastination. I feel like it could kill me at one point.  No joke. I really need to start getting on top of things before they are suddenly piled up on me.  And yet as I say this, here I am blogging instead.

This reading week, I had a lot of stuff to do, and I didn't do it.  Instead I decided that this week would be the perfect time to watch all four seasons of Heroes. And so currently on the 3rd season and starting to become severely sleep deprived, I decided that homework late at night was a good idea.  Yeah, no. It was not.

I had to read a 30 page paper on the "Genotype-Phenotype Correlations in Lesch-Nyhan Syndrome" and then summarize it into a one page abstract report. Firstly, I got lost reading it.  Secondly, trying to condense that much information into a tiny tiny page is bat-shit crazy.  And still, for some reason I decided to choose the most genetic disorders for my 75-minute presentation (X-Linked Disorders).  I can barely speak half they things I am reading and have to talk about it.  Hypoxanthineguanine phosphoribosyltransferase.  Try saying that in one breath. I am not only going to be nervous about speaking in front of my peers, but also about my inability to speak proper English.  I mean, I can't even say invitation properly.  I say invintation. InVINtation. Who says that? This girl, right here.

For the next month I am in some big doo-doo.

1. Feb 26: History Midterm (25%)
2. Mar 3: Moodle Posting Due
3. Mar 6: Music Project Due
4. Mar 10: Moodle Posting Due
5. Mar 13: Music Quiz/Psychology Presentation/6 Abstracts Due/1 Companion Reading Due
6. Mar 17: Moodle Posting Due
7. Mar 19: History Primary Source Paper Due
8. Mar 20: Music Project Due
9. Mar 24: Moodle Posting Due
10. Mar 31: Moodle Posting Due

And, another joy to my life. I found out that my ONLY two final exams are on the same day.  With a lovely hour in between them. And I also have my psychology papers for a final exam due on the same day. FML.

I was actually really looking forward to the next couple semesters and being done with school, but I got a chance to look at the courses they are offering. And it looks like I may have to stay another semester.  I need 7 more courses to graduate, and I can't even find 5 to fill in my schedule.  Sometimes my university makes me re-think my choice to go there. 

Ugh. Someone just switch places with me. Please? Maybe I could be like Bilbo and a wizard will just come and take me on an adventure...

Well now...

I just finished reading The Casual Vacancy by J.K.Rowling. I...I don't really know what to say. I thought it was well written, but there were certain aspects that I did not like about it at all. There was almost too much detail about certain items and then I was just confused with the slow plot line. I still don't really even understand what she was trying to get at with her novel. All I know is that the people in the town have interconnecting lives, which is no shocker. It was almost as though the novel was only good for the last 50 pages, because it made sense (slightly) then, but still it was confusing.  I don't know if this was just me, but when I read it I felt as though she was switching between characters in the same paragraph. Characters that don't really apply to each other much.

I don't know. Who am I too judge. It definitely isn't my favorite book AT ALL and nor would I suggest it to anyone to read.  And this coming from a HUGE Harry Potter nerd. It's not her writing, just the story itself that....doesn't interest me at all.

Time for bed for me! And tomorrow I will pick out my next book to read....I'm feeling a comedy, but who knows. Happy Blogging!

Textbooks

Textbooks. The dreaded T-word. For some, its not terrifying and for others it is horrendous.  I think buying textbooks is horrible at times, because Universities overprice them. And I realized that this year when I was looking at one of the required textbooks for one of my classes. At my university it was selling for around $91 before GST (which is a goods and service tax, the only one we have here in Alberta).  My professor was talking in class on Monday, when it was brought to my attention that my university ran out of copies of it. Joy. So my class decided to talk about other ways to buy it, and a girl said that she had bought one through Amazon. I have never bought anything off Amazon, but I thought I would check it out because I needed a textbook at some point in my class (it was one of the few textbooks that would actually work longer in my degree if I went on). And low-and-behold to my astonishment, the textbook cost $81 with FREE shipping! Are you shitting me?!? Next semester I am going to check my textbook list and check online to see the pricing. Because that was ridiculous. (I am not in anyway at all saying buy all your textbooks from Amazon, I am just saying that my University is ripping students off....No promotion. Promise.)

Another thing, at my university, on some textbooks, they offer rentals. Which makes sense, because half the time the University wont buy back your textbooks or if they do they buy them back at $10 when you spent $150.  What is really awesome, is when they allow rentals on Used textbooks. Its quite nice because I don't want to fork out a huge chunk of change just to use a textbook for one class and never use it again. And it is frustrating (for me) to not get back the money I spent on it, so I wont sell back my textbooks often.  Then you are sitting around for years with a bunch of textbooks you will never ever use again. They pile up. Well. For me they do. I think it has something to do with me being unable to throw out books, even if they are textbooks from a horrid class. 

Anyways, on an off topic note I just finished my second book of the year. It was called The Long Earth by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter.  I really enjoyed it. I was initially nervous after reading the cover because I really didn't know what to expect, but it was really good. And I was looking on Wikipedia more about the authors (because I am that much of a geek when it comes to good books, I want to read more by that same author(s)) and I found out that they are planning a sequel! Which is coming out June 20th of this year! So excited! Because to be honest, the ending was quite sudden and I definitely need to see some closure. If I ever become anything in this world to do with writing, I would adapt this book into a movie in a heart beat. Just because there is so much you could do with it, and I think that it would just be an amazing thing to see on the big screen. This is coming from a girl who would pick apart movies that have come from books.  I can just see how it would go and how to do it. So I swear, if someone doesn't do it and years down the road if I ever feel like someone takes my writing seriously, I would consider doing an adaption of this book. Hands down. 

But I am off to bed, work tomorrow until 3 then class from 4-9. Long day ahead of me. Bleh.