Hunger Games

I totally gave into peer pressure with the growing hype around the Hunger Game books. I decided during finals I would start the book but was only able to get like two chapters in. Today I read the entire book in about three and a half hours. I would give it a 5 out of 5. I haven’t enjoyed a book this much since Harry Potter. Anyway here’s a quick summary of the book:

A girl named Katniss is living in a impoverished district in a futuristic country called Panem where her Mother, sister, and herself are struggling to stay alive. Katniss sustains the family by hunting, gathering, and trapping food in a fenced off forest with her good friend Gale.

Every year each of the 12 districts is forced to submit a boy and girl to the Hunger games which is a competition to stay alive between the 24 selected “tributes.” For the 74th annual Hunger Games Katniss’s sister, Prim is chosen for the games. To save her sister Katniss volunteers herself to the game essentially handing over her life. She and a baker’s son are chosen and have to prepare for the games, each utilizing their special talents.

The book takes the reader throughout the Games and is something I haven’t been able to put down.  There is a movie coming out this March as well so here’s a trailer:

Get the book, watch the movie or do both!! I will totally geek out at the movie release! I’ll probably do more related posts soon as well!

The Letter

Today a blog follower, Charles, emailed me today with a request to share something with all you readers out there. Charles recently came out to his parents by letter and was accepted with warm and welcome arms. He has been showing people this letter in hopes that it will give struggling LGBT kids hope for the future. Anyways I read this letter and think it’s inspiring and well written. I really like this bit: “Medicine made me realise that one of the most marvellous things about living creatures, and particularly about humans, is variation.No two humans are exactly the same. People who fit exactly into a stereotype are rare; they are not the norm.” I can’t agree more with this statement. Variation is beautiful and what makes people interesting. Being different is a gift and Charles explains how he appreciates his sexual orientation.

Here is the link to the letter: HERE 

The Gay Commandments

1. Thou shalt respect fellow gays and lesbians

2. Thou shall have a fag hag and appreciate her

3. Thou must like dick

4. Thou must tell both girl and guy friends if they are wearing something atrocious

5. Thou shalt not wear a fedora

6. Thou shalt show gay pride

7. Respect your gift to shop

8. Thou shalt show acceptance for all

9. Thou shalt recognize the gay anthems of Ke$ha, P!nk, Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, etc.

10. Thou shalt use the gym to stay better looking than straight men

These aren’t incredibly serious but hey post your own down in the comments!

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Lana, Drunken Role Models, and Dates

I’m not even going to apologize for my randomness. I am a random person, learn to like it.

In the music world of Andrew and probably a lot of other people I am going nuts for Lana Del Ray. Lana has only released four songs to my knowledge and I can only say they are brilliant! I’m actually listening to her as I write this. Lana is very talented, dare I say as talented as Adele? Plus Lana has some swagger that really gets me going. Check her out

As my first semester is coming to a close some of my classes have actually been backing off on homework so I have been exploring the internet, possibly one of my new favorite Youtubers beside Jenna is Hannah Harto who has been doing weekly videos of her getting drunk and cooking. They are hilarious. It looks so incredibly fun I’ll have to try sometime. When I’m legal of course…. Anyway Jenna did a tribute to “My Drunk Kitchen” and that is my favorite of them all so here is that:

Tomorrow is Duke and I’s five month anniversary! Time has actually flied with Duke and I am very excited to go out to dinner with him after my interview with a Tufts Alumni and shortened practice.

Saturday our swim team is going to a meet called True Team State which is basically the state meet that measures team depth not just top swimmers. I am swimming the 200 medley, 100 fly, 200 free relay, and 100 breast. I haven’t been swimming all too well so wish me luck that I do better!

Have a great weekend! Like, Comment, Share, Retweet, or subscribe! Thanks for reading!

Senior Pics 2

I forgot to post the rest. Here they are

Before MN

In a lot of my posts and comments I have been hinting that I used to live somewhere else and I really feel like I should shed some light on some of my travel experience.

First off, my dad is in the Navy, rather was in the Navy he recently just got out, but point is, I am a Navy baby.

Our family has been stationed all over the world. Im gonna start when I was born. At that time my family was in Japan. Yeah, Japan. We could get into all the technicalities of where I was officially born because I was born on a Naval base but I was born on the island of Japan. So I’ll leave that decision up to you all. I didn’t stay there very long because about a year after I was born we moved to Washington DC for 3 years. I have no memory of living there apart from some random, insignificant, tiny memories. I think the only significant thing that happened to us while there was my little sister was born.

When I was four our family got relocated again to Naples, Italy. The three years I stayed there had a lot of impact on me. With a mature enough brain to remember things, Italy has shown and taught me a lot. Things I have learned/experienced in Italy are:

• I have traveled throughout Europe and gained a respect and love for travel.
• Being in all Italian school I learned how to pick up languages easily (however I did forget Italian because it was a lot like spanish)
• I learned that all people are very different and accepting them is 10^4089273094372409 easier than not accepting
• I have become an Italian food snob- no Chef Boyardee for me.
• Fun Fact: I was practically as blonde as possible when I lived there (I’ll find a pic)
• In Italy we were robbed 5 separate times
• While in Italy I hated living there. Being 4-7 years old I couldn’t appreciate the worldly experience I was getting and just wanted to have all english cartoons.

In 2001 our family moved back to Minnesota so we could be close to the rest of our family

Now that I am older, more mature I see that many people didn’t have a similar experience as me. I have grown to appreciate all of the moving around and I am thankful I was able to do all of this travel so young.

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Best Books Ever

Earlier this week I tweeted my followers to tweet @ me with post topics they want to hear. I got one reply haha thank you @OlympusJack for indulging me. He asked me to do a post on my favorite books which is a really easy topic to discuss because I haven’t read for pleasure in years.

When I moved to Minnesota I had very little friends so books became my friend. I would read at recess, during class, and at home. This helped develop my reading skills and now I read at 350 wpm but since high school where classes required a lot of reading of stuff that I don’t like. So reading dropped off my radar as I read for school and did homework.

I do however have a favorite book/series. Forgive me for my lack of originality, but my favorite books are all of the Harry Potter books. There is a reason this franchise made millions (billions). Since first grade when I read the first book, Harry Potter books have been a place of escape, fantasy, and wonder.

I grew up with Harry Potter. I love Harry Potter: the books, movies, apps, and other cultural things having to do with HP. And although I don’t read for pleasure anymore I still read Harry Potter every once in a while so here is my list and ranking of the books:

1. The Deathly Hallows, no doubt.

2. Sorcerer’s Stone

3. Goblet of Fire

4. Order of the Phoenix

5. Half-blood Prince

6. Chamber of Secrets, even though when I read the ending I was so scared I had to read it with my dad in the room.

7. Prisoner of Azkaban

Favorite Characters: Dobby(cried when he died), Hermionie, Bellatrix (Bad Bitch, and I love it), Luna, McGonagall, Harry (give in). I even dressed up as Dobby for the most recent midnight premiere. Yes that is a pillowcase, it was really hard to get my shoulders into that.

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Stats

Blogging wise I’m pretty happy with my blog:) If you guys want to check out the stats I’m gonna copy my super successful friends from Walk the Road and show my 2011 year report: Click on this

#Jabs

Recently there has been a big story here in Minnesota about the hockey player Jack Jablonski a sixteen year old with an awful story. A little while ago Jack was illegally checked into the boards during a hockey game that severed his spinal column and he is now paralyzed from the neck down despite a recent surgery that took place yesterday. I truly feel so sad for Jack, his family, and all those close to him I can’t think of many things much worse than what Jack is going through. Our school, and many others, wore white today in recognition of him, and a lot of people have changed their profile pictures to a picture of his hockey number and a caption saying that _____ is praying for Jack. Here is an article on his status: JABS. Along with that there have also been several arguments today on and off Facebook regarding this matter.

Before I continue I want this to be loud and clear: I am not down playing the awfulness of Jack’s tragedy, and I don’t mean any insult to him/his supporters.

With that said, this issue has brought up a lot of controversy regarding the coverage of Jack’s accident. The amount of support shown for Jack has never been seen before at this scale. Many people have gone out of their way to show their support for Jack that hasn’t been seen by anyone in our high school, and other high schools. People are continuously posting about it on Facebook, Twitter, etc. Multiple schools have done the white out today.  Finally, students have called each other insensitive for not wearing white or changing their profile picture to fit the current situation.

Here is where the argument lies. This week a 3 year old was shot in Minneapolis, no one is changing their profile picture for him. Last year one of our own classmates (a year older and was black) was shot to death, we didn’t do a white out for him. Some of our classmates see that there is a problem that it seems that we are only caring for Jack or we seem to care less about others.

I see some validity in this point. I think that something that these people allude to is that Jack is a kid that many of us high schoolers can relate to, which explains the magnitude of the reaction. I believe that everyone deserves recognition if something so tragic happens to someone.

When things get really political/argumentative I prefer to not take sides, because I don’t see the sense in fighting. I think it is awful that Jack got hurt. I am participating in the white out and am keeping Jack in my prayers. I hope that Jack gets better; his doctor said that depending on how he reacts to his surgery he may gain more of an ability to move.

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Another New Years Post

Although you could call my last New Year’s interesting and fun, this year’s was truly amazing. I didn’t do much the day of New Year’s Eve until I went out to lunch with Alec and had a pretty intense game of ping pong. Around 5 I headed home to hang with Duke, we started our night off watching Water For Elephants (a movie I had been saving for several weeks on netflix at my house so I could watch it with Duke). We started it off cuddling in the family room which was the most public place in my house that we cuddled.

Eventually it was time to go out to dinner at one of my favorite restaurants, Punch Pizza. This place has the most traditional Neapolitan pizza I’ve had outside of Italy, they have their own wood burning stove with romantic Italian music playing. Duke got a pepperoni and I got a pizza with: artichoke, olives, basil, prosciutto, and mozzarella. It was absolutely fantastic as always but tasted a little better being with Duke. A fun fact is that the church that Michelle Bachman goes to gave Duke a giftcard to Punch so I’d like to think our gay dinner date was made possible courtesy of good ol’ Michelle. 😉 

It began to snow during dinner so we headed off to a party at a friend of Duke’s house. It was a cool party because recently Duke has come out to a lot of his school and a lot of people found us and introduced themselves to me which made me happy to see that Duke has very supportive classmates as opposed to his parents.

We left the party early to get home because the roads were getting slippery and I wanted to see the ball drop. We got home just as my parents and sister got home, so we watched the ball drop together. Once the ball dropped, my parents began kissing, my sister kissed my dog’s ear, and I leaned in to kiss Duke; In front of my parents! 

Shortly after we went downstairs to finish watching Water for Elephants which we finished in the nick of time because my mom wanted Duke to get going because “Nothing good happens with teenagers after midnight.” So I walked Duke out and sent him off with a goodnight kiss.

Best New Year’s ever. Hope you all had a great one as well! Now we all have to follow those pesky resolutions. Till next time!