Category Archives: Reading

May the Odds be Ever in Your Favor

I went in for my first day at the Holiday Inn for work, and it was overall an alright day. I didn’t do any training mainly because it’s a lot to take in at once. So I mainly just shadowed people, watching what they did and taking mental notes of little things about the hotel. The only thing that I really did was occasionally file a paper or two. It was a short shift, only three and a half hours, but there wasn’t anything I could do yet, so I was fine with that.

I’m scheduled to work again tonight from six to eleven, so what people would call a normal shift, haha. I’m pretty nervous because tonight they’ll start training me and it just all looks so confusing. The workers that I met the other night were nice though, so I think it will go alright. I usually can catch on to things pretty quickly, so I’m hoping that this will be one of those occasions too.

I woke up this morning at 9:30, thinking that it was Saturday and that I had to babysit. I have today off of school (marking the start of my spring break), so that threw me out of whack a bit. It wouldn’t be such a problem, but I’ve mentioned before that I’ve been having some trouble sleeping, so I’ve been really tired lately and just need a good day off to sleep in. Which would’ve been today.

Not to mention I saw the midnight premiere of The Hunger Games last night. :D

I wasn’t nearly excited for this movie as I was for the Harry Potter movies, but I was still pretty excited. I think it’s always a bit weird reading a book and imagining in your head what you think everything is like, and then watching what someone else viewed it as on the big screen.

Overall I really liked the movie, so I’m going to insert a mini-review here (no spoilers, I promise!). Most of the things that I really did not like were not plot or acting related, it was more with the filming of the movie itself and the camera angles. In the beginning, when the movie was showing the Seam, the camera was extremely shaky. I realize that this was intentional and that it helped set the mood, but it just annoyed me. I just wanted to somehow be able to stop the camera from shaking!

The way that the fighting between the tributes kind of annoyed me too. The camera was zoomed real close in so that you couldn’t really see what was happening. You could just see a glimpse of a punch, part of a knee in the stomach, and the rest very blurred – again with the shaking camera. :blink: I was talking to Andrew and my friends about it afterwards and we all agreed that if it would have showed everything in the fighting scenes, the movie probably would have been rated R for violence. But, I thought that they could have perhaps shown a little bit more – but I’m an action kind of girl, so I guess that’s just me. :P

Other than those two things, I really loved the movie. It stayed very true to the book and the things that they did omit I thought were minor and were necessary for the sake of time. I’m glad they didn’t split the movie into two parts. A lot of movies have been doing that which is a bit annoying and seems just another scheme to make more money.

A couple of people I know were complaining that it did not stay true to the book, but they also read the book within the last week, which is rather stupid. There are going to be differences between book and movie, and I learned my lesson after reading one of the Harry Potter books the day the movie came out. I just sat there and critically viewed it, noting every single thing that was different, and I didn’t enjoy the movie because of it.

The casting for the roles and the acting itself was done very well. All of the characters came very close to how I pictured them in my head and my favorite would have to be Haymitch – Woody Harrelson was spot on with his portrayal of his character. The Capitol people me and Becky joked all just looked like a bunch of Lady Gagas, but I thought they were excellent as well.

Overall, I thought the movie was fantastic and I really hope that they are going to make a movie for Catching Fire, too. If you hadn’t read the books or seen the movie, I would recommend both! The Hunger Games are right up there with my other two favorite book series, the Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. 8)

Self-Conscious Words

I am not a big football fan. In fact, I know very little about the game besides the fact that you get points for scoring a touchdown. Apparently though, everyone around me is obsessed with football. The SuperBowl was last night, and needless to say I didn’t watch it. Though, I did later look up Kelly Clarkson’s performance of the national anthem, because I adore her and think she’s amazing. :love:

It’s kind of funny because everyone keeps asking me if I watched the SuperBowl last night. I just kind of laugh and tell them no and then they seem all disappointed that they can’t discuss the game with me. I mean, I guess they could, but there really wouldn’t be much of a response on my side. And then they proceed to ask me what my favorite commercial was. Which makes me laugh again, because I’m not going to suffer through half of a football game just to watch commercials. Silly people. I’ll youtube them later. :P

I mentioned a couple posts ago that I was taking a Web Design class and so far I’ve been kind of disappointed. It’s not exactly what I thought it would be. All we mainly do is familiarize ourselves with Dreamweaver, a program that does all the coding for you, and we have to complete small assignments like:

  1. Make a table.
  2. Have a link in each cell.
  3. Make the links purple using CSS.

So not exactly building a layout or anything. I often find times where I have nothing to do because I’ve already completed all my work and the teacher is just waiting for everyone to catch up. I’m actually writing this blog post during this class. :P But, I am learning some things that I didn’t know before and I’m becoming a lot more familiar with CSS, which is nice. That is one of my goals on my 101 in 1001 list, which I haven’t been really keeping up with much.

I’ve received a few comments recently remarking about me completing NaNo and editing my novels, etc. I’m currently working on two; one I am editing and the other I am still writing. However, I’m not sure I plan on publishing either of them. NaNo offered all winners five free copies of their novel through CreateSpace and you can publish it through there. I’d like to do that – I mean being able to hold in my hands a paperback novel that I wrote would be simply amazing – but the whole selling it to the public thing, I’m not so sure about. I was just talking to Kris about how I’m really self-conscious of my writing (ironic enough because I own a blog) so knowing that the entire public had access to my novel, makes me a bit nervous. Soooo, thinking all that over still. What do you guys think?

My NaNo novel is called Murky Waters, and in short, it’s an adventurous story about a young barmaid and pirates. During NaNo, when I was writing it, I thoughit it was the worst thing ever. But after going back and editing it, I’ve become really proud of it – especially since it’s my first completed novel. There are some parts where I’ve laughed aloud at something I wrote – and that’s one of the greatest feelings, knowing that you wrote something really good.

My other novel, that I am currently writing, I have no plans to share it at all. I started it in 2007, so when I was in the seventh grade (!!!) and I just want to finish it for the pleasure of finishing a novel. It’s pretty bad, but I enjoy writing so this is more of a project just to keep me writing and my creative juices flowing. Plus, it’s keeping up with my new year’s goal to keep writing. :)