Category Archives: Life

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)

9 Comments Family & Friends - Life - Reading - Work

Scrambled Eggs and a Clean Room

This year my school started late start days, and they are exactly that: a day where school starts about an hour later than normal. During this time teachers have meetings… and I’m not sure what else. It doesn’t really make a lot of sense to me why we have them, but I absolutely love them. We have one a month, and I look forward to each one.

It’s so nice to be able to sleep in, even if it is just an extra hour, on a day that you have school. It’s not nearly as nice as a day off, but I’ll take what I can get. I always have so much more time in the mornings, too. As a rule, mornings are the bane of my existence; I usually can never get up on time and am running late, can’t find my school ID or my shoes, have about fifteen seconds to brush my teeth, don’t have time for breakfast, etc. But on late start days, I somehow manage to be able to sleep in and be able to get ready with, somehow, time to spare.

I actually had time to make breakfast for myself (scrambled eggs and orange juice, please :)) and I still have extra time, which is why I’m writing this post now. Gasp – in the morning! I know. :P It’s absolutely lovely. Plus, I just feel better when I wake up and the sun is out, compared to not being able to see the sun. :/

I haven’t been sleeping very well lately, and I’m not exactly sure why. When I get home from school I’m so exhausted so I’ve taken the habit of napping before dinner, so that probably is one of the main reasons. Yet having to wait til night time to be able to sleep again is such a long time when I’m already so tired. :blink: I just need to break the habit and hope that that helps.

Another habit I’ve fallen into recently is cleaning my room over the weekends. No matter how hard I try, I cannot keep my room clean for more than three or four days after I’ve cleaned it. I’d say that I just don’t have time to keep it clean, but that’s a lie – I’m just really lazy. So during the week my room gets really cluttered and then on the weekends I tidy it up.

Though, this weekend I also had to keep it clean because Macy keeps getting into stuff and I didn’t want her taking any of my things! :P

On Friday I have about ten scholarship applications and essays due. I worked with my dad last not on the application itself – some of the questions they ask are kind of ridiculous. One of them asked what percentage financially does each child rely on their parents. It’s just like…what? I never really thought about what percent I relied on my parents. :? So we just kind of guessed.

I’m really pretty nervous about these scholarships. I got a decent automatic scholarship from UMKC (my university): $3,500 a year, renewable. But other than that, I haven’t received any others. College is so expensive and I’m competing against at least thirty other really intelligent peers of mine. Gah. I know it’s better to at least try and hopefully get something, but I feel like these scholarship applications will be all in vain. So I guess most of my time this week will really be spent working on my scholarship essays. And praying, praying that I can get something good in return for my hard work.

I applied for dorming on the UMKC campus over the weekend. I know of one girl that is attending with me, but we both agreed that we didn’t really want to room together, so I’m just going to be put in with someone I don’t know. I kind of don’t really mind that much. I feel like I can generally get along with most people, so I’m looking forward to meeting new people, including a random roommate.

I also signed up for orientation over the summer, sometime in June (I already forgot :P) to sign up for classes and all that jazz. It’s crazy to think that in August I’ll be off to college. Kind of crazy and scary at the same time. By applying for dorms and registering for college, I basically committed to attend UMKC in the fall. I’m pretty happy with my choice because I love the campus and school itself, but I can’t help but wonder if I should’ve picked another state school to receive more money. There’s a few that I could’ve gotten almost a full-ride, but I didn’t like the school too much. I think I made the right decision though – picking a school that I really liked instead of one that just gave me a lot of money. At least I hope so.

 

7 Comments Academia - Life