Winter Cleaning, Part 2... A rubber duck. That is a cat.

You know, I think this cat-duck may become the mascot for my blog. I can put him on ascots. Yes I just did. 

I can still remember exactly where I got this duck. He's from Great Wolf Lodge. In case you don't know where that is... (I don't know if it having a stock necessarily makes it well-known) It's a wolf-themed hotel and waterpark. You may wonder how they fit wolf themes into a waterpark if you've never been. If you have been and you're a fun person, and especially if you have a short attention span, you might be thinking something along the lines of what I'm thinking, which is "I have no idea just how they did it, but they did, and oh is it awesome!" It just works, okay? Like oreos. You don't know just exactly how they stick the icing to the cookie so firmly, yet sometimes you break that darn cookie before you can even separate it from the icing!

Besides the waterpark, they also have a spa - for parents and children, no less - called something I can't remember, a training/workout room, gift shop (of course), along with a cafe and Dunkin' Donuts, and something that is now a bowling alley and was once a computer room. The last thing, and I think the last thing we found, was a tiny arcade, visible when you went to the bottom floor via the elevator. It was lit with blacklights, but was surprisingly well-lit anyway. There were tons of games and unsurprisingly way-overpriced token games with near-impossible to get prizes. Instead of all that, my brother and I found a fantastic game that was surprisingly fun and gave instant gratification. It was like a crane game, but not quite, and was filled with all sorts of tiny prizes... and ducks. You know, the rubber ducks you may have taken in the bathtub as a child. But these were different. They were wild colors, strange paint patterns and dressed as very strange things. Like a rooster or a cat, for example. Some were painted purple with green dots, for another example. We got these almost every time. We came home with probably about five or six ducks, and maybe three dinosaurs and two bendy men each. We had so much fun trying to nab what we saw as unarguably best prize in the machine. Hours, I imagine, were spent in front of that, smiles and giggles on our faces as we watched the thing stop spinning, hoping it would be a duck that popped out. I still have the cat one, I admit, and every time I see it, it reminds me, tangentially I presume, how much I really do love my brother. It's hard to hate someone when you remember spending goodness-knows-how-much-money on to get plastic ducks while laughing hysterically and groaning in horror.

Spring...Er, Winter Cleaining

It's finally here. The day I have been trying to avoid for what I suppose is about 5 years now... Let's see... Yep, probably about five or six years of panicked shuffling, pulse racing, physical palpitation on the palms and a definite heating of the cheeks just at the thought of it... That's right, I have to clean out the closet.

I know, I know, overdramatic. But for me, a lot of that stuff is like a scrapbook. Seriously, I need a scrapbook. I mean, most of the stuff I kept not because I liked it so much, but because of how I got it. It's not just a little rubber duck, it's that duck I got on that vacation! I loved that trip... What if I forget about it. So here, now, for anyone unlucky enough to have clicked the link to either view the page or somehow follow my blog, or if you are that person in Germany who saw my post x number of months ago and managed to make my life, get ready for a virtual closet-cleaning of the mind. This is where I'm going to store all those memories that I'm giving the physical counterpart away to someone who can use the physical part again to.

The first and most important thing that I had in my boxes of Everest... Squinkies. Sure, no one knows what they are already, but I mean, that's the point of a fad, isn't it? Bring it in quick, get them all sold, get out before the card house collapses. Squinkies remind me of my disastrous sixth-grade-year, the year defer all my failings on. Sure, it may not be totally true, but total and utter betrayal is pretty intense for one who's more into thinking that gossiping, if you know what I mean. It was a bit of a shock for my age... That's more or less what I expect now, but that's probably because of it. I'd say more, but I'm still forced around the people who were part of that, and I don't want any names anywhere. I don't like hypocracy, and making them feel bad because of what I said is NOT revenge. It's bad. Not only that, if they haven't changed, it'll be a reason to tease.

Anyway, the squinkies. The first of the fads of my time I've participated in without predicting. This, in fact, is what got me into the idea of predicting fads. I'm pretty darn good at it. This is where it all started, too. With a little zoo-in-your-pocket, as I like to think of it. They're little zoo- or otherwise -animals that you can squish. They're still around, now with the brand-name squinkies, but back then, we basically called them "those squishy animals you can get at Little Caesar's". Yep, that's right, that's where they were from. We took (pr rather, our parents took) a 30-minute drive to the Little Caesar's across town. If you were lucky enough to live near there or have someone in the family who worked near there, you were in for some big perks. If you had any extras, or if you just wanted something out of someone who had the money to pay for it, you could get just about anything. Gum, money, homework passes, "Homework passes" - a pass for you , where someone would do your homework for you so you didn't have to, even pledges of servitude of one form or another. I had several, including the "rare" ones, sometimes. I lived nowhere near any Little Caesar's, but with the power of persuasion, I could usually -let's face it- probably connive it out of someone else. I don't even remember how I got it out of people. I think I started out with a couple, and people, mostly taking pity on my middle-of-nowhere-home plight, gave me their least favorite ones. I traded those for ones that people didn't like but I liked better, et. cetera. I can say this. I didn't steal any, because if I had, I would still feel guilty to this day. 

And you know what? A few months back, just after seeing the Avengers, I went and bought a set of Avengers Squinkies. They fit in one of those pouches about the size of the one you may have had for the tooth fairy. It was a brilliant buy, in case anyone was wondering if it was worth it. So there you have it. The first item on my new-and-organized shelf of stuff/memories.

Ah, school.

So... History. Glad someone much smarter thank self gave me a key to go off of... They didn't make any circles, but marked off enough that I had a way better chance at guesting. Hah. Whatever... Probably did not pass with a great grade, though. Probably about an 88...
Anyway, there are more people following my DeviantArt now. Although to be honest, the art that's popular on there is not my kind of stuff, so I'm not going on nearly as much. I guess you need to be the change you want to see. So for now, I'm going to up the amount of stuff I put on! for sure!
I would get off low, but why bother. I have another 20 minutes to wait in the lunch line, so it's not really worth it to stop. So Now I suppose I'll talk about the book I'm reading; the Count of Monte Cristo. The book is really good, but it's... Odd. No offense or racism, nor stating the obvious intended, but it just feels foreign. In the way English writers think differently from the first of the American writers - even such a small amount of time a difference appeared in the organization of thoughts!- even then. There are differences in organization and the way thoughts are expressed through either emotions, metaphors, or any thing else, there is just a slight difference, almost like skim and two percent. When you've had just one for a while, the other presents its differences in flavor. Dumas presents his slightly creamy edition of a story that seems a little too adventurous and foreign for an English work. Many of the English classics either have nothing about foreign countries, or if they do, there is very little about ten and what there is is somewhat biased, like the way a young adult might talk about their younger cousin, instead of their equal.
Dumas' work, however, presents several cultures with a familiarity that make them seem like his own, or at least cultures he sees as advanced as his own, even if not with the depth or warmth he views his own.

Whao!

Someone in Germany visited my blog! Whoever you are, consider yourself my friend. :')
Unless you didn't like it. Then just assume you broke my heart from a different continent.
But still, I am amazed. I can call myself INTERNATIONAL now, right!?
This amazes me on a whole new level of amazing. If you are that person right now, just know you made my Monday, my week, and even, possibly, my month.

Oliver Twist

So I suppose this is a little (*ahem*very*ahem*) late, but I put this for Beowulf and any other books I read. I plan on doing a chapter-ly sum for each book I read. But as I'm on chapter thirty-something at last check on Oliver Twist... I might just wait for Beowulf to start this. Who knows?

Blogging... And nonsense.

I... Wow, I haven't been on here in ages. It's crazy. It looks like I'm on OpenOffice... How does all this new stuff work?!?!
Well, anyway... I've been considering blogging again only because of this: People only seem to remember all the bad occurrences in their lives. I don't want to be like that! This is, I think, going to be a journal. One that I can share.
     When I was young, one of my dreams was having a diary of my life. I realized, even then, that for the most part, the only time someone read your diary was if you are famous, or if you ended up going through some kind of catastrophic event. Until just recently, I never stopped to consider that that is no longer true. Just think, now, if someone has similar interests  or even just wants to look something up that I've rambled about, by goodness, they may end up... HERE!? The absolute thrill that this brings, the idea that another person has shared this thought, this event, brings, I don't know, some kind of emotional thrill to me that I just can't even fathom. And I know I'm not alone. If I was, people wouldn't spend so much time thinking up witty things to say on Facebook in the hopes it would bring them a like. My motives are slightly different from those in my class, I think. I don't want them to think I'm "Cool" (Capital C cool. Lowercase "c" is not Cool), because I don't care. The people I care about impressing are not impressed much by the idea of someone spending hours thinking of one little phrase they're going to put on their great and powerful Facebook Wall of Themselves. The people that are impressed by that... Well, I'm going to make no effort to talk to them, and since they spend all of their time on social networking sites or online games, I guess we won't be talking much.
     I think another thing I want to do is keep a catalogue of all the books I've been reading... Maybe, subconsciously  that's just so I can brag to my old English teacher. Because she's the kind of person you want to please. Or want to impress. Or both.

Everyday New Things

So... Beginning a blog. I'd like to say I have big plans... But not really. I plan on letting it grow and be free. <3 So here it is. Enjoy.