My life is extremely hectic right now. I wanted to write a short post letting you guys know that I am still alive. I haven't had any time to blog or even check blogs in the last couple weeks. I recently got offered a job that I very happily accepted. I am trying to wrap things up here at my current job before I leave. I also no longer have a computer at home so that just makes things harder. My wedding is next month and now I'm swamped with wedding planning on top of trying to move and starting a new job. My new job will not give me the luxury of blogging at work.
As soon as my wedding/honeymoon passes and we get in to a new house our first purchase is going to be a computer. So until then you probably will not see much of me on your blogger feeds. I'm sure everyone has been in that situation where life just takes over and gives you no time to do the things you want to do. I hope at least some of you will stick with me during my little hiatus. I promise I will be back with full force once things start settling down and I get a computer.
Much love to all and hope everyone is having a fantastic summer!!
Friday, June 7, 2013
Friday, May 10, 2013
Lets Talk Books
All through high school, I never got too much into reading. I pretty much only read when it was required. After high school I completely stopped reading for about 3-4 years. It had no appeal to me whatsoever until someone told me I had to read "A Thousand Splendid Suns". Now when I was in school and did read I would usually read mostly nonfiction books mostly about drug recovery or teenage girl problem real story type books.
I was quite weary of reading fiction when someone told me about "A Thousand Splendid Suns" but I decided to read it anyway. I fell in love completely. After that I read "The Kite Runner" and loved that one just as much and realized that I really enjoy reading. Not only reading but also enjoying reading fiction. Who would of thought.
I have been reading pretty much ever since, minus my small hiatus I have spoken about here before. Following those two books is when I started to actually buy books and start my little collection. Usually I would go to the bookstore and always head to the young adult section. I was SHOCKED the first time I went after high school because it was nothing but all of these vampire books that to me looked absolutely ridiculous. It was a craze that was going on that I knew nothing about and I did not like it. I mean who wants to read all these books about vampires that I am guessing are pretty much the same just with different characters. (my opinion). After that I stayed out of the young adult section for a long time.
Now is the time you get to call me a coward or what have you. (everyone has a guilty pleasure) I kept hearing about this Twilight series. I mean anyone and everyone was talking about these books. I heard vampire and strayed far away from these conversations until a good friend of mine said just read them. So I gave in. Surprisingly I read all four books in a matter of a couple of weeks. I was hooked. Judge me all you want, I don't mind. I will say this though, those will be the only vampire books I will have read and don't plan on sticking to this craze that finally seems to be dying out and being replaced with a new craze.
Dystopian Fiction Novels. I'm not for sure if this will become as big of a craze as these vampire books did but I am seeing a trend. I read all of the Hunger Games books kind of by accident. I was in search for a book and one day on my lunch break was at Walmart looking for one. I have seen the Hunger Games book all over the shelves at numerous places, had no idea what they were about, the cover didn't look appealing and I kind of just didn't really pay attention until this day and I was desperate for a book and didn't have time to go to the book store so I said fuck it, let's give it a try.
This trilogy was AMAZING! I had never read a dystopian novel before and I was completely intrigued. I don't think there was anything that I didn't like about any of the three books. I really enjoyed the movie as well. I was told that they are going to split the third book into two movies. Why?? I don't understand why movie people feel the need to prolong a series for as long as possible. We dealt with this through the Twilight series, which by the way I know I loved the books, but I HATED the movies. We went through 5 years of this shit. These movies winning every single award they were nominated for, never giving any of the other extremely better movies a chance. That urks me to the core. I'm sure I will like the other Hunger Games movies but it really isn't necessary to prolong the third movie.
I have read plenty of books since the Hunger Games until now. I'll give you a little recap of the last three I have read.
Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden: This was actually the only book I have read after seeing the movie first and I am very glad that I did end up finally reading it. I had seen the movie a copious amount of times. Being one who has a lot of Japanese in my blood and loving the culture as much as I do and with the amount of detail the author goes into on the very private and provocative life of a Geisha before WW2 and the detail of the cities and surroundings of the main character, the book did not disappoint me in the least bit. A lot of people hear the word Geisha and automatically assume prostitute. After reading this you will know that a Geisha is far from that and that being a Geisha is like being a piece of art. If you are interested in what a Geisha really was back then I highly suggest you read this book!!
Lords of Salem by Rob Zombie: First off, I love all of Rob Zombies music and all of his movies except for Halloween 2. (fucking horrible, in my opinion). Devil's Rejects is actually one of my top 3 forever favorite movies. Anyways, this book took a little getting used to. This is his first novel and you can definitely tell. His writing is very elementary and you have to slow your brain down to read it. It's about a girl named Heidi who is a recovering addict and works in a radio station. She receives an anonymous record from a band called The Lords. After playing it on her station weird and unexplained murders start happening and the town of Salem is going a little crazy. That's all I will say for now since the movie just came out (by the way I heard it is a joke and the worst of Rob Zombie's movies by far. So I will wait for it to come out on DVD). If you thought it was good, please tell me because I haven't heard one good thing about it yet.
Churchill's Secret Agent by Max and Linda Ciampoli: If you love reading about the Holocaust this is a book for you. It is a non-fiction autobiographical novel that depicts Max Ciampoli's life as Winston's Churchill's Secret Agent during the Holocaust. He goes on numerous missions behind enemy lines from 1940-1945 all for the main goal of freeing his home country of France from the Nazi's. Some other Holocaust related books I recommend are Jacob's Courage a Holocaust Love Story, Sarah's Key, and Not Me. Do you have any Holocaust related books to recommend?
Let's get back to the Dystopian Novels. I just finished the first two books of the Divergent series by Veronica Roth. These books are very similar to the Hunger Games books. There is a lot of talk about the Divergent series vs. the Hunger Games series. I'm kind of stuck in between. I loved both series for different reasons. I'm not going to pick a side. I have a feeling that once the Divergent series gets a little more known there will probably be a lot of hate talk going on. I see people saying that she probably ripped off the story line or what not. But If you loved the Hunger Games I think you will also love the Divergent series. If you don't compare the two, you can enjoy both of them. When I finished the second book I was upset. There is no way she can just end the series like that. I was thinking no, there has to be a third book, there just has to be. So I did some research and found out that she is coming out with the third book BUT NOT UNTIL OCTOBER. Ugh that frustrates me. I don't want to wait that long to get to the conclusion. I guess I have no choice. I also came across some info about a movie in the works. That will cause a lot of ruckus among readers/viewers and fighting for awards and all that good stuff.
I notice a lot of people go to the library for books, or buy those nook/kindle things. I am not one of those people. I am one who likes to keep all of my books. One day I will own a house and I will have my study and have my library that I've been dreaming of. I don't even like to let people borrow them because I will most likely never see it again. I could never have a nook/kindle because I need to have the real thing in my hands, turning the pages, highlighting words and sentences and the smell of them. The smell of books especially really old books is one of my favorite smells in the world. Walking into a used book store and getting that whiff of old dusty pages. It's so calming.
Enough of my ramblings about books. I realize this post is kind of all over the place. Actually I realize that most of my posts that have a lot of writing are all over the place. I'm not good with structuring my thoughts I guess. Sorry for that.
Anyways I'm always up for book recommendations. Shoot some over if you have any!!
I was quite weary of reading fiction when someone told me about "A Thousand Splendid Suns" but I decided to read it anyway. I fell in love completely. After that I read "The Kite Runner" and loved that one just as much and realized that I really enjoy reading. Not only reading but also enjoying reading fiction. Who would of thought.
I have been reading pretty much ever since, minus my small hiatus I have spoken about here before. Following those two books is when I started to actually buy books and start my little collection. Usually I would go to the bookstore and always head to the young adult section. I was SHOCKED the first time I went after high school because it was nothing but all of these vampire books that to me looked absolutely ridiculous. It was a craze that was going on that I knew nothing about and I did not like it. I mean who wants to read all these books about vampires that I am guessing are pretty much the same just with different characters. (my opinion). After that I stayed out of the young adult section for a long time.
Now is the time you get to call me a coward or what have you. (everyone has a guilty pleasure) I kept hearing about this Twilight series. I mean anyone and everyone was talking about these books. I heard vampire and strayed far away from these conversations until a good friend of mine said just read them. So I gave in. Surprisingly I read all four books in a matter of a couple of weeks. I was hooked. Judge me all you want, I don't mind. I will say this though, those will be the only vampire books I will have read and don't plan on sticking to this craze that finally seems to be dying out and being replaced with a new craze.
Dystopian Fiction Novels. I'm not for sure if this will become as big of a craze as these vampire books did but I am seeing a trend. I read all of the Hunger Games books kind of by accident. I was in search for a book and one day on my lunch break was at Walmart looking for one. I have seen the Hunger Games book all over the shelves at numerous places, had no idea what they were about, the cover didn't look appealing and I kind of just didn't really pay attention until this day and I was desperate for a book and didn't have time to go to the book store so I said fuck it, let's give it a try.
This trilogy was AMAZING! I had never read a dystopian novel before and I was completely intrigued. I don't think there was anything that I didn't like about any of the three books. I really enjoyed the movie as well. I was told that they are going to split the third book into two movies. Why?? I don't understand why movie people feel the need to prolong a series for as long as possible. We dealt with this through the Twilight series, which by the way I know I loved the books, but I HATED the movies. We went through 5 years of this shit. These movies winning every single award they were nominated for, never giving any of the other extremely better movies a chance. That urks me to the core. I'm sure I will like the other Hunger Games movies but it really isn't necessary to prolong the third movie.
I have read plenty of books since the Hunger Games until now. I'll give you a little recap of the last three I have read.
Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden: This was actually the only book I have read after seeing the movie first and I am very glad that I did end up finally reading it. I had seen the movie a copious amount of times. Being one who has a lot of Japanese in my blood and loving the culture as much as I do and with the amount of detail the author goes into on the very private and provocative life of a Geisha before WW2 and the detail of the cities and surroundings of the main character, the book did not disappoint me in the least bit. A lot of people hear the word Geisha and automatically assume prostitute. After reading this you will know that a Geisha is far from that and that being a Geisha is like being a piece of art. If you are interested in what a Geisha really was back then I highly suggest you read this book!!
Lords of Salem by Rob Zombie: First off, I love all of Rob Zombies music and all of his movies except for Halloween 2. (fucking horrible, in my opinion). Devil's Rejects is actually one of my top 3 forever favorite movies. Anyways, this book took a little getting used to. This is his first novel and you can definitely tell. His writing is very elementary and you have to slow your brain down to read it. It's about a girl named Heidi who is a recovering addict and works in a radio station. She receives an anonymous record from a band called The Lords. After playing it on her station weird and unexplained murders start happening and the town of Salem is going a little crazy. That's all I will say for now since the movie just came out (by the way I heard it is a joke and the worst of Rob Zombie's movies by far. So I will wait for it to come out on DVD). If you thought it was good, please tell me because I haven't heard one good thing about it yet.
Churchill's Secret Agent by Max and Linda Ciampoli: If you love reading about the Holocaust this is a book for you. It is a non-fiction autobiographical novel that depicts Max Ciampoli's life as Winston's Churchill's Secret Agent during the Holocaust. He goes on numerous missions behind enemy lines from 1940-1945 all for the main goal of freeing his home country of France from the Nazi's. Some other Holocaust related books I recommend are Jacob's Courage a Holocaust Love Story, Sarah's Key, and Not Me. Do you have any Holocaust related books to recommend?
Let's get back to the Dystopian Novels. I just finished the first two books of the Divergent series by Veronica Roth. These books are very similar to the Hunger Games books. There is a lot of talk about the Divergent series vs. the Hunger Games series. I'm kind of stuck in between. I loved both series for different reasons. I'm not going to pick a side. I have a feeling that once the Divergent series gets a little more known there will probably be a lot of hate talk going on. I see people saying that she probably ripped off the story line or what not. But If you loved the Hunger Games I think you will also love the Divergent series. If you don't compare the two, you can enjoy both of them. When I finished the second book I was upset. There is no way she can just end the series like that. I was thinking no, there has to be a third book, there just has to be. So I did some research and found out that she is coming out with the third book BUT NOT UNTIL OCTOBER. Ugh that frustrates me. I don't want to wait that long to get to the conclusion. I guess I have no choice. I also came across some info about a movie in the works. That will cause a lot of ruckus among readers/viewers and fighting for awards and all that good stuff.
I notice a lot of people go to the library for books, or buy those nook/kindle things. I am not one of those people. I am one who likes to keep all of my books. One day I will own a house and I will have my study and have my library that I've been dreaming of. I don't even like to let people borrow them because I will most likely never see it again. I could never have a nook/kindle because I need to have the real thing in my hands, turning the pages, highlighting words and sentences and the smell of them. The smell of books especially really old books is one of my favorite smells in the world. Walking into a used book store and getting that whiff of old dusty pages. It's so calming.
Enough of my ramblings about books. I realize this post is kind of all over the place. Actually I realize that most of my posts that have a lot of writing are all over the place. I'm not good with structuring my thoughts I guess. Sorry for that.
Anyways I'm always up for book recommendations. Shoot some over if you have any!!
Thursday, April 25, 2013
Life Update
Sorry for the lack of posting lately. I haven't had much motivation to write. Life has been pretty mundane lately. Not in a bad way, just nothing really exciting has been going on. Here are some things that have been going on recently.
Wedding invitations have officially been sent out. Now that, that is out of the way I really need to get focused and start getting shit done for this wedding. I have never been the girl who has planned her wedding since she was 5. This really isn't my thing at all. It's very overwhelming and stressful. There is so much to be done still. We are getting married in Preston's Best Man's parents house in the backyard. Hopefully things will start falling into place soon. The main things that need to get done still are getting everyone in the party there outfits, finding and purchasing wedding rings, center pieces, bouquets all that mumbo jumbo that I wish I could just pay someone to take care of all of it but we just don't have the money and are having to do all of this stuff on our own. Thankfully I have girls who are crafty and can help me with the DIY stuff. Here are a couple of photos from our Save the Date photo shoot. Photo credit goes to my very good friend Allyson Boyd.
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Wedding invitations have officially been sent out. Now that, that is out of the way I really need to get focused and start getting shit done for this wedding. I have never been the girl who has planned her wedding since she was 5. This really isn't my thing at all. It's very overwhelming and stressful. There is so much to be done still. We are getting married in Preston's Best Man's parents house in the backyard. Hopefully things will start falling into place soon. The main things that need to get done still are getting everyone in the party there outfits, finding and purchasing wedding rings, center pieces, bouquets all that mumbo jumbo that I wish I could just pay someone to take care of all of it but we just don't have the money and are having to do all of this stuff on our own. Thankfully I have girls who are crafty and can help me with the DIY stuff. Here are a couple of photos from our Save the Date photo shoot. Photo credit goes to my very good friend Allyson Boyd.
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I'm still practicing on the drums every once in a while. Surprisingly I didn't loose it and am able to jump right into the beat. I also got down the double on the kick drum. That was a good feeling. Now to try to learn how to do a triplet. As of right now, that seems impossible but that's also what I thought before I had the single down on the kick drum. Practice makes perfect I guess! Preston tried teaching me the first part of the Violent Femmes song "Blister in the Sun". Supposedly it's one of the easiest songs to learn how to play. Pssh, I call bull shit. I tried to get down the first 5 notes but it is extremely hard and you can't even tell I'm playing a real song cuz I'm playing it slower than slow. But it's still kind of fun.
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My work gets involved in this thing called Corporate Challenge. It's a 2 month long sports event kind of thing where companies from all over the valley participate. Every sport you can think of is most likely to be an event. From Flag Football, Track and Field, Archery, 3D Dodge ball, Shooting, Cart Racing, Kick Ball, Tug a War and many many more. We used to participate every year but when the economy took a shit we stopped for 3 years in a row due to lack of funds. This is the first year we got back into. I participated in Tug a War and Flag Football. Flag Football is usually the only event I like to do because back when we were doing this every year we won the Gold Medal 3 years in a row. This year we ended up only getting a Silver Medal so we were a little bummed but we all had a good time. We played 3 games in a row. Now it's coed so we have to have 4 girls on the field at all times and we only had 4 girls total so we were playing offense and defense back to back with only 10 minute breaks in between games. Now I do not exercise in the least bit and am a heavy smoker so by the third game my body was giving up on me. The next two days was hell. I was the sorest I think I have ever been. I really need to figure out someway of exercising. Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures from football but here is a couple from Tug a War. We placed third.
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What's new with your folks?!?
Monday, April 15, 2013
New Tattoo
I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend!! Mine was pretty good. I finally got my ass back in the chair to get tattooed. It has been a while. I originally got the portrait done 2 years ago. Shitty photo but here is the original navy photo and the portrait.
I have always known what I wanted to add to it. I just needed to get some money before I could continue. As soon as I got my tax return, I made my appointment. This drawing War and Peace has always been in my Uncle's room since I can remember. I have always been really attached to it. The morning glory with barbwire symbolizes all of the really good times and all of the really bad times that I have had with my family.
Now the barbwire is a little outrageous for me. I didn't want my tattoo to look like it came out of the 90's. I just wanted the barbwire to be in there but not be the main point. After discussing this with Brett and a couple erased sharpie drawings, we finally figured out exactly how I wanted it.
We still have to add the lettering "Mr. Belvedere" to the banner and he wants to touch up the rest of his face so it all blends and looks new. My arm was really swollen and getting lumpy and he didn't want to aggravate it more by sharpying on me so we stopped for the night. Going back in a couple of weeks to finish. I am extremely happy with the outcome. I love how it flows around my arm and it doesn't take away from the portrait at all.
Brett who is my longtime friend and tattoo artist is really amazing. I watched him do his first tattoo back when I was 17 and living with him. He progressed extremely fast and is now an outstanding and known artist in Las Vegas. He has been at Pussykat Tattoo Parlor for a couple of years now. I found out during my appointment that he will be moving to Heritage Tattoo in the next couple of weeks. It's a good move for him. But he did tell me that he won't have his own room there. I really love the fact that he has a room right now. It stops random people from interrupting your session and being nosy and annoying. The new shop is just a wide open space I guess. But from what he says, it is a very professional and classy shop and a place where you don't have to deal with the other annoying customers trying to figure out what your tattoo means and all that bullshit you don't feel entitled to talk to them about because you don't know them and will never see them again. Here is a view of part of his room. I love all of the random stuff he has in there. The taxidermy is a little weird and came out of nowhere. I guess he recently got into that stuff. I thought it was kind of funny. I should have took more pictures but I was full of nerves before we started.
I have always known what I wanted to add to it. I just needed to get some money before I could continue. As soon as I got my tax return, I made my appointment. This drawing War and Peace has always been in my Uncle's room since I can remember. I have always been really attached to it. The morning glory with barbwire symbolizes all of the really good times and all of the really bad times that I have had with my family.
Now the barbwire is a little outrageous for me. I didn't want my tattoo to look like it came out of the 90's. I just wanted the barbwire to be in there but not be the main point. After discussing this with Brett and a couple erased sharpie drawings, we finally figured out exactly how I wanted it.
We still have to add the lettering "Mr. Belvedere" to the banner and he wants to touch up the rest of his face so it all blends and looks new. My arm was really swollen and getting lumpy and he didn't want to aggravate it more by sharpying on me so we stopped for the night. Going back in a couple of weeks to finish. I am extremely happy with the outcome. I love how it flows around my arm and it doesn't take away from the portrait at all.
Brett who is my longtime friend and tattoo artist is really amazing. I watched him do his first tattoo back when I was 17 and living with him. He progressed extremely fast and is now an outstanding and known artist in Las Vegas. He has been at Pussykat Tattoo Parlor for a couple of years now. I found out during my appointment that he will be moving to Heritage Tattoo in the next couple of weeks. It's a good move for him. But he did tell me that he won't have his own room there. I really love the fact that he has a room right now. It stops random people from interrupting your session and being nosy and annoying. The new shop is just a wide open space I guess. But from what he says, it is a very professional and classy shop and a place where you don't have to deal with the other annoying customers trying to figure out what your tattoo means and all that bullshit you don't feel entitled to talk to them about because you don't know them and will never see them again. Here is a view of part of his room. I love all of the random stuff he has in there. The taxidermy is a little weird and came out of nowhere. I guess he recently got into that stuff. I thought it was kind of funny. I should have took more pictures but I was full of nerves before we started.
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
Wetlands Nature Park
This past Saturday Preston, Lulu and I went to the Wetlands Nature Park. The company that I work for did all of the engineering on this. It's like a Spring Preserve that is supposed to have a bunch of wildlife roaming around and swimming around. Unfortunately we didn't get to see much of the wildlife that is supposed to be there. I don't know if it was because the time of year or what, but we barely saw anything. Not even any birds. But we did get to see a good size turtle under one of the streams for a split second, some dragon flies and a rabbit. I was kind of bummed we didn't get to see more, but we still had a good time. Here are some of the pictures I took while we were there.
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