Final Exam

Jigsaw Puzzle

For my Computer in Education Class I have to embed a Jigsaw puzzle into my blog! Enjoy!

My ABC’s of Life

Act on it if you feel it

Begin to live… now

Can’t is an automatic stop button

Dare to

Envelop others in your presence

Forget past mistakes

Get it

Help those in need

It could always be worse

Junk is valuable

Keep memories

Let it change your life

Make a difference

Now is the time

Open your mind to LOTS of things

Practice

Quench the thirsts in your life

Rake, shovel, sweep, dust, clean, and vacuum.

Sit and watch

Take pictures

Understand it before you change it.

Very. Do things that are “very”.

Walk there

eXpect change

Yesterday is exactly that, believe in today.

Zealous or overzealous, as long as it’s not underzealous

 

I had just actually found those tonight. I wrote them a while ago. I’m not sure if it was for an assignment or just for fun. But I thought it’d be fun if I shared. And if I remember right, it was VERY fun.. So go ahead and write your own ABC’s of Life :)

Suggestions on How to Live A Better Life

During training for working at the YMCA as a summer camp counselor, my boss showed this video on the first day. I'd say this video has it down pat. Enjoy to whatever extent you wish :)

Just Finished Reading: The Pact- Jodi Picoult

Just Finished Reading is kind of my way of telling about a book I just finished (oh the irony) and my feelings towards and about it. It's not really a formal review nor does it follow traditional guidelines. I'd say it's more of a way to kind of "express". Haha I can hear you groan. Who likes reading/listening/enduring others' expressions anyway? I guess I'll go against the grain and throw it out there. Read it if you like, pass it by if you like. It's all relative. Enjoy :)



The Pact left me dizzy as I tried to pry reality from fiction after I finished this book. I'm most definitely a crier when I read but this time what burned my cheeks and stained my lips were not my own tears, but a whirlwind of emotion derived from every character that wrought a devastating plague in this moving tale of question; how far would you go for love? From the opening of the cover to clutching the book in my grasps as I let my head hang in a triumphant defeat, I was held short of breath and pleading for an answer to "why?"; yielding the conclusion of it all to ring hot in my mind. I find myself trying so hard to conjure up a description of my feelings during and after I read this love story, but as the picture of love, hate, despair, loss, turbulence and blinding fate are painted in my head I bite my tongue; my watered-down description would do no worldly justice to the actual progression of events that procured a "storm" of this nature. Left with my soul aching, wanting so desperately to believe that anything so heavy with uncertainty never actually has to be endured; I silently exhale only to immediately be infused with doubt. Jodi Picoult keeps your heart from page one and returns it to you with a new tactility on life; a new place where it beats for far more than you thought it could. I give it 5/5 and I suggest it to anyone who wants to REALLY see what they're capable of feeling because I guarantee after this... you will never be quite the same

Stumble Upon

Oh me oh my have I got a website to share. Although this is a trend among trends to millions of people out there, I was recently introduced to StumbleUpon.com and I have to have to say I'm positively addicted. It was actually my Mom who told me about the website and I was skeptical at first; in my head I was protesting "There's no way checking a few boxes pertaining to Photography, Drugs, and K-12 Education will result in interesting websites that appeal to me." Well ladies and gentlemen I couldn't have been more wrong. One of the first websites I came across was a photography website titled vi.sualize.us (that is the web address also) and I spent an honest to goodness hour and a half clicking through photo after photo, drowning myself in the unique stories told by these pictures. When a person uploads a picture they put word tags with it so it comes up when people search for that specific tag, so whatever you put in the search box will come out, in one light or the other. Instead of searching I sort of just browsed. When you click on a picture, the right margin is filled with that artists favorite pictures and other pictures in relation to the one you're looking at. Click after click I became more enticed with what I was coming across. From what I was choosing to look at and filing through the stream of 'favorites' and related pictures, I got on a somewhat vogue/love/human-expressionism/straight-up-pretty-picture track and ended up saving a BUNCH (is that allowed?) of them for a future slideshow. I'm excited. So let me see what I can come up with right now...

Taking the search option, I typed in 'hope' (and suffice it to say next to everything else that came up with 'hope' in the tag so did pictures of Obama. Go America :]) and the first picture I clicked on was this one :




which is alright, nothing TOO special, but then I was led to this one (choosing from the pictures on the right side):





I'd have to say that's a cool way to displaying a quote. I got asked to Homecoming that way once, but hey, whatever works, right :) Okay so here's where it gets exciting, from the right hand side I picked this one next:





First of all, that boy is damn cute and second, what an amazing picture :) I love the incorporation of the small things flying around him. And the look on his face is priceless. Alright moving right along, what shall I pick next? Hmm.. How about this one:





Cool huh? I'm thinking he's throwing some kind of smoke grenade or tear gas or something. Intense. What else can we get our hands on? Ohh try this one on for size:





I'd have to say I couldn't sit still or give up the man hours to complete something so detailed. But thank goodness not everyone is like me and people DO make these things for people like me to revel at :)


So as you can see, it's a pretty interesting time milling through pictures on the visualize website. I'll have to post the slideshow I make with the one's I've saved, that'll be fun. So I guess this post wasn't more than to rave about StumbleUpon and for me to get all pumped up about photography. And as a disclaimer, I know those pictures don't look THAT AMAZING, but if you give it a few minutes and you poke around on that website, I will see your foot go BAM!, into your mouth. I guess I just showed those ones to example the picture-to-picture clicking and how if you kept it going, you could spend the better part of an evening without stopping, blinking, or getting bored.

Gosh, someone should hire me to boast about their product because I'm thinking I'm starting to get good at it!

I found this video a few years ago and I'm still moved each time I watch it. I'm not a religious person so I am a bit surprised that this had such an effect on me, but it did. The intensity of it all, with all thoughts of God/Higher Being/etc put aside, is what I think gives it such a weight. I encourage you to watch it; I think you'll understand what I mean after you do.

Let's talk jewlery!

Given my age, it's no surprise I've taking a liking to jewlery of all kinds. My dearest mother recently started displaying her handmade jewlery on a website that caters to the beautiful and talented workings of those who are crafters of anything from pottery to pumpkin bread. I wanted to devote this post to share some items from www.etsy.com that I found enticing! So here goes (in no specific order):

Jimi Baby...is that you
I find this piece simple but amazing and I love the quote!

Periodot and 14k Gold Ring with Hammered Band
Looks like something RIGHT out of Sundance, beautiful!

Fill Your Heart With Family Love
Keeping your family so close to your heart couldn't be easier!

B l a c k C a t.
This is so cute you won't stop at Halloween when you wear this one!

Those are just a few of the millions of amazing things on Etsy. It's a pretty addicting site. I wish I had more money and I'd be pimped out in handcrafted treasures!

Movie Critic in the Statesman

Link to DeGoey's critique in UMD Statesman

So as I was waiting for class to start at 9 this morning, I picked up the most recent edition of the Statesman (UMD's own newspaper) and read an article done by Kyle DeGoey. In his article he gave his personal review on two recent box office hits. The first was Bride Wars, which was irrelevant to me because I haven't seen it. Then I saw that he also did a review on Seven Pounds and there it was, like a punch in the face, it reads

Overall Grade: D-

I was thinking "there's no way that grade is right, it has to be a mistake" and I continued to read line after line of what I imagine as black sludge spewing out of his mouth. Now if you've seen Seven Pounds you know that the very beginning is indeed a 911 call where Will Smith's character is clearly distraught and drowning in a pool of mixed emotions and in this call he states he needs an ambulance because there's been a suicide. When the dispatcher asks who the victim is he says "I am" and the scene ends. DeGoey states

"Since the audience knows how it ends, we are all better off leaving after the first 30 seconds."

To that I would have to say you actually DON'T know how it ends. Those 30 seconds and the actual end to the movie are a universe apart and if you've seen it I think you'd agree. DeGoey continues on to complain that the movie was so confusing and that you are constantly asking yourself question about who's who and what's going on. Yes, those questions went through my head just as they did his but instead of claiming that this type of story line was "just annoying", it made me stare harder at the screen, convinced that the pieces would fall into place before I left the theater. I was very determined to find the answer, that patchwork that would fill in all the gaps thus far. And as the movie progressed and you followed Will Smith's character through a journey of forwards, backwards, up, and down, the movie started to delicately, but fiercely make sense. What I think is great about this movie is it leaves so many possibilities open to your imagination and I think almost everyone will find that at one point or another they will try to finish the movie before it's actually over. I think the confusion of this film only leads you to be more hungry for the truth about what has actually been going on and what it means.

DeGoey also tries to give a watered down argument that "Smith doesn't carry this film" when I believe the entirely painful, polar opposite. Through every scene I found myself thinking that there was something about Smith's character that wasn't quite right. He always has a look of distant despair on his face, like there was so many things pulling every which way on the inside that he couldn't compose, or even know his normal self was. I felt this gave the film a lingering pull on the audiences' hearts and inner beings. I believe Smith portrayed the message, feel, and sound of this storyline with the utmost passion and sincerity.

DeGoey closes with the conclusion that "It [Seven Pounds] fails in every aspect from the contrived love story to the horrendous music choices." which is ironic because the genre of a "love story" took a backseat to a more suiting "drama" which it was released as. The point of this movie was not to display an epic love story (like it may come off as), but a heart-wrenching soul struggle and I believe that is what makes it unique in comparison to the other 90% of movies in Hollywood today. I think DeGoey missed the boat big time on this one and it just may be that he chose not to or lacks what is needed to take this movie for what it is. Of course he's entitled to his opinion but to me it seems like it was an opinion rooted from the atypical road this film follows. I left this movie in tears, deeply moved, and exhausted at the thought that people ACTUALLY do go through this in life and that for some it won't necessarily end in a way that dismisses a crowd with a feeling of devastation and triumph that lumps in your throat and pulls at your heart.

So this is the first one

So here goes nothing, I'll sit down and type something worth reading soon. I think maybe centering this around college stuff (like college life) would be cool? Maybe not...