Kat in the Hat

I'm so happy it's finally sunny outside. All those clouds were boring! Not to mention they seriously hindered my ability to take pictures outside (everything comes out flat when there's no contrast of light and shadow). It's still ridiculously windy, but that makes it kind of fun. :) So praise God for sunshine!!

Vulcan
Speaking of photography, I went up to the Vulcan statue for the first time this weekend and took pictures. :) It was incredibly windy, especially up on the observation deck. I almost blew away!! It was still really overcast that day, but the view was incredible and I got some good shots (hopefully). I just finished that roll of film, so I'll know the results this week or next.

Cross Fit
So, one of my friends recently got his instructor certification for Cross Fit. He asked the dojo in general (he's also my sensei) if anyone would be willing to start doing Cross Fit so he could get some practice as an instructor. For those of you who don't know, Cross Fit is a workout program that's designed to build muscle movements you need for life, and the workouts are always changing so you never get bored (and your muscles don't stall in growth). I'd done a few workouts for funsies with him and one or two others, and none of those had been too terribly taxing. So I said, "Sure, that sounds like fun."

First two official workouts included running laps outside. I have a love-hate relationship with running. First time wasn't so bad, because I ran at my usual cross-country, I've-got-to-keep-this-up-for-3-miles pace, which is basically a brisk jog. Turns out you're supposed to run as fast as you can for as long as you can. So I did that the second time, and barely made it halfway through the first lap before I started lagging. By the third lap, when I heard the "motivating" claps of my "friend," I wasn't sure who to hate: him for telling me to pick it up or me for agreeing to do this.

I'm not sure I would call it "fun" anymore, but I don't actually hate it either - if I did, I'd just stop. It's a good challenge, and I want to see how quickly I improve. (I do wish the workouts weren't so similar to my strength training class workouts, though.)

School
After heartily avoiding it for several weeks (since almost the beginning of the semester, in fact), I finally started working on my oral review study guide. Yes, I know, I'm a procrastinator. But at least I didn't wait until the week before! I've still got... two weeks, I think? >_> The point is... I started. And it was actually kind of fun to go relearn some of this stuff! Guess that means I chose the right major. ;) And, since I've written papers on some of the study guide topics before, it was relatively simple to answer a couple of the questions; just had to re-read the papers. They're pretty good, actually. I can see where they need improvement, but I'm proud of the work I did on those.

Part of my homework for my Human Sexuality class was to watch about an hour of MTV. I was not at all pleased with that part of the assignment - I despise MTV. And after watching an hour of "Fantasy Factory," I feel completely justified in my prejudice. Nobody should be watching this mind-numbing crap. How is it entertaining to watch two guys in fat suits race around a dirt bike course they built indoors for no good reason?? The show seems to be built around the antics of these few workers - why do they even have such a big warehouse/"factory"? - because I couldn't discern any purpose at all. Waste of time.

Your Turn!
I was talking to one of my friends at dinner the other night, and we got on the topic of nicknames. We're both named Kaitlin (hers is spelled with a C), but she goes by Caity and I, for the longest time, refused to let anyone shorten my name. That's gradually become less of an issue for me, though there are a couple nicknames that I refuse to acknowledge or allow.

I just thought it was interesting how we had different attitudes about our full names and our nicknames, and thought about the stories behind some of our nicknames. I go by "Dora" with some of my friends; I got that one in high school Spanish, because I was pretty good at Spanish and looked a little like Dora the Explorer. "Kat," the nickname in this post's title, is so far only used by one person; he chose that when I shut him down on another nickname.

How do you feel about having a nickname? What's the weirdest, funniest, or most interesting nickname you've had, and why was it given to you?

Looking forward to reading your responses! Have a great week.

Is This the Real Life?

I pretty much exhausted my clever Monday-themed titles with last week's post. (Which was taken from the song "Monday, Monday" by the Mamas and the Papas. Good song.) If any of you have other clever ideas, go ahead and share them. Even if I don't use them for a post title, it'd bring a smile to face, and who doesn't like to make other people smile? ;)

Samford hosted its first ever TEDx event Friday. Some of my best friends are on the team that put it all together, so I went out and supported them Friday morning. This TED stuff is pretty interesting, actually. The notion behind it is a little nebulous, but it's basically opening people's eyes to how they're connected on so many more levels than they normally assume. (The "x" in "TEDx" basically means that it's an independent event that's not hosted by TED.) Some of the talks for the morning session were how our infant selves connect us (since we're all basically the same in our first year of life), how the news connects us (particularly pointing out social media interaction), and how vulnerability connects us. The morning session was great and gave me ideas that [in content] were completely unrelated to what I was hearing, but I think that was kind of the point. Hear other people's ideas, see connections you hadn't before, and then start making some connections and ideas of your own. I'm excited to see when they'll have their next event.

They had an afternoon session for TEDx, but I wasn't able to go to that because I was going home with some of my friends for the first time ever! I was pretty excited to see their house, chill with their family, and enjoy their mom's home cooking (I've had samples of it before when they've come back from a weekend at home). It was a great weekend with a lot of resting. Two of the five of us had homework to do, so they weren't as engaged, but the rest of us played cards, watched movies, read books... Chill stuff. :)

I actually watched 3 movies this weekend. The Matrix on Friday night, because I was in charge of choosing a movie and I found out 4 of the people in the house hadn't seen it before. That was fun, hearing them voice confused questions and saying, "I'd take the blue pill" or "I'd take the red pill." (Someone really did say the blue pill; made me sad. Why would you ignore the search for truth?) And we watched Star Wars VI: Return of the Jedi on Saturday so I could start catching up; my suitemates and I are watching all the movies in order of release, and they got ahead of me big time. I watched Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace on the ride back to school Sunday and I still have Episode II to watch before I'm caught up!! Thankfully, one of the girls has some tests this week, so it'll be a while before we can all sit down for the final movie. Buys me some time.

Well, those are all the highlights. Not much of interest going on, haha. I've got to start studying for my oral review ASAP, which means things will get even less exciting during the week, though the next few weekends still have interesting things planned. We'll see.

Peace out.

Oh, before you go, check out this video one of my friends showed me over the weekend!

Monday Monday

Happy Monday, everyone!

It's the start of another week full of opportunities. The excitement and anticipation is almost enough to make going back to work/school worth it! :D (Of course, I have the day off. We don't get Good Friday off; we can only get one day and this way, no one has to travel back to school on Easter Sunday.)

I discovered that my dear old SLR camera suffers from a light leak. This explains why a band of light shows up on some of my negatives. I took my camera with me when I bought more film and dropped some off for developing. The guy running the store said the foam that's supposed to keep the light out had almost completely disappeared, just dried out and blown away over the years. Luckily, another guy at the store said he knows someone who repairs cameras as a hobby (for money), and he gave me this man's name and number. I'm going to call him up today to see if he can do anything for me, or at least meet me and check out my camera. It's an old thing, but I like it a lot, and I want to be able to keep using it.

My first real post to the other blog was a little rough. It's quickly becoming clear to me that blogging about something I care about and want to represent well is going to take work. I'm fine when it comes to an analytic research paper, but writing a blog post that keeps reader interest? Ha. Well, practice practice practice. :) And I got some good advice from a friend who has good blog posts (when he posts), as well as some resources for more tips. I'll try to put some of them into practice Wednesday.

So... I went and saw The Hunger Games for the midnight premier. And then two more times this weekend, once on Friday with one group of friends and once on Saturday with another group. Unless someone pays for me, there's no way I'm going to the theaters for it again! Tickets are so expensive. :( But, the movie is still great after 3 viewings. And each time I watch it, I'm able to look at it from a different angle, which keeps things interesting. I got some music out of the 2 extra viewings, too: a remix of "Seven Nation Army" that plays during the GI Joe: Retaliation trailer, and the 4 notes for Rue's and Katniss's mockingjay signals (which of course I tried to play on my ukulele). Yay, for music!!

In other nerdy news, I started watching Avatar: The Last Airbender again. They have the whole series on Netflix instant. It's such a great show. It's funny and light, but also has a lot of wisdom woven into the characters and what they say. Even the intro to the show is meaningful if you listen: "Water. Earth. Fire. Air. Long ago, the four nations lived together in harmony. Then, everything changed when the Fire nation attacked. Only the avatar, master of all four elements, could stop them..." Elements in balance, pride pushing one nation (element) to disrupt the balance, the only one who can restore balance is the avatar, reincarnated master of all 4 elements... Makes you think.

And with that, I wish you well on your journey into the new week! You've already completed one day!! :D

(Easter post coming later. I wanted to get this up relatively close to the "Monday" time limit.)

Playing Catch-Up

     The last time I actually updated y'all with life events, I was going to Step Sing, making prints in the darkroom for the first time, still thinking about whether to go on a mission trip and where, practicing ukulele, reading, and watching a ton of movies. (All the super-exciting details here!) My, what a difference a month and a half makes!

     Step Sing was incredible. For those of you who don't know, Step Sing is a Samford-wide song and dance competition. There are different groups that come up with a theme for their show, then practice for 40 hours over the course of about 2 weeks before they reveal to the Samford community the fruits of their hard work. Each group makes a banner about their show, chooses their own costumes, arranges their music, and choreographs their dance moves. It's a huge chunk of work for the teams that lead each group, but oh so much fun. A new group this year won second place; they dressed as nuns and sang songs like "Living on a Prayer," "Fanatic" (Lecrae), and a couple from The Sound of Music. It was a hilarious show with great singing and choreography, and hopefully next year will be even better. :)

     We can now go into the darkroom on our own, which makes me super happy - I've got a lot of prints to make, and not a lot of time during class. I took advantage of this privilege on Saturday and did alright. It took me over 2 hours to end up with 2 contact proof sheets and 2 prints, though. Some perfectly good print paper was lost to my lack of attention, turned nearly black because I forgot to change the amount of light coming down. That paper isn't cheap either, which compounded my frustration. But, sometimes you just gotta learn the hard way. Now I know what to absolutely make sure I remember. (The prints came out pretty well once I got everything right.) We're going back in during class today, and I'm hoping to make another print.

     Along the same vein, I did my first ever photo shoot over Spring Break. The idea to use some of my dojo friends actually came from another friend's profile picture. My friend is in his gi (uniform), and it's a panning shot of him punching.

le example of ye olde panning shot

One of the prints we absolutely have to have is a panning shot, so I thought, "Why not get some of my friends with swords to go at it? I'll get a good shot out of that, for sure." And the photo shoot just evolved from there. We went up to Monte Sano state park and set up in the Japanese tea garden they've got. The story for the shoot wound up being pretty exciting, mostly because none of us knew how it was going to end. We started off with the idea that they were ninjas from different employers, but had been given the same task: retrieve the scroll. Obviously, only one can succeed. Which one will it be? (I ran out of film halfway through, so I used one of their iPhones for the rest of the shoot. Those photos are up on Facebook, and you can see them there if we're 'friends.')

     I didn't get any clear sense of which mission trip to go on - or even whether I should go - so I decided to focus on getting a job instead. But I'll be keeping my eyes and ears open, both for opportunities and for God's prompting.

     Ukulele practice goes as it has. I've got about 3 songs I can play pretty well, so I focus on those to practice that whole sing-and-strum-at-the-same-time thing. It's not too bad when I'm doing my own strum, but now I'm practicing other kinds of strum patterns, and it's almost like starting over. Plus I'm trying to transition away from using the pick. It's challenging, but I enjoy it and it'll be worth it. :)

     I haven't picked up Lord of Chaos since that last update in February, but I did recently start re-reading the Hunger Games trilogy. It's been over a year since I last read them, so I figured I'm overdue, especially after watching the movie and realizing how much I've forgotten. It's as good as it was before, even though I'm able to stop in the middle of crucial scenes now. (Seriously. Katniss was just starting to run from the wall of fire, and I remembered something I had to do, so I put it down and just left. No way that would've happened the first time through.)

     My Blockbuster free trial ran out about a month ago, and I just now got all 3 DVDs that were out sent back in. (I was still within the grace period, I think.) It was great watching them. Hopefully I'll have enough time to start another free trial over the summer, so I can finish out my list. In the meantime, I still have Netflix instant streaming, and there are plenty of movies on that list. But, the odds I'll watch them before summer are pretty slim; my suitemates and I are going through all 6 Star Wars movies (in order of release), and our schedules dictate that we only do one a week. So it'll be finals week before we finish them, if we keep that pace. (I'm hoping we'll get an extra one in every once in a while. Love those movies!!)
     And, of course, I went and saw the midnight premier of The Hunger Games. Definitely gonna have to catch it again as a matinee or in the dollar theater. Such a great movie, and it handles the book's details so well.

     Now that I've bridged the gap between a month-and-a-half ago and now, I can say a little bit about what's going on currently and toward the future! (Next week's update won't be so packed, I promise.) Today I sent out my cover letter and resume to a temp agency my granddad is connected with. This seems like a pretty promising door, so I'm excited to hear back. The plan for now is to work back home in Huntsville as an administrative assistant or technical writer (or something else, if a door unexpectedly opens), save up some money, and go to Nashville or Raleigh for an internship in a publication house in 5-10 years.
     Upon further thought, I've decided to not make a third blog just yet. Keeping up with two will be enough work as it is, especially as the semester starts to pick up speed and barrel in toward finals. So, if I have any poems or short stories, I'll just post them on my deviantART page; if you're interested in reading them, you can do so there. (It's mostly Dragonball Z fan-fiction right now, plus one recent poem. Yes, I'm a nerd. I embrace it.)
     The budo blog has been updated with bits from posts on this blog (those bits are now replaced with either brief summaries or links to the full post on the other blog). The first current, [hopefully] thoughtful post will go up on Wednesday. I have no idea what I'm going to talk about yet, so it'll be a surprise for all of us! :)

     One last random thing. I've decided I'm going to dress as Katniss Everdeen, heroine of the Hunger Games trilogy, for Halloween this year. I'm already growing out my hair; now I have a goal! And that should keep me from chopping it all off again. ...Maybe.

Peace out!