It's exam week.

And I've created the near-perfect storm of exams.

Tomorrow I have a real exam for COM 2000, then I have to turn in a take-home exam for Environmental Tech Whatever (so that's what I'll be working on today). Thursday I have three exams. Three. In one day. Grand total of five exams. I haven't had to take this many since high school.

So yeah, this is me disappearing until Friday. Sorry!

Friday Fragments

1) It was the last week of classes this week, which means there are only 67 days until my last day of school. Ever. (Nope, no plans to go to graduate school.) The *grin* emoticon doesn't do this justice, so... ^________^

2) I've been working on this new story called "Evan's Almost Dead Again" (for now). Not completely obsessively because school keeps getting in the way, but it's been fun.

3) Just curious. Anybody here into fandom? Cuz I just discovered this, frankly, really entertaining Livejournal called Fandom Secrets, which is kinda like PostSecret except with... fandom.

4) And because a post just isn't complete without some sort of visual...


5) Happy Easter! Hope you all have an excellent Sunday doing whatever you do. I think my dad's side of the family is getting together Sunday evening for dinner. Plus we have church earlier in the day. We're not very exciting people. :P (Though church activities can be exciting. Like that time with the grill exploding into fire and almost melting my friend's face off. No exaggeration.)

Have a good weekend, everybody!

Character Q&A

You know those questionnaires about your characters that kinda float around the internet, and they're supposed to be really fun and give you insight about your character?

Yeah. I've always found them kind of irritating. I don't know if any of you feel that way. But I picked up a very similar exercise from Script Frenzy a couple years ago that helps just as much.

1) Take a Facebook survey. Any Facebook survey.

2) Answer the questions as your main characters.

3) Happiness ensues.

For example:

102) Your best friend of the opposite sex likes you, what do you do?
Tal: *Hand shoots up in the air* You JUMP THEM. Until the writer says, "Nooo, Tal, your boy is a WEIRD boy, a very weird boy who would have a heart attack if you did that." So then you just tease and flirt and hope he gets the hint, but then he's too big of a chicken to admit that he loves you-
Sim: Um.
Tal: -so you keep trying and trying, even though you start doubting yourself, and then when he's taken away-
Sim: *Full on frontal attack*
Tal: ...Oh yeah. That's what you do. 

Emerald and Pyro: *Exchange look*
Emerald: I thought you used it to make a plan to take over the middle school.
Pyro: Thanks for that... using me for your own selfish gain...
Emerald: It was Hydro!
Hydro: And thank you for your feminine wiles. *Smirk* And you too, Emerald!

:D It's a lot of fun.

I'm sorry. I am so, so sorry.

Very short post today. Er, tonight. I was going to tell you about this website, but... I got a little sidetracked...

I think you'd better see it for yourself and just experience the phenomenon.

I'm sorry.

Friday Fragments - We're All Winners Edition

I got the website wrong yesterday. It's not random.com, it's random.org. WELL. After doing magical things, we have a winner for the book giveaway. First, thanks to everybody who entered. It was a lot of fun reading your comments (although I'm way too scared of that post to reply to them all individually, sorry).

Without further ado.

Can I get a drum-roll?



Thank you. And the winner is... Sarah Reads Too Much! I'll be sending you an email by the end of the day, but if I don't hear back by Monday, I'm just going to assume you don't want the book anymore and choose another winner.

In other news. Allow me to fill the rest of this post with awesome YouTube videos and delay the very special episode until tomorrow.







Have a good weekend, everyone!

Autism Awareness Giveaway

Just a quick reminder in doodle form. Cuz you all know how I'm pretty much smitten with doodles.

Oh yes.

Oh my WOW, people.

I am now intimidated by the number of comments on Monday's post. It's kind of amazing how many kind of obscure lines got thrown out there.

Just to clarify. The post/contest will be closed to comments at 11:59 EST tomorrow night AKA 4/14. Or whenever Doctor Who finishes on PBS/WGVU. (Oh yes.)

Friday's going to be a Very Special Episode Post. So today, you get whatever the heck this is (just for reference, this was written in a cootie catcher). Because sometimes it's fun to do things a little differently.

Strangers
"Hey, 3:15 Guy."
"...What?"
"That's what I call you in my head. 3:15 Guy. Cuz you always come here at 3:15."
"Oh." Beat. "My name's Rory."
"Mine's Kaleigh."
"Can I have a root beer float?"
"Oh. Yeah!"

Friends
[Insert picture of Rory and Kaleigh here. Actually, you know what?]

Good enough.

Maybe.
   That's a good word for this.


Not Enough
"So... you haven't been around lately."
"Yeah, just don't have much time."
Beat.
"...Usual?" Read: Missed you.
"Yep." Read: You too.

Beginnings
"I need to ask you something."
"Yeah?"
"Do you like..."
"..."
"...Root beer floats?" This is code for someone.
"Do you?"
"...Well, isn't it obvious?"

--

Yeah, it's kind of open-ended, but it was fun trying to fit in a story on a cootie catcher.

So challenge! If you would like to. Try to write a story in a format other than the typical "Someone said, 'Dialogue,' and then there was prose." fashion. If you do it, just tell me, and I will give you a doodly-type avatar thing.

Autism Awareness Book Giveaway- Closed!

This is my sister Laura.

Stetsons are cool.

This is my sister Laura being hilarious.

My family found out Laura had autism when she was about two years old. She's doing pretty well now, well enough that we think she'll be able to move into a group home eventually. But she's the reason I'm participating in this.

So the book in question is a Book of Legend.

Oh yes.

Oh.

Snap.

Yes.

Bask in its glory, kids.

Bask in its glory.

In all seriousness, though. If you want this book, then all you have to do is reply to this post (as in the one I'm writing/you're reading at the moment) with answers to the following:

1) Are you doing anything for Autism Awareness Month?

2) Are you following this blog?

3) How many lines from The Princess Bride can you think of by yourself? As in: no internet involved. No friends. No family. Just you, soldier.

OK. Go!

EDIT: OH MY GOSH I was in such a rush to get this posted because of this project thing that I totally forgot about autism information. I fail forever. But here it is now.

Autism affects 1 of out 110 children now (it was 1 in 125 two years ago, FYI), and there are four times more boys with autism than girls. It's a spectrum disorder, which basically means that it ranges in severity (you have low-functioning, high-functioning, then everybody in between). There's no cure and nobody is sure what causes it - by the way! If you hear anybody tell you that they've found the thing that causes autism, it's probably not true. Because in all likelihood, it's a combination of biological and environmental factors.

You can find more information here.

Autism Society
Autism Speaks
Autism Research Institute

You can also find the other blogs involved in this week's giveaway here. Thanks everyone who's commented already and so sorry for the info delay!

Friday Fragments

OK. So it's already the 8th. Weird.

1) So last Friday night, I started feeling a little weird. By Sunday, I was totally bed-ridden and felt like I was dying, which explains Monday's post. This lasted well into Wednesday. So yeah.

2) Finally got my hands on If I Stay! It was alright. Not a bad read.

3) The fountains at school are running again, which means spring is officially back. And to prove it, it's supposed to get into the upper 70s (like between 75-78) on Sunday or Monday. :D

4) On the eleventh, the Autism Awareness Book Giveaway is starting. Be excited.

Have a good weekend!

Battling a plague demon.*

*By which I mean I'm horrifically sick and in no state to write a blog thing.

Here's this instead.



Have a good day, everybody.

It's April 1. You know what that means.

It means it's Friday! So here are this week's fragments.

1) It's Autism Awareness Month! (Note the change in banner.)

And there's a book giveaway hop over at the I Am A Reader, Not A Writer blog.



Naturally, I am all over this. Erin at Quitting My Day Job is participating as well. You'll be able to see a full list of all the participating bloggers at the previous link. What book am I giving away? Not sure yet.

2) This makes me laugh. So much.

3) Script Frenzy starts today. I am not going to attempt it this year, and I'll tell you why.
2009 (by myself): 6 pages. Finals happened.
2010 (collaborated with Kassy): 25 pages. Finals happened.
So yeah. I can sense a pattern here. Any of you participating?

Have a good weekend!

Why I Read/Write YA: A Response

Erin at Quitting My Day Job asked in today's post what our high school experience was like and why we read/write YA books.

I went to high school in a relatively small town. Not the smallest by far, but small enough where people tend to remember your name. It was small enough that most everybody understood why it was hilarious that I screamed for five minutes at one of my best friends for a Senior Send-Off skit (I was the quiet one in school; she was the outspoken one).

Summarizing. Freshman year was alright, sophomore year was just OK, junior year was THE BEST EVER ZOMIGOSH!!!1one528@+42*!!~#%!!!one (you will never see me do this again, I promise), and senior year wasn't terrible.



My best friends were, and are, awesome. By the end of senior year, we had like a four-girl-band type of thing going. We even have this AMAZING graduating picture that Kirstin and I call Smartest to Dumbest. Kassy and Steph call it Least Common Sense to Most Common Sense. We're all very mean. :D I don't actually have a copy, so let me doodle it for you. Wow, this post is media-heavy.

Kirstin: Valedictorian, National Honors Society sash thing, Honors cords

Me: National Honors Society sash thing, Honors cords

Steph: Honors cords

Kassy: GRADUATED!

So yeah. But we actually spent most of high school writing this amazing series of short stories called EPSE. It's like if high school were an epic and had 13 main characters. Yeah, we didn't know what the heck we were doing.

I read YA because, well, it's fun to read. When I'm reading more age-appropriate books, I don't feel compelled to binge read them. I've never felt that sort of immediacy with an "adult" book, even Lord of the Rings, which I adore. And with YA, you can talk about a LOT of things. You know what I mean.

Why I write YA.

1) Force of habit. I've always written it. It's like my default setting. :D

2) I'd rather write about high school drama than college drama. (Sometimes I just sit in class and think, "I hate this place, I hate this place, I hate this place, I hate this place...") At least high school drama has hilarity potential.

3) Teenagers with their mood swings, dramatics, shenanigans, and hormones make for doggone entertaining characters. Real Life Example: At the beginning of senior year, my friend Kirstin had a crush on this boy she called the "Sun God". Or something like that. Well, she wasn't wearing makeup one day, and she thought she saw him pass by our cafeteria table. What did she do? She dove under the table and took Kassy with her. It was hilarious.

4) This.

"So, when you and Radar said you were going out to 'get slushies', was that your secret code for getting together and making out?"

Hydro/Radar is my OTP. (Yep. I ship characters I helped create.)

It's story time!

Too exhausted for a proper post. Here's something from the hundred theme challenge. The prompt was Sixth Sense.

--

“Do you have any recurring dreams?”

Evan Lin just wanted to know why Lily Hale painted him in one of her original pieces for their sixth grade art class. In the painting, Evan and Lily were piercing a giant shadow with two glowing swords. Rays of light ran through the shadow like cracks.

In real life, they didn’t really talk that much at all. Usually when they passed each other in the hallway, they just smiled and nodded. When he asked her why she painted him, she just told him to walk with her after school.

And that led to her completely off-the-wall comment about dreams.

Evan replied, “I can never remember my dreams in the first place.” He looked at Lily from the corner of his eye. “Is that what it is?” He frowned and crossed his arms. “…You’ve been dreaming about me?”

Lily shook her head. “It’s not like that. I’ve only had a one dream with you. And I don’t know why you were in it because real life people always stay out of my head at night.”

Evan scratched the side of his head. “What do you mean by that?”

Lily sighed and ran her hands through her curly brown hair. “It’s like when I go to sleep and start dreaming, it’s not quite a dream. It’s like I enter a whole different world that’s just as real as this one. And I know that in dreams, everything seems real until you wake up. But even after I wake up, it’s still incredibly… real. For lack of a better word.” She took a deep breath. “So that’s what makes me think it’s a different dimension.”

“You know you sound crazy, right?” Evan laughed in attempts to lighten the mood.

Lily smiled and nodded. “Yeah, but I think you’re gonna keep listening because you really want to know where you came into play.”

Evan had to admit she was right. “That’s true. So what was that thing we were killing? Was it like that world’s version of Sauron or something?”

Lily shrugged. “I dunno. Like you, it’s a recent development.” She paused to think, then added slowly, “But I don’t think we were killing it.”

Evan stopped on the sidewalk and grabbed Lily’s shoulder. “We had swords. Glowing swords. We were stabbing a huge shadow. How is that not killing a bad guy?” He waved his right hand side to side. “You know what, nevermind. It’s just a dream you had.” He continued walking, but Lily just stood there.

“Um. Actually…”

--

Just the first draft, but yeah.

Have a good day, everybody!

Friday Fragments

Wow, it's already Friday. It appears the timey-wimey-rollercoaster that comes after spring break has set in. (Timey-Wimey-Rollercoaster: Time appears to accelerate and weeks pass before you realize it.)

1) Don't know how I missed this last week, but they cast Katniss in The Hunger Games adaption. I was kind of rooting for this unknown actress on YouTube, but if they say she's good, then I'll trust their decision. Now I guess they're focusing on Peeta.

2) I became Facebook-popular this week with this music video I've been working on to Owl City's "If My Heart Was A House". Two weeks with Paintbrush and Windows Movie Maker. And it's not finished yet.


3) If you're like me, you might occasionally wonder what kinds of delightful stories JK Rowling is cooking up these days. College Humor has an answer.

4) A conversation from Wednesday:
Nurse: So what's your major?
Me: Creative Writing.
Nurse: Oh my gosh, WHY? What can you do with that?
Me: *Stunned laughter*
True story. Have to give her credit for being honest.

Well, have a great weekend, everybody!