Here, have a quickie...

This post will have to be hasty, sadly, as I'm already up late (ok, it's only 10:30pm, but i'm already sleepy, and my first class is 9am tomorrow :D).

Ugh. You know how you do that thing where you think of all these great things to blog about during the day, but by the time you sit down to write, the idea has flown away with no hope of returning. Like, when you take a bird out of its cage when it's not trained to not fly away and the cage is outside*... Yeah. I'm having one of those days. I can't remember what I used to do, but I know I was better at remembering stuff to write about. So, the bloggers among you out there... what are your techniques for holding onto noteworthy blogging topics?

I was going to do a whole lot more today than I ended up doing. I was woken by the rain coming down hard, and was lucky enough to get my window shut before it started pelting in my general direction. As for the rest of the day... I had porridge for the first time this year, I tidied my room on-and-off, so now it's semi-presentable. I still have heaps of organising to do; my desk is still covered in a moderate layer of junk/cd's/projects in a state of mid-completion. Once all that gets done, though, everything should be sweet.

My sister, who returned to school this week, was decorating her new timetable and student diary for the year, and requested to see my old ones. I took the opportunity to peruse them myself, and I gotta say, I was pretty dang awesome back in the day. My year 11 and 12 student diaries were the bomb. I could never have decorated my 8/9/10 diaries though, as I was in a class of snobby overachievers, and weekly diary checks were pretty much mandatory. Year 11 and 12 I had rehearsals every morning that checks were conducted, so being a creatively frustrated young artist, I made the most of the opportunity in front of me. I'll post pictures or maybe a video** of the offending articles soon. Seriously, I was some kind of genius.

ANYway, time for me to go get my act together, so tomorrow morning goes smoothly :)

Nail colour: Princessa Number 126: Oscar Evening
Subscribers: Still 26. Didn't see that one coming. -_-

Have a good day/afternoon/night guys. Hopefully I'll see you tomorrow.



*this actually happened once to my sister. We'd had this yellow budgie for like, three weeks, and she absent-mindedly took it out of its cage to hold it, but forgot it was outside. In the immortal words of my younger sister, "Tweety did fly away easily"

**but not too soon. We have capped internet here, see, so until the new month starts, no uploady for me. :( meh.

Obligated and Loving It.

Well, well, well. Here we are again. Day three of my self imposed punishment week. I must say, I am glad I imposed this upon myself, because now I am remembering how easy it is, and indeed, how fun it is to blog on a regular basis. I really want to keep this up for a long time to come. It shouldn't be too difficult to manage either, seeing as most of my course work will be on computer. ^_^ I hope you guys are looking forward to a fun year as much as I am :).

Right now, our house cat is sleeping on the floor in my room. It's rather adorable, yet not out of the ordinary, as most things she does are adorable. Except marking her territory on the carpet under my computer desk. And waking me at four in the morning. Other than that though, 100% irresistibly adorable.

Today was pretty good. I was VERY tired, but I woke up surprisingly early. Like, early enough that I was relieved that I could hit the snooze button without feeling guilty. I did get up though, and drank herbal tea (cranberry, raspberry, strawberry flavour. Best. Infusion. Ever.). I promptly got dressed and headed out to the bus stop. Halfway up the street, my lovely neighbours who were going to the shopping centre I work at stopped by the road to give me a lift. I think I scored the world's best neighbours. I was relieved, then, because I didn't have to rush to the bus stop in the heat, or run the risk of not making the bus and being obscenely late. To celebrate arriving at work a little early, I went to the food court and treated myself to hotcakes. They didn't have any plastic forks though, so I headed in to work to use the ones in the tearoom. Just as I got there, they were opening for the day, so sadly, I had to leave my scrumptious hotcakes and start work. One and a half long hours later, I was back in the tearoom eating breakfast/morning tea. Man, those hotcakes hit the spot. So good. Work was long though. No anecdotes of which to speak (like how I didn't end with a preposition there? Yeah. I got english skillz :P). Just a lot of hours punctuated by very little interesting matter at all. Although, one of the new girls (her name is Courtney) and I have established that we are pretty much the same person. Our mutual love of Jonas-Brothers-of-the-nineties-teeny-bopper-boy-band, Hanson cemented this theory. Remember Hanson? Mmm bop, doo be da ba doo op, etc? I was pretty much in love with Zac, the youngest one (I was eight, ok. Shush yo mouth) because not only was he this amazing kid who was world famous, (as far as I was concerned), talented (he played the freaking drums, ok), and he was only twelve. To top it all off, he wrote and recorded a song on Hanson's debut album to a girl called Lucy, and that just played BEAUTIFULLY to my eight-year-old fantasy.

ANYway*, Not much really noteworthy happened since. So, I just filled a blog post with "today was boring. it was slow. I was bored. Nothing happened." Are you still awake, faithful reader? If you are, congratulations. I was sure that would bore at least ninety percent of you to sleep.

It's not really noteworthy, but since I have nothing else to say, I'm going to tell you about this. Yesterday, after orientation, I bought myself a Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince calendar for 75% off. I thought this was awesome. Apparently my parents didn't agree. They both came into my room, on separate occasions, and told me that "that stuff is occult" and "you're back-sliding". Um, correct me if i'm wrong, but wasn't the whole Harry-Potter-Is-Evil over like, five years ago? Or longer, possibly, I can't be sure... Anyway, this really bugged me. It's not a big deal, but it bugged me.
Controversy aside, I really like this calendar. I doubt I will be using it for practical purposes much this year, but I'll probably end up keeping it for years to come. I did the same with a Pirates of the Caribbean calendar I received for christmas a few years back. I reached May, and there was a gorgeous picture of a brooding William Turner. Needless to say, I didn't change my calendar again for the rest of the year** XD

It's late now. Time for sleep. I was going to watch The Holiday, seeing as it is my last night to stay up late and do holiday things, as term starts the day after tomorrow. :D.'

So, have a good weekend, guys. May it be less boring than mine so far, anyway.

Hopefully I'll see you tomorrow.

Burritos: 1. I don't see this figure climbing any higher any time soon either. I've gone off them a bit.
Nail colour: Au Naturel, except for the thumb which features a new colour I tried at work today, and subsequently bought. I think it was called Oscar Evening (misspelled, it actually says "eveing") The brand is Princessa (some cheap brand) and the actual colour is a deep greyish purple. I love it.
Subscribers: Still 26. Like I expected it to rise in the space of one day in which I did not post a video.

The picture is one of my sister and I messing around on PhotoBooth... again... um, enjoy?

*I'm starting to think that any blog post on this blog is not complete without me starting a paragraph with ANYway...

**True story

Keeping my word, and Starting Anew

At long last. I said I'd be back today, and every day this week, and here I am. I am yet to return each day for the rest of this week, as those days have yet to arrive. This is beyond my control, malheureusement*, as I lack the ability to bend the time-space continuum.

ANYway...

The purpose of THIS post was to tell you ALL about my day.

Being too lazy to ACTUALLY check back and see what I wrote yesterday, I am relying purely on my memory when I say "I don't think I mentioned anything about what my plans were for today. So, I shall tell you now.

Today was my orientation day for my Diploma course in Graphic Design. I am really freaking excited. I woke up about 45 minutes later than intended, which in turn caused me to be ten minutes late for the start of orientation. No biggie** though, seeing as it was just your basic run-of-the-mill Here-are-our-safety-procedures-which-we-are-required-by-law-to-inform-you-of-but-couldn't-be-arsed-going-into-detail-about kind of speech. I didn't miss much. I did miss out on a seat though, as the auditorium was already packed. Then, after they showed us step by step how to enrol online (which I managed to figure out on my own over a month ago) (by this stage I was starting to think that these guys don't really give us much credit in the intelligence department. I took this as my cue to zone out). After about an hour of this, we split into our different courses and were introduced to our teachers and tutors. Again, more of your run-of-the-mill stuff. They then began a long process of taking headshots of each of us as a resource for them to help put names to faces. Because Graphic Design is a huge subject, this took ages. Also, there were other levels of study that went before Diploma students (Certificate 4, STEPS program highschool students) so it was a long wait. I amused myself by spinning and rolling on my computer chair. It was an effective in passing the time, so hey. I am still yet to make any actual friends, but there's plenty of time for the whole getting-to-know-you rigmarole. Then, after the photographing took place, I was done. So I went off to explore the campus that the teachers were too lazy to take us on a tour of. This restored my faith in their faith in our independence. So, where did I go, but the four-storeys-of-pure-nerdy-delight library. I love libraries. This one in particular has kept every issue of a foreign design magazine which I love but am too poor to afford, so I now have them all (nearly) at my very fingertips. *excitement* There is also a section dedicated to music. Not necessarily for study purposes, in fact, they said it was for our enjoyment. Guess who's going to be borrowing*** a heck of a lot of these? This girl right here. Man, My itunes will rock by the time I graduate :D. Then I figured out the printing system, printed my timetable, and left. The rest of the day was unmemorable.

Ok, upon revision none of that was really all that memorable either, but hey. It was fun to write. And that's kind of the point, isn't it? Plus, memorable or not, now I can look back and say "oh that's right. I remember that day at orientation now". And I have a certified record of the severity of my true nerdiness****.

I want to put some sort of count, or tag at the bottom of my posts now, hayleyghoover style. Burrito count? No, I don't eat burritos. Nail colour? I didn't wear nail polish today, though, I could just call that "au naturel". Subscribers? I don't post enough videos for that to really be of interest to anyone. I know we've already been through this, but I can't remember what I said/am too lazy to check. What kind of things should I put at the end of my posts?

I'll do those ones anyway, for now.

Burritos: 1 (from Oporto's. Was so full I couldn't finish it)
Nail colour: Au Naturel.
Subscribers: 26 (up 2 from last time I looked. I haven't posted on my personal channel in months. Where do they keep coming from?)

Maybe the subscriber one will encourage me to post videos on my channel? Would any of you like to see that? I actually tried challenging myself last year, saying I'd reward myself if I got to 100 video uploads with a Flip HD Camcorder. I. Want. One. Reckon I should give it a go this year?

That's enough for tonight. Hopefully I'll see you tomorrow.

*It's FRENCH for Yoghurt! I mean, for 'unfortunately'. :P You know Yoplait actually convinced me as a kid that 'yoplait' was the actual french word for yoghurt. Imagine my embarrassment when I discovered in class that the ACTUAL word for yogurt in french was 'yaourt'. Tricky marketing people. *tsk tsk* I bet you didn't know that. You learn something new every day... unless of course, you already did know that. In which case, you should probably go somewhere else to learn your something-new for today. Sorry.

**Holy snood, Google Chrome recognises biggie as a legit dictionary word. No squiggly red underline. I'm impressed.

***And by borrowing, you of course know I mean pirating. I like pirating. I mean, stealing music is bad, and I don't condone it, but when you call it Pirating, that means I can officially call myself a Pirate. Now, that makes me feel badass.

****So apparently, Google Chrome recognises biggie as a legit dictionary word, but NOT nerdiness... um, did I miss something?

You don't even need to say it.

I know. I know. For all the times I mentioned* how much I love blogging in my last post, and for all the times I have resolved to blog more (because I just love it so damned much) I haven't done a whole lot of blogging.

I have been using Tumblr a little. I will discuss this in further depth when I am ready I suppose. I keep trying to set deadlines for myself, but, as you can well see, that didn't really work too well now, did it? I was thinking at the end of the month, or on the first day of a new month, but since the first of February is this Monday, and also the day I recommence my studies, sadly, I don't foresee a deadline met. Also, that doesn't give me long to make some decent use of Tumblr, because as yet, I have yet to post more than ten times. Considering just how easy it is to post, and indeed, repost on Tumblr, this is really just lazy. I know, every time I say this it loses impact.

BUT. My studies require me to do a lot of sitting in front of a computer. I am relatively sure that it won't be too difficult to procrastinate effectively**. I mean, how hard can it possibly be?

So, as per my New Years Resolution, I will be showing this blog more love.

I have more I could write about, but, since I have been so damned bad at this lately, I am thinking it's time for another Punishment Week***. Really, folks. If there is one piece of blogging wisdom I have gained, it is that no blog should be entered into lightly. A blog is more than a page of whim among a million in cyberspace. A blog is a commitment. It's a portal for interaction like no other. Like, on a scale of one to ten, one being Pet Sea Monkeys, ten being Marriage, I'd say a blog is around a six or seven. No joke. With a blog, you're not committing to a virtual page. You are committing beyond that, to each and every reader who reads, and returns to read, your blog. You commit to people.

I haven't been very committed to you guys at all, and for that, I apologise. If you follow me, you probably did it for a reason. Since I lost my blogging mojo, I have lost sight of what it is I write that keeps you, my followers**** returning to my little old page here.

So, aside from forcing myself back into this WONDERFUL habit, I need to know why you read this little virtual piece of me. Is it my random style of writing? Is it my sense of humour*****? Is it... could it be... the endless promises and failures to improve? Readers, I need to get inside your heads. I know this possibly sounds just *slightly* insecure, and maybe it is. Like I said, I've lost my mojo. I need a little help relocating my groove. Then, it should be sweet.

I have a fairly important life stage that I'd like to keep record of. It starts tomorrow, with orientation.

New leaf officially turned.

See you tomorrow.

*and by 'mentioned' i mean 'gushed about'

**now THERE'S two words you rarely see placed next to each other.

***You remember these, don't you? It was, admittedly, a while ago, back in my blogging prime, when I would post diligently every three days. Then, when my diligence slipped, I would PUNISH myself by making myself post every day for a week, on top of my OE3D commitments.

****Ohhh. That makes me feel POWERFUL. My followers. My minions. Oh, the possibilities... muahahahaha...

*****Not likely

Blogging like a BOSS

So, I was browsing Borders a few days before Christmas (it was the 23rd to be exact) with my mother and sister. It was approximately eleven o'clock* at night. A funny time to be browsing the shelves of Borders, say you? The one night of the year the shops DON'T shut, says I.
Anyway, I was browsing away**, when my sister ran up to me and shoved this here bookazine*** into my then-empty hands. She proceeds to inform me that my mother had picked it up to look at, then my sister, knowing me as well as she does, instantly thought to show me. She was very right to show me too, as it contains so very much information on the topic of blogging. Now, I love to blog. It may not seem like it, looking at this here blogspot. True, i haven't shown my blog much love of late, but I still love to blog. Whether microblogging on Twitter, or developing an argumentative essay/reeaallly long rant to post, say, here, I love to pour my heart and soul out in word form into the interwebs. While I may not necessarily always commit to the task as much as I should/would like, I doubt it will ever be something that I abandon altogether. Aren't you guys glad to hear that? You should be... uh, that is to say, I would really really like it if that were the case *ahem*.

Being something that I love to do, blogging is an ability that I enjoy improving. So, naturally after seeing this, I whined to my mother, asking why she had picked it up in the first place, because now I had to buy it. There really was no way out of it. And so, I parted with twenty-five hard-earned dollars, and the bookazine became mine. As it turns out, it contains lots and lots**** of information about the different kinds of blogs available. Everything from Wordpress to Twitter has some sort of mention, and they're all assessed and compared. Loving blogging as much as I do, it made me realise just how little I know about the world I love so much (the world of blogging, that is xD)

So, I'm going on a kind of quest this year. I will be crash-testing all the different blogs listed in this here bookazine. Not that I don't already love Blogger. I do. It's just that, I made my blog here without so much as thinking about doing it anywhere else. They say all blog types have their advantages and disadvantages, but you never really know what's best for you until you try them all.

I will continue to post here. In fact, I'll probably use this blog as my home base, to keep you all in the loop. I've already ticked Blogger and Twitter off my list. Next: Tumblr. I've actually already set up a Tumblr account. I will probably report back here in about a week and let you guys know how it's going. In the meantime, if you already have one yourselves, follow my blog here

Happy blogging!


*Don't you just love the word "o'clock"? No one will explain what exactly goes between o and clock, but the apostrophe must stand for something, right? Nevertheless, every time I say it, I feel very piratey... although that might have something to do with me changing my Facebook language to English - Pirate, and recently completing a POTC marathon with my sister... *ponders*

**I browse like a BOSS. Especially in Borders.

***Like a magazine, but made with awesome instead of suck.

****and LOTS

NEW YEARS and stuff...

So it's that time again.
Time to take stock, reset goals and all that lovely stuff.
So. Here Goes.

In 2009 I:
- Took a gap year (again)
- Turned 20.
- Worked towards items essential for my future (Macbook, car, etc)
- Bought a MacBook Pro (writing this post on the lovely machine right now)
- Decided what I wanted to do with my life (finally)
- Made friends both IRL and here online
- Joined endless websites on a whim, some of which lay completely forgotten about
- Attempted NaNoWriMo for the first time, and wrote 13000 words worth of my first novel
- Read more books than I could care to keep track of
- Attempted to keep a diary for every day (this lasted approximately 40 days)
- Attempted to blog every three days (again, this petered out after a few months)
- Was accepted into a Diploma of Graphic Design program starting this year (i.e. 2010)
- Did not rejoin my orchestra
- Did not take violin lessons
- Did not take dancing lessons
- Joined a collab channel on YouTube

This list is by no means exhaustive. It's just all I can remember right now.

In 2010, I resolve to:
- Rejoin my orchestra (with whom I will travel to Shang-Hai in june/july), and get back into dancing (violin lessons probably won't happen)
- Continue saving for a car
- Pick up diary writing again, only this time establish a specific purpose for writing, other than 'making myself'
- Get back into blogging. I miss this, guys. I think I forgot just how easy it is.
- Focus on my course, and not let trivial things pull me back from achieving my full potential
- Learn from my mistakes
- Get into the habit of finishing my projects, or at the very least seeing them through to as-close-to-completion-as-they-will-get

It's really late so I will leave it there.
Happy 2010 guys