What planet are YOU from?

Disney tweeted this pic. It's SSOOOOOOOO cute!


http://www.flickr.com/photos/annathered/3126697987/in/set-72157611437641921/

Life Goal #43

I have an unofficial list of life goals (that likely isn't anywhere near 43+ entries long, but as it grows and I haven't written it...who knows. Check back in 50 years). I want to go to all 7 continents. I want to go to all Disneyland parks. I want to visit all the countries that I wish to see (read: most European countries, Australia/New Zealand & the Mexican Riviera). And, I want to see lighting come down from the sky and hit something (preferably nowhere near me, but somewhere close enough to me that I can see it). Like, I would be THRILLED to see this in person:

Yes, I said thrilled. All I've ever seen is "sheet lightning" (not sure if that's it's official name or not, but it's the boring kind where all you see is a flash of light, as if God turned flipped the on-switch on then off). I like the above "finger lightning." It looks so pretty, powerful and majestic! I don't know, maybe I'm just weird. I used to be super interested (and am to a certain extent) in storms. I remember loving the movie Twister, esp. the part where they're in the eye of the storm. I used to think it'd be really cool to be in the eye of a storm and imagined it sometimes. I also did a report on hurricanes once, and they too I found really cool (again, especially the eye of the storm). Storms are still interesting to me now, but their destructive side sticks out more in my brain than their cool side...except for lighting! Having never met or known someone (or known someone who knows someone...or having any connection at all to anyone) who was hit by lightning, I am fully allowed to be fascinated by it and be not that scared of it. How often are people hit by lighting? Hmm, let's see...well, what do you know?!?! According to the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), "Lightning is one of the most underrated severe weather hazards, yet ranks as the second-leading weather killer in the US. More deadly than hurricanes or tornadoes, lighting strikes in America each year kill an average of 73 people and injure 300 others." Well, you learn something new every day! Apparently liking hurricanes or tornadoes makes more sense; I should distrust lightning more. Too bad, lightning is cooler. Still want to see it come down from the sky like in the picture...from somewhere safe, of course. Not from a tree. =D

It's a continent, not a country...

So I was thinking yesterday about how we have a tendency to lump all of Africa as one, as if it were a country. Maybe this is because of Europe (which we also lump together) or something. Or maybe because similar things seem to happen there (genocides and tribal violence/war, poverty)...not really sure, but it's really a continent, not a country (I was thinking about this because a guy was generalizing saying "African". For example, he said he learned how to do "the African handshake" and was telling that to a girl from Ghana who didn't really seem to know what exactly he was talking about...). So I decided to see just how big Africa as a continent is (because often things are much bigger than you'd think. Last year, when I found out the Australia is BIGGER than the continental US, I was completely shocked. In my mind it was maybe the size of Texas...geography is (obviously) not my strong point), and I found this map:

SO interesting, right? I hadn't really thought about it other than knowing that it starts above the equator and goes pretty far down...which doesn't say all that much (well, I guess so. It says that it's long. But you can't forget the wide-ness...). Well, there's your geography lesson for the day. You're welcome.

Spring Student Symposium: an alliteration!

Today was the Fourth Annual Spring Student Symposium. Seeing as it's the fourth, I guess it started my freshman year, which explains why I didn't really know what it was until this year, and I only know what it is now because several of my friends presented today. So, what is it, you ask? Well, it's a day where students present their work -either their theses (for seniors, mainly) or class projects. There are talks and there are also posters (the poster section resembled a science fair). So, I went to several talks to support my presenting friends. It was SO interesting! I kinda wish I'd gone before, but oh well. You see, when you ask people what their thesis is about, they'll give you a really short, somewhat generalized version of their thesis. In the presentations, they had about 15 minutes to talk about it, and I realized that their theses were SO MUCH MORE than what they said (which makes sense. I mean, a thesis is what, 50-100 pages? And one or two semesters of work (not including those who did research during the summer or while abroad) A two-sentence explanation/over-view obviously can't do it justice). So at first I went really only to support people, but I found their presentations all really interesting (some that were in econ or otherwise out of my field went a little over my head when it got to graphs and numbers and everything, but I got the general gist of the research and understood the conclusions). So yeah, it was all really impressive.

On another note, I saw another great aspect of the kindle. Because of it's nature, it's really great if you like to read on a cardio machine. You see, if you're trying to ellipticize or something while reading, normally you need to either continually hold the book (no fun and often difficult) or you have to come up with some creative and still problematic solution (I've seen people keep the book open by putting a scrunchie/rubber band around the book then around the monitor to hold it steady. But when you have to change the page? No fun). With a Kindle, all these problems are solved. It's flat, so it can stay on the little ledge on the machine perfectly fine without rubber bands, and you press a button to turn the page, so the page-turning issue is gone. You see?!?! Now, if I could read on an elliptical, I'd be set....(I can't because I try to essentially sprint all the time so it'd be too bumpy to read and I'd inevitable slow down as I tried to really read the book)

Mulch & Treasure

So, I went to the grocery store last weekend and what should I find stacked up outside the store? Mulch! Now, I really don't remember ever seeing this before. Mulch...at the grocery store. It seems weird. I'm there to get ice cream and bottled frappuccinos...and mulch? Hmm. Seems like a gardening store item to me. Well, that's Vermont for ya! Well, I guess it comes with spring? (which it really is here. The trees are blooming, the grass is green, it's been nice weather, and my allergies are here (not that I like allergies, just that I get them in the spring. I'm fully armed with both Claritin and Zyrtec)).

So, that answers the "mulch" question from the title. Now you're wondering about the treasure aren't you? You aren't?!?! What kind of imaginary friend are you? Well, just out of spite I'm going to tell you anyways. This weekend I watched Treasure Planet (oh, I am LOVING renting from iTunes). Not a Disney "classic", but a movie I had never seen. I decided to watch it because I just recently bought the song "I'm still here" by John Rzeznik which I remember really liking even then (when the movie came out). They played it on Disney, and I had it on Napster, which, of course, is no more (or, it exists, but you have to pay for it and why get that when I can have iTunes which works so magically with my Mac and my iPod?). All this to say, it was really cute. I liked it. Is it my favorite movie? No. Do I plan on buying it? Not really, no. But I enjoyed watching it. It's made me wonder about the original book (Treasure Island) which I've never given much thought to...must Spark Note it. Anyways, here's a scene from the movie (where the song plays) that I really liked (it's very bittersweet): Watch Me!

Thirdly, I have recently discovered DisneyChannel.com. I really like it when it works (which it doesn't always. Sometimes it stays a black screen and won't show any show or at least not the one I'm trying to get it to show. It's very frustrating. But when it works, it's great!). It's annoying that they'll show you the exact same commercial like 2 or 3 times during the same show (which is what, maybe 22-23 minutes?), but oh well. I also discovered that they have some episodes in other languages. I remember seeing the ads for that on Disney Channel whenever it came out, but I forgot. So now, I have discovered it, which is good because I can watch some shows in French and in Spanish (and German or Mandarin if I new them...where's Italian, I might ask?). Downside? There are a total of 3 episodes translated (at least when I was last on there). I think 5 would be better....oh well. Also, I wonder -who's the target audience for the foreign language shows? You see, the site is in English. It says "French episodes"...in English. The commercials are in English. So I'm just wondering. I went onto the Disney Channel France website, and unless their hidden somewhere in the website (sometimes I have trouble finding things on websites, which is why I LOVE the "search this website" boxes. SO much easier to find something that's likely been buried in a website for whatever reason), they don't have videos you can watch online. Does that make sense? Americans can watch shows in French online but the French can't? I must be missing something...maybe? I'll check again. It'd be SUPER awesome if they had an equal amount of episodes available on their website. I can find other language versions of shows on YouTube, but then you have to watch them in 3 segments (aka. wait for three sections to load, hope that the people who put them up did a good job so you don't miss parts of the show or anything, hope the quality is good enough, etc), and that's no fun.

5 more weeks, Computer. 5 more weeks.

Let me introduce you to my computer. It's almost 4 years old. It crashed last year so I had to get a new hard drive. It stopped being able to read & burn CDs, got fixed, then started up again. It now takes DVDs really slowly and makes a lot of noise, but it can still read & burn them (thank goodness! What ever would I do without the Sims?!?!). I put Leopard on it (which is newer than my computer) in order to play the Sims 3, found out that I didn't have enough RAM to play it anyways, but it was too late at that point (without wiping my hard drive) to take Leopard off, so my computer is simply slower than it used to be and I was only able to put one expansion pack of the Sims on it (I miss university...I just have seasons now). It makes A LOT of noise when it's inactive, so when I bring it to class in order to have an article that I didn't print available during the class, it's super loud in the relative quietness of the classroom. It had 224.7 MB of space left on Sunday, but after deleting almost all of my photos in iPhoto (don't worry. I made DVDs of them and have some on flash drives), I now have 3.88 GB of space (will have about 1GB more soon. I rented a movie from iTunes, so after I watch it & it goes away, I'll have some space left). That, my friends, is my computer. I sincerely hope that it lasts the rest of the semester. 4 weeks of classes, 1 week of finals (or rather, final paper-writing), and then if it dies, who cares? I'm ready for a new computer anyways (so that I can have Microsoft Office 2008 (and therefore docx & pptx), the Sims 3 (which has been sitting all alone in it's box at home), all the other programs I didn't have the space to put on this one after Leopard (Adobe Photoshop, Print Shop, etc), and an upgrade! =D But really, it'll be time).

Why did I tell you all of this? Well, for 2 reasons. 1) I just spent about an hour burning picture DVDs and doing my best to open up space on my computer. 2) I wanted to back up this picture that I got from the Disney Parks Blog a few weeks ago:

It's a really cool picture isn't it! It's of flowers in front of Fantasyland. I tried to find the link of the original photo (more so that no one thinks I'm claiming that this is my picture than for any particular other reason. Really, the blog entry was the picture and maybe 1-2 sentences about it), but couldn't so...yeah. A photographer at Disneyland...In case my computer crashes, it is officially backed up.

The Big One

So, the recent earthquake in SoCal (well, centered in Mexico and apparently went as far as Arizona?) made me think about this movie that I had to watch in Middle School. It was about earthquakes in the LA area. So, according to the earthquake scientist people or the geologists or whoever they were, there is apparently a sizable earthquake in the LA area every 200 years or so. Well, at the time (I think it was 7th grade?), SoCal was due. It's been over 200 years since the last big earthquake. The recent earthquake has made me think of that movie again, because TBO (The Big One) might be coming up soon...I hope not, but those movies. Seriously. WHY do they show those kinds of movies to young impressionable middle schoolers? "Wait...how'd you go from the earthquake movie to 'movies' -plural?" Well, there was one other such movie that I had to watch. The bridge movie. I don't remember being afraid of bridges until I had to see that movie, which is made up entirely of bridges gone wrong -collapsing, flapping in the wind, etc. Why such a movie is shown to kids I may never know, but I definitely have had bridge-issues since then. I don't like walking or driving over bridges, especially wooden ones (which, interestingly, were not the main type bridges that failed, but still). Eek. I simply don't feel safe on a bridge where planks move and creak or where there's space between the planks (and therefore you can see to the bottom -wherever you don't want to fall to your death)...yeah, to avoid. Big stone bridges don't bother me as much, in general...anyways. I'm deviating. All of this was to say, we should watch different movies in middle school. Maybe a Disney movie or something...?

Happy Easter!!!

More than bunny rabbits, more than colored eggs...

At the crack of dawn on Sunday, the women came to the tomb carrying the burial spices they had prepared. They found the entrance stone rolled back from the tomb, so they walked in. But once inside, they couldn't find the body of the Master Jesus.

They were puzzled, wondering what to make of this. Then, out of nowhere it seemed, two men, light cascading over them, stood there. The women were awestruck and bowed down in worship. The men said, "Why are you looking for the Living One in a cemetery? He is not here, but raised up. Remember how he told you when you were still back in Galilee that he had to be handed over to sinners, be killed on a cross, and in three days rise up?" Then they remembered Jesus' words.

-Luke 24:1-8 (The Message)

Adventures in Spantalian.

It's funny. "Spanglish" is pretty much the only combination of two languages that has a name that makes sense. Of course, it could just be that most other languages don't mix in the same way, especially Spanish and Italian? I suppose. Anyways, I have discovered something. My Spanish is SUPER influenced by Italian. My French has not been influenced at all, really. But my Spanish...both Italian AND French has invaded it. I'm not sure, but I think it's because of the frequency that each language is used. I have Italian for an hour 5 times a week, French for an hour 4 times a week, and Spanish for 3 hours once a week. Really, I think that's a HUGE factor. If I'm speaking Italian everyday, and Spanish once a week...I might start going to the Spanish language house again (especially now that it's warming up. I'm not big on going back outside if it's cold or raining or anything. I really only leave Ross then if I absolutely must for a class or something. Lazy, I know. But we Californians like to hang out in our flip-flops and are not at all content to be forced to wear boots to go somewhere if we don't have to. It's true! ). But anyways, my Spanish is currently Spantalian. I have to keep auto-correcting myself. It's ridiculous.

P.S. As of Tuesday, I have finished all scheduled oral presentations for French for the semester (and therefore, FOREVER. Not that I might not for my job have to give a presentation in French, I suppose, but it's still monumental. The last graded presentations on boring/depressing literature...yessssssssss). Bad news: 3 more for Spanish.

On you FV farm, you can plant...nachos? Hmm...interesting. Didn't know you could grow them by planting tortilla chips. Gotta try it sometime. =D

A pretty hilarious SNL skit about Team Jacob v. Team Edward: