Mother

Mother

Picture Dictionary is back! Mother was my word today - apparently the reason that it sounds so similar cross-culturally is because there are root words for it in many of the base languages (mat in Sanskrit and mater in Latin, etc.) according to Word Nerd. I had always wondered about that actually... not sure why.
Other than that, today was slow as all nonsense. School, tennis pictures, paying off items, convincing people to go to tolo... you know, regular stuff. Joshka is back to being a friend of mine [hoorah!] but other than that, no social development. I have got to start doing something creative again.
And, as I sat here in this very state of mind, I got the email.
ScriptFrenzy is in April and the NaNoWriMo people encourage everyone to do it! So I shall... 100 pages of scripted work in 30 days [whoo!] Hopefully this will recharge my creative juices and get me moving on something outside of school. Vikram and My Avatar this Friday will fuel my creative spice, tolo will fuel my energy, and then I can sprint off the blocks and venture into that new type of writing that I have worked with but never tried. Good luck, me!
Anyway, for now life is just a mess of tests and unattractive work opportunities. Thank goodness I have nothing to do today - a little rest period, you know?
Au revoir!

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Fico

Fico

Fico: to flick someone off.

Today is another one of those save-your-bases days; I had a REALLY hectic Tuesday yesterday and am going to try and eliminate some of the easier tasks [because of commitment issues, I can't just give them up, haha].
There will be a detailed report at the end of this week, because I am running out of time and patience at the moment. However, God-willing, we will all shine next week and glow until the embers burn out. Or, at least, we will trail into the darkness quietly.
Have a great Wednesday!

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Leaves

Leaves

So, yesterday Joshka drew a random word for me that I feverishly wrote down as my Picture Dictionary word for that day - and here is the realization!
I am somewhat saving myself from having to post in the evening because I want to work today [isn't that strange?] so I'm hopefully going to get a lot of my theater homework done in the space of time between 5pm and 9pm.
Today is Superstar day and I completely and totally don't know what to do for it. I am often pop culture deficient, if you must know, and so therefore it's somewhat difficult for me to figure out a person to emulate. Oh well, I'll just dress nice and hopefully it'll pass.

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Happy March!

Encratic

I wonder now if Word Nerd is making stuff up - but then again, online dictionaries are not really to be trusted. Hm. I believe I am on a black and white/wide angle craze right now... Odd.
I am now at a might 136.6 pounds! Hoorah! I am doing quite well for myself, I believe. Other than that, the highlights of today were that I wrote part of a story I hadn't opened for the longest time and I washed all my awesome new clothing. Sweet.

Encratic: Abstinent from pleasures of the senses.

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Thither

Thither

This is the point where I realize that editing is a really long process. A really long process.
My class today was extremely enjoyable, however, because of that realization. It really demystified the editing process for me and made it seem like a lot of fun because - as everyone should probably know by now - I am somewhat of a grammar nerd.
We went over sentence-by-sentence edits today amidst other topics, and I want to go learn the grammar rules and etc. now! I have some books on it, but I have not had the time to crack them open yet. Now, at least, I have an excuse to! Hoorah!

Anyway, besides that, the word I got today was thither. These assignments are a lot more interpretive than others and involve a little more editing - which makes me feel more "artsy" as a photographer, haha. I really enjoy it so far because it is a challenge that I'm embarking on [every day!]
When I first started thinking about the word, I was heading out to get my hair cut. As we passed the miniature forests, Da made a comment about the underbrush and how you can see it in winter. So I thought that I would journey out and get that for thither because when I think of it, I think of fairies and forests and mystical things. [I saw a BRB sign by the way, haha! It was amazing - the construction workers put it up in the middle of Redmond. If only I had my camera!] But then, when I got home, I realized that thither might be something completely different. I knew that I wanted to use the dead roses from Valentine's Day in something, so I grabbed them and went through the elaborate process of making a makeshift tripod in my stairwell to take this photograph. Ah, books and a step stool and cropping skills... quite nice when combined in the right fashion!

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Hound

Hound

I used Word Nerd today and got this word. I was almost going to find another one - it was so difficult for me to think about where to find this word (I am not a dog owner, nor did I have a thought towards embodying this verb). For a while, I thought I should just do another downward dog pose from yoga and call it a day.
And then, I started cutting.
All the little college packets that I collected in order to save paper/have fun craft items to work with have now been cut up or recycled, making it much easier for me to start my new mission of collages and decoupage! Hoorah! However, I still have about 20+ magazines in a box that desperately need to be shown the same treatment. Hmm... long weekend, perhaps?
Anyway, I got some really great pictures and captions, so I just grabbed a large slab of black paper and started strewing them around and... WHABASH! There was the hound I was looking for.
An attractive black and white dog photograph - now attached to all the eye-catching college mail that many many many colleges have sent me [even after I had gotten accepted Early Decision and sent in everything, geez]
Anyway, aside from that, today was a Thursday schedule, so we danced around trying to figure out our assignments and thanked our lucky stars that there were no tests and/or crises today. We still got to watch the Spirit Week video and Madame Sanchez was our sub in French [a Filipino woman who had coached my Highland tennis team - how time flies...]
As well, last night I wrote the monolithic sum of 1256 words in order to do the re-writing assignment for my editing class tomorrow. It was crazy! I don't know how I churned out that type of word count every day during NaNoWriMo (but then, of course, the point of NaNo is really to churn out as much crap as possible; for re-writing, you actually have to think)
That accomplished, I realize I have been spending gregarious amounts of time on myself. Quite refreshing, actually, but I am not sure how long it will last... hopefully throughout my lifetime, but who knows?

Which leads me to the question: what have you done for yourself today?

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Oh My Goodness! SYNTHESIS!

Childhood

Photojojo has given me the excellent [and probably totally obvious] creative idea that connects words with pictures! Ahaha!
I previously was going to do a story based on a picture [which sounds cool, but is actually pretty high maintenance for someone like me who has a lot of story ideas bubbling around even without external stimuli] but the newsletter for this week presented the opposite effect: The Picture Dictionary.
You choose a word (an abstract one, generally) and then take a photograph which represents it. And, as it happens, I have a copy of Word Nerd [and a ton of writing prompt books that also involve word-y things] that would be perfect for this assignment! Brilliant!

Perhaps you are wondering why I am writing at 9am on a Thursday [or maybe when I read over this, it will make perfect sense, who knows?]. Well, we had an unexpected snow day come down on us last night, so school was canceled - which is both good and bad. Good because I need the rest and recuperation; bad because we have one less rehearsal. Oh well, it comes.

Today, aside from the excitement of a free day, I wanted to give out my impressions of viewing the Darius Goes West movie for the second time with the cast actually there. First of all, it's still an awesome documentary! I was really impressed by how many people it attracts time and time again. The Sammamish theater was packed top to bottom, and they said that it was the same at the 1pm showing as well. Though I had already seen the film, it reminded me about all the different issues facing this world and how we can actually help out; no matter who you are, there is a way to help. For Darius, it is getting to the 1 Million DVD goal, which would help people learn about Duchenne muscular dystrophy and aid in finding the cure (which is much closer to happening than people think - I know that whenever I think about curing a disease, I believe it's way off in the future, but no!).
Anyway, the best part of the night was not [at least for me] just the film itself. It was the fact that the filmmakers were there to talk to and question and say "goslabi" with. As a stupid side note, I love Southern accents (oh, Georgia boys...) and these guys were always cracking jokes ("cause you know, he's always hanging out at the gas station" - haha) and making the entire audience laugh. It makes sense because the point of the movie was actually not to be a downer, as many documentaries seem to be, but to raise awareness for a bevy of different issues [accessibility for disabled people, Duchenne, the freedom/lack thereof for someone in a wheelchair...].
All throughout, I kept thinking that this would only happen in America. Since we were talking about it in bio, oddly, I also thought about cystic fibrosis and other diseases that need a lot of care and attention. And, well, it made me really grateful. Grateful because Life is a precious gift, and sometimes I can't even believe that so many people exist on this world without having to go through some hardship like that. But, in the end, it's only a hardship if you treat it like one (similar to awkwardness) - if you try your hardest to be as great as you are, there should be nothing in your way. And that's their mission, and a mission I can totally agree with.
Aside from all the serious stuff, there was a "goslabi" eating contest to raise money [through pain!] and they made a lot of cash just from doing that. Aidan was running around all over the place, and Mindy Leffler gave a great talk about the current research (which really made me hopeful that this might be cured or the quality of life improved very very shortly). Overall, it was just a great night and I hope that their message will continue to reverberate until this disease is cured, these places accessible, and these dreams realized.

Unfortunately, I had no camera/got completely nervous after the movie let out so I did not nab a picture with any of the guys. Darn it! So, instead, my picture today is of the word:

Childhood - (noun)
1. The state or period of being a child.
2. The early stage in the existence of something.

This was not drawn from Word Nerd, but I just thought it fitting [perhaps because Duchenne affects children or perhaps because my dad made pancakes before leaving this morning; either way, it's quite representative today]

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