The Alchemist

I just finished reading the worst book ever. Yeah, I'm talking about The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. The whole story felt like a "YOU JUST GOT SCREWED" prank. The whole story is this. Boy has dreams about a fortune in Egypt waiting for him, so he ends up meeting with a king accidentally. The king tells him that the fortune will be his, if the boy follows his Personal Legend and then the boy sells all his sheep. Boy gets mugged like 3 times in the book for crying out loud. Then he works his tail off for a year and then he gets stuck in a caravan that's not going anywhere for a year. Basically the boy gives up his life for a treasure, gets stopped twice, gets beaten up, and gets mugged. I MEAN SERIOUSLY? NOBODY WANTS TO SEE THE HERO IN A STORY FAIL! Also, on the last two pages, the boy gets beaten up and mugged again. One of the muggers asks, "Why are you here?" The boy replies, "I had a dream of a fortune in Egypt." The mugger says, "I had a dream similiar to that. Only the treasure was in Spain, by a deserted church. In the dream, I dug under a tree over and over and I eventually found the tresure. Only idiots would actually follow their dream, though." The mugger leaves and the main character is bleeding on the verge of death and he learns that the treasure is where he started at. OH YEAH! I forgot something. The boy falls in love with a girl and he promises he'll come back for the girl, right? Anyways, in the epilougue, he finds the treasure in the place he started at. On the way back from Egypt, he didn't even stop to meet his girlfriend because he was so darn greedy that all he wanted to do was get his hands on the treasure. SERIOUSLY? THE ENDING WAS NOT RIGHT! The overall lesson of this story was: If you follow your dreams, you will get to it. BUT, first you have to lose your fortune, give up everything in your life, get beaten up, waste a few years of your life, and then go back where it all started to achieve your dream. Summary of the book? The most stupid waste of my freakin' time, waste of my money book ever. If I ever meet Paulo Coelho, he better watch out before I slap him.

My step by step process of LOOK's chocolate. The LOOK chocolate is filled with cream of either strawberry, chocolate, orange, or vanilla. In the second picture, you may notice that each column of chocolate is different. The L piece is strawberry. The indented O piece is chocolate. The outlined O piece is orange. The K piece is vanilla. My favorite was vanilla, then orange, then strawberry, and finally chocolate. The chocolate just tasted well normal! The third picture in order is strawberry, chocolate, orange, and vanilla. The best thing about this chocolate was that it wasn't so incredibly sweet that I couldn't finish it. It was a nice balance of sweet and bitter. I really like it and I finished it all within the first half of the movie. Yes, I smuggled it into the movie theater. I'm so hardcore.

William's Pumpkin

So I went to the supermarket and found these little pumpkins, right? I thought they were cute and decided to get it for one of my stuffed animals named William. William loves it! (I sound mental...) I also got William like 3 rubber ducks....Anyways, this was just a short random post. :)

The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya

Ok, I went to Barnes and Noble with my friends, Amina and Rebecca today. Why did we go? We went to go read FREE MANGA, as in not paid for. We’re such rebels. Haha, not really. A lot of people go and read free manga. Anyways, I found the fourth book to the manga series The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. I had to get it and I’m super excited! I’m going to read it as fast as I can and tell you about it! See you until I find something to talk about.

RIP The Hand Me Down Kids

 It has come, yet another break up, another happily never after. The Hand Me Down Kids, who have become part of my top 5 favorite bands, broke up. After writing one of my favorite songs, how could they just end so abruptly? Supposedly the members just drifted away. Still, it's incredibly sad. Plus, I was about to send in a Fan Pic soon of me holding a sign for them...I think Lamoni said he was going to be part of a band called Kids Like This? I'm not sure, so if you could tell me, that'd be wonderful.

The Hand Me Down Kids Songs (In Order of how much I like them!)

• Despite the Distance
• College Girl Queen
• Liquor Makes a Liar
• The Comeback
• Heart to Molly
• I Wanna Waste My Time
• Vacate (Vacate never even made it out of the acoustic stage, how sad!) 

I'm going to miss them...RIP THMDK

MY BIRTHDAY GIFTS!

Hello once again! My birthday was on November 10th and today is the 16th. I hope it's not too late to write a post on it! So this was the very first year I went to school on my birthday. It's not because I'm a spoiled kid whose parents allow her to stay home on her birthday, it's because I never had school on my birthday due to Veteran's day. There's two boys at my school, who are twins, named Colin and Clyde who share the same birthday as me so as a joke we always scream, "HAPPY BIRTHDAY!" to each other. Then when I got home I had four hours of homework because that's how much my language arts teacher loves me. (Sarcasm. Just a little side note, my friend Hannie told me that I'm an overly sarcastic person...Is that true?) After that I had a dinner of my choice, which was curry udon! My favorite dish, but curry gives me stomach cramps....I should probably erase that. Then I had birthday pie! Yes, birthday pie because I usually don't like cake due to the fact that it's usually dry.  The only cake place I like was closed, unfortunately.

Now here's the part that describes the picture. It's all my gifts from various friends and relative!

Mom and Dad: A neon green purse, a donut pillow that I named Tadashi after my favorite character in SA, a silence+noise blazer (not pictured), and a book called What White People Like. (I can't underline anything for some reason...)

Madeline:  Harajuku pencil case, tokidoki for Target binder, a Book Thong(awesome name for book mark), and a homemade mustache pillow that is GIGANTIC!

Rebecca: A paper craft of me, these little baggies that I've been asking her for that are epic, and a little cell phone charm that looks like it's saying Mmmmmmmmmmmm.

Maggie: A $15 itunes gift card

Tiffany: Two mamegoma folders, an angry pineapple, and a Domo-kun key chain/neck strap thing-y

Auntie La La, Uncle Mike, and Kenji: $50 bill

Grandma and Grandpa: $50 check

Sophie: Eventually a Chubby Bunny Pillow 

All the money is going to my traveling savings because one day I'm going to travel the world. Click on the picture to make it bigger!

Edit-I ended up returning the purse because it had this weird stain that we couldn't get out.

Michael Jackson This Is It!

 So yesterday, I saw Michael Jackson's movie, This Is It, with my buddies Madeline and Rebecca. Originally, I was the only one that wanted to see it, but I think my friends enjoyed it. This Is It contained interviews, performances, videos, practices, and behind the scene footage of making some of the images that were going to be used in Michael Jackson's 50 city concert tour. I personally really liked it. My favorite parts were the dancer tryouts, "They Don't Care About Us" performance, "Human Nature" performance, and the "Thriller" making of the video. The dancer tryouts were interesting because hundreds of people would all be dancing at the same time and Kenny Ortega would be able to pick out only two that were exceptional. When I looked at the hundreds of dancers, they all looked amazing. I liked "They Don't Care About Us" and "Human Nature" strictly because I like the song. The making of the "Thriller" video was amazing, seeing all the dancers being transformed into corpses. Most looked like they were colonial era type of people, but there was one mummy. I noticed something during the movie, Michael Jackson has some pretty amazing pants (red, gold, and silver!) and his jackets are pretty out there. His jackets have little pop outs on the shoulder parts and many sequins/glitter/rhinestones. Overall it was worth it.

Oh and just for the record, Madeline kept whispering to me "His pelvic thrusts are the best part. Hur hur hur," and "That bleach blonde guitarist is so hardcore!"

Fortune Cookie Monster Vs. Cookie Mosnter

So who do you think won this war? The Cookie Monster? Or the Fortune Cookie Monster?

Dear Jack EP

Today is November 3rd and you know what that means? The Dear Jack movie, "Swim" art book, and the Dear Jack EP came out. (Does anyone know what EP means?) The Dear Jack movie is about Andrew McMahon's fight with acute lymphatic leukemia. I'm planning on getting it because I forgot to preorder it! (SHOCKING, I KNOW!) Anyways, I'm going to see if Best Buy or Target has it. If they don't, I'll just get it online. Now the "Swim" art book I'm not going to get. I don't need to be reminded about how bad my art is every time I open it up. Plus, I sent in a picture that I drew and it never made it in! (It's my secret shame, that's not that secret anymore...) The Dear Jack EP includes "There, There Katie", "Swim (MusicBox)", "Diane, the Skyscraper" and "Dear Jack", which are all being downloaded on to my ipod right now! "There, There Katie" is for his sister, who donated bone marrow for his treatment. It is one of my absolute favorites by him. The piano music is beautiful and calming. "There, There Katie" was originally called "Katie." I personally thought the song sounded better acoustic. It felt more raw and heartfelt. "Swim (MusicBox" is a lot more calming than the original recording, but I felt the original version was more powerful and inspirational. For some reason "Swim (MusicBox)" reminds me of the sensation of being underwater. "Diane, the Skyscraper" has more of a drumbeat than most of Andrew's other songs.  I'm pretty sure this song was originally just called "Diane." You know how sometimes when you're listening to a song, you just start envisioning what the music video should look like? I felt that the music video should be in black and white, with Andrew walking through New York looking up at the skyscrapers. His breath would leave in wisps of fog in the chilly air and the occasional scenes of him playing at a coffee shop or something of that sort with his band will pop up...And Diane will just walk in. That's about as much as I had planned. "Dear Jack" is set at a faster pace than the rest of the songs and has a bluesy feel to it. A third of the way into it, a slightly country feel hits it. Not the hardcore country about their horses and stuff, but more of a fast paced cheerful country song.  Then half way in, Andrew goes back to his slow powerful ballad ways. Anyways, here is the order in which the songs rank with each other:

• "There, There Katie"
• "Diane, the Skyscraper"
• "Dear Jack" and "Swim (MusicBox)" are tied...

Nutella

Yum, yum, yum! It's NUTELLA snack! While I was in Florence, Italy, I noticed that every street vendor sold this Nutella snack. So I decided to try one! It turned out to be like a Pocky snack I get at my Chinese supermarket. The Nutella snack had little biscuit sticks with Nutella on the side. You're supposed to dip the bicuit in the Nutella and get as much as you can onto it! Turns out the drink wasn't actually Nutella flavored...It was another brand of juice, whose name I have forgotten. The drink was a VERY sweet lemonade. I ended up buying a few more packs the next day. You know how when you're traveling, it's hard to fill up on food and find cheap snacks? Well I found a tasty and inexpensive snack, so I bought a few packs. Anyways, I thought I should share this with you! Good bye!