Looking Back on 2011, Looking Forward to 2012

Uhm. So. There's less than twenty-four hours left in 2011. That's weird. Wasn't it just a couple weeks ago that it turned 2011?

I'm not really one to make resolutions, really. I mean, I have goals and everything for this year, but they're not "resolutions". I guess I could say something about wanting to jog more, but that's sort of cheating because I'm taking a jogging class this next semester (death). I have plans and everything, but there's a difference, you know?

I'm looking forward to some really geeky movies coming out, as I've already talked about. I'm looking forward to another year of learning and growing. I'm looking forward to meet the people I'll meet and go the places I'll go. I'm looking forward to figuring out what the heck I'll be doing this summer. I'm looking forward to starting my final year of undergrad in the fall. (That concept also freaks the beejuzus out of me. My final year of undergrad. WHAT???) Oh, and my "twin brother" (we adopted each other as twins) is coming home from his mission in October. I'm really excited to see him again. :) And my best friend leaves on his mission just this next month, so that's exciting too.

This past year... Well, I remember at the beginning of last year saying something along the lines of "2011?? BRING IT." ... Yeah, I'm never doing that again. It did. It brought it. It brought it good. I started off the year being a complete idiot, really. You know those mistakes that you make that you know are mistakes when you make them but you delude yourself into thinking you can make it work? Yeah... That was my January. And it kind of messed up the rest of the semester. Luckily I had "Twelve Angry Jurors" going on that semester so I had that to hold on to.

And then this summer... Best. Four Months. Of My Entire. Life. No exaggeration. I'm serious. Everything was right where it needed to be, I was doing what I needed to be doing. Granted, it wasn't butterflies and rainbows 24/7, but the good far, far, far outweighed anything not as good. I had found a rhythm. I had found as close to perfection as I've ever experienced. I didn't feel lost ever, or like I didn't know what I was doing with my life. I had a plan, I had a path. And I was moving right along.

Course, then I went back to school. Things had kind of gotten a little messy right before going back to school so the beginning of the semester was hell. And then General Conference rolled around... And I got answers. I had to remind myself of some of those answers every now and again throughout the rest of the semester, either by going back to General Conference talks or notes that I made, or Priesthood Blessings, or just talking with various trusted individuals (certain friends, family). But if I remembered what I needed to remember, took things one step at a time, and went to rehearsal to act hysterical as Mrs. Bennet, I was fine.

Then I came back home. Where I am now. Got my wisdom teeth taken out. Relaxed. Ta-da.

That was 2011.

So 2012? I'm not going to say "Bring it!" like I did to 2011, but....

Let's see what you can do.

The Wisdom Teeth

Okay, I'm not on painkillers yet because my face is still numb so I'm going to try to get this out now.

I didn't turn into a bawling mess! Yay! I was still terrified and I still teared up a bit because I was terrified, but they put the IV in and the surgeon just starts chatting with me, asking when I'm going back to school and stuff. I remember starting to feel a bit fuzzy and then the next thing I know I'm sitting in a sort of "waiting room" I think with my phone in my hand. I look at my text messages and realize that I've texted my best friend:

"That was the strangest that ive ever expierenced.my moith feels like lead"

I kind of stare at that for a moment and then send him another text, letting him know I honestly don't remember sending that text. We have a short conversation, I'm sort of auto-pilot and I think he was somewhere between amused and concerned. I'll have to talk to him about it later when I'm more in control.

I don't really remember walking out of the oral surgeon's office and to the car. I think I remember sitting in the car. Maybe. And somehow I ended up on the couch. I don't have my big coat on or my boots so I must've taken those off. And I think my sister grabbed my computer for me.

Right now the bottom half of my face is numb. It's a really bizarre feeling. It's hard to swallow. I think I might taste some blood but I can't be sure. Mom's out getting my pain meds right now.

Really, I don't even look that bad right now. Half of my bottom lip is under my control, but the other half simply will not move. It's bizarre. And slightly frustrating too. The worst part? Last night as I was attempting to fall asleep I was coming up with some golden scenes for The Time Menders. I want to write them down now but I just don't have the concentration to do so! Though... I've gotten all of this out... Hm... Maybe I'll give it another go.

EDIT: Apparently I was hiccuping a lot after waking up and Mom was giggling at me. It's a common reaction to the anesthesia. Don't. Remember. A Thing.

Bravery

This will be a short post because I need to wake up really early tomorrow. Which, actually, is the reason for me writing this post.

I have a strange sort of "courage" I have discovered. I don't even get nervous anymore when I go on stage and act ridiculous in front of hundreds of strangers. Even auditions aren't that bad. I get a little bit of butterflies, but I think that helps, really.

Yet I'm getting my wisdom teeth taken out tomorrow and I'm terrified. Not so much about the pain or the aftermath or any of that. But because of the being put under thing. Sedated. Losing that hour to nothingness. I know that happens with sleep in a way, but there's something different about it not being my choice. And it's terrifying. So terrifying that today, at my consultation, I almost started crying a couple of times, I'm almost crying right now, and I'm afraid I'm going to look ridiculous tomorrow when this twenty-year-old woman starts bawling out of terror in the oral surgeon's office.

I've never had surgery before, obviously. I've been to the hospital for myself (aka: not going to see family) once that I can remember and that was only because I had strep and the physician's office wasn't going to be open for the weekend. I've never even had stitches. No braces, no cavities. Nothing. My dad never had to get his wisdom teeth taken out and I was praying that I would inherit those genes.

Heck, this summer when my dentist told me I was going to have to get at least two of my wisdom teeth taken out (turns out I need all four out), I almost started crying right then and there.

Really, I should stop thinking about it. Every one keeps telling me it's not that bad and I'll be fine, and I believe them, but I'm not comforted. I'm still terrified.

I'll let you all know how it goes. Obviously not for a couple days since I'll be drugged up, but once I can, I'll at least drop a word to say I'm fine. Because I will be. I just might, like I said, turn into a bawling mess of terror before they sedate me.

2012 Cinema Excitement

Today a trailer was released. A trailer that made many fanboys and fangirls go nuts. They'd been waiting for it for a long time. Heck, even my dad had a grin on his face after watching it. And since this movie isn't coming out until the 14th of next December... and I already am totally geeking out about several movies coming out before then... I figured I'd just go through what movies I know of that are being released this coming year that I'm excited for. In order of release date...

"The Woman In Black". Okay, maybe I'm just excited because I'm interested to see Daniel Radcliffe without a lightning scar and glasses. But I'm still excited. And totally freaked out, too.

"The Lorax". Danny DeVito. Is the Lorax. With that knowledge alone I'm totally stoked for this movie. Also, judging by how amazing "Horton Hears A Who" was, I'm betting this one will be fun as well.

"The Hunger Games". My excitement cannot be fully expressed in any way, shape, or form. I'm already planning my costume for the huge midnight showing party I'm going to. I'm currently re-reading the trilogy. The only movie that has ever excited me more was HP7.2. And that's just barely.

"Avengers". Oops, I think my fangirl is showing. Holy crap, I'm soooooooo excited for this movie. I'm a huge fan of all of the Marvel movies since "Iron Man" (I went around for months, playing that movie on my iPod and trying to memorize it--judge me if you will) so getting to see them all put together... AHHH.

"Men In Black 3". I'm not sure if I would say "excited" is the right word for this one... But definitely optimistically curious. And definitely now wanting to re-watch the previous movies. But mostly the first one. LOVE.

"Brave". Since Disney gave up on the traditional princesses thing after "Tangled", I'm interested to see what they'll do with this. It could either be awful or it would be wonderful. I'm hoping for wonderful. :)

"The Amazing Spider-Man". I'm excited for this one if only because it's a hundred time more true to the comic books. Gwen instead of MJ. Him making his web-slingers rather than webs coming out of his wrists. And he actually looks like a high schooler!

"The Dark Knight Rises". I mean, obviously this is going to be amazing. Though, I'll admit, I'm still not sure how I feel about Anne Hathaway as Catwoman. It's just weird. But it's Christopher Nolan, so I trust him. :D

And, finally, the trailer that inspired this post: "The Hobbit". Nerd-tastic, man. Nerd-tastic. What more can I say? Oh, I can say this... Holy goodness, dwarves, can I marry your voices?

The Time Menders

I announced it when my fantasy trilogy got titles, so I figured I'd announce my scifi trilogy getting a title.

The Time Menders

None of the individual books have titles yet, but they're also still not anywhere close to being as fleshed out as The Gisola Trilogy is. I'm particularly excited about the title of the scifi trilogy, though, because of all that it implies and all that it references in the books. I would go into extreme detail, but I don't want to spoil anything.

I will say, however, that all three books have sort of standard scifi gimmicks in them: the first book focuses on time travel, the second book focuses on alternate realities/universes, the third book focuses on black holes. Time travel's important in all three, alternate realities/universes are important in the last two, black holes... well, explain everything in a sort.

Anywho, it's all very exciting. YAY!

Kirk's Lineage

I'm going to be an uber-geek here and share something I just realized as I go through a bunch of movies because I'm bored, only have one more final, and don't go home until Saturday.

According to the new "Star Trek" movie, James Tiberius Kirk's parents are... much more than they seem.

His father is Thor, God of Thunder. And is sexy. Who's own father has quite the legacy...

Odin. Who, in his younger years, trained Zorro. Yeah, that's right. You thought Odin was as BA as you could get until you realized he also trained Zorro.

His mother is Emma Swan, savior of the town Storybrooke and daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming (who's real name is JAMES).

Snow and JAMES. JAMES, I tell you, JAMES.

I mean, how can you ignore the coincidence there? That's sort of ridiculous.

Basically, this makes Kirk so much more awesome. He's got quite a legacy behind him.

Also, I'm a nerd.

Also? The first eleven minutes of that movie ("Star Trek", not any of these others) always make me cry. Always. I just can't help but imagining being Kirk's mother. Awful.

Peace! I will stop your mouth.

This summarizes how I feel right now. And I'm pointing to this picture. And where it's from. David Tennant and Catherine Tate in Shakespeare's "Much Ado About Nothing".

Oh. My. Gosh.

There were times I was laughing so hard it was that awkward, annoying sort of scream laughing. David and Catherine were just... just... And, I mean, of course, their chemistry was phenomenal, but we all already knew that thanks to "Doctor Who". I'll always be a 10/Rose shipper, but Donna is my favorite companion. She's the only one who could ever get in to a fight with the Doctor and come out on top. Because it's Catherine Tate. And David Tennant. ANYWAY. I'm not here to talk about "Doctor Who", I'm here to talk about "Much Ado". (Hey, that rhymed...)

"Much Ado" actually has a special place in my heart. As we all know, I'm a theatre major. But how did I get to being a theatre major? I did a couple things in middle school. A one act, two plays. All of them... I mean, I had fun, but I was just doing it... to do something. You know? It wasn't something I really wanted to keep doing forever. (Just a random note: when I'm typing all of this out right now... You know how sometimes after watching a movie or something, there's a character who you feel like you're emulating for a while afterwards? Yeah, it's David Tennant's real Scottish accent narrating what I'm typing in my head. LOVE.) ANYWAY.

Gosh, I'm sorry. I blame David. <3 Anywho. In fact, it was so much something (theatre was, that is) that I didn't want to do forever, that as soon as I got to high school... I didn't do it. All throughout my freshman year and most of my sophomore year. The only reason that didn't continue was because my two best friends were walking to auditions after school for the Spring Play and sort of... dragged me along. So I auditioned. And got a part. I was Margaret in Shakespeare's "Much Ado About Nothing".

From there on out, I stayed on the stage. It was Shakespeare that got me hooked on the stage... I suppose that's one of the reasons why I love him so much now and don't have as much of a problem with his language as some people do.

So then you add David Tennant and Catherine Tate to this all??? OH. MY. GOSH. I mean, I love all Kenneth Branagh Shakespeare, I love David's "Hamlet", I love Sir Patrick's "MacBeth"... But this? AMAZING. And I loved the concept for it, too, it was so interesting. And... Catherine and David's mannerisms... Man. Oh, man. It made me come to the conclusion I want to have a marriage like that relationship. You would never, ever get bored.

Finals Vs. The Eternal

So it's Finals Week. What does that mean? Realities of the eternal will now hit me full on in the face and make me realize I really, really don't care if I fail my Western Civ final tomorrow at noon. Well, okay, I do. Because I don't want to have to re-take that class. And the reaction of my parents would be a party. But it really doesn't matter when these eternal truths are so plain as day.

I have this friend. First time I saw her, I could've sworn I recognized her from somewhere. But I couldn't figure out from where for the life of me. Once she and I started hanging out, she told me that she felt she recognized me too. We started going back through life to try to figure out where we knew each other. Despite the fact that my grandpa was the first bishop of her home ward, that was long before her family moved there. Despite the fact that my mom's side of the family comes from a town fifteen minutes away from where her family lives, it seems they've never met. We researched, talked to our parents.... We spent a lot of effort trying to figure this out. Eventually we came to the conclusion that somehow, by some strange circumstance, we were blessed enough to actually recognize each other from the pre-mortal existence.

I'm serious. Totally and completely.

After that, she and I have had our differences. Some major. Some huge disagreements that seemed to have the possibility of ruining our friendship forever. But here we are, living now in the same house. There are still days when we don't really talk. But we'll always come back. We'll have nights of ridiculousness. We'll have random adventures. We'll stay up until two in the morning just talking, like we did just Friday night. And I would submit that that was in preparation for tonight.

Tonight, within literally two hours of each other, both of us had things happen. Very similar situations. Completely different, yes. But very similar. I won't go in to what those things were, one because it's not my place to divulge into her life and two because I really don't want to get that personal with all of you. Suffice it to say, she came into my room, cried a bit, then went to her own room. A couple hours later, she came back in to update me and realized something was happening on my end so left. After things on my end wrapped up a bit, I went to her room and we just talked. We realized the parallels and we cried. We strengthened each other and we cried some more. We built each other up as sisters in Zion and made promises to our selves, each other, and Heavenly Father. And we cried even more.

Then I realized. Tonight. Right there, sitting on her bed. That was why. That was why we recognized each other from the pre-mortal existence. That was why, despite not talking to each other for four months, despite not really being friends for an entire year, we were able to forgive and forget. That was why we were friends in the pre-mortal existences and promised we'd find one another. Tonight. That was why.

Yes, there may be more reasons to come. But that was one of those almost surreal moments in life where you realize so much of your past, present, and future hinged on that single moment. There are many of those throughout life and it's always amazing when you're able to recognize them in that moment. This was one of the things she and I were promised by our dearest Heavenly Father himself. This moment. This sisterhood.

And how, really, can an exam matter now?

"Take an umbrella, it's raining."

So this semester I took a Directing class. The big project of the class was to direct a scene and then have it performed for the class. I had directed a one-act my senior year of high school and had so much fun doing it so I was rather excited to do it again with more experience. This time I directed about a ten-minute scene from a play that I was in in high school: "The Curious Savage".

For this scene I had six actors, all good friends of mine. We performed it in my cozy living room. And? I thought it went extremely well. I was very pleased. And whatever grade I'm given on it will not change my opinion of how well it went.

In fact, afterwards, I was chatting with a friend who was in the Directing class and, therefore, saw the scene. He films all of the productions at school and films a lot of the performances done in classes, including these. He was talking to me about how much he loved the space I used for the scene and mentioned it would be fun to film the entire play there.

"Yeah," I thought, "that would be fun. ...Yeah... Oh, my goodness... YEAH!"

Suddenly I have a fun side project for next semester. I've talked to all six of my actors from the scene yesterday to see if they would want to be a part of it, they've all said yes. I've talked to a couple other actors for other characters in the show and, so far, everyone's said yes. I'm thinking it'll be like a movie or television show schedule where we take a couple Saturdays here and there, rehearse a scene over and over and then film it all in one day.

Basically, I'm insanely excited for this. This show holds a dear place in my heart and I love that I'm getting to work with it again... and that I'm getting to continue to direct. And to direct people I love. And, basically, it's going to be all around amazing. And I'm excited. YYYAAAYYY.

Happy Anniversary, Haphazard Scarves!

Today, December 4th, 2011, marks one year since I created this blog. (A rather convenient anniversary, actually. I'll never forget it because it's also my mom's birthday. :) ) w00t!

It's been a crazy year. I can honestly say that it has held the best times of my life, though I think the worst times still belongs to 2010... Haha! So that's good.

A lot of changes have happened. Goodness gracious. For the past couple of weeks I've been going back to what my life was like this time last year. o.O I'm so glad I am where I am now and not where I was then.

I'll go more in to this sort of topic for New Year's, of course. I just had to say something about having had this blog for a whole year! Craziness.

Also, on an unrelated note... I have finally reached a particular scene in The Gisola Trilogy. I've been anticipating this scene ever since I knew it was going to happen almost a year ago. It's what really gets the action of the characters and their relationships going and also the action of the plot going. It's rather exciting, actually. I'm no longer introducing the characters and their personalities and relationships. The story is really getting started. And we're full steam ahead, baby!!!

Holy...

Okay, I admit it. I'm not a perfect Mormon. (Let's be honest, though, unless you're a Molly or a Peter, who is?) I've watched a number of rated R movies. For the most part, I'll avoid them, but there are some that warrant watching. (I don't care who you are, The King's Speech is a phenomenal movie. And watching it edited would be simply stupid.)

Going along with the whole James McAvoy obsession, I watched one of his R movies last night. From everything that I had read it about it, it sounded like it was a rather under-appreciated movie and I've always had a thing for under-appreciated movies. (Though... really, most of James McAvoy's movies are under-appreciated...) Plus, it was based on a true story and those are always interesting.

"The Last King of Scotland".

Okay, so here's why it's rated R: there's a sex scene and a half. The movie could've definitely done without those scenes (as all movies with sex scenes could). There were quite a number of bare breasts in traditional African style (though, not like "The Gods Must Be Crazy" bare breasts: these were nice, round healthy looking boobs). That didn't bother me, partially because it takes place in Uganda and partially because... I don't know, boobs don't bother me? :P Oh, and they drop the f-bomb quite a few times. Not as many as, say, "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" (another phenomenal movie), but still. Also, you get a brief glimpse of James' genitals. Which was completely and totally unnecessary and actually rather ticked me off.

Despite this, however, it definitely needed to be rated R. And I'm glad that they didn't try to tone these other parts down, because it very much would have diminished the power of the movie.

There were two scenes in particular. The first, you see a dead body that has... had gruesome things done to it. The second, a character is tortured. Very realistically. As in, I am beyond curious to know how they pulled that off but at the same time, I don't want to know because I'm afraid it'll ruin the power of the scene for me.

And, brilliant me, I watched it late at night. So I went to sleep absolutely terrified. I would submit that something like this is more terrifying than one of those horror or suspense movies... Because this was based on a true story. This actually happened. There are actually people like this out in the real world. In the words of James McAvoy's character, Nicholas Garrigan (edited slightly for those who don't watch R no matter what):

"You're a child. You have the mind and ego of an angry, spoiled, uneducated child. And that's what makes you so incredibly scary."

I want to watch it again. It was that good. But I'm also scared of watching it again. I probably will watch it again eventually, it'll just... take me a while to bring myself to.

If you have the stomach for it, I would definitely recommend it. "The Last King of Scotland". Just... be prepared.