Busting Out the Board Games

Mason again. Though the weather doesn’t show it, ’tis the season for snow, ice, and cold weather in general. Unfortunately, power outages go hand in hand with winter weather. Unless you’ve got a good book to pass the time, being snowed in isn’t much fun. Board games are a great way to entertain the family in this kind of situation, so without further ado I present 3 great board games you probably don’t know about.

Movie Review: The Secret World of Arrietty

I previously stated that I have minimal love for Miyazaki movies. Well I’m going to have to retract this statement, because I loved this movie so much I’m not sure I have coherent words for it.

The movie begins by introducing a girl named Arrietty, who is absolutely tiny and a “Borrower”. She lives inside the walls of a human’s house along with her mother and father, and they’re not sure if they are the last Borrowers left, since their species has been gradually declining in population. They live by stealing tiny bits of food and things to make into objects to use. The movie begins with the arrival of a sickly boy named Sho, who Arrietty sees as he drives up to the house. Arrietty also has her first expedition to go gather materials that night with her father, and while they have a mildly successful time, it ends in disaster when Arrietty is seen by Sho. With their secret exposed, the Borrowers must find a new home before they and their home are discovered by people less kind than Sho.

Movie Review–Green Lantern: The Emerald Knights

I actually thought this was the Green Lantern with Ryan Reynolds in it, but sadly I was mistaken. This is actually a series of stories about the Green Lanterns…in cartoon.

It was still okay. I haven’t watched the Green Lantern yet and therefore have not yet formed any sort of attachment to the characters, so I guess if you liked the Green Lantern and its characters then you might like this. Basically, the more senior Green Lanterns tell Arisa, the new recruit, stories about themselves.

New Year’s Resolutions

My New Year’s resolution? To be able to bench press 50 pounds by the end of January. I don’t think this is something that would happen by itself, but I don’t perceive it as to unfeasible to accomplish. For me, it’s a perfect goal.

The Top Ten “Teen” Resolutions:
1. Get Healthy
2. Get Happier
3. Be a Better Person
4. Find Love
5. Show More Love to Your Family
6. Be a Better Friend
7. Get Better in School
8. Learn Something New
9. Be a Role Model
10. Make Some Money

I asked several of my friends what their goals were and all of them fit somewhere in the top ten “teen” resolutions (listed above).  I think that all of these are fine New Year’s goals, but they are objectives that I strive to accomplish on a daily bases, not especially in a New Year.

Resolutions are generally hard to stick with, after all most people think that they should be life-changing goals. After only one week, just 64% are still on track, and after six months, less than half of the “resolvers” are keeping up with their plan. This goes to show that you should keep your plan SMART.

50′s Unconventional

It’s that time of year again, ladies! Time to light those candles and set out those Christmas crackers, time to bus your children downtown to Macy’s to see old Saint Nick and, above all, time to tune in! So turn up that shiny new radio and settle down, because you won’t want to miss this!

With us on Women’s Time today we have Mrs. Barbara Wilson, here to tell us about her own unusual choice of a Christmas tree. Barbara, I hear that instead of the traditional cut evergreen, you decided to build your family’s tree out of books, am I right?

Yes, yes I did! You see, it’s our family tradition to gather ‘round the tree every evening and read together, and I thought why not celebrate what really matters to us?

Perfectly reasonable, Mrs. Wilson, perfectly reasonable! So, tell me, exactly which books went into the making of this tree?

Well, of course I started with the Ladies Home Journal Compilation. I think it’s really quite fitting, using that book as the base, since it certainly is responsible for most of the cooking and decorating I do to make the holiday… And my little ones contributed a few of their ‘comic books’, which I added to humor them. And of course I have the traditional Christmas collection – Nothing like Christmas books to make a Christmas tree! A Christmas Carol is my personal favorite. I also included  From Here to Eternity, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Catcher in the Rye, Farenheit 451, On the Road, The Communist Dream -

Aaand there’s our time for today, folks! Well thank you very much for speaking with us, ladies, that was Mrs. Barbara Wilson hailing from Smelton County, Virginia. We’ll conclude today’s programming with an old Christmas classic, rewritten just for Mrs. Wilson’s tree.

O’ Christmas tree, O’ Christmas tree,

Thou structure most sturdy,

O’ Christmas tree, O’ Christmas tree,

Please let me read thee

 

The sight of thee at Christmas-tide,

Spreads the written word far and wide,

O’ Christmas tree, O’ Christmas tree,

Thy paper branches doth beckon me

Thank you for listening, that’s all for this evening, but be sure to tune in next week for our Christmas Day broadcast!

(Here’s my book Christmas tree. Post a pic of yours below!)

The Pokémon Card Game- Good Friends, Good Times

Hello everybody. I’m Mason, the sort-of-new blogger for the site. Now that break’s here, I can start writing! I’ll cover games, for the most part. Since I’m guessing that you’re not here to read about me, I’ll get straight to the post.

One of the first and foremost things you should know about me is that I’m a card game junkie. I dabbled in Magic The Gathering, the Naruto Trading Card Game (TCG), and Yu-Gi-Oh, but my hands-down favorite would have to be the Pokémon TCG. I forget why, but at some point in third grade a girl gave me a couple cards. I took a look, and was instantly hooked. Ever since, I’ve begged shamelessly to go to all the tournaments near us; they’re just that fun. Let me tell you, like so many other random nerd hobbies, it has a fantastic community. You will find some of the nicest people on Earth chattering away about what deck to use for the next event, or what they think about the latest idea doing its rounds on the internet. They’re devoted, too: they’ve risked life, limb, weekend, and social standing to be a part of the huge, hidden family that spans the world.

Let’s Talk About Junior Year and AP Courses

Junior year is so much fun that I may potentially be losing my mind. Or that could be the sleep deprivation. So much like my post last year about how to not prepare for the SATs, I’m going to tell you guys a story about my past week at high school, where my eagerness for winter break was suddenly overshadowed by looming piles of schoolwork that frankly came out of nowhere.

Tis the Season to Eat FOOD.

I’ve brought it upon myself to cook dinner every night during winter break if we’re not eating out (and also to learn how to whistle, become a Chinese yoyo master, and a juggling prodigy, but first things first). I just thought I’d share some of my favorite recipes for this holiday season. Enjoy!

Last night I decided to make eggplant soup, which I found a recipe for on AllRecipes, since we had a bit of eggplant left. It turned out delicious, but it wasn’t such a good idea after I realized that I didn’t have a blender. But I’ll share it here, in case any of you do, or want to be like me and have to mash everything up in batches with a wooden roller. Here is my slightly modified version, depending on what I had at hand.
EGGPLANT SOUP (serves two people and one very hungry sister)
Ingredients
-1 eggplant, cut in half lengthwise
-1 tomato, cut in half
-1/2 large onion, cut in half
-3 pieces of garlic
-Salt
-Pepper
-Goat cheese
-Vegetable oil
-1 chicken bouillon cube
Directions
1) Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
2) Place your tomato, eggplant, garlic, and onion onto baking sheet. Drizzle and spread vegetable oil over the tops and bake in the oven for about half an hour, or until they have some brown spots on them.
3) Take four cups of water and put on high on the stove. Add a chicken bouillon cube. Peel the skin off of the eggplant and place the eggplant, tomato, garlic, and onion into the pot. Stir around for a while (and mash a bit with your spoon) until soft. Once the water starts bubbling (when it’s boiling), you can turn it down to medium heat.

Movie Review: Howl’s Moving Castle

Junior year has been busy sucking the fun out of my life, but I managed to find time on Halloween to watch Howl’s Moving Castle, a movie I’ve been meaning to see for quite a long time but had never quite topped my priority list. Bored and at a friend’s house, we started the movie up and I found I liked this movie. I may not feel motivated to see it again anytime soon, but it was definitely good and worth a watch.

The Occupy Movement

On July 13th, 2011, Adbusters, a Canadian group, called for a peaceful occupation of Wall Street. On September 17, 2011, it began. At first, a little over a thousand people showed up, but the numbers quickly grew. People camped out in Zuccotti Park protesting, as Adbusters calls it, “CORPORATOCRACY”.

Just after less than a month, the occupy movement had already spread to more than 95 cities in 84 countries. You may have heard of their slogan, “We are the 99%”, which refers to the wealth inequality between us, the 99%, and the top wealthiest 1%.

Yes, there are occupy movements currently in North Carolina.

Mind Over Matter. Or the Other Way Around.

Have you ever had that itching feeling? The one where you’re on the edge of some momentous discovery or creation, an instant before a breakthrough, so close that a heavenly choir is preparing to sing in the background? If you’re anything like me, that instant-before moment is right about when you lose your train of thought.

The other night I was doodling my own book cover for Lois Lowry’s The Giver. Everything was going well, the  images were flowing freely from my mind to my pencil to the paper. My fingertips were throbbing, but it was that pleasant soreness of effort and accomplishment. The two-dimensional graphite on my paper grew a magical depth and form, reminding me of the real magic that came out of Clary Fray’s illustrations. Okay, maybe my surprisingly decent drawing of a finger sandwich couldn’t actually become a finger sandwich, like Clary’s could in Cassandra Clare’s City of Bones, but it could make my soul soar.

Thai String Dolls Craft

Halloween is almost here (my favorite holiday), and I thought I’d share a Halloween craft I discovered last year: Thai String Dolls.

Anime Review: Tiger & Bunny

I was going to say Tiger & Bunny was a weird series, but I realized I couldn’t do that since I watched KHR and that series really just takes the cake when it comes to weirdness. So I’ll settle for unique. Tiger & Bunny is a ridiculously unique anime that is probably one that no one would expect me to watch. Why? Because it’s a superhero anime, and I’m really just generally not into the superhero thing.

Throughout the first arc of the series I was really not sure I would be able to continue with it, because it just wasn’t my kind of show. Thankfully, the series is actually really awesome and I really think it deserves to be watched by everyone.

What’s “In” Now

FEATHER HAIR EXTENSIONS

Here we have Selena Gomez showing off the latest trend — feather hair extensions. What you do is you take these hair extensions and attach them with a bobby pin. These just hit my school recently, and now I see them on everybody’s hair. If you like to go with the flow, these are totally in. If you don’t, maybe wait until these die down until you try wearing them, because I have to admit, they’re pretty cute.

You can buy them here on Amazon. Here’s a great Youtube video as well about buying, attaching, and rocking the feather hair extensions.

To see more trends, click here:

Audio/Book Review: The Throne of Fire…and a Cow.

The Throne of Fire is Rick Riordan’s second book in the Kane series. I did a review on The Red Pyramid, which is the first book.

Carter and Sadie, the siblings who are descended from the Egyptian pharaohs Rameses the Great and Narmer, continue their adventures from The Red Pyramid, but this time with a group of trainees that answered their call. Now they are at Brooklyn House with these promising young magicians. The House of Life is convinced that the Kanes are bad news, but their worst enemy yet, the chaos snake Apophis, is rising in just a few days.

Anime Review: Durarara!

I watched Durarara this past (much missed) summer, before I was sucked into the black hole of Junior year and battered with homework. Though it was a while ago, I remember really enjoying this anime after a bit of a rocky start. Though I can’t call Durarara my favorite anime ever, I highly enjoyed it and I understand why it has such a large fandom now.

The series begins with a timid boy named Ryuugamine Mikado arriving in Tokyo and meeting his old friend Kida Masaomi.

How to Get Organized for School

Welcome back to school! While I’m definitely going to miss the summer, it’s time to get back to the (less relaxing) schedule of more work than play. To help keep track of your seemingly never-ending list of tasks, I’ve come up with a few tips that have worked really well for me.

1)   Use a planner! 

A planner can be your best friend during the year if you really stick with it. I recommend finding one that shows you a full monthly calendar so you can schedule long-term projects and that has daily planning pages. My personal favorite is the Franklin Covey planner,

which lets you change the pages each month (to keep the planner really light) and each year (so you don’t have to keep repurchasing entirely new planners). I think it is absolutely amazing since you can personalize the pages, choose whether you want weekly planning pages, monthly planning pages, and/or daily planning pages, and use the same planner every year. The planners also have places for any stray papers, your credit cards, and pens!

Talk Like A Pirate Day

YOU’RE INVITED!

Who: This is a day for all pirates! Or just landlubbers who wish to be pirates!

What: Have ye never heard o’ this day before? It be the International Talk Like a Pirate Day!

Where: Anywhere on the seven seas that you please!

When: Septemberrrrrr 19^th!

Why: What? Why? Why wouldn’t ye want a good excuse to talkee like a pirate?

How: These be my FINEST tips on how to be a pirate!

Series Review: The Books of Bayern by Shannon Hale

I love Shannon Hale’s books. They have just the right touch of romance for girls, and the right touch of action for guys. I’ve always enjoyed reading books with magic, fairy tales, or any of that sort, mostly in part because, well, you don’t really see that much around here.

I remember reading these maybe four years ago. I still read them over and over again today. It’s amazing how they never get old. Just recently, I listened to all three of the audiobooks, thanks to the convinent Overdrive Media Console that Wake County Libraries offers They’re recorded by Full-Cast Audio, which has to be the  most amazing audiobook company ever. They have different voices for each character and music and sound effect and everything.

Anime Review: Ao no Exorcist

Of all the animes that I have watched this lovely summer, I have no hesitation in calling Ao no Exorcist my favorite. I only began watching (during AP season, no less) because of a ridiculously high recommendation from my friend, and I was hooked by the third episode. This series really has potential to become one of my all-time favorite shonens, along with Fullmetal Alchemist and Katekyo Hitman Reborn. Maybe as testament to how good it is, Ao no Exorcist had me in tears by the second episode.