READ THIS. NOW.

http://megginreviews.blogspot.com/2011/07/meggin-watches-harry-potter-and-deathly.html

Just read it. It's a practical way to use 5 minutes of your life. Go. I'll know if you don't. *gives evil eye*

EDIT: Due to the fact that Blogger will not (for some reason) let me post my expertly written comment on Meggin's post, I'm just going to type is here and hope she see's it...

I just want to say, Meggin, that this review made me cry. It perfectly summed up almost everything that I thought and felt while watching the spectacular final installment of my favorite book/movie series. One thing I want to add would be a huge bucket of Kudos to the special effects programmers. They had to animate the giants, dragon (what an adorable dragon, I was heartbroken to see how it was mistreated), the spells, the house elves, the goblins, and Nagini. Those incredible people, they deserve an overflowing mug of Firewhiskey.

That is all.

The Fortune-Telling Porch Swing

So during my long stretch of time spent at the River, I spent a lot of time on our porch reading, as always. Okay, if you want to be specific, it's not really a porch. It used to be, with a screen and huge table and everything, it dominated two sides of the house. Now it's closed in and has these massive sliding windows, so we can close them when it rains and stuff to protect the wood floor, but still see outside all the time. BUT for the purposes of this discussion, we are going to call it a porch.

So as I was saying, I did a ton of reading on the porch, usually sitting on our porch swing. Although, I guess it's not really a swing, as it doesn't hang from the ceiling and it's not made of wood. We used to have one of those, but it dry-rotted. This thing has a metal frame and the rest is fabric...I suppose it's really a glider. BUT once again, for the purposes of this discussion we are going to refer to it as a porch swing.

So I was reading on the porch swing with a fan blowing the fresh air from outside in my face, but I was too preoccupied with my terribly chipped toenail polish to get very far in the novel. My hideous toenails reminded me of my torturous times in middle school, when I used to constantly paint my nails really flamboyant colors and patterns, which led me to remember the time when I bought my middle school boyfriend there with me, and we had sat on that very same swing. I remember the conversations we had perfectly, and what we were wearing, and how the weather was. It was like a movie in my brain or something.

I thought back a little further, and I remembered the time my Great-Uncle Richard had flown up from Florida to spend some time with all of us, along with his wife, who we all call Aunt Secret. He and I sat on that swing, talking about school, friends, life, water-skiing....and a year later, he had died.

I remembered a mere summer ago, when I bought my friend and musical mentor Matt down to go fishing and hang out for the day. He convinced me to audition for All-Districts on that swing/glider, and gave me advise on how to handle the stress of Wind Ensemble now that he and the other experienced seniors had graduated.

After remembering all these people and conversations and jokes and overall just special moments, I started wondering about the future. Someday, when I'm older and wiser and hopefully successful, I might be engaged, or married, or have children of my own (although I dearly hope not). And I wondered, 20 or 40 or 60 years from now, who will be sitting on that swing with me? What will I have done with my life? What college will I have gone to? Will my best friend and I still be best friends? Will I still eat tomato sandwiches and watermelon there with my mother? Will my cousins and I still hang out, and sit on the beach together? What will have happened to the golfcart we have ridden all our lives?

Will the people across the street still seem as immature to me as they do now? Will I have the same boat as now, or a newer, faster one? Will I have a jetski? What color will it be? What car will I drive? Will it still run on gasoline? Will someone build a house on the empty lot across the street? That would be annoying, it would block our view of the water. What books will I read, sitting on that familiar seat? Will I still text my friends, or will we have holographs? 

How will my world change while this swing stays the same?

An Abundance of Ambers

Hello there, my lovely blog-reader(s)! Sorry I've neglected/procrastinated you. I plan to write several posts today and have them post on random days/times, due to the fact that I am probably leaving again. Anyways.....

For those of you who are made of AWESOME, the title of this post is indeed a play on John Green's wonderful book, An Abundance of Katherines. Amazingly, I have drawn a comparison between this post and John's book; they are both about being an individual, and standing out in a world of monotony. My friend Nicole (@MegginLovett) and I were talking last night, and she said 

" :D There should be more people like you in this cosmos."

To which I replied something along the lines of, "The world would be a much more quiet, nerdy, grammatical, appreciative place if everyone was like me." But then I really started thinking about what it would be like to have a world where everyone was like me, and I was like, "Holy crap, thank goodness that's not the case!"

One of my biggest pet peeves is when people are afraid to be individuals, and they just go with the tides of others in order to fit in. I'm not the type of person to shop at Aeropostale or American Eagle just because everyone else is (unless I'm shopping for jeans. Their jeans are really nice). Not that there's anything wrong with those stores, I just don't need to be a walking billboard for them, with the store name across my chest. I wear what I want, in styles that I'm comfortable with. The majority of my wardrobe is from Kohls, because they are awesome, affordable, comfortable, and not just the same old skin-tight t-shirt with words all the time. If the world was just an Abundance of Ambers, Kohls would certainly do great business, but none of the other stores would. To make matters worse, we would all be dressed the same, therefore eliminating the individuality of that personal aspect.

Also, I am quite a shy person. Like, painfully, excruciatingly shy. I went to a Leadership Conference yesterday and the day before, and the teachers there literally shuttled me over to a table with students and made me talk because they were concerned. It's quite a miracle that I am able to convince myself to be so open with everyone here on this blog and on Twitter. If the whole world was full of painfully shy and awkward people, there would be few relationships, little communication, business meetings would be utter failures, and nothing would get done. The only good thing is, there would be no cliques. I hate cliques. They isolate people and create meaningless and inaccurate stereotypes, which I find detrimental and just plain irritating.

Finally, I love a mostly-empty, well stocked, comfortable library. I go at least once a week during the school year, and more so during the summer. However, if everyone loved libraries like I do, then there would be no books left on the shelves, the chairs would be worn and saggy, and whispered conversations and the buzzing of phones from Twitter notifications would dominate the atmosphere. The books would all be well treated and cared for, but it wouldn't really matter, because the waiting list for them would be ages long.

There are about a hundred reasons why a world of Amber-like personalities would be a bad thing, including a ton of skittish, sucky drivers; but my main point here is that the things that I love would be extremely overused, obsessed over, and worn out, and the things that I don't love would fall by the wayside. A balance of different varieties of people and personalities is important in a successful society, despite how nice it would be to completely understand one another. If we are all individuals in the same way, we aren't really individuals at all. We are just An Abundance of Boring.