2013[:

Today is January 2, 2013!
So we've survived 2012... twice for me actually. My plane flight back home to CA from NY was ON the 21st... gained 3 hours coming back, re-entering the 21st o:

Point is, we've made it! Here's to another great year to come[:

I counted down with my family playing Taboo and Poker in our family room. Then, we went to New Years Dim Sum later that day, followed by watching Wreck It Ralph and Parental Guidance :D

Today, I got to hang out with my best friend and went to In-N-Out for the first time since I've been back!! Yum <3 Then, we went bowling with some of our other friends, followed by Les Miserables, which was definitely worth our time[:

Its a great start to the new year, let's keep the spirits high and take on 2013! [:

Keep Loving, Keep Flying

Surreal

I am about 3 weeks into my first year in college... at NYU! How surreal is that? It's odd, because for some reason, it feels rather normal, even though CA and NY are totally different in so many aspects. I guess that's good that I didn't get shell-shocked or something though, heh.

I also came across a quote today which I loved, so I thought I'd share it with anybody who might come across this little ol post.

"There are people who are generic. They make generic responses and they expect generic answers. They live inside a box and they think people who don't fit into their box are weird. But I'll tell you what, generic people are the weird people. They are like genetically-manipulated plants growing inside a laboratory, like indistinguishable faces, like droids. Like ignorance."

 - C. JoyBell C.

Also fitting with this theme of surrealism and what seems normal and thinking outside of the box, I'd like to share with you some surrealist pieces of artwork by Salvador Dali, James Marsh, and Vladimir Kush; one of them is even now my new laptop wallpaper! :D

First off is the already commonly known, very famous, and one of my all-time favorites: "The Persistence of Memory" by Salvador Dali.

Here is a piece by James Marsh, an artist I've only recently come across.

Another piece by James Marsh. 

This is "African Sonata" by Vladimir Kush, which is another one of the ones I've liked for quite some time now.

"At the End of the Earth" by Vladimir Kush; I only came across this piece today, but I love his vision!

Another piece by Vladimir Kush, which is actually currently my laptop background!

"Fauna in La Mancha" by Vladimir Kush; I was actually trying to decide if i wanted this or the previous one as my background for a while.

I loved this piece by Vladimir Kush, mainly because it incorporated main pieces from several of his other works; you should be able to recognize the butterfly windmills from "Fauna in La Mancha" and the cloud hot air balloon from pictures displayed above; he has another piece that I have not posted here that has a boat with butterflies in the place of the sails, which is also incorporated in here. This piece as absolutely beautiful with its attention to detail while questioning the details of reality.

Surreal
See U RREAL soon [; Yea, I'm lame :P Or maybe I'm just thinking outside the box and you're weird ;P <3

Final Gov/Econ Project

For our final AP Government/Economics HP project, my teacher said we could write an essay or do any form of a project by ourselves or in a group of our choice on an issue of our choice. Gives us a pretty wide range, so seeing my classmates work should be interesting! My group consists of Neda, Blanca, and I... we decided to do a blog on Capital Punishment/the Death Penalty... I set up the blog... but realized after I put in way too much work into it that I had created it under my new NYU account... which doesn't allow me to switch it to my personal account which houses both this blog and my writing/poetry blog: P.O.V. - Perspective of Vanessa. Hopefully, NYU doesn't choose to delete the blog, especially before my teacher has a chance to see it and grade it! o: It's not completely done yet, but if you want to see the what's done so far/the progress: Consequence or Incompetence.

Long Weekends, Senior Stuff, End of the Year and more

I have been so busy and wiped out by the end of the day that I haven't been updating this blog, so here's to me catching up!

On the final day of my four day weekend... I went to Knotts with my little sister and one of my close friends, Gauri[: We got there around when they opened and left about 8 hours later. While we were there, we obviously went on the rides, grabbed some fries for lunch as well as some fro-yo, and... stalked one of our friends, Chris, who works there :P We also saw a TON of little kiddies from elementary schools and junior highs. We were wondering WHY they were everywhere, until we figured out there was a 5k marathon run there earlier that day. It was pretty interesting hearing bits and pieces of conversations that completely tipped us off that they weren't from this area.

The next day at school, it appears many of the seniors were... sick :P The rest of us who hadn't caught the 24 day virus ended up playing cards and such. My first period was actually spent alternating between reading a book I brought and arguing/debating with our teacher x]

The following day, the seniors have all recovered, and we all showed up at school dressed up and ready for our senior presentations/interviews. Some people were rather nervous about it, and many people have complained about the work we had to put into creating our portfolios, but, ultimately, the experience was rather fun for most of us. If anybody reading this is looking for advice on a future presentation or interview, all I have to tell you is have a firm handshake, smile, be courteous, relax, be yourself, and talk. That's really all there is to it... oh. and dress professionally, obviously[: Not only that, but Senator Dianne Feinstein visited our school that day to talk to our students. Unfortunately, I could not go listen in, because that was my presentation time slot, but many of my friends where there and filled me in on what happened. We were also featured in the OC Register for this reason... there were some factual errors in the article, but several of the students at our school guarded the comments section against other posters with negative things to say about our school.

Yesterday, we went to our classes and all that normal stuff... and then... we got our yearbooks! :D yay. They're also 3D.. pretty cool[:

Birthday and LONG WEEKENDS cont.

Mm. This long weekend so far has been fabulously blissful[:

My day today? Well I actually had a board meeting for HOSA from like 9 til noon, but that's not at tedious as it sounds, and it went by faster than we expected it to, especially with mangos, chips, and chocolate covered blueberries ;D I went home and actually had time to relax and read for fun, something I love to do, but haven't been able to do as much during my high school years (not to say I didn't, but not as much as I would have liked to). Then I took a lovely nap... and awoke freaked out because I wasn't sure if it was the same day or if I had slept all the way through the night into the next morning... don't blame me: it was around 6 PM and was still super sunny and bright out my window and the numbers on my digital clock have become faint AND I wasn't wearing my glasses or contacts :P Afterwards, my mom, my sister, and I went shopping for a while before our entire family headed to Stacked (for the first time) for my belated birthday dinner :D SOOOOOOOO filled: Chips, Onion Strings, Chili, Double Stacked Burger, and my birthday Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream Chocolate Chip Cookie Sandwich ;D Yum.

Ready for more adventuring tomorrow! [:

Birthday and LONG WEEKENDS! :D

Well. I guess it's not technically my birthday anymore, because it passed midnight... but this weekend's been amazing so far hehe [:

Saturday, May 26th: Joint 18th birthday party for me, my best friend Jeffrey, and our other good friend Llewellyn! [: We partied all day and all night really :P Haha, the last person to leave left at 2 AM or so. The remaining people slept over. We didn't end up sleeping until past 4 AM... on the hardwood floor of my living room... AFTER some late night snacking on chips and salsa and cold pasta :P hehe

After we woke up on...
Sunday, May 27th: My actual birthday!
We ate popcorn chicken, muffins, chips, and soda for breakfast (errrr... brunch? morning snackage? idk :P) before Jeffrey came by to take us out to birthday lunch at Buca di Beppo (yum. more pasta! :DD hehe) and shopping ^^ Afterwards, I hung out for a while with one of my friends who I haven't gotten to hang out with for a long time. Later, I ended up going to hang out with my brother, his basketball teammates, and their families. Oh the wonderful feeling of being greeted by excited screaming little kids' "VANESSA!"s :D We hung out by the pool and a bonfire in their backyard. We munched on dinner and then made SMORESSSS :D hehe. Before watching the second Fantastic 4 movie.

Yep. All in all a great birthday celebration [:
And on top of that... I don't have to go to school tomorrow (er today? O.o) or Tuesday! :P yay for long weekends! :DD