College Life: Door Decorating Contest

Has it really been almost two weeks since I last posted something? I'm so sorry, guys. Life's been slamming me lately, and I really didn't feel like finding something to write about. Because I'm pretty sure that my life has been rather boring lately.

However, there is one thing that I've been doing that I'm REALLY quite proud of! WE DECORATED OUR DORM DOOR FOR THE HALLOWEEN CONTEST.

And get this even crazier thing -- WE WON.

WE WON "BEST DOOR" IN THE DORM.

Sorry for all the caps; I'll stop now.

 You see, our dorm had this "Decorate Your Door" contest, with prizes for "Best Door," "Cutest Door," and "Scariest Door." My room mate and I decided to go ALL -OUT and create a Doctor Who themed paradise.

To the right, you can see the Imperial Dalek that we made. It's not the right colors, but it works. And the best thing? It's to scale!

His name is Dalek Mycroft.

 This is me standing next to the Imperial Dalek! I'm leaning a bit, but you can still see that the Dalek is WAY taller than I am. I'm five-foot-five-and-a-quarter-inches tall. This Dalek's probably pushing six feet.

The amount of math that we put into this thing was mind-numbing. We probably spent six or seven hours on this Dalek alone! Everything on it is to scale.

We found blueprints online and followed them down to the exact measurement sizes. (We also discovered that my Captain America cup is exactly nine centimeters in diameter - the width of the Dalek's ball-things.)

 We also made a to-scale K-9 as well! It's not quite as good as the Dalek, because we had a bit vaguer blueprints to work off of. 

Still, I think we did really good with what we had. 

K-9 is to the left of the door. 

 Here, you can see K-9 and how close he is to the door. He looks really neat!

And, of course, the door itself. It's not exactly "to scale," per se, but it is REALLY close. We based the design off of my TARDIS blanket that I bought back in... July or August, I can't remember now. 

My room mate did the lettering, and I found the decals to print out (the "Free Public" sign and the hospital circle). I aslso figured out how to make a box out of paper, and tape a flashing light to the wall so that the TARDIS's light would actually light up!

You can see, going down the left side of the TARDIS, that we have Weeping Angels. I drew every one of them! I'll make a separate blog post for the Angels, so keep a lookout for them, all right?





What do you guys think of my door? We're going to leave it up the rest of the year!!

Animal Crossing: New Leaf

Let's talk about something for a little bit, shall we? I'll start off with the fact that I'm a hardcore Nintendo fan. (Now, your definition of "hardcore" may differ a bit from mine, but I consider myself a hardcore one. I just don't have the money to get some of the things that I want at the moment.)

Recently, Animal Crossing: New Leaf came out for the 3DS. I hadn't really been planning on getting it, but after seeing so many things about it on Tumblr and stuff, I decided that I wanted to try it out. After all, I'd really enjoyed Wild World when I bought it back in 2006/2007. I played it for years before I got tired of it.

Much to my surprise, New Leaf was really engaging. It's even better now that you can be the Mayor of the town, and you pretty much have absolute control over your district. (You can't decide where people will place their houses, but oh, well. Maybe next time?)

The amount of customization that some people do in this game is just absolutely incredible. Some people place paths all around their town. I've seen one town that uses tiles from The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening to turn their village into a replica of Kohlint. It's fascinating.

I haven't done anything pretty like that with my town, and I don't know if I ever will. I'm not sure if I'll have the patience to do that. I think I just want to be able to place things as I please, without worrying about whether or not I'm making my town beautiful for people to travel through it using the Dream Suite.

Speaking of the Dream Suite, there are so many towns out there that are just stunning. There's the rumored Aika Village, which tells a story so dark that not many people enjoy visiting it. (I got stuck for 15 minutes in one of the houses; it was terrifying.)

In short, New Leaf allows you to live a whole new LIFE. And for somebody like me, whose life has been falling apart for months now, it's a nice way to escape and find ways to breathe before having to head back into the real world.

If you have a 3DS and haven't picked up New Leaf, go do yourself a favor and spend that $40. (Or wait for Christmas.) It's well worth the money, because there's always something new to do, always new festivals to see, and the New Leaf Tumblr community is very welcoming. Give it a try.

This is Mayor Mira from Mysidia, signing off.

One Month Later...

It's been a month since Jake died. 

...It's hard even writing those words. 

Jake.

Is.

Dead.

It still doesn't feel real. It's like at any moment, he'll walk into the youth room, throw his little (though not by much) brother around, and make everybody laugh.

My last real interaction with him was the day before my birthday. My youth group went bowling at the place he worked at, because he could get us a special deal. He had a lot of fun bowling with us, I think. (I drove Hunter to and from the bowling alley.) 

I can't remember the last time I actually talked to him, though. Is it bad for me to be saying that? I have no idea when I last talked to him. Was it the Mississippi Mission Trip? (I sincerely hope not.) 

When did I last talk to him? What did we talk about? Why can't I remember anything?

It doesn't seem real. I think I'm still in the shock phase, but I'm not sure. I'm not sure of anything any more. It's been a month; shouldn't this have gone away by now? (Then again, I am still immensely depressed from something that happened back in May.)

***

Anyways. I went and saw Hunter today. He had another friend over, Cody, and that guy was pretty cool. They played Grand Theft Auto V while my sister & I watched. (Well, Sarah mostly played with Hunter's new puppy. It's adorable, and loves to bite and play. So excitable!)

He looked really well. He's down to mostly just painkillers now, and he's wearing pants. (Pants are good.) He was talking and laughing, and he has the new Pokémon game as well. (I went out and bought Y today, because I felt like I needed to have some incentive to get through the week.) We talked about how he was doing.

He still needs a walker, but he can hobble slowly about. He doesn't really need to be walking, though, until they get that bone fragment out of his hip. His feet are still really scratched up from the accident. (It's really strange; it's been a month...shouldn't it have healed better by now?)

All in all, he's doing really well. He even ate an entire large bowl of Spaghettio's & Meatballs while I was there. Just wolfed it down. I'm so excited he's eating.

***

Marina's doing...well. She's still in pain, but I don't know how she's managing it. I haven't been able to get many updates on her. And I think Bailey's doing well, too. It's hard keeping up with them.

Pinterest Craft & Movie Nights!

My RA this year is absolutely awesome. She came up with this idea for a Pinterest Craft & Movie Night a few weeks ago, and we've been doing it every other week for three crafts now.

The first craft was a Glow Fairy Jar, and the movie we watched was The Little Mermaid. The jars were really messy to make, and they only glowed for a little while, but we were left with glittery jars at the end. I think all we need to do is put a little fake tealight in it and it would look awesome!

You can see my jar to the left. I tried to take a picture, but it's really hard to take a picture of things that glow-in-the-dark with a cell phone camera. It's almost impossible, actually, so I apologize for the terrible picture. 

The glitter I used was silver and blue. The glowsticks were blue and yellow, with a dash of pink.

The second craft was Crayon Melt Art, and the movie was Tangled. (Do you see a theme here?) This was actually really easy to do, and I'm certainly going to try and show my grandmother how to do it. I think it'd be a great idea for the younger granddaughters to do while they're with her. It's a rainy-day activity for sure! 

My crayon art didn't turn out quite as well as I wanted it to, but hey - that's what happens when you go in without knowing what you're doing :) Next time, I'll get it right, for sure! (I may even make a tutorial!)

I'm going to pick out better colors next time I do this! (It was dollar-store crayons, so you won't go broke doing this!)

Last night's craft was Dream Catchers, and the movies were The Lion King and Road to El Dorado. We finished Lion King, and since some of us still wanted to make dream catchers (we had a lot of string and hoop-stuff left over), we all stayed and someone put on Road to El Dorado. That's actually a really sexual movie; I didn't catch any of this when I last watched it in sixth or seventh grade! Wow!

The instructions the RA had printed out were actually really confusing, but thankfully one of the girls had been a camp counselor so she knew how to make them a much easier way. She taught everyone how to make the dreamcatchers, and we were all really thankful for her! Mine didn't turn out as well as I wanted it to...

After making my first one, I wanted to make another one for my little sister. So I rounded up a small piece of wire-hoop and started doing this one in pink. It turned out much better than my first one (although the picture is crap).

She's really excited to be getting it, actually :)

I did this one while watching Road to El Dorado. It took longer than my first one, because I tried to be a bit more careful with this one. (No such luck; it's still a bit wobbly.)

I think if I had a stronger piece of outside-hoop stuff, something that wouldn't bend if I tugged on it, then I would certainly make a better one! (I'm totally going to try again...)



I really can't wait for the next Pinterest night - it's going to be BOTTLE JELLYFISH! Basically, you take a plastic bag and you ball it up and you put it into a bottle with some water/food coloring and ohmigosh it just look awesome. (The fact that the movie we'll be watching is Beauty and the Beast makes me even more excited!)

What do you think, Readers? Should I make a step-by-step tutorial for the crafts that I've been doing lately, or would all of you just ignore them? Do you think they'd be fun to do? (They're cheap and easy, I think!)

I Hope My Teacher's a Whovian

Recently, I became obsessed with drawing Weeping Angels. You know, those things from Doctor Who that will throw you so back into the past that you die before ever seeing the present again?

Yeah, those things.

I've been drawing them on my whiteboard for two weeks now (just one a week, you see; it's slowly turning around and getting closer, the closer we get to Halloween). Then I decided I wanted to put them down on paper so I'd have a permanent set of Angels (bad idea, I know).

The other day, though, I was bored in my Music 121 (it's either "Appreciation" or "Intro to Listening") and started drawing Angels on my pages. One pose per page. I'm hoping that my teacher's a Whovian, and that she'll flip out when she sees my gorgeous doodles.

Would you like to see them? 

I actually have another full-page one that says "GOOD LUCK," but I've decided not to put it up because A) It's unfinished and B) it looks horrific. Sorry, guys, but them's the breaks.

It's even funnier because we turn in these notebook before the tests. I didn't doodle at all on my last turn-in, but this time I have Weeping Angels and a ton of Zelda doodles. (The note on her last one said I love your handwriting! Maybe this one will be STOP.)

Bandanas and Jesus

I'm sure you all remember my previous post about helping out in Children's Church. This Sunday marked the fifth week since the series began, and it was also the lesson that I think I enjoyed the most.

I wear bandanas every week, of course, but this week the lesson I gave had to do with bandanas. The lesson was on Attitude.

The first bandana I showed off to the kids was the red bandana. Red stands for love. When we see a red bandana, we're supposed to remember that Jesus loves us.

Jesus loved everyone, even his enemies. 

Red gets us happy and excited, and reminds us that we're to love everyone, even if they don't love us.

We're supposed to "wear" red bandanas all the time. Forget about the other two colors; red's our color.

Then we have the blue bandanas.

When you hear that someone's "blue," what do you think about? You think they're sad. Blue is the color sad, unhappy, negative people. We shouldn't want to wear blue bandanas.

Nobody likes negative people in their lives. If you're too negative, then you're going to end up with a lot fewer friends than you began with. 

(Also, I'm sorry for the picture. I am wearing a tank top underneath that shirt, I swear. It just slipped down a bit for the picture. Ugh.)

Then we have the yellow bandanas. In Twin Forks Junction, we call scaredy-cats "Yeller Bellies." They're scared and unhelpful most of the time.

Yellows are wishy-washy and they go along with the crowd because they don't have the backbone to stand up for themselves.

We don't need to wear yellow bandanas because we don't need to go along with the crowd. We need to stand out and stand up for Jesus.









Now, the whole point of this lesson was to drive home one thing: We need to be happy, loving people. We can be scared and sad at some points in time, but we don't need to wear those bandanas 24/7. We need to have our red bandanas on as much as possible, and show love and kindness to everyone we come across. 

So, I want you take a moment and think about some things. What color bandana do you wear the most? What can you do to wear the red one more?

HUNTER. IS. HOME!

HUNTER IS HOME!

HUNTER IS HOME!

HUNTER.

IS.

HOME.

My sister texted me about 9:00 and told me, "BTWS YO, YO HOME BOY HUNTER IS AT THE HOOOOOUSE!!!!!"

"ARE YOU KIDDING"

"NO FO SHIZZLE HE HAD A BOWEL MOVEMENT SO HE COULD GO HOME!"

So Hunter went potty and his doctor, after extensive tests, decided that he could go home. (She's been checking up on him more than she should have, because she felt so bad about NEARLY KILLING HIM earlier. So there's 99.9% chance of NO RELAPSE this time!!)

So I get to go see my best friend on Friday when I get home! You really have no idea how happy I am right now :D I am just jumping off the walls. I wish I could contain my excitement!!!! :D

So thank you, everyone for all of your prayers and well-wishes these past three weeks! :) There's just one more person to focus all the healing powers on: Marina. I mean, Hunter's still got a ways to go as well, but Marina really needs prayer right now as well. (She can't have as much pain medication while she's in rehab, so she's having an extremely tough time.)

Thank you, everyone, for what you've done :) I know you don't know these people, and they don't know you, but hey -- thanks. Thank you so much. Hunter means more to me than anyone will ever know. And Marina and Bailey all mean something to other people as well. 

Hunter's Eating!

I went and saw him yesterday, and he started eating actual food again on Saturday! Yesterday he had three french fries and three pieces of barbeque while I was there. (His mom pulled it off the ribs for him.) 

He also no longer has any tubes sticking in him. He still has the IV NEEDLE in, just in case they have to pump fluid into him, but he's got nothing attached any longer. He's switched to pain pills now, so he no longer has his morphine button. He's also up and walking around some (he's got a fall risk bracelet on), but mostly he stays in bed.

He's also been playing video games again, which is a very good sign. (Although his TV hasn't moved from Cartoon Network in two weeks, and his mom is ready to strangle him.) 

He's smiling, talking a lot, and basically acting a bit like the old Hunter. Nothing quite as crazy, but at least he can follow conversations and understand people and stuff. He's improved a lot from last week, even. It's fantastic.

Maybe he'll even be home by the time I visit him next week :) I'm getting a little tired of driving to UAB every week, but I would do it EVERY DAY if I had to.

***

Marina's been in rehab for about a week now, and she's in a wheelchair. She's also in constant, excruciating pain. One of the rules of rehab is that they have to dial down the pain meds they give you so that you can start therapy without being drugged up. I can only imagine the pain; she was essentially put back together from the waist down. That's going to hurt a lot, probably even WITH pain meds.

Her sisters tried to do her hair the other day, and she couldn't sit up for more than five minutes before she started sobbing and had to go back to lying down. It's just tremendously, tremendously sad. And terrible.

I hope she starts getting better soon.

So I Went to a Bar Today

Technically, I guess it's called "The Tavern on Main" or "The Main Street Tavern." I didn't exactly look at the sign to see what it was called.

I sat a table with friends for about half an hour before this guy in a motorcycle vest (the "Iron Order") with tattoos and a knife on his hip comes over and starts chatting us up, introducing his "newbie friend" to us. He asks our names, and the first thing out of my mouth was, "I'm Melissa."

So my friends followed my example and all gave fake names. I'm not sure if he believed theirs, but he sure as hell believed mine. We all showed him the M on our hands ('cause he was carrying a beer) and said we couldn't drink. So he and his friend shuffled off. (His "friend" showed up later and tried to dance with Erin.)

I hit the dance floor with my friends, and, well, it was just SO AWKWARD. I kinda moved my hips and swayed. One guy did back up to bump butts or something, but it freaked me out a little and I ran away. So he either thinks I'm a lesbian or that I'm waaaay too inexperienced for his tastes. I wish I hadn't done that now, because he WAS kinda cute. Would've been better if he had asked or if I'd known him, though.

The whole thing was awkward. A few people were like having sex on the dance floor, but other people were just dancing and breaking it down and were having fun. The couple-y people made me almost as sick as the smoke.

Eventually, one of my friends got sick from the smoke (we were all feeling sick) and we left. She threw up. I tied her hair back for her. She had to use Erin's rescue inhaler. 

I still feel sick. My room mate said she could smell the smoke on me before I opened the door. So I've rinsed my clothes. I've sprayed Febreze everywhere. It was an experience. One that I WILL NOT repeat for a while x-x

And now I know why Charlie always carried his knife wheneverhe went to the Otter Creek Tavern. You NEED TO.