june media roundup

I've done a few of these media roundups before, and it's time for another one! Sometimes I feel like all I do is read (some of you probably feel like all I do is read, too—after all, that's mainly what I write about!), but in between reading all of those books, I have been listening to some music and watching some TV and movies. Here are a few of the things I'm enjoying—or eagerly anticipating—right now:

"Forever Reign" by One Sonic Society
Every so often, I come across a song that gets completely stuck in my head. This is one such song! We sing it in church sometimes, and I recently downloaded it. Right before my gallbladder surgery, I was pretty nervous, and I was singing this song in my head to try to calm myself as they put me under. When I woke up, it was still running through my head ... and it's been there on-and-off ever since!



Tyler Perry movies
These two movies could not be more different—except that they both star Perry! I'm looking forward to both of them.

Madea's Witness Protection

I have a soft spot for Tyler Perry movies. Especially Madea movies. Madea is an acquired taste—the first time I saw Diary of a Mad Black Woman, I thought Madea was completely over the top and ridiculous—but once you grasp the humor, you're in for hours of laughter. My sisters and I are eagerly anticipating Madea's Witness Protection, which comes out this Friday. Does it look stupid? Yes. But it also promises two hours of Madea goodness. Hallelujer!

Alex Cross
I'm not going to embed this trailer because it's a bit graphic, so if you want to watch it, go here. So at first I wondered if Tyler Perry could really pull off the role of Alex Cross—made famous by Morgan Freeman in Kiss the Girls and Along Came a Spider. Well, 38 seconds into the trailer, I forgot all about my concerns ... because I was screaming "Matthew Fox!" at my screen. Matthew Fox is the villain, and not in the seems-like-a-good-guy-but-is-really-kinda-bad way that he was in Vantage Point. He completely CREEPED. ME. OUT. And made me really want to watch this movie. Come October, I'll be in the theater.

"Beautiful Things" by Gungor
In yearbook class, we always listened to music. Oftentimes, it was Michael Bublé or One Direction ... and Joey, the editor, got far too many song picks. On one of the last days of school (after Joey had already graduated and gone back to China), Tori picked this song. It was the first time I'd ever heard it—at least that I can recall. I fell completely in love. It's definitely my favorite song of the moment!


Dawson's Creek
I'm halfway ashamed to even admit to watching Dawson's Creek. I realize I'm 14 years late to the party, and I really wasn't even interested in watching it when it originally aired. Then it showed up on Netflix, and I watched the first episode. And the second. And the third. As Blendy says, it's like crack—so addictive! In the week following my surgery, I watched the first three seasons. Since I've been back at work, I've been watching the episodes at a more reasonable pace, and I'm currently at the beginning of the fifth season. And let me just say, I'm totally in the Pacey-Joey fan club. Dawson ... is just annoying.

Drop Dead Diva
Could you ask for a more ridiculous concept? I'm not sure: Deb is a model who gets into a car accident, and Jane is a lawyer who gets shot ... both on the same day. Through a mixup, Deb dies, and her soul is placed in Jane's body. So Jane is really Deb, but no one knows except Deb's best friend Stacy and her guardian angel Fred (who has now been replaced by guardian angel Luke). Here's the kicker—Jane works at the same law firm as Grayson, Deb's fiance. The longer Deb remains in Jane's body, the more like Jane she becomes.

Drop Dead Diva is simply a fun summer show! It's currently in its fourth season on Lifetime, and while it's not a show I can't miss an episode of (like, say, Fringe), it's a fun way to pass an hour. The cases are never super-serious, the cast has chemistry, and the characters are multi-dimensional. The first three seasons are streaming on Netflix. Check it out!

The Bachelorette
I blame my sister for my Bachelor/ette addiction. I thought the franchise was incredibly stupid and a waste of time ... until one evening when I showed up at my parents' house while Val was watching DeAnna's season. I was hooked. Do I "believe in this process"? No. But it's sure entertaining to watch! We have weekly Bachelorette parties at my parents' house ... sometimes Dad even joins in the fun! 

This season may be my favorite ever—current Bachelorette Emily isn't messing around, and she's not afraid to send guys home when she knows they're not right for her, even in the middle of a date or before the rose ceremony. And the guys are so fun! She's down to her final four guys, and I'm fairly certain I know which one will be going home next week. Of the three that will remain, all seem to be great guys. Of course, I'd rather have Sean than see Emily have him, but that's not very realistic, is it? Check out his Twitter bio. This guy's not going to have any trouble finding a woman if Emily lets him go! (Speaking of Twitter bios, Arie's absolutely cracks me up. So true!)
So that's what I'm watching/listening to/anticipating. What about you? Any movies, music, or TV shows I should check out?

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crafting with blendy & becky: book page flowers

For our May craft, Blendy and I decided to make these book page flowers. I wasn't sure at first if I could make them—we've already established that I'm not naturally very crafty!—but they were surprisingly simple. I couldn't believe how quickly I picked it up, and soon I could form the petals without really thinking.

Rather than give you step-by-step instructions, I'm just going to point you to the site I used. Their pictures make following the directions incredibly easy.

Before we could start making the flowers, I had to decide which book I was willing to tear apart ... not an easy task for someone like me who loves her books! Then I remembered this book. I got it through Vine, and their rules stipulate that reviewers can't give possession of the products received to anyone else, though they can dispose of the product after a certain amount of time. Well, I still had the book on my shelf, and there was no chance I'd ever read it again ... so making book page flowers out of it seemed perfect!

Like I said before, you should go to this origami instruction website for directions, but here are a couple things I learned from making my flowers:

Make a template, then trace as many as you can onto a piece of paper. I found that when I was just measuring (say 4" x 4"), I often wasn't quite accurate ... so each petal of my flower was a slightly different size. Tracing a template eliminated that problem.

Also, use pencil, not pen (as I did), to trace the template. If I didn't fold the petal perfectly, I often had a little black showing through.

At first, the flower making was slow going, but soon I could complete a flower in about 15 minutes. It's perfect busy work while watching a movie or chatting!

Here are my completed flowers on top of the book I "sacrificed" for this project. (Side note: I helped with VBS at my church this week, and one of the daily lessons was on sacrifice—how Jesus sacrificed his life to save us. The teacher did an illustration using q-tips and money showing that not everything we are asked to give up is a sacrifice ... and I think this book would fall under that category!)

I'm not sure yet what I'm going to do with the flowers—I guess I'll put them out as decoration somewhere. Aren't they cute?

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i'm free!

This blog has been woefully quiet for the last several days, and if you follow me on Facebook, you know why: yearbook. It has completely consumed my life ... to the point where I spent TWELVE hours working on it yesterday. But today at 6 p.m., I submitted the final page ... so I'm free! It seems crazy to not have to think about yearbook anymore. After work, my evenings will be mine again! So what will I do with them?

• Clean my house. I went straight from a week of lying on the couch after surgery into two weeks of intensive yearbooking. I did manage to do the dishes a couple of times, but that's it. My house is a complete wreck—it's bad enough that even I am getting sick of it! (And if you know me well, you know I have a high tolerance for "clutter" ... I think it's in my genes!)
• Mow my lawn. It's been two weeks since Blendy was kind enough to mow for me, and I'm sure my neighbor—the elderly man who lives in Grand Island and keeps a house here as a weekend getaway—would appreciate it if my lawn was a respectable height, rather than the jungle it resembles now.
• Finish up the posts I've started. I still have to tell you about my May craft project (it's super cute!) and finish writing my April & May goals update. I also have a fabulous recipe to share!
• Read. I know: I'm always reading ... but I've gotten way behind. I did manage to read and review Glamorous Illusions on time, but for the first time ever, I missed a tour deadline! The review was due yesterday (a Sunday ... really?), and I haven't even cracked open the book yet. I have another two reviews due on Friday. So I guess I'll be doing a lot of reading for the remainder of the week.
•  Exercise. It's really amazing how out of shape you can get in just three weeks! I went for a walk and bike ride on Saturday—my first exercise of any type since surgery. When I got home, I was exhausted and totally winded. So I really need to get back out there!
• Check out Saving Hope. All I know about it is this: it stars Michael Shanks and Erica Durance. And that's all I need to know to give it a shot. (Actually, it had me at Shanks ... Lois Lane is just the icing on the cake!)

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i really should be working ...

I had my gallbladder removed last week. (That's a post for another day.) My yearbook submission date was May 25, but I knew there was no way I'd feel like working on yearbook right after my surgery, so I got an extension from my yearbook rep. Now I'm back at work and feeling good, so it's time to buckle down and finish the yearbook. So tonight, I silenced my phone, turned on some music, and sat down with a stack of spreads to proofread.

That was three hours ago. In those three hours, I did manage to proofread three spreads. But I also ...

• Carried on a Facebook conversation with Blendy and Janae about The Bachelorette. I have somehow managed to be spoiler free so far this season, so I have no idea what's coming down the pike ... and I'd like to keep it that way! My top three right now are Arie, Doug, and Sean. And Kalon and Ryan so have to go!
• Perused this list of celebrity Republicans. I have no idea how accurate it is, but I always knew I liked Freddie Prinze, Jr.!
• Watched a couple episodes of What I Like About You. (Yes, Val, "Ground-Turkey-Hog-Day" was one of them!)
• Fell into that black hole known as YouTube. Seriously! What is it about being under pressure that makes terrible fan videos so appealing?
• Played "Words with Friends" on Facebook. I'm truly terrible, but I enjoy it—and I'd be willing to play any of you ... just send me a request!
• Fell into that black hole known as Pinterest. I am totally trying this tightlining tip I found!

And now, it's time for bed. Maybe it's time to start using LeechBlock again!

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crafting with blendy & becky: rice heat therapy bag

The title of this post should actually be "Crafting with Susan & Becky"—when I told Blendy I wanted to make these rice therapy bags (discovered through Pinterest, of course) for our April craft project, she politely declined. So I turned to the woman whose help I would have needed to enlist anyway: my mom!

I think the last time I used a sewing machine, I was a freshman in high school. The sewing part of Home Ec was rather tramatic for me—we were required to make items of clothing and then wear them to school. This was bad enough on its own, but the day I chose to wear my terrible plaid jumper was also a day I stayed after school to work on yearbook. So did my cousin, who was responsible for the yearbook page of the yearbook ... and she took a picture of me working on my spread. So my horrible jumper is now immortalized on the pages of The Reflector. After that experience, I swore off sewing ... until now!

Apparently, when I swore off sewing, I really swore it off because I remembered virtually nothing. My mom had to basically hold my hand the whole way through—from cutting out the fabric to pinning it together to threading the sewing machine to actually sewing!

If you want detailed instructions, you should really go to "Sew, Mama, Sew!"—the site that inspired me. They give great directions! I didn't really follow their directions, though—I needed something simpler. So here's what I did ...

Find a fun fabric for your bag. Or you could do what I did and raid your mom's fabric scraps! (I didn't care if my bag was particularly beautiful ... after all, I was going to be the one sewing it!)

Cut fabric into approximately 8x20 inch rectangle. Fold in half to create 8x10 inch rectangle. If you have a fabric that doesn't look the same on both sides, be sure to fold so the right sides (what will be on the outside at the end) are together.

Pin on the three non-folded sides. Leave about four inches unpinned.

Sew. Try to keep your lines straight. (I was very bad at this.) Be sure not to sew the unpinned section.

Trim the edges and turn the fabric right side out.

Pour two pounds of rice into a bowl. Add 10-ish drops of essential oil and stir together. (You may need more or less—adjust until it smells right to you. I went WAY overboard with my cinnamon bark. Repeat after me: Less is more!)

Carefully fill bag with rice.

Stitch the hole closed. (Sorry, I can't give better directions for that—I did what Mom told me to do, but I don't think I can accurately describe it!)

To use your bag, heat it in the microwave in 30-second increments until it's as warm as you'd like.

Enjoy!

Note: This really was my April craft, and I did everything up to the rice part in April. It just took me a while to get my essential oils, so I finished in May.

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need a saturday morning laugh?

So true! My favorite line: Do you wanna be Jim & Pam, or do you wanna be Ross & Rachel?

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guest post: "leopard" by rae zhong

Here is the final installment in the series of short stories written by my students. Today's story, which received first place votes from several students in the class, is rather morbid. Despite the "ick" factor (or perhaps because of it), I really enjoyed this story, the first place winner in our contest. (See Natalie's second place story here and Elaine's third place story here.)

Leopard 
by Rae Zhong

It was at noon when I woke up, and I was in an unfamiliar place. The last thing I can remember was the sound of a gun. I was hungry. I tore off the bloody flesh from the chicken which was just two feet away from me, the scarlet liquid splashing upon my face and the grass.

Stale. Yuck.

I ate part of his body and threw the rest in the brushwood. The bloodstained chicken corpse made me sick.

“Hey, take it easy, buddy. Don’t waste your food.” There was a voice from the tree behind me. I ignored him. Because that’s the way I treated a stranger.

“I know this is your first day here, but as a leopard, especially in a zoo, you can’t be picky on your food. I understand you want to have something that tastes delicious, yet in this place, the choices could only be chicken, chicken, or chicken.” The leopard smiled and swung his tail, looking like he'd been telling a funny joke, although it sounded dumb to me.

In the next hour, he was being so loquacious that it seemed to me his tongue was going to fall off from his mouth. His name was Jeffery, which was given to him by his feeder. I sneered at him. "We are wild and solitary hunters. We don’t need names. Names are for little cats that are obedient to humans."

“You act exactly just like me when I first came here,” he said, “Arrogant and unbending. I tell you, time will swallow and perish all of your pride. Once you are here, you will never escape from this cage. Your world is this forest and the people outside the iron fence. And don’t even try to run off; they would seize you again.”

I didn’t retort; neither did I tell him the plan that was already in my head.

Life in the zoo was miserable. People turned us nocturnal animals into diurnal just because the zoo opened during the day. We could not have any freedom on hunting food nor choosing food. We could not even stay in the cave because people would not be able to see us. The only thing we could do is walk in front of the fence in order to let people visit us.

I wanted to end this boring life as quickly as possible.

So I obeyed everything the humans said, acted just like a biddable kitty. I didn’t bite or roar at anyone. I ate what they gave me. I wagged my tail like a stupid dog while they were feeding me. I smiled at them even though they could not understand a leopard’s smile. I could tell they trusted me bit by bit. I waited patiently until one day my feeder approached me with another disgusting chicken, calling me “Tom” (what an ugly name!), and I knew that it was time.

It was time for escape.

I immediately jumped on the feeder, using my claws to scratch his arms and legs. I saw shock and fear on his face, and I saw my dreadful face in his pupil. Was this right? I doubted myself for just one moment. "But what can you do? Stay in the zoo till you die?" another part of me retorted.

“Tom! What are you doing! Stop! ” It was Jeffery. Oh, I forgot he was in there, too. He ran to me, tried to separate us. “Don’t you know what it would cost you to kill a human? Your life! ” He shouted at me. I knew. I didn’t plan to kill people. I just tried to run off. The back door of the leopard forest was unlocked and two workers of the zoo were standing outside. They saw me running to them. They tried to shut the door. But it was too late. I jumped on the open door and broke it with my cuspid, and those frightened people ran away.

I heard Jeffery yelling, but I could not stop myself. I kept running like an arrow shooting out of the bow. I ran out of the zoo. I ran into the city. I made a huge ruckus among the frightened people. I didn’t stop until my shins cramped and my claws hurt. And I realized I was at the outside of the city. There was only grass, trees and mud roads around me.

Am I free?

I could not tell. I was out of the cage, but I had no clue where I was. I didn’t know how far it was from here to my home or how long would it take to go there. What could I do?

I was depressed. I missed my talkative friend Jeffery. I missed his dumb jokes, his laughing, and his amiable advice. I regretted my actions. Well, kind of. Yet I knew I would never go back to the zoo. I walked and walked. I hunted a rabbit. I ripped his head off, tasted his fresh flesh, but it didn’t taste as good as I thought it would.

"What’s wrong?" I sighed.

Suddenly, my legs started walking back. I could not control them; it was not my brain that told them to do so. The direction was to the zoo. I was insane. Yes, I was sure of it. The light wind blew my soft fur, leading me to the place I hated but missed.

I was going back.

I heard the sound of a gun.

The last sound I heard in my life.

CITY NEWSPAPER: The leopard that ran out of the zoo was found dead. Greedy hunters stripped off his fur and threw his dead body in a field.

About the author: Rae Zhong (center) is a sophomore from China. Art is her passion. She also participates in music, speech, and track.

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