Obligatory Christmas Post.

Woohoo! Christmas! Yaaaaay!

It was a really great Christmas, actually. Between the awesomeness that was having literally every single one of my cousins in one place for the first time ever--Lili having come up from Houston with Hannah and Grandmama for a weekend of adventure and "arrowing", and Oliver coming with Simon and Emily from California for Christmas festivities--the week was positively full of rarely-seen family!

                  Granny, Austin, Brendon                                                                

Sophia 

 

               Oliver                                                                                         Lili

First came the aforementioned weekend of Lake Fork craziness (which included endless target practice with my dad's and Jackson's new bows, four-wheeling, Christmas baking, bonfiring, and Jackson capsizing in the canoe before Lili and I came to his [damp] rescue).

After this, Jackson and I came home early to celebrate our three-year anniversary by seeking out my mother's Christmas gift, of which neither of my parents were even faintly aware. It took us hours of searching to find the right one, but we finally went home with the newest addition to the Bailey family:

Meet Poppet Cat Bailey (a 6-month-old, sweet, adorable girl-cat!)

The next day was Tuba Christmas with everyone, including Grandmama's reindeer antlers, as per tradition:

 

Then, of course, was Christmas!

We opened presents:

(I got a new phone, a ton of books, some lovely clothes, and a lot of other wonderful things! Yay!)

We ate Christmas dinner:

And, by golly, it snowed! 

So all in all, it was a pretty successful holiday. Hope yours was as awesome as mine, and Happy New Year!

PS - Sorry for the nosedive in picture quality recently. I haven't had the motivation to edit any of these pictures or upload pictures from my real (non-iPhone) camera. So yeah. Blah. 

Finally Done!

The semester is officially over! I just took my last final and am feeling pretty good about my grades. Now, after I finish up some laundry and load all my crap into my car, I'll be ready to go home for a long and glorious month! YIPPEE!

For the record, this is a picture of all the notecards I have used for studying this semester with Gatsby the Dapper Lego Man for scale. 284 notecards, to be exact.

College!

But to counteract this overload of schooling, I did an uncharacteristically reckless thing and went to see The Hobbit premier the night before my last final. The movie was three hours long, and I only got four hours of sleep and minimal studying, but IT WAS SO WORTH IT! Good god, that movie could not have been better. Far more lighthearted than the LotR movies, but not childish or silly, still appropriately dark. Gah! GO SEE IT IMMEDIATELY. 

Oh, and I did fine on my final, so no worries. Priorities or something. 

Another thing that makes me excited: My boys The Lead Pipes are finally releasing a real album! Professionally recorded and everything! I went with them to record and took some pictures for the cover design. And by the way, their recordings sound incredible. Friends of Jackson, be excited. They're probably looking at a release date in January-ish. 

My preliminary cover design:

Also, enjoy this cartoon I drew while killing time at Amitea:

And here is a picture of a happy sloth friend!

Happy Winter Break!

My Life is a Collage of Stories

You know what I love?

Stories.

Stories are why I am an English major, why I love to read, why I love to write. They are the reason I see the world for what it is, to love this place and these people and this chance we have been given to explore and discover and feel and know. The reason I have battled the biggest and the smallest monsters, traveled through time, died and been born again and again, defeated Voldemort, survived the zombie apocalypse, met the Doctor, learned what love means at the end of it all. The reason I know that the human imagination is probably the most important part of our collective existence, the reason we have survived, and will continue to do so.

This week, with finals approaching and the number of square meals I get in a day reduced to one-ish, I have been lucky enough to have time to experience some pretty amazing stories. Stories that have absolutely nothing to do with school, or academia, or studying, or learning, but have magic and meaning in them just the same.

The first was Firefly, the early-2000s TV show about space cowboys. My brother has been pestering me to get on the hipster bandwagon for years, and only now that I have succumbed and watched the tragically short fourteen episodes plus one movie do I realize how effing awesome it is. Everything you would ever want in a series --  danger! a gang of rebellious outlaws! romance! intrigue! humor! -- all wrapped up in a  story of smugglers aboard an outdated spaceship travelling throughout the galaxy evading capture. When you add in Nathan Fillion and a bunch of other likable/badass characters, the story is irresistible to the lover of post-apocalyptic space epics known as Myself.

The second was Life of Pi. I had the pleasure of reading this book in Ms. Kremer's class freshman year of high school, and while I loved and appreciated the book and its general genius, which was very new to me at the time, I promptly forgot about it until the announcement for the movie. Last night, several friends and I went to see it at last, and I was totally blown away. This was by far the best book-to-movie adaptation I have ever seen, effectively capturing, not only the detailed plot and its complicated twists, but also the essence of the book itself, all its subtleties and nuances and themes and the feel of the story. For this, I respect Ang Lee (the director) and Suraj Shurma (young Pi, who had never acted before) immensely.

Lastly, I spontaneously decided to reread Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows earlier this week, which, despite being time-consuming, has been completely worth it. It's been well over a year since I've read a Harry Potter book, and every time I return to them I am astounded by their sheer genius. These are books that will last generations--and rightly so. This story is so epic and perfect and human, and it holds a special place in my heart as the one that, so many years ago, got me hooked on this beautiful art form.

Sorry this post is long, but if you've made it all the way to the end, I'm going to give you some advice: stop studying, stop stressing, stop whatever you're doing for just a couple of hours and go watch a great movie, read an excellent book, and revel in your favorite stories. Get away, if only briefly, from your own life and problems and worries and experience someone else's for a while.

:)

Dear Internet,

All I want is a ten-season-long Netflix series wherein Neil Patrick Harris, Nathan Fillion, Alec Baldwin, and David Tennant play nerdy space cowboys, directed by Joss Wheedon and Wes Anderson, based on a book by John Green, and, knowing you, probably containing lots of cats. With music. And probably time travel and spaceships and maybe a little bit of Tina Fey. Also aliens. And if you have time throw in some Joseph Gordon-Levitt playing the guitar.

Are we on the same page here? Okay good.

Sincerely,

Ariel Bailey






PS - I DON'T CARE IF IT SUCKS JUST DO IT.

A Brief Glimpse at my Thanksgiving Adventures...

My brother came down from Colorado! It was nice to see him and hang out after three months of college.

Blublublub.

We went to Houston to visit our awesome Bailey/Alamshenas family!

We saw five alligators at Brazos Bend!

We went to Thanksgiving fireworks downtown!

AND we went to the Texas Renaissance Festival...

So that's it! I hope your holiday was as fun-filled as ours. Now back to classes and tests and projects for two more weeks, then CHRISTMAS! Whoo!

All the Stars!

So the past few weeks have been exhausting and exciting. It's been super busy and crazy and aaaaaaah I can't wait for Thanksgiving break.

Two weekends ago I went camping at Ray Roberts with these awesome people.

 

Andrew, Jena, and I struggling to tame the tent. Ugh. 

All of our outdoor-culinary adventures. We got quite gourmet! Garlic-spinach chicken sausage with toasted asiago bagel, anyone?

We also had a beautiful laying-in-the-middle-of-the-street stargazing party, followed by a midnight glowstick rave and ridiculously aggressive card games. Fun times. 

I also took senior portraits for my friend Amanda. This is the first time I have ever been paid to take pictures of someone, and I admit I was quite nervous. I think they turned out well though! (Despite the enormous pain and frustration that inevitably plagues me during projects like this that actually matter. UGH TECHNOLOGY UGH.)

And finally, this last Friday there was an Honors exodus to Inwood Theatre in Dallas at midnight, where our collective favorite godawful movie, The Room, was playing--WITH TOMMY WISEAU AND GREG SESTERO PRESENT!

This is me standing between Greg Sestero (left) and Tommy FREAKING Wiseay (right. Obviously.). 

O-M-EFFING-G. There is only one word to describe how I felt, and that is starstruck. I'm not sure if Tommy is technically a celebrity, but in Honors he's like the second most important person next to Dumbledore or maybe The Doctor. Meeting him after watching his movie dozens of times was surreal to say the least. And honestly, having experienced the nearly incoherent way he speaks broken English, I'm impressed that his movie made any sense at all!

And he signed my spoon!

My favorite quote of the night had to be this:

TOMMY: People say my movie is "bad acting". But you know what we say about "bad acting"? Greg, tell them--what do we say is "bad acting"?

GREG: Uh... I think you people pretty well know. 

Ha! Poor Sestero. So much shame. But a top contender for best quote was when Tommy called up a girl to sing Happy Birthday to her, then started and completely made up the lyrics. It went something like this:

TOMMY: Happy Bir-day to you, Happy Bir-day to you, Yay, you have Happy Bir-day, Yayayayayay, that's it! Now get off the stage. 

Ooooooh my. It was an experience. A spoon-throwing, screen-yelling experience. But oh my god it was possibly the most awesome night of my college life. My life is a joke. 

Anyway, then today I went to see these fantastic boys perform at the Country Club:

Andrew Jackson!

And in two days I'm going to Houston for Thanksgiving. All I have to do between now and then is finish my obnoxious English essay, which I have written except for the last sentence, which currently reads: "AND THEN SOMETHING ELSE GOES HERE. BLAH." Probably not academic enough for my teacher. 

Ah yes. Good times, good times. 

Progress!

This election saw many wonderful changes in our country that really restores some of my optimism about Americans in general.

We put the first Asian-American woman in the Senate!

Maize Hirono of Hawaii

We elected the first LGBT Senator!

Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin

We chose the first female amputee for Congress!

Tammy Duckworth of Illinois

There are now a record twenty female Senators!

Including all the previous female Senators, who were re-elected, and the two ladies mentioned above, these women joined the ranks:

Deb Fischer of Nebraska

Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts 

We have our first Hindu-American to serve in Congress, also a woman!

Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii

White men are no longer the majority in the House Democratic Caucus with the addition of a record number of minority groups!

Four states legalized gay marriage!

There are now more openly LGBT Congresspeople than ever before!

Sean Maloney of New York

Colorado and Washington legalized recreational marijuana.

(Which in my opinion is a good thing economically whether or not you actually plan on making use of this law.)

ALL of the men who made insensitive (and frankly wrong) remarks about women, abortion, and rape failed to get reelected!

And, of course, the first mixed-race President won a second term!

(And also won the popular vote, just FYI.)

Whatever you think of these people's politics, they represent a distinctive move toward a better and more egalitarian country. This is an election I can be proud to have participated in!