Movie Minute: Cullowhee Creek Adventure

This was filmed freshman year right before final exams. Best adventure ever!! If only there had been a chain...

Busy Busy Day

It's a busy day here in Sylva!! The sun is shining, the temperature is rising, and Stuart and I are running around like crazy to get everything done today.
Yesterday, we spent the majority of our time packing up his apartment in Balsam then unloading his belongings into our Sylva home! It was hard, hot work!! And thankfully, Stuart's friend pitched in with the bigger furniture. All that's left is his queen-sized bed and giant TV! That will not happen today, however. Today is full of other things!!
To do before sunset today:

1. Deposit pet sitting payment at BB&T
2. Purchase hamster bedding from Fish & More Pet Store
3. Schedule steam cleaning for Stuart's apartment
4. Schedule car inspection for Stuart's Honda Civic
5. Pay for Stuart's X-rays
6. Take recycling and trash to SRC
7. Drop off Western Carolinian subscription check at the University Center on campus
8. Clean bathtub bathroom!!!!
9. Pay Stuart's rent in Waynesville
10. Go to Food Lion
• Tilapia
• Chicken thighs
• Pickles
• Gala apples
• Corn
• Lemonade mix
• Pickle relish
• Mayo
11. Call Justin for various information!
12. BUY MILK!!!
13. Go to Lowe's to buy a piece for the window that Sparta broke
14. Pay the power bill
15. Pack up more stuff from Stuart's place
16. Volunteer at animal shelter... maybe! 

12. Going Bovine

Book 12: Going Bovine by Libba Bray (A)

Ok, this is now one of my favorite books!! What an awesome story!!! For our six-month anniversary, Morgan bought me a gift card to my favorite bookstore City Lights. I took a chance in getting Going Bovine, which took up the entire monetary worth of the gift card, because it had a cover of a cow carrying a lawn gnome and as I scanned the first page of a boy talking I thought to myself, "I like this kid." And, I'm so glad I bought this book!! It was hilarious, awesome, exciting, unable-to-put-downable.
In modern day Texas, a boy in high school is just trying to survive being an outcast. His parents are on a rocky road to divorce, his sister is Little Miss Perfect and dating the recently-turned ultimate Christian football player, and this boy... Cameron... just wants out. Then, he founds out he has the human version of mad cow disease.

In the hospital spaced out on morphine, Cameron has a hallucination... or is she real... of a punk rocker angel named Dulcie who tells him that there's a cure. He just has to find Dr. X and save the universe from dark matter. Along with a Latino dwarf who is OCD and a hypochondriac and a lawn gnome that says he is the Norse god Balder... he travels across the lower United States in search of Dr. X, a cure, and what it means "to live."
Every page is a laugh! Every chapter has a new adventure. Every moment you fall more and more in love with these crazy, multi-layered characters. Some of my favorite moments include the gang making up their own sarcastic bumper stickers:

"My honors student sells drugs to your honors student."

"I know you're stalking me."

"Please don't tailgate: body in trunk"

"Quantum physics has a problem of major gravity" (292). 

Magazine Publishers Weekly compares the book to Douglas Adams' Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy as Going Bovine is bizarre, fun, and also innocently sweet.
Says Cameron as they near the end of their journey: "We sit staring out at that vast ocean, Gonzo and I, just watching the sky colors drip into the sea like a giant percolator, making something sweet and strong, something to keep you going when all you've got left are fumes.
"Maybe there's a heaven, like they say, a place everything we've ever done is noted and recorded, weighed on the big karma scales. Maybe not. Maybe this whole thing is just a giant experiment run by aliens who find our human hijinks amusing. Or maybe we're an abandoned project started by a deity who checked out a long time ago, but we're still hardwired to believe, to try to make meaning out of the seemingly random. Maybe we're all part of the same unconscious stew, dreaming the same dreams, hoping the same hopes, needing the same connection, trying to find out, missing, trying again - each of us playing our parts in the others' plot lines, just one big ball of human yarn tangled up together. Maybe this is it...
"We've left the moment. It's gone. We're somewhere else now, and that's okay. We've still got the other moment with us somewhere, deep in our memory, seeping into our DNA. And when our cells get scattered, whenever that happens, this moment will still exist in them. Those cells might be the building block of something new. A planet or star or a sunflower, a baby. Maybe even a cockroach. Who knows? Whatever it is, it'll be a part of us, this thing right here and now, and we'll be a part of it.
"And if it's a cockroach? Well, that will be the happiest f***ing cockroach on the planet. I can tell you that" (434-346).

Works cited from:

Bray, Libba. Going Bovine. New York: Delacorte Press, 2009. Print.

Photo of the Day April 20

Last April, I was doing this: running amok in Cullowhee Creek and discovering awesome things! The boys and I walked from the Ramsey Center all the way down to the Creek Lot past Walker Hall through the creek discovering awesome things. Here we found a bike!

5. My Side of the Mountain

Book 5: My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George (A - )


Georgina Deeb

I forget how horrible and awful George's ending are typically are. In Vulpes the Red Fox, she killed off the fox after a big hunt with a single shot and that was it!!! In this book, a boy named Sam runs away to his grandfather's land in the mountains and begins to live for a year in the woods. It's not because of some distaste for consumerism. It's not because he wants to be Thoreau though he is called that by his friend "Bando," a lost school teacher. It's because he's a young boy at that age where they want to run away from home. So he does. He tames a peregrine falcon, lives off the land on nuts and meats, and turns a hemlock tree into a house.

But the ending SUCKS!!!! Acceptable endings would have been:

1. Sam decides for himself to return to New York City
2. His family shows up to collect him and Sam mysteriously disappears but some people whisper they see a "wild boy" in the Rockies or in Appalachia
3. Sam dies!!! Even this is better than the actual ending, like in the film Into the Wild, which is based off a true runaway

The actual ending is Sam's entire family that he ran away from shows up on his mountain and immediately begins to build an actual house. Sam calls them out on it, saying "you're ruining everything!" and he's right! And then not even four sentences later, the boy shrugs and gives up. And, his family moves in and builds an actual house just because the mother got offended by how journalists described her in newspaper editorials. George writes such beautiful, beautiful books about the forest and the wild then ends them like this!! I wanted to throw the book against the wall. If it weren't for such a horrible ending, this book would have an A+. I forgot how amazing the book is since I last read it in 7th grade. But that freaking ending!!! It makes me want to scream.
Otherwise, the book is unbelievable starting with a boy in a tree worrying about a snowstorm then flashing back to the beginning of the journey. There is so much character in the boy written on a level for middle school students but just as enjoyable for adults as well. I hope that the two sequels, The Far Side of the Mountain and Frightful's Mountain, aren't tainted by the Gribley family trying to modernize everything.

2. 20,000 Leagues under the Sea

Book 2: 20,000 under the Sea by Jules Verne, Great Illustrated Classics version (A)

The haunting story of Captain Nemo has been a favorite of mine for quite some time. Today, I reread the abridged classic throughout the stormy afternoon while Sparta quietly slept parallel to me on his ottoman.

I have always been enthralled by the ocean so an entire book dedicated to exploring and living in the sea is right up my alley. Unfortunately, the book has lost some of its magic since I last read it. Because of its adaptation style, the writing is "dumbed down" for children. It's the reason this book gets an "A" for a grade instead of an "A+." At the same time, I knew I'd probably never be able to plow through the original novel by Verne. It's why the Great Illustrated Classics series are so great; I can read classic novels but not suffer through them. I believe the only classic I can truly stand is Wuthering Heights, but I still have to be in the mood for it!

At the end of the book, Captain Nemo admits to Aronnax that he is a writing a book of his life. Could there be a sequel to 20,000 Leagues that is like the book Captain Nemo mentions?!?! Is there a book like that? I think that'd be even better than 20,000 Leagues because it wouldn't have Ned the harpooner whining about escaping and Aronnax gasping and marveling over everything. Honestly, man, get over yourself! You wrote an entire book on the wonders of the sea. You've researched all this. Now, shut your gaping mouth and just enjoy the scenery. Your never-ending questioning and badgering of Captain Nemo ticks me off!!!! ...Anyway.....

For those of you who can't make it through a page of Bronte, Austen, or any of the other classics, pick up a Great Illustrated Classics next time you're in Books-A-Million. You get to read a great book that everyone who plays Jeopardy is supposed to know about and you get a black-and-white illustration on every other page!! Fun, yeah?!

100

Welcome to my 100th post for "Apartment 101." I am so excited to have reached this number!! Thank you to everyone who has followed this blog publicly and to everyone has been reading my strange thoughts, musings, happenings, and poking through my photography. Your comments, Likes on Facebook, and reads make my day!

To celebrate my 100th post, I decided it would be a good time to announce my grand news: as of yesterday morning, I was accepted to University of North Carolina - Greensboro!

I am beyond thrilled and excited to continue my college education at this university. While I am slightly saddened to be trading in my Catamount paws for a Spartan helmet, I cannot wait for the adventures that will unfold with my two pals Anna and Joe, and I will be so happy to be closer to the love of my life.

The greatest tragedy of this news is that I will have to say good bye to seeing Chris on a daily basis. Since meeting in freshman year, Chris became my immediate confidant and best friend. He was everything I needed all through freshman year and well into now my sophomore year. I only hope that our friendship will remain strong though we are apart and I will be able to see him on a semi-regular basis. Even though I am moving, I will not ignore or forget our great friendship and hope he feels the same. Though I will be busy with my junior year, a boyfriend, and adjusting to a new city, it is important to me to work on keeping our relationship as close as it is now.

I cannot and am already making plans for my big move to Greensboro!! Anna, Joe, I hope you're ready!!! Because Sparta and I... here we come!!!!