Awkward Family Photos

If you're ever bored and want something to check out...click here! Awkward Family Photos is full of pictures that you can browse through for...maybe hours?? Not the most productive way to spend your time.

Mamma Crickets

I was listening to Classical 89, when suddenly they started talking about an example of nesting: when a mother plays her baby Mozart while still in the womb. I remembered discussing this in class! Well, they switched over to talking about crickets. Apparently, a study has shown that mother crickets can warn their fetuses to be wary of spiders. For the experiment, they exposed one group of pregnant crickets to spiders, while the control group was not exposed. The offspring of the 1st group were more wary of spiders than the offspring in the control group. This is an important bit of wisdom for the mother to pass on, because crickets abandon their unborn eggs before they hatch! You can read more about it here. Enjoy!

Media?

Sometimes I think I confuse media with technology, just because they are so interlinked. For example, is the Internet media? Or just certain websites? Or all websites? What about Skype? Facebook? I know the basics of media--for example, the ones that are in the PowerPoint slides (Yes, I just looked them up). Anyway...just a random confusion of mine.

Oh the joys of Vegas...

I went to Las Vegas this past weekend with my boyfriend. WOW. I would not recommend that. As cool as the strip is (as in...cool building structures), it is WAY to dirty for me to enjoy. I've been there many times in the past, but I think this time may have been my last. The whole time we were there, I was just so concerned about all the pictures of naked ladies everywhere (seriously everywhere--on the cars, billboards, sidewalks, buildings), as well as the scantily clad women walking the streets. The worst part of the strip are the workers that stand along the sidewalk, snapping porn advertisements on their hands or shoving them in your face. I felt bad for recommending to my boyfriend that we go there. I'm sorry he, as well as myself, had to see all that. Anyway...yay for Las Vegas...?

Books, books, books

Having the book assignment really got me thinking of books that I loved growing up!! I've decided to compile a list...mostly for my own sake. So here it goes!

• The Man Who Loved Clowns
• Rifka
• Number the Stars
• The Boggart
• The Giver series
  
• The Blue Sword
• The Witches
• Chasing Redbird
• A Wrinkle in Time
• The Phantom Tollbooth
• Peppermints in the Parlor
• Night
• The Chronicles of Narnia series
  
• Harry Potter series
  
• Eragon series
• Walk Two Moons
• Ender's Game
• Time for Andrew

The list definitely goes on, but for many of the books, I just have vague memories. It's actually frustrating! I have a lot of snip-its of books I loved, and I can't remember them for the life of me! If I remember more, I'll probably add another post.

Love to the Highest Bidder, an old favorite pastime of mine.

As an adolescent, one of my favorite books was Love to the Highest Bidder. This book, by Rachel A. Nunes, is an LDS romance novel. Over the years, I've probably read it at least 10 times. This is a story about a woman, Cassie, with a career as a museum art buyer. At an auction she meets another buyer, Jared, who is goign after one of the same items as herself--a statue of Buddha. Through the course of the novel, these two individuals fall in love, but find themselves in great danger (as another buyer wanted the item and tries to get it from them). At the end of the book, the reader discovers that the "bad guys" were hired by Jared's boss. The statue had smuggled diamonds in it. After almost getting killed, Jared and Cassie end up getting married. I think I liked this book so much because of the romance and suspense. I always imagined myself going on romantic adventures like Cassie and Jared. I always imagined having a romantic boyfriend , and maybe I lived Vicariously through Cassie. I spent hours reading this book! I haven't read the book for a few years now, and I think after 10+ times, it's finally losing its appeal to me.

Romania Video

In one of my SFL classes today, we watched a video about the orphanages in Romania. This movie was very eye-opening for me. When I'd previously heard about the bad conditions of the orphanages, I never realized just how bad they really are. For example, Dr. Nelson told our class that there are over 100,000 abandoned children in Romania (I'm not sure of the exact number...I just know it was HUGE). The children barely get any human interactions. Anyway, after watching the movie, I felt sick. I felt like there was nothing I could do to change this situation. I felt so helpless! Even if I personally went over, there are still thousands of other children who are still those conditions, without any form of attachments. It was amazing how much that piece of media affected me. For anyone who reads this blog, do you know if you're allowed to go to Romania if you're graduated?

YouTube

YouTube can sometimes suck me in. Isn't it amazing how easily one thing leads to another? For example, I was watching Early Winter, by Gwen Stefani, and noticed her awesome smoky-eye makeup! So I then watched another video about how to do "smoky eyes." For any of the girls who are interested in this...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z49yr0zk_pk

And I know this is kind of ridiculous for me to post on my blog.

..but now you know ;)