waving goodbye

time for us to bid farewell to the marvellous month of...

...and what a month it's been! :) crazy and busy and exciting and stressful and lovely. are y'all ready? here're my top 12 things of September:

1. home!i'm not gonna expand much on this here... because i wrote a whole post about it earlier. so go read it, why don't you? ;)
2. reunions :)with, you know, my boyfriend. he's great and i missed him (after a week... yeah) so it's been great to be together again! i could honestly talk about this for the rest of the post, but you will all roll your eyes and then run away, so i will move on. (and yes, i'm pathetic - go on and laugh at me, it's quite alright)
3. learning to drive... because Chris is awesome and has started giving me lessons. (i had my 2nd today!) and it's possible that i still really suck at driving - but it's been fun nevertheless, and we get ice cream afterwards, and it's raaaadical :)
4. Journ 3 application = BOOM. so in case you don't know, i'm studying Journalism, which is a fairly big deal. the people in our department generally take themselves quite seriously and make us submit HUGE crackin' applications each year. i'm in my second year now, which means that applying for next year gets even MORE serious - because we have to decide on specialisations. you know, like writing or television or radio or photojournalism or DESIGN. aaaahdesign! yeah, you know what my first choice was, don't you? ;) anyway, we had to fill out this crazy long application form and hand in motivations for our top 3 choices, as well as assignments for each of those three specialisations. and then also submit portfolio work to bolster our applications. and if that sounds like a smallish amount of work you are wrong, my friends. completing my application took absolutely AGES, but i have never been more proud to submit something, because i basically poured my soul into that application. and now i just have to wait a few weeks to find out if i got into Design! ohpleaseohpleaseohplease... *gulp*
5. Babilanto AGM :)i've also been on the committee of a society called Babilanto at my university for the past year; we're a language lovers society, and we're great! we had our AGM this past Wednesday and as a committee decided to have it at an awesome little restaurant in town, where we ate some delicious pasta and had the best conversation ever (my sister was there, and i haven't been able to spend time with her in FOREVER, so it was beautiful.). it was really just a good, good time.
6. Picture Pot! which i know i've mentioned before and have been all elusive about it and stuff... yeah, i'm still planning to do a whole post on it, but i may as well tell you about it now ;) another society here at Rhodes, called Masincedane, runs a soup kitchen in the location outside our town and generally does really great, creative work. one of their fundraisers every year is called Picture Pot, and what happens is students are invited to donate little works of art (A5 size or thereabouts) that they've drawn/painted/sketched/conceptualised/whatever. these are then all displayed on an evening - like an art gallery or exhibition! - and you pay a R20 entrance fee, with which you can claim any artwork in the exhibition! it is fantastic. i submitted 3 paintings this year and on the night, i saw two of them get claimed - HA! it is the coolest feeling :D the artwork i got is also really beautiful. but i will save some detail for my long post on Picture Pot ;) moving on to...
7. GIANTS, BABY!! this AWESOME baseball team became the NL West Division CHAMPIONS... yoh, i love them - they've done so well :D
8. a great Super XV schedule for the Sharks :)the Sharks are my TRUE team - as in, out of all the sports teams i support, i love them the most - and they've been playing fairly well in the Currie Cup at the moment. but the Super XV schedule for next year was released, and in my opinion they have a fantastic schedule! including a game PORT ELIZABETH against the newly-instated Kings during term time (which is a must-go-to game), and a game in DURBAN against the CRUSADERS (Chris's favourite team) during our APRIL VACATION... yeah, we're casually already making plans to be there. so excited.
9. A Case Of You.we all know that i love Noah Gundersen after my last post. go to that post and watch the second video... um, i had that on repeat for most of this month. crazy good cover.
10. the return of Free Crappy Portraits! i'm so happy about this that it had to go in italics. technically Sarah hasn't enabled submissions again, but she's posted a few of the backlogged entries and (according to inside sources) she's planning to start the blog up again SOON! and then i will submit a photo of me and Chris, and will get back an awesome crappy portrait. and if all of this is gibberish to you, then go HERE and live. cool.
11. the discovery of IndieBerries.seriously, guys, Che is a girl after my own heart. except she's older than me, so maybe i'm a girl after HER own heart? i dunno. but anyway, she's great and she deserves a billion more readers, so go check out IndieBerries.
12. spring = dresses = HAPPY.really nothing more to say here.

and those were my top 12 things of September :) October promises to be just as busy and exciting and wonderful - i'll see you then!

oh noah

Q: how do you know Hannah's back at varsity?

A: when she hasn't blogged in the last week and a half.

no, really guys. i was on such a roll during my time off, and now i'm back to this. i blame it on the copious amount of work i've had, but oh well!

let's talk about how awesome Noah Gundersen is. i'm not gonna tell you his life story, but basically my sister and i stumbled across him a couple years ago and have been entranced ever since. he mostly sings with his sister Abby accompanying him on harmonies (although both of the songs i've put here of him are just him) but he also often sings with ALL his siblings (there are four of them) and their harmonies are ridiculous, so i've added two video-songs of the whole Gundersen family to this post. 

AMAZING, YES? YES.

and all i can say is, oh Noah.

ah, home!

everyone knows the song, right? Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros?

HOME IS WHEREVER I'M WITH YOU! LA LA LA LA TAKE ME HOOOOOOME.... MOTHER, I'M COMIN' HOOOOOME!!!

only the greatest song ever. if you don't know it, i scold you soundly and send you here... and then here.

trust me to blog about my holiday right as it ends... as i mentioned a couple posts before, i'm on my September vac (which is one whole week long!) and it's been great. i decided to blog about the past few days because Chris is already back in Grahamstown for a Philosophy colloquium (he got back on Thursday - as i type, he should be in a philosophical seminar of some sort :) )... which got me thinking about going back - i leave tomorrow morning - and, of course, of being back home in the first place.

i can't even lie - being home has been SUUUUPER awesome. i basically left a day early (on Friday instead of Saturday) because there weren't any flights left on Saturday when we booked - yikes! it was the weirdest experience ever - i am NOT used to leaving early. i stayed up the night before, packing my room up and finishing a final Journ assignment (yup, both of these things literally took up the whole night) and then my darlin' drove me down to Union - after letting me leave random left-over junk and my stuffed penguin in his room, like the Superman he is - and we waited there for my bus!

i had a year-long wait (actually four hours, but close enough) at the airport when i got there, so i sat at Wimpy and had breakfast and ridiculously expensive orange juice. i love PE Airport at the end of term - you just see Rhodes students EVERYWHERE :D i ran into my beautiful friend Elna and my bandmate Clarke and another friend of mine, Warren... yeah, it was great. anyway, after 4 hours at the airport, i snuck an extra kilo of hand-luggage onto the plane and flew home to beautiful KZN! aaaah green hills. aaaah Mom. aaaah FROYO.

(i edited this photo on purpose because the Wakaberry stuff is so pretty and my face was so splotchy-coloured. and cause i was feeling arty and things. k.)

ohaai Wakaberry. you are delightful. and expensive. expensively delightful. in hindsight, i didn't need to put SOOOO much junk on mine (which is obviously the one on the left) because it made it weigh a TON, but it was delicious and worth it (and my mom paid - yessa!).

we then went home - to Lil' Hometown - where i got to see my dad! woot! and then we rushed off to our local annual art exhibition's opening, which my parents help organise and set up and whatnot (my dad exhibits stuff every year, cause he's talented like that). my favourite part of it was obviously the finger food (you know me and food, doh) and the kids' art, which was hilarious and beautiful. check out the March of the Flamingoes...

my favourite is the little girl-flamingo on the far left of  this picture, with her rainbow socks. she's got style, y'all.

i basically collapsed after the exhibition... because, you know, i'd had 2 hours of sleep the night before, and 3 hours of sleep the night before THAT. so, um, i was a bit tired.

theeeeen, on Saturday, we woke up in the morning and went to THE MARKET OF AWESOMENESS! ...also known as Made@Home. this is a little market run by a wonderful woman in our community, who is also basically a bakery goddess. it was started as a way to help her daughter out, made up of a community market - with baked goods and fresh produce and really cool homemade stuff made by people in our town - and a tea garden where THIS type of thing is served. srsly.

insane, right? on Saturday night, my mom's school had a fundraiser evening, where my dad showed slides of his incredible game reserve photos, a teacher from my old high school sang like a boss and everyone ate. (i waitressed!) it sounds weird the way i've described it, but trust me, it was REALLY cool :D favourite part = set up, when i got to babysit the most beautiful little girl in the world... and now i'm just rambling. sigh.

the rest of my week has been a little less eventful but just as awesome! i've been waking up early every morning and going in to work with my mom - which is also a LOT cooler than it initially sounds :P 

my mom's office door, as decorated by yours truly at the age of 6. legit.

my mom teaches 10 Grade 4 kids who are basically the coolest cats. they make me laugh so much. while there, i hung out with them, read two set-work books for English (Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf and Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee) and did some watercolour paintings for Picture Pot (which i'll blog about in the next couple days - until then i'll leave you in suspense ;) ).

(the first two of my four watercolours... they all involve words, cause i can't shut up :P )

my mom and i also painted clothespegs for funzies, and they look like so: 

it hailed on Thursday! the hailstones were massive, as you can see by the one i am holding in this photo:

yep, sarcasm. i'm charming, aren't i?

otherwise, i've just been hanging out, learning a song on the piano, reading the paper, doing crossword puzzles and sudokus, playing Scrabble and cribbage with my mom, watching The Avengers (again!) and loving it (again!), watching The Hunger Games (finally) and loving it, too (whew! so glad it was so awesome), watching rugby... (which i'm actually going to go do now - c'mon, Sharks!)

Made@Home happened again this morning, and THIS was what occurred, just to give you an idea of its true awesomeness.

the eats-and-drinks board = love

chai tea is a winner, yo!

my mom and i always go halfsies on the food there, because there's always just too much choice. this week, we shared the apfel strudel and a pizza muffin:

OM NOM NOM NOM!

so seriously, that's what my week's been like. and tomorrow i'll leave home at 6AM to catch my flight back to Grahamstown... so cheers, Lil' Hometown, and see you in 10 weeks!

happy Roald Dahl day!

guess what's up?

yep - it's Roald Dahl's birthday today! 

(for the next seven minutes, anyway... i know how to leave things to the last minute :P )

unfortunately, my mom and i only discovered this at about 3pm, so we couldn't do anything ridiculously fun and Dahl-ish with her school kids... but i thought i still had to do something in honour of the man who contributed enormously to my ridiculously great childhood. i mean, we're talking about the inventor of 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory', 'Matilda', 'The BFG', 'The Twits', 'Danny the Champion of the World', 'James and the Giant Peach', 'The Witches', 'George's Marvellous Medicine', 'Fantastic Mr Fox'... the list honestly goes on and on.

i mean, let's be real now - which little kid who's read Matilda doesn't want to have her awesome powers and spunkiness? that's right - NO ONE. because Matilda is one boss of a character. 

and then we get Sophie and her BFF the BFG, both of whom are brilliant...

and, of course, Charlie Bucket - humble and kind-hearted and meagre and heroic...

...George, who rocks the party with his delightful medicine...

and Danny, who is rightfully named the world's champion (although his dad arguably ties in that place - what a great guy :) ).

and those are only a very few of my favourites!

i hope one day to be as excellent a story-teller as Mr Dahl, but i don't think it'll ever happen. he had this unique ability to capture a kid's experience, spot-on, and relate it back to the reader. 

so all i can say is THANKS, MR DAHL! ...and happy birthday :)

Why I'm Not Where You Are

"Everything that's born has to die, which means our lives are like skyscrapers. The smoke rises at different speeds, but they're all on fire, and we're all trapped."

—Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

if you haven't read Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, you should. apparently, the same goes for the movie (which my mom has watched, and which i'll watch as soon as she's finished reading the book). it's the story of Oskar, a nine-year-old boy trying to come to terms with the death of his dad in the 9/11 attacks. it is beautiful and painful and real, and is easily one of my favourite books.

it's been eleven years today since the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers in New York City, and there still aren't answers, reasons. there never will be. the horror of that day will never be justified, explicable, understandable.

i was 8 when the towers were hit. my memories of that day are of feeling unsafe, irreparably confused and genuinely, deeply afraid, for possibly the first time in my life. because things like this shouldn't happen. senseless, brutal, nonsensical events like this shouldn't happen.

since then, i've felt unsafe several times. yet none of my fear can come close to that which i felt eleven years ago. when it comes to numerous things that i learned of in childhood, i couldn't understand then what i do now - but that rule just doesn't apply to 9/11. the story hasn't become more explicable with time. i'm still just as confused, and more frustrated than ever at such senseless brutality.

i think about all the families and friends of people who died in those attacks; i mourn with them and pray for them. i commend the bravery of the American people, for their resilience, their firmness in the face of such a vile act of terrorism.

i will never forget.

i love cats

time to pick up the blogger baton. i can do this. i can start blogging on a regular basis again. *trembles nervously*

so, yo - it always seems to be confession time up in here when i blog recently. (i also seem to be a gangster, suddenly. hmmm.) here comes another (fairly obvious, i think) confession: I ADORE CATS.

i'm presently on a week-long school break so i've back in Lil' Hometown since Friday and this (see photo below) has been happening frequently since then. YES.

forgive the hideous picture - i'm aware that i really don't look at the top of my game (hides), but it kind of basically demonstrates my point. this is my (*ahem* technically my family's) cat Gimli. and me. just chillin'.

my family's never really had a dog. (you'll see why i say really in a couple sentences, don't fret.) this has a lot to do with the fact that my dad's just not a dog person; they're too boisterous and loud and messy, they dig up his yard and they scare his birds away. it just doesn't work. we tried to make it work with a Cocker Spaniel-Border Collie cross named Sam when i was 5 or 6, but it didn't happen; she was lovingly given to our local SPCA after a year (maximum... i was little so the time-frame evades me). but we've had a cat for long periods of time - first Rufus and now Gimli. 

cats are basically one of my favourite two animals. (the other favourite: PENGUINS! i actually had cats down as second-favourite just because i can actually own one some day, removing some of the awe and wonder that i felt would linger around penguins forever; but Chris disputed my claim that i could never own a penguin and instead maintains that it's possible in some future of mine for me to have a little penguin waddling around behind me - LOVE - so now they're back on equal footing. penguins and cats. will have to write a penguin post soon. oh, and i appear to have an obsession with brackets in this post. speaking of which, this bracket should end. now.)

i love cats so much that i'm at the level of the I LOVE CATS LADY. heck, i'm not even gonna just link to her... the video deserves to be right here, all up in your business. WATCH AND LEARN, PEASANTS.

now, the sad - or awesome - thing about this is that the woman above was definitely trollollolling. i am not. i love cats THIS MUCH. okay, maybe sans basket and rainbows and stuff - but really, i want to hug them all, and it makes me sad that i can't.

my sister and her digsmates recently got a cat - the beautiful Cass, pictured above - and now i'm sad that i'm not moving into digs next year. just because i can't have a cat. and Chris and i have honestly had discussions about getting a kitten to live in res with us, but always run into the same issues (not allowed, will meow at odd times, will fall out of 3rd-floor res window and badly hurt itself). insane, right? and sad... so sad. just want to have a cat.

i find all kinds of cute cat things on the internet which make me feel like i'm not alone out there. there is obviously ICanHasCheezburger, which is epic:

(deaddeaddead-deathbycuteness-dead)

...yeah, i could carry on, but i'll stop with the Monty Python reference because it WINS.

and then this Free Crappy Portrait, that i wish was for me:

(i don't know why she couldn't be BLONDE, really, cause then this'd be perfect)

and then numerous other things such as this fantastic illustration:

and cat clothes from ModCloth...

finally, this video (read Huffington Post's little article on it here, which is brilliant too):

and THIS... forever and always.

in conclusion? i love cats. always have, always will. and i really ought to work on my conclusions, but i can think of nothing better to say, so adios! ...and go hug a cat.

avengerville

since it's been three months since my last post, i think it's time to admit that my boyfriend blogs more than i do. (no, really - Chris started a blog called SportsBeard a few days ago that is basically ruling my life. click through for the awesomeness.)

i don't feel like boring you all to death with the story of my life for the past 90-odd days, so instead you get to look at stuff from the internet that i love! yes? YES :)

more specifically, i think it's time to mention how much i adore The Avengers (yeah, watched the movie, got the t-shirt, have the sound-effect socks). i am a Captain America fangirl for life (my gran's cousin directed his movie, actually... my relatives are awesome) and just love pretty much anything involving the Avengers and him. so here are a few of the things i found on the internet that are Avengers-themed. and i love them all. click on the images to link back to their original sites!

Charles Wilson's Winnie-the-Pooh-meets-the-Avengers: Werm Hole Exparimunt

(i mean, hi... how brilliant is this? and adorable? i know the Avengers aren't necessarily meant to be adorable, but c'mon.)

Mike Kunkel's Avengers Scribble

Noelle Stevenson's Sweater-vengers

her description for this image is hilarious - i have to put it here.

"I think Bruce knitted sweaters for everyone because knitting is a calming pastime, and then Thor was like LOKI IS MY BROTHER AND HE DESERVES A SWEATER TOO and so Bruce made one for Loki with Thor’s design input."

she's basically one of my heroes and has done a whole series on the Lord of the Rings called "The Broship of the Rings"... but here're a few of her other Avengers-themed illustrations that i couldn't help but throw into the mix :)

SHERHULK HOLMES AND HAWKSON (winning combination)

Thor and Loki Part 1

Hulk and Hawkeye ("Hulk like to look at the pictures")

Loki and Hawkeye

Loki and Thor Part 2

...and my FAVOURITE! a Captain America VALENTINE!!! k, done with Noelle. moving on. i promise.

CATVENGERS! (i couldn't find the link to this one - it just went viral on tumblr. if any of you know where it originated, let me know and i'll link it!)

Danny Haas's Assemble

(i love this... i think it's SO well designed. clean, sharp, beautiful.)

Matt Kaufenberg's series on what the Avengers do on days off. 

(incomplete, sadly, but still BRILLIANT.)

AND...

Hannah Friederichs's Avengers tribute to Maurice Sendak. 

i love this.

ok, that's all from me for now! :) hope you've enjoyed my AVENGER ADVENTURE (oh no i didn't)...