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)... 

whilin' away the hours...

exam Hannah reports!

so far i've written 2 of my 6 mid-year exams - Modern Fiction on Wednesday morning and Media Studies on Thursday morning. they were the two i was dreading the most, and they both went fairly well, so i feel like i can relax just slightly now :)

my next exam is on Monday afternoon. it's the first of my three English papers and it's all about ROMANTICISM! so i've spent the day reading over the examinable poems for Wordsworth and Keats. it's been heavenly. 

i particularly adore Wordsworth's "Ode" - the man is basically a lyrical boss! observe:

"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:

The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,

Hath had elsewhere its setting,

And cometh from afar:

Not in entire forgetfulness, 

And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come

From God, who is our home:

Heaven lies about us in our infancy!"

and then, later:

"What though the radiance which was once so bright

Be now for ever taken from my sight,

Though nothing can bring back the hour

Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;

We will grieve not, rather find

Strength in what remains behind;

In the primal sympathy

Which having been must ever be;

In the soothing thoughts that spring

Out of human suffering;

In the faith that looks through death,

In years that bring the philosophic mind."

need i say any more? well, perhaps just this: whataman.

and now it's dinner time, so i'll be off :)