Coffee

If I had the money, I think I would spend all of it on drinks from starbucks. Starbucks is so delicious but it is also so expensive. I have tried to save money by buying starbucks coffee and making it at home, but it really isn't the same thing. The one thing I am never going to be able to replicate is a frappuccino. And their whipped cream is amazing. Whipped cream from a grocery store just isn't the same thing.

I also love the environment in Starbucks. Where I live, it's really difficult to ever find a table to sit at in any of the Starbucks, which is disappointing because I would love to bring my laptop out there so that I can work. Most of the time I just end up going in and then walking right back out because it's too crowded to anything else. I think the only way I would ever be able to get a seat in Starbucks would be if I showed up right when it opens. There is another coffee shop that I like that is really similar to starbucks. The coffee is delicious and the atmosphere is great as well, but it has the same problem of never having any place to sit, despite the fact that it's so huge.

So now I'm at home with my packs of starbucks coffee and drinking several cups every day. I got a french press and I've been trying to figure out how to make the perfect cup of coffee with it. The problem is, store bought coffee is usually too fine for the french press, so I always end up with little floating bits in my drink. And I can't seem to ever make a consistant cup of coffee. Some days I'll make a cup that tastes amazing, but other days it will literally taste like medication even though I am using the same brand of coffee. I wonder what it is that I could be doing wrong.

Musicals

I used to be a huge musical theatre geek and lately I have been feeling the love coming back. I used to live for musical movies and I would exclusively listen to broadway soundtracks. Lately I haven't been that way, but after watching some Wicked clips on Youtube I think I want to get back into musicals.

The first musical I ever saw on broadway was Aida and I was dazzled by it. I don't remember it very much now, but to someone as young as I was, it was the most amazing thing I had ever seen. Then I saw Phantom of the Opera and as soon as the chandelier got lifted up over the audience, that's when the true obsession began.

Since then I have seen several other musicals, and to this day Moulin Rouge remains one of my favorite movies. I was thrilled when Les Miserables came out because there is such a shortage of movie musicals, but unfortunately I cannot get into it at all. I got through about half of the movie, but I was too bored to go on. There just didn't seem to be any kind of plot, and the music was so repetative that I wanted to die at one point. I was so disappointed. I'll probably finish the movie eventually, but I really have no motivation to because it's so uninteresting.

I wish I had enough money to go and see more Broadway musicals. I want to see Wicked again, which is ridiculous because I already know that play inside and out. But I can't help it. I love it and I think it's one of the best things ever. I hope they turn it into a movie. For now, I'm going to have to be content with watching clips from different musical numbers on Youtube.

Thinking about amazing manicures

In the past couple of months I have become obsessed with gel manicures. They are the most fantastic t thing I have ever discovered. I have stopped giving myself manicures because I was becoming tired of it coming off minutes after I applied nail polish. It started to feel like I was wasting time putting effort in something that would be gone so quickly.

My sister took me to the nail salon to have a manicure about a month ago. I didn't want to go initially since manicures are very expensive, but if I hadn't come I would not have discovered the incredible gel nail polish. It's the best thing ever. I painted my nails a really dark red color and it stayed that way for almost 2 weeks.

I started doing a bit of research to see if I could paint my nails with gel polish at home and found that you can, but you have to buy a lamp to cure the polish. I think I should invest in one because it would be worth it since I would save money on trips to the salon. I love having my nails painted too so I know that I would get a lot of use out of it. I was looking at this site Nails and Polish which has some reviews on the lamps and it helped give me an idea of what I should buy

I'm going to have to think about if I should get an LED lamp or a UV lamp. Buying the lamp and the colors that I want are going to be a costly investment. I don't even know anything about which gel polishes are the best yet.

Movies

Anyone who knows me, knows that I love movies, so I thought I would write a bit about it. Here are some of my absolute favorite movies of all time. I am just going to write down the ones I can think of. They are not in any particular order. I love all of these movies.

1. The Cabin in the woods. I am a giant Joss Whedon fan, so the fact that he made this masterful horror film is so exciting to me. I love that this movie essentially plays with all of the usual horror movie tropes and sort of pokes fun of it while also being a total love letter to the genre of horror. I thought it was fantastic and there is nothing better than the scene where the elevators come open and all of the monsters come out and attack people.

2. Moulin Rouge. This is such a different movie than any of the horror that I usually like but it holds a really special place in my heart. I love musicals. The first time I watched this movie I didn't know what it was about and I was so surprised when I sat through it and realized just how great it was. The music is so catchy and the ending of the movie makes me cry every time. Sometimes I even stop the movie before the last ten minutes so that it can have a happy ending.

3. The Descent. This is my favorite horror movie in the world. I watched it with my family and we initially didn't want to watch it because we generally don't like movies about caves and this movie came out when there was a sudden influx of cave horror for whatever reason. Boy am I glad we watched it. I don't get scared easily when I watch movies but this is the first time I was really scared when I saw a horror movie and it stuck with me even when I went to bed. I honestly thought that I was going to be attacked by cave monsters.

Notebooks

I have a lot of strange addictions, but one of the weirdest ones is my love of notebooks. I just love notebooks, journals, and sketchbooks in all shapes, colors, and sizes. Whenever I go into a book store the first place I immediately head to is the notebook section. I don't know what it is about notebooks. Is it the blank pages and all the possibilities of what could go inside of them? Is it the way they look and feel? I have no idea.

My problem has reached epic levels because now I have tons and tons of journals but I don't know what to do with any of them. I also have an issue with trying to start a journal but if I'm unhappy with what I have written in it I don't want to use it anymore, and there goes a perfectly good, almost empty notebook. I bet no one else in the world has the same kind of dumb issues that I have.

As an artist I have a similar issue with sketchbooks. I love having a ton of them. But once I start drawing inside of it, any bad drawing is enough to make me want to dispose of the entire book. It's a really silly problem that I have.

The amount of journals I have collected is so many that I have a crate full of them, but that doesn't stop me from going to a store and buying a whole bunch more even when I have so many unused ones. Even the idea of going to a store like staples is exciting to me. Most people do not enjoy going to Staples but I freaking love it. There are so many fun things inside of it. Not only are there lots of notebooks, but there are pens and highlighters and sharpies. I wish I had a use for all of these things so that I could use them all!

Making movies

Here's a weird thing I have been thinking about. I already have too many hobbies, but sometimes I feel like i want to be a video editer or some kind. When I was a kid I always wanted to be a filmmaker. Back then I just called it a director, since I didn't know any other words for people who were involved in movie making. I guess that desire still lives on inside of me.

It's easier than ever now to get involved with something like that with youtube around and tons of other video sharing sites. But the problem is I'm not even sure what I should do. If I am interested in video editing I could just start with making fan videos and playing around with video software just to get the hang of it. I've already done this a bit by taking clips of my favorite shows and trying to edit something that goes along with cool music. It's a lot of fun, but it's also really time consuming.

I also would like to make my own really cool videos as well. I already have a great camera, but I wouldn't even know what to film. I went to Europe last year and I'm kind of kicking myself for not capturing any video footage because I would have loved to edit a video about my time there. I know I could never be a vlogger or anything like that because I hate the sound of my own voice too much, and I don't think I really have anything to talk about that would be interesting on camera. I couldn't do comedy style videos because I am not funny. And I don't know anyone who could be actors in my videos. Not like I would ever be able to write a script anyway. I know I shouldn't let all of these things get in the way of something that I want to do, but I'm one of those people who feels like I can only do something if I know the end result is going to be great. Oh boy.

Reading

Every so often I become obsessed with reading. Now I have always loved to read, but when I say obsessed I mean more than just enjoying myself and reading lots of books. I become obsessed with the number of books I read and trying to beat the amount of books I read in the previous month or year. Last year I read around 30 books, which I would say is a pretty respectable book number, That is several books every month. However I set a goal for myself to read 50 books and I'm finding it to be a struggle. I want to read all of these books but I also want to enjoy them and not just speed through them so that I can read my goal.

I've tried to read multiple books at once to see if that would help me increase the number of books I read, but I found that that was only causing me to lose interest in books if I hadn't gotten around to reading them since I was reading 5 other ones as well, so I quickly gave that up. Sometimes I try to read ridiculous amounts of books all in one month, but I can't ever seem to get past 4 books in a month even when I feel like I have been doing nothing but read all of the time. I wonder how those people who read hundreds of books do it. I bet they completely eliminate things like television and internet time from my life. I can't do that though, because I need the internet for my job, and I also love too many tv shows to just drop them cold turkey.

I've set this goal and I am determined to beat it. The big issue is that when next year rolls around and I've finished my books, I'm not going to be satisfied with anything less than 50 books. My reading life is going to get more and more difficult as the years go on. Uh oh.