Harry Potter Books, in summary

This summer, I vowed to do something I never had before: read all of the Harry Potter series.

I'm currently on the sixth, even though I basically know what happens throughout the end.

So, here is a brief summary of the books as opposed to the movies:

THE HARRY POTTER BOOKS IN TEN SECONDS

1. SORCERERS STONE- Harry escapes a bad life and enters a cool one. Little kids swoon with envy. Insert storyline of "chosen boy" like in Star Wars and every other fantasy story existant.

2. CHAMBER OF SECRETS- They make friends and fight monsters! BEST FRIENDS FOREVER.

3. PRISONER OF AZKABAN- We meet the two most attractive characters in all of literary history, Sirius Black and Remus Lupin, who have a questionably close relationship with one another. (Delightfully so, of course.)

4. GOBLET OF FIRE- Cedric Diggory dies, but reincarnates as a sparkly vampire in another movie series, so it's okay. Then Japanese women make body pillows shaped like him.

5. ORDER OF THE PHOENIX- Harry whines because no one understands him. (Well, he IS fifteen...)

6. HALF BLOOD PRINCE- Ron whines about Harry being popular and Hermoine whines that no one likes her, which is true.

7. DEATHLY HALLOWS- Harry wins. JK Rowling rakes in millions.

The end.

Beach Day

Last week, me and the Chinese family took a trip to Long Island, to the beach at Robert Moses park. The day was a little cloudy, windy, and the water was freezing, but overall it's a lovely beach and I'd like to go back (when the water isn't sub-zero)

In the car, a very grumpy QiQi (pronounced Chee-Chee) is woken up from her nap.

She demands to play with the iPhone! Now!

From left: Adeline (who's going to Yale this fall), Qi Qi Hidalgo, and Jennifer, Winston's sister and Qi Qi's mommy.

It wasn't too crowded and the waves were really big!

Like, "oh shit" big.
I got knocked down a bunch of times.

Wins + beach = happy.

Happy feets.

Qi Qi approves of this beach. Almost.

Jennifer, Lena, and Qi

Emily the epically awesome

You almost got it there, Qi. Keep on truckin'.

The Great Gerbil Run

Sometimes, when Winston and I get back to his house after a particularly trying day of summer school, we just need to chill out and let our brains wander. Wins achieves this by playing Starcraft. I achieve this by being ridiculous (as per usual.)

How did I decide to be ridiculous today?

By making a giant gerbil obstacle course, of course!

The first step was laying down newspaper so they wouldn't make a mess on Qi Qi's squishy soft play floor that covers the upstairs living room, where I decided to build the course since it had the most open room. The run was rather small (I made it the "beginners course") and walled with books so they wouldn't jump out. I used books that I wouldn't mind messing up:

1. A Calculus textbook (Not mine. Bahaha!)
2. Some older, shabbier books
3. Winston's copies of the Twilight series (I should have smeared gerbil food on them first)

The incentive? At the end of the maze was half a granola bar! Which is the equivalent of a lifetime supply of salt & vinegar chips for me.

Gerbil course of DOOM. (not really.)

The entrance to the maze, marked by a pair of Vans
(I got a new watch. It's totally steampunk awesome.)

They must pass through a tunnel...

And a slightly larger tunnel,
followed by my copy of War and Peace,
which they have to jump over to receive the granola bar.



Our two victims contestants:

MAXIMILLION BONAPARTE SCRUFFYKINS
aka "Max"
aka "Winston's favorite"
and

DANTE INFERNO BEAZLEFLUFF AWESOMEPANTS
aka "Dante"
aka "Kate's favorite"

First, the race takes off with our first contestant, Dante.

Our hero first sits at the entrance, not knowing what to do. He pees next to Anne Rice's The Vampire Chronicles out of fear and confusion.

He ambles through both tunnels, then stands like a meerkat next to Eclipse, looking baffled.

Rather than leaping to victory, Dante decides to hang out on Tolstoy for a bit. He merely blinks at the granola bar.

Finally, after about a minute of wandering back and forth in the course, he steps over the War & Peace, finds the granola bar, and turns back. He is not impressed by the granola bar.

Time: 1 minute 20 seconds.

Next up: Max!

Max has a good start, sprinting like a bat out of hell to the tunnels.

He is deterred only by Vonnegut's Player Piano, which apparently is delicious.


Finally, he makes it to the last jump... but what does he do? Takes a shit on Tolstoy, then runs back to the beginning. Maybe he is trying to make a statement against Russian literature.

After dashing back faster than my phone can process the camera shutter, Maxie takes one final leap over the (now defaced) War & Peace to his victory nomming. However, his victory doesn't last long because I chuck the little bastard back in his cage and quickly take care of my beloved W&P. (The book is now fine.)

Time: 43 seconds.

The winner: Max!

Verdict: My favorite gerbil is retarded.

Blergh

Currently I am sitting in Winston's house with his cousin Emily. Emily is one of my favoritest cousins of his ever.

I didn't quite understand the concept of cousins when I was very young, probably since I don't have any. This baffles my boyfriend's family. They don't know how one survives with such a small family.

My family is small, but lovely.

This is a short post but I NEED TO BLOG MORE.

This will become a place full of tour shiznit! Also, I'm trying to see if it would be possible to blog from an iPad... this will require multiple trips to the Apple store.

Like the new layout? I can haz update!

The editing html thing was tedious for the longest time, so I'm happy about this new enhancement to blogger that makes things a little easier (since, otherwise, I'm really bad at web design.)

Ok, more later. Zai tien!

Where I'll Go (Plus: My Boyfriend the Buddhist Monk)

I want to go many places. I've been to very few. The following post is a list not of places I've been, nor of places I probably, in all likelihood, will ever actually visit... but, rather, these are places or events that I have always wanted to go see/do/experience. It's fun to write about.


1. Hogsmeade, the Wizarding World of Harry Potter or some shit like that

Now, this is cool. They're making a theme park designed to be the new Harry Potter world. So, basically, all us muggles can go and pretend to be wizards for a short time. Here, we can drink butterbeer and... probably buy wands, and... hell, I don't know what else. But there's probably a bunch of flying mythical animals and shit like that.

By the way, I'm kind of a fake Harry Potter fanatic; I love the world but have never managed to finish one of the books. Love Tom Felton, though.


2. The Iditarod, the big dog sledding race in the Yukon yay polar bears

Animal welfare activists will probably want to kick me in the nuts with this one, but I don't have any nuts, and I'm probably not going to run the iditarod either. As a kid I worshipped Balto, and thought it was my life's destiny to become a dog sled runner. There's a lot of hardships for the dogs, and the people too; everyone suffers freezing blizzards, lack of food, lack of sleep... kind of like being a college student in New York, but with less people.


3. A Tibetan Monastery 'cause it's cool yeah yeah

For some reason, Tibetan monks have always been my favorite kind of people. Maybe it's their peaceful Buddhist nature. Maybe it's because I'm a weirdo. Probably the latter.

In any case, I do plan on traveling the world someday and seeing a bunch of different temples and monasteries. Mad cool, ne?

...chotto, demo, fine...

My mum says my boyfriend looks like a monk, like the Dalai Lama or something.

Here is a picture of my boyfriend who looks like a monk
Cute, right? Hehe.

And here's if he ever actually decided to become a full time, legit, Tibetan monk

"srry, no lovin for Kate, Buddhist monks are like super solitary LOL
sux 2 be u"
"OMG WTF BBQ oh well I still luv u mah sexy monk lol"

Okay, so he's not actually Tibetan, he's Taiwanese. Still.
Speaking of Winston, that brings me to my next place.


4. Cambodia, specifically Angor Wat cows not necessarily included

Winston is mentioned with this entry because his father is from Cambodia, while his mother is from Taiwan. Cambodia is one of the places I have to visit because of its history: I have long been fascinated and terrified by the legendary Khmer Rouge genocide that took place largely in Cambodia. Much of Winston's family experienced this horrible genocide, and they fled the country and came to America. But that's an entry for another day, and a whole lot to write about.

Cambodia, then, is one of the places I want to visit in order to see the museums and countryside for myself. I want to be closer to what I've learned about.

5. Japan's cherry blossom season I think it's a specific neighborhood sugoidesu

Japan is beautiful, so I hear. The Japanese language is beautiful, and I've been studying it diligently, both in class and outside. The sakura trees of Japan are super famous because they're really pretty, and for a certain time in spring everyone goes to picnic outside so they can be around these giant pink trees.

Who doesn't love giant pink trees?



6. Anime Expo, hopefully as an invited guest and not a visitor ...I'm a dork


Anime Expo in Los Angeles is one of the biggest nerd conventions in the world. Nerds come from all over to rejoice in their nerdiness, and those who are not fully immersed in nerddom are dragged by nerd friends and become nerdified through the nerdy halls of nerdy goodness. I, myself, am a nerd. I know this. I accept this. And I want to go to AX really bad. I'm a voice actor for anime so I've been to one convention before as a paid, invited guest, and I got to speak on a panel and sign autographs and stuff, which was really cool. Being invited to AX means you've made it in the voice acting world as a real, awesome person. But I suck and don't get much work any more so it'll probably never happen. LAWLZ.


K, I gotta go. It's my last day in Texas for a long while, so I shall go hang out with my mum and my bestest fwends Lauren Bird and The Gwate Donana (Joanna) then tomorrow I get to see my Buddhist monk again! Life is swell. (Btw. Kelly. I miss you.)

GO SEE HAIR ON BROADWAY. THIS CHICK IS IN IT AND SHE ROCKS.


And read Anna Karenina!

~Kate the wordly wishful thinker

Book Haul

* * *

So, I'm a self-proclaimed bibliophile, but I'd like to think that I've lived up to this title.

I friggin' love books.

I also have my kindle, Isolde, but her battery is dead and I left the charger in NY; I believe the kindle is awesome and everyone should get one. But even though I have my kindle and love it, I still love the feeling of holding an awesome sturdy paperback and flipping real pages.

So, while I wait for a new charger, I satiated my hunger for new reading material and indulged myself. You could say I over-indulged myself, too. But I'd sooner spend all my money on books than on food. (Which would help, actually, seeing as I'm on a pre-tour diet.)

In my backyard there's this cool little bench in a plant-surrounded nook

...which you'd think would be awesome for reading, but it's so damn hot and there are a thousand bugs of both the crawling and the flying/buzzing/stinging variety living in all that greenery.




So, on with the haul...



Anna Karenina, Tolstoy
















the Prophet and other poems, Kahil Gibran, recommended by my friend Kelly
















Mother Night, by my favorite writer in the entire world, Kurt Vonnegut, my hero.
















So I'm gonna sit here for a while after I'm finished blogging and go read some Tolstoy. Go grab a book, everyone, and get off the damn computer ;-)








Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life. ~Mark Twain

Sunflower?!

News update 1:
So, you may have noticed that I've changed the entire theme from "Strawberry Cup-Kate" and merged it with that other blog idea I had called "Sunflower Existence." This new title is referring to a Ginsberg poem that inspires me called the Sunflower Sutra.

Here is a short segment

A perfect beauty of a sunflower! a perfect excellent

lovely sunflower existence! a sweet natural eye

to the new hip moon, woke up alive and excited

grasping in the sunset shadow sunrise golden

monthly breeze!

How many flies buzzed round you innocent of your

grime, while you cursed the heavens of the

railroad and your flower soul?

Poor dead flower? when did you forget you were a

flower? when did you look at your skin and

decide you were an impotent dirty old locomotive?

the ghost of a locomotive? the specter and

shade of a once powerful mad American locomotive?

You were never no locomotive, Sunflower, you were a

sunflower!

The entire text of the poem can be found here, if you aren't totally bored with me now.

Bear with me for a while. I'm gonna change the layout a shit ton of times.


News update 2:
I booked a national tour!

I will be starting the entire process in November, with two weeks of rehearsals before we open in Pennsylvania. I'm super ultra absurdly excited, as well as completely baffled as to what to pack. I'm gonna be on the road for five months; how on earth do you pack for that? At least I have my kindle, Isolde. Otherwise, lugging sixty or so books around with me might be pretty cumbersome.

Tweet me. I'm out.