Bits and Pieces: April Edition

Picture/Photo Find:

Something I Did:

Yesterday I traveled to Hays, Kansas, for my last ever robotics competition. Because I'm fifteen, I have outgrown the welcome of the FLL robotics team, and so I can't compete next year.

Being with my friends all day definitely kept me from feeling too nostalgic, but at the end of the day, as they dropped me off at my house, I couldn't help but feel a little sad (also, I was emotionally compromised because we had just been watching the saddest part of Life of Pi, when my friend Erin paused it to dump me off).

One of the best parts of the tournaments is that you are surrounded, literally surrounded, by geeks and nerds alike. They crush you with their nerd-dom, something that is both familiar and comforting. You can talk about Loki freely with a group of people who understand his character development. You can show people your Figment page because they actually know what Figment is and are interested in reading your stuff. Really, it was great.

I plan to help my robotics coach next year and maybe attend the competitions with them, but it won't be the same--not only because I won't be part of the team, but also because I won't be competing. I'll be helping.

There's a certain part to growing up that really slays me, and it's that the bigger you grow the more responsible of things you are, and the less fun things you get to do.

A Writer Thing:

The short story: I submitted my first story o a lit mag.

The elongated story: After shuffling my feet and dreaming of the days when I would finally grow some balls and write a cover letter so I could send some short stories out to literary magazines, I finally took the initiative, sat down, and wrote it.

Then, I carefully submitted a short story to a small, online magazine called Lightning Cake.

Their description:

Lightning Cake is a tiny zine of illustrated speculative flash fiction. New electrifying bites published weekly. Cut yourself a slice and chomp in.

I thought it sounded like just my cup of tea, so I submitted. Plus, it does not hurt in the least that I know the editor from Figment, and I am very comfortable submitting my stuff to her. It has been a learning experience, and even when I get rejected I will be grateful for the experience.

A Song for Your Ears:

You may remember a few months ago in this one Bits and Pieces post, where I told you that I watched a lot of these anime movies by a guy named Hayao Miyazaki. Hoping to gain yet another layer from these movies, I started listening to the scores from them.

My favorite is from Howl's Moving Castle. Have a listen; I like the violin parts most of all, because they move and take the melody, but I think the piano bits are especially breathtaking. 

What am I Doing Tonight?

Well, tonight is my high school's prom. My sister Hope will be going with her boyfriend (also known by close friends as "Rhett"), and I will be staying at home, dreaming of the day when I will have a boyfriend--or at least a friend--to attend with. 

Perhaps I will do some reading.  

The Warehouse of Broken Things

My sister, Hope, has a boyfriend. His family helped start the town we live in: his great-grandfather farmed and I think bought most of the land around the town, and his grandfather used to work in Hollywood (he collected a bunch of neat stuff, like an outfit worn by Harrison Ford, and the gorilla hand of King Kong. This garners its own post, though, so I won't get into it). After he came back he donated money and made a name for himself. Many of the streets in town are named after them. 

Anyway, Hope's boyfriend is this goofy, nice guy who today showed us inside a few of his family's decrepit buildings and shared with us some ancient knowledge about the history of his family and their relics. 

Sitting in the back of one of their shops, three in all, is a row of antique cars. They are very, very cool. One is a '67 Chevy Impala, the other one is a banana-yellow VW bug convertible, and the last is an old beach cruiser jeep, like the ones you see in the movies where buff, well-oiled gentlemen are leaning against them with surfboards in their hands. 

The Christmas star makes its appearance.

While the cars sit in an old, padlocked garage, the roof of said garage is in disrepair and so birds and dust got to the cars before we did. The air smelled heavily of dust, and it sat in my nostrils, but Hope and I were as excited as little kids on Christmas. Make no mistake, we are not automobile experts. I barely just starting driving a month ago, and before that I knew next to nothing about them. 

I do know that my dream car is a dark silver VW Bug, and Hope's is a jet-black '67 Chevy Impala, which--hey looky there--both suitable counterparts happened to be sitting side-by-side under the same roof. It was insane, the amount of excitement we felt looking at these cars. 

The boyfriend had explained that his dad used to drive the Impala, but had dented it, left it sitting for years on end, and had let his eldest son work on it--a dire mistake to any car.

The Bug was rolled while under the ownership of another person, and they towed it in next to the Jeep, where it has sat for thirty years. I was sad to hear the news; it was a beautiful car, but now it's nearly ruined, the seats cracking, the exterior dented and broken.

After we finished ogling at the cars, we went and looked at his mother's surplus collection of ceramic creations. His mother is very into pottery. She owns two kilns that I have seen so far, and has a whole building stacked with shelves of ceramic molds. Their entire house is filled with these figurines, which range from basic bowls and miniature pots, to inappropriate, anatomically correct frog figurines. One room has these huge painted butterflies and Dumbo molds stuck in it. 

His mother keeps boxes of her surplus stuff out in the garage with the cars. It was so cool. There were a few Kansas ashtrays, a statue of Jiminy Cricket, some little cowboys boots, about twenty gravy bats/flower vases, all seven dwarves, a few unpainted nativity sets, and this huge pig-thing which I was informed took four gallons of clay to produce. 

I ended up taking home a few of her gravy boats/flower vases, with the firm intention to keep spare jewelry and other stuff in them. They don't actually look much like gravy boats, just really low vases, which is good.

There was a lot of other stuff in that shed, nearly everything broken, and I titled it 'The Warehouse of Broken Things'; my sister agreed. Today was a good experience, one that I hopefully will relive. The warehouse was like a gateway to the past, showing me fleeting images of happy people doing what they love and traveling places, of keeping their dreams locked up inside a building so that hopefully they can return to them later on in their lives.

My Favorite TV Shows (When I was Little)

When I was little I watched tv shows constantly. I would say that I watched it more than I didn't (with breaks for sleeping). This went until I was about six, and then I started kindergarten, and I started learning important stuff like reading and writing and math. Like any little kid, I had these particular shows that I watched.

Because I homeschool, and also because I have to babysit Trelawney--my littlest sister--sometimes, I watch these shows again. Most of them I remember, and I'm not afraid to tell you that I like watching them. It's a weird sort of nostalgia. 

The first show that I watched was Little Bear. Recently I learned that Suzanne Collins (author of the Hunger Games) actually produced/wrote this show. I was very interested to learn that Suzanne has entertained me my whole life.

Anyway, Little Bear is about this bear who lives in the woods and plays with his friends: Duck, Chicken, Cat, Owl, and seasonally a human named Emily, and a monkey named Mimzy. It's very old-fashioned and pioneer-y, and so though there is electricity, Little Bear and his family carry around oil lamps, pump water, and garden by hand. 

I think I liked this show because it was always different, and also, I could just watch it, instead of being expected to interact with it like other shows, like Dora.

I also frequently watched Oswald. Oswald is about this octopus and his dog, and they go around being polite to everybody. I remember there was this one episode where Oswald grows a banana tree in his house, and overnight it grows the biggest banana in the history of bananas, so he goes around town giving away all of his banana because he can't eat it all. At the end of the day, Oswald doesn't have a single bit of his fruit left, and as he's dejectedly walking across the park with his dog all the people he gave to that day have all set up booths, giving Oswald all of the stuff they made out of his banana. 

Little Bill comes next. I can't really say what Little Bill is about, except for the fact that he's in kindergarten, has a bunch of friends, owns a pet hamster named Elephant, and is a total fanboy when it comes to this superhero named Captain Brainstorm. I guess it is about the adventures a little kid can have, while obeying his parents and staying safe, following traffic rules, learning how to read, etc.

There are a lot of underlying themes in this show (as with any little kid series) about being a good child. In fact, I can't remember any times in all the episodes I watched where Little Bill told a lie, or did anything that would provoke getting punished. He got quite a bit overexcited at times, and got scolded, but most of the time the show goes smooth sailing. 

Next comes Maggie and the Ferocious Beast. MatB is about this little girl who has two friends: a beast, respectively named Beast, and a pig named Hamilton, who lives in a cardboard box. The box he lives in was always a wonder to me as a child; it's a lot like Marry Poppins's bag, because you never know what inside it, and it holds more things than its shape lets on. 

Anyway, they live in Nowhere Land, and everyday Maggie comes over and they go on an adventure. The adventure varies from each episode-- Nowhere land has a lot of mass, and so there is a beach, and also a pumpkin patch, and a place for lost toys, and there is even a place where a big giant lives. 

Now that I'm older I heavily suspect that the whole show takes place in Maggie's imagination. I think this is because she always comes over when it's daylight out, the place has no end and has no other humans in it, both Hamilton and The Beast look up to her as a role model and are complete oafs without her, and one time she even brought her triplet cousins over (who coincidentally wandered into the giant's land and ate some of his strawberries).

That said, I still really liked this show, and I will probably watch another episode of it sometime soon--don't judge.

Finally--though I could go on forever--I end with Blue's Clues. Blues Clues is about this teenager named Steve who owns a blue, animated dog named Blue. Blue and Steve live in a hideously furnished home filled with objects that aren't inanimate. Because Blue can't speak to Steve, she has devised a way to tell him exactly what she's trying to say, by putting "paw prints" on three items that she thinks will most likely lead to one specific idea. 

I know I watched this show more often than I should have, because my older sister Hope went completely bonkers about it. When I was four days old (really) I went trick-or-treating as Blue, my sister as Blue's best friend and neighbor, Magenta. Unfortunately, that night it rained and so I went home with my mom basically as soon as things got started, and Hope wore my costume when hers got wet and magically transformed into Blue.

The aforementioned animate objects sometimes played a big role in the show. Most important of which were Mr. Mailbox, who delivered mail, Mr. Salt and Mrs. Pepper, who had two children later on who weren't salt/pepper mixes but completely different spices, and a clock named Clock (original). 

Later on Steve goes to "college", and his brother Joe takes over the ropes. Joe likes squares, and has a big stuffed duck named Morris. By the time Joe stepped in I was really dead-set on liking Steve, and decided not to trust Joe. Plus, around that time I was six or seven, and thought that those types of shows were for babies. 

Now I really wish I could go back to when I was littler. It was simpler back then.