TheInkgirl

It was a semi-last-minute decision, but I'm going to Honduras (leaving 3 a.m. Sunday and getting back the 27th or 28th).  I may have internet access, actually (which I've NEVER had there before).  But I may not.  If you don't here from me for a few days, I'm not ignoring you.  I'm just off in the mountains somewhere.

So I was pressured into getting a tumblr.  If nothing else, I will use it to follow the chick who pressured me into getting it.  But if any of you deviants are also tumblrers, feel free to send me a link.  I may as well get some use out of the thing.  Also, if any of you deviant/tumblrers wish it, I could turn it into a sketchblog.  I suppose it's semi-quasi-sorta up to you.

To graduate quickly and on time, I need to take summer classes.  This is unfortunate.  However, one of my required courses is digital photography; and, as such, I find myself equipped with a wonderful camera that I don't yet know what to do with.  At the very least, I ought to be able to take decent-quality pictures of some of my semester work.

In other news, I sold this at a gallery showing:   I mean, it was a small gallery and I only sold it for a couple hundred dollars; but every little bit helps, right?  (Maybe I can use this cash to help pay off the camera).

_{{CSS: Firestixian | Art: Kitsune-Rin }}

I don't like writing journals.  But the last entry was from December.  Having a Christmas entry up in March is just embarrassing.  So I stole this meme from for something to put up instead.  Dang, but it took longer than I expected.

001. Real Name → Meg.  Not Megan.  Never Megan.  It's actually short for Margaret; but I stopped going by that because Americans can't pronounce the name.  It has THREE syllables; not two.  Admittedly, the emphasis on the first and, when the name is pronounced correctly, the second is almost a suggestion of a syllable.  BUT IT IS THERE.  To make it worse, I live in the south, where my name was pronounced (complete with rampant twanging): Mar-GRET, Mar-GRIIIT, and--when people were mad at me--Mar-GRUT.  It was between elementary and middle school that I got fed up with people bastardizing my name.  Really, only the British pronounce it right.  That's one thing I like whenever I'm in the U.K.  
002. Nickname[s]→ Meg (although, even on a lot of legal forms, that's my name).  When I was 12/13 everyone called me Meggie (as a result of making every single person I know aknowledge Cornelia Funke's literary greatness).  Some friends/family called me that long before, some still do.  People also call me the following: Megrit, Magret, Miss Maggie-May (all three from one persistant cousin), Megan (by teachers.  ALL THE TIME.), Moggy (by several Honduran friends), Mingie (by a few relatives), Pretty Girl, Megara, Haruhi, Sherlock, and Iggy
004. male or female → Female
005. Elementary → Been There
006. Middle school → Worst three years ever.
007. High School → Finished last year.
008. Hair Color → Brown.  During the winter, it goes dark brown.  During the summer, it's honey-brown.  Redish highlights.
009. Long Or Short → Waist-length
010. Loud Or Quiet → That depends on who you are, where we are, and how well I know you.
011. Sweats Or Jeans → Jeggings
012. Phone Or Camera → Phone with camera.  (I need a new camera.  Mine is crap).
013. Health Freak → I'm too lazy for that.
014. Drink Or Smoke? → a) Alchoholism leaps and bounds through my family, and b) I don't want to die of lung cancer (plus, I'm too poor for a smoking habit).  So neither.
015. Do You Have A Crush On Someone? → How about literary hero-worship for a prolific knighted writer with dementia and a prolific vocabulary.  Will that do instead?  No?  Well...
016. Eat Or Drink? → Drink.  I'm almost never hungry.  And I don't like a lot of food.  And I don't want to PAY for a lot of food.  But I'm always ALWAYS up for hot, caffinated beverages.
017. Piercings? → Too lazy to take care of piercings...
018. Tattoos? → No.  I like Henna.  But I don't want something that lasts forever.


HAVE YOU EVER BEEN IN...?
019. An Airplane → Many times.  It's a little bit boring... You'd THINK that flying would be exciting but NOOOOOO.  Even on Take A Chance Airlines it gets boring (ask me about TAKA airlines sometime.  I have....STORIES).
020. A Car Accident → I've been in several.  I only caused one.  On my first day of college.   knows that story.
021. A Fist Fight → I have a logic/rhetoric/English professor, to whom I'm nearly genetically identical, as a mother.  I prefer talking at people.  And when I get into a physical fight, it usually involves kicking and dodging more than fists.  Oh, and knife threats and pepper spray and....well...  But that doesn't mean I've never hit people.  I have.


FIRSTS:
022. First Piercing → I've always been too lazy to keep them up.
023. First Best Friend → I'm not sure who was my first best friend.  Although my oldest, and one of my best friends, I've known all of my life and all but two months of hers.
025. First Award → I don't remember.  Something for school.  Meh.
026. First Crush → I don't remember.  It was probably a celebrity, though.  When my friends and I were in middle school LotR and PotC were everywhere and Orlando Bloom was a BIG DEAL.  Actually, I remember feigning a celebrity-crush on him when I was eleven because all of my friends loved him.  And, I mean, he was pretty.  But not my type.
028. First Big Vacation → I don't know.  Most of my "vacations" have been to visit relatives. I've been going to the gulf coast, Islands, the West coast, and the Caribbean all my life; but that's just because I have family there.  Those were sort of vacationy places...(well, actually the Caribbean was the LEAST vacationy but that's a different story).  We usually spend all of our travel money to see relatives.  One summer we went to the U.K. for the first time and on a road trip out west.  That was the most vacationy vacation, probably.

LASTS:
029. Last Person You Talked To → My sister and her best friend (who's like the annoying sister I never had) who have taken up weekend residence in my room.  And won't leave.
030. Last Person You Texted → My bestie (a lovely little English major).
031. Last Person You Watched A Movie With → My Dad.  We were watching some Miyazaki goodness.
033. Last Movie You Watched → Spirited Away
034. Last Song You listened To → Get Up by Barcelona
035. Last Thing You Bought → Glitter eyeshadow and six dollars worth of clay for 3-D design.
036. Last Person You Hugged → I don't know.  I hug a lot of people.


FAVES:
037. Food →Depends on my mood.  Sometimes I don't like/want any food.  But I can usually afford/eat fresh-out-of-the-bakery bread and chocolate.
038. Drinks → Coffee, Earl Grey, Spice-Chai with Cinnamon
039. Clothing → Artist Bitch Rant: I'm into fashion design and blending my own makeup.  Clothes are important to me.  They should not EVER be what everyone else wears, just because everyone else is wearing it.  People who just wear that freaking one-size-fits-nobody North Face jacket and Uggs just because that's what everone wears make me sick.  Your appearance should both reflect your personality and be aesthetically pleasing.  End of Artist Bitch Rant.
040. Book → I love wayyyyyyyyy too many books to mention.  Bibliophilia has been a lifelong illness.  A few, a VERY few, of my favorites include those by Lewis, Tolkien, Pratchett, Shannon Hale, Markus Zusak, Cornelia Funke, Rick Riordan, Eoin Colfer, Charles Dickens, Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Sir Walter Scott, William Goldman, Mark Twain, and ancient bodies of work such as the cumulative bodies of classical mythology (Greco-Roman and Norse/Germanic).
041. Music → Again, wayyyy to many to choose.  A few of the best are Handel, Hans Zimmer, John Powell, Betthoven, Bach, Vivaldi, Grieg, Gregson-Williams, Vienna Teng, Enya, Regina Spektor, Mumford and Sons, Ben Folds, Alexander Rybak, Irish Rovers, Flogging Molly, and Mika.
042. Flower → Roses are deliciously full of symbolism, but overused and--occasionally--full of kitsch.  I love bluebells and crocuses (early bloomers where I live), cherry and apple blossoms, surprise lilies (one of the only pretty things that blooms here on my birthday), snowdrops, edelweiss, and narcissus
043. Colors → Blue, Green, and Purple.  Blue was my favorite when I was younger.  Although, at one point, when I was younger, I wanted to be original and started telling people that "rainbow" was my favorite color...until I had one other girl agree with me.  I then amended my statement to "clear is my favorite."  Of course, neither are, by definition, colors; but you try telling that to a six-year-old and see if she cares.  Also, I love color psychology, and the respective color-psychologies of different cultures.  In American color psychology blue symbolizes spirit, freedom, high-ideals, loyalty, and a higher-world.  Purple is the color of Royalty, whimsy, artifice, and artists (I'm surrounded by many purple things in my purple rooms).  Green symbolizes peace, nature, greed, natural power, age, vitality, and untrustworthiness.  Not all of those are fabulous, I know.  But I love the color.  It also happens to be the color that looks best on me, and the color of my eyes (but I mean, natural forest green.  Most people I know have something between blue-grey, grey-green, and blue-green and just call it green.  I mean green green.)  I don't know if it's always my favorite; but it's always my favorite on me.  Of course, I'm obsessed with the dark ages and the history of the Green Martyrs and love their role in saving civilization.  I also come from an Irish American family.  And it's the color of my birth-stone.  I might like blue and purple better; but green is my color (to the extent that if I were to get married, it'd be in a green dress, not a white one.  In Western cultures, green was a traditional wedding color long before white was anyway).
044. Movies → TOO MANY.  Some of my favorites (a few) are: Lord of the Rings, Mulan, Pride and Prejudice (the six-hour one with Colin Firth), Luther, Henrey V, 9, The King's Speech, The Princess and the Frog, Sinbad, the Road to El Dorado, Lilo and Stitch, Hercules, The Incredibles, Kung Fu Panda, Howl's Moving Castle, Casablanca, It's a Wonderful Life, Gladiator, PotC, etc.
045. Shoes → I usually wear some kind of fun boots.
046. Subjects → Art, Literature, Music, History, Culture, Humanities, English, Foreign Language, Logic, Philosophy, Religion...basically all of the culture-oriented classes and none of the mathy sciency ones.

IN THE PAST YEAR I...
047. Graduated Highschool
048. Started College
051. Inherited a Car and named it Altivo
052. Wrecked the Car
053. Got a new job with...more regular paychecks than I had previously.
054. Was forced to play video games (Super Paper Mario and Twilight Princess), which I NEVER do, by my gamer sister
055. Was a camp co-councilor with my English-major best friend
056. Climbed on top of a freight train.
057. Played on a dangerously-high train bridge to take pictures with my lifelong friends before their family moved two states away.
059. Competed for a lot of scholarships
060. Failed a test, for the first time in my life (but still have an A average, thank GOODNESS.  I'm too poor to afford not to.)
061. Was the pianist for a wedding
062. Was repeatedly begged to work as a nude model (and didn't, and STILL WON'T, accept.  You'd have to pay me a lot more than they're offering, thanks).
063. Crashed a highschool's prom
064. Became a legal adult and a legal voter.  (And then broke a lot of speed limits to get to the polls to vote).
065. Spent the weeks surrounding last semester's midterm staving off depression by wearing a celtic-rockers t-shirt and borrowing my eleven-year-old brother for a few weeks of Phineas and Ferb binging
066. Had two chances at two completely opposite boyfriends and turned them both down


CURRENTLY:
067. Eating → Nothing
068. Drinking → Coffee
069. Getting Ready To → Go buy things for a really unexpected party that decided to happen at my place
070. Listening To → Vienna Teng
071. Today → Windy, cloudy, and wayyyyy to warm for March
072. Waiting For → My headache to leave

YOUR FUTURE:
073. Want Kids? → Not really.  I'd love to name other people's kids, though.  NAMES mmmmm.
074. Want To Get Married? → Not really.  Unless there's an old guy with one foot in the grave, one foot on a banana peel, and sitting on a pile of money looking for a cute, little, trophy-wife.
075. Careers in mind → TOO MANY.  AGH.  I just want to skip the career part and go to when I'm sixty years old, with dozens of degrees after my name, literary awards on my wall, smoking jackets, cardigans, a penchant for pretending senility to screw with peoples' heads, and the freedom to finally do and wear what I want without people questioning me.


WHICH IS BETTER ON A BOY/GIRL?
076. Lips Or Eyes → Eyes (lips, wtf?)
077. Shorter Or Taller? → Uhh, taller?  I guess?  I don't like superrrrr-short and I'm not a fan of gargantuan either.  How about...average hight.  Normal proportions.  Yeah... 
078. Romantic Or Spontaneous → Romantic Shmomantic.  Probably spontaneous.  
079. Nice Stomach Or Nice Arms → Nice Money
080. Sensitive Or Loud → A healthy dose of...maybe both?
081. Hookup Or Relationship → Relationship
082. Troublemaker Or Hesitant → Troublemaker is not the opposite of hesitant.  And vice-versa.  Therefore, since I want neither one, I am not required to choose one.

HAVE YOU EVER:
083. Lost Glasses/Contacts → I found them again.
084. Ran Away From Home → Noooooot really.
085. Held A Weapon, For Self Defense → Yes. (What I really want is a license to carry concealed weapons.  Paranoid, I know.  But hey, I'm American).
086. Killed Somebody → No.
087. Broken Someone's Heart → Maybe...but I still hope not....
088. Been Arrested → Nope.


DO YOU BELIEVE IN:
090. Yourself → Sometimes
091. Miracles → Some kinds.
092. Love At First Sight → Don't you mean: Lust at first sight?  (Means no)
093. Heaven → Yes
095. Sex On The FIRST Date → Why?  That would be a pretty stupid thing to do. So no.
096. Kiss → Do I believe that they exist?  What?  Is this a question?

ANSWER TRUTHFULLY:
097. Is There One Person You Wanna Be With, Right Now? → I want to see my oldest friend.  But I'm tired.  SO TIRED.  So tired that I want to be aloneish right now.
099. Do You Believe In God → I consider this truth to be self-evident that....
100. Post As 100 Truths And Tag 5 People: I refuse to tag.

You know how every Christmas has a different feel?  And you can never predict what that feel will be?  It's kind of like how every year in highschool feels different, or how every year of summer camp has a different feel.  I always wonder what flavor the next Christmas will have.  This Christmas season's feel, for me, has been...odd.  Not bad.  Just odd.  I suppose a lot of it has to do with the whole First Year of College thing.  This is the first year since I was, gosh, nine or ten I guess, that I wasn't performing with the orchestra in front of a few thousand sweater-wearers.  It's the first year that hasn't been chock full of Christmas recitals.  It's the first year I got off school before my siblings and had to bum around without them.   It's odd.  But, it really isn't bad.  

I did help put on a church play for all the kids/youth this year.  And, at my church, our Christmas play isn't the nativity.  We have a writer who comes up with hilariously original plays (that may or may not make a whole lot of sense).  One year it was Sherlock and Watson being transported to the 21st century where Christmas was only vaguely referred to as "The Holidays," and they had to use their detective skills to figure out what was being celebrated.  Last year was a fairytale involving Buffy the Vampire slayer references, where--to break a curse--the princess in need of rescue had to find a way to reconcile a just God and a merciful God and a sinful humanity.  This year, three kids got to meet a bunch of historical figures (which was bloody fun) and see what they would have been like if Jesus had never been born (and we were, thus, our culture wasn't influenced by his teachings about selflessness, sacrifice, and love for all men).  It was fun.

Today I was babysitting some kids and, since we have no snow here, we made cookie-dough balls and had a cookie-dough-ball fight instead of a snowball fight.  We then took loads of peppermint and snowflake-shaped sprinkles outside for an epic-snow-war.  It was fabulous.

Those same kids will be caroling with my family tomorrow.  We always take Christmas eve to go caroling at hospitals and nursing homes.

And, after Christmas, we're traveling to see my mom's family--which will involve a lot of costumes.  We celebrate basically every holiday by dressing up and playing very loud games.  Then we'll visit my best friends (that's another reason this year was odd; usually they're here shopping with me); but this year they moved out of state.  We'll stop off at Dad's sister's for the New Year.  

Costumes.  Odd stories.  And Christmas-themed food fights.  That's the flavor of my Christmas this year.  What about you?  I'm sure there are as many Christmas's as there are watchers.  

Much love, and have a great end-of-2011/beginning of the year of the apocalypse!

~Meg