Friday Freeday: 3 Hours to Go!

Welcome back to Friday, everyone!

I had been thinking about taking off the Friday before Memorial Day probably since February, but since money is tight, I decided not to. Then Monday came around and literally drove me to drink. Tuesday did the exact same thing. Rumchata has a formula I didn't perfect Monday night but did better Tuesday night. My throat was aflame Wednesday morning, though.

I work at a job that I've realized this week I don't want to be in. I only look forward to the last two Wednesdays of the month, where I get out of the office to go to another office for peer reviews of behavioral intervention strategies. I really like that circle of people, and Wednesday made my week WONDERFUL. And that was when I decided I'm taking half of today off, so my 3-day weekend starts in 3 hours. \o/

I'm almost 29, and I've managed to skirt and nomad my way through these clerical-type positions since I graduated college, but I'm at that point now where I want to not do it anymore. I don't have much choice right now, but I really need to buckle down and figure out what I want to do with my editing business (will be broadcasting my website to the state soon). I also need to/will jump back into another editing phase on my fantasy WIP because I have so many more ideas to flesh out the story, and I'm getting anxious to do them!

So after I critique the shorts in my inbox for Critters.org and finish with my beta, I will be striving to do what I want to do with my life.

Have a happy Memorial Day everyone! And if you're in the Tri-state Area (PA/NJ/DE), 102.9 WMGK's Top 500 Classic Rock songs starts at 3pm! Knowing the #1 song will get you a chance to win a trip to MGK's Beach House!

Throwback Thursday: Fitzgiven

Welcome to another most likely sporadic day-specific post. lol

Throwback Thursday is a hashtag on Twitter where people post old pics of themselves. There are rules about this, such as: you can't post a pic that you took about a month ago. It has to be at least a year. It also has to be posted on Thursday. But since this is a blog about writing (mostly), I decided to post pieces of the first story I wrote during my first writer's convention when I was 9 years old. It's going to literally be pieces, more like what I see in my head from the meat of the story because that was almost 20 years ago. I do, however, still remember my mom expressing the hesitation of the teacher who was reading the story out loud. lol

Sara Conrad was 13 years old when she became an orphan. She was coming home from school that day. Her bus let her off at the long, winding dirt road that led her to the log cabin where she lived with her parents and two sisters. Her older sister was away at college, fortunately. Sara smelled the smoke before she saw it. She ran down the rest of the road and came to a halt in front of her home engulfed in flames. Her heart raced. Her parents and kid sister would have been home by then. Without another thought, she ran inside and looked around, screaming for her family. She couldn't go too far inside, for the flames had swallowed almost everything, but she got far enough inside to see the three skeletons hanging from the ceiling of the living room. Written in blood on the wall behind them was one name: Fitzgiven. Sara hurried back out of the house before the smoke could suffocate her, and she knew she had to avenge her family.

I imagine she cried in the original, but I don't remember all that. I also am aware that unless her family was flayed first, they wouldn't be burned down to just their skeletons so quickly, but I was 9.

Sara was one of the recurring mutants in my [insert bad adjective] Hearts series I wrote for 7 years. She had the plasma ability like Jubilee. She was blonde with blue eyes and allergic to cherries (for some reason). Her family was locked in a violent feud with the Fitzgiven family, who had the ability to create and manipulate fire. I never tapped into WHY they were fighting. If I go on to revamp these stories like I said before, I will definitely work on making this whole piece make sense.

Express Yourself: Whatcha reading?

Welcome back to Express Yourself hosted by Jackie at Bouquet of Books and Dani at Entertaining Interests! This week's question is: What are you reading?

I am currently in the home stretch of my favorite author Robert Olen Butler's The Hot Country. It is his first thriller as well as the first in his new Christopher Marlowe Cobb series, and it is set in pre-WWI Mexico, during its revolution. It's very intriguing, and Kitt Cobb is a complex journalist who reveals a big story that could also change the history of the United States!

I am also beta reading an interesting vampire fiction. I like when people have different takes on the vampire mythos (I've been using this word a lot. Am I using it right?), and this writer does a very good job of painting a picture of this supernatural world a poor supposed-to-be-in-college kid is sucked (no pun intended) into.

Stop by Jackie & Dani's pages to get the other participants, or to join this weekly bloghop! :)

Friday Freeday: The Best & Worst Movie Remakes!

This Friday Freeday is a BLOGFEST!

I didn't have time to watch all of the originals or remakes of the movies I've seen (I've seen so many movies), so I will have to go with the movies for which I have seen both the original and the remake. That narrows it down to like 5 movies.

Best Movie Remake: Beauty and the Beast
Weren't expecting that, were you? I was 7 or 8 when Disney put out this tale as old as time. From the opening tale of the mean prince turning away a fairy queen disguised as an ugly, haggard woman and being cursed until someone could love him for his inner beauty (or something, it's been a while), to the spectacular fight scene and the revelation of the hot prince Beast was (yes, even for a cartoon, the Prince was sexy), this movie captivated me and became my favorite Disney movie. Now, what made it better than the 1946 Jean Cocteau French film? What the heck didn't? I saw the original in my History of Film class, and my teacher for some reason hated the Disney remake. Admittedly, the set was beautiful (there were people in the furniture if I remember, so the candles were moving around, etc.), but the movie was boring. Even worse, the Beast was so not scary. When he first appeared, my classmates and I laughed. He looked like a regal Zoobilee-Zoo character. There was also some elaborate story about a rose garden (is this in the original story?) and when Avenant (Gaston in the cartoon) goes after Belle (I'm not sure he was rescuing her at this point; it's been 9 years), the garden turns him into the Beast, who gets Avenant's handsome features, at which Belle wasn't all that happy. At least in the cartoon, Belle is happy to get the Beast she fell in love with and his true hot self. lol

Worst Movie Remake: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
I had originally chosen The Wiz, but then I remembered this tragedy (You get to live another day, The Wiz). I actually wrote a review about this on IMDb.com; that's how much I hated this movie. I find Tim Burton highly overrated anyway, and this might have been the first time I thought, "You know what? Johnny Depp is, too!" Apparently, Roald Dahl didn't like Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and neither did Burton, but the original is a classic, and I love Gene Wilder. I've only seen him in two movies, and I absolutely love him. Johnny Depp's Wonka was (as I described it) Stepford Wives meets (as others described it) Michael Jackson. The rush to get to Wonkaland and the lack of mystery sucked all of the magic from the movie, and the Oompa Loompa pop songs ruined the rest for me.


BONUS: The Best & Worst Song Remakes
Being a big music lover, this one was a little harder, because I've heard A LOT of remakes (sometimes haven't even heard the original first), so I had to go with what popped into my head first, because your first instinct is usually the strongest thought.

BEST: (I Believe I Can)/Fly by Glee (orginally by R. Kelly/Nicki Minaj)
Buy it on iTunes, look it up on Youtube, SOMETHING! DO it! Glee's really cheesy (it's like FOX's version of Kids Incorporated), especially when a student breaks out in song, and the others jump in as back-up like they knew the arrangement already (c'mon man). But sometimes, the remakes they come up with melt my heart! The one above was a mash-up of R. Kelly's "I Believe I Can Fly" and Nicki Minaj's "Fly" in a way that when it started with "Fly," I didn't expect "I Believe..." to come in, and when it did, I almost went into worship. It's beautiful.

WORST: Papa Don't Preach by Kelly Osbourne (originally by Madonna)
I think everyone scoffed when Kelly decided to do this. First, the child can't sing all that well. Second, I haven't heard it in years, but I remember being SO bored, and her staccato "Ooh-ooh" is now playing in my head over and over. This was a big moral-of-the-story moment that screamed "just because Daddy could, doesn't mean you should."

Thanks, as always, to the great Ninja Alex-Sensei and his co-hosts, Stephen Temp, Livia Peterson, and Father Dragon Al, for doing this blogfest. <3 Stop by their pages to find the other contestants, as well as their Best & Worst Remakes!

This is Fitness Week?

I pay no attention.

A blogger mentioned "we" were talking about fitness this week, and I think I remember someone saying that about the whole month, so I can go ahead a talk about it a little bit. ;)

I became a Zumba instructor March of last year. Here's my official web page: dhawkins.zumba.com. And yes, that is what I really look like. I've always had an issue with sticking to one exercise regimen, but exercise has been on my life as early as 5. Did anyone else wake up early in the morning to do Mickey's Mousercise? How about getting your calves in shape with Tony Little? I have legs like a horse because of genetics and Tony Little. What 7-year-old did this?! lol

There was also Aerobics with Soul, featuring a little Tanzanian woman, Jane Fonda's Aerobics, Step Aerobics, then later in my teen years, Belly dancing with Neena & Veena, and my very short-lived stint with Yoga (HATE IT). So when I learned about Zumba, dancing and exercising to Latin rhythms, as a lover of many things Latino, this one stuck. Also NYC Ballet's Exercise, which is MY yoga, but I love teaching dance fitness. It's fun, and when you get tired, you can do whatever you want. lol

This week, I've pushed myself to exercise every day (except today and Sunday), and I have a 2-hour Zumbathon tomorrow before I hit up a party (for maybe an hour because I'm highly anxious around crowds).

Does anyone else have a fitness regimen?