Dream House

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a college girl in possession of a good deal of homework must be in want of a way to procrastinate.

That's why I'm lying on my couch, wrapped up in my shock blanket, listening to Taylor Swift songs I've never heard before, watching people play glow-in-the-dark Frisbee, and blogging. And skipping the song I do recognize because it brings back memories of youth Church dances. Holy cow, she's wearing jeans and a hoodie in this video. I thought she always wore pretty dresses. Oh, never mind. There's the pretty dress. Universe can carry on as usual.

I'm really going to write about something other than Taylor Swift music videos. I just haven't figured out what yet.

In desperation, our hero Googles "writing prompts". The internet advises her to write about her dream house. Will our heroine take the internet's advice?
... Yeah, probably.

A few months after Moriah had run her last season writing for Doctor Who, she, Danny, and their kids had packed up and moved from London to Portland, Oregon. I too found myself back in the United States, glad that Moriah and Danny's invitation to spend the week at their new home provided me with an excuse to escape the miserable heat of LA in the summer.

Getting to their house took a while. Living an hour away from the city in the mountains suited Moriah and Danny's careers and stage of life well enough, but they only had to go to the city once a week or so. The commute would have driven daily commuters like me mad before the month was out. The road to the house was lined with astonishingly tall trees, all in their green summer prime. A quarter mile before the house, the road turned to dirt. It was hard to believe that anyone lived in such a wild and untamed place.

My first view of the house was a red brick chimney that jutted out of the roof. As I drove closer, the house came into full view. It was beautiful. The lower half was made of large stones that were all light grey while the upper half was wood that had just a hint of red in it. Large windows reflected the snow-capped mountain   to the west. Sitting in a hammock that hung from below the deck was one of their daughters -had Rose really grown so much in the past two years?-, reading a book.

I stepped out of the car and heard the sound of a brook or creek nearby. Birds called to each other in the trees, making me feel like I was in a "Relax With Nature Sounds" video. The perfect fresh-pine-mountain-scent only added to the feeling.

I had scarcely looked around before Moriah, Danny, and their son John, who had grown about a foot since I last saw him, were all outside greeting me.

This is fun. Perhaps I'll continue it later.

Sitting on the Couch

I'm sitting on the couch in Dr. Baltar's dorm, with Fabio and Indiana Jones - two of Dr. Baltar's roommates. Except for that Indiana Jones just went to take out the trash. Dr. Baltar is doing some stuff on his computer. Fabio's playing with the music - thankfully, we've abandoned the previous unpalatable rock for the much more pleasant Chopin. Now Fabio just needs to pick a song and stick with it.

I've just finished giving Hannah her motivational speech to study, since her finals are coming up. I'm waiting for Aladdin to message me back on Facebook and tell me the story of his fake relationship.

It's not a very eventful Sunday.

I went to Church for the first time at my new ward for spring term. They seem nice enough. The church building was, as usual, freezing. Maybe one day I'll live in a world where the thermostats are not under the control of overweight men in socks, pants, long sleeve shirts, and coats while the women freeze in their skirts, heels, and short-sleeved shirts. But not today.

Dr. Baltar says he's broken "it." What "it" is, I'm not sure. Something on his computer. So that'll keep him busy for a while.

This Chopin is making me want to write a story or something. A love story, of course. Or I could just pin a bunch of stuff on Pintrest. That's usually what ends up happening when I feel to write. As if enough worldbuilding and character development would actually get the thing written.

Dr. Baltar fixed whatever he had broken. Hooray! Sometimes I feel like I'm watching a sports game when he works on computer stuff. I don't have a clue what's going on, but I'm happy to cheer or moan as appropriate when people tell me what happened.

I fell asleep during Sacrament Meeting today during a musical number. Speaking of falling asleep, I'm pretty sure Fabio is just about there. Five magic points says he does. Even though he's in the most uncomfortable position imaginable.

Why do I get so cold so easily? I'm basically always freezing indoors, and always freezing outdoors in the winter. And frequently the summer. I wish my body conducted heat or something.

Fleets and Armadas

In fandom, supporting a relationship between two people is called "shipping" them. The idea of them together is a "ship." I have many ships - so many that I feel the need to a) write them all down to catalog them and b) blog about them.

Ariel and I were recently discussing whether to call our many ships a fleet or an armada. We learned that an armada is bigger than a fleet, and so all our ships together constitutes an armada rather than a fleet. But we both like the sound of a fleet better, and in Battlestar Galactica the entire human race's ships is called a fleet. So we call our ships our fleets.

I call my ships by either names for the ships that fandoms have given (like Harmony, Snarry, or Johnlock) or by just the two names of the characters involved. Ship names are prefaces by either HMS or USS, depending on if the fandom they're from is British or American.

Flagships are my strongest, most proud ship within a fandom. Submarines are my anti-ships, or couples I really don't like together. I have romantic ships and platonic ships (see Heterosexual Life Partners).

In the future, I will probably post about individual ships. For now, there's grammar to study, showers to take, food to eat, bedrooms to clean up, outside to think about visiting, and some running shoes to put to use.

What I Do Instead of Blogging

In my new Management Communications class, we've been assigned to blog every week. When I first found this out, I was super excited, since blogging is already a thing that I do <sarcasm> with alarming regularity. </sarcasm> And then I proceeded to not blog.

Important Things I've Been Doing Instead of Blogging
- Doing homework/quizzes for my accounting class
- Reading my sister's first draft of a new story project
- Making lists of top ten best male voices (Benedict Cumberbatch, David Tennant, Gerry Butler, Aled Jones, Matt Berninger, Sean Connery, Jeremy Irons, Roger Allam, Frank Sinatra, Colin Firth)
- Watching Merlin
- Warring with and cursing the wifi about trying to stay connected to the secure network for more than three minutes at a time
- Catching up on the vlogbrothers videos
- Watching the Lizzie Bennett Diaries
- Finishing a chocolate bunny from Easter
- Researching ways to voluminize my hair
- Spreading my cream cheese with a paring knife because I forgot to buy butter knives
- Pretending that I know what I'm doing at the student fitness center
- Going for mountain drives with friends with cars
- Accidentally making 80-mile detours on mountain drives
- Making pancakes
- Making smoothies
- Avoiding the cold and windy outside
- Checking my grades every hour until they were all posted
- Tumblr
- Sleeping

"For she'll be up twenty times a night, and there will she sit in her smock till she have writ a sheet of paper."
Leonato says that about Beatrice in the little haha-let's-tell-Benedick-Beatrice-likes-him ploy. I'm not up twenty times a night, and I definitely don't sit in my smock till I have writ a sheet of paper (or blog post). Maybe I should fall in love. Maybe that would make me enough of a lovesick romantic to sit up at night and write about feelings instead of eating uncooked Top Ramen while I watch Netflix.

I'm really not as pathetic as I sound, though. I really do have deep feelings and emotions. And I don't just sit around watching TV because it's something to do. I watch TV for the stories, and all the inspiration and feelings that go with them. TV shows are currently my favorite form of stories because of how much more can be conveyed about a story through video and how long they last. Movies are great, but they're over too soon. TV shows and miniseries are far longer, and I just love having more content. So I get into these great relationships with miniseries and TV shows, and I love them and they make me incredibly happy and I'm just overjoyed to have discovered them. But then they end. Or I catch up and have to wait for more. And that's where I am now.

Sherlock: hiatus until the Second Coming
Doctor Who: hiatus until probably this fall
Downton Abbey: hiatus until who knows when
Firefly: canceled
How I Met Your Mother: waiting until Monday for the next episode
Merlin: doesn't count because I have yet to fall in love with it
Pride and Prejudice: has been over since 1995
Cranford: has been over for years

And even when we get to non-TV fandoms, it looks the same.

Harry Potter: past its heyday, the movies don't cut it, and I don't have the books at college
Lord of the Rings: only twelve hours of content is a lot to be going on nine years later
The Hobbit: doesn't come out for ages
The Hunger Games: don't have the books; don't have money to go see the movie again

And then there's the problem where no matter what I read or watch, I always end up thinking to myself, "yeah, this is cool, but... it's not Harry Potter." Or Lord of the Rings. Or Sherlock. Or Doctor Who. Or whatever. It's the same problem that I have with choirs. I grew up with the two best choirs in the world (Mormon Tabernacle Choir and the Cambridge Singers), and because those are my standard, every other choir sounds terrible even if they're really not, just because they're not as good as the MoTab.

Alright Moriah, you've been rambling long enough, now it's time to shut up

Not So Fresh Anymore

Well, I seem to have made it through my freshman year at BYU.

My grandparents moved me out earlier today, and I'm staying with them for a weekend before I start Spring Term again at BYU. I'm excited for Spring Term. I really do actually like learning and classes at BYU when they're not horrible Gen Eds like Physical Science.

I did get an A in Physical Science, though. :)

I've said goodbye to the people I won't be seeing for a while. Saying goodbye to Sirius Black was hard, but we did get a picture together.

Allyson helped Nikki and I get all packed yesterday for our checkout, and we never would have made it without her. She's a darling.

Last night, I went to the new Nicholas Sparks book-turned-movie with some kids from my ward as a last huzzah. The movie was absolutely awful, but it was good to see everyone again before we all went our separate ways. (Cue that Journey song.)

Nikki and I left this morning. We were very good roommates, and I'm glad that we wound up in the same room. She's great.

After hauling all my stuff to my grandparents' house, my grandparents and I went to a wedding reception for a couple that they knew through their Japan connections. The couple had started dating in high school and had waited for both of them to serve missions before finally getting married. They made an adorable couple. 

Freshman year was overall brilliant, and ended very well. But now, as my mother said when we were discussing how I'm done with science classes for the rest of my academic life, "Holy buckets, Moriah! Moving on to greener semesters!"