Another convert for the Racer ranks!

The Best Part of Today #126:

Turning a friend on to your favorite movie.

We all have favorite movies, or at least movies we really like (or if you don't like any movies, seek help). Like reading a well-thumbed book, watching your favorite movies over again, laughing and crying at all the parts you love that movie for is truly a wonderful experience that can be matched by few other things in this world. But converting a friend to having the same enthusiasm for the movie as you do derives a special pleasure. Even though in the long run it doesn't matter what other people care about your preferences, it's nice to be able to share your enjoyment with someone else.

I just succeeded minutes ago in having my roommate watch Speed Racer for the first time and she loved it, which the proverbial cherry on top of a great day today. Second only to the Lord of the Rings film series, Speed Racer is truly one best movies I have ever seen, and adding another friends to the posse of admirers of which I am a part is intensely gratifying.

Let's hear it for geeks (of all nationalities, shapes, sizes and flavors!)

Last week was kind of crazy. I was catching up on schoolwork after my 21st birthday consumed the weekend before, and I was trying to get ahead because I was going to AnimeBoston on Thursday. Needless to say, in order to achieve this, I needed every space second of time. But that's okay, because my weekend was so great that it can take up 4 days and be a two part BPoT.

The Best Part of Today #124 [Wednesday, Monday]:

Geekdom.

The Best Part of Today #125 [Thursday, Friday]:

aNiMe CoNvEnTiOnS.

Clearly these two are pretty closely related, but they are slightly different. I like to think of them as two sides of a venn diagram with a large shared middle section. Not all geeks like anime because there are varying degrees of geeky/nerdiness. (Geekdom and Nerdom are not even the same thing, but that's a discussion for a different day. They're more closely related than anime and geekiness are.) Anyway, the great thing about anime conventions (and comic conventions I'm assuming, though I've never been to one, and expect they are more firmly in the Geek side) have all kinds. There are people dressed up as characters from shows with japanese names you can pronounce and there are people dressed as Star Wars characters. There are Pokemon and there are Gundams. There are Kirbies, and there are shinigamis. Even if you don't know any anime, it's still cool to just sit and watch everyone pass in crazy, homemade costumes. Where else do you get to channel your love for awesome fictional shows? Where else can you go and know that every person there is a geek? Feel the love, people.

Bringing spring indoors

The Best Part of Today #123:

Fresh flowers.

I have heard some arguments from people that find flowers to be sad or wasteful because you cut them from growing outside, and they don't last very long, and you have to throw them out when they die. But really, they are there to be enjoyed and there is really nothing like have fresh flowers in your room, especially if it's raining and cloudy and cold outside and your room smells like spring. I myself have a wonderful bouquet of daffodils in my room and they smell just delightful. Daffodils always seem very special to me because they announce the coming of springtime, but they really aren't there for very long, so I want to enjoy them as along as possible.

As you can see, our plants have been growing

exponentially since they were potted in the

bigger pots. This picture was actually taken about a week and a half ago, and they gave grown even more since then. I would have taken a new picture, but the plants are currently at home but divided into yet more pots. Along with my fresh daffodils, I also received a new strawberry with some ripening strawberries! What a treat! I'm hoping our little strawberry plant (lower left) will some be as large and fruitful!

When the weather outside isn't frightful

The Best Part of Today #122:

Perfectly-timed weather.

Isn't it always the way that you're sitting inside at work or class, staring at the sunny blue sky, and then when you finally escape it starts to rain? This has happened to me before, but actually it isn't always the way of things. Today my first and and only class (in which we had a quiz scheduled) was cancelled, and it was pretty nice all day until I went back to my room and hunkered down to do work. After a little while I happened to look out the window notice that it was spattered with rain falling from a cloudy gray sky. I enjoyed that it wasn't the other way around for once.

Sometimes listening is just not enough

The Best Part of Today #121:

Discreet distractors.

It has reached that part of the semester at which point final projects and presentations are beginning to flood my classes. I had to observe upwards of 6 presentations just today and butt and brain both were starting to go numb. I firmly believe that I can do something else while to music or to someone speak. That is why, even though I love classical music, I generally avoid classical music concerts because I feel I need something else to do while listening, which is of course considered very rude. I used to play my gameboy at some of them when I was younger, and attracted many disapproving glares, and graduated to reading books. This is slightly more difficult when the concert hall is dark and it is difficult to see the pages, but it attracts fewer haughty stink-eyes.

This sort of thing is considered even more disrespectful in class, and something to the extent of diverting oneself with an electronic device, or even something non-electronic like a book, is absolutely unacceptable. I'd say doodling is pushing the envelope a little, as your professor may glare at you if he or she realizes you are not just taking dedicated notes. The perfect medium here is jewelry or other accoutrements that you can use to occupy yourself without looking distracted or distracting. For me, it was my relay for life anklet. I mentioned in an earlier post that I got a bracelet for donating a dollar to relay for life, to which I added a colored bead for each time I walked around the track. During class today I amused myself by pushing the beads around the bracelet into different formations and just back and forth, kind of like a mini abacus. Call me crazy, but it helped pass the time because it was better than just sitting and blankly staring at my classmates. No offense to their presentations and hard work and everything, but we all know that class presentations aren't really anyone's favorite things to sit through, so I'm sure you can all relate.

Things that also fall into this category are those fancy watches with spinning dials on the face, or rings with with moving parts. I myself have two rings that are fun to play with: one is a steampunky little thing with gears and a spinning hand kind of like a compass. The other is actually a miniature box with a little latch that my friends joke I could use to surreptitiously poison someone's drink. I was also wearing my fork bracelet today and resorted to taking that on and off occasionally.

Any other things you guys use to keep yourself politely occupied?

The best kind of book

The Best Part of Today #120:

Free books.

This is such a great thing that I was sure I had written about it before. Now that I'm over 100 posts its hard for me to keep track of everything I've listed as a BPoT, and I'm still not entirely sure I haven't said something along these lines before. But if I have, my defense in this case is that I'm not just talking about free books. I'm talking about free Advance Reading Copies! I always feel that these are so much more special than regular books because a) they're not for sale and b) they come out before the actual book. That means you're paying nothing to get a book before it has actually come out. What kind of crazy idea is that?! It also usually means--for me anyway--that I have met someone in the publishing world who has given me these books, which, in itself is a wonderful thing.

Today I received no less than 5 free advance reading copies from the head of bookselling at my college co-op because I was interviewing her for a class. That's a total of $85 worth of free books. One of them is even from my favorite publisher, Disney-Hyperion, which I am doing a project on tomorrow and now I have something cool to bring to add to my presentation. Nice.

Shut your eyes

The Best Part of Today #119:

Sleeping in.

In general, I'd say I'm a morning person. I usually far prefer the early morning to late night, depending on the context. But sometimes circumstances force me to stay up later than I'd later, and at those times it's nice when I'm able to sleep in a little bit and "catch up," so to sleep. Conversely, it's nice when nothing impedes from going to sleep a little on the early side.