Hello, internet.

Now that I have a domain name, I feel I need to update this thing regularly. Successful bloggers have a specific audience and write regularly on one specific topic. You've got your mommy bloggers, your bookworms, your foodies, and then those who blog about whatever their current obsession is. People tend to take one aspect of their life and focus their blog/website on that. Personally, I have no idea what to sell myself as. I'm just Reyna. Just Reyna. I'm usually either at school or at home, in front of a computer screen. Not the most exciting person in the world.

Since I can't stick to just one part of me and write about it, I guess I'll be using this as a personal blog for now. Y'know, the type where I talk about... well, myself. Just as I've been doing for ages. Since my last two posts were on the 20th and the 25th, and this one is on the 30th, I figure I'll start regularly posting on here every five days. Well, not every FIVE days. But every day that is a multiple of five. Yes? No? How does that sound? Who even reads my blogs? Unless I'm bored (or close friends with a person), I tend to have a TL;DR attitude when it comes to other peoples' blog posts.

ANYWAY. ENOUGH NEGATIVE NANCYNESS.

Let me tell you about this blog/page/site/whatever-you-wanna-call-it. On the sidebar, I recently added links to other social networking sites I am part of. Feel free to follow/add/stalk me on those. Under the header, there are links to other pages that are also part of this site. One of them is "East LA Creepers" and the other is "Twitterms." There's an explanation of each on both pages, so I won't summarize them for you here. I'll add some more pages as I feel I need them. For now, that is all the navigation potential on here.

I feel I've wasted enough of your time for today. Look out for my next post on April 5th. It'll most likely be about Doctor Who because the new season will have begun one or two days prior.

How old is Harry Potter, really?

Yes, I know there are inconsistencies in the series, but this is the generally accepted conclusion within the Harry Potter fandom as to the time frame in which the series takes place.

Background music: "Back to School" by Harry and the Potters

Are you master of your domain?

I just had to make a Seinfeld reference.

I finally bought ReynaVilla.com! I'd been wanting to buy my own personal domain since I was about twelve years old. I remember all when I would create/edit/upload stuff to GarfieldPercussion.com and GarfieldIndependent.org, wishing I had my own little place on the internet, since I pretty much spent all my free time on it. I'm not popular AT ALL on the web, but I figured that I kinda owed this to myself.

Now that I think of it, my life since elementary school has been just a whole lot of web phases. As a kid, I felt sooo cool when I got my first hotmail address.Sometime in middle school my made my first little Harry Potter website, hosted on FreeWebs (which is now just webs.com), and spent an insane amount of time on Harry Potter fansites. It was also around ths time that I made a small site where I posted lame little graphics I made, most of which were icons/avatars. From there, I went on to LiveJournal and got a blog on there. Not much came from that, except a bunch of ranting and complaining. When my freshman year of high school arrived, I got a MySpace account. Ohh, how I'd spend heaps of time angling my photos appropriately (MySpace-appropriate; "the angles"), posting bulletins, commenting photos, and making my own layouts. Heck, I even made layouts for friends. It wasn't that hard to figure out how to alter them if you had prior knowledge of HTML and CSS. Two or three years after this, I got an account on Facebook. Oh, gosh. I would update my status on there like it was nobody's business. (Which, really... it was nobody's business. Whatever that means.)

Nowadays, my time online is spent on YouTube and Twitter. I use YouTube mostly as an alternative to blogging. If I'm not in the mood to blog, I usually just make a video and vise versa. I update my Twitter just a tad bit more than I used to update my Facebook during my late high school/early college days. There's just something about instant feedback that I absolutely love. Twitter is the perfect place for that. I consult my followers on there for almost everything. They're truly amazing. It's also fun to see everyone else's muses and rants.

That leads me to today. And I don't mean "today" as in "this era." I mean today. Literally. I bought ReynaVilla.com out of sheer online vanity. I'm hosting my blog on here for now, but who knows what I'll do with it in the future. That's what happens with most of the websites I'm on. I got my Facebook account during my junior year of high schoool, but didn't start using it for another year. Same thing with Twitter. I had the account, and didn't actually use it for a while. I get the feeling that ReynaVilla.com probably just will remain as a site where I post my blogs and link to other accounts, but I'm fine with that. I'm kinda tired of being [WebsiteName] dot com SLASH REINIX. I don't wanna be a slash. I just wanna be me. I also don't want my full name followed by dot com to be owned by anybody else. It's mine mine and only mine.

Oh, hey... I'm on yet another YouTube channel.

This one's a collab channel with three other people. It's called WTVlog. I'll be posting videos on there every Tuesday. This is my first video on there:

Oh, Alzheimer's. You're weird.

I'm only posting this so I can remember every detail of what happened just now, so I can tell my mom about it in the morning... or something like that.

I was sitting in front of my computer screen watching an episode of Doctor Who at around 12:30 am when my grandma walked in, looked at me, and asked why I was up so early. I told her that it wasn't early yet, and I hadn't gone to sleep. She walked back down the hallway and into her room, convincing me that she understood that she was awake at a different time than it really was. Understandable. It happens to everyone at one point or another.

However, she came back out from her room fully dressed five minutes after that. She sat down at the dining room table and set her purse down in front of her. I asked her why she was sitting there, and she told me she was waiting for my uncle to pick her up because he's supposed to get here at about 7:30am. I went on to tell her that there were still seven hours left 'til then and asked if she was gonna wait that long. She just looked at me, dumbfounded. I asked her if she knew what the current time was and she told me it was around seven. Once again, I told her it was past midnight. She didn't believe me. I told her to look out the window, and notice how there's not even a hint of sunlight shining through. She said nothing. I asked her what the time was. Again. She said it was around seven. Again. I asked her if she looked at the clock to check the time. She said she did, and that it was seven. Then I thought to myself Well, maybe her clock is wrong. I led her to her room so she could show me what clock she referenced for the time, and she pointed to it and said "See. It's 7." The clock actually said it was 12:50. I turned on the light so she could see it clearly and made her look at the clock closely, then she finally realized I was right. It was past midnight. It was not seven in the morning.

"Oh. In that case, I'm gonna put my purse away." This was all she said. She then went back into the dining room, picked up her purse, and took it back to her room. She hasn't been out since. (It's 1:05am right now, by the way.)

I find it so weird how that was her only reaction. If it were me, I would've laughed at the situation and said something about how it would've been embarrassing if I'd just gone on thinking it was morning. But, nope. She only said she should put her purse away. What would've happened had I not been here? Would she have sat there and waited seven hours for my uncle to pick her up? It's odd seeing her so... emotionless like that. But I guess that's just what happens when you're old and have Alzheimer's. You don't really care about anything anymore. The good, the bad, the funny, the silly, the scary. Well, maybe the scary. She still says she hears voices talking to her every now and then. For the most part, I can tell they're just her conscience. Though I do remember a particular day in which I'd asked what the voices told her, and it was some pretty malicious shit. I'm not sure what that was all about.

I hope I don't end up this way. If I do, then I hope I have a grandkid who's lame enough to stay up on a computer past midnight to tell me what I'm doing wrong.

Update: Oh! My friend Luis reminded me of this short film when he read my tweets about what happened. (Like usual, I tweeted a play-by-play as this all went down.) It's very... well, just watch it.

Mockingjay!

As you may or may not know, I'm a fan of the Suzanne Collins' "The Hunger Games" trilogy. I never really liked to call myself a fan, but then I realized how excited I got when things like the release date for the final book (August 24th, 2010, by the way) were announced and decided that I am, in fact, a fan.

Scholastic announced the cover and title of the third (and last) installment of the "Hunger Games" trilogy today, and here it is:

I really like it. It's very different from the first two covers, which were much darker and straight-forward. They told me something along the lines of "Here is a mockingjay inside a ring, with some circles in the background. Make whatever you want of that." Book 1 showed us the famous mockingjay pin. Book 2 had an actual mockingjay, but it was just kinda there, flying at about the same angle as the mockingjay from book 1. This time, however, we're presented with a bright mockingjay spreading its wings; exposing itself to the world. Mockingjays have always represented strength, willpower, and hopefulness in this series, and you can be damn sure they'll mean more than just the final book.

Also, note that the background is light blue, and reminiscent of the sky. I get the feeling this is telling us there will be more to explore within the story, both literally and metaphorically. See, this time, Katniss won't be trapped in the Hunger Games arena for the majority of the book. She'll be out there trying to save her district and, by extent, all of Panem. Speaking of her district, I couldn't help but notice the shapes in the background and how the center circle is now broken. To me, the background shapes always represented the districts of Panem and how they're all connected. When I noticed the background of this cover, the first thing that came to my mind was the last line of Catching Fire: "there is no District Twelve." I expect chaos in this book. Lots and lots of chaos.

I can't wait for the release! I'm very excited to see what happens, and also very curious as to how this Katniss-Gale-Peeta love triangle will turn out.

What are your speculations? Are you guys as excited as I am?! :D

iPad, State of the Union, Zinn

Well, today was pretty damn interesting in regards to headlines. For me, anyway, since they were on topics that interest me. I don't even know why I'm drawn to certain things, as I'm not one of those hardcore Apple elitists (honestly, the only Apple product I own is an iPod Nano), nor am I very into politics, nor am I a huge history nerd.

I guess I always find new gadgets fun to learn about. I think I just like the idea of maybe owning them one day. I spent the majority of my time during my morning philosophy class keeping up with the long-awaited official announcement of the new Apple tablet, the iPad. I must say, the specs are pretty cool and I'm digging the fact that it (supposedly) has 10-hour battery life. I don't think the iPad is anything... new, since it's been talked about so much. Though, it's definitely steps up from the Amazon Kindle, and pretty much exactly what I expected to come out of Apple: an oversized iPod Touch (BTW, I hate when people refer to it as an iTouch, as there's no such thing as a fucking iTouch) with a few more capabilities. It's still pretty cool, and I wouldn't mind owning one. I wouldn't recommend getting it instead of a Macbook, though. Instead of a Kindle, definitely. Also, the name "iPad" made me picture a feminine sanitary napkin with white earphones attached to it. And once I got over that, it reminded me of pad thai, which made me a bit hungry.

Now, on to the State of the Union address. It was pretty much what I expected. I mean, the only thing that really pertained to me was Obama's announcement of an increase in Pell Grants. Though, this might mean they'll be denying other students of such grants in order to accommodate for those who could use the increase. Sucks for them. Less important things to comment on: Nancy Pelosi blinks a heck of a lot, Obama makes too many jokes about the rivalries between parties. (And by "too many," I think I meant, like "two.")

Lastly, I found out that the noted author and political activist Howard Zinn passed away today, and it actually saddened me a little. I'm not sure if I can call myself a fan of his, but I definitely respected the man. ("The man" as in "Howard Zinn," not society.) Honestly, the only things I know of his opinions come from his book, "A People's History of the United States." It's very biased and leftist, and definitely not something one should read if they want what would be the most accurate account of United States history. Nonetheless, it is a very interesting and good read. (Interesting and good? Really, Reyna? Could your adjectives be any more dull and generic?) Anyway, I didn't think his death would make me feel bad seeing as how I was never that into history and activism. Then I realized that I cared about this because of what I associate this man with. Naturally, when I think of Howard Zinn, I think of "A People's History." I remember having read a chapter or two my sophomore year of high school when I was doing research on God-knows-what. Then junior year came around, and I had to read it for A.P. US History. I found it so much more fun to read than the actual textbook we were using. At the end of my senior year of high school, I asked a few of my teachers to sign books for me. Books I'd read in their classes, that is. There was a teacher, Mr. Woessner, whom I took three classes with. I told him to sign my copy of my Zinn book. I was always fond of this teacher, especially since I was never supposed to have taken A.P. US History with him at all to begin with (but that's a story for another day). Anyway, he signed my copy of "A People's History" and wrote a very endearing note on it. I always respected Mr. Woessner. And, I guess Zinn's death saddened me because I always associated Zinn with Mr. Woessner... which made me feel like part of Mr. Woessner was gone, too.

Reyna on Rain