I am such a horrible blogger.

• I like researching random topics, usually historical. Google Books makes me super happy. I get to read obscure books that I never would otherwise. I especially like "Who's Who" books and other lists of names. Well, lists of anything, actually. I don't say this to be offensive, I really think we all fall somewhere on the Autism Spectrum. At least I do. Not terribly, but I'm gifted and pretty socially awkward. Anyway, we all have our little idiosyncrasies and mine is lists.
• I love the fact that there were multiple at the University of Alabama back in the 1830s and 1840s. They looted professors' homes, shot guns everywhere, destroyed Bibles, vandalized the chapel, sexually harassed women, set fires, and were generally just little punk hooligans. One year, the entire senior class was expelled plus some undergrads. We've always been a party school. Now we just have frat parties and The Strip. Roll Tide!
• On that note, I also love the fight song. Here it is:

Yay, Alabama! Drown 'em, Tide!
Every Bama man's behind you, hit your stride!
Go teach the Bulldogs to behave, send the Yellow Jackets to a watery grave!
And if a man starts to weaken, that's his shame!
For Bama's pluck and grit have writ her name in Crimson flame.
Fight on, fight on, fight on, men!
Remember the Rose Bowl, we'll win then!
Roll on to victory, hit your stride!
You're Dixie's football pride,
Roll Tide, Roll Tide!

Hot actor edition

Here's a list of actors who make me happy.

• Robert Redford. I love The Sting. Besides, he was so hot. I mean WOW. Sadly, he now looks like an old boot.
• Paul Newman. Wow, what a man. I love the fact that he and Joanne Woodward were married for almost 50 years. His charity work is also incredible. And those gorgeous blue eyes.
• Matt Smith, the 11th Doctor. So attractive in a very quirky way. And British.
• Benedict Cumberbatch. He's Sherlock Holmes in the new BBC series Sherlock. He is also extremely attractive. I guess my type is tall, pale, and dark-haired. Just like me.
• Jimmy Stewart. So adorable. Mr. Smith goes to Washington, It's a Wonderful Life, Rear Window, Vertigo, and Harvey. His voice is awesome.
• Cary Grant. Ooh la la.

Rocky Hill Castle

• Rocky Hill Castle is an abandoned antebellum mansion up in Lawrence Co. Col. Saunders hired a French architect to build the house, but he went way over budget. (Some things never change.) When the Colonel saw the huge bill he got angry and refused to pony up the extra. The architect stormed off, swearing to shake the damn house off its very foundation, and just swearing in general. He died not too long after, and the family began hearing loud knocks and bangs. A year or so before the Civil War, Col. Saunders had a massive six-story tower added on to the house. It clashed horrendously, but since when have men cared about that? During the war, two young Confederate soldiers died in the tower. Neither of them are said to haunt the property, but during Reconstruction a new ghost appeared. She's a beautiful young woman who hangs around the tower and in the wine cellar. She wears a lovely pale blue dress, and never says or does much of anything. But the one time she did speak to Mrs. Saunders, she managed to scare the whole family away.
• Up next, my personal favorite, The Drish House!

Storytelling

• A local legend died the day before yesterday. Southerners tell good stories; just think about all the authors we have: Harper Lee, William Faulkner, Truman Capote, Mark Twain, Tennessee Williams, Margaret Mitchell, Alice Walker, Eudora Welty, Kate Chopin, and Zora Neale Hurston. All that to say, the ability to tell a good story is practically innate here in the South. But for as long as I've been alive, much longer, actually, Catherine Tucker Windham was the best of the best. I doubt her books are widely known outside the South, but here they're truly a rite of passage. In the '60s and '70s she authored a series of books Thirteen (Insert state here) Ghosts & Jeffrey. There were two books about Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Georgia, Southern (from several states), and there may have been one about Florida. When the school library put them out around Halloween each year the list to check them out was a mile long, but I read them all. There are thirteen stories in each book, plus the story and photo of Jeffrey. Jeffrey is the ghost that haunts Mrs. Windham's Selma house, and a picture of him appears in each book. I never got to hear her tell stories in person, but I often listened to her on the radio. I especially liked her stories about her days as a UA co-ed in the 1930s. Her tales were a very important part of my childhood. In fact, I'm about to dig out my copy of Alabama Ghosts. I'll post again tonight and give y'all a quick recap of each of the stories. Otherwise, you'll never know what you're missing. :)

Ach! This blog will not die!

• Google Scribe. Still in beta mode, but it's really fun. It's predictive text for Google Docs. Not sure how useful it is, but I was sold when it managed to figure out "Jabberwocky," "The Raven," "Annabel Lee," "Bohemian Rhapsody," and "Smells Like Teen Spirit."
• Google books. I love the obscure old books you can find.
• Illuminated letters and fancy lettering
• Doctor Who. I love Matt Smith.
• Graham Norton. Funniest gay Irishman I can think of off the top of my head.
• Having geek parties with Mary Ruth
• Gummy worms
• Cheese pizza
• Dr. Pepper
• Vitamin Water (Dragonfruit and Raspberry Apple!)
• Oreos
• Pin-up girls. Does the sound weird coming from a straight female? I don't care. Pin-up girls kick ass. In fact, my secret goal is to one day be a pin up or burlesque dancer. That's why my college education is so important.
• Speaking of burlesque, my fashion idol/ girl crush? Dita von Teese. She is so freaking cool. I've always loved anything bawdy or risque. Not crude or vulgar. Sexiness and vulgarity are mutually exclusive.

Psychology

• Psychology. I watched this show today, I don't remember what it was called. But there were ten people in a house, five suffered from mental illness, five did not. Three mental health professionals observed them performing activities designed to bring out symptoms of specific illnesses. They had to diagnose the five with mental illnesses. They were only correct about two of the ten: bulimia and OCD. They were wrong about depression, bipolar, and social anxiety. Pretty interesting, and a great reminder that you can't always tell when someone is suffering.

Another delay.

Well, it's not like anyone reads this, but here are some more things.

• Late nights
• Giving people presents
• Cheese calzones 
• Rhinestones
• Superhero movies
• The library
• The smell of books
• Genealogy
• Arby's 
• Horseradish
• X-Men
• Coke
• Chili fries
• Maxi dresses
• The name Callie
• Being sketchy
• Sitting on the steps of the school in the middle of the night and talking with friends
• New bottles of shampoo
• Morgan Freeman's voice
  

Random things

Apologies, I've been too busy doing nothing at all of importance and feeling like a normal human being this weekend to update. But these are the things that I've done since Friday that make me happy.

• Being alone. There's a difference between being alone and lonely.
• Meeting all my nerd friends at a lousy pizza buffet for lunch.
• Shopping with friends.
• Blank journals with smooth leather covers.
• Doing the things I love with people, not alone. I introduced Grace to the wonderful world of antique shopping. It's more fun when you're not alone.
• Old magazines and advertisements.
• Funny dated books about sex, beauty, manners, history, science, politics, geography, etc.
• Old sheet music
• Old books
• Old jewelery
• Mary Ruth's annual party. Movie projector on her patio, film we largely ignore, talking till all hours, friends I've not seen in six months, but we pick up where we left off, and I laugh more and harder than I do any other night of the year. We talk and laugh through the night. Friday it was especially poignant. Mary Ruth lives in an area totally destroyed by the April 27th tornado. Her house was okay, but still damaged. Friday was one month exactly from the tornado. It killed over 40 people, my hometown destroyed. We drank a toast amidst the destruction for the day we all grew up. Even the grown ups grew up. For our city. For each other. For hope. For the fact that people are inherently good. For the fact that it is entirely possible to depend upon the kindness of strangers.

These images are all scrambled. But still happy.

"Hope"- My illustrations of one of my favorite poems

Art supplies

• Crayons are better than sliced bread, as far as I'm concerned. I invest in a new 64 count box every few months.
• Colored pencils are also swell. When I draw, I color it in with colored pencils first, then crayons to make it brighter, then pencils again to smooth and add texture.
• Copy paper is nice to draw on. It's a perfect size, a nice smooth texture, clean, white color, and it's very low pressure. I mean, when you're working on canvas or vellum you feel like you have to not make any mistakes. If you're drawing on copy paper and you mess up, you can just get a new piece without feeling too wasteful. Fancy paper is pricey.
• Who doesn't love glitter?
• Colorful Sharpies are amazing, but I'm a Sharpie miser. I made the mistake of letting the kids at work use mine to outline their letters. (I was teaching them how to do illumination.) After about 10 minutes I took them back up, for three reasons: they were using nothing BUT Sharpie and wasting the ink, they didn't comprehend why I had them drawing on top of books and folders, so they ruined a couple of tables, and the fumes were reaching dangerous levels. Still, I love me some Sharpies.
• I can't do origami, but I love origami paper.
• Charcoal is messy but oh so much fun.
• Pastels are also messy, but I do my best work with them.
• I love drawing in ebony, but it's so hard to sharpen.
• Rubber cement was always fun, but not for any good reason. My fondest memories of it involve spreading it on my hands and making little balls out of it. Good times.
• However, I'm not a fan of Elmer's glue (too messy) or glue sticks (utterly useless.) 
• Also not a fan of scissors, markers, soft pencils, and poster board. I'm a lefty. Poster board was always the bane of my existence. I can't guess how many I ruined over the years because my hand drags across the still wet ink. In 10th grade, I had to do a project on WWII. I spent all night writing a letter or two, then drying it with my hair dryer, so as not to smudge it.

New favorite animal

• The Octopus. Of course, I'd be terrified if it brushed against my leg out in the ocean, but they're smarter than a lot of the college students I know. And watching them squeeze in and out of boxes is so cool. Plus, they look like aliens. Aliens are cool.

More things

• Tacos
• Mythbusters
• Being left alone
• Google books

Artists that make me happy

• Jan van Eyck. I like that painting of the Renaissance couple; I don't remember what it's called.
• Mary Cassatt. Her mother and child paintings are so sweet.
• Dali. Melting clocks are cool. When I found out that painting was called The Persistence of Memory, and not "Melting Clocks," my mind was blown.
• M.C. Escher. Born on my birthday and his optical illusions give me a headache, in a good way.
• Vincent van Gogh. He is a huge inspiration to me. To have so much emotional pain but produce artwork that shows ecstatic beauty of the world shows an amazing talent. It makes me want to turn my pain into something beautiful too.
• Edward Hopper. His work fascinates me. You could write a novel about most of them.
• Degas. Ballerinas, remember?
• Monet. How can you not love waterlilies?
• Renoir. I just love the impressionists.
• Klimt. I just really like all the gold and geometry.
• Warhol. Who doesn't love soup and Marilyn Monroe?
• Lichtenstein. Comic book art is cool.
• Peter Max. Freaking awesome.
• George Barbier. French fashion illustrator of the 1920s. Love his flapper portraits.
• Toulouse-Latrec. Can can dancers are cool.
• Norman Rockwell. The ultimate happy artist.

Happy things

• Ballet. I took ballet for almost a decade, and now I paint ballerinas. I still go to the ballet twice a year, and my Christmas tree is decorated with my collection of ballerina ornaments. 
• History. History is my passion in life. It always has been, and now I'm majoring in it. 
• Museums. I want to do museum studies in grad school and take care of our history. My family had to literally drag me out of each Smithsonian museum last summer. I was in heaven!

Hmmm... I have some more things right now, but I need to get dressed and stuff.