Thursday, January 31, 2013

Good Riddance January Blues

All I've heard today is 'My God, where's January gone?' or 'Oh didn't January go quick!'; clearly I am on a completely different planet to everyone else, because I have never known such a long month. 

I hate January. Everything about it just winds me up: the fact Christmas is a whole year away, the fact I broke my New Year's resolutions within a matter of hours, the fact I have no money to spend in the sales because I spent so much at Christmas, the fact it's cold ... I could go on but I think you get my drift. 

Then I got annoyed with myself; I've just lost 31 days of my life that I'll never get back, and what do I have to show for it? Absolutely nothing. 

All I've done is feel sorry for myself and moan about how depressing January is. What was the point? I didn't achieve anything by giving in to those January blues; it didn't make January go any quicker. I was waiting for January to end, but now it has ended, there's nothing at the end worth waiting for. I'm in exactly the same position as I was on the 1st January. 

I seem to spend a significant amount of time waiting. Not day to day waiting, like waiting at traffic lights, waiting for Eastenders to start, or waiting in shop queues, but waiting for something to happen to me, something incredible, something exciting, under the disillusion 'good things come to those who wait'. I thought it was patience but let's be honest ... it's just laziness. 

So I've decided I'm starting 2013 again. Nothing comes to those who wait, you've got to get off your backside with a positive attitude, and start sorting your life out. No one's going to do it for you. 

Asteroid 2012 DA14 Will Just Barely Miss The Earth On February 15th, Destructive Potential Of An H-Bomb


Asteroid 2012 DA14 is going to just miss the Earth on February 15th. It will pass by at a distance of just 14,913 miles, which is closer than many satellites orbit. If it did strike the Earth, which it may in the future, the 164ft long asteroid has about as much destructive potential as an H-bomb. So if it hit an urban area the damage would be enormous, and that’s not even including side effects such as changes in the weather, and possible tsunamis.



As Don Yeomans, of NASA’s Near Earth Object Program at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, says: it will be a “record-setting close approach. 2012 DA14 will definitely not hit Earth. The orbit of the asteroid is known well enough to rule out an impact.”

Researchers have estimated that if a strike did occur, that it would level an area larger than all of Greater London. Just back in 1908 there was an asteroid impact of similar size, the Tunguska event. The (estimated) 131ft asteroid completely flattened over 772 square miles of Siberian forest.

“That is an area the size of Greater London,” said Dr. Gerhard Drolshagen, a near-Earth object observer from the European Space Agency’s Space Situational Awareness (SSA) office. “This asteroid is a little bigger.”

Dr Yeomans continued: “Since regular sky surveys began in the 1990s, we’ve never seen an object this big get so close to Earth.”

“The rock in question is believed to be made of stone, rather than metal or ice and Yeomans estimates an asteroid of that sort flies past Earth on average every 40 years, but is only likely to strike the planet ever 1,200 years or so. An estimated 500,000 near-Earth objects measuring up to 98ft are believed to be undiscovered.”

Dr Detlef Koschny, also from the SSA, said: “We are developing a system of automated optical telescopes that can detect asteroids just like this one, with the goal of being able to spot them at least three weeks before closest approach to Earth.”

Unfortunately, even though it will be passing very close to the Earth it will not be visible with the naked eye. It will peak around an apparent magnitude of 7.4.

The asteroid’s orbit will likely be changed to some degree by its very close pass-by, but isn’t expected to pass any closer than 0.0004 AU from the center-point of the Earth on its next pass-by in 2046.



Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Who'd want to be human if you can be bionic?

As a child, I wasn't into ballerinas or fairies like most little girls; I wanted to be a superhero. It wasn't such an unreachable dream, all I had to do was get bitten by a spider or fall down a well. Spiderman was my favourite, but I wasn't fussy... Batman would have been equally as cool. My parents however, concerned at the prospect of me being paralysed from jumping off our garden shed, assured me this was an unattainable dream and that I should probably be a teacher, nurse or something normal, for nobody actually existed with powers that exceeded human capabilities...

This however, is no longer the case. The Guardian published today, an article on how close we are to creating our first bionic man. Rex, as he is known, is a 7ft tall, skeleton of prosthetic limbs. He has a fully functioning heart and lung system, spleen and pancreas, he can even hold a conversation. By 2017, he is set to be the stronger and faster than any human...



I am in no way objecting research or the use of prosthetic limbs and organs where necessary; the fact soldiers can come back from war, with no limbs and have some sort of normality due to prosthetics is nothing short of a miracle. However, to make an entire human for no reason? Why?

Where will it stop? If one can be made, who's to stop someone making an entire race?

If you want to be the fastest and the strongest man in the world and it's technologically possible, who's to deny people? 

It is without a doubt one of the most mind blowing creations I've heard, but equally one of the scariest and potentially dangerous. To have the power to make a race of people who are more powerful than humans, who are operated by machines and who have no emotions, feelings or conscience ... humans are putting themselves at risk of being over ruled by their own creation. 

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

What are we paying road tax for?

Day two and I'm moaning; cue jaw dropping and shocked faces... 

Today I handed over £74 to legally keep, my pretty poor excuse for a car, on the road for the next six months. I did consider the Del Boy approach, the 'it's in the post' note, but thought I'd better be safe than sorry. Now this payment wouldn't have been so bad if:

1. It was enough for the entire year, and, 
2. I understood and felt confident as to where this money was going.

I concluded it must be to maintain the roads and thought 'hey, it's to be expected, you pay for the privilege of using these roads and surely this will make the roads nice and smooth to drive on...' but upon swerving no less than four treacherous pot holes within the three and half miles back to my house, I was a little peeved to say the least. If that isn't enough, in the last year I've replaced three tyres and also had to get an entire new wheel due to massive craters in the roads. 

Now I know everyone's in the same boat, and they can't just abandon the law, but it really does beg the question: what are we honestly paying over £100 a year for?

Monday, January 28, 2013

'Two Pints of Lager and a Steak Sandwich Please'

I never thought my life would be interesting enough to write a blog about, but as soon as I even consider it, I casually get roped into a missing person’s incident... 


So, it was a standard evening at work in a traditional pub, in a sleepy, idyllic, English village: understaffed, rude customers ... almost enough to overlook the mangy looking gentleman in the corner, putting customers off their food with his persistent coughing.


I have to say I did feel a bit sorry for him, he had to be someone's relative, a father, maybe a grandfather ... he'd clearly just lost his way a bit. 

He soon went on his way and I thought nothing of it until the following morning when the police phoned about a missing elderly man who was last known to have been at the pub. I shamefully couldn't place him until, a wave of guilt swept over me, as I remembered the lonely little old man in the corner, who didn't kick up a fuss, demand my time, or look down on me like the fifty other diners that evening.  I'd completely ignored the man who probably only came in for company, and I might have been the last person to see him alive...

My life is not that dramatic though, and I was pleased to hear the man was safe and well this morning, reunited with his family. It did make me re-evaluate who I give my time to however, so if Tony happens to come into the pub again, I will definitely be buying him a drink and taking a moment to talk to him about his week, his day, his life.

Saturday, January 26, 2013

Parfait tic manga review


Synonyms: Parfait Tic
Type: Manga
Volumes: 22
Chapters: 149
Status: Finished
Published: 2000 to 2007
Genres: Comedy, Romance, School, Shoujo
Authors: Nanaji, Nagamu (Story)
Serialization: Margaret

I was pretty surprised how much I really got into it too!  First off, the art is GREAT!  And this one was like, blatantly <3-triangle, spelled out in the first chapter.  But I never, for a moment, doubted whether or not Fuuko liked the cousins.  The relationships are really REALLY well done.  There's nothing rushed about it.
Fuuko is a happy and cheerful girl. One day, two cousins, Daiya and Ichi, move into the apartment upstairs. Cold Ichi and mischievous Daiya gave a very bad first impression. All three are going to the same school as well. How will Fuuko's high school life turn out?


I found this story to be extremely interesting and realistic. Usually in manga, the girl falls in love with a guy and stays with him and eventually moves on to the second guy and stays with him permanently if it's a love triangle. However, this manga portrays life- girls that are unsettled on their love. The truth is, we don't understand our hearts and our love interests tend to change as well. The same happens with the female protagonist of Parfait Tic, Fuuko. 


She's uncertain as to her feelings for Daiya and Ichi. And Daiya and Ichi are so lovable as well. Of course, the male protagonists are clichéd. You have Daiya, the fun, lively, and funny one who's in danger of failing school. He appeals to the fun-loving Fuuko chan and she takes a liking to him. And then on the other hand, you have the cold Ichi kun, the smart one who doesn't take any nonsense. He's more secretive and has a lot more complexity to his character than Daiya. However, when push comes to shove, he too has feelings for Fuuko. It's a battle between the cousins for Fuuko's love. Who will win? 


The only flaw with this series is its length. I feel like some parts are dragged out way too long...especially with Fuuko when she's rejected by one guy and has to learn how to move on...or when she's confused about her feelings for one or more of them. It gets annoying when you need to plow through 10+ painful chapters of her feeling remorse and depression when she sees the face of the guy that she used to like and now has to learn to act normal with. It was extremely annoying and repetitive, especially since this cycle of like, love, express feelings, get rejected repeats two/three times. And the guys...at times I felt like they were being cowards, Ichi mostly. He acted like a spoiled brat rather than that masculine shojo male figure girl's look up to. He doubted himself and he caused Fuuko to feel pain...now that does happen in manga, but it takes him forever to realize his mistake and his true feelings. But then again I think it takes time to over come issues in real life too right?


It's very cutesy, typical shoujo. I LOVE the facial expressions though, especially chibi versions. Overall, the artwork is visually appealing, but I enjoy it most for its comedy. I will definitly recommend it if you are for unrequited love or for love triangles. GAH I wish the series will end soon because it's taking forever. I think I know who she ends up with so for those of you who have read up to chapter 114 [because I'm updating myself with onemanga.com], there's probably a final arc where she will switch her love interest to the other guy [don't want to mention any names], and I think that'll be the conclusion of the story...or so I hope.
Anyhow, definitely a cute one to read so try it and see for yourself :D


Sunday, January 20, 2013

Love Is










How do you know when you're in love with someone?
I don't mean love in the sense of the way you love your family (from the moment your heart starts beating, the first breath into your lungs, the safety and history as familiar as the sun or stars--knowing they'll be there day and night, one of the other) or they way you love your friends (aka the family you choose or who choose you such as I've loved Aubrey since we decided to have our first sleepover when she was 5 and I was 4 and the fact that we were complete strangers couldn't stop us from becoming friends forever, a love that is never ending, a love where even if we haven't seen each other in way too long, nothing's changed and it's like we were never apart, a true best friend becoming sisters by choice [she's my older sister and I'm here younger sister] or the way I love Deedra even though we just met last year or I never thought you could make a new, amazing friend that would develop into one of the best friendships at my age even though we started our as co-workers being obligated to spend 9 hours, nearly 5 days a week, in a small office space having to work together, spend a large part of our time with one another, and now spending time together even outside of work by choice and knowing we'd do anything for the other, or the way I love Taylor and have since we first met as teenagers and with a love that defies distance because through that distance we've become closer than ever bonding our hearts together through words, connecting by letters that mean more than even the words and individual letters handwritten in them)?
NO, I KNOW how that love works unconditionally, undeniably, irrevocably--carried in your heart. I mean how do you know when you are in love, that you've met the "one" you will marry and be together forever? How do you realize that the love story you have spent your waking and sleeping, your hopes, your dreams, and prayers, and wishes on stars, birthday candles, on paper, out loud, at 11:11, as you watch A Walk To Remember, Charly, Titanic, The Notebook, and it's what gets you through the trails and heartaches? 
Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting.
...until the words and days blur together, until waiting begins to feel like an emotion or a ghost haunting you , until waiting defines you and transforms into as much a part of the love you are searching for.
Is love when there are no doubts or worries or fears or questioning or wondering or second guessing or is it when you care so much about someone that none of the above matters, all that is important is that person and you put your trust in them and take a leap of faith knowing the risk but finding the greater risk is not taking the chance or making the moment and praying that he will catch you and instead of falling you will fly higher than the stars? Is it the opposite? Do you find the answer like in the movies and fairytales, at first glance across a crowded room or in the first kiss and finding it will be your last? Is it in the boy who never gives up on you and will kiss you in the pouring rain, dance with you in the middle of the road under a starlit sky with no music except the sound of him singing for you or the symphony of your heartbeats, or builds your dream house, or writes you a love letter every single day like Noah?
Is it in the boy like Landon Carter who takes you by surprise, who changes and makes you change into your best self, who helps you accomplish all of the goals and things on your list of things to do before you die just to see your smile and make you happy, who makes promises he won't fall in love with you and vice versa but finds in his heart is yours, and yours beats inside his chest, and without the other you're incomplete, who is always patient, always kind, always protects, always trusts, always hopes, and endures all things?
Does it wash over you slowly like a light rain shower or crash into you like a wave, like a storm, soaking you into your very bones and lighting up your heart like lightning? Does it change the reflection you see in the mirror? Is it at a steady pace or racing like a sprinter? Is love when you don't have to ask yourself any of these questions because you find the answer in a feeling you get that's always been there and is found in the eyes of the one you're meant to be with and you just know it more than you know yourself, more than you know anything?
All I know is love, true love, is out there... that it's worth all the questions you have and the loneliness leading you to it. Love is worth everything, anything, and more. I'm certain there's a reason for the wait. You must do the seeking and praying and preparing before the finding, before you've found L.O.V.E. Four ordinary, common letters that form together what they cannot even apart: the most beautiful, extraordinary, rare, meaningful word to ever exist...to be thought, to be written, to be said, to be heard, to be felt. 
Love is worth it.
Love never fails.
Love is seeing an imperfect person perfectly, the person perfect for you and that you're perfect to.
<W3/L (With Love)
 Charley Brooke

Thursday, January 17, 2013

It's Time

 i see you seeing me

sometimes i feel like i was born in the wrong decade...
flapper/vintage style









































"Part of me feels like you can't say you were truly in love if it didn't last. If I end up getting married and having kids, that's when I'll know it's real--because it lasted."
-Taylor Swift

"I want to kiss you,
but only in the most
connotative way possible
so that no dictionary definition
would stand a chance
to describe how your lungs
could be filled with the 
sweetest air possible,
and yet you would still be
so breathless."

"A present from the heart: I'm here not because I'm supposed to be here, or because I'm trapped here, but because I'd rather be with you than anywhere in the world."
-Richard Bach

"I missed you every hour. And you know what the worst part was? It caught me completely by surprise. I'd catch myself walking around to find you, not for any reason, just out of habit, because I'd seen something that I wanted to tell you about or because I wanted to hear your voice. And then I'd realize that you weren't there anymore, and every time, every single time, it was like having the wind knocked out of me."
-Leigh Barduge

"The snow will still fall 
when the ground cannot keep it,
and so too will I."
-Tyler Knott Gregson

"Maybe there's something you're afraid to say, or someone you're afraid to love, or somewhere you're afraid to go. It's gonna hurt. It's gonna hurt because it matters."
-John Green

"I built you a home in my heart."

"You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you."
-Mr. Darcy

"It's 6 am and I want to be lying next to you with our hands locked together and our legs intertwined. I want your face buried in my neck and I want to listen to your breathing. I want you to wake up and tell me 'I'm so tired', because I want to whisper 'Go back to sleep' and I want to hold you tighter when you do. I want to lie in bed alone with you in the comforting quiet of the early morning hours and maybe read a book while you sleep. I want to be simple with you and I want to be whatever you need me to be."

"This is what you do. If you feel low, you stand tall. You mess up, you move on. You want to try something, try it, and if it was a stupid thing to try, you look it in the eye. There's no turning back. You apologize if you're sorry, but know that the nimblest, strongest hands can't rebuilt a bridge out of embers so cut new wood. Start from scratch. You love with your whole heart. If you're jealous, talk yourself down from the ledge, have a good time up there, looking down on the world. If you have to lie to make everything true again, lie like you mean it. If you find yourself in a cage, reach out through the bars for the key, unlock the door, and run away. If running away gets dangerous, run home. If home doesn't mean what it used to mean, decide what home will be in the future. If your best friend says she doesn't trust you, hold her jaw in your hand until it hurts, and make her face you. That's all it takes. If you think you love a guy, see how his hand looks in yours, that's all it takes. If you get exiled into a new land, then go discover it. And if you feel like you're drowning, go swimming."
-Hobson Brown

"And she finds it difficult to believe--that a person would love her even when she isn't trying. Trying to figure out what other people need, trying to be worthy."
-Margaret Atwood

"Nevertheless, I can tell you that you will awake someday to find that your life has rushed by at a speed at once impossible and cruel. The most intense moments will seem to have occurred only yesterday and nothing will have erased the pain and the pleasure, the impossible intensity of love and it's dog-leaping happiness, the bleak blackness of passions unrequited, or unexpressed, or unresolved."
-Meg Rosoff

"I'm not gonna sit around and waste my precious divine energy trying to explain and be ashamed of things you think are wrong with me."
-Esperanza Spalding

"Some things are created to be together."
-Cassia, Matched by Ally Condie

"I want to reach out and grab his hand and hold it to me, right over my heart, right where it aches the most. I don't know if doing that will heal me or make my heart break entirely, but either way this constant hungry waiting would be over."
-Cassia

"We could all be hiding something."
-Cassia

"It was the first time he saw her without any makeup, jewels or any fancy clothes to make her stand out in the crowd. That's when he fell in love with her."

"Never let your fear decide your fate."

"Every girl on the planet has insecurities. It helps to know that some of the most beautiful people in the world wake up some days and don't think they're pretty. As sad as that is, it's good to know that a problem you think is your own in actually something every girl faces. Happiness and confidence are the prettiest things you can wear."
-Taylor Swift

"Don't ever let anyone, who claims that they love you, treat you as if you're ordinary. Because, even at a distance, I've seen the way you love. I've seen it so intently, that I could almost feel it too. And the last thing I could ever recall feeling again is ordinary."

"I know exactly how that is. To love somebody who doesn't deserve it. Because they are all you have. Because any attention is better than no attention."
-Augusten Burroughs

"Can we stop these dreams
from turning into fiction?
Can we make them real?"
-Tyler Knott Gregson

"You see in my view a writer is a writer not because she writes well and easily, because she has amazing talent, because everything she does is golden. In my view a writer is a writer because even when there is no hope, even when nothing you do shows any sign of promise, you keep writing anyway."
-Junot Diaz

"I told myself I was relieved. But relief doesn't feel like a chunk of lead in your heart. That's disappointment."
-Marie Rutkoski

"I always feel like I'm struggling to become someone else. Like I'm trying to find a new place, grab hold of a new life, a new personality. I guess it's part of growing up, yet it's also an attempt to reinvent myself. By becoming a different me, I could free myself of everything. I seriously believed I could escape myself--as long as I made the effort. But I always hit a dead end. No matter where I go, I still end up me. What's missing never changes. The scenery may change, but I'm still the same old incomplete person. The same missing elements torture me with a hunger that I can never satisfy. I guess that lack itself is as close as I'll come to define myself."
-Haruki Murakami

"I look at you and see all the ways a soul can bruise, and I wish I could sink my hands into your flesh and light lanterns along your spine so you know that there's nothing but light when I see you."
-Shinji Moon

"It's all these choices that we could have made, the things we might have done. We see them with perfect clarity only long after the moment has passed."
-Lisa Unger

"Look into your own heart, discover what it is that gives you pain and then refuse, under any circumstance whatsoever, to inflict that pain on anybody else."
-Karen Armstrong

"You deserve good things, and I want to be one of them."

"Moments: These moments lead me to the thought and the belief that they are all life really is. Life is moments, series of them that sometimes connect, sometimes seem completely random, sometimes take your breath away, and sometimes hurt more than anything you ever thought possible."
-Tyler Knott Gregson

"Two souls are sometimes created together and in love before they're born."
-F. Scott Fitzgerald

"You're allowed to scream, you're allowed to cry, but do not give up."

"So blinded am I by the beauty of his surprise and so overwhelmed by possibility and impossibility."
-Ally Condie

"Let me believe in this, all of this, and you believe it, too."
-Ally Condie

"I thought you were different. But hey, it's not the first time I've been wrong."

"You are mysterious. You're beautiful, intelligent, and virtuous, and that's the rarest known combination."
-F. Scott Fitzgerald

"She looked happy but was she really?"

"Try to imagine a life without timekeeping. You probably can't. You know the month, the year, the day of the week. There is a clock on your wall or the dashboard of your car. You have a schedule, a calender, a time for dinner or a movie. Yet all around you, timekeeping is ignored. Birds are not late. A dog does not check its watch. Deer do not fret over passing birthdays. Man alone measures time. Man alone chimes the hour. And, because of this, man alone suffers a paralyzing fear that no other creature endures. A fear of time running out."

"The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts."
-Marcus Aurelius

X's & O's
Love is a game
of tic-tac-toe,
constantly waiting
for the next x or o.
-Lang Leav

"For him, you will be the light at the end of the tunnel, the halo of glowing yellow that he has been waiting for. Never forget that you are someone worth steering for, someone worth the swift kick in the opposite direction. Worth all of the trials and checklists and almost rights because you are a mountaintop, the crush of violet on skin from a rainbow that seems so close to the earth that it must be real when he comes to you, gorge on his compassion. Fill yourself completely. He will think you a miracle, a revelation and will count himself as the lucky one. Do not question him or yourself--this is exactly the kind of love you deserve."
-Cody Gohl

"I saw him seeing me."
-Ally Condie

"We are afraid to care too much, for fear that the other person does not care at all."
-Eleanor Roosevelt

"I promise to dream of you, every night, and from this day until all days have ended, I promise to always speak to you before I sleep, no matter if your ears are there to hear the words."
-Tyler Knott Gregson

"And finally I twist my heart around again so that the bad is on the outside and the good is on the inside. And keep on trying to find a way of becoming what I would like to be. What I could be if there weren't any other people living in the world."
-Anne Frank

"It is never too late or too soon. It is when it is supposed to be."
-Mitch Albom

"Your hand reaches for mine. We kiss tentatively, passionately and then, tenderly. Your brush my hair away from my face. 'You're beautiful.' I wrinkle my nose in protest. 'You are.'"
-Lang Leav

"It's one thing to tell her she's beautiful but it's another thing to make her feel it too."

"I believe that no concern of ours is too small or insignificant. The Lord is in the details of our life."
-President Thomas S. Monson

"I love you. When I say love I mean it in ways the word itself does not quite convey. Sometimes, I think there are not enough letters in love for us. I think Four does not work and does not have enough structure to hold the things I feel for you, and you feel for me. Let spill the four letters and let us not be ashamed to pick them up and rub them into our hearts. Love. I Love You and I know now I always have."
-Tyler Knott Gregson

"You are the boy who wanders into hearts without knocking or wiping your feet. I am the girl who says goodbye but never really lets go. We are the aimless. The hopeless. The broken. The lost."

"One day, I'll be someone's everything."

"Someday we will find what we are looking for. Or maybe we won't. Maybe we will find something much greater than that."

"Remember that sometimes not getting what you want is a wonderful stroke of luck."
-Dalai Lama XIV

"Find someone who will tremble for your touch, someone whose fingers are a poem."
-Janet Finch

"To love another person is to see the face of God."
-Les Mis

"Allowing yourself to be vulnerable is one of the most attractive things you can do."

"I don't know if being in love only made people more lonely, why would everyone want it so much? Because of the illusion. You fall in love, it's intoxicating, and for a little while you feel like you've actually become one with the other person. Merged souls, and so on. You think you'll never be lonely again. Only it doesn't last and soon you realize you can only get so close, and you end up brutally disappointed, more alone than ever, because the illusion--the hope you'd held onto all those years--has been shattered."

"I looked and looked at her, and I knew, as clearly as I know that I will die, that I loved her more than anything I had ever seen or imagined on earth."
-Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

"The same God that placed that star in a precise orbit millenia before it appeared over Bethlehem in celebration of the birth of the Babe has given at least equal attention to placement of each of us in precise human orbits so that we may, if we will, illuminate the landscape of our individual lives, so that our light may not only lead others but warm them as well."
-Elder Neal A. Maxwell

"You are either the captive or the captain of your thoughts. You can resign yourself to mediocrity or you can dare to dream."

"If we don't change the direction we are headed, we will end up where we are going."
-Chinese Proverb

"Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far they can go."
-T.S. Eliot

"I fought because I had found peace in her. Because I knew I could find rest in her touch that somehow both burned me up and washed me clean."
-Ky, Crossed by Ally Condie

"I will love. More. So much that no one will have any idea what to do with me. They will watch with a confused look and wonder why I give so much and do not ask for more in return. I will give it because giving is getting and there is nothing quite so important as emptying your heart every single day and leaving nothing undone, no declarations of it unsaid. I will not only stop and smell the flowers, I will plant them myself and watch them grow old with me. I will pull over and dance in every single rainfall, and I will make snow angels even when there is hardly any snow left for the wings. I will never, ever believe in the words 'too late' because it is never too late to be exactly who you wish, do exactly what you should, say exactly what needs to be heard and live the exact life you should be living."
-Tyler Knott Gregson

"How often you need
the whole of my gentle hand
on half of your face."
-Tyler Knott Gregson

"I have become far far far too talented at silent weeping."
-Tyler Knott Gregson

"Do you remember the time I told you that there's more to this life than waiting for Death to stop crossing her t's and dotting her i's and checking her list and checking it twice to finally get our names? I remember the time I told you that we've got two hands but one is for holding mine and what you choose to do with the other determines the who, and the how of what you'll become. Squeeze it tighter now and whisper into my ears what you want and I swear on the bones that were made strong when milk did my young body good, that I will break them all into dust and chalk powder just to bring you what you need. Mention it, just mention that you like the smell of new water on old earth and I will give you the rain. Take down your hair and I will become the wind and do nothing with my days but play in it. Would you believe me if I told you that all it takes is all we have and that even though that might sound like too steep a price, all we have is always more than all we need and there will always be something to spare, something more to give when giving is no longer in season and the gifts of our generosity have long since spoiled? I can feel your pulse and the strength of your heart when you smile and I will never stop falling in love with the way you find your way through the days and the grace in which you absorb the sky at night as if the stars were born from the freckles on your skin, copied with precision and mapped out against a tapestry of darkness. I find you there, when your skin is further than I need it to be and I pretend it's your breath dancing through the bare tree branches, making ghost sounds and haunting me with your absence. Do you remember the time I told you that you are all that I am not and the very first time my eyes found your eyes I was home? I remember that no matter how often I see them, every instant I cannot I feel homesick like the middle of an adventure when you are halfway between forgetting the feeling of your legs in your own bed, and remembering it again. The middle of the longing and the ache of always that trails you around like a scent in your collar and the phantom tingling of fingers on skin long since forgotten. I remember you remembering. Do you?"
-Tyler Knott Gregson

"But I don't understand, you can be with me. Ask me and I'll never go."
-Tyler Knott Gregson

"It is
in herself.
She will find
her strength,
the strength
she needs."
-Tyler Knott Gregson

"It is all for you. Every word. Everything I do. You are the stubborn pumping of this aching heart."
-Tyler Knott Gregson

"What if I told you 10 years from now your life would be exactly the same? Doubt you'd be happy. So, why are you afraid of change?"
-Karen Salmansohn

"Why do we wait for catastrophes and hard to mention tragedies, why do we wait for unimaginable atrocities and unfixable maladies to do the things we wish we'd done, or say the things that lived so long on the tips of our tongues that they planted roots and our tastebuds are blooming? Why do we wait for the afterthought, the glance back from too far forward, the point of no return to wish we could? Why do we wait and what the hell are we waiting for? Death? Sickness? The beds that adjust their backs so we can see the hospital television just a bit better? For the veins to rise in our arms and the backs of our hands in ways only old age can deliver? Are we waiting for an accident, for an excuse, for a giant push from a giant force? What are we waiting for? Moments drip past us like grains of sand when we sit on the beach, aimlessly dipping our hand into them because why not, we have an entire shoreline to play with. Until we do not. Until we look down and see that the ocean has swept all the sand away and all we're left with is the handful we grabbed before it did. What value each grain has them; what perfect value. How safe we'd hold them. All I know to say my love, is the sea has come and we hold the shore in our hands. What are we waiting for?"
-Tyler Knott Gregson

"Perfect love casteth out all fear."
-Moroni 8:16

"And it feels like forever is just a heartbeat away."
-Charly

"Something about death seems to make me wonder about the life I'm living."
-Let It Go by Chris Williams

"So often in my life I've tried to direct or rush the Savior into producing a blessing or the final outcome during a trial. Like so many things of worth, outcomes take time to materialize--sometimes years and years--and when I'm in the thick of the trial, I have the worst perspective on that timing or when it will end. You have to have patience and be willing to endure. If my prayers aren't being answered in a much better way, and it's worth the wait."
-Chris Williams

"I have found that you can't always appreciate why you should keep moving forward until you've gone far enough to turn around and see the progress you've made."
-Chris Williams

"I think we must be taught, tested, and tried, or we'll never come to know what we are really made of, and we won't be prepared to one day see ourselves as we are seen in heaven."
-Chris Williams

"We bind ourselves together in this life through love."
-Chris Williams

"She wasn't doing a thing that I could see, except standing there, leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together."
-J.D. Salinger

"You begin to speak
before the first word is out
I fall more in love."
-Tyler Knott Gregson

"All this time. All this effort trying to prove that making islands of ourselves is the truest form of courage. All this time. All this effort wasted. Bravery, is the into another set of eyes, the steady voice, the four words softly spoken: I belong to you."
-Tyler Knott Gregson

"Give your daughters difficult names. Give your daughters names that command the full use of tongue. My name makes you want to tell me the truth. My name doesn't allow me to trust anyone that cannot pronounce or spell right."

"I see it in her
I hear it in her
I feel it in her
She's magic."

"Some people stay. Some are born to run away."
-Jack's Mannequin

"I have the deepest affection for intellectual conversations. The ability to just sit and talk. About love, about life, about anything, about everything. To sit under the moon with all the time in the world, the full speed train that is our lives slowing to a crawl. Bound by no obligations, barred by no human limitations. To speak without regret or fear of consequence. To talk for hours about what's really important in life."

"I wish, as well as everybody else, to be perfectly happy; but I, like everybody else, it must be in my own way."
-Jane Austen

"You are the finest, loveliest, tenderest, and most beautiful person I have ever known--and even that is an understatement."
-F. Scott Fitzgerald

"But no tears came at first, even when she knelt by her window in the darkness and prayed, looking up to the stars beyond the hills--no tears, only the same horrible dull ache of misery that kept on aching until she fell asleep, worn out with the day's pain and excitement."

"You can't live a positive life with a negative mind."

"Life doesn't rhyme. Your first kiss isn't as important as your last. Get caught in the rain. Paint even though you're not an artist. Really get to know people. Get your heart broken and put the pieces back together. Wonder about things. Learn. Remember that sunsets are free. Look up at the stars and get lost. Forgive and forget. Live for the moments. Life is really, really short so make the most of it now."

"Life expects something from us. Life asks of every individual a contribution and it is up to that individual to discover what it should be."
-Viktor Frankl

"How can he both draw me in and keep me out?"
-Ally Condie

"There was no amount of expensive makeup that would make me look the way she did: that was simply what falling in love did to a person."
-Jodi Picoult

"She considered how strange it as to measure success by how closely each product resembled the one that had come before."
-Jodi Picoult

"Sometimes you look up and there just seems to be so many more stars than ever before. More. They burn brighter and they shine longer and they never vanish into your periphery when you turn your head. It's as if they come out for us and to remind us that their life took so long to come to us, that if we never had the patience to wait, we never would have seen them here, tonight, like this. That as much as it hurts, sometimes it's all you can do, wait, endure and keep shining knowing that eventually your light will reach where it is supposed to reach and shine for who it is supposed to reach and shine for who it is supposed to shine for. It is never easy, but it is always worth it."
-Tyler Knott Gregson

"Is this not real?"
-Alma 32:35

"You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
Or carry report. You are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid."
-T.S. Eliot

"There is a section in the brain just for hope."
-House

"Life is SO full of unpredictable beauty and strange surprises. Sometimes the beauty is too much for me to handle. Do you know that feeling? When something is just too beautiful? When someone says something or writes something or plays something that moves you to the point of tears, maybe even changes you."

"I'm still writing about you and you haven't read a word."

"Live in such a way that those who know you but don't know God will come to know God because they know you."

"There are a few haunting the dark spaces in the first language I grew up tasting on my tongue, that I just cannot suffer to say. What of 'goodbye' and the way the final sound of the final 'e' always comes with a breath out, a lingering and softly defeated breath as if it had fingers and those fingers had hands and they were scratching and clinging to the floorboards of that final letter? Fighting, always, fighting to stick around, if only for you, if only forever. What of 'can't' and the way can't becomes a window covered with bars and those bars forever change the way light spills into the spaces between them? What of the way it kills the plants where the shade of those bars fall across the room? Can't is a door covered in locks and I've always had a problem with losing my keys. Can't is the won't said with decoration and the illusion of being utterly powerless. Can't loiters and only we can chase it from the parking lots of our souls. What of regret and the way it stains our memories with wishes that will never come true? What of 'would have' or 'could have' or the most heartbreaking and poltergeist haunting 'should have'? When will NOW start being better than THEN and when will we leap first and ask questions second and when we will understand that sometimes, sometimes, the entire universe conspires to put us exactly where we need to be at the exact moment. We need to be there and if we would stop fighting it so hard and start reaching it so and start reaching out instead of pushing away, pulling instead of fighting off, we would discover that all we need is waiting, patiently, directly in front of us. What of all these words I will not say? What of all these words I cannot suffer to taste a moment longer on this tongue of mine?"
-Tyler Knott Gregson

"It is so easy for me to love you that it frightens me. I've never been good at anything. But I've never wanted anything so much as I want to hold you every waking minute. And every night while I sleep. The question has ceased to be 'How do I love you?' and has become 'How would I ever stop?'"
-EC

"Nothing is so common as the wish to be remarkable."
-William Shakespeare

"There is a light which cannot ever be extinguished. It is inside of you... It is you."

"The world is a series of miracles, but we're so used to seeing them that we call them ordinary things."
-Hans Christian Anderson

"Maybe I was naive, got lost in your eyes and never really had a chance."
-Taylor Swift


Hey lovelies! Can you say quote-overload? They are overwhelming in a good way. I hope you love them or can relate to these words as much as I do. Words are like treasure to me. Worth more than diamonds and possessions. They become engraved in your heart. They have to power to change you and make you feel understood. Beautiful words for a beautiful you.
Imma leave you with a very silly conversation that you might find humorous or ridiculous... or both between one of the loveliest people I know who is quickly become one of the best friends I've ever had in my life... Deedra.
 C & D

Deedra&Charley

We started out as coworkers (still are) and have become instant friends. I adore her & am jealous of her beauty! I am so grateful for Dee and love that she shares my obsession over Ryan Gosling and Channing Tatum, introduced me to the extremely addicting show "Catfish", and drinks Diet Pepsi like it's water (as do I), and is the sweetest girl ever.
Well Dee has been using Instagram for a while to edit her photos only... she was clueless as to how to run it or what hashtags meant and just confused beyond comprehension. So I have her Insta-lessons and now she is Insta-good. Here is our convo...
D- "#C #H #A #R #L #E #Y. Thanks for teaching me a thing or two about Instagram today! (hashtag#hashtag#hashtag!)"
C [me]- "#ilovethis #anytime #instagood #yolo haha :) Have a good weekend! #yourethebest #twitterlessonsnext #d #e #e #hashtag."
D- "#yolo? I feel like I'm 70 years old. #dont #know #"hip"lingo #23 #year #old #problems. Haha! Next week we'll teach me about Twitter or something else real cool."
C-"#23yearoldproblems indeed! I feel you there! I'll teach you Twitter next time. You can teach me Pinterest #deal."

Haha we even set up our sibings to go on a date in the secret hopes of being related/sisters & turns out it was a wonderful match. They've been inseparable ever since. #presh
Dylan&Jordan (Dee's little bro & my little sis)

#insidejokes
#loveher
#loveyou
#lovelies
#charleybrooke
#hashtag