Just For Funsies.

The sunsets in Warrnambool have been unreal lately. I don't know if there's some Godly artist, decorating the sky with wide brush strokes, or if it's just good old Warnie saying good-bye.

I get bored on the way to the store...

YER A WIZARD JERRY. (My lecturer's name is Jerry).

 

Will the real #BenWatson please stand up, please stand up, please stand up?

<--Sarah-Pillow

For our last Marine Biodiversity practical, we took a quiz on arthropoda (boring) then got to study echinoderms! I got to dissect a sea urchin. The spineys were really brittle and broke off when I picked it up. Then I had to pierce the exoskeleton, which was pretty damn hard, so I took the dissecting scissors and stabbed into the side of the urchin like a serial killer...and that makes me sound like a psychopath...

We also watched a super badass video in class, where they had placed a mini camera inside of a limpet and we got to see a starfish protrude its stomach into the limpet's shell, liquify its insides, and suck it all back in. SO EFFING COOL.

The innards of the urchin smelled horrendous. Like someone had a room full of sour milk and dead animals. But it was so freaking cool. The yellow and black things are eggs and the whitish cylindrical piece is where the food enters the body. They have a water vascular system, so that's why there you'll see no blood.

My friends are better than your friends. 

Went to see Bad Neighbors with #BenWatson, Aiden, Yarran, and Daniel. One of the funniest movies I've seen in a long time. The casting was an arsenal of comedy perfection.

My housemates and I have also been religiously viewing The Voice weekly. Although I love Ricky, Joel, and Will equally, Ricky's team is BOMB.

There was some random, artsy-fartsy, sea thing going on in town this past Saturday when Sarah and I were on our weekly outing. Most of the decorations were made out of trash (which I'm assuming was found on or near the beach). It was a genius idea to enlighten the community about littering on the beach.

Also, Circus Royale, if you want to get people to come to your circus, get rid of that murderous clown on your flyer. 

It was Rachel's 18th birthday the other night, so naturally...we had to get wasted. The beautiful Kittens is finally legal and now we can rage any time any place.

Also, for those of you who don't know, this is the Seanchai Irish Pub (aka the Shan). Drunk Alix thought it would be a wonderful idea to take photos of it for my blog. Thank you Drunk Alix. 

These two randoms saw me taking photos and wanted me to take one of them. I told them I'd put it on my blog and they'd be famous...yea, I lied.

Sarah and I scored Jacinta's basketball game the other night again. They pulled out their inner Lisa Leslie and killed it.

Last but not least...what even are Australian cartoons? 

What are this?

Da fug?

idle thoughts.

Have you ever just wondered, what am I doing wrong? Why is nothing I ever do good enough? Well I do constantly. I wonder why I have never been "the best" at anything. I wonder how someone can be so completely average. I realised just recently that it was because I was trying to fit myself into this Alix-shaped box that everyone had of me...or was it an Alix-shaped box that I had of myself? I had to stop classifying myself as one thing or another. For my whole life, I've always been the type to gauge things from one extreme to another. Either I was extraordinary at something or I was terrible at it, and since I wasn't extraordinary at anything, my default setting was to think I was terrible at it. I realise now that I have spent more than half my life hating myself for things out of my control. I have held myself back from life changing opportunities based solely on my fears. I recently read a quote that struck a chord somewhere deep inside me. 

"But what if I fall?"

"Oh but my darling, what if you fly?" 

I am not entirely sure what it was about this that affected me so much...it just seemed as though this unknown person was speaking directly to me. I'm not going to spew cliches like "life's too short..." or "you've only got one life," but I will say this: Think about how old you are now. Most of you are probably around 20 or so. On average, that's about a fourth or so of your life. You've only got 3/4 of your life left to do everything you've dreamt of doing. Why waste that time afraid and resenting yourself for it?

Here are some videos from the concert the other night. I won't try and explain the quality, you can hear that for yourselves.

Patrick James. Facebook. Twitter. Insta @patrickjamesmusic

Boy & Bear. Website. Facebook. Twitter. YouTube Insta @boyandbear. 

How do I even Life....?

Stress. This seems to be the common theme among myself and everyone around me lately. Exams. Reports. Pracs. Grades. Deadlines. I can see these weighing down on everyone around res and I have felt this weight myself. It's been killing my mood and making me question myself more than ever. I needed to find a way to lessen this weight, this stress. Slowly, throughout the week, I found a way.

Jacob took Katie and I on an impromptu trip to the beach. Although it was freezing, just feeling the sand under my feet, between my fingers, hearing the waves roll in and just smelling the salt in the air while the sun sunk slowly behind us, was enough. There's nothing that quite compares to the euphoria you feel when being at the beach.

In case you haven't notices, my friends are weird. Like, crazy weird...but I wouldn't have it any other way. Because, I mean, hey...I'm crazy weird too. 

Such an intense netball game this Saturday for the A-Grade girls. Although they lost, Dayle rolled out of a backwards somersault pretty nicely. :)

Thanks to the generosity of Morgan Pumpa, Katie and I were able to go the the Boy & Bear concert at the Lighthouse Theatre last night. Patrick James and his band opened and although his voice was beautiful, I couldn't really get into the music. The only time I really felt the music was when his band left and he played the keyboard while singing. At that point, I felt the music and what he was trying to convey.

After a 20 minute intermission ("The bar is now open," typical Australia!), Boy & Bear were finally on stage. Leading up to the concert, I made sure to listen to some of their music on YouTube, to get a feel for their sound. I knew that I liked their music, but I wasn't overly amazed by it after watching the videos. I wasn't expecting what I would feel when they started to perform. From the first song, I was engulfed by their music. The singing. The instrumentation. The emotion and passion they were showing was all encompassing. At some points, I forgot that I was in a theatre and just felt like I was the only one in the room. 

Between one set, the drummer wished all the moms there a happy Mother's Day and was talking about how they didn't get to see their moms that day because they were a "fair bit" away from home. If only they knew what a fair bit away from home really felt like. 

I know that you probably saw these posted on my FaceBook, but I felt the need to post them here as well. My one and only, older brother graduated from Iowa State University this past weekend. This will be the first time that he's not going to be at a school I'm going to or plan on going to. The fact that he's now an adult terrifies me, because that means that I'm that much closer to being an adult as well. I don't want to be a grown-up. I don't know how. I'm not prepared to be completely responsible for myself. Anywho...my cousin, Brenden, also graduated this weekend from Coe College. It makes me sad that we're all growing up. My cousins are my best friends. My brothers. My sisters. Soon we're all going to be adults with our own families and aren't going to get to see each other as much. We try and tell ourselves it won't happen. We've promised each other infinity amount of times that we'll never let anything between us, and I hope we won't. I don't know what I'd do without you guys in my life. My family is my rock.

Last but not least, Mother's Day. My mom is the best friend I could ever ask for. I have tried to come up with the perfect combination of words to encompass what she means to me, and failed so many times. She knows what she is to me. Everything. I love you mom and miss you so much.

Voices like a Mixture of Fergie and Jesus

So my mind was blown on Wednesday when I heard everyone sing at the open mic night. Have a listen: