Mission Completion!

Well it's been a week since the end of the April A to Z Blogging Challenge.  It's probably a good thing that it ended when it did because it's now the end of the semester and time for finals!  As part of the challenge, however, it is... suggested that everyone do a review of the experience today, so here's mine!

I originally signed up for the challenge as a way to get me blogging on a regular basis, and yes it certainly worked for the month of April.  Unlike a lot of the suggestions on the main page for the challenge, I neither wrote a full list of my chosen topics, chose a theme to write around, nor wrote any posts ahead of time.  That probably made my life a little more hectic than it necessarily had to be, but it worked out so I guess I'm okay with it.

I did have some topics before hand, but as the challenge progressed I actually became quite picky with them and most of the pre-picked topics were thrown out in favor of ones that I thought of on the day.  I really liked doing this because it made the blogs a little more spontaneous, I think, and more enjoyable for me to write.  Take my D post, I thought up that one in the shower and typed it up in about 20 minutes!  The hardest thing about that post was tracking down all the pictures.  And everybody LOVED that post, myself included.  So yes, some of my best work is definitely spur of the moment.

The thing I probably enjoyed the most was the response from my new reader base (and my old one).  Yay!  It's always reassuring to know that people actually enjoy what I'm writing, especially when I don't personally know most of them.

I started the posts with a very tenuous theme, that being things that related me to other people.  Avatar: The Last Airbender = roommate, Binturong = colorguard instructor, Chickadee = Grandma Kenney, MCKD = Dad and friends, etc.  But right around 'I' was when I started to deviate.  'I', 'J', and 'K' can be tricky letters if you ask me, and my inspiration only went so far.  I did try quite hard to stick to my 'theme' but some posts just got away.

All in all I enjoyed the Challenge, as it certainly was challenging in the way I went about it.  At this point in time I have every intention to participate again next year, and maybe then I'll have a bit more structure to my posting.  And then again, maybe not.

K is for...

KAYLA!!!!!

My lovely roommate!!  Here you see her cleaning the mold off of our bathroom ceiling as there is no fan in the bathroom.  Stupid design plan if you ask me.  But we take care of it.

Here we see her eating a deep fried Oreo.  I don't actually have too many pictures of her, so that's all you're going to get.  She's a pretty decent roommate, considering those I've had before.  And the best part?  We actually get along!  Yay!  I drag her around to more things than she probably wants, but she puts up with me.  Good times.  I guess in the future I should take more flattering pictures of her...

G is for...

Guy Fieri

You may know him from the following Food Network shows; Guy's Big Bite, Diners, Drive-In's and Dives, Tailgate Warriors, and NBC's Minute to Win It. This post isn't strictly about him, but it's his influence that led to it!!

We'll start with a quick info session, the Food Network is one of the only channels that we watch in my room here at DelVal.  We occasionally watch Fox, and when I say we I mean me, and when I say Fox I mean Bones.  Other times we flip the channel and end up watching Too Cute or Finding Bigfoot on Animal Planet.  But usually, it's Food Network.

F if for...

Ferdinand.

Whoops!  Where did that come from?  Sadly my topic is not that of King Ferdinand circa 1492, but rather Ferdinand the Eucalyptus circa 2011.  Ferdinand is a tree.  A eucalyptus tree that my roommate and I made last October for the Homecoming Parade on campus.  The theme of Homecoming was Bright Lights, Big City, so Animal Science Society chose Sydney as their city.  We then had to make a float with the Sydney theme for the parade.  I was given the task of creating a tree.  Keep in mind I'm a poor college student.  Soooo the backbone was made of cardboard from cereal boxes and such, and then it was wrapped and stuffed with newspaper, painted brown, and had green 'leaves' stapled on it.

A is for...

Hello everybody!  Guess what today is?  Today is April 1st, otherwise known as April Fool's Day.  It is also the first day of the Blogging from A to Z Challenge.  Now if I was cool enough and though of this before hand, doing a post on April Fool's would have been a pretty smart thing to do.  However, I only now realized that it would have worked and I already have another topic that I really want to post about.  So maybe we'll talk about it next year. 

Okay so the topic I am so excited for is, of course, Avatar: The Last Airbender.  And I am not talking about the James Cameron Avatar with the blue people on another planet.  I'm talking about the Nickelodeon cartoon with the people who have the power to manipulate the four elements: air, water, earth, and fire. Each element has a nation built around it, consisting of benders and non-benders alike.  It is only the Avatar who can master all four elements and maintain world order.

The premise of this show is that the Avatar, Aang, has been lost to the world for 100 years.  Most everybody thought he was dead.  However, he is discovered in an iceberg by a girl waterbender, Katara, and her brother Sokka.  Together they embark upon a journey to help Aang master the four elements while simultaneously avoiding the seeking hands of the Fire Nation, who has practically conquered the world in the absence of the Avatar.

I absolutely love this series for multiple reasons, including:
1. The Characters
2. The Story
3. The Animation
4. Character Development
5. Animals