youthmystique

We live in a society in which when we want to relax, we turn on the TV.

I am somewhat guilty of this too, but I don’t really think I watch that much TV. Thursday night is when I watch The Office and Project Runway.

Although reading books makes you think and seems like a lot of work, it’s still a great pastime.

After college, I started to get into reading again. I didn’t read as a hobby in college because I was already reading items for other classes.

Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter and Twilight series books are testaments that people still like to read. The key thing nowadays is staying ahead on your reading before the movies come out. Then when the movies come out, you can pick them apart. Or in some cases be pleased with how the movie did a good job of following the book.

Going to the movies is a great way to get out of the house and is great for date night. But if you want to go on an adventure from the comfort of your own home, then books are great!

I say books are still in.

Right now I am reading “Marshmallows for Breakfast.” What are you reading?

I realized I have a little more than 200. Most of them are people I met in college. Others are work friends, excoworkers and friends I went to middle and high school with. One of them is a close relative and a few others are cousins.

 How many of them do I see on a regular basis? Well, I see my fiancé on a regular basis and the close relative I see every couple of weeks. The work friends I see basically every day.

Some of my Facebook friends I have not spoken to in a long time. Some of them I don’t even like anymore.

You may be asking why I still keep these people as friends? I like to Facebook stalk them.

I think we are all guilty of Facebook stalking. Yeah, you haven’t talked to Joe Schmoe or Mrs. Joe Schmoe in a long long time, but you  want to see what he/she is up to.

It’s amazing how many of my Facebook friends have kids. Some have two and others are on their third. This makes me feel quite old!

I’ll just settle for four-legged kids (pets) at this point.

Image from boston.com

I am a big fan of the show, Project Runway. Recently, I found out that the Web site, www.projectrunwaysweeps.com,  is offering a chance to win $1,000, or you could win $25,000 and have lunch with Tim Gunn. 

You can enter many times. All you have to do is watch a clip of last week’s episode and vote on who you thought should have gone home. They pick the bottom two from the week before to choose from.

It would be so exciting to meet Tim Gunn! I wonder what kind of restaurant you’d be able to go to in NYC and what he would order. Is he a martini man? Or is he a mixed drink man? What would we talk about? Would he tell Heidi about me? Would I get a chance to meet Heidi too?

And of course, the big question, “WHAT WOULD I WEAR?”

I’d have to get a whole new outfit!

I would also be happy with winning $1,000. That could pay for a lot of nice things.

My chances are probably slim with either of the prizes but oh well. It’s fun to dream, right?!

Well, it’s been some time since I updated my blog.

My theme of my blog is to concentrate mostly on issues that affect young people. I am now 25 and consider myself a young person. I don’t always feel like it though.

What do some young people do? Get married. I am not there quite yet but slowly getting there. I became engaged last year and I will be getting married not this fall but next fall. I have my dress and I’m pretty excited about that.

If you are getting married, go to David’s Bridal. They have a great variety of styles and decent prices.

We just booked our photographer. We are using the same one my brother and sister-in-law used. I feel pretty confident in that choice because they did an awesome job. We decided to get a videographer from the same place. Several people I know don’t remember their weddings. My fiancé and I would like to remember ours.

Wedding planning is stressful and exciting. Everything is so expensive but there are ways to be frugal. Time always helps that.

I’ve been seeing a lot of promos for “The Principal’s Office” and I really wanted to watch it. This weekend I had a chance to see several episodes.

If you haven’t seen the show, basically it’s a reality show, giving viewers an inside look of what happens in various principals’ offices.

Watching this show reminds me why I didn’t get a job in education. Kids seem so much worse than when I went to school.

In this one episode I was watching, this kid got in trouble for making a “sexist comment.” He said, “How can women be bad at sex? All they have to do is lay there.”

He defended what he said by admitting he was taking a quiz in a girl’s magazine.

I wanted to slap him across the face.

Another girl didn’t want to go outside for gym because the humidity messes up her hair. I can understand this annoyance, but I was thinking, “Get over it.” What made it worse is she was telling the principal “People depend on me to look good.” Her face was plastered with makeup. There was so much eyeliner I could hardly see her real eyes.

There was also a principal who gives students the option of three “licks” from a paddle. It looked fake though because he paddled a student behind a closed door.

For more information, visit http://www.trutv.com.

Photo from http://www.tccandler.com

So I got sucked in to watching “The City,” a spinoff show of “The Hills” on MTV.

I will never consider Whitney as a Carrie Bradshaw but I can say that Whitney is learning to be tougher.

Since she moved to New York, she’s had to deal with a spoiled, stuck up co-worker at Diane Von Furstenberg and rumors that Jay, the guy she’s interested in, likes another girl.

Does anyone else want to punch Olivia, the stuck up co-worker, in the face? She bragged about having Manolo Blahniks at age 15 or 16. She’s definitely the villain of the reality show. I’m glad that I don’t work with anyone like her.

Although I don’t dislike Jay, I don’t think he’s good for Whitney. They’ve been hanging out for a month and he still doesn’t want a relationship. Then from previews, he seems like he gets jealous when Whitney hangs out with other guys. Sorry bud, you can’t have your cake and eat it too. I like that Whitney’s been straight up honest with Jay like when she told him about the rumor floating around and in the most recent episode when she tells him she doesn’t want to date someone that doesn’t make her a priority.

It should be an interesting season.

This fall my boyfriend of four years proposed to me on his birthday. What a wonderful surprise that was!

That week as we told family and friends we faced the big question: “Have you set a date?”

That’s very overwhelming. We thought “just let us enjoy this time.”

We chose October 2010 as our time to get married. I am waiting on my mother-in-law’s list of people she would like to invite.

I started looking at prices for some food and  man, it’s overwhelming. I had trouble sleeping last night and half of the reason was because I was worrying about how we’re going to afford a wedding. My parents are going to help of course but I feel bad making them pay for everything especially with all of the help they have given me throughout the years.

People are putting pressure on us to move up the date of our wedding but what they don’t realize is that it’s better to have a long engagement. That was it is easier to budget. I want us to have a nice wedding but I don’t need to have it at the fanciest place.

MTV usually irritates me but one show I do love on that channel is “The Hills.”

I get wrapped up watching girl drama because I am not involved in it.

For those of you who don’t know, Whitney, one of Lauren’s loyal friends, is moving to New York and is going to star in her own reality TV show, “The City.”

It was hard to watch Lauren and Whitney say goodbye last night. I was tearing up. They’ve been so supportive of each other with their fashion careers and friend drama situations and now they will be on two different coasts.

Whitney is one of the girls on “The Hills” that I have a lot of respect for because she doesn’t get annoyed over little stupid things. I am happy that she’s moving on in her career and trying something new. I am wondering if this reality show of hers will be as popular as “The Hills.”

Is Whitney strong enough for this show? I don’t know about that. I hope that she is. She’s going to be in the limelight a lot more now.

I am also curious on what kind of challenges she will overcome in the new show. I don’t know about other fans of the show, but it seems like a lot of career opportunities just kind of fall into Whitney’s lap. I am excited to see how she handles the new job and if things seem to go as easy.

Player Brody Jenner, another person on “The Hills,” is going to have a spinoff, “Bromance.” I guess it’s kind of going to be like Paris Hilton’s new bff. I don’t think I will be that interested in this show. But who knows.

I started to decorate the apartment with Christmas stuff about a week ago. My inlaws (or future inlaws) came over so I wanted to bring our little fiber optic tree out of the closet.

I like snowmen decorations a lot so I have like three of those. One I received as a present last year during a work Christmas party.

I’ve grown to like Thanksgiving a lot more than Christmas because of having to figure out what to get family and friends.

Some people are so easy to buy for like my sister-in-law. It’s almost like shopping for me. Haha But on the other hand, buying for the men in my family is difficult.

It’s also kind of difficult to get into the Christmas spirit when the economy is so bad.

The other day when I looked out the window, I started to feel that Christmas spirit. Many of our neighbors have their houses decorated. It’s neat to drive or walk around the neighborhood to see the lights. (It’s also free except for that gas part! That’s a plus!) Seeing those lights is like a glimpse of hope. Even though times are tough, people are still lighting up their lives with Christmas decorations. It’s enough to put my Grinch-like attitude aside for a few moments and try to see the beauty of this time of year.

Recently, I met up with a friend I’ve known since first grade. She went to school in the Philadelphia area and now lives in Connecticut. I’ve never seen her place in Connecticut but I’m assuming you can walk to places there like shops, a library, etc.

We grew up in the country with not a lot of options for entertainment. What do you do for fun when you’re 10 and you can’t drive? Or 15?

I think my friend asked me something like, how is it that we didn’t turn out to be worse teens/young adults? I mean, boredom could have lead us to drugs or other bad stuff.

My answer? “Because we hung out with each other.”

We only lived a mile or two away from each other so we’d hang out almost every weekend. We collected Littlest Pet Shop toys and even came up with our own game we called “Century.”

I didn’t have cable at my house so I had to have a good imagination to keep myself busy. (That’s probably why I’m a writer.) I hope someday when I have kids that I can get them involved in activities so they don’t watch TV all of the time.

I like the country and I’m not ashamed of where I came from, but I want to raise children in a town where I can walk them over to their friends’ house and maybe even walk them to school. I’m not ready for kids yet though, just to let you know.