Fifteen Minutes of Fame (and none for Holly Norris)

So on day two of my new fitness routine, I'm pretty much dying. My thighs, abs and back are killing me, but I feel...stronger. If that's possible, already. I noticed today that I could run a little longer, hold the wall squat on my new ab routine better, just a few small improvements that put a smile on my face.

Today was quite an important day for me, because the Travel Channel aired a episode of their new show, Fandemonium, hosted by Adam Richman from Man v. Food, titled "Midieval Madness." It was filmed at, you guessed it, Scarborough Renaissance Festival, my home away from home.

Shenanigans with fellow UNT girl and troupe member, Kristen.

I was - of course - out of town the weekend they filmed at faire, which was the weekend I left for ICDC in California (to read about that crazy week, click here). But in watching it, I could name at least one person in almost every frame/scene, and promptly did so, much to Le Boyfriend and his father's annoyance.



Celtic Troupe, my lovely, award winning group, is featured in the video above, and one of our two troupe directors, David, is featured in the episode, as well as the Pirate Crew I'm a part of and the reason I got involved in faire, the Seahawk Society. It was super surreal seeing all of my friends on TV, but it was such a great feeling knowing that this show would bring more tourism to the faire and hopefully more publicity to our troupe! (The faire website totally crashed after the episode aired, so you know it did it's job!)

One of the highlights of the season - the Scarborough Celtic Troupe Scavenger Hunt for children on Celtic Weekend. They had to find the 10 of us listed on the page and get our John Hancock - I mean Henry Tudor....

Welp, that's all for now, folks. Time to go get some shut eye before an early run to beat the heat tomorrow!

Love,
Holly

PS: Did you like my little Mean Girls reference in the title? I thought it was clever (:

The Lizzie Bennet Diaries

You may (or may not) have noticed in the postscript of my last blog that I am currently fangirling over Jane Austen. And pretty much anything related to her, her works, and the world she helped create.

So it comes as no surprise that one of my newest obsessions is this little thing called the Lizzie Bennet Diaries. What is the Lizzie Bennet Diaries, you may ask? Well, as any self-professed Austen nerd will tell you, it's only one of the best YouTube shows EVER. Seriously, just watch.

Maybe because this version of Elizabeth Bennet reminds me of myself (social media savvy, mass comm student with a crazy family, sounds about right), I relate so much more to her than to the book version, but this show had me literally rolling on the floor laughing at some of the outlandish things that happened. Despite reading the book, I was so not prepared for this version of Darcy. I finished the entire series in less than a week, and I have absolutely not one ounce of shame.

I just wanted a chance to share this little tidbit with you, my lovely readers. However few (or many) of you there are. If you have a series or show you think I should watch, leave it in the comments below!

Love,
Holly

Stop the World

As if I can't say it enough, life has become insane!

I've literally worked almost every day I've been in town since the beginning of June-I'm beginning to think I'll never get the smell of BBQ out of my clothes.

But I am finding a little more free time. I got about 4,000 words into my book that started as a NaNoWriMo (that's National Novel Writing Month for you non-nerds) project a while back when I hit an inspirational spike last night while closing up at work. Yay for having mind numbing tasks where you can think about other things!

In short, the book is about a school for girls with special powers (yes, similar to X-Men), which has to make some serious changes when their all male brother school burns down and they have to house the boys for a year.

I always picture the clique from the early seasons of Gossip Girl when I'm working on it.

It's been a pet project since I was 12, originally a short story, but it's since expanded to this crazyness that's barely 3 chapters in and over 12,000 words long.

I'm also trying to find a way to start getting really into my summer school classes. With the way my schedule worked for this upcoming year (Seniors '13, woot woot!), I'll be at our local Technology Center all day, rather than my home campus, so I'm trying to find a way to fit in all the classes I still need before graduation. At the moment, I'm in the middle of a ridiculously hard online PE class (my Travel Tourism class counted for one semester, now I'm just trying to get the second semester done without getting gross in public) and have yet to start my online French II course, both provided by Texas Tech ISD-two things I never thought I'd see together; my name with any Texas school.

I did recently stumble across an adorable site/blog called College Prep, and it's not what you might necessarily think. It's actually this really cute blog run by a college girl named Carly who seems to be as pearl obsessed as I am! I love finding people who manage to be awesomely smart and stylish at the same time. I'm adoring her use of Lily Pulitzer sticky notes and Kate Spade agendas-if all my paychecks weren't already being allocated towards DECA, I might invest in both!

Carly's super cute agenda. I have a similar one from Walmart in Tiffany Blue.

But alas, I'm sticking to being a high school recessionista. I will always love my designers, but for now it's Dollar Tree and Walgreens for me as far as school supplies go.

I'm also managing to catch up on my TV shows while cleaning. I'm on Season 5 of Eureka, Season 2 of Game of Thrones, and Season 5 of Mad Men. I'm still trying to catch up on Degrassi, but I can't get myself to sit down and actually watch. I know, a former Degrassi Die Hard, saying she can't watch Degrassi. I'm just having issues loving any of the plotlines in the later bits of this last season-Dave kind of annoys me, Clare/Eli have gone a bit stale, and Fiona needs to go back to curly hair!

That's all for now, I think. I'll probably do another post tonight about my recent Leadership Retreat with the officers of Texas DECA, but for now, I've gotta go get ready for another rousing night of serving BBQ to crying children and elderly couples.

Toodles,

Holly