As I said in my What's In My Memory Box post, I've already done a post looking at what's in my makeup bag. But the contents of said bag (and the bag itself) have changed since then. I feel like I spent all of my teens trying to figure out what makeup I liked and what products to use and what worked best for me--and now that I'm in my twenties, I've figured most of it out. So here are the products that really do work for me, taken from my makeup bag.

Hey everybody! Today I wanted to talk about social media, which is one of my favorite things. I spend a lot of time on social media websites, and although there are drawbacks (as with any technology), I feel like on the whole it really enhances my life. When people get all negative about it, it hurts my soul a little bit.

After all, social media allows me, as a disabled person, to have a richer social life. It allows me to stay in contact with people who have moved away. It connects me to other people with disabilities and illnesses like mine, which is useful both for treatment and lifestyle help and just for commiseration.

Social media also grants me access to a lot of information about the world. Honestly, my favorite thing about social media isn't posting things myself, it's reading other people's posts. I've learned so much from the people I follow online. My Ravenclaw self is thrilled by the way social media and the Internet as a whole allow us to access and share knowledge!

So here are the social media tools that I use along with the ways that I use each one.

Facebook
​Facebook has become something of a "staple" in the social media world. If you want to be accessible to the people in your life, you need to have one, but it's not very new or exciting anymore.

On Facebook, I have a personal profile where I'm friends with people I know IRL, along with a few trusted Internet friends. I also like a lot of pages about topics I'm interested in As such, each day as I go through my feed, I see a wide variety of information about all kinds of things. I don't post very much on my personal profile anymore, but every once in a while I'll share an article or a quiz that I liked or a personal update.

My personal profile isn't widely accessible. However, ​I also have a Facebook page where I post links to all my blog posts as well as various book recommendations. This page is open for anyone to like!

It's time for another life update as told through this list of "-ing" verbs! Here we go.

Eating: nothing, since it's after dinner, but I'm craving more Nilla wafers
Drinking: water (what did you expect?)
Wearing: a black dress, cuz it's easy to put on
Smelling: the fact that I need to do the kitty litter, which will probably not happen for another week
Reading: Carrie by Stephen King
Writing: this blog post!
Editing: CUCUY, where I can in between class projects (ergh)
Making: hardboiled eggs every week so I can eat more protein
Listening: to lots of different songs as I try to figure out what my jam is right now
Watching: Lost in Space with my brother a couple episodes at a time 
Bookmarking: Global Voices, most recently
Playing: Dungeons & Dragons and "the creepy house game" at church young adult game nights

Today's bonus Wednesday post is, unsurprisingly, 4th of July themed! Taking the idea from the ongoing Top Ten Tuesday tag, I'm going to post some (but not all) of my favorite book covers in the colors of red, white, and blue. They're placed in order of publication, coming from my "love the cover" shelf on Goodreads. Enjoy!

My apologies for forgetting last week's post!

I think it's time yet again to look at the top 25 most played songs in my library and compare them with the 25 top-selling songs right now according to iTunes. Explicit songs will be marked with a red "E."

​1) "Save the World/Don't You Worry, Child" Pentatonix
2) "River" Bishop Briggs
3) "The Avengers" Alan Silvestri, from The Avengers
4) "Young and Menace" Fall Out Boy
​5) "Uncharted" The Piano Guys
6) "So Tied Up" Cold War Kids, feat. Bishop Briggs
7) "Centuries" Fall Out Boy
8) "Human" Rag'n'Bone Man

9) "Champion" Fall Out Boy
10) "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" Lorde
11) "Moonlight" The Piano Guys
12) "River Lea" Adele
13) "Conrad" SOHN
14) "Dangerous Woman" Ariana Grande
15) "Michael Meets Mozart" The Piano Guys
16) "The Fire" Bishop Briggs
17) "Wherever I Go" OneRepublic

Ever since I discovered I can wear skirts again (though it's still uncomfortable--it sets off my heartburn for some reason), I've been compiling a t-shirt wishlist. After all, I have to replace the shirts I got rid of while I was too sick to wear anything other than dresses. It's been super fun, so I wanted to share my finds with you! I doubt I'll end up getting all of these shirts, but I would be happy to wear any of them. Check it out!

This post idea comes from Top Ten Tuesday, where bloggers have been prompted to post their favorite book covers in their favorite color! My favorite color is purple, so here are some awesome purple book covers for you to enjoy. These are all taken from my "love the cover" bookshelf on Goodreads, in order of publication.

Once again, apologies for missing the previous week. I had another bout of illness, because I'm lucky like that. In any case, today I thought I'd give y'all an update on my life via "-ing" verbs, in another Taking Stock of My Life.

Eating: green cookies!
Drinking: water
Wearing: a long black bubble dress and a long-sleeve plaid purple and green shirt
Reading: The Belles by Dhonielle Clayton

My apologies for missing last week! I had to take a sick day. :P

Now it's time for another round of speedlinking, where I share some cool stuff from across the Internet for you to enjoy!

First off, I added the two Avengers: Infinity War trailers to my Speedlinking playlist on YouTube (#23 and 24), because THIS IS A VERY IMPORTANT EVENT THAT I'M NOT SURE MY FEELINGS WILL SURVIVE. (Can you believe it now has an April 27 release worldwide?) *Language warning on that link*

Next, a few links that may be useful to you writers out there. A lot of people online have been talking about the Notebook.ai, a worldbuilding program online that has both a free and a paid version. It looks really awesome, and I'm sure a lot of you would enjoy using it. Me, I've found that I do better freeform, using Word--even my one go at the ever-popular Scrivener didn't work out. Nevertheless, this looks like something a lot of people will find very useful.

There's also a random last name generator, for those less-important characters who you just need to name, darnit. It's got a great variety of names from every culture, at least from what I've seen so far, and it's a little less awkward than going through your Twitter feed. :)

Then there's the Atlas Obscura, a website where you can look up basically any location to find its most interesting attractions. I think this could be useful for real-world worldbuilding, as one of many pieces of research you'll have to do when including a real city in your stories.

As this very difficult year comes to a close, it's time to review the TV shows and movies that came out! Here are my thoughts on the ones that I viewed from 2017. There are a lot of them--I've gotten more involved in TV and movies since 2015, when I last did this kind of post. (Major spoilers are marked and hidden.) ​

​*Long post ahoy*

Supergirl Season 2, Part 2 (TV-PG)
​I've been a reluctant viewer of Supergirl ever since the show started. To me, it's always seemed clunky--I'm especially bothered by their excessive focus on Supergirl being a girl and by Kara's lack of journalistic skills. I also honestly don't like any of the characters, except for Lena Luthor. Martian Manhunter is one of my fave DC heroes, so I'm really saddened by my dislike for him in this show. Ultimately, this season of Supergirl, with all its focus on Mon-El, just didn't click with me. I ended up deciding not to continue watching Supergirl. A clear thumbs down ​for me. I didn't really enjoy any of the episodes.

Hey, friends! It's time for a life update as told through a series of "-ing" verbs. Enjoy!

Eating: baked potatoes and penne basically every day
Drinking: water
Wearing: a navy and white striped dress and white, knee-length compression socks
Smelling: that my room is a bit cleaner now
Reading: The Mirror King by Jodi Meadows
Writing: nothing other than the usual
Editing: THE PROPHECY KEEPER
Making: fun of my younger self
Listening: to awesome new songs like "Young and Menace" by Fall Out Boy
Watching: nothing ATM, but I'm super looking forward to the next season of Stranger Things!

It's been a while since I've done this, but I figured a good filler post while I'm busy at MayoClinic would be to share, once again, the top 25 most played songs in my music library compared to the current top 25 songs on the iTunes chart. Any songs with explicit content are marked with a red "E." Check it out!

1) "River" Bishop Briggs
2) "Save the World/Don't You Worry, Child" Pentatonix
3) "The Avengers" Alan Silvestri, from The Avengers
​4) "Centuries" Fall Out Boy
5) "So Tied Up" Cold War Kids, feat. Bishop Briggs
6) "Human" Rag'n'Bone Man
7) "Moonlight" The Piano Guys
​8) "River Lea" Adele

9) "Michael Meets Mozart" The Piano Guys
10) "Uncharted" The Piano Guys
11) "The Fire" Bishop Briggs
12) "Rolling in the Deep" The Piano Guys
13) "Beethoven's 5 Secrets" The Piano Guys
​14) "Don't You Worry, Child" The Piano Guys, feat. Shweta Subram
15) "Hollow Moon (Bad Wolf)" AWOLNATION
16) "Wherever I Go" OneRepublic
17) "Story of My Life" The Piano Guys

Today, I think it's time for another Taking Stock of My Life post, in which I share the current state of my existence through a series of -ing verbs. Check it out!

Eating: plain cheese quesadillas on organic tortillas
Drinking: water, but as usual, not nearly enough of it
Wearing: A cute sundress in black with a peachy-brown flower print
Smelling: the wonderfully stale air of my room
Reading: Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor
Writing: just blog posts and diary entries right now
Editing: old blog posts, mostly
Listening: to Bishop Briggs and the Piano Guys

Welcome back to Top Ten Tuesday, a book blog tag hosted by The Broke and the Bookish! Today, I'm going off-topic because I feel like sharing Top Ten Favorite Poems. My two favorite poets are E.E. Cummings and Lucille Clifton, so they will feature predominantly here. For more poetry and quotes that I like, check out my Pinterest board! Obviously, I own none of these poems; they are not mine.

1) "my mind is" by E.E. Cummings
​
my mind is
a big hunk of irrevocable nothing which touch and
taste and smell and hearing and sight keep hitting and
chipping with sharp fatal tools
in an agony of sensual chisels i perform squirms of
chrome and execute strides of cobalt
nevertheless i
feel that i cleverly am being altered that i slightly am
becoming something a little different, in fact
myself
Hereupon helpless i utter lilac shrieks and scarlet bellowings.

1) Wayfarer by Alexandra Bracken. A cloudy purple background, a simple landscape with a tree in a jar, a city-like reflection, a distant flock of birds flying free--it all makes for a lovely and intriguing cover.