HAPPY 4TH OF JULY! I hope everyone's out to watch the beautiful display of fireworks tonight. :)

Okay, let me begin by saying: I LOVE SALES. After hearing about awesome prom dress sales at Dillards (is it Dillards or Dilliards? ~_~...) from Joy yesterday (who is too "old" for words :P), we decided to go to the mall and see what was there. Well, we weren't disappointed. They had a couple of racks with dresses $20-$30 (original prices are, what, over $100), so Tiff (my sister) and I went crazy! I must have tried on about 10 dresses! I love trying on dresses and looking elegant - unfortunately, this is not the age where balls and social dances are the thing (I'm such the romantic), so we can only wear them during prom. =\ I found a really pretty glittery aquamarine one, and although it reminded me of a mermaid, I liked it a lot. Unfortunately, the zipper was broken beyond repair, so I sadly put it back on the rack. I also tried on this white dress that blended into silver... really, um, interesting ^_^' "Unique" is the word.

My mom picked out this dark purple one, and it fit nicely (although the chest area still had room... surprisingly -_-) - My sisters and mom were like, Oooo... so elegant! I guess I don't strive for "pretty" (usually characterized by bright, vibrant colors - think princess!) anymore, just "elegant" (can be charactized by darker colors that add a flair). Which is fine. :) To me, "pretty" reminds me of pastel colors, in particular pink, and it's for the young, dainty beautiful girls. "Elegant" sounds more... mature, and I've been told I act older than I really am (unless I'm ROFLing with my friends - then I act like I'm 13 :D). Anyway, the dress has purple glitter flowers on the front. The veil-like material on the front splits into two, and the dress is a little flowy (but not dragging). I like it. $30, not bad. Now I'm good to go for the rest of my high school career - two years left, dang... where did the time go?

We went to Sam's today. It's like Walmart, only everything is in bulk... wow. Talk about food heaven. *amused*

King Arthur is coming out July 7th. It looks pretty good. I'm a pretty big King Arthur fan, and I'm anxious to see the big screen's rendition of the classic. The cast looks impressive. The guy who plays King Arthur (who is it? Too lazy to look it up...) looks like a King Arthur. I always imagined King Arthur as the guy with decent rugged good looks, but quiet, shy. Demure? On the other hand, I always imagined Lancelot as dashing (which accounts for Guenevere's attraction to him...) and audacious. Guenevere is, of course, Guenevere, but I didn't know she does archery and whatnot... :D Maybe I need to read the real accounts of King Arthur (Mallory, anyone?) one time. Kiera Knightley is a pretty good actress (even though The Pirates of the Carribean IS an overrated movie if you ask me), so I think she'll be wonderful.

I finally finished Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy today. Fans of this book, I'm sorry, but I'm about to begin a long tirade: About halfway through the book, every page was very painful for me to read. I kept on marking page 754 (the last official page) with my bookmark and was glad to see the pages between the page and me dwindle, ever so slowly. The plot? Beautiful Anna Karenina is married, has a son, enjoys a nice status being the wife of a Russian official named Alexey Alexandrovitch Karenin, but she's rather bored by her husband (she doesn't love him at all, in fact, there are times when she hates him). One day, she meets Count Alexey Vronsky, who is, of course, dashing and handsome, so she falls in love with him and becomes his lover. Sound familiar? I didn't see why it was called "one of the world's greatest love stories in world literature." Maybe I just don't understand great classics. Maybe Tolstoy's style of writing isn't getting to me. Whatever the case may be, I didn't think there wasn't much love in the story (once again, I am a romantic, so this may have an impact), and Anna and Vronsky aren't even the main characters in the novel. There's an excessive amount of characters, most of them not even that important to the story (SO MANY RELATIVES!), and I often got many of them confused. In the end, I just gave up trying to discern who's who (if you're expecting a master list of characters in Anna Karenina from me, think again). Way too much dialogue, a lot of it was really dull and boring to me. Sure, most of the characers reacted to Anna and Vronsky's relationship, which is important, but in other scenes, they talked about the most senseless topics. I was not amused nor entertained. The ending, however, should hit most readers powerfully, provided that they get there (if I didn't push myself, I would have never made it =\). I did feel a sense of closure, though. Sigh, poor Anna...

I understand that romance may not be the #1 theme in the novel - mostly the ideals and values of the Russian society at the time, and so on and so forth - but you could have warned me about it when the description said "one of the world's greatest love stories in world literature" ...

Set along her story is the tale of Konstantin Levin, a Russian man whose values are very much Leo Tolstoy's own values. I found his side of the story refreshing (he finds loves and is happy while Anna finds... love and isn't quite so happy afterall), and his struggle to win the love of his life was well written. However, after he finally wins Kitty's heart, there are still many more chapters of their life, which I found a little...long and dull, as well. They got married, they lived happily in the countryside, yay, so why are there 500+ more pages to go? ...

Sorry, I'm aware this -is- a great classic, and if I read it and actually absorb its values, maybe I will appreciate this more. It's just that the plot was buried beneath a lot of unnecessary pages, and that has distorted my view of this novel.

...Whew!

I'm reading The Odyssey by Homer. I never read the whole book, and there's a first time for everything. There should be more people like Odysseus and Telemachus in this world. :)