SKYFALL 007; RECAP

All right, I just came back from Skyfall 007. Before I write this, I want you to know that I overreact hugely when it comes to movies - whether if it is crying or screaming. I ranted on for thirty minutes at one in the morning after I saw Breaking Dawn Part 2 - even though that is a whole another story. But that doesn't take away from the amazingness of this movie.

Click the above picture ^ to go to the official Skyfall 007 website!

I'm going to try to explain how I feel about this movie right now. It's an emotion with terror, excitement, thrill, breathlessness, and all of those factors again and again. Try imagine breathing really hard and having the scenes play back through your brain. Multiply by the biggest number you can possibly think of. I hope you can understand how I am feeling right now.

MAJOR SPOILER: IF YOU ARE GOING TO WATCH THE MOVIE AND HAVEN'T PREVIOUSLY PLEASE KINDLY SKIP THE FOLLOWING PARAGRAPH.
The last fifteen minutes of the movie is where my excitement came from. When Bond is running across the frozen lake and is attacked by Silver and his gunman person, my heart literally froze. M and the cute old guy were huddled in the little shed and it seemed like Bond was about to go down. THEN HE SHOOTS THE FREAKING ICE WHICH IS PROBABLY AT -3451923094915789 DEGREES AND SINKS WITH THE GUNMAN. He's being strangled, unable to breathe in the freezing water. They just keep on sinking and sinking and sinking in a dark, dreary lake that seems to go on forever. Then somehow Bond gets the gunman in a headlock and then breaks his neck. Unable to find an opening in the ice above, he grabs the gun or whatever it was from the gunman and shoots the ice. The screen goes into a thing of white now. Then it goes to the lonely shed, where Silver sees Bond's parents' grave. By then I was like "PLEASE LORD DON'T LET THE OLD GUY AND M DIE PLEASE DON'T" and he walks up the stairs to see M on the pews. He's going on about how it HAD to be like this and the cute old guy walks in saying "I couldn't find the..." then Silver shoots the wall next to him (WHICH BY THE WAY WAS LIKE 2 INCHES) and the old   man's face was frozen, then I sincerely thought that he was dead. And I was NO NO NO NON ONONONONONOONNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO then he blinks and moves. Then I was okay, until Silver starts approaching M. He sees that she's shot and pretends to caress her, and then my friend and I were like "He's gonna shoot her right now, he's gonna do it!!!!!!!!!" He stands up and places the gun in her hand and his head next to hers, and tells her that it is up to her. To kill both of them right now. I was dying. The scene lasted for five seconds which seemed like a billion years. You can ask my friend, I was breathing so hard and so far down my chair I was about to fall off. M's expression was so freaking genuine to the point I was terrified. Then Bond walks in and throws a knife at Silver's back and while Silver dies, tells him "The last rat standing" or something like that. After that, Bond supports M while she is losing her breath. I was thinking that the scene would freeze right there and then she would be okay, transported to a medical center or something. But NO!!O!!!P!O!O!O!O!OO! She dies right there! In Bond's arms!! Then he closes her eyes and the screen goes black.

Welcome back, to all of you who skipped the previous paragraph.

That last part literally had me dangling off of my chair. Now I am going to tell you this. I love popcorn. During movies, I'm one of those people who manages to eat a bag of popcorn during the previews. Being serious here. I grabbed a handful of the popcorn about 20 minutes before the movie ended, then when it was over it was still there. Not in my intestines, but in my hand! That's an overwhelming sign that the movie (at least the ending) is absolutely spectacular. If you haven't seen Skyfall 007, you are missing out on life. GET OUT OF THE CHAIR RIGHT NOW AND GO WATCH IT!!!!!!!!!!!

Just Keep Swimming...

I mean this as in never give up, always keep going, and also to just actually keep swimming.

I came back from my first swim meet today. You have no idea about how terrified I was, about how bad I was going to be, thinking of all these ridiculous things that has probably a .009% chance of happening. Time rushed by so fast for me. School was over, and then my whole swim team and I were on a bus to the hosting school. It was a big meet, and I knew that there was going to be people worse than me, which did make me feel better.

I did a lot better than I thought I would. When you swim in a race, you don't think. My 50 freestyle was one of the somewhat earlier events, but still far from the first. Time raced by. In what seemed like just a few minutes, my cap and goggles were on, and my coach was telling me to go stand near my lane. I didn't even bother to take notice of the serious nervousness I was going through. Suddenly, the previous heats were over, and it was my time to race. I stood up on the block, and I heard the words "Swimmers, ready", then the unmistakable beep. My start was pretty strong, I got about five or six meters in a streamline, then raced the rest. I don't remember anything after that, just straining to hit the end as fast as possible. You go, you splash and kick as hard as you can, and you don't really register the effort it takes until you get out of the water. I was so tense and my muscles strangely sore after I went out of the water. Apparently I had been about six seconds in front of my heat, and I had dropped like five seconds from my best time in practice. Which is CRAZY, right?? But I feel like it's because of during a race, it's so official, you know it's time to put everything you have out there. I never felt like that in a practice, but now I know that I can be just as good as the others.

That was the moment I realized that you never give up, no matter how hard it is, and you keep going until you get there. Don't give up, because as a graffiti on the Brooklyn Bridge says, "You have to feel weak before you feel strong".

So don't stop because something is challenging. It's supposed to be like that. Life would be so boring if everything you did, you were fantastic at it naturally. Keep going and don't stop, eventually you will get to the very top.