Mariah's Nerdy Notes

Happy New Year, everyone! I can't believe 2019 is already here. This year has been the longest, hardest year of my life, but I learned a lot of things about life, about myself, and about the strength to carry on. My advice to you is this. Take care of yourself first and foremost. No one is going to do it for you, loves. I love all of you and may this year bless you and yours with everything you need and everything that will benefit you in the long run. I read 40 books this year, so that was a great achievement on my part. This year I'm upping the ante and not only am I upping the number of books to read (50 books!), but I'm also participating in the monthly read-a-thons hosted by Books and Munches. January's theme is Jam Jar January, where you put all of the books you wanted to read in 2018 and put them in a jar (or in my case a Harry Potter mug I received as a holiday gift) and pick some out. I picked six and left the rest in the mug in case I finish or DNF the lis...

Hey everyone, I know. It's been a while and there's a reason for that. May was busy, but good and full of new adventures. One of these days, I'll be good about posting weekly, I promise. I pinky promise. As for right now, on June 1st, I launched a 101 Goals in 1001 Days project. This project originates with Day Zero and there are posts about it all over the internet. I first learned about it from Sunshine and Stationary on YouTube, and decided I wanted to try something new. After a lot of research and days of brainstorming, I finally have my list. I've broken it down into eight categories. 101 in 1001 Days Start Date: 01 June 2018 End Date: 26 February 2018 House 1. Find and stick to a cleaning routine 2. Fully furnish and decorate house 3. Go meatless one day a week for a month 4. Decorate with the changing of the seasons.  5. Start using a diffuser 6. Whole house clean at the same time 7. Try 2 Pinterest recipes a month 8. Perfect a f...

Welcome back, everyone. We're looking at April's wrap up and looking forward to May. It's been a crazy month here. My birthday was the start, a friend visited and went back, then I had a unit test at school. Not to mention everything else going on. Honestly, it hasn't been a bad month. Just super busy. It was a relatively productive month emotionally and health wise, but I'll tell you what. I didn't get nearly as much done as I would have liked to nerdy wise. No new movies. Only four books. And I didn't finish a single project. Very disappointing. The truth of the matter is sometimes that happens. Let's look at the updates! Books: I finished four books this month. Waters Luminous and Deep by Meredith Ann Pierce (5/5 Stars), Lost City of Z by David Grann (4/5 Stars), Dead Until Dark by Charlene Harris (3/5 stars) , and Never Suck a Dead Man's Hand by Dana Kollman (3/5 stars). The stats so far are 15 books this year: 3 nonfiction, 3 fantasy, 3 su...

When I last wrote a blog post, I had received some fantastic news as well as some devastating news that I had alluded to. Unfortunately, what was once fantastic news turned into devastating news. Over the past few months, I have been through a very personal hell of loss starting January 12th with the loss of my grandfather. In February, we lost my youngest aunt on my mother's side, a mere ten years older than me. This was followed quickly by my grandmother's hospitalization and the death of my great aunt all before Saint Patrick's day. My very secret news was for me the most traumatic loss as I lost the life I was growing inside of me. I still can't really talk about it and to say that my mental health hasn't been on spot is perhaps the biggest understatement of the year. Which is why I haven't been producing content and why this content is going up on a Sunday instead of the regular Wednesday and Friday.  In books and movies, we try to characterize the slow,...

Hey everyone, Sorry for the lack of posts in January. My family was hit with a loss of my grandfather on the 12th followed by some other big news, which I'll announce soon. Overall, January was an okay month. It had its super lows, and its super highs. I was hoping for more progress on my geeky goals, but here we go. Gaming: I didn't get a lot of time to put into gaming, but so far. I have all of the Lorestones and have completed all the areas up to the Plains of Erathell. I've devoted about 30-ish hours to the game and I would like to finish it this month. I would also like to finish Jotun, an amazingly beautiful indie game that I started over the holidays. I also want to complete one, just one, Hearthstone Dungeon Run. Pray to the Hearthstone Gods for me for good card draws. Watching: I'm rewatching the X-Files and I started at Season 1. As I am writing this, I am watching Season 5 Episode 17, so I'm about halfway through the seasons! Podcasts: I r...

Hey guys, As most of you know I've been doing my CYOS 2018 Reading Challenge, and one of the first books on my to read list was: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum. Being an avid Julie Gardner fan, I was expecting a nice romp through the land of Oz as Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion. It was supposed to be a relaxing stroll down memory lane and taking a break. This book has some very very dark points, which reminded me of the Disneyfication of other stories. So this week, let's explore the truth behind 5 of my favorite Disney movies. 1) Snow White In the Grimm telling, Snow White's mother was sewing one day when she pricked her finger with a needle. As the blood fell onto the snow below the window, she prayed for a child with lips as red as blood, hair as black as crows, and skin as white as snow. The Queen dies soon after the child is born and the King takes a second wife. The Stepmother becomes the evil queen when her magic mirr...

So I've been playing a lot of Kingdoms of Amalur Reckoning lately. It's an old game and I'm behind. I am a failure to gamers everywhere. I know. With this small confession aside, here is my list of the most annoying enemies so far. 1. Sprites Allow me to introduce the humble sprite. Kind of cute in a "I'm more likely to eviscerate you and eat your innards than say hi" kind of way. Just me? These annoying little buggers normally come in groups of at least three, and often include Storm, Fire, and Ice Champions. AKA they use magic to wreck your life while their regular buddies (see above), are using their claws and tail to cause an annoying amount of damage. As I've gone farther in the game, the groups get bigger or they randomly spawn...while I'm running away from an Ettin. Not cool. 2. Venom Spitters I hate. HATE. Spiders. I understand they are important to the ecosystem and they can live happily outside my house. Except for these ones and ...

Happy New Year!!!! Congratulations, my lovelies, you have survived 2017. Good job! I'm so glad you're still here today. May 2018 give you all the blessings you deserve. 2018 potentially holds a lot of big stuff for me, but we will have to see. I was blessed with an awesome holiday season and came out on the other side a few pounds heavier (probably) with new determination and new games/movies/books. :D If you've been following my YouTube channel, then my TBR for January is old news to you, but if you haven't been then what are you waiting for. ;) In January, my TBR is the first five books of the OZ series by L. Frank Baum. I got an awesome omnibus with the first five novels from Barnes and Noble last year for close to $8, and have yet to read it. These will be the first five books and a new level in my Choose Your Own Story challenge. (For more information, check out the blog posts or the video down below.) My sixth book this month will hopefully be How the Irish Sa...

Hey guys, I have made a little workbook for you guys to fill out if you are interested in doing the Choose Your Own Story. I've given each level a little quest and left room for you guys to write in your own rewards. The story follows a young adventurer who has to defeat the bosses in a dungeon leading to the dreaded Book Wyrm, and free the kingdom of Literaria. After a brief introduction, you get right down to business taking down bosses in the form of books. After every five books you go up a level. This workbook covers the first four "chambers," or groups of five books that you need to read to get your new title. This goes off of one of those old time RPG or Choose Your Own Adventure stories. For this adventure, you choose your own stories, meaning you choose what books you want to read and set your own time limit. There are seven titles to gain from NOOB to Dragon Lord (a unisex title in Literaria), and seven chambers you have to clear. Set your own goals and I ...

Hey guys and gals, So I've been bullet journaling off and on for a couple of years now, but really decided to recommit this year to just using a bullet journal instead of a bullet journal and a regular planner. A very dear friend of mine got me a beautiful datebook for Yule, which I'll be using mostly as an external future log instead of having one in my journal. I am going to be using the Scribbles that Matter Pro notebook. I got it off Amazon for $15 and I love the feel of the paper. Mine is white, with black and gray bookmarks, black pen loop, and black elastic band. At the beginning of the Scribbles that Matter notebook is the title page with a handy dandy spread to show what date the journal was started. I'm starting mine on the 31st of December as shown below. After the title page is a Key page, already split into two handy columns and the three index pages. In most bullet journals, people create their own, but Scribbles that Matter (and the Leuc...

Hey everyone, Sorry for my disappearance lately. There have been some very rough days starting in November and December. There have been some family issues and we are waiting for some sort of resolution, but I'm hoping everything is finally going the way we need it to for the New Year. This year I have designed my own reading challenge that I'm calling Choose Your Own Story. I don't know about you all, but I have a TBR list a mile long and so I needed a challenge that fit my needs a little better. Here's how it works. There are seven levels based on the number of books read: - NOOB 1 - 5 - Peasant 6-10 - Bard 11-15 - Mage 16-20 - Wizard 21-25 - Sorcerer 26-30 - Dragon Lord 31+ books I've set rewards up for myself corresponding to each level, but feel free to join in with or without rewards. Keep the conversation going in the comments below. I'm working on developing a printable for you guys and I'll be doing a video soon of my set-up in my bul...

Hey guys, I just put up a new video over on my Youtube Channel. https://youtu.be/vhLaNt0MkPA Make sure to check it out and like, subscribe and leave a comment! Mariah

****Hey guys, Mariah here. Sorry for the one post this week. I hurt my back something awful and am trying to get everything caught up now that I have some meds for it. Wish me luck. Anyways, a hearty welcome back to my friend Torin and to all of you for tuning in to another week of "The Witch I Knew on Pleasant Home Road."************** SUNDAY CIDER The faire was on a Sunday in mid-April and it wasn’t until almost a month later that Lilith and I arranged another time to meet, eat, and drink. We’d deliberated for a short while about the day until we decided on a Sunday evening. It was still decently temperate out instead of the scorching southern heat that’s so prominent. I remember not quite being able to find the house but the road I was on was correct: Pleasant Home Road. I’d eventually found the correct place and parked and walked to the door. Unassuming, the door seemed wholesomely easy to approach, unlike other doors with garish knockers or flanked by over-sized ...

**Hey guys, and welcome back! Here is Chapter 2 of  The Witch I Knew. **  DAY DRINKING The day of arrived and I hadn’t heard from her yet. “Typical”, I thought, to which my phone responded, almost with an air of annoyance of the fact I would think that, by chiming in with a text message. T’was her, simply stating that shed be there that day and that she was excited to hang out. “bloody brilliant” I responded. My messages were short and sweet that day because a friend of mine was visiting from out of town and we were meeting another of my friends at her house to pick her up for the faire that day. My friend (who’ll be referred to as Widgen, her cat, also affectionately referred to as her tiny crack-head) was visiting from out of town and was on a road trip of her own and had stopped in my town to take part in my hospitality for a grand few days. Widgen, like Lilith, was average height by my standards with dirty blonde hair that was a mix of wavy and curly that dan...

In September, I received an Advanced Reader Copy of a book that was about to be published for the first time here in the United States. The book was  Podkin One-Ear, by Kieran Larwood (Clarion Books, September 2017). Originally, released in the UK about this time last year, the book has finally reached America's shores and bookshelves.  Set in a world, where rabbits are the predominant species and have evolved not only the ability to speak, but have divided themselves into clans. Each clan has a burrow akin to the castles in medieval stories, which acts as the central point for the surrounding areas. The book follows the adventures, heartache, and coming of age of three siblings, children of the Chief of their clan. The second eldest, and heir apparent, is Podkin, who is completely happy in his role as a spoiled prince. He, his elder sister, and their baby brother are forced from their home after a clan of rabbits known as the Gorm attack. The rest of the story follows thes...

***Hey guys! Sorry this is up so late, but I promised a guest post and here it is. Please welcome Torin to the blog and enjoy the first chapter of "The Witch I Knew on Pleasant Home Road"!.*********** The Witch I Knew on Pleasant Home Road By all personal accounts, and by my own standards, I live a pretty mundane life. I, like everyone, enjoy the exciting excursion now and then. A friend recently told me I lead a “unique life”. In that regard I suppose its just in the colour paint we use on the canvas that is our life that makes it “unique” to some and “mundane” to others. To myself my particular painting is, perhaps, dull? To others it seems vibrant. *writer’s note: at this point I had originally droned on for about a paragraph about the differences in colour and the particular ‘swatches’ we use for our individual paintings (yes, I used that word) but I felt it wouldn’t be prominent to this particular post so I’ll just continue *shrugs violently** In my attem...

Hey guys, What a wild ride. You would not believe the amount of stuff that has happened in the past few months and I won't bore you with it. Long story short. My new place is full of boxes and is 3000 miles away from where I last wrote to you. It's been a rough few months, but I finally am starting to get settled in. On that note. There are a couple of things you can look forward to here on the blog and on the YouTube channel. First things first. There's going to be an awesome review of a new book that hasn't even been published yet! We also have a new series coming out written by my friend, Torin. He'll be guest posting once a week until the series is finished. Torin's been working really hard on the first few posts, so stay tuned for that every other Friday (starting this Friday). Over on the YouTube, we're going to have some more playthroughs, some TBR lists, some geeky crafts, and more as I get settled in. New videos will be posted the first weeken...

Hey everyone, So remember forever ago when i said I was going to start a YouTube channel and then I failed miserably at doing that because life was making me cry and beg for mercy? Well I told life I was gonna do what I want (and got rid of a lot of toxic people and relationships) and conquered my fears with a mighty roar....or a sip of coffee and glare. And..... I STARTED MY CHANNEL. Yup...look me up: Mariah Macomb. There are two videos currently and I couldn't be more excited to keep going. I release one every weekend, so far there is a book haul and a playthrough of the first three levels of Rayman Legends. So there's that? Who are some of your favorite YouTubers and what would you like to see on my video?

Hey everyone! I recently subscribed to a relatively new subscription box called MerLady. It offers mermaid themed goodies valued between $45-60 for about $35 a month. I adore this box. Keep reading for an unboxing of the goodies involved in this month's theme Bohemian Merbabe. Look at that logo. Be still my heart....and open the box!  After you open the box, there is a handy list of everything in the box with the value and the vendor. Some of these items can be bought on the Merlady website, and similar items can be bought at the vendors listed. This was everything in my box. We'll go through each one of these items below. Starting with....  The Jewel Soaps! There are three little soaps: an emerald, an opal, and an amethyst. I loved how vibrant these were and how they go with the mermaid theme. They go great in my ship-wreck themed upstairs.  This makeup pouch now goes everywhere with me holding my pens and important paperwork. It's about 6 inches by 9 ...