What I Learned Recently:

That I am the only person who reads my blog who likes to solve cryptograms.

Very well, have it your own way. Anyone want to try some trivia? Read one question at a time and see how many questions it takes you to guess the correct answer (who "Miami Flower" is).

1. He is male.



2. He is an actor.



3. He dropped out of high school when he was my age.



4. He is exactly ten months and one day older than Lisa A.



5. He's broken his back, his ribs, his nose, both his legs, his arm, his wrist, a finger and a toe, and cracked his skull three times.



6. His favorite "football" team is Manchester United.



7. His newest movie was recently mentioned on one of the blogs in Derrick's list.



8. He has four initials, and the last three are JBB.



9. In his first major movie, his hair color was light blonde instead of its natural brown.



10. He has acted as the Trojan prince of Greek literature to whom Aphrodite gave the (already married) most beautiful woman in the world (I think her name was Helen, but I haven't read the Iliad in a couple years) as a wife.



11. His most-repeated line at my house is probably, "A diversion."



12. He has acted in LOTR, POTC, and KOH.



13. The "Flower" part of his "codename" is meant to be considered a verb.



14. His costars include Viggo Mortenson, Elijah Wood, Keira Knightley, Johnny Depp, and Kirsten Dunst.



15. He is excellent at archery.



16. He likes to snowboard, and in his movies he also shield-boards and trunk-boards.



15. He is.....(comment and leave the answer if you know)!!

More on Miami Flower

For all you devoted fans who have been positively dying to know the answer to my little name game in a previous post, I will give you one more chance to try to figure it out. The coded name is "Miami Flower." I thought about just giving the answer outright, but I decided to put it in cryptogram format instead. If nobody gets it in a few days, I'll give a couple easy trivia questions.

OLX WXDVKR PR IJXVOPKR, KDQTRSK AQKKC, VOTDDXS TV QXUKQTV PR OLX QKDS KY OLX DPRUV ODPQKUM.

I won't be terribly surprised if nobody tries to figure this out, but cryptograms are my favorite kind of puzzle to solve, and probably the easiest to create as well. So, even if nobody else does anything with this, I had fun anyway.

If anybody has never played a cryptogram and wants to give it a try, here are some instructions with a couple tips.

From Sickness to Doctors' Offices to Money to Games to Movies to Stupidity

In case you were wondering why I haven't posted in so long, it's because I've been sick with a cold. Actually, that's a lousy excuse because I have used the internet a good amount anyway. On the other hand, I've had less energy and I've gone to bed a wee bit earlier on average. So the excuse is good enough.

A couple interesting things have happened to me this week. One was on Wednesday, I think. Mama took Ryan to the doctor for a physical, and while she was there she realized she had forgotten his insurance card. She called me up and told me to bring it, so I did. I followed her directions to the doctor's office. I think the office was new or something because it wasn't marked, but Mama's car was there so I went in anyway. I walked in and found two nurses there working on unloading some cardboard boxes. I told them I was looking for Dr. T., and one of the nurses smiled knowingly.

"Are you looking for your brother? He's here in the back with your mom. Here, follow me." I followed her into the waiting room and into the back. As we were walking through, the nurse waved her hand in the direction of a young girl who was sitting on one of the chairs. "There's Elektra."

I was a bit startled. Who in the world was Elektra? Why did the nurse think I would know any such person? I didn't know what to say, so I said nothing and just followed.

The nurse led me through a series of halls until she came to a certain examination room. She knocked on the door and opened it. I had never seen the people in there before in my life, and apparently they had never seen me. The bewilderment on all of our faces must have convinced the nurse of her mistake, for she closed the door without anyone speaking a word and asked me apologetically whom I was looking for. I told her, and the whole affair was settled in a matter of seconds, but it was pretty funny in the meantime.

The second thing that happened to me was of a bit of a different nature. I was looking at an small book of poetry I had gotten for Christmas from my grandfather, and after reading it for about ten minutes, I decided I wanted to find out when it had been written. I opened up to the beginning of the book to find the copyright date. Lo and behold, what should fall out but $20.00 in cash and a coupon book to Dunkin Donuts from the Brights! Needless to say, my afternoon was made.

I have been feeling better over the past day and a half than I had been for most of the week (which is good because I am doing music in church tomorrow morning). This is very fortunate considering I stayed up to midnight last night (that is why I said earlier "going to bed earlier on average" instead of making a universal statement; although, last night might have made the average the same as before. But I don't feel like doing math on my free time, so I'll just leave it at that.) Why did I stay up until midnight? Playing.....CRANIUM TURBO!!! I had so much fun despite losing by half a turn. Ryan, Kayla (who is here for the weekend) and I made one team, and Daddy, Mama, and Cara made the other. One of the best parts for me was trying to act out "Winter Olympics" in chirades and hearing Kayla and Ryan shouting, "Luge! No, figure skating! Speed skating! Skiing! Oh what's it called...the skiing where you turn fast... Oh, now it's snowboarding!" They got it, but now until after the timer ran out. We WOULD have won otherwise. Actually, there are more than a dozen things that would have made the outcome different, but I don't really care. It's the fun and the resulting memories that really count.

I watched The Truman Show for the first time today. I really enjoyed it for the most part. It was interesting to think over the movie when it was over and put together the pieces that didn't really make sense during the course of the film. I liked Jim Carrey's acting in it a lot. The Truman Show is definitely one of my top three movies with that actor in them. This is a joke because I have only seen three movies with him in them. Haha. Very funny, huh? I think I'm getting tired.