We've been having a wonderful time at Cape Cod! The weather could not be better, the place is perfect, and, best of all, literally everyone has been having a good time. We took a lovely family walk on the beach yesterday in the evening, and I got some great pictures. Want to see them? Good!
....and other subjects. Such as....
Cape Cod! We are currently vacationing in that wonderful place. The weather was nice today, the trip went well, and our place is lovely. The biggest surprise is that our house has wireless high-speed internet! Therefore, I can post pictures without waiting for an eternity!
I haven't taken any really good pictures yet, but here are a couple to start with.
I have been reading "Uncle Tom's Cabin" recently, and although I have been enjoying it to an extent, there are certain little things in Harriet Stowe's writing style that annoy me. Unfortunately, I am neither analytical enough to figure out what elements in her book bother me nor eloquent enough to write down why they bother me. However, this passage describing a girl "between five and six years of age" might be a bit of a help:
Her form was the perfection of childish beauty, without its usual chubbiness and squareness of outline. There was about it an undulating and aerial grace, such as one might dream of for some mythic and allegorical being. Her face was remarkable less for its perfect beauty of feature than for a singular and dreamy earnestness of expression, which made the ideal start when they looked at her, and by which the dullest and most literal were impressed, without exactly knowing why. The shape of her head and the turn of her neck and bust was peculiarly noble, and the long golden-brown hair that floated like a cloud around it, the deep spiritual gravity of her violet blue eyes, shaded by heavy fringes of brown,--all marked her out from other children, and made every one turn and look after her, as she glided hither and thither on the boat.
Over the past several weeks, I have begun to regard white-tailed deer less as elusive beasts of unparalleled grace and beauty and more as hazardous beasts of alarming ubiquitousness. I don't know if there has been a spike in the deer population in southern New Hampshire or if I've just had a change of fortune, but the number of my encounters with these Odocoileus virginiana has increased more than exponentially. In my first year of having my license I did not see a single deer while I was driving. I'll admit that I saw one while driving before I got my license, but that was with my driver's ed teacher and it was snowing, so I was already going about ten miles per hour.
By April of this year, I had been driving for nearly twenty months and had not seen more than one or two deer. All that was about to change.
I returned from Italy with Daddy and Ben on April 5th. Ben spent several days at my house, and the following Friday we set out for Fairwood, where Ben would rendezvous with his mom. (I know I already told this story, so I'll be brief.) On the way, we narrowly missed hitting a moose - I had to swerve violently to avoid a collision. Then three deer crossed the road ahead of us. I didn't have to brake, but they still were there. Coming home several hours later. I had to slow to a stop for a group of at least five deer on Chestnut Hill.
This was all pretty surprising to me. I hadn't seen any deer in ages, and then to see nine in one night? Pretty weird.
But it wasn't the end.
Some time later, some night in the middle of May, Cara and I went to pick up Kayla from the airport. On the way I saw a deer cross the road ahead. I didn't have to brake.
Then, after the May Feast, I was bringing Bria back to Fairwood from a break and I had to brake pretty firmly to avoid smashing into another deer. It was pretty intense.
Today, as I was taking Sandford Surveying's Nissan Pathfinder to the gas station to refuel it, a deer sprinted directly across the road in front of me at breakneck speed. Actually, any slower speed would truly have been "breakneck", as I would not have been able to avoid hitting it. As it was, I had to brake pretty severely.
As the night goes on, I find the various encounters I have had all blurring together into a few foggy memories. Most of my deer-sightings have taken place on one of two roads - Joppa Hill and Bedford, for those of you who know the area - and I think I am starting to mix everything up in my head. Nevertheless, I counted earlier and found that I have seen a bare minimum of 14 deer (including the moose) in less than two months!
Now that's just scary.
When we were in Pisa, Daddy wanted to make a ton of trick shots. I didn't really want to very much, but we did anyway and some of them came out pretty good. Just to prove that we weren't being original, however, I snapped a couple shots of the multitudes of other like-minded tourists.
I can't think of much to say, but I want to say something so here something is.
I went to see "The Importance of Being Earnest" today at the high school where my cousin Chad is a teacher. He directed the play, and I am happy to say I enjoyed it thoroughly. My biggest complaint was that, although the sound guys had the "Imp. of Be. Ear." movie soundtrack on, they never played more than between an quarter and a third of the "Western Wind.." song. (The one with Colin Firth and Rupert Everett singing a duet.) I really love the play itself, though. Oscar Wilde's wit is timeless.
Tomorrow promises to be a busy day. Mama is going to Florida to spend a weekend with her sister and brother-in-law, and I have a piano lesson. Also, I have Friday cleaning, school, and innumerable chores. (Well, obviously they're not exactly innumerable in every sense of the word; I'm just trying to imply many chores. I suppose I could have just said that and saved myself much blog space, but who cares? It's free!)
I would have posted recently if it weren't for several different circumstances. First, I couldn't get blogger to upload my pictures for some reason or other (at least, it was taking too long). Second, instead of posting last night, I spent hours and hours trying to get a networked game going among my computer, Cara's laptop, and Mama's laptop. Alas, I had no success. Instead I wasted four hours getting more and more frustrated. I had a good network connection going, and I could transfer files easily from one computer to the other, but the games would not connect. What made it worse is that it started to at the beginning, and then just stopped altogether. Therefore I spent at least three hours just trying to get it back to what it had been when I started, and I didn't know what I had changed. In fact, I still don't. Ah, the joys and sorrows of computers.
Yesterday, Mama took our two cats, Schooner and Ketch, down to Connecticut to bring them to an Animal Rescue League. The local ARL makes you pay $70 per animal that you drop off, so Mama decided to take them to CT since she could visit her mom and drop off the cats for free. The reason we were getting rid of them? Allergies. Mama thinks Ryan is allergic to cats, since he is definitely allergic to something and it doesn't seem to be food.
Mama left the house around 9:30 AM with the cats. She brought them both in one small carrier since that was all we had. They were quite snug, but they seemed to be content. Mama met her mom at her house (I think, but it's irrelevant anyway) and they drove to the ARL together. The first thing Mama noticed when she entered the place was that it smelled. It smelled of ANIMALS!!! That gave her a bad impression. Then the person in charge showed her where the cats are kept. They were all let loose in a large room because "they're happier that way." Then Mama heard that in the basement there were 92 cats that had been taken from the house of some old lady who had dead cats in her freezer. This was too much. She burst into tears and brought the cats home. So if you were dreadfully saddened that our cats were gone, take heart: they're not gone yet.
I am going to take an SAT tomorrow (Saturday) morning at 7:45. Wish me luck!
...on a bottle of 'Bragg Liquid Aminos' (aka healthfood soy sauce): 'Try the Bragg healthy lifestyle: Vital living to age 120!!!!'
Ummm, yes. And everyone who doesn't follow this diet will live trivially for the rest of their lives.
