My Last Post of 2007

I'm not exactly sure what this post will be about, but as the clock ticks toward the end of my Christmas break, and the end of my continuous access to Verizon FIOS, I feel that any failure to post would be a waste of opportunity. Furthermore, I've finally gotten back into reading David Copperfield after a woefully long period of reading nothing at all, and there's something about Dickens that inspires me to put my fingers to the keyboard and write away, [Merrill].

Maybe I should just talk about Dickens. Basically, I love him. He has such an amazing way with words! His characters are so colorful and enjoyable, and he conveys David's thoughts in such a clear and insightful, yet amusing, way. There's a tremendous thrill of satisfaction that comes from reading about Aunt Betsey Trotwood telling Uriah Heep to act like an eel if that's what he is, but otherwise to control his body. (At least, I personally was tremendously satisfied by that line, for it expressed precisely what I would have wished to say to that loathsome creature, had I the privilege of being one of the novel's characters.)

Even the most minor characters in the book have such depth. Mrs. Crupps, for example, is only David's landlady; yet her manipulative hypochondria, her careless attitude towards her duties to her tenant, her repeated use of the phrase, "I'm a mother, myself," her infantile habit of placing pitchers on the stairs in a vain plot to break Peggotty's legs, and myriads of other little, almost unnoticeable traits and idiosyncrasies make her into more than just some uninteresting foil. She, along with all the other personalities in the book (and they are many), is so alive that the story becomes alive itself. I have no trouble seeing why David Copperfield is one of the world's greatest classics.

In other news, we broke the December snow record. (I'm not sure why I say "we," since neither I nor any other human had anything to do with it, but I cannot think of an alternative that will leave the sentence in active tense.) I don't know any specific numbers for the amount of precipitation in my town, but Concord exceeded 1876's 43-inch record just this morning. Last year, we had 1.8 inches, according to the website I consulted, but I don't even remember getting that much. It would appear that all the snow last December deserved was donated to this year's December on top of a normal amount as a kind of consolation prize for the month that really ought to be white.

I can hardly believe that 2008 is now less than thirty minutes away. It will be interesting to see how long it takes me to get used to the new number. I don't think it should be hard: I hate writing 7's, and "2008" has fewer syllables than "2007" anyway. Pitiful though it may seem, I think I'm going to head to bed now, just minutes before the calender changes. I am quite tired, and there will be plenty of 2008 to enjoy come tomorrow (and the following 365 days).

EDIT: I got distracted and stayed up after all. It's now 2007 2008!!!

Happy New Year, everyone!

Life's Frenzied Course

Some of you may be interested to know why I so rarely blog. Others may wonder what my day is like at Bible school. I will now attempt to kill two birds with one stone, as it were, and satisfy everyone's curiosity. This is an outline of a typical school day at Bible school, with stories thrown in here and there. Please enjoy. I put a lot of time into it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I generally get up around 6:30. Mornings are usually the hardest time of my day, partially because that's when I want to be in bed the most and partly because my blankets are really warm and soft. Also, I have a tendency to stay up late working on one of the many projects and skills I have set as goals to work on (including, but not limited to, composing music, working on the school website, reading a book from my lengthy book list, and...um...sharpening my Minesweeper skills). Despite the hardship, however, I arouse myself as best I can, do my devotions, and get dressed just in time for the 7:30 deadline: work meeting.

Work meeting takes about fifteen minutes. We get assigned our morning jobs (things like cleaning the dorm, taking the trash, and random small jobs like raking leaves) and pray over the day. If we finish before the breakfast bell rings, I sometimes play the piano for a while.

After breakfast and chores, there are fifteen minutes before the nine o'clock meeting. There's not a lot to say about that time, other than that there is always a really good message and that, if it's Wednesday, I play the piano for the songs (Jane T. plays on Mondays, and the rest of the time it's usually either Mr. T. M., Craig, or Aunt Elaine).

Class is the next thing on the agenda, and boy do I have a thing or two to say about class! First of all, I really enjoy it, as I mentioned in a previous post. There is so much to learn, and, with this group, it's often easy to have a great time doing it.

My first class of any significant length was “A Harmony of the Four Gospels,” presented by Professor Dan. That class was just the first-year students together, and we had a lot of fun. The most memorable time of the whole class was when we had an SMD, or something like that: a Student Moderated Debate. We, the seven first-years, were given a couple questions on a sheet of paper and told to discuss them on our own. We were to debate on the meaning and symbolism of the parable of the ten virgins and on the meaning and application of the parable of the talents. Fifteen minutes was the time limit for the whole thing. Well, never having come to an agreement on the meaning of the oil, we didn't get very far with the application. We were enjoying ourselves so much that we didn't notice the time, and class was over before we were halfway through the discussion. We continued it on the way to – and throughout – our lunch.

Late in November, I finished my next class: Acts and the Epistles of Paul (aka Paul's Life and Letters). Mr. M. taught that class, and I enjoyed it (surprise!). The ENTIRE student body took this class at once!!! Well, almost the entire student body: we were never actually all there at once, due to sickness and traveling. Still, the vast, vast, vast majority of us usually made it. Which leads me to point out that the entire student body of the school numbers sixteen. Which leads me to point out that it's quality – not quantity – that counts.

Throughout the year, some of the students try to keep a record of the more humorous and/or interesting quotes. Interestingly, most of the ones I've written down have come from the A & E of P (P's L & L) class. For example, when Mr. M. was teaching us about the dead in Christ rising first (I Thes. 4:16), he described it thus: “There will be a great shout, the archangel will cry out, and the trumpet will sound, and pop poppity, pop pop pop, the dead in Christ will rise!” And when he was describing someone who was new at something (whether a biblical character or a former student I can't recall), he said he “had some green stuff behind the ears,” presumably meaning that he was green and a little wet behind the ears.

The last class we had before Christmas break was Beulahology (the study of Israel) under my very own cousin Craig. It was a fantastic class, and I now know so much more about the Holy Land. For example, the study of it is the chapstick of the soul.

Some background is needed here. When Ethan from RI (mentioned in just a couple paragraphs in more detail) was at the school for a weekend, he showed the guys a video of Andrea making an extemporaneous speech about lessons from Napoleon Dynamite. It's a tremendously humorous clip, and you should watch it some time; but the long of the short of it was that ND teaches the importance of chapstick, which can represent the chapstick of the soul. Now, Andrea was cut off before she could explain what the “chapstick of the soul” was, but Craig took the opportunity in his class to explain that it was the study of Beulah! I never would have guessed it. Of course, knowing the origin of the term, the guys all laughed uproariously. The girls tittered politely and looked with querying gazes to the other side of the room. We explained later.

Beulahology wasn't all fun and games, though. I really did learn a lot. I know what the Cardo is, and that there's a menorah there. I know that Petra was carved from rock and was the site of Indiana Jones: the Last Crusade. I know that En-Gedi means the Spring of the Wild Goats, and that it flows into the Dead Sea (but nothing flows out). I know the regions of the land, the major cities, and oh so much more! If only my teacher knew about my blog so he could see how much I know!

Back to the schedule...

After class and lunch comes afternoon work. That can be anything from raking leaves to chopping wood to installing sinks to making apple cider to painting trim to washing windows. My favorite assignment I've had yet this year was when Ben and I had to crawl around under the men's dorm installing a venting system for the dorm dryer. The aria “The People That Walked In Darkness” from Handel's Messiah went around in my head nearly the entire time.

Although crawling around with a headlamp in a two-foot tall room singing an oratorio was fun, the most memorable work time came another time. My friend Ethan from RI stayed an extra day after the youth weekend in early November, and he, Ben, Stephen, Andrew, and I were assigned to do a lot of leaf raking and hauling. Leaf raking is a fun job because you can work super hard for ten minutes and then goof off in the leaves for a bit before you get a nice quiet tractor ride up to the Designated Leaf Dumping Area; plus, you can talk while you work, and when you have a different friend than usual helping you, it makes the time even better. We whipped up several enormous piles of leaves by the apartment building and then got some awesome pictures and movies of ourselves jumping into them.

Then we moved to the lodge, and the fun only increased. The lodge is designed much like a two-story motel, with an outdoor staircase to the second level. We piled up a tremendous amount of fallen foliage near the stairs. Can you see where this is leading? Ethan was, I think, the first to jump off the staircase railing into the leaf pile. It was a perilous feat. Gritting my teeth with anxiety, I stood watching as he cautiously climbed the precipitous rail, evoking memories of an audacious Anne Shirley walking the ridgepole of the roof. I knew it wasn't 100% safe, but I also knew that Ethan wasn't stupid; or was he?



Suddenly, with a great cry, he vaulted himself into the air, cleared the hedge, and whoosh! Landed safe and sound in the pile. (Did you like my deceptive foreshadowing?) Stephen quickly followed, and then Ben, then Ethan again. Finally it was my turn. Now, for those of you who don't know, I would not exactly call myself an acrophobe, but I do have this...er...hesitation to throw myself from heights that are anything other than diminutive. I don't like rope swings, I (presumably) don't like sky-diving, and I don't like the idea of jumping off railings. I spent all of two minutes gathering my stupid nerve, but finally I took the plunge. To my relief (if not to my surprise), I didn't kill or even hurt myself. But to my embarrassment, I instinctively plugged my nose. I just lay in the pile of leaves laughing at myself for a minute or two. At least it made a good picture.



One of the easiest things to do during work time is radio. Fairwood has its own low-power radio station, and five guys a week get to sign up to run it for an hour of work time. It can be really enjoyable to sit and listen to classical music, turning on the microphone every so often to say, “Good afternoon, and thank you for listening. You just heard Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 in B flat minor, performed by Van Cliburn. Now we are going to listen to Isaac Stern play Humoresque no. 7 in G flat major, by Dvorák.” What is not so enjoyable is when you find that you left the microphone on during the song, and repeated those sentences over and over, practicing for when the song did end; and when you reach for the microphone switch to turn it on, you find that it was on in the first place and that you had been talking throughout much of a nine-minute piece of music. Not that that ever happened to me or anything...

Dinner generally comes after work, and after that is generally free time, which I generally use up by practicing the piano. The big exception to all these generalities is Thursday, when we have no dinner after work because there is no work. We have a few extra meetings in the early afternoon and then have an early dinner, followed by HOURS of free time. This time slot is when most of the students opt to go on the town trip to Keene to get whatever they need at Wal-Mart, Target, the bank, the grocery store, etc. This time slot is when I usually choose to remain at home and bask in the quietness and the lack of other things to do. I am the sort who is easily drawn out of reading or studying to sit around talking, and when there's no one to talk to it's so much easier to make progress on the things that are, in the long run, more productive.

With the exception of Thursdays, the only real variations of the schedule come in the evening. Monday evening we study; Tuesday we have sports; Wednesday we have “heart group,” Thursday we study, and Friday we relax and bask in the Sabbath peace.

The end.

Snow and Ice

All I Want for Christmas...

...is a roof that doesn't leak!

If you have tears, prepare to shed them now. Since writing that first sentence I have spent half an hour in the dripping cold because my wish was not granted. At least not yet. Of course, Christmas is still twenty-three hours and forty-three minutes away as I type, so I can't complain too much for just a LITTLE bit longer.

But seriously folks, this leaking business has been pretty extreme over the past couple days. It started in the addition, where we had to cut a hole in the ceiling to let out the rivulets freely flowing through the insulation over our heads. ("We" are my dad.) There was a pretty bad ice dam on the rook, so "we" shoveled it off and I went to town in treacherous weather to get us some Potassium Chloride (or something like that, a.k.a. ice melting granules) from Aubuchon Hardware. Daddy and I (but mostly Daddy) have sprinkled the stuff on the gutters by the addition several times, and most of the leaking there is taken care of. Just in time for tonight....

As those of you in New Hampshire already know, it's relatively warm and quite rainy this evening in the Granite State. While this is good for our skating prospects (which excites me to no end), it is only the silver lining to a very, very dark cloud.

This seemingly harmless, gentle drizzle combined with the rising temperatures have sent gallons of water sloshing down our various roofs. With our gutters full of ice, we somehow ended up with leaks in our basement and laundry room. More shoveling and sprinkling of chemicals (by "us," of course) ensued.

Lest you think I was lazy, a certain influential member of my family would not allow me - or anyone else in the family except my dad, for that matter - onto the roof. I mostly shoveled the deck, found flashlights and chemicals, and emptied buckets.

Right now I don't know of any more leaking going on, thank God, but you can feel sorry for us all the same.

O! now you weep, and I perceive you feel
The dint of pity; these are gracious drops.
Kind souls, what, weep you when you but behold
Our [household]'s vesture wounded?

Glad to hear it.

Quotes from Julius Caesar

Snow: Good or Bad?

& OTHER VITAL SUBJECTS

I no longer press the "New Post" button on the Blogger Dashboard with the same freeness or frequency as I once did. That's a fact. Looking back, I am amazed by how much more rarely I undertake that nudge of the index finger. My blog used to be my LIFE! Now I'm a typical Bible school blogger: I post every couple of months. Or not. But I'm here now, anyway. And since I told myself I wouldn't indulge my habit of writing about how rarely I write, I will now cease to break my self-promises.

I actually did write a LOOOOONG post over Thanksgiving break: "A Day in the Life of a Bible School Student." I had fun writing it, and I think it could be interesting, but I lost my inspiration after writing for HOURS (don't worry, I'm a slow writer) and still having a number of paragraphs to go. I'll finish it later, but I decided recently that working on the same monolithic post forever and failing to actually PUBLISH anything was anything but productive.

There I go again. Writing about how I never write. It's an addiction, I tell you! On to something else:

This is a risky subject, because nearly everyone who still blogs at ALL and who lives in the glorious New England area has already said something about it. But risks are to be taken, and now is as good a time as any.

Snow. There is a LOT of it. So far, to my recollection, we've had three large snowstorms in New Hampshire. It may have been four or five, really, but certainly a minimum of three. And theses are no light dustings either. Mais non, mes amis: we're talking about the clouds dumping DECIMETERS at a time! Is this a good thing or a bad thing? That is the question.

The bad thing is that driving has been made far more difficult than it ever was last December (remember how we had no snow at ALL last December?). I've finished my shopping, fortunately, but not without my fair share of sliding about on the roads between stores. Right now I'm at Grandpa's, on the top of the famed Hill of Chestnuts, and that hill is not a hill for the light of heart right now. No sirree! It was all I could do to get to the top, and it was almost more than I could do to get up my grandfather's driveway! I actually had to get out and - get this - SHOVEL!

Speaking of driveways, my family's driveway is not really for the faint of heart right now either. Nor is it for the poor in driving skills, however stout the condition of their hearts may be. To successfully reach the S. abode, one must first back into the park across the road and then accelerate forward like Jehu. You see, a running start is unarguably necessary in order to reach the top of the first hill; one cannot get sufficient momentum turning into the driveway from the road.

EDIT: I managed it without using the park this morning, but LAST NIGHT it was impossible, and it still may be with some cars.

The rest of the operation is pretty straightforward: drive like Jehu the rest of the way, too. Once you get the hang of it, it's wicked fun. Some cars slide more than others, and those are the best, but even with AWD and snow tires it's great to have any excuse to drive in a manner that would be reckless any other time of year.

(This is not meant to imply that I am ever reckless. I am a cautious soul to the very core of my being.)

Snow also means shoveling. Lots of shoveling. And snowblowing. And leaky roofs. It is, in short, a maintenance nightmare, at least when so much comes at once. I was lucky in that I was sick for most of this last storm, which exempted me from manual labor, but now I'm on the mend and the snow's still coming down. Shoveling is starting to look like a part of life.

I must note here that I do not abhor shoveling, really. It's good exercise, and that means it's good for keeping warm despite the cold. It is also productive exercise, which I far prefer to "unproductive exercise": push-ups, treadmills... basically any exercise for exercise' sake. Shoveling, on the other hand builds your muscle and gets other stuff done at the same time. It's just hard to break the psychological barrier. You know, the voice that says, "You are warm and cozy inside. It's cold and uncozy outside. Cuddle up, be warm. Make yourself happy. That's it. You don't want to spoil the beauty of the undisturbed landscape, do you? So what if no one can get to your house? They should stay inside too; inside where it's warrrrrm, warrrrrrm, warrrrr...."

Yeah. That voice.

Now for the positive sides of the snow: beauty, Christmas spirit, and snowballs. That pretty much sums it up. No explanation needed.

Conclusion:
Snow is good. Snow is fun. Snow is beautiful. However, I believe we now have enough to last us until January at least. Meteorologists, take note.

I Lied.

Yesterday, at our annual family Thanksgiving banquet (even "feast" is too benign a word for the comestibles procured each fourth Thursday of November by and for the S. clan. To paraphrase one cousin in attendance, "Every year, the food is so good that we're never surprised when it turns out amazing.") - OK, that parenthetical note really was a bit too long. If you kept beginning of the sentence in mind throughout those two sentences, I am impressed. I was saying that yesterday, at out annual family Thanksgiving banquet, I told someone that I was not working on any project for school. I meant it at the time but remembered today that I did indeed have an assignment: a Christmas slide show. I worked on that aaaaaaaaall day.

The reason I'm telling you this is that, had I not been tied up aaaall day, I would have written a similar post earlier, thus satisfying the inevitably painful cravings of the more voracious of my readers.

Ahem.

It's hard to believe how long it has been since last I took up my keyboard and updated the world as to my goings on. So much has happened in the last three months that I will not even try to tell it to you all. Even if I were willing to write it all out, I doubt any but the most patient and focused would read it. Having decided, therefore, to be selective in my writing, I will now proceed.

First of all, for those of you who don't know (whom I imagine to be very few, but who should not therefore be ignored), I am attending a Bible school in western NH. To use my memorized description, "It is a small non-accredited Bible college near Keene, NH." I love it. Several of my best friends are there with me in the same year, the classes are interesting, and even the work is sometimes fun (gasp!). I've really enjoyed contemplating the Bible more deeply than I had before. So far my class has covered the Gospels, Acts, and the Epistles of Paul. The teachers have repeatedly stressed that we were just skimming the surface, but even skimming the surface of the meaning of the Bible yields so much good!

Well, now is the time when I reveal how much of a surprise post this really is: I'm not going to say any more!!! Often when I talk about not writing much is when I end up disserting and haranguing - in short, writing much. But not this time, boy howdy! I've got lots of stories jumbled about in my brain that I may try to transcribe over the rest of the weekend (no promises, though), but for now I'm going to give my eyes and fingers a break.

First, though, allow me to wish you a happy Christmas season (is it really here?!), just in case my next blogging hiatus is as long as the last...

P.s. Here's a little music video I made a while ago when Kimberly said something about guys in the dorm making music videos. I ended up being the only one really in it, but Ben did the camera work. Perhaps someday I will manage to rope some of my other dormfellows into a more elaborate production, but for now I trust you enjoy what I am able to offer on my own.

Willful Misinterpretation

Yesterday I did a LOT of driving. Daddy sailed with a couple friends from Portsmouth to S. Darthmouth, MA, on his friend's boat. I'll call the friends Abner (the boat's owner) and Frank (Abner's friend) simply because it can be so much fun to come up with aliases that have some very slight connection to the originals. Anyway, I was supposed to meet them in Dartmouth, drive with them to Portsmouth, and then drive home alone while Daddy followed in his car.

For the sake of fun and convenience, I spent several hours at a friend's house in Rhode Island, a mere half-hour from the marina where Daddy & Co. were to dock. I had a great time there, and my being so near to Daddy's destination enabled him to more accurately estimate when he would need picking up.

Daddy called around eight, and I headed off for Dartmouth with a flair in my shifts (driving a car with a standard transmission's version of walking with a spring in one's step). I came to the marina with very little trouble and was introduced to Abner and Frank.

Abner was (and presumably remains) around fifty-five years of age. I believe he is rather wealthy, but my only supporting evidence is that he owns a $200,000 sailing yacht. As to physical appearance, he reminded me of King Cole, from Wee Sing's immortal classic, King Cole's Party. Those who are familiar with that movie will have a better idea of how he looks than I could probably ever conjure with my own words.

Frank was about ten years Abner's junior. While this may not be entirely fair to him, the movie character that almost immediately jumped to my mind upon seeing him was none other than the infamous toy reseller (Al?) of Toy Story 2 - the one who steals Woody to sell him to a museum in Japan or something crazy and immoral like that. He described himself as part-time massage therapist, part-time chef, and, at one point in the trip, he moaned for about five minutes about serving 220 people "all by himself."

"All alone? Are you serious?" Abner queried with some incredulity.

"Yeah, seriously! I only had four people to peel and cut vegetables, four to serve, two to run the grills, three guys to help set up the tables, and the rest I did all alone! It was ridiculous."

Much of the trip I was rather put off by their conversation, which consisted mostly of bashing policemen and teachers, and which was unfortunately often crude or profane. Daddy changed the subject several times. I tried to absorb myself in my current book, Northanger Abbey, but I could not ignore the steady stream of words from the back seat.

Not all of the conversation was obnoxious, however. The discussion of politics made me laugh quite a bit - even out loud once, although I'm not sure either of the two passengers noticed. This conversation made such a good story that it was actually my impetus for writing this blog post. It all started with Abner talking about the presidential candidates.

"I STILL think that Romney will blow everyone else out of the water!"

"Nah," replied Frank. "Have you seen him up close and personal? He's too much of a slick frat boy."

"Well, I still think he'll win. He's got the most money."

"Yeah, if that's what it comes down to."

"I don't know, I bet Thompson will change things pretty quick," Daddy interjected with a laugh.

"Oh yeah," Frank replied. "Isn't he the guy who isn't really a politician, but acts one?"

Here I put a rare word into the mix: "No, he was a politician before he was an actor." That was probably one of only two or three sentences I spoke the entire journey from Dartmouth to Portsmouth, NH. Abner and Frank probably thought I was a very taciturn individual.

"What's this world coming to when we elect actors for our leaders?" Frank mused. I was going to point out Reagan's magnificently successful presidency, but Frank's next sentence checked me. "Schwarzenegger has been OK, but REAGAN! Reagan was a DISASTER!" Ummm, right.

I don't remember the immediate details that followed in the conversation, but I think Abner was criticizing one of the candidates when Frank replied, "At least he's not from Texas!" He chortled at his joke.

A short pause ensued. Then Abner asked, "Where was Jimmy Carter from?"

"Georgia," Daddy replied.

"That guy - that guy was the most paTHETic president in history!"

"No," Frank replied with meaningful tones, "I don't think HE can hold that title anymore."

Silence once again reigned, but only for a moment. "Yep," countered Abner, "Bill Clinton deserves every bit of that title!"

It was here that I let out an audible, albeit quiet, chuckle.

I think Frank was slightly taken aback. How could his meaning have been so misconstrued? Did anyone in his right mind really believe there could be ANYONE worse than Bush, or was his friend insane? He decided to take things from a different angle.

"Well, maybe things will be different with a new attorney general."

"How so?"

"Well, if someone who's actually interested in JUSTICE gets in there, there are going to be a ton of investigations!"

I'm afraid I don't remember any more of the conversation beyond this point. It may be that some random circumstance, such as the truck that almost ran us off the road, changed the subject back to the rudeness, pride, cruelty, etc., of the nation's police officers ("They all think they're above the law!" "Mmm-hm."). Or it could be that the mention of the justice system turned the conversation to the incompetence of "that court in South Carolina" ("They're all jerks there." "I know: I've BEEN there!"). At any rate, the talk lost my interest, and I decided to learn more of the adventures of Catherine Morland instead. But not before I had had a good laugh.

For Kimberly

In Kimberly's recent post, "You Gotta Love Paul and His Sentences," she suggested writing out the sentence from verses 3-14 of Ephesians 1 "if you're bored someday, or want a challenge." I decided to give it a whirl. Not having done any diagramming in well over a year and a half, I'm not sure I got everything quite right; however, I don't really care. It was a fun late-morning activity, and I present it to you, my audience, now in all its black and white glory:



I'm not sure how much that will make you understand the sentence structure, KJ, but feel free to study it all you like. :)

Someone get a senator on the line, quick!

Washington ought to pass a law against poorly manufactured technology. It causes so much hassle.

On the night of Saturday, August 11, I purchased myself a brand new desktop computer: a Compaq Presario with 2GB of RAM, a DVD-RW DL drive, 250GB of hard drive space, and an AMD Athlon 64 X2 4000+ dual core processor, for those who understand such specifications. It also came with a 19-inch LCD monitor and a printer, and it runs Windows Vista Premium. I like it very much.

Don't worry: I plan to clean my desk this week!!!

As I was adding some of my music to this wonderful new piece of technological equipment Friday morning, I was surprised by the computer crashing.

"That's odd," I thought to myself. "Brand new computers with Windows Vista and such fancy specifications as this computer has are not SUPPOSED to crash, at least not before they've been purchased a full week."

I restarted and continued with my work - at least, I tried to. It was not fifteen minutes before the computer crashed again. In fact, it continued to crash every five to fifteen minutes for the next hour while I ran diagnostic tests of every variety (Compaq desktops with Vista have a LOT of diagnostic programs). Well, I was running a test on the memory in my computer when suddenly - pffft. The whole machine breathed what appeared to be its last and lay lifeless on my desk. No matter how many times I tried to resuscitate it with the power button, all my efforts could elicit were a few mournful beeps. I was sad.

I called the computer hospital (a.k.a. HP support) and explained the situation. (Oh, another law should be keeping Spanish speakers from operating English support lines. I had to ask the support guy to repeat himself so many times that it was not even laughable.) To make a fairly long story short, he figured out that one of my memory cards was bad. I took the bad one out, and voila! The computer roared back to life, and all was well.

All, that is, except for that I now have to wait for a box to arrive; then I have to send my PC's bad memory away; then I have to wait for another box to arrive; then I have to put the new memory into my PC. THEN all will be well. But all this hassle could have been avoided if it were not for POORLY MANUFACTURED TECHNOLOGY!

Judd Gregg? John Sununu? I DEMAND a change!

Oh, and while you're at it, enact a Comprehensive Rebate Reform Bill, please. Thank you.

Sincere Flattery

Have you ever thought about how easy it would be for someone to impersonate you on Blogger? I mean, the sign-in is quite secure and everything, so your blog is safe; but what about your comments? It occurred to me a while ago that anyone can easily impersonate a blogger on comment pages that allow the "other" option. Just look up the impersonatee's profile link, type it into the webpage box, type their display name in the top, and presto! You have a comment that looks completely authentic. So if your best friend comments on your blog to say they hate you, or if someone you admire calls you fat and stupid, or, for that matter, if someone who is usually vehemently nasty says something unequivocally nice, you might want to take it with a grain of salt.

This danger is not limited to Blogger. Did you hear about the lady whose house was put up on Craigslist as having a free moving sale? I think I read about it in World magazine, but it might have been online. Anyway, she came home and found her abode in complete disarray, with most of her belongings AWOL.

Stories like that, combined with good old logic and common sense, have convinced me to take all my comments with ample grains of salt.

For instance, should I receive a comment on this post from Ryan saying something like, "You stupid, fat, bucket of lard! I don't see YOU making any high school Soccer teams! I am so much better than you! Hahaha!" I would not be mad at Ryan because Ryan is too nice to say something so degrading. I would simply think, "Some weirdo is impersonating Ryan on my blog." Then I would sigh and forgive that person because of the wonderful spirit of kindness that is deeply ingrained in my personality.

Self-Analysis

Have you ever felt that your life was monotonous but at the same time not wanted to do anything about it? Have you wanted your room clean but not wanted to clean your room; wished something exciting would happen but not been especially active in bringing anything exciting about; felt that you really should be doing so much more but at the same time felt utterly apathetic? Have you sat for minutes at a time just looking at all the work that surrounds you, knowing that it must soon be accomplished, reminding yourself of the time, and making lists of what else needs to be done, but quietly refusing to apply yourself to the task?

Because that's how I feel right now.

The Wind

Today's weather has been rather too hot and humid for my taste, but as evening approaches, things are starting to cool down and a delicious breeze has picked up. There is almost no sound I prefer to that of the wind rustling the leaves of the trees. Right now especially, it reminds me of the approach of another cool, crisp, beautiful New Hampshire autumn, and that makes me very happy indeed.

They don't make books like they used to...

Strong though the temptation was, I resisted the urge to, once again, entitle my post with some variation of the announcement that I had returned to the blogging world. Saying "I'm back" implies that I have seen the error of my non-blogging ways and am now strenuously striving to mend them. This, however, is not the case. I have returned, but I offer no guarantee that I will remain.

I have not been neglecting my blog through any previous resolution or self-denial. Simply put, I have not recently satisfied the urge to blog because no such urge has existed.

Now, however, is an exception. I miss writing out my thoughts and sharing them, and, rather unexpectedly, I miss writing in general. As a matter of fact, I have rather wanted to write for a week or so, but I have been utterly unable to come up with a good idea for a post. I'm sure many interesting incidents have come my way this summer, but I have lost my habit of viewing every happenstance through the lens of blog-worthiness.

It now amuses me, when I think of it, how much my life once centered on my little web page. My first thought each morning would be, "What can I blog about today?" Every time I could snatch a few minutes between school subjects, I would make a frenzied dash to the computer to make sure I had not missed any new posts on my blog list. And since my days were far busier then, I often stayed up late writing a post or editing a photo since there was no other time I could do it. Describing me as obsessed would not have been far from the truth.

As I have already intimated, obsession with blogs is no longer a fault of mine, whether it was before or not. I have spent most of my summer doing other things. I wrote in my last post about working at Grandpa's, redecorating and renovating his upstairs apartment. That has now been completed, and I have been instead occupying my time with whatever happens to be convenient. I have been reading more, playing the piano more, and working on school some (I still have to finish Calculus).

My expectations for reading over the summer have been rather high. I have often regretted the brevity of the list of books I have read, and this summer seemed the perfect time to lengthen it. Sadly, I had the misfortune to start with a book that I did not enjoy at all: The Last of the Mohicans. I spent nearly all of July with this as my official current book, but I could not bring myself to read more than one or two chapters at a time. Upon analyzing the situation, I decided that I had several good reasons for this hesitation.

1. Few of the characters were likable. In fact, Heyward was the only major one for whom I had any sympathy. Although the Mohicans were described as "bold," "handsome," "noble," and many other favorable adjectives, I found them cold and a bit uncongenial. Hawkeye was simply obnoxious, though not so much as David, the singer ("I have never profaned my lips with any song that was not taken directly from the Holy Psalms."). The girls were not bad, but I felt no connection with either "happy, beautiful Alice" or "somber, noble Cora." Since I certainly could not sympathize with the enemies, I was basically left with a tale of people for whom I cared absolutely nothing.

2. I could not discern an overall plot. I felt as though I were reading a collection of semi-related stories that went through a constant cycle of conflict and resolution. This can be done successfully, I'm sure, but at the end of each chapter I found myself wondering why I kept reading when all the immediate problems had been solved. Perhaps I had not looked for it hard enough through my apathy, but I could not find a connecting plot thread or an overall conflict to bring unity to the book.

I hate to leave books unfinished, since I never get back to them. Case in point: Lord of the Rings. I have not finished that series, despite having seen the movies more than once and read The Hobbit multiple times. I have even read the Silmarillion, but I "took a break" from the main series a quarter of the way through Return of the King and have never stopped that break. Someday I will pick up that volume and read it right through to the end; but until then, it will serve as a warning when ever I want to stop a book partway through. "Remember the Lord of the Rings!"

In this case, however, I permitted an exception. Having logically proven to myself that I could legitimately stop reading a book I was so little enjoying, I switched to Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. That book is incredible! I do not think I exaggerate when I say that it is one of the best-written books I have ever read. I love all the characters: sympathetic or not, they are colorful and interesting. Jane herself is the best of all, with all her various emotions and ideas clearly explained and described. The plot is unified, too, and the descriptions are moving. I consider a book to be very well-written when I find that it makes me at various times angry, amused, worried, excited, and sad. (No, Charlotte Brontë's publisher is not paying me for saying this.) Jane Eyre does all of this, holds my attention, and does not leave me with any sense of regret for how I have spent my time. Long live Jane Eyre!

Back From the Depths of Obscurity

Rejoice, all ye connoisseurs of blogs: I have a sudden urge to thrill you all with a post. Isn't that nice?

I proved to myself today that I am not just an ordinary cook, nor am I just a good one. I am, to be precise, exceptional. How so? I made a recipe BY TASTE! Sauce à fraise d'Aaron, I call it. (That's French for Aaron's strawberry sauce.) Here's what I did: I heated up frozen strawberries with sugar and water, cut the berries up, and continued to heat until the sauce thickened. And guess what, mon ami? It was a success!!!! Je suis un génie, n'est-ce pas?

Oh, yes, I almost forgot: the blueberry pancakes were good, too, boy howdy!

(I'm not sure of the origin of "boy howdy," but I know a bunch of cool people who say it, and I wanted to show that I am cool as well as exceptional.)

Anyhow, cooking has not been my primary pursuit this summer. (Would that it were!) The cold fact is that I have been working, working, working, and not all of it for pay. I have to finish Saxon Calculus by the end of the summer (16 lessons to go), I have to fill out my transcript, and I have to earn money on top of all of that. From this flurry of industry comes my lack of recent posts. I have been slaving, slaving, slaving.

Much as I hate to admit it, I am exaggerating here. Busy I am, but I have not been without my idle moments, nor without my hobby-consumed moments. Blogging takes fourth place in my list of hobbies, so the extra work has had the effect of bumping it off my schedule.

One of the more interesting things I have been doing is redecorating the upstairs apartment at my grandfather's house. I have spent a good amount of time the past week or two painting, sanding, scrubbing, and washing. The bathroom has basically become Cara's and my project, and it needed work desperately. The thing that made it hardest to fix was that the brownish linoleum floor with the geometric patterns did NOT match the yellow and blue tile walls, and the floor and lower walls were not going to be replaced. Along with our knowledgeable-in-graphic-design mother, though, Cara and I managed to work around them. After Cara removed the blue and white wallpaper (which didn't match either) and picked a new paint color, I sanded the bathtub (it was covered with some sort of epoxy to hold the now-removed glass doors), washed wallpaper paste off the walls, primed, reprimed, painted, and repainted. Then, yesterday I spent about six hours on two separate shopping trips, looking for necessary accessories. I bought curtains, curtain rods, shower hooks, shower curtains, trash baskets, and drain plugs, and it was all so much fun. Redecorating can be a very fulfilling activity.

One thing I found amusing today was that a clock Mama and I bought at Wal-mart for $3 broke. Hahahahahahaha!

Just kidding, the funny part is that the back said, "If this clock breaks before the warranty runs out, send postage paid with $5 for handling and we will send you a new one." Any child can see the thrilling logic there: pay $6.50 for a $3 clock so that you can wait for the long, slow shipments to and from the company warehouse. Riiiiight.

The other amusing thing was Daddy asking me to place the butter in "neutral territory" so that he could reach it, too.

Well, there's a brief update on my life. It was fun. I should do it again some time. Just don't hold your breath...

Aaron and Me

Well, I'm back from Guys' week and the Fairwood youth convention. It was terrific fun. We camped, hiked, swam, had "special activities," watched Facing the Giants, played volleyball, sang, and worked. We played ping pong and volleyball. The food was delicious. Not all my friends were there, but I made some new ones and had a great time anyway. The meetings were excellent, with subjects ranging from putting on the armor of God and being clothed in humility to revival to being in the White Cavalry. That's about all I'm willing to tell you for now. There's just way too much to recap.

A few days before I left for the time at Fairwood, a little blogworthy incident came my way but did not make it to the internet...until now!!!!!!!!!!

I was sitting at the piano playing some classical piece when a little dark object on the carpet caught my eye. I glanced over to the left, and what should running around in little circles but an eensy weensy mousy!

I jumped up and tried to find a way to capture the little rodent without harming it. There were no jars or containers around, so I grabbed a tennis racket that was handy and half-heartedly tried to scoop up the little varmint. To my delight, the critter clung to my racket with a vehemence, even trying to crawl through the strings. I took him over to where I knew I could find a jar of some kind and made him a little house. I soon moved him into a much larger and more mouse-proof vase. He had everything a mouse could want: paper towel, cardboard, seeds, water... but it was not long before we noticed that he was not eating.

"Aha!" I said, "This mouse is not yet weaned!" So we fed him milk from an eyedropper. He crawled in a baby-mousish way across my hand, lapping up his dinner, and often sitting in it as well. It was great fun.

I had great dreams of the mouse becoming a sort of adviser and bosom companion, like the famous mouse Ben of "Ben and Me." Unfortunately, the mouse would not eat enough, or we did not feed him enough. The cold truth is that he died after a short two days of happiness. We hadn't even named him! We had discussed what we should name him, to be sure, but nothing was agreed on by all sides. Now that he's dead, it doesn't really matter. I think I'll name him Walter anyway.

This is Walter:

Good News

Le graduate, c'est moi.

Cape Cod!

Blood and Guts - edited and toned down

Finally, finally, finally! I have a foot injury to rival the one Stephen got back in February. May this picture serve as a warning to any of you who would not hesitate to run like a barefooted Pheidippides along beautiful sandy beaches in the middle of the night. One never knows where cinder blocks might be lying about...

EDIT:
My apologies to those who were grossed out or shocked by the photo of my bleeding foot. I have removed it for their sake. Those who missed it and are prepared for a gory sight may still see it by clicking here, but for the rest of you here's what my foot looks like now.


In other news, Cape Cod has been fabulous. My family is here for a two week vacation which is going swimmingly (hahahahaha!) except for that I split my toe. See above.

Finally, although it has very little to do with the rest of the post, other than the fact that with cable and loads of time, we get to watch a lot more baseball, I would like to add this little note:

CURT SCHILLING IS THE BEST OF THE BEST!!!!

For one thing, he just pitched a whole game without allowing a hit until the bottom of the ninth, not letting the A's get a single run. For another, I can appreciate his contribution to the fabulous 2004 Red Sox season even more now that I, too, have a bloody sock.

Crrrrrruuunch.......

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!! Deadlines! School! Too much....(pant, pant)....work.... Sanding! Painting! Calculus! Physics! Powerwashing! Essays! Graduation planning! Lawn work! Invitations! Teeests! Oh my!

In case you were wondering what's up in my world...

My First One!

Here's what I saw today about a quarter of a mile from my house:



A FORD GT!!!! It had the same paint job and everything. I was pretty dazzled.

I'm IT!

Claire just caught me in a game of blog tag. I have to list seven random facts about myself, choose seven other people whom I have deigned worthy of being tagged, and state the rules so that said people will know what this tagging business is all about. Also, I must leave a comment on the respective blogs of the people I tag.

It's all rather neat, in my opinion. The biggest downside is that it won't be long before all my blogging friends have been tagged and the game will have to end. However, that won't matter to me because I have had the good luck to be one of the first caught! How fortuitous! Here goes:

1. I will be graduating from high school next month, and I am the valedictorian! My grades are, like, wicked high, lol, and that's why I totally deserve that title. Actually, for those of you who are unaware, which is probably none of you, I am home-schooled and therefore have no competition. I would be valedictorian even if I had D+'s and C-'s across the board. Fortunately, that is not the case.

2. I only say "lol" tongue in cheek.

3. I prefer prose to poetry, for the most part. I have been studying both English and American literature this year, and I can't say how glad I was when the endless poetry chapters (Victorian in one and Modern in the other) ended this week and I got to read good old regular writing for a change. Not that I don't like Robert Frost, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Tennyson, and Keats, but it was so refreshing to switch to Thomas Hardy, Pearl Buck, Rudyard Kipling, and James Thurber. I can finally read more than three or four pages an hour without my brain going into either a daze or panic mode!

4. Hmmmm... what else? Well, I'd much rather differentiate than integrate...

5. OK, let's see if I can dig up a random fact from my childhood so that my facts will actually BE random and not a report on my progress and preferences in school. Ah, I know. One of my earlier memories is going to a party - probably for Christmas - with my extended family at my Aunt Lori and Uncle Lloyd's house. We were having turkey for dinner, and Uncle Lloyd was cutting it with an electric knife. I was VERY impressed. What an amazing piece of machinery! It did all the cutting for you! I probably came rather close to breaking the tenth commandment before I found out that we had one too. Anyhow, several days later, Mama was looking for a knife for something, and apparently there was none to be found. I exclaimed, "Aunt Lori has a knife!" Mama and Daddy were both quite amused with this helpful little statement, and perceiving their laughter, I proceeded to use the expression whenever the opportunity arose.

6. Someday I hope to be excessively wealthy and drive a Lamborghini - maybe even five! A couple Aston Martins or Ferraris would be acceptable alternatives...

7. I need to go to bed.

OK, now for the tagging: I hereby choose Stephen, Daniel, Lisa, Derrick, Wesley, Lindsay, and...BEN!!!! I know, the odds of Ben doing it are probably one in f'(x) at x=37 where f(x)=x(3e^x). Those odds are pretty bad. Still, that leaves one more option for all the others who have been tagged and still enables me to fill my list of seven.

P.s. Cara beat me even though I had been working on my post for over an hour by the time she started. How irksome! And this was "just going to be a quick post", too.

I Am NOT Impuissant!

As writer, designer, and editor-in-chief of "Aaron's Blog", I strive to achieve a fair balance of humor and meaning, pictures and text, and reality and fantasy. Of course, I don't strive very hard, necessarily, which explains the prevalence of fantastic pictorial attempts at humor throughout this publication. I would love to reverse this trend, but I keep running out of time and having too much school or work of other kinds on my plate to consider a serious post-writing session. For one thing, I have other things to write about for school if I feel like writing seriously, and for another, I'm slow at writing anyway. Sometimes I can design a new blog template in less time than it takes for me to write a page-long blog post. (I was going to say "full-length", but what's a "full-length" blog post?) Finally, how am I expected to find the time to write on my blog on Monday nights when I HAVE to watch 24?!?!? The question borders on inanity.

So, I am going to continue the trend.

This past weekend, I attended my cousin's graduation from the Bible school in Dublin. After the ceremony, I hung out with some friends on the front lawn and proved to them, once and for all, that I am not a light-weight, muscle-less, exercise-hating, athletics-shunning, geeky twerp of a weakling. I showed them, all right! I showed 'em my special flips! I twisted, turned, jumped, and glided, and when I had finished gamboling about, they had to admit that Paul Hamm would have nothing on me if I just worked out another thirteen hours a day and lifted weights while I did my school.



Of course, it is rather strange how my arms get so muscular and tan when I jump - perhaps even as muscular and tan as my friend Tony's (!) - while my face remains pale. Natural phenomena can be really perplexing sometimes, can't they?

A Word of Advice

Never, ever, ever, ever, ever touch your middle finger of your right hand firmly to the middle of a baking sheet that has just been in a hot, hot oven, especially if you play the piano. Trust me: it will hurt. I was reheating some pizza in the oven today, and, well, the rest is history. Don't EVER touch your middle finger firmly to the middle of a hot, hot baking sheet (did I already say that?). It may, just may, end up looking like...

...this:



Of course, it may also end up looking like that if you dip it in moderately hot wax just so you can take a picture of it and put it on your blog to try to fool people into thinking that you got a burn from touching the middle finger of your right hand firmly to a hot, hot cookie sheet...

Somnithoughts

I wasn't feeling well this afternoon. And as it often does when I am not well, school had exhausted me. I fell asleep on my bed after taking well over an hour to do just a couple pages of British Literature. While I was sleeping, I had an interesting dream. Now, I don't usually write about my dreams, but this time I was intrigued by how much the dream had to do with what is going on in my life right now.

I dreamt that I was going to a Christian school. That’s easily traceable: this afternoon, I was just thinking about and looking at the website of the Christian school my cousin Andrew attends.

I lived in Boston. This probably has something to do with the fact that I visited Boston just a couple weeks ago, touring Faneuil Hall and the financial district with my cousin Doug, who works there.

I had a nice literature teacher. I was struggling with the meaning of some poetry today and wondering what it would be like to have a teacher to explain it all to you; specifically, I wondered what it was like to be in Andrea’s literature class. The teacher in my dream wasn’t Andrea, but she was nice anyway. Interestingly, my class was all boys, and the classroom was my bedroom.

I dreamt I was in love. This would seem to be totally unrelated to my life except for that I’ve been reading Sonnets from the Portuguese by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. (“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways…”)

One of the more bizarre aspects of my dream was who I was, and who was the father of the girl I loved. I just watched the hilarious movie Night at the Museum a week ago, and the father-of-the-girl-I-loved was Ben Stiller. I was the kid who was his son in the movie (see photo).

Back to the literature class: Aunt Sharon interrupted our class discussion to give us all a little sermon that sounded suspiciously like a prose version of Robert Browning’s "Prospice." This is related to my day in two distinct ways: first, Aunt Sharon called yesterday, and I answered the phone; second, I read that very poem today! What are the odds?

When I thought Aunt Sharon's talk was almost over, I went downstairs listening to the rest on my cell phone. We just got a bunch of cell phones fixed yesterday.

Derrick was in the kitchen. No clue what that was about.

Then my dream jumped to the ALCS, and the Red Sox came back from way behind to destroy the Yankees… and yet no one cared! The commentators were like, “Oh, I guess the Red Sox are going to the World Series. Interesting.” I was really pretty distraught until I woke up and realized that, when the Red Sox do win this year, there will be a multitude of people cheering them on!

A Little Legacy

I have a rich uncle. Actually, he's really just the husband of one of my mom's second cousins, but we have always called him Uncle Martin.

Uncle Martin wasn't always rich. When he was born in Tallinn, Estonia's capital, in 1943, his family lived in a slightly cramped, albeit well-kept, apartment in the outskirts of the city. Although it was really too small for the family, they could not afford anything larger.

Uncle Martin's parents, Rasmus and Anna Tamm, were not considered poor by many of their fellow citizens. At a time in what was then the U.S.S.R. when the average worker had to give up fifty-six hours' pay just to buy a pair of jeans, being able to afford an apartment at all was a sign of affluence (or at least thrift). Uncle Rasmus was the manager of a major textile factory where he was paid the same salary as newly-hired workers. Aunt Anna worked as a seamstress for a slightly lower rate. They both worked hard, and managed to keep the household income above the national average. Nevertheless, the faulty Communist economic system kept them from attaining the level of wealth they deserved.

Uncle Martin realized all this, and he did not want to put up with it. A rather adventurous type, he somehow managed to emigrate to Australia before he had graduated from high school. He had almost no money left when he got there, but he soon found work on a cattle ranch and quickly caught the attention of his superiors with his skill and industry.

After several years, he had earned enough money to buy his own ranch. His household was prosperous. It was not long before the Tamm ranch was well known throughout his area for both the quality of its beef and the amazing amounts of profit its owner was able to achieve. The truth was that Uncle Martin was a genius with money. He could take a dollar and convince someone to give him two dollars for it; when that failed, he would work until his money had expanded some other way. He invested well, he worked hard, and he raised his livestock properly. All this would have been enough to make him rich, but there was one more reason for his wealth. I will expound momentarily.

One day when Uncle Martin was out riding, his dog Klimpi fell into a large hole in the ground with a piercing yelp. Uncle Martin quickly dismounted and tried to see if he could reach him, but this was not a possibility: the hole was too deep. Just as he was about to ride back to his barn to grab a shovel and perhaps a few of his workers, however, Klimpi came trotting up from another direction. Uncle Martin was quite pleasantly surprised - the thought of another entrance to the cave had not occurred to him.

Uncle Martin determined to find the entrance, and it was only a matter of half an hour before he had found it. Behind some briers on a hill not far away, there was a hole about three feet high and five feet wide that led to a uphill passage. The passage was about the same height, but it was significantly narrower. Armed with a flashlight from his saddlebag, Uncle Martin crawled up it, carefully watching for signs of hostile wildlife. There were none. The tunnel continued on in the same way for about ten feet, after which it suddenly turned downward. Another twenty feet later, it widened into a sizable room. Uncle Martin was thrilled. As a boy, he had always dreamed of finding an exciting cave, and now it was reality. And furthermore, the walls of the cave were sprinkled with gold. That fortunate fact was beyond his wildest childhood dreams.

It was not long before Uncle Martin took full advantage of his situation. He had a professional mining company excavate the cave, and his reward was in the millions of dollars. He continued to invest wisely and soon became one of the wealthiest men in Victoria.

Uncle Martin moved back to Estonia in 1995, not long after the nation had regained its independence. The rest of his family, with the exception of a younger sister who never married, had died, but he quickly became a successful businessman in Tallinn. He invested heavily in the country, and as the Estonian economy flourished under its capitalistic system and flat tax rate, Uncle Martin's wealth only increased.

I suppose you may be wondering why I'm giving you all this information. Well, it seems that Uncle Martin happened to be perusing blogs one day when he came across my post about Glimpy Soup. Since that is a family recipe, he figured we must be related, and a little bit of research convinced him. Both affluent and generous, he decided to send me a little present. Imagine my surprise when this showed up at my door:




OK, I admit it. This was all made up. I came up with the idea a while ago when I was thinking about Agatha Christie's novels: it seems that each of her characters who becomes suddenly wealthy explains it as "a legacy from their uncle in Australia." Besides, very little in the way of newsworthy material has come my way in recent days. Anyway, writing this was fun, and I learned some stuff about Estonia that I hadn't known before.

Un Post Senza Un Titolo

As this picture should make clear, green is quickly becoming - as it should - the dominant color here in New Hampshire. Spring has absolutely and irreversibly arrived! Of course, it isn't yet late spring here, as evidenced by the fact that Eagle Wings remains placidly parked in the driveway.

Other signs of spring: peepers, beavers, open windows, open doors, sprouting lilies, later sunsets, and (gulp) mosquitoes. (Say it isn't so!) Fortunately, the last item in that otherwise happy list has not yet become a nuisance. So far I have seen about ten of the little bloodsuckers and have killed about five. If I can maintain that ratio of mosquitoes killed to mosquitoes seen (or is it the other way around?) throughout the summer, I will be very, very pleased with myself.

One of the ways I have been taking advantage of the relatively, and sometimes indescribably, beautiful weather we have been enjoying of late is to go rowing in the morning before I do school. As you can see by Exhibit B (at right), the pond is currently clear, glassy, and full. Alas, before long the algae will have significantly marred our view to the west, but so far so good. Several times now I have been in our boat when one or more beavers have come out of their lodge and swum around the pond. One time, while I was enjoying the breeze and reading American Literature, I tied the boat to a tree at the end of the pond. I was just lazily studying (there's a paradox for you!), when two baby beavers swam out of the swamp, right by my boat, and into their lodge. After a while, a big one came out, swam around for a while, and then returned.

The more exciting time was when I was actually rowing. As I went from one side of the pond to the other, the beaver would swim to the opposite side, swim around for a bit, and then dive under with a terrific smack of its tail against the water. 'Twas cool.

And now for a confession: after writing my last post, I have only read about seventy-five pages of Les Mis, and most of that today. At first it was from lack of time, but as the week went on and the book remained untouched, I was struck by this observation: sometimes the less you do of something, the more tired of doing it you feel. Now I have resumed reading it and am enthralled once again.

A Long, Long Book

Maybe I'm too obsessed with blogging. It's been only five days since I last posted, but I feel like it has been an eternity. For the last couple days, I have been watching in horror as my then-newest post sank lower and lower on the list of blogs, until I simply could not stand it any longer. Plus, I didn't like its title. Time for a new post!

The reason I have not been blogging much recently is that I've been spending most of my free time reading Victor Hugo's Les Miserables. It is a FANTASTIC book! True, it's almost as long as the Bible (in pages), but it is worth it. I have found it to be simultaneously profound, gripping, and stirring.

One thing I've noticed is that Victor Hugo tends to expound more than some readers might think is necessary. In the beginning of the book, there is a fifty page biography of a character who promptly dies once the action actually starts. When another character is known once to have looted some dead soldiers on the battlefield of Waterloo, Hugo deems it necessary to write a sixty-five page dissertation on the strategies of Napoleon and Wellington, the various circumstances that changed the course of the famous battle, and the philosophical and international ramifications of the outcome. Fortunately, I found it intriguing. Finally, when the main character hides from his pursuers in a convent, the description of this action is quickly followed by a thirty-seven page section covering every aspect of this specific convent, from its location and layout to its inhabitants and history, and expounding on the philosophies, appropriateness, severity, ambitions, correctness, and results of monasticism, its followers, and its opponents.

As you can see, I am beginning to acquire Victor Hugo's propensity to use long, complex sentences.

I am currently about 500 pages into the book, and I can hardly believe I still have 750 more to go. I can't understand how anyone can write something that long without losing the reader's interest (at least, without losing it often). Whenever I try to write fiction, my stories end up far short on substance. I'm not sure I'd be able to come up with enough storyline to write a novel. Yet even if I had the plot of Les Mis to start with, I would probably have written it in one hundred pages in a very boring way. Victor Hugo transforms it into a twelve-hundred page tome that is fascinating! That is just unfathomable to me. HOW DOES HE DO IT?

A good quote from the part of the book discussing monasticism:

There is, we are aware, a philosophy that denies the infinite. There is also a philosophy, classed pathologically, which denies the sun; this philosophy is called blindness.

To set up a sense we lack as a source of truth, is a fine piece of blind man's assurance.

And the rarity of it consists in the haughty air of superiority and compassion which is assumed towards the philosophy that sees God, by this philosophy that has to grope its way. It makes one think of a mole exclaiming: "How they excite my pity with their prate about a sun!"

Beautiful Nature

Before I say anything else, let me assure you that I did NOT take this picture. (Click here for the source.) Neither I nor my camera are capable of producing such a work of art. Nevertheless, I have been excited and blessed to see that our pond is the current residence of no fewer than five equally gorgeous wood ducks. Whether they intend to make this their permanent residence I don't know, but I have been enjoying them while they last. They swam around in the pond throughout all of yesterday's snow, and they're still here this afternoon.

The inclement weather actually seems to have been good for naturalistic purposes. My feeders have been alive with goldfinches, chickadees, cardinals, sparrows, and juncos. It is amazing how beautiful wildlife can be. God is amazing!

Panic is...

...let me TELL you what panic is!

(Spell check says I should say "what panic are", but I didn't go through eleven years of A Beka Book Grammar and Composition just to lose my reputation for great noun-verb coordination by deferring to a computer! No, siree!)

Oh, yeah. Panic. I'll start from the beginning.

Well, first of all, as most of you know, I am a member of Chestnut Hill Chapel, a nice little rustic church in one of the prettiest parts of the prettiest state. (That'd be New Hampshire.) I have attended Chestnut Hill my entire life, and it is a wonderful church for many reasons. One of the least important is its tendency to produce superb bloggers. These bloggers include current members such as Bria, Cara, Ryan, Evan, Jill, Lindsay, Susan, Melody, Jenna, and Wesley, as well as former members such as Claire, Liane, Karena, Derrick, Carrie, and Darren.

Back to my story about panic:

Well, since last Sunday was Easter, Pastor Evan asked if our family could do any special music. In honor of a great family heritage of spontaneity, I quickly replied in the affirmative but put off the decision on what we would sing until the night before. By that time some of us had decided it was too late to do anything, and declared that they would not become involved in a musical piece that would bring shame to the S___ name by its obvious want of preparation. (They didn't say that exactly, but I'm using the Dan Rather approach. To paraphrase, "I know that's not what they really said, I know the evidence doesn't exist, but the spirit behind it is certainly, beyond any doubt, true.")

Despite all objections, however, Daddy and I looked through all his music books (I had exhausted mine of possibilities) for an appropriate song that we wouldn't have to learn. We settled on an old favorite: Michael Card's Love Crucified Arose. I'm never quite sure how to punctuate that title, but, as punctuation does little to affect musical pronunciation, I did not panic about THAT. (I'll get to what I DID panic about later.) I looked over the chords and decided to change some of them. Actually, I changed a LOT of them. As a music theory student and ardent fan of frequent and violent modulations, I implemented no fewer than four key changes in a two-verse and three-chorus song: C to D to E flat to F. It was SO MUCH FUN! I've always wanted to sing "Wonderful Grace of Jesus" raising the key one step per verse, but I can rest somewhat more easily having used pivot tone modulation in church by ear!

After the church brunch on Easter morning, Daddy, Ryan, and I went upstairs to practice in the sanctuary. Practice seemed fine, although we didn't do the whole song because people were starting to come in for the meeting. I wanted to check one more key transition before I went to sit down. Wanting to be unobtrusive, I placed my foot on the soft pedal of the piano. As I tried to press it, however, I was perplexed to find that the whole pedal assembly was wiggling more than the pedal itself. "How very strange," were, I am sure, the words which ran through my head. Curious as to the source of the problem, I dropped to my knees and looked at the apparatus. For some strange reason, I decided to press the sostenuto pedal with my hand and see what would happen. Well, what happened was that the entire pedal stand separated itself from the rest of the piano and fell to the floor with a crash.

PANIC!

At first I was afraid I had ruined Easter for everyone. How can Easter be happy without a good Easter service, and how can there be a good Easter service without music, and how can their be music without piano pedals?!?!?!? Then I looked at the end of the assembly, and lo and behold, it was not broken! It had merely come out of its socket, and in a matter of two or three minutes, my uncle and I had reunited the two pieces of the piano.

And that's how the boy saved Easter.

Quote of the Day

"You know, Tom, I'm not David - I never will be! - but today I found that who I am is pretty good."

(President Wayne Palmer from 24, as remembered by Aaron)

Um, good, Mr. President. I'm glad you have such good self-esteem!

An Obiter Dictum

As my last post made clear, snow has returned to the hills of New Hampshire. Once again the familiar crystalline white is spread over the surrounding countryside like vanilla icing. The sun has returned, fortunately, but it smiles not on budding flowers but on ubiquitous white. As an autochthonous New Hampshirite, I cannot be very surprised; nevertheless, I had no presentiment of this foreboding doom, and I have an animadversion to obnoxious surprises.

As the dour clarion calls of the pessimists reverberate throughout the land, I must allow that their lamentations have not completely convinced me that winter has become perdurable. Although I was disillusioned by the return of the hiemal weather, I am something of a realist. The return of favonian weather is inevitable, so if I simply exercise my longamity all will eventually be satisfactory. In the meantime, I have often found music to be a roborant when the prophesies of the clerisy are less than roseate. Therefore, allow me to present a little song I wrote to alleviate the pain of those who are suffering (including you in Georgia, where the temperatures last night were in the twenties!), to ameliorate, as I was saying, the discomfiture of any who both endure psychrophobia and read my blog.

Neither the sound quality nor the nor the stridulous tones of my voice in the nether regions of its range are outstanding, but I hope you found this diverting anyway.

P.s. Can you tell I was trying to get Claire to comment? :)