My Wishlist Wishlist

As I was doing some shopping on Amazon.com today, carefully comparing some similar items and combing their reviews for useful information, I remembered a time when I used to do such things more frequently, albeit for a rather amusing purpose.

Way back in the early days of my relationship with the World Wide Web, when we paid $25 a month to get super-slow service from America Online, when e-mail was something of a novelty, and when things like Blogger and Facebook were only mystical concepts in the minds of the technological avantgarde - back then, in the dawn of my online experience, Amazon.com was my primary attraction to the internet. Strange though it may seem now, I spent hours on that site. In fact, I probably spent a rather large majority of my internet allowance perusing the world's biggest online store. And the irony is that I had no intention of buying anything. I was the ultimate Windows shopper.

My commitment to honesty compels me to admit that the simple joy of comparing the latest merchandise was not my only attraction to Amazon.com, per se. It wasn't all merely about finding out what was the best, the cheapest, or the best deal. Nor was it about just having fun, though of that I had much. No, I was a selfish little lad, as a retrospective glance at my ideas, misconceptions, and consequent action from that time would make sadly apparent.

I first learned about Amazon.com when Evan and Jill came over for dinner shortly after they had moved to New Hampshire. It's one of those random little memories that sticks in one's mind from his childhood for no explicable reason. Mama and Jill were talking about shopping, I think, and Jill asked if we had tried Amazon.com. I had heard of it - I think by that time it was already a pretty big company - but hadn't realized that WE could use it. I don't know exactly who I thought generally used it - probably rich people with fancy computers or college students who could sit down with only Notepad open and design a whole website (imagine!) - but that's beside the point. The point is that if Jill could shop at Amazon.com, so could I. Suddenly online shopping was a possibility, and I took my first opportunity to check it out.

Some time in the next few days, I opened my very own Amazon.com account. What excitement! And what bliss! I had already become the first member of my family to open a personal e-mail account, and to add "first Amazon.com member" to my resume cemented my reputation as the most tech-savvy member of the family.

But this was back in the days when pride had less appeal for me than materialism. Imagine my absolute delight when I learned three separate but related facts: Amazon sometimes overstocked and sold things for cheaper; Amazon asked what your birthday was; and Amazon let you create a wishlist. Clearly, Amazon users had only to report their DOB and ask for whatever they wanted, and the philanthropic managers of the good website would send you presents (if, of course, they happened to have more stuff than they really needed).

Well, from that moment it was my ambition to place all the overstocked merchandise I could find in my wishlist. I particularly desired a CD boombox and a digital camera, I remember, and I would fly around the electronics pages searching for whatever I thought was nice but unlikely to be extremely popular.

"This one looks nice. Memorex CD and tape player... with remote control! I doubt it will be overstocked, but I'll add it to my list just in case. Oh, here's a nice Sony... same features but way more money! No one will buy this! I'll add it..."

Birthday after birthday came and went, and though I watched the mail around those times with eager expectancy, my hopes for a complimentary gift from the wonderland behind my mother's inch-thick laptop screen were never realized. Nearly ten years later, I'm still waiting.

The Rights of Man As Perceived By a Child

I think I may have been a singular child.  Certainly, I know of few boys who have so early developed and cultivated into maturity a sense of the rights of the father in the family setting.  I was, as I say, quite young when I first recognized the man of the family’s greatest and most sacred privilege: the claim to the driver’s seat.

The father’s right to drive was something I long considered a certain unalienable right with which he had been endowed by his Creator.  After all, whenever we went anywhere as a family, Daddy always drove.  And, I suppose I reasoned, if something were always done a certain way in our family, mustn’t it be the supreme law of the universe?  Indeed, I could think of few worse infractions against the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God than for the mother to drive the family anywhere.  Of course, when the father was not around, the mother must inevitably sometimes assume the role of chaufferess.  This was no sin.  But for the woman to drive when the man was in the same vehicle was a dreadful usurpation of paternal authority, and I never beheld such an occurrence without grave fears for the souls of the reprobates in question.

I remember one particular time, long ago, when just such a scenario was played out before my eyes.  We were leaving church, I believe, and I spotted some naughty woman driving her husband away – and in such proximity to the very house of God!

“Mama!  Why is … (I can’t remember who the culprits were exactly, so I’ll make this generic) … why is Mrs. Smith driving instead of Mr. Smith?”

“Well, Aaron, maybe Mr. Smith is tired or doesn’t want to drive.”

Doesn’t want to drive?!?  This was food for thought, indeed.  What right had he not to want to drive?  I was perplexed and baffled.  A little crack opened up in the dike of my convictions.

“Well, if he’s tired, I suppose it’s all right…”

I stuck my finger into the crack.  But it kept growing, growing, growing, through the years, and soon all my precocious ideas began to crumble and my youthful, imaginative dogmata were reduced to the ruins of real life.  Just look at me now!  Half a dozen women could drive their husbands by me and I would scarcely blink an eye.

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

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.

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...

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.

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.

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.

Ambiguity Revisited

I just remembered what my "ambiguity" post was going to be about: the relativity of the word "long" in reference to blog posts. Some people in my family think everything I do is "long," and others don't. Some think "long" is anything with more than one paragraph, others don't think it's too "long" unless it both has 37 paragraphs and is boring (or at least dry). An interesting subject, to be sure, but I don't have the time to write a disquisition on it now. Schoolwork calls.

A Lunch Fit For a Kuningas

"What," you may ask, "is a 'kuningas'? And furthermore, what is that delectable-looking luncheon?"

I will tell you. First, a kuningas is a king. It is not any special kind of king, merely a different translation of the same word. The language is Estonian.

"Where," you may ask, if you aren't up on your geography or just aren't the sharpest nuga in the sahtel, "is this wonderful nation of Estonia?"

This I will also tell you. Estonia is the northernmost of the Baltic states (Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia), and lies on the Baltic Sea just across from Finland. Russia neighbors it to the east and Latvia does so to the south. Although its population of 1,324,333 is just slightly larger than New Hampshire's 1,235,786, Estonia's landmass is about twice the size of the Granite State's.

Enough of the geography. My connection to this country is that I am exactly one quarter Estonian by ancestry. My great-grandmother immigrated to New York from Estonia just in time for my grandmother to be born an American citizen. She brought with her the recipe for Glimpy Soup, a photo of which you have just had the honor of viewing. I'm not sure of the spelling of the name (the dictionary I used to translate suggested "klimp" should be the actual root), but it means dumpling soup.

Glimpy soup, as I will continue to call the dish for the sake of tradition and Americanization, is simply superb. It is also simply simple. It is dumplings in a milky broth, seasoned with salt and pepper. Everyone who's anyone who's had it LOVES it (except Kate, who is someone but nevertheless strangely abhors the soup; fortunately, I believe her sister Lisa's opinion is quite the opposite). It has always been a family favorite here and is beyond a doubt the best thing since sliced bread. You should try it sometime! You just might feel more like royalty than ever before.

(Glimpy soup is actually better than sliced bread, so if you want to REALLY compliment something, you should say it's the best thing since glimpy soup.)


Ryan sometimes gets so excited to eat his glimpy soup that he forgets his manners entirely.

Ryan is the Nicest guy in the WHOLE world!

Ryan is handsome,strong,cool,nice etc.

Dessert

The picture says it all.

I'm back, Lucius.

This week has been SO busy! I have had NO time to write posts! Actually, that's not quite true, but I haven't had MUCH time. Add to that the fact that I have had NO inspiration at ALL to write, and you may realize why it is that I have not.

First of all, the biggest news of the week is that we have been redoing our roof. Our neighbor Mr. Z. has been doing it with occasional help from me and/or Daddy. Roofing can be pretty fun! The first part is best: tearing out nails, ripping off shingles, generally performing mass demolition. It's awesome, let me tell you! I like laying shingles, but it is not so nice as ripping old ones. Laying shingles just doesn't have the same, shall we say, exhileration to it: slowly working up the roof row by row, measuring and cutting individual shingles, working around the flashing (you have to in demo too, but just not the same way), and smashing skylights. In case you wondered, that last part was unintentional. Fortunately, I had nothing to do with it. Anyhow, the front side of the house is basically finished, and next week we will move to the back, which though much larger, is less steep. It contains fewer skylights, too.

I finally cleaned my room yesterday after floundering in mess for weeks. It's amazing what a difference it makes! It's also amazing how much much less work it takes to mess it up than to clean it! Bother those stupid laws of thermodynamics...

Having a clean room is especially nice because this week I will be able to do my school there. Of course, I could have before anyway, but it can be just so hard to concentrate when you are surrounded by clutter! I have been doing most of my school subjects in the living room, dining room, or basement, but there are a lot more distractions in the first two and the third is relatively dark. Distractions can be fatal when you're doing such subjects as Calculus or Economics, both of which require constant concentration. As a matter of fact, so do Writing, Literature, Chemistry, Physics, Italian, Vocabulary, and music (if you're doing them right, anyway)!

Thursday I worked on the same problem in Calculus for close to twenty minutes and still got it wrong. SO frustrating. Fortunately it was one of very few. Also, I have been getting the same kind of problem wrong for DAYS...and all because I keep not noticing when they say "diameter" instead of "radius." Grrrr. School has not all been sadness and depression, however. In fact, so far I have been enjoying pretty much all of my school subjects, albeit overwhelmed a bit here and there. Even little things people say every now and then remind me of a new concept I studied recently in Chemistry, or a poem from Literature. (Did anyone spot my allusion to Nancy Boyd's (Edna St. Vincent Millay's) "I Like Americans" in my paragraph on roofing?) For a rather weak example, something Elizabeth said the other day reminded me of something from chemistry...something about the penetrating abilities of radiation from atomic bombs?...ok, so that's REALLY weak. But I have also noticed numerous applications of supply and demand!

Today I read an Agatha Christie through from beginning to end. It was a nice Sabbath thing to do; so relaxing! Alas, I didn't figure it out. The murderer was the very person of whom I said to Cara, "Well, the very LEAST likely person is such and such...", not counting Poirot or the narrator, of course. Near the end I THOUGHT I had it all figured out, but it was a red herring...a secondary crime meant to cast suspicion on a character who is shady but not completely shaded, if you know what I mean. Oh, Agatha! How do you do it?

So it begins....

Well,school is officially started here at Sand End. (Get it? Sand End? Haha! I kill myself! Hoho...ha...ahem....) I hardly feel like anything is different, though, because I've been doing Chemistry and Literature throughout the summer, and a number of my other subjects have yet to arrive. Call me a warm frog, but I haven't been able to dive into school with the same kind of enthusiasm as usual. Oh, well. Fortunately, I am now doing a part of Chemistry that I actually enjoy (Nuclear Reactions!), and Calculus has been pretty good. Literature started out great! I loved it! It was my favorite subject! And no, I haven't forgotten the rules of grammar; I am using the past tense on purpose. I think it's a conspiracy: the A Beka program starts out with "Early American Short Stories" - which are FANTASTIC! I even like reading Poe! - then jumps straight into "Early American Sermons."

Gulp.

Actually, the sermons section was not really that bad. I read "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" as well as the work of such others as Talmage, Billy Sunday, and James Weldon Johnson. They were both well-written and inspirational. But they just take soooo long to read! At least they do if you want to try to get anything out of them. Which I do.

Actually, I finished reading all the sermons by now, so I don't know why I'm even writing about them. Today I read selections from "A History of Plymouth Plantation," though, which is almost as bad time-consuming per page.

Speaking of school, does anyone remember/know how to do the geometry problem pictured at right? I can always look it up, but I thought I'd just let others do the work. :) (And no, it is not a problem from my next Calculus lesson.)

The leaves on the big maple by our pond are rapidly turning into a gorgeous crimson! Just thought you should know...

In other areas of my life, I spent much of my afternoon translating French! I enjoyed finding out how much I do remember (I took it in 6th grade through 8th grade, I think), as well as how learning Italian has actually improved my understanding of the conjugation of French verbs! Fascinating! If you would like to know WHY I was translating French all afternoon, you'll have to try to get Cara to blog about it. It's HER story. >:) I tried to get her to write about it tonight, but all she could think about was her new hairdo, not her mysterious African letter! So go inundate her with comments here and maybe you'll all have an interesting post to read. Not that her hair isn't interesting, but...

<--- Here is the HQ of the Sand End (hahaha...) Department of Information, Communication, and Academics. *cough* This was before Cara redid her coiffure... *cough*

A Quote

Recently spoken by Offspring Y, of "Overheard in the S------d Household" fame, to me (Offspring X; I admit it):

"Why are you taking over my life!?!?!?!?!"

Meaning, of course, that I should return the laptop to him (or her; you never know here)....

Video: Ping Pong

Warning: I stretched out the volley to match the length of the song. If you get bored just skip a bit and you won't miss much. However, if you have any appreciation of music, you WILL watch it all. ;)

Windows Media (.wmv)

Hope you enjoy this!

I've been enjoying a wonderfully peaceful Sabbath at home. So far I have slept in, played Ping Pong with Daddy (he beat me thrice: 21-18, 21-17, and 21-16), ate brunch instead of breakfast, read blogs, and pretty much just enjoyed the quiet. Hope your Sabbath is/was as nice!