Panaisafix

This past year at Bible school, my fellow dormmates and I made a movie spoofing American Idol. It was funny, but probably the best part was the ads. This is, in my humble opinion, the best of those. It's one that my good friend Bobby and I put together one afternoon because we had nothing else to do. It's for this medicine - Panaisafix - which fixes all your problems. Seriously.

The Course of Pranking Never Did Run Smooth

This post is actually written from a computer, for once. I guess you could say my phone has gotten me at least slightly more into the habit of posting, and when something too good for 1000 characters and 1 picture comes across my path, I must get me to the press room.

Just such a something did indeed come across my path in recent days. It all started last week. Since Rachel was publishing an article with testimonies from the seven first-years in TOR (our church magazine), she wanted pictures of each of us. We were to get them to her by the end of the week. Sadly, we did not succeed (at least, the guys didn't), but that is not the point of this post. Saturday evening we finally got around to taking the requisite photos. Craig got out Clyde's handy dandy Nikon D70S, and we all pretty much lined up for a photo shoot. We all got pictures. They were good.

But there is so much more to the story than that! You see, we didn't just want to send Rachel boring old portraits. No, we wanted something original and lively! With this in mind, we all settled down around my computer while I clicked and dragged and typed until our pictures looked like this:






Rachel was highly amused when she opened the folder. "They were too good not to share," she said, and they quickly found their way to the Fairwood kitchen bulletin board.



We all laughed, of course, but we didn't know just how far Rachel was willing to go to share our hilarious photos. The next evening, we were stunned when she showed us a copy of TOR... with our edited pictures!

Good grief! Imagine the embarrassment and devastation! I was pretty stunned, to say the least. What would the magazine's faithful readers think of Fairwood's first-year guys? Would they call us names? Would they complain to the editors? What about my reputation? I went to bed and sobbed all night.

Let me correct myself: I MIGHT have sobbed all night, had it not been for the fact that Rachel pointed out (after allowing just a brief period of unutterable anxiety) that this was only a rough draft, and the official copies - the REAL ones - would be published with the much less original - but, oh, so much more acceptable! - traditional portraits which we had included in a subfolder.

Well, relief was ours, and the end of the story was a happy one for all. We got our laugh, and Rachel got hers. But the moral of the story is this: never play a prank on someone without evaluating what he could do to get you back.

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.

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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.

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...

Good News

Le graduate, c'est moi.

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.

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 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!"

Che Bella Giornata!

...as we who are almost fluent in the Italian tongue are wont to spout on days such as this; for today was undeniably beautiful. Spring arriveth!

I enjoy a merciful amnesia throughout the winter months that permits me to enjoy the snow and the cold without actually realizing that I am simultaneously enduring them. Once I get a taste of spring, however, I look back on the months and realize that winter isn't so hot after all. The sunshine, the smell, the sounds of water and of birds - all these and more take the days of spring and set them in a different league from the days of the rest of the year.

Today was such a day. As I walked down to get the mail, it struck me that I had forgotten how much FUN it is to be outside and comfortable at the same time! I had to do school, but that didn't stop me from enjoying the great outdoors. On the contrary, I simply moved my classroom! (The joys of homeschooling...) I did most of Calculus outside, enjoying the relatively warm breezes, the cooing doves, the radiant sunshine, and the tinkling of the melted snow running into the gutters. I had a great perspective of all these things from my perch on the roof.

Yes, on the roof.

Kids, don't try this at home.




The skylight made a terrific table, but I must say whoever invented roofing shingles wasn't thinking about comfort. It's not bad on some roofs, I'm sure, but ours is a bit steep. Nevertheless, the fresh air and the view were nice while they lasted.



Now I'm off to cogitate on the symbolic role of the one female character in Call of the Wild...

Why School Should Always Come First

Because you never know when you're going to have trouble with your first Calculus problem and spend an hour on it, only to have your Dad look at it and say, "OK, let's see; first thing to do is make sure everything is in radians...." Oops. And if you were planning on taking an hour doing Calculus, and the first PROBLEM takes you an hour, you know you're in pretty bad shape.

Therefore I cannot blog tonight.



I'm not always that neat with my Calculus...

A Sagacious Perception

I have been reluctant to write a new post recently because I have been doing so much writing for school anyway. (Or at least THINKING about writing; half the time has been spent dealing with technical difficulties.) Every time I sit down to write a post I feel like I don't have a clear enough outline. I don't have organization of thoughts. I don't have a clear purpose. But then, a blog doesn't have to be purposeful and organized, does it? A blog can be random! A blog can be about my incoherent personal thoughts and experiences! Suddenly I feel free! I will update! I will not be considered a blogger manqué!

Disclaimer: From here on, the rest of the post is not necessarily sagacious, although perceptions continue to abound.

Speaking of technical difficulties, I'm sure most of you have noticed that my Link Gallery has stopped working. (I know that Claire, Jenna, Andrea, Derrick, and anyone who reads Andrea's blog have noticed, and that probably covers most of you.) I assure you I had nothing to do with the problem and I've spent enough time trying to fix it to write seventeen or so posts so glorious that you could not but dance for joy. However, all my efforts have been to no avail as of yet. Perhaps the website (feedblendr.com) will remedy itself. Maybe I'll find some other way to blend a new terrific sixty-two-blog feed. But until then, I'm sorry for all the suffering you'll have to go through: the grueling agony of adding to favorites, the tortuous clicking of the mouse, link after link.... but, as some wise pirate once said, "Life is pain, Highness."

Those of you from the South may think that just because it's spring down there, and Andrea said it was spring up here, that it is spring up here. However, you would be wrong. I mean, it was spring up here, but it is spring no longer. Au contraire! It is fr-r-r-r-eeeezing! After a record warm start to the winter (and cries of, "HEEEEEEELP!!!! GLOBAL WARMING!!!!") it has now come to a record cold middle or end. You never know how much winter is left in NH; spring could be here tomorrow, or it could be put off until late May. Who knows? All I know right now is that the numbers the meteorologists are showing are in the single digits – without the major wind chill. And there isn't even any good skating! Ah, well, "If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant…." (Anne Bradstreet)

I... love…

Microsoft Word 2007! (You thought I was going to say "celery root," didn't you?) I haven't bitten the bullet and paid the hefty purchase price, but I did download a free 60-day trial and I love it! It's so easy to use and so graphically pleasing… and it comes set up for posting to blogs!!!! How cool is that? The best thing of all is that my trial doesn't end until I graduate, so I get to spend the rest of my grade school days writing in style! I feel so CTU.

Of course, if I really were that advanced, I would probably be able to fix the feed problem myself, but who said I felt like an O'Brien? I'll just content myself with being a Buchanan. Or maybe Josh Bauer. Except He wasn't in CTU. And my dad is actually quite nice, as is my grandfather. So I guess the analogy – if it was an analogy – really breaks down there. Sigh. Good thing this whole discussion is completely irrelevant.

Thus concludes my heart's outpouring to all ye, the faithful readers. I hope I provided you with a hearty boff or two, but whether I did or not I must now popple off to finish my Calculus.

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.

The Work of a Feverish Mind

I caught some sort of sickness yesterday afternoon that left me feeling tired and weak. I can’t usually fall asleep in the daytime when I’m well, but I had no problem then. I think I must have had a fever, too, because I woke up covered in sweat even without any covers. Mama thought I had one today, too, although the only symptom I still exhibit is a general feeling of fatigue. Further supporting my theory that I had a fever, I dreamed some interesting dreams yesterday afternoon, dreams with more plot than any I’ve had in a long time. Here they are for your benefit:

My first dream began with me driving Bria along some street in the commercial section of some town. I don’t think it was a real town, for I cannot conceive of its location in reality. I have all these perplexing “memories” of places suddenly popping up in my head, too, that were either long-forgotten real places or the fruit of my feverish imagination. Anyway, to return to my dream…

I was driving along some road a bit like South Willow St with shops on only one side and hills on the other. There was not much traffic, and the road was smooth and long. As I turned right to go into a large shopping plaza with Ames on one side and some other building on the other (at least it wasn’t Caldor or Bradley’s or Rich’s), I was excited to perceive Diane R. following us into the place in her red SUV. I wove around the parking lot looking for a good spot, although I ended up parking right in the middle for no clear reason.

The parking lot was unusual in that it was, shall we say, inhabited. In fact, there was quite a community! There was a “lot overseer” and many people just living in the parking lot. It was very much like the trailer park in “The Long, Long Trailer,” except that people lived in cars. One fellow asked if he could park there “until Tuesday”, and everyone shouted his joyful assent. (“Welcome to the best parking lot in New Hampshire!”)

I got out of the car and looked for Diane, but I had been mistaken: it was not she. Instead it was a teacher from the Christian school where I took the Stanford Achievement Tests in every grade from first to eleventh. I walked over toward the building into which she directed her steps, and it turned out to be the schools new location! And it was time for the tests! I was rather peculiarly unsurprised to find that Bria was no longer with me and that Daddy and Cara had taken her place. The three of us walked into the building. Interestingly, the first floor was the basement of the church (CHC), and it was full of preschoolers painting at two long tables that took up most of the width of the room. Cara and Daddy forged their way through to the door leading to the stairs, but in the hustle and bustle of the crowd, I could not keep up. I even tried diving between the backs of two long rows of chairs, but all I got was paint on my new white jacket (which I don’t really have). I did make it through, but my family had disappeared.

I continued to climb level after level in search of the “Executive Office,” as I called it. People laughed at me when I asked where the Executive Office was, but I didn’t know why. I finally reached the second-to-last floor (I think there were four stories in all, including the basement) and found that the stairs to the final floor went in a circle getting increasingly narrow without rails. It all looked rather perilous. I can still picture it clearly, although I cannot describe it well. I was in the middle of trying very, very hard to gather enough courage to go up when Mama called me on my cell phone. I don’t remember what she said, but I think she was angry that I wasn’t home yet. I thought that was strange, since I was at tests, and just hung up without answering (an action I would never consciously consider, I assure you).

I headed down the other way just in time to see Cara go into a classroom and close the door. I didn’t want to interrupt her tests, so I explored the building looking for someone who could tell me where to go. I knew the principal of the school could help me, but he was giving tests to some of the younger kids, so I just hung around waiting for light to be shed from some other source. When Cara emerged for a break, I was just starting to talk to her when I suddenly remembered that twelfth-graders do not take this kind of SAT, and that I had no reason to be there. I left feeling both relief and embarrassment.

Then I was Spider-man watching Cara’s store for her while she ate dinner, and I stopped a bunch of robbers by making a cool web, but that’s another story for another day.


By the way...

Click here to discover the secret source of the soundtrack for The Gigantic Amoeba at Medfield College! In case the audio doesn't work, or you don't want to take the time to check, it's the second movement to Mozart's Piano Concerto no. 21 in C: Elvira Madigan. It's a fantastic piece, and if you don't have it in your music library, you should definitely add it.

Simply Amazingness

Did you know...you'd better not have known, or I'll be really disappointed. I feel like every time I tell someone something around here they've already heard it and say, with a disdainful flip of the hand, of course, "Oh, that! Aaron, that was news way back yesterday. You're so behind the times!"

Well, nobody's ever said quite that to me before, I must admit. But anyway, excuse my going off on a wild tangent...

By the way, a tangent has several definitions besides the one in which it was used above. For example, the tangent of an angle in a right triangle is the ratio of the opposite side to the adjacent side which is not the hypotenuse. It is also a line that touches a curve at only one point.

Am I being incoherent?

OK, here's what I've been trying very hard to say this ENTIRE time:

As a teen, Fanny Crosby memorized Proverbs, Song of Solomon, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, many Psalms, and - here's the most amazing of all, at least as far as I'm concerned - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.

Numbers! Deuteronomy! Oh... my... WORD! Talk about amazingly amazing! She knew all that by heart! And I thought I was pretty good when I memorized all the Epistles of Paul...

Ahem.

Here you must whistle, hum, or sing any song you can come up with about a grain of salt (or two or three). And then, just because it fits so well with both the topic and the season, sing the following of Fanny Crosby's hymns:

Carol, sweetly carol,
A Savior born today;
Bear the joyful tidings,
O, bear them far away:
Carol, sweetly carol,
Till earth's remotest bound
Shall hear the mighty chorus,
And echo back the sound.

        Refrain:
        Carol, sweetly carol,
        Carol sweetly today;
        Bear the joyful tidings,
        O, bear them far away.

Carol, sweetly carol,
As when the angel throng
O'er the vales of Judah,
Awoke the heavenly song:
Carol, sweetly carol,
Goodwill and peace and love,
Glory in the highest
To God who reigns above. 

Carol, sweetly carol,
The happy Christmas time;
Hark! the bells are pealing
Their merry, merry chime:
Carol, sweetly carol,
Ye shining ones above,
Sing in loudest numbers,
O sing redeeming love. 

The Veteran Traveler

Today I visited three states! The sad thing, though is that I only intended to visit two. Furthermore, I traveled more in the other two than I had intended. It wasn't too bad, but...oh, I'll just tell you the story. Here goes.

Daddy went today with one of his office workers, who is an even more avid sailor than he is, to sail Eagle Wings, our 30-foot Hunter, from Portsmouth to Rye, where it will be taken out of the water tomorrow morning. I went along to take one of the cars home so they would not have to return to Portsmouth when they had finished their ocean jaunt. I had not been actually expecting to go, but I was fine with it and took my Calculus in the car with me, so I would not be bored on the way up. I was going to take my audio Italian CD for the way down, but, well, let's just say non lo ho potuto trovare. So I didn't take it. No matter! Instead I toted along a tasty collection of Classical from the library: Violin concertos by Beethoven and Mendelssohn performed by Isaac Stern (who, by the way, is TOTALLY INCREDIBLE!!!!), some Chopin and Liszt, and a Tchaikovsky CD I didn't end up listening to (but which is also terrific).

Anyway, I began with the Calculus right away, listening to the (TOTALLY INCREDIBLE) Violin CD with my Walkman. Unfortunately, I had a math test and was done in twenty minutes. How I wished I had more school to do! Not because I wanted to do school particularly, but because I was in a rather scholastic mood and wanted to get done as much as possible. However, there was nothing else to do, so I sat and listened in raptures to Isaac Stern's incredible skill.

We reached Rye in good time, and leaving the Camry in the harbor parking lot, headed up the coast to the Portsmouth Naval Base, which, for those of you who are so uninformed as to believe the Portsmouth Naval Base is in Portsmouth, is in Kittery. Go figure. I dropped my passengers and their cargo off at the pier and headed out into the great wide world, full of hope and ambition.

All was well, at first. After all, I have driven home from Portsmouth before. Misfortune was not far ahead, however. I am used to coming down the Rte. 1 Bypass, going around the Portsmouth circle, and heading straight to 101 via 95. This was impossible today, for SOMEONE had decided to close the Rte. 1 Bridge!!!!! I was furious! Why close the bridge when Aaron was coming to town? Sadly, there was nothing I could do but follow the detour sign. Actually, there were more signs than that one, but I didn't see the others in time. I sped by them, following the signs for I-95. In no time flat I found myself screaming up I-95 NORTH, praying for an exit. There was one pretty soon, but not soon enough to avoid adding another 14 miles to the trip.

So, once again I was going the right direction. I was annoyed at the whole missing-the-detour thing, but at least now I was home free, right? Of course right!

Or not. As I continued south down the interstate, I thought of this and that, listened to Chopin, and all in all drove a bit absent-mindedly. I wasn't driving dangerously or anything, but I certainly wasn't concentrating on my route. I went through the tolls with my dad's EZ-Pass, and instantly my mind was on that subject. I weighed the pros and cons of the electronic system versus the tokens, thought about whether I liked the fact that EZ-passes sometimes let their possessors get through legally but without paying (i.e., the bill doesn't charge for every toll). The statesman inside me screamed, "Return to tokens, vote in a Republican governor!" But my carnal nature rather liked the situation.

So I continued with such ponderings, and pretty soon I thought I should watch the signs. "Hmmm....495? Huh, I thought that was in Massachusetts. Weird." Hardly had these thoughts passed lightly through my mind when I was startled by three words: "Massachusetts Welcomes You!" I didn't welcome Massachusetts.

I was pretty seriously annoyed, but I remembered from a another boat excursion, that one to Gloucester, that 495 connects with 93, and I have driven that road a hundred (well, maybe ten) times. Therefore, I began to look for signs for 495 North (because New Hampshire is to the north, right? Of course right!). There were none to be seen! Everything was "495 South", "495 South." (Probably just another example of the inefficient, bureaucratic government of Massachusetts.) After going a good way further, finally there was a sign for the northern half of the highway. I took it joyously, and headed farther and farther down a little highway, with no sign of nearing my hoped-for destination. Finally, putting aside my pride, I stopped for directions.

"Hi, can you tell me how to get to 495 North?"

"Next light."

Grrrr. I made it back onto the highway. Finally, finally, finally, I was on the right track. I started to breathe a sigh of relief - but ended it as a cry of despair as another hateful sign approached: "End 495; Joining 95." So I had just gone in a big loop! So that's why there were no signs for 495 North! Suddenly it all came back to me: "You have to take 495 SOUTH to get to 93! NOW I remember." I didn't do another turnabout, though, and this time found the 101 exit pretty quickly (my eyes could not have been more peeled). In the meantime, I passed a VERY welcome sign, one of the first: "Welcome (Bienvenu) to New Hampshire: Live Free or Die"!!!! No more of this "You're going to like it here" stuff; everyone already does anyway.

The rest of the trip home was long but blessedly uneventful. I made it back to my home town without further ado, although I got pretty tired of Chopin and was too tired to change the CD. Now I am home, and it has almost never felt so good.

Below: An overview of my trip; blue lines indicate where I was behind the wheel; red indicates where my dad was driving.

We can't all excel at everything...

In absence of other ideas for what to post, I thought about promising to the next person on my list of blogs who posts that I would put up his picture on my blog as an award. Then I decided it might be a deterrent, and I'm not exactly sure I have a picture of every person whose blog I regularly read. By the way, if you're a girl and are upset that maybe I don't read any girls' blogs because I said "his picture on my blog...", read Grammar 101 or ask an English teacher.

This train of thought draws my mind instantly to the subject of Physics. Why? Because of the author of my Physics book, Dr. Jay Wile of AEM. He is a great teacher, to be sure, and knows much about science, but one sentence I read in Physics a week or two ago nearly drove me to the brink of insanity: "If someone drops two different objects of any size and weight from the same height in a vacuum, she will find that they land at the same time." SHE????? If he said "female person" instead of "someone" I could pardon the feminine pronoun, but, of course, he didn't. If he had said "he" I would have smiled; if he had said "he or she" I would have rolled my eyes; if he had said "they" I would have shaken my head; but since he said "she", my sense of justice to the English language was grieved. The only thing worse would be "it"! It is time Jay Wile was exposed for what he is: a brilliant teacher and scientist (as well as, according to his website, a pianist and actor) with a slightly incomplete grasp of grammar.

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*

In Which I Find Myself Busy as a Bee

I have never been so busy in my LIFE as I expect to be over the next couple weeks, and especially the next day and a half. This is always the busiest time of year for me, but this year takes the cake and eats it too. (Mixed metaphor intended.) The sources of this nearly incredible surge in activity are numerous. However the largest source BY FAR is my VBS overhead for Chestnut Hill. Allow me to elucidate. Our church is having a one-week camp (Vacation Bible School) for kids aged 4-12, or something like that, and I am the official creator of the Powerpoint presentation containing the lyrics to the songs that said children are to sing. One problem: I based all my work on the presentation I built for VBS two years ago, and just recently - about two hours ago, in fact - I found out that the one from last year had far more songs, and they were in a different order (this matters for reasons to hard to explain at 11:32pm). AND I CAN'T FIND THE FILE FROM LAST YEAR!!!

Here's how I felt when I found out I couldn't find the file:



So I have my work cut out for me, especially considering I only have tomorrow to work on it, and I have to work tomorrow and go to church and go to a VBS planning meeting. I'm swamped!

Once tomorrow is over and VBS has come and gone, I will have one day to recuperate. Then it's off to Fairwood for a "Young Men's Week." That will keep me busy until Wednesday or Thursday; then I shall head off to Block Island for a celebration of my mother's 50th birthday party. Then there's Fairwood's Family Convention and then there's leftover Chemistry and Math and Reports. Ugh.

In other news, my long-lost wallet has been found! I know most of you probably never knew I lost it, but I had, and it was most distressing. It turned up on Daddy's boat the third time we looked. I am so relieved and thankful! It was very much an answer to prayer It's especially nice to have something so relieving happen when I am in the midst of feeling excessively overwhelmed.

Follow-up from previous post:

I have decided to defy the public slightly by not reading an Agatha Christie. Vacation is over now, and I have read probably twenty Agatha Christies before anyway. I am only slightly defying the public, however, because I read the second most voted for book: Miss Buncle's Book. I enjoyed it quite thoroughly and highly recommend it. The only annoying thing about it is that I had to get it from the Milford library since the local library didn't have it. The annoying thing about THAT is that the Milford library is not clearly marked. In fact, I went into the wrong building the first time. A sign right over the door said "Library," but apparently it was mistaken: it was the Milford Planning Center. Some guy who mistook me for his buddy redirected me to the real library, across the street. I went in and, after several wrong turns, found my way to the Adult Fiction Section and made off with my prize. Cara, Ryan, and I were on our way to New York to visit some friends, and Cara read the book aloud on the way there and back (a ten hour trip, and she read for about six hours total). I finished the rest last night.

We had a great time in NY, especially playing Quaker with Klara, Becca, and Ruth. I got some great video and audio clips with my digital camera, but alas, they are on a different laptop and it is too late to transfer them. I may post some of them this week. Then again, I may not.

Back to another subject: I think I will continue to go with the public's opinions for my next couple books as well. I plan to read LOTR, Animal Farm, and The Prince and the Pauper in that order. I am notorious when it comes to following through with reading lists, however, so we shall have to wait and see what happens.

By the way, when I went to get my camera to take my "how I felt" pictures, this little guy was sitting right on the doorstep. Isn't he adorable? I think I shall name him Thaddeus for no particular reason whatsoever.