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.

My Last Post of 2007

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy New Year, everyone!

Life's Frenzied Course

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Back to the schedule...

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

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

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



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



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

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

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

The end.

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.

Willful Misinterpretation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Georgia," Daddy replied.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"How so?"

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

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

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...

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!"

Quote of the Day

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

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

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

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.

I Am Related to Prince William!

For all those of you who are so scared by my profile picture, I suggest getting Firefox and installing the Adblock add-on that I mentioned in a post last week. It will enable you to avoid being forced to look at Aaron van Beethoven while simultaneously affording everyone else the pleasure.

Now on to other and more important things:

This week was full of sickness and school. I'm glad it's over. At the same time, however, it would be nice if I could just keep repeating Thursday or Friday until I was completely finished with all my schoolwork so I wouldn't have all this blasted pressure. (Why can't I just graduate without doing any work?!?!? WHY!?!?!?!?) Of course, we all know what happened to the man who asked for a month of Sundays (supposing we all have read the Book of Virtues), so maybe I'd better be careful what I wish for. Plus, if we had a whole month of Thursdays, there would be no Saturdays on which to relax, and - possibly even worse - no Tuesdays on which to turn eighteen! Horror of horrors!!! I think I'll stick with the good ol' 365-day year.

Now, please humor me as I skip back in time for the rest of my post.

I had an OUTSTANDING time at the last youth weekend! It was terrific fun, and I don't know why I didn't think to write about it before now. Actually, I'm not sure I want to outline the whole weekend for you, so maybe that's why. I would still like to point out that it was a great time, with great meetings, awesome games, fun sports, and grueling competition. I still think that my team's snow church was better than Cara's team's snow "fruitbowl," but I had a good time anyway. One of my favorite parts was creating a TV commercial for Bruce's Canned Yams. Such fun! I'll have to try to get the video and post it.

Now I'm going to skip even further back in time to the game time on Friday night: one of the many fantastic games Andrea thought up was... the game where you have a label on you where you can't see it and you try to guess who you are. (If that game has a name, it is not in my vocabulary.) I took a while with Rush Limbaugh, but I took even longer with my next one. I had narrowed myself down to a member of the British royalty, but I still couldn't figure it out! Was I Prince Charles? Prince William? Prince Harry? Prince Andrew? Prince Phillip?

"No! What gave you such highfalutin' ideas?" laughed Andrea gaily.

But what other princes were there? Was I actually a duke or a lord? I was beginning to run out of male royalty when my dear friend Ben said, "DO YOU EVEN KNOW YOUR GENDER!?!?!?"

Oh, right...

I asked whether I was Queen Elizabeth, and know what? I WAS! I had never known it before.

Happy Valentine's Day II and MORE!

Happy Valentine's Day again! Don't worry I didn't eat more than one chocolate bar, although I did have a number of marshmallows, some angel food cake, chocolate-covered strawberries, whipped cream-covered strawberries, and ice cream.

Ahem.

Speaking of Valentine's Day, what better day is there in the year to play through a book of old "classic" American love songs? Some of them are really quite funny. It seems that sentimentality was pretty popular back in the nineteenth century. Some of my favorites are "I Love You Truly" (the very same song that was sung by Bert and Ernie in "It's a Wonderful Life"), "Just A-Wearyin' For You", "Down By the Old Mill Stream", "In My Merry Oldsmobile" (yes, the book is old), and "Gypsy Love Song." They're all so...so old-fashioned! And funny! Maybe some time I'll try recording a couple of them, but it's too late to do it tonight.

On to other, more modern, less soupy, and probably more interesting subjects. ADBLOCK! I love Adblock. If you have never experienced it, you don't know what you're missing! It's an add-on for the browser Mozzarella Firefox (as it has been recently dubbed by a member of our family who previously called it "Maxamilla Foxfire" but broke that habit), and it lets you right-click on any picture on the web and Adblock it. BOOM! No more ads from THAT website! It's so much fun ("Feeeeel the power!" "Whoa, I feel it!"), and there are hardly ever ads on the websites I visit anymore, at least after I've been blocking things for a while. Life is good again!

My final subject:

The Inaccuracy and Fickleness of Weather Forecasting

---

Recently the weather forecasts have been all over the place. First we were going to get a huge huge huge snowstorm. "At LEAST twelve inches, probably even TWO FEET!" cried the meteorologists. But they soon changed their minds: Weather.com declared yesterday that we would get two inches before the precipitation turned into sleet or rain. Fortunately, they were wrong. Then this morning it was "eight inches, or maybe more. Some sleet around noon." Good thing they inserted that little disclaimer: they needed it. We have at least a foot. Oh, and the sleet didn't show up until 2:30, and it lasted about thirty seconds.

The meteorological community managed to keep from being totally wrong with the morning forecast, but they just couldn't stop while they were ahead. "The snow will taper off throughout the evening. It won't end until midnight, but we will get only one to two inches between 4PM and then." They may be right about the midnight part - the snow is coming down quite softly now - but it still is falling pretty steadily, and there is less than half an hour left before February 15th arrives - oh, wait, they just changed it to "light snow until 2AM, with some freezing drizzle." (Maybe it will end at midnight after all!) At any rate, I'm pretty sure we've had more than two inches since four.

I don't want to bash the weather-people; I'm sure they're all very nice, and I assume they do their best to get it right. But as Mrs. Banks would say (or sing), "Although we adore them individually, we agree that as a group they're rather stupid..." :)

Here's how our property looked like around 3:30 or 4:00 this afternoon:

Aaron S: Diary of a Young Boy

Due to lack of time and space, I've been forced to share only about half of the volume of my first diary with you. Nevertheless, I have managed to include, word for word, what I think are probably the most enjoyable nuggets from the little (and I mean LITTLE) volume.

Sat., 1996, Mar. 2:
On the 27th in February, was my birthday! I am 7 years old! ....

You will soon find that the subject of this last little entry - birthdays - once predominated nearly the entirety of my thoughts, or at least those I deigned worth sharing with the future. I shall now skip two entries to bring you to one of the next notable days in my calendar:

Friday, November 1, 1996:
...It is Bria's birthday, and she is (9) 9 years old...

...My Jack-knife is missing. It has my diary keys on it. My diary was locked, but Bria let me use her keys. Her key's are just like mine.

At Breakfast we had egg's and bacon. For lunch bologna Sadwiches.

Bria chose Savory Chicken, rice, lima beans, String beans, cornbread, and water for supper. For desert, of course, it was cake.

...My birthday is on February 27th. Next year I am turning eight.

Cara turned 6 last Friday.

That's all I have to say today!

Saterday, November 2, 1996:
...Next year on my birthday I want to get playmobil, train tracks, Some books, and some little lego's.

Next year my birthday is goint to be on a thursday. I hope I'm going to have a nice birthday.

Like random? You'll love this:

Sunday, November 24, 1996:
In four days is thanksgiving. Lisa A***** has e-mail in Bible school. I need new pajama's. Today mama is going out. Tomorrow We have school. I'm going to rest now!

Tuesday, November 26, 1996:
Today is cleaning day. I cleaned one of the bathrooms, my room, and nothing else.

Monday, December 30, 1996:
Today I Accidentally broke a chip (about this big -> [little scrawl]) off my violin. Kimberly M***** is coming over. We alway's have a fun time together. I cleaned my room today. It looks much better than yesterday.

I'm not sure why I said Kimberly and I "alway's have a fun time together." Please don't misunderstand me: Kimberly is both very nice and very fun. However, as a general rule, she played with Bria whenever she came to our house (possibly because they were both girls and she is about 4.5 years older than I). In fact, the above-mentioned event may have been the very time I got so mad at Bria and Kimberly for excluding me that I threw a metal trash can at our poor guest. I believe I got in rather serious trouble.

This entry immediately follows the last one:

Tuesday, February 28, 1997:
Yesterday was my Birthday! I'm Eight now.

Ninety-seven was actually a good year for my journal-keeping. I posted a nearly record-breaking SEVEN POSTS before I got to this next one below:

Sunday, December 7, 1997:
Christmas is only 19 days away! I'm very excited....I've made a cardboard dollhouse out of a box.

Next post:

Monday, January 26, 1998:
Christmas was 32 days ago. I got [blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah]. Well, I have nothing else to say!

Saturday, January 16, 1999:
....In about a month I'll be 10. My first decade! My next one is 20.

And with those words of wisdom, I'll sign off, wishing all of you a very merry last-week-before-Christmas!!!!!

Ryan is the Nicest guy in the WHOLE world!

Ryan is handsome,strong,cool,nice etc.

Why Have I Not Been Posting?

Well, there are several reasons. First, I have been busy (so what else is new?).

Second, a good bit of my computer time has been spent perfecting little details with my link list.

But, for today at least, the most significant reason is that I have felt like this:



...and have been doing this:



I am definitely starting to feel better, but now I have to work on the Powerpoint presentation for tomorrow's church service. So, once again, I have absolutely NO time to blog. Nothing to write, nothing to show, no one to listen...but Aaron never complains! Not every blogger can be an Aaron!

For Red Sox Fans

Are you down in the dumps? Do you feel like the world has let you down? Is life full of misery? Then I have a bit of news for you that you are going to love. Of course, you've probably heard it already, but....

...New York is JUST as dead as Boston!!!!

Finally, life has meaning again... ; )


Photo from MLB.com

Recoooooooord!!!!!

I have officially (well, actually, I didn't research this, but I think it's right) neglected my blog for the longest period EVER since June of last year! Actually, this year in July probably comes close, but let's not haggle over the inconsequential details. The point I am trying to make cannot be denied: I have not posted in nearly a fortnight! I confess and repent in torrential tears. Almost.

Our extra cell phone broke. Somehow it ended up sitting in a cupholder of water and now when it is turned on the screen says "Service required." Grrr. The ensuing shortage of mobiles (pronounced MO-bilez) has been annoying to say the least. When you have three cars and 3.5 drivers (Cara's the 0.5), and constant appointments throughout the week - not to mention errands! - how can you LIVE without cellphones. The fact that we did, in fact, live without cellphones ten years ago is of no importance. These days, cellphones are a NECESSITY! Plus, do you realize how "uncool" it is to not have a cell phone? I shudder at the thought!

In an effort to remedy the dire situation, I bid on a cellphone on ebay.com. (I know what you're thinking: "Uh oh, here comes a story." Well, you're right.) I didn't win either of the first two I bid on, but then I noticed another inexpensive phone, bid on it, and won it - all in the space of about one minute. It was then that I was pointed to the fact that the phone was for AT&T...and we use Verizon Wireless! AAAAAHHH!!! Embarrassment and devastation!!!!

Ahem. So, now we had an extra phone that was worth nothing to us...nothing whatsoever (notice how I switch to "we" once there's a mistake involved; I'm so open-minded). However all was not lost; when the phone came, I (first person singular again) did something daring: I put it back on ebay! I'd never sold anything online before, so this was a new experience. I've been studying HTML and CSS and the like for school somewhat, though, so I leapt at the challenge. It sold! And know what? I got $5 more than I paid for in the beginning!!!!! Therefore it is said, "Like Aaron, a mighty ebay seller before the Lord."

A Shining Example of Breviloquence

Well, I don't have much to say, but I'll say it anyway.  Last night, as I lay sleepless in my bed until the early hours of morning (why, why did I have to take that Excedrin?), I schemed grand schemes for my spectacular Sabbath Post.  I would write poetry!  I would post pictures!  I would thrill and awe!  The wonders of my rhetorical, technical, and artistic skills would be sung to the third, yea to the third and fourth generations!  Alas, it was not to be.  Instead I involuntarily cleaned the kitchen to give everyone else a Sabbath break.  Sigh.  At least that's over.  It wasn't too bad, really; I recited "The Raven", "Paul Revere's Ride", and "The Embarrassing Episode of Little Miss Muffet" while Ryan prompted me.  I sang "You Gotta Eat Your Spinach" and "Come and Get Your Happiness" (from Shirley Temple's Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, in case you wondered) to pass the time.  By 9:30, however, it was getting old. I am so slow at cleaning the kitchen, and, unfortunately, "passing the time" never speeds things up.

Well, I know you were all dying for news from my end, and boy, do I have some for you!  I rearranged my room again!  Woohoo!  There's something I like just so much about rearranging furniture.  This time it was not just for fun, though.  I had a mission: to move my bed, bookcases, bureau, desk, and computer in such a way as freed up enough wall space for me to bring my keyboard into my room.  I managed it!  Fortunately, I like it, too.  It's not as aesthetically pleasing as the former arrangement, perhaps, but it is more functional.  The best part (other than that I now have a keyboard in my room) is that my bed is directly under the skylight, and I can look straight up into the stars!  Not that our stars compare with those of the Catskills or even western NH, but I'll take what I can get.

(Speaking of the stars in the Catskills, have you ever seen them?  I have lain for hours on the H.'s lawn just gazing at the sheer beauty of the sky.  If you haven't seen stars like that you don't know what you've missed.)

Well, I'm going to leave off here in hopes of my pastor reading my blog post aaaaaaaaalll the way through.  He told me today that he doesn't always get through my lengthy "sermons."   I said to him, "Upon my honor!"


Actually, I didn't.  : )

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?