Bothers.

A week gone by and no post. If it is any comfort, last week was a cool week, an exciting week, an eventful-life-changing-direction-finding sort of week even.


And tomorrow I have a large Composition paper due.



And tonight's post is going to be wery short.












If you are wondering about the title (about the word itself, that is, not the period, I don't know where that came from) then this little notey will only help you or confuse you more:
If you are a family member or dear friend, I think that you may realize word that I might have used and suddenly become graitful.
If you are not and therefore clueless - consider yourself spared.
























































Congrats for scrolling all the way down here, but the post really was short, see?

Beauties and Dangers of the season

We have been having such beautiful colors lately. What with the sunrises, the sunsets, and the brilliant fall foliage it's hard to steer straight on the way to school! I have been taking a few pictures of the sky, but what I could get for you today was just a couple clips of the tops of trees (perhaps I’ll steal from James, the master photographer, soon but this is what I could get myself). Enjoy!




Silly me for moving my hand, but you certainly get the impact of the color.

I love how the leaves glow in the morning! The trees in our neighborhood look like the northern apples, layers of gold and red and green.

And yet after my beautiful travels, I was attacked by the local wildlife. Such menace and peril!!

Caught under a wall

I have a bone to pick tonight. Well, perhaps it’s more of a problem to diagnose, or maybe just a confession to make - but before we get to all of that, let me share with you the Tale of the Concrete Fisherman.

Once upon a time, there lived a well meaning chap who wanted to do some fishing. Having no block and tackle, he looked for and found a similar tool, hitched it up on his back, and began watching toward the stream, determinedly but awkwardly. When he found a spot that he liked, the fisherman swayed from side to side for a moment and then suddenly cast his fishing device straight into the river. For the tool he had chosen to catch fish with was a concrete wall.

After thus setting his fabulous-fish-catching-environment, the poor dolt waited for some water to build up, and crawled out onto the wall (which had remarkably fallen upright) in order to secure his prizes. There was a silvery flash below him – a fish! [Note: Please refrain from any vulgar exclamations of “to catch a fish/ so juicy swEEET!” until the narrative is complete –Ed.]

The foolish Fisherman stood in the middle of the river with his heels in the running water, batting at the fish which had collected below him. He let his hand first follow one and then another, teetering on the wall in his eagerness to grasp something. Soon, however, the pull of the whole stream was too much for him and he was swept back out into the current, still fitfully snatching at the fishes around him…

*********

Charming my dear, you’re probably thinking, But how on earth this relates to any nonsense under the sun is beyond me!

I guess that this story expresses how I’ve felt lately – just swept under the wave sometimes. Call it the ending of my freshman honeymoon period, call it a tiny spark of concerned responsibility, call it an irregular chocolate/coffee cycle (hey I’m working on that one), but in the midst of great classes and plenty of time to work I find myself unhappily loafing about like … well like a guy floating gently towards the water fall. Where do I like to put the blame? On the computer, of course.

With the advent of three writing classes this semester (Comp, Lit, and Journalism), I’ve spent a lot of time on the computer. But somewhere, among the necessary research, I found that I was loosing major chucks of time in black holes like “I’m-scoping-out-the- background-info-real-quick” or “That-extra-source-is-just-around -the-corner.” In the midst of wandering from link to link, bedtime would crop up and I would find that two and a half hours had disappeared into the fog.

The problem (for me) doesn’t stem from a rabid desire to defy sanity, or see how many web cookies I can munch on. The very allure of surfing is its usefulness. And at first, the endless possibilities of a search engine spread a cheerful glow over all my work. Did I need to profile a new professor in the Art Department? Ah ha! Here was a list from his old Alma Mater of all the art pieces he’d ever exhibited! Oh Ho! Here was another site that had all of the courses he taught at his last university! And best of all was that juice page of links which handed me all of the web sites which related to my thesis.

Riiiight.

And so, as I said before, I fell off the deep-end of search engines and resurfaced with some big holes in my day, day after day after day. That is why my complaint against being a Google writer came out in a story. If you stop and think about it, hoping to find a choice feast for your professor from one search word is a bit like throwing a wall into the creek for some fishes. It’s one thing to hope that a specific, authoritative web page will slosh up against your net; it’s another thing to plunge into a current of links that will teach you the meaning of “relevant” through the eyes of 54 different webmasters. The internet and its search options for a few occasions – yes. Search engines as the quick answer for all literary research – an unhappy no.

When I came out of the twilight zone I was greeted by Late Evening on Planet Earth, and believe me it was not a happy landing. As I wailed to my Mater one night, “Two hours in the middle of every day! Poof!! Gone!!” In the wordage of someone who to spent all of his time lifting rocks and mentoring padawans – Distressed I was.

So where does my story end, the bottom of the lake? Well, with all this water still in my eyes, I can't really say. But, if you’ve stuck with me this far, you deserve to have some concessions. I admit that you, the readed, might have gotten this revelation long ago. You may be thinking that anyone who imagines that Google and spell checker are the keys to happiness deserves to go over a waterfall or something. My answer is that redemption comes to the dolts of the world as well and I’m a work in progress. Since the evening of that outburst to my Mom, I’ve been aware of my tendency. Not totally victorious, but aware. I'm beginning to see that not only are there other ways to fish for thoughts, but better ways to discipline one's life. My hope is that tomorow I will find a footing or get some tackle and begin to learn to pull the perfect catch.

New innovations all the time

Hola, soy una loca ¿no?

Well, in our own language - I have indeed found a blog skin that I like very well. And if it lasts for two weeks, well we have a winner. But as I said, I am finding new ways of doing things all the time, trying to find that little artist in me somewhere.

Hence the colors on this post.

¿Te Gusta?
(That means - Do you like it? for y'all uno-lingual peeps!)

Sometimes...

you feel like a gutted fish

Spilling one’s guts

But please don’t do yours. I just got finished with mine.

Went down to Indianapolis this weekend, and it was s-WEET! They had a progressive dinner/costume party at 2^nd RP and Jims and I were privileged to attend. She went as an actress and I went as a reporter. Unfortunately we didn’t take many pictures, and the only picture that I could find was this one.

::cough:: We had a blast - the peeps down there were great, yummy lasagna, and uh, meaningful skits based on nursery rhymes. (I never knew that The Old Woman who lived in a Shoe had such modern application until now!) Is there any better way to spend a Saturday night?

Aaaanywho. In the lesser important realm of school, I’ve been doing articles on Lawrence of Arabia, skits in Spanish, other things that… I … can’t remember now.

Ben’s going down to Indi himself this weekend to participate in the Fall Ministry Project. It was a very cool time for us last year, but I’m too old now (and can’t really spare the time). It’s a good opportunity to have some fun with kids from all over Indiana, spend a night at the church, and then go out and spend Saturday working at the host congregations. Sycamore RPC (the congregation in Kokomo) is both sending youth down and hosting whoever gets chosen to come up here. We who are staying still get a piece of the action because we can volunteer to go up to the church ourselves and we may get to host some kids in our home. Pretty cool beans.

Urg. That phrase is the secret signal that I’ve absolutely run out of everything to say. Catch up with you later!

Oh, and I will be changing this skin until I find an accoutriating look, advise as you see fit. If you’re thinking that the word accoutriating is a big vague and may not even exist – hehehe you’re beginning to catch on…

Work, such as schoolwork or piecework, that is done at home [that's right, Homework!]

Though changing my blog skin was cleverly plotted to distract my readers (no real post in days after all), certain grumps have made it clear that they are not to be put off. Very well then, I shall tell you the tale.

First, I no longer have my job. Now now, don’t splutter popcorn all over your lap like that, it isn’t nearly as bad as it sounds! God has provided other means of income, and there are advantages in leaving the post of Main Building Custodian behind. The first reason is really God’s will. As Mom always reminds us “You don’t know what He’s sparing you from, when He takes something away!” She’s absolutely right, and not knowing what it is sounds good for me!

Of course what's one of the great side benefits? The same thing that slew Gollum’s kings and gnawed high mountains down. More Time! Extended duties at The Correspondent, long reading assignments from writing classes, the next level of Spanish, these things take my time and particularly my evening time. Quite often I feel that I’d trade two good hours of morning for an hour of evening; there’s nothing to distract you but what you must get accomplished before bed!

The last plus here is that I'm not really loosing money, I have two small sources of income which I didn’t have last semester. There's now a regular check from The Correspondent for my duties as the Entertainment & Reviews Editor, and a new babysitting job. I combined the two and they add up to about the same as what I got cleaning at the Mission. Now I’m working at (or falling headlong into!) the things I love. Huzzah! Huzzah! As Ginny very often says, God is so good!!

Whew! So this week has been my first week of free evenings , and woooooo badger have I needed it!! I had an uber hard, uber important paper due for Eng Composition last week (was it only last week and not lifetimes ago, my precious gray cells?). Anywho, that finally got, uh, turned in. This week on Monday evening (whither art thou oh cells?!) I had an uber UBER important Lit Criticism paper due, and it also landed on the prof’s desk in time. Alright, so both of these papers only averaged about 6 pages ::cough:: double spaced buuut, I'm just a fish so I can get all psyched up about it, right?

No?

oh.

Now that those are out of my hair (hair? I still have hair now?) methinks I’ll turn my attention to a newspaper article that is due Monday afternoon. Or how about the Review of Literature and the Research Proposal due for Composition? You see how these things go.

I certainly haven’t been without my fair share of fun and games in all of this. Right at the beginning of this long week, I and my forlorn brother found ourselves abandoned with a lone wiener - a single frankfurter! - in the fridge. It must be said that later that evening we noticed a note from Mom, “There are pot pies, burritos, and pizza in the freezer. Have fun!” Be we, for shame, did not see it (or them) and so what followed could not be directly blamed on us. There have since been splendid feasts of lasagna, or sloppy joes, but on this empty Monday night Ben and I broke from our bounds! We flung ourselves into gastronomic bliss and went to Sonic!! ::sigh:: I’ve wondered if the everyone understands what Sonic truly does for the world, but in our family it has always been the epitome of burger happiness Can you imagine, oh my tots, what followed? We visited, not one, but two ice cream parlors to sample and compare the mysteries of Peanut Butter Moose Tracks.

And, to conclude, I’ve been in front of a computer a lot lately, not the ideal place to spend one’s youth, and it has a way of making me an extreme grump myself. This evening, for something like 79 seconds, I slowed down down down, went outside, and took this. I couldn’t help but smile at how beautiful He has made His world.

p.s. There’s something going about that has me excited (if you know me, yes the hopping up and down, shaking my bangs kind of excited). I shan’t spill the beans now, just be aware that somewhere tonight there may be a cabbage all ebullient over something…

Muhahahahaaaaa!

Oh yes










I've done it again