Puzzles

Tonight was the first time I've done a puzzle since the end of the summer. I'd forgotten why I love puzzles. I'd also forgotten why I get aggravated at puzzles. In any case, it was good to finally piece together another jigsaw puzzle. I think it's good for my concentration and my patience. Maybe I should buy a few to keep on our coffee table and work on whenever I have a few extra minutes.

Harrison Bay & Vespers

This afternoon us three Q. kids were invited to Harrison Bay for a potluck supper. We'd never been there before and thought it was an awesome place. We took a bunch of pictures, walked on fallen-down trees, participated in double-high kendo fighting, got muddy feet walking by the shore and swam (well Ty and his friend Josh swam while Bryn, Jonathan and I watched since we had to be on stage with orchestra at vespers). The only bad thing about the outing was that we had to leave earlier than we wanted to since orchestra played for alumni vespers. I wish we could have stayed out there a lot longer, but if we had I wouldn't have been able to tell you the next story.

The most amusing part of playing for vespers tonight was offering. We were only supposed to play for prelude, song service, special music and postlude, but all of a sudden just after offering was announced, Mrs. Minner jumped to her conductor's stand and whispered frantically, "we're doing the third movement for offertory!" We all immediately started rearranging our music and then we were off. Except for that the woodwinds and brass started playing the second movement with so much gusto that I was all of a sudden convinced that Mrs. Minner had really said for us to play the second movement. Then I saw Mrs. Minner's quite astonished face and realized that she was just as confused as I was. The flautists saw her face too and faltered for a few seconds. Then Mrs. Minner motioned and mouthed for them to just keep playing and we carried on normally and finished in fine form. I just thought that was totally hilarious. (Ammendment: Now that I've written that whole thing, I'm not quite sure it's all true. It is true to the best of my knowledge, but no one else in orchestra that I've talked to so far remembers the senario quite that way. My sister said that Mrs. Minner did in fact say we should play the second movement, but the flutes faltering happened because they did the first repeat even though Mrs. Minner had whispered "no repeats" just before she started conducting. Bryn said she thought Mrs. Minner made the astonished face because of the unexpected repeat. So now I'm not sure what's actually correct and factual although I feel like my story is much more interesting. So therefore, I give you leeway to believe whatever you wish about this whole paragraph.)

Now onto my last story. Jonathan was going to give Tim and I rides home after vespers, but Tim wouldn't come out of the church. Finally Jonathan went in to find him and we drove off. As we were driving through campus Tim told us that while he was talking inside the church to some other orchestra members, this old man with a really distinctive deep voice walked by and stopped to put his hand on Tim's shoulder and say "thank-you for that lovely music." Tim responded with a "you're welcome" or a "glad you liked it" or something like that. Tim said he recognized the man's voice, but couldn't quite place where, why or how he recognized it. Then one of the orchestra/community members Tim had been talking with said "Hi, Uncle Dan." Turns out that was THE Uncle Dan. Like the Uncle Dan from Uncle Dan and Aunt Sue's Your Story Hour. You should have heard the racket I made when Tim told us that. I was soooo extremely jealous. We almost turned around and went back just to see if we could find and talk to Uncle Dan, but then we realized that (1) he'd probably already left and (2) we'd mostly likely just come off as complete lunatics. Anyway, just wanted you to know that you should keep an eye out for Uncle Dan hanging out around campus this alumni weekend. I know I'm going to. I should probably make sure to have paper and a pen on my person at all times too so I can get his autograph if I do run into him.

European Encore

Tonight was the annual Sietze de Vries organ concert. He's a great Dutch organist and improviser. As usual, the concert was awesome. My friend Stephen, an organ major and a huge Sietze fan, was sitting beside me pretty much drooling the entire hour and a half concert. At the end, the audience gave Sietze a standing ovation. Danielle, sitting on my other side, started clapping a rhythmic steady clap; the European encore clap. I heard her and immediately switched to clap along with her. Bryn, on Danielle's other side, caught on too. I nudged Stephen and pointed with my head to Danielle's clapping hands. He gave a huge grin and changed over to the European encore clap with great enthusiasm. Soon a good portion of the front section of the church was clapping in rhythm too. Sietze bowed a couple times and left the stage. We all kept clapping. He finally came back on stage, bowed again and then did an encore. We (Danielle, Bryn and I) all think he must have heard the European encore clap and appreciated it so much that he did the encore. Or maybe he was always planning to do one. Anyway, I just thought it was neat.

After the encore, as I was leaning back into my pew, I sat against this old man's hand. He had put it on the back of my pew (the pew in front of him) to stand up. I half-turned and said, "sorry" like any good Canadian should. He said, "oh well that's OK" and gave my shoulder about five good, strong pats. I turned farther around and realized it was a man I used to think was really nice until I learned some stuff about him and found out he wasn't all that nice. So that was interesting. And that's all the random facts I have for you today...

...except that just before the concert Danielle called a Southern Swingers club meeting. (Southern Swingers is the equivalent of Southern Striders, but just takes place on the Spalding swings instead of the track.) It was rather last-minute so we couldn't get any other Southern Swingers members together so it was just Danielle and I. We had fun. And now I'm really done for this post.

60th

Today is my 60th blog post on this blog. I've been waiting for this momentous occasion for a long time. I have now equaled the number of posts on my regular blog. I also had a haircut today. I planning to just get a trim but somehow I accidentally told her to do whatever she wanted to my hair. That was a bad idea...now my hair is really short. Oh well, hair grows.

Gordon Bietz

I walked into the orchestra rehearsal room today and immediately noticed a visitor. Well, actually we had two visitors, but only one was someone of importance. This visitor was Gordon Bietz. I wondering what he was doing in an orchestra rehearsal and imagined that he had just come to listen. As soon as our orchestra conductor had prayer, she introduced the visitors and said they were be helping out with special music for Alumni vespers on Friday night. So if you've always wanted to hear Dr. Bietz sing bass in a quartet then come to vespers on Friday night and bring your friends.

Web site

I was stressed out all day today. Actually I've been stressed out about today since last night. I decided that I wasn't going to think about school work at all during break and I managed to do that quite well. But of course, as soon as I got back to campus I started worrying about getting everything done that I needed to have done by tomorrow. Mostly I was worried about my fiction story and my Web site. Tonight I went to the Mac lab in the SJ&C (department slang for the School of Journalism and Communication) at 6 p.m. and started slicing up my Photoshop design. I was having some trouble getting it right so I asked my brother (who was also working on his design in the Mac lab) for help. We eventually agreed to switch tasks. I said I'd make Tyler's form on his contact page if he'd slice my design. We switched computers and I had his form done pretty quickly. Then I went over to see how far he'd gotten. He was still trying to figure out slicing so I took over again and then had the TA help me with the slicing. That worked a whole lot better and finally I had my design in Dreamweaver and could start working on it. For this assignment we had to make up a Web site for SNL, Southern News Live, which is a joint project between two SJ&C classes. We had to make a home page, an about page and a contact page. I'm pretty happy with how my home page turned out, especially for pretty much starting from scratch tonight. The other two pages are alright, but nothing to expand upon. Anyway, so now that I've finished explaining that, here's a screenshot of my home page.

Rope

Today on our drive back to Southern, we noticed a rope trailing on the road behind a truck that was way in front of us. We were driving in the right lane and then moved over into the left lane to stay away from the strange unwinding rope. We watched as the truck tried to pass a semi. The rope slid over into our left lane. The truck kept going, unaware of the long line trailing behind him. Finally the car in front of us drove over the rope and then we did too. All of a sudden the rope broke off from the truck and disappeared behind us. It was really strange. We drove up beside the truck and Jonathan tried to yell from the driver's seat that they had lost a rope or a coil or something like that. We're not sure if the driver of the truck ever understood what we were trying to tell him. It was weird, but something I wanted to remember, so that's why I picked it for my post today.

Bookstaircase

I love books. I also love bookshelves. Here's books, bookshelves and stairs combined. I want stairbookcases like this someday.

BB Gun

Last night some of us went up to Christopher's cabin to sleep. No one could find the keys for the cabin after we were up there yesterday morning to clean so we had to climb through the windows that we'd fortunately left open. When we woke up in the morning we were hungry, but we hadn't brought food for breakfast. We drove back down to Christopher's house and mixed up some pancakes, and brought along some eggs, peanut butter, applesauce (of course) and syrup. Then we drove back up to the cabin to eat breakfast. It was about 11:53 by the time we got back there. Not exactly breakfast time anymore, but we still wanted to eat breakfasty foods. Jonathan climbed in the window and I started handing the food items in to him. Tim was playing around with Christopher's BB gun as he had been for the entire previous day. He was aiming for the pile of paper plates we'd brought up to the cabin and shot just as I let my hand fall after passing something to Jonathan. Tim accidentally shot my finger with the BB. I was surprised at first, but immediately knew what it was. I said "ow" right away and that's when Tim and Jonathan realized what happened. I was a bit afraid to look, but finally realized I should. I pulled it out from where I'd hid it in my sleeve and saw a big bubble of blood pooling on my right pinky. The ring-finger beside it started to swell up too. Tim ran around to the van to get Jonathan's first aid kit. Jonathan, sticking his head out the window, asked to see it and I held my hand up to him. Then I started feeling a little like I do when I get blood tests so I sat down on a stone below the window. Tim came back around the side of the cabin and started looking through the first aid kit. Then next thing I knew I was in my elementary school playground and there were kids screaming and yelling. I wasn't sure what was going on, but I started to run. Then I tripped, fell in a hole, gave a huge jerk and yelled "whoa!" Tim and Jonathan then told me, in rather urgent voices, to lay back down. It was then that I realized I had just fainted. Tim was still crouching beside the first aid kit and Jonathan had somehow got behind me to make sure I hadn't hit my head when I'd keeled straight over. For a few milliseconds I still wasn't really sure what had happened and I lay back down to figure things out. Tim let me know that I was deathly white (not sure how I can get more white than I usually am, but apparently it's possible) while he cut some gauze off a roll and held it to my finger. The thought of all the blood from my hand that Tim was holding up in the air draining back down into the rest of my body kind of made me feel sick again, but I stayed lying down and tried not to think about it. Tim fastened some gauze onto my bleeding finger with that white tape stuff and I started feeling better. Tim finally gave me the go-ahead to sit up a bit. I carefully sat up while Jonathan and Tim hovered around nearby to see if I was about to faint again. After a few more minutes Tim said I should come inside while he and Jonathan made me some food. Tim got inside the cabin and Jonathan waited outside while I managed crawling through the window. Then I rearranged my sleeping bags and blankets and laid down to wait for breakfast to be made. Tim kept telling me to let them know if I was feeling like fainting again, but I was pretty sure I wouldn't faint again. (I'll finish the post later...we're going back up to the cabin for supper.)

Apple Sauce

Today I woke up when someone's cell phone alarm went off. Not quite sure what time that was, but I never really got to sleep again after that. Later on most everyone else woke up and we talked for a bit before having morning worship together and getting ready for the day. We had waffles with peanut butter and fresh apple sauce for breakfast. Then we all drove up to see Christopher and Somer's (Tim's brother and sister-in-law) cabin and helped out with some cleaning there until the gnats drove us away. When we got back to Christopher's house we started the great apple sauce making afternoon. With six SAU students and Christopher all working at making apple sauce, we got done cutting all the apples the one stove in the house could handle really fast. We kept working all afternoon whenever the apples were boiled and ready for the actual apple sauce making. In between we played with Tim's newphew, Isaiah, and niece, Eden, read, played piano and other excited activities. Right now I'm looking after Eden while Christopher finishes up some more apple sauce. I think we're going to go swinging now, but first, here's what she has to say:
"cvcfggvbnm bvcvczxzcv mn b vcc." *Sentence typed by Eden Grace.

Mid-term Break

Early this morning I was having really strange dreams about spiders crawling all over me. I kept waking up and trying to brush spiders off. I would have been more concerned if I'd been more awake. So, like I was saying, I kept waking up every couple hours or so. Finally, around 5:30 a.m. I woke up and was actually not really tired anymore. Then I went to watch the Orionids meteor shower. It was pretty cool and something I haven't done for a really, really long time. I couldn't actually see any meteors for a long time, but finally I started being able to see them. Then I went to Tim and Jonathan's apartment for a potluck breakfast. They have potluck breakfast every Friday morning, but moved it to Wednesday for this week because of mid-term break. Anyway, it was French toast (my suggestion) and some other tasty foods. Then I went to my first class. After that Bryn and I met Ty in the parking lot behind Talge and gave him his birthday present. We had some siblingly talking time before going separate ways for mid-term break and then Bryn and I went back to our apartment. I quickly packed my stuff and got ready to leave and then went back to campus for my last class before break. Then I met up with the people I was traveling with and we headed out for New Market, Virginia. Six of us came to Tim's brother's house for break. So we're here now and I'm looking forward to a great break.

Car Keys

It's happening again. All because the mornings here in Tennessee have gotten frosty all of a sudden. For the past two mornings, when I've parked my car on campus and try to take my keys out of the ignition they won't come out. This happened on cold mornings last year too, but usually I could eventually coax my keys to give up their death grip on the ignition. Well, yesterday they refused. I'd just pulled into a space in the parking lot below Hackman and Lynn Wood and was trying to hurry to World Religions when I couldn't remove my keys from the ignition. I sighed, knowing the struggle ahead of me. I tried every trick I'd used last year. No luck. Glancing at the time on my phone, I finally knew that I'd have to leave the keys as they were if I was going to get to class on time. I just left my keys in the ignition, carefully making sure not to lock the doors. I just prayed no one would notice and take advantage of my poor car's vulnerability. Fortunately, either nobody noticed my keys hanging right beside my steering wheel, or those two did notice were too honest and un-stealing to try to profit from my predicament. This morning I had the same problem. I did improve on my methods from yesterday though by taking all my other keys off the key ring and just leaving the car key in the ignition. Just before I left my car, I decided to try to get the key out once more. It worked. I was exceedingly glad. But now I'm still left with the problem. If anyone has any good ideas, let me know...I've tried everything I can think of.

TQ Birthday

We had a birthday party for my youngest brother, Tyler, tonight while my parents are still here. His birthday is on Wednesday, but my parents are flying out tomorrow morning and I'm going to be leaving on break as soon as I get out of class on Wednesday, so we decided to have a celebration today. It was a quick and rather raucous affair consisting of five of his dorm friends (three of which are RA's), two of his sisters, two of his parents (the only two), and one of his cousins. The three RA's were worried about being at work in time, so we had his party at the Four Corner Rafael's. Since we didn't have time to make him a cake, or buy him a good-tasting one, my mum passed around bags of Skittles and Canadian Smarties (oh so differently than those chalky American ones). Then there was the obligatory picture time to appease my mother and then all the RA's and friends of RA's traded hugs to the other non-young-adult-males (Ty's sisters, parents and cousin) and hurried back to campus. It was fun, but a very different party than either Bryn or I would ever have, haha.

Chewing Gum

My mum gave me a great idea for a kids book this afternoon. She said that when she was in the airport in Boston, waiting for the flight back down here to Chattanooga, she threw her gum away. Then she said she started feeling bad for her poor gum all discarded and thrown away. So she said that I should write a kids book following the life cycle of a piece of gum, from the factory to being thrown away. I think that's the greatest idea yet. Kids would love to read a book about that. Maybe someday I'll have time to research what actually happens to a piece of gum in its life time.

Kite Flying

Today I went kite flying. We thought of the idea when we got out of church and it was really, super windy. By the time we were done eating lunch and got out of the field beside the duck pond it wasn't all that windy anymore, but it was still fun trying to make the kite fly. Later I went to the I Cantori/Southern Ringtones Evensong. Actually, because I got a ride with an I Cantori member who had to be there early for practice, I sat in the balcony while the during the hour of practice. It reminded me of being at music festivals when I was in high school. For one music festival that happened every February in a town about two and a half hours north of my town, all of my teacher's students stayed together at the same hotel and then we'd spend our days at the church where the music festival was held. When we weren't practicing, we'd sit in the balcony doing our homework as we listened to all the other competitors play. The Kamloops music festival was always a lot of fun and a good time bonding with each other. So tonight, listening to the Evensong practice reminded me of all those good times. Oh and the actual Evensong was pretty good, too.

CSO

Yesterday I got a text from Jonathan. It said to call Tim. Now here's the background. Tim doesn't call me. Ever. Actually, he did last school year until he saw his phone bill and I don't believe he's called me since. My phone is from Canada so people usually don't want to call me since they'll get charged more and stuff like that. So basically I either call people myself or else people get a hold of me through my sister (who I live with) or they send me texts and I call them back. Anyway, so after I got this text, I called Tim and he asked if I wanted to go to the Chattanooga Symphony and Opera with a group of people. I agreed to and so seven of us went to the symphony last night. It was pretty cool. I haven't been to a symphony (other than our own Southern symphony concert, which I was playing in) yet this year and I've never heard the Chattanooga symphony. They had a Tchaikovsky night. The first piece was Tchaikovsky's Piano Concert #1, which the SAUSO (I'm sure you can figure out what that stands for) played in the Concerto Concert last January. Four of the people in our group had reserved tickets beforehand and were sitting pretty close to the front, but Jonathan, Bryn and I had to just buy tickets at the door and we were farther back. From where we were sitting, the sound was kind of quiet and I couldn't even see the cellos at all since they were in the middle and not on the outside like I'm used to. Usually I mostly watch the cellos when I go to the symphony because I find them most amusing of all the instruments. Anyway, Jonathan saw that the first box on the right side of the balcony wasn't being used and so, at intermission he went up there and asked the people in the box behind that one if anyone was sitting there. They said no and that we could use it if we wanted so Jonathan, Bryn and I went up there. The seats weren't as comfortable as the ones we'd had before, but the view was great. I could see the cellos nicely from that vantage point and most of the other sections of the orchestra except for the brass, woodwinds and basses. Probably the most interesting part of the second half of the concert was watching the conductor. He was really ahead of the rest of the orchestra...so much so that we weren't sure how the orchestra stayed together so well, but somehow they managed. That conductor was soo funny to watch. Usually he used really sweeping, circular motions. Other times he'd stop conducting with his right, baton-holding hand and just conduct with his left hand for a bit. Once in awhile he'd actually stop conducting all together and just stand there staring at a certain section of the symphony, usually the cellos, violas or brass, with a humongous smile plastered on his face. It was certainly an interesting second half. Oh and the piece the symphony played for the second half was the Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 5, which the SAUSO played two years ago. So I had fun knowing the pieces so well, and remembering what was coming up next and the part that I played. It was a very random, last-minute invite, but I'm really glad I got that text from Jonathan from Tim. These are the kind of things I want to remember when I leave Southern.

Water

I've been thinking about water a lot lately (not totally surprising with all the uninspiring-for-writing-ideas rainy days we've been having). I don't think I could live without water. OK, OK let me clarify. I don't just mean drinking water. I know I couldn't survive without that. I mean I don't think I could be truly happy living in a place where I couldn't get to a large-ish body of water within, say, at least an hour or two. I was born and raised in a town that borders the Okanagan Lake, which stretches 135 km from a town 40 minutes north of my city all the way to another city an hour south. It's a long, skinny lake apparently so deep in some many places that even sonar can't determine the depth. I've spent at least part of every summer of my life swimming or boating in that lake or other ones nearby, so I'm really not sure how I would function if I had to live in a place that was completely dry or devoid of flowing water. I guess, when I really think about it, I'm sure I could find a way to be happy anywhere, but the idea of living in a place without somewhere to swim or go boating makes me sad. I guess I should start thinking about where I want to live after this school year is finished...

Empty Gas Tank

This afternoon went very differently than I thought it would. I had high hopes of sitting down after Survey of Children's Lit. and totally finishing my second draft of this story. Well, that didn't happen. Instead I had a really fun afternoon and got nothing done. I'm pretty ready to be done with this story and start working on some non-fiction. I feel my writing strengths include essay-writing, non-fiction, and, nowadays, AP stories and do not include fiction writing. Anyway, so Jonathan phoned me about 20 minutes after I got back from class and asked if I could come back to campus and take him to get some gas. His gas tank was completely empty and he couldn't get his van started to get to a gas station. So I drove back in to the university and then had to look around to find him. He and Tim had climbed way up in a Hemlock tree. The only reason I found them was that Jonathan started whistling some orchestra piece and I followed the music until I spotted them. Then I gave him a ride to a gas station and back to his van. After that I hung out at his apartment to use his Internet (the wireless at our apartment randomly stops every so often and it hadn't been working when I was there earlier). Then we went to orchestra and I suffered through the three pieces we just started working on for our November concert. Yesterday I decided that I dislike all three pieces. Today I revised my initial judgments and decided that the Smetana overture won't be all that bad. It'll be pretty super fast, but it's quite repetitive, at least the second violin part is, so once I memorize it I'll be fine. I still can't stand the Rachmaninoff symphony and the Prokofiev violin concert though. Anyway, I survived the hour and fifteen minutes. Then I went back over to Jonathan and Tim's and participated in (actually mostly watched) some cleaning activities. Yes, certainly a very different afternoon than I anticipated, but it was good different. Sometimes that can be better than being totally productive and getting a lot of stuff done.

Sunny day ideas

Well, it was another sunny day, so of course, I got plenty of story ideas. Too bad they all came about a week late for this fiction project. I will admit, one of the ideas came during our discussion in class time. Here's a list of stuff I thought up to write about today:

-On my way to my 8 a.m. class I hit my right pointer finger that I hurt last night in the great glass explosion. I'm pretty sure there's some glass in there cause my finger hurt when I hit it. Anyway, that made me think of the weirdest idea during the rest of my drive. What if human skin just naturally engulfed things like glass shards or that type of thing? Kind of like macrophages engulfing cell debris and pathogens. Oh and I love the word macrophages, by the way. It's always been a favourite biology term. Just thought I'd add that in there. Anyway, for months I've tried to think of a cool, science fiction-ish idea for a short story that could rival "Breathing Exercises" from Maps in a Mirror by Orson Scott Card. It's probably one of my favourite non-typical short stories. I really wish I could write stories like that, but this is the first idea that's even semi-close to that idea that I've had on the subject. It needs some refining, but it might be interesting.

-In Creative Writing class I was kind of letting my mind wander, but heard when Mr. Lale was talking about that movie with the guy with the daughter that got involved in the current slave industry. That immediately made me think of some good family friends, the Thorp's. They traveled all over the world for stuff with the GC and as lay people and now they work at the Hope Channel. Anyway, when their three boys were young they were in Bulgaria and their kids were almost kidnapped into the beggar industry in Sofia. Only because of their responsible and obedient oldest son, Jonathon, were the boys saved from the kidnapping and probable disfigurement of the child beggar life. From there I thought of Deborah Ellis' book The Breadwinner and the other two books in that series, Parvana's Journey and Mud City. I thought that a book like those about the children street beggars in Sofia, Bulgaria would be an new idea for an older kids book (unless it's already been done, but I sure haven't seen anything like that out yet).

-I don't remember what triggered this idea, but somehow I started thinking about twins. Authors seem to love writing about twins. They love to either compare how similar twins are to each other or contrast how different twins are from each other. But I was wondering if there are twins that aren't either just like their twin or totally different from them. What if some twins just are absolute compliments to each other. Oh, now I remember what I was thinking of that gave me this idea. I was thinking about how different people's taste buds are from each other. What makes some people absolutely love mushrooms and other people absolutely hate them? Well, what if there was a set of twins that was different than each other in completely compliment ways. One twin hated eating mushrooms and the other loved them and ate all the first twins uneaten mushrooms. And then the mushroom-loving twin hated vacuuming, but the first one loves it. OK, I'm not explaining this very well, but I hope you get my drift. It'll be interesting to see how I could explain it to make sense and if it would work in a story setting.

-This afternoon I was putting a book back into my bookshelf and saw The Whipping Boy, which made me think of rat catchers, which made me wonder what the son of a dog catcher would feel about all those poor caught dogs that are probably going to be put down. Then I questioned if there really are such things as dog catchers. I mean I've heard of them for a long time, but I've never seen a dog catcher in real life. Those two dog catchers on the second Homeward Bound movie don't count. Anyway, I thought a book called The Dog Catcher's Son could prove to be an poignant story. Not really sure how it'd all work out right now, but it's so seldom that I think of titles before I think of story ideas that I just had to include that in the list of ideas I got today.

-In orchestra rehearsal I wanted to write something in our music and I grabbed the mechanical pencil that my stand partner keeps in our folder. It got stuck in the pencil holder part, but finally I got it out and tried to write on the music, but then the pencil lead wasn't clicked out, so that took up more time. Then I started wondering who invented pencil lead. From there I started wondering who invented erasers. I think that's a really ingenious idea. I mean what in the world was the process that lead someone to invent a way to erase pencil markings? All I can say is that is one creative person! Anyway, since I like school and office supply stuff so much I thought about researching who invented which useful school or office supplies. Might not make the most interesting book, but it'd sure be fun to know the stories behind how each item was invented.

-It was different in the Accent office tonight. Our editor and managing editor were gone so the copy editor was in charge. I was glad I wasn't put in charge, but I decided to be nice and help the copy editor out. I usually don't read over each page of the Accent; I just read over the news pages and make edits where I see fit. But since we were two people short today I read over the entire Accent. It didn't actually even take all that much longer. I think we might be getting quicker or more organized or more efficient or something like that. (I even had time to finalize and e-mail out my news budget for next week.) So as I was looking over a page to find widows and orphans I realized that there are very few true to life books about widows and orphans out there. At least most of the stuff I've read has been very dramatized and romanticized, which I really can't stand. Now I've never been a widow or an orphan, but I do have some very small bit of insight into the world of orphans or at least children not living with their biological parents. Two of my siblings were adopted. My older sister was adopted when she was, I believe, less than two-years-old from Pakistan by my mum's cousin's family. For years there was strife in that family about the adoption and in the end it didn't work out. When my sister was eleven and a half and I was nearly two-years-old, my parents adopted my sister. It's been an interesting journey ever since and certainly not the type of romanticized situation that you typically read about in orphan books (much as I adore Anne of Green Gables, it's definitely a work of fiction). Later, when I was just about nine, my parents adopted a six-year-old boy who was four months younger than my younger sister. This was a totally different situation and my younger siblings and I, even at our young ages, learned a lot about hurt and abused children and their coping methods. Because of this experience my younger siblings and I had to grow up a lot sooner than most young kids do. In the long run, I'm thankful we had those experiences because it taught us about dealing with drastic life changes, being able to go-with-the-flow, life in the real world, and, most of all, pulling together as a family to work things out. I long to write about my experiences as a sibling to adopted children, but I've been scared to for a long time because I don't want to just write what people want to read. I want to write the truth and I don't think many people want to read or hear about that. (When I read a new release by my favourite children's lit. author almost two years ago, I was sorely disappointed with her for writing exactly what people want to hear and having a perfectly happy ending. I know that's what the public wants, I know it's what sells books, but it's just not the truth in the majority of cases.) I've attempted to write about my adopted brother several times, but it never came out right and I have given up altogether for a long time. I think I might be ready to try again. I'm not sure if the best way would be to write memoir or non-fiction or if it'd be best to write as fiction. Anyway, at some point in the future I'd like to write my experiences from my early childhood with my older sister and then also from the experiences with my younger brother from a few years later.

-Also in the Accent office tonight, we were trying to come up with last minute photo ideas. We pooled our ideas and came up with a good solution. That got me thinking about photography. It seems to be a really popular career these days and an even more popular past time. I should know...I've got a mother and sister who LOVE taking pictures. I don't really mind though cause I get to be a model which is usually pretty fun and I've got thousands of pictures to show my kids someday. I was wondering what story idea could include photography and I wondered if there was some way that an author could use a picture for a book cover and then have the whole storyline come from a part of that picture or different areas of the photo or be about the people or place or objects in the picture...or all of those things. I might try that out sometime.

-When I came back to my apartment after work tonight, I found a bee flying around the living room. As I was shooing it outside (which had to be done twice since it just flew right back in after the first time) I thought that I haven't seen too many bee-keeper books for young kids. If I ever do try my hand at a kids picture book, maybe I'll use a bee or bee-keeper storyline. Maybe I'll even write it from a bee's perspective like this picture book we had as kids about a spider living in a log and his troubles when his log all of a sudden gets used for a fire in this man's fire place (can't recall the title of the book right now, but it's a pretty good one).

Well, those are the ideas I thought of today. Give me your feedback. They're not all stellar ideas, I know, but I thought I might as well jot them down in here while I've still got them sloshing around in the back of my brain.

Canadian Thanksgiving

*Epistle Alert (a term I use to inform one of my friends when I'm going to be typing a long IM. It applies to this post. Just wanted to give you all a heads up.)

Today is Canadian Thanksgiving. It was probably the best Canadian Thanksgiving I've had since I've been at Southern (when I was at Walla Walla I was just seven hours away from home, so we always went back for the weekend). It's always really great at home, but this year home came to me (minus the weather). My parents are here and helped me cook a huge Thanksgiving meal. They came over to our apartment around 8:30 this morning and started cooking pies while Bryn and I went to class. When I came home after class I made a cheesecake (something I'm actually good at making) and then did random other things to help out. I worked until my afternoon class and then worked again after it for the rest of the afternoon. Everything went normal and according to plan until about 45 minutes after my parents left to go clean up and get ready for dinner (about 45 minutes before people were supposed to start arriving for dinner). Bryn had come home from work and brought our cousin, Breanna, and two friends home with her. Stephen got to work making his taco salad and I put Whitney and Breanna to work, too. I asked Bre to start making the corn and moved a glass dish cooling on the stove top with a casserole in it onto the table so we could use the element for cooking corn. Then I turned on the element and put a pot with water in it on there for the corn. Then I went back to doing whatever it was I was doing at the moment (helping Whitney with the squash, which is a weird food, by the way). Several minutes later, with the squash all finished and put on the table, I was helping put away dishes that Breanna was drying when a tremendous exploding sound made us all turn toward the stove. The second, bigger glass dish full of another casserole exploded. I thought I knew right away what had happened. The dish was on the back burner and I had turned on the front burner. The glass dish had probably just gotten so hot from the front burner being on and that's why the dish exploded. I quickly ran over, trying to avoid the glass on the floor and turned off the burner before the glass starting melting all over the stove top. It was a huge mess and the casserole was obviously ruined. I was so mad at myself, but I couldn't figure out why the front burner being on had exploded the dish so fast. I said my wondering out loud. That's when I learned the truth; I had actually accidentally turned on the back burner. Breanna told me that she'd seen the back burner red hot a minute or so before the great explosion of 5:20 p.m. (not sure why she didn't mention it). Anyway, so yeah, that was the low point of the night. Actually the low point was stepping on glass (luckily my feet are tough enough from going around barefoot most of the summer - and a good bunch of the school year so far - that they didn't get cut) and having a sliver of glass poke into my right pointer finger while I was cleaning the glass off the stove top. It was a small poke, but went pretty deep and bled quite a bit. Thankfully it didn't hurt too much, but there was so much blood that I was actually thinking that I should do one of those chemistry-type experiments when you figure out your blood type. I've never done one of those, but I really want to find out my blood type (remarkable that I still don't know after getting tons and tons of blood tests when I was a kid). I have a feeling my blood type is something really normal, probably A+, but I'm still curious to find out. Anyway, I'm totally off-topic. The point is that was the low point of the night, but then after that we had a really great time hanging out with friends and family. My brother and his family came and then a lot of our friends too, so it was tons of fun. We counted 24 people here before everyone started leaving, so that was quite a gang to feed, but we did it. We were kind of worried that we wouldn't have enough food, especially after that casserole got destroyed, but we had absolutely tons and tons. So much that we sent some of it home with friends. All in all, it was a busy, interesting, glass-filled day, but definitely a memory I'll never forget!

PS - Sidenote: When Tim came in our apartment he saw a cookie tray filled with the remains of the glass-infested, ruined casserole and immediate grabbed some of the casserole and started chomping. We all yelled at him to stop and by that time he was yelping, "I have glass in my mouth! I'm eating glass!" He ran to the sink and spit out the glass casserole and then washed his mouth out to make sure there was no more glass left in his mouth. Then he made us explain why there was glass in the casserole. It was something only Tim would do.

At the end of the evening, when most people had left, Tim and Caleb stayed around to help us clean up. Tim decided he wanted to eat another mouthful of squash and chose to stick his mouth into the remains of the squash that Whitney and I had left beside the stove. Of course there was glass all over it from the explosion and so as soon as Tim took a bite, we noticed what he was doing and had to repeat the scene above. Some people just don't learn...

And one more random comment: After everything was cleaned up, Tim, Bryn and I were putting an extra fold-up table away in the garage and Tim found my viking sword. My group in Cultural Anthropology class a couple years ago did a project on the Vikings and we all got plastic Viking-ish-type swords. I liked mine enough to keep and every so often it comes in useful. Well, last night Tim decided that we should sword fight. He claimed the actual sword and gave me the scabbard to use, which is quite flimsy. Somehow in our fight Tim managed to actually cut me with a plastic sword. My only consolation was that if the scabbard had been a real sword, I would have cut Tim's arm off. Later on Jonathan and Tim tried sword flighting each other. Tim kindly offered the sword to Jonathan and took the scabbard himself this time. Somehow Tim still found a way to draw blood, giving Jonathan a cut with the scabbard. Seems it was a bleeding-ful night as well...

Curry Pot

Today I ate curry. Just so you know, usually I don't eat curry. It's just so hot and I have sensitive taste buds so the combination usually doesn't work out too well. Anyway, today Tyler wanted our family to go out to eat for lunch. He chose The Curry Pot, which I've heard of many times, but have never been brave enough to go to. In any case, I decided I'd be brave for once and try it. I walked through the buffet after Ty and he told me which things weren't hot, which were hot and which were mega, super hot. I took all his advice and had a great curry-and-Indian-food eating time. I was pleasantly surprised that I liked pretty much everything I tried. After that, my mum and Bryn and I had fun going kitchen-supply shopping. We found some great additions to our kitchen. Then we went back to our apartment and got ready for the orchestra concert. It went pretty good I think. There were some interesting happenings on stage during the concert, but other than those few incidents, it went good. And that's what I have to say today.

Mill Creek-Swimming

I just got back from some awesome times. My parents are here. They drove out with their fifth-wheel from BC to Tennessee and had planned to get here on Friday, but there was a bunch of snow in Montana and Wyoming that slowed them down. They decided to take another route and went the Colorado/Kansas way. They finally got here this morning after driving all night and got to church in time for the third service so they could hear Bryn and I playing with the orchestra. After church and saying hi to my parents and all that good stuff, we headed back to our apartment for a perogy-ful lunch. Then we split up into two groups (adults and young adults) to go to my older brother's house. The adults got there way before the young adults, because we stopped at the cliff jumping creek in Soddy Daisy on the way to my brother's house. We hiked for a little bit and then found out the cliffs were a little ways still, so we went back to a place with kind of a pool and decided to swim there. It was pretty freezing, but kind of nice once you got in. There was a pretty good current, too so it was good exercise swimming into the current. Danielle and I swam over to a cave sort of area made by two big boulders to explore. I bravely went in first and made my way through the tunnel-ish area. Danielle tried to freak me out by screaming randomly every four seconds. And then she started screaming in earnest and I really did get freaked out. I turned to look at her and she was pointing to the rock beside me. I looked where my hand was touching the walls of the tunnel and saw an eNORmous spider staring hungrily at my hand. I started screaming too and we splashed out way out of the tunnel and back down the creek. Soon after that we were all too cold to swim anymore and we headed back to the truck. Along the trail back to where we parked, I happened to look down just as I stepped right beside a snake. I was quite startled, but the snake appeared just as startled, so I wasn't quite as freaked out as I might have been if the snake hadn't look startled. He was actually pretty small and an interesting colour of grey with some weird black spotted markings on his head. He slithered off the trail and into the woods. I was pretty glad I hadn't stepped on him. We continued on and eventually found our way to my brother, Mark, and sister-in-law, Terrie's house. My parents were already there as well as some of their other friends and they were just ready to eat. I thought it was rather impeccable timing on our parts. We had barbecue hamburger-y stuff for supper. Later we played Stomp Rocket with my nephew and niece and their friends. It was tons of fun. Now I'm back at my apartment. I think we're going to be watching a movie, probably "The Great Dictator." Our landlord isn't home this weekend so we can make as much noise as we want. It's been awesome. Bye for now.

Tired

So last night was interesting. I pulled the first all-nighter of this semester and had my research paper done by 7:15 this morning. Jonathan and Bryn were in the same boat as me, so we decided to commiserate together. Jonathan came over here and the three of us worked on our papers all night. There was some times of crazy laughter, complete and utter tiredness and even an impromptu home movie watching time. It was certainly something I'll remember for awhile. The point is we all finished our papers and handed them in on time.

Now, I forgot to write this yesterday, but it's just so amusing I have to. Yesterday after Creativing Writing, I went to the music building and helped Bryn with a project she was doing. Then we found out it was Pasta Day and so we headed over for that, got our food and ate it in Kelly's Garden. We had just started eating when a nosy yellowjacket came flying by to investigate. I tried to shoo him away, but he was very persistent. We moved to another table, but he followed us. So finally we moved to a table at the other end of Kelly's Garden. We enjoyed most of our meal in peace, but then either our same friend bee, or a new one, wanted to join in. He promptly landed in my white sauce (which was on the side) and started drowning. I didn't know what to do, but he eventually got out without my help. Then he wandered onto my napkin and started doing the strangest getting-sauce-off-my-butt dance. It was quite amusing. He was doing all these weird moves and using his hind legs and his wings to wipe all the white sauce off. It was fascinating. Bryn tried to get a video of it on her cell phone, but then found she can't take videos, so she took a picture instead...much less cool, but something for us to remember. Yeah, so that's my story. Hope you had fun reading it.

Research Paper

I'm writing a research paper. Actually, right now, at this very moment, I'm not writing a research paper. That's mostly because I'm writing this blog post. I needed a break from Hasidic Judaism. I decided to do my World Religions paper on this very conservative Jewish group mostly because of Chaim Potok. Well, actually, because of three of his books. I have no idea how many times I've read his book,"Davita's Harp." It's one of my favourite books (yeah, I know...I say that about most every book I read). I just love how the storyline brings together so many diverse people and place and situations all in one book. "My Name is Asher Lev" and "The Gift of Asher Lev" are the other two Chaim Potok books that I've read numerous times. They're pretty great, too. Anyway, all three of these books are about Hasidic Jews. Ever since the first time I read "Davita's Harp" and the Asher Lev series, I've been extremely curious about this mystical Jewish division. And that's why I chose Hasidic Judaism for my research paper. My research is proving to be pretty interesting, but I'm not having the best of times writing the paper up. Probably because I've been switching back and forth between AP writing and creative writing all week and now my brain is stuck in those styles. It's resisting the research writing. I should end this and get that brain of mine back into the research-y mindset. Adios for now. Oh, and you should all read those three Chaim Potok books. They're pretty interesting.

Weather

I've discovered something amazing; I get more ideas when it's sunny. Yesterday (overcast and rainy) I was scrambling for ideas for this fiction story. I thought and thought all day, but not one idea came to me. Today (blue skied and sunny) ideas were popping into my head left and right. So very strange...

Information Systems

I scoff at that department name. More like Non-information Services. I have been trying all afternoon, from 12:30 p.m. until about 15 minutes ago, to get in contact with anyone at IS. I'm writing a story about the Internet being down for three hours last night and really need to talk to someone, anyone, from that department. First I called every single person I could find even remotely related to the IS department on the People Finder. Then I looked at their Web site (which is horrible by the way...they don't have any information on there and no way to contact anybody). I left message after message on office phones, repeating my phone number at the end of each message so they'd know it was important. I e-mailed each person that I called. I got no responses. So finally, completely fed up with the NIS, I drove down to campus and roamed the IS department, being turned away from door after door. Most people told me that they didn't have any information about the situation. One guy said he didn't have authority to tell me anything. Finally I was directed to the executive director's office. He said he didn't really know too much, but must have noticed my desperate look and taken pity on me. He let me ask some questions and gave me all the answers he knew. Then he said to call the guy that really knows everything about the Internet being down at his home number, since he was out of the office all afternoon (he'll have a nice time listening to all my messages when he gets back in tomorrow). I called his house...no answer. And not even an answering machine for me to leave him yet another message. Yeah, I'm not too fond of IS today.

Pet Peeves

Today's post is brought to you by my thoughts after watching "My Sister's Keeper" on Saturday night/Sunday morning. I was disappointed in the movie because I loved the book while I thought the movie was pretty awful. (Not awful in the sense of it being such a horrible, bad movie, but awful in the sense that there was so much changed from the book that I couldn't really enjoy watching the movie.) The only redeemable part, in my mind at least, were the actors. They were great.

Here is a list of my pet peeves. Don't comment on them yet. I'm planning to update the list throughout the day as I think of more items. Check back around midnight for the fully compiled version.

-when a movie based on a book isn't really based on the book at all
-spelling/grammar mistakes (especially when I make them)
-bugs trying to live inside my abode (they belong outside!)
-when people pronounce it egg-zit, instead of exit
-when people pronounce it aks instead of ask
-long fingernails (they just don't work for string instrumentalists)
-when people imply that, because they are doing a science-based major or career, they are therefore much smarter and more knowledgeable than other people who are doing an arts-based major or career
-getting stains on clothes I really like
-when people tell me they think it's dumb to own books (they just don't understand and, really, why do they care if I want to spend my money on books anyway??)
-apostrophes (sometimes they just get confusing)
-not having a comfy or inspiring writing spot in my apartment

That's all I have for now. Feel free to comment [again] now.

And, for comic relief to that negative-ish blog post, check out what my pretty cool Prime Minister did this past weekend.

Cohutta Triathlon

Well today I went to the Cohutta Triathlon for the first time ever (this weekend was a lot of firsts for me, I guess). I've been to Cohutta Springs twice before, but never for the triathlon. Bryn, Danielle and I, the cheering section, got a ride with Jonathan and Tim, actual participants, and, after a little bit of unsureness about the correct route, we finally made it. Tim and Jonathan went off to find the last member of their team, register and do all that important stuff while Danielle, Bryn and I sat on the grass, half people-watching and half homeworking (well, only Danielle was homeworking, Bryn and I were coaching her on French vocab). When the triathlon was about ready to start, we made our way to the lake where the swimmers had assembled and watched the different heats take off. It was hard to figure out who was who as the swimmers came in, but we managed to identify most of our friends and cheer for them. When Caitlin, the other member of Tim and Jonathan's team, got out of the water we ran behind her to watch Jonathan take off on his bike. Then we found a place near where the bikers came back to the finish line and settled down to work on homework and other stuff while we waited. We cheered for various people we knew as they left from/arrived at the biking area. When Jonathan came back in we watched for Tim to take off running. We stayed at that spot until pretty much everyone we knew came by and finished the triathlon and then we milled around talking to people until it was time to go. All in all, it was pretty interesting and a great way to spend a Sunday morning and afternoon. As I watched the interactions between people at the triathlon, both competitors and cheerers, I was vaguely reminded of my high school years when a bunch of my violin teacher's students and my brother's cello teacher's students competed with each other at music festivals. It was always a fun time of bonding together, even if we were playing against each other, and a good learning experience. That's what the triathlon was like today, everyone encouraging each other. It was a really neat thing to see.

Now, in other news, last night my friend, Danielle, convinced Bryn and I to watch "Star Wars" with her. She's been trying to do that for probably about a year and a half now. Last night she finally succeeded. Neither of us were too impressed with it. The only character I really liked at all was Han Solo. He was kind of cool, as pilots usually are. But I especially couldn't stand that stupid Wookiee guy and his dumb groanings that were supposed to be words. I kind of felt like Stella on "How I Met Your Mother" when she watches "Star Wars" for the first time with her fiance, Ted. She was pretending to like it because it was Ted's all-time favouritest movie ever, but she was hating it the entire time (to watch the scene, click here). Actually, I guess I didn't really hate it, but it was pretty cheesy and kind of confusing to figure out all the random robots and other assorted non-human characters. The storyline was okay though, I guess. Anyway, I pretty much guessed a lot of how things were going to turn out and got most of them right. But now I guess I can say I've watched "Star Wars." Oh and also, last night another friend, Stephen, called to ask what we were doing and when I said we were going to watch "Star Wars" he asked if he and his friend, Billy, could come over to watch with us. I said sure. When they got here, they came in and Billy walked straight into the kitchen, picked up a hunk of my smoked gouda cheese that was still sitting on the counter from a little bit earlier when I had made myself a sandwich, and gulped down the entire thing. I was quite amazed and slightly annoyed, too, because smoked gouda is pretty much my favourite kind of cheese ever and that was the last of it I had. Plus, it's pretty expensive. Anyway, it happened so fast there wasn't much I could do about it. Weirdly interesting, eh?

Student Cave

Today was awesome! I know I say that in every post I write on Sabbath, but Sabbath's have just been really awesome this year. We (Bryn, Ty, Danielle, Jonathan and I) piled in one car (squishy!) to drive to First Chattanooga SDA Church and had an, well let's just say, interesting time. Mostly because of special music, but that could be a blog post in itself. Then we came back and changed into our best caving-type clothes before heading over to Student Park for a hot dog picnic with a bunch of people. Afterward, we (Bryn, Ty, Jonathan and I) walked to the student cave and had a great time searching through the cave. In the two plus years that I've been at Southern I hadn't yet been in student cave. It was a lot of fun scrambling over boulders and through passageways and getting absolutely, completely muddy. It was pretty cool and totally worth getting super dirty. I'm glad I finally went!

Cell phones

They are sometimes more bother than they are worth. Today I got a call from my cell phone company, Telus, a Canadian cell phone provider. (I have a Canadian cell phone, while my younger siblings have pay-as-you-go phones from down here. We use my phone for calling home and that sort of thing. It used to be more convienient, but I'm thinking more and more these days like I should switch to something better. Kind of hard now that I'll only be around here until May, though.) They informed me that I needed to pay my bill or else my cell service would be cut off. I politely informed them that my bill had been paid yesterday. The lady I was talking to snootily told me I hadn't. I told her I had. She told me to go make sure and then call them back because this was "a VERY important matter." I agreed that it was an important matter and told them I didn't need to check and make sure because I knew the bill had been paid. She told me to check anyway and hung up on me after giving me the number to call back. I was grumpy. I made some phone calls, verifying that my bill had, in fact, been paid. I was quite annoyed at the fact that making these calls was using up my precious minutes. I began to despise Telus. It felt weird despising them because I've always, until today, maintained that they are one of the better cell providers in Canada.

When I had all the info I needed, I tried phoning back. The number wasn't right. My annoyance level rose. I found a number online and tried it out. It took me to one of those awful voice verification systems and I spent more of my minutes trying to navigate through that. The voice verification lady didn't always understand what I was saying because of the anger edging into my voice. Finally I was put in a queue to talk to a real, live human being. I was told by the ultra-friendly voice verification lady that I would have to wait about 18 minutes to talk to this real, live human being. I was not impressed. But then she informed me that I could punch my number in and hang up the phone, then when my turn in line came, my phone would ring and I would be able to talk to the real, live human. I opted for this plan. Finally, my phone rang and the lovely fake lady said I was next in line. Then the wonderful real, live human tones filled the phone. I told the lady (who talked with a semi-hard-to-understand accent) about my troubles with Telus and she asked me a bunch of questions. Then finally she realized I was talking to the wrong department (not sure why the voice verification couldn't have figured that one out) and transferred me to some other office. Fortunately I didn't have to wait another 18 minutes for another human being. The second lady also had that same hard-to-understand accent and asked me some more questions. Finally she asked a question I didn't know and told me I had to find that out before she could finalize anything.

To make this long story shorter, I had to phone around some more to find out the answer to her last question and then had to call back (which was another process because the number the last lady had given me was wrong, too). Luckily I tried a different number than the first time and got to speak to a real, live human being much sooner than the last time. This real, live human being was super nice and helped me out so much better than any of the other three (four if you count the voice verification lady) ladies. Finally I got everything sorted out and was told that I'd still have my phone service. Wow, what a lot of work just to be able to use a phone...

NHL

Today was the opening day of the NHL season. It was also the first time the Hockey Night @ Southern club met to watch a game. It was a lot of fun. I'm pretty sure it's the best club on campus. We watched the Washington Capitals play against the Boston Bruins. I really could care less about either of those two teams, but it was just fun to watch hockey again, especially with a bunch of fellow hockey fans here at Southern. Who would have guessed there were so many hidden away on campus?? Anyway, I cheered for Boston, mostly because I really can't stand the Caps. Plus, there were lots of Caps fans at the party and I thought the Bruins could use some cheering. Boston eventually lost the game 4-1. Now I'm listening to the Vancouver Canucks versus Calgary Flames game. So far that's not going too well for my team. The Canucks are down 3-0. Hopefully they can come back and win it though. In any case, I'm just super happy the NHL is back again at last!