???

I really don't understand computers. That is, I don't understand the personality factor.

Forget It

I wrote a nice long blog post. Now it's gone. Serves me right. Never trust a computer.

Maybe tomorrow, when I feel optimistic enough to waste time again.

Long Live the Hobbits

Tolkien's world has come to ours. Or at least, someone's discovered a wormhole.

Today's local Times Union proclaims the discovery of a human dwarf species, supposedly 18,000 years old. Their home is the Indonesian Flores Island, home to giant lizards and miniature elephants.

My personal theory? Someone's accidentally stumbled across one of the few colonies of Hobbits established during the escape from the ruin of Beleriand. No one was aware of them at the time, of course, because Hobbits are small and quiet, especially in woods full of large trees. What I don't understand yet is how they came here. If anyone has an idea, please let me know.

In other news. . .

Wednesday night was "Taste of the World", an annual Grace event sponsored by Mu Kappa and featuring tables of cultural samples from twenty-eight different countries. This is only the third or fourth year, and already it attracts hundreds of students and people from the community. Kathleen and I, both in Intermediate German, helped our Austrian professor with her table, serving Nutella (chocolate hazelnut spread) on bread and apple juice mixed with mineral water. We took over for our professor and her husband while they went to visit the other tables, and found ourselves scrambling to spread Nutella and fill more little cups, as well as stamp everyone's "passport" with the Austrian seal. When it was our turn, I tried nearly everything -German potato salad, sticky rice, crackers with quince jelly and cheese, authentic Russian torte. Most of the music was coming from the Argentine and Mexican tables, facing each other, where whoever was controlling the speakers seemed intent on outdoing the opposite table in volume.

When my roommate and I got back, we had to race each other up and down the entire hall to calm down.

Thank you for the package, Thainamu! I had just come out of Sociology, where we had not been discussing a pleasant topic. Finding your gift was just the right mix of kind intent and chocolate that I needed then. Yes, I definitely inherited my dad's taste for chocolate and my mom's love for it.

Photos

So I only seem to be posting once a week. What can I say? Life is busy.

I thought y'all might like to see some photos I took over fall break. These are from the day we went up to see Daddy at Mayo (Monday, 17 October).

Daddy, with his IV to the far left, and his heart monitor on upper left -
http://www.imagevenue.com/host/web2/e57b8_P1040306.JPG

Nolan and Trevor busy on Daddy's exercise bike -
http://www.imagevenue.com/host/web2/ad546_P1040309.JPG

By popular demand, Mommy -
http://www.imagevenue.com/host/web2/0c2f4_P1040320.JPG

Trevor thinking (on trip up) -
http://www.imagevenue.com/host/web2/c82fd_P1040302.JPG

And finally (okay, it's not quite straight, and I'm not quite a professional photographer. . . yet),
all the kids, more or less, in our 15-passenger van (on trip up) -
http://www.imagevenue.com/host/web2/52fe2_P1040298.JPG

I'm thinking this is the first time many people have seen Daddy for a while, since he and Mommy haven't been in our last few Christmas pictures. Anyway, this will give you an idea of our family right now. Thank you for all the prayers!

Today is one of those rainy Saturdays perfect for falling asleep over homework reading in a dorm room. Today I was glad to discover that all my midterm grades are in, all As.

Next week is Grace's Missions Conference week. For us, this means extra-long chapels on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and instead of classes Wednesday, two sessions with missionaries as speakers (8 a.m. and 11 a.m.). Wycliffe has one each hour, so that makes my choice easy.

Ardith, please have a very pleasant and relaxing Fall Break this weekend!

Having decided to avoid the sensitive topics of religion, politics, and sports, let me wish you all un bon week-end, una buena fin de semana, ein schönes Wochenende.

Here at last

Yesterday morning I woke up and typed out my German paper/speech. Then, because it was a grayish cold fall day, and I didn't have anything else to do, I went back to sleep till breakfast time. My 9 o'clock class had been cancelled, so I worked at the library till 11, when I went down to Prof. Schram's house for an authentic French meal. She served us de la salade, des baguettes, du boeuf bourgignon avec des pâtes, du fromage, and Holly made us delicious cream puffs so full of cream that it burst out at every bite.

When I got back to my dorm room, I carefully proofread and corrected my German paper. As soon as I had finished, my computer rebooted. Then I discovered that the only colors left for hall t-shirts were orange and yellow. Despite these difficulties, my paper was finished and my weekend stuff packed by 2 p.m. and German class.

We left soon after 3 and reached Tammie's house about 10:45, with a rather long, gray, and uneventful drive in between. Mommy picked me up on her way back from Mayo, and we reached home around 1 a.m. Of course, all the kids were asleep. How fun to come down this morning and see everybody!

Update

I don't know how many people actually read this blog, but I would like to ask for prayer for Daddy and Mommy. Neither of them has been online today, so I began to wonder. Kendra told me on AIM that Mommy took Daddy to the hospital on Friday because his heartbeat was irregular. While staying there overnight, his defibrillator shocked him, so they sent him up to Mayo, where he was shocked again.

I'm sure Mommy will be back within a few days to give more details. Till then, please do pray for them.


The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much.

James 5:16

Saturday Already

I think time perception should be reduced to an equation where the speed of time passing (y)increases exponentially as a person's age increases (x).

Last night Cheaper By The Dozen was playing in our lobby. Besides making me homesick, it reminded me to try posting links to pictures. The following link should take you to a photo I took of Trevor this summer. If it works, you will highly enjoy it because a) everyone has to love Trevor, and b) I took the picture with the superb Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ1PP which Daddy found for me on Ebay.

http://www.imagevenue.com/host/web2/954df_P1030192.JPG

If it doesn't work, you won't know because I will have removed the link.

In other news - Midterms are next week. This doesn't mean much to me, because I only have 2 official midterms next week. I had three tests last week, two the week before, and two more next week. Our exam for Advanced French this Wednesday was the most difficult. I sat and furiously wrote long paragraphs to answer nine essay questions. After the fourth or fifth one, I could feel my brain slowing down perceptibly. After I was done, I felt mentally stretched out for the next four or five hours, and I'm sure the others had a similar experience. So on Friday, our dear kind Professor Schram took us over to the Grille to drink coffee and talk French around the table. We all agreed that we loved our French class!

Now I want to see if my photo links.

Trip to Stratford

Here's what happened this weekend. . .

Thursday night was supposed to be early-to-bed, since I had to get up at 3:30 a.m. to leave on the Stratford trip at 4:30. I got back from choir practice at 9 p.m., just in time to see Kerry and Bush give their wrap-up speeches at the debate. After that, despite doing no homework, somehow I didn't get to bed till 11. Then I got up at 11:30, remembering I hadn't filled out an overnight slip. Back to bed. Here followed a pleasant 2 hours or so of sleep, till I was shocked awake by a very noisy alarm - the fire alarm. What do you know, they decided to have the drill that night. We all raced out and shivered in the cold for about 15 minutes. One more hour of sleep, then up, shower, hastily stuff my overnight gear into a backpack, run downstairs and call my friend to make sure she was up. We left from the McClain parking lot a little after 4:30, two 12-passenger vans and a 7-passenger that a student was driving.

Here and there on the trip up I almost dozed off. About 11 o'clock, we finally reached the U.S.-Canadian border. One of the girls is here in the U.S. on a student visa, and she didn't get the email about bringing her passport. Our van, the last one in the caravan, was sent to Canadian customs while the others traveled on. Customs officials (all ladies) tell us we can't enter the country. So, we try to head back across the border, only to be stopped again and sent into U.S. customs. Canadian customs was very modern, glass walls, alarms, etc. Coming into U.S. customs was like coming to Ellis Island as an immigrant about 100 years ago. They did have computers. Also big guys in blue uniforms behind the desk who barked out, "Next! Who's got an orange card?" to a crowd of non-middle-class non-white people. One lady was speaking another language. Dan (who speaks Spanish) and I (who attempt to speak French) figured out that it was Italian. We all felt very out of place.

After that, finally making cellphone contact with Professor Sauders' van, we dropped our poor passport-less friend Charity off at the house of one of the students' parents. She felt terrible that we'd already missed the first play, and wanted to make sure we made the second that evening. We felt terrible to leave her behind. Nevertheless, we persevered, reaching Stratford in time to check into the hotel and eat supper at a restaurant which was unfortunately behind, causing us to just miss the beginning of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Thus we had to watch the first two scenes on the lobby TV before we were conducted up dark stairs and hallways to our balcony seats.

The play was superb. The music and lighting together were just overpowering enough to tip me into the story. Not to mention superb acting, with just a touch of modernism that made us crack up laughing. I personally find Shakespeare anything but dry on the page, yet it's amazing how it comes to life through acting. You'd almost think Shakespeare wrote plays. Towards the end, Nick Bottom was performing before Theseus and Hippolyta, and pretending to die, with repeated shouts or groans of "Die!" and appropriate jerks and collapses, while I nearly died laughing in the top row of seats. I could see Jason, Derek, even Ethan doing it. Oh, and the Wall. The Wall was very good too.

To make a very long story short, we went out for dessert, went to bed, got up and toured the Shakespeare costume warehouse, went sightseeing and shopping (including an all-important visit to the chocolate shop), and set out on the return journey, nearly drugging ourselves with sugar when we used up our Canadian change at a gas station to buy candy bars and donuts. Crossing back into the U.S., we all held our breaths and could hardly believe no one stopped us. Except we did have to declare the bamboo - "No, it's not in dirt" - why did that guy buy bamboo anyway. We picked up Charity, who treated us to personality analyses on the way back, before it got dark and someone played the Veggie Tales DVD he had bought on a laptop (I think it was the same one who bought the bamboo). Arrived back a little after 9, good time considering all the delays.

Needless to say, we all became friends after spending hours and hours together. It was an unexpectedly wonderful weekend.

Answers

Apologies for not posting these sooner. I was extremely busy yesterday and today.

--Coercive potential -- Capacity of bombs/shells to kill/injure enemy

--Area denial weapons -- Cluster bombs that kill/destroy everything within area

--Incontinent ordnance -- Bombs/shells that miss targets and kill civilians

--Suppressing assets -- Reducing enemy's fighting ability by killing people and destroying equipment

--Ballistically induced aperture -- Bullet hole

--Scenario-dependent postcrisis environment - Whether we win or lose

Ardith did fairly well, especially on the last two. Which I think are the funny ones. Mommy wasn't as accurate, but then she was trying to apply military tactics to the homefront battle zone.

As to your prize, Ardith, it's too bad I didn't see your answers before I went to Stratford and visited all the intriguing little shops. But, since you're my sister and I love you, I'll give you something. Sometime.

Pop Quiz

Here's some military lingo from the 1991 Persian Gulf War that you can decipher over the weekend.

--Coercive potential

--Area denial weapons

--Incontinent ordnance

--Suppressing assets

--Ballistically induced aperture

--Scenario-dependent postcrisis environment


As presumptuous as these phrases sound, their translations will probably be three or four times as long. Unless you've done many writing condensation exercises.

I'll give you the answers some time after I get back.

From the French

So the French Civilization book is good for something. . .

je suis fait pour ça = I'm done for (French)
je suis formaté = I'm formatted ("current" French)

je ne comprends pas = I don't understand (French)
j'imprime pas = I don't print ("current" French)

Hilarious!

We had a guest in our Advanced French class today, Dr. Plaster, the academic dean, who was 'observing' our professor and her class - as happens to all Grace professors every three years. He can speak French, and with some difficulty restrained his theological opinions while we discussed French 20th century philosophy - existentialism and absurdism. Fascinating. We didn't get into Sartre and existentialism quite as much, though Prof. Schram did give us some quotes to discuss, such as -L'existence précède l'essence-, "Existence precedes essence." Sartre believed that in order to find meaning or reality in life, we have to produce it ourselves by our own actions. For Camus and absurdism, we read a few short extracts from Le Mythe de Sisyphe and L'Etranger (you can figure those out). According to Camus, our lives and our work are meaningless, much like Sisyphe who would roll the rock up to the mountain's summit only to have it fall back down again and again. As long as we are not conscious of the futility of our work, life is not tragic; but once we realize it, yet continue to work, we become victorious over this futility, and Camus calls us "heros of the absurd". Then life has meaning, perhaps even happiness.

There's the typical French optimism for you. I don't agree with Camus' premises, but his conclusions seem to follow. Thankfully we know the one who brings sense to life, because He is life Himself - Jesus Christ.

Friday night!

I'm so glad it's the weekend. This has been a long day, trying to stay alive and alert on five hours of sleep. True, I shouldn't have stayed up talking last night. . . but then they were sitting on my bed.

For anyone who's attempted to learn German, this essay by Mark Twain appreciatively pokes fun at the language:

http://www.kombu.de/twain-2.htm#x1

I think nearly anyone would enjoy his humor. Besides, I have to promote linguistic interests occasionally.

The Sounding Board (Grace campus newspaper) arrived in our mailboxes today. Let's see what's on the agenda this time. Hmmm - Editorial - "Proposed 'graduated curfew' to foster class unity" (graduated curfew = the higher the class, the later the curfew). Now it's true that sharing gripes tends to bring people together. Whether that's real unity is another question. The editorial goes on to explain that curfew was established to "foster academic success", then suggests that "a later curfew would allow for more academic interaction across the campus after midnight." In other words, college students, if left to themselves, will naturally gravitate toward good study habits and discipline. This is an exciting possibility, especially after what I've seen of late-night habits on campus. Too bad it will limit study groups, since the sophomores and juniors who are taking the same class can't study together. Anyway, it's high time someone conducted research on the brain activity of college students between 1 and 3 in the morning, comparing the results with other two-hour time blocks throughout the day.

Graduated curfews should "build class unity". Especially vital in today's peer-oriented society. It will also discourage cross-class dating (if I may use that term), since the guy could be out till 2 a.m. but would have to bring the girl back by 1 a.m. Or vice versa. Undoubtedly, Student Development wants to protect students from the emotional complexities involved.

Thus, the two benefits of graduated curfew - 1) fostering academic success, and
2) fostering class unity through "deeper relationships". I wonder if these are supposed to occur simultaneously.

That said, graduated curfew may be a good thing, though considering the number of students who class themselves as "somewhere between a sophomore and a junior", it may be difficult to enforce. Anyway, I'm sure this issue will be coming before Senate sometime during the year.

Best Medicine

A few I've picked up from my sociology book -

Real Headlines

"Police Begins Campaign to Run Down Jaywalkers"

"Drunk Gets Nine Months in Violin Case"

"Iraqi Head Seeks Arms"

"Squad Helps Dog Bite Victim"

"Killer Sentenced to Die for Second Time in Ten Years"

"War Dims Hope for Peace"

"Stolen Painting Found by Tree"

and my personal favorite,

"Miners Refuse to Work after Death"

Brought to you by the Society for the Advancement of Criminal Humor (SACH, pronounced in a weak imitation of German with a guttural gag on the end).

Tuesday afternoon

Finally! It only took a month to get my computer up and running. Computer Services finally installed the virus scanner (after I dropped it off last Friday... of course, that was after hours), which I hope was the last problem. Seems that Ardith and I have both had our share of difficulties.

Today has been one of those days. Started out below 50 degrees, and now it's above 80. I hope this does not portend a hard winter. The Grace campus was obviously not designed with winter in mind - long walks between buildings, and our chapel auditorium lies at the bottom of a steep hill. These I can live with. Walking into a wind so freezing cold that it gives me a headache, that's a different story.

On a more literary note, yesterday I wrote the check that ensures my trip up to Stratford, Ontario, to see two Shakespeare plays, along with Professor Sauders (head of the English Department) and about 30 other students. We'll be leaving early Friday the 1st of October and coming back late the next night. Sandwiched in between those eight-or-so-hour trips will be sightseeing, a hotel stay, and of course "Macbeth" and "A Midsummer Night's Dream". (my apologies - blogspot in Windows 2X doesn't seem to have as many options for creating posts, i.e. italics!) I heard about this last year, and the more I considered it, the better the opportunity seemed, especially since this particular theater is acclaimed as the finest in the Western Hemisphere. Just a warning in case I disappear weekend after next.

Too much to comprehend

I recently finished reading through Ezekiel and noticed a few things.

The book begins not with Israel or Jerusalem, but with God. God reveals Himself as the holy God, the Lord GOD, and sends Ezekiel to prophesy to the "rebellious house" of Israel. More specifically, Ezekiel warns of judgment coming on Jerusalem, which begins with the removal of God's Spirit from the temple (10:18). Throughout the book, God declares that by what He is doing "they will know that I am the LORD." The relationship between God and His people is illustrated not only as that of the holy God and His unholy people, but also the faithful God and His adulterous people. How thrilling, then, to come to the end of Ezekiel and read his visions of the new temple, and of God's Spirit returning to reside there (43:2-4). Coming to the very last verse, "and the name of the city from that day shall be, 'The Lord is there.' " (48:35)
God is glorious, and God is faithful.

Colors

Thought that maybe I should explain why I picked a very green template. Green is my favorite color. But, since that's not enough reason for some people, I went searching on Google for facts.

Green is supposedly the color of healing, rest, refreshment. It is also associated with nature (obviously), with wealth; with good luck, jealousy, and harmony - interesting combination - and peacefulness, tranquility. I also discovered it's good for your heart. If you don't believe me, try this:
http://library.thinkquest.org/27066/psychology/nlcolorpsych.html

In other words, this blog should be a pleasant place to visit.

In the process of trying to rediscover the above website, I came across another site that gives career tests based on color preferences. It's fun to try -
http://www.colorwize.com/Bestresults.htm

However, don't expect it to be accurate. The top forty careers they gave me centered on science, math, and technology, with speech/debate as number 2. Maybe you'll have better luck. You just may, if you follow the link from my green site.

Welcome

Salvete! Xaipete! Bonjour! Guten Tag! Buenos días! Hello!

Welcome to my blog! This is a test post, so it will be very short. Actually, I never intended to have a blog. . . first I had to get a template in order to post on Mommy's, then I was curious to see if I could set up my own. Besides, Daddy and Mommy have a blog. Ardith has a blog. Second-oldest children are very competitive, and I certainly am - so, I must have a blog too.

For those who are interested, the above greetings come from the following languages: Latin, Greek, French, German, Spanish, and English, in that order.

And now let's see if this works!