snoopy!





Which Peanuts Character Are You Quiz

Home again, home again, jiggety jig, after a nice calm bus ride.
Monday we went to the G.'s house and swam in the pool. I'm pink and sunburnt and had lots of fun, as did the boys. We swam, then rested, then swam, then I tried to relax on a lawn chair while my little brothers and the two younger hosts threw water balls at me. Little boys find it hilarious to do that since I usually don't pay attention and so I get socked every time. Me throwing the ball back at them, mind you, is even funnier. Lets just say that my ball throwing is an expression of my femininity. (another way of saying: I throw like a girl.)
We're going to the pool with Mrs. M. and Jay today, which will be fun. Speaking of which, I need to go get Math, History, and Bible (all summer catch up subjects) done early so that I can go.

Only one more cake to go. I'm at my friend Kit's house and have been since Wednesday night, and she is making a wedding cake. We have baked. We have frosted. We have tasted. (or at least, I have, since she can't eat wheat.) We have despaired. We have tried again. We have become sick of frosting. I personally consider sugar, cake, and frosting to be the bane of humanity. At least when you have to taste each batch of frosting. We've used seven pounds of butter just for frosting. And since its a white cake, we've struggled with the cakes themselves. White cakes, I gather, taste worse, are harder to make and less moist than others. We had though one where the inside was very moist. Kit's sister Ant said it would make a good pudding. We deduced we hadn't cooked it enough and maybe we needed to add a little white flour to the cake mix. Fortunatly, we finished. Then we had to bake two layers each for two side cakes. But they were chocolate, so they turned out fine. (except for one...) Then we had to deal with how to put a pattern of three evenly spaced dots around the outside of the cake. We debated the merits of a paper stencil and marker. We sat and thought. We talked through several ideas. "We could use lace," I suggested. Kit stared at me across the table. "So we could," she said, and off we went to find some that would work. We decided eyelet lace would work best. We went to the fabric store and found some. Then we went to find ice cream.

While we frosted and Ant ironed, we watched US Marshals. Since we have all seen it several times (it being a favorite) it was easy to listen and frost at the same time. I'm taking the bus back home tomorrow. After we set up the cake at the reception. All for now. Bedtime is definitely here.

I went to the thrift store to look at books and old National Geographics. The National Geographics are 30 cents each, so I like to get a few that look interesting. The following is as accurate as possible considering my memory.
I was kneeling down, since they are on the bottom two shelves, and I had just decided to get February 1976: U.S.S.R., Ob River, Apollo-Soyuz, Sargassum, Minnesota, Jefferson, Azores, and was flipping through an article on Tolstoy in June 1986: Immune System, Tea & Sugar Train, Tolstoy, Snow Leopard, Bikini , when a sharply dressed foreign man knelt beside me and began looking at them too. After he had scanned the rows in front of him, he went to the other side of me and looked. The only place left was in front of me. He politely said,
-- "Excuse me..."
(I nod and move over)
--"I'm looking for a specific one," he explains, "from 1980."
We continue looking, he for the 1980 he wants, me, well, for anything dealing with Russia/U.S.S.R. or anything else that catches my eye. His hand darts out and he pulls one from the bright yellow stack.
--"This is it!" He says happily, looking at me.
--"Great!" I say
--"It has a picture of one of my friends," he says
--"Wow!" I raise my eyebrows and nod. It is not everyone who is in National Geographic.
--"Yes", he says, looking through it, smiling. "A picture of where I was from. Here, let me show you the picture."
I'm slightly taken aback by this, but I wait while he flips swiftly through the bright pages.
"Here it is!" he exclaims happily! He shows me.
I see a picture of three Hispanic males standing in a row near a white car with thick blue and red pinstripes. They stand there comfortably, I have a vague recollection of drinks in their hands, in wifebeater shirts.
"Do you see the car?" he continues, "Can you believe that my friend did that himself with spraypaint?"
I am genuinely surprised. "Really? Neat!"
"Yes!" He continues, telling me about the car. I have never had an intense interest in old cars, however, as he shows me the stripes on the car done with spray paint, I become mildly interested. He tells me that his friend had sold the car and then regretted it because he had the car before he got married and he and his wife had many memories involving said car. Then I listen as he tells me what year the car was made in, and the fact that this car from this particular year has a different fender-thingee. (not his words, mine.) He goes on to tell me about visiting a friend and going down to the local mechanic and seeing a car just like this, only without this paint job. He can tell it is the same year as his friend's was. He walks over and knows its the same.
"Now," he tells me, "Can you see anything on this car that you could tell it was this car even if it was repainted?"
I shake my head. He points triumphantly to the windows.
"He had roses etched on the windows!"
I'm speechless for a moment. This is most interesting. Roses on the windows, hmm?
"Oh!" I look closer. "Yes, I see them!" I stifle a giggle. This is just plain strange. People don't just start talking to utter strangers...do they? I know I don't usually.

I just took my history test. The last question was: Read Philemon 15-17 on the relationship of Paul, Philemon, and Onesimus. How does this passage undercut the religious arguments in support of slavery? This reminds me of a rhetoric assignment: "Should the US go to war without the approval of the UN? Why or Why not?", which begs the question, should the US go to war in the first place? This question suffers from assuming agreement on whether this passage does, in fact, undercut those (undefined) arguments. It also suffers from not defining slavery--do they mean the OT pattern (Leviticus 25.39-40), or the Southern pattern of lifelong slavery? My (edited) answer is below.

This passage is confusing when applied without defining terms. How can a lifetime slave, who is enslaved by race, be treated as a beloved brother? If he has little or no hope of freedom, is that not cruel? Yet Ephesians 6:5-9 and Colossians 3:22 are clear that bondservants, or slaves, should submit to their masters and their masters should remember their own master is in heaven. The key to understanding this is the Old Testament law which required that every 7th year all slaves/ indentured servants be freed who were fellow Israelites, or brothers. (Deuteronomy 15:12) Since this law nowhere was repealed, it is still required, thus putting the South's system of lifelong servitude clearly at fault.

I discovered recently while looking through my visitor statistics discussing fetal pigs on your blog will increase hits, I imagine from desperate students. I'm not sure yet whether this is good or bad. I do not anticipate it helping them.

Still thinking about those elusive weapons of mass destruction?

Amazing Poetry Generator. Enter URL and wait. My blog was summed up in the following piece of weirdness:

Blog so went well.
I had my
strand of life, yet there is it?
was a fetal pig
lab . report on many reasons, so
still throw it for
some good pictures back. into their lives. A Poetry
blog.

(thanks to Ebbing Tide for passing on the fun)

just now~
younger brother with spiky hair from sweat from biking, crooning,
(him) - i'm spookay, i'm spookay, i'm spookay...
(me)- you don't even know what spooky means!
(him)- yeah I do!
(me)- what does it mean, then?
(him)- it means my hair spooks out!
.

What I'm reading-
The Brethren, John Grisham
First Circle, Alexandr Solzhenitsyn (these too are for fun...I'm enjoying both of them immensly)
Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis (for my Rhetoric class)
Lord of the Flies, William Golding (for a co-op literature class, but I'd read it before)
2000 Years of Christ's Power: Part One: The Age of the Early Church Fathers, N.R. Needham (Dad got this at the last History Conference)
Rules for Monasteries, St. Benedict (this too)
Of Plymouth Plantation: Bradford's History of the Plymouth Settlement 1608-1650, William Bradford (a gift a while ago)
William the Baptist, James M. Chaney (Dad read this aloud to us at some point, but I didn't remember it so went back)
Feed My Lambs: Why the Lord's Table Should Be Restored to Covenant Children, Tim Gallant ( dad got this, too, at the last History Conference)


btw, check out Classical Free Virtual Academy I'm taking a Bible class from them. Very interesting mode of teaching.

Much ado about Marshmallows. (thanks, Little Geneva)

Someone found my blog by searching for 'fetal pig lab report'. I find that mildly depressing for some odd reason.

overheard this morning~
mom- ...and the Lord made the heavens and the...
younger brother- what?! I thought God did!

Well, I had my oral presentation today, and it went well. I was a little nervous because I was the first one up, but I did ok. The only questions were two that I actually knew the answer to. Then we finished dissecting the fetal pig. Yuk. I think I'll try to do the lab report on it today, so I'll still remember what we found. Next Friday we're having finals, and the teacher says she is going to use an actual fetal pig and stick in pins and we'll have to ID them that way. I find this scary because I can ID black and white pictures pretty well, once you are actually dealing with brown organs, I'm lost. I'm not to worried, though, because the term paper grade came back. It was 1/4 of my grade and I got 190 out of 200 possible. So one bad final won't completely sink my grade.
btw, I started a Poetry blog. Right now I'm pretty busy, so I won't be updating it regularly. I've also been messing with the template for this blog. (in case you didn't notice). My links therefore have disappeared. They will return as soon as I can put them back up.

scene: Walmart cosmetics aisle
characters: myself and five year old brother Joshua
his comments are in quotes
Joshua stares at a makeup ad while I look at eyeshadows. He sees a close up of an eye and eyebrow with a dark smudge of purple shadow from the inside of the eye diagonally to the outside of the eyebrow. He intently studies it for a moment. Then he asks me, with a grimace,

-"do you like that?"
-no
-"if you buy that" pauses to grimace and shake head "then...I'll just throw that right away."
-well, that isn't your job, though, is it?
considers
- "no, but when I'm grown up and have my own house, then."
I misunderstand and think he's still talking about throwing away my makeup
-well, even when you're big you won't be my boss, you know.
-"no, with my girls, I mean."
-with your own daughters?
-"Yeah." he walks alongside me as we leave the aisle. "even if the mom [his wife] thinks its ok, I will still throw it away."
------------------------

I walk on with him, marveling at the fact that at five, he is planning his household's rules for eyeshadow.

I have to dissect a fetal pig tomorrow. Bleh. :-/
On the plus side, I drove with my mom today again, and all went well. I got a letter from an old friend, which always cheers me up. :-)

I had a wonderful time at the party (thank you, Kit, Ant, and Meg!) and will (hopefully) get some good pictures back. Most of the people hadn't done the dances, but we successfully taught them not only easy ones like the Pattycake Polka but medium hard ones like the Virginia Reel, and then we were all having so much fun that we went ahead and did the Posties Jig AND the Scottish Polka! My blisters are healing nicely, thanks.

I'm going to go study for the dissection. I want to do it a ways before bed b/c I think it would impair my sleeping ability to have pictures of the internal organs of fetal pigs floating around in my head.