Ramble

The One, and Signs

2012-02-22T16:59:00.000-05:00

I was talking with a friend about romantic relationships the other day and thought, why not post some of this on my blog? So you might be getting a few posts about various aspects of dating/courting/whatever you want to call it. Unfortunatelyish I tend to go down bunny trails and I'm not sure if the way my mind connects things makes sense in writing, so neither am I sure if I'm talking about the same thing at the end of the post as I am at the beginning, but hopefully you can follow okay.

-I have been in a relationship for a whopping total of one year, so I am clearly an expert and qualified to tell you how to do everything. In a few months, I'm getting married to the only man I've ever dated. Multiple views I held have been stretched and turned upside down and sideways during our relationship.They probably will be again. So please don't take this and whatever follows as anything more than my current, personal thoughts and opinions born out of my limited experience and observations. My only hope is you may find it helpful in some way or another.-

I'm starting off with the concept of "the one." You know, the idea that there's one specific person out there written into your destiny for you to marry and you just have to figure out who it is. It's popular among Christians, but it seems kind of messed up to me. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for seeking and following God's will to the best of our abilities. That's very important to me. But the whole "one" thing puts so much pressure and doubt on singles. "Is he the one? How do I know? What if I marry him and it turns out someone else was the one?"

I've seen couples frozen in place for lack of "confirmation," I've seen people get into relationships that ended badly because they thought they'd been given signs each other was The One, and I know of one couple who dated for three weeks, married, and divorced three months later. The One concept actually seems to encourage irresponsibility and unwise decisions due to over-reliance on "the feeling" or "signs from heaven" which are so easy to read into or misinterpret. No matter who you're with, love is a choice you have to make day after day, and I think some people mistakenly expect that if they follow a magic formula to "the one" it will be easy. God gave us heads as well as hearts for a reason - to like, you know, use them. To quote the movie Ever After,

Henry: "Then let's say God puts two people on Earth and they are lucky enough to find one another. But one of them gets hit by lightning. Well then what? Is that it? Or, perchance, you meet someone new and marry all over again. Is that the lady you're supposed to be with or was it the first? And if so, when the two of them were walking side by side were they both the one for you and you just happened to meet the first one first or, was the second one supposed to be first? And is everything just chance or are some things meant to be?"

da Vinci: "You cannot leave everything to Fate, boy. She's got a lot to do. Sometimes you must give her a hand."

I'm not comparing God to fate, but He does gives us freedom to choose, and I've never seen Him write something like, "Jane, you should marry Leroy!" on a billboard so you'll finally know (not to say He can't, hasn't, or won't, just that it doesn't always - doesn't usually? - work that way).

I can't tell you how to decide who to date or if you should marry someone. In my case, we built a solid friendship before we started dating, talked about a ridiculous number of subjects early on to find out where we're on the same page, considered our personalities and the way our strengths and weaknesses compliment each other, talked to people with more experience and wisdom, listened out for our family's opinions (how much this plays into decision-making depends on your family - be respectful and consider their words while making your own decisions based on your convictions [assuming you're an adult and not like 16]), considered reasons for marrying and not marrying, blah blah blah. And prayed of course. Usually I thought God said yes, sometimes I didn't know if He was saying anything, and a couple of times I thought He might have said no (I asked Him a lot, okay). In the end I just have to trust Him. Sometimes trusting Him means taking a leap of faith when common sense and all that mess lines up but a lightning bolt hasn't written your significant other's name in the sky, because when you've been surrounded by The One business, yes, that can be a leap (with maybe a teensy bit of exaggeration). There were plenty of "coincidences" along the paths that brought my fiancé and I together, plenty of things that may have been signs, that were at the very least fun to consider and made us think, but that's not what he founded his decision to say, "Will you marry me?" and mine to say yes on.

I believe God has plans, destinies, for every life, and I'm not sure how our responsibility to take initiative and make decisions factors into it all. So perhaps the idea behind The One is true, but the application is flawed.

"Nearly all marriages, even happy ones, are mistakes: in the sense that almost certainly (in a more perfect world, or even with a little more care in this very imperfect one) both partners might be found more suitable mates. But the real soul-mate is the one you are actually married to." - J. R. R. Tolkien

Proposal Story

2011-11-26T03:24:00.001-05:00

I'm writing this post because several people have asked and it might cut the number of times I have to tell it down to 50 from 100. ;-)

I know I haven't blogged in a while, so here's a very abbreviated version of the backstory: Last year I started getting to know a young man named Alex over the internet, starting on a Christian filmmakers' forum. We got to know each other very well, in March he drove from his house in North Carolina to where I live in Georgia to meet, and we decided to date/court/whatever you want to call it. After hours and hours and hours of phone calls, hundreds of e-mails, many instant-messages, and half a dozen visits, he asked me to marry him last Sunday and I said yes. Here's that story.

My older sister and I went to visit Alex on Thursday. The day after that his water heater stopped working. So after two failed attempts to fix it when he got back from work Sunday (said failure was not his fault, by the way - he did everything right, but the plumber discovered another issue he couldn't have known about), we felt like getting out of the house for a while. We decided to go for a walk on the beach. It was overcast, but it cleared up some while we were there so we put a blanket on the sand and stargazed. I played with long shutter speeds on my camera for a while.

Then we just stargazed and talked. At some point Alex asked me what my biggest regret would be if I died that night. I told him, and he said his would be me not knowing how much he loves me. I was like, aw, that's nice. I'm cold; can we go soon?

A couple of minutes later I got up to leave. Alex only got up partway; he stayed on one knee and took my hand. Then he said something along the lines of, "The best way I know to express it to you is this," and here a thought flashed through my mind: He's going to ask, isn't he? "Will you marry me?"

He caught me completely off guard. I really didn't expect him to ask anytime soon, despite being pretty sure he wanted to marry me. So I think I said, "I don't know" about half a dozen times while I thought about it (hey, I wanted to be sure). I also said, "I'm cold and I have to go to the bathroom." Romantic, right? But I'd known for sure for a time that I didn't want to ever leave him, so I finally said yes.

He slipped a replica of Nenya (Galadriel's ring from The Lord of the Rings) on my left ring finger. He asked how it fit and I said it was a little loose. Then I decided to experiment to see if it would come off (I didn't think it actually would, but I wanted to know. I didn't think this through near as thoroughly as accepting his offer of marriage) and shook my hand around. Surprise, surprise, it fell off and landed in the sand somewhere. We hunted around for a bit using his phone screen as a light and I was just about to put my camera flash to use again when he found it. Phew.

So, we're both very excited and happy and planning our nerd-themed wedding. :-D

Things To Do When You Go To A Con

2011-09-07T03:01:00.002-04:00

Long time no blog. I've just returned from DragonCon (well, two days ago) (it was lots of fun, by the way), and in light of it I thought I'd share a few tips for the new or inexperienced or stupid con-goer. So here you are, a few things to do at a con:

1. If you wear a costume, take safety pins. You'd much rather have them and not need them than need them and not have them if you have a costume mishap. Safety pins can make pretty much anything wearable enough that you don't have to go home for fear of being arrested.

2. Drink water and eat food. You need to stay hydrated and keep your energy up for the best experience. You don't want to pass out when standing in line to hear Mercedes Lackey read or ask William Shatner questions (or pay $70 for his autograph), or in a crowded room looking at wonderfully nerdy goods you can buy online at half the cost. There are multiple reasons for this. If they take you to the hospital, you will miss a good bit of the con. And there is the possibility they will cut your costume off, especially if it may be restricting your breathing. If you are a lady wearing a corset or a bodice, you will probably lose it (if you're a man wearing one, you should probably change). The chances of being kissed out of unconsciousness like Snow White by a strapping man in a Han Solo costume are slim. Plus passing out is not as romantic as it may seem (or so I've heard, as I've never passed out myself).

3. Get to panels as early as you can without missing other important stuff, especially if there are famous people involved. They can only let so many people in a room at a time, and lines form fast and early when TV and movie stars will be there.

4. Respect people, their costumes, and their personal space. They may look like your favorite character, but that doesn't mean you should tackle, hug, or kiss them without their permission. Their costume may be the best thing since Serenity, but that doesn't mean you should touch it. You don't know how sturdy it is, you don't want to ruin their day and their opinion of you by knocking the gears off their top hat, and they may feel about it the same way you feel about your kid brother handling the model you built of the Enterprise - before the paint dries.

That's all I have off the top of my head. Feel free to add to the list with a comment.

Long Time No...Blogeth

2011-03-01T22:37:00.003-05:00

Yes, it's been a while, and this is going to be short. The last several months have brought about things I never thought would happen. Mostly through a particular relationship with someone, I've grown and learned so much - about loving, feeling, relating, about myself and others. It's been mentally and emotionally exhausting but it's been worth it. Maybe someday I will be able to articulate it in a way that will help others.

In one way I feel my life is at a standstill - like I've been treading water, wasting time. I don't know what I want to do with my life. It's frustrating. But on the other hand, God has definitely been using this period to teach me a lot. So if you're in the same place, be encouraged - it's often these waiting times that bring about strengthened character and invaluable lessons that will help prepare for the future, not to mention it's a great time to work on your patience. ;-)

Have a random, cool song:

A book I recommend: The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. I mentioned it in my last post. It was so good I pre-ordered the sequel months before its release (and it was released today! *squee* Now to wait for it to arrive). It's an excellently-crafted fantasy novel. It's been a long time since a story so pulled me in. Note: contains brief thematic elements, language, and violence.

A movie I recommend: Tangled. I saw it in theaters last year, and it's a really good story. I pre-ordered that, too.

Autumn

2010-11-16T14:15:00.010-05:00

Since the end of August life has been a little crazy. I got my bottom wisdom teeth taken out and a few days later went to Virginia where I worked for almost two months. During that time my mother was diagnosed with leukemia and spent a month in the hospital. But God proved His trustworthiness over and over, giving me His strength when I had none of my own. I literally had nothing else to rely on, and God came through every time. It sounds cliche until you experience it.

I have new questions floating around in my head. How to live in this world without pounding one's feelings into a rock to avoid emotional breakdowns when you're surrounded by difficult situations. How to survive as an introvert when you retreat into that cave in your mind to get by and it turns into pride. How to reconnect with a part of yourself locked behind a wall without letting out a victim, if it should be done at all. How many second and third and fourth chances to give people who make no effort to keep in touch or know you and then act like they have any business pretending to care about your life when you see them. And my view of God is being challenged as I read and compare the old testament and the new.

The rest of this post is about books and movies.

I read Tolkien's The Children of Húrin over the past month. It's definitely not for everyone. It's the tale of a family who fails to escape the tragedy that follows them everywhere under the curse of Morgoth. But it's a beautiful and delicate piece of fiction that I want to read again in the future. The only thing I dislike is an act that seemed out-of-character for the protagonist.

I'm now reading The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. Oh, the prose in this book! It does drag sometimes but there are absolutely delicious sections. One of my favorites I read yesterday is this:

"And then there was Abenthy, my first real teacher. He taught me more than all the others set end to end. If not for him, I would never have become the man I am today.
I ask that you not hold it against him. He meant well."

Granted, I am a rather peculiar person, compared to most of the other people I've met, so it's quite possible no one outside of my writers' group would like it. But it does for me what cups of tea or high-quality chocolates or Beethoven or sports cars do for other people. Same goes for parts of The Children of Húrin (like, most of the first half or so).

I watched Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon for the first time the other day. When I started it, the dialogue was all in English, which confused me a bit because I thought it was in Mandarin. It matched up well with their mouth movements. But the voices and the body language were like cats and dogs. So I went to the menu and, thank goodness, there was an option to switch to Mandarin. Asian movies with English dubbing don't work for me at all (unless they're cheesy Jackie Chan movies, and then it adds to the effect they have in the first place). It throws off the...mood, artistic value, whatever you want to call it, so I watched it in Mandarin with English subtitles. That was more like it! There are a few iffy scenes but it was a good movie overall. To me it was an example of how pride can ruin your life and those around you. I find it so odd how America, a nation founded on Christianity, has fewer morals in the majority of their modern films than China. Anyway, I liked it enough to buy it so I bought a gently used copy off Amazon for $3.

I got another book today - 'Til We Have Faces by C. S. Lewis. I might read it after The Name of the Wind, or I might read Blink of an Eye by Ted Dekker, or try to finish Green.

I discovered a band last week the sound of which I really like. This is my favorite song of theirs so far.

2010-11-15T13:22:00.002-05:00

I'm not giving up my blog forever, but I have a lot of things to think through right now. I'll hopefully resume posting in the not-too-distant future.

Fowl Beasts

2010-08-19T13:55:00.055-04:00

Okay, here's Chai:

Here are some of the others being led back to the corral after the ride -

- and here are some before the ride:

I've been house- and pet-sitting with my sisters since I got back from Colorado. We do this every now and then for a family when they go on vacation. They have goats, pigs, chickens, guinea fowl, seven dogs (five inside, two out), and a cat. We've been living on their popsicles and ice cream bars [slight exaggeration], coming up with more elaborate blockades to keep the pigs from escaping (which they keep doing), trying to keep the dogs from killing the guinea fowl when they get inside the fence, disposing of the one they got a hold of, collecting chicken eggs, sharing a bed with a three-legged pug who snores and a basset hound/beagle mix who sticks his tongue out when he sleeps, and watching lots of TV and movies. It's fun, aside from being slowly eaten alive by mosquitoes and the occasional ant every time we go outside.

I'm of the opinion that guinea fowl are some of the dumbest animals in creation, dumber than chickens. One repeatedly tried to fit through the holes in the chain-link fence. Obviously, only its head went through. Two or three perched on top of the fence. I ran toward them yelling, "Be gone, fowl beasts!" (I didn't want the dogs to eat them) (P.S. - Fowl is for birds. Foul is the way your gym socks smell. I was being punny) but they just looked at me for a few moments before hopping off. They have three now that one is deceased. They travel around the yard in a pack. Hopefully Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli won't take offense at the fact I've been referring to the guinea fowl by those names.

I did write a decent-sized second entry about the Moot, getting to the more personal aspects of it, but I'm not sure if I'll post it. I'll have to think about it some more. Here's a picture I took of the campfire.

Moot Points

2010-08-18T19:34:00.007-04:00

This post may or may not be very intelligible. I'm back from the Moot. It was one of the best weeks of my life. Never have I so felt at home as I did there. We're an eclectic group of people from California, Washington, Texas, Tennessee, Arizona, Georgia, etc., brought together by our interest in writing, and when we hang out friendships click and cliques don't exist. It's amazing. I've never felt so comfortable with a group of people before. I love them so, so much.

August 4th. I had a smooth airport experience the day I flew to Denver. MOTS picked me up. We talked about movies and watched amusing YouTube videos (Julian Smith FTW) at her house until her sister Dolphin got home. Their parents took us to eat at Chipotle's because a beautiful storm was going on and the power kept going out so they couldn't cook dinner. We watched the first two episodes of Doctor Who season 4 when we returned and then went to bed.

August 5th. MOTS, Dolphin, and I drove toward Colorado Springs to meet up with the other CPeeps. It was a beautiful drive. I love the scenery in Colorado. We met in a unique little town with dreadlocked hippies playing guitar on every corner. It was somewhat overwhelming seeing everyone. Most I'd met before, but there were a handful of people I'd only spoke to online. Two of my Georgia friends and I went off a bit and I stopped shaking and started easing into the group. We had a good time at the park and walking around the town. We returned to the pavilion in the park to break up to our various host homes. It started pouring rain. The pavilion was down an incline and the water started pouring in. We ended up standing on the benches while we waited for our rides and then ran out into the rain to get to the cars. I had my cloak on, so I didn't get very wet.

Curritigris, Feowin, Anywhere and I stayed at Yellow Leader and Blue Monkey's house in the Springs. We played Whonu and Nertz and roasted marshmallows over a fire outside. Blue, Any and I trickled back inside as Feo and the boys discussed church denominations around the fire. They came in shortly to watch The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen with us (a favorite among Clean Place members). I don't think any of us made it to the halfway point before going to sleep.

August 6th. Everyone eventually made it to the park where we filmed a movie with MOTs and Elder Fern directing. It's about a group of writers whose words are stolen by villains with names such as Passive Voice, Adverbs, Dream Sequence, Monologue, and Semi-Colon. The writers have to communicate using pictures and hand motions as they go on a quest to get their words back. I played one of the writers and the shoes of one of the villains (Yep. There's a shot with just my feet and the weapon of mass restriction, because I wore a pair of black, silver-buckled boots). We'd just finished up when it started raining and an impressive lightning storm went on over the mountains.

My group went back to Yellow Leader and Blue Monkey's house and watched The Deep (a documentary on the deepest reached part of the ocean). There were some fascinating creatures featured. Then we headed off to the mall to hang out with Balto (a member who lives in Colorado Springs but couldn't attend the rest of the Moot). We ate supper in the food court (yay Chinese food), went to a nicely nerdy store where we bought a Disney princess poster to send home to Maranar (his Clean Place-member sisters came to the Moot, but he couldn't make it this year. Yes, he's a guy, and we bought him a princess poster), and explored Borders, where we ended up reading aloud from Jonathan Acuff's Stuff Christians Like, a hilarious book. We signed the poster in the parking lot, went back to the house, and I went to sleep.

August 7th. We met at Mangycat's church and drove up the mountain. I was in Legolas's car with Elraen and Anywhere. It started smoking partway up the mountain so we stopped. There were some strangers driving up right in front of us and they stopped when we did and came over and said not to drive it until it cooled down because it was way overheated. MOTS and the crew in her van pulled up behind us and took Elraen and I the rest of the way up while Legolas and Anywhere stayed to take care of the car. Everyone settled in to their rooms in the lodge. I roomed with MightiMidget, Bree, Daeriel, Telpenen, and Dolphin. We got a rundown of plans and such, went for a walk, split into a few critique groups, and had a devotional that Rivus led. The rest of the night was spent with one group playing a language learning game called "Where Are Your Keys" and the other watching some member-made movies and such. I spent most of it photographing the group playing WAYK. I got some nigh-epic pictures. The point of the game aside from learning foreign languages is to be as ridiculous as possible to have as much fun as possible, so some very interesting facial expressions and hand motions were made. Whenever you have an "Aha!" moment during the game, when you figure out what something means, you have to throw your arms in the air and yell, "How fascinating!" It spread like a virus through the Mooters and was used over and over again in multiple circumstances.

The other days are something of a blur of wonderful people and moments. There was open mic night, where people sang and played instruments and danced and contact juggled and read poetry and read from Tolkien's The Children of Hurin. There was the play that some of the members put on, a musical with songs from The Phantom of the Opera and Fiddler on the Roof rewritten to apply to Clean Place members ("Cloakmaker, cloakmaker, make me a cloak"). We went hiking, climbed rocks, and did swing, two-step, and barn dancing. There were writing workshops and speakers (Scott Meyers, Jeff Gerke) and one of our members did a seminar on creating languages. During Mr. Gerke's talk, he said something that inspired everyone to simultaneously do the "How fascinating!" thing and I think we startled him rather badly.

We made up collaborative stories and haiku. I finally got to watch Stargate SG-1 with Mightimidget (life goal there, since before she left the site, we were Clean Place's biggest Stargate nerds). A group of us watched the 2003 live-action Peter Pan movie and made hilarious comments about how creepy it is. We played Dutch Blitz late at night and ended with a spontaneous, ab-hurting-laughter-inducing round of 52 Pickup.

One afternoon, the four of us who really wanted to go horseback-riding (which included me) got to go on a trail ride. The ranch's horses are absolutely gorgeous. Dolphin rode a lovely, light-colored palomino named Annie. Elraen rode a white-with-brown-spots appaloosa named Bill. Younger Fern rode a cute, short, dark brown horse named Cocoa. And I rode Buttermilk, a dark palomino stallion. The two ranch hands rode Chai, a chesnut, and a tall, dark bay whose name I didn't catch. It was so much fun riding along with a forest of aspens on either side, wildflowers and high, green grass, and the mountains looming up all around us. The terrain got pretty rocky at times. We got to canter up a steep hill once. Buttermilk tended to pull to the outside of Cocoa, the horse directly in front of us, so some of the skin got scraped off my knee by a tree. He kept trying to pass Cocoa so I held him back, and he kept reaching down for a mouthful of grass as we went along. I learned to pull his head up and give him a kick, so he only stopped the first time. It just added to the experience. I wouldn't change any of it. I loved it. I did think Buttermilk was a girl for a while because of his unmanly name. Poor laddy.

I took these pictures of him.

With the bay, right after the ride:

That (Wednesday) evening, when the whole group was having a campfire a short distance from the corral (I was majorly distracted by the horses for the first part of the evening):

A photo I took during the ride - that's Annie, Bill, and Cocoa (our guide was just ahead, out of the picture):

Another, with a glimpse of the mountains and the back of Buttermilk's head:

Me on Buttermilk, a picture Younger Fern took over her shoulder without looking, hence the blurriness:

The helmets were required and turned out to be quite handy due to all the tree branches that would have been in our hair without them. I really, really, really like horses, in case you couldn't tell. I'll stop here with the pictures of them or I'd end up posting a gazillion. Well...okay...here's one more. This is Annie.

And here's Cocoa.

Oh look, there's Bill...

I can't leave Chai out, can I?

Okay...yes, I can...must...stop.

Anyway. The Moot was fantastic. I knew I was going to have a good time, but it surpassed my expectations. It was a huge blessing. I'm going to stop here and write more about it later so I don't end up with a novel-length entry about it. I've been working on this post for a few days in between going through my 1,058 pictures from the Moot, so no promises on when the next one will be ready.

Suburba

2010-08-02T16:53:00.006-04:00

House of Heroes' new album, Suburba, is available to download for $3 on Amazon.com here and includes an Amazon MP3-exclusive track. I'm not sure how long this offer is good for.

House of Heroes is one of my favorite bands. :) I've twice seen them in concert.

Rocky Mountain High

2010-08-01T19:38:00.006-04:00

Okay. I really need to stop blogging for a time. Which is convenient, because I have to anyway. I'm flying to Colorado on the 4th and from the 7th to the 12th I won't have internet access to speak of. I return on the 12th and right after that my sisters and I'll be farm-sitting for some friends for a week and a half. I will have internet access there but I don't know how much I'll use it.

I'm a little excited about the Colorado trip (I'm not very excitable. At all. So a little excited is a lot excited for me). I'll be spending a week at a ranch in the mountains with a little over 20 other eccentric teenagers who are my best friends. We'll be doing writing workshops, critique groups, a play, a talent show, playing games, riding horses, talking as much as socially-challenged writers who converse more with the characters in their heads do, etc. Great. Now it sounds like rehabilitation for the insane. I assure you that we're all mentally sound, at least comparatively speaking.

I think my next writing goal is to finish the sci-fi story I wrote earlier this year. It's pretty short, so I might post it here when I'm done. I want to rewrite scene 5 and finish scene 6.

Yes, I listened to John Denver when I was a kid.

Questions

2010-07-31T20:41:00.004-04:00

Golden hearts,
what do you beat for?
Honor,
how long are you worth dying for?
When are you right,
and when do the stubborn
become fools?
Where is the line between pride and apotheosis?
Principle, when do you call us to fight
and when do you call us to surrender?
Do you ever make their blood
worthy of being spilled?
Should the innocent fall willing
under the blade of the lost?
Does the reason ever justify
the sacrifice of souls?

Mess of Me

2010-07-30T19:37:00.001-04:00

Hero

2010-07-29T22:35:00.008-04:00

And now back to our regularly scheduled broadcast, whatever that is.

Pretend that never happened.

:D

Instead of burning my story, which I would still like to do at some point, I celebrated the end of that dreadful excuse for a novel by watching movies half the day (what? I like movies). Firstly I watched Blade Runner, because 1) it's sort of a nerd classic and 2) Ridley Scott directed it. He also directed Gladiator and the recent Robin Hood movie, two films I enjoyed very much, so I was curious about Blade Runner. It was...interesting. I would be very selective in who I recommend it to. There are a few parts I really disliked.

I wanted a change of mood so I watched Kung Fu Panda, one of my favorite animated films, and this evening put in another movie I'd never seen, Hero. I put it in our massive Netflix queue and bumped it to the top and it came in today (well, Monday, but that disk had a crack in it; the watchable disk arrived today). My family didn't think much of it. My little sister left partway through the beginning and my mom and older sister are glad they didn't pay money at a theater for it.

I, on the other hand, loved it. I completely understand if foreign films aren't your thing, but I highly appreciate it on various artistic levels. The story is excellently crafted. I wasn't impressed in the beginning but it turned out like an onion - layers were peeled back until the core of the story was revealed. You have to pay attention or you'll miss something and won't understand it. There's some beautiful cinematography and the score is stunning at times. There's a shifting of color to represent differences in the layers. A qualm people may have is with the ending, but I like sad stories. As soon as it was over I got on Amazon.com and ordered a like-new copy for five bucks from their used section. I may be watching it by myself, but I'll be watching it again.

The Ixitprise

2010-07-29T00:53:00.014-04:00

I finished. I wrote 50,155 words. I am not sure I have ever before been so happy to finish a novel. I doubt it.

Note: The rest of this post does not make any sense. Please do not call the men in white coats. I am not a danger to anyone. If you would like to keep thinking of me as an entirely sane human being (granted, it may be too late for that already), stop here.

I finished it out by writing an epilogue about Rex and Biddy living happily ever after. But partway through I got sidetracked by the blogs.

According to the epilogue the blogs, who had never been mentioned before, "are a race of swamp creatures who live in all the swampy regions of the universe. They say a lot of things that do not mean very much at all but make other people think or laugh or pay attention to them.

"Blogs are one of the most common species in some countries. They come in many colors and have widely varying opinions. We are not sure why people take some of their opinions so seriously. For example, many of their opinions have attention called to them in the village of !Oohay. We do not know why the village leaders choose certain blogs to be attentioned in !Oohay. Perhaps because they agree with them or at least think they will be controversial enough to be interesting. We cannot say, because the village leaders of !Oohay are a strange lot who do not know what is good for them."

I don't know where this stuff comes from. It's late, I haven't slept much, and I think there may be something illegal used to replace the sugar in the sugar-free Klondike bars. Mostly the lack of sleep thing. There comes a point when you're too tired to...finish a sentence. Like this. What I meant is too tired to...to...close the door in your mind that opens in to...whatever this is. Or you could, but you're too tired to care. Anyway. Shall we get on.

Narcissistic Blog took over a neighboring kingdom, then Rex and Biddy saved it, then the machines took over, then Rex and Biddy saved it, yada yada yada.

Then Dustan became king of the White Kingdom in the icy north.

"In his kingdom there were a lot of petals. Which you do not expect because you already learned that it is in the icy north. Psych! But the petals were there, and they were mostly lavender colored, and the fairies of the deep south would come up once a year and collect a very many to take back to the deep south and sew into beautiful fairy dresses and hats and purses and billboards. In return they put advertisements for the icy north on some of the billboards. They said things like, “Wear your fur year-round!” and “It is always time for coffee!” Also, they kept the icy kingdom from being buried in petals, which fell from the sky like rain every so often like rain did in less not normal places."

Dustan had a pet ladybug.

"He hoped it did not die. Would not, that is. For a long time. He hoped it lived a long and fulfilling life. For a ladybug.

"The bug went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize and the medical one and the science one and the music one and the literature one. It was a very talented bug. But the president accidentally stepped on it when they got together for a meeting. Needless to say, he was not reelected.

"Life went on much as it had been in the household of the king of the icy north. He missed the ladybug some days, but he was glad he was not in the spotlight so much because of a bug. It had drawn some attention to the icy north and they got more tourists than before. He had a ladybug, one hundred times the size of a real one, statue built of ice, but some kid who lied a lot melted it by accident. The kid learned his lesson. He was put it* in detention for fifteen years. He grew up to become the captain of the Ixitprise, a space ship that went into space and explored the final frontier."

*Typo

See what I have to put up with?

I mean, a typo...seriously.

This is just what the epilogue is like. The rest of the novel is different. Badder (and contemporary sci-fi, not kingdomgs and stuff). So now I expect your support of my desire to see it go up in flames.

I am definitely returning to the fantasy and outlining route next time.

Maybe I should post one of my serious stories on here at some point.

A

2010-07-28T11:12:00.007-04:00

A song:

A picture:

A verse:
"All discipline seems for the moment not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness." - Hebrews 12:11

A quote:
"You are not only your pain. You are not only wounds and scars. You are also better things. You are possibility and promise, hope and healing, daydreams, favorite books and favorite songs. You are the people that you love and the people who love you. You are hope and change and things worth fighting for. This is all your story and your story isn't over." - Jamie Tworkowski

A website: ThinkGeek

A book I want: Ignore Everybody

A fact:
There are definite downsides to living in a neighborhood with a homeowners association. For example, it eliminates the possibility of setting up a blacksmith forge or building a miniature Anglo-Saxon village in the backyard.

A commercial:

A book I'm reading: Hood by Stephen Lawhead

A tv show I'm watching (on Netflix, so I can watch it in order. I haven't seen any of the current season yet): Doctor Who. The Doctor is one of the best characters in all of fiction.

A place I'm going this year: Colorado

A place I wish I was going this year: DragonCon. Hopefully next year...

A photograph I took:

A haiku I wrote:

Stoic, smacking, gray.
Please do not grow a mustache
again, Agent Gibbs.

A Truth:

Fantasy

2010-07-27T13:00:00.006-04:00

I'm almost to 48,000 words. I finished the story as much as I wanted to so now I'm writing random short stories in it. My preferred manner of celebration for when I reach 50,000 words is to print out the novel and burn it. I haven't given up hope on this but neither have I figured out where to burn it and whether or not my parents will let me use their ink cartridge.

I think part of the problem with this story, aside from the incomplete vision and lack of predetermined structure, is that I haven't read or written enough sci-fi to be able to do it well quickly. I have both written and read much, much more fantasy. I realized this when I stuck one of my characters in a pseudo-medieval virtual reality and suddenly found myself back in my element. If I do NaNoWriMo this year (it mostly depends on whether or not a film group costuming department opportunity works out), I think I'll go back to my roots. ;)

I've liked fantasy for as long as I can remember. The Chronicles of Narnia, The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, The Phantom Tollbooth, and Medallion were among my favorite books as a kid (The first three still are favorites, and I haven't read the other two in years...I should read them again). They were (and are) important to me. All of the books aside from the Bible that have impacted me the most over my life are fantasy, or in the case of Ted Dekker and Frank Peretti, at least have fantastical elements. If the stories were told, as close as possible, in a different genre, would they have affected me as much? I don't know, but they weren't.

Most of the stories I remember writing were fantasy. When I was 12 I started writing a fantasy story that ended up being 70,000 words long (It isn't finished. I haven't touched it in years. I am better at starting than finishing). My other novels and about half the stories I've written more recently are fantasy. I've liked it for so long that when someone asked me why, I couldn't really say. Why wouldn't I? But thinking on it, I suppose it is the escape from reality that attracts me so much, to worlds where anything can happen. One reason I like writing it is I don't have to do much research *innocent whistling* (though I have researched things like how to remove an arrow from a body). I can create an entirely different world with different laws and creatures and things. My hero can have wings. My heroine can go on a quest to close the Door to the North to keep the world from freezing over (no stealing :P). I can have dungeons and dragons and dwarves (spell-check says dwarfs, but that makes me think of Snow White, who is probably my least-favorite Disney princess ever).

The part of fantasy that I don't get along with well is magic. I very rarely use anything resembling it in my stories. I haven't settled on what's okay to use or approve of in fiction and what isn't because the Bible clearly states real magic is evil. In real life, when trying to find or use power, if it ain't God, it ain't good. People have a lot of different explanations for the vastly varying kinds of magic in their novels, and my opinions have slowly changed form some recently, but I'm not 100% sure on this matter. If you have any thoughts on it, I'd like to hear them.

"Some things can only be said in fiction, but that doesn't mean they aren't true." - Aaron Latham

Tonight

2010-07-25T00:17:00.014-04:00

...was the last meeting of my church in its current format (it met on Saturday nights because it started as a little prayer meeting). I am not going to miss it. I was as good as invisible 90% of the time.

Have a song. It makes me smile. B. Reith is one of my favorite artists. His music is so...real. Yes, he is dorky. Lovably so.

It's interesting how people do the same thing they're trying to avoid through their attempts to avoid it. They want to be themselves. Something to do or say enters their mind that someone else would approve of. They realize this and because they don't want to conform to other people's opinions or expectations or change themselves to suit others, they do the opposite of the idea. But by this they're still allowing those expectations, etc. to direct their choices - it's just in a different direction. Half the time they don't know what they really want - to do, say, be. They don't stop to ask themselves.

On a lighter note, last night (Friday, I think) I saw, crawling down one of our hallways, the biggest spider I have ever met outside of a zoo. It was a couple of inches long. I'm the person my sisters call when they need a bug killed (sometimes I catch them and let them outside with my bare hands [the bugs, not my sisters] *flexes muscle...or maybe that's my humerus bone, no pun intended*), but that freaked even me out for a moment. I smashed it with a boot and then flushed it down the toilet for good measure.

Movies

2010-07-24T13:02:00.011-04:00

It's the weekend, so I've been using it as an excuse to watch movies. My older sister and I watched The Book of Eli Thursday evening (which isn't the weekend, but whatever). I was a little apprehensive at first but am pleased to report I was not scarred for life. It has more graphic violence and foul utterances in it than the movies I usually watch. I wasn't sure just how graphic the violence would be so I held a pillow at nose-level and whenever there was a fight, I put the corner between my eyes, effectively blurring things. It was an interesting movie. I like the concept quite a bit. But it brought up something that has been on my mind off and on over the months - when, if ever, is it morally justifiable for a Christian to kill someone? I don't know the answer.

Last night I watched Bella. It 's sweet, though the pacing is a bit off (slow for a long while with a rushed ending). I even teared up once or twice. And there is a Jon Foreman song in it. Happiness.

And then, today, I watched Lemony Snickett's A Series of Unfortunate Events because I bought it and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen used off Amazon.com for $3 each and wanted to make sure it plays without a problem (it does). I've seen it a couple of times before. It's too dark for some people but I like it.

A fourth Pirates of the Caribbean movie is being made. Please, shoot me now. I like the first. The second was worse, and the third was terrible, because they slowly turned all of the characters into villains. Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley (a.k.a. Will & Elizabeth) aren't going to be in it. Jack Sparrow is the main focus. Penelope Cruz is playing his love interest. Blackbeard is the antagonist (the only thing even mildly appealing I've heard about the film). Interesting how the two characters in media I think need to die the most are both named Captain Jack - Captain Jack Sparrow of PotC and Captain Jack Harkness of Doctor Who and its spin-off (at least he's not in very many Doctor Who episodes, and I wouldn't touch the spin-off, Torchwood, with a standard-issue ten-foot pole*). Regrettably, both seem to be immortal in their respective stories.

I'm more or less back on schedule for SuNoWriMo. I wrote 3,000 words last night and 3,000 words the night before. Whee

Now I am going to play Wii Fit (which I am laughably bad at) because I went jogging outside the other day and when I reached the top of the worst hill in our neighborhood, I almost passed out. Bothersome Georgia heat.

*Hero, Second Class reference. It's a good book. You should read it. If you like fantasy. Or making fun of fantasy.

You write like...

2010-07-22T12:26:00.003-04:00

There's a website where you can enter samples of your writing and it tells you who you, supposedly, write like. First I entered all of my blog posts, one at a time. The overwhelming majority was that

I write like
Cory Doctorow

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

The runners-up were Margaret Atwood, David Foster Wallace, Stephen King, Dan Brown, and Chuck Palahniuk. I got them multiple times each. There were others I only got once each.

I was rather amused to find the result for my review of Hero, Second Class was

I write like
Edgar Allan Poe

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

and my poem "Jousting Horse" is apparently like William Shakespeare.

I've been entering pages of my SuNo at a time now. The first result was Rudyard Kipling. I was horrified (this is an exaggeration) to find the second was Stephanie Meyer. I must print this novel and burn it when I finish. I find this proof that Meyer is not a good writer, because the quality of my SuNo is pretty awful. Further proof of the lack of quality of my SuNo is that all of the other results said I write like Dan Brown. I haven't read any of Brown's novels, but I've read excerpts that were hysterically bad. When I pasted the whole 32,000 words in, the overall result was Rudyard Kipling, but it might have just analyzed the first part, since that was my first result.

For the last decent-quality story I wrote, the result was William Gibson, and for my current work-in-progress aside from SuNo, James Joyce. For my most recent really-short story (785 words) I got Ursula K. Le Guin.

I don't know who any of them are.

I need to stop wasting time on that website.

Have a good day.

Blue, Inception, and Cookie Dough

2010-07-19T22:29:00.005-04:00

I've not gotten much sleep the past several nights and it shows, in my writing, a lot. I seem to have lost most of my ability to write anything serious. I was bored/stuck in my novel, because it needed serious writing, so I had my characters transported to a place with video-game-like mountains, blue dirt, and a person pushing a cart playing The Fellowship of the Ring soundtrack. I'm not sure if it's real, like another planet or a man-made place in the middle of nowhere, or if it's a virtual reality.

If I were writing a novel I was going to try to get published or let anyone read, I would wait until my head straightened out, but it's SuNo. I can't stop. So I improvise. I have 32,031 words so far.

I saw Inception this morning. I wasn't much into it until about halfway through and then I loved it. The concept is fascinating. Minds are fascinating. So my mind really liked it. It's an interesting movie. I feel like I was just rather redundant there but in case you haven't realized it, my mind isn't functioning normally right now, so please excuse me. The overdose of sugar doesn't help. It's been people's birthdays and they bought a lot of ice cream. For the record, Blue Bell Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream is very tasty. The cookie dough lumps are the size of a small eyeball.

Which could be many sizes depending on how small the eyeball. But they're bigger than all the cookie dough lumps in all the other brands of cookie dough ice cream I have ever eaten, so far as I recall.

And no, I don't recall how many brands I have tasted. I don't pay much attention to that sort of thing.

I'm not sure what a brand tastes like, anyway. I'd imagine sort of burnt and skinny, with a hint of metal.

I'm reading Hood. It's good.

Night

2010-07-18T11:57:00.000-04:00

Silent night,
you give the writer
words to write.

Quiet moon
beyond the shade,
I want to see you soon.

Silent night,
you give the hurting
tears to fight.

Quiet moon,
is it dirge
or lullaby you croon?

Arkansas

2010-07-17T13:37:00.004-04:00

I think I'm going to post every other day or so instead of every day. For one thing, I don't want to put you through boring, forced writing. For another, there's some family & friend drama going on that has left me a bit drained.

My current word count is 28,008.

I like Palladio.

The swing dance last night, by the way, was the most fun of the ones I've been to, despite the underlying drama that left me so distracted I probably scared away a number of guys by brooding in the corner. I learned some new steps and such and most of the guys I danced with were fun, talented dancers. I like the faster, more energetic dances best. The music was all played on records that night.

Speaking of dancing, the Virginia Reel is so much fun. I learnt it last month. I recommend learning it if you ever have a chance.

This post, by the way, has nothing to do with Arkansas.

Got Malk?

2010-07-16T18:11:00.001-04:00

I'm going to a swing-dance and might not be home until after midnight, so I'm leaving you with this video.

Oh yeah...

2010-07-15T22:53:00.004-04:00

I almost forgot to blog today.

I noticed tonight that I use the left side of the keyboard significantly more than the right, or at least I did while I was word-warring tonight. My left arm is weary. I got some of the biggest numbers so far (for me) this summer tonight. Most of the word-wars were around 10 minutes long, and while I usually get approximately 320 to 480 words in that time, give or take a dozen, tonight I reached as much as 652.

My typing record is 121 words in a minute (but in normal circumstances I never type that fast).

I have a little over 26,000 words now. It's not my original 2k-a-day goal, but at least I'm on track for reaching 50k by the end of the month.

I'm so tired that for a little while, I went off on a tangent about a man named Allard the Duck and his dog, Dustan the Adventurer of Great Old Times in May in New Hampshire. Allard wanted to write a story about his dog but only managed one paragraph because he kept browsing the internet. Then I returned to my normal (if you want to call it that) story.

While in the chatroom we use for word-warring, it was pointed out that one could change their display name without changing their forum name. So we ended up with BarbaraManatee (that was me *cough*), TheMoose, PlotPoodle, SnugglyPanda, and something about a pony, while our normal usernames are Zephyr, Rivus, Legossi, Tippie, and ShatteredSerenity (this is on a Clean Place member's site, not Clean Place). :P Sadly, no one else joined the word wars after we changed our names, so there was no one to confuse.

Bass Hunter makes me happy. When I listen to his songs, I get flashbacks of the time I spent in Texas in April (staying with friends from Clean Place), where I was first introduced to his music (the lyrical quality of which is generally delightfully cheesy).

Trust

2010-07-14T15:42:00.015-04:00

I can't speak - oh, this song is so pretty. Have a listen.

Anyway, I can't speak (well, write) on trusting humans, because I don't do that much on any deep level. For one thing, I'm practically a hermit, which limits the opportunities, and for another, three of the people I trusted more than anyone else in the world betrayed that trust rather drastically at different times, so I haven't decided how much trust is wise to place in humans. But I have learned that trust in God is one of the most beautiful and freeing things in the universe.

2009 was the best year of my life thus far (2010 might give it a run for its money), in part because during it I went through the darkest period of my life in which I entirely lost hope in certain things for a while. I was just waiting to die (for various reasons I didn't consider suicide). When I made it through that, I came to trust God on a level I'd never experienced before. I'd been through a deeper valley than any in my history, and He'd led me out of it, though I was blind to His hand as I walked through (which felt more like lying in the mud at the time). After that, there's nothing I don't know He'll get me through, whether it happens the way I expect or not. I cannot express how much His trustworthiness means to me. It's my rock. It relieves worry and brings strength. Sure, I knew I could trust God before, but there's nothing like having that trust solidified and then really experiencing it through everything that happens, good and bad. It's like the difference between being told God loves you and actually experiencing that love. It's a drastic, life-changing difference.

At times we think our worry is justified, but it's not. The Bible specifically says,
"Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God (Philippians 4:6)." It sounds cliche, but we can trust God through everything, no matter how dark, 100%. Trusting God has changed our relationship every day, not just when I'm having a hard time. It's deepened my love for Him and helped me even more to see Him as a real person rather than a cloud looking down on me from afar. ;) It's not something you can be told how to do. Trust builds the more you get to know a person. It's the same with God, but unlike everyone else, He will never, ever let you down. His answers to your questions and requests may not be what you hope for, but He knows better than to do everything we think He should. Peace comes with trust, peace in accepting His answers (or lack thereof).