I'm still here; just checking in. What's new? I want to pass on what Audrey's awesome grandma said to me in the graduation card she just sent me:
I bless you with being everything that God designed you to be. I bless you with singing songs of joy each morning as you start the day - for Jesus your savior has shown you great love and favor. I bless you with knowing God so well that great peace flows from you to bless those around you. I bless you with the exhilaration of experiencing God's goodness and unfailing love and care all the days of your life.
1. Claire talked me into getting a facebook; that's where a lot of the NSA people are. Feel free to look me up and add me there too. But I'll continue to be active on xanga, perhaps using the word "active" loosely.
2. Two huge cans of escargot fell into my hands and I cooked some tonight. Ever wanted to know what canned snails smell like? Breakfast sausage. But in alfredo, they just taste like alfredo. They're like mushrooms for people who don't like mushrooms. Except my mom, who now does not like either.
3. If I mess with an entry after I post it, do you get a double email if you're subscribed to my xanga? I try to make my OCD as less annoying as possible. I will try to prove that by not editing this and correcting that last bit. Oops, I'm editing anyway. Bad llama.
"I shall be told, perhaps, that Alyosha was stupid, undeveloped, had not finished his studies, and so on. That he did not finish his studies is true, but to say that he was stupid or dull would be a great injustice. I'll simply repeat what I have said above. He entered upon this path" -monkery- "only because, at that time, it alone struck his imagination and presented itself to him as offering an ideal means of escape for his soul from darkness to light. Add to that that he was to some extent a youth of our last epoch--that is, honest in nature, desiring the truth, seeking for it and believing in it, and seeking to serve it at once with all the strength of his soul, seeking for imjmediate action, and ready to sacrifice everything, life itself, for it. Though these young men unfortunately fail to understand that the sacrifice of life is, perhaps, the easiest of all sacrifices, and that to sacrifice, for instance, five or six years of their seething youth to hard and tedious study, if only to multiply tenfold their powers of serving the truth and the cause they have set before them as their goal--such a sacrifice is utterly beyond the strength of many of them." -Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
From cleanerplateclub: they "picked the Westland/Hallmark plant at random. Not based on any kind of identified risk assessment. Completely at random. Kinda’ makes you wonder how the other 6,200 facilities are doing."
What have I been doing for the past three months, you ask, that has been more pressing than writing to you all? Preparing the little grey cells for college, reworking old and making new jewelry so I can wear my sparklies in said college, messing around with food and paint (at different times), turning into an activist because the world isn't going to change itself, thinking over a story I want to write for you and the heck of it, meeting old friends (it's time consuming!), and recently, starting an Israeli type of self-defense martial arts. I'm the only woman who's been to the two lessons I've had, but I'm told there are a few in the class. Yesterday, one of the things we did was take partners and practise getting the upper hand in a situation where you're on your back and someone kneels between your legs and slices at your neck with a rubber knife. It made for good icebreakers. Funnily, it's hard to find this sort of martial arts taught in the US, but there are classes in town here and the fitness center across the street from New Saint Andrews offers it. I don't know if I'll have time to go, but it would be nice to become proficient at something other than sitting in chairs. I know, I'm bragging, but sitting is inborn so I can't take credit.
I keep getting asked if I'm anxious or excited about going off to NSA. My answer is always "Nope, not really." Yeah, I'm a real hit at parties. The reason I rarely get excited is because I'm happy about what I have while I look forward to what God has in store for me. I'll enjoy life in college like I enjoy life here, but for different reasons. I'm just concerned about this going away/graduation party that I'll have to throw this spring so people don't think I'm sneaking off to college. How much would all the guys hate me if I were to make my party a formal dance? Or how much would everyone hate me if I threw a retro costume party/potluck for some decade or another? Goodness knows I have enough old music for it.
"Goodness knows" reminds me of something I've been wondering about. English is a living language, right? so if you want to steer it in one particular way you can always try. (The same way doughnuts scribbled their way into being donuts, "alright" is going to sneak into our next generation's dictionaries, making teachers clonk their heads against their desks nationwide. With enough influence we can keep our majority from writing our dictionaries, which is why I use archaic/British spellings with a lot of stuff. I just think it looks better.) So here's what I've been considering. Unless there are kids around, we can use "bad" words in the right context, for instance "Truly thou art damned, like an ill-roasted egg, all on one side." The phrase "Oh my God", not used by me or the majority of Christians I know, came from people actually crying out to God. It's become "cussing" according to the circles I go with, thanks to most people not being Christians but still using the phrase as an interjection. When we say "Oh my word" we may offend less grandmothers but we're also losing what could be a reminder to call out to God. What if we were to start saying it "Oh my God" again and take it back, as it were, and really mean "Oh, my God"? That's the dialect equivalent of whole wheat flour: some people might not like it, but it's got substance and nutrition while enriched flour just gives you arguably empty calories, spikes your blood sugar, makes you eat more, and maybe turn you into a buttertroll. Uh, yeah. I'm going to go make some macaroni and cheese.
PS. All this and bodacious new shoes; they were at TJ Maxx for $7. If you like them, neighbours, get thee there, because there were more and they are as comfortable as sneakers. There were some in the shoe section and some on a table in the middle of the clothing section. I'm reading Karl Marx for school and I wonder what he would have said about the value of these shoes. Do you think a pair of shoes, and any other form of art, is worth the list price, which is sometimes hundreds or millions above the cost of the materials?
