The Snow Fort: An epic of three warriors

Perhaps school is turning my brain to mush, but I wrote an epic out of a snow fort fight...

Yep.

I know.

:-/

However! I cling to the idea that creativity is proof of some remaining brains. Besides, it was fun to write something in the style of the old, unrhymed-iambic-pentameter epics I'm studying in school.

The day dawned dark; the sky was lade with snow.

Sun showed just the gray bald back of his head

Left flurried, self-secure littles preparing

For white, stormy arms. Gray atmosphere seeped

Into the hearts of all. But yet remained

Three warriors. The one, a youth, declared

To two his purpose. His design meant ill

Towards all who loved him, raised him, did him good.

Some land of theirs he stole in secrecy

And sought snow castles thereupon to build

His purpose scofflaw fugitives to hold

In “freedom” but still bent to do his will.

By such he thought to earn a treas’ry vast.

By hard work first, he’d live a slothful life

And toil by breaking backs of other men

Thereby to win himself a vast estate.

To such end joined one of the twain fighters.

Together labored they to build their hall.

Betwixt they swore the fortune they would share

But to his heart, each swore to keep the whole.

That last wise warrior knew a better scheme

Which would reward the good and right a wrong.

He let them build the castle to their will,

Then he would seek to turn the profit good

To such an end he let them labor on

Thinking to make them slaves to their own work

And on their finish, conquering would serve

To punish them, and give their fruit to those

Who lovingly did raise them their whole lives

And gave own labor to raise these two traitors.

By such a scheme he waited through the seconds

And seconds turned to minutes, minutes hours.

Then was time ripe to satisfy their greed

And they began to seek out those in need

Of escape from a dire, and criminal life

By giving righteous “well paid” work of light.

Then did the third, our hero, gladly rise.

And went him forth among them as a spy.

He sought by hard work, constant, to earn trust.

And surely it did work. For such a man

Of character is surely never found,

But is compared to him, who lives in legend.

Thus was it that he came inside their lodge

And knew the secrets, strong and weak thereof.

Beyond this, knew him patience, for i’ faith

He waited hours more for them to part

And leave him master, caretaker and heir

Should aught befall them ‘fore they made return.

So sure their downfall, eminently near

The third of that bold party made his call.

He stood upon the parapet and declared

“I claim this fortress and this castle mine

For use as should be for our benefactors

That they which gave us home and health should be

Returnéd that same gift by warriors three.

If thou standest by me, come and welcome.

Our names be renowned for hospitality.

But if thou durst oppose, gird up thyself.

I will attack thee forthwith as you stand.”

With such, he waited their reply with calm.

But they knew not aught of humility

And threw themselves against the walls to fight.

The warrior threw them back and then rained down

A shower of stones and snow and ice unceased.

The two were so beset, one ran away

Deserting what he had not first begun.

The other stood and used with his strength

A shovel – left from work – became his shield.

Howe’er he stood, he could not win the wall

But stood away from reach of raining stone.

Until by chance he spied him such a tool

As might befit the conquering of a wall.

There lay a pickax where his warrior friend

Had thrown it down as he fled far away.

This he took up and quickly advanced close

And when he reached near enough for his arm

He raised, and threw the pickax on the wall.

It struck its target, and tumbled down inside

Lay the last warrior, slain for his good heart.

So thought the wicked one in triumph glad.

But lo! There stirs our hero living still.

He creeps, bleeding, weak, up to the gate.

There he grasps the handle of that ax

And pulls it from his body carefully.

He staggers, wounded, out, and finds his prey.

The warrior gaggles, frightened, runs away.

He thought him conqueror, and his opponent dead

But the man was living and pursuing.

Then came the wounded man so close in fight

He grasped the wayward warrior by his helm

And thrust him forth into a cloud of white,

He cried “Die now, thou villain! Be dispatched

Into this wild, white, devo’ring abyss.

I end thy black days here, in death of white.”

Revitalizing Leadership: Live to change lives.

My generation needs to see believers living out Biblical faith. In Titus 2:7 it says “…in all respects be a model of good works, in your teaching show integrity, dignity and sound speech…” In today’s world many people say one thing and do another. They live a double standard. Transformational leadership starts with believers leading as a way of life. This necessitates involvement in scriptures, family, church, work and government.

Believers need to be rooted in the word. There is great poverty of biblical knowledge among believers today. We delve into commentaries and short studies about the Bible, grateful for man’s perspiration, but we are malnourished of God’s inspiration. For us to lead, we need to be in the word and know the word.

Our most important sphere of leadership needs to be our family. The Bible states in 1^st Timothy 3: 4-5 that if we can’t lead our own family we can’t lead in church. I believe familial leadership encompasses loving, valuing and respecting our spouse and modeling love and integrity to our kids.

Leadership at church is multifaceted. Plug into a small group, triad or other Bible study. Participating in a group in which we lead others and are led as we study scripture is necessary to our growth. Be held accountable. Be involved in service; find your area of excellence and be a leader. Lead AWANA games, a Bible study, worship etc.

Work; no matter how big or small the corporation, even the Christian intern can lead! Be the best employee that you can. Show up on time, work hard, be a person of integrity. This will give you a platform with which to bring up Christ.

Christians need to lead in government. One of the biggest ways is staying informed of what different candidates and elected officials believe. Take the time to vote and encourage others to vote. If you feel called to run for an office, pray about it, then jump in and be courageous.

My generation needs to be believers who are purposeful in living out their faith. Individuals don’t turn away from Christianity because they have tried it and it doesn’t work. They turn away because they see hypocrisy in people who claim to be believers but don’t live by the book.

*Deep breath* You choose the title!

...is something I love to do. I had to write a paragraph using setting to insinuate mood. And not just any setting or mood...I had to choose from a list of settings and mood.

Settings: City in the Rain; Midnight on the Farm; 1890, in the Parlor; High Noon on the River; A Spring Morning; In the Bar, After Hours; The Dusty Road; Dawn in a Foreign Place.

Mood: sinister, sick with love, full of promise, suicidal, dangerous, suspense, happy-go-lucky, lonely.

Sooooo...here be the paragraph, and you see if you can determine which I chose from each list! Leave a comment with your guess before I tell you!

Droplets made music in puddles. Singing water filled damp air, thrusting out delight and receiving its delight thrust unceremoniously back, leaving ripples. There was work to do: high rises and business men with newspapers, Hyundai Sonatas honked angrily, afraid of spoiling their polish on the wet city freeway – uncheery, all. Rain’s embodiment, wearing mother-enforced galoshes and brown ringlets, mad the weary water smile by leaving vanishing footprints on the drowned sidewalks and kissing the raindrops with green eyes wide in wonder. Rain fell, surer of its task of joy, and bathed the world in sweet dancing sorrow.

Gratitude Challenge: Day 1

*I am grateful that I have little school to do. I can take my time! Yay!

*It felt good to sleep in this morning. It's because I was sick, ya know, but hey, there are benefits!

*I get to do a photo shoot today! As in, I'm the model. Senior Pictures, Here I come! I love photo shoots. :D

*The park we're going to for my pictures is gorgeous this time of year! Beautiful trees, old wooden bridge, old stone building, stream...all great places for posing!

*I have an amazing mother.

*I'm reading a good book.

*I have another good book on hold at the Library.

*My little brother gave me a hug.

*I ate a piece of fresh, homemade bread with honey. Mmmmmm.

*It's a beautiful day.

Join the challenge! Find ten things you're grateful for every day for 21 days. Can't wait to read your posts!

A very nearly Bad Day. But not quite.

There is a vast difference between getting up and waking up. This morning, as usual, I got up long before I woke up. I warn you, it's a vulnerable practice. Family members seem to have the innate ability to discern when you are up but not awake. 


School started and I went around doing nothing in particular and trying to get ready for choir. I had to prepare some errands, which somehow managed to distract me until 9:30.


Walking to choir did pick me up a little. Sitting down and singing "Ahhhhh" on various pitches and in various tones did not. I think I yawn more in choir than I do before bed.


Being tired set me up for moodiness. I ran my errands hurriedly. The wind gave my hair a distinctly different look from the carefully combed and waved one I'd prepared in front of my reflection. Altogether, I was eager to get home and finish my school so I could plan something pleasurable for my evening.


Mumsy called as I was leaving town and asked me to wait in town for her so we could switch vehicles. Through no fault of anybody's, it ended up being half-an-hour of non-school down time waiting to go home.


Mother brought with her another errand and sent me off with the glad tidings of a list she'd left for me on the kitchen counter. By now, I was attuned to even the littlest thing that would add to my gloominess.


The right blinker was out.


The sky was gray.


There was no gas in the tank.


I forgot my checkbook at home and had to use pocket change to put on gas. Luckily I had $2.55 on me...


Do you have any idea how embarrassing it is to say "Pump no. eight," spill a handful of quarters, dimes and nickle on the counter? "I think that's right..."


Not cool.


My favorite song came on as I parked to run my final errand.


Do you begin to understand my discouragement? But God has amusing ways of reminding us what life is really about.


When I came back to the truck, my favorite song was still playing. The first phrase I heard was "Oh glorious day!"


I came home...lunch dishes greeted me.


But I only had a paragraph left on one of two papers.


I turned in both papers by 4.


I finished the dishes, which were easier than I expected.


There was hardly any laundry to hang out.


My loyal pooch came and sat by me while I clipped color to the clothesline.


I got to make two pans of brownies! It was actually on the list Mom left me.


I licked the beaters. Not just "licked the beaters" I did acrobatics with my tongue to get all the batter I could off of the outside and the inside. They hardly would have needed washing. I threw them in the dishwasher, just in case any of you were going to ask.


There were hardly any clothes to take off the line!


And I did it barefoot.


I'm not going to do any more school. Period.


I am going to play the piano.


I am going to eat a brownie.


I'm going to see if my bestie has emailed me.


I'm going to publish this blog post and wait for comments.


Cuz I want to hear about your glorious days.

!

College Algebra

For the past few months I have been studying for the College Algebra CLEP test. CLEP stands for College Level Examination Program. My reasoning was that if I had taken algebra 1 and 2 already, how much more difficult could college algebra really be? So I took a few practice tests and studied a little (precious little) and scheduled a day to take the test.

That day was yesterday.

It was about 9:00 in theory and 9:30 in actuality when Mom and I sallied forth for this test. We were well armed: I with seven forms of ID (they'd asked for two,) practice tests to review, and a good book for the drive; Mom with enough cash to satisfy the most money-hungry of test administrators and more than enough anxiety than the two of us would have needed put together.

Despite, or perhaps because of, our late start, we arrived in the city of the testing center an hour early. Mom took me to McDonald's to get me a second breakfast. She ate a sausage McMuffin and worried over me. I sipped a hot cocoa and babbled about a movie I wanted to see.

The testing center was on a college campus, but once we were in the right building, none of the faculty could point us to the CLEP testing center. Aggravation might have set in, but we were still a good half-hour early and I was comparatively relaxed.

I was still relaxed when the test administrator let me pass after merely glimpsing two of my ID's. When she took my calculator away, I was still only slightly more nervous.

Then the test started. At this point, I had mostly forgotten to be nervous. By the time I was 1/4th of the way through, my only concern was my time. I plugged away...steadily...people came and went around me. My computer was in a tiny back-lobby sort of hallway that had three offices off of it. There were students coming and going and talking and registering for who-knows-what most of the time.

And then something out of the ordinary happened. I got fidgety. The test was long and I was getting a little bored. I was tired of sitting still and answering questions. I slumped in my seat. Worked another problem. On to the next one. Sat up straight. A graphing question; easy, just subtract x from the left, that's negative slope, so it's not option E or B...I muttered mentally. At least boredom wasn't resulting in brain-frying effects.

Then I was done. I sat there nervously for a minute. What to do? According to the test administrator, my score would print off as soon as I finished. I shrugged and waited. Suddenly the printer next to me grunted and began to align itself for some task. Yep, t'was my score. I grabbed the papers eagerly and started searching them for a number, a percent, a letter grade, or anything that would reveal whether I passed. On the right were two numbers.

Score: 66

ACE Score: 50

I gulped. 50? That was the lowest passing score that College Board allowed! Equal, I think, to a C or C-. I stood in shock. The voice of the test administrator came matter-of-factly over my shoulder: "Oh! Good. You passed! 66 too. Nice work. Your mom's out here waiting for you."

Now, I am not very practiced in the art of grinning ear to ear, nor am I particularly gifted in walking ten feet in the air, but at this moment it was revealed to me that neither of these are necessarily practiced arts.

Now, only one final act remained to conclude my days of studying arithmetic.

This felt soooooo good.

Wait for it...

Sweet relief.

Wild-eyed revenge.

Satisfaction.

(Pr)Icy Starlight

Ttttttttooooooodddaay................IIIII mmmmmeeeeaaaann toooonight, *pauses to blow furiously on fingers*...I went ouside for my first observational lab in my Astronomy course. I appologize for the wacky spelling, my fingers were a bit numb.

I'll provide you with the story.

I had the advantage--for such you could easily call it--of not being able to do the observation right away. Basically, a bunch of people who are taking this online class with me did the observational rather half-heartedly, or on a cloudy night, and my professor sent out an email warning us that we were expected to see more than three or four constellations! (He didn't put it so gently.) It behooved me to take note.

So tonight (and incidentally my father) found me practicing piano dilligently at about 8:15. Dad pointed out that the sky was clear and I shouldn't take my chances or sit on my duff (something I have done before). Sumarily he told me to make hay while the sun shines.

An aside: Sun shines? Truthfully? What is the world coming to? Something tragic, to be sure.

So I gathered a skymap that I'd printed off (here), a pencil and notebook, and booklight, a real flashlight, and a garbage bag-turned-desktop to protect my scientific studies from the snow.

I'll admit I was a bit queasy as I left the circle of light and the yard in favor of the open prairie/CRP where I could actually see the sky. It felt strange and alien to be outside of the protective windbreak of trees.

I crunched through and over the snow until I had a reasonable view of most of the sky. The snow was hard enough that my garbage bag did make a nice desktop. With the precision of a mad astronomist (astronomist sounds more mad than astronomer, agreed?) I arranged my notebook, pencil and skymap by the light of an LED flashlight stuck between my teeth.

The actual observing came by way of looking at the map with the light and then back at the sky while I muffled the light in my coat. The skymap, being such, has the directions reversed, so that facing north, east is to the left. It makes sense when held up against the backdrop of the stars, but that was difficult, and the light affected my night vision. The process ended up going something like this:

Locate a constellation on the map. Check the orientation of the constellation against the printed directions on the map. Close your eyes and try to re-orientate yourself to the sky. Lay down and look for the constellation, but only notice the few brightest stars. Sit up and look again at the skymap. *Lightbulb* Lay down and look at the sky. Pick out a few more of the stars in the constellation. Look at the skymap again. Oh, duh, those ones. Right there. Yep. I got it this time. Look back at the sky. Squint because you forgot to hide the light. Pick out a few more stars, enough to see the general shape of the constellation. Roll over and hold the light between your teeth as you try to write the name (usually borrowed from Greek and Roman mythology) with your mittins on.

Blow on your hands.

Start the whole process again.

It was a blast! I really did have a good time. I missed the Great Square of Pegasus, but I think that's because I got outside a little to late. Missed Jupiter too, but there was light pollution on the horizon where he was supposed to appear, so that wasn't my fault. Mom came out once I'd been out there a half-an-hour and we finished up together. I did find 13 constellations total.

I should mention the individual stars that I found too. Sirius, the brightest star in the sky, was out and in his glory. He was a part of...something Major. Can't quite remember. And Polaris, the North Star, was twinkling from his position on the end of a jeweled dipper.

Here's a picture of stars taken from a camera with a shutter left open. It shows how the stars rotate through the night.