Tag(ged)! January 29, 2008
Posted by Anya in : spontaneous degeneration , 5commentsMy dear mother tagged me with the book tag (quite short)…
Rules:
1. Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages.)
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people.
Well well, what do you know… I just happen to have a good book sitting here. (The advantages of when someone in your family tags you. They warn you. 
)
Book: A String in the Harp by Nancy Bond.
“…You’ll have a grand morning for it. Wind’s up, but sun’ll be out in two shakes, look you. Down to Ynyslas is it, Gwilym?”
Now the tag-five-people part. *sigh* I think I’ll just say that if anyone wants to do this… you can… and if you want to just leave it in a comment, that’s good too.
So let’s see. Other than that, I’ve been up to schoolwork… talking on IM… reading a massive book about Sherlock Holmes… messing around with Hebrew, a bit. (Caleb B: “Oh, it’s easy!” A2, in response to my saying “It looks hard.”: “It is.”)
A1, is, of course, trying to keep me up on my tiny bit of German and tonight is also throwing in Old English. Huzzah.
Oh yeah, our Mexico team is… um… in Mexico for a week of various missions projects. Thus, we have one quiz team with only one person. Mhmm. I hope we get to quiz her.
Yesterday I was helping Miss Dance with her geometry. There was some concept that she was not getting, but it seemed clear as anything to me… so I said, “I shall explain this in words of one syllable. This… needs… to… be… put… into… the… –”
her: “Into is not one syllable.”
me: *sigh* “This… needs… to… be… put…into… ARG… in… a… form… like… this.”
both of us: *giggle*
Mom: “Are you working, or did you finish?”
us: “Um… we’re working!” 
Missing Link Found! January 25, 2008
Posted by Anya in : Uncategorized , 4commentsThose poor evolutionists who have been bashing their brains out trying to come up with the missing link between man and monkey… of course they can’t find him.
It’s okay, this came as a revelation to me, too. I mean, I had always assumed that they couldn’t find one because one didn’t exist.
Well. Tonight at snack the mystery suddenly became clear. Ib was making faces, as he is wont to do, in a fashion a cross between Mr. Bean and Cosmo Brown. He made a particularly odd one and I found myself saying to him (more of trying to say to him, but choking laughing), “And what if your face freezes like that?”
Then it came to me. If his face freezes like that, some fortunate archaeologist will think that they have found the missing link between man and monkeys.
My darling little brother.
Quotes from DC, part I January 23, 2008
Posted by Anya in : spontaneous degeneration, smiling is good for you , 4commentsAnd so you all know, most of these have absolutely no relation to the March for Life. They just grow out of the group of people we take along.
Sam (and Sam refers to Sam L, not Samwise):”I forgot my pillow!”
*a minute later*
“I forgot my pillow!…. I forgot my pillow!”
me: *offers hoodie*
Sam: “No. 
It had the perfect fluffiness to… um… covering ratio!” *moans* “I forgot my pillow!”
me: *tries to gag him with the hoodie*
Sam: “Ew. Now I spit on your hoodie.”
me: “…so?”
Sam: “That is disgusting!!!!… I forgot my pillow!”
We lost sympathy after a while.
~~~
*as the movie restarts halfway through*
Peter: “How many times are we going to watch this movie?”
me: “Three hundred and seventy…”
Peter: O_o
me: “…one.”
Peter: “NOOOOOOOO!”
~~~
Take a picture! [Peter]
~~~
Bryan: *comes past carrying some energy drink* “This stuff is gross.”
~~~
(some guy on the bus) “I am NOT apologizing for beaning anyone with my backpack.”
~~~
Caleb (Psalm2): *walks up and joins us (finally) in front of the Air and Space* *sticks tongue out and looks as if he feels like dying*
~~~
Man: *handing out brochures*
us: *all refusing as we’re supposed to*
Man: “They’re in English! Take some!”
us: *crack up and walk away*
~~~
Sam: “I got it! I got it!”
everyone: “You’re the judge!”
~~~
us: “SAM! Do you think we’re all nuts?”
Sammy McG: “YES!”
Sam: *ignores* * a minute later* “Were you asking if I though you all were crazy?”
me: *nods*
Sam: “No. Just Peter. :D”
~~~
Peter: “It’s a good song for when you’re happy.”
Noelle: “No, it’s a good song for when you’re sad.”
Peter: “Yeah.”
~~~
Sam: “I wanna be a REAL BOY!”
~~~
We interrupt this post to bring you a few photos.
It’s the moon! Take a picture!
Um… right. (Peter: “WHAT????”)
~~~
There was also this whole, long, extremely dragged out thing on the way to DC where Peter made the terrible mistake of singing one line of what is apparently a Hannah Montana song… and then he put on my earmuffs… and he heard about it the rest of the day… and tonight at youth group… and…
Then there was the Peter everything. Peter Product, which changes into whatever liquid you want. (It came in handy when TJ decided to assassinate Peter and it turned into acid mid sip.) Peterbutter and jelly sandwiches. Then they were all laughing so hard that every time anyone said anything, someone else would say, “It’s a Peter _________!” and they’d all laugh again. Noelle literally turned purple from lack of oxygen. 
Sam: “Peter. I recommend that you take a walk. Get a hobby. Get a job.”
me: “Yes. Like trying on straitjackets.”
Sam: “Yes.”
After I got home, I was talking to Griffin (we had seen his younger brother Gabe in DC. Weirdness.)
Griffin: Tired?
me: Shall we say that I do not run as well as you do on four hours of sleep?
Griffin: Yes.
Griffin: Let’s.
me: This is a very braindead conversation, if I’m going to dignify it by calling it a conversation.
Griffin: You shouldn’t.
Unfortunately, it is a common result of the March for Life. We all are, as Caleb McG put it, feeling rather like bleh.
Goodnight.
DC, here we come! January 21, 2008
Posted by Anya in : spontaneous degeneration , 2commentsTomorrow, the March for Life.
Maybe this year I’ll actually get some pictures, especially of mysterious things like the non-feather sword.
However, we have fewer kids going this year than any other year I’ve gone… the Mexico missions trip is next week, so at least some of the kids are on turbo-school… doubling up this week. But that’s okay… I’m sure there will still be plenty of quotes. If we don’t all freeze to death.
The Good Folk January 17, 2008
Posted by Anya in : spontaneous degeneration , 1 comment so farThere was prolonged discussion at snacktime tonight about the Tooth Fairy, and if her identity is separate from Dad’s… there was great debate over if Dad is the Tooth Fairy (in which case, I suppose, it wouldn’t be a “she”) and if the Tooth Fairy is real, and if they were suggesting that if Dad was the Tooth Fairy and the Tooth Fairy isn’t real, does that mean that Dad isn’t real?
I love being homeschooled… January 15, 2008
Posted by Anya in : spontaneous degeneration , 1 comment so far
The librarians are used to it. They don’t shudder when they see us coming (as far as I know). They let us help scan the books (not that they have any choice) and make recommendations for us when we’ve run out of books.
And yes, that really is our bookbox and we did not get a new one for Christmas. 
And no, I did not make much progress on Arabic. It didn’t help that I quit partway through the second lesson…
(Non)Iceskating January 12, 2008
Posted by Anya in : spontaneous degeneration , 4commentsWarning: This post is liable to be mostly very boring, because it’s just about what I did this evening. Don’t feel obliged to read it.
No, sorry, I did not feel like iceskating. C’mon. I just rollerbladed on New Year’s, and am finally no longer black and blue… but I could go and hang out, so I did. (Youth group type party, although there were a good number of younger sibs there too. And older sibs. And… yes. You get the idea.)
For a while I hung out in the ice rink with Emily and Kristen and various other people as they got tired and came over to take a break. But then I got tired of the coldness, darkness, noise, and strobe-type lights, so I moved into the other room we had.
I spent quite a while talking with BenDavid… it had been too long and we had a lot to catch up on as he is ready to graduate next semester. Aaaaaah… I was at his graduation party! It doesn’t seem that long ago! He is extremely talkative once you get him started, which I tend to forget, because other than that, he’s quite quiet.
Then Richard and I stood in the corner of the room for a while, but we didn’t really manage to come up with anything to talk about… we probably used up our laugh quota for the week on Wednesday. Oh well. There was an exciting minute or two when a guy tried to deliver pizza… Richard and I were happy… but then it was pointed out to him that we had not ordered any pizzas… much less 16… and he took them away.
Richard: *face falls*
me: “What?!? When someone offers you pizza, you should never refuse!”
Richard: “But he would have been back, expecting us to pay for it.”
Logic. It gets you every time.
And I had been joking…
After the devotional and hanging around with Marah, Aubrey, and the two Chinese girls who knew a bit of English, I ended up getting involved in a game of Apples to Apples.
That was fun.
Mrs. U: “We say that if you get the card, it describes you!”
Mrs. K: “Yes Suzanne. You SO just made that up.” (Mrs. U had the green card Awesome.)
Mrs. U: *looks at my cards* “Well, those pretty much describe you. Except for clueless.”
I had picked up Clueless from Samwise with Greenpeace. Woohoo!
Let’s see. Samwise won Chewy from me with Bad Dogs. (The cards were lame. Bad Dogs cracked me up, and they’re chewy in the sense that they chew, right? Any of my really long term readers remember when Antion got chewed up by their dog?)
We also found that BenDavid thinks too much. The rest of us threw our cards in… and BenDavid’s sitting there considering… and pondering… and we finally told him to quit thinking and put one in already!
Samwise, it seems, loves having his picture taken. He was posing for me. As making an apple juice ad. Yeah. 
Annnnd go figure. Amidst all the pop (soda-pop… soda…) we took an apple juice.
Samwise: “LOOK! It’s APPLE JUICE!”
Andrew: “APPLE JUICE???? I love apple juice!”
Ooh, yeah. I also won Miserable from Samwise with Israel.
Sam: “Well… if you think about the Old Testament…”
me: :) “I thought you would.”
Sam: “We’ve just been reading Ezekiel…”
me: “Yep, I thought you’d be there.”
Funness.
Aubrey took our picture, but chopped off half of her head in the first try. She still looked better than I did! Does being un-photogenic qualify as a disability? *sigh* But she was happy with the picture, so it was good.
And I’m now tired of typing, so goodnight.
Useful for us classically homeschooled people… January 11, 2008
Posted by Anya in : spontaneous degeneration, smiling is good for you , 4comments(These are taken from this site)
Clamo, clamatis, omnes clamamus pro glace lactis - I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream
Te audire non possum. Musa sapientum fixa est in aure - I can’t hear you. I have a banana in my ear
Balaenae nobis conservandae sunt! - Save the whales!
Cave canem, te necet lingendo - Beware of the dog, he may lick you to death
Illiud latine dici non potest - You can’t say that in Latin
Me oportet propter praeceptum te nocere - I’m going to have to hurt you on principle
Cogito ergo doleo - I think therefore I am depressed
Sane ego te vocavi. forsitan capedictum tuum desit - I did call. Maybe your answering machine is broken
Tintinnuntius meus sonat! - There goes my beeper!
Abutebaris modo subjunctivo denuo - You’ve been misusing the subjunctive again
Ducator meus nihil agit sine lagunculae leynidae accedunt - My calculator does not work without batteries
Scio cur summae inter se dissentiant! Numeris Romanis utor! - I know why the numbers don’t agree! I use Roman numerals!
Meum cerebrum nocet - My brain hurts
Braccae illae virides cum subucula rosea et tunica Caledonia-quam elenganter concinnatur! - Those green pants go so well with that pink shirt and the plaid jacket!
Cave ne ante ullas catapultas ambules - If I were you, I wouldn’t walk in front of any catapults
Abiit, excessit, evasit, erupit - He has left, absconded, escaped and disappeared
Brevis esse latoro obscurus fio - When I try to be brief, I speak gobbledegook
Caesar si viveret, ad remum dareris - If Caesar were alive, you’d be chained to an oar
Da mihi sis bubulae frustrum assae, solana tuberosa in modo gallico fricta, ac quassum lactatum coagulatum crassum - Give me a hamburger, french fries, and a thick shake
Catapultam habeo. Nisi pecuniam omnem mihi dabis, ad caput tuum saxum immane mittam - I have a catapult. Give me all your money, or I will fling an enormous rock at your head
Die dulci freure - Have a nice day
Sentio aliquos togatos contra me conspirare - I think some people in togas are plotting against me
Tua mater tam antiquior ut linguam latine loquatur - Your mother is so old she speaks Latin
Sola lingua bona est lingua mortua - The only good language is a dead language
and finally, the EXTREMELY useful, potentially life-saving one, especially when you’ve just triggered the anti-matter devices to go off…
Me transmitte sursum, caledoni! - Beam me up, Scotty!
Sometimes ya gotta wonder January 10, 2008
Posted by Anya in : spontaneous degeneration, smiling is good for you , 3commentsAlso known as, sometimes I’m delighted that I’m homeschooled, and not off at college a year early, because I’d hate to miss these sorts of things.
Today, I was in finishing up Chinese class, and Chrissie and Ib were supposed to be doing Latin chants.
Ib came bounding up the stairs (apparently the people in my lesson were talking too loudly) and yelled at me, before yanking the door shut, “YI ZHI MAO!”
Right.
Sure.
That made perfect sense.
He actually does apparently know what it means… so I kind of have to wonder why he was yelling “A CAT” at me as if it were the same as “BE QUIET”.
(Mom says she had told him to shut the door so that they wouldn’t be getting Latin and Chinese mixed up. I’m still failing to see what yi zhi mao had to do with it.)
Item number two from the wonderful world of Ib.
I was almost done with my stats and he came skidding into our bedroom. “Come quick!” he panted.
I protested, but he insisted that there was something he had to show me right away. So I left stats and Casting Crowns and followed my brother.
“Since you are interested in science,” he began, clutching a little pencil sharpener (you can see a picture of it on Mom’s blog, here) which he then directed my attention to. I squinted at it and made out the shape of a miniscule fruit fly. “It’s really loud,” said Ib. “It sounds like Daddy outside when he is cutting with that [insert sawing noise here] thing.”
He then directed my attention to the corner of his bedroom where the radiators meet up. Oh joy. A spiderweb. I apparently haven’t dusted his room in too long. Oh further joy. A spider. He only very recently has stopped screaming for me at the slightest scent of a spider.
But no. I was not being summoned in to kill the spider, nor to watch it be killed at the hands of my Heroic, Daring Brother. To the contrary. He upended the pencil sharpener above the spiderweb and removed the lid. There was a tense moment while it appeared that the fruit fly had missed the web. But then it became apparently that, huzzah, it had landed in the web! The startled spider went over and began winding it up. Talk about a delivery service!
“This is so interesting,” said Ib, watching intently.
“You spoil that spider rotten!” I replied.
“It’s my pet, I have two more,” he informed me. (Just what I wanted to know. But the other two have their webs up by the ceiling, so he cannot drop little gifts into them.) “Well,” he explained, “I don’t usually feed him.” He switched into his I-am-quoting-from-a-movie-and-you-are-expected-to-realize-this voice. “It’s so rare that we catch one!” (This, of course, I identified as a quote from The Ultimate Sob story Gift.)
Interesting. Verrrrrrry interesting.
But I had stats waiting, so I couldn’t hang around while the spider (anyone else thinking of Be Kind to Spiders?) ate the little fruit fly’s guts.
Aragorn and what amazes me January 8, 2008
Posted by Anya in : I won't keep things purposely vague , 6commentsI admit it. Lord of the Rings has some incredible characters, and I feel like I know most of them. I’ve always enjoyed Samwise, even before I had a friend named Samwise (obviously. He quite possibly wouldn’t have picked up the nickname, at least not so soon, if I hadn’t thought that Samwise Gamgee was pretty awesome.).
But (after all that) this post is not about Samwise. Rather, the more time I spend in Middle-earth, the more I’ve been finding Aragorn an increasingly impressive and good character. Some admirable qualities of his come to mind quickly, and I don’t think I need to supply evidence for them… humility, nobility (good mixture there, and hard to achieve.)
Going a bit further, Aragorn is an incredibly strong Christ-figure. He is a prime example of the title “archaygos” which is given to Christ in four places in the New Testament and which suggests, as J. Julius Scott, Jr. explains in Basics of Biblical Greek, being a path-breaker, being the founder of something, and being the leader and ruler. Aragorn takes the Fellowship into dangerous territory and leads them boldly. He is the foundation of the new kingdom of men which replaces the elves, and he is the King of it. Through all this, he remains a stable character and shows that he has a good idea of what his goal is.
And here is what jumped out at me tonight.
Eomer was silent for a moment, then he spoke. “We both have need of haste,” he said. “My company chafes to be away, and every hour lessens your hope. This is my choice. You may go, and what is more, I will lend you horses. This only I ask: when your quest is achieved, or is proved vain, return with the horses over over the Entwade to Meduseld, the high house in Edoras where Theoden now sits. In this I place myself, and maybe my very life, in the keeping of your good faith. Do not fail.”
“I will not,” said Aragorn.
He doesn’t say, “I’ll try.” He doesn’t try to shift this responsibility to someone else.
And for a man like that I can understand why Arwen Undomiel would give up immortality and power.
That brings me to another side of Aragorn. He’s Man. Obviously, he is in Tolkein’s story, getting to usher in the new age of Men, but more than that… in him we get to see both the new Adam (in his Christ-figurehood) and the old Adam (in Arwen choosing to become mortal for him, which has interesting parallels to Christ becoming man for us.)
Here’s the unbelievable part. Aragorn, in a lot of ways, deserved Arwen. (As far as the movies go, I’d say he deserved better than Arwen!) But we didn’t deserve Christ at all. We were His enemies. And He died for us.
I stand in awe of You…
Wedding Dress
if you could love me as a wife
and for my wedding gift, your life
should that be all i’ll ever need
or is there more i’m looking forand should i read between the lines
and look for blessings in disguise
to make me handsome, rich, and wise
is that really what you wantchorus
i am a whore i do confess
but i put you on just like a wedding dress
and i run down the aisle
i’m a prodigal with no way home
but i put you on just like a ring of gold
and i run down the aisle to youso could you love this bastard child
though i don’t trust you to provide
with one hand in a pot of gold
and with the other in your side
i am so easily satisfied
by the call of lovers less wild
that i would take a little cash
over your very flesh and bloodi am a whore i do confess
but i put you on just like a wedding dress
and i run down the aisle
i’m a prodigal with no way home
but i put you on just like a ring of gold
and i run down the aisle to youbecause money cannot buy
a husband’s jealous eye
when you have knowingly deceived his wifei am a whore i do confess
but i put you on just like a wedding dress
and i run down the aisle, run down the aisle to youi’m a prodigal with no way home
but i put you on just like a ring of gold
and i run down the aisle to you…
