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Hello again, world July 2, 2008

Posted by Anya in : spontaneous degeneration , 1 comment so far

I’m not really sure what to post about.  :P  Amazing, eh?  Let’s see.  I’ll try the more actually journal-ly type of post.

I finished reading Crime and Punishment.  Given how much I did not enjoy The Brothers Karamazov, I expected to drag myself through C&P as well.  Oh me of little faith.  It was exciting.  Scary, too… and parts were a bit too true to life depictions of depravity, but it was good.  And the ending had rather more resolution, which I appreciate.

Speaking of endings with resolution, what is it with Gone With the Wind?  Granted, I didn’t watch the entire movie.  But… AUGH.

I still think that this quote (from this site) is nigh unbeatable:

I’ve been working on the Hebrew alphabet.  This is true even though David K managed to throw me on the second question he asked.  :P

I’ve been listening to Sink ‘n Swim.  It’s mostly enjoyable.

I tried taking pictures of fireflies for Mom tonight.  They didn’t work out that well.  The fireflies are exquisitely beautiful, but they don’t really go for the whole sitting still thing and flashing on the count of three.

The Silmarillion is almost done.  And then what?  Ah well… I’m hardly out of reading material yet.  :)

Terrible Twos Tag June 27, 2008

Posted by Anya in : spontaneous degeneration , 7comments

There shall now be a lull in posts requiring thought. :)

Christine tagged me.

Two names you go by :

1. Anya :)

2. Brane (That’s mostly just Abby, though.)

Two things you are wearing right now:

1. Pajamas…

2. A hair doodle.

Two of your favorite things to do:

1. Read.

2. Discuss theology.

Two things you want very badly at this moment:

1. Um… a teleporter!

2. A throat which is not irrationally sore from cheering at a ball game tonight. :P

Two pets you had/have:

1. Thunder

2. Lightning (they were gerbils)
Two things you did yesterday (only 2?)

1. Went to Bible study.

2. Worked on a story which I had neglected for quite a while.

Two things you ate yesterday:

1. Steak salad

2. Um… hmm… oatmeal.

Two people you last talked to:

1. Hmm. I lost track of who in my family. Just count them all.

2. Anika.

Two things you’re doing tomorrow:

1. Going to a picnic.

2. Getting ready for church.
Two longest car rides:

1. Hm. As far as I remember… to Florida.

2. Back from Florida? *grins* Oh, okay. Probably Williamsburg.

Two favorite holidays:

1. I don’t know. Talk Like a Pirate Day is fun.

2. Christmas.

Two favorite beverages:

1. Lemonade

2. Chocolate milk

And there ya go. Nothing too fascinating, at least I don’t think so.

Random Lonya Bit June 22, 2008

Posted by Anya in : spontaneous degeneration , 3comments

I found a single page with this part of story written on it.  I’m not sure if it was supposed to fit in chronologically with anything else that I had written, or what, but it was sort of interesting.  :)  At least, I thought so.  And as this is my blog, you can have the fun of being subjected to it too.

For anyone unfamiliar with the story line, Tio is Anya’s older half-brother and has been missing in action for some years.  Also, her name being Anya is really not related to my name being Anya.

Anyway… the story.

Aze Silme Orestel Sovereign of Aynoli

Elanna Mur’l'nian Ruler of Murnia

Anya Jleta Princess of Lonya

Silia G’Way Star of Gazigway

Eleanor White Sunshine of Riscon-Morg

Anya stared gloomily at the creamy sheet of parchment in her hand. The titles flowed across the page and looked magnificent, but she couldn’t see only the titles.

Ruler of Murnia. Ruler was a good, solid, honest word. It sounded like Murnia itself — a solid land, productive with labor and peopled with sturdy inhabitants. Murnia was an oasis of green farmland. But there was more behind the title than the land. There were the people.

They were people who were fiercely independent, but whom Monrag was trying to brutally crush. Like Declan’s family.

Anya rubbed her eyes with the tips of her fingers. Why?

Star of Gazigway. She resumed her thoughts after a moment, rolling a goblet around between her fingers. The delicate layering of silver filigree which held glio was a Gazigwayn marvel — and a carefully guarded secret, of course. It sparkled like stars in the light. That thought brought her back to the title Star of Gazigway. Anya frowned. It had to be changed. Far too many of the ‘gwayns still reverenced and worshiped the stars, and she didn’t want any of that; Lady of Gazigway would sound just was well. Lady — ah, yes, there was her trouble. She wanted the title of the one ruling Gazigway to begin with “Lord”, not “Lady”.

And Sovereign of Aynoli… that was the worst of all. Anya dropped the rock paperwight which she was holding onto the table. Sovereign of Aynoli.

Tio, where are you?

She had never expected him to go away, but to go away and not even mind-bridge — what had happened? It was agony.

Sovereign of Aynoli.

The words could not have drawn her attention more if they had been written in flaming letters.

And all she wanted was the title which was hers only informally: Princess of Lonya. Lonya, with all its green woods and icy creeks and starry sky in the middle of tree groves — that was hers, where she belonged. And the people in it — she belonged to them too. With them.

Anya sighed again and stood up. All of it was still her responsibility until Tio returned or Ay’hn saw fit to take it away, whether she desired it or not.

J’Sûl walked into the kitchen, careful not to interrupt the sunshine spilling in through the windows. “Hey, Aze.”

“Hey, J’Sûl,” she responded. He looked like he was ready to go somewhere; sturdy shoes, jeans… “Where are you going?”

“The falls at Crytona,” said J’Sûl quite solemnly.

“Cray Falls?” said Anya. “Who’re you going with?” She assumed that if he really wanted to be alone, he wouldn’t have come in for no other apparent purpose than to talk for a minute.

“Santiago’s coming.”

“Oh.” Anya didn’t dare say anything else for a moment, knowing that she’d burst into laughter. She pushed in the chair which she had been sitting in.

“What’s so funny?” asked J’Sûl, unable to restrain a smile of his own.

“It’s a philosopical trip to Cray Falls,” Anya answered, managing a fairly straight face.

J’Sûl slung his backpack down onto the floor and opened some cupboards. “Yes and –” BANG “–that’s why–” THUD “–we decided to see if you wanted — OW! — to come too.”

“Are you alright?” He had turned around and crashed his head against the cabinet door, which was swinging ajar.

J’Sûl looked sheepish.  “Yeah.”  He stowed the peanut butter in his backpack and looked expectantly at her.

“I’ll pack.  Just wait a few minutes,” responded Anya.

She was running away.  The thought hit her as she dashed up the stairs.  Running away from responsibility, just as she had accused Lee of doing.

Bit about the weekend… June 14, 2008

Posted by Anya in : spontaneous degeneration , 2comments

Let’s see.

College looks great.

There was a lot of information this weekend. A LOT. The good news is I now know where buildings are, more of the faculty, a bunch of the other kids (kids? incoming freshmen?) and my basic class schedule.

David K tells me that 17 is a nice number of credits. It seemed that his opinion is sort of related to the fact that he also had 17 credits his first semester.

Freshmen Course (required thing)
Honors Old Testament
Greek 201
Intro to Philosophy
Hebrew 101
English 101
Freshmen Honors Course

The thing on that list which I find really amusing is this… I’m in Greek 201 and English 101. *clears throat* Right.

There were a lot of amusing things…

~Playing Scrabble very unaccording to the rules. (Words like si and Judea were accepted. Samwise did agree to take uh off the board.)

~Walking with Mora and Aisha. This was funny for the reason that Aisha kept saying things like, “AAAAH! Look! Those are going to be our mailboxes!!!!” Also, Aisha identifies the student building by the blue banner. Hopefully they won’t be changing that banner any time soon… :)

~The reasons Danielle and I wondered just how ready for college we are:

  1. We had quite a bit of trouble getting in line in the one building. It shouldn’t have been as complicated as it was.
  2. We had some difficulty finding a room in another building. *grins*
  3. (This made us wonder about me) I could not get the water turned off in the one sink. Danielle finally took mercy on me and shut it off.

Come to think of it, it’s a good thing she wasn’t with us right after lunch the first day…

me: “So I’m going to the Science building. See you later.”
Samwise: “You’re… where do you think you’re going???”
me: “…the Science building…”
Sam: “No, you aren’t. We’re going to the gym. That’s later.”

Oh. Yeah. Well.  He then reminded me of what the date was, and I told him that I had known what year it is. This was thrown into some doubt later yesterday, but… you get the idea.

It inspires confidence, doesn’t it?  :D

Actually blogging, I guess, about what’s been happening. June 12, 2008

Posted by Anya in : spontaneous degeneration , 4comments

Hello there. I would greet you more personally, but I’m not actually quite sure who’s reading this. If you leave a comment, though, I will know. I like comments. *grins*

I’m off to college tomorrow; staying for one night. This makes me happy.

Also, I’m taller than I thought. I’m short enough that this also makes me happy. Anyway, I’m apparently 5′4″. And a half. That leaves me tied with Anika. Not a bad place to be.

I’m still reading The Silmarillion, and I keep staying up somewhat later than I meant to. It’s Beren and Luthian… a rather captivating story… and… yes. Worth staying up late about. I’m also working on catching up in Systematic Theology. Hopefully in a week or two… And of course I’m still reading The Divine Conspiracy with notes going. (Griffin, be warned.)
Also keeping up with Greek. I think I like the subjunctive tense, but I think I like it for the same reason I did not like participles — namely, extreme flexibility in translating. I’m so weird. But it’s nice to look at an unedited passage (even if it better be from one of John’s epistles and not Hebrews — Hebrews has lots of unusual vocabulary, it seems) and know pretty exactly what it says.

And Mom found me the livemocha site. I recommend checking it out, so far it’s been good.

I probably ought to pack for tomorrow. It seems like it might be a prudent idea, and I am… prudent… right? Well, sort of. Hopefully I am when it matters. :)

Anyway. Have a lovely day, or two, or whatever until I talk to you.

Random… Thoughts (if I may so dignify them) June 9, 2008

Posted by Anya in : spontaneous degeneration , 3comments

Getting ready for college is reminding me of getting ready for camp.

Yes, I think that I have the two very much in the same category in my mind. Except, of course, college is longer and the classes are more varied. But at both places I expect to spend a lot of time in classes with good theology.

*grins*

Saturday was Samwise’s graduation party. It was a lot of fun. There was much throwing-of-water at other people, largely kept going by Peter and me. (We’re pretty evil.) But I have pictures of Sam filling water balloons, too, so you needn’t feel so badly for him. And we splashed him in the back; thus he still looked fine for pictures. :)

David: “Quit wasting water! The price of gasoline keeps going up!”
Even he failed to explain the relationship.

Samwise, Peter and I were talking, and he was waving a flyswatter around absentmindedly to make his points. Then he stuck in back in his pocket.
Arika: O_o “What is that???”
Sam: *hurriedly snatches it out of pocket and holds it behind his back*
me: “What is what? It wasn’t there, you didn’t see it.”
I have no clue why he had it in his pocket.

Emily came up to Peter and gave him her typical greeting. It goes like this. “Hiiiiiiiii Peeeeeeeter, wanna play Maaaafia?“
He ran the other way.

It’s scary to see my friends growing up. It’s scary to see myself growing up. But, on the other hand, it’s a good thing. It’s a REALLY good thing. Trust me. We’ve been watching home videos and I was way. too. serious. as a kid. It’s goofy. That is, it’s goofy how serious I was.

Good thing I got some goofy friends who do things like carry flyswatters in their pockets. :D

Many Links June 6, 2008

Posted by Anya in : spontaneous degeneration , 3comments

I’m looking through my favorites. Some of the poor things get left on that list simply because I forgot to take them off, so I’m trying to clean it up.

But in the meantime, among other things, there’re still…

There are some other websites which aren’t on my favorites list for the simple reason that they are such favorites that I don’t even bother to put them there.

These include…

TBNN, which recently made me laugh really hard with this article.

The Rebelution.  (What else do I have to say??  *grins*  Oh, okay.  I especially like that link when it looks like this:  www.therebelution.com/forum)

Various blogs.  Look at the ones on my xanga and reformedblogs sidebars, and that gives you a pretty good idea of what blogs I read.  I do have a few which I need to add yet.

There ya go.

Edited to add:  I can’t believe that I forgot Librivox.

Watch out, college. June 4, 2008

Posted by Anya in : spontaneous degeneration , 2comments

*grins*  I graduated.  We were all razzing each other about flunking, much to the disturbance of Jimmy McC, who had been practicing baseball with Ibey.  (As an irrelevant sidenote, Jimmy can pitch 93 mph.  I’m glad that he was practicing with Ib and not me.)  We assured him that we were joking. 

Dr. S:  “Yes, she graduated.”
Miss Dog Lover:  “Now she’s gonna get married and leave us.”

Is there really something going on that I don’t know about here?

It’s a tradition in our youth group that you write something on the wall after you graduate.  So now I’m trying to think of what a good thing to write would be… hmm… difficult decision to make, when you’re using Sharpies.  Especially as Antion has declared it a crime to paint over Sharpie.  Mhmm.

We’ve been talking about different sorts of temptations in youth group, and tonight it was about desires (see James 4:1-3).  Pastor B started the conversation off with, “What is a character trait which helps you to control yourself?” 

Samwise and I looked at each other with some confusion and whispered, “Self-control?”  We then both started laughing (it does tend to make us laugh when we say things simultaneously… I know, I know, we are really easily amused.)  Pastor B looked over at us.

“Yes?”

“Uh, self-control?” we said, louder, but still nicely synchronized.  *grins*

Andrew suggested self-disciple. 

We’ll see if Samwise has the courage and fortitude to follow orders in the face of almost certain death  to sit next to me again, seeing as how I decided to pull the lever and spring the footrest up.  (In my defense, he had been looking for the lever and was going to trigger it himself, but I beat him to the punch.  This comes of sitting next to Peter, because it’s pretty vital to be able to do things like that which will startle Peter into a second or two of silence.)

In a week and a half I get to go (up?  down?  *has no sense of direction*) to campus for one night.  That makes me happy. 

I’m trying to think of my reading assignments for the next few weeks.  Short stories by Checkov, The Divine Conspiracy (and yes, I really have to read that one under a sort of blackmail arrangement…) by Dallas Willard, The Silmarillion by Tolkien, quite a few chapters of Systematic Theology by Wayne Grudem, more Greek by William Mounce (who reminds me a lot of our quizmaster Mr. K… I don’t know what it is… but if I was messing with my book during a lecture, I wouldn’t really be that surprised if he told me to quit crinkling it… *grins*), a book of commencement speeches (it’s okay, Samwise gave me a speech.)  And… um… various other things… possibly The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, for which purpose I must have note-taking supplies on hand and be far away from all walls so that I cannot bash my head.  (Picture the “There was a bee” scene in Ever After.  ^_^) 

And… various other things to read, which are not coming to mind at the moment.

Goodnight, world.

Dream Time! June 2, 2008

Posted by Anya in : spontaneous degeneration , 2comments

I had a weird dream the other night. Man, was it weird. I’ll just tell it as much like a coherent story as possible.

Please remember, this was a dream.

We were on a cruise ship. It was also a recruiting ship — recruiting for Patrick Henry College. I think that Alex and Brett were somewhere around, I seem to remember them hovering around the edges of the dream. Jesse F had apparently become interested in going to PHC, so he went to one of their seminar things about why it’s such an excellent school, etc, etc. I tagged along.

Toward the end of the meeting, they asked if anyone who was coming to PHC had not been given the flu shot. This was an imperative for attending PHC, and if they had not done this, they needed to. I was pretty sure that Jesse hadn’t gotten the flu shot, so I asked him about it. Of course, this proved to be one of those irritating situations where as soon as you try to discreetly whisper something to someone, everyone else drops what they were doing and turns to watch you. Naturally, the presenter, noticing the commotion, kindly asked Jesse if he had been vaccinated. Jesse glared at me and said well actually no.

This incident probably explains how I came to find myself wandering the ship in search of someone else to hang out with. I was also trying to avoid Mr. A, who was pacing the decks and ready to tell everyone at the least provocation not to stack plates with the forks in between.

Fortunately, I stumbled across a meeting which Dr. and Mrs. 8kidlets were in. Their son Ethan wanted to be liberated from this meeting, so I snagged him to go roaming about with me. We went about and then Ethan decided to look over the edge. However, the railing was really, really wobbly so I banned the activity, assuming that the 8kidlets would be Most Put Out if their youngest son was washed overboard. We went in search of something else to do and ended up watching a tennis match. Somewhere in that process I lost my rings. I did return Ethan to his family and saw Abigail, Emma, and Eliza sitting in a row on a pew. I’m pretty sure there was a fourth girl who was about Sophia’s age, but it wasn’t her. I don’t know why they hadn’t gone adventuring with Ethan and me, but, it was a dream.

The next big thing happening on board was a crime. Who knows how we knew that there was going to be a crime, but we all did, so we were eagerly looking out for clues. My rings’ vanishing act seemed to be tied into the coming crime in some way. I think that there was a husband and wife who hated each other and we were waiting for one of them to murder the other…

Suddenly, the dream changed scenes. We (my family) was driving in a city. Suddenly a blind guy came running out in front of our minivan and we almost hit him. (Duh.) We drove on and then heard police sirens screaming behind us, so we turned around to see if we had hit him after all. As it turned out, we hadn’t, but the car behind us had. It was unclear if they had actually hit hit him, or just sort of gently bumped him. Either way, he was lying in their trunk sure that he was dying, and the police were interrogating everyone about what had happened. Things became even more confusing when it began to look like the guy wasn’t dead or, for that matter, blind at all, but this was instead part of a grand scheme involving a bank robbery.

The scene changed again.

We were driving into an apple picking orchard, where cats and chickens came running out to greet us as soon as the gate was opened. We had to get out of the car and try to scoop them up and shoo them back inside. There was a little kid playing in the dirt who looked suspiciously like Dakota. It seems for some reason that I reclaimed my rings from him. *sighs* Given Dakota, it wouldn’t be too surprising if he did manage to pick up something which I had lost.

And then the scene changed again.

I was talking to Andúnë. I think we were IMing, but it was hard to be sure. But I can’t remember what we were talking about… and then…

Dad woke me up.

Oh well.

By Demand May 28, 2008

Posted by Anya in : spontaneous degeneration, smiling is good for you , 2comments

Richard and Peter commanded me to put a quote from Peter on my blog. As a bit of background, we were talking about standardized tests which we’re required to take, and how much we all enjoy them, because we get off from our other work that day. :) And, frankly, they take less time than a regular day’s school. And you get to go out of town, and all that… it’s rather geekishly fun. Sam (Peter’s brother, not Samwise) doesn’t seem to agree. At that point, Peter comes out with

Tests are always easy — unless they’re the kind you have to study for.

…it’s a little surprising that Richard was able to tell me to write it down, and that I was able to do so, we were laughing so hard.

Anyway. In other news.

I’m looking forward to college.

(What? Did someone just remind me that first I have to get my eval on Monday [I stand corrected, it’s on Tuesday]… and pass… and before that, I need to finish up my portfolio… which means finishing my science paper, and my text log… and… boy. Thank you so much for bringing that up.)

Anyway. I am looking forward to it.

But there’s a nice amount of Greek for me to do between now and then… finish the test I’m on, five or so chapters of Mounce’s, another test, and then I John.

That will be fun. Dr. W (who will be my Greek prof, HURRAY!) is pleased with how I’m coming along…

…still, I’d appreciate prayer that the Greek will sink in.