Wednesday again!

It is that day when I have on my to-do list "blog something interesting". I always hope to have something interesting when I do go to post. Sometimes I do and sometimes I don't.

But today, I do have something interesting. I want you all to go read Annie Fellows Johnston's books, at least as many as you can. They are most excellent. I am in the middle of one about Mary Ware.

I must now leave for work (that work which I do on Wednesday afternoons in a professor's lab). But perhaps I shall expound more later on why I believe these books to be so wonderful. Or maybe, better yet, I shall write a book review.

Happy Thanksgiving!


I have many things to be thankful for. To show you some of these things, I shall describe my family at this moment.

My dad is sitting on our gray couch in the living room. He is reading The Hobbit out loud. Annie is sitting between him and Jo. Elle is rocking in the large rocking chair next to the couch. Joe crouching on the love seat. He keeps moving around. Bethy is walking around and making much noise. She has Annie's slippers and is carrying them around, occasionally taking time to bite one or the other. She has left a couple of toys on the floor showing a trail from the piano to the couches. Mum is sitting at her desk. She is playing Spider Solitaire while listening to Dad. It is windy outside, but it is not really sleeting like my Dad first thought. It turned out to be only my fingers on my keys as I began typing this post on my laptop.

Now Joe is hanging upside-down on the little couch. Dad is reading an exchange between goblins and Gandalf as he and the dwarves perch in trees and the goblins dance around below. Bethy is causing trouble. I know this because Mum is saying softly "no, no, no." Then she scooped Bethy up and gave her kiss. Dad is asking Annie what happened to Gandalf. Elle is fidgeting by playing with her ear and tapping her head with her hand.

Mum has just placed Bethy into her playpen. Bethy protests. She will calm down soon. Joe falls off the couch and rolls across the floor.
Mum asks me about my status message. Dad pauses. Annie asks if they are nearing the end of the chapter. It is past her bedtime and she is getting sleepy.
Bethy has stopped crying. She peers over the edge of the playpen and chews a toy. Joe makes faces at her. She laughs and then starts to cough. She finds it funny and tries to cough more.

The wind has picked up. I can hear it rushing around the house. The sound is mixing with the dishwasher from the kitchen and Bethy singing with a stuffed duck.

Elle chews the edge of her shirt and rocks gently. She is listening intently to Dad's story. Joe has stopped moving on the love seat. He is instead staring off into space. He jumps up suddenly to pick up a toy Bethy drops. He leaps over the back of the couch and back into his place.

Elle moves from her chair to play peek-a-boo with Bethy. Bethy is not appreciative of her efforts. It is nearing Bethy's bedtime.
Dad has just finished the chapter. Annie is disappointed. Dad wonders because she had wanted it to end earlier. "She also doesn't want to go to bed" Jo points out. Elle asks Annie if she has brushed her teeth. Joe and Annie leave to brush their teeth. Their bedtime is at eight thirty.

Jo mentions watching The Lord of the Rings. A rumor of the possibility that Mum may watch it as well goes around. Mum does not encourage it. Elle hangs over her chair to coax her.

Joe comes back down and Dad is wondering what I am doing.
I will now post this and you can draw your own conclusions as the what I have to be thankful for.

This blog needed some pictures. Here is one from several weeks ago.

Concerning a bit of ground on my campus

It is like a small cliff, but very short. And it has several layers or steps going up. Trees grow on it, climbing down each step and leaving their root in long tangles over the rocks. The trees have leaves that are all golden and green and brown, and many are on the ground. That is the most beautiful part of all. The fallen yellow leaves stream over the rocks like gold waterfalls. It is most amazing. It truly looks like a flow of gold coming down between the gnarled tree roots and the massive rocks.

I stand and stare at it.

And praise God once again.

The odd weekend part II

Here is the sequel to the previous post at last.

My roommate's fiance took the loss of his clarinet amazingly well and went off to the Pep Band to yell instead of play the clarinet.

The rest of us felt terrible for him. It was, after all, a fifteen year old, plastic, school-issued clarinet which he had played for years. We all imagined he must have sentimental attachments to it.

We drove home. My two roommates suddenly remembered their grandmother, who lived nearby, had a jar opener with a long handle and a grasping claw at the end. They decided to ask her if they could borrow it. We took along two brooms, a mop, an odd bar, and a bent curtain rod to make sure we had enough length to reach the bottom of the storm drain. My roommates' friend brought along masking tape and two flashlights. And at the last minute, one of my roommates ran back into the house and came out with paper towels, hand sanitizer, and a plastic bag (in case we retrieved the clarinet piece). Then we climbed back into the mini van and went to grandma's for the jar opener.

After returning to the scene of disaster, I attached the curtain rod to one of the brooms and lowered it into the storm drain while my two roommates held flashlights and their friend took pictures (because of course we must have those). We poked around for a bit, but unfortunately, the clarinet did not float as we had hoped (seeing as how it was made of plastic). Two guys walked by and gave some suggestions which consisted mostly of calling the department of public works. We finally gave up trying to rescue the clarinet in this manner, and decided to call. No one answered, but we had expected as much. After all, it was a Friday night. Then we hunted around for the police department's phone number and found something we thought was it, but nobody answered that one either.

So we admitted defeat and returned home with all our equipment. Then we trudged up the hill to the hockey game. Fortunately, a friend was driving by and gave us a lift because we were all getting cold.

My roommates' parents were quite surprised at the lateness at which we arrived, but they were amused at our explanation.

And that ends the very strange story of that weekend, except that nearly all of the people we have told this too say we are crazy or nuts. It is most puzzling because I can't imagine what else they would have done in our place. We thought we did remarkably well with all our plans. At least, we felt the plans did credit to the engineering school we go to.

My weekend (That sounds so boring)

But it wasn't a bit.

But first I must give a word of praise to God. I prayed for peace and calmness for my physics exam this past Wednesday and He gave it to me. And I did much better on it than my previous exam.

I had three exams this past week: one in Macro Economics, one in Physics II, and one in a fun (read sarcastically) engineering class called Strengths of Materials. I was not pleased to discover this, but by God's grace, I got through them all. Since this post is not about exams though, we shall move one. But it sets the stage because for the weekend, I planned all sorts of fun things to do.

Like getting a haircut.
And spending some time with my family.

And going out to dinner with some roommates, friends, and roommates parents to a Chinese restaurant.

Then I and my roommates and friends climbed into the friend's mini-van to drive back home. We were going to meet my roommates' parents at a hockey game later. Also, I did not mention this before, but one of my roommate's fiance came with us. He plays the clarinet in our school sports band (called by the aptly descriptive name the "Pep Band").
On our way back home, we discovered we could drop him off closer to the hockey game so he could be there early for the band. Strictly speaking, he was "voted off" the van (okay, we were just kidding). So he gathered all his stuff, including his fifteen year old, plastic school issued clarinet, and hopped off the van as we stopped at a corner to let him off.
Unfortunately, he dropped some stuff. Like the case containing his clarinet. It promptly landed on the grass near the sidewalk and burst open, scattering clarinet pieces on the ground (They weren't broken; that's just the way they are stored). I watched dumbfounded as the barrel of the clarinet rolled down off the edge and tumbled right into the storm-drain!
We asked if we could help, and found a flashlight for him. He peered down and decided it was too deep and wet to get the piece back.

This ends part one.
It wasn't going to be in more than one parts in the beginning, but I realized it was kind of a long story.