The Day

I knew this day was coming.

It comes for everyone, sooner or later. It starts with small and seemingly insignificant choices, each choice steadily becoming more and more important. Soon, one begins to shiver at the mere thought of the approaching day.

Eventually, one may cry and sniff when one thinks of the day, but these actions only serve to confirm the certainty of that day's approach.

And then the evening before the fateful day arrives, one feels the lump in the back of one's throat, the pain of a headache, the tiredness of eyes, the heaviness of a mind that has finally given up fighting the inevitable.

The day itself dawns like every other day. But it is different from every other day, because of the horrible dread it holds: that horrible hacking and coughing! That tiring sneezing and sniffing!

And now that day has come for me, just as I knew it would. I stand, crushed, incapacitated; beneath that awful weight so lightly called a common cold.

Wasting Time

For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. (Romans 7:15 ESV)

No Picture Today....

For want of a picture, a post was lost;
For want of a post, the audience was lost;
For want of an audience, the blog was lost;
For want of the blog, HOMEWORK GOT DONE!!!!!
And all for the want of a picture.
(But as it happens, you get a post anyways).

Fly Training

I have been discontented with my blog recently. Dis-contented, meaning I am not happy with the content. I have dappled in politics the tiniest amount, conducted interviews with the famed children's author Rodney Richards, and commented on science. Today, however, all of that changes.

Instead of a nice, sometime reliable, technical blog, I am going to post blow-by-blow descriptions of my newest hobby: fly training. I have often lamented that, although monkeys and zebras and mosquitoes are trained for circuses, the house-fly is often neglected. Therefore, I have determined to stand in the side-lines no longer. I have seen my duty and I will perform it aptly, by becoming a fly trainer.

So what exactly does this mean for my readers?

It means that I will post progress daily, including close-ups of my flies' latest stunts, and exclusive shots of their cheering comrades. I will choose the best of my performing flies and name him/her Fly of the Month. In order to boost the self-esteem of my flies, I will issue custom-made t-shirts for the flies, complete with the team logo on it. Eventually, I will be able to split up my flies into several teams and hold aerobatic contests.

In addition, I will dye my hair different colors to reflect my mood and therefore success of my fly training venture. For instance, if I am happy, I will dye my hair blue, and you will know that all is going well. If I am sad I will dye it red, and then of course you will know that I am either bothered by the lack of talent in, say, Sammy-fly, or bemoaning the loss of a now squashed Jerry-fly.

Finally, I will change my blog template to fushia pink and rename it, "Fleet of Flies." Perhaps, if I am especially successful, I will get my own reality TV show; however, I must think first of what is best for my flies.

Today seemed like a good day to start - it's April 1st.

Boring Title

I am suddenly aware of a very sad trend in my recent posts. None of them are particularly happy or lighthearted. I see sad posts, long posts, crazy posts, boring posts - but no posts in which I happily ramble like a sick duck.

Maybe this is because I am attempting to be cold and professional like a fish, and have regarded it my duty to state things accurately and clearly. But now I am wondering, who reads blogs now anyways? A blog, I think, is mostly fun for the author, who can post things on it and grin proudly every time they see their blog glaring down at them from the computer screen. Everyone else glances at it quickly and wonders why they just wasted 5 seconds of their precious time.

Thus said, I could post anything I wanted on here, no matter how absurd, for no one would read a post that had an icy picture and a boring title. In fact, I almost regret not having some astonishing secret to share with the world (or in this case, the small cluster of my smiling fans that I have created in my imagination), to reward whoever was trying so hard to procrastinate their work, or else were so extremely bored with their interesting television shows and fiction books, that they bothered to read this post....

Oh, and while I am at it, I might as well mention a more recent feature residing at the end of my posts. It is called "Reactions" and I think it is for people used to Facebook's "like" buttons. Instead of leaving a nice comment, you can click a button: happy, sad, interesting, or funny - and the nice part of it is, your name will not be attached, so I will not know who clicked "sad" when I write about my nice new pink bunny slippers, nor will I know who clicked "happy" when I write an eulogy to my dead, pet parrot Penelope.

Disclaimer: I do not have a parrot. Nor do I own pink bunny slippers. I think I will click "sad" the day I write about those.

CT

I am in Connecticut again. I like to visit this state, because it is beautiful along the coast, with lots of beaches and boats and bridges. Spring comes earlier here than it does back home, although there was a light dusting (maybe one inch) of snow on the ground this morning. When walking down the road, one sees green grass beginning to peek out and crocuses and other early flowers are already dotting the gardens of several yards. Oh, there is one more reason why I like Connecticut - my sister lives here.

She has a happy little apartment in a complex, and me and my brother, Clevard, have been staying with her this week. My family strictly charged me to blog about my adventures here and post lots of pictures, but unfortunately I left my USB cable at home, so they will have to suffer a plain narrative with no colorful pictures to make it palatable.

As it turns out, that is probably alright. Because one of our adventures is really not something one wants to see pictures of. There is a toilet in my sister's bathroom, like most bathrooms. And this toilet decided that it would be plugged and stay plugged for a couple days, and every time we attempted to flush it, we would end up with disgusting water all over the floor.

So there I am, trying desperately to use a plunger, my socks soaked with the dirty water on the floor, and nothing seemed to be working. That is when I did what any other silly girl would have done - I cried. My sister eventually fixed the toilet and went running around the house, yelling about how she was the "Toilet Unplugging Expert Genius" and accusing my brother of being jealous of the title. She succeeded in cheering me up.

Happily, most of our time has been much more enjoyable. We went on a windy walk and breathed in the spring air, and saw tiny delicate leaves opening on the very tips of trees, and the hard brown ground yielding to the spongy grass. I wake up every morning to hear song birds, and I walk out in the parking lot and hear the distant roar of a train, its loud horn echoing throughout the neighborhood, warning people of its coming. It reminds me of a train track running along the river side that I used to hop around at my grandparents old house, and I still remember the rush of the wind as a train whizzed only a yard from my face.

In the meantime, I am working on calculus and watching an old 70's TV show about the Hardy Boys, which I find highly amusing. I have also been checking the news frequently for any scrap of information on the war we recently rushed into blindly. I am not exactly sure what is going on with that, but I do not think I am the only one feeling clueless right now.

And that has been my week! I am having a wonderful trip but I miss home, and I can not wait to see our woods begin to blossom as the trees in CT have done. I will see two springs this year, and what could possibly be wrong with that?

Thoughts on Japan

March 11, 2011

The news has been ablaze with reports of the devastation in Japan after an earthquake of magnitude 8.9 occurred just off the shore of Japan, earning it a place among the top five most violent earthquakes on record worldwide. Violent aftershocks, with magnitudes reportedly as large as 7.4, shook the islands, and a massive tsunami washed Japan's shores and caused evacuations along the North and South American west coasts.

On March 12, the outer structure of Unit 1 in the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant experienced an explosion that triggered fear of radioactive contamination. Although the reactor itself remained intact, it appeared to be functioning at abnormal levels due to lack of proper cooling, and residents were quickly evacuated from the area. Soon afterwards, the other reactors in the nuclear plant showed signs of overheating. There have been more explosions, exposures to radioactivity among plant employees and health-workers, and growing concern that the disaster will prove as tragic as that of Chernobyl.

Besides nuclear concerns and causalities, there have been reports of up to four missing trains, and thousands of people missing in various coastal towns. In one shocking report, it was estimated that up to 9,500 people in a town with a population of 17,000 were missing.

This tragedy is unspeakable.... And for all we know, it may get worse. It has gotten worse. Even if the calamity were to stop making news now, and no more casualties were to be had, the calamity would continue for many years. Many people have lost everything - families, friends, homes, possessions - and the rebuilding and healing of Japan will be a long, sad process.

I am calling on my fellow Christians to pray for Japan - to pray that this tragedy would not be in vain - to pray that the heartbreak and insecurity of all those involved would be used by God to bring them to an understanding of the Love of the Savior, and to find security and refuge in Him.

"God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way, though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble at its swelling." Psalm 46:1-3

Farewell, Discovery!

I have avoided posting about things happening in the world, as the news has been mostly sad, weird, or simply puzzling as of late. Perhaps I will eventually post about the unrest in Wisconsin or the state of protesters in Libya, but right now I mean to call to mind the end of a once glorious and unparalleled age for the United States, as the last of the shuttles is retired with no replacement.

Shuttle Discovery is to be launched today (provided there is no unseen delay), on its last flight to the International Space Station (ISS).

Hopefully with the increase in space craft designed by privately owned companies, such as SpaceX, space travel will continue and even increase within the coming years. And in time, this type of space travel may dwarf the shuttles in comparison. But until then, a moment of recognition for the engineers and scientists who designed these shuttles, and the astronauts brave enough to fly in them (14 of whom never made it home), not to mention the countless others who worked behind the scenes, is never out of place.

On cannibal mice and dumpster sleds

Both are in our garage right now.

Our garage pets, as we fondly call our mice, have been known to swipe the peanut butter from the mouse traps without triggering the mechanism that shuts on their tails. We are very proud at the skill of our pets, as they constantly risk their lives for a scanty portion of food.

Sometimes, however, one of our pets gets careless. Then there is a mouse carcass, a blood spattered mass of fur. Although we try to dump these carcasses as soon as they appear, there are those nights that we can not get to it. And this is where the mystery begins.

The garage doors are shut, and the window is closed. And on one side of the garage and one side only, the mouse carcass is slowly consumed. The next morning, we find half a mouse, and if we leave over night again, the entire mouse is gone. But if the carcass is on the other side of the garage, the carnivore does not seem to consider it worth the effort.

And thus our conclusion was this: we are experiencing an invasion of cannibal mice.

The dumpster also sits in our garage. It is very smelly like most garbage dumpster, and looks like a large black rectangle standing vertically upright on the ground. In the back of it are two good-sized wheels, used for wheeling it down the driveway come garbage day. At least, there used to be two wheels.

One of these wheels must have been disgusted with its job. Not too long ago, my brother was wheeling the dumpster down the driveway when a wheel popped off and would not stay on. We found that if we kicked it back on its axle every five seconds on its trip down the driveway, it tended to be fairly usable.

Gradually, it grew looser and looser, until one day, it decided to fall off just as the garbage truck came around, and our obliging trash-guys decided to take our wheel along with our other garbage.

Then my brother had to unicycle our dumpster down the drive way. I can only imagine that he found it hard, as wheeling a heavy, smelly thing down a long drive way on one wheel, seems to imply that the majority of the weight and smell was on him - not the wheel. Perhaps that is why he did not seem too upset when that wheel fell off also.

Now we have a dumpster sled. My brother still employs the last wheel when necessary, but he stores this wheel in the garage so that no one can mistake it for garbage. So maybe, just maybe, the garbage collector will have pity on us and give us a new dumpster soon....

1/1/11

This is the start of a New Year - and consequently, a day with a cool numerical pattern. But besides the numerical pattern of 1/1/11 (which will be beaten by 11/11/11 sometime this year), nothing else seems to have changed.

New Years Eve has always been slightly disappointing to me. In the US, people sit up until past midnight, drinking alcohol at loud parties, so they can usher in the new year with a horrible headache and blasted ear-drums. They watch a crystal ball slooowwwly descend on a pole, and think this is the best thing that has happened to them all year.

Now it is the first day of 2011. The economy is still bad, wars are still happening, and my bedroom is still a mess. The sun rose like it did every day of 2010, and the snow outside is melting. What has changed?

Nothing has changed. And therein lies a miracle. Why has the sun not stopped shining? Why do we still associate snow with winter and warmth with summer, as we have for centuries? Why is my heart still beating this morning? Human beings are so fragile. Life is so short. Why am I still alive?

"...[I]n these last days he [God] has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power..." (Hebrews 1:2 - 3).

And my knowledge of the Gospel - that Jesus died to save the sinner that rebelled against him, and that he rose to show that we are saved indeed - my knowledge of this wondrous Love will make me want to change the way I live this New Year.

And thus my resolutions will not be based on the changing of one digit in the number we use to measure years, nor on my past grievances I wish to fix, but on the Love that Jesus had for me, and the love I have in return.

Happy New Year!

Veterans Day

I am certain that I am not the only one to have observed the ironic contradiction of emotions one may feel when remembering soldiers who have fought for us. In one sense, one feels deeply saddened as one remembers the men who left their homes to defend their homes; who spilled out their blood, watched many of their friends and comrades die before their eyes, and experienced countless hardships that we have only heard in name: the soldier with a scarf around his head in the horrible heat of the desert, trying to keep the sandy dust out of his lungs; the soldier who trudged for hours in the snow, leaving blood in his foot prints because he had no shoes; the soldier lying wounded in a hospital, or captured by the enemy, or watching helplessly as some atrocity occurs before his eyes, and knowing that there was nothing he could do, or ever can do to reverse the event....

Yet even as one feels sad, there is a joy that comes as well, and even pride. Those who lived after the wars, and experienced trama or carried memories that will haunt them for ever after, carried those memories because they fought for us. Those who came back wounded, mutilated, incapacitated, sick - who sacrificed their lives in another sense - were so hurt for our sake. And finally, for those who died, they died to save us, that we might live in peace and security and freedom - all good things which ought to inspire joy, and not grief. I am sure that they would not wish us to mourn.

And so I end this post in the best manner that I know how:
Thank you to all of the soldiers out there who have fought, will fight, and are fighting now! "The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace." ~Numbers 6:24-26

Autumn and NaNo-WriMo

The middle of October is always a funny time of the year. All through September and the beginning of October, the splendor and glory of autumn appears - trees are on fire with golden, crimson, and orange leaves, and the apples ripen and pumpkins fall off the vine.

But by the middle of Autumn, the leaves have faded into a muddy-brown color, and many of the tree branches are sadly forlorn, stripped of all their leaves. It is too early for Thanksgiving (the happy beginning of the holidays), and seems to be stuck in an insignificant rut in-between things.

Happily, however, it is also the time when one begins planning for NaNo WriMo. What is NaNo WriMo? It is, quite simply, National Novel Writing Month. On November 1st, the writing begins and doesn't end until 30 days and (hopefully) 50,000 words later. In October, one begins to map out the basic plot one's story will follow, and sign up to be a participant of NaNo WriMo on the NaNo WriMo website (see link above).

This is my second official year of NaNo WriMo. Unfortunately, I only got 15,000 words last year. But it is one of those things that is more fun to actually do than "win" necessarily. Maybe if [this being a very big if] I am extremely good this year in my story writing, I will consider posting the complete story here. :)

On Dinosaurs and a Neglected Blog

I am posting today primarily to try out this updated blogging editor thing that blogger initiated simply to confuse people like me who dislike changes to anything that has become nice and familiar. To be fair, the only problem I have had with it so far is that it is slow, and that isn't blogger's problem but my old computer's. :)

I was also feeling just a touch ashamed for leaving my blog without a new post for almost a month and decided to post something even if it meant opening up the dictionary and choosing a word at random. However, although I have resorted to that in the past, today a subject offered itself to my attention.

A couple of new dinosaurs were recently discovered in North America,the most intriguing of these being the Kosmoceratops (Kosmo: "to ornate" ceratops: "horn-face"). Apparently, this particular dinosaur definitely has an ornate horny-skull - the most elaborate of all known dinosaurs.


Sadly, as I am not a dinosaur enthusiast, I cannot elaborate, being slightly muddled (an understatement) by the technical words of classification and genus. Perhaps the only thing I know about dinosaurs comes from second hand knowledge of Jurassic Park. In any case, this sad semblance of a post will have to do for now....

Connecticut

The 4th of July, Independence Day, was this past week. Unfortunately, I was unable to write anything for the occasion, being temporarily without internet for about ten days. To be exact, I was in Connecticut with my sister.

Our catch phrase during the trip became "like home, but not home." In other words, Connecticut has aspects that aren't much different, and other aspects that are soooo not New York. For instance, we walked into a crowded Walmart and were beginning to feel right at home until we spotted a sign in the store advertising fireworks. Beneath, strange boxes of the combustible items were stacked neatly, ready for the average customer. As a native New Yorker, I have always viewed selling fireworks to just anybody as being against the law. Thus the Walmart there was "like home, but really not home."

Anyways, my trip to CT left me favourably impressed. The ocean we visited was stunningly beautiful, and if my camera batteries hadn't decided to die, I would have loaded my hard drive with so many pictures that my computer would have crashed. I saw two impressive displays of fireworks (which one can never take a picture of to do it justice), and I watched Toy Story 3 in 3D (my first 3D movie ever).

Now I really am home. It has been one of those hot, quiet afternoons in the middle of summer vacation that makes one feel as though something unexpected should happen - but unexpected thing rarely does come along - and I'm not convinced that such days are unpleasant things....

The End of the Shuttle

"What is it? It's a bird! It's a plane! It's...a SPACE SHUTTLE!"

It's hard to know where to begin with a story when one is facing the end of it. Nevertheless, some effort must be made to acknowledge the retirement of the space shuttle - and the end of space travel as we know it. Scheduled to take off sometime mid-November of this year, the Endeavour will mark NASA's final shuttle mission.

Although NASA will continue to work on things such as Mars exploration (using robotic craft), and the study of stars and planets both in our galaxy and beyond, the future of manned space-craft is so uncertain and unlikely that it could be up to 10 or 20 years before an American astronaut again steps out onto the dusty soil of the moon's surface - and possibly longer before he can stand on Mars and see the red planet with his own eyes.

To be fair, none of the shuttles ever made it to the moon, but that only makes the retirement all the more saddening. If the government cared so little about landing on the moon in recent years, how much does it care about the exploration of space at all, now that the one connector between the Earth and the vacuum has been discarded without a replacement?

Therefore, we remember the shuttle as we remember the Apollo missions. Perhaps the shuttle's accomplishments were comparatively insignificant. Perhaps it's experiments weren't as ground-breaking as those during the Apollo period. Nevertheless, the symbol that it stands for: the delight of exploration, the importance of technological advance, and most notably, the self-sacrifice and bravery of those men and women who risked their lives - and of those who died, most notably those of the Challenger and the Colombia - for the furthering of our understanding of natural phenomenons and the physical universe - is no less great than past achievements. Thus we see the conclusion of this chapter in history come to an end.

Quote #1

Russell looked at him with new respect. “I'm glad to meet your acquaintance.”
“I didn't introduce you to my acquaintance. After all, I think you're my only real acquaintance here, so you're essentially saying that you're glad to meet yourself,” Kyle said.

~From one-of-many-unfinished-stories

P.S. If you think this quote doesn't make any sense, you're not the only one.

Disconnect

In the care instructions for a pot holder: "Iron on lowest setting as needed."
Two questions; first, why would anyone want to iron a pot-holder? And second, if it can't handle the highest temperature setting on an iron, how will it survive handling hot pans straight from the oven?

Language

Have you ever been aware that you think in words? For instance, if you saw a dirty pillow that had to be washed, this recognition would probably not come as a vague impression on your mind, but rather as a sentence, "Gee, this pillow is dirty! I need to wash it!"

What would happen if you were deaf and blind - you had never read English and you had never heard English? Would you think in English? Would words actually be voiced in your thoughts?

I find it very hard for my mind to grasp the concept of thoughts using no words. I am sure that the very thing that makes one thought different from another thought is the way the thoughts are expressed with words in one's brain.

If this were the case, than a person with no knowledge of any spoken language might invent his own language and think in that! What would sound like gibberish to us would make total sense to him, because he has always thought in it!

And now I'm left speechless as I wonder at the gift of speech.....

9/11

September 11, 2001.

"Two planes just crashed in the the Twin Towers!" Mum broke the news to us as we sat at the dining room table working on school. She had just received a phone call from her mom, who got actual channels on her TV instead of snow storms.
My head looked up in amazement. I had no idea what the Twin Towers were then, but I was pretty certain that a tall white building we always passed on our way to Church was one of them. I couldn't even begin to guess what the second one was.
Mum tried adjusting our radio to a news channel, and as the static cleared away, we heard the grim voices of news reporters. A commercial popped on, I think for some sort of "zone alarm," but the station interrupted it, and its music fell flat. The radio station viewed this news as more important than its main source of income? Everyone knew at once (including stupid little me) that there would be no more school today.

The rest of the afternoon we spent over at my grandmother's house (the one with great TV reception), watching the news as it replayed the pancaking towers, over and over again. I remember seeing the plane crash into the tower, and I watched as the building melted down like paper mache in the rain. I was horrified when I learned that certain specks of flying material were actually people who had jumped from their windows in the hopes of escaping the approaching horror and doom.
I saw a battered fire engine and a melted ambulance, and I'll never forget the scene described by a reporter: walking through a river of blood that was thickened by bodies blown up beyond recognition or belief.

Sometimes silence is better than a carefully thought-out-and-phrased ending. I think now is one of those times.

.............................................

P.S. For anyone who was curious about the white building I mentioned in the first paragraph, I needn't have worried; it was a comparatively short nursing home quite a few hundred miles away from NYC. We pass by it every Sunday on our way to Church, and probably will for many Sundays to some (God willing).

The Truth in the Lie

I had the weirdest dream last night. But it brought up an interesting question, which I'll get to in a moment.
Basically, in the midst of a whirl of confusion that always comes with dreams, I needed to get some information out of some odd-looking aliens. The problem was, these particular aliens spoke in lies; nothing they said was true - nothing, that is, unless you knew the code. Apparently, if you ignored certain words in just the right pattern, other words would stand out and form a sentence that told the truth. Thankfully, someone knew the right pattern, and was able to teach me, after which I woke up.
So now I am wondering, can someone tell the truth and a lie at the same time? And were these aliens actually bad , or was their intent to tell the truth, but they had to get it out in code?
And if you're wondering why I'm dreaming about aliens, let's just say I watched an old StarTrek movie before bed....