You who use Firefox...is this entry even showing? I'm having problems with all my browsers tonight.

Windows IE 7.0 browser, free upgrade: not a computer-threatening idea, but still rather a bad one. Hands for people who think that IE should not try to be Firefox? I mean, most people would agree to that simply because they like Firefox and think Microsoft is evil. I actually don't like Firefox all that well (::ducks objects heaved by 'Nanda et al.::), so my reasoning is basically that Microsoft isn't really very good at imitating any group it doesn't own, as far as I can tell, and Mozilla is no exception.

Anyway, Thanksgiving was good. Uncle Paul was there, back for a while from Fallujah, where he's training Iraqi policemen and doing some other stuff. I should have written about that last night; I would have had more to say. As it is, a day later, most of what I know is that a) wow, is he ever in a dangerous place, and it's more real to me now how scary it is to have two relatives in Iraq (Matt's still around Baghdad somewhere, with the Army); and b) the poor soldiers deserve some comfort. Forest People, at school, is doing a big anysoldier.com project, and I think I've just jumped on board for collecting some supplies for them.

It's far easier to offer them help than to come to any conclusion on the war itself. Uncle Paul is as hardcore conservative as my dad is liberal, and they offer very different perspectives on the whole thing. To me it only seems "too hard a knot for me to untie," as with most political issues. I'm glad to have a vote, but I don't feel particularly deserving of it. What knowledge I have of the outside world, from Alfred Isle, where I quite happily spend most of my year, is scant. Coming home, rather than making me regret my ignorance, usually makes me all the more ready to embrace it again upon going back to school: the news is simply not worth watching, and rarely worth reading. I feel like Alfred is the only place I ever see any civility, political or otherwise, and I suppose even that is partly because I'm out of APO and Student Senate.

But enough of that. ...I spent lots of today napping and reading Macbeth, trying to find something to write my next paper on for Mayberry. I think I've found it. It's not as good a topic as last paper's, but should be simpler, once I iron out the thesis. Something to do with characters' connections to nature, and how the Macbeths and the witches throw it out of whack, and how it's up to Malcolm and Macduff to stabilize it. We'll see.

Tonight Mom, Sean (the bro), and I went bowling. It was a very good night for all three of us. I even broke 100 in the second game...what was it I got, a 107? That never happens. So rock on.

The Christmas season is begun, thank heavens. The worst of November is over. Then again, most of November is over. Holy cow, I have the literature GRE in eight days. At least it's on campus--hurrah! A welcome change, after the drive to Rochester at the crack of dawn for the regular GRE.

My brother has another week at home after I leave, since he's between quarters (well, trimesters, but...). He came home with a couple of work-study paychecks...and all his poker winnings, which amount to more than the checks. Gracious, those poor ROTC kids he's been playing against. They had no idea, as I did, that he spent this summer reading poker books and playing it online. ...He's going to be playing curling again soon; that's his gym class next quarter. Good; not only is he excited, but now I get to have fun again, telling people my brother plays curling, and watching them be either like huh? or whoa!

Speaking of poker, on Wednesday I came with the family to Regal and saw my first-ever James Bond movie. Casino Royale is apparently pretty different from other Bond movies, so I guess I really don't have anything to compare it to, but it wasn't bad, though it was violent (and though there's a scene in there to make guys in particular blanch).

That's about all from here. Wish I was in Rochester, where everyone else is. At least I have fewer distractions from my Shakespeare paper...?

-Laurel

Aaaaaahhhhh, I can't stop!

Okay. So I realize that pretty much everyone with a blog jumped on this bandwagon before I did back in October, but Lily Jo finally forcibly sent me the Trick-or-Treat-Haul game, and it ended up being so spectacular that I played it for faaaaar longer than I care to admit.

To show how much fun I had, and because pretty much everybody has to see this (especially 'Nanda and D'Artagnan and Aneya), here I present my Cut-and-Pasted-and-Edited, Far-Too-Long Trick-or-Treat Best-Of Montage:

You went trick or treating as Waldo.

Stephanie Tanner gave you wasabi.

LeVar Burton gave you a red gumdrop.
Carmen Sandiego gave you a brain.

The Dead Parrot gave you a butterscotch.

Ringo Starr gave you sand art.

Jareth gave you the Antivirus.

Jem gave you a wintergreen.

Horatio Hornblower gave you a cordial cherry.

Marius gave you a lemon drop.

Simon and Garfunkel gave you a golden key.

The Baby-Sitters Club gave you a towel.

Lucy Pevensie gave you the Golden Snitch.

Charlie Brown gave you the Sign of Iron.
Bran Davies gave you a chocomint.

Le Petit Prince gave you a malted milk ball.

Meg Murry gave you a Christmas tree.

Meg March gave you a chocolate-chip cookie.
D'Artagnan gave you a gumball.


You had a spamtastic time until Rockapella betrayed you to the Dominion.

(or, as an alternate ending for certain readers of this blog) ...until Christine Daae deleted your NaNovel.


What's Your Trick-or-Treat Haul?
Shiver My Timber--A Pirate RPG


There you go. That's not even the half of the awesomeness on there (try though I did, for example, I never did get Bink back after I accidentally passed him the first time), so definitely check for yourself if you feel so inclined.

Thanksgiving soon!

Okay. Time for some productivity, finally.

-Laurel

On Miran

Erica has a friend--well, she's my friend, too, but primarily Erica's--named Miran. I've meant to mention her for some time now. Miran (said "meer-ON") is from South Korea, and is an art student. She's Christian in a solid, but almost mystical way--she's always very concerned with the genuineness of our speakers for IV, and she's disliked a couple of them on the grounds that she didn't sense their sincerity. She claims to sense a lot; I don't remember all the stories anymore that I heard one night when I sat and listened to her and Erica for a while. She is blunt and eccentric, and forever apologizing for anything she sees as coming out of her own selfishness (she says she got spoiled at home). Holding up her end of a conversation is no problem for her: she talks fast--maybe even as fast as I do, haha, but certainly in even longer strings than I do. She's picky about food, and somewhat of a germophobe (she wears a surgical mask out in public, which reminds me of news footage during the SARS epidemic), but she loves apples, which I guess she doesn't have in Korea (makes sense). When we had so many of them around the house, after the IV apple-picking, she'd take as many of them home at once as we'd give her.

I caught her artistic eye the night we met. It was cold, for September (I think it was in September), and I was wearing my old red fleece, the one I've had for literally six-ish years now. Something about the bright red of my fleece and the brightish blue of my eyes (mine? she should see my dad's and Uncle Dennis's) made her apologize for always looking over at me. It became a surprise to her when she saw me anywhere else and I wasn't wearing it, since that's how she remembered me, blue eyes and a red fleece.

Well, I am a very t-shirt-oriented person, but this year, I have had to get some actual warm clothes. Almost all of mine from the last several years have met one of various demises--shrinkage in the campus dryers, recurring holes, zipper problems, etc. (The red fleece still lives, trouper that it is, but I can't wear it every day.) Today I finally went out and bought a nice, non-itchy sweater. As it turns out, it too is red, a bit deeper a red than the fleece, and actually has a hood. (I have never owned--or, indeed, before this year, even seen--a hooded sweater. It looks better than you'd expect, because of the different way it's cut.)

I told Miran about it tonight when she came over to do a joint Bible study/class project with Erica, knowing the color would please her. Excited, she asked me to put it on and show it to her. I did. Miran went into art-girl ecstasies: I got an in-depth explanation of my eyes' chroma (an interesting definition; check it out), how it worked when I wore red, how my sweater and the t-shirt I had on under it (my light blue Quiz Bowl one) worked together, but the sweater and my jeans (dark blue, a little washed-out) didn't, and how I should go to Australia because my eyes were the color of the Great Barrier Reef.

She also, I found out as she went on with her analysis, likes two things about my looks that I mostly do not: the thickness of my eyebrows and the way I look without bangs. In Miran's opinion, the next time I go anywhere fancy with a guy, I need to be in a red dress, with no bangs, and it will be amazing. She was very funny about this, asking, at one point, "Don't you want to please your man?" I laughed at that, pointing out that I probably should get one first (though I don't like that way of phrasing it, but whatever). Erica reminded Miran of the Biblical mention of beauty coming from within. Miran agreed enthusiastically that that was most important, but still thought I would look better bangless. Fair enough.

All of this about the sweater is perhaps not very interesting, but I have never been told so many times at once that I am beautiful (except by my parents, probably, when I was younger), and it was nice, though I didn't quite know where to look. ...She makes me wonder about minds more abstract than mine. My cousin Tara is a professional artist, mostly abstract sculpture, and she finds these meanings in what look, to my family, like very colorful blobs. (As far as we know, no, she is not on any controlled substances, haha.) Miran talks about auras, and the people at Lighthouse Church speak in tongues. I'm so normal, at least comparatively, and quite fine with that; I know Miran is lonely, in a way, because so few people really know firsthand what she means about things. In such a sublime and complex world, though, it's good to know that God is the God of the abstract as well as the commonplace.

That's all I have on that.

-Laurel

Mizu no kokoro

Today was just an awkward day, one of those where large portions of everything I said were wrong, especially around Dr. Strong, whom I saw for three hours today, instead of two, because of my thesis meeting that turned into various FYE things as well; and especially in Writing Center, where my second tutee and I just were not operating on the same wavelength.

Plus, I've just now remembered that I'd resolved to keep being extra-careful in speech today, after the inspiringness of yesterday's IV sermon about letting our yes be yes and our no be no.

But I think I'm going to have to lower my stress level a bit, because one of my high-level warnings is going off: I am starting to obsess about conversations after I've had them. I mean, to some degree, I do that all the time, go over things and make sure I haven't said anything too stupid, and make sure there wasn't something I've missed that I should have understood at the time, but I think it gets especially bad when I'm under tension. When I start feeling like verbal precision is an incredibly important part of being a good and Christian person, and agonizing over my utter lack thereof, it is time to cool it. Watching myself is good, but intention is more important than success. My job is to love, not to never sound stupid.

-Laurel