January 03, 2004
Kids, this is why we post more often than once a week . . .
What is the world coming to? More importantly to me at the moment: What in the heck is my family coming to? Half of them are watching this monstrosity even as we speak. And they've seen it before . . . they're watching it again because they loved it so much. Oh, and set your minds at rest . . . I've never seen the movie before, and I never shall. You know, I really thought we were making progress last night when I went with my parents to rent some movies. I have grown sick and tired of the G and PG rated crappola that tends to circulate around here and I just suddenly felt the urge to find a movie that I could actually sit down and watch and not feel like an idiot . . . or worse. I usually just avoid the room where the TV is whenever anyone around here is watching something that I didn't bring with me.
So anyway, I decided that with the extremely limited selection of the video store we were in, there was really only one possibility: this movie. So we got that and I watched it with my parents and my oldest brother, Brett. My mom particularly liked it and my dad actually stayed up and stayed awake two hours past his bedtime while we watched it . . . that never happens. So I thought, briefly, that we were doing good . . . Bleah.
Okay, it has been awhile since my last informational post, so I guess I'll just dive right in and recall whatever I wish to recall about the last week and change whenever it comes to mind. Today was relatively eventless, so I'll start there. My second brother, Micah, has been after me since I got here to play HeroClix with him, but I had been putting him off. I don't know the first thing about the rules and it looked like it would take time and effort to learn, and I just wasn't interested. He was getting antsy though, and I figured it wouldn't hurt anything to play. I put him off indefinitely on playing his last craze (The Lord of the Rings Customizable Card Game) last Christmas and we never got to play and he was visibly upset by this, so I decided I wouldn't do that to him again.
I promised him . . . Thursday, I think, that I would play on Saturday for sure. And last night I said that it would have to be in the morning (because I'm an idiot). So he and his best friend, Donald Fox, are pretty much bouncing all over my bed at about 9:00 (I had to bed at 3:00 . . . because I'm an idiot). Well, I'm pretty good at pretending to be asleep, so they gave up after a bit and I didn't get up until almost 11:00. And we didn't get started until almost 12:30. Ha. The game lasted almost four hours because my youngest brother, Ian, wanted to play as well (and he had never played before either). And, to make a long story short, I worked all three of them. So that was fun. And then I was suddenly exhausted and I took a two hour nap, and that is almost everything that has happened today. I sleep too much.
Yesterday our good friends, the Frys, came over to spend the day. I'm sure some of you have seen Mr. Fry (kf) post comments from time to time. They arrived at about 8:30, and I had gotten up about five minutes before that (of course). We had a wonderful breakfast of omlettes and waffles and . . . craploads of other good stuff which is all kind of hazy because I was tired. Among the things I did that day: watch the new scenes from TTT with Asa, talked with Asa about this and that for an hour or so, discussed English Literature with Mr. Fry, ate some delicious pizza for lunch, played Catchphrase for awhile (it's kind of a hybrid between Taboo and Hot Potato) with me, Mr. Fry, Mrs. Fry, Asa, and Hannah vs. my parents and brothers and Rachel. We generally won . . . a lot. Especially when the category was History Buff. After they left I got some reading done . . . and stuff.
Thursday I mostly spent reading once I finally got up and we took down all the Christmas decorations. The day before was . . . hmmm . . . actually the day is very fuzzy in my mind for some reason. How nice. I do remember the evening, because we made our annual trek over to the Briggs' house for their big New Year's Eve get-together at about 9:00 (yes, at night). Every year I go there are more people there and I recognize fewer of them, but that's okay because most of the old hands keep coming back. There are always plenty of people that I know. I sat in a corner and read a book for the first hour or so, pretending to listen to my brother and his friends talk fast cars and fantasy basketball. Then there was finally a game that I decided I wanted to get involved in: Mexican Train, played with dominoes. We played that until about ten minutes before midnight, and then everyone gathered for a quick prayer time, etc. And then we had fireworks! Yay! More on fireworks later, but suffice it to say that NYE is just as big as CE, and in some ways it's bigger for us. There are about eight "family units" that show up to these gatherings and each of them brings enough fireworks to last an hour or so. It's loud. We love it. After that we played Catchphrase and Moods until about 2:30, and came home.
Tuesday . . . nothing happened. Not that I can remember, anyway. I think it was overshadowed by Monday, when I finally went to see RotK in English. I was shocked at how much better it was. And we went to the nicest theater in Central America, which is actually saying something, believe it or not. Admission is $3.50. I laugh at all of you. My mom inisisted on going, because she wanted to see it again. And so we managed to drag my dad along. He admitted afterwards that it was worth watching again in English.
Sunday, nothing important . . . Saturday, went to see RotK for the third time in Spanish . . . Friday, RotK for the second time in Spanish . . . Thursday, first time in Spanish . . . Wednesday, Christmas Eve . . . Tuesday, . . . Wait. I went back too far.
So on Christmas Eve, after we opened our presents (I got some great new books, including a three-in-one by Wodehouse) I went over to help out with the proceedings elsewhere. I wound up filming most of it, and not much else until firework time. I had purchased 400 whistlers for about $5 and there were about 900 other whistlers that different people had, so we had a very healthy whistler war. The young kids with their sparklers saw the big kids throwing their fireworks around and thought that that looked like fun, which resulted in the only mishap of the evening (a minor cut and burn behind Juan's ear). We had to save some of our whistlers for the next day because the kids had to go to bed.
I had to get up early on Christmas morning and help assemble the trampoline . . . that wasn't much fun. It was fun watching the kids get on a trampoline for the first time. Wow. And they all insisted that each of us do it. My dad jumped a bit, and my mom, and then they started chanting for me . . . although I was trying to film. So I got up there, and actually jumped higher than one foot off the thing (which no one else had dared to attempt). I scared them at one point because they thought I was going to jump over the edge. Heh. Gimme a break. Micah wowed everyone with his famous backflips.
Then we had another whistler war with what we had left. It was Brett and I vs. everyone else. We wasted them because they were all cowards. There are a few tricks to remember here. Hold onto the whistler until it actually starts to whistle, otherwise you won't be able to aim it at all, and it's just as likely to fly back and hit you. There is one chance in a thousand that the really cheap kind will blow up in your hand, but I've never had that happen. Don't flinch, under any circumstances. No matter how good of a shot the other team is, a whistler will almost never actually hit you. And if it does, it won't hurt. Your pride will take a lot more damage when you run squealing out of the way. Our opponents didn't realize this, so there was much laughter from us as they did precisely that.
A brief word about certain key times: midnight, Christmas eve . . . noon, Christmas day . . . midnight, New Year's Eve . . . 6:00 am, New Year's Day . . . noon, New Year's Day . . . 6:00 pm, New Year's Day. Most of you have probably never been in a war zone. I haven't either . . . but I know what it sounds like because that's what it sounds like at each of those times. I kid you not. Literally thousands of black cats going off around you at once like machine gun fire, some locals actually firing hand guns into the air, whistlers going every which way . . . and the bombs! Ohhhhhh, the bombs. They are sooo freaking loud . . . Which was why I was mad at my brother when he kept "forgetting" to warn me that he was setting one off less than ten feet away. The reason I couldn't see him doing that was because a thick cloud of smoke descends upon all areas of the country where there are people. You really can't see ten feet in any direction . . . it's great. It's especially great when you're running wildly around, throwing "live ammunition" at the dark, looming shapes around you, and dodging their return fire.
Right. Anyway. I'll talk briefly about books now, and then I'm going to go read some. I finally finished Descent into Hell the day after Christmas. There is definitely an element of poetic irony there, as my reading of the thing truly had been "slower than Christmas" (any way you look at it). It was my least favorite of the Williams books, but that's not saying much, because I still liked it. It got annoying at one point when it was particularly incomprehensible, but when everything finally came together . . . that was good. On my rather arbitrary and random rating scale (I have trouble making up my mind over the proper balance between rating based on perceived quality and enjoyment . . . the two don't always coincide, especially with me), it got a 94 (yes, out of 100). I gave War in Heaven a 97 (which has nothing to do with the fact that that rhymes, I swear), and Many Dimensions got 100. Because I really really liked it. I finished that other random book I was reading, and it was so terrible that I'm not going to talk about it here, or anywhere else. I gave it a 24. I finished a Forgotten Realms book that I was reading, The Shattered Mask (third in the Sembia series), on Thursday and gave that an 89. Scholl would enjoy this book, I think . . . It contains a number of prime examples of why wenches should never be armed (they might be tricked into assassinating you). It was pretty good, and I've enjoyed that series thus far. There are seven books. I'm nearly within what I call "striking distance" on two books (meaning that I could easily finish either of them in one sitting): Paradise Lost and the Star Wars book I'm reading, Force Heretic III: Reunion (17th in the New Jedi Order series . . . just two more books and I can leave that one behind!). I am enjoying both of them, on completely different levels. I'm finally making headway in Lord of Chaos. I'm a safe distance past the halfway mark now. And, last but not least, I'm on the point of beginning Master and Commander. In spite of all the other reading that is taking place, I'll have to move fast. This one is on loan, and I've got barely a week left. With that in mind, I'm going now . . .
