Laptop!

Yess, precious, at last I have my own laptop computer, complete with webcam. I'm typing on it right now, and it's marvelous. Many of you probably know I've been waiting for it for months, so it's almost incredible to hold it in my hands at last!

Last night I was working feverishly on a short story until the wee hours of the morning--well, more like four A.M. I am very proud of it. Which is something, since my writing has been so dissatisfying to me as of late. And yes, I know I need to post the next part of 'Nighthawk'; it's completed, so I'll do that ASAP. Also, Andromanche, I have not yet finished your birthday gift. Yes, I'm horrible. I'm sorry. It's inching forward . . . I've been writing a lot of good beginnings and endings to stories, recently, but then the middles refuse to cooperate, and it's maddening.

Anyway, I was then roughly awakened by my frantic mother this morning after sleeping in and nearly missing my appointment with the doctor. Nothing like a couple of immunization shots to start the day off well, hm? Well, anyway, both my arms are now sore, but at least there's a few less diseases in this world to worry about.

And afterwards, of course, my father finally took me out to get my computer. Yay, I'm so excited! So you'll excuse me if I cut this post short so as to acquaint myself with my new computer, won't you?

(Linden, I'm currently debating about his name. After the Gawain debacle, I'm a little wary . . . 'Merlin' might be interesting, but if Nimue comes along, I'd be sunk. What do you think?)

Oh, and another thing: a belated Christmas gift for me arrived in the mail today. To be more specific: I am now a proud owner of one of the 'Tolkien Ensemble's CDs. Thanks, Mum and Dad!

PS-I will post a little about my Christmas soon, as well as a little surprise and a challenge for my reader friends, and a question or two about literary foods. All will be made clear.

Made Me Cry (Almost)

Everything that I have tried to say in my poetry, is captured in these few lines. When I read them, I felt my heart shiver. It will haunt my dreams, tonight.

Forgotten Language

by Shel Silverstein

Once I spoke the language of the flowers,

Once I understood each word the caterpillar said,

Once I smiled in secret at the gossip of the starlings,

And shared a conversation with the housefly 

in my bed.

Once I heard and answered all the questions

of the crickets,

And joined the crying of each falling dying 

flake of snow,

Once I spoke the language of the flowers . . .

How did it go?

How did it go?

The Oath of Feanor

Hello everyone, and yes, I am at home now, and it is all very lovely. Especially since my baby sister wasn't afraid of me like I was afraid she would be.

And an added bonus of being back at home is that I now have access to a scanner! So here at last is the picture I drew for Raven's Eye, as requested. Basically, he wanted me to draw the scene from The Silmarillion wherein Feanor and his sons make the terrible oath. So I obliged, and--here it is!

(Except it won't load onto my blog, unfortunately. So you'll have to follow this link to my DeviantArt, where I will post it for you guys.)

Aloha!

I don't know how much of a common knowledge this is, but 'aloha' means 'hello', 'goodbye', and 'love'. I'm using it in the 'goodbye' sense in this post, because--yes, I leave Hawaii tomorrow to return to my home and hearth.

There are exactly 31 minutes until my final Philosophy exam, so I cannot write as much here as I would like; I want to get to the exam early and do some last-minute studying. But I wanted to say farewell from Paradise before I left for my own personal Paradise--home.

Hawaii has been remarkably good to me. I've found good friends, read good new books, and have been relatively successful academically. I also adjusted to seeing cockroaches scuttling about, and the blazing hot sky, and the rainstorms that surge from the sky without warning. I have not yet adjusted to the normalcy of geckos running around the apartment I'm living in; I still get so excited and think they are adorable.

All my friends--lucky blighters--had their last exams on Wednesday, so they're already gone. I'm almost done packing my bags; I'll finish today. Oh, Laura and Kat, I did send your Christmas gifts; I hope you get them.

Will I miss Hawaii? Well . . . yes, I will. I'll miss the Barnes & Noble that I haunt every weekend; we became very good friends over the course of the semester. I will also miss a couple of my professors--but I am very glad at the prospect of never seeing some of them again! I will also miss my weekly walks to the library, and the geckos, and the friends I've made here.

But I am still eagerly looking forward to going home. And my mom tells me that my siblings are all counting down to the day of my return instead of Christmas, isn't that funny? One of my first acts as reinstated eldest child will be to make cupcakes with all the little ones; that should be an adventure. And I'll practice my Irish dance every day, and enjoy my time home with all my heart.

After all, I should. In just three weeks, I will be back here . . .

Anyway--love to all, and Mele Kalikimaka!!

Swamped.

Quite literally, swamped. I have never had so much work due in so little time before in my life.

. . . Well, okay, I have, but I still hate it! I might not be able to check in again until next week. If that does turn out to be the unhappy case, do not worry. I will be back.

Speaking of swamps, my history professor randomly asked the class "What is a morass? Anyone know what a morass is?" yesterday during lecture.

I immediately answered with the first word that came to my mind: "A quagmire."

*Sigh* Sometimes being an author and knowing too many synonyms to a word is confusing. But still, how was I supposed to know he was just looking for 'swamp'?

. . . And Don't Forget About Exams

Yeah, well, Christmas spirit aside, it's also time for me to get into the 'Final Exam' spirit--namely, rabidly studious and kinda stressed. I've never had a Final in my life, as all my exams have always been quarterly, so that adds slightly to the pressure.

However, today is library day, which eases the stress somewhat. I really enjoy my weekly walk to the library; the road is so quiet, and the mountains are so green. And for a tiny little building, that library sure has a good selection of books.

Of course, they're also closing for renovation this December and won't open again for two years, but hey. That's just my luck.

Oh, and did I mention that I found and read 'The King of Elfland's Daughter'? Well, I did, and it was very different from what I had expected, but very enjoyable nonetheless. I love the originality of old fantasy. So many fantasies now are like clones of each other, or clones with simply differently styled hair or something, you know? So similar in bone structure that you can tell what is going to happen next. As an author, it's one of my greatest fears to fall into that 'conformity' trap. That might be what makes early fantasy so refreshing: you are really swept away in a story and don't know where it's going to go.

I haven't mailed any presents yet. But I will. I'll let you know when I do, to make sure the mail service doesn't steal them or something ;)

Okay, time to get back to studying. It's philosophy homework, aah!

Time to Start Getting Into the Christmas Mood!

Here you are, my first gift of the Christmas season: My favorite Christmas carol sung by one of my favorite musical artists. How brilliant is that?

Homesickness, and Thanksgiving

So I just visited Laura's blog, and very fortunately for me she had posted a series of lovely, calming, peaceful and reflective posts. I was having a bit of a rough day today. Namely, I received my first photograph from home today, and it was of my youngest baby sister laughing at the flickering candles on her first birthday cake, and it left me depressed all day. Isn't that strange? I should be ecstatic just because I got to see her beautiful face again, but . . . well, it's changed. Like I knew it would, but still. And in all that joy and sweetness in her smile, in her laugh, in her eyes . . . there wasn't any for me. I'm not in her life right now, and no matter how I play with her and communicate with her on holidays and as time grows by and she grows up and realizes that her elder sister is living away from home, I can't change that. The bitter fact that she has lived these past few months and grown and changed and now has a laugh and the tentative beginnings of a voice and a feisty personality and a recognition of and love for her family. And that I am not a part of any of that. She celebrated her birthday, lived these past few months of her life without missing me, and she never will. Oh, that might seem so silly to people who don't have little siblings and love little siblings like I do! But trust me, it's hard, hard, hard.

. . . Enough of that. I was crying at my computer screen earlier, and it does sound very comical, but isn't so funny in practice. But Laura, your post helped me a lot. I do have a lot to be thankful for. Life is beautiful no matter where you are. I'm fortunate in my family, that even though I'm not with them I can still write to them and speak on the phone to them and I'm going home in 19 days!

Thanks, Linden. Thank you very much. (And I have your Christmas gift wrapped and ready, but part of it might be a little late. We'll see.)

Well, now that I've been able to vent a little and get all my accumulated 'feeling-sorry-for-myself' out of the way, it's time to share a little about my four-day weekend.

Thursday: Thanksgiving, of course. And what better way to kick off Thanksgiving than to watch 'The Fellowship of the Ring'? Which of course I did. And I went to Thanksgiving dinner with my grandmother and a few of her friends, and the food was quite good, but I stuck out like a sore thumb because I wore a dress and everyone else was wearing t-shirts, shorts, and 'rubbah slippahs'. But I didn't mind too much, because I believe that any festive day must be accompanied by nice attire, and so laughed good-naturedly when one of the locals joked that I was so obviously from the mainland "Where they dress up nice the kind, you know?"

By the way, out here people eat sushi for Thanksgiving. I found that interesting.

Friday: I spent some time exploring the island with a friend and his family. Up in the mountains enormous white birds nest, and their voices sound like strange spirits screaming and wailing in the treetops. It gave me delightful shivers. And a huge, dizzyingly tall and ancient tree graciously unfurled a vine almost as thick as my fist so that it fell from hundreds of feet up to halt dangling merely an inch or so from my nosetip.

Of course I accepted the nice old tree's invitation and had a swing.

Saturday: Cold (for Hawaii, which means about 70 degrees yes-I-know-what-you're-thinking-Laura-if-it's-any-consolation-to-you-I-didn't-think-it-was-cold-really) and very rainy. I spent all day cooped indoors, which was an excuse to get some writing, cooking, and cleaning done. As well as a good gob of homework. I meant to do some art, but fell asleep first. Oops.

Sunday: I visited a very large, very wonderful Hawaiian craft fair, as well as a local shopping mall. And by 5 o'clock--I had completed my Christmas shopping! It came at the cost of aching feet and slight dehydration, but it was all well worth it. I had a magnificent time, and it does feel so good to buy things for other people, doesn't it? I didn't even go broke, either, so all in all it was a lovely and productive day. Mission accomplished!

So the wreaths are going up, carols are being played, and fake snow even adorns a few buildings here, looking very out of place. But--'tis the season to be jolly and joyous! And thanksgiving is not too long gone. So:

I am thankful for Laura, Kat, Andromanche, Raven's Eye, Elendil, Luce, my dance friends, my other friends, my school friends, and anyone else I might be forgetting who has ever given me a kind word or a smile when I have needed it most.

I am thankful for my imagination, which can keep me entertained and make the world beautiful even when sometimes I am very tired and occasionally discouraged and lonely.

I am thankful for all the amazing authors whom I admire, but mostly for JRR Tolkien, for helping shape my soul, and for LM Montgomery, whose Anne is an increasing source of inspiration to me as I work through college.

I am thankful for my family, whom I love with all my heart and all of whom make me laugh and think and learn.

I am thankful for little things: the tiny geckos with golden eyes, and the pounding of rain against a glassy window, and the smell of good paper and ink, and sweet green air.

I am thankful for big things: rainbows and good grades and literature and sparkling seas.

I am thankful that I am able to be thankful.

And yes, I am thankful that in 19 days I will be home again.

Amen.