This little munchie started crawling yesterday......

There is a most interesting little bug on some books in front of me. He keeps opening his wings up quite wide and then closing them again quickly.
He is all dressed in black and has two long feelers that stick out comically from the sides of his head. When he is facing me straight on, I realize how flat he is. His body is thin with his six legs coming out on either side of it. His head is like a little ball, tiny in comparison to the rest of his body. I cannot quite tell for sure, but I think there is a little brown spot just under his head on both sides. He appears to be some sort of beetle species because he has two long wing cases down his back that meet in the middle of his body.
He has been sitting here still while I have been typing. Perhaps he knows I am trying to describe him and is staying still so I might look at him better. Now he is beginning to move again. I suppose that means this description is over.

Now he is gone.

nothing at all of interest to you (don't bother reading this post)

So, I got tagged....



Seven random facts about me that you might not know.
1) This is the first time I've ever gotten tagged in my life (that I know of anyway).


2) I can't get RPI Scheduler to work


3) my sister just figured out my password


4) so I changed it


5) I installed Ubuntu on my dad's old laptop


6) and I'm quite pleased with myself


7) I'm really happy that school is done




That's it. Not very exciting. I always thought it would be fun to do one of these things but they are harder than they look. Now I'm supposed to tag 7 people........like Laura, and mum......... I don't think I know 7 people that read this blog....

So, if you read this blog, and I didn't tag you, please consider yourself tagged.

Poem Game 1

Last night we played the poem game again. You can see the rules and the poems we wrote.
So I thought I'd post our results so everyone else can be almost as amused as we were. I'm not going to post all the words we came up with, but I will put the words we used in our poems in italics.

In random order:
First, here is Mum's:

It was unintentional that I chose the dictionary
for out came a fragrance so stale.
My eyes fell upon the word canary
and all at once I could hear the wail
That mournful wail of the fiddle.
What, do you think that a riddle?
Mournfully high then mournfully low
I'm so glad it's only one!

Although there are supposed to be at least five words from the list in the poem (see the rules here), Mum was holding a wailing Bethan. That seems to have also affected the content of the poem.

Second poem is Noelle's:

My chocolate chip cookie,
became very stale;
For I was playing on my fiddle,
a song about a whale.
Pine cones are very furry,
and my eyesight very blurry,
because I ate one to many,
a hazelnut cookie.
My thimble rolled away on me,
It reversed it's gravity,
And now it's sitting in a tree,
looking as happy as can be.

I guess she was thinking about cookies because we were eating Christmas cookies while playing this game. I am puzzled by the furry pine cone line. I never thought pine cones furry.

Next poem, Jo's:

The unintentional consequence of
his studying the dictionary was
that he became increasingly
stale. "Stop it!" he suddenly
cried. "When you fiddle with
the pine cone you make me
drop my hazelnut into the
thimble! And I can't hear my
music box when you make such
a noise! You sound like a
bear driving a car guaranteed
to run like a starfish! I would
prefer it if you drove a
sleigh, It would improve
the quality of the calcium
in the queen." After that
he was condemned to be
continually coating jellybeans
with chocolate.

I believe she used every word in that "poem". She said it was free verse.

Nothing

This is a nothing post. I have nothing to say and it's six-thirty.

Nothing posts are fun to write. One does not need to have a clearly defined idea of what to write. Nor do you have to think about polishing and perfecting what you do write. I guess you could say it was similar to a writing excercise I practice in my writing class called "freewriting." Both types of writing are easy and almost mindless to begin. Both stir up one's thoughts and encourage more thinking. After a couple of freewriting excercises, I have dozens of thoughts flowing through my brain. Sometimes they lead to a good topic; other times they spawn each a dozen more thoughts and topics. I have not written enough nothing posts to find out if they have the same effect on my brain.

How do you go about writing a nothing post? Well, first of all you must sit down and yawn. Then you stare off into space for about five minutes. When you have come back to earth, you look at your computer screen for about two minutes. It's hard on one's eyes to stare at computer screens for much longer than that. When your eyes are suffienciently dry and sore, you finally begin typing. Just put your hands on the keyboard and type in the first sentence that comes to your mind.

A good time to write nothing posts is at the end of the day. You must be just tired enough to want to not think hard, but not so tired you will fall asleep. Nothing posts are also good "fillers" in between several serious posts on a blog. Of course, you must not write too many nothing posts. They work better in small doses.

There are already too many blogs that have nothing but nothing posts. This is not a good situtation. It is an example of shallowness and laziness. Poeple do not want to think and work to write serious posts. Many, many young people and older people write hundreds of nothing posts every year. Can you imagine the quantity of nothingness that is produced?

Unfortunately, this laziness is something we all fall into. My own blog tends to nothing more every time I post if I can spur myself on to post at all.

But if you are struggling with this sin (like myself), know that God is able and will help you.

"Through sloth the roof sinks in,
and through indolence the house leaks."
Ecclesiastes 10:18

BibleGateway.com

Second Round of Poems

These are the last three poems of the six.

Kirk's Poem (age 18)

"Charlie was running
Through words on the chalkboard
When a quiet humming
Disturbed his careful methodology.

"He could concentrate no longer
When he reached the word 'Plexiglass'
The humming became louder
'Noelle!' Charlie shouted.

"'Stop humming,' he pleaded;
'I am studying theology!'
'You can hum somewhere else,' he conceded,
'but not where it will cut my thoughts.'

"Noelle calmly replied, with a smirk,
'I have essayed to be silent,
but the sound will quadruple with each quirk!'
She kicked the tableleg hard.

"'Shark!' yelled Charlie.
He chased her from the room."


Mum's Poem

"Charlie was running to the chalkboard
to write upon it a sum
But as he went he tripped over a cord.
Quiet! said the teacher to him.
Your methodology is flawed,
if you utter a word."


Dad's Poem

"Charlie, running fingers on the chalkboard,
quiet, a certain methodology
for when a word escapes the hoard
of his mind.
Softly, slowly, his thoughts begins to clear,
and as water, or plexiglas,
a shout of joy, no fear,
a sound thoelogy!"

Dad, if this wasn't for a game, it would be one of those abstract poems one has to study in literature. You know, the "what does the author mean?" sort of questions and stuff.

First Round of Poems

I can't find my youngest sister's poem, so I have only six.

The poems are from youngest to oldest.

Joe's Poem (age 8)

"Charlie had a book of theology.
Charlie had a running chalkboard.
Methodology is the same thing as a tableleg.
God's word is the sword of the spirit.
flaxy seed is the same thing as plexiglass."

It was supposed to rhyme, Joe.


Elle's Poem (age 12)

"I was in a race! I was running!
I was being, oh, so cunning!
I could feel against my chest, the flapping of my chalkboard,
That hung by a thin, red cord.
Why I took my chalkboard, spelled upon it a word,
I don't know; but how could I be so absurd!
It gave me extra weight, making my leg feel like a tableleg
One that was losing a peg!
I was definetly not as happy as a lark,
By the end of the race, no! I felt almost like a shark!"


Jo's Poem (age 17)

"There once was a boy named Charlie
Who lived in a field of barley
He liked to go running,
He was very cunning
And loved his home in the barley

"There was a man who liked to hoard
He lived in a town called chalkboard
He found some plexiglass
and hid it in a crevasse
Then went back home in Chalkboard"

Note: All misspelled words and punctuation are from the actual poems.

Fun Game from Book

My graduation party and all the yard work it entailed is finally over. So, yesterday we all took naps and got really crazy. That included playing a new game that Jo read about in a book. It was so much fun, we decided to share with anybody who wanted to try to play it.

What you need:
First, you need at least three or four people (the more the merrier).
Then you need a piece of paper and a pencil for each person.
Last of all, you need a long strip of paper.

What to do:
Choose someone to begin.

The person chosen to begin writes a word on the top of the strip of paper and folds the paper over. No one should be able to see the word.

Next, the person passes the strip to the person on their left.

The second person repeats the previous steps, writing their own word underneath the folded bit. Then it is passed on...And so on all the way around the circle
*Note: It is good to have a variety of words. Try to get some verbs in there.

When the strip of paper has no more room left to write a word and fold it over, it is time to unfold the paper. My family chose to go around the circle twice, making a total of fourteen words.

Someone reads the words out loud.

Everyone laughs.

Then the strip of paper is left in the middle of the table for everyone to see.

This is where it gets fun. Each person has to write a poem using at least five of the words on the list in the same order as they are written on the list.

When everyone has completed their poem, they are read out loud. There are a number of ways you can do this. My family handed them all over to Mum who read them out loud and had us guess the author, but you can do it differently if you like.


This is the list of words from our first round:

Charlie

running

chalkboard

quiet

methodology

word

plexiglass

Noelle

theology

cut

essayed

quadruple

tableleg

shark

I will have our poems in the next couple of posts.