The 9th Annual J. Gresham Machen Bloodletting

The Underclassmen

The Upperclassmen

Trotter was chosen by the pink.. and he did not tolerate any nonsense.

Praise God for the beautiful weather, brave men, and loyal spectators who made this day so joyous.

Going to Carolina in my Mind

America Needs The Money Hole!

Wow.

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Of Interest

• Book: Manalive by G.K. Chesterton
• Music: “Fireworks” – The Whitest Boy Alive
• Movie: Planet Earth (one day I’ll branch out, I promise).
• Curious About: Birds of Paradise. Those things are wacky.
• Check It Out: This is so cheating… whoa. ;)
• Delight: Driving out of the fog onto the sunny reaches of Schweitzer mountain to go skiing. ;)

Carpe Diem

I really need to practice my Latin.

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Of Interest

• Book: Manalive by G.K. Chesterton
• Music: Disco tunes on Pandora (while having nertz marathons).
• Movie: Still Planet Earth. It’s that amazing.
• Curious About: Iceland.
• Check It Out: Ah, hippies. ;)
• Delight: Making concertina books. Anything involving glue and the paper-cutter has to be pretty fun.

Happy New Year and Happy Epiphany! (a tad belated)

First off, an announcement. I have decided these posts need a new sort of format. Since they have no format at present, that shouldn’t be too hard. ;) Actually, I really wanted to toss this entire blog and start a new one, but whatever good intentions I started with, it would probably disintegrate into randomness like this one anyway, and I don’t really want a ton of blogs floating around cyberspace in a sporadic trail of chaos behind me. So, from now on, perhaps this blog will behave itself a little better. We’ll see.

Well since this is a belated New Years Post, I suppose a list of New Years Resolutions would be appropriate. Or perhaps, entertaining, in any case.

• Devotions every morning. No excuses.
• Go to sleep between 10 & 11pm on school nights. Tartar sauce.
• Try all the cheeses at the co-op (as budget allows).
• Cook dinner at least once a week.
• Turn 20. :D
• Finish sewing my quilt.
• Sketch more often.
• Birdwatching! Yes, I’m that dorky.
• Start writing my declamations before Thursday morning. Not that I would ever do that.. *cough cough* ..
• Recapture the piano from storage.
• Take more walks.. and play more ultimate. :)
• Learn how to serve a volleyball (and not by luck on the 23rd attempt).
• Spend less time on the internet. The real world is more exciting.
• Read at least two books every week.
• Learn how to swing dance properly.
• Go cherry picking! :D
• Get Dad to teach me how to work on my car.. and drive stick shift. *horror music*
• Learn how to knit a hat.
• Not get sick every week of next term.
• Pull out my fencing gear and finally remember all 8 of those parry positions again.
• Babysit as often as I can.
• Make more waffles! Because the world always needs more waffles. Or is it lerts?
• Watch more nature documentaries and PBS/BBC shows. Just because.
• Buy a plant and attempt to keep it alive in the basement.

Haggis. Isn’t that a neat word? I think I’d like to try it but I won’t put it on my list of resolutions. I’m not that sure.

Resolution lists are fun to write, I think, because they’re so hopeful. Not that I will actually succeed at many of them.. but you never know.

Because we all need some inspiration for the new year.. or in any case a laugh:The only reason I can console myself to the fact that Orlando Bloom and Kiera Knightley made it into an “inspirational” video is its utter ridiculousness.

And now that I have rambled far too long.. the format part of our program. I always enjoy when people list their “picks,” so I thought I’d try my hand at it. Here goes…

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Of Interest

• Book: The Importance of Being Earnest
• Music: “New Hampshire” – Matt Pond PA
• Movie: Planet Earth
• Curious About: Snow leopards
• Check it Out: The Flying Irish Running Club. Is that fun or what?
• Delight: Mom reading The Hobbit aloud in the morning during break. Just like those old beloved homeschool days.

Go Deep

Cooking With Dave

It’s Friday… which means fish and chips night at O’Doherty’s Irish Pub and Grille! :) Dollar off by order of the Vatican. Mmm! Lots of salt and vinegar. But no one makes fish and chips like Dave.

Home

Peace and rest at length have come,
All the day’s long toil is past;
And each heart is whispering,
‘Home, Home at last!’
–Thomas Hood

It’s good to be home. :)

This is the Snow that Never Ends, it Just Goes On and On My Friends…

Does anyone remember “Lamb Chop”? It suddenly strikes me as rather an odd title for a children’s tv show and a better name for a serial killer or a basset hound… but I’m already wandering. If you remember that show, you will perhaps smile indulgently on my title – until the song gets stuck in your head for the rest of the day.

It is still snowing. I’m ecstatic that we will be having a white Christmas this year. Every day it snows, but each day with a different snow. First there was a day of snow showers, stopping and starting. Tricky. Then there was a wet snow that fell thick and icy in heavy blankets, cut through scarves with the damp chill. The next morning: blowing, swirling snow, the kind that you can stare into like campfire flames, always shifting, hypnotizing… lifting on drafts and sweeping low and snaking across the road in ripples like the very tips of waves licking up the sand.

But today was the best snow of all. I woke up to see it drifting so slowly it seemed to be moving in slow motion, suspended, drifting down so gentle and thick… a magical snow, hanging in the air longer than possible, bigger, whiter, and softer… the snow you only find in storybooks. It was so light and so big that you could see each individual snowflake, little silver stars, and when they landed instead of packing down they looked like little fluffy mounds of white dandelion fur. Incredible.

Of Ice and Sleds (a very pathetic attempt to parody “Of Mice and Men”)

Well, the time has come for an update. I was hoping for my mind to help me out and think of something intelligent and summary-like so you could know all the thoughts that have been tumbling around my brain and what I’ve been doing these past few weeks with some semblance of order, but I seem to have lost it somewhere this week. It’s a mournful bit of news, but I am almost certain that one of those times I was trotting between NSA and Bucers it slipped out of my pocket and fell into the snow. This is most unfortunate because now you will have to dig through a jumble of thoughts in whatever order they decide to wander out.

1. When we returned from Thanksgiving Break, my roommates and I spent a very fun night decorating the Infirmary (aka basement).                    We set up the little plastic tree and hung lights everywhere – so much fun! Maybe.. too much fun. *moving on*
2. It snowed!                                            Being a GRITS to the core, I became pretty ecstatic and dashed out into the snow to play with our boarding family’s kids.                                            We had sled races down the driveway for a while with sleds built from skies and wooden boards (they’re fast and they fit a ridiculous amount of small children), but then the time came for a snow fort. However, the snow was so light and fluffy and tempting that our walls only got about a foot or two high before that dissolved into snowball wars. It was proclaimed boys against girls, so Bea and me defended ourselves bravely from the brilliant sallies of Coton, Miles, Jasper and Bo. It was epic. And then I made the mistake of saying whitewashing was acceptable, but only for those over 10. I got whitewashed. Multiple times. Snow Angels.                                                      The mighty Boaz decided to impress me with his muscles. I was impressed.
3. The Christmas parish potluck at the Whitling house was a blast. The hit of the party was the cardboard tank that Hans made entirely out of cardboard boxes. It is pretty much too cool to be described properly, but if you happen to come to the Whilting house you will see it defending the living room in all it’s splendor, probably with one or two small Whitlings inside of it, peering through the working periscopes. We played a “guess the number of M&M’s game” and I ended up with a huge glass jar of 326 peanut M&M’s, which I have been feeding to everyone who comes within a five foot radius of my desk whether they like it or not.
4. Kelsey taught us all how to quill Christmas ornaments, and we invited Heather and Bea down to help for a fun girl’s night.                                             A rather psychedelic snowflake                                                                     
5. We sang Christmas Carols at the ice-skating rink on Saturday for the CRF Christmas Party. It sounded incredibly beautiful. And it was really cold. And snow was floating in from one side of the rink. Lots of fun. :)
6. Games at the Nuart. This has become a most excellent freshmen traditon. The Hand Game, Signs, King Elephant, and Four on the Couch, ERS…
   
7. There was the Christmas concert…  Which you can watch in its 90 minute entirety if you really have nothing better to do with your time. 
8. There was sledding fun at Robinson Hill on Sunday. The lovely view of Moscow Mountain. We built a jump, but soon even flying through the air down a very steep hill just wasn’t dangerous enough. We sympathized with Blaise Appel when he asked, “Dad, can I have some dragon blood in a danger glass?” We wanted something more – careening down the slope in a mass of bundled bodies, flailing limbs tumbling down the white slopes in a cloud of powder, sleds running overfallen comrades, the crash and trail of carnage, of red scattered across the white snow. Oh wait, those were just mittens. We all linked arms/legs/sleds/saucers and decided to take the hill in a solid block, experimenting with different formations. Usually it ended up with our brave block of sleds scattered across the hill, getting pulled on our backs, falling off the sleds, and running over each other until we lost momentum. It was a blast. We never did make it all the way down the hill, but we sure tried. I think we’ll have to perfect our techniques in the months to come.                                                    
9. And then there were exams. I put off mentioning those. This past week was pretty incredible. On Monday there was Breaking Bread Before Battle and I spent the day preparing for the Math exam and the Lordship Oral final in various study groups. Tuesday I completed my Rhetoric oral final and my Math written exam. They went really well.. I had fun. :) Tuesday night I spent many hours at Bucers with Abby studying for the Lordship written, with input from various and sundry classmates nearby. It was actually really interesting.. but alot to do. I returned home with coffee for Becca to finish reading Turabian and such. Wednesday was a bit intense – four finals in one day. But it was fun, in a way. I had both Lordships and both Latins, which all seemed to go quite well, except for the last Latin, in which I felt a bit lost, despite studying for it all afternoon at Bucers. Then again, I don’t really mind. I’m just glad I survived, learned alot, and can now take a good long nap. :)