The Code Cracked

Well, I finished the book today. I spent most of the afternoon and evening working through the last two-thirds of the book and my eyes are very fuzzy. It was a good read, but not as great as the media storm and popular frenzy had led me to hope. By the end I was putting the clues together more easily than the characters. Also, it seemed to take far too long to get through some parts of the plot. I give Mr. Brown full marks for the Teacher, but the ending as a whole was rather a let-down. I'll still see the movie, though I'm not expecting terribly much from it at this point given its poor reviews.

New subject!

Today I opened the salad bar with Amanda, Kristen and Nikki. None of us had gotten enough sleep last night, which led to far too many funny incidents to mention at this late hour. Kristen's quote from break time, "Muffin, why do you break?" was repeated in altered form throughout the shift to outbursts of giggles and Amanda entertained herself by making us nametags of our new "condiment" nicknames. I say "condiment" because they weren't really condiments. Amanda is Dillweed, Kristen is Worschtershire sauce, Nikki is Saucy and they eventually decided on Mellow for me. The best part of the day was when Kristen lost her nametag (which read "Worshy") and realized that it was on the bottom of a fruit pizza out in the case. She and Amanda rescued it before a customer could purchase the pizza and be bothered by it, but it was by far the funniest thing that happened all day. (She realized that that's what had happened to her nametag when she saw another sticker from her apron get stuck to another pizza [the sticker said "Ready to serve Deviled Eggs"-Amanda had given one to each of us at the start of the day].) We couldn't breathe for lauging so hard after Worshy was rescued.

Well, there really wasn't time for much else in the day, except that I got to see Kevin since he was home briefly. Tomorrow, my first day off i a while, mom and I are going shopping. It should be fun.

-Kim

Tales of the Salad Bar: Year Two

Well, the bar and the case are both twice as big as last year, but it's still the same old salad bar. Deb has been freaking out about us having enough prodeuct to sell over the holiday weekend and had so many people in to work on Friday that there wasn't room for them all to be in the room working at the same time. On this bright side, they got enough done that this weekend has been relatively easy. I just got back from closing, which I'll be doing a lot more often this summer, and I'll be going in early tomorrow to open the bar again. Oh well, holiday pay is worth it. Although, it's weird that I'm working all the days the rest of the family has off...

Tonight I worked with Amanda, which was nice. We can actually talk about things--with some of the other girls I'm somewhat at a loss for things to say. Donovan, one of the produce boys, seems a lot more cheerful this year. Last summer he seemed to always be in a bad mood, but so far every time he comes through our work room he'll say something that's either funny or downright weird. I think I like this Donovan better.


Driving home from work tonight I saw the coolest thing. A woman and her two sons were out riding horses down by the soccer fields on the south edge of town. The mom and the smaller boy were together on a big, beautiful bay, and the older boy was riding a pony alongside them. It was so cool to see.

I am currently reading the Da Vinci Code in the hopes that I can finish it before my family goes to see the movie. I got quite a bit of reading last night due to the fact that I couldn't sleep. And yes, it was the not sleeping that induced the reading, not the other way around.

I saw X-MEN III yesterday. It was amazing. And sad. It made me cry. The death, even of bad guys in battle, seems so much more real in a live-action movie than in a cartoon. It's hard to watch Wolverine sink his claws into someone. And I know some people don't like spoilers, but there was more death than there had to be. They took the Pheonix plot in a whole different direction than I expected. This all makes me want to watch the original cartoon seies again. Do you suppose they might put it out on DVD sometime? That would rock. I used to wish I was a mutant because it would be fun to have special powers. Especially the ability to fly. I'm glad they put Archangel in the movie for that.

My room is still not put back together, but it's getting closer. I think that will wait until I get a day off to focus on it, because whenever I tear things apart to put them away the mess just gets worse for the first couple of hours.

Anyway, I have an early morning tomorrow and I hope to get some more reading done before I sleep. Goodnight.

-Kim

Summer Begins

Well, summer has officially started. In the few days I have off before going back to work at the salad bar, guess what I'm doing. No, I'm not sitting in the back yard reading for hours on end (even though I really want to...) and I'm not sleeping all day (though that would be nice too). I'm actually cleaning my room. See, here's the thing, the past couple summers I've been too stinkin' busy to clean things out properly, so it's all just piled up. I have one shelf that hadn't been dusted in almost three years. (Don't worry, I got that one taken care of today) The funny thing is that I've had to leave a lot of the stuff I brought home from school sitting in the living room and the green room because there is just no place in my room to put it. So it's time to pack away the vestiges of my youth and send all my old clothes to Goodwill. I tell you, you never really know just how much stuff you have until ou have to move it. But I'm sure you already knew that.

There isn't much other end of the ear news. I'm still waiting on the two grades I wasn't sure of--honors sem and Medieval history. So I guess I'll just keep waiting.

In any case, I should get back to my cleaning. I doubt I'll be able to show you pictures or anything, because I've discovered that it is nearly impossible to upload pictures with the slow home connection. (This would be why my facebok profile pic has not changed to one of me and my little cousin Jonah.) You know it's kind of funny how much I can still say after I've said I'm done.

-Kim

Freeeeeeeeeedooooooooooooom!

Well, all of my finals are behind me now. I've been having a one-girl dance party in my room to celebrate. It's great fun.

You know, I had all these good intentions of actually sharing what's been going on lately, but as most of it was studying and writing papers, I don't think I will. All the fun things are in Dianna's blog posts, so you can read about them there. It is now my goal to keep up with things yet to come rather than dwel on the past, no matter how good it has been. That's as philosophical as it's going to get, folks!

-Kim

Finals Crunch

What is it about springtime that makes us all fools?
I want to paint my toes green and burn my skin red to match.
I don't want to finish, I just want to be done,
I've traded my studies for grass and sun.



These are sentiments from a few weeks back which seem quite applicable right now. And it's proof that I do write poetry. You can judge whether it's any good.

-Kim

pretty red rocks

Okay, so a bunch of us went rock climbing yesterday at Palisades Sate Park. It was a whole lot of fun just to be outside with people. It was also a good learning experience for me. allow me to explain:

I've never been afraid of heights. I mean, I'll climb any mountain you put in front of me (especailly Mt. Baldy out at camp) and generally show such disregard for safety that it's a wonder my mother hasn't had a heart attack. But for some reason I can't handle climbing with a rope and harness. Puting my trust in a rope just wasn't going to cut it, and I'm still not sure why. I mean, I even tried finding places to free-climb, but was unable to get anywhere. It really frustrated me, especially because no one else seemed to be having any problems. Shannon and Jess learned to repel, and the others were experienced at it, and Dianna was content to stay firmly on the ground. But I wasn't content. I wanted to do more than watch, so I couldn't bear the idea that I was afraid. I'm not supposed to be afraid! And maybe I'm being overly-critical of the whole situation, but it bothered me that nobody else really cared whether I participated or even noticed when I wandered off. Except Dianna. She could tell something was bothering me, so we wandered off together for a bit but couldn't find anything better to climb on our side of the river.

When we came back something was finally different. Jason asked if either of us were willing to go down with him. What that meant was that he would be in charge of the rope, and the other person would just be along for the ride. That sounded better to me than trusting in my own power to get me down safely. After all, Jason is pretty much a prefessional at this sort of thing. Of course, even with professionals things sometimes go funny. The rope guards caught on the rope, and Adam had to cut them off with a knife so that we could continue our descent. Let me tell you, seeing a knife coming toward the rope that was holding me suspended above the ground was not a pleasant thing at all. But we made it down just fine, and it was actually really fun. I have decided that next time I will go down on my own and do things properly.

Jason said an interesting thing to me afterward. He said that it really took a lot of courage for me to trust him to get me down safely. It struch me as odd, since that was pretty much backward to how I was looking at things. After all, he was the experienced one. I figured he would be better able to get me down than I would.

Reflecting on that, it struck me as a parallel to the Christian walk. After all, God is the one who invented life and knows how everything works. We're just amatuers at this whole thing and don't really know what we're doing. so everything works a lot better if we just let the expert be in charge and do things his way. Sure it's dangerous, but going it alone will always be worse. And don't even consider just waiting on the solid ground. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, as they say. The Christain life is hard sometimes, and scary, but it's worth it. nothing compares to the joy we find in living for God and following the path he has laid out for us.

Food for thought.

-Kim

Sharing my bears

No, I'm not just avoiding working on my Romantics paper. I actually have things to share.

This morning I presented in honors sem. Yes, I got in front of my class and read to them portions of the first two chapters of my book. I didn't like having to leave so much out, but I went too long as it was, so there wasn't much to do about that. I was so nervous before I did it that I actually felt ill. After all, this story is my creation, my art. It's a part of me, and I was frankly worried about how they would accept it. Apparently my worries were foolish, as I only heard good things afterward. Tricia even commented that I should come tell stories to her daughter. Hey, I'd love to babysit Noelle (sp?) from time to time. I got to hold her today during Dianna's presentation. Oh me goodness she is so sweet! I still have yet to see her with her eyes open, but she didn't fuss a bit and is simple adorable, and so tiny still! I don't think I've ever held a baby that new before, and I absolutely love her.

Anyway, on with the news of the day.

Delta David Gier (sp?) came to listen to our choir today. Apparently next spring the South Dakota Symphony is doing a work that involves a choir, so he's been visiting various groups to see who he wants to come sing with them. I siezed this opportunity to talk to him in the hallway after rehearsal. Explaining that I was a violinist, I asked him how auditions work and he encouraged me to come try out in September. I still don't know if I will, but this certainly bears more looking into.

On the subject of violins, I'm getting new music again! Whee! Maria picked out a Mozart concerto for me to find, and she'll be giving me a little more Bach, too. And we're looking at music from "Schindler's List" as well. I sight-read some of that today. It is such gorgeous and haunting music. And it was written by John Williams for Itzhak Perlman, so that makes it double good. Of course, it also means that I'll be playing notes I hadn't realized a violin could play, but the challenge is half the fun.

Tonight, in an effort to not go completely insane, Dianna, Amber and I are going to see "The Pink Panther" at the cheat seats. It should be a good study break. And this Saturday a whole bunch of us are heading out to the Palisades for some rock climbing (see, I told you I'd get out there eventually!). Now I just have to solve the debate with myself as to whether I should still ride the bike path in the morning before we go climb and/or swim in the afternoon. (don't worry, Mom, I'll still have time to get my homework done.) I may decide that sleep is more important, but that remains to be seen.

In any case, it's back to John Keats now. Have a happy and productive evening.

-Kim

Serendipity

Well, there's no way I'm going to remember all of the happy things that have happened recently, but we can hope to breeze through most of them before my mind goes entirely to sleep.

Friday was trebuchet day. Technically, another team won the contest, but we were the only ones to ever hit the target dead-on, and we won farthest distance. So it was a good time. Especially since Dianna survived driving on the interstate and I was able to navigate us around the highway construction. Eventually. Hey, we still beat Dr. Herman out there.
That night we competed in the dorm triathlon. Sullivan lost pretty badly, but we had only four people on our team by the end of it. And I still say our cake really did look like a giraffe. Shouldn't we at least get bonus points for creativity?

Saturday was laundry day. I spent the afternoon with Grandma and ended up vaccuuming the basement for her. In the evening was spring formal. I had so much fun just dancing around like an idiot. My legs still hurt, but it was way worth it.

Sunday was the spring choir concert. Not only was the concert great, but my cousins showed up! That was a quite welcome suprise, since I hadn't seen Laurel for a couple years. I think it's funny how many of my professors still remember them, although Nancy keeps forgetting that they're my cousins. Kirby won't forget, though. Especially not since he had Laurel for honors sem ten years ago.

Today was my violin jury. It actually went pretty well, but I'm still a little nervous to get the comments back.

So I've gotten a lot of interesting mail lately. Apparently I have to go be honored at the USF awards banquet this Friday, but they won't tell me why. I've been invited to join another honor society, but I can't be at the induction ceremony because it conflicts with the band concert. I have very unique problems.
Oh yeah, and I'm filling out an application for some hokey honors thing that Doc nominated me for. There's actually a chance for money, so I'm filling it out. And I'm terribly proud of my response to their prompt to describe my goals and asperations in 100 words or less. It's a shame it's going somewhere so pointless. So I'm going to share it here too:
It is my intention to attend graduate school to continue my studies in English. After getting my degree, I would like to be a librarian, so that I could help children learn to love reading. Of course, the library would only be my day job. I also intend to publish a series of novels that I have already begun work on. And I’ll still be playing my violin in whatever venue is available to me, whether it is my church worship team, a civic symphony or a gig touring with a rock band.

And now for some thoughts on writing. In my down time at work I've been re-writing a bit of my story to get it ready for my honors presentation, and I think I've realized why my story got stuck. It's not focused and doesn't aim for a single age group. So I need to fix that. I also need to adjust a few pieces of plot in order to make the history and timing work. There's no way I can go on and finish it until it starts properly. You have no idea how happy that realization made me. I pretty much ran back from work last night to keep working on it.

Well, time for sleep now. I hope some joy comes your way too!

-Kim