wow! I seem to be melting.

Well, let me get all my whiney stuff out of the way right now. It's soooo hot in Texas! waaaah!
Done.
How about all that stuff going down in New Orleans? Sometimes you start feeling like that sort of thing--hundreds/thousands dying in natural disasters--doesn't happen in the U.S. any more, but God's creation is still way, way bigger than we are. It probably will always be. By probably I mean without question, of course. I'm praying for them victims. There's a bunch of refugees from N.O. in Longview right now. So I sit in my room with the A/C up and count my blessings, because God has been awesomely good to me! Nuthin' to complain about, seriously.

My computer just got here this afternoon, so if you wanna hit me up on AIM, now's your chance. Before now I was filling my time with editing my book. Not that I won't get that done now, of course!

And I gotta say: it is awesome to be back with my friends. Abbi, Ben, and Brianna all showed up to get me from the airport, and we went off for a Walmart run same night together. I missed them, and everyone else, and all that sort of thing all summer, not kidding. I'm looking forward to this semester lots and lots.

Hm. Still gotta get my class schedule all ironed out, but that's slowly getting done. Cool. I'm working on an evaluation of my summer to be posted later. It was, in short, exactly what I needed, though. For sure.

old enough...?

In case you missed the memo, I turn 21 on Saturday.

Feel free to leave gifts with my roommate, after threatening him sufficiently so that he does not eat them*
(*With apologies to my roommate)

In no particular order or level of helpfulness, here are some of my favorites to help you out.
My favorite...
Candy Bar: Snickers
Bird(s): Nuthatches, Kingfishers, Hummingbirds [various], ducks, and hawks
Dog(s): Corgis, Dachsunds, and whatever you happen to own ;) (excepting all black labs)
Thing in the sky: Eclipses, followed closely by nifty clouds and zeppelins
TV: the broken kind. Unless it's really big and free
Food: Homemade noodles and tacos. Eaten seperately
Gem: Opals, followed closely by sapphires. Unless you count girls' eyes, then those
Pop: Sprite, vault, canada dry, and verners
Shirt: I spent three days in a row this summer without one while I worked on my book...that rocked

Anyways, I don't know much about what to think about being 21 yet, but I'll say that the first 20 years of my life have rocked for the most part, and they seem to be increasing in general Rock...itude...so, here's to a lot more years, and stuff. Spent with cool people, preferably.

In general, less interesting fronts of life, I got my license renewed this afternoon; talked to a girl while I waited who was getting ready to go off to GVSU for a master's in occupational therapy, and had been through her undergrad stuff at really conservative colleges that fined her for going to movies or not wearing a skirt.

That reminds me...with everything I've seen about the state of the school system these days...homeschooling my kids (when there are some little people who fit that description, and no, there aren't) is looking better all the time. You can quote me on that in ten years, when that might be something I have to worry about, lol.

finished!!

Well, my mum told me yesterday we didn't have to go back to Grand Rapids until I finished my book.

So I finished my book.

I guess I saw the end of the tunnel...so to speak. Banged out 8, 770 words between 10 a.m. and 11:50 p.m., bringing the finished total to 69.6k, which should publish in the neighborhood of 275-300 pages, I think. There's a particular song I listen to when I've finished something, because it makes me feel happy--Piano Lesson by Donut Junkie--and I played that as I wrote that last, heartwarming sentence to wrap the whole thing up. It felt good.

Now...editing and illustrating comes next! I'm hoping desperately that I can finish within a month.

First I gotta pack up and get out of here, though. Man. Woo. I can make it.

destruction

The only vehicle I've been in for the past 4 days has been a boat. I even took a boat to one of my odd jobs the other day. You see, the DOT has seen to take our perfectly fine, only road access, and remove it (hopefully with the intention of replacing it with another perfectly fine bit of road, but who knows)...so there are huge scrapers and dozers and thingies going back and forth, and I can see their tops over the fence and stuff.

So I'm supposed to finish my book this week, ish, and it's just about time for the exciting climax...not that I've been working diligently or quickly on it lately, but at least the other day I crested 50,000 words, which was my minimum size requirement. Part of me keeps thinking I need to keep expanding, part of me wants to launch right into the action and just wrap it up in another 10k or less...we'll see what happens. It was still cool to hit 50k.

Anywho, after this weekend--say, tuesday--I'll be driving home from da cottage (that apparently doesn't fill the definition properly, so I've been told, being neither "small" nor "cozy"), I'll be heading back to Grand Rapids.

Whoa. It just started dumping rain outside...hard. Cool. More rain just fell than we've had all summer, and I'm not even kidding.

Yeah, so after Grand Rapids, I fly down to LU for my senior year! on the 28th, remember. God's given me a lot of peace about all of this, but I'm still moderately bothered by the fact that I haven't ironed out my schedule yet. Well, I'll take care of it this week, right? Yeah.

Hope everyone who reads dis is doing great and feeling peaceful, for serious. Let tomorrow worry about itself.

yes, hm....

I think it's official, I finally started missing school. Or at least, being with everyone from school. Up til now I just missed a few people, but it's moved up to missing being there with everyone and the whole schebang of activity. Now that I've learned that still more people are not coming back than was originally suggested, it's looking like a very...different semester. Two weeks on the nose until I get back to school, and Jordan's promised a Taco Bell run as soon as I get there...followed, of course, by the joyful reunion with roomie & friends. Hopefully.

All I want to do before I get there is finish my draft of my book, because once that's done I can be satisfied that I can finish the rest at school. I can illustrate at school...I just can't write stories there (beyond basic editing, which I will be doing)...it's sitting at about 45k words right now...I'm losing steam right now, so I'm moving to wrap it up this week maybe, hoping I can wring about 60k out of the storyline. I think illustrating it will be fun. I'm hoping I can find people around LU that vaguely resemble my characters so I can work from photographic reference.

So back to missing everyone. It's interesting how bad this has hit me in the past few days...sometimes you just wanna get together and chill with some people, no? Thanks to the wonder of our modern transportation system and the bizarre nexus of randomly distributed people that come together in College, some people I really wish I was with right now are spread from Canada out to the East coast, and back all the way to Cali. Fooey!

Oh well, gotta deal with life as it comes, no? To everyone that's going down to school early this week: I'm praying you guys have safe travel. I'll be there on the 8:30 pm flight on Sunday, the 28th, and you can certainly feel free to hit the airport and see me /pick me up--sound good? Hehe. Rock on.

Anyways, today we trailered our speedboat and dumped it in Lake Michigan, and then we motored all over the place for a while. The waves were big and made for a really fun/bumpy ride, and I didn't get seasick, which was an answer to prayer. Last time I was out there in a boat I was just a kid, and man, I was pathetically ill.

Aiight, that's it for the night, yo.
Required Reading...Romans 12:14-end

picture post!

Here's all kindsa pictures. This will kill your 56k, so kill your 56k first.

Cousin Cody, with Leanna and Olivia in the background.

Olivia showing off her dad's watch.

Grandpa's dachsund, Peggy.

Cousin Jono.

Leanna and Olivia watch the turkeys.

Left to Right--Mom, Julie, Will, cousin Carson, Uncle Bob--eat at our beach picnic.

Cousin Carson. Aunt Janet and Leanna in background.

Dad, and Jono on his head.

Carson and Jono discuss...something

Jono and Leanna

Me and Jono...lookit that sky back there, it was cool.

Mama turkey with her entrouage of turklets

Dad and Max

From hiking Lake Michigan: Richard and Sunset

A shot of "Pyramid Point"

A hugemungous petoskey we saw but couldn't take with us, since it was in a boulder.

Myself and Richard during a break from hiking.


That's all ya get! :)

and...submit

Well, I sent off my last obligations to WJI the other night...and came right down to the wire doing it, as always. I think my final paper--about a Christian worldview framework for mathematics and the need for one in technical education--turned out pretty okay. If you're interested in it I'd be happy to email you a copy...just slip me a note to my email.

Now it's back to my book. If I can make money doing this, I will. It's been so long since I've been properly working on a book, and I had begun to fear I was no longer capable of it...but I am, and it's tons of fun too.

Anyways...I'm off for the next few days for another hike up the shores of Lake Michigan, starting where we left off last year in Glen Arbor. Bringing a camera this time, too. I'm really looking forward to it (And then of course, getting back to writing :D)

Man, school's approaching...blah!

work?

So, this week, I'm supposed to be finishing this big research paper for the World Journalism thing...about 2k words about the topic I chose, namely the application of faith in the teaching of technical college courses. It's due Friday, and my research is barely anywhere...blaah. I don't think I want to be a journalist, but I do want to finish what I started...and yet, I don't want to do the work. But I need to, and I probably will. I'll be working on it tonight, yet, I guess.

Instead of working on the paper this afternoon I did crank out about 4,000 words for my book, bringing the sum total up to 37.3k, or 74 pages of single space 12 point, which is way further than I figured I would be for the point in the story where I am. I still have the best bunch of the book ahead of me, and that's exciting. People keep stealing my printups, and a new one is running off right now...

Hm. I also started Shadowfolk back up! In pencil, for now, but in my humble opinion it looks pretty sweet. Check it!

Other exciting news, well, a squirrel vaporized himself this morning in a high-voltage switcher and left a few thousand people up here without power for the morning. That was interesting.

Recommended reading: Dig Ephesians 2 and 3, mostly 2. Also, Wild at Heart is a very good book, so you should dig it too. There was something in there I wanted to share, but I forget what and the book is too far away to go get right now. You'll just have to poke through it and find it for yourself.