I've been digging through a lot of older stories I wrote. I started a new blog for some, especially the Lonya ones (as I rewrite them at the pace of a snail!). Check it out at The Lonya Chronicles. I have some of the Lord Peter mystery on there too. (And I'd like to add that I'm still really pleased with that one, although there isn't nearly enough of it.)

However.

Most of the others are, sadly enough, on the level of deserving to be taken out and shot.

Yet...

There are a few parts which made me grin, at least, so I thought I'd share them all.

From The Catacombs
...Augusta loved to order all the slaves around. Just thinking about her high-handed manner made Demas so angry that he scrubbed the floor harder, although the marble tiles sparkled already.

He did have one hope for the party that night. Demas hoped that Augusta would meet a man. And get married. Her father allowed her entirely too much freedom – he even allowed her to choose who she would marry!

Augusta was in less than no hurry to choose, because there were plenty of male slaves around the house for her to flirt with. Demas had been receiving her flirtations for some time now. It was not flattering. It was disgusting.

Which reminded him: he had better get back to work. If he didn’t get back to work, there wouldn’t be a party. If there wasn’t a party, Augusta wouldn’t meet any charming men. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t get married, and if Augusta didn’t get married, she wouldn’t leave the house. Demas thought that once she was out of the house, surely she wouldn’t be able to flirt with him any longer...

“I am looking for a slave-girl for Augusta,” he confided. “She must speak Greek, for I wish Augusta to learn conversational Greek.”

Demas stifled the laugh that was creeping up and nodded solemnly. He was perfectly aware that Augusta was quite familiar with any Greek words which could be used to flirt, but he couldn’t tell that to Aquilla. So he held his tongue.

From one of the gazillion beginnings of the Peter Brandt Mystery...

They had collided next to the salad bar.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I’m an awful klutz,” she laughed.

He had nodded, and then grinned. “It would probably help if I was looking where I was going. Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. Lovely,” she said.

That was their complete encounter, much to the dismay of the older ladies who had been staring at this budding romance unabashedly.

From some Star Wars fanfic...

“Look,” said Jaina, sounding just like her mother. “There it is.”

Jacen shivered. “Jaya, did you tell anyone where we were going?”

She purposefully misunderstood him. “Don’t be silly, Jas, I didn’t let on to any indiscreet operatives.”

“Operators,” corrected Jacen. “Seriously, Jaya, did you tell Dad where we were going?”

“Dad’s on Corusant, ’member?”

“Jaya.” Even Jacen’s everlasting patience was wearing thin.

“I told Chewie.”

He nodded. “Mmkay. Good enough.”

“We can handle it on our own!” Jaina protested. “We’re Jedi-in-training!”

Jacen yanked the steering control away from his sister just in time to keep them from colliding with a freighter. “Uh, sure. Jaya, we’re PADAWANS. Just like everyone else.”

“Well, it’s not like everyone else is related to Luke Skywalker,” she replied sulkily.

“Thank goodness,” muttered Jacen.

...

“Kela Rendar, where is your brother?”

“My brother?”

NK listened intently.

“Don’t act like an idiot. Your brother. The smuggler. Dash Rendar.”

She looked down at her hands, pushing the tips of her fingers together until they went white.

“Answer the question, young Jedi.”

“I don’t know,” said Kela sadly.

“That is not an acceptable answer,” buzzed one of the droids.

Exile, NK, and Kela all shot it a murderous glance.

“Roger roger,” it continued, in its own little cyber-world.

Kela bit her tongue to keep from laughing and tightened the laces on her boots.

From the Vampire/Werewolf story (and I could hear Abby ALL OVER this story. So weird!)

Meinae was darning a sock, albeit not very expertly. After a few minutes, she flung it on to the floor. “Darn it,” she exclaimed, and went out to the kitchen. “Cameron did leave?” she asked for the eighteenth time.

...

A young man swaggered into the tavern and plunked himself down at the bar. “Heyyyy,” he drawled, looking Meinae over.

She felt herself blushing. “What can I get for you?”

“Well…” he said slowly, “I want a…” he leaned a little closer and dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, “ a water with some lemon in it.”

Meinae suppressed a giggle and brought it to him. “Here you go.”

“Thanks,” he said with a wink, and gulped it down.

As she wiped off some tables, Meinae inspected the flirtatious stranger. He was fairly good-looking, she decided. She also decided that Cameron would probably kill him for flirting so with her.

Just then Siofra entered at a run and bashed into Mr. Flirt, who had just gotten to his feet. He fell back onto the stool with Siofra on top of him.

“I saw your horse outside,” she said by way of explanation. “Seonac-Aidan, where’ve you been?”

“Around…”

“Oh, Mei, this is Seonac-Aidan, my half brother.”

Mei nodded, somewhat dumbfounded.

“Has he been flirting with you?” Siofra had seen the effect Seonac-Aidan had on girls and was sure of the answer. Without waiting for Meinae’s response, she rounded on him. “Seandan, don’t do that! This is Cameron’s faithful lassie.”

“Oh!” Seonac-Aidan stood up again and made a sweeping bow. “So you are the Mei of great renown?”

“Er…” said Meinae. “Um, how do you guys know so much about me?”

From Kiltboi, which is probably lame if you aren't part of it and inherently hilarious if you are.

They went up the crumbling concrete stairs and emerged into the rainy , gloomy, foggy daylight. Kip pulled his hat down over his eyes, and began walking briskly along the busy streets. Corbani grabbed him by the elbow.

“What?” asked Kip in a hurried whisper.

“We’re here,” she said noncommittally.

“We’re where?” asked Kip, who couldn’t see a thing, because his hat was literally pulled down over his eyes.

“Subway,” hissed Corbani.

“Oh,” said Kip, walking into the frame of the doorway.

....

A lone Sandwich Artist stood surveying his medium with a baleful eye.
In other words, Kip was glaring at the lettuce as if he wished to strangle it.
The problem was, he couldn’t for the life of him figure out how to strangle lettuce.



Good times. :)

Now my third finals week is behind me, and I can honestly say that it’s one of my favorite weeks of the semester. While it is an absolutely horrendous week for engineers, it’s pretty lovely if you’re a Biblical Languages major. Translation: I end up with less work to do than most other weeks!

Add to that all the tension of tests (my own and those of over a thousand students all around me!), a semester’s worth of generally not-enough-sleep and multiply this by an exponential amount of general insanity and figure that it’s not just me, but all the students... well, it makes for some great stories. Sorry that I don’t have pictures for any of it.

I noticed that my brain was beginning its happy serotonin dump the end of first week in December. Suddenly, the girls at my table and I were laughing at anything. I prepared myself for the onslaught of adventures.

It was probably a pretty good tip-off to the week when, intending to stick my tongue out at Isaac, the man who walked between us received this expression. Worse still: realizing that he’s an OPC pastor. Epic fail on my part.

These adventures may only be mildly interesting, or in fact quite boring, if you weren’t there for it. If you were, though, you’ll know what I was talking about. If you ask questions, I may answer them.

The First Intentional Adventure: my dear roommate and I went to get coffee thingies/slushies and see if the coffee shop had puppy chow. They did. We ate it. Lots of it.

Then there was the silly-stringing of the second floor. Kat got it in her hair. Hannah the El-Ed woke up from her nap to answer her door... and got silly-stringed. Molly and Martie’s door sported a foamy smiley face, while another door on that hall received a heart. This didn’t actually start with second floor, you understand. It began with my roommate spraying our suitemates. And bathroom, which sort of looked like Spiderman had a bad day. Did I mention that our one suitemates may not have been very awake when first silly-stringed. (Should that be silly-strung?) Good news: silly string cleans up pretty easily.

The Isaac episode wasn’t the only one of its sort. In an attempt to hit Luke D with a sodden napkin ball, I ended up landing it on the tray of some girl whom I do not know. She was startled. Luke was in danger of dying from laughter. Jordan hit him with broccoli, twice. Score.

Nicole is going to make her husband eat mud and raise their children. Poor guy.

Rebekah decided to flip upside down on the railing outside of the dining hall. She said that it was fun and she was in no danger of hitting her head. Jia ni, Rivkah! But I’m not sure that I endorse trying it.

I learned that if you’re paid by direct-deposit, it’s a waste of time to check your mailbox... duh...

Various RAs with headlamps may interrogate you when you come to pull your laundry out of the dryer. If this should happen, attempt to make sure that it’s dry, no matter how confused you are, rather than taking a basket of rather damp laundry the whole way up to your room. Yeah.

Freshmen are pretty excellent at eating your leftover ice cream. It beats throwing it out, as far as I’m concerned.

Molly+Martie+Jordan+me(in a bookstore)= much time drooling over books. We’d rather do that than say goodbye.

So what wonderful things did I forget, people?

So, I think that I have figured out what one of my favorite things to do is.

Talk about what it will be like when all things are renewed.

Seriously. Jordana was cranking out questions a million a minute last week while the Ninja Girl and I were, erhem, trying to work on homework. Jordan and I were at one table, where I was writing my humanities paper, and NG was a table over doing some homework of death. (Pretty much all of her homework is Homework of Death.) Anyway. I digress. Questions were all over the place. Will we be able to make our skin change color at will? Can we have fuzzy skin? Will everyone be the same age? Will people have children? What about if I die before you, will I have to wait for you? Will I even notice that I’m waiting for you if there isn’t any time there? Will we just get to wander around and see everyone? Will there be lines to see some people, like Paul? Will waiting in line even matter, if you have an eternity? Finally, Ninja Girl (so much for being focused on her homework) cracked up.

The questions were quite funny, but I was loving them. So many things to think about and look forward to, so far from the idea that one girl in my youth group at EV has of heaven. And, mind you, she is a well-churched girl. “I don’t want to go,” she complained. “It seems so boring.” I tried to give her some words that would hit her with a glimpse of what makes me so excited about it. It didn’t work. I hope that she figures it out. She knows there must be more, but she’s not getting it.

Of course we don’t get it yet. But I want everyone to at least be excited.

It came up again tonight after family devotions, in a long train of thought connected to if animals disobey or not. And I love it. We sound like little kids getting ready to go on a vacation to somewhere they’ve never been. We don’t know the specific features, but we know it will be amazingly incredible.

I remember at the end of my tenth grade year, when a rather traumatic choice lay before me. Was I going to go to Quizzing Districts, or the youth retreat for my presbytery? Both were good options. And I was utterly torn. Mom assured me that in the long run, it probably wouldn’t matter that much, and that at other points in my life, I’d have much more difficult choices to make, such as where to go to college and who to marry. (To be honest, I doubted her. Deciding who to marry HAD to be more clear cut, right? ...I think tenth graders just don’t understand everything that they think they do... at least... I didn’t... College, on the other hand, was no harder of a choice. ANYWAY!) Antion was helpful, as he would be at various other times when I needed to make decisions. “I don’t know about the rally,” he said. “But I promise you that you won’t regret coming to districts. It will be amazing.”

I did end up going to districts. That wasn’t the only factor in my decision, but it’s one that has stuck in my mind. Because that districts was thoroughly amazing, a two day period packed with adventures, laughter, friendship, fellowship, hard work, and a lack of sleep. It was far beyond what I had envisioned.

So my reasoning goes like this. If Antion could be that spot-on on something that wasn’t even in his control, my confidence is all the greater in the promises of God for what He is preparing for me. The memory of my first districts is precious.

How much more excited can I get about the full feast that districts was only a taste of? Something beyond all of our most glorious and fantastic imaginations?

How can I live a single moment without being in utter awe at this great thing sure to be? And yet I forget the rapture and grandiosity of it all the time.

Right now, I am thankful. And praying to remain ever conscious of that, so that I may remain ever thankful to the Giver of these good gifts.