Seven Sevens

Pipsqueak at The Common Room tagged me to do the seven sevens game.


Things to do before I die:

1. Learn to know God better.
2. Read everything Lewis, Chesterton, and Tolkien ever wrote.
3. Play the third movement of the Moonlight Sonata.
4. Learn broadsword-fighting.
5. Make a film.
6. Write an epic.
7. Get even close to finishing my language.
7b. See The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, see Ancanar, read Cicero and Beowulf in their original languages.


Things I cannot do:

1. Ride a bicycle.
2. Dance.
3. Speak Anglo-Saxon.
4. Bounce down a tree.
5. Bounce up a tree, for that matter.
6. Sound like Christopher Lee.
7. Listen to good music "in the background."


Things that attract me to my spouse:

I'm MARRIED? < ditto. < same

Seven things I say most often:

1. "Really?"
2. "We'll see."
3. "- - - !" (Miss M's name.)
4. "Thank you."
5. (whatever elvish word I currently have stuck in my head.)
6. "It's from the Narnia movie..."
7. "Hopefully" in starting a sentence. (It's a habit I'm half-trying to break.)


Seven books (or series) I love:

1. The Lord of the Rings
2. The Chronicles of Narnia
3. Beowulf
4. The Space Trilogy (Lewis)
5. Ivanhoe
6. Jane-Austen-novel-series
7. Time Quartet (L'Engle)


Seven movies I watch over and over again (or would watch over and over if I had the time):

(The last three I'm not so sure about)

1. Sense and Sensibility (with Emma Thompson)
2. The Adventures of Robin Hood (with Errol Flynn)
3. the A&E Pride and Prejudice < ditto
4. Ever After
5. The Lord of the Rings
6. Star Wars
7. Pirates of the Caribbean

Seven People I want to join in, too:

I don't have seven people either:

1. Tim's Mom
2. Just Here For Now from Sunny Day

Top Ten Desert Island Christmas Albums

Queen Shenaynay from the Beehive posted her favorite albums here, and, after I do a little shopping at amazon.com for one or two from her list, I'll be posting our own list. :)

Our tastes are pretty basic, we like traditional carols and we don't need our carols gussied up to make them palatable for modern listeners. Last year I wanted to buy a couple of new CD's to play at our church services, so I sampled quite a few current selections at the Christian bookstore and couldn't like any of them. Instead, I went online and looked for old favorites - Bing Crosby, Julie Andrews, Nat King Cole, and liked those much better. I didn't learn to like classical music until we'd been homeschooling a couple of years, so we're only beginning to discover what's out there in that genre. I expect our top ten list will change when we find more classics to love.

Here's our list --

A Christmas Album (Amy Grant) It never seems like Christmas until we play this. I haven't been as thrilled with her later Christmas albums, but I love this one, it never gets old.

Light of the Stable (Emmylou Harris) especially the song Beautiful Star of Bethlehem, which the Judds popularized recently

The Nutcracker (Tchaikovsky) We have three copies of this. We sometimes listen to the whole thing, and sometimes just highlights.

Nine Lessons & Carols (The Choir of King's College, Cambridge) A new tradition for us that just started a couple of years ago.

Greatest Christmas Songs and Christmas with Julie Andrews - We love both of these, and can't pick between them, so I just included both of them

Handel's Messiah (Our copy is conducted by John Eliot Gardiner) The Messiah has been growing on me over the years.

Christmas Day in Hawaii Nei (Makaha Sons) Mom's addition: "This isn't the only Hawaiian Christmas music I have, but it's my favorite."

A Christmas Carol (Focus on the Family Radio Theater Drama) We listen to this every year, I prefer this to any of the movie versions

Merry Little Christmas (Linda Ronstadt) I just picked randomly from a few others that we like to make it an even ten. (Tim wants to replace this with a favorite of his own)

In Autumn

Another poem written for creative writing class (which is finished now).

In Autumn

The wind comes from forgotten lands
of ancient hills and elven strands
to tease remembrance in the mind.
You'd think the air was brought
purposely to wake the thought
of elder day or foreign clime.

The leaves are like an unknown tongue,
each a word, in piles flung,
sentence-deep around the trees.
The earth speaks, too (squish! squash!)
And the treetops (swish! toss!)
In a roil of branchy seas.

They tell of something just beyond
mortal grasp; like a fond
memory, but deeper, higher.
I cannot see what's behind
the invitation of the wind—
I know the Something stirs desire.

This Month's Books - November 2005

Beowulf by Anonymous, translator unknown (this online version)
The first time I've read this translation. It's more literal than Burton Raffel's, and it seems to have heavier alliteration, which sometimes makes for better reading aloud (it's almost impossible to read it silently). But it is harder to understand and I don't think it grasps the original meaning as well as Burton Raffel's. Still, Beowulf is Beowulf.


Persuasion by Jane Austen
Very good, all of it. The writing quality and characters especially (the character introspection was excellent). I will have to read them all again, but this may be my favorite of Miss Austen's books so far.


On Directing Film by David Mamet
Mr. Mamet is both a screenwriter and director. In this book he propounds his theory of film and how, therefore, a film should be made.

A film is a story told by a series of juxtaposed images. The film is built of smaller story segments, the scenes, which are in turn made of smaller segments--"beats," he calls them--which are made of several shots, which are the smallest segment. The job of the smaller segments is to show action in the simplest possible way, and combined they form a meaning in each of the scenes and the ultimate story of the film. Because a film is built this way, the shots or beats themselves do not have to be "interesting"--they do not have to tell the story. The same goes for the actors--they don't have to act interestingly, they just have to perform the actions. The story itself will make them interesting.

He also talks about some of the problems with modern filmmaking. A lot of modern films do not have a good story or structure, and a lot of modern directors are more concerned with personal expression or making things "interesting" than they are with telling a good story as simply as possible. Because the story itself is not interesting, they have to add things to make it interesting: eye candy or "artistic" style, or graphic detail. But if the shock value is all that holds the audience, then each successive film will have to be more and more graphic. If moviemakers would simply concern themselves with telling a good story as simply and clearly as possible, we wouldn't have a lot of the problems we do. (Personal note: I think by this standard Alfred Hitchcock would be a very good director but Peter Jackson would be a very bad one. Artistic expression and all that.)

It is a good book, well worth reading if you are interested in making films or just interested in the filmmaking process. (Be warned, however, that there is some mild language and a few other things that might not be suitable for children.)

Apple Cinnamon Muffins

Apple Cinnamon Muffins (1 dozen)

I tweaked a recipe for "basic muffins" that I found online to make whole wheat apple cinnamon muffins. These use oil, but no butter or shortening, so they have no hydrogenated/saturated/trans-fat.

1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup unbleached flour
1 Tablespoon cinnamon
1 Tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 Tablespoons sugar

1/2 cup soy or rice milk
1/4 cup oil
1 egg
1 cup applesauce
1 teaspoon vanilla

Mix the dry ingredients in one bowl, the liquid ingredients in another. Then combine both and mix it all up. I use foil liners in a cupcake tin so they don't tear apart when you try to remove them from the paper to eat them.
Bake 400 degrees 20-25 minutes.

Teacups

I've always thought that someday it would be fun to collect teacups. As it turns out, my collection has already started! I love pretty teacups, so if you have any pictures of yours online, I'd love to see!

My very first teacup, and still my favorite. My mother and I saw this while shopping at an antique mall during a visit, and she bought it for me. She suggested that any teacup collection should be based on a color. That was easy - pink!

When I saw this one, I thought it was the prettiest teacup I'd ever seen. Until I brought it home and put it beside my favorite! But it's a close second.

These beautiful cups were gifts from my favorite tea partner, Ginger.

Not really a teacup, but I love it.

Coloring Pages

Here are six intricate Mandala designs for those who like intricate coloring. They open in Adobe Acrobat and you can print them for free.

New Wallpaper

Isn't that beautiful? You can get it here.

6:30 am

Miss M still isn't asleep. She took a nap and then woke up at midnight, mad because her nose was stuffed up. She's been up since then, alternately fussing, playing, screaming in frustration, and almost dozing. Maybe she's teething.

720 Extra Days of Childhood

Seen at rivendellwis blog:

"What if you could give your child the ultimate gift? What would it be?" How about 720 Extra Days of Childhood? Read more at Mozart and Mud Pies. A blog well worth reading. Good job, Ann L. Collins.