The Report, Continued

The Sightseeing Report!

The Air Force Academy!  Dude, the highlight for me was the chapel.  It's amazing!

Architecture, what?  So cool!

I love how it reminds me of a paper airplane... folded and stuff.  Fitting, yes?

Organ...woah... *in shock*

I like this shot. :)

I also saw the Olympic Training Center.  This was somewhere just inside the front door....  The cool thing is, at that elevation, the balls go about 3 ft higher than they would normally, so the gym ceiling is WAY up there!

We drove up to the top of Pike's Peak.... the summit itself was under cloud cap, so we couldn't see anything from the very top, but we were literally in the middle of a cloud!  Which was cool.  :)

I love the sky and the lakes up that high....

Quite a view!

And this little guy we met at a lodge about 7 miles up I believe... must be completely tamed by visitors because he walked right by the car and sat down to pose for us!

There you have it... I still have pictures from the park to show y'all though, so we'll continue in this vein tomoz!
AMZi x x x x x

I'm Back!

After two weeks in Manitou Springs, Colorado, a day in the Black Forest, and a day on the road.  Plus a day of recovery yesterday.  I appear to be on Warp Time Zone--where I sleep on CO time, eat on Hawaii time, and lose track of all time regardless of what's going on.  Forget Kansas time!

So...the Report.  Y'all should check out the website, summit.org.  The Summit, student conference in CO, I can stand as witness to.  It roxx.  Epically.

No seriously.  It's hard to describe :: all of the awesomeness is still swimming around in my head...or maybe that's the change in elevation...  At any rate, it's a shock to come back, like I've got torn up by my roots.  Which is strange.  I wasn't homesick for home while AT the Summit (too busy making friends, learning new things, doing all sorts of stuff, etc.) but now that I am home, I'm homesick for the Summit!

I've always been looking for a place where I fit.  I remember distinctly trying to find it in churches we've been to. Waiting to fit in, to become like the other girls (and I wanted so badly to be like them).  It never clicked.  The church we attend now is very nice and I like it there.  When asked, I would tell my friends, "It's as close to a home as a person like me is ever going to find."

Well, I was wrong.  I found it.  Summit is a place where there are people like me.  Let me explain that, because it's not quite enough yet.  I have various "groups" or "classifications" of friends :: my writing friends, my music friends, my doctrine/theology friends, my friends who think, my friends who laugh.  I hope I can say that for every area of interest, every passion of mine, I have at least one friend I can share that with.

But at Summit, I can be ALL of me.  That means a lot to an introvert like me :: it takes so much work to bring myself into the outside world that it can be tempting to just drag out one element of my character--the entertainer, or the nerd, or the writer, or the musician.  Whichever aspect is most convenient.  It takes about three solid hours of interaction to get past whatever element I pulled out, and then you get closer to the real me.  At Summit, I don't need to be one element.  I can be ALL of me, every aspect, and people know it and they don't care.  They can see me, varying from hour to hour like every other human being.  See the music, see the thinking and arguing, see the joking and laughing, see the need for solitude and peace, see the joy or the pain or the anger.  It's a place where I don't have to review everything I say to check for politically-correct-ness.  THAT aspect alone is worth the price of the conference!

Not to say that we're all alike there.  Not by a long shot!  The difference is, you can disagree without getting stomped on.  You can sit down over dinner and have a nice logical conversation with someone who is vastly different.  People all around you are hearing new things, thinking new things, following their beliefs to their conclusions and seeing where they're headed.  And everybody knows it.

It is nice not to be such a minority anymore.  To have at least five people I can count on to back me up and help me out.  It changes my outlook from argument-weary to argument-worthy.

And this post has turned out super long, so I'll leave you with that.  Tomoz I think I'll give the report of what I did in between all of this home-niche-place-where-I-belong finding. :)
AMZi x x x x x

Three Things...

That are so Awwesooooome that I just can't get over them!  You'll probably hear of them again from me before long.  I just can't get over them.

Thing #1 :: The way the floor shakes when the elders walk up the center aisle of the church in unison.  I wait for this, two times every week, as they're distributing the Lord's Supper.  For some reason it just gets to me!  I had to put it in a book, Allemande to be exact, because it was such a tangible thing.

            The organ sang out, the strains of the hymn rising into the high ceiling, echoing wonderfully down the nave.  I could almost feel the deep tones of the foot-pedals humming through the pew into my back.  Then the organ burst into a resounding chord and died away, leaving silence still colourful to my ears. 

            I caught a metallic clink from far behind me—the distinctive sound of a shining plate being passed.  Then the elders walked forward in unison, up the aisle toward the front of the church.

            I scooted forward on the pew until my feet reached the floor.  I laid the soles of my shoes flat against the stone and waited.  The six elders approached steadily, rank on rank of feet.  They passed our pew and the vibrations of their footsteps travelled into my feet.  I smiled broadly as they passed and settled back into the pew.

            Why did I like the feeling of all those feet marching solidly up the aisle?  I couldn’t explain it, but it seemed one of those odd pleasures allowed to me, since I couldn’t see.  Others had the way the daffodils’ stems bent at the head; the way pale green and pale pink looked so well together; the way snow glowed in the little shower of light from a lamppost.  I had the reverberating footsteps of the elders as they took the communion plates to the front.  It was almost enough. 

            When I was young, Mum made me a big, heavy book, bulging with thick pages.  It overflowed my lap when I opened it and spread my fingers on the page.  She pasted a bouquet of textile delights into the hefty paper.  Thick velvet, and rabbit pelt, and sandpapers of various coarseness.  A cool, sticky piece of flat silicone, a wrinkled piece of paper pulp, and a square of shaggy carpeting.  Leaves with distinct, raised veins, Chinese coins with holes in the middle, lumpy woollen yarn—every spread became an exploration. 

            I traced the embossed cover of the hymnal as I stood to sing the hymns I knew by heart.  And the echoes of my thoughts surged through me like the shaking of the floor under the feet of the ages.

Thing #2 :: Fences in the fields in the summer...

Man, a scene like that just makes me crazy...  When you're driving out (South until the streets stop!) and you get to a hillside with a big green field and a fence and a bunch of black cows... Maaaan.  That's it, I'm telling you.

Thing #3 :: The way the leaves rustling sounds just like the ocean...

I love the sea.  I love the Great Lakes.  I love little lakes.  I love cow ponds.  Okay, I love water, period.  But I live in landlocked Kansas.  Small problem, yes?  But it doesn't matter!  It makes all the difference when the spring finally comes and the trees leaf out at last.  It's amazing.

Anyway, so that's what I've been thinking about lately.  I've been writing Chapter 7 on and off while working on this post (pictures take for blooming ever to upload) and I think I've just finished it.  AND once again, I didn't actually get to the point I was hoping for (reporting to the Admiral) but it's already 1,000 words over my goal/limit.  So, I guess we'll arrive at the fort NEXT chapter!  *sighs*

AMZi x x x x x

JUST Hear Me Out!

I'm serious!  When I start talking about why I like math, people smile warmly...and then run away.  I'm not SCARY, right?  Well, not TOO scary.  And math... is awesome, right?

It's not even like I adore math for a mathy reason.  *pushes nerdy glasses up on nose and quotes*  "Erm, there's only one right answer.  I like that."  Or "Numbers are shineeeee."  No, I like math because you can do awesome things with it!  It's like I've been waiting my whole life just to get the cool stuff!  It's so exciting!!

You should have heard me when I first started USING logarithms.  As in they actually end up being useful in the end, instead of just instruments of torture to math-haters.  I yelled, "Logarithms can go BACKWARDS???"  Excitement.

Or the fact that you can find the area of the inside of a curve?  Um, am I the only one who sees this amazing-ness in this?

How about trig identities?  They're like logical syllogisms, but with math!  They're like the brainteaser thinking-skill activities we've been doing since Grade 2!  How is this not awesome??

Really, though.  I honestly think most of the "I hate math," and "Math hates me," and "I'm deathly allergic to matrices!  Gaaah!" is purely psychological.


La hermana couldn't take vitamins when she should have because she convinced herself that she couldn't swallow them, and that they would taste bad.  Cause No End of Trouble, let me tell you!

I was THE pickiest eater for the longest time, until I started training my brain.  I'd smell something cooking, and tell myself, "Heeeeeeyy, this doesn't smell so bad!"  And then later, "This is going to taste great!"  Bang, all of a sudden, I like all these foods I never would have touched.  Makes life so much easier, yes?

So why won't the same thing work on math?  Focus on the exciting parts.  It's really not boring, tedious sometimes, but not boring.  And so much of it is really really  interesting!  It's lovely to see things falling into place, to check your answer and go, "Hey!  It really works!"

And a long sheet of composite functions can work wonders on a headache or a bad mood. :)  Trust me, I've tried it on multiple occasions. :)

AMZi x x x x x

PS: yes, I was incredibly nerdy and embroidered a graph on a sheet of notebook paper.  Fear me.
PSS: A couple people have asked me where I got the idea for the signal flags on my handkerchief project.  I love all things to do with the sea, and had known about nautical signal flags for awhile, and like them a lot.  Then I just got the idea to embroider them!  :)

Awwesooooome!

Something that makes me say "Awwesoooooome" today was the discovery of a Cath Kidston theme for Google Chrome.  If you don't have Chrome yet, and you're still in the dark ages banging your rocks together and against Internet Explorer, click here to get it.  And if you don't already know, as in my Yank friends, Cath Kidston is a UK-based designer who makes prettyful things.  I can't say as I can quite go for all of it, as I'm not HUGELY floral, and some patterns remind me too much of my mother's old duvet....  But in general it's lovely.  So the theme made my day.


Wicking of Speech, something that just makes me happy (seriously, I said that out loud, and el hermano said "Wow.") are these amazing dotty ceramics from said Cath Kidston.  I remember telling la hermana that I would have a polka-dotted pitcher when I was old and suchlike, and she couldn't believe such a thing existed.  Howzat, girlie?  That's just how I am. I make plans, and while most of my plans involve how to really save lots and lots of money when I'm older, and how to be efficient, and how to be scheduled, I do have some ingrained frivolous bits.  Because (you guessed it) they make me happy.

Another Awwwesoooooome thing is that I still adore seeing this blanket spread out over my bed every morning.  Even though it's now too hot to have it on the bed at night, it still belongs there all the rest of the time!

Another thing that was "Awwesoooooome" was discovering that I can make my Plastic BagBags on a knitting loom!  I've made a bag in the past, out of "yarn" I made from plastic grocery sacks, and it's gotten a lot of use and even more attention since then.  I gave it to my mother, who is now known by every employee of our local Whole Foods as The Bag Lady.  Pardon me while I die laughing.

There, I've recovered.

Anyhow, so I racked up all these plastic Hy-Vee bags and they've been sitting all wadded up in my closet.  Aaand then I proceeded to procrastinate (must be good, because it's all "pro-" right?) because I did NOT enjoy knitting up this scratchy plastic yarn on giant blue size 16 knitting needles.  So I thought, Heeeeeeeeey, how about THIS?  These looms were very popular with soccer-moms-turned-crafty-moms a few years ago and I have a set.

And I did!  And it worked!  And I'm happy!  And I've made massive amounts of progress!  And there will be a tutorial appearing here when it's finished, as well!  Awwwesssssssooooooooooommmmmmmeeee!!!

And something else that was Awwwwesooooooome yesterday was the fact that Geometric series are actually applicable in Physics!  Well, I thought it was awesome!  ;)

AMZi x to the fifth power