I just finished a class. And am home for the weekend. And at the moment, my mind is drawing a complete blank when I'm trying to think of what it was I wanted to write. Thus you, my dear reader, have been treated to a mundane stream-of-consciousness blog post (sans the typos, which I bother me enough to correct). Have a nice day.

I have thought, before, that to translate a song would be a wonderful experience, even a way to worship God with my Spanish talent. And now I know. I've loved this song for years: And I thought to myself, this past Friday, that it would be a great song to translate into Spanish. So I made my best effort to produce a Spanish lyric faithful to both the original song and to the Biblical passage from whence the English song came; and in addition to that, I tried to make the lyric sound good, to sound like it was supposed to be that way originally (instead of being a translation clumsily fitted to the original tune). So, I looked up the verses in two different Spanish translations (the NVI and the RV-1995 ) to try to write the lyric as close to the Bible verse phrasing/words as possible. Then I wrote a version, and didn't like it at all. (I still have it, however, in my e-mail.) I re-wrote most of it as various ideas, words and phrases, came to me.... and here is what I c

As you may be aware , ever since getting a Facebook account (i.e. succumbing to the pretty permanent fad on campus), I've been alternately amused and frustrated by certain aspects of it. In fact, I was just criticizing its creation of people who have lots of "friends" but few-to-no close, intimate confidantes. I called it "faceless friendship." And now I've finally gotten around to reading "Loneliness in Numbers," an article in the latest Atlantic magazine that points out that the coming-of-age of the Internet and the social media thereof has also brought about (or maybe highlighted) the advent of another phenomenon--loneliness in the midst of connectivity. The author makes some good points. One of my favorite observations: Acquaintances are easy to maintain with casual, group emails and Holiday notes. But real friends? They take time and energy--both to develop, and to nurture or maintain. And the key observation: And the more ... time anyone s

They got a big hole in them. Mostly due to weak old fabric. Let us all remember fondly my old jeans. Fare thee well, old friends. *tosses jeans into wastebasket*

I decided this month that I'd do all my devotional Bible readings from my Spanish Bible. I figured, hey, I've been to Central America, I'm practically fluent, and I should be able to understand the Spanish translation quickly enough that I don't lose the meaning of the passages I'm reading. So I'm doing that. And boy, is it wonderful. Verses that I'd instantly recognize, even be able to recite, in English regain a freshness when I read them in Spanish. (Today's verses were from Romans 8:28-39, which of course includes the whole part about neither death nor life nor anything else being able to separate us from God's love.) Sometimes I also realize something completely new about a passage I've read before, simply because of little language differences (such as, I can tell the difference between a singular "you" and a plural "you" at a glance with Spanish). This is pretty awesome. It's like singing in Spanish, only better

SIDENOTE: Before I forget, that last post was the 450th! And, we are just three comments away from 700! (Note to the sidenote: I do know that some comments haven't been counted in that tally, for whatever reason--the computer didn't like me or something--but for the sake of consistency I'm going by this number.) Now, for the real content of the blog post. I just found out about two more couples who just got engaged this weekend.... in addition to the couple that got engaged last weekend.... what IS it with junior year ? I wish them all my utmost felicitations (well, usually felicitaciones actually), but seriously! That makes five or six in the last few months.

From my devotional e-mail today: This morning let us hear the Lord Jesus speak to each one of us: "I will help thee." "It is but a small thing for Me, thy God, to help thee. Consider what I have done already. What! Not help thee? Why, I bought thee with My blood. What! not help thee? I have died for thee; and if I have done the greater, will I not do the less? Help thee! It is the least thing I will ever do for thee; I have done more, and will do more. Before the world began I chose thee. I made the covenant for thee. I laid aside My glory and became a man for thee; I gave up My life for thee; and if I did all this, I will surely help thee now. In helping thee, I am giving thee what I have bought for thee already. If thou hadst need of a thousand times as much help, I would give it thee; thou requirest little compared with what I am ready to give. 'Tis much for thee to need, but it is nothing for me to bestow. 'Help thee?' Fear not! If there were an ant at

I had just about half an hour between lunch and going to work, so I decided not to trek through the snow to make an almost-pointless visit to my apartment. So I'm sitting here in the library figuring out how to busy myself until it comes time to go to work. Spanish class today was kinda fun; we discussed the ideal man or woman in groups, basically in the context of who you'd marry, so in our little groups we had to make lists of each. I joined a gal friend of mine who'd been to Central America with me this fall, and a lady in our class who's a native Colombian. (I still haven't figured out why she's taking Conversational Spanish if she's already a native speaker!) We had fun in our group, especially since the Colombian lady is quite chistoso (jokester) while at the same time very smart and mature. (She's married and has mutiple children, so she'd better be mature!) After that little exercise, we all wrote on eraseable boards as our maestra listed

One week on campus (mostly), and things have been crazy. If you've been reading my other blog (the link to which is by request), you know I've tried out and gotten a part in a one-act comedy to be performed the first weekend in February. That's in addition to a class on Spanish conversation, and on top of preparation to write the prospectus and annotated bibliography for my senior honors project (this beginning stuff needs to be done by the end of the month). Plus, I've helped tutor a young ESL student who's struggling in math, and watched a million episodes of Touched by an Angel a couple nights ago, and have also been getting caught up with the yearbook (I'll be assistant editor). Oh and I've been working, but that's a given. I absolutely love the honors project preparation. I'll be helping to plan and launch my college's new website for the college newspaper & broadcasting programs! I also love Spanish class, except that today we tal

I got moved into my apartment on campus late this morning... spent an hour or so unpacking before lunch, then got my computer hooked up to the internet and the rest of the stuff unpacked after. Also rearranged the room a bit--my roommate for this time, whom I've never officially met (she remembered that we had a class together a couple years ago), gave me leave via Facebook message to rearrange the beds when I got back. Of course, there's not exactly a lot of space in this room, so I maneuvered the beds into the only other position possible. (I like that arrangement better.) And I'm off to go to work in about fifteen minutes. At which time I will return to my old job at the library ... for more than four hours! I've books and the internet to keep me occupied, of course, but I'm hoping to get some writing done as well. (Journal-writing, that is.) And after having listened to music for the last few hours, I will return to a world of silence and my own thoughts.

Or is that nerdiness? I can't really say. Anyhow, if you haven't already noticed (or seen my Twitter feed or Facebook update), today is Palindrome Day, or Mirror Image Day as I like to call it, because you can write the date backwards and forwards and it's exactly the same. 01/02/2010. It's cool, huh? (Even if it only works in the U.S. system!) The fun thing about that is that it's so rare--before 2001 (when the last one was), the last palindrome day before that was waaaaay back in 1380. And though the next one will be next year, they'll happen only once a decade after that (more or less), and after 2290 there won't occur another until... 3001. Amazing, huh? And, as if that weren't enough, I received my Christmas gift from my roommate in the mail today. It was a square root watch. In other words, instead of reading 1 through 12 on the edges of the circle (it's analog), it reads (square root sign)1 through (square root sign)144. That's just

If you follow my Twitter updates (or checked on the sidebar over there earlier), you may already know that I watched two film renditions of my favorite book today to ring in the new year. The old "Pride & Prejudice" from 1940, with Laurence Olivier and Greer Garson, I'd seen before and enjoyed quite a lot. The new one was interesting, mostly because it was set in our modern day in Utah (of all places!). Now, having almost memorized the book, I am able to quickly compare movie quotes as well as adaptations of scenes. So, I'm peculiarly well-suited to watching these things and enjoying them. That said, this one in Utah was probably a made-for-TV movie (since none of the actors were big shots in the least) and felt like it. Also felt like a teeny-bopper movie in some respects--the colors, the costuming, and the fact that the gals sort of talked like Valley Girls. However, much of the wit was kept intact (though not all, unfortunately), and the movie did an admirab