elinsyw

substance // entry #427

2002-02-25T04:35:59Z

When through the old oak forest I am gone,
Let me not wander in a barren dream,
But, when I am consumèd in the fire,
Give me new Phoenix wings to fly at my desire.
[John Keats]
Ten and a half months ago, I stumbled upon livejournal.com and opened an account. LJ has been a unique chapter in my life; I've grown up a lot from the person I was last April, in part because of my interactions here. But chapters come to an end.

I might come back to LJ eventually, but it won't be as Elin. Hiraeth (and email) will still be online, and hopefully more active in the future.

Thank you for listening to me talk, for giving advice and encouragement, for answering all my computer questions, and discussing topics with me when I've been confused or curious. Thank you, also, for sharing your lives and thoughts in your journals, and for letting me be a part of this community. It's been fun and profitable.

To my brothers and sisters in Christ, I will be praying for you... and see you in real life some day... that day. I look forward to it. :-) To the others, thank you for being my friends. I'm going to be praying for you, too... this joy-filled life I have been given is truly so incredible and I wish that you could share in it.

elinsyw @ 2002-02-24T19:44:00

2002-02-25T00:42:19Z

Oh, yes. I wrote a journal entry many moons ago (okay, a few weeks ago) and forgot to scan it in and post it:

104k | college-ruled paper

elinsyw @ 2002-02-23T14:37:00

2002-02-23T19:35:25Z

Does this work on LJ? It's quite cool if it does...

Cool. It doth.

elinsyw @ 2002-02-21T21:57:00

2002-02-22T02:55:22Z

Weirdness. My web server just deleted two files. Deleted. And I didn't do it.

[sidenote: new poem. Short. Written at school in my library cubby hole. Mostly 'cause the view was really something. First poem I've written in a good while.]

update (10:38): Ah. Wasn't my host's fault. A user crashed their system (well, I guess that might be their fault, but they fixed it). My files are back.

elinsyw @ 2002-02-20T23:07:00

2002-02-21T04:05:39Z

Incidentally... The Voice Project.

I don't think I'm going to do it, even though I'm rather slightly part of the message-board community that it started with. I'm very much into keeping reality and internet apart, and keeping voices offline makes real life more... special, somehow. More kept.

But it's a very cool idea, nevertheless.

[Disclaimer: since I, time, and speakers are not colliding appropriately, I have little idea what the voices say. :-)]

I can't think of an intelligent subject line

2002-02-21T03:27:37Z

I owe a few people comments... and a few more email... my apologies, I'm just royally busy with schoolwork and other sundry activities. (And although I am awake and relatively unbusy when I am home, like now, my brain is fried from working all day. So the chances of me posting something thoughtful are relatively nil.) I ought to get caught up on comments and such this weekend... But I read all things. :-)

elinsyw @ 2002-02-18T19:15:00

2002-02-19T00:13:52Z

This is astonishingly accurate. For my iNTx self, at least.

pretty please with a cherry on top

2002-02-16T04:11:28Z

I think I just finished my site. I think my next project will be redesigning the main directory... something more domainish and less directoryish.

At any rate... in my earlier youth, I used the expression "pretty please with a cherry on top" rather often. There were three degrees of "please": "please," "pretty please," and "pretty please with a cherry on top." The last of which I just used on my site.

Has anybody ever heard the expression before, or did I make it up? I know "pretty please" is fairly common... but I don't think I've ever heard the cherry bit. And I vaguely recall adding "and chocolate syrup" in extreme cases of "please."

elinsyw @ 2002-02-15T19:02:00

2002-02-16T00:01:29Z

I have a weird life.

[Just a general observation, not pertaining to anything in particular.]

This is, of course, dreadful. I haven't submitted anything since I was thirteen.

2002-02-12T02:37:20Z

Submitted this game we play, the sound, ode, a name engraved, fleeting, transitory, and the bottle, along with a fiction bit and a non-fiction bit.

Pieces chosen for very select reasons, not the least of which is that my professors will certainly read whatever is published, as will some of my classmates. Thus, they're the more impersonal and disconnected ones... at least, the more abstract ones. And I edited them a bit first.

the search

2002-02-09T04:19:48Z

I don't ask much of potential coats. Wearable, somewhat warming, and durable. With a significant preference for buttons instead of zippers, dark colors rather than light colors, and a non-fluffy demeanor.

Yet I spend no less than five hours in search of a decent coat. About 80% of the probably sixty coats that I tried on were poorly made: the buttons were uneven, the seams were visibly crooked; the fabric was bunched in a seam. Interesting phenomenon, since I was shopping at relatively nice stores.

Anyway, all the coat-trying-on served to define mentally the idea of a "perfect" coat: black, three-quarter length, wool, one column of buttons (like what is the point of the second column that does nothing, exactly?), absolutely no fur or leopard-print, no hood, no cuffs, princess seams, smallish collar or well put-together wider lapels (a rarity), some polyester mixed in to repel lint, lined, no belt, no waist seam, unobtrusive buttons. This with one row of black buttons. Which, astonishingly, is quite near to what I found. It's a little less tailored fit than I'd like, but it's really quite nice. I went with a small collar, though, so I can button it up to my chin. I suppose I could relent and wear a scarf instead, but I'm into simplicity and practical warmth.

I have a very distinct sense of fashion. I tend to wear clothes that most people "really really really like" but couldn't/wouldn't wear themselves. My dresses usually have a definitive medieval air to them, and in normal clothes, I tend to put together rather vivid colors... jewel-tone purples, greens, and reds; deep browns, bright oranges, coral greens and bright dark coral pinks; and the inevitable black, tan, or green pants to match. I get the "I never would've thought those colors would go together, but they do" thing a lot. So I usually want coats (and shoes) that match my "modernized traditional" look.

And... the formal dresses this year are neat! I think they reached their height of ugliness my senior year of high school... this year's are the best I've seen in a while. Even the colors; I think the whole obsession with the 70s might finally be coming to an end.

on the nature of bolt-holes

2002-02-06T04:16:24Z

I like to find places where I can disappear from the world of people, where I can be relatively undisturbed and unseen for a moment or an hour or a morning.

Such places are difficult for a commuter to find on a busy university campus.

Classrooms and study rooms are out -- students aren't "supposed" to be there without reservations. Likewise out are dorm lounges -- I lack the electronic key card needed for access. Commuters have their own lounges, but they're in all the wrong parts of campus, dirty, and usually full of people.

So I spend considerable effort finding places that everyone else forgets. I've found two, previously. Today I found a third, less secluded but nevertheless more to my taste. I have a huge break between two of my classes, and I was wandering around the library looking for a good place to sit and study. The library is virtually empty at 8:30 in the morning, so there weren't lots of people milling about. So I roamed at will. Finally, I went up to the top floor, and looked about until I found The Desk. The library is covered with little desks and chairs -- the idea, I guess, is for people to study! -- and I found one, tucked away in the half of the library drenched in boring books that get checked out once every ten years or so, and further back in the far corner. The desk is perpendicular to the outside wall, with another wall in front of it, another high desk right behind it, and a big column on the indoor side. There's room to squeeze in, dump my bookbag and coat on the desk behind me, and voilà! I have a little cube. Easy to see, if someone is looking -- it's really not as tucked away as most of the places I find are -- but in the three hours or so that I was there before wandering off to find lunch, only two people walked by, and neither of them saw me. The very best part? The outside wall has a big window right where the desk is that overlooks the biggest "lawn" on campus. A good view.

So I think I'm changing my default bolt-hole. I need to remember to wear warmer clothes, though... it's in one of the under-heated parts of the library, and was really quite cold. I scurried out to the dining hall and had warm soup.

On a different note... I was being cold (lazy?) and taking the elevator instead of climbing up three tall flights of stairs, in another building. I pushed the "up" button, and backed away to wait. Of course, the "up" button lights up, quite brightly in the dimly lit elevator-foyer. Along comes this guy, rather nerdy-looking (like a math/physics nerd, not a computer nerd), and he goes to push the button, stops, then suddenly realizes that I'm there, kinda jumps in surprise, then proceeds to turn around and bang on the up button. Yeah, bang. Punch-punch-punch-punch-punch. Then he turns around and looks at me. And grins. Then he backs away, too, even farther than me, so when the doors finally opened, I go in first. I push the button for the fourth floor, and back away. He walks in, looks at me, looks at the button-thing ("controls"?), acts like he's going to push something... for a moment I thought he was pushing all the buttons... apparently he was just being indecisive... he finally saw that I'd already pushed one, and he looks at me, grins, and mumbles "well, I guess that'll work." He acted like he didn't know you could pick more than one floor. Acted like it was my fault for picking the fourth floor. But still grinning about it, and acting uncannily conspiratorial and friendly. It was very... odd. Sometimes I really don't get people.

elinsyw @ 2002-02-04T00:53:00

2002-02-04T05:50:59Z

You know what's really freaky? To have someone find your page by typing a sentence verbatim from one of your essays. (Search strings -- i.e., from Google -- show up in the non-user-specific logs -- the ones I'm still reading.)

I mean, why? My site's the only result at Google; so it's not too terribly common. (The result is a 404 due to the recent redesign of the site...) So somebody had to have my essay in front of them, but not know exactly where it came from, right? Which means they had to have it in some offline form?

Freaky. (Or is there a perfectly logical explanation for all this?)

elinsyw @ 2002-02-02T22:46:00

2002-02-03T03:43:35Z

What happens when you mix my mind (or lack thereof), a desire for a new desktop background (preferably being bright, detailed, un-techie, and earthy), with a wonderful graphics program (Painter 7)? This (922k). ::sighs:: I missed my calling. I should've been one of those people who paint stripes on canvas and spend the rest of their lives trying to convince the rational parts of the population that stripes deserve the designation of art.*

On a slightly more serious side... my first quasi-serious attempt (218k) at drawing in Painter. Black-eyed susans aren't my favorite flower, but they seem to be a recurring theme in my life...

Anybody used a graphics tablet and know if they're really a significant improvement on good ole mice?

And layers are sooooo cool. So cool.

-----
*Yeah, I'm knocking it. But I actually like the graphic. It pleases some obscure part of me that likes disorder all mixed up with order... so the fact that everything's not symmetrical but looks like it's supposed to be, and the total mismatch of the brown/green with the blue/purple all make me vaguely happy with it. It's my new desktop graphic, until I come up with another.

elinsyw @ 2002-02-01T22:56:00

2002-02-02T03:53:26Z

1280x1024... this is addictive. So much space! Such small type!

(Result of spending far too much time playing with procreate Painter 7, which suffers from a deplorable lack of workspace. But then I played Pong at this resolution, which is really inexcusable, since it looks precisely the same at all resolutions. And web pages in general look seriously horrid this high, so I suppose I'm ever after doomed to switching resolutions as I switch programs. ::sigh::)

substance // joy and excitement and all sorts of other stuff :-)

2002-01-29T04:06:27Z

I've mentioned earlier the Bible study I go to on Sunday mornings before church...

We've been doing this since August, and we've worked through the first 3½ chapters of John since then. Yeah, really. We meet for an hour and fifteen minutes or so, and it's pretty much solid Word-ing, so you can imagine the pace at which we're crawling through the book!

I've been in good studies before; studies that get into the original language and cross-references and all that stuff, and have a good deal of discussion over most of the verses. But this study is so incredibly different!

There's two of us who're "always" there... we started the study. It was really weird, actually... we knew each other slightly in fifth grade, and I started going to her church last June, having no idea that she went there, and one Sunday, she met up with me on break (our Sunday morning service has a... coffee and fellowship break in the middle), and asks what I think about starting a college Bible study. Well, I think it's fantastical, I was feeling a little underfed and a little underfellowshipped, and I'm typically always up for a Bible study. So we get approval from the approval-people, and one Sunday, lo and behold, our names are on a nice little sign in the leaders-name-slot under "College Bible Study." And so it began. The reallyreallyreally weird thing was that we were both thinking of John, 1 John, and Romans to study. And that neither of us thought we had to pick one. Romans is sort of the background; we're studying John and 1 John verse-by-verse.

Maybe it's because we're both coming to the study eager and hungering for the Word. Maybe it's because we're two or three gathered in His name. Whyever it is, it's a genuinely awesome time. God-filled. Word-filled.

We're excited. Excited. I've been in Bible studies where people are interested, but excited? I'm learning so much about how alive the Word is; how incredibly good God is to reveal it to us... and how much Jesus Christ is the Word of God to man. Everything snaps together like a nice puzzle; God's been working throughout history to bring His plan to fruition...

At any rate... it's all the Word. I wish I'd understood that a long time ago, that fire and sparkle aren't really a characteristic of the people involved in the study, but a result of the Word and the proper handling of the Word. Be joyful always (1 Thessalonians 5:16).

Ah, joy. I really didn't understand joy very well until about a year ago. I'd been asked to pray and consider solutions to an issue that had come up in another Bible study, and while I was searching for some answer -- or at least encouragement to share -- this whole joy thing really hit me. And I mean really hit me. Like somebody flipped a switch in my head. I always thought of biblical joy as a sort of permanent, non-emotional version of happiness. No such thing. Joy is a gift from God that is totally centered in Who He is. It's knowing that no matter what happens, God'll be glorified. Knowing that God will be God. And joy's a reaction... Acts 16, the Philippian jailer... got saved, and the first thing it says about him is that "he was filled with joy because he had come to believe in God"! I've long been taught that joy is a... a choice, like loving somebody you don't like, that joy isn't an emotion at all, it's a perspective of life. While this may be true, I think it sells joy short... joy's a gift, not a chore. It's not a decision, it's a... state of being. And it's good!

I wish I could go back to all the Bible studies I've been involved with through the years, and say, look, folks, we have a lot to be excited about! Why are we moping? We should be serious-minded; seriously God-centered, seriously aware that God is sovereign! I don't think sober-mindedness and joy are mutually exclusive.

Personally... I've really been learning a lot about the difference between "God is first" and "God is all." The former is kinda like doing what God wants me to, then doing what I want to, sorta a top-down way of categorizing one's life... the latter is more like starting at the roots, letting God have everything, and viewing the "little things" as places where God decides to give freedom -- point being that it was His to give, not ours to keep. I want God to work through me in whatever way and every way He wants to; to be a tool, acting on His every desire... but I tend to get caught up in doing good things in a list-type fashion (I'm going to study the Word, pray, talk to my friends, and try not to sin) instead of a more fluid way (how can I use this moment to serve God? -- for every moment of every day). But I'm learning. It's so cool, learning...

God seriously rocks.

and I think I'm gonna teach English?

2002-01-27T23:37:36Z

Belived... ha, I can't spell. (That was how I spelt "believed" on the novel thing... oops. I'd like to call it a typo, but believe is one of those words I never could quite spell right.)

novel-in-progress

2002-01-27T21:59:40Z

Added a whole 'nother chapter to my novelish thing. Altered one paragraph and abruptly switched genres from fantasy to science fiction. Or maybe it's both, now... At any rate, there's a whole lot more there.

And I did the split-perspective thing, which I detest in books... ::sigh:: But I rather like the new part, and I like the scope that the story just gained... it's much more workable than a droll fantasy world, this mesh of swords and ships.

random fact

2002-01-27T06:08:02Z

Beef barley soup looks exactly like mud soup while it's cooking. The oregano looks just like grass; the bay leaf... well, it's a leaf. And looks like a leaf. And the beef stuff creates this foamy brownish broth... just like mud and water on a warm summer day.

I thought it was amusing while I was cooking it. Now, I think it's a little scary that my mind associates something in the kitchen with my childhood adventures in dirt.

elinsyw @ 2002-01-25T23:06:00

2002-01-26T04:05:03Z

Okay, so these are kinda custom-tailored, but still... surprising.

I don't know that I've ever recommended anything about the Elliots before, which is rather surprising since I decided at age six that I wanted to marry Jim Elliot. :-) I think I'm going to find a copy of the journals somewhere; anybody know if they're any good?

miscellany

2002-01-25T03:41:03Z

I put an essay on Blaise Pascal's Pensées up; if anybody wants to read it... it's probably the best essay I wrote last semester... I should have most of the essays up later tonight or tomorrow. Then there's just the author section... ick. I haven't been in an autobiographical mood lately. And the design is just sorta temporary. I don't know what I'm doing with it. And I haven't been on the computer much lately... stuff happening in real life has been demanding much time and energy...

[Eh, this sounded rather negative. I'm not in a bad mood or anything... but my brain is definitely not all here. :-) So much not here, in fact, that I forgot half of this entry:]

I'm submitting stuff to a magazine -- published by my university. There are prizes and all that good stuff. It's cool, 'cause the competition is limited to my fellow students, but the resulting magazine gets read by the Big People. So if there's one of my poems or such (i.e., fiction, journal entry, etc.) that you think really stands out from the rest, please let me know! :-)

elinsyw @ 2002-01-19T13:34:00

2002-01-19T18:33:31Z

Scratch that. I added a background image. But I'm not sure yet if I like it or not; comments?

questions, questions

2002-01-19T03:15:16Z

For those of you who haven't been over there in a bit, hiraeth's new personal site (which will be at the old URL when complete) sort of got a new redesign in the past twenty-four hours or so. Namely; it's text-only (!) and now refuses to work in Netscape 4.x (which I suppose I'll fix before I put it live-live...). I'd really appreciate feedback on the aesthetics of the design (about half the pages aren't up yet, but the design should be the same throughout) since text-only designs tend to be really hard to make look good, unless the tables are obvious -- which they aren't. And there will be a splash page; I just haven't made one yet that I actually like. I'm thinking maybe the whole thing is a little too simplistic...

Now for my real question: I've noticed an increasing trend amongst personal sites to have a section where visitors can ask anonymous questions (i.e., about the site-owner), which will then be answered or not answered in a special section of the site. Any opinions on whether this is good/bad/juvenile/interesting?

elinsyw @ 2002-01-17T23:15:00

2002-01-18T04:14:48Z

Cool! Newsgroups. Never done them before. (Yes, been online for... sevenish years, had a web page for nearly as long, and I've never, ever, done the newsgroup thing.) This is interesting. I'm... lurking (?). I think.

elinsyw @ 2002-01-15T13:47:00

2002-01-15T18:46:56Z

Indecisive? Me? Never. I just change my mind sometimes. :-)

(Note the lack of a default. And so it shall remain.)

Later addendum: I'm still thinking about the abstract thing, too. And, with no default, there's less clutter (like when am I actually going to remember to specify a pic?) and people generally won't see it until they've read something. So I did listen to the answers to the question I asked; thanks. :-)