saraelisabet

...observations on my life and things around me...

Sunday, October 29, 2006

Blogger is confusing me...

So, I wrote the post below Saturday morning, and it told me it wouldn't publish. And now it mysteriously appears. I am rather mystified about that.

I am feeling much more like bed than writing a blog entry. You should check out Kara's blog for some pictures of today, if she's put them up yet. :-)

Saturday, October 28, 2006

4:30 pm - 3:00 am

Getting out of French class early
Yessss!!
Riding home in the rain
Brrrr
Bekah seeing Shingle Paradise for the first time
Aren't we cute?
Putting away groceries
They bought pears!
Half-vegetarian lasagna
Guess which half I ate?
Half of a movie with Morgan Freeman in in
There's a reason it was only half...
Ten minutes of a movie in Swedish
There's a reallllly good reason it was only ten minutes...
A whole movie about museum artifacts
You might have heard of Indiana Jones?
Driving, yes, driving home
Hey! It was raining!
Drinking tea
With honey
Watching what can only be categorized as a chick flick
And what's the matter with that?
Talking on the couch of love til rather late
What can I say...I'm a girl

And how was your Friday night?

Monday, October 23, 2006

being romantic, oddly enough

I feel like jumping up and down. This is a lovely gem I stumbled upon almost accidentally. It is true that half of the reason I feel like jumping is that it fits perfectly into the journal I am writing for poetry class, but the other half is because it is just so beautiful. Sigh... and I am the least romantic member of Shingle Paradise, too! (This has been proven. Ask for details if you need them.)

Without further ado, let me present poem 20 by Petrarch, translated from Italian by A. S. Kline:

Ashamed sometimes that your beauty,
lady, is still silent in my verses,
I recall that time when I first saw it,
such that nothing else could ever please me.

But I find the weight too great for my shoulder,
a work not to be polished by my skill:
the more my wit exercises its force
the more its whole action grows cold.

Many times my lips have opened to speak,
but my voice is stilled in my chest:
who is he who could climb so high?

Many times I've begun to scribble verses:
but the pen, the hand, and the intellect
fell back defeated at their first attempt.


*wistful dreamy look*

A guy who admits that he can't write poetry about you is very appealing (never mind that he just dashed off fourteen beautiful lines...)

Sunday, October 22, 2006

a very blow-by-blow account

I feel like a little elementary kid writing a "What I Did on My Summer Vacation" essay but here goes...

What I Did This Weekend
by Sara Young

Friday evening began with a bit less of a bang than I had hoped because Dan had put up his Mustang for the winter and picked me up in some red SUV dealie instead. I swallowed my disappointment and threw my backpack in the backseat. After more wrong turns than either of us feel like discussing, we ended up somewhere near Whitestown (I think...?) at some of Bekah's friends' farm. After admiring their kitten, three pianos and organ and bonfire, Laurie, Bekah, Dan and I took off for Starbucks where we met Ana. We hung out at Starbucks until far past the time they locked the doors. Bekah helped Ana cheat at checkers and I talked on Laurie's phone for her and explained to our mutual friend Dave why I don't want to date him or anyone else he wanted to set me up with. He was very sweet and happy for me.

There were some misadventures involving a red car that someone had tried to render unstealable by disconnecting some coils or something like that and some Ale-8, and then we headed to Bekah's. Bekah, the gracious host, asked if anyone was hungry and Ana proclaimed a desire for broccoli, which Bekah fulfilled by microwaving some that was leftover for dinner. Dan, in awe of Bekah's procurement of the vegetable, expressed a hunger for shrimp alfredo. Bekah said, "We have frozen shrimp in the freezer!" And that is how I ended up making shrimp alfredo at 2 am. It turned out rather well, not to be a braggart.

Getting in bed was accomplished...before 4:30 sometime. Getting out of it was accomplished by 11 am. Bekah's mom made us breakfast and we played around on facebook and stuff until Laurie got off work and came over. The plan was made to go to Starbucks with our respective textbooks and study. Really. You can ask Bekah's mom.

But then....Dave called (same one). He was on his way to Wyoming and half-jokingly told us we could use his unlocked house to throw a party. We asked if we could ride his horses. He told us we were probably too sissy to actually ride them, but go ahead and try. Does that sound like a challenge to you? I've been longing to ride since summer anyway. So, we got out there and caught two horses. Laurie rode a fat furry ball of cantakerousness around in one pasture with a halter and a leadrope. I put a bridle on a mare in the adjacent pasture. I didn't fall off but there were some screaming episodes and a cowboy-hat-flying off incident. When you are in a field of horses, and the horse next to yours comes up cantering and bucking, it shouldn't be too hard to figure out what your horse will want to do if she's got any spirit at all. And when you don't have a saddle it is a bit more slippery than normal.

This is getting long. If you got this far, congrats. Keep going.

When we had finished our riding adventure we added our own dear sweet feminine touch to Dave and Ben's house. This included rearranging the furniture in the living room, organizing the junk on the dining room table, and throwing away some nasty moldy food. Moving the nasty food produced a smell so horrific Bekah found a can of air freshener. This may have been a good move had she not sprayed what I am convinced must have been nearly the whole can. If I have respiratory problems later on in life, this will be why. We also created a fake person in Dave's bed using a wig found on his floor. I wish I could see his reaction. But honestly, what do you expect when you leave your house unlocked?

Saturday evening was calm and well, normal. I ate dinner with my parents and then we went to go see Flicka. It was obviously designed to be a sappy girly sort of sentimental film (I told my dad he shouldn't come with us, but he didn't listen.) Horses are not trained the way that movie implies they are. But, it had horses in it, and I was all starry-eyed and happy from having been around them, so it was fun. After we got home I stayed up (too) late writing in my journal, petting my cat and just thinking about stuff.

Sunday morning my dad made waffles and I went to church. He let me drive his black BMW 535is which was simply fabulous. I get to drive it about three times a year. It is very dear and near to his heart. Dr. Sam Chao from China preached and told us lots of stories about things going on in China. The people there thirst for suffering. They see it as a way God strengthens their faith and they think it is a blessing. We in our heated SUVs and 200 cable channels and wireless internet in cozy little West Lafayette apartments just don't get it.

Sunday afternoon I think I took a nap and read Romans 6. I believe that's it. My mom and dad and I drove to Lafayette, went to evening service, talked to some people at church and went out for dinner with Jessica. Italian. Mmm. Maybe I don't mind if Jessica wants to make pasta every night it's her turn to cook after all. Actually, I don't mind at all, but I think she needs to know how to make other things.

This post needs to be over. I need to go to bed. Tomorrow begins a new week, a new chance to live every moment for God, a new opportunity to have adventures to blog about, a new sun to bask in.

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

interspersed

study
It has been scientifically proven that
read James
one cannot study for long periods of
study
time and absorb everything; thus periods
fall asleep (oops)
of staring at books and cramming your
study
brain full of facts (or what your professor
take a shower
claims to be facts) must be interspersed
study
with other activities. Furthermore
pick a house
some of these activities must be of the
study
extremely fun variety if more studying
eat chicken and rice and broccoli
than three hours is to be accomplished
study
in one day. Lindy is about as extremely
dance!!
fun as you can get and doing it outside
study
on the Slayter Hill stage for the very
sleep
last time this season is quite enjoyable.

Monday, October 16, 2006

autumn

The morns are meeker than they were -
The nuts are getting brown -
The berry's cheek is plumper -
The Rose is out of town.
The Maple wears a gayer scarf -
The field a scarlet gown -
Lest I should be old-fashioned
I'll put a trinket on.

Don't tell me you don't like to read poetry, because you just did. Don't tell me you don't like Emily Dickinson, because you just read some of her work, and you enjoyed it, didn't you? Admit it!

Part of my Sunday afternoon was spent reading poetry just for the fun of it. Other portions of it were spent talking to Laurie (who came up to visit! yay!), reading II Corinthians and snoozing gently wrapped up in my sister's fuzzy white blanket.

Tomorrow I have a midterm in Theories of Communication (COM 102). Thus I must go to bed, but first I shall leave you with some insightful knowledge. One quote I recall to have amused me when we were studying Interpersonal Deception Theory (aka "the theory that teaches you to be a good liar") comes from Freud concerning observations of a liar...

"If his lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips; betrayal oozes out of him at every pore."

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

glimpses

If you were to take a look through my eyes this weekend, here are some things you would have seen...

~ a black stretch of pavement ahead reaching into the night. Yes, I got to drive, (my mom's car all the way to Bloomington!) and it was pretty sweet.

~ a smelly goat beneath my fingers getting sheared. (Take note of the "a".) Apparently I am the only repeat goat-shearing visitor to the Wegener's.

~ a certain blonde head that I have been looking forward to getting to meet. See Kara's blog for more details. She was looking forward to meeting this blonde head even more than I was.

~ a rather greenish lake with a mysterious film spread across parts of it. It was perfectly canoe-able lake however. It got more canoe-able when Andrew and I got rid of the loud, complaining cargo in the middle of our canoe. (She decided to climb into Kara and Keith's canoe instead, and thankfully did not tip either canoe in this process.)

~ Ellie, Laurie, and Jessica sitting across from me in the park, eating fast food and talking and talking and just having a good time.

~ The view through the changing trees at Eagle Creek Park, where Laurie and I tried unsuccessfully to get lost hiking. I am so glad we got a day of being outside in before it gets cold, and even gladder that I have great friends like Laurie who will go do random stuff with me.

~ another road, also in the dark, going by slightly slower because Josh was driving, which led me back to Lafayette and back to Shingle Paradise

~ Kara sitting across from me, cross-legged on the carpet with her laptop in her lap, doing the same thing I am: wasting time online when we both know full well that we have stuff to read for anthropology tomorrow...roommates are such good influences!

Friday, October 06, 2006



The second hand is different than the other hands. It is slender and red as it scurries around its glass cage. My eyes follow my quarry. It is trying to make me dizzy. I will stop its mad, pointless dash. I will brace myself against the wall like a fly as I break the glass cage. I will grasp the slender point with two fists. I will not fall backwards. I will leap nimbly down, point in hand, and I will puncture my forehead with the slender object. I will not bleed. My skin will engulf the second hand and it will be gone. Somewhere it may float in the confines of my mind but I shall never see it again.

What? Don't tell me you don't watch the clock anxiously on Friday afternoons before October break! Don't tell me it doesn't mess with your head!

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

splurge

Splurge is one of those delicious words. It's fun to say and fun to do. Yesterday, Kara, Jessica and I took a bike ride to Goodwill in the wonderful summer-like weather and I ended up spending sixteen entire dollars. At Goodwill, that's splurging. However I now possess three great shirts for fall/winter and a skirt that Jessica picked up and said, "Sara! This skirt looks like you!" She was right. It bonded with me instantly as soon as I tried it on.

Dear readers, I am excited to present you with an...

Extra credit opportunity for zealous readers of my blog!!!
If you desire to score some brownie points (not necessarily in the form of physical brownies, at least not until this week is over), read this poem. It is only 32 words. It will take 30 seconds to read and the same amount of time to ponder.
I can't imagine not wanting to enrich my mind. I am loving every minute of it, especially poetry class and finally getting 10/10 on anthropology quizzes.