Best Definition of Friendship I've Ever Found

"What is a friend? Friends are people with whom you dare to be yourself. Your soul can be naked with them. They ask you to put on nothing, only to be what you are. They do not want you to be better or worse. When you are with them, you feel as a prisoner feels who has been declared innocent. You do not have to be on your guard. You can say what you think, as long as it is genuinely you. Friends understand those contradictions in your nature that lead others to misjudge you. With them you breathe freely. You can avow your little vanities and envies and hates and vicious sparks, your meannesses and absurdities, and in opening them up to friends, they are lost, dissolved on the white ocean of their loyalty. They understand. You do not have to be careful. You can abuse them, neglect them, tolerate them. Best of all, you can keep still with them. It makes no matter. They like you. They are like fire that purges to the bone. They understand. You can weep with them, sing with them, laugh with them, pray with them. Through it all--and underneath--they see, know, and love you. A friend? What is a friend? Just one, I repeat, with whom you dare to be yourself."

C. Raymond Beran, in Bits & Pieces, September 19, 1991, p. 3-4.

Please Pray!

Isn't it handsome? I certainly think so, this is the table display for the signing event in the smallest of the three stores. In less than a week, Wayne Thomas Batson will be there from 5-8pm will be there and we will be having an awesome time, despite Bryan Polivka not being able to make it. I have had a dozen problems with this particular event everything from having to revamp the signs to props not showing up at the right time to people not sure that they could make it. There is always cost involved when the store does something like this and I take quite a bit of risk myself telling the owner that it will be fun and profitable. This first signing I'm not too worried about, it's kinda in Wayne's back yard and even the fans with books are going to be coming out to say hi to him, play with the props and revel in the pirate decor. He's going to do a reading from Isle of Fire if we get enough of a turn out and I have some door prizes for those that show up too. Not to mention pirate trivia that we'll have posted and did I mention the props? Yeah, it's going to be a fun time. I sure would love some prayer from you all though, it's been probably the roughest event I've put together to date. Here are some of the others snaps from around the store advertising the event.









That's the front window there, the photo taken from the inside looking out and beside the most awesome Isle of Swords is an early birthday present for me. The rings actually rotate within one another as well as collapse nearly flat. This is the first rotational globe that I've seen which is able to swing and change its' presentation as well as being reasonably priced. Mom bought it while I was drooling over it and then said she thought it would be cool to have as a prop for the signing so would I like it early? I said yes, yes please!










This is from the outside (ignore the dirty window please) looking in at the display. The glare is rather horrible but I am extremely proud of that iron cross there which usually hangs in my room. I thought it did very well to represent the monks in the book which might have had something that plain hanging on the walls in their cells. The gold coins have been a real big hit and everyone wants one. They are cool. Theyappear to be metal until you pick one up and see the minor imperfections and feel the weight of it, then you know it's plastic. The pouch my brother brought back for me from Jamacia when he was there on his missions trip years and years and years ago.

See? Being a pack-rat pays off.






This is the wall behind the front counter, and that ships wheel is mine, it hangs on my wall when not in use as a prop for the signing and the lamp over there is also from my personal collection, purchased to be used as a bookend from Tuseday Morning (TM) for $9.00 on clearance. I liked the nautical look of it, and it feels substancial when you pick it up. Look at all those lovely jewel toned books. They are so reasonably priced in paperback too, just $9.99 retail. And, see those glorious seals? Yup, lost chapter editions.


















This is the last photo for tonight, but I had to include it because it's The Rise of the Wyrm Lord that for whatever reason didn't get the cool colored print in the paperback edition and yet the cover is my favorite. Why? Because of all the action taking place there, and I can remember when Wayne did a talk at the local library and had the cover art for we fans to look at and I was so disappointed. On the orginal cover there were these horrid red cat eyes in the cave that made it look so weird and out of proportion and really really B-movie like and then, through the careful words of the Capt'n the art got changed and I was sooooo happy! So, I had to put the little letter opener on it and take a picture.




In conclusion, I would ask that you pray, and pray hard for this week for me and for my store. I am not asking the Lord for number, though that would be cool, and I'm not asking for sales, though that would make my job easier. I'm asking specifically that the Lord open the eyes of the owner and the various managers to the fact that there is a hunger for these type of events, and also that every last person that shows up be blessed by the event in one way or another. Book sales and $$$ are great, but I can't take them into eternity with me. They're props, staging, like the items I used to set up for the event and one day they will be gone. The people who come to the event, they are the real treasure, and they are the eternal beings that will spend all of forever with Christ, or without Him.

Ooooh cool!

Taken from M-W (Merriam-Webster Online)

descry • \dih-SKRYE\

*1 : to catch sight of

2 : find out, discover

Example Sentence:

Liang descried a bluebird flitting near the edge of the glade.

Did you know?

With "descry" and the more common "decry" ("to express strong disapproval of"), we have a case of linguistic double-dipping. That is, English borrowed from the same French root twice. Both words ultimately come from the Old French verb "decrier," meaning "to proclaim" or "to decry." English speakers borrowed the term as "descry" in the 14th century and used it to mean "to proclaim" or "to spy out from a distance" (as a watchman might) and eventually simply "to catch sight of" or "discover." Meanwhile, in French, "descrier" itself developed into the modern French "décrier" ("to disparage, to decry"). English speakers borrowed this word as "decry" in the 17th century. Be careful not to confuse "descry" and "decry." They may be close relatives, but in modern English they have distinct meanings.

Fingerlings

Oh! Rhu's remembering sparked my remembering too! (Again)

When we lived in New Jersey, every summer we would travel the three and a half hour from our house to visit our grandparents in Maryland. At that point, our main transport was a Dodge Malibu called "Fat Albert" after the cartoon character Dave and I both loved, voiced by Bill Cosby (Who was and is to this day bar-none the comedian everyone in my family adores. Dad discovered him when he was in I SPY and has been a life-long fan, Mom discovered him in the Cosby Show and entered into the adoring of him, and Dave and I discovered him in Fat Albert and the Gang in reruns and promptly followed suit) and it had seats covered in a pale brown vinyl. Wretched material, created for the sole purpose of torturing children. In the winter when I would wear skirts to school and church it was so cold and slick it was impossible to keep balanced on the seat so that the belt didn't cut into my hips and stomach. In the summer it was worse, skirts or shorts were murder because the backs of my thighs would stick to the vinyl and peeling myself off the seat when we were wherever it was we were going was sheer hell. The worst possible thing however was the summer 3 1/2 hour trip to my Grandparents, because of the vinyl, because Dave and I would be forced into close proximity to one another in a hot, close space, and also because Skipper who was our beloved dog at all times save that car trip would be wedged between us. Unlike neutral Switzerland, Skipper didn't sit peacefully and allow Dave and I to exchange threats. He was a hyperactive Germany intent on escaping the car by any means, including windows, and sadly Dave and I each possessed a window in our territory of the backseat. He continually invaded our area, scratching bare legs, slobbering on whatever books we were trying to read or tapes we were trying to get into our personal cassette players to listen to, and also working to sit on our laps with his his hot, smelly, furry body so he could ram his nose out the window and then his skull, and then the upper part of his body, and then jump out and escape.

It was during one of the three and a half our trips that Dave came up with "Fingerlings" which was to be an amusement that like FirstOnes went everywhere with us and we taught to others. Here is how to make a fingerling, if I had a camera I'd give you a visual but here's some simple instructions, and most of you have probably done something similar anyway. So without further ado take one of your hands (it doesn't matter which) and curl up your ring and pinky fingers tight against your palm as if you were going to make a fist, but leave the thumb, the index finger and the middle finger loose. Good! Now, the thumb and the middle finger are the Fingerling's legs, and the index is the head/neck of the creature which if you half close your eyes could perhaps look a little like a brachiosaurus. I said, a little like. *Ahem* Anyway, that is a Fingerling. Our were incredibly curious and mischievous creatures. Right Fingerling would fight left Fingerling and kill it, and then begin to eat the dead Fingerling. Hey, Dave and I got so good with them that they were better than hand puppets. We could show shame, anger, happiness, fear, and a variety of other emotions with our Fingerlings. This game was played a lot in the car, and most especially in boring stores (meaning any that weren't toy stores) where the Fingerlings could explore the racks of clothing, dusty glass shelves and pretty much anything else in the store that wasn't breakable.

The benefits of the Fingerlings were that:
1) We couldn't lose them or leave them behind (they were after all attached to our bodies)
2) Didn't run on batteries
3) Amused us for hours and hours of time and allowed our parents to shop relatively unmolested by "Mom/Dad can I have this/get this

The only down side really was that people who saw our fingerlings often stared as if we were insane. Obviously the benefits outweighed the drawbacks and Dad and Mom encouraged this game for years and years.



Good Memory Jog Rhuness!

More More!

Tagged! If You Read This Consider Yourself Tagged Too!

Rhu tagged me on my other blog and I had such fun remembering I thought I'd put what I wrote here too. Btw, I don't always post exactly the same thing on each blog, sometimes I'll put an idea or an entry just on the one and not on the other. Xanga gets read more but I love the layout of this one and so, I keep them both. Anyway-enjoy!


Your Longest Running Game Played as a Child


That would have to be one simply entitled First Ones though not First Ones the Movie, sadly. First Ones prime players were my brother David and myself though it often included Lloyd, his best friend when we lived in New Jersey, and Kelly who was Lloyd's sister and my best friend too. First Ones was a game only to be played outside, and was best played in the Summer when the daylight hours were long and there was nothing to keep us from staying out from after breakfast to twilight with only a brief intermission for a scarfed lunch of cheese sandwiches. The gist of the game was this; Dave and I (and Kelly and Lloyd half the time) were the advanced scouts of a people coming to Earth. We were to make notes and take samples and send back the reports and things to the oncoming ships so the others would know what to find when they arrived. We were equipped with hover-bikes (our bikes) which ''flew'' so high over the buildings that they looked , from our point of view, like the pebbles variation in the pavement of our street, and 'pocket recorders' conveniently were invisible to everyone but ourselves. Had you happened upon us during around of First Ones you might have seen our hov-bikes abandoned haphazardly by the curb (we weren't good at landing them all the time) and the two of us or the four of us on our knees, waving our pocket recorders over thick clusters of clover in someone's front lawn. One would be carefully extracting one clover, stem, roots, leaves, everything and even the dirt cluster around it and placing it into a Tupperware (TM) container for further analysis, another would pull out a small and deadly weapon that had been disguised as a squirt gun, and the other two would be making notes in little Mead (TM) spiral bound note books, the kind that our teachers required us to keep in school to keep assignments straight. We collected all kinds of flora and fauna (as you no doubt can guess) as well as insects, interesting rocks, and occasionally small toads or snails. What I remember most about the game is the way we would talk with one another. Here's a rough out of a conversation:

Me: Commander, look what do you think that odd building is sir?" *points to our own house*

Dave: I'm not sure, Captain but I believe it might be an old type of prison or trash dump. Let's go and see, but be careful.

Me: Commander, what is this marvel? *Points to a tree*

Dave: Oh, that is according to our research called a Poodle. The people who live here keep them as pets and sometimes eat them.

Me. Commander, we are being watched, I can feel it. To our bikes!

All cars were enemy craft that were trying to beat us to earth and to stop our ships from coming and we had to race like mad down the sidewalks and to our driveway which was the only place we could transmit to the oncoming ships from, and any people we met were to be smiled at and then immediately mind-wiped with our deadly weapons which had that one other setting. There was 'kill' and there was 'mindwipe' but no stun.

This game could be played anywhere and usually was. We'd play it on our street, we'd play it on Kelly and Lloyd's street which was a cul-de-sac and we'd play it when we came to visit our Grandparents in another state. We played it too with our new friends when we moved. It was hours and hour of fun and we could play it off of our bikes too, we would play it in the wood behind our house and also in the park that backed up to the wood. It was played in the fall and the spring as well, and sometimes if we felt especially bored with snow ball fights and snow men, in the winter, but my richest memories are the ones that took place in the height of the summer when all the world was ripe for imagination it seemed and there were adventures to be had everywhere.