A Visitor

A experimental paragraph I wrote describing an environment and a fictitious character's reaction to it.

     Sam opened his eyes, the ringing sound faded away as the last streaks of blue cleared from his vision.  He sat up, looked around, and found that he was in a forest.  A very ancient forest by the look; old gnarled trees with massive limbs reaching in all directions stood at regular intervals from each other.  He drew in a deep breath and slowly let it out for the smell of the forest was not, as one might expect, musty or rotten but fresh and energizing.  He stood, began to walk around, and smiled.  The sun shone down in great shafts between the branches of the trees, illuminating the thick oak leaves.  As he walked, all was quiet except for a slight breeze which rustled in the leaves overhead.  It was not an eerie quiet but a peaceful and yet surreal quiet.  This was no wonder to Sam of course, the places those strange doors led to always seemed so very real while at the same time carried a hint of replication, like a painting which looks realistic but at the same time is just a painting.  If only I knew it were real, he thought.  He walked over to one of the trees and brushed his hand against its rough bark.  He stood there for what seemed like only a few minutes, but could have been hours, when he was startled back to his senses by a beeping sound.  He looked down at the small digital stopwatch on his right arm which read 00:10 and counting.  “Time to go,” he said aloud, then returning to where he had lain before lay down and waited.  The stopwatch continued beeping with every second that passed, 3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . . 0 . . . .  Suddenly the trees, the light, the moss on the rocks all flickered blue and in a second, was gone.

How to Train Your Dragon

Yesterday . . . no, the day before yesterday the family and I went and saw How to Train Your Dragon at the [two] dollar theater.  I have to say, I loved it.  Great story, great soundtrack, other than a very few things here and there, it is now one of my favorite animated movies yet.  I was thinking of writing my own review of the movie but after reading an article by N. D. Wilson on it which pretty much says everything I would've, I decided to just post a link to his article.

Here's the article.

And here's the awesome trailer:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHUhygdAZIw

Mini Things.

Yesterday - like I do on most Mondays - I mowed the yard.  Our yard is quite large so it usually takes two to three hours to finish.  During these monotonous hours of Monday mowing (I just came up with that on the fly!) I usually have two, or sometimes three, sided conversations with myself.  I'll even base different sides of the conversation off of my friends.  It can get pretty intense (basically, awesome).

If I'm not carrying on a conversation I like to use the time to do a lot of good, hard thinking.  Not just ordinary thinking but thinking.  Like thinking about what it means to have true happiness, or why people love to dump the the Law of Moses when Jesus specifically said that he had not come to abolish the Law but to fulfill it (Matthew 5:17-18).  Yeah, thinking.

Other times when I mow I simply, well, daydream.  Today was one of those other times.  Now I will attempt to describe to you all that I daydreamed about (don't ask me why). 

At the start, when I first got on the mower, I was already thinking about all of my various friends and their personalities (now you know where I get the idea to include them in my conversations).  I noted how a sizable portion of my good friends are out-of-state.  Not to say that I don't have any good friends locally; I do.  I pondered this and after awhile came to the conclusion that the reason my out-of-state friends are really good ones is because in order for us to keep up a relationship we have had to make an effort to do so.  And in doing so it has made the friendship strong.

With that conclusion, the previous thread of thoughts came to a close.  For awhile I simply watched the grass being brutally run over, chopped to pieces, and then thrown back to whence it came.  It occurred to me how tough a plant grass actually is.  Think about it.  That's what I did.

After that, my thoughts hopped from one thing to another for awhile.  I cannot remember what all they hopped on.  During this time I kept on hitting rocks that would, when run over, make a loud noise and launch through the grass chute, disturbing my thoughts.  I became quite angry with the rocks and their rudeness of getting in the way of the mower.

Soon after this I finished up the section of the yard to be mowed with the riding mower and it was time to move on to the section to be done with the push mower (we mow the field beside our house with a riding mower and the grass around the house with a push mower).

Now, I have always been fascinated by small things, particularly scale model miniatures.  I've thought it would be cool to have a whole room just for creating miniature towns or scenes in.  Of course, even though it would be cool to have something like this, there wouldn't be a whole lot of practicality in it; it would be a hobby.  Not to say hobbies are impractical, it would just be an impractical hobby for me.  Miniature sets can become quite expensive to make and at this point in life I am looking for things that give me money rather than take.  I'm looking for assets.  I thought about mini things for a time as I push-mowed.  Now you can see why I titled this post "Mini Things."

After awhile my thoughts of mini things disintegrated and went on to many things, which I don't remember.  At any rate, soon after my thoughts went to many other things I finished up the last bit of yard, put all the mowing stuff away, and headed inside to freshen up for supper.  I really don't know were I'm going with all this but in any event you've had a small peek inside my head and saw how I think when I have nothing else to do (mowing requires very little brain work).

* * *

Before I sign off I just wanted to say: Happy Sixth of July Everyone!  I know, I know.  I'm a little late for the Fourth.  Speaking of the Fourth, I was going to tell you what we did on the Fourth.  Here's what we did, ready?  Nothing much.  Come to think of it we really just hung around the house the whole day until my parents and older brother went to a wedding in the evening.  I know what you're thinking: "how un-patriotic of them to not celebrate our very own country's birthday."  But just hold yer horses and don't get yer panties in a wad, because we did celebrate . . . on the third.  We went to some friends house, ate hamburgers and hot dogs and then lit some sparklers and in general, had a good time.  Isn't that the point of holidays? :P

Well, I'm getting tired of writing so I will leave you with a cool song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLvsS6o0hJY&playnext_from=TL&videos=lPZ-BjcD3CA

'Til next time,

Yours Truly