Public Apology.

My dear, gentle and maybe slightly aggravated readers, I, known only to you as Ophelia, deeply apologize.
I sincerely hope that you are asking, "Why, since she's so perfect, is she apologizing?" but I highly doubt it.
I've been a bad, bad girl. Last night, my mother took me aside and showed me the errors of my ways.*Gasping followed by sobbing pierces the air* Punctuation errors. And Grammar errors. Lots of them. What you see now is the corrected version.
My main problem is that I am addicted to commas. I tend to throw rules to the wind and follow my heart when it comes to punctuation because it's so much more expressive that way. Actually, I'm rather proud of myself for not placing a comma before that "because" because that is one of my most frequent errors. In conclusion, I will try to do better, but until then, let's just say those little so-called, "mistakes" are me taking advantage of poetic license.
P.S. As a side note, my mother claims that poetic license is just an excuse for being lazy.

Ugh; I hate posers!

I positively cannot stand dramatic picture poses. Cameras are supposed to show what you look like! I find it excessively annoying when a friend, or in this case second cousins on my mother's side puts on a face that looks nothing like them in real life. Does anyone else share this annoyance? These are my second cousins:

Trey,

And Asher.

See? they both have these pasted on, horribly morbid fakey faces. It absolutely drives me batty! People are supposed to smile, and look nice in pictures. Try telling that to my sec. cousins though; it's swimming upstream.

Bus Ride

Well, I woke up this morning and decided that I was reasonably sound of mind, so now I will finish telling you the story of our bus ride:
I'll start out by telling you why we were going on the bus ride in the first place; our church was visiting our sister congregations down in Oregon, as every quarter all of the HOFCC churches gather together for a giant service.
I got on the bus and plopped down on to a plush seat, attempting not to think about who had sat there before. It was a nice clean bus, however, so I ceased thinking about it. I exchanged hellos with Bear and Libby, and we compared how early we had woken up. As the morning progressed, we kids grew rowdier and more restless, and we took to playing telephone, which was the only game we could imagine playing in a bus. Nearly everybody started a line, some two, and mine were, "Milly Mallard marches to the Moo goo gai pan (sp?) market," and "Elegant element alamonde (sp?) around avacadoes." I can't even remember how they ended up, but I am positive they were ridiculous. After that, we all talked and joked for long time. Unfortunately, as with most of the kids, I was sitting in the back. And in the back, there was a bathroom. Now, let me explain my point of view: I am completely averse to the idea of a bathroom on a bus. It probably saved us a lot of time at rest stops, but after sitting in the back, I'm not entirely certain it was worth it.
We finally drove into the parking lot, then eagerly jumped out. The service started soon after, so we headed into the auditorium to sing some beautiful songs and listen to a powerful message on discipleship. I am afraid I did not gather its full worth because I was so tired, and I had to pinch myself to stay awake. However, I really enjoyed what I did hear!
After service, we ate lunch and set to work making Italian sodas. As I made them for hours, (it seemed) I got into a rhythm: dash of flavor, splash of half & half, pour soda, stir. Dash, Splash, Pour, Stir . DashSplashPourStir. I finally stopped because I had made so many sodas that my shoulder began to ache. I really must commend Libby for her endurance because she continued slaving away until we ran out of club soda.
I, lazy lump, skipped off to play speed volleyball. I had a blast because it was a "click" sports day for me. Let me explain... normally, I am not, er, um, very good at sports. At. All. However, that day, I felt like I was actually contributing to the team. (At least a little.) I felt so, so, so athletic!
Anyway, after that, we piled into the bus for the long, long drive back. Once home, I crashed, realizing that though tiring, it had been a wonderful, full day.

Four long days

Hi. It is 8:58 PM, but it feels like 11:00. I haven't posted in four days. I think that might be a first, but I'm too tired to calculate it out. You, my hopefully faithful readers, can if you want to. Somehow I have a sneaking suspicion that you won't though.
This morning we got up at 5:00, and loaded stuff in the car, drove to church, then unloaded stuff from the car, then loaded stuff on the bus, then loaded ourselves on the bus for a 3 hour drive down to OR. It was a blast, but if I ever see another food item wrapped in plastic, I think I'll barf.
O.K. I believe I'm too tired to blog. I'm already grossing you out, and I will finish talking about our bus ride when I'm a little more sane.

The poll is up!

Ha! I have the poll up and running like kids on a Chef Boyardee commercial. Sorry, that was really random, but hasn't anyone seen those commercials where the tin man has a label that says "Chef Boyardee soup" or something like that on it, and all the kids run after him?
Nevermind. Well, anyway, please do me a favor and vote on this poll. Hmmm, maybe I should try a different approach... Vote on this poll or else! I know where you live. *Laughs evilly*

My mother, the Egg Princess

Here's a lovely little report that I wrote about my mom.

When my mother was 18, she and some friends flew to Nushygak, Alaska, to work in a Salmon cannery. The nearest phone was 40 minutes away by boat, or 20 minutes away by plane. At first, she worked not many hours, and she would scrounge for the old job. Cleaning the shower stalls was one such job. Mom tells us it was the most disgusting job that she had ever done, and she cleaned them by mixing ammonia and bleach together, (which can kill you,) and dumping them all over the bathroom. Fortunately, she survived the experience. However, mom was not stuck scrubbing toilets for long, because the harder you worked, the better the job you got, and mom was a hard worker. Soon, she was promoted to being an egg princess. An egg princess’ job is to slit open the fish and take out all the eggs. This job was called egg “princess” because it was considered one of the better jobs. Even so, mom worked 16 hours a day on average. At the peak of the season, everybody worked 23 hours a day. The entire work force wore yellow slickers to protect their clothes from being coated in salmon guts. Mom remembers once, a man was showing some new comers how to chop fish heads off on a machine that had a vertical blade that chomped up and down. While the machine was running, he told the workers, “One thing you must never do is stick your hand in the machine, like this:” He stuck his hand in the machine and chopped his hand off. Many of the workers were Japanese and often they would invite mom and her friends over to dinner. Mom describes it as a pleasant experience, always with delicious authentic Japanese food, except once, when it was not so delicious. “One time,” she recalls, “we stayed over there to have special meso soup. Now, meso soup is quite good, but this was special meso soup. I wanted to see what special meso soup looked like, so I peered into the pot- Do you know what chum eggs are? They are huge marble sized salmon eggs. Well, I looked into the pot, and floating around in it were huge, slimy chum eggs, and FINS! Smelly, underbelly fins.” But mom tells me that they had a baker who made absolutely divine pastries. The particular cannery mom worked at could not sell fish to the US because the quality was too poor. Mom told me that one time, the fisherman left huge bins of fish on the docks for four days. If you touched the fish, they were so incredibly old that your thumb would easily go through them. But they processed and packaged it anyway. Mom worked at the cannery for 5 weeks and she earned $4000 dollars. She tells me that when she received her pay check, she was thinking, “This is it?” Now, my mother, the former egg princess has resolved never to eat canned fish again.

P.S. Mom is not nearly old enough to have these pictures be her personal ones. I simply googled Nushagak Alaska cannery.

Errrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh! Website Malfunction

For the last 4 days, I have been trying to load a super awesome movie, so YOU, gentle readers, could enjoy it, but, alas, I cannot because for some reason the website won't allow me to upload the video. And this on top of my being unable to post a poll. I am deeply offended. I think I'll go complain to the authorities.
But on the other hand, I suppose I should be very nice to the people who run the website because they probably work like a lake full of busy beavers. So I can have a blog. For free.
Besides, it would probably be a case of the oldies song, "I fight authority/authority alway wins/" But I'm not really fighting; I'm complaining, so I guess I just typed that out so that I could have an excuse to sing that song, even though those are the only two lines of that song that I know. (Wait, are there any other lines in that song?) That song is so much fun to sing merely because I have absolutely no desire to fight authority.
Well, bye for now. I think all go dance around my bedroom singing, "I fight authority/authority always wins/I fight authority/authority always wins.../

Polls

Alrighty, the results are up for the watermelon poll:

5o% love watermelon!

25% could eat just watermelon for the rest of their lives!

Traitors! Only one person hates watermelon. (Not including me.) That's terrible.

And only 13 people voted on this poll! Can you believe that? I know more people have looked at my blog than 13. 13 stinking votes! Come on! That is totally lame!

So, now the new and improved post is up. You, my gentle readers, get to help choose the name my new Flip video camera shall bear. I expect more of you this time! Everybody vote, or I will throw a big fit. You don't have to be a blogger or have a blogger identity, you just select your option of choice and press the big button that says, "Vote."

P.S. I afraid I have spoken too soon. Yes, I eat my words. The poll widget isn't working. *sigh* maybe in a couple of days.

And now is time for... The Serious Post

Today I am going to try my hand at a more serious post, as it is Sunday. My featured verse is a very familiar one;

Proverbs 15
1 A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.

I have discovered that it is only familiar because it is very, very true. Try it, it works!

THE END

History Lesson

So, as I was irresponsibly blogging, in my own little world, Bracie, who was studying her history book, like a good little cherub, fascinated me with the top fact she derived from her modern U.S. History lesson. She said, out of the blue;

"You know what? Al Gore's wife has ugly knees!"

And so I got up, walked over to her, and I stared at the picture, and I saw that it was true.

My fear...

This picture is of me trying to dodge the camera. I dislike getting my picture taken, except when I'm taking silly goofball pictures. Ask my mother; she will confirm this. She is always saying, "Ophelia, come and get your picture taken! What if you die tomorrow? How will we remember you?"Our digital camera has all these pictures of, say, my arm, or my ponytail because I duck to escape the lens. This video was filmed by Giles:

These are pictures of a photo contest. Competition takes place between two people, in this case, first Paul and me, and then my mother and me. It is incredibly important that both parties are highly paranoid of "the lens" You run around snapping pictures, and in the end, whoever has the most complete picture of the other wins. I won the first contest, and my mother won the second.
Here's my mother trying to take a picture of me and trying to block me from taking a picture of her. The game is most fun if there are things to hide behind and trip over.

I hate Algebra!

Bracie and I both hate math. Here are two videos, which were taken on two separate days.

Ophelia hates Algebra

Bracie hates Algebra

Ophelia: "Aaaaaaagh!!! Bracie, I don't understand this equation! Help. How do I set it up? What should I do?"

Bracie: "Follow your heart!"