You're probably getting exasperated with the incessant stream of Tohunga in this blog, so I'll get to the non-Tohunga news first ( ), that I have final exams next week. I may have English and History switched, but I think this is how they go:
Tuesday:
Biology – Not hard. Entirely multiple choice, but some can be tricky...
English II – Mm... harder. Because a lot is written answers, and though I know the texts pretty well, there are a lot of them...
Wednesday:
French IIIe – Pah! C'est d
There's a Blue Moon tonight...
Second full moon in a month, for those who don't know – a rare occurence. Some calendars will list this full moon as being on June first, but they lie. The full moon occurs this evening, making it the second one in May! It's getting near the end of being a real Blue Moon for me over here on the east coast, but those further west still have time to go and bask in its majesty. (If they're interested in such things.) It figures, of course, that there's heavy cloud
They're so fun!
Onepu, Nuparu, and Taipu emerging from a tunnel
Two Onu-Koronans with a Huna and a Miru in a quarry
One of those watches another Onu-Koronan with a Hau hoisting himself out of a hole
Talvi stands guard on the porch railing
Lumi pondering
Hahli coming out of a clump of dense foliage, the sun filtering gently through the trees above
Hahli again, practicing Willpower in a willow tree (with a little help)
Marka in a wet bush, for some reason
The Astrologer observi
Thanks to Makuta Master, as of Monday I am in possession of five of the Bionicle sets I have wanted ever since the beginning...
The Tohunga! Jala (with Nuparu) was the only one I had had up till now. I've wanted these five since 2001. I'm ecstatic.
Kongu on the porch railing, very bright in the morning sunlight
Kongu again, with Matoro in the background
Onepu coming out of the earth at the base of a tree
Matoro, looking a little lost
Maku and Huki hidden away in the ivy
Group
...What? I had to title this one interestingly somehow.
Just got back from seeing Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World's End... It's my least favorite of the trilogy, without question. Overall I disliked it, but it had its great moments. Unfortunately, the things I dislike far outnumber the things I like.
Barbossa was great. Best pirate captain ever, and acts it. As was the monkey.
Jack was... okay. Hardly as funny as in the first two, methinks. I really hated his entrance scene, where
Remember the invisibility spell from a couple entries ago? We finished translating it today – it is very strange. You perform a ritual and then summon four spirits, who give you an invisibility cloak, but with a catch...
There was also popular request to post the spell, so that I will. Not the full thing, because that would take to long, and the incantations are also rather religious (I told you it was strange), so a summary will have to suffice...
~ Preparation ~
Go out to a secluded
Remember Erato, the plant I bought a couple weeks ago? I spent quite a lot of today outside, either gardening or just sitting around, and I finally repotted her. (It? Plants are hermaphrodites, but this one is named after a female...) Now she has a nice dark green pot instead of the ugly orangey-brown one she came in.
She's an Aglaonema of the Emerald Beauty variety... The yellowish-white flowers are old; only the pale green one, on the left in the first picture above, actually looks nice
Wow.
My Bionicle folder now has more than thirty thousand views. That's quite a lot. I guess... um... thanks to everyone who viewed it? I should have some new MOCs up soon... I hope...
Also, we are now translating an invisibility spell from a medieval spellbook in Latin. It begins by effectively saying that not many people know how to become invisible. And then it has all sorts of strange requirements – it has to be on a Wednesday, the moon must be waxing, you must have recently cut your h
I'm not sure why I titled this that. Maybe it's because in the space of about a week, all the trees around here have suddenly gotten their leaves back... I'm also listening to The Memory of Trees again at the moment, another source of green, since the song always makes me think of an immense forest with bright sunlight filtering through the leaves...
But the "triumph" comes from the fact that I finally finished my research paper! I spent most of the past week writing it, and I really hate wri
I think that the scent of cherry blossoms is easily among my favorite smells in the world. I was so inspired by it yesterday that I wrote a haiku...
Light petals, dark wood
Delicate white rimmed with green
Fairest scent of all
If you didn't know, I'm rather fond of writing haiku. Given that in the last week the growing plant life has bloomed amazingly fast, it works out nicely to mark it with a poem to one of the newly-opened flowers. (Of course, it also figures that in the week that
I have finally seen Riverdance live.
It was Saturday. It was amazing. It was amazingly loud. It was really fun to see the dances and visual effects that accompany the music, then also to finally see the Uilleann pipes played – that (those?) is one of my favorite instruments in the way of sound. Back to the dancing, it's amazing people can move their feet that fast. It's almost scary. But really cool. I love Irish dancing, as well as Celtic music in general, also with the New Age blend some of
At this moment, I am eating a pop-tart, drinking Sprite (oh the glory!), listening to Amarantine (It's in the Rain just finished), and wearing contacts. My eyes are still getting used to the last (and my goodness, they're hard to put in, especially since I have fairly narrow eyes), so things are simultaneously blurry and in focus, but that'll fix itself. It's also grey and cool outside, and was raining earlier.
Life is awesome. *sings along with The River Sings*
Incidentally, the female fo
Bwahaha. They are finishèd.
Yes, Kayvee. With a grave accent.
See the topic for the other five! Including Gahlok Va doing yoga, Lehvak Va doing a somersault, Kayvee and Pahrak Va inspecting the camera, and Tahnok Va being abducted. Whee!
In other news, Friday the Thirteenth was a very enjoyable day for me, as always. I finished writing a story about witches, a cat, and a swimming pool that I started last summer. Then I received a very useful Bricklink order, too, including a number
I bought Thulox yesterday... I like him a lot more than I was expecting to.
He's actually sort of cute. I wish his body were both more substantial and more fixed in construction, but the Kalmah armor keeps his back double-socket from moving around, and the fact that his front socket can move means he can realistically put one leg in front of the other when walking. I would prefer his tail socket fixed in place, though. And because of the vertical alignment of his body sockets, his legs can't
Did you know that Easter is named after a goddess of the dawn?
Or at least it's assumed to be. Both the name and time it's celebrated are thought to come from the Saxon goddess Eostre, a goddess of the dawn and ferility, also known as Ostara to the Norse. Hence the cardinal direction east, the association with rebirth (springtime and the ensuing fertility, the regrowing of plants from the ground), and also the tradition of dying eggs – symbols of life and offerings to Eostre.
Meanwhile, ac
Happy new year! Again! This time it's the Elves'.
"And on the day of the New Year of the Elves, Celeborn and Thranduil met in the midst of the forest; and they renamed Mirkwood Eryn Lasgalen, The Wood of Greenleaves." ~ The Return of the King, Appendix B
Again requiring a conversion from the Shire-calendar date of April 6th to April 7th in the Gregorian calendar. Loa literally means "growth" but is generally used to refer to one year, whereas yén strictly speaking means 144 solar years, b
So titled because that's what the weather's been like at various points today. We've been having one of those annoying April snowstorms. And it was spring just yesterday, too. Hopefully it will be warm and green again next week...
Because then I have Spring Break! At last! Goals include finishing the current chapter of QfLD (unlikely, but if I really try I might make progress!), working on drawings I have going, finishing a short story, and perhaps entering BBC 42.
Other news includes that
I probably had something specific to say here, but if I did I've forgotten it. Sooo...
Finished my revamp of Kongu! Explanations are (and comments should go in) the topic. I considered keeping the Mask of Summoning, but I had decided earlier on that the Kualsi looked much more like Kongu than it did. Plus I drew his mask in something of a hurry and didn't have time to restyle the Mask of Summoning to look Kongu-like.
Henry and I have determined that the worst possible way to die would b
Music: Live to Tell the Tale, Nightwish
Mood: Accomplished
Of greatest interest:
Like how she looks now? Then go see the rest of the Mahri Remixed – you may like the rest even more. (And yay for shameless plugs! ) I just finished drawing Kongu, the last one I needed to do, so I hope to have him up tomorrow.
Secondly, on Saturday I got Nocturn and Axonn. Nocturn is just about completely awesome – lime greeeeeeeen! And glow-in-the-dark blue! – Axonn is a pretty good set, not bad but not
Aside from tennis practice, today's been one of my best birthdays ever...
It's been cloudy and rainy all afternoon, which is my favorite weather. I walked around outside the house in the rain, looked at the various plants beginning to sprout and bud – the late snow we got last weekend has melted, and it's expected to be fairly warm from now on, so spring is finally here to stay. I got pretty drenched but had great fun, then came back inside and sat gazing out the window, writing a poem... Rai
Today is Ovid's birthday! Author of Daedalus and Icarus, Pyramus and Thisbe, and Apollo and Daphne within the Metamorphoses, and the Amores...
I really want to see this happen:
Pyramus falls desperately in love with Cleopatra. Romeo does too. Anthony, meanwhile, is entranced by Juliet. Juliet, feeling slighted and affronted, forms an alliance with Thisbe. Thisbe disguises herself as a man and challenges Anthony to a deul. Cleopatra acts magnificently unconcerned with her suitors. Romeo and
There's this quiz tournament thing going on at my school right now... Yeah, nerdy, but really fun. There wound up being seven teams of four people each, from varying grade levels.
My team is myself, Henry, Dani, and Mike (all Sophomores), and last Friday and today we played against Youri's team (all Juniors). What is really cool is that on Friday, Dani and Mike both had meetings they had to go to, so Henry and I were the only ones playing against a full team of four. And we thoroughly owned
Took the National Latin Exam today... For some reason we took the Prose exam, even though we were supposed to take Poetry. Odd.
It was pretty easy, in general, though there were I think four questions that I really didn't know the answers to. Three of them I narrowed down by process of elimination, and one I took a wild guess at, and by checking afterward I found out I had gotten at least three of them right. (Including the one about Augustus's second wife, which was the wild guess. Though it
At last! Most of the remaining snow melted today, it's 60º as I type this, I can see the ground again, and thanks to the early Daylight Savings Time it's still light outside as I type this, meaning that I can once again do homework by daylight. (I never do homework in the afternoons.) I find it appealing that the first thing I did was Latin, translating the part of Ovid's Pyramus and Thisbe where Pyramus declares that he wants to be savagely eaten by lions.
I took a walk a little earlier, ju
Mood: exhausted
Listening to: Less than a Pearl, Enya
Ohhh, it feels like it's been so long since I've listened to Amarantine (the CD, not the song). I love the songs in Loxian, and the whole album is, as with most anything by Enya, very relaxing, and good for a late winter afternoon...
In Biology, we're finally on plants, and I'm annoyed that we skipped the section on Bryophytes (mosses, liverworts, and hornworts mainly). And we jumped over the chapter on algae entirely. Bryophytes are m
