Dames and Dragons

I have a dream: to make my own dress for a Renaissance Fair, and then volunteer there. I don't really know how to sew yet, but have until the summer to learn and make a dress. If anyone so cares (or dares) to join me, please do. (The actual fair is yet to be decided on...I am currently looking into one in the catskills).

Sailor's Grave

My recent sea themed reading voyages (Life of Pi, Moby Dick, The Old Man and the Sea), reminded me of a song my dad always sang to me when I was little. I found the words so thought I'd share. But like any good sailor, I only sing when there's rum around.

The Mermaid

Twas Friday morn when we set sail
And we were not far from the land
When the captain, he spied a lovely mermaid
With a comb and a glass in her hand

O the ocean's waves will roll
And the stormy winds will blow
While we poor sailors go skipping to the top
And the landlubbers lie down below (below, below)
And the landlubbers lie down below

And up spoke the captain of our gallant ship
And a well-spoken man was he
I have me a wife in Salem by the sea
And tonight she a widow will be

And up spoke the cookie of our gallant ship
And a red hot cookie was he
Saying I care much more for my pots and my pans
Than I do for the bottom of the sea

Then up spoke the cabinboy, of our gallant ship
And a nasty little lad was he.
I'm not quite sure I can spell "mermaid"
But I'm going to the bottom of the sea.

Then three times around went our gallant ship
And three times around went she
Three times around went our gallant ship
And she sank to the bottom of the sea

Well if you liked that enough to read the whole thing, click this link and you can hear it: http://www.thebards.net/music/lyrics/The_Mermaid_Song.shtml

Finis

"Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee" (p.550).
After three and a half months aboard the Pequod, I thought I would conquer Moby Dick. But it was indeed he who conquered me.

Under the Sea

This juvenile boxfish was found on a recent expedition into the "coral triangle" bordered by the Phillipines, Malaysia and Indonesia. They went three miles below the surface and discovered this crazy creature. Woah.

Roadtrip

I've been keeping updated on everybody else's blog (by everybody, I mean all 3 people), but forgot about updating my own. So for those who haven't given up on my neglected blog and still come for a visit, here are some selections from me and Anzie's recent roadtrip.....
(I uploaded them in reverse time order by accident. Anywhoo, below (in order posted) are Washington D.C., Great Smoky Mountains-with loyal frog companions, Shenandoah Valley, Alabama- backyard, Alabama- baby cemetery, Price of Gas, North Carolina)

Crazy Ahab

"All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick. He piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart's shell upon it."
Moby Dick, p.177. Yes, that's still all I'm up to.

Excerpt from 'Life of Pi'

"No!No!No! My suffering does matter! I want to live! I can't help but mix my life with that of the universe. Life is a peephole, a single tiny entry onto a vastness- how can I not dwell on this brief, cramped view I have of things? This peephole is all I've got!"