Random, poetry and songs

Saturday, 3/29/03
A Celtic blessing:
May he road rise up to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face.
May the rain fall soft upon your field.
And until we meet again,
May God hold you in the palm of his hand.

I got two new pens! What I wrote to do today, I actually did before dinner yesterday. It is 4:15pm and I haven't yet left my room. Have I been being productive? Not really, but for the first period in my life I'm okay with that. I've been putting my pictures in the little photo albums they gave me at the photo shop. I can't wait to do my scrapbook!

Sunday, 3/30/03
I am, as usual on Sundays, waiting for the train after church. It was a nice meeting, though I was tired. Last night we switched to daylight savings and I found out too late to get enough sleep. I was determined to get enough sleep last night, but I was writing a scene and it took longer than I anticipated. First I was interrupted by dinner, then Omar came in and started talking to Cady and me. We had good laughs about various profs in the College of Architecture.

Next week is General Conference and I'm so excited! The thing, though, is that it's at weird hours, and in Prato, over an hour away. But the trains will work out fine. The question is how to get there once I'm in Prato. I'll call the elders on Friday to see if there's another sister riding the train, and if not they'll meet me at the train station.

To finish about the rest of the weekend, on Friday I went up to the studio to grab my project, supposedly to work on, but really I went because I couldn't stand it any longer without my pen. I can't stand blue pens. Mine have to be black. On the way down I stopped at Valerie and Carmen's place. They happened to have just started watching Notting Hill. So I watched it with them on Carmen's laptop. Our hostel in London was near Notting Hill, and we went to Portobello market the last day there, so I felt I had to see the movie that was set there. I found it quite dull. I ran my errands right before dinner and looked at my pictures during dinner. Directly afterward, we watched O Brother Where Art Thou. Now that is a great film.

Tuesday, 4/1/03
I hope you don't mind
I hope you don't mind
That I put down in words
How wonderful life is
Now you're in the world!

That song is beautiful and I love it. Is that by Elton John?

Now I'm sitting, not listening to Marco's lecture. I can't when so much is on my mind. One good thing has happened. Last night when I was wasting time playing on the computer while waiting to see if the internet would begin to work, Dixie said she wanted to go to Pompeii and so we made a plan to go this weekend. Exciting! I was so afraid I wouldn't find anyone to go with me.

I just have to add that I've been reading some of Robert Burns' poetry, and some of his poems I really like. The only trouble is choosing poems I can identify with, whose subjects I know something about, since a lot of them are about people. It's nice because there's a glossary in the back to translate the Scottish dialect words. My favorite is "Scots What Hae", Robert the Bruce's address to the Scots before Bannockburn, which I'm sure they used for inspirtation in Braveheart.

I just went to another Marco lecture outside in the courtyard. He told a story about how his grandfather, a rather frightening man, gave him an apple. He opened the apple and exclaimed, "It has a worm inside!" His grandfather boxed his ears and said, "If the worm is in the apple, that means it is good!"