Testing, testing…

As an exercise to check my brain power (I’ve been down with some sickness this week) I am going to write a story. The secondary goal of my exercise is to throw something together for NinjaEditor to critique. Yes, NinjaEditor has a name but I think of her as “NinjaEditor”, correctly capitalized and slightly deified in my mind. (No, not really deified. Her powers would extend at most to an ability to maintain beverage temperature with her mind or a few mind tricks similar to those emplowed by Jedi.)

The Ramilken Border
or
The Thin Red Line of Death

The Ramilken border moves frequently. Three years ago I thought no more of the phenomena than you probably do but that was before I was drafted. Now I consider the Border’s whimsical tendencies to be bordering on personal insult.

Aware as I am that our private Border issues are not the subject of multi-world discussion I find it hard to believe that there is a corner of the universe that has yet to hear our story. The whole blasted business consumes my life and affects the life of millions of our citizens. And yet, we are unique and known to be so. Bearing that in mind I will take the time to explain the Ramilken Border Problem to my less-persecuted audience.

On other worlds, I am told, border problems are the results of disputes over land. Often the area contested is in the middle of an area of bloody warfare. Apparently entire civilizations have wiped each other out over land. My culture considers the very idea of violence over land to be despicable. Our problem is of an entirely different nature.

A Frustrated Creative Force

There are creative people in the world who’s creativity flows smoothly along well-ordered paths. They are the irrigation-system types, the people who have put serious time and energy into creating structure for their creativity to operate in. The great benefit of being an irrigation artist is that you KNOW that your creative pursuits are being amply watered.

I am not one of those types.

But never doubt me! I’m not knocking the structure of people who have schedules- who paint from 7am-noon then break for lunch after which they work on accumulating references and knowledge until dinner when they go back to painting until bedtime. These people are my heroes. Seriously. I would sew them all multi-coloured capes with my own ivory fingers if I could find these artists.

I aspire to being scheduled. I think it’s the best way to avert frustration and speed learning. You don’t grow in any skill unless you are consistent in doing it.

Frustration dies quickly in well-ordered environments, at least in my own life.

In other thoughts… I’ve got an amazing idea for a story or film. It’s greatest recommendation is that it’s a sci-fi movie with little to no special effects. You’d just need a tank of water and some waterproof prosthetics/makeup. My problem is that I feel like I “tell” instead of “show” when I write. It’s annoying and I’m not sure how to remedy it. Maybe I should ask NinjaEditor….

Also, I am taking piano lessons and LOVING it!

I need a studio

At the risk of sounding like a COMPLETE hermit/anti-social, I am in desperate need of a place to work undisturbed. Maybe it is artistic immaturity, but the knowledge that at any moment someone could come into the room completely ruins my “zone”. It’s not just about not being talked to- it’s about the constant tension of anticipated interruption.

I liked my room in NC for that reason. No-one ever came in without asking first- they would never have thought of such a thing. Indeed, they rarely came in anyway.

I don’t have a space like that here. I could use my room but my room is taken over by an enormous bed. There is the little studio in the corner of dad’s office but it’s dad’s office and he won’t let me oil paint in there. (Nor would I be comfortable doing so even if he didn’t object since the whole room is carpeted and the light isn’t great.) The garage is too cold and people go in and out all the time.

It may not sound like a big deal to have undisturbed space but it’s very important. At least, it’s important if I even want to become serious about art. (And since there’s nothing else to which I am as much inclined as art and I have all kinds of time in which to be serious….)

Sigh.

The Lord has a plan, and I have an eye on a basement room at Union Hill….

Life After

Life is full of afters. In fact, every moment you live is a moment after something.

The good news is that same moment is simultaneously a moment “before”.

The best news is that each moment exists. You can live in it, breathe in it, make choices. Laugh, cry or rage as you must. I choose to laugh more often than I rage (but only slightly more than I cry) because that is who I am. Let me tell you, it’s a darned good way to live.

I’m not always the best at behaving as I should. Sometimes I’m snarky and sometimes I am so mad that I can’t see straight and often I am wounded by things that shouldn’t really bother me. This is my weakness. But we of the Union Hill persuasion decided tonight that crap is alright as long as you own it. So I’m owning it! I’m not a saint and I’m not an angel and people are exhausting.

“So bring your crap. We compost!”

Also “Qaplah!”

A Love Letter to NC

As most of you probably know I have decided not to move back to NC. I have to tell you, it was a wretched learning process just making the decision. A people-pleasing nature combined with a lack of trust in my own decisions with a little “what exactly IS my dream” make for rough going. (But you wouldn’t believe how stretching it is!)

What it came down to is that the reasons I had for going back were reasons birthed from fear. Fear of letting down my NC family and fear that if I made the wrong decision God was going to punish me. It sounds ugly written out and it was ugly in my heart. Not to mention that both are LIES. Firstly because my NC family loves ME and that love is not dependent on whether or not I spend the rest of my life in the same town as them. Secondly because God is good and He is pleased with me and we are going to run together forever! God is good ALL THE TIME and if anything matters then everything matters!

Letters to My Sister

What you are going to read today is something called “The Letter Game”. It operates on the basic principle of two characters, separated for some reason, writing letters to one another. Jennifer (my sister) and I decided to play together as a way to pass time and work out our writing muscles. So bookmark both my blog and hers and prepare for the adventure.

Danika Cain
Pass # 26572
S.S. Sumpter
out of New Haven
bound for Planet 6 Beta

Dani!

Before I get down to the trivial details of my trivial life and the less trivial details of your VERY interesting life I have to tell you something… It’s no big secret though you won’t have heard it over any of the Com channels unless you have high security clearance or know the Trinic method of decryption. A week ago Wednesday one of the women working in our experimental sector at IG was found dead in her lab. Now that isn’t even that unusual these days- we’ve had four suicides this year- but what I found later is MOST unusual.

You see, anytime something like this happens the High Pu-Baw and Senior Muck-a-Mucks  have us do an internal investigation. All of the other biologists with my clearance or higher were gone at a conference in Japan so I did the gene testing. Dani, her DNA had been altered! I’m not talking alien/mutant altered. It was so subtle that I almost missed it. Just one tiny DNA strand shifted ever so slightly… In layman’s terms someone went in and shuffled her DNA. I’m not sure what effect it would have had on her… I know it didn’t kill her. She died of mercurial poisoning.

Oh what a way to spend the day!

I think the best thing a person can do for themselves is to occasionally spend an entire day doing just as they like. I took one of those days today after having been metaphorically smooshed by a combination of non-stop socialization and an overworked brain.

The forenoon was spent praying, reading, sitting in the corner of my bedroom and texting with James as he took the manly responsibility of organizing a trip to the movies. We didn’t end up going to the movies and the praying had little apparent effect on the aforementioned overworked brain so I went for a walk. The walk was MUCH more productive in that the Lord said “Give it a rest!” and I said “oh. Ok!” I am therefore not going to even DISCUSS North Carolina again until January 5th. If you ask me about it I will politely change subjects so don’t bother asking.

In the afternoon I read and snoozed and played with my cat. The evening was spent in what we call “poozling”- a verb form of “puzzle” much used in the Mansour and Smith households. Mother and I also watched Julie and Julia and I drew some more.

The latter part of my day has been spent alternately eating things that aren’t good for me and reading my new (super intense) cook book. Did you know that stock pots are tall and thin so that the liquid boils up through the bones and vegetables and also to limit evaporation? Or that you aren’t supposed to just leave stock alone? You need to check it every hour or so to make sure it’s not too hot. Or that you aren’t supposed to STIR the stock more than three times during the first hour because it will make your stock cloudy?  Also cut your bones small and put in a little salt so the albumin is drawn out of the bones. And skim! Skim skim skim! Side note- what the crap is “albumin”?

Tomorrow: Avatar and Fond Brun or “Brown Stock”. Need to stop by the butcher for some veal bones….

Count the Months…

Or better yet, count the days. How long has it been since I wrote a meaningful “this-is-what-is-going-on-in-my-life” update? At least a month and probably two.

I’m not sure if it is possible to become a hermit at twenty-two but I can feel myself slipping that direction. People make me tired even when I am enjoying being around them and a cabin in the forest sounds better and better. It must be that I have some kind of call on my life that will involve some kind of counseling or love-you-into-wholeness business. There is no other reason for the fact that I reject calls more often than I take them and my happiest days are spent quietly at home.

The long and short of it is that I don’t know if my wishes for solitude are valid but the ARE and they are a large part of why I never update. My life in NC is… complex… and by the time my day boils down to time for blogging the thoughts I wish to express are not wholly positive. Not blogging is my way of being fair to the people I live with.

My dreams are as they ever were… I want to make movies and to travel and to write and to finish my B.A. and get my Masters. I want money to bless people and the companionship of kindred spirits. I want quiet and forests and mountains and Love. I want to know God and be known by Him.

If I could I would move to the Oregon or Washington Coast, work in a bookstore and take acting lessons.

For now I am home in Seattle. Loving it and waiting for God to give me a good reason to go back to NC. I’m sure He will if I’m meant to return.

Letters to My Sister

What you are going to read today is something called “The Letter Game”. It operates on the basic principle of two characters, separated for some reason, writing letters to one another. Jennifer (my sister) and I decided to play together as a way to pass time and work out our writing muscles. So bookmark both my blog and hers and prepare for the adventure. I’ll be posting on Tuesday’s, Jennifer on Wednesday’s or Thursday mornings. Enjoy

Danika Cain
Pass # 26572
S.S. Sumpter
out of New Haven
bound for Planet 6 Beta

Dani,

I had coffee with the Colonel yesterday and sorted out some of my complaints re security. It turns out that he is the doing the ONLY screening of our letters. He’s somehow worked it out to bypass both the gov regulations and IG’s internal security. For a colonel with a floppy mustache and a comb-over he has remarkable clout. But I’m glad that he’s the only one reading these (for the time being and until some horrid desk clerk at Com or at IG figures out we’re thumbing our noses at them). But that explains the delay. The poor man has plenty to do during the day and reading our verbose letters is NOT high on his priority list.

Re the Doses. If there is a precipitate at the bottom of the vial it probably means that the Passes have “curdled” it, for lack of a better term. Sometimes the internal shields in Pass ships malfunction ever so slightly. It’s not enough to hurt a human but it can affect the molecular structure of simple bio-vites like the Doses. It wouldn’t hurt you to take it but it wouldn’t do you any good either. I recommend slipping it to Garvey as recompense for the loss of the shampoo. It will give him a nasty purple rash on his neck and turn his urine black. Or should, if it’s the kind of Dose alteration that I’ve studied. I’ve sent ahead a fortnight’s worth of new Doses (courtesy of the IG stock room). Also a lovely purple sweater that I bought you since your cat won’t sleep on anything but the sweatshirt that I stole. Ha!

Letters to My Sister (2)

What you are going to read today is something called “The Letter Game”. It operates on the basic principle of two characters, separated for some reason, writing letters to one another. Jennifer (my sister) and I decided to play together as a way to pass time and work out our writing muscles. So bookmark both my blog and hers and prepare for the adventure. I’ll be posting on Tuesday’s, Jennifer on Wednesday’s or Thursday mornings. Enjoy

Danika Cain
Pass # 26572
S.S. Sumpter
out of New Haven
bound for Planet 6 Beta

Dani,

It took them an entire day to get your letter. It had to pass through four levels of security and they would only deliver it to me in the Di-Level Lab. And that’s including the normal Com lag. Honestly I’m not sure what they think I would be communicating to a mid-level ship’s cook that could harm IG. Or what you would be saying to me that would be worth a government agent’s time! We should have taken more encryption classes as kids. Then they’d REALLY have to work at it.

Honestly, I expected the regs to be different working for a multi national company like IG. It’s not like being in the Force or working at the University. But it really is terrible sometimes. These people are determined to maintain control over every nuance of  security. Right down to personal letters between siblings. Couldn’t we talk to the Colonel about it? He told me that going through IG would be best but if it’s going to take them an entire day to decide that your description of Passes is harmless then something needs to change! But I guess IG is pretty tied into government these days and government is nothing if not paranoid. I am not yet resigned but I’m sure I will be.