First Spanish class = win.

(It was expected, though. Nat had this class yesterday.)

We had a substitute teacher! The main teacher is coaching soccer and will be starting next week. In the meantime, we could get started—if we had the right book! We didn't. There was a typo that made everybody buy the wrong book.

So he handed out the syllabus, and then we took it in turns to stand up and say, "¡Hola! Mi nombre es… [Maggie]. Soy de… [hometown/state]." It was riveting. Oh, and our assignment was to write our names on the piece of paper at the front of the class. He advised us to learn the alphabet, too.

Classes start today at Bethel.

However, I don't have any Thursday classes.

MONDAY, WEDNESDAY, and FRIDAY
8:00 - 8:50 Spanish I
9:00 - 9:50 Elements of Music

MONDAY (I believe)
Exploring Creation through Physical Science with TQ and Snap's mother

TUESDAY
Teaching Oly'Anna's and Justinian's piano lessons

That's as far as I know right now. Tomorrow at 10 (after Spanish and Music) I'm going to have a voice lesson, and then we'll figure out a regular schedule. We'd set it regularly at 10 on Monday or Wednesday or Friday because that would be so handy, but that's when chapel is at Bethel, and while neither of us (as a teacher and a REACH student) are required to go, she is discouraged from teaching during chapel.

I just realized, I am apparently a Register Early to Achieve College Hours student. That's grammatically nonsensical.

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Here I go again. This is unimportant. I merely feel obliged to relate it as it includes a few people who may read this.

I dreamed about getting an application from the tiny-branch library… they had this weird program going on where they took a character from three USA TV shows and that character was a librarian and also answered phone questions. My librarian was one of these characters, and she answered the theological questions. She got one while I was talking with her: "If the power's out and I'm scared, is God there?" and she answered, "Remember in Ephesians 5 when God says he is always there," and I was thinking, "That's not in Ephesians 5." So naturally I immediately asked her if the bread and wine of communion were truly Christ's Body and Blood or merely a symbol, and she did not answer. I digress.

One of the other characters doing the library thing was a villain, and I realized he was going to try to kill us all, so I got Nathaniel, Paul, Ethan and Zeke to come to the library to vanquish him. While I was getting them the library became multi-level and incredibly complex, with a few secret passageways for good measure. We were not very adept at navigating the labyrinth of stairways and books and seas and finding and fighting the villain. Nathaniel was useless, narrating us; Paul was comic relief; Ethan thought he was saving us all but really wasn't; and Zeke was the only one doing anything but I was the only one who could tell, even he didn't know. I was just kind of annoyed with them all.

Also I punched through about twelve brick walls.

I woke up before anybody actually won.

Three quotes.

Smart people were valued because they could solve problems, not because they could speak pleasingly about them.

"Oh," said Grace, sounding disappointed. "I'm sorry to year you say something so stupid."

… so instead of having a romantic encounter, she wrote about one. This is a common dilemma among English majors.

I found these on post-it notes around my room. The first two are from an Enderverse book, probably Children of the Mind. I don't even remember where the third came from.

Names

Wikipedia lists six Scottish forms of Margaret and they all look hard to pronounce:

Maighread
Mairead
Maisie
Marsaili
Mysie
Peigi

Why, oh why don't I know how to say you? This makes me sad.

EDIT: Okay, well, five of them look hard to pronounce. (FIVE.) Maisie is reasonably simple.

Incentive.

Forest Born is coming out this fall.

You know I've been looking forward to it for a long time.

You may also know I've been feeling apprehensive about this year's NaNoWriMo.

So:

I'm not going to read Forest Born until I'm done with my novel. I don't know if it's going to be a Write-Five-Thousand-Words-and-Read-a-Chapter thing or just a Write-Fifty-Thousand-Words-and-Read-the-Whole-Thing thing. If I don't finish in November, well, I guess I'll have to wait even longer to read it. I'll figure it out later.

I really want to read it.

PAMA

Sometimes—particularly when I am experiencing a great deal of emotion—I have trouble sounding sincere over the internet. I have a lot of rampaging thoughts and I type some of them and sometimes they're the wrong ones, or they don't make sense without the ones that are only in my head. So, sorry if that happens. I'm working on it.

(This is not because of any instance in particular; I just realized that some of the things I've said in the past may not have translated well, and I don't want to give the wrong impression in the future.)

And here is the obligatory emoticon to show I'm in a good mood: :)

Don't Be Cool, Stay In School

I got my left ear pierced again. And then once more. Now all I have to do is swab it with alcohol three times a day for six weeks. Or two months, according to the lady who did it. She kept asking, "Are you sure you want it this way? Once I do it you can't change it. Are you sure?"

Okay, so my DREEM was like The Man Who Was Thursday, but entirely with circus freaks… Why do I post my dreams so often? I've heard it said that people telling their dreams is annoying. Is this annoying?

I'd like to get a job, but I need an ID. To get an ID, I need my social security card, proof of address, and a parent. Probably some other stuff too. Long story short, we had a fruitless trip to the license bureau and Mutti has decided that we might as well get me a driving permit, because it works and then we're ready in case, I don't know, suddenly we need a fourth driver for our three cars and the price of insurance for a minor goes down.

I'm not planning on actually learning how to drive yet.

We went to TQ and Snap's house to surprise OFHP for her birthday, and Pasto' G. and Dr./Mr. H., Snap and Erik, Anna and Matthew, Nick and Nat, TQ and I went canoeing, split up into those pairs. (Anna and Matthew were in a kayak, though.) Besides those wacky kayakers, TQ and I won two races, because our canoe was the only one with two females. (We held back in the third so we could soak Nick and Nat.)

Happy birthday, my OFHP! I miss you!