Kentucky Derby

The Kentucky Derby

Run, Horses, Run!

        You may or may not be aware, but today is the day of this year's kentucky derby. Being as my mom is what you'd call a "horse girl", or one of those girls who grew up utterly obsessed with horses, it's a day of note in our house. Despite the fact that I am, in fact, allergic to horses (it starts with a rash, then sneezing turns into coughing and then my asthma takes it from there, even just being around horses) I also enjoy it. I love the flamboyant hats, and wearing a hat of my own (though typically not as fancy as the actual ones at the race), and picking horses we think will win (but not putting money on it. Because that would be illegal.) Sometimes we're good at it, sometimes we're not. Usually, it's primarily based on the coolness of their names. This year, I picked Wildcat Red, Dance with Fate, and Vicar's in Trouble, the first two because of their names--I will pull for anything with any form of cat in its name whatsoever, and I like dancing and adding fate to it sounds cool and a little edgy--and the third because of its jockey, Rosie Napravnik, who I root for simply because she is female and out of a sense of feminism, in that ever-present desire for people of my gender to accomplish things we have not yet done, like a Kentucky Derby win. My mom, after me, chose Candy Boy, Uncle Sigh, and Intense Holiday, the first because she likes its jockey, Gary Stevens, from a show on Jockeys she watches (Mom watches pretty much anything and everything horse-related), the second because of its name and reference to Duck Dynasty, another show she watches, and the third I think because of its statistics or its story or something. She had originally had Danza, for the name, or the way its face looked, I think, or something like that, but she scratched him in favor of Intense Holiday.
        I had a lot more commentary planned, but once more, time runs short.

Here is my hat this year, which is just my favorite white fedora-hat with my floral wreath from my first prom conveniently slipped over it. I was thrilled with how well it worked as a derby-hat. I felt my purple gloves looked horse-riding-ish and so wore them as accessories as well.

Admire my derby fashionableness.

Some derby-day selfies :)

 I feel so... derby-y! Even though for the past two years at least one of my picks for top horse has finished dead last. That's a feat in its own.

 I really do like taking selfies, especially when I feel so very stylish :) hehehe

Then I had this whole digression about my beloved childhood stickhorse planned. I even had a video of the music its ears play, but that failed to load, what with my Chicago pic post competing and all. Some other time, perhaps.

She is beautiful, and so filled with memories. 

I used to style her hair...

She looks lovely wearing my derby hat :)

and she has... violet eyes ;)

Beyond the violet mist, it's okay to like something you're allergic to.

Pictures of the Lande

The Lande: Photographed

         Congratulations on stumbling upon an exclusive, rarely seen glimpse of the Lande beyond the violet mist! This is a rare opportunity indeed, and I hope you savor it appropriately. I shall now take you all, my beloved blog readership, on a short phototour of a few places in the land that are declassified enough to show you. Or maybe they're just pictures I found on the internet that resemble the Lande. I can't tell you that. Just enjoy their beauty in awe.

 

To get to the Lande, you may come through a portal such as this one. Normally, portals are classified, but this was the spare portal from Pluto that spontaneously combusted a while ago and so no longer exists. 

 This is one of the major lakes of the Lande. Picture yourself in a rowboat in the early morn, rowing out to watch the mist at the boarders of the Lande spilling onto the lake's surface over the mountains as the sun rises. The air is cool and fresh, moist from the lake and the dancing mist in the distance. Gaze in awe at the violet mist and the peaks of the mountains over which it spills. Later you can go strolling through the forest, which you may glimpse at right in this image. Perhaps you have packed a picnic. But for now, just sit, floating on the still waters, and listening to the chirps of birds beginning to fill the air, and watch the mist.

. 

Later, you may come to this beach by the Sea of the Lande. You may even get to see the starfall rains, as seen in this picture--the blue cloud descending towards the water at left. They happen every so oft. You can wade or swim or walk upon the soft sands, or head towards the mountain yonder, ahead and to the right.

 Further down the beach, you may see a sunset such as this, with the silken sands (one of the components in the sand of our Lande is literally that material called silk in your land) shining beneath the violet light as the sun sinks behind the boarder-mist.

 Here is one of the forests that grows alongside the lake at top in its full spring blooms.

 This is a meadow in the highlands along the mountains, also at sunset. Times of sunrise and sunset are when the violet color of the Lande is most apparent, because the sun is shining horizontally through the mist at these times, casting a violet light o'er all the Lande. It's a fine time to go hiking in a place such as this.

 To be clear, not everything in the Lande beyond the violet mist is actually violet or a tone or shade thereof. This is one of my favorite climbing trees at noonday.

 This is a hidden waterfall in the midst of one of the many forests of the Lande. It's a lovely hike to go and visit it.

 This is actually the view from my palace as Queen. (and the one picture in this blog post I didn't get off the internet.)

 I love the forests of our gorgeous Lande.

 We have many fine walking paths...

  

... as well as many hidden waterfalls

 

and ponds in the depths of our forests.

 

One of the chief products of our Lande's agriculture is, in keeping with our traditional color scheme, lavender. (We also grow plenty of violets, but these aren't as commercial) 

 

End your photo-visit to the Lande by gazing at another of our gorgeous mist-tinted sunsets.

Come and visit our Lande, if you are so fortunate as to be able to find and enter its mysteriousness!

**PROM!!!!**

**it must has sparkles**

        Today is the Friday before prom, which prom is tomorrow, so, as our creative writing teacher mentioned, everyone is all obsessed with it and the air is filled with an energetic excitement for it (which is shared by most, though others aren't overzealous about prom) and we're probably all going to blog about it. I decided I'd like to jump in and follow this trend. I do indeed like prom. I love dancing; I love getting all fancied up; I love all the gorgeous decorations, both helping with them and admiring them; I love dancing; I love the dress shopping; I love the magicalness of the night. Last year, I really didn't think I was going, actually. As it happened, I probably wouldn't have gone to prom last year if the prom committee hadn't assembled everybody in our grade, I think it was, and asked for more help with the decorating because not enough people were showing up. Slightly guilted by this, I decided I ought to help decorate, if only for the sake of other people who were going to prom. It was a lot of fun helping with the decorating, and I got talked into attending prom about a week before the actual dance. We very quickly bought a dress, got some jewelry at walmart since we didn't have time at the mall, made a nice little floral wreath out of some fabric flowers, wire, and gardener's green tape, also from walmart, and I went and had a grand time. 

         Well, at first I was a little dissatisfied because they started out by playing rap, which I hate rap as much as/ more than country music, and it's harder to dance to rap than even country (I do real dancing, not stand-and-wiggle dancing. I do twirls and leaps and arabesques and paussés and so on. Lyrical is my favorite style. I love how prom just lets me let loose with it, too, because I don't really worry about form or even much grace and I truly dance like nobody's watching at prom.) and so I was actually glad when country music came on at first. However, as the night progressed, I got into it more, as discussed in the former parenthetical note, and I stopped really caring what music was playing and just danced to everything, because even rap has a rhythm I can run with. I was glad, though, when they opened it up to requests and I managed to get two classic rock songs in--"Every Rose has its Thorns" by Poison, which is a perfect song for a flowing lyrical dance, and then I said "anything else classic rock" and the DJ said "is Journey good?" and I said "sure!" and so she played "Lights" (though I was thinking more of "Seperate Ways", which had been stuck in my head for most of prom decorating, and which has amazing guitar that makes dancing really intense, but "Lights" was nice, too, and also good for dancing. Actually, that was the song that was playing when I danced with the second guy I danced with that night. Yeah, I also danced with two guys at prom last year, in addition to my solo lyrical improv-ness.) It was a great night, and I danced loads, and I was utterly exhausted at the end, my feet sore and tingling and aching but I felt wonderful. I was kind of surprised when the dancing was over, and I was like, "Already? Awww..." because I was having great fun frolicking about, but then when the music ended and it got all quiet I realized how exhausted I was and so I just went home and didn't stay for the after-prom. I took off the dancing slippers (shiny purple ballet flats) I had worn specifically for the dancing and I used my foot massager and called that my after-prom and then I flopped flat in bed (I did change out of my dress and such first, of course, but I think I skipped toothbrushing and most other bedtime routine steps) and I was asleep probably by one, and I went to church the next morning. 

        This year I haven't been helping with prom decorating as much, because I guess I just got busy and distracted and forgot about it, and they didn't ask for help as much this year. I only ended up staying to help after school last Wednesday and Friday (it is now Saturday. I know I said I'd finish this last night, but it got late with the hairstyle practicing, and so now I'm writing whilst my hair dries. I've never been fond of hairdryers) but that was fun, too, and I'm glad I did. Our prom decorations are amazing, by the way, all the years I've gone. And also the first year, when I was a sophmore, but I didn't go, I peeked in the gym doors; the theme was "secret garden", which would have been probably my favorite theme, but I didn't go, though what I saw was gorgeous. Alright, so, I need to finish this post and the post in the tab at left now so we can do my hair, nails, and makeup. 'Tis time to become fancified! Ya know what, I think this post is long enough. I can report back on this years prom and why I like prom in general later. Or not. This post shall suffice for time being.
        Beyond the violet mist, your lady the Queen has a ball to attend in all her finery.

speed-post: imagery

Speed Post

a brief, hopefully pretty, description

       So here's the deal. It's 10:13 presently. We've been practicing my hair for prom (my mom's doing my hair). We're not done yet, but my mom said I needed to blog (I've established that I need to do my blogs tonight because obviously I won't be blogging tommorow night since I'll be at prom, until, like 4a.m. I guess, and the day's going to be mostly preparations, such as hair and nails, and dinner with my buddies and so on and so forth) and so she said that if I can have my first post done by 10:30 we can keep practicing my hair. Thus, being as it is now 10:15,  I am going to do a brief, quick post, just a pretty little description, that whatever-comes-to-mind classic style of writing I do so well. Usually the scenes I describe follow similar motifs, but I'm starting this one with a little inspiration from prom decorating tonight and where I'm going from there will probably head towards a motif. 10:18. Here goes. (K so I get a 2 minute bonus now because Mom asked me to check my e-mail for something. So it's now10:20 and I'm writing till 10:32)

         Her feet skimmed lightly across the star-laden floor. The soft pinpoints of silver on the deep grey sky-ground floated and drifted in swirling patterns as she twirled and lept about atop the surface of the fathomless space. She jumped into the sky that was above the floor, a fine train of stars flying after her like a veil of silver, caught mystically in some indescirnable jet stream left behind her graceful bounds. As she jumped she twirled, and as she twirled the stars spun around her like a tornado-cloud orbiting her dancing form. She hovered in her dancing leap longer than was thought possible by most, until it became clear that she was flying in some way and no longer merely dancing. The minute star-glows shown brighter as they spun more and more fiercely about her, transforming from a fanciful train into a mystical vortex of whitening light. Suddenly they flashed blindingly, and in the sheer whiteness the grey star-floor of the place where she had been dancing was gone, and she lighted in a verdant grove in the midst of Lothlórien (woops this just became fanfiction I guess). The simple dress she had worn hitherto morphed into a glimmering gown elven-fair as she stared, mystified, at the glorious forest all about her, grand, arching limbs of the immense trees overarching her laden with white spring flowers that filled the air with a luxilliquant scent.

        Beyond the violet mist, we hope we've made something pretty, for now we must needs go practice fancying our hair, and shall return to the lande thereafter.

surprises

Surprises

some stuff you may not have known about me

        The other day in creative writing class, we were talking about music (or something, I don't specifically remember what lead into it), but in any case, somehow the question arose of what I was listening to. I am in the habit of listening to one or the other of two stations on "I heart radio", which is an online radio-listening-to website that just happens to be the website used by both of my favorite radio stations (I've actually never gone to the "I heart radio" website itself, I just went to both of these radio stations' websites and clicked on the "listen live online" button at one point or another, and both happened to link me to the "I heart radio" sites for their station, and so those are what I've bookmarked for listening) and anyways it's really nifty because I can still listen to my radio station from Virginia, or I can listen to the radio station closer to here that's actually out of Minnesota and that I can get in on the non-internet-based radio in my bedroom when the wind's just right but only then (suddenly I'm remembering Green Acres when the neighbors tell them that they can hear every word they're saying from miles away when the wind's just right) but anyways, I like to listen to these stations because they're classic rock stations, and that surprised my creative writing peeps. At the time they asked, I was listening to my Virginia station, and "Rooster" by Alice in Chains happened to be on. So, I told them that's what I was listening to. Then I went ahead and showed them by unplugging my headphones and turning up my computer volume, because Creative Writing is one of those fun classes where it's alright if you do things like that once in a while. Everyone was, like, in shock. I think they were baffled. I mean, I guess it is kind of a rather dark-ish song, but it still sort of surprised me that they were so surprised. But it was so much fun to just completely shock the majority of my Creative Writing class like that, to have them all practically gawking at me. It was fun; I like when I can surprise people with details about myself. And so, in the interest of having fun surprising people, I've decided to do this blog post about things about me that might surprise people like this. I am surprisingly complex. Of course, everyone's quite complex when you really get down to it, but I guess I seem exceptionally complex to me, probably mostly because I'm more familiar with my own complexities than I am with anyone else's. 

        I was thinking about doing a "ten things about me that would surprise you" thing, but I don't want to restrict the number of things like that when I don't even know what my things are going to be yet, and also it's getting late and I doubt I have enough time to really explain ten surprising things about myself. 

1. I listen to classic rock. I didn't always, when I was younger. I used to listen to pop and old Radio Disney music, back before they started manufacturing actor/singer celebrities, back when they played stuff like the Black Eyed Peas and Kelly Clarkson. Now I really feel like an old person, that my childhood stuff is now so old and I'm here nostalgia-ing about it. Well, reminiscing would probably be a better way to say that. But nostalgia-ing sounds cooler. But anyways, in those days, I also occasionally listened to my parents' music, which was predominantly classic rock. And one day it hit me: this stuff is so epic, and it gets stuck in my head, and I really like it! And so I fell in love with classic rock. There are other reasons, but with music, it's mostly just an intuitive feeling that you get from the music that makes you love it, and that's why it's one of those things that's so hard to explain. While I've been writing this blog post, I've been listening to my Virginia classic rock station, and the songs that have played include: Pearl Jam's "I'm Still Alive", which I can sing mostly by heart, "Werewolves of London", which is splendidly tongue-in-cheek and quite amusing when you listen to the lyrics, "In the Air Tonight" by Phil Collins, "Burnin' for You" by Blue Oyster Cult, "Free Fallin'" by Tom Petty (who is my first classic rock love and the one who really drew me to the genre for his unique, quirky-sounding music and voice), "Livin' on the Edge" by Aerosmith (which, we rode the Rockin' Roller Coaster in Disneyland/world/I get them mixed up and anyways it was epic), "Carry on my Wayward Sons" by Kansas, "Walk" by the Foo Fighters, and "Twilight Zone" by Golden Earring, just for a good sampling of the music I listen to. That's just what's been playing whilst I've been blogging. I can sing most of those songs by heart and they're actually all really good examples. Oh, and for surprising facts, I also headbang and toss my hair wildly about. I get into my music, though people might not think it. That's more of an at-home kind of thing than an in-creative-writing thing, though I did do it during my "don't be boring" performance. 

2. I collect American Girl Dolls. I touched on this in my Chicago blog post. I think it's kind of a fun contrast to the above image of me as a hard-rocking head-banging classic rocker to put this here. I'm running out of time to go into detail, but suffice to say, I am not a stereotype. Certain stereotypes may more or less apply to me, but I don't think there's any stereotype that covers classic rock, american girl dolls, and book nerd-hood, all in one, not to mention the many other sides of me. Except perhaps insanity, in which case see number six, but, you know. 

3. My bedroom is not now and has never yet been painted purple. As you may have guessed from the title and theme of my blog, I'm sort of renowned for my deep love of the color purple, which is indeed an awesome and amazing color. Thus, many presume that walking into my bedroom would be like plunging into a bottomless sea of violet and lavender. Surprisingly, it is not. My bedspread is often (though not always) purple but my walls have not yet been. 

4. I have both danced and played soccer, and I love both. This came up when we were talking about gender roles in literature. I may not be very athletic, but at least I'm somewhat versatile.

5. I crochet my earphones (and likewise spin my hair) This was mentioned in creative writing the same day of the classic rock disscusion. My teacher overheard my answering to someone asking me about my earphones, and she just said, "I'm really going to miss you." :)

6. I'm insane 8D

7. I am the Queen of a Mysterious Magical Lande beyond the violet mist. I mean, you're reading this, so you must read my blog, to some extent. See my post on "Coronation" for further details.

        Welcome to the crazy, surprising world of the Queen of the Lande beyond the violet mist ;)

Renouncement

Renouncing

        Remember that post a couple weeks ago when I announced that I was going to start trying to do my blog posts earlier in the week to save more time for working on my short story, The Curse of Lake Avgir Lys, that I'm hoping to possibly publish? I have since realized a huge flaw in my logic: when I start my posts earlier in the week, it means I spend more time on them, not less. It's a part of my natural tendency to fill whatever time I have, I think. I mean, at some point there is a limit, and there's also a minimum, but with most things, I think that I can spend so long on them doing them fully and completely, especially with blog posts, where I can ramble on about my ideas almost perpetually, that I almost always have to cut them off at some point, and so if I have longer to spend working on them, that's just longer until they get cut off, and so while the post may be rather nicer if I start sooner, it's just going to take up more of my time. Likewise, I need a certain bare minimum of time, but usually, a few hours of evening for all three blog posts meets the cut. Though, regrettably, I do sometimes go a little past midnight. I like spending time on my blog posts, I really do, but as far as goal-setting goes, if my goal is to have more time to work on things other than my blog posts, it's better that I continue my late-at-night Saturday format. It may not seem like a good idea, but it just fits in with my life better. I am a procrastinator, but in some respects, it works for me. 

        Take, for example, my prom dress. Prom is next Saturday (already!!!). We bought my dress yesterday. I think most girls in my school have had their dresses for months. But you know what? The dress I chose was on sale for half price now, and it wasn't months ago. It would've been over the budget my mom sat if it hadn't been half price, but it was half price, and so I got it. Sometimes, not always but sometimes, procrastinating pays off. 

        But it's just the natural way I work. It would be cool if we had a just-blogging class, but that's not what this is, and I'm actually behind on my creative writing pieces, too. So I have a lot of writing in my life to do, and this post might be a lot longer, but the hour of the night reminds me that that's not really necessary, and that's actually probably a good thing. 

         In the Lande beyond the violet mist, procrastination is utilized as an advantageous trait, and hopefully it shall benefit us as we plow onward on our quests to becoming authors.

RUMBELLE LIVES!!!!!

RUMBELLE LIVES!!!

I FOUND IT!!!

        You may recall some time ago, long before my lengthy Rumbelle picture post a couple of weeks ago, I once had an original Rumbelle blog post that explained what Rumbelle is, what shipping is, and which began endeavoring to explain just why I am so obsessed with them. Then, you may recall, that tragically, this post was accidentally deleted. I attempted to restore it from my memory, and I posted this the week following, but I still wished I could find the original of it. As trivial as it may seem, I actually prayed about it. Sometimes I pray about really weird and relatively trivial things. But sometimes, you never know what prayers God will answer, or when He will answer them. I had thought that this one wasn't going to be answered and that I'd never see my original Rumbelle post again, but I had reconciled myself with this and had accepted that my restoration was probably the best I was going to do. In short, I had given up. I had allowed myself to fall under the delusion that it was possible for something to be permanently deleted from the internet. For most people, it seems, they would rather this was possible, but for me, I was overjoyed to discover that it's not.
        You see, for Composition, we're beginning our persuasive writing unit, and we were talking about how there are more than two sides to every argument, and we were looking at this case with this teacher named Natalie Munroe who apparently griped about her students on her blog. I decided I wanted to know more about this, and so I googled her, and I was reading some things about her. Her original, student-griping blog, it seems, had been deleted, but I saw a newer blog of hers, and it actually made her seem a lot more normal and human to read her blogging, and it better explained her mindset and things. In any wise, I started looking at other articles about her, and in one, it mentioned how her old blog stuff could still be found from cached versions.
        I wanted to know more about these cached versions. I may have given up on getting my original Rumbelle post, you see, but I had not forgotten, and this had re-sparked my hope. I found this article: http://www.googleguide.com/cached_pages.html and I was beggining to get excited. Forget Natalie Munroe; there was a chance I could get my lost blog post back! I went into my blogger reading feed thingy, opened the link that once led to my Rumbelle post, and took the URL. The first time I tried, I typed cache:htttp://www.beyondthevioletmist.blogspot.com/2014/02/rumbelle-i-ship-it.html, and this didn't work, much to my dismay. But then, I realized, upon looking further at the article, you weren't supposed to type in all the http://www. business. So, I just typed in cache: and copy-pasted the URL of my lost post, and I could not believe my eyes. There she lay, the mystical lost blog post of Rumbelle. I immediately took an onslaught of screenshots of it, as though it might slip away as easily as I might blink, and I now have a folder containing 48 screenshots of my blogpost. To be fair, though, I had to scroll about three times to get the whole post, so it's not as if it's the same exact screenshot over and over 48 times. But it did not disappear as I blinked. I had planned on reposting it here tonight, but as it turned out, I still had the empty, content-deleted post that was once my post that was now scarcely preserved in cache-form saved in my posts as a draft. So, I was able to restore not only the original content of the post, but to restore it with the original time-date stamp. I did have to fix some formatting things when I copy-pasted it back, but the content's all the same.
        So, if you'd like, you can see the cached form of the most original post here: cache:beyondthevioletmist.blogspot.com/2014/02/rumbelle-i-ship-it.html (which seems to reroute to here: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Abeyondthevioletmist.blogspot.com%2F2014%2F02%2Frumbelle-i-ship-it.html&oq=cache%3Abeyondthevioletmist.blogspot.com%2F2014%2F02%2Frumbelle-i-ship-it.html&aqs=chrome.0.69i57j69i58.2741j0&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 but the other one's shorter and seems to work just as well.) Then, you can see the restoration here: http://beyondthevioletmist.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-lost-rumbelle-restored.html which is a different URL because I did retitle it but it's still the same post. And, if you'd like, you can see my attempt at restoring this post from my memory but from mostly scratch here: http://beyondthevioletmist.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-following-is-my-best-attempt-at.html. Compare them. Contrast them. Evaluate my mental soundness based upon them. Oh, and if you have no clue what I'm talking about, it's explained here: http://beyondthevioletmist.blogspot.com/2014/02/post-i-am-too-distraught-to-give-proper.html.
        But you know, from that night when I first lost my post and prayed that I could get it back, God knew that I would find it now and in this way. He knew I would feel the desire to google Natalie Munroe, and then to read that one more article about her before getting back on task even though I'd said that three articles ago, and then that I'd stumble upon that article about finding cached versions of webpages, and then that, on a whim of fleeting hope, I'd try it for my Rumbelle post, and that I'd find it and be praising Him, here on the eve of Easter. It's pretty amazing. And so, now if you need to find a long-lost post, you too know how to access the cached version.
        Beyond the violet mist, we have been blessed with the return of the lost Rumbelle post. 

Chicago Sojourn

Chicago

~not the musical about women who kill people~

rather, the city with the overwhelmingly tall buildings

     Today, I was not in the land beyond the violet mist, though obviously I have here returned for this Saturday evening time of blogging. But today, my mother and I took an adventurous sojourn in the vast, tall city of Chicago. Well, technically we arrived here/there yesterday, after a six- or seven-hour drive (or more--I'm not sure--I kind of loose count after two or so), and we did do a few things, including eat the fancy, upside-down, thick "Chicago style" quote Pizza unquote (which was so fancy and different, it was hardly even pizza and more some other kind of... dish) and go to a fancy kitchen store Mom thinks she might have seen on Food Network, but today was our full-out city-exploring day of general adventurous sojourning. In fact, I am still quite tired from it--my feet are still tingling spitefully after all the miles I put on them (we reckon it was at least five miles that we walked)--and also I still have my Norwegian post open in the tab at left to finish (I was so close to finishing last night, I really was, but I hit the cut-off and now I wanted to get my thoughts about Chicago out before I went back and finished it) and other than my feet being tired, I was up late last night and early this morning and it's been a huge and exhausting day (and for the record this still isn't a run-on sentence) and so this post is probably going to be a general, skim-over, summary of events. Throughout the day, I kept thinking about things going, "ooh! I can blog about that tonight" and "ooh! I'll post this picture in my blog post tonight!" and even "ooh! I'll make this cool video of the train for my blog!" but I think I'll have to do a more reflective post with more pictures and possibly video(s) later. 

     So, the gist of our day ran thus: I think it is safe to say that we are staying somewhere in a suburb/sub-town called Naperville. It seems to be a fairly large suburb/town that makes up the outer skirts of Chicago and so hopefully this information won't give you too much of an advantage in your (the internet at large's) ongoing quest to stalk me. So, we went and caught a train (which was the first time I rode on a train since we were in Germany in Fall 2008, five and a half years ago) and it was a double-decker train so I convinced Mom to ride on the upper level :). At this point I would like to reflect a little more on the coolness of the journey and finding the balance between taking pictures and looking at scenery not through my camera, but again, I'm kind of pooped. So, then, we arrived in the city. There was initially some struggle to find our way, which I would go into, but after a short time we managed to find the restaurant run by a Top Chef winner at which Mom had been yearning to dine, called, "the Little Goat", which had the logo of a cute little goat all over, yet oddly still served goat meat (I had amazingly spiced dark chocolate chip crunch pancakes and a superbly rich toffee shake). From thence, we planned to attempt to catch a cab at some point to go to Navy Pier, but since we were so full from the delicious food of the restaurant, we decided to walk a little first. Then I got taking pictures, and we kept walking. And then Mom was stopping to look at our map (an item which we used quite a lot) and some friendly guy in a yellow shirt asked if we needed help finding anything, and then we learned from him we were over halfway there, and so we kind of went, what the heck, let's just keep going, and so we kept walking, and then we eventually stumbled upon Millenium Park. At this point we'd already walked, like, two miles, and so we rested on a bench for a while, circa five minutes, during which time Mom mentioned an Alaskan survival show where Mom had seen these people who would walk for forty-five minutes and then rest for five so that they could keep going. Then I convinced Mom to wander around the park a while, and then we really just stumbled upon the giant silver jelly bean (pictures and further explanation later) and, well, suffice to say, walking 'neath its belly was like walking into a wormhole. 

     So, then, somewhat refreshed from our short rest and proud of adding another thing to our list of Chicago-y things we'd done, we proceeded to walk still farther, headed on our quest to Navy Pier. (We had both picked out our top thing to see, pretty much, and Mom's was that restaurant of the lady who won Top Chef, and mine was Navy Pier, which has a giant swing ride, which is my favorite type of ride. They just feel so like flying. I could swing on them nigh all day :). But from Millenium Park we came onto that big shopping street, Michigan Avenue, which also had lots of street performers. So, it just made sense to check out a couple of stores as long as we were there. We bought fancy chocolates that I can scarcely wait to try in a fancy chocolate store after getting a free sample of smooth, creamy, gooey, amazing vanilla caramel. We went into a four-story tall Crate & Barrel, a kitchen and interior design kind of store with lots of brightly colored modern furniture. And I got to ride a bunch of escalators ;) I kind of have a hyper-little-five-year-old attitude towards escalators. Sometimes, in the mall, I'll ride them just for the sake of riding escalators. 
     Then, we finally made it to the American Girl Doll store, which was amazing. I know some people would say that I'm kind of too old for American girl dolls, but at this age, I consider myself a veritable connoisseur of all things American girl doll. I am a collector and a scholar of the beautiful historical dolls, in particular. I do still take a certain joy in arranging lovely displays of my dolls and things and in collecting things. I also proudly cited various facts to my mom as we perused the store (she mostly resting on a soft chair, as we had gone probably another couple miles. My fatigue was outweighed by my childlike jubilance at the amazing plethora of dolls and museum-esque historical displays), facts such as that Caroline Abott (whose mini-doll I got today--on sale for half price!!--only $12!) is the only doll whose official era-year does not end in a four. Julie is the doll of 1974; Molly, 1944; Kaya, 1764; Kit, 1934; and so on and so forth, but Caroline alone is 1812, specifically so that her story can match up with the start of the war of 1812. Not only am I an epic book nerd, I am an American girl doll nerd, which is kind of a niche market for nerds. I was trying to give a brief summary of my day, wasn't I? That Norwegian post is really going to get cut short. 

     So, in order to get to the American girl doll store, we'd had to walk, like, 5 blocks past the turn-off to Navy Pier or something, so we now had to walk back. I did suggest, though, that we walk out towards the lake first so that we could walk along it on the way to the pier, so that was really neat. We saw lots of horse-drawn carriages on that shady, tree-lined side street leading up perpendicularly to the road that ran parallel to the lake, which, my mom is what you call a "horse girl", the kind that grew up with cowgirl boots practically glued to her feet, and so she would have loved to go on a ride in one of those, but for one we couldn't see where people were getting on, for two we guessed that it'd be outrageously expensive (earlier we'd looked into getting a ride on one of those bike-taxis, but it was going to be, like, $30 for, like, two blocks, so Mom passed), and for three I'm actually really allergic to horses. I tried to convince Mom it'd be fine, but in all honesty I probably would've been ridiculously covered in rash and wheezing hard within a block. So, we arrived along the lake-side road. 
     It was the first time I'd ever seen a great lake before (beyond, perhaps, a brief glimpse from an airplane). We eventually got to the pier, but guess what--the Ferris wheel and the awesome swing ride weren't open! Huzzah! That's right, weren't open. As in they were closed. As in that "huzzah" was sarcasm. I know it's hard to tell when I'm typing, probably. So we strolled onto it to check it out anyway. Going towards it we passed a neat little beach, and so we agreed to stop there on the way back. We bought some touristy things and took some touristy pictures on the pier. There was a little frog-hopper-style little kid's drop-tower type ride open (pictures later will help explain what this is) and so I convinced my mom to buy me a ticket for that, since I figured it'd be worthwhile to ride the only ride open. It really was a very little kid ride, though, and it went even slower than it looked from the ground, but the view was nice from the top. 

     So then we walked back and we stopped at the beach. The sand felt splendiforous on my bare feet that were plagued with exhaustion at that point, like a shifting, soft massage rolling gently across them. The water of the lake was icy but refreshing, and it felt kind of good to numb my feet a little. We took some pictures, of the beech and the city and the geese and seagulls, then we caught a bus back to the train station and thence a train back here where we're staying. 

     We hath been on a sojourn and an adventure on the other side of the violet mist today. 

Norwegian greetings

Ha det på badet din gamle sjokolade!

<Ser deg i kveld, din gamle karamel!>

Norwegian Greetings

        You may be wondering what in the world my title could possibly mean right now. (Unless it's gotten to the point where it's like that scene when Dumbledore tells Harry, "you may be wondering why I brought you here," and Harry replies, "Actually, sir, after all these years, I just go with it." If this is indeed the case, then I thank you very much for your high estimation of my epicness. If not, consider that a goal I'm setting for my blog.) If you are clever and observant, you may have noticed that my second subtitle is "Norwegian Greetings" (as is my post-navigation title) and from this you may possibly have deduced that the two sentences prior to this subtitle are in Norwegian. If you are like me, by the time you are reading this, you have quite probably already gone to google translate to endeavor to figure out what they mean. Of course, if you were exactly like me you would have already learned these phrases at Norwegian camp and so you would recognize them, but I mean if you're sort of like me, without being my long-lost-twin/epic-stalker-ninja. So, now, hang on, I need to go to google translate to see what it says and to see how accurate its translation of these sentences is so I can correct you or forewarn you about mistranslations and such. I'm not telling you that you should go to google translate or anything if you're not like me and haven't already gone, because, of course, I fully intend to explain these sentences later in the post, but I just want to correct the knowledge of the insatiably curious so they can better understand the explanations later. Okay, so google translate's pretty close, but the first half of the first phrase is wrong, and they're confusing enough as they are, so hang in there for the explanationing. 
        If you do indeed know me in person, it is quite possible you have actually heard me saying one or both of these phrases at one point or another, as I am generally fond of tossing them into conversation whenever it is remotely possible. They're just fun and awesome-sounding and so very Norwegian, and when you actually learn them, their meanings are very cool. They're pretty much my favorite Norwegian sentences that I know so far. 
        What really inspired me to do this particular post, though, is that the other day I was revisiting the website of my awesome and amazing Norwegian camp, and I was just looking at their videos, and I saw this wonderful explanation of my favorite set of phrases, and I was like, I should do a blog post on this! And so here It is. By the way, here is the website of the Norwegian Camp I attend: http://www.norwegianridge.org/. And here is their lovely, very Norwegian logo, designed by an actual Norwegian who moved here to study graphic design and who taught at the camp:

They should, like, give me a discount for this free advertising or something ;) hehehe. Na, it's just an awesome camp filled with awesome Norwegian-ness and epic crafts and language learning and adventure and craziness and amazing wonder and you should come, especially if you know me, because my friends never seem to come back from one year to another (though I've only gone two years so far). 
        And so, here is the official video of the phrases from the camp. It's done by a girl who is actually younger than me, which made it sort of funny that she was our teacher some of the time, but she knew a lot of Norwegian because her mom was from Norway (the one who came for graphic design. Then she met an American man and got married and had two kids. She is now a "legal alien", she told us. At Norwegian camp, you can also learn the life story of actual Norwegians!!). ~Suddenly it's That Time of Night on Saturday and blogging style changes accordingly~ So this video is the main part of the post anyways, and she explains the phrase really well. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=9THCGjybwd8

        The one thing is that she translates it in this video as "good-bye in the bathroom", but I often translate it as "see you in the bathroom" when I am telling friends, because I seemed to recall that "Ha det", which literally means "have it" but which is used as the Norwegian good-bye phrase, can also be interpreted as "see you", and so that phrasing seems to make marginally more sense to me. Also, since she says the phrase a little quick in the video, I thought it'd be nice if I wrote out my pronunciations of the phrases for you here. Basically: Ha-deh pa ba-deh doo gahm-leey shya-koe-lah-deh, sair-die ee kveld doo gahm-lee care-a-mell. That's not, like, the official way pronunciation writing is done, like in a dictionary, I know, but I think it should help anyways. So, now you can go impress your friends by greeting them in Norwegian! Or I guess it's not a greeting so much as a parting, but still. Ha det, tout le monde!

        We beyond the violet mist think that chocolate and caramel are nicer things to call each other than alligators and crocodiles, anyways.