No, I didn't die last night.

I know you were very glad to read that title. I'm very glad to be able to type that title.

Anyway, the tsunami passed almost invisibly last night. That few inches of water man....

I'm just running with the theory that Canada wants to destroy us, but it's being passive-agressive about it, so it gave us a decidedly minor tsunami. Just to show us it could.

So how was my night? Well, just to point out a few things.

I am the only one in my house to sleep on the ground floor. Which means that I had to move upstairs, and camp up there the whole night. Normally, this would not be such a bad thing. I have no problem with sleeping on a floor. If my carpet were softer, I might actually make a regular habit out of that while lying on the floor doing my homework.

But for some reason, sleeping on the floor last night in my little sisters' room... was an experience.

It's been a while since I've slept with children. I've enjoyed it.
Then last night my baby sister greeting me trying to go to sleep with her waving her flashlight in my face.
Whatever. I can deal with that. I told her that if she didn't stop, I would take away her flashlight.
It turned off, and I feel asleep just fine.
Then, I got to try and sleep on the floor. Which was being particularly hard and flat and not comfortable. My neck didn't like it at all.
Then, dawn comes. How do I know it came, you ask?
Well, first, living in Hawaii, you can't ignore the sun coming up unless you either don't have windows or have curtains that block all light.
Not to mention I opened my eyes and found my baby sister leaning over the edge of the bed, staring at me.
Just staring.
I tried to do a quirky eyebrow thing at her, scare her off staring at me, but due to an unfortunate genetic mix, I'm incapable of raising only one eyebrow at a time. Not for lack of trying.
After our weird little stare-off in the bright light of 6 am, she got out of bed.
Neatly stepping on my face.
Now, I'm not saying it was deliberate. But I've seen bulls run more gracefully through a china shop than my baby sister attempted to not step on my face.
My face notwithstanding, she left the room to rampage downstairs and stuff.
I went back to sleep, attempting to recover my face from being stepped on.

That was my night. Also the only night in recent history I went to bed before 11 pm. That clearly means I can stay up past 1 am this morning. Right? (Wrong, Carina. You still have to function tomorrow.)

That's really it. A tsunami sort of came and my sister stepped on my face and everyone's good. I'm definitely not a zombie telling people I'm okay in an obvious attempt to lure people to the island so all of us who died and turned into zombies can eat your BRAINZZZ.

Not at all. :)

TSUNAMI POSTING!

Ok, that title gave this tsunami probably far more urgency and worry to all you who just read it than it hopefully deserves.

But yeah. Canada apparently decided to have an earthquake, which then got the ocean so mad that it decided it wanted to send waves of anger out towards my beautiful Hawaii.

Might I just say, not cool. Not cool at all.

Anyway, living out of the floodzone, I'm actually just ensconced in a little corner of my parent's room upstairs, where almost my entire family has gathered, except for those children who are asleep in their beds.

So, for all my family and friends reading this... yeah, we're safe. So far. But it shouldn't be that big, so barring an unforeseen huge wave, we'll survive.

This is what we do in a tsunami.

Get all the stuff we think we might possibly need and want to survive a possible flood. Except for the piano, because unfortunately there is no way to bring that upstairs.

Gather in our parent's room.

Convince the little children that we're not going to die.

I must fight the urge to run around screaming "WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE IT'S A TSUNAMI ERMAGERSH."

Text all my loved ones.

Check all my social networking sites.

Eat food.

PARTAY TILL THE WAVE HITS OH YEAH.
(which it hasn't yet)

Find something ridiculous to argue about with my brothers.
"This is an intimate gathering."
"No, I definitely feel like this is more of a party."
"Intimate gathering."
"PARTAY."
"INTIMATE GATHERING."
"THIS IS A PARTAY BECAUSE I JUST TURNED ON THE PIANO GUYS AND SO THERE."

Write a blog post about this tsunami.

Then wait. Wait wait wait wait wait for this wave to come. Hey, ten minutes left. It'll all be good.

I love all of you.

Chapters of My Cookbook

Hello! It's been a while. I missed you guys.

Anyway, while I was doing my English 201 homework the other day (which involved reading a book, shockingly enough) I looked down at my bookmark and was relatively surprised at what it was.

It was a doodle(ish) from one Sunday during Relief Society in June. My mother and I had been trying to figure out a Father's Day present for my father, and we got excited and started coming up with chapter titles, which I then wrote down. (which is just another example of why me and scrap pieces of paper don't work well together if you want my full attention).

Anyway, most of them are amusing, and they tell funny stories about my family's eating habits. Bon appetit!

The Aldrich Family Cookbook.

Chapter 1: I Don't Know.
because sometimes you just don't know what's for dinner.

Chapter 2: Shut Up and Eat It (and you'll like it).
Classic Southern traditions.

Chapter 3: But of course You'll Like It! It's Your Favorite!
It was that child's favorite. Up until 3 seconds ago, when they saw they actually had to eat it.

Chapter 4: Anything But _________.
All the recipes will have bacon. Because everyone loves bacon.

Chapter 5: Where's a House-elf When You Need One?
sometimes I hate being a Muggle.

Chapter 6: I Am Not a Short-Order Cook!
except when we are.

Chapter 7: Go Ask Your Father.
alternate answer to chapter 1.

Chapter 8: Rice: The Saga.
no, but seriously. how much rice can one boy fit in his 5 year old body?

Chapter 9: That Would Be Great. Too Bad It's Frozen.
for rejecting suggestions made in chapter 1.

Chapter 10: "Breakfast for Dinner!" "Yayyy!" "Noooooooooo!"
oddly enough, only I and my father scream no.

Chapter 11: "Here. Let Me Help You." ~Dad.
he knows when you're in his kitchen. always. and he can't stop himself if he fears you're creating a culinary disaster.

Chapter 12: Alton Brown and the Dream of a Perfect Kitchen.
curse Good Eats. and unitaskers.

Divining the Bones

Well, earlier in my history class this week, we were studying Chinese history, and we were talking about oracle bones, and the role they played in the culture. What would happen, is the priests would take bones, usually the shoulder blade of a turtle, and inscribe upon it the question they wished answered by heaven. Then they'd shove the bone in a fire and read the answer by the cracks inflicted upon the bone by the heat.

So I thought, if I can play at reading palms for fun, surely I can play at reading oracle bones. So here, is my interpretation of the concerns and answers to those concerns of the royals in ancient China.

The question: Will the other-tribe-of-people-who's-name-must-not-be-mentioned attack us this summer?

Answer: Not if you do a peace dance in the middle of the river during winter solstice. 

Question: What should I get my daughter for her birthday? 

Answer: A pony. 

Question: Who should my son marry? 

Answer: Not that ugly hag of your friend's cousin.

Question: Should I attack during summer or wait until fall?

Answer: Didn't I already tell you to do the peace dance?

There you are. Divination.

Into the Wild- Thoughts on Nature, Man, and Whatever Else Comes Out of My Fingers

There is, I believe, a most intimate relationship between nature and humans. There is something about nature that inspires us, that calms us. It has an unmistakable effect on our bodies and souls. Nature, oddly enough, is a great revealer of the humanity of a person. In nature, we find ourselves as we can in no other setting.

I recently finished reading Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer. For everyone who hasn't read it, it details the journey of a young man named Chris McCandless. The journey, as you might expect, ends with him dying of starvation in the wilderness (or maybe you didn't expect it. now you know.). He abandoned his family, friends, and civilization to live on his own, surviving by the land. And he did so, until he got trapped by a flooded river and got sick and starved to death.

Chris was driven into the wild by many things: his rocky relationship with his parents, his stubborn independent streak, and his love of nature. Like the title of a book he idolized, he indeed felt the "call of the wild".

Many people have judged Chris' character because of this journey. Some admire him for his courage and ability to follow his dream and actually survive in the wild for over 100 days. Some despise him, to the point of pure vitriolic hatred. They call him selfish, say that his journey was comprised of using people, letting them help him and care about him, then running off and leaving them in the dust. They also say he had no respect for the land, and he died because of that, and he deserved it.

While I personally do not believe that he deserved death (to quote one of my favorite books: "Will you butcher them for stupidity? Stupidity is unfortunate, but it hardly deserves that kind of punishment.") I don't exactly condone what he did either. I can neither praise him nor condemn his actions. How can one condemn a man for following a dream, something he feels like he has to do to make his life worth living? But then again, how can you praise it when it caused so much grief and left permanent marks on the lives of those who loved you?

His own mother said, "Many people have told me that they admire Chris for what he was trying to do. If he'd lived, I would agree with them. But he didn't, and there's no way to bring him back. You can't fix it. Most things you can fix, but not that."

The words of one of my classmates also sends a message: "We're sitting here, decades later, analyzing,  judging this guy, deciding if the decisions he made were right or wrong. He's dead. We're judging a dead guy."

We all have our own journeys, our own wild to go to and confront. And this book, I think, illustrates well the danger of confronting life, and the need we all have to live our dreams and see life on our own terms.

Chris' wild literally was the wilderness... but what is your own? Would you survive your own encounter with your personal wild? Does death mean that you weren't victorious?

Think about it.

The "Look" Challenge

This is a little game I discovered while I was blog-stalking the other day. While technically, I didn't get tagged in it, it still looked like fun, so I decided to try it out.

The game is, to take the current manuscript you are working on, find the first instance of the word "look" and use the surrounding paragraphs as a book excerpt on your blog.

So, I went and looked at my manuscript, and discovered that "look" is actually the fourth word in my manuscript. (Technically, "looked" but it's still the same word.) This is very clearly the first chapter in the story Amber and I are writing.

Enjoy.

~

Director Mendez calmly looked at the irate young woman standing before him.

            “This is idiocy!” she exploded. “I’m the perfect candidate for this program, and you know it!” She flung the unsigned application on the desk before him. “Why did you reject me?”

“Because you’re too young,” Director Mendez said. “You don’t have the experience we need, and-“

“Because every time you look at me, you see Mamá,” the girl finished bitterly.

“Andrea,” he said, his tone stern. “That’s below you.”

“It may be below me, Padre, but it’s the truth.” Andrea said.

Director Mendez sighed.

“Papá,” Andrea pleaded. “Yo no soy mi madre. Soy mi.”

“Lo sé, hija,” he said, taking his daughter’s hand. “I know.”

She moved the application towards him. “Then sign it.”

Director Mendez hesitated. “Hija…”

“Papá,” Andrea touched his cheek. “This is my country. These are my people. Trust me.” She smiled at her father. “It’s in my blood.”

Director Mendez picked up a pen and signed the paper. “Te amo, Andrea,” he said. “Make me proud.”

School- After the First Day

Well, if you read my last post, you know that these past two days have been busy and stressful as everyone on campus is trying to get ready for school and get everything to work out and stuff.

And I have to say, we're all doing a fantastic job of it.

College is so much more different than high school.

I mean, duh, we already knew that. But I never actually realized just how much different from high school college was.

I took AP classes in high school, actually taking three of them in my senior year. I thought that was busy and stressful and hard work?

Yeah. I spent my entire day today either doing homework or in class. Or eating, because that's pretty important.

And that's from one day of class. It's such a high maintenance level of work to be prepared for my actual classes.

And I love it so much. From two days of classes.

I don't even have the words to describe how happy I am to be back in school again, and how happy I am that college is different from high school, and how happy I am to be here, at BYU-Hawaii. I have awesome teachers, and I am looking forward to working with my classmates.

I'm a nerd, and I love school. I love learning new things, and I love applying it to what I already know.

Like those little moments when I can explain the genetic modifications I use in my story because of my AP Biology class.

When I'm world-building, and I have to come up with governments and countries... AP Government and We the People.

The fact that I'm writing at the level I am. Lots of practice writing not only stories, but also all those analytical essays for AP Literature and AP Lang. As much as I hated those essays, I learned not only what was important in stories and literature, but also ways to put it in.

And just pretty much everything else. I am so super excited. I feel like a sponge, and I just want to drink all this in.

And on a completely unrelated note, today I discovered one of my little brother's Lego ninjas has Bieber Fever. Because college can't be all work.

Enjoy your day.