over and over and over

It has been a "duh!" and "dangit!" kind of day, at least partially.  Multiple trips back and forth between houses because of keys left behind, going back out to the car because wallet is inside, realizing you're hungry when you're in the car about 2 minutes after leaving the house.  You know how it is. 

The final frustration was my paper.  Word is messing with my mind, I tell you, because I am just 2 lines or so over my page limit and NO MATTER WHAT I DO it's not getting any shorter.  I took out 3 full lines of a block quote.  I have taken out extraneous adjectives and adverbs (I'm bad about those).  I've put on my Hat of Succinctness.  Nothing.  When I look at the print preview, NOTHING HAS CHANGED. 

So I give up for now.  I will look at it again on Monday, when it is due.  I will let it rest.  If I can't figure it out then?  Oh, well. 

How many times does "moon" appear?

Today has been a busy day, but it's lovely.  After staying up most of the night and working a little today, I can be done with my first paper if I want to be.  I'll go over it a bit over the next few days, tweaking & maybe adding enough to make it a solid 10 pages. 

Three hours of sleep is all I got, and I drowsily donated blood and read some C.S. Lewis essays on fiction (now unnecessary) before heading down to SFO to get one of my goddaughters.  My head about exploded due to only one security line being open, but I finally obtained the girl and made it out of the city. 

In an effort to get my page length, I flipped through the Chronicles looking for another example of the things I already pointed out, but eventually realized I had a shiny, new point to make!  That was fun.  So I pulled up the trusty Amazon search and looked for "moon" in all of the books (well, the one, big copy of them all).  No, I haven't resorted to listing objects and the frequency of their appearance, but I had an idea that the Moon was sometimes more than just a moon, so I wanted to see all the uses.  Turns out I'm kind of right.  That's always  nice. 

Voyage of the Dawn Treader, etc.

I may have read Prince Caspian today, too, but I was more interested in Voyage.  I found it quite difficult to skim because I haven't read it in some years (7 or 8) and, with the movie coming out soon, I wanted to read the details.  I did skim a bit, but found myself slowing down and wanting to savor.  I just about clapped when Lucy, Edmund, & Eustace got to the field with the feast laid out by the Lamb.  I love the imagery!!  And Reepicheep??!!!  He is seriously awesome.  Love him.

I just started on The Silver Chair, which I remember not liking.  It may be because I don't like villains & so I'm not real fond of the time spent with the giants and worrying about being eaten.  We'll see how I feel.  I'll likely skim a lot, because I'm really just looking for things about Aslan. 

My sister will be here in less than an hour, and I've been cleaning off & on today while trying to focus on reading.  I've had mixed results.  Sure, I read 2 books, but I wanted to finish all 7 by tonight. 

So, I'm going to read a few chapters, wait for Seth to call me from In-N-Out in Rohnert Park, I will place my order with him, then do some last-minute cleaning just so my sister isn't completely disgusted by our house.  I swear, if I didn't ever have company, my house would never be cleaned. 

Chronic(what?)cles of Narnia

As you may have seen coming from my previous posts, today was a breakdown day.  Not long after I woke up, I started thinking of all the things I needed to do today, and I was only able to talk myself out of crying for so long.  Thankfully, my dear husband was home, so he was able to hug me and knew I was going to cry before it started. 

After a run and getting most of the errands done, I was able to lighten up a bit and get a little homework done.  I finished The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and skimmed through The Horse and His Boy.  It makes me happy when the story obviously mirrors biblical actions and themes.  I love it when people are anointed with the Holy Spirit, and I really liked Narnia's Pentecost in The Magician's Nephew. 

I also love Lewis's writing style, especially when he talks to the readers.  You see a side of him that I would call silly, even though you don't often read about that aspect of his personality in biographies or letters.  The only glimpses of that you get are in a few letters or remembrances by students of his who write of him good-naturedly making fun of other professors and acting more like the students than an authority figure.  If you only ever read his theological writings and most biographies, you would have to read between the lines to figure out that he had quite the sense of humor. 

So tomorrow I shall press on with Prince Caspian get through the rest of the books.  Once I have all my data, it shouldn't be a difficult paper to write.