The Shack

I haven’t read it, but I have read several reviews. This one makes the most sense to me based on everything I’ve heard, so I thought I’d share it: http://www.christianfilmmakers.org/forums/viewthread/1281/

GARF and Dogs

Approximately three months remain until I will hopefully go to GARF, the Georgia Renaissance Festival (less if you go earlier than homeschool day). If anyone wants to come with me (and my mother and younger sister and whoever I can get to go), just drop me a note or e-mail me or whatever. Tickets on homeschool day (May 7) are $10 per adult and $8.50 per student. Visit http://garenfest.com/ for more information. The student days last from 9:00 to 14:30 (2:30 PM). If I go, I plan on being there every moment possible, and wearing Renaissance-ish (not claiming to be historically accurate) garb. Since I will hopefully have new garb made in time, I might have some things you can borrow to wear if you come.

I went to Michaela’s house on Saturday. We went to Starbucks with Amy and Rachel and then watched Iron Man. Michaela has trained Rachel’s dog Kiwi to let herself outside and close the door when she comes back in. Kiwi went out, and their other dog Sunshine was inside, and Kiwi let Sunshine out.

I need to go do other things, so I will leave you with a picture and a link.

Sunshine and Kiwi, and the cats – Puddin’, Tabby, and Paisley:

Here’s a link: http://www.elizabethancostume.net/

Have an amazing rest of your life.
- WM

Oho

I don’t have a reason for using that as the title of this entry. I just felt like it.

I generally forget what I blog about pretty fast, so I apologize if I repeat things.

I updated my poetry blog and I’m about to update my Project 365 blog as I listen to Josh Groban. I’m really enjoying the book I’m reading (How Sleep the Brave). Some of the character dialogue seems unrealistic, but most of it’s very good and some of it’s perfect. So far I think it would make a great movie.

I watched the Karate Kid movies recently on Hulu. I saw the second and third (and fourth, “The Next Karate Kid”, but I don’t like it as much) on TV on day and wanted to see the first so I looked for a place to watch it online and found Hulu. That inspired a search for other movie-watching websites and that inspired research on whether or not they were legal. Most of the ones you’ll find if you Google them aren’t legal, but Hulu is. Here are a few links to pages that can help you find other legal ones:
One

Two
Three

Have an amazing rest of your life!
- WM

Giant Post o’ Randomness

Firstly, here’s a website: Pendragon: Sword of His Father.

Second, I need to stop injuring myself :p I’ve acquired various cuts over the past few days (and don’t remember how I got any. I think one was from something that had to do with sewing) and I burnt my arm on the iron.

Third, is this not the saddest picture you have ever seen?

Okay, maybe not /the/ saddest, but it makes me feel pretty bad. I mean, if a kitten came up to me like that and I asked if I eated its cookie, I might cry.

On a more serious note…I will hopefully be graduating in the spring (but the amount of school I have to get done to accomplish that is overwhelming, so I might save myself some stress and go through the summer). So I need to figure out what God wants me to do. I personally want to stay home and read and write and sew costumes, but I kinda figure He has something else in mind that will get me out of my rut. I also need to drive a lot more (like, 27 hours) so I can get my license so I can get a job and go to college or whatever. And yikes, I just used “like” and “whatever” in the same sentence. I must need to get more sleep or something.

I’m reading “How Sleep the Brave” by James H. Hunter. It’s very interesting so far. There are some annoying parts, such as: The breakage of writing rules has bothered me some (back story, passive voice, and the like). The omniscient point of view is annoying at times because the author doesn’t stay in the main character’s head and let you know what he’s thinking and I’d like to. But the story is engrossing enough to get over those things. The skipping of several years that sounded interesting bothered me even more, but it turned out well enough that I quickly got over that too. The author is good at securing your sympathy for the characters and building suspense.

I babysit tonight, as usual. It’s my weekly, two-hour character-building session. Most of the children are generally well-behaved, but there are three boys…well, two are brothers. They tend to be wild and disrespectful. The third boy is pretty good when the other two aren’t there, but when they are there, he’s worse than both of them and stirs them up so /they’re/ worse, too.

God is doing some things in my youth group that make me very happy. We (the youth group in general) used to be more involved in each others’ lives and we’d get together and hang out and talk about what God was giving us (which more often than not turned out to be the exact same thing everyone else was getting from God, down to the very same scriptures). Granted, I never talked much and still don’t, but just hanging out with them was great. Then those who were the unspoken leaders started college and other jobs, and while others stepped in to an extent to take those roles, we haven’t been as close since. My social life pretty much died and I felt guilty for wanting to just talk (or in my case listen) and hang out more than we did at the youth meetings, selfish for wanting to be known. But God is reminding use of the importance of being involved in each others’ lives, of getting to know each other and be unified with each other as well as with Him. I’ve wanted this for a long time.

There have also been some changes at Clean Place lately geared toward bringing us closer together, so that’s neat that God is doing the similar things in both of my circles of friends.

And now I have to end this so I can eat dinner and go build character for two hours kid-watching. ;p

Have an amazing rest of your life.
- WM

Another Other Journey to the Center

of the Earth. We rented the new one that stars Bredan Fraser. There’s not enough to say to dedicate a post to a review. There’s no innapropriate content except the gal needs to learn how to dress proper. But it wasn’t very interesting. It felt like they spent more time on special effects than plot and character development. I don’t like the characters much.

I’ve thought of several things to complain about so I’ll think of something good to go along with them.

Laura had art class today and Mom and I went to Kohl’s so I could look for some shirts. I looked for an hour or more and found two (and they’re the exact same style, just different colors). Most everything is too thin or too clingy or too short or too low or wide in the neck or too fitted. I don’t really like clothes shopping. It wears me out. On the bright side, I can sew. Maybe I’ll just wear Renaissance garb all the time. That would be fun.

I hope the weather warms up soon. I don’t like being cold. On the bright side, it’s never too cold for ice cream and I got some today while we were out. Butter pecan. Yeah I’m strange.

I found a sewing pattern I’d like to get – but it’s out of print. Simplicity 4488. On the bright side, I might be able to make something similar by combining patterns I already own.

The worst thing that happened today was probably Obama becoming president, but on the bright side…uhhhh…God loves us.

The Clean Place Moot is in August. It’d cost me around $800 to go. I really, really want to, but $800 seems so far away and August so close in comparison. On the bright side, I might get to go with the youth group to a lakeside cabin for a weekend next month and it won’t cost very much (we’ll probably have to buy food, since that’s kinda important). And if God wants me to go to the Moot, He’ll provide a way.

Another bright spot was seeing someone searched “Poems about Haldir” on WordPress and found one of my blog posts. Hahaha

Have an amazing rest of your life!

- WM

Movie Review: The Mummy 3 (whatever it’s called)

I watched this Monday.

Negative elements:

Scattered cussing and a few suggestive parts, not to mention the whole raising-a-dude-from-the-dead business and everything involved in that. One character is described as a witch but portrayed as good and there’s all that sort of thing. There are a couple of gross parts.

Positive:

Characters make sacrifices for their loved ones, sometimes ones that prove near-fatal.

Overall – I had a cold so I wasn’t paying close attention to the movie. It was weird, though.

Movie Review: Traitor

We rented this and took it to my brother’s apartment to hang out with him and watch it. I don’t remember it too well since it was over a week ago. You can also check out the review on pluggedinonline.com

Negative elements:

Cussing:  The s-word is used frequently along with a handful of other words.

There’s not much blood, but the violence is disturbing at times,  the most disturbing part being where two people throw a young man off a bridge onto (I think) a street below.

Positive elements:

The main character values human life and does whatever he can to save it, except when:

Questionable elements: The main character shoots and kills two terrorists in cold blood. They were obviously bad men and needing stopping, but I always wonder if that could have been avoided. The main character is also a Muslim.

Overall, it’s an interesting movie, but not one I’d watch again. On the bright side, maybe it will help people to realize not all Muslims want to kill you, and help them think of terrorists as real people and thus perhaps inspire Christians to pray for them more.

Frogs, Family, and Losers

I ordered a sword frog today from The Inner Bailey. The site was recommended by members of renaissancefestival.com, and though the price on the frog is a bit higher than others I found, I heard the item quality and customer service are worth it. If you don’t know what a sword frog is, don’t feel bad – very few “normal” (as in, non-Rennie) people I’ve met know what it is (you can look on the website I linked or look it up elsewhere if you’re still confused).

I’ve had a cold since Saturday, which isn’t very pleasant. But what was pleasant was that my aunt drove up and stayed with us Saturday and Sunday nights so she could go to a 50th anniverserary party for /her/ (and my mother’s) aunt and uncle (we young ‘uns weren’t invited, just the first-generation nieces and nephews and I suppose some other closer relatives, to keep the party small). We went to my brother’s apartment on Saturday and brought pizza and a couple of movies my older sister rented. We watched Traitor, which was…interesting.

I’m watching The Biggest Loser with my sisters as I write this entry. I don’t know how or why they started watching it, but they did and I started watching it with them. Actually now I’m in my room again because I need to do dishes so I put my laptop back in its place and hooked it up again. And now I’m kind of just rambling. And now the show’s back on.

Have an amazing rest of your life!

- WM

More Books, and Patterns

Hobby Lobby has Simplicity sewing patterns on sale this week for ninety-nine cents each, so I accompanied my mother and younger sister yesterday and Mom and I went there while Laura was at art class. I got four costume patterns and found some ribbon suitable for costumes that was in the Christmas section for 80% off.

We went to the bookstore Borders afterwards. I got Ivanhoe, which we have, but I wanted my own copy. I also got two books that were 50% off – Lord Hornblower, one of the Horatio Hornblower books that the TV series is based on, and C. S. Lewis and Narnia for Dummies. I’ve started school back and it’s seriously shortened my pleasure reading time, so I don’t know when I’ll be able to read them, along with all the other books I want to read.

Other than that, not much has been going to blog about. I’m struggling with a lot of things so if you’re reading this, please pray for me.

Have an amazing rest of your life!

- WM

Books and Project 365

Mom, Laura and I met friends for lunch and then went to Books-a-Million with them. I bought three books and Mom bought two on my behalf – The Shadowmancer Returns (G. P. Taylor), Wormwood (G. P. Taylor), The Illuminator (Brenda Rickman Vantrease – I’ve never heard of her but it looks interesting), a book with all of Jane Austen’s novels in it, and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Cour (Mark Twain), which I started reading.

I also started another blog. Yep. This one is for Project 365. Check it out here.

I also joined GoodReads.com to keep track of books I read in 2009, since we aren’t doing that on Clean Place this year. I joined as Manwariel.

Have an amazing rest of your life!

- WM