Oh, yeah...this needs a title

Wow. April 29, and it's already roasting here. It's up in the 80's, which, if you were in the 60's just last week, is hot. The weather changes so fast here it's like...like...I dunno, an Amtrak.
So, due to it's being so hot, we turned on the air conditioning. Funny, I'd forgotten about that little feature. Anyway, we turned on the AC, and I suppose that when it's on it gives off a smell, a very faint one, so that it's not so much a smell as some intangible sensation, if you know what I mean. I started detecting this smell shortly after the AC went on about an hour ago, when I was doing homework. I was listening to Coldplay at the time, and consequently was already in a state of groovy nirvana fit to put my younger brothers to sleep. No, I was not on any chemicals; music my drug of choice, thanks.
So this smell comes drifting into my room, and suddenly I'm barraged with images from last summer, when we were brand-new into this house. That summer, because it had so much change in it, has already been branded thoroughly on my brain, so the ensuing fit of nostalgia was...rather strong. Not that I was reduced to tears, it's just that that smell gave me such an amazing sense of last summer.
This actually happens to me all the time (but I have no idea if it's something that happens to most people as much). Certain smells and music tend to "bring me back" to certain places and times, which I know happens to most people, but I think I may be blessed with an extreme case of it. Many of the CDs in my room remind me of something when I listen to them, and deja-vu from my nose is fairly common, too. I guess that may sound slightly creepy, but it's actually enjoyable. It may even be called a guilty pleasure, considering that we should be living in the present. But the year that is now almost behind me was so unique that I almost can't help it.
Ah, the glory of summer.
* * * * * * *
Oh, and I figure I'd better mention this:
For the past month or so, I and three of my siblings have been rehearsing in a production of Aladdin (yes, the Disney one). Unfortunately, due to some unfairness, we needed to perform the "Junior" version, which meant two things:
1): No one under 18 was able to audition, which didn't affect me, but prevented some prominent talents from lending their skill
2): The script was significantly pared down and adapted; it's only about an hour long in itself.
However...
We found ourselves with a fantastic team of directors, including the incomperable Lisa Pixler and Janice McIntyre. Lisa, as "the" director, really knew her stuff, and on top of that has great special-effects savvy. Janice has spent much of her career as an artist, and gave us one of the biggest, most beautiful sets we've ever had. Susanne Burroughs gave us choreography that was simple but looked great, and Debbi Teague kept us on top of our harmonies, among many other things. So, consequently, what could have easily been a short, rather trite show instead opened to a full house last night, a house filled with one of the best, most responsive audiences I've personally ever performed for, looking and sounding great, and getting a screaming standing ovation at the end. Oh, man, was it glorious.
I love theater.

Fun with Paint

Just try and tell me that that isn't cool. Just try.
Paint is awesome.

Viva Jesus!

It's Easter! Aaaand...yeah, I actually don't have much to say.
I suppose I could sum up Lenten eventens, but I really can't think of much comment to make on that, either. Except that on Thursday I had a pretty humbling experience. How so?
Well, let's just say it's interesting that sometimes while we can feel our heads getting a little swelled, since it's not happening with conscious effort on our part there's not much we can do about it; in other words, while I never actually said to myself: "Oh, I am just so on top of this spiritual thang," that feeling of superiority was still creeping in, and it came and slapped me in the face last week after I discovered some "advice" I had given was badly taken but not badly needed. Fortunately, things have been (more or less) reconciled, but that didn't stop me feeling like a dork.
Hooray for shots of dorkiness. Anyway, enough of this, it's Easter, eat chocolate, say "Hallelujah!", be happy!

What God Hath Wrought

I just got back from a hiking trip (though I'd really call it an "expotition" if you Winnie-the-Pooh fans know what I mean) throughout the area of the Palouse Falls in Washington. It was awesome, in that my previous image of Eastern Washington being a dry, sagebrush-y and overall boring place was blown out of the water (ugh. No pun intended). Picture some of this:
Staring over a chain-link fence, you see below you a pool of muddy, coffee colored water, which is surrounded by soaring cliffs of rock over which creeps moss, grass and shrub. Above the pool, through a niche carved into the top of the cliffs, thousands upon thousands of gallons of water are cascading downwards, a miniature Niagra.
About five hundred feet east-ish of this spectacle is another: The river flowing from the falls curves and winds about two hundred feet directly below you as you look down, and as you look up...You see an expanse of green hills which suddenly collapse into a craggy gorge through which the river is following its millenia-old path. Over this view, the sunlight seemingly flows through the gray rain clouds that are now dispersing, and the entire view is lit with the burning, golden light of sun after a storm. Wow.
Then, go a ways south and you see wooden power lines, lacing electricity across the landscape, their insulators glinting like glass buttons. These power lines are running parallel to a railroad, which is just emerging from a canyon of dynamite-carved rock. You are standing at the very point where the canyon walls slope back to the ground, and looking down at the tracks, you can imagine dust-smeared workers hacking and chipping through the rock decades previously, planting the dynamite charges that will blow tons of the stone sky-high.

Once the tracks have emerged from the canyon, you see alongside them three, maybe four trees. These trees are old, their branches bare of leaves but covered in yellowish moss, and they have a thin, twisting, spiky beauty to them that speaks of age. Blaaaugh, I'm waxing unforgivably poetic, but unfortunately for you this is cyberspace, and you can't slap me. Hah!
The last stop I want to mention is farther away, to the north. Once again, you eventually find yourself staring down a craggy precipice, but this one is only fifty feet or so, and a somewhat muddy trail will lead you down it. You follow it down and find yourself alongside the same railroad you were next to earlier, walking on a bed of rocks that, once again, have likely been blown to bits by explosives. Wheeeee.
The trail switches back down a steep hill covered in these rocks, and eventually, when you're at the bottom of this hill, you then enter a forest of exceptionally tall sagebrush, about as tall as a full-grown man. Over this sagebrush, you can see a sheer bluff of basalt columns looming in the background, and in the center of this bluff is a strange pockmark, formed by some of the columns curving about in a very peculiar way.
Through the sagebrush you can see swirling, roaring rapids, muddy brown like the rest of the Palouse River. In and around the rapids are rocks, random lumps of land, and one or two outcroppings that make a fine place to stop and have lunch. In the midst of this, you stop for quite a while, to savor both your surroundings and the pleasant change in the weather. As you sit on a rock outcropping, staring at the bluff, the sagebrush, the swirling brown rapids, whatever, you reflect on how beautiful the place is, contrary to your previous perception of the area as being either shrubby or dead. You wish you could come down into this little valley, with the bluff and the rapids, as often as you liked, becuase while it's beautiful, it's not a tourist destination; it's not riddled with trails, litter, and plaques describing how Lewis and Clark fought of the Hopi Indians here, or whatever. It's deserted. It's a haven. As C.S. Lewis may have liked to put it, it's a patch of God-light.