The Intuitive Reasonings of Jessica

Last Friday West Lafayette was cold and rainy and therefore I (being in West Lafayette) was cold and wet. Under normal circumstances, coldness and wetness would have added together to a lousy start to the weekend. However, these were no normal circumstances. I was quite happy because after my last class of the day, Laurie whisked me off to a warm sunny place called Turkey Hill in the Ozark Mountains in Missouri for a church conference. It was not warm and sunny when we arrived due to it being 12:00 am, but the sky was clear and starry and the air was quite warm for it being night.

After a lovely night's sleep in our cabin, Laurie and I awoke to a delectable breakfast of pancakes and bacon. We then attended chapel, where Laurie's uncle was speaking. He is a good speaker and he is very enthusiastic about the gospel.

After lunch, Laurie and I skipped the afternoon session to go pick up her friend Micah in Rolla, the town where Laurie was born and grew up. It is a beautiful little town in the mountains. The orange, red and yellow trees made the scenery even more breathtaking.

Laurie, Micah and I returned to Turkey Hill in time for the second half of the football games. A girls' game and a boys' game of tackle football were going on simultaneously in a muddy field. Laurie and I sat on the hill and watched. I was glad we didn't join in the game because the girls are notorious for being more aggressive than the boys.

Saturday evening, Laurie's friend David attempted to teach me to play volleyball. However, due to my lack of proficiency in sports, my team suffered. Nevertheless, I managed to hit the ball over the net a total of four times. Sadly, the number of times in which I missed the ball entirely was much greater.

Near midnight, Laurie, one of her friends and I lay down on the concrete and gazed at the stars. God's creation sure is beautiful. We could see so many stars that are imperceptible through Lafayette factory smog.

The next morning, Laurie's uncle preached for the church service. He spoke on Jonah and I really enjoyed it.

Lunch was directly after the service, and we left for the long trek back to Indy right after lunch. When we arrived back at Shingle Paradise, I was happy to learn that the lovely Missouri sunshine had followed us. The warmth didn’t quite make it, however; I was bummed to have to wear a sweatshirt to school this morning.

Now that midterm has come and gone and I have received all of my art from A&D 113 back from my TA, I have decided to post some of my favorite pieces. First, is the ink wash still life. The assignment was to draw a still life that was set up in the studio using ink, and then complete the picture with hatching and cross-hatching on top of the wash.

The next picture I am posting is the positive/negative space. The assignment was to draw panels on our paper (most people drew boxes; I chose to draw abstract shapes with zig-zag edges) and then draw a different thumbnail in each panel using negative space. The still life was set up in the studio and we just got to pick which angles to draw from and what to include in our thumbnails. This was the first picture that we had the option to experiment with color in, and I was very happy do so. Finally, I am posting my landscape. We were allowed to draw anywhere we wanted, so I chose to draw in the graveyard on Salisbury Street.

~Thanks to Andrew Wegener for taking the pictures~

I have embarked upon an ambitious undertaking to read a long book Kara has recommended by the title of The Fellowship of the Ring. This book is probably quite familiar to most of you, even if solely by association with the movie of the same name. However, unlike most of you, I am an anomaly in that I have never seen the movie (with the exception of the first twenty minutes of it which I viewed at the Wegeners' lovely abode some weeks ago). Therefore, the plot and characters are all quite new to me. Nonetheless, I am ascertaining it to be rather enjoyable and well-written.

I personally find it rather agreeable to read a book before seeing the movie based upon it. This allows the reader to discover the characters on his own without his understanding of the story being marred by possibly incompetent actors who may misrepresent the story. (Not having seen the film The Fellowship of the Ring, I am in no way criticizing it.) After having seen a movie, it is often impossible for one to completely free oneself from the movie director's interpretation of the story and approach the actual book with an open mind so as to understand it just as the author intended it to be understood. For example, in the book Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, I understood the character "Mary" to be a plain girl. However, in the five-hour version of the movie, she is portrayed as exceptionally ugly (no offense to the actress; I’m sure those zits were fake). Those who saw the movie before reading the book would probably overlook the fact that the book merely describes her as "plain" because they had already been ingrained that Mary is downright ugly. I also don't recall any reference to Mary having ill singing skills in the book, but I am hesitant to say so as I read it rather cursorily in high school and may be mistaken.

Another problem with seeing a movie before reading the book is that often the story is "Hollywood-ized". For example, in the film A Walk to Remember several details are changed from the original book (which I consider to be far superior) to make a better movie. Someone who sees the movie and then reads the book might consider the book to be in error simply because he had first heard the story a different way, when in reality the movie was the one at fault.

Once again, for those of you who missed it the first time I said it, I am in no way criticizing the film The Fellowship of the Ring AND I have not yet seen it (except for the very beginning). However, I would like to say that despite still being in the first chapter of the book, I have already ascertained that it is a book that would be exceedingly difficult to make a film out of, even with a Hollywood budget. Therefore, any decent attempt at creating a movie about the book would be quite commendable although I doubt that the movie holds true to the book in every respect as that would be near impossible.

Inflated holiday decorations in people's yards are the ugliest, tackiest, most distasteful, most revolting things I have laid my eyes on this season. I know they have existed in previous years as well, but this year they have stood out with uninhibited squalor. What nauseated me the most was seeing huge inflated Halloween decorations contaminating the beautiful landscapes of southern Indiana. Imagine rolling hills, dilapidated barns, grazing cows, trees of red, orange and yellow... and huge inflated ghosts popping out of huge inflated pumpkins! I'm sure you can imagine my repugnance.

In other news, half of Shingle Paradise is no longer single. The two extraordinarily lucky men have been being exemplary examples of gentlemen of late. For the benefit of my male readers, I have decided to share some highly useful lessons both men have successfully utilized in the past week. I am sure these two tips will prove to be indispensible to you someday as they have been to the two aforementioned gentlemen.

Handy dandy tip #1: Chicks dig ice cream
Handy dandy tip #2: Chicks dig chocolate

In conclusion, I have an inquiry for my dear readers. I fervently advise you all to reply, as your answers are imperative to my decision regarding the future of this blog. The question is this: Do you prefer posts containing intuitive arguments against such things as A&F and inflated holiday decorations, or do you prefer the exhilarating updates on my roommates' love lives? Or, perhaps you think that I have already achieved a delightful balance of the two. (This post, for example. is an anomaly in that it contains both.)

Dilapidated barns, trees in changing autumn colors, and grazing cows. All of that on top of beautiful Bloomington hills made me want to pull out my watercolors and do a landscape. But alas, I didn't have any with me, much less enough time between goat shearing, canoeing, hiking, and all of the other fun things we did. Nonetheless, it was an emphatically awesome weekend.

Yesterday Kara and I rode our bikes to her friend Tom's house. He lives on an enchanting farm outside of Otterbein. It was roughly 20 miles away, and it took us 2 hours to get there, but the ride was strikingly picturesque. (It didn't quite compare to the Hoosier Hills bike tour, however.) Tom is a fascinating person with a lovely vocabulary. He is an anomaly in that he is a Luddite (a machine hater) and his vocation is the "Macintosh geek" of Purdue University. He would make a great professor. Unfortunately, that doesn't really suit his fancy.

Tom has a beautiful dog and two beautiful cats. Kara and I wanted to kidnap the dog, Washu, who is part Samoyed. She is white, fluffy and adoring, and would make a perfect pet. The only drawback is that she is accustomed to living on a 75 acre farm, and might not adjust well to life in Shingle Paradise. While we were slightly disapointed in this (and that Tom didn't want to part with his dog) we shall enjoy going out to visit her frequently next year in training for Hoosier Hills. There are few hills on the way there; however, the distance will augment our endurance.