First post

Well, friends, after various peregrinations upon the far-ranging expanse of the World Wide Web, I have come to settle upon this particular thread for my personal blog. I deleted the xanga after a consideration of some of the advertisements...blogspot is noticeably free of those. I shall keep the other blogs I started, that those who are interested solely in my literary criticisms, literary endeavors, and venturings into the realm of theology and philosophy may follow my progression there without being distracted by accounts of my personal life, which will tend to be less formal. Comparatively less formal, anyway.

News of the past week or so:

--First day of school classes today! Latin 3, US History 2, Freedom's Foundations (Political Philosophy) 2, Geometry, and Rhetoric. Rah! This should be an interesting semester.

--Working on scholarship applications for the fall, and information on the Simultaneous Membership Program with ROTC and the VA National Guard.

--FINALLY finished The Pickwick Papers yesterday, after starting it over the summer, returning it to the library, and not having time during the fall semester to read the copy I later bought. Grand book, and remarkable debut...I may post on some of my favorite parts later on. :-) Will be starting Martin Chuzzlewit soon, though my goal of reading all of Dicken's novels before I graduate is looking grim. I have 8 to go (I've read 7, I think), and only 2 1/2 years. It's possible, I suppose, but a full Dickens novel every quarter is somewhat daunting.

--STILL slogging away at Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion. Also started John Owen's The Death of Death in the Death of Christ, pretty much the definitive work of the Reformed church on particular redemption and why they believe it. I've been dabbling in Spurgeon's "All of Grace," and "John Ploughman's Talk"; both are short books, but they are more tracts than doctrinal treatises, so are having a harder time holding my interest right now.

--Received my Geneva Bible from Vision Forum!!!! I caught it on sale for half-price, with the black leather binding. It is a work of art, and a piece of history. And the leather smells wonderful. :-)

--I picked up two tapes for 75 cents each at the Salvation Army store yesterday, while waiting for my sisters to finish dance lessons. Steve Taylor's I Predict 1990 (yes, it's old), and One Bad Pig's Smash; punk/pop/rock (how DO you categorize Steve Taylor? He even has one song where he sings to an orchestra playing a piece by Rachmaninov...) and metal respectively, with lyrics generally satirizing the vanity of worldly philosophy from a biblical perspective. Not the greatest art of all time, but, hey, it was 75 cents and something for my car's tape player. :-)

--Inspired by a phone call from my old trumpet instructor, a conversation with Tim B., and my little sister's first flute lesson, I have picked my trumpet back up and am playing it again. I was happy to discover that alot of my old range remained, but, naturally, I had none of the endurance necessary. I was able to hit a high C (above the staff) a couple times, but I couldn't hold it for any length of time. That will require practice to get my lip back in shape; in the meantime, I'm mostly playing songs out of my hymnal, just for fun. I have no idea what I'm going to do in the future with my trumpet, but the same goes for my guitars, come to think of it.

In other news, there's another poem on the poetry blog, and I am getting close to completing my mini-epic. It's not long enough to be a true epic, but not short enough for me to just call it a poem (it's about 340 lines right now, with 20-60 left to go)...Anyway, I'll be posting that up by section in the next few days.

Sola Gratia,
Colin