Merry Christmas!

Have a very merry Christmas, everyone! May we remember to give of ourselves for others this Christmas just as one has gave everything to become the Ultimate Gift to the world. My mom and I picked up a tree at Home Depot the other day for free, so I finally got to take a Christmasy photo. :)

Free Christmas music

One of my favorite singers, Anna Gilbert has a Christmas album for free today at Noisetrade.com/annagilbert!
If you like mellow, acoustic/folk-sounding music sung by a singer with a pretty voice, give her music a listen.
You can also find quite a few other Christmas albums (as well as a bunch in many other genres) on Noisetrade, and it's all free (and legal). Enjoy! :)

Christmas music playlist

Here's a Christmas music playlist I complied (it will probably expand as I look through my music and discover more); perhaps you'll find some songs and or artists you like in it. Feel free to offer some suggestions of your own in the comments. :)

Christmas music playlist

I Heard the Bells On Christmas Day - Casting Crowns
While You Were Sleeping - Casting Crowns

Veni Veni Emmanuel - Hayley Westenra
Silent Night - Hayley Westenra

O Come, O Come Emmanuel - Aliqua

A Snowflake Fell and It Felt Like a Kiss - Glasvegas

Silent Night - Sixpence None the Richer

Wishing for This - Leigh Nash

Christmas This Year - TobyMac Feat. Leigh Nash

Snow - Loreena McKennitt
Our King - Loreena McKennitt

Snow - Sleepthief

Emmanuel - Blackmore's Night
We Wish You A Merry Christmas - Blackmore's Night

O Holy Night - Josh Groban

Carol of The Bells, Sing We Now Of Christmas - BarlowGirl
Hallelujah (Light Has Come) - BarlowGirl

Winter Night - Little & Ashley

Carol of the Bells - August Burns Red

Wizards In Winter - Trans-Siberian Orchestra
Carol of the Bells - Trans-Siberian Orchestra
Dream Child - Trans-Siberian Orchestra

In Which I Look Quite Silly...

but have some fun at the same time. :)
Mini bull-riding! :D

The most successful attempt yet:

 

An other-than-successful attempt (trying to ride Mini Moo backwards can be tricky):



 

 

 

Mist In the Morning

Happily, although I'd missed it recently, there was mist at my house this morning! I forgot to take iPhone HDRs, but I still think I got some decent shots.More (better) photos from this morning to follow soon...

 

Pieces of Autumn

Once again, I'm out of a job and looking for a new one...
Check out 1saleaday.com for lots of good deals - I've gotten quite a few presents for my family from there. :)

Forest

Green and more green.

Forgiven

Can you see past the things that I have done
And the blood on my hands?

This was inspired in part by Relient K's song, Forgiven.

Give me the strength to face the wrong that I have done
Now that I know the darkest side of me...

Forgive me for what I have been
Forgive me my sins (taken from The Truth Beneath the Rose, by Within Temptation)

 

Dream

Everyone needs to dream sometimes...

Nature and Harmony

I took some nature photos on a morning recently...here are a couple. Aren't you glad God placed such beauty in this world?

The dewdrops sparkled like diamonds in the morning sun
But our eyes were looking ahead and we trod them underfoot, not realizing what treasures lay beneath our feet... 

                       I often like harmony in music...some of my favorite artists, such as BarlowGirl, do harmony very well. Recently while searching for songs by Michelle Tumes on YouTube, I discovered someone who is great at singing harmony; here's the video I first saw/heard her in (it's one of my favorites of hers - perhaps you'll think it's very pretty as well): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anvfr6JgVoM&feature=plcp

Sleepthief is another who features some great harmonies (mainly by layering a single female vocalist's voice many times); here's one Sleepthief song (a duet) in which you can hear some amazing vocals that sounds great together: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYDtUYtGc5I&list=UULM3uDRM-SGaiBe5hLUno9w&index=8&feature=plcp  

Musing

Yes, this isn't particularly interesting and doesn't have any real meaning behind it...it's just a regular self-portrait. Did you know that taking selfies without a wireless remote is quite difficult? It can be really hard to get the focus where you're going to be... Anyway, I enlisted in the Navy recently and I'll be going to boot camp next February...so now I have to get in better shape (mainly be able to run a mile-and-a-half in 12 minutes or less) and memorize some things. I also got a job a bit ago - I'm working at a pharmacy called Super D. Unhelpfully, the compnay was bought by Walgreens recently and there's a Walgreens store down the street from where I work, so my location is closing soon...and when it does I'll have to find a new job. :P Anyway, other than the Chick-Fil-A 5k run in Memphis I did on Labor Day (I got an incredibly slow time of 29:40), there's not much else that's happened to me recently that's worth mentioning. Oh, and there was some clouds and lightning from a storm recently. Expect more pictures soon.

Apathy

Save me from myself
Take from me this apathy
Wake from from my slumber
This waking sleep is dragging me down
So give me your passion
And set me on fire again...

I hope to be able to create a better image for this concept sometime. The description was inspired in part by Hannah Martin, whose words you really should read; perhaps you'll find them as beautiful and moving as I do.

Unrelated: today was my first day on the job at a drugstore called Super D's; it might only last a month since Walgreens bought the company and the location might close down, but even if so, a month of work is better than none. Also, the people who work at the store are nice, which I'm happy about. :)

Beach

I went to a lake some time ago and forgot my camera. I had my iPhone though...I just had to find something to rest or brace my iPhone on for HDRs, which could make things difficult at times.

SOOC (except for straightening) HDR:After editing and cropping:And another of the clouds (SOOC):There is way too much noise in the clouds in all of these. :P

Dark Days of Uncertainty

This post won't have many photos; I'll try to have a post with more when I'm somewhere with WiFi.



I'm sad to say that my adorable calf died recently of unknown causes (she may have strangled herself on the tether line, but I don't know for sure)...she was a sweet little creature and I still miss her. :-( I wonder if it's strange that I dreamed she had come back to life or something like that the other day.

Recently I've been considering joining the Navy to be a CTN (kind of like a computer hacker), which would be great in many ways since the job is probably interesting, it can help get a good job in the civilian world after the military, it doesn't require deployments overseas except to Hawaii, which doesn't really count, etc. It seemed great, but there's one hitch: I really do not want to get the required vaccinations, mainly because I've found that there are many big risks involved with vaccinations (and they haven't been proven effective either), and since I don't have a shot record I'd have to get many in a short time, which might overload my system and do further damage. While there have been vaccination waivers given out, I haven't been having success with being able to get one...
So I either have to continue to try to get a waiver (although there seem to be few options left with that), join the military and get all the vaccinations and possibly get very sick or worse, or simply try to get any kind of minimum-wage job that probably won't help much with my future.

So currently I'm basically "stuck between a rock and a hard place," as the old saying goes...I would sincerely appreciate prayers for guidance and for doors to open so I will be able to move forward with my life.

On a more lighthearted note, here's Santa with two of my favourite fortunes:

Micro Moo (again)

This may be the first photo I've taken of just her with my camera.



Please pray for me, friends; I may be joining the military soon... :O

Molleigh in the country

Here's an HDR edit of an old photo...

And here's the iPhone edit (the more dramatic one is the one further edited with my iPhone)

Micro Moo and Moi

So you wanted to see what I look like? Ok, here you go. Isn't Micro Moo (a.k.a. Buttercup) such a pretty little thing?

Imagination

Do you ever imagine things with different colors than the ones they have, or in different settings than those they're usually seen in? Here are a few examples:







If you click on one of these, you can see them and other on my Flickr photostream, including some in my recent "Around my house" landscapes series. And yes, I do find dice fascinating and like to collect them. :)

A Rose By Any Other Name

Just a couple of edits of an iPhone photo...

Looking for love

Here and there
All around her
She was looking for love
In all the wrong places.
She couldn't see
That what she sought
Was with her all along.





Getting over a barbed wire fence was more difficult than I'd first imagined, an I got lots of mosquito bites...I wonder if it was worth it - the focus in these is off. :P

The Avengers

Yesterday I watched The Avengers at the theater; I don't have time to write a long review, but I'll give a few of my thoughts here. I thought the movie was great (and no, not just because Scarlett Johansson, my favorite actress, is in it); naturally, the special effects and having a bunch of characters from the Marvel universe together are both awesome - how all the different movies tie in to the main storyline is very interesting. Also, unlike Captain America, which is my least favorite of the Marvel films I've watched recently (it didn't really seem to have any point to it - it just felt like eye candy), The Avengers had some powerful and thought-provoking themes woven into its plot. [Spoiler ahead] For instance, that of sacrificing one's own life to save others. At one point on the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier, someone (I forget who - perhaps it was Captain America) accuses Tony Stark of something along the lines of only caring about himself and not looking out for other people, but toward the end of the movie, Iron Man grabs the nuclear missile sent to destroy New York and flies with it through Loki's portal to space and destroys the alien ship with it, even though he knows it will cost him his life. It ends up not being the end of Iron Man, but you knew it couldn't be, right?[Spoiler ended]

To be continued..maybe.

Random stuff

Tomorrow I will not be a teenager any longer. Hooray. Birthdays are highly overrated, as you've probably discovered, but if I have a good amount of money in a year, my 21st birthday might be better since I'll be able to get a handgun and other cool stuff like that. :)

Ok, enough about me for now
Micro Moo (a.k.a. Buttercup):

Recovery

I am almost 100% recovered from when I knocked my head on the floor, so thank you God and thank you everyone who prayed for me to get better. :)

Recovery

I am almost 100% recovered from when I knocked my head on the floor, so thank you God and thank you everyone who prayed for me to get better. :)

Unpleasantness

I have found that hardwood floors are appropriately named. While wrestling with my younger brother (who is now nearly half-a-foot taller, a little bit stronger, and only around ten pounds lighter than me) yesterday, my head hit the ground with a considerable amount of force, causing me to lose consciousness for some time (so those of my family who witnessed it say - I don't remember much after hitting my head though), giving me a concussion,, a lump on the head, a bleeding ear, a stomachache and headache, and a sore jaw - not to mention just feeling awful. Although I'd gotten a concussion ten years ago while the vibe I was playing Tarzan on broke (when I was roughly parallel with the ground), this is the first time I can remember getting knocked out. And unlike the previous occasion and other times my stomach and head felt bad, when I tried to sleep the pain did not go away; it may have when I was asleep but that was an off-and-on occurrence and I had to sit up repeatedly because my head was killing me. (some of the time it felt like it was about to explode - if that's what migraines feel like, I feel so sorry for people with them) And even now, a day later, I'm still not feeling so well...so remember everyone, it's not like how you read in novels; getting hit on the head results in more than a short-lasting headache - and it is not a pleasant experience. Prayers that I will be better by tomorrow (particularly so I can get college assignments done) would be appreciated. :)

Portal

This, if you haven't guessed, is my "Atlantis" photo, which I used the Photoforge2 app's Tiny Planet "filter" on.

This slightly reminded me of a portal, which made me think of the video games Portal and Portal 2, as well as their soundtracks. I especially like some of the songs on the Portal 2 soundtrack, such as Machiavellian Bach, Turret Wife Serenade, and Cara Mia Addio...at any rate, if you want to, you can download the soundtrack for free (as well as legally), here: http://www.thinkwithportals.com/music.php" rel="nofollow">www.thinkwithportals.com/music.php

Update: I'm just now looking at this on a computer and realize it's an iPhone photo that actually looks pretty good even though it's here in a larger size!

A Parade of Pink

Yep, more low-quality iPhone photos...I took some new pictures with my camera today though, so I'll get to work on those sometime soon.

Fight for Life

My family and others protesting in front of a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic...

Pray for an end to the slaughter and spread the word.

Tears Fall, by BarlowGirl