Bethjoy.com

And that would be fun!!! I just discovered how easy it is to put my videos into Itunes and though I don’t know how it would be to put a movie from a DVD on there at least it ought to be pretty easy to put my own movies and my music on there.

I’m probably going shopping today:) And that may hinder the soonness of the purchase of the Video Ipod but it’s rather fun going shopping and I need to find a birthday present for my brother John whose birthday is tomorrow. I think he’s going to be twenty-three but I’m not totally sure about it. If he’s not turning twenty-three he’d be turning twenty-four so Happy Birthday John.

And here are two pictures of what I made. Tonight I made the green dress. The white dress I’d made a while ago.


The Chronicles of Narnia The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe is coming to theaters next month. I’m rather excited about it since I may get to go see it! Oh, and in case you were wondering, the two outfits in the pictures are sort of like two outfits in the movie. I’d seen pictures of them and thus attempted to sew them.

Which is good because I’ve started feeling very unwell today. Must have been all those sugary deserts I didn’t eat on Thanksgiving…

So now… I think I’ll occupying my mind with other matters:) And did you know that there are more than 70 volcanoes in Japan?

I have just completed Unit 9 of History. And I got an A 94% on the test first time through. And prior to deciding that I would open the box of trading cards when History was done I had only completed the first lesson of the unit. So the result of deciding to open the trading cards when history was done is that I have just spent a solid hour and a half on school work and have done five lessons, two quizzes and a test. It was a short unit but still, I got an A 94% on the test!

And now I just have Unit 10 which has eight lessons three quizzes and a test in it and I’m done with History!!! Isn’t that nice? I think I’ll probably be using the five dollars off an order of twenty-five dollars or more coupon I have at the trading card place to get Language done. Those units are long… Probably double or more what the history units are. And now it’s really time to go to sleep. Tomorrow is another day and I have a feeling I’ll be opening some trading cards then:)

He overwhelmed my ring bearer at site 8. And I decided something. I’m going to add a condition to opening the box of Star Wars trading cards. So now the three conditions for opening it are: 1. If I beat Daniel 2. At Christmas 3.(the new one) If I finish history. Something tells me History may be finished before the week is over. After all, it’s only ten O’clock and I only have two units left and I already know something about what I’m studying. But I really ought to go to bed and get a good nights sleep so once again I have a problem to figure out… I’ve been making tough decisions all game and considering the fact that I lost I may not be a very good decision maker…

I made a new trading card game today! I shall first show you the trading cards and then mention what the rules of the game are. If I can figure out what they are myself…

If you’ve played trading card games before then you probably will have no difficulty in figuring out what to do with these cards. If you haven’t then you probably shouldn’t have much difficulty either. However since I’m writing the rules I’ll probably have some difficulty in figuring out what to do with these cards. So you can feel free to invent your own rules if you want too.

Now for the rules… As you may have noticed on the cards on the top of the card there is a name and the name at the top really doesn’t have anything to do with game play. The picture doesn’t either. However the A: X and D: X are very important as well as the cost of the card.

Basically the idea of the Two Player game is each player chooses ten cards(they can be any cards out of the twenty on my website and their can be as many duplicates as wanted(you will need to print them off of my website because currently that is the only way to get the cards)). These ten cards they hold in their hand so that their opponant does not see what they have. Then Turn One starts. Each player may play one card to begin with. To play the card you merely set it down face up and perform the cost on the card to activate it. So if it says “Crow like a rooster” then say “Cock a Doodle Do!” and your card is activated. Your opponant plays their card and also pays the cost, so let’s pretend they are playing “Attack of the Parrots” so they would say “Polly want a Cracker” three times and then the encounter of the two cards would begin.

The Encounter. On the cards there is a large A followed by a number and a large D. Let’s say your card says A: 35 D: 20 and your opponants says A: 45 and D:10. Well, your opponant would win the encounter… But why? Well, A stands for Attack and the number following it is the amount of points of attack that you have. D stands for Defense and the number following it is the amount of defense points you have. To begin with you subtract from your opponents attack points your defense points(so 45 - 20 equals 35) and then you subtract from your attack points your opponents defense points(so 35 - 10 equals 25). Then you compare the resulting numbers. So 35 left from your opponents attack compared to 25 left of your attack means your opponent wins. Wish I’d chosen for you to use a different card? Well, if you had played Something Strange That Way Goeth you would have won the skirmish and to play it you have just had to recite the alphabet backwards while looking cross eyed.

Oh, and incidentally, if you can’t perform the cost of the card then your card is not activated and your opponent wins the encounter. Now what happens to the winner? Well, they take their opponents card and their own card and put them in front of them(you may want to write your name on the back of your card so that you know whose card it is.) Then Turn Two will start and you will each play another card and do another encounter. The winner of that skirmish will put both cards in front of them. The game goes on like this until each player has played all of the cards in their hands and then you see which player has the most cards in front of them and that player wins!

Now. Suppose you had a large group of players who did not know about playing this game beforehand? Well, here is a variation on the game for surprise games. You take a lot of the cards(enough for each player to have the same amount of cards(how many per person is up to you)) and then put them in a stack. Then each player takes turn drawing a card until all of the cards are drawn(if you want you can allow them to put the card under the deck and draw another if they feel sure that they don’t want it). Then the game starts. Presumably one plays this at a table so somebody starts(you can chose your own method for deciding this). Then they begin an encounter with the person on their left and that goes just like in the two player game and then the person on the first players left begins an encounter with the person on their left and so all around the table until everyone has used the cards in their hands and then you see who has the most cards. In case of a tie those who are tied will merely chose three cards out of those in front of them and play one encounter using one of the three cards they choose. The winner of that encounter is the winner of the game. Hopefully the game was amusing…

So there you have it! I hope you have playing The Ridiculous Trading Card Game and I refuse to be responsible for any injuries that result in playing the game, real or imagined. I thought I’d put in small print for the fun of it:)

From right to left, me Elizabeth Von Fange, Laura Beth, Daniel Von Fange, Andrew Von Fange.

And yesterday isn’t bothering me in the slightest. I’ll still see if I can’t get Daniel for a rematch:) I’d like to beat him and I’m pretty sure that I could. So let us see what the day shall bring forth…

Today was certainly interesting… And to be able to understand some of it you may want to know that I have Hypoglycemia. And that means that at times my entire outlook on the world can change, to some extent, at any time without much warning. This said, let us explore my memories of today…

The morning started out without me noticing much abnormal but now that I look back on it there were a few strange things. 1. i woke up without being called. 2. I did not go back to sleep. 3. I baked two pumpkin pies. 4. well, actually that’s enough to begin with. Mom is teaching me to how to cook so I helped with lunch preparations and I didn’t eat much breakfast which was probably the root of my problem(not eating much breakfast being the root of the problem. Learning how to cook probably didn’t have anything to do with it though the vacuuming might. For some reason vacuuming with our current vacuum cleaner is stressful for me.) Eating affects how I am. If I don’t eat plenty, often, and healthily then goodbye stability.

Laura Beth arrived before lunch, which she was supposed to do. We had a big thanksgiving lunch with turkey and stuffing and cranberry sauce and sweet potatoes and jello that Laura Beth had brought and rolls made from bread dough that I had helped make. However… I don’t like turkey so I only took a small amount of it. Sweet potatoes I like so I took a large spoonful or two. The stuffing, cranberry sauce, and jello were declared by my mother to be too sugary for my consumption. And I had a roll. The rolls were the obvious beginning of my personal downfall for I said that the looked odd in a very blunt way(I was expecting a loaf of bread) and I was laughed at(though not meanly of course) and then later in the meal I said that the turkey was cold… I was promptly asked something about when I graduated from Emily Posts etiquette school. I felt further embarrassed and bothered. And throughout the rest of the day occasionally I would say something that simply wasn’t the proper thing to say and though I’m glad everyone was amused by them(Daniel even thanked me for the entertainment) I was rather bothered by it all and cried and was uncomfortable and embarrassed a lot more today than I probably have been in months.

The primary reason for this was the Thanksgiving Day TCG Game between Daniel and myself. I lost. And unlike previous games I was SO CLOSE to winning! And the worst part of it was that I COULD HAVE WON if I had just kept one single little card in my hand instead of discarding it and had equipped it to my ringbearer. Instead my ringbearer was overwhelmed by exactly double his strength at site nine and if he had survived that encounter I would have won the game. I went upstairs to my room crying but I started getting upset with myself for being so upset about an inconsequential game that really doesn’t matter in the long run. But really, it did matter and it does matter despite the fact that I feel really bothered about being so immature. The primary reason for me being so upset today, setting aside Hypoglycemia, was,,, Well, actually at the time of losing the game i really only thought about losing the game. It was only afterwards when I still felt like crying throughout the remainder of the day that I started telling myself that I should be upset and it doesn’t matter and so forth. Though really… Oh never mind. But I tried to stop crying before I was finished and I think I should have just cried for a while, felt better, and then been able to handle the rest of the day better. I don’t always make the best of decisions. Oh well.

I’ll probably start crying again and get my computer wet if I dwell on this subject any longer. But still, I had spent several days in preparation for that game and I really did want to win. However next game… Well, Daniel hopefully won’t be walking away a victor from that! Even if I can’t squash his Ents I’m still going to try and get to site nine before he does. And when I get there I’m going to try and have a good enough fellowship to handle whatever he sends against me. And I’m going to make sure I equip the ring-bearer with everything I can get a hold of. I’ve already made some modifications to my deck since the game and I changed it from a sixty-six card deck down to a sixty card deck so it’s tighter and their is more chance of drawing a really good card instead of just a good card and I replaced a few cards with even better cards and I took out a companion or two and instead put in Gandalf and an Ent of my own and changed my strategy ever so slightly and next game with Daniel… Well, I’ll just have to wait and see and what will happen. I hope I don’t have to wait too long. Maybe Daniel, after partially causing me to have such a miserable Thanksgiving, will take pity on his poor little sister and play another game with her tomorrow while her adrenaline is still flowing and hopefully while her insulin(has something to do with hypoglycemia) is not and give her a chance to beat him and open up the reward I promised myself which I’d really like to open.

Life can certainly be interesting. However usually, probably 90% of the time actually, I am happy, or at least, I am not sad or upset or bothered by anything. However it is just a bit more unpleasant to have a day when you are very unhappy happen to you when everybody else is happy and when you too should be happy. Oh well, I’ve pretty much stopped crying and calmed down (two teddy bears and a comforting mother really help) so I’d better not stir anything up again. But I’ll probably remember this day for a while and it will probably rank with one of my birthday’s when I opened a few vintage never removed from their boxes barbies thinking they were presents for me and instead my mother was going to sell them for another lady, and a certain Christmas party where their was a gift swap going on and I got to be the one who picked the present for our family and I was hoping to get to keep it and I picked a sort of Joke present that I did not like and I was in tears of agony, and the day where we went to a big theme park convention that had so much fun stuff at it but my brothers wanted to look at everything before doing anything and as I walked along aisles filled with booths of fun stuff and I saw how big the room was and so many fun things to do and I got tired of walking I started crying and talking and my mother walked me back to the car and it was the last day of that convention and I didn’t get to do anything and… So much for trying not to upset myself. But some days certainly do stand out my mind as being particular awful and horrible and unpleasant. And then there are the days that really stand out in my mind as being pleasant. Like at LDI when I got all of those free beads. And the day a stage decorating company whose owners are good friends of my Dad’s sent me a HUGE box of fabric. And quite a few Dollmarket trips stand out very pleasantly in my mind. And my birthday this year. And my fifteenth birthday. And part of a day on a Cruise ship when Mom finally let me leave the deck and I went down into the restaurant and ate ice cream while looking out a glacier caving through the huge window. Most cruise memories are extremely pleasant. Amongst them is when there was a writing class that I went too and everyone(I think) enjoyed what I wrote and the lady authoress who conducted the class being very encouraging about my writing. And there was the day I got my name badge at Central saying “Elizabeth Von Fange Video Production Crew”. I have a lot of pleasant memories connected with running camera at central and I’ve gotten several compliments there. And once I directed and I did fairly well according to Bobbie Garn who is the official and very professional overseer of video operations. Both trips to visit the Massatts recently were very pleasant. And although I’m sure their have been many, many, many, many more wonderful things that have happened to me and days that were very wonderful, at the moment I can’t think of any more. But of this I’m fairly sure, the day I finally beat Daniel in a fair game of Lord of the Rings Trading Cards will definitely be very high on the list of happy days. Very high indeed…

And I think I have a terrible memory at times. Which isn’t always bad but… I suppose I probably should stop writing but it sort of makes me feel better and it’s preventing me from lying in bed monologging with myself. One of the heaviest spiral downwards I go through is because of monologuing. It takes a while to really work myself up but when the storm bursts… It’s time to eat:) And go quietly into my room and perhaps watch a movie. We watch Charlie and the Chocolate Factory on the big screen right after my defeat today and watching the movie was enjoyable. Though I still felt like crying when I thought about anything but the movie. My brain wasn’t very awake and alert today.

Oh, and if you’ve read through all of this I do congratulate you. If you are sympathetic I appreciate it and if you are laughing at me then I’m glad I don’t know about it and if you are thinking that I am silly and immature it’s possible that I am(I’m only seventeen you know) but I usually am somewhat mature and I’m trying to be. I’d better stop writing and go to sleep. After all, tomorrow will probably be a brighter day though I’m not sure about that and I think I’m getting too pessimistic for my own good so i need to stop writing and go to sleep and eat a BIG breakfast tomorrow so the world will seem brighter.

And Merry Christand and a happy new year too. Mysteriously this morning a present for me arrived underneath the tree and it has a peculiar rattling sound to it so I’m looking forward to finding out what is in it when Christmas comes around.

I should be playing my game with Daniel soon. That could be interesting…