#151 - Stella! - May 27, 2013

Cool, cute, or odd thing from the last 24 hours:

1) driving home from church, a streetcar on wheels (instead of rails) comes at us.  In bold letters on the front, the word "Stella" is stenciled.  This strikes me as odd, and it takes me a few seconds to link the two things.  Eventually my Tennessee Williams memory kicks in, and I get it.
2) During the basketball game, Christian comes in and shows me his lip balm cannon.  It shoots the cap when you push the plunger and increase air pressure.  Memories of being an 11 year old boy and doing the same thing come back.  And I tell him about the clicker pen shooters I made when I was a kid.

When it was evening, I put the Heat-Pacers playoff game on my phone, and wrote the next installment of my Book of Mormon rewrite.  Just 1 Nephi 2:16, where Nephi first gains a testimony.  I finished at half time and put the game on the TV.  Aria hung out with me for a bit and then went to bed.

The Book of Mormon ReWrite (I'll abbreviate it to BOMR I think) looms large in my understanding of the scriptures.  To make the story into one with characters instead of figures, you have to write dialogue.  As you write dialogue, you have to get inside the head of the people, try to make sense of what they do and why, and you have to add color and flavor.  For instance, here's the 1 Nephi 2:16

"And it came to pass that I Nephi, Nephi, being exceedingly young, nevertheless ebing large in stature, and also having great desires to know of the mysteries of God, wherefore, I did cry unto the Lord; and behold he did visit me, and did soften my heart that I did believe all the words which had been spoken by my father; wherefore, I did not rebel against him like unto my brothers."

This one verse turned into 2 single-spaced pages as Nephi goes off by himself to pray and has his seminal spiritual experience.  It's the first one we read about, and sets in his mind that his father is a prophet.  Hugely important, but so easy to skip over when reading through first Nephi.

Exercise milestone today: 1 mile.  I haven't run a mile in 20 years.  It wasn't fast, but I was going 6mph most of the way.