My own little raptor squad

Normally, I'd wait until the end of the month to do a life update, but since when are rules always followed around here? *scratches head*

Christian and I finished our first college class last week. Our professor ordered pizza and I made cookies. We finished out our presentations. I also got to drive the Tank again, because we don't exactly know how extensive the damage is on the civic so Dad doesn't want me driving it around. So that was a thing.

Our pool is almost full! I repeat, our pool is almost full! why in the world did I misspell "almost" twice in a row?

Public Speaking class started Monday. The professor seems ok, but here are more students in this class, so that'll be interesting.

Grey has started to push her chicks out into the world. She's not defending them or gathering them to herself quite as much. They've almost all got their grown-up feathers, except in a few patches where they're still growing. Their long legs really make some of them look similar to feathered raptors. X)

AND GUESS WHAT?! They perch on me now! of course, only when food is in the picture, but still. BABY STEPS

Why no, I don't have any scratches from sharp landing gear,
what makes you think that?

Oh yes, I have rad selfie skills. Sarcasm.

nom-nom-nom-nom

They can get heavy after a while!

I know their daddy was the black rooster, who had *ahem* certain ideas of how to treat his caretakers, but since I've got them so they trust me, hopefully they only inherited their momma's good side. I know at least two of them are hens, but I've no idea about the others. Hopefully we don't end up with four younger roosters along with our other one!

I made apple pie for Independence Day.  there's still some in the fridge with my name on it

I stayed up for a bit trying to get pictures of the fireworks with long-exposure. 5-8 seconds with no tripod seems like forever! Anyways, I took a lot, but only a couple turned out ok.

Also! THERE WAS A LIGHTNING STORM MOVING TOWARDS US AND OHMYGOODNESS IT LOOKED SO COOL! Mostly cloud-to-cloud, but sometimes it would touch down.

That vertical line on the horizon is lightning

Eventually the rain came so people stopped shooting off their fireworks.

What else happened?

Oh yes! I'm doing Camp NaNoWriMo! I'm continuing off of April's work, and my goal is to get it up to 10k. I know. It's not that high, but with college and general adulting...

The sunsets have been gorgeous lately, but the absolute best was Saturday night on the drive back from Church. At first it was all cloudy and rainy, but once Church was over, the clouds had cleared out just a bit in the west. It started out gold. Then it changed to more orangy-pink and some of the clouds had faint green reflections. Then it erupted into dozens of different colors. Just. Absolute. Gorgeousness.

Sorry about those weird reflections, we were in the car.

For the past week or so I've been listening to Broadway Showtunes blogger says "showtunes" isn't a word. whatever.
Mainly The Phantom of the Opera, The 2010 Live Les Miserables, Wicked, and Fiddler on the Roof.

Now, snippets:

After switching on her lamp, Reiyna allowed herself to be drawn into the pages of a book. It was a good story, she decided when she finally shut her eyes to sleep; about a clumsy street urchin with unheard of long hair named Primrose Elmira Sparks, and a boy named Jax whose guardian wouldn’t let him out of a tower. She had mainly bought the book because the cover was intriguing and because the synopsis promised that there would be cake and sarcasm.

(Oh yes, that will also be a story at some point.)
-

After she finished preparing for the day (a process that only took about fifteen minutes), Reiyna yawned her way down to the kitchen to prepare breakfast. She opened the fridge, but it was empty, or almost. There wasn’t much one could make when one’s ingredients consisted of bottled water, cashews, and a turnip. Reiyna pulled on a sweater, wrote a quick note to her father, grabbed a few credits, and walked out the door into the empty street.

-

 “You made that up! How could it be true?”

“Because it’s in rhyme. And it is a historically well-known fact that all prophesies end up being true if they rhyme.”

“So you just thought, ‘hey, I’m up a creek right now, let’s make up a prophesy about my daughter that rhymes so she can save us all plus solve my sidekick’s lack of a wife problem!’ WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?” Reiyna barely managed to restrain herself from slapping the woman who was supposed to be her mother.

Ms. Thrush placed a hand over her eyes and leaned heavily on her cane. She suddenly looked quite old and worn out. A sigh, barely audible, escaped her lips.

“I cannot deny that what you have said is not a complete falsehood, nor can I affirm that it is the whole truth,” she paused, “in order for you to fully understand, I must go back to the beginning. Yes,” she nodded to herself, “it is time for you to know the story of Millicent.”

(Ooooh! The Big Reveal!) (If you remember my first NaNo, Millicent plays quite a large part. Here are some snippets from that. I did change around a few things, her name for instance. That was before I really had a different name for the Maleficent character, so I just called her Maleficent.)

Well, how are you doing? Anything big happen during this half of July? Are you doing Camp NaNo? What do you like to listen to? Also, what do you think of my fine feathered friends?