The Blog of Bonnie J.

2008-05-09T12:02:00.003-04:00

Hello folks! Since I've checked my stat counter and I'm still seeing a significant number of hits to this website, let me direct you once more to my new website, www.generalismo.com. If you want to keep coming back here and reading things, that's fine too, but I won't be likely to update very often!

Thanks and have a wonderful day.

2008-03-01T17:06:00.002-05:00

Hey folks, I'm moving. Please update your links and blogrolls (or your super secret file on me at the FBI) to www.generalismo.com

I haven't switched over all my old links. One of the criteria I picked for links at the new site is that it needed to have a post from 2008. A few of the links I clicked on no longer worked, so if you see that your outdated link is here email me the new one.

Look on the bright side - instead of having to type 23 characters, you only need to type 19! (not much of a difference, actually!) If you use the ctrl+enter short cut you only need to type 11, plus two key strokes. Anyhow, see you over at the new place.

GENERALISMO.COM

2008-02-24T21:33:00.000-05:00

Hey people! I set out to write a blog post and then when I finished an entire page of text, I felt like the post wasn't appropriate. Sometime last year my grandfather said that some of what he reads on my blog seems like journal material. Sometimes I post things without thinking them through all of the way, or later on I see the folly of what I'm saying. So instead of posting the rant I was going to, I'll just say "Hi!" and update y'all on what's been going on with me. I am in Florida and a mosquito is flying around my hands. Last night, one was flying around and I caught it, so I caught it. Then, since it didn't appear to have any blood in it, I ate it. Doesn't the Bible say something about having dominion over animals!? It was small anyhow, and I chewed it as best as I could to make sure there were no nematodes still alive in it (which, of course, I think might still be possible. I'm not sure how small they actually are.) Didn't taste like much though. Peter my brother said if we had a bunch of them and ate them all at once you might be able to tell what they taste like. Vincent my other brother says they probably aren't the best thing to catch to try to stay alive in the woods. I would tend to agree ;)

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A book came from Paperbackswap.com in our forwarded mail; Occult Invasion by Dave Hunt. It should be interesting. I'm also in the middle of reading Judgment Day, by the same guy. I can't say that I agree with everything he says, but it's very interesting. Most of it consists of what I believe to be sound things. Pagan Invasion was also good. A novel that he wrote was good, but I don't remember the name.
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2008-02-15T11:15:00.003-05:00

Hello friends and occasional readers :) (notice how I worded that?) Just kidding! Even if you don't have time to visit my blog, you still may be a friend. More and more often I'm struck by how unreal the internet is. It's just that - unreal. Unreal in the sense that you aren't necessarily making contact with the real person on the other end. I'm so glad to be unfettered by the internet while we're on the road. Yet I'm so happy to be back to it when we get home. It's kind of nice checking the email once every few days and getting dozens of messages than checking every 5 minutes and not getting anything most of the time.
I haven't been able to keep up with my youtube subscribers (leaving a note to thank them for subscribing) but really, it doesn't matter. I'm glad they enjoy my videos, but youtube can't be my life, and neither can facebook or any other internet thing.

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Second, I have some thoughts on music. We're with some good friends here in Texas and they are great musicians. One of their kids picked up the saxaphone two weeks ago and has absolutely blown me away with his playing. It's not even funny! He made 4th in a mandolin contest that is really the big competition (Winfield in Kansas). So anyhow, I've been thinking about music lately. Most of you probably know I used to play trumpet and still do ocasionally, but not as much as I used to. I really did enjoy playing but I just fell out of love with it as I started playing guitar more and more. Now that tendonitis (alternately spelled tendinitis, for those of you who are wondering) has payed me a visit, guitar practice has gone way down. I went from 20 hours a week to 1 or 2 :( It's very saddening in a way, but it's opened another door. It's opened the door for another less hand intensive instrument, such as trumpet.
But on to my point, life is the point. Serving God is the point. Living for Him is the point. Music is a language, but it's just an expression of feeling. Or at least that's what it is ideally in my mind. When you play a scale, you aren't just playing frequencies, you're conveying something. If you play a bunch of random notes that don't sound good, you may not be saying anything, or you may be saying something that's angry or confused. It's like speaking; two people who each speak a different language are THINKING the same thing in abstract thinking, but the way in which they express it are different. In music, life is what there is to convey. As far as lyrics go, people enjoy music that they can identify with. If you sing about feelings which no one has, chances are people won't identify with the music and they won't like it. Sometimes they DO feel the feelings you sing about but they don't realize it till you write it. Then you have brought a feeling in them which was formerly completely without description into clarity, and they identify with that.
Likewise, with instrumental music, you can conjure up feelings that people identify with. You can play a peaceful sounding song and they will identify with peace, and they may further identify it with images of what they consider peace, and this might include abstract or concrete thoughts about their lives. And this has nothing to do with new-agey imagery, it doesn't have to be images.
So the point is not technique, it isn't winning competitions (although that's nice, especially if there's a prize for winning!), it isn't playing a lot of notes, it isn't playing fast, it isn't playing slow, it's just conveying the message. It isn't even playing a particular instrument. I've been sticking with guitar because the point for me hasn't been saying something in the language of music, it's been playing guitar. I want to start to say something with music! Notes only have names because we've come up with a way to organize a perfectly organized system in our heads. It's already organized, it already has form. God created music that way. There's nothing left to do but jump in and explore and learn your way around.
Basically, I feel like I can go play anything and I'll be doing what I want to do. I will (and have) discovered that some instruments are more to my liking than others because it feels more comfortable to express myself on (I feel more comfortable on trumpet than bassoon) but there's no saying whether or not at some point in time bassoon will help me to better express what I want to say. You don't use a 4-wheeler to cross the country and you don't use a plane to visit your neighbor.

So praise God for his wonderful creation, and the way in which He's made us able to understand the little that we do about it. Next time you sit down (or stand) with your instrument, try something new. If you already don't play by ear, trying playing by heart and mind. Think of something and play how that situation feels. It doesn't matter how it sounds at first, you'll get more comfortable with expressing yourself as you go on. You can even take a picture and try to interpret it into music. I tried this with a quilt once and it was fun. I just went around with the different blocks (it was a sampler) and tried to play a musical interpretation of each block. Where there were small pieces I might play a bunch of quick, small notes, or where there was a bold pattern of light and dark squares I might play very softly and then very loudly. It wasn't a song, but it got me to actually play from feeling than by rote, or by reading notes.

We'll be in Alabama on Wednesday I think, then we've got about 2 weeks in Florida. Then in about 5 weeks from now we'll be home, I think. Hasta luego!

2008-02-05T13:37:00.000-05:00

Last night at about 9:30 I saw a flash outside and the electricity went out. We all just stopped what we were doing and wondered what was going on. Dad looked outside and pointed out that all of the electricity at the stores around us (including Walmart) had gone out. I said I thought I saw a flash of light and asked if anyone else saw it. Well it happened again, and I saw a big flash and a lot of sparks from one of the power poles. Then we pulled out cameras (dead batteries!) and all watched while 3 or 4 more flashes happened, between which all of the electricity at the stores was going on and off. Then after a few minutes everything turned back on. It was strange seeing the Walmart parking lot totally black with no lights on. Then one by one, the lights turned back on and warmed up to full light. Carol asked this morning at Walmart and they said it happens fairly often because of the wind here, and that they sometimes have to throw out all of their freezer food because they run out of generator!!! It was a little excitement for us all :D I started wondering what it would be like if we lived in a country where there were frequent power outages, or very little electricity. Different, for sure. And dark.

If you haven’t already voted in the primaries, I urge you to get out and do so (unless you’re voting for Huckabee, in which case you can stay home :D) All kidding aside, if you’re not voting for Ron Paul take a serious look at what he’s saying about our country, why he’s running for president, and who he is, and then go vote for him! He made 2nd place in Maine, which is fantastic. If only I had a picture of the signs we have at home (hung from our second story porch so no one will vandalize them), I would post it now.

2008-02-02T13:18:00.001-05:00

What, pray tell, do my readers think about switching the Blog of Bonnie J to Generalismo.com? Basically, I've been thinking of coming up with a better way to organize posts (and separate the archives into personal and non-personal) and post all of my ramblings at one location. Generalismo doesn't get updated very often because of the research that I have to do to come up with an interesting post. I'm thinking about it, anyhow...

We're still in South Texas and I made a video for youtube of the leaf cutter ants. I can't upload it because the connection here is so poor. Maybe before we get to Florida I will get a good connection and be able to upload. It was really neat to see them working.

2008-01-25T13:45:00.000-05:00

Here are some pictures. Kinda late, but OK :) You wouldn't have known they were late if I hadn't told you :D

Our first concert went pretty good, and then we ate afterwards. About 3/4 of the way through the meal, I got a stomach ache. I started feeling just a little woozy, so I sat down while we were breaking down. We snapped some pictures because some of the Johnsons came and visited! I was feeling really sick in these pictures but it was right before all the blood drained from my lips and I looked positively green.

Funny faces, anyone?

I ended up losing my supper, but I felt great the next day. I'm soooo thankful that I didn't have the flu!! It was fantastic to feel good the next day.

Here's the ocean we visited the next day with the Johnsons.

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Last night I went out with our friends (who had one free seat) to a service they were doing music for. I brought my guitar and tried to stumble along with the chords on the songs that I didn't know :-) It was interesting, and a definite learning experience as the whole service was in Spanish. I didn't converse much, but I did understand some things - especially when they prayed, which was a little slower. It's hard to understand "machine gun" Spanish, as I've heard it referred to. It's very exciting when the conjugations start to work! And my friend here that we're with speaks Spanish. It's hard to speak in Spanish when our time is so limited and I don't understand very much of what she says (though she'll help me through till I DO understand what she says).

Here's a video I made for youtube. It's just a vlog.

Today we go south and our next concert is Sunday afternoon. Adios!

2008-01-23T15:49:00.000-05:00

I have to mention again the language site I found called LiveMocha.Com Check it out, it's free, yadda yadda. I also found a GREAT verb site for Spanish verbs, if you are a beginner like I am. This site will generate quizes to learn how to conjugate verbos en español.

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Just whenI thought my hands were much better, I got around internet access and am having problems as bad as before they started to get bad. Both hands, occasionally both arms, ache like I've done a lot of strenuous things with them, even when I barely do anything with them.
I finished reading Frank Peretti's book, Monster, and at the end in the interview with him he mentions he writes for 5 hours a day and has to be careful with his hands. No kidding! Computer use will really do you in, folks. Monster was a pretty good book, by the way. I can't recommend it to squeamish readers who frequently have nightmares, but if you continue through the whole thing you'll find the story resolves itself in a way that doesn't leave you looking for monsters under your bed at night. I've learned the hard way that bad things you put in your mind take a looong time to fade, and sometimes they never completely come out of the back of your mind. Whatever is pure, whatever is noble, right, admirable, trustworthy, true, etc., think about such things! Not trash.

2008-01-20T10:32:00.000-05:00

Hello!

It's almost time for coffee and donuts in the church that we're singing at this morning, so I have to go soon and get fattened. (And run through a song we're doing this morning.) We didn't have a church for this morning until last night. We performed the Mommy Song along with the rest of our program and this church (that we've sung at before) is having Sanctity of Life Sunday this morning, and they asked us to come and sing and close our music with that song. Sometimes when I sing it, I think I wonder if the words are kind of awkwardly placed here, or they don't flow right, but it probably doesn't matter. I mean, I want our music to be good, but it doesn't have to be perfect in the worldly sense to be God honoring.

I can't remember if I blogged about tendonitis or not. I think I have it, and I've been trying to remember to ice my arms before and after concerts. My left hand aches more than my left, but my right hand aches sometimes too. I'm working on changing the way I hold my pick, and the way my left hand fingers the notes on the fingerboard. So far, OK. I practiced yesterday when my hands felt better but they ached afterwards and I wished I hadn't played. It's been a week since I've done any real practice!

See you all later, we should have wireless in Houston so I may be more regular with blog updates :) Maybe I'll be able to get a picture or two up as well, and POSSIBLY some youtube stuff from where we are!

2008-01-11T07:56:00.001-05:00

2008-01-10T21:50:00.000-05:00

We leave tomorrow for a 9 week trip! I think it's a little more than 9 weeks, actually.

I made a video for youtube on making signs for Ron Paul.

I can't remember if I just did this, but I gotta put a plug in for Ron Block here while I'm talking about Rons! Check out his website, and his list of music articles, specifically for banjo and guitar. No matter what instrument you play, I think it'll be inspiring. I may not agree with every one of his points, but there's sure a lot of good stuff there. His two albums have been great. Some of the songs lean a little more contemporary than my family likes, but overall it's great! Check out Faraway Land and Doorway at amazon.com. Just in case you didn't know, he's the guitar/banjo player for Alison Krauss and Union Station (he's all the way on the right in the photo on the homepage). He also has articles written on other facets of life, such as the books he's been reading and theology here.

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I'm so excited about this trip. Carol put up a shelf on the far side of her bunk (we're both on the bottom level of the triple bunks) so I decided to put one up for mine this time and I think it's going to be very helpful. I always end up just piling stuff against the wall. All I need is a little padded pull down shelf for my laptop with the keyboard part inclined at just the right angle for typing while lying down :D Hopefully I'll make a video about this stuff. I think it'd be fun for people to see.

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I almost forgot, I ordered glasses from Zennioptical.com. I got these half-rims and these full-rims (black!). And yes, you read correctly, the glasses (with lenses) were $8 a piece! I added anti-glare coating for $5 each, making my total for two prescription glasses only about $30. My sister got a few other ones and the shipping is only $5 for all of what we ordered so it's a little less. My eyes are pretty bad, but if you go a few steps further in the badness scale, you pay a little extra for extra strength. You can also buy more expensive frames, of course, but these black ones are kinda trendy and I don't know how I"m going to like them. You can also get rimless (what I wear now) for about $20, I think. We've bought two batches, so yes, they do really deliver. These should reach us on the road as our mail is forwarded, and it'll be neat to actually get them and see how they look on me :D

Goodbye for now, I'll blog when I can and hopefully will have pictures of where we have been!!!

2008-01-08T15:17:00.000-05:00

So long, chicken friend!

Someone came to pick up Chollie today :( Good news is, he ain't headed for no stew pot. He's headed to a proper farm that's keeping their chickens indoors for the winter :)

Here are some parting shots.

I think I 'm going to miss him!

2008-01-07T13:02:00.000-05:00

I borrowed this from PrairieSunrise. :D They're all my answers, of course ;) I'm not always the most concise person, so if you're a slow reader you might want to go get some snacks at this point.

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2007 Summary Survey

1. What did you do in 2007 that you'd never done before? Finished the top to a twin size quilt, went to a political rally

2. Did you keep your new years' resolutions, and will you make more for next year? I made resolutions in November or December I think, and I don’t even remember what they were J

3. Did anyone close to you give birth? No

4. Did anyone close to you die? Tough one. A lot of people I know seem to have died in 2007. I’m not sure how close you could consider them.

5. What countries did you visit? None!

6. What would you like to have in 2008 that you lacked in 2007? A closer walk with God, and more discipline

7. What date from 2007 will remain etched upon your memory, and why? I don’t really associate days with events. I will probably remember the Ron Paul rally, and the fact that my dad got sick again

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year? Surviving! I guess writing the first song that meant anything to anyone besides myself was a good thing that God worked through me

9. What was your biggest failure? Neglecting to seek God first in everything, and letting myself be filled with excitement for material and temporal things.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury? Achilles tendon problem that made me give up running, and sore wrists/hands from practicing too hard. Other than that, a lot of colds!

11. What was the best thing you bought? Good question! Teaching DVDs and music CDs.

12. What's one of the best pictures you have from this year? The one of my chicken J Actually I don’t have a favorite picture, I have a favorite folder on my computer and it’s about 4 GB full of pictures from my computer‘s lifetime.

13. What is the saddest movie you saw? I can’t remember! I probably cried on plenty of them though.

14. Where did most of your money go? In the special woodstove that burns money for heat. Come to think of it, I don’t know exactly where it went! It’s probably still in my bank account and I just haven’t checked in a while.

15. What did you get really, really excited about? First of all, the MOST exciting thing was in December and it was hearing a sermon on drawing nearer to God and seeking Him. It was really incredible. I also got excited about the Ron Paul rally, and I always get excited after having a good conversation over a tract. Sometimes people just say ‘No THANKS! (Get out of my face!) and walk away. That’s a bummer, but it’s so exciting to get a responsive person. Also, I got excited about guitar playing and music again.

16. What song(s) will always remind you of 2007? Probably Ron Block’s albums, although I won’t remember what year it was that I got familiar with his music.

17. Compared to this time last year, you are: Fatter (slightly!), a year older, a tiny bit more versed with Spanish verbs, waaay more hesitant, and a lot less adventurous. I wish I had mo’ better news on that front, but I gotta call it like I see it! I’m probably more emotional, which is good and bad. Not good for keeping composure under stress, but very good for drawing out music. I’m also loads more happy being single ;) I’m starting to sound like a really boring person…

18. What do you wish you'd done more of? Praying, witnessing, and practicing.

19. What do you wish you'd done less of? Sleeping, wasting time on the computer, nagging my family

20. How did you spend Christmas? Singing and eating, then practicing

21. Did you fall in love in 2007? Not unless you count with my Maker. I don’t THINK you can count the guitar, but I have been spending a lot of time with it lately ;)

22. New Favorite Restaurant? Ryan’s Steakhouse

23. What was your favorite TV program? The one I didn’t watch! Seriously, I’m coming to be happy that I don’t know who certain characters are on the TV. The less junk in my head the better.

24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year? Myself? But the Bible says you don’t hate yourself, so I guess the answer is no.

25. What was the best book you read? Ephesians and Galations

26. What was your greatest musical discovery? Improvising on a single string over a modal vamp! And then shortly after that, in 2008, I discovered single stringing improv over a drone! Wow, super cool, and I’m way serious. If you think I’m nuts go buy a book called The Advancing Guitarist by Mick Goodrich and wrap your brain around just the first chapter. Then in a few years when you’re done with that, go on to the second chapter ;)

27. What did you want and get? Assurance of salvation and for the doubt to just go away. I can’t say that doubt never enters my mind, but in Christ I conquer doubt of things that are real.

28. What was your favorite activity of this year? Hanging out with my family and being on the road

29. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you? I was a year younger before, and a year older after it occurred. We were at my grandparents house, we ate cake and my family gave me very nice presents.

30. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2007? Ripped, misaligned and a little grungy looking. Just kidding! I would say that my concept in 2007 has been a figure of change - changing from dumpy looking tee-shirts that hang to my knees to wearing a sweatshirt that actually fits and doesn‘t billow out all over. I’m not too worried about how I look, but I see the wisdom in looking somewhat put together.

31. What kept you sane? God. That’s it. Everything else drives insanity.

32. Which celebrity/public figure did you admire the most? I don’t know if they’re public figures but the persecuted church that we only hear about really stirs me. Also Ray Comfort, and Ron Paul, for “regular” public figures.

33. What political issue stirred you the most? The fact that America is going down the drain with its policies. I know the deeper issue is a Spiritual problem, so the best solution to America’s problems is to go out in every street and preach the gospel. Ron Paul can be a tool to help us get back to where we should be at, but God may not have the same inclination towards an exceedingly wicked, prosperous, “free” country that He did towards one that was turned towards Him. So even if you get our laws straightened out, the dollar is worth something again, and everyone continues to be wicked and hate God, we still have the bigger problem with us.

34. Who did you miss? I thought a lot more about my grandmother than I have in recent years. I did miss someone that I thought I might get to see, but it was probably a figment of my imagination that things would have turned out differently if I had gotten to see them. And yes, it was a guy (just for all you smirking people). I have a few people online that I’d really like to see, and my friends that are girls have gotten a lot closer than ever before.

35. Who was the best new person you met? This is completely unanswerable! I met so many people, and so many of them have influenced me for the better.

36. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2007: God knows you better than you do, so don’t just trust Him in some things.

37. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year: Whatever you do, whether in word or deed do it all in the name of the Lord, Jesus Christ.

2008-01-06T12:50:00.000-05:00

I've got about 5 minutes to blog. I'm going to turn off the wireless switch on here and go to play guitar. Yesterday I had a devastating (playing-wise) thought. I thought what will change when I can play guitar better?

The only consolation I had was that playing guitar is better for my brain than being online or wasting time another way. But I got to thinking if my guitar playing is enjoyable, which it is most of the time, then doesn't practicing for hours everyday mean I'm lazy? And at that moment, thinking that practice must be unpleasant to be considered progress and not laziness, it was so discouraging to think about continuing. But thankfully, I think that this will pass and I'll be happy spending time with my guitar again. Work doesn't have to be unpleasant I don't suppose. But it has to be disciplined, so I need to continue!

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Today Dad and Vincent went to the airport. Mom and I drove them, and on the way home (and right before we got there) we broke down 5 times! The car was just stalling and we'd have to wait for 15 minutes before continuing. It was interesting, to say the least, but at least Dad and Vincent made their flight, and God provided our needs.
I don't think we'll take the car out on another long trip anytime soon, though!

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We leave Friday for a 9 week trip. Pray for us, please! I haven't packed anything, I suppose I should do that sometime before we go. Uh, yeah. That'd be a good idea. I rigged up a mixer and a mic in my room again, but the results were so discouraging I quit! I ought to do that soon though and do some serious critiquing. I did put a video up at youtube asking for critique, check it out on my page at youtube.

2008-01-02T23:00:00.000-05:00

Happy '08 everyone!

I haven't been blogging because I haven't been online. Monday night (the 24th), at about 11pm, I decided to take a break from being online from Christmas day until the new year started. So, with daily email checks, I managed to stay offline during that time.

Now, since it turned out so well, I am considering another one. This seems silly, since my readers are all online, and of course I like it when they're online to read my blog. But I'm not trying to tell you to go away, I'm just trying to say that life without internet was like a vacation! I had extra time each evening that I could spend cleaning, practicing, or doing whatever. So maybe consider just taking a day or two off - if you can without thinking about being online the whole time. All of my other breaks have been nervous, "I can't wait to get back on!" things. For some very odd reason, this one wasn't.

If I should turn my internet use into weekly excursions, I'd be sure to blog if I could. While we're on the road, I 'll have to take internet whenever I can get it and not worry about whether it's weekly. And email doesn't count as internet, so I can check that as often as I want.

While offline I discovered;

youtube comments can wait a few days to be checked
the world you know online doesn't stop when you leave it
people still visit your facebook page and blogs
no one misses you too terribly
you can still communicate via email
you write letters
you call people on the phone

My computer is going bonkers again, so I had better stop and post this before I lose it. My computer starts to blink, then the windows move to the top of the screen and I'm not able to access things, or close them. When I open task manager to close them it often disappears in the mess. I hope it's a hardware (motherboard, someone told me?) problem because I can get it fixed with BestBuy.

2007-12-21T21:42:00.000-05:00

I've decided to stay away from forums that might have debates going on for a while. Christian forums, in particular. Interjecting on a thread discussing guitar strings is one thing - making something that could be read as a retort to a Christian brother or sister is another thing. When I see something I feel is wrong, I feel so strongly like giving my opinion. But for one thing, a fool is the one who the Bible says likes to air his own opinions. Secondly, in a thread where everyone is basically just stating disagreements on how to interpret the Bible, what does my opinion do? It's rare enough that a friend says something that changes my mind on a belief I hold pretty strongly - how do strangers' opinions online help you to change?

There are many things in the Bible that I have questions about. Is the wisest thing to do in order to come to a conclusion to go to a forum made up of unknown people? I’ve never met at least 99 percent of them, never fellowshipped with them, never prayed with them, never worshipped together, never cried together, never laughed together, etc. Well, we may have said “lol” together, if that counts.

I’m not saying you have to be close friends to have a fruitful conversation, but it says in the Bible to be careful of the company you keep. And I’m not sure if keeping company with people I don’t know is wise. I know people can get to know each other well enough to know they want to marry each other online, but I’m not spending time like that with everyone on the forum! I guess some people could criticize me for spending time with non-Christians online, but I'm not getting into arguments about theology and maybe I'm being a witness, which is more than I can say about my worthless arguments about what a certain Bible verse means.

If you’re an internet only friend of mine, please don’t think this means I’m dropping all internet life and want you to go away. I just can’t justify the time spent at FORUMS right now. It’s too confusing and challenging, both mentally and spiritually. So please stick around!

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Also, the song I've written is now online at our website - here's a link to both of our albums and here's a link right to Mommy, Can't You Hear (or The Mommy Song).

Here are the words online. A few people have asked for them. I just checked and the version I sung was just a little different. They're something like this anyhow.

Vs 1: When you and dad were going out
It was against the rules
He’s left you all alone
It’s just you and me
Sitting silent in the dark
You looked outside your window
Thought about your life ahead
But I my life would lose

Chorus: Mommy, can’t you hear me crying
Hear me crying out for you
Mommy, can’t you see I’m dying
With my last breath, I cry for you

Vs 2: With tearstained eyes you left your car
And walked into that place
Where you and I would part
And never see your face
The battle rages in your heart
You knew it wasn’t right
But now that you have made your choice
I will pay the price

Chorus

Vs 3: Now that I have long been gone
A tear rolls down your cheek
Memories are fading now
But still you feel the ache
Sometimes you are scared to face
The truth that lies ahead
Wondering what our lives would be
If you chose life instead

Chorus
Mommy, can’t you hear love calling
Hear him calling out to you
Listen to the master
He will make your heart anew

Vs 4: On a day so long ago
A man laid down his life
For you to be the sacrifice
For him to pay the price
Now while you have breath in you
Turn your heart to him
Let him change your heart
You’ll be free from sin

Mommy, can’t you hear him calling
Hear him calling out to you
Dying, he came to save you
Living, he’ll set you free

Mommy, can’t you hear him calling, hear him calling out to you

2007-12-19T13:23:00.000-05:00

Anyone looking for a pet rooster? I posted an ad at Craigslist and at Freecycle that reads something like the following:

Our family has raised a rooster from a chick as a pet. He is about 4 months old and is friendly. We hold him on our laps and he will go to sleep while we’re holding him. We wish we didn’t have to give him up. We are leaving in a few weeks for a long road trip and we can’t take him along. His name is Clovis, but he has many nicknames.

He loves mashed potatoes and spaghetti. At our house he eats mostly leftovers with some grains. He’s very fond of kasha.

We would like to see our rooster go to anyone who is interested in a rooster, either for a regular rooster or a pet. We are just trying to keep him from the stew pot!

Cage measures approximately 15”x22” and 18.5” tall and comes free with the chicken.

I know some people have concerns about integrating a chicken into another flock of birds, I’ve never done it but I’ve found some information on how to help it go smoothly.
http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/load/farmlife/msg0510183117472.html?4

Also, I have a video of him here> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z94ju6u6LYc

It shows him as a chick and also how he looked a week or two ago.

Please help Clovis!

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I am doing some business with the US copyright office. I was surprised when I rounded up all the original tunes I have written (and "rough" recorded on my computer) there were 12. It's not many, but I didn't think there were that many. A friend down in TN who has been a songwriter for years has really encouraged me to write, and he reminds me that some writers write hundreds of songs but only have a handful that they really like (and I assume that other people like). That is helpful when you scrap song after song after being disgusted with it after a few hours. One of the tunes I've written turned out to where I really do like it, so I guess I only have 78 to go until I write another one!

It's hard to write from your heart. Everything gets so wrapped up in chords, and patterns that I fall into, etc. It's when I seemingly mindlessly burst out with a melody that I like the tune. Of course, I'm thinking of something in my head that fits the tune, but if I sit down to concentrate on something to write it doesn't always come out. I need to work on forgetting things - forgetting past intros, cliche patterns of notes or chord progressions, etc. It's almost like making your heart naked. It bares what's really inside. Maybe it's because I'm frightened to think what I'll find. Maybe I'll find all the indulgences I've allowed my sinful nature, and the losses of a million battles. Somehow I haven't been able to completely forget wrong things I've done. However, as much as these things remain in my human memory, I know Christ has healed my heart and I don't need to be frightened. I need to remind my frail, human heart that I'm not scarred - Christ is scarred for me. There's the real heartfelt song writing material - I suppose you could write a lifetime on the theme of Christ being scarred for our sins and not begin to finish the story.

One strange thing is that I'll try to write for part of the afternoon and come up with pretty much nothing, and then at 10 or 11pm when I'm in my bed getting sleepyheaded, something will pop into my head and I have to get up and write it down so I'll remember it in the morning.

Writing about the writing process is much akin so a beginner artist describing how they come to paint their pictures. They may not be that good, but the process can be interesting. Most of the tunes that come to me at night aren't great, but to me, the way in which I come across them is interesting.

2007-12-16T09:21:00.000-05:00

TODAY IS THE TEA PARTY 07!!

Click here to donate to Ron Paul TODAY!

If you don't know who Ron Paul is click here to find out.

2007-12-13T13:38:00.000-05:00

This is one of the best Lemon Bar recipes I have ever made, if not the best. A butter-cookie like crust (think: cookies in tins that come in all shapes and with big grains of sugar on them), a nice lemon filling and a very light cookie-ish topping.

There are only two parts: The crust and the topping. The flour in the topping rises to the top while baking and creates the third part. At least that's how it worked for me. The top burner in our oven is not working so that might have been part of it but I assume it'll be the same when I make it again later this week ;)

Lemon Bars

1 cup butter (I used only a stick and a little bit more, melted)
2 cups flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup sugar

Mix the above ingredients to make the crust. Pat in 13x9 pan and bake at 350 for 15-20 minutes.

4 eggs
6 Tbs lemon juice
6 Tbs flour
1 1/2 cup sugar

Mix the above together and pour on top of hot crust right out of the oven. It says in the book to put it on top "at once," but I don't know if that means pour it on right after you mix it, or just make sure you pour it on as soon as the crust is done (and still hot). In any case, I waited to beat in the flour and sugar until just before the crust was done and then poured it on as soon as it got out of the oven.

Put back in the oven and cook for 20-25 minutes. It kind of puffed and the edges got just a little bit brown. The top sank as soon as it got out of the oven.

Cool and enjoy :D

2007-12-11T20:35:00.000-05:00

I was working today (wow!) and a thought popped into my head about music, and why certain songs sell so well. And why are there so many songs about being wronged, or being untrue?

People love to identify with the words in a song and everyone feels wronged in some way. Song sold.

2007-12-09T17:35:00.000-05:00

When emotions are volatile, it is often a poor choice to pour your emotions all over your blog. I have the choice of either refraining, or giving in. I think I'll skirt around the issue...

Fingers don't express enough emotion. At least, mine don't. Maybe some people have so finely tuned their expertise in some skill involving fingers that they can actually pour out their emotion through them. But really when, say, a musician feels strongly about something, is the deepest expression of that person the music that comes "from his soul"? When he despairs, does he really sit down and improvise a song that comes from the heart, or in reality does he sit on the edge of his sofa and groan and cry and utter little squeaks between breaths.

How much regret can one person have? What is a measure of regret? - is it how much you try to change things so they'll be different in the future?

This probably amounts to what my grandfather says would be more suitable for a journal entry than for public consumption. I'd like to say I can't help myself, but in reality I really could say no to posting this. Maybe it's just therapy to write it down.

On another front of this whole thing, it'd be interesting to know exactly what happens when your emotions get the best of you and your chest heaves, your breath somehow gets blown out of you all at once, and the muscles in your neck and throat all knot up (especially if you resist). Meanwhile, your eyes feel the need for sudden extreme lubrication and you need a tissue or something. What exactly makes you do that? Does the brain just say "Ok, we've turned an emotional corner, all systems go."?

It's actually amazing to think how tuned our physical bodies can be to emotion. Have you ever really thought about what happens when you laugh? Just thinking about it is almost enough to make you laugh again. Laughing is a very strange thing when you dissect it, yet it comes naturally whenever you're tickled by something - either physically or mentally. Hahahaha. (weird). Yes, you can go ahead and laugh just to see what it sounds/feel like and then analyze it.

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A string popped at our concert this evening. It was in the middle of a song. It was interesting. I had to retune the rest of the strings and then while the next tune was being played (piano) I put another string on.

2007-12-03T12:39:00.000-05:00

Of course most of you know we have a pet chicken. I have put together some footage of him for youtube and here it is.

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I'm becoming increasingly frustrated with the inappropriate videos linked in the sidebar at youtube. Either there's a big increase in bad videos on there, or there's something whacky with their linking system.

2007-12-02T19:42:00.000-05:00

Last night three of of were supposed to play in a community band concert, and all of us were supposed to lead a singalong piece. Well...two of us went to play, and two of us sang. We used the church's in house system (two 6 inch speakers), one of their mics and one of our mics. All over it went pretty well. I had been thinking maybe I would sneeze in the concert or something. I did earlier in the day, and I think I did after I came home. I've been sneezing today, and my nose is still getting its exercise. I am SOOO happy that my sinus doesn't ache like it did, and I think the infection is well away. Dad hasn't been coughing quite as much as he has been, and Vincent my brother's neck is a little less sore. But we're not sure if we're going to be able to sing Friday. It's supposed to be an overnight affair and the low that night here is going to be 13. We're going to be a good 60-70 miles NORTH of here.

Whew. It'll be interesting, to say the least.

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I put up a new video at youtube, one which I invite my bi or multilingual readers to answer. What language do you think or dream in?

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If you post at forums you might like this thing to use in your signature. It's attention catching, at the very least! Right click and save (it'll save as a gif, I think) and then upload it to your favorite photo hosting site (such as photobucket.com).

2007-11-29T11:05:00.000-05:00

This morning I thought this cold was over. My symptoms were greatly lessened and I thought life was going to go back to normal. A few hours later, my sinus was aching again, I was sneezing, I couldn't breath through my nose (but it was still dripping), and my eyes were all watery. You're welcome for such a pleasant description :) I did leave out a few details.

I haven't taken garlic since Saturday. I know I should, but until yesterday I hadn't eaten much of anything and I'm afraid to take it on an empty stomach. I took apple cider vinegar again. I've been drinking Mom's broth.

Thinking about all of the oranges I've eaten, I was prompted to think about the way that oranges were at one time considered a special treat. With the way our dollar is losing value, will it be long until buying an orange in the USA is considered a luxury, best saved for holidays?
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The VCR I've been using made it 3/4s of the way through a movie and refuses to play the rest. All I can do about that is shrug and sneeze. And maybe hit it with my hand. The way they make them nowadays is so it's hard to get them open. There are no screws visible on the bottom. It's too taxing to sit there and try to fix it between nose blows. I think I'll hit it again.

2007-11-28T14:06:00.000-05:00

Since I am sick, I've spent a lot more time at the computer than usual. I found out that Ray Comfort has a blog, and while reading the comments on one of his posts I found this guy's blog, Puritan Fellowship. I checked out a few of the posts and I found one called Leonard Ravenhill Quotes. I don't know anything about Ravenhill, I had never heard of him. One of the quotes struck me particularly, though.

"Some women will spend thirty minutes to an hour preparing for church externally (putting on special clothes and makeup, etc.). What would happen if we all spent the same amount of time preparing internally for church—with prayer and meditation?"

Now as a performer, I know that it does take a few minutes to go from street-clothes to ready to sing for an audience. I'm very guilty of neglecting more important things by convincing myself that it's my very duty to look the part and to spend the time to make myself that way. I shouldn't look unprepared for a concert, but I shouldn't put the one before other priorities - preparing with the One who I'm singing for.

2007-11-23T20:27:00.001-05:00

I got a new cold. Whoooo hoo. At least I'm trying to look on the bright side ;) This one entails a fairly bad sore throat at night, congestion, dizziness, and a slight nauseated feeling.

I have watched two movies in two days. That is an unheard of thing in this season of time in my life. I get movies out from the library, have them for a week, and then bring them back. (Before I get a chance to watch them!) The movies I watched were While You Were Sleeping, and The Harvey Girls. The first one was OK I guess, but there was so much taking of the Lord's name in vain that I would not watch it again, and I can't recommend it. I was looking up the second one online so I could link to it and found some information here on the real Harvey Girls.

The Harvey Girls is an old B+W movie that seemed promising, but then it turns out that the main characters make some silly decisions and I was disappointed with it.

I also read 3/4s of the book Screwtape Letters, by Clive Staples Lewis. Thought provoking, to say the least.

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Speaking of colds, I took a video of me taking some garlic. What a wonderful topic :| I don't particularly like raw garlic in large amounts, but I have found a fairly good way to take it. I do like raw garlic on toast with cheese though, that's very yummy.

2007-11-18T21:08:00.000-05:00

Bonnie has a cold!!!! Score one for the germs. (Cue: applause. Scattered "boos" from the Bonnie supporters).

The rest of the family has already gotten it, which means maybe I'll be the last one to get over it. I've been making pot after pot of tea in my handy little 4 cup coffee maker that resides in my room. Coffee most mornings, then assorted regular teas before lunch, then decaf herbal teas after lunch.

I've been putting significant time into playing my guitar, but my hands have started to bother me. My brother is also having problems with his hands and wrists, and strangely enough my sister and I got an ache in the same part of our back within two days of each other. I think it's the cold, so hopefully it'll be over and I'll be back to normal practice! In the meantime, I'll be working on my guitar technique to make it as little wearing on my hands as possible.

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It's so amazing how the human mind can change. From year to year, day to day, and even moment by moment. Satisfied, unsatisfied. Happy, unhappy. When circumstances dictate how we feel 100%, I guess we get into trouble. But then, can our emotions ever be separate entirely from our circumstances? Does a martyr who dies at the stake for God feel some sort of emotional turmoil, though 100% committed and satisfied by Christ? Or does being able to trust completely on God make us able to separate us from the wildly strong effects that emotion can have on us? Or are we strong in Christ when - though we have emotions flowing hotly through our veins - we put out trust in God and work through the emotions to do what's right?

I'm so tired. We had company over and I felt like sleeping while I was standing by the woodstove. I've been staying up too late. I keep hearing people talk about how a lot of people get TOO much sleep, and that we've trained ourselves to need too much. Maybe that's true, but since I'm sitting here blowing my nose, I think going to bed an hour early can't do any harm. (scattered claps for the Bonnie team. Laughs from the germ team.)

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I brought home a new Spanish course from the library. It is good for me to get back into it. I wrote a post at Generalismo.com about learning languages and I got an email shortly after about www.livemocha.com. It looks like a really cool language site and I'm glad they let me know about it.
I've learned some new words from the course from the library, and even listening to simple phrases over and over again is helping.
Mi coche es rojo. Ahh! No tengo un coche! hahah.

2007-11-13T15:55:00.000-05:00

Today I updated our family website with new family pictures under the bios page.

I also updated Generalismo.com

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I'm kind of bummed because I didn't finish my guitar practice due to a sore thumb. I hate that achy feel that warns me that I'll have overdone it in a few more minutes, but I'm glad I'm made aware that I need to rest it.

I also made cookies. I wonder if people who read my blog regularly can tell when I'm distracted, and my mind is not really on blogging. Lol.

Ummm....yeah. I really need to focus. I find plenty of things about myself to complain about, but when I do that I'm really being self centered. Of course, it's not good to complain about other people constantly either. I guess complaining doesn't do much good. It just makes you feel depressed.

Maybe I need to start a new quilt. I finished this pink one a while ago (I don't remember if I blogged pictures already) and I hung it on my wall just to have something nice to look at. I'm not very happy with the way some of the blocks just look "weird," but it is variety, and I didn't want to do just plain boxes. I guess now I can look at all of those and figure out which ones I would like to do in another quilt, and which blocks don't make the cut. I just went to take a picture of it and the batteries on the camera are dead :(

Oh well.

2007-11-10T22:27:00.000-05:00

I went to a Ron Paul rally in Philly today!!!

A friend was in the little inner circle of people in the front and on her account I got in a lot closer than I would have been otherwise - and then she snapped a picture!

I also got some video but it looks like really poor quality so far. I'll have to see if I can get anything out of it.

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While on the road I discovered the lady who first inspired me to blog - Izzy Lyman, author of The Homeschooling Revolution, has quit blogging and left a goodbye on her blog a few days ago.

I'll miss visiting your blog, but I hope you do great with whatever else you set out to do :)

2007-11-06T06:51:00.000-05:00

Check out how much presidential candidate Ron Paul has raised so far on this fund raising thing. Amazing!

If you haven't heard about Ron Paul, BONNIE SAYS TO CHECK HIM OUT! Go :)

2007-11-05T13:32:00.000-05:00

Hi folks. We're home.

I'm tired :) But I'm looking forward to going on the road again this weekend to New Jersey.

2007-10-25T23:09:00.001-04:00

THIS is so crazy! If you want to see more optical illusions, click next once you're there.

2007-10-24T23:13:00.000-04:00

I only have five pictures today. Sooner or later, my sister Carol will have an update I'm sure, so go ahead and visit there if you want more info.

My sister and I went to our FAVORITE fabric store, which happens to be in Kentucky (Smiths Grove). I took video footage that will probably be on youtube before too long.

I took photos of all the prints I got, and then I worked on some patterns. This one is made up of flying geese and squares, that's it! It's really quite simple and I hope to make it once I get home, with off-white and red.

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We spent some time with a family we met last year but weren't really able to spend any time with. They fed us many meals and were SO hospitable. Thanks Brandts :D

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We sang at a surprise birthday party, which was a lot of fun (especially the surprise part) and the fields up at the farm it was at were beautiful.

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And one night that a church took us out, we hung out with friends in front of the restaurant and Carol took out picture. This was supposed to be the funny face picture. I don't think I've ever seen Peter's face quite like that before ;)

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I feel like Generalismo.com is being neglected. Which, of course, it is. I just don't have the focus to write anything for it right now.

2007-10-16T10:34:00.000-04:00

Trip To The Y
I can't remember if I told you all already, but the church we sang at a few nights ago gave us free passes to the YMCA nextdoor for Friday and Saturday. The gym was a lot of fun, considering I had never been in a real gym before. There were tons of machines, and a nice free weight section too. I used the free weights mainly, except when I went over to the machine side to do pull ups on the bar over there.

This all made me realize that what I really want is not a gym membership ($$$$$), but just a few more dumbbells ($, or 0). Depending on where I get them, I might be able to find them for nothing. That is, of course, depending. I hate the thought of spending money on chunks of metal shaped into dumbbells.

I had been slacking off with workouts in the weeks before we left. When I did my normal "easy" chest/tricep routine, I woke up really sore! I did squats with maybe 40 pounds and woke up sore. My thigh muscles were twitching the next day - WEIRD!

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Moviemaking
When I got online I thought I had something so pertinent to blog, and then I forgot what it was. Or maybe I just wanted to get online and I made a good reason up in my head that didn't really exist. I found some great books on filmmaking at the library last night. One is called Cinematic Storytelling: The 100 Most Powerful Film Conventions Every Filmmaker Must Know. Of course I couldn't take it out, because I'm not a member at this library in OH, but I looked through it and took some notes. I'm also sort of on the lookout for a new camera. I'm not sure. I really would like to be able to make a higher quality video for the music video I'm planning on making, but I can't spend a whole lot on a new camera. I'm not sure if it would be more wise to invest in new software first, or a new camera. The biggest problem I see with Windows Movie Maker (came free with Windows) is that I can't line up things precisely, which will impede lip synching, and that it doesn't seem to want to process clips under a certain length.

2007-10-14T19:38:00.000-04:00

A about a week ago, probably because I was slightly bored, I explored more of my webdesigning software - Namo Webeditor 6. This is a great little program you can get on eBay for around $20 - it retails for $100, I think.It's a WYSIWYG editor to make webpages with. It's also bundled with an animator, which I had never paid much attention to. After a little tinkering, I found some it's really cool to make banners out of, such as this one:

I made another one but it's a lot more frames than this one and it's 2.5 MB! I'm not sure how that would do as a banner ad.

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The last few days I've been waking up with a sore-ish throat and this evening I finally decided to look, and I found *BLEEP BLEEP BLEEP BLEEP* (too gross to describe to the general public. Basically the infection that I normally see in my tonsils (I think it's strep B, which is supposed to stay in your system permanently, I think?) is at the base of my tongue. It's been mildly aching sometimes when I sing. I've been gargling with warm salt water, hopefully that will take care of it. If not, I might have to go on a garlic thing. I'm considering going off white sugar/flour for a time but I never last on that and always end up saying moderation is better than nothing. We'll see what happens in the next few days I guess.

It's sooos nice to have wireless, this is actually accessible IN the bus, in my bunk even! Very nice. We're parked at a church that has some sort of strong wireless signal nearby.

2007-10-13T10:52:00.000-04:00

A few months ago I was making our weekly pizzas and I thought I should take some footage to make a video of. So I used my camera without a tripod (and got it all floury and greasy, lol) and made pizza. Then I lost the cable to my camera (someone borrowed it) and I wasn't able to upload it. I bought a new cable on ebay and then the day before it came I FOUND THE OLD ONE! So anyhow, I edited this about a week ago and now that I am on a stable wireless line at the library in Columbus (thanks library!), I have uploaded it.

So here tis.

Click here to go right to the video at youtube.

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Carol made a big post just recently and I'll just steal one or two pictures to make you want to go to her blog :) There are many many more pictures there, so by all means if you want to see our recent travel stuff (including a trip to Cabela's, all I can say about that place is WOW, and if you ever get a chance to visit one, even if you're not into hunting, then visit! It's like a free museum).

Someone had a lucky day. (just kidding.) I feel bad for the guy who did this, it wasn't even his vehicle he was driving!

2007-10-07T09:55:00.000-04:00

Whoo hoo! I graduated from teens :| Is that good, or bad? It's better being older than dead, methinks :)

Here are some random pics from this weekend and right before we left.

A friend visited from CA and brought her cousins with her! We had a lot of fun and I got to cook supper for them. It was kinda cool, I've never really cooked a whole meal for company before.

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When we went to Philly we saw this really cool building.

Here's a close up in the middle. I thought it was really neat.

I know I cut this off a little, but we were driving down the road and it was hard to frame it right.

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Inside the stage we sung on:

Some friends that came early and hung out with us before the concert. Some of them we just met for the first time.

After the concert we took a group picture:

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Then we went to our grandparents house, where my family gave me a (20th) birthday party. They made it so much fun and my mom's cake (that she made from scratch and MADE up the recipe) was great!! In fact, I think we should have a reenactment of the cake eating part ;)

And the green river flowed! Thanks to all my family who went out of their way to be generous to me on my birthday :)

I would blog a picture of the coins I got, but I don't have the picture at the moment and they are telling me it's time to eat so I have to go, NOW! BY y'all till next time.

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ETA: One more picture :)

Here are the coins I got, a $20 and a $5 silver piece! I feel like one of the group - one of my coin collecting brothers :D

I tried to upload a video to youtube but it didn't work! No surprise, since it was a 65 mb upload and one wireless.

2007-10-03T19:59:00.000-04:00

I'm leaving :) That means less regular internet access. I don't know how I'm going to upload stuff to youtube! Here is my account, at which you can find my reply to the Pat Hetic video (along with bloopers) and at some point you should see videos about our trip. Subscribe there if you want to be updated when I put new videos up.

Bonnie's YouTube Stuff

I'm going to miss the internet, but we're going to be able to meet a lot of people and see some old friends :)

2007-09-30T21:12:00.000-04:00

These girls have some kind of sense of humor ;)

2007-09-28T10:13:00.000-04:00

This morning I woke up and the first thing I noticed was that my mouth felt kind of funny. One of my wisdom teeth has become infected. It feels really swollen but it doesn't hurt, which is a good thing. So now there remains a decision to make; go to the dentist and get antibiotics and then my tooth taken out, or try saltwater rinses and heavy doses of garlic?

Although I like garlic, the idea of walking around with a clove in my mouth isn't that thrilling.

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I found out today why peppermint feels cold. And why peppers feel hot.

2007-09-24T13:46:00.000-04:00

I must be the only one klutzy enough to burn my lip while making pizza! I made pizza for lunch today and I had an idea. Why not roll out the dough in a rectangle, put cheese and pepperoni on it and roll it up into a loaf? I did just that and stuck it in the oven when the rest of the pizzas were done cooking.

I took it out of the oven to check it, held the pan about face-height, and while I was sticking a spatula thing underneath to check for doneness it slipped and the lip of the pan hit my lip. Thankfully it wasn't a very bad burn (only a very small part has blistered so far) and I heard lips heal pretty quickly (or is that your tongue?). I want to suck on an ice cube but I know it's not generally a recommended practice because of the possibility of numbing and then freezing (and damaging) tissue.

On the bright side, the pizza loaf seems to have turned out great. To do it yourself, use:

enough pizza dough for 2 pizzas
sauce
oregano
mozzarella cheese
provolone cheese - we have extra sharp around so I used that. Gives a nice flavor
romano cheese
pepperoni

Roll out the dough to about 1/4 inch thick. Spread with a small amount of sauce. Don't be liberal unless you want a soggy roll. Grind together in a blender - or other like appliance - a handful each of pepperoni and romano. Sprinkle dough with oregano, mozzarella, provolone, and pepperoni mixture. Roll up and pinch seam to seal. Pinch ends together to make a circle (but make sure there's a hole in the middle. This will close up when the dough grows in the oven). Snip little holes on top. Bake at 350 for 25 minutes or so, or until bottom and top are moderately browned.

Now put on your apron. Put on your oven mits. Put on your bakers hat. Put on your cooking shoes. Put on your winter jacket. Protect yourself from the flood of people streaming into the kitchen to sample your cooking.

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If you want a link to your site at generalismo, put a link to generalismo.com up at your blog/site and let me know :) Yes, I'm being incredibly sneaky and underhanded. The more links you have to your site, the more likely you are to get hits from search engines (and therefore, more readers). I could put up links at Generalismo to every site I've ever visited, but then I'd have a super dooperly long list and hardly anyone would get any hits from there. If you're willing to take the time to put up a link to Generalismo, then it means you care enough about your site to try to get the extra hits from Generalismo, which means better content for my readers.

Like my brother quotes, after explaining that something is either 1 for $2.50 or 2 for $10.00, "Don't think about it, just buy!"

So, uh, "Don't think about it, just link!"

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2007-09-22T20:38:00.000-04:00

I just finished reading a book on the Nuremberg Trials. If, perchance, you either never learned exactly went on at the Nuremberg Trials, or you learned once and forgot, take a minute to look it up and find out what happened. It basically are the trials that took place in Germany shortly after WWII that was headed up by the US, France, Great Britain, and the Soviet. Very interesting read, especially some of the eyewitness testimony, and of course, the end result of the trials.

This afternoon I was in the bus getting something to eat while parked at the studio and I happened to see an older cucumber in the vegetable bin. This happens sometimes because we put things in the fridge for weekend trips and don't always get them back to the house before they expire. It was just a little bit soft. Actually, it was a lot soft! I thought to myself how prized a fairly fresh cucumber would be if I was in a prison camp starving. I cut off all the bad parts and took a bite. Then I smelled it and I spit out what I was eating because it smelled kind of weird, but then I thought "How bad could it be?" and finished the rest of it off.

Fast forward an hour or two and I eat a few tacos. I did put some hot sauce on them, but no more than usual, and I ate a lot less than I normally would eat when eating tacos. Right after I ate I felt so sick I had to lie down and I fell asleep on the couch in a room where the guys were playing games LOUDLY. I couldn't figure out why I was so sick feeling but a little while later when I woke up I happened to mention the cucumber to someone there at the studio. She said she did something just like that - ate an older cucumber - and ended up throwing it up in the middle of the night :(

So I don't think I'll eat anymore rotten cucumbers if I don't need to. And I guess that should make me doubly thankful - that I don't have to eat rotten cucumbers to stay alive, and I don't have to feel sick like that all of the time!

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Read about a woman who had 23 pins stuck in her as a baby and is now 29. She just found out about the needles recently. Ug. This is just one happy result of the mindset displayed in China's one child policy.

2007-09-18T19:09:00.000-04:00

As I said in my previous post, we did go to Maine! I haven't ever spent a better weekend in Maine, I don't think. Carol took a ton of pictures and I'm uploading some for y'all to lock eyeballs on. Sorry to dialup users. Looking at my list of pictures to upload, this will be the most I've ever posted at once. And it's a sincere apology. Over the weekend I was blessed to have internet access, but I also realized how dialup users must really have a hard time loading so many pictures. So for whatever reason you have dialup, I'm sorry that you can't load them any faster, but I'm glad you're here despite the difficulty :)

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For one thing, we brought our chicken along with us. I'm tempted to say "our pet chicken," but until we get chicken diapers for him/her, I don't know if we can keep it.

So here's Mom and Tweetalizer

Then the Ds introduced us to a game called Four on a Couch

The next day we took down a wall in their house (fun fun fun, except someone got kicked when they didn't know a foot was going to come flying through the wall). For some reason I don't have pics to upload of that.

The next day we sang and went to church. In the afternoon we tried to take some demo pics. Here's one

In the evening we sang again

And I met the lady that inspired me to yodel! Yessiree, here she is. It was really neat to meet her after all these years.

Right as we were going to bed that night, Mrs. D remembered we hadn't arm wrestled yet (I had asked to at the concert but there wasn't a good place), so we decided to do it right then.
Here's before we started, two basically normal people

And here we were after a few minutes of holding each other in the middle, two kind of insane people (and she's more insane, she WON BOTH ARMS!!! Go Mrs. D!)

Then Monday began and we headed to a beach in Maine. The beach is right near a really cool fort.

Here's the inside wall. It reminded me of something out of The Sound of Music, you know, when they're performing before they run away

K and her brother inside

N inside. It was so cool in there! I almost can't believe they let people walk right in it's so cool. Let me just say here I hesitate to blog other people's pictures because I'm so afraid someone will be upset with me for posting them in a public place online, but hopefully since I'm just using initials here, no one will mind :)

Carol got my picture in the window frame!

Here it is from the outside (I'm in one of those windows but it's hard to see).

This is a door to one of the rooms inside, presumably a room to store ammo in. Some of the guys got in there first and scared me when I came in with some of the rest of the guys, then we hid in there and scared everyone else coming in! It was really pitch black in there until your eyes adjusted so it was a great set up :D As Carol was taking this she said "Ah, I see you're in here." I guess the flash lit it up for her, lol.

We played games and while watching the different age groups play some of us sat on the rocks (how is a hunt for a candy bar fair when both 20 yr old and 5 yr old are playing?) Here are some of the girls and I - why oh why didn't I bring my sunglasses so I could fit in! I'm such a misfit! Now life will not be worth living because I didn't look like everyone else. *pause* hahahahah, just kidding :p

Then we ate lunch, and afterwards headed down the beach about 1/2 mile to play volleyball. Talk about having a great time! Here are all of us lined up, and I like this shot because it looks like Mrs. C is ordering us around! lol.

After we played volleyball for a few hours we went even further down the beach to go SWIMMING! Yes folks, I said swimming. I thought they were nuts, and I told myself it was so crazy and that I was never going in. I didn't even bring clothes to swim in. But then we ran down to the beach and everyone else was going in (the insane people, at least), so I walked in with my clothes on. It was COLD. But on the bright side, it was warm when I got out because it was so cold in the water. On the run back to the other part of the beach I had to let my pant legs all the way down (I had rolled them up) because it was like sandpaper on my legs. But anyhow, it was fun even though it was leg numbing.

Here are some of us after the cold swim. Mrs. D handed me a towel and I said "I don't need this," but then I *thought* and said "Thank you!" and I was awfully glad I had it, lol.

The sunset was so beautiful and I just wish I had used a flash on the pictures I took of Carol

This morning I woke up pleasantly sore and with a lot of good memories. Hopefully Carol will blog and fill in with what I missed :D

2007-09-14T09:41:00.000-04:00

It's time for an announcement! I'd like to introduce all of my friendly and faithful readers to Generalismo.

The only reason people would come here, I assume, is because they either know me or want to get to know me, or what's going on in my and my family's life. I'm very happy to be able to blog in that way, and I like the thing I have going on here, but Generalismo is a blog of a different sort. I'm blogging about things like how to milk cows, or how jelly beans are made, and what it's like to donate blood (complete with pics from my recent visit). I want it to be a learning blog - the blog of a generalist.

In any case, I hope you visit and put Generalismo in your bookmarks or subscribe to the RSS feed :D

And I will still be blogging here. It's sort of like having a regular job, and then taking up some hobby to do at home - life continues as normal for the most part.

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We're going to Maine for the weekend! I"m getting kind of excited but it's going to be cold, I think. Get there this evening, hang out with friends tomorrow, go to church and sing Sunday, go to the ocean Monday and take pictures for our upcoming album (and get blue lips from getting our feet wet in the slush? I mean, water.)

As most of you know I've been working out lately and amazingly enough it's started to slow down just a little. I did 5 sets of pushups last night and I realized it had been a while since I had done them last. I'm working out a few times a week still, but for some reason it just doesn't seem like I'm doing as much as I was. Oh well, to everything a season and if I can just maintain for a while that's fine.

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I can't believe it's already September. The summer is fleeting! Where does time go? The only reason I can't answer that question is because I have to go finish packing. *yeah right*

2007-09-11T16:01:00.000-04:00

I guess I shouldn't keep it a secret. I'm working on a new blog. The new blog will not replace this one, I hope to keep both going simultaneously.

Here I can shoot my mouth off, so to speak, and say how I FEEL about things without having any legitimate info to back it up. I ought to have some, but I don't necessarily post things like that.

The new blog (name to be unveiled later) will be more structured, while at the same time maintaining a sort of ambiguous quality. I want to learn things and be able to share what I'm learning with the rest of the people out there who have the same type of interests.

If it's a flop, then it cost me me $10 for the domain and probably 8 hours of work between posts already up and the work I've done on the template. If it's good, I'm going to enjoy having another blog :D

2007-09-09T15:48:00.000-04:00

I've taken to sitting on a swiss ball instead of a chair when I'm in my room. If I had to get up extraordinarily early and fall asleep every two or three verses of morning Bible reading, I can sit on this and hurt myself when I give in to sleep and fall over. Very useful, really. I find myself constantly bouncing up and down. Given that fact, I don't know how long it will be before it explodes and I bruise myself by landing on the floor.

The extra exercise provided by the constant bouncing and twitching gives me the rationale for eating chocolate. I looked for a stock picture of a chocolate bar and found plenty of "free" stock photos. However, "free" things are not always without a price, in this case a membership fee of $199 a month. Thanks to my sister, who always lets me borrow her camera
(even though I once deleted all her pictures accidentally!), I was able to make my own picture. I even took the wrappers out of the trash can I was absentmindedly throwing them into. I had to unwrap three bars for this shoot. Of course, it wouldn't do to wrap those candy bars back up and put them in the bag they came out of. That would just be unhygenic. I think instead I'll do with them as I've done with the rest...unwrap them, set them on their wrapper, and place the wrapper next to the output of my laptop's cooling system. Viola, perfectly warmed, soft chocolate.

According to WIN - Weight-control Infomation Network, nearly two thirds of the population 20 years and older are overweight. Do you fall under that statistic? According to the Census Bureau the population of the US is currently over 302,000,000. According to CBS, 45 million of those each year go on a diet - that's 14%. If you're overweight and are ready to take some action to leave the flab behind, check out this article called 15 Rules For Fat Loss. I've been part of the statistics, weighing in at nearly 20 pounds more than I do now. Click here to see the pudgy faced, 13 year old Bonnie.

I used to hate exercise and complained when my mom asked me to walk with her. My knees "hurt" and I was tired, blah blah blah. Then somehow I started running and I started losing weight. I didn't just start running and become a runner. I must have quit 5 or 6 times, each time losing interest. I'd invariably find a new plan someplace and start running again. I remember running for almost a whole year and thinking that was pretty cool, that was the longest I stuck to ONE running program. I remember somewhere in the middle of that period thinking that I couldn't run a mile, it was just too hard. Then a friend said any able bodied teenager could push themself to run a mile*, so the next time I went out I pushed myself and I finished a mile. After that running continuously instead of running/walking was no big deal. And if I did take a break every mile or so, that was fine with me - I was a real runner!

Now due to an ankle injury caused by pushing too hard too soon (IE 5-6 mile barefoot runs at paces as fast as I could run them without feeling nauseated) I'm not actively running, but I'm pretty sure I could go out there and run a mile without much trouble. I'm still a runner, I'm just not running right now!

So now, through gradual changes to my eating and exercise, I have managed to keep most of the fat off. You can too, just try!

*Don't take this as medical advice, just because a friend of mine said it doesn't mean it applies to you.

2007-09-05T20:37:00.000-04:00

Today we went haying again!

I'm so exhausted. Between the first and second rounds of haying I mucked out foot baths and refilled them with water, which wasn't very hard but it was kind of dirty :D Then we put up fence till the last hay came in. My back was a little sore from this weeks' pushups and bench pressing. I don't know why it bothers my back, or what I'm going to do to avoid it.

I started a new diet. It's called Eat All The Chocolate You Want. I think it's going to work! The pot belly it promises to deliver is most sure to show up on me before long. There go my ab dents...I've never really wanted to be "trim," or "lean" anyhow, right?!

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I've been reading a lot about nuclear facilities and in particular Cherynobyl. My interest was partially sparked by a friend who adopted a disabled boy from Russia who I had thought was disabled due to the longterm effects of Chernobyl (it turns out it was drug use of the mother.) So I've been reading just a smattering, mostly light books. The kind you can sit down and read in 20 minutes to an hour.

I've been finding it's very fun to go to any section in the library and get any book that looks interesting. I've read about the Bermuda Triangle, internet economics, chocolate bars, and Bill Gates and the internet. Topics I have yet to read are about the local flooding of several communities years ago and a book on Wales.

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For my flatpicking friends, here's a new flatpicking video.

2007-09-01T16:22:00.001-04:00

Howdy folks!

Well, to "get" this next video you might have to use your imagination. Think: eyes = little black holes and you'll be jes' fahn.

Here is additional information for your brain to make sense of the whole thing :)

I know I need a few extra things...mostly I just need a nose wig.

2007-08-30T21:06:00.000-04:00

This week we got a call that a friend was haying. We went up there and spent a nice afternoon expending calories (replenished by the delicious pizza, corn on the cob, and cherry tomatoes for supper) and getting a job partially finished. The haying was done for the day, anyway.

Carol got lots of great pictures, some of which, as usual, I will borrow and display for y'all to look at :)

For starters, this is the barn we were working around. They had already done one run of hay so it was partially full.

Outside by the conveyer belt:

In the downtime between loads we walked around and checked out the rest of the stuff on the farm. Some of the animals checked us out too!

Do I look like a future dairy farmer!??

Yessiree, here is where your milk comes from:

Some of the cows seemed eager to get milked but I saw one kick off the milking device a few times.

Hannah was having a great time :)

And this isn't the first time I've noticed - my brother has got gorgeous blue eyes :)

This one is just because I liked the goat:

And we got to take home a chick - one that will probably go to a friend of ours once it's a little older. She has chickens already and will probably like another one.

At the end of the day, after hanging out with everyone and eating supper, I discovered this dirty looking thing in the mirror.

We all went home tired! Today I'm surprised that I have little to no soreness resulting directly from moving the hay. My hands are sore and maybe my shoulders a bit.

2007-08-24T11:01:00.000-04:00

OOOOKKKKKKK... (I"m trying to imitate youtube's Daniel Gardner in his latest video, FFFFFBBBBBBBIIIIIIIII.)

I want to let you all know that I've gone through my first page of posts and left follow up comments to y'all that have left comments. I'm afraid that's one aspect of blogging I've been neglecting for a while. So if you commented recently, you probably have a reply now so you can go check it out :)

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My mom and I went to the studio yesterday and I put some guitar tracks down. I haven't talked much about our CD lately because we haven't been able to work on it weekends as we've been out singing. Now, however, the singing schedule is slowing a bit and we are now going to be working at the studio more.

I drove to and back from the studio and on the way home we went to Home Depot to get parts for my brother's installation of the airhorn on our bus. I wasn't sure which exit it was at, so we called my dad, and since I guess he drives more by feel on the roads he knows, he said it was the one after a certain rest area. Well I got off on the one RIGHT after, and it was the wrong one! We ended up in the wrong shopping mall so I called my dad and said "Dad, I'm lost." I wasn't really lost, I guess, because I knew how to get back on the highway. But I wasn't sure how to get to Home Depot from there. Anyhow, I managed to get us to the studio, Home Depot, and then home in two pieces (my mom and I).

I know for sure I have not gotten over the thrill of driving. I kid you not, my heart rate goes up when I pass people on the highway. I'm not sure exactly why, it seems commonplace enough. I should just be thankful I haven't matured to the point where I need to go over 100 mph to get my heart rate up. Hey, I don't need to spend $50 at Six Flags, I just need to go driving...uh, yeah....

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I'm getting in that thinking-intensely-but-unable-to-pin-down-what-about mode. A few months ago while complaining to a friend about feeling like I was blowing whole days without doing anything, I was advised to make a to do list. I've been doing that on most days since and it helps so much!

I put my MIT - Most Important Task - at the top. These are things that have deadlines or are very important but I'm apt to forget. Generally I have a personal list of things that I do not write down but are very important. Those are my MUST DO'S and I just keep them in my memory since I do them daily.

After that I might have a few VIs - Very Important. These are things that I really need to get done but they may wait if absolutely necessary.

Then I put down things that I'm hoping to accomplish, however far I get on the list is ok. My list today looks something like this:

MIT: Pimsleur (Spanish study)

MIT2: Practice guitar break for studio work tonight

VI: work abs, take l-glutamine

Clean sink upstairs

Clean room - desks, floor, dresser, bed

Vacuum Stairs

Drink 8 glasses of water _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ (I check off each one)

Get rid of bags for giveaway on floor

Return books to library - renew movies I haven't watched yet

Do Laundry

Fix broken links at website

Write down ideas for consumer friendly computer 3D modeling program (have you ever tried to work with Blender?) It's HARD! I have an idea, but I need to do research on it because I'm not sure if a program like the one I envision already exists. I would really like to find one that does what I want it to, and I think it would be great fun even for just a game.

2007-08-22T20:58:00.000-04:00

My browser doesn't have photobucket in it's memory when I type "p" in the address bar.

Who knows how long it's been since I've uploaded pictures :(

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This morning I got up early and made eggs benedict for breakfast. Layers go as follows: toasted buttered english muffin half, hollandaise sauce, two strips bacon, poached egg, hollandaise sauce. YUM! I think of hollandaise sauce as slightly diluted butter, so it's caloricious :) I don't think that's a word, but I use it anyway.

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And I'm sorry Mrs. Lyman's lettuce got et up by furry creatures. I normally don't like cabbages this much (and don't normally look like I'm in love with them). But this is a special cabbage, it's the first one I've ever picked out of the first cabbages I've ever grown. Pretty cool to grow things that look just like the kind at the store (almost). It's pretty mind boggling even for a country bumpkin like me.

Funny as it may be, when Carol shot that picture it was in between a traditional smiling pose and she said "Oh, you're not going to like it." Who'da thunkit :) Thanks Carol for taking the picture.

2007-08-19T09:06:00.000-04:00

I found this site the other day and thought it needed to be blogged about. Below is a quote from their homepage.

Welcome to the web site for the Dihydrogen Monoxide Research Division (DMRD), currently located in Newark, Delaware. The controversy surrounding dihydrogen monoxide has never been more widely debated, and the goal of this site is to provide an unbiased data clearinghouse and a forum for public discussion.

And an excerpt from their page, "What is Dihydrogen Monoxide." Please check this out folks, you owe it to yourself to learn about things like this.

The dangers, uses and potential threats posed by this chemical, Dihydrogen Monoxide, are widespread, and some feel, terrifying. Here is just a small taste of what Dihydrogen Monoxide (DHMO) is:
Some call Dihydrogen Monoxide the "Invisible Killer"
Others think dihydrogen monoxide should be Banned
Dihydrogen Monoxide is linked to gun violence
Dihydrogen monoxide was found at every recent school shooting
Athletes use DIHYDROGEN MONOXIDE, or DHMO, to enhance performance
Dihydrogen Monoxide has been found in our rivers, lakes, oceans and streams
Dihydrogen Monoxide is a major component of acid rain
Thousands die each year after inhaling dihydrogen monoxide
Dihydrogen Monoxide can be deadly
Find out the truth about Dihydrogen Monoxide

Learn all you can about dangerous chemicals like this one so you don't abuse them. And learn what they actually are and how to recognize them! I found that I was actually exposed to this chemical while on the road in the bus and I really need to take the measures needed to protect myself.
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Yesterday we played in the last band concert of the year with one band and this afternoon we play a special concert with a band we don't usually play with. It's funny that now that band season is over, I feel this urge to pick up my trumpet and start playing again. The guys I play with (who are in the lead section) have been inspiring as of late. Yesterday I got to play Buglers Holiday in a concert! I've never played it publically, I remember looking at the music when I was younger and trying to play the first part by myself. I played the third part and the two 1st trumpets played the 1st and 2nd solo parts. It was so fun! The director asked right before we pulled it out "What do you think?" I tried to remember if there were any really difficult parts in it, but I figured if he thought I could do it then hey, I ought to try. I'm glad I did.

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2007-08-16T16:34:00.000-04:00

The other day my mom, sister and I headed out to pick berries. Vincent was to follow later on on his bike. Soo...we got up there, picked a while, then Vincent shows up and the farmer told him not to go by the bulls because they've only seen a motorcycle once and they'll freak out. We picked a while, then Vincent went home. We picked a while more, then we went to leave and while I was getting into the car mom said "Look!" and I turned to look and my heart kinda went "pitter patter" as I looked and heard a large form coming towards us quickly, but it was just the bull on the other side of the electric fence. Of course, after noticing little tunnels in the overgrowth by the woods at the edge of the field, I was expecting something more like a bear or something :)

In the car, while backing up, I told mom how I've been really nervous lately for no reason, and I wondered why.

"Oh my, look at the bull. Oh! BONNIE GO GO GO!" Then, "Bonnie, no, stop!" I was pulling forward now, in between the blueberry field and the bull field and all the of sudden my mom and sister freaked and I almost started laughing because I wasn't askeert of the bull (wasn't very nice of me.) It was tossing it's horns and stomping in the grass on the other side of the fence, but he kept looking straight at my mom and she thought he was going to charge the car. It was really funny at the time, less funny now because I feel bad for making light of the situation when other people were apprehensive about it. But anyhow, I didn't step on the gas but stopped, and then since the bull wouldn't leave us alone, my mom suggested we turn off the car and I did. Carol prayed and thanked God for the day and the safety he gives us, and then the bull started eating grass, walked away still eating, and then we left.

Anyhow, next time we went we drove down the other side :D

Today my back is really aching from (I think, and someone has suggested) pushups with my feet elevated (and possibly the other variations I did). I was seriously considering (and still am) hiring my 8 year old sister to give me an upper back massage :| I think she could do it, and then I could tell people I hire a private massage therapist :)

I haven't checked this all the way, but this site looks really interesting. It's a list of common errors in English.

2007-08-12T13:14:00.000-04:00

Today we have two concerts in VT and I am on wireless in the bus waiting to go to the concert this evening.

On our way from yesterday's concert to this morning's concert we went down a dirt road in VT and ended up here - The Floating Bridge! There was a 6,000 lb weight limit (we're around 18 tons) so we backed up to the end of the road. We just thought it was a broken bridge (there weren't any signs that we saw) and were shocked this morning when they told us it was meant to be in the water. To quote one of the comments in the link above, "Go figger."

After going down that road we had to go down another dirt road. Everything was fine until about a mile and half down - the road took a sharp turn and there were big ruts and GRASS in the road :( Stuff like that and buses don't mix well. So we backed up a good ways until we came to a driveway that we could turn around in.

Our morning was, uh, interesting :) Hopefully Carol will update before too long with pictures.

2007-08-09T18:41:00.000-04:00

Howdy people.

Aren't all of my readers people? I have yet to hear of any animals reading my blog. You never know, though.

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Not too long ago I acquired an older cassette version of Pimsleur in Spanish. Despite the claim in their title text at the top of the box, it takes a lot more than 10 days to learn a language if you're going to learn anything more than a smattering of the language. Maybe there are people who can learn how to speak reasonably well in a very short period of time, but I'm not one of them :)

Since I'm unhitched at the moment, should I do as this article suggests? This article seems a little more practical, but you never know what's around the corner ;)

I've been thinking about practical ways to improve my Spanish. The top on my list is to continue with Pimsleur each day until my brain is seemingly saturated and I am having trouble remembering what I heard just the minute before. The second would be to have some type of contact with Spanish speaking friends. I've done a little bit of emailing but when I email I can use a dictionary and a verb book (which I do, almost constantly.) That's a help, but I'd like to improve my spoken Spanish. There's phone calling, but I'm really really afraid to do this. I'm afraid I will say two sentences in Spanish and get stuck and not have anything else to say, and I'll just talk about how terrible my study habits are and how I need to study more. Should I just take the plunge and call up people I know who speak Spanish? Brrrrng...brrrng...ok, they picked up. Uh, how do I say who I am again?

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2007-08-06T09:42:00.000-04:00

As I type I'm uploaded a fairly large number of photos. This is an effort to make up for my great lack of blogging. It seems blogging gets constantly pushed to the end of my list of things to do, or never makes it to the list to begin with.

This weekend we went to NH to our good friends the Bartletts' house, related to Jonathan on my sidebar list of blogs (they're his grandparents.) We had such a great time! We got to meet their other grandkids, Jonathan's cousins. Here's all of us after our last concert in their town:

So...to begin with, we swam in the lake they live on. Their neighbors are really nice - one loaned us all of his kayaks and boats, and the other gave us rides (and let some of us drive!) his new jet skis. More on that to follow.

Matthew kayaked.

Mom kayaked.

Vincent and Peter took the canoe out.

I think almost everyone got to go around in the kayaks :) On Friday night I thought it'd be fun to go all the way around the lake and so Vincent, Peter and I decided to get up early and do it before breakfast. I think it was only about 4 miles round trip. We made it out by 6:45am and returned in plenty of time for breakfast at 8:30am.

The riding of the jet skis was SOOOOOOOO fun! They were three seaters that we were riding and I went with the neighbor and Hannah. He let me drive it! He said I was going too slow around the corners and I was going to tip us over if I slowed in the waves :( So they finally he got tired of me going too slow, I think (lol), and he leaned over and said "look here, this is how to do it," and we went flying around the corners. I sort of got over my reflex that we were going to fall over and I went a little faster - 51 mph on the straightaway with the throttle wide open :D Then he took it again (Hannah kept saying "Why don't you do it, you're more fun than her (me)") and we went very fast, made loopdeloos, figure eights, and a few tailspin like things where we stopped really suddenly in a turn and the back end went flying. It was exhilarating. I thought it was funny how Hannah would genuinely be yelling in fear and then the next minute say "Do it again! Do it again!" The guy asked her if she wasn't an adrenaline junky, lol.

The guys went skiing after that, but they were on the other side of the lake and Carol didn't get any pictures.
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I'm having a hard time organizing my thoughts on these pictures. Carol seems to do such a good job at telling the story with pictures - I seem to post them in any old way :p

Here's a picture of Peter I really liked. I didn't take it. Most of the pictures I blog I haven't taken :p

And here's Hannah! I don't know why but she reminds me of the little girl in the Sound of Music movie.

Here's the church we sang in on Sunday morning in Concord, NH.

And here's the really nice sign Mr. Bartlett put together :D

The lettering is a lot neater than it was on mine that I made a few weeks ago, lol.

I didn't know Mr. Bartlett was a hairdresser!

You find out shocking things every day, I tell you :)

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We had been gone for 7 days when we got home last week, then we slept here for one night and then went out for this weekend. I'm not sure when this happened, but my picture fell off the wall and the glass broke! One time I hung a picture next to my bed with a piece of glass in the frame and during the night I slept "pulled" the picture off the wall and when I got up the glass was broken :( Thankfully I'm learning not to put things next to my bed that I'm going to hurt myself on. And I haven't done much besides sleep talking lately, I don't think.

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I did a little drawing last weekend at Odosagih. I was trying to sketch people but it was so hard - they move all around! I decided to sketch my hand instead and here is one of the sketchings.

(am I ever going to learn how to sketch my right hand if I always draw with my right hand???)

Here are some different views of heads I did. They look kinda ugly but I guess it helped me a tiny bit in understanding what the head looks like.

This, incidentally is a sketch of the the picture that fell off my wall - I sketched
it while I was being lazy and lying on my bed. I had the sudden urge to draw SOMETHING so I picked up my pen and paper and scribbled away.

And I think the scribbly pen drawings are really interesting, where you build up light and dark values with more or less scribbles. I tried it just a bit there at the top with the nose and mouth.

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Does this say anything about my efforts to exercise?

When I told a friend I got an exercise bike and told him it was nice, he said "Yeah, to hang clothes on, right?" Of course I said "No way, I just used it today," (I had.) And besides, I'm not hanging clothes on it. I'm hanging towels :D

Some of my room really IS organized, btw. Check out this bookshelf :D

It probably doesn't look very neat, but I know where just about everything is. Some of the movies on my wall, btw, are not ones I recommend. It's a funny thing with movies - sometimes I watch them, cringe through the stuff I'd rather not have in there, but I just leave them there because I forget about the bad stuff. They're kind of in holding right now, just like the Hobbit books I have. I've read them 4 or 5 times, but I don't quite feel right about reading them again when I have vehemently argued against Harry Potter. It's easiest for me to leave them on my shelf. I'm not tempted to read them again, but it'd be hard to just chuck them. Any thoughts?

Well..I guess that sums it up for this post.

2007-08-02T14:21:00.000-04:00

We're home and around internet access!

We went to Potter County in PA. It was really fun, but sadly enough I don't have any pictures and I don't have time to upload them (at the moment). We've been gone for a week, today we got home, tomorrow we leave for another trip to NH.

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We picked a bunch of berries in the woods. We went hiking in the woods. We cut and split wood. We ate maple syrup (is "ate" the right word? We didn't drink it!). We sang for people. We shot off firecrackers. We shot other things off, too!

Ok, so I've got to go away and hurry and do some things we've got to do before it's too late to do them before we go away for the weekend :)

2007-07-26T08:53:00.000-04:00

We're going away for a week to sing in NY. For today's post I'm blogging a late Happy Birthday to Hannah :) I was looking at old pictures and saw her 1st birthday and remembered I hadn't blogged anything about her turning 8. HAPPY BIRTHDAY HANNAH!

And here's a blast from the past, this is the bus when we first had it towed here in 2003!

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I've got to put in a good word for GIMP, which stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program. (GNU stands for "GNU's Not Linux," which according to this site is a recursive acronym.) Download GIMP for Windows here

What can you do with GIMP? A whole lot more than I originally had thought. This is the best free imaging program I have ever used. Not only can I resize pictures, but I can also draw with a computer! There are a variety of different brushes, and with each brush you can control the flow and the opacity. Also convenient is the unlimited amount of times you can erase something and start over, and I believe their Undo function is pretty limitless.

Here's a picture I made the other day with GIMP when I was trying to explore the capabilities of the program.

2007-07-23T15:33:00.001-04:00

This weekend we did a few gigs in New Hampshire. We had a great time. Someone from a forum I visit (and moderate, incidentally!) showed up to the concert with his wife. The forum is really small, and it was cool to meet someone who knows almost everyone at that forum that I know (online, at least).

I almost forgot to take a picture, but when he mentioned he had taken pictures I remembered, grabbed Carol's camera and his wife took a shot of us.

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Now I hope no one is offended by bare shins.

This is the result of picking raspberries with capris on and not paying attention to what's going on near the ground. It was kind of overgrown where I was picking and I REALLY wanted those berries!

The second time I went to pick I stepped in a red ant hill (not the kind they have down south) and my leg felt a little itchy at first and then all the sudden it hurt and I looked down and there must have been 25 ants on me biting all at once No marks though, and the stinging didn't last. I can only imagine what would have resulted had the ants been fire ants!

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I'm not making much progress muscularly, but that's ok.

I'm starting not to really care what they look like. It's kind of ridiculous, my muscles are almost totally flat unless I'm flexing, and then who cares what they look like flexed? To make a lot more gains I'd have to put a lot more into it, and I'm not only not that disciplined, I just can't see spending my life on that. Maybe if I had access to a gym with proper equipment it'd be easier. It's as if to make X about of gains, you need to put N amount of effort, but to make X(2) gains, you'd have to put in N(5) amount of effort. Maybe it isn't that way, but it seems like it. It's easier to lost 5 lbs when you're 200 lbs overweight than when you're 5 lbs overweight (it seems). It's easier to put on muscle when you have none than when you have enough to make it look like you have a little. Ok, I'm done theorizing and confusing myself!

Meanwhile, I've yet again failed my goal of 10 pull ups (I was going to do 10, 4, 3, 2, 1) I did 5 sets of 5, then 2 negatives with my little brother pulling on my legs. But hey, big deal. If I worry over this stuff then it's not worth it.

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I used to rarely venture to the books of Isaiah and Jeremiah because they're "dry phophetic books." No way! I've been reading them along with Matthew and the rest of the Gospels and it's really neat to see the quotes in the New Testament from the Old and how they work together. I'd highly suggest you do this. I'm not sure what ratios of each book you'd have to read to get them done at the same time. Just start reading x amount of chapters a day and whichever one you finish first, read over again while you're finishing the others.

2007-07-19T21:25:00.000-04:00

I said there would be pictures someday, and alas that day has come.

At the County Gospel Festival in Fort Fairfield, ME we met up with some friends we met last year. Here are some of the girls at the table we ate supper at. Mrs. B cooked us supper! It was great soup ;)

Another of the girls

One of the boys

Dad used his high tech sound thrower to announce we were praying :D

Mom bought ice cream for the whole crew - and I didn't eat one bite! (That was by choice.)

And I made a poster for our concert tomorrow! Mom hung it downtown next to the bigger sign for the series of concerts in the park.

That's all for now. Now that Carol has a camera that takea a different type of media (that doesn't go in my laptop) I don't upload photos to this computer as often. But don't worry, they won't cease entirely...

2007-07-17T16:41:00.000-04:00

So last weekend we went out and passed out about a thousand tracts at a big fireworks gathering. It was very interesting. At first I was very intimidated. I asked some of my younger brothers if they wanted to come with me but they were more interested in going with my older brothers, and when I go with them I don't really do much. So I started walking towards one side of the field and I felt as if surely the woman sitting in the chair would see me coming from a very long way off and wonder what I was doing. Miss Coward turned instead to the chairs directly to her right, in hopes that the sudden approach wouldn't arouse suspiscion. "Did you get one of these?" I asked, offering a pamphlet printed with the very message that countless have died for through the ages.

A lot of people took tracts, few refused. I met a few Christians who claimed to be genuine believers but admitted they aren't as active in sharing their faith as they ought to be. I gave them tracts anyway and asked them to please check out Way Of The Master. All in all, it was a great experience and hopefully next time I will be less timid about starting out. I ran into some neighbors who I didn't previously have the opportunity to witness to and had a good conversation, and I saw some people who were actually listening and appeared to be understanding the Gospel.

Here's a picture my sister took. One of the guys is an old friend, and he had never heard of Way Of The Master so I took it upon myself to promote the complete Gospel message that includes the law. Most of my encounters were away from my sister (and the camera). I hope by seeing real life encounters and hearing about them will encourage you to do the same. It's harder for me to witness to people I know (ironic, isn't it?) but it's important even if the only you can get the nerve to witness to strangers.

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Yesterday I nearly broke my record of 8 pull ups. I just couldn't bring myself to do the 9th. I'm not sure why I seem stuck there. Maybe I need to do more negatives. I did the nordic track today and got all red and sweaty. I wonder how much wearing headphones hinders the body's ability to cool itself. How much heat gets expelled through your ears? I know it's a lot warmer in the winter to wear a hat or scarf that covers my ears.

Since I've been talking about these alternative pushups I've been trying, here's a link a demonstration at youtube. They're really interesting and stress different muscles. Youtube is getting just plain gross these days. I can't vouch for any links there.

I've also discovered that I might be able to work up to a one armed pushup by employing an approximately waist high railing. I grip the railing with one hand and try to keep my body straight and lower it as close to the railing as possible. I can't make it till my chest hits the bar, but I figure it must be doing some good. There's also a low bar at the playground on which I can practice one armed pull ups. If I stand under it I can help myself up with my legs while trying to put as much strain on my arm as possible while still performing the movement.

2007-07-15T21:55:00.000-04:00

Ok, so here I am in Maine and everyone is asleep (except Carol, who I think is on WiFi in the bathroom on her laptop!) and I'm on wireless internet. I don't think I have any pictures on my computer yet but expect an update either tomorrow afternoon or Tuesday.

I'm really looking forward to being on the road again. I think this fall trip is gonna be so much fun.

I also need to update on last Saturday night's witnessing experience and I need to get pictures from there. Yikes. Even my blogging is getting behind. I must stop thinking about this in terms of deadlines, it's going to take all the fun out of it! So someday you'll get the updates I keep talking about, if God tarries ;D

2007-07-09T16:20:00.000-04:00

I learned that instead of asking "Donde esta el agua?" in Spanish, you should say "Donde hay el agua?" (with the first upside down question mark as well, but I can't type that.)

We went to a family reunion on Long Island and the two hired help guys both spoke fluent Spanish. I tried to communicate a little, and the one guy said the good thing was I was trying :P I tried also to speak with another guy there who spoke Spanish and he was very kind but laughed after one sentence I tried to put together from what I knew and not one I had ever heard before. It was kinda funny, because you know it's like someone speaking very broken English and putting words in the wrong order.

So here are some pics from the reunion.

The boys around the dessert table. AND BY THE WAY IT WAS NATHAN'S BIRTHDAY YESTERDAY! Happy Birthday Nathan :) You're growing up so fast, I can hardly believe it.

I hope Carol doesn't mind my blogging this, I thought it was such a cool self portrait.

My great uncle (the host) and I.

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We passed out tracks Saturday night at the fireworks but I want to devote a whole post to a summation of that experience and I don't have the time to right now.

I also have some other thoughts and observations that I'm not organized enough to get into. It probably wouldn't make sense to anyone, including myself, at this point :)

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At the park today I did 2 sets of 5 pull ups, couldn't finish the 3rd set of five (only did 3, then I did two singles to finish the set of 5), then I did one set of 12 negatives, then two sets of 6.

I did two sets of 17 pushups (one with feet elevated) then I was way too tired to do another set and my palm started hurting. So on my way home from the park I did one set of 12 in the grass, and once I got home I did two sets of 12 - one a knee to elbow variation, the other a variation where your leg crosses in front of you as you lower yourself, back to normal position as you push up. They helped a lot because they put different stresses on your muscles. I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to do anymore. I feel lazy. But, that's another topic for another post, and if I go into how I feel at this moment, I'll be posting those thoughts that I said I wasn't ready to!

2007-07-07T12:20:00.000-04:00

For those of you interested, this is my 635th post. It's nice that blogger keeps track, because there's no way I'm going to periodically go through all of my posts to count.

I did the Nordic Track this morning in hopes that it would better for my achilles tendon than running or biking. I can't remember the last time I got so sweaty. Indoor exercise where you stay relatively still produces an environment where less sweat gets evaporated. If I run the sweat evaporates as I run, on the Nordic Track it kinda just sits there and makes me sticky. I'll be able to tell tomorrow morning if the exercise aggravated my ankle.

And the MRI came back, by the way, and they said there are no tears! Thank God, because I have a feeling a torn tendon would take a very long time to heal.

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I drew a picture yesterday and spent a little more time shading it than I would have normally. I sketched it out, kinda, then I did the details on the face, then I started shading from the outside in. However, then I was left with a very detailed outside and a white inside with a few marks for facial features. I was afraid to start shading the face because I thought it would turn out looking dirty, but I took the plunge and started shading a bit. When I was done, I made some highlights by removing the pencil with my eraser. I think I need to branch out and draw some men's faces, lol.

This picture was from a magazine, and it seems to me that magazines are much safer than drawing pictures of people you know, because you can get away with it looking less like the model. However, it's doing me less good, so I really need to buckle down and figure out what I'm missing in my face likeness drawing.

2007-07-06T10:35:00.000-04:00

What does the general audience feel about drawing posts? Of course, I don't really care what you think, I'm just asking to be polite ;) Someone told me never to worry about the blogging audience and I think that to a certain degree that's true. I don't want to have half hearted posts because I'm worried what someone would think. Hey, if I think I'm stupid, I'm not going to water it down! Of course, not thinking about the audience could have some serious implications, but if I treat it as I would a real life conversation I think I'll be safe. Hopefully I don't say things here I wouldn't say to someone in real life. Although, sometimes I blog about situations where I would be very uncomfortable to have to tell someone something, or I don't have a clue what to say to them about it (IE, your clothing was very distasteful, as in extremely unmodest, or your church service was really not very God centered.)

So on to the original topic; One common thread in all of the drawing blogs I find is that they contain nude drawings. I'm not entirely convinced either way on the subject of drawing nudes for study purposes (I'm sure somewhere down the road I will figure it out), but I don't intend to draw them now and I certainly don't intend to have any nudes on my blog. So look with relative safety! I'm a beginner. A lot of times my drawings don't end up looking like the subject. At the moment, I'm having a difficult time drawing heads/faces. Clothing is really fun to draw, but when it comes to putting a face on someone I freeze up and while they might look remotely like a human being, they don't look like the person.

I'm not going to start blogging artwork because I need affirmation, and if you don't want to comment on it that's fine. I just enjoy looking at blogs of drawings so much I thought I ought to share some of my own in hopes that someone else will be inspired or be prompted to look at art in a new light.

Soo..expect, later today, some pictures of pencil or charcoal drawings I've been working on. Don't hold your breath :p

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Ok...it's later today! I keep most of my current art in this red binder, and I keep my Drawing With the Right Side of The Brain in there as well. I still haven't done all of the exercises in there.

Here's a face I drew some months ago (maybe a year, even?!), as instructed in the book to have as a before drawing. It's relatively flat and not at all lifelike.

A few months later, it was getting a liiiittle better.

I got a book from the library by Marsha Hunt called What We Wore. It's all about fashions from the 30s and 40s (maybe some 50s too?). I picked out something with a few shadows to draw because I find that a lot easier! The more shadows the better, I think.

And finally, I was looking around for something to draw and I saw a pattern for a skirt with a girl on the front modeling it.

2007-07-03T12:52:00.000-04:00

Here's a picture of Sarah and Carol and Me :D

2007-07-02T10:12:00.000-04:00

Yesterday we met the Plourds! Check out Sarah and Steven's xangas. Their family sings together and they did a gig at Pilgrim Pines, a camp and conference center where we will do a concert also in a few weeks. It was a lot of fun to meet the Plourds there and we hope we can meet up again sometime.

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I'm so unproductive. I got rid of AIM and Yahoo messenger and I still spend too much time on here. I resent the activities I have outside the house because I already neglect the things I have to do around the house. I'm stuck in a rut, really, but I'm trying to get out of it. I have a hard time concentrating on things I have to do if I've got things lying around on my floor or clothes that aren't put away. I have a hard time concentrating when I put off important tasks that I think are going to be difficult - I try to do the simpler tasks instead but the big ones loom over me. And sometimes those prove to be simple tasks but I put them off.

I haven't run in months and it looks like I won't be able to for months. That discourages me. I miss it.

I haven't played guitar in earnest for months and I'm starting to really feel as if I can't play.

I haven't been street witnessing in a while, the only contacts I have are far and few between and several times I've put off witnessing until they go away. I convinced myself it wasn't appropriate to bring up.

I'm definitely not showing the self discipline qualities the Bible speaks of. I've got many unfinished projects, or projects that simply aren't projects anymore because I lost interest. I groan to think of how unproductive I am compared to someone who works a 40 hour work week and gets more done outside of that than I do. If I wrote how I spent every minute of the day I'd be ashamed to let anyone see it.

God has given me just as much time as He did Paul, or any of the other great men and women of the Bible. He gave me just as much time in a day as any other person who has applied themselves and done great things for God. But I'm just flailing around wasting my time and generally being a sloth.

I spend too much time thinking and pondering and not enough time doing. I put simple things on my list to do (on the day I cook I write down all three meals as things to do) just so I can cross them off and feel productive. Sometimes things go on 3, 4, 5 or 6 lists before it gets done (or possibly written off).

On the bright side, it's a good thing I'm not hitched to anyone, I'd feel bad for him :) There's always a bright side to something, but I'm never it. I'm never the answer to my problems. I need to remember that. I'm never going to be productive in the ultimate sense of the word. I don't create anything, I don't make anything. God makes things. God fixes things. I destroy things and I break things. Making my imaginary future productive self the answer to my problems doesn't fix the problem, it makes the problem.

Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and His righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you.

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It amazes me how God uses blogger ;)

2007-06-28T09:10:00.000-04:00

Today there's a birthday in the house! Peter is 16 today :D

A little Peter:

A big Peter, bigger, taller, and stronger than me :D

HAPPY BIRTHDAY PETER!
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And here, diving into the vault of vintage pictures, is a shot of what my room used to look like on a fairly regular basis.

Frightening, I tell you!

I forgot to take before pictures before I started my room repainting - it was more or less clean. But you can at least see the green color here. I was so tired of that color after a few years. Here it is after I had already pushed everything to the center of the room: (shot from the same location, same window in the picture.)

And here it is after the paint, before the cleanup!

A few hours later (see a path emerging??)

And now, after several trashbags of givaway stuff has been removed and after multiple vacuumings (it is so hard to keep a very dark rug clean looking! At least it doesn't show hair :p):
v

I'm really happy with the color and I've put off putting things back on the walls because they're kind of nice empty. I do need to restring some of the twinkle lights I had strung around the top of the room. That makes great alternate lighting, either alone of combined with a lamp. I'm not sure what I'm going to end up with for curtains either. I threw those up because I'm pretty sure the neighbors could see through the big cracks on the sides of my blinds!

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For yesterday's lunch I made 8 pizzas - we usually eat 6 1/2 and the other 1 1/2 are left over for the guys to snack on the next day. It doesn't look like much pizza when it's all sliced up and stacked on a tray. If I had pizza boxes I would have boxed them whole, but we don't have any of those - yet! The lettuce in the back is from our garden, by the way! I don'e recall ever being able to just go out and pick lettuce but it sure was fun. It didn't take much effort on my part to plant it; Vincent tilled and made some of the rows, I just stuck the seeds in and did a little weeding! So hats off to Vincent and his gardening efforts, which are really proving to be fruitful :)

For some reason, it looks less appetizing all stacked up and sliced like that, lol. They ended up eating all but 4-5 pieces though, so it must have tasted fine!

2007-06-26T20:48:00.000-04:00

Mom got some asparagus today. I used to think asparagus was nasty stuff - I had never tasted it before! It's fantastic. Cooked in a pan with a little oil and a fair amount of salt..mmmwah. I also ate some yucca slices I had baked. I was putting oil on it but it makes it a little soggy (I thought) so I baked it with just some salt sprinkled on top. Again, another yummy vegetable that I didn't think I liked.

In an effort to give evolution the credibility it deserves, ask yourself if my food just happened to cook itself and arrange itself as seen on this plate when I tossed it in the air ;)

How about this one??

Use your brain and think!

2007-06-25T15:17:00.000-04:00

We just went away for a Sunday and Monday and did some concerts. After our concert today, we went out to Chinese, and then I took a nap on the way home - must have been 20 minutes, max. Now I feel so exhausted and tired, I can't believe it :p

Tonight Carol and I have to go to band. I feel to tired to play, I know I'm going to be half asleep as it gets to the second half of the concert.

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At our concert today we met one of the shortest adults in the world (she was shorter than Hannah!) and a 93 year old movie star, Kay Linaker, who starred in a lot of movies with Charlie Chan. I'll blog a picture of the movie star at some point, because they're on Carol's camera right now and I don't have a reader that takes her cards.

Off to try to shake off the snoozy feeling......

2007-06-23T15:07:00.001-04:00

Today I have a picture to post. We went to an engine show and were walking around. Carol stopped to take pictures of me beside a car and the guy there said hop in, so I did and she took some pictures :D

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And just for fun, here's a flex picture. My right bicep grew 1/8 inch, isn't that grand!? Actually, it's not that grand :P

I've been listening to Kent Hovind a lot because we put his DVDs on often in the living room and I walk through a lot and sometimes sit to listen and what I've been hearing through his messages is that God hates pride. He doesn't like it when I do "good" if I do it with pride. He doesn't like it when I workout because of pride. He doesn't like it when I say "I'm grand." So no, I'm not grand. See instead something God has created and marvel at His wisdom. Without his life in me, I would be nothing!! And in fact I still am nothing, but only He is something, and He is in me! The fact that God doesn't like pride is both freeing and disheartening at the same time. It's hard to do things without pride, but on the other hand, there are so many things you can do to please God if you just do them to please Him and not to satisfy your pride! So embrace your freedom in Christ. Do good for God to bring glory to His name.

2007-06-20T20:19:00.000-04:00

For some reason my feet are really achy today. Got an MRI scheduled to check out my right achilles tendon. Around August of last year I started having trouble with it and I've just now decided to find out what's wrong and what I'm supposed to do to fix it. No running for the next 4 weeks at least :|

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My sister painted my room today! As I sat amidst the higher-than-me piles of stuff that I had pushed to the middle of the room, I started to feel a little overwhelmed. I had to go to work and then make supper when I got back and I wasn't sure when I'd get the painting in. This weekend is incredibly packed all of the sudden. Work and MRI Friday, studio work Saturday, concerts Sunday and Monday. In the meantime, I've got a great sister who volunteered to paint and a nice couch to sleep on (my bed is nearly completely inaccesssible). Oh yeah, and what color did I paint? Well I went from "celery stalk green" to light purple. The green was really getting on my nerves and it looked so dingy. I was never completely decided on a new color, but when I went to a friend's house and saw her bathroom (purple) I decided nearly instantaneously that I was going to paint it purple. It was so nice to be cured of my indecision for just a little while :P Next I won't be able to decide how the furniture goes back! I've got a before picture (with all the stuff in the middle of the room) and I'll get an after picture when it's DONE!!! Trim comes tomorrow, after the nursing home singing and Bible study.

Check out this cool color visualizer from Sherwin Williams. (click on Launch Color Visualizer.)

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I witnessed to a guy at Walmart today while we were getting the paint. I tried to strike up a conversation with the guy mixing our paint but he declined to take the Good Person Test. Later on, while I was in the crafts department an older man commented on my shirt (the back says FDNY) and said maybe there'd be one for the 9 firefighters who died recently. So I struck up a conversation, asking about his shirt (had some initials on it) and we quickly *happened* to discuss who was good enough to go to heaven. First he said "I've never broken God's law." Afterwards, he admitted he had, but said I shouldn't go around saying people are liars because saying "fibber" sounds better! We left and went our separate ways, and later on he approached me in another part of the store, prefaced his question with "I'm a glutton for punishment," and asked if God was punishing him by making him have knee problems and cancer. We talked a little more about sin, judgement, and justice. It was interesting.

Carol was with me and it was nice to have two people - things kind of bounce around and it's a three way interjection conversation instead of a head-on conversation. The message wasn't any less because of it, but it was more comfortable to me.

2007-06-19T11:00:00.000-04:00

Hm. There's a lady on the bench. I pause as I wipe my hands on a towel, looking out over the sink and out the window.
Witness to that lady when you get out from work.
I don't have any tracts, I can't witness without tracts.
Would Paul or Peter have said, "I can't preach the gospel to this crowd becaise I don't have printed literature.
Well, no, but what if I make a fool of myself?
So?
Ah, she's gone! Whoops, no, she just walked away from the bench a bit. Now there's a crowd out there, three people against one is just too many.
The Creator of the universe, of you and those three women, is closer than beside you.
Aww..well they just got up and walked away and I still have 30 minutes to go to leave here. I look out about 5 minutes later. They're back. Am I not supposed to feel disapointed that they came back?
(time passes, and a situation ensues which convinces me I need to give the gospel to this woman. I am genuinely over my fear and I am going to start up a conversation as soon as I leave, in about 10 minutes.)
I glance out the window and see her and her mother still there. Suddenly they get up and enter an approaching bus.
You lost your chance.
Well what was I supposed to do, go out there before I was supposed to leave work?
What are you going to do next time you see them?

Point #1. Always bring tracts. I could have run out there before they got on the bus and handed them tracts without having to keep them from catching their bus.
Point #2. Why be afraid?
Point #3. Yes, you've passed up opportunities to witness before, don't pass them up next time.

2007-06-17T20:01:00.000-04:00

A few days ago I made a little mandolin for my brother out of clay. I used my airbrush, even!

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On our way to a concert a few weeks ago I opened the hatch to the bus and saw the sky and trees. It was so beautiful!!!

God is great. Really, God is incredible. On a trip I took a few days ago I stopped at one of my favorite places in town and ate lunch. When I stopped and really really looked at the view (it's an open field with hills rising out of the far edge of it) I had to stop chewing and just be quiet and be amazed. I was thinking about how complex the blade of grass was that I had my foot on, and how complex just one of the trees on the hillside is. Mindblowing.
I'll have to take a picture sometime and share the splendor - as well as a camera can capture it!

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I have dream jobs. Seriously, I make over what my living expenses are, my wages are not entirely confiscated, my bosses are so unbelievably kind, I'm not physically exhausted at the end of my short work hours of doing housework. WOW. I mean W-O-W! I live in America. I can pass out tracts on the street, the only fear being of rejection. No getting shot, no getting my hand cut off, no getting beaten to death. I'm escaping hellfire! W-O-W-!-!-!-! C'mon Bonnie, get grateful. See reality. I invite y'all to join me :D

2007-06-15T08:50:00.000-04:00

I guess I didn't take much of a break :)

BERLIN (Reuters) - An aggressive squirrel attacked and injured three people in a German town before a 72-year-old pensioner dispatched the rampaging animal with his crutch.

Check the rest of this exciting adventure here :)

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On Monday we played the with Marine Forces Reserve Band! It was lot of fun and it was incredibly to listen to them. I was thinking how each person has to know exactly what to play and play in tune and in tempo. Imagine how complex and beautiful the medodies they play are - but imagine how complex and beautiful the human eye is. Even one cell must have most complex cooperation and interaction than the band. God's creation is amazing. Thank God for music and for the skill he's given us as lowly humans to play it and enjoy it!

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I just read Some Kind of Genius, a book about a music savant, Tony DeBlois. He's blind, autistic, and an incredible musician!
Here's excerpt from an article about another musical savant, Blind Tom, who appeared around the mid 1800s.

Like any slave child, Tom never attended school, and seemed incapable of learning in other areas. He was restless and explosive and required constant supervision. He seemed irresistibly drawn to the piano and without instruction whatsoever could listen to a piece of music and play it through note for note, accent for accent, without error and without interruption. (Just as Leslie Lemke does) At age five, Tom composed a song he called The Rain Storm based on experiencing a thunderstorm that day. Since Tom was able to repeat complex pieces after a single hearing, General Bethune hired professional musicians to play for the child and thus, by simply listening and faithfully reproducing what was just heard, an instant repertoire of concert quality was created.

Read the entirety of the article here, it's really an interesting read.

2007-06-11T08:24:00.000-04:00

I'm taking a break. Don't expect any posts for a few days. Blogging will (Lord willing) resume as usual when I am finished with my break.
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Psalm 91:1.

The Lord reigns, let the earth be glad; let the distant shores rejoice.

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2007-06-10T19:51:00.000-04:00

Today our company left, we had a fun time with them and our concerts went well :) Here are some pictures at the concert today.

Susannah playing Carol's fiddle :D

Mrs. LaClaire took some pictures too!

Peter on his mandolin

Vincent pickin' away at his banjo

The LaClaires called up some of us. I had just left to get something and missed out :(

2007-06-08T21:16:00.000-04:00

Tonight we're expecting some company. Friends are coming from PA. We had a concert today, we have a concert tomorrow, and one on Sunday. Then on Monday we're running sound for the Marine Corps Reserve Concert Band, who is performing with the Montague Community Band, which is the band I and several of my siblings play in. Kinda cool :)

Today's concert went well, a fair amount of sun in our eyes, lots of distractions (it was for the Relay for Life walking thing. We sang on a double wide flatbed trailer on the side.
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Today for the second time in the recent past I've passed up ice cream for A PIECE OF FRUIT! This is totally unlike me. I don't know if my brain is right. Since I have a cold (which seems to be in my ears now :( it's probably better not to have the dairy anyway. I pity the other siblings in my family that have this (and my dad, too!). It's a baddun. It also is effecting my trumpet playing, I had an inspiration to practice but my head feels so weird and the guys at the trumpet forum said to go see a doctor. Blah. Maybe I will, but I don't want to get stuck on antibiotics again! The ear/trumpet thing has been ongoing, maybe it's just been exacerbated by the cold.

2007-06-07T17:02:00.000-04:00

I found two animated shorts online the other day at an art blog.

If you're morally opposed to mixed drinks, please excuse the mixed drink in the first scene of Maestro. After all, he might be mixing up a ginger ale milk drink or something ;)

Maestro

No Time For Nuts

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I'm trying to find advice on art (drawing in particular) on the internet. However it seems like in every forum there's a good share of nudity and unchristian themes. I hate to click every other topic and have to close the page and think how ridiculous my history would look to anyone who saw it. That, of course, brought to mind that it's probably not worth it if I want to keep my eyes from things I shouldn't see.

This might be a tad touchy for a blog intended for such a wide audience, but I'm starting to wonder what a Christian's view on nudity in art should be - apart from the blatantly provocative nudity that is really nothing more than thinly veiled pornography. Gordon College seems to have something to say about the use of nude models in exercises, at least. Is this something like drinking wine or eating meat? Whatever you think on the matter, keep between yourself and the Lord and not do it if it offends others? Surely not all nudity is pornography? Either way, I find too much other objectionable material on the forums to warrant the advice I would get there - so far.

2007-06-06T20:52:00.000-04:00

This is what the yeast, sugar, and water for pizza dough look like when Bonnie forgets about them for a little too long.

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It's really chilly here today. It felt like fall when I first went out! Thankfully summer hasn't even begun! There's THAT MUCH more ahead of us in terms of warm weather, God willing. Maybe we'll have a year that there is no summer. Pleeease, no, let's have summer!

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I found a neat guitar lesson today, here tis.

2007-06-05T13:58:00.000-04:00

It's thundering outside. It has been raining for a while but today it hasn't rained any. Like thunder and winds without rain is a fool who boasts. I know I misquoted that, but I can't seem to find the reference for it in the book of Proverbs.

I went out in the rain the other day and it was so pleasant. Warm raindrops, puddles to splash in as you walk by. It wouldn't be so pleasant if I didn't have a dry house to go to, I'm sure.

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And the cold rages against the human body. So far I haven't gotten a ton better, but it can't last much longer. Thankfully I just have a lot of congestion and I don't have too much of a sore throat. This is a many-mile-of-tissue-cold, to be totally open and blunt :p Carol has been talking about making people who get colds take garlic and other such interesting things. I'm sure we could scare our siblings into not getting any colds again :)

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It's interesting how the seasons of life go; sometimes the future seems so bright and sometimes it's dimmed by the immediate things going on around us. Feelings don't actually change what's going to happen unless they prompt us to change something, however, so either change it or do it and try to have a good attitude. Pray for strength to complete it. I was thinking about having to do something and I got that dreading feeling, I could almost feel my bones getting sick. Then I thought about something pleasant coming up at some point in the future beyond this task I dreaded, and immediately I felt much better. But then I realized after that fun thing coming up, there would be dreadful tasks again, there would be deadlines, there would be people unhappy with me, there would be regret, etc. etc. But THEN I started thinking that what I really ought to be thinking is that heaven awaits beyond all these tasks, whether they be dreadful or pleasant - that is the ultimate "super duper unsurpassed great moment" coming up that should overshadow all other unpleasant tasks! If I thought about that more often I'm sure I'd be happier.

2007-06-03T21:20:00.000-04:00

Yesterday we did two NEW songs. Here are the boys doing He Will Set Your Fields on Fire. Great tune.

2007-06-02T21:41:00.000-04:00

Chew crunch....chew crunch crunch...sniff...chew crunch...tk tk tk tk tk tk tk....chew...sniff...tk tk tk tk tk tk...sniff sniff sniiiiffff....

(this is me eating a fig and using my laptop). Figs are delicious, are they not?

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I've lived a different existence since I got a new laptop without any sort of Instant Messenger on it. I'm not sure exactly why I didn't install it. On the advice of a friend I decided to give it a try and go Instant Messenger Free, TM. (just kidding about the "TM" part :D)
I spend far less time chatting, most of my communication is done on email, forums, and sometimes at chat rooms on forums. Some people I bump into online (at their websites, facebook, etc) and I think "Oh, I used to talk with them all of the time!" I miss some people, and I have been tempted many times to install the messenger programs I used to use. But is it worth it? I still haven't decided yet :) One of these days you may find me with Instant Messenger on my laptop!

2007-06-01T21:25:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I had that weird dry throat thing going on. Today I'm sure of it; I've caught some kind of sickness primarily affecting my sinuses and throat. Yuck. It could be a lot worse. Now I have that weird stuffed up sound when I talk. Hooray :D Tomorrow I'm supposed to sing a song that I wrote at a concert for the first time! I'd better bring tea to drink.

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I've discovered a super delicious shake: 3/4s of a frozen orange (visit Florida in the winter and pick up oranges no one harvests from their trees!), 1 1/2 scoops whey powder (have a mom that wants to ferment things with whey), and 1 tablespoon flax seeds. Then you add probably 6-7 ice cubes and a little water. I'm not sure if it'd work in a regular blender but in our 3 horse power blender it turns out like sorbet or something. No sweetener required! I also make the same thing that's chocolate, only I use a few teaspoons of unsweet chocolate powder and a few dates instead of the orange and I might add a few nuts. If you let it melt it turns back into a regular shake. It can't have many calories either, and it makes a great snack.

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I worked a bunch of difference places today and biked 5 miles. I'm so tired! I tried to up the weights for bicep curls by tying my two 10 lb dumbbells together. It worked great!

2007-05-31T14:30:00.000-04:00

Kirk Cameron on Yahoo.

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If you use a laptop, how do you sit when you use it? Hunched over? (did you straighten up when I said that!?). I can't find the article I was looking for, but here is one that talks about laptops and posture. If you don't have good posture for the hours and hours you spend on the computer, you may end up permanently hunched over. No fun!

2007-05-29T16:39:00.000-04:00

I was taking a break at work this morning and sitting there thinking, I go online every day. That means I go places where things change. I don't visit the same websites every day that have information identical to the information I saw last week. Change is key to having frequent visitors, but how frequent is annoying?

So folks, think about it. Is it more annoying to visit a blog that you haven't visted for a few days and find 2 or 3 posts new since you came, or to visit a blog that you've been checking every day for a week and still no update? Which are you more inclined to visit?

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For those of you who may be fed up with Internet Explorer, maybe you should try Opera. No, you SHOULD try Opera! So far I haven't found another browser that will do all of what Opera does; Tabbed browsing (how did I surf before tabs!?), Speed Dial (a grid of 9 squares with thumbnails of each of your favorite sites, reloaded with a current thumbnail at intervals you specify) and the ability to save a session - when you close Opera with 5 tabs open, the window automatically remembers those tabs. Next time you open, all 5 tabs will be there. That way I can save articles I've only read halfway, only read half a thread and come right back to where I was later, etc., etc.

Oh yeah, and I forgot you can just put your mouse over the tabs and see a thumbnail of the page that's loaded under that tab. I think other browsers do that as well, but Opera really has a nice browser. Now if you have your own favorite browser that's all well and good, but if you think it's better than Opera then let me know :D

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I also did some more thinking on the way to the library, but this thinking is very hard to describe. I'm not sure why it's so hard. Maybe it's crystal clear, but my mind is just muddled.

What is the reality of life, is it the harsh, grim reality of those living in third world countries? Is it those whose lives are learned about in Fox's Book of Martyrs? Is it the chubby, bright faced baby who has no concept of what reality is? Is it my cushy American lifestyle where I constantly blog about my food habits, complain about body composition, and write about trivial things like what the best browser is? Is your life reality? How many times do you read about someone else, or watch a movie, and think, wow, how small is my world really?

There is a vast world out there, and each person has a perception of reality. Reality is indeed as grim as those living under conditions of starving to death, being murdered, being tortured, and is as "bright" as those being loved, enjoying life, etc. etc. However there are two commonalities that I see being shared by all of the human race. Each is created by God, and each dies. That is the beginning and the end of human life on this earth. No matter what we feel, or what we perceive, that is the ultimate reality of the human. Each must face judgement. However horrible whatever terrors this world holds for us, trust that God's judgement is far far more terrifying. Fear not him who can kill the body and then do no more, but fear him who has the power to cast your soul into hell. We might have the illusion of peace in our lives, being Americans (or if you're not from this country, it is obvious that at the very least you have an internet connection, which would be a sign of extreme wealth in comparison to much of the world) and living in a society where life is easy. But don't be fooled. You'll have to give an account to God for breaking his law, the 10 Commandments. If death is the ultimate end to all, then we face a bleak existence. How glad I am for the reality of God's love that overrules personal perceptions, personal prejudices, and personal innacuracies. I'm glad I'm not the fullfillment of my reality, aren't you!?! :D

2007-05-27T21:06:00.000-04:00

Today we visited a few older people, one at a nursing home and one at her home. I wonder what it was like when every Sunday was visiting day, and families would visit other family or friends. I haven’t ever seen that happen, but I’ve heard about it.

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I made a vegetable beef stew after supper; I’ll freeze most of it to eat later in the week. I loaded it with onions and some garlic so the boys won’t like it. Of course, I didn’t purposely make it so they wouldn’t like it, but I just did it because I like it like that J I haven’t been cooking much lately. I cook the usual meals that I cook, but I haven’t been baking much at all. I miss it, but it’s easier to not have to battle the cake sitting on the counter. Today Carol made a cake and by the time I got to it, it was half eaten. Next time I saw it, it was gone! I did have ice cream though. Gotta cheat somewhere. I dislike that word though. I gotta, um, gotta splurge :D
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I found out about two cool websites this week. One is www.craigslist.com and the other is www.freecycle.org. The first is mainly for selling and buying used items (but they also have free stuff, jobs, vehicles, etc) and FreeCycle is free things only. For Freecycle you join your local Yahoo group listed at the website and then receive emails about free items wanted and available in your area. On Craig’s List you can buy things in any area, on FreeCycle you can only do local things (as far as I read). I encourage you to check them out and possibly get involved in trading. I found some great deals on weights, but they’re too far away! Lord willing I’ll find something locally, which would be very cool.

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THIS POST HAS BEEN REMOVED BY MODERATORS.

HAHAH! Just kidding :D Unless you consider me my own moderator.

Seriously, I consider what I posted mildly inappropriate and I am not at length to discuss why :)

2007-05-23T07:59:00.000-04:00

ETA: Carol put a really nice picture post together in honor of our dad's 50th birthday :D Head on over to her blog.

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Thanks to the a publicity agent from Sourcebooks, I’ve been asked to review two books published by Sourcebooks Jabberwocky, “an imprint of Sourcebooks Inc.” Thank-you Sourcebooks, for considering me :) My review today is for Marigold and the Feather of Hope, the Journey Begins, by J. H. Sweet. At some later date I will review Dragonfly and the Web of Dreams, also by J. H. Sweet.

Marigold and the Feather of Hope, the Journey Begins, by J. H. Sweet.

A nine year old girl reluctantly goes to visit her aunt for two weeks and discoverers that she’s a fairy. The plot continues with the fairies having a special mission, rescuing the “Feather of Hope” for the Brownies, whose “spirits are most often derived from acorns, pinecones, river stones, mosses, clover, or mushrooms.“ Aunt Evelyn, who is also is Beth’s fairy mentor, tells her that she is still human “and has a soul. But [she] also has a fairy spirit..and a special gift relating to that particular fairly spirit.” The definition given in the book as a fairy is a “delightful, magical spirits with likenesses and kinship to flowers, insects, and other small creatures. Fairies are problem solvers, helpers, fixers, and protectors of nature. They get along well with gnomes and most other living things.”

This book promotes the idea of a pagan, witchcraft centered world, where Mother Nature has created fairy spirits, and gnomes cause all things in the earth to grow. They have special abilities which enable them to go undetected by humans and to practice magic. Their morals are not defined by God, but by the Fairy Handbook, which changes to suit the person reading it.

The fairies meet under a willow tree, because “willow trees inspire communication and creative ideas..” They employ wands and pixie dust to perform magic and the book mentions in several places that animals cannot talk unless they’ve been bewitched. There are several cases where things occur physically as a result of fairy activity - tingling hands, changing eye color, and actual body changes when the human “takes fairy form.” The light emitting from a certain wand is purported as being protection from bad spirits, but what bad spirits are is not elaborated. Broken household appliances are credited to gremlins, who are “nasty earth spirits who are invisible to regular human beings…The gremlins’ sole purpose in life is to break machines, appliances, and other mechanical devices.” Certain household objects, such as anything made out of stainless steel, vacuums, and a certain breed of dogs are purported to be charms against gremlins.

There is nothing in this book resembling a godly, Christ centered mindset. I do not recommend this book.

2007-05-20T13:54:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I had a phone conversation with a friend (a rare occurrence!) and it was a very good conversation. We discussed mostly music. This friend has been playing music professionally for many many years, and I always come away with something to apply to my own music.

For one thing, I'm discovering (to my great surprise) that it's normal not have a drive to play guitar for periods of time. Lately I've just been in the dumps as far as playing goes, and I keep thinking I'm a failure because I haven't been playing. However, life is far far bigger than guitar playing, and in reality isn't about playing guitar at all. Of course, I know this, but it is easy to get caught up in material things, the things that we can see. To quote The Book, "For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal."

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I'm watching the Presidential Debate on Fox News. Since we normally don't get Fox News (and it's soon going to be removed from the stations we get with SkyAngel) I have never had the chance to watch one of these before. Neither have I been able to vote, but that's beside the point. I'm so happy to see Ron Paul on there!!! Readers, I urge you as an American to check out his site.

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I've started reading from my Spanish Bible again. I hardly know what I'm saying, but hopefully some of it will sink in :P I'm finding it really difficult to stick with it when there is no one locally to talk with. I'm considering calling some friends from various parts of the country who speak la lengua, pero si no puedo miro a la gente, no puedo comprendo. Ok, so I THINK I said if I can't see, I can't understand. It's much harder on the phone. Anyone got suggestions on learning the language? I'd like to find some books read on tape in Spanish. Maybe I should check the library.

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I tried my hand at freehand airbrushing. It's not very good artistically or technically, but if you glance real quick it looks a little like a cub :D

2007-05-17T08:11:00.000-04:00

Yes, it is a video about airbrushing. I recently was reminded (I was looking at a friend's car that has ghost flames on it) that I have an airbrush sitting in my room that was given to me, and I thought how disappointed the guy would probably be to know that the airbrush he gave me to use and learn on is just sitting there. Then I got to thinking how much fun it was last time I had it out and I decided to airbrush another shirt. I really haven't done much airbrushing at all so it's still kinda rough. This is my third attempt at this kind of lettering I think. My freehand lettering just looks dumb so I'm sticking with this for now :D

Airbrushing Video at Youtube.com

I can't find the place to embed it in this page, I'd much rather do that because there are so many yucky ads everywhere :( I'll change it if I can figure it out.

A guy who's a really good guitarist (who also happens to be, and I'm honored to say it, a friend of mine) gave me permission to use his music for the background. So although I doubt anyone will make that mistake, I'm not playing the music. Visit Mr. Corbin's website here.

2007-05-16T08:47:00.000-04:00

Hopefully my readers will be happy to hear that I passed my evaluation for the Massachusetts Motorcycle Safety Course :D The written test has more questions than the regular written exam at the DMV and that riding part was definitely more difficult than what I've heard the road test at the DMV consists of. (This is the secret about what I spent 15 hours doing on Monday and Tuesday.)

We had to do figure 8's in a rectangle written on the ground, points for touching the ground and for going outside the line, do a swerve, and a quick stop at a certain point (then they measure how much further past the line you went, and you get points for breaking early or for slowing down). It isn't hard, really, and it was a lot of fun. The school I took the two day course from is SM Motorcycle School. I've met both of the owners ( The "S" and the "M" of the name) and the course is really a lot of fun. Not only do you learn a lot of stuff, but if you pass you get a certificate to get your license without a roadtest (if you've prepaid at the registry, you get it mailed right to you) and a break on insurance.

I feel way more like I'm aware of what's going on around me on the road. I also discovered that yes indeed, I need a smaller bike than the one we have now. I haven't actually ridden ours yet because it needs some work, but when I stand on it my feet don't sit on the ground flat footed. On the little bikes we used at the course I felt much more comfortable and realized that it'd be an advantage to have a bike that's shorter.

After the course, I borrowed a bike and went out for just a mile or two. It was fun, but my dad reminded me that the thrill of doing something the first few times usually wears off. Yeah, I'm sure it will, but I'll have fun in the meantime :D

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I made a video Sunday that I haven't had a chance to upload or do anything to. I'm not sure if it's impolite to leave readers hanging (kind of uncomfortable!) but I'll wait to tell you what it's about until I get it all edited and stuff. It involves an art project and something that has to do with air pressure. Any guesses? (If my family guesses, it will defeat the purpose, since they already know about it!)

2007-05-12T09:05:00.000-04:00

I'm slow these days.

I sit down to blog, open up a window, sign in, then leave without blogging because I get distracted. Somehow in my mind that counts for something as far as regularity of posts go.

However slow I may be, life isn't! Last night we did a concert. It was fun. They fed us before and I had thirds on greenbeans. They were really good! Sometimes I have fun eating "right," and sometimes it's such a drag. Last time we made a BBQ I made those No Bake Chocolate Bars and I told myself I could have a piece. Well what's the difference between ONE piece and TWO pieces? Two pieces and three? Not much, except that they all add up. I've been doing much better at avoiding sugary things if I don't have the first bite. I can't count the number of times I've reached out for something and almost picked something up and then pulled my hand away. I don't seem to have the self control at this point to only have a tiny bit. Some days, yes, but most of the time, no.

So for those of you who might be trying to give up something, maybe you should try a new approach (no "First bite"). It also seems that when I go through the motions of getting something, sometimes I'm OK. Like I'll put my hand into the bag of pretzels and not actually touch anything in there and that buys me time to say "no!" if I don't need any extra carbs for the day. But then, there are days where I say no all day but then eventually I crumble, and on days when I know I'm not going to go overboard, I do have the first bite.

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So yesterday we sang, today is sort of an "off" day, tomorrow we sing, and Monday I'll be gone for 12 hours, Tuesday 9 hours. It's better than having nothing to do, but I'll be looking forward to Wednesday, when I get to stay home and cook :)
On Wednesday I should have a synopsis of the activity I engaged in on Monday and Tuesday. Until then, it's a secret ;)

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How would I look on this bike?

(dream on, Bonnie!)

2007-05-08T15:00:00.000-04:00

Listen up people! Tomorrow at 1pm ABC will be streaming the debate between Kirk Cameron with Ray Comfort and the atheists on the other side.

After the video streams on ABC, the video will most likely be available here.

This ought to be a very interesting debate.

2007-05-07T12:51:00.000-04:00

I finished the bagel video!

Here, for my blog readers, is the altered recipe from The Bread Baker's Apprentice.

Sponge=

1 tsp instant yeast
4 cup high gluten (bread) flour (I used whole 50% whole wheat)
1 1/2 cup water

Mix yeast with flour. Add water. Let sit in bowl, covered, on the countertop at room temp for 2 hours.

Dough=
1/2 tsp instant yeast
3 3/4 cup high gluten (bread) flour (I used 50% whole wheat)
2 3/4 tsp salt
1 TB honey, dark or light malt syrup, or brown sugar

In the same bowl, add extra yeast to the sponge and stir. Then add 3 cups flour, salt, and malt. Mix till ingredients form a ball. Add remaining 3/4 cup flour.

Knead for 10-15 minutes (less if by machine. I did one batch by hand and one by Kitchen Aid). Immediately divide dough into 4 1/2 ounce pieces (for standard bagels, smaller for smaller). I used a scale the first time and weighed everything, including the flour. The scale wasn't working this second time when I did the video, so I just measured ingredients by volume and eyed the amount for each bagel.

Cover bagels for 20 minutes and let rest. Let them rise until one floats within 10 seconds in a bowl of water. If not, dry bagel and put back on counter. Test again in 10 minutes.

Place on pans lined with parchment paper (they stuck terribly since I didn't follow directions the first time. This time I used parchment paper and cornmeal on some, on others just a greased pan. Parchment paper worked much better).

The following day boil water in a big pot and add 1 TBS baking soda. Preheat oven to 500. Boil bagels in water 1-2 minutes on each side (as many as will fit comfortably). When all bagels are boiled, remove with slotted spoon and place back on trays. Bake for 5 minutes, reduce heat to 450, rotate and switch pans, bake another 5 minutes or until they get slightly golden (it took probably 15 minutes for me).

Eat up! They taste great plain, and the kids liked them toasted.

A word of caution before you put the whole wheat in there; I got some mushy bagels on the second round and the only thing I can remember I did differently was the flour. I also didn't watch as carefully how long they boiled. Keep an eye on that timer!

I reeeeally should have gotten a clip of the finished product, lol.

2007-05-05T12:45:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I made a new hair fork. This time I went online and looked up hair forks on ebay and checked out what designs I could draw from. I also took some pictures of the process.

Here's the log I cut it out of:

That's handsawn :p I bet I tore lots of muscle fiber while cutting that :D

And this is what the grain looked like when the log was split, which is why I saved it for the to-make-things-with pile (which in reality consists of a single log).

I sanded each side of that chunk up above on the belt sander, then cut out the shape with a hand jigsaw.

I used a chisel to make the curved face of the top of the comb, I also used the sander to enhance the curve of the whole thing.

And after a few hours of work, here's what it looked like!

And here it is in action:

I'm really much happier with the way this one turned out than the last one.
This picture kind of shows the curve of the fork.

2007-05-02T16:12:00.000-04:00

Today I went searching under my dresser for a log I saved from the woodpile. It had kind of a curvy grain to it, and I thought I might be able to make something out of it.

I made a hair fork (or prong). It turned out ok, but for some reason the way I've been putting it in my hair gives me a headache :(

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For after supper I made No Bake Chocolate Cookies - except I put in some marshmallows with the rest of the ingredients. And I put them in a greased pan instead of making cookies out of them. It's too time consuming to make individual cookies. I've got better things to do with my time, like blog...and make pizza. Tonight I'm going to try to make a BBQ Sauce pizza, sort of like Cici's pizza does it.

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It's so nice outside I need to go out and do something. I feel kind of, I dunno. Pent up inside or something. I'm tired of complaining! It seems like I know what the problem is in my head, but I can't really put it into words. So because that problem, whatever it is, exists, I find a myriad of other things to complain about that I really shouldn't. My mom said I was acting "different." What does different mean? It's really bad when you're changing somehow and you're the last one to find out! I ought to go do some jumproping, I always feel giddy afterwards, lol.

2007-04-29T21:12:00.000-04:00

This evening I came across an email in our family's mailbox. It was a story about Christians in Turkey who were recently murdered. There's a warning halfway through the email that the text becomes graphic and not to read if you're squeamish. I haven't brought myself to read it. I just flashed it by and my neck got hot and I had that "ugh" feeling in the pit of my stomach.

I saw just a few of the details and I can see it was a very gory murder. Three Christian men were murdered by 10 Muslim young men all under the age of 20. The Christians died a slow, torturous death. Please remember the persecuted church. If it is a sin to neglect doing good, then it is certainly a sin to forget our brothers and neglect to pray for them.

2007-04-27T17:40:00.000-04:00

Today I have a few videos to link to (sorry dialup people!).

I was searching at youtube for videos of people performing pull ups and found this 6 year old girl doing them. Pretty neat!

(and yes, I must include something about physical fitness it seems in EVERY post. Maybe I'll be over this phase soon ;)

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I haven't played guitar much the last few months but I really want to get motivated to practice. Just for fun, I made a tutorial for youtube of a few G runs.

I also compiled some funny reactions I got to the camera and put them on youtube.

I know my videos are kinda lame, but it's fun to make them :D

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Just an update on the bagel recipe - I'm making a video for youtube of the process of making them! The problem is, I can't bake them till Sunday morning (they sit overnight, up to two nights) so the video won't be done till sometime after then. At that point, I should be putting up the recipe. I hope they don't flop this time. I had to edit the recipe a little because I ran out of white flour and had to use whole wheat (ssshhhh!).

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My cold is getting a little better. In fact it's a lot better. I took a ton of garlic one day, but I haven't been loading up on it other than that.

2007-04-24T18:50:00.000-04:00

I have a stinking cold! Well more accurately, it doesn't stink - I can't smell at all! Not that I wouldn't smell if I didn't ever shower. But I can't SMELL! You know what I mean ;)

I got up at 5:00am and the day has been surprisingly short. While I was at work a breeze blew in the window and all of the sudden my throat felt really itchy and my eyes watered and almost had tears coming down. It went away as fast as it came, but I wonder if I have any allergies. It would be so horrible to have that itchy throat/watery eyes thing all of the time. I can't imagine.

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I started three batches of bread dough today; I started a poolish from the recipe for whole wheat bread in The Bread Baker's Apprentice, one is a whole wheat chocolate walnut loaf I came up with on my own (inspired by bread we have occasionally been given) and the other is another chocolate loaf but it's an all white flour dough. The whole wheat has to ferment till tomorrow so I won't make that tonight, but hopefully the chocolate loaves will be done tonight.

The bagels I mentioned last time turned out really good, by the way. The recipe in The Bread Baker's Apprentice is really good! Nathan, my brother, even said to make a triple batch next time.

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So I'm getting over my cold and going to work and reading, and making bread. And lifting weights occasionally ;)

2007-04-20T09:57:00.000-04:00

I need to correct one of the things in my list below. James W. Lanning is actually some guy I met randomly out there. It did have something to do with blog hopping (mine) from comments left at various sites of people who knew each other online, but not he is not directly a friend of a friend of Mrs. Lymans. So basically I'm wrong :) I'll try to be less confusing in my future posts, if possible...

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This morning I was awakened to a principle I've grossly overlooked. How many of you spend time in earnest prayer for your family? How many of you lay your family's burdens on the alter and pray for God's wisdom for another family member's struggles? I must admit that I haven't even given it much thought. Sure I pray that God will bless my family, but rarely do I have specific thoughts on my mind when I do so. Basically it's like a "bless my family and make us a good witness." But there's so much more to it than that. Sometimes I pray for friends and I don't really know what to pray for. But we who live with family members know each other (should know each other) very well. We know what's bothering people, what they're struggling with, what they need - even if sometimes they don't see what they need. Maybe it's just me who forgets about things like this. If you really love your family, pray for them. Intercede in prayer on behalf of those who are struggling and pray that God would bring conviction where it's needed and to comfort those who are in need of comfort.

2 Samuel 12:16
"David pleaded with God for the child. He fasted and went into his house and spent the nights lying on the ground."

Luke 18:1
Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up.

Romans 12:12
Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.

And this one is a really good one! (Not that the others aren't.)
Ephesians 6:18
And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints.

If your siblings and parents are Christians, pray for them! If they're not Christians, pray for them!

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I'm trying to make bagels. This endeavor is something both my mom and sister have successfully completed. I have yet to see if mine will be a flop or a good batch of bagels. I'm trying to take pictures as I go, maybe when I finish I'll have some pictures to post. The recipe is from a book I got at the library called The Bread Baker's Apprentice, by Peter Reinhardt. The first 100 pages of the book are just info on the process of making bread. The 11 steps of making bread, how yeast works, how to figure mathmatical formulas for bread (ratios). It's very interesting and I'm looking forward to reading his first book, Crust and Crumb.

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I went for a run yesterday, it was so nice out! After days and days of rain the sunshine is certainly welcome. We swept the front sidewalk and cleaned. I suppose that's what they call spring cleaning. I can't wait till the temperature outside is higher than the temperature inside - that means window opening is in order. Even yesterday with the sun it was still only about 60 degrees out side and it was a few degrees warmer inside. I figured if I opened the window it'd cool my room down too much and be cold at night. I ought to have opened it anyway, because last night it was too warm to sleep under my two sheep skins and big blanket.

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I've got a cold. Hooray. I've been looking online and some people who have started weight lifting don't get enough sleep and don't eat enough so they feel like they have a cold all of the time. Amazingly enough, I'm finding that it's easy to get up in the morning as long as I do the same thing every morning. I went to bed at 8:30 the other night because I thought I was going to need the extra sleep - I got up at 5:30am like I planned (9 hours sleep?)and I was really groggy and sleepy. Now if I go to bed at the normal 10:00pm/11:00pm time, I can get up at the normal 6:30 (7 1/2 - 8 1/2 hours sleep) and feel fine in the morning. I'm guessing if I went to bed every night at midnight and got up at 6:30, I'd adjust to it. It might not be good in the long run, but I'd adjust and wouldn't feel super groggy in the morning.

I deadlifted 117 lbs yesterday and I think it was just a little much. It is hard to lift out of your comfort zone; although I can physically lift that much, I don't want to. My mind says don't do it again. It's too hard to muster the mental strength to tell your muscles to work. While deadlifts have been on my list of questionable exercises because of potential risk of back injury, I think I'm going to stick with them for now. When I was concentrating a lot on my abdominals and not as much on my back I was getting unoften occuring but very painful twinges in my lower back (hip). The same thing was happening when we were working on building a house in Kentucky. Since I've been doing deadlifts properly, I've had less pain and I can sleep on my back again without waking up and feeling like something is stabbing me in my joint. At the beginning, deadlifts did seem like an exercise that was aggravating my hip, but I'm convinced it was due to poor form. You can seriously injure yourself deadlifting improperly, so be careful if you're doing it. Research proper form and don't stray from it. Don't lift so much that you can't have good form. Note that that link I just gave does have a drawing of a guy with no clothes on but it looks like a picture you'd look at to see muscles or something and in my opinion, is not immmodest. I didn't even notice it but someone pointed it out so I figured I'd mention it. Also, the links on that page are bound to be dubious. A lot the stuff in the bodybuilding scene is really ungodly. I never want to compete, and I don't want to be a bodybuilder, but some sites that happen to be about bodybuilding have good information on proper form, whether you're lifting to get glory for yourself or if you're lifting to be stronger. And that's not to say there aren't godly people who are also bodybuilders. It just happens to be that a lot of it is not God centered at all. I wonder why, if I had to go through all of this explanation, did I put the link there to begin with? It's not as if someone who reads this is going to randomly start deadlifting!