Year: 2008 Page 5 of 15

Who knew Mickey D’s was so amazing??? 

A long time ago, when play places were still accessible (to me) and Happy Meals came in little boxes, McDonald’s was the place to go. Who knows what happened. I think it was shortly after I discovered Wendy’s that I left the yellow slides and the rainbow ball pits.  Anyway, McDonald’s lunches have sort of held this bad reputation for longer than a while. 

Most Saturday mornings, the Chapmans head down to the Golden Arches for a high-cal breakfast and a chat with Lupita, the reliable Mexican cashier. McDonald’s breakfasts are pretty good. I usually order a country ham biscuit (eaten separately: top biscuit first, then ham, then bottom biscuit.  It’s a tradition), some apple dippers and a small orange juice. The breakfasts are enjoyable, if not a bit greasy.  But lunches?

😛

By a cruel twist of fate, we went to McDonald’s for lunch Saturday afternoon.  So I ordered a Mighty Kids chicken McNuggets meal.  Fitting, no?  I opened my faded paper bag and pulled out:

A LITTLE POLLY POCKET DOLL!

How AMAZING is that?!!?? I LOVE McDonalds now!!!

Oh, and I have a question.  What exactly are chicken McNuggets made out of? Definitely not chicken.

This weekend was a fun weekend. I was going to say we did not get much done, but when I thought about what to write today, I realized that we did quite a bit. We just hung out on Friday, but got up pretty early on Saturday so we could buy Christian a suit.  We found one at J.C. Penneys in the mall at Crossroads.  It is perfect.  After that, Kelly, Christian, and I had a banana/chocolate milkshake, a hot chocolate, and a coffee (respectively) at the Barnes and Noble so Lorena could shop for her dress.  Kelly read while Christian and I used the wireless internet there to work on our computers. Lorena found a great dress!  It is perfect for her coloring and will be fun to wear at the wedding in Mexico in a couple of weeks.  We will put pictures of the event up after it is over.

On Sunday, we went about an hour east of Raleigh to a meeting that included two of regular meetings.  Afterward, we had a potluck.  It was nice because we got to get a little better acquainted with some people we had previously just met in passing.  Lorena made deviled eggs and a pasta/sausuage dish.  We also took a pie.  Of course, we stopped for an ice cream cone on the way home, then I spent a bunch of the afternoon catching up on homeschool corrections.  We are in the big push leading up to the Mexico trip.  Instead of giving them work to do while they are on vacation, based on some nudges from others and guilt feelings of my own, I have decided they should not take any homeschool to Mexico with them.  Still, we are going to push hard before they go and then for a week or so after they return to be in a good place by Thanksgiving.

Kelly and Christian talked to their very good friend Hannah who was our neighbor in Albany for a long time yesterday.  We all miss her a lot.

I made great progress on my Betty Blonde comic automation program. It is a program I am writing to help me process Kelly’s comics for publication on the web.  I had already written the part that takes the individual scanned frames, adds drop shadows and titles, and accumulates them into a single comic and and accompanying thumbnail.  This weekend I added the ability to upload the comic and the thumbnail to the appropriate directories on our website.  I think I will just add a rudimentary GUI to that part of the program and call it complete.  Before I wrote the program, it took me about five minutes to scan in the panels, then another fifteen minutes to make the strip and put it up on our server.  It still takes me five minutes to scan in the panels, but I can build and upload the strip in about thirty seconds now.  That helps a lot.  The next step will be to write a program to automate some of the daily posting.  It currently takes me about ten minutes to do the daily posting.  I hope to reduce that by at least half, if not more.

July 31, 2004 – La boda de Tony y Martha (Photos)
August 5, 2004 – The patio is poured

I do not know where this originated, but my mother forwarded it to (as technologically savvy grandmothers are wont to do).

This is for anyone looking for more insight to how to handle the current economy.

If you had purchased $1,000.00 of Delta Air Lines stock one year ago you would now have $49.00 left. With Enron, you would have had $16.50 left of the original $1,000.00.

With WorldCom, you would have had less than $5.00 left.

But, if you had purchased $1,000.00 worth of beer one year ago, drank all of the beer, then turned in the cans for the aluminum recycling REFUND, you would have $214.00 cash.

Based on the above, the best current investment advice is to drink heavily and recycle. It’s called the 401-Keg

A recent study found the average American walks about 900 miles a year.

Another study found Americans drink, on the average, 22 gallons of alcohol a year. That means, on average, Americans get about 41 miles to the gallon.

Makes You Proud To Be An American

Lorena is going to buy a new dress tomorrow to wear to the wedding. Christian, possibly Kelly (depending on her frame of mind at the moment–she might go with Mom), and I will probably sit in the book store while she goes to the 247 stores required to make exactly the right choice. The main thing we will do for the rest of the weekend is prepare for the trip next week. I am not that motivated to try to write anything too profound this morning. I think I am better at trying to write something interesting than actually doing, but I figure I ought to practice my homeschool preaching and go with the belief that if I keep practicing I will improve. At any rate, rather than make that effort this fine Friday (80 degrees are forecast for the whole weekend), I will put up this picture because I like it and I do not have to think too much while I do it.

Lunch=>

We started homeschool in mid-August so we could take a couple of weeks off to go to a wedding in Mexico in October. Kelly’s three goals for the first half of the year (by late January or early February) are to perform well on the U.S. History II and Spanish CLEP tests, finish three-quarters of Teaching Textbooks Geometry, and concentrate heavily on Apologia Biology. Christian’s three goals for the first half of the year are to perform well on the Freshman English Composition and the Western Civilization CLEP tests, finish two-thirds of Teaching Text Books Algebra II, and concentrate heavily on Apologia Physical Science.  We made good progress on all those goals although we are certainly not ahead of the schedule.  Of course, we continue with the excellent Sonlight literature, our read alouds, Rosetta Stone Spanish II, music, exercise, current events, writing, bible reading and memorization, etc, but those are subjects that are part of the daily homeschool routine now that we have done for over four years.

We have still not decided what material we will take to Mexico.  This is vacation time, but most of the Mexican cousins will be in school during the day, so I want the kids to make some progress on their goals, as much to keep them from saying “I’m bored” as anything.  Still, we are operating right on the edge with the math progress so I will probably have them take their math materials with them to do three lessons per week.  That does not sound too onerous to me, but then I am their goal driven ogre of a teacher.  I will discuss this with both the kids and the vice principal (Lorena).

Christian got a replacement guitar back from the music shop where we bought it.  We are not sure how good it is, but we are having my work buddy, John S. check it out for us.  The music shop wanted to replace the Takamine Jasmine ES45C which had a manufacturing defect with a Mitchell MD-100SCE.  If anyone has any opinions on that, please let us know.

July 30, 2004 – Losing more weight
August 2, 2004 – Grandpa Milo’s birthday

Update: She seems to be more like us all the time.

In a little more than a week, Mom, Christian and I will be going to Mexico for a wedding of one of my mom’s cousins!  I can hardly wait!!!  I haven’t been to Monterrey in years, so I’m excited to see how all my cousins are and to go to all the new places that I’ve only heard about.  My uncle is building a new house, my grandma got a gigantic new refrigerator, my other uncle got a piano, and grandma tells me that there are a bunch of professing girls around my age in the area (not including my many cousins) so I’m also looking forward to meeting them.

Oh!  I also have several cousins who I haven’t even met yet, or who I only got to see when they were little babies. That’s kind of sad, but fortunately I’ll be seeing them soon.

And then there’s the food.  Carne asadas (basically Mexican barbecues.) and mango and strawberry cakes and tamales and TAMARIND FLAVORED CANDY!  I don’t even know why mom is bringing her ‘American recipes’ with her to Mexico when there’s already so much good food there, but I guess she wants to give Grandma a taste of her foreign culinary talent. 😛

Sorry this is so short… will write more later!

We read a textbook titled Understanding the Times by David Noebel over the last two or three months. Every night when I returned home from work, I spoke with Lorena for a half an hour or so over the Greek salad she always has waiting for me. Then, we made some popcorn and I read to Kelly and Christian while they worked on their comics. One time, about half way through the book, Christian picked out Home Style popcorn rather than the regular stuff we normal get. We were pretty disgusted with him until we had some, realized we like it better, and gave it our official, reading-aloud-with-the-Chapmans seal of approval. Now that is the only kind we ever get.  We finished reading a Sonlight curriculum book, The Gammage Cup, just a few days before we finished Understanding the Times.

The book was very good.  At places, the reading got a little tedious, but each of the worldviews we studied was covered well.  It was not all tedium, but what there was, was a result of material that was repeated both for clarity and as a way for it to stick with the reader.  We notice now that we can often identify the worldview of writers and speakers on the radio, magazines, and the internet.  It was something we did not much consider before we read this book.  When we can identify a person’s worldview, it makes it easier to understand and respond to them in appropriate ways.  It has been particularly useful to help us interpret what the politicians say during the current presidential election season.

Between now and when Lorena and the kids leave for Mexico for the wedding, we will read a book about evolution that I will talk about in a little more detail later.  We have decided not to start another Sonlight novel until we are all back home in North Carolina after the wedding in Mexico.

Notice my slovenly appearance in this photo–three days growth of beard, puffy face. Do you notice what is in the box? Aunt Julia sent us a birthday package with nice cards for all of us (and a nice little extra for each of the kids). That was just a cover for her enabling ways. She knew that Bryan was at his daughter Mari’s wedding, probably eating and gaining weight, so the pressure was off on the weight loss death match and my defenses were down. So Aunt Julia, in her normal, conniving, underhanded way, and because she knows Mom always liked me best, sent me a box chock full of Snickers. It was addressed to all of us, but I knew EXACTLY who it was for.  If you noticed a huge spike in the weight chart, you now know why.  Actually, it was a wonderful surprise.  Thanks for the care package Aunt Julia!

July 26, 2004 – Quiet weekend
July 27, 2004 – Quality Corners update

We try to maintain a good perspective on the current election as it unfolds before us. The party conventions excite and entertain. The debates incite strong emotion. It is easy to get too worried about the course of local and world politics in the most powerful country in the world in turbulent times. Kelly read a book last week about events such as these, but that occurred in the couple of decades starting in 47 A.D. in Rome. She was assigned to read The Flames of Rome by Paul L. Maier as part of her Sonlight literature curriculum. I was amazed to learn that Maier studied under Karl Barth at Basel in the 1950’s.  Maier makes a statement in the preface that he used no proper names in the book nor did he describe any events that did not appear in the historical record of the time.  Some of the activities in the book were sufficiently repugnant that he put in a disclaimer that said that he did not want to offend the sensibilities of the reader, but it would have been dishonest not to include the material.  There do seem to be some strong analogies between the events of the first century and the events of our own times. 

Kelly felt like this was one of the best books she has ever read.  That is quite a statement because we have read some amazing books over the last four years.  Some of the events in the book she described as “disturbing and truly disgusting.”  The book did not have a happy ending.  I decided to read the book myself.  It is always good to be reminded that our hope is not in America and that America is not good.  Goodness and hope derive from a completely different source.  We have had it so good for so long that we expect certain freedoms and luxuries.  Every reminder that no one has ever made any promises that we would have an easy life helps us to base our hope in reality.  The reality is that things will get bad before they get better, either in our own time or that of our children or grandchildren.  Maybe this book will help me remember that.

July 21, 2004 – Working late
July 23, 2004 – Still working…

I have often written about how much we have enjoyed going to the library in Holly Springs. It is more than that. We talk about life in the car, eat breakfast at the McDonalds on the way, and plan the day as we go. Last night we listened to the presidential debate so talked about that a little. After that, we talked about what life is like when one is in college, the relative merits of Old Navy, Target, and Goodwill. We talked about going to Lowes for materials to finish the cat tower.

It dawned on me that, at most, we only have two or three years of these wonderful Saturday mornings. So then we discussed how important it is to realize that, in our worldview, life is linear–going in one direction toward an important conclusion–not circular, repeating itself over and over. We discussed the importance of enjoying every stage of our life for what it is. I explained how life really became a lot easier about the time I started my Masters degree. I had complained to Grandpa Milo that I would be 34 years old by the time I got my degree.

He said, “How old will you be if you don’t get your degree.”

It was like a light went on in my head. There is nothing I can do about the speed and direction of time, so I should enjoy every moment for what it is. Now that I am 53, it is a great joy to get the most out of being at the stage in my life where I have something to offer people just starting out in their careers at work, homeschooling my kids, enjoying the companionship of Lorena, and being at the zenith of my career. I know that I have 7 or 8 years of this if there is no huge dynamic (like death or an inheritance of $10,000,000,000–the former being more likely than the latter). Then it will be time to move on to that joyful stage when my career is ramping down and I can start thinking of doing something crazy again, like moving to Mexico to teach at a University or going back to college to do a Ph.D. in something useless.

These Saturday mornings make me very happy and thankful to have been given such a life as I have. I am glad I learned all this when I did. I have hope my children will learn this even earlier than I.

My birthday this year was very, very good. You will remember that I went hog wild at the party on Wednesday after our bible study by eating a scoop of vanilla ice cream and and an entire chocolate cupcake with frosting. The thing I do not understand is that even after that, I am at a new weight low only two days after the fact. I am almost thirty-five pounds down from where I started. If I can stay on the wagon through the weekend, I should be on target to meet my goal of forty pounds lost before I fly down to Monterrey to visit my in-laws. Woo-hoo. One of the things I have noticed after having lost all that weight is that I can actually get my ring on and off–something I have not been able to do without massive amounts of grunting, soap, scraped skin and accompanying pain.

So, with the winter on the way we have a fairly busy schedule.  We have our trip to Mexico, a visit from cousin Julia who currently works for a famous rock star, and a visit from Grandpa Milo, Grandma Sarah, and Miss Turbone for Thanksgiving.  The kid’s name for my buddy Warren is Miss Turbone instead of Mr. Bone.  I do not think he could tell the difference until we told him.  Maybe he was just being gracious.  It came from a book we read once, but there was a Miss Turbone the kids in the book called Mr. Bone.  Actually, it is pretty funny.  At any rate, with winter coming and not much planned other than travel and visits, I have decided the time is ripe to start trying to complete our half-finished projects before Lorena starts getting some ideas about buying new furniture.  That always happens when we are not busy enough.

The first project on the list is the cat tower.  I am going to try to spin that back up this very weekend.  We have to make some adjustments to what we have already completed, buy some new feet, carpet, rope, and PVC pipe before we can get started so a visit to Lowes is definitely on the schedule for tomorrow–right after the library.  Then, we really need to get Christian’s room painted. He finds it quite challenging to sleep there with one wall of a fairly hideous deep blue color.  We just have to find something a little more soothing.  The wall painting thing is Lorena’s special domain as is the vast bulk of the furniture refinishing effort, so I am going to encourage her to finish the dresser she has already started, then help her find some new project at a garage sale, a flea market, or Craig’s list. Kelly, of course has Betty Blonde and all of us want to work on our video blogging. On the technical side, we are still moving forward on the volcano computer. We are hoping to have it ready for the volcano by spring.

July 19, 2004 – Working the weekend at ATS
July 20, 2004 – Scott Ramsdell professes

We took cupcakes and ice cream to our bible study at Lester’s and Esther’s house.  Everyone stuck around for a good while after meeting to just talk and eat really fattening stuff.  Even I had both a cupcake and a scoop of ice cream.  After all it was my birthday.  Still, I am back down to my lowest weight since we started this death match.  It turns out that it was Youngin’s and Madelaine’s birthday on the 19th.  Everyone sang Happy Birthday for me, then sang again for Madelaine, but not for Youngin because she did not fess up until it was too late.  I put them into my calendar now, though, so we will be ready for them next year.  We are going to have the “main” party for me on Friday evening.  It is funny how, the older I get, the more I am interested in using these kinds of events as an excuse to eat food that will cause me to gain weight, so all we are going to do is hang out together as a family and eat shrimp and steak.  How much better does it get than that?!??

All we are trying to do now in homeschool is get everything completely completed (if that makes sense) leading up to the trip.  I do not want anything hanging over the kids’ heads while they are on vacation in Mexico.  I might have them do a little math, but other than that I am going to leave them alone.  I think I am getting soft in my old age.

We are anxiously waiting to see where Lyle comes in now that he is back in the game after convention!

July 15, 2004 – Newspaper front page photo of Kelly (Photos)
July 16, 2004 – Joe and Kevin come to lunch

Demorest was absolutely wonderful! I made a million new friends, I heard some really nice things, the macaroni and cheese was spectacular (that’s the most important part you know, the quality of the convention food), and I was thankfully sitting next to some strong Georgia singers during the hymn sings so my harmonizing skills just got 100 times better. Here are just a few of the pictures that I took while I was there:

Kelly, Andi, Danielle

Picture of most of the young people at Demorest

All of the kids after the hymn sing

A picture of the younger young people

Andi, Danielle, Rachel

Wooden flower... all the guys were whittling these between meetings

When Lorena and I first got married, we lived in Boynton Beach, Florida because I had a job there with Motorola. We went to our annual church convention at Apopka the first year we were there and met an older couple who had come over from Cuba in the early sixties a few years after Fidel Castro’s bloody takeover. The older couple had son named Jorge who I had previously met, I think mostly just at gospel meetings when I lived in Atlanta in 1988. Jorge and his parents spoke Spanish with a beautiful Cuban accent. Both Jorge and his folks had been down to Mexico to the convention that is just a few blocks away from Lorena’s parent’s home in Monterrey. Lorena talked to Conchita last night on Skype. She says she remembers Jorge very well and that he ran around with Lorena’s uncle Valentin when he was down there.

Last week, I had a chance to visit a little with both Jorge and his beautiful daughter, Lydia. Jorge maintains a wonderful blog here.  There is a lot to commend the blog.  I was amazed with a beautiful picture of one of my favorite small cities in the world, Las Cruces, New Mexico on a post he made about the meanings of a bunch of places in America with Spanish names.  You can find that here.  My favorite post though, by far, is this one.  It is a speech Jorge has given a number of times as a guest speaker at naturalization ceremonies for new American citizens.  It is very inspiring.

July 13, 2004 – Marion County Fair
July 14, 2004 – Kelly wins the talent show

It took me awhile to work it out, but to my best recollection, I lived just north of Atlanta in a suburb called Dunwoody in around 1988 for a little under a year. I met a lot of people when I lived there. I remember them for their friendliness and kindness to a bachelor living 3000 miles from home. It was great to get reacquainted with so many of them. A lot of the single people are now married with families. It was particularly good because so many of them remained faithful to their beliefs. Also, it is amazing how many of them are homeschooling. There are three couples in particular with whom I was able to visit at some length over the four days we were there. Joel and Karen have a girl just Kelly’s age and two younger boys. Gene and Carla also homeschool their kids in a way that is similar to us.

Ralph and Barbie do there homeschooling a little differently than the rest of us. Barbie works with a pretty wide range of people to get tutors to assure their kids hit all the academic bases.  If there is such a thing as a business gene, it is more strongly expressed in her than anyone else that I know.  She is a whirlwind of organization and entrepreneurial effort.  In the midst of their homeschool and busy lifestyle, they are building an amazing new house. I go way back with Barbie and had met Ralph many years ago, so it was great to have a chance to get caught up with them.

The effort these people make to give there children something better than what is available in the popular culture is the single thing that impressed me most.  There are many academic advantage that can accrue to those who homeschool their children, but that was not why any of these families were doing it.  I had a great talk with Joel about all this.  It is truly a marvel to watch teenagers focus on character and academics to prepare for careers and courtship rather than the shallow boyfriend/girlfriend, too young relationships promoted in today’s pop culture.  It is great that Kelly and Christian established friendships and communications with these new, like-minded friends.

On a side note, I talked with Gene about some of things we do at Quality Corners.  He told me about a kind of wood used for paint grade moulding called Paulownia.  It might be a super help to our little business as it is about a third the weight of our current paint grade substrate (MDF) which means the price of shipping the stuff to our customers would be dramatically cheaper.

July 9, 2004 – Buying stock, testing for curricula, and the county fair
July 12, 2004 – Saturday at the Beach (Photos)

The last four days were too eventful to describe in just one post, so I will take a couple of days to describe our four day weekend down in Demorest, Georgia. Lorena and the kids came to my work here in Morrisville on Friday afternoon after Christian’s guitar lesson. We drove straight from there down to Buford, Georgia where our good friend Myrna lives with her husband Rene, their two year old twins, Rey and Victoria, and their new little baby boy, David. We have known Rene’s family from Medina, Mexico, but had never met Rene until this weekend. It was a nice drive (in spite of the surly service we received at a Subway on the way). When we arrived, Victoria ran out with her arms out to be picked up. She is an absolute doll and we instantly fell in love with her as we did with Rey and David, too. Rey is the Energizer Bunny. He is a very physical boy who is moving all the time–running, pushing his cars around, hammering things–just in constant motion. He is also a very sweet boy. At the end of the last meeting, he was just worn out, so he saw a lady none of us had ever met before, ran up to her, and held up his arms. She was a little surprised, but she picked him up and held him for forty minutes or so while she slept on her shoulder. She fell in love with him, too.

Went to our church convention after spending the night at Rene and Myrna’s house. There, we met Rene’s brothers Agusto, Luis, and Froylan along with Froy’s wife Blanca. We really enjoyed the chance to get to know them a little. We hope they come to visit us some day soon–they do not live too far from us. Here are some pictures we took at the end of the convention of the whole Mexican crew:

Victoria and Rey

Victoria

Todos los Mexicanos

Ken, Lorena, y Rey

We met a whole bunch of homeschoolers and an old Cuban friend, too. I will talk about them tomorrow and the next day.

July 7, 2004 – Counter offer from ATS
July 8, 2004 – Staying in Albany (photos)

After work today, Lorena, Kelly, Christian, and I are taking about a six hour drive to a little town in Georgia for a convention of our church.  We are going to spend the first night at the home of Rene and Myrna Rosas.  Lorena grew up a few blocks away from Myrna in Monterrey, Mexico.  Rene’s family is originally from the little town of Medina Mexico.  They have two year old twins (a boy and a girl) and a baby who is around eight months old.  We are very much looking forward to seeing them.  Then, on Thursday morning, we are going to the little town of Demorest where we will spend the rest of the weekend.  I lived in the town of Dunwoody, Georgia, for six or eight months toward the end of the 1980’s.  It is a community on the north edge of Atlanta.  There should be a good number of people I knew from that stay as well as a good group of people Lorena and I knew when we lived in South Florida just after we were married.  There are the DeGroots, the Wheelers, the Evoys, and a bunch more.  I will try to bring a few pictures back with me to post here early next week.

July 3, 2004 – Third of July Parade (Photos)
July 6, 2004 – Resigning from ATS

Christian and I have been talking about projects and what we want to do this winter. The reality is that we still have three or four things in process that we need to finish. The main thing Christian and I are doing together is our cat tower. That should not take more than a weekend or two to finish up, but we are probably not going to get to it until after our trip to Mexico in October. In addition to that, the volcano computer project keeps inching forward. We would like to get it finished by this spring because it can be put into the volcano as soon as the snow melts. We also have a radio to put together, but that has been put on hold, too, until we have enough time available that is not filled with school work. Then, Lorena has some projects she wants to complete with Christian. They two main things they want to do is refinish some chairs and repaint Christian’s bedroom–they really do not like the color they chose for the first painting.

Time just seems to be flying to fast to take on too many new projects. At the same time we want to do all these things, we see college flying toward us very rapidly. We are really going to need to think about when we want to put Kelly into college. It will probably be after next year, but even if we wait for one year after that, it is time to prepare for the ACT, look for scholarships, and identify some possible schools. Christian will probably start the year after Kelly. It really is amazing how short is the time one has with their children.

July 1, 2004 – Selling ESI
July 2, 2004 – What to do on the 4th of July

A couple of weeks ago I read the classic book Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. Unfortunately, I already knew how it was going to end due to an Alvin and the Chipmunks Halloween special I saw when I was 7. Other than that, I enjoyed the story immensely. Just my type of tale. It had terrific suspense and I felt genuinely horrified and rather sick when I read the macabre ending. The good part was that the whole double-personality story could be explained away “scientifically”. If mysteries can’t be explained away, then I don’t sleep at night. Not because I’m trying to figure the mysteries out, but because I’m scared silly that a psychopath is going to crawl out from under the bed and murder me. I still don’t know why I read mysteries.

This year, my literature is fantastic. I have several fantasy books, a few mysteries, quite a few classics, and some modern books that I’ve never even heard of before. During my first week of school I got to read a collection of Father Brown short stories, some of which I had never tried before. That was a major highlight. Right now, Dad and Christian and I are reading aloud a good old silly fantasy story called “The Gammage Cup”, and I have been reading a collection of George McDonald’s fairy tales to myself. Of course there’s deeper reading than that. I have a couple of Dickens books and two Shakespeares in my 9th grade library. But even though I always end up liking the classics, I only start reading them because I HAVE too. It sort of takes me a while to get used to the author of a book and his or her style of writing. For example, when I tried a Father Brown mystery after months and months of reading nothing but Agatha Christie, I could hardly bring myself to finish the book. It was too complicated and ‘boring’. Same with the transition from Nancy Drew to Hercule Poirot. Or even from Poirot to Miss Marple.

I think I’m done now. I’ll try to come up with a different subject than books or reading next time. 🙂

Well, we did not get Kelly’s first video blog filmed this weekend as planned, but it is still high on our plan of things to get done. We did have a busy, busy weekend as we had lots of things to get done before we go off to our church convention in Georgia on Wednesday. The highlight of the weekend was last night when we went over to our friend’s (Lester and Esther) house for dinner (awesome smoked salmon). Their recently married son and daughter-in-law just finished up their Ph.D.’s and are going off to do research for awhile in Prague. It is even more idyllic than it sounds–not only are they smart, attractive, and going off to spend a year or so in the most beautiful city in Europe, they are very nice people. Kelly was truly inspired by a young woman with a Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering. I hope they stay in touch.

Here is a housekeeping item. I have a couple of pictures from Christian’s birthday. Take special notice of his shiny new computer! We needed to get one because the old one did not work so well. Christian enjoys it very much and we enjoy him having it.

June 29, 2004 – Playing catch and debt free
June 30, 2004 – Relaxing night