Music

Really liking Sandra McCracken, The Builder and the Architect,

and Andrew Peterson, Resurrection Letters, Vol. 2

If you follow either of those links, there's notes from the artists on how the songs came to be and you can listen.

Both are singer-songwriters in the folk-countryish sort of style.

Good words.

Photo Booth and Old Folks

It can be amusing to see how creative minds manifest themselves.

(Looking into the Time Vortex, maybe)

“The old begin to complain of the conduct of the young when they themselves are no longer able to set a bad example.”

~Francois de la Rochefoucald

(who, in case you are curious, was a cardinal of the catholic church in France in the 1600s, or a French author and nobleman of the 1600's or maybe that name was common in France back then and the guy that said this could have been just about anyone.)

Hot Cars

Saw lots of Corvettes tonight, and three new Camaros. None of the Camaros were black, however. One of the Corvettes was a 1982. It was slightly modified. If Danjo's Vette was slightly modified like that, the new Camaro wouldn't be tempting. The guy said it would do a 12 second quarter mile. I think he said it had something like 1000 horses. Maybe it was 1200. He said they were making a new manifold for it. He thought they could get another 30 horses or so out of it. It looked just like Danjo's car on the outside, only maroon. No scratches. They were planning to redo the inside next month. I couldn't really tell what needed redoing. The guy said you could hook up a laptop to it. I don't think he meant for wi fi. I think it was to program the car. He was speaking hot-rod-ese, so I wasn't completely sure.

Saw a white 1964 Fairlane 500 coupe. Looked familiar. I don't think our Fairlane had beige leather seats though. I remember them being grey cloth.

Also saw a 72-ish blue Buick GS 400 with a white top. Vinyl, not convertible. I might just trade the Corvette for that one too.

It's my blog and I can post if I want to.

First of all, Romance of the Forest just keeps getting better. Adeline has had two dramatic proposals in the space of less than twenty pages, has a favorite fawn that runs to greet her, has found some sort of manuscript, and has had some pretty interesting nightmares. That's on top of the tortured guardians and the evil father who tried to force her to become a nun.

Secondly, I was thinking I needed a hobby. Then I remembered all the ones I already have, so rather than starting another hobby (no time) I chose from the long list of readily available hobbies, and you must now be entertained by the resulting chaos.

Can you see the face of...no, not her. Who do you think I am?

Can you see the face of a baboon?

Dry Now

The difference between 110 and 79

Wi Fi

This one you have to guess. He He!

I have one comment and one question about this one.

Comment: Danjo the Magnificent has found this very helpful when making popcorn. He has quit asking me how to make it (why would anyone make microwave popcorn when it's so easy to make real popcorn?).

Question: Why is it that photobooth is like looking in the mirror instead of like looking through the lens of a camera? I had never noticed this before. Is it a photobooth setting or just the way things are? I suppose I could have edited the photo to reverse it, but I have a movie I want to watch.

Who is this man?

Holding Peanut M&M's hostage is an ineffective threat.

I prefer plain M&Ms.

I am shocked and horrified on two counts:

1: If you like peanut M&Ms so much, why were any allowed to be crushed in the center console of your car?

2: M&Ms. Crushed. In the center console of YOUR car? WHAT?

If You Have Never...

read a gothic novel, you might find it entertaining.

Jane Austen did (see Northanger Abbey).

I'm reading Ann Radcliffe's The Romance of the Forest.

I've decide to post a quote of the day in the sidebar.

I haven't gotten very far into it. I've been told it gets better.

Already I am entertained.

Oh,

Hebe is the goddess of youth-daughter of Hera and Zeus. Cupbearer to the gods.

Something Unexpected (Nothing to do with BMWs)

I think there are a couple of people out there that might recognize this. The colorful things appeared to be peanut M&M's. I have to say I found it rather shocking. I mean really! Of all people? This is NOT the way I was raised. Really.

Eyes, Flames, Baby Bird

Dusty had a bath today. She has the prettiest eyes. When she is wet, all that crazy hair she has is out of the way and I can see her eyes. So I took pictures. Someone else has pretty eyes as well.

This next photo is the result of too much oil in the marinade. The chicken was not, uh, harmed.

Then there's this little guy. We have a lot of birds around here. His mom was still keeping an eye on him, but he's kind of young to be hopping around on the ground. Hope he's okay.

Faces

Tori (Torry, Torrey, Tory, Torri?)

Which of these looks most criminal?

These are the people who have the expressive faces in my family.

On the way to the muppet auditions

Obligatory First Day of School Post

Here they are--the three Adventurers on the first day of school. If you want to get nitpicky, it was Venom's third day of school but that's when I took photos)

Young Adventurer begins third grade.

Venom is off to 8th grade, needing a porter.

Adventurer Two is ready for the first day of the 6th grade.

And because it's easy to post five photos at a time on Blogger, here's a couple more. An angel, and Young Adventurer "whitewashing" the fence. Will work for cold hard cash. Expects to make the big bucks at age 8.

My bank has spoken

Their reply:

Thank you for your email regarding your loan. We apologize for the inconvenience. Unfortunately due to our system update there is not a way to make a principal only payment after the monthly transfer date without affecting your next automatic payment. You may modify your automatic loan payment to pull a fixed dollar amount by visiting a branch to complete an internal transfer form.

So there is a way to fix the problem they created with their system update, but I have to go into a branch, stand in line, and deal with some person to fix it. Funny, in a way. Definitely a conspiracy. I think the online services department may soon be sick of me. Maybe I will write a letter to the president of the bank. Or maybe THE President. Well, maybe not THE President. He's too busy to take his kids on a decent vacation.

Untitled due to lack of coherent theme

Searching for a "Pocket TARDIS" app for my iPod Touch. I'm going to try out the Dalek Soundboard (it's free after all) but keep looking for the one I want. Every once in a while it would be fun to be a software developer.

Wondering what people do if they don't arrive in time for dinner in Sweden.

Sad that the Obama girls only got to visit Yellowstone for a day. That's when it stinks to be the daughters of royalty. Flying in helicopters, that's cool. I wonder if they got good seats to watch Old Faithful.

Praying for my son, who thinks doing long division in his head might be too hard. I think he's actually going to be delighted at how easy it is. For him, sometimes all those Montessori manipulatives add difficulty by adding steps.

Maybe I should just go do some dishes now. Someday I will get all the funny pictures I have taken in the last few days off my camera and post a few. Adventurer Two gets her wildly expressive face from her dad. :-)

Confusion

Why is it that when I drag my fingers across the screen of my iMac, nothing happens but fingerprints and smudges?

Oh.

Morning's Entertainment

I checked back with my online banking system to see if they answered my question regarding my automatic loan payment. Recall, this is an automatic payment to our van loan. In May, it was suddenly $100 less for that one month. I sent them an email asking why. This is what they said:

Good Afternoon,

Thank you for the email regarding your loan payment. We understand your concern and apologize for any confusion this may have caused. With our system enhancement the automatic payment will only pull the funds that are needed to bring your loan current. Somewhere in the history of your loan, you made an additional $100 payment. Conversion weekend took place on May 22 so when the internal transfer occurred on May 26, your minimum payment was $100 less.

Pardon me, but this is a "system enhancement"? Don't most sane people expect when they set up an automatic payment, the bank won't change it randomly? And if I want to pay an extra $100 toward the loan (given that there's no prepayment penalty), shouldn't I be able to do so without the bank undoing it whenever they want?

I responded to this. I think I'll go put the $100 back too, just to see what happens. We'll see what they say...

I know some things you don't know!

All kinds of things happened today in my world. I am not going to tell you about it.

Today's News

No, this is just news in my world, not beyond. Just in case you were wondering.

Young Adventurer can blow up a balloon with his nose. Can this get him into college? I think he's just gonna have to keep practicing piano. I am glad he now likes "Malaguena" and some random minuets and bourees and jazz tunes instead of "Shave and a Haircut."

Young Adventurer also likes his new school teacher. Not as much as his old teacher, however. The reason? The new teacher is not as strict. He likes strict? Well knock me over with a feather! What does this mean? I don't know. I'm sure it will become clear as we progress past the first week of school.

With the kids out of the house I am using Danjo's laptop a lot more. Today I started catching up on entering things into the personal-finance-software-that-is-not-Quicken. I discovered that my bank randomly transferred the wrong amount for the car payment a couple of months ago. It's an automatic debit. Kinda strange. There doesn't seem to be any reason. We'll see what they say when I ask. I might finish catching up on keeping track of the budget sometime next week if I don't get bored. When you haven't entered anything since April, what's another few days? I think I'll work on it while Danjo is home. Then he might come to understand why I need my own Macbook Touch.

We have a new grill. It's funny. The old grill was pretty old. There were many more holes in the burner than there were when it was new. The holes were larger, and in new places. This finally convinced us that forking out $$ for a new grill might be preferable to blowing up. I cooked dinner on the new grill tonight. Kept having to turn up the heat to get the food to cook. I was used to cooking on a old, bad grill which burned everything if the heat was not on it's lowest possible level. Spiritual metaphor here again. :-) "However, at that time, when you did not know a real grill, you were slaves to that which by nature was not a grill at all (anymore)...."

Don't go back to the old grill. You might blow up.

I saw a yellow with black stripes Transformer Camaro today. Unless it actually transforms, I still want the black one. So way much cooler than my Odyssey.

That's about it. The dogs are hungry and can't understand why blogging is more important than feeding them.

No pictures today. Go take your own. It's fun.

Pondering "Lavish"

So we've been studying Ephesians. This week was 1:7-8 "In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace which He lavished on us..."

I was pondering ("Are you pondering what I'm pondering?") what is "lavish?"

It's a word I associate with having too much. Greed, gluttony, waste, excess, spoiling, irresponsibility. In general, I tend to avoid lavish. I'm not comfortable with lavish.

So, I was pondering it again this morning (3am--why can't I think at a time other than 3am?).

If God gives lavishly, it must not be a negative thing, but what is a God-like appropriation of the word "lavish"?(in what order to place consecutive punctuation?.!":").?

God "lavished" His creativity on Yellowstone, and Grand Teton, and Yosemite, and the California coast. He "lavished" them with beauty and uniqueness and stuff.

Must

have

photos

to

illustrate

my

point

.

Okay. Makes somewhat more sense now.

Now I will go brush the dog and eat the remaining Godiva chocolate while watching Dr. Who Season 3 on Danjo's laptop until I fall asleep because I am so tired from pondering all this at 3am. My kids are at school!!!

Oh, just wondering...

Who out there watches "Ice Road Truckers" on a regular basis?

I was unaware of the existence of this show before last weekend (maybe that comes from only recently acquiring cable TV) but apparently this is a popular show?

Adventurer Two

This is a picture of Adventurer Two catching an asteroid.

She is stronger than she looks.

The asteroid turned into a frog prince.

Who wants to kiss it?

These last two are random nice photos.

She is still looking for a good superhero name.

Random collection of vacation photos

Kids on Grandpa G's tire swing

This tractor has been in the family for years and I finally got to drive it. No sidewalks nearby.

Seated in the light

Since when does Ronald McDonald have a tail? Creepy.

Working on editing the golf cart video...