Answered Prayers

We got an update from our friends in Texas! - an answer to our prayers.

Just got back into town ....everything fine. It was a Cat 5 & headed a bit north of here so there was a mandatory evacuation (ick...). We left and made it up to Ron's folks in west Texas(who are too far out for even cellular phone coverage). By the time we got there, Rita had changed course and the evacuation was rescinded for Corpus (thankfully...kinda wish it had just gone NW in the first place, but since when we left we didn't expect much left to come back to...given expected wind damage, etc...we are trying to remember to feel thankful & not annoyed by the stress & travel...we are very glad to have a home with furniture & intact windows & ESPECIALLY air conditioning since it was 102 with heat index of 117 today in Corpus).

Thank you so much for your prayers...I don't believe that Rita changed course until you guys started praying...of course the folks in east Texas may have some complaints. Please keep on praying because they are forecasting the "possibility" of two addition tropical waves, developing into storms, into hurricanes...headed for the gulf of Mexico next week.... The sooner the "fall" cool off comes the better... apparently the water is still warm enough for the storms to be Category 5's again......

Answered Prayers

Book Review: In the Beginning...There Were No Diapers

In the Beginning . . . There Were No Diapers: Laughing and Learning in the First Years of Fatherhood by Tim Bete.

This is a great book. Laugh out loud funny. Much of it reminded me of my own experiences as a new father a few years ago.

The chapters are short enough to get through if you only have a few minutes of reading time, and each ends on a postive note about God's work in our relationships with our children. Though it's billed as a humor book, it is also quite inspirational, especially the last chapter. Tim Bete makes it clear God always has a plan, whether or not we can see it or understand it - even when children are acting like children. And the author definitely shows a love for his children through his writing.

I only had two minor - very very minor - issues with the book, and I hesitate to even mention them because they are rather petty on my part. A couple of times it seemed the author kept going with the humor even after we had gotten the point. And it seems like I've always seen "badda bing badda boom" spelled that way instead of the way the author spells it ("botta bing botta boom") Again, that's just me. I did a Google search on both spellings, and it seems both are used. Those two things didn't spoil my enjoyment of the book though. I recommend any father read this book - and I'm going to try to get my wife to read it too just because it's
that good!

This is a review for Mind&Media, the author provided the book to that website for distribution for this, and other, reviews.

Free books are cool!

Book Review: In the Beginning...There Were No Diapers

Upcoming Reviews

For Mind&Media, I'll be reviewing several products:

How To Write, by Herbert E. Meyer and Jill M. Meyer.

This is an ebook available for only $1.99 and is published by Storm King Press.


Another book I'll be reviewing shortly (I'm almost finished with it!) is In the Beginning . . . There Were No Diapers: Laughing and Learning in the First Years of Fatherhood by Tim Bete. He also won the grand prize in the 2005 Writer's Digest Best Writer's Web Site contest.


And finally (so far), I'll shortly be reviewing is a CD by
Paul Aldrich called Mock and Roll.

Upcoming Reviews

Kids Hear the Darndest Things

Kids hear the darndest things!

Sometimes it's hard to make out the words to songs...

• "God bless America through the night with a light from a bulb!"


• "O Susanna, Oh don't you cry for me, for I come from Alabama with a band-aid on my knee!"


• "Give us this day our deli bread! Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Whole East Coast."


• "We shall come to Joyce's bringing in the cheese."


• "Yield not to Penn Station."


• "While shepherds washed their socks by night."


• "Praise God from whom all blessings flow, praise Him all creatures, here we go."
  

Original Source: Unknown. I got it from a daily email newsletter that didn't credit it.
If you know the original source, comment it and I'll add that to the post.

Kids Hear the Darndest Things

A little prayer request

OK...rather big request and her name is RITA. ...telling her politely to leave has not worked. ..therefore we are leaving (actually we have to ...not that I'd want to share a room with her
anyway). Eventually we are making our way to Ron's folks in West Texas. The holdup seems to be that the Army wants Ron to stay (for a while longer at least) ...seems they aren't too concerned about Rita...or they are and Ron's an asset they want to keep local. ..(although they haven't said where yet). So, HELP ...prayers Please...

That's an email we received Wednesday from a family friend that lives in Texas. Seems like everyone has a friend or relative that lives in Texas - they all need our prayers.

A little prayer request

Stuff

Oh yeah - We finally heard back from the radiologist on Elizabeth's knee - what? Last week?
No fracture. The dark line on the x-ray was just a growth mark (growth plate?).

Rubi's been busy adapting to her new part-time job, and running Elizabeth here and yonder, and working out occasionally, and trying to find time to spend with her friends.

Alexander and Catherine started preschool (Catherine is in preschool, Alexander is in pre-K). Alexander goes Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, while Catherine goes on Tuesday and Thursday.

So I'm driving across town every single day to take the yunguns to preschool for 2 and a half hours a day.

Most days, Rubi will ride with us and walk in whichever kid has school that day. Then I'll drive her to work. After that, me and the remaining kiddo go to the Y, which is just a few blocks away from Rubi's work. I'll stick the kid in the "babysitting" room, and go work out for a bit, maybe 45 minutes.

Then back to preschool to pick up a kid. Back home for a nap (the kids and me!), then maybe some housework and lunch before we go pick up Rubi from work.

That's the mornings around here.

Afternoons, I work most days. As soon as Rubi gets home from work, she leaves again to go pick up Elizabeth from school and do her afternoon errands (soccer, workout, time with her friends, housework, whatever).

Stuff

Huh?

What's that?
Rubi and I have a blog?
We're supposed to write in it every so often?

Oh.

Sorry. Been busy.
RLTB
(thanks Curt for the acronym).

Huh?

We The People

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

With these words begins one of the most important documents in our nation's history: the Constitution of the United States of America, which was originally adopted by on this day in 1787 and became effective on March 4, 1789.

We The People

Ugh.

Ugh pretty much sums it up. It's that fun time of year for me when the S.A.D. starts kicking into high gear.

When the wha-huh kicks in? S.A.D.'s fairly well known, but if you haven't heard of it, here: (From the Seasonal Affective Disorder Association's site)

SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) is a type of winter depression that affects an estimated half a million people every Winter between September and April, in particular during December, January and February.
It is caused by a biochemical imbalance in the hypothalamus due to the shortening of daylight hours and the lack of sunlight in winter.
For many people SAD is a seriously disabling illness, preventing them from functioning normally without continuous medical treatment.

It sucks. Everything's a big hairy drama to my sun-starved brain, I sob uncontrollably over every little thing, and often over nothing. The house is a wreck because I can't keep up with it. My poor kids would be a mess too if Kev didn't help out so much. September's the worst, because I'm moving into the full-fledged depression part, and the transition is particularly difficult. I use a combination of light therapy (Ten minute tanning sessions here and there) and non-sedative antidepressant drugs, which help. But then there's the added guilt of "I'm tanning myself into an early skin-cancer grave", PLUS the all-too-widespread assumption that people who take antidepressants are weak, can't/won't deal on their own, need to suck it up, blah blah.

On top of this, I've gone back to work part time and had some other physical problems. My blood/iron count bottomed out, leading to the funfest that was a five hour IV treatment, to be repeated every three months. With lots of fun bloodwork every week in between. Bleargh.

I'm sure things will look less bleak soon, but right now it's midnight and I can't sleep for anything. Things always look their worst then.

Ugh.

Ouch.

Elizabeth had her first "real" soccer injury Saturday. She has gotten whacked in the face with a soccer ball every single season, to the point where we joke about it. She took her traditional ball to the face at the first practice this season, so we joked that she'd gotten that out of the way and we could move on injury free.

Not so much. She had one of those flukey collisions with another player in the second quarter and went down like a ton of bricks. The front of the other player's knee collided with the side of her knee. She was making a bigger fuss than she'd ever made over a soccer boo-boo, and her coach told me that when he went to straighten her leg to get her shinguard off, she screamed. I hadn't arrived on the scene at that point - I was trying so hard not to be overprotective mom, so I was forcing myself to stay on the bleachers. (Don't think I'm not killing myself with guilt over THAT one. She was really hurt, and I was on the bleachers chatting it up with the coaches wife. Ugh.)
She wasn't able to straighten it or put weight on it at all, so after 30 minutes of icing it down, etc., we headed off to have it looked at. It was swollen and icky looking, and she had to be carried to the car.

Anyway, we wound up at the urgent care center for X-Rays, where they found what might be a small fracture. The doctor wanted a radiologist to look at it to say one way or another for certain, so we're just hanging out waiting to see now. She's walking around normally, although it's still pretty tender to the touch, so I'm not too terribly worried.

In case you were wondering, her team lost. Icing on the cake.

Ouch.

Yay Arnie!

The Governator says he'll veto!

Yay Arnie!

Yeah what he said!

Very good article at NewsMax.com:
Don't Blame Bush For Katrina.

(Watch for multiple pop-ups at the main site!)

Yeah what he said!

Blog Party: Three Wishes

"Gah!" I screamed as the smoke spread around me from the spout of the small golden tea pot. I threw the pot down thinking I had done something royally wrong when a voice spoke from the smoke.
"Behold!" Boomed the voice. "I am the Wish-Granting Guy from the Golden Tea Pot of Earl!"
Uh. Yeah. I looked around for the source of the voice, or the hidden camera.
"No really," the smoke said. "I have the ultimate power to grant you three wishes because you picked up the Golden Tea Pot of Earl."
"Who's Earl?" I had to ask.
"What?"
"Earl. Who is he, and what's with his tea pot?"
The smoke shifted slightly, "Earl... uh, he's the guy who... wanted tea, yeah! Then, uh," more shifting smoke, "Then uh, couldn't find his tea leaves, and..."
"You're just making this up aren't you."
"Now look!" The smoke surrounded me, "Do you want me to grant you your three wishes or not?"
"Three wishes?"
"Yes. I am the Wish-Granting-"
"Yeah, I got it. Teapot Guy and all. So... "
"Look. Just make three wishes and let me get me back to my tea pot."
"It's nice in there?" I picked the tea pot up off the floor and placed it back on the table.
"Not really, but I get great reception on my Dish."
"Three wishes?" I crossed my arms over my chest. "Let's see..."
---
MCF is hosting another Blog Party!
Three Wishes:

If I weren't greedy and selfish, my three wishes would be for:
1: Secular scientists to realize how foolish they sound when they preach evolution.
2: Those same scientists, and everyone else world-wide to know, accept, and have a close personal relationship with their Savior, Jesus Christ.
3: An end to all prosecution of Christians world-wide.

On the other hand, If I were greedy and selfish my three wishes would be for:
1: Nine hundred ninety-nine million dollars tax free with no strings attached. After all, with that kind of money, I could help out many churches, in addtion to helping out myself and my family and my descendants for several generations.
2: Wow, after that first one... the greed is kind of gone now. Wish number 2 is wish number from the first list.
3: Wish number 2 from the first list.

Blog Party: Three Wishes

Book Review: The Armageddon Strain

Just finished reading "The Armageddon Strain" by Sharon K. Gilbert; Christian "supernatural" fiction set in the author's on-going series of interrelated novels called the Mytharc series.

While I don't usually like "killer-virus" stories, mostly because they usually use the virus as the actual antagonist in the story, The Armageddon Strain doesn't do that. Instead, the virus is just another tool being used by the bad guys.

This is a good book. I look forward to reading more by the author, as well as her husbands upcoming contributions to the Mytharc series. The ...method of the Mytharc series reminds me a bit of the Repairman Jack series - a series of interconnected stories building up to a "final showdown" between good and evil. The Gilberts' impending showdown is real however, whereas F. Paul Wilson's showdown is purely fictional.

In The Armageddon Strain, I especially like the fact that much of the story takes place relatively close to home in Southern Indiana - granted not in Evanspatch and Southwestern Indyucky that I call home - but close enough.

The main character, Maggie Taylor, is a nice normal perfectly human medical professor and an extremely busy person. It's nice seeing a character who's life is so hectic that she forgets she made appointments - that's a nice human touch. Most of the other characters aren't as well developed, serving supporting roles to Maggie. But that's okay - because it's Maggie's story.
Family life is portrayed very favorably, as is eating! I always enjoy reading about characters enjoying a meal at a local establishment.

Grab this book if you want a good supernatural thriller, and an exposure the war going on all around us.

Armageddon Strain

By Sharon K. Gilbert / Whitaker House Publishers

After her father dies suddenly, Dr. Maggie Taylor receives a mysterious package with a message of universal doom. Confronted by a vast conspiracy to destroy the world, Maggie must discover the link between her father's dying, the deaths of two dozen other scientists---and the secret BioStrain weapon. Will she find the truth in time? 302 pages, softcover from Whitaker.

Book Review: The Armageddon Strain

Yeah, I'll just be fixing that now...

Correct link:

http://www.cafepress.com/shutupcindy1

Yeah, I'll just be fixing that now...

Shut. Up.

In response to media attention (why?) given to Ms. Sheehan, Rubi (my darling wife) has created a new Cafepress store. Show the world you don't care what Cindy has to say!

Shut. Up.