Sorry y'all...

I'm going to just post over here now. I know this can be a lot of trouble, but I need to learn how to use Wordpress for something else we're doing. This is a good way to do that.

Seed block pictures

I realized that I haven't posted pictures of the seed blocks we did Thursday. Daddy and Kyle have also done a lot of work out at the barn. Hopefully I (or somebody) will get some pictures of that soon. Until then, here are the seed block pictures:

We planted the tomato seeds in large seed blocks which we made with one of those really big cans of pumpkin.

That's my Granddaddy!!!

Mama posted about his letter, so I don't need to repeat any of the details. I just had to link to it though! Granddaddy comes out with some pretty surprising things sometimes!

The real question now is: "Why are they requiring even the retirees who want to serve another year (good grief! The Methodist churches I've been to have been desperate for any kind of help/work/assistance/committee member they can get!), and who have served many years before this, to take this class???"

Perhaps I can see it for fresh seminary students, but even then I don't think this sort of thing should even be thought about for pastors! If the "pastor-finding committee" (or whoever) thinks that a prospective pastor might have a problem with this kind of thing, does that not immediately disqualify that prospective pastor as unfit for the role of leading a congregation? I certainly wouldn't want someone like that leading me, my family, or my friends! But now I'm just ranting, so I'll stop.

Long post with a few pictures

Saga of the Rushed Dinner

Last night I had my menus fairly planned out. The meat was thawing, and the side dishes were more or less planned. I had read over the recipe for the main dish (a delicious, but very rich, cubed pork loin recipe) earlier, and knew that I had plenty of time. I made the mistake of not having my side dish recipe, scalloped potatoes, printed out. I spent nearly a half hour that should have been used in cubing the loin trying to print that recipe! Around 4:45 pm, I decided to just wing it, and hope it turned out okay. Of course, we had decided to have dinner around 5:30 pm, so I was doing my best to speed things up. Have you ever noticed how things all go wrong right when you really need them to go right? Well, it did last night. I knew a 5:30 pm dinner was out of the question, but I thought that if I hurried enough a 6:00 pm dinner might just be attainable. I dropped a potato in the compost bowl, which was full of kefir and whey, so that made a rather large mess. I try to be a clean cook. I don't always succeed, but I try anyway. Then I sliced a couple of fingers (not bad enough to bleed, just to frustrate) using the mandoline. Finally I somehow managed to use the chef's knife (don't ask me how, I don't know) where the blade caught another of my fingers. Really, I'm usually very good with knives! I've decided that I don't work well when I rush. I did manage to have everything on the table by 6:10 pm I believe (although the potatoes could've cooked a bit longer). And so ends just another day in paradise, or another cooking experience. I can only hope that it was a learning experience too!

---

Now for a little update:

I'm still working on the quilt binding. I'm still reading a theology book (Mother Kirk, by Doug Wilson). I'm finding it interesting, but one that I'm unable to read through quickly. It appears that we will be doing seed blocks inside this year. Daddy's set up our green house tables to be able to support a light. All the animals are doing fine. The cat disappears at will, but has been back that last few days. The dogs are still tremendously fat from pig left-overs (We had pig feet on our front porch for the longest time! I couldn't help hoping that those Jehovah's Witness people would show up again!). They also had rib bones from Saturday's dinner. Oh, Daddy fixes the best ribs! The cows are surviving as are the chickens. Clarabelle has been giving up to 2 gallons of milk a day, but the milkers have gone out rather late too. Chuck is so big now, but we can't think of weaning him yet! That would necessitate two milkings a day! Here's a few pictures:

What a greeting that would have been for the Jehovah's Witness!

That's probably 47, our best-looking and best-tempered cow.

The seed block table, newly rigged up with a light. Now, at least, we won't have to worry about bringing them inside when it gets too cold outside!

A little whine

I can't quilt and read at the same time!!! It's too difficult to hold a needle and thread, the quilt, and a book, so I'm having to choose between finishing the endless quilt and the endless book! I have to choose the one that means the most to you... ummm... I mean.... that makes it appear that I'm doing something rather than just lazily sitting around. So, it's either quilt and watch a movie, or read classic literature. Neither look very good.

Observations

• Flan is better served warm.

• A little coffee enhances the flavor of chocolate.

• If your an author, you somehow have full authority to make up, misspell, and twist words.

• Microsoft Word is sometimes just plain ornery.

• Milking is no fun when it's freezing outside.

• It just doesn't seem right that it's snowing way south of us.

• Slivered almonds burn very easily in attempts to toast them.

• Chicken spaghetti made with yellow rubber (a.k.a. Velveeta, processed cheese product, etc.) is not good at all.

• My last few months in the kitchen seems to have changed my views a bit. :)
  

Ugh!

I think I'm going to have to read some sort of book on literary analysis next. You just wouldn't believe how that prospect enthralls me.......... or not! Still, I'm absolutely sick of reading books and not being able to ascertain whether or not they were actually good! I don't think even a book like that would help me very much to reveal how to figure out the world view or slant of any particular book. How could it? It has to have a slant too! I have finished reading The Wars of the Roses, but all I came away from it with was the desire for more! It seemed to ask for a sequel, but I don't know if the history in it was very good or not. I certainly don't know if the world view was good! That sort of bothers me, but.......

I'm in the middle of Nicholas Nickleby, but I'm finding it quite a bit more tedious than the other Dickens books I have read. Somehow, my opinion of Dickens books improves one I am done with them, so I defer final judgment of it until I am through, and, even then, just to say whether I liked it or not.

I've got it

Mama took me to get my driver's license permit this morning. We were only there an hour, and everything seemed to go smoothly. I've kind of got a Hitchcockian "that was way too easy, what's going to happen next" feeling. I filled out a form, answered every question on the test correctly, passed the eye test, and had my picture taken. Really the only problems we encountered were: the computer wouldn't accept a Morrison address with Grundy County (Easy enough to fix. The mailbox is in Warren County anyway), and one of the ladies there couldn't read the school name on the diploma because of the fancy font. They also wouldn't let me keep my head covering on, but that was no big deal.

We also cleared up the stuff about the graduated driver's license: because I'm getting my permit when I'm 17, I'll just hold that until I'm 18, and then go directly to the regular, unrestricted driver's license. If I'd gotten my permit when I was 15 (holding it a minimum of 180 days), I would have had to apply for an Intermediate Restricted driver's license when I was 16, then, when I turned 17, I would be allowed to go to an Intermediate Unrestricted driver's license, and by the time I turned 18 the state would have decided I was ready for a full-blown driver's license. Thankfully, I get to skip all that in the middle now.

This is all that was necessary to obtain the permit:

• My diploma
• Mama's driver's license (as long as it had the correct address on it, which it did)
• A certified birth certificate (I guess to prove that I was actually born???), and
  
• My social security number

Now I'm going to have to find some way to get 50 hours of driving time, including 10 hours of night driving before 10:00 pm, this year!

General update

Okay, then, since my last post I have finished Our Mutual Friend, and started The Wars of the Roses by Allison Weir (it was just one we had, don't know if it's good or bad.). I ended up enjoying the book Our Mutual Friend better than the movie. The movie was fairly close to the book (besides leaving out a great deal of the "Society" scenes, and making Eugene less bored than he seemed in the book), but it was more graphic. It had a few more disgusting parts in it that weren't in the book too.

Anyway, I am only at the beginning of this Allison Weir book, but so far, though sort of interesting, I'm not too crazy about it. For some reason, I tend to stray away from women authors when it comes to nonfiction. I don't particularly know why. It may be I don't like this book because of the first chapter where the authoress kept referring to the fourteenth and fifteenth century women as having been regarded as chattels and heir-bearing machines. She said this or things similar to this several times, and I just got tired of reading about how "poorly the women were treated" and so on. The parts about how the kings had to go to war with France just to keep the people and Parliament behind them are fairly interesting.

I have also done a great deal of quilting. See! I haven't quite forgotten my goals for this year! With quilting comes hours of stitching monotony unless, of course, you get to watch a movie! Which I have been doing (too much, judging by the way my head feels this afternoon). We watched the 2005 "Pride and Prejudice" and "National Treasure" yesterday; Kyle, Luke, and I watched "How the West was Won" this afternoon.

We've been making Claire practice the Psalms and hymns that we've learned in parts at church. Once she can play them, the rest of us can practice our parts.

I bought a planner a while back to use for the organization of my menus. I recently looked through the front pages that are used by students to write down stuff about where their classes are and who is teaching that class and so on. It also had a page for Morse code, Braille, and sign language alphabets; along with these however, was a section entirely devoted for emoticons!!! Mama, Claire, and I looked over some of them; these were some of our "favorites" (to laugh at):

O:-) meaning angel (if y'all already knew all this, please pardon me. This is completely new to me, except for the smiley :) or ;) or :( frown)

%-( meaning confused

:-& meaning tongue-tied

|-O meaning yawn

Looking these things up on Wikipedia brings up a few more than my little planner. I like these too:

',:Y meaning concerned duck

~:> meaning chicken

Just thought that was weird.

That's all for now. Maybe I'll get a post up soon that has a lot of pictures for those of my "readers" who don't look at this blog unless there are photos.

New Year's Resolutions

Usually I'm against things like that (on no other basis except that I can never seem to keep them), but this year I decided to test myself again. I have a couple of goals for the year 2008:

• I am (hopefully) going to finish a quilt that's been in the works for about three years. To try to make it more certain that I accomplish this I am not going to sew anything else until that's done. :(

• Also, I hope to become better read this year. I intent to expand my knowledge of certain authors in fiction (C.S. Lewis, Charles Dickens, etc.) , read up on some of the more "modern" history, and perhaps add a little theology. I'm going to try anyway. I'm working on Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens right now. I've never been too much of a Dickens fan, but this one seems to be alright as did A Tale of Two Cities. They're still nothing I'd put top of my list though.

There. Hopefully I will be able to accomplish these things this year, especially now that I've declared them to the entire world. Then of course there's all those things that are normally on people's lists of resolutions:

• Eat better

• Be nicer to everyone

• Go through all the junk everywhere

... to name a few. Unfortunately, I have no desire to eat better than I do. I hope I am nice to everyone, but I know I'm not. I've been labeled, and labeled myself, "mean" too often to not know it! I am continually striving to overcome that, whatever it may look like. A desire to get rid of junk? Of course! I'm all for it! Having to go through it all before it goes to the appropriate place (trash, Goodwill, Ebay, etc.)? "Ummmmmmm......... weeeelllll........... you see........ I... uhhh.... ummmm......... I.... uh.... think.... I'm busy. Yeah, that's it! I'm busy!" Not much desire to do that either. It's got to be done sometime though, and better now than when crunch time comes!

A few things

This morning the pastures in front of our house were black! I stepped out on the front porch to check it out, and could hardly hear myself think. Apparently, a flock birds had chosen our area as a migratory "rest area." I love being outside when so many birds are here; it's so amazing! When they would all start up to move to the next spot their take-off sounded like a turkey drumming. It's a powerful sound. Watching that sort of thing always brings the greatness of the Lord to the very front of my mind.

I tried playing my mandolin again recently, hoping it wouldn't bother my wrists. It did. After playing it again, though, I am continually longing to pick it up! I can think of so many excuses to play it: it needs playing so that the it will keep a tune! My fingers will completely forget everything I worked so hard on! I think it's probably best that I don't play it though. :(

Is it really December? It's over 70° outside! What's with that?!? It looks like it'll get colder as the week progresses though. I think Kyle and Luke are going to go up on the mountain to find us a cedar tree that we'll cut down next week. We usually have live Christmas trees, but it should be fun having a tree that we harvested off our own land. According to our long-standing tradition, we'll have tons of finger foods and have Christmas music playing the evening we decorate it.

Civics Quiz

This was linked to on a blog that Mama and Daddy read. We took it as a family this evening and got a 91.6. Pretty good considering. I knew quite a few more answers than I thought I would, but I could still stand to read up on some of the more "recent" history.

Guess what I've been doing!

---

Yep. I looked through our barn raising pictures!

It's a.... convertible!

:) Right, Chris?

Another calf

31 calved today!!! She seems to be doing much better; for a while there she was barely getting around. Of course it's a little heifer calf; we don't seem to be able to get any bulls that we can turn into future meat. Oh well, we still have a couple or three more calves on the way.

---

Now, per request of a certain someone (Don't worry, Caleb, I won't mention any names.) I am going to post an entire paragraph of a couple of week ago when the Lovetts spent a couple of days here. I warned you, sir!!!

Well, where to start... I guess it's always easiest to start at the beginning. So, the Lovett family arrived around 4:00 pm on Wednesday, October 3, 2007. The day before Daddy and Kyle had processed one of our turkeys; I had been nursing it all day. We had dinner around 5:30 pm or 6:00 pm. After dinner Kyle and the certain someone got up a game of Cranium. We played two games of that Wednesday night. For those of you who know (roughly) how to play the game, you know that there are certain parts of the game where you have to silently act out things. Well, the word was "mermaid," and the certain someone had to act it out. He did a very good job! His partner guessed it almost right off. The other word that he acted out later was "nun." Again he did a wonderful job. We learned (if we didn't already know it) that that certain someone can't hardly spell, but he can spell "aqueduct." That's enough Cranium talk, I think. On to Thursday. The men worked very hard on I'm not sure what all. They did electrical work and drywall work, but other than that, I'm not sure. We ladies went to Sir's Fabrics. Kaliste and I discovered how good a Twix Ice Cream bar tastes. ;) We had turkey-pot-pie around 7:00 pm for dinner Thursday evening, and we again played a couple of games of Cranium afterwards. They left the next morning. Well, is that enough? Is that enough information on y'all's visit? Sorry, but we don't have any more pictures of that visit that I can post.

Pig Slaughtering

Well, I will post about it soon, but we haven't downloaded the pictures yet, and I'd rather do it all in one post. Kyle and Daddy are butchering it this evening, and Mama and Claire are cutting up bits of meat and fat to freeze for sausage. I am trying to keep Luke occupied! :) So far, that's not been too difficult; he's watching Tom and Jerry right now.

Theological Debate

Ahasuerus or Xerxes?

Just a quick update

One hen started laying this weekend while we were gone. We've got a refrigerator full of milk, but letting Chuck stay on Clarabelle has been very nice. It enables us to go away for a couple of days without having to worry about milking her. Chuck is growing fast, but he's not the nicest calf. He's not mean yet; he's just stubborn and skiddish.

Claire said she'd write about this past weekend and post it here or on Mama and Daddy's blog. If she hasn't done it by the end of this week I'll try to post something about it.

Shakespeare

I've been trying to get through all of Shakespeare's plays. Perhaps I wouldn't feel like doing this had not the plays all been in one large book. For some reason I cannot make myself only partially read a book, whether it be a book of other books or not. So far, I've read over half of these famous plays, and I've understood them well enough (surprisingly!). However, lugging this book around the house with me is becoming tedious, and I will rejoice when I am through.

I found a quote I wanted to post on here, although I am not entirely sure what they are talking about in the context of the play. It can be applied to today's world though:

Sands: New customs, though they be never so ridiculous, nay, let 'em be unmanly, yet are followed.

That's from King Henry VIII, Act I, Scene III.

I think it's messed up

This has snow in the forecast for tomorrow! However, the low is in the 70's!