Prayer Request

The redbuds are letting us know that spring is just around the corner if not already here. I do feel sorry for my friends up north. (Of ocurse, come July, I feel sorry for myself.)

This is the time of year that teachers look for jobs for the coming fall. Rachel has begun registering for teacher job fairs at a number of public school districts. We just happen to be located such that there are four different independent school districts with elementary schools within a 5-mile radius of our house. There will also be some Christian schools to apply at.

Rachel has had an interesting year as a substitute teacher, many good experiences and a couple bad ones too. But she is ready to try a full-time teaching position for next year. Pray that God will help her through the application process and especially the interviews (she feels like she doesn't interview very well) and lead her to just the right position.

Pebbles?

I just ate a bowl of cereal that claimed to be 96% organic. I wonder what that other 4% was.

Pastor Gary Simons

I was looking at the online TV guide tonight and noticed that we we turned on channel 2 at 9:30 we could watch Pastor Gary Simons. So we did. He wears cowboy boots. His church is just a few miles away in Arlinton. And he has a website: www.garysimons.org

One time we got a phone call: "Hello. Is this Gary Simons, the preacher?" I replied, "No, this is Gary Simons, the missionary."

Skinny

Can you believe that was me? Thanks to the good old internet, the other woman in the photo found me and we've reconnected after 30 years. She sent me this photo of us. I have no remembrance of it being taken, but I assume it is somewhere in Michigan in the early 70s. I also have no remembrance of ever being that skinny.

We're All Getting Old

Happy 50th Birthday to the Cat in the Hat. I guess I'm not the only one getting old.

Speaking of getting old, we had physicals this week. Actually the news was slightly better than last time in almost all categories. Except, I do have something stuck in my ear, which the doctor will try to fish out on Monday. You'd think I'd notice if something was there, but it could explain why I haven't been able to hear so well! :-\

Dustbowl

The weather is very weird at the moment. There is not a cloud, I think, in the sky, but visibility is limited due to all the dust in the air. This is a photo I stole from a Dallas weather cam at about 3:30pm today. Currently winds are at 25 mph with gusts up to 45/mph.

My guess is that a lot of this dust is from a humongous construction project (yeah, we need another mall) south of us. There are several acres of open earth there. Or at least there was, before this wind came along!

There is Justice in this World

We are lowering the price of your current 1 at-a-time (2 per month) plan to $4.99 a month plus applicable taxes.

Your membership will automatically move to the lower price for your next billing period and be reflected in your Membership Terms and Details. The lower price will appear on your next bill on or after February 23, 2007. You will still get the same great service and convenience. So please sit back, relax and enjoy your movies!

-The Netflix Team

Gary bought me the cheapest Netflix subscription for our anniversary, for $4.99/month. Except that when I actually signed up, it was $5.99/month. That was a little aggravating. Then we noticed all the TV ads for Netflix for $4.99/month, and that was more than a little aggravating. So when this little message arrived in my inbox yesterday, that was not aggravating at all.

Somehow, picking out movies over the internet is way better than going to the store, especially for Gary. But the types of movies he has been picking out are not exactly entertainment! His latest choice was Supersize Me. (I just had to use the big font for that.)

Three Generations

This photo reminds me that I miss my grandma.

Under A Rock

We've figured out why I've never heard of the the Police. I was living under a rock from 1979-1983--no electricity, little English, and lots of kids. No time for Police.

I have heard of the Beatles.

The Police

From an email from Andrew:

P.S. Just in case you missed it, The Police reunited (Sting is their lead singer) and they are about to go on their first tour since 1984 together. I was lucky enough to get some of their tickets this morning and they have already sold for double. :)

I'm not sure I've ever heard of The Police. But last time Andrew sold Sting tickets, I got a new dishwasher out of the deal. Maybe this time he'll buy me a new car. :-)

Servants In Luggage

Meetings have been going on in my office for the last week plus. Several of those attending meetings come from overseas. One particular attendee I've come to think of as Mr. Beast Of Burden--Bob, for short. All week long boxes have trickled in containing stuff for him to hand carry back to country X (I suppose I shouldn't actually mention the name of the country--in order to protect the guilty--but this country has a LOT of ocean in it.) I can understand the hard drives, the laptop, the prescription medicines. But what about 6 pounds of pinto beans?? And used tee shirts from the boutique?? Really, are there no tee-shirts to be had in this country??

He's more gracious than I would be if asked to carry all this stuff in my luggage. But I did hear him mutter something about someone starting their own personal cargo cult!

Happy Valentine's Day

May your day be filled with love (and chocolate).

Credits to Ma Hoyt's Christmas letter for this graphic. ;-)

Supplements

I've never really taken nutritional supplements, subscribing to the theory that if you eat your vegetables, you don't need them. (And I love vegetables, almost all kinds.) Besides that, they're expensive.

But I'm beginning to wonder if my daughter would benefit from them. She is sick way too often, and she doesn't like vegetables very much (except broccoli and carrots and corn).

Anybody know anything about supplements and could make a recommendation? (Although if you sell them as a side job, I might look at your advice with a jaded view :-)

Just the Facts, Ma'am

I was never a very good history student, so maybe that's why I like the "executive summary" passages in the Bible, places where the author condenses all the relevant facts into a short densely-packed passage. Some examples:

• Acts 2:14-36 Peter gives a speech.
• Acts 7:2-53 Steven gives a speech.
• Hebrews 11 Heroes of the faith.

Do you know of other passages like that?

Where the Cobs Live

If spiderwebs are made by spiders, then certainly cobwebs must be made by cobs, right? Haven't you always wondered how those cobwebs formed at the top of the window frames when you've never seen a spider any where in the vicinity?

Naturally, we must check to see what the the internet says about cobwebs.

Anyway, I found where they live at our house when I unloosened two painted screws over the air intake vents under the furnace.

Scary, huh?

I actually had a reason for doing this. I mean, who wants or needs to go looking for yet more dust in one's house? My reason had to do with the on-going process of getting a new water heater. The old one is still dripping, but not spewing, so I just had to see if I could tell where the drips were going.

Need More Detail

Ugh. For all that work I did yesterday trying to organize information to take to Rachel's new doctor, it turns out I still missed a bunch of stuff. It makes me want to go on a tirade about the medical industry and the bad job it does with patient records and about how I would fix it if I were in charge of the zoo.

In any case, I should have brought along the yellow International Certification of Vaccination card.

Summary of Life

Tomorrow morning Rachel has to go see a new doctor. Sad, but she's too old to keep going to the family doctor she's had since she was two and a half, someone who has known her well and really cared about her.

Anyway, in preparation for visiting this new doctor, I'm helping her summarize her medical history. You know they are going to hand her a massive set of papers to fill out when she gets there, so we're trying to get prepared for that.

Perhaps it was overkill, but I decided to do this right. I made a spreadsheet with the months of the year across the top, and the years of her life down the side, then further subdiving each year into these categories: Location, Education, Jobs, Medical, and Misc. Perhaps I'm being obsessive, but haven't you sometimes wished you had a concise reference guide to what you did when? (Or maybe your memory is so good you don't need that??) So the idea is to fill in the Medical row specifically for tomorrow, but filling in the Job and Education rows will help when filling out job applications, etc.

And, if anyone wants to write a book about her, think how valuable this will be. :-)

Poor Hibiscus

This is what happens when Gary leaves me home alone in the freezing weather.

Bill Collectors

I pay my bills, I really do.

But in September of 2003 I got a statement from a phone company saying I owed them $156.10. I called them to say that the phone number from which these calls were supposedly made had closed down by me in June 2002. (At one point we had two land lines, before we got high-speed cable internet.) They said they would research it. Then later I got a letter from a new company telling me I needed to pay. Then later I got another letter from a bill collection agency telling me I needed to pay. Each time I phoned them and explained, and each time I kept notes and was glad I had kept notes from the time before.

And now today, another call from another bill collector, for the same amount. By some miracle I was able to locate the paperwork and notes from 2003 and explain it all again. When I complained about being through all this before, she told me how the bill collectors buy and sell debts to each other--so if bill collection company A doesn't succeed, they sell it to B who tries again, etc. Apparently, since no one seems to believe me, this may go on forever.

*sad face*

Waste Management

I guess it is getting pretty bad when you can't think of any better way to waste people's time than to post about trash cans. I could have recycled some old topics, but instead, I'm making bad puns.

I do like the new blue bins we got to place our recyclable materials in. Dallas as been slower than it should have been in getting around to this, IMHO. But, really, do we need bins this big, even if they are emptied only once every two weeks?? For that matter, do we need regular trash bins this big? I know in Texas everything is bigger, but it seems that oversized trash bins, picked up twice a week, only encourage over consumption of over packaged consumer goods. I can go 2-3 weeks before setting the trash bin out for pickup. (I guess that is partly because I put the "stinky" food scraps into the compost pile instead of into the trash.)

OK, let me know if you can think of anything more interesting for me to blog about. I'm hitting a dry spell, it seems.