Winter weather

So I am either crazy or downright insane as I write this post, but oh well. I am sitting at my church because I am caroling in between our Christmas programs. Now what makes this crazy is that snow is blowing and drifting and it is in the single digits outside and we are in a blizzard warning area. Like I said I may be a bit crazy. Oh well. That's just life when you live in Michigan.

Obama in Michigan

Well I have to confess that I did something I'd never done before and that is go to the rally of a political speaker. More to the point going to hear Barak Obama speak. The Van Andel was comfortably full. At about 5:45 they must have closed the doors because we didn't see that many more people trickle in. Also about that time Dad called Lisa saying that John Edwards had just landed and was going to endorse Obama. It started about 6:30. I've got to say Obama is a good motivational speaker. He's really motivated the young adults of this country to actually get out and vote. Topics of interest for the night:

Cutting Poverty in half if he were in office Question how??
Troops coming home in 2009 -- ideally maybe reality not likely. Perhaps starting to bring them home by the end of 2009, but complete removal???? It all depends on what the situation is.
Universal health care -- not so bad an idea.
Jobs no tax breaks for companies who move to Mexico.
--NAFTA was a bad idea in the first place

A lot of good ideas, but no thought as to how he'd implement them. Part of my concern with Obama is that he's an inexperienced, but that could be a good thing, as Lisa pointed out, because he's not corrupt.
All in all it was an enlightening evening.

Getting Ready

Well it officially feels like I'm doing this missions trip. I just got the package of information from HCJB. I've been complaining on the lack of hours from work, but perhaps that is just God's gift of extra time to start preparing letters without feeling exhausted. Even though the trip is six months away it will go by in no time. I even found myself looking at travel journals in Barnes and Nobles as I won't be taking my computer with me.

The Jesus Problem

At dinner we were talking and Dad mentioned that a lot of people were in an uproar over the fact that on American Idol gives back they sang, "Shout to the Lord". I don't watch American Idol because frankly there are a lot better things to be watching. However when something like this comes about I'll pay slightly more attention. If you haven't seen it here it is for you to view.


The very fact they sang "Shout to the Lord" was surprising because the song is overtly Christian even for American Idol. The kicker was when he said they changed "Jesus" to Shepherd. Qu'est-ce que HUH??? This is why everyone was making an uproar (well that and people of different faiths were making noise that they chose a Christian song). So I watched it and it was just as Dad said. What really irritates me is this mentality, "we can sing about God so long as we don't mention the name of Jesus and by changing it to something else people won't really know. Even though this song is sung in practically every church it North America." Not to mention the rest of the song screams CHRISTIAN. I mean I've read some posts that think it's awesome that American Idol was singing a Christian song and yeah it is, but this reminds me of what Pastor Paul talked about back in the fall. People don't have a problem with God, but as soon as Jesus enters the picture people have a problem. Some people have argued that Shepherd is just another name of Jesus. But the problem is we live in an age where Jesus isn't welcomed. The only reason it would be removed is because they didn't want to offend people. I think it's rather disingenuous for the downloadable itunes version they left Jesus in. Personally I would have rathered they either left Jesus in for both versions or left it out for both versions.

It's nice to have Mistletoad back

You know there are just some traditions of Christmas that make Christmas and hanging Mistletoad is right up there with them.

'Twas The Night Before Christmas (as written by a technical writer for a firm that does US government contracting)

'Twas the nocturnal segment of the diurnal period preceding the annual Yuletide celebration, and throughout our place of residence, kinetic activity was not in evidence among the possessors of this potential, including that species of domestic rodent known as Mus musculus.

Hosiery was meticulously suspended from the forward edge of the wood burning caloric apparatus, pursuant to our anticipatory pleasure regarding an imminent visitation from an eccentric philanthropist among whose folkloric appellations is the honorific title of St.Nicholas.

The prepubescent siblings, comfortably ensconced in their respective accommodations of repose, were experiencing subconscious visual hallucinations of variegated fruit confections moving rhythmically through their cerebrums. My conjugal partner and I, attired in our nocturnal head coverings, were about to take slumberous advantage of the hibernal darkness when upon the avenaceous exterior portion of the grounds there ascended such a cacophony of dissonance that I felt compelled to arise with alacrity from my place of repose for the purpose of ascertaining the precise source thereof.

Hastening to the casement, I forthwith opened the barriers sealing this fenestration, noting thereupon that the lunar brilliance without, reflected as it was on the surface of a recent crystalline precipitation, might be said to rival that of the solar meridian itself - thus permitting my incredulous optical sensory organs to behold a miniature airborne

runnered conveyance drawn by eight diminutive specimens of the genus Rangifer, piloted by a minuscule, aged chauffeur so ebullient and nimble that it became instantly apparent to me that he was indeed our anticipated caller. With his ungulate motive power travelling at what may possibly have been more vertiginous velocity than patriotic alar predators, he vociferated loudly, expelled breath musically through contracted labia, and addressed each of the octet by his or her espective cognomen - "Now Dasher, now Dancer..." et al. - guiding them to the uppermost exterior level of our abode, through which structure I could readily distinguish the concatenations of each of the 32 cloven pedal extremities

As I retracted my cranium from its erstwhile location, and was performing a 180-degree pivot, our distinguished visitant achieved - with utmost celerity and via a downward leap - entry by way of the smoke passage. He was clad entirely in animal pelts soiled by the ebony residue from oxidations of carboniferous fuels, which had accumulated on the walls thereof. His resemblance to a street vendor I attributed largely to the plethora of assorted playthings, which he bore dorsally in a commodious cloth receptacle.

His orbs were scintillant with reflected luminosity, while his submaxillary dermal indentations gave every evidence of engaging amiability. The capillaries of his malar regions and nasal appurtenance were engorged with blood which suffused the subcutaneous layers, the former approximating the coloration of Albion's floral emblem, the latter that of the Prunus avium, or sweet cherry. His amusing sub- and supralabials resembled nothing so much as a common loop knot, and their ambient hirsute facial adornment appeared like small, tabular and columnar crystals of frozen water.

Clenched firmly between his incisors was a smoking piece whose grey fumes, forming a tenuous ellipse about his occiput, were suggestive of a decorative seasonal circlet of holly. His visage was wider than it was high, and when he waxed audibly mirthful, his corpulent abdominal region undulated in the manner of impectinated fruit syrup in a hemispherical container. He was, in short, neither more nor less than an obese, jocund, multigenarian gnome, the optical perception of whom rendered me visibly frolicsome despite every effort to refrain from so being. By rapidly lowering and then elevating one eyelid and rotating his head slightly to one side, he indicated that trepidation on my part was groundless.

Without utterance and with dispatch, he commenced filling the aforementioned appended hosiery with various of the aforementioned articles of merchandise extracted from his aforementioned previously dorsally transported cloth receptacle. Upon completion of this task, he executed an abrupt about-face, placed a single manual digit in lateral juxtaposition to his olfactory organ, inclined his cranium forward in a gesture of leave-taking, and forthwith effected his egress by renegotiating (in reverse) the smoke passage. He then propelled himself in a short vector onto his conveyance, directed a musical expulsion of air through his contracted oral sphincter to the antlered quadrupeds of burden, and proceeded to soar aloft in a movement hitherto observable chiefly among the seed-bearing portions of a common weed. But I overheard his parting exclamation, audible immediately prior to his vehiculation beyond the limits of visibility: "Ecstatic Yuletide to the planetary constituency, and to that self same assemblage, my sincerest wishes for a salubriously beneficial and gratifyingly pleasurable period between sunset and dawn."

---Author Unknown\

How does Santa Do it?

There are just some things I can't help posting at Christmas time and this is one of them. This is a scientific looks as to how Santa makes it to all the houses on Christmas eve

How does Santa do it?

1. No known species of reindeer can fly. But there are 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most Of these are insects and germs, this does not COMPLETELY rule out Flying reindeer, which only Santa has ever seen.

2. There are 2 billion children (persons under 18) in the world. BUT since Santa doesn't (appear) to handle the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and Buddhist children, that reduces the workload to 15% of The total - 378 million according to Population Reference Bureau.

At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that 91.8 million homes. One presumes there's at least one good child in each.

3. Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 822.6 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with good children, Santa has 1/1000th of a second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get back into the sleigh and move on to the next house. Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false but for the purposes of our calculations we will accept), we are now talking about .78 miles per household, a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us must do at least once every 31 hours, plus feeding and etc. This means that Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, 3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle on earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second - a conventional reindeer can run, tops, 15 miles per hour.

4. The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized lego set (2 pounds), the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, not

counting Santa, who is invariably described as overweight. On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that "flying reindeer" (see point #1) could pull TEN TIMES the normal amount, we cannot do the job with eight, or even nine. We need 214,200 reindeer. This increases the payload - not even counting the weight of the sleigh - to

353,430 tons. Again, for comparison - this is four times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth.

5. 353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance - this will heat the reindeer up the same fashion as spacecraft re-entering the earth's atmosphere.

The lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy. Per second. Each. In short, they will burst into flame almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind

them, and create deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team will be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second. Santa, meanwhile, will be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500.06 times greater than gravity. A 250-pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force.

In conclusion - If Santa ever DID deliver presents of Christmas Eve, he's dead now.


author unknown

News

Well I have a feeling that one way or another I'm going to end up in the UK. When God wants to get his point across he'll get it across one way or another. I was talking to a customer at work the other day who is from church and I mentioned it in passing. She was all excited and said she could see me in England. My sister can see me in the country sipping tea in a cozy cottage. The only thing that keeps me from doing this is me. I just need to pray and let God work out the rest.

In other news Anthem Avenue came to Central on Sunday and I will admit it was nice to actually meet some of the people I've tracked songs for. Hopefully I will be able to track for them in the future.

Adventures in Cooking

So yesterday we tried twice to make bread for stuffing. Both times the bread machine gave birth to loaves of bread that were only good for bricks or doorstops. Third times the charm right? Well it only sort of worked. We did a 1.5 pound loaf in the bread maker and it rose, but not as much as it should have. To see what could be the problem I made some bread by hand and it rose perfectly I have enough for cheesy bread now in addition to the extra loaf I did for the stuffing.

Stephanie's podcast

Give it a listen!

Why Don't Young Adults Care


This is a project I did for my audio production class back at GVSU. I've wanted to share it with people because quite frankly I'm proud of it. Hope you all enjoy this.

Let it Snow

Well today it was snowing. This time without the rain that came with it the last time. It was wonderful. It looked so good downtown against the store fronts that are already decorated for Christmas. I've got to say I don't mind a little snow for Thanksgiving. Now a full blown snow storm like we had a few years ago...that's a different story.

Food for Thought

On Friday I took Lisa to Meyer Music to see if they would take our old full size violin back to rent out to other students. Now I'm not going to lie and say that it was in great condition because it wasn't. It showed signs of being a well used violin. It doesn't look that great or sound that great. A new set of violin strings would go a long way in improving the sound probably. Anyway we took it in and the clerk asked us where the serial number was on the instrument. I should have known the outcome at that point because it didn't come with a serial number. Like all of our instruments we got it from Canada. Who puts serial numbers on instruments?????
She took the violin back and she wasn't even back in their shop for five minutes when she comes out and says they can't use the instrument. Why couldn't they use it because it wasn't SHINY.
"It's a lovely antique" she tells us, "But we can't accept it in the physical condition that it's in". She pointed out a couple of cracks in it. The major cracks that were on the violin were a couple of ones that we knew about and had fixed by someone who actually knew what they were doing. If she had looked closely she would have seen the glue holding it together.

We had been told that they were very particular about the instruments they bought back. That isn't exactly the way I would phrase it. It's more like they'll buy it back so long as it looks nice. Giving students violins that are shiny actually do a disservice to them because a violin that is shiny isn't going to sound as nice as one that has no shine on it. My violin is old and it doesn't look that nice. It's got a crack in it that's been repaired and they probably wouldn't buy it back for that reason. However it sounds beautiful. You'd never know that there was a crack in it unless you looked at it. It's the cracks and scratches on a violin (or any string instrument) that adds character to the instrument. Anyway it made me think of one of my favourite poems called "The Touch of the Master's Hand"

"Twas battered and scared, and the auctioneer
Thought it scarcely worth his while
To waste much time on the old violin,
But he held it up with a smile.
"What am I bidden, good folks," he cried,
"Who'll start bidding for me?
A dollar, a dollar - now who"ll make it two _
Two dollars, and who"ll make it three?

"Three dollars once, three dollars twice,
Going for three". . . but no!
From the room far back a gray-haired man
Came forward and picked up the bow;
Then wiping the dust from the old violin,
And tightening up the strings,
He played a melody,pure and sweet,
As sweet as an angel sings.

The music ceased and the auctioneer
With a voice that was quiet and low,
Said: "What am I bidden for the old violin?"
And he held it up with the bow;
"A thousand dollars - and who'll make it two?
Two thousand - and who'll make it three?
Three thousand once, three thousand twice
And going - and gone," said he.

The people cheered, but some of them cried,
"We do not quite understand -
What changed its worth?" The man replied:
"The touch of the masters hand."
And many a man with life out of tune,
And battered and torn with sin,
Is auctioned cheap to a thoughtless crowd.
Much like the old violin.

A "mess of pottage," a glass of wine,
A game and he travels on,
He's going once, and going twice -
He's going - and almost gone!
But the MASTER comes, and the foolish crowd,
Never can quite understand,
The worth of a soul, and the change that's wrought
By the touch of the MASTER'S hand.

~Myra B. Welch

God is good!!!!

So I had one of those days where everything that could go wrong ultimately would last week. My cell phone went through the wash and was toast. Well I took my car in to get the brakes fixed and there was this guy who I mentioned my phone was toast. Simply because it had been one of those days. He told me he had another one that he wasn't using and he said he would give it to me. Talk about a God send. And there it was this morning when I got back from Ohio.