Mouse in House
Freya caught her first mouse… in the house about 20 minutes ago. Like I’m going back to sleep now!
**UPDATE**
I tried going back to bed after I posted but I couldn’t sleep. I’m proud of Freya for catching the mouse (and VERY unnerved that it was in the house) but I wish it hadn’t been at 6:15 when I had only been able to get to sleep 3 hours earlier.
The story: I had been woken up by some loud growling and mewing. I figured that Freya was being obnoxious and attacking her siblings, so I yelled to Jon to break up the cat fight. He came in holding Freya who had something dangling from her mouth and told me that she had a mouse. My response was “So?” as I thought it was a catnip mouse. Jon then informed me that it was a real mouse, which made me flatten myself against the wall and start screaming. Jon extracated it from Freya’s mouth and tossed it in the garage. We then sprayed the carpet where he had dropped it and washed hands and arms with lots of soap and hot water. It was a pretty good sized mouse too — it would be the equivalent of me trying to swallow a pheasant whole.
God willing, it’s the only mouse we have in the house…
Confirmation Essays and Faith Tests
My Confirmation kids were whiny today. They had just finished finals and had all the memory work and reading to do for Confirmation (which I might have lightened if they had TOLD me), which apparently made it too much. They DID have two fairly lengthy verses; but that was because they hadn’t done their memory verse the previous week.
I also informed them that they had to do faith essays and that we would pick the best three to read in front of the congregation. This got whines of “but I hate reading my own writing” from people. We might choose other people to read them in front of the congregation and I’ll probably make a display board of all the essays. I wish the kids realized how much it means to the parents to have their child’s essays chosen and read and even to see the other kids read essays on their faith to the congregation. Maybe I should give them 1 Peter 3:15 as a memory verse next week?
I gave the kids the study guides for their tests today and we talked about some of the seasons of the Church year. My 2nd year students knew more than they thought they did and it was interesting discussion. We’re going to try and move their class to Sunday and lengthen it by 30 minutes so that we can get through everything. I might also give them some handouts on prayer and how to pray.
I also wish my lesson had gone better tonight. I had musical examples of psalms and stuff but the kids were really distracted. I guess you win some and you lose some…
The State of the Union Address
The State of the Union Drinking Game
Number of hard ciders I would have had to down during Bush’s speech (with 10 tics counting as a full bottle): 17
Number of hard ciders I would have had to down during the Democratic rebuttal: 1.5
Want my thoughts on the SOTU? Click “more”. Realize though that if you click on the “more…”, you are choosing to read what I’ve written and knowing that I am not a fan of Bush, you are willingly choosing to read something criticizing our president.
Iowa Caucus
Kerry took Iowa.
Duuuuuuuuuude…
Why I Haven’t been Posting Much Lately
Life is kind of strange right now. I just set up my new laptop (which was bought with Christmas and birthday money from the last year) and my settings aren’t transferred over yet. My laptop refuses to recognize my desktop (which is making the transfer of my Outlook Express a royal pain) and my techie and I spent an hour playing with things before they worked yesterday. Right now, I’m putting my MP3 collection on CD’s. I’m on disc 6 of the “Doxa!” series and the next one will probably be my oldies ones.
Church was lovely this morning. Doing the Confirmation material has put me more on speaking terms with the Almighty and I actually wanted to get up at dark-thirty on a morning when the temperature was a balmy -35F with wind chill to go worship. (The cold was worth about 7 expletives.) The service at Church #1 was short because of the annual meeting; but I sang my heart out (and probably was the reason some people got one of the hymns — it’s Danish, which means that the tune is bizarre). At Church #2, they let me sing with Holy Commotion (the worship team) and I had a blast. I’ve been missing church choir and I relished the opportunity to sing and worship with a group like them. I also got compliments from parents on my Confirmation lesson last week, which was an ego boosting for me.
We take Sable (our happening ’84 Volvo) in for fuel pump replacements tomorrow. (I am so tempted to fry our Newark mechanic on the MechanX Files on Car Talk’s website because he misinstalled the rear fuel pump and didn’t use Volvo parts. If he’d used Volvo parts, they would be under warranty right now. Grrrrr.) We also have a copy machine tech coming by because we fried a fuse in it while copying annual reports. On Wednesday, I have two Confirmation classes and there are various other things going on. I’ll be blogging but perhaps not as vocally as usual.
Oh yes… I do have opinions on the Democratic primaries that are happening. (Unless there is a shot that Dubya won’t get re-nominated, I’m ignoring the Republican ones. The Republicans are also on the state sh*tlist around here as well because they’ve cut a lot of really essential services and have done things to irritate the farmers.) I’m torn between Dean and Clark. Dean’s claim of religion irritates me (it’s scary that someone could butcher the Christian faith worse than Dubya’s random allusions to verses and hymns with no context) but I don’t know if Clark will get the nomination. I also like Kerry, so I’m kind of split three ways. Once Iowa is over (since it’s being talked up here), I might blog about my thoughts on each of the candidates.
Friday Five: Messages
1. What does it say in the signature line of your emails?
There are a couple:
-“The 10 Commandments are not multiple choice.”
-“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen not only because I see it, but
because by it I see everything else.” (C.S. Lewis)
-“Do I have to have a reason to be neurotic?” (If you know me in real life, you shouldn’t have to ask about this one.)
2. Did you have a senior quote in your high school yearbook? What was it? If you haven’t graduated yet, what would you like your quote to be?
I think mine was thanking all my friends and God for my life or something like that.
3. If you had vanity plates on your car, what would they read? If you already have them, what do they say?
Mine would say “LEPICAT”.
4. Have you received any gifts with messages engraved upon them? What did the inscription say?
I don’t think I have anything engraved. *tries to think if there are any knickknacks or something*
5. What would you like your epitaph to be?
“A grace-filled life”