i love books

i love all my friends' blogs that list the books they are currently reading. i also really love my books! i have to admit that when we moved into the new house before i even unpacked our bathroom necessities and clothing (useful for everyday purposes) i unpacked my books. no kidding. i am usually reading several books at once, but never more than one from the same genre, so as not to get confusing! so here's my "playlist" so to speak:

Octavian Nothing: the first in a young adult series set in 1770's boston. i love a good young adult series, personally, plus i'm always on the lookout for books that might interest my students. i've been enjoying it, but it may be a difficult read for my students because of the old-style language.





Glimpse of Jesus: i always love Brenning Manning. he has a way of speaking grace and truth right to my heart. i chose this book because i am studying the life of Jesus in Luke with our housegroup and felt this would be a good compliment.








The Green Mile: yes it's Stephen King, but, no, it is not your typical horror story. if you saw the movie you understand. i'm reading this along with my sophomores as it's part of the English 10 curriculum. anytime you can read a book with an accent, you're in for a good time, be it southern, british, or any other. yes, i read books out loud in accents. i really mastered my british accent with the Harry Potter series! by the way: you would use a southern accent for the Green Mile.




Ragamuffin Gospel: i am pretty much always reading this book, so don't expect me to list it every time, but it is worthy of mention. i usually get through it and start immediately back at the beginning. each time i highlight with different colors so that i can remember what was significant to me more recently. it has become a veritable rainbow. i always need to hear what brennan has to say to the soul who is battered and beaten up and in need of grace.

and conservatives are concerned about Obama's big-spending, higher taxes government?!?!

if you are a regular reader and you do not want to hear my liberal rant for a few lines, PLEASE DO NOT READ ON! i have refrained from politics so far because it can be so touchy. this is just a little sarcastic humor (but also a bit serious) directed at mccain. i do not want to offend anyone, but this is MY blog which is kind of like an extension of my brain, so there's been fair warning.

thank you tim for alerting me to this! i don't know why some people are concerned about obama's government spending and big liberal government! check out the price tag on cindy mccain's outfit. outfit. not house, not amount donated to help AIDS orphans or Katrina victims, not amount donated in college scholarships for future educators or underprivileged students. outfit. one outfit. one. ok you get it. check it out. was it worth it? does she look like $300,000 bucks to you? not to mention the cost of getting her hair, nails, botox, faux tan, waxing and lipo done for the event. ok. now i'm just getting ugly. i'll stop. it speaks for itself. oh, and also the price for the limo she probably rode in to get to the event and the private jet she took to get to the limo to get to the event....

Cindy McCain
Oscar de la Renta dress: $3,000
Chanel J12 White Ceramic Watch: $4,500
Three-carat diamond earrings: $280,000
Four-strand pearl necklace: $11,000–$25,000
Shoes, designer unknown: $600
Total: Between $299,100 and $313,100

be thrifty...and green!

i have a vague idea of seasonal produce, but wanted to learn more about local, seasonal fruits and veggies. so i googled and found a very helpful website where you can select the state and the season and it comes up with a list of produce from the area and from surrounding states. did you know that buying local foods (or as local as possible) can help keep the cost of food lower? did you also know that with the recent inflation, fresh produce is the one section of the grocery store to be least affected? according to this article i read from the k-state ag department, the less your food has to travel and the more we encourage the market toward local foods, the cheaper they will be! yay! thrifty AND green! anyway, here's the link to the website i found. by the way, if anyone knows what a salsify and a kohlrabi are, let me know! apparently they are types of produce.
http://www.nrdc.org/health/foodmiles/results.asp?season=18&state=17

KSU football kicks off

Ahh. I just returned home from the first KSU home football game of the 2008 season. K-State had a good outing and looks much improved from the rather discouraging state at the end of last season. Because I could talk/blog about my post-game notes for quite an extensive time, I will restrain myself and limit this blog to only one highlight and one criticism.

Let's start with the not-so-great: tackling. It was a little rough. Not the worst, but should have been much better against the likes of North Texas. It wasn't just that we were missing tackles, it was that we seemed slow of of the line of scrimmage, slow off our blocks. We should be bigger, stronger, and markedly faster than a team like NT and they were definitely beating us around the outside. They didn't even really try to go up the middle and they certainly didn't try to go around Ian Campbell (because he's awesome and back playing his natural DE position...yay!). Still they were beating us to the outsides and we were missing tackles because we were trying to chase them down, instead of staying with them. Now, they do have an incredible QB/receiver combo that teamed up for quite a lot of yards last year...our objective was to keep the receiver in front of us, sacrifice the shorter yardage so as not to give up longer plays. We were successful in that.

Now, the positive: offensively we were much more efficient than I expected us to be. We rarely lost yards in a play. There were even a couple of QB miscues (one bad hand-off for Freeman and a mishandled snap for Kauffman) that could have easily turned into big losses but still resulted in positive yardage. For the most part, we moved forward. We had very few penalties, very few turnovers, we were efficient in 3rd down conversions, and our first team offense scored on 6 out of 7 offensive series. Encouraging. This week's vote for most improved player: LaMarc Brown (#7). Proved he indeed had very good hands and could become a big time play-maker and this due to hard work. He sticks around after practice to catch an extra 40 or 50 passes from any person willing to throw to him. Well done.

Ok. So there was a lot of in-between...but I'm sure that will surface in my blogs as the season continues. For now, this is all I have to say (I know, self-editing...shocker).

the incident

well, we closed on our house on friday and promptly began working so that we can get moved in! we are painting, refinishing cabinets, buying appliances, varnishing window sills, tearing out old shelves and dry wall from the basement, cleaning, trimming bushes, etc....the major things that we are trying to get done before we move in are the painting and refinishing cabinets (or at least the sanding part). so, we're at the house on friday night working and i'm painting the crown molding in our living room white. suddenly, the quart of white paint slips out of my hands and upright on the hardwood floor! no sooner do i think, "whew! that was close! at least it landed upright!" then i look down to see a volcano of white paint shooting up at me. it splatters my face, hair, the ceiling, my arms, the window, and the floor! i didn't know whether to laugh or cry. plus, it was a lot of paint and i hate wasting good paint! so, kirk and my friend nancy started cleaning up my mess while i went to clean myself off. feeling badly because they are cleaning up my mess, i hurry back to help them. they are almost finished wiping up the paint from the floor. i grab a step ladder that is in my way so that i can help them. unfortunately, the very same cursed quart of white paint is sitting on the lower step of the ladder. it proceeds to slip off of the ladder, tip on its side, and fall onto my foot and the floor. i don't know what was wrong with me. it was bad. the irony: i got more paint on the floor that night than i did on the wall.

training camp week...and ken griffey, jr.

to my friends who do not give a rat's behind about sports but love me and my crazy-competitive-sports-analyst self: please forgive the following ranting blog. you all know me...no need to explain.

i would like to take a moment to celebrate that it is training camp week for the NFL. this means that football season is officially beginning. important news from training camp thus far: the chiefs, sadly, are not going to be very good. we are not surprised. and jared allen is causing problems [refusing to practice, threatening to cause harm to chief's offensive linemen if he is forced to practice, etc.]. um, quit being a giant man-baby. secondly, my favorite of all time, brett favre has been reduced to a very unfortunate, non-starting, starting QB. sad.

on other sports news, my ken griffey, jr. has been traded from the Cincy Reds to the White Sox. this is devastating. although i wanted to live and teach in south chicago, this does not make me a Sox fan. in fact, i loathe konerko and pierzynski. i wish they would go away. now i am torn. can you love the player and hate the team? can you want griffey, jr. to continue to be amazing yet hope for his team to meet their pennant demise? oh the agony.

disclaimer: to all of you who think that i am just a band wagon jumper who loves only the big name celebrity athletes....i have been a favre fan since the first time i saw him run head first into an on-coming linebacker like a fullback in a QB's body. this was before he was a celebrity...this is what made him a celebrity. griffey, jr. has pretty much always been a celebrity [due to the name "griffey"], but i have loved him from the beginning, since the mid-90's, at least. so, give me some credit. no, i did not just become a football fan because of fantasy football. i despise fantasy football. i spit on it. i listen to sports talk radio. i know that most of the radio personalities are men, and men who think that women only became interested in football because of fantasy football. i do not fall into this category. i've been a sports fan my whole life. amen.

the labeler

so i bought a label-maker. i have wanted one forever, and with this [eventual] move i wanted to get my life organized! so i broke down and bought one for myself....and it's my favorite purchase OF ALL TIME! besides our new house. and my piano. and my camera. and my bicycle. ok.

i have been a labeling fiend! i labeled everything in our file cabinet, fire-proof safe, i am making labels for all of my books [especially the ones i take to school], our plastic storage containers, the list goes on...

i recommend this purchase for anyone who is an organizational nut like i am. see how beautiful my files are?! if anyone needs me to make a label for anything, let me know.

"family" cookout

every summer, friends from our church get together every few weeks in a downtown park to grill dogs and burgers, snack on chips and desserts, and play soccer or frisbee. we drive around the hangout spots downtown to invite local lawrencians and the homeless to join us in a "family" cookout. we started doing this 3 years ago after making friends with a couple that was homeless and hearing them describe how it feels to be looked down on, or worse, overlooked; to not have friends, or even friendly conversation; and to never be touched. my good friends casey, jon and i decided we may not be able to do much to thwart poverty and hunger, but we could at least be friendly and welcoming to people who don't often feel welcomed among friends. hence, the cookouts. here's a group of us last saturday. even though it was stinking hot, we had a good time!

more on the cleanse

ok...i've learned a lot about my habits, like eating because i want food, not because i'm hungry, or thinking i'm eating healthy foods but not keeping track of how much "extra" stuff i'm adding (sour cream with black bean quesadillas, or tons of cheese and croutons on a salad).

i've also been present in a lot of situations where i normally would have indulged with no hint of self-control yet passed up the chance to eat my normal favorites (like popcorn at the movies, enchiladas and margaritas at a dinner my mom had for Dale's friends, soda and junk food at a favorite restaurant, etc). i thought i would have to just avoid these situations altogether during the cleanse, to avoid temptation; it's nice to know that i can turn down my favorites.

as part of the cleanse, i also don't eat after 7 pm which hasn't been as difficult as you would think and has actually helped me turn down some of my previously mentioned "favorites" because it was already too late in the day.

i'm cranky, though. i want bread. and cheese. and tacos. it helps me to know this is only for a short period of time. i don't intend to go back to totally over-eating and junk food. but it's nice to know that at the end of this i can eat a taco.

the cleanse

so, i decided to do this "cleansing diet" because i need to kind of start over. i need to start with the bare minimum food and give my body a break from all the crap. so, for a week it's just fruits and veggies for me (and a handful of nuts here and there). next week, i'll add in beans, whole grains, rice, and tofu.

first thing i noticed, i really am not that hungry. i'm eating a lot less but i'm not hungry. which means that i can get by with a lot less than what i was eating before. i knew that i was eating a lot more than i needed, but couldn't distinguish between "needs" and "wants." you get used to thinking you "need" to load the plate up, you "need" that extra bread (with butter), you "need" a combo meal instead of just a sandwich or a taco. after a while you stop thinking of those things as extras, you start to believe you will be hungry without them.

second thing i noticed, i can't look at erika's blog. she's got amazing pics of good foods she's cooking up...none of which i can have for now!

one more week to go. i'm going to live a little next friday, eat what i want on fridays, but i think i'll probably stick with the week 2 diet other than that.

is it strange to talk about my food intake on my blog? oh well. that's what is going on with me right now.