Our kids as actors

Summer 2010

The Mission from Lake Geneva Youth Camp on Vimeo.

Merry CHRISTmas 2010, Everyone!

For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: 

and the government shall be upon his shoulder: 

and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, 

The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.

Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end,

upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, 

and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever.

The zeal of the LORD of hosts will perform this

Isaiah 9: 6, 7

Womanly Intuition is Highly Overrated

pc: Wheaton College

It was early in the afternoon, and I was the lone parent in the waiting room of the Music School.

Entry door opened; I got up to take a look.

I did not recognize the man -- short, stocky -- wearing a light-coloured coat; peering into the empty practice rooms.
He stopped and smiled when he caught a glimpse of me.

"Where is the owner?" he asked.
I gave directions to the outside stairs which lead to the owners' residence.
"Uhmmm....what's her name?"
I said her first name.
"Are YOU one of the teachers?"
No. Did he want someone in particular?
"Never mind. So the stairs are where??"
They're outside of the front doors, to the left.
He smiled once again and exited.
My anxiety level suddenly shot up.

I hurriedly found my cell phone and called my husband.
I paced from hallway to the waiting room, and back again, as I explained the situation.
He was just as perplexed as me; but after five minutes I'd calmed down enough, 'tho still feeling wary, to hang up.
I continued to wait.

Don, the school co-owner walked in through the back door.
Did a man show up at their front door about 10 minutes ago?
"What man? I didn't see anyone?" he answered.
Once again, I felt anxious.
"Let me go back upstairs and ask my wife."
I waited for his return, all the while thinking that the Music School needed a better security system.
A camera by the door?  Doors that lock behind you?
A Guard? One can never be too sure in today's society.

Don returned with the missing pieces to the puzzle.
Don's wife had given a donation months (years?) ago to AA.
The stranger had  remembered her (tho' not her name).
He had successfully completed the Alcoholics Anonymous program.
He's sober.  He's happy.  Most of all, he's thankful.
And that's why he'd shown up at the Music School.
Talk about misjudging a fellow!!

12.8.23.18

BBC top 100 books, continued

I want to read most of BBC's TOP 100  books, God willing.
Done with my number 35 on the list (The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins).
Here's my next read  ---

Number 36: Middlemarch by George Eliot

http://www.online-literature.com/george_eliot/middlemarch/

It's got me bogged down, though.  I think it's because both 35 and 36 are from the 19th century.
 So, I'll read this at the same time ---

Number 37: The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/77203.The_Kite_Runner

BBC's top 100 books

This was a friend's blog from a couple of days ago.  This has resulted in an impromptu reading list for my Nook.  I've made bold those books I remember reading. I did not italicize.  I may have read more, but the total comes to 34.  


    The Woman in White is  my  number 35 (as of today, 12/03/2010) . For a book that is over 150 years old, it's quite rivetting:

Have you read more than six of these books? The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here... Bold those books you've read in their entirety and italicize those you have read in part.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien  

3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling

5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

6 The Bible

7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell

9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman

10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott

12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy

13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare

15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien

17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk

18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger 

19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

20 Middlemarch - George Eliot  (done, 12/15/2010)

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell

22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens

24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy -reading now

32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis

34 Emma-Jane Austen

35 Persuasion - Jane Austen

36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini (done 12/20/2010)

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell

42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving

45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins  

46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery

47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy

48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood

49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding

50 Atonement - Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel

52 Dune - Frank Herbert

53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt

64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

65 The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac

67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy

68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding

69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie

70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

72 Dracula - Bram Stoker

73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett

74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses - James Joyce

76 The Inferno – Dante

77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome -

78 Germinal - Emile Zola

79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

80 Possession - AS Byatt

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker

84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro

85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom 

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 

90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyto

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

92 The Little Prince- Antoine De Saint-Exupery

93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

94 Watership Down - Richard Adams

95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo