Don't try it. The crust is not quite crispy, but it's not chewy either. It's got all the grease embedded in to become crispy, if it just got cooked a little longer. On top of that, there was very little cheese and the sauce is too spicy for my tastes.
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Out of the Mouth of Babes
"Mommy, can I have a dog?"
"Why do you want a dog, honey?"
"I don't like cats. They bite me."
"When do they bite you?"
"When I pull their tail."
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Things That Go Bump in the Night
I didn't sleep well last night, which put me in a position to participate in this farce. The middle of last night, I didn't check the clock, but I heard a lot of hissing (we have three cats). Some time later, I heard thump, thump, etc. It sounded like something was about to get knocked off a shelf, so I got up and went into the living room. I flip n a light and see Julie and Lucy staring behind the game chest, where I can see Jenny's tail. "A bug" I think, and go to see what it is. It turned out to be a a glue trap, with a mouse in it, stuck to her paw. Later investigation revealed that she'd brought it all the way up from the utility room. "Poor girl," I try to pull the trap off, it doesn't budge and she cries. Great. I pace a bit trying to remember what the pest guy said to do if this happens, realize I don't want to wash my cat's paw with soap and water at 3:30 AM, pick her up, and try slowly pulling off the glue trap. It works, I don't know why but I'm not complaining. Now to look at the mouse. There's droppings in the glue, and it isn't moving. How long has it been in there? Then I see its chest moving, it's just really stuck, but not where it can get its nose stuck and suffocate (the trap is a tube, not a flat sheet, and his back was stuck to the top of it somehow). Well it looks like I'm going to have to put it out of its misery. I go down to the utility room looking for the rubber mallet, but the handle I grab is attached to the one-handed sledge instead. That'll do. I take it outside and lay the trap on the driveway. I don't have the heart to wield the hammer myself so I let Newton do the dirty work, from about four feet up. In the morning, Alethea tells Rachel that we had a mouse in the house last night, so Rachel says, "What's it's name?" and I say, "Flat Stanley," and Alethea glares at me. I never really got back to sleep.
Monday, August 20, 2007
Galatians 5
This is the first in a sermon series I'm going to attempt. I really profit a great deal from our pastor's sermons, and write lots of notes. I've found, though, that I don't look at them much afterwards. I'm hoping that blogging my reaction to the sermon each week will help me process it more. Some of it will be summary of what he said, some of it will be what came to mind during the sermon.
This week's passage is Galatians 5 (we go through the New Testament one chapter at a time on Sunday mornings and through the Old Testament the same way on Wednesday nights).
Synopsis:
- The Gospel is utterly incompatible with legalism. There is no middle ground: you cannot mix Law and Grace.
Sound Bites:
- How does God lead people? By rules or by his Spirit?
- God wants my heart more than my ability to keep rules.
- You manufacture works, you manifest fruits [of the Spirit].
My Notes:
- From 5:1: Freedom begins when we come to Christ--freedom to be what we were made to be--but it almost immediately comes under attack. The following verses make it clear that it is legalism that we need to stand firm against, and that it cannot coexist with grace. I had not previously understood how strongly Paul was condemning legalism here. I know full well from personal experience how bad it is, but hadn't thought of it as being literally antithetical to the gospel, or of being something we needed to strive against to prevent it from taking us captive. I hadn't ever anthropomorphized it as an enemy before, but that sure seems to be what Paul is doing here.
- A Tripartite View of Legalism?: The obvious kind of legalism is the "Don't smoke, don't chew, and don't go with girls that do" variety. This is the legalism of behavior, which says, "Christians must behave this way." I'd guess it is what people think of first when they hear the word legalism. There is another kind. I recently had a long-time friendship fall apart over the question of whether difference of opinions on lesser theological issues should be tolerated or confronted the same way sinful behavior should be. This is the legalism of theology, which says, "Christians must believe this." After I thought of these, I saw that they could be characterized as a legalism of the body and a legalism of the mind (soul), so I wondered whether there might be a legalism of the spirit, too, or of the emotions side of the soul. It's easy to think of the legalism that dictates how Christians must respond emotionally to various situations--gotta have joy 24/7, you know. The legalism of the spirit has been harder to pin down; I think, though, that this is the legalism that says, "A Christian's relationship with God must happen like this." It is essentially putting rules on what God is going to do. Here's an example, perhaps: someone who has a prophetic dream, but rejects it or ascribes it to Satan because "God doesn't give dreams anymore." Peter on the rooftop may be another example.
- Having One's Reward In Full: This is one of Jesus' cleverest phrases. He was talking about hypocrisy, the Pharisees being overtly religious to get the praise of men. This idea can be abstracted, however: whenever you are seeking the praise of anyone or anything other than God, that praise is likely getting all the reward you're ever going to get. Legalism works like this, because the legalist praises himself when he checks himself against his list of rules, or is praised by others that share the list of rules. The legalist's satisfaction that he has the right behavior or the right theology or the right kind of relationship with God--whatever he sees in the mirror when he looks at his rules--that's all he'll ever profit from it. When the rules tell him he's okay, actually he's deceiving himself: Paul here is laying out very strongly that Law and Grace are incompatible. In the context of legalism and rewards, I think he's saying that we must make a choice: are we going to walk by grace, or are we going to walk by a rulebook? The second half of the chapter tells us that walking by the Spirit will answer the question, "How will we know if we are doing what's right, if we don't have a list of what's right and what's wrong to consult?" Do we trust the Spirit enough that following him will result in right living? If so, then we are walking in freedom. It's hard to let go of the list of rules, though--really hard. The temptation is to say, "Tell me what to do, and I'll do it," instead of, "I'll follow you one step at a time."
* This isn't a copy of his outline, rather it is what stood out to me or occurred to me based on what he said. I typically have my notes page full halfway through.
AccuRadio Trick
Being only a beta geek, I still use Windows but do use Firefox. This means I have IE on my computer doing nothing. A while ago I set the homepage to my favorite internet radio station AccuRadio (which works better with IE anyway). That works, but after a while I found I was always going to the same station (A Flock of Eighties, No Rap). Somehow I've been clicking, scrolling, clicking each time I start it for a few months without figuring out what I did today: copying the URL for the pop-up player window into the IE home page field. Now, I just click the IE icon on the Quick Launch and the tunes start. Now if I could only figure out how to get it to respond to the Windows Media Player audio control buttons on my Inspiron 6000--I could skip songs without switching windows to IE!
Sunday, August 19, 2007
SkyBus
I read about Skybus in Popular Mechanics or Popular Science, one of the two, while at the store. It is a cut-cost airline, that offers everything a la carte. At least 10 seats per flight are guaranteed to be $10 one-way, and the rest are $30, $50, $90 etc. based on how early you are on the first-come-first-served availability. For going home to Maine, there are flights between Columbus, OH and Portsmouth, NH, so it seems ideal for us right now. Plan early enough ahead, and be willing to travel on a Tuesday or Wednesday, and my wife and I and two kids could go to Maine and back for $80 airfare, or so it seems. It will bear looking into.
What I Did This Summer
It has been that long. Sorry about that. Here's the rundown:
- I had research assistantship looking for extrasolar planets. This has turned into my thesis project. We haven't find any yet. The problem with this is that it involves staying up all night to use the scopes, but only when it's clear. With Indiana weather sometimes you don't know whether you're going to get any sleep that night until after dinner. Then, in the morning, the kids want to be with Daddy, so Daddy doesn't get any sleep and gets grumpy. I'm going to try to crash in the planetarium for morning naps this fall, we'll see how that goes.
- When I did have free time, too much of it was spent playing Nethack.
- My parents came to visit and we had a good time together.
- We found a place on the Cardinal Greenway, starting south from the Medford trailhead, that is gorgeous and best of all shaded. We've seen a bittern, a deer fawn among other wildlife, plus there are tons of black cherry trees along the way.
- I've been taking classes at my church to prepare joining their prayer ministry. These have been challenging but I am excited about getting involved in this.
Once again, here starts another attempt at regular blogging.
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Playing The Farming Game With a Local
A couple nights ago Alethea and I had Dave and Callie over for dinner. We played The Farming Game (BGG), which just so happens to be set in Callie's hometown of Yakima, WA. Not only that, but she actually worked for a cherry processing plant. She was constantly commenting about place names and events in the game reminding her of home. It was the most fun I'd had playing a game in a long time.
Dave and Callie got engaged recently. Dave managed to surprise her. Instead of a ring, he gave her a diamond nose stud. It looks really nice and bonus points for creativity.
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Friday, May 18, 2007
Gmail: Customize Your Spelling Dictionary
If you aren't using Gmail, then you should be, enough said. For those of you who are, here is something I stumbled across today: you can add words to your spelling dictionary. When you right-click on the red underline, look for the option under the suggestions. It doesn't appear to transfer over to Google Documents, though, which is odd.
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