Cabinet Pictures At Last

The kitchen and bathroom cabinet doors and drawer fronts are done, except for the special under-the-sink ones and the ones for the island (which are being done in a different color).

You can just see the top of one of the island doors in the first picture--the one that has the whitewashed look. The rest of the cabinet needs to be done that way before the drawer fronts can be installed.

Blog Readability Test Results

Interesting. I'm not sure what it means, except that I probably use more complicated sentence structures than those suitable for Elementary School. Using longer words I'm sure doesn't help either.

What I'm Thankful For

During this Thanksgiving Season we often (and should) take time to reflect on what we are thankful for. I want to take this opportunity to mention a few of the many things I am thankful for.

1. God - Thank You God for sending Your only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, to earth to die for my sins. Thank You for choosing me to be Your daughter. Thank You for writing the Bible so I can learn about You and what You want me to do. Thank You for caring about me as an individual person and for being very patient with me when I fall down. Thank You for all of the other things I am thankful for below...I only have them because of You.

2. Parents - Thank you Dad and Mom for being the best parents in the world. I know you aren't perfect, and neither am I, so we make a great combination. Thank you for raising me up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Thank you for helping me to understand that I need to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and that it is not something passed down from you or anyone else. Thank you for loving me. Thank you for teaching me that material things are not important, but spiritual things are. Thank you for teaching me that a sense of humor can cover a multitude of problems. Thank you for teaching me that we are all equal before God. Thank you for teaching me the importance of actions and attitudes. And thank you for giving me brothers and a sister. I'm so glad you didn't stop with me.

3. Siblings -
a. Thank you R&W for being my big brothers. Even though we are not close in age, I love you very much. Thank you for the great nephews and niece!
b. Thank you J for being such a great little brother. We grow closer the older we get, and I look up to you in more than one way. :-) I am so happy that you found your R! May God bless you and give you many years together serving Him.
c. Thank you E for being the best sister in the world! You are so wonderful that my only regret is that we don't have more sisters to enjoy all the fun we have together. You are my dearest friend and confidant. I don't know what I would do without you.

4. United States of America - Thanks to all of those who worked and gave their lives to raise-up the best country in the world. I realize that if it was not for the sacrifices of many others, both in the past and present, I would not enjoy the freedoms we have in this great country. May God bless America and draw her back to Himself.

Friends (in no particular order):
> CMR - You taught me what it means to be a friend.
> RH - You have encourage me by your willingness to obey God and wait for His leading.
> KD - You are the sweetest young lady I know. Your love for the Lord is an example to me.
> LH - You taught me what it means to listen to others. You also taught me lots about cooking!
> DE - Your learner's spirit and love for learning about God has challenged me in ways you can't imagine.
> CV - You have shown me how to endure tribulations and come away smiling.

Misc. Blessings:
> Health - Generally excellent PTL!
> Job - Meaningful, great co-workers, close to home, challenging, etc. What a blessing!
> Safety - By God's grace I have been protected from many hazardous situations. May I never take this for granted and always ask for and thank God for each day's protection.
> Sense of Humor - I feel so sorry for people who are perpetually sad. The world is a beautiful place and there are numberless things to laugh about. I only have to look at myself in the mirror in the morning to get a good laugh to start off my day.

I could go on...believe me! But this seems like a good place to stop for now.

I hope you have lots of things to be thankful for this Thanksgiving Season.

Now It Doesn't Work, Now it Does

On Monday we had quite a wind and rain storm. We lost power at work twice, for 30 seconds and 10 minutes respectively.

Monday night I went grocery shopping. It was a slightly larger than normal list. While I was on my way from Fred Meyer (where I did the bulk of the shopping) to Costco and Home Depot at the other end of town, my cell phone rang. The power was out at our house.

As it was too late to do anything about it, I finished my shopping and headed home. It was fairly cold out, so I put milk and fish right next to the frozen turkey and hoped they would stay cold.

We do have a generator, and after finding out that the power had been out since around 8:30 a.m. we decided to hook it up to cool down the fridge and warm up the water. We got it running, but after everything was hooked-up there was still no power. I fiddled for a while, but as far as I could tell, there was no power coming out.

The next day we prepared for work in the dark and with little bits of very cold water. Anything perishable in the fridge was a loss.

I checked into getting the generator fixed, and it is expensive just to get someone to come out and check into what might be wrong. Happily, my Dad volunteered to come take a look.

My Dad arrived this morning and fired up the generator. It was putting out the proper voltage. He tested the cord. It worked. He tested the breaker. It worked. Everything worked just like it was supposed to work. There is a possibility that there was some moisture which was dispelled by running it for a while earlier this week. Anyway, now it works fine. And we are going to do something about keeping down the moisture.

In other news, I talked to my young friend's math teacher this week. I am going to begin meeting with her twice a week instead of just once. She has quite a bit of math homework on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings. On Wednesdays we only have 1/2 hour, but we put it to good use last night.

Tomorrow night I get to watch the movie "Amazing Grace" at a friend's home. I am really looking forward to it. If you haven't seen it yet, it is now out on DVD. It is the story of William Wilberforce, the man who ended slavery in Britain. I have heard that it is very inspiring.

Last weekend we went to visit my brother who recently moved closer and took him and my other older brother and nephew out for dinner. We celebrated my oldest brother's birthday (which was on Monday). It was a lot of fun to be together with them again.

Onions Again

We had a special request for more French Onion Soup, so last night my young friend and I began peeling and slicing onions. The recipe calls for 8-10 large onions. We cut-up 9. I think the book's definition of "large" and the store's definition are different. I'm not sure just how we got onions that were that much bigger than last time, but we filled the crock pot so full of onions that we could not fit all of the liquid the recipe called for into the pot. Next time we'll do fewer onions.

We also prepared the makings for Hamburger Stew. That is what we will eat tonight. It sounds pretty good.

Along the lines of impromptu lessons, this morning the topic of why heating food up in a crock pot also stirs the ingredients together was discussed. I have known about why things go from solid to liquid to gas for so long, that sometimes I forget that the knowledge is not inherent in everyone. It was fun to talk about how molecules go faster as they are heated and slow down as they get cold. My young friend was quite fascinated by the idea. Hearing that heating water turns it into steam was particularly interesting to her.

Tough Questions

There is a special joy that comes from knowing you have helped someone learn something. Teaching has always been one of my delights in life. Over the years I have had many opportunities to teach a variety of people a variety of things. From coaxing a baby to drink out of a bottle for the first time to teaching an adult how to use their computer, it all has an appeal to me.

Last night when I picked-up my young friend from school she was very excited. She had a surprise test in class and had to compute both the surface area and the volume of a cube. She was confident, based on our lesson the night before, that she had gotten the correct answers.

It seems to me that part of the reason why so many kids don't like school, and don't do well in school, is because they don't understand what they are being taught. It is hard for a teacher with 20-30 children in her class to take the time to explain things to the ones who didn't pick it up when she explained it the first (or second or third) time. Or perhaps they just need to have it explained a different way to suit their learning style.

Along those lines, last night the topic of God and the Bible came up. My young friend had some very tough questions going around in her head. What would you say to a 13-year-old who wondered why God would kill almost everyone on the earth (the flood) or why God would punish everyone for the actions of one person (Eve in the garden)? How would you explain what sin was to someone whose list of sins was a grand total of one: murder? (We did come up with some more BTW.) And what does it mean when people say that Jesus died for our sins?

I am very glad she is thinking about these things and, with the Lord's help, I hope I can adequately answer them. These sorts of questions are the ones that we all need to be prepared to answer when we meet people on our walk though life.

Tough questions are good, because they indicate that a high level of thought and interest has gone into them. Tough questions are also wonderful opportunities to share the truths of God's Word with those around us. I hope you are prepared for that day when you are asked some tough questions. And some day we will all be asked the toughest question of all: "Why should I [God] let you into heaven?" The wrong answer will doom you to an eternity of suffering in hell.

Math Problems

It has been a while since I have had to do mid-level math. That means the math that is more complicated than basic match (which one tends to use regularly) and not as difficult as really hard stuff. In this case, it was the issue of finding the surface area of a cube.

Supervising a 13 year old also involves helping them with homework. Last night most of the homework was math problems. The first set covered graphing. No problem. I have always enjoyed graphing. The second set covered finding either the surface area or the volume of a cube. I easily remembered the formula for finding the volume, but could not remember the formula for finding the surface area.

This is where my problem solving skills came in handy. I figured out the formula, or at least one of them. It involves finding the surface area of each of the three unique sides, adding them together, and multiplying the answer by two (because there are two of each of the three unique sides). It worked, and I think my "student" will be able to remember it for next time. This morning when I quizzed her, she remembered everything very well.

There wasn't time last night for much more than fixing dinner, eating, and doing homework. She has started basketball, which means the time after school previously used for homework is now spent at basketball practice. This means that homework will need to be done at home.

In addition to math, my young friend practiced her part in a play her "group" wrote at school for a project they are doing on the Nile River. I wish that I had seen the play sooner and been able to point out some basic flaws. But since they were putting it on today, there was no chance to make changes.

The story is, unfortunately, very politically correct environmentalism gibberish. The story is about a family with a cow that lives near the Nile River. A power plant is built nearby which pollutes the river and the cow becomes sick. The family goes to the plant owner and asks him to stop polluting the river, which he refuses to do with no regard for what he is doing to the river. They get half of the plant employees on their side and a toy factory is built nearby which takes away all the power plant employees. So the power plant is shut down and the owner goes somewhere else. Oh, and the cow gets well.

Although it was too late to change the story, I was able to share with her that not all power plants pollute rivers. And there are good reasons for having power plants. We also talked about what happens to human waste. I'm not sure just what they are teaching her, but she had the general impression that here in America we dump our raw sewage into our rivers. (Our conversation started when she asked me why people couldn't dump sewage somewhere besides into our rivers.) We talked about waste treatment plants and what comes out after waste is treated properly. It was a good conversation.

I can't help but wonder what other misinformation they are teaching at school. Maybe I really don't want to know. I would be too discouraged. I have a pretty good idea how bad it is without knowing all the specifics.

On a more cheerful note, yesterday's election went pretty well for conservatives. The initiative to make passing tax increases harder passed. The measure to make passing school levies easier failed. And the huge tax increase for transit failed. The one sad note was the passage of the measure to provide triple damages plus attorney fees for health insurance claims. People were voting with their hearts instead of their heads again. They don't understand what the measure really does, and I am sure the trial lawyers are rejoicing all over the state. (I called it the "guarantee attorneys get paid" measure.) I wonder if most people realize they voted themselves health insurance rate increases. I doubt it.

Cars n' More

My car started when I went to pick it up from the garage. They (bless their thorough hearts) kept checking just to make sure they had covered all bases and found that one of the "rods" that connect the battery to the car was worn down so that it did not provide a good connection. They replaced it and everything seems to be running just fine (cost: $44). The lack of a good connection may have contributed to the state of the battery. My mechanic suggested that I see if the problem is fixed before I go in to get a new battery. I cannot tell you how nice it is to know that you have a good, honest mechanic!

On other fronts, the autumn weather is presenting me with office temperature maintenance issues. I have only been in this office since June, so I have not experienced cold weather until now. I am learning how to regulate the temperature. This office has a very large south-facing window which gets the afternoon sun. However, the office starts out cold in the mornings.

To somewhat complicate the temperature regulation issue, the three rooms at this end of the building share a thermostat. There is one office on the north side; a large, windowless room in the middle; and my office on the south side. So my temperature regulation efforts go something like this:
1) Office door open during the night so the morning's automatic heat will flow freely.
2) Close office door when I arrive and turn on my space heater.
3) As the sun gets warmer, turn off space heater and then remove coat. If it is cloudy, I may leave my space heater and coat on all day long.
4) The afternoon sun usually makes my office warm enough so I open my office door for brief (or longer) periods of time to allow heat to escape into the large, windowless room next to mine.

Actually, it is a nice system. Since the windowless room in the middle is generally cooler than my office, I can open the door to quickly cool my office if it becomes too hot. And I am not inflicting my personal (warm) office temperature on anyone else (or wasting heat on a room that is infrequently used).

There are "noises" around the office that we will be hiring more people next year and I may have to share my office with someone else. I hope they like it warm.

On another note, I have had an unusual craving for Tootsie Rolls during the past two days. Happily, eating candy is not frequently part of my diet, so I doubt if eating several pieces of candy two days in a row will hurt me.

Weekend Meetings

On Saturday I had two Young Republican meetings, one for the state and one for the county. Between getting ready, driving to and from, and attending the meetings, my Saturday was more-or-less shot.

I took my car to the shop this morning and they called to let me know that it IS the battery. The battery has "sulphated" which means it doesn't build-up a proper charge and its charge is slowly going down. Happily, it is still under warranty and so I can get it replaced free.

On other fronts, my older brother Will has moved to Lynnwood! I am so excited! It will be so nice to have him closer. He has lived 20-hours away (one-way) since I was around 14 years old, so visits were rare. He came to visit on Sunday afternoon and it was so good to see him again! It was extra exciting to think that we would get to see him more regularly.

I also managed to squeeze in some more work on organizing our DVD collection. Just a few more weekends and I should be all caught-up. Then all I will have to do is keep-up with any new DVDs that are burned each week. My Dad has been working on burning our VHS collection to DVD, so there will be new stuff to enter for several months to come.

Mom and Dad are going on a short vacation to Disneyland in CA this week. It is one of those free trips you get from listening to a presentation on purchasing time-shares or something like that (they did not buy anything). They have never been to Disneyland, so I'm sure they will have fun.

This week I will be staying with one of my co-worker's daughter while he is gone on a business trip. This is the same young lady that I stayed with before. We will continue cooking lessons as well as work on homework. Her latest grades showed some improvement, which is very encouraging.