Lines from Linda

Campus Life

It's family weekend at Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tenn. And, since that's where my daughter is a student, I'm here. Blogging from a college dorm common room on a laptop computer. I'm not used to either. I'm a full-sized keyboard, desktop kind of writer, and the thermostat in the dorm is definitely NOT set to accommodate the hormones of a forty-something-year-old woman.

We've decided to forgo the scheduled "parent activities" the school has planned for the day and come up with our own agenda. So far, for all the girls in this suite, the day's first priority is sleep. Having no critters to feed this morning and no dog to let outside, I slept pretty late myself. Until 7:06 a.m. I'm showered, made up, dressed, and ready to meet the world. Unfortunately, this world doesn't wake up on Saturdays until about noon.

Other than watching the Razorback/South Carolina game this evening, we have no set plans. Maybe hit some of the tourist spots in Music City USA, maybe shop. Definitely eat lunch, since we sort of skipped breakfast.

Daughter is in the premed program here. A program that has met with much success in the past few years. She is a double major, Applied Bio-Chemistry and Psychology, and hopes to become a pediatrician.

Good Morning, Americans! It’s FRIDAY!

I was needing a Friday this week! Actually, I have a busy weekend planned as I'm heading out to Nashville right after work to see my daughter. It's "Family Weekend" at her school. It seems as though I have a lot of plans squished into the month of November--two out-of-town trips, a ladies retreat for our church, Thanksgiving, a couple of family birthdays, a one-day seminar, and I'm sure there were some other things that haven't filtered through my brain yet. That should help make the NaNoWriMo/NaBloPoMo challenges more interesting!

Last weekend Hubby & I enjoyed traipsing through the Missouri Ozarks. The autumn colors were just starting to peek through the greenery. Some areas had more color than others. We hiked around and visited several old mills and many of the springs that southern Missouri is famous for. This beautiful area is Alley Mill and Spring, located near Eminence, Mo. Eminence is a quaint little Ozark town filled with friendly people and great food. We enjoyed spending time viewing nature and God's glorious creation.

New Addition…

There's nothing like having a baby to disrupt one's schedule. Not that I actually have a schedule. But that's beside the point. I'm trying to make excuses here.

Actually, I suppose in this case I'm more of a foster mom. You see, one of my goats, Kindness (pictured), gave birth yesterday. It was a difficult delivery and required an emergency c-section as one of the little ones was lodged in the birth canal. Sadly, that baby didn't make it. But, Sebastian did. And it's amazing how quickly a critter so small can get an attitude so big!

Kindness is still in the animal hospital. Her uterus tore during the labor and had to be removed. Plus, she suffered some nerve damage and is at this time unable to stand because her hind legs are paralyzed. This condition is sometimes temporary, so I'm hoping within the next day or two she'll be able to stand. The vet told me she is scooting around well this afternoon, which is an improvement. Hopefully she'll be able to come home tomorrow.

I haven't taken any pics of Sebastian yet, but I hope to post some soon. And if I'm his foster mother, then my dachshund is his adoptive mom. When I brought the little buck home yesterday, my mini dachshund, Bullet (a.k.a. "Miss I'm Too Cute and Adorable to Potty Outside), started licking him from head to toe. When he whimpers, she runs to him. She cuddles him, plays with him, cleans him. It's fun to watch.

But still, I have a goat in my house. Yes. In my house. And that is somewhat out of the ordinary. Last night I slept in the recliner holding both Bullet and Sebastian. I think I got close to four hours of sleep. And guess what both of them are doing right now? Right. They're taking a nap. I think I'll join them. *yawn*

Adventures in Missions…

Our church's youth group spends a portion of each July working as part of a large mission effort in Rio Bravo, Mexico. Over 200 volunteers from a number of churches divide into various areas of service: Medical Clinic (includes dentistry, pharmacy, pediatrics, medical, and optometry); Bible Study; Vacation Bible School (for children); Benevolence (food & clothing); and Construction & Repair. Everyone stays at a McAllen, Texas, motel, and the groups travel back and forth across the border each day.

In 2005, our group experienced Hurricane Emily, which forced us to remain in Texas for one day. It was my first and, thankfully so far, only hurricane. I didn't go last year, but the group was introduced to the U.S. Border Patrol. It's a long story, but yes, my son was involved. He added the word "contraband" to his vocabulary and learned that no matter how cool butterfly knives appear to the average teenage boy, they are illegal to bring across the border. And, on their return trip, the bus's a/c went out.

The "jinx" continued this year when 5 inches of rain doused McAllen early this morning. According to some, the deluge fell within a 30-minute time period. As one person put it, "That's like emptying a boot on a flat rock." Yeah. The motel lobby took on water, and a tornado touched down within blocks of where our group is staying, destroying some area businesses.

Due to the storm, the church bus was temporarily incapacitated (see pics) but is now up and running. The first reports we heard contained the following phrases:

"The front third of the bus is submerged!"

"We're standing in knee-deep water!"

"We had to evacuate through the emergency bus exits!"

After those initial adrenaline-laced phone calls, I could hear the Titanic theme song playing in my head and envisioned the kids scrambling for their lives as the rising water filled the bus. But shortly after those panicked conversations, more details were relayed to those of us back home. Okay, it was in reality the front third of the FRONT of the bus (technicality); the knee-deep water was in the parking lot (NOT the bus); and yes, they had to use the emergency exits, but only because the front door wouldn't open.

The group plans to resume their work with the other team members tomorrow and, Lord willing, will return back to Arkansas the end of the week.

Near the Foothills of the Ozarks…

I spent the past two days at Harding University (my alma mater) getting my son registered for college. A lot of memories came back as I walked the campus. So much has changed and grown, just like my little boy. It's hard to believe my baby will leave the nest in just a few weeks, but today is his 18th birthday, so I suppose it's time.

Valentin will have a busy first year. He's chosen Biology as his major and will be in the pre-optometry program. His secondary major will be Vocational Ministry with an emphasis in Missions, which means he will take a lot of Bible classes once he completes the pre-reqs for optometry school. His goal is to become an optometrist and do mission work a few months each year.

He has chosen Spanish as his minor, and passed a test that allowed him to totally skip two semesters of Spanish. If his grades in Spanish 201 and 202 are high enough (crossing fingers), he'll get 8 free hours credit for the year he skipped. Val's roommate will be a young man from our church, and they've been great friends for several years.

Val has spent most of the summer involved with Missionaries for America and is currently on a mission trip to Rio Bravo, Mexico, with our church's youth group. It's been a busy summer for him, but mission work is his passion, so he's had a great time.

I'm very proud of you, son! Happy Birthday!

Fun with Grandkids: a.k.a.–Moving Day

I'm a little tired today. Okay...I'm exhausted! Yesterday was moving day. No, not for us. For hubby's oldest daughter and family. It seems after grandson #3 came along, they decided they'd need a bit more room. So they called for reinforcements--the grandparents. Since we're a blended family, these kids have THREE sets of grandparents instead of the standard-issue two.

The fifty-something crowd doesn't offer the best help if you're in the market for movers. Keep that in mind the next time you're packing a U-Haul. But still, we were all excited about their new home. And spending a day with the grandkids is always time well spent.

When you have that many grandparents, it's challenging to come up with names for all of them, but the kids have done a great job handling that chore. There's MiMi and Poppy (my stepdaughter's mother & husband); Grandmommy & Granddaddy (my son-in-law's parents); and Papa Don and Nana Linda (yours truly & hubby).

We had a good system. My son-in-law, Poppy, and Papa Don manned the dollies. My son (the strapping young lad) slung the big stuff over his shoulder and sent all the grandfathers into nostalgic fits. And Granddaddy remained in the U-Haul, reloading the dollies as they returned from their deliveries. The women unpacked boxes (Read: ran up and down stairs putting boxes in their proper places until our legs turned to rubber).

For some reason I don't remember, I ventured out of the house and into the truck. Our eldest grandson, age 6, appeared with his baseball and glove. "Granddaddy, can you play catch with me?"

Granddaddy's face contorted with conflict. He was in the midst of orchestrating the order of box delivery. But who could tell a 6-year-old no? Especially one of your own grandkids...

I butted in. "Granddaddy's pretty busy right now. How about if Nana Linda plays catch with you?"

"Sure."

He grabs my hand and we head out to the backyard. On the way, I decided I'd better confess. "It's been a LONG time since Nana Linda played catch. You'll have to cut me some slack."

He stared at me, obviously puzzled. "What does that mean?"

"It means I'm not very good!"

"Oh, that's okay, Nana Linda. Grandaddy's not very good either."

New Arrivals!

Don't you love little baby noises? I went to bed last night with two eggs in the incubator and woke up to chirps of two baby goslings. Babies are the best part of living on a hobby farm. These two little darlings will grow up to become beautiful African geese. If you click on the picture, the link will take you to a site with lots of African geese pics, including a number of gosling photos. (You can also click on my Flickr feed in the sidebar for more pics from our pond.)

Just over a month ago, my son's friend (pictured with him here) was visiting, along with her best friend & sister. While wandering around our wildlife preserve (we have two acres fenced around our pond), the girls found two abandoned goose eggs. It's hard to know if such left-behinds are fertile, rotten, or healthy, so we placed them in the incubator and waited.

The girls named the eggs (and I suppose now, the geese!) "Felipe" and "Snuggles." The one who selected "Snuggles" has likely never been too close to an adult goose, but I'll honor their choice of names and let her form her own opinion in a few months when she gets chased around the pond. Geese are hilarious, but are very territorial.

To incubate eggs, make sure you keep a bit of water in the troughs so the humidity level will be high. And turn the eggs several times each day. That's about it. You can look up the temperature for specific breeds, but it's usually around 99.5 F.

I'd begun to wonder about our little geese, as a month had passed. But yesterday afternoon, I heard little geesey noises coming from the incubator, and the eggs were rocking back and forth. By bedtime, one egg had a slight crack.

New birth is a blessing we're allowed to witness often on the farm. God shows His presence often and in many ways. Even in the form of a baby goose.

Around the House, Around the Town

Around the House

We have another graduate in the family. My son Val, (pictured at left with his friend Lyndal), received an Honor Diploma last night at our local high school graduation. He has grown into a fine young man. He plans to attend Harding University, my alma mater, and major in Bible with an emphasis in Missions. He also plans to use his elective hours to fulfill the prerequisites for optometry school. Once he becomes an optometrist, he hopes to work 10 or 11 months per year and spend 1-2 months each year doing mission work. Yeah, I'm VERY proud of him!

Around the Town

Look at the picture to your right. See the girl right in the middle? The one with a charcoal-colored headband? Her name is Shekinna Stricklen. You'll likely hear it again, if you're a basketball fan. She just finished her junior year at our local high school and has already made All-State three years in a row. This year, she was named a Parade All-American, and in many recruiting polls, is the top recruit for high school girls, class of 2008.

The big news this week is that Shekinna has been invited to the USA Women's Basketball Olympic Team trials in Colorado Springs next month. The school hosted a fund-raiser yesterday with hopes of covering the costs for Shekinna and her parents to fly to Colorado Springs, their motel expenses, and a rental car. The community really came through for this cause, raising over twice the goal amount. We're all very proud of Shekinna and the entire Morrilton Lady Devil Dog basketball team (2006 State Champions--pictured above; 2007 State Runners-Up).

Oh, and yes, my daughter, "Miss I'm a Big College Girl Now," is in that pic, too--just a little to the right and down from Shekinna. (You can see her star shining!)

And, as if we didn't have enough things to worry about...

I bumped into an article this week that said many blogs are judged by the (since I forgot the writer's exact word, I'll paraphrase) "coolness" of their RSS Feed Icon. Blogs are apparently judged by numerous criteria: Technorati rankings; Platform (WordPress, Blogger, TypePad, etc.); theme or template; Google placement; how geeky the blogger is; and...I'm sure the list goes on. Well, not to be outdone by the blogsperts out there, I inserted a new feed icon into my blog this week. I even went into the code file and changed the color to match. (Pretty geeky of me, huh?)

I've been wondering about blogs lately. I mean, does anyone really read them? We all have blogrolls, but who reads all those blogs? There are probably millions of them out there, swarming around cyberspace.

It's kind of like Amway. Does anyone use the soap? If you've never been suckered into joining a multi-level marketing organization, it works like this: The company manufactures a product. Some supposed-millionaire buys the product and sells it to their "downline," which is, in actuality, your "upline" (unless, of course, you're the supposed-millionaire). Okay, so the box of soap makes its way through the ranks--backwards, mind you. After all the uplines sell the box to their respective downlines, the soap box finally reaches your home, and what do you do? You sell it to your downline. And so, I ask again, does anyone ever use the soap?

Until next time...

Update: I found yet another template I like better, so gone is my fancy RSS feed icon. Such is life!

Bowl Me Over

Happy Birthday Today to:

President Andrew Johnson (born in 1808)
President Woodrow Wilson (born in 1856)
The state of Texas (attained statehood in 1845)
and...

The Bowling Ball (invented in 1862)

Actually, archaeologists have discovered evidence of bowling paraphernalia in the tomb of an Ancient Egyptian youth, buried in somewhere around 5200 B.C., so I don't understand the whole thing about the bowling ball being invented in 1862.

In other bowling ball history that pre-dates its invention, early Americans used wooden balls, mostly constructed from oak. Some digging in Polynesia revealed in that ancient culture, stones were rolled at pins from a distance of 60 feet--the same distance from the foul line to the head pin in today's modern bowling alleys. So, while some things change, some remain the same.

I poked around the Internet, attempting to discover more information about the bowling ball, but the only thing I found was that it was invented on December 29, 1862. No site I browsed mentioned by whom, where, or what constituted the "invention" of an item that had obviously been in use in some form or fashion for thousands of years. And the source quoted most often by the sites I viewed was "Useless Facts."

None of that really matters, of course, except that bowling has a connection to my own birth. I was nearly born in a bowling alley, so I was interested in the birth of the bowling ball.

From what I remember, my dad was rolling the series of a lifetime. The first two games were in the mid-to-upper 200s, and his team was preparing to begin game #3 when my mother had a labor pain. Just one. I wasn't the first child, so she felt she could handle a bit of labor while watching dad's final game of the night. She'd wanted a little girl born in June, and it was approaching 11 p.m. on the 30th, so she knew I'd better hurry up if her wishes were to come true. Of course, they didn't have ultrasounds back in those days, so the whole girl/boy thing was yet to be revealed to her, and her doctor was pretty adamant that she would deliver a little boy firecracker. They probably argued about it for months.

So, there we were...waiting. The woman sitting next to my mother, however, was not so content as mom to have me hang out (or rather, in) while dad finished his match. I mean, who wants to risk having to deliver a baby? In a bowling alley? Against mom's wishes, this woman made her way to the floor and insisted that dad give up potentially the best series of his life and take mom to the hospital. A compromise came about: dad would bowl out game #3 alone, then we would leave.

The guys in charge moved Dad to two lanes, far from the action, and he finished his series. His score? 112. Oh, and I wasn't born for nearly 4 more hours. Yeah, the great series bombed, and I've been blamed for it for the past 45 years. Sorry, Dad!

Christmas Q & A

Was Jesus really born on December 25?

Probably not. Most historians believe Jesus was born in the spring or even very late summer. The Romans usually waited until after harvest time to conduct the census, and some scholars believe Jesus was born near the end of September. Since the shepherds were out in the fields at night, the weather would have been warm.

Why is Christmas celebrated on December 25?

The ancient Norse people suffered through long winters and looked forward to winter solstice (usually around December 22) –the time where the days began to lengthen–as a promise of spring. They burned a “yule log,” which burned for about 12 days, and each spark represented the hope of new birth come spring–piglets, lambs, calves, etc. The Romans also celebrated winter solstice, and many of their pagan rituals concerned the church as many Christians participated in the pagan festivities. Therefore, Pope Julius I chose to create a Christian holiday during the mid-winter holiday season and selected December 25 as a day to celebrate the birth of Christ. The initial holiday was called “The Feast of the Nativity.”

Was the new Christmas holiday an overnight success?

Hardly! In fact, some Christians protested and Christmas was even outlawed in some areas because the Bible doesn’t state the birthdate of Jesus. It wasn’t declared a national holiday in the United States until 1870. Christmas gained popularity as a family centered holiday through the writings of Washington Irving and Charles Dickens.

So, should Christians celebrate Christmas?

The birth of Christ is certainly a biblical subject, and the angels, shepherds, and wise men celebrated Christ’s birth. Romans 14 tells Christians to celebrate days if their conscience allows it; if not, don’t. In other words, this is up to the individual. If one wishes to celebrate, then do so, but don’t force your opinion upon others. If not, then don’t, but don’t condemn those who choose to do so. Personally, I celebrate Christmas but understand that the exact date of Jesus birth isn’t the real issue, but rather the fact that God graciously gave us the gift of His Son, and that Jesus came to earth to die and rise again so that we can hope of an eternal life in heaven.

I want to wish all my friends & blog readers a very blessed and merry Christmas!