Some Blog Site

A husband and a wife can say the exact same words but have very different meanings. Here are some examples:

Phrase: “The noodles are on the stove.“

Phrase: “The dishes in the dishwasher are clean.“

Phrase: “What time is dinner?“

Those were, of course, random examples from anonymous people.

Here’s my tip for wives: don’t read anything into what your husband says. Take it at face value – he is just giving you information.

Here’s my tip for husbands: try to guess what your wife means when she says something. Don’t take it at face value – she is giving you secret instructions.

The topic of the week at our time at Maranatha during our vacation was relationships. The speaker was Ron Zappia, whose bio in the link I just provided accurately reflects his speaking style. I bet he wrote that himself.

He gave a week’s worth of sermons, complete with illustrations (literal drawings – he used markers and a sketchpad on an easel). I am not going to recap everything here, but I will go over one particular point.

Without self-examination, there can be no self-control.
– Ron Zappia

That’s good, but that’s only half the equation of self-control. People need to see themselves honestly, but they shouldn’t be looking at just themselves. How does what I’m doing affect others?

That goes along with one of my favorite quotes about self-esteem:

Kids don’t need more self-esteem; they need more others-esteem.
– I forget who

That’s what I see as one of my tasks as a parent – get my kids to see that what they do does affect other people. If it helps them, then they should do more of what they’re doing. If it hurts them, then they should not do it. Be aware of more than just yourself.

But that strays slightly from Pastor Zappia’s point, which is that you need to be aware of yourself first. If you don’t think you’re doing something, then you won’t check how it affects others.

So two points for raising kids (the process of which I am merely beginning): get them to recognize their own actions/attitudes and get them to recognize the effects those have on others.

I suppose the third point should be to get them to change the behaviors that are not good.

“But how do I get my kids to do that?” you may be wondering.

I am wondering that too.

If I ever get the answer, I’ll let you know.

I was reminiscing about my early years in college and thought I would look up what the internet had to say about the band Tree Climbers Guild. Since there was no information out there, I get to write something. Now whatever I write will become the definitive guide to TCG.

Ahem.

Tree Climbers Guild was an award-winning band from Cedarville College in the mid 1990s.

The award was the Alpha Chi talent show, in case you were curious. Might not matter to anyone outside of the Cedarville family, but it was a big deal back then. It propelled TCG to fame and fortune. The fortune was, if I remember correctly, $100 for winning the talent show. TCG then put that $100 into studio time, produced an album, and sold a bunch of cassettes.

It had to be in the dozens, maybe even hundreds.

Here is their debut album: conclusion of the matter

I think that was their only album. The artwork, in case you can’t quite make it out, is a tombstone with a rose lying across the grave bed.

Here is the side of the cassette tape:

And here is the back of the tape:

Here is the outside of the album cover/liner thing:

And here is the inside, the liner notes and all the lyrics:

I am not going to type out the lyrics (go on, click on the picture to enlarge it and read for yourself), but here are all the song titles (aka discography, although it might be more appropriate to call it a cassettography or a tapography):

Side 1

• ghost of the coyote
• flight of the unsure soul
• never ending dream
• you are not
• the hungry sea
• as we stand

Side 2

• maybe tomorrow
• seventeen to my plateau
• silver burning
• foreign ground
• conclusion of the matter
• evening reverie

Bonus feature:
Riding on the coattails of the success of TCG was Somewhere In a Box. Since that tape was next to TCG in my collection, I will post its pictures here for fun.

“Hey look!”

“A caterpillar!”

“Let’s scoop it up with your Croc!”

“The Croc’s not working!”

Then I transported it to safety underneath a tree, away from the sidewalk. I didn’t get a good picture of the caterpillar itself, but I think it is known as the caterpillar of the polyphemus moth.

And yes, I do believe each statement was spoken with an exclamation point.

Here are three recent photos of life around here:

Lego Bed

In our house, the phrase “make your bed” usually means “move the Legos off the bed” rather than “straighten the sheets and pillows”. In fact, that has become part of the bedtime ritual – change into pajamas, brush teeth, put away Legos, read a story, and say prayers. Beta probably likes to have his Legos on his bed because his is the top bunk, so no one bothers anything up there.

Driver’s Ed

Beta’s cousins have one of them fancy battery-powered toy trucks. And Beta loves to drive that whenever he’s over there. Now Gamma is old enough to ride in it. They shared a ride last weekend, and I just really like this photo.

Blokus Art

My wife and I like playing games. I want the kids to like games too, so I try to play whatever board games we have that might be appropriate. Blokus is fun, and the kids get the concept, but they don’t have the sense of challenge in playing the game yet. Alpha and Beta will play (against each other or against me), but as soon as it is done, they eagerly take apart the board and proceed to make patterns or pictures with the pieces. Alpha liked this masterpiece; I liked that he made sure all 4 colors were symmetric.

We had a birthday party the other weekend. It was a surprise party, so we were to arrive at a certain time. Leaving the house at a certain time is never easy with young kids, but we actually did it this time.

But we almost didn’t make it to the party.

We were last in a line of cars on the road. About a mile and a half from our house, three things happened at once:

• I saw a car, one that was several cars in front of us, swerve violently off the road, crossing through the oncoming lane to do so;
• I heard my wife yelling something (I forget what at this point, probably “look out!“); and
• I saw a tree falling across the road.

“Get your phone!” I said to my wife. She called 911, but it went to a “please hold” message so she hung up. We noticed other people on their phones as well, so we figured someone would get through.
(more…)

Alpha has taken our teaching to heart.

For those who don’t know the story, go read the original Pblk Education first.

Okay, now that you’re back, take a look at his recent paper (click on the picture for a larger version):

Every single word has the wrong number of boxes for letters. I’ll give them the one box for “sh” since that’s one sound and that’s the lesson for the day and they made that box slightly larger. But they’re still short by one letter every time.

Alpha adds boxes where boxes should be. If they don’t give him enough spaces to spell a word correctly, then he makes the spaces himself. The curriculum might not know how to spell, but he knows that he knows how to spell and he tries to do things the right way (okay, “shrit” isn’t exactly right, but we’ll tell him that and he’ll learn that it’s “shirt”).

There are a bunch of ways I could go with this topic, but I’ll choose this one: it’s good to know that my child is listening to his parents over the school. I hope it stays that way. And it’s good training for the future – “I don’t care if the government says it’s legal; it’s still wrong.” He has already learned that people in power can be wrong.

Except for his parents, of course.

My goal is that he learns something more than spelling – that there is right and wrong and that is ultimately determined by God. He needs to do what is right regardless of the culture.

There are gray areas too, and he should understand that not everything is either 100% right or 100% wrong. But we’ll work on that concept later. Spelling, grammar, and math work better without gray areas.