The World Around Us

Moving!

2008-07-11T15:30:00.000-07:00

My husband is starting a writing bulletin board, and I noticed that our hosting company allows you to install wordpress on your site. So instead of having a blogspot.com blog address, I will now have an easier-to-remember address, http://brookelorren.com/blog. Hope I just find more time to post!

Revival Challenge Day 19

2008-06-05T07:50:00.001-07:00

Sorry I haven't posted in a few days... we're currently on the road in California, taking the kidlets to the various Southern California attractions. But I've been praying for revival and I hope that you are too.

I was reading Ezra over the last few days... the times that we are in right now are a lot like the times of Ezra's day. If you've read Ezra before, you might remember that the Israelites were taken into captivity by the Babylonians, and they rebuilt the temple. Some people who had seen the original temple were sad because it was not as nice as Solomon's, but many people were glad nevertheless.

Anyway, Ezra lived in a time that is very much like our own. The believing people were living among many people that did not believe in God. And just like in our day, the believing people were living a lot like the nonbelieving people. They were even marrying nonbelievers (it happens today too).

Ezra was very sad when he found out that the people were living like the world, and he prayed with repentance and forgiveness. The people decided later to live separated lives again.

My preacher was talking about how when he was a high schooler, he was invited to a church youth group meeting. He was wondering how church youth group could be fun. They started showing pornographic videos at the meeting. Preacher left the meeting early, and was turned off from Christianity for years as a result. Even the nonbelievers know that Christians are not supposed to be doing things like that.

If we live like the world, how are we supposed to show the world how we are different? How your life can change by believing in Jesus? You can't. The divorce rates in Christian homes aren't really different than the divorce rates in everybody else's homes. Our children are generally just as ill-behaved as the rest of the world's. If there is no change in our lives, why would the world want to be like us? At least they are free to do as they like on Sunday mornings.

I know that there are obviously some people who are Christians that have great families. I know many of them myself. But your family speaks more about what it's like to be a Christian than a lot of other things you could say. Perhaps that's something to pray about today, whether for strength for your own family (even if your family is great that's probably a good idea anyway), or strength for the families of people that you know, people in your neighborhood, and people in your country. Revival is more difficult when our families are falling apart.

Where Is The Ark of God?

2008-05-31T09:34:00.000-07:00

Indiana Jones made a movie about it once... where is the Ark of God?

I was watching Digging For The Truth on the History Channel once, and they had an episode of where the ark might be. One of the plausible sounding guesses was that it was in Ethiopia. Some people think that somehow it got over there because King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba had a relationship of some sort... or so some believe.

The Ethiopian theory is based on the belief that the last known reference to the ark in the Bible was from King Solomon's day.

I guess whoever came up with that little bit of research failed to read the entire Bible.

While I was reading II Chronicles 35 today, I ran into verse 3: "Then he said to the Levites who taught all Israel, who were holy to the Lord: "Put the holy ark in the house which Solomon the son of David, king of Israel, built. It shall no longer be a burden on your shoulders. Now serve the Lord your God and His people Israel."

So evidently, the location of the ark was known in King Josiah's day, and he sent it to one of the houses which Solomon built. I would guess he would put it in a house in Judah? And not in Ethiopia, even if Solomon built a house there. Josiah followed the Lord, and I would find it hard to believe that Josiah would send something that important away from his country during his lifetime. He also had no reason to believe that the ark would have been taken by enemies.

He died fairly suddenly in battle.

His sons did evil in the sight of the Lord. One of them was carted away to Egypt, Nebudchadnezzar carried away another king and also took some of the articles from the house of the Lord to Babylon.

II Chronicles 36:18 says that all the articles of the house of God, great and small, ended up being carried away to Babylon.

Perhaps somebody had foresight in the days of the final evil kings, and hid the ark away... or perhaps the ark ended up going to Babylon. But the Bible says one thing: it didn't leave Israel in the time of Solomon.

Revival Challenge Day 14

2008-05-31T09:14:00.000-07:00

Hello!

Hope you are all having a great day today, whether you are reading in the middle of the morning or in the middle of the night.

The expected bad news has happened... Governor Ritter of Colorado signed a bill that will allow sexual predators to enter women's restrooms at any time that they feel like, as long as they claim to believe that they are female at the time they do so. Of course, that was not the intent of the bill... the intent of the bill is to allow transgendered people to use the restroom of the gender they perceive to be... but the unintended consequence is that it will allow sexual predators to use the women's restroom as well. They need our prayers.

I was reading II Chronicles 35-36 today. King Josiah was a good king. Unlike Joash, who became king at age 7 and was good for all the days of his mentor Jehoiada, then ended up killing his mentor's son after his death, King Josiah seemed to be a good guy all the days of his life. Chronicles doesn't really say anything bad about him.

But he did sin, and that was his undoing. King Necho of Egypt was fighting against Carchemish, and Josiah decides to join in the fight. Necho sends him a message from the Lord, basically saying butt out, this isn't your fight... don't meddle with God, or he'll destroy you (II Chronicles 35:20-21). Josiah didn't listen, and that was the end of him.

I bet there are a lot of people like Josiah out there. I know lots of people that love the Lord. They try to do what pleases God most of the time. They go to church, teach their kids right from wrong, try to stay away from filthy movies and television shows... but it's very easy for even people that want to follow the Lord to fail just as Josiah did.

Anyone can be like Josiah. I'm not perfect. Only Jesus is.

I pray today that those of us that love the Lord can follow him today with our whole hearts, and not fail to listen to him when he speaks today, as Josiah did with the king of Egypt.

Revival Challenge Day 13

2008-05-30T08:31:00.000-07:00

Hello!

I was thinking this morning as I woke up... what could revival mean to this country? I suppose most Christians generally think of it as a good thing... and it is. But... the road to revival might not always be sunshine and roses.

I mentioned the Fulton Street Revival on Challenge Day 1. Lots of people got saved, people got rid of the ungodly trash in their lives, and the crime rate went down. Great! BUT... to get there, there was a stock market crash. When things look down for a people, that's often when people turn their hearts to God.

I think that's true in most people's lives. Like Hezekiah in II Chronicles. Today I read chapters 32-34. Many of us who have read the Bible a few times know that Hezekiah was about ready to die, then he prayed that he wouldn't die, and God let him live another 15 years. During those years, he was full of pride and didn't serve God the way that he was supposed to.

I noticed today, that his son Manasseh was an evil king, for the most part. Manasseh was 12 years old when he became king, which meant that he was born while Hezekiah was in those 15 years that he spent in pride, not following the Lord. So all he saw of his father's life were the bad things, and not the years and years of good that he did before that, repairing the temple and the like.

Manasseh was an evil king for most of his life... but in II Chronicles 33:12, after Assyria took the country and he was in bondage, he humbled himself. So for the last few years of his life he was good.

Manasseh's son Amon probably saw the evil that his father did for most of his life, and he was an evil king. He didn't repent, and only reigned 2 years. He had a young son named Josiah, who was 8.

Josiah saw the evil that his father Amon did, for all 8 years of his life, but he was 6 years old when his grandpa Manasseh died. Manasseh had repented in his latter years, so during the 6 years that Josiah was alive before his grandpa died, he probably saw his grandfather doing good.

But before Manasseh repented... he was taken away into captivity by the Assyrians.

What good is it if our country gains the whole world, but loses it's own soul? The riches that God has to offer us in the next life are better than the riches that we can find in our toys, the clothes, the food, and all the wonderful things that we find down here. I know I'm saved, and if you're praying for revival along with me you probably are too, but we live with people that aren't saved, and some of them are probably people we care about.

Revival Challenge Day 12

2008-05-29T11:17:00.000-07:00

America continues to have some serious challenges. Focus on the Family had a broadcast yesterday about a law sitting on the governor's desk in Colorado saying that private businesses can not discriminate against transgendered people who want to use the bathroom of the opposite gender. So anybody that thinks, or says that they think, they are of the opposite gender can go into the restroom of the gender that they believe they are.

I do feel for transgendered people... many of them seem to struggle with their identity. BUT... this law is fairly dangerous. How is a business supposed to know that someone feels they are of the opposite gender? There is nothing to stop a man from going into the girls bathroom, claiming to be transgendered, when his true motive is of a predatory nature. Locker rooms at schools and gyms would allow for peeping toms, who could simply state that they felt like they were female, which gives them a reason for using the female locker room.

Colorado needs our prayers, only God can keep the governor from signing this law at this point.

Although things look bad, I was encouraged when I read II Chronicles 30-31 today. While the people of King Jotham were wicked, and the people of King Ahaz's day followed him in his evil doings, the people in King Hezekiah's day had a real revival. They cleaned up the temple, got the priests and Levites cleansed, and even sent out messengers to Israel inviting them to join them in the Passover... they had their own little band of missionaries going out, I guess you could say.

This change in the hearts of the people took place quickly... II Chronicles 29:36 says that "Hezekiah and all the people rejoiced that God had prepared the people, since the events took place so suddenly." It just happened. Only God can do that.

Perhaps you think that praying for revival is futile... aren't we in the last days? I think that we are, but other countries are seeing people turn to Christianity, why can't it happen here too?

A Sputtering End To The School Year

2008-05-28T22:15:00.001-07:00

Life is funny. Around the beginning of April, I had this schedule all ready. I was going to be done with school before Memorial Day, it was going to be great.

Then our house caught on fire.

It is so hard to get back into your life's groove when everything is so suddenly interrupted. We missed a couple of weeks of school, and the lessons that were so easily begun at 9 have now become afternoon classes.

But I'm finally starting to see the end. We have 3 more math lessons. My dd's birthday is coming up very soon and I'm not teaching reading past that date. Those are our most difficult classes.

I really enjoyed BJU's Vacation Stations last year. It only took about 15 minutes a day, and last summer dd seemed to blossom under the program. At the beginning of the summer she could sound out individual letters, but she couldn't blend them to form words. By the end of the summer, just by reviewing what she already knew, she had gotten blending, and I was confident enough in her abilities to put her right into Reading 1.

So we're getting Vacation Stations 1 this year, and we'll start that the week after her birthday. We won't be finished with Bible or history (we have 10 lessons of each left), but both history and Bible are not intensive classes, and they have information that I'd like to teach before we hang it up for the summer. I'm hoping that Vacation Stations will reinforce all the addition and subtraction facts that dd has been learning all year, as well as reinforce all the reading that she's been doing.

We picked up the items for the summer reading program at our new local library today. Dd's all excited about that.

I wrote earlier today about the faithfulness of some of Judah's kings... or in their case, how their faithfulness sort of went to a sputter in the latter years of their lives. I think that homeschooling requires a great deal of faithfulness. You just have to keep plugging away at it. It takes faithfulness, especially when things are going well. If I hadn't been on schedule when our house fire happened, it'd be very difficult to catch up, or I'd have to teach reading and math all summer.

Last year, we were able to end our school year in April, for a very long and enjoyable summer. This year is seemingly ending in a sputter. First the math goes, then the reading goes, then we slowly morph into our summer schedule while tying up the loose ends of history and Bible. But I guess one great thing about homeschooling is that you can be flexible in this sort of way if you want to.

Revival Challenge Day 11

2008-05-28T08:11:00.000-07:00

In the last couple of days, I've been reading from II Chronicles, chapters 24-29. Most of the kings talked about in these chapters were "good" kings, but they all had some problems:

Joash - was a good king while his adopted father Jehoida was alive, but after Jehoida died he ended up murdering Jehoida's son for rebuking him.
Amaziah - outwardly followed God, but his heart wasn't in it... later set up an idol, which was his downfall.
Uzziah - followed God when he was young, but became proud as he was older, decided to offer his own sacrifices in the temple rather than doing things God's way, and was stricken with leprosy
Jotham - was a good king... but the people of the day were wicked
Ahaz - must have listened to his wicked peers, because he was a wicked king.
Hezekiah - must have learned about the Lord from Grandpa Jotham, who died when he was 9 years old (if you do the math). He was a good king who followed the Lord. He reopened the temple that his father Ahaz had closed, and you could probably say there was revival.

I made a note about the first three of those kings... they were good and followed the Lord, but they didn't stay faithful. I don't know about you, but if the Lord doesn't come back soon and I live a full life here on Earth, I could have many more days left on the earth than I have already have had... I pray that no matter what happens, I will remain faithful, so my end doesn't go the way of the first three of these kings.

What I noticed about the second three kings was how Jotham was a good king that followed the Lord, but he ruled a wicked society... kind of like today. His son Ahaz became king when he was 20 years old, and was more like the society than his father. He reigned for 16 years. Ahaz's son Hezekiah became king at age 25... do the math... Ahaz was 11 years old when Hezekiah was born (!), and Hezekiah was 9 years old when Jotham died. It seems to me that Hezekiah must have learned from his grandfather when he was still around, because he followed the Lord like his grandfather did.

Things weren't going very well in Ahaz's day... a lot of battles were lost and many people were carried away captive. But when Hezekiah took over, he returned to the temple sacrifices and to following God.

I haven't read past this this time around, but I remember that things were pretty peaceful in Hezekiah's day, and he added a lot to the storeroom... so much so that his biggest mistake listed in the Bible was showing off all that he had to the king of Babylon.

Part of what I'm going to pray about today, as I pray for revival to this country as a whole, is for faithfulness so I don't go the way of the first 3 good kings I mentioned here, and for my kids to follow the Lord, so they don't decide to follow the wicked society, as king Ahaz did.

Teacher Has Class "Vote Out" Their Classmate

2008-05-27T19:58:00.000-07:00

This article is so sad.

A Kindergarten teacher allowed the children in her classroom to vote out their classmate, who is in the process of being diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome.

I feel so bad for this little boy. Perhaps he was acting up... but that really isn't any reason to vote out a five year old. How are we going to expect this little boy to learn to behave and feel loved if we're rejecting him before he even hits first grade!

School is tough enough without your teacher rejecting you, especially if you have a disability like Asperger's. Kids are more than likely to tease him as they get older, on account of how cruel they often tend to be. There's absolutely no excuse for a teacher encouraging that sort of behavior.

The Bible says that in the last days, the love of many will wax cold. I think this lady is just one example.

Revival Challenge Day 9

2008-05-26T23:20:00.000-07:00

Hope that you had a great Memorial Day.

There are many heroes who have died for the freedoms that we have, but true freedom comes from God. Which is why we need him so much. We are endowed by our creator... is what our founding fathers said with regard to freedom.

Hope that you found time today to pray for revival of this country, amid all the fun that you hopefully had with your family and your friends.

Revival Challenge Day 8

2008-05-26T00:04:00.000-07:00

I'm posting this after midnight, but I haven't gone to bed yet, so I still consider this to be day 8. :-)

Tomorrow is Memorial Day. Our country has a lot of heroes in it. Not the kind you see on TV or in the movie theaters, but the people that serve in the Armed Forces day after day. Especially the ones that happen to be on the battlefield... or the ones that give their lives for our country.

I found out something interesting today... since 1776, not a single generation has gone by without having to defend freedom. I guess it's something the devil likes to attack. Because the freedom that we have had includes the freedom to worship God. The Chinese don't have the type of freedom we do... they have to meet underground. Neither do many people in the Middle East.

Today I read II Chronicles 14-17. I noticed something interesting. King Asa was a pretty good king, and followed the Lord for most of his life. He fought a battle with 580,000 soldiers against armies with more than a million soldiers... and he won, because he followed the Lord and God was on his side. When he got older, he became more prideful and relied on his alliances with other countries more than he relied on God. As a result, Judah was constantly in battle for the rest of his life. Similarly, he had a problem with his foot, and rather than praying and relying on God, he relied on physicians, and was never healed. He died 2 years later.

His son, Jehoshaphat, also loved the Lord, but he continued to rely on God all his days. I noticed something interesting. The fear of the Lord fell on all his enemies. This was only because the country under Jehoshaphat was a good country... if you would use the terminology of today, you would think of it as a "Christian nation".

Our country is quickly losing it's status as a "Christian nation". For the most part, it hasn't been for years. I watched some old speeches that Ronald Reagan made the other day, and it was really sad to see, because he referred to a Christian God in his address, in a way that would be scandalous if a president said today. It would be nice to go back to a day where presidents could talk about the birth of Jesus Christ and of the creator.

The only way we're going to get there is for revival. Don't know if it will ever make a difference, but I'm going to keep on praying.

In church today, our preacher preached about our military heroes, and about Christian heroes. We also sang some patriotic songs. Like a verse that rarely gets sung any more:

Our Father's God! To Thee,
Author Of Liberty,
To Thee We Sing;
Long May Our Land Be Bright
With Freedom's Holy Light;
Protect Us By Thy Might,
Great God, Our King!

Almost a prayer for revival in itself.

A Clarification Regarding Todd Strandberg

2008-05-24T14:35:00.000-07:00

I posted earlier today about my 13 year history with the Rapture Ready web site. I want to make something perfectly clear, because I do not want another innocent person's reputation being ripped to shreds as mine has.

Todd Strandberg had nothing to do with my situation. While he does own the web site, to the best of my knowledge he had nothing to do with what has happened in the last day. His friend and fellow co-writer, Terry, also has nothing to do with what has happened.

Todd is a good person who just wants people to know about Jesus, repent and get saved, so they will be ready when the rapture happens. I have admired him for many years, although the only time that I have ever really had contact with him was several years ago when I sent an email offering to help him with something he had requested volunteers with. I guess he was swamped with offers or my offer got lost in the email, because he never replied.

He writes great columns and I believe he lives what he says. He has poured tons of his own money into helping this cause for Christ, on what probably wasn't a very large salary. He has done so much for God for as long as I have known of him and followed him. I have nothing but respect for him, and I expect when he reaches the pearly gates, he will have many jewels in his crown and God will definitely be telling him "well done, thou good and faithful servant."

I just wanted to clear this up, because I did not want to malign the reputation of either him or of Terry. He was not the person that called me a demon-possessed, single male with multiple personality disorder. I don't want anybody accidentally thinking that. While I am not going to publicly reveal the name of the person that did accuse me of these things, I wanted to make sure that everybody knew that it was not Todd. I continue to have nothing but respect for him.

Thanks. :-)

Revival Challenge Day 7

2008-05-24T12:33:00.000-07:00

Okay. I have done all I can and I'm going to try to put the past 24 hours and hurt behind me. The real problems with this country don't stop just because a few people hate me.

Gotta get back to the business of praying for revival! I hope that you join me! :)

Trashed Reputations Are Impossible To Recover...

2008-05-24T11:01:00.000-07:00

I've been going through a struggle for about the last 24 hours, and it has to do with the loss of friends... and ends with a trashed reputation. I suppose that we should all be careful of what we say to other people... because although in my circumstances it was not caused by gossip, people can lose their good names over false rumors as well.

I'm going to tell my story about how my reputation was trashed here. Hopefully in an attempt to clear my good name with some people. Probably not everybody, some people may not believe me, but that's okay. Airing my dirty laundry publicly, and hopefully rationally, is about the best that I can do.

It starts about 13 years ago. It was 1995, and I was in college. I went to a Superbowl party with some friends, and this random lady was there. She was a Christian, as I was, and she started telling me about all this stuff that was happening behind the scenes... European Union stuff... all tin-hatty at the time. This one chance encounter with her introduced me to Bible Prophecy, and made me realize that we were in the last days. I had always enjoyed the book of Revelation, but I always thought that stuff was far off into the future.

That year, yahoo and other internet search engines were still in their infancy, and I did a search and stumbled across the Rapture Report. It was a report run by a wonderful man of God named Todd Strandberg, that came out every week that detailed the events of the day, sort of like a report card on how close it seemed that we were to the Rapture. I thought we were within 10 years of the rapture. But I guess God has different timing, because we're still here. Of course, his ways are better than mine, in ways I can't understand.

Years went by, and eventually the Rapture Report started a bulletin board, and renamed themselves Rapture Ready. I had gotten interested in other interests for a while, so I missed the first board they were on, but then I was a member of the second board. I was a very active member... I remember back in the days they posted their post count, and there was almost something of a competition to see who could have the higher post count. Those were fun times.

I was having a great time posting, and I was always talking about my friends on the board or something that we were discussing. My husband decided that he wanted to have an account. I was all cool with that at the time. For a while, things were going great. We both had friends on the board, they knew we were a married couple, and everything was cool.

Until my husband started getting involved in the political forums on the board.

He's a great guy, but he's not exactly... political. I'm the kind of person that can tell you that you stink and be nice about it. He'll come right out and say it, and you'll be offended.

That's when things started going downhill. Because he'd post things that were usually Biblical, but he'd say them in such a way that he would get under people's skin and rile up some nerves. So he started getting on the "bad boy" list with the mods. They started giving him warnings, but he didn't tone it down.

Then it happened. He got banned. Not just himself... he got us BOTH banned.

I was absolutely livid. We weren't on speaking terms for about a week. Finally after two weeks they let me back. Unfortunately... they also let my husband back. Anyway, he knew how upset I was over him getting me banned, so he did tone it down, and when he found out that he was having a personality conflict with one of the moderators, so he asked to be put on vacation. He never posted to that board again. That was 2005, I think.

Anyway, time passed. In 2006, I found out that we were going to have our second baby. I started becoming a regular poster over at the Epregnancy.com forums. Several months into posting there, I was getting into the debates and everything, and I was discussing with my husband what was going on over there. It happened again! He decided to become a member over there. Again, he was abrasive in the political forums, as he tends to be. Again, he got banned. Fortunately, the moderator knew me very well over there, and decided not to ban me.

It didn't stop there. Dh decided to create this alter ego on the Epregnancy forums. Again, stirred up some trouble. But he was less abrasive, and because he was pretending to be a girl, they didn't run him out of town that quickly.

About the same time, Rapture Ready (the forums) came under new management, and started all over again with a new database and everything. Since my husband had never had a problem with Todd or anybody else over at these new forums with the same name, he decided to create a new account there. So did I, because I had friends that went over at both boards now.

What do you know, my husband does it again. He starts posting to the political threads, starts offending people, and gets put on vacation. This time, they do the sensible thing and only put him on vacation. It's biblical that you should be punished for your own sins and not the sins of others, right?

If it would have stopped there, this whole thing would have ended and my reputation would still be intact. I wouldn't be writing this long diatribe today.

But no... not satisfied with being put on vacation, my husband decides to violate the Terms of Service on the board by dredging up his old alter-ego from the Epregnancy days. Even though there was a post on the site that says loud and clear you will be banned for creating multiple identities he decides to do so anyway. He thought that he was being slick by masking the IP that he was using while creating the account.

So yesterday afternoon, I get back from my wonderful vacation in Los Angeles, planning to respond to someone who had asked me a question while I was away, and I found out that I was banned.

I had not done anything to deserve this. Unless you believe that you should be punished for marrying the wrong person.

I had a good, long conversation over AIM with my husband over this yesterday afternoon. I was livid. When he did this to me over on RR three years ago and I finally got reinstated, I told him to never do this to me again. But he did.

And you know what? He also told me that he had several accounts that he only logged into from work. I was absolutely floored. He said that they had not banned his other accounts. He told me that he had no intention to stop posting to Rapture Ready from these other accounts, if they were ever so kind to reinstate me, but he did promise to not post from home. Oh great. Get me into trouble and then not stop doing what got me into trouble in the first place. Thanks.

I had a PM conversation with one of the moderators in the last evening. I'm not going to post his name because it is not my intention to hurt anybody in all this. I just want to do what I can to clear my reputation publicly.

Anyway, I could not convince this person that I and my husband were different people. I sent him a link to my and my husband's picture over on a site that he should have been familiar with as being valid, I sent him the names of several people that had spotless reputations that could vouch for the fact that both me and my husband were different people (some of them I have met in person). I even took a picture of our driver's licenses and sent him a copy for him to view. You would think that perhaps this would be enough proof that I and my husband were different people. Somehow, I can't think of anything else that could provide more proof than that.

But no, it was not. We do live in the same house, and accordingly, have the same IP address (duh). We have our domain names registered under the same account (yes, that makes it easier, you only have to pay one bill). I suppose that that proof supercedes the fact that we have different driver's licenses, there are two of us in the picture, and that there are several people who have met both of us and can vouch for the fact that we are not the same person.

Anyway, my reputation has been tarnished in the process. According to some people, not only am I a deceitful person who creates multiple accounts in order to violate the rules of a message board that I have many friends on, I also have multiple personalities and am demon possessed (because I asked them to never reinstate my husband to the board EVER in order to prevent this from happening to me again). Oh, and I am also a single man.

Well, for anybody who has stuck around to read the whole thing, this is who I really am. My real name is Brooke, and my middle name is like Lorren. I have been going by Lorren, or Brookelorren, on the internet since 1994. If you google my internet nickname, Brookelorren, you will find out more than you would ever need to know about me. Read my writings. If I truly am a demon-possessed, single male trying to create a fake identity in order to post on the Rapture Ready message board, I've got a real problem... because if I truly am the fake that some people think I am, then I have been carrying on this elaborate hoax for more than 10 years. Do you think that I am intelligent enough, that I have the foresight, to start writing hundreds and hundreds of articles and posts over a period of more than a decade, in case one day I get banned from a message board? I assure you, I am not. I may think that I'm pretty smart, but it's more of a book learning thing and not a people smarts thing.

Well, there's nothing really more than I can do to try to recover my reputation than what I have just said. I can't make anybody believe me. But I will say that you will find out that I am who I say I am at the Rapture. At least Jesus knows who I am.

Revival Challenge Day 6

2008-05-23T20:53:00.000-07:00

Ugh... today has not been such a good day.

In order for God to heal the land, God's people have to pray and turn away from their sins. Well, I'm having a hard time with the second part today.

My husband decided to create fake identities on a message board that I've been a member for more than 10 years for, which is against the rules. They ended up banning me over it. I'm trying to contact some people off board because it is completely unfair to punish me for something that he did, but so far no luck.

I'm having a difficult time thinking kind thoughts towards him at this moment. He knew that he was doing wrong and this is the second time that he's caused me to get banned from a message board because of something that he did (the first time I was reinstated after a few weeks of pleading). I feel angry and hurt over all this. I'm also feeling hatred towards myself over this... I have the tendency to self-flog myself when people are punishing me for things like this.

So I'm trying to pray for revival, but today it is difficult.

Revival Prayer Challenge: Day 5

2008-05-22T23:24:00.001-07:00

I didn't post yesterday because it was a pretty busy day. We went to Universal Studios, the American Idol Finale, went to have dinner at a Disney Diner type place, then I went for a swim in a pool 5 stories up. Plus we didn't have internet. But I did continue to pray for revival, I hope you are too.

Today is day 5 in my challenge to myself to pray for revival. Oddly enough, this morning I read about the verse in II Chronicles saying "if my people, who are called by my name, pray .... then I will heal their land". That's a paraphrase from the top of my head. As Christians, we are called by Jesus' name. What does healing our land mean? Does it mean that crops will grow well? Does it mean that our country's leaders will start making wise decisions?

I don't really know what it means, but it is probably good, and I'd like to find out. I heard once that in Haiti, they have horrible crop yields, but over in the Dominican Republic, same island, they have wonderful harvests. I heard that Haiti was dedicated to Satan... I'm not sure about that, but I do know that voodoo and witch doctors are big around there.

Hope that you all keep praying :-)

Oh, while you're at it, you might have heard the news that Steven Curtis Chapman's 5 year old daughter died in a car accident. He's the person that sings "Cinderella" and "Miracle of the Moment," along with many other Christian songs. He could probably use your prayers too.

Revival PrayerChallenge: Day 3

2008-05-20T21:50:00.001-07:00

I'm in Los Angeles today, I may not post tomorrow because wi-fi is scarce, but I'll keep praying anyway. We're here on a trip that I won.

California needs your special prayers because of the recent court decision allowing gay marriage. It will be allowed in 20something days unless the supreme court of CA allows a stay until the voters can decide. They really need our prayers.

America needs our prayers too, and I'll keep on continuing to pray for revival. And for the Californian government. There is a post on townhall.com about what the effects of gay marriage might be and it would be shocking. Could you imagine engagement homosexual engagement ring commercials? Dreaming for your Prince Charming being hate speech?

Gotta go! Hope you join me in prayer.

Homeschooling Infants: Signing Time is Paying Off!

2008-05-19T23:34:00.001-07:00

Most homeschoolers realize that children don't just learn between the hours of 8 and 3. Kids learn all day long. My daughter learns about history and geography at bedtime when I read to her from Little House On The Prairie. She might learn math at the grocery store. While we have formal learning, it doesn't stop there. Since I'm her sole teacher, if I can find ways to integrate learning in the rest of my daughter's day, I will.

The same is true for age. Kids don't start learning at 5 and know everything they need to know by the time they turn 18. They start learning at birth. In fact, they learn at a more rapid rate when they are younger.

Although my homeschooling efforts are currently focused on my daughter, I also have an 18 month old. As he gets older, I can do more "formal" learning with him. Not really formal because we don't have a curriculum that we use yet, but I can tell him what a train is, or a fish or a bird, and he'll pick that up from me.

I've been trying to teach my son sign language since he was about 3 months old. I wasn't expecting him to sign with me at 3 months, I just wanted him to start getting used to it. I haven't been the most consistent person in the world at it, but I kept on plugging away at it.

At around a year old, ds started picking up a few signs. He first signed dog, then he learned fish. He started signing milk and pointing to his mouth to tell me that he was hungry or thirsty (I just had to guess). It's very nice to have your baby be able to tell you what he wants.

Now he can tell me a lot more about what he wants or is thinking. Just today he made the sign for water (he doesn't do it correctly, but I know what he's trying to do) and I knew that he wanted something to drink. He will also make that sign when he sees a lake. We went for a walk and he heard an airplane, and made the sign for plane. Just a couple of days ago, he heard dd running the water in the bathtub to get her hair wet, and he made the sign for bath.

I have to thank the people at Signing Time for their great DVDs. They have catchy tunes and are made with children in mind. I'm glad that our library has them, although they tend to be a hot item and are often gone. Our local PBS station is now showing Signing Time on Sundays, so I have Tivo set to record it.

Dd has picked up on sign language too. She's getting pretty good at it. :)

Revival Prayer Challenge: Day 2

2008-05-19T08:21:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I challenged myself to start praying for revival for this country, every day, from now until the election. I think that only God can make a difference in this country, not any political candidate or legislative reform.

I prayed for revival, not only of this country, but of myself too. Because it has to begin with ourselves. Anyway, I already got a small blessing out of it. It was my turn to work in the nursery, and usually I'm a little disappointed that I have to be in the nursery and not in church. But I prayed for a better attitude and to see it as an opportunity to help others. Anyway, my baby is in the nursery still, and there were only three babies in the nursery yesterday. One was asleep, so it was just my little boy and one other girl. We have two nursery workers for the accountability. Working in the nursery was a nice time of bonding and playing with my little boy yesterday.

I read 1 Chronicles 28-29 this morning, and I came across an interesting verse. 1 Chronicles 28:8-9 (and I'm paraphrasing here) say that if we seek the Lord, we will possess the land and leave it as an inheritance for our kids, but if we forsake him, he will cast us off forever. I know that this was written to Israel, but I think that the principles translate to any country.

Today I'm including a little prayer... nothing fancy, but I know that some people, like my little girl, don't really know where to start.

Dear Lord, thank you for this wonderful day. Our country needs your help. In the Bible it says that if we forsake you that you will cast us off forever, but if we seek you, we will possess the land and leave it as an inheritance. I know that I have sinned, and while it may be a convenient excuse to say that "everyone else is doing it," I know that that's not an excuse. Please help me to live for you today, please bring revival to me. And dear Lord, please bring revival to our country, we need it desperately. We can't fix it ourselves, only you can. In Jesus name, Amen.

Prayer Challenge: Pray For Revival

2008-05-18T20:30:00.000-07:00

Our church is starting week-long revival services. This got me to thinking about a sermon that I heard about a year ago about the Fulton Street revival. Here is some info on it.

The Fulton Street Revival started out with one guy deciding to hold weekly prayer meetings. Only 6 people came the first week. More came the next week. Then more, until soon they had to find a bigger room. It spread to other cities. God was moving in this country in a big way. People stopped drinking and bars were put out of business. I think they had to lay off police officers because there were fewer crimes.

Our country could use God's help right now, don't you think? I don't know about you, but I'm not really impressed with any of the major political candidates. Courts all over this country are legislating from the bench and going against the people's wishes. Our country seems to be headed towards economic ruin, illegal immigrants are taking away jobs, our school system leaves something to be desired, there's so much garbage on television and in the movies... we need God's help!

So here's my challenge to you: pray. Pray for a little bit every day. Pray for this country to undergo revival once again. The Bible says, “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land” (2 Chronicles 7:14). This is the kind of prayer we need.

Our guest preacher today started off preaching from Nehemiah for the morning Sunday School Service. In his day, Israel had just finished building the temple, but the walls had been torn down. Nehemiah prayed and wept for 4 months before anything happened. But he also did something else. He confessed his own sins, he confessed the sins of his own country. You can read it in Nehemiah 1. Revival followed.

So my challenge is this. Pray every day, not just for the revival of our own country and for God's help, but also confess your own sins and pray for a revival in your own heart. Because revival has to start with ourselves.

I challenge you, and myself, to continue to pray for revival from now until election day. If God is working within this nation, it really doesn't matter who wins the election. God can work through any of the candidates. God can work in the hearts of anyone. What matters is that we pray. What matters is that we pay attention to ourselves and what we are doing.

This is as much a challenge to anyone stumbling across this post as a challenge to myself. I hope to make updates, hopefully frequently.

So this is day one.

How Does This Happen?

2008-05-16T23:14:00.000-07:00

Here's one of the more morbid stories that I've heard in a while...

Lady Lies Dead For More Than 35 Years

Hedviga Golik died years before I was born, and nobody discovered her dead body until now? Nobody noticed? How does something like that happen?

I've read stories about people laying around in an apartment for a couple of weeks before they've been discovered, but 35 years? Unbelievable.

I wonder where her family was, or if she was all alone. Her neighbors said that they thought she was going to travel abroad. It's really sad that nobody knew or cared about her enough to even wonder... they just forgot about her until she was found.

What I also found sad was that the neighbors almost immediately started bickering about who owned the apartment.

Fortunately, there is someone that never forgot about her. Someone that will never forget about us. God cares about her, and always has, for the 35 years that her body lay still in the shut up apartment, and for whatever lonely years of her life were spent by herself before she died.

The Mattress: The Safest Place for Your Valuables?

2008-05-13T14:29:00.000-07:00

In the days of increasing state budget shortfalls, some states have decided to seize assets in people's safe deposit boxes. Like this story:

Carla Ruff's Safe Deposit Box

Somebody got a good deal, because the government figured that her box was unclaimed and the owner was unknown... even though she still had an account with the bank and the safe deposit box was paid for. They decided to sell off her great-grandmother's pearls for $1800, even though they were worth more than $82,000. Good deal for whoever bought them at auction.

Perhaps the best place for your precious valuables is in your mattress nowadays. The government feels free to take anything from you whenever it feels that it wants to.

No wonder living "off the grid" is becoming more popular.

Lazy Americans And Their Jobs

2008-05-12T18:12:00.000-07:00

I saw this on Glenn Beck today... thought it was amusing.

I guess the New York Sun or some newspaper like that reported on one of their pages that they are having problems finding people to pick cherries because the governor won't let them import workers from Mexico and Jamaica...

On the same page, right next to the complaints about the lack of workers to help them pick fruit, there is an article saying that teenagers are having trouble finding work this summer.

Hmmm... what's wrong with this picture?

Why can't the teenagers pick fruit? Are they too good for that job?

I was talking to my grandma on the phone yesterday for Mother's day, and she was talking about how there are tons of immigrants (whether illegal or not I don't know, probably a lot of them are illegal) that have moved up to Washington State to pick brush and shuck oysters. My dad did that job when he was younger, as did my great-grandpa and grandma back in the days.

So where is the disconnect here? Are teenagers to lazy... or to good... to pick fruit in New York? Or brush in Washington state?

I'm not sure what is the answer. Perhaps the teenagers do find themselves too good to pick fruit and brush, or perhaps the job seekers are not looking in the same place that the employers are advertising.

Take brush picking. I lived in Washington state for many years, but I'm not sure where I would go to find a job like that... if they would even hire me nowadays because I speak English and have a US birth certificate. Do they advertise in the newspaper or on places like Monster.com? How do the teenagers find out that there are jobs to be had?

Where are the cherry farmers advertising their jobs?

I know in Arizona there used to be a lot of employers that would hire illegal immigrants. They can't any more because if they get caught they will lose their business license. But back in the days, many of these jobs would send trucks out to specific street corners where the illegal immigrants would hang out and wait to be hired for the day. I'm not sure if white, English speaking teenagers would have been welcomed there.

In Louisiana, after Hurricane Katrina, many construction workers flocked to the state to work on rebuilding the city. Until they were all fired so the construction companies could hire illegal immigrants instead. I know someone that this happened to.

So I'm not sure whether the cherry picker shortage is the fault of the teenagers who don't know that there are jobs to be had out on the farms, or if the fault is of the farmers who don't want to hire them.

But I will say this: people should learn how to work hard. It's what made this country great. I remember reading an article a year or so ago where businesses felt like they had to cater to the new twenty-somethings, who would not even bat an eyelash at quitting their jobs if they didn't like the working conditions, hours, or other aspects about the job. Not sure if that still holds true today, with fewer jobs to go around.

I graduated from the University of Southern California. I've had some cool jobs, like working as a movie extra one year. I've had some less than prestigious jobs as well. One summer in college I worked at McDonald's. I've had high-paying, "important" jobs, like being the anti-terrorism officer at the Navy base in Naples.

A couple of years ago, I took a job as a teacher at Kindercare, making less than 1/5th of the pay that I had received at my job in the Navy. It was the right job at the time, because it allowed me to keep tabs on my young daughter. I blended in fairly well, but my life was not the typical day care worker's. Most people would not like to take an 80% pay cut to care for other people's children with a college degree.

My dh took a 50% pay cut for a while to go stock shelves at Wal-Mart at night. He's a college student, and he needed a night job so he could go to school during the day. You do what you have to do, even if it involves doing hard work, or working at night. He has since found a better paying evening job.

Many successful Americans learned to work hard doing jobs that many would consider "beneath them". 60 Minutes did an interview with Clarence Thomas where he talked about having to work hard as a kid. Wasn't it Abraham Lincoln that split rails? George Washington was an everyday guy in an earlier American war before he became a great war hero in the American Revolution. Chris Gardener, from the Pursuit of Happyness, spent a year taking care of his son while homeless in order to graduate.

There may be easier ways to do things, but sometimes you have to work very hard for a while to get what you need to get done. And if the fruit pickers need workers and the teenagers need jobs, perhaps some people need to work hard for a while.

Ebay Forces Paypal Use In Australia

2008-05-10T10:45:00.000-07:00

Back when internet commerce came out and Ebay was just a baby... one of the first companies to actually make a profit on the internet... I thought it was a great idea. It's really cool to be able to look up and find just about anything that you want to buy. It's great to be able to sell something to a wide audience.

It still is a great idea, but I'm not a big fan of Ebay the company any more.

I feel similarly about Paypal. It's a great idea, being able to take credit cards online easily... but I don't like Paypal at all. I think they're a bunch of crooks. They stole $300 from me several years ago and I've never gotten over it.

We were living in Italy, in Navy housing, when Paypal stole money from me. I don't remember the exact details, but I was trying to get money into my USC Federal Credit Union account so I could pay a bill. After completing the transaction, Paypal decided to steal money out of our account (without authorization) and then decided to freeze the Paypal account where the stolen money went to. The only way to unfreeze this account was to produce gads of paperwork, including driver's license, some other stuff, and a utility bill. Since we lived in Navy housing and the Navy paid all of our utilities (and we therefore had no utility bills), we could not meet their excessive demands, and Paypal still has our $300 to this day.

There are many more horror stories (some worse than ours) on Paypalwarning.com.

So eventually, Ebay purchased Paypal, and then Ebay decided to make the Paypal thieves their preferred method of payment. Oh... goody. There are alternative methods of making online payments, but some people are more reluctant to accept those.

Ebay was once a fine company, but it has gotten too big and thinks to highly of itself. It has raised fees for sellers. It has banned the sale of homeschool teacher's editions, for no apparent reason. They say that it is because it's impossible to prove that someone is buying a book to get the answers... but these same books can be purchased online by anyone with a credit card, so I don't buy that... I think they're just kowtowing to the textbook publishers who don't like it when people purchase used books in favor of new books.

Lately they've screwed up the Ebay feedback system. They've made it more difficult for buyers to get good feedback, and if you are a casual seller on Ebay who doesn't do much business there and hasn't built a high enough feedback, you are banned from using their special features like buy it now.

Ebay's recent move is not in this country. In Australia, they are making a rule so that all transactions have to be completed through Paypal. Great... Australia has an alternate method of payment through bank transfers, that is popular with Australians, but Ebay doesn't want to allow that any more. They want more money, and more control. Perhaps they want to freeze a few more accounts and steal more money that way?

Who knows how long it will be until Ebay wants to enforce that rule here?

Will we ever see a real Ebay alternative? People have tried, but nobody has reached the success of Ebay, as of yet. If Ebay remains too big for themselves and keeps on passing rules that anger buyers and sellers alike, perhaps that will give Ebay's competitors a little help.

Back To Normal... Almost

2008-04-25T15:52:00.000-07:00

We finally moved in to our new house Wednesday. Almost. We still have all our appliances over at the old house, and anything that we haven't needed for the last few weeks that we're going to be able to salvage from the old house.

I never thought that I could get exhausted from shopping, but it is possible when you're replacing things that you need for your house. We've spent probably more than $2000 in the last couple of days. There are the obvious things... like cribs, mattresses, televisions, entertainment centers, a couch to sit on, lighting, but then as you try to go on about your daily life, you discover that you are missing other things too. Good thing we live close to Wal-Mart!

You never think about the little things that you use on a daily basis and only replace when you are dissatisfied with what you currently have or it breaks. Things like... a colander. Or pot holders. I made spaghetti and rolls last night... then I discovered that even though I had a pot to put the spaghetti in, I didn't have potholders to take the food out, didn't have a colander, I didn't even have a large spoon to stir the spaghetti in the pot. I found things to make due, but I realized how you just get so used to having things and you take them for granted.

There are food staples that I know that I always seem to have that I'm finding need to be replaced. Like soy sauce. I usually pick up a bottle when it's on sale and I have a coupon, so I always seem to have one in my pantry by the time I run out. But it lasts a long time. If I want to make stir-fry vegetables, I just take it for granted that it's there.

We got our phone service and Tivo back up, finally. That's another thing that I tend to take for granted. Getting those back up hinged on getting the internet working, since we use Vonage, and Tivo needs either a phone connection or an internet connection (through your router) to work. The internet, what do you know, decided that it wanted to have problems our first two days here, so we had neither internet, nor phone, nor Tivo... and since we hook our cable through the Tivo box, we didn't have television either.

But slowly, it's all coming together. We've assembled the futon, entertainment center, crib, new adult bed, and dd is sleeping on a Ready-bed on the floor until we can get the rest of our insurance money. We have a little bit of food in the cupboard and enough utensils to make a couple of things. The phone, cable, internet, and Tivo are back up. Tomorrow our church has assembled a moving party, and we'll get the washer and dryer, freezer, desk for me, and even dd's play house is coming... that's going to be a fun one to move... my dad made it and it's made out of wood, it's big enough that I can stand up in the very center (although I'm short).

After tomorrow, there will still be moving tasks... primarily going through the house and getting the things out that we wish to keep... but the big stuff will be done. And life will return to a new sort of normalcy.

Constitution Party: The Other Black Candidate?

2008-04-22T20:55:00.000-07:00

Anybody remember a few weeks back, there was a Republican Presidential debate, and you saw your four regulars... there was Ron Paul, John McCain, Mike Huckabee, and I'm not sure if Mitt Romney had dropped out or not. There was also some random guy up there on the platform... Alan Keyes. Where did he come from? What was he doing up there? Of course Alan Keyes is not new to politics and it wasn't really the same as having Bob the mailman up there, but it was really odd to see someone up there that nobody knew was even running for president.

Anyway, just a couple of days ago my husband told me that Alan Keyes had left the Republican party. That he was thinking of becoming the next Constitution Party candidate. Cool!

I've been a big fan of the Constitution Party for about 5 years now. I voted for their presidential candidate, Michael Peroutka, during the last election. I knew he had no chance... after all, I had never heard of the guy before. I didn't like either of the mainstream presidential candidates and really couldn't see much of a difference between them (and I still don't think that we would be any better or worse off if Kerry had been nominated), so despite people saying that I was helping one presidential candidate over another by voting 3rd party, I really wasn't, because it really didn't matter. Which can be hard for people to get.

This year, I don't know how I'm going to vote. Barak Obama is pretty scary with his whole black liberation theology ties... Christians and gun owners are bitter? He's pretty scary. Plus he thinks that if a baby survives an abortion it's okay to murder them anyway after they've been born. John McCain isn't great... he's pro-illegal immigration and admits that he doesn't have a firm grasp on the economy, but at least he doesn't think that infanticide is okay if the baby is an abortion survivor, and he doesn't think that a Jesus that loves all people, including white people, is a bad thing.

But if Alan Keyes joins the race as the Constitution Party candidate, that could switch things up a bit. He sounded pretty good in the one presidential debate that he went to. People who are familiar with politics have at least heard of him. He's conservative in a way that John McCain is not.

Either way, Keyes running under the Constitution Party ticket would bring recognition to the party in a way that it's never had before. They hold their national convention tomorrow, so it will be interesting to see what happens.

April 19th

2008-04-22T14:33:00.000-07:00

Last week I posted about the FLDS compound in Texas being raided and mentioned that April 19th is a big date in history. In recent history we have had

Waco
Ruby Ridge
Oklahoma City

and on the 20th we have

Hitler's birthday
Little Colorado Massacre

Anyway, me and my daughter were doing her history work yesterday, and I found out another major event that happened on April 19th. We had been talking about the colonies, and how the colonists didn't like the taxes so they stopped buying the stuff that was taxed, then they had the tea party and threw all the tea into the sea... then the British decided to leave Boston Common and march to Concord, where all the colonists were keeping their guns. Paul Revere came riding all night through Massachusetts warning about the British soldiers coming... and on April 19th, 1775...

the shot that was heard round the world, otherwise known as the first shot of the American Revolution, was fired by an unknown colonist.

Out of all the years I spent compiling date calendars for the Navy on important dates, that one never registered with me.

It's interesting all the important dates we all seem to forget about collectively as a nation and as a world... like the date that the Polish Calvary and German Infantry defeated the (Islamic) Turks and started to drive them back in the middle ages... September 11th, 1683.

The Food Shortage Hits The Mainstream Press

2008-04-22T08:59:00.000-07:00

I've written a couple of times about how several countries have stopped exports of food and that there have been food riots in several countries because of the increase in price, due to the lack of supply. Some of my friends who like to be prepared have been purchasing large quantities of food to feed their families; some of them have not been able to purchase what they wanted because the stores supplying these items are backlogged.

I haven't had the chance to watch much news lately, between commuting 1 hour each way to visit my friends, go to church, or get something from our house, and tossing rotten food out of a refrigerator and freezer that hasn't had electricity for a week, and trying to get back into teaching my daughter on her regular school schedule, there hasn't been much time. But I was very surprised when we had the afternoon here without any errands and I had the chance to turn on Glenn Beck... he was talking about the food supply, of all things!

Now, I realize that he's not the most mainstream of all the press... but he was talking about the economy several months ago, when most of America was blissfully unaware that things would get a lot worse than just the value of our homes declining. His show is on CNN Headline News, so it's not like we're talking about some really off the wall publication that nobody has ever heard of. So I was surprised to see him talking about this. He did tie it into ethanol, which is something he is very much against, but ethanol isn't the only cause of the food shortage.

I guess that Costco is even experiencing shortages in certain staples, and many of its stores are limiting the quantities of staples like rice and/or flour that you can buy. Some of the stores are out of most types of rice.

If there is a grain of truth to what Glenn Beck is saying (and there is)... eventually other news outlets, like ABC News and the like. Because eventually the effects of this will hit the grocery stores. This is where the biggest challenge lies. Because people are likely to get scared and panic. And when they panic they're going to rush to the grocery store and clean everything out.

We're not likely to see an Ethiopia-like famine in this country. We still have farmers in this country, and as long as the crops don't fail we'll still have food, although perhaps not in the abundance that we are used to.

Bloggy Giveaways Carnival Giveaway: Walking With Angels: Aural's Gift!

2008-04-21T21:07:00.001-07:00

I've won before from some of the great sites that work with Bloggy Giveaways, and I wasn't planning on hosting a giveaway until I had an idea... why not give away a copy of my husband's wonderful book as a prize?

Walking With Angels Volume 1: Aural's Gift is a book that details the story of a girl that can see into the spirit world... specifically angels and demons. I know that this book is purely fiction and a product of my husband's imagination, but the tale he weaves is extremely plausable... it really changed my thoughts about how the world of the unseen could potentially work. Do saved people have angels that follow them around? What part do demons have in the physical world?

Well, in this book, the ability to see angels and demons wasn't particularly a blessing. People start to think that Aural is a bit... nutty. Anyway, I won't spoil the rest of the story, but if you would like a copy for free, just leave a comment on my blog telling me either who your favorite Christian author is, or why you would like to read this book.

I will have to add, some of this book might be disturbing to young children. It is not the kind of book I wouldn't want my grandma or pastor reading... in fact, we have loaned this book out to people at my church, including the pastor, but some of the content is best read by older people. Here is a longer review that I wrote about the book.

We will probably end up shipping this straight out from amazon.com or barnesandnoble.com, otherwise I'd offer to have it autographed. If you really wanted an autographed copy, I could manage that but it would be smoke damaged due to the recent fire.

I will pick the winner randomly out of all comments received prior to 11:59 PM PDT on April 25th. Please only enter once or you will be disqualified. Also make sure that there's an easy way to contact you... if you leave an email I'll email you, if I can't find one I'll post a comment on your blog, and if you leave no email and no blog I'll have to find another winner :( . US addresses only please. I'll post the winner here next week, probably Monday or so.

Good luck! And be sure to visit here for more fabulous prizes!

It Just Figures

2008-04-18T17:16:00.000-07:00

We've been drooling over the Wii for more than a year now. We finally decide to buy one (previously I've been trying to win one)... and it doesn't work. The sensor has serious delay issues.

I'm not sure which would take longer... sending the Wii to Nintendo to get repaired or replaced, or taking the Wii back to the store and trying to find another one. The one that we got took more than a month to find. You would think that finding a Wii would be pretty easy, considering that both dh and stepfather-in-law work nights at Wal-Mart, when they get the new shipments in (dh works on the stocking team, although in food, not electronics)... but so far a working Wii eludes us. Oh well, back to looking.

But all is not bad... we have some wonderful news. We hooked the Tivo up today to our mother-in-law's tiny TV in the kid's temporary bedroom, and it still works! We were afraid that the heat, smoke, or perhaps an electrical surge might have damaged it. Our Tivo wireless modem thing we bought also works. We haven't had the chance to try the TV yet, but we're probably going to replace that anyway with the final insurance payment, but if the Tivo didn't get destroyed, with the hard drive in it, the simpler (electronics wise) TV should still work too.

And we have our new address. We get to move in 5 days.

The Polygamy Cult vs. CPS

2008-04-16T22:54:00.000-07:00

First, excuse me if I'm missing some R's in my typing today. Although dh saved my CPU in the fire, I lost all of my peripherals and just replaced them today. Unfortunately, the cheap keyboard I got has a problem with the R key. So I'm taking it back tomorrow to get something not defective and perhaps better. But for now, bear with me if I miss a couple.

If you've been watching the news, you've probably heard of the raid on the FLDS compound in Texas. Oddly enough, we're coming upon the 15th anniversary of the Waco raid on the 19th... the 19th is a very significant day because it also marks the date of Ruby Ridge and Oklahoma City. Today is the first anniversary of the Virginia Tech massacre, and the 20th marks both Adolph Hitler's birthday and the Littleton Shooting. When I was the Anti-terrorism officer for my Navy base in Italy, I maintained a calendar of significant dates like these because terrorists like to commemorate dates like this. I always highlighted the 19th and 20th because they are the biggest days of the year for terrorist and other attacks of this sort.

Most of these people used to live in other parts of the country, including Colorado City in Arizona. There was a big to-do a couple of years ago with the FLDS group back then, and their leader ended up getting prosecuted. The group is known for polygamous marriages and forcing young teenagers to marry older men (like in their 50s sometimes).

An anonymous caller said that she was 16 and was being forced to marry against her wishes. They still don't know who this caller is, but the tip was enough to make the police take action. More than likely, they've been watching this group for years and were just waiting for an excuse to come in. They are a pretty secretive group.

All the ladies and children were carted off. CPS took custody of the children and the ladies were given the option of returning to the compound or going to a safe house. Only six ladies took the safe-house option, from what I've heard.

They are complaining because they can't see their children, and of course, I'd be upset too. But the most important thing is ensuring that these children are safe. Even without the anonymous girl showing up, there is still plenty of reason to think that they might not be safe.

The ladies were being questioned by the press, and they were very evasive when they talked about the age of marriage or polygamy. If there really wasn't anything going on, don't you think they would have gone and outright said that only adults were allowed to marry? Well, they're not doing that. They change the subject or give a non-substantive answer. And there have been prior FLDS escapees that have talked about how the conditions were for them.

I'm all for the ability of parents to bring up their children the way they see fit. To a point. You can make your kids go to church, you can make them eat their peas, you can choose what type of school they go to, you can even choose what vaccinations to give them and whether or not they can have birth control in Middle School. I don't want my rights trampled on, and the corollary to that is that other parents have to have their rights too.

However, we do have laws in this country. The laws in Texas require that anyone under the age of 16 have a court order in order to marry. The age of consent in Texas is 17, although I believe that they will not prosecute if the age difference is 3 years or less. In the FLDS community, by accounts of escapees, often the age of marriage is under 17 and the age difference can be measured in decades.

I think that CPS did the right thing by taking the children away while they investigate the matter. While in general, I don't think anonymous calls warrant CPS taking a child away from the parents, this is more than your I saw so and so with dirty hair and I think the parents are neglectful type of case. There is evidence beyond the phone call.

Unfortunately, this is the only life that many of the people have known. I'm all for homeschooling, obviously, but these people have little contact with the outside world at all... and if they are being taught illegal things, that is wrong. The Amish are similar in that their children are educated in the Amish ways and they are to some degree segregated from the world, but there is a vast difference, in that the Amish don't abuse their children as a routine matter by marrying off their young teenagers. The Amish also often deal with the local communities, and are not as isolated in that respect.

I hope that the justice system gets to the bottom of this and that the matter is resolved peaceably. While the adults are free to do a lot of what they do on their own private property, the children need to at least be taught that you don't get married until you are an adult.

Listmania - Best and Worst of House Fires

2008-04-15T22:25:00.000-07:00

I'm writing a list post for a contest over at Networkbloggingtips.com. The prize is an external hard drive and you can join too.

Since the biggest thing preoccupying my time right now is the house fire, I'm making a list on the best and worst things of having a house fire. I'll save the best for last by getting the bad stuff out of the way first.

The Worst Things About Having A House Fire

Losing your stuff
Having to make an inventory of everything that you own and lost for the insurance company
Having to live an hour across town because your old house is no longer inhabitable
Cleaning out the refrigerator after it's been without power for a week
Cleaning everything else in the house that's covered in soot and ashes
The bank putting a hold on the insurance company's advance check because they're not used to you depositing so much money in the bank at one time
Throwing away all the plastic baby toys that they can no longer use, remembering your kids playing with them
Seeing your baby's destroyed pictures

The best thing about having a house fire

Getting to shop for new things
Getting the opportunity to take pictures... you never know, maybe they'll be a contest for a picture of the "worst bathroom" and you'll be in the running!
Discovering things that are still usable even after the fire
Starting to resume a normal life again
Having less stuff... easier to declutter!

So that's the best and worst that I can think of so far.

Drug Use: Another Reason It Is Not A Victimless Crime

2008-04-15T17:26:00.000-07:00

Some people say that drug use is a victimless crime. If you don't rob somebody, don't spend your kid's milk money on drugs, and don't drive or perform surgery while on drugs, nobody gets hurt, right? Or so some people argue.

Unfortunately, that is a little short sighted. And I'm not even thinking about the drug dealers that might decide to shoot their rivals in their drug wars... they choose to get involved in that lifestyle and that just happens to come with the territory. But far away... where the drugs are grown... a more innocent victim might be affected by someone's drug use.

Let's say you use heroin, or perhaps opium. Let's forget for a minute that heroin is a very addictive drug that might leave you in a sort of desperation that you might not otherwise expect to be in. The poppy seeds that are used to make the opium and heroin are grown somewhere. One of the places happens to be Afghanistan.

Again, forget for a minute that there are a lot of terrorists grown in Afghanistan that get a lot of their power and money from the heroin and opium trade. An increasingly common victim of the drug trade is the opium bride, as described in this Newsweek article.

Here's how it works. A farmer might be down on his luck, so he borrows some money in order to plant a poppy crop. He promises to pay back at the end of the season in the form of opium. But then something happens. Maybe bad weather causes his crop to fail. Sometimes the powers that be decide to declare war on drugs and destroy the crops. The farmer is left with no crop and a debt that he can't pay back. So he gives up the only asset that he might have... he repays his debt by giving away his daughter as a wife to the lender.

Evidently this is becoming more common. Some 5 year old children are often given away in this manner. One person in the story ended up promising his 2-month old daughter to pay off a debt. They are not supposed to actually consummate the marriage until the daughter reaches puberty, but they can go work as housekeepers and maids until that point.

It's sometimes hard to see how our actions affect others... in this case, you never would think that using drugs could lead to someone getting sold as a bride halfway across the world.

Getting Back To Normal

2008-04-13T17:28:00.000-07:00

I don't know about other people that have been in house fires, but I'm just glad to see some things start to get back to normal.

I only managed to teach school 1 day last week. I felt bad about it at first, but realistically, if dd was in public school and she had a house fire and had to move an hour away from home, do you think that she'd get any school done last week? I don't think so. Tonight dh is going to work, and he'll be gone for most of the morning, and we'll get school done like normal. That will be good. Then maybe I'll take them to a park so they're not bored out of their minds.

I'm glad that dh saved my computer. It's amazing how much of a difference having your own computer makes when you're trying to get things done. I do a lot of sweepstakes, and I have specialized software on my computer that remembers all my passwords and helps me paste all my information in. I tried using dh's laptop the other night to do this and it was so much less efficient. But I'm getting back into entering my sweepstakes as well, and getting back to normal in that area is helpful as well.

There's only so much adventure you can take before you want to see a return to normalcy. Even if that normalcy involves staying in a strange house and being in different surroundings than you were before.

Life In The Museum

2008-04-12T21:37:00.000-07:00

Since we had a house fire last Sunday, we moved in with the relatives. I'm thankful that they have two rooms to spare (one for me and dh, one for dd and baby ds), but I'm going to be really glad to move into our new home. Dh applied for family housing at his college, and they said that it would take a week or two to get the background check taken care of so we could move in.

My mother-in-law is great (her husband is okay), but living here is like living in a museum. They have a formal dining room that is always set with a nice place setting, but nobody eats on it except perhaps Thanksgiving... but not every year, just some years. They have lovely candles and decorations, and the house is always showroom ready, like Better Homes and Gardens is going to run through and do a photo shoot or something.

This is not the sort of house that Kindergarteners and toddlers who just lost nearly all of their toys like to run around in.

Both of them are in nearly a constant state of boredom. There is just so much Noggin and Nick Jr. that a kid can watch. We only accomplished one day of school last week (out of our normal 4) because I had to put together an inventory of everything we own that was damaged or lost in the fire. The most fun that they had this week was when we drove across town to check the mail (we're staying about an hour's drive away from our old home) and I discovered that UPS had left a note saying that I had a package to sign for... so I called UPS and asked them to let me pick up the package, and I had to wait 4 hours for it to arrive back at the warehouse. They got to spend 4 hours at the park waiting.

It's still hard to tell exactly how bad the fire is and how much we actually will end up losing. Some things are obviously smoke damaged beyond repair, like couches and mattresses. Some things will be able to be saved with some chemicals and hard work, like clothes. Some things were lost and I'm going to have to look to see what has become of them... my college class ring was in the area where the fire was the worst, and I have to find it first to see whether it is still intact or has become a melted hunk of gold. But everything is still in something of a holding pattern while we wait for our house. We don't have much room here, and we can't really go through our things and clean them up without having a place to bring them to.

In the meantime, the kids are going crazy in this lovely museum. Please pray that the housing department approves our move in the next few days and we can actually have a place of our own again. A place where the kidlets can run around, yell, and not have to worry about getting yelled at for touching the knick-knacks. Well, they aren't really allowed to yell all the time at our house either, but I don't mind a little of it... most of the time.

Turning Lemons Into Lemonade

2008-04-08T15:47:00.000-07:00

Just hours before my house caught on fire, the Lord told my pastor to change his message from Jude to one on Psalms 18:30, which basically says that the Lord's way is perfect, and he protects those that trust in him.

While I was in church listening to this message, my house was on fire, unbeknownst to me. The smoke detector woke up my dh, who saved my computer and the pictures contained inside (my hero), and put out the fire with the help of my neighbor who brought along a water hose after he used up our fire extinguisher on it.

When I got home and discovered that our house had been on fire, I was shocked. I still find it a little hard to believe. Isn't that one of those things that happens to other people? After finding out the real important information, that my husband was okay (and yes, the pictures), in a way you just have to let it sink in and figure out what to do next.

It looks like we've figured out what to do next, and I'm pretty happy about it. We're going to move to a new house, whether or not our house ends up being totalled or repaired, and we'll sell whatever house/land remains.

Our insurance company should give us the full amount that we are insured for for the contents of our house. The area that caught fire was the most expensive part of our house, with our computers, (musical) keyboard, a TON of software, etc. in that area. We also have to toss all of the baby's plastic toys because they could be toxic to him, all our plastic dishes, utensils, and kitchen tools, and there was smoke damage to everything in our house... some of it we will be able to clean, some of it is not cleanable. Anyway, we did a partial inventory of what was lost, and it easily adds up to our insured amount.

We put together a budget for what we plan on doing with this money, and we decided to turn our lemons into lemonade. As a fan of Dave Ramsey, sometimes I hear people call up and say "We're debt free! We sold all of our stuff on eBay, did this, did that, etc.". Well, we're not selling our stuff on eBay, but we have decided to NOT replace all of our stuff. We will replace some of our things, and use the rest of the money to pay off our car, pay off my student loan, and start an emergency fund.

We will have no debt payments, and our expenses will be lower because we will be living in family housing at dh's school. His job is right by our house, so we will save on gas because he can walk to class and is within minutes of work. The housing includes high-speed internet and cable television, so that will save us $100 a month as well. Since the house will be smaller than the one we were living in, we should have lower electricity bills as well. We're going to put together a budget, and for the first time in years, we will actually have a little money left over after paying for necessary expenses. So we should be able to slowly replace some of the other things that we lost over time, even if we don't buy them right away. And we won't be paying interest to the banks any more!

I don't recommend having a house fire to get out of debt, but at least in this case, we will be able to take a bad situation and use it for good.

What's Next?

2008-04-07T16:11:00.000-07:00

I've said it before... after dh lost his second or third job in a year, "what's next, is our house going to catch on fire and burn to the ground?"

Uhhh, that wasn't a good thing to say.

Because that's exactly what happened last night.

I was on my way home from church with my little girl and baby boy. My husband was sleeping because he was going to go to work that evening. On my way home, I saw a police car sitting by the road. I thought it might be a police car pulling someone over. As I got closer, I saw that the car was right outside our road. Then as I pulled onto my street, the police officer stopped me. After a short conversation with him where he treated me like an idiot for not knowing what was going on or where I was supposed to park, he directed me to park by the fence at the end of the street, and I walked down the road with the baby in the stroller.

There were fire trucks on the street. I asked the first people that I came to if they knew what house it was. Was it the blue house? They didn't know, but it was on the same side of the street as ours. When we got farther down, the fire trucks were dangerously close to our house. It was either our house or the neighbor's house. It was our house.

Was my dh okay? I kept walking to the fire trucks and told them the house was mine. "Your husband's over here" the fireman said. Well, at least he's okay. Were my pictures okay? I found out my really great husband had saved my computer. He's such a sweetie.

It took us a while before we could get in the house, and we couldn't see much stuff that night. We went back today and everything is covered in soot and smoke. All throughout the house. Not everything was burned, but everything is covered in smoke.

I guess that something electrical caught on fire, around my husband's computer system.

It looks like we will probably end up debt free from all of this, because we can take some of the money that we're going to get and pay off the car. We'll probably get money from selling the property as well. Not the way I had hoped on becoming debt free.

I hate to ask what's next. There's not much left, except for our lives and health.

Got A Fry's/Kroger's Around? Check Your Sale Paper

2008-04-05T15:03:00.000-07:00

If you've been reading my blog in the last several months, you might have noticed me posting several times about the economy. My last post was about a possible food shortage. Well, if you are interested in stocking up on the cheap, you might want to check out your local Fry's/Kroger sale paper. They have a great sale going on, where if you buy 10 items from this list (mix and match though), you get $5 back instantly. You can do this up to 3 times per transaction.

I did this today, and this is what I got for $15.66. That includes tax, and I did not use coupons:

10 cans Hormel Chili
5 boxes Betty Crocker Cake Mix
4 boxes Kroger Pop Tarts
2 packages Goldfish Crackers
6 packages Lipton Sides
3 packages Pillsbury Flaky Layers biscuits

I normally do my shopping on Mondays, but I wanted to try to do this deal twice, so I made a special trip today for this sale. On Monday I will redo this deal, but use coupons... so I should be able to do even better, because I'm sure that there are some coupons that match some of these deals.

If you want to do this deal a lot but are low on money, check on Monday or Tuesday. If they run out of their sale items they will give you a raincheck and you can do this deal next week or whenever they get them back in. I bought the last of the Lipton Sides today at my store... they may or may not restock them tonight. I did this a couple of months ago when they had Tombstone Pizza on sale... $1.50 each if you bought 9. They also had $.99/lb ground beef patties in 5 pound bags. They had sold out, but I was able to get rainchecks for them, and a few weeks later when they restocked, I was able to get 20 pounds of ground beef for $20 and 9 Tombstone pizzas for $1.50 each.

An Upcoming Famine?

2008-04-02T08:18:00.000-07:00

When I went grocery shopping Monday afternoon, I picked up 8 bags of pasta. Tomorrow when I go shopping after taking the kidlets to the library, I plan on getting a 20 pound bag of rice.

No, we're not gluttons (well, not my kids or my husband at least, and not me to that extreme), but I'm starting to get a little concerned. All that flooding going on in the midwest? It's destroying some of the crops in this country. I saw a sign at the grocery store the other day saying that weather in other parts of the world were making bananas harder to get to America, and another friend in another part of the country saw the same sign. Ever since then, the bananas that have arrived have been more bruised and have been of poorer quality, and the price went up $.20 a pound. In Asia, some of the rice harvest has been decimated and the price of rice is going up there... some countries are not going to be exporting.

The cost of food is going up all over the world, according to MSN. Food is getting more scarce everywhere.

Here is a video from CNN about the subject:

In the US, many of us depend on the grocery stores to supply us with our daily bread. What would happen if a major shock to the world's food supply hit the news today? What would happen if you turned to CNN.com and discovered that several countries had decided that instead of exporting their food, they were going to keep it inside their own countries in order to keep their citizens from starving? What if a major weather event hit our country this year and most of the crops were destroyed? All at the same time? Do you think that the grocery stores would empty pretty fast?

We've lived in a land of plenty for so long, that we think that a food shortage could never happen here. Perhaps the people of Egypt felt the same way during Joseph's day? There were seven years of bountiful harvests. You say, Joseph was storing grain away... but the people were not. The Egyptians ended up giving Joseph all their gold, then they ended up selling their livestock to Egypt, and eventually the country ended up owning everything that the Egyptians had, because they had no other way to get food but to sell all. They obviously weren't planning for famine, or they would not have had to sell everything that they owned in that manner.

I don't have the resources to gather much, but at this point I think that getting a little extra is a good idea. The Bible says that in the beginning of the tribulation, there will be famine. The rapture will take the Christians away before the tribulation, but that doesn't mean that there will be an abundance of food until that point. If I could, I'd rather be prepared as much as I could. 8 bags of pasta and 20 pounds of rice might not feed a family of 4 for very long if there was nothing else in the store to buy, but it would feed someone a little longer than 0 bags of pasta and 0 pounds of rice would.

How My Babies Got Their Names

2008-04-01T20:18:00.000-07:00

And now, for something completely unrelated... a post about how my babies got their names (it's for a contest where you can win a $50 Amazon.com gift card).

My kids are named after characters in the Dragonlance books, written by Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman. The characters are brave, good, kind, and are the kind of people that I would like them to grow up to be... mostly.

Their middle names come from my family and the Bible (the family names just happen to be in the Bible). My mother-in-law's name was used for my daughter's middle name, and my dad's middle name is my son's middle name now.

If we ever have another baby boy, we'll probably give him my Grandfather's middle name as the first name and find a Bible name for the middle name.

Both ds and dd do not have names in the top 1000 baby names, for any year, but I have actually met people that have these names before. They are obscure but nice. My grandfather's middle name is a lot more common, but it is quickly dropping out of the list of top 1000 baby names in favor of all the Jadens, Kaidens, and Aidens that are out there now.

So that's their story. If you would like to try to win the $50 Amazon.com gift card as well, you can go here and write your own story on your blog. Or if you don't want to try to win a $50 Amazon.com gift card but you have an interesting story about how you named your babies, you can leave a comment here... but I'm not giving away any prizes.

Why My Daughter Hates Math

2008-03-18T08:52:00.000-07:00

I have known that my daughter's least favorite class was math for some time now. I thought that it was too hard for her and there was too much work involved. After talking to her about it, I have discovered that instead, it is too easy and there is too much work involved.

I thought that the time might come where this would be an issue... school was incredibly easy for me as well, and I had trouble with all the "busywork" that the school gave me (aka homework). I was very bad during middle school... we had one math teacher where you corrected your own paper, so you could erase the date on yesterday's homework and turn it in the next day. If he'd write the grade on the paper in pen, you could draw a picture over the grade and turn it in again that way... I was bad, lol. Anyway, despite my aversion to homwork, I would ace the tests and even did well in a math competition that my school took part in.

I didn't know that school being too easy would be an issue when my dd was 5. I don't remember school becoming too easy until around 4th grade. I'm glad that I started Math K when my daughter was 4, because Math 1 is easy for my 5 year old. And looking ahead, Math 2 has a lot of review to it and will probably be easy too.

I told dd that I was making her repeat handwriting 1 for another year because she wasn't doing very well at it... she got very upset. She told me it was easy and she was bored with it. But she writes on her handwriting pages so sloppily. I told her that I wouldn't let her move on to handwriting 2 unless her writing improved and looked nice. Wouldn't you know, her handwriting pages improved 100% that same day.

So far, reading is not too easy. I don't think that it is a challenge any more... but so far it is not too easy with not too much busywork. But I suspect that at some point reading will get that way with her as well. We've primarily focused on phonics this year, and there's been a smattering of grammar thrown in. She already knows what a homophone is though, thanks to a VeggieTales song on the subject, and I think that once we start introducing grammar topics, she's going to get it quickly. I remember when I was in school, it seems like they introduced nouns and verbs every year... boring...

Now that I have this new revelation, it makes some things easier for me, and some things more challenging. I now know that I can skip parts of certain lessons and not feel bad about it. I don't have to make her do every single problem, every single day. School is going to take up less of the day this way. On the other hand, I have to make sure that she is getting enough work. At some point, I may want to supplement her school work by giving her extra subjects to learn or having her read more books on her own. I want to instill a work ethic in her, but I want her to have something meaningful to do.

I figured that it could come to this point eventually, because not only was I bored in school, but her dad must have been bored in school too because he has told me that he cut class a lot and still managed to get As in his schoolwork... and he was on the Dean's list at ASU last fall despite rarely studying.... but I didn't figure that this would happen at age 5 with us. I guess this is another good reason that we're homeschooling. Not only would dd get into trouble all the time because she'd be talking to her friends all day, she would also be bored with the work... especially considering that we're already one year ahead of what her peers normally would be learning.

Of Millions and Moochers...

2008-03-14T09:10:00.001-07:00

I do a lot of sweepstakes. It's been a small help while dh was looking for a job, and it's something I can do to contribute while staying at home and homeschooling. There was a discussion on a sweepstakes bulletin board on whether you would tell people if you won a large, $million+ prize.

A lot of people say they would not. They are afraid both of jealous people that would harrass them with nasty emails and PMs, but also of the myriad of strangers that would come up to them and ask them for money.

I know of 3 people who have won $100,000 or more in the lottery. One person won over a million. I wouldn't dream of asking these people for money. In one case, they set up a trust fund with the money, in another case they spent it on things like a house and a car, and in another case, my friend's dad had won the money and she was complaining that he didn't share (I had only met her dad a couple of times).

Why is it that people feel free to beg "new money" lottery winners for cash, but we wouldn't go up to our friend, who worked hard for their money and as a result ended up with a million or two in the bank, for their money? Is it because of the ease in which they received the money? I don't really get this phenomena all that much.

Most people that win millions in the lottery end up bankrupt and broke later on. Is it because they are constantly being harrassed by people that want some? Is it because by winning the money, they haven't changed their attitudes towards money and still haven't learned to live within their means (only their means have just gotten a whole lot bigger)? I'm not sure.

A couple of years ago, the winner of the HGTV dream house (which is worth millions of dollars) decided that he would live in the dream house (HGTV offers to buy it from you if you wish). He had to take a mortgage out on his dream house to pay for the taxes on it. Not only that, but he kept his old house (what was he thinking?). He partied for a while, then life happened and someone in his family got sick. Now his home is (was) being foreclosed on him and he's broke.

They are announcing the HGTV Dream House winner for this year on Sunday. If I win it, don't come asking for money. I would be selling the dream house, after going out to see it and spending the weekend there, and then here is how the money would go:

Taxes
Tithe
Build a dream house of my own (a much less expensive version)
Retirement fund
Emergency fund
Get out of debt
Buy a hybrid car for dh
College funds
If any is left over, give some away to pre-chosen charities

So don't come asking for money ;-). The money has already been spent on paper. Dh does not plan to hang around the house and play video games all day, so we will have an income coming in, but that income will be used to do fun things like provide homeschool scholarships, fun trips, and perhaps we'll be generous with Christmas presents and helping relatives. On our own terms.

The winnings are spent on paper. Fun to dream, even though they'll probably pick someone else. If we did win, I wonder if, after all of our winnings were spent, if people would come up to dh and say "can I have some of your paycheck? I know you're rich and all." You don't do that with your rich friends, why would you do that with people that have good fortune and win it?

Wake Up Call

2008-03-12T14:37:00.000-07:00

I was talking to my friend last night, who is currently out of work and looking for a job, and she was telling me about some of her job interviews. Some of the people out hiring and looking for a job are primarily looking for people who are reliable and show up on time.

What a difference a shift in the economy will do. I remember reading an article about a year or two ago... it was talking about how business owners are finding themselves having to bend over backwards to cater to the new 20somethings entering the job market. What really stood out to me was what one girl said (I'm paraphrasing):

"If I don't get what I want from this job, I'll just leave and go find another job."

Wonder how that's working for you? The official unemployment figure right now is 4.8% right now. Maybe it's just bad here in Arizona, but I can say anecdotally that things are not as bright as that might seem. My husband just got a job after being unemployed for almost 3 months, a friend of mine is looking for work after about a month of unemployment, and another friend of mine is working, but only 2 days a week, when she would like a full time job.

All 3 of these examples probably wouldn't show up on the unemployment figures. Both my husband and my friend had accepted lower-paying temporary assignments to keep some food on the table while looking for a permanent, better-paying job. My friend working 2 days a week won't show up on the unemployment statistics either, because she is just underemployed, not unemployed.

Who are the people that are going to get (and keep) the jobs when there are fewer of them to go around? The people that are going to work hard and be dependable, or the people who want their employers to bend over backwards to keep them happy?

Perhaps our sluggish economy will serve as a wake-up call to people who want to have it their way on the job. Like... say... the people who can't do math and can't figure out how to make change while working at McDonald's, so you either have to have correct change or pay with a credit/debit card (that's a recent story I heard). Or people who want special hours, or special benefits? While all that stuff might be nice if the boss can swing it, sometimes it's impractical.

If we as a country do not develop a work ethic, how can we expect to achieve the greatness that our country used to have when we did know how to work? I'm not saying that there aren't plenty of people that do know how to work, but if the article that I was reading a year or two ago is any indication, there is a large segment of the population that needs to learn. Perhaps the increased competition for jobs with people that do know how to work will be their wake up call.

One Paycheck Away...

2008-03-12T14:15:00.000-07:00

Everyone, it seems, has heard the statistic... many families are just one paycheck away from being homeless. I don't know what the percentage is, but it's a lot.

Of course, if truly desperate, I think that a lot of these families could move in with relatives. My sister-in-law and brother-in-laws did a couple of years ago, and while it wasn't fun, they survived. We could always move in with my family, or my husband's family (maybe, if they weren't too traumatized by taking in my in-laws ;)).

The other thing that this statistic doesn't keep into account is God. If you've been following my blog for a while, you might realize that it's been nearly 3 months now since my husband lost his job. We didn't have savings built up.

But we've managed to survive. In fact, the week after dh lost his job, we took off on an impromtu vacation for three weeks to stay with my family over Christmas in another state. Some people thought we were crazy for doing that, but we used dh's final paycheck to pay for that trip, and we didn't have to buy food for 3 weeks. My grandparents are getting up there, in their 70s and 80s, and had never seen their only great-grandson. We figured that it was a sign to go.

We knew at the time that dh was getting school money a few days after we came back (he's a student at Arizona State University), so we knew we wouldn't be coming back destitute. Also, very few companies are hiring in the last couple of weeks of the year. So for the past 3 months, we've been surviving by visiting family, school money, and then we got a nice large income tax return. Dh has been accepting temporary employment when he can get it, and when he's not working, unemployment has been chipping in with their generous package of $240 a week.

God has been coming through in amazing ways. And while I'm sure that he could come through some more if needed, he chose to finally give my husband a job. Dh actually turned down a temporary job offer last week... he had interviewed for one job that was to pay $35K a year, then the company called back and said that job went to someone else, but they had a temporary one for $29K a year. We knew that he had this second interview with Enterprise Rental Car coming, which will pay a lot more, and we took a gamble that he would get that job instead. Fortunately, the gamble paid off, because he caught the fat bird in the bush after letting the skinny, sickly one go.

He gets to start on Monday, and he worked it out with the temporary job that he's currently working at that he will continue working with them for the rest of the week. So things are looking good. They're hiring him on a temporary basis for now with the plans to take him full time, mainly because Enterprise has to pay a headhunter fee once they do hire him full time and doing so costs a lot of money, so they want to make sure that dh is dependable. He is, so that's not a problem.

So we survived not one paycheck missing, but 3 months of missing paychecks. When you need it, God sometimes comes through with money from unexpected sources. Not that I like tempting fate like that... we're big fans of Dave Ramsey and believe in having an emergency fund. I already have about $30 saved away in our emergency fund, but we'll start building it up to $5000... while a normal "baby" emergency fund is supposed to be about $1000, in this economy we want it a little higher just in case of another job loss. My friend has also lost 3 jobs recently, her job losses have been in the last 2 years.

Sex Offender Registry - Who Belongs?

2008-03-08T23:05:00.001-08:00

Last night, 20/20 had a special about a guy who went on the sex offender registry because at age 19 he slept with his 15 year old girlfriend. He had some legal issues over this and as a result, was not allowed to see his girlfriend until she was older. As soon as she turned 18 and they could see each other again, they got married.

While I don't really agree with 19 year olds sleeping with 15 year olds and think that it is wrong, I'm not sure if in cases like this, a lifetime sex offender registry sentence is appropriate. I know that I'm not worried about him hanging around the park and trying to pull my daughter into the back of some van for the purposes of molesting her. He's not interested in young children, he's not interested in hanging out in dark alleys waiting to attack the unsuspecting young lady walking by at night, he's just a guy who fell in love with someone who was at the time too young for him.

We had a guy on the sex offender registry that was on our street. I'm not sure if he's still there anymore, he might have died or something. He was a level 2 offender and did something with some preteens. That's all I know about him. Those are the guys that I'm worried about. I'm worried about guys that break into people's houses in the middle of the night. I'm not worried about a guy who had an underage girlfriend when he was 19 years old.

I might not go so far as to say that this guy should not have been punished at all, or that maybe putting him on the sex offender registry for a while wouldn't have been overdoing it, but perhaps we should think about reviewing certain sex offender cases after a certain length of time. Perhaps in cases where the "victim" was a consenting and willing participant, review the case in 5 years and take them off the list if it seems appropriate (like in this case). There probably should be a few more parameters, like if the victim was 12 or under they stay on there, but shouldn't we have a way to take people off the registry in certain cases?

There are other silly reasons that someone might get on the sex offender registry. Such as... a kindergartener kisses another girl in class and she claims sexual harrassment. Or a few 9 year olds are playing a game where everybody is slapping their friends on the butt. Or a teenager accidentally downloads child pornography on the computer without knowing it. I don't want to know about these people. They're not dangerous, and I don't think they belong on the sex offender registry. Review the case after a while and take them off.

Having non-dangerous people like this on the sex offender registry cheapens the whole registry. If you look at a map of sex offenders in my area, there are tons of them. Are they all dangerous criminals? How many of them do I need to worry about, and how many of them just ended up on the registry for being stupid and impulsive? I only want to know about the dangerous ones.

Unless they take him off the list, when he's 90 years old he's still going to be punished, in a way, for sleeping with his wife before they got married and because she was so young. I find that to be a little ridiculous.

It's a Blog Party!

2008-03-07T23:27:00.000-08:00

Hello! Welcome to my little stop along the party train... the blog party, that is! Part of the rules require me to introduce myself, so here goes!

I'm Brooke, and I'm a homeschooling mom to a 5 year old and a 16 month old. My husband is a currently out-of-work executive assistant, but God has been helping us through this time and we're doing okay. More than okay... this is my first blog announcement of this, but God blessed us with a really exciting trip win on Wednesday! I can't give out the details publicly until I am declared the official winner and I might even wait until I get the tickets, but I'm very excited about it and I'll be sure to post more about in the next couple of months as I can.

So as you can tell I like to win things! I also like to read, and save money! I don't shop much outside of groceries, but I love coming home with a carload of food for a pittance. I'm a big fan of Dave Ramsey too.

I blog about just about everything here. I blog about news stories, homeschooling, great sermons I hear, things I might notice when reading the Bible... whatever I feel like. I also write product reviews, but I do that for Epinions.com (they pay). I wrote my 175th review this month!

What's a party without door prizes? The party hosts, 5 Minutes for Mom, along with several other great sponsoring sites, are giving away some wonderful prizes for the party. They've asked party participating bloggers to list their favorite prizes on their party post, so here are some of the great prizes that I like:

My baby can talk DVD set - I do signing with my little boy and it's great!
$20 Amazon.com gift certificate provided by the Organized Knitting Club
Chocolate provided by The Chocolistas - Yum!

I haven't even had a chance to look at all the prizes yet but there are some really good ones, so I'll add to this post later.

Teaching degree to homeschool?

2008-03-07T15:45:00.000-08:00

A recent California decision could make it more difficult to homeschool in the state of California. A judge decided that you had to have a teaching certificate to homeschool.

To an outsider, that might sound pretty good. Doesn't a teaching certificate teach you how to educate? Don't we want our homeschool parents to do the best job possible?

I actually thought about going the teaching certificate route when I considered moving to California. But other than perhaps fulfilling a few legal requirements, a teaching certificate would not prepare anybody to homeschool. In addition, the homeschooling teacher would have to become more prepared than ANY public school teacher out there, because in order to become certified to teach a child from Kindergarten to 12th grade, you would need to receive ALL of these certifications:

Elementary School Teaching Credential
- get a bachelor's degree
- complete a multiple subject teacher preparation program, including student teaching
- pass the Reading Instruction Competence Assessment
- the initial certification lasts for 5 years, within that time period a teacher would have to also need to complete additional requirements for a clear credential, which would allow them to teach their second child

Earn a Single Subject Teaching Credential for all required California high school subjects
* English
* Mathematics
* Social Science
* Biological Sciences
* Physics
* Languages other than English or art
* Physical Education
- get a Bachelor's degree (well, at least you have one from certifying for elementary school)
- complete a single subject teacher preparation program including more student teaching
- achieve a passing score in the subject examinations for all 7 required teaching areas

There are a few other hoops that need to be jumped through, involving English proficiency (perhaps for people that might need to homeschool ESL students?), constitution courses, and computer skills, but you get the idea.

I'm sure that 90% of public school teachers do not have all those credentials, but that's how the state of California is heading. A homeschool teacher would have to spend more time jumping through hoops than she'd have to do in actual teaching time!

What would a teaching certificate get you, anyway? Would it help you learn to teach your own children? Not much. Teaching programs prepare you to teach a large group of children. It helps you manage a classroom. Is all that student teaching that a homeschool mom would have to go through help them at all when they're sitting down at the kitchen table teaching US History to their 7 year old? Probably not, unless perhaps she has 30 children in school. Not even the Duggars are close to that (some of their kids are already grown).

I am not completely opposed to having homeschool families have some sort of... education. Perhaps a child development course in the earlier grades? Maybe a course on how children learn? Perhaps a basic proficiency test. But to require someone to receive 8 different teaching credentials in order to teach 1 child (or maybe a few more) is ridiculous. Teaching credentials designed to teach someone how to manage classrooms and teach multiple children are useless in the homeschooling environment. And it's ridiculous for this judge to make the comparison. I don't need to learn how to become a mechanic to learn how to put gas in my car. Neither do I need to learn how to manage a classroom of unruly high schoolers in order to learn how to teach one (hopefully well-mannered) child of mine English.

HSLDA Needs You! Please sign their petition.

2008-03-07T15:32:00.000-08:00

If you are a homeschooler or a friend of homeschooling, please sign this petition at the Homeschool Legal Defense Association web site. Currently, the Supreme Court of California plans to publish the appellate court opinion that I commented on earlier. The ruling basically stated that it was illegal to homeschool without a teaching certification. If that happens, any court in California could use this ruling to prosecute other homeschooling families in the state.

Depublishing the opinion is what HSLDA recommends at this point.

Although I don't live in California and many people do not, the rights of homeschoolers everywhere should concern us at least a little. Please take the time to sign the petition. Thanks!

40,000 People Exposed to HIV and Hepititus C at a Medical Clinic

2008-03-03T11:11:00.000-08:00

I saw this link posted by a friend of mine in Nevada... 40,000 people who went to a medical center have been potentially exposed to HIV, Hepititus C, and all the other nasty bugs that can be spread through blood.

Evidently, reusing vials and syringes was a common practice at this clinic. Additionally, the clinic did not thoroughly clean equipment used for procedures like colonoscopies and upper GI tests.

I guess that the business could be subject to sanctions or lose its Medicare contract.

I think that perhaps stronger penalties should be applied in this case. The medical community has known about AIDS for more than 20 years now. Everybody knows that reusing syringes can spread the AIDS virus, and that there is no cure. Most people (in medicine at least, I would assume) know about Hepatitus C, and that it can lead to liver failure and death. This is not rocket science.

Personally, I think that if any of these patients ends up getting AIDS, Hepatitus C, or anything else as a result of this syringe policy, and dies, that the person responsible for giving them this disease and killing them should be charged criminally for involuntary manslaughter.

Reusing syringes in this day and age is just asking for people to die. 30 years ago... fine. People didn't know that it could kill. This is 2008. Almost everybody over the age of 10 can tell you that it is a dangerous practice (sure, they might not be able to find the United States on a map, but they do get sex education).

I only know somebody who knows somebody that may be affected by this, but this really angers me. I just don't get how people can be so careless and neglectful when it comes to something that can kill people, all in the name of saving a buck.

Why We Didn't Move To California

2008-03-01T09:06:00.001-08:00

Me and my husband met in California. I went to college in California. My husband grew up in California. But when we were living in Italy, and I was getting out of the Navy, and could move anywhere in the United States that we wanted to, we chose to move anywhere but California. Why? Because they like to harass homeschoolers.

A few years ago, it was in the news every fall. Someone would be told by their school districts that homeschooling was illegal and they were required to send their child to public school, yadda yadda. This happened for two or three years in a row. For the last couple of years it's been quiet. But now, California has a new harassment case in the courts. What a surprise.

Many people who have been keeping an eye on education know about California State Bill 777, which requires public schools to actively portray homosexuality and homosexuals in a positive light. Several family and religious advocacy groups have been encouraging people in California to pull their children out of public schools as a result.

Recently, a California judge has ruled a mother of 8 to put two of her children into public schools.

In this case, the parents were following the laws, which in the state of California require you to either a) establish a private school, b) have your child taught by an accredited teacher, or c) have your child homeschool under an umbrella school. The family in question had been using option c to homeschool. Since no laws were being broken, why are these people being singled out?

The judge says that keeping the children at home deprived them of interaction with people outside of the family, people that could help if something was amiss in the family, and the ability to develop emotionally into a broader world than their parents "cloistered setting."

None of the judge's arguments are a part of the law. He is just legislating from the bench. While it is good for kids to get out and make friends, that's not part of the law.

I like our laws here in Arizona. Tell the people that you're homeschooling when your child is old enough to go to school, teach them, and you're good. I haven't heard of any recent cases where parents are being harassed in this state either. And I do get my kids out to be with other people. This week, my daughter has played with her neighbor friend, played with her friends at church, been to Sunday School, and spent the afternoon playing with some more friends and evidently pouring sand all over her brother's hair in the process (somehow he had bucketloads of sand on his scalp yesterday). We would have been to the library as well, but my car battery needs to be replaced and so it's not working right now.

Hopefully, this case will get overturned on appeal. And hopefully, what happens in California stays in California. If not, I'm already throwing around a few alternatives if things do become hostile to homeschoolers in Arizona.

Businesses Be Good, You Never Know Who's Watching

2008-02-23T20:09:00.000-08:00

In this day, where everybody is blogging about their experiences, one embarrassing move could go viral on YouTube, places like Planet Feedback are there to take your complaints, and Mystery Shoppers abound, it's amazing how often people still get terrible service. I suppose that it would be understandable in an economic downturn where businesses are cutting costs and people are flocking to whatever is cheapest, but this has been going on for many years.

People are often quick to complain, but they don't compliment as readily. Perhaps if people complimented and spread the word about how good a company was, more people would go to the good places in favor of the bad places.

In this case, I have a compliment. I won a $100 gift certificate to Lickety Split Scrapbooks about a month ago. I won it off a blog site that gives away prizes, I think primarily from small businesses that are trying to get promotions by giving out prizes. Anyway, I think Lickety Split Scrapbooks is a small business that is probably run out of the home of some enterprising mom. I'm not sure, but that's the impression that I get.

Anyway, I won the gift certificate on a Saturday. When I won, I was given an email address from someone at the company and she was supposed to give me the coupon code to get the $100 in products. She responded that day with my coupon code, and I had the fun of ordering from her that day.

When I received the order, her products were wonderful. I've had a lot of fun with them.

Just today I had a question about a monthly page kit that I had ordered, and once again, she emailed me back... on a Saturday. Now, I don't expect someone to be sitting at her email answering business emails on a Saturday, but I'm quite impressed that she did.

Anyway, I've been an author at Epinions.com for the past 7 1/2 years. I go through periods where I don't write very much, but then there are times when I'll write a lot. Right now they have a promotion going on where for every 10 reviews you write, they'll give you $10, and if all 10 are very helpful reviews, they'll give you another $10. They also pay income share every month, which isn't a whole lot of money, but it's something. Maybe if I don't win a Wii I can buy one with the Epinions money I make in about a year.

I've been trying to think of things that I can write reviews on. I always strive to write very helpful reviews, based on the ratings that people that read your reviews give you. I end up writing quite a lot about a product, which seems to usually give me a very helpful rating, but I can't exactly write about every topic in as much depth.

They have an online stores and services category, and you can suggest an online store to be added to their database to review. While I don't exactly have the disposable income right now to shop from this great store, I figure the least that I could do for her providing me with such a great prize and having such terrific customer service is to write about my experiences. Hopefully I can drive some business her way.

For good or for bad, in this day of the internet, you never know who is watching. And lots of people love to tell others of their experiences.

Local Governments Running Out Of Money...

2008-02-23T18:56:00.001-08:00

Arizona has a law where they are supposed to keep their budget balanced. Right now, there is a $1.3 billion budget deficit, which has prompted governor Janet Napolitano to initiate a state hiring freeze.

This is not really a great surprise to me. My husband was hired by the state early last year, and before he got past his probationary period where they can't fire you without an act of legislation, they started letting go of people left and right in the office he was working in (a lot of the employees were hired under a rule that allowed them to be let go). Every day there was somebody else going, and my husband started looking for a job before they gave him his two weeks notice. To hear that they are not going to hire any new people (except in some critical areas like health care) is not a surprise.

The amount of children enrolling in Arizona schools is less than expected however, which people believe is due to the new law that punishes businesses for knowingly hiring illegal aliens, so that should help, as there is not as great a need for teachers, and they may even have to cut staff.

Another local government running out of money is the city of Vallejo, California. Reuters is reporting that they are considering filing for bankruptcy. I suppose I can see how a Southern California town could be headed for financial problems right about now. Housing prices have been through the roof for years, and I'm sure that Vallejo received a lot of money in property taxes especially, because it is a very nice town with some very nice houses (I used to live in nearby San Diego). Vallejo could have easily gotten used to receiving a certain amount of revenues in property taxes, and as property values fall, revenues fall. Also, with people spending less, there would be less money in sales taxes coming in.

I wonder how many other local governments are having trouble balancing their budgets right about now? Vallejo is not the only city in the country that has seen astronomical housing values plummet. Just recently, interest rates for bonds have gone up, which will cause more strain to some of these locations.

When your local government runs low on money, the effect can trickle down to everybody in the area. Will they have to make pay cuts? Raise taxes? Delay replacing items that wear out like fire trucks? Cut back the library hours?

I don't live in Vallejo, and as far as I know, Arizona is not making any other cutbacks that might affect me, but this could be a sign of things to come. I hope not. Hopefully the city, state, and county governments in this country will take a close look at their budget and make the proactive cutbacks needed so they can balance their budget.

After Katrina, many people were left with the feeling that you can't depend on the government for help at all times, and you need to try to be prepared. That is still a good goal, especially when the resources of government are tapped.

I'm Starting To See Why They Killed Themselves During The Great Depression...

2008-02-20T14:29:00.001-08:00

Not that I'm planning on doing that or anything... but I can understand their frustration.

Some days you can wake up with no money in your pocket and be thankful that there's nobody in the hospital, you have food in the pantry, freezer, and refrigerator, and that you're alive. Other days you wake up with total frustration over the emergency room bills from last year that you have no clue how you are ever going to come up with even money to make payments on them, the mortgage that's 20 days late and you can't pay until the federal income tax return comes back, the unemployment people that say that there's a problem with your application and are always busy no matter what time of day you call them, three job losses in the last year, two months of unemployment and no prospects in site, and five years of barely being able to afford to pay the bills because even when dh has a job, it's usually not enough to pay for luxuries like new clothes or trips to McDonald's.

The last 4 jobs my husband has had (if you don't count the emergency job at GoDaddy last year because we needed money and dh couldn't find a job and it was better than nothing) was working as an executive assistant. As in, assisting CEOs of small companies, department heads, etc. When he was employed in those jobs, money was decent. Not great, but we could pay our bills and have a little left over. We were even planning on going to Disneyland and putting dd into gymnastics classes. His first executive assistant jobs that he took were 12 years ago.

Before that, he had jobs as an Administrative Assistant. That's the step down from the Executive Assistant. It's a perfectly great job if you're 22. It's not a great job if you've been working as an Executive Assistant for 12 years.

My husband just said earlier today that he's going to start applying for Administrative Assistant Job. Might as well start applying for jobs where you wear a hat and say "Do you want fries with that?" as well. It's a good thing that they raised the minimum wage.

It's just frustrating. Last year, every time dh would lose a job, it would only take about 2 or 3 weeks to get another one. This time, it's already been 2 months, and I'm starting to feel that we'll be lucky if he has a job again in another 3 months. And Ben Bernanke says that there's no recession. Well, maybe the economy doesn't meet the technical definition of a recession, where there is a decline in the Gross Domestic Product for two successive quarters (6 months), but I'm not seeing any signs of things going great around here.

I was talking to my mom yesterday, and she says that a friend of hers has a daughter that works for Macy's, and they let go of an entire marketing department there. So evidently things aren't going well in Seattle either. I talk to people on the internet all the time that can hardly make ends meet. Yes, things in the economy are just going along swimmingly...

I normally try to be positive but sometimes it's hard to be positive all the time. Yes, God has always swept in at the very last moment and provided us with the things that we need. He helped my mother-in-law find a brand new crib for just $15 at Wal-Mart, that doesn't happen every day. But sometimes you just wish for some semblance of... stability. A job... anything that will give you the impression that the next month's mortgage will be taken care of. Nowadays I suppose not even a job is going to give stability, but it's better than no job.

I guess this must be something like how the Israelites felt while they were wandering around in the wilderness. Yes, God provided them with food every day, but there was absolutely no stability there. What if I wake up one morning and God doesn't put the manna there? Similarly, I've been thinking What if dh can't find a job and we can't make the mortgage payment? The Israelites did not see a light at the end of the tunnel, and right now, neither do I.

But then again, David spent several years living in caves and forests while being chased by King Saul. Eventually Saul was killed and he became king and things weren't so bad (until he sinned with Bathsheba, then everything went downhill from there). The Israelites wandered around in the wilderness for 40 years, but after that they had the promised land and things were good. Even my parents... my dad used to work for my grandpa, but he barely paid enough to live. I remember we were always broke. One day my dad got mad at grandpa and quit... but when he got a job after that, it was a really good job and now they're doing pretty well.

I'm just waiting for the second, happy half of the story. Even the people that lived through the Great Depression, and then World War II, did pretty well in the 1950s. If they lived through it without jumping off a skyscraper in frustration.

Michigan Suspends Student Loans -- Listen To Dave Ramsey

2008-02-19T18:16:00.000-08:00

If you are a student in college or have a family member in college right now... you may end up being affected by the nation's current credit crunch. If you live in Michigan, you may be affected next semester.

As reported on Mlive.com, Michigan's MI-LOAN program, which was often used to close the gap between loans made by the federal government and the actual cost of education, has been suspended for the time being, because the program was unable to borrow enough money needed to in turn, lend the money to it's borrowers. The cost of credit is going up... and it's quite likely that in the future, more than just student loans will be affected.

Thinking about buying a new car? On credit? While for years many people have just been able to walk to the dealership and walk away with a brand-new car for no money down, in a credit crunch, like the one that's just beginning, that might be a thing of the past... even if you have stellar credit. It will be harder to get a credit card, harder for businesses to get loans... and it's already harder for home buyers to get loans.

A tightening credit market is not entirely a bad thing. While it is a bad thing that some students might not be able to go to college without the MI-LOAN program, our country as a whole relies too much on debt. I'm a big fan of Dave Ramsey. He lives in a world where "debt is dumb, cash is king, and the paid off home mortgage replaces the BMW as the status symbol of choice". I like that. If only my husband could get a job so we could pay off our student, car, and home loans, LOL.

Living in the world of credit sacrifices tomorrow in order to live it up today. We see that in both personal finance and government finance (think national debt/trade deficit). There's absolutely no reason to finance a vacation. While it might be important to finance a trip to great-grandma Smith while she lies on her deathbed, nobody needs to borrow money to go to Disneyland. Or to buy a Hummer. But people do it every day. There are people out there paying more in car payments than we do for our home mortgage. Hope you like that car, because you may end up living in it if things go south.

The days of credit cards loaning wads of cash to everyone and their dog (and dead grandma) are probably drying up. Perhaps this means that people will start learning to live within their means? One could only hope. It's not easy to adjust to a lower income level, or an effective lower income level because there is no credit to go out and borrow, but it can be done. We took a 66% pay cut when I left the Navy and my husband went to work. I had to learn to use coupons effectively and hunt out bargains. Now it's like a game to me... see how much food you can haul home from the grocery store for the least amount of money. Today I came home with 20 pounds of ground beef, 9 Tombstone pizzas, and 1 box of Velveeta Shells and Cheese for $36. I was in bargain lover's heaven.

America as a nation tends to be a resilient nation (or at least it used to be). We will live through this credit crunch and any residual effects, and hopefully come out of it as a people much wiser and a little more thrifty.

Is Customized Education The Future?

2008-02-19T12:32:00.000-08:00

My daughter is 5, and I'm starting to teach her double-column addition. She also is progressing pretty well with her reading. Today she read a story that included the passage "One day Gray Fox and Trapper Joe rode into the camp. The men were not surprised to see Father in bed."

My daughter is not a genius. Far from it. When she was 13 months old, we had her tested for learning deficiencies. In some areas, she tested at the level of a 3 month old. In most areas, she tested right around that of a 6-9 month old. I could have pursued state help for her, but we were moving from Italy to Arizona at the time, so I never got around to it. I still have the paperwork though, more for a good laugh now than anything else.

At 26 months, I started taking her to Kindercare. She started to catch up, but she was still behind most of the other kids. While most of the other kids in her class learned their colors several months before they turned 3, I was beginning to think that she wouldn't learn her colors until after she moved into the 3 year old classroom. A couple of weeks before she turned 3, she figured out her colors.

When she was 3, she started learning her letter sounds, like all the other kids. But then at 3 1/2, we started doing something that would eventually lead her to learn adding 2 column addition and reading simple paragraphs before she left what would normally be her Kindergarten year... I started teaching her individual instruction and letting her learn more at her own pace.

A lot of kids stall at letters, numbers, shapes, and colors until they're most of the way through Kindergarten. Towards the end of Kindergarten, they often start blending and learn sight words. In your typical Public School model, it's necessary to do this. Not every kid comes to Kindergarten learning colors, shapes, numbers, and letters, and so the whole class needs to be taught all these things, even if they learned all of this back when they were 3 years old.

At four years old, I left Kindercare and my daughter was being taught full time. We went through a Kindergarten math book. We skipped past several lessons because they covered things that my daughter already knew, and I didn't see the point of reteaching it. Before she turned 5, we started the 1st Grade Math book. She wasn't really ready to read words yet, but we worked on some Now I'm Reading books... these are really great. By the time last fall arrived, she was already 30 lessons into her 1st grade math book, and was ready to start the 1st grade reading book.

So what was the difference between a 13 month old that was testing in some areas as a 3 month old, and a 5 1/2 year old getting ready to finish a year of 1st grade work? Customized education. As a homeschooling student, she is able to move ahead when she is ready, and spend extra time in areas that she has trouble on. With our current public school model, customized education isn't exactly feasable. All the kids in a particular class move at the same pace, doing the same lesson on the same day for the entire year.

In the early days of public education, children could learn at their own pace. The one-room schoolhouse would have several different grades in one room, and they would do a lot of learning at a pace that suited them. Most homeschools with more than one school-aged child use the same model today.

Although public schools currently move everybody along at the same pace, they don't necessarily have to. And sometimes they don't. When I was a kid, they had one classroom that was a grade 2/3 classroom, where the exceptionally bright 2nd grade students went to the same grade along with the 3rd graders that needed more help. We all went to different classrooms, based on levels, for our reading classes. We even had individual reading times where we read booklets at our own pace, and moved up in levels. As children get older, they might find themselves in remedial classes, gifted classes, honors classes, or AP Classes. In high school many students pick and choose their courses, and might find themselves, in their senior year, taking Calculus 1, or Algebra II. Some high schools have programs where you can be dual-enrolled at a local community college, and you might even be able to finish your associate's degree before you reach age 18, if you are motivated enough.

All those programs, for all those different classes, cost money. Today technology can make learning even more customized in a more cost-effective way. As a Senior in high school, I took Russian via satellite. Our school also offered Japanese this way. Back then, it cost $5500 per student that enrolled in these programs, but prices have probably gone down. There were only a couple of students in the class, and we took the class in a little room in the library. Our librarian made sure that we showed up, but our primary teacher was the satellite teacher that lived a couple hundred miles away. I also took an independent study course in high school, where I would write computer programs at one computer while everybody else in the room was being taught something else by my teacher. In that class, my teacher would check in with me periodically to make sure that I was learning and my work was progressing.

Public schools could make customized education possible for everyone with advances in technology and the internet. There are DVD courses, satellite courses, and internet courses that homeschool students can take. Often that can be a good choice for a parent that has several children that are at several different levels. Children can now even take public school classes in their own homes. Some of these programs have to follow a pace directed by an overseeing teacher of the whole program, but there's no reason that they can't be allowed to advance at a faster pace if they are able.

Currently, 4% of school-aged students are being homeschooled, and that is a growing number. The public schools are in competition with private schools and homeschools for students. While some (like my kids) will always stay in private and/or home schools because of the religious aspect, customized education could potentially raise interest in public schools. The public school could combine individualized instruction in reading, math, and spelling, while teaching classes like history and science as a group. They would still be able to do things like show-and-tell and art classes as a group as well. During individualized instruction, the teacher could oversee the group of students to make sure that they were not goofing off, that they were actually progressing, and answer any questions and troubleshoot technical difficulties.

While I'm not a big fan of public schools and think that there's a lot more problems than just the kids not being able to work at their own pace, using technology to customize a child's education might help a lot to boost the educational level of kids in our country. Imagine if kids that were math whizzes could start taking pre-algebra in grade 5 if they were ready. Or perhaps a child was really good with languages and was able to learn Spanish, German, and Arabic before they got out of high school. All of this could be done with the technology of today, if schools were willing to think outside of the box a little.

Squatters Flocking to Foreclosed Homes

2008-02-18T07:32:00.001-08:00

Last month I wrote about how some banks were trying to sell their foreclosed homes at auction, but they weren't getting the prices that they wanted for them, so they'd just let them sit. In a declining housing market, I thought that was a bonehead move (they're not going to get any more valuable, but today on Excite.com there was an article about squatters living in foreclosed homes. Yet another reason that the banks should be selling their foreclosure inventory rather than sitting on them.

Not all of these people occupying foreclosed homes are nice families who just got down on their luck one day and lost their places to live. Some of these vacant homes are being taken over by prostitutes and drug dealers. Just what your average suburban family wants living next door, right? One person interviewed for the article said that she was living in abandoned homes because she kept getting kicked out of shelters for violating the rules of the shelter (i.e. no drugs).

I don't have a problem with the homeless in general. I've met some very nice people who were previously homeless. My brother was once friends with some nice boys that were homeless. The church that I used to go to had homeless dinners.

However nice the homeless people are that are occupying these houses, it can't exactly be a good thing for the value of the home. Is having a crack-house operating out of a home going to make you want to jump for joy and bid up the price of a house at auction? I don't think so. Even if you get a nice person squatting in the house, there is the potential for damage to the house, as people try to keep warm by lighting fires, or have light by lighting candles. Homeless people also don't have as much access to things like curbside trash pickup. While I'm sure many clean up after themselves and don't make a mess, the likelihood is that many squatters don't pick up the trash before they move on to another home.

The sad thing is, there are more foreclosed homes in some areas than there are homeless people. In Cuyahoga County, Ohio, there is an estimated 4,000 homeless people, yet 15,000 foreclosed homes remain vacant.

So it leaves me scratching my head wondering why businesses won't sell these homes at what the market will bear for them. They're probably just being greedy, don't really want to cut their losses, but if it's greed, it's not helping them. Houses do not increase in value when they are occupied by homeless people, whether they are nice, or whether they are operating a crack house out of it. Neighborhoods do not increase in value when someone is running a prostitution ring out of a nearby abandoned house. Homes do not increase in value during a declining market. It's common sense.

Ebay Boycott Planned

2008-02-14T23:06:00.000-08:00

Ebay recently announced that it was planning on changing its rules, and a lot of people, myself included, are not too happy about it. Many people are planning a boycott of Ebay from February 11-25th.

Ebay is announcing that their fees have been reduced, but that is only a half-truth. While they are reducing their listing fees slightly, they are increasing the percentage that they take from the final purchase, which will make it more costly to the seller, not less.

Ebay is changing the feedback system as well. I've heard two conflicting reports... one person is saying that sellers won't be able to leave negative feedback for buyers, another person I heard from said that sellers won't be able to leave buyers any feedback at all. At any rate, this hurts the honest buyer by not giving them the opportunity to build up any feedback. This is the part that I am most upset about in how it may affect me, but for sellers, there is more bad news.

If a seller has below a 95% satisfaction rating on Ebay, they won't appear on the Ebay search engines. Sellers are more likely to get negative feedback under the new system, because there are some jerks that just like to complain... and since they can't get negative feedback in return, they are more likely to leave less-than-positive feedback. While this might be a good thing for bargain hunters that are willing to comb through all the auctions to find someone with 95% feedback that nobody else is bidding on, it's bad for the sellers.

If all this wasn't bad enough, if you have less than 100 feedback and you want to sell your item using Paypal, Paypal can hold your money for 21 days! This won't hurt the power-sellers, but small-time people trying to get rid of some clutter in their house are going to suffer. Who ever heard of selling something before you get paid for it? Even though you most likely will get the money eventually (as long as the buyer is honest and doesn't try to get Paypal to refund them their money because they say they are not satisfied), people with under 100 feedback would still have to pay for shipping costs out of their own pocket. If they were selling something large like a computer monitor, that could be quite a bit of money.

I have issues with Paypal anyway... Paypal has personally stolen $300 from me. If you want to read some horror stories about using Paypal, visit Paypalwarning.com. I do not use them unless I have to, and I will never give them my bank account information... the reason I lost $300 was because they decided to take it out of my bank account without my permission, froze my account, and then told me I had to send in documents that I did not have to get my money back (I was living overseas in military housing, they wanted a utility bill, and the military doesn't give you utility bills). So people are smart not to use Paypal to begin with, <100 feedback or not.

Ebay has instituted "Seller rewards"... but it's not really a great deal. Only 7 Ebay powersellers (out of all the people selling on Ebay) even qualify.

Ebay started a new policy last year where they won't let people sell teacher's editions of textbooks. They say they don't want students cheating, but you can get these same books from the manufacturer's web sites anyway... I think they're just kowtowing to the textbook manufacturers who'd rather be selling new books. People still sneak in "Parent Editions," but there aren't as many TEs for sale as there used to be. So Ebay is already less valuable to a homeschool teacher.

Hopefully a lot of people will honor this strike/boycott and perhaps Ebay will back down. They have a monopoly in the online auctions market, and they think that they can do whatever they want as a result. Well, I don't have to be their customer either.

DD's Friend is Out of the Hospital and is E-Coli Free!

2008-02-13T21:00:00.000-08:00

I posted earlier this month about my daughter's 7 year old friend Shadiyah who was in the hospital with e-coli. She ended up on kidney dialysis things were going so poorly. When I got the initial call at 6:40 in the morning that she went to the hospital, it sounded like she wasn't going to make it. She recovered much faster than the doctor's expected, and I attribute it to the power of many prayers. Shadiyah had 2 churches, 7 message boards, this blog, and a radio station prayer ministry praying for her. So thank you if you were one of them.

End of the Homeschool Year in Sight

2008-02-13T19:06:00.000-08:00

About this time of year, my dd starts getting towards the back of her textbooks, and I start to wonder when we'll be done for the year. I put together a lesson plan for the remainder of the school year this week, and it looks like we'll be done with everything (except reading) somewhere around May 21st or so. We won't be finishing the reading textbook... I'll be ending that book at the beginning of June after completing lesson 141. I doubt that I ever got to lesson 141 in any of my public school textbooks when I was in school, so I figure that's good enough. All the other subjects I will be completing the entire book. Something that we NEVER did in public school.

Since my daughter is 5, if we were in Public School, she would be in Kindergarten. I remember a little bit about Kindergarten. I remember some things that happened in Kindergarten. With my daughter this age, I am able to see differences in her life up to this point compared to my life at age 5. I'm pretty happy with how she's turning out so far.

She still likes relatively innocent TV shows like Dora The Explorer and Wonderpets. Considering what some kids her age are watching, I'm pretty happy with that. She has lost a lot of interest in Sesame Street and Calliou. She likes to play games on children's web sites.

I remember counting to 100 with my mom in Kindergarten. My dd can count to 100 as well. She can read a lot of words, and add and subtract some numbers. So I feel that academically she's doing pretty well as well.

There are some things with homeschooling that don't translate very well to the public or private schools. Such as doing schoolwork at the dining room table with your baby brother in the room. Sometimes she gets distracted from her school work and will play with him while she's supposed to be doing something else, or she'll be fiddling with a toy when she's supposed to be listening... but she's 5. That's something I suppose I can live with.

She does get the practice of having to sit quietly in a group setting... although sitting quietly has always been a challenge for her. She likes to talk with her friends, even when she's supposed to be quiet. That's another big difference between her and I. It's hard for me to find friends, but she's always meeting new friends. You could say that it's a downside to homeschooling to not be able to socialize with her friends all day every day, but it's probably a positive. She probably would get in trouble a lot in the regular schools for talking, and would probably listen less in class as well.

I remember when I was in Kindergarten I had a boyfriend. He got held back for hyperactivity, so that was the end of that. My daughter doesn't seem to have any interest for now. While I know the time will come eventually, I think that it's good that she doesn't think of boyfriends now. I think that public school often places a great importance on that, and I'm glad that my dd is away from the pressures to get involved with boys before she is actually genuinely interested.

So the school year only has about three months left and I think it has been a success. Next year there will be more work for her to do, but she'll be able to have a little more independence than she has right now as well. I'm looking forward to the break... but I'm also looking forward to this fall and seeing my daughter learn and grow more.

Our National Debt

2008-02-12T22:56:00.001-08:00

The other day, I started reading America The Broke. Even though it's four years old, it's just as relevant as ever... perhaps even more so. Me and my husband are seriously considering taking $1000 of our tax returns this year and investing in gold. It's not a new idea from this book... I asked my grandma earlier this year if she'd consider moving my inheritance from Microsoft to gold because I'm a little bit wary of what might happen to the stock market... but this book paints quite a scary picture. Especially chapter 3. If you can't afford to buy the book and your library doesn't have a copy, go down to Barnes and Noble and read just that. It's something that could happen.

I remember as a kid I didn't care very much for Ronald Reagan. I now know more about him and I respect him as a Christian, but he did a very bad thing with our national debt and deficit. Even as a kid I knew it. I was quite happy in the Clinton years when we started to have a surplus (don't get me wrong though, there were plenty of things he did wrong)... and I'm pretty nervous now as Homeland Security and the Iraq war continue to rack up the debt today.

I know more than I want to about being in debt. All we have right now is a car loan, mortgage, and a student loan... that and the medical bills from when my kids had to go to the ER last summer when we were waiting to get approved for health insurance, but there was a point in my life when I had more debt.

Back then, I was making a lot of money. The debt was manageable, but we were still trying to pay it down. We could have saved a lot more and spent a lot less, and sometimes I want to kick myself for not being more financially frugal back then. Because when I got out of the military and my husband became the breadwinner, we took a 66% pay cut. And the debt was swallowing us alive. I couldn't imagine if today we had credit card bills to pay right now, with no job and living off temporary assignments and unemployment (if it ever comes through).

After learning of Dave Ramsey, I grew to hate debt. I realized how much of our income every month was being wasted in interest. I imagined how much cash we could have freed up if only we didn't have a mountain of debt in front of us. We have since tried to keep an emergency fund... which is a good thing because almost every time we got one last year, dh would lose his job again.

This book talks a lot about our national debt. While it's not the same as personal debt, we still have to pay interest on it. A lot of interest. This book says that on average, every person in America pays $1000 a year to pay interest alone. I don't know about you, but I would rather have that money go towards something useful like roads, or even the schools... or you could always put that into the taxpayer's pockets.

The problem is, our country thinks that it can buy whatever it wants, pay for whatever it wants, and we'll be okay. It doesn't work that way. In my personal budget, I have to make choices as to whether I buy clothes, take the kids to Jamba Juice, or buy something else. I can't buy everything that I want. And neither can the government. Our politicians think that they can, but we pay for it... and will continue to pay for it until it gets fixed.

We want to pay for an expensive war, give senior citizens social security, give medical help in the forms of Medicare and Medicaid (which I currently receive), pay for the roads, pay for education, pay for welfare, prisons, farm subsidies, and on and on. Many of these are noble things. Who doesn't want to help the poor? Who doesn't want to help the elderly? But the problem is, we can't afford everything that we want to fund.

This book is a quick read and I'm just starting the last couple of chapters where it gives suggestions on what we can do to improve the situation, but right now, this book is scary. It's no wonder that foreigners are buying up our assets, when we have this massive debt. It's no wonder that so many other countries of the world hold us in contempt. We're like some lazy cousin who is mooching off everybody else, promising to pay them back later, while they are working hard and loaning money to us.

We used to be a nation that loaned to other nations. Even the Bible says that you should be one who lends to others, and not one who borrows. We used to be more self-reliant as a people. Now we're a people that builds houses on barrier islands known for hurricanes, and expect the government to bail us out when it gets destroyed. Now lenders get the government to bail them out, after they gave out bad loans that they probably shouldn't have been giving out in the first place.

Perhaps one day something will happen to make us a nation of people that rely on ourselves and try to foresee circumstances in which we might need to be prepared. Until then, wanna buy some gold? Just in case we end up with runaway inflation... you never know. Wouldn't be a bad idea to stock up that pantry with food, just in case the prices start skyrocketing as well.

Mitt Romney Drops Out?

2008-02-07T13:13:00.000-08:00

This election is getting stranger and stranger... the headline on foxnews.com right now reads "Mitt Quits Race". Mitt Romney is dropping out of the presidential race, which is quite shocking to me. Although I do find the subtitle under it a little wrong... "Road Clear For McCain To Capture GOP Nod."

Perhaps not. With a 3-way race between McCain, Romney, and Huckabee (I know Ron Paul is in it but he's not in it to win it, he's probably just in to get his message out), I think that McCain probably would have been the clear winner. BUT... there's a lot of conservatives that don't see McCain as a conservative and wouldn't consider voting for him. I personally see little difference between him and Hilary Clinton.

A lot of people don't see Huckabee as a conservative either, and I suppose that he isn't in some areas. But there's no doubt that he's a social conservative.

Anyway, with the choice now between McCain and not-McCain, it will be interesting to see how things turn out. I happen to like Huckabee myself, so I'm rooting for the not-McCain. I don't think that in a two-way race, McCain is necessarily the victor. 60% of voters have been voting not-McCain already... they've just been split as to whether they liked Romney or Huckabee.

Should be interesting to see what goes on in the next primary.

Should It Be A Secret When Cows are Hormone-Free?

2008-02-07T11:01:00.000-08:00

I saw this article on MSN.com this morning regarding hormone-free cows:

Ben & Jerry's in food-safety fight

Evidently, Montesanto doesn't want you to know whether the cows that make the milk you drink (or in this case, eat in ice cream) are pumped up with recombinant bovine growth hormone, or rBGH. They say that rBGH is perfectly safe, and cows that use this hormone make milk that is just as safe as cows that do not.

Shouldn't the consumer be the one to decide? If we think that it is safe, then we'll buy the milk. If we don't we won't. I remember when Nutrasweet came out, and they used to put out these commercials that Nutrasweet was so great because it came from nature, or something like that. More than 20 years later, many people have serious doubts about its safety (do a google search on Nutrasweet, or even look it up on YouTube). I personally have discovered that it makes my memory go, and I avoid it when at all possible. Since I discovered the connection between Nutrasweet and my memory a few years ago, I've had about 2 sodas that had Nutrasweet in them, and I love soda.

There are a lot of people out there that will pay a premium for organic. They'll pay extra for organic carrots, hormone-free meat, and I've even talked to some people who buy a share in a cow so they can have non-pasteurized milk. I can't afford too much of that myself, but I think that people should have the right to choose what they will and will not eat, and part of that choice includes whether I want pesticides sprayed on my food, AND whether I want to drink milk that comes from a cow that took hormones.

A representative from Montesanto said "We need to stand up for our technology or we're going to lose it." It's not a matter of technology and whether you would lose it or not. It's a matter of whether rBGH is something that the consumer wants or not. Just because the technology exists doesn't mean that you should use it. We have the technology to make atomic bombs, but that doesn't mean we want to use them. We have the technology to clone human embryos, but that doesn't mean that we should do it. It's a little like comparing apples to oranges, but a technology should be used (or not used) based on it's own merits. And people should decide whether they want to go along with it or not.

I don't know whether I'd avoid these cow's milk or not. I can't really afford milk as it is, which is why we get WIC. But if I had the choice between hormone milk and not hormone milk, I'll choose not hormone milk every time. Which is what Montesanto fears... BUT we should have the choice anyway. And there will be people that can't afford the non-hormone milk if it's more expensive anyway.

Maybe Montesanto should stick to making stain repellent for carpets.

For now, I'm glad to know that Ben & Jerry's make ice cream from the non-hormone cows. Makes me more likely to choose their ice cream.

Happy Super Tuesday?

2008-02-05T16:59:00.000-08:00

Well, today is Super Tuesday, and the country is waiting for the results to come in. My state is voting, and although this is an open primary state, today is not a primary, it is a "Presidential Preference Election". Since I refuse to be identified as a Republican or a Democrat (I identify myself with the Constitution Party), I was not eligible to vote today. Which is a shame because I really like Huckabee, but I guess it wouldn't matter much since John McCain is going to win in Arizona anyway.

The media seems to think that John McCain and Hilary Clinton seem to have the lock on the nominations at this point. Oh boy. Could we have picked anybody worse? I suppose that Giuliani probably would have been worse, but not by much.

So I suppose that unless something miraculous happens tonight, we'll be stuck for another 4 years with the illegal immigration mess, because I don't think that either Clinton or McCain will do anything about it. Not sure what McCain's take on the issue is, but if Hilary wins we'll probably be stuck getting taxed through the nose to pay for crummy health care coverage.

I'm not sure how we got into this situation. Are these really the best two people that we have that were running for president? I suppose that the Democrats had some pretty slim pickings, but there were plenty of better candidates on the Republican side. Mitt Romney, Duncan Hunter, Fred Thompson, and my favorite, Huckabee, were all far more conservative in many areas. I'm not really a true fan of any of those, but McCain? Blech. I know he comes from my state and all, but he might as well be a Democrat with all the bills he tries to pass.

Why is it that we're always stuck with two choices that are nearly identical? Last election we had Curious George running against John Kerry... I voted third party because out of the two of them, it didn't really matter to me who would win... both of them, in my opinion, would run the county equally poorly. I know so many people that were huge Bush backers several years ago that can't stand him now.

If these are the two candidates that we end up with, I just may end up voting Constitution party again. I know they won't win, but if the choice is between McCain and Clinton, does it really matter who wins? Not really. So I'll just vote for who I truly like, even if they don't have a chance. I heard rumors that one of the leaders from the Minutemen were running under the Constitution party. I can vote for them.

Another thing about voting third party... some people say that voting third party takes away votes from somebody who otherwise might win. When I voted Constitution party, people said I was taking votes away from Curious George. Really? You can't take away votes from someone that you'd never consider voting for in the first place. If I were given the opportunity to vote today, I would have voted for Huckabee. Does that mean that I took a vote away from Mitt Romney? No, because I wouldn't have voted for him.

I've heard several News commentary shows say that whoever the Republican candidate is, the Republicans will "rally around" him. Do you really think so? I guess my comment doesn't hold too much weight since I'm not a Republican, but I certainly wouldn't rally around John McCain. How about rallying around None Of The Above? It's too bad that the Unity08 movement ran out of money, perhaps they could have picked a decent candidate.

Maybe we'll see some surprises tonight. I hope so.

The Fragility Of Life

2008-02-01T23:04:00.001-08:00

Good news, it looks like my daughter's friend/husband's friend's daughter is going to be okay. Her kidneys did stop working, but today they installed a catheter so she can do dialysis. She might be in the hospital for up to 2 weeks, but it's certainly better than the alternative.

This day has shown me how fragile this existence we call life is. One day your daughter's friend is just a normal 7 year old, the next day she has bloody diarrhea, and a week later you get a call at 6:40 in the morning with what sounds like you're going to need a miracle to ever see her again. We just take it for granted that tomorrow will come... that your child will grow up and get married someday (if the rapture doesn't happen first)... that when we visit friends and relatives that live far away, they'll be okay and we'll see them a year or two later when we return.

Fortunately, this little girl will probably be okay. But it just makes me think about how no tomorrow is ever guaranteed. How everything can fall apart in one moment.

My cousin died of cancer when he was 7. One day he was a playful little 5 year old boy, and then he was limping. Turned out to be cancer. We thought that he was going to be in remission and was going to be healthy enough for a transplant, the next thing you know, he was gone.

If You're Up Reading This, Please Pray

2008-02-01T05:57:00.001-08:00

My husband's friend's daughter and one of my daughter's good friends has e-coli. She hasn't been able to keep down food for about a week now. Tonight things went really downhill and we just got a call saying that she's on dialysis and her body is shutting down.

We really need your prayers. Thank you. Her name is Shadiyah.

The Housing Market of Cards

2008-01-28T07:50:00.000-08:00

The news of the day is that new home sales showed their worst performance in 16 years in 2007. This is only in addition to all the mortgage defaults and tumbling prices for homes going on.

60 Minutes did a report on mortgages last night, focusing on Stockton, California, where a lot of the skyrocketing housing prices started. They had a map showing houses that were starting the foreclosure process, houses that had gone into foreclosure, and houses that went up for auction but did not sell. The map was full of blue and red dots.

So it's evident that a lot of people are going through hard times. I've talked to so many people from around the country lately who have said that they are having trouble making ends meet, they need to save on groceries, etc. A lot of them are homeschoolers so they generally try to get by on one income or have a small part-time income from home, but one person's story really caught my eye - her family was a two-income family, and her husband was considering looking for a second job because they still were having trouble... they were already behind on their mortgage payments and were having trouble paying their electric bill and the like. Made me feel fortunate.

A lot of factors have contributed to this. People were getting adjustable rate mortgages, figuring that they'd refinance later when the rates went up (but the party stopped before they had the chance). The costs of the most basic things you need to survive, like food, gas to get to work, and energy to heat your home, have continued to go up, while wages have pretty much stayed the same. Skyrocketing property values have added to the problem by increasing property taxes. I know that our property taxes have gone up $200 a month in the 2 years that we have lived here, and our house is only worth $150,000.

There is one thing that disturbs me in all this, and one thing that I think is just plain ridiculous.

The disturbing thing to me is the people that can afford to pay for their homes, yet they are walking away from their obligations because their home is worth less than their mortgage. I've signed one of those mortgages (and the billion pieces of paper that go along with it) and I didn't see anywhere in there that you can just decide to stop paying if your home goes down in value, rather than up like you expected it to. Sometimes that happens, that's the risk that you take when you buy a house. If you think your house is overvalued at the price they want for it... don't buy it. It's a little like the stock market... if they are selling shares of a stock at more than they are worth, it is foolish to buy.

A lot of people lost their houses during the Great Depression, but it was not their choice. They saw home prices fall too, but their mortgages were also remaining the same, just as they are today. Unfortunately, a lot of people were losing their jobs and were given pay cuts and/or a reduction in working hours, so many couldn't continue to pay for their mortgage. People like the couple on 60 Minutes, who decided to stop paying for their house because it was worth less than their mortgage, probably existed, but there was a lot more shame to not paying your debts back then, so most didn't default of their own free will.

The other thing that is bothering me is the number of houses that the banks can't sell at auction, and therefore are just sitting there. ??? What are the banks waiting for, for housing prices to go up again? It makes just about as much sense as spraying a field of crops with poison so that nobody will eat it, when there are starving people out there. Perhaps they should consider auctioning them at whatever market value will pay for them, rather than holding on to them in the hopes that they will be worth more later. 60 Minutes showed some people being given a tour around foreclosed homes... one of the tour guides said something like "the price has been recently reduced, now it's only" and then he gave a price that was slightly over $300,000. That's why they have so many homes up for auction that won't sell, if they're still expecting people to pay that.

Of course the one downside of selling the houses, no matter what the price, is that the price that people are willing to pay might turn out to be a lot less than what the houses around it are supposedly "worth," which will just cause their property values to go down, which will make more people voluntarily give up their homes, which will cause property values to go down perhaps some more. Which was a cycle that occurred during the 1930s, when one house sold for a ridiculously low price that was below the mortgages on the other houses, the other houses were automatically worth less.

Some of the biggest losers in this whole mess are those people that decided to invest in REITs (Real Estate Investment Trusts). Anybody remember a while back where you'd see these advertisements about investing in real estate, but you didn't have to even buy a house? They saw quite a loss in 2007. If you had them, hopefully you got out when things were still good.

We're probably in for more rocky days to come. But it's probably needed to balance out the insanity that has been going on for so long. Not that balancing is fun.

Render Unto Caesar

2008-01-27T13:09:00.000-08:00

Every once in a while, you go to church or you're reading your Bible and you run into something that makes you say "wow!" Today was one of those days.

Most people that have any sort of rudimentary Christian background have probably heard the phrase "render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's." And lots of people know that Jesus was talking to some of the religious people about whether they should pay tribute, or taxes, to the government. There are some people out there that like to argue that you shouldn't pay taxes, but they tend to be on the fringe and a lot of them are in jail.

What reason does Jesus give for knowing that the coins belong to Caesar's? Whose image is on the coins? Caesar's. Because Caesar's image is on the coins, we are to render them unto Caesar.

But what if you put that into context Genesis 1:27?

So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.

~ Genesis 1:27

Whose image are we in? God's. So doesn't that mean that we should listen to him... or render unto God's the things which are God's?

Just something interesting that I saw today.

Hope In Troubled Times?

2008-01-26T22:55:00.000-08:00

When I think about the major news stories of the day, it makes me want to pull my hair out. The world situation with Iran, North Korea, China, and Russia showing their muscle could be a potential headache waiting to happen. There's the whole situation with Mexico (maybe we should add them to the above list), where not only do we have their citizens demanding to use our schools and health care, armed military officials cross our border on occasion and we do nothing about it. Then there's the economy, which who knows whether it will get better or it will get worse, but the "econonomic stimulus" package is going to weaken our dollar even further... and right now even a lot of people with jobs are having trouble trying to make ends meet. Aaaack!

Oh yeah, and there's that little thing about the Constitution... sometimes it seems like it isn't worth the paper it's written on any more. Maybe it's more like a cool artifact rather than a document that our country actually lives by.

It seems like the Lord should be coming down at any minute to come and rapture us all out at any second. But can we really know the date and time? Gregory of Tours wrote in his The History of the Franks in the 500's that he thought that the signs of biblical prophecy were being fulfilled and they were in the last days even then.

But a history book that I'm currently reading is bringing me hope. I'm currently reading The Forgotten Man which discusses the Great Depression. It seems like they were going through a lot of what we are going through right now.

Well, not the Mexicans on the border thing, but they did have immigration. They had Hitler coming to power in Germany. Mussolini was doing his thing in Italy. Stalin was remaking Russia in the model of communism. Of course we all know what the result was of that... World War II.

Economically, things were dismal. People were losing their houses right and left because they couldn't afford to make house payments. Jobs were laying off workers. People were finding it hard to make ends meet. Much more so than is happening now. Times were rough for a lot of people.

This is the stuff that most people learn in their classes in school, if they go to a decent school and actually pay attention. But by reading this book, I'm seeing that there are a lot more similarities than I had ever known.

Government was taking away freedoms, and people were wondering if Roosevelt was going to be a dictator and the Constitution was turning out to be a meaningless historical document. Andrew Mellon, a very wealthy guy who now has all sorts of things named after him, was being taken to court by the government for not paying his taxes... even though at the time he had taken certain tax deductions, they were perfectly legal. The government was pushing power companies out of business with their Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). The government even passed a law saying that customers who went to a butcher could not even choose the chicken that they ate for dinner that night. I've never gone to a butcher and told them to kill a live chicken... that's a little foreign to me... but not having the choice as to what product I purchased at the store seems quite un-American to me as well.

Things seemed pretty bleak at the time. And I'm sure things were rough. The people that lived through the depression went right from economic hardship to the hardship of a world war. But after all that... people seemed to do okay in the 1950s.

I don't have a magic crystal ball that can tell me if the economy is going to get worse or better, if any of the threatening countries will rear their ugly head and the world erupts into a full-blown World War III, and I can't tell you if Islam will try to impose Sharia law in places that were once thought of as Westernized or even Christian. But I do believe that we can learn from history... and what I think can be learned from this portion of history is that even when things seem to be at their worst, and all hope is gone... things can miraculously emerge better than ever.

Obama and the "Race Card"

2008-01-26T07:38:00.000-08:00

This is not a commentary on the politics of the Democratic party of of Barak Obama... I'm not even really sure what he stands for, other than "change" anyway. But rather an observation about race.

Why is it that the Clinton campaign seemed to bring up the "race card" first? Is it perhaps because Barak Obama is not really black? Let me further explain.

Barak Obama's father is from Kenya, so he is part black. But his mother is a white-girl from Kansas. To say that Barak Obama is black is a slap in the face to the 50% of his genetic makeup that did not come from Africa. He is every much a white person as he is a black person... he is biracial.

My two children are biracial. I never refer to them as black. They are not. If I need to refer to them by description, I'll say something like "he's the little tan boy over there" or "my daughter is the little tan girl." Tan is a color that describes their color.

They are not black... in fact, they have more European DNA in them than African DNA. I'm about as European as they come... every single one of my ancestors have been in America for five generations, and at that point, some of them immigrated here from Germany in the 1800s. Some of my ancestors have been here in America for 15 generations... they came from England to Jamestown in the 1600s. I've been an amateur genealogist for about 15 years, and I know that I'm about as European as they come. One of my ancestors did come from Italy in the 1100s, lol. But that's still Europe. My husband, on the other hand, is NOT as African as they come. He does have some French DNA floating around him. His family comes from Louisiana, and that's where the French comes in. So to say that my children are black is a lie... they are more white, more European, than they are African.

In Barak Obama's case, his father comes from Kenya, so he might not have any European blood on his father's side. But he is 50% white.

Sometimes I wonder, what are we, back in the slave days? Because back then, if your great-great grandpa was black, and every other member of your family was white, you'd still be considered black. That's not black, that's mostly white.

I know that it's easier for most of the media, and probably for many Americans, to see the world in terms of strictly black and white. But it's not that way, especially now. Even those little demographic boxes that ask you what race you are are starting to catch up. 15 years ago, most of them would say "check one", but now, more increasingly, they're starting to say "check all that apply". Which is how it should be... if you're going to bring race into the equation at all.

The country might be fawning all over themselves, congratulating themselves on how enlightened they are to have a "black" person running for president, but they have a long way to come. Maybe when we stop forcing people into boxes that they only half-belong in, we can start congratulating ourselves.

The Best Explanation of Tithing I've Ever Heard

2008-01-24T14:42:00.000-08:00

January is always tithing month at my old church. While every service included a mini-sermon on tithing "if you don't tithe God can't bless you", a special emphasis is placed on tithing in January. Every single Sunday school lesson, and a few church sermons, are devoted to the topic. Have you ever tried to explain tithing to a Kindergartener? I have. My Kindergarten-aged child still doesn't really know the difference between a dollar and a penny... and we've been counting money nearly every day since October!

If you were having any problems in your life, my old church would ask "do you tithe?" It doesn't matter if your income is $3000 a month and your bills and necessities total $3100 a month, the solution to all your money problems is to tithe.

Every week you'd hear testimonials about how people were in debt and they started tithing, and a year later, they're magically debt-free. I'm sure that their stories are true, the people with the testimonials were trustworthy people. You hear over and over again "everybody can afford to tithe, because it's the FIRST 10% that goes to the Lord."

Okay, that's fine and good, I'm sure that I can give the first 10%. Even on the whopping $1500 we made this month, I could give $150 of that to the Lord. Then you have the mortgage of $1000, and I'm left with $350. My electric bill was $150 this month, so that leaves me with $200 to pay for gas, food, water, sewer, trash, the car payment, etc. It doesn't really work out, does it?

This month is an extreme example, but the $3000 for $3100 in bills is not. I'm sure that God could be a magic money machine that could provide me with an extra $444, every single month, so I can afford to tithe when ends don't meet by normal means, and I'm sure that there are some people out there that have a lot of faith that can make it work... but I'm not one of them. I see the Dave Ramsey budget laid out in front of me and I shake my head and say "it's not going to work."

We were talking about tithing at my new church, which is not something that my new pastor normally talks about. He said that the one time he did try preaching about tithing, someone had a heart attack or something like that, so he took it as a sign that he shouldn't preach any more about tithing, lol. But we had a Sunday school topic on it, so he gave a really good explanation, of what to do when your income doesn't cover, or just barely covers, necessary expenses like food, transportation to get to work and church, your bills, and a place to live?

He said that sometimes people get off the path, and then they want to start doing the right thing, but it's not always something that one can do overnight. Getting to the point where you're living beyond your means is one of those things. Or in our case, we were once living within our means, but our income was slashed, but our bills did not decrease. When we realize that we are living beyond our means, we need to repent of it, and then do whatever we can to get to the point where we can tithe. It would probably be a worse testimony to the Lord if we decided to tithe all of a sudden and stopped paying our mortgage as a result.

Not that we should go out, when we can't afford to tithe, and buy a new set of cookware or some fancy gizmo that we see on television when we can't tithe. We need to do what we can to tithe before we start buying those extras that we don't need.

It makes a lot of sense to me. I know miracles happen... my nephew is having a birthday party on Tuesday, and we really didn't have enough money to buy a gift for him. What do you know, the $25 Target gift card that I won back in November showed up today, so I can get a box of diapers and a present, without spending any money.

Maybe I should believe that God will show up on my doorstep magically with $1500, but unfortunately, I don't.

Low Income Misconceptions?

2008-01-23T23:47:00.000-08:00

I just got my power bill today and was shocked. $150 in the middle of the winter? And we were gone for 2 1/2 weeks of that time. Yikes! They are also planning another rate hike in the middle of the summer... just when everybody in Arizona is at their peak power consumption. Ouch.

Everything is so expensive. We're current on all our bills right now, but with the horrible economic luck that we've been having in the past year, I'm starting to hope that we don't end up losing our house. That's probably not something that will happen, but it's not like the overall picture for America is doing so well either. Dh has a current temp assignment for the next 2 weeks, but it doesn't pay well, and after that, who knows?

So I saw that the power company has a program to help people pay for their electricity. We fit the income guidelines... for the past 2 months we're under the income cutoff by $1000 a month. Yikes! The cutoff is at 150% of the poverty level.

We should be over the cutoff if/when dh gets a permanent job. If you're the praying type, he really is hoping to get a job as a 911 operator. He'd be great at the job... he doesn't have much compassion so he could remain fairly calm when taking just about any sort of phone call. I don't mean the compassion thing to sound negative, he'll admit it to your face.

So I guess that in our current life circumstances, we'd be considered to be low-income. But that's all just a number. I don't feel like I'm low income. And perhaps that's because there's a lot of stereotypes that come with the label. So I guess that this post is to perhaps dispel some misconceptions...

- You don't have to be uneducated to have a low income. I have a college degree and dh is working on one.

- Your income doesn't necessarily determine what you have. My mom used to work at the food bank where I grew up... she worked there for years. She would complain when people would come down to the food bank, yet still buy lottery tickets or play Bingo. While both are probably stupid ways of spending your money and are definitely not the best thing to do with your money if you have to go to the food bank, would doing either once a year be such a bad thing? I guess that depends on your view of gambling.

But we have lots of clothes and both of my kids have tons of toys. My parents are generous at Christmas. I have a whole closet full of clothes. Some I've had since high school, some I bought when I was in the military or in college, I won some, and I've bought a few things in the past few years.

- Income doesn't necessarily go up. In our case it's gone down. In 2003 it was a choice because we believe that homeschooling is important and being there for your kids is more important than money. Which is why I chose to leave a job that paid me more than $6000 a month (plus all the other military benefits) to go work at Kindercare for $7 an hour.

- Your income doesn't mean that you're lazy (or conversely, hard working). Ever work at McDonald's? That can be a tough job, but it doesn't exactly pay a whole lot. I'm sure that picking lettuce is not a walk in the park either. My husband goes to school full time, and usually works full time. Sometimes people just get unlucky. I read the book Nickel and Dimed last year... most of the people that the author worked with worked very hard.

I suppose we may end up with $14 knocked off our power bill in a couple of months if we continue to hit rotten financial luck. Woo. And I get a little help paying for my kids to go to the doctor. But this should all be temporary... even if our country does go into a recession/depression, countries always come out eventually. But the way that some people would have you thinking, anybody who falls into some rotten luck should be sterilized to prevent them from having any more kids, they should never buy fancy name brand food (although often this is the food you can get for free or dirt cheap if you buy it on sale with a coupon), and you should always drive an old beater, even if you know nothing about cars and having a reliable car to get to work is important to keeping a job.

I once knew a guy that was a Lieutenant in the Navy Reserves who lived in a car. That was his choice. Income is just a number... and that's about all it necessarily says.

35 Years of Murder - Roe v. Wade

2008-01-22T15:32:00.000-08:00

This morning as I was driving my daughter to the dentist, I heard on the radio that this is the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. I looked it up and it is the 35th anniversary of the Supreme Court's decision.

Back when the law was created, we didn't have all the fancy ultrasound machines that we do now. I suppose that the ignorance of the day could have been excused to some degree, but it's hard to look at today's ultrasound pictures and not think that a fetus is just as alive as a baby. I had the opportunity to go see Bodyworlds 3 last year, and they have a fetal display... it is amazing how defined a baby's features are even at 8 weeks gestation.

In the last 35 years, millions of people have been killed for various reasons. Some were raped, some were forced to by their parents, some had health problems, some didn't want to tell their parents. Whatever the reason, the way that we react to the preborn has changed over the years.

A girl can choose to have an abortion, or she can choose to have an abortion and make the father pay child support. Over the years, the argument of father's rights has developed... why can't the father choose to renounce the rights to the baby and choose to not pay child support? We seem to think that it's "my body, my choice" but it doesn't extend to "my wallet, my choice" for the fathers. I'm against abortion, but it does seem a little unfair to the guys. If abortion wasn't available, as it used to be, there wouldn't be this argument.

Adopting a baby is not an easy thing to do. If you want to adopt a healthy infant of the same race as you (and you happen to be white), you can get on a waiting list and hope and pray that you'll get your chance someday... after shelling out thousands to tens of thousands of dollars. I wasn't alive before the Roe v. Wade decision, but somehow I doubt that there was a dearth of healthy babies waiting to be adopted. When teen girls used to get pregnant, often they would go away to "visit an aunt" or something for several months, and come back after having the child and adopting it out.

A lot of people that are in favor of abortion use the argument that "there are so many unwanted children in the world... abortion just keeps another unwanted baby from being born." While it's true that there are many unwanted children out there, most of them are not healthy newborns, which is what a lot of the parents facing infertility are trying to adopt. Many of them can't any more, because they can't afford it.

Adoption nowadays just seems to be something that most people don't even really consider. You either want the baby and you have it, or you don't want the baby and you abort it. Not many people have the courage any more to go through with a pregnancy just to give it to some strangers that really want to have a child but can't.

Premarital sex is something that is easier to hide from your parents. The availability of birth control aside, if you get pregnant nowadays, you can just "get rid of it" by going to Planned Parenthood, and your parents never have to know in many cases.

Babies with birth defects (or suspected birth defects) are less likely to be born. You can have tests to screen them out. Sometimes the tests are wrong, but even if the test wasn't wrong, is it right to say that you don't want a baby to live even if it is not perfect?

There are truly cases where the mother's life is in danger and there is absolutely no way that the mother can survive without an abortion. Tubal pregnancies, for example. There is no way to save the baby's life, because the pregnancy in the fallopian tubes would cause both the mom and the baby to die. But there's not much controversy surrounding that.

Neither is there much controversy on doctors using abortion procedures, the D&C, D&E, or D&X, in cases where the baby has died and there is an inevitable miscarriage. Doctors that don't perform those procedures on living babies will perform them when the mother is waiting to miscarry. It can be a lifesaving procedure in these cases (without this procedure people sometimes could bleed to death)... I happen to be one person whose life was saved twice by this procedure, even though I was hoping that I could miscarry naturally.

There is also the abortion drug out there, RU-486, which was not available 35 years ago. It's not exactly the quick fix that some doctors would let you think... but then again, it is not necessarily an evil drug, for the same reason that the D&C procedure is not always used to kill babies. Sometimes people lose their babies and are going to miscarry anyway... this drug can be used to help people in those circumstances in the same way a D&C could.

It would be nice to live in a world where abortion was outlawed once again. I'm not suggesting that we have a "too bad, so sad" attitude towards those who find themselves pregnant with an unwanted baby, I think that we should help them in any way that we could. It would be nice if more resources were diverted to pro-life crisis pregnancy centers that would help teen moms (or older moms, if needed) with resources, medical care, or even a home to stay at if their parents kick them out of the house.

I really love my babies... the one that is 5 1/2 and had her first two baby teeth removed today, and the one that likes to climb on our computer cases (and anything else he can find). It's hard to believe that they started out smaller than a poppy seed. It's hard to believe that someone would want to end the life of a baby that would eventually grow into a sweet little newborn or toddler if just fed and cared for.

I used to think that abortion was okay for some people, but not for me. But then I saw the Silent Scream video. Don't click on the link if you are a kid or are squeamish, however (there's nothing on the main page that is offensive).

Hope that we don't have another 35 years (and 35 million babies) of abortion in this country. :-(

Stock Markets Worldwide Drop - What To Do?

2008-01-21T15:58:00.000-08:00

My husband called me up to let me know that several stock markets worldwide have been dropping today. I guess that's not really a surprise. Our markets were closed for Martin Luther King day.

Is there anything that you can do in times of economic trouble? Especially if things continue to get worse?

1) Become a miser. My husband even suggested that he wanted to do this last week. We're going to spend as little as we can. I even ordered a Pizza Hut gift card with some of my Mypoints, because I like to take dd to Pizza Hut once a month to use her Book-It coupons, and even the $5 I end up spending for me and ds is too much for me with this new spirit of miserliness.

2) Save as much as possible. That may be difficult, but if you can find ways to cut back with newfound miserliness, you might be able to save a little. Every little bit helps. If you're getting a tax refund, save it or pay off bills with it. If President Bush gives you some money, save it or pay off bills. My dh is trying to save up at least $5000 in case he loses his job... which will be a little tough because his temp-to-hire assignment ended abruptly a few minutes ago, so once again, we have no income coming in to save. But once he does get a job, we're saving it.

3) Trust God. No matter how bad things get, God is always there in control. Nothing can happen, good or bad, without him knowing. Even hard times are usually temporary. Even the Great Depression ended... eventually. If you don't know God, now might be a good to get to know him. We all have done bad things, like lying, or stealing (even taking a pencil from work is wrong), or hating someone else (Jesus said that was murder in your heart). That keeps us from God. Jesus has paid the penalty for our wrongdoings by dying on the cross... if you trust him.

4) Make yourself indispensable as an employee. Make it so that you are so important, your job won't want to let you go. Learn new job related things.

Hopefully things will turn around... but if not, be prepared for a bumpy ride ahead.

MLK and Kids

2008-01-21T15:30:00.000-08:00

Happy Martin Luther King Day!

It's a pretty normal day around here. The baby is pinching his big sister and pulling her hair (as normal), we had school earlier today (although I made reading a little easier for her), and dh is off at work. He doesn't have school but he's going to his friends after work to build a computer, so he might as well be going to school after work.

I tried to explain Martin Luther King day to my 5 year old, but she really wasn't interested. I don't even really think she knows the difference between black people and white people... she knows that people come in lots of different colors, something that she can see in her own family, but she doesn't really know too much about race.

So how do you explain that at one time some people had to drink out of different water fountains and sit at the back of the bus?

She's just starting to get slavery. She knows that a slave is "a person that works for another person" and that they don't get paid. We've discussed that the Israelites were slaves in Egypt, and have touched on slavery in the colonies, because we're studying colonial America this year. But a 5 year old doesn't really understand much more.

I guess that it's good that we live in a world where kids don't know a thing about racism. I'm sure that time will come eventually, but it hasn't yet and in some ways that is good.

Working Grandmas

2008-01-19T12:07:00.000-08:00

I was just entering a contest to try to win a trip to China, and I started wondering about who would go with me. My mom would probably be interested in going, but then who would I keep the kids with? Their other grandma works. Perhaps their aunt.

But it's a darn shame that their other grandma works. She's already worked for most of her adult life, and has even retired from her career. Her husband makes her work... he wasn't happy with his management job with one company, so he went to work (from the bottom) for another company, made his way to night manager, and now he's unhappy again. Plus they listened to some really stupid financial advice and took out a mortgage when they could have paid off their house entirely.

I remember what a good time I had as a kid when my parents would go away, either for a week or a weekend, and I went to stay at Grandma's house. What kid doesn't like to stay with Grandma? Everything is different there... and grandmas always have toys around. Even my grandma still has toys in her house for her great-grandchildren when they visit.

Even my grandpa was pretty cool. He's pretty crotchety right now (I guess that's what you get when you're 82 and still work full time, although he does so out of choice), but back when I was a kid, Grandpa was really cool because he would give us sodas.

I loved going to Grandma's house. It didn't matter which grandparent, I would have a great time at both of them.

Nowadays, for many kids, staying at Grandma's house isn't the option that it used to be. A lot of grandmas work full time. Many of them will retire, I'm sure, but during their grandchildren's youngest years, when it's the most fun to go and stay with Grandma, they're working. It's a little sad.

Both of my grandmas did work... some. My Grandma W. made pies for this café in our little town. Grandma S. made (and still does, I think) wedding, bridesmaid's, and prom dresses, as well as wedding and sheet cakes. Grandma W. did actually have to go into the café to make the pies, but it only took a little time out of her morning. Grandma S. does all of her work in the home, although sometimes she goes and delivers the cakes somewhere. But being a home entrepreneur is a lot different than getting up and going to work full time somewhere, which is what a lot of grandmas are doing nowadays.

A lot of people nowadays think that they need two incomes to make it. I'm sure that in some circumstances that is the case... especially if they have a lot of debt. The working grandma is just an extension of that. Which is a little sad, because Grandma's house is great fun for little kids.

Why Does Our Government Encourage Stupidity?

2008-01-19T07:35:00.000-08:00

My Excite News today said that our lovely president wants to give everybody tax rebates. The hope is that we'll take the $800-$1600 that they want to give us and go hit the mall.

As much as I'd really like to have a wii and some new clothes, that's the last thing I'm going to be doing with my money right now.

My husband lost his job 3 times last year. Not because he was goofing off or anything, but he just happened to get hired into jobs that didn't have their contracts removed or had to make cutbacks. With all indications of America's economic bubble bursting at some point, we don't expect things to get better soon. If we get the money, we're saving it. Maybe we'll invest it in gold or some other precious metal.

A couple of days ago, my husband suggested to me something that I never would have imagined that he'd say "let's live like misers." He loves to spend. However, he wants to be prepared in case he loses his job. So our goal is to save up $5000 in case he loses his job again.

It seems as if America has lost all touch with common sense. If you get into debt or spend money that you don't have, eventually you're going to have to pay it back. Visiting my family over Christmas really showed me the effect of being smart with money, and living within one's means, or being stupid. The people that got into debt when I was younger sure had fun then, but they're not exactly that well off any more.

Dave Ramsey is a pretty smart guy when it comes to money. He has a lot of common sense. He has a few baby steps that he suggests that people use when they are trying to work their way to financial independence:

Step 1: save up a baby emergency fund
He suggests that you save up $1000 as a baby emergency fund, in case the car breaks down, the refrigerator stops working, or something unexpected like that comes up. $1000 isn't going to help a whole lot, however, if you lose your job. We're trying to save up $5000 right now... actually we're trying to save up $6000, $5000 in case of a job loss, $1000 in case the car breaks down.

Step 2: pay off all debts except the house
We have a student loan and a car loan that we need to pay off. Oh, and some medical bills when we had to go to the ER last summer (3 times) when dh didn't have a job. So that's what we have to pay off after we save up our emergency/job loss fund. You pay interest on all of your debts, so it's a good idea to get them paid off. Once you have no debt, you have more free money every month. Yay!

Step 4: save up 3-6 months of expenses
This is where Dave suggests that you save up in case of a job loss. We're doing more of step 4 in step 1, primarily because the threat of a job loss seems a little more looming than even the refrigerator breaking down. But we'll probably add to our savings here.

I think that step 5 is pay off the house, but it could be save up for retirement or save for your kid's college funds. If I ever get to these steps I'd be all over it ;).

I don't see anywhere in here the instruction to "go out and waste money at the mall." That might postpone the inevitable downturn in the economy, but it's going to happen. You can borrow and live beyond your means forever, even if you are a government. We can try to put our head in the sand and pretend that when our economy grows enough, we will pay off the national debt, but that's just like somebody who goes out and charges up their credit cards saying to themselves "I'll pay it off when I get a raise." When that raise comes, they just want to spend more money on other things.

If we get these tax rebates, I'm saving mine. I'm going to need it whenever the bubble finally bursts. And if everybody else rushing off to the mall or going on vacation ends up prolonging the inevitable, then I guess that gives me a little bit longer to prepare.

The Mexicans Don't Want Their Illegals Back... Boo Hoo

2008-01-16T20:45:00.000-08:00

Our state recently passed a law stating that companies who knowingly hire illegal immigrants will have their business licenses revoked. Despite the fact that it is currently being challenged in the courts, the law has had the effect of driving some illegal immigrants out of the state.

Now some Sonoran officials from Mexico are complaining that the new law will hurt the state because of the jobless Mexicans returning to their hometowns.

Could somebody call the Waaaaambulance?

There are several issues here. First, the people that are leaving Arizona and returning to Mexico were not supposed to be here in the first place. Secondly, the people returning are citizens of Mexico, not of the US. They belong in Mexico. Thirdly, this law passed last summer, so people have had at least six months to prepare. In addition, not all of the illegal immigrants are returning to Mexico. Some of them are going to other states; others weren't Mexican illegal immigrants, and are returning to other countries (sometimes it's easy to forget that there are illegal immigrants from countries other than Mexico, but they come from all countries).

Arizona has contributed to the education, health care, social services, and police services of illegal immigrants for far too long. I've waited in the emergency room for 4 hours before waiting to be seen by a doctor... and I can guarantee that many of the people ahead of me were not legally here. I'm sorry if Mexico feels that it can not provide for their own citizens, but what makes them think that we want to?

If the Mexican citizens returning to their own country are hard-working, then in due time they will once again be contributing to the Mexican economy. Mexico is a country with natural resources, and if it's not a place where someone can be an entrepreneur of sorts, then perhaps Mexico should take care of some of the corruption in their government, take a look at how things are run, and allow enterprising people to find ways to make their own money. Other than selling trinkets in tourist areas. Not that selling trinkets can't be an honorable way to make a living, just that there are a lot of them and there should be other options.

I realize that there will be some adjustments to be made. On the part of both Mexico and the state of Arizona. But it can not go on as it has been.

I remember watching a program in the last day or two where they were talking about how we have had recession avoided and put off for years because of low interest rates. It's just like someone who can't pay off their credit cards, so they take out a home equity loan to pay off the credit cards, then end up ringing up their credit card bills again. At some point there is a breaking point. We can't continue to give incentives for illegal immigrants to come live in our state. Our economy can't support it. Especially with the way that the economic future is looking. We either face the music now or face worse music later.

I'm not trying to be heartless, but there are always consequences to pay for your actions. If not now, later. Mexico is partially culpable in the whole illegal immigration mess. They have turned a blind eye to it for quite some time. Unfortunately, if an influx of Mexicans returning home is going to cause a problem, that is just the price that Mexico must pay for not attempting to stop, and even winking at and promoting, the exit of their citizens into our country for so long.

Highest Inflation in 17 Years

2008-01-16T07:53:00.000-08:00

Woke up this morning to see an Excite article to see that inflation is the highest that it's been in 17 years.

Of interest to note, is that the two items that rose the highest last year were energy and food costs. Energy costs were up 17.4 percent, and food costs were up 4.1 percent. This is the highest that it's been since 1990.

The report, issued by the Labor Department, said that inflation outside energy and food costs were tame. I don't know about you, but energy and food costs just happen to be the two things in my budget that are not fixed, and there's only so far you can squeeze them.

Now I'm pretty good with the food costs, and there were several weeks last year that I got by with spending $25 for the week (out of necessity), and that included diapers, but that's primarily because I always shop for things when they are sale and I always have a surplus because I buy this way. People still have to drive to work and back though.

What does a typical person's budget look like? Not the numbers, but whether something is fixed or not. I'll give a breakdown of my budget, and I guess I may be semi-typical, other than I don't have credit cards:

Mortgage - fixed
Car payment - fixed
Student loan - fixed
Trash - fixed, but subject to increase
Sewer - variable
Water - variable
Internet - fixed, rates locked in for now
Vonage (phone) - fixed, but subject to increase
DirecTV - fixed, but subject to increase
Electricity - variable
Gas - variable
Food - variable

I may have other things but I can't think of them. The three largest items in my budget, outside of the mortgage and car payment, are variable. There's not much you can do to decrease them. And they are also the three items that went up the most in 2007.

Because I'm pretty budget conscious when it comes to groceries, I really notice when the prices go up. Surprisingly, around here, the price of ground beef has remained fairly stable, I can still get that for $2 a pound not on sale. There was even one week last year when they had beef on sale for $1 a pound and I was able to buy 20 pounds or so. Milk has gone up, however, as well as soda, processed foods like chili, bread... I even saw a higher price for frozen vegetables two weeks ago.

The question that I'm wondering is... why is the federal reserve keeping interest rates so low? Haven't they been saying for at least 10 years that inflation has not been a problem and that keeping interest rates low was promoting economic growth while keeping inflation down? Since inflation is going up, shouldn't they raise interest rates to try to curb it?

When my parents bought their home in the 1970s, they were lucky because they didn't have to pay a double digit interest rate on their mortgage. Interest rates that high are unheard of today. But maybe they should be closer than that, rather than sitting at the ridiculous lows that they've been at for nearly the past decade.

There is one downside, of course, to raising the interest rates... all those people in adjustable rate mortgages that are already crunched in their budgets. With skyrocketing home values, property taxes have gone up to keep pace with it... I know that our property taxes have gone up nearly $200 a month in the last 2 years... and we don't have an ARM. So I get that raising the interest rates will eventually cause more people to not be able to afford their homes and have to foreclose.

However, the whole point of an adjustable rate mortgage is that it is adjustable. There are usually limits on how much and how fast and ARM can adjust, but the whole point is that they do adjust. They are usually a very stupid idea, because you never know what the future can hold. Everything can seem rosy one minute, but anything can happen... especially when it comes to the economy.

If they don't raise the interest rates and inflation for the things you have to buy continues to skyrocket, everybody will suffer... including the people with ARMs. If they do raise interest rates, maybe the government can keep the dollar from freefalling and maybe we can curb inflation. Course raising interest rates will probably send the housing market into a tailspin and create a lot of foreclosures.

What a choice. Inflation and a weakening dollar, or the housing market going into a tailspin. Tough call.

What's Wrong With California? - Thermostat Control

2008-01-14T18:15:00.000-08:00

I used to live in California, and I know a lot of great people that live there. I know an excellent church in San Diego... if you ever happen to be there on a Sunday, be sure to check out Lighthouse Baptist Church. I love Disneyland... but there is a reason that I don't live there any more.

For several years in a row (although I didn't hear anything in the last couple of years), in the fall I'd always hear about some poor homeschool teacher who was threatened with losing their kids or something because they were homeschooling. While California is a state where it is legal to homeschool (as it is in every state), for a while there, they were harassing homeschoolers left and right. They're also the state where Across The Centuries - that oh-so-lovely Islamic-friendly textbook where you get to assume a Moslem name, pray to Allah and play jihad games - is part of the standard curriculum in many schools. And let's not forget that you have to promote homosexuality in the public school curriculum now.

But the newest news from California doesn't involve any attempts to conform the populace into homosexual Moslems... this time they want to invite the 1984 lifestyle into your living room. Specifically when it comes to temperature.

Next month, the California legislature is expected to approve a measure that would force all new homes, or homes undergoing significant remodeling, to install thermostats that could be controlled via radio frequency. The whole point is to allow the power company to change the temperature of your house based on the available power. They want to be able to control how hot or cold it is in your house.

Now I like to conserve electricity more than anyone. At least in the summer. Forget a temperature of 72 degrees... in the summer I like to keep the thermostat somewhere between 84 and 87 degrees. I just hate to see high power bills, and I don't mind the heat. In the winter though, I like to keep it around 74 during the day because I get cold easily... 70 at night.

I wonder how this radio controlled frequency device would work on cold-blooded peons like me. Maybe they'll turn my thermostat up to 90 if they are running low on power... which I guess might be okay... but then when they get power back, are they going to try to turn it back down to 75 or so? Are they going to try to freeze me out of my house? Give me a much larger power bill than I want because they turn the temperature down lower than I want? Well, they won't with me because I don't live in California, but maybe I have another heat-twin in the Golden State... will they make her suffer?

I suppose in the winter they'd be less likely to take over temperature controls because the rolling blackouts usually occur in the summer when it's hot.

Despite the fact that it won't affect me - yet... there's that whole poem of "they went after the smokers, but since I wasn't a smoker... I said nothing .... then they came after me, and there was no one left to speak up." What kind of a society do we live in where Californians will stand for this? Maybe someone has a medical problem where they need it to be a certain temperature? I know that my husband has a problem with getting too cold because it can flare up his sickle cell anemia. Or if we look at it from the bigger picture... what business is it of California's if I use my money on air conditioning or if I spend it all on Haagen-Daaz? Or beer? Or if I send it all to Mexico (wait, I guess they're okay with that last one).

I wrote just a few days ago that I believe that our country is headed for difficult economic times... very difficult ones. I wonder what will happen if/when that happens. I read the other day about a kid during the depression who was made fun of because of being dirty... mom had to choose between buying a bar of soap or a dozen eggs, and she chose to buy food. What would we as a populace do if struck in a depression now? Are they going to let people that can't afford their sewer bills any more to dig an outhouse in their backyard? Will they take children away from their parents because they can't afford soap? Of course, everybody else would be in the same boat, so the government probably wouldn't want to take away the soapless children because then they'd have to pay someone to take care of them. But who knows, our government hasn't made a lot of sense lately in a lot of areas.

But back to California. Wouldn't it be a whole lot better if California made the temperature control program voluntary instead of mandating it? You could provide incentives like giving them a slight discount on their electric rates when the system was activated. Couldn't the government just ask Californians to conserve when there was a power crunch? Maybe suggest that they turn their thermostats up to 100 or something?

I realize that rolling blackouts are a problem in California during the summer... but reducing rolling blackouts by telling them what temperature they can keep their homes at is worse than the problem itself.

A Different Sort of Post: Weirdness

2008-01-12T01:30:00.000-08:00

Julie has asked me to write about 5 things that are weird about me. So I guess that I might, even though this is slightly out of character from what I normally write on my blog:

1) I do my grocery list with a spreadsheet that I carry to the store. I use the Grocery Game to find out what the best deals at the store are, then I enter the item name, store's price, the price that I'm paying after a coupon, the quantity of the item I'm buying, and the coupon packet that I can find the coupon in. After putting together the spreadsheet, I gather my stack of coupon booklets, which I keep sorted by date, and cut out coupons. I then take my coupons and spreadsheet and shop! BTW, my spreadsheet saved me $15 this week. I expected my grocery bill to be around $52 and they charget me $67. Even with my substitutions and tax, I suspected that something was wrong with a difference that great, and it turns out that they didn't give me the Proctor and Gamble rebate that I was supposed to give and charged me full price for the meat I bought. I brought it up to the attention of the store employees before leaving the store and got a $15 refund.

2) I'm a stay at home mom, but I'm also something of an entrepreneur. I do a lot of sweepstakes, that netted me over $760 worth of prizes in the last half of 2007, and I also am a member of a survey site that periodically sends me surveys and pay me cash for it. I also keep track of my sweeping wins (and expenses) on a spreadsheet.

3) I read nonfiction for fun. I like to read history from a Biblical worldview. Right now I'm reading Gregory of Tour's History of the Franks for the second time (read it first in college).

4) I have a college degree, and spent several years in the Navy after college. Ended up as a Lieutenant with 10 years that counted for pay... if you look at the military pay charts, it pays quite well. Well, with all that, I still chose to work in a day care for $7 an hour for 2 years. I worked there because we needed a little extra money and at the day care I could keep a better eye on my daughter. I currently am a homeschool teacher.

5) I like to learn languages, but I'm only completely fluent in English. I can get by in several other languages though. I've studied German, Russian, Spanish, Italian, and a smidgen of French, Arabic, and New Testament Greek. Oh, and I'm trying to teach my 14 month old American Sign Language (ASL). So far he's signed eat, doggy, milk, and I think ball, yes, and more to me.

There you have it. Some weird things about me. I'm not going to tag anyone else for the same reason that I never forward chain letters or chain emails.

Is Our Country Headed Toward Economic Ruin?

2008-01-12T00:26:00.001-08:00

I wrote in my last post that my dh didn't have a job... but this article is not about our economic picture. I'm happy to say that 1 week upon arriving back from my parent's house for our unexpected Christmas break, my husband has found a temp-to-hire position working at the headquarters of a large grocery chain around here. I'm really proud of him and his skills. When I left the military 4 years ago and my husband took over as breadwinner, it took him over a month to find a job. He lost 3 jobs last year, and each time it has taken him 1 or 2 weeks to find another. Every time he has gone on an interview and blown away the competition. I guess that working hard and improving your skills pays off, eventually. And he's still going to college in the evenings (he's taking 12 units this upcoming semester... completely amazing). The pay for his new job isn't spectacular for a permanent job, but it's pretty good for a temp position... and usually you can expect to get a raise when a company hires a temp permanently.

I'm worried, however, about this country as a whole. It's something that both me and my husband have been predicting for years. Just like the housing bubble. Any logical person could have looked at skyrocketing housing prices years ago and could have told you that it couldn't last forever. When you have to have an income of $90k a year and put down well over $100k to buy a house, something has to give. Just like the dot-com bubble. Remember in the early days of the web, when companies made their money from advertisements, and those companies paying the advertising were also making money that way? I personally made a little pocket change just from putting advertisements on my computer. But it was all a big Ponzi scheme, and eventually, it had to end.

I'm so serious about this, that I called up my grandma today and asked if she would consider moving my inheritance that she currently has invested in Microsoft into gold. She said that she'd consider it. I really do not have confidence in the near-term future of the stock market... near term being the next 5 years, probably less. I believe that in the grand scheme of things... as in... 30-40 years from now, stocks are still a good investment, but I fear that we are headed for an economic downturn of 1930s proportions. I'm doing my best to prepare for it, both mentally and educationally.

Glenn Beck has been talking about the economy a lot recently, which I find interesting, but what he says really only confirms what I already believe. He recommended the book "The Forgotten Man" which I checked out from the Greater Phoenix Digital Library and started reading. It's about the great depression. I'm not sure how things will play out, but I'm trying to learn a little bit about hyperinflation as well... boy that would be fun to go through... NOT.

This article was interesting. Forget the fact that whoever wrote the article is completely out of touch with reality (who seems to think that feeling the middle class squeeze means shopping at Whole Foods and buying cases of Pelligrino)... read some of the accompanying message board postings. You probably won't want to read them all because it goes on for 123 pages at last count, but it truly enlightening. There are SO MANY stories of people who are having difficulty making ends meet, and only a few people that don't feel that way.

I guess a lot of people charged their Christmases this year. Tsk, tsk. I guess that it is okay if you are able to pay off that bill this month, but a lot of people won't be. Unfortunately, the good times on credit cards only last for so long. The income limits might rise for a while, but eventually you have to pay. Like the Bible says, there is pleasure in sin for a season. But is debt a sin? The Bible says that the borrower is slave to the lender.

Interestingly, I found this passage in the Bible as I finished reading the Bible last year (well, I actually finished it on January 1st, but who cares about one extra day):

Woe to him who increases what is not his! Until when, then, shall he load the pledges on himself?
Shall not those who strike you rise up suddenly, and those who shake you awake, and you become a prize to them?
Because you have stripped many nations, all the rest of the people shall strip you; because of men's blood, and the violence of the land, of the city, and of all who dwell in it.
Woe to him who robs evil booty for his house, to set his nest on high, to be delivered from the hand of evil!
You have planned shame to your house, to make an end of many people, and are sinning in your soul.

~ Habbakkuk 2:6b-10
Isn't that what we as a country are doing? And have been doing? The very act of buying on credit is increasing what is not ours! And we as a nation have been stripping other nations for years! Just think of all the Chinese sweatshop workers that labor away to make our clothes and toys. They don't get much out of the deal. They have a job, sure, but not in any sort of condition that we would work in.

It is rather difficult and in some cases impossible to get by without any debt in this country... we had to take out a car loan last year after our old one decided to die; neither of us knows anything about cars so we need something reliable for dh to get to work in. We do have a mortgage, although we tried to go the more modest route, and we have student loans... mine is towards the end of getting paid off, and dh's loans have saved us through some job losses. But should we really be charging Christmas gifts on credit? Or vacations? Things that are unnecessary.

If people stop buying, the economy is going to slow down. That is what we hear. But guess what? People can't spend beyond their means forever! Eventually people have to pay or they lose it.

While on vacation, I got to see many of my relatives. It is interesting to see how your relatives turn out. They're the one set of people, other than your closest friends, that you can say that you've known for decades.

I remember visiting my Aunt and Uncles, a long time ago, and they lived in a little trailer on a piece of property that didn't have electricity. They had it hooked up to a generator. Later on, they lived in a motor home for a while. They've had their share of difficulties, but guess where they live today? A very nice, gorgeous home.

Another Aunt of mine, when I was younger, I thought that they were rich. Always having huge birthday parties, redoing their homes with nice things, getting great presents for their kids. Found out later they were financing and getting home equity loans. They eventually lost their house. Currently my Aunt lives in a trailer.

My parents didn't have much money when I was growing up. We went for years without health insurance because we couldn't afford it. My grandma would always bring home clothes from the Navy Thrift Shop and my mom would make me try them on twice a year. They weren't always the latest fashions, and around 3rd grade or so I didn't really like them. My mom would save money through coupons and refunding, and that's how we funded my first trip to Disneyland in the 4th grade. It was my first time out of state. They're doing pretty well now. They paid off their home, then decided to buy a Harley for dad, remodel the kitchen, and replace the windows in the house, so they took out a small mortgage again for that. But they're doing okay. They were able to take us out to eat a couple of times, weren't worried about how much propane we used in our "guest house" while there (we stayed in their trailer), don't obsess over coupons like they used to, and don't really worry too much over the cost of things like when the VCR goes out all of a sudden. They can afford it.

Too many people nowadays live like my Aunt and overspend, rather than my other Aunt and Uncle, and my parents, who don't look like they have too much initially, but since they're not overspending, end out a lot better in the end. And that, unfortunately, is why our country may be headed for a huge wake up call.

If everybody paid their fair share of the national debt today, we'd all have to cough up over $30,000. That's for every mom, every dad, every grandpa, and every baby. It would be over $120,000 just for the people in my house. That's what my home mortgage is. But that's what we all owe, and it's getting bigger every day. I just can't see this going on forever.

Despite this, I think that we personally (as in, my immediate family consisting of me, dh, dd and ds) can make it through. Dh has a lot of skills, I've learned a lot about coupons and frugality, and we're mentally prepared to hold on in the bumpy years that may lie ahead. More importantly, I know that no matter how things get down here, there is always a better day ahead. And I've read history. I know that times get better eventually. That is, unless we're headed toward the last days spoken of in Revelation... and even they get better after Jesus comes back and begins the millennial kingdom. I also know that historically, we live lives that even kings and queens wouldn't even dream of back in the middle ages. And most people in Iraq would love to trade places with us. It's all a matter of perspective.

Merry Christmas!

2007-12-25T01:39:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas to all! I hope that everybody is doing well this holiday.

For some of this, this year has been a difficult one. I know people who are in the middle of divorce, trying to save their marriage from divorce, have lost loved ones this year, and have lost their jobs in the past couple of weeks (we happen to be one of the latter). But no matter who you are, and especially if you have the resources to read this message, we can all be thankful for this day.

I'm very lucky to have a great family. While some of my extended family might bicker, and perhaps this might even keep some of them away from family gatherings this year, I have great parents that are generous with gifts. My kids will wake up to some nice surprises tomorrow, even though I only spent $5 on gifts for the entire family this year.

But I really did get a lot for that $5. I love to talk about my sweet deals and bargains, so this is what I got. For $5, I managed to get...

A bath toy for my ds (a boat that floats around in the water)
A "My Mommy's Tote" book/toy for ds
A "Phonics 4 Babies" DVD for ds
A Cootie game for dd
A dot-to-dot book with CD-ROM for dd
2 AMC Movie passes for dh

I bought the AMC Movie Passes with Coke Rewards Points, bought the bath toy, dot-to-dots, and Cootie game with Toys R Us bucks from the McDonald's Monopoly game (and the $5 that I spent), and I won the My Mommy's Tote and Phonics 4 Babies DVD. Not too bad!

There will be kids that don't have generous grandparents, that don't have parents that can magically turn $5 into $68 worth of gifts, that won't have very much this year. Some people might wake up without much food to eat. While that is a shame, they also have something to be thankful for this Christmas season.

No matter what your circumstance, there is one thing that all people can remember and be thankful for. The reason that we have Christmas in the first place. The little baby that was born... not really on December 25th, but we celebrate the birthday of Jesus Christ on this day. His birth was special not only because he was God, but because of what he did for us.

It would be a shame for someone to celebrate Christmas without knowing why the baby Jesus came to this Earth. He came because none of us are perfect. We've all lied. Even my toddler knows how to lie. We've all stolen, taken things that don't belong to us. We've all had a burning, passionate anger towards someone... God sees that sort of hatred towards another person as murder... we're all murderers at heart. So many of us have taken the Lord's name in vain, and that is offensive to God. We've all fallen short of God's high standards... every one of those shortcomings I listed above, those bad things, is sin. A person who has even one sin on their record can not go to Heaven, but must go to a place of eternal torment called hell.

But the good news of Christmas day, is that 2007 or so years ago, Jesus came to this Earth to give us hope. He came to live just like we did, in order to die a horrific death so that our sins could be forgiven, and we would have the hope of one day entering Heaven... if we only ask for forgiveness and repent (or turn away from) our sins.

Everyone, no matter how good or bad this holiday season has been, can have this hope. That is one thing we can all be thankful for on this very special day of the year.

Merry Christmas!

Fleeing For Your Rights: Homeschooling In America

2007-12-21T00:41:00.000-08:00

I know what the Bible says: one day, the whole world will be taken over by the one-world government, ruled by the iron hand of the Antichrist. It will be a very scary time for Christians, who will find themselves without their heads if they get caught.

I've also seen people in other countries that have it bad. Like in countries where being a Christian is likely to get you killed. Where it's illegal to own a Bible. I've even seen the story in Germany where a lady was getting her kids taken away because the government decided to drag out an old law from the days of Hitler making homeschooling illegal.

But what I've seen today, in America, really surprised me. Not because it happened, but because it has happened in America.

A lady has actually had to flee her home in order to prevent her kids from going to public school. Not due to abuse or neglect, but because an over-zealous judge decided that public school is what was best for her children.

It all started earlier this year, when the school district lost some paperwork that Denise Mafi sent in to homeschool her children. Evidently, the school district lost the paperwork, and her children were found to be truant. She has been homeschooling for nine years.

The judge in her case had the audacity to state that "homeschooling fails 100% of the time." I guess that depends on what your idea of success is, considering that Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Albert Einstein all had homeschooling backgrounds. The real motive behind his idea of a failure rate is quite transparent, since it has been proven that homeschooled children, on average, do better academically than their public school peers: the judge wants the children to receive the "social benefits" that come along with a public-school education... gems like indoctrination, groupthing, growing up to believe that your parents are idiots and God is either not real or his name is Allah... that sort of thing. The failure rate that this judge is referring to is a failure to produce the sheeple that the public school system is designed to create.

For Denise Mafi's judge, nothing but a full-fledged public school education is good enough. Not a private school. Not public school at home (she already was doing that)... but having her children taken by force from home every day and sent to a regular old public school. Anybody else in this country would at least have the choice of sending their children to private school.

This story is far from over... she has recently fled her home in order to escape the public school system. I'm sure that we have not heard the last of this case, so please keep her in your prayers.

Me and my husband have talked about what we would do when/if the government ever comes to try to take away our rights. I don't blame her for fleeing. We would go too. We already have discussed where we will go (which I will not disclose here). It is a sad day when this happens in America. Having to flee your home to protect your family is something that you associate with the Jews in Nazi Germany, not homeschoolers in the "land of the free."

Jury Duty For Life?

2007-12-20T01:01:00.000-08:00

We recently took a last minute trip to go visit my family in Washington. My mom has recently been called to jury duty, and as a result, she has to call in every evening to see if she has to go in to serve the next day.

I was laughing with her about the time that the state of Washington called me to jury duty when I was living in Italy... at the time I hadn't lived, voted, or held a driver's license in the state for over 10 years.

She mentioned that they once again called me to jury duty... at this point I haven't lived, voted, or held a driver's license in this state for 15 years.

Whenever they call me to jury duty, she has to call the jury duty people and tell them that I haven't lived in this state in over a decade, that I live in Arizona now, and can not serve on a jury here.

Which is fine... except what happens when she's not around any more to call up the jury duty guys to tell them I'm not around?

It seems as if the powers that be in Washington State never cull their jury duty rolls, and if you lived in this state once upon a time, they can call you up for jury duty indefinitely, even if you haven't lived in this state for decades.

Skipping out on jury duty is a serious offense... or so I've been led to believe. Even though I don't live here, and don't intend to live here again, I still do visit every once in a while. My brother lives here. My niece lives here. Of course, my parents live here as well. Right now, my mom takes care of my jury duty excuses, but it's not likely that she'll be around 50 years from now to handle them for me. I can just imagine this scenario... 40 years from now, I'm visiting my brother and family in Washington State. I'm driving a car and get pulled over for speeding...

Police officer: Let me see your license

Me: here you go (hand him my license)

(Police officer goes back to check his database. Comes back.)

Police officer: Did you know that there is a warrant out for your arrest? It seems that you skipped out on jury duty 5 years ago.

Me: But I haven't even lived in this state in 55 years!

Police officer: That's not my concern. I'm going to have to take you in.

Perhaps that is a ridiculous scenario... is it? I haven't lived in this state in over 15 years and I'm still getting jury duty notices, should I have any expectation that it will ever end? Since I left this country, I have held driver's licenses and voted in two different states, and I have lived in 5 states and 2 different countries. Does this state expect you to be a juror for life if you live here for any amount of time?

My mom takes care of my jury duty summons right now, but I have to wonder about all the other people who have lived in this state once upon a time, that don't have any relatives left that can take care of any jury duty notices. There have to be thousands of people that once lived and voted here, that have moved away and don't have relatives at their former address to care for things. What happens to them when they get jury summons and don't show up? They may return for a vacation or to visit friends... what happens when one of them gets caught for skipping a jury summons that they have no knowledge of because they lived out of state at the time?

The jury people told my mom that I have to write to them personally to get taken off the jury rolls. Who to write to, I don't know... and how was I supposed to know anyway that I was supposed to write to someone to get taken off the jury rolls? It's not like they tell you these things when you register to vote or get a driver's license... is there any fine print that says "should you ever decide to move, please write to xxxxx to be removed from the jury rolls, or we may call you up to serve for all eternity." I never saw anything like that.

I bet that they are still calling up dead people to serve on juries here. My grandma died in 1990... perhaps she is still getting jury summons. That was only 17 years ago... probably.

Makes me wonder if they are sending jury summons to me in my old addresses in California. I was registered to vote in two different counties there. I could be getting called up for trials in Los Angeles County and San Diego County all the time and not even know about it. I last lived there about 8 years ago, so anything is possible.

So anyway... my thought for the day is... if you are someone in charge of calling up people for a jury... if they haven't lived in the state in say... 5 years or so... and are living and voting somewhere else... perhaps you should stop trying to get them to serve on juries? And maybe double check to see if the people that died 5 years or more are taken off as well. If you are in Washington state, there is a death index that is updated regularly that can help you take the dead people off your rolls. And please stop calling me to jury duty when I haven't lived in your state in 15 years! Not unless you're willing to spring for plane tickets.

Religion on the College Campus

2007-12-10T00:21:00.000-08:00

I think that Bill O'Reilly has it right when he says that we are in the midst of a culture war. In these days where everybody's lives are so compartmentalized, and it is so easy for us to spend time only with people that are a lot like us, it's hard to tell who is winning. Some companies try to take polls, but those are hard to gauge for accuracy sometimes... statistics can often say crazy things. So most of what you end up with is anecdotal evidence.

I've heard anecdotal evidence about professors who believe in creationism rather than evolution to lose their jobs, grants, fellowships, etc. The same goes for scientists. But rarely does a difference of religion affect my life, other than perhaps a lost friendship or somebody thinking I'm a little silly for my beliefs.

It's hard to tell whether someone's religious views can affect their grades sometimes. I once wrote a paper about pet microchip implants, and its relationship to the prophesied mark of the beast, back in the 90s for a college class (back before most people had heard about pet microchipping) and I didn't get a very good grade on it... but with such a subjective subject as English, it is hard to tell whether I was marked down due to the content of the paper, or whether it was just a lousy paper. On rare occasions, it is obvious that someone's grades are affected by their religion.

Recently, my husband got to experience this. He is currently a college student, and is taking two religion classes. The professor obviously does not share his religious views. My husband studies hard in the classes, and for the most part has done well. However, there is one question on his final exam that he knows will be marked wrong due to his religious beliefs:

True or False: Allah and the God of the Bible are different gods.

Or something like that.

My husband knows the answer that the professor wanted. The professor believes that Allah and Jehovah are the same. However, the answer to this question is strictly a matter of faith. Neither me or my husband believe that Allah is the same God in the Bible... their characters are completely different. The Koran says that Allah claims to have no son... Jesus is the Son of the Biblical God.

My husband answered that Allah and the God of the Bible are different, knowing that the professor would mark it wrong. In fact, he wrote next to the answer "go ahead and mark it wrong." If he were to say what the professor wanted, he would have gotten the question correct, but he would at the same time be denying God himself, equating him with something that he was not.

So my dear husband wasn't thrown to the lions or anything, and that one question probably won't affect his final grade or anything, but it was a small faith litmus test on a college campus. I'm sure that this happens all the time, I had just not seen it so obviously in my own life before.

Why Do Honorable Veterans Have To Pay Back Bonuses?

2007-11-22T21:52:00.000-08:00

Recent news reports have been talking about how Iraq veterans were being asked to pay back enlistment bonuses after being forced out of the military due to injuries. Officials in the Pentagon have said that they will resolve this issue, but the fact that this problem has come up really didn't surprise me too much, as I have a similar story. I thought it horrible what happened to them, but not too surprised.

After I got out of high school, my parents were telling me that they didn't have enough money to send me to USC. Nevermind that with financial aid it would cost the same as the state school that they would have preferred I went to, but that's another story. As a result, I ended up joining the Navy Reserves.

The Navy Reserves has a Reserve GI Bill program, where if you are a drilling reservist attending college, you get a small amount of money per month. This program doesn't give you as much money as the Montgomery GI Bill that is more popular, but I also did not have to pay into it. The only attachment to accepting this money was that I remained a drilling reservist for 6 years.

That would have been all fine and good, until I decided that I kinda liked the reserves, and I didn't care too much for the starving student routine. That fall, I decided to join the Navy ROTC program. That did not pose a problem. I was a midshipmen Mondays through Fridays, and on one weekend a month, a was an Aviation Structural Mechanic Airman, drilling at Seal Beach Weapons station. It worked out fine...

Until I received a scholarship from the Navy ROTC program. You see, there's a law that says that you can not receive money from more than one government source. I'm not sure how that works, but I do know that it would have been illegal for me to continue to receive drill pay AND receive my scholarship. So I had to stop drilling. I was still serving the military, there should have been no problem, right?

Not exactly. Nobody really communicated with each other. The reservist branch of the military didn't really know how to deal with me, and even though I sent them letters and paperwork regarding my status with the military, they decided to transfer me into the Internal Ready Reserve (IRR, non-drilling status). I don't think that there are too many cases of drilling reservists joining ROTC and getting a scholarship as a midshipman. Almost every other former enlisted person that I know that went the officer route went through Boost, or the Warrant Officer program, or applied while on Active Duty. I was a fairly unique case.

Remember the agreement that I had to serve 6 years as a drilling reservist because I had received the Reserve GI Bill? I was only able to drill for about 2 of those years before I received my scholarship and was not able to drill. You think that the military would have been happy that I had chosen to serve my country in a greater capacity, and not just limit my time to one weekend a month. It didn't work out quite that way.

I started receiving letters asking for the money back. I had a collections officer call me asking for money... paying them back was not really an option since I was disputing the money for one thing, and secondly, I was living off the $3000 a semester I got from another scholarship I had earned at the time. So I argued with the collections officer a little saying that I was disputing their right to take the money, and I think that was the last I heard of that. Only it ended up on my credit report.

Time went on, and I received my commission as an officer in the United States Navy. The funny thing is... the reserves had never discharged me from the IRR. So at one point I was an Ensign in the active duty Navy, while at the same time I was also an Aviation Structural Mechanic 3rd Class (I passed the promotion exam and got a promotion, evidently) in the Navy Reserves. My parents ended up getting some letters addressed to AMS3 me while I was an Ensign... funny.

It was funny until the day I was on deployment in the Caribbean and my husband tells me that I ended up getting paid $300 for one of my paychecks (normally they were over $1000). He had to go to Navy Relief to pay the rent that month. Anyway, the Navy Reserves thought that they were pretty smart, finding out that I was employed by the Navy, they could seize my money that they wanted from when I received Navy GI Bill money. Only they couldn't put 2 and 2 together and realize that since I was in the military... maybe I was meeting my obligations? No, they couldn't figure out that.

I had been arguing with the Navy Reserves for approximately 4 years about this problem. I would send a letter to them asking why they thought that I owed this money, they would send back a form letter saying that I didn't fulfill my obligations and had to pay back the money. I would send a letter back asking pointedly whether they thought that I didn't fulfill my obligations because I transferred to ROTC, or because I just didn't drill... they sent me back another form letter saying the same thing, that didn't answer my question.

I ended up writing my congressman, Duncan Hunter, for help. He just happened to be the chairman of the Armed Forces Service Committee (very convenient to have the chairman come from the San Diego district). While I don't think I ever voted for him before, he got me my money back, AND got the whole mess off my credit report. One credit reporting agency ended up not taking it off, but I sent a copy of my congressman's letter and it came off right away after that. So I guess you could say that it literally took an act of congress to get this straightened out. I've been a loyal Duncan Hunter supporter ever since, even though I don't live in his district any more... he has my eternal gratitude.

The story has an even better ending than that. After I got the letter from my congressman, I learned that I could get credit towards my pay for my reservist time... the longer you have been in the military, the more you get paid. I was able to get the Navy Reserves to finally discharge me, and for pay purposes, I ended up with 5 years of military service added to my time in service. My pay went up probably around $1000 a month. And not only that, but I had been underpaid for more than a year of active duty miltary service... KA CHING!!! The military owed me around $10,000, but they took out a huge chunk for taxes. Still, it was a very nice payday.

So I can sympathize with these wounded veterans who have been asked to pay back part of their bonuses. I'm glad that this is getting national attention and it will be taken care of. The last thing that I think our country should do is penalize soldiers for getting wounded on the battlefield. We should be bending over backwards to take care of them.

The military needs to consolidate their databases so they know who is where and with what branch. They need to get some common sense in their policies as well... if you are discharged from the military because you are wounded, or if you go from drilling reservist status to midshipman status... you shouldn't be treated like a scumbag who failed to fulfill your duties. I don't know how they made these wounded soldiers feel, but I know that that's how I felt for quite some time, even though I was doing the best that I could. A little bit of communication and a little bit of common sense could go very far, and avoid more disasters like these.

The Real Reason Behind September 11th

2007-11-17T23:17:00.000-08:00

I alluded to this in a comment I made in an earlier post, so before I forget about it, I'd like to write about it.

While listening to Chuck Colson speak in a Focus on the Family broadcast earlier this month, he brought up some points about September 11th. I thought I remembered hearing this before, but it really shocked me. If you want to hear the broadcast, you can log into iTunes and hear the Focus On The Family podcast from 5 November 2007, entitled "Standing Strong In A Dark World 2".

After the attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001, people made speculation regarding the date. Some people thought that the attacks on 9/11 referred to the US emergency telephone number 911. Some people thought that the date was chosen because 9+1+1=11 and that 11 was a message to all the people "in the know" about the New World Order. Perhaps some of that was involved, but there is a simpler explanation to those people who know their history... September 11th was the date that Polish calvary and the German infantry broke through the lines at the seige of Vienna when the (Islamic) Turks were turned back the Ottoman Empire was defeated in 1683.

Osama Bin Laden is not stupid. He would know this. The struggle between the Islamic world and Western society ended on this date. The Islamic empire was defeated... however, 318 years later, Osama Bin Laden chose to renew this struggle.

Kids sometimes like to ask why the study of history is important. Sometimes adults wonder as well. However, knowing certain events and certain dates in the past can help you understand better what's going on today, and give you a better idea of how to react to this.

If Osama Bin Laden is trying to act on the behalf of Islam and renew a world struggle, isn't that something important to know?

Revelation 18:13 - Cloning, slavery, or both?

2007-11-15T22:24:00.000-08:00

While watching the O'Reilly Factor tonight, I was stunned when someone referred to cloned embryos as a "commodity". Not that embryos were referred to in such a fashion, but it reminded me of a verse in Revelation (in a lament about the things that Babylon had sold after it had fallen):

and cinnamon, and incenses, and ointment, and frankincense, and wine, and oil, and fine flour and wheat, and beasts, and sheep, and horses, and chariots, and slaves, and souls of men.

In the NKJV it refers to bodies and souls of men being sold.

Anyway, I guess they're cloning monkeys over in Oregon right now and some people were worried that they might start cloning human embryos next. What really made me think of this verse is how this whole cloned embryo thing could perhaps take off at some point. I believe that a baby is a baby in the zygote stage, so whether you are talking about an embryo, fetus, or even a blastocyst, it's still a baby, and if it is a human baby, creating it to experiment on or harvest stem cells from (forgive me if I get my terminology wrong I don't feel it's worth the time investment to research) is morally wrong.

But let's say at some point in the future scientists do start cloning humans and start experimenting on their cells (at whatever stage). I could really see a trade of sorts developing... people would be buying and selling the bodies and souls of men as this Bible verse is referring to.

Now I know that slavery does exist today in the traditional sense that we learn about in history books. Back in the days when I had more money I did donate money to a modern abolitionist group through the Combined Federal Campaign. For more information about slavery today you can visit www.antislavery.org. Up until today, I thought that Revelation 18 referred to the modern slave trade. And it probably does, to some extent. But perhaps this verse is also referring to the buying and selling of cloned embryos as well.

Another thought on the subject of cloning... if you cross a human with a mouse, what do you get? Scientists have already created these chimera-like creatures, and I'm wondering what they are. I believe that there is a divide between animals and humans and humans are not animals, and vice-versa. So what is a chimera? Is it a human or an animal? Does it have a soul? Does it need to get saved? Will it automatically go to hell? At the end, will God just destroy it and it will cease to exist? To me it's a scary thought... that God is allowing us to create these... whatevers... and who other than God knows whether these creatures need salvation or not? Or can get saved?

Pat Robertson Endorses Guiliani

2007-11-07T23:04:00.000-08:00

I'm really underwhelmed by the first-tier candidates this election. On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton? I'll be praying for enough money to move to Australia if that happens. Barak Obama? Does anybody know what he stands for except for dancing well? As for the Republicans, we have a pro-choice, adulterer divorcee and a Mormon. Not that Mormons aren't nice or anything, and I think that in general Mitt Romney could do a good job, but I'm afraid that a Mormon president would make it more disagreeable to say that Mormons and Christians are of different faiths. I really like governor Huckabee, and I'd vote for him if he actually gets the nomination. He seems to be gaining in the polls, so we'll see. But he still seems to be a dark horse. I like Duncan Hunter too, mainly because back when I was in the military and was having problems, he retrieved thousands of dollars for me that the Navy had wrongfully taken from me... sometimes it helps to write to your congressman, and it paid off big time that time.

I heard today that Pat Robertson is endorsing Rudy Guiliani. I don't think that Pat Robertson's endorsement carries the weight that it did oh... 20 years ago or so, but I still find it disturbing. I know that Guiliani did really well after 9/11, but to be perfectly honest, terrorism isn't my top concern. More people die from bathtub drownings than terrorism. He's got way too many marks against him in my book. If it was just the abortion issue, that would be one thing. If it was just the divorce issue, fine. We've already had more than one adulterer in the White House, so if it was just that... okay.

Dr. James Dobson said the other day that voting for the lesser of two evils is still voting for... evil. And if we're talking about human lives being saved here... a lot more people die from abortion every year than terrorism. It just doesn't impress me. Last election I voted 3rd party, and I don't regret it. If it comes down between Guiliani and Clinton, I'll vote 3rd party again.

While it seems like people know who is going to get the nomination, a lot of things could change in the next few months. Four years ago, Mr. Yippee Yee Haw Howard Dean was the front runner, but he kind of ruined his chances. So I suppose that there is still hope. But it is disappointing when a "Christian" leader endorses someone with so many strikes against him. I know that we have all fallen short of the glory of God, and we should forgive, but at the same time, the Bible also doesn't have a problem from disqualifying people from certain offices due to their past. Haven't we had enough presidents being voted into office with tarnished reputations already?

Westboro Baptist vs. Free Speech

2007-11-03T00:11:00.000-07:00

The Westboro Baptist Church, run by the Phelps family and owners of vile web sites such as "Godhatesf&$s.com", recently lost a lawsuit for $11 Million for picketing a funeral.

Now, I really can't stand the Phelps family. I feel sorry for their kids, who know that they hate "fags", yet don't even know the meaning of the word. I think that they are the ones that need to wise up and repent, and I pray that some of their children will see the truth over what they've been taught from birth. But, I can't really say that in this case, I agree with the lawsuit. That's a really hard thing for me to say, considering how vile these people are.

The father of the deceased soldier in this case was on The O'Reilly Factor this week. He described what happened. They did have to change the parade route because of these kooks, but during the parade and memorial service, they did not see the Phelps clan (according to what the father said on the program). It was not until AFTER the memorial service that the father turned on the TV, expecting to see coverage of all the well wishers and mourners, that he saw coverage of the Phelps idiots instead.

This is America, and we are supposed to have free speech. We don't have the freedom from being offended, or from having people hurt our feelings. We aren't guaranteed that things will go our way and people will only say nice things to us. Much as I can't stand the Phelps' or their message, they do have the right to say it.

If the protesters had intruded on the funeral, I think that I would feel differently. Funerals cost money, and are normally held on private property. If someone barged in on a funeral that people had paid for and had some reasonable expectation of being relatively peaceful, I can see that there would be damages. But in this particular case, the funeral itself was not interrupted, they stayed away from the parade route, and the protesting was not seen by the family during the protest.

The message of the Westboro Baptist Church is hateful. It is unpleasant. In my opinion, it is also quite misguided and wrong. But isn't that what many people say about Christians? Many non-Christians think that being told that if they don't repent and ask Christ to be their Savior they are going to hell is hateful. They find it unpleasant. They think that it is misguided and wrong as well.

There is a difference between most Christians and those of the Westboro Baptist Church, of course. Most Christians that I know believe that God LOVES the world, which is contrary to what the Phelps clan teaches. The Phelps seem to delight in the thought of everybody that is not in their church going to hell, while most Christians that I know find it exceedingly sad and tragic. But conservative Christians (I realize that some more liberal Christians don't feel this way) do tell other people that if they don't repent and get saved, they will not be going to Heaven.

Perhaps a small settlement for pain and suffering in this case might have been appropriate. $11 million is quite a lot, however. On the other hand, to punish these people because of what they say... no matter how vile and egregious... just opens the door to other sorts of free speech lawsuits. It's only a matter of time before real Christians start being hit with lawsuits too.

In The Internet Age, Play Nice

2007-11-01T22:12:00.000-07:00

Most of us alive and able to read blogs remember a time when the internet was not so prevalent. That soon will not be the case, considering that I've had an email address now for over 13 years, but 13 years ago, you didn't see www plastered on every print ad and not everyone had a blog, web site, AIM address, etc. Mostly just us technogeeks back in the early days.

Having the internet around changes the way things operate, and I don't think that most of us have really gotten used to that fact yet. Specifically, that quite a large percentage of our conversations can be recorded and preserved for potentially all eternity, if the need arises.

15-20 years ago, that was not the case. You had photographs, of course. Those have been around since Lincoln was in office to one degree or another. There were videos and films... I'm sure that my grandparents still have old reel-to-reels of me hunting for Easter Eggs as a 3 year old. Then there were also tape recorders, which technically could be snuck into a room to record a conversation, but that wasn't routinely done. The answering machine came along and then you could leave messages that could be saved indefinitely.

Now, things are different. Not only do all the above ways of recording still exist, but they are more pervasive. Many people carry cell phones wherever they go, and a lot of those come equipped with cameras. Emails, texts, and instant messages can be easily saved, and are often the preferred means of communication. Internet bulletin boards exist where people discuss anything and everything.

Just because you say something, doesn't mean that it's over. Our words, preserved electronically, are out there for a very long time. There are Usenet posts of mine still floating around from my college days. What we say does not go away.

Not only that, but if you say something that you shouldn't, everybody and their mother can be notified before breakfast. Our recorded conversations can be forwarded to everyone we know, and even to those we don't, as long as we have a shared hobby and post to the same message board. If our forwarded message is outrageous enough, or deemed important enough, our friends might end up forwarding it, and their friends might forward it, until the message goes viral.

Which can get people into potential trouble.

The Yankee sales manager over at WCBS in New York is one of those people that forgot how powerful the internet can be, and that if you don't play nice, your words can come back to haunt you.

Last month, a fellow poster over on a sweepstakes web site won a $1000 watch. Supposedly, the prize was "stolen" and the radio station was going to scrounge around for some junk in it's place. Sweepstakes are governed by laws and are a form of advertising for companies... while substitution is authorized in almost every circumstance, a company always has to substitute with an item of equal or greater value, not a bunch of junk that is worth several hundred dollars less than the originally promised prize.

So in the quest to get the prize back, several phone calls were made, and the radio station couldn't get their story straight. More than one watch was stolen, but the radio station couldn't seem to figure out how many watches were stolen, because that number kept changing.

Then the sales manager left a veiled threat to this person (like he was going to sick some lawyers on her or something) on the winners answering machine. He also called her a nasty name in another phone conversation. Oops.

20 years ago, it might have been pretty easy for some fancy bigwig at some New York radio station to intimidate the little guy. Lots of people had answering machines, but they weren't very good. Certainly someone in this exact situation couldn't have notified hundreds of people about it. There would be no support system of people to give advice on what to do. You could complain to your friends about it, write a letter to his boss, call the consumer reports guy for a different station in the area, but more than likely, not much would happen.

Despite all the bad things surrounding the internet, the ability to get help and find justice is a good one. This person will more than likely get their watch. It is also likely that Mr. Not So Nice Guy's boss will find out about the situation, and while action may not be taken, probably said boss will be keeping an eye on him.

Because we live in an age where anything can be sent anywhere within minutes, it helps to play nice. It helps to follow the Bible's advice on not getting drunk as well, because those that do get drunk could find themselves the darling of YouTube the next day if they are not careful. Anything we do or say could get picked up with someone's cell phone, get talked about by our friends on the internet, etc. So it helps just to play nice to begin with. Because what we do today could follow us around longer than we can remember it ourselves.

Halloween and the Entitlement Culture

2007-10-31T23:23:00.000-07:00

Today being Halloween (although, almost over), my mind started wandering to the whole premise of trick or treat, and I started wondering if it's popularity is somehow related to the whole society of entitlement that we seem to have nowadays.

We don't really do Halloween in our family. My daughter watches all the popular children's cartoons, so she knows what it is, but we don't go out trick or treating, purchase Halloween costumes, or anything like that. She did play dress up today, wearing a princess costume I bought a couple of years ago on the day after Halloween (50% off). She also got candy, since our church had a movie night to go to.

Since we don't do Halloween here, I think of the scenario of what happens when/if someone shows up on our door begging for candy. We do have some candy in the house, and I suppose if someone had shown up, I'd give them some and a gospel tract. We have lights that turn on when you walk up to the front door and stay off the rest of the time, so that didn't happen.

The premise of Trick-or-treating... give us candy or we'll play a trick on you... isn't very appealing to me. Most people nowadays don't vandalize a person's house for not giving out candy, but the phrase implies the threat. I was curious if the rise in popularity of trick-or-treating was in any way correllated to the rise of entitlements, so I looked it up in Wikipedia.

There are various forms of begging for treats that go back hundreds of years... in the 1500s, poor people used to go around promising to pray for the dead in exchange for food. However, the earliest reference for Halloween begging was around 1915. But it wasn't something commonly done.

The phrase "trick-or-treat" came from the 1930s, when begging for Halloween candy became more widespread. In the 1940s and 1950s, trick-or-treating became more mainstream, appearing on TV shows, magazines, and a Disney cartoon.

Oddly enough, from the 1930s to 1950s, many adults though of trick-or-treating as a form of extortion. Some adults didn't even know what trick-or-treating was, and the children had to explain it to them. In 1948, even the children protested trick-or-treating... the Madison Square Garden Boys Club carried a banner saying "American Boys Don't Beg."

Coincidentally, perhaps, the entitlement programs started around the 1930s as well. There is some correllation but it may not actually be linked. 80% of adults plan to give out Halloween candy, and 93% of children go trick-or-treating. So while it may be seen as an entitlement by some kids, it is one that many adults don't mind bestowing on cute, costumed children.

No Child Left Behind - Homeschool Style

2007-10-27T22:00:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I found out what the meaning of "No Child Left Behind" is to homeschool parents.

A local Christian school had the day off yesterday, and one of the members of our little homeschool group was babysitting 10 of the students that had the day off. We used to go to the church attached to the homeschool, so my daughter and I know all the kids at that school. One of the girls attending the school is my daughter's best friend, so she was really happy that her best friend had the day off.

So yesterday all of us had a park day. 10 kids from the Christian school, my 2 kids, and 4 other kids that normally go to the homeschool group. So we had 16 kids.

We all met at the main house where we normally meet, and all the kids either walked, rode in a stroller, rode in the van, or rode bicycles to the nearby park. We took a picnic lunch and toys. We had quite a bike parade!

For the homeschool parent, No Child Left Behind means making sure that no child gets left behind when you have 16 children walking or biking to the park... and making sure that no child gets left behind when returning home. Or toy.

Any parent that thinks that homeschoolers get no socialization doesn't know what sort of socialization homeschoolers can have. Our park day crowd of kids looked like any group of kids you might find at any day care center in the country... only none of the teachers had to make sure the kids weren't biting, spitting, climbing up the slide, etc. (I worked at a day care center for two years). The kids ranged from 11 months to 8 or 9 years too, so there was probably a wider age range than would be playing at the typical day care center playground.

In a typical week, my daughter attends church 3 times, goes to the library with other kids, sees her soccer friends twice a week, and goes to her homeschool group. Not to mention trips to the grocery store, doctors, or anywhere else we might happen to go. She doesn't seem to lack friends. As an added bonus, she usually gets along with her brother pretty well (unless he's trying to play with the mouse or keyboard while she's trying to play computer games).

The "Good Old Days"

2007-10-26T00:14:00.000-07:00

When I was a kid, I would remember sometimes about how old people would talk about "the good old days." You probably know the stories... the ones where they had to walk barefoot in the snow 10 miles uphill (both ways) to get to school. But then again, they could go to the movies for 1 cent and with another penny they could buy a bag of candy or something outrageous like that?

There was a thread today on a bulletin board where people were talking about their version of "the good old days," using real examples that they remembered rather than the 10 miles in the snow uphill exaggeration, that made me think. There have been good old days in my family as well, and it's sad that they are gone. And it has nothing to do with money, or technology, or even safety. It's something that could be recreated today, but is probably gone forever, at least with my generation.

When I was a kid, we used to go to my grandma's house every Sunday. The grownups would sit around and watch 60 minutes, and us cousins would play. They were all there almost every week. All of my grandma's 4 children and their kids. Sometimes we'd ride these Big Wheel tricycles out in her backyard, or play house, or something else. Grandma always had lots of toys at her house (she still does).

Every July, we'd get together to watch boat races. We'd all draw little slips of paper to see who got what boat, and if your boat won you got some money. I remember one year we made homemade ice cream. Another year it was so hot that it was in the 100s and one of our bunnies died.

Every year, we'd go camping in August. Same place every year. The campground started getting popular, so we started showing up on Thursdays to get a good spot. The campground started getting even more popular, and I think we ended up going on Wednesdays toward the end.

Every Christmas, we'd all go to grandma's on Christmas Eve. "Santa Claus" would come and pass out present. One year Santa came drunk and pinched my Aunt's butt, and said "sure is *#*&ing hot in here"... something we still can laugh about. On Christmas day, we'd all get together again to open Christmas stockings and eat.

Obviously, people get old, and families get bigger as the kids grow up and get married. It would be okay if that was the end of the story. But unfortunately, that wasn't what happened. Everything started going downhill about the time I graduated from high school and went off to college.

My cousin got cancer at age 5. He died when he was 7. It really hurt my Uncle deeply. I'm sure that it hurt my Aunt as well, but she could at least still be kind. My Uncle started being sullen at family gatherings, and stopped talking to my mom. Then my mom got mad at him and doesn't like him any more. Uncle said some harsh words to my brother and they got upset with each other as well.

Then a different Aunt got a disease that makes you quite sick and remains with you for the rest of your life. Ended up getting a divorce with another Uncle of mine. That situation deteriorated as well. Now my Aunt is somewhat estranged from her own daughter because she wanted her daughter to choose which parent she liked better, and that's a mess.

Another Uncle of mine has always liked to drink, but it's catching up to him. Sometimes he can't remember what year it is any more. His own son took his food stamps from him one time and was laughing about it with another cousin of mine.

Two of my family members around my age are divorcing.

Since I live far away from my family, I haven't been able to go to our annual camping trip in several years, but I've heard that some people just don't show up any more. Those that do show up often fight, because half of them don't like each other any more.

It makes me so sad to see what has happened to my family. I still get along with all of them when I come up to visit, even though many of them don't get along with each other. I love them all. Since I live far away from all this, I have pretty much avoided the drama, and perhaps the days when we all used to get together and go camping, hanging around the campfire together, going hiking together... perhaps they seem more real to me and not as far off, because that's how everyone was when I moved away to get an education and see the world. A little like when the last time you see a child is when they're an infant, and the next time you see them they're 5 years old, and they seem to have grown up overnight. It's like that with me, perhaps.

I hear about the breakdown of the family, about Satan trying to attack the family, and this is what I think of. A family that used to be so close even 15 years ago, barely cares for each other any more. It's so sad to me. Because my daughter and son will never know how fun it is to have 8 cousins to play with, that we visit weekly.

While the 9-person extended family on my husband's side is pretty close, it's not the same. And perhaps we're the exception rather than the rule.

I miss the good old days at times. Not good old days of black and white TVs and 5 cents a gallon gas (not that I remember any of those days because they were before my time)... but I miss the good old days when my cousins, aunts, and uncles were all close, met together every week, and there was only 1 person out of the whole lot of them that had gotten a divorce.

Drug Makers Take Infant Cold Medications Off The Shelves

2007-10-11T12:44:00.000-07:00

My son has had a cold for more than a week now. A couple nights ago, he woke up at 2 AM hacking and unable to sleep. We didn't have any infant decongestant in the house, so my husband ran to Walgreen's to get him some medicine so he could get back to sleep.

Well, I'm glad that my son was sick earlier than this week than today, because who knows what infant medicine is left on the shelf? I found an AP article on Excite saying that drug companies had pulled many infant medications off the shelves. Evidently, some parents are overdosing their children.

While I don't run to the medicine cabinet every time my little boy has a runny nose, there are times when it's very nice to have infant medicine. Like when it's 2 AM and your baby can't sleep. By taking the infant medications off the shelves, parents are left with fewer options to deal with their children.

With the wonderful availability of the internet, it's very easy to look up a dosing chart for infant's medications. I like to use the one here. Although, since they are taking the medicines off the shelves, they might end up taking the dosing chart off the internet as well.

Which leads us to the bigger question: with infant medications no longer available, what will parents do when their child is sick in the middle of the night and can't sleep? My guess is that many of them will be giving their infants children's medicines. Which doesn't really fix what the drug makers are trying to solve in the first place, does it?

15 Minutes of Anonymity

2007-10-04T17:33:00.000-07:00

There's a saying that goes something along the lines of... everybody gets 15 minutes of fame... or something like that. The culture that we live in is obsessed with fame. People want to be famous, and if they can't be famous... they want to work for the famous. In a recent poll, more people wanted to be a celebrity's assistant than something important, like being the president or the CEO of a fortune 500 company or something.

You really can't blame them. Celebrities make a lot of money, and people almost worship them like gods. Who doesn't like being loved and adored? Of course, for those of us who are Christians, God is who we should want people to love and adore, not ourselves. But even for the Christian, it's natural to want to be liked.

A lot of people do stupid and dangerous things because they think that it will make them famous. Look at the Fear Factor phenomenon. People that get into fights or do stupid, dangerous stunts in front of video cameras in hopes that their YouTube video might go viral.

But what happens to these people? Do they really experience a complete change of life? Do they get mobbed for autographs in the grocery store? Probably not.

With the popularity of reality TV, just about anybody can get on television. Or lots of people at least. But very few of them are remembered by the masses. If you watch American Idol, do you remember Zachary Travis (without Googling)? He was a boy that completely looked like a girl... he now has a web site up at Zachidol.com. They have a guest book up there that gets about 1 post a month. Or perhaps you are a Survivor fan. Without googling, can you even tell me what season Carl Bilancione was from? He was from Survivor Africa... which wasn't the most popular season by far, but I've seen every episode of Survivor at least once and I had to look up Survivor seasons on Wikipedia to find that name. I haven't seen every season of the Amazing Race, but I don't really remember Megan and Heidi... and they were on the very popular season that Rob and Amber placed second in.

So if your average reality TV fan can watch every episode that you appear in and not remember you after a couple of years, what becomes of someone who loses their finger creating a YouTube video that they hope will go viral. Well, a year from now, nobody will know who they are, and they will be without a finger.

I have my own experience with television. One summer in college, I worked as a movie extra. I worked in Higher Learning, Stuart Smalley, Reform School Girls, True Crime, and Little Giants. I carried the American flag during the televised Olympic Torch Relay Kickoff in Los Angeles for the Atlanta games. I appeared in several commercials and did a couple of interviews for the Armed Forces Network in Europe about terrorism. Most recently, I appeared in a local American Idol style singing contest.

As a movie extra and flag bearer, I blended into the background and nobody ever notice me, although I could pick out myself. People did recognize me after I did the commercials, and would come up to me and say "hey, I saw you on TV last night!" However, the military community in Italy is pretty small, and more than 90% of the people on the base would know who I was even without the commercials... especially since I taught the anti-terrorism class every week, that all new people were required to attend upon arrival. My picture was also up in the security building because I was the Force Protection Officer and was part of the chain of command. So it wasn't exactly appearing in a commercial and having some random stranger recognize you the next day.

My last television appearance, singing on a local television show, actually surprised me because nobody recognized me. I wasn't on a public access show that nobody watched, I was on a television program that they advertised for months beforehand while they were soliciting for people to audition. I was the very first person to sing on this show. The judges said my name on the air. I sang an entire verse of a song on the air. I'm sure that many people watched the show, but when I went out the next day, it was just like the day before... I still lived a life of complete anonymity. I didn't go on the show to try to be famous (I wanted the prize of a car and cash), so in a way I was glad that nobody knew about my television performance.

In the grand scheme of things, very few people are remembered for very long in history. Would you recognize Mark Dinning if he was walking down the street? Do you know what song he sang? He sang the popular 1960 song "Teen Angel". Many people remember the Beatles, Chubby Checker, and Elvis Presley, but many other people who had hit songs of the time have been fading from memory. 47 years from now, do you think anybody is even going to remember Paris Hilton? Probably not.

If you go back even farther in time, even fewer people are memorable. We remember Bach, Beethoven, and Queen Elizabeth, but many other people who made music or sang during that time are forgotten. Even farther, we remember Plato, Nero, and Julius Caesar, but who remembers the Roman Emperor Vespasian? Going farther back, how many Egyptian Pharoahs can you name? What did Sekhemkhet do? And I have heard the name of the Pharoah Djoser before, but only from the movie Ghostbusters.

As Solomon would say, it's all vanity. Being famous might be fun, but it's not worth losing a finger over. Besides, there are way too many people that get famous and it ends up being their downfall. River Phoenix? Dana Plato? And more recently, Britney Spears... although she hasn't died of a drug overdose or killed herself or anything, I know I wouldn't trade my kids for anything.

Besides, the more famous you are, the more people say bad things about you. It doesn't matter who you are, people even criticize Mother Theresa. Even this little ol' blog, with maybe two readers, already has someone talking smack about it.

Are You Ready For Bird Flu?

2007-10-01T01:05:00.001-07:00

Worldnetdaily has reported that dozens of people in a Mexican city have turned up with suspected bird flu. So far, 45 patients have turned up with flu symptoms, some of them children that would not normally have anything to do with being around birds.

This may turn out to be nothing. Hopefully it will not spread. But it does leave us with a very important question... are you ready for the bird flu? Do you have a plan in place?

We use The Grocery Game method of buying groceries, which not only helps you save money, but has the added benefit of letting you stock up a little, since you buy things when they go on sale, not when you need it. I have some food stored up, as well as quite a lot of toilet paper (2 unopened packages of 12 double rolls each). Unfortunately, my diaper supply is pretty low. I had purchased a lot of diapers prior to my baby's birth, but he's worn them all and I buy diapers as I need them.

After hurricane Katrina, I put together a stash of water, but that supply has dwindled as well.

With these recent potential bird flu cases so close to our backyard, perhaps now would be a good time to rethink what you would do in the case of bird flu. Would you continue to send your kids to school? How long could you avoid going to the grocery store? Could you work from home? Do you have supplies like gloves and masks?

The US government is currently undergoing a practice bird-flu exercise. I wouldn't be alarmed, when I was in the Navy we did practice terrorism exercises all the time, so that we would know what to do and what to expect if the real thing ever occurred. I'm glad that the government is working on being prepared. How about you?

Some preparation is good in general. It's good just to have a little extra water and food on hand, because you never know what will happen. If you live in a part of the country that has bad snowstorms it's good to have extra food and supplies on hand just for that. A terrorist attack could occur, or some other scenario. Food and water are great to have on hand no matter what. If you have a few extra dollars, masks and gloves could be a decent investment... if bird flu did hit the US, you can be sure that they would sell out quickly.

There's no reason to be alarmed... it's a good idea to be watchful though. And a little preparation never hurts.

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Juan Williams A "Happy Negro"? - CNN Thinks So

2007-09-29T00:13:00.001-07:00

A day or two ago, CNN declared in its broadcast that Juan Williams, a frequent commentator on The O'Reilly Factor and other Fox television programs, was a "Happy Negro".

Say what?

O'Reilly was having lunch at a Harlem restaurant with Al Sharpton, talking about how sometimes whites feared black people, and that it was primarily driven out of fear. Just look at how the media portrays black people far too often as gang-bangers, or half-literate hoodlums that can't speak proper English. On his radio program, O'Reilly remarked to Juan Williams that the restaurant that they were eating at was just like any other restaurant run by white people.

The comment was taken completely out of context by CNN, and O'Reilly was portrayed as anti-black. Juan Williams, who was talking to him on the radio, was called a "happy negro" for speaking to O'Reilly and having a civil conversation about all this.

A month ago, if you asked me how race relations were in America, I would have said "pretty good." My family is about as integrated as they come. Between me, my husband, my husband's brother and my sister-in-law, my mother-in-law and her husband, there are exactly 3 white people and three black people. Nobody ever gives us problems. My biracial daughter has no problem making friends and tends to be popular wherever she goes. My biracial son is the darling of the church nursery... even the other children come up to him and call him "the cute baby."

But obviously, despite so much progress, underneath the surface there is much tension. Look at the whole Jena 6 controversy. That is a mess all around. There are both whites and blacks that have acted poorly in that one. Then you have this whole O'Reilly/Williams/Happy Negro controversy. How insulting can CNN be? To me, calling someone a "happy negro" brings up thoughts of old slave/plantation stereotypes a la Driving Miss Daisy.

Give me a break. Both me and my husband watch the O'Reilly Factor regularly and I've never seen anything on the program to make me believe that he is a racist. We've both read two of his books and never have seen anything that we perceive as racist. Juan Williams always appears intelligent and seems to have his own opinion.

CNN seems to be the racist ones to me. Happy Negro? Come on. Reminds me of when my husband decided that he was going to go to college and he asked for a small (1/2 hour a week) schedule accommodation from his boss. His boss's reply was a no and implied that he shouldn't be wasting his time trying to better himself, and what, was his job answering phones not good enough or something? Like maybe he should just be satisfied making below the mean salary for the rest of his life, letting his computer talents go to waste. I'm not sure if the comment at the time was meant to be insulting or not, but it sure sounded along those lines. And so does "happy negro". I didn't watch CNN before, and I'm certainly going to think twice before turning it on again.

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Apple says iPhone unlocking may leave handsets "permanently inoperable"

2007-09-24T21:19:00.001-07:00

Apple said Monday that many of the unauthorized iPhone unlocking programs available on the Internet cause irreparable damage to the iPhone's software, which will likely result in the modified iPhone becoming permanently inoperable when a future Apple-supplied iPhone software update is installed.

In another article I found, "This has nothing to do with proactively disabling a phone that is unlocked or hacked," Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, said in an interview. "It's unfortunate that some of these programs have caused damage to the iPhone software, but Apple cannot be responsible for ... those consequences."

We're supposed to believe that Apple didn't purposely write code to try to override the hackers? That it's all a coincidence that Apple is releasing a software release that will disable hacked iPhones? ROFL. I'm the tooth fairy.

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Everyday Mathematics Makes My Head Hurt

2007-09-23T22:52:00.000-07:00

An internet friend of mine who had previously been homeschooling her 9 year old decided to send her child back to public school, at least for a semester. On the message boards she remarked that her daughter hated her new public school math class, and had even cried during math. She was using a textbook called Everyday Mathematics.

I had heard of the book before, but I didn't know anything about it. I visited some web sites to learn more about it. Wow, it's quite scary. I was looking through the K-3 glossary to see some terms that their book used:

mental arithmetic Does not require all computations to be done in one’s head. Rather children develop a variety of flexible solution strategies, including drawing pictures and doodles, counting jumps on a number line or grid, and so on. Children devise their own solution strategies.

Doodles? Drawing pictures? Children devising their own solution strategies? That's just looking for trouble in a math class. You can't devise your own solution strategy for something that you barely know how to do in the first place.

number grid A table in which consecutive numbers are arranged in rows of ten. A move from one number to the next within a row is a change of one; a move from one number to the next within a column is a change of ten.

Huh? Say that again?

Fact Triangles Triangular cards that use the members of fact families for practice with addition/subtraction and multiplication/division facts. Two one-digit numbers and their sum or product (marked with an asterisk) appears in the corners of each triangle.

What was wrong with flash cards?

power of a number The product of factors all of which are the same. For example, 53 (five to the third power, or 5 x 5 x 5) is another way to name 125.

I understand this term perfectly well, but this was something that was taught in 7th grade when I took pre-algebra. I might have learned it in 6th grade math, but certainly not in 3rd grade math.

In case you think that these third graders are geniuses, though, the K-3 glossary fails to include definitions for improper fractions, mixed fractions, subtrahend, addend (not an item in the glossary by itself, but the definition of "number family" assumes that you already know what an addend is), or minuend. Not that most people use those terms in their everyday life, but if you are going to be teaching mathematics at as high a level as powers of a number, I would think that you would want to teach fractions first... and I would guess that if you taught fractions properly, some of those terms would end up in your book's glossary.

MJ McDermott, a meteorologist with a degree in atmospheric science, produced this 15 minute YouTube video talking about Everyday Math, as well as TERC math. It's pretty interesting:

It's amazing how anybody other than someone with a really high math aptitude already would be able to go through a program like this with a good grounding of mathematics.