yum-o!

we had a lead team meeting at church last night so on those evenings i have to grab some dinner on the way. well, i wasn't in the mood for a run for the border, so ...

i looked up some international restaurants in lexington. i remembered the recommendation of a mediterranean / greek restaurant that happened to be on my way so i decided to eat there. and boy did it ever not disappoint. delish! i had the lamb & beef schwarma over rice with a side of hummus (with a big pita). there were a lot of onions and basil drizzled over it all and a side of a great garlic sauce / dip. the flavor was explosive and i ate it way to fast because it was so good. i'll definitely have to make time to visit sahara again!

good movie

as you know, i've been watching a lot of old classic and critically acclaimed movies. this wasn't on that list but was a great inspirational, feel-good movie.

i checked akeelah & the bee out from the library and watched it one night this week (yay! a week off of school!). i like movies like this; i've also enjoyed a couple of popular recent documentaries - one on national championship level scrabble and one on national spelling bee level. ::looking them up:: let's see - that's word wars (2004) and spellbound (2002). anyways, akeelah sets it all up like any feel good movie - girl from south central la, terrible school, never missed a word on a spelling test, ..., overcoming obstacles, ..., national bee, and even a bit of a twist ending. probably not 4 stars by a major critic, but a happy evening for me.

whew! finally done

i finished the book review late monday night and then was zonked on tuesday night. i managed to ...

do some editing on my final paper (max 2400 words) and really lay out the topics i wanted to cover - i already had a ton of text that just needed to be organized. wednesday night was lifegroup (mmm! surprise thanksgiving dinner!) and thursday we went to the circus. it was a bit better last year, but i think jake still had fun. so then came friday night. i don't recall if i've mentioned, but i've got an interesting project at work that affects all of our group's 2008 line. i really needed to get done with (almost) all of the actual programming this week so that i can have all of next week for the testing (think logic analyzers and frustration). anywho, i got what i wanted done (yay!!) and i got home later than expected and had to work late into the evening on what turned out to be an 8 page paper, but it's all done now! 10 days of freedom. i remember my first semester of seminary (summer 2002) how a professor gave us an extra weekend to work on a final paper. it was due the day the fall semester classes started. booo! well, i have two straight-forward classes that i'll enjoy this fall. and it really felt great to figure all that stuff out at work yesterday.

bookshelf

i forgot to blog about this last week. i built a bookshelf last week! i had wanted a shelf for the kitchen to put our cookbooks and gardening books since i'm running out of room in my library upstairs. L and i were talking about ideas and looking at furniture pieces and nothing quite fit the rather ordinary 1' x 2' x 3' space. in an attempt to surprise L, i swung by lowe's on the way home, got the necessary materials, and began building the bookshelf. L helped me after she got home and i had a bad cramp in my arm the rest of the week from holding the spray can nozzle down for just 5-10 straight minutes. ouch! all of my 'squatting & bending' muscles were sore for the next couple of days as well. somebody needs to walk more or something!!

oh yeah, speaking of books, if you'll look to the left, there's a new link to a pic of the books i ordered for my birthday. many were used and many had been on my amazon list for quite a while. oh, and speaking of my amazon list, i went to the seminary library this past saturday and checked out around a dozen of the books that have been on my list for quite a while. if any are really good resources, i'll add them back to the amazon list.

leadership retreat and mom visit

we had a really good weekend. my mom's mom turned 90 years old on thursday and they had a birthday party for her over in louisville at the assisted living place. would've loved to have gone, but with work and all, alas. afterwards, mom and charlie came to stay for the weekend. when we set this up, i had forgotten that we already had a leadership retreat scheduled for the weekend. in the end, i was able to spend time with both and it worked out pretty well.

when they arrived on thursday evening, i was making a double batch of peanut thai for dinner - it turned out scrumptious! friday after work, L met me in wilmore and we went straight on to the leadership retreat. it was a cookout and low ropes course for team building that evening. mom and charlie had stayed with jake all day and all evening while L hit the dentist on her off day.

on saturday morning, i got up and went to the seminary library to get some fall semester books and a bunch from my amazon list. i walked out with like 30 books that aren't due until january 2008. if any are great resources, i'll purchase them later. the retreat was from 9:00a - 4:00p on saturday and L stayed with mom, charlie, and jake and worked on hanging three ceiling fans in the upstairs rooms. they were all already wired up and supported so it was much easier than it could have been.

sunday was a great church service and then enchiladas for lunch. mom and charlie left shortly thereafter and we all napped away most of the afternoon. i read some for a book review that is due tonight, but we mainly just hung out and had some brats and rice for dinner. two papers this week (no biggie... :-) ) and then a good 10-11 days off until fall semester begins the day after labor day.

organizing and re-arranging upstairs

not much, but it was fun. on friday, L & a friend bought another bookshelf for jake's room and put it together. on saturday morning, i pulled out my childhood toy box which was filled with books and i filled the new bookshelf. i took the toy box to the guest room closet, cleaned said closet out, and put a bunch of extra books (that were in a box in the closet) and stuff into the toy box in the guest room closet which now looked a lot cleaner and emptier. then L pulled the big baby toys out of the playroom closet and reconfigured them in there like a puzzle in order to get more in there. we added a number of big things that jake doesn't play with anymore to this closet and the playroom looked much better. we took the chair from the woodbridge living room from the playroom and swapped it for the chess table in the office / library. we put an extra end table where the chair was between the couch and the futon and pushed them together. we moved the kid's rug over between those two items and moved the train table over to the more "play" area of the room by the closet. that created two more distinct areas
of the room. we measured the guest room and considered putting jake in there, but it would've been seriously crammed and a lot of work just for the "fun" of it. a big saturday accomplishment!

2.5 months down, 3 papers to go

summer semester is almost over and it has been quite a bit less painful than i had anticipated. the week of the storytelling class was jam packed and somewhat emotionally draining as classmates began soul-searching and opening up on their own accord to tell some quite personal stories. had to write a few papers afterwards and overall it was a good class. i even counted the entire harry potter series as reading for the course. i called it "4,000 pages of the best storytelling of the past decade" and i dare the prof to challenge me on it.

three more papers for the exodus class and i'll be done for the summer. fall semester starts 09/04/07 and i'm taking a discipleship class and a christian leadership class. overall, i have 3 papers, 5 three hour classes, and a one hour seminar class left until walking for graduation in may 2008 - Lord willing.