Thanksgiving ain't for the birds

lise and i had a blast in maryland with friends and adopted family from our 10 years living in the DC/Baltimore area. thanksgiving highlights included:

• one of my girls, karen, getting engaged the day before thanksgiving to her youth minister boyfriend (who we got to meet for the first time over the weekend - we think he rocks! MARRY HIM!!!). karen is at lancaster bible college now and i'm so proud of her i could pop.
  
• getting to see crissey (or christiiiina, as i call her) and seeing how much she's grown and how proud i am of her
• seeing kimberly and matt, up from virginia beach staying with kimmy's mom. kimberly has blown my mind, too. i've known her and karen and crissey since they were 14 years old - kim and kar are 22 now and crissey is 20 - i'm getting old, folks.
• staying with our old friends barb and joe. they've been some of our best friends for many years now. we miss them terribly.
• my making a trip to CD Depot in college park, md (around the corner from UM) with my poker winnings and walking away with a ton of incredible CD's.
• finishing David McCullough's John Adams and wishing it wasn't over. isn't that silly?
• LOTS of time with lise driving to and from and in between. can't imagine anyone else i'd rather be with than her. she rocks my socks.
• wishing we could move back to maryland.

all in all, a fantastic time with old friends!

Jim Borgman is a genius

for all my students who are suffering through the college application process, you'll love this.

check it out

Krauthammer chimes in on evolution and intelligent design

charles krauthammer deposits his $.02 on the evolution / intelligent design fiasco as well as our friend pat robertson, the kansas school board and the dover school board. read it here.

Winter Reading List

i've been in a bit of a mental pickle this past week or so. having a hard time shaking it. not much i feel like commenting on at this point, but i will mention the winter reading list.

as much as i read (2-3 hours daily, usually at night before bed) i've never been a big history or non-fiction buff, but these past few months have me reading both like a crazy man.

finished reading The Bradbury Chronicles back in september. bradbury is probably my favorite of all authors (in particular, Dandelion Wine and his hundreds of short stories). it's a fascinating read for someone like me who has been reading his books for 25+ years. a good bio, if not written a little too enthusiastically by the author.

in october, jon weatherly loaned me his copy of David McCullough's 1776 - a non-fiction book about the tail end of 1775 through the beginning of 1777, following General George Washington and the continental army in their battles and dealings with the british army during the revolutionary war. to my surprise, it was a very intriguing read and i was hooked.

bought McCullough's John Adams (the companion to 1776) and am 2/3 of the way through it. it's even better than 1776 (and won the Pulitzer Prize). it's an 800 page biography of Adams' life, focusing mainly on the political life and his relationship with his wife Abigail.

mixed in with all this, i read The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind by Mark Noll. a mind-blowing critique on the loss of the intellectual mind among evangelical christians. should you read it? absolutely.

for just plain reading fun, The Cat's Pajamas was a good read, too.

re-read Fahrenheit 451 last month, too. when you're reading the biography of ray bradbury, it's hard to not want to go back and read some of the classics. a word of warning, however: when you hit ebay and find a copy of one of your favorite books on CD that has been read by the author and you get all excited and order it, please do a quick check:

- is the author currently 82 years old?
- has the author recently had a stroke?
- does the author's voice now sound like someone speaking through a wet washcloth that has been jammed in his mouth?

if any of these apply, DO NOT BUY THE BOOK ON CD!! pull your copy off the shelf and read it yourself. you'll thank me for it later.

books currently in the holding pattern:

McCullough's Truman, a biography of Harry Truman (another Pulitzer Prize winning book).

C.S. Lewis' The Problem of Pain and The Great Divorce.

by the way, anyone want to buy a great classic by ray bradbury on CD? $10. cheap!