Saturday, December 31, 2005

Dinosaurs


They never taught us this in school. Dinosaurs are depicted on Incan burial stones that date from the 1500's. That is, prior to the "discovery" of dinosaur fossils. How would these Incans have known to draw accurate pictures of dinosaurs without having actually seen dinosaurs? I suppose one could say that these dinosaurs were a figment of Incan imaginations, but how would that explain the multitude of dinosaur images on artifacts from other cultures, made by other ancient craftsmen?

Check out this page at Genesis Park. And lest you call this site biased, you will find many other sites that describe these artifacts, and I have not been able to find a single site calling them a hoax. Dinosaurs and humans co-existing?! Our God is an awesome God.

Hmmm...

I am in a knitting quandary lately. All my holiday gifts are done and gone, but that means I have nothing left to do--or nothing left I have to do. TME (The Master Eclectic himself) gave me some yarn for Christmas, and right away I started on an afghan with it. But now I have bogged down a little. Part of the reason is that the yarns I am using are kind of fluffy, and little fibers come off of it as I crochet. I have a cold right now (thanks a lot to Shorty) and the little fibers will only make my nose run more. I have an ancient doily that's about half done, but I'm uninspired. I got some other yarn for Christmas and it's all beautiful but I don't know what I want to do with it yet. I started knitting a scarf with one of the lone skeins but I'm almost done with the skein and the scarf isn't very long. :(

TME wants me to make him one of these sweaters but I don't know if I have the patience. I already made one for me, Shorty, and Midge but TME is a lot bigger than any of us and the one I made for myself seemed eternal. *sigh* But I guess I ought to, that way we can be a goofy matched set.

Friday, December 30, 2005

Plain Jane Introduction

Plain Jane is my wife. She is neither "plain" nor is her name "Jane." But my name really is "Justin."

WOOT!

PJ is in da house! This blog is set to be seriously eclectic now.

Thursday, December 29, 2005

People You Need

One of my dearest friends visited this week and it occurred to me while he was here that he is the type of person that everyone needs around them. The reason being that he is a pusher, he pushes me to push my own envelope and find out that I can do things beyond what I had thought were my limits. He is an "edifier" in the biblical sense of building up other people and I think that we need to find such people and surround ourselves with them. We also need to discover what makes them edifiers and become that ourselves. I'm inordinately blessed to have him as a friend, but I'm even more blessed since my wife is also an edifier. She pushes me to different limits, though - more spiritual rather than physical. It is interesting to me that they both push me to areas where I am not so comfortable to discover that I have capabilities there. I think that this must be a common attribute of edifiers, breaking down barriers so that stronger foundations can be laid; or I might just be reading too many muscle-building web sites lately.

Tuesday, December 27, 2005


I shot this on a trail I was on in July and every time I look at it I feel like I'm there again. I'm glad I got a part of the trail along with the mountains in the background since I think that is the part that makes the difference. Of course, I know absolutely nothing about photography, but I know what I like.

Coffee Geek

I have to admit that I am a Coffee Geek (one of my favorite web sites is http://www.coffeegeek.com). I'm sure that there are worse ones out there than me, and I don't spend as much money on it as I could (thankfully), but I have at least 4 different ways of making coffee in my house and I like to cycle between them all every so often.
Anyway, Coffee Geek has a great post on how to make Turkish Coffee (http://www.coffeegeek.com/guides/turkishcoffee) complete with pictures of the entire process. This is important since many guides for making Turkish Coffee on the web are just text and you are sure to mess up one of the important parts from just a description. One of the most notable things about Turkish Coffee preparation is how almost everyone who has posted a description has some step that must be done as described or it is sacrilege, but other posts will have it completely different. My experience is that there is more slop in the process than many people seem to believe. Isn't that like most things?

Monday, December 26, 2005

Christmas Presents

This year I got a CycleOps Riser Block (http://www.cycle-ops.com/products/riserblock.htm) that I can use with my trainer (don't laugh, I asked for it). Anyway, I was having a lot of pain in my wrists when I was riding my trainer and this simple little product just eliminated it (it just raises your front wheel). Highly recommended.

First Post

I so enjoy reading everyone else's blogs that I finally decided to try one of my own. Unfortunately, I cannot decide on any central theme to plan for the blog, which I'm sure will eliminate whatever scant readership I might have had in the first place, but I'll have fun posting anyway.