I am still here!

Working feverishly on TME's sweater. The back is done and I'm halfway through the front. I bought four skeins as the pattern required but I think I may need more, I am almost done with the 2nd skein already.

So much for exercising. I have ANOTHER COLD! I am using Zicam AND Airborne so I had better get well soon or else.

On a more fun note, we are going to be butterfly parents! Shorty got a Butterfly Pavilion from Insect Lore for Christmas and we were waiting until it got a little warmer to order the caterpillars. Well, since it takes a few weeks to get them, and about 5 weeks for them to mature, if we order now they should be full-grown butterflies by the end of March and that's practically summer in Eclectic-ville. :D

Buying Food on the Plane

Some of the airlines have started programs now where they sell you food on flights that they normally would have given you a meal on before. I'll have to admit that I was very cynical about this the first time I was on a flight where they were doing it, but I had a change of heart pretty quickly after I realized that in general the quality was higher than what we were getting before and I could ask for more healthy options that tasted better than what you used to get if you selected the "Low Fat" or "Vegetarian" meal preference. I could still hope that they would just give these choices to us for free, but in the end I'm happy with the switch (except for the times when I've forgotten to bring cash on the plane with me and had to sit with a growling stomach and nothing but the snack mix bags they still hand out for free to kill the pain for 5+ hours, but those were my fault).

yay for me!

Well, I've been mostly keeping up with exercising. It is still boring, and I'm still not seeing any real changes (TME doesn't think I will, since I am already scrawny--maybe just an increase in endurance), but at least I'm still doing it. And I finished the sweater! It actually turned out pretty cute, although I need to re-do the buttons. I bought the size specified, but they are really too small for the buttonholes--it won't stay buttoned. And it's much easier to put on new buttons than to re-do the buttonholes.

Now I've started on TME's sweater. I am making it in "Montana Sky" Homespun yarn by Lion Brand, I think it will look nice on him. Now I'm just hoping I can finish it before sweater season is over--sweater season doesn't last very long in Eclectic-ville.

Context and the Gospel of John

The Gospel of John is a paradoxical book to me. John's tone (both in the Gospel and his letters) is very matter-of-fact and this leads to a lot of quotable verses (of course the most famous of all being John 3:16). But I think that there is a fundamental problem with this because John's books are so context sensitive (there are broad ideas being communicated and reading individual verses, though they may seem to pass along concrete ideas, are often really slaved to the main idea of the passage that can span entire chapters). So this is central to the interpretation of the book and always has to be kept in mind - that it often sounds like John is quoting proverbs, but they link together to form an entire idea. A couple of verses will show what I am talking about here, I think:

John 5:31 - "If I testify about myself, my testimony is not valid."

John 8:14 - Jesus answered, "Even if I testify on my own behalf, my testimony is valid, for I know where I came from and where I am going."

John's tone makes us want to take each statement as simple standalone fact because they are so straightforward. But if both of the above separated statements were meant to be true by themselves then Jesus contradicts himself. An atheist may have no problem with this, but I'm not an atheist, so I choose to believe that this is not the case and rather we must understand each passage in the light of the entire passage, not in individual verses pulled from their context. In the first case Jesus wants to point out that there is another who testifies about him (John 5:37 - "And the Father who sent me has himself testified concerning me.") and that this is not just anybody, but rather is the Father himself. In John 8 Jesus has a similar concern (to point out that his testimony is given validity not because of himself, but rather because God the Father testifies concerning him). We can see this in John 8:18 where Jesus says, "I am one who testifies for myself; my other witness is the Father, who sent me."

Of course, I've just quoted other verses in the same area to point out that I don't think we should be quoting individual verses, which is a little silly of me, but I think that examination of the entire passage in each case proves the point.

relaxation

TME and I recently returned from a few days spent in sunny Arizona. It was a very nice and very relaxing vacation. It was pretty cool to swim in the middle of January. :D

On the flight home we were on the plane with a guy who looked remarkably like Elijah Wood. I couldn't stop staring because I was just sure it was going to be him, LOL. I think I embarrassed TME by standing near this guy at the baggage claim so I could get a glimpse of his name on his checked baggage. It wasn't Elijah. We figured Elijah Wood wouldn't fly Southwest, haha. Although if you're out there reading my blog (!), Elijah, you've got a guy out there who could seriously be your double.

sort of a WOOT

Well, I decided for exercise purposes that I would try running in place on the trampoline instead of jumping on it. On Monday I did it for 15 minutes! *insert WOOT here* On Tuesday my calves ached so bad it hurt to walk. I didn't exercise Tuesday partly because of my calves and partly because I got my allergy shot that afternoon and I read somewhere that you aren't suppose to do heavy exercise after an allergy shot and that sounded like a good excuse to me and I want to take good care of myself. So today I exercised again! That makes twice in one week, which is a pretty sorry achievement but I will take what I can get!

I also found a new project to start! This time I am making myself another "house sweater." I am a little like Mr. Rogers in the winter, I get home, take off my jacket and put on a sweater. My current house sweater has a bunch of snags on it because I like to pick up my cats so I thought I'd make another. Of course now that I am making one I will be really mad if my cats snag it, haha. I am crocheting it, and I am a super fast crocheter so I am already done with the back and have started on the left front. I used "reclaimed yarn" from a project that I tinked--it was going to be a sweater for TME but I started it on the knitting machine, then put it aside and forgot how I had done all the settings so I just gave up on it. It is navy blue, and I would post a picture but it would just come out looking like a black blob and you would wonder why in the world I would waste my time on that. Hopefully it will be semi-cute when I'm done.

Phooey.

I am officially a wuss. And exercise is officially the pits.

Okay, so we got one of those mini trampolines at the thrift shop. Shorty and Midge were thrilled of course, as they are already bouncing off the wall half the time anyway. And clever me thought it would be useful for exercise. I can jump about 10 times before I get a side stitch. Today I managed to run in place on it for 15 minutes. About an hour later I got stomach cramps which TME said was basically my innards getting all revved up due to the exercise. Just lovely. Yeah, that's really what I need, revved up innards. *blah*

TME tells me that if I work through it then it will get better. I'm not sure why I want to. Grrrr.

Moving to a New Computer

I haven't posted lately as I've been moving myself to a new computer. The old one was having power problems so I finally decided it was time to just begin anew. Anyway, one of the most frustrating things about starting over like this is all of the passwords that I have to re-enter (some of which I have forgotten and can't find anywhere). I suppose I could use one of those password managers but I feel like somebody should make a way to have a single password that is used for all sorts of programs, sort of an online driver's license. When you get a new program, it could, with a very simple-to-implement API, query this central identification server. Of course, there would be the huge problems inherent in securing something like this when some criminal stole your identity and then owned all of your data in a single stroke. Bummer.

Jane tells me that she never has any problems remembering all of her passwords. Of course, since they are all "Jane" that makes it easy... just kidding.

Emoticons

I don't know how many of you out there in Blogland use MSN Messenger, but I am convinced that they have three of the very best smileys out there. They are:



TME and I are very hip and wired and so we often use MSN to chat with each other when we are in different rooms. That's what very hip and wired people do, you know. We also got Shorty hooked up with MSN so that we don't have to shout when she's back in her room. That's what hip and wired people do who are tired of shouting "Get off the computer and do your schoolwork!" LOL

So I use liberally. TME thinks it's the exact face that I make at him when he's being silly. He's probably right. is good for all-purpose not getting your way. And is always useful when TME says he wants to read one more blog before he makes my pancakes on a Saturday morning. :)

*caution* Whining ahead

I need to exercise more. :(

I don't need to lose weight (if anything, I need to gain weight), but I am not at all physically fit. Riding my bike around the block makes my thighs burn and puts me out of breath. *cry* My parents are still living and so are 3/4 of my grandparents so for the most part there is some decent longevity in my history, but I worry that because I am so out of shape I am going to have a heart attack at an early age or something. :( :(

My problems with exercising are this: I don't have a lot of free time to myself, make that almost no free time. I have to tell Shorty and Midge to beat it if I want to use the bathroom in private *roll eyes* and if I put in an exercise video they all want to join in. I know, a good mother would let them exercise with me, but our living room isn't all that huge and frankly it isn't all that fun to exercise as it is, and it's even worse when you are getting thwacked in the head and your feet stepped on. *heavy sigh* I could join a gym or Curves or something, but then the child care issue comes back--I don't feel like it would be very responsible of me to ditch my children for an hour or so three times a week just so I could exercise. We have a stepper, but that makes me feel inadequate because after a couple minutes I am dying of burning muscles.

TME tells me that I am also not properly motivated, that I need a clear goal. I guess he doesn't see "not dying" as a very good goal. :P But it's not like I can say "lose 10 pounds" or something similar as a goal. He suggests I use "lowering my resting heart rate" as a goal, but that just doesn't seem very doable to me, plus it's rather boring. My heart rate already fluctuates like crazy due to my thyroid so I don't know if we could even accurately track that as a goal. I would like to have more nicely shaped, muscley arms, but that's a pretty lame goal too.

In case you haven't noticed, my pessimism is at a high point when I get started talking about exercise. I am stuck in the quandary of being negative about everything, yet feeling constant guilt about not working on it. *blah*

Plain Jane--the criminal

Saw this article today, guess I'm a criminal too. I think Shorty and Midge are better off for it, though. ;)

Many Browsers

I have to say it, I'm addicted to new software. For some reason I'm especially fond of messing around with different web browsers. Once Opera became free recently I gave it a shot and I have to say that I use it almost exclusively now. I still like Firefox for the variety of its plugins (open source shines the most for that aspect), and I have to use Internet Explorer sometimes on pages due to compatability issues (Opera, for example, doesn't seem to like handling Blogspot's post editor that well - see screenshot). But all-in-all I think that Opera is my favorite browser... currently... until I try something different.

What is up with all this sickness?

Okay, so today most of us in my family are sick, it seems. There has been a great deal of sickness going through our valley in the past month. While we were with the extended family during Christmas we had 2 sicknesses sweeping through at the same time (a stomach bug and a cold); it was awful.