Just Get Me to My Work on Time

Yesterday when I left work, I left a lot of details undone. All the crucial stuff was done, but there were probably another ten to twenty things that still needed to be finished. So yesterday, I thought to myself that I maybe would try to get to work by 5:00am. (my usual time is 6:00am). Knowing how I move in the morning, I knew this was possibly improbable, but I thought maybe I could do just this once.

Well, at 10:00pm last night when I was getting ready for bed, I suddenly knew for certain that I wasn't going to get up before 4:00 so I could be at work at 5:00. I decided instead to really get up at 4:20 when my alarm goes off instead of punching the alarm four times like I usually do (sometimes five times). I thought that I would then get to work by about 5:30.

I did pretty well. I only punched the alarm twice when it went off. I was ready to leave the house by about 5:15. That meant I might get to work by 5:40 or 5:45. Then I remembered--I had to get gas or I might not even make it to work, and since I was going a different route I could go through McDonald's and get something for breakfast to eat on the way.

The good news is that I made it to work on time, early even, at 5:59. This is about ten to fifteen minutes earlier that I usually get to work (I make up the time at the end of the day--it works). So I can say I WAS 15 minutes early. I am both proud of myself and mostly very irritated.

Living with me is hard. I think one of the reasons I look forward to Heaven is that I will be changed, and that will be pretty miraculous. And I don't think I will have to be on time for work.

Some Random Things

Jen drove home last weekend from Florida so she could leave her car and dog with us. It was a long, long way to drive. Now she is in NY near Buffalo doing some intensive training with the organization she will be working with in China. She will be home for a few days after that and then again for almost two weeks later in July. She has had an awful lot of stuff to do and still has plenty more to do. Please pray for her.

Jen's dog Gizmo and our dog Riley are having a wild time together. They run and play most of the time even when they are both worn out. They are getting along pretty well. Life has changed a lot for both of them--and for us. Both dogs are cuties.

I am looking ahead and starting to work on the Neighborhood Bible Clubs with my church which will held the first full week in August. Work + good times.

We had a potluck yesterday at work. Our theme was "Stuffed Stuff." We had stuffed tomatoes, stuff celery, stuffed enchiladas, stuffed empanadas, stuffed kraut burgers, stuffed shells (mine), stuffed cheese cake, stuffed strawberries, stuffed ice cream sandwiches, stuffed spring rolls, stuffed deviled eggs, and some other things. It was all good. We had really different things than we usually have.

On Father's Day both kids were out of town, although Aaron arrived back home mid-afternoon. Gary wanted fried chicken for his day--homemade fried chicken. I cooked one pan full and then told him I could fry the other pieces on some other day so that I could make gravy from the drippings to go with the meal. He decided he wanted all the chicken cooked (he was afraid I wouldn't fix it later) and that we could eat later in the afternoon. So we ate at about 2:30. Aaron got home just as we were starting to eat. He doesn't really like fried chicken, so he had some veggies and potatoes and gravy. Usually I would have fixed him chicken strips or something else, but I didn't know he was coming home so early (he can stand fried chicken strips). Anyway, Gary's been taking chicken for lunch all week. He's been very happy this week, at least at lunch time.

Apparently I don't have too many thoughts today. I just found out I have to proof a paper for somebody in the building, so I guess I'm quitting with the writing.

200th Blog

For my 200th blog I have 200 book titles. The list includes some repeats, but I'm going to leave the list as is. It's a good list.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien

3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

4 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

5 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

6 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell

7 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

8 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott

9 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy

10 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

11 Complete Works of Shakespeare

12 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

13 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien

14 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger

15 Middlemarch - George Eliot

16 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell

17 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

18 Bleak House - Charles Dickens

19War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

20 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh

21 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

22 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

23 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

24 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

25Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

26 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

27 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis

28 Emma - Jane Austen

29 Persuasion - Jane Austen

30 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne

31 Animal Farm - George Orwell

32 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving


33 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery

34 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy

35Lord of the Flies - William Golding

36 Dune - Frank Herbert

37Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

38 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

39 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

40 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

41Count of Monte Cristo - Aleandre Dumas

42 On The Road - Jack Kerouac

43 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy

44 Moby Dick - Herman Melville

45 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

46 Dracula - Bram Stoker

47 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett

48 Ulysses - James Joyce

49 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

50A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

51The Color Purple - Alice Walker

52 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

53 Charlotte’s Web - EB White

54 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

55Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

56 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Eupery

57Watership Down - Richard Adams

58The Three Musketeers - Aleandre Dumas

59Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

60Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

61Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain

62The Æneid - Virgil


63Adventures of Tom Sawyer - Mark Twain

64Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

65Through the Looking Glass - Lewis Carroll

66All Quiet on the Western Front - Erich Maria Remarque

67The American - Henry James

68Animal Farm - George Orwell

69Anna Karenina - Tolstoy

Arrowsmith - Sinclair Lewis

70Babbit - Sinclair Lewis

71Beowulf

72The Bible - God

73Billy Budd - Herman Meville

74Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

75Brothers Karamozov - Fyodor Dostoyevski

76Caine Mutiny - Herman Wouk

77Call of the Wild - Jack London

78Canterbury Tales - Geoffrey Chaucer

79Complete Stories of Edgar Allen Poe - E.A. Poe

80 Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court - Mark Twain

81Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

82Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevski

83Cry, the Beloved Country - Alan Paton

84Daisy Miller - Henry James

85David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

86Death Comes for the Archbishop - Willa Cather

87Don Quiote de la Mancha - Miguel de Cervantes

88Dune - Frank Herbert


89Emma - Jane Austen

90Ethan Frome - Edith Wharton

91Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury

92A Farewell to Arms - Ernest Hemmingway

93For Whom the Bell Tolls - Ernest Hemingway

94Giant - Edna Ferber

95Gone with the Wind - Margaret Mitchell

96Good Earth - Pearl S. Buck

97Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

98Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

99Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald

100Great Short Works of Joseph Conrad - Joseph Conrad

101Gulliver's Travels - Johnathon Swift

102The Hobbit -J.R.R. Tolkien

103House of Seven Gables - Nathaniel Hawthorne

104Hunchback of Notre Dame- Victor Hugo

105The Iliad - Homer

106Ivanhoe - Sir Walter Scott

105Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

108Jungle Books - Rudyard Kipling

109Kidnapped - Robert Lewis Stevenson

110Last of the Mohicans - James Fenimore Cooper

111Little Women - Louisa May Alcott

112Look Homeward Angel - Thomas Wolfe

113Lord Jim - Joseph Conrad

114Lord of the Flies - William Golding

115Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien

116Main Street - Sinclair Lewis

117Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

118Moby Dick - Herman Melville

119Moll Flanders - Daniel Defoe

120The Morte D'Arthur - Thomas Malory

121Mutiny on the Bounty - Charles Nordhoff

122My Antonia - Willa Cather

123 1984 - George Orwell

124The Odyssey - Homer

125Of Human Bondage - W. Somerset Maugham

126Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway

127Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

128The Once and Future King - T.H. White

129Pearl - John Steinbeck

130The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde

131Pilgrim's Progress - John Bunyon

132The Plague - Albert Camus

133Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austin

134Quo Vadis - Henryk Sienkiewicz

135Rebecca - Daphne Dumaurier

136Red Badge of Courage - Stephen Crane

137Red Pony - John Steinbeck

138Return of the Native - Thomas Hardy

139Robinson Crusoe - Daniel Defoe

140Sherlock Holmes, the Complete Stories - A. Conan Doyle

141Silas Marner - George Eliot

142Slaughterhouse-five - Kurt Vonnegut

143Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner

144Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway

145Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

146Three Musketeers - Alexander Dumas

147Time Machine - H.G. Wells

148To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

149Treasure Island - Robert Lewis Stevenson

150A Tree Grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith

151Turn of the Screw - Henry James

152 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea - Jules Verne

153Uncle Tom's Cabin - Harriet Beecher Stowe


154Vanity Fair - William Thackeray

155War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

156Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte


157The Yearling - Marjory K. Rawlings

158You Can't Go Home Again - Thomas Wolfe

159Aesop's Fables - William Caxton

160Arabian Nights or One Thousand and One Nights

161Black Beauty - Anna Sewell

162The Call of the Wild - Jack London

163Gulliver's Travels - Jonathan Swift

164Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates - Mary Mapes Dodge

165The Happy Prince and Other Tales - Oscar Wilde

166Heidi - Johanna Spyri

167Ivanhoe - Walter Scott

168Just So Stories - Rudyard Kipling

169The Legend of Sleepy Hollow - Washington Irving

170A Little Princess - Frances Hodgson Burnett

171Little Lord Fauntleroy - Frances Hodgson Burnett

172The Lost World - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

173Peter pan - J.M. Barrie

174Pilgrim's Progress - John Bunyan

175Pinocchio - Carlo Collodi

176Pollyanna - Eleanor H. Porter

177Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm - Kate Douglas Wiggin

178Rip Van Winkle - Washington Irving

179The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett

180The Swiss Family Robinson - Johann Rudolf Wyss

181Tales of Mother Goose - Charles Perrault

182The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Duras

183Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea - Jules Verne

184The Water Babies - Charles Kingsley

185White Fang - jack London

186The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

187Where the Sidewalk Ends - Shel Silverstein

188The Hiding Place - Corrie Ten Boom

189Charlotte's Web - E.B. White

190Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

190The Indian in the Cupboard - Lynne Reid Banks

191James and the Giant Peach - Roald Dahl

192Little House on the Prairie Books - Laura Ingalls Wilder

193How to Eat Fried Worms - Thomas Rockwell

194Pippe Longstocking - Astrid Lindgren

195Stuart Little - E.B. White

196Sideway School is Falling Down

197The Black Stallion - Walter Farley

198The Cat in the Hat - Dr. Seuss

199Green Eggs and Ham - Dr. Seuss

200The Little Engine that Could

Amazing Date!

June 10th. This is my 37th anniversary. It is also my husband's 37th anniversary. We were talking last night about this anniversary. When we got married we hadn't even thought about being married this long. It wasn't that we thought we would get a divorce...we just hadn't visualized the possible length of time a marriage could last.

Some of the events on our wedding day in 1972 included these special moments:

Gary's mom got locked out of the motel room before she had gotten dressed for the wedding.

My mom sat in grease in my dad's car on the way to the wedding and we had to rush down to the church kitchen to wash it out. Fortunately the grease came out.

When my dad and I were just starting down the aisle from the back of the church, he almost stumbled when all the people turned to look at us. I think he hadn't realized that was part of the fun.

Gary and I sang a duet during the wedding, "Day by Day." The pastor had told us we probably shouldn't plan to sing because at his wedding he passed out he was so nervous, and he was afraid we might have problems.

My sister sang a solo and so did our friend, Allen. Both did a wonderful job. Someone made the comment since we were having so many songs (three including ours), we should just have the choir sing. We didn't.

The ring bearer picked his nose up in front.

We had two flower girls, Kay (my cousin) and Jody (Gary's niece). We also had three attendants on each side (my sister was my maid of honor and two friends were the bridesmaids; Gary's two brothers and his friend Allen were the groomsmen). Our colors were yellow and white--very pretty in June.

As part of the postlude, the organist played "The Fight is On, O Christian Soldiers." The truth. I don't know what she was thinking!!!!

It was a great wedding. I loved it.

Gary has been a great husband and I'm so glad to have him. And he is glad to have me (or else). With God, we have created a unique life together.

I am hoping for another 37!

Respect your Mother

A co-worker's mother can't keep her house clean. She was a lousy mother when my co-worker was growing up (she was/is an alcoholic), she needs to sell her house and move--she should be able to see that.

Another co-worker's mother doesn't know about or understand all the technology. When she asks her daughter questions, she tells her she's not going to use the technology and she doesn't need to understand.

Another co-worker's mother didn't fix food the right way and treat her right when she was growing up.

These women act like their mothers are foolish, unable, and not willing to do things the right way. I don't like to hear that kind of talk.

When I was a kid, I felt family loyalty. I might have thought my mom and dad didn't do everything right, but I didn't want other people to know their faults. I think no matter how fallible our parents are, we should be respectful and protective of them and their reputations.

My mother was a great mother. Not perfect, but great. Why we expect perfection from others when we can't be perfect ourselves is not reasonable.

My mother taught me many valuable things: ironing, laundry, spelling, sewing, driving, hair curling, shopping, cleaning, dishes, cooking. She taught me to read the Bible and pray and go to church. She provided a piano and piano lessons and a clarinet, and camp and library trips. She made me obey and taught me respect for my dad. She was a good example.

My son and daughter treat me with respect. I know they respect my opinion and my abilities. I think (and hope) they say kind things about me to their friends.

Being a mother wasn't always easy for my mother or for me. We just tried to do a good job.

Family Picnic

Aunts, Uncles, Cousins, Brother, Sister-in-law, Brother-in-law, Nephews and Nieces ( some of these people have already been told about this, but if you read this blog, please spread the word),

I would like to invite you to a family picnic on Saturday, July 18. I don't know yet where it will be. Details will follow at some point, but I hope you will hold this date open for this event. This will be the last time we will see Jen for probably two years. I hope you can come. We will figure out food later.

Qingdao Demographics & Prayer Requests

By the end of 2006, Qingdao was estimated to be the home of about 8 million inhabitants, of which around 3 million reside in the Qingdao urban area. Another estimated 5 million live in other cities under Qingdao's jurisdiction.

The annual birth rate is calculated around 76,507, with a birth rate of 10.15 per year per thousand, and a death rate of 6.32, both calculated on an annual basis.

Living standards are among highest of leading Chinese cities due to the strong export economy and relatively high family wages.

While Qingdao is home to 38 Chinese ethnic minorities they constitute only 0.14% of the city's total population. Qingdao boasts a vibrant expatriate community, led by the Korean community which comprised over 80,000 individuals in 2007.

This information all comes from Wikipedia--not my brain.

Please pray for Jen. She has had so much to do and she is worn down. Pray that she will find someone to take her little dog. The girl who was supposed to take him changed her mind. Also Jen still has to raise about $5000. Her church is taking an offering this Sunday, and some friends are having a gold party (people bring broken gold jewelry, and then it is melted down). I'm planning a barbecue for the Sheriff's Office and asking for donations. Anyway, she needs your prayers.