A few days ago my grandparents called to wish Brendan a happy birthday. I stood and listened to half of the conversation. At one point, they must have asked him, “What are you doing?”, because he replied calmly, “I’m talking on the phone.”

I saw "Master and Commander: The Far Side Of The World" last Saturday. I enjoyed it quite a bit. Speaking of violinists, as I did last post, Russell Crowe's character, Captain "Lucky" Jack Aubrey, plays the violin.
Crowe has joked that playing the violin is "probably the most difficult stunt I've done" , and says that ' "I have gotten to the point where I know that I can make a beautiful sound," ... Bettany [ship doctor, with whom he plays duets] also studied the cello, but has no such warm feelings for it. "It's a ghastly instrument," he said.'

The rest of the movie was very good too, with great fight scenes and flying cannonballs.

Did you know that Patrick Henry was a violinist?
According to the biography of him I dipped into ( Give Me Liberty: The Uncompromising Statesmanship of Patrick Henry, by David J. Vaughan), he was a very good one, too. He also knew Latin, Greek, a bit of French, and mastered the flute at twelve while recovering from a broken collarbone.

The only time a woman really succeeds in changing a man is when he is a baby.
~Natalie Wood (20th century), U.S. actress. Quoted in The Joys of Having a Child, by Bill and Gloria Adler (1993).

Today’s difference between Russia and the United States is that in Russia everybody takes everybody else for a spy, and in the United States everybody takes everybody else for a criminal.
~Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921–1990), Swiss dramatist, novelist, essayist. Trans. by Gerhard P. Knapp (1995). Sentences from America, no. 37 (1970).

I like Bartleby.com

“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.” So begins a literary romp through the land of Middle Earth. For The Hobbit really is a romp. J.R.R. Tolkien’s later books are journeys or quests, but in this first book of Middle Earth, Tolkien gave us a rollicking good time without any background information needed.

Go read the rest of my review.

Book review due this Friday. Test this Friday. Test next Friday. Paper and presentation due Friday after next . Paper due Dec. 12th on the Two Cities of St. Augustine.

I'm in a Christmas mood. I'm ready for stollen making and Christmas lights and trees. And sweaters and wearing red. And Christmas music and crackling fires.

I'm still enjoying 'In the Fiddler's House' (see sidebar). I borrowed it from the library, but I think it deserves a permanent place in my collection. If you like fiddling you should give it a listen.

Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou such a sap, Romeo?

(inspired by having to write a paper on my least favorite Shakespearian play.)
Fortunately, it is due today, so it will be gone soon. Another paper (on another topic, yay!) is due Friday, so my paperless elation will be short lived.

"Sadly, what is lost in all of this is that the Lord's Supper is primarily blessing. It is, after all, a means of grace. Though we suppose we are protecting our children from judgement, we are in fact 'protecting' them from the Supper's benefit."
Chapter 3 of Feed My Lambs, by Tim Gallant.

Take the 100 Acre Personality Quiz!

All right, so at first I was Kanga. But I thought saying I was patient wouldn't always be correct. So I tried again, and was Rabbit. But I prefer to be a silly old Pooh bear!

My brothers are cowboys at the moment. I'll share some of their cowboy knowledge with you:
Cowboys don't use forks.
(a simple enough mistake, they merely confused Vikings and cowboys!)
Real Cowboys tie their own shoes.
(I thought real cowboys wore boots. I stand corrected.)

On another topic:
When (and if!) you make cupcakes in ice cream cones, here are a few tips~
~ test one first
~ bake about twenty minutes, using cake instructions
~ fill cones about half full or they'll overflow
~ put aluminum foil around the bottom half to keep it from burning
~ bake in a muffin tin, set one cone in each

"Covenant community is not a nice fringe benefit of Christianity; it is essential. A Christian cannot exist apart from it, and those who are isolated are in great danger of perishing spiritually. No individual member can prosper apart from the whole."
Pastor Wilkins, Face to Face: Meditations on Friendship and Hospitality