And the Gold Medal in Hopscotch Goes To...

I was sitting in the living room when hubs yells out from upstairs, "You've GOT to be kidding me!" Curious, I went up there to see what he was talking about and he was watching the Olympics on the Oxygen channel (as if they're a hub for athletic events...whatever!). They were showing what we later learned was Individual Dressage. Pronounced 'druh-SAHZ,' it is defined as "the art or method of training a horse in obedience and in precision of movement." Looked like horse dancing to us. I swear they even used the word, "pirouette" in the commentating.

We sputtered a bit about how we couldn't believe this was an Olympic sport (I have a hard time defining as a sport anything where the bulk of the work is done by an animal or machine, but I digress...). We began naming off other "sports" that have found their place into the Olympic line-up - trampoline, synchronized diving, rhythmic gymnastics. Please, why not give us marathon hula hooping or shuffleboard? I did read a simple, informative article that did explain some of the how's and why's of event selection, but it does make me wonder who gets to make the final decision about what we get to see every 4 years. Where do we get to vote? Come on, give us some roller derby.

Salutations to the Musician

My friend, The Musician, lamented the dearth of new posts by her blogger buddies, so this one is for her. I wish I could offer some deep, thought-provoking prose or some funny anecdotes, but I'm just too tired! I truly hope you're not reading this in the wee hours of the morning. Just know that you, the Geek and the wee one are prayed for!

Beginnings and Endings

Update: We went, we cried, I cried some more, we survived day 1. Only hundreds more to go.

I fight tears today. They come each time I realize that today is the last day my daughter will be my "baby." She starts kindergarten tomorrow and our lives will never quite be the same. Starting tomorrow, other adults will have significant influence on her life and choices and I'll have to share her with new friends and commitments. I know to some this may not seem like such a big deal, but it's very scary to me. Granted, it sounds like I'm jettisoning her through time and sending her off to college, but sending her off to kindergarten is just a taste of what's to come.

Have I squandered my time with her the past 5 years? Have I taught her about Jesus to the best of my ability? While I know I will still have plenty of opportunities to spend time with her and teach her, it just seems like this golden time is now over and I don't know if I've done a good enough job. I love her so much and I don't want to have screwed up.

Noah and the Dinosaurs

So, we're "vacationing" with some old friends at their home in Harrison, OH and it's just minutes away from the Creation Museum. We spent several hours there and it is really a neat place. I wasn't sure what to expect, but it was beautifully landscaped and the exhibits and presentations were very professionally done. I left there with a fresh, lingering awe of God and what He's done and some new questions to ponder in light of Scripture. For example:

• Were there dinosaurs on Noah's ark?


• Did fossilization occur as a result of the Flood?

It reminded me of pictures I saw on Dan Kimball's blog of Jesus riding a dinosaur and another of Him holding one like a lamb. How startling at first, but possible?

Anyways, hubs and his pastor friend had a great discussion in the van and at dinner over what we'd seen and heard. Very thought-provoking stuff, to say the least. It wasn't kooky or ultra-religious in the sense that it rejected science in lieu of some mystic, supernatural stuff. It allowed science and faith to work together to tell the story of the redemption of humanity and creation through Christ. I loved how the gospel was interwoven into the science of it all. I think that's exactly how it's supposed to be - using science to learn more about God and appreciate His power, love and creativity, and not to disprove His existence.

Is There A Movie Adapted From That?

The story is that apparently the National Endowment for the Arts estimates that the average adult has only read six of these books. Here are the markup guidelines:

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.

2) Italicize those you intend to read.

3) Mark in red the books you LOVE.

4) Reprint this list in your blog



1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkein

3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling

5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

6 The Bible

7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell

9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman

10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott

12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy

13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

14 The complete works of Shakespeare (I've read a LOT, but not all!)

15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien

17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks

18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger

19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell

22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens

24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh

27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis

34 Emma - Jane Austen

35 Persuasion - Jane Austen

36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell

42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving

45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery

47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy

48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood

49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding - I HATED this book

50 Atonement - Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel

52 Dune - Frank Herbert

53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt

64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac

67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy

68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding

69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie

70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

72 Dracula - Bram Stoker

73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett

74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses - James Joyce

76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath

77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

78 Germinal - Emile Zola

79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

80 Possession - AS Byatt

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker

84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro

85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90 The Faraway Tree Collection

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery

93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

94 Watership Down - Richard Adams

95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

So, that looks like 30 read out of 100. Not too bad, I guess. I do like to read and I've read some really great books not listed here. Like The Musician, I was fortunate to have had a spectacular education at a public school and had the chance to take AP English classes that required me to read many of these works. Some I liked, many I did not.

If I were allowed to count those books which have been made into movies or plays, I could add 11 more!