New Checking Account

So, my husband opens a new checking account at a bank closer to our home but doesn't add me to the account. Should I be suspicious?

Oscars

In case you live in a bubble and haven't heard, the Oscars were announced today. I wonder how many people are like me and have only seen a few of the movies nominated. I wonder if there will be much interest in the Oscars given the movies that were nominated (none of which were huge boxoffice successes).

Keira Knightley in "Pride & Prejudice" is up for best actress, though I thought her performance was just OK (her smile got on my nerves and so did her laugh). "War of the Worlds" and "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" only received award nominations in minor categories. That's it, that's all I've seen.

Untied Shoelaces

I guess this guy regrets not listening to his mother and teachers who told him to keep his shoelaces tied. This is a good warning to those who don't keep them tied, tie your shoelaces before you go into a museum.

(Link via Hugh Hewitt)

Busy Not Reading

I haven't blogged recently because I've been very busy not reading. Knowing that I have to read forces me to do other things like clean the house. I also had to do mommy things like scan in pictures of Christmas past then take the digital images to CVS for reprints (I lost the negatives). Why you might ask? Samantha is scrapbooking after school on Mondays. So I drop off the pictures and wait an hour while she does scrapbooking. I bought the Poythress book with me to read while I waited but I also brought a library book that I needed to renew (our next stop). Guess which one I read?

Cathy

This is so true! I used to be able to cut out sugar for a couple weeks and lose weight. Now, nothing!

Romans

The White Horse Inn is doing a series on Romans. You can listen to it here.

Open Office

My hermeneutics professor made his handouts available to the class already in a number of different file formats including one I had never heard of before: Open Office. Open Office is a free multilingual office suite and yes, you heard (or in this case read) that right, FREE. It is very similar to Microsoft Office and has a spreadsheet, word processor, powerpoint type presentation software, a database program and a graphics program. It also includes an equation editor. It reads and saves files in the Microsoft Office file format. You can download it here. I have tried it and it is pretty good.

Microsoft Video

Here is a funny video that some of us might wish were true (especially when you get the blue screen of death).

(Link via Common Grounds Online)

The Fruit of Procrastination

Of course I always wait to the last minute and last night was no exception. Samantha kept saying to me, "Mommy, you need to read. You need to do your work. If you don't do your work, you are going to regret it." (Could Samantha be a prophet like her namesake?)

Of course I did not listen and I told her to leave me alone or she would be punished. "Leave me alone. I will do it when I finish this game of Zuma."

"Mommy, you are such a Zuma-head."

This morning I really wished I had listened to her since I decided to put off editing and printing my Bible study until this morning.

"I think I will drop you off at the cafeteria if we get to school early."

"Oh no! Don't do that!" They hate being dropped off at the cafeteria since it means waiting around until school starts and then walking further to their classes (with their backpacks).

"But I have to get home and edit and printout my Bible study. You can walk from the cafeteria. Don't you think it is important that I get ready for my study."

Then Samantha and Sarah in voices dripping with self-righteousness and condemnation state that I should have prepared last night instead of waiting until this morning. They had no sympathy for me.

Back at the house I was able to quickly make the editing changes before it was time to leave. I was under a time crunch because I had to give the lecture before the discussion groups since my daughters had a half day at school. I hooked up the USB cable to print the slides and the questions for the Bible study. I forgot to turn the printer on and when I did, Windows rejected my USB device and then I got the blue screen of death because I was trying to insist that it use the printer that it has been using since I got this laptop (and with the laptop before this one). I restart the system and it still refuses to accept the printer, so I gave up and packed up the computer in my laptop bag (which I very highly recommend, BTW) and rushed off to my Bible study. As I am driving, I realize that the printer may not be working because I finally installed my new scanner/printer software (which I got when I got this computer in September) and it was probably experiencing a driver conflict. Of course if I hadn't been procrastinating I would have realized all this last night instead of today (or months ago when I bought the scanner).

The fruit of my procrastination? No handouts for the women, I had to read off the monitor because I didn't have a handout, no questions for next week and now I have more work because I have to email the questions and the notes. Will I learn? Of course not, I know I need to read for seminary and yet I played Zuma when I got home today. But ending on a note of hope, I did write this post today instead of next week.

Update: The End of the Spear

Hugh Hewitt liked The End of the Spear and recommened it on his blog. I guess I finally got an answer to my question. I think I might just wait until it comes to DVD.

A Post on My Other Blog

I have posted an article about a recent episode of ER on my other blog. I am posting longer articles there.

Update on My Seminary Preparation

Thank you for the prayers, Susan! I need all the prayers that I can get. I have been reading and am now at page 72. I am hoping to finish the book this week so that this weekend I can write a digest for Murray's Redemption Accomplished and Applied.

Finally, a smoking gun on Beth!

Here it is Michele,
Finally a reformed voice crying out in the desert about Beth!
She is reviewing Beth's book "Believing God". I think the reviewer said it well when she surmises that Beth encourages us to "to add human effort to what God has already done in the cross of Christ, even when it's called believing God or faith. Faith in Jesus Christ is a saving grace, whereby we receive and rest upon him alone for salvation. Everything else is of grace in the Christian experience, too, thanks be to God."

I hope you have time to read the entire article, despite all your hermeneutics "reading".

BTW, I just prayed for you that you would be diligent to complete your reading and stop procrastinating!

Another BTW, I just finished my Art History class today! (In case some of you didn't know, I'm going to college, finally!!) Anyway, I had my final exam today. I think I aced it.

Susan

Never having blogged before, I just thought I'd take a minute and test this. Where did they get the name 'blog' anyway. Couldn't they have come up with something that didn't remind me of an old creepy movie from the 70's? Yes, I know that was The Blob...but I still think of it every time I enter this site. Even 'Blab' would have been better. : )

But this is Amazing

I was looking at some of the other pictures they had from the Walk for Life march in San Fransco and I was amazed by the size of the crowd in this picture. It is shocking that they have that many pro-life people in San Fransco!

This is Really Sick

Here is a link to a picture of Chrystal Haviland of Berkeley who "partakes in the pro-choice side of Saturday's Walk For Life and counterdemonstration." She is pregnant and has written "My baby is prochoice" on her belly. This is wrong on so many levels but the question I have is since when has it ever been about what the baby wanted? I thought that it did not exist as a human with rights and feelings until it leaves the mother's womb.

(Link via The Corner)

Welcome to Me!

Okay, I've finally found my way to Reformed Chicks Blabbing.
So far I've only really seen one Reformed Chick blabbing, so I guess I'd better jump on in. I have so many incredibly deep and provocative thoughts simmering around in my brain that I just don't know where to start. Which one would you like first?

How about this?
Tomorrow I will be 40 years old. 40 years old. How funny, because I still feel like I'm 22. I guess that's a sure sign of old age, huh?
It's very interesting because I'm finding that women who are 10 or more years older than I am assure me that I'm still very young and that "it doesn't start going downhill" for at least another 10 years. Just today my neighbor told me that she didn't start "going downhill" until her last birthday. I am, naturally far too polite to ask her just how old that might be, but I know that she's well into her 60's. Another friend tells me that I am now olllllld. She's about 3 years older, by the way.

I am really not bothered by this age business. It's just another year. Just another age. Just another notch on my lipstick case. One thing that's weird about age, though is that once again I find myself at this artificial sort of milestone and I find myself lacking. Things are not the way I thought they would be. But then again, one thing I've learned lo these many years is that nothing ever is. Some things are better than I had expected. But I also realize that my Cinderella dreams have to some extent popped like the bubbles in her wash tub.
And that's kind of okay too. Those were idealized, romanticized dreams. My dreams at 40 are far more realistic: a clean house, an empty basket where the laundry pile once was, new living room furniture, a lovely vacation, having my husband praise me in the gates and my children rise up and call me blessed. There are others too, but they are none of your business! Hey, cool, that's one fun thing about being an old lady! :)

So here's to me. And here's to another year of life. And here's to the knowledge that I am living the life that Christ had planned for me from eternity. And that, to quote the common parlance, is all good.

An Update on My Reading for Seminary

I asked for prayer in Sunday School today that I would be able to prepare for seminary this week. I had asked for prayer last Sunday but I did not get any further in my reading. So today I resolved to read the book that I have been struggling through for the last month. I read one page and fell asleep until it was time to cook dinner.

I have decided to hold myself accountable here on the internet. I know that each day I am going to force myself to report my progress to this blog and even though I am not sure anyone is reading it, I am hoping that the public nature of my failure will motivate me to get going!

BTW, the way the name of the book is God-Centered Biblical Interpretation by Vern Poythress (my professor).

A Cute Gift Idea?

Where do people come up with these ideas. Why a monkey?

Big Brother

I think I'll be using Google instead of Yahoo and Microsoft to do my searches because of this.

End of the Spear

End of the Spear is getting panned by the critics. Has anyone seen it? I was thinking about seeing it but if it stinks I won't bother.

Star Jones Lacks an Understanding of Human Nature

From Drudge:

"You know what? At some point, one of these men has to put it back in his pants and zip up the zipper."

She even suggested that Bush hold some kind of talk with the man behind 9/11.

"I won't trust him, but anything that gives me the opportunity to seek peace, I would at least check it out.

"People make deals with the devil all the time. We make deals with people we don't like," she said.

"You don't negotiate with terrorists," said Elisabeth Hasselbeck, the show's youngest host.

"You don't negotiate," Jones interrupted, "but I do think you figure out when there is a solution that's diplomatic that doesn't result in [loss of] human life.

"What do we have to lose to check it out?" Star said.

"You know what?" she then added, "At some point, one of these men has to put it back in his pants and zip up the zipper at some point."

(Link via PoliPundit.com)

How can you make a deal with people you can't trust to uphold it? Doesn't diplomacy and negotiation imply some kind of common ground? How can we have common ground with someone who believes it is God's will that he start a war by killing civilians? How do we find common ground with those who would behead their enemies (us)? There is no common ground on which to establish negotiations, they do not share our standards, our values. They do not believe that it is wrong to kill women and children, they do not believe it is wrong to torture civilians.

This reminds me of what Dorothy Sayers said about Germany and shared standards of conduct:

"We have been very slow to understand this. We persist in thinking that Germany 'really' believes those things to be right that we believe to be right, and is only very naughty in her behavior. That is a thinking we find quite familiar. We often do wrong things, knowing them to be wrong. For a long time we kept on imagining that if we granted certain German demands that seemed fairly reasonable, she would stop being naughty and behave according to our ideas of what was right and proper. We still go on scolding Germany for disregarding the standard of European ethics, as though that standard was something which she still acknowledged. It is only with great difficulty that we can bring ourselves to grasp the fact that there is no failure in Germany to live up to her own standards of right conduct. It is something much more terrifying and tremendous: it is that what we believe to be evil, Germany believes to be good." Quoted from Creed or Chaos? pg. 29

Unbelievable! Why would anyone believe anything these women say?
(Link via Instanpundit)

Update: Here is a response by The Alliance of Iranian Women to the misuse of their protest pictures by Code Pink.
(Link via Evil Pundit of doom)

PCRT

My friend Linda sent me a link to the PCRT and suggested I blog about it. PCRT is the Philadelphic Conference on Reformed Theology that the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals hosts every year and it was originally held at Tenth Presbyterian in Philadelphia (it has since expanded to three other locations). My husband and I would go every year for our anniversary and would have a wonderful time (I haven't had the time since the start of seminary). This year two of the professors from my seminary will be there, Carl Trueman and Sinclair Ferguson. Here is a link to the conference.

Susan, are you going?

My Busy Day and Impending Doom

I had planned on writing at least one new post a day but I was really busy yesterday. I got my daughters ready for school, drove 45 minutes each way to school, edited the notes and questions for my Bible study, drove to the church, battled with the copier, taught Judges 10, had lunch with some of the ladies from the study at the Olive Garden, drove an hour(traffic) to pick up my daughters, took Sarah, my daughter, to the dentist, came home and cleaned, and then I went out to dinner with my friend Linda to a local Thai restaurant. This is why I say in my profile that I'm a stay at home mom who never stays home!

Next week is the last week I will be teaching the Bible study because I had a scheduling conflict with school. I had to take a hermeneutics class that is the gateway to the rest of my classes at seminary so there was no putting it off. Oh, the best laid plans of mice and men! I had schemed to make sure that I had scheduled my study on a day that I thought would be relatively free from classes but alas, it did not work. When I first saw the winter schedule and realized that I would not be able to teach, I cried and unfortunately I was in my Church in the Modern Age class at the time. I was a little upset over the fact that I had spent my entire summer writing the Judges study and now I had to hand it over to another teacher. I think I will miss teaching but will probably appreciate the break. My reading schedule is going to be brutal this semester.

I am a very slow reader and I think that I must have ADD. My mind wanders while I read and I can think of a thousand things that need to get done while I am reading. It takes me an hour to read ten pages. I know that I will have to read my hermeneutics professor's book by the second week of class and yet I am only on page 34! I have been trying to read it since Christmas. I also had to read some books to get ahead of the curve for my Doctrine of Salvation II class and I haven't even started them and the start of seminary is fast approaching but I will not be prepared. I feel like the heroine from the silent era of films who is tried to the train tracks and sees the train approaching but can't free herself from the ropes before she meets her impending doom.

BTW, in case you were wondering hermeneutics is "the science that teaches us the principles, laws, and methods of interpretation." This is a quote from one of the books I have to read for hermeneutics, Principles of Biblical Interpretation by Louis Berkhof. Here is a link to the books I have to read for hermeneutics and here is one for my Doctrine of Salvation II. Notice that for my Salvation class there are two pages of books to read. The professor told me that there would probably be 2,000 pages of reading and yet knowing that I still procrastinate.

Survivor

I am looking forward to the new season of Survivor since they have reformatted it with four teams: young men, old men, young women and old women. This should be interesting! You would think that the old women wouldn't stand a chance but sometimes the younger teams get cocky and lose. I am also looking forward to it because there is a Presbyterian playing.

Serenity Part Two

When my husband saw that I added Serenity to my favorites he said, "It's a favorite already?" I told him that it was a really good movie and he was going to like it a lot and that I wanted to eventually get the series on DVD. After he watched the movie he said, "Order the series now."

Blog Name

Hey Angela, I think we choose the name of our blog too quickly. This one is much better: έχω ζωη (though we would have to call it echomen zoe).

Serenity

I watched Serenity last night and it was so good I added it to my favorites list. I would highly recommend it except for one problem with the movie, it has some gross scenes. It was written and directed by Joss Whedon, who created Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, so you can understand what type of grossness to expect from this movie. But like Buffy, it is funny and well written; you really care about the characters. The movie is based on a canceled TV show which I have never seen but that didn't cause me any problem watching the movie because Whedon did a good job filling in the background of the characters.

What I found most amazing about this movie is the fact that it had a pastor-like character (he is called Shepard). Religion is usually absent in sci-fi films, so I thought it was refreshing that there is any reference to God. Whedon appears to understand that religion is not going away just because we have spaceships and sophisticated weaponry. If Christianity has been around for two thousand years it is safe to assume it will be here for thousands more. I think that sci-fi writers make their stories less believable when they exclude Christianity from their futuristic societies.

You can find a more detailed review here

Where in the World is Angela?

Angela, Donna beat you here! Is your procrastination showing or are you really busy?

My Profile

I realized that I wasn't putting titles on my posts. I hate writing titles, I am not very creative. If it wasn't for Angela, we would have a very boring title for this blog (A Different View was my original choice).

I guess you can tell that we are still in a state of construction. This is my first attempt at a blog and I am trying to get everything working properly before we open for business and start advertising.

Yesterday I tried filling out the profile section but got hung up because I couldn't think of a favorite movie or book. I couldn't think of a single book that I like the best out of all the books I have read and the same could be said about movies. Maybe its the mother in me, "I love you all equally and I have no favorites."

Anyway, I am sure that no one really cares what my favorite movie is but I don't want people to form an opinion of me based on my choice of "The Terminator" or "Willow." And just because I don't list literary classics for my favorite books doesn't make me an idiot or Philistine. So with this caveat, I will fill out my profile. (This is how my mind works -- it's sad, isn't it?)

Polar bear at the Philadelphia
Zoo

While I wait for my friends to show up, I am going to test our ability to post pictures. I am going to try to post a picture taken at the Philly Zoo over the summer. It was shot through glass and I am quite pleased with it since it doesn't look like it. With my old 35mm camera I would never be able to shoot a picture through the glass but with my Olympus digital camera I can. It does all the work, I just point and shoot (I like gadgets that do all the work).

OK, I'm already having a problem with the name. I told my husband to go to my new website, "Reformed Chicks Babbling."

I think the first post of a new blog should be a statement of intent. We are Christians who hold (more or less) to the Westminster Confession of Faith (thus the Reformed Chicks part of our title). We started this blog to have a forum to discuss the things that interest us and to rant about the things that annoy us (thus the Blabbing part of our title). We hope that others will join us in discussing the issues of the day from a biblical perspective.

Happy New Year!