Mín Englisc Blog

Something was wrong with the page this morning; the top of the side bar said "Today is Sunday, January 31, 2005".
Most of today was occupied with reading a political science book (not related to schoolwork) and with work on stamps. When I finished the stuff with the stamps, about 5:45 PM, I came to see what I needed to study for class tonight. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that I had a quiz tonight, for which I hadn't studied at all! As a result, my whole evening was occupied with study.
At class, I had a great evening, with only one exception. Like last week, the professor talked politics a lot. However, this time, it was directly related to the text; the text looked at government subsidies, so we studied political aspects of farm subsidies. There was only one bad part: NO QUIZ! All that work, and I find that the quiz will be on Wednesday.
Happy Birthday to Mr. Hanson!

Dad had planned to preach this morning from chapters 6-9 of Judges, where we read of Gideon and his aftermath. However, he took long enough bringing out the first chapter, where the angel of the LORD appears to Gideon, that he decided to chop off the other chapters and use them next week.
Today being the last week of the month, we had our normal lunch-at-church, followed by afternoon church. Although we normally have above-average attendance with lunches, we were below normal again today with just thirty-eight people — even though we had people that aren't usually there! Six people, including a family of five, are ill, and six others, who come only when we have lunch (they live two hours away) stayed home because of the weather. Paul Soma's parents were here today, along with two children (Laura and Dominic), and one member came who lives in a nursing home.

BLOGS Current competitors are marked with an asterisk.
1. *Nathan: 9.
2. *Katie: 8.
3. *Bekah: 7.
4. *Rebekah: 15, 10 pictures. Each picture, together with a little caption, is its own post.
5. *Charity: 6.
6. *Anna: 8.
7. David: 6.
8. Abby: 2.
9. Becca: 2.
10. Joseph: 2.
11. Allen: 1.
12. Brian: 1.
13. Grace: 1.

David has now been eliminated from the blog contest.

As expected, we had quite a good time today at the Derby. Altogether, out of our seventeen-member troop, seven boys showed up, plus one Cub Scout who plans to join our troop next month. The events ranged from starting a fire by rubbing sticks together to semaphore (I was the only one who knew it >8-( to carrying everyone and everything, including sled, across a rope between two poles. It's good that we took some rope of our own!
Anyone who reads this site much knows that I don't do a "quote of the day" or anything like that very much. However, after reading the following on Rebekah's page, I had to repeat it.

Someone in our Church Photo Directory looks dead.

I'm about to leave for our annual "Klondike Derby", ten miles away. It should be fun, although today is predicted to be around the freezing mark and we'll be outside all day.

Warning: I'll do my best to post tomorrow, but it's slightly possible that I won't be able to post. My troop is going on the annual "Klondike Derby" tomorrow; we leave here at 7:00 and won't be able to return until evening. We had hoped to camp, but there weren't enough adults planning to camp to meet regulations.
Today, I've focussed on one activity: moving stamps from the three-post printed album to the loose-leaf album. Taking out all my stamps from Germany, West Berlin, East Germany, Bavaria, and Württemburg definitely takes a long time — not to mention making new album pages for all of them by hand! A pity I didn't have anywhere near enough time to make all the pages. I did, however, make pages for and mount some similar (and therefore confusing) East German sets.
Mom spoke to me today about the idea of buying insurance for my collection, an idea I'm considering. Of course, I wouldn't be insuring most of my collection — most of my miscellaneous foreign stuff is worth almost nothing. On the other hand, I have a good deal of money in my early Norwegian stamps — I have copies of eight of their first nine stamps — and in American stamps, especially late 1800s through early 1900s.
Tonight, we went over to Lakeview, ten miles away, to visit Mrs. Miller from our congregation; she moved into her new house in Lakeview today. It's a ton closer than her old house in Springfield, from which she had been making two round trips for worship each week. For you in Indianapolis, that's like someone from Bloomington attending Northside's worship morning and evening.

In case you haven't seen or heard of it already, check what Katie has to say. She and her mom were in a car accident yesterday.
Unlike the previous few days, today has really seen very little action. I've been working online a bit, gotten spellchecking done on the Glasgow manuscript, and totally rearranged the books in my room. With the new shelves on the wall, I was able to take all of the books off my floor and move others onto the new shelves from the bookcase. I now have lots more room on a better-arranged bookcase — all the Byzantine works together, all the Tolkien together, all the stamp catalogues together.
I received some good news today: an email came in from Mrs. Gordon at E&P. She said (basically) that I have a green light to go ahead with the project, and that they expect to post the finished text online. Now I have to get final clearance from local BSA officials, and then I can start sending parts for proofreading.

Today, we're down to eight people competing for the marathon-blogger award: Mary dropped out yesterday.
Other than my class tonight, I did rather little today. Since Mom bought another needed bookshelf support, I installed it this afternoon. For some reason, the screw was nearly impossible to get into the stud, even with a power driver — and then I discovered that I had put it in 1½" too high. Dad needed to come and get it in the last little bit the second time. At least it's up there; I now have more usable shelf space than I'd had in years.
Tonight, as usual, was my ŒCON 200 class. I expected little difficulty: completed homework to turn in, a bit of discussion, and plenty of diagrams to illustrate how supply and demand changes. Bear in mind that the class time is two hours with several minutes of break in the middle.
There are several reasons for why demand for a product changes, among which are seasonal changes (like low demand for coats in summer), fads, and the wealth (or lack thereof) of the customers. While we were looking at the personal wealth factor, the professor commented about the effect that the tax rebates a couple of years back had on the national œconomy. Although he supported President Bush in that, this comment made him think of things he doesn't like that the president does. We ended up spending at least FORTY-FIVE MINUTES listening to him complain about Iraq! This after we lose two classes due to weather and a third due to MLK Day — and, like Perry Meridian HS, we have school off on MLK Day but have to make up Presidents' Day. This after he says that all non-essential material will have to be cut out due to the lack of class time. We didn't even get our break!

Dad was gone most of the day, visiting Grandmother down in Cincinnati. She's doing some better, which is good; pray that she may continue to improve. He stayed long enough that we barely made it on time for the troop meeting tonight.
I began today with a short list of things to do: write overdue thankyou notes, finish my assignment for my œcon class, and maybe work a little on my Eagle project. Dad had hoped to call Lynne Gordon, the chair of publications for the E&P Board, but he had to go to Cincinnati; she had much information I needed for my Eagle project. Imagine my surprise when Mom told me that Dad had called Mrs. Gordon, who would soon call here! I jumped into work on it, but was able to do very little work before Mrs. Gordon called. I was greatly encouraged by what she had to say, and (just in time) finished my project application before leaving for the troop meeting.
The troop committee (adults who run the troop) met tonight, and (to make things short) approved it with excitement. Pray that I might get the last level of approval, that of the district advancement committee, and that I could get going on the project very soon. While you're at it, pray that I might complete the project quickly, and that I might get Eagle Scout on schedule!

My biggest task today has been the formal start of work on my Eagle Scout project. Those of you on covienet (if any of you are, which I doubt) remember that on Saturday I sent out a note asking for proofreaders. So far, I've received "Yes" replies from eight people (of sixteen necessary) plus two who think they can help plus three members of my family who are willing. Only three to go! At any rate, I had to type up a few documents: "Give a Short Description of Your Project", "Describe How Your Project Will Help the Selected Group", etc. Hopefully I'll get enough people to proofread the whole book soon; at that point, I should be able to submit the plan.

Other than that, really little has happened today. Did you hear about the snowstorm they had in Massachusetts? Both Plymouth and Salem were buried under thirty-eight inches of snow. And I thought we had it bad with twenty-two inches a few days before Christmas.

Dad preached from the first five chapters of Judges today, focussing on chapter two. When you think about it, it's amazing how long God allowed the standard cycle (judge's death-rebellious people-oppressing nation-repentant people-new judge-judge's death) to go on.
Due to the weather, attendance was far lower than normal. Usually, we have a total of about seventy people between the two services — low forties in the morning, high twenties in the evening. This morning, however, we only had twenty-four, and the evening service is cancelled.

I should have posted an important announcement before today, but I forgot. So here goes:
Paul & Dana Soma announced at church last week that Dana's expecting their third child. Pray for them — for Paul to have more permanent work, and for Dana for obvious reasons.


BLOGS
Thanks to Nathan's blog contest, I've seen far higher levels of posting than normal. Granted, some posts aren't much — some just one word — but most posts are substantial. As long as they are in the contest, I will rank the two people whom I don't normally: Mary and Bekah.
1. Nathan: 7
2. Anna: 11
3. Katie: 8
4. David: 5
5. Rebekah: 4
6. Bekah: 4
7. Charity: 4
8. Mary: 4
9. Becca: 2
10. Joseph: 1
11. Brian: 1
12. Allen: 0. Last post 12 January.
13. Grace: 0. Last post 1 January.

Today has been a nearly useless day. I was unable to do much of anything useful the whole morning. Shortly after noon, Dad finished working on the computer, enabling me to spend two hours on the computer finishing a problem for my œconomics class. Hopefully, I understand properly; at least I can ask the professor on Monday night, since it isn't due until Wednesday.
Let me ask you the œcon question: if France can produce 300,000,000 barrels of white wine or 600,000,000 barrels of red wine, and if Germany can produce 500,000,000 barrels of white wine or 800,000,000 barrels of red wine, what should each country produce?
After I finished homework, I joined Mom and Isaac in snow shovelling — which I would not finish until nearly 5:30. They had already taken care of our sidewalks; therefore, we went over to church and worked the entire time.
Last night, I finished reading Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's The First Circle. Like many (or maybe all, I don't know) of his works, its subject is the vast Soviet prison system. This one, however, deals with a setting I don't think I'd heard of before: scientists imprisoned in a laboratory in Moscow, working on technical things during their endless terms. This book is quite complex — it has over a dozen main characters — but extremely compelling. To read of the sufferings of these men is shocking, but even that was nowhere near to being as bad as the sufferings of the prisoners in the Gulag Archipelago. Give thanks to God, who provided Ronald Reagan to save our nation!

Before yesterday, I had never tried a "filler" post for safety's sake. I'm sure glad I did — otherwise, I would have been the first one out of the contest!
Hopefully, all of you watched the inauguration ceremonies. I did and was very impressed with everything — except for the idiotic commentators. I'm curious to hear your views on President Bush's speech: was it perfect, too liberal, too conservative? Overall, I think he had some great parts, plenty of decent parts, (and one bad one) and an overall high quality speech. The audience applauded twenty-five times during the speech (I counted); many of those times deserved more applause than was given.
One point Dad repeated from somewhere else that I wouldn't have thought of otherwise: President Bush sounded very much like President Wilson, constantly putting his policy as that of promoting safety through fostering democracy in other countries. The big difference between the two presidents is that Wilson was content to stick with diplomacy, while Bush doesn't hesitate to recommend stronger measures when he thinks it necessary.
Without a doubt, the saddest part of yesterday's ceremonies was seeing Chief Justice Rehnquist for the (short) time that he appeared. It's shocking the difference that the last few months have made. The news showed a picture of him from October together with one of yesterday; since they at first didn't mention the date of the older photo, I thought it must have been taken about ten years ago. Pray for him; I'm sure he won't administer the oath in four years, and I doubt he'll be around to see it be administered.

This will be today's post if I cannot post further.

Very little happened today for me. Here's a basic summary of the day:

Get up.
Read some.
Work on genealogy.
Go to class at 7:45 PM.
Blog.
Go to bed (at least that's planned).

I did, however, make a good deal of progress on genealogical work; I discovered reference to one ancestor of whom I was unaware — and she's supposedly buried at Rose Point RP, where I visit several times per year — and compiled much information about lots of umpty-great uncles and aunts. By the way, does anybody have information about Deborah Calvert, daughter of George Harlan, born in New Castle County, Delaware, on 28 October 1690? I didn't think so.
Dad was gone most of the day down in Cincinnati visiting Grandmother. As he put it, "She's been better, but she's been worse". Pray for her; she's currently in Jewish Hospital, Cincinnati, and partly through a chemotherapy program.
Thanks for offers to help proofread Glasgow's History of the RP Church, but I'm sorry to say that I'll probably need to decline your offers. Since this is being done for the church and as an Eagle Scout project, I need to ensure compliance with the original — and I want the proofreaders to have easy access to an original copy. The reason is that since I'm not a professional typist, I make many mistakes that aren't caught by the spellchecker: typos that make other words, repetition or omission of phrases, etc. But thanks again!

Tonight's troop meeting was much busier than normal. Usually, we have an opening pledge ceremony followed by patrol meetings — where boys plan events and work on advancement — followed by the end of the meeting 90 minutes after the start.
The first unusual part came immediately after the opening, when we surprised Mr. Stoner, our longtime (and now former) Scoutmaster with the presentation of the Scoutmaster Award of Merit, a nationally prestigious award. Everyone who knew of it had been sworn to silence; I didn't post in the extremely unusual event that he would read this!
After the award, we all sat down together while a man from the local Order of the Arrow lodge discussed the Order and supervised an election to make people eligible to join the Order. The three candidates were Matthew Bump (from church), Isaac, and I; people were allowed to vote for none, any, or all. I forgot that we won't even find the results of the election until the Spring Camporee at the end of April; all we know is that someone was elected, since a revote — which was not held — is always held if none be elected.
Finally, much of my time during the actual meeting was taken up in a meeting with the chairman of the District Advancement Committee, who deals with all Eagle Scout project ideas. He has (unofficially) approved my project idea of republishing Glasgow's history, and he's rather enthusiastic about the idea. My main presentation points were: (1) the book is very rare (2) there is much demand in the RP Church for it (3) publishing by the E&P Board would help the church (4) because Glasgow grew up in an RP congregation here in Logan County, there is a ton of local history to it (5) both the county libraries and the independent Belle Center library would like copies for their genealogy sections (6) other people, even Mrs. Stoner, find it extremely useful for genealogy research. Now I have the task of finding people in the denomination to proofread and of getting the Board to publish it.
Please pray, by the way, for two problems. One, with the troop, I can't mention; just pray for its resolution. Secondly, and more important, the Deardurff family (their son Wes is active in the troop) suffered a loss today: Mr. Deardurff came to the meeting, and in response to a question, told me that his brother died today. Pray for the family; Wes and his immediate family are members of a conservative Presbyterian Church (USA) congregation, but I know absolutely nothing about the rest of the family.

Overall, today has not been the best day. Because of the holiday, I had no class tonight, giving me about three hours of extra time. I had also planned to finish work on Glasgow by scanning in the three pages of pictures yet remaining. Lastly, I hoped to put up bookshelves in my room today.
However, very little was done. Dad & I tried to get the scanner to work, but it never did. As a result, all day I've been trying to go over to Somas' across the street; they told me I might use their scanner if necessary, but they've been gone nearly all day. Since I've heard nothing of their schedule, I've kept a good deal of my day open so as to be able to go there easily. Furthermore, almost no work was completed on the shelving; we plotted points for the shelf supports, but attached absolutely nothing.
As a result of this surplus of time, I've done several things I wouldn't normally do: I played over two hours of computer games, I finished some back work for the Scout troop, I recorded tons of old church statistics, and I'm going to work on genealogy when I get off. Still, these haven't given me enough to do, as I've been without anything to do much of the day.
Tomorrow, at our troop meeting, we're going to have an important night. I've scheduled the local Advancement Committee Chairman to come to the meeting to check my idea for an Eagle Scout project. We also will be preparing for the upcoming Klondike Derby, held this year here in Logan County. Most importantly, we're going to have elections for Order of the Arrow, a Scouting honor society, and I'm eligible. Hopefully I'll be elected; this is my only chance.

Dad preached today from a different text by looking at chapter five of Romans; he plans to continue his "History of Israel" series next week. It was somewhat odd to hear him preach; he went three straight weeks without preaching! Three weeks ago, we were on vacation; two weeks ago, his voice was weak, so Mr. Bump preached; and last week, the weather forced the cancellation of services.
Also at church, I took a draft copy of the new church directory for people to examine and correct. It received several compliments (most of which should have been given to Dana Soma, who conceived the basic idea) and — fortunately — no corrections.
Later I hope to scan three pictures from Glasgow's History; if I can, that will enable me to complete work on putting the book into the computer. Of course, doing so is dependent on whether the scanner will work properly or not. A pity we can't get scanners to work well with this computer; this is the second or third one we've had, and never have we had one work completely well. They work fine for a time, but then they cease to work, and Dad must therefore download new drivers, reinstall the scanner, or do something else.

BLOGS
1. Katie: 8
2. Anna: 6
3. Rebekah: 5
4. Becca: 9
5. Nathan: 3
6. Joseph: 3
7. Brian: 2
8. Charity: 1
9. Allen: 1
10. David: 1
11. Grace: 0. Last post 1 January.

This afternoon, I've scheduled a patrol leader's council meeting for my Scout troop to replace the attempt last week where we didn't have a quorum. Pray that everything go well!

As of today, Isaac is 1.9178082191780821917808219178082% of the way around to being 15; it's been one week since his birthday. I, today, am ⅓ of the way around to my eighteenth birthday. Has it really been four months since September? At any rate, Isaac was planning to have a birthday party a week ago, but it was cancelled. He then hoped that people could come tonight, but (due to the condition of the house) Mom doesn't want people coming over. Isaac tried, unsuccessfully but (to my mind) logically, to have people anyway, saying that the Reames family from church wouldn't mind since they aren't even living in their house currently.
Other than one event, today has mostly been similar to previous days: type Glasgow and recording statistics from past Minutes of Synod. I am now, finally, finished with the text of Glasgow; after a bit of work this morning, I was able to print out a title page that is quite similar to the original. Now I have the trouble of putting in three pictures: one with the author's portrait and signature, one of Geneva College, and one of various mission and Seminary buildings. None of them will work well in the format I used with other pictures.
Today's different event was a trip to Springfield, an hour south of here; I rode along when Dad took Isaac to our "local" Scout store to use a gift certificate. Imagine his surprise and disappointment when he found it's useless here! It's only good at nationally-operated stores and at Cincinnati-area stores; at least we're in the Cincinnati area often.
One question: Why have I received absolutely no comments the last three days?

Like other recent days, today has been primarily spent indoors reading and typing. I've now finished all but about five pages of Glasgow, and I hope to type at least one more page tonight.
As I'm reading and copying from old Minutes of Synod, I've progressed to the early 1960s. It's interesting to see some of the decisions made by Synod. Looking ahead to 1967, two issues central to the RP Church were debated: church-state relations and alcohol. It was in 1967 that members were first allowed to vote; it was in 1967 that a committee began proposing that Synod lift the 1841 total-abstinence mandate. Here's another quote from an older Minutes.

The third paper asks, "Is it Scriptural to ordain women to the office of elder?"
Accepting the New Testament Church as a pattern to be adapted to each peculiar need of the Church, we recommend that Synod permit Presbyteries to arrange for the ordination of women to the office of Ruling Elder when the need is imperative.

This is excerpted from a report adopted by the 109th Synod in 1938; Ohio Presbytery had asked to ordain women. Fortunately, some of our great ministers spoke against the change forcefully enough that it was never adopted. Praise the Lord for those men!

For the first time in over a week, I had a college class. Due to the weather, last Wednesday's class and last Monday's class were both cancelled; consequently, two weeks into the class, we're a week behind. Worse, next Monday is MLK Day, so we have another class night without a class. The professor mentioned tonight that he plans to formulate and distribute a syllabus — he already made one, but it's hopelessly out of date already!
This morning finally saw the end of our boil alert. Since I don't remember ever experiencing one before, I never realized what effect such an alert can have on daily life. A pity we didn't have one like Katie mentioned, where drinking water was the only thing affected — we couldn't shower, wash hands, or do much of anything else with unboiled water!
Paul Soma came over for part of the day to work on the leaky roof. As of this afternoon, our roof is now covered with tarps; hopefully they'll be able to catch the rain before it gets down to the shingles. He also worked some on the underside of the roof, working with the insulation above the (removed) ceiling tiles. I gather that this ceiling has not been sturdy since the last time the roof was replaced, when a man fell through the roof to the floor.
As I work toward planning an Eagle Scout project, others in my position have had interesting ideas. Read the third story on this page for a unique project — the weirdest and yet most public I've ever heard.

Unlike yesterday, today was a day of very little activity. Except for when I went along with Dad & Isaac to the house of some boys in our Scout troop, I've not even left the house.
Most of my day has been occupied by computer work. Today, I finished typing the main text of W. M. Glasgow's History of the Reformed Presbyterian Church in America, as well as the preface and associated parts. I now have only about fifteen pages to type out of the entire work of 788 pages.
In the kitchen, we've had a leak in the roof for a long time; it developed midway through the autumn — just late enough in the year to make us wait until spring to replace the roof. Of late, it's been leaking badly enough to cause serious damage to the ceiling; with today's rain, it became so bad that Mom & Dad took down some of the ceiling. This keeps the ceiling from falling to the floor, although it makes the ceiling even uglier than before and forces us to place six buckets to catch falling water instead of one or two.
Paul Soma from church came over today with his father-in-law's chainsaw to work, and work he did. By noon, all of the fallen logs were cut into short sections, ready for his wood-burning furnace. As well, he cut down a six-inch-thick limb from one of our big trees; it was so badly damaged that we could see straight through its center.

BLOG RATINGS

1. Nathan: 7
2. Katie: 7
3. Becca: 6
4. Brian: 3
5. Anna: 4
6. Charity: 3
7. David: 2
8. Joseph: 1
9. Grace: 0. No post since 1 January.
Rebekah posted at least twice, but is not rated this week due to a computer problem on my end.

Tonight was supposed to be my third class for this term, but it became the second since last Wednesday's class was cancelled for the ice storm. However, when we showed up tonight at 7:25, twenty minutes before the start of class, absolutely noöne was there, and noöne showed up while we waited until 7:50. I hope class wasn't moved without my being told!
Class was not the main focus of the day; almost all today was occupied by cleaning the yard of all the fallen branches. Using one hundred feet of rope, a pair of loppers, two hand saws, and a poor-quality machete, we cleared almost all the yard, even taking down a semi-fallen log with a diameter of over a foot. I hope soon to put up before-and-after photos of the cleanup effort.
Other than class, most all of the day (besides cleanup) was related to cleanup. I accomplished about two things besides cleanup and class: first, we ate dinner at Fazoli's in Bellefontaine; second, we all showered at my former Scoutmaster's house. Due to (1) power outages (2) lots of work (3) a boil alert, like in Indianapolis, I hadn't showered in several days. Doesn't it feel nice to be clean?

Well, I was planning to put up a somewhat normal post today: sermon subject (although evening since morning was cancelled due to ice), current news, and blog ratings. Parts one and three of that will have to wait; shortly before I was going to post, I read Katie's post about Rachael getting into a snowball fight with Benjamin Blackwood when the computer — and everything else with electricity — died. This was at 3:45; we didn't get power back until 8:30. With that, we had to cancel evening worship, too, and prepare for another night without power. However, as we were singing psalms around the kerosene lamp, the power came back. Although the outage was short, it wasn't too nice. Maybe it's all Benjamin's fault.

Before anything else, let me say thanks to Brian Fulk for posting for me at the worst point of this week. I called him and asked him to post about a bunch of seemingly hopeless problems, and he posted almost immediately.

Starting early Wednesday, we began to receive freezing rain, which didn't stop until after midnight Thursday. Throughout Wednesday the ice accumulated on limbs and power lines, and branches began to fall by evening. Our electricity failed at 10:05 PM, and we went to bed expecting it to be out all night. Around 1:00, a huge limb fell from a tree next to my window, forcing me onto the couch downstairs. I slept only about five hours all night.
By morning, the rain had stopped, but branches continued to fall. Everything was covered, and much of our lawn was unsafe. Branches covered our roof. As well, water was accumulating in our rock-walled basement; by late morning, when we started bailing it out with buckets, it was over a foot deep. Without electricity, the sump pump wasn't working. One of our deacons and his son came over after lunch with a generator, which enabled the pump to empty the basement — just in time for our new furnace, which was submerged to the bottom of its switches. However, when they left, water began again; although we resumed the buckets, we were losing ground. A member of our church in Springfield (two counties south), who had nothing but rain, called all over the state for us; she eventually found that no generators could be had in Ohio or Kentucky. With this news, I broke down in despair.
Just a few minutes later, however, a friend of ours called; he, ignorant of any of our problems, wanted to offer us his home if necessary. Dad said that we couldn't leave with the water in the basement. At this, he praised God's providence — he had just bought a new generator; it wasn't even out of the box! In short, he came immediately, and he left the generator and plenty of gasoline when he returned home late that night.
All Friday and today was boring: sitting around, pumping water every few hours, going to Bellefontaine for a little while, and sleeping. The newspaper had some interesting articles which I recommend to you: Iced Out and County Branches Out to Begin Repairs. It wasn't until about 7:45 PM that we regained our power.

Hallelu Yah!

USC won last night's national championship game 55-19. So much for Auburn's chances of splitting the national title.
Right now, we're some hours into an ice storm. My œconomics class tonight has already been cancelled, and Prayer Meeting probably will be cancelled as well. Isaac returned a little while ago from the library and post office to report being hit seven times by sticks, four times by small branches, and almost being hit by one large branch.
Earlier, while listening to Rush Limbaugh, I heard the funniest story out of Prague, Czech Republic. Some man tried but failed to commit suicide with a chainsaw; read about it here. One caution: that website has tons of cookies.

As I type, USC is beating Oklahoma 45-10 early in the third quarter of the Orange Bowl, this year's championship game. Any idea who's going to win?
Due to Christmas and New Year's, we had no troop meetings the past two weeks; tonight's was the first since the 14th. We had low attendance tonight, with only ten of seventeen members (plus two visitors) present. Fortunately, I won an award I think I should have received before now: our troop's Honor Camper award. This is given to whomever the troop thinks was the best Scout on an event; the award is rotated after each event. At any rate, I now wear the special "Kente Cloth" neckerchief.

Well, last night's class went well. Unlike my previous class, where I had a Korean grad student, this class is taught by an older professor (age 57) from Illinois. He laid out his policies and preferences; among other things, he mentioned his favorite sports teams — Pittsburgh Steelers and Illinois Fighting Illini. We also covered some basic terms in œconomics.
Perhaps the professor should have covered the œconomics of buying books for school. The OSU office in Bellefontaine only had new copies of this book — no used — priced at $100 and change — for a SOFTBOUND book! Mom wrote a check for the book, since I didn't have money on me.
Today began the same way as yesterday: work on stamps all morning. It wasn't until a little while ago, when I went to the post office to withdraw money to pay back Mom, that anything interesting happened.
As I was filling out the withdrawal slip, I noticed on the table an envelope containing money. Since one doesn't often find money lying around at a bank, I asked the teller about it. After she investigated slightly, she realized that it belonged to an older lady who had redeemed some CDs over an hour before! To top off the confusion, although I got my money, everyone forgot to update my passbook for quarterly interest. Talk about an unusual experience!

Today has been rather monotonous; all that I've done, other than a little time on the computer and a trip to Bellefontaine, has been making album pages for my German stamps. Even on the trip I worked on them! At least I've gotten a good deal of progress.
I'm about to leave for Bellefontaine again; tonight begins my Ohio State winter quarter class (the book of which was the reason for my going to town) at the same place as before. I'm expecting little more than an introduction tonight, like last time. Check back for a report!

The Lord's Prayer in Quenya:

"Átaremma i ëa han ëa · na aire esselya · aranielya na tuluva · na care indómelya cemende tambe Erumande: ámen anta síra ilaurëa massamma · ar ámen apsene úcaremmar sív' emme apsenet tien i úcarer emmen. Álame tulya úsahtienna mal áme etelehta ulcullo: násie:"

Because Dad was feeling ill earlier in the week, he arranged for Mr. Bump to preach today. His sermon, good as always, looked at the second half of the second chapter of I Peter, where we're called to submit to authority. I just hope to worship at another congregation next time Dad takes a vacation week here at home.
Time to review my past year.

Best event of the year: ECHO, June
Worst event of the year: Grandma's fall during Christmas dinner, December
Most encouraging event: Talks with Kevin, various times
Most significant event: Mr. Long's sermon at Calvin, July
Thing I most wished I could have done: Attending the ECHO joint party, August
Hardest thing to do: Bike trip to Calvin, July
Saddest event: Seeing my grandparents' declining health, January-December
Other important events: ACT results arriving, January; beginning blogging, March; high school graduation, May; Scout summer camp, July; Calvin, July; starting college, September; typing of Glasgow, September-December; genealogy project, November; becoming Life Scout, November; Winter Conference, December.

BLOGS

1. Rebekah: 52 — all pictures.
2. Anna: 2, 1 poll
3. Brian: 2
4. Becca: 2
5. Nathan: 1
6. Katie: 1
7. Grace: 1
8. Joseph: 1
9. David: 1
10. Charity: 0. Last post 24 December.
11. Allen: 0. Last post 12 December.

Happy New Year!