A Spark of Humor

I am working on a research project (not paper) about the Nestorians in China. I have to create an annotated bibliography, and was reading through William of Rubric's account of the Nestorians in Mongolian China, when Sheryl sabatoged my computer and wrote my annotation for me. I thought you all might enjoy it too:

William of Rubrick’s Source on These Horrible People

Translated by someone who knew no Chinese, this source is written by William of Rubrick’s based on the observations of his second cousin’s great aunt, who visited the Nestorians personally. Rubrick heard first hand from the second cousin’s best friend, who heard it from the second cousin, who heard it from his mom, who heard it from her mom, who heard it from her sister. Rubrick’s second cousin’s great aunt flatly contradicts that the Nestorians were really in Persia at all (They jumped immediately to China), and did not want to make any converts…that’s why there were not many made. This was for several reasons: 1)They knew no one would want to listen to their beliefs. 2)They didn’t really believe the beliefs themselves and 3)They were infamously terrible rhetoricians and couldn’t present their case for their lives. Rubick goes on to relate how the Nestorians had been planning on working on their rhetoric, but had been unable to find and secure a copy of Aristotle’s Rhetoric.

This was for two reasons: 1)The printing press was not yet invented, and the monks at the local monastery would not lend their one copy to those whom they considered heretics, and 2)They looked in the wrong section of the public monastery library, since they had forgotten that Aristotle’s teacher was Plato. Therefore, they were looking directly after Socrates, and since Plato wrote so much for Socrates, they couldn’t get through all of Socrates books before the library closed. If they had more time however, they could possibly have, after working through the writings of Socrates and Plato, eventually gotten to the Aristotle section. However, even if they had, they would not have been able to check it out. This is for two reasons: 1)The monks, as was aforementioned, would not lend their one handwritten copy of Aristotle’s Rhetoric to heretics and 2)They had forgotten their library cards as well as having an already over due book.

Well, she probably doesn’t have a future in historiography, but maybe she should become a comedian!

Ice-Encased New Jersey

Hi Everyone! Yep, It's me again and this time I am not focusing on the few ice spikes (see below) we have in the front of the house, but the ice encased yard we have. Yes, everything is covered in ice. Pictures speak a thousands words, so instead of trying to explain, here's some pictures:

Now for a couple of the bushes and dogwood tree:

Now to finish, a shot of the wintery and icy yard and a shot of the tree. The sheen on the branches on the tree are sheets of ice.

As normally happens when we have this icy land, it only ever stays for a little bit. It's turned to rain and the ice has started to melt.

...AND MORE SNOW...WITH ICICLES!

If you either are living on the East Coast, or are following the weather on the East Coast, you know that NJ has been hit again, and again, and (guess what?) again with snow. It's been rather strange, and a great winter. We've had snow on the ground for over a month now, and about every week there's a new snowstorm that cancels something...today it's co-op. Therefore, I decided to use some of the extra time writing a blog and sharing some of the pictures that I took from the storm last Wednesday into Thursday. Wednesday's storm started morning and throughout the day became worse and worse, eventually canceling prayer meeting. Thursday morning it had pretty much stopped snowing, but the roads were pretty bad for the morning. Thankfully, Andrew and I were still able to have our dress rehearsal for our choir concert, which was on Saturday night (amidst light snow fall!)

Explanation to the the pictures above: The first is our back porch engulfed in snow, some of it from previous storms. The second is our front porch's view into the winter wonderland, and the third is of one of my favorite sights and I hope I can paint some day: the fresh snow on the trees.

I've discovered that this snow storm, and the days following it, were PERFECT conditions for icicles. We don't normally get icicles, but we, along with about everyone else on our street and neighborhood, received those growing spikes off of our roof. It's been warming up just above freezing during the day, which lets snow from the roof melt, making the icicles grow and dripping all the water onto our front step. Then, as the afternoon wares on, it dips below freezing again, and we have our own little ice skating rink...literally on our front step! The next day, once it's melted a little, Andrew normally gets out there and breaks it up, just in time for the cycle to start over again. Anyway, I found icicles the perfect photography objects:
Here's a shot of the front of the house's icicles.

I wish the camera had behaved and focused on the front icicle, but I still thought that it was a cool picture.

These two are two loners above the back porch. (Notice the snow still on the tree branches behind them...one of the most BEAUTIFUL parts of snow storms!)


I know I gave you the sensation of being among the icicles, but here's one from behind the icicles looking out.


Now for some more close ups (both on the front porch):
I love the design of the second one! God truly is an artist!

And for some reason, I took this one. Don't ask me why...I'll tell you anyway: I thought it was gorgeous and slightly ironic to have this icicle and the bright blue sky above it.

So there's an update on the weather and icicles in NJ. All the inhabitants of the snow engulfed house are doing well...one has been traveling the world (Daddy) and is now getting an unexpected visit to the family in Seattle as his flight into snow-ridden Newark was canceled. The rest of us are keeping busy with school and other such activities. I hope that you, my gentle readers, are doing well too! (Sorry. I've been waiting to call someone my gentle reader for a long time.)

WE GOT SNOW!

Well, we've been waiting for awhile, (at least it feels like awhile) but we finally got our first big snowstorm! It's really hard to measure how much we really have, because of the fierce wind that has accompanied the snow. On our deck we have about 3 feet, in our yard and driveway about 16-20 inches, by the tree in the front yard, 2 inches, and on the far right side of the house, no snow at all! That should give you all a bit of an idea on the amount of wind we had and the drifting that occurred! The falling of snow ended about 9 AM on Monday, I'd say, but the wind was at it almost all day long, and boy was it fierce! We kids experienced this wind for a short period of time, when we went out to take some pictures, but we were not able to stand the cold for long! ...well, I should say, we girls were not able to stand it for long, because Andrew and Daddy went outside again to shovel the driveway.

This first picture is on Sunday night, and is of our backdoor window...the wind has blown the snow into a very cool design!

This next picture is of the window over our sink: Another specimen of the wind!

Just thought you all might like a picture of the actual snow falling...
This demonstrates one of my favorite features on my camera! (I've had it for almost two years, and I'm still finding fun features!) It's called the Night Landscape setting, and I think it slows the shutter speed down, so that the picture isn't blurry, but there isn't a flash...Sorry...I digress.

Still on Sunday night: this is the ruler showing that we have 15 inches...there was some drifting already, but it wasn't as much as later.

This is the view on our porch that we woke up to on Monday morning. I don't know if you can really see the amount of snow from this picture, but on the porch there was a TON of snow! Our picnic table is in the middle, and the snow has almost completely engulfed it!

This is just another shot of the snow... This time from our front window.

Now we're out in it to take some more pictures! This one is Julie running...If you didn't know that already.

...and this is me, not running in the snow.

This isn't a great picture of Andrew, but it shows that he was having a great time taking pictures of the snow itself.

Andrew was so kind as to take this picture of Julie and me together...you don't want to see the ones we tried by ourselves...yeah, they were all pretty disastrously funny.

So if you weren't able to really experience the snow, I hope the pictures were able to give you a small taste of it!

Let the Memories be Made!

Well, the holiday is over, the turkey eaten, the friends departed, and the fun ended...well, I wouldn’t go that far, but Thanksgiving is finished and the Christmas season is now upon us! On Thanksgiving morning, someone told me, “Let the memories be made!” and with that fresh in my mind, I watched carefully throughout the day for the making of memories. Here is what I found:

First thing on Thanksgiving morning, Mommy and I have the tradition of making the stuffing and starting the turkey together. This memory was started a few years ago, but each time the amazing smell of the sizzling butter, onions, and cooking bread cubes, etc of the stuffing fill the kitchen, Thanksgiving officially begins. This year, I decided that the smell was so AMAZING that I nicknamed the stuffing the “Amazing Goodness.”

Another memory made was that Julie’s classmate from her honors class joined us for Thanksgiving. She’s from India and a Hindu, therefore, she had never experienced the joy of an American Thanksgiving before. Not only did she experience a cultural event, but she also witnessed the joy of a Christian gathering and heard the gospel. She was a delight to have with us and we hope to keep this friendship up!

At almost every gathering that we have at our house, we love to play the game Catch Phrase with our guests. (If you don’t know what Catch Phrase is, it’s a wonderfully fun group game where you describe a phrase or word without using that word and then you pass this disk thing on to the next person, and you go round and round until the timer goes off) Anyway, we love to play it, and it’s always a crowd pleaser and it pulls out such fun aspects of personalities that you would other wise not know about! We played several games in a row of this, and as always, the calm-under-stress and the spastically-jumpy personalities showed themselves.

On the day after Thanksgiving, we had dinner with our good friends the Morrisons. It was a spontaneous get-together. I think those might be the best gatherings...those you aren’t expecting. It was nice to spend time with them, tease one another, play Uno, and just have a good, relaxing time eating chili and left-over pumpkin pie...not together of course.

And, as always, even though those memories are made and Thanksgiving season is past for another year, there’s always many things to look forward to. Christmas decorations are going up throughout the house, the lights are hung on the bush outside, the Ladies’ Christmas Tea is this Friday, the Messiah concert is this Saturday, and a Boy Scout Ice Skating event on Friday...and...and...and...I think you get the idea. So, yes, the memories have been made, and we’re looking forward to making more!

Julie and Catherine Bake a Cake

The title of this tale should really be "Catherine Plans, Bakes, and Decorates an Ornate Cake despite Julie's Sabotage Attempts." In favor of clarity, however, the editor in deep self-consultation with the author has chosen the more succinct and elementary title that you will observe affixed to the top.
Editorial notes aside, we may now proceed with the story proper: Long, long ago (last weekend), Catherine came over to stay at Julie's house for several days. Although both had completed a tiring week of VBS, they decided in their typical genius style that that weekend and no other would be the perfect time to complete a mission of epic proportions and disastrous repercussion - it was time to begin their long and laborious pursuit of fondant cake making. Yes, that is correct. Catherine and Julie chose, of their own volition and at a time of unideal conditions, to bake and decorate a cake with that stuff professionals use for wedding cakes, presidential balls, and UN committees (well, the part about the UN is mere supposition, but it sounds like something they would spend their time on!)
It all began on Friday night, when they returned home from the VBS ending program to make the fondant. NO! They did not purchase the fondant because it costs something close to twenty dollars. Instead, they made fondant. I will now divulge a secret known only to the masses: fondant is made out of powdered sugar, marshmallows, Crisco, and water mashed together and kneaded from a gooey mixture into a semi-firm ball. Right. Just what I would have chosen for a Friday night after VBS. Furthermore, rather than following the typical dying procedures, they chose to make brown fondant by adding coco powder. (In their defense, somewhere on some website, the suggestion to use coco powder was made, and therefore was not a mere whim of their hallucinating brains.) They also cut strips and started drying rings of fondant over a foil-covered broom handle for their bow.
Saturday morning, the adventurous explorers awoke early and baked the chocolate cake, which would serve as the top half of the two-layered cake. After a brief intermission, they returned to make the larger bottom layer - yellow cake. Then, Catherine left the yellow cake in the care of Julie to run quickly back to her house and do vacuuming or something like that. Vacuuming at a critical time like that was not Catherine's wisest move. Less wise was her relinquishing of the task to Julie, master saboteur of all kitchen productions. The batter made it into the pan, and the pan made it into the oven, but the cake never made it out of the pan. Or at least not in one piece. Following the clearly delineated plan of the mission hidden in the recipe, Julie tried to free the still very warm cake from the pan only five minutes after the cake had left its warm and secure place in the oven. DISASTER #1! The bottom half of the cake fled the warm environs of its pan, leaving the hapless top to fend for itself as it clung to the bottom of the pan. Disaster #2 followed shortly on the heels of the first: Julie panicked and swiftly dumped the remaining layer of cake onto the top of the other, causing it to crumble hopelessly into crumbs and pieces. Sheryl and Mommy flew to the rescue, but it still looked sadly mangled.
Leaving the cakes in the freezer to cool and reassemble at will, Catherine and Julie took a much need break to attend a picnic/pool party for five hours in which time they thorough exhausted all the remaining energy they didn't have after VBS.
By the time they returned home to continue the cake production, life was not looking up!!! Catherine immediately started making icing for this beautiful cake. Unfortunately, all semblances of powdered sugar had departed the house (ahem, we will not pry further on the whereabouts of that sugar), so Julie was dispatched on the mission detour "Operation Get Sugar," otherwise known as a trip to the grocery store. Victorious, she returned with two bags of sugar and one bag of flour.
Icing was made, the bottom layer assembled, fondant was warmed and rekneaded. And suddenly, both girls experienced Disaster #3. Coco changes the consistency of fondant. The wonder substance of fondant suddenly becomes a crumbly and simultaneously gooey (but delicious) mess of coco, marshmallow, crisco, and water. Julie suggested adding more crisco, and at first her second attempt at sabotage seemed to gain the upper hand as the mixture turned more gooey and even more crumbly. Catherine saved the cake with some well timed water (I told you it was the universal solvent) and together they got a sheet of coco fondant rolled out, only to find it hopelessly affixed to the counter top. They huffed and they puffed. They pulled and they pushed. But the mixture had no desire to move in one piece.
Admittedly, they were at a stand still until Catherine's math degree saved the day. They remembered that two halves make a whole. Consequently, Julie rolled out half the fondant, which only covered a third of the cake. A little more manipulation got the entire bottom covered (if you call a holey, crumbling sheet of brown goodness a cover). Assuring themselves that all would be well, Catherine and Julie recalculated their decorative imaginings and chose to ignore the other ball of hopeless coco fondant in favor of some blue and normal fondant for the top covering. Success was short lived. Although the blue cooperated in the rolling department, there was simply not enough of it to cover the entire second layer beautifully. Undaunted, the adventurous duo placed the blue sheet of fondant over the top of the cake and stood back to admire their work. This is what they saw:Please go ahead and laugh. It's very funny!
To cut an already too long story shortish: this cake somehow was transformed from the blue blob perched atop a brown blob into something much more satisfactory thanks to a few well-positioned circles, bows, stripes, and ribbons to mask the underneath. And the following pictures will allow you, patient reader, to judge how far their art of camouflage succeeded.And so as all good things come to an end, so ended the adventures and misadventures, the sabotage attempts and the happy successes of Catherine and Julie's cake. And there too must end my chronicle, because an author can only roll out a story so far before it and its readers are thinner than fondant!
So they all lived happily ever after, except for the cake which was cut up and devoured.

The End

Slide Show of the Carlson Invasion

We've been back from Washington for two and a half weeks. After looking through the pictures many times, we've scaled our four week vacation down to eight minutes. The first song is called "Overture" by Patrick Doyle, and the second song is called "Northern Lights" from the CD called Soundtracks for Classic Books: Music for Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. I'm not sure who wrote the actual piece.
If you are a cousin, aunt, uncle, or grandparent of the Carlsons, and you have a favorite picture of our time together that did not make it into the slideshow...I'm very sorry, but I had to choose about 96 (more or less) pictures out of the 1800 that we had, so bear with me. Enjoy!