Another Year

If you're VERY observant, you may notice that I changed "42" to "43" years old in my "About Me" section. Yes, another year has passed, and today I celebrate its passing. I am thankful for each year of life God gives me.

Today will likely be uneventful. I have already celebrated with my family, and Don and I are celebrating next Saturday since we have a church dinner tonight. Still I am thankful . . . that I had 30 e-mails this morning, most of them "happy birthday" wishes, and that doesn't count the ones I have already gotten, in addition to cards and other gifts and wishes. God has blessed me with wonderful family and friends, and that in itself is a reason to celebrate!

Are They Serious?

I apologize in advance. I try not to put people down on my blog, but I am in disbelief right now. Barack Obama has won a Nobel Peace Prize?

WHY??

According to this article: http://www.wsmv.com/politics/21248290/detail.html,

The new president was hailed for his willingness to reach out to the Islamic world, his commitment to curtailing the spread of nuclear weapons and his goal of bringing the Israelis and Palestinians into serious, fruitful negotiations.

So basically, nothing has been accomplished. The prize is based on his potential accomplishments. His election, as far as I can tell, was similarly based, and so far, as well as I can tell, all he has done is drive our country deeper into debt, weaken our military and threaten our freedom. What's more, the deadline for the nominations for this prize was only days after he first took office.

I appreciate that he is the first black president. I really do. I would have been happy to vote for a black man IF I THOUGHT HE WAS QUALIFIED FOR THE JOB. I would like to affirm that his color has nothing to do with how I feel about all this, except that I think some people are so enamored with the fact that he is black, that they are overlooking everything else.

Enough said.

Genghis Grill

My dad and I had lunch today at this Mongolian restaurant. I didn't even know what Mongolian food was, but the first time I tried it, I was hooked!

Essentially, you build your own stir-fry. It's set up sort of like a salad bar, and they give you a bowl, which you fill up with meats, vegetables and seasonings of your choice. Then you choose a sauce and hand it all over to the grillers, who cook it in front of you. You pick between several types of rice or noodles for them to serve it over, and then you can sprinkle it with chopped peanuts, sesame seeds, chow mein noodles, etc. They offer suggestions for combinations, or you can just be creative. There are chopsticks available if you want a more authentic eating experience.

It's fairly reasonably priced, around $9 for a "bowl." You can pay a little extra if you want a "bottomless bowl," which means you can have as many refills as you want. One is plenty for most people though. My problem is that the only two locations in the Nashville area are in Cool Springs and Hendersonville, neither of which is particularly close to me. Their website says there are more coming though.

They serve alcoholic beverages, if you're into that, and offer a dessert menu if you're still hungry after you eat your stir fry, which I never am. I think this restaurant is a good place for a family outing, a date, lunch or dinner with friends, or just about any situation.

The Lesser of the Two Evils

I'm a little psycho about using poisonous products: cleaning chemicals, bug killers, weed killers, etc. Anything that says something like "Caution: harmful or fatal if swallowed" can't be very good to breathe in, touch, etc. By the same token, I don't like putting flea treatment on my dogs. Anything that's designed to kill fleas can't be too good for dogs either, in my way of thinking. Even the external stuff soaks into their skin, working its way through their bodies, but it also gets on my hands when I pat them, and I put my hands in my mouth, etc.

Fortunately, for some reason, we haven't had much of a problem with fleas. Our dogs are mostly indoor dogs, though I do take them out several times a day, but they've never had enough fleas that I've bothered to use anything for it in recent years. Nash got tapeworms twice in the past year, though, which can be caused by fleas. The last time he did, the vet talked me into buying a dose of Frontline for each of them. It was $17 a pop, but I didn't use it because I didn't see any fleas on them.

Until recently, that is. I cut their hair last week, so I can see more skin, and Dasha has flea residue all over her. Occasionally I see one crawling on her. Nash's hair is much thicker and darker, so I haven't seen any on him, but he is scratching a lot. So, with strong encouragement from Don, I put the Frontline on both of them this morning. I am watching them carefully to make sure they don't have any adverse reaction to it. So far they haven't, thankfully.

Am I a nutcase? Doesn't it make sense that poisons are harmful to us and to our pets? Look at how the cancer rate is skyrocketing, and the medical community acts like they're clueless about what's causing it. I think there are a lot of things we use that are considered "safe," but we have no clue what their long-term effects may be. We don't put 2 and 2 together.

Anyway. I'm just sayin'. I'll use these products if I have to, if I think their benefits outweigh their potential harmful effects, but I will continue to try to avoid them as much as possible.

Swiffer

This is nothing new, but it's a nifty little gadget.

(I stole this picture from their website, but I hope they'll forgive me since I am, after all, promoting their product for them at no charge.)

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Just pop on a cleaning cloth, wet or dry, and "swiff" away! (I think I've created a new verb.)The head rotates, so it easily slides under hard-to-reach places. (Please ignore the crud on my bread machine and my mixer.)

The wet cloths aren't quite as effective as mopping, but for a quick clean-up, I think Swiffers are great!

Boldness

We are studying the book of Acts in my Bible study, and this week we were on Chapter 4. Peter had just healed the lame man in the name of Jesus and was using the opportunity to preach the good news of the gospel. Along came the priests and Saducees, "greatly annoyed because they were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection from the dead." Peter and John were arrested even as the number of believers continued to grow.

While on trial the next day, Peter was filled with the Holy Spirit and boldly stood before those who opposed him, proclaiming Jesus as the only way to find salvation, amazing the men who recognized that these uneducated men must have been with Jesus. They couldn't charge them with any crime, but ordered them not to speak anymore in Jesus' name. They answered that they must do what God told them, not men.

The next section is interesting. They were released and went back to their friends and told their story. Their friends prayed for them, not for relief or protection, but for more boldness to speak! God's response was to shake the place where they were gathered, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit "and continued to speak the word of God with boldness."

Our leader challenged us with this. Do we as Christians in America today have anywhere near this amount of boldness? If we did, would things be happening as they are today? Would our rights be taken away from us, one after the other, as they have been in recent years?

Atheists are speaking out boldly. Prayer has been taken out of schools. There is talk of having "under God" taken out of the Pledge of Allegiance and "In God We Trust" taken off of our currency. Even Christian radio is being threatened.

Should we just sit back and take it all? Or should we stand up boldly and proclaim God's truth? I think if enough Christians did this, we would make an impact on all that is going on. Thankfully, we haven't reached a point where we will be thrown into prison or killed for speaking our faith, so we have a lot less to lose in this country than Christians in the past or in other parts of the world do.

I challenge you to join me in praying for boldness to proclaim my faith and to stand up for the name of Jesus!

A Lesson from a Tree

" . . . Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart." I Samuel 16:7
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My neighbor has a tree in her yard that I have always thought was an eyesore that needed to be cut down.

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One morning I was visiting with her on her porch (as I often do on my morning walks), and she looked out and said, "I like that old tree. It has character."

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Suddenly I began to look at it differently. Rather than seeing an old, rotten tree, I began to think of it as a tree with a story to tell. How old was it? What had it seen during its life? Had children of yesteryear climbed up into its branches, looking out over the neighborhood? And now it was a playground for birds who regularly visited the feeder my friend had hung on it, and for squirrels, who likely made their home in its hollows.

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I will never look at the tree the same way, now that I know it has "character."

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How often do we judge people this way? They may be old, unattractive or handicapped, and we label them in our minds accordingly. But what if we looked instead at their character? Wouldn't we see them in a completely different way?

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Like the old tree, I need to look at a person's character, at their heart, as God does. I will likely find that there is a lot more there than meets the eye.