The experiment of the movie-less month continues, and I’ve read no less than two collections of Agatha Christie short stories in the last couple of days. And started a Martyn Lloyd-Jones collection of sermons on the Sermon on the Mount (which I’m really enjoying). Yeah, I miss watching movies, and yeah, there are (many) times when I feel like all I want to do is sit down and unwind watching a fun little fictional story. But this is becoming a really great month. For your entertainment this week…. How to find a modern-day Mr. Darcy. This article is completely serious. (via me ol' roomie ) And on a related note, I present: Pride and Prejudice, The Game. Also found via the roomie. You had one job. ONE JOB. (Via a Facebook friend.) A writer for Speculative Faith penned a two-part series on the relationship between Amy and Rory in the splendid British sci-fi show Doctor Who . That pair is probably the best married couple depicted on modern screens, just FYI. (Via a Facebook DW f

I bought a new phone last week. No, it wasn’t an iPhone, though I was thinking about getting either an iPhone 4 or 4S. They wouldn’t have service on the provider I’m currently using, so I decided, hey, what else is nifty and less expensive? I found another pay-as-you-go provider that offered service on a very nice-looking Samsung Galaxy SII. Certain of its specs resembled the things I liked about the iPhone 4S — namely, the 8MP camera, but also the storage capacity, the touchscreen, etc. And this one could turn into a little miniature wifi hotspot for my laptop. And its provider, though also not my current provider, has decent service around here and offers a cheap plan with unlimited data. So I bought it. The nice thing? I was thinking of it for a couple days—as I always do with large purchases—and then what do you know, I look again at the phone and voila, the site is running a “Breakup Day” special on Feb. 13, making the phone cheaper than I could find it on eBay. That clinched

I love church potlucks. I don’t have any food allergies or standard health problems (like diabetes… yet) that preclude my eating whatever I like, or whatever looks adventurous. So I enjoy myself hugely at these get-togethers. Last week was Missions Conference at church — one of my favorite weeks of the year. We heard from international workers in eastern Europe and sub-Saharan Africa. And we ate a lot of food. For the Sunday night poluck — a pretty standard affair — I made some crabmeat casserole. It’s my favorite casserole, but it makes a full-size 8”x11” pan, or a good 2-quart casserole dish. (Or something like that. It was a big casserole dish anyway.) If I made it for myself, I’d be eating it for about two weeks. That is reason #2 I love church potlucks. I can make my favorite casserole and only eat as much as I need for one meal; my friends take care of the rest. Sure enough, the casserole dish was cleaned out by the end. Monday night was soup night. The church I attend here

One of the perks of living on my own is doing whatever I want with my time. But it’s also one of the pitfalls. Last Saturday morning, I realized how many movies I’d watched in the last week. I don’t remember how many it was, but it was a mix of library movies and movies I already owned. And I realized how much time I was not spending reading, or doing chores, or taking care of a host of other worthwhile pursuits. So I decided that from Feb. 2 until March 2, I won’t watch any movies. Not from the library, not ones I own. The closest I’ve gotten is those five-minute Lizzie Bennet Diaries vlogs . It’s an experiment, I suppose, to see if I can reestablish some good habits (like daily Bible reading, or finishing at least one book per week) before I start watching movies again. So far it’s paid off. Since I don’t watch TV shows either, cutting out movies has forced nearly all stories (fictional or otherwise) to come to me by way of the written word. (The LBD is the exception.) I’ve had

Indiana weather is pretty bipolar. We had snow the beginning of this week, then it warmed up enough on Wednesday that I ran outside and took a 1.5-mile walk along the river. Thursday I went up one of the boulevards and whiled away the time I walked by speculating on the floor plans of all the gorgeous houses I passed and judging which house was my favorite. You don’t have to be superhuman to commute by bicycle – you can even wear jeans if you want! In the summer I commute by bike as much as possible, but I’m wearing khakis to work for the most part. Extrinsic motivations aren’t all that effective – at least not when compared to intrinsic ones. A book review on the Evangelical Outpost. The secrets of Grand Central Terminal , an interactive photograph. Mouse over the dots and you’ll learn all sorts of fascinating things about the place. My favorite is the whispering gallery! (Via Challies .) This essay from a gay activist made the rounds on Facebook a few days ago, and it’s worth a

Sometimes I imagine that bread grows on trees in bunches, like bananas. Complete with the plastic baggie it’s sold in. My aunt gave me a bread machine the other day, but it didn’t come with instructions. Not really, anyway; the instruction booklet stopped right before the recipes began. What good is that? So I spent Martin Luther King day with my aunt and uncle at my cousin’s new apartment. My cousin, a 25-year-old bachelor, is very good at baking bread. (Go figure.) He’s got about 7 years of experience using a bread machine, too, so he spent part of the afternoon showing me how it’s done. Start with the wet ingredients, he said. I scribbled this important information into my notebook. Then add the dry ingredients, he said. Scribble. Set the bread machine to “dough” and go watch a movie, he said. Scribble, scribble. While the dough baked, the family introduced me to a very silly movie called Private Eyes (if I remember correctly). It starred Tim Conway and Don Knotts. Yes, it was a

An advantage of a large apartment is having space for a personal dance party. A disadvantage of any apartment is having neighbors who will wake up if you have said dance party at 10 p.m. An advantage of my particular large apartment, however, is that UD* and the other gal in this dwelling work weird shifts – second or third, or a varied odd shift – and are hardly ever home at 10 p.m. This is where my eclectic iTunes playlist comes in, along with a set of hand-me-down computer speakers that are apparently high-quality. (Harman audio, or something. I don’t recall the brand name for certain.) That setup in the sometime dining room turns it into a great dance hall – complete with a hardwood floor, I might add. Nowhere else would I be willing to dance as crazily as I do in that dining-room-cum-dance-hall. I would be far, far too embarrassed. But in the privacy of my rooms, with the curtains pulled fully across the windows, I can headbang to The Beach Boys (let me hear some of that roc