Working this job kinda drains me, mentally. I feel dumber after these days at work... and thus, can never think of what I meant to write about earlier. At least I'm on eight-hour days, instead of the nine-hours-plus-Saturday that became the last two weeks. All that comes to mind is that I'll be going to the state fair next week, with my sister, for the first time in... three or four years. I think the last time I went was when I was sixteen and drove the longest I've ever driven without my parents. (I still can't believe my parents let me, a sixteen-year-old, drive to the state fair and back, an hour each way. I don't think I've driven alone that far since...) But that was before the advent of this "Pen or Sword?" blog, I believe. Back in the days of "El Cuaderno." Man... I've had this blog name a long time..... three years this coming month. See how random, disassociated, and unorganized my thoughts become after getting home from w...

Tonight one of the ladies at work asked me, out of the blue, if I owned horses. I do not own horses. Never have. She said I just looked like the kind of gal who'd ride horses. What does such a gal look like? Perhaps I wear, unbeknownst to me, the emblem of an equestrian club. I wonder if it's the ponytail.

Today's sermon was about the letter to the Philadelphia church, in the beginning of the book of Revelation. A few fascinating things I learned: --Philadelphia wasn't really that big a deal... just a little city that had only one thing going for it: It was at the crossroads of the East and Rome, so it had a lot of trade routes running through, and thus was a kind of communications hub. Not a real financial or religious center like Ephesus or Corinth. --It was on a fault line, and a HUGE earthquake (the biggest in recorded history, I think) levelled it in AD 17. --It got rebuilt after that, but then every time the residents felt another tremor, they all ran for their lives out of the city. --Eventually, the only thing that survived earthquakes and the passage of time has been the big ol' pillars from the pagan temples there. And, in light of all that, this verse has particular meaning: "Him who overcomes I will make a pillar in the temple of my God. Never again will he...

(Not to be confused with antidisestablishmentarianism.) My mom and I recently semi-discussed (for twenty seconds, in the van, on our way to Wal-mart or something) the difference between the complementarian and egalitarian constructs of relationships between men and women. (I don't even remember why.) Anyhow, I saw an article today that reminded me of that again. It's obviously complementarian , as can be expected from a Focus on the Family blog/webzine, and shows how the author interprets the leading/submitting roles of a husband and wife. I thought it was fascinating (and pretty much right, too, for what my nineteen-year-old's opinion is worth). Part of it discusses how passive a lot of today's guys have become. And that, in turn, made me think of one of my, ah, annoyances with other guys my age. I can't call them men (well, not most of them) because they lack maturity and passion for something (their vocation or something similar to which they put forth energ...

This past Sunday I got to go with my family to meet a gaggle of just-returning missionaries from all over the world, at an amazing opportunity at my church district's campground. A pretty simple setup--a giant world map, on canvas maybe (it was something pretty sturdy), laid out all over the grass next to the tabernacle at camp, and with band instruments set up next to it. The amazing part was being able to hear so many stories/prayer requests from so many parts of the world at one time. The missionaries were stationed on the map (that's why it was so big), in the vicinity of where they minister on the real globe. Anyone who wanted could come up and talk to the missionaries--several folks from my church made the trip. And these missionaries were from all over, though we got to talk to just people from Africa and South America (there wasn't time to visit with everyone). We heard some encouraging stories about breakthroughs in West Africa, changes in South America, and s...

I've been quite busy this week... as I posted on my other blog, I've: Helped out with VBS two mornings Helped out with my church blood drive one morning/early afternoon (after a VBS) Judged several 4-H projects one morning Had a dentist’s appointment one morning Worked nine-hour days (till midnight-thirty) And worked eight hours yesterday. I don't regret one single thing in that list. Even though I suffered severe sleep deprivation (less than 3 and a half hours) Thursday morning. And even though my feet, back, and hands were sore by the end of the week. In other news--there is an apple slice sitting on the couch beside me. I do not know why it is there, nor do I know for whom it was intended (though I have my suspicions). Perhaps somebody will take pity on it, eat it, and sent it to little-apple-slice heaven. Not me though; I don't like apples all that much.

I got onto Twitter this afternoon, and one tweet (twit?) in particular caught my eye: AtlanticOnline Should children be taught Latin in school? http://bit.ly/WCeZk So I read the blog post (on the Atlantic's Ideas blog). It was actually rather interesting, and advocated teaching Latin to the underprivileged, or whatever you want to call kids who aren't quite literate, to help them build a better English vocabulary and grammar. By providing a grounding in the prefixes, suffixes, and roots that serve as the building blocks for so many English words, Latin enables these disadvantaged students to catch up. In addition, Latin's grammar, unlike that of English, follows reassuringly predictable rules. Each part of speech is quickly recognizable... even if you don't know what the words mean. And Latin gives students a conceptual understanding of grammar that can easily be transferred to the study of English; once one understands the difference between, say, a direct and in...