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After the Miers debacle, I think this nomination will reunite the various conservative factions. And now, it's the left that's having pants-wetting hissy fits, which I like much better. ;-)
(Both links via Beth...and I second what she has to say to Harry Reid.)
“American Snapshot” Meme
According to a book about Americans, the average American:
(Via Andrea Harris.)
I have always loved bath stuff -- cool soaps, wonderful bubble baths, shower gels, etc. When people say that they don't know what to give me for a present, I just say, "Give me some bath stuff!"
I heard about Creekside Soap and decided to give their products a try. I absolutely love their soap. The Oatmeal, Milk and Honey soap is to die for. I also love the Lavender and the English Rose (which are not currently on their rotating roster of products). Applejack Peel is another favorite. I have also bought a lot of these soaps to give to family and friends as gifts and they loved them, too. I highly recommend Creekside Soap.
I also have heard about the products offered by a Canadian company called Lush. I tried numerous products by Lush (ordering them via Amazon.com
Anyway, my great affection for bath things got me interested in dabbling in making soap and other bath stuff myself. I got started by buying a bath fizzy kit at a drug store that I go to that also sells a few craft products. At the same time, I bought a book about soapmaking, but it is mainly about making cold-process soap. (Creekside Soap is cold-process soap.) I just want to keep things simple for now, so I decided to go the melt-and-pour route instead. So, I bought the only slab of melt-and-pour soap they had.
My first experiment was a bit of a failure. I used the colorant and orange essential oil that came with the fizzy kit, which was fine except that I didn't use enough fragrance. Where I really went wrong was in choosing a mold. I didn't have proper molds, so I used some empty Altoids Tangerine Sour tins instead. Bad idea...I couldn't get the soap out without cutting it up. I eventually ended up using this failed batch to make some liquid hand soap.
I bought a couple of books about melt-and-pour soapmaking. I then went about getting some proper supplies. Some time ago, I had bookmarked a website that sells all kinds of soapmaking products called Sweet Cakes.
I have bought a bunch of fragrance oils, essential oils, colorants, molds and melt-and-pour soap bases from Sweet Cakes. Some I made for just myself and my mother. (Various floral scents such as rose, lilac and violet.) I made some patchouli and hemp oil soap for my sister and a friend of mine who loves patchouli. I also made a whole bunch of holiday scented and colored soaps that I will use as gifts. I donated some to my church's holiday craft fair (to raise money for the needy) that will be going on the next two Sundays. The holiday soaps I made are: Pumpkin Spice, Cranberry Spice, Christmas Forest and Frankincense & Myrrh (for which I used a gold soap base). I also experimented and made a few bars of a scent I created that I called Christmas Rose. I used a combination of rose, Christmas Forest and F&M. I think it turned out pretty good, considering it was just an experiment. It smells like roses with a little bit of Christmas thrown in.
I used a lot of pre-colored soaps, but I have also used colorants. This is where I have run into some problems. I bought gel colorants from Sweet Cakes and at first I had problems with the colorant creating glops in my soaps. (This was the soap I made for me and my mother to use.) I did some Googling and finally found out that this was caused by adding the colorant when the soap was too hot -- it should not be over 145 degrees. Also, I noticed the colorants fade or even change colors over time. The former problem is probably caused by not using enough. I suspect the latter is caused by, again, the soap being too hot when I added it. I now use a thermometer to measure the soap's temperature before adding the colorant, which solved the glopping problem.
I found another soap-supply place to order from called Bramble Berry. I was looking for a Rice Flower scent and they had it. (The first time I ordered from Creekside Soap, they sent me a lovely smelling sample of Rice Flower soap. Unfortunately, they are not selling it right now.) With my next batch of soap, I'm going to try and get a little fancy. Using the small bath fizzy molds, I'm going to make small pieces of soap, and then I'm going to embed them in clear soap. It will be all Rice Flower scented. Wish me luck with this project. If it turns out well, I'll post pictures.
I also have stuff to make bath fizzies. If my soap sells well at this week's craft fair, I may donate a few more bars for next week and make some holiday scented fizzies as well. Below is a picture of the holiday soaps. I donated two bars of each.
Click for larger view.
If you will notice, I last posted about my weight loss progress over a year ago.
There's a reason for this.
I my highest weight loss point was, I think, 54 lbs., which I reached around September or October of last year. After that, I lost the plot.
I spent many months just spinning my wheels, losing a little weight and gaining a little back again. For a long time, I stayed at about the same place without further progress. While I had some health issues (bronchitis, gallbladder surgery and some other things) I also wasn't trying that hard anymore. I got tired of wasting time exercising that I could use doing other things, or just plain relaxing. I resented the hell out of it, in fact. I also resented having to watch everything I eat. I got tired of eating fruit and salads when I really wanted...something else. Although some people going through the Weight Watchers program have readjusted their tastes so that they prefer healthy food to the fattening stuff, I haven't been able to do that yet.
I injured my back in May and had to take steroids for a week and I gained about 10 lbs. (I am allergic to NSAIDs, which is why I had to take steroids.) My exercise program fell by the wayside and I just quit caring.
Now, I've gained back a little over half the weight I lost. I've started to have some of the health problems that drove me to lose weight in the first place. I am achy and fatigued and out-of-shape. Even after I lost 50+ lbs., I still needed to take cholesterol medicine, but being overweight doesn't help the situation.
My pride is hurt and I feel like a failure. I just started going to Weight Watchers again after a few weeks. The people there are great...they are very supportive. Nevertheless, I had to swallow a lot of pride to go back. I know I shouldn't be embarrassed, but I am anyway.
But I'm climbing back on the wagon again. My little rebellion is over. I really hate being overweight. I hate the way it makes me feel and look. So I'm going to keep fighting.
I had a feeling this would happen. Fairly or not, this nomination was hurting the President politically. We know that Miers is very loyal to Bush, so she did the right thing for him politically.
President Bush said he reluctantly accepted Miers' decision to withdraw, after weeks of insisting that he did not want her to step down.
I figured the President was digging in his heels on this. In a way, I don't blame him.
"The radical right wing of the Republican Party killed the Harriet Miers nomination," said Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada, who had recommended Miers to the president.
Perhaps, but there are some who are more moderate who opposed the nomination as well. I thought a lot of the criticisms of Miers were unfair. She wasn't "Ivy League" and people used stupid things like birthday cards she wrote against her. However, I could also understand the accusations of cronyism. Also, the fact that Harry Reid recommended her is another strike against her. I stayed neutral on this, waiting to see how she did in the hearings. But, like I said, I had a feeling the hearings would never come to pass.
Anyway, I'm just glad this little drama is over with because I was sick of all the whining on the conservative blogs.
Update: Miers' withdrawal letter.
Update 2: The Anchoress weighs in, like I knew she would. I share her disgust at the way a lot of my fellow conservatives acted over this whole thing. I saw a lot of very unChristian behavior by some people who call themselves Christians. By the way, she mentions that someone (I assume it's a blogger) said the following: ”[President Bush] likes terrorists more than he likes us!” If anyone could let me know who this is, I would appreciate it. (I Googled but came up with nothing.) If I link to them, I would like to delink them. If not, I would like to focus my scorn on them. Thanks in advance.
Your aura shines Orange!
What Color Is Your Aura?
brought to you by Quizilla
I would say that that's accurate for the most part. I knew someone a long time ago who claimed he could see people's auras. He told me that I had an orange aura. Weird coincidence...
(Via E-Pression.)
Okay, I know everybody has made that joke by now...so sue me. For now, I'm not worried about Hurricane Wilma because, according to the computer models, a front is supposed to cause her to turn eastward after she crawls over the Yucatan Peninsula. While this is a good thing for my area, it's a bad thing for South Florida. Hopefully, she will weaken considerably before she hits Florida.
Now that the hurricane names have all been used up, any other storms this season are going be assigned Greek alphabet names: Alpha, Beta, etc. Considering how early the season got started and how active it's been, I wouldn't be surprised to see a few Greek names used before November 30, which is when hurricane season ends.
I'll be getting my storm shutters installed early next year (yes, there is a waiting list), so I just hope we don't get anything major in this area before the season ends.
Really, this bigoted fool should infuriate me more, but for some reason, I am mostly just amused by him. I mean, he actually writes drivel like this with a straight face:
Perhaps the point is this: Why does this sort of bizarre hyperbreeding only seem to afflict antiseptic megareligious families from the Midwest? In other words -- assuming Michelle and Jim Bob and their massive brood of cookie-cutter Christian kidbots will all be, as the charming photo suggests, never allowed near a decent pair of designer jeans or a tolerable haircut from a recent decade, and assuming that they will all be tragically encoded with the values of the homophobic asexual Christian right -- where are the forces that shall help neutralize their effect on the culture? Where is the counterbalance, to offset the damage?Where is, in other words, the funky tattooed intellectual poetess who, along with her genius anarchist husband, is popping out 16 funky progressive intellectually curious fashion-forward pagan offspring to answer the Duggar's squad of über-white future Wal-Mart shoppers? Where is the liberal, spiritualized, pro-sex flip side? Verily I say unto thee, it ain't lookin' good.
This guy actually gets paid to write this crap!
Okay, so this family has sixteen kids. As long as they love the kids and provide for them and don't abuse them or anything, what business is it of yours, mine or Mr. Morford's? What happened to "reproductive choice" and all that? And if Mofo Morford wrote the same bigoted crap about other religions instead of Christianity, he'd probably be charged with hate crimes there in San Francisco.
Yes, Morford is deeper and more spiritual than the Duggar family, which is why he laments the haircuts and lack of designer jeans worn by the Duggar kids and obsesses on the alleged state of Mrs. Duggar's...erm...plumbing.
I was going to say I find Morford scary rather than the Duggar family, but really, how can you be scared of someone that silly and superficial? He's too much of a buffoon to be scary.
(Via the sometimes infuriating Mark Shea.)
Inspired by my prude post, reader Thomas Wyld sent me a link to this article on the Guardian website: Face to Faith. I think the writer here does an excellent job explaining why lust is a sin and why, when you come right down to it, people generally prefer love:
If lust is wrong, what is it that makes it so? For one thing, it represents the pursuit of instant gratification - "I want it, and I want it now ..." - which is always a perilous business. This is why the dictionary defines it as "libidinous desire, degrading animal passion"; to lust is to elevate the animal in us above the human. Worse, lust treats its object as precisely that - as an object, not a person. Amnon used Tamar; and once he had got what he wanted, he spat Tamar out.But Christians - and, of course, others - insist that sex should primarily be the climactic expression of affection and tenderness: of love, indeed. Human beings (uniquely?) have sex face to face - a posture that symbolises relating to, rather than simply using, another person.
It is true that two people may happily agree to give their bodies to one another without any kind of mutual commitment, and that is a long way from the rape of Tamar. But offering one's body in this way is also a long way from offering one's self, a long way from saying: "I give myself to you because I love you exclusively; and there is no more intense and beautiful way of doing so than what we share together in this act."
This reminds me of what C.S. Lewis had to say on this subject in The Four Loves
We use a most unfortunate idiom when we say, of a lustful man prowling the streets, that he "wants a woman." Strictly speaking, a woman is just what he does not want. He wants a pleasure for which a woman happens to be the necessary piece of apparatus. How much he cares about the woman as such may be gauged by his attitude to her five minutes after fruition (one does not keep the carton after one has smoked the cigarettes). Now Eros makes a man really want, not a woman, but one particular woman. In some mysterious but quite indisputable fashion the lover desires the Beloved herself, not the pleasure she can give.
Eros is romantic love, which is one of the four types of love discussed in the book.
I've got plenty of them, so if you want one, write me at my Gmail address:
BTW, has everyone who asked for an invite received theirs? I ask this because I sent an invite that I never got a notification on. I was concerned that maybe the invite was never received for some reason by the person who requested it. If you asked for an invite and didn't receive it, please let me know. Thanks!
I took Betty for her last heartworm treatment this morning. I'm exhausted...trying to control 93* lbs. of female Black Lab in heat will do that to you. I feel like I have whiplash. Thankfully, I will be able to get her spayed next week.
One thing about Labs...they go through the toys. She loves rope toys and can reduce them to mere threads in no time. Frisbees don't even last a week. I just gave her a new Nylabone Frisbee two or three days ago and it's already so chewed up it won't fly anymore. I also got her a King Kong, which she loves...especially when I put that peanut butter stuff in it. One toy I got her that she shows no interest in is the tire toy. It looks and smells like a real tire. However, she turns her nose up at it.
Like I said, she's in heat. There is a male dog next door and she's actually tried to tunnel under the fence...twice.
*She's gained about 10 lbs. since I got her. They found out she had hookworms as well last month. After she got rid of the hookworms, she started gaining weight.
That best describes me according to this column by Edward Morrissey of the Captain's Quarters Blog: WP - How Harriet Unleashed a Storm on the Right.
Also, this is just hilarious! (Via Andrea Harris [beware of the scary picture of Carrot Top and some other weird-faced guy].)
Barbara Nicolosi has seen a rough cut of the forthcoming movie of C.S. Lewis' The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and gives it a thumbs-up:
So, this adaptation of his books on the big screen - in being true to their source material - will be tremendously, heart-fillingly comprehensible to those of us who love Jesus. And probably a bit strange to those who don't. But whereas The Passion was disturbingly incomprehensible to non-believers, this film will be fascinatingly so. I want to be clear, there is plenty of stuff to love and enjoy here for non-Christians. But they aren't going to get why we Christians are going to be in ecstasy here , any more than the pagans got why we cried copious tears at The Passion. What I am saying is, be prepared for this new Narnia film to be foolishness to the New York Times, and a stumbling block to Daily Variety.
I had worried about Disney's involvement in the project -- I didn't want to see Narnia get Disneyfied. But it looks like that isn't going to be the case. Perhaps the involvement of Walden Media (which is owned by a conservative) is why the movie is staying true to the book.
I never read the Narnia books as a child, but I'm listening to them in audiobook form now. I'm about halfway through the series. (I'm currently listening to The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.) I have really enjoyed what I've heard so far and I look forward to the LW&W movie.
(Both links via Mark Shea.)
Update: Barbara Nicolosi follows up her initial post with another that wryly wonders if Disney is re-discovering its soul.
Update (10/11/05): Patrick Gaffney attended a preview of this film today at Wheaton Bible Church. He has lots of photos and C.S. Lewis' stepson, Douglas Gresham, was there as well.
What's this all about? Find out here and here. What is dhimmitude? Read all about it, grasshopper.
Incidentally, I now have a craving for Sweet & Sour Pork.
Everyone is in a tizzy over the nomination of Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court. The Anchoress thinks Bush is playing "rope-a-dope", whereas Mark Shea just thinks Bush is a dope.
My own opinion is similar to the Anchoress':
She may not make it to the Supreme Court. Bush may not even intend for her to get there. She may be, rather than the “misdirection,” many expected, an out-and-out decoy, floated to allow both the liberals and the conservatives to blast her out of the water so that Bush can then put up another candidate that both left and right - after having behaved very badly over Miers - will not dare to behave badly over, again.
That's pretty much how I see it. The left hates her, the right hates her...she will never be confirmed. Bush knows that and Miers knows that too. I also think her nomination (and rejection) will be a distraction that will make it easier for Bush to get the person he really wants confirmed once this brouhaha is over. That's my prediction anyway...
Update: Okay, would someone on the right explain something to me? Why are so many on the right having pants-wetting hissy fits over this woman's nomination? Is it snobbery (because she isn't "Ivy League")? Is it because you are an idiot who thinks that if an older woman isn't married that she must be gay or something? (And to think, it used to be that only unmarried men had the "honor" of being slandered that way. Score another one for feminism!) Really...what is your problem? This is a serious question.
I mean, I don't know much about this woman, so I don't understand the hysteria. She may be a terrible nominee, but I really don't know enough about her to judge that yet. I'm sure her fitness (or unfitness) will come to light during the confirmation hearings. The Anchoress takes the different factions on the right to task for their immaturity and tells them to grow up. She has more patience than I do...every other blog I read the past couple of days makes me want to yell, "Shut up! Shut up! SHUT UP!", and then slap them silly.
**sigh** I'm getting misanthropic again. I almost feel like I need to take another blogging break...
...I don't care. In fact, I'm proud to be a prude. Because articles like this make me sad. Apparently feminism fought for the right for women to be as skanky as they wanna be. And before I get accused of having a double standard, let me make something clear. I think that better behavior should be demanded from men, rather than worse behavior expected from women. Men should be castigated for being promiscuous as much as women should be, rather than being praised for being "studs".
I recently read a review for a book called Female Chauvinist Pigs, which, in light of the above article, sounds like something that's timely and right on target.
I refuse to rehash why I think the so-called "sexual revolution" has been a bad deal for women. If you want to read more on what I think of this subject, go here, here, here, here and here. Then when you are through reading those, read this.
Incidentally, I really look forward to Dawn Eden's book, which she mentions here. She is putting her blog on hiatus so that she can work on it. It sounds like the message in her book is one that desperately needs to be heard.
BTW, if you disagree with this post, please read all of the above links before commenting. Otherwise, I will not take your comment seriously and I will ignore you. In other words, don't be a butthead. (Yes, I'm in one of those moods.)
(I wasn't sure what category to put this in, but I think it should go under "Faith", because no matter what your beliefs on this debate are, you are taking some leap of faith.)
Steve H. has an excellent post addressing the whole evolution/intelligent design debate. He also has two follow-up posts here and here. His point is essentially this: how did life, and conscious life at that, get started. How did a stew of various chemicals turn into life? Here's an excerpt from the first post:
Now, let's say you create a planet. The planet has things like rocks and mud and water and air. How can evolution cause life to arise there? Common sense says it can't. There are no genes. There is no population of organisms. There is no reproduction. So if life arises spontaneously, it seems to me that the mechanism--whatever it is--can't be called "evolution."If that's right, then anyone who says life first arose as the result of evolution must be totally wrong.
So I guess people who don't believe in a creator have two theories, not one. The theory of evolution, and the theory of magical animation of rocks and mud. [...]
So you have this mud and these rocks and all sorts of ultraviolet radiation. And somehow, these ingredients magically decide to go against the general rule in the universe and organize themselves into something that is either a life form or the precursor of a life form.
Does that make sense to you?
Then, in the second post, he asks this question:
So...let's assume organic molecules cooperate and turn themselves into living organisms without a God to tell them what to do. How does consciousness get into the organisms?
Finally, in the third post, he clarifies his point further:
I realize, though, that I should point something out. Yes, I am a creationist, but I don't claim evolution doesn't occur. I think it's pretty obvious that it occurs to one extent or another. Whether it accounts for all the species on earth, or some of them but not others, or what, is another question.When I criticized the theory of evolution below, what I was really getting at was not so much that evolution is a crappy theory, but that when the theory of evolution has a weakness, evolutionists tend to conceal or ignore it, much as creationists conceal or ignore problems with creationism. I think that's a very fair criticism.
Now, the spontaneous generation of life from non-life...that, I do not believe in. I can see how a living species could be transformed by selection forces, and I know the problems with the fossil record aren't necessarily fatal to the theory. But order from disorder is completely different. As far as I know, the least complicated organism on earth is more complicated than the most complex lifeless object, by orders of magnitude.
If you are interested in what I think of this, you can read this post on my faith journal (which I have badly neglected) where I give my take on the creation account in Genesis. Here is my main point:
To me, the most important thing to get from these chapters is that the universe and everything in it is not some random occurrence. God created everything that exists. Personally, I believe a lot of this account is symbolic -- a way of explaining a very complex process so that people could understand. But nevertheless, God is the Creator, whether you choose to take these passages more literally or not.Now, could God have created the Earth and all life in six days? Of course -- he could have created it all in a millisecond if He chose to do so.
Personally, I don't believe the six days are literal, and I don't believe the Earth is only a few thousand years old. Someone might ask, "If God is so all-powerful, why would He create the Earth over a process of millions of years?" But you could really ask the same question about six days. Why couldn't God have created everything in a millisecond?
My belief is that God created the way He did because He took pleasure in His creation, like an artist takes pleasure in creating a work of art. Notice that in each part of the creation account it says, "And God saw that it was good." I believe that on the day of rest, God stepped back and admired His handiwork, like an artist would admire a creation that he perfected. God is truly the first and greatest Artist!
Roy Jacobsen of Dispatches from Outland has launched a new blog called Writing, Clear and Simple. Roy discusses the purpose of this blog:
The ability to use words well, to communicate with clarity and force, is rare, but it is a skill that anyone can learn. If you want to develop your ability with words, to learn to use them clearly and concisely, with power and precision, then this website is for you. The focus will be primarily on writing, but the things you learn will carry over to speaking as well, whether it's conversations around the water cooler or formal presentations before large audiences.Each week, I'll present a short, simple lesson or tip about using words that you can put into action immediately. I'll link to and comment on articles about the art and craft of writing well, and spend some time looking at examples of writing captured in the wild--the good, the bad, and the ridiculous. On top of it all, we’re going to have fun.
One thing that I hope has happened since I've started this blog is that my writing has improved. I can write off the top of my head much better than I used to. However, I can still make some cringeworthy mistakes -- especially if it's early and the caffeine hasn't hit my system yet. :-)
Roy's new blog looks very promising and it is something that is much needed. Whether you blog, write papers, documentation or even just email messages, improving your writing skills is essential.