Our neighbor, Soren

Soren is our neighbor.  If you just thought, "Soren Kierkegaard!" yea!  I'm not alone.  I've never met anyone named Soren before.  I've actually only talked to him once, even though I've been married and lived here for almost six months.  We don't see a lot of him, and I frequently think that he must be irritated by hearing my oft-repeated Owl City songs through the thin walls.  Hopefully he has headphones.

Anyway, our little house is rather small and shares a wall with Soren's.  His house is the mirror image of ours, so our two bathrooms have a common wall.

Tonight I was washing my face in our bathroom, I could hear Soren doing something in his bathroom (try not to think about it), and Amos was in the kitchen.  In the process of getting the Crock-Pot down from its perch on top of the fridge, Amos knocked over the cereal container, making a lot of noise that he thought I could hear.  I didn't hear anything, though, until he yelled, "Don't worry, I'm oh-kay!!"

Without thinking of our neighbor, I raised my head, facing the shared wall, and yelled back, "What are you doing in there?!"

I'm guessing that Soren either thought,
"Should I respond?  What is she talking about??"
or
"Weirdo.  I gotta move."

Don't...

I don't have much to say.

Ummmmmm, I finished some little crafty projects.  I think they look nice.

Zeus is still alive.  Sometimes he sleeps under his heater. :)

I had an interview today for a high school right down the street.  I'll find out by Friday if I got it.

I'm reading The Arabs by David Lamb.  I was disappointed to learn that he didn't write any more books about the Middle East, though he did write an updated version of The Arabs.

Amos and I went to our church's Christmas party on Sunday.  One of the best parts was watching a guy in a motorized wheelchair pull kids around the ice rink behind his chair.  It was awesome. :)

Only eleven more days till Christmas!

The little house

And finally, pictures of our little house. :)

The front, complete with clover and a rose bush :)

The front room with bookshelves and a coffee table/bookshelf

The other side of the front room, with more books :)

The small kitchen with announcements and missionary prayer cards

The other half of the kitchen with shelf, bridal bouquet, and Christmas tree

Master bedroom with the quilt I made and curtain I need to finish

The other side of the room

Our backyard.  The hammock takes up a lot of the space in the summer

Finally, our little Christmas tree with Amos' present! :)

Windy

Amos and I have wanted to go to the Huntington Library and Gardens for a few years now, but it is really hard to get tickets for their free day. Our friend Rachel had several free tickets that she was giving away, so we decided to take a trip this morning!

We left a little before 10:00 and headed down multiple freeways to Pasadena.  As we got closer to our destination, we started seeing splintered trees and severed limbs along the edges of the freeway.  Getting off on the surface roads, we saw more downed trees and blacked out traffic lights.  We drove up to the gates of the Huntington only to be told by two cheerful guys that the gardens were closed because of the power outages.  We decided to drive back through some other roads to see more of the cracked and dismantled trees.  Amos commented that I was just like my dad, who loves to check out all disasters.  One day Dad took off work to go check out the broken and flooding Folsom Dam; "you have to see these things while they are happening!"  The terms "ambulance chaser" and "rubbernecker" come to mind.

Anyway, we took some pictures of the carnage.  You can click on them to see a larger version.

This tree is being held up by the powerlines

I don't think this tree hit the house, but it was close

Road block!

More powerlines and road blocks...

If you look on the left, you can see the asphalt that was cracked by the tree roots

Just stuff...

1. We sang this song from Sovereign Grace in church today.  I am a big fan of Sovereign Grace music as it takes lyrics from both Puritan prayers and the Bible.

2. My brother Scott and sister-in-law Ashley are waiting to adopt a little baby from Uganda.  My old IBEX friend Nate and his wife Miriam have been waiting over two years to adopt two babies from Rwanda.  Gunner and his wife Cindi adopted one little boy from Uganda several years ago and two boys and one girl from Rwanda this summer.  Please pray that Scott and Ashley's baby and Nate and Miriam's babies come home soon.

3. I don't know what to do with my free time sometimes, but I feel like I should DO something with it... *sigh*

4. In other news, Christmas is only a month away!  As our pastor said today, "we set apart the days to celebrate the birth of our Savior."  Our Savior; the Muslims' Savior; the Hindus' Savior; the atheists' Savior; your Savior; my Savior.

Zeus

Well, there's a blog post title I never thought I'd use!  We decided to name our new fishy friend Zeus.  Amos ordered him a personal heater and thermometer today so that 1) he can be warm, poor guy, and 2) so we don't accidentally fry him. :/  When it's cool in the house I tell Amos, "I'm going to put the sweater on Zeus."  No, I don't mean a literal sweater, with holes for his tiny fins, but that would be funny!  His "sweater" is a fleece blanket folded a few times and secured with a binder clip around his bowl to keep him warm.  We also turn on a light above his bowl for a little extra heat.  Yes, the poor fish needs a heater if he is going to survive in our little home.

So far Zeus is a good fish.  He swims around or hangs out in the bottom of the bowl with the little flattened marbles.  Zeus does have a problem, though; he won't eat his food.  There are so many water-logged pieces of fish food at the bottom of his bowl right now!  Apparently bettas can go about two and a half weeks on a hunger fast before they will actually eat their food.  I think they are fed different food at the store because Zeus really doesn't like this kind, even though it is specified as betta food.  He will suck it in and spit it back out a few times before it slowly sinks to the bottom.  We have another type of food that he likes, but some websites say it's like candy and he needs to eat his "real food."  Hopefully Zeus will give in soon!

Here are some photos of him.  Hopefully you can still see what he looks like.

Zeus, chillin' in his sweater :D

He's a very nice color...

Our fishy friend, Zeus the betta fish

Ferdinand? Bertram? Jonah?

Call us sick, call us morbid, call us weird.

One of our friends just got a betta fish, and she accidentally killed it by not putting enough water conditioner in the water when she introduced her pet to his new home.

Poor Charles.

Charles' death inspired Amos to get his own fishy friend.  Our little fish has a big, round bowl and some blue and green flattened marbles for landscaping (waterscaping? aquascaping?).  He likes to stay right below the surface of the water like a miniature submarine.  Amos is afraid the poor dude is going to freeze and give up the ghost, so he's looking into a heater for him, which is probably a good idea considering how cold it gets in our little house.  Apparently one brand of heaters has a tendency to boil fish, so we won't be getting any of those.  I didn't know this, but companies also make tiny, leaf-like hammocks for bettas that come attached to a suction cup so you can stick it to the side of the bowl.  Whoa.  One reviewer says his fish loves it and looks "as deliriously happy as it's possible for a fish to look."

Alrighty then.

I came up with a few names for the fish, but Amos hasn't officially approved any of them.  First I thought that Bertram would be a nice name.  Then I thought of Jonah (my personal favorite), and finally Ferdinand.  We shall see!

I just hope he doesn't end up christened Bluey or something weird like that. ;)

11/13/11

1. Amos and I attended an India meeting at church today.  We are going to Bangalore, India in July!  I'm so excited!  Amos is going to make a promotional video for our ministry partners (they have a Bible college and a children's home).  I'm going to teach a writing class and help the kids with homework.  I saw pictures of all of the kids last week, and I can't wait to go over and meet all twenty of them! :)

2. I am making this for dinner! :)  It should be reaaaaaaaaally good.

3. Friday was my brother Scott's birthday.  He's twenty-seven!

4. On Thursday I had an interview.  I should find out tomorrow or Tuesday if I got the long-term sub position.  I really hope I get it!  I think the decision has been made already, but please pray anyway.

5. I finished A Chance To Die: The Life and Legacy of Amy Carmichael by Elisabeth Elliot...which reminds me that I need to renew the other three books I checked out!

6. Amos and I have been married for four months now!

7. There are a lot of exclamation points in this post! ! !

"It has a little stink in it..."

Amos has several side jobs.  One of his jobs is a temporary job editing photos for our old IBEX professor, Todd.  Another is creating a website for our old IBEX friend, Lexi.  Still another job is hauling around porta potties mobile restrooms for his coworker Ryan.

I know what you are thinking.

"Uggggghhhh, porta potties!  Nasty green closets set up at flea markets and construction sites, dirty as can be, and twice as smelly."

Yeah, that's what I thought when Amos told me about it.

However, these are different.  These restrooms are very nice.

I was describing them to my mom one day.

What I said: "They're really nice, they're big, and they even have a little sink in it."
What she heard: "...they even have a little stink in it!"

Haha!

Anyway, this last weekend Amos was hauling one of the units up to Fresno for a wedding.  It was quite the adventure.  We got up at 4:20 am, took showers, packed our stuff into the car, and headed for Master's, where Amos had parked the truck and unit.

We got everything transferred to the nice, brand-new, diesel Dodge Ram and were up in Fresno by 8:30.  After talking to the wedding coordinator, we started setting up.  The unit has a freshwater tank for washing hands and flushing, so we ran a garden hose across the street to "fill 'er up."  Unfortunately the first car that drove by cracked the hose in three different places!  Water was shooting all over the road and running into the little field where we set up the restrooms.  Soon we were avoiding mud puddles and tracking dirt into the bathrooms.  One of the set-up guys for the wedding found another, heavier hose for us to use, so we set everything up inside, topped off the tank, and were off to a fun weekend!

The rest of the weekend included a free upgrade to a bigger hotel room, taking naps, watching TV (British TV shows and college football, mostly), going out to dinner at a Mexican restaurant, sleeping in, and eating waffles and powdered eggs (gag!) for breakfast.  It was fun. :)

All in all, we had a great time in spite of early mornings, my cold, and mud puddles.

Amos' parents, Barb and Lester, wanted to see some pictures of the units, so here they are!  Click on the picture to see a larger version.

Early morning Fresno, behind the trailer

The handsome husband, looking a little cold

The bathrooms, complete with mats and palm trees! ;)
Notice the little lights to let you know if the stall is occupied.

Inside the ladies' stall

Suffer

I finished The Reason for God by Timothy Keller yesterday.  I think everyone should read this book, penned for "skeptics and the believers who love them...The first, shorter part of the book looks at popular arguments against God's existence, while the second builds on general arguments for God to culminate in a sharp focus on the redemptive work of God in Christ." (from Publishers Weekly via amazon.com)

Some of the topics that hit me the hardest:

• the importance of forgiveness and the pain that is involved in that forgiveness
• the danger of building one's life on anything other than God
• Christ's identification with us in our suffering

Amos and I heard hard news about a friend today, and I have been thinking back to what Tim Keller kept hitting on, namely that Christ suffers with us.

He loves us.

True love involves caring for the sufferer and entering into their suffering yourself as you draw close to them.  Christ did this for us on the cross.  He identified with us in our humanity and suffering.  He left His Spirit to comfort us as we live, laugh, love, and suffer here on earth.  "Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows..."

He knows.

And that is immensely comforting to me, especially as I want just to fix the situation and make everything right.

He cares for our friend more than anyone else ever could.



God knows.

I'll get around to it one of these days

I thought of putting up pictures of our little house today, but I didn't get around to it.  First Amos and I didn't get up very early today; Amos blames it on the sugar we had the last few days.  I have no idea why we've been so tired.

After lunch of leftover homemade lasagna, I took Amos to work then toodled around on the internet for a while.

Later I walked to the grocery store and talked to Irene on the phone.  When I got to Vallarta, I bought a $0.20 cucumber before jay walking running across the street to Ralph's.  I bought a can of pineapple for $1.00 and a box of crumb donuts (the best kind) for $0.49.  Arriving back at the little house, I put the cucumber away, got some cash out of my wallet, and walked to another grocery store, Tresierras.  I bought two onions, a pound of carrots, and twenty eggs.  Next I walked down the farmers' market to find out how much the tamales were.  When I found out they were $3.00 each, I decided to just go home and have something else for dinner.  Another customer told me they were really big, though, and when I looked, I decided to have one after all. :)

I walked back home and cleaned up some of the house before I had dinner.  Then I talked to Amos and another friend on Facebook and finally got back around to mopping the kitchen and bedroom floors.

Now there are candles burning in the bedroom and kitchen, working away at the chemical cleaning smells.  I'm waiting for Amos to get off work.  I head off to work tomorrow!  I'm going to one of my favorite high schools.  Should be good!

Henry

Henry is the newest addition to the Ralston household.

Henry.  He even got the blue and green memo!

As you can see, he is a very nice plant of the sage variety.  I've wanted a sage plant for a long time.  I grew a tiny specimen from a sage seed when I lived at Aptartment 29 (three years ago!), and it did pretty well until I put it outside in the hot blazing sun.  The poor little plant was not prepared for SoCal's heat and quickly shriveled up.

I wanted a sage plant because you can use the leaves to make really good tea.  When I was in Jordan five and half years ago, we had tea every morning at our hostel.  The tea was very good except for the day that I found a pincher bug taking a float in the tea pot.  My friends and I asked the hostel owner what the brand of tea was and then wandered Wadi Mousa till we found some.  I bought the biggest box that the little convenience store had (195 teabags), but I didn't use them fast enough.  I threw about half of them away yesterday because they were so bitter it really took away from the taste.  I kept the cardboard box and several of the tags from the teabags, though.

Last Sunday I went to the grocery store and found a new box of Ceylon tea, though sadly and understandably, it was not the same brand.  Amos and I had some tea on Tuesday or Wednesday before we went to Home Depot and bought Henry.  I've resisted the temptation to water him; apparently he only needs a little water to survive.

Henry makes very good tea.

Jordanian Tea
Ceylon tea
A lot sugar
A few fresh sage leaves (summer) OR
A few fresh mint leaves (winter)