I Heart Battlestar Galactica

Only 4 episodes left! *Sniff!*

On Youtube:
The Top 10 Reasons to Watch the Last Season of BSG

A "Birthing Prayer"

Wow.

From "The Prophet"
By Kahlil Gibran

"And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said,
'Speak to us of Children.'
And he said:
'Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as he loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable."

Only When You're Pregnant....

...are you not offended when a student says, "Ah, miss, mira más gorda ahora."

News, and Either a Stalker or a Conspiracy

So...we are officially having a boy! (Or a girl with an extra leg....)

After the exciting ultrasound last night and getting fun pictures I wanted to show off, we headed over to my dad's house to show off the "baby" pictures. While we were sitting there talking, my dad answered the phone, and it was for me. Weird, I thought, Who's calling me here? But, having just sent a mass e-mail with the gender to lots of family, I figured it was probably my grandma or some other family member calling to chat. Strange that they would call my parents' number rather than my cell, but you never know with my grandma, or maybe I missed my cell and they called that number as a last ditch try.

So...I answered the phone and it was....the Obama campaign! ???!?!! Blink. Nevermind the fact that the Obama campaign didn't even exist when I last lived there (about 8 years ago), I couldn't even vote when I lived there! (The first election I could vote in came after I went to college.) So, logically after she gave her introduction and asked about volunteering, I said, "Do you know I don't live here?" My next logical options were that they had mixed up names or my dad heard the wrong name, being all L's in the female side of my family. (Though that's not much more logical as neither Linda nor Leanne can vote.) And she said, "This is Lisa Martin?" Well, yes...but I explained it was my parents' house and gave her my correct phone number.

How did they get it?!? I'm sure if I gave phone number when I joined the Goshen for Obama group, it was my cell. So...either I have a stalker, following my every move and selling the info to the highest bidder (or giving it away for fun) or there's a vast conspiracy following me and I should check my belongings for GPS devices.

In all seriousness, I'm not sure if I'm more baffled by the fact that they somehow had that particular number for me, or that they just happened to call in the short time I was there, after not having visited over there for about 2 weeks.

Tip to random stalker: If you want to annoy me, rather than just baffle me, give my whereabouts to the McCain campaign, or the NRA.

Come to Our Church!

Here is a website with some, umm, interesting, real church signs. Do YOU want to go to these churches?

Here are some of my favorites....
















Poor literacy...my #1 reason to be a Christian!
















Umm, you might want to leave the kids at home for this sermon....















Ahh, thanks for the helpful advice!


























I can't even comment on this one. It makes me want to cry.


























God could dominate the world himself, being omnipotent, but he'd prefer you to do it for him....















Again, you might want to think about leaving the kids at home for this one....

Hi, I'm alive still!

I think.

Well, I just spent the last 20 minutes trying to figure out how to upload a good image from this fun toy of a site I found, but I give up, so this is a pretty lame post. It's wordle.net - in the site you can paste in a chunk of text or a link to a blog and it spits out a "word cloud" you can play with. Basically, it's a random arrangement of the most common words in your blog (common words like "the" omitted) - words that appear more often are larger. You can play with the arrangement and colors and font or have it rearrange randomly. It's pretty fun. Here - you can use the dumb link to look at what it did with my blog, since I'm too technically inept to make a copy that's not tiny or blurry.

I Believe You Have My Minkey...

Just went to see the movie "The Golden Compass". I liked it....despite many protests from some Christian groups. I think that is overreaction, along the lines of the Harry Potter thing. But I'll give my final commentary on that after I read the books. Below is my personal "Daemon" according to a quiz. You can vote to see if it fit me...What does it say that it is the same as the bad character's daemon in the movie???

The Dumbest Thing I've Seen All Week (And I just spent all day with high schoolers on their first day of school)

So on my way home I was behind a guy on a motorcycle talking on a cell phone. This is either not a feasible activity or else he was not very good at it because he kept kind of swaying back and forth. The kicker was that apparently he had been wearing a helmet but took it off to talk on the cell phone; he had it hanging from his elbow. Somehow, I think if you're on a motorcycle (which cars often ignore or don't see) and you're about to decrease both your coordination and concentration and take off the only thing keeping you from becoming a vegetable if you get hit by somebody, it's really better that you just pull off for a minute. (We were around all kinds of stores where he could have done just that.) That's my rant. Bye.

My Personality



I took a personality quiz yesterday. According to it, I'm an INFJ, which may or may not be the same as I've tested before. What do you think, does this describe me?

"INFJs, making up an estimated 1% of all people, are the most rare type (males even more so). They are introspective, caring, sensitive, gentle and complex people that strive for peace and derive satisfaction from helping others. INFJs are highly intuitive, empathetic and dedicated listeners. These traits tend to act as a "tell me what's wrong" sign on their forehead, hence the nicknames Confidant, Counselor or Empath. INFJs are intensely private and deeply committed to their beliefs."

Famous INFJ's include Martin Luther King, Jr., Mother Teresa, Nicole Kidman, Mel Gibson (Yikes!), and Nelson Mandela.

Pivot Questionnaire

Pivot Questionnaire

(It seemed interesting when Jeff did it!)

1. What is your favorite word? Ya.
   
2. What is your least favorite word? Nice.
   
3. What turns you on creatively, spiritually or emotionally? Good music, laughter, reflective silence.
   
4. What turns you off? Verbal, physical, or emotional violence. (Ever get that cringing feeling when some parent is yelling at their kid in the grocery store because they're acting like (*gasp*) a kid?
   
5. What is your favorite curse word? Blasted Fruitloops (Yes, I know it's two!)
   
6. What sound or noise do you love? A good thunderstorm.
   
7. What sound or noise do you hate?
   
8. What profession other than your own would you like to attempt? Something in Linguistics or research.
   
9. What profession would you not like to do? Telemarketer. I hate trying to sell stuff and talking to random people on the phone. And I hate telemarketers calling me. I'd have to kill myself!
   
10. If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates? Hi - which choir would you like to sing in today? And don't forget to check out our library after dinner with Jesus.
    

It's out to get me!

So, apparently the weather has decided to smite me for my March 21 post. Sigh. Maybe I will just freeze into a Lisa-sicle and not survive my 26th winter after all!

To cheer myself (and you other snow-phobics, unlike my strange snow-philic husband), here's a repost of my favorite Easter cartoon. Still has the power to make me chuckle, even when I've laughed at it a billion times!

Hello from Madison!

So we're having a great time at Andrea and Brandon's! I'll put up some pictures (hopefully) when we get back to Goshen. So far, we've been mini-golfing, visited an art museum, and eaten at an Afghani and Italian restaurant (those are two different ones....)

And two nights ago, I had what I believe is officially the world's most boring dream: I was at work, in the teacher workroom, making copies. And not just any copies, like 100 of something (which is weird because I neve make that many!)

Happy first day of spring!!!

And it's even nice out.

So, at least officially, according to the calendar, I have survived my 26th winter. Woot!

Mailing List Fun

We get mail addressed to the following people:

• Mrs. Lisa Martin
• Lisa Martin
• Lisa Rose Martin
• Lisa R. Martin
• Ms. Lisa Rose
• Lisa Rose
• Liwsa Martin
• Mr. Jeff S Martin
• Jeffrey Martin
• Jeff S Martin
• Jeffrey S. DMartin
• Mr. Jeffrey S. Martin
• Jeffrey S. Martin
• Lisa Rose and Jeff Martin
• Jeff and Lisa Rose
• Lisa &. Jeff Rose
• Ms. Lisa Rose and Jeff Martin

This is not counting mail to "resident" or "preferred customer" OR mail for previous occupants of the house (e.g. Bryan Falcon, David Mosley) OR neighbors who got on a mailing list with an address in error - ours (e.g. Eric Kanagy) OR production companies for any of the above (e.g. "Crunchy Productions"). We seem to live near lots of media people.

While I will admit to having signed some things before that I knew would produce junk mail, I have never purposely signed incorrect names, though it's been tempting. (I've heard before of people using different middle initials to track who sells their name.) So, the incorrect spellings and names are somehow corruptions that got passed along. It's especially interesting the ones that seem to be derivations of speech - e.g. the Jeff and Lisa Rose (which just takes my middle name for a last name, which it could sound like if you didn't know us), which later got changed to Lisa and Jeff Rose. Or Jeffrey S. DMartin, which seems a pretty big coincidence considering Jeff's most common screen/e-mail name is jeffTHEmartin.

And, as an extra tidbit, here's the latest funny quote I have, from Jeffy:
"Hello call-waiting Ryan and Jamie moo I'm a cow and I have cinnamon under my foot."

Quote for the day:

"I'm racist against stupid people."

(This comes from one of the 5 principals I work under...that doesn't count others who are directly or indirectly above me....the superintendent and asst., the ENL director...(fortunately for me, they're all nice)....How many bosses do YOU have?)

Cute Baby Pictures

Anyone remember my roommate Jana, from first year of college? You can see pictures of her new baby, Nelinka, here.

This cracked me up the first time I watched it, and I'm not even a huge fan of Mr. Bean!

It's back!

The word of the day is:

revived!

No, I will not be posting the WOTD every day on my blog, but I have reinstated my e-mail WOTD list. For those of you who are unfamiliar with WOTD, it began my freshman year of college as a fun little thing to amuse myself, but eventually expanded into a reasonably large daily e-mail to a group of people whose assignment was to use the word as often as possible during that day. I sent the WOTD by e-mail today to the people who were on the list the longest and that I figured wouldn't be annoyed by it. If you are interested in subscribing (or unsubscribing) to my daily randomness, e-mail:

wotdqueen@yahoo.com

You are also welcome to send me suggestions for your choice of WOTD (I refuse to guarantee that I will select your word, but usually I use suggestions). Previously, WOTD has generated a lot of "reply all" conversations, so I also had a "no reply" list for those people who couldn't handle the deluge in their inboxes. If a similar thing starts again, I'd probably start two lists again as well. Let me know.

Life sucks, sometimes

...but I don't really feel like dying either. No options! Argh!!!!!!!!!!!

It's gloriously rainy outside!

It's wonderfully grey and rainy today! Some people talk about how rainy days are gloomy and sad. Sure, I can appreciate the gloom of a rainy day - sometimes a rainy day is best spent by curling up inside with a book. And I guess I'm learning that I really do need a decent amount of sunlight, after my last two winters here in Indiana. In all honesty though, a rainy day tends to cheer me up! Just the smell of rainy weather is enough make me smile most days. I have loved rain for as long as I can remember, especially when I can listen to it while I go to sleep. I walked outside to the car this morning, tired and a bit glum, but as soon as I got out into the glorious grey mist, I cheered up!

It's especially great after missing the rain all winter. Now I'm ready for a good thunderstorm! (I can remember not liking those, but I love them now...as long as I'm not driving in them.)