From Wit’s End

August 12th: Bugaboo plays his music. (15.7MB AVI file)

August 21st: Hilarious Bubbles! (12.2MB AVI file)

More pictures forthcoming. Enjoy!

…and they will return to you. Wouldn’t you know it, I woke up with a sore throat again this morning. I gave my cold to Rachel and Jack, and one or the other of them mutated it for me and gave it right back to me. It’s going to be another rough week, I guess.

Well, it looks like Rachel and Jack got the cold that I got over about a week ago. And Jack just started teething, too, which is making feeding him interesting. He’s hungry, but it probably hurts to swallow sometimes, so things go pretty slowly about half the time, with much wailing and gnashing of … um … gums. We’ll make it, I guess.

To counter-balance the bad news, I’ll put up some pictures and a video or two this week, barring any paranoically-foreseen circumstances. (I’m feeling slightly better about things, having put away a certain amount of provisions against hardship. Whatever happens, I’ll definitely feel better on the 23rd, I’m pretty sure. Yeeesh.)

Not only has TulipGirl flattered me by tagging me for one of them “meme” things, but she’s even said it could be interesting. This is my first meme tag, so I hope I don’t disappoint:

1. One book that changed your life:
   
   

   “Lost in the Cosmos” by Walker Percy.

   Sunken in a depression induced by my life circumstances not meeting my expectations about five or six years ago, I found this book on a shelf and devoured it in record time. God used it to snap me out of my funk, change my attitude and outlook on life, and turn me in the right direction.

2. One book that you’ve read more than once:
   
   This one is tied between

   The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (and the Hobbit) by J.R.R. Tolkien
   
   - & -
   
   The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis.

   Which is not only multiple books, but multiple series of books, completely blowing away the intent of this question, I guess. I have ended up reading these two series about once every five to seven years.

3. One book you’d want on a desert island:
   

   The Bible

   …of course. Along with pencil and notepad for verse categorization, I hope. I suppose seven colors of highlighters would be too much to ask…

4. One book that made you laugh:
   
   My sense of humor is pretty sensitive, so I laugh at a lot of things in books — some of which aren’t intended to be funny, perhaps — but I have to answer this question with another series:

   The Complete Peanuts, by Charles M. Schulz.

   Fifty years worth of classic humor.

5. One book that made you cry:
   
   I’m not very sure about this one, because usually it takes music to make me cry. Hmm… Maybe

   “The Path of Loneliness” by Elizabeth Elliot.

   …but that was a long time ago.

6. One book that you wish had been written:
   

   “Where Abraham Kuyper’s Holland Went Wrong and Why.”

   Have you seen Amsterdam lately?? By many accounts it used to be much much better. To be fair, I haven’t gone looking for a book on such a subject, so it may exist. If it does, I’d be interested in reading it.

   Oh, I just thought of another one:

   “BLACKOUT: Power Hates a Vacuum”

   A Tom-Clancy-type thriller that would explore the geo-political consequences of an EMP bomb going off over North America.

7. One book you wish had never been written:
   

   “The Red Badge of Courage” by Stephen Crane.

   A more BORING book was never written, in my experience. Thankfully, I was being homeschooled when I had occasion to read it, so I was able to talk my way out of finishing it.

8. One book you’re currently reading:
   

   Quicksilver, by Neal Stephenson.

   Stephenson, starting with “Cryptonomicon” and continuing with the three-volume “Baroque Cycle”, has deftly merged two of my favorite genres, making a kind of “historical science fiction” that I can really get into.

9. One book you’ve been meaning to read:
   

   “Total Truth” by Nancy Pearcey & Philip Johnson.

   I’ve heard a lot about this book, and it definitely sounds like my cup of tea, but it hasn’t risen to the top of my book pile yet. Maybe this fall…

10. Now tag five people:
    • Manila Drive (either Andy and/or Ellie)
    • Curiosita (Sister-Bekah-in-Law)
    • Godward Posture (Dave’s a busy, busy man, but he may respond.)
    • Rednow (my Brother Dave, also pretty busy)
    • Slowmath (my Brother Tom)

P.S.– Answers to questions that weren’t asked:

I’m a big, big fan of the Inklings of Oxford. I got to mention two above (Lewis & Tolkien), but here are the others:

• Dorothy Sayers
• G.K. Chesterton, &
• Charles Williams.

All of their stuff is all good, all the time. Also check out a few of their most direct literary predecessors:

• George MacDonald
• T.S. Eliot

[It may be too soon to say this, but I think I may have the seed of a book or two in my head which could possibly be a literary descendant of the Oxford Inklings, as well as a philosophical descendant of Abraham Kuyper. Indeed, that is one of the reasons that this website exists. It could be a while yet, but I think it's in here somewhere....]

I got some kind of chest cold last weekend, and it’s been with me all week long. Heartburn, a sore throat, and a wicked cough were on tap for me this week. And it set off my asthma pretty badly, too. So I was “addicted” to Albuterol and Advair all week. And the propellant in the Albuterol gives me headaches when I take it all the time. And I’ve only been getting 6-7 hours of sleep every night.

I went to the Young Men’s Bible Study held at the church by Dr. Ferguson and Duff James on Tuesday morning, and since it was for young men, I brought Jack. They’re going to be skimming through Proverbs, and the first one this past Tuesday was pretty good. It was supposed to end at 7:45, but it went a little long.

So i was running a little late to “Aunt Ellie’s” house to drop off Jack, and I got pulled over and given a ticket for going 38mph in a 25mph zone. She gave me a break and made it out for just a little more than half the maximum (Probably because I had Jack and was trying to get him to Ellie’s) But I was pretty late for work.

Speaking of work, someone from our team is moving on to another job in about a week, and I’m taking over most of his duties after he leaves. So in my aforementioned condition I had to try to absorb a lot of information this week with only limited success.

All this, and Mercy has been relieving herself on the livingroom rug all week, probably out of jealousy of Jack.

So yeah, it has been a hard week. But today is being particularly nice to me to make up for it. I’m feeling a little bit like I’ve turned the corner on my cold — I think the Zinc lozenges I bought on Thursday evening helped in that respect. And it’s raining softly outside, so I don’t have to mow the lawn until later. And Rachel made muffins with blackberry filling and fried eggs for breakfast. And my music is playing, and it looks like I might have time today to buy a new pair of slacks, and/or try the video capture box I bought a few weeks ago, and/or continue to catalog my coin collection.

It may be going crazy out there, and the world may or may not be about to irrevokably change, but there’s a cool breeze blowing outside in the middle of August in South Carolina, and that’s a miracle. And if one miracle can happen, why not another? And if miracles can happen, then Love exists. And if Love exists, then everything is going to be all right eventually.