Conversation challenge of the week

Try inserting this into a conversation:

"Overall shorts are just an invitation to uncomfortableness."

I was involved in an exchange not 10 minutes ago in which I used that exact sentence.

Jose said

When talking about current movies,

Jose: "...a movie something like This is Not a Country for Old People..."

Oh my Lord, that was funny.

I had practically given up on blogging. I haven't felt like it for a long time. I still don't feel like I have much to say. I hate, however, having my blog out here un-updated for months, but I don't want to delete it either. So I'll just say a few things. We moved into a new house. We love it. It's really great to have more space to live in.

Today we are going to a memorial service for a friend who died of a rare form of cancer. She donated her body to a research facility that studies the type of cancer that she suffered from. Maybe they'll find a cure for others someday. Her name was Renee, here is here obituary in the Austin American-Statesman.

Some links that I've been into lately:

http://thelostdiary.com/
http://www.lostpedia.com/wiki/Main_Page
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

Oh, and I'm excited about the Spring and Summer coming up. Although we had a really mild Winter compared to the rest of the country, it's always beautiful here in Texas in the Spring and Summer. Especially Austin.

Communion crunch

At the church I go to, we sometimes take communion as a congregation. Each person is given a little piece of bread and a tiny cup of grape juice. The bread is a little bitty crunchy square cracker that tastes kind of like a wheat thin. After the pastor blesses the bread, everyone eats the cracker at the same time. The funny thing is that when it's really quiet and I don't chew my cracker right then, I can hear the resounding crunch of every person in the room biting down on and chewing their cracker at the same time.

Coming soon to a theater near you: Sara's War

I am happy to say that I won my personal war against at&t. It's a long and painful story which involves talking to 10+ at&t representatives including 2 supervisors in 4 or 5 different departments, including the Retention department (what is Retention? Think about it. It's customer retention. Last resort central. They could not help either, by the way). Maybe I'll tell it someday. Suffice it to say, I GOT WHAT I WANTED.

Lesson? Keep bothering them. Argue. Threaten to cancel. You will eventually come out on top.

Ha ha

Global warming: The newest religion

Do you ever feel squashed by post-modernism?

MLK, Jr. quote via The Irresistible Revolution

"To our most bitter opponents we say: Throw us in jail and we will still love you. Bomb our houses and threaten our children and we will still love you. Beat us and leave us half dead and we will still love you. But be ye assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer. One day we shall so appeal to your heart and conscience that we shall win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory."

That is a beautiful example of radical grace.That is the kind of grace that Jesus preached and continues to preach to this day.

By the way, the Simple Way recently experienced a huge fire in their neighborhood. Go to their website to see what happened, what they are doing about it, and what you can do to help.

www.thesimpleway.org

Funny word

"Separatrix"

What do you think it is?

Also known as: virgule, solidus, slash, diagonal, or stroke.

Who knew that something so seemingly simple could have so many names?

If you aren't reading this website every week, you should be.

I thought I was the only one who couldn't get no. 5 out of my head

This is really funny. I saw this on digg. It's the top 10 songs that people get stuck in their heads. I have had experience with 5, 2, 9 and, of course 1.


1. Other. Everyone has his or her own worst earworm.
2. Chili's "Baby Back Ribs" jingle.
3. "Who Let the Dogs Out"
4. "We Will Rock You"
5. Kit-Kat candy-bar jingle ("Gimme a Break ...")
6. "Mission Impossible" theme
7. "YMCA"
8. "Whoomp, There It Is"
9. "The Lion Sleeps Tonight"
10. "It's a Small World After All"

The other day I had "Low Rider" by WAR stuck in my head for some reason, and also that song from the flea medicine commercial with the cute puppy singing, "I ain't got bugs on me, I ain't got bugs on me...!" That puppy is so cute, isn't it? I like it at the end of the commercial when he starts walking kind of sideways.

This bugs me

A pet peeve of mine since I got back to Texas is that people call the pronunciation of Spanish by Spaniards a "lisp." You may or may not know this, but is Spain the correct pronunciation of the letter "z" and the soft "c" is a voiceless "th" sound like in "theater." Because Americans are used to hearing South American Spanish, which pronounces the "z," the soft "c," with the "s" sound, when they hear a Spaniard (or someone like me, who speaks Spanish with the Spaniard accent) it sounds to them as if they were lisping, and they call it so accordingly.

Then, you get this story about how one Spanish king had a lisp. So to make him feel better, all of the people around him began to speak as he did. And there you have it=why Spaniards lisp. This is all complete crapola.

Okay people. A lisp is a speech defect. It means that the person speaking with a lisp is not pronouncing words correctly. Like they are defective in some way.

This is the real story. The "th" sound was evident in Spain even before the Spanish travelled to the New World. The sound developed from the sounds associated with the cedilla (ç) and the "z." So the original pronunciation of the "z" and the soft "c" is as a voiceless "th."

However, in some areas of Andalucia they started pronouncing them as an "s." One of the articles that I read says that this might have been because of the strong the Mozarabic influence in the south. People from Seville and other places in Andalucia still speak like this today (some also still use "ustedes" instead of "vosotros" which is another difference in the use of the language).

Well, I bet most of you didn't know this, but many of the famous explorers and "conquistadores" from Spain were from Andalucia. As were many of the subsequent Spaniards that immigrated to the New World. They were the original "mispronouncers" of the the "z" and the soft "c." They removed themselves from their original population and the "sss" stuck.

So if we are to say that someone is mispronouncing, who would it be? I, for one, would have to say that no one is mispronouncing. I believe that language is alive and it evolves as cultures evolve. I also speak American English, which is different than British English. If I say that the British have a speech impediment because when they pronounce the "r" they open their mouths more, that would be stupid.

So please, stop saying that Spaniards have a lisp. It's insulting.

A homeless bum

Jesus replied, "Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head." Luke 9:58

Have you ever thought about that?

Anniversaries

Tomorrow is our 5th anniversary. As I say every year, it's feels like an eternity...

We were actually married at the court house on May 23rd, but our wedding ceremony at the church was on June 29th. I recognize the first date, but Jose recognises the second date. He always gets what he wants.

It was also a year ago that I wrote about my family reunion. We are going again this weekend. Remember last year when I fell in the lake and nearly killed myself? Remember how my little cousins suffered from post traumatic stress disorder for about 5 hours after witnessing the fall? (Well, they did.) Remember cornhole??? Those were some good times. Well, those times are gonna look like crap compared to this weekend's times. This weekend's times are gonna ROCK!

Again a new layout

Now blogger lets you change stuff on your template a lot easier than before. I like change. I just want to note that the photo behind my title was taken from this flickr site. This guy takes some nice photos, people. He was in Granada and took pictures of a lot of my favorite places.

Check out this guy's Spain flickr set as well. It's completely awesome.

A snippet of my life

Say goodbye to the spelling bee and hello to a running update on my life! Jada introduced this to me.

Twitter!

Conclusion to Christian v. Athiest

Here is the last installment.

Part 6

So poignant in light of current times

Stolen from michellemalkin.com:

Do you recognize the artist?

Part 5, y'all

Wilson v. Hitchens, part 5

I don't know if this is the last one. They said it would be throughout the month of May and this is the last day, so maybe it is.

I changed my template...cool!

Here's a new template. I know, it's just another Blogger one, but I wanted to see something different. I was getting tired of the green one.

Anyhoo, we went to my mom's this weekend. Here are a few pictures.

We drove together in Amber's car. We met in Lampasas and we left our car at the hospital. I spent the entire weekend thinking that our car was going to get towed.

One of the many warnings on a gigantic combine (that's for cutting wheat). They are apparently very dangerous. You could get pelted with flying arrows.

My mom put Amber and I to work. Where was Jose? Watching the Sci-fi channel.

It's still very flat out there.

Last but not least, my GRANDMA! She's so cute. We played Skip-bo for about an hour.

Wilson v. Hitchens, cont.

Here are parts 3 and 4 of the online correspondence between Douglas Wilson and Christopher Hitchens, continued from my last post on the subject:

Part 3

Part 4

Very, very interesting.