Another Picture

By this point, I hoped to have taken a lot more pictures, posted a bunch here, and kept up with my blog a bit more regularly. But I got that virus the day I got my camera, and caught the flu the day I got over the virus, so I haven’t exactly felt up to all that. However, I think I’m finally getting over all that stuff, so hopefully I’ll have a lot more pictures to share in the coming days, and will have more to write about here, something besides being sick.

I do have one picture I want to share of our cat, Belle. She’s such a cute thing, which makes her a likely candidate for a photo subject.

Valentine’s Day Pains

From the brilliant Daniel Gardner:

New camera!

I haven’t been posting nearly enough lately. I hope to start posting more though, between pictures and craft projects. Which brings me to…my new camera! I got it for my birthday, and love it. It’s a Canon PowerShot A570. I’ve been playing around with it a lot, trying to figure out the settings. I’m getting over a virus I caught the day I got the camera, so with that, I haven’t been up to taking as many pictures as I hoped to have by now. I have gotten some, however, and I’m having fun figuring things out. I really want to learn more about photography, and this has a lot of manual settings, so it’s good to learn with.

This is my favorite so far:

Also, I made my mom an apron for her birthday, and took pictures as I went along. I plan on posting those soon, with general directions for how I made the apron.

Homeschooling families

Just this afternoon, my mom and my sisters and I were talking about how we’re different enough from the majority of people, that many would probably think we’re as odd as The Addams Family. Then I just found this video, and thought it was hilarious.

A Homeschooled Family

Anchored in Faith

This is a wonderful example of a young mother trusting the Lord through difficult times. She’s a homeschool alum with two young children whose husband is overseas with the Army. I found it neat to read about her faith and how she’s getting through these rough times.

Homeschooler Influence

First off, if you haven’t seen the ad with Mike Huckabee and Chuck Norris, watch this. I think it’s great.

Then I was just watching an interview on Fox News with Chuck Norris and Huckabee, and found this pretty cool. Chuck was asked how he came to endorse Huckabee, and he was talking about all the research he did…and how two boys from Oregon with a site called The Rebelution emailed him and told him why they supported Huckabee, then he gave the link to the site and told people they could check it out. I’ve been to their site and heard of it many times, and they have a lot of great stuff. I just thought it was pretty cool that they got together because of Brett and Alex Harris, Josh Harris’s younger brothers, and Alex is also on HSA, which I’m a member of. They’re pretty well known amongst older homeschooled kids and graduates.

Here’s the link to the video, but I’m not sure if that will work. If not, go here and scroll down to “On the Record” and click “Dynamic Duo”. (After writing this, I found you can also view it here on their blog)

I thought it was pretty neat to see how much influence an email from two homeschoolers could have like that, and it’s a reminder how small the circles are among homeschoolers.

Plans…

There’s a quote that says, “If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans.” We can plan so much, but sometimes, our planning just doesn’t coincide with our circumstances.

I planned to be much more diligent about blogging this month, to write a novel(or at least start one) in a month, to work on crocheting and finish up Christmas gifts and making cards before December, and to work more on web and graphic design and make some blog templates and advance my skills. A bit ambitious, but I was going to try. Another quote says, “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.” Okay, a bit inaccurate, considering the moon is closer than the stars are, but that’s beside the point. I wanted to make the most of my time by working toward all those goals. I figured even if I didn’t accomplish them, if I at least tried, I would get a lot done and have a rather productive month.

Did I mention that our plans don’t always work out? Mine certainly didn’t. That tendinitis has still been being a pain, quite literally,  and typing irritates it faster than anything else. So I’ve done little typing, and when I have been typing, it’s been to catch up on correspondence or do things I had to get done. Pretty much everything I planned to do needed my hand, which hasn’t been so cooperative. Though I can crochet some, which is nice. That doesn’t bother my hand nearly as much as typing does.

This is the longest thing I’ve typed in some time, and my hand is starting to rebel, so I should probably stop. My hand is slowly improving, I think, but  I still need to rest it a lot.

Historical inaccuracies in fiction

I posted this over at HSA and thought I’d post it here as well:

How much would you put up with in books or movies? I’ll tolerate a bit, but there are times so much is wrong and all they care about is having a good story, and that rather ruins it for me. For instance, a WWII movie where some of the uniforms used wouldn’t have been worn for another 15 years, where they have people in the OSS before it was even formed, where they have songs that weren’t even released yet being sung, etc. Or a Civil War movie where people aren’t acting appropriately for the time period, historical facts are all messed up, etc. When a movie is just full of things that were wrong/didn’t happen at the time, I get fed up and find it too hard to enjoy the movie.

With something like Pirates of the Caribbean, I can overlook it more. That was meant to have fantasy elements, so it’s not as bad, I don’t think. But when something is trying to be passed off as “a WWII movie” or something set during the Civil War or whatever, I think people should do what they can to make it as accurate as possible. Also with writing. I’ve seen people on a writing forum who basically don’t care if they get historical facts right. “So what if they didn’t wear crinolines for 20 more years? I want my characters wearing them and want it set in this era.”

So I thought I’d come ask all you about it and get y’all’s opinion on historical accuracy in fiction, though this post is quite a bit longer than I intended. Do you care if a film or book is historically accurate? Does it really matter all that much? Why or why not?

Jericho

I had never seen the show Jericho before, but my mom had seen part of it and liked it. So this week, we’ve been watching it online, and finished the last episode last night. Ah! I can’t believe that had canceled it at that point! Thankfully, due to a huge fan outcry and petitioning, CBS renewed the series. They made a seven-episode second season, and have yet to announce when it will air. Hopefully soon, and hopefully to be followed by more episodes. Anyway, if you haven’t seen the show before, I would highly recommend watching it on cbs.com. It’s awesome. One of the best shows ever.

It’s set in Jericho, Kansas, a small town where everyone knows everyone, everybody shops from the same little general store, and they rely on the crops from the farms on the outskirts. As people are going about their daily lives, they begin to see something is seriously wrong. Off in the distant sky. seemingly over Denver, there looms a giant mushroom cloud. Power goes out, all communication goes down, and they’re cut off from the rest of the world with no knowledge of what happened to Denver. Was it an accident? Was it attacked? If it was attacked, who did it and did they bomb anywhere else? Is the rest of the country still there? Was the radiation close enough to kill the citizens of Jericho? How will they all survive? What happened?

Superb acting and characters, especially Hawkins and the Greens, and the story is amazing. It’s something that’s so relevant, because we really wonder if and when something like this will happen. Seeing the news about New Orleans after Katrina gave us a glimpse of human nature after a disaster. Something of this magnitude would magnify that tremendously. The story is so real and possible that it’s a bit scary. Yet that realness and possibility is part of what makes it so intriguing. When will something of this magnitude happen, and what would it really be like? How would we respond? What would it take to survive? Seeing such things played out in the lives of these characters really draws a person into the show, and makes you wonder. It’s very clean as well, which is a rarity nowadays.

Cinderelly…

This really cracks me up:

I’ve watched various Disney songs in other languages before, and I love hearing how the different languages sound, but those little mouse voices singing Hebrew…I just find it hilarious.