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Book Review : Sarah, The Aviators

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Sarah: Women of Genesis by Orson Scott Card

1.5 stars / I like historical fiction. I like the idea of embellishing on known facts to create a fuller story. But I like my historical fiction to add to the story, not change it. Some of the issues I had with the plot points were addressed by the author in the afterword, but some were not. THe afterword was also revealing in that the author states that some of the information on Abraham’s early life came from ‘The Pearl of Great Price’ a sacred Mormon text. One thing that really irritated me is that in this novel Abraham was of priestly lineage from Noah through his father Terah. But Terah is clearly identified in the book of Joshua as an idolator. Anyway, this book was written from Sarah’s point of view and thus contained lots of mushy introspection and emotional exploration. I found myself wanting to fast-forward in more than a couple of spots. When I told Toby about this, she lit up and said that she would like to listen. Chicks. Format : Electronic download from LAPL played at fast speed (but not fast enough).


Brotherhood of War 08: The Aviators (Brotherhood of War) by W. E. B. Griffin

3 stars / Only a couple of books left in ‘The Brotherhood of War’ series. This is book 8, and I intentionally skipped book 7 because I read on Amazon that the series originally ended with book 7 (“The Generals”) and that 8, 9, 10 were written as prequels in the time between book 6 and 7. I don’t know what happened, but some of the characters had been promoted and stuff. It was a little confusing. This book was probably my least favorite so far because the author didn’t focus on the main characters of the series. Format : Tape from Ventura County Library. Current Listening : The Merchant of Death (Pendragon Series #1) by D.J. MacHale Current Reading : Nightlife: A Novel by Thomas Perry

Project : 1Dec-2Dec

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What a weekend. We fully broke into the roof this past weekend, removing about 1/4 of the total roof.

Removing the roof

Removing the roof

We did a run to the Santa Barbara dump with 3200 pounds of roofing debris (truck load and trailer load).

Debris

Debris

The attic insulation is the ‘blown in’ insulation that is basically shredded paper stuff. It is very messy to work around and made a mess inside the house in the couple of places where we (ok, I) stepped through the drywall.

No more roof

No more roof

At the end of the weekend, we had about 20 feet of floor joists in place treads on the stairs. So now we don’t have stairs to nowhere we have stairs to the outside.

Floor Joists

Floor Joists

Happy Family

Happy Family

NOTES: We found out this weekend that our overall length of new construction is 5 feet longer than what is drawn on the plans. This includes the 3 feet of existing house that we discovered a couple of weeks ago. The existing house is 3 feet longer than the measurements shown in the plans. So this week, my job (one of my jobs) is to measure out all the posts that are attached to the foundation and get an accurate set of plans. Toby and I spent about an hour stretching tape on Sunday. It always seems like no matter how much thought we put into some things, it always seems like we didn’t do it right. In particular I am thinking about how our lumber is stacked. We spent some time trying to arrange the lumber with the soonest-to-be-used lumber on the top of the piles but we have had to dig quite often. 95% of our 2x12s are at the bottom of the lumber pile. However, God in his mercy gave us about a dozen and a half 2x12s that were easily accessible this past weekend, so Greg didn’t have to wait for lumber. But now it is time to dig down to the rest of the 2x12s.

Soccer Man

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Max’s 2nd year playing AYSO soccer was a really great one. Last year he sort of ran around and tried, but had very little skill or assertiveness. This year was a major change, helped in no small part to his great coach Ryan, and having buddies he already knew on the team. And like Matt has written, the overall goal of ‘exercising’ has taken root – I think his coach spent a lot of time doing fun warmups with the team. Very similiar to last year, Max got a goal in the 2nd half of the very last game – a huge high.

Hair by Max

Coach Ryan, Ian, Miles, Max, Ben and Asst. Coach Tyler

Team Spirit

A Question of Paternity

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Lately I have been wondering if Toby has pulled a fast one on me in that Max may not be my son. Over the last couple of months he has begun exercising on his own a lot. It started off with push-ups but has progressed. He does push-ups before AWANA meetings so that he can win at the games and he does push-ups before his AYSO soccer games so he can run fast. While visiting the Neinhuis’s for Thanksgiving he found a set of 5# dumbells and did curls and presses in front of a full length mirror. If it was just the exercise, I would be very pleased. But it has gotten to the point where he has become the health police in the family. Last week, I was having a grilled cheese sandwich and he told me that my muscles were going to get small because I was eating white bread. Someone (I suspect Toby) told him that white bread is not as good for you as wheat bread. He will only eat the brown bread because it has vitamins for muscles. I could even overlook this white bread thing as just some brainwashing by his mom or my dad. But this past weekend he decided he didn’t want to eat sugar any more. Now this is not something that any son of mine would ever do. He didn’t want any pie, he didn’t want any whipped cream. He didn’t even want any soda. What is the deal? The final straw occurred when we were at Denny’s for breakfast on Saturday and he didn’t want any syrup on his pancakes because syrup has sugar in it!!! I don’t think any progeny of mine could ever eat dry pancakes when syrup was available. (I got some honey packets and convinced him that honey doesn’t make muscles small, it was almost difficult.) On Sunday morning, as I was getting Lucy out the door, Max was doing sit-ups (crunches, really) in the living room while waiting for us to go out the door. I know he is my son, but where is he getting these wacky ideas, especially about our friend sugar?

Kid Talkies

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Max is now enjoying answering the phone. We are trying to teach some etiquette, so it’s not just, “What? Who is this?” I guess it must be rubbing off on the little Miss, because she handed me her toy phone this morning, after saying into it, “Just a minute please.” Max and I were reading our children’s story Bible, about Moses. The Hebrews were hungry and complaining in the desert, and Max piped up, “This is where God sends them some mayonnaise!”