Shoes and ships and sealing wax and cabbages and kings...
First of all, blogger has changed again, but this seems to be a reasonable change - it sort of looks like typing in Word, and you can change fonts and colors and stuff, but I don't feel like experimenting right now.  It also has a spell checker, and I really think they need to consider whether the dictonary they're using is quite up to date, or if maybe they should add some special blogger language to it, like, for instance, the word "blogger." :-p
 
Next, a bit about church this morning 
Part of the Epistle reading was Colossians 1:21-23, "You who were once estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his fleshly body through death, so as to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him-- provided that you continue securely established and steadfast in the faith, without shifting from the hope promised by the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven. I, Paul, became a servant of this gospel."  One wonders what the anti-Federal Vision people make of that.    
 
About halfway through the service, Lilian got fussy, so I took her out to the van to give her a little private practice in Sitting Patiently on Mama's Lap When Required.  Some advances were made, but I think it would be wise to practice at 10 o'clock every morning this week so she'll be in the habit by next Sunday. 
 
Random thoughts about what I've been reading and listening to lately 
Busman's Honeymoon was really good but it was only incidentally a murder mystery.  It was really about marriage, and in reading it I find that I really don't understand Lord Peter and Harriet a bit.  Why are they so concerned about maintaining independence and a kind of aloofness?  They seem almost afraid of their love for one another.  
 
Since I've just finished the end of the story of Lord Peter and Harriet, I decided to go back and reread Strong Poison, the book where they first met.  I think I remember who actually killed the guy that Harriet was accused of killing and how he did it, but it's still fun reading it to see if I can pick up on the clues, and hopefully to gain some insight into Lord Peter's and Harriet's way of interacting with each other in Busman's Honeymoon.  
 
Friday I listened to Peter Leithart's lecture from the 2001 CWSC entitled "The Why and How of Reading," in which he said that when rereading a book, it is good to remember the end of the story because you may pick up on things that you missed the first time through.  His lectures on Jane Austen are excellent ("Repeat after me: Real Men Read Austen."), and right now I'm in the middle of listening to John Hodges' lectures on Beauty.
 
I'm also reading Jeff Meyers' The Lord's Service which has been a wonderful experience.  I may blog more about it later if I can ever find words to express what I'm learning from the book.
 
At the conference, Mike bought Abraham Kuyper's Lectures on Calvin for me and I read the introduction and the first part of the first chapter this afternoon.  The biographical info in the introduction focused almost exclusively on Dr. Kuyper's academic and political credentials and mentioned nothing at all about his family.  When I read a man's biography, what I really want to know is who were his wife and children, and what are his grandchildren and great-grandchildren doing today?  That, I think, is the real measure of the man, moreso than his published works.  But of course, it's possible he never married.  I wonder if Google will tell me anything?
 
And finally, What We Did This Evening
There were two or three dances at the Christian Worldview Student Conference, and Mike finally had the pleasure of dancing the Virginia Reel.  He had a good time dancing with Elai, and noticed the ridiculous number of young men standing around not dancing, and that far too many of the couples were girls dancing with girls for want of male partners, so he was inspired not only to try to encourage the young men to oblige the ladies and to set the standard himself, but also to teach us the Virginia Reel, and is considering dance lessons for all of us so that our own young men will be better equipped when they are old enough to attend the conference.  So we took the leaves out of the big table and shoved it into the school room so we'd have space to dance, and spent two hours this evening dancing!  Our family is fortunate enough to have four couples, and it was great fun, though by seven o'clock we were all hot and sweaty, so we sent the kids out to play in the sprinkler.  A frabjous day! Calooh! Callay!