I am so sore!

Samuel and I went to Mr. B.'s dojo in Owasso Tuesday night. We did a lot of drills of different street-fighting techniques involving rising knee-strikes, drop elbows, torking your hips (for power), sidestepping, and getting your head down low. I'm stiff and sore all through my lower back, thighs, and calves. But it was really fun!

I guess this got buried by Hurrican Frances but Western Japan was hit pretty bad by typhoons.

Dad borrowed Unfit for Command from Rod S. at work. I just finished it this morning. Kerry is such a flip-flop and a traitor! The book very meticulously (sp?) documents everything. There's certainly no holes.

Mama was still feeling terrible Monday so she went to the doctor Tuesday morning. She either has real bad bronchitis or walking pneumona. The doctor thought it was bronchitis, the x-ray technician said walking pneumona, so it was sent off to the radiologist. I'm betting on walking pneumona. Mama is one tough dog and doesn't get to feeling so bad just with bronchitis. I wonder if I had some form of her walking pneumona in mid-August. For about a week I felt bad, had no energy, felt congested in my chest, and my upper back hurt like mad. Let's pray Mama gets over it pretty quick.

Isaac is progressing by leaps and bounds in his reading. Right now he's reading Frog and Toad Together by Arnold Lobel. Lobel also wrote Owl at Home and Grasshopper on the Road both favorite kid books of mine. Anyway, Isaac is really enjoying it and reading really well.

I'm almost done with Dante's Inferno. I've been real grateful for the commentary I got. Practically every character we've met so far is 1, a Greek or Roman legend (I can handle those since we read about quite a few of them last year.) or 2, an Italian contemporary of Dante. That's where the commentary and Google comes in. It's also why it's an interesting read-if you like history. His theology is majorly messed up. He puts Roman/Greek literature idoltratiously (is that a word?) close to the Bible in value. And he doesn't see all sin as damning. You're punished by your 'major' sins. The list of sin sounds good (lust, excess of pleasure, wrath, heresy, miserliness, wastefulness, violence against others, suicide, gambling, sodomy, urusury, blaspheme, seducing, flattering, schiscm, hypocrisy, stealing, decieving, forgery, and treachery.) but you never meet any 'minor offenders' of these sins. The tendency is to look at all the rotten people Dante meets and say "I thank God that I am not like that _____" just like the Pharisee. Also, he has never stated that the bottom line conviction is weither you've accepted Christ as Saviour or not.

On a lighter note, the biography of *drumroll*

Dixie Sue is our 6-year old Border Collie. She has bad allergies (like everybody in the Tulsa area) but they are quite treatable, and her eyesight is getting a little worse. She's a smart cookie and quite good at herding. She does it by staring down the chickens rather than barking. She loves to play soccer although she hasn't quite figured out all the rules. She's most adept at detecting the difference between the 'we're-yelling-because-we're-having-fun' screams and the 'rooster-is-trying-to-kill-me' scream. Sometimes she'll even chase off the roosters before you yell. :) Her one and only major flaw is barking savagely at all strangers thereby scaring the wits out of them even though she's too chicken to get closer than three feet. :)

Samuel has to make a phone call so I better go. Love y'all!