40-Day Fast: Baa! Baa!
2007-07-30 09:14:00
We are reaching the end of the 40-Fay Fast, initiated by Kat in response to being moved to action by a picture. We are on day 39 - Tressa is highlighting the Dalit today, and also the practice of intentional mutilation of beggars that is common in India.Tomorrow is the final day, and Kat has pulled one more thing out of her bag. She is suggesting we each spend one dollar and buy a family a goat, through World Vision.The early-morning bleating of a dairy goat is a happy sound for children in countries like Haiti and Kenya. They know it’s ready to be milked! A goat nourishes a family with fresh milk, cheese, and yogurt, and can offer a much-needed income boost by providing offspring and extra dairy products for sale at the market. It even provides fertilizer that can dramatically increase crop yields. A perennial favorite, both to give and receive!A dollar, just 100 pennies that you probably either throw away or hoard in a drawer, will make a difference. Go to Kat's page by midnight o
Because I love her
2007-08-03 12:07:00
Today is a special day. Mrs. Euphrony and I are celebrating our 11th anniversary. Tonight, Mrs. E' sis will come by to watch the kids for us while we go to The Magic Island for an evening of fine food, laughter, and slight-of-hand. But, for now, I want to tell you all some of why, after eleven years, I still love this woman.We first met some thirteen years ago. From the start, and straight through to today, her smile melts me. I love her laughter (probably a big reason I go for light humor so often) and the gleam in her eyes. When we met, she was fresh out of high school and I was a college senior; now she wears the marks of gray in her hair and the weariness of mothering two children, but she is just as fiery and beautiful to me as ever. She has the temper stereotypical of the land she is named for, but her heart is deep and the compassion she has for those in need is phenomenal in its depth. She has taught me much from both - how to better express myself rather than keep in my thoug
Rheology in action (or, How to be dull and cool at the same time)
2007-08-02 12:08:00
Yesterday I promised Chaotic Hammer that I would provide something even more exciting than watching glitter settle, watching paint dry, or watching grass grow. As it so happens, it is something right up my alley.What I speak of is an experiment in rheology. But first, let me introduce you to Deborah - judge of Israel and the first recorded rheologist. There is a relation, called the Deborah number which relates the time over which an object is deformed to some characteristic time of the material. If the deformation occurs faster than the characteristic time, the object behaves like a solid. But, if the deformation occurs over a long period of time the material will flow. Deborah described this in her song of praise when she said "The mountains flowed before the LORD" (Judges 5:5). Yes, even rock flows, given enough time.And so, the experiment I speak of is The Pitch Drop Experiment - recognized as the longest running laboratory experiment by the Guinness Book of World Records. Started
Filler
2007-08-06 13:51:00
I want to blog, but just don't have anything to say. So here's some filler and fluff.Mrs. E and I had a great anniversary. Between an excellent dinner, the main magic show, and two close-up magic shows we spent over four fun-filled hours at Magic Island on Friday night. One tag line sticks with us, from a very funny magician: "Some people clap, some throw money. Others just say 'wow'." After an early-morning birthday party to Lil'E's best friend on Saturday, we all went down to Galveston and spent the afternoon on the beach. Beautiful weather and a great day. Maybe I'm just too content to have anything interesting to blog about.Kat is starting a new get-to-know each other series, with ten questions answered by each person who responded. Watch her blog daily to learn more about the some people you may or may not know.We've started reading Lil'E the Little House series, starting with Little House in the Big Woods. Not very far into it, yet, but thus far Lil'E has learned about
Birthday Music: Pierce Pettis
2007-08-10 12:09:00
Some of you noted that I recently celebrated my 34th birthday. And what did I get for my birthday? Music
, of course. But since I like to have the CD case and read the liner notes I didn't just download it off iTunes; thus it has taken a few days for me to select, buy, and receive in the mail my music. Now that I've had a few days to listen to it, I'll give you a little taste of what I got. Pierce
PettisMaking Light of ItOkay, by a show of hands, who reading this has ever heard of Pierce Pettis? Who has heard his music? Chances are, you have heard his music but didn't realize it was his. Besides his own recording career, Pettis has spent the better part of the last thirty years writing and co-writing music that other people have recorded. From collaborations with the likes of Art Garfunkel to the numerous covers of his music by artists like Joan Baez, Sara Groves, John McCormick, Geoff Moore, Andrew Peterson, Randy Stonehill, and Dar Williams, it is quite likely that you know his mu
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Talk of fairies, wermaids, and God
2007-08-13 13:34:00
Editor's Note: The editorial staff (e.g. Mrs. Euphrony) has read this post and found its numerous grammatical errors detract from the normal quality of this blog. The author has been placed on probationary status and the errors corrected.Little Euphrony has been a talkative one this weekend. Her imagination is great to see at work, and her heart is so sweet. Here are a few of here her conversation points for the weekend.First, fairies visit her every might night to put strong glue on her fingers, toes, arms, nose, ears, etc. so that daddy cannot pretend to pull them off (note, it is strong glue, so it is stronger than daddy). Previously, Lil'E did this herself; but since I've tried to catch her just waking up she has apparently hired out the job to fairies to make sure it gets done before I see her. The fairies spent all weekend with her, with Lil'E carrying them around cupped in her hands and playing with them at meals. She even (pretends) to order food for them, so they don't go
What's missing here?
2007-08-17 14:15:00
Found this from Lifehack.org (they expand on these more in the article):"10 virtually instant ways to improve your life"Stop jumping to conclusionsDon’t dramatizeDon’t invent rulesAvoid stereotyping or labeling people or situationsQuit being a perfectionistDon’t over-generalizeDon’t take things so personallyDon’t assume your emotions are trustworthyDon’t let life get you down. Keep practicing being optimisticDon’t hang on to the pastOkay, who caught what is missing in this list? Besides the lack of ambiguity in this list of rules, that is. (How can you follow these rules when #3 tells you not to make up rules?)Here's a hint: what are you supposed to do?Answer: nothing, apparently.Don't do this, don't do that, don't do the other thing. These all sound so good, but what are you supposed to do in the end? I'm not sure they know. The kicker is, of course, that we have to do something. Practically everyday I do something. Now some people might argue with that, but upon fu
Belated birthday gift
2007-08-22 15:23:00
From my friends at work: This email is a confirmation that your online entry at the site of Blood Water Mission was received. Following is the information that was recorded:Account Name: EuphronyAmount: $50.00Fund: 1000 WellsComments: gift for birthdayThey had found out I was fasting on my birthday, as part of the 40 Day Fast that Kat set up. I didn't want to insult them by not eating the cake they would have gotten me, so I told the lady who usually organizes such things and she told everyone else. They waited a little longer for people to add their desired gift and gave me today $50. It is now in the hands of Blood:Water Mission. Give a cheer for the people who are going to get clean water because of this! And thank God for this generosity!Tags: Blood:Water Mission, Birthday, Gift, Donation
How to say thank you
2007-08-21 09:25:00
I need some help here, guys. I want to say thank you to a very close friend of the Euphrony's. She did something really special for us last week, and I need to find the proper way to give recompense. In a moment of kindness, she taught Liler'E how to blow raspberries while eating his oatmeal and pureed squash. How can we let her know just how much we appreciate sticky slobber flying from our son's mouth and splattering about the room?Help me out, my friends. What should I do?Tags: Revenge, Friendship, Payback, Tit-for-Tat
Guitar vs. Guitar Hero
2007-08-19 20:50:00
Take this to heart.Tags: Ironic but true, Guitar
Hero, Comic
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Ways to inflate my ego
2007-08-24 11:19:00
Our rheology expert from the states is over with us next week, and would like to give us a presentation on Monday morning at 10am in the VP meeting room. Please put it in your diary. Euphrony has a wealth of knowledge on this subject and we should take full advantage of the time he is going to spend with us. Please rearrange your work schedulers to allow a needy transfer of knowledge.It sure is nice to be appreciated. Of course, being appreciated can also have its drawbacks. For example, going on a last-minute trip to Scotland for a week, leaving your wife in the lurch as she tries to take care of two kids and do dress rehearsals for a play that opens the day you return. But still, it makes one feel important to be sent flying around like that.I fly out tomorrow to Aberdeen. I'll return on Friday the 31st. Quick trip, and it'll be a busy one. I'm going over to do some training on rheometry for guys in our lab there. I'd been expecting this, kinda. We had talked about it earlier in
Greetings from Grampian!
2007-08-30 04:24:00
Well, it's been a busy week here in Aberdeen (part of the Grampian region of Scotland) – long days of rheology training (with me filling the roll of trainer). The picture on the right is of the amusement park area across the street from my hotel, that I've not had time to visit. I'll be headed home tomorrow, so the trip is nearly over. I sure am looking forward to that 6:10 am flight! The hard part of the week has most definitely been the taxis, as in they’re hard to get. The mornings have been alright, getting a taxi to the hotel in five to ten minutes. Afternoons, though, are a different story: Monday it took and hour to get a cab and Tuesday was little better with a half-hour wait. Apparently, they can’t get to me to pick me up because of traffic gridlock.But the week has not been all rheology games. I've managed to have a (small) life outside of work here. I was on my own Sunday and Monday nights, just walking into the City Center to eat some dinner. Tuesday night, howeve
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Prayer time
2007-09-26 15:41:00
I used to have a sidebar that listed current prayer requests. I found, over time, that they became less and less current and eventually removed it completely. However, I still want to bring up a few items for prayer, and I ask that you remember these.Mrs. E's grandfather is in pretty bad shape. He had a section of his intestines removed about a month ago, and he has just not been recovering well. He's been a little sick, and more than a little depressed at his current condition. He is a man who loves the outdoors, and loathes being inside for any length of time. He cannot even sit still through a church service, and has to go stand at the back to have some motion and freedom. As a boy he would leave home and walk around, going to visit his sisters (who were much older) or just walking, for days at a time without telling his parents where he was. Even as he aged, he was always sitting outside rather than inside, and still took several walks every day. For a man like this to be confine
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Music Review: Tell Me What You Know from Sara Groves
2007-09-24 08:48:00
Oh, tell me what you knowabout God and the world and the human soul,How so much can go wrongand still there are songs.In 2006, Sara Groves took a trip with Gary Haugen (of International Justice Mission) to Rwanda. What she saw there changed her – maybe not radically, but in an accumulation of subtle shifts. Her latest album, Tell Me What You Know, is in a way her conversation with us about what she experienced. Listening to Tell Me What You Know, I cannot help but believe she learned about hope; hope in the direst of circumstances, hope to endure and overcome.At times stylistically a little different from her previous work, this album has an overall energy that pulls you from one song to the next as Sara explores this theme of hope. The album opens with "Song for My Sons" which is, as you would expect, for her sons (and daughter). As Sara liltingly sings her hope for her sons, you hear your own prayers for your children. But, to be honest, when I play the album I find myself wanting
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Public Service Announcement
2007-09-21 12:41:00
For those who did not know and do care, the "Do Not Call" list of phone numbers that telemarketers have to consult and avoid is not a permanent list. When (if) you signed up, if was to be on the list for five (5) years; since the list is now five years old, the earliest adopters are about to be dropped from the list. If you wish to register for the first time or renew your phone number's presence on the "Do Not Call" list, you can register on-line at https://www.donotcall.gov. It may take as much as a month or two before the calls stop (as the companies only have to update lists monthly) but before long there will be more silence in the house. But, if you're really lonely and just want someone to talk to, don't sign up and chat away with the telemarketers - you have my permission.In a related note, did you know that a similar list exists for credit card and insurance applications? Well, it does! It is not as thorough as the "Do Not Call" list, and only covers companies who get their
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, Service
, Announcement
, Public Service
, Public Service Announcement
*awkward silence*
2007-09-21 10:25:00
I don't know what to say. Don't be a Lindsey.And don't forget our old friends, the Crash Test Dummies!Tags: Ad Council, Bullying, YouTube, Crash Test Dummies, Game Show
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Poll: What do you wear to work?
2007-09-20 11:47:00
What do you wear to work?How does it affect your personal attitude?How does it affect how others at work respond to you?Tags: Uniform, Clothes, Work, Attitude, Perception
Hypotheticals
2007-09-17 12:47:00
Hypothetical Situation #1: You are driving down the road, when traffic slows to a stop at a red light. The person behind you, driving a truck and pulling a horse trailer, fails to slow down and rear-ends your car, doing non-negligible but non-critical damage to the read of your car. You proceed to do all the usuals, trading contact and insurance information, and only later find out that their insurance had lapsed. What do you do? Talk to the person, and try to arrange for their reparations of your car.Talk to the police and/or a lawyer and begin some form of legal action to recover damages.Let it drop, since the damage is no-critical.Hypothetical Situation #2: Same as the above case, with the exception that the person who rear-ended your car is not reachable (phones disconnected or unanswered, etc.). What do you do? Talk to the police and/or a lawyer and begin some form of legal action to recover damages.Let it drop, since the damage is no-critical.Hypothetical Situation #3: You enter
Amoeba Soccer
2007-09-15 13:40:00
Today marked the first soccer game in Lil'E's potentially fabulous career. Under 5 soccer is some of the funnest stuff to watch. You know they just don't get it. They try and try, but you have to tell them five times a minute which way to go and what to do. And they move around the field like an amoeba. Here's a shot of Lil'E doing the right thing. Yeah!(She's the girl in green in the middle. The guy in green really tore up the field.)It's a crazy process, if you've never been through it. The park had cops directing traffic in the parking lot. Since last week's game was rained out, she actually had a chance to practice before her first game. The uniform she got - sized "youth medium", aka it almost could have fit me, the chubby thirty something man. Crazy. About two minutes into the game, Lil'E got the ball and was moving it down field when someone on the other team kicked it away from her. She stopped, drooped her head, and ran to me on the sidelines crying. Four years of te
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Musical Mish-Mash
2007-09-14 10:33:00
If you like free music, go to FreeCCM right now. For the exchange of your e-mail address (which they only use to tell you about when new music is available on FreeCCM) you can currently download songs from: Phil Wickham - "Sailing on a Ship" from CannonsChris Rice - "It Is Well With My Soul" from Peace Like A River: The Hymns ProjectFee - "Grace Will Be My Song" from We ShineTodd Agnew - "Our Great God" from Better QuestionsI recently discovered that Charlie Peacock did a best-of album back in 2003, called Full Circle. Only he didn't just slap the old music on a new disk, he asked friends he's worked with to collaborate on re-making the songs with him. Good stuff! The opener is "In The Light" (for those who didn't realize, he wrote and recorded this song long before dcTalk was a band), with Sara Groves sharing vocal duties. The music is done by Béla Fleck and Phil Keaggy, whose interplay between banjo and guitar is wonderful listening. Here's a clip:While we're talking about Sara
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The quandary of Christian indemnification
2007-09-13 14:37:00
I don't know if you have followed the story at all, but Mary Winkler appeared on yesterday's Oprah, talking about her conviction, her freedom, and her life. As a reminder, Mary Winkler is the woman who shot and killed her husband, Matthew, in May 2006 and fled with their three daughters to the beach. Matthew Winkler was the well-liked preacher at a small Church of Christ in Selmer, Tennessee; the defense that Mary presented shattered the perceptions of those who knew this couple. I have followed this story over the last year with some interest: I, too, grew up in a small Church of Christ in Abilene and my uncle, many years ago, preached with Matthew Winkler's grandfather. I could know this family, seen in a hundred others I've known in my life.First, let me make it clear that I don't want to debate the conviction and sentence that she received: the courts evaluated the case, based on evidence, and decided that a charge of intent to kill was not appropriate; thus, manslaughter and
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All the roads that lead to Euphrony
2007-09-11 15:14:00
I recently asked all of my "loyal" readers where they come from, why they read, and what their perfect sundae would be. I actually had "loyal" readers respond - although only one listed their sundae selection (thanks, MammasBoy). Since interest was so low in sharing sundaes, I have officially scrapped the project of adapting Taste-o-Vision to my blog. Your loss.My last post seemed aimed at amusing myself. At least, no one else got the joke. Again, your loss.Today I bring you a selection of what brings strangers here. At one time, my top incoming search was for "Dora the Explorer". Alas, Dora has been usurped by ultrasounds. It would seem that lots of people are interested of those funny pictures of our innards. Here's the list, compiled from incoming searches from the last week (including the searcher's choice of spelling and capitalization):3 week old embryocharacter and attributes of the holy spirit22 week fetusoptometrist glassesultrasound images of cmvbelated birthday presentNEIL
Read more: Euphrony
Book Review (abridged)
2007-09-10 15:57:00
Let be begin by making clear that this is a book review and not a movie review. While I love the movie, I am specifically talking about the book The Princess Bride, S. Morgenstern's classic novel, abridged by William Goldman in 1973. Let us then continue.I recently reread one of the great all-time classic novels of daring-do, The Princess Bride. A great work, well-abridged by William Goldman (who penned the scripts for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, All the President's Men, and Marathon Man, among many other great works), this is by all measures an enjoying read. The funny thing of it is this: just after I finished reading I caught a snippet of an aural review for this on NPR (it being the 20th anniversary of the movies release). Interested, I went to the web to track down a text of this review. I was, admittedly, shocked when I finally found the text and discovered it to be a 500-plus page treatise on the novel, the movie, and the Goldman abridgement. The original book was only
Who are you people?
2007-09-07 12:48:00
And why do you keep reading over my shoulder?No, seriously, who are all of you people
who read/view my ramblings? According to Feedburner, I hit an all-time high of 30 subscribers to my feed. I don't even begin to have a clue as to who all of you people are, but you must be gluttons for the ramblings of a rheologist to keep checking out what I have to say. (Or, maybe not, considering the interest in my last several posts. Maybe I'm really all alone, here, in the dark and cold recesses of the internet. *gulp* Mommy! I'm scared!)Okay, so seriously (Wait, I already said that, didn't I? Well, I mean it this time.) who are you and why to you read. It can't be my poor attempts at witty banter, and surely it's not my magnetic personality (although that would be cool). Maybe it's my penchant for parenthetical statements (or not); maybe you are all rambling rheologists just like me. I don't know.Tell me, please, your name and bailiwick. If not your bailiwick, then what is your milieu? W
Natural Disaster: The Kids Game!
2007-09-06 14:42:00
Dear United Nations,Thank you for giving everyone the opportunity to plan for and possibly mitigate natural disasters in an 80's-style video game. I sincerely appreciate how you were so deftly able to teach me the importance of defences, warning systems, and community building opportunities in the face of floods, earthquakes, and hurricanes. I promise that next time I will not place the hospital on the beach, without proper structural supports, before a tsunami hits. In retrospect, that was probably not the best move. Same goes for building the emergency shelter as a grass hut when a wildfire was likely. My bad.Most important, I want to thank you for preventing me from demolishing, willy-nilly, the existing infrastructure of a community for the base purpose of building up my hotel empire. I can only assume that this is symbolic that you, the United Nations, are deeply interested in every community - large or small - and of the power you wield sufficient to prevent greedy "players" fro
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, Disaster
Livin' la vida Isaac
2007-09-05 14:47:00
Let's just begin by saying this: I'm no Ricky Martin. If you know me at all, you'll know that I am not a person who leads a crazy life - I may be a slight bit on the crazy side of things, but I am about as safe and predictable as they come. So, having established that I'm not livin' la vida loca, I will say that I have become rather enamored of the life of Isaac
recently. In fact, if their is any one person whose lifestyle I am trying to emulate (besides Jesus, of course) it would be Isaac. I'm trying to live la vida Isaac (insert catch latin rhythm here).Okay, what am I talking about? You know Isaac, right. Not the one on The Love Boat, serving up the drinks to the guest star of the week. The one that was offered up as a sacrifice by his father, Abraham, and was spared by God. Yeah, that one. What part of his life, you might ask, are you emulating? Probably the two things you know offhand are his near sacrifice and his lying about Rebekah being his sister to the king, Abimelech
Hey, baby, do the hustle
2007-09-03 14:49:00
Oh yeah, its real. Grab your kids (7 and under only), slip on your platforms, gold chains, and leisure suits, and get your moves on. It's Baby Loves Disco. I really don't know what else to say, except burn, baby, burn! And the only thing that is slowing us down from going is the cost: $12 per walking human.Apologies. I feel I really left a lot on the table with this post. Honestly, when Mrs. E first told me about this I thought there is just so much material here to work with that it was a natural for posting. Alas, I came to the plate and struck out on this one. Pathetic and shameful, really. If I were a Brant Hansen or a Shaun Groves, with a true spiritual gift of sarcasm, then you would have enjoyed this post and come away laughing. I promise to do better next time.Tags: Baby Loves Disco
Geek Quotient: 8.7
2007-10-01 15:02:00
Okay, I've made no secret of it that I am a geek. I have officially rated my interest in this radio show (that's right, I said radio show) as a 8.7 on the Geek
Quotient Scale. Similar to the Richter Scale, the GQS is logarithmic; therefore, a GQ of 7 is effectively ten times geekier than a GQ of 6. Don't ask what the GQ of rating according to the GQS is: it's too high to measure.But what can I say? I'm a sucker for the tidbits and connections to life that Dr. John Lienhard offers up in this weekly radio series, Engines of our Ingenuity. A professor of mechanical engineering and history at The University of Houston, he brings an interesting and unique view to how technology has influenced our lives. This has been a long-time interest, dating back to an undergraduate class I took on the history of science - very enlightening. For example, the common notion that when Christopher Columbus sailed in 1492 the majority of the world disbelieved his notion that the earth was round, favorin
Things to remember to survive a conference
2007-10-09 00:14:00
High everybody! Greetings from Salt Lake City, home of a bunch of Mormons, a big salty lake thingy, and the 79th Annual Society of Rheology Conference. (Sorry, Seth, but no Alps.) While I'm away from Humid-ston and enjoying the cool, dry Utah air, I thought it might be nice to share a few of the more important lessons I've learned over the years when attending a conference
.Wear heavy clothes. This one is potentially the most important thing to remember. Even if the meeting is in Death Valley, they will manage to chill the conference rooms to sub-Arctic conditions. I've actually seen the foolish and unprepared end up like Ötzi, the frozen Stone Age hunter. So, watch out. The opening plenary lecture will be esoteric. It will be over your head. It will also interest only 1-2% of a crowd of people in that field. Be careful of this opening lecture: if not prepared, you brain will short circuit and the rest of the conference will be worthless.Similar to #2, pace yourself. There is only s
Read more: survive
Impaneled
2007-10-05 10:09:00
A few weeks ago, my darling wife acted in the Birth Play (by Karen Brody). After the last performance, the cast and family/friends gathered at Star Pizza to chow down. At that time, the organizer of the play here in Houston noted my "excellent co-parenting skills"; as a result, she has asked me to sit on a dad's panel at this Saturday's Birth Fair. Being a good husband, and of course and "excellent co-parent", I accepted this honor. And so, from 11:25 until noon, me and two other guys will sit and talk about giving birth.Don't laugh.Really. Stop it. Now.Why can't a group of men sit around and talk about birth, expressing their opinions on how it should be and how the system should be different? Without reading from cue cards prepared by his significant other, or being castrated, that is.Seriously, though; if you think a man only sits the sidelines in this, then the man you're thinking of is leaving his wife out in the cold. From spending nine months of marginal sleep (when one can
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