UGH!!!!

I just found out that our super cool pastor, formerly from Long Beach, CA, is leaving to pastor a church in Montana!
His last sermon at our church will be in mid-November. God bless him and his family. That will be rough, he's got teenage daughters... that is a difficult age to move and such.

And God bless our church. What an upheaval. I don't know how Foursquare churches handle these transitions.... When I became a born again Christian, my first church was Presbyterian. I really loved my then-pastor. He was awesome! But he left the church to become a chaplain in a hospital. My church then went through so many pastors like every few years. Sometimes we had "visiting" pastors, and I did not like that. I hope that our church, here, will find a good pastor quickly.

Well, I have been in a funk lately, maybe I am starting to feel homesick. I read somewhere that the international VT students usually start feeling homesick around October. Since I didn't feel it in earlly October I thought that I had surely been spared. But yesterday when I spoke with my friend, Michele, she nailed it. When I told her I had been in a funk, she asked if I was homesick. It had not occured to me that that is what I was feeling. I thought it was just the cold weather or boredom. But she nailed it. Cause when she said "homesick" I choked. So... there, it is out. Jessica is missing CA. Thankfully Shane is doing quite well. He says he does not miss CA. At least, not like I do. That's good. It would be bad if both of us felt the same way.

Next weekend we are going to Virginia Beach. I am excited to be venturing out.... especially cause they have a Trader Joe's!!!!!! Yay!.. either there is one there, or near there.. whichever... I am HAPPY HaAPPY, HAppy, excited to go to Trader Joe's. I have not written up my grocery list,... but I will!!! yay!! happy, happy, joy, joy!!! I am giddy excited....

Another exciting part of the journey will be seeing my sister-n-law, Natalie and her husband, Chris!!! they are currently travelling through this region and will be in Virginia Beach the same weekend. How cool is that?!!! God is so great! The timing is just perfect. I really needed a lift, and thinking about these things has brought a smile to my face. I am looking forward to this weekend. The only sad thing is having to leave Chispita. Unlike back home we don't have anyone to doggysit for us. So, we have to put her in a doggy kennel/boarding place...

So anyway.. happy weekend ahead... happy, happy, joy, joy... :) :D :)

NJ court: same-sex unions have same rights as marriage

All entities in the State of New Jersey will be forced to treat same-sex unions as the equivalent of marriage, even though they won't call it "marriage" for now. See the First Things post by Ryan Anderson.

Anderson says, "The people rightly claim the prerogative to deliberate about how to order their common life not only because sound decisions are thus more likely but because there are no natural superiors or inferiors. There isn’t a ruling class and a ruled class. All citizens stand on equal footing with regards to participation in the shaping of the state’s laws, laws that are binding on all citizens. But the court in Lewis v. Harris has flouted these principles in a clear instance of judicial aristocracy."

Trader Joe's wrote me back...

Subject: Thank you!
Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2006 16:26:32 -0700
From: "Trader Joe's Location Requests" Add to Address Book Add Mobile Alert
To: kika....
Aloha and thank you for contacting us with your location request!

Your request has been sent to our Real Estate department for future consideration. We value your interest in and enthusiasm for our stores, but due to the volume of daily requests are not able to respond to each one.

For up to date information on where we will be opening soon, please check in on the locations page of our website - www.traderjoes.com - We hope we'll be seeing you soon!

A new hat for the Cheezer....

Now for the real Cheese...

it doesn't look like she likes it very much....

My army of clones

Soon my army of clones will take over the solar system!!


This is a template for an image that will appear in some publicity for my department, highlighting new faculty. Two of the Shanes are just fillers, and will be replaced with two other new faculty members.

what to make of it?

article about a ghetto fab party in Texas..

And the leaves change before they fall...

(click on the images, for a larger view.)

A cute little house we saw....

Trippy, how only parts of the tree have changed.

This is a neighborhood near our church.

Simply breathtaking! Especially when it is sunny out, the light yellow and orange seems to radiate.

This tree is a few blocks away from our house. I wish I had taken a picture of it sooner. Last week, the whole tree was a brilliant golden yellow/orange! It looks like a lot of it fell already. Check out the floor beneath the tree. It was soooo pretty.

Pickin' a pumkin....

(Click on the images, for larger view.)

This is me... with so many choices!!!


Chispita found one she liked...


Some were big. Bigger than Chispita, even!


This is Shane ready for the hayride back to the farm/festival...


This is me in front of the haystack/rolls that kids were free to climb and jump all over. It looked like fun. But it looked like it was for kids only.

cornfield maze...craze...

Last Sunday, Shane, Chispita, and I went to a pumkin patch farm... that featured a Maize Maze...
(click on the images, for larger view.)
This was the entrance... I am styling with my new raincoat because it had been drizzling.

Shane taking off into the cornfield.

Shane, .... Chispita's and my hero, led us out of the maze.

We have been invaded!!!

Ugh! we got bugs!
Ladybugs! Usually I say "Aw, how cute.."
But these have me saying "Ugh, go away!"
While researching how to get rid of them I found this really cool website.

Everything you ever wanted to know about bugs and stuff.. tons of pictures, too. Have fun.

Maybe multiculturalism doesn't work

As least not in Britain. This past week, British cabinet minister Jack Straw appealed to Muslim women to remove their veils, calling them "a visible statement of separation and difference." Uh, duh. They're a statement of their faith, Jack, which I suppose visibily separates them.

This has reignited a debate on the value of multiculturalism. Ruth Kelly, a senior member of Tony Blair’s government, suggested that the multicultural experiment “may have resulted in a more fractured society.” Really? You mean living totally distinct from each other, as in "celebrating diversity", has the opposite effect of assimilation? What a revelation!

She calls for an “honest debate” on “integration and cohesion”: “We have moved from a period of near uniform consensus on the value of multiculturalism to one where we can encourage that debate by questioning whether it is encouraging separateness.”

Joseph Pearce comments: "Multiculturalism, the battle cry of anti-racist egalitarians, is now seen as apartheid! The comrades must be getting a little confused by the political somersaults they are being asked to perform.

Multiculturalism [was not] the only long-standing Labour Party dogma that Kelly attacked. Addressing the thorny subject of mass immigration, she argued that to discuss the subject was not being racist."

Letter to Time magazine

Within a world of intense spiritual longing, Andrew Sullivan comes along and characterizes that longing as merely "fundamentalism". Though I sense his sincerity, his alternative of embracing uncertainty will not sit will.

Shane
Blacksburg, Virginia

Beheaded prophet opera dropped by posers

A Berlin opera company recently cancelled a Mozart production over security fears because it features the severed head of the Prophet Muhammad. Robert Miller argues that these artists are posers. They theoretically subscribe to 'transgression,' the idea that liberation to a better form of life is obtained by trangressing the norms of a power structure. But the Berlin company feared that showing Muhammad's severed heard in their show would anger some Jihadists, perhaps resulting in their own heads being severed. Instead of standing up for a moral principle of resisting a power structure, they folded immediately, "thus demonstrating to the world what we knew all along, that postmodern artists are courageous only when in no real danger."

Storm trooper

Doesn't Chispita look like a storm trooper from Star Wars? I mean, look at those big black eyes against the stark white face. And that black thing on the mouth... snout thing. Soon Chispita will be turned in to a fearsome army of obedient clones ready to do my bidding and the comparison will be complete!