secret to a happy marriage

Marriage. In two days, we will have been married for an entire 11 months.

The secret?

Don't walk to the skytrain station together.

Most of the time we don't have to worry too much, as I'm usually not ready by the time he's leaving. But from now on, even if I'm ready, I think I will find one more thing to do.

You see, I'm a bit of a morning person - meaning I wake up happy most of the time. And then I'm also verbal. (shocking, I know) And Gordon is lovely 98% of the time, but he has this little part of his personality that he refers to as "surly"...this part is closest to the surface for the first 2 1/2 hours he is awake in any day. Mix surly introvert with random and distracted verbal extrovert and shake it up for 5 blocks and WHAMO! you have marital distress.

But allow these individuals their own pace, path and personal space and all shall be well.

This morning, we temporarily forgot this little bit of wisdom. It's okay. We've had a little laugh at ourselves and solemnly promised to make our own ways to the skytrain from now on. (Whew, that was close!)

Your happy marriage secrets?

the snow in Vancouver 'never' sticks...

There is snow on our barbecue. Crazy.



This is Crowley Drive.


And this is the North Shore.


UBC has no power so they're closed ... so I guess I'll work from home and do as much of the exegesis homework as I can without access to the library. And as for the rest of the day? Who knows.

oh the weather outside is frightful...

Did I bring on the weather by putting up our tree yesterday? (see the 3ft. tree in the corner?)



Had Cheryl over for dinner and went to a movie. When we got back, this is what it looked like...



And this morning...



So I think we're just going to stay in today...

how much is a blog worth?

I have no idea how this works but found it on maggi dawn's blog and couldn't resist...

My blog is worth $1,129.08.
How much is your blog worth?

Tuesday mornings...adventures in discernment

So I have my coffee and a bowl of cereal. Have read through any new posts on my blogroll. Woke up dreaming about the final song for this morning's chapel.

Tuesday mornings are usually mostly filled with thinking about what is to come later in the day.

Will everyone show up who is supposed to DO something?
Will everyone DO what they're supposed to do? Or something sensitively 'other'?

It leads me to ask questions about the nature of listening to the Spirit.

How much of what some people call "the Spirit" is just somebody's common sense?
How much of what some people call "common sense" is really the Spirit?
How does one know whether it is the Spirit in the long beforehand planning or the last minute changes? Or both? (Now I know that there are those who lean towards "anything spontaneous is inherently more Spirit-led than something planned" but I can't stomach it as it seems to put the Spirit in a jacket until the moment something is happening...wierd.)
When one is actually in the midst of something (ie leading a service), how do they know when to stay with the plan and when to veer off into something new?

I had the privilege of working with a group of people for a couple of years who liked to think about, talk about, and DO all of the above. The only "answer" we could ever seem to come up with was a word that isn't nearly as concrete as would be helpful: DISCERNMENT.

Hm. And now, I'm off to try it out. Happy Tuesday!

haggard and driscoll and other 'heroes'

Here is an open letter from a co-pastor of a Vineyard Church in north Seattle...Scot McKnight comments on the letter on his blog too...

Meanwhile, there is a lot of talk about Haggard, fundamentalism, traditional/complementarian/egalitarian...

For your perusal... the Scroll is the blog of the Christians for Biblical Equality. There's a lot of good stuff there.

I promise to link some more "fun reading" sometime soon. :)

Meanwhile, happy reading...

quite a day...

Friday is a quasi-work day for me...usually a couple hours of teaching and then errands, etc.

Gordon had today off though...so we slept in, then I went off to teach.

We ate a quick lunch, caught A GOOD YEAR at Metrotown (good movie...we liked it!), drove out to Langley to meet Sue, our friend who has spent the better part of the last 3 1/2 years in Lebanon and returns next week. Following coffee we picked up our friends who have just returned to Canada from 3 years in Chad. We took them out for dinner and had a great "kill the fatted calf" kind of evening.

On the way home, just in case we hadn't packed enough into the day, Gordon gave me a crash course in Phonetics. Bilabial fricatives, egressive pulmonary airflow, voiced, voiceless, plosive... all sorts of crazy things. :)

I'm ready for a little sleep ...

rain and a microwaveless kitchen

Winter has come - and I forgot that it doesn't get cold...it's just really wet. No sign of sunshine this morning. None. Which would be perfect if I could stay home and sit in front of the fireplace. Which I can't for two reasons:
1. I have to go to work.
2. We don't have a fireplace

We were all homeownerish on Saturday and went to Lee Valley to get these fancy brackets that you can put your microwave on so that it sits just below the upper cupboards, giving you back the counter space that the microwave has been hogging...

This was followed by a few hours of installation and then a short while of de-installation. (including ripping two holes in the wall)

Then we went to Rona to buy materials to repair our drywall...Gordon had a swatch of the ruined wall in hand so that they could match paint. :)

So the microwave is still sitting on the dining room table as the mud takes forever to dry...we're on coat number 2...

All of these "we" pronouns...well, you should think of it like this: The space-saving desire was mine, the discovery of the brackets at Lee Valley was mine, the rest of the hard work and frustration and repair work has been Gordon's.

The saddest part is that when this is all finished, the microwave will STILL go back on the counter. We'll be back where we started. Except that now "we" know how to repair drywall. :)

Happy Monday.