bekahcubed

Categories Technology

And it’s up…

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I’ve been wanting to get my little sib’s blogs onto the menterz.com website for quite a while now. It doesn’t seem reasonable to be paying for a domain with our own name on it and then using free hosting at a different domain.

Problem is, the kiddos (Joshua and Grace) are using WordPress.com for their blogs. They like their blogging platform and don’t want to go through the bother of learning html and using it for their blogging (like I do.)

Thankfully, the blogging platform they are using is open-source from WordPress.org. Which means all I have to do is install WordPress on our web server, configure it for their blogs and get their blogs transferred over.

But I’ve never used WordPress–and I’m not THAT comfortable with programming of the non-HTML variety. So it has taken me a while.

Actually, now that I think of it, maybe it hasn’t been all that long. Was it really just this last Sunday that Dad and I sat down together to install WordPress on our web server? I think it was.

I’ve been spending every spare moment since learning how Worpress Themes work–by creating a them that matches my website. I am in the process of switching the blog portion of my site over to WordPress–as it will make it simpler for me to post from a distance (for example, while in between classes at school). I will continue doing my own html for articles, bible studies, book reviews, and the like.

It seems that this will have the happy effect of allowing me to post on my blog more easily, while maintaining my skills in html and css–and maybe even learning a bit of php and mySQL while I’m at it. I’m pretty excited about the prospect.

And, having worked out most of the bugs (I think) with the whole “WordPress blogging” thing, I am now ready to unveil the newest development in the life of “bekahcubed”. While messing around with our web server, we discovered that we could create a new subdomain for me with just a couple button clicks. So, instead of the old www.menterz.com/bekahcubed, you can now access my website at bekahcubed.menterz.com. This is a much nicer url to share. So, please update your bookmarks to bekahcubed.menterz.com.

In addition, you may want to update your RSS feeds or subscribe to my RSS for the first time. I now have two separate RSS feeds: one for the blog content and one for the (more) static articles.

Also, be prepared for an introduction to Joshua and Grace‘s blogs–coming soon to menterz.com

Categories Reflections

Dreaming and Doing

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Some people dream to the exclusion of doing.

Others do to the exclusion of dreaming.

I vacillate between the two.

Heartsick because of hope deferred, I shut off the dreams and exhaust myself in doing.

Worked to the ground, I look up to the sky and ask “Is this really what I dreamed of?”

I planned to write a post about all the many things I’ve dabbled in, dreamed of, done. But as I started writing, the dreams rose in my throat to cut off my air.

Remember the days, Rebekah?

Remember the days you dreamt big dreams? Remember dreaming of identifying with Christ to the point of sweating drops of blood like He did? You were such a zealous little girl, swinging on the swings at Tanker Hill while the adults in the church prayed. You dreamed of an army of children, passionate for God alone. Remember dreaming of a revival sweeping our nation, transforming every public and private activity? You were such a passionate teen–and you wanted to see the world changed.

Remember the dreams, the plans, the desires of your heart? Remember the designs, the plans you wrote up? A haven for missionaries on furlough. A refuge for those struck by natural disasters. A nursing home that was a HOME instead of a “facility”. A year-round camp. A support school for home-schoolers. A church-based community center. A church without walls, a church that never sleeps.

Remember how you hungered not just for knowledge but for experience as well? Remembering dreaming of traveling to each of those exotic places you read about? Remember wanting to work in the factory, wanting to build the computer, wanting to go into space? Remember wanting to see the animals first hand in their natural habitat? Remember wanting to learn the dance, do gymnastics, figure skate?

Remember when God told you your dreams were too small? Remember when He told you to dream bigger? Remember when God told you to start dreaming again? That wasn’t that long ago–but you became disappointed too soon.

June 10, 2006 passed and you weren’t married. You’re approaching 25 and you don’t own a house. You have school loans you didn’t plan on accruing. You haven’t been all those places you planned on going. You haven’t accomplished what you hoped to accomplish in your first quarter-century. So you immersed yourself in doing and let the dreams die.

O heartsick one, revive again. O downcast head, be lifted up. Awaken to dream, to yearn, to delight once more.

Rise above the busy pit that would never have you see the light. Arise to dance again. Arise to sing again. Arise to dream again.

Categories What's on Your Nightstand?

What’s on Your Nightstand?

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What's on your nightstand? Logo

5 Minutes for Books hosts a monthly “What’s on your nightstand?” carnival on the fourth Tuesday of each month. The idea is that you let everybody know what you’ve been reading or are planning on reading this month.

It suits me to a T since the books I’m reading are literally on my nightstand. Here’s today’s photo.

Books on my nightstand (August)

Fiction

  • The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien (I’ve been re-reading this one. Check out my notes on Chapter 1, 2, 3a, and 3b.)
  • Dangerous Sanctuary by Lois Richer (A recommendation from my little sister that I haven’t started yet.)

Nonfiction

  • How Do Astronauts Scratch an Itch by David Feldman. (Halfway through–just finished reading about why ceiling fans get dusty.)
  • Your Two-Year-Old by Loise Ames. (Still trying to finish up that 649.122 Section at the library.)
  • Secret’s of the Baby Whisperer for Toddlers by Tracy Hogg. (Ditto above. Only about a dozen books to go in the section–can’t let them multiply too fast on me.)
  • Bicycling Magazine’s Complete book of Road Cycling Skills (Now that I’m commuting by bike and training for my big ride next year, I’d like to develop some skills.)
  • How to Expand and Upgrade PCs. (Got my new hard drive installed, now I just need to clone my current hard drive over and get everything arranged right.)
  • Do it Yourself PC Upgrade Projects. (Do you mean to tell me that you do not routinely check out at least two books on any given subject before attempting to accomplish a task?)
  • The Perfect Apron by Rob Merrett. (Felt the need for some cute new aprons for while I’m teaching my cooking-I mean-Scientific Principles of Food Preparation-lab. And these aprons are HARD-CORE cute. I made the bias cut one and wore it to lab today.)
  • Get out of that pit by Beth Moore. (My church’s ladies retreat this fall is based on this book. A friend and I decided to read it and discuss it together prior to the retreat. So far, so good.)
  • Opposing Viewpoints: Medicine. (With the current Health Care debate raging, it helps to be informed!)

Childrens/Young Adult

  • Leonardo, the Terrible Monster by Mo Willems. (Carrie at Reading to Know recommended Mo Willems–and I’ve fallen in love with his cute illustrations and story lines–in that order. I haven’t read this one yet though.)
  • Breathing Underwater by Alex Flynn. (I read Alex Flynn’s Beastly and loved the modern-day retelling of Beauty and the Beast from the Beast’s perspective. This one looks to be pretty different, but I’m eager to read it regardless.)

School

It’s too depressing to enumerate these. Suffice to say that I’ve got a biochemistry text and a couple of library biochem primers, a book of lab tests (to study for the RD Exam), a text for my program planning class, and a half dozen texts for my counseling class.

Just finished

  • Farmer Boy Days (A very abridged version of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Farmer Boy for new readers. Unless your child is seriously intimidated by the bulk of the Little House books, I’d encourage them to read the “real thing”. I was reading the Little House books by 2nd grade–and I don’t see why others shouldn’t be able to as well.)
  • Nurse Matilda: Collected Tales by Christiana Brand. (I loved Nanny McPhee, so when I saw this book at the library, I snatched it right up. I enjoyed the first novel, but found the second two to be a bit too repetitive.)
  • The Contented Soul by Lisa Graham McMinn. (This wasn’t a bad book, but it wasn’t great either. It had nice thoughts of contentment, but seemed a lot more “worldly wisdom” than “wisdom from above”. I can get enough worldly wisdom from worldly books. I don’t want to have to read it in “Christian” books too.)
  • Rose Daughter by Robin McKinley. (I LOVED Beauty, McKinley’s first retelling of Beauty and the Beast. In Rose Daughter, McKinley tells the story again–with a completely different twist. I love both. These are books you definitely don’t want to miss.)
Categories Simple Sunday

Simple Sunday: Nachos

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~Thankful for the Mexican leftovers our church sent us home with after the work day yesterday. Nachos are one of my favorite foods, but my frugal outlook rarely allows for a bag of tortilla chips (and topping the chips with gobs of shredded cheddar, like I prefer it, isn’t exactly easy on the wallet either!) Nonetheless, thanks to LCF, I have some nachos to munch on as I read blogs (trying to keep my mind off the fact that I’M TEACHING MY FIRST LAB TOMORROW!)

Tortilla chips and nacho cheese with beans

(Yeah, I know that doesn’t look the most appetizing–but it still tastes pretty good!)

Visit Davene at Life on Sylvan Drive for more Simple Sunday posts.

Categories Everyday Life

Housekeeping

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I haven’t been around much lately. I’ve taken a break from my normal blog-reading/blog-writing ways to do some housekeeping.

First order of business, finish portfolio. (And I’m done. Now I can breathe again!)

Second order of business, figure out my thesis (Yep, I decided to switch to the thesis option. Now I need to get my thesis topic finalized, select my committee, and turn in my MOC. Joy!)

Third order of business, figure out this assistantship thing. (Cleaned the labs today, had a quick meeting. Will be teaching my first lab on Monday!)

And then there’s the “extra-curricular” cleaning.

I decided one day that my computer was getting frustrating and it might be time for an upgrade. So I chatted with my dad about what I might need, and got some input from my brothers (which I decided to ignore ;-)). Then, motherboard manual in hand, I went window shopping at NewEgg. Thanks to a decent insurance settlement for the accident in February, I finally had a bit of money–and so I put in my order for a new hard drive, two new memory chips, a new keyboard, and an optical mouse.

Meanwhile, I’ve been “cleaning” my website–trying to get all my various and sundry web stuff into the same format. It’ll be nice when it’s done. The final format is set up to allow for easy changes via CSS (cascading style sheets.) Once I’ve got everything in the same format, I’ll be able to make changes to my whole website by just making changes to a single file (instead of having to open every file and tweak each file’s code individually.) I’ve decreased my sidebar links down to just the updated ones–and I’ll be re-adding the other links as they are updated. So that’s kept me pretty busy.

But then, my computer parts arrived. I opened them up to discover—I’d bought the wrong hard drive. Instead of purchasing an IDE drive like I knew I had intended, I purchased a SATA drive. GAH! So I repackaged the hard drive, printed a return label, and dropped it off at the UPS store this afternoon. And then I went back to NewEgg and ordered the right hard drive.

I was done with cleaning (the labs) earlier than I’d expected today–so I figured I’d go ahead and install my new memory. After all, hard drives aren’t everything.

But when I opened my computer case, I discovered that I had quite a task ahead of me. The entire thing, inside and out was CAKED with dust. I ended up taking out my CD drive, my DVD drive, my floppy disk drive (I know, ridiculous that I have one of those, right?), and my hard drive and wiped the dust off the exterior portions. I inverted the computer and shook (gently) to leave my carpet flaked with dark grey dust. I removed the case fan and wiped the dust from its blades. I removed the CPU fan–and discovered a MAT of dust. Imagine dryer lint, only composed entirely of dust. That’s what the top of my CPU looked like. I picked the stuff up and it was almost a half a centimeter thick! Disgusting!

So pretty much, I ended up removing every component of my computer, blowing or shaking or wiping it off (depending on whether it was an exposed or enclosed component) and reinserting it after cleaning the case space surrounding it. I use old nylon stockings as dust rags–and I went through three pair on my computer today.

But once I was done cleaning, I installed my two brand new 1 GB (gigabyte) memory cards and my new keyboard and mouse.

I started the computer, and boy does she hum. It’s like she let out a big exhale. “I can breathe again–or maybe even RUN!” And run she does. It takes less than a quarter the “normal” time to load web pages. How did I ever live without all this memory (and a clean computer)?

Categories Everyday Life

A Bit Skittish

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We had a good time last night, if not exactly according to plan. The dairy store turned out to be closed. (Who closes their store for an all staff meeting at six on a Monday evening? I mean, really!) So we picked up ice cream from Super Saver and brought it home. Watched Sweet Home Alabama at Mom and Dad’s–then it was late, so Grace went to bed. Bekah and I stayed up and tried on clothes–and Bekah did my makeup. (I think she wants to nominate me for What Not to Wear. I’m pretty sure I’m not that fashion-hopeless–but in the eyes of a fifteen year old girl who thinks it’s travesty to not wear eyeliner…)

Bekah and I dressing up

Anywho, today we ate, watched more movies, played the piano… Grace and Bekah swam a bit. And Caroline called to say that their van had broken down so they wouldn’t be able to pick Bekah up. At first we planned to just have her stay an extra night, but Bekah changed her mind half-way through the afternoon. So, after we watched an after dinner movie, I took her out to where her parents are staying tonight.

We were driving down the road, the CD player tuned a bit (read: WAY) too high for my ears’ comfort level, singing along with Chris Tomlin to “How Great is our God.” I hadn’t seen a speed limit posted for the road we were on so I was playing it safe at 45. (On the return trip, I saw that the limit was 55). It was dark, as it usually is at 10 pm in the country–even in August. As we crested a hill, I saw him, 5 feet in front of me. I think I tried to swerve, but it was futile. I hit the dog.

So perhaps you can understand why I was a bit skittish for the rest of the drive?

Categories Everyday Life

On tenterhooks

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Waiting anxiously for a very special guest to arrive.

I spent a month tutoring Rebekah in Mexico last summer. Now her family is in the States on furlough–and she’s coming to spend the night tonight!

Ahhhhh! Eeeee! Ooooo!

I’m pretty excited.

So far the plans look like dinner, ice cream at the Dairy Store, watch a movie, and then hang for the rest of the evening and through tomorrow. Grace is going to come over for this evening’s festivities (Grace and Rebekah are the same age), but can’t stay the night since she has her last day(?) of detasseling tomorrow.

Anyway, it should be tons of fun. Maybe I’ll have pictures for you tomorrow. (Or maybe not, we’ll just have to wait and see!)

Categories Simple Sunday

Simple Sunday: Food

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~Thankful for food. After 15 months of unemployment for Anna (12 of which were clinical rotations) and 7 months of unemployment for me (7 of which were clinical rotations), both of us are out of money. But even though we might not have money for things like milk or store-bought bread, we still have plenty of food left in our pantry or provided by my mother’s garden.

Pantry full of food

(Okay, I’m also thankful that my insurance settlement from the accident is February is coming this month and I’ll be employed starting next Monday. And I’m thankful that Anna has a job interview that sounds hopeful in a couple of weeks. God always provides!)

Visit Davene at Life on Sylvan Drive for more Simple Sunday posts.

Categories Everyday Life, Reflections

Traveling a Trail of Fears

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Today, I rode a trail where less than a month ago an attempted rape had occurred in broad daylight.

I rode it mostly as a manifesto against fear.

Having spoken my silent piece, I took a shorter path back: the road.

There I discovered a different danger. Instead of a nameless, faceless man intending to perpetrate a great crime against womanhood in general and me in particular, I happened upon a harried mother, intending no evil but capable of inflicting great harm.

No doubt she had other things on her mind as she came up to the intersection I was riding across. Perhaps she looked both ways, perhaps she didn’t. If she did, she looked right through me. Because she turned her SUV directly in front of me, cutting me off. And then she stopped, nearly forcing me to run into her.

Two different trails–one traveled with trepidation, one with confidence. On one trail, nothing occurred. On the other, I could easily have been killed. On one trail, I feared intentional harm. On the other, I was almost the victim of unintentional harm.

Try as I might like, I can never escape the dangers of this world. I cannot escape the fears that might overcome me–there are things to fear everywhere. So I have choice. I can travel the trails of fear, forever in bondage to potential harm; or I can entrust my life into God’s hands and travel the trail of faith.

“Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?” Luke 12:25

In looking for a link to said attempted rape, I discovered that police later issued a recall of the statement, saying that the woman who claimed to be attacked had lied.

Categories Books, Reflections

Exclamation Mark

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I’m reading Ravi Zacharias’s Cries of the Heart (Good book, by the way). Ravi quotes Lewis Thomas from Medusa and the Snail:

The mere existence of that cell should be one of the greatest astonishments of the earth. People ought to be walking around all day, all through their waking hours, calling to each other in endless wonderment, talking of nothing except that cell….If anyone does succeed in explaining it within my lifetime I will charter a skywriting airplane, maybe a fleet of them, and send them aloft to write one great exclamation point after another around the whole sky, until all my money runs out.

The quote impressed me with the author’s sense of wonderment–and my own lack of such wonderment. The cell is but the least of the wonderful things that I could spend my whole life astonished at. What of the new life being wrought in my friends Jolene and Jennifer as they reach the last trimesters of their pregnancies? What of the orderliness of the universe and the fine-tuning of every law to permit human life? What of the intricacies of weather systems that bring life and death, beauty and destruction? What of the miracle of regeneration?

Yet I rarely stop to wonder, much less spend my every day wondering. And I believe I have lost much in my blase grown-upness that thinks it knows the answers and therefore fails to ask the questions.

Oh, to embrace wonder once again. To return to the child-like astonishment, that on hearing why the sky is blue, asks yet again, “But why?” For indeed, the first explanation is rarely the end, it is only a springboard for a deeper sense of wonder.

May I look at life today through different eyes, through the eyes of wonder. May I take the time to wonder, to be astonished, to gasp in awe at the greatness of my Father displayed through all His creation. May my life be a grand exclamation mark, repeated with every breath–an exclamation mark punctuating the grandness of my God.