βλόγος

Aaron asks:

And what’s the head count (no pun intended) so far? How many nickels?

Well, it’s rather depressing, actually. I really need to start spreading the word a bit further than just my little circle of influence. I’ve got some ideas for making this little project go viral, but it’s all a matter of working up the time and energy required to put those ideas into action.

The grand total right now is 59 actual physical nickels in a cup in my desk drawer and 21 virtual nickels in my PayPal account. That’s 80 nickels all together, making the grand total $4.00 even—one four-hundredth or 0.25% of my goal. Another 31,920 nickels to go, and I’ll have my MacBook. Things are looking up!

What’s all this about, you ask? Check out the original post for details.

I accompanied Janene to the endodontist on Monday to get a root canal (she tells the story here). As they prepped her for the procedure, she eagerly inquired about sedation options. They offered her a little something called Versed. I don’t know if you know anything about Versed (I didn’t until Monday), but it’s an awfully potent drug with some rather remarkable effects.

The endodontist’s assistant explained that Versed induces a conscious sedation. Janene would be awake through the entire procedure, able to follow instructions and answer questions, but she would have no memory of the whole experience. As far as she was concerned, it would feel as if she just took a little nap.

Continue reading “Versed, a curious thing” →

Every once in a while I hear a story on NPR that simply fascinates me. Yesterday it was a story on All Things Considered about a previously undiscovered portrait by Van Gogh. This new painting was not “discovered” in the sense that it was found in the basement of some old museum. Rather, it was discovered hiding beneath the paint of another Van Gogh!

Apparently, Van Gogh had reused a canvas by painting a new painting over the top of an old one, and scientists used a new x-ray technique to see what the painting underneath looks like. They were even able to determine the colors of paint by analyzing the chemical makeup. Listen to the story and watch the accompanying video to see how they did it: “Experts Uncover A Painting Van Gogh Covered Up” (listen and watch).

Can you spare a nickel? I’m kicking off an experiment to see if I can raise enough money to buy myself a Macbook. But here’s the catch: I’m planning to raise the money entirely in nickels. Doing the math, the roughly $1,600 it will take to buy a Macbook works out to 32,000 nickels. So far I’ve got 6 nickels sitting in a cup on my desk. Hey, it’s a start!

So here’s the deal: I’m shamelessly asking you to toss five cents into my PayPal account. This money will not go to charity or a non-profit of any kind and is most certainly not tax-deductible. It will go straight into my pocket. You’ll get nothing in return for this, but hey, why do you care? It’s only a nickel. And that’s the whole point: I’m not asking for much—just a few seconds of your time and a nickel.

So, what are you waiting for? If you’ve got a PayPal account with a positive balance, please use this button right now to throw a nickel in my change cup:

Thanks!

Update: I’ve blogged about this again since this initial post. To follow my progress, see the following posts.

• “A nickel update” on August 21, 2008
• “More nickels” on September 9, 2008

I’m not sure why, exactly, but I’ve had this hymn on my mind a lot lately.

Lead, Kindly Light

by John Newton

Lead, kindly light, amid th’ encircling gloom,
Lead Thou me on;
The night is dark and I am far from home;
Lead Thou me on;
Keep thou my feet; I do not ask to see
The distant scene; one step enough for me.

I was not ever thus, nor prayed that Thou
Should lead me on;
I loved to choose and see my path; but now
Lead Thou me on!
I loved the garish day, and spite of fears,
Pride ruled my will. Remember not past years!

So long Thy Power hast blest me, sure it still
Will lead me on;
O’er moor and fen, o’er crag and torrent, till
The night is gone,
And with the morn those angel faces smile
Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile!

(hat tip: Swirlee)

I’ve been tagged for one o’ them crazy memes. This one involves:

• Grabbing the nearest book.
• Turning to page 123.
• Quoting the fifth sentence on the page.

I’m sitting in the front room near a bookshelf full of books. Strictly speaking, there are four books that are nearly equidistant from me, so I’m going to quote the requested passage from all four of them.

From Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible:

Thus the correspondence was to be first settled by a sensible appearance of the divine glory, which was afterwards to be carried on more silently by the ministry of Moses.

From the Reformed Expository Commentary on Galatians by Philip Graham Ryken:

Even though he did not use these precise words, Paul obviously believed that the Bible is infallible and inerrant from beginning to end.

From Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology:

Because there is some common knowledge of right and wrong, Christians can often find much consensus with non-Christians in matters of civil law, community standards, basic ethics for business and professional activity, and acceptable patterns of conduct in ordinary life.

And the wildcard in the bunch, from Richard Lyman Bushman’s Rough Stone Rolling:

The revelation on the millennial gathering brought all the routine activities of everyday life into question.

woddfellow2 said:

Did the plan to “take over the world” fail?

In a manner of speaking, yes. I’ve been following your blog, and I almost mentioned in my earlier post that you’re having your own adventures in waking up. It sounds like you’re doing well, so I hope you can keep it up!

I believe the last time I blogged about this was day 21, and if memory serves I stopped on day 30-some-odd. I spent about a month off, after which I made a valiant second attempt (I vaguely remember blogging about the second attempt, but can’t seem to find it now), which lasted again about a month, and now, of course, it’s been over a year.

I really miss having that extra hour or so in the mornings to get things done, so I’d really like to get back in the swing of it. I’m not going to get cocky about it this time, though. I was getting up at 5:20 am back then, but this time around I’m going to do 6:00 am at the earliest.

This morning when I woke up to feed the cat, I honestly thought about staying up, but decided to crawl back into bed anyway. Tonight I’m purposely leaving tomorrow’s lunch unprepared so I’ll have to get up and do that. Hopefully that will be enough motivation. Wish me luck!

My doctor said I have the arteries of a 23-year-old. The rest of me is 28, for those keeping score.

Let me back up. I went in for a routine physical two months ago. At a follow-up appointment a few weeks later, in going over my blood work, the doctor mentioned that my bad cholesterol (LDL) was high, but that this may not be much of a concern because my good cholesterol (HDL) was also high. He wanted more information before giving me a clean bill of health, so he ordered something called an IMT scan. This week we got the results of that scan back, and this is where he came to his “arteries of a 23-year-old” conclusion.

Continue reading “Twenty-three” →