This is Who They Are

Today's goal:

Alma 20

Alma 21

* * *
The Book of Mormon reminds us that self-determination and freedom is one of God's greatest gifts of his will to mankind.

We left the plains and found ourselves traveling once again through thickly forested paths. It is a delightfully pleasant place to be; the shade and the gentle breeze are welcome against the steamy heat of the afternoon. Despite the fact that we felt to name our path Dead Heifer Trail, most of the company are in good spirits.



( ...Before Our Journey's Through... )

Today I get to counsel with a child who has learned, for perhaps the first time, the difference between school and profession. In the latter instance, one is never graded on effort. There is virtually no reward for hard, sincere, dedicated, good-attitude diligence. All that really matters in the professional world is results – cold, hard and indifferent.

It doesn't matter how hard you try. All that matters is what is the end result.

This is a rough thing to realize.

And I mourn the continued submission of his innocence to the unholy pressures of living on this earth.

Today's goal:

Alma 18

Alma 19

* * *
I love how the Book of Mormon makes it clear that anyone, at any time, who sincerely turns to the Lord in humility will feel an instant measure of peace.

Today's goal:

Alma 17

* * *
The Book of Mormon is a potent reminder that selfless love melts through a lot of hard hearts. And for those that aren't, it is a tangible assurance that the Lord is aware of our efforts to be meek and charitable.

I worked solo this evening, installing an octet of blocking pieces with some efficiency as the fog rolled in and the chilly evening air descended. It does not look dramatically different, but the top of the joists is starting to get a taut, rigid appearance to it that will ably support the Trex when they start going down.

We also listened to Acoustic Alchemy all throughout our work, and this is a good soundtrack to our efforts.

Deck 14 | Deck 16

Today's goal:

Alma 15

Alma 16

* * *
The Book of Mormon possesses the unique ability to turn a hard heart into one malleable by the tender ministrations of the Spirit. More potently, it can take one who is convinced that God does not love them, and give that person conclusive evidence that this is not so.

Today's goal:

Alma 13

Alma 14

* * *
When terrible things happen to good people, the Book of Mormon reminds us that we needn't worry about the eventual outcome, because of the atonement of Jesus Christ.

The first phase of the online renewal is done:

our new blog interface!

I still have to design the new header. My head hurts, though, from all of the "But can we do this?" that I peppered my poor husband with tongiht. The great thing is that now our clients can come and see everything ya'll are saying. So be nice, people! And talk a lot. And tell your friends. Make us the next big thing. Hahaha.

Today's goal:

Alma 12

* * *
When the Book of Mormon reminds us of the importance of this probationary state, it carries this to my heart with a potent motivating spirit.

So much that we do in life ain't rocket science, but it sure helps to think everything through as you go.

"The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed."

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them ;]

Yea, I know I didn't Bold/Underline/Italicize correctly, on my journal I couldn't tell the difference between bold and normal, so underline/bold/italicize all mean the same below.



1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen - parts.
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien [I've read FOTR, planning to read the other two later on]
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling [multiple times]
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible - parts [parts]
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell ||| I plan to.
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (Sonnets, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Macbeth, Twelfth Night, The Tempest) - William Shakespeare (read most of it)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien [I swear, I've read up to the last 50 pages like... 4 times, it counts.]
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams [I've seen the movie, haha]
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis [I've read the Magician's Nephew/Book1 and Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe/Book2]
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis [Yea, this one counts as 33 doesn't it?]
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens [i've seen the movie and stage interpretations many times]
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White [it was read to me when I was younger]
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo



______________________________________________________________________________________________


Listen to your iPod on Shuffle.
For the first category, that's the first song.
Press Next for the next category.
Repeat.

Opening Credits: "The Unforgiven II" by Metallica

Waking Up Scene: "Crazy Train" by Ozzy Osbourne

Car Driving Scene: "All These Things that I've Done" by The Killers [sooo not a driving song]

High School Flashback Scene: "Never Meant to Break Your Heart" by Underoath

Nostalgic Scene: "Black and Bruised" by Eighteen Visions

Bitter, Angry Scene: "Overrated" by Thee Days Grace

Break-up Scene: "Get Up, Get Out" by Godsmack

Regret Scene: "My Immortal" by Evanescence

Nightclub/Bar Scene: "27" by Breaking Point

Fight/Action Scene: "If These Scars Could Speak" by Zao [I thin that's right... the songs not labeled, but I'm pretty sure that's right]

Lawn Mowing Scene: "Redemption" by Switchfoot

Sad, breakdown scene: "Cold War Transmissions" by Anberlin

Death Scene: "Sky is Over" by Serj Tankian

Funeral Scene: "Some Will Seek Forgiveness, Others Escape" by Underoath

Mellow Scene: "At a Glance" by AFI

Dreaming About Someone Scene: "I Just Wanna Live" by Good Charlotte

Contemplation Scene: "Play Crack the Sky" by Brand New

Chase Scene: "Breaking the Habit" by Linkin Park

Happy Love Scene: "Don't Look back in Anger" by Oasis

Happy Friend Scene: "Stop" by Matchbox Twenty"

Closing Credits: "Tears and Rain" by James Blunt

Today's goal:

Alma 11

* * *
I value the way that the Book of Mormon typically explains doctrines and principles with plain and precious clarity.