Bedtime

Dave slept upstairs for a week while I had a bad cold in an effort to avoid catching it. It didn't work. He has had a bad cold for a week and has been sleeping upstairs in an effort to avoid giving it back to me.

This has been considerate of him and we sleep better when the other person isn't waking us up with coughing or nose-blowing, but Dave made a big mistake. He let our little Yorkypoo, Libby, sleep beside him.

She had previously slept in her little two-tone pink crate, which was too large when she first came to live with us, but is cozy now that she is almost four and a half pounds. She was never too thrilled with the idea of going "bedtime" in her little pink crate, and now that she has been spoiled (really, there's no other word for it) by being allowed to sleep with a warm body in a big bed, she doesn't like it at all.

Dave bought a wire kennel for "toy breeds" and put it in the opening under the kitchen desk. Last night that was where Libby went "bedtime."

Dave is still fighting his cold and he slept upstairs (with the door shut) while I slept down the hall from the kitchen desk (with the door open).

Libby's new kennel has more space, lots of visibility, and a beautiful fleece mat. I even stuck in an old pink towel to make her feel more at home. But Libby did not like her new kennel.

She whined. When I coughed during the night, she barked. I told her to be quiet and go "bedtime." She whined. This grandma is getting too old to be awakened during the night by little ones, especially little canines.

I wonder if Dave's cold was really bothering him all that much last night...

Check out Challies and Venema

Tim Challies, over at challies.com, has posted some excellent entries summarizing teaching from the recent Ligonier conference, The Holiness of God.

Tim reports on conference speakers such as Robert Godfrey, Thabiti Anyabwile, Alistair Begg, and R.C. Sproul as well as other conference events and his personal reflections. His posts are well written, well organized, and well worth reading.

In an earlier entry, Tim posted a book review of Dr. Cornelis Venema's Christ and the Future, which is also posted on the Discerning Reader website. Monergism.com offers Christ and the Future for $11.05.

Dr. Venema's newest book, Children at the Lord's Table? Assessing the Case for Paedocommunion, is now available for $19 from Reformation Heritage Books. Dr. Venema was recently interviewed by Reformed Forum about this new book and the podcast is available here.

These books by Dr. Cornelis Venema are two investments that, even in today's economy, will not disappoint.

Book Review: Home by Marilynne Robinson

Because Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead is one of my favorite novels, one might assume that I would be excited about her newest novel, Home, particularly since it deals with the same characters and events as Gilead.

I confess, however, that I picked up Home with trepidation. I have never been a huge fan of sequels, believing they are frequently quick efforts to cash in on the original's lucrative streak and that they often demonstrate a decline in literary quality. I feared Home would disappoint.

It did. But not because it met my usual expectations for sequels.

Home is not, in the strict sense, a sequel. It does not pick up where Gilead left off. It is better described as a companion volume, written about the same people in the same place, but from another perspective. Rather than a first person account from Rev. John Ames’ point of view, it is a third person account from Glory Boughton’s point of view. In Gilead, Glory appeared as a minor character on the story's fringe: the disappointed-in-love daughter of Rev. John Ames’ friend “Old Boughton” who had come home to care for her father. The reader sensed that Rev. Ames cared about her, prayed for her, and appreciated her friendship with his wife. But he records only a few instances of her actions and dialogue. She is not part of Gilead’s many prominent motifs.

Some Gilead fans may find the Boughton household fascinating as they encounter the same events recounted in Gilead, this time uncovering the Boughton response and discovering the Boughton dynamics.

But these revelations spoil the beauty and mystery that is Gilead.

Home’s writing exhibits Robinson’s literary talents; it skillfully displays the fragility of life and relationships; it aptly depicts Jack’s struggle to love and live.

But Home lacks Gilead’s thematic development and plot complexities. It lacks Gilead's technical brillance and figurative language. It lacks Rev. Ames' gentle voice and humble faith. Most of all, Home lacks Gilead's abiding mystery and undulating luminosity.

And that is disappointing.

I'm back!

Yes, faithful readers, I'm back in blogging business!
My son installed a new motherboard in my desktop computer on Saturday and I've been scrambling to get caught up with my work since. Suffice it to say that on Monday I was finally able to begin layout on a newsletter that was due at the institution that day! I hope, the Lord willing, to send a PDF today, which is as late as it can get; it must be proofed there and corrections or changes made before it absolutely, positively must be at the printer on Monday.
My computer is working well, but two days before my motherboard fried, my monitor died (that was four days after the almost light fixture fiasco, about which I blogged).
Now I am working with my old CRT monitor that is about the size of a boat anchor, but has a miniscule screen.
Since it's so heavy, it sits at an angle on my desk to be over some support. It has an annoying glitch of periodically "burping" in the bottom left corner. The small screen means that I must constantly scroll documents and work space up and down and from side to side in order to do my work. And I have to constantly scroll just to access the scroll bars! I've been in the office for less than an hour this morning and I already have a stiff neck.
But I'm not complaining (well, maybe a little) because I am very happy to have the software I need to do my work.
I hope to post more postive entries in the near future.
Thanks for reading and stay tuned!

Update

Just a quick update to let my many and faithful readers know that I have not been able to post because my computer's motherboard fried about a week ago.

I am able to do some work on my laptop, but it's very difficult to work with its keyboard and touchpad. The cursor arbitrarily jumps to a previous portion of text, sometimes deleting entire chunks of text. When I try to send emails, my cursor will suddenly create multiple drafts. When I'm working online, the cursor will open anything over which it drifts.

So that's why I haven't been posting entries to my blog. I hope to get parts for my computer this week and be back in business the week after that.