Never shop at overstock.com. Ugh.

I am (hopefully) at the tale end of a three month ordeal with them. Finally, they say it will be finished in 2-4 days.

We’ll see.

But… just stay away from them.

Okay… one more update on the lappy before the last one. That’s the plan, anyhow.

It shipped! Scheduled to arrive on the second.

laptop update.

This will hopefully be the last update before I finally get the new guy. I heard from the Sony sales rep today, that my order is being processed. If that process started on Thursday when I spoke with him (which I assume it did), then I should have the lappy in my hands no later than Wednesday, one week from today. That is the maximum build time and maximum ship time.

We’ll see.

Movie Ratings..

On my ten point (of course) subjective standard system.

Cellular: 3
Catch Me If You Can: 7
The Body: 6.5

iTunes music rating system, as well as Windows Media Player’s, have five stars. I may be wrong, but a scale of five stars is just inadequate.

I think it should be either ten stars, or a scale of 100. Lauchcast allows you to have a rating system on a scale of 100, and I think that’s way better. I mean… how many songs/movies/whatever would get five stars? It can’t be many. And how many cds do you buy that you really like so little that you rate them one star? One star is the lowest, which means you absolutly don’t like it and don’t want to hear it. You can’t rate it zero stars.

So that means one star and five stars are pretty restricted. So you’ve got the middle three, which isn’t a whole lot of range. My guess is there are a whole lot of three stars in most people’s iTunes library.

I will now take a moment to brag on my girls a little bit. They’re such good girls.

We have, it would appear, succeeded in instilling in them thankful hearts. Every evening, when we sit down for dinner, both G. and A. thank Mommy several times for making the food (this in addition to our prayer that I lead, where I thank God for providing the food and Megan for preparing it for us). And they’ll occasionally thank me for buying the food. It’s a great feeling to notice the good things your kids do, and where you’re doing something right as a parent.

But, yesterday, after our dessert, Mike helped clear the table and took A.’s empty bowl. Ashley said to him, “Thank you for taking that bowl”, or something along those lines. It made me bubble over with pride and thankfulness. This was a man she didn’t really know, and it was a situation she has never been instructed on. We taught them to thank Mom for making their food, but all on her own Ashley put it together, and thanked Mike for taking her bowl.

Yesterday, Mike and Kristen (and Kate!) came down and worshipped with us at Providence. I got a phone call from Mike Saturday evening, making sure his info and directions were right, and letting us know they were coming down. I thought of them as I rolled out of bed around 7:15. They were starting their drive about then.

They came over after church, and spent the day with us. We piled our baby toys on the living room rug, and Kate and Fiona crawled around on there, tasting the toys and making noises and being accosted by the ‘big’ girls. It’ll be nice when Kate and Fiona are a little bit older, and they can play their little girl games together on these visits. They’re just about two months apart, so they’ll be at all the right stages together.

It was, once again, a pleasure to spend time with the Stewarts and get to know them and share good food and a bottle of wine with them. And on this visit we had the bonus of worshipping with them.

p.s. I did pull out the digital camera this time, and took a few pictures of Mike and Kate and Geneva kissing Kate… but I then handed the camera over to G. and A. for photographer duties. I haven’t seen what they turned out yet.

I came across the following question on an internet discussion board…

In eternity, is the Father’s relationship to the Son as the Son dependent on the perfect ethical character of the Son, such that the Son’s sonship is dependent on His lovliness, or is the Son the Son, without respect to the condition of His lovliness?

My first thought is “how embarassing”. I mean, really, have we come to the point where our theological discussions are reduced to this? Is there nothing more significant that we can talk about? Something more meaningful? Something more practical? I mean, this is nothing less than “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?”.

As far as I know, the order for my new laptop is being processed. I have requested a tracking number when that is available, but we’ll see if I get one.

I was able to choose the configuration for it, which is nice. I means I got to put money where I want it in the system. Here’s what I’m going to get…

VGN-FS500
- 15.4″ WXGA TFT with Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 900 w/ 128MB Dynamic Video Memory
- Intel® Pentium® M Processor 740 (1.73GHz, 2MB L2 Cache, 533MHz FSB)
- Intel® 915GM Chipset
- Intel® PRO/Wireless 2200BG Network Connection (802.11b/g)
- CD-RW_DVD Drive
- 60 GB Hard Disk Drive (4200rpm)
- 512 MB (256MBx2) DDR-SDRAM (DDR333)
- VAIO Video Plus software package (which is essentialy the LE version of Adobe’s video editing software)
- 3 usb 2.0 ports, one 4pin firewire port

I can’t wait.

Any parents have a suggestion on how to keep cute little cuddly girls from crawling into their daddy’s bed at night without him even knowing it?

For Valentine’s Day, Megan made the most supreme, delicious, wonderful, best-tasting-ever dessert. MMMMM.

I will do my best to describe it, but know that the words will fail to give you the sense of true greatness.

First, it was in the shape of a heart. Fitting.

Second, it had strawberries, sliced vertically, so they also had the general form of hearts, and the red color.

It starts with a layer of pie crust. It’s flat and, like I said before, in the shape of a heart. On that goes a slightly lemony custard topping. Strawberries are then placed on top of the custard. Then another layer of piecrust, custard, and strawberries. Then it is drizzled with chocolate.

I ate the last of it last night. Glory to God… it was a taste of heaven. I am blessed to have such a talented wife.