This & That

Well, some of you may have been wondering whether we have died - for death alone could keep our fingers from their resolute intention to chronicle our lives on this keyboard, to encapsulate and transfigure the rich marrow of our existence into electronic words for you to read. Actually, as it turns out, we kind of suck at blogging. Our lives seem so uninteresting, so shy of being chronicle-worthy.

I have a bit more time right now when Julia is away on a trip, so I thought I would jot down some brief reflections as a plea for you not to delete the bookmark you no doubt have for our blog.

In the past month and a half, we've had wonderful visits from two families from St. Andrews that we absolutely love: Tim and Rachel Stone with their son Aidan and baby-to-be-born-at-any-minute, and Patrick and Kristin Egan with their three girls Laura, Shannon, and Jo. We love all of them dearly, and it was so nice to see familiar faces and just enjoy hanging out. We enjoyed seeing London and Oxford with these friends, and look forward to continuing the friendship in years to come...

Julia endured a bout of acute tonsillitis, and bore up like a hero under the combined strain of sickness, school, and scholastic husband. For my part, I have been writing on Philo of Alexandria's use of Deuteronomy, which is taking way longer than I would have thought. Philo is Paul's older contemporary with a penchant for allegory and prolix illustration, which makes reading his work alternately fascinating and want-to-rip-your-eyes-out-boring. I'm supposed to be done with this bit by next week, but it is looking more and more unlikely.

In other news, I am proud to say that, not having watched a game of college basketball in several years, I accepted Tony Tigner's invitation to join a pool at espn.com (called: exegetical ninjas, which is pretty accurate) and tied for 4th out of 13 or so. Of course, that still means that I lost $5, but that's only £2.50 here, and I'm glad I played. Next year, the title!

Random thoughts, all. We'll be back with a better post soon (i.e., when Julia gets back and can offer some control...)