poor little froggies

I have a 5 gallon aquarium in my office. I had 2 african dwarf frogs in there for a year or so and then, sadly, they passed away. Fast forward about 3 months and I finally took time to clean out the aquarium. I changed the filter, refilled with water, added the de-chlor stuff and let the aquarium run for a day or two.

Then I bought 3 new frogs. Geewhiz are these frogs fun to watch... when they're alive. :(

Unfortunately of the three I added, I can only find two. One is dead and stuck in the artificial plant, the other is swimming energetically and seems fine. Where did frog 3 go? I'm hoping Mindizzle will have time to remove the dead frogs today. She still owes me a dead fish or two from a couple years ago when I took care of a dead cat for her. (Rest in peace, Emma... mean, mean kitty.)

I used to tease Jim about his aquarium being "The Aquarium of Death." Apparently that's what mine has become, although in all fairness... the frogs seemed a little not so good in the aquarium at the pet store. And the fish dude just reached his hand in and grabbed them by their frog feet. I think I'll go elsewhere next time I buy some fish.

tired, but a good tired

I'm exhausted and there's a group of seven or eight youth who likely feel the same way. Today was the day to paint the high school/fireside room in the Underground. We picked out colors from a lot of sample shades and ended up with two colors: roundabout and of course I can't remember the name of the other color right now. Maybe it will come to me in a bit. We had the idea to do a light color on top and a darker color on the bottom with a white stripe through the middle.

As Jordan and another youth (I don't remember who was helping him) tried to get a straight line, it was obvious that would take forever. Derek, in a moment of brilliance, suggested we not worry about the line being straight and instead just make it go up and down around the room. Like a roller coaster? Yep.

And wow, does it look cool. That was indeed a great idea. It's also symbolic of the teenage years, I think... with ups and downs. One of the ladies who was at the church for soup and sewing day thought it looked like the mountains of Italy. We're not so sure about that, but hey... it was a compliment and we'll take any of those that we can get.

Thanks to the kids for helping, to Noltes for donating some furniture that looks awesome in there and to the family of Ada Banks for giving us memorial money for a worthy project. :) I'll get some pictures up later, but unfortunately my camera is at home and I'm typing this from work. Just imagine a cool room with a trippy rug and a cool paint job.

bookmark this now

I've always been bad about doing devotions. Normally if I'm reading the Bible it's to get ready for a Bible story, to plan Sunday School, part of a specific retreat or in church. I'm not one to set aside a consistent part of the day for devotions. That said, I still think it's a good idea to take a snippet (longer is better) of time to focus on Scripture and prayer.

And this is the best way I've found to do it. www.d.365.org has a daily devotion. I think it's geared towards youth, but as an adult-- yes, I'm an adult even though I get mistaken for a teenager-- I still enjoy it and find it useful. When you click on that link, there's a "start devotion" button and it walks you through a theme, some scripture, a song, a prayer. You can take as much or as little time as you want, but it's worth a look. Try it for a few days... let me know what you think.

I'll post another blog or two later this week. I'm working on the rest of the school year and the summer schedule. And there's cleaning... lots of cleaning... Happy spring break.

The Underground will be closed over Spring Break

It's true. Without school, there is no after school so enjoy your break and come back after Easter.

There might be some high school type stuff going down that week-- possibly painting a room! But mostly I plan to use the time to clean and plan and look ahead to summer.

Cait and Justin played a couple songs--here's one of them.

I didn't include this video with the other pictures from the open mic
because I wasn't sure how to put a video in, but I think this will
work. I don't make use of the video option on my camera much. This is
shaky and dark, but the audio's okay. I played it in Windows Media and
was able to lighten it up, but I couldn't figure out how to edit the
video itself so it would stay like that.

open mic at espresso yourself

Kathy and Dennis Norman were gracious enough to let some high schoolers and a few adults take over their coffee house, Espresso Yourself, on Friday night. The idea behind the Open Mic was to give high school youth something to do on a weekend, and geewhiz did they find things to do. From poems and songs and raps... the night was entertaining for those who shared and for those who watched. Here's what it looked like.

bowling party

On February 24th, The Care Committee held a fun bowling afternoon. Though I didn't take the opportunity to bowl, I did take some pictures. After a full afternoon of bowling, the group returned to the church for homemade pizza. Unfortunately my camera batteries died before the pizza portion of the day, so there aren't pictures of that. I trust you've seen pizza before, though. I bet you'll get over not being able to see pictures of the pizza we had.