I've been in bed for the better part of a week with a nasty respiratory virus, so I haven't been up to gathering many snippets. Nevertheless, the world as I saw it this week:

A cousin asked me today who I'm "pulling for" on the GOP side as we move toward the 2012 election. I told her I'm not "pulling", just watching. Just the watching is going to be an entertaining pastime, don't you think? Entertaining as in, watching some men rearrange deck chairs on the Titanic, maybe?

Liz Cheney rising?

Nathan is scheduled to leave for Basic Training on Tuesday. But as of this writing, we still don't know for sure...there's been a snag with his security clearance as it gets caught between an old and a new computer system and it may not get worked out in time for him to get into this next class. If not, he might have to wait until March and none of us will be happy about that. Well, except MAYBE Cheyenne.

Between coughing fits I've compiled my list of baking and cooking that I (we) will do outside of our normal fare. I wonder if I've ever purchased candied cherries in a month other than December?

At long last, our little family co-op has finished Tapestry of Grace Year 2 and will start on Year 3 after the New Year. I think it only took us three years to get through it! At this rate, we may never even make it to the Spanish American War before they graduate, let alone the League of Nations. History may just culminate with the War Between the States!

I really, really dislike Bill Maher.

I adore Jacquie Lawson's Advent Calendar, a sweet gift from my friend Val. Go look at the demo and download one for yourself. No, this is no substitute for something with a Biblical emphasis...it's just fun, sort of like an animated Norman Rockwell village.

I WILL finish Dickens' Nicholas Nickleby before year's end! I've downloaded several more audio books that I'm dying to start, including the new Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy: A Righteous Gentile vs. the Third Reich.

This gem via Of First Importance:

“The Christian life is a thank-you from beginning to end as we ponder what God has done. What an absurdity to think that we could ever bargain with God, as if there were anything we could put on the table. Nothing we can do would ever earn his favor. Yet all is ours for free. And the cross reveals his willingness to forgive not just once, but over and over and over again. How can we repay such extravagant, generous love? We cannot and need not, and the heart’s only answer is gratitude.”

— Rebecca Pippert
Hope Has Its Reasons
(New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1989), 159