future

Prepping Real Food and then Eating It–Slowly!

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As I mentioned in my last post, I’m scaling back my writing for this blog as I move towards developing my music blog, where there’s a fair amount going on. I hope you’ll take a look over there and subscribe if you haven’t done so already and if what you see interests you. I’ve also done a couple of posts recently over at my Intentional Conservative blog, so if you’re interested in politics you can head on over there. (You can also follow me on my personal Facebook page, which has nothing personal on it at all—it’s composed entirely of political articles, mostly by conservative writers, some by conservative Christian writers. Good stuff, I have to say.)

But I’ve been meaning to post something here about this whole let’s-slow-down-food-prep-and-consumption idea. If you’re homebound and looking for something to do, of course you’re all in on the slow-food idea. If you’re holding down a deemed-essential job and maybe also juggling child care, my hat is off to you and I fully recognize that you may have less time these days for nourishing yourself and your family. I don’t have any magic answers for those of you in that situation, I’m afraid.

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A Lesson Learned from Lessened Activity Levels

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Image by Mabel Amber, still incognito… from Pixabay

I mentioned in a previous post that I was facing foot surgery, which took place on March 11. So it’s been about 2 ½ weeks since then, and I didn’t feel that I could stand on the scale without my surgical boot or shoe until the 2-week mark. Guess what? I was four pounds up. FOUR POUNDS.

Why did this happen? Well, my activity levels had gone way, way down. I went nowhere at all for about the first week except for my doctor’s appointment, and I spent a lot of time lying on the couch with my foot up on pillows. I

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A Glorious Trip–Glitches and All

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One of the few glimpses of the hot air balloon fiesta that we glimpsed!

My husband and I went on a trip this past weekend to Albuquerque NM to see visit the Hot Air Balloon Fiesta. Here’s what went wrong in the first 18 hours or so:

1. We realized that we’d hit a stretch along I-25 in northern New Mexico where there weren’t any gas stations, and our little Honda FIT has only a 10-gallon gas tank. We’d been watching for a gas station but hadn’t seen any for some time. Suddenly we realized that the gas gauge was telling us we were in trouble. Where was the nearest gas station? Turned out it was 21 miles back the way we’d come. How had we missed it? Did we really need

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An Escape Artist Tells Her Story.

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Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover, 2018, published by Random House, available in a number of formats.Also visit the author’s website at tarawestover.com.

Hi folks! I’m finally back to the blog after five weeks off. My last post was written on May 14, three days before we departed on our big trip to France. My intentions were good about writing some posts from the road, but that never happened. I think I started one post early on and never came back to it; after that I just let it slide. When we got home I had tons of ideas I wanted to write about, but they weren’t the kind of thing that lends itself to an article. Rather, I’m working on a short book, tentatively titled “The Intentional Traveler: An Insanely Detailed and Practical Guide” or some such. Originally I thought of it as a Kindle single and a downloadable PDF, thinking that I’d shoot for about 10,000 words. Well, I’ve written only two sections and am already well over that mark. There’s just so much about traveling, just as there is about life in general, that never gets discussed. Well, I’m your person on the spot for that. I always want to know that backstory, the details, the procedure. If you’ve ever read one of my recipes you’ll know that my notes are sometimes as long as the recipe itself. I want you to know all about how to make it!

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A Bittersweet Farewell–and a Look to the Future

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Overlooking Lawerence and the Kansas River. (Boston Public Library) (cropped).jpg
Old North College, the first building on the University of Kansas campus, at the northeast promontory of Mount Oread, looking north over Lawrence and the Kansas River, ca. 1867. Image accessed via Wikipedia.

I decided to re-post the following here at the Intentional Living blog from my Behind the Music blog. This is my last post for the season. Next fall I’ll do something to amalgamate the two blogs for my subscribers. In the meantime, here’s what I wrote about the lovely piece that we’ll be performing to end our concert. Be sure to come if you’re in the area! It’s going to be great. (And if you come on Friday night you’ll get to attend the reception afterwards, which will include my version of Sally’s Baking Addiction Guinness brownies. If that’s not enough of a reason for you to come, I don’t know what is!) So here’s the post, in its entirety:

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A Blast of Impassioned Pleading for Our Endangered Democracy.

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Suicide of the West: How the Rebirth of Tribalism, Populism, Nationalism, and Identity Politics Is Destroying American Democracy by Jonah Goldberg, available in Kindle, hardback, and audiobook formats through Amazon.com and other outlets. (Link is to Amazon.) The audiobook is highly recommended; if you are not currently a member of Audible.com you can get the book for free if you sign up for an Audible.com membership; access that page here. Visit the author’s website at jonahgoldberg.com.

I have a very simple goal in writing this post, linking to it on Facebook and Twitter, and perhaps sending out a separate e-mail blast: I want to do my small part to make Jonah Goldberg’s new book #1 on the NYT best-seller list. Right now he’s #4 on the combined print/e-book list and #5 on the hardcover-only list. (James Comey’s compendium is #1 on both of those lists; I somehow think I won’t bother with that one.) In order for this much-desired result to occur, people have to buy the book. I re-activated my Audible.com account in order to get the audiobook, all 16 hours and 2 minutes of it. It was well worth my time.

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A Challenging and Informative Book of the Week

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Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on America and the Election of Donald Trump by Michael Isikoff and David Corn, March 2018.

As I often say, I try to keep politics off my Intentional Living blog, but I also like to post about the books I’m currently reading, and sometimes those two areas overlap. Whatever your political leanings, though, I consider this a book required reading as we move ahead into the unknown territory our country is now traversing. (That sounds a little pompous, I guess. After all, the future is always “unknown territory,” isn’t it?) You may remember that I wrote a post about the Gary Kasparov book Winter Is Coming: Why Vladimir Putin and the Enemies of the Free World Must Be Stopped awhile ago, a truly frightening book by someone who has lived through the worst that the Putin regime has yet to offer.

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Time Refuses to Be Managed.

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This building clearly shows the passage of time, don’t it?

Today I sat down to go through an accumulation of notes I’ve taken over the past couple of years, mostly from sermons at my church and lectures at Bible Study Fellowship. I was particularly looking for ideas that I’d scribbled down in the margins about possible blog posts, while also reminding myself of the wonderful spiritual truths that have been showered down upon me from various speakers. I don’t know that I intended to spend quite as much time as I did, but now I have a manageable little pile of notepaper with various areas highlighted. So I decided to go with the idea that ended up on top, quoted above. Here’s the entire quotation:

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I Enter the Wonderful World of Podcasting Myself

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I’m so excited! Jim has just posted my first podcast episode on my political-commentary website, “Intentional Conservative.” Those of you who get my weekly newsletter will perhaps remember that said newsletter came out late last time because we were trying to get the podcast up and running so that I could announce it. Such was not to be, so I went ahead and sent out the newsletter on Wednesday, telling my subscribers that the next one would be this coming Friday, March 16. But since I’m planning to do the podcast weekly, I’d be publicizing two of them at once. So I’m going ahead and sending out this two-post newsletter today. (Note that we’re not yet up on all of the podcast platforms, so you’ll be listening to this first episode directly from the website. But when we do get uploaded or downloaded or whatever, I hope you’ll subscribe in one of the feeds. I’ll notify you through this website when that happens.)

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