Mucho Miscellany

1. I think we may have figured out one way to have four kids without going a bit crazy. I am facing a 40 hour work week (1/2 clinicals, 1/2 work) in the fall, and had decided we needed a housecleaner. Instead, we all started cleaning the house together on Saturday mornings...Ar organizes the kids with a to do list, I clean the bathrooms. Of course there is some whining, but the kids all get their allowances upon completion, so it goes pretty well. I am very impressed with how well the kids can do things like mopping, sweeping, and vacuuming.
2. Never doubt the power of the jinx. Yesterday at work, I did the unthinkable. I uttered the word quiet at the end of my shift. It had been such a great day after two weeks of being slammed. You are never to utter the word quiet in a hospital. Within a half an hour - a patient went into a-fib and likely had a heart attack and my other patient had a blood transfusion reaction (which involves a sudden fever of 103 or so and rigors so bad he was shaking his bed).
3. Pandora Radio is one of the best things I have ever found on the web...a friend of Ar's was listening to it at http://www.pandora.com/. You can create your own radio station by picking one or two of your favorite songs and it streams songs they think you will like. I have Clash Radio while Ar has "Wicked Cool" and "Strange Folk". It plays a lot of music I have never heard, but really like - especially songs by decently well known bands that don't normally get played on the radio. I don't know why it thinks I like Belle & Sebastian, though, because I don't.
4. Hooray for summer and farmer's markets. I have a CSA share and am blowing the rest of my grocery budget in an orgy of fruit and berry eating. Yum. Tonight I have been struck by the dessert muse and am going to make a raspbery-peach trifle.
5. Tomorrow Ar and I are taking 3/4 of the kids to Vancouver, WA to sit in on a talk by Tom Sine, who wrote The New Conspirators and started the Mustard Seed House in Seattle. He is one of a handful of people on the forefront of the 'emergent church' that are community oriented and focus on social justice. It is right up the alley of what we have been doing in our home church group. My understanding of the bigger picture is a bit fuzzy...hopefully, we will all learn a bit more. One of my favorite books written about this type of church is Irresistable Revolution by Shane Claiborne.
6. I think we are going to have an outdoor movie night next weekend. We will probably watch Howl's Moving Castle. We are trying to pick a movie that is good for kids and adults - not an easy task.