This is Red, she's not happy.

Red thought that when we moved to from Michigan to the beach here in Virginia we were leaving snow and sleet behind us.

You see Red has been a very reliable traveling companion. She has gotten me home through blizzards, whiteouts, ice, and snow more times that I can tell. Red is getting up there in age and she thought that she was leaving all the bad weather behind. I've always tried to reward Red for being such a good car by using good gas, washing her, and making sure she was full of oil. In Michigan Red was even able to live under a carport so she hasn't really gotten buried under snow in a long time.

When we drove through the mountains of VW red got excited because she was leaving the Midwest behind and moving to the warm south. Red really likes to go on road trips and was happiest this summer when she was able to bathe in the warm beach on Assateague Island.

Now Red feels like I've betrayed her, she is once again covered in multiple layers of white stuff. Red can't wait until the nice warm weather of summer comes again. Living in the south her oil has thinned out and she finds it really cold to be buried in snow again. Red is also upset because no one else in this state knows how to drive in this weather so she is stuck in the street buried in snow for who knows how long.

I hope she forgives me, I guess I'll go try and dig her out latter.

New Year, New Post

So another one of my New Year resolutions has been to post a new blog entry at least twice a month. Since you always have to keep a resolution for at least the first month of the New Year here is my second blog post.

I rang in the New Year with a visit to my grandparents in Baltimore. It's so nice to live close to Granny and Pop-Pop and to not have the hasle of flying. After spending a few days with them I decided to stop by D.C. for the afternoon.

I first went to the Air and Space museum where a special art exhibit was being presented of Apollo 14 astronaut Alan Bean's paintings. I have previously seen his work in a book but it was so much better in person. He uses his moon boots, moon dust, moon rake, and space suit pieces in all of his paintings and they are truly breathtaking.

The Air and Space museum also houses some of the most famous pieces of aviation history Apollo 11 command module, Apollo 11 and 16 moon suits, Mercury 7 capsule, Amelia Earhart's leather jacket, the plane Howard Hughes raced, the wright flyer, etc. It is a really neat museum.

I then went to the American history museum and went on a pilgrimage that every foodie must do. The reason, Julia Child's kitchen!! It was so much fun to see her handwriting on cookbooks, Le Cordon Bleu deploma, and the famous mortar and pestle that she describes in "My Life In France".

I had never been to the American History Museum before and I highly recommend everyone go. If an artifact was significant in the course of this nation it probably is there! I saw the star spangled banner that flew over Ft. McHenry, Dorothy's ruby red slippers, the original Kermit the frog puppet, General Sherman's black charger, the banged up file cabinets from the Watergate apartments, and the list goes on. This was a really neat museum!

Year End Books In Review

One of the things I was looking forward too after graduation was being able to read again. I tend to read a lot of non-fiction but this year I tried to branch into reading more fiction with mixed results. After looking over my book list I tried to pick my top 5 books for this last year (out of 45):

1. Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher. Also known as Princess Leah Carrie Fisher has lead an interesting life. This is a very short book based on a one woman show she created that talks about her struggle with mental illness. Ms. Fisher has a great sense of humor (as should anyone who wears a metal bikini which is preserved on film for posterity) and there were several point in this book which had me laughing out loud.

2. Assignment in Brittany: Helen MacInnes. I love Helen MacInnes books, they are part spy thriller, part romance, and involve exotic locations. I've only got about 9 more books written by her that I haven't read yet and I'm trying to ration them. If your looking for an exciting, interesting, and not too complicated author you can't go wrong with one of Ms. MacInnes books.

3. The Terminal Spy: Alan S. Cowell. This book documents the first act of nuclear terrorism when Alexander Litvinenko, a former KGB agent, was killed by a plutonium pellet injected into his leg. This book details an interesting history of the fall of the Soviet Union and the still cold war.

4. Red Storm Rising: Tom Clancy. I love Jack Ryan. This however is not a Ryan story. Instead it focuses on a world war started by Russia. Even though this book is long (like all of Clancy's books) I had a really hard time putting this one down, it was a real page turner from beginning to end.

5. Plague Ship: Clive Cussler. If your looking for an action filled fiction book involving a Scientology like cult, biological terrorism, and the high seas then this is the book for you. I actually checked this out as a book on tape and it made commutes in rush hour traffic much better.

I've decided to set a very ambitious reading goal for next year. Looking on my bookshelves I realised that I've got some wonderful books on Christian thought and theology that I've always wanted to read but haven't yet had the chance. So I've decided to try and read these 12 books in the next year:

Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters: C.S. Lewis
The Sovereignty of God: A.W. Pink
Orthodoxy: G.K. Chesterton
Desiring God: John Piper
Foundations of the Christian Faith: James Boyce
The Grand Weaver: Ravi Zacharias
The Knowledge of the Holy: A.W. Tozer
The God Who Is There: Francis Schaffer
The Hole In Our Gospel: Richard Stearns

Quite a list, who knows if I'll make it.