Vacations are always too short.

Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi.

Well, generally speaking, anyway.  I suppose it's theoretically possible to stay somewhere long enough  to be bored and ready to come home but I have not had that experience, lol.

We had timeshare points that were going to go away in December; if we didn't use them, we'd lose them.  We only get one week every other year, and we didn't use them last year, thinking we would use them for planned family Disney trip this fall.  Ultimately, though, we decided to stay on Disney property for a number of reasons...which meant we had to use those points.

And we left it too late.  It wasn't a matter of 'where do you want to go?' -- it was 'Oh, gee, what can we get, during a week that we can use it?'

So we ended up at a resort in northern Georgia...that was about 7 miles away from the nearest town, situated near a golf course.

And since they only have two-bedroom units, and 'our'  one-week-every-other-year unit has only one bedroom, 4 days was the max.

But, you know, my idea of a vacation is to go someplace quiet and do ....nothing.  Or something. Sleep late.  Read books.  So 4 days in the middle of nowhere in Georgia really wasn't bad.

It rained the first two days and was gorgeous the other two.

I finally finished a project I started LAST year...when we went to a state park for 3 days and my hubby was half sick so we did pretty much nothing.  That was the last 'no -agenda' vacation, and I thought I could do something specific.

I'd gotten Dr Caroline Leaf's book The Perfect You   when she spoke at our women's conference a few years back.  In the middle of this book is something she calls 'the Unique Qualitative (UQ) Assement Tool'.  I was told it was a 350 - question quiz to help identify how an individual's mind operates.  I thought it would be like all those quizzes you take on Facebook...'Pick the phrase that best describes you', sort of thing, with a key at the back to explain what all the answers mean.

Ha ha and HA!.  It's 350+ essay questions.  7 modules with at least 50 questions in each module. So, I thought last spring, with three days at a state park with basically nothing to do, I should finish easily.

HAHAHA again.  I wrote like a beast, except for a couple of 'let's take a walk' or 'let's play Ticket to Ride' breaks, and I got through FOUR of the seven units.

I puttered around with it at slow moments in the interim, but when we packed up to leave over the weekend I still had the last module to do.  So, I decided that, if I got NOTHING else done while gone, I would finish that last module.

It rained Monday and Tuesday, and it wasn't until Tuesday afternoon that I finished.

Whew.

All totaled, I wrote 119 pages in a college-ruled composition book.

It's the 'Book of Lisa', y'all.

And, here's the kicker, there's no real key to interpreting the data.

Because the awareness comes as you are answering the questions...and then evaluating all the answers you gave for a particular module.  No one sees the answers but you and they don't compare to a standard.  There's no reason not to be brutally honest with yourself, which is good, because this is an exercise in introspection and self awareness.  Some areas I knew I would be strong in, I was.  Some I expected to be strong in, I wasn't.  And I could see that as I answered the questions.  Because I wrote the questions and the answers in the composition book, I can now go back and re-read and consider the impact of those answers.  I think it will take another focused effort to analyze and interpret my answers...and then apply what I learn.

It sounds crazy, just looking at that, but it really was a journey of self-discovery.  It's going to be another journey of  adaptation in some areas.

And I still have to finish reading the last third of the book, lol.

But...hey, I really DID that thing! :-)

We didn't have a view of the mountains like I'd hoped, but we did have a nice open sky.

And you all know...I love the sky...so here's a pic from vacation that seems appropriate.

Story Time

Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

If you hang out on Facebook, you know there are memes and challenges and such that make the rounds...and every once in awhile, someone tags me in one.

Some I skip....because, well, it's just not something I have anything worthwhile to say on the subject..  Some I do when there's a more convenient time frame.

I got tagged in one last week that I decided to participate in.

The idea was that you post a picture of a book you love once a day for seven days...and challenge one other person each day to do the same.

Foster the love of reading!  Find out who loves the same books!  Maybe find another great read that you hadn't met yet!

Of the 7 people I tagged, only one actually did it.  Four gave it a pass...not the right time for them, or they just don't do those things.  Two appeared to be confused by the instructions.

But those things should come with a warning...because I sat down and re-read 5 of the books post haste...as in, I sat up past midnight every night re-reading one of the books I loved.  Here are the 5 I re-read last week:

Granted, most of them are very short.  I didn't re-read the first two that I posted ...Silverlock, by John Meyers Meyers and  C.S. Lewis's Space Trilogy (yeah, I know, that was three books but it's one story, lol)...mostly because I knew it would take more than just a couple of hours to read those, so I resisted the siren call.  But by the third night I failed at resisting and jumped in and read.

I slept really late this morning, making up for lost sleep.

I didn't chose the obvious favorites...I tried to pick books that likely weren't going to show up on someone else's list.  But all of them were books that I have loved for years...although Ender's Shadow is a newcomer to the list that I found within the past 10 - 12 ish years.

But today, thinking about the books, I realized something.  If you asked me what my top favorite books are, the ones I read over and over...the list would be overwhelmingly fiction.  Not completely...some of Madeleine L'Engles non-fiction would be on the list...but generally speaking, my old friends are...stories.  And even the favorite non-fiction are autobiographical.  Which is, of course, story that is factual.

Stories have shaped my world view in a way that non-fiction,  however good, doesn't often do. I have read many really, really good topical books, but...I rarely quote them, and even though I remember that they were good and I learned from them, I can't really articulate what it was.  I can't think of many that I have read more than once

It's no wonder at all why Jesus used story so much.  Story tells truth in a way that we can remember it.  The illustrations of story make the lessons stick.

Something to keep in mind when the creative urge comes...

Tracking the Reading, Book 2

Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

Maybe I should throw out the disclaimer that I'm will not be writing scholarly reviews of literature; just recording my off-the-cuff reactions to books as I read them, mostly just to document that I AM reading through my book stack.

And book number two wasn't even ON the bookstack.

On a whim, I borrowed a book from my son in law, the Princess's hubby, on New Year's Eve.  With my kids all being huge Marvel geeks, and kinda pulling me along with them (I've even been into the Spiderverse already), I thought it might be a good idea to read some of the lore that plays into the Marvel Cinematic Universe (the MCU, to the savvy).  Neil Gaiman is a name that is familiar to me, although I honestly haven't read any of his other works.  And it is interesting that his introduction to the Norse mythology was...Marvel Comics.  He, quite simply, is recording Norse mythology in a modern voice, after searching and researching and reading and studying what  there was available.

The characters really aren't like the MCU representations,  but that's ok.  They felt, well, more Norse.  More mythic.  I felt very much like I felt after reading the adventures of El-ahrairah from Watership Down....stories told over and over, with a little spice added or different emphasis made by each teller of the tale.  Some were funny, some were gruesome, some were somber.  Ragnarok is shattering and heartbreaking but there is hope.

It was an easy read;  the language is not high blown or archaic.  If you're determined that the MCU version is not to be disturbed this won't work for you...but the roots of Thor's MCU story are clearly  here.

And, to folks who might not understand why I'm talking about Norse Mythology in a Bible Study Blog...well,  it does interest me to see the difference between the gods venerated by other cultures and the God of the Judeo-Christian world.  Just my personal quirk, I guess.  And it was the second book of the year.

My general reading had fallen way, way off.  Well, my Bible reading did, too, although not as badly.  I was at least somewhat intentional about Bible reading. So...here's to 2019 and reading again.

And  now I can return the book to its owner.  That's important, y'all.  Always return the book.

Tracking the Reading - 2019

Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

I've been reflecting on the pile of books I wrote about back in October.  (Pause for mental processing of how long ago that post was...I honestly thought I'd written it in early December).

I need to be intentional about getting through that stack.  So, by way of being somewhat accountable, I thought I'd do a little post as I finish a book this year.

The first one up I'd saved to read over Christmas break and I actually read it Tuesday evening, so it's the first book of the year.

And, full disclosure, I actually know the author but I'm sad to say that, although we're facebook friends and just live a few miles apart, we move in completely different circles and haven't seen each other in years, which is more an indication of how crazy busy life can be than anything else.  But I ordered my copy from Amazon, same as anyone.

And I really enjoyed the book.  Of course, I am pretty partial to anything that involves A Christmas Carol, so that was already in its favor.  Dixie imagines Bob Cratchit's back story...and does a particularly good job of answering the question, 'Why on earth didn't the poor guy just get another job?'  You may or may not agree with how she handled his relationship with Jacob Marley, but it does add an interesting layer to her story.  It was a quick read; I started reading after the kids left around 8 PM and finished it without staying up excessively late, with a smile on my face.

If you, like me, enjoy all things Christmas Carol and, like me, don't have a problem with 'how it might have been', it's worth a read.

And that's one book off the stack, to which I've added at least three more since that post...

Yes, I'm definitely going to have to be intentional about my reading this year.