AHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

Ahhh!!!! This morning , I woke up on the right side of the bed, & saw the most unusual thing.... maybe it's side- effects from the medication my doctor gave me.. noseis-aflaris..........

The challenger accepts his own challenge~~~

Picture 1- Sylva's lamp; scapular at the top...

#2- Catherine Smith's rocking chair...

#3- Drafting table... a mess, yes~~~

#4- Footstool that used to be located in front of the fireplace...

Eleven Things:

1. Reinvent your interests

2. Be all that you wish to be

3. Surround yourself with..........

4. Don't forget to enjoy yourself

5. Rejuvenate often

6. Stay in motion

7. Encourage others

8. Show by example

9. Create something, anything

10. Be patient, but don't procrastinate

11. Don't forget to dream~~~~

May peacefulness find you daily!!!

Is this working???

Wow, I made it !!!

Christopher just taught me how to post things on this blog!!! Thanks 1st Godson!!! I'm in the loop...I'm in the loop...I'm in the loop !!! :) Aunt Ivan

This is funny, but painful... Simon and Isaiah in their glory

What Happens With Procrastination

I had to read 1984 as my chemistry book report. It is a great story, but the book report that followed it was about enough to shove a gun in my mouth... not literally. All I can say is Big Brother is watching.

Merry Christmas from the NICHOLS Family!

Best Laid Plans

Kathleen, John, Paul and I went to Cornwall, Ont last night to see a speaker, author Matthew Kelly. I read one of his books and it was very useful and inspiring. Of course, the boys were less than enthusiastic, but Kathleen and I bulldozed ahead, drove to Cornwall had dinner with the boys and went to the General Vanier auditorium in the company of about 2000 other eager enthusiasts.

To give you an idea, this is what we were supposed to hear:

Instead, a brave lady took the stage and explained to the throng that Mr. Kelly would not be coming -- immigration, you know -- and thus, no Matthew Kelly. John visibily moved his body and head as if to say, "I told you so... This was a bad idea from the get-go." I think John and Paul were of the mind that this is what happens to parents who force their kids to go to "lame" events.

Instead, the Bishop of the area, Paul-Andre Durosher, gamely, on an hour's notice, came to talk. Candidly, he said that he'd had a rough day and had just laid down to take a nap, questioning whether he'd even go to the talk when he got a call to give the talk. He did a bang-up job and it was fun.

Kathleen and I are off to Quebec City, Que. 25 years married. See you later.

25 Years of LOVE

Today, we celebrated Mom and Dad's 25th wedding anniversary. 25 YEARS! Wow. And what a couple. They eloped on December 17, 1984 in Notre Dame Church. Uncle Jay, Paul and Tom heard from a little bird that they were planning to get married and showed up to the wedding to be their witnesses. This morning after mass they renewed their vows.

Later this afternoon we picked out the perfect Christmas tree. It was a beautiful day.

To celebrate, Mom and Dad are going to Quebec City. They leave this Wednesday. Say a few prayers for them today, and this year. Personally, I have never met a more beautiful couple.

A Fox May Steal Your Hen, Sir

A fox may steal your hens, Sir,
A Whore your health and Pence, Sir,
Your daughter rob your Chest, Sir,
Your Wife may steal your Rest, Sir,
A Thief your Goods and Plate,
A Thief your Goods and Plate.
But this is all but picking,
With Rest, Pence, Chest, and Chicken,
If ever was decreed, Sir,
If Lawyer's Hand is fee'd, Sir.
He steals your whole Estate,
He steals your whole Estate.

This tune was used in the comedy Love for Love by William Congreve (1670-1729) as A Soldier and A Sailor. The music was by John Eccles (1668-1735). John Gay wrote these words to the Eccles tune for The Beggar's Opera (1728).

The tune is sung by the fence Peachum, who has learned that his daughter Polly has wed the highwayman Macheath. He determines to turn Macheath in - to gain the reward and so that he can protect his daughter's dower.

Yet, as so often is the case, the dig at the lawyer is the punch-line, even though the darn play wasn't even about lawyers at all. Such is the injustice visited upon my profession...

Here's Something:
More than one-hundred and fifty thousand books were published in 2009. Three centuries ago in all of the British mainland colonies of America, only thirty-one books were printed (if you discount a handful of broadsheets, proclamations, and volumes of laws). The pickings are slim—and grim—but here are the Top Ten Books of 1709:
1. Daniel Leeds. “The American Almanack.” All but three books published in 1709 were religious tracts, printed in Boston, and nearly all of them have to do with the day of judgment. Leeds’s almanac, printed in New York, is the only truly secular publication of the year, which fact alone makes it a stand out. It also boasts some wonderfully bad doggerel: “His neighbours Horse that over his fence doth neigh / Will make his owner, for’s presumption, pay.” At least the horse isn’t dead.
2. Thomas Doolittle. “A Prospect of Eternity.” For its cheering message about the importance of “weaning our hearts of this world.”
3. “An Appeal of Some of the Unlearned.” An anonymous response to a treatise called “An Appeal to the Learned.” There were no book reviews in 1709 (the book review was invented around 1750) and this exchange is as close as American letters gets, that year, to a back-and-forth. It’s not as cheeky as it sounds, though; the debate was theological, and the unlearned demurred: “we are not Contentious. We only Enquire.”
4. Cotton Mather. “The Cure for Sorrow.” Nine of the books printed in 1709 were written by Mather, a Boston minister, and two more by his father, Increase, who was, at the time, the president of Harvard College, which makes it hard to leave them off the list. Their literary efforts account for more than a third of the year’s books. This one has got the best subtitle: “An Essay Directing Persons under Sadness What Course to take, that they may be no more Sad.”
5. Increase Mather. “Solemn Advice to Young Men Not to Walk in the Wayes of Their Heart and in Sight of Their Eyes; but to remember the Day of Judgment.” The most popular book of 1709, it was already in its second edition, and saw a third before the year was out.
6. John Fox. “The Door of Heaven Open and Shut.” Fox, a lesser Doolittle, in my view, was better known for his earlier treatise, “Time and the End of Time,” which his Boston printer hawked on the title page (as in, “Fox, author of the bestselling End of Time!”).
7. Cotton Mather. “The Golden Curb for the Mouth.” A sermon against swearing: “O Sottish and Monstrous Impiety!”
8. Bathsheba Bowers. “An Alarm Sounded to Prepare the Inhabitants of the World to Meet the Lord in the Way of His Judgments.” The only book that year written by a woman, it’s twenty-two pages long, and Bowers spends a good three of them apologizing for having written it.
9. “The Massachusetts Psalter.” A book of psalms, translated into Algonquian, and set into type by a Nipmuck Indian named James Printer, whose printer’s fonts were, last year, discovered during an archaeological dig in Harvard Yard.
10. I’m holding this place for Benjamin Franklin, who was born in Boston in 1706, began his apprenticeship at his brother’s print shop in 1718, and became the scourge of the Mathers three years later, when he broke upon the literary stage in the guise of a fictional character whose name was a parody of two of Cotton Mather’s more dreadful sermons, “Silentiarius” and “Essays to Do Good.” In 1721, the sixteen-year-old Franklin, who would help topple the Puritan theocracy and change the course of American letters forever, by making our books better, introduced himself to the world: "I am courteous and affable, good humour’d (unless I am first provok’d,) and handsome, and sometimes witty, but always, Sir, Your Friend and Humble Servant, SILENCE DOGOOD."

Here's Somthing Else:
Here is the Current Best-Seller's List for Non-Fiction:
1 GOING ROGUE, by Sarah Palin. (Harper/HarperCollins, $28.99.) A memoir by the former Alaska governor and vice-presidential candidate.
2 HAVE A LITTLE FAITH, by Mitch Albom. (Hyperion, $23.99.) A suburban rabbi and a Detroit pastor teach lessons about the comfort of belief.
3 OPEN, by Andre Agassi. (Knopf, $28.95.) The tennis champion’s autobiography.
4 SUPERFREAKONOMICS, by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. (Morrow/HarperCollins, $29.99.) A scholar and a journalist apply economic thinking to everything: the sequel.
5 ARGUING WITH IDIOTS, written and edited by Glenn Beck, Kevin Balfe and others. (Mercury Radio Arts/Threshold Editions, $29.99.) The case against big government. (†)
6 TRUE COMPASS, by Edward M. Kennedy. (Twelve, $35.) The late senator’s autobiography.
7 A SIMPLE CHRISTMAS, by Mike Huckabee. (Sentinel, $19.95.) Christmas memories from the former Arkansas governor and Republican presidential aspirant. (†)
8 WHAT THE DOG SAW, by Malcolm Gladwell. (Little, Brown, $27.99.) A decade of New Yorker essays.
9 THE IMPERIAL CRUISE, by James Bradley. (Little, Brown, $29.99.) In 1905, during a diplomatic journey organized by Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft negotiated secret agreements with several Asian countries.
10 OUTLIERS, by Malcolm Gladwell. (Little, Brown, $27.99.) Why some people succeed, from the author of “Blink.”