Monthly Archives: September 2007

Roman Games: What I did

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We played outside games this week. Here’s how class went.

Drew map of Mediterranean area
Discussed Alexander the Great (376 BC), in regard to conquering Greece, heading to Persia, dying of malaria.
Also discussed in terms of the Festival of Lights.
Punic Wars 1-3 from Kidipedia.
I. Carthage is on island near Africa with one other city.
City and Carthage got in disagreement.
Other city asked Rome to come help.
At beg. Carthage winning b/c of superior ships. Romans copied them.
Rome whopped Carthage and demanded tribute.
II. Carthage went to southern Spain and began attacking cities to rule.
Needed the silver mines of s. Spain.
One of the cities asked for Rome’s protection.
Rome had northern Spain, b/c that is where the gold mines were.
Carthage was beaten again.
III. Hannibal brought elephants over the Alps to attack Rome.
Rome attacked the city of Carthage.
Gov’t demanded Hannibal come home.
Elephants died.
Rome beat Carthage.
Took everyone off as slaves, demolished the city.
Story told that they salted the entire city. (This did not come out as a story until later, so we do not know the veracity of it.)
So, Rome is now in charge.
Talked about Roman children’s games, using list from Ancient Rome: Children:

rattles
scooters
jump rope
yo-yos
seesaws
swings
kites
dolls made from wax or clay – Some had jointed legs and arms.
balls
board games
hobbyhorses
carts hitched to goats, ponies, or dogs
models of animals and people
hoops with pieces of metal on them like bells
stilts
weight lifting

I added paper airplanes to the list and asked them to raise their hand if they thought it was a game the Romans played. No one raised their hands for the first two and after that it was about half and half.

Then discussed how Roman weddings are.
Boys older than 14, girls older than 12.
Engagement ring, 3rd finger left hand. Believed a vein led straight to heart, seat of the emotions.
Night before wedding, girl gives away all her toys to other family members.
At wedding, hold hands to show consent.
She wears a white dress with a red veil.
They eat a cake. (offered to Juno)
Groom carries bride over threshold.
(Ancient Rome: Children)

Showed fresco of girls playing in bikinis from Aerobiologicalengineering.

Did not show naked boys playing soccer, but did tell about Cicero’s description of a man getting a shave from a barber and dying from having the ball hit his head. (ABE’s Roman Ball Games)

Then we went outside and played Roman kids’ games.

Somewhere I found these rules for Trigon.
3 players in a triangle.
3 balls.
Throw them to each other in no order, trying not to drop them on the ground.
Wiffle balls made catching them harder, but worked well.

Jar
One person sits on ground in the “jar.”
Others try to touch him without being touched in return.
Each one he tags becomes part of the jar collection.
This continues till all or most have been tagged.

Blind man’s bluff
In Roman version, people must call out. (probably where Marco Polo comes from)
So one blind man, group. Each tag makes a person out.

Kids loved playing these games.
(Romans also played Dodge Ball if I could get a ball for next time.)

Goals: One reached

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and the reward:

“At 175 R and both boys go with me for one bike ride in the next week. The boys would only ride 15 minutes each. The boys would also lift weights with me once.”

So that’s where I am now. My bigger clothes are fitting better now.

Fire fishing

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Discovery Archaeology has an article on fire fishing from ancient times. The New Testament mentions the men fishing all night and finding no fish, then Jesus commanding them to cast their nets back in and the boats almost floundering (no pun intended) from so many fish.

Fishermen around areas mentioned in the New Testament worked the night shift, suggests fishing gear found in a 7th century shipwreck off the coast of Dor, Israel, west of Galilee, where Jesus is said to have preached.

The standout item among the found gear is a fire basket, the first evidence for “fire fishing” in the ancient eastern Mediterranean. Early images and writings indicate fires were lit in such baskets, which were suspended in giant lantern devices from the end of fishing boats.

Light emitted from the fire both attracted and illuminated fish, as well as other sea creatures, like octopus, which men then speared or captured in nets.
…
The researchers, from the Israel Antiquities Authority, added that the ancient Greek philosopher Plato (approximately 428-348 B.C.) wrote about the practice, which involved striking fish forcefully from above or below the water.

The fact that Plato should write about this method “reflects the importance of fire fishing in the ancient Mediterranean,” according to the researchers, and reveals that fire fishing was practiced throughout the New Testament era and for several centuries thereafter.

This might be a good point for Dielli when we get to the third book.

“Heavy”

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A heart becomes heavy when it is carrying bad news around. A friend of mine knew that her finances were difficult. Her husband had made some bad investments and they’d been forced to take a small second mortgage on the house to tide them over. That was over a year ago.

Just this last week she found out that her husband hadn’t been working at all for at least the last two years. I don’t know what he had been doing when he said he was working, but he hasn’t.

They have nothing.

He left.

And she and the two kids were forced to leave as well. The house was not theirs. She is living in an apt where, when she plugged in her hair dryer, the whole electrical system went down.

I saw her not too long ago. I guess it was before all this went down. I hope so, anyway, because she didn’t tell me anything about it.

She is working a job that is just above minimum wage and has been for the last two years, while trying to go to school. I doubt she’s still trying to go to school.

But my heart aches for her.

Aching is not a good thing. I’ve prayed. But what else can I do? Get a gift card to Wal Mart. That might be useful.

10 mph

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Yes, that’s slow for a car, but today I went the whole 10 miles, after getting lost a few times, and got home in an hour.

Now if I can only do that for fifteen hours in two days, I’ll be ready for the MS150. I’m not ready yet for sure.

How to raise low cholesterol

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Most people in the country have to worry about high cholesterol. (My hubby’s is over 300.) But mine is very low. Having researched side effects of low cholesterol quickly for Mary, I learned that some of my fogginess, lack of concentration, and lower brain function might be because of my low cholesterol.

So, how do I raise my cholesterol?

Eat saturated fats. (There are conflicting reports. Some say this might help protect against coronary problems; some say it might cause them. But my cholesterol is low enough, I can probably add this without a problem.)

Exercise. Exercise on a daily basis, what happened to taking days off?, can raise your HDLs. Those are, as my mom puts it “your Happy cholesterol.” Those are the ones you want to go up. So my exercising will help raise that.

Lose weight or maintain a healthy weight. My guess is maintaining a healthy weight won’t raise your cholesterol. But maybe losing weight will. I don’t see how, but I’m not an MD.

Making sure enough magnesium is in the diet. I’m not sure how you do that. Take a vitamin. Eat veggies and fruit. (That’s what the research report said. But are all veggies and fruit high in magnesium or are they just trying to get you to eat those?)

High magnesium foods: artichokes, whole wheat flour, almonds, cashews, black beans, navy beans, white beans, pumpkin seeds, spinach, tomatoes.

Checking out my numbers. According to most of the websites I’m in the optimal range. I’ve got under 200 total, under 100 LDL, and over 50 HDL. But, according to the few websites that deal with low cholesterol problems, I might, indeed, have a problem.

Oh well. I’m eating more beans and nuts. Hopefully that will help.

PLEASE if you are taking a drug,

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check out the side effects.

I had someone comment on my blog here asking if their low cholesterol could cause muscular and skeletal pain. I’m not an MD, but I can surf the net with the best of them.

I looked it up. No was the answer to her question.

BUT she’s taking a drug whose side effect causes the breakdown of the skeletal muscular tissue. The site says “Call your doctor at once.”

So please, if you are taking medicines, review the side effects periodically. You may not have had them at the beginning, but once the drug built up in your system, you may have them now.

And, Mary, please call your doctor and let me know how everything turns out.

Weird church email addresses

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I was searching through the online directory for my denomination. Many of our churches do not appear to have a church email address. Some of them are clearly the preacher’s address. But one was a hotmail account, which always strikes me as strange, and one was a “viagrafix.com” address. Very weird.

Getting better

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In the last six weeks I’ve lost ten pounds. That would be way more impressive if it weren’t for the fact that the ten weeks before that is when I gained those ten pounds. Now I’m back where I was for over a year and a half. And I’m trying to go down.

I looked over my notebook and 9/04 I weighed 185. (What I weighed 6 weeks ago.) Then 2/05 I weighed 169. I hope to drop faster than that this time. Five months for 16 pounds… Then 5/05 I weighed 155. Three more months for 14 pounds.

So, if I lose now like I lost then, it will be eight months before I’m at a “good” weight. But that’s okay. This time I am going to get to a good weight and stay there. I’m going to keep up my careful eating and my exercise. I am not going to get frustrated when my weight doesn’t go down for two months. If it doesn’t, I will simply celebrate that it hasn’t gone up.

I am also improving in my exercise.

I haven’t done as well at weights as I would like or even as well as I have done in the past. But I can get better quickly just by doing a few things differently. I’m working on those.

My aerobic exercise is good. I have been adding 10 minutes a week to my bike riding. So I started at 30 minutes a time, then went to 40; now I am at 50 minutes a ride. I went approximately 8.5 miles each the last two days. It wasn’t even particularly hard. I wouldn’t be able to keep that up for ten hours, but I am getting quite a bit faster.

I’ve also gotten my medicines organized in a way that I think is helping me. It’s not helping my hair, which was why I started re-dosing, but I do think I am doing better.

As far as school goes, I am making progress.

I am getting my grading done before it is due. Sometimes a week in advance is finished. But at least I’m not grading papers the last hour before class again. That’s a plus.

In addition, M and I are staying on track more for school. He’s got to stay up with Geography and Algebra II, since he is taking them from someone else. But we are also keeping up with biology and reading. I need to get it in gear for writing, though. We haven’t been doing that. I think I’m going to do Monday and Wednesday mornings for reading and assignments. Then he’ll have stuff due for me on Friday. But I’m getting that done better, too.

I’ve prepared for my history and poetry class ahead of time. That’s worked out fairly well. I do need to print some things for next week’s history class, but I know what I want to do. We’ll be ending the Olympics phase and moving on to ballooning. That’s a big jump in time, but I haven’t found anything to put in the middle.

So, overall, I’d say I’m a little ahead of where I was last year, but not as good as I want to be.

God, please help me.

I haven’t thought economics was behind terrorism

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and I still don’t think it is in general. Remember the eight doctors in the UK?

But apparently some low level fighters may, in fact, be fighting because it’s a job when they don’t have one.

If you want to see why I think so, and how the US is working to turn that around, read this military news article about Gen. Stone and the education program in place in Iraqi prisons.

How to live longer

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Medical News Today says that restricting your calorie intake actually causes your body to stay alive longer. Apparently eating less, or eating nothing at all for fasts of 48 hours, causes production of anti-aging compounds.

So if you want to live longer, you can eat less.

I want to live longer. I am presently trying to re-train my body to eat less.

(I’ve lost 4.5 pounds so far.)

Truck stops on the internet highway.

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Church loses tax-exempt status for property because it refused homosexuals the right to marry there.
Read it at Life Site. What happened to the “We don’t care about the churches we just want the same legal rights as heterosexuals” that the gay-lesbian alliance used to shout? Guess it “changed” once they found out that the churches weren’t going to automatically think that what they were doing was right.

Columbia University Dean says Hitler welcome. Ahjimenihad is too.
This story is in the NY Daily News. Of course, according to the same article, when Columbia invited Nazi Germany’s ambassador over for a speech and cocktail party, Columbia’s students revolted. Haven’t heard that happening this time.

What is a tyrannical anti-US homosexual-murdering military-killing women-murdering head of state doing coming to one of our schools? At least NY didn’t grant him the access he wanted at Ground Zero. I imagine he’d have used that at home for “this is what else we’re going to do” propaganda.

American students flunk civics test.
This is a 60 question test, on various subjects, some of which I question as “US,” such as the meaning of the term junta. And about four of the questions are hard to understand… That is, I read them two different ways and then had to guess which they meant. But otherwise the test is interesting. The major findings are here and you can also take the test yourself.