Bowl Season Over

So, seeing as I don't have TV, I have to admit to not having actually watched a single bowl game. I keep up with a lot of college football by reading about it online the day or two after. If I really care about the game, I might have ESPN real-time game-tracker on the computer and check the score now and again. Here are some of the highlights (for me at least):

• BYU lost to Arizona in the Las Vegas Bowl
• TCU pulled off a slim victory over Boise State
• leaving Utah the only undefeated in the country (and national champion) with their win over Alabama
• the Sooners should have won last night and I would have been the winner of the family Bowl Pick 'em Game
  

and while it is no bowl-season news... BYU will be playing Oklahoma in the Dallas Cowboys brand-new, huge stadium for their season opener next season. We have to hope that BYU doesn't humiliate themselves too much...

So, until another college football season...

I am not the master of anything. I have always dabbled in too many things. My goal for this year is honing my skills at one or two things and not be going in so many directions. I am concentrating on my drawing skills with led pencils.I got some for Christmas. I am getting rid of some of my stamping stuff. Not all of it but if I haven't used it since I have been in her it is history.
BEV and I are reading the Doctrine and Covenants and studying too. this is our 3rd time but we are still being edified by reading it.
I am working on my clutter issues. It is important when I am is such a small space.

STAND IN HOLY PLACES

KEEP THE FAITH

FEAR NOT

lOVE MOTHER, GRANDMA MAARILYN AND mARILYN

Addition

I should have said I am picking up my Russian reading where I left off a few years ago. I've had War and Peace and Anna Karinna sitting on my shelf for 15 years now and just haven't got around to opening them.

I've read "A day in the life of Ivan" and "the Gulag Archipelego" and "Crime and Punishment" and "Fathers and sons"? and some Pushkin. I've studied Russian history and Russian art and culture and some literature. And I've taken 2 semesters of Russian in college so I have a smidgen of Russian language - and of course, we live surrounded by Russians. I think personally knowing the Russians has helped to understand the things that I have studied. So I appreciate the warnings about "War and Peace" but unfortunately, it is time for me to dig in and tackel Tolstoy. I actually like what I have read of his before. I'm not that big of fan of Pushkin, but I don't like poetry, so that probably contributes to that.

Challenge for 2009

We come from a very intelligent family. I think sometimes the frustrations we face in life come from boredom and a lack of intellectual challenge in our lives.

So here is my challenge to each of us this year: Pick a subject and focus on mastering it.

(I'm still working on collage and altered books in my art life and I also plan to attack the Russians in my reading - I'm starting with War and Peace. Spiritually, I am looking to attack the writings of Isaiah. They totally mystify me - no, that's not accurate, they CONFUSE ME and I just don't get them ! ! !)

SO : What talent will you work to improve?

What book will you read next?

What subject will you conquer?

NY Day celebration

We had our friends Dick and Greg over to have our goodluck meal of blackeyed peas (cooked this year as a bean soup sort of dish with sausage, beef broth, lots of garlic and thyme) and home-grown mustard greens and red kale. It was yummy. Susan made cornbread.
Then we all went together to see Milk, a very good but sad movie. Sean Penn was astonishing.

Now our celebrations are over and we are working on our end of year accounting. Oh joy.

Love to you all and best in the new year, Sandra and Susan