Check out this video. Dinosaurs fit in with the Bible just fine:

(Here's a direct link to the video in case this doesn't play)

Yep, I really believe this! No kidding!

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When stuff in my life goes topsy turvy, like this week, I try to remember that God is in charge. The thing is, we just don't know what his plans for us are. So, this passage of the Bible has been playing itself in my head today. I just thought I would share it:

Ecclesiastes 3

1 There is a time for everything,
       and a season for every activity under heaven:
2 a time to be born and a time to die,
       a time to plant and a time to uproot,

3 a time to kill and a time to heal,
       a time to tear down and a time to build,

4 a time to weep and a time to laugh,
       a time to mourn and a time to dance,

5 a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
       a time to embrace and a time to refrain,

6 a time to search and a time to give up,
       a time to keep and a time to throw away,

7 a time to tear and a time to mend,
       a time to be silent and a time to speak,

8 a time to love and a time to hate,
       a time for war and a time for peace.

I hope it can help you sometime like it helps me.

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Our parrot, Peanut Boy died tonight. Peanut Boy was a Timneh African Grey parrot, and a very loving member of our family.

His last owner, an elderly man, died. Poor Peanut Boy had been bonded with his owner, and was grieving thereafter. He had pulled out many of his feathers and was in very poor shape. The man's widow was no solace for Peanut Boy, and she gave up and decided to find him a new home.

Most of our pets come from sad situations, and when I saw Peanut Boy, with his feathers all chewed up, my heart broke for him.

I brought him home and he became a member of our family. In time, Peanut Boy fell in love with my hubby, and his feathers slowly recovered.

He was bonded to my hubby, like my hubby was his mate. Peanut Boy would sit on my hubby's shoulder and whisper sweet nothings into my hubby's ear. We would pause the TV and just listen to Peanut Boy and smile at each other. Peanut Boy will be very much missed.

We are very happy that Peanut Boy was able to find a second love in his life after his old owner died. We will miss him very much, but we are consoled with the thought that he was a happy bird till the day he died.

Dear God,

Please accept our Peanut Boy into your arms.

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Some of you might have noticed that I mention God in many places all through my space. "How come?", you might ask. Well, I like to talk about my favorite things on my space. As a born again Christian, my relationship with God is my very favorite thing.

My relationship with God is especially important to me since I've only believed in God for eleven years out of the over fifty years I have lived. I like my life much better now that I have Jesus in it.

Another of my favorite things is telling other people the reasons why I believe in God. Before I believed in God, I never knew that there were logical reasons why a logical person could believe that God exists. But, there are logical reasons to believe in God.

On my space, in the top corner, I have "My Motto". In part, it says:

"... Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have ..." from the Bible: 1 Peter 3:15.

I am always "prepared to give an answer" because I've compiled a website to do just that. I made my little website X-Evolutionist.com to talk specifically about "The Reasons Why I Believe in God".

In closing, I'm going to quote my favorite Bible verse:

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Genesis 1:1.

Thanks for reading this far down.

Sincerely,

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In "A Charlie Brown Christmas" Charlie Brown asks: "Isn't there anyone out there who can tell me what Christmas is all about?"

Linus steps up and says:

"And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the fields, keeping watch over their flocks by night. And lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the lord shone round about them, and they were so afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not, for behold, I bring unto you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you this day is born in the City of Bethlehem, a Savior, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; you shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel, a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God, and saying, 'Glory to God in the highest, and on Earth peace, good will toward men'".

That's what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.

That's my favorite part of A Charlie Brown Christmas, when Linus quotes Luke chapter two from the Bible.

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Spring and Fall are my favorite times of the year. I love to spend a lot of my free time outside in my little paradise in the backyard enjoying God's creation. From my comfy seat on the patio, I can see a lot of what God has made: Trees, sky, clouds, wild birds, squirrels...

Also, I have my own pets in the backyard: My two free-range box turtles, Timmy and Tommy, always have free run of the backyard. We give them fruit and vegetables, but they also like to eat whatever goodies they can find, including bugs and worms.

I also have my forty-something goldfish in the fishpond my hubby built for me. I love to watch them swim around. It's very relaxing!

My two bunnies, Cadbury and Hudson, have a nice, private yard of their own, but when I am outside I open their gate and let them romp through the entire backyard. I love to watch them run laps around the pond. They climb up on the hillside where the waterfall comes down, and play King of the Hill, then jump over the waterfall and keep romping. They are very athletic and fun to watch.

Then, of course, I have my three dogs. They patrol the fence and make sure there are no breaches in security, like a squirrel on the fence, for instance. Belty often gets up in my hubby's chair and sits by me. He's my big boy.

Then, of course, I always have at least one of my pet birds with me: Most always Penny, my cockatiel who is bonded to me. Also, Rufus, my African Grey Parrot, is most always outside with me. Others come out with me from time to time.

Rufus loves animal sounds. When he is outside, he loves to copy the wild bird calls. He also loves to watch birds flying overhead. And, when the dogs bark at squirrels, he whistles for them. He's very handy to have around!

My hubby recently bought me an iPod Nano, and I uploaded my audio Bible on MP3. So, I've been enjoying listening to God's word while I enjoy watching God's creation. I also love to crochet and I bring out my latest project.

So, lately, when I wasn't in Spaces Land, I've been outside in the backyard in my spare time. I'm enjoying Fall while I have a chance, as it is getting colder and colder every day.

The high today will be 56 degrees Fahrenheit. Winter will be here soon and it will be very cold outside. The turtles will be hibernating, the pond will be frozen over, the fish will be inactive, and the bunnies, the birds, the dogs and I will be inside where it is warm.

Then, I have to wait till Spring when I can go outside and enjoy God's creation again. Spring is when baby birds are hatched and their parents bring them to our pond for a drink and their first bath. I love to watch the clumsy little things learn to fly and find their own food. So, next Spring, I'll be out in the backyard again.

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Gerry sent me a link to this video of a dancing cockatoo. You won't believe until you see it. Snowball actually dances on the beat most of the time. If you look at the bottom left corner of the video, you'll see a parrot like Rufus trying to dance, too.

Rufus loves to dance to music he likes, and make "finger snapping" noises, but he can't quite get coordinated with the beat. He often practices, with no music, "snapping his fingers" while bobbing his head, trying to get them both on the downbeat. He's trying to learn to bob his head on every beat, and snap his fingers on two and four. (His favorite music is all in 4/4.) He raises his foot when he "snaps his fingers". He's a crackup.

But, I can't get a video of him. He is camera shy. He stops doing things when I get the camera. Bummer. Here's a video of me trying to catch him dancing. He stops as soon as he sees the camera. Here's another video of a time he stopped dancing. You can see Peanut Boy in the cage, too. That is the show tune cable channel playing in the background. Rufus will often dance to show tunes. He also likes Roy Orbison.

Rufus likes to learn new things. I showed this video to Rufus for inspiration. He was really paying attention. Yes, really!

Even likes watching America's Funniest Home Videos. He even laughs. Yes, really!

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As you might already know, I have a lot of pets, including a cage-full of parakeets here in my office. The other day, I accidentally left the door of my parakeet cage open after feeding them, then went outside. While I was out in my backyard, five of my eleven parakeets got out of the cage. When I came in the back door, they were all flying around the kitchen, but they flew away in various directions. I looked everywhere for them, but I couldn't find them!

Luckily, Nicki lives in my house...

Nicki, my girl-dog mutt, got spayed when she was young. So, she's never had puppies. BUT, God wired her with a maternal instinct to the max. She thinks all my other pets are her babies.

So, when I couldn't find the parakeets, I said: "Nicki, find the babies". She immediately went searching for her "babies". One by one, she led me to them. One was found in a closet, one was up on a shelf, etc. One by one, they were put back in their house with the other parakeets.

Once four were back in their house, I took "inventory" and found that Monty was still missing. I asked Nicki once more "Nicki, find the baby...". She went looking again. Finally, she led me to the back room where we found Monty behind a chest of drawers. Monty had gotten stuck between the wall and the back of the chest of drawers, and couldn't  get back out again.

When I put Monty back in the house, Monty and his girlfriend Gumby were very happy to see each other! (parrot-type birds mate for life) They immediately started doing the parakeet equivalent of hugging and kissing. Here's a picture of them taken some time back:

Gumby and Monty

Thank you, Nicki! I would have never found all the "babies" without your help. Good girl!

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I wrote recently that one of my bunnies had died, and how my other bunny, Cadbury. was sad and lonely. As I said before, I wouldn't ordinarily want to get a new pet so soon after being brokenhearted. But my hubby and I decided that Cadbury Bunny should have a new companion.

Cadbury now has a new boyfriend named Hudson. He is a fairly young bunny, still growing, but already is as big as Cadbury. Sometimes my hubby calls him Baby Huey, after the big diapered baby duck in comic books. Here's Hudson Bunny relaxing after a hard day's romp in the yard:

We weren't sure they were going to get along, so I didn't blog about it. At first, she fought him and chased him away. So, we put them in separate pens where they could get acquainted safely, with supervised visitation when I was outside. Finally, Cadbury, (and I) got used to the idea of a new bunny, and she started liking his company. She likes Hudson now, but sometimes she goes to where Jellybean died and pines. She (and I) will be fine. Here's a picture of Cadbury and Hudson when they were first getting to know each other:

Now, Cadbury and Hudson snuggle and groom each other. Hudson is a very nice bunny. They have a bunny paradise outside our back door. They have their own little fenced bunny lawn, and they have a big, roomy hutch under our gazebo awning on the patio. They have their choice of sun or shade.  When I am outside, I open the bunny gate so they can romp around the backyard. They also like to lean far over and eat the tender plants in the fishpond. One time, Hudson even dove in the fishpond and swam across when Cadbury was chasing him before they became friends. After they have a nice romp in the yard, they go back into their own bunny yard for a nap, and I close the gate.

They also have a bunny pen in the house. We bring them inside on hot, rainy, cold, etc days.

Welcome home, Hudson Bunny!

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I posted recently about the walkway we are building around the pond. My hubby is doing an excellent job! It's about halfway around the pond so far and it looks very beautiful.

Here's a picture of Belty modeling part of the new walkway: (click for larger picture)

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Jellybean the Wonder Bunny died suddenly yesterday of natural causes. Jellybean was a wonderful companion to me and my hubby, and also to his sweetheart Cadbury Bunny. Jellybean loved to romp in the yard with Cadbury. Here's pictures we took shortly after they joined our family:

Jellybean on the left, and his sweetheart, Cadbury on the right.

We only recently had adopted Jellybean and Cadbury. Here's the blog post from when we adopted them last June. As you may know from previous posts, my husband and I love to give loving homes to homeless pets. We are very sad to lose Jellybean so soon.

His girlfriend, Cadbury, is moping around listlessly. They did everything together, always running together, or laying together and washing each other's face and ears.

Usually, when a pet dies, I don't have the heart to get another one right away. But, this time, my hubby and I have decided to adopt another companion for Cadbury since she is so lonely. I called the bunny rescue lady this morning, and she's going to keep her eyes open for another neutered male bunny who needs a new home.

Sadly, many people get bunnies for their little children at Easter, without knowing much about bunnies. Bunnies are strong willed, usually don't like to be picked up, and will often scratch when picked up. So, there are always bunnies that need new homes as people realize that a bunny was not a correct choice for a little child.

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I had read a lot about Alex, a parrot who could count and knew colors. I was very sad to hear just now of Alex's death. My parrot, Rufus, is the same species as Alex. I had followed the research with Alex with great interest.

Dr. Irene Pepperberg had worked with Alex for many years. Their research told a lot about the capabilities of African Grey Parrots. Here's more information on the Alex website. Here's a video of Alex telling colors, numbers, etc, that was on PBS.

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The goldfish pond that my hubby built for me is a great joy for me. (You can do a search on "pond" and see how much I talk about it here.) But, from time to time we have to work on it. Lately, we've had a problem with grass tendrils traveling to the pond and growing into the water. The edge of the pond can get quite bushy. It looks icky, so we have to pull the grass out. The grass gets in between the rocks, so it's hard to pull out.

At one point, we had a mulch yard around the pond, and we had used these to outline the mulched area and make a pathway through it. The mulch was to keep the grass from growing around the pond.

It only worked a little while.....The Bermuda grass took over and it grew right through the mulch. So, we are back to the drawing board. Here's a picture of how it looked when the grass started taking over the mulched area. You can see the stepping stones, and also the edging bricks between the lawn and the old mulched area.

So, this weekend, I was outside pulling weeds around the pond, again. I thought, there's got to be a better way! I brought a proposal to my hubby to build a "shoulder" of some sort, a buffer zone, between the grass and the pond. I told him I thought we could reuse some materials we already had to make this shoulder.

Remarkably, (tee hee) he liked my idea. Once we decided to do it, his job was to figure out how to do it so it worked the way we wanted. We sat down and planned what to do.

With our new idea, we will let our lawn go all the way up the the edge of the shoulder. So, we picked up up all the stepping stones and edger bricks and stacked them up out of the way. Also, my hubby "scalped" the grass off of the mulch area, and mowed up a lot of the mulch, to get it back down to the level of the rest of the lawn. That was a job right there! Just ask my hubby. It was a lot of work bagging grass clippings in a relatively small area.

Besides that, we calculated quantities and went and bought our materials. It was quite a lot of hard work for my hubby to load and unload all the sand bags, so I'm not sure when we are actually going to start working on our project, but at least we have all the materials ready.

We still have a lot of work to do. Here's the rest of the plan:

• Remove the rocks from around the edge of the pond.
• Dig a shallow trench, two inches deep, all around the edge of the pond about two feet wide
• Install narrow sheet metal flashing vertically as a physical weed/grass barrier just outside the two feet.
• Spray weed killer on the shallow trenched area (carefully! We have lots of pets).
• Line the shallow trench with 6 mil plastic liner.
• Fill the trench with two inches of sand.
• Lay the stepping stones in the sand.
• Put the medium sized rocks back around the edge of the pond.
• Fill in the spaces between the medium rocks and stepping stones with small rocks and gravel (left over from making the pond).
• Line the whole shoulder with the edging bricks for a mow edge.

It's going to be a big job, but we don't ever want to pull weeds out between the rocks lining the pond any more. It will save us a lot of time and work in the long run.

The nice thing, is that we don't have to spend much more money to make this, since we are mostly re-using materials we already have.

Wish us luck!

PS: I just was surfing my space to see how often I talk about the pond, and I came across a Picture that shows the edge of the pond, (and my turtle Timmy!).

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My hubby and I are both off Monday, so we have a well-deserved three day weekend starting today. It's going to be nice to have a nice, long, relaxing weekend with my hubby.

I got my Google search box working, finally. Thanks go out to my good buddy Mark Slack for tech support.

I am having fun searching my own space, so I hope it helps somebody else to find what types of boring things I talk about.

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I added a feature to search my space. I could use a Beta Tester to try it out, tee hee. It works for me, but would you please test it while you are here and let me know if it works for you?

Thanks!

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I noticed this morning on my Statistics page that somebody in Germany had translated my space. I got a kick out of seeing my "Welcome" module become this:

Willkommen!

Hallo! Mich anrufen „X“.
Für danke
Besuchen meines Raumes!


Haus von Rufus
der Wunder-Vogel!

"Home of Rufus the Wonder Bird" became "Haus von Rufus der Wunder-Vogel!" Just for kicks, I Translated that back into English. It came out to be: "House of Rufus the Miracle Bird!" Tee hee.

This reminds me of something else. There is a fun site called Lost in Translation that will translate text from one language to the next, back into English, then to the next, and so on. It's like playing the game "Telephone" where you start saying a sentence and whisper it to one person, to the next, etc, and at the end of the circle come out with something entirely different.

For example, I just translated

"Spaces is a fun place to hang out."

on Lost in Translation, and it came back with: "

"The station of the work is a place to the friction of the safeguard."

What in the heck?

Try it, it's fun!

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I've recently heard of an upcoming documentary, "Expelled the Movie", and I am really looking forward to it. The subtitle of it is "No Intelligence Allowed". Check out the previews on their website, and you'll see why.

As for me, after believing the teaching on origins I received in school for decades, I finally found out there is no proof to what I was taught, just suppositions and conjecture. (more here)

True science is being suppressed. Anything that does not prove the preconceived "truth" is rejected.

Peer reviewed science journals do not accept anything against evolution. That's partly what this movie is about. Creationists are "Expelled" from the scientific community for trying to make their research known.

But, creationists have published a lot of things in peer reviewed journals on other topics. Creationists have to write books to publish their research about evolution and creation. I have a lot of these books on my Book List on my blog. It's these books that convinced me that God exists.

The truth is not decided by majority rule. The truth is decided by examining evidence, and this movie will show that the evidence is being suppressed. That is NOT science - That is indoctrination.

I applaud Ben Stein for putting his career on the line and going against the majority on this topic.

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I didn't believe in God for many years. I believed what I heard: that life began by a process of time and chance and then developed further from there. I have since found out that there is very little justification for that.

I came to believe in God because I read a bunch of books that convinced me that the scientific evidence actually points towards the existence of God. Life is too incredibly complex to be a product of time and chance. I made a website that gives the justifications for my belief, plus a list of books with scientific evidence that God exists.

If you do not believe in God, do yourself a favor and see if you are right. Look and see if there is actual proof for what you have been led to believe about how life began.

I would like to recommend a book.  Each chapter is by a different scientist who gives evidence of things that cannot be explained by purely physical means. You can read it online here:

In Six Days: Why 50 Scientists Choose to Believe in Creation

Please give me the benefit of the doubt and take a few minutes and check out some of the essays in this book. I honestly believe that there is scientific evidence that God exists.

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I was at my kitchen sink yesterday, and out my window I saw a big hawk land right in by backyard, next to the fishpond. I live in a residential neighborhood, miles from where I usually see hawks. I love hawks, but I'd rather see them some place else than in my backyard because of my pet bunnies.

I was a bird watcher long before I ever had my own pet birds, so I had mixed emotions. It was like the time I saw a great egret, who eat fish, land on my roof and look down into my pond smacking his lips. I love big wading birds, but I don't want one to eat my pet goldfish!

I was startled when I first saw the hawk, but later realized he was probably only at my pond to get a drink. After all, he landed far away from my bunnies' pen. God gave hawks better eyesight than that!

Anyway, my dogs Nicki and Belty didn't think a hawk belonged in our backyard, either. They must have smelled him, because they were in the house but ran out the doggie door as soon as I saw it land. The hawk saw them coming and flew away. What a beautiful creature he was! God is a very talented designer!

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As I said previously, my computer crashed big-time last month. I am finally in a position to get some work done. I am still finding glitches now and then as I use my CADD (computer aided drafting and design) software. It's been tricky getting all my configurations back to normal.

I learned my lesson! I've added a second drive to my computer just for backup. I am regularly backing up my Documents and Settings folder. I never want to go through this again!

I am still using all my computer time for working. I am way behind, and I get paid by the job. Enough said!

I'll be out visiting soon, I hope!

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