Today was a busy day. Calvin and I started out the morning with a meeting for Got Style at church. (An ABC evangelism training program.) It was interesting to see where our church stands as a whole in their evangelistic styles. My primary (most comfortable) “evangelistic style” is Analytical - no surprises there - followed by Relationship and Incarnational (servant evangelism) as areas I am somewhat comfortable in. Personally, while I scored high in the intellectual arena, I think that works more in harmony with relationship-building. I’m not a huge “talker” until I know someone.

After we got home at around 1:00, we translated 2 Samuel 11 and 24 until dinner. I must say, the narrator in 2 Samuel 11 (as in much of the Samuel corpus) is a literary genius. Unfortunately, you just don’t catch much of the interwoven suspense/surprise elements of the David and Bathsheba story in the English. I love translating Hebrew narrative - the (almost) sacrifice of Isaac was another fantastic read when I translated that some years ago. Chalk one more point up to learning original languages! Anyways, I’m happy to say that we’ve now completed all of our translation work for Exegesis of 1 & 2 Samuel for the semester.

The special Saturday dinner for tonight was “Italian Chicken,” in the crock pot. We put a whole chicken in the crock pot with some chopped up potatoes, and an entire bottle of Italian dressing. It had been cooking since 8:00am on low when we unleashed it. It turned out very well - extremely tender (fall-off-the-bone) and juicy. The potatoes weren’t bad either. We paired the dish with some of those canned crescent rolls and a bottle of Tuxedo White, which was decent, but not as good as I remembered. It’s possible that the food pairing wasn’t quite right, but we’re still learning.

After dinner, it was back to Hebrew: we finished Micah 6:13-7:10 for Hebrew. Tomorrow we hope to finish the book and be done with translation work for Intermediate Hebrew. Progress! Micah has been both frustrating and rewarding to translate. At times, it can be difficult to put the Hebrew into readable English if I even understand what it’s saying myself. That’s when the text isn’t corrupted by some textual error. However, there are some great passages that just really flowed - the beauty of Hebrew poetry never ceases to amaze me. Once again, so much you just don’t pick up in the English - so much you just can’t transfer since they are poetic devices for the Hebrew language.

I am reminded constantly how much I love Hebrew. I have battled through Akkadian all through this semester. Somehow I manage A’s and B’s on my quizzes, but I have a sinking feeling that at the insane rate we’ve had to learn it, it will seep out of my mind within a few months. If nothing else, it has reinforced to me where my real love lies.

So, today, it’s been church, chicken, and Hebrew - and a little Stargate thrown in at the end.

I finished my presentation on Philip Schaff today for Historiography. Can I say, I like that guy? I also finally managed start my Exegesis paper for I & II Samuel. I typed 6 pages, but the problem is I don’t really think I need 6 pages on a summary of I Samuel (Petter’s so-called “Synthetic Method”) when it’s only a 20-25 page paper. I guess I was having too much fun trying to find creative ways to pack a lot of information into a short amount of space and got carried away. Apparently, I need to pack tighter.

I also made a mean chicken dinner tonight - “Stagecoach Chicken” - a recipe I borrowed from my mother-in-law. Saturday nights are “nice meal” nights.

At any rate, I feel like I at least accomplished a small bit today, and now I’m going to go reward myself with an episode of Stargate SG1.

On Tuesday I temporarily acquired a pet ladybug. When I saw one climbing up the filing cabinet next to my desk, I promptly turned a small, clear, plastic storage device into a ladybug home complete with air holes, and captured it.

My new ladybug friend lived on the top of my filing cabinet for a day and a half before I released him back into the wild (if the bushes outside our apartment by the parking lot can be called the wild). In that time, I made several observations:

1) As soon as I captured him, he immediately made a small mess inside the container. I initially thought it was, ah, ladybug excrement, but after some research online I discovered that when scared or threatened, ladybugs release a small amount of smelly liquid from their legs to deter predators. After finding that out, I felt rather sorry for my poor, frightened ladybug.

2) Ladybugs appear to “wash” their faces and even shells with their legs. I say this only because as I was observing the ladybug at several points, I noticed that he was moving his front legs in a manner that looked like a cat giving itself a bath. He also rubbed his back legs together. Now, I didn’t research this particular activity, so for all I know he was itching himself or making some ladybug noise outside of my range of hearing. Nevertheless, it was a rather endearing activity.

3) At one point, the ladybug attempted to squeeze itself out of one of the air holes I made. Since I’m a smart person, I didn’t make the air holes large enough for the ladybug to fit through. That didn’t stop him from trying however, and he managed his tiny head and two front legs before giving up and retreating back into his temporary prison.

4) On advice from a website on keeping ladybugs as temporary pets, I dribbled some water down one of the air holes so my friend had something to drink. 10 minutes later, I found him at the side of the little pool. Drinking, perhaps? The water was all gone within hours, whether to the ladybugs stomach or evaporation, I guess I’ll never know.

5) I read that ladybugs play dead when they are threatened, and once I came in to the room to find him indeed looking quite dead: unmoving even at a tap on the container, and his legs carefully hidden under his shell like a turtle so that he rested flush on the ground. Not fooled, I turned the container upside down, and instantaneously two little legs shot out from under the shell to grasp hold tighter. He, however, remained firmly attached to what was now his ceiling. Dead? I don’t think so.

Upon completion of my ladybug observation, I bequeathed the name Hermiod (after an Asgard from Stargate: Atlantis) on the tiny creature, and put him back outside with a sad farewell. Never had I realized how many details the life of such a small, insignificant creature could offer if one could only be prevailed upon to take the time to stop and watch for a day, or two.

Goodbye, my ladybug friend. May the rest of your days be free from predators and full of aphids to eat!