School

I like to think I am a pretty good writer, sure I do not have a huge following here or anything. Still being able to express myself well in writing has always been one of my virtues. So it feels fairly humiliating to have to take a class recapping elementary and middle school Finnish grammar in order to take high school Finnish classes. Well, I really need to as evidenced by the grammar, spelling and etc. Test taken on the first day. Under 50% success is nothing to brag about.

We have our first writing assignment. I am looking forward to it but I feel nervous. I have not taken an academic class in six years. I am afraid that I will let myself down again like I did back then. Back then I failed out of college. I locked up and was unable to do the work. I was unable to study and to complete the course work. Now I know I can do better and I am just taking one class, one class I really need and am finding reading the course text rather challenging. I am scared of the writing assignment. I have to write it by hand, all high school work has to be in Finnish classes. I have a strict limit for my final draft. If it runs long, how am I going to shorten it with out rewriting it? What about writing mistakes? Can I just write it in pencil? An erase able pen? Or do I just write it in pen and draw lines over my mistakes. I have to ask the teacher. I am also worried that I will get too nervous about it and not finish it like so many other assignments in college. That would be humiliating. I really have to do well in the class to gain back my academic confidence.

When ever I have the time to work on my assignment I seem to be too tired to think so I can't work on it very much. Like now, I was going to work on it but I feel really tired. It is about nine in the evening here. I will have to try earlier tomorrow.

Worst Ways to Evangelize

1. Yelling at random people on a street corner calling them whores and whore mongers.

2. Trying to outsmart them by using clever turns of phrase which really do not make your case, just make your opponent unable to answer.

3. Quoting scripture. What is scripture to someone who does not believe in the Bible? Also scripture quoting is usually employed in a barrage to show off and to try and remove any possible personal discussion from the witnessing.

4. Using "Science". God cannot be proven via the scientific method, the other good news is that he cannot be disproven either. Here you think: Wait, I am sure she meant to say "but the good news is". No I believe that not being able to prove the existance of God is a good thing because the second we prove him belief is no longer neccesary defeating the whole point of seeking Him.

5. Handing out tracks. If a person is supposed to be brought to a personal knowledge of Christ you need something personal there. Come on, would be Apostles, get your hands dirty. Get down there with the sinners like Jesus did. Open up. Give of yourself in order to give God.

Witnessing is a personal act that requires you to care about the person on a personal individual level. I mean, you must care about him as a person, not just as a potential soul you can help usher into the kindom of God. When people figure out it is just about winning souls they will became jaded with Christians and what a person thinks about Christians they start thinking about Christ.

Edit: I noticed a typing error which changed the meaning of what I was trying to say. Originally I had said "I mean, you must care about him as a person, as a potential soul you can help usher into the kindom of God." What I had intended to say was, "I mean, you must care about him as a person, not just as a potential soul you can help usher into the kindom of God." It has been corrected in the post to reflect my sentiments. 09:46, 25.8.11

Don't Leave your Brain at Home When you Go to the Health Food Store

My blog is, at least based on the title, supposed to in some smallish way, every once in a while, promote scepticism and critical thinking. So, as Brian Dunning, my favorite skeptic, would say: let's turn our skeptical eye to nutrition. Nutrition is one of the fields most rife with pseudo science. Everybody seems to think that because we eat all day how we feel about something should be good enough evidence what we aught to do. Well, the scientific method still aplies to nutritional science. So I present you with my favourite episodes of Skeptiod about health and nutrition. I recommend you choose the listen option on the transcript page because Skeptoid is a podcast and meant to be listened.

Just because some people have a glutein sensitivity and should stay away from it does not mean it is not good for the rest of us. Bring on the glutein!

Organic food is good, right? Well, that does not mean non-organic is bad.

Do we really know as much about what we should and should not be eating?

Then there are fads. Most of them blow over, many are harmless but useless, others are weird but many are even dangerous, in my opinion.

Then again, how many of us truly understand how our bodies work and go out and buy into immune system boosting supplements.

As you can see, I have discovered the joys of putting links into my text. I commend anyone who has decided to begin a journey to better health but don't go in like a country girl into a big city or you gonna get raped.

My Other Blog

(Note: Feb. 4 2012 This blog no longer exists. Fitness magazine no longer hosts reader blogs.)

I started a blog on fitnessmagazine.com. I figured that I would post the first entry here. It is going too be about getting into shape. Sorry, St. Cynic,I do not mean to rip you off by starting to write about health and stuff too. I am sure your posts will be much more informational.

Here it is:

Sneaking Into My blog

I felt pretty lame when I chose “Ninja Fitness” for my blog title. Still I think it works. It is eye catching and describes my love of martial arts and my habitual sneaking around at the gym. I try to slip by unnoticed as I go to work out. I have been working out on my own for years, running under the cover of the night or lifting weights in my living room. Other than mixed martial arts class I have not worked out where other people can see me for years.



I used to be a really shy teenager. I was scared of other kids I felt awkward and fat and stood back listening to other people talk and emerged my self in this fantasy world where I was fit, strong and gorgeous. Not only that, I was powerful and confident. I was a hero. Rescuing babies from burning building and fighting of an entire street gang on my own. You know the usual fantasies of a teen loner. I read about health and fitness I wanted to take martial arts classes and be more like the girl in my head. When I was a senior in high school I got the chance to sign up for Taekwondo at my school. I worked harder at it than anything I had ever done before. I thought I was terrible but it meant so much to me to succeed and I did. My teacher told me I was a great student and at the end of the second trimester commended me for helping and encouraging the new students that had joined us after the first one. All this gave me fantastic self confidence and made me feel a little closer to the girl I wanted to be. After three years I was a brown belt but unfortunately had to stop taking classes because I could no longer afford them. It was sad but fortunately I had discovered along the way that I was athletic and that I liked running and all sorts of different athletic activities.



Now I am a married woman with a kid and I have gotten out of shape in between then and now. I am at my heaviest than I have been since my pregnancy and the year or so after. I am out of shape and feeling further from that woman in my head. I would like to be like her again. I did some mixed martial arts along the way and hope to get back to it sometime but for now all I have in the near future is a gym membership, which is something I am not used to.



I will be working out at the gym wearing all black and sneaking in during the quiet times. No really, coincidentally all my workout gear is black. I will try to motivate myself to post about it occasionally.

*****

Well, I doubt I will post the future entries on this blog here, but if you feel so inclined nothing will stop you from reading Ninja Fitness. Can nnot guarantee that the link will take you there since I do not know if you have to be a registered user to read them or anything.

Militant Stay at Home Motherhood

When I was growing up my mother worked part time. No one ever told me, until I was a teenager that I could not do something because I was a girl. My mother unintentionally raised a feminist. I really hate the word feminist. It seems to imply female superiority. I do understand that basically it just seeks female equality and was coined in a time when women were the down trodden masses while being simultaneously put on a pedestal and told they had the minds of kids with nice tits. Still I dislike the word.


When I was in college I was having a conversation with a girl in a campus Christian group called Ki Alpha. She was engaged to be married, I think. I was talking about my family and chose my words incorrectly. I said: "My mother is just a stay at home mother." (At the time she was not being licensed for dentistry in the US). The girl became very upset with me and felt like I was belittling stay at home mother hood. She explained to me, in a way I recall as hostile that she was intending to be a stay at home mother and how that was in her opinion the greatest job a woman could have. I explained to her that I meant no disrespect and my mother was a great stay at home mother and all that. That it was a perfectly respectable life choice. I never spoke to her personally again.

Since then I have been a stay at home mother for many years by default. For her it was a choice. Raising kids was going to be her career, her goal in life. She got a college education to raise her kids, that is fine. For me it was not a choice. I never dreamed of being a stay at home mom. In fact I was never really was sure I wanted kids.

I have thought since my conversation what got her so upset with the little, miss chosen word just. Many stay at home moms are always on the defensive about it. I wonder if it was that she had been criticizes for her plan before, maybe she thought having job instead of staying at home with the kids was unforgivably selfish for a woman or that she was not entirely confident in her choice. I will never know the answer to that.

I guess I understand her upsetness in a way because once after a Sunday school class in a Baptist church that dealt in successful marriages. It was taught by a couple who had been married a mere nine years and the husband acted like he needed to convince himself that he was the boss of his wife by saying "Christ, church, Christ, church" all the time (when he said Christ he pointed to himself and when he said church he pointed to his wife). If one is the true leader of something one does not need to posture like that, mmmkay. Their basic message was that after marriage a woman should never work and the man should be the primary, and only breadwinner and their way was the only Biblical way to do it. Needless to say I was extremely upset after this class. A girl asked me what I had thought about the class and stupidly I told her the truth. She told me that I had a problem with submission and I was too prideful. I did not reply to her.

I firmly believe in a parent's right to stay at home and care for their kids and not working. I also believe in my right to want to have a dang job. Maybe all those dear mommies and working women need to get the chips off their shoulders so I can talk about my lack of a career freely with the words I choose with out getting a tongue lashing from someone more righteous. It is so hard to trust Christians sometimes.