Bible Quizzing

  Today we had our quote day amidst thunder storms and rain.  Not literally in the midst of it, we were inside the church.  I passed in weird yet lovely fashion.  I was through chapter 16 when my coach told me that I did not have to quote anymore.  Come to find out he was under the wrong impression and I should have quoted through the rest of the chapters.  Thankfully I did not have to and I made the team.  We will be having finals on Saturday and I will probably be forced to post the results on Sunday.  Hopefully things will go as planned.

Musings from Minot

  The last little bit has been a little bit hectic.  Sorry about the lack of posts on this blog.  In reality there has not been anything of much interest to post about.  Some of the highlights of the week was when the England goalie fumbled the ball into his goal for a point for the USA.  When ever soccer brings you one of the memorable things in your week you know something is wrong. 

  Thursday of this week we will be tested by our quiz coaches to see how ready we are for finals.  My understanding is that everyone will quiz at finals, but possibly not nationals.  Jared and I know all of our material but are still attempting to study hard for finals.  We definitely want to get first place.  This is Jared's last year and we want it to be memorable.

  The weather here in North Dakota is so unpredictable.  One day is rainy and very gloomy and then the next it is sunny.  From Thursday to Saturday of last week it was terrible.  There was rain and clouds, I hardly ever had a chance to see a blue sky.  Then on Sunday, after much prayer, it turned out to be a nice sunny day in which we had a wonderful softball game after church.  My team won, but that would be another story.

  It sounds as if the weather my be turning for the better for the people in Oregon which would be good for them.  They deserve a little bit of sun every once in awhile.  The difference between the rain in North Dakota and Oregon is in Oregon you expect it in North Dakota you expect snow not rain.  We get it all here. 

News from Minot

  WOWSER!  The last week has been crazy.  Sorry about not keeping the blog up-to-date.  My parents have experienced a safe voyage to Nebraska and back.  My Grandma Odum is doing fine.  Last I knew she was able to walk with a walker and was doing some rehab.  She will be spending some time down in Arkansas with one of her daughters until she has fully recuperated and then will head back up to Nebraska. 

  Nothing too much has really happened since I last posted.  School is out for everyone in this family for the year, that is good.  Finals is coming upon us fast and furiously in quizzing. And the weather can not decide whether or not to turn summer.  When the thing you are worried about the most is the weather you are doing pretty good.  I hope that everyone else is having a great start to their summer!

~Jonathan

Breaking News

  I Figured that it is always a good idea to give out some breaking news.  Yesterday, my Grandma Odum broke her hip.  Please keep her in your prayers.  She is going to be in the hospital for 3-5 days.  And will have to rehab for 4-6 weeks.  Please keep her in your prayers.

Boy's B-Day

Yesterday, Jared and I had our birthday.  As you might have been able to tell by the pictures it was Jared's 19th and my 16th.  We had a birthday breakfast and later on that day we had a birthday party with some of our friends.  Here are some more pictures...

Random Things

  This post I am going to talk about quizzing and any other things that I can think of.  Hope you all enjoy it.

  The first thing that came to my mind as I was this grand email that I received from an anonymous person that was confirmed not to be true.  Nonetheless it was so interesting and such a grand thought I figured I would still share it with you all.  Without further ado, here you are.

  Like I stated this story is false according to Snopes.

  The weather here in North Dakota has been great over the past few days.  The sun has been giving us radiant rays of sunlight.  We have very much enjoyed the weather.  According to the weather forecaster on this blog it is suppose to rain today, which has not yet happened, and it is suppose to rain more as this week progresses.  Hopefully this wind that is happening right now will blow the clouds right on out of the city and we will not have to worthy about the crazy rain.

  The quizzing year is progressing rather fast.  This weekend, we will be heading east to a tournament in Harvey, ND.  Is is actually suppose to be more of a quizzing demonstration.  Hopefully everything will go well for that.  Finals is going to be June 21st and I am planning on having all of my material learned for that.

  Today, as stated in a early post, Jared and I are celebrating our birthday.  My mother prepared us a wonderful birthday breakfast.  It consisted of biscuits, gravy, bacon, and eggs.  We were very thankful for that.

We were very tired!

 Last but not least I have prepared a slideshow of random things that have happened over the last little bit.

Birthday

 Jared and myself are celebrating our birthday today.  Jared is turning nineteen while I am turning sixteen.  If you would like to leave a comment for us you are more than welcome.

The Day After

  I have never been able to figure out what is so draining about Sunday.  It is the second day of your weekend, but when you wake up Monday afternoon you are still tired.  For me it might be the fact you go to church around 1:00 and get back to your house for the night around 9:45.  We normally play some kind of game that requires physical activity, but still I do not understand.  There are other days during the week that I play games that require physical activity other than a thumb with the Xbox controller.  There is just something very special about Sunday. 

  This weekend we had a quiz tournament.  The results were not what we wanted but it was a very good prep for finals.  My team, consisting of Preston and myself, took second to Bismark.  Jared and Anthony took third.  It sort happened just like last tournament.  Minot 1 and Minot 2 played each other the first game, Minot 1 won that game.  Minot 1 played against Bismarck, Bismark were able to hold on and win.  Minot 1 and Minot 2 played each other again, Minot 2 won.  Minot 2 went on to lose to Bismarck who was the undefeated team.  Jared and Preston took 4th and 5th on the all-tournament team, respectively.  I was able to manage to get to 2nd on the all-tournament team.  The quiz tournament was a little bit frustrating because every quiz I had a chance to quiz out but did so only once.  The first quiz I quizzed I got my first five correct and then managed to get me next five incorrect.  The second quiz I quizzed I got eight correct.  The last quiz I quizzed I got my first six correct, got the next one wrong, waited for the two questions I wanted and managed not to hit the buzzer again.  I think that we will be fine going into finals and have a chance to finish where we want to finish.

  My parents got back Saturday night from a trip that they took with the Pearsons down South.  They enjoyed their trip down and, I hope, are happy to be back home.  We enjoyed their time away by sending Jessica away to the farm and playing a lot of Xbox with Preston and Garret and doing a little bit of quizzing, which is fun again. 

Nothing Interesting But Something to Read

  I hope things are going great for everyone this fine week.  We have a few subjects to talk about in this post today.  We will talk about quizzing, school, and something else that I won't tell you yet.

  School is winding down for me and Jared.  Jared will be taking his last test of the semester tomorrow morning.  I will be taking my last test for the year somewhere between now and May 28th.  Jessica has done a great job of pioneering herself through her schoolwork and to the end of the year.  This week she has been able to sleep in and do whatever she wants, which just happens to be around her brothers.

  A couple of posts ago I wrote how quizzing was starting to be just a lot of work, that has changed.  I finally got back in the groove and it is a lot of fun again.  It has been a long time since doing my review and learning verses was fun, but it is.  This weekend we are going to be having a quiz tournament in Dickinson which is around three hours away.  Next weekend we will be having a quizzing demonstration in Harvey, which is around two hours away.  Needless to say there will be a lot of traveling happening over the next couple of weeks.

  Of course this post would not be complete without me ranting about the weather.  Since Saturday the weather has really picked up a lot and we have been enjoying some sunshine.  The temperature has been staying under 60, but we can deal with that.

  My parents, with Vaughn and Wendy, have taken a trip to a far away land this week.  Jessica will soon be going on a trip to someones house and then Jared and I will be at home all by our lonesome.  This is going to be great!  Would talk about this more but can't give up any of our secrets.


  And here is yet, another George Carlin quote.

If one synchronized swimmer drowns, do the rest drown, too? - George Carlin

Have a great day everyone!

A Musing from Minot

  I hope you all had a very happy Mother's Day!  I had a great one (this is Jonathan writing).  It all started by waking up around 10:00, it just doesn't get much better than that.  I did my quizzing and went to church.  It was after church that things really started getting to be fun.  I don't what you guys think about it, but when you go to a restaurant and there are what seem to be a million people waiting to be seated and you are able to walk on through the crowd tell them you last name is "Starr" (because you made reservations) and go to your table that is fun.  After that we were able to play some softball.  It was just a very memorable Mother's Day for me. 

  It seems to me you guys have been just having a great amount of fun with the new game we put onto the blog.  Judging by the amount of comments we got we would assume that nobody ever comes to this blog and we should shut it down.  You guys might be thinking "You should shut it down" but we will not let you guys have that relief.  As I am writing this post I just remembered that there was Student Convention in Oregon this weekend, that will get some of the Oregonians off the hook.  Please do play the game and tell us what you think of it.  If you like it we might try to get some more games of the same type on a game page.  Speaking of pages, please check out all of our pages.  I am in the long process of updating our "About Us" page and will tell you when it is done.

  Here is a story about just how important it is to be relaxed in life.

  There were a pair of robbers that were holding up a store.  When they went into the store one of the robbers demanded that none of the people in the store move.  When his partner-in-crime made the decision to that they should actually rob the store and moved his partner shot him.

That is why it is good to be relaxed.

   Here is something for all of the evolutionists that just may have stopped by to read the blog.

If man evolved from monkeys and apes, why are there still monkeys and apes? - George Carlin

Have a great day today!

More SNOW! :(

It is a terrible though to think that you already have had spring, summer, and fall and it is only MAY!.  That is what we are thinking here in North Dakota.  The weather has probably gotten way too much attention on this blog.  If you think so you can always leave a comment and let me know, or just continue to let me ramble on about it.  I went outside this afternoon without my coat on to retrieve my camera from our van.  Boy, was that cold.  When it is -60 you body gets used to the temperature so when it climbs up to -20 you feel great.  When it is +60 and the temperature drops down into the 30 you are cold.  There is not really that much snow on the ground, it will probably all melt away by the end of the day.  Hope you guys are enjoying the more frequent posts.  They may not be as information riddled, but they are something to read.

A Musing from Minot

  Some time when you think that you are having a blond day then you need to read this story.  I am sure that it will be very helpful for you to realize that you are not as blonde as you might think.

  There once was a women and a daughter.  The daughter found out that it just might be fun to eat some ants, she did.  The mother, being the brilliant mother she was, called the Poison Control Center to make sure that her daughter would be alright.  The helpful person at the Poison Control Center said the daughter would be fine because the ants would not harm her.  The mother then told the helpful person that she had given her daughter some ant poisoning to kill the ants.  The helpful person immediately told the mother to get her daughter to the hospital as soon as possible.

 I would say that the lady was probably insane, maybe she was just having a bad day.  I can tell, because it is pretty hard for me to grasp my mind around someone giving their daughter ant poison to kill the ants she just swallowed.  I think the digestive juices would have done a great job at killing the ants.  The women probably was just having a blonde moment.

  There is actually some family news in this post!  Jessica is planning on having her schoolwork done by the end of the week.  She took a few tests and self-tests on Thursday so she will  have the opportunity to pretty much close everything up this week.  Me on the other, I will be done on May 28th and it does not look like I will be able to expedite the process very much.  Jared is going to be doing his Finals next week so he will be also.  Great things happen this time of year.  Like the weather changes into nice sunny days and things like that.

  Bible quizzing is still going and is becoming a lot of hard work.  It is hard to do the stuff this time of year, but we just have to plow through until finals come.  After that, hopefully, nationals will come for us and we can have some real fun.

Isn't a bit unnerving that doctors call what they do "practice"? - George Carlin

The last couple of stories and quotes I found at a website.  I think them very much for their stuff and hope that they keep on putting good, clean stuff on their website.  Don't you even begin to think that I will tell you the name of the website, though.

Try this out

This is a really cool game.  It is actually kind of challenging.  At first you are going to think that it is really easy and then you will find that it gets really hard.  If you ever get to level 4 you will be amazing and please tell me.  If you turn up your sound really loud it might help you a little bit.  It helps to tell you when you are going to lose, sometimes.  Please tell me what you think about the game, hopefully it won't be to cheesy.

Sorry about the ad that is right before the game.  I don't know how that got there.  I was intending only to put the game on the blog not the ad also.  

Daily Musing

According to Snopes this story is inaccurate.  It never happened and has been said about former Presidents.
  
 For those of you who are just a little unsure about what a cattle guard is, cattle guards are horizontal steel rails placed at fence openings, in dug-out places in the roads adjacent to highways (sometimes across highways), to prevent cattle from crossing over that area. For some reason the cattle will not step on the "guards," probably because they fear getting their feet caught between the rails.  
  A few months ago, President Obama received a report that there were over 100,000 cattle guards in Colorado . Because Colorado ranchers had protested his proposed changes in grazing policies, he ordered the Secretary of the Interior to fire half of the guards immediately.
  Before the Interior Secretary could respond and presumably straighten him out, Vice-President, Joe Biden, intervened with a request that before any guards were fired, they should be given six months of retraining.

Not in anyway am I trying to mock or make fun of the President.  I thought this was a little interesting when it popped into my inbox.  

Here is a little something about money:
  People say that money is not the key to happiness, but I figured if you have enough money, you can have a key made.

Here is a good one-liner for you by Dave Edison:
I am desperately trying to figure out why kamikaze pilots wore helmets.


Here is a story:

A man walked into the corner store with a gun, planning to rob it. He demanded all the money in the till. The cashier put the money into a bag, as the robber instructed him to. The robber then demanded the bottle of Scotch he saw behind the counter. But the cashier wouldn't give it to him because he said he didn't believe the robber was over 21. The robber pulled out his driver's license to prove it and the cashier gave him the Scotch.
After the robber left, the cashier called the police with the man's name and address. He was arrested soon after.

Today's Musing

Where is the safest place in the world?

1.) Avoid riding in automobiles.
They are responsible for 20% of all fatal accidents

2.) Do not stay at home
17% of all accidents occur in the home

3.) Avoid walking on streets or sidewalks
14% of all accidents occur to pedestrians

4.) Avoid traveling by air, water, or rail
16% of all accidents occur by these forms of transportation

5.) Avoid going to the hospital
32% of all deaths occur in hospitals

One thing that I would like to point out is that .001% of all accidents occur in church worship services.  An even smaller percent than that occur in Bible Studies.  Please, above all else, go to church and read your Bible you will become a lot safer of a person.

Here is something for you to remember about money:
Too many people spend money they haven't earned, on stuff they don't want, to impress people they don't like.

How about this story:
A female walked into a bank in Centereach, New York and handed the teller a note, demanding all her cash.  The note said she would start shooting if the teller didn't comply.

The teller asked her, "Are you serious?"


The suspect responded by fleeing the bank

Something to bore you with

  Today I woke and eventually came down stairs to do my schoolwork.  I looked out the window of my dad's office and saw our church van.  What I saw next was something that most states do not see in May.  It was this white stuff that I think they call snow.  It actually caught me by surprise, last year this time we were playing softball after church on Sundays.  This year we haven't been able to play a single game because of the weather.  If you look at the weather forecast widget on the right of your screen you will see that the weather is pretty nasty.  There is a lot of chances for snow in the forecast.  I guess Aunt Beth was right you guys are dealing with the same stuff we are just in a different form.  For the most part though we are both getting rain though. 

Musings from Minot

Alright, so I started not liking "Around the House" and decided to change the name to "Musings from Minot".  Maybe some day I will get real good and bore you by having "Daily Musings from Minot", if that happened you all would probably think that the world was going to end.

 This week we are going to talk about our guest speaker we had in church Sunday, the end of the Hunter Education Course, and at least one other thing.  I would tell you the other thing, but I am afraid if I do you will leave this page right now and that wouldn't be good for my sponsorships.  They might all drop me and I might would have to stop doing the blog.  Okay, maybe the last couple of  lines was a bunch of baloney.

  Sis Gleason came out to the great state of North Dakota over the weekend.  The reason she came was for Ladies Retreat and then we had her stop by our church and talk a little bit in our first service.  I am sure she did a great job (I was not in the first service).  We are very thankful that she was able to make the trip out here.  Today, I am feeling in a generous mood and am going to give her a shout-out (whatever that means).  Sis. Gleason here is your shout-out!  Receive it with honor and dignity.

  Last Thursday Sis. Wendy, Garret, and I took our test for the Hunter Education Course we were endeavoring in.  It turns out we all passed and Sis. Wendy was the only who did not get a question wrong out of the three of us.

  I know that there are a couple of Oregonians that read this blog.  They probably take their laptop outside sit back and relax as the sun beats down on them with rays that make them wonderfully comfortable.  Right now I am not complaining about snow because that is part of North Dakota, take that away and North Dakota would look pretty ugly in the winter, or in the summer for that matter.  What I am complaining about is the rain that keeps on invading the Dakota Territories.  Here I am, someone that is not used to the rain :) and when I wake up in the morning I instantly go into mourning because of all the crazy rain that is beating down on my head coming down outside.  When I moved to North Dakota I figured the snow would be cool (literally), but the rain?  I guess I had not prepared myself mentally for that surprise.

  Here are a couple of "Did you know?" facts.
On this day in the year 1871 the first professional baseball team, opened its first season.
On this day in the year 1904 the United States began construction on the Panama Canal.
On this day in the year 1904 Charles Stewart Rolls meets Frederick Henry Royce in the Midland Hotel in Manchester, England.  They are the founders of the Rolls-Royce.
On this day in the year 1949 almost the entire Torino football team was killed in a plane crash.  Click here to read the full story.  It is actually kind of interesting.

Around the House

  I am sorry about the long delay since my last post.  Things have been going on extremely fast we have had a trip to Grafton where my dad preached Sunday, a quiz tournament on Saturday, and on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday of last week and this week I have been taking a hunter education course.  Yea, I know I am taking it a little bit late in life but at least I am doing it.  We will have a lot to talk about this week.  I don't believe I will have any pictures in this post, so if that is what you were looking for you can go on to the next website you were planning on looking at.

  This Saturday we had an extremely competitive quiz tournament.  Jared and I were on different teams this tournament which really made things interesting.  Ashton and London from Bismarck joined teams.  It turned out to be Bismark's best team versus Minot split up.  Jared's team beat my team the first game, then his team lost to Bismarck.  In the loser's bracket my team beat Jared's team and then it was time for another Minot versus Bismark face-off.  My team won the first game and then lost the second game in a heart breaker on question 19. Jared and I were both on the all-tournament team. Jared took first with around 115 ppq and I took third with around 62 ppq.  Jared and I knew our material pretty good.  Pretty soon it will be time for us to really dig deep into our charting.  We are pursuing the first place trophy at finals so we will have the opportunity to go to nationals and hopefully have a lot of success. 

  This weekend, pretty much as soon as the tournament was over, headed east to go to Grafton.  It was a quick trip and helped my geography of North Dakota if nothing else.   We got down there Saturday night, my dad preached Sunday morning, and then we headed back on Monday.  I guess you may not call it all that quick of a trip, but it was definitely packed.  My dad preached about how we need to have an attitude of change in our life.  We cannot have the attitude of leave me alone, but we should have the attitude of God change whatever needs to be changed in my life.  We spent the evening with Charlie Pearson and his family, which pastor the church there in Grafton.  On the way home we managed to spend around two hours in a small little town of Devils Lake.  If you told that to someone in North Dakota they would really want to know what we did in order to spend that much time there.  It really wasn't all that bad, I was catching up on some studying I had to do for the Hunter Education Course, needless to say it flew by pretty fast.

  I don't think we really need to talk that much about my Hunter Education Course that I am taking.  It is a little bit more work than I was expecting, but I think that, that is partly due to the fact that I am spending three hours three nights a week listening to someone try to bore you as much as possible.  If someone called it fun, I would wonder what was wrong with them.  The first thing I would do for them would set them up with a psychiatrist.  I would have the doctor figure out what was wrong with the persons brain, then I would do anything possible to help them (almost).  After that I would pray that God would do a miracle in their life.  I think that there would probably be no other way for them to get better. 

  On Friday our home school groups got together and we toured the Scandinavian Heritage Park (or something like that).  It was actually half interesting.  The coolest part of the tour was when we went to this place that was a U.  It had seating all the way around the U.  When you stood in the middle of the U you could talk directly at the closed part of the U and your voice would magnify when it came back at you.  The acoustics were amazing.  It was very cool. 

 Thanks for suffering through all of this jumble.  I hope you found it half interesting and not very time consuming.  I also hope that you have a great week.

Extravaganza Pics

Here are just a couple of pictures, hope you enjoy them!

Extravaganza Recapitulation

Sorry about not updating the blog on Saturday, but I was so disgusted after that tournament it was not even funny.  It turns out that the experienced team took T7th while the intermediate team took T5th.  A girl from our intermediate team named Natalie took fifth on the all-tournament team with 62 ppq, while I took T5th on the all-tournament team with 47.5 ppq.  We had a great trip and ended up going to an amusement park on Saturday after quizzing.  I actually went on all the rides that everyone else went on.  You guys may not be surprised but this was a great step as far as roller coasters for me.  We started home on Sunday and got back to Minot around 11:30.  The trip home was a lot of fun and now it is time to get ready for our next tournament which will be taking place on Saturday in minot.  About the actual tournament, we lost that heartbreaker on Thursday night.  On Friday we had to wait five quizzes after lunch which ended up taking a toll on us.  We beat Bismarck and then ended up losing to Denver 1 which was a somewhat close game.  We had a chance to win the quiz going into the 30 pointers but soon after that they iced the quiz.