What we've been up to.

Sorry the blogging hasn't been as frequent lately. I've been super busy with school and website work, and David's been working extra hard at work lately, too. So here's a round up of things we've been meaning to mention for awhile.

A couple Fridays ago I played basketball for Wolfson. It's in a tournament called "cuppers," which is probably equivalent to intramurals - i.e., anyone can play. The good news is that I scored more than half of our total points. The bad news is that our total score was 5, and the opposing team's score was 45!

Our opponents (Balliol College) were quite good and serious, and most were actually on a team. They had nice navy uniform tops with their names on them - then there was us, with our point guard in a yellow polo shirt that said "Sexy Lay-up" on the back, and me in a pink shirt that says "West Coast: Doin' it baja style." The other bad news is that it was full-court for an hour, and it has been so long since I've done any sprinting that my lungs were burning like crazy, and passing out seemed like a distinct possibility. Despite all that, it was fun!

My game was the Oxford University Iffley Sports Centre, which, it turns out, is where the world mile record was broken by Roger Bannister in 1954. There's history everywhere you look in this place!



Another piece of old news is that a couple weeks ago, I was contacted by a TV program called "Teachers' TV Resource Review." The show (just on cable and online) is a government-run thing that does reviews and testing of resources that teachers might want to use in the classroom. Here in the UK one of the required school subjects is Religious Education, and they've chosen to feature ReligionFacts, out of an original list of 10, as a good resource for that subject!

Hurrah! What an honor that English kids might be assigned to look at my website at school. I had a nice telephone chat with a lady from Resource Review and I happily faxed a consent form to them. They filmed the show last week, I think, but it won't air until August.

In other website news, I've been busy over the last few weeks throwing together some info related to The Da Vinci Code in preparation for the movie coming out this Friday. More work could be done on both, but at least it's something for now.

So the "Sacred Destinations Travel Guide" now has a section on Da Vinci Code locations, such as Westminster Abbey, the Temple Church, and the Louvre pyramids - plus interactive Da Vinci Code maps.

And ReligionFacts now has a section called "The Facts on The Da Vinci Code" that provides some info on what's true and what's not in the book. Even if you don't care about The Da Vinci Code, you might enjoy the Leonardo da Vinci gallery of his paintings and sketches.

If you know anyone that might be find any of this useful, please spread the word and send the link(s) along!

Personally, I enjoyed The Da Vinci Code a lot but the "facts" presented by the know-it-all characters really started to irritate me after awhile. I don't care either way if Jesus was married and had a child (though the evidence is pretty strong against the idea), but I do know something about Constantine, the Council of Nicea, the Gnostic gospels, and the history of Christian beliefs - and they just got those so wrong.

I hope some of the more obvious mistakes (most of which don't affect the plot) won't make it into the movie. It premiered at Cannes today, and apparently the critics think it's terrible. I was sorry to hear that, but mainly just because I like Ron Howard and Tom Hanks.

Oh, and I'm going to school, too! Last week I wrote a 25-page essay on the Christological controversy, which hurt my brain. Then I had to explain what I'd learned extemporaneously during my tutorial. This week was Greek study in preparation for today's tutorial. That was more fun than the essay and the tutorial went well. There was one word that my lexicon insisted meant "sea-fish," but didn't exactly work in the context, so that brought some humor to our translation work.

Last Saturday we had a fun day in London, and Sunday we had a nice walk on the grounds of Blenheim Palace (near Oxford). More on those in another post coming soon.

I hear there is some super-hot weather back in Oregon! We are having a downpour today. We're looking forward to more sunshine but also dreading the heat, since we don't have a/c or even screens on our windows! You'd think all the concrete would keep us cool, but it doesn't seem that it does.

And we can't do a blog post these days without mentioning our friends the waterfowl. Last night we were surprised to see a huge group of 20 goslings, of mixed ages and sizes, all being looked after by just one set of parents. Adoption? I dunno. But they sure were cute. And the mother duck with many ducklings is doing well, too, although I think she may have lost a few. :(