A Friday Five

1. Josh Hillis has posted a little blog about the ridiculousness of a crazy spiked hula hoop that is supposedly a new fitness fad. Ouch!

2. And on the topic of fitness fads, I keep seeing advertisements that say, "Flat abs guaranteed! No crunches necessary!" Well, of course I know that crunches aren't the be-all and end-all of abdominal exercises. There is an "abs-travaganza" of other things that you can do. But, please...crunches aren't that bad. There are things far worse than crunches. In fact, I bet I could turn a crunch-hater into someone who would scream for relief, "Just let me do crunches instead!" by just making them do a couple of my favorite ab exercises.

Anyhow - just because an ab workout is advertised as "crunchless" don't be silly enough to think it will be easy. If it does turn out to be easy, I'm 99.9% sure you won't be seeing results. That's because results take E - F - F - O - R - T...effort.

3. Anne Hathaway (The Princess Diaries, etc) will be wearing a ribbon at Obama's inauguration. That ribbon signifies her protest against Rick Warren (Saddleback Church, author of "The Purpose Driven Life") who Obama has chosen as he clergy of choice to give the invocation. Heck, I'd protest Warren, too - but it would be for entirely different reasons. Hathaway finds Warren's views too conservative (laughing, coughing sputtering over here as I type this). She thinks Rick Warren represents (a chuckle here) the religious right. HA. I think evangelicals are far more critical of Warren than the left - because of his watered down gospel, faulty handling of Scripture in "The Purpose Driven Life," etc. (The PDL claims from the get go that "it's not about you, it's about Him" but the more you read the book you find he thinks, yep, it's all about you). Great book recommendation: Decieved on Purpose by Warren Smith.

I actually think he's a great choice for a liberal president to pick. Obama tries to walk a fence between liberalism and conservatism, as does Rick Warren. He's got the ability to be a bit of a bridge. And really, did anyone think with all of the Hollywood liberal posse in town that he was going to pick someone like Franklin Graham or John MacArthur?

4. A read a scary article at Fox News about anti-psychotic Alzheimer's meds and death. While the two drugs the VA psych doc has given my father are not mentioned in the studies, there certainly have given my father trouble. Too much trouble.

5. We're under a winter weather warning and are expecting 6 - 10" of snow tonight. I'm happy it's happening on the weekend and that we have no place we really need to go. I'm hoping we can get bundled up and head out to our favorite sledding hill and actually enjoy this round of the white stuff.

~o~

I drove Caren to her appointment today and I am happy to say she doesn't have to get a hard cast. Of course, she's still in the sling and she's not allowed to do anything...but praise God that she doesn't have to have an itchy cast on her arm for weeks!