Tackle it Tuesday: A "Birthday Song"

-- Happy birth number two . . .
Sins forgiven, it's true . . .
Angels singing -- Joy in Heaven . . .
'Cause you're born now anew!

“Likewise, I say unto you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth.” (Luke 15:10 KJV)

Bear wrote the above for the following Tackle it Tuesday Assignment, hosted today at FaithWriters Blog

Today, you will be a song writer. In honor of my daughter’s birthday, let’s see what you can do with the famous Happy Birthday song. Change the lyrics but definitely keep it a birthday theme. (Think, “Happy birthday to you, you live in a zoo, you look like a monkey, and you smell like one too…”) You may leave the first line the way it is if you want, but make up the rest.

It's nice to get quick satisfaction from having a finished piece of writing that only involved five lines worth of effort. And anything would've been better than smelling like a monkey in a zoo! So it was an unusually easy topic.

However, Bear is still only in the research phase for this week's big "Writing Challenge" piece, and "deadline" time (Thursday morning) continues to march closer. Plus, she's gotten herself into deep waters with it ... The angle she wants to write about is turning out to be a much bigger "challenge" than she expected.

So she'll restrain herself from sitting around in the Living Room here, in the comfy recliner, with bear feet propped up, chatting. And instead, will head for the Worship Room to get some good background music going, while she tussles with this possibly crazy idea (crazy, considering it has to fit into a 750 word-count limit).
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Bear's news and free multi-media Christian resources: Bear's Writing Den

Coming Through The Fire

Writing Challenge Troubles

Bear had a good writing day today, and is starting to get back into the swing of things. Although early this morning, she wondered if maybe it wouldn't be smarter to quit trying to be a writer at all.

She ended up having quite a bit of trouble with this week's Writing Challenge topic, "The pen is mightier than the sword." Twice this week, she's had what she had initially thought were good ideas in mind; but when time came to try writing each one of them, they felt like total duds. And this morning, the deadline for entries was looming large, and she had no new ideas. In truth, by that point, she didn't feel like writing anything at all ... was drawing a major blank on the whole thing.

And Bear prayed again, thinking maybe she should just skip this week's Challenge, based on the fact it's been such a rough week health-wise, and she's not at her best. But then an idea came to her that seemed like it might be worth a try.

It actually took about 5 or 6 hours to hammer it out into final form, but she was happy with the result. And very thankfully, got it submitted with time to spare, after all.

In much better mood, she then dropped over to visit the current class of Jan's Writing Basics, which is about learning to create good characters, and got some work done there also.

So, although she can smell just a bit of the smoke of singed fur, from "coming through the fire" this morning, she's feeling victorious tonight, and thanking the Lord.
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Bear's news and free multi-media Christian resources: Bear's Writing Den

Spring Break ends

The Weekly Writing Challenge begins again

Bear didn't expect the break between quarters at FaithWriters to zoom by so fast. Can't believe there's already a Contest topic posted again. It's also likely time to be looking in on Jan's Writing Basics classes, and Ann's Grammar Basics. Plus, Bear has to admit that she has not been at all diligent on the DailyGrammar.com work or the OneWord.com exercises these past few weeks. And missed out on two of the mini-challenges, and a couple "Tackle it Tuesdays" as well. (Info and links on most of these are in the Writing Resources and Library areas of the Den.)

In other words, Bear has been on major vacation leave, while working on the Den. And it's time to get back down to some serious writing work.

The Challenge's topic, "The Pen is Mightier Than The Sword", kind of surprised Bear though. Considering that the last topics were things like "Humph", "Wow", "Shh", and such . . . "The Pen is Mightier than the Sword" seems quite a mouthful by comparison.

It also looked to be a tough one to pull a 750 word entry out of the hat for. But after some prayer, an idea that Bear loves came to mind, and she's going to go with it. It's not super original. But she likes it much anyway, and looks forward to writing about it. Maybe she can dig up an original twist somehow. Or maybe it's not as obvious as she thinks.

Most likely, since one of the contest's rating categories is "originality", Bear is not going to hit the 40 top-rated entries in this one.

But if true, so be it.

Sometimes, it feels more important to write about things that aren't super original than to search about for something more unusual...

Bear likes to write about some of the foundational issues of Christianity -- and often, they aren't very "original". But it helps Bear to write about them anyway, and often deepens her own understanding of things.

So she's sharpening her pencils, dusting off her keyboard, putting new lightbulbs in her desk lamp, and gearing up for action.

Bear is also diligently practicing shouting "Touche", just in case it might be needed.
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Bear's news and free multi-media Christian resources: Bear's Writing Den

Congratulations Winners + Bear Wants to build an addition

Late Afternoon
Congratulations Winners!

Congratulations again to all the winners of this week's Writing Challenge!  Bear has had a chance to look at just a few of the entries, and they are excellent.  She's looking forward to getting around to reading more.

But at the moment, Bear is still very preoccupied with moving cleanup and settling in still.

Late Night (Actually, very early Friday morning)
Bear wants to build an addition

Bear decided to cut down on the number of family photos in the sidebar and make things a bit more streamlined there. 

Bear also decided she wants more rooms reasonably soon.  She's thinking of a Bible room.  And once the worship room starts filling up more, will likely want to have an extra room for kids/teen worship type stuff and interests, separate from the main worship room.

So she spent the night looking into WordPress and other blogging and Website setup options . . .  Hours of frustration.

And I tell you, it sure made me appreciate Blogger more.  Theoretically, Wordpress is supposed to be better than Blogger if you want more than 10 pages.  Also, it can create sub-pages.  However, it looks to me like you have to mess with the code a lot more, every time you want to do even basic things like adding a gadget or widget.  And I don't want to spend lots of time learning how to do all that. 

Blogger seems much faster and easier to work with.  And the other free blogging solutions seemed to also have more flaws than blogger.. At least for a beginner like me.

So then I thought maybe I could somehow copy my template background and put it on another website hosting service -- then just build a normal website there, as an extension of the blog here.  I could link the two together, and if they had the same background template look, it would work nicely. 

But I couldn't figure out how to move the background. 

So I prayed on it, very frustrated. 

Then a possible solution hit me.  And I really think it might work. 

I decided that I could just create a second Blogger blog, with the same template background.  Because you can create as many blogs as you want to on Blogger, apparently.  And I can set up the side bar to match in the other blog also.  And then I can cross link them.  (Because I had already set up the Header Links in a text gadget anyway -- so all I have to do is copy the gadget from one blog to another.) 

So now, Bear has up to a total of 20 rooms available to expand into in future, and is happier again.  (IF the idea works.)  Or, if she wanted to set up a third blog, 30 rooms; or, if she wanted to set up a fourth blog . . .

Time to call it a night!

Welcome to new Den Visitor + What are followers? + More work on the Den + Feeling at home

Evening
Welcome LaTawnia!

Welcome to the Den, LaTawnia!  Bear looks forward to getting to know you more, as time goes on.

Bear is trying to figure out "Following" more

Bear has to admit that she had no idea what a "follower" was, until recently, when she looked in the Help Files for an explanation.  Bear is kind of a social klutz, and hasn't had any experience at all with social networking type stuff yet.  Although she IS thinking about joining Facebook, just to give it a whirl and find out more about it and try to figure these things out.  She also still doesn't really understand things like RSS feeds, podcasts, and many other modern Web innovations, that are just routine to most people.  Even putting together this blog/website has been a MAJOR "learning as she goes experience".  

(About 7 years ago, I had a very SMALL blog on Blogger.  But in those days, you could only do one page, and, as far as I know, "gadgets" and "widgets" weren't yet in vogue.  And the only social networking site that was really going strong was MySpace.  But it was very suspect and parents worried about their kids being on it -- while the kids were apparently happily  "social networking" years ahead of their parents.)

Anyway, Bear is about 7 years behind the times on lots of major Internet technology -- and 7 years is a LONG time gap, considering the speed at which the technologies are changing.

But, although Bear is not sure she fully understands how "following" works, and hasn't dared to try it herself yet, she's glad you're here.  Your visit today was an encouragement, just at the time when Bear was starting to think she had gone a bit overboard-crazy in all the moving-to-the-Den work frenzy.

More work on the Den

Today has been a saner day, though.  Bear actually got more sleep, and got caught up on kitchen work.  And she found some time to dig through some old family photos and found a less blurry one of BearBear at keyboard.  Plus, she was happy to stumble onto the one, where she's hanging out at the front Den entrance.  (She's the one on the far right-hand side.) So she hung those up on the walls and things are starting to look less bare around here.  Or, maybe they're actually looking MORE "bear"?  (I may not have completed the homonym writing challenge, but at least I got ONE pair in!)

Also, she found time to pop over to FaithWriters and wave hello, so people there won't think she died or something.  :-)

So, it's beginning to look like life is going to start to return more to its normal pace, fairly soon.

But right now, hibernation -- preferably long hibernation -- is what's on Bear's agenda.

Late Night
It's beginning to feel homey around here

Well, Bear is starting to feel at home in her den.  She's got the Worship Video player on, as she posts this, listening to great worship music.  Has got the mail system setup so she has outside communication with the world.  Has got a new quiz in the Rec Room ready to do after finishing this post, and this week's Bible Memory Verse on the blackboard, in sight, for practice.  Plus, has instant access to Bible look-up, and can even have whole Bible chapters read to her aloud -- (using BibleGateway) in whatever version she wants.  Quick one-click access to a multitude of awesome Christian Resources, good reading . . .

She's one happy Bear, as she tilts the recliner back, feet up, and surveys her new domain.

There's lots of work to be done yet, and more "moving trucks" on the way eventually, with more furniture for many of the rooms.  But the initial moving rush is over, and all basic utilities in operation.

It has been a very hectic moving season though, and Bear's pretty tired.

In fact, she's been so caught up by all the moving excitement, that she hasn't even entered the Homonym mini Writing Challenge at FaithWriters this week yet.  Not sure if she's going to get that done or not.  Will see if she's got a bit of energy back tomorrow, after getting some sleep . . .