All right. It's Wednesday, just about the midpoint of this Eagle River vacation. Let's see, the rest of Tuesday I pretty much hung out, finishing up my audiobook and reading more of History of American Political Theory. I've finished up my 60 hours of Summer reading for the Wheaton Public Library which will net me a free taco at Chipotle. There are other rewards for 20 and 40 and I still have a couple gift cards that I've saved. ::Cough cough:: Anyway, part of the reason for this was that it was either raining or threatening rain the entire day and evening. As a matter of fact, that evening, there was a gigantic thunderstorm all that late evening and night. That has actually happened all three times we've been up here. I must say, Eagle River has provided me with a fantastic opportunity to catch up on a lot of college lectures. Right now I'm going through some of Wheaton College's speaking sessions. This one Indian speaker D'Souza Dinesh or something like that. Anyway, he was talking a lot about combating the New Atheism and made some very excellent points that I added to my intellectual arsenal. He brought up some things that I had never heard about from anyone else before, like the fact that every single physical law of the universe (speed of light, gravity, rate of expansion of the universe, etc) has to be absolutely exact or else the universe as we know it would simply not exist. There were other cool facts to. He was saying that his talks are aimed differently for different audiences. He said that for Christians, he wants to encourage them in their faith, to agnostics or seekers he wants to show them that there is evidence and maybe think twice about disbelief in God, and for often arrogant undergraduate atheists, he wants to give them an "intellectual horsewhipping" which I thought was beautifully hilarious. As much as I really liked the guy, he also held a position in strong support of God-directed evolution and how the earth was 5.5 billion and change years old. I guess that shows how sheltered I've been because I thought a belief in a literal 6 day creation was much more ubiquitous among strong" Christians that it actually seems to be. I'll delve into my beliefs on that in more detail at some point in the near future. Maybe I'll type a draft of it on my laptop and post in when I get home...hmm. Now there's an idea...Anyway, today I listened and read more, kayaked a bit more (and got really sunburned on my lower arms and curiously right above my knees too) and...went tubing. This time however, they went too fast and crazy and really ticked me off because I was telling them to slow down. It was less fear of my life and health and more an anger at a blatant disregard of my requests and a feeling of broken trust. So that sort of left me sullen at the world (except my iPod and Palm of course) for a while. Just a few hours ago, we went to a choir concert at a nearby church that was singing old revival songs of the Great Awakening (I believe it was the second). Some of the songs like "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms" were familiar and nice, but a lot of the other ones I didn't know and so I sort of felt a disconnect. It was really cool to hear deep men's voices and the ladies sing really high, especially considering the church I've attended all my life doesn't have one. So that brings us up to the present. I'm writing this and will start getting ready for bed soon. Tomorrow will be our last day of water activities as it has been confirmed that we'll be going to Black River Falls in the UP on Friday. So I'm really looking forward to going and getting pictures, especially considering there actually hasn't been much to photograph (maybe I'll explain later in a more all-encompassing post). Well, it's time to scram!
