This evening, I experienced another first in married life: I cut Lincoln’s hair. There aren’t any pictures of the event, since no one else was there, but I don’t think he looks too bad. . . . Lincoln assures me I did a fine job. It took a long time, but Lincoln has very thick hair. We tried to use his electric beard trimmer at first, but it was too small and kept clogging. So we had to revert to the old standby: scissors. We don’t have any hair-cutting scissors, but I used a surplus pair of sewing scissors. Lincoln suggested his big office scissors, but my sewing scissors are much sharper and considerably less unwieldy.

At any rate, now Lincoln has short hair. And I didn’t completely mutilate him. :)

Here are more, long overdue wedding photos. This is a more miscellaneous collection than the last; I’ll be posting family and wedding party photos soon. Enjoy!

Last week I received my first check for writing. It’s only a minor milestone, but it’s at least a small break into publication.

I’ve been working as much as I can towards applying to graduate schools. I’ve looked at the websites for dozens of PhD programs, but I’m still having trouble narrowing down the list to four or so schools to apply to. Part of the difficulty is that I won’t know where I stack up as an applicant until I have my GRE scores. Even then, graduate school seems sufficiently subjective that I won’t have a sense of what type of school I can get into until I have the fat (or thin) envelopes in hand.

I try to work on GRE practice problems every night. I’m not sure that there is much that I can do to improve my writing score, but I’m trying to make my verbal score as good as possible. When I practice the verbal questions, Abby sits behind me and guesses at her own answer. She explains the ones that I get wrong to me. In the practice tests I’ve actually done very well on the quantitative section, so I’m only going to brush up on some basic mathematics.

I’ve also done a lot of reading about graduate school applications. The AHA has some helpful materials. I’ve read or will read Beyond the Ivy Wall: 10 Essential Steps to Graduate School Admission, The Real Guide to Grad School: What You Better Know Before You Choose: Humanities & Social Science, Graduate Admissions Essays: Write Your Way Into the Graduate School of Your Choice, Becoming a Historian: A Survival Manual, Getting What You Came For: the Smart Student’s Guide to Earning a Master’s or a Ph.D., and The Chicago Guide to Your Academic Career: A Portable Mentor for Scholars from Graduate School Through Tenure. Each of these books could be distilled to a page or two, but I’ve found the advice they have to be worth the bother of cutting through all the fluff.

In less than two weeks, I’ll take the GRE. In August I’ll write essays, fill out applications, get transcripts, and ask for letters of recommendation. And in September through January, I’ll wait.

At long last, I am posting pictures of some of my culinary exploits. The most interesting thing I know how to make is pizza on my pizza stone. In this gallery you can see the very first pizza I made on the pizza stone, and the progression up to the “gourmet” pizza I made for Epic Movie Summer: Part III. I have also included a picture of Lincoln, who isn’t making pizza, but he’s making risotto, which is Italian, so it might be served at Mullen Pizza Parlor too. He made chicken risotto for us for dinner tonight.

Since marriage, I have learned, in small part, the art of cooking with onions, having never cooked with onions before because we never ate onions when I was growing up. I have decided that onions are good when they are chopped up and put in other dishes; whole onions or raw onions still don’t appeal to me. Contrary to popular wisdom, cutting up onions has never made me cry–maybe I haven’t been using the most potent varieties. Mostly I use Vidalia onions, since they’re cheap. My favorite thing to do with onions right now is to fry them along with cube steak or throw them in a ground beef dish. They add just a hint of more flavor, I think.

I like using spices too. Lincoln can vouch for the fact that I like throwing random amounts and varieties of spices into just about everything. Cinnamon is a favorite, but savory herbs and spices are great too. I love my Italian seasoning, and my jar of Tuscan seasoning gets frequent use. Of course, creating my own mixtures of spices and herbs is fun too–oregano and basil, sage and thyme, garlic, all kinds of stuff. Basically, if I like the smell of the herb, I throw it in with a roast or a marinade.

As always, I’m looking for recipes–onions, spices, or anything at all! :)

I haven’t posted very often in the first two months of being married, but I hope to resume this summer.  I have been busy with several things:

• I finished my contributions for the Encyclopedia of American Veterans, to be published by Greenwood Press.
• I’ve also been working on revising papers in hopes of getting them published.
• I’ve been studying for the GRE in hopes of getting into graduate school. I’ve also been narrowing down the list of graduate schools to which I might apply.
• As usual, I’ve been teaching Sunday school, going through Romans. I will also preach next week.
• I started a new job at BJU’s Mack Library working as the reference librarian.
• I’ve started doing freelance work for Discover the Book Ministries, a Christian publisher in Tulsa. I’ve been writing study guide questions for a new devotional book.
• I’ve managed to do some reading, but not the sustained reading into public history and American religious history that I had intended.

Perhaps just as important, Abby and I have been enjoying an Epic Movie Summer with Kellen and Anna Beth Funk. At least once a week, we get together to share a meal and watch an epic movie. For now, we’re watching The Lord of the Rings in six parts, but we may continue with other epics if there is more summer to last. Of all the things that we do the summer, enjoying the company of our friends may well be among the most important.

Abby would like me to add that she has been busy preparing wonderful meals for me, which is very true. The pile of recipe books borrowed from the library attests to that. Tonight’s entree is a gourmet pizza with the Funks.