blessed to be a witness

Mood- anticipatory
Color- slate blue
Fingernails- painted
Emotion- unclear
Flavor- strawberry
Outlook- unsettled
Description- sweet
Morning- varied
Sleep- certainly

Well, it's been a great day so far. Thanks for all the birthday wishes! I feel like I'm really part of the adult world now. Although I'm sure that feeling will fade by tomorrow. :)

Today at Schnuck's I was carded when I bought some beer and the cashier remarked that we had the same birthday. I looked at her nametag and it turns out she also had the same name. We had a nice little chat about it. See the things I would miss by using the self-checker-outer?

My room is a pig sty.

Minus the pig manure. And slop. And no trough. So basically, a pig sty without everything that makes a pig sty a pig sty.

But you know what I mean.

Enjoyments of the week so far:

-pineapple upside-down cake
-Hugh Grant
-Ben Harper
-2 kinds of birthday cake in Katy's suite
-laughing hysterically with my roommates (or maybe them laughing at me?)
-my favorite kind of Kool-Aid (ice blue raspberry lemonade)
-tossing jacks at Carrie while she slept
-a huge orange cat
-a good parallel-parking job in the Central West End
-talking to Sarah Stanage! albeit, for one minute
-receiving my first birthday card from Southwest Airlines
-6 on analytical writing!
-predicted but not actual rain
-Iced Caramel Royale at Kayak's with Ali
-new Strong Bad e-mail
-having a really messy room and not caring about it much
-a nice nap on our couch

And it's only Tuesday!

Ode to the ampersand:

Oh, dear ampersand
My favorite of the symbols
Your rounded outline
Your flowing curves
Your meaning, at once useful and fleeting
My pencil never has to leave the page
Oh, dear ampersand
Inclusive in your word, the essence
"And"

I felt really horrible last night as my nose continued to run, I kept sneezing, everything still itched, and I couldn't breathe. Blasted allergies! I thought I had escaped them. But luckily, today is better. I still used it as an excuse to not exercise, but my throat really wasn't feeling great either. And the two large red gel caps of some kind of cold/allergy medicine I took seems to be helping.

Now I'm off to Indiana for a fun-filled weekend hanging out with churchy people! I hope nothing exciting happens here without me. That would be tragic.

Website of the day: Turkey Run

I mailed my taxes today! Now I will not be arrested for tax evasion. I am such a good American citizen.

On Tuesday in class, we saw a "video" of a Billy Graham crusade from 1957. It was held in Yankee Stadium, which was completely packed with people, not even counting the ones standing outside. A massive choir started by singing "How great thou art," and because it was in the North, the crowd was pretty well integrated. Then-Vice-President Richard Nixon was the "celebrity" guest, which was also interesting. I was just thinking about what an amazing path Billy Graham has followed. To think that that crusade was almost 50 years ago, and Graham is still around. While the American public is probably, in general, more hostile towards "crusades" or "Jesus rallies" than they once were, I'm sure that Billy Graham has brought countless people to faith in Christ. The girl sitting next to me in class kept making comments, not quite under her breath, about how the whole thing was "weird," and other generic criticisms, but something in me really admired the whole scene. So consider this my shout-out to Billy Graham. I think he's cool.

Billy Graham, by the way, has 1,070,000 hits on Google in 0.12 seconds.

Reading Hopie's blog about her old journal entries inspired me to look back on mine. It's only a year old, so I couldn't go back that far to find anything super-embarrassing, but I did find a poem/prayer I wrote on Maundy Thursday last year. Keeping in mind that I don't generally write poetry, I want to be brave and share it. Here goes:

Wash over me, Lord Christ
In your love, you create me
By your grace, you make me whole
Enable me to love
Enable me to serve
Not as the world gives, you have given me
Not as the world gives, let me give to you
Hold me in your arms, your love
Let me be healed where I am broken
May your light
And your love
Be always in my sights

I have decided to blog rather than send some very important e-mails I need to send. And that's okay. (Sorry, I just needed to assure myself that it's ok to take the time to do stupid things when I have a lot of time to spare.)

Not that blogging is stupid.

Right. Back to the task at hand!

So, today I got my ticket in the mail to go see the Waa-Mu Show at Northwestern. It's an annual original musical that the Theatre department puts on, and Adele (who I've known since we were 2 years old!) wrote two songs in it! I'm so proud of her. :) I'm going to go during reading week because, hey, I've got nothing else to do.

In sad baseball news, the Diamondbacks are sucking it up!!! I'm disappointed, but I guess that's one reason why rooting for two teams is a good idea. How exactly do you root, root, root for the home team, though, when you're not sure where home is? 'Tis quite the dilemma.

And finally, there is one more night of Uncle Joe's training left! Let me know if you want to do something tomorrow night after 10:30 to celebrate with me!

Happy Easter! I would just like to share how much I love ECM. Last night, we had a beautiful Easter vigil service. We heard four people tell how they became a part of the community, said our first Hallelujah's, drank leftover wine, sang our hearts out together, and yes, I even cried. It was the first time in a long time that I've felt truly overwhelmed by love. And then this morning, church was great, but so was having brunch with my dearest friends and talking and laughing and playing Catch Phrase. Thanks to everyone in ECM because it is what it is because of you. And I love you!

Ok, enough of the sappy stuff. Other news... I booked tickets for me and my brother to go to France! Holy cow. I was annoyed because I looked at fares Friday night, didn't book the tickets, and then ONE NIGHT LATER the same flights cost over a hundred dollars more. C'est la vie, I suppose, but it still made me mad. But I digress. Ok, so we're going May 25- June 15, then I'm going home to Phoenix for a couple weeks, and I'll probably be back here by July 1st. And in other exciting news, I've been thinking more about possibly getting a new car. I mentioned this to my mom.... and she doesn't think it's a bad idea, either. So who knows, but I might return in July in a new(er) car. I still feel like I need to pray about it, though, and see if it makes sense.

I'm also feeling comment-deprived, so feel free to let me know what kind of car you think I should get, what I should bring you from France, why you too love ECM, etc. etc. Use your imagination!

Website of the day: where we'll be

I heard one time that Marlon Brando never actually memorized his lines for the movies he was in, he was just very skilled at using cue cards.


Do you think that's true? I have my doubts.


Website of the day: Brando

My oh my, what a busy week this is, including but not limited to:

taking the GRE
Wednesday night church
Cardinals game!
various errands
various Uncle Joe's related tasks
Thursday church and all-night vigil
deciding when I'm going to France
Friday night church
Saturday night church
Sunday morning church

Can you tell it's Holy Week?

We have an apartment! And it's a great apartment! And it's an affordable, safe-neighborhood apartment!

Ok, so it's not ours just yet... but we're darn close. Everyone is invited to come over for a grand tour before you leave town for summer. Or when you get back into town from summer, for that matter. Or maybe you should just make a special trip to visit me and my apartment.

Happy faces all the live-long day. :) :) :)

Allow me to get on my Arizonan soap box for a moment and complain about Daylight Saving time. So... I understand the logic of it and all. I like the fact that it will be bright for another hour tonight. But when you (and by you, I mean me) forget about it... well not really forget. See here's what happened. I knew the time changed last night. I had it circled in my planner. I heard a "public service announcement" about it on the radio last night. But for some reason, the little synapses in my brain didn't grasp that 2 a.m. Sunday basically means very late Saturday night. So what I expected to be 2 a.m. Sunday would actually have been 2 a.m. Monday. That's where the problem arose. And so when Katy called me this morning and I realized my mistake and that I had a half-hour to get ready for church, I must admit I was distressed and not a little bit angry. And naturally I couldn't be angry at myself, I had to be angry at the whole system of Daylight Saving.

Luckily, what could have turned into a very foul mood and lasted the entire day was dissipated by how nice it was outside, seeing Katy and being proud of her for breaking 2 hours in her half-marathon, and going to church. Whew.

But I still sort of resent having to do the whole Daylight Saving thing after 17 years in Arizona without it.

Ahhhh.....

After a full day of talking about self-injury and suicide at Uncle Joe's training, I went to see Starsky and Hutch with Lesley. Then we went to Steak N' Shake and now I am full of grease and ready to sleep.

Also might have exciting apartment news tomorrow. I'll keep you posted. Hah, get it? I really will keep you posted. Thanks blog, for pointing out new and unfunny puns to me.

I am pleased to report that April Fools' Day came and went with no one taking advantage of my gullible-ness.

In other news of me, I talked to my dad for a bit. Luckily, I took my phone with me when I ran into my apartment, or I would have missed his call. It was pretty good to talk to him, except I have to figure out when I'm going to go to France. That makes it sound really bad, like it would be a hardship to go to France. It's not, I just don't know when it'll happen and he's all anxious for me to figure it out so he can make plans for things we can do together. I guess it'll be good because it doesn't look like he'll be able to come for graduation now. But I'm also going to want some time on my own to do the whole speaking-French thing. So we'll see. It's hard to make decisions about things that seem far off.

In apartment-seeking news, we still don't know where we're living, but we have a couple of good leads. At least I think they're good. And finally, I have to prepare for training tomorrow and continue with my GRE studying, so I suppose I should stop putting those things off. Have a good night, all.

Website of the day: Le Monde

So I forgot one more:

You know how there are those commercials and other jokes about plumbers looking under the sink with their gigantic butt crack showing? This morning, shortly after the barking dog, I definitely saw a worker (ok, so he wasn't a plumber, but still...) drilling a doorknob or something while squatting and yes, his gigantic butt crack was showing.

Moments from my morning run:

They're redoing the roof of Sasha's, so our whole building and street smelled like tar.

As I stopped to walk for a bit (and probably looked very tired), these two other walkers gave me some encouragement to keep going. Thanks, St. Louisans!

When I got back on my street, this woman was sweeping or raking or something, and her little lap dog came barking towards me. She scolded it for going in the street. Never mind the barking at nice runners part! But I am glad I didn't witness a Yorkshire Terrier hit-and-run.