The Beauty and the Mess

I am a sick girl. No, not that kind of sick. :) But I have my sweater and my Diet Cherry Coke here for comfort. I only got about four hours of sleep last night because A) I was tense about the war B) I couldn't breathe C) my computer was extremely noisy D) the cat was hogging the bed. At about 4 am, Gandalf left and I shut the computer off, and could finally sleep comfortably. At 6 am, I awoke to what sounded like very loud tooth-brushing. It turned out to be Kathy cleaning her sneakers. At that point I gave up and got out of bed. Better luck tonight, I guess. :P

The Tigers play Arizona State tonight at 6:30 Central time. Kathy and I are going to a big game-watching party up at the school. I'm glad the NCAA is continuing with the tournament, because if the Tigers can't play, the terrorists will have won. :)

A hymn for today: This Is My Father's World.

Happy birthday to lifeofpatrick! And to Bun, who is 7 today. :) I like St. Patrick's Day. I want to do something to celebrate, but since I don't like beer, my options are limited. Kathy suggested making smoothies from lime sherbet, so that's a possibility.

My weekend was sort of an emotional rollercoaster. Fun things happened, but I've been anxious and easily upset (and gradually getting sick), so I wasn't as happy about things as I would have been normally. But there was much to be happy about.

- I got two new shirts at Old Navy, with my giftcard from Christmas. I thought the card had 50 dollars on it, but it actually has 100. I can stretch that for months. :) I also found some cute capri pants and Ocean Pacific board shorts at the thrift store.

- The teacher's supply store near my apartment just opened a new scrapbooking department. My mom and I were in heaven. They had cute papers, 10 for a dollar. I'm excited that I won't have to drive 20 minutes to get scrapping supplies anymore.

- I saw BLAST! It was incredible. If it comes to your town, go. The colors of the set and costumes change as the show progresses. For the "green" part of the show, they did Copland's Appalachian Spring, which is one of my favorite pieces. It was wonderful. On my way out, I got my program signed by one of the drummers. My mother teased me afterward and said she noticed some eye contact. I looked the guy up in the program; he's 26 and has a master's in music. My faint dreams of marrying a band director have been re-inspired. :)

- Debra and I finally went to see Drumline, against the advice of almost everyone we know. We really liked it. I figure you have to know band to really appreciate the movie, because whoever wrote it definitely lived it. I'm going to start telling people to see it if they want to understand what my high-school "career" was like. "One band! One sound!"

- I've decided to make Debra a special "sisters" scrapbook for her graduation. I've already done two pages. I am sure I will do much sentimental weeping over this project.

- As you already know (if you care), the Tigers are 7th seed, West bracket in the NCAA tournament. Many, many locals are angry about our placement. aardwolf and others have explained the reasoning to me, and I can see everyone's point, but really. 7th seed, people! From nothing! I'm just glad we're going to dance. :)

I wonder if we'll be at war by this time tomorrow. Please pray for the President, everyone.

I have redesigned again! Stop by and check it out.

Woo hoo! The Tigers just won their first C-USA tournament game. Many of us at the office are excited. :) Kathy and I are really getting into this tournament. We've been watching all of the games, not just ours. We even taped a chart onto the kitchen door. I'm pretty confident now that we're going to make it to the NCAA. March Madness, indeed! :)

Have I mentioned how wonderful the weather is here? It's impossible to concentrate on work. I just want to be outside. This morning, though, I was awakened (half an hour before I had to get up) by a huge thunderstorm. I turned on the TV, and the weatherman said, "Yes, we have showers, but they're not severe." As the hail pounded against my window, I shouted, "Then what do you call this?" But now it's sunny and nice again.

Now that the windows are open in the apartment, Gandalf has been basking on the windowsills. This past weekend, I passed a window and it looked like he had knocked the screen out and was about to jump out. Of course, he hadn't, and Kathy (and aardwolf) later laughed at me for panicking. Well, last night, the laughter stopped. I went to Kroger to get some ice cream, and when I got home, Kathy met me at the door, holding the cat. "Remember how you had a screened window in your room? Well, now you don't." Apparently Gandalf pushed the screen out and was sitting on the ledge when Kathy found him. I'm so glad I wasn't there. Now I have to call the landlady to get it replaced, since it was a deformed screen to begin with (which is why a cat was able to remove it).

I did one of these drawing things, but it's really lame. I tried to draw Bun, but I have a very hard time drawing with a mouse.

NUMBER 18, BABY!

When Kathy and I heard about it last night, we leapt up from the table, grabbed our pom-poms, danced around the apartment singing the fight song, and then calmly sat back down to finish our dinner. We think this is the first time the cat has wondered at our craziness, instead of the other way around. :)

In other local news, police busted a meth lab last night across the street from my high school. This is in addition to the illegal arsenal recently discovered behind my elementary school, and last week's disgruntled parent trying to run down the vice-principal of my middle school. I'm almost beginning to feel like I'm back in Miami. :P

Tonight I am actually going to tutor at Streets- they found a kid who wants to show up. Even though I've been "volunteering" there since September, I've only actually tutored twice. So I'm nervous. We'll see how it goes.

Here's a funny thing I got from Kathy: ( Thoughts on Gas Prices )

Well, the klutziness continues. Last night I slid into the dining room in my socks (a la Risky Business) and right into a long, sharp piece of wood that was invisibly sticking out of the floor. It was somewhere between a splinter and a ruler, and it was lodged in the bottom of my foot. I managed to remove it...or so I thought. Today I can tell that something is still in there. It really hurts. I've been limping around all day. Add this to the huge bruise I got last week from walking, casually, into the doorknob, and I think I might be hospitalized soon. :P

My weekend is not going to be as fun as I thought. The tickets for both the Grizzlies game (with Lawson and my brother) and the final Tigers home game (with Kathy and whoever) have all fallen through. Kathy went to get the Tigers tickets today, and they were sold out. So now I think we're going to have people over to watch the game, or something. I don't know. I'm pretty bummed about all that.

Evan is coming over tonight for pizza, Friends, and Harry Potter discussion. (He doesn't know about that last one yet. :)) And a new episode of Good Morning Miami is coming on! So those are two happy things.

Bible study was wonderful last night. I wish all of you could hear Jean Larroux teach. I always leave there feeling so refreshed and...I guess...centered. I might buy the tapes of this series and transcribe them or something, because I can't even paraphrase him justice.

After Bible study I went to Starbucks, which prompted me to wonder, at what age are you too old to hang out at Starbucks? The whole place was packed with college students. I'm a little sorry that I was never the kind of person who hung out in coffee shops, because now I want to.

I need some sort of lifestyle change.

Hello all.

My weekend was okay. When my radio alarm went off on Saturday morning, I slowly realized that people were talking in serious voices. I picked out the words "launch," "Camp David," and "President," and immediately thought that we were under attack. Before I was even fully conscious, I leapt out of bed and ran into the living room, scaring Kathy to death with my unintelligible shrieking. We turned on the TV and saw what had happened. I was sad. I called my dad, and he told me that the Columbia was the shuttle I had watched take off when I was little. (We used to drive up to Cape Canaveral for the launches.) I've been praying for the families of the astronauts. I think at least a couple of them were believers, so that is a comfort to everyone.

Around lunchtime aardwolf came to pick me up and we went to the basketball game with yakko7178 and his girlfriend. (Pictures to come in Lawson's journal.) It was fun. Then Lawson and I hung out at the apartment and then went to his house and watched Jurassic Park II, which I mostly spent hiding under my jacket while he laughed at me. Fun times. :)

On Sunday I took a nap that was entirely too long, which whacked me out for the too-little remainder of the day. This is becoming a pattern. I used to be able to nap for an hour on Sundays and then get up, but I've been so tired that I just keep sleeping. More iron in my diet might be a good idea. :P

I'm bored with my icons. I have many nice pictures of myself, the cat, etc. but when I resize them to icon size, most of them look horrible. Bleah.

Today is Ryan's birthday. He shares his birthday with Elvis, and my birthday is the day Elvis died. Weird, huh? :) Evan and Luke and Myla and I are going to take him to dinner tonight. He wants to go roller-skating, but I think we're waiting until the weekend to do that. Besides, I bought him Signs on DVD, so hopefully we can watch that and I can finally see it. And hey! I was supposed to see it on my birthday! So the circle will be complete. :)

Last night I went to the basketball game with Lawson and Jeremy and Teresa. It was fun, except when we were walking back to the car and it was so cold I could hardly move. Lawson wanted to prop me against a post and come back for me in the car. :P

I really don't have anything interesting to say right now.

Happy belated birthday to reflected_grace and cafemusique! Sorry for being a birthday slacker.

This weekend was good. Royce's surprise party was interesting. We all sat in the dark for 20 minutes because Kathy thought she had seen MaryElaine and Royce's car pull up (but it wasn't them). It's interesting how everything is funnier in the dark; Luke and Ryan's antics had me cracking up, which made Kathy mad because she was sure they would hear us. Finally, MaryElaine and Royce actually arrived, and we were quiet, and Royce was very surprised. Yay. :)

On Saturday I bought the pattern and fabric for my Belle dress, and cut out the pieces. It was exhausting. Then Kathy and I went to our game against Mississippi State. Thankfully, it stopped raining for the game, although the humidity was visible. At first, the Tigers played excellently and the game was very close. But somewhere in the third quarter, they just lost it. I think the final score was 29-17. Depressing. However, it was nice to go do something, just me and Kathy. And when we went over to see her dad, he bought us popcorn and Coke. :)

Sunday morning was eye-opening. There were 5 people in Sunday School, which, sadly, constitutes a crowd these days. The elder who's teaching our class told us again that they're still looking for a minister for us. He started asking us what kind of program we wanted and how they could meet our needs, which was nice, but all they need to do is find someone to do exactly what BJ did! I mean, we were all happily learning back then. Then he told me that they want to take the "career" people (basically, me and one other person) out of the group, and instead, get us to teach Sunday School classes. Now, I want to join the church as soon as possible, and I've been thinking about where I can serve. But this was sort of sudden. He talked like it was already decided, and I had to jump in and say that I would certainly consider it, but I couldn't give him a definite yes yet (while my head was spinning). Then he said that I should start going to the singles' Bible study during the week. I am 23 years old! All my friends are in college! And our group was called "College and CAREER" for a reason! I don't feel so old that I should be ejected from the group. I don't know what to think about all this. Bleah.

Well, my boss is coming in late today because she's taking Gandalf and his brothers to the vet! They're having their shots, so we should be able to have him this week! Maybe even tomorrow! :)

Well, last night's game was an adventure. I've never seen the Tigers play as badly as they did in the first quarter, so I wasn't too surprised that we lost. I spent most of the game running around looking for my parents, Ryan, and Lawson (I was only successful with the latter two). I learned that it is impossible to have a cell phone conversation in the Liberty Bowl (Lawson suggested they schedule several minutes of quiet during the game for people to make calls). By the fourth quarter, I was exhausted. The score was 38 to 20, so I just went home. Apparently we scored 12 more points in the last five minutes, but oh well.

I have just acquired the Beauty and the Beast DVD. Yay!

What is it about a chilly, rainy day that makes everyone play Tom Petty songs?

It amazes me how fast things can happen in life. Especially relationships. I hear of so many people nowadays who meet someone and, in a year or six months or even three months, they're married. Incredible. On one hand, that gives us all a little more hope, because you never know what tomorrow might bring. But the more I think about this, the more I realize that this sort of situation cannot happen to me. I have a rule for myself: I will marry a man who is my best friend. And that takes time. Even if (dream sequence) I were to meet a smart, funny, mature Reformed guy tomorrow and he was actually interested in me (/dream sequence), I would want to be his friend first. I don't want to be all mushy and nauseating with a guy who doesn't know who I really am. So it will be foooreeeverrrr before I even have a boyfriend, which is sad. All because someone wouldn't cooperate... :P

Which reminds me, in a roundabout way, of something my pastor said recently. Think about how different the world would be if everyone kept just one of the commandments. For example, if no one lied. Can you imagine the effects of that? We'd know what was really going on in government; corporate book-cooking wouldn't exist; fewer people would have affairs, because they couldn't lie about it; it goes on and on. It's just boggling to me to think about it.

I guess I'll be quiet now. You're welcome. :)

I just love this new icon. What I really would like is a picture of Elrond with the caption, "You WILL destroy the Ring, Mr. Anderson." :) That's what I was thinking every time I heard Elrond speak for my first few viewings of FOTR. I thought Evan was going to kill me, because after I quit saying it, I would laugh anyway and he knew what I was thinking. :)

We have chosen a cat! My boss took Kathy and I to meet the kittens at lunch today. One ruined pair of pantyhose later, we have chosen our little Gandalf the Grey. :) It was hard to decide, because all the kittens were so cute and endearing. But one of them really seemed to take to me, and I liked him best too. Then he used Kathy as a kitty jungle gym for a while, and she agreed that he was the right one. :) So in a week, possibly two, he will come home with us. I am excited. I feel bad for my boss, though, because she's not an LOTR fan and I think she is secretly horrified that we are naming a kitten Gandalf. :)

Tonight I am actually having a fun social evening! In lieu of RUF, we are all going to the football game to support our sadly lagging Tigers. (ESPN2. 7 pm. It'll be the only football game on tonight, and maybe you'll see me. :)) My family is going too, so I will probably go find them and spend a little time with them. (Lawson and Jeremy, you know where I usually sit if you want to drop by.) Anyway, I am glad to be going out and doing something.

I'm feeling a lot better today. :)