The Beauty and the Mess

I am SO busy this week. It's nice, but I wish I had more time to write about things that have been going on. So here are the three main items of the day.

- Tomorrow I'm moving to a new cubicle. It feels like a big change, even though it's a whole ten feet away. On Monday our new hire is starting, and she'll take over this cubicle. It seems appropriate - this is the space for new people. After three years, I will no longer be the youngest and newest person in our department. Part of me feels like my edge will be gone, but I'm starting to like the idea of being an older person around here. I have a good feeling about things at work.

- Some of you may remember our friends Ashley and Kathryn, who got married in March (Ashley is a guy), giving us a queen-sized mattress set a couple of months ago. This was a huge blessing...we all know mattresses aren't cheap. It's still in their garage, because Evan had to build the bed frame before we could take it. With everything going on he hasn't had time, and I was getting tense. My mom had suggested I look for a bed in the want ads, but I never got around to it. Well, yesterday Ashley called me at work and said, "Hey, my boss is giving away a cherry four-post queen bed. Are you interested?" :D So he took the bed to his house, and on Sunday my dad is taking a trailer over and picking up the whole ensemble...in addition to my parents' couch! My parents ordered new furniture, and they decided to just go ahead and give us their old, nice couch while we were moving things. I'll have a couch! People can come over and have somewhere to sit! SO exciting. Also, I may paint the kitchen on Saturday. This weekend will be a huge step toward the New Married People Apartment.

- Last week at church band practice, I could tell as soon as I started playing that something was wrong with my flute. My friend and I examined it and noticed that the key pads are completely worn down. My flute hasn't been serviced since my senior year of high school, so I shouldn't have been surprised. Repadding usually runs about $200. My friend took me to talk with our director after practice, and he said he'd see if there was anything he could do. A little while ago, he called and said that the church has money set aside and usually contributes $50 toward repairs. That was helpful enough, but then he told me that someone had made an anonymous contribution to the music ministry, and he felt that part of that money could pay the remainder of my repair costs. So I'm taking the flute to the music store tonight!

Does God provide or what? He is so good to little undeserving me. It's amazing.

Happy birthday, Maria! I hope it's been a good day!

For the first time in months, I did some scrapbooking last night. I've really been in the mood to create something, so it felt good to cut and paste. :) I worked on my book of me and Evan from meeting to engagement. If I finish it by the wedding, maybe we can display it on a table at the reception! I'd like to get more done on it tonight, but that's not going to happen. We're having our first pre-marital counseling session. I'm looking forward to it and am curious about what we're going to do. Robert said to bring our Bibles, which is a good sign. :)

Changes are coming closer at work. The managers are still interviewing for the two extra coordinator positions. We decided this morning how everyone will be arranged, office-space wise. I'm going to move two cubicles down to be closer to one of my bosses, since it looks like I won't be working for the other one once the new people come (right now I support two people). No one has told me anything for sure, but that's what I suspected anyway. It'll be weird to be in a new cubicle, but after three years, a change of scenery might be nice. I'm just afraid I won't be busy enough once my workload is cut in half. I hate to sit around looking bored (I say as I type an LJ entry).

Bad censorship: One of our radio stations that plays Avril Lavigne's song "My Happy Ending" edits the language so that one of the lines says, "All the fish that you do." It cracks me up. That's like when they edit action movies on TV so that the characters say totally nonsensical things, like "I'm gonna kick your pie."

( What color am I? )

Happy birthday to the lovely Rachael! And happy late birthday to Sherri!

Life has become strange and stretched-out for me, like on that episode of Stargate SG-1 where the black hole started to come through the stargate and caused time on Earth to slow down. [/geekiness] In the past, a lot of activity has always made time go by faster, but I guess it's different when there are so many big events. Tomorrow evening Evan and I will get on a plane, arrive in our nation's capital in the middle of the night, and then drive to Fredericksburg (Manda, is that anywhere near you? Not that I'd be able to see you, but still), where we will spend the weekend. I'm excited about meeting Evan's cousins and other family members, but sad because while I'm gone, Kathy will move out. When she picks us up from the airport on Sunday night, she won't be my roommate anymore. I was hoping we could have a Last Night tonight. Then I found out our family friend, Gus (he's like an honorary uncle) is in town tonight and wants to take my family to dinner. He hasn't seen me since my engagement, so it's important that I go. I won't be home too late, anyway. (And really- like I would turn down Firebirds?) But I don't want her to think I don't care or don't feel sad that she's leaving.

The bright side is, in 144 days I get to live with Evan instead. Not a bad trade. :D We have decided to stay in my apartment following the wedding. For the last couple of weeks, we were working on buying a house from a friend of Evan's who now lives in Cincinnati. It seemed like a great idea- start off our marriage in our own home!- but I was really overwhelmed at having to deal with so many big, unfamiliar changes at once. Also, I was already stressing about our financial situation if we took it. Besides these things, something didn't seem right about the whole deal. We asked my parents' neighbor, who's a realtor, to run a check on the house. It turns out the neighborhood is depreciating faster than you can blink. That made it clear that the house was not a wise decision, and the peace I felt afterwards confirmed it. Then we thought about getting another apartment instead, one with a real air conditioner and a washer/dryer actually in the apartment. But the more we think about it, the more sense it makes to just stay where we are. Why complicate things? I can live without modern conveniences a little longer, I guess. We'll be together and that's what's important. :)

( Survey from Jessica )

My office is a sea of sneezes today. I must have already said "bless you" about fifty times. At least I'm not the one sneezing...yet. :P

This song reminds me of Luke...he always plays it when we have bonfires in the fall. I hardly see him or Myla anymore. They're having a party next week for Myla because she passed her CPA exam, but I'm going to be in Michigan. I'm sad about missing it.

Debra left for college this morning. Last night I went to the house and we had some last-minute sister time. I made her some personalized magnetic poetry words. She really liked them. I meant to take a picture of the box and card that I made to go with them, but I forgot. Anyway, I'll see her next week on my way to Michigan, so I tried not to get too sad about her leaving. It's going to be strange not having her here. At the same time, I'm so excited for her. My first year of college was probably the happiest year of my life. I hope she is similarly blessed.

I'll be getting some new furniture sometime in the next few months! My mother is replacing their couch and getting rid of the dining table. This sparked a whole conversation about my post-Kathy's-wedding living situation, which left me feeling even more confused than before. Today I've come to the decision that I'm not going to make any decisions right now. :) I can't presume to make big plans a year and a half in advance, when I have no idea what my situation will be then (Matthew 6:34). I notice I've started assuming that nothing's ever going to change for me. Maybe that's bad. I have this idea that the world is going to keep turning and I'm going to keep standing still. Other people will move, get married, have babies, get better jobs, get advanced degrees. I will keep going to my administrative job every day, playing flute occasionally, and coming home to crafts, Friends, and a cat. Not that I'm not growing spiritually or otherwise. It's just the outward things that seem to be on an eternal pause. I've read many times that the quiet times like this are when God prepares us for other things. I just hope there are other things.

Wow, I really didn't mean to talk about all that. Does anyone have any exciting weekend plans? I'm going to dinner and a movie with my brother tonight. It should be fun. My brother is great. :)

The end.

Happy birthday verseseven!!!

I've made a few changes to my photo page, but nothing major. I have a ton of pictures I'd like to add, but unfortunately the university scanner acts up every time I try to use it. Maybe because I'm not supposed to be using it. :P

Tonight marks the return of my Wednesday night Bible study! Our topic is the Church as the Bride of Christ. I am looking forward to it. After years of going to Bible studies three and four nights a week, cutting it down to one has been weird for me. I just don't learn as well on my own. I can read over a chapter three times, and never get out of it what I would have gotten if I was listening to someone teach it. I guess I just need to pray for more wisdom and insight when reading. Of course, once we understand something we're supposed to obey it, which will cause me to know my sin when I don't obey. Which will show me again how sinful I am and how much I need a Savior. Oh...there's the point. :)

I'm feeling sad about my various groups of friends. They're sort of falling apart, as I said the other day. RUF is just weird now, because it's full of people I don't know (mostly freshmen). My friends and I are now the "old crowd," and lately it's hard to even get us in a room together. I do have other people to hang out with, and Ryan and I hang out a lot, but I miss the way things used to be. Kathy's always with her boyfriend and his friends, and Evan's always with his truckin' buddies, and I don't see either of them as much as I would like. And the less I see them, the more frustrated I feel, and the more likely I am to be childish and huffy about not seeing them, and spout a bunch of saved-up nonsense at them, making them want to stay away from me until I can act normal. :) It's a vicious cycle. I'm trying to figure out how to stop it. :P

One of the sort-of-old-crowd RUF girls is auditioning for The Real World. It's funny, because I really think she might make it. She's the right kind of person for it. Also, she goes to CBU, which is where Keri from the Chicago cast used to go. I'll keep all of you posted on that. :)

Does anyone (besides Lawson) watch Scrubs? (If not, you should.) Do you remember the one where J.D. (I think that's his name) had to hang out with the older doctor and his patient for several days, and they did this funny Real World-intro thing? I just thought of that. Okay, I'll shut up now.