Stayed in Grand Island with friends last night. Watched a movie, cross-stitched, ate too many Oreo balls, and slept in a comfy bed. This morning, Melissa made chocolate chip muffins for breakfast. It's almost enough to make you forget that it's one degree with a wind chill of negative twenty-two outsi...
December 21, 2008
December 19, 2008
Last night, I stayed late to work on yearbook. I drove home in one of the craziest snow/ice/lightning storms I've ever seen. I had to stop a quarter of a mile down the road and rescrape my windshield because the windshield wasn't yet warm enough to melt the ice--instead, it froze to the windshield on contact. It took me 25 minutes to drive the two-ish...
December 18, 2008
First of all, if you haven't seen Straight No Chaser's version of "The 12 Days of Christmas" (have you been living under a rock???), go to YouTube right now and watch it.You're welcome.Last winter, someone told Mom about the YouTube video. We both loved it, and I wasted way too much time one evening watching all the videos of them I could find. (They did a sitcom medley that was so fun for a TV junkie like me!) For their anniversary, I ended up...
December 16, 2008
I've been too busy to blog much lately . . . but one of our local TV stations has made it easy to show you what I've been up to!Singing Christmas TreeIt's the 35th year for the SCT, and a reporter came to one of Saturday's performances. We've done eight shows, and we have four to go! Being in the tree is so much fun--I'm so grateful to have the opportunity to do this. Go here to read the story and watch the video. Look for me at 1:03! I'm the...
December 8, 2008
I got an email from Amazon yesterday telling me I have a $5 credit on mp3 downloads. Why? There's this promotion going on right now where if you spend $25 in their CD store (or some other places, too--click the link to see all that apply), you'll get a $5 mp3 credit to use in their digital downloads store. Yipp...
December 4, 2008
The Christmas season is upon us once again, and I've switched into my annual "Christmas music only" mode. With that in mind, I thought I'd repost this, which I wrote last year when I was still blogging over on MySpace . . .Contrary to what retailers want you to believe, the Christmas season does not begin on Nov. 1. There is a holiday between Halloween and Christmas, and it drives me nuts that Thanksgiving is overlooked. When I go shopping in early...
December 3, 2008
Amazon is currently running a 50 mp3 albums for $5 each promotion. There's something for everyone here, and at $5 per album, it's a great deal! Last night, I downloaded Jack Johnson's Sleep Through The Static and Chris Tomlin's Hello Love. There's also stuff by Coldplay, the High School Musical 3 soundtrack, and lots of albums I've never heard of!Amazon...
It took me much longer to watch Leverage last night than I'd planned. That's because it was a .mov file. It wouldn't play in Windows Media Player, and when I tried to play in in Real Player and Quicktime, I could hear it, but all I saw was a green screen.I've known about the green screen problem for a while, but I'd forgotten about it. A few months ago, I downloaded an episode of a tv show from iTunes, and I couldn't get it to play normally on...
December 2, 2008
Leverage, which premieres on TNT at 9 p.m. Sunday, evokes the Ocean's movies. There's the ubersmart criminal mastermind (Timothy Hutton)--although in this case, the pilot episode represents his first foray into criminal activity, the small-time crooks who are each good at one thing but work amazingly as a team, the behind-the-scenes twists that keep the audience in the dark until the setup is revealed to the guy being robbed/tricked (a la Toulour...
My Black Friday gift to myself? (Well, besides season two of Psych, which I got for $13.88 at Target!) A new monitor! Three years ago, I needed a new computer monitor, so I went to Best Buy on Black Friday. The crowd was insane, they were out of the monitor I was looking for by the time I got there, so I just gave up. Days later, Lisa gave me her family's used-but-still-in-good-shape monitor, so I quit looking for a new one. That monitor has...
I received an envelope in the mail today from TNT. Yes, the cable channel. The outside of the envelope read "ENJOY AN EXCLUSIVE SNEAK PEEK AT TNT'S DARING NEW SERIES." It was lumpy, so I knew it didn't contain a dvd. I opened it up and found . . . a flash drive! I'm not overly familiar with flash drives--I have one that has the beginnings of my novel on it--I didn't know you could put a TV show on one! The show is Leverage. After I watch it,...
November 25, 2008
You know those adolescent crushes--the ones you get on famous people? My first celebrity crush was on Jonathan Brandis (R.I.P.). I had a huge poster of his face on my wall. That crush faded fairly quickly (although the poster remained on my wall for years). It was replaced by a crush that lasted longer than I'd like to admit . . . and evidently isn't quite gone yet. I say it isn't gone because as this page (sent to me by my considerate brother)...
November 24, 2008
Product placement on TV is getting ridiculous. I remember the days when sitcom families wouldn't have real brands of pop or potato chips. I found it distracting and fake. But now, it seems like every show is promoting a particular brand or five . . . which is just as distracting and fake.Everyone knows the American Idol judges drink Coke. And anyone who watches The Amazing Race would be, well, as stupid as some of this season's teams if they...
I love looking at the stars. I always have. When I was in lower elementary, my mom and I checked out this tape about constellations from the library. We took our little portable cassette player outside, played the tape, and looked at the stars. If I remember right, we weren't very successful in identifying the constellations; we may have only found the Big Dipper. In upper elementary, I discovered Orion, which quickly became my favorite constellation....
November 22, 2008
I finally saw Fireproof last weekend. I loved it! Our international students also saw it, and it certainly seemed to make a lasting impression on some of them. One of my students told me that it made him reexamine his view on divorce. Before seeing the movie, he thought divorce was OK as long as no kids were involved, but now he's not so sure. Then in chapel this week, my pastor spoke on real love, which dovetailed quite nicely with the message...
Well, I only had one suggestion for what to call my reaction labels, so I went with it: insightful, diverting, and ridiculous. I figured those labels were more interesting than mine, so thanks thesisterv...
Steph and I went to tobyMac's Winter Wonder Slam concert in Lincoln on Thursday. I was way excited--I was never able to see dc Talk live, so I figured seeing tobyMac would be the next best thing. Plus, I really like tobyMac . . .There were four acts. The first, B.Reith, was quite enjoyable. He sounds remarkably like Jason Mraz. Seriously. At...
November 16, 2008
Blogger has a new feature called "reactions." It's a way for me to gauge what you, my readers, think about my posts. The labels are totally customizable, and I had several to begin with, but for some reason, only three show up on my blog. So I need your help: do you have a better idea for what to call the reactions? Right now, I have funny, interesting, and boring. But if you can think of a better way to say those things, let me know!Also, for...
At Singing Christmas Tree practice today, a guy thought Melissa and I were sisters. I've never thought we looked too much alike before, but my sister said she's had people ask her if Melissa and I were related. At least the guy didn't think I was her mother (yes, that's happened to me before . . . with a friend who is older than me!). What do you...
November 13, 2008
A few months ago, my parents went wild cleaning their basement. The basement was my home for a year after I graduated from college, and when I moved out, I didn't exactly take all my things with me. So, while they were cleaning, my dad took the liberty of packing up two boxes of stuff and depositing the boxes in my car. I lugged them up the stairs...
November 11, 2008
This afternoon, I found out that Covenant Life Church (Josh Harris' church) released a cd of 10 hymns they're learning as a church this year. I love hymns, so I went to the church's website to check out the cd. I literally began bouncing up and down in my office chair when I saw the familiar NoiseTrade widget. I've written about NoiceTrade before--I...
November 10, 2008
Kudos to the Wall Street Journal. They ran this opinion piece on the treatment of President Bush. The author makes some good points. It's a shame the way we treat the man we elected to be our president.I have no trouble supporting President Bush. I've never understood why people seem to hate him so much--but then I've never been one of those "withdraw the troops now!" people, either. However, I may struggle in my support of President-elect Obama....
I came across this piece in the Washington Post. In it, Deborah Howell, the paper's ombudsman (sadly, I had to look it up) acknowledges that yes, the Post favored Obama.I understand that everyone has his or her own bias to bring to the table, but this year, the media didn't seem to make any effort to conceal that bias. I'm glad that the Post is admitting its bias . . . even if it is after the fact. Hopefully, the media will attempt to be more...
November 8, 2008
I just got Sports Night from Netflix. Sports Night is another one of those shows that Andrew and I used to watch together in the basement--only Mom wouldn't have hated this one so much. I was about two minutes into the pilot when I heard it: laughter. At first, I thought there was something wrong with the dvd; then I realized it was a laugh track. I so rarely watch sitcoms anymore (and really, how many "traditional" sitcoms are left?)--the only...
November 6, 2008
There's always something magical about the first snow of the season. It was raining when I walked to my car this morning. On my way to work, the rain became snow. As I walked to my classroom, I smiled at the feel of the flakes melting against my face.One hour later, the wind had begun blowing. Hard. The snow had turned to sleet, and it stung as it whipped into my face. Suddenly, the weather didn't seem so magical anymore. (Especially since...
November 4, 2008
I just learned that Fireproof has made its way to our local theater. The theater is only open Friday through Sunday, so I'm thinking about seeing it on Saturday night. I've heard very good things about this movie . . . I'll let you know what I think after I see ...
This afternoon, I stumbled across some news that made me forget about the election for a few minutes. Before I tell you the news, it's confession time: I was addicted to the last cycle of The Bachelorette. I have long mocked those "find your soulmate on TV" shows, but I somehow got sucked into the "who will DeAnna pick?" drama. I watched, speechless, as she eliminated Jeremy, the attorney who I'd picked to go all the way. The next week, I was...
This morning, I voted in my third presidential election. We are seriously so blessed to live in a nation where we can make our voices heard in the voting booth. I cannot understand why people would choose not to vote. It's such a privilege!My senior year of high school, I was so jealous when several of my classmates got to vote. We weren't electing the president that year--it was 1998--but that didn't matter to me. What mattered was I was only...
October 31, 2008
Last Friday, I stumbled across the 4th quarter of the 2001 Nebraska-Oklahoma game on ESPN Classic. I tuned in just in time to see this:The commentators spent a lot of time talking about Eric Crouch's Heisman bid. My mom and I watched the Heisman presentation from a surgical waiting room in an Omaha hospital. My aunt, a longtime diabetic, was finally getting an much anticipated kidney transplant.Watching this game reminded me how much I used to...
October 30, 2008
The light in the stairwell outside my apartment burned out about a week ago. I've been holding off on calling my landlord about it because of this brilliant idea: what parent in their right mind would let their child go up a dark stairwell to trick-or-treat? I'll just enclose a note with my rent check on Saturday--after Halloween! Of course, there are some crazy people out there . . . this is what happened to me last year on Halloween:*Halloween--we...
October 29, 2008
Sometimes I forget that in the age of the internet, you can connect with practically anyone. (Thus, I am Facebook friends with my favorite Lost blogger.) I was reminded of this fact when I received a comment on my last post from Eric Wilson. Who is Eric Wilson, you ask? He's the guy whose book I'll soon be reviewing for Thomas Nelson.Here's what he had to say:Just to clarify, I started pitching the idea for my series before Twilight even came...
October 27, 2008
We should have scheduled conferences. Then I wouldn't have to sit here for six hours waiting for 10 parents to come through.I really love proofreading. How do I become a freelance proofreader?Smart move turning my phone to vibrate. The chorus of "So Happy Together," for some reason I can't remember, is the ringtone I've set for the school. Since Mom was in the office, and I was in the gym, she called me several times to give people messages,...
October 22, 2008
I've been downloading music from NoiseTrade for a while now; if you like free music (and who doesn't!), you should check it out. So far, Derek Webb (of Caedmon's Call) is my favorite NoiseTrade artist, but you can also get stuff from Phil Joel, Sixpence None the Richer, Sandra McCracken, and many othe...
October 21, 2008
Have a little time to spare? Try out the Eyeballing Game. I've played probably 15 times in the last two days. My best score was in the 6's. I'm truly terrible at convergence and excellent at bisect angle. Check it o...
A few weeks ago, I wrote about Obama's response to the "when does life begin" question. At the time, I said that a candidate's stance on abortion was important, but perhaps not the most important issue. Two months later, I've reversed my opinion. How can I, in good conscience, vote for someone who will not defend life? I know this is a touchy issue, and Christians all over are debating it. In fact, I just read something about it on the Boundless...
October 16, 2008
Last week I mentioned Ryan Reynolds . . . who I still choose to believe I saw in Stratford. I was a big fan of his sitcom Two Guys, a Girl, and a Pizza Place, and I have fond memories of watching it with Andrew. Especially the Halloween brain-swapping episode. Berg, as I'll always think of him, is the cast member who has reached the highest level of fame, and after "seeing" him, I started wondering what happened to everyone else. I saw Ashley...
October 12, 2008
Singing Christmas Tree practices started today. I'm so excited about singing again! (I'm also excited about seeing Melissa on a more regular basis . . . we'll have lots of time together with all the rehearsals and performances in the next two months!) We're doing a few songs that we did when I sang three years ago. The music is really good, and I think the drama will be as well--it's the Apostle Paul telling other inmates about Jesus while he's...
I don't know how many times in my life I've said, "I wish God would just drop a map from the sky telling me what to do!"My pastor is preaching a series on faith. Today he talked about Abraham. I've often struggled with what God wants me to do with my life. Who hasn't? And it's in those times of uncertainty that I've wished for that road map. But Pastor Mike said something today that hit me as one of those "duh" statements--it should have been...
I started this a week ago and forgot about it . . .It's 8 p.m. on Sunday night, and I'm sitting in my sister's living room in Kent Hall at Grace. I think this is the 9th time I've been back at Grace since graduation, and each time, it gets a little less surreal. I realized today as I walked around campus that I've now been gone from Grace for longer than I was here. Weird.Steph and I left school early on Thursday to begin our trek to Indiana....
October 8, 2008
So, here's how I did:read 50-100 pages of Lynne Spears' autobiography I actually finished the book last night.begin jotting down thoughts for review of said book No notes, but I did start thinking about the review. I stumbled upon an opportunity to get a free book in exchange for writing a 200-word review and posting it on Amazon and on my blog. So look for that sometime in the next week.work on my novel If typing a page I wrote in Steph's notebook...
October 7, 2008
Just returned from Canada and Indiana, and I've hit the ground running. After a crazy day at work (where I spent hours designing a postcard, thanks to a sketchy internet connection), I still have a million things to do. On the agenda: read 50-100 pages of Lynne Spears' autobiographybegin jotting down thoughts for review of said bookwork on my novelwash dishescall Valflip between NCIS and Dancing with the Starsgrade journalsupload...
September 29, 2008
I left work early tonight to go shopping with my mom. We went to Schweser's, a clothing store, because we had 5% off coupons that expire tomorrow. I've never been a big fan of Schweser's--I've always thought of it as an old lady store--but one of my good friends has recently bought lots of cute clothes there, so I thought I'd give it a chance. We went to Columbus, which is 45 miles northeast of Central City, because we'd heard it was a bigger store...
Thanks to all of you who prayed for me as I agonized over my decision. Yesterday, I finally made it.For the past year or so, I've been thinking about going back to the church I attended when I lived in Grand Island. This summer, I started praying about it. For the last week, I've been agonizing over the decision.When I'm faced with a hard decision, I tend to just put it out of my mind . . . which is why I've been thinking about this for a year...
September 25, 2008
I had my first classroom observation today. The first. Ever.I'm in my fourth year of teaching, but I didn't take a normal route to the classroom. I took one education class at my community college; I decided then that I didn't want to be a teacher. In my second year at NC, my then-boss asked me to start a writing class for our international seniors. The next year, I began teaching ESL. I've worked my way up to two ESL classes, yearbook, speech,...
September 22, 2008
That's all I seemed to do last night. Two hours after I went to bed, I was still awake. Normally when I can't sleep, there's no good reason for it. But last night, I knew the reason: I have a big decision to make--a decision I've been contemplating for about a year. The thing is, it's now time to actually make the decision, rather than just think about making it.Tonight, Proverbs 3:5-6 came to my attention. I've known these verses at least since...
Steph wanted pizza last Friday, but I didn't want to take the time to make our normal homemade crust. Searching through Mom's recipes, I found one from my aunt called Crazy Crust Pizza. It looked fairly quick and simple, so I decided to go for it. I knew it would be different, as it called for 4 eggs and only 2 cups of flour . . . but I had no idea...
September 15, 2008
September 11, 2008
I'm up late proofing the Advance. I knew it would be a late night, but I didn't realize just how late. I need to get the edits to Beth tonight so she can finish it tomorrow. Here are a few of the things keeping me awake and sane while I work:Diet Wild Cherry PepsiCode Red Mountain Dew (caffeine and sugar!)Pillsbury Mint Chocolate Brownies (thanks, Steph!)DayQuil (yes, I have a cold--as do about half the people associated with NC. What's the deal?...
September 9, 2008
My yearbook staff has been selling ads during class for the past week. After they got back today, my mom took a call from one of the businesses some of the boys visited. My first thought when Mom told me about the call was oh no, what did they do now? I trust them, but still, they're teenagers, and I wouldn't put it past them to have a lapse in judgment.But no. The lady was calling to let us know how professional and respectful the boy who had...
September 5, 2008
I had extra time this morning--don't ask me how that happened--so I decided to make some coffee. I got out my travel coffee maker, which brews two 15-oz. travel mugs of coffee. I got it all set up for one mug; then I decided I should take some coffee for my mom, too. So I added water and coffee, made sure the mugs were firmly in their slots, and turned it on. I went back to my room to finish getting ready. Just as I was ready to leave, I went...
September 4, 2008
A smattering of the things I've been thinking about today:Why do I always feel compelled to use my nice, 12-cup coffee maker whenever I want coffee? The instructions say not to make fewer than six cups at a time, so I always make that much and then have two or three cups left over to get nasty. I have a coffee maker designed for travel mugs . . . so why don't I just use that? Maybe because the 12-cup lives on the counter, and the travel maker...
September 3, 2008
Highsroad trip with Valworship at Christ's Covenant (the church I attended in college)visiting Jen in South Bend; meeting up with Sarah in Des Moines as we each crossed IowaSarah Palin--you go, girl! the meal Val's roommates had waiting for us when we arrived at Gracefinding a shortcut on the way homeseeing my Sparkies again!Lowsfast food on the way to Indiana (more to follow!)leaving Valnot being able to sleepmy schedule--I'm so busy and stressed...
August 27, 2008
Dave Barry used to have a syndicated column that ran in the Sunday edition of the Independent. Nearly every Sunday, my brother would read the column to us while we ate our Sunday dinner. I've developed a fondness for Barry over the years. Today, a blogger I follow had a link to Barry's Democratic National Convention columns. And so, I must also share with you. Enj...
August 25, 2008
More thoughts on singleness . . . this time from January 2007. (FYI, the links don't work anymore.) Reading this again has been a good exercise for me. singleness Last night I rejoiced in my singleness. I wandered through my apartment, grateful that I live alone and wondering how on earth I could adjust to living with a man. I shopped for chick flicks on Amazon,...
August 24, 2008
Up to this point, this blog hasn't been political, and I plan to keep it that way, for the most part. However, I just came across this article by Peggy Noonan, and I had to share. As you may know, McCain and Obama recently took part in a forum moderated by Rick Warren. Warren asked both candidates at what point a baby should get human rights. McCain's answer: "At conception." Obama's? "Answering that question with specificity is, you know, above...
At least it sure seems that way. Three couples I know are getting married in December, and one in January. I'm 3-7 years older than all of them. My brother just announced his engagement. On Friday, another one of my high school classmates "bit the dust"--now at least 27 of the 41 people in my class are or have been married.I turned 27 two weeks ago. Most of the time, I'm OK with my age and with my marital status, but every once in a while, I'm...
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