The partridge is in the pear tree

That title is code for "the package is delivered." I will tell more of that story later, but it's too close to the fact and who knows what spies are reading this blog.

Well, that said, it's now time for bed, so I will bid you a fond adieu (or however you spell it) and retire to my quarters to sleep the sleep of a... hibernating turtle (but replace "deep under water" with "in my bed" and "in the mud" with "in my layers and layers of soft blankets" and "lower their body temperature" with "burn up with fever from the layer and layers of soft blankets" and "breathe through their tails" with "snore through my nose/mouth/throat" -- wow, that's a lot of replacements. Turns out I'm not much like a hibernating turtle).

When life is crazy, make lemonade.

It's almost Christmas, and I'm really looking forward to a long weekend of kicking back, relaxing, and celebrating the birthday of my main man, Jesus. Oh yeah, and eating egg rolls. I better make sure we're still planning on that for this year and that I'm not going to miss it by needing to come back to Midland in order to work on Wednesday.

I'm going to finish up those thoughts later; I got distracted by Jack Handey's Deep Thoughts, such as the following:

"Today I accidentally stepped on a snail on the sidewalk in front of our house. And I thought, I too am like that snail. I build a defensive wall around myself, a 'shell' if you will. But my shell isn't made out of a hard protective substance. Mine is made out of tinfoil and paper bags.

Instead of having 'answers' on a math test, they should just call them 'impressions' and it you got a different 'impression' so what, can't we all be brothers?

If God dwells inside us, like some people say, I sure hope He like enchiladas, because that's what He's getting!"

In other news, we got our parents Dance Praise Revolution for Christmas -- a variety of DDR, but with Christian music, i.e. pretty sweet. Of course I made them open it early so that I could watch them enjoy it before I have to leave (and so I could enjoy it myself). Let's just say I'm the DPR master. Not really, but it's a lot of fun and now I'm really sweaty, and I would never recommend "Shadow Dance" mode when Jason is controlling the dance.

Over and out for now.

smelling like something that needs to be sent through the car wash

i love hanging out with friends. i don't even completely mind going to a bar where they drink and i laugh at them. i HATE the smell associated with that situation. boooo. it's made its way into the pores of my clothing. does clothing have pores? it does now.

oh yeah, a friend of a friend at the bar said his friend (another guy) thought i was cute... is that supposed to make me excited and want to hang out with said friend of friend of friend? because i just said thanks and left. well, we were leaving anyway. it's not like i just ran out.

i forgot to bring pajama pants to troy with me. hmmmm...

Are you tired? Because you've been running through my head all day.

Today was a good day. Probably if you had asked me how I thought my day was at about, say, 5:55 I don't think "good" would have been in my top 213940 list of responses. Well, maybe because by about 162, I would have run out of other words in my vocabulary.

Anyway, I'd like to thank all the friends who came over and brought groceries and helped cook and set my table and then feasted with me and swapped some hilarious stories. It was good times.

And if it weren't past my bedtime, I'd tell you more, but that's all for now, so peace out.

Courage. Confidence. Character.

I guess that's what the Girl Scouts are about these days. Back when I was in Girl Scouts, we were pretty much just about cookies. Well, at least that's what I was pretty much about. I just got my box of thin mints for the year (why'd I only order 1?!?), and it's almost depleted. Ok, not exactly, but I'm definitely chowing through them quicker than I ought to be. Nevermind, there's none of this "ought" business when it comes to cookies!

So I mentioned God was trying to teach me more about trust and love... I'd like to expound on that, but I'm not sure how well I'll do. Oh well, just go with me.

Love...
* To be able to love others, I also need to be able to receive love. I guess to me this seems a little selfish, like "Gimme the love first, then I'll love other people" but really with this whole sinfulness thing that we're born with, we're pretty much incapable of loving others without having some love poured into us first. And only so much can come from friends and family. At some point, I've got to look to God to love these people that I'm just not capable of loving on my own. And in that sense, I need to first be able to RECEIVE God's love so that I can OVERFLOW it on to the next person. Which means I need to recognize that I myself am not unlovable, as much as I don't seem to love myself sometimes. Somehow God still does love me and wants me to receive his love. Pretty cool. There's a song that I've heard recently, David Crowder Band style: Everything Glorious. My favorite line is in the chorus, where it says repeatedly "You make everything glorious" and then ends with "And I am yours, what does that make me?" GLORIOUS, of course!
* Love out of obligation isn't really love. Too bad for you, anyone that I've been "loving" out of obligation. You're OUT OF LUCK now. Just kidding. I will just be working on point number 1, i.e. overflowing God's love through me to you, instead of this fake junk you've been seeing. Trust me, it'll be an improvement because my own fake love is wearing thin.
* And as much as I've heard this a bazillion times before, love is STILL not a feeling. Love is a verb (or luv is a verb?) as DC Talk would say. Sometimes I miss that old school DC Talk. Remember Time is Ticking Away? And Jesus is Alright? And yes, luv IS a verb.

I now interrupt what God's teaching me to bring you this special news bulletin. Gmail has colored labels now! That's right, you too can have a pretty inbox. Of course, I considered making all of my labels orange because, well, we all know I just like orange, but I decided that rather defeats the purpose of labeling which is to be able to distinguish certain things from other things and doesn't work too well when it's all orange. Hmmmm... dilemmas.

I'll come back with another post about what I've learned about trust. Guess those colored labels were a bigger interruption than any of us anticipated!

... in all circumstances.

It would appear by the new set of pictures around the title that I'm full of myself. And indeed it's true. Ok, maybe not. But I do like to make faces. And photo booth makes it just a little bit too easy to do that. The one thing I was thinking about is that all the pictures look normal to me but to everyone else I probably appear mirrored. Because I am. Because that's the way the built-in camera works. Interesante.

Anyway, God's teaching me more about trust and more about love. I'll have to expound on that later. Suffice it to say for now that I'm finding out that I'm really not very good at either one of those things, but I'm a work in progress.

Waffles says hi. Except it comes out as more of a meow, but I'm translating as best as I can.

Peace out.