In the life of a Kelsey

God sings loud

2012-01-13T17:27:00.002-05:00

First of all, I've never thought of God as a singer. I suppose if humans are created in his image, and many good singers live or have lived among the human race, then the chance that God also sings is good, but this is something I hadn't really thought about.

Just recently I was reading a book called "The Greener Grass Conspiracy" (by Stephen Altrogge), and in it, the author points out the verse Zephaniah 3:17.

The LORD your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing. (ESV)

Not even just singing: LOUD SINGING.

I like this picture*, of a God who rejoices over us with gladness, quiets us with His love, and exults over us with loud singing.

*Note: I do not condone building a picture of God based solely on things that I (or you) like. But sometimes it's ok to marvel at a God who sings.

Random thoughts

2011-12-16T19:00:00.000-05:00

Pepsi + a cherry cordial Hershey kiss does not replicate Cherry Pepsi. Turns out there's no chocolate in Cherry Pepsi and trying to put some in just tastes weird.

The name "Dakota" can belong to a boy or a girl, and just because Dakota Fanning is a girl doesn't mean I should assume that my adopt-a-family child is a girl. He's not.

Today seems to be the start of the holidays as noticed through Out of Office messages saying things like, "See you next year!" or "Gone until January 9th" (really? why am I not taking a 3 week vacation like this?) or my favorite "I’ll be out starting noon today. Ishould be back the 4^th or 5^th. I will have a laptop with me, butwill do my best to ignore it."

I'm finally starting to get to the point where I want to hear the Christmas songs interspersed in the regular songs on the radio instead of just tolerating them because it's December.

On Sunday, I'm going to have a Christmas cookie/dessert baking day with some friends, and I'm already both excited about and dreading the sugar high and subsequent crash that is inevitable with that many cookies around.

It's getting increasingly harder for me to concentrate at work on Fridays. I think it's partly due to having every other Friday off and partly due to the fact that neither of my work neighbors have been around on Fridays lately.

Had a discussion about the benefits of toothpaste vs just using water. I think if nothing else, toothpaste makes my breath smell better, but I guess I don't know how much more it cleans my teeth.

Dangerous Basements

2011-12-14T19:00:00.000-05:00

Having a basement is a dangerous thing, and not just because of all the creepy crawly (real or imagined) things that might live down there.

It's dangerous in the same way that gmail is dangerous -- "unlimited" storage!

When you live in an apartment, you've got limited space. If you also happen to study the ways of IKEA, this space becomes a little less limited once you learn how to fit an entire life's worth of stuff in 127 sq ft, but still, there's only so much space, and most of this space is your actual living space, so you don't necessarily want it cluttered.*

So, every once in a while, you go through your stuff and realize that you've got too much. Something's gotta go. Thus the Salvation Army gets a nice gently-used donation or your second cousin who just started college and needs some hand-me-down furniture gets that random chair you've had since you were in college and thought it was the best thing ever. You free up a little space, and the natural balance of your apartment returns.

But in a house with a basement, you've suddenly got this mysterious space available for things like this. It's not exactly used as your living space, so you don't have to regularly see the stuff down there. It's wide open and unfinished, so there's plenty of room for stacking. It's perfect for those things that you just don't really want to deal with right now. I know, I'll stick a box of stuff in the basement and figure it out later!

Except later never really comes. You're too tired to descend all those stairs just to sort through things you probably don't really need. Or you're saving it for when you have kids, thinking (irrationally, of course) that they might want to play with that stuffed animal you had growing up that no longer has any fur and is missing its left eye. Or maybe out of sight is really out of mind, and once it can't be seen, you just don't have to deal with it anymore.

The moral of the story? Don't have a basement. Or if you do, don't be fooled by its seemingly innocent ways. It all starts with just one box...

*Unless you're a hoarder and like that sort of thing.

Married and all that jazz

2011-11-28T19:48:00.000-05:00

I found out today that even a tedious never-ending process like changing your name when you get married can have its benefits. Or at least one benefit, like...

...a new badge at work!

This might not seem that great, but my previous badge was not doing so well. The picture on it was from my very first day at Dow. Unfortunately, after a series of bad haircuts, my hair had gotten pretty short. Not to mention that somehow right before my picture was snapped, I must have tucked some hair behind an ear or something, so that in the final product, it looked like the hair on one side of my head was a couple inches shorter than on the other side. Also, I don't think the person behind the camera had been kind enough to tell me when they were about to take the picture, so I had some sort of weird expression on my face.

All that to say, for the past year or two, I've used a badge safety add-on to cover my picture. And over that year or two, it rubbed on the picture enough that if it wasn't hideous in the first place, it was now worn away in a way that made it appear as though I had both a white beard and a bad skin disease.

So today, when I went in to get my name changed on the badge, and they told me it would be a few minutes, I simply asked: "Can I update my picture, too?"

And they said yes. And I got a new picture. And this time they even counted to three, so I knew when the picture would be taken and managed to get a smile* on my face.

Now I just have to keep this same smile on my face while I stand in line at the Social Security office to finish getting my name officially changed...

* Thinking back, maybe the strange expression I had on my face for my first badge picture is more representative of how I look at work than a smile would be. I guess this gives me something to aim for.

Chinese Pelmeni

2011-10-26T20:00:00.000-04:00

A friend of mine (who likes to remain anonymous on the internets) has a certain affinity for the country of Russia and all things Russian, so it was no surprise that she made a Russian dish for our Bible study group last week. This dish is called pelmeni, and it's basically a type of dumpling, generally containing meat of some sort.

Sarah and I both had work issues last week on Bible study day, so I showed up late and Sarah couldn't make it at all. Anonymous was nice enough to send the leftover pelmeni home with me, so Sarah and I could both try it out. I had mine that night and put the rest in the fridge for Sarah.

Fast forward to this week, and the pelmeni was still in the fridge. Being the hungry person that I was, I figured that Sarah wasn't going to eat the pelmeni if she hadn't already, so I ate it for lunch. Then being the prepared person that I am (ha!), I decided to get something out of the freezer for dinner. Originally my thought was chicken, but I opened the freezer to find some leftover frozen potstickers and figured that would be a nice low-preparation dinner. I put them in the fridge and went on my merry way.

Meanwhile, Sarah got home from work at the end of the day and opened the fridge looking for something to eat. Remembering that I had mentioned the pelmeni in the fridge (and not having a clue what pelmeni actually was), Sarah grabbed the potstickers and ate them, noting to herself and a friend that pelmeni tastes a lot like Chinese food.

Eventually I got home, hungry after a hard day's work (yes, even sitting at a desk all day makes me hungry), and opened the fridge to find an empty space where the potstickers should be. I sometimes forget things, so I thought maybe I had only imagined putting the potstickers in the fridge, but I checked and they weren't still in the freezer either.

Finally I asked Sarah, "Have you seen my potstickers?" At this point, Sarah burst out laughing as she realized her "Chinese pelmeni" weren't really pelmeni at all, and then she recounted how she thought it was strange that (1) they tasted like Chinese food and (2) they seemed to be partially frozen, despite being in the fridge for a week.

I laughed too, until I remembered that I had no dinner.

Vicious cycle

2011-10-07T19:00:00.000-04:00

I'm tired. I feel like I've been tired for a month.

The kind of tired that makes me snooze my alarm in the morning the maximum number of times I'm allowed to snooze before it just shuts off.

The kind of tired that makes me start to doze off at work, especially in the afternoons when I've finished lunch.

The kind of tired that makes me think, "If I could just take a 20 minute nap, I'm sure I'd wake up and be ok... for a little while."

The kind of tired that makes me feel like sometimes I'm walking in slow motion.

The kind of tired that has me feeling like I just want to crawl into bed as soon as I get a moment of free time.

The problem is that this kind of tired does not lend itself well to getting out and doing stuff. I have not gone running in a really long time. The end of my Smitty's membership came and went without me batting an eye because you can't really tell the difference if you haven't been going in the first place. I haven't had to worry about how my shoes make my back feel because I haven't been doing anything in my shoes that could possibly hurt my back.

And this lack of doing anything lends to my tiredness.

Wait, let's backtrack. I'm tired, so I don't feel like doing anything, so I'm tired. Sounds like a vicious cycle.

I think I need a nap.

Not to be outdone...

2011-09-29T11:49:00.001-04:00

It was a bright and sunny morning. The birds were chirping, the flowers were unfurling, and the leaves on the trees were smiling up at the sun as they soaked in the necessary photons for some last fleeting photosynthesis before they shut it down for the winter.

And I was locked out of the garage.

This wouldn't matter if my car wasn't locked in the garage. But as it turns out, it was, due to my "bright" idea to start parking in the garage, so we didn't have to juggle cars in the morning.

This still wouldn't exactly be a problem if my front door key (also the key to the door on the side of the garage) worked, but we already know (or if you don't, see the previous post) that that's not the case.

My first action was to call Sarah because (1) her key works and (2) she would also have her car, which has a garage door opener. I suspected she might still be in her morning meeting, but I somehow hoped she would answer anyway. Nope.

My second action was to call Joe to see if somehow he hadn't driven to work already and could get me and take me to work. This still wouldn't solve the whole "my car's stuck in my garage" dilemma, but it would delay the consequences of it until later when I needed to drive to photog class. Unfortunately, Joe was already at work and in the middle of something. I told him I'd try to call Sarah again.

Since Sarah hadn't answered her cell phone, I tried the switchboard to get her office phone. At this point, I was informed that Sarah isn't anywhere in the phone directory. After answering various questions (Does she spell her name differently? -- No; Did she recently get married and change her name? -- Pretty sure she didn't...), I decided that Sarah probably never actually worked there, and only used that job as a front for her real job, so I gave up on that, and tried her cell phone again.

By then, I started eyeing up the small window on the side of the garage. As I was calling Sarah again, I noticed that the window was open, so as long as I could manage to get the screen out, I might be able to climb in. I think my message to Sarah might have been something like, "If you get this soon, call me back; otherwise, I'm just going to have to break into the garage through the window."

The screen wasn't all that hard to pop out. After I pried up a couple of metal tabs, it was basically free. The harder part was figuring out how to climb over the bushes in front of the window while somehow positioning myself in a way that I could climb into the window without diving headfirst. Two folding chairs later (one in front of the bush, one shoved through the window and into the garage), and I found myself awkwardly straddling the window pane, trying to figure out how to get enough momentum to propel myself off one chair and onto the other (without slamming my head into the top part of the small window in the process).

Finally I made it through with no damage to myself (other than some wet spots all over my clothes from the bushes and some spider webs in my hair from the window). After a brief moment of panicking that I hadn't brought my car key with me and my garage door opener was locked in there, I got some common sense (duh!) and remembered that (1) I could now open the door on the side of the garage from the inside or (2) I could just use the wall button to open the main garage door. I think sometimes after you've just had to climb in through the garage window to get to your car, your brain starts thinking that everything has to be done in weird ways.

So, if my neighbors didn't think I was a burglar the other night, it's quite possible that they do now. Or they're just really confused about why I choose to climb in through windows rather than walk in through doors. Of course if they asked, I would just tell them that I'm in training for something, mixed in with subtle references like, "Man, I'm really going to have to improve my time before I head down to Langley" or "I bet those Navy Seals never have to fit through windows that size!"

Burglar!

2011-09-20T11:34:00.001-04:00

Nothing like feeling like you're breaking into your own house.

Sarah and I moved this weekend out of our beloved apartment (ok, maybe not that beloved) to a house across town. We're still unpacking, and we're still learning about the ins and outs of the house. I'm not sure exactly how old it is, but as Loki (the cat) can attest, sometimes it makes a lot of noise.

So yesterday morning, I managed to scare Sarah by walking around downstairs in the morning without turning on any extra lights. I think the porch light had been on, and between it letting light in through the window and Sarah's bathroom light shining down the stairs, I had been able to see what I needed to see and didn't feel like finding the light switch as I walked across the living room to get a drink of water from the kitchen. Sarah, hearing noises downstairs but seeing no lights on, thought that maybe someone had broken in and was wandering around (stealing stuff? waiting for her to come down, so they could knock her out and kidnap her cat? I'm not sure what she thought they were doing). Turns out it was just me, and everything was ok.

Fast forward to last night. I had been out and about for church band practice, Joe's volleyball practice (where I attempted to capture a picture of "up" for my photog class), and Joe's house to visit Waffles and use the internet since we haven't gotten it hooked up yet at our house. By the time I got home, Sarah was already in bed and the house was all locked up. Normally I've been going in the back door because it's usually closer when I pull in the driveway, but since Sarah's car was in first, I was closer to the front. Plus that light was on. So I gathered up all my stuff and made my way to the front door.

At this point I should mention that Sarah and I had a couple sets of keys made when we moved in, so we'd be able to get into our house, but since we've had those keys made, I've only come in the back door. Turns out my front door key doesn't quite work. After multiple attempts at getting the door unlocked, I decided to give up on it and go to the back door.

Trooping around back, I knew there was no light but hoped I would be able to see well enough to get the key in. No such luck. There are two locks, and although I could get one, for the life of me, I couldn't get the other. [Note to self: Never lose your ability to see, or you will be hosed.] Back to the front porch to get a flashlight from my purse (yes, I left my purse along with various other valuables sitting on the front porch). At this point, I was really hoping Sarah was sound asleep and not hearing all my attempts to enter, what with her recent fear of people breaking in. Back to the back door, where I'm shining a flashlight and trying to open the door, while also hoping the neighbors don't suspect a burglar and call the police.

Fortunately, I finally made my way in (and didn't hear any sirens), collected my stuff off the front porch, and climbed in bed. Unfortunately, I might have to get another key made, although strangely enough, Sarah's key (which was made from the same key) works just fine.

Colorado

2011-09-11T22:24:00.000-04:00

We've returned from a week "out west" in the great state of Colorado. It turns out everything's* better in Colorado (mountains, sunshine, dry air, to name a few).

I have to say, it's quite handy having a locally-grown tour guide, even if she does talk in her sleep. Note to Sarah -- I still don't know what you want me to teach you and, yes, we do know that at the CSM everyone carries a white-washed rock up to the M.

I'm not sure exactly what it is about mountains, but they're very mesmerizing. No matter where we were, my eyes were drawn to the large rocky landscape looming over us.

It's kind of interesting, the various perspectives of mountains. When you're far away and the sun's overhead, the mountains start to look a little two-dimensional, like they're some sort of ginormous cardboard cutout acting as a backdrop to the activities going on in front of it.

From that distance, you can't see a lot of the individual ridges and boulders and trees.

Then you move a little closer, and the trees start to look like a bristly fur coat, as though the mountains are some sort of giant, slumbering animal, hibernating for the winter under a thick evergreen fur coat.

And then you move even closer, and you're in the mountains, and they're all around you, towering over you with their giant granite surfaces. Now you can make out the trees as individual trees, and you start to see winding paths and wildflowers and hope to catch sight of some sort of wildlife.

And they make you want to climb them. I don't know what it is, but I think we as humans (or at least me as myself) have a desire to be on top of things, staring down at the rest of the world.

I don't even have any mountain-climbing skills, and I found myself wanting to climb.

So we did, a little. Mostly small boulders or things with easy footholds. Those rock surfaces that look a little like huge playground equipment aren't actually as easy to climb as my mind likes to make me think they should be.

Fortunately for me, there are things like cog railways, invented to get those not-so-great at climbing to the top of mountain peaks (Pike's Peak, to be more specific). And there are people who design roadways through national parks, so that people like me with a camera and a desire to capture the views is able to move around quickly and snap a few shots that, while beautiful, can't completely contain the gloriousness of God's creation.

Anyway, now we're back to home sweet flat Michigan home. I'll miss you, mountains. Until next time...

* Sarah did admit that she likes the leaves changing color better in Michigan for its wider variety of bold colors. Woot, go Michigan!

Go west, young people!

2011-09-02T15:42:00.002-04:00

Tomorrow we head west, to the mountainous lands of Colorado. Today we head south and slightly east, to the not-as-mountainous lands near the airport, so we're ready to fly out bright and early in the morning.

My last memories of Colorado are from a family trip we took "out west" back in the days of high school, or something like that. I reminisced with my parents on the phone last night about all of the car troubles we faced -- overheating, more overheating, brakes going out. Probably overheating again. We also reminisced about spending hours upon hours at the Mitchell, SD corn palace (while getting the brakes fixed) and seeing about a bazillion motorcycles heading toward Sturgis for the motorcycle fest (or whatever it's actually called).

This time since we're flying and not pulling an old pop-up camper behind us, I'm hoping we don't face a lot of the same overheating issues, but if we somehow manage it in whatever car we're using, I know the key is to turn off the A/C, turn on the heat, and roll down the windows in hopes of not dying of heatstroke. And/or pulling over and dumping lots of water on things.

Anyway, I think it'll be a fun trip. Hopefully we see some yellow-toed marmelades* or other cool animals like that. I'll keep you posted.**

* aka yellow-bellied marmots
** This doesn't mean I'll be posting during the trip necessarily.
*** There is no triple-starred item, but I just wanted to assure you that I actually enjoyed the trip out west with my family despite car troubles and long hours at the corn palace.

Speaking of Waffles...

2011-09-01T04:30:00.000-04:00

(I warned you that you might start getting posts about my cat)...

Joe and I had a discussion the other day about Waffles and waffles. I've always thought it kind of interesting that Waffles has a plural name. I guess it's kind of helpful in the sense that it helps differentiate between when I'm talking about my cat and when I'm talking about deliciously syrup-covered food.

Me: Waffles are amazingly tasty! Especially when covered with chocolate. [Food]
Me: Waffles is amazingly tasty! Especially when marinated overnight and cooked on the grill. [Cat... turned food]
Me: Waffles likes to wake me up before my alarm clock. I think I might eat him! [Again cat turned food]

You get the idea.

Anyway, Joe brought up the idea that maybe all waffles should be plural because maybe a waffle is actually one of the little squares in what we currently call a waffle. Thus, if we were to sit down at a place like the Friendly Toast and order a Caribbean Waffle, we'd get one little square pocket covered in pecans and carmelized bananas, and in order to get the whole enchilada (er, round thing with lots of little square pockets), we'd have to order the Caribbean Waffles.

Turns out that a waffle is not in fact just one of the little squares, so not only was that whole conversation irrelevant but the little squares don't even have an official name! Some people call them pockets. Some people call them dimples. Some people just eat them smothered in white chocolate chips and strawberry sauce.

I'm getting hungry.

Sources of inspiration

2011-08-30T16:43:00.004-04:00

Although I haven't blogged much recently, the blogging in my head still continues on a regular basis and reminds me of my lack of actual posts. The thing is that I want to post, but...

... I'm not sure how I feel about my sources of inspiration.

Normally I'm inspired by what's going on in my life. In fact, I was all set to post about my great friend Craig who happens to have a magical list, but I realized that it might start to sound like I spend a lot of my waking hours buying and selling random furniture and trying to somehow get things for free. Just so you know, this time I was selling things instead of collecting more things, and it turns out it's pretty great to have people pay me to haul away my stuff, so I don't have to do it when it's time to move out, which, by the way, is approaching in T minus some small number of days.

I also thought about posting about biking (cycling) again, but I think I've talked about it a few times already, and since I've only posted approximately a handful of times this year, a few out of a handful is a large percentage, and you're probably tired of reading about it. Also, you might start to think I actually cycle on a regular basis, and although this should be true, it's probably not as true as I like to think. You know how sometimes you can start to see yourself through a lens of things you wish you did and lose touch with the reality of what you really do, like rather than actually cycling, camping, frisbeeing, blogging, jogging, and growing a lush garden you're actually just wasting your days away mostly working and sitting around?

My last thought was to post about wedding planning because that seems to be consuming my life, but then I decided that just because it's consuming my life doesn't mean you want it consuming your ~~favorite blog~~ almost-forgotten-feed in google reader, nor do I necessary want it consuming my blog. Maybe I'll make myself a pact that I can't post about it more than once a week, except at my current rate of posting that would be 300% of my posts. Let me just say this one thing about wedding planning: woohoo for cake tasting!

So, if I don't get some other sort of creative inspiration soon, this blog is probably going to revert to the days of "Waffles World," and you will be inundated with random posts about a cat.

P.S. Waffles is not potty trained.

Post-vacation blues

2011-08-12T11:07:00.003-04:00

Vacation is wonderful. Relaxing. A nice change of pace. Necessary.

Coming back from vacation = the opposite of all those things.

Well, I suppose it's maybe necessary or why am I here?

Work welcomed me back on Wednesday by breaking my email. After many attempts to fix it, I finally got things going, so that I could trudge through 800ish emails in my inbox. Only to have it break again later.

Also, that's about the time I got a headache, which I would just attribute to my email woes except that later it developed into a low-grade fever. I've never heard of email-induced fevers, but who knows, maybe it's a thing. Or maybe I'm allergic to working and my body was doing its best to fight it.

All that to say, I'm thankful that I can take time off and get away every once in a while. And I suppose I'm even thankful that I have a job to come back to. And maybe even slightly thankful that my body has natural healing mechanisms such as heating itself up and making me slightly delirious in order to drive out things that are trying to attack it.

Now when do I get to go on vacation again? :)

Love me some cherries

2011-07-20T09:59:00.001-04:00

Posted via email from Kelsey's posterous

The Waiting Place by Eileen Button (a review)

2011-07-13T10:16:00.003-04:00

Everyone goes through periods of waiting for things throughouttheir life, whether it's waiting in line for the Java the Hut barista to takeyour skinny boy decaf latte no fo order or you're waiting for somethingslightly more important like a job or a place to live or a cure for cancer. These are the sorts of things Eileen talks about in her book.

I've had to wait a time or two in my life, so I thought this bookwould be a good one to read to give me all the answers of how to make the mostof those waiting times, learn to be more patient, etc. Unfortunately,this isn't an instruction manual with all the answers. Then again, does that sort of thing actuallyexist?

So, what is the book? It’sa collection of essays about various parts of the author’s life. Although I couldn’t relate to everything, thethings I really appreciated about the stories were their openness, honesty, andgroundedness (I don’t think that’s a word) in reality. Eileen talks about her real life, her realstruggles, the real things she and her family has had to go through and waitthrough. I started the book wonderingwhy I’d want to keep reading stories about someone else’s life and ended upfeeling like I’d just had a long chat with a good friend who’d taught me thingsjust by sharing her life.

I’d recommend the book if you want some casual vacation reading orsomething to read a little bit of before you go to bed. Or maybe if you need something to read whileyou’re waiting… for something. If you’relooking for a deep theological book about the aspects of waiting, this probablyisn’t for you.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher through the BookSneeze®.com book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255

Sizeable

2011-07-12T08:29:00.001-04:00

A coworker of mine commented yesterday about me owning a Giant bike and a MINI car. I guess I didn't realize all of my forms of transportation had to be named with sizes.

Inaugural Ride

2011-07-07T14:11:00.000-04:00

Joe, Sarah, and I all decided recently that it was about time to get ourselves some decent road bikes. Probably about a year ago, Sarah & I started the search, but we happened to visit a bike place on a rainy day, so we couldn't ride any of the bikes. Plus we weren't really sure what we wanted and knew very little about anything bike related, so we grabbed a couple of bike catalogs and stuffed them under our coffee table where they sat without any attention.

Anyway, long story short, we got more serious this year, Joe joined in, and after a painful decision process* (have I mentioned that I'm horrible at making decisions?), we all got bikes.

Yesterday was my first time out on the new bike, other than riding it on a trainer at the bike shop to get fitted. This was also my first time owning a bike helmet (I know, what in the world was I thinking in the past with no helmet?! and all that jazz) and padded shorts, so after donning all my nerdy cyclist gear, we were off.

Road bikes don't exactly have a lot of padding, and with tire pressure somewhere around 100 - 120 psi, you feel every bump in the road. Even through your padded shorts. Actually, after about 2 hours on our bikes, I feel like the sorest parts of me were my wrists, elbows (or elbow-pits), and neck. I probably need to work on my riding form.

All in all, it was nice to feel the wind rushing past us as we zoomed down the rail trail. Due to some technical issues with my mountain bike (rusty chain, brakes that rub, other brakes that don't work, tires that seem to lose air a lot), I haven't gotten out on a bike very much lately, and there's just something about cruising along on a bike that feels right. Especially a bike that makes everything feel like you're going downhill compared to said junky mountain bike.

* I think I was the only one in pain. Joe & Sarah ended up buying the only bikes they actually rode. I rode at least 5 bikes and ended up buying one that I hadn't actually ridden. I'm not sure what I should learn from this...

PS. Why have I never played with http://pixlr.com/ before?!

Good vs Bad

2011-06-30T13:11:00.003-04:00

Good idea: Free Reese's peanut butter cup

Bad idea: Forgetting free Reese's peanut butter cup in your purse for a day... in the summer heat.

Bag o' candy

2011-06-13T15:32:00.001-04:00

Today's inspiration is brought to you by the 95-year-old grandmother (or grandmother-in-law) of one of my coworkers, who has had quite the sweet tooth (represented by these giant bags of candy passed out at her birthday party) and has still managed to make it all the way to age 95.

Posted via email from Kelsey's posterous

Hammock stand bargain

2011-05-23T14:57:00.000-04:00

Once upon a time (2002), in a land far away (Belize), I bought a hammock. At the time it seemed brilliant -- a good deal, comfortable material, a million dreams of swinging gently in it floating through my head.

And then reality struck, and I quickly realized I had no place to put it. Certainly wasn't going to fit in my dorm room. Actually, I wonder if we could have rigged something up between our beds...

Anyway, I always figured I'd eventually be able to find some trees that were the perfect distance apart to put up my hammock, but the thing about that is you have to have trees, which usually means you have to have a yard, and well, I've lived in an apartment ever since I got the hammock.

At some point, I thought maybe I could buy a hammock stand. And then I looked at some prices, and noticing it would be probably 10x the cost of the hammock, I thought maybe I could *make* a hammock stand instead. But that never panned out either.

Enter Craiglist.

While randomly perusing the site one day, I saw an ad for a hammock stand:

"Hammock stand. Good condition. Best offer."

Well, it couldn't hurt to at least email, right? After asking about the size and shap, it turns out it was a 15-footer in good condition. Direct quote from the seller: "What can you do to a hammock stand?"

A few emails later, and we had worked out a time for me to go check it out. In the meantime, I did a little research and found that a new 15' hammock stand would run me somewhere in the neighborhood of $100. Or maybe $54.95 + $61.00 shipping (thanks, Amazon...). Being my cheap self, I wanted to pay something like $25 but didn't think that was necessarily very realistic.

So Joe and I drove out to the guy's house and met him in the backyard to look at the hammock stand. There's not much to look at (I mean, it was some metal poles that look like they're in decent condition), so mostly it came down to determining a price. Since I didn't want to look like a fool and blindly offer $5 or even $25, I asked the guy what he was thinking. He said he got it for $130, it'd now cost about $150 in stores, and he was willing to let it go for $60.

This was more than my cheap self wanted to pay, but still much cheaper than buying a new one. So I offered him $50. Nope, he wouldn't go that low. "It's not about the money" (he actually said that), "but I'll meet you in the middle at $55."

Now, I think either of us could have gone either way with the $5 we were stuck on. But I only had the MINI and even if we took the stand apart, Joe and I didn't know if we could get it to fit. So we pulled a typical bargaining move: just walk away. I told the guy I'd give him a call once I thought about it.

Two days later, I had pretty much decided I still wanted the stand but had been too lazy to actually call the guy back about it, when I got an email:

"I'm not getting a lot of feedback from my ad, so, I'll let it go for $45."

Say what? Didn't I just offer $50? And now with no effort of my own, it was suddenly only $45?

I arranged a day and time to come pick it up (after some car swapping with my roommate), but ended up getting another email:

"Problem. I thought this might happen. I haven't had this thing apart for a couple of years. So now the pieces are stuck together. I soaked them in WD-40 and that should loosen them up. I'll e-mail you when I get them apart."

Not a big deal. My hammock is sitting somewhere at my parents' house, so I'm not in a rush to get the stand. But a few days later, I got another note:

"No way I can get this thing apart. So, if you want it and can pick it up (I think a pick-up truck would work), I'll give it to you. Please let me know either way as I have other people interested."

I had a lot of faith in Sarah's Santa Fe (and a lot of mental block of how big the hammock stand actually was), so Joe and I headed back out with the $45 in hand and some high hopes of being able to take the stand home. With a little bit of ingenuity on Joe's part (glad Sarah's got a sunroof), we managed to fit it in... kind of (see picture) and made it back to Joe's house.

I emailed the seller to let him know where I'd left the money since he hadn't been home, and I did't want him to just think we took the stand and ran. And I got another reply:

"Thank you , but you misunderstood my note. I said if you come and pick it up, I would give it to you. So, give me an address and I will send you a check for $45 or pick up your money here Let me know."

I'm not so sure this guy knows how to bargain... or is this the part where I offer him $70?

Fake fake pockets

2011-05-20T11:02:00.000-04:00

I was so faked out by my fake fake pockets that I forgot my computer at home this morning.

Maybe you are unaware, but along with having a ridiculous way of informing women of the size of their pants, women's pants designers also like to make women's pants as useless as possible.

Now you're asking yourself, "What exactly are pants to be used for other than covering up someone's legs? Are women's pants no longer covering women's legs?!" Gasp.

While this is also sometimes true, I'm talking more about secondary uses for pants, like having pockets for holding keys or kleenexs or baby kangaroos. Ok, not so much the kangaroos.

Men's pants almost always have pockets. What are pants without pockets? And don't get me started on belt loops. I now own multiple pairs of pants without belt loops and thus can never lose any weight for fear of them falling to my feet in the middle of something important.

But what annoys me most are fake pockets. This is when pants designers want to have the look of pockets without actually allowing you to put anything in said pockets. I've always assumed this is because they like adding lines, but they don't want you messing up the look by adding the bulge of actually putting something in your pocket. And/or the pants are too tight to fit anything in there anyway.

So I bought a pair of (cheap) pants the other day, and much to my chagrin, I noticed while wearing them yesterday that they have fake pockets. Except, wait... what are those squares of fabric I can feel under the pants where the pockets should be? Oh, I see... they're pockets. But they're sewn shut. They're fake fake pockets. Double-fake, if you will.

I can only imagine what happened to create these double-fakes. There were two pants designers involved. One level-headed person who knows the handiness of a good pocket, and one slightly crazy person who enjoys faking people out with fake pockets. Level-head says, "Hey, look, let's put some pockets in these pants."

Crazy face says, "Nah, I don't think I'll like how that's going to look. Let's do fake pockets."

Level-head: "But everyone *hates* fake pockets. C'mon, there's room, let's put real ones in."
Crazy face: "But real pockets are so... bulgy. We're making them fake."
Level-head: "No, real. People need pockets."
Crazy face (while crossing his or her fingers behind his or her back): "Fine. We'll do real pockets. I'll go tell the production line."

And then crazy face proceeds to the manufacturing floor with the design for real pockets in hand, and promptly tells the assembly line to sew them all shut.

So here I am, wearing my pants with fake fake pockets for the second day in a row, so confused by what's going on that I end up sitting in the parking lot at work wondering how in the world I plan to do any work without my computer. I call it the fake pocket triple-fake out.

Some things I find awkward

2011-05-12T16:55:00.000-04:00

I was thinking about situations that make me feel awkward after going through a few of them seemingly in a row on the same day... Here's an (incomplete) list.

* Walking past people who are having a conversation right outside the bathroom door at work. And then walking past those same people still in conversation on your way out of the bathroom. Worse if it's people you kind of know. (Is it just me that thinks it's weird for people to know exactly how long you were in the bathroom?)

* Walking slightly behind people who end up going to the same general place. Makes me feel like I'm following/stalking them. Extra awkward if they're walking slower than I want to walk, and I have to figure out if it would seem rude to pass them.

* Realizing that someone was sitting in a nearby car watching while you poorly parked, adjusted, realized you were still poorly parked, and adjusted again. Especially when you drive a small car that should never be hard to park.

* Discussing how often people misspell your name while simultaneously misspelling the name of the person you're talking to about it. (This didn't happen recently, but it definitely happened, and I felt awkward in retrospect when I realized what I had just done).

* Finding out you have had silly putty on your face for an indefinite amount of time, without any one letting you know. Bright green silly putty.

That's all for now...

Let cookies be cookies

2011-05-11T10:54:00.000-04:00

Lesson learned: wheat flour is not a good substitute for white flour when it comes to cookies.*

I don't care how healthy you want to be, let's just not pretend. Cookies are cookies. And if you're going to eat cookies, they might as well be delicious.

And don't even try to tell me that applesauce works just as good as butter.

* This is really just a "note to self," since I'm the one that made cookies with wheat flour instead of white flour, although this wasn't for health reasons. It was for I'm-too-lazy-to-go-to-the-store-in-the-middle-of-making-cookies-and-oh-looky-here-I've-got-wheat-flour-in-the-cupboard reasons.

the floor is caving in!

2011-05-04T22:54:00.000-04:00

Two nights ago, I woke up (well, maybe not completely), sure that the floor was caving in. My first instinct was to save the cats, who both happened to be sleeping on my bed. Did I tell you I sleep on a twin-sized (craftmatic adjustable) bed that may or may not be big enough for one wiggly human and two let-me-take-up-all-the-space-you-thought-you-needed-for-your-feet cats? So anyway, I whisked Loki up off the bed and carried him out to the living room, where I deposited him on the floor.

If cats had thoughts, I'm sure he would have been thinking, "What in the world?" or maybe "the crazy girl who keeps sleeping on our bed just got crazier."

Then I went back for Waffles. By the time I carried him out to the living room (to safety, of course), it started to dawn on me that the floor was not actually caving in. In fact, the floor was looking about the same as it had when I went to bed, probably about an hour before.

So I carried him back to the bed and went back to sleep.

...Only to wake up the next night for some unknown reason and fling all my covers on top of the cats as I jumped out of bed again. Yet the cats keep coming back. I can't help but thinking the cats have more mental problems than I give them credit for.

Movement

2011-05-03T22:45:00.001-04:00

Now that the weather's turned nicer, I've been trying to get out and get moving a little bit more. Sunny days are natural motivators, but even on overcast, gray, slight-chilly days (such as today) it's good to get off my butt and do something. Joe and I have re-implemented Monday=Run Day as of last week, so we've now got 6.5 miles under our Monday night running belt. Actually, I don't wear a belt when I run. To be completely forthcoming, I don't wear a belt the majority of the time. And to be even more honest, I have no idea how to even wear the "belt" my sister just gave me.

Tuesday night has now become a walking night. We used to have a great women's bible study on Tuesday nights, but after surviving Isaiah, we're on a break (for the summer, indefinitely, not quite sure...), so I've convinced a few of the ladies that we should get out and walk. The more times I actually line up people to do stuff like that with me, the more likely it is that I'll actually do it.

Joe's also been good about getting out for walks with me if the weather looks good. The other day while walking near his house, we found a miniature wetland preserve, complete with a beaver. I couldn't get close enough to find out if he was a relative of the infamous Justice Beaver, but now that I know the general whereabouts of his home, maybe someday I can get his autograph.

Next step: line up more people to ~~make~~ encourage me to do things. Maybe soon I can bust out the tennis rackets. That's pretty much like running with how much I have to chase down run-away balls.

Fluky* Thoughts

2011-05-03T10:27:00.000-04:00

I'm having a hard time forming cohesive thoughts that would fill up a blog post, so instead I figured I'd fill it with a bunch of thought fragments (in no particular order):

> Buying oranges individually rather than in a bulk bag is probably worth it for a couple reasons: (1) I don't always go through a bag before they go bad and (2) individual oranges seem to be 17x better than the ones in the bag. I have had the hardest time peeling the bagged ones AND they're dry. (Or maybe I just got a bad batch... I was reading a list of Common Fallacies in Reasoning that Greg buzzed about earlier, and the Faulty Cause (or post hoc ergo propter hoc, which happened to be in a recent crossword puzzle) fallacy might apply here).

> Bryan Allain (one of the bloggers I usually follow) has been talking about making health/fitness goals for May. I resisted posting anything in his comments because I don't like making goals, BUT I've been ruminating about it and think I maybe want to set some mileage goals. Now the problem is figuring out a reasonable number that will stretch me but not break me (and believe me, when it comes to running, the breakpoint could be pretty low... doesn't take much for me to convince myself not to go running).

> Once when I was visiting my brother, Joseph, he got a cookbook from the library. Yesterday, when Joe & I went to the library for the first time in... a while... I decided to check out a cookbook. Already tried two (simple) recipes and was pleased with both. Might have to make this a habit.

> Also might need to grow an herb garden.

> Speaking of which, cilantro is definitely one of my favorite herbs these days. What's the difference between an herb and a spice?

> Shopping early for wedding gifts is WAY better than shopping late. I'm used to shopping at the point when there are approximately 3 things left on the registry, i.e. the 3 things everyone else thought were the worst to give as a wedding gift. So I dutifully buy them, wrap them up together, and make the bride and groom wonder why they've received a toilet bowl brush with a silver napkin holder and an ugly vase that should have never been put on their registry in the first place.

Ok, I think that's all the fluky thoughts I'll give you for today. Catch ya on the flip side.

* I was going to steal directly from Tyler Stanton and title this "Arbitrary Thoughts," but thought that I could at least thesaurus it and find another word. Then I started to think that maybe arbitrary didn't mean what I thought it meant since I couldn't find random in the list of synonyms. So I thesaurused random and found that in fact arbitrary was in its list, which prompted to me to go back to arbitrary and realize that I just couldn't read.

Then while I was typing this up, I thought to myself, "What if Tyler Stanton stole it from someone else in the first place?" so I googled arbitrary thoughts, got about 4.5 million results, and figured maybe I should be more original and choose one of the synonyms of random that thesaurus.com so nicely spit back at me originally. I settled on slapdash because it sounded funny, until I googled "slapdash thoughts" and got another half million hits, including slapdashthoughts.com. Googled a bunch more and finally settled on "fluky thoughts" since at that point, google asked me if I meant "fluffy thoughts" because, let's face it, fluky doesn't even look like a real word. **

** Are footnotes allowed to be that long?

An apple [pie] a day keeps the doctor away

2011-04-09T23:52:00.000-04:00

Today I cut my finger and got $25.

It's not quite as simple as it sounds but really not much trickier than it sounds either.

Joe and I signed up again this year to make apple pies as a fundraiser for the local Good Samaritan Rescue Mission. Every year they gather groups of volunteers to spend a couple Saturdays in the kitchen, assembly-lining a bunch of pies that are then sold (some to the volunteers) to raise money for the mission. The pies are delicious and the work can be fulfilling (if not always completely enjoyable), so here we were again.

We'd learned from the past that sometimes it's best to pair up in the apple peeling-cutting process, so one person's always peeling and one person's always cutting. Joe's goal was to go the whole day without cutting an apple, so that left me with a knife in my hand.

Doesn't that sound safe?

Let's just say a few hundred apples in (possible slight exaggeration) and somehow I mistook my finger for the next apple. Actually, I just managed to slice the front of my left ring finger while trying to speedily chop an apple and had to spend the next 5 minutes applying pressure to stop the bleeding, so I could get back to work. (Sidenote: I did not even come remotely close to passing out, booyah).

Anyway, at the end of the day, they gave out a few prizes, I think as encouragement and a thank you for helping out. One of the categories was just called "Cutter" (I think it's a pity prize), and since I was the only clumsy one, I walked away with a $25 gift card for Amazon.

Worth it.

E days!

2011-04-01T08:14:00.001-04:00

Taken at Big E's Sports Grill

Posted via email from Kelsey's posterous

Wii're online

2011-02-28T12:25:00.000-05:00

My roommate got a swiit* deal on a Wii a few months ago. It was available on the swapshop (kind of like Dow's own Craiglist) from a mom who was helping her son sell it to make a few bucks. I think maybe he wanted to buy a car. Anyway, that's irrelevant. The point is, it was a good deal and included a bunch of games, and Sarah decided she should swiip it up before anyone else bought it out from under her.

Of course, wii had to try out all the games that came with it -- Super Mario Bros, Rockband, Wii sports. Unfortunately, wii ran into some issues.

First, Rockband. It came with a guitar and drums but only one wireless dongle to plug into the Wii. And it only worked with the drums. So basically, it's a one-man drum band.

Second, wii realized that some dwiib had set up parental controls. By "some dwiib," I'm probably referring to the lady that sold it to Sarah, but I just wanted to say something with a "wii" sound. Anyway, turns out neither of us knew the code, nor did we know the answer to the security question (apparently the person was not born in Midland), so wii were stuck. Also turns out parental controls block things like changing the wireless settings, which are important when games like RockBand try to access the internet every time you play.

Sarah attempted to contact the seller about both of the issues, but alas, she never heard back. It made me want to wiip (ok, not really).

Wii considered our options. Maybe wii could just wipe out the Wii and return it to factory settings. This seemed promising, except that it meant wii would lose some N64 games preloaded on the device. Maybe wii could save the pre-loaded games to an SD card. Wii got some advice from friends who originally said wii needed a special Wii SD card. Then they said wii didn't, so I tried an SD card I found lying around and realized that although I could save the game settings, it wasn't saving the game.

Eventually, I thought about trying to call and get the parental controls turned off. But alas, the calling hours were until 7pm PST, and it was now 10:30pm EST. Being a slightly impatient person, I turned back to google, and sure enough, found someone who had created a site to spit back parental control PINs after entering a confirmation number. A few keystrokes later, and voila! Wii were parental control free!

Now wii've had a chance to get the Wii online, download the latest firmware, and get ourselves addicted to the magic of Netflix.

* Just in case you can't read my WiiNotation, I've used "wii" to replace any "we" or "wee" sounds. So, "sweet" becomes "swiit," etc.

Falling apart

2011-02-26T16:33:00.000-05:00

Sometimes I feel like I'm getting old. I remember the good ol' days when I could fall asleep anywhere (still can manage that part pretty well) and would wake up feeling rested. Nowadays if I fall asleep somewhere other than my bed or another large soft object like it, I will probably wake up wondering who beat me up in my sleep. Is this supposed to happen when you're only in your twenties?

I don't think I help matters, though. A friend of mine has urged me to stop playing volley/wallyball since I tend to injure myself. Speaking of that, I think when I used to jam my fingers playing volleyball in high school, they got back to normal much more quickly. Nowadays it seems to take forever. I jammed my pinky over a month ago, and it still hurts every time I play volleyball and sometimes if I just happen to bend it too quickly for its liking or something.

I also have recurring foot pain, knee pain, shin pain if I run too much, and other jammed finger pain from the ring finger I jammed in the fall. Oh yeah, and I somehow managed to kick my own thumb the other day while warming up for a game, enough to make it bleed. Also, I have been sick off and on (more on than off) for the past four weeks. I've self-diagnosed it as mono, but since I technically had mono back in high school, I don't think it's supposed to produce symptoms in me anymore.

Basically what this means is sometimes I wonder if (a) I'm just a pansy and/or (b) I'm not going to have any working pain-free body parts by the time I'm 40.

Snowed in (aka working in my pjs)

2011-02-02T17:11:00.000-05:00

After having been sick for about the past week and then the sudden onset of snowpocalypse, I've spent some good time home on the couch, working in my pajamas. But, just so you don't think it's all fun and games, let this picture of Waffles warn you: sometimes work kills.

Road awareness

2010-12-30T11:49:00.000-05:00

Joe is trying to help promote "road awareness" when I'm driving. It seems that on long trips with him, I have a tendency to get behind the wheel and stop paying any attention to what road I'm on.

So far, on the way to Wisconsin that had the negative affect of taking us two hours out of our way up to Houghton (hi, Michigan Tech!) when we should have been heading west across the UP. How was I supposed to know the road I was on was really two roads that at some point would split with seemingly zero notification*? And that one of those roads would head north instead of west?

The good news is that even though our 10 hour trip became a 12 hour trip, we ended up arriving within 60 seconds of the rest of his family, and we were both able to (mostly) laugh it off. His parents recommended using a GPS, which as it turns out, we had with us in the car and just hadn't turned on since Joe knew where he was going. Apparently I did not.

Fast forward a few months to last week, and we were on our way back from Iowa. This time my lack of road awareness actually shaved a few miles off our trip (but don't worry, Joe, if you're reading this... I will still try to pay attention to roads next time). Joe had driven the first stretch, so I took over somewhere in Illinois when we stopped for gas. As I drove, I called out the states as we entered them, and it wasn't long before I had said both Indiana and Michigan.

This seemed like good news until Joe asked me what road I was on. Of course I was still on I-80. Wait, I-80 doesn't go into Michigan... so, I must be on something else. Maybe 69? No, I don't remember turning onto 69. How about 94? I vaguely remember seeing a sign at some point telling me I was on both 94 and 80 simultaneously. Must have just taken the 94 fork instead of the 80 fork.

Silly roads that diverge.

Anyway, the good news is that (1) I have a GPS, (2) I have a sister that gets lost more than me, so I have enough lost experiences with her to not worry about them too much anymore, and (3) my next trip is to head home, which I could probably do with my eyes closed**.

* Note: There may have been some sort of notification but obviously I somehow missed it, so that must mean it's not sufficient...

** I would not recommend ever trying to drive with your eyes closed, nor will I actually try it when I head home.

Christmas Shoes (not the song)

2010-12-29T17:19:00.000-05:00

I was reading a blog the other day by a pastor whose church did the whole "let's give our shoes away for Christmas" thing on a recent Sunday. I've heard of it before, but for those of you who don't know, it's when a church partners with someone like Soles4Souls or some other organization that helps people needing shoes, and then some Sunday, everyone just takes off the shoes he or she is wearing and drops them in a donation box to be given away. And I suppose they then walk out of the church barefoot.

A couple thoughts on this:

1. Sweet idea. Great way to incorporate an object lesson and teach people about giving during the Christmas season.

2. This probably works best in warmer climates, so your church doesn't have to walk out into a foot of snow with nothing on their feet. Then again maybe this will help teach them what it's like to be shoe-less and thus give them more joy for helping someone without shoes on a regular basis.

3. This probably also works best in states where it's legal to drive barefoot. Fortunately I remember reading some article a while back that despite the fact that people often think it's illegal to drive barefoot, there aren't too many states with laws against it, unless maybe you're driving a motorcycle.

4. Would I have to give away the shoes on my feet or could I come back later with a different pair of shoes? Does wanting to keep my own shoes make me selfish?

Thought #4 was actually the prompting for this blog post. I talked to my brother Josh about it it a little after reading the article because I realized that one of my initial reactions to the story was, "Hmm, guess I should stop wearing my boots to church," mostly because I don't want to give up my boots.

They're just boots, you might say. But, for someone who often walks to work, they're not just boots -- they're something that helps prevent trench foot and keeps my pants dry and provides overall peace of mind on an otherwise blustery day.

Which leads to some questions... would they bring the same joy to someone else? Possibly. Could I just go out and buy a new pair of boots after giving mine up? Probably, BUT it took me a while to find these and they happened to be at a store near my parents that I've never heard of anywhere else, and I got a really good deal on them that I probably couldn't get again because it required opening a charge account AND taking advantage of the sale of the day going on at that point, and... you're right, they're all just excuses.

But, would someone want a new pair of boots more than my slightly used pair? Then I wouldn't have to be too particular about the boots and could just buy some at a store in town... or does that mean I'm caring less about the quality of their boots than I do about my own?

Anyway, I didn't come to any complete conclusions, just gave me something to think about.

Adopt-a-family woes

2010-12-28T10:58:00.000-05:00

Whoever wanted a pillow as a pet anyway?!

I read the wish-list for the family we were adopting this year for Christmas. Consistently, I saw the words "pillow pet" followed by an animal of choice. A pig here, a unicorn there. Add in a bumble-bee and a turtle or a frog.

At this point in my existence, I did not know that these so-called "pillow pets" were so prevalent they could rise up and take over mankind. At this point, I had never heard of such an absurd-sounding gift. A pillow pet?

I put the powers of Google to use, and lo and behold, found pillowpet.com or some such site that advertised these monstrosities as "As seen on TV!" and "Don't be fooled by a fake; get the REAL pillow pet!" or something like that.

They looked cute enough and soft enough, and well, I was starting to want one for myself, but I stuck to the list, found the ones I needed, and then got called away from my computer to do something else. When I came back, the turtle AND the frog were sold out. But I needed one of them. I found the frog elsewhere and purchased it separately from the other three, then sat back to wait and enjoy the fact that I had shopped so far ahead of time (this was December 6th, a whole 3 weeks before Christmas).

And then I waited and waited and waited some more.

By this point, I had figured out that pillow pets were indeed EVERYWHERE, at least about eight different kinds of them. I started to come up with a back-up plan. If my pillow pets didn't arrive by the weekend before I needed to turn them in, I would buy another set at a local store (for less than I paid online, since I didn't have to ship them...).

Unfortunately, the frog and the pig are no where to be found in local stores. Fortunately, the frog arrived in the mail on Friday. Unfortunately, the pig did not. Fortunately, pig and penguin both start with a 'p,' so I got a penguin instead. Unfortunately, the similarities between pigs and penguins end right there.

I wrapped all the animals, including the replacement penguin, and prepared to write a note to go along with it -- "So sorry the pig didn't make it in the mail on time. I hope this penguin will suffice even though all your siblings got exactly what they wanted. Guess this is a good lesson on how the real world works. Bah humbug and merry Christmas."

Then I delivered the animals to the front desk of the building where they were being collected and emailed the person in charge -- "Hey, if there's any chance I can swap out a pillow pet pig if it comes in the mail soon, let me know."

Turns out that even though the gifts were being collected Monday, they weren't being delivered until Thursday. This still placed my deadline at Tuesday since I would be fleeing town on Wednesday.

I had tried to track my package before, but half the time the order tracking part of the site is down, which leaves me in the lurch. At some point Monday, I was able to see that my package had left Belleville, MI, which I assumed meant it could be somewhere nearby. Still by Tuesday morning, there was no package and no update to the tracking information. I was beginning to lose hope until I refreshed the tracking page after lunch, and saw a note saying it had made it to the post office. (Side note: I didn't realize shipping something half-FedEx, half-USPS was an option).

I called the post office. They didn't have the package. "Can you check again?" Not in another spot where packages go either. Finally, she checked, and sure enough, it had already gone out for delivery. Knowing that my mail usually arrives before noon, I instantly regretted not going home for lunch (just kidding, I had delicious Indian food instead, who's going to regret that?).

So I high-tailed it out of the office, raced home, found the box, drove to Walgreens to buy gift bags, stuffed the new pillow pets inside, and went and made the swap.

The guys at the front desk of the drop-off building seemed to be slightly puzzled by the fact that I walked in with 3 gift bags and walked out with 3 stuffed animals.

And now I never want to see a pillow pet again.

Tyler Stanton's "Glorified Pamphlet"

2010-12-28T10:06:00.000-05:00

If you've been wanting to buy Tyler Stanton's book (Everyday Absurdities), check out your options here:

Kindle
PDF
Paperback

You can also download the first chapter free.

For more info, see tylerstanton.com, or watch the video promotion.

Card delivery (or why I should never be a mail person)

2010-12-20T14:10:00.000-05:00

A friend of mine and used-to-be-colleague, Shawn, asked if I would deliver some Christmas cards from him to people around work. This sort of thing is usually not too tricky, so I agreed, and we decided he'd drop off the cards on Sunday night.

Now Sunday night, I had a Christmas party at the church, and I told him about this, so he said he could meet me there, or we could arrange a way to get them afterward. Since I didn't get any calls from him or see him during the party, I assumed I would need to call him afterward and decided to do this after my drive home.

It's winter, and with winter comes road sludge, so my windshield was a mess. As I pressed the lever to move my windshield wipers, I noticed something white moving with them. And other white things flying away. A few firing synapses later, my brain made the connection: these were Shawn's cards. I pulled into the next available driveway and started the trudge back the way I had come. I knew there was at least one envelope that had gone flying and I was determined to find it. Just as I was calling Joe to turn around and bring me a flashlight, I spotted the wayward card. The lettering on the envelope was a little smudged from landing in a snow bank, but that's not too bad in the grand scheme of things, right?

At that point, I tried calling Shawn to verify the number of cards I should have. My count was the one from the snow bank plus three from under my wiper plus one precariously on the hood of my car, giving me a grand total of five. That sounded like it could be right, but I couldn't be sure since both phone numbers I had for Shawn seemed to be disconnected.

Upon arriving at Joe's house, I sent Shawn an email, something like this:

"Hey, sorry I missed you... also, exactly how many cards was I supposed to have because I didn't find them until I was already driving and I'm afraid some flew off my windshield."

Content with the five I had retrieved, I still did one last check on my drive home from Joe's and went to bed, expecting that all was well.

And awoke to an email stating there should have been seven (seven!!) cards in total. Oops.

So I drove back again. Normally I'd walk to work, but I had to deliver some adopt-a-family presents (that's another nightmare for another time), so I hopped in my car, detoured out of my way, and retraced my route again. I'm not sure what the cars around me thought as I putzed along the road, scanning the side for the sight of a bright white rectangle against a muddy white snow bank. I found one more card, so I turned on my hazards, pulled over, and retrieved it. Slightly wet and smudged from a night on the street, but still deliverable. But alas, even after another pass back and forth, I still couldn't find the seventh card.

The good news is that Shawn seems to be ok with this and will just make another card. Whew.

Merry Christmas.

Abducted!

2010-11-23T10:45:00.000-05:00

Four days ago, I was walking home from work, minding my own business, talking to Jen, when suddenly, I was abducted by an old lady driving her car down the road.

It was all a matter of timing.

Normally on a Friday, I try to clear out of work by 5, sometimes even a half hour or so early if I'm feeling extra lucky.

Normally on a Friday, I walk straight home from work without any extra turns or stops.

Normally on a Friday, it wouldn't be so dark out on my walk (silly Daylight Saving Time!).

But this wasn't a normal Friday.

I got out of work closer to 5:30 and called up my roommate to see what plans were for the night. After discussing things, we determined that Jen would be walking over to our place, and since my walk home almost goes by her apartment, I figured I'd "pick her up" along the way.

As we were walking and talking and about to cross the last street before the apartments, we heard the sounds of a lady shouting. At first, we both ignored it, and then realized she was shouting at us.

"I'm lost! Can you help me? I'm lost! I don't know where I'm going."

And like a couple of suckers, we went back to help. I quickly assessed the situation -- a lady, looking to be pretty old, stopped in the left turn lane, with her window down, and a confused look in her eye. Didn't seem too dangerous, other than maybe the stopped in the middle of the road part (although at this point she was still at a stop sign).

Turned out she needed to be one street to the south, but that's a little tricky (only slightly) from where she currently was because Dow's corporate center is in the way. So we gave her directions (go straight until you see another stop sign, take a right, turn left at the light) and assumed she was good to go.

Not so much.

I made it back to the sidewalk and watched her pull her car approximately 15 feet forward and stop in the middle of the intersection, as she looked more confused than ever. She looked straight, then left, then right, then right again, and I could just see the gears turning in her mind, but little did she realize that way led straight to a gate that she probably wasn't going to get through (at least not without a badge or significant damage to her car).

So I walked back to the middle of the road, amidst cars stopping and honking and veering around her car in an attempt to make their way wherever they needed to go. And I offered to get in her car and show her where she needed to go.

Oops, guess that gives away that I wasn't *really* abducted.

Since I once-upon-a-time got a job offer from the CIA, I've got a few secret agent skills up my sleeve. So I knew that in terms of dangerous people to get in a car with, old grannies that are so lost they stop in the middle of an intersection are near the bottom of the "Dangerous Abductors" list, next to "Toddlers" and "Pet Chinchillas," neither of which I've actually seen drive a car. Actually, the biggest danger is that of the car crashing in an effort to get unlost, rather than granny pulling a gun or something.

I left Jen to walk the rest of the way to the apt by herself, telling her I'd eventually make my way back on foot from a location further down the road. After a little encouragement that it was ok to drive out of the middle of the intersection, granny and I got on our way.

Twenty minutes later, we made it to the stop sign. Ok, so it didn't take quite that long, but granny did seem to want to turn onto every side street we passed, despite the fact that they were all on the left side of the street, and she needed to go right. I gave her a pep talk, repeated (and had *her* repeat) the next step multiple times (go to the light and turn left... that's right, go to the light, right there, and turn left), and exited the vehicle to make my way home.

I'm assuming (hopefully) that granny made it home. For those of you reading this from your home, I just want to make it clear that this post does not condone jumping into cars with strangers. In fact, there very well may be dangerous people reading this blog and then donning old lady wigs and cataracts (and maybe even a pet chinchilla) to entice you into their vehicles.

Be safe!

NaNoWriMo: Day 2

2010-11-02T09:42:00.000-04:00

Today is day 2 of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) and my official word count is... (drum roll, please)... ZERO! Yes, that's right. 1/30th of my novel writing time is already wasted, without a dime to show for it.

For those of you who have no clue what I'm talking about, a few months ago, I was perusing the interwebs and happened across an account of someone participating in a mysterious event called NaNoWriMo. For some reason, this makes me think of dinosaurs (maybe because of the hours spent playing Nanosaur on one of our new iMacs (or the school's) in ages past), but it's actually all about writing. And you know, by how frequently I post on my blog, that I love writing.

Ok, so maybe you don't know. And maybe I don't love writing. But I have always aspired to be an author. And what could be better for that than trying to write an entire novel in a month?! A short month, might I add... but at least it's not February.

In typical Kelsey fashion, I talked to various and sundry people about NaNoWriMo after signing myself up on a whim on the website. I said things like, "How hard could it be? Apparently other people have done it." And, "If I can do it, you can do it." And, "You've got all kinds of time to come up with an idea for a story!"

I think I took that last one to heart a little too well.

And then suddenly there was no time left to come up with my great story idea. And suddenly November was upon us, like white upon rice.

And well, it's day 2, and like I said, I have approximately zero words, minus around 300 words wasted writing this post instead of noveling. All I can say is that Jen warned me early on that only about 1 in 5 people succeed at NaNoWriMo. So maybe it's better to not try and thus not drag down the average.

My little Midland bubble

2010-10-25T11:35:00.001-04:00

It seems that every time I travel away from Midland, I both appreciate and depreciate (I know, wrong word) Midland a little bit more when I come back.

I appreciate the lack of traffic and the fact that I don't have to have a lot of margin between things when my longest trip across town could take all of 15 minutes. I don't know how people manage to ever make it to anything on time without losing their sanity when their drive could be anywhere from 30 minutes to 90 minutes depending on whether a butterfly flapped its wings in Zimbabwe (or something else equally nonsensical -- really, how do non-accident-related traffic jams happen?).

I depreciate (aka don't appreciate) the lack of variety of restaurants in Midland. Despite the culinary diversity provided by the many possible wing sauces at BDubs, sometimes I wish we had a few more options (for restaurants in general, not sauces at BDubs). I always feel like some sort of ravenous foreign-food-seeking beast when I travel to other cities. This time I managed to get Thai food twice and had some authentic Turkish food, prepared right in front of me by a Turkish lady that my sister needed to visit to drop off a Turkish-English dictionary. The food reminded me of some sort of pierogi (I know, those are Polish), and now I want to see if I can figure out how to make something similar. Not sure I'll ever quite master the same technique, nor do I know the recipe, but I'm sure the internets can find me something.

There may have been more to my original appreciate/depreciate idea, but it's flown the coop (and probably caused a traffic jam in Singapore in the process), so that's all for now.

Bob Loblaw

2010-10-11T10:22:00.000-04:00

I read an article last week about narcissistic conversationalists (http://trippcrosby.com/2010/10/conversation-tips-pt-1/), which are those people that manage to turn every conversation around to themselves. I posted on something similar a while back (http://kelseyhill.blogspot.com/2009/10/dialogue-sometimes-nothing-more-than.html).

Anyway, Tripp had the following recommendation:

"When you feel yourself wanting to talk about yourself, try forcing yourself to first ask 2 more questions about the other person. I think you’ll be surprised at how much people will start wanting to talk to you."

Seemed like some good advice when I read it, so I decided to try to put it into practice. Except that I started to realize that I didn't necessarily *want* people to want to talk to me. It's like a catch-22-black-hole-vortex of conversational doom. The more you ask questions and make people want to talk to you, the more questions you have to ask to avoid turning the conversation to yourself. And the more you avoid turning the conversation to yourself, the more people want to talk to you because, guess what! They get to talk about themselves. And then you have to ask more questions. And they keep talking about themselves.

And soon you realize that you now know more about the detailed workings of being a paper-supply salesman than you ever wanted to know. And you also know your used-to-be-just-a-casual-acquaintance's entire minute-by-minute morning routine, including what brand of toothpaste they use and how many seconds they spend brushing each tooth.

The reason this all bothers me is that I know that I, too, am often a conversational narcissist (and also that after typing this whole thing, I still can't spell narcissist). Have you noticed how many times you've read the word "I" in the past few paragraphs? If there's one thing I've learned/am learning, it's that often the things that bug me the most are things that I myself have problems with (because it's all about me, right?).

So, all of this leaves me with a question or two. Is it ok to not ask those two questions and instead steer the conversation toward something that both of you can enjoy? I guess I'm saying that yes, I understand that the conversation doesn't always need to be about me, but does it always need to be about you (er, the other person)?

Photo me this

2010-09-27T17:18:00.001-04:00

I entered a photo contest, run by a guy who's going to donate money to Charity:Water in the winner's name. You can check out the top five and vote here:

http://www.evanforester.com/?p=822

I'd tell you to vote for mine, but that doesn't seem like a fair way to pick a good photo, so just go and vote on whatever one you like. And consider donating to charity:water, too. :)

Let me in!

2010-09-23T07:33:00.002-04:00

I have done all three of the following in the past week:

1. Tried to open the door to our apartment building by pressing the unlock button on the key to my car. (And despite the fact that it was parked around the corner, I came down later to find it unlocked.)

2. Pulled out the keys to the apartment to badge through the pedestrian gate at work on my way home for lunch.

3. Held up my badge to the wheelchair button on an inner door at work, as though it was a badge reader.

I have yet to draw any conclusions from all of this...

Psychosomatic

2010-09-16T11:57:00.000-04:00

I'm often cold at work anyway, but this week has been worse in a psychosomatic way (I think that's the right word...).

See, I have some blue "thinking putty".* And this blue putty sometimes turns my hands blue.

Well, when I'm already feeling cold, and I see that my hand is blue, my mind sometimes combines these things and thinks, "Wow, I must be _really_ cold!"

The end.

* Pretty much like silly putty but better because you can get cooler colors, and it doesn't get nasty after a day of using it, and apparently if you order enough, you can get a Crazy Aaron bobblehead (at least you could a couple years ago... I don't know where ours went).

The sky is falling!

2010-09-14T14:09:00.000-04:00

I must have had a dream that somehow the ceiling was going to cave in on my bed. I vaguely remember that it was tied to something that I was supposed to have done and didn't do, like, "Kelsey, if you don't clean your room by noon, the ceiling will cave in." Except I don't remember what it was that I was supposed to do, just that I hadn't done it.

Anyway, around 12:30am, I jumped out of bed to avoid the crumbling plaster. I even shoved the cats off the bed to "safety" before I realized it was all a dream, and my ceiling was not falling on my head.

I'm not sure that Loki and Waffles were very thankful that I saved them from nothing.

The wait is over (THE END IS NEAR!!)*

2010-09-10T15:03:00.001-04:00

I'm not going to Tanzania. At least not any time soon.

For some of you, this might sound like me saying, "I'm not eating a cheeseburger." Or "I'm not reading Dante's Inferno." Or "I'm not doing something random that I pulled out of thin air and has no relevance to normal life or conversation."

Well, it's not all that random.

Back story: Dow decided to partner with the Ministry of Education in Tanzania to help them develop increased technology in their secondary school systems, necessary in part because of a shortage of teachers. I got an email about this asking for volunteers at the end of July. Of course this sounded excellent -- go to Tanzania for about 3 weeks, with everything paid for by Dow and counting as my regular work (i.e. I wouldn't have to take vacation), so I threw my name in the hat and waited.

Then there was the flurry of information sessions, filling out of forms, and a meeting with one of the guys in charge, at which point, I found out there were probably about 3 of us (of the initial 30 or so people interested) that they were considering to send over. This was followed by, "We'll discuss this on Friday and let you know either Friday afternoon or early next week."

Friday came and went, but I was on vacation, so I wasn't paying too much attention anyway.

Monday came and went about the same way (minus being on vacation), followed by Tuesday, and then Wednesday. I don't know about you, but "early next week" generally means within the first half of the week, so when I hadn't heard anything by Wednesday afternoon, I figured it might be time to check up on things. Except one guy was out on vacation, and the other guy's schedule was entirely blocked off.

I didn't hear anything back from either of them until Friday, at which point, it was something like, "Hold your horses, we'll let you know soon."

I'm sure if I had horses to hold, that would have made things better. And actually, I think they said something more like "Hold tight," but if I didn't get horses, what was I supposed to be holding?

A week passed, and then another. At this point, we were into September, and since the initial email about the whole thing had mentioned "mid-September," I decided enough was enough. I couldn't hold my breath (or horses) forever, so I started solidifying other plans.

And then, finally, I got an email saying they had chosen someone else to go, at least for the first round. We'll see if the whole process starts over again later, since they want to send someone once the first guy does his assessment, and they figure out who/what they need.

Until then, I'll enjoy breathing.

* The end is not really near. Well, I guess I don't really know. I just felt like screaming that out from the title with ALL CAPS for extra yellability because it somehow seemed (at the time) to go with "the wait is over"

** You might be searching for the double asterisk in my post to no avail. I just wanted to comment that I think that whoever purchased the "Sleepy Time Tea" I've found in the tea drawer at work either has a sense of humor, has sat in on one too many pointless conference calls, or needs to be fired from the tea-buyer position.

Crab apples and goose poop

2010-09-07T23:43:00.000-04:00

Tonight Sarah and I realized it's almost mol(e) day again. Yes, you're right, it's still a month and a half away, but let's face it. It's only a month and half away. Wasn't it just the other day that we woke up for a 6:02am breakfast at Big Boy?

Time always manages to fly by. To whiz right past as though it's the natural order of things to get older and older and wonder where the time's gone. And this year has been no different.

I tried to make a photo book in record time a week and a half ago. It was one of those "FREE ALBUM!!" deals, except the trick was that you had to have it ready to go within the next few days, and guess what? Oh, that's right, you're leaving for Wisconsin tomorrow and don't know if you'll have internet access, and well, I guess you'll just have to make the photo book today if you want to get it for free.

I tried (in vain) to cram all of what's happened so far in 2010 into one measly 20 page, 8"x8" album and ended up with something called "The best album ever (this year)," slightly reminiscent of Five Iron Frenzy's album, "Our newest album ever."

All that to say that I couldn't possibly fit it all in because just like every year, there's a lot that goes on, and yet somehow in the midst of it I wonder how last October is already so far away. As though I could do everything that I have documented in photos in the span of a month...

Ah, how the relativity of things* amazes me endlessly.

* Don't even get me started on the relativity of temperature! How can a 63 degree day in the early spring be cause for celebration and the wearing of shorts and yet a 63 degree day in the early fall means a busting out of hoodies and jeans? How can one person feel hot when another feels cold? How can the people who control the temperature at work get it so wrong so often?

Wildlife

2010-09-04T23:38:00.000-04:00

Vanishing Act (A Review)

2010-08-26T08:58:00.000-04:00

Liz Johnson sent me an advance copy of her newest book, "Vanishing Act," to review for you here on my blog. I have to admit, had I ever heard of the "love-inspired suspense" genre before (which I hadn't), I probably wouldn't have put it high on my list of choices to read, but since I know Liz, I figured I'd give it a shot.

The book starts out right in the thick of things -- Nora James has been kidnapped in an effort to get at her father. She narrowly escapes and has to start a new life with a new identity, so her abductors aren't able to trace her.

Fast forward to the future, a year or two down the road (should have written this review a month ago, and I might have actually been able to tell you if it was a year or two, or somewhere in between), and an FBI agent is assigned to track down Nora (now disguised as someone else).

That's where the romance comes in, and I have to admit, that's where part of my brain starts to get confused and slightly angry. It's a little jolting to be reading along, right in the middle of some sort of action-filled page-turner, interrupted by lingering glances and thoughts of marriage. Why are you thinking about being married?! Someone wants you dead!

Overall, the book's a good, quick read. If you're looking for a book to take along with you on vacation and keep you entertained for a few hours, this one will probably do the trick.

For more information about Liz, see below.

About the Author:

Liz Johnson grew up reading Christian fiction, and always dreamed of being part of the publishing industry. After graduating from Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff with a degree in public relations, she set out to fulfill her dream. In 2006 she got her wish when she accepted a publicity position at a major trade book publisher. While working as a publicist in the industry, she decided to pursue her other dream-becoming an author. Along the way to having her novel published, she completed the Christian Writers Guild apprentice course and wrote articles for several magazines.
Liz makes her home in Nashville, TN, where she enjoys theater, exploring the local music scene, and making frequent trips to Arizona to dote on her two nephews and three nieces. She loves stories of true love with happy endings. Keep up with Liz's adventures in writing at www.lizjohnsonbooks.com.

Subconscious vacation

2010-08-20T08:59:00.000-04:00

At first glance, it might just look like forgetfulness. Or maybe a lack of organization.

But at the root, we discover that my subconscious wants to be on vacation.

Last week, I took Thursday and Friday off to hang out with family. Had lots of fun in the sun, bruised and battered my body doing lake things (seems typical these days, am I getting old?), and in general enjoyed not working (except, of course, for those times that I *was* working since no one would take my on-call for me on my own birthday).

This Thursday, I got to work and discovered something important was missing: my laptop. Of course, by "missing," I mean it was sitting in its bag on the floor at home, waiting for me to take it to work with me. I turned around in my tracks, hopped back in my car for the 3 minute drive across the street, and arrived home to find both my laptop and some suspicious-looking cats, who had just knocked over a water glass left out on the table and were lapping up the spilled water from a chair.

Today (Friday), I walked to work. At a brisk pace (I was hoping to not be late for my daily 8:00am meeting). Arrived at the gate, felt around at my hip for my badge... nothing. Not in my bag either. Or my other bag. Turned around and walked at a brisk pace back to my apartment, while dialing into my 8:00 call on my phone.

I'm telling you... days like these must be meant to be vacations.

Fishes

2010-08-09T08:49:00.003-04:00

Those sure don't look like driftwood to me...

Gone fishing

2010-08-06T14:58:00.000-04:00

Just printed out my license to fish. Maybe not quite as cool as a 007 license to kill, but it'll work, since all I want to do is catch some salmon. I might even be happy with catching a piece of driftwood as long as we're out on a boat.

I'll update you on our catch when we're back (even if it is just a piece of driftwood). May even post some pictures (photoshopped if we don't actually catch anything).

Of late

2010-08-02T18:45:00.001-04:00

Had "Stand in the rain" running through my head as I was running through the rain last night. Funny thing is that in Michigan, rains usually don't last long, so if I had just been thinking, I could have sung "Stand in the dryness [of my apartment]," while waiting the 15 minutes it took to stop raining, instead of running for those 15 minutes and then going inside as it was finishing up.

This weekend, I tried to test some of my creativity skills. Project number 1: basket lining. Sarah and I have talked about getting some baskets to put on the shelf below the coffee table for things like mail, random papers, junk that normally sits out on top of the coffee table. Now the goal here would be to periodically go through the mess in the baskets, not just use them to collect junk, but for now, we just want to get some baskets there.

So I went to Joann's (of the fabric variety) and found some baskets I liked, but I wasn't really diggin' the fabric they had chosen (despite the fact that it has orange in it). Fortunately, I was in a fabric store, so I also found some replacement fabric. Then returned home to find a 20% off all items coupon for Joann's. Ironic that it would show up in our mail the one day of the year that I go to that store.

Currently we lack a sewing machine, so I decided to hand-sew (who thought *that* was a good idea?), which required a needle and thread. I used to own such things but don't know where they are (or if I left my little sewing kit in Guinea), so I dragged Joe with me on a walk down to Walgreens, where we find a nice $5 sewing kit, complete with stitch ripper (surprisingly unused so far in my sewing journey), thread, needles, a pin cushion in the shape of a tomato with a dangling baby tomato (in the shape of a strawberry) attached, scissors, pins, a tape measure (would have been handy when I was "measuring" things earlier), etc.*

Progress so far: Everything's done other than sewing some sort of hem around the entire outside edge, which may in fact be the sum total of all the sewing I've down so far, plus some. So I'm maybe 42% done, but the rest of the sewing should be pretty straightforward (literally, minus the deviations from hand sewing, which means it'll be more of a zigzag in the end).

Anti-progress so far: Waffles has chewed on various parts of the basket, thus it looks a little sad without the fabric cover (but Waffles looks cute all curled up). Also considered taking the handles off the basket with Sarah's super shears because I was going to be too lazy to cut out spots for them. Might still happen on the second basket.

* Always fun to throw out an "etc" when you can't remember actual things (and/or the list is so long at this point no one cares)

Morning jumpstart

2010-07-28T23:46:00.000-04:00

Some people wake up early and do something to get a "jump start" to their morning. Others wake up early and do something to get their car jump started.

Today, I was in the second category.

Some days, I don't even have to drive to work. I live all of a 10 minute walk from where I work (usually), so if you see me driving, that generally spells out one thing: LAZY (that's if driving can actually spell). And/or I've got something I need to do at lunch that requires a car.

But this week, I get to drive to Saginaw for work. Someone thought it would be a great idea to have some face time with people who are doing testing on our SAP systems from Saginaw; as if everything we do can't be done just as well with a phone call (or IM) and livemeeting/netmeeting. In fact, this week I have gotten IMed and emailed requests from people in Saginaw who are probably sitting within a couple hundred feet of me.

I digress. My car died. Yesterday.

I drove back from frisbockey (yes, fine, I am lazy... let's move on), parked my car in our covered parking spot because all the good spots along the building were taken, and turned the car off. Except the fan stayed on. I've had this happen before, so I popped the hood (as if I knew what I was doing) and decided to add some coolant. Light from the sun was quickly fading, and I had also parked in a dark location, so in the ensuing chaos, I managed to drop the cover to the coolant thing somewhere into the engine compartment. And still the fan whined on.

So I drove over to a spot on the other side of the building, hoping that maybe my car would realize it was ok to turn the fan off or that it was ok to give up the coolant cap or something else magical, but none of this happened. I closed the hood, went inside, and decided to go for a walk with Sarah.

By the time we got back, the whining of the fan had stopped. Also, my power locks had stopped working, the lights wouldn't turn on, and all other things the battery normally powers were not being powered.

Since it was dark, I asked Sarah if she'd be ok jumping it in the morning. She agreed, g'nite, good morning, time to give it a jump.

Except Sarah's jumper cables were missing. We still aren't sure where they've gone. The last time Sarah remembers using them was with Jon & Mandy, who have been off adventuring in Africa for something close to a year now. I started wondering if somehow they had been brought inside, and then with my completely useless brain, starting "remembering" seeing them in various places around the apartment.

Called Joe, who had already made it to work but said he'd do what he could to come back and rescue me. In the meantime, I had nothing but time since I surely wasn't going anywhere anytime soon, so I managed to re-find my coolant cap and put it back on. I say re-find (not the past tense of refined) because I found it once when Sarah was still around but in the process of pulling it out, bumped it against something and dropped it into the dark corners of the engine area again.

Long story a little longer, my knight in business casual armor came and got my car working again, so off to Saginaw I went.

I think I'm going to start looking for less "exciting" ways of jumpstarting my morning from now on.

The Michigan Hedge-trimmer Massacre

2010-07-27T11:29:00.000-04:00

As I was helping Joe with yardwork this weekend, I couldn't help but feel like I was part of some sort of hedge massacre. This poor hedge had worked so hard, just doing its thing, growing toward the sun, and here I was cutting it all back in one fell swoop of the electric hedge trimmer. A few slow steps forward, a quick shove back for the hedge world.

Joe reminded me multiple times that the hedge couldn't actually be angry at me since hedges aren't humans, or even animals for that matter. That didn't seem to stop me from randomly assigning it emotions as I went along. (Then again, I was also talking to vegetables and muffins Sarah & I got at the farmer's market... perhaps this is a larger problem).

It also got me wondering how someone gets into the field of hedge-shaping. I don't know what it's actually called, maybe hedge sculpting, kind of like ice sculpting, except not as cold and a little more green. Also, from my quick reading on the topic, it probably takes a couple years of preparation to get your hedges ready. I'm not sure what type of hedges you start with for this sort of thing. And for some reason I just keep picturing Mr. Miyagi working on his bonsai tree.

Check out this hedge:

All this talk of hedges makes me hungry (or maybe that's just because it's lunchtime).

Farmer's Market

2010-07-24T17:13:00.001-04:00

Saturday morning around here means it's time for the farmer's market downtown. I'm pretty sure my sister's talked multiple times about going to the farmer's market mostly for the baked goods, so she can grab something and walk around and eat it. Turns out my sister can have brilliant ideas (such as this one) every once in a while, so I decided to give it a go this morning.

The real problem becomes figuring out which baked good to get. There are so many choices, just like there are far too many choices for vegetables (and fruit)! Hence why Sarah and I now have a packed out fridge, and a long list of all the fresh stuff we need to use up soon before it all goes bad.

I settled on a cream-cheese-filled chocolate muffin and a raspberry-filled yellow (vanilla?) muffin and split them with Sarah. Mmm mmm good. I would show you a picture, but alas, they are already in my belly.

Frisbockey

2010-07-20T22:33:00.000-04:00

I played frisbockey for the first time tonight. If you're wondering what in the world that is, it's a combination of frisbee and hockey. Mostly like ultimate, but you score by throwing the frisbee into a hockey-ish goal instead of completing a pass into the endzone. There are also "no traveling" rules that include things like "if catch it on your knees, then you must throw it on your knees."

We had 7 on 7 with one sub... sounds like it may have actually been a smaller group than they've had in the past, but it seemed like a pretty good amount, although it may have been nice if the sub was on our team. Let's just say I'm a little out of shape for that sort of thing. Apparently my occasional jogging at a nice slow pace doesn't translate into being ready to do lots of sprinting, jumping, and quick turns on the frisbee field.

That's all I've got for now, just thought I should post to remind myself that I still have a blog.

Suspended reality

2010-07-12T13:54:00.000-04:00

I just got back from a week of suspended reality, aka vacation, aka a time where the world as we know it ceases to exist temporarily -- at least for as long as we can allow it.

We pretend that we don't have to work to earn a living, that we can sleep in every day and not have to set an alarm. We eat as though these calories don't count, because, well, we all know this isn't real life. We hang out with people we don't normally see and pretend that we get to do this sort of thing all the time. Showers and getting out of our pajamas are optional; s'mores around the campfire are mandatory.

Instead of making daily decisions about how to do our work in the best, most efficient way, our hardest choice comes down to whether or not we want bananas and chocolate chips in our pancakes (and the answer, of course, is yes!). We watch movies and read books and sit out in the sun as though as it's our job, except without any of the stress or performance metrics or specified hours.

We forget about our new plan to be more organized -- that can wait until *after* vacation, right? Our daily routine becomes nothing at all like a routine and probably isn't repeated daily. Each day is a new adventure. Clocks are a thing of another world; here we live by the sun, and even that provides only a loose guideline to how we spend our days.

Productivity is measured in the number of naps we take or the number of times we laugh or in the number of times we consecutively catch a frisbee successfully.

And we love it. Or at least cathect it (for those of you who've read "The Road Less Traveled").

Ah, vacation. How I miss you already.

The Big D (no, not that one)

2010-06-29T23:13:00.000-04:00

Discipline. Self-discipline at that. It's harder than it looks (and boy, does it look hard sometimes).

Every once in a while, I look at my life and realize that parts of it are a mess. Literally. And, as often is the case with messes, my messy life does not seem to want to clean itself up.

Not to say that life isn't just messy in general. I think any time you're throwing things like relationships into a mix, it's bound to get a little messy.

But I'm talking more about literal mess.

So, I've recently adopted a plan I like to call "Don't let the sun go down on your dishes." A lesser known saying to "Do not let the sun go down on your anger" (a less important one, too). Basically, it means I don't leave my dishes waiting to be washed overnight. Actually, it's more like washing my dishes as I use them in general and not letting them pile up, whether it's overnight or just during the day. (But "Do not let the sun cross the sky or set or rise on your dishes" just didn't work out as well).

Turns out it takes about 12.2 seconds to wash a plate right after I've used it. Maybe a little more, but the point is, it generally doesn't take all that long, and if I just wash it, then I don't have to think about it later. Or grumble to myself when the stack of dishes in the sink is preventing me from getting to the water. Or grumble to myself again when the knife/cup/plate/pot/spatula/cheese grater/potato peeler/measuring cup I need is sitting somewhere in the middle of a dirty pile of dishes.

I feel a little bit like I'm turning into my mom (and soon I'll start doing things like [gasp]... making my bed in the morning!). But I think that's ok because we all know the acorn doesn't fall far from the tree anyway. :)

Lonely can of Pepsi

2010-06-22T23:25:00.001-04:00

At least for the past week (but I'd venture to guess even the past two weeks), there's been a lonely can of Pepsi sitting on a post right outside the pedestrian gate that I walk through most days to get to work.

I have no idea who put it there or why it just sits there alone, day after day, night after night.

Of course, my imagination starts to take off with this sort of thing. Maybe it's an experiment run by the security guards who are watching with the little camera at the gate -- who will cave and move/take the can? Maybe some sort of terrorist hopes that a Dow employee will pick it up and take it within the gate, where the poisonous toxins within will then be released. (In this case, I feel sorry for the terrorists... not the brightest idea, apparently, since no one's yet taken the bait). Maybe it's sitting on some sort of pressure switch, like they have under diamonds and other valuables in movies -- if you move the can, the pressure switch goes off, and silly string rains down at you from the top of the gate.

Or it could be something as mundane as someone carrying a pepsi, setting it down while they fumble in their bag for their badge, and forgetting to grab it again before going through the gate. And then they got a ride home with someone else and haven't been back through the gate since.

I wonder if everyone else that passes through the gate notices the can of Pepsi. Maybe tomorrow I will switch it out with a can of Coke.

UPDATE: "Tomorrow" is upon us and... the can of Pepsi is gone! This can only mean one thing...

Anything you can do...

2010-06-16T11:12:00.000-04:00

...I can do better.

That's what Waffles must have said this morning, right before he swan-dived (swan-dove?) off the balcony. I'm not sure if he was talking to the birds he was chasing ("You think you're the only ones that can fly?!") or Loki ("Just because you jumped *first* doesn't mean I can't jump *better*...")

All I know is that I heard a thunk, watched some birds take off, and saw Loki looking toward the edge of the balcony as though he just lost a good friend.

The thunk's probably a good indication that it was more of a fall than an actual leap, more of a belly-flop than a swan-dive.

I set aside my computer, walked out to the balcony, and sure enough -- only one cat where there used to be two. The second was now sitting two stories below on the ground, looking up pathetically, probably trying to figure out just exactly how he got from where we were to where he was currently.

After firmly closing the balcony door so the other cat wouldn't make another leap ("I'll save you, Waffles!"), I went downstairs to let the jumper back in. Contrary to my idea that he would embrace his freedom and take off, he was sitting just about where he landed, kind of huddled near a bush for protection from the great outdoors (or maybe protection from the birds that had lured him off the balcony in the first place). It didn't take a whole lot of coaxing to convince him to come inside, and his tail was about 3x as fluffed out as usual, a sure sign he was distressed. Fortunately he didn't maul me on the way back upstairs like some other cat who recently made the same jump/fall.

Now I just have to prepare my explanation if the neighbors start submitting complaints about it raining cats and cats.

The grass was greener... right?

2010-06-14T15:21:00.000-04:00

As I think about my current work situation and try to decide how I feel about it, I've started to realize that there are two parts to the saying "the grass is always greener on the other side."

One part is what we normally think of -- we end up thinking that someone else has it better than us, or if we just had x, y, or z fall into place, everything else would magically be better (where x, y, and z are things like get a promotion, get married, move to a new city, start a new job, get a bigger house, start our own company where we set the hours, etc.).

But the other part has to do with some sort of memory loss or dementia, known as IS (Israelite Syndrome*, not to be confused with the other IS, or sometimes I/S -- Information Systems). When someone's got IS, they start to "remember" that the grass used to be greener. That everything was better where they were before -- in their old job, in their old town, before they started dating, before they had kids, back when they were in college, etc.

I have to admit that I'm guilty of both of these types of "greener grass" envy at times. I also have to admit that I'm guilty of complaining about things more than I should (this weekend was a reminder of both of those things as someone I haven't seen in a while asked me if I was liking my new job better than my last one, and I suddenly realized that either (a) I had forgotten how much I disliked my last job or (b) I had done a lot of unnecessary complaining about my last job so that other people thought I really disliked it).

All along the reality is this: I don't even like the taste of grass, green or not! Ok, maybe that's not the point. Maybe the point is that people care too much about the color of their grass, both literally and figuratively (I mean seriously, green grass is nice in the summer, but do we have to drain the Great Lakes and spend copious amounts of time and money on our lawns to get them that way? What about turning our yards into something useful, like tennis courts or volleyball courts or farms? (I'd link to an article that Sarah posted recently about farming in town, but I don't feel like finding it again)).

Maybe the point is that we should look for ways to be content with where we are and what we've got and who's on the journey with us.

And maybe we should stop eating grass.

* Israelite Syndrome has never actually been diagnosed since I just now made it up. And if we really wanted to get down to the nitty gritty, Israelite Syndrome could probably get pretty confusing since the Israelites of the Bible were known for a lot more than just whining about wanting to go back to Egypt. So beware of ever telling someone they have Israelite Syndrome, as they may believe that you're saying they have a problem with false idols, whoring, turning away from God, wandering in the desert, a love/hate relationship with manna, doubting, having 11 brothers... and the list goes on.

The Jump

2010-06-09T17:24:00.000-04:00

The Jump

(This story has been waiting for me to tell it. Waiting long enough that I've already told most of you in person. But for the sake of being able to read about it years from now, it's time to write it down.)

Let's start with some lessons learned: never leave a cat alone with access to the balcony.

Let me also add this disclaimer: no animals were harmed in the enactment of this story. Or at least not in any way that wasn't their own fault.

It was a pretty typical scenario. I had been home most of the evening and opened the sliding and screen doors for the cats to wander out on the balcony and back in at their leisure. So far this hasn't caused too many bug issues, and it's easier for me than letting them in and out when they whine. (Note to self: maybe I shouldn't be rewarding their whining anyway, but that's a lesson for another time).

I was also in the process of doing laundry, and I often will let Waffles follow me down to the laundry room as his weekly foray out into the wilderness of the hallways of our building. Don't ask me why, but for some reason he loves this little bit of "freedom," so he now even recognizes when it's laundry day, based on me grabbing my laundry basket and the jingle of quarters as I head for the door.

So Waffles and I started the trip down to the laundry room to move my clothes from the washers to the dryers, leaving Loki all by his lonesome at home (Sarah was off galavanting at some graduation party or something). Since Waffles likes to roll around for a while and sniff at various things in the hallway, it takes a while for us to get down to the laundry room, but when we got there, I started to hear a deep meow.

And it wasn't Waffles.

I looked out the window and saw people who had been hanging out in the courtyard in front of our apartment walking toward the building, presumably heading for the source of the meowing. And I thought nothing of it. Someone was probably just coming to check out some cat who had wandered away from home, or maybe it was their cat who had run away from their festivities. As they got closer, I saw a white cat dart in front of the window, and the people started walking away, so I assumed all was well with the cat that was roaming wild outside. I figured Waffles was probably jealous, but other than that, I thought nothing of it.

Until I was climbing the stairs back to my apartment with Waffles in tow.

Wait, *Loki* is a white cat. And I left the door to the balcony open...

Oh no, Sarah's worst nightmare (and thus, by the mathematical property of substution, my nightmare since I was "babysitting") -- Loki jumping to his demise. It took her *years* to even let Loki on the balcony, and by that I mean more like months, since I haven't even been living with her for a year yet.

I rushed up the rest of the stairs to the apartment, frantic to find a little white cat inside. Usually he'd greet me at the door or at least be roaming the living room. Nope. Maybe he was out on the balcony? Nope. In a bedroom? Nope. I even tried moving around in the kitchen and offering him catnip if he came out. No Loki.

So I rushed back downstairs (leaving Waffles behind this time) and threw open the door to go outside, then headed in the direction I had seen the white cat run. Sure enough, there was Loki, pretty much freaked out of his gourd that he was outside and didn't know what to do. I scooped him up and carried him inside, where he mauled me to climb down and meow in front of a door that looked like ours on the second floor. That kid just wanted to get home!

Now I think he struts around in front of Waffles, proud to have been the first one to make the jump. Waffles, meanwhile, is wondering a few things: (1) Why didn't he make the jump sooner?, (2) Why did he have to *survive* the jump?, and (3) Why didn't he take advantage of his escape, yell "FREEDOM!" William Wallace style, and take off?

The Last Christian (A review)

2010-05-29T09:08:00.000-04:00

I haven't reviewed a lot of fiction books, and truth be told, I often get so sucked into the story line of any fiction book, good or bad, that it's hard for me to figure out if the book was really any good or not.

But I'm pretty sure this one was good. (I know, real raving review isn't it?)

The book is set in the future, in a time when technology has been integrated into every part of life, even more than it is now, I guess. Cars drive themselves. People connect to the "Grid" using brain implants that allow them to be basically "online" all the time. Meetings and classes are done in virtual reality while everyone stays physically where they are, thousands of miles apart.

And then there's Abby. She's the daughter of missionaries, now a missionary herself, in a remote tribe in PNG. The tribe has been left alone, as a sort of last vestige of life before technology. Except suddenly some sort of "disease" starts killing off the tribe, so Abby leaves to get help. And then is suddenly faced with a world not only with technology she's never seen before, but a world that has basically given up on any sort of religion, especially in the US. And Abby's grandparents have tasked her with the job of bringing Christianity back to people who believe that tolerance and human knowledge reign supreme.

I thought the book had a good overall plot, kept me wanting to read more and figure out what was going to happen in the end. The characters were pretty well developed, and the technology of the future was described vividly enough that I felt like I knew what the author was talking about. I also think the book had a lot of good stuff that makes a person think and evaluate what he or she actually believes and how that plays out into living life.

If you're interested in borrowing my copy to read it for yourself, let me know. Otherwise you can also buy it by looking at options here.

This book was provided free for review by WaterBrook Multnomah.

It's hot outside, better turn on the heat...

2010-05-27T11:56:00.001-04:00

Sarah & I have been attempting to run our A/C recently, without much success. That is until yesterday.

The thermostat has 3 settings for how it's run: (1) on all the time, (2) on based on the temperature in the apartment (i.e. it'll kick in if it needs it), or (3) off. We like option 2, so we can set the temperature, walk away, and know that our A/C won't just be running continuously and racking up a large electric bill for the month.

But option 2 hadn't been working. We'd set the desired temperature below the actual temperature, and nothing would happen. We'd set it *WAY* below the desired temperature, and still nothing.

So in the end, we'd resort to some combination of option 1 (just letting it run) and option 3, at which point we'd get our fans going to circulate air.

Now, I knew that option 2 should work. I'd used it at the beginning of the month when I had visitors spending the night for my sister-in-law's baby shower. So yesterday, I determined to figure it out.

After moving the temperature up, down, all around, then flipping it back and forth between settings 1, 2, and 3, I finally looked to the other side of the thermostat, where there are two more settings that I had forgotten about.

"Heat" and "Cool."

Turns out the A/C's not going to kick in so much when the heat's turned on.

[This has been today's "Duh" moment, presented to you by Kelsey & Sarah. Tune in again next time for more of the same.]

Fire in the hole!

2010-05-25T14:05:00.000-04:00

You can never be too prepared for something like camping. Pretty sure both the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts have the motto, "Be prepared," and we all know they do a lot of camping. Actually, I only remember camping in someone's backyard when I was in girl scouts -- not sure if that's just a bad memory or if that's all the rusticness (rusticity?) we could handle.

Anyway, my roommate's been spreading talk of going camping this weekend, so in honor of that, I decided to start practicing my fire skills. First, I went to a bonfire at someone else's house. This didn't give me a lot of preparedness since I had nothing to do with building the fire or keeping it going.

So I decided I needed some fire-making skillz. Living in an apartment in the middle of town makes this a little tough but not impossible as I discovered yesterday while making pita chips.

After putting two pans of pita in the oven to bake, I noticed smoke coming out of the burners on the top of the stove. I figured the pita couldn't have become burnt already, so I opened the oven to realize that it was pie goo from previous pie-making sessions that bubbled over and created a sticky, carbony mess on the bottom of the oven.

My ever-cogitating brain deduced that it might be easiest to scrape up the crud while the oven was hot, so I pulled out a metal utensil and started scraping. Which worked, but also ended up flinging bits of carbonized pie goo onto the oven coils. And since I was baking something at the time, the coils were rather warm and decided to create sparks out of the carbon bits. Which in turn landed on the larger carbon chunks and started a fire. In the oven.

Fortunately our kitchen just happens to be designed so that the oven is near the sink. So after removing my pans of pita chips and watching the fire burn for a while, I finally doused it with water, and all was well again. Except for my pita chips, which still needed to bake longer, but that was easily fixed by putting them back in the smoldering oven.

So, watch out campers -- I know how to make a fire. I just need to figure out some way to bring the oven with us...

Summer Days

2010-05-24T16:49:00.001-04:00

Sunshine. Strawberry pie. Frisbee. Walking a dog through the park. Mint moose tracks ice cream cone. Dinner outside. Stepping in dog poo with my bare foot.

Ah, summer days.

I have to say, stepping in the dog poo was probably some sort of poetic justice. When Sarah & I took Sidney out for a walk, we didn't think to grab a plastic bag to bring with us, so you know what that means... no way of collecting poo.

She (Sidney, not Sarah) lasted quite a while but eventually a dog's gotta doo what a dog's gotta doo. And since we didn't have a bag, we kind of tried to smear it into the ground but ended up just leaving it for some innocent person to come upon.

Turns out someone across town simultaneously* left their dog's poo for another innocent person to step in.

So when Joe & I decided to toss a frisbee around in the park down the street from his house, it was only a matter of time. Actually, Joe even commented on the fact that I was running around with bare feet in a park that was sometimes inhabited by furry canines. I dismissed his comments as nothing to worry about.

Until I felt the squish. Joe had thrown the frisbee high and to my left. I ran after it, my eyes of course being on the flying disc above my head, not on the poo waiting beneath my outstretched toes. I nailed it squarely with my left foot, oozing it between my last three toes (the piggy that got roast beef, his brother who for some reason didn't get any, and the littlest piggy who decided to go "wee! wee! wee!" all the way home). All attention went to how to get it off as quickly as possible, which involved a lot of rubbing of my foot in the grass, along with the use of a stick to get it out from between my toes, peppered with a lot of "ugh"'s, "ew"'s, "gross"'s, and "I can't believe you were right about me stepping into dog poop."

I ended up walking back barefoot, and Joe brought me out a bucket of soapy water with an old toothbrush to scrub between my toes.

Moral of the story (choose from any of the following):

<> Don't stomp in poo.

<> Eat ice cream

<> Enjoy your summer days while you still have them

<> Beware of flying discs

<> The rain in spain stays mainly in the plain

<> Better out than in, I always say

<> Never play tag with a tiger

*This is not confirmed as I was not in two places at once, and also if I had been there to witness it, I would have remembered for later so as not to step in it.

The joys of roommates

2010-05-14T08:54:00.000-04:00

(This post is in honor of Sarah, who actually is a joy to have as a roommate)

To begin with, let me tell you that this post is about how *I* am an annoying roommate. So don't start thinking I'm posting bad things about Sarah.

Everybody should experience the joys of roommates. I've had the privilege of having 9 roommates, if you don't count sibling roommates when we were kids. All of them have been different in some way -- a redhead, a Canadian, a fake Canadian but really Michigander, a lover of semi trucks, a cat lover, etc.

Some of them I've chosen as roommates; others have just happened. Most of them have become close friends.

But I have to say, along the way, each roommate relationship has had some bumps. I mean, I know all my roommates have absolutely loved everything about me -- all my weird habits, all my opinions on things, etc, but even so, I'm sure every once in a while there's been a little friction. Maybe once or twice, they've thought to themselves, "How long exactly is our lease? When can I start counting down the days to moving away from Kelsey!?" or maybe, "Hmm, I wonder how hard it would be to get the locks changed while Kelsey's gone today..."

One dynamic that's always interesting in roommate relationships is the idea of "bedtime." Depending on schedules and personalities, there's often times when someone's ready for bed and their roommate is not. I've been blessed with an ability to fall asleep pretty easily despite what may be going on around me, but throughout the years, I've also noticed that there are certain things that don't make it easy to try to get to sleep.

For example, I can generally fall asleep if there's music playing. But what makes it *harder* to fall asleep is if the music is playing too softly for me to completely make it out. Then my brain stays awake, trying to piece together the bits and pieces I can hear to make it into a song. I can also fall asleep if there's some sort of mostly constant noise, like the sounds from watching TV, but it's harder if there are sporadic bursts of noise, like random banging of pots and pans.

Or maybe like Yahtzee.

Have you ever noticed how noisy that game is when you're rattling those dice around in the cup? And how silent it is in between rolls? Just when you get used to the rattling it, it goes away, only to start again 30 seconds later.

Probably similar to the idea of someone jackhammering something down the road. Rattle rattle rattle. Pause. Rattle rattle rattle.

And yet some roommates are audacious enough to choose to play a game like Yahtzee exactly when you're first trying to fall asleep. In an apartment with walls that are probably just a little too thin, vents that are shared between rooms, and doors that couldn't hold back noise to save their lives. (Which brings up the question, do doors have lives to save in the first place? Answer: No (which may be part of the problem, lack of motivation for holding back noise))

The nerve!

Any other game would be fine. Shuffling of cards? Fine. Spinning of the dial in the game of Life? Fine. Marbles clicking on a homemade Aggravation board? Fine. Even the repetitive music of Bomberman on the SNES? Fine. Rattle, RATTLE, rattle, pause... NOT FINE.

Since I don't usually see Sarah in the mornings, and since she's generally pretty nice and might not tell me anyway, I haven't heard any comments on the annoyingness of Yahtzee at night, but I can just imagine what she's thinking.

But I left my window open, just in case my key doesn't work when I get home...

None of your busyness

2010-05-11T23:16:00.000-04:00

Is it just me or does anyone else find it really hard to get groups of people together to do things these days? Everyone's so BUSY.

Our family has struggled with this for a while now. A couple parts busy, a couple parts distance. For a while it was hard enough to get everyone on the same continent. Now we're all here but still find it tough to get our yearly Christmas card picture.

My college roommates, both actual and honorary, were trying to plan a get-together at the end of the summer. Except it's already turned into trying to find a weekend in the fall instead. Too many people are too busy!

It's even struck the ladies I was in a Bible study with on Wednesdays. We used to be able to get together at least every Wednesday for the study... now that it's over, we're struggling to come up with one night to get everyone together for some Bollywood (in this case, everyone may be *faking* busyness in order to avoid the movie).

I'm almost convinced that pretty soon my own cat's going to claim he's too busy to hang out with me.

Rain

2010-05-11T12:23:00.002-04:00

Question: How wet could I really get from a 10 minute walk home for lunch?

Incorrect answer: This ain't nothing compared to Guinea's rainy season. Walk it, you wimp!

Correct answer: Pretty darn wet.

A Traveler's Tale

2010-05-07T22:53:00.000-04:00

They say there's a first time for everything, but secretly we all hope some things never reach a first. For me, missing a flight due to poor planning for city traffic was one of them.

Derek and I got out of our training in plenty of time. Our flight wasn't until 6:30, and training was actually done after just a half day, so we had an afternoon to kill. We used up the first part catching up on some work while we had a nice internet connection at the training site, and then made our way to the King of Prussia Mall -- 2nd largest mall in North America, I guess. I'm not a huge fan of shopping myself, but Derek being from Shanghai at least wanted to see it and possibly pick up some more goodies to take back to friends and family on the other side of the world.

So we went. We didn't have a lot of real purpose; Derek had maybe two stores he wanted to visit for sure, and then the rest was just wandering. We figured if we were out of there by 4 or 4:30, that'd still give us plenty of time to get to the airport, turn in our rental car, and make our flight.

But we forgot about this little thing known as traffic. Friday afternoon commuter traffic no less. Things of this nature aren't generally a problem in Midland, and even if there *is* lots of Friday afternoon commuter traffic, I never see much of it on my 10 minute walk home from work.

We left the mall parking lot and got in line in another parking lot of sorts. Little by little the cars crept along, but the Philly area is hilly enough that you can't deceive yourself for long thinking that "soon enough, we'll really get cruising." The top of a hill offers plenty of opportunity to realize that the parking lot extends for at least as far as the eye can see.

Still, we harbored hopes that once we hit the highway, things would improve. That is until we actually saw the highway. And I simultaneously made the connection that it was the same road that we took into town on Wednesday when my aunt & uncle picked me up. The same road that we were on for a good hour just to get downtown.

The minutes ticked by, or rather digitally changed on the clock on the dash, and our extra time buffer quickly started vanishing. Soon enough we realized that not only were we lacking a buffer, we were lacking the necessary amount of time to check in to our flight and make it to the plane. A sense of urgency was creeping in, but unfortunately that doesn't make traffic move any faster or more logically. A sense of needing to find a bathroom wasn't helping the sense of urgency either.

In a flurry of gathering papers with phone and confirmation numbers, we started making calls. First to Avis -- what were our options for dropping off the car? Could we just have someone meet us right at the terminal? No, of course not. Well, can we be guaranteed that there will be a shuttle waiting for us to take us to our terminal immediately when we dropped of the car? Ma'am, the shuttle runs every 10 to 12 minutes.

That was that.

Next, a call to the roommate. Can you try checking us in online? No luck; too late. Surprise, surprise. Ok, can we get a phone number to call Delta?

At this point, we were starting to see some hope of actually reaching the airport at least, so we formulated our game plan. I would drop Derek off at the terminal with our stuff. He'd rush in, try to get checked-in, see if there was any hope for me. Meanwhile, I'd drive over to Avis, drop off the car, and catch the shuttle back to the terminal as quickly as possible.

It was ludicrous from the start; I mean, at this point we were probably within 30 minutes of our plane taking off. But it was all we had to work with.

Armed with my extra cell phone (handy when the guy you're with is from Shanghai and doesn't have a US phone plan), Derek tucked and rolled and rushed into the terminal. I peeled out from the curb and raced to Avis.

Slight exaggerations. You can only go so fast driving around the airport when there's security all over the place and speed bumps every 12 feet.

Of course finding Avis requires making another loop around the airport because you've already passed it at this point. But also of course, we were way too late for our flight.

Derek called a minute or so after I hurriedly grabbed all my stuff out of the rental car and got my receipt from the unhurried guy checking the car back in. Bad news confirmed: flight missed. Good news: the unhurried guy who gave me the receipt also gave me my GPS I left in it in my hurry. "I thought this might be yours and didn't want you to get lost."

It's a weird feeling when all the hurry goes out of you, and suddenly the only urgent thing left is that pressure in your bladder. I found myself a bathroom and realized I didn't need to rush anymore. Sure, I still needed to meet Derek over at terminal E and figure out the new game plan. But I didn't need to be there as fast as (or preferably faster than) humanly possible.

I can say one thing -- the lady helping us at Delta was super nice. Nothing was heading to Michigan until the next morning, but she was able to change our flights without charging us an extra cent. And then she gave us discount vouchers to stay at a nearby hotel to wait out the night until we could make another attempt at hitting the skies.

Wait, weren't *we* the foolish ones that didn't plan for traffic? Shouldn't we have to pay or something to change our flights? Shouldn't you be telling us that we were fools for not thinking about things like large city traffic back-ups?

Not that I asked any of these questions out loud, just gratefully accepted my hotel discount voucher and found my way over to Zone 4 to wait for the hotel shuttle.

My roommate just laughed when I told her we missed our flight and wouldn't be in until the next day. Pick us up at 11pm or 11am, apparently not too big of a deal for her. Laughter is nice when the urgency adrenaline rush is gone.

Our hotel is pretty nice -- I'd say just about as nice or maybe nicer than the last one we were in, at just a little over half the price of the other one. Sure, things maybe don't look as fancy, but the rooms are bigger, the bathrooms are bigger. I still have free wi-fi (and it's actually working) and a workout facility.

One last story before I turn out the lights and drift off to sleep for about 4 hours before I have to catch the early airport shuttle.

We got to the Ramada carless, as you know after the saga of returning the rental car, so our dinner options were limited to anything we could walk to. Of course there's always the restaurant in the hotel, but a quick glance at the menu posted in the lobby told us it was on the expensive side. The weather was nice enough, and we obviously didn't have anywhere we needed to be, so we decided to take a walk. First place we came to after crossing the highway: The Philly Diner.

Derek was ready for another Philly Cheese Steak experience after our instructor doubted the legitimacy of the first one earlier in the week, so we figured it seemed like a decent enough place to find one. Super nice wait staff; Derek got his cheese steak, and I got a chicken wrap. We were just finishing up, when I noticed a cockroach crawling on the floor.

These things don't phase a person much after spending time in Guinea, but I casually mentioned it to Derek. His response?

"Catch it and put it on your plate, and you can get your meal for free."

Second response:

"Better yet, catch it, cut it in half, and put half on your plate. Then we will eat free at the Philly Diner for the rest of our lives."

Poetry

2010-05-07T12:54:00.000-04:00

Someone googled "poems using the name Kelsey" and ended up here. Unfortunately, I don't think I have any poems with my name in them on here. But today, we're going to remedy that with a haiku.

A girl called Kelsey
Amazing, wonderful, sweet
None as cool as her

Pretty good, eh? Yeah, I know, "sweet" doesn't really describe me, but I do *like* sweets, so that's pretty close. Plus, my Guinean roommate and I once determined that if you become too sweet, the ants will carry you off, and no one wants that.

Here's an acrostic, or as some call it, a "name poem."

Kelsey likes koalas
Except that they sleep all the time
Least that's what Sarah said
Since she went to Australia
Enroute to New Zealand
Yikes! This has nothing to do with Kelsey! And it doesn't rhyme or anything else cool!

Gotta work on my acrostics. And my acrobatics. One last type of poetry to appease the googlers -- a limerick.

There once was a fair maiden, Kelsey
Mistakenly often called Chelsea
She made people laugh
And owned a giraffe
The townspeople nicknamed Old Smellsey

Turns out there aren't a lot of words that rhyme with Kelsey. Also, there aren't a lot of giraffes in the midwest.

Well, hope that helps you, mystery googler*, next time you're looking to impress your friend, Kelsey.

* Note: not to be confused with a mysterygoogler, someone using mystery google, which returns someone else's query rather than actual results of what you typed, thus returning your own query to another mysterygoogler.

More about cities

2010-05-04T23:09:00.000-04:00

The thing about cities is that they're all about food, at least for those of us who don't live in the city on a regular basis. Whether the city is known for a certain food or not, the truth is that it's just got a crazy variety of food that can't be so easily found in the non-city parts of the country us non-city folks regularly frequent (aka home).

I'm pretty sure I've already detailed many of the foods I had in both Chicago and Boston, which is evidence of their importance to the trip. Here in the outskirts of Philly, we've been getting fed at the cafeteria for lunch, but today that meant Tandoori curry chicken over rice with naan. Delicious. And dinner was my choice, so my coworker and I ate at a place called "Thai Orchid." I ordered something they had listed as "Evil Jungle Princess," labeled with two peppers on the spiciness scale. Definitely had my nose running by the time I finished it, but every bite was wonderful.

I think there are multiple parts to the reasoning for not having food like this at home. One is obviously the availability, like I've already mentioned. There aren't really a ton of Thai or Indian places near Midland (although La Zeez at the circle's pretty tasty). But also, the truth is that I just eat out a lot more in general on a trip than I do when I'm home. Turns out there are both cost and health benefits from eating at home. For example, despite the fact that I've gone running both days that I've been here, I'm still probably gaining weight from the sheer quantity of food I consume. Eating out always means large portions, not to mention trying to keep myself awake during training, which generally involves having something on hand to eat or drink at all times. Not to also mention the free breakfast buffet included in our stay at our hotel. And we're not just talking your cheap "grab a danish" continental breakfast... it's a full out french toast, bacon, sausage, eggs, fruit, muffins, oatmeal, etc breakfast buffet.

So while part of me enjoys all this food, part of me also looks forward to getting back to my routine of not eating more than my weight's worth of food every day. And part of me thinks that maybe I'm just going to have to learn how to make all this stuff on my own. Just need all the right ingredients, and maybe a tandoor oven...

Philly Cheese Steak

2010-05-03T21:11:00.000-04:00

Chicago and Boston weren't enough for my city-thirsty soul. So I had to add to my adventures with Philly. Actually I haven't really seen any of Philadelphia yet, more so just some neighboring suburbs, like the good ol' city/town of Wayne, PA. I think I saw a sign driving through that said it used to be called Louella. I don't know who either Louella or Wayne is, but I guess they're pretty popular in these parts to have a town named after them.

One thing that cities (and/or their metropolitan areas) are good for is people-watching. Airports are good for that, too. Our flight from Detroit to PA was delayed while we waited for some flight attendants (which, by the way, seemed very unnecessary since our flight was so turbulent that the flight attendants were asked to stay in their seats the whole time), so I did some people watching then, in between reading chapters of a book I'm going to review in May. Sometimes I just watch; sometimes I make up stories.

Speaking of stories, I had a very talkative guy in the seat next to me from MBS to Detroit. My last attempt to talk to my neighbor, on a flight to Boston, resulted in about 2 sentences of conversation, followed by a discreet insertion of earbuds by the guy next to me. This time I ended up sitting next to a guy that I had probably mistakenly labeled somewhat creepy while sitting waiting for our plane to board. I had been talking to Derek, a coworker who was coming to the same training as me, and this guy seemed to keep looking over in our direction. Turns out he thought he recognized me from somewhere, thought we were maybe even somehow related. Also turns out he flies all the time for his job, which is some sort of construction, mostly of the type where they're fixing buildings with problems. I even found out that for quite a few years, he brought his wife with him and trained her on the heavy equipment to the point that she was showing up a lot of the guys on the crew. I'm not sure that'd make the guys super happy, but this guy seemed to be pretty proud of his wife, which I think is cool.

I guess you don't have to make up stories for the people that are willing to tell you theirs.

Today I went running after our first day of training. There's a high school right across the street from the hotel we're staying in, so I kind of ran around that direction. I saw lots of cars... everyone seems to be in a hurry. I passed a people walking in the opposite direction who pretty much ignored me and kept up their frowns while they hurried along to whatever was next. I mean, I guess I can't say much... what is running but hurrying, and with no purpose? It's not like I was running to get somewhere quickly.

I realize I'm pretty much rambling (almost an opposite of hurrying) with this post, so I'll call it quits for now, but you'll likely hear from me again soon.

What weird wonders will Waffles wolf?

2010-04-28T11:50:00.000-04:00

We all know that cats in general are probably a few fries short of a happy meal, if you know what I mean. And some cats are a few fries shorter than the rest. Waffles may fall into the latter category.

One evidence of this is the stuff Waffles likes to eat. Normal cats like things like meat, dairy products, catnip. While Waffles does like meat and catnip, he generally turns up his nose at things like milk or cheese in favor of something like watermelon. He also likes to eat my roommates plants.

I discovered this morning that Waffles enjoys frosted mini-wheats.

Noticing a pattern? Waffles... watermelon... wheats... well-watered plants. If I had to guess, I'd say Waffles also likes Willy Wonka's gobstoppers. And maybe wild rice. Or maybe worcestershire sauce.

Life in the big city

2010-04-27T23:02:00.000-04:00

The last two weekends have found me in cities slightly larger than my current residence. And by slightly larger, I mean each city (and/or surrounding area) has more people than the county I currently live in combined with the county I grew up in.

Last last weekend was a trip to Chicago where we came, we saw, and we conquered. Came to Chicago (obviously). Saw some people (Amy, Tobeys/Kruses, Sarah J) and some sights (Shedd Aquarium, Lake Shore Drive, Millenium Park). Conquered a 6k fun run with Live Earth's Run for Water, sponsored by Dow in cities all around the world, including Chicago. Also conquered mounds of Thai food, Chinese food, homecooked steak/chicken, Giordano's pizza, and whatever other delectable delights we encountered.

This past weekend was a 5-year reunion of the girls I went to California with my junior year of college for spring break, except instead of hitting up the West Coast again, this time we went east to Boston. And had an excellent time, I might add. Melissa was a fantastic host and showed us all around the city of Boston, found us some sea food, mexican food, italian food, and an irish pub, and even managed to take us to a Paw Sox (minor league baseball) game in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. It was a good time of catching up, reminiscing, and starting to brainstorm our next trip in 5 years -- Caribbean anyone? :) We also managed to meet up with Chris, who arranged breakfast at the Friendly Toast, where I was introduced to their king cakes -- two banana chocolate chip pancakes with peanut butter in between, topped with whipped cream, and surrounded by bacon. Mmm mmm, good. That combined with all the other delicious food and the fact that I had ice cream at least once every day while I was there meant I came back approximately 27 pounds heavier. In fact, this might have accounted for some of our plane's issues with turbulence, due to extra poorly-distributed and unexpected weight in the back of the plane.

Pictures from both trips are up on fb. I'll maybe add some to this post and/or with my reflections about big city life in a future post.

Like a champ...

2010-04-21T08:10:00.002-04:00

No food in my stomach. No orange juice pumping thru my veins. And no
passing out or even feeling queasy.

That's right; I survived getting some blood drawn. Like a champ.

Take that!

I have to admit, I'm slightly disappointed that grown-up bandaids now just consist of a cotton ball and a piece of tape. Where's the cartoon bandaids of my youth?

Fortune me this

2010-04-15T16:28:00.000-04:00

I'm 0 for 2 on my afternoon snack fortune cookie fortunes. They both assume I have certain characteristics already, and you'll soon see that this is not true.

Fortune 1: Your nurturing instincts will expand to include many people. [Note: There is still hope for this one as "expand" could mean to go from no nurturing instinct to some, right?]

Fortune 2: You will soon get something special because of your charm. [Note: Pretty sure I only possess charm on days that I've eaten the lucky variety for breakfast]

Jonah-itis

2010-04-14T16:17:00.000-04:00

I used to just see Jonah as a guy who got swallowed up by some sort of ginormous fish but was eventually spit out.

Then I started to see him as the guy who disobeyed God, got swallowed by a big fish, eventually got spit out, and ended up going to Ninevah.

And then I started to pay attention to *why* Jonah didn't want to go to Ninevah in the first place. He ran away because of God's mercy and compassion.

What?

Yeah, that's right. He ran away because of God's nice side. Because he didn't want to see the Ninevites spared from the punishment they deserved. He probably also didn't want to look like a fool, proclaiming God's wrath only to have it turn out that God would spare them.

Sometimes I find myself feeling a little bit like Jonah. We're going through the book of Hosea in Bible Study right now (almost done!). Throughout the book, it repeatedly talks about all the ways Israel has turned away from God, turned to other things (idols, kings, etc), and in general broken their covenant with God to serve Him only. And as if reading Hosea's take on it isn't enough, the Bible study we're doing frequently references passages in Israel's history where God specifically told them not to do what they're currently doing. And/or where they did what they're not supposed to be doing previously, and now they're doing it again.

Yet peppered throughout the narrative of Israel's sins and the punishment they deserve are glimpses of God's immense love. If you asked me, I'd say I have nothing against God's immense love, but I have to admit, seeing the way He repeatedly forgives the Israelites sometimes makes me feel a little bit like Jonah. A little bitter that God threatens great punishment, but only until His heart seemingly melts and He once again promises to restore Israel, to love the people that have turned away from Him repeatedly.

I look at God and think, "Man, didn't he ever take any classes on parenting or babysitting that talk about following through on your threats?!"

The problem is that I, like Jonah, am also a recipient of God's great love and mercy. And without it, I'd probably be nothing more than a small pile of ashes blowing in the wind -- the remnant of my body after being smited with a bolt of lightning. I think if I got a firm grasp on just how much compassion God has shown me in my life, I'd maybe be a little more reasonable in accepting His compassion for the Israelites.

I also wonder if having a firm grasp on God's compassion and how freely He gives it would motivate me more to help my friends get a glimpse of that compassion, too.

Homeless

2010-04-11T16:14:00.000-04:00

Homeless Kelsey, eating her morning oatmeal

First thoughts about being homeless for a night...

* It's not so horrible to sleep outside in a cardboard box for one night. Yes, it was cold. Yes, it was uncomfortable. Yes, I feel like I could use a nap, but that's the thing -- I can go home and take a nap... in my comfy bed or on my comfy couch. Unfortunately most homeless people aren't just homeless for one night.

* Keeping my smelly soup cup overnight was probably worth it to get some brown sugar in my oatmeal.

* Prearranged homeless people have it a lot easier than regular homeless people. I'd like to go around and interview a bunch of homeless people to figure out how many of them had someone give them a nice washing-machine-sized cardboard box and unlimited duct tape each night before they go to sleep.

* I'm very blessed in the fact that not only can I afford to pay my rent and thus have a roof over my head, but even if I for some reason couldn't, there are numerous people who would take me in before I'd be forced to hit the streets. I think. Right, mom and dad?

The chicken or the egg?

2010-04-08T11:19:00.002-04:00

Does my work chair have a large dent in the armrest because I always rest my elbow there, or does my elbow always rest there because there was already a large dent?

These are the sorts of deep questions I ponder on a regular basis.

Quick (like a bandaid) progress report

2010-04-06T08:42:00.004-04:00

[Oops, meant to post this yesterday... oh well, maybe I can change the posting date and make it look as though I posted it on time]

Today was my first chance to attempt to pass out some cookie love to my garbage collector(s). Having no idea when they actually come to empty our dumpsters, I was on alert as soon as my alarm went off around 6:30. Actually, I was even on alert before that because my cat woke me up at 5:57 and Sarah's alarm went off soon after that.

Mostly being "on alert" meant cracking open the sliding door so I could listen for sounds of large garbage collecting vehicles.

Turns out the dumpster dumpers don't come until after I go to work, at least that's how it worked out today. I was faked out temporarily by a bus that came to pick someone up -- heard the big diesel engine, heard some loud beeping as it backed up, even thought I heard a clunking sound of a dumpster being moved (but I probably made that one up), so I raced downstairs, cookies in hand, to find... no garbage men.

My backup plan was to give the cookies to the people who take my trash at work. Usually I am friendly to whoever it is for the day or week, but I can't say that I've taken any time to get to know these people that make my trash magically disappear. Well, after a second look at the cookies, I realized that they're starting to get a little dry and crusty due to poor storage choices. And no one wants to get dry crusty leftover cookies as a demonstration of God's love for them.

So for now, I just took the time to get to know one of the ladies who empties my trash and cleans around our area. (Her name is Mae, by the way).

Next, it's back to making cookies and trying again.

You must be tired...

2010-04-05T22:56:00.000-04:00

Because you've been running through my mind all day. Actually, that's just a cheesy pick-up line with the word "running" in it, which was supposed to be the topic of this post.

Ah yes, running. I have such a love-hate relationship with the word "running" or more so with the actual act of running. I love the idea of getting exercise without requiring a whole group of people (like you would to play a sport), without needing a lot of equipment (maybe just some shoes, maybe not even those if you subscribe to the barefoot running camp), and without needing a ton of time (you don't have to drive to the gym first, you can run wherever you are).

I hate the feeling of my internal organs jostling up and down with every stride, making me feel like I want to toss my cookies, or whatever it is that I ate most recently (which lately might very well be cookies). I hate the pain that creeps into my shins and knees and calves and thighs and makes me wonder if I'm eventually going to need to replace all of those parts. I hate the shortness of breath and the cramps in my side and the feeling of a few short minutes stretching into hours (what, you mean I've only been running for 3 minutes?!).

The problem is that I realize that most of my complaints against running are just that -- complaints. Unfounded ones for the most part. Psychological ones. Excuses designed to make me feel as though running is evil and must be avoided in order to save my health and/or life. Turns out, the opposite is probably true. That running is more likely to improve my health.

My sister's been running for years now and doesn't seem to be suffering from misaligned organs or replaced knees or permanent side cramps.

My dad's been running for years and years, and he seems like a pretty healthy guy for his age.

Another problem with my complaints is that some of them could be avoided if I just took the time to prepare and postpare for running. Mostly this would probably just involve some better stretching. I keep telling myself this, but for some reason I tend to ignore myself and skip most of the stretching. That's the problem when you don't listen to yourself -- you sometimes miss some good advice.

Anyway, I'll be running for another couple weeks at least, until Chicago and the "big" race. Woot.

Homework

2010-04-05T13:55:00.001-04:00

I'm reading the book "Guerilla Lovers" by Vince Antonucci. Excellent book so far, with a bunch of challenging concepts and practical ideas for loving people in a guerrilla lovefare sort of way.

But there's also a website, guerrillalovers.com, which starting this week will have weekly assignments for how you, too, can be a guerrilla lover.

This week's assignment is to make cookies and give them to your garbage person.

Make cookies -- check. Hired a high schooler to do that for me last week.
Deliver them to my garbage person -- stay tuned. So far I've acquired the knowledge that people come and empty out the dumpsters at our apartment on Tuesdays & Fridays. So I have two chances to deliver these cookies. And/or I might give them to the person/people who empty my trash at work. We'll see, but I'll keep you posted.

Feel free to join in on guerrilla loving, too.

Happy April Fool's Day!

2010-04-01T09:49:00.001-04:00

For many people, the goal of April 1st is to make other people look like fools or at least feel foolish, or some combination of both. Back in my college days, my roommates and I had a fun time brainstorming ways to fool each other, with my favorite probably being the year we managed to get a couple friends to leave their dorm rooms unlocked, at which point we TPed them. I especially like it because of the excuses we used to get them to leave their rooms unlocked -- "Oh, I was hoping to borrow your iron... could you leave your room unlocked?" Yes, this came from me, Kelsey Who-Cares-If-It's-Wrinkled Hill. And "Hey, we were hoping to try to catch a squirrel in your room... can you leave it open?"

Anyway, this year so far, I've only fooled myself. And since I've done it multiple times already, I figured I'd start an April Fool's Day tally. Here's the list thus far:

1. Walked a little over halfway to work this morning, all proud of myself for carrying my computer bag on my opposite shoulder and not killing my left one anymore, and realized I didn't have my badge. Had to turn around in front of a lady walking her dog and walk all the way back... FOOLED.

2. Got a call from an executive's office professional asking if I could come help set up the executive's computer in his new office. Arrived to find out that the big issue was threading a power cord behind a cabinet. After grumbling to myself about being tasked with a job any fool could do, I used my dexterous arms to get the power cord where it needed to be, but somehow managed to cut myself in the process. FOOLED AGAIN.

3. Splattered tea all over myself and a paper on my desk while taking the tea bag out of my mug. FOOL!

More to come, I'm sure...

(Em)pathetic

2010-03-31T08:57:00.000-04:00

[Note: Second in the recycled ideas series. I actually don't remember writing this post, but it still rings pretty true.]

I'm pathetic when it comes to empathy. I generally have a couple of views on things: (1) Suck it up; it's not that bad, (2) If I were in your situation, I would have done things differently/better to begin with and not be in such a mess, (3) Been there, done that, learned my lessons -- why can't you learn them already and be done with it?, (4) It's psychological, get over it.

My biggest example is about food, which is where number 4 applies.

I have little to no tolerance for picky food people. It's food, people! Eat it!

Truth be told, I don't like squash. You'd think that its wonderful orange color would be enough to make it appeal to me, but there's something about it that just sometimes makes me want to gag. But does this mean that I never eat squash? No. It means that I have some psychological aversion to it, need to get over it, and am convinced that someday it too will be on my list of ok foods.

I battled my squash aversion for a while by making bunches of squash muffins. You can't taste the squash in the muffins really, but you can smell it when you're cooking the squash and mashing it up to make it muffinable. And the smell is similar to the taste: not great.

What really gets my goat (what do these phrases come from?!) is the food dislike categorized by "it's the texture."

Texture?! That's what makes food interesting. If you don't like textures, why don't you just blend everything in your magic bullet and have your mom spoon feed it to you while making airplane noises? Oh wait, you wouldn't like that texture either.

Ok, that's a little extreme. But seriously. I like things like shrimp *because* of the texture. Mushrooms? Delicious, and slimy. Milkshakes? Mmm, so good, and so slurpy (not to be confused with Slurpees).

I sometimes wonder what it would be like to spend a day/week/month in the life of someone who doesn't enjoy certain foods for any of various reasons. Recently I talked to someone who doesn't like pineapple (not even the fresh stuff!), and although I was taken aback, she informed me that it doesn't really bother her. Maybe it's a matter of not really knowing how much you're missing out. Maybe it's like making mud pies in a slum when you could be vacationing by the ocean (didn't someone make a comparison like that once?). Or maybe it's just recognizing your tastes (literally) and being comfortable with what you like and dislike. I'm not really sure.

Time to go out and try some more squash...

Breakfast

2010-03-28T09:36:00.000-04:00

On Sundays I often wake up earlier than necessary so that I can spend some time preparing myself for church by reading my bible or playing my guitar, or so that I can make myself a delicious breakfast instead of the cereal/yogurt/banana I generally eat during the week.

Today, I decided to go the breakfast route, mostly because of a bottle of maple syrup that's been sitting on my dresser since I brought it home from the Guinea mini-reunion in Canadia (thanks, Hernandezes!).

So I said to myself, "What could go better with maple syrup than a delicious homemade belgian waffle?!" Answer? NOTHING. Well, maybe a pancake or crepe would be good, too, but I like waffles.

I found myself a waffle recipe... I think it's the first time ever I haven't just used a mix, and we even have one currently, but I believe it's of the FiberOne variety. Nothing against a little fiber, but I like to enjoy my waffles, not think about how they're helping my digestive tract.

As I heated up the waffle iron, I started envisioning some sort of chocolate chips with the waffles. I went to our usual stash and found an already-opened bag of white chocolate chips. A good start. Then, as the waffle started cooking and the delicious smells were filling the kitchen, I suddenly had the urge to make some sort of strawberry topping. Mmmm, good stuff. Since we had some fresh strawberries that needed to be used up, voila, a few minutes later and I had my sauce.

So here I sat, with a thick fluffy waffle, smothered in white chocolate and strawberries. And that's when it hit me, that the whole point of this exercise was to try the new maple syrup...

Oh well, maybe next time.

Why do we want?

2010-03-26T15:55:00.001-04:00

[This is the first in a series of "recycled idea" posts. I don't really remember what circumstances brought up the ideas in this post, nor do I know if they actually make sense. I also don't think I have since come up with any great way of concluding it, so I'm just going to leave it as is... Enjoy!]

We want things because of the expectations that come with them. I'm using the word "things" loosely here, referring to not only material goods but other less tangible things (good health, love, etc).

When we're kids, we want a new toy because we think it'll take away our boredom or impress our friends or make our siblings jealous.

We get a little older, and we want to be good at sports because we think it'll win us points with the popular kids or impress our friends or at least give us a good physique.

At some point we want that special guy or girl to finally notice us because we think that will make us feel loved or mean we never have lonely Friday nights or at least take away the guesswork of always wondering.

We enter the working world, and we want a promotion because we think we'll impress our friends or never have to question our spending habits or make our mother proud of our accomplishments.

If we take away some of our expectations or start fulfilling them with things that actually work, we'll stop wanting so much. We expect our boredom to be taken away as kids? Then BE LESS BORING. A cool new toy can't fix things if you lack an imagination and the ability to be easily entertained. Sure, sure, it can maybe come close or at least pretend to fix the problem temporarily, but it's bound to crop up again. And then you'll just want something else.

We expect to impress our friends? BE YOURSELF. If you'd like "yourself" to be interested in sports, cool, it's probably good for you. But don't expect being good at sports to solve all your friendship woes. Friendships (like all relationships) take work. Yes. That's right. So now you've got the work of being good at sports AND maintaining good friendships. (Also, note that getting a good physique is indeed *not* a result of being good at sports, but a result of the work that goes into practicing in order to be good at sports).

You expect starting a relationship to end all the guesswork? Think again! Unless your communication skills magically improve just because someone's told you they're interested in you, I don't think that's going to happen. Not to mention all those books like "Men are from Mars; Women are from Venus" or "Men are like waffles, women are like spaghetti." Things don't get easier from one phase of a relationship to another; they just get different.

Getting a pay raise doesn't mean you suddenly don't have to worry about what you spend. Sure, maybe it means you can go out to eat a little more often or you don't have to worry so much about whether you'll be able to afford the cable bill this month. But you still will have to weigh whether purchases are worth it or if you could be using your money for something better.

Face the music

2010-03-25T09:34:00.000-04:00

It's time for me to face the music. To be honest with myself. To realize that my posting frequency and content has been slowly going downhill.

I've run out of ideas.

Some might call it 'writer's block,' but I figure you actually have to be a writer and not just a driveler of nonsense in order to qualify for that sort of official sounding problem.

As another excuse, I might try to say that I've been busy -- too much going on to come up with brilliant ideas and sit down to put them on paper! But c'mon, who is *so* busy that they don't even have time to think? Let's just say some of my "busy" moments have included a 5 hour drive each way to/from Canadia and 7 hours of cutting apples to make apple pies. If those aren't good times to just think, I don't know what is!

So. I'm excuseless. But still idealess. Which means...

The next few days may just be Recycle Old Ideas Week! Yes, doesn't that sound exciting.

Here's how it works. I have about four or five drafts in my email, consisting of half-composed thoughts that never reached a conclusion and thus never reached my blog. Yet I'm sure that somewhere in there are some great nuggets of brilliance (or maybe at least of chicken). So, over the next few days, I will share some of them with you. Maybe I'll try to conclude them; maybe I'll leave them as they are. Maybe I'll ask you to come up with a conclusion for me. Or maybe I'll go "Choose your own adventure" style and come up with multiple, seemingly random conclusions. Who knows. Oh, the mystery of it all!

I'm sure you just can't wait to find out what's coming...

Fun advertising

2010-03-22T14:31:00.000-04:00

Just got back from a trip to Canadia, and in honor of that, I'll show you a picture from my previous trip back in December.

First of all, who names their shipping company "Fluke" and secondly, who then uses this slogan?

In lieu of a review

2010-03-18T23:16:00.000-04:00

I'm cheating on my book review this week. I haven't quite had the time (found the time, made the time, added extra hours of time to my day) to finish reading the book, so I'm going to give you the summary and a couple of initial thoughts, then hopefully get back to you with something better within the next week or so. Sorry for my slacking.

Summary:

At the age of eighteen, Alex and Brett Harris wrote Do Hard Things—and launched a movement that would change a generation. Young people around the world were ready to be inspired, ready to move beyond complacency, ready to rebel against society’s low expectations.

Now the highly anticipated companion book, Start Here, answers the questions Alex and Brett have received from thousands of teens on their worldwide conference tour and popular online community: How do I get started? What hard things does God want me to do? How do I keep from getting discouraged or burned out? What is the best way to inspire others?

Filled with stories and insights from Alex, Brett, and other real-life rebelutionaries, Start Here is a powerful and practical guide for young people who are ready to take the next step and blast past apathy. Let the rebelution continue.

My initial thoughts:

So far I've read just the first few chapters of the book, and despite feeling a little bit like it would have been good to read Do Hard Things first, I still feel like this is going to be a handy little book. Especially for young people who want to do hard things and need some help getting started. Or for old people that want/need the same thing. It's already challenged me to think about my life and start thinking/brainstorming/dreaming about things I could be doing with it. I also think it's encouraging in the sense that it's got stories of other people doing hard things, but also in that it explains that hard things don't always have to be big things. We don't all have to solve world hunger and create world peace in order to be doing something hard. In fact, they'd probably recommend steering away from trying to do either of those things and point to trying to do something a little bit more feasible first. Aka, hard doesn't have to mean only impossible things.

If you think you might want to read the book, you can get a copy of it from the WaterBrook Multnomah Sit e.

Note: This book was provided for review by the WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group.

The lifting of the ban

2010-03-15T14:24:00.000-04:00

I was just about to write a post called "Repeating Themes" and then thought to myself that it sounded oddly repetitive of something I'd posted before. Sure enough, there's another post called "Repetitive Themes." Maybe someday I will turn this into a name for my band, once I have a band worth naming, of course. We will only need one hit song anyway and then just challenge people to put it on repeat for days on end. Note to self: maybe it's thinking like this that prevents me from ever truly being in a band that's worth naming.

Speaking of bands, except minus a letter, my personal travel ban has been lifted now that we're into March, so I took full advantage of that this weekend and visited northern Ohio. I know, pretty wild for a first trip after a travel ban. Along with having a bunch of fun with both family and friends (and even friendly family), I also learned a couple things:

(1) I need to be better at routine car maintenance, such as checking my tire pressure. Turns out I did not even have a tire pressure checker handy, which seems ludicrous because they cost all of $1.50 and are useful little tools that can conveniently join all the pens in the side pocket of my car door.

(2) I'm a tired person. Not a *tiring* person (notice the subtle difference), just tired. I don't think DST helps with that sort of thing, but I'm pretty sure I've already ranted against DST in the past on my blog, so I'll let it go this time. Just know that I may boycott it in the fall. Sure, falling back sounds nice, but maybe avoiding the need to fall back and spring forward altogether is best. And if the rest of the world doesn't join me in this boycott, I suppose I will simply be an hour early for everything for approximately 4 months. Anyway, back to being tired, I'm realizing I may need to plan in some unplanned time, as oxymoronic as that sounds. Maybe when I get back from Canadia at the end of this week.

(3) Fiddler on the Roof is set in Russia. Should I have known this before? Probably. Did I know this before? Probably. (There's a good chance that the last time I watched Fiddler I thought to myself, "Ah, so this is based in Russia!" much like I thought to myself while watching it this time. Kind of goes back to repetitive themes -- when your memory's not so hot, old ideas often strike you as new and original and fresh and ingenious.)

(4) Giving up pop for Lent has a direct negative correlation with my ability to stay awake on long road trips by myself late at night. Fortunately I found some sweet tea at a rest stop along the Ohio Turnpike, and it was enough to get me through the last hour (and provide some new cavities for my dentist to find when I go next week).

(5) Some libraries let you check out artwork. That's right... having a dinner party and want to impress people with your wall decor? Just grab a framed copy of an Ansel Adams photograph at your local library to put above your table. As far as I know, this is only valid in Painesville... I'm not sure I've ever heard of it anywhere else.

That's all I can remember learning for now. I'll keep you posted on the non-learning aspect of the trip once I get some pictures ready to go along with it.

Something to say

2010-03-07T22:46:00.000-05:00

I just realized that I hadn't posted since February, and since that was so last month, it's time to write again.

Let's start out with some random loose-end tie-up:

1) I now have a mailbox at work! So when I walk past the mailboxes on my way to/from the bathroom, I can actually find mine and see that I have no mail. This is a little disappointing as I did not request it and preferred to get my mail hand delivered, but instead I'm now reminded of my lack of mail on a regular basis. Oh well.

2) The ugly quilt is finished and sent off to the Chicago area. I'm not actually sure my sister has done anything with it there, but I figured she was maybe more likely to encounter a homeless person in such desperate need of a blanket that they'd be willing to put up with a brightly colored, handmade, lopsided sleeping bag. By the way, that thing ended up being pretty heavy by the time it was done, so if heaviness keeps a person warm, someone will be warm indeed.

3) 6k training is progressing nicely, especially since I recently heard of visualization techniques where you don't actually have to do something, you just visualize yourself doing something. Makes running a whole lot less strenuous. But, no, seriously, I've actually logged a good 7 miles just this weekend (running outside), plus a few on a treadmill on Friday. I'm enjoying the fact that I can run pretty comfortably outside, and other than the fact that I have to dodge massive puddles left behind by melting snow, it's quite pleasant (as far as running goes).

In general, life has been keeping me pretty busy -- not in an overly busy, boundary-busting sort of way. Just in a I-have-to-keep-track-of-things-with-my-google-calendar-more-often sort of way.

Oh yeah, in other news, I got an eye-fi card this weekend. For those of you who don't know what that is, it's an SD card with wireless built in, so basically you set it up, then stick it in your camera just like a regular SD card and start taking pictures. And then (this is the exciting part), instead of dumping all the pictures onto your computer whenever you're done snapping, the pictures upload themselves right from the camera, while you continue to click away. Stay tuned for more on that. I'm still experimenting with it, but so far I'd say it's pretty sweet.

Ok, that'll have to do for tonight. I might try to put together some cohesive thoughts again at some point this week, but until then, keep your stick on the ice.

Training

2010-02-28T23:28:00.000-05:00

Sarah has once again convinced me that I am going to run in some sort of event this year. A couple years ago, it was a 5k. Now we've progressed to a 6k. In case you're wondering, "Why 6k?" like a lot of other people out there, it has something to do with the average distance people have to walk to get drinking water. You can get more information about it at the Live Earth Run for Water site.

So now I'm attempting to train a bit. I'm semi-convinced that if I really set my mind to it, I could probably just show up on the day of the race and run (ok, maybe just jog) the 6k without a whole lot of training. I've heard of crazy people doing this sort of thing or something close to it for whole marathons, and this is little more than 1/9th of that. But I don't think that's the point. In fact, in this case, the point isn't so much the race; it's the actual training.

See, the problem I often have is that I want to get exercise, but if I have no goal to work toward, my workouts become (1) sporadic, (2) random, and (3) infrequent (Is that the same thing as sporadic? Actually after looking up sporadic, it seems that I could simply use that one word to describe a combination of random & infrequent, but we'll leave all three points because it seems better that way. Plus, everyone knows that every once in a while it's fun to be redundant sometimes.)

To solve this problem, we present you with... voila! A race to train for! Then suddenly, I can look up things like 8-week 6k running plans (the race is April 18th, btw). I actually didn't look up the plan until the end of this week, so I haven't been sticking to it strictly since it technically started Monday but will try to probably do better in the coming weeks. This weekend I did some running (25 minutes on the treadmill) and some cross-training (rollerblading... woohoo for a snowplowed rail trail!). Tomorrow's more cross-training (volleyball), although I think the schedule says I'm supposed to actually run, so maybe I'll attempt to get to Smitty's, too.

In the midst of my newfound semi-enthusiasm for training for this run, I can't help but be reminded of the verse in 1 Timothy: "For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come." Truth be told, my "godliness" routine often looks a lot like my fitness routine; that is to say, it's pretty sporadic without something I'm working toward. I wander aimlessly through the Bible, hoping something will jump out at me and make me feel like I've learned something profound. Instead, I tend to be drawn to things I've already underlined from a previous reading, and although I still can (and do) learn things from stuff I've already read and focused on, I tend to just kind of skim it over thinking that I already know everything there is to know about it.

My prayers aren't much better, as they become a jumble of thoughts in my head, mixed in with about a thousand red herrings, trying to lead me off the track of communicating with God. My prayer journaling is random at best, often marked by the phrase, "oops, haven't written in a while" followed by a lackluster entry written right before bedtime when my eyes are already fighting sleep, and it's possible my brain has started on its way toward a REM cycle before I even have a chance to close my eyes.

But if I have a goal, something to aim for, things go much better, just like with physical training. Currently, I'm in a Bible study about the book of Hosea, so that directs my Bible reading and even gives me ideas of what to pray for. And journaling kind of naturally occurs as I stretch my thinking muscles. I have goals each week (to get through the material that we'll be discussing) and have a daily "training plan."

Anyway, I'm not trying to say that Bible reading or prayer or whatever it is you do in your relationship with Jesus (or exercise for that matter) can't just be spontaneous and random, but I am saying we're supposed to be running a race as if to win the prize, and sometimes a little training regimen can help.

Self-evaluation

2010-02-24T00:08:00.000-05:00

I've never been a fan of evaluating myself. I've never actually been a fan of evaluating anything really, at least not if it involves picking some number of stars or rating something from 1 to some arbitrary number on some scale that no two people see in quite the same way.

For example, the site Goodreads (a book rating site) uses a star scale, I think from 1 to 5 stars (and no half stars!), but how do you rate a book like Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and then turn around and rate something like Love & Respect with the same scale and expect someone to know what you're talking about. Did you give it 5 stars in its category? Or is it a 5-star all-around you'd-recommend-it-to-anyone-looking-for-any-category-of-book sort of rating? What emotions were you feeling before you started reading the book? What extenuating circumstances were happening around you? How long did it take you to finish the book? Would you recommend it to a sixth-grader? How about a college graduate? How about someone who's just entered retirement? Would you tell your grandpa to read it? Did the book make you think or relax you or entertain you or tickle your funny bone or encourage you into action?

The point is, rating/evaluating things can be tough.

And then turning around and trying to do that to yourself is even tougher.

I've been reading all these books that are supposed to teach me things. How to love people better. How to have better relational boundaries. How to demonstrate God's grace to the world.

The problem is that I read what they say, try to evaluate my own abilities in whatever area it is, find it difficult, and end up evaluating other people instead. I read something and think, "Hmm, this really applies to George's situation. I'll have to tell George about it." Meanwhile George is like, "Why is Kelsey telling me this? She doesn't even have it figured out for herself yet!"

It's a little bit like the speck & the plank parable. Except of course, I only have a speck and everyone else has planks in their eyes. Right? That's what I often start to think when I'm reading these things. Well of course, I couldn't have these sorts of problems or if I do, they're on a much smaller scale than Felix's version of the problems.

Why is it so easy to see flaws (whether real or perceived) in other people and ignore them in ourselves? Why is it so easy to look at someone else's situation and come up with a solution but look at our own and think there's no hope for figuring it out?

I think what I need is for someone else to read these books, look at my life for me, and tell me what I need to change. Except I think that's somehow missing the point, too. Maybe there's something in the process of really looking into our lives and struggling through the self-evaluation that God wants us to go through. Otherwise he'd probably just write our problems in the sky and provide solutions.

Not to mention that if someone else were to read the books and tell me what to do, I'd have to work on listening to what they had to say, and that may be harder than figuring things out for myself!

Call me Miss Fix-it

2010-02-22T14:46:00.000-05:00

Or don't. I probably won't respond to it anyway, as Miss Fix-it sounds nothing like Kelsey, and although I've adapted to other things like Chelsea in the past, I'm not sure I would adapt very quickly to Miss Fix-it.

The point is, I felt very handy this weekend. I fixed my hairdryer.¹ I fixed Sarah's DVD player.² I fixed a game of hand & foot so my dad could win for his birthday. Ok, that last one's not true, although our team did do inordinately well for no apparent reason.

¹ First of all, if I had known my hairdryer was going to be so easy to fix, I'd have done it much sooner! As it turned out, the metal plate that acts as the switch wasn't making good contact with the other metal piece that it needed to contact to complete the switch due to some build-up, which was easily cleaned off with a qtip and a little elbow grease. And voila! Working hairdryer. Now I can return the one I ~~stole~~ borrowed from my parents.

² We started off blaming the DVD player problems on the movie Thoroughly Moden Millie, which we'd watched the night before. Believe me, a movie with songs about tapioca pudding and a combo fight/acrobatic-show scene can wreak havoc on a DVD player. After fiddling with things unsuccessfully for a while, I decided it was time for DVD surgery and with the removal of a few screws, I opened 'er up. Only to find that the problems really were caused by Thoroughly Modern Millie, as the DVD for it was still in the player, jammed in so that it wasn't allowing any other DVDs to play. Oops.

Release the anger (Subtitle: Why I'm not an author...)

2010-02-21T23:59:00.000-05:00

Tonight at Bible study, we had a really good discussion on anger. I don't generally think of myself as an angry person (although I do get angry at certain things... slave trade and human trafficking, lack of rights for the unborn, WoW addictions, etc), so I probably don't pay as much attention as I should to parts of the Bible that address it, which means that tonight's study was good for me in bringing up something I might otherwise avoid.

Of course during the discussion, the idea of righteous anger was addressed. The Bible specifically mentions God's anger at times, often directed toward his ever wayward people, the Israelites, along with various times that even Jesus was angry (at his disciples when they fell asleep instead of praying, at the money changers in the temples, etc). But one thing that came out was that it seems that all the times righteous anger is mentioned in the Bible, it's a short-lived thing. It's never that God burns with anger and just lets it smolder for centuries.

So that got me thinking about anger that I hold on to, which reminded me of a few things that came up over this weekend during some mostly funny discussions with my family during my dad's birthday lunch. And one of those things is the Young Authors Conference (this is where the post's subtitle will finally tie in. And you thought I was just not an author because I write poorly!).

I've decided it's finally time to get over my anger at not getting to go to Young Authors. Maybe it's more of a bitterness at this point, but let's face it, bitterness doesn't sound good (or taste good) either, so it's time to let it go. But let me tell you my story first.

Back in the day when I was in elementary school, there was a yearly event called the Young Authors Conference, for which students were chosen to attend based on various qualifications related to writing. The goal was to inspire students to write, to find joy in both reading other literature and authoring stories of their own. It was to inspire creativity, the use of an extended vocabulary, and sometimes even the skill of illustration (as most of what we wrote in elementary school were picture books).

When I was a wee child, probably about the age of 6, I was chosen to attend the Young Author's Conference. Why? Because I dictated a story that my mom wrote down, and I illustrated. And because I took said story into school and showed my teacher. And because my teacher made a fancy cover for the book using fabric with daisies on it. And, well, because I was probably the only kid in first grade to "write" a story and there was an opening to go, and ta-da, Kelsey gets to fill the spot and attend.

So I went. And I'm sure I enjoyed it. I remember very little (i.e. nothing) except that I brought home a book that had something to do with a guy who folded paper, and it was signed by the author. I also have a vague recollection that something about the book scared me, but then again, I had a lot of irrational fears when I was that age and did things like jump from the doorway onto my bed to avoid the wolves I was sure lived underneath. (Note: to jump from the doorway of my room to my bed means nothing as my bed came all the way to the doorway of my room)

That's all neither here nor there. The point is, I was now an aspiring author.

And I loved it. I loved to read, as evidenced by the number of personal pan pizzas consumed because of my participation in some sort of Pizza Hut sponsored reading program. So it was only natural that I also liked to tell my own stories. And tell them I did.

Every year I submitted another story to the Young Author's competition, and every year, for some reason or another I was denied. Of course the competition was a little more intimidating, since I was no longer the only student writing. But I'd still claim I was exceptional little author.

This is where the anger comes in. I still remember (as much as I can actually remember anything that far back) submitting a story in fourth grade about an alien coming to earth and being befriended by a human. It was amazing, of course, and even the illustrations were good (I was learning how to make some things look more 3D and spent a while perfecting the stairs leading up to the human friend's house). It was not chosen. My teacher informed me that my story was good, but since I had been to Young Author's before, it was only fair to give someone else a chance.

C'mon lady, that was first grade! But ok, in the essence of fairness, fine, send someone with a second-rate story in my place. In all honesty, I have to admit now, looking back, that there were, I'm sure, other stories as excellent as mine or even better. But that's not how you feel when you've been hours perfecting your own masterpiece.

Also, on a side note, I (or possibly my dad) submitted the same story to some sort of separate competition, and I won a printer! In truth, this was probably actually more valuable than a trip to Young Author's, and I should have been very happy indeed.

In fifth grade, we were told we could work in groups. We were also fairly warned ahead of time that if we did choose to work in groups, only one of the members of the winning group would actually be able to attend Young Author's as there was limited space. I chose to work with my best friend at the time, Jenni, and we wrote a book that had a character named Mr. Hickory (that's honestly the only thing I remember about the book). And we won. And of course I let Jenni go because I had gone in first grade.

Then, I find out later that the other fifth grade class sent a group of three (count 'em, 1...2...3!) girls to the YA conference. Boy, was I steamed. Now, looking back, this story is reminiscent of the parable about the people who were asked to work for a denarius or something and then get upset at the end of the day when people who worked for less time were also paid a denarius. But truth be told, how could they be upset when that's what was agreed upon in the first place? I could have chosen to write a story on my own if it was going to be that big of a deal!

Sixth grade was my last year for redemption. And sixth grade was also the year of pneumonia. I'm pretty sure I was out for the majority of the YA prep time, and although I think I asked my dad to submit a story I had written on the side (Mystery in Malaam (which I don't remember how to spell), written after a trip to Ghana). But I think by the time I tried to have him turn it in for me, it was too late, and thus, no YA again. And sixth grade's the cut-off, so no more YA ever.

My authoring dreams were crushed.

Ok, so now that I've got it all out on paper, we can see that it was all ridiculous. We can also see other reasons that I'm not an author. And lastly, we can see that I have a horrific memory anyway, so why does it matter whether I went to Young Authors or not?

I also had loving parents who encouraged me to keep reading and writing anyway, so truth be told, I have no excuse (other than my poor ability to tell good stories) for why I'm not an author today.

Young Authors, I apologize for my anger toward you all these years. Thank you for taking me in during first grade and introducing me to my fear of folded paper (just kidding). No, but seriously, I think it's great that there is something like Young Authors, and if nothing else, I can always try to tag along as a chaperone when I force my own kids to write something brilliant and win a chance to go.

Hear No Evil: A Review

2010-02-16T17:11:00.001-05:00

I'd never read anything by Matthew Paul Turner before, so choosing to review this book was a bit of a wildcard decision. But I was partially intrigued by the concept of the book, and I'd also heard good things about another of his books (Churched), so I thought I'd give it a try.

Part of the summary I read before I started said, "Straightforward and amusing, Hear No Evil is Turner's 'life soundtrack,' a compilation of engaging personal stories about how music—and music's ability to transform—has played a key role in his spiritual life."

I'm not sure if I've just been reading too many non-fiction books that are giving me advice on life lately or what, but I think I was maybe expecting more of the same, that Matthew's experiences with music transforming him and playing "a key role in his spiritual life" would translate into little nuggets of how *my* life could be transformed.

Instead, I'd say the book is more of a biography. A musical and interesting biography, for sure, but a biography nonetheless. So when I started reading it as such instead of constantly waiting for the author say, "What I learned was this...", all of a sudden I could just sit back, relax, and appreciate the story of a guy who grew up in a fundamental baptist home where music with syncopated rhythms was not only frowned upon but was probably thought to be created by the devil himself. (Does this ring a "Houseplant Song" bell for anyone else? "Once I read a book, and this is what it said: if your music has a beat, then you're going to wind up dead. Doesn't really matter if it's Christian or not, if it's syncopated rhythm then your soul is going to rot." I would say I'm surprised Matthew Paul Turner never tried the houseplant test with music growing up, but I don't think his parents would have let him listen to the Houseplant Song in the first place. Not to mention the fact that it came out with Audio A's Underdog album in 1999).

I have to say, the book is a pretty easy read and a pretty interesting read. I thought I grew up a bit sheltered in the music I was allowed to listen to, but it was nothing compared to this guy, so the stories are pretty hilarious (and eye-opening). At one point, he mentions that he bought the same Amy Grant album 5 times because either (1) his mom caught him with it and made him get rid of it or (2) he felt guilty about having it and got rid of it himself but kept rebuying it because he liked it so much.

The "soundtrack of life" idea is one that I've thought about before, so it's cool to see the soundtrack that helped define/shape the author's life. Have you ever thought back through the music you've listened to at different points in your life and what it meant to you then or means to you now? I can't say that I'm a mega-Amy Grant fan like the author (although I still listen to Amy Grant's Christmas album, with songs about a tender Tennessee Christmas), but I'm sure there are bands or artists that I will always really love to listen to. I also think that music is very memory-inducing, much like smells. So whenever I hear the song "Almighty God" by Wayne Watson (yeah, that's right, Wayne Watson, don't hear that much anymore), I'm transported back to the days of MCCKz (Majorly Cool Christian Kidz) and dancing around the sanctuary. Whenever I hear the Supertones Hi-Fi Revival, I picture myself cranking up the volume on my stereo and attempting (pretending?) to do my homework on the 3rd floor of West Quad at U of M.

So now, for the recommendation. Would I recommend you read this book? I don't know. If you're looking for some good laughs, some good stories, some assurance that you're not the only one with a crazy childhood or the only one who associates your life with the music you were listening to at the time, then this is probably a good book for you. It's also probably a good book for you if you still think that syncopated music is of the devil (or if you're on the opposite side of that coin and can't fathom anyone believing that). If, on the other hand, you're looking for something deeply theological to unlock the mysteries of life, the universe, and everything, this is probably not the place to look.

If you'd like to buy your own copy of the book, you can look here. Also, as usual, if you'd like to borrow my copy, feel free to let me know in the comments.

And if you have a blog and would like to blog for books (free books!), check that out here.

My book was provided for review by the WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group.

Catchphrase

2010-02-15T12:44:00.001-05:00

In all fairness to Sarah since I mentioned her sodium slip-up in the previous post, I should probably also mention that when trying to get people to guess Rosa Parks, I claimed that "she rode in the back of the bus," when in fact, she's known for the fact that she refused to ride in the back of the bus.

And this is why I like Catchphrase: because you don't have to be at all accurate in your description of something, yet you're bound to have someone still guess the correct answer. And in fact someone guessed that Sarah was trying to get at the answer "sodium" and someone shouted out "Rosa Parks!" as soon as I said my inaccurate sentence to sum up her fame.

It's also fun to see the various styles of giving Catchphrase clues. I tend toward trying to use synonyms, paired with hand motions. For example, my phrase of "spiked hair" becomes "pointed tresses" (probably while playing with my hair with my free hand). Others like to tell a story: "She was riding along in a convertible and her [pause, with a hand wave meaning guess this word!] blowing in the wind..." Someone guesses hair. "Ok, good, now the hair had been styled that morning, so it was sticking straight up, and it was..." A mohawk? Gelled? Spiked. "Yes, spiked! So, put those two together... " More hand motions, as the guessers chant along in time to the hand motions -- hair spiked? No! Spiked hair! Spiked hair! Spiked hair! (Because you know, guesses must be repeated in case the neighbors didn't hear you all chanting "spiked hair" in unison the first time).

Then there are the people who do some sort of Catchphrase insider-trading. They somehow happen to be on a team with their BFF who has some sort of ESP/telepathic connection to reading their thoughts. So all they have to say is something vague like, "We talked about it yesterday" and their friend shouts out, "The Vietnam War!" Or maybe if they're really good, they just give a little look that somehow expresses exactly what needs to be guessed, and as they start to say, "Um, you know..." their best friend forever jumps up and screams, "OMG, it's John Mayer!"

My brother, cousin, and I once played Catchphrase for so long one night that the next day, we simply identified words/phrases by things that people wrongly guessed for them the night before. "It's the thing that you guessed 'hot air balloons'." Yes, the teenage mutant ninja turtles! I still remember one word (lime rickey), which I still don't know the meaning of, but if my cousin were to say, "That thing that none of knew and couldn't guess," I'd know exactly what he was talking about.

Ah, Catchphrase. You will forever amuse me. Just don't get me started on your scoring tactics...

Valentine's Day

2010-02-15T00:16:00.000-05:00

Some people call it "heart day." Others call it "singleness awareness day" or "forced affection day." Still others call it "give me chocolate day" (ok, maybe that's just me) or "cupid day" or "el dia de amor" (that's for your spanish speakers out there. I call it "good day to have a partay! day."

And part(a)y we did!

One of the girls from the young adult group at church organized/hosted a fondue party, or as the invite said "fun + fondue = fundue." Who can resist large vats of cheese and flowing fountains of chocolate? Pas moi (that's for you french speakers), that's for sure.

So we gathered and feasted and made merry, and it was a joyous occasion for all. Also a filling occasion, and a sugar-coma occasion, and a wow-did-i-really-just-put-broccoli-under-the-chocolate-fountain? occasion. I actually did not try chocolate covered broccoli, but thinking back, I should have.

I'd say we had an excellent turnout, and a good mix of people, as well as some fun group games and some random entertainment (think crazy balloons that pop out of plastic packets after being pounded, or Joe doing a wookie call and serenading the cat to the tune of "Under the Sea," or James explaining the differences between aerobic and anaerobic exercise, or Sarah (a chemical engineer) trying to claim that S is the chemical symbol for sodium while under duress in a game of Catchphrase).

Not to mention the chocolate we brought home in the form of prizes. That's right, Valentine's day will live on in my stomach.

Faith like a child

2010-02-14T09:17:00.000-05:00

I bought a book as a gift (and because I had heard good things about it), so I decided to pre-read it before giving it away (I know, I'm such a great gift giver, aren't I...? Sarah has already determined that I tend to give selfish gifts... things that somehow help me by giving them to the recipient).

Anyway, the book is called "The Jesus Storybook Bible," and I presume it was written for children, but I find it amazing! And I'm super pumped to eventually give it as a gift but not until I finish it first.

Why's it amazing? Because it tells the story of Jesus. But not just the story of Jesus that starts with him being born in a manger or even when the angel comes and tells Mary she's going to have a child. No, the story of Jesus that starts with creation.

Ever wonder what the story of Abraham has to do with anything? Ever wonder why God gave Moses a bunch of commandments and told us all about them through multiple books in the Bible? Ever want to know why we have the story of Nehemiah and Ezra and what the point of it is? Ever wish the book of Isaiah could be slightly paraphrased so you actually knew what he was saying?

You should read this Bible.

Don't be ashamed if you're older than 12. Maybe you don't consider yourself a kid anymore. Maybe it's been a long time since you've considered yourself a kid. That's ok; this will give you a chance to practice your "faith like a child."

Also, there are good illustrations, and I give props to the guy who drew pictures for all the of the 350ish pages.

In the life of a Kelsey

God sings loud

Random thoughts

Dangerous Basements

Married and all that jazz

Chinese Pelmeni

Vicious cycle

Not to be outdone...

Burglar!

Colorado

Go west, young people!

Speaking of Waffles...

Sources of inspiration

Post-vacation blues

Love me some cherries

The Waiting Place by Eileen Button (a review)

Sizeable

Inaugural Ride

Good vs Bad

Bag o' candy

Hammock stand bargain

Fake fake pockets

Some things I find awkward

Let cookies be cookies

the floor is caving in!

Movement

Fluky* Thoughts

An apple [pie] a day keeps the doctor away

E days!

Wii're online

Falling apart

Snowed in (aka working in my pjs)

Road awareness

Christmas Shoes (not the song)

Adopt-a-family woes

Tyler Stanton's "Glorified Pamphlet"

Card delivery (or why I should never be a mail person)

Abducted!

NaNoWriMo: Day 2

My little Midland bubble

Bob Loblaw

Photo me this

Let me in!

Psychosomatic

The sky is falling!

The wait is over (THE END IS NEAR!!)*

Crab apples and goose poop

Wildlife

Vanishing Act (A Review)

Subconscious vacation

Fishes

Gone fishing

Of late

Morning jumpstart

The Michigan Hedge-trimmer Massacre

Farmer's Market

Frisbockey

Suspended reality

The Big D (no, not that one)

Lonely can of Pepsi

Anything you can do...

The grass *was* greener... right?

The Jump

The Last Christian (A review)

It's hot outside, better turn on the heat...

Fire in the hole!

Summer Days

The joys of roommates

None of your busyness

Rain

A Traveler's Tale

Poetry

More about cities

Philly Cheese Steak

What weird wonders will Waffles wolf?

Life in the big city

Like a champ...

Fortune me this

Jonah-itis

Homeless

The grass was greener... right?