So Good

After a baketastic weekend, I am enjoying a breakfast of both banana walnut bread and chocolate chip oat scones.

You wish you were here.

Workout

So with my sore foot/toe I haven't been able to run, and haven't really felt like working out. (Pain is a good excuse for laziness.) But at WinCo this afternoon I got an inadvertent workout. Two words: obstinate cart.

Mostly my right arm got the biggest part of the work, but that's pretty standard (last year my right arm was at least an inch bigger than my left).
I made up for it by eating Easter candy.

Deprivation

Why is there no icecream in this house? Where is the chocolate? There is always chocolate. And usually marshmellows.

I have nothing to say no to!



Just tv.

Studying

So I have this reoccuring dream these last two months that I am attending some sort of community college (I think?). I am enrolled in two classes - I think one is some sort of English class, and one an art class. In my dream it's like I've just woken up and remembered that I am still in school, not working and what not so I panick and race to school, freaking out that I haven't gone to classes in a month and have no idea what is going on. Over the past week people have been talking about finals, so I dreamed that it was almost finals and I had pretty much only been to school one week. Josh was really relaxed (as usual) and told me I should just go and I could totally do the finals just fine. Uh huh. Freak out dreams. haha. They are horrible, but so wonderful when I really do wake up because I LOVE not being in school right now! I win.
However, I still love learning and studying and reading. I'm currently working on a fact sheet project for Ezra (for Josh's ss class), which I'm enjoying. Also, we are reading a booklet thing for church called "Seek God for the City". I believe we are going to start a book called "Just Walk Across the Room" for small group, and I just heard about a Francis Chan book called "Crazy Love" that I want to read. (I was first introduced to Chan last year at Passion Atlanta - he is a great speaker and has a big heart for God.) There is so much more to learn.

Marvelous Light

I was sitting here on the orange chair doing my morning computer stuff when the sun made its way around the house (and just blinded me as I checked to see how close it was to heading behind the hedge) and is, for the first time I remember, shining right on me! i have sun shining in my face in my little basement house! It is lovely.
As I took a moment to bask and smile, I noticed the song I was playing, having just downloaded it, was Marvelous Light by Charlie Hall. Oh yes, today is full of Marvelous Light!

Portland Timbers

So, my life has been consumed alot recently by the Portland Timbers. They are Portland's professional soccer team. They are currently in public debate to get an expansion team to the MLS and upgraded PGE stadium. It's crazy. The vote is this coming Wednesday. Here are some links about it.

MLS proposal
http://www.kgw.com/video/?z=y&nvid=339590

Timbers Highlights
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3-xI7hbCzI&feature=related

Timbers Army
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5-sc6TXkfY&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISxNURopKOM&feature=related

The home opener is April 30th. Do you have your ticket?

Not to Mention

I've had plenty of things to blog about this week, and not gotten to any of them. Things that fall under such categories as
magical carwash experience
toothpaste recommendations (and the black list)
humorous tastes in politics
flying clouds
Perelandrea bushes
nicknames by strangers
making movies at work
and minor house floods deja vu.
Not to mention my concern over what our landlords must thing as we receive at least two Victoria's Secret catalogs a week.
Or the fact that I have not cleaned house or cooked real food all week - so thank goodness for my most awesome husband, blenders, and extra towels (you were right, Twigs).

Spring?

Not that I'm over eager for it, or even really looking for it yet, but Spring seems to be popping up all over town. I managed to talk myself into going for a small run today and was surprised by both crocuses and snowdrops, a man mowing his lawn, and sun on my back. Also, I've been eager to keep the windows open (could possibly a residual desire hanging over from last weeks kitchen re-do that involved too many paint fumes).
Thankfully Spring has not weasled its way onto the mountain: the clouds seem to have been dumping for the last couple of days.

We Are Getting Old

Reason number 1: we are both graduated from college.
[Graduation Celebration - the people I know are definitely young at heart]



Reason number 2: I am SO SORE from snowboarding. Back when I first started I would get terribly sore, but that was because I was not athletic and fell alot. Right now, it just comes down to the fact that I have not snowboarded much in two years and just feel the burn that much faster. Old or not, Bachelor was Awesome; the snow was nice, the view was spectacular, I got a sweet bruise (rare for me after snowboarding), the company was fun, we were exhausted.
[Our cameras are too big and important to our livelihood to take on the mt, so these are from our friend's cameras]

More!

I bought some more plants today to take the place of the two that sort of got overgrown and ate themselves, and the fern that died within 2 weeks of our purchasing it.

However, the Spider plant and the Wandering Jew my grandma gave us are doing well, I'm pleased to say.
I bought an Aloe hybrid and little packs of Basil and Cilantro seeds. We'll see how they do. I sort of dumped a lot of Basil seeds into the pot. I also found a bigger pot for the Spider plant (it was outgrowing its old one! Amazing!) that I'm quite happy with. It has a lovely urn sort of shape to it, and its a nice textured bronze color.
Please don't die!

[PS if you noticed the brown bookshelf in the picture below has not been organized by color, fear not - as soon as we're not tired of scanning books and moving them around, they will be included in the colorful funness.]

On Imagination and Responding to the Bible

[More from Read the Bible for a Change]

As we imagine the world really being as the Bible describes it we artistically "render" the world around us, thinking, imagining, feeling, and acting in ways that cooperate, that fit with, the values of this invisible but very real kingdom of God. Francis Schaeffer fully understood this perspective:

No work of art is more important that the Christian's own life, and every Christian is called upon to be an artist in this sense. He may have no gift of writing, no gift of composing or singing, but each man has the gift of creativity in terms of the way he lives his life. In this sense, the Christian life is to be an art work. The Christian life is to be a thing of truth and also a thing of beauty in the midst of a lost and despairing world.

Responding to the Bible is a matter, then, of awakening our imaginations to living as if we are natives of a different world of thinking.
-Lubeck, p.84

Details

I like change. At least I like to think I do.
However, a month or so ago Josh suggested we organize our library by color. Yeah right. (I said no way crazy boy.) They've been alphabetized for ever! How would we ever find what we were looking for? Sigh.
But... then Kristin introduced me to www.gurulib.com and I realized - hey, if we can have our books all organized online, why not have them organized by color on the shelves! It looks less chaotic and yet is somehow more crazy. I like it.

[Also, here is our "smoking chair" we so love, our new (free!) blue desk, and my painting I am thinking about re-doing.]

We Do a Fair Bit of Reading

The story of my reading of this book is rather painful.
I got it at the library last summer, but someone had a hold on it (how dare they!) so halfway through it I had to choose between a fine, and leaving off halfway through. We were quite broke over the summer. Then, I got it for Christmas - yay! But then we went out of town and things like that. I was starting to think I would never finish it. Then, over the last week or week and a half, I started it up again, only to discover that hgtv is just like all the other channels and puts its shows on the internet. No reading. But there is a happy ending - Sunday night I closed the computer, sat down on the couch, and finished the book. It was lovely.
Here are two of my favorite quotes from the begining of the second time I came back to the book.

"...for he considered books as rather like birds and it saddened him to see them caged or still" -p102

"In fact, his love for this arboreal element made him, as all real loves do, become merciless even to the point of hurting, wounding and amputating so as to help growth and give shape" -p103

Read the Bible for a Change

Following the Bible is not about reforming our behaviors by strict rule keeping. Rather, it is an invitation to our imagination, offering to us whole new ways of seeing and being in the world in the ways that God describes it. God does not liberate us in Christ by giving us more and different laws, but by enabling us to look at literally everything form a different perspective, with a new reference point for reality.
Instead of depending upon our eyesight to provide us with reliable information on the way things really are, we are offered hope by depending on faith-empowered imagination to conceive of things from a God's-eye view.

The world itself can be re-created in our minds, not as the frivolous fictions of wishful thinking, but by my fully embracing the fact that God's own version of reality, seen with eyes of faith while I read the Scriptures, is more accurate, more truthful, and more soul satisfying than any rival version, including (especially) those in which I am at the center of my universe of reality.
-p 83, Lubeck

Notes from a Call Center

Some old ladies sound like old men - it's confusing.

I think one of my co-callers got a marriage proposal. He does have a captivating voice.

My pencil was made in TAWIAN.

Some people are very honest.

Some people are shamelessly cheesy with their voice mail messages.

Some people are funny. (Fave: "please leave your humorous anecdote or tale of woe")

Why answer your phone if you
a)have company
b)are leaving on vacation That moment.
c)are on your way to a funeral/sports pictures/the hospital
or d) are holding a screaming baby

A lot of people are unemployed.

One degree down, one to go! Looks like PSU was just a little backed up with transcript corrections and my English major is finally all good to go. Yaaaay PSU got something right!

Reading and Reflecting

Remaining in Christ requires us to focus on... our need to spend time being with God in silence and solitude. That may include a weekend away at a retreat center, but it need not. Our inner world can become a monastery where we sit with God in the middle of a busy life.

-Larry Crab, The Papa Prayer p 60-1

Habits (Thanks to All Who Support Us)

Being "young and in love" (Josh's parents little term for "crazy and a bit broke" I think) has its perks, but sometimes it's a little odd. We end up with lots of leftovers (not necessarily our own) in our fridge. We harass our upstairs neighbors for cooking supplies. We spend a lot of time at the library (I am putting a hold on this book). We don't wash our cars (and frequent the particular gas stations most likely to wash our windows). We drink a lot of tea (it comes in bulk at WinCo!). We spend a lot of time on the "free" section of Craig's list wishing they weren't such a long drive away or that we had a big enough house for whatever is free on any given day.
We have plenty of entertainment, though I have one complaint: not enough snowboarding. With 95 inches of snow at Timberline, snow in town and a Jeep, it's pretty tragic. At least we do have snow in town this year so we can at least see a little of it. Oh, and on the subject of snow - I'm proud to announce that Sister Maria did fine driving to church today in the inch or so of snow that we had on our street! Granted, the rest of the roads were just wet, but I'm pleased that her first experience with snow (besides being utterly buried in it) went well.

Sad

I had my 6 month ring inspection a couple of days ago (all these new things married people have to do, goodness). It was uneventful.
Yesterday, as I was squirting shampoo into my hand I discovered a crack all the way through one of the bands on my ring. Sad! Now they have taken it away for 10 days and my hand is naked. Sigh.

Ex Libris

Our "currently reading" shelf is getting a little big for its britches these days. It might look more ambitious than it actually is due to its co-function of holding library books, though. Right now we've got:
The Annotated Alice, Carroll, Gardener
Northanger Abby, Austin
The Baron in the Trees, Calvino
Coyote Frontier, Steele
Representing Women, Nochlin
Printmaking for Beginners, Stobart
Prints: Art and Techniques, Lambert
An Architectural Guidebook to Portland, King
Art in Theory: 1815-1900
Read the Bible for a Change, Lubeck
The Reason for God, Keller
The Well of Lost Plots, Fforde
and whatever it is Josh is laying on the floor reading.