8 Simple Things

Freeandflawed’s fault!

(I was going to post links and totally embellish this thing, but it’s far too late at night for me to want to try and do that. Besides, I reckon you all are intelligent people and know how to use the ‘net to find what you’re looking for.)(Once again, going back to the late at night thing, I won’t be tagging anyone. But feel free to fill this out with your answers.)

8 Things I am Passionate About

1. The little things in life. (There’s so much joy to be found in just the itsy-bitsy things in life, it’s almost ridiculous.)

2. Constantly learning (intellectually, emotionally, spiritually)

3. My relationships

4. Writing

5. My sister

6. Connecting to new people

7. Reading

8. Blogging

8 Things I Want to Do Before I Die

1. Take a tour of Europe

2. Get married

3. Write seven books (the first is close to being completely done) (and the number seven is not significant–I just want to write more than one)

4. Finish my bachelor’s degree (innnn progressss)

5. Have kids of my own

6. Visit Japan for something completely geeky, like an anime convention, or a sci-fi gathering, or something crazy.

7. Go on another mission trip

8. Go to Pop!Tech and TED.

8 Things I Say Often

1. Wow, way to ____ . (not have your turn signal on)(drive in two lanes at once)(not look where you’re going)

2. Awesome!

3. Oh sweet!

4. It’s fine, no worries!

5. Your face. (It’s one of those elementary insults that I haven’t quite given up yet.)

6. Hm.

7. But… Whatever.

8. It’s fine, don’t worry about it!

8 Books I’ve Read Recently

1. The Opposite of Fate by Amy Tan

2. DO NOT DISTURB by Andrew Schwab

3. We Caught You Plotting Murder by Andrew Schwab

4. Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller

5. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand

6. The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut

7. That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis

8. The Weight of Glory by C.S. Lewis

8 Songs I Could Listen to Over and Over

1. The Dryness and the Rain by Mewithoutyou

2. Paper Snowflakes by Backseat Goodbye

3. Snowfall by Brian Mazzaferri

4. Daydream by Jason Castro (a cover of Lovin’ Spoonful done on American Idol)

5. Ghouls by Chasing Victory

6. Dear Las Vegas by De Capulet

7. Adelaide by Anberlin

8. Speak by Nickel Creek

8 Things that Attract Me to My Best Friends

1. Sheer brilliance.

2. They are the funniest people I know.

3. They love me for who I am and all my dweebazoid geekness.

4. They always have stories to tell

5. Always listen to my stories

6. They see life the way I do

7. People I can count on to be there when I’m wrestling with life

8. Always supportive

Be nice to me…

“Be nice to me, I donated blood today.”

I would have taken a picture of the sticker that said this, but directly after I got home I proceeded to lose the sticker and then curl up into bed with a movie.

Sweatpants, Wildfire, and My Sister.

“These sweatpants have pockets. I think that’s what the extra ten dollars was for.”

“Really? Can they not find anything else to write about for this show? I mean, really?”
“I told you! This show has the same storyline over and over. But they’re probably really popular with the short-term memory crowd.”
“Oh, that’s true.”
“It’s like, if you can’t remember what our last episode was about… Here ya go!”
“Yeah. In case you retain the storyline, here it is all over again!”

Life according to my father

My father said this to me in an email a few days back. We were talking about sleeping patterns at the time, but what he said is applicable at any moment.

“Life is just a learning process, yes?”

The vocal chords that walk down the street every night

The last few nights I’ve been hearing voices go past my window.

The first time I heard the voices I panicked, and nearly called someone on my cellphone to keep from completely losing my nerve.

And now? I mostly freeze for a second, wait for the voices to pass, and then continue with my regular routine.

Who are they? Late night sojourners? A group of friends who take walks that stretch across town and go deep into the early morning? Something I make up in my head?

I don’t know. Usually by the time I can work up the nerve to press my ear against the glass of my window they are already gone.

They walk out on the road, so I’m not too worried or anything… They just stir the coals of my already active imagination. I wish to either find out who they are and why they pass here at the same time every night, or write a story and create who they are and why they are here.

It’d make a better story than the one I made up on the spot in the restaurant today about mutant platypuses vaporizing and returning to the mothership once I have shot them with my invisible laser gun.

There are moments where I feel like such a child because of the stories I create, the silly things I think about. I mean, really? What girl my age comes up with things like me? Though at the same time… I’d have it no other way. The platypuses need someone to see them and the dragon in the hallway needs someone to breathe fire at once and a while. Otherwise, I half-think that the platypuses and the dragon might actually die somewhere in the back of our heads. They will leave their bones in the archives of the child-like imagination that we seem to abandon somewhere in our skulls more and more with each passing day.

Hearts on the Rocks

It sounds like this week has been kinda rough for just about everyone.

Even if I get a decent night’s sleep tonight and tomorrow proves to be bright, sunny, and beautiful like it was today… At least my heartstrings got their workout this week.

(And I’m still trying to figure out whether or not that’s a good thing.)

This reminds me of Yoda.

I feel like Luke in Star Wars. It’s that part in the Empire Strikes Back where Luke lands in the swampy, foresty looking place.

Luke: I don’t know. I feel like…

Yoda: Feel like what?

Luke: Like we’re being watched.

I suddenly have found myself feeling self-concious about the things I post. Since I’ve started coming in contact with some marketing bloggers, professional bloggers, and a generally wider audience than six months ago, I feel like people are now watching my writing. It’s a weird feeling and I don’t like it much. I start feeling like the content I want to write is not good enough, or not professional, or not ______ .

And then I think, Wait… who’s blog is this anyways?

Oh, right. It’s mine.

Numerical Lineup for Wednesday

Interesting things about today:

1. The quote: “If you mistreat the dog, I will mistreat your face.”

2. Raw milk is amazing. Forget the watery stuff you buy at the store. I’ve been making this slow-ish move towards organic foods, and it’s getting better everyday. Before I started being into natural foods and such, I was totally the type that didn’t want to think about the whole health food movement. I mean, com’on, everyone knows that health food doesn’t even taste good, right? Oh man was I wrong! If you start eating pure, organic vegetables, and hormone-free meat, organic peanut butter, raw milk… It seriously just feels better to my body. My friend Tony classifies health food people as “crunchy people” after the way their eat crunchy granola.

3. A lunar eclipse! Last one ’til December of 2010. Though, unfortunately, it will be over by the time you’re reading this.

4. I found this site called Scribd. It’s basically an online document storage site. It’s not an online word processor like Zoho or Google, but it stores documents and allows you to display/distribute your documents digitally. The site is very clean looking, the document display is fantastic, there are tons of options and really cool features that any web guru will appreciate, and right on the front page there is a tag cloud that allows you to navigate to the document genre of your choice to browse what other users have uploaded.

5. I actually got stuck in the Screenplay section and found a sci-fi story to pour over for the next couple of days. It’s about 70 pages. I don’t know if it’s any good yet, but I’ll be sure to post a link if it is.

6. This week has felt very disproportional to most weeks. For some reason it’s felt slightly off-balance, and I unusually aware of how slowly or quickly time passes.

7. I wrote some lyrics this week. I think I’ll be posting them soon-ish.

8. I hope you all had a lovely Wednesday!

Arctic (Macbook) Air

This is about the only way I’ve found to describe today:

Meh.

The snow is back, so I assume we’ve finally decided to be Arctic.

Although, two happy things came along to brighten my day.

1. Bright, ripe, large red strawberries. (I’d take pictures, but they’re gone now.)

2. The most amazing fruit dip ever with which to eat the strawberries. The ingredients are marshmallow cream and cream cheese. It’s delicious. You should try it.

Hopefully with some sleep, tomorrow will be better than today was.

And I have the song from that silly Macbook Air Commercial stuck in my head. (Luckily for Apple, that was the point.)

Yeah… Indication #341 why I should be sleeping right now.

New terrible.

I discovered a new terrible feeling tonight.

It’s made up of a combination of being over a half-hour from home, with an almost completely empty gas tank, an almost completely dead phone, and the inability to get my gas tank open.

We had a random bizzare-o ice storm hit in the middle of the night last night. And somehow, by 2pm today it had hit 40 degrees. My state really should make up its mind. To have Artic-like weather, or not to have Artic-like weather. That is the question.

Because of the dramatic switch in tempatures, we had pouring rain and awesome sheets of ice all over the place.

So today was icy, slippery, drippy, slushy, grey, and just generally off-kilter.

I hate to be Johnny Jane Raincloud, but according to today’s weather it might actually be appropriate.

Shoot the Moon

Last night the boyfriend and I had dinner with the youth pastor at my church and his wife. She made some delicious chicken, and then after dinner we proceeded to play a few games of Sequence.

“This game makes enemies. Really fast.”

After the few games of Sequence, we broke out the milk and Oreos for dessert. Once we had our fill of Oreo-and-dairy-heavenliness, we started playing Hearts. We played for at least another two hours.

I was actually supposed to take a road trip today with a couple of friends, but it didn’t work out this weekend. And, you know, I’m okay with that. Tonight was very comfortable. I was able to really relax, take a break from my endlessly chattering brain, hang out, eat good food, and play Hearts.

Now that I think about it, I actually kind of needed an evening like that.

Just before I said goodnight to the boyfriend we were looking up at the sky through the moon roof in my car. The sky was incredibly clear. There were some stars out and the moon wasn’t quite full.

“You know why the moon’s not full right?”
“No. Why?”
“Because I shot it.”

Not Happy What Day. Happy Valentine’s Day.

Despite the list I wrote this morning, today really was awesome.

I went with the boyfriend to On the Border, then went to one of favorite date spots: Best Buy. (I know, it’s kinda nerdy, but we’ll never run out of things to talk about while walking up and down the aisles of the music section.)

We then met up with my sister and her beau and the four of us went to see Jumper. After that we went to Steak ‘n Shake and spent the rest of the evening sipping shakes and laughing. All in all, a very pleasant day.

Caption for the photo: He didn’t want me to go all of Valentine’s Day without having flowers on my desk so guess what he showed up with yesterday on his lunch break?

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Happy What Day?

Pros:

1. I found the perfect card

2. I found a DVD set he’s been wanting

3. I found it on sale!

4. I have someone to celebrate today with.

5. Jumper comes out today.

6. Valentine is a cool word.

Cons:

1. It’s cold.

2. Why does everyone have to celebrate this on the same day?

3. Valentine’s Day is a holiday-wannabe. It’s like a very distant cousin that you only see at family reunions. You know the one; they are younger than you, are rather arrogant, and they absoutely refuse to leave you alone until the family get-together is over.

4. Card and gift botiques weird me out a little.

5. It’s a lose-lose situation for almost any party involved.

6. It’s over-rated.

7. It’s over-rated to say it’s over-rated.

8. The coffee I am drinking is overly bitter.

9. Number eight doesn’t count.

10. …Neither does number nine.

The Stolen

I read this post by Bee in Bondi. My heart came up into my throat. I’m a little upset that there wasn’t more information about this in the US.

Australia Says Sorry.

(Why an apology was needed needed).

The Wikipedia entry about The Stolen Generation.

Of Marketing

Dear readers,

Lend me your ears for a moment, will you?

I’m going to talk marketing for a minute. (“Let’s talk marketing.“)

I have volunteered to be a part of writing a marketing book. Now, this is kind of weird considering that I am not a marketing consultant, I don’t work in marketing, and I don’t even have a marketing degree. I don’t write about marketing, advertising, or the business world.

So why would I volunteer to write in a marketing book?

Because in our twenty-first century society, marketing is absolutely key!

It doesn’t take a degree from Yale to recognize that our world is constantly changing. People today always have places to go, things to do, people to talk to, and if they don’t they at least pretend like they do. With the technological and political advances that happen minute by minute every single day, you have to be able to capture attention and advertise, promote, and support before the next text message comes in, the channel is flipped, the laptop is closed, or before our rubberband-attention-spans snap.

We live in a society where viral marketing has become an art. The up-and-coming generation has been raised through the MacWorld, YouTube, XBox, and text messaging. Even the people of this country as a whole and other first-world countries around the globe have become accustomed to instant communication, instant gratification, and instant networking. If you as a marketer cannot keep up with the way our technology has shaped our country you very rapidly fall to the sidelines.

This is why I feel that I have something to say about marketing and our world today. I am a product of the Millenial generation, and now being an adult in our country I have seen the failures, successes, and unsung marketing techniques and experiments even just by being a consumer.

I do not have a business blog, I am not a marketing consultant for a living, and I do not have a degree in either arenas, but marketing isn’t only about the business side of marketing. It’s about the consumer, the product, the money, the attention spans of the audience, the technique, the stories, the lessons from others, and the media put in front of our faces. It’s all about this huge process and idea we call marketing; from beginning to the end, from the spark inside someone’s brain, to the product or cause changing the world around them.

Marketing is everywhere. We eat, breathe, sleep, talk and work marketing everyday and so many don’t even recognize it. That is why conversation about marketing, and communication in this arena is so vital.

So why marketing?

Why don’t you tell me? Why don’t you tell them?

Winter Escape ‘08

I slept where it was cold. My night was long moving quickly between waking and the depths of chilled slumber. I dreamt intensly with an ocean cold mind and a bloody and churning heart.

I went on a retreat with the kids I work with at my church. The entire weekend was a blast except the first night when I didn’t sleep well. I was having very vivid dreams but they were short and it seems like I woke up after each one. When waking up I either found myself having to get up and shut off a flashlight that had been carelessly left on, or picking my pillow up off the floor, or just generally have to rearrange my covers to reach both my shoulders and my feet.

Whether it was slaughtering the other team in Euchre, leading worship with Mr. Friday and Laura, getting whitewashed four times, sledding outside the dining hall, or just getting to hang out and grow together as a group, this weekend was awesome!

Blue

Morning was blue. She woke slowly, still wrapped like an unborn butterfly inbetween her overs. She opened her eyes. They were still drowning, her pupils were still rushing up through the water to the surface of conciousness. She lingered for a few minutes, but then she rose and walked over to the nearby clock. It had been frozen in sleep, but with a single touch from her finger it sprang to life and the day started moving.

I woke up easily the first morning. I made it to the dining hall for the leader’s meeting by 7:30am. Though on my way there, I couldn’t help but muse at how blue the morning sky was. Everything glowed blue like a dawn twilight. The thick blue light lasted for an hour or two, and then the sky eventually moved to its usual clean white color.

There were several inches of snow and it made the snow hill a trip to walk up, but in Connor’s words, “I found out that throwing snowballs at the people going down the hill was more fun than actually going down the hill itself.”

Nightmares and all the little receipts we let hang around

I have discovered that in the end all the gas receipts will do us no good. Our nightmares will still keep us awake, our stars will still collide, and fear and anxiousness will still be written into the liquid in our eyes.

And I wish you wouldn’t talk about me like I am not in the room.

Right before your own eyes covered in snowflakes

See? Dr. Suess trees.

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Dr. Seuss Snowstorms

It’s day like these when I feel like I’m spending a few days inside some kind of foreign landscape. Like I’ve been transported into a cold and winterized world that exists inside a book on a shelf in the library across town.

Maybe the little worlds that are inside children’s storybooks are escaping like animals from a zoo and have come to swallow us whole into their simplistic complexion.

We are being eaten alive by the yellow skies in the mornings and Dr. Seuss pine trees.

Maybe we’re all trapped inside a novel. A novel about life, death, taxes, and snow.

Paczki Tuesday

Woo hoo for Paczki Tuesday. It’s those awesome/awful pastries that pack calories like it’s going out of style that unfortunately happen to taste delicious. Every year on this day a couple of different coworkers are decidedly good polish people and they buyand leave the little heart-attacks-in-a-donuts laying around the kitchen.

“I was going to send you a picture of me eating a Paczki but then i decided to just send you a picture of one instead.”

“Yeah, way to like–”

“Pack on a million calories?”

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Feb-roo-airy Fifth

Today happiness was:

1. An appreciative email I received this morning at work

2. Being able to sing the acoustic version of the song “Supernatural” by Flyleaf

3. Salmon leftovers from Longhorn Steakhouse (mmmm!)

4. Meeting a new friend for coffee

5. The coffee itself

6. A slice of this awesome banana-pecan bread to go with the coffee and new friend

7. A good conversation with my dad, and his willingness to listen to what I had to say

8. The Bluegrass iTunes Essential playlist

It was just a generally good Monday following a great Saturday and Sunday. Which, you know, is saying something.

 

Reason #325

Reason #325 why I love blogging:

I find really awesome people that make me really excited to be alive.

There’s something really cool about knowing that you coexist on the same planet with people like them.

Oh, and by the way. I’m in.

Unwanted Reminders

I spent this morning trying to wash the concert out of my hair and off my skin. The heat radiating from the other bodies in the small venue, the sound left in my ears, the ticket stub in my pocket, the smell of sweat and warmth woven into my shirt.

It seems it was only yesterday we tried to take off the dreams we built for ourselves. All those little plans of roadtrips and adventures and pranks and conspiracies and journeys. They’re gone. Just gone. They clung to our younger selves like our clothing and then suddenly we just left them behind like a sweatshirt in a laundry pile.

Where did they go? We seemed to have misplaced them.

This doesn’t make sense in our language but…

You spell safety to me.

Hearts

“One thing that has bothered me with <3s is that they always look broken.”