Spoons 'n Ukes

I didn't get in bed until after 1:00, yet here I am at 7:17, already finished with my regular internet pass times so you know I've been up for a while. I moved back to Starkville yesterday. My bed was apparently not as happy with this as I would've thought and welcomed me back with zero sleep. Since I'm up anyway, I'll bore you with a little of the happenings in my world recently.

I have lost my spoon ring...again. I know I had it Saturday, and I know I didn't have it Sunday. I'm at a loss as to where it might have gotten to between those days. Maybe it was tired of living life being called a spoon but never being used for food consumption, so it ran away. Or maybe I just dropped it and it rolled under my bed and it's living it up with the dust bunnies. In either case, I feel truly bereft without it.

My mother got a ukulele for her birthday back in May, so all summer I've been messing around with it. Since I'm back in Starkville now and figured she probably wouldn't appreciate it if I took it with me, so I bought my own. I am very excited and fully expect to be the next Israel Kamakawiwo'ole except for the fact that I am not a very large Polynesian man.

I will now combine the subjects of the last two paragraphs into one snazzy picture.

I miss you dearly, spoon ring. Hopefully our paths will cross again one day soon. My finger feels naked without you.

I

I never post anymore.

Is it sad that most of my posts say something to that effect?

I guess that really depends on your point of view. If you like hearing from me, it is sad. If you don't like hearing from me, you probably aren't reading this now and so it makes no difference.

It is currently 1:17 a.m. I'm in that weird stage of being tired, but not sleepy enough to go to bed. When I reach this point I get contemplative or silly. Right now it's kind of both.

I've started every little section so far with the letter I.

It was unintentional, but now I feel like I have to continue with it.

Icecream is yummy.

Ice cream is also apparently two words.

Igloos probably aren't very fun to live in. Or at least they wouldn't be for me. I'm always cold.

I can't think of any other words that start with I and it seems self-centered and taking the easy way out to just use the word "I" as my i word, so I believe I'll stop.

It's bed time anyway.

Happy Surprises

I love it when God unexpectedly plops little happys (happies? It's not a real word, but it's the one I want to use. I just don't know which wrong way to spell it is the right wrong way.) into my lap.

Last week in church we were talking about not just sitting around but actively doing something for our faith, so I got to thinking about how I'm not involved in any ministries at home. This is mainly because during the school year I'm never there. However, I'll be home for June and July which is a whole two months that shouldn't be used for idleness but for doing something productive. I was just starting to contemplate what I could do when a friend leaned over and said she needed to talk to me about something after the service. She wants to start a program for girls in the church, a kind of mentor/Bible study/sleepover-fun kind of thing, and she wants me to help. It was like all I had to do was actually think the words "What can I do?" and God was right on top of it with a "Here--do this!"

I am currently sitting in a hotel room in Odessa, TX as part of a group of 8 students and 2 professors from my school on a storm chase. We're driving around the Great Plains for 2 weeks looking for storms. The most I really expected to get out of this trip was some cool pictures of clouds, hopefully some tornadoes, but yesterday I got a lot more. I was sitting in the room with two of the other girls, one of whom was reading her Bible. She read something that she thought was cool out loud to us and it sparked this whole deep conversation about finding God's will.

I didn't expect God to immediately give me a ministry I could be involved with the second I asked for one or for Him to speak to me about His will through my fellow storm chasers while sitting in a Texas hotel room, but He did both of those things. And when I think about it, why did I not expect Him to do those things? He's an all powerful God. He can do anything. Just imagine what He could do with me if I was asking for and expecting great things rather than just being surprised (although pleasantly so) by them when they're dropped into my lap.

Yee Haw

I associate summer with country music. I have for a while, and I have no idea why. I rarely, if ever, listen to country during the school year, but all summer I listen to it almost exclusively. I used to think that it was just a Lucedale thing. Something about driving down back roads at home just needs country in the background to feel right. However, here I am, still sitting in Starkville and the least excited about summer that I've probably ever been, but what am I doing? Listening to the Josh Turner Pandora station. I guess my mind is trying to tell me subliminally through my music choice that summer is here and there is nothing I can do about it, so I might as well suck it up and make it worthwhile. I'll see what I can do.

And so that this isn't a complete downer of a blog post, here's a happy story. Last semester I was in a class called Physical Meteorology that was probably the most ridiculous class I've ever taken (Actually that's not entirely true because I'm pretty sure Physics II was an even bigger bane of my existence, but that was last year. New year, new bane.). Not that the subject was ridiculous, but the teaching method was. It was unorganized and way above everyone's head. The first test was mostly quantitative (plugging stuff into equations and whatnot) and I made 100 (with a curve of course). Since the curve was necessary, the teacher decided that for the next test, it should be all qualitative (explaining of processes rather than proving them with equations). I made a 77. The class average overall was a lot higher though, so for the final, it was decided that this new format would be kept. I just knew that there was no way I'd get an A if this was the case. I dreaded the test all week. When the day came, I was convinced it would take me at least 2 hours to finish, judging by how his previous tests had gone. Instead, I was out of there in 45 minutes, and this was after working through the test three times because I didn't want to be the first one to leave. Finally, I gave up and turned it in. The next day, I checked my grades, not expecting that one to be posted yet, but saw that it was...and I had an A!! I screamed. Out loud. My roommate came running into my room because she was sure something had attacked me.

Kamikaze Cockroach

Today I am a believer in signs.

I do not do well with roaches. They completely creep me out. I get the heebie jeebies just thinking about them. This morning as I was getting in the shower, I saw a big, ugly, obviously mean-spirited roach crawl across the wall of the bathroom. I was already partly in the shower, and therefore wet at this point, so there wasn't really a whole lot I could do about it without dripping all over the bathroom, so I just decided to go ahead and finish my shower, and then deal with the problem later. The silly roach completely ruined my shower experience though because naturally I was worried that it was going to crawl into the shower and eat me the whole time.

Thankfully, I finished my shower uneaten, so I got out and began to look around for the roach so I could kill it, but I didn't see it anywhere. If there's anything worse than seeing a roach, it's knowing a roach is there, but not seeing it. Completely ill at ease at this point, I decided the best thing to do would be just finish getting ready, so I leaned over the toilet to get something out of the cabinet above it and just happened to look down. Low and behold, the pesky roach was floating belly up in the toilet bowl. All I had to do was flush.

Since today is the day of my worst final this semester and I've been worrying about it all week, I've decided that the roach is a sign, and maybe today won't be so terrible after all.

Home

I started this post the other day and never finished it. However, I just spent all afternoon working on a project that involves manually putting 20 years of daily soil temperature data into a spreadsheet, and I'm pretty sure if I spend one more second working on it today I'll explode. Seemed like a good time to take a break and finish my post.

I'm in this weird stage of life where I have a house with parents and sisters, but I'm not there most of the time, so it's not exactly "home" anymore, or at least not in the same sense of the word as before. I also have a place to stay at school with my school "family", where I do spend most of my time, but it's not really "home" either because I know I won't be here for much longer. So when I think of the word home, I don't automatically see images of a particular place or particular people. Instead when I think "home" I think of feeling completely relaxed, of being absolutely comfortable, of being at absolute peace with myself and the world around me.

I recently came across this verse in John 15: "I've loved you the way my Father has loved me. Make yourselves at home in my love." Other versions say to remain or abide in my love, and while it means the same thing, something about putting the word "home" in it makes me see it in a whole new light. It brings all those feelings of comfort and peace with who I am and where I am to mind, and it speaks volumes to me of who my Savior is. While He is all powerful and has every right to do anything He wants with us, He's not some ruthless, hard hearted slave driver, constantly ordering us around with no regard for our well being. Instead, He wants us to make a home in His love. To be so comfortable there that we'd rather be there than anywhere else.

Some friends of mine lost almost everything in an apartment fire yesterday, and that got me to thinking about home again. If what we consider home is where we keep all of our stuff, that can all be taken away in an instant. However, if we consider Jesus's love for us our home, then it can never been taken away. His love is constant, never changing, never ending. It can't be stopped by a fire or a flood or anything else that can so easily destroy our worldly dwellings. If that isn't comfort and peace, or my definition of home, then I don't know what is.

I'm Twitchy

Earlier tonight, while sitting in Priority, my eye decided it would be fun to start twitching. I do not agree with its decision. It was most annoying, and it made me look rather silly. Now the twitch has decided to move to my left thumb. While this does not make me look quite as silly, it is quite possibly even more annoying. Thumb twitches are more prolonged than eye twitches. Also more violent. I wonder if the twitch will get tired of my thumb soon or if it likes it there and is planning on camping out for a while. I certainly hope it moves, but only if i get to pick where it goes. A nose twitch might be fun. I'd kind of look like the girl on Bewitched.

Insidiousness

In an attempt to feel productive without actually having to do homework tonight, I decided to go through all of my old blog posts and fix grammatical errors. I think it takes skill to come up with a procrastination like that. I'm kind of glad I did it though. I used to have some pretty humorous things to say. Now I feel like I don't have anything to say. However, looking through my old posts, I realize I didn't really have a whole lot to say then either. They're all about the silly things that go through my head or about not-that-interesting-but-cleverly-narrated things that happen to me. Silly things still go through my head and not-that-interesting things still happen to me quite frequently. I enjoy writing and need a creative outlet for it or I'll lose it, so in the future I promise I will try to remember all the silly things I think and experience so you, my dear reader, might have a little bit of entertainment.

We'll start off the silliness with a description of my Applied Climatology class this morning. We are talking about how climate affects agriculture, and one of the topics was drought. There is a type of drought called an invisible drought. It's like what happens in July when you get a little bit of rain every day, so you think you're doing fine, but actually the amount of rain you're getting is less than the amount of evaporation taking place so the drought is "insidious." The professor went on to define the word insidious for us. He said that to a lot of people it has big, destructive, evil connotations, but in actuality it just means it creeps up on you, "like too big underwear on a 20 mile hike."

Generous Living

I was reading in Matthew today and came across a passage that I've probably read a hundred times before, but somehow it struck me differently today. Here it is: "Go to the lost, confused people right here in the neighborhood. Tell them that the kingdom is here...You have been treated generously, so live generously."

In my head I know that I am supposed to share Christ with the lost world around me, but sometimes, actually a lot of the time, that knowledge stops right there, as a thought, and never actually carries over into an action. However, Jesus didn't have to come to Earth to die for me or even do a lot of the smaller things he's blessed me with. How ridiculous is it for me to take an incredibly selfless act performed for me and hide it away instead of sharing it with people that need it? Especially when I've been specifically asked to by the creator of the universe? It's like a slap in the face, and I don't know about you, but I certainly don't want to be the one slapping Jesus Christ, Son of God, in the face.