What I've Been Doing Lately, Picture Book Style

I graduated, which makes me very happy and very sad at the same time.

I started working at the bank again. (This is not really where I work. Century Bank is a much nicer looking bank than this. Even the Walmart branch.)

I hung out with this guy a lot, but not as much as I would if we didn't now live an hour and a half apart instead of the former 2ish minutes. (P.S. Isn't he a handsome?) Yesterday I went car shopping with him which made me decide to start saving my money...

...for one of these.

I started getting up at 5:00 every morning to run with my dad. I like the exercise. I love the conversation and the time spent outside watching the world wake up.

I was asked to help teach 2nd grade Sunday School, which I am very excited about and will start next Sunday.

I also went to the beach and got a funny, splotchy sunburn on my legs, which I will spare you pictures of because I couldn't find any non gross sunburn pictures.

Basically, I started my transition from college student to whatever comes next. So far, not so bad.

Just Call Me Domestic Darla

It is Saturday. More importantly, it is the Saturday of Super Bulldog Weekend. What does this mean to you? Maybe nothing. To me it means that I was up late last night and I'll be up late again tonight, therefore, in the interest of my mind and body, I should be asleep right now. Instead, I was awake at 7:30 am. Wide awake. I could have stayed in bed hoping I would fall back asleep, but it was hot, so I decided to go downstairs and have breakfast. Once I reached the kitchen and saw the state it was in, I decided I'd straighten it up a little first. This turned into completely cleaning the kitchen (wiping counters, scraping up little bits of cookie dough that seemed to have gotten plastered all over everything, sweeping, and mopping) and the living room (scraping up even more cookie dough that somehow got under the rug, sweeping some more, mopping some more, straightening the pillows, and vacuuming). Then and only then could I make the coffee and biscuits that I came down for, but before I'll be able to enjoy eating them, I'm going to tackle the dishwasher, and possibly even the dirty dishes in the sink.

P.S. I wasn't even here last night to make this mess.

P.P.S. I think I have a problem.

I just spent a while reading a few other blogs, so I feel the need to write something in mine since I've neglected it for a while. The only problem is that while I have the inspiration, I lack the subject matter. The only thing I can think of is that I never wear my spoon ring anymore and I never play my ukulele either, rendering my last post completely obsolete.

Also, I am hot. The living room in my house is big and open and has tile floors and my roommate and I are cheap. These things combine to make it cold in there all the time. However, even though we don't set it very high, we do keep the heat on since it's been downright Arctic here for the past week. The heater runs and runs, unsuccessfully warming the living room but way too successfully warming my bedroom which is much smaller, a lot less open, and carpeted. I don't know how thermostats work, but I'm assuming that whatever instrument measures the temperature of the room is in the living room where it is currently 67, not my bedroom where it has to be at least 90. The only exception is my closet where it is always 30 below. Maybe the architect designed my room the way he did, knowing that the closet would always be cold, because he knows that boogie monsters prefer a warmer climate. Unless my personal boogie monster is the Abominable Snowman. Or was he not actually one of the monsters that worked to scare kids on Monsters, Inc? I don't really remember, but I don't think he was. Guess that means I'm safe.

It looks like I had more to talk about than I originally thought.

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.