A Little Rambling

That's what summer brings with it. The glorious freedom to be a lazy bum. And I have definitely been indulging in some laziness. Sleeping in to wake up without an alarm clock. Naps in the middle of the day and evening. Picnics in my backyard. Game nights with friends. Hours on end of reading in silence. Too much facebook. Movies. Skype. More naps. Ice cream. Yogurtini. Which reminds me! I went and saw Thor again last night with J.D. and Chantel, and it was better the second time for sure. I'm pretty sure I even caught a couple Wagnerian undercurrents à la " Ride of the Valkyries " in the first battle scene between the Asgardians and the Jötunns . Music major nerdy moment! But anyways. After the movie, we went on a search for frozen yogurt. That word is really hard to spell in English for me, because my brain likes the German " Joghurt" better. So Chantel and I decided we could open our own frozen yogurt place called " Jötunheimr Joghurt."...

1. It's 2:12 am. I should go to bed. But...facebook (which was hacked)! And blog!! 2. I have the greatest friends ever. 3. Transappleism. 4. My face hurts from laughing for about the last 9 hours. 5. I have a bruise on my nose, and that also hurts. The dangers of teaching pre-school! 6. I can't wait to do this again. 7. I really want a box of expensive, gorgeous, glittery cupcakes. Like these. 8. Disney songs with sometimes lovely, sometimes scary harmonies. 9. Ping Po(ng)? Ping po(ng)! I love water! I'm weird...I'm excellently weird! 10. Her heeeeeeee! Apparently my laugh has a 2 octave range, possibly on E's.

Mmmmm dinner last night was delicious, and my wonderful sister took some pictures so that I could make up a "real" recipe blog. This is fairly easy food and always well received, so I hope you enjoy! Also, this is my first time writing it out, so it's probably pretty wordy, not nice and concise like normal recipes. Ah well. Bacon-Wrapped Chicken ingredients (suggested) chicken breasts thick bacon herbs/spices of various assortments according to your taste olive oil red wine possibly toothpicks 1. Get yourself some chickens out of the freezer. Because I am kind of bad at planning ahead, I generally marinade my chicks while they're thawing. It seems to work quite well. I used boneless & skinless this time, though there's a delightful variation if you use boneless, skin-on chicks in which you stuff the skin with herb-y cream cheese. Delish! But this is not that recipe. 2. Arrange them artfully - or not - in your glass pan, or if you don't have a g...

While our parents are off gallivanting in Scotland, the four of us decided to have our own fun here at home. We decided to do dinner and a movie, with me cooking. (We have received one e-mail from our parents, and two brief facebook status updates to let us know they are alive. The last line of the 5-line e-mail mom sent? "Feed Freddy." Nice to know what the priorities are...) So, I decided to make a delicious meal of bacon-wrapped chicken and roasted veggie pasta salad. Since I did say I was occasionally going to turn this into a foody blog, the recipe should be posted tomorrow. I love when people enjoy my cooking - it's so gratifying! Larissa walked in and the first thing out of her mouth was, "It smells so good in here!" Freddy was hesitant at first about eating anything I'd prepared, but even he enjoyed it and was complimentary. Success! He was the only one who'd never eaten my cooking before - because he never came to my apartment ever! ...

I have many, scattered across the globe. There are many within the Greater Phoenix Metropolitan Area that are so far away they feel as if they are scattered across the globe. This does, however, lend itself nicely to sleepovers. I should do that more. This post about my sleepover with Rebekah made me just so happy. It's really the only reason I'm blogging, was so I could show off her post. I'm currently on skype with a friend in Japan. I just got done skyping with a friend in Oklahoma, on his leave from Afghanistan, where he deployed from Germany. I have friends in a large majority of the 50 states, lots of countries, and most of the continents. Maybe I should meet someone going to Antarctica. It's hard to maintain friendships over such vast distances. It's hard to be a part of the everyday when you only get to chat once in a while due to 11.5 hour time differences (really!) or military duties or the weeks of waiting for snail mail, and actually speaking to ...

I have smooshed bug all over my finger. Excuse me while I go wash that off... I have been productive today! Mis padres are in Scotland and my sister was off running a concert, so after I got home from work (a couple hours early...boo for cancellations!) I cleaned. Well, first I went grocery shopping. Then, as I was putting away the groceries, I noticed how grody the refrigerator was getting, and after discovering several unidentifiable things lurking in tupperware, I decided it was time to tame this beast. I took out shelves and scrubbed them, I pulled things out that I don't want to know why they were in there in the first place, I organized and consolidated and threw out and then organized some more when I put my groceries away. Ahhhh. :) After that, I cleaned my whole room - including emptying and organizing every drawer, going through my closet, going through my desk, moving the catbox out AT LAST, vacuuming, dusting, scrubbing, sorting, throwing out crap, all kinds of f...

co-edited by my pulchritudinous sister. This is going to be an odd and complicated post, I can feel it. So, maybe just don't read too deeply into it. It's just some thoughts that have been on my mind for a while. I'm less than fond of hearing the word beautiful applied to myself. Silly, right? But let me explain attempt to explain. Remember the days when everyone was fighting for guys to stop calling girls "hot" and call them "beautiful" instead? I suppose those are still going on, but I hear about it much less often. Well, probably largely due to the good intentions above, beautiful is now the only word I ever hear. It's quite rapidly losing it's meaning. Don't get me wrong, there are times when hearing that word makes me levitate with giddiness. But it's very, very rare. Most people don't mean much with 'beautiful.' They really mean pretty, or nice, or they know it's what is expected. There's not a lot of t...

I am not my mistakes. I am more than the hateful things you say about me. I am not your lies. I am not my guilt. I am more than my baggage. I am more than my pain. I am not controlled by my shame. I am not the girl you thought you knew. You look at me and see the past, the grime, the sin. You see my shame. You exploit my fear. You degrade me. You hold my guilt in my face and make me stare until I can't see through the tears. Christ looks on me with love. He does not see my sin - He has forgiven me. He has become my sin, that I might become His righteousness. He sees me as His pure, spotless bride. He loves me. He loves me. He loves me . He chose me. He wants me. It is His eyes that matter, not yours. I am God's. I am loved. I am paid for. I am free. I am pure and holy. I am forgiven.

It's here! Although the weather would delightfully suggest otherwise, which is quite alright by me. My favorite part of summer is going to be not having every moment of my day scheduled out in advance to be somewhere. Instead of going from school to observations to work to rehearsal, I have time to go to the store, or to hike, or to hang out, or to shop, or to wash my car - and to cook! I LOVE to cook. I told my parents when they let me move back in while I wait on the still-no-news-on-the-approval-of-the-short-sale house that I would cook dinner for them whenever they wanted. I think I've 'actually' cooked once in the last semester, and that was pretty early on. Working till 8 at night and then having concerts to attend or perform in or rehearse for pretty much limited the number of times I ate dinner at home - or at all. But today, I got to cook! I've had a couple people mention that I should do a foody blog, and I really want to, cause most of the things I ...

I feel like I should be blogging, solely because it's almost 3 am and I am still wide awake. I am starting to get drowsy, but I've been rather slap-happy working on my final education project, due at 11:40 am tomorrow. It's a group project, and the chat function on Google Docs has proved of the utmost entertainment value. Also, playing with the little flashing cursors can turn into a hysterical game that wakes up sleeping family members who wonder why on earth you're laughing so loudly to yourself at a word document on the computer screen after midnight. I'm a little sad it's the end of the semester. Don't get me wrong, I am SO ready for summer break. But it always seems that right as I get closest to people, we get separated. I have finally made some really solid friendships with people who are just a riot to hang out with, and now I don't get to see them on a daily basis. Sure, we've got plans for the summer and it'll be great, but I'...

Well, technically, Mother's Day is over, as it is 12:23 as I sit here. But I have to say how wonderful my mother is, not least because she stayed up this late quizzing me on the terrible drop-the-needle exam looming over my head for tomorrow morning. There are some composers to whom I'd just really like to give a piece of my mind. And hope they choke on it. Anyways, back to my wonderful mother. She is so supportive, I don't know how I'd get through without her sometimes. Her mom died when she was 17, and I remember turning 17 and fearing I might lose her similarly, and I am ever so thankful that God has continued to bless me with her in my life. She is a wonderful listener, a great hair-dyer, a laundry fairy, and she does all those thankless little (and very big) things that I tend to not realize and certainly don't thank her enough for. She is encouraging, and loves me even when I ignore her advice. She's usually right (you'd think I'd learn). She...

So, sometimes a blog post doesn't have to be me sharing my words, right? Like when I want to show off that I have one of the coolest pastors ever. I've never seen the show, but being a 'right wingnut' myself, I totally would - especially if Pastor John was on it. This is the same guy who took me and some of the rest of our class shooting instead of our final a couple semesters ago. Best final ever. Wish that would happen tomorrow.... Which reminds me, I'm studying for theory. Boo. 7:30 am tomorrow, pray for me!!

I tend to stay away from most anything political. I don't particularly like having an opinion. I feel quite strongly that they should be adequately supported, and that requires research, which I rarely have the time and energy to do. Or sometimes, I really want to hold one opinion, and I know that if I do the research my black and white view will turn gray, and so I simply refrain from actually having an opinion in the first place. When the death of Osama bin Laden was announced last night, my first response was, finally. Then it started taking over facebook, some people cheering and others posting scriptures like Matthew 5:44 or Proverbs 24:17 , and then those who were attacking people with, "how dare you rejoice that someone is dead/in hell/etc." I decided I needed an opinion, and here I share it. I am not happy that Osama bin Laden is in hell. I am not rejoicing in his death in any way. The death of one man, even if he is the head of Al Qaeda, does not change...