Old Art

I dug up some old drawings of mine today:


This is the one that got selected for Highlights Magazine, February of 1990 I believe.


I got bored on road trips, so I would sketch my dad driving.


I think I did Yoda when I was 11...


...as well as Mr. Spock, which I gave to my dad for Christmas in '91.


I drew my microscopic observations.


I was fascinated by pixellated illustrations (even if they are clip art).


I'm not sure why I wrote myself a letter using the Webdings font, rather than just typing one out, ha. I had a thing for secret messages and codes.


I did this from a painting my mom had on the wall. I was 8. Be impressed.


A quaint get well card I made for my grandpa who was sick with cancer, in 1990.


Originally I doodled this on the back of a math test that I didn't do very well on. Then I transferred it to another piece of paper because I didn't want to keep that awful test.


An octopus. I think I was 12. I was really proud of this one.


This one was purely out of boredom, as many of my creations were. They are finger prints illustrated into people.

Jesus Cheeto

You know it's a slow news day when some woman finds a cheeto that resembles Christ:



She called him Cheesus.
"It's the cheeeesiest!" - Chester Cheetah.

Skip to the Lou Part2

The afternoon at Johnson's Shut-Ins on the Black River in Farmington, MO:

Skip to the Lou Part1

Kaldi's Coffeehouse.


Aimee showed me her extensive collection of pins from all over. My face conveys: "Wow, Aimee, you have a lot of pins."

Oh Yeah, I Am a Twin

It sure is hilarious having a twin again.. and being a twin in an office environment where people are seeing that we're twins, ha. I just flew in to St. Louis about an hour ago. Mandy picked me up and brought me in to work with her. Cubicals! Ha.

Wow, we just had about 8 people at once staring at us trying to see the differences. "Let's see the profiles." "Oh yeah, I can tell you apart." "Really? No way, except for the hair, they look the same." "Did your parents dress you the same when you were little?" "Did you ever switch places to mess with people?" "Who's older?" Heh. I haven't gotten all of those questions for a while. It's kind of funny. Especially when Mandy and I laugh at each other after the staring and comparing clears. Sorry strangers, but the answers to your questions are very much recited.

Planes, Pains & Automobiles

Tomorrow I'll trek to Missouri where I'll be away for about 2.5 weeks. After all the traveling to summer camps and shows this summer, I'm not really looking forward to the trip itself. Chatt shuttle > Nashville flight > St Louis... St Louis > Springfield drive > St Louis > Nashville flight > Chatt shuttle. Oh well. This time I'm armed with my new compy with longer-lasting charge so I can work or at least just listen to music. (Yeah, I could own an iPod like everyone else, but no). Maybe I'll take a video with my iSight built-in compy cam, of me sitting in my plane seat looking out the window, hehe.

It's going to be a busy "vacation". On top of two weddings, a swimming/picnicking trip, hanging out in St. Louis with family/friends, then tripping to Springfield for wedding #2 slash hanging with those friends for a few days and tripping back, I also have work to complete on the websites project I've been busying myself over for the past 3 weeks. I hope I can do it all, and that I don't compel myself just to let it go to have fun with people because it basically needs to be complete when I return. I'm getting close though, so I'm not too worried.

Phobia

I was computing here this morning, just minding my own business when this! scooted quickly across the floor near me. At first I was like what the heck is that!? I've never seen a centipede like this before, like a combination spider/centipede. Gross. Maybe the spiders and the centipedes have nests near each other in my apartment. *Shudder* I hate to think of what goes on in all the nooks/crannies/behind-the-walls here that I can't see. How can I be sure that any table I sit at doesn't have a wallpaper of spiders and nasties on the underside of it? Gah!

Sometimes bugs don't bother me. I can take care of the little guys no problem.. but when it comes to anything bigger than the little guys (mainly the things with large dangling limbs or multitudes of fast-moving legs) no way. They make me do the bug dance, which consists of stomping my feet around/running away and performing a brushing motion all over my body as if they were covering all over me. There's still a huge dead wasp laying on my window sill next to a spool of thread. I'll suck him up next time I vacuum. This is the window/corner that my sewing machine and relateds are in, including a pile of clothes I have yet to alter for Jonathan. Sooo, you might want to wash those before wearing them. Save yourself a bug dance.

Anyway I sprayed Windex on the spiderpede, and then covered him with a Missouri State University mug. Die.

Peking

I was really in the mood for homemade pizza last night, so I went out for toppings. After sitting through traffic backed up for a mile due to a light being out from the storm, and after stopping and going by Aldi after learning their power went out, and after driving through nearly 3" of water on Brainerd Road, I made it to Walmart on fumes. I picked up a few regular ingredients, and then decided to try something different for the "meat." In the cereal aisle, in the "Vegetarian" section there was a product called Mun Cha'i-Ya (Peking Vegetarian Roast Duck), and it was only $2.68 or something, for a can. Ingredients: Gluten, Water, Soybean Oil, Soybean Extract, Salt, Sugar. Honestly I bought it because I didn't want to spend $5 on real meat. I am cheap, but this is already a known fact, so no surprise...and I figured, let's see if Jon can tell that this isn't meat, hehe.

So when I opened the can, and poured out the juice, out comes this can-shaped chunk of simulated "duck" onto my cutting board. Ha, it did kind of gross me out, and I smelled it a few times to make sure it was something I wanted to feed to my boyfriend. I think the strangest part was that the stuff had a bird feathers bumpy texture to it, which obviously had to have been stamped into the side of these gluten chunks. I cut it up into small pieces and spread it over the pizza, followed by a few layers of parmesan and shredded mozzarella cheese to hide anything too obviously in question.

While the pizza baked, I was chatting to Nathan and making fun of my ingredient and I told him I wasn't going to tell Jon what it was until after he'd eaten it.. However I got up to do something, Jon came in, took a seat at my compy, and nosily read through our conversation without me knowing. I hear a "HA!" And I was like "what?" Hehe, so the surprise was spoiled, but it's alright. The Peking didn't really taste like anything anyway. It still creeps me out a bit.

Ironically as we ate the pizza, the episode of the Simpsons was on in which Lisa becomes a vegetarian, and tries to push her views onto Springfield. It ends with her giving up with a hot dog at the Kwik E Mart, which she learns from Apu is a tofu dog, and then he takes her through the secret-passageway-disguised-as-a-freezer-door-labeled "Alcohol-Free Beer" to the roof where Paul and Linda McCartney discuss vegetarianism with Lisa. Ha.

Don't Let Go!

I had a dream one day at camp last week that was disturbing, yet highly unrealistic. Surely crazy, but the message I think is actually a good one, and less harmful than the details portray, although I'm not sure what that message is just yet:

Jon and I were visiting the Gateway Arch in St Louis, which is where we went on our first real date after meeting in person, and there was a new-addition lookout-balcony at the top. We climbed out to it and walked a curling staircase to the top together. Once at the top, he was about to get down on one knee, then somehow slipped and fell over the edge! He grabbed the railing and I grabbed his hand, but I couldn't pull him up. He was dangling over St Louis! (And if you have never been to the top of the Arch in St Louis, this is what the view looking down is like).

It was so scary, obviously unrealistic, which I noted as I was in the scene, but still a scary scenario. And then, you know the scene from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade where Henry Jones says to Indy as he's hanging on to reach for the grail on the verge of slipping into the crevice in the temple, "Indiana. Let it go." ? Well, when I looked up I saw my grandfather saying that to me, my dad's dad, who passed away when I was eight, and who tends to pop into my dreams every so often. I was like, "No! Are you crazy!" I had a feeling as though my future was about to slip away from me.. and I was prepared to jump out after him, had he lost his grip. Instead, I woke up.

I usually don't read much into my dreams, at least not ones of this nature. I can tell the difference between ones that might have specific meaning and those that are just a jumble of thoughts or feelings, although I have had some that were foretelling of future events that later occurred. I've also had some that allowed me to connect with people no longer present on earth... and of those, people I've never even met, which was pretty amazing let me say.

Dreams are interesting, indeed. I'm amused by God's enabling us the means to unconsciously come up with such scenarios.

Riverstone Camp Summary

I've finally had a chance to relax some after camp week, so now I'm ready to reflect on the experience. Although I didn't partake in so many camper activities as I did with the Vineyard's regional camp, I was still able to connect with some of the campers either through my class or through the apparent outrageousness of building a duct tape dress, definitely a conversation piece. I enjoyed getting to know some of the other staff members and band members as well.

I found that I really had no reason to be nervous about teaching. I was glad that feeling had pretty much gone away just before the weekend prior to camp. It's kind of amazing to think back a year ago when Jon first told me about Riverstone camp and encouraged me to come teach a class whether I'd been able to make the move from Missouri or not. I think my teaching this time around has encouraged him to want to teach something next year, too. It has also given me the confidence to want to teach more. Perhaps a practical course of some kind at the Vineyard, maybe something for homeschoolers or anyone who wants to learn something I know a thing or two about.

I enjoyed watching the kids get so crazy about camp and about building their relationships with others and with God. I was especially impressed with the messages the speaker, Kevin Queen, had as well. His illustrations were such that I think the kids were really able to get a grasp on what they need to do. (Doing, and action being the key). One of my favorite illustrations he gave used a slice of key lime pie (mmmm!) to illustrate an individual. As he took each bite of the pie, he would say areas of a teenage life each bite might represent: shopping, watching tv, doing homework or what have you, none of which included expending oneself for God. By the time he got through the list, the piece of pie was gone. He put the plate down and portrayed the angels and God looking down exclaiming "look guys! crumbs!" I think a lot of kids connected with that, and how we need to give God more than just our leftover crumbs. I was also glad that Kevin discussed how "Christian paraphenalia" isn't what makes us Christian. Bumper stickers, Christian stores, loading your Facebook up with Bible-verse applications and such. That's not what God wants us to do. We have to act, sacrifice our pride, exemplify the love of Christ in all that we do. I would hear Jon going "yes!" upon Kevin's revealing these topics. Very good.

I was also very thankful to get more time for relaxation here than was possible at the Vineyard's regional youth camp. Jon and I had a chance to sit by the lake and for me to flick weedbuds at him, and to rock on the porch swing in front of Pulliam Cottage and talk with the other band guys or anyone else who'd happen by. We went to a few of the camper events and came up with a game to locate the camper that embodied ourselves at that age. I never really found my counterpart, I guess because when I was in 6th-8th grade I wouldn't have decided to go to a summer camp. I was antisocial like that. But Jon found his counterpart, ha, some lanky, curly-headed kid just awkwarding around on the sidelines, who talked with the adults when he returned from the sidelines, hehe. God has a sweet way of making the little things we share between each other enable me to fall more deeply in love with Jonathan. Increasingly, the depth of falling seems to measure the distance from here to space.

During the drive back to Chattanooga we stopped in Cartersville, GA for dinner. There were three separate displays of firework shows going off at the same time on the Cartersville horizon. We stood streetside to watch them.

Duct Tape Sculptures (part 2)

I made this dress entirely out of duct tape. The dress has little white duct tape roses on the chest, and is lined with toilet paper on the bottom and the t-shirt I cut it from on the top. It's quite comfy.. but a little hard to get off, as I had to tape myself into it. I also made a hat and tie for Jonathan so he could be my duct tape date for the dance we had tonight at camp. They called us out as "the piano guy and his girlfriend" among the other "best costumes".

Duct Tape Sculptures (part 1)

The kids finished their projects today. They put some great things together:


The kids working.................................................................Mike's robot was awesome.


She worked some fine detail onto a bracelet......She had green hand prints on her face, but her rose was beautiful.


Real wearable flip flops! .......................................................A multi-colored flower and a purse.