invigoration

So this week has been so crazy...I haven't been this drained in a long time - physically, emotionally, spiritually, everythingly.

Last night I was up until nearly 2 doing some homework...but it was worth it to get it over with...because for the next 36 hours I have nothing to do (except make 20 servings of spaghetti sauce)

Here's the plan:
Stay up late tonight watching the first season of The Adventures of Pete & Pete.
Sleep in.
Hang out with myself.


I know what you're thinking - 3 days without posting and now I post with this incredibly boring post about how I have nothing to do tomorrow?



Pete & Pete!

What was the first thing I did when I found out I had an ipod?

I downloaded an Abba cd



And then Amber walked in and handed me something from Estes Park...and I guess they deposited 100 dollars in my account due to tips. I was not aware that people in the laundry got tips...but they do. So what did I do? I got Tim McGraw's Live Like You Were Dying on itunes.


I about got the new Ben Folds, but then I thought Ima get that one on real cd that I can touch and that comes with the dvd.


Today is like Christmas.

What is going on?

I just plugged my ipod into my computer...I don't know why I did it, it's been sitting on my coffee table since it drowned, and I just decided to go ahead and plug it in...and then:

it turned on.

Is this a miracle? Did it just take a week for the ipod to dry off? What happened? I don't understand.

Pictures o' the weekend

Here are los pictures!

I saw this truck on the way to Iowa, laughed much, and got out my camera:


Ally and Ivee:


AHHHH, SCREAMING:


Amber and I moments after we've reunited


Ally and Ashley being reunited:


Reunition with Christine!:


Ally and the Christines:


Christine, Bemi, Nick and Febus' iteam:


There's only one word to describe this picture, and that word is "inappropriate:"


Amber just after she was baptized:


Amber, Ally, and I making faces shortly after the B-tism:


All the baptized/baptizers at ISU:


Bemi told this girl, and one or two others, that he was going to marry her:


Christine right before she was baptized:


This warthog was sitting on the ground outside The Game


All the LTers at the retreat reunite for a picture (okay, not all of them because that was too difficult):


Christine and Bemi:


A picture of Bemi's face:


One of many pictures that Bemi took of the girls right before we had to leave:


Ally pumping gas outside the world's largest truckstop! Might just be the coolest thing in all of America:


And this is unrelated, but last night I was talking to Andre (in Australia) and he was on googlemaps and he found a picture of my Australian home, College Square! My apartment complex is the four buildings forming a square to the left of that weird tri-building complex. The big green thing kiddy-corner to my building is the Jewish Cemetary that Joe used to chase foxes into. The street my building is on is Lygon St. - world famous for it's italian restaurants. If you go down Lygon two blocks (til almost the end of the map), and turn right you'll run into the UniMelb campus! On your right before you get to campus is the hairstylist where they would cut your hair for half the price on tuesdays if you were a student. You can only see the corner of campus and you can't really tell it's a campus from this picture, but there it is!!! My old NEIGHBORHOOD!!!!

Quotes

"It's like driving up Trail Ridge where there's snow all around you...except it's corn" - Ally on our drive to the camp

"What does that say?" - Ally (motioning towards the writing underneath the Camp Manitoubi sign)
"Land of God" - me
"Ohh...I thought it said Land of 600" - Ally

Amber handed us all gum Friday night and I told Christine that I had tuna breath. She couldn't stop laughing for a long time, later she explained to Ally and Amber that as we were all putting gum in my mouth that I'd said

"let's go unibreath!"

I never actually said that, but it's still a definite quote of the weekend

And during the iteam (small group) meeting:

"I don't like tv much....just Smallville really.....and Becker....I'll watch anything that's on" - Bemi

Bemi later started talking, telling someone about her friendships and I'm not even sure what else he was talking about:
"You didn't mention any of your friends - Stephanie, Christine Bonheim...."
(a while later)
"...the only thing that's keeping me awake is the ice cream later."
"Mute, mute, mute!" - Febus
The room erupted in laughter.

"Ohhh, look at that curly hair!" - Bemi before he sniffs my hair


And along with these quotes I'll have pictures to post in a wee bit too, but not now! Money, Banking and breakfast await me.

Reunition

And the secret has been revealed!

So early friday morning I got up and drove to Iowa where I met Ally and hung out with Ivee, the adorable three year old that she babysits.

"Knock knock" - Ivee
"who's there" - Ally/me
"Chicken" - Ivee
"Chicken who?" - Ally/me
"Chicken...don't cry it's your birthday!" - Ivee

Then we drove to a little bodunk city in Illinois called Lowpoint, for the Illinois retreat. We got a little lost getting there, but not as much as when we were leaving. Once we finally got out there we saw Matt Barnes waiting and he was like "what??" and then, when we drove in, Mike "The Miz" Hadady came running towards our car yelling "how are you here?!" and then we hugged and told him to "shhhhhhhh" and then I gave him my camera so he could take pictures of us hugging Amber and Christine...when Amber drove up she got out of her car, saw Ally, but then looked back in her car and then turned around to us and started screaming. Then we started screaming...then we all started screaming a whole bunch of unintelligible words and phrases...and the hugging! The hugging! After a long time, and a few awesome surprises (like Danielle Franke!!), up came Christine's 1993 88 Oldsmobile. We see her walking towards us and she points and says:

"what?"

Then we hugged and hugged and after we'd blubbered and freaked out we decided to find Bemi.

We go over to the Men's side and we see Bemi come running out of the bathroom to attack some guy...so I started repeating "Bemi Ekwejunor, Bemi Ekwejunor." I saw him look around and then we heard him just start screaming and he ran at me and hugged me so hard that I think he cracked a bone in my back. Then I gave him my camera and he took some pictures of us screaming...

Ahhhhhh, it was so awesome!!!!!!!!!

Best thing ever ever!

Then we hung out in the dining hall for awhile. Everyone else went to bed at, Ida Know, 12 ish? The Christines were definitely up until nearly 3 though...both of us so exhausted and just in a totally crazy happy mood...

The rest of the weekend was really awesome too! Pavi Thomas talked about 2 Corinthians, and I found out JK is doing his orientation in January for GCM! And then Christine and Amber were both baptized!! Ahhh, too much.


In one word:
fantastic

Country Music, HM, squishy nose, elusiveness and country music

I went down yonder on the Chatahootchee
Never knew how much that muddy water meant to me
but I learned how to swim
and I learned who I was
a lot about living, and a little 'bout love

Before the Leaders Meeting I had dinner with Jodi and the Quickerts. Maren and Karl told us a story about this lady that they helped out on the freeway and it was a really amazing story! Hopefully Maren or Karl will write about it on one of their blogs (linked on the left). Then at the leader's meeting we had the pleasure of Herschel Martindale coming and speaking to us tonight, he was the kind of man that I could just sit at the feet of and listen to for hours, just really truthful and refreshing (yet still convicting). He also introduced us to a brand new staff member from Columbia, Missouri, so after the service Lee and I talked to him for a little bit about Missouri and how he decided to go on staff and stuff like that, and then Karl and I talked for a long time about sort of the same thing. I was feeling really out of control when I got to the meeting for a few reasons and what he talked about tonight just really put my heart at peace...

And also Maren squeezed my nose, but I'm sick so it sounded...squishy.

And now I'm trying to go to sleep because I have something to do early tomorrow...




I'm going to burst open! I have to go to sleep asap before I spill my guts all over this blog.

You get a line, I get a pole
We'll go fishing in the crawfish hole

Stickies

Stickies...just what I needed to further organize every single aspect of my day.

For you not-mac-users, a Stickie is like a post-it note but it's on your computer...Susan at the Apple store programmed it to automatically turn on so that I would see a note she wrote to me when I got this little computer...after a week of stubbornly quitting the program every time I turned on the computer, I've finally discovered the awesomeness that is the Stickie.

Yesterday I wrote out every little thing I wanted to do that day, and after I did it I was able to put a little check by it, and man...it was awesome.

To do this on a regular post-it every day would be wasteful, and there wouldn't be enough room on it, and typing is so much quicker, and come on...it's me - I would lose it after five minutes.

Now the Stickie, and I don't think I'm exaggerating here, the Stickie is one of my best friends of all time.

Audio Vox!

So the Rock Retreat was awesome, and so...here's pictures!

As Rachel said as we walked into our room, "...spacious..."


And here's us at the end of the scavenger hunt...
"did we win?" - us
"...yeah, you won 6th place" - them


Here's a few pictures of Sarah and I when we took a nap on a blanket by the kickball game (awwww)




and afterwards in our sleepy disheveled state

Rachel and I right before she got baptized


Rachel and Andi immediately before she got baptized


Andi, Rachel and Mark before she went under

and right after



The picture Mark referred to as the "Hollister Picture," or "The New Rock Poster Picture:"


After Rachel was baptized Sarah and I started reminiscing about our baptism day, and then we got really excited and started hugging:


Then Karl and Maren hugged (because they're married):


Jessica, Sarah, me, Maren and Karl around the bonfire:


My above shot of the Apples to Apples game we played after the bonfire:


Lee physically reenacting the Prayer->Word->Obedience Airplane analogy that Spencer gave us the day before:


Sarah reenacting Lee


And here's Sarah, Rachel and I at the Student Activities Fair yesterday:

The Daily talked about The Rock in today's paper too. Check it out now! (the funk soul brother) Fair highlights options for getting involved

Fly attack, etc.

I would like a miniature fly swatter...one that I can fit in my wallet. Tonight at Caffetto there was a point where four flies were on my coffee cup, and 3 were settling themselves on my arms. What is this!? I looked around and didn't see any fly-attacks happening to anyone else!

I shower every day, so I don't understand what was going on. And then I don't wear perfume or anything like that...I just smell like a clean human being...and since when are flies attracted to coffee!? What is this? So, I'd like to reitterate how cool a teeny tiny fly swatter would be.

Also, I finished the crossword puzzle today...a kid next to me told me a Welsh priest was called a Druid (I already had the _ruid) and then my friend in my other class helped me out with AOL being an ISP...and that model houses are made of Balsa wood. So thanks to their help, that crossword got done. I love when the crossword gets done.

I had a great night though...and despite a loss of ipod, a migraine last night, and a two-hour-long fly attack tonight, I'm having a pretty good week!

I've been slacking with the running in the mornings, also with the not-lying-in-bed-for-a-half-hour-or-more-after-the-alarm-goes-off in the mornings. Tomorrow, so help me, I'm getting up right away to get my wednesday started off with a sha-bang!

I love you,
Christine

My life being a sitcom, we all knew it was inevitable that my ipod would at some point die in a humorous way. The question was always: "how?!"

Well today, my friends, that question has been answered.

See I was having a pretty typical morning, intending on writing a blog entry about how when I'm sitting on the back seat of the bus my feet can't quite reach the ground (there's humor in how short I am, you know?). I then arrived at school, grabbed a newspaper, opened it to the crossword and took my normal trip to the bathroom.

Okay, I'm just going to be blunt. I flushed my ipod down the toilet.


I'll never forget that blue glow coming from the bottom of that white bowl.



Throughout class I burst out into tearful laughter at least four times, you see, God's been wanting me to take those headphones out of my ears for weeks now, and He managed to find the most hilarious way possible for me to obey Him.

Paint the Bridge!

Last night Lee and I met and after awhile I managed to form my straw into what I thought was a pretty darn good mushroom.

Which led to the quote of the night:
"That's not a mushroom, that's Texas!" - Lee



hahahaha, okay, so yesterday Rachel and I painted the bridge! I helped paint the orange background, but after that we split up the responsibility. Rachel painted while I took pictures of Rachel painting. She did such a great job!! Yeah Rachel!!

Here's a compilation of pictures showing the progression of the project:
















Can I get a what what?