What's IMDB?!?! (incredulous look)

So I realized that a service I considered to be really well-known isn't so well-known. And yes, I'm talking about IMDB, the same site I was rambling about yesterday. Chris and I will sometimes make comments to people such as "I need to IMDB that movie" or "Well, I checked him out on IMDB and..." and typically no one bats an eye. But lately people have been asking "What's IMDB?" and this is, for some reason, shocking to me. I am starting to even suspect that some of the people who didn't bat an eye at comments were just afraid to ask what it was. I mean, I expected to have to inform my Dad, because Dads never know the cool websites. But these are young, relatively savvy people who are asking what it is.

And so I want to make sure, for any of you who have been afraid to ask, IMDB is a super-cool site which keeps a comprehensive database of everyone who's had anything to do with any TV show or movie. You can have fun playing the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game just by clicking through different actors and what they've been in and who's been in it with them. Chris and I love finding out how many movies a certain actor has been in with a certain director (for example, Johnny Depp with Tim Burton). You can also find out that Johnny Depp is already slated to be in 7 movies coming out between now and 2007, and one of those is a Tim Burton movie. See how much fun this is?

And by comprehensive, I mean that you can find our friend and PEZ documentary partner Chris Marshall because he interned on Swimfan (and the lower half of his body and his hand are in it, but he's not credited for that). And, for you Gainesville folks, did you know you can also find Lori Taylor and her 1970 movie, Mark of the Witch? (And if she hasn't told you her story about the movie, you must ask her).

Ahh yes, I love IMDB. You should too.

look-a-likes

Well, today we checked on a new church, and saw Batman Begins, among other errands and running amock. I must say, I enjoyed the movie. Of course there were plenty of things that were unrealistic (it's a comic book, after all) but there were a lot of things that seemed a bit more plausible, and I like it when a movie like that has realistic elements. Not to mention Christian Bale is just cool. The movie seemed filled with big-name actors, as well as actors who look like other actors so I kept wondering (like a guy who looked remarkably like Anthony Hopkins)... when I checked them all out on IMDB tonight, I was happy to not other people making comments about certain actors looking a lot like the people I thought they were (like the Anthony Hopkins guy). Not only that, but the pastor at the church we checked out happened to look a lot like Val Kilmer... who just happens to be a former Batman... I just love it when things link up in weird ways like that.

Good Times

Our pastor and his wife from back in Gainesville (who have now themselves moved to Philly) are vacationing in Tybee Island (right by Savannah) this week. So Chris and I were able to get together with them last night and have dinner and such. It was great to get to catch up with them. Good times, good times. And now I can finally say that I've been to The Lady and Sons, which is apparently a requirement for Savannah, because she has a show on the Food channel. The food was good, but not quite good enough to warrant all the hype. But at least now we've been there.

Tonight is RUF, which I've been looking forward to, not just because of the message but because afterwards we get together with friends, and that's always fun. Summer RUF is a different animal because it's so much smaller, so you get more opportunity to talk to the few people that are there, instead of feeling overwhelmed by the 50+ people you don't know. It's funny, I wasn't looking forward to summer because so many people go home for the summer term, so a lot of our friends were going to be gone, and I figured we'd be pretty lonely this summer. But so far, we've actually been able to hang out with people MORE, and meet and become friends with NEW people... very cool.

Extremely Loud

Saturday we went to Tallahassee for a wedding, Sunday we returned to Savannah. It's a 5 hour drive, so I got to do a lot of reading... I read a book that Chris had already finished, that we borrowed from a friend of ours, called Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. All I can say is... wow. This was an amazing book. I laughed out loud, I fought back tears, and a couple of times I just had to stop and sit and feel incredibly helpless... that's how amazing it was. I would definitely recommend it.

I guess soon I'll have to read Everything is Illuminated but Chris checked that out from the library, and then he returned it so our friend Angela could check it out, so I guess I have to wait for her to finish it. That's okay though because I may need a short break from emotion after that one... maybe I'll read something else in between, or maybe I'll be too busy to read for a few weeks (more likely). Anyways.

Hot!

It is really, ridiculously hot today. Not even 10am, and weather.com tells me it's 84° outside, but with 77% humidity, it feels like 96°! But wait! There's more! By 2pm it will be 92° and feel like 101°! Bleh. This Floridian is being baked to a crisp! There's even a Severe Weather warning due to the heat. The only thing that makes me feel better is knowing that it's about the same in Gainesville, with a "feels like" temp of 100° today. At least I know I wouldn't be better off there.

Stupid sun. And global warming.

Envy

It came.

It's not mine. I got it for Chris, since I already have a Dell MP3 player. But my Dell is nothing compared to this baby. I'm so jealous. He's gonna spend the next couple days transfering music from CDs onto the new iPod. It's so slim, and pretty, and... I WANT IT!

Ah well. For those of you that didn't believe us that we could actually get a free iPod, take that. For those of you that helped us out, THANK YOU! And if one of you wants to post a comment with your link to freeipods.com, maybe someone will see this and say "Man, I want one too!" and they can click your link to get started while helping you on your way to 20 GB of happiness.

Sprout Crazy

So I've been sprouting some mung beans over the past couple days so I could make Phad Thai tonight with them, and man do these things grow like crazy! I started out with 50 cents worth of dried mung beans. Mung beans are small and green and about half the size of a dried black bean. 50 cents worth is about half a cup, give or take. Well, after soaking them over night and then leaving them in a jar for 3 days (rinsing them about every 8 hours, as directed) I now have more sprouts than I know what to do with.

Exhibit A.

I easily have 5 cups or more worth. These things grow like crazy! So I made some weird mustard and bean sprouts stir fry for lunch with almost 3 cups worth (I have enough for lunch tomorrow, too). And tonight I'm making Phad Thai with the rest of them... hopefully. I may still have some left over though, and I'll need to come up with yet another item... a salad, maybe. They're yummy, and fun, but getting a little out of hand. Next time I'll try just sprouting 15 cents worth and see where that gets us. I have a feeling that will be closer to right for one meal.

My next adventure will be to try sprouted black beans & rice. We already like black beans and rice, so we'll see how it is once they're growing... I just started soaking the beans and some brown rice to try it out. The best part is Chris doesn't sound scared of my experimenting (he loves the Phad Thai) so that's always good, considering he's such a picky eater.

Hurricane Season again!

Wow, it seems like we just escaped last year's brutal hurricane season, and it's upon us again. That means I'll have to start keeping a cursory eye on NOAA again. This hurricane season I'm not at the TV station, so I don't get a daily hype about how "This one is really going to kill us all." But considering the next few years are supposed to abound in hurricanes, and not only do we live on the coast, but most our family and friends are in Florida, I feel like I'm obligated to watch out for them. I miss the days when classes were cancelled in college and I had no idea why, only to find there was a hurricane coming right for us. Ignorance was bliss.

I feel like I can't compose a proper sentence, or think in proper sentences, because I just spent about an hour today learning how to get certified to grade SAT essays for The Princeton Review. The cool thing about essay grading for them is that you can do it from home, and you get $1 per essay and each one shouldn't take more than 2-3 minutes to grade. But it's hard to figure out the right way to grade them. And between learning how they should be graded, and taking the certification test, I read about 3 dozen bad high school essays. Lots of poor structure and poor reasoning and poor spelling. My brain hurts.

Unfortunately, I did all that only to discover that there was currently only 1 essay that needed grading. That's right, one. So I made $1.00 today. Woot.

I don't feel like I wasted my time because there will eventually be more to grade, plus it gives me more insight into teaching the essay writing portion of the class. But it was still a buzzkill to only get to grade 1 essay after all that.

Such is life.

These make me laugh...

A Softer World posts fake cover letters to companies... I believe he actually sends these to companies... and they're funny. Go read them. Now.

I have no words...

I really don't know what to say about this, other than to direct you to read this strange article.

Certified!

Well, it was a nervewracking last day, but I did get certified to teach SATs for the Princeton Review... woo hoo! I have no idea when I'll get to teach my first class, but I'm "in the system" now, so I just have to wait and see. Yay.

They call me Mama Kendra...

So I'm in Atlanta again for Princeton Review training. And apparently the way I've learned to teach isn't the way Princeton Review wants me to teach AT ALL. So I'm trying to re-learn a new way to teach that goes against everything I had to do for New Horizons. The main problem, apparently, is that I'm "too nurturing." That's not really surprising... I mean, the guys I worked with at the TV station did nickname me "Mama Kendra" for a reason, but I thought that was because I brought them Cold Eaze when they were sick. But considering it's just my nature to be "nurturing" it's kind of hard for me to figure out how to turn that off to be the "Rockstar Trainer" they want... I asked a few questions for clarification, and what I came out with is that I:

1) Talk too slowly

2) Make sure people are understanding what I'm saying

I understand we have a limited time to teach all the material, so we need to keep moving. But I thought I was explaining things about the same as he was modeling it for us, so I'm trying to figure out how to cut it down... I guess I'm just not giving the class enough credit to know how to do some of this stuff. I just got so used to having to teach with the assumption that people don't know how to open a file on their computer after I've showed them 3 times, so I'm so used to a super-systematic approach to teaching and need to break from it. But the thing I'm having a super hard time wrapping my head around is that I'm talking too slowly. All my life I've heard "Hold on, slow down and start over" when I'm telling people a story. The main criticism I've had in class presentations in school was that I could have spoke a little slower. I mean, when people are nervous, they talk faster. I talk fast in general. When I started teaching for New Horizons, the big thing I learned was that if it sounds to me like I'm talking a little too slowly, I'm really talking at just the right speed. So I really worked at slowing down my speach when teaching, until it became automatic. And I never, EVER had anyone ever tell me I was talking too slow. Usually people appreciated my not going through things at breakneck speed. And now I'm being told that I'm speaking too slowly and I need to speed it up. And this is what they said after I gave a teachback while being super-nervous which should mean I talked too fast anyways, despite my best efforts. I don't understand. I really don't.

So tomorrow I have my last teachback. I will try to speak more conversationally, more quickly, and less nurturingly. If I succeed, I should get certified to teach this stuff and make a little bit of money. If not, I go back to normal life without SAT prep. Stay tuned...

Slight Reformed Frustration

So Sunday, Chris and I went to church at IPC less than a mile from us. We prefer to go to a church out on Whitemarsh Island, but the drive is a little too far, so we thought we'd give this one a chance again (we hadn't been there in months). Anyways, in the bulletin under an announcement about evening service out on Point Pleasant, was a note that a lot of people go out there early to enjoy fellowship before the service (and I guess it's at an outdoor park or something), but that we needed to keep in mind that not all recreational activities are permitted on the Lord's Day - only activities that are glorifying to God are permitted, as stated in the Westminster Catechism.

So Chris and I figured, if they took the time to print this in the bulletin, there must be some sort of specific idea they have as to what is and is not permitted. But we certainly didn't know what that meant. I mean, I know people who won't go to a store on a Sunday because they believe you shouldn't work. When Chris and I lead Youth Group in Gainesville, we weren't allowed to take the kids to see The Passion Of The Christ on a Sunday, because some elders had a problem with us watching a movie on Sunday. But considering everyone has a different idea of what's permitted, we had no idea how to take this message int he bulletin. I asked a couple friends who attend there, and they didn't know either.

So yesterday I asked our RUF minister, who is also a member at the church. He went back and forth on making sure I knew that some members of the church believe this, and certainly the pastor does, but there's different ideas as to what extent to take that, and... basically... never answered my question. We tried to push him to give us some sort of answer, "Okay, well if we were to go out to Point Pleasant, what recreation could we do and not do? Would we be allowed to play Frisbee? Or is that not focussed enough? Are we expected to just get together and sing hymns?" and still, no answer. This was surprising because Tom is usually very straightforward about anything you ask him, so this was obviously a touchy subject.

So after all this time, I still have no idea what IPC means in their bulletin when they make the distinction of only engaging in worshipful activities on the Lord's Day. Certainly they meant something. Certainly they put it in there with certain activities in mind to encourage, and other ones to discourage. But if no one knows what's being encouraged and discouraged, what's the purpose? Doesn't this really just start getting a little too law-based? (without any definite law, even!) And if no one can agree on what the standards are, how are they supposed to enforce the standards? I start envisioning a bunch of Pharisees bickering over whether or not Jesus can pick a grain on the Sabbath.

So I'm a little frustrated about the whole thing. I was started out just being curious about this particular church's stance on this issue, and now I think I'm just a little more turned off by this church. Bleh.

(Yes, that's right. When it's time for me to wrap up this post, the best I can come up with is "Bleh." That's all I'm left with. Sorry.)

Another Weekend in ATL

Not a whole lot of excitement going on around here. We recently got a storage unit, so Chris has been slowly relocating some of our clutter to the storage unit. It will be nice to clear out a lot of our stuff, since our apartment has virtually no closet space, and it doesn't look like we'll find a better place to move to any time soon.

This weekend I go back to Atlanta for the second weekend of SAT prep training with Princeton Review. As long as my teachbacks go well and I don't get cut, I will be certified to teach high schoolers how to beat the SATs. Then I'll be (hopefully) scheduled to teach courses and do tutoring for it on evenings and weekends. Fun fun fun!

I think I'm going to switch up the audio books and listen to Harry Potter this time around. Give my mind a break before spending the weekend thinking about quadtratic equations and proper grammar.

Last night I had the most fitful night's sleep, with weird dreams that kept waking me up and confusing me, and a huge non-dream plane flying about 10 feet above our apartment at 3 in the morning (I dunno what was going on, but it was LOUD and it was CLOSE, and it freaked me out!). Considering I'd been woken up earlier because I dreamed someone was breaking into the house, I was utterly confused when I was woken up by real noises, because I wasn't entirely sure it was real. (Then Chris confirmed it this morning). Bleh. No more ice cream before bed for me!