2006 : Reflections

While the hubby doesn't really understand my New Year's nostalgia, (he doesn't really get into celebrating New Year's Eve), I can't help but feel the urge to look back on my year and think about all that's happened in 2006. Since tonight is going to be a quiet one (I'm not feeling too great and Chris has to be at work tomorrow morning, so no celebrating for us), I figure now is a good time to do all that reflecting. For brevity's sake, I'll do it in the form of some lists.

The Big Stuff

→ I lost my grandfather (dad's dad) in March. Missed the funeral because the death was sudden and I was in New York City already.

→ I lost my other grandfather (mom's dad) in July. We knew it was going to happen, so I was able to get up to Indiana in time to say goodbye and be there for the funeral.

→ I was able to reconnect with my cousins in Indiana while I was there, which was a real blessing.

→ In November I gained a sister-in-law when my brother got hitched.

Number of weddings attended: 4 (Jean Clark's, Tiffany Crenshaw's, Nahum & Melissa's, and my brother's)

Number of funerals attended: 1

I went to Art Museums or Galleries in:

→ New York City (too many to count in too few days)

→ Philadelphia (Philadephia Museum and a couple galleries)

→ Washington, DC (Hirshorn and National Gallery, mainly)

→ Atlanta (The High Museum, twice)

→ Savannah (the new Telfair, 3 or 4 times)

→ Gainesville (The Harn)

I went to a concert in:

→ New York City (Camera Obscura)

→ Atlanta (Sufjan Stevens)

→ Jacksonville (mewithoutYou, Anathallo)

→ Gainesville (Less Than Jake)

Places I visited WITHOUT going to galleries or concerts:

→ Columbia, SC

→ Indiana

→ West Virginia

→ Lakeland, FL

→ Fort Myers, FL

I went to one film festival (Savannah Film Fest), and took too many road trips to count between movie-related trips, funerals, weddings, concerts, and our vacation in March. I don't even want to THINK about how many miles we put on the car.

2007 : Projections

As for what 2007 has in store, only God knows where we will be at the end of next year and what all will have taken place. So far we know to plan on one wedding in February, and one film festival in February. We are hoping for more film festivals to add to the list (only time will tell). As for travels, again only time will tell, but I'm hoping that 2007 will grant us the opportunity to at least visit the west coast, perhaps making it to Seattle, Portland, and/or San Franscisco. Guess I'll have to start living the year to find out!

Happy 2007 everyone!

Package In The Mail

Today we got a package in the mail from Chris's dad in Texas. If anyone knows anything about my husband Chris, then you know he's a collector. If anyone has ever been in our house, then you know our house is filled with stuff. But you haven't seen anything until you've seen his dad's house in Texas... this is where he gets his collecting bug. To illustrate, I give you Exhibit A, the Box We Got in the Mail Today.

Some of the things in this box include:

• dead Japanese Beatles (2)


• Dead locusts (3 or so)


• a little toy girl without a head


• patch for Handyman Club of America: Life Member


• pencils


• Envelope full of feathers


• boxes of feathers


• a coupon for One Hug


• little labels in french


• Wasp Nests (3)


• two bottle caps for Orange Crush


• one little yellow bullet?


• dried sunflower heads (the note says I used a paint Brush To Remove The Fuzzy stuff on The sunFlower. It's still good Bird Food. Recycle.


• antlers


• part of a skull from an animal with big flat teeth


• part of a turtle skeleton (?) with a "Barrel Full of Monkeys" toy in it (the note said: Behold "Creature Man" alias "Too Face" Looks like he ate a monkey. poor monkey.)


• Thorns from a Texas Thorn Tree


• One of those seeds covered with white stuff that floats around in the summer(very carefully packaged


• One tiny bird egg


• Some pieces of wheat


• Shell from a bullet


• a Clam shell (I think)

Everything was packaged with much care and deliberately delivered... Chris was thrilled, and I documented everything... the notes are my favorite, so I made sure to take pictures of the notes. All very much fun, quite a change to my day. Last time he sent us stuff, it included a few bird eggs and a couple of birds nests that he attached to very small photo frames... very precious but all stuff we have to be very careful with... I'm not really sure where all this stuff is going to go; we don't have a lot of space (as anyone who has come to see us knows very well). Anyways, Chris wants to do some photographs with some of this stuff, but I dunno when he'll get around to that.

Oh, Internet, we love you.

Well I was feeling a bit stressed today (busy day) until I saw this movie, which has brightened my mood considerably. I don't know why a silly news broadcast from the 90s would make me so happy, but, well, it did. You should watch it. I think it's worth the 5 minutes of your life.

crazy life

Well, if you haven't been reading Chris's updates on our week at the Savannah Film Festival, then you should do that now, because I'm not going to bother recapping what he's already done a good job of sharing. I'm to exhausted from my insane (but exciting) week. I will say that we had a great week, we met a lot of awesome people and got some really great feedback on out film, and people seemed to really love it, which has made us very excited and eager to try and get this shown to more people. As of this writing, Chris still has to post the final update from Day 6 with more news of our week, which he will do as soon as he has time.

Also my brother got married this Saturday, so that's made for a fun and busy weekend. The wedding was beautiful and there was a lot of family down for it, and we all had a great time. My only regret is that by the time we got here, we were so exhausted from our film festival week that we were hardly coherent to visit with family and friends.

That's it for now. I need to get some sleeps.

Fall Back!

Well, I decided it was my civic duty last spring to post a Spring Forward reminder, so I figured I should do the same for all you peeps relying on me to remind you when it's time to Fall Back. And Saturday night it is! We get 2am TWICE on Saturday night, and an extra hour of glorious sleeps.

I, for one, will be most greatful for the extra hour of glorious sleeps, because this weekend is the beginning of the busiest 10 days of my year (at least), and the beginning of the Savannah Film Festival, which Chris and I will going to all week. If you haven't been following along and you don't know why we're going to the film festival and why it matters, it's because we've made a movie and it will be playing at the film festival, which means we get fancy all-access passes and can go to all the shows and panel discussions. Rockin fun times. Then my only brother is gettin' hitched during the closing weekend of the festival, so we'll be missing out on the last two days of the festival because we're going down to south Florida for the wedding. It'll be exciting! I'm looking forward to seeing all my family that's making the trek down for the wedding.

Okay, too many things to do, I've done my update and warned you of the time change, so I'm off to be productive.

the sad truth

I think I worked for a place just like this Dilbert comic, especially the part where I was promised for over a year that they were ordering new computers for us (and it was still just in the promise stage when I left the company). It's so funny it makes you cry, but those aren't happy tears.

changes - all fixed

had to make some hosting changes with this site, so there's been a little downtime... but I think we're all set and back to normal now. lemme know if there's any trouble with the site, so I can fix it.

An Amazing Trip

Chris and I took a few days off from normal life recently and went to see a couple of shows and visit friends in Gainesville, FL and Atlanta, GA. The Lord really blessed our time. We caught up with a BUNCH of old friends, some of whom we'd completely lost touch with, and others that we just don't see often enough. We had some amazing time of fellowship with so many old friends, and the Lord used many of them as an encouragement to us.

When we first talked about going down to Gainesville to see Less Than Jake and visit some friends, it was going to be about 2 or 3 days out of town, and I could justify that in my mind as something that we could do. But then when we talked about going from Gainesville up to Atlanta to see Sufjan Stevens as well, and visit friends there, I was torn between really wanting to do this (it was the week I had off from teaching, after all), and feeling guilty about the idea of playing when I have so many things to do, and when money has been tight lately. But in truth, there are always a million things to do, and money always feels a little tight. And there are times when we need to play. We need to fellowship. And the Lord really confirmed that in our trip. We really needed this, and there was nothing to "feel guilty" about.

Anyways, the short recap of what we did... we played with the Geary's in Gainesville, and even went to Paynes Prairie to see some alligatorss (big ones- yippee!). 3 year old Cyris made us laugh a lot, and Baby Izzy is learning to walk. We stopped by the Christian Study Center and caught up with Dr. Horner and Nora Wickam. Later that day we got a call from our friend Amy who was in town from Orlando, and found out from Nora that we were in town. So we go together with her and Heather for dinner. That night we went to see Less Than Jake, had a good time, and got some sleep.

The next day we went up to Atlanta. Got there in time to spend a couple hours at the High Museum before they closed for the day... they had a bunch of photography that Chris wanted to see. Found a hotel, took a nap, then got together with my old art-school friend Beth for dinner. She took us to a most amazing restuarant called R. Thomas, with yummy organic food, and took us to her apartment to see her paintings. We had a great time with her, then went to a most awesome teahouse (11:11 Teahouse) to chill and check some email in their herb garden. I got some great tea, and we were harassed by random cats (real fuzzy cats, not hip slang for people). While we were there, our friend Stefan called... he, too, was in Atlanta! (he lives in Charlotte) HE was hanging out at a restaurant waiting for Brooke's shift to end. He gave us directions to here (including directions like "when you get to the end of this road, men in red coats will take your car away"). We got lost a couple times, but eventually made our way. We had drinks with Stefan and Brooke there until they kicked us out, then Brooke took us to another place where we hung out until THEY kicked us out. Then we went home to sleep.

The next day we met up with Brooke and Stefan again, and we ran around Atlanta all day, went to the Flying Biscuit for lunch, wandered into shops, learned that hanging a bag of water with a penny in it in your doorway wards off flies, and had an encounter with The Granite Curbs of Atlanta, which, we learned, pop tires if you get too close. That evening we got together for dinner with a bunch of friends who were going to the Sufjan concert, including 3 more Savannah people, 2 people who drove in from Gainesville, and a friend from Chattanooga. It was fun to see this concert that brought all of us together from all over the place.

I could also go on and on about how amazing the concert was, and how great Sufjan's music is, and how honest and joyous and beautiful it is, but I'll stop now.

Anyways, now we're back to life and getting work done and it turns out although I have a lot to do, it's manageable. And being out of town for a few days didn't mess anything up. And... it was awesome. The End.

Insomnia

Those of you who know me know that I do my best design work at night. For whatever reason I can be much more productive after 8pm than I can during daylight hours... and although I may spend a whole day trying to get design-type things accomplished, I seem to just be flailing about until evening. It's just the way my body works, and I've always been like this... even in high school I would half-doze through the school day, come home and take a nap (my mom would usually yell at me to wake up because she didn't understand why I was asleep in the middle of the day), eat dinner with the family, then be wide awake and ready to socialize and study until 2 or 3 in the morning, when I'd catch a couple hours of sleep before starting all over again.

Well, I lost out on a lot of productivity time over the weekend with that wretched food poisoning (I think we did settle on it being food poisoning, fever and all, because apparently that comes along with a good dose of bad food), and today I really needed to make up for it. I spent most of the day doing random work that needed to be done, took a nap from 6-7, had some dinner, and have since been staring at this computer screen, zipping away on about a thousand different tasks. I've marked a LOT off my "To Do" list tonight. The problem is, at 3:30 when I was at a good stopping place and wanted to get some sleep, I couldn't. I'm still wide awake, thinking of all the other little things that I need to do.

So here I am, almost 5am, with more little things checked off my list, trying to figure out what else I can get done. I know that tomorrow is going to be pretty miserable now that my sleep schedule is entirely out of whack, but there's not a whole lot I can do about that. So. At least I'm (finally) being productive. Considering the fact that my July was an exhausting behemoth from which I still feel like I'm trying to recover, I feel like this has been the first time I've had some control over my life in about 2 months. I must say I'm a little relieved.

yuck

Chris and I got food poisoning* from our dinner last night and have been basically out of commission all day. Throwing up takes a lot out of a person, and it's worse because we're both sick so we can't really help each other. We had to ask a friend to bring us soup, crackers, and gatorade (which she did immediately, bless her heart)... anyways, not fun. We've been in an out of sleep all day and our whole bodies hurt and we are pretty pathetic. I hope I can get a good night's sleep tonight so that hopefully tomorrow we're feeling better for church, etc.

I know, not the most exciting post, but it's what my day has been, nonetheless.

*(Aug 27 Update) Turns out it may have been a virus and not food poisoning, because we've been sick a couple days now with fevers and whatnot. Definitely not fun.

Why Organic?

God's really put the idea of fair trade it on my heart a lot recently... I know I've blogged about it a couple times in the past, but right now I'm praying about what more I can do locally to spread awareness, specifically within our church and/or local churches in general, to let people know how their dollars can make a real difference in human lives. If you would pray for me in that respect, it would mean a lot.

So today I was looking at the website for a Fair Trade organization that my pastor told me about (he just bought coffee from them for the church the other day) and I ran into something that just amazed me.

This farmer was talking about why he only grows organic coffee.

"There are two main reasons that I now run a completely organic farm. The first has to do with my Dad. I grew up on a coffee farm. My father was a farm hand on a large farm and he used to spray the herbicides. The owners made him wear the tank on his back when it was filled with harmful chemicals. One day they spilled the chemical liquid all over my father’s back. Fifteen days later his skin completely peeled off and he became so sick he could never go back to work again. He has recovered some, but at the age of 65 he still can’t walk properly as a result of the accident.

Fourteen years ago when my son Luis Gonzalo was one year old, I sprayed herbicide on some of my crops. My young son had a cut on the bottom of his foot and he walked barefoot onto the place where I had just sprayed. He started to turn purple. We rushed him to the hospital and he went into a coma for three months. He was sick for seven years and is still somewhat affected by the incident. After that event, I was convinced that I would only grow crops organically."

I've started to be able to pinpoint that a lot of my health problems are related to pesticides, growth hormones, and preservatives in a lot of the food I eat. When I started cutting those things out of my diet by only buying organic and preservative-free foods, I felt a lot better. So I know that it makes a difference. But these stories just floored me. How can farmers even think about putting these things on our food? Why does the FDA approve of this stuff that can hurt us? (but really, don't get me started on the FDA and whether or not they are concerned about our health) ... I really just don't understand. Really, when it comes down to it, you're asking people "If I give you money, will you feed poison to all these people?" and a lot of people say Yes. They say "If I don't have to see them or think about the effects, and if it means I have a more comfortable life, the sure." And that's where we get the majority of our wealthy. And that just breaks my heart to think about.

I'll probably ramble more about this kind of topic as I learn more about it.

Update

Oye. I feel more than a little exhausted. This past weekend Chris, Paul, and I drove up to West Virginia to go to Tiffany's wedding. We had a good time... the wedding was beautiful. Tiffany did a spectacular job of planning a wedding on a shoestring budget, and had everything under control. She even personally stamped about a million napkins so they'd have personalized napkins. They were super-cool. And I finally got to meet her friends Spike and Samantha, both of whom I'd heard about here and there for the past 8 years, but neither of whom I'd ever met, since one lives in Pennsylvania and the other in Portland. So that was cool. But still... driving 20 hours round-trip within a 40 hour timespan is a little tiring. Just a little.

Now I'm back to normal life, and working on a bunch of freelance projects along with my jobs, and of course, maintaining stuff for the movie. There's still alot we have to do with that this month. I predict very little sleep for this girl in the month of August... hopefully September will fare a little better. And if not September, maybe October will prove restful. I know I'm looking forward to NOT going out of town for the whole month of August.

Anyways, if you're one of the large number of people who haven't really heard from me in a coon's age* then I must apologize and give you the following explanation - I'm exhausted, and I still don't have daytime cellphone minutes until August 3rd. And I haven't made nighttime phonecalls because... well... I'm exhausted. Plus my past two weeks have been spent either out of town or with company before going out of town or recovering from being out of town. Do we see a pattern here?

* (can you tell I've been to see my grandma lately? I mean really... "a coon's age?" who says that?)

recovering

So it's been a long time since I posted anything... because life has been a little too hectic to remember to take the time to post anything. So I figured I'd give a brief (as brief as I can) update on what's going on.

My grandfather has been pretty sick, and so last weekend my dad and I traveled up to Indiana farmland to say our goodbyes to him. My mom had already flown up a few days before, and my brother also flew up briefly to see him. In the one week I was there, we said our last words to my Pappy, spent the first 2 days watching my grandfather's health fail him until he finally passed on (died in the same home he was born in, 75 years earlier), spent another 3 days dealing with all that comes with that, then 2 days for the calling and the funeral, and I left the next evening to get back home. It was a pretty intense week... since I live so far away I don't get to see my family up there very often, and there's a LOT of family up there... many of whom I don't know or hardly know. With so many friends and family coming to visit with my grandfather's death, though, we spent a lot of time visiting and getting reacquainted with people... for the first few days there was almost ALWAYS company over from the time I woke up until just a couple hours before going to bed.

It was a really important week. I was really greatful to be able to see my Pappy one last time, and to be there for all that followed. He was a strong believer and in his last week did not seem to have any fear of what was to come... he knew that it was time for him to go to heaven, and he had no doubt that's where he was going. Just hours before he died we believe he started seeing Jesus sitting with him, because he kept pointing and my mom and my aunt at one point heard him say "Jesus" as he pointed. He also gave a thumb's up as he gave his very last breath.

I guess because I knew he was weary of this world, and knew he was going Home, I didn't have such a hard time with his death as I would have if we weren't prepared for it. So I was able to enjoy and treasure the other important thing that happened on this trip - getting reacquainted with my family there. Great Aunts and Uncles, grandma, aunts and uncles, cousins, second-cousins and our "honorary-cousin." We played cards and laughed and joked and ate lots of meals together. I shared music with my 17-year-old cousin and talked to the boys about what to think about for college in the next couple years. We played with kittens and laughed at dogs and watered plants and planted a tree and pulled corn stalks where they didn't belong and plotted how to catch a rouge chipmunk and ate cookies as fast as my mom could bake them.

While all this was going on, Chris was scrambling back at home to get everything ready for the premiere of our movie in Cleveland, and Wednesday night he and our good friend Angela drove up to Cleveland for the World's Largest PEZ Convention. They spent the weekend selling shirts and other merch and pre-selling DVDs, screening the movie, and hanging out with PEZheads. They'd call me with questions when necessary, and kept me updated. Then Saturday evening they made their way 4 hours south-east to where I was at my grandmother's house, had dinner and hung out for a couple of hours, and then the three of us drove all night and into the next day to get home.

One day later, the apartment is trashed and I'm doing my best to get things cleaned up and organized and back to normal, I go back to Vidalia tomorrow for work, but I still feel exausted from the long drive and just the jolt of everything that's been going on... I could have slept all day, but that wasn't an option. Just trying to get back in the groove of things.

This next weekend is Tiffany's wedding in West Virginia... that will be another 9 hours up and 9 hours back in 2 days time. This time with new company... my old friends Amy and Paul are both carpooling with me, so that will be fun. I just hope I'm well rested for another weekend out of town.

bread update

Right. So my sprouted bread project? Big disaster. We're talking cooked top, but with uncooked liquid bubbling out of holes in the top, apple-crisp style disaster. Pretty nasty. Big waste of time. I don't think I'm cut out for intense baking. I'll stick to buying Ezekiel bread at the store.

On an exciting note, since I've started my organic food diet/detox, I haven't felt as hungry, and have a lot more energy, and feel like a better person in general. Very exciting. And I've even lost a little weight in the past week... a couple pairs of pants that haven't fit in a year or so can be zipped up, and I'm hopeful that if I give it another week, I'll be able to actually wear them comfortably. Good stuff.

busy bee

Well, I have a couple of weeks off of teaching, just working for GTA for the next couple of weeks. It's nice to have a couple weeks where I don't have to go out of town, either for work or for anything else (now that Wedding Season is taking a pause). Don't get me wrong, I had a blast going down to Gainesville for weddings and getting to see friends, but I am happy to have some time at home without rushing off. I get to recoup a little before our two consecutive weekends in Cleveland this July.

I have been keeping busy at home, though. With the movie premiere coming up, we've been doing some filming to fill in some gaps, and I've been working on some animation segments, as well as some DVD menu designs. It's going pretty well, and I'm having fun doing it, but it means I've been staring at the computer screen way too much.

I've also been reading about food issues, since my food allergies have been getting really bad, and am trying to get myself on a low-chemical diet... ya know, eating food not filled with hormones and pesticides and preservatives. For one thing, I'm allergic to at least one preservative, and for another, the growth hormones in the meat we eat doesn't stop acting like a growth hormone when it transfers from the cow's body to ours. So for the next two weeks, along with trying to eat mostly organic, I have to abstain from alcohol and caffeine... I figured a time when I'll be home for a couple weeks is the best time to go through that. Excitement.

So as an experiment, I'm trying to make my own sprouted bread. I have a feeling I'm in for disaster, but I got a recipe and I'm sprouting a bunch of seeds and beans, and then I have to grind them up into flour and make bread outta them in a couple days. I'll let you know how that goes.

Lazy

Well, last Thursday was the end of Chris's spring quarter at SCAD. A couple weeks from now he begins his final quarter, and by September he'll be done with SCAD. This past quarter was especially wearing on him, so we took this liberty this past weekend of being completely lazy bums, watching 22 saved episodes of the TV show 24 in just 3 days. We can never handle watching this particular show one week at a time, so we've been saving them up all season to have a marathon, and this weekend was the time. Now, before you go crazy thinking that we watched 22 hours of TV, I do want to remind you that without commercials and the "Previously on" that begins each episode, they're actually only 40 minutes long, so we only watched about 15 hours of TV over 3 days... not really that unreasonable, considering it was our lazy rest-up weekend. And boy, did we need it.

Now I'm back to work and everything is back to normal for me, and Chris gets to spend the next couple of weeks cleaning, organizing, and doing the millions of things he's been putting off since he's been too busy with school. I love this time because the apartment actually starts looking neater (I'm not allowed to touch his piles of stuff because I won't know where they go, so I have to be patient until these times when he's ready to clean them up).

So life has been pretty uneventful, although busy with work and other normal life stuff. Nothing much else to tell.

church

Many of you may know that for the two years we've lived in Savannah, we've had a really hard time finding a church home. There are a few placed we've tried to settle into, but to no avail... we never really felt at home anywhere, and that meant we skipped church more often than we went - it was just too hard to drag ourselves out of bed to go someplace where we didn't fit, and didn't even seem like we were really worshipping. Recently we decided to start looking again, and started with an internet search for different churches in the area, broadening our scope past reformed/PCA and more towards non-denominational. The first church we visited with our new gusto was an awkward disaster - no one spoke to us even though we looked totally lost and couldn't find the worship room, and the pastor spoke to us via a videotape. Alas.

The second church we checked out was the Vineyard Church in Savannah. I had gone to a Vineyard for a couple years in Gainesville before Chris and I started dating, so I kind of knew what to expect, but also knew that Vineyards can vary from one another enough that it wasn't necessarily the same as my old church. Long story short, we've gone back every week, and we've really enjoyed it. The pastor is really engaging AND actually teaches AND isn't afraid to tackle the touchy subjects. It's a young church overall, so we've met a lot of younger married couples as well (hooray for married couples!)

We were invited to a homegroup the second week we were there, and have had the opportunity to get to know the pastor a bit more through that, too. After knowing us for all of three weeks he came by our house to lend Chris a book yesterday, and knowing that our car was in the shop (just making sure the brakes they fixed were really fixed, because we had been hearing weird noises) he asked if we wanted to borrow one of theirs for a couple days. Thankfully we didn't need to take him up on it, but I was more than a little surprised at the offer.

So that's our exciting news. Hooray for a church home! And it couldn't have happened at a better time - right after my schedule changed so that we can't go to RUF on Wednesday nights anymore. For every season....

Showers

This weekend is Bridal Shower Weekend. Tomorrow night I'm helping to throw a shower for Tiffany in South Carolina, and Saturday night I'm helping throw a shower for my friend Greta Lyn in Savannah. So this should be a fun, if not slightly hectic, weekend. I'm looking forward to it. I am a bit worried about the shower in SC though, because the girls helping out that live there are being very uncommunicative (I asked on Monday what time they wanted me to get there, and they still haven't told me a time. They even scheduled the shower for earlier than Tiffany's fiance can be there, so the guests of honor will be late to their own shower, all because these girls don't actually talk to anyone). So pray that I will be patient and make the best of the situation and not let any of this mess up Tiffany's party in any way... I really just want her to have fun.

Now the Savannah shower, no worries. Should be smooth sailing.

TV execs are starting to get it

A while back I rambled about how TV execs aren't taking advantage of the internet as another means to get their shows (and advertisements) seen, and instead are prosecuting people who pirate TV shows, treating them as a threat. Well, it seems like they're finally starting to get it - making TV shows available for download the day after they air (with commercials) or letting you purchase them on iTunes (without commercials). Gold star!

Goose Chase

This past weekend we were in Atlanta doing some PEZ filming, and stayed the night with Chris's brother, Sam. We had a great time, and since Sam lives on a farm, had some interesting "animal encounters" that definitely aren't the norm for two downtown Savannah residents. So I took a lot of pictures of the area where he lives. Along with just enjoying some peacocks, we held baby kittens (they haven't openned their eyes yet), some baby ducks, and I was chased by a (very viscious) goose. Here are some photos of our trip:

Sam lives is the little cottage in front of that horse stable.

The peacocks were right outside Sam's house and woke me up in the morning. The male was showing off for all the females and wasn't at all concerned that I was standing right next to him

These are the ducks we got to play with

This is the only photo I managed to take while I was actually being chased by the evil goose

This is the photo I tried to take when the evil goose was flapping his wings and yelling at me and trying to bite me and I was running away.

This is Sam with the magical power to chase the goose away with some secret goose-chasing-power that I certainly cannot harness. Sam had to keep him away so I could leave.

Chris on the farm

Aside from being attacked by an evil goose, we had a good time. It's always fun to hang out with Sam. And I love animals when they're not attacking me, so that was cool.

Rodents, rodents, everywhere!

We've got something (mice, rats, possums?) living under our tub and now in one of the walls of our apartment. We've put rat poison under the house, but I dunno how much good it will do. But they wake me up at night gnawing on the wall by my head, and make all sorts of weird noises in the space inside the tub molding.That's annoying enough (I keep waiting for them to finish a hole in the wall and run into my bedroom), but I'm in Vidalia this week, and last night at the house I stay in I heard something running around above my head. Maybe it's just some noisy bugs... but it didn't quite sound like it. But wait! There's more! I get to work this morning and I hear something scampering above my head in my office at work! At first I thought I MUST either be imagining something, or a bug was really loud in the flourescent lights, but it moved around too much and scampered too much to be a bug. Our super-cool maintenance guy Lucky came by with a ladder and stuck his head up there but he didn't see anything... so I'm just hoping he scared my critter away. Man, Georgia and their rodents.

We didn't have these problems in Florida. Pro'lly because of all the snakes. I miss reptiles.

please explain

I've recently (this week) been obsessed with the absurd popularity of myspace. Notice I didn't say I was obsessed with myspace, but rather I am struggling to understand why it is so darned popular that it is listed as the second-most-trafficked website, and generates a ridiculous amount of revenue.

So far all I've figured out from it is that I can talk to people that I already talk to on the phone, or via email. I mean sure, there's the potential to "reconnect with old friends" but frankly, all I see that as is a means to find them, message them, then move on to emailing or calling them. So why do people hang out on myspace all day and talk about how they're addicted to it, and tell people that a myspace account is about as important to life as an email address or a phone number? Why, why why?

I am most perplexed because I used get why certain things were popular online, being a child of the interet and an early adopter of email (before people knew what email was, I was running up bills on Prodigy when they had a 30-email-a-month limit that I didn't realize existed). So I feel a little out of touch that I can't figure out why it's so darned popular.

Explain, please.

Last NYC post - yummy food

So I think this is the last thing I promised to rave about from our trip to New York... the food. I think I will just have to say that I don't think I can ever enjoy Olive Garden again after eating Italian in Little Italy. I honestly didn't know that olive oil could taste so amazing... and their pasta tasted homemade (another thing I'd never had)... it was just so fresh and amazing, I couldn't believe it. And we found a great sushi place in the East Village that had 50% off all their sushi all the time, so we got to get fancier sushi than usual and still pay less than we would have getting boring sushi back home. Yum! We had a crazy experience at a chinese restaurant in Chinatown (no one spoke english, even our table-mates, and they gave us forks because we're white). And we had most fantastic Thai food in Soho. OOh! And bagels! The only place to get bagels in Savannah are Atlanta Bread Company and Panera... and they're $1 for a plain bagel... so we were excited to be able to walk a block or so in any direction and get bagels every morning... real bagels, not Sam's Club or Atlanta Bread bagels.

Really, pretty much every meal was yummy and fun and all we had to do any time we were hungry was pick a random part of town, ride a subway if necessary, then walk a couple blocks looking at all the available options until we picked one that looked yummy and affordable. The only time this failed us is when we were in Tribeca later at night and our only option was a mexican restaurant that served hamburgers and didn't speak english and closed at 9pm... we just barely got there in time.

So we're kind of sad to be back in Savannah where there's no such thing as good bread or good bagels. But we do have cheap japanese and good pizza within walking distance of our house, to at least we have that to console us. (I actually decided that I preferred pizza-by-the-slice at Vinnie Van Go-Gos in Savannah over the Official New York Pizza at Ray's Pizza and Bagels in the East Village... that surprised me). And we can get reasonably priced Thai downtown, too. And burgers. But I will forever miss the italian and the bagels, which are pointless to look for in Savannah (unless Angela is cooking for us... she makes some killer italian food. it's in her blood).

Fear in America

So there's a website out there where someone wrote instructions for how to make your own real-life Super Mario Blocks (you know, from Super Mario Brothers) and suggestions to hang them up around town in public spaces to bring smiles to people's faces. Being a child of the 80s I think it's great... I loved Super Mario Brothers! And a lot of people have made them and hung them up around their towns, as evidenced on the website that started it all.

Recently some high school girls created their own and placed them around their town in Ohio. And... people called the cops because they were afraid of the suspicious packages they saw. And the girls "turned themselves in" explaining that it was just for fun and meant no harm. But they still may face criminal charges because "The potential is always present when dealing with a suspicious package that it could be deadly," McCoy said. "In today’s day and age, you just cannot do this kind of stuff."

I don't know if I'm outraged at the ridiculousness of this situation and these police officers who think that pressing charges on teenages who didn't do anything wrong is the right thing to do, or if I'm just sad at the state of our nation that people are scared by powder residue left by doughnuts and shiny gift-wrapped boxes.

Andrea Zittel - Critical Spaces

One art show Chris and I saw while we were in NYC was Andrea Zittel's Critical Spaces show at the New Museum of Contemporary Art. I'd learned about her in art school and thought she was pretty cool, but I just really fell in love with her work when I got to see a lot of it ... then I saw a HUGE book of her stuff at an art museum in town, and had a lot of fun looking at it, so I just wanted to share and point you in the direction of her website to learn about some new art going on. My best description of her work is that she is all about conserving space and minimalism... and considering my apartment is crammed full of my husband's stuff that he can't bear to part with, I tend to gravitate more and more towards the idea of minimalist living (considering it's something I'll never experience). She started her artwork while living in a 200 sq ft apartment in Boston, which I think is an understandable start to this kind of work. :)

Anyways, she's basically all about interior design and conservation and establishing order and organization... and she totally lives out all of these things that she creates as art... and I think it's pretty awesome... and that's about it.

Spring Forward!

If you're like me, and you don't pay attention to these kinds of things, and last fall you learned that the world had set their clocks back an hour when you looked at your cell phone and it said 10am instead of 11am and you realized you could have slept in, and no one at work sends out mass emails to remind you and your church newsletter ALSO doesn't remind you about this, then you definitely need me to tell you to SPRING FORWARD tonight... that's right, there will be no 2am on April 2nd, the world will automagically shift to 3am ... and your clocks should do the same, or else you will miss church or work or Sunday Morning Shootout on AMC... or whatever you do with your Sunday... until you check a computer or a cell phone and realize the time is different.

Of course, I learn almost every daylight savings day that EVERYONE but me and Chris inherently knows when these things happen, but NO ONE thinks it's necessary to remind anyone because they think everyone else inherently knows, as well (something about everyone but me watching the news or reading the newspaper?). So since this year I thought to check and set my calendar to remind me, I thought I would remind all of you, too, just in case it slipped past your magic radar.

Vacation Photo

So after going through the 500 pictures Chris took over out vacation, I realized that we're not really good at taking "vacation photos" ... not a whole lot of touristy pictures of places we go, and no pictures of the two of us anywhere... except for this one Chris took of us looking at a Robert Smithson sculpture at the MOMA. Aaaand... that's about it.

Click for the rest of the picture.

NYC - Hooray for Subways!

So one of my favorite things about New York City (other than the museums and galleries which, as you know, I burned myself out on despite my love for them all) is the public transportation. I really love to walk, and that's the whole reason we live where we do in Savannah, is that we can walk to a good number of places in Downtown. Our favorite coffee, restaurants, health food store, and Chris's classes are all in walking distances from our home. But when we need something from a big store or real groceries, or if we have jobs outside of downtown, the public transportation in this town is ridiculous at best, so we have to get in the car and drive. Especially with gas prices what they are, and the fact that our economy eats up oil like we're not fighting a war over it, I would really prefer not to have to rely on gas as much as I do. Not to mention cars just feed into our ability to lose ourselves in our own little worlds and pretend that no one else really exists and that nothing is as important as ourselves. (and that car that just cut me off isn't another human being with his own issues and things on his mind, it's this big machine that just upped my blood pressure unreasonably). So I love subways and buses (when they actually go places at reasonable times) because not only do I get some exercise walking to and from the subway, but I'm actually interacting with society. Sure, I don't really feel like talking to random people on the subway, but at least I have to acknowledge them... and it's kind of fun to watch people on subways, anyhow. Not to mention it's not wasting extra fuel.

The only thing I haven't figured out is how people buy lots of groceries if you're riding on subways. My guess is either 1) You don't get much at a time, or 2) you order it and have it delivered. Maybe there's another magical way this works, but that's all I've figured out.

So now I'm all about wanting to live somewhere with subways. And walking. Lots of subways and walking (or biking, but that's not really a possibility in Manhattan if you're not a fan of being run down by psycho drivers).

That's all I have to say about this.

Back from vacation - thoughts on Art.

Well, Chris has been doing a fantastic job of talking about our trip on his side of this website. He was a lot more diligent about taking time to do things online, whereas I barely got on the computer the whole trip... I was usually too tired once I had the opportunity, and was much more concerned with showering and sleeping.

So what I will add to Chris's accounts are a lot of extra little tidbits. Like my pedometer tells me that we walked, on average, 10 miles a day. I typically (if I'm lucky) manage to walk about 3 miles a day, and the recommended is 5 miles a day. So this was a lot more walking than we were used to... my feet and legs were killing me all the time, but we never wanted to stop because there was so much we wanted to see each day. We went to every museum we wanted to go to, plus PS1 (a division of the MOMA, which was awesome) and the Philadelphia Museum of Art that weren't on our planned list. We also went to every gallery we knew we wanted to see, plus a bunch that we just wandered into that had some awesome stuff (like a Nan Goldin exhibit, and one with some Matthew Barney prints). And we saw so much artwork that I started to get sick of artwork.

Really, I enjoyed everywhere we went. But I am more interested in modern art than I am in the older stuff... basically, I care most about anything from Dada onward than from anything before, and I have the most knowledge of art from Dada onward. And I love Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art... really, I LOVE this stuff... but I got really tired of art museums that seem to think that people stopped creating art after Pop Art. It got to the point that by the 4th or 5th museum, when I rounded a corner and saw another room full of Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko and Barnet Newman, I would inwardly groan. I really got tired of seeing the same stuff... I wanted something newer! Give me some Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, or George Segal! I know you own some of their stuff! So where is it? And those are three artists we never saw work from... very disappointing. We did see a few things from Joseph Beuys, Rachel Whiteread, and Chuck Close. But overall, the post-pop-art representation was scarce. Very disappointing to me.

I ended up enjoying the small galleries more than the large museums in a lot of ways, because it was newer work, even though most the time it was people I'd never heard of and would probably never hear of again.

I must say that I was very pleased with the amount of Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, and Marcel Duchamp work that we saw, though. Their work never gets tiring to me... the Rauchenberg Combines show at The Met was amazing... and I was well pleased with the Jasper Johns room at the Philly Museum, not to mention the Duchamp room there.

Our RUF pastor has said on multiple occasions that he things beauty, and therefore art, is objective, and that Marcel Duchamp's work is not beautiful and is therefore not art. I will have to disagree with that until the day I die, because I think the work he's done is conceptually beautiful and meaningful in ways that a lot of other "beautiful" art cannot be.

Although I will say that the more I run into Monet's work, the more it grows on me.

Anyways, this has turned into a long rambling art post... I'll talk more about the trip later... next episode will most likely be raving about the food in NYC... and there's a lot to rave about!

Tshirts!

Finally! We have t-shirts to sell to you all for our PEZ movie! Go check them out and buy them!

Donald Miller Audio Chat

So this is kind of cool. Donald Miller and Derek Webb are going to do an audio chat next Tuesday night online, and answer questions that people pose to them about social issues and such. I'm a big fan of Donald Miller, and really respect his honesty and his outlook on Christianity, so I'm really excited about it (and hoping it's available to download after the live chat, because I will be in Vidalia and unable to listen to it when it happens).

Anyways, lately I've been talking to a few people about how to bring about social change in society, and so I posted a question in hopes that they will answer it on the audio chat (or at least email me back if they can't get to it during the chat). So I figured I'd post it below since it pretty much sums up what I've been thinking about lately....

It seems to me that in today's money-driven society, our only real way to "vote" on any issue is through our spending habits. Specifically considering that large corporations seem capable of buying their way out of anything, the only thing that would speak to them would be if people stopped purchasing their products.

For example, Starbucks won't stop taking advantage of their coffee farmers unless a huge percentage of their customer base stops buying their coffee there in favor of fair trade coffee at other coffee shops (or only orders fair trade coffee options at Starbucks, when available, and otherwise doesn't purchase coffee there at all). This is because what matters to Starbucks, ultimately, is their bottom line. If it's financially in their best interest to switch entirely to fair trade coffee beans, they'll do it, but only then.

What do you think about this theory, and do you think it's a viable option for socially concerned Christians to use selective boycotting to make a difference?

That's all I have to say today.

More NYC thoughts

Well, I spent a lot of this weekend figuring out what all we wanted to do while in the Big Apple, and when we could do it all, and buying tickets for things that are best pre-ordered. And it's become abundantly clear where Chris and my priorities lie when it comes to these things, because our trip is very much a Museum Tour of New England. Our trip consists of stops in 3 places: 1 day in Washington, DC, 4 days in NYC, and 1 1/2 days in Philly (and a lot of driving). Our itenerary is basically made up of the following stops:

• Washington DC: Hirshorn Museum, and the National Gallery of Art


• New York City: MoMA, the Neue Gallery, the Whitney Biennial (!!!) and the Whitney Museum, the Guggenheim, The Met, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, and as many galleries in Chelsea as we can manage (which has about 250 galleries in about a square mile area)... specifically including the Sara Tecchia Roma Contemporary, because that one has some work from Makoto Fujimura, who is an elder in the PCA church.


• Philly: visit with the Clarks, and Chris has a list of 3 galleries he wants to go to while we're there

I mean sure, when all the galleries have closed for the night, which is about 6pm each night, we've got other places to visit as well, like the Empire State Building, Ground Zero, Central Park, the East Village, Chinatown, and as much else as we can handle before I pass out from sheer exhaustion and Chris has to carry me back to the hotel. But now that Chris has all this art history learnin' in his brain, he's just as excited to hit all these museums and galleries as I am.

This is especially exciting for me, because I tend to be really influenced by the art that I see, and I rarely have been able to actually share those experiences with anyone else. I've been able to see some amazing artwork in some amazing museums, but most of them have been by myself (or at least, once I was there, I was on my own). Museums I've experienced alone include: The Louvre and the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Hirshorn Museum, and the National Gallery of Art in DC, and a bunch of smaller places that I can't remember. And I went to the SFMoMA in San Francisco with my friend Stephen, but although he was interested in it all (or at least pretended to be) he didn't really know what he was looking at, so didn't really understand my excitement. And most specifically when I was wandering through all the art museums in DC alone a few years back, I was really aware of how much I wished there was someone I could share that experience with. So I think that's what I'm most excited about with this trip, is being able to do all of this with my husband, and knowing that he'll be just as excited about these things as I am, and we can actually talk about that experience.

So yes, I'm really psyched. And getting very anxious.

New York

Chris and I are officially going north for spring break. It's going to be way colder than I would like, but Chris has off school and I have off teaching at the same time this spring break, so we're taking advantage of that to head up and do the things we've been wanting to do for so long. So we're gonna spend about a day and a half in Washington DC on the way up to see some art museums, then to NYC for 5 days. I've never been to NYC and Chris has only been for a few hours once, so we're really excited about it, and are just starting to try and figure out what all we're going to do while we're there. I know we're really excited to go to lots of art museums, and of course things like Central Park and Times Square and stuff. But I'm not really sure how to plan or what to think about doing. So if you have any suggestions or money-saving tips or anything, let me know. We're staying in what is most likely a crappy hotel but it's only $100 a night instead of $300 a night so we're dealing with it, but we really wanted to stay in NYC near subways so we can get up and go, not try to drive anywhere or anything. So. Will be an adventure. Then we're wrapping up our trip with a couple of days in Philly, staying with the Clarks who moved there about a year ago. So I'm excited about that. Not excited about the cold, but, I will deal.

Providence

So, as always, I work in Vidalia (80 minutes from home) on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. And I stay the night in town since I work until about 10pm Tuesday, and start at about 8:30am on Wednesday. But the house I usually stay at had guests so I couldn't stay there. And for some strange reason, all the hotels in this tiny town were booked for Tuesday night. So one of my students had offered previously to let me stay with her if I ever needed to, so I took her up on the offer (and felt like a real jerk, calling her on Tuesday at work to see if I could stay with her Tuesday night). Anyways, she was super-gracious about it and so I followed her the 20 minutes to her house in a super-tiny nearby town. She and her husband are about my parents' age, and they have 3 grown sons, so they have lots of spare bedrooms. So I stayed there that night, got up in the morning and got ready to drive to work... and my car wouldn't go. It would start, and would run as long as I gave it gas, but as soon as I tried to do anything else, like break to put it in reverse, or turn on the lights, or ANYTHING, it would die.

So after trying to start it for about 10 or 15 minutes, I started to panic. Here I am in a place I know nothing about with a car that won't start and I have to be at work and I'm 90 minutes from home. Well, the woman I was staying with is the city Clerk for her town, so she just called up the chief of police to come by and help us out. He tried to start it up, no luck, then offered this suggestion, which we followed -- he called someone else to tow it to a repair shop for me, and then he called the repair shop to let them know to expect the car, while my student drove me to work. In the meantime, her husband called up the repair shop, talked to someone he knows that works there, and let him know that I had to have the car running that day if at all possible. Then when it was all fixed at 4:30pm, he called me at work, picked me up, and took me to get my car. I have a very strong hunch that if it was just little ol' me taking my car in to this (very busy) shop, my car would NOT have been ready. As it was, I made it to work on time, left work on time, and got home at about the normal time for a Wednesday. Pretty freakin' amazing, if you ask me.

When I realized I was going to have to ask this woman if I could stay with her because I didn't have anyplace else to stay, I really felt horrible because I really felt like I was intruding, and I just kept saying "God, you know what you're doing...." After today, I know exactly why He had me stay with them... because any other scenario would have been ridiculously impossible, and would most likely result in my still in Vidalia without a change of clothes or any clue of what to do until my car was fixed. It was just a real blessing, and an amazing example of how God is in control of EVERYTHING, even these relatively little things in our lives, and how He looks out for His children. I need things like this every now and then to remind who is really in control.

And that's the story of my day.

Oh yeah, the car had some grounding rod in the BACK that had corroded and was losing the connection to everything else, so the repair people had to spend half the day locating this bizarre problem, and then removing this rod, sandblasting the junk off it, and putting everything back together again. I have such bad luck with my car.

Evangelical Politics?

I found this article to be interesting, and a little promising. The article seems very similar to conversations I've had with of Christians my age, because none of us feel that either political party is close to operating biblically. So voting for one candidate is always voting against things we feel we're called to support as followers of Christ. So it's encouraging to see that this is a conversation that's really cropping up everywhere, and not just in the twenty-something age bracket. I mean heck, the LA Times is taking about it.

SCAD disappointment rant

So this weekend Chris has been busting his butt to get a proposal put together for a grant he was nominated for. It's a pretty big deal, if his proposal is selected, he will get funding to do a pretty big photo project. And he had to be nominated to even submit the proposal. So of course he's taking this opportunity really seriously, and trying to do his best to get it right. But he's never written a proposal before, and doesn't really know how to put it together in a way that it will be taken seriously by the the judges.

So he's been trying since the beginning of the month to get some faculty from SCAD (where he goes to school) to help him out. However, everyone he's asked has just told him to ask someone else. Specifically, a couple of his professors just aren't interested in taking a little bit of time to help him out. One of them just says "Well, chances are you won't get it, so don't get your hopes up" and acts like because it's not a sure thing he shouldn't even try. Another professor told him to ask a woman who works at the campus library. Her job is to help faculty write proposals, so he figured she was the best person to ask for advice. So Chris emailed her, and she never wrote back. A couple weeks later he tried again, and the woman actually forwarded his email to the professor and to the head of the photo department saying "Why is this guy bugging me? Get him out of my hair." Then she just told Chris to ask someone from the photo department (where he started, and everyone told him to ask someone else). So basically, he's completely on his own for this. We've been trying our best to get this written the best way we can figure it out, but it's really frustrating that we're going way into debt for this school because it's supposed to be so great, and NO ONE can be bothered to DO THEIR JOB and help a student who has a good opportunity. I mean, if he gets this, it's good news for SCAD as a whole, because one of their students won the grant. So why won't anyone take a little bit of time to help him out?

So today is the day the proposal is due. He was up til 4 in the morning working on it, I got up this morning to proofread and add some suggestions. He printed out a few copies, and took it down to the photo building try to hunt down anyone he can to get some last minute input. I'm hoping if he's in their faces with a proposal, SOMEONE will feel obligated to give him 10 minutes of their life. Here's hoping.

Less Than Jake

Well, after a few months of trying to get an interview with Vinnie from Less Than Jake, we were finally able to sit down with him in their studio in Gainesville, FL yesterday evening. It went really well, and was definitely worth the drive, because he had lots to say about his hobby of collecting PEZ. This was the last big thing on our To Do list for the movie, so we had a great sense of accomplishment, especially since it was the FIRST thing on our To Do list when we decided to make the movie.

Considering I have a vivid memory of my friend Travis running around in French class when I was 16 or 17 with a Taz PEZ dispenser, all because LTJ liked PEZ so it was all cool and "old-skool" ... and that probably has something to do with why I had my first PEZ dispenser in the first place, which is somehow connected to why we have over 800 of the darned things now... it was pretty neat to be able to meet one of the guys. That, and, a LTJ concert was my first ever real concert right after my 18th birthday in Fort Myers. So there's all kinds of nostalgia connected to it. Kinda cool.

So anyways. Check out some photos from the interview.

apologies for the lack of posts

you know... life's busy, just haven't really had time to ramble. But here it goes... just the highlights.

We just got back from visiting family all over Florida for Christmas. We had a great time... it was good to get to see everyone, and considering we went to 5 different cities visiting family and friends, I do believe we got to see everyone. Good times, good times.

We randomly met the host of Street Smarts (a silly game show I used to watch way too much) in a New York style deli in the middle of Orlando with Amy. We were in line to order, and the guy in front of us looked really familiar, so I told Chris "that guy looks a little like the guy from Street Smarts." Chris said "hmm, if you say so." But the longer we waited in line, the more Chris started to agree. So before the guy left, Chris stopped him and asked if he was "that guy from..." and he said "Yeah, my name's Frank." He was at the Orlando Improv for the week. And he even offered to get us tickets for the show that night, but we had to be at my brother's place in Jacksonville that night, so had to turn it down. Very random encounter.

And... classes start for Chris on Thursday, and I start teaching again next Tuesday. So it's been a restful past few weeks, but the real world is about to start again. Looking forward to seeing what's next.