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.

Chris is home!

My hubby finally returned last night, with a HUGE stash of new PEZ stuff that he acquired during his trip, and 4 shotglasses for my collection (New York, Canada, Niagra Falls, Pennsylvania). And tonight he finally posted a recap of what he did, along with a lot of photos.

Of course, he doesn't have any of the photos I would expect, like pictures of him with Robby from the Goo Goo Dolls or with the president of PEZ North America. He mainly took pictures of PEZ dispensers and PEZ machinery. If I had been there, I would have been in charge of the camera, and there would be photos that were actually interesting to people that aren't obsessive PEZ collectors, but alas, this is what you get when you let the boys handle things on their own. Basically, anything I told Chris "Whatever you do, make sure you get lots of pictures of this and this, and make sure that you do this" never happened. None of it. Not ONE thing I reminded him to do was done. And here I thought I was being silly thinking they needed me along. No, not being silly, they really did need me along. Apparently they also got lost alot because neither of them knows how to read a map. ::sigh:: Men.

Non-post

This morning I went out to my car and it had all 4 wheels intact. It was a very good morning indeed.

The Case of the Missing Wheel

While Chris is galavanting all over New England for the PEZ movie, I had my own adventure Tuesday morning in Savannah, when I left my apartment to drive 90 minutes to work only to discover that my car only had 3 wheels. The other one was stolen and replaced with an old car battery which propped the car up. (yes, the whole wheel. Rim & tire. This seems to be a common question). The last thing I had stolen from me in Savannah was a bike tire off my bike, so obviously the criminals that prowl my street like rubber. And of course this would happen the first time ever that Chris has gone out of town without me since before we were married. And while everyone else I know in this town is out of the state for vacation. (This all sounds oddly familiar, because the last time I was left all alone without Chris or anyone else I knew in town, my water tank exploded on the road and I came down with an terrible stomach flu and could hardly get out of bed, let alone take care of myself).

At any rate, I spent Tuesday morning talking to police, buying lugnuts to fasten the spare doughnut to the car (thanks to some friendly officers who took me to the car supply place and put the wheel on for me), hunting down a rim that fit my car (two junkyards later), and finally waiting at Sam's for an hour to have the rim and a new tire put on the car (I was the first person TO Sam's but somehow at least 3 cars were serviced before mine... I even overheard someone telling the girl working the counter that I should have been in front of these other people). So I was massively late to work, but luckily made it in time to teach my classes. And I didn't even break down in tears. Being the big sissy I am, that's saying something. I did, however, wake Chris up to whine to him and call both my parents more than once during this whole mess.

Unfortunately, at the moment I can't say I learned anything from this ordeal, other than I should never let my husband leave the state without me.

As for Chris, he's in New Jersey today, and will be in Connecticut, New York City, and Washington DC tomorrow, and hopefully will be on his way home to me Friday. He's got all kinds of exciting stuff happening, which he'll be talking about at Making of PEZheads - The Movie when he gets a breather.

Goo & PEZ

Well, let me tell you what Chris is doing right now while I'm sitting in Savannah. Chris is in Buffalo, NY with the guitarist from the Goo Goo Dolls. No kidding. The guitarist, Robby, is working on a PEZ cartoon, and today a band he produces is filming the music video for the theme song for said PEZ cartoon. And Chris is there to film them making the music video, as well as to interview Robby, and The Juliette Dagger, which is the band doing the music video. All for the PEZ documentary. He drove 9 hours Saturday to Washington DC to pick up the other Chris, then the two of them drove 10 more hours to Buffalo last night, and they've been at this music video shoot since morning. He's having a good time. I'm jealous because I have to be responsible and work for a living. But, truth be told, I would probably be bored and freezing up there, so I guess it's not too bad.

Anyways, that is our news. We're really excited to get this kind of footage for the documentary. Good stuff. Goo stuff. Ha.

Buttons!

We have buttons! They're pretty awesome. Everyone needs a button of the Chris PEZhead on his/her backpack. You should go get one. Or twelve.

Oh, and the exciting news I've alluded to? It's close. I'll probably wait and let Chris post about it after it happens, since it's his thing, but I may not be that patient. So... Monday I should be able to let the cat out of the bag.

Kids' Thanksgiving

Today we had "The Kids' Thanksgiving" down in Jax. My brother and his fiancee hosted thanksgiving for me, Chris, and Chris's brother Sam. Our friend Paul came and had thanksgiving with us, too. Matt & Sara made the turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, broccoli casserole, stuffing, and candied yams. I made the corn casserole, green bean casserole, deviled eggs, and Chris made "pink stuff." We also brought pumpkin pie. So we had a LOT of food. It was yummy. There were leftovers to bring home. That made me happy. I really love thanksgiving. I think it's my favorite holiday. The whole point of the holiday is to eat lots of yummy food and hang out. And sleep, although I didn't get my traditional nap this year. Really, you can't beat it.

And we were pretty happy with our ability to hold our own with a full thanksgiving dinner cooked without the help of our parents, who until now were always in charge of thanksgiving preparations. I think we did a pretty good job of handling things. Our only mishaps were turkey that had to be put back in the oven to cook longer, and hard-boiled eggs that I had to nuke a bit longer because I didn't cook them all the way through. We live and learn.

the suspense is killing me

Ooh! oooh oooh! I am jumping out of my skin with exciting news about our PEZ movie, but I'm afraid to post it anywhere because I'm afraid I'll jinx* it. It seems like every time good stuff potentially will happen, it doesn't work out if we tell people. Bleh. So I'm holding it in until we have confirmation. Let's just say Chris has an exciting adventure ahead of him, and I don't because I have to be at work. Poor me. Lucky Chris. More later. In, like, a week.

* Yes, I know all my Calvinist friends are rolling their eyes at my use of the word jinx, but really, that's what it feels like. even if it's not true. that doesn't change what it feels like. so shush up and get over yourselves. ::wink::

PEZ Interview

Chris did an interview with House of PEZ website about the documentary we're making. You should check it out.

Fame and Fortune await!

...or maybe not.

Since the program I'm teaching for at Southeastern Technical College is so new, they decided to feature it in the Winter newsletter. Complete with a picture of me sitting in the Mac lab, and a quote, too. It's really strange that everyone at this school is walking around with a copy of my face staring at them.

In other news, we're selling fun new stickers for the PEZ movie... if you buy them, you're helping us to make this movie a reality. Plus I'll be your best friend. I mean, you can never have too many best friends.

Shameless PEZ plug

This past weekend we went to Myrtle Beach to film another PEZ convention. This one was a lot more laid back than the others... we got to hang out on the beach and stuff. We got some great interviews, and met the woman behind the voice of the Snapple commercials (who is an avid PEZ collector). It was a lot of fun. So our movie website has been updated with posts and photos, as well as a new trailer that went up about a week ago. Check it out - www.pezheadsthemovie.com.

Really. Check it out. Why haven't you clicked on the link yet?

Ghost Whisperer Randomness

So I was flipping channels tonight and happened across the intro for "The Ghost Whisperer" ... it's actually a pretty interesting intro, very similar to the intro for Desperate Housewives, but then I noticed that the style seemed very similar to that of Jerry Uelsmann's wife, Maggie Miller. So I googled it, and sure enough, "Each one of the frames in the opening titles of GHOST WHISPERER is based on an original creation of artist Maggie Taylor."

I'm kinda proud of myself for recognizing it. It's also kinda neat because she came and spoke to one of my digital art classes in undergrad and talked about putting live goldfish on her flatbed scanner and stuff (and then wondering why they died so quickly). Randomness. I wonder if Tiffany remembers... she was sitting next to me in class. Man, that was a long time ago.

Google Search revisited

So I discovered something kind of strange today. Chris was googling the name "skeene" yesterday, to see what pops up, and I noticed in my website hits that a couple of them came from people searching for "kendra coppage" ... which is me 2 1/2 years ago. So I was curious what pops up when I search for kendra coppage... and I discovered that there is actually another Kendra Coppage... she's a runner. Yep... all the pages that came up either referred to me, or to Kendra Coppage the runner. Funny. So I searched for kendra skeene, and I'm still the only one (hooray), but there were some pages that came up where there was a kendra and someone else with the last name skeene in the same document... and all of those were for marathons and other running-related things. That amuses me because I couldn't run anywhere if my life depended on it.

That's all I have to share today. I know. I'm boring. Sorry.

Teaching at STC

So I had my first day of actual teaching at Southeastern Technical College yesterday. How should I describe it? Well, exciting, exhausting, and excellent are probably the best descriptors.

I was actually there in the building from 9:30am - 10:00pm, and was on the road for 90 minutes before and 90 minutes afterwards. Plus, of the 12 hours I was there, I taught for 6 1/2 of those hours. So it was a pretty exhausting day. But everyone I work with is so nice, and helpful. And my students are all super-nice and really eager to learn... so it was really great, and a lot of fun for me. Plus I may already have a couple of extra responsibilities / extra hours to do some other stuff that sounds like fun. And a woman in one of my classes offered to see if anyone from her church would let me stay with them Tuesday nights so I don't have to stay in a hotel every week. Even if that doesn't work out, it was so nice of her to offer, and hopefully that will work out.

I've got my own office, and I've finally got a computer set up in there, so it's starting to feel like home. Over this next week they should get the projector set up in the Mac lab so I can do more teaching in there, with the beautiful G5s that are just for this program. And I'll be getting business cards printed, too. I'm, like, official or something.

So I'm just really excited about everything that's going on. I really feel like I'm right where God wants me right now, and I'm excited to see what He has in store next. It should be an interested couple of months coming up.

Broken Email Form

If you've ever tried to contact me via the actual "Contact" page on this site (instead of comments on this blog) then I did not get your message.

Although the contact form itself was written just fine (and any messages sent to Chris were, in fact, received), it appears that past web hosting issues were preventing me from getting my mail, unbeknownst to me. So, just so that everyone knows, I was not blowing you off if you did send me a message.

Now, rather than try to get the problem fixed (which I've tried to do before, only to encounter helpless hosting services who refuse to acknowledge there is a problem and pretend like I just don't know how to check email), I just have that page sending to a different email address, which has fixed the problem. So. Now you can contact me.

expensive tastes

So a couple years back, Tiffany brought a bunch of stuff back from Japan, and included in her stuff from Japan was a lot of green tea. The labels were all in Japanese, of course, so all I knew was that it was "Japanese green tea." And I loved it, so I drank a lot of it. Now it is gone. It's actually been gone for a while. I tried finding more, and what I found was Sencha green at Wards... but it's not quite the same.

So today I went down to the Savannah Tea Room to see if they had what I wanted. After lots of explaining and lots of tea-sniffing, we found it... and I discovered I have very expensive taste in tea. While I could get an ounce of Sencha for $3.00 from them (and I could get that at Wards for even less), it was $9.00 for an ounce of Gyokuro, which is what my taste buds crave. Alas. I settled for an ounce of Cherry Blossom Sencha, and headed back to my computer to find some Gyokruo (Jade Dew) green tea online... only to find very similar prices everywhere I go. Considering I'm always excited about how inexpensive it is to be a tea drinker, I'm just not able to bring myself, so far, to purchase some of this pricey loose tea.

So far, the cheapest I've found is here, but I'd have to buy a lot of it. Enjoying Tea also has an okay price. But for now I'm gonna keep looking for alternatives. Alas.

My brother is so cool

So my brother and his girlfriend are on vacation this week, and they stopped by to visit on Saturday. They've already done the tourist-Savannah stuff, so we basically just hung out. When I told him about my dead Mac desktop that I don't know what to do with, he decided to take a look, because he used to work at a computer repair place. Well, we didn't fix the mac, but what he *did* do is salvage my hard-drive, which made me very happy. I'm kind of afraid to take apart computer stuff, because I don't know what all the parts do. But I told him to have at it, so he took apart my external hard drive, swapped the hard drive in that with the desktop hard drive, and then we plugged that one into my new laptop... sure enough, it worked! I was able to retrieve what little was on there that wasn't on my backup drive, and then I was able to wipe it so that I can get rid of it without worrying about someone getting my old info. Ah, happy day.

We tried modding the case so that my external drive housed both harddrives, but it didn't quite work. So for now I've just got everything back to normal, and I'm still trying to figure out what to do with that desktop. Now we're guessing it's the power supply that's shot. But everything else works just fine.

shocking

This story is fantastic. Apparently some guy in Australia generated enough static electricity from the friction between his wool sweater and his synthetic jacket that he scorched carpet and melted plastic, without even realizing it. I don't know why this story makes me smile so much... it just does.

I wear many hats - The New Job blog

I have a new job.

Chris wants to be sure I specify this as "I have another job" which means I have not quit any of my other jobs.

Which means I have 3 part-time jobs, plus freelance.

Anyways. As of today, I have a new part-time job as Adjunct Faculty at Southeastern Technical College in Vidalia, FL (90 minutes from Savannah). At the end of this month I will begin teaching 2 days a week for their Computer Graphic Design Specialist certificate program. I will have my own office, and I will be teaching two courses - Intro to Computer Graphics, and Publication Design. I will teach in a mac classroom and a pc classroom that are specifically for these courses. I will be developing the curriculum for Publication Design from scratch, and modifying an existing curriculum for the Intro to Computer Graphics class. I get to pick out books and stuff. And I am so excited.

The classes are on a quarter basis, and after this fall quarter, I will most likely be teaching two different classes for the next quarter, and so on and so forth as long as they like me and I like them. This kind of thing is exactly what I've been wanting to do ... well, pretty much forever. It's a great opportunity, and a great foot in the door.

Of course, part-time doesn't pay the bills, so I'll still be working the other 3 days a week at my current job. And tomorrow my SAT class for Princeton Review starts, so that's my third part-time job (although that one is REALLY part-time, because the classes are only about 10 hours a week for a few weeks, and they are few and far between here in Savannah). Plus freelance web design, which is very random and never guaranteed (even after clients guarantee they want me to do it, it's not really guaranteed). Oh yeah, plus that movie we're making.

So I'm a busy, busy girl. But I'm a happy busy girl.

Now I must get to bed so I can be up and ready to proctor an SAT practice test in the morning.

back in savannah

Well, we're back in Savannah, after almost a full week of visiting family in Florida. We haven't been down to visit our parents since we moved to Savannah, so we figured we had to get down there (and good that we did, with all that was going on with Chris's mom). Anyways, we had a very busy long week, with a LOT of traveling (with $3 gas!!!) So I just had to map out our trek. You'll find that numbered below.

1. We started out last Wednesday night, driving the 8 hours to Fort Myers (where my family lives) but made a short pitstop in Gainesville to have dinner with a couple friends to break up the drive a little.


2. We spent two days in Fort Myers, hanging out with my family.


3. Drove to Lakeland Saturday, where Chris's family lives


4. Sunday we made a short trek back to Fort Meade to visit Chris's grandparents


5. Tuesday we headed out, stopping in Orlando to meet my sister-in-law's boyfriend


6. After killing a couple hours in Orlando, we made our way up to Jacksonville, where we had dinner with my brother and his girlfriend, then drove the rest of the way home to Savannah.

Yes, we had a busy but productive week.

And now that I'm back, I have a cold. blah. go figure.

New Orleans

If you've been following Chris's blog, you know that his mom was stuck in New Orleans during this recent ordeal after the hurricane. Well, I'm happy to report that she arrived home safely last night, and we were all there to greet her (which in itself was something, since Chris and I, as well as his brother Sam, all live in Georgia now and just happened to be coming here for the weekend already). She added some details to the story we already knew that just amazed us all... and would be, I think, almost too much to recount.

Chris may add a bit more later, but what I want to make clear from all this is the fact that the National Guard did not help these people once they arrived in New Orleans. Chris's mom was in the Superdome (after escaping her hotel that had been looted) and there were shootings and stabbings there all the time. She feared for her life, and rightly so... people had to fight to protect her on a couple of occasions. When the National Guard did finally arrive, their purpose was to block people IN the Superdome, not to protect people... they saw shootings and stabbings happening, and did nothing to stop them. They pointed their guns at people when they felt they were in danger, but did nothing to protect those who were actually in danger.

Even once they made it on a bus (Friday, after being stuck there since Wednesday), no one was concerned with really helping them. Deborah tried to tell them, whenever she could, that she had a home to go to and if they would just let her off the bus, she could get to a hotel and get herself home, but they wouldn't let her. She was not really safe on the bus, either. So she literally had to escape the bus in Fort Worth in order to get to a hotel and get a flight booked for home.

I'm just amazed and disgusted with just how little was being done to actually help these people.... And the government and the news are spinning this to be a better situation than it really is, so I think it's important that we all know just how little is being done to help. And if you've seen news stations where it look terrible (because I have) I want you to know that it is actually worse than what you've seen. We are very blessed that Deborah made it out safely.

Fair Trade Soapbox

So this past Friday, the crew of Pezheads - The Movie trecked to Gainesville, Florida, in the hopes of conducting an important interview. When that fell through (grumble grumble) we moved on to Plan B, which was to interview random people about their thoughts. We happened to be in Gainesville during the first week of classes at UF which means that the entrance to the Reitz Union was filled with student groups trying to recruit members. So we got to say hi to Steve Lammers from RUF in Gainesville, as well as Chris's friend Alan who works for Campus Crusade. Also, right next to where we were set up, was a group of grassroots-types who were informing people about Fair Trade. And they were giving out stickers, which is always a way to get Chris and my attention. So I went over to talk to the girl and learned all kinds of cool things about Fair Trade.

I mean, I already knew about Fair Trade with regards to coffee, especially, mainly due to an article in an old re:generation magazine. But it was good to get thinking about it again. I believe strongly that as a Christ-follower, I should be concerned for the well-being of others... and not just other people in Savannah, but other people living everywhere. That's why I think that healthcare should be more widely available, and that's why I get mad at people who support Right to Life but not Right To See A Doctor After You're Born Whether You've Got A Great Job Or Not. (yes, I am upset that I make too much money to get free healthcare but not enough see a doctor after I've paid my rent). Anyways. Back to Fair Trade.

I would do a terrible job of trying to explain the whole idea behind it, but Oxfam Fair Trade does a fabulous job for me. So you should read up about it there. The super-short version is that companies that sell coffee are buying it from the growers for less than it cost these growers to produce it, because they can. Then they sell it to us for ridiculously high prices so they can buy a new Mercedes. And I think that's disgusting. What Fair Trade does is pay growers a fair price for their coffee... above their cost of production. This still is a low enough price that companies can afford to do it without losing much by way of profit. And it's just socially responsible.

I'm really not one to rally for ... well ... anything, mainly because I'm not a big fan of debates, and rallying for something requires debating people who don't agree with you, or struggling with frustrations against people who just don't care. So I tend to just have my own convictions and stick with them, without doing much to try and do anything about it. Terrible, I know. But it's true. The same way I don't walk around trying to "evangalize" to every non-christian I meet, I also don't walk around yelling at people for drinking Starbucks coffee. But I do try to "vote" based on how I spend my money, however small a contribution that is. Chris and I, eventually, want to open a coffee shop... at which point I want to serve only Fair Trade coffee. But in the short term, I was thinking "I should only buy coffee from places that serve Fair Trade Coffee." But that opens a whole new can of worms.

The only place I know of near me that serves Fair Trade coffee is The Sentient Bean. That's great when I'm at home, because it's about a half-mile from my home. (And I MUST point out that their double espresso is 50 cents CHEAPER than the coffee shop 2 doors down from my office, and at least 25 cents CHEAPER than Starbucks, neither of which buy their coffee at a fair price. Think about that). But although there are 6 coffee shops a very short distance from my work (less than a mile, and most less than half a mile), none of them serve Fair Trade, so to say that I'll only buy Fair Trade coffee paints myself into a corner of Not Buying Coffee... an idea I'm none too fond of.

But the cute grassroots girl at the Reitz Union told me that they were able to make it a requirement for coffee shops on UF campus to sell Fair Trade... even the Starbucks that moved in! So then I thought "Well, maybe I should go into these coffee shops and suggest they buy Fair Trade. Then I would be able to get coffee downtown. And I would be doing something good. I mean, it's quite likely that these people have never thought of it before, and so they aren't consciously ripping off coffee farmers in 3rd world countries.

So that's my new plan. And by ranting about it here, I may feel a little more fire under my butt to actually do it. Stay tuned.

Oh yes, and I must point out that the Christian Study Center of Gainesville serves fair trade coffee (way to go, Dr. Horner!). And coffee shop owners can buy organic Fair Trade coffee directly from Sweetwater Coffee in Gainesville. Man, I love Gainesville.

new computer

My new apple has arrived! Finally, I'm back on a mac... and a sleek thin 15" powerbook that fits nicely in my backpack, at that. =) Much happiness. Now, if you'll excuse me, I must return to customizing my new extension of myself.

books

Today I finished reading Blue Like Jazz. I would definitely recommend it... the author is just really honest about his thoughts about God and spirituality, and just dealing with things in life. It was great... and awesome because he was so open to admit that he doesn't know everything, that he has faults, and here's what he's learned from some of his faults, and here's what he's learned about God and about life and about love from other people. Very great food for thought. And he's a bit of a hippie liberal, which is great too, because a lot of his non-conventional thoughts on stuff really resonated with what I think... and it's just good to remember sometimes that not every Christian is a die-hard Republican.

I also finished listening to the audio book of Lord of the Flies today. Good book. Disturbing. I had a friend in High School who had read it and felt it was necessary to add "I have the conch!" to many conversations, so I kept being reminded of that throughout the book. She also felt it was appropriate to interrupt conversations with "But I'm cute!" ... that has nothing to do with Lord of the Flies, I just remembered it.

I'm going to bed now.

apples and green peppers

So when I said my computer wasn't functioning well, what i really meant was that it won't boot up. I suspected it had big problems, but thought maybe, just maybe, a cord came loose and that once I dug around through all the cords, it would start up again, but I was wrong. (Sorry, John, but you can still have it if you want to try and make it boot up). So I finally bit the bullet and ordered my new laptop. I mean, I'm a web designer. I can't very well be without a computer. So I'm all kinds of excited for when my shiny new apple comes to my door. It should be soon.

In other news, I gave up on my green pepper plant about a month ago. It was crawling with bugs and flowering but not actually creating peppers, no matter how hard I tried to pollenate the flowers. So I gave up, stuck him out on our back porch where I was sure we'd forget about him (it's kind of a pain to get to our back porch, and it's nothing to look at, so basically the only person to go out there is Chris, when taking out the garbage). Well, much to my surprise, it's completely thriving out there. Chris watered it while I forgot about it, and the rain's been helping with the watering, too. Plus, green pepper plants love heat, so I guess it's having a great time in the 97 degree whether as opposed to the 78 degree weather indoors. Because, much to my surprise, I have a single solitary green pepper growing on it now. Oh joy and happiness. I can't wait for it to get big so I cut him up and eat him. Now at least I know never to try and grow a green pepper indoors. Or tomatoes, cuz that one is still gigantic but lacking in fruit... I guess they need to be outside for that stuff to happen. ::sigh::

The Sleeping Bag of Myself

So in between working, prepping for the SAT classes I'm teaching soon, and sleeping, I've been doing a lot of reading lately. That's what happens when I don't have a TV... I have to find some other form of entertainment, and reading is a long-loved pastime I haven't done enough of lately. I devoured all the Harry Potter series as audio books (so I still don't know how that chick's name is spelled, cuz I haven't seen it)... and I really enjoyed them, as well as enjoying the ability to "read" and do other things at the same time, as long as those other things didn't require thought... like laundry or crocheting. I've also been doing actual reading, too (as opposed to listening). And it's been great, I've been devouring lots of stuff... some beautiful, some just bizarre, some a little of both... but whereas watching too much TV made me stupid, all this reading is causing me to internalize a lot.

Right now, for instance, I'm reading Blue Like Jazz and although some of it is just so-so, some of it is amazing. So I have all these beautiful little stories in my head, and then I don't know what to do with them, other than go through life absorbed in the beauty of these little stories. I'm way too much in myself and not in the world, I guess. It reminds me of a phrase from a book I read earlier this summer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, where Oskar talks about "zipping up the sleeping bag of myself" ... or something like that. I thought that was a beautiful phrase, and I guess that's kind of what this is like. I'm probably not making any sense, but that probably goes along with the rest of it, too.

no interesting title

Well, let's see... i haven't posted for a while because althought I've been waxing and waning between super busy and waiting on feedback from everybody about everything (like I am now) there's not much to talk about. I'm trying to make enough $$ in freelance work to get a new apple laptop, as my 5-year-old mac has decided to pretty much quit functioning on any useful level, and considering it's so old, I've pretty much given up trying to get it to behave any better. So Chris and I have been sharing his computer, but we both need it too often so that causes problems. But I need a couple other projects to go thru before I'll be able to get a new machine... so I just dream about it a lot.

I managed to finish (barely!) crocheting a baby blanket for Luisa before her shower last Saturday. It turned out very well, i must say. I was very proud. And Luisa seemed to like it, so hooray!

And... for now that's it. Nothing exciting to share about my birds or my plants (which although they're flourishing, never did really provide me with much in the way of produce). Oh! Katie gave me a wonderful goldfish shower curtain that makes me smile. I took a picture and will have to post it soon.

So that's all for now. Sorry to be so darned boring lately.

busy again

Well, I spent the past weekend in Indiana, visiting my family up there. It was a lot of fun, and great to see everyone again. I hadn't been up there in almost two years. Since I've returned, I've been busy with work, freelance projects, and crocheting (I told Luisa that I would make her a baby blanket, and the shower is this Saturday, so I don't have much time yet to finish it). So... haven't had much time to post, and haven't thought about much other than all the things i have to do. I need to get working on prepping for the SAT classes I'm teaching next month, too. I'm feeling stressed for the first time in a long time. Not a bad feeling... just different.

service rant

I don't know what's going on with companies that do their business online lately, but I haven't gotten proper service from anyone without complaining in over a month. Really, it's ridiculous. We ordered stickers to sell for the movie, and they wouldn't have arrived in time if I hadn't emailed a complaint at how long they were taking (once I complained, they printed and mailed them off overnight that day so that we got them in time). We ordered business cards that were supposed to arrive within 10 days, but they didn't arrive within 20 days and so we didn't have them for the convention. I emailed multiple times with no response, so I called and they printed them and mailed them out within 2 days. I registered a website name for a client on Tuesday, and as of today although my payment had gone through, the info hadn't actually been processed and I still couldn't access the website. I emailed on Thursday and got no response, so today (Saturday) I emailed and said that I had 5 sites with them currently (which I do) and that all further sites would be hosted with someone else if I didn't get an immediate response, and low and behold, the site was up within 2 hours. Really. Ridiculous. I'm having similar trouble with freelance work, where I am not getting paid unless I harass the accountant(s) regularly. I'm starting to get really frustrated with the way things work. Why can't any companies do their job unless I complain that they haven't done their job? Is anyone else experiencing this?

PEZ recap

This should be my last plug about our documentary for a while. Just so you know.

The PEZ convention this past weekend in Cleveland was awesome. Really. I know it sounds strange, but it was great. Even though the three of us drove 13 hours straight overnight getting there, have to wait 5 hours upon arriving at the hotel before we could check into our room, slept very little while we were there, and then drove back 13 hours straight overnight, it was all worth it. We set up a mini studio in our room to film interviews, the guys spent most of the weekend filming rooms or doing interviews, and I spent the bulk of my weekend meeting people, figuring out when people could do interviews with us, and making sure the guys were fed. I walked close to 10 miles during 2 days without even leaving the hotel, and it wasn't that large of a hotel. I didn't even realize it at the time, but looking back, yeah, it was pretty much nonstop walking. But I loved it. I like meeting people, and everyone was so nice and helpful and fun. (Even the older dealers who don't really think we're going to finish this and have a good product were very nice tolerant of us and barely even let on that they weren't taking us seriously.)

The one thing that never ceases to amaze me, though, is the amount of money people sink into their collections. Chris had a (what I thought was reasonable, even generous) $40 allowance on PEZ for the weekend, and then I gave him another $10 on the last day. But he would mention to someone (anyone!) "Yeah, I have a pretty small budget of what I can spend this weekend" they would always reply "Yeah, me too" but it soon became clear that their idea of "small budget" was something like a couple hundred dollars or more. I met an 11 year old who has been collecting for "9 or 10 years" and who must have spent over $500 on PEZ over the weekend, judging by what he told me he had already purchased when we interviewed him on Friday. Intense.

But yes. Much fun. And we have a lot more planned, although there's only one more convention we're going to film, and that's in November. But we have a lot more filming to do, overall.

So yes. That's all the excitement for now. I've actually got quite a few things keeping me busy right now, so it will probably be a while before I can post again. It's good to be busy.

PEZ-a-mania

We're here! Me, Chris, and Chris left Savannah last night at 7:30pm, and we arrived in Cleveland this morning around 9am, slept in the car for an hour, and then started wandering the hotel. We can't check into a room for another 30 minutes or so, so we're killing time in the lobby with their wireless Internet. Looks like it will be a fun weekend, although right now we all just want to take a shower and a nap.

This will probably be my only post from here, but later today we'll start posting photos and updates at our PEZheads - The Movie website, so check there.

Crazy Busy Weekend

Well I had quite a fun weekend. Friday night my friend Angela and I drove to Columbia, SC (a little over 2 hours driving) to see Tiffany and her boyfriend. They were in town just for the weekend, and I haven't seen Tif in almost 2 years, and I've never met her boyfriend, so that's why we drove there. We had sushi and coffee and yakked about college and stuff we did 4 and 5 years ago... it was fun. Then Angela and I drove back home, and I was in my bed by around 1:30am.

Then Saturday, my brother and his girlfriend came up to visit from Jax. We wandered downtown and went to Fort Pulaski and such. I haven't seen them in ages, too (at least 8 - 10 months). We had fun. It was really hot, though, and I think we all baked in the sun. So we spent some time just hanging around in my apartment playing with Google Earth. If you think google maps are fun, you've gotta download Google Earth. We were zipping around the world, looking at my grandparents' house in rural Indiana, visiting the Eiffel Tower and the Colisseum... I love this program. (Chris and Matt's girlfriend were entirely uninterested... those losers). I always sucked at Geography, so I guess this stuff is fascinating to me because I feel like I can see stuff and get a better sense of the layout of things. Especially if I have an aerial view of "That's Grandma's house, and there's the country store we always go to, and that's where they are in relation to each other" and stuff. Much fun.

I think that's about all the excitement for the weekend. Much fun. And this weekend we go to Cleveland for that PEZ convention. Oh, the excitement never stops!

Not much to say

Katie was here over the weekend for a visit, and we had a lot of fun. It was great to just spend time, hanging out with her. And we watched Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, which I was interested in seeing because it has Alexis Bledel (Rory from Gilmore Girls) in it, and I think she rocks. It seems like the movie was filled with TV actors, because another of the main characters was Joan of Arcadia, and some West Wing guy was in it, too. If you check some of the other actors on IMDB, lots of them have at least made TV drama appearances. Anyways. I was expecting it to be pretty lame, but was surprised to find that it actually have a good deal of emotion... I liked it. It was a good sappy girl movie. And I hate sappy girl movies.

My bro and his girlfriend are coming to visit this weekend, so I'll have another weekend of playing tourist and tour guide. Should be fun. The only things I like about Savannah are the things I take people around to when they're visiting, and I don't do those things regularly, so I love company.

Aaand... that's it. I'm out.

I'm a PEZhead

As many of you know (but some may not), Chris and I, along with our film major friend Chris, are making a documentary... about... PEZ. Go figure. Anyways, we're going to Cleveland at the end of the month to film a huge PEZ convention. Should be all kinds of fun. And I've had a website built for our venture for months (literally. Months.) but I just now made it live for the world to see, because I had to wait for a few kinks to be worked out with the Chrises (How DO you pluralize Chris, anyways? Is it Chriss, Chris's, Chrises, or maybe Chreese?). Yeah, this post is getting ridiculously rambly. So anyways.

The point is, go check out our website for PEZheads - The Movie. This month the guys are really getting their butts in gear with it, so there should be semi-frequent updates and such. Hoorah.

Guest(s)

My good friend Katie is coming to visit from Gainesville... she should be here sometime this afternoon. I'm excited. She was supposed to come visit last summer, but the hurricanes kept canceling our plans. Not this time! Dennis will not stop us!

I've only gotten far enough in our plans to know that we're going to Sakura for their sushi lunch special ($4.95 for two rolls, salad with ginger dressing, and tea! You can't beat that!) ... then we'll probably just wander downtown.

Sunday night her husband and father will be staying with us after their Re-Trek a bit north of us, then they'll all head home Monday. Should be fun.

After the weekend

Man, it's hard to return to work after a long weekend. It was a pretty good weekend, too. We spent lots of time with friends, which is the best, in my opinion. Thursday night was Girls' Night at my house... I made my homemade tabouli, and we just hung out for a while. Friday night we met with the other Chris about our PEZ movie (business cards and stickers have been ordered)... Saturday night we went over to Chip and Chris's house, and Angela fed us leftover enchiladas (yum!) ... and then we hung out, and then we watched a strange video-game movie called eXistenZ. Sunday I did work for half the day, and then Angela came over and we hung out forever... and then MONDAY, my Chris made lasagna, and Angela and Robbie came over to eat it... then they left to study and go to work and such, and then Angela and Chip came over that night. We were supposed to go downtown for fireworks, but I wasn't feeling up to it (girl stuff) so we hung out instead. Which, I think, was more fun than standing shoulder-to-shoulder on River Street with 85% humidity to watch some fireworks. I mean, Disney World spoiled me forever from normal fireworks, anyways.

So yes. Good food and good friends makes for good times. Not a bad way to spend the weekend.

But the fun doesn't stop there! This Friday, Katie comes to town for the weekend. It will be the first time she's made it up to Savannah, so I'm looking forward to showing her around. I'm sure it will be more good times.

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!