rock, rock

The Lord is still rocking our world, and we're still in Atlanta for the festival. Brooke and her hospitality has been a huge blessing. Friends calling out of the blue because the Lord put us on their hearts has been a strange an amazing product of the week, as well. I'll post more when there's actually something to post, instead of just lots of confused feelings and nervous tummies. Please pray.

The ATL, and please pray

Chris and I are in the ATL for about a week for the Atlanta Film Festival. We're staying with the always super Brooke Taylor, and going to see films and meet people. It's been good so far, and there are many days left.

In other news, Chris and I would appreciate your prayers as we try to see where the Lord is leading us right now. Much confusion has been ensuing as of late, and long story short, we're pretty confused and uncertain about a LOT of things. So we would appreciate your prayers for discernment and direction.

Why I shouldn't let Chris go out of town without me

So there's a trend that's been developing in my life, that goes "When Chris goes out of town, bad things happen to Kendra." The first time was when we were just dating, and Chris went to Alaska for 6 weeks. Otherwise known as The Hardest 6 Weeks Of My Life, some of the things that happened included a really bad stomach flu, the water pump in my car breaking, and my hot water heater in my apartment exploding (huge spark that woke me up, smell of burning rubber, water spraying all over the place... yeah, I'd call that exploding).

I was afraid to let him go far after all that, but I kind of had to get over it last year when Chris went up north on PEZ business for a week. The trend continued, though, because that's when a wheel was stolen off my car.

Finally, Chris went out of town for this past week. The first day I was home alone without him, I got a mild bout of food poisoning that put me out of commission for the day. I was hoping that was it for my "Bad Things Happen When Chris Is Gone," but on Saturday a flaky girl ran into the back of my car. Not a bad accident, but the back bumper is scratched up.

So now I'm thinking for sure I shouldn't let Chris take off without me again. Things are just easier to deal with when he's here (and less bad things happen).

um... ew.

I'm up way too late and watching Man vs. Wild on the Discovery Channel because that's all that's on (the guy will parachute into random places and then has to survive for a week, and get back to civilization or something... I don't usually pay really close attention to it)... and the guy is in the middle of the Moab desert and it's really hot, so he has this cloth wrapped around his head to cool him down, but it's not doing much good, because apparently it's really hot, and in fact it's so REALLY FRIGGIN HOT that he just took the cloth off his head, PEED ON IT, then wrapped it back around his face (covering all but his eyes, really). All I can think is that I can't imagine being SO MISERABLY HOT that it seems like a good idea to pee on a cloth and put it around my face to cool myself down some. (I mean, fresh pee isn't exactly chilly, either). Gross. Really, I'm just kind of praying that I never have a time in my life where it seems like a practical, useful idea to pee on a cloth and stick it on my head.

Hmm, now he just ate a raw bird eggs, then decided to cook the other one on a rock (he just broke it on the rock and it cooked, because remember, it's REALLY FRIGGIN HOT).

Okay, for all the gross and worst stuff all at once you can check out this page of videos, where the "Keeping Cool" video features that gem of a moment that sparked this blog.

My hubby isn't here to ramble all this to, and it's too late at night to call Angela, so you, dear Internet, are the only person I have to tell. I'm so glad we can talk like this, Internet. I'm so glad you listen to my randomness in the middle of the night. I hope we always stay friends.

Portland rocks!

What I didn't mention before is that Chris and I are beating around moving to Portland. The other options we were thinking about doing with the next couple years of our life all fell through, so now we figure we can go anywhere we find jobs, and we've been really interested in the PDX. Especially after visiting and getting a sense of the area, it seems like a reasonable possibility, provided we can find jobs there. So... there will be lots of prayer in the next couple months, and nothing is for certain, but that's what we're thinking.

So... some things we really loved about Portland... for one thing, people are nice. Friendly, helpful, polite, whatever... they were NICE. People working in stores, at restaurants, wherever. I found myself really surprised by that, and then I realized that I'm used to employees treating me like a nuisance they have to deal with so they can get back to doing nothing. I'm used to people mumbling at me so that I don't even understand what they're asking, or talking to their coworkers instead of helping me (except for the woman at World Market who is always super-excited about the sales, or the owner of Zunzi's who treats every customer like a rockstar). But I didn't experience that in Portland, which was pretty amazing.

Another great thing about Portlanders - they YEILD TO PEDESTRIANS! No kidding... if you're standing at a crosswalk, cards STOP for you. Rarely do they speed past, or slow down and wave at you to run across before they get there, they come to a complete stop. We even had cars stop for us at places that didn't even have a crosswalk. More than once a car would just stop, and we'd be confused about why they were stopping until they motioned to us to cross the street. We were SO CONFUSED. It was like being in a different COUNTRY or something. Pretty fantastic.

And of course there's all the yummy organic and vegetarian food options... all the organic local beers... all the flowers and happy plants, all the yarn stores and crazy hippie stores... so much FUN! And best of all, I didn't have pollen allergies while I was there, despite all the blooming stuff... but the second I got back to Savannah my eyes started watering.

AND along with being very bike-friendly and bus-friendly, Portland has cool things like car shares... which I think is just the greatest idea ever. Chris and I REALLY want to stop being so dependent on our vehicle for everything. For one thing, I would get a lot more exercise if I could bike or walk where I needed to go more often.

Granted, we didn't experience much of rainy Portland. It sprinkled a couple days we were there, but in general it was mild weather and clear skies, great for going to Japanese Gardens and the Columbia River Gorge. I'm not sure how I'd handle 3 months of rain and gray skies, but... at least it doesn't get super cold very often.

Well, this was more rambling than I expected, so I'll stop for now. Off to be productive again.

hosting switcheroo

In case the site disappears or changes briefly at any time, it's cuz I'm finally switching web hosts, trying to escape the hell that has been my current hosting situation. But HOPEFULLY everything will go smoothly.

Update: The transfer went as well as I could have possibly hoped for - yippee! Now I'm working on transfering some other sites, but I've got my site, Chris's, and this one all transferred painlessly, with minimal email downtime. Yippee!

high fives!

Today's Dinosaur Comic makes me think of one of my favorite peoples. You gotta hover over the image to get the alt text for the best part.

back from Portland!

Well, we're back in one piece, and gotta get back into normal life. I may write more rambling about fun in Portland later, but tonight I spent too much time uploading photos to my flickr account, so you can start there. I'm organizing things by tag, so you can see all things portland, or can break it up into more manageable bite-sized pieces, like the Columbia River Gorge, the Japanese Garden, or just general downtown stuff. We also took pictures of some we found around town, like some random public art, like toy horses tied to the side of the street, and the fuzzy poofs on some trees and powerline posts. There's some notable food items. Oh yeah, and flowers.

On an unrelated note, I've got a couple more crochet photos up of some newer projects. For the one or two of you who care.

It seems like some of my photos on flickr are losing their tags or disappearing, and I don't know how.

portland is awesome

so I thought I would be able to post some photos from some awesome places we went today, but we didn't bring the right cord for the camera. So... that will be a while. But I can link some things up and talk about how cool they are.

did I mention I love Portland? Lots of fun shops, places to eat and indy record stores and thrift shops and gardens and pretty trees (magnolias and dogwoods and red buds blooming all over!) And there's a Whole Foods market right in downtown... just lots of yumminess everywhere. I got a tasty organic microbrew at a pizza place (where the server was very excited about the prospect of fresh herbs on our pizza). Much coolness. It's beautiful here. Okay! On to the links!

Today we at at Hot Pot City, where you pick a soup broth flavor, and they bring it to you in a pot with a cooker under it, and then you get whatever meets and veggies and spices and noodles you want at the bar and dump 'em all in and watch it cook up. Pretty cool!

Then we went to the Japanese Garden, which is the most authentic outside of Japan. It was absolutely beautiful, and we took a whole bunch of photos, (which I guess I'll put on flickr when we get home).

Then we went to some shops, including a couple of cool yarn shops. I found some great stuff in Lint... I got a bunch of wool yarn... some to make a felted bag for me (since my first attempt turned out great), some to make Angela a felted bag with, and some that was on sale that I just had to get cuz it's awesome (usually $17 a skein, marked half off, so I got all 3), and I'll figure out what to make later. Let's just say I spent way too many $$ at Lint. But Chris told me I could get it as my anniversary present, so hooray (he got some used CDs at some indy record stores).

Oh, and I forgot to mention that Powell's Books is pretty darn awesome and huge.

We dunno what else we'll do with our next couple of days. We have two days where we only have film festival events in the evening, and then Sat/Sun will be all day, all night film festival stuff. So we have two daytimes to fill with random fun. I guess we've got to figure out what else we want to do. We do know that we want to go to Imago Dei Community Church on Sunday morning. I listen to their podcasts every week, and I really like the pastor. It's a pretty huge church, but I think it is worth checking out.

So that's what we know so far. And now I'm gonna go rest before we head out for some dinner.

not yet

sorry Limani, I haven't gotten around to posting photos of my favorite city yet. but it's pretty awesome. And today - NO RAIN! Off we go!

St. Patrick's Day in Savannah

Saturday was, of course, St. Patrick's Day. And Savannah has a pretty huge parade in the morning, then an even larger drunken party at night. We went to the former. The weather was nice, and the parade was hard to navigate through, but we walked through pretty much the whole parade route. Chris took lots of photos, so I put a few up on my flickr page. Check 'em out.

More Pi

First of all, I am saddened that Google doesn't have a cheesy logo modification for Pi Day (you know, like they do for New Year's and Chinese New Year and stuff)... But Dinosaur Comics made up for it by talking about Pi Day today... and finally, I'm quite pleased to say that I've converted Angela to the greatness of the day. Speaking of Angela, she's one of my favorite people ever, so you should read her new blog. It will undoubtably be fun for all!

Pi Day

Man, I wish I had this shirt for Pi Day. Not that I'm allowed to wear t-shirts when I'm teaching, but, maybe I'd be able to get away with it for a special occassion. Not that it matters since I don't have this shirt.

And speaking of Pi Day, thinkgeek.com tells me that 3.14 is also Albert Einsteins birthday. How cool is that?

Ribbit?

I really think these new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles look more like frogs that like turtles. And why is the movie called "TMNT" instead of the full name anyways? Is this like the rumor that Kentucky Fried Chicken are so genetically modified that they can no longer be classified as chicken, so they changed the name to KFC? Perhaps these turtles have been so mutated by CG that they can no longer be called "turtles" and must just be referred to as TMNT only.

my favorite month of the year? perhaps!

I think this may be my favorite month of every year. March is a great month anyways... in the south it's when everything is blooming and green and the temperature is nice ... and on top of that, THIS week is just filled with random fake holidays - some of my favorite fake holidays at that! Let us start with Wednesday, 3.14, which is Pi Day... the day you eat pie and act like a dork by wishing people a happy Pi Day and no one knows what you're talking about. This is immediately followed by 3.15, the day Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC (you know, "Beware the Ides of March!") ... finally, we have 3.17, Saint Patrick's Day, the day you're suppose to wear green and talk about the "Luck o' the Irish" and eat shamrock cookies. This is especially a fun day in Savannah, because they have a huge St. Patrick's Day parade, everything closes down, and everyone hangs out outside and drinks too much and wears silly green attire. The fountains have all be "greened" with food coloring, there will be much bagpipes and celtic music everywhere... I love Irish stuff, I don't know why. But for some reason I've always loved St. Patricks Day. It's just so random. This year it falls on a Saturday, so there will be more hooplah than usual, because people will come in from all over for the celebration. I'm glad I already live downtown and don't have to fight traffic to go to anything. Chris and I will probably just walk around and check things out. Some people will camp out in the squares to get prime spots for the parade.

And this, dear friends, is why I love mid-march. The End.

Epilogue: did I mention I love the end of March because it's Chris and My anniversary? This year we'll be in PORTLAND, OREGON for our anniversary, which is really stellar. Last year we went to NYC. Much enjoyment, indeed!

organic crochet

I ordered a couple small skeins of organic cotton yarn from etsy.com (which I started browsing after .tif said about a million times "have you checked out etsy? really, you need to check out etsy" so i did) ... I got the yarn in the mail today, and tonight I have myself some new hand warmers! I'm especially excited about these since my skin is so sensitive to everything; these shouldn't irritate my skin at all. huzzah!

the only thing that makes me sad is that the skeins were pretty small (they were only $3 each, after all) so I'm not sure if I have enough left to make anything else. There *might* be enough left for a hat, but I probably won't know until I'm almost done with it. The great thing about this yarn is that it's easy to take apart, so if i get to the end of the yarn and realize it's not enough, I can just take it apart and come up with something else to do with it, only time will be lost.

website issues

this website was down for a couple days... some problem with our hosting company... which if you've noticed, is always having problems lately, and doing a very poor job of communicating this to their customers. I'm looking to switch, and I'm so certain that when i do, everything will be better. But that will take time, so... let's just hope they don't screw things up terribly in the meantime to where i don't get important emails or something.

Spring Forward ... again

So although I'm sure no one learns they have to spring forward from ME, I've done this a few times now so I think it's my duty to remind everyone. Daylight Savings Time is this weekend... and apparently it's early, not that I ever know when it is, but people are reminding each other left and right this year because it's early. That also means computers might be confused, so make sure you've run your computer updates so they can reflect the new time.

Awesome timekiller

This is a pretty fun website... look at user drawings of scenes from movies, and guess the movie. But make sure you follow the directions from the little [?] icons or you probably won't do it right. The Burgg

bands and babies

This wound up to be a pretty crazy weekend. Chris and I went down to Jax to see mewithoutYou... otherwise known as the only band I'll go to because I am getting so sick of shows... then we went further down to Gainesville to stay with the Geary's so I could watch their kids while they went to see mewithoutYou the next night. Lucky for inexperienced me, the kids were in bed before Luisa and Adam left for the show, and I just had to sit around in the house. But that was just the beginning of our weekend, because that night, after the show and after everyone was home and in bed, Adam knocked on the door (3:30 am?) and told us that he was taking Luisa to the hospital... she'd been having contractions all night, but they weren't sure if she was going into labor or not, and finally decided they'd better go in at least and find out (she was, and they got her ready for her third C-section). Luckily, we were there to stay with the kids. The next morning Adam came back to get some sleep, and I got up to get the kids up and dressed and fed, and then when I started to crash after a couple hours (I had a cold, after all, and only had 4 hours sleep tops myself) I woke Chris up and made him trade off with me so I could get a little more rest.

Then later on in the afternoon we all made the trek down to the hospital to see baby Ayden*. He's a tiny cutie. Cyris was pretty excited about his new baby brother, and Izabel was about as excited as an 18 month old can get. Adam talked us into staying one more night, because Luisa and Ayden were staying in the hospital until Tuesday morning, so we left this morning. Anyways, we thought it was cool that God planned it all out for us to be at the house when this all happened, and we got to be the first ones to see the new baby. (And probably the first one to put photos up... I hope Luisa doesn't get mad at me!)

And for all you silly people who are wondering, no, it didn't make me want my own kids. At all. If anything, the whole experience made me feel completely inadequate to take care of kids all the time... I just don't have the energy for it.

*I double-checked on how they spell the names yesterday, so I swear I'm not mispelling them)