"Well, I'm in love too, but in an orderly fashion."

As I was dropping a friend off on campus tonight around midnight, I nearly ran over approximately 20 couples walking off into the outer reaches of campus to get some alone time on this, the first night of school. Living off campus is nice for several reasons, one of which is no open house rules. While I am as thankful for these rules as any girl can be who lived on a hall with a communal bathroom and unscrupulous hall-mates, it does propose some difficulties to a relationship. Those couples still on campus must brave the lobbies, or else wander into parking lots, fields, cars and sets of buildings to commune. Romantic, isn't it?

College relationships have many down sides, including lack of money, no privacy, and the ridiculous things one must do to spend time together. Staying up until all hours of the night was my least favorite. Biola has always been swarming with couples, but I for one am glad not to be one of them. My next relationship will play out far from the reaches of lobby dwellers, hall-mates, and campus safety patrollers. It will include jobs (which pay money!!), houses in which dwell only close friends, none of the mushy church approved PDA, and, with a little luck, the maturity and happiness that can come with order and confidence.

Only at Biola...

Why is it that the most spiritual classes I've ever taken at Biola are P.E.? I guess this is what comes from being an English major in Torrey...

Tips on How to Get Business

1.) When walking into office please, please don't chew and then smack your gum. It's gross.

2.) Don't look suprised when I tell you I am in charge of something. That's right buddy, I can be in charge of stuff.

3.) Don't try to smarm me into business with you. I can compare prices with the best of them. Watch me.

4.) Don't be happy I am scanning your card into my computer. You think I am filing it away in some technologically sound system, but really I just want to show my friends the smarm:

A Meme?

I'm not really sure what a Meme is, but Andrew tagged me, so here it goes.

Four Jobs I Have Had:

1. Snackbar Attendant (so fun, and so much free junk food)
2. Horseback riding instructor (the horses are more fun than the students)
3. Assistant Office Manager at EIP
4. Library Inventory-er and Organizer for a Private School

Four Movies I Could Watch Over and Over Again:

1. Pride and Prejudice (the long one, not the romance novel version)
2. Enchanted April
3. Wallace and Grommit
4. You've Got Mail

Four Books I Could Read Over and Over:

1. Little Women
2. Winnie the Pooh (it is so peaceful)
3. Wooster and Jeeves Novels
4. Dorothy Sayers essay on Classical Education (I love it!)

Four Places I Have Lived:

1. San Jaun Capistrano, CA (You know, in the OC)
2. Temecula, CA (Where there are NO Wigwams)
3. La Mirada, CA
4. Oxford, UK

Four TV Shows I Watch:

1. Friends
2. Dancing with the Stars (It is awesome, Abigail)
3. Wooster and Jeeves (do BBC tv shows on DVD count? I think so)
4. Lost by default, since it is on ALL THE TIME at our house

Four Places I Have Been on Vacation:

1. Hawaii (three times)
2. Italy
3. Williamsburg, VA (that's what you call an educational vacation)
4. Park City and Salt Lake, UT (returning to the Mormon roots)

Four Websites I Visit Daily:

1. Ryan's blog
2. Abigail's Blog
3. Kathy's Blog
4. The rest of my friend's blogs

Four Favorite Foods:

1. Pizza
2. Chocolate
3. Sandwiches (especially tuna!!)
4. Pad Thai

Four Places I'd Like to be Right Now:

1. Ummm, Italy, I guess. That's all

Four Bloggers I'm Tagging:

1. Kathy Tabris
2. Abigail Schilling
3. Ryan Schaffner
4. Matthew Langford

A Tribute to my Cousin Ian

I once knew a boy who had a tattoo on his shoulder, proclaiming his access to the “Luck of the Irish.” He decided it was a great tribute to his heritage, until a confused cousin informed him that they were not Irish but Scottish. They consulted their elder relatives of several generations who did indeed conclude that the family was as Scottish as Robert the Bruce. He was angry with his mother who, he claimed, had always told him he was of Irish decent. He remained quite upset until his Dad told him that he thought, perhaps, just maybe, he had a great grandfather who might be Irish. This appeased him for a while. Who knows the difference anyway, really?

True Story.

Farm Girl

Today I worked out at my parent's house, helping them prepare for the impending kitchen remodel that is so big it is requiring us to move just about everything we own to various locations on the property. This is complicated by the fact that all of those places were already full, thus forcing us to move everything out of one spot, fill it with new stuff, and move the displaced stuff somewhere else, and so on. All this moving is not only unearthing a great deal of dust and dead bugs, but through the moving of old boxes and searching for what to save and what to throw away, it upheaved thousands of memories.

My childhood was incredibly happy. My two younger sisters and I are close enough in age that our interests were never far from each other, and our toys were a collection in sets of threes. Playmobile and American Girl Dolls were two of the most prominent and coveted playthings, followed closely by Breyer horses, and, I am sorry to say, Barbies. Boxes and boxes of these treasures remain, hermetically sealed by my mother to save for "the grandchildren" ("the grandchildren" became a priority by the time I was thirteen, and my sisters still talk about being jealous that the nonexistent grandchildren got our toys, learning more quickly than most to resent their children). To look through the boxes was to remember the hours we spent with the dolls and the friends who shared our passion. Those girls' dolls are packed away too, replaced by horses, boys, and college. We are no longer playmates: we are nurses, missionaries, equestrians, nannies, scholars, musicians, and growing up. But for today it was nice to remember; nice to sit on a tail gate of the truck as dad drove from the shed, past the horses, to the garage and back again. Nice to play with our old dog who used to chew our toys in her puppy enthusiasm. Nice to see that my sisters are still my favorite people and that playing with them is still the most fun. And nicest to know that we are still happy; that the kitchen, like so much else, will soon be new; that my youngest sister will soon be in college, but that our memories will always be the kind that carry us farther forward.

Popcorn Jelly Beans, Revisited

Today I received a shipment of 36,000 Jelly Bellys. This would be more suprising except for the fact that I ordered them on Monday. For those of you who have never received this amount of Jelly Bellys, this is three huge boxes weighing about 70 pounds each. In general, I don't really care for Jelly Bellys, with one notable exception. I LOVE POPCORN JELLY BELLYS. I am now resisting the urge to dig through the boxes and boxes of one ounce bags of candy and pull out all of the popcorn flavored ones. It is hard.

Three Days and Counting

So, I am three days in to my going-to-the-gym-everyday-even-if-I-think-it-will-kill-me-because-
it-is-good-for-me experiment, and I feel like a new person. I am happy all the time and have so much energy. It's like a took a magic pill called Turbo Kick Box and everything is all better (please don't make fun of my magic pill's name).

Life, Spanish, and the Fine Art of Denial

I have one final semester left in my entire undergraduate career. This is an amazing, wonderful thing, except for one tiny problem. I have two semesters of Spanish left in my entire undergraduate career. I know that you, my readership, are an intelligent bunch, and are at this very moment thinking, "hmmm, this math doesn't add up". You would be right, Oh Readership, which brings me to my point. I am a freaking idiot.

You see, instead of taking the required Spanish courses, I have been honing my craft of finely tuned denial. I have been saying to myself, "I can pull of two semesters in 5 months! I will take online courses and they will be super easy, kind of like traffic school. I will never take Spanish at Biola again, HAHAHAHAHA!" And, as deadlines for my intended Spanish study wizz by unheeded, I am beginning to worry a bit about where my denial has gotten me.

Never one to be easily intimidated however, my denial has now taken a new, more alluring form. Kathy and I have decided that actually taking Spanish is for the faint of heart and weak of mind. We instead will test out of any required classes and be free as birds! This high risk strategy is so beautiful it is hard to take ones eyes off of it long enough to go sign up for online classes. See you at my graduation in 2007.

Molly and Kit

No, I am not referring to the two most modern members of the American Girl Doll Family (a similarity I just recognized), but to our two wonderful dogs. Molly has been an upstanding member of our family and paragon of canine virtue for all the fourteen years I have known her, but this post will focus on the more recent addition, our overwhelmingly happy and large Kit.

Kit was given to us by an old friend when she grew too big for their small children to handle. While Molly was instantly impressive with her sheer force of brain power, ability to know us kids by name, willingness to go anywhere and everywhere with us, her ability to run faster then most cheetas, and her jumping of 6 foot fences in a single bound, Kit at first glance seemed to be kind of a failure at being a dog. She appeared to be incredibly stupid, more awkward then any animal I have ever encountered (she would knock over everything in her path including us), and was actually physically incapable of running. She could walk, but get her to go faster and she turned into a strange hybrid of dog and camel, trotting towards you, never stopping in time to not take out your knee. Dad actually picked her name for its ease and effectiveness when yelled angrily across the yard.

Despite her unpromising beginning, Kit has unexpectedly turned into one of the great blessings in my life. She has learned to run and to be slightly more graceful around the house, but she has also demonstrated a personality not frequently encountered. Kit is affection incarnate. It never matters if you have been gone three weeks or just walked down the street to get the mail, as soon as you get back to the driveway she will greet you with the same incredible enthusiasm and excitement. Whenever I see her she walks up to me and licks my hand, and today when I didn't let her get on the porch swing with me, she walked around the swing in a circle, whimpering until I pet her. She has been trying to be very good and quiet in the house, but whenever you mention her name you can hear the solid thumping of her tail from where ever she may be laying.

The other night I got to experience another side of her that caused my warm affection for her to turn into genuine love. I was home alone one night here at my parents, which can be a little scary. We have few neighbors, and live well out of town, so nights are very quiet. I had finished the movie I was watching and went upstairs to go to bed. Both of the dogs followed me up and layed down in the hall. Just as I was about to fall asleep, they both start barking loudly and ran downstairs. I freaked out. I knew none of the doors were locked, I was alone, and something in our normally quiet neighborhood was causing our normally quiet dogs to bark incessantly. I creeped downstairs and locked all the doors, and Kit followed me back up. Once I got back in bed, she sat down right in front of my bed, facing the door. I felt instantly safe, seeing her planted in front of me. Though it was probably nothing outside, I knew that she was their to protect me from it. She only moved to come and lick my hand or to patrol downstairs once or twice, and then she would promptly sit down in front of me again. She sat there for over an hour until my parents came home.

If I am able to find a man who shows the same balance of love and protection I get from this dog, I will be one lucky, lucky woman. If not, I know Kit will always be my affectionate friend with big scary teeth.

What Women Want

After watching the aforementioned movie with Kathy and Tara:

Kathy: So what do women want?

Tara and me: ummm...

Kathy: Mel Gibson!