So ... last week was summer camp with the student ministry at my church. Part of my responsibilities this year included helping the senior class produce camp news every day. It's *exhausting* because we film after midnight usually and then I have a few hours to edit and have ready for noontime news. But ... it's all fun ;)
Here are a few of the videos we put together:
Every Christmas I am faced with a bizarre fact about myself. I'm a Christmas Light-ist. I have white christmas lights in my house - and ONLY white Christmas lights. Steve knows not to bring colored lights within 100 feet of our home. Thankfully he's also a Christmas Light-ist - although I think that just comes from growing up in a country where they didn't even have icicle lights until recently. For the past few years, we've sent boxes of icicle lights to one of his friends in England because his neighborhood has a Christmas decorating contest. Every year he wins because he's the only one on the block with the contraband icicle lights ;) And of course we only send WHITE icicle lights ...
When we're driving home each night ... my eyes are accosted with several houses with colored lights up. Do they not know? Weren't they raised right? How did it get so bad? Did no one tell them to leave those colored lights on the shelves and pick up the good stuff? The only thing worse than multi-colored lights ... are the solid red lights. A house about 4 miles from us has all their windows lined in red lights ... it looks like some evil den of demented elves or something.
Now I know lots of you have colored lights in your homes right now. I just want to tell you that its not too late. Leave your colored past behind. There's still time to come to the light ... the white light...
:propeller: At 12:44 PM on September 21, 1977 my mother was checked in by my frantic father to Bradley Memorial Hospital. I was born at 12:55 PM. :bday: According to my mom, they stopped on the way to the hospital at one of her friends house to drop off my brother - and it's lucky I wasn't born on their front porch! As my father said at lunch today - I was in a hurry then - and I have been ever since. Twenty Eight! That doesn't seem as old now as it did when I was a teenager ;)
I've turned off my newsreader this week. I was talking to a fellow blogger last week - and we agreed that it seems like every body can't stop talking about Katrina and who's to blame for the aftermath. People are either ranting about it - or linking to everyone elses rants. Other than my entry about HCA's evacuation efforts (which was a POSITIVE post), and displaying a Red Cross Donation link, I haven't felt the need to blog on the situation. What could I possibly say that would do anything for those people? But some people just can't seem to keep away from their keyboards.
Enough already. Instead of spending an hour writing a blog entry about how Bush, Brown, FEMA, black people, white people, etc are to blame for the suffering in the gulf -- get up and actually do something for the people. Drop off clothes and toiletries at the local collection point - donate some money. Clean out all the extra stuff from your house -- everyone's got stuff they can give. Blogging about it, rehashing every single thing that has happened, casting blame this way and that ... that does absolutely NOTHING for those people.
Woah! This morning I filled up for $2.59 -- on my way home tonight -- it's $2.99 ($3.01 at a gas station I saw later!!) That's a 40 cent jump in 9 hours! Pam says she read that it was $3.29 in LaVergne. Again - woah.
As a point of reference -- Steve and I drive about 60 miles a day round-trip just getting to and from work every day. $3 gallon quickly adds up.
I'm back from camp with my church's students ... and now I'm halfway through my ten year high school reunion weekend!
I can't wait for Monday :)
Tomorrow morning I leave for a week at camp with my church's students. As my internet access situation is still up in the air (or at least the speed of said internet access) - I doubt there will be much activity here this week. Well -- that and the fact that I will barely have time to breathe this week, much less have a few minutes to sit down and blog ;)
MacGyver is spending the week at his grandparents. They were up here in Nashville this weekend -- and we sent him back with them for the week. Steve's out of town this week too -- and since we're down at my parents next weekend for my reunion (more on that subject) -- we figured they could spend some time with the grand-dog -- and we'll just pick him up when we're down there next week. 
I think they're more nervous about watching Mac than they were about keeping Sarah, their grand-daughter, for the first time overnight. Maybe that's because Mac tends to get in trouble when he's visiting friends ;) 
Sarah is pretty easy to take care of! They do have one thing in common -- they're both complete cuties.
My ten-year high school reunion is two weeks away. I'm on the planning committee :censor:. (yes, I must have been smoking crack to agree to that.) We've been working on it since September of last year. That may sound like a long time - but not when you consider that we had almost 600 people in our graduating class -- so just trying to contact everyone in our class was a huge task. 
We divided up the yearbook pages amongst the committee members - so each person had about 40 people to locate.
Lesson one - we needed a bigger committee.
We gave ourselves til January of this year to locate everyone on our lists. That was about 4 months. In December, some of our committee members hadn't contacted anyone on their list yet. :banghead:
Lesson two - those people you didn't like in highschool? you still don't like them
I filled up my tank yesterday at $2.20 a gallon - and while I know that gas in the US is cheaper than almost anywhere in the world - it still irks me to pay that much when I remember getting it for 98 cents a gallon not too many years ago. I have seen the bit below many times -- but it still makes me laugh (as I grab my purse to head to Starbucks for my frapp-fix)!
Think a gallon of gas is expensive?
This makes one think, and also puts things in perspective.
| Starbucks Frappuccino Grande 16 oz. $3.99 | $31.92 per gallon |
| Diet Snapple 16 oz $1.29 | $10.32 per gallon |
| Lipton Ice Tea 16 oz $1.19 | $9.52 per gallon |
| Gatorade 20 oz $1.59 | $10.17 per gallon |
| Ocean Spray 16 oz $1.25 | $10.00 per gallon |
| Brake Fluid 12 oz $3.15 | $33.60 per gallon |
| Vick's Nyquil 6 oz $8.35 | $178.13 per gallon |
| Pepto Bismol 4 oz $3.85 | $123.20 per gallon |
| Whiteout 7 oz $1.39 | $25.42 per gallon |
| Scope 1.5 oz $0.99 | $84.48 per gallon |
| Evian water 9 oz $1.49 | $21.19 per gallon - for WATER |
So, the next time you're at the pump, be glad your car doesn't run on water, Pepto Bismal or Nyquil!
Why is it considered romantic for your significant other to do something for you because a national holiday has reminded them to do so? Is it not more romantic, more special, and certainly more meaningful, for your significant other to give you flowers, send you a card ... give you a present ... on a random day. Just a normal day ... no holiday, birthday, anniversary. Just a normal day. March 19. January 5. October 4. Whenever. On those days ... it means more because they were thinking of you all on their own.
My husband gets this. He sends me silly little cards ... gives me flowers ... gets me a starbucks on the way to pick me up ... and he does all this quite frequently ... without a national holiday having to remind him. I love that. :heartbeat:
So, on this capitalistic-greeting-card-industry-created holiday, to my husband Steve -- I say -- thank you for knowing me well enough to know you don't need to waste your money getting me flowers on Valentines Day ;)
