what am I doing?

since I've been busy out here I thought I would post all the things I would have put on Twitter, which by the way I am now putting on my site ... look at the right-hand sidebar ... Twitter is a site that's all about answering the question "What are you doing?" in 140 words or fewer to keep in touch with family and friends.

So here are some of the things I would have put on Twitter the past couple days if I had bothered to get on the computer, or if I wanted to pay for texting it from my phone ...

driving through the most glorious mountains I have ever seen

washing an endless supply of glass candleholders

running through a lumberyard

cutting fake cherry blossoms with bolt cutters

driving to Harrisburg with GPS to pick up two people I've never seen before

pickup successful.  Now arguing with the GPS voice

 ... and that brings me about up to date.  Who else wants to get on Twitter and tell us what you're doing?

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

Uncle Jim tagged me with this ...

I am (a/an):

a. audible singer

b. bike-to-work kind of gal

c. charismatic catholic

d. delicious cook

e.  excellent writer

f.  free human being

g.  gracious hostess

h.  humble ;)

i.  inquiring mind

j.  justice-and-peacenik

k.  kan't think of what starts with k

l.  loving sister, daughter, niece, aunt, cousin, friend

m. mistake-maker

n.  nearsighted  8-)

o.  optimist

p.  pushy when I have to be

q.  quiet sometimes

r.  road-tripper (also recent runner)

s.  sinner (also swing-dancer, also soccer-player)

t.  tenacious

u.  unpretentious

v.  victorious

w.  willing to try new things

x.  ???

y.  yarn user

z.  ztupendous

from PA

Just a quick update from Liberty, PA, one of the prettiest places on earth. I had a lovely drive out here Monday - ten hours just flew by :) My favorite part of the whole trip is this little five-mile section of PA 64 that I drive on right after getting off route 80. The loveliest valley you've ever seen. I'll try to stop and take pictures on the way back. The other cool part of the trip was seeing the work they're doing on 15 North out here - they're ripping up the hillside to make the highway bigger or something - it was neat to see the bare, raw, red earth and the smoke where they were burning up big tree roots. They're going to begin blasting on Monday - ooh, maybe I'll get to see some of that.

I had a lovely last week in the Bend before coming out here. Wednesday I got to have lunch with "Uncle Jim", fellow blogger and brother from the Muncie branch. Maybe this is a wierd metaphor, but I kind of think of him as a tree God planted - strong and full of life - sturdy and unshakeable - he has a lot of love to give and seems to just give it unhesitatingly. He told me a great story about inviting a bunch of people (was it 11, Jim?) over to dinner even though he has minimal cooking experience :) What a blessing, meeting him was the highlight of my week.

I did get ANOTHER six-mile run in on Saturday - still pretty amazed. I am struggling to figure out how to keep up my training while out of town but I do think I will have time for a run tomorrow morning - from here to town and back is four miles. After a run and a shower I am down towards Lewisburg for MY BROTHER'S WEDDING! The words still feel funny to say. "My brother is getting married on Saturday." Crazy! Anyway, I am super-looking forward to all the wedding prep we're going to do these next three days - I am ready to roll up my sleeves, pull back my hair, and dive in headfirst. Can't wait.

I hope to get back to a computer soon to give you more updates on how it's all going, but we'll see what happens ... in the meantime peace to you all!

i like running too

... so with the help of the HOLY SPIRIT ... this morning I jogged six miles straight.

i like basketball

Only six of us showed up to soccer last night, so after an exhausting forty-five minutes of World Cup (and the loss of one player who had to get up early this morning), everyone kind of wanted to play basketball instead. Basketball? OK, I still have vivid memories of the last time I tried to play basketball - I didn't know what the heck I was doing, I was surrounded by about a billion people, it was one of my classic sports-torture moments where all I wanted to do was hide somewhere and cry. Absolutely, totally miserable. Even after I started playing soccer, and learned a bit of volleyball, and began running, basketball was still firmly outside of my comfort zone. I mean, way outside. Like no, I will not consider playing it, thank you anyway.

But five people is just not enough to play soccer, and none of us wanted to go home, so what else were we going to do? "If y'all want to teach me how to play," I told my friends, "and if you'll bear with me when I start crying ... then OK."

But you know what? No tears. Michael gave me an EXCELLENT two-minute explanation of basketball and how to dribble and how to shoot. By the way, another vivid memory - trying to dribble a basketball down the pavement in grade school gym class - it just seemed impossible! I could not get the hang of it. Oh man, gym class, how I hated it ... anyway, last night was a different story. I was able to kind of get the basics of the game, enough to play in our little three-on-two game ... and I made a few good passes. And I actually got the ball in the basket once. And, I had fun. That is really the most amazing part. And it's really quite a tribute to Michael, Sarah, Justin and Kyle ... it's really amazing to me, to have friends who love me so much that they'll play a game with me that I barely know how to play, and that they can break through this terrible lifelong barrier I've had and actually help me have fun playing basketball. Amazing. Can I overuse that word a bit more? Amazing. Amazing. Amazing.

In other news ... running is still hard. The Sunburst 10K is 19 days away and I continue to have LOTS of trouble jogging even a mile without stopping to walk. As I told Pete the other day, at the rate I am currently going - and many people can literally walk faster than I am jogging - it will take me an entire two hours to finish the 10K. "And that," I told him, "is just not acceptable." Not just because it would be a ridiculously embarrassing time, but also because I really don't want to be running for that long of a time! Running doesn't feel very good, and I don't really want to feel that way for two hours.

But for some reason, today I feel differently about it. I've mapped out the run I plan to do tomorrow morning - three miles up Riverside and back - and it probably will take me two hours, and I'm just going to be OK with that. I don't know why running has been so bad lately, and I don't know if it will ever get better, but I'm going to do it anyway.

OK, so go back to that last paragraph and erase that "for some reason" part. I know the reason. Yesterday was Pentecost, so at our People of Praise meeting we got into small groups and prayed over one another, and among other things, one thing I asked for prayers for was that the Lord would help me with running. JUST NOW as I was writing all this I realized this is his answer. He's (probably) not going to magically make me a better runner, but he will pull me through and jog with me for the whole two hours.

Amen.

meaningless blog post

Shameful! It's been a month and a half since I last blogged. The longer I go without posting, the easier it is to say "I have nothing interesting to blog about today,"but today I am just going to get back into it despite the fact I don't have anything important to say. Let's go with my favorite format, the Random Listing of Random Thoughts.

The Power Outage. I think storms are totally awesome. Driving home from Sarah's Friday night, being pummeled by wind and rain across the field by Mayflower, I drove by a tree that was down - I think it had fallen on a power line - it was flashing and sparking. Kind of scary, like, "is something going to blow up when I drive by it?" - but also awesome. Called 911 'cause it kind of looked like it was on fire. So then when I got home I was all like "who forgot to turn on the porch light?" But nobody forgot, it was just that the power was out. Saturday morning I discovered why when I looked out my bedroom window and saw the next door neighbor's huge tree fallen over onto the power line in the alley. Lack of electricity made for a very interesting day! Thinking hard before opening the fridge so that I didn't waste the cool air. Being free from my hair-styling slavery for a day because I just plain couldn't use a hair dryer or straightening iron. Absent-mindedly flipping the light switch all darn day. Carting all my cooking supplies over to Tia's house to use her kitchen. Super-fun. (No, for real, I don't mean that sarcastically. I had a great time chatting with Tia and Jeff and Molly, and letting Mason play with my keys.) The power was back on when I got home last night so now I have lovely hair and the option of cooking in our own kitchen :)

Earthquake! The other super-cool experience of the past few weeks was the earthquake that centered in southeastern Illinois but woke me up in northern Indiana. I also experienced the aftershock via the shaky table in my supervisor's office. I had an interesting conversation with a friend yesterday - being aware of the possibility of earthquakes in the Midwest was rather worrisome to him - I told him, "Why worry when you can't do anything about it? What are you gonna do, stand over the fault line and hold it together with your hands?" I don't worry much about natural disasters. Maybe I should. Well, not worry, but think about them a bit - like when we had the talk at the community meeting about what we would all do if the bird flu hit us. Yeah, I think I'm in favor of thought and preparation, but not worrying. No matter where you live you could get hit with some sort of natural disaster. And we're all going to die someday anyway right? Is that attitude too cavalier?

Running is HARD. That may be the only worthwhile thing I have to say about it.

Biking is fun. I got my old bike fixed up so I could do some cross-training and now I bike to work 2-3 times a week. Just in time for the gas prices to go up! The ride to work is only about 20 minutes, if that, and I also have a really short ride from work to my favorite coffee shops on my lunch break. And I'm being nicer to the environment. And getting healthier. Super fun.

OK, well, that's enough for now. I will blog again another day. Probably.

a very long post from a very short trip

Eight hours on the road after a full day of work, then three days in the Twin Cities, then another long drive back ... we had a GREAT time on our crazy road trip. Here are some highlights ...

... us girls (Sarah H., Cat and me) woke up Friday morning to find the Coleman's kitchen covered with post-it notes telling us where to find cereal, silverware, and anything else we might need ... so that our sleepy little minds had little to no thinking to do :)

... MC Ferber (not to be confused with MC Hammer) guided us to the Mall of America where we parked on the Indiana level of the garage ;) It's hard to say whether we had more fun riding the roller coaster or running down the up escalator at the mall. We (mostly I) were (was) dismayed to find that PB Loco was closed, but I did get some fun gifts at Sox Appeal, which later prompted Bill R. to tell Anne B. that she was looking soxy. I also finally found the mandoline I have wanted for so long, which I used to make homemade potato chips last week. Only about half of them burned, the rest were tasty ;)

... we then joined up with Sarah C. at the end of her day working at the Mill City Museum. It's hard for me to explain to people how interesting this place is! The museum is about the history of the flour milling industry in Minneapolis. That sounds pretty dry but I love learning about labor and industry so I found it fascinating. Our visit included viewing the Minneapolis in 19 Minutes movie, which was pretty fun. Did you know that Minneapolis owes its existence to St. Anthony Falls?

... Friday night we had dinner at the Colemans' house with some folks from the campus area. We all prepared it together and had a ton of fun! Afterwards the guys (Justin, Peter, Michael B) went to hang out with some guys in Dinkytown while the girls hung out with Sarah, Rose, Janelle, Christine, Mary Clare, and Beth. We played Pop 5 and the South Bend girls tried not to fall asleep too ridiculously early, but it was hard ;)

... Saturday morning was the Minneapolis Institute of Art where one of the highlights for me was the flying baby Jesus picture. I don't go to art museums much and didn't realize how much I enjoy them ... after half an hour looking at art - slowly, taking my time with each painting, then trying to catch up with my group ;) - I felt a delightful kind of peace and contentment. I need to spend more time with art. The modern art was not as peaceful, but only because I had to think about it more. I don't always understand modern art, but I try hard to appreciate it. (Aside: one time, years ago, as I was beginning a watercolor for a high school art class, I brushed a stroke of red onto my paper and was struck by how beautiful it was. Red is beautiful. White is beautiful. The curve of the stroke was beautiful. Ever since then I have tried to appreciate modern and abstract art.)

... we ate lunch at the Global Market and enjoyed food from: Vietnam, Cuba, East Africa, Jamaica, and Trinidad. Since one of my favorite coworker-friends is from Trinidad, I was especially excited to try a Trini drink called sorrel, which I didn't particularly love, but Rose did so she finished it for me :)

... we took a quick trip to the Cathedral of St. Paul. The interior of the dome was encircled by Psalm 150 - it was in fancier language but here it is in the Message translation:

Hallelujah! Praise God in his holy house of worship,
praise him under the open skies;
Praise him for his acts of power,
praise him for his magnificent greatness;
Praise with a blast on the trumpet,
praise by strumming soft strings;
Praise him with castanets and dance,
praise him with banjo and flute;
Praise him with cymbals and a big bass drum,
praise him with fiddles and mandolin.
Let every living, breathing creature praise God!
Hallelujah!

... we also did a mini-visit to the Como Conservatory which was lovely and warm and full of fresh flowers. But the name of it just called me back to days of studying at the CoMo (Coleman Morse) building at ND ... Peter and I shared fond memories of the comfy couches and free soda :)

... we went to a terrific Mass at St. Peter Claver church. It was lively and diverse and the sign of peace took a nice long time. Check out this article on the parish.

... and then we had dinner in Dinkytown. We ate with different sections - I was delighted to spend time with the Action section and get to hear more about what they are doing - I hear that another section was celebrating Dan Ficker's birthday - so we all had a great time. After dinner people hung out and chatted or played a game of bowls that was so loud that although it was being played on the third floor, you could hear it in the kitchen. Personally, my favorite thing about Dinkytown was that every time I turned around I saw another person that I met some time in Allendale :)

... Saturday morning was brunch with the Theis family where Mary Clare is in household. Oh my gosh, Jen Theis's pancakes are the best. I copied down her recipe. I also had a ball talking to her about household. But the highlight was definitely when one of the little Theis girls sang "the Little Mermaid song" to us ... unfortunately there is no way to convey that experience in a blog post. If only I had recorded it.

... Our last hurrah in Minnesota was the campus area meeting. The coordinator apologized that he hadn't planned anything special for the meeting - he was a wee bit distracted by the birth of his daughter Charis just a few days before - but it was really one of the highlights of the trip. The campus area was the most tight-knit, we-are-a-family, let's-really-live-life-together area I've ever seen and it sparked a discussion during our ride home about what the role of the area in PoP life should be. I was also delighted to see my friends the Wilsons who took care of me during my summer service project in Indianapolis and now live in MN with their gorgeous little daughter Claire. I also got to re-introduce Mike Wilson to Cat, whose household he lived in when she was very small. Fun times.

... and that's all for now. I promise to post photos later ... also in coming attractions is a post about our day trip to Chicago ... stay tuned!