Like Butter Scraped Across Too Much Bread

This, my precious, is the definition of epic:



My only complaint? It doesn't need to be split into three two and a half hour movies. Just no.

Glimpse

I think seeing Lindsey Stirling play Transcendence live last night was the best thing that has happened all month.

 

(Electric Daisy Violin)

Raymond and I decided she's the ultimate definition of a Manic Pixie Dream Girl.

The Abyss of Adventure.

This life is wild and precious.

I only have one.

Each day, each moment, each year -- it will only happen once.

It is not a safe journey. It is not a comfortable trail.

And I am not fearless. I am a coward, I am afraid of pain and suffering, I am afraid of losing, afraid of letting myself go into the unknown.  Afraid of not being liked, afraid of failure...the list is endless.

But that fear is alright, because I am not on a journey to become a fearless hero. I am on a journey to know my Creator. To seek and find the truth.

That fear is alright, because I have a God who is beyond me. Even if I don't feel comfortable in my own skin...my God did not make me for this world.

There was this moment this past weekend in which I found myself sandwiched in the backseat of a friend's car as a surprise for her birthday. Head down, feet tucked under -- trying to be as inconspicuous and small as possible.

I watched glimpses of trees blip past my small, poorly angled view of the window -- able only to wonder what was really going on when the brakes were slammed on or the road suddenly got bumpy. And I had no concept of when we'd get there or how long the trip was.

But listening to the music coming from the speakers, loving the voices and conversations of the driver and passenger, I realized I was able to enjoy each moment while it was there because there was no telling -- not even the slightest hint -- of how long it would be there.

The end of my story is unknown.

The reasons behind events I encounter are unseen.

My view of reality is skewed, narrow, limited.

And I am not fearless.

But perhaps I can be brave. Perhaps I can have courage.

Perhaps this abyss holds adventure.

Farewell for the moment

Ack! It's the first day of summer and I'm frantically posting all of the things I wanted to post before summer began and...well...yeah. So scroll down 'cause I posted some cool things. ^.^

At any rate, I am going "off-the-grid" as they call it around here, and spending my summer free from the computer/internet/technology in general...as much as is physically possible in this world of ours.

I feel as if I have finally reached the point where I can do it without caring about how much the internet world will suffer for lack of my impeccable presence. (snort)

I am, however, posting it on here as a form of accountability to myself -- not because you really need to know, but because embrazening it on the internet somehow makes it official.

Lately I've been really sick of the kind of command technology has over my life and how dependent I am on it.

I think I still might blog occasionally -- as in, write it out in a notebook and type it up on a library computer or something. Anything so that I'm not confined inside the house to a hunk of technology during the summer, but am still free to share thoughts and discoveries.

If you need to contact me, my email is on my profile, and I'll check it every once in awhile. =)

Happy Summer!

Summer Bucket List

Read the Lord of the Rings
Read the Space Trilogy
Write a new song
Get permit
Then get license
Hike a new mountain
Vacation to a beach
Campout in the backyard
Learn Beethoven's Sonata Op. 10 No. 3 in its entirety
Buy a violin
Stay off the computer
Adventure through Pike's Place
Cook dinner more often
Read at least 5 non-fiction books

...and that's just the beginning.

In Which I Blog About The Ice Storm

I probably shouldn’t be wasting precious computer battery life.

But I am.

I mean, 6 hour battery life – you can’t blame a girl, right?

Staying up watching movies….piles of blankets, movies with my brothers, candle flames…

I know pretty much every parent in the world (as well as every internet-geek in the world) hates it when the power goes out, but I kind of like it.

Granted, the branches creaking and crashing down around my house every 10 minutes isn’t the most comforting feeling in the world, nor is the fact that I can’t sleep in my own bedroom due to a Very Large Tree just outside my bedroom window.

For those of you who don’t live within a 50 mile radius, allow me to explain:

The snow mentioned in the previous post actually all melted within a day, forcing me to attend school on Tuesday. However, it soon reappeared – much to my thrill and delight, in time for them to cancel school on Wednesday. It did the same thing again on Thursday, where I proceeded to have many sledding adventures with Very Awesome Neighbors.

However, it then froze over, rained, froze over, snowed, and any growing bit of nature is now 20 feet closer to the ground than its natural state due to the heaviness of the aforementioned frozen rain/snow/ice/rain/snow.

The power, sadly, could not hold up against all of the falling bits of nature, and I am now forced to use my battery life and walk around with my cell phone light so that I don’t trip and kill myself.

I’ve gotta say though – nothing is more fun than getting to talk on a phone that has a cord on it. Okay, maybe I’m young and techy but it’s COOL! Also, so is sleeping with lots of blankets, crunching through ice, and watching movies because you really can’t do anything else with the lights all off.

Yep. So of course you won’t read this until the power comes back ON and I have wifi again.

Living without power is kinda fun. I’m sure I’ll be tired of it at some point, but hey – life is an adventure and I might as well live it, right?

Day 2 of the ice storm!

Well. Living without power sure is freezing COLD. Praise the Lord for gas powered water heaters and stoves!

Also for neighbors with power. Who let me dry my hair and charge my laptop at their house. :)

It's kind of fun to wear 10 layers of clothing. Plus warmer outdoor temperatures have manifested themselves today, so it's not so bad.

Everything is melting all over the place now, a gigantic branch fell off our tree, and everything is drip drip dripping, with snow lopping off of all of the trees with a crunch as it hits the ice. It’s like Narnia when spring was coming!

24 hour power outage...it's good to have lights and heat again. But it's also really, really nice to not have it. I know that sounds strange, but it's nice to take a break from the internet and just let my world quietly revolve around my neighborhood. I got to hangout with my neighbor a lot this week, and we don't get to do that often.

To not have electricity makes me really grateful for it, but there's something quietly...peaceful about not having electrical wires radiating their....electricity....all around me. It's not all busy busy.

When all of the electric-things are gone, and all I'm surrounded with is the power of nature, the beauty of a storm, and the cold nipping at my nose, it leaves me in awe of the strength and might of God. I can just sit in quiet wonder of his beauty.

It was a good week.

Stay this little.

Do you ever just sit and watch the world go by?

I do that a lot. In the car going somewhere...on a plane...walking through campus...gazing out over the valley. I watch kids walk home from school, I watch my classmates, I watch the lovebirds in the corner of the room.

And the other day I was sitting in the glorious sunshine, looking over the valley.

We live close to the airport, which means 1) we get a lot of noise in the summer time and 2) we get to watch planes land and takeoff pretty much whenever we jolly well please. (this was great fun as a child)

I followed the progress of one particular airplane as it took off.

As someone who flies on a semi-frequent-ish-basis (enough to remind me how much I love it, little enough to keep me wanting to keep doing it) I love that feeling as the airplane finally begins to pick up speed.

Each step in the process of going to the airport seems to take you one step closer, from waking up at 5 in the morning to actually leaving the house with half of your world toted behind you, to that heart-thumping moment when you leave the security of those dropping you off behind as you walk away from the car.

You're thinking this is really it. Whatever it is that you've been waiting for for ages has finally come.

It like, triples when you board the plane, and then comes to a screeching halt when you start to taxi.

Forever.

And you wonder, will it ever takeoff? I could be sleeping right now.

I chew my gum nervously, worrying that the flavour will run out before we takeoff and I need it in the first place.

But it comes, you know it always will.

That moment when the airplane lurches a little and you know it's finally time.

It picks up speed, it goes faster, and faster, and faster, and just when you think you might run out of runway space, it gently lumps into the air. I say "lump" because it's like going over a speedbump with a pillow on it.

Your heart does this weird ker-thump thing, your ears go all funny, and your stomach does what it does in an elevator, except about 2.4 times more.

And if you're heading to a National speech & debate tournament, it does it about 11.9 times more.

So as I sat there, watching this airplane take off into the sky, I wondered what the people on the plane were thinking.

Were they all businessmen who were just flying because they had to, lost in the busyness of their iwhatevers and computers and papers, or who sleep right through the thrill of taking off?

Or could there be a young person on there, her heart beating with the excitement of a new place she was going, her stomach turning with the idea of what would be expected of her when she got there?

What did my world look like to them up there? I could see them, but they couldn't see me.

I was living that experience in my head as the
plane made it's way slowly towards the edge of the valley and then began to turn towards the east.

Thank you for flying Delta Airlines, we are now [insert number I never do comprehend] miles above Seattle, heading east towards Boston. Our flight attendants will be coming around shortly with refreshments. Meals are available for purchase upon request.

I watched the plane pass through a cloud.

I know what it's like to go through a cloud on a plane. The world is a tiny maze of dollhouses and then all of a sudden, there's a little fog covering it all.

I wonder if there's a child on that plane, nose pressed to the window, staring excitedly at everything that's going by.

I wonder if maybe someone is not traveling somewhere new, but somewhere old. Maybe he's going home after a long, fulfilling trip. I hope he enjoyed my favorite city.

The plane turns to the east, and eventually disappears behind the trees.

East.

There are a lot of places you can go when you turn east. That's a lot of states you could fly to.

I never want to lose my love for flying in a plane. To feel that magic, thrill, and anticipation.

There are some parts of life I have to grow up in...but when I fly, I'll always be a child.

Scenes from a Summer

This was almost like a preschool reunion or something.
I have known this amazing girl since I we were 3 years old!

My lovely new friend Emily and I at the Rebelution Conference in Portland
[post on that coming soon....ideally]

Some of the sweetest girls I know.

Me 'an my Narnia Nerd buddy at the Narnia Exhibit in Portland.

One of CS Lewis' wardrobes. :D

Cousinsauce

This is my awesome friend Heather. We've known each other since we were 4.

Last weekend we adventured out to Fort Casey and Deception Pass on Whidbey Island with some friends.

I love them.

Middle of August, wearing jeans, hiking trails. It's what we do.

We are true Washingtonians. We wade in the pacific.

Kite flying at Fort Casey

We are pretty cool, if I do say so myself.

I feel as if this picture accurately describes our relationship.

Explaining to visiting East-Coast friends what real pine trees look like. ;)

Ever seen the movie "The Wilderness Family?"

Cheesy/fake/cropped/free Space Needle souvenier :D

Definitely going on my list for best summers of the year. Oh wait, that doesn't sound right, there's only one summer per year. Oh well. ::happy sigh::

In case you were worried

As blog readers rarely are, but just to reassure myself that I am reassuring you that I have not fallen off the face of the earth, here I am.

I'm suffering from a terrible case of post-speech-tournament-disorder and withdrawals from lack-of-seeing-speech-friends.

Because of this, brain simply refuses to put the thoughts and events of the the 2011 NCFCA National tournament into understandable English. I am, however, extremely grateful for your prayers and thoughts. It was a marvelous tournament and I not only enjoyed it, but learned a few things as well. A thorough and more serious update is in the makings, I promise.

Here we go again.

It's the week where you pack up about half of your life and drag it across the state.
Where your most prized possessions become your script submission forms.
Where you wear a suit day in and day out and don't look weird.
The kind of week where copious amounts of sugar, caffeine, and snack food is not unusual.
And where the only way you make it through is by the grace of God.
Prayers are most appreciated.

Tomorrow will be really relaxed, as will Friday. But on Thursday I get/have to do 4 debate rounds and 3 speech rounds. [insert appropriately already-exhausted-look here]

And somehow, I managed to forget to bring pajamas.

Again.

=P