I just figured out what I want to be for Hallowe'en next year, so I'd better get crackin' on finding some friends so I can show someone...

Also, yesterday I told this girl at work that I was thinking about being my grandma in the '70s because I had a paisley dress and a short curly black wig, so she said she was disappointed this morning when I didn't wear it to work. Sorry. So I told her about the time when I was working at the refugee center and one of the other teachers and I decided to dress like old ladies one random work-day. We wore awesome old lady dresses and orthopedic shoes and the students thought we were nuts. I think Missy was pretty much like, yeah that sounds like something you'd do. I don't even remember what I was telling them the other day, but she was just like, you're so weird. Yeah, sounds about right. But I aim to please.

And finally, apparently the other day, when my head hurt so badly that I thought my eyeball was going to explode(old school migraine for me), that when I was pressing on my brow bone to make it feel moderately better, I pressed so hard that I have a bruise there today. Good job, self.

Since it's been nice this week, I've been taking Kazoo on run-walks(we alternate fast walking with sprinting) after I take Shannon to school. Not to sound like a baby or anything, but dude, running on asphalt makes my shins hurt. In fact, all week it's just been hurting while I do it, but now my shins just hurt. Way to go, oldness.

Things I learned today

If I don't eat anything until 2:30 in the afternoon, I get shaky and it won't go away for a long time after I eat something. Fun times. Also, if I am working on a thing pertaining to KY(but not Bowling Green) and another thing pertaining to NY, I can get incredibly confused when I'm working on NY stuff and people call me about KY. I have to shuffle all my papers around to find the pertinent information and then people think you're stupid or insane and it's just not cool. Way to be confused, self.

Odds and ends

Sealing our windows is pretty much the best thing we've ever spent a few hours on, as it has gotten close to freezing the past couple nights and we still haven't even turned our heat about 65 degrees and it has not been super freezing in the house at any point. Yay, plastic! {jazz hands}


OK, so fellow House fans, I'd like to give last night's episode a giant "What the...?!" Seriously, House writers? After what, five seasons? Now you're going to go there? Also, the way that was shot made Hugh Laurie's balding spot on his crown stand out. And I could really tell it was a Deran Sarafian-directed episode. It was kind of a strange episode anyway. I just tried to find this clip, but was unsuccessful, but right before I watcher House last night, I watched Greek and there was this part where this girl was talking to a dude she used to date and she kept getting closer and closer, until she was all up in his personal space and I was like, nooo, don't have her cheat on the awesome dude! Seriously, she was as close to him as House was to Cuddy right before they kissed. But at least Greek didn't go all the way with their invasion of personal bubbles. At least House and Cuddy didn't have sex, though.

I realized yesterday that reading my blog must be a lot like having a conversation with me: occasionally serious, mostly random. I mean, I don't think carrying a conversation with me is like one with my mom, who is always changing the subject really abruptly and you have to get used to it in order to keep up. But I know I am sometimes random, but it's more like a free association kind of thing than jumping backwards to things we already covered. Most of the time anyway. It's just all, serious talk about life and God, random excerpt from conversations at my house, me babbling about unimportant stuff...

Another play in one act

Parental guidance is suggested. This play contains some language and mild references to violence, as well as some truly terrible plays-on-words.

Andrea: So, did I tell you what I decided we need to do?

Shannon: Nooo...

Andrea: We need to join a roller derby team! There isn't one in town, but there's one in Nashville, or if you'd prefer, both Louisville and Lexington have teams.

Shannon: But I bruise easily and you are prone to migraines.

Andrea: Yes, well, we all have our crosses to bear. But you get to pick names and there's a registry and you know how I love paranomasias and also dirty stuff, so combining those two awesome things would make me ecstatic! So, the names should be like, dirty and/or violent and/or puns.

Shannon: Right. I can make a name for you...

Andrea: And I will pick yours! This could take a while, because you cannot have the same pun-tastic name as someone else on the national registry. Also, there's the problem that I looked into like, the rules of roller derby and it totally seems hard. Like, you have to be able to stop, which is something I was never able to master on anything wheeled except a bike (and cars!).

Shannon: Uhh...

Andrea: I know, you're wondering why I decided we need to do it, if I don't even know the rules or the point of the derby. That's an excellent inquiry, although you are the person who's been telling me for like 10 years now about how much repressed anger I have. I don't really know, but it sounded like a good idea to me this morning, so I spent an hour learning about it. So let's just make ridiculous names and forget the whole team-joining part. Sadly, Pirate's Booty is taken.

Later, in the car...

Andrea: Poke-Her-Hot-Ass!

Shannon: Bwa-ha ha! ...Well, if it matters, I am partial to alliteration...

Andrea: I can try to work with that. Horton Hires A Ho? Bloodbathsheba? A.C. Slay-Her?...This one's too obvious, but Violent Femme?

Shannon: Ha ha! There's something wrong with you...

A few minutes pass and we are back at home...

Andrea: Warring Piece! Leif Garrote? ...Esther the Molester? Latter-day Taint! ...Rufus Painwright? Ohhhh, this would so be Dave's roller derby name if he had one: Revenge of the Turd!

Shannon: (laughs and shakes head) (continues to humor me)

Andrea: Obsessive Compulsive Destroyer!

Shannon: Oh, I think that's it!

Andrea: OK, now you have to think of something! It's not so much fun when it's just me shouting random things at you. Or maybe it is for you. And heaven knows I'm keeping myself entertained.

Shannon: I really think yours needs to contain a reference to you being German.

Andrea: Fine, as long as there's no Sexicans about it, as neither of us is sufficiently lacking in caucasian-ocity to pull it off.

Editor's note: I did come up with more that I did not include in this post and if you care to hear them, I will share. :) Also, there were a couple periods where I was like, throw names at me. Throw words at me. It wasn't actually all that helpful, because Shannon would say, "Ruth" and I would say, "oh! Esther the Molester!" Or Haman's Curse, which we deemed too obscure for most.

Abortion Steals Your Literacy!

and your powers of reason. I am officially pro-life, I can't afford to get any dumber. We are having a political discussion involving jazz hands and abortion when I suddenly find myself unable to create an appropriately witty roller-derby name for Andrea. Boo.

The places that used to fit me cannot hold the things I've learned

So, not too long ago, Shannon planted a bug in my ear about leaving. At first, I was like, eh, not so much. The more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea, until I got to where I am now, which is ready to leave. Now. We just reupped our lease, so I can't. Also I don't know where I would go or what I would do. But I want to get out. And those of you who know me well, or at least for a long time, know that I will stay in a less than ideal situation (any sort: work, home, people) for eons because, well, probably mostly because I don't think I deserve better, but also because it's easier than changing things, or a bad ___ is better than no ___. Maybe not. Or maybe I decided I'm ready to leave because I can't right now and I'm really just deluding myself. That sounds like something I would do.

Now is definitely a really bad time to be looking for a job of any sort, especially when I have a good one, with good benefits, good people, and bosses who treat us all really well. And I don't know what I want to do. I don't want to go back to school because I hated it, and it's stupid to keep spending money when I don't have an endgame in mind. I talked to some people whose opinions I trust recently, and while most of them were encouraging and whatnot, one of them made me really sad. It was just that I didn't realize what I wanted the answers to be until after they gave me the wrong ones. I don't want someone to tell me to do the safe thing. I've been doing the safe thing all my life! What are my interests? What am I decent at that I could conceivably parlay into a career, or at the very least, some fun supplemental income? Yeah, not much. I want someone to tell me to be happy and do something I love. Or is that too much to ask? Apparently so.

I've been listening to Sara Groves' Conversations CD lately. I started to use part of the lyrics to "Painting Pictures of Egypt" for the title of this post, but I went to check them just to be sure, and discovered the chorus isn't what I thought. I thought the piece I wanted to use was "the future feels so hard, but I don't want to go back." Apparently it is actually "the future feels so hard, I want to go back." I realize my version of it is somewhat contradictory, but I guess I heard it that way because that's how I feel. Also, it still sounds like that's what she's saying to me.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I think You are telling me to wait, and I will wait to hear from You

I just found this post I started about a week and a half ago. I think I need the goggles to prevent me from posting ridiculousness (like this, except it seems I did decide to post later at the time, and just decided to post it now because I feel like it)on the internet, rather than e-mailing ridiculousness to people. Also, it's never because I am drunk. I did not realize that drunk e-mailing was such an issue for some people.

Last night at church our pastor was talking about how we should listen to God and wait for him before we react to things. He went into some detail about waiting and, rather than write his lengthy bit down, I wrote in my notes that we should use Gmail Goggles in all situations. Except of course, instead of being about e-mailing, it's about doing anything, and instead of having math problems stopping you, you have God. What can I say? I'm not a good note-taker. The other day during a conference call at work, my notes stated that this one dude complained for like 5 minutes about having to do work at his job. Gasp!

Bring it on, winter!

Today Shannon's mom and step-dad and her sister came over and helped us winterize The Paneled Palace, just in time for a really lovely day. We sealed plastic over all of our windows (on the inside) except for the ones in my room, as the heat grate is right outside my bedroom door. We even did the ones in the kitchen, although I think we're going to get a curtain and a tension rod so we can kind of seal it off, since we don't spend a ton of time in there and it would be cheaper to not heat it (but not let it get so cold the pipes freeze!). Ahh, the joys of an old house and a floor unit heater. But we knocked it out and even got all the blinds back up and you can't even see the edges of the plastic on the sides of most of the sheers. So now we are ready for it to be cold. And I got some shorter layers cut into my hair yesterday, but I got up at 6:20 this morning, when I had to be at church at 7:00, so I didn't have a chance to futz with them.

Well, for reasons that are absurd, I would up spending my lunch hour running around all crazy-like instead of going to the airport. So no one has to tell my grandma that I have shamed her. ;)

More ridiculousness

So I read Christina's post that mentioned my post (this is so meta) and I wanted to mention something else. Not about abortion, because I think I already went over where I stand on that a couple weeks ago. Anyway, the other day, I read this article where they talk about the four best-informed news audiences. And despite the way US News and World Report spins the data, the answer is the viewers of conservative shows like Rush and Hannity. Which strikes me as likely. My grandma is incredibly well-informed and she spends most of her days watching FOX News. And she has listened to Rush for as far back as I can remember. That doesn't mean I agree with her on everything, but there's no doubt in my mind as to how much she knows about things. Anyway, I think it's really sad and telling about our country that so many people don't even know who the PM of Britain is or the PM of Canada or the President of Mexico. Not that I knew who the PM of Canada was, but I did know Britain's. How many Canadians do you think don't know who is in charge down here?

Shhh...

So Bill Clinton is supposed to be in town later today, campaigning for Bruce Lunsford. They really want to get rid of Mitch McConnell. I really want Mitch McConnell to stop Botoxing his face so much, whether he wins or loses. The man can only move his chin when he talks. It's creepy. At rehearsal at church the other night, I was talking to this dude about politics, because we had a previous conversation about it last time I was on graphics. He said that McConnell's campaign manager made a statement about how they weren't worried that Clinton was coming because the last time Clinton came around campaigning for McConnell's opponent(1996?), McConnell still won by a landslide. I said that that was because people in this area liked Clinton a whole lot less in 1996 than they do now and he was like, it was before the affair stuff. That wasn't even what I meant, because I think people in this area disliked him long before that. Now it's more removed and he is less polarizing than he was back then. Rather like his wife is now. But that's neither here nor there. Am I really far off? Also, I totally want to go hear him speak. It's going to be at the airport, which is really close to my work. And it's going to be at my lunch time, so I wouldn't even have to move things around. It just seems likely to be the only opportunity I'll ever have to hear a former President speak. But don't tell my grandma, as she would be horrified!

Eh...

This weekend was fun. Thanks for having me, guys! Now, if you are a member of my family and you feel you haven't seen enough of me lately, tough luck. Get in your car and come see me. The Paneled Palace is open for visitors, but only if you give us at least 20 minutes of warning. ;)

Anyway, you know how sometimes I like to read garbage? (see Shannon's post-I prefer my trash to be less trashy, and more ridiculous, with cringeworthy dialogue-hey, the same goes for my TV garbage!) I also like to watch mindless garbage on TV sometimes. Tonight I turned to One Tree Hill for that frivolous pleasure. I have been recording the episodes and saving them for a day such as this, but the episode I turned on wound up being all morbid and depressing. I guess lately my guilty pleasures have not been turning out the way I want them to. Nuts... Although this evening, I did find something eminently more entertaining than trashy romance novels. If you're lucky, maybe I'll share it with you at a later date. Let's just say Shannon and I could hardly breathe it was so funny.

Also, Shannon gets to be a contributing author because last night she was catching up on my blog, although I don't know why, since she's always either there for things I write about, or she hears about them, and she said she had things to say. She wants to correct my revisionist history. Namely, where in the post about books, I said I spilled daiquiri on The Kite Runner one slightly tipsy day at the pool. Honestly, it was more than slightly tipsy. ;)

ANDREA BOUGHT PORN!!!

This is Shannon, I'm gonna start adding my own thoughts here from time to time.

So Andrea and I were eating our standard dinner of fries and burgers from McDonalds( yeah!!!) and she tells me that she "accidentally" bought some erotica from the used bookstore. Now we all know that is college talk for porn, so picture with me--- Our sweet little Andrea perusing the romance section when she comes across a volume with exceptionally lovely cover art that she decides to buy. She takes the smut novel to the nice octagenarian working the register and pays her $2.00 while the grandmother smirks at her. Later that evening, she sits down to read about a nubile young virgin and the rakish English Lord who loves her when, to her shock, she realizes that SHE BOUGHT PORN!!! Who here thinks she continued reading?

Obviously, the first word that comes to mind is sophisticated

I have the day off tomorrow. I'm going to Birmingham to see the peeps. And Greenwood Wine and Spirits Shoppe called to tell me my case of Tott's is in. So I will be taking a half case of champagne to Birmingham. I don't know why no one sells it anymore, but they said they can order it. Awesome. Rachel and I found some at a liquor store in Owensboro once, but we're not sure which store it was. Oops. Obviously I am a lush. Or not, since I rarely drink. It's just that when I do, I would rather have Tott's than Korbel. And I don't branch out into anything more than $20 a bottle because I am cheap. And seriously, a half case of sparkling wine means I can store it in the dungeon and call it a wine cellar! Classy! See you AL Benz 'dolts' at lunchtime. :)

A play in one act

Inspired by Monday's episode of How I Met Your Mother.

Shannon: They have an intervention banner! We should have interventions. We can have two interventions for Jack, two weeks in a row and then he will kill us, so we'll have to hold off. And we can do 'yay, interventions! {jazz hands}'

Andrea: Only if we can have a banner! And it should have exclamation points before and after the word 'intervention.' And the ones before it should be upside down! And there should be {jazz hands} on the banner! And we can have interventions for everything. For the 'yay, ________ {jazz hands},' for watching too much Keeping Up With the Kardashians, reading too much garbage, for having too much actual garbage in here... We would get to the point where we needed an intervention because we have too many interventions really quickly. Saturation point, we're on our way!

Shannon: Yeah...

Andrea: I got way too excited and specific about that, didn't I?

Shannon: Umm...

Andrea: Yeah, we just shouldn't even start having interventions. It can only end in heartache.

So I joined a website called paperbackswap yesterday. I posted 17 books and I already have two requests. It's kind of neat because you only pay for mailing the books, so there are no fees. So when someone requests a book you have, you send it and pay for it because when you request a book the person who sends it to you will pay. It's kind of awesome for those books you know you're never going to read again, like mysteries and bestseller stuff. And they do swap hardbacks as well as audio and of course, paperbacks.

I had been going to the used book store here in town, but I believe I mentioned once before that 75% of their inventory is romance novels. You can occasionally find something you really want, but it's still half of the original price. I did manage to find a copy of "The Kite Runner" there, but then while Shannon was reading it, I spilled strawberry daiquiri on it one slightly tipsy day at the pool. Oops. I still intend to read it, as it isn't ruined, it's just pinker than it was when I purchased it. I also found a copy of "Midwives" on the bargain table, so that was only 50 cents. But I read that book back when it came out years ago, although that didn't stop me from taking advantage of that awesome bargain. Also, I thought Shannon might read it, as she's been reading everything I have. You get half of the original price on things you take in to the used book store, but they don't take hardbacks and you can only use your store credits for half of each purchase total. The two requests I've already gotten from paperbackswap are for two books I didn't even like much anyway ("A Live Coal in the Sea" by Madeleine L'engle and "A Better Woman: A Memoir of Motherhood" by Susan Johnson). So, all in all, yay book swapping! {jazz hands}

My whole world is the pain inside me, the best I can do is just get through the day

Yes, Superchick, that song is just about right if you're talking migraines. So, I've been seeing commercials for the new Treximet, and I finally remembered to look up exactly how it differs from Imitrex. Apparently it is just Imitrex with Naproxen. Which is fine, but not really helpful, as if I wanted to take naproxen with my Imitrex, I would. I do not, however, as I've yet to have a migraine that over-the-counter meds can even touch. It seems that GSK is releasing Treximet because their exclusive patent on Imitrex is almost up. So there will soon be a generic Imitrex distributed by Ranbaxy! Yay! I love sumatriptan! {jazz hands!} Shannon asked me the other day how I function with the head and I was like, well, you know how sometimes I stare blankly at the TV or a book? Yeah, that's me concentrating on the pain. I generally try to concentrate on things other than the pain, not because it makes it feel better, but because I would never get anything done and also because at least then I feel less like crying, although no less frustrated with my body's betrayal. Urgh. Anyway, why, yes, I am still having head problems right now. Thanks for asking! Sorry for whining about this, but it's getting to me again. I do not enjoy the searing agony each day; it begins to wear on my spirit. Lucky me.

In which I talk about things I have zero experience in

This morning I was reading a post on Gawker about the cover shot of W magazine where Angelina Jolie is breastfeeding and make-up free. It seems as though most people are OMG-ing more about the lack of make-up than the fact that she's breastfeeding, which is cool, although she's so naturally pretty that her skin looks better sans make-up than many women's skin looks with it. But there was a link in that piece to an article about Maggie Gyllenhaall breastfeeding in public where I read the following comment, "Sure, it's her right, but in all seriousness, I plan on having LOTS of sex with my husband after having a child. Baby feeding machine and sex kitten are essentially mutually exclusive images. It's possible to be the former without giving up the latter, so I shall breastfeed indoors without my husband present. I don't care if this is a politically correct or feminist-approved method of thinking. My body. My choice." Now, I 've never given it much thought, not having a husband or a child, but I really don't think those two images are mutually exclusive and I feel sorry for that woman for thinking that doing what her body was meant to do in front of anyone will make her less desirable. And if she really thinks she couldn't breastfeed in front of her husband, is she going to ban him from the room during the birth, too? It just smacks of a very dated mode of thinking, and possibly some body image issues. I mean, boobs can be both purposeful and pleasurable, so why would one thing cancel out the other? That would be sad. So this lady thinks if her husband sees her breastfeeding, he won't ever want to have another baby with her? Poor, mistaken lady.

P.S. I just tried to type something about a turnaround, but I typed Turner Student instead. I have typed that set of words together pretty much everyday, at least one, for the past three and half years. Apparently I can no longer type the word turn without automatically typing Turner Student. :)

Strangers, waiting, up and down the boulevard...

I don't know if I've mentioned this on here, but I take Shannon to and from her classes (so she doesn't have to buy a ridiculous parking pass). She calls me when she gets out to come pick her up and most of the time I'll let Kazoo ride along because he gets so excited. Lately I've noticed that anytime I am home and Shannon is not and then she calls me, Kazoo gets really excited and runs to the door. He knows her ringtone means we're going to get in the car! Her ringtone is Don't Stop Believing by Journey for the same reason that Rachel's ringtone is No Scrubs and well, most all my specific caller ringtones are chosen entirely because they make me laugh when the phone rings (my dad's is the Law and Order theme song, but I tried to get Video Killed the Radio Star and it wasn't available; neither was Television, Television by OK Go). So Shannon has started playing that song on the computer and Kazoo gets all excited when it gets to the refrain. He cracks me up. He is apparently smarter than I give him credit for.

Scary things that make me laugh...

Hearkening back to my post last week about how much I love HSM3 for merely existing, this post on Gawker made me laugh until I clicked on it and saw the photo not in thumbnail. It's totally scary and somehow even more dead-eyed than the real Zac Efron! Ahhhh! Real monsters! I also really don't think that any commenter can beat the Gawker caption. Chucky indeed.

You know a word I really don't care for? Akimbo. I know what it means and that's all well and good, but it sounds ridiculous. Which may be part of the reason people rarely actually put their hands on their hips. They don't want someone to describe them as being akimbo, as it is so undignified. ;)

I am losing my mind lately. I cannot find like, simple words in there. Last week I was trying to talk about a fundraising thing, and I could not think of the word fundraising! It's getting annoying. I was trying to talk about someone who was not doing something everyone else was doing, because they felt it was wrong, but they weren't being all in your face about it to the people who were doing it. I could only come up with not proselytizing. But I don't think that was the word I was looking for. I feel like the word I am looking for does start with a p, so not being a self-righteous prick is out. It might be pharasaic, but I am not sure. It fits, but I think it's still not the word I was looking for. Help to ease my troubled mind?

J'aime le fromage!

On Sunday afternoon Shannon and I watched some LA Ink because it was on. This dude got a tattoo of cheese. Not just a tattoo, but a memorial tattoo for cheese! He can no longer eat cheese because of an accident, but he loved it so much he wanted to memorialize it. My favorite part, I think, is that he has the dates 1981-2006 for cheese. It is dead to him. Sad! So freaking funny. I love cheese and I would be sad if I couldn't eat it anymore (I had pepperoni and Colby cheese on Ritz crackers for dinner last night...mmmm), but dude. He was so sad about it that he thought the cheese should be in black and grey. That is pretty sad. I wanted to share the joy of this man's tattoo with you. It made us giggle and dream of the day we might meet men who so ardently, earnestly love cheese...

Quandary!

So, I don't know if I've said this lately, but I love amitriptyline. It's my friend. But we've (we being me, but on my doctor's orders-so no one thinks I'm self-medicating) had to up my dose twice since I started, and that may be an issue. I love it; it's great that I discovered what real sleep was supposed to be like. I was always such a light sleeper that I didn't even realize how poor the quality of my sleep was until I started taking Elavil and experienced real sleep. I sound like Lindsay Wagner on those Sleep Number bed commercials. But seriously, good sleep! The problem is that now that it's a lot higher dose, I am knocked out within about an hour and a half of taking it. I was taking it by nine o'clock, because that way I could still get up in the morning without much trouble. But if I take this dose at nine o'clock I have issues getting up at seven. So I started taking it at like 5:30 or 6:30 and being in bed by nine. The only day last week I stayed up past nine was Thursday, for the debate, and that was pushing it. Shannon didn't know I was taking my medicine that early, so I think she thought I was massively depressed or dying or something. She said it was like I was just gone. If I take it that early, I even wake up before my alarm goes off, but I really don't like being dead on my feet at 8 o'clock. I don't know if I should call the doctor and try something different or just suck it up and sleep a lot. It's just weird because I have always been able to function very well on small amounts of sleep (small being maybe five hours, not like 2 hours). I don't like sleep cutting into my activity time...

Also, I doubt this is a side effect or anything, probably just my insanity, but lately I keep hearing a ringing when I turn my head to the left, but only around ten in the morning. I thought it must have been something in my office, but it happened to me on Saturday and Sunday too. As my father would say, then don't turn your head to the left, dummy! A side effect that isn't very fun, but does help me to remember to drink enough water is the dry mouth business. Yesterday I saw commercials that lead me to believe that Imitrex is going to have a generic soon! Yay! I totally got a pack of nine on September 28th and I'm already down to two. Oops. I've been having the head issues of late, again. The insurance only lets me get one pack of nine each month. Some months they decide I can only have eight or seven, and once, six, so then the pharmacy cuts some out and I don't see it until I get home and open it. That always makes me grouchy. It's the same price whether they give me seven or nine. I totally thought I was doing ok, at least not complaining about the pain, because that gets boring. But today my supervisor was like, I've been meaning to see if you're ok because I can tell you've been having head problems lately. Like, aww, crap, pull it together! But then she told me how well I was doing something or other, so I guess I've been managing acceptably. Maybe she can just tell. I know some people who can tell by looking at my face if I'm trying to function. Maybe that's where the lovely vertical wrinkle between my brows comes from...

Scary stuff

So, Shannon and I watched the debate last night. We only had to pause it discuss a couple times. I like how no one in any debates will just answer the questions that are asked, not that that is anything new. This girl at work wore a Palin shirt in one day and we asked her about it and she was like, well, I guess we're voting for her. Her family gave her the shirt, so she was just going to go along with it. That really frightens and upsets me. People who don't inform themselves and decide what they think and who they like and why.

Confession

Every time I see a trailer for High School Musical 3, I laugh. The first time I saw one of those giant cardboard things at the theater and realized it was going to be a theatrical release, I laughed. That movie has brought me so much joy without me even needing to see it. Just the thought that it's out there, a giant candy-colored confection that is a 90 minute music video a la Disney, is enough. Also, the one part in the trailer where Zac Efron throws his head up and his hair is all wet, is so reminiscent of Justin Timberlake throwing his head up (although his hair is not all wet from sweat-eww)after he drops to the ground in the NSYNC video for Bye Bye Bye. Wow, I feel old. That song totally came out my senior year of high school. OK, I totally looked that video up and that made me laugh too. I forgot about his curly hair. So, gentle readers, here is my present to you on this fine afternoon.

Question, followed by some ranting

Is it acceptable to give part of your tithe money to charities instead of the church? Also, can you count time spent volunteering as part of your tithe(let's pretend for just a second that my time is valuable or matters to anyone)? I feel like the answer to both is no, but I want to donate to a Donors Choose project and I already donated money to Komen (October is Breast Cancer Awareness month, in addition to being Domestic Violence Awareness month. Bowling Green doesn't have a Komen run, so I just gave money.) and now that I am volunteering to do camera every other Saturday instead of getting paid to do the same, I am a little more strapped for cash. You know how it goes... It ebbs and flows.

I went to Sunday school for the first time in years this past summer. It is now called ABF (Adult Bible Fellowship) at Living Hope. I feel old. Anyway, that was not the point. The point is that the 20-somethings class was discussing submission and service. Which happen to be things I have been thinking about a lot recently. My church is fairly large, one of the larger churches in town, which is all well and good, except that in a church where more than 2,000 people come through three services each Sunday, it should not be the same 20 people doing all the work. I'm not even talking about the children's ministry because I know that they likely have the same problem and when our pastor Jason entreats people to serve, he generally talks about the children's ministry.

But the worship ministry remains the same. There are two guys at church who run lights. Just two. It's not like it's hard. I've done lights a few times, although I didn't read the handbook about the board and learn to program it so you can just press go to go the next light cue. We actually have more than two capable men who can do sound for the first time in memory, although it is still my dad more often than not (which is how he prefers it anyway). We do have more than enough graphics people too, although that is the thing that requires the most attention, but the least knowledge. There are only two people who do monitor board and the same maybe 7 people help reset the stage each weekend that that is necessary. We do not have enough camera people. Not even close. I was on for a month and a half straight this summer because we don't have enough. My dad has been on the list for camera recently because there aren't enough. I'm on five times this month, although two of them are for graphics (yay! I love being on graphics because then I get to sing all the songs three times. Also, I do better when something requires all of my attention, because if it's only some, I get distracted, so graphics inspires me to pay attention, since any mistakes made are obvious to all and sundry.). Really the only actually difficult tech crew job that would require more than one Sunday of demonstration would be sound. The same two people switch off doing monitor board on Sundays. It's just inconceivable to me that in a church as large as ours, more people don't volunteer to help. Our pastor wants to get three good cameras and actually make more use of the video aspect than just piping it into the lobby and nursing mothers' room as we do now. But I can't see that happening when we barely have enough people for one camera. For three we would need at least three per service and one director. And when I say I've been thinking about this lately, I mean ranting to several people about it. Ask around. Anyway, when the ABF leader asked at the end where people should serve I was like, hello! I doubt any of them will act on it, but at least I was there to offer the suggestion. I don't even remember how I wound up on the tech crew, although I'm sure it was about my dad. But we are more backstage kind of people, and I can't remember a time when my dad wasn't serving a church. Or a time when my mom wasn't serving by being in the choir. It's just how they roll and thusly, how the Benz spawn roll. When they sent out the tech schedule for August, they sent me an extra e-mail asking if they were overusing me because they didn't want to burn me out. I do sometimes get irritated about camera at church, but that's mostly because the situation is not ideal. The lighting on our stage is terrible, so that people on the right side are in the dark and people on the left side are overexposed. It's not cool and there's nothing you can do to make wide shots look good and you have to adjust the iris constantly as you pan. But I wouldn't quit, because it's something I can do and someone has to do it, and apparently no one else is going to volunteer. And I think it will be more fun after we get the lights fixed and have three cameras and a director. Sometimes I have fun doing it, if there's a lot going on that I have to stay on point for. Like I said, I'm easily distracted when something does not require my full attention. I've been on something so much this summer that now I feel weird when I go to church and don't have anything to do.

I was just telling Mark yesterday that I am all about Amazon, for books and other things. Today their gold box deal is the BBC Pride and Prejudice with Colin Firth for only $15.99! It makes me sad that everyone I know who likes it already has that. Except me. I just have the recent one with Keira Knightley, which is not as awesome, although admittedly less time-consuming. Maybe I can justify buying it for myself if it's only $16. Also, Amazon wants me to buy a book called The Leopard Prince. Fret not, for I will not purchase it. The product description reads as follows: "Wealthy Lady Georgina Maitland doesn't want a husband, though she could use a good steward to run her estates. One look at Harry Pye, and Georgina knows she's not just dealing with a servant, but a man. Harry has known many aristocrats-including one particular nobleman who is his sworn enemy. But Harry has never met a beautiful lady so independent, uninhibited, and eager to be in his arms. Still, it's impossible to conduct a discreet liaison when poisoned sheep, murdered villagers, and an enraged magistrate have the county in an uproar." I'm not sure how I can manage to resist buying it after reading that, but there we are. Seriously? Poisoned sheep are on the same level as murdered villagers? Oh, wait, I forgot, only rich people mattered in old-school England. Also, is the magistrate enraged about the sheep or the people, or something completely unrelated? I always try to make all my liaisons discreet. ;) This makes less sense than the day Amazon wanted me to buy a table tennis set. Or maybe it makes more sense, given that I do read far more often than I play tennis of any sort...

Bon anniversaire, mon frere!

This uno's an obeisance to Mark, for his birthday; the onus is on me for his insufficient interest in marvelous words (e.g., vituperative). I happen to own a superfluity of interest in awesome words, but there's a marked dearth of utilization in my daily lexicon. I ken Mark knows words I do not; he has learned much adscititious of my tutelage. I generally will not fain affirm my inferiority, but as it's his anniversaire heute and Wednesday is the day I set aside for my hebdomadal confession(it's not - I just wanted to work in that fun word), I admit that a person of my antediluvian age cannot know all the patois of the puerile generation. And Mark's place in the musical province allows him a degree of habituation with words even the most sanguine ordinary auditor(such as myself) cannot ever hope to evince. He too, is somewhat of an autodidact, but his metier being not coeval to my own, we have disparate levels of vernacular.

*This is just a joke, much like the time we made that fake blog for Mark. He is apparently just super inspiring. Anyway, I know this is mostly nonsensical, but it was fun. I know lots of words, but not exactly how to use them, as I am not actually smart.