Things I love

If you were to take a serious look at my online presence - Facebook, Twitter, Blogger - you would find that I am a horribly predictable person. Every Friday (my day off), there is a greater than 90% chance that I tweet or put up a FB status about what I plan to do with my day. Or a summary tweet in the afternoon talking about what I had already accomplished. Same goes for Saturdays when I have them free.

And that list of activities will always include at least two of the following: knitting, going to the Arboretum, going out for coffee, watching baseball, going to the farmer's market, or cooking/baking

If you were to expand out a bit and look at my day-to-day tweets and status updates, you'd find that more than half of them have to do with coffee (or tea), Bach, reading, writing, and eating.

I am one predictable and easy-to-figure out lady.

But here's the thing. I know what I like. And I know what feeds my soul. And I know what brings me balance.

Reading/writing: An old favorite. I love words. I love finding perfect words to describe what I'm seeing, thinking, or feeling. I love seeing how other people use words. This is probably also why I love writing sermons...

Knitting: It is the only form of visual art that I am good at. I am fascinated by color, I love touching soft things, I like that I can make something beautiful with my own two hands, and I am fascinated by the way that projects take shape. Bonus: I knit to knit, which leaves me with leftover projects without homes, which is GREAT for gift-giving.

Coffee: I blame my genetics for my love of coffee (the substance). I blame a particular group of high school friends for my love of coffee shops. Coffee is delicious, and going out for coffee is a change of pace and a change of scenery. So I use my coffee outings purposefully. I'm also very productive at coffee shops, so much sermon-writing happens there.

Cooking/baking/FOOD: I love eating. And if I love eating good food, then it follows that I love trying my best to MAKE good food. Part of it is the proud, creative, "I made this" feeling that also applies to knitting. And food is how my family celebrates and reunites. So cooking is about food and about sharing.

J.S. Bach: My favorite composer, hands-down. Fun to sing, fun to play, great to listen to. And something about Bach's music strikes me as profoundly ordered...and profoundly creative within that order. So it's definitely balance-restoring for me.

Morton Arboretum: A place I went to as a child, and now a place that is right up the road from where we live. Trees. Flowers. Hiking paths. Lots of land, so that even on crowded days, I can walk and hike and be all by myself. A great place to wander, or to bike, or to have a picnic. A fantastic place to bring my camera and pretend I'm a great nature photographer. And a great place to sit outside for a while, since we don't have a house with a lawn or anything right now.

So anyway, now you know a little more about my favorite things. I don't mind that I do nearly the same thing every weekend. And I don't mind that I tweet about it, even if there's nothing new under the sun to say about it.

How about you? What are the things that you come back to, over and over again, that bring you joy and peace and balance?

Sing sing sing.

I'm all antsy today at work because I'm looking forward to tonight: my first rehearsal with Chicago's Apollo Chorus! They held mid-season auditions last week, and told me on the spot that I was accepted. I am thrilled to be singing again. I haven't done nearly enough singing recently - it's harder to find choirs to sing with once you're out of school. I don't sing in a church choir right now because (until I find a first call) Matt and I drive out to the suburbs to go to church with my family on Sundays, and it's too much commuting to try to rehears with and sing with the choir there.

My first night of Apollo comes on the heels of yesterday's Bach for the Sem benefit concert. This is my third year of singing with Bach for the Sem, a concert of local singers and instrumentalists who perform works by Bach and others in a concert to raise money for the ongoing work and ministry of LSTC. Yesterday's concert included Mendelssohn's Vom Himmel Hoch, Bach's Magnificat (my all-time favorite Bach work that I had yet to sing until yesterday!), and a few other carols and anthems.

As I look back on all of singing I've done over the years, I realize that I have been truly blessed, not only by the groups with which I've sung, but also by the range of music that I have had the opportunity to perform. Apollo is gearing up to sing Carmina Burana this spring, and so I just spent the morning listening to it while working. When it finished, the next music up in iTunes for me was Mozart's Requiem. Listening to it makes me remember singing it my senior year at PTS, along with two local church choirs, under the direction of James Litton in a big anniversary concert in Princeton. What an amazing experience!

Or I think about singing the Faure Requiem with the Minnesota Orchestra my senior year of college, or performing on Performance Today my junior year of college. I think about performing the last third of the Vaughan Williams Hodie at Bach for the Sem two years ago, singing my first Bach cantata and singing the soprano solo in Britten's Rejoice in the Lamb while at PTS...

When I reflect on these special and wonderful moments, as well as on the entire experience of being a part of a corporate effort to learn and love and perform great music, I am reminded of the joy of contributing to something greater than myself, of adding my single voice to a larger whole. Those who know me best know that I am my truest self when I'm dealing with music. (They also know that I can be incredibly geeky about music.) I can't wait for tonight, to begin again the process of learning music with a group of musicians, and of building relationships with a new group of people in that way peculiar to those who share something as intimate and wonderful as making music!

I Need to Make a List

At some point, I will most certainly post about my brave decision to keep my "PhD Watch" list up for all to see, despite my apparent lack of success in getting accepted, and how I am working on dealing productively and positively with rejection, and how I could either be embarrassed by my lack of success or proud of my perseverance. And I will definitely let you all in on my vocational processing as I begin to re-envision myself entering the call process this fall, instead of 3-5 years from now. But for the moment, while I'm thinking to myself, "I must either be VERY called to ministry and God's making it obvious, or else I'm just stupid," I think that I need to make a list. I need to remind myself that I really am good at some stuff in life. One of my friends made a list like this for me when I was in high school, right after my best friend and my super-serious crush started dating. It's just good to remind myself that I indeed have gifts and talents.

So, without further ado, Things Melissa is Good At:

1. Hrm. Grammar. The title of this list really should be "Things at which Melissa is Good." But that sounds bizarre.

2. Knitting. And I love it. And all of these thoughts about an alternate plan for my future make me remember that in my dream world, I would open up a yarn store/coffee shop. Knitting, caffeine, and (hopefully) making money? Sounds good to me!

3. Singing in church. And perhaps singing in general. And appreciating classical music, both choral and orchestral.

4. Cooking. And baking. I think that I believe I'm good at this in part because I'm fearless. I'll try anything. And I'll eat anything, too, which is good for those times that my adventures turn out less-than-perfect.

5. Giving hugs.

6. Playing Scrabble. (Ok, so I'm not quite as good at this as my husband is - he ALWAYS beat ms! - but in general, I think I'm an above-average Scrabble player.)

7. Public speaking. I'm such an introvert, but definitely love speaking in front of a crowd.

8. Wearing my geekiness with pride. Whether it be related to music, computers, video games, liturgy, theology, whatever. I know my geeky sides well, and fully embrace them.

9. Related to #8, I'm good at being a goofball. And, for the most part, I've gotten over fearing being a dork. It's nice to know that by 26, I've outgrown most of my junior high insecurity...

10. Random things: driving in the city, cleaning the apartment (which is a VERY different thing than keeping the apartment clean, something that I am NOT good at!), bargain-hunting, clipping Emme's claws, being introspective/self-aware, being a family-gal, being a Cubs fan...

All right. Back to finishing my coffee, squeezing in a bit more work before 5:30, and then going to the church's knitting circle. :)

Yes, Punctuation Amuses Me.

God bless the semicolon:

Celebrating the Semicolon in a Most Unlikely Location

Ahh, nerd-dom...

Super Lego Mario (Level 1)

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Super Lego Mario (Level 2)

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Oh So Pretty...

Apple's newest shiny pretty thing: the MacBook Air.
::crave::

The Best and the Distracting

As an interesting cross between 43things and Amazon.com's Listmania, I found the Best Stuff in the World to be an amusing distraction, especially when I should be writing papers (ahem). Oh...and speaking of distractions...if you haven't already jumped on the Funny Farm bandwagon, it's worth many many hours of time-wasting. For those of you who haven't seen it, it's a huge map of word-associations. Some are creative, some are obvious, some are downright difficult. But regardless, once you get started, it's terribly addictive. Horribly addictive. And fun.

Technology meets faith...sort of

I don't even have the words...

Art + Computer Geek = Awesome

How I spent my evening

I admit it. I did something that I had promised myself I wouldn't do. I actually sat down and wasted time browsing YouTube. HOWEVER, I did not do this frivolously. I got nostalgic and found a whole bunch of my favorite clips from old Sesame Street. There are some absolute favorites posted on YouTube. I spent two hours browsing and finding some great memories. I'm not sure how many of them I will force upon you in the next week or so, (here's a playlist of clips in case you're curious and impatient) but for tonight, I leave you with this adorable classic moment:

Change is bad

Today was another big announcement day for Apple. Nothing overly interesting this time around. Colorful new Nanos that remind us of the iPod-mini days, a bigger iPod, updates to the iTunes store (movies and games now), all very nice, but nothing overwhelming.

Along with all of this came the next iTunes update. I have to say, I think that iTunes 7 is UGLY. Anyone else agree with me? It's more spread out, with more unnecessary rounded edges (look at those ugly scroll bars!), and an overall more cluttered feel. It'll take some getting used to.

Can we say EXCESS?

[photo courtesy of store.apple.com]

Ok. I admit it freely. I am a computer geek, and an Apple geek as well. I like shiny things. So I was, of course, interested in what would be revealed during the WWDC. So now we have the Mac Pro, the successor to the PowerMac, and it looks just the same, except that they have managed to beef up the options on it. Yay, I thought, for those people who need a super-powerful computer. Now they can accommodate multiple hard drives and an insane amount of RAM. Here's the problem though...Just for fun, I went to the Apple website and thought I'd customize an extreme Mac Pro. Max out all of the options, see what the computer would look like. So the first option I had was upping the processors. That immediately added $800 to the computer's base price of $2400. Next was the RAM. I had already read elsewhere that the computer could support 16gb of RAM. Crazy. Unnecessary. What is more insane than that, however, is the cost! You can purchase that 16gb of RAM for the low low cost of $5700. No, that's not at all a typo. And that's just the beginning. There is room in this computer for 4 hard drives, and you can max them out at 500gb each, for a grand total of 2 TETRABYTES of hard drive space. $200 for the first 500gb drive, $400 each for each consecutive drive. Then change the graphics and video cards, upgrade to a 30" cinema display, and heck, add on a second one since the computer can support it. And then play with Bluetooth and Airport, upgrade the mouse and keyboard to their wireless counterparts, make your computer a server just for fun, choose your software options, might as well tack on some AppleCare...and before you know it, you have now configured a $17,000 computer!

Let's get serious here. That's a ridiculous amount of money. And a ridiculous range of options. who really needs TWO 30" cinema displays? Or 16gb of RAM, for goodness sake! Who in their right mind needs this extensive range of options? And who would really pay for it anyway?

I thought, at first, that I would be impressed with this computer. Now I'm just sort of disgusted. What on earth justifies this sort of excess and complete technological machismo?

Free Advertising

By the way...if you're looking for a really great ipod cover and you want to be a bit creative, thus implying that you want your ipod to look different than everybody else's, you should check out ifrogz. You get to choose the color of the case itself, the color of the band that further protects the sides, and the click-wheel decal that goes on the screen protector. Awesome.

Matt and I both ordered a set for our respective ipods, and they just arrived yesterday. Beautiful. My fishies. And Matt's pawprint.

They really should pay me commission...

On Relaxation

I have to admit that it took me the full week between the end of finals and graduation to settle into the concept of leisure time. For that entire week, I couldn't sit still for more than an hour at a time without wondering what else I should be doing, as if there were work to be done, or as if I was being lazy, ungrateful, and wasteful - as if there must be something that I should be doing that was actually productive and thus fulfilling. I went to the mall three days in a row for no reason other than to get up off the couch and leave the apartment. I was frustrated because I felt as if I had no sense of purpose.

But then Thursday happened - I had a meeting in the morning and then spent the rest of the day cleaning the apartment for my family's Friday morning arrival. The weekend was a blur: I only had my family around for three days, and in those three days I had to find time to enjoy them amidst baccalaureate, graduation, and a Mother's Day barbecue with Matt's family. The way that we solved the problem of having many appointments in a short visit was to make the special effort to stay in more than we went out when we weren't obligated to be anywhere - we made a point of sitting around and enjoying each other. I think that changed and helped me. I realized that there isn't necessarily any shame in allowing myself to relax, especially when it is a bounded indulgence. I finished classes, have these few weeks to relax, and then begin CPE the first weekend in June. (Sidenote: CPE = Clinical Pastoral Education, which is a summer-long hospital chaplaincy internship required for my eventual ordination.) Knowing that I'm not making a habit of being lazy, and knowing that relaxation is not the same as laziness, this week has been a mostly leisurely one, with just a hint of responsibility here and there to remind me that I'm still involved in the functioning of the world and that the world still has a hold on me and my life.

This is not to say that my relaxation has been profound or deep, however. This week has been filled with frivolity (though much-appreciated frivolity!). Matt and I are more than halfway through watching the first season of the West Wing on DVD, and I am enjoying it immensely. I think that it is a smart and well-thought out show, and that it is beautifully executed, even when the banter is a bit verbose. I've spent more hours than necessary sorting through graduation pictures and setting aside particular shots for use in an album, should I ever get around to making one. I just did the myspace thing today, something that I had been resisting, but something that has already turned out to be a fun way to reconnect with friends from high school and college. I spent two different afternoons this week hanging out with Matt at the after-school program at Princeton Academy of the Sacred Heart, which he directs. This meant refereeing heated games of four-square, playing on the swings while observing the construction of roads and bridges in the sandbox, making sure that the junior-kindergarteners get their turn shooting baskets with the third-graders, tossing a frisbee with the last kid whose dad was late, and watching our friend Jason get outnumbered in lopsided games of cops and robbers. Some parts of my week were more "worthwhile" than others, you see. But I have come to terms (at least for the moment) with the knowledge that enjoying my last days in this apartment before I have to pack it up, enjoying my last days in this part of the country, and enjoying the company of my husband while we still have time to curl up on the couch together to watch TV are not vices, but rather are necessary parts of renewing and reworking myself as I head into everything that the future will inevitably throw at me.

what i did tonight (hint: lots of standing in line)

my evening began at 7:10, still far down the mall from the barnes and noble entrance. at 9:00, after eating a wendy's hamburger and fries standing up and sending matt home to fetch my ipod, i rounded a corner and the situation still looked like this:


at 9:45, i was close enough to the front of the line to sneak a picture of the action...and there she was: Giada De Laurentiis, italian chef extraordinaire, as gorgeous as they come. in case you weren't aware, i am a food network geek, which means that i am severely grieving that our cable setup gives us FOUR espn networks, but NO food tv. :( but anyways, i am a food tv geek enough to actually think that standing in line for upwards of two hours to get a cookbook signed was a reasonable idea. hehe.


hey look, there's me! despite what it might look like, i am NOT praying to her, just thanking her for sticking around long enough to get to the end of the line (there were only three more people behind me when they cut off the line around 7:30). i was smiling a lot. and so was she. and apparently her assistant was amused too (the lady in the white sweater)...


and when the line was done, her publicist made her pose with the book. she said she felt silly posing with a book, but was still happy to face lots of goofy people like me who were excited to get a good picture of her:


so that was my night. a long night of standing in line in the mall, just so i could get a cookbook signed for my dad and take a few pictures for me. this was the first time i've stood in line for something like this, so in that respect, it was actually pretty fun. at some point everyone stands dumbly in line for upwards of two hours in order for a thirty-second interaction with some celebrity. tonight was my night. :)

grammar and spelling

I don't usually up and correct people's grammar, or comment on their spelling. That gets annoying. But I was indeed an English major in college and have always been one of those people who bristles when certain blatant grammatical errors are tossed around.

The biggest offender? Misuse of the word "myself."

"Myself" is a reflexive pronoun. This means that it is used to intensify or refer back to a previously used noun or pronoun. That is to say, reflexive pronouns do not stand on their own. They only refer to the appropriate previously used noun:

I myself ran the race. (intensifying that I was the one who did it.)
I fixed dinner for myself because I was hungry. (following a preposition, refers to the subject...however, it would be incorrect to say "I fixed dinner for himself/herself," because there is no direct reference. In that case, you'd say "I fixed dinner for him/her.")


You do not use "myself" as a substitute for the word "me." Or, for that matter, as a substitute for the word "I." Let's go back to elementary school. When I am the subject of the sentence, I use the word "I:"

I went to the store.
Sharon and I went to the store.
Following the rainstorm, I went outside and jumped in puddles.


When I am the object of the sentence, I use the word "me:"

Yesterday something amazing happened to me.
Sharon told me a funny joke about monkeys.
My father prepared dinner for my mom and me.

Yes...that last sentence is correct! It would be horribly incorrect to say "My father prepared dinner for my mom and myself," even though it might sound pretty or sophisticated. Myself does not replace a noun, it refers to one!


But all of this is really only a preface to what I really intended to say in this post. Two things in the past week that made me cringe.

1. Last Sunday's Old Testament reading, Genesis 9:8-17. This is where God is making his covenant with Noah using the rainbow. A few times, God speaks of "the covenant that I am making between me and you and all living creatures." A couple things bother me. First of all....even though I can't find a good reason why it is grammatically incorrect, I don't like the order of the objects: "me and you and all living creatures." When you use the word me in a list of people in the predicate of a sentence, don't you usually leave "me" to the end? Wouldn't it have been more correct to say "you, all living creatures, and me?" I think it would. Furthermore, notice that there are three objects in the list. Three "people:" God, Noah, and living creatures. Between is a poor choice. Among is used when comparing more than two things. Though in this case, you could probably argue that there is a theological notion in using between, because it points out that there are really only two agents in the world: God and not-God. But I would have liked it better if God had said "between all living creatures and me." That would have been the best phrase.

2. In my blog-browsing, I was reading this post and its comments. It's an interesting conversation topic. The comment strain feels a little bizarre to me, as if it is going to spiral downward very quickly. But that's not the point. I don't want to be mean...but read through the comments, and notice the use of the word "thrown" instead of "throne," as well as the misspelling of the word "gentlemen" to read "gentlemean," which does make an interesting commentary on the eventual nature of comments on controversial blog posts, but is nevertheless a misspelling.

Not quite sure why this all bothered me enough to make a lengthy post about it. But now you've seen my dark side...

unprovoked discourse on my initials

my married name: melissa ann bills.
my married initials: mab

how many of you remember reading romeo and juliet in high school? i mean, really remember it? mercutio makes an eloquent speech about one "queen mab." queen mab...hrm. i sort of like the sound of that.

according to wikipedia, queen mab is a fairy who is portrayed in mercutio's soliloquy as "a miniature creature who drives her chariot across the faces of sleeping people and compels them to dream dreams of wish-fulfillment."

dreamy.

hybrid

brilliant.

Ars Electronica

(i am going to go there. someday. whenever i get to europe.)


enjoy!

the past day or so

I was bored two nights ago and thought that since we have something crazy like 1500 wedding pictures from our friends and family (all digital!), it might be fun to put together an Unofficial Wedding Album. That is to say, to put together the equivalent of a wedding album all of pictures NOT taken by our official photographer. I put together a very nice collection, and then decided that I might as well take advantage of iphoto's insta-slideshow feature. Of course, then I had to coordinate music, which involved sending the rendition of "Love Divine, All Loves Excelling" I have on my computer to Matt's computer so he could edit the intro and the coda. I then made a slideshow playlist of that and of "House of God" and let iphoto autofit the slideshow to the music. But then I spent time cutting and rearranging pictures so that the pictures from the wedding all fit into "Love Divine" and so that the reception pictures started at the beginning of "House of God." I then discovered that I could put the slideshow together in imovie, where I could be even pickier about coordinating the slides to the music, as well as adding chapter divisions into the presentation for when I burned it to DVD. (Mind you, this whole slideshow is under ten minutes in length!)

But THEN, after watching a nice DVD of a slideshow of our unofficial wedding album (having transferred the dvd file to Matt's computer to burn, since I don't have a DVD burner!), somehow Matt or I thought that it might be nice to take our wedding DVD (taped by a family friend) and to make a joint DVD of the wedding video and the slideshow.

I've spent the past day and a half working on a way to convert the dvd format to a format that imovie would understand. It has been a learning process. But thanks to HandBrake (a dvd to dv converter) and Clip Creator (a program where you can split the footage up in more managable clips for imovie to import), I am finally at the point where I am importing movie footage into imovie and editing it. But finding these programs took forever. It also took trial and error. It was a pain in the butt, but a worthy one. So by the end of the night, I should have a very nice DVD of the wedding plus a slideshow of great pictures, and I will be a very happy girl.

(Anyone want a copy? I'm serious. I'm really proud of myself right now and would love to share my efforts. *wink*)

Other than that....opinion time:

Should Matt and I get a cat? I want one, but we're worried that it might be more money or responsibility than we can manage right now. Thoughts? Please comment!!!

That is all.

the sound of silence

wow. it's been a while.

the sad part is, really, that nothing terribly interesting has happened since last i posted. i am still working two jobs, both of which have caused me periods of immense, though short-lived frustration. our bedroom air-conditioner is still broken, which means that our apartment is consistently hot and humid, because the poor living room air-conditioner cannot possibly cool the entire apartment no matter how long we leave it turned on as high as it will go. matt's sister visited for part of this week, and it was really great to see her. ruth is avoiding all talk of leaving for college...i remember how it felt. you know that your friends are going to leave and that you are going to have to move away from home and start something entirely new and different, and the best way you can hope to deal with it is to ignore it. she's a strong girl (much stronger than people give her credit for...much stronger than she'll ever let on to the general public), and i know that she'll love college. lasting the fear of the end of the summer is the bigger part of the battle.

speaking of battles, matt and i have already finished half of The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age, our foray into co-op rpg-ing. the game has grown on me since we started. it's much more guided in terms of quests and explorations - you have little room to backtrack, there are few (if any) side quests, and the game doesn't expect much mindpower out of you, seeing as it tells you pretty much exactly where you need to go, what you need to do, how to get there, and doesn't give you much room to wander off the path. there is no money or purchasing component, nor is there much of the usual talking to random people in order to gain information and to advance the plot. but while advancing the plot is not terribly interesting or challenging, the game does an amazing job at battles. it offers you a huge number of interesting and specialized attacks, both physical and magic, and there is an impressive range and frequency to upgrading your armor. the armor part is my favorite, because the game really does outfit your characters as you acquire armor and equip it. lots of shiny things. AND, elegost (the character in the game akin to aragorn) acquires this SWEET hooded cape. it is extremely sexy.

let me think....other things to update...

well, for one thing, matt is starting to sort of maybe consider law school as a potential option for a new career path. i can see his lsat prep book sitting on its shelf, as yet unopened. it seems to serve as a decent representation of what's going on in matt's head. serious enough thought, but not yet at a point of action. the new book is like the shiny new idea. but opening the book would necessarily mean that he's going to move on that idea. the nice part is that he doesn't have to decide whether or not to go right now, he only has to decide whether or not to apply. thoughts and prayers would be much appreciated!

as for my summer reading list....i've gotten sidetracked. not only did i read a severed wasp(my favorite book of all time!), but i have recently decided to reread the lord of the rings trilogy. so i'm still reading a ton...just not doing so well with my list.

other than that...my parents visit next weekened (yay!), and i'll get to see pictures from beth's trip to norway, the last few pictures that i don't have from our wedding, and pictures from our friends jon and gretchen's wedding that we went to a couple weeks ago. we had a great time - we were back in minnesota, and we got to spend time with old friends (and steph drove up!). we got to visit st. olaf, hang out in northfield, see a twins game...and we definitely talked about how much we loved it there, how much we could see ourselves ending up there someday. and on a totally unrelated note, i've also spent time knitting after an unplanned and unexplained hiatus. i've decided that as a knitter, i'm more cut out for knitting small, nontraditional things instead of sweaters. for instance, i'm knitting covers for our sofa's throw pillows right now. i've even been dorky enough to compile an entire amazon wish list dedicated to books of nontraditional knitting patterns. :)

anyways...that was a lot of disorganized material. life hasn't been so boring, i suppose, just not as blog-worthy. but now, my laptop is making my legs way too hot, so i'm going to go. it's bedtime anyway.

g'night!