More Underground Design: Striped Wall

Apartment Therapy recently featured wall art done with electrical tape, which inspired me to post some pictures of my striped wall done with electrical tape:

 

 

 

I Miss This.

I wish I had more time to blog. 

Oh, and a working home computer.

 

HUGE NEWS

THE CULT OF SINCERITY premiers on YouTube on April 8th!  The first full-length feature film ever to be released on YouTube, The Cult of Sincerity is breaking all the rules of independent film-making.  Read more about it here and be sure to check out the website!!

 

He’s Back!

My friend Kyle comes into town again this afternoon to spend Easter weekend with me.  I anticipate much hilarity and fun as I try once again to convince him to make NY his home base.  Wish me luck!

 

All Things to All People

“ ¹⁹For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them. ²⁰ To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though not being myself under the law) that I might win those under the law. ²¹To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (not being outside the law of God but under the law of Christ) that I might win those outside the law. ²² To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some. ²³I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings. “ 
-1st Corinthians 9:19-23 (emphasis mine)

 This idea has been on my brain lately, as a “calling” of sorts.  I was talking with my mom on a recent drive from Longview to Dallas (about 2.5 hours in the car each way) about how my friends from Hebrew class consider me almost Jewish; some of my Asian girl friends from church lump me in the mix when they say “… and the Asian girls” (referencing a group of young singles who often have lunch after church); my friends at Red Door think of me as ”a theatre person” even though I haven’t been on a stage in years; and I had so many Mormon friends in high school that people often thought I was Mormon myself.  The more I talked about this with Mom, the more I realized that this has been a pattern all my life:  in high school, I wouldn’t have told you I had a “crowd” or that I stuck with one particular clique — I was a band nerd and a choir geek and a theatre freak, and I also spent time with some of the hicks, the jocks, the social misfits, and even some of the popular kids.  In college, even though I was a music theatre chick and I spent time with that crowd, I often felt gravitated toward the music business or music ed kids, and I had friends in all sorts of programs from business to bio-chem (even in nursing, the program known for having “invisible students”).  In church and in school as a kid, I never stuck to the kids in my own income bracket.  I think people in all walks of life are fascinating, and I’m always looking for ways to understand people different from myself.

 I think that most of the time you have to meet people where they are in order to love them.  You can’t wait for them to come to you.  We’re called, as Christians, to love one another — everyone — as Christ loved us.  Really loving people, I think, means trying to understand and to know them, even if it is for a short time or in a small capacity.  I’ve been told I’m good at networking, and I see that talent as an opportunity to love more people.  I may not, as Lincoln said, be able to “please all the people all the time”, but I will continue to try to love them.

Seemingly paradoxically, I have the hardest time loving (and forgiving) some of my fellow Christian brothers and sisters.  More on that struggle later.

 

 

An Activity!

Look, Kids!  A color page!  Grab your green crayons and print this one out!  (And if you don’t have crayons, well, that’s just sad; but you can borrow mine.  I love coloring.  Really.)

 

Linky Love

The blog shelteriffic does a round-up post called blogwatch that highlights blogs they’ve perused in the past week.  Inspired by that, I thought, even if I don’t have the time to sit and write out a bunch of blog posts, I can at least direct you to some other places that had content I enjoyed this week! 

So here you go, straight from my browser history, in no particular order:

http://itsbean.blogspot.com  A friend’s new website that follows the life of Bean, a little character ADORED by those that know her.

http://jalan46.livejournal.com/17446.html  A friend’s review of Cloverfield that amused me.

http://www.lionbrand.com/patterns/70375AD.html?noImages  A project I’d love to tackle if I had the time and new how to read crochet patterns.

http://www.jakearmerding.com/home.shtml  Fantastic musician who’s also a friend of mine.  The very first time I heard him perform, I immediately went home and bought all his CDs.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/02/dining/02curi.html?pagewanted=2&_r=2&sq=harold%20mcgee&scp=2  Interesting article about heat.

http://www.crazyblinddate.com  My latest spontaneous endeavor which promises at lest interesting stories if not the love of my life. 

 http://www.biblegateway.com/  Handy reference for looking up verses in different translations.

That’s all I’ll post for now . . . Happy Browsing!

 

Hiatus

Ok, it’s not really true; I don’t even know how to fish.  I had a boyfriend once who wanted to take me . . . and I’ve always loved the song “Fishin’ in the Dark” by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band . . . but I digress.  I’ve been so busy with the holidays and then with a CRAZY start to 2008 at work, that I haven’t had a lot of down time.  Plus, my home computer is totally dead.  Thus, this blog is neglected.  Hopefully at some point I’ll be able to resurrect it, as I do actually enjoy blogging (who’d've thunk?).  ‘Til then, don’t knock me out of your feed reader!  I’ll be back!

 

Chamelions and Crushes

I’m a bit of a chameleon.  I like to spice things up, change things around, and the thing that most frequently changes (other than my clothing) is my hair:  style, color, cut, all of it is variable.  Because I’m not shy or coy about the fact that I dye my hair, people who didn’t know me before college (when the chameleon in me took hold) often ask about my original hair color.  Well there it is, in all its glory, in the above picture.  As a kid, I had long blonde hair with bangs.  In middle school I grew out the bangs and figured out that the reason my hair held curl when my mother put it in rollers was that it’s naturally wavy, so after driving my mother crazy going through what she calls my “Gravel Gertie” phase (hey, learning to style naturally wavy hair all by yourself at 12 years old is just asking for frizz and tangles, ok?), I wore my hair in all sorts of variations (braids, curls, waves, straight, half up, half twisted, ponytail, pigtails, the list goes on), but always long.  My freshman year in high school I tried the “layered look” (still no shorter than my shoulders) and hated it, and grew it right back down to the middle of my back.  The older I got, though, the more adventurous I felt about my hair, and in college I got tired of being blonde and went red.  Since then it’s been everything from merlot to mahogany to platinum.  Then between sophomore and junior year of college, I got up the nerve to cut it all off and donate it, and from there on out you never know what I’ll do with it next.  But this picture is my “virgin” hair — uncolored and mostly untamed.

But enough about my hair.

In some respects, I look at this picture and think of how different I am (have you noticed the WWJD bracelet yet?).  There again, I look and see the same face, same typical expression of physical affection, and oh, look:  the same pattern of becoming attached to a guy who has no interest in me.  Gee, look how happy he looks to be in this picture.  Now, in all actuality, he was my boyfriend at the time, and that look is probably more directed toward his mom, who interrupted us kissing to finish off a few leftover shots on a disposable camera; but when I look at this picture, at the expression on this guy’s face and his body language compared to mine, I can scroll through and put a list of guys in his place.  I had a discussion two days ago with a female friend of mine about the hell of unrequited love, which she thinks is evil and a symptom of a fallen world because, as she puts it, “There shouldn’t be such thing as love given without love in return.”  What I find myself wondering is this:  What do you do with it?  How do you make it go away?  And why does it always happen to me? 

 

Oh, the Yumminess

I don’t have any pictures of my efforts, because, well, I just didn’t bother to get out the camera, but I thought I’d post about the delicious eggplant I made a few nights ago.  Oh, so easy:

 - Slice a large eggplant in 1/2 inch-thick rounds;
 - Arrange rounds on lightly greased cookie sheets (they can touch);
 - Slice cloves of garlic into slivers and top each eggplant round with one sliver of garlic;
 - Drizzle the entire pan with EVOO;
 - Season with kosher salt, pepper, a sprinkle of cumin and a dusting of cinnamon;
 - Roast in the oven at 450°F for 15-18 min.

 That’s it.  Tasty hot or cold, and could be nice pureed into a dip.  MMMMMM.