just for fun

This new twist on the ol' quiz is going around on various bloggies, so I decided to give it a try. Fun and cool!

The idea is that you type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search. Then, using only the first page, pick an image. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into FDs Mosaic Maker. (Choose 3 columns with 4 rows.)

The Questions:
1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food?
3. What high school did you go to?
4. What is your favorite color?
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. Favorite drink?
7. Dream vacation?
8. Favorite dessert?
9. What you want to be when you grow up?
10. What do you love most in life?
11. One Word to describe you.
12. Your favorite animal.

Here's me:


(if you click it, it gets BIGGER!)

and my answers are:

1. Rosanna (I'm guessing this is a picture of a girl with whom I share a name)
2. tacos
3. home school
4. red
5. Harrison Ford, back in his Indy days (yeah that's right, I like to kick it old style)
6. MonaVie
7. London
8. tiramisu
9. domestic goddess
10. the Word, my husband
11. loyal
12. golden retrievers

meanwhile, as I wait for timelessness...

...I want these cupcakes. But since quite obviously don't have the time to actually make them, I may see if Cupcake (a funky little shop here in MN that sells, you guessed it, cupcakes) carries something like them.

ETA: I found the link to Cupcake here in Minneapolis. :)

crazy days and longings for timelessness

Yesterday Rob's grandmother died (not "passed", DIED. I dislike softening the harsh reality of death) so we are making plans to go to the funeral in OKC this Saturday. I think we're going to leave straight from work tomorrow (Thursday) and drive to Rob's sister Jennifer's house about 4 hours away in Iowa to stay the night. We'll carpool with them early Friday morning for the 11-hour drive to OKC, getting there in time for bed on Friday. The funeral service is 10:30 Saturday morning, after which we'll spend time with the fam until evening. We'll pull out of OKC Saturday evening and drive half-way back to Minneapolis, finishing the drive on Sunday morning.

The reason for such haste is that this coming week is the kick-off week for TBI... starting with a picnic on Sunday afternoon at a retreat center, where I will leave Rob for Sunday & Monday nights for his "male bonding time" retreat with all the TBI guys, from which He'll come back on Tuesday evening in time for bed. Wednesday is new student Orientation Day, and Thursday is the first day of classes!

Somewhere in between all this we hope to fit in some breathing, and maybe even some eating, if we're really lucky! ;)

On another note, Rob read me a letter he wrote his grandma right before she died, and it was amazing (perhaps I can convince him to post it on his blog). It made me long for heaven all over again. It's funny, before anyone close to me died, I rarely thought much about heaven... but when my mom's father died in 2004, it awakened a whole level of thoughts and feelings inside me. Every verse I read about heaven, every song I sing that has a line about being with the Lord, and every prayer or sermon that has heaven in its theme is so much more REAL to me now that I know people who are there. And every time another person I love goes there, it makes me want to go all that much more. I mean, really... no more pain or sadness; all mysteries revealed; no more dim sight, instead seeing Him face-to-face?? Yes, please! Not to mention the streets of gold, timelessness (uh, YEAH!), the endless delights that will always thrill us, and being with those who have gone before. As the Gettys so eloquently put it:

"As saints of old still line the way,
Retelling triumphs of His grace,
We hear their calls and hunger for the day
When, with Christ, we stand in glory."

Two of the things I am looking forward to the most are having long, deep, sweet, and even funny, one-on-one talks with Jesus (I imagine sitting side by side in the grass on a warm sunny afternoon, maybe next to a stream, eating grapes and cheese&crackers together), and corporate worship "services" where I'll be part of millions and millions of people singing the most gorgeous songs of all genres, lifting up the Name of the Lord as He sits on His throne. I can't quite comprehend that, but I can compare it to times I've had here on earth and then imagine it magnified by 1000... and that thought makes me tear up immediately. One of the things I like about that thought is the fact that all of us believers will be 100% unified. Right now, I can name about 10 people off the top of my head that I'm looking forward to restored relationships with! All the little divisions that shear apart relationships will be totally gone; we'll all think the same way, because we'll all KNOW HIM as He really IS. Ahhh... THAT is my over-arching longing that fuels my desire to get to heaven! Now just to live this little life that He's given me and get that outta the way so I can go there already!

There's a verse in a song by Derek Webb about the Wedding Feast of the Lamb that touches a place deep inside me every time I sing it. It's a beautiful word picture of how we will enjoy the fullness of redemption in heaven. It's an invitation to finally exchange, for the last time, our "sordid history" for His Body and Blood, and partake of the freedom that they have bought for us:

Because I am My beloved's
And My beloved's Mine;
So, you bring all your history,
I'll bring the bread and wine.
Then we'll have us a party
Where all the drinks are on Me
And as surely as the rising sun
Oh, you will be set free,
Oh, you will be set free!

Yeah!! Who's comin' with me?

I'm also so proud...

... and so humbled to be part of a company that is not only the fastest-growing privately held company in American history (with stats beat only by Fed-Ex!), but also does this and has leaders who found things like this. Thank GOD for MonaVie! Seriously, I don't know where I'd be without this company, and this product.

Again, thank God... for my brothers' persistence in telling Rob and I that we *needed* to look into the opportunity more seriously... for the effectiveness of Creator-designed nutrients having a life-changing effect in my Mom's body... for the people on our team who believe in us and themselves... for the vision, hope, and dreams that God is revealing more of to us every day... and for the tool of MonaVie to make those a reality.

I'm honored to be in this business. Onward and upward!

I am so proud...

...of my husband! He passed the grueling Greek entrance exam for The Bethlehem Institute and will be starting this new chapter of his-OUR-lives next weekend. This has been a desire that Rob has had since about 2001, and I am honored to be a part of this with him... what adventures await us! Congrats, Babe!

if I could sing...

I'd belt this one out on a smoky 1930's-esque nightclub stage to the Love Of My Life... he makes me feel like a queen every day I'm with him.

This one's for you, Babe:

The very thought of you
I forget to do
Those little ordinary things
That everyone ought to do
I'm livin' in a kind of a daydream
I'm happy as a queen
And foolish though it may seem
To me that's everything

The mere idea of you
The longing here for you
You'll never know
How slow the moments go
Till I'm near to you
I see your face in every flower
Your eyes in stars above
It's just the thought of you,
The very thought of you, my love

iWant

I'm obsessing over scooters, so I did what anyone wanting to deal with an obsession should do... looked on Criagslist. Oh yeah, that helped! Heh. This little vintage piece of Vespa adorableness is the one that I'd buy if I needed a scooter, which I don't... really. I guess.



Edit: Or maybe this hot little red one! Oh gosh... Must. Stop. Drooling. Now.

news flash!

I just found out from my boss (the only other female in the office) that there is a fabulous place for swing dancing in St. Paul. It's the Wabasha Street Caves.

Caves? As in, side-of-the-hill, walls-of-rock caves? Yep! Evidentially it was an old mobster hang-out back in the day; they transformed these big caverns into an underground (literally) party pad where they wined and dined their lovely ladies. Now that Al Capone et. al are dead, the caves been opened to the public as a restaurant/dance hall/historic site. You can even take a "gangster tour" and hear all about the atrocities that were schemed there.

I've also heard that the Belgian waffles are outta sight.

Thursday nights are reserved for a swing lesson at 6, followed by dancing into the night. I'm definitely planning on going there with mah hitman some Thursday very soon.

longish weekend

After a shortened word day today I'm headed to Kalahari Resort for a work-funded mini vacation.

I think it should be fun. Actually, at first I wasn't planning on going for several reasons; mainly because Rob couldn't get the time off and I don't like doing fun stuff without him because that makes even the most exciting things boring. Also, I mainly work with truckers and foreign warehouse workmen. Not exactly the kind of people you really want to be in a bathing suit around, ya know? Especially since I know what their preferred lunchtime "reading material" is. But upon further information, I found out that several of the guys are bringing their families, and we aren't really required to hang with them anyway.

So I started doing some mental gymnastics: a weekend away lounging beside a pool and such, or spending my Saturday doing the usual cleaning, grocery shopping, and cooking? Um, you do the math. There was still one little hitch though. Rob. He still had to work, so there was no way he could come... and, being the hip, trendy, eco-conscious, childless, young couple that we are, we share one car. Or is that because we don't want to fork over our hard-earned cash for another tank of gas every week for a car we really do. not. need? Oh yeah, that's it. But the other description sounds more... of the moment? haha

Anyway, after talking to Rob about it, we had the brilliant idea that I go with a friend. Oh yeeeeeah... kinda like what would have been my first thought before I got married? Exactly. So I invited a friend with a car and decided to go for it. Girl's weekend! I'm actually pretty excited, despite the gray haze that is the fact that Rob's not coming. I'm sure there will be plenty of girl-talk, nail polish, laughing, and whatever else it is that we girlies like to do when we get together. I'll write a review when I get back on Monday!

some things don't change... much

I posted a comment on Johanna's xanga this morning, which then led me to go look at my own old old xanga that I nearly forgot I had. I read through all the posts (like what, 5?) and came across one that literally made me shake with laughter in my pneumatic office chair. I laughed because... well honestly, I don't think my skills have improved all that much in the last 3 years! At least I don't like to cook any more now than I did then. I just *have to* more often. I'm hoping that the old adage, "practice makes perfect" will start to come true in this area sometime soon.

For your reading pleasure, I'm copying the post here:

Cooking Sucks

So I tried to be all "Sally Homemaker" today and make a nice lunch for my parents and brother David as he was working on painting the house.

I got all inspired to be creative by taking canned chili and customizing it by adding tomato paste, chopped onions, grated carrots, and extra chili powder. Looked good, smelled good. To go with it, I made iced tea customized with lemonade and fresh squeezed lemon.

Evidently I made it all too soon; David was not quite at a stopping point. So I set the table all cute and then ran downstairs to my room to check e-mail and stuff. The computer is a vortex. 15 minutes... maybe even a half an hour... later I smelled chili. Burnt chili. I had apparently left the burner "on", resulting in nearly all the beans sticking to the bottom of the pan and that burnt taste to infuse the whole pot. So I try to salvage what I can, and serve it anyway.

20 minutes later I am STILL waiting for David to come in and EAT, gosh darn it. Finally I just start working on something else... then I find myself listening to David saying that he's leaving and will just do a drive-through. Fine... Dad and Mom can still eat the burnt chili. It was then that I noticed the broken tea bag and tea leaves floating beautifully around in the iced tea like a brown snow globe.

Sigh. How does one sign up for Meals On Wheels?

(And we aren't even going to mention my repeated failed attempts at making rice...)

Okay, there is one thing that I've improved on... I can make killer rice now. Anyone want to come over for dinner? We're having rice.

work. or not.

I searched the web high and low and couldn't find a template that was *just right*, so I resorted to changing the colors on the plainest Blogger template. After fiddling and fiddling and fiddling with my header image, I think I finally came up with something that I like, for now at least. And it only took 2 days, countless font searches and a 30-day Photoshop trial later. (I think I'm more of a perfectionist than I'd like to admit!) Nevermind that I was supposed to be working today! Erm, yeah. Too bad my work responsibilities don't include manipulating text and images, color and layout. I'd hardly call it work; time would fly by.

Anyway. Here's the first incarnation of my blog! (I don't doubt that it will go through multiple mood/personality/style changes; it's owned by a woman, after all) Yes, the title is shamelessly ripped off of the Third Eye Blind song, Semi-Charmed Life. I've always liked the song from my teenager-hood, and it seemed to fit, y'know? I don't endorse the lyrics particularly, but after watching the video I do want a scooter- in apple green, please. And bangs.

introduction to... everything

So, I'm not exactly a blogging type of person. In the past, that is. Today's a new day! I'm going to try my hand at this and we'll see where we get. I think I'll have to set myself an alarm to remind me to post something here every few days! Prettying up the page may help... I think I'll go look for a template that's a wee bit more inspiring. ::wave and smile::