live. move. be.

Coolest site ever: Wordle. You basically type in the name of a website, and it gives you a neat graphic featuring a randomized assortment and design of the words that are featured most often on that particular sight. The words that are most frequently used are the largest in font. I used my Prague blog, and I thought it was an interesting summation of my summer:

Check it out. It's fun to stare at for a long time.

Tonight I am so bogged down with work that I have no choice but to simply stop. Sometimes you just have to drop everything and take a step back. So tonight, I'm doing that with a brief blog update. And I'm also celebrating the first day of fall with my roomates by drinking hot apple cider and eating popcorn!

My top 3 from this past week (besides my birthday, of course):

1) the Farmer's Market. I really love walking through fresh markets and buying produce....what a perfect way to spend a crisp autumn Saturday. I savored some tasty homemade peach ice cream that reminded me of childhood, as well as buying some lovely tomatoes, onions, crispy lettuce, and a thick loaf of crusty sourdough bread. The twins got similar items, so we had a delicious lunch that consisted of the best BLT's you've ever tasted.

2)Babysitting. I babysat for five great little kids Sunday evening. Apparently, my name is circulating around the families in my church, which is pretty sweet, because I make far more money in a few hours of babysitting than at a few hours of my job. Not to mention that it's a billion times more enjoyable.

3) Moments of rest. I was pretty sick for the first half of this week, probably due in large part to my continual lack of sleep. Being a night person who has to be at work early every morning has not turned out so well for me this semester. Tuesday morning, as I sleepily slogged through the Dewey Decimal system, my shuffling iPod gave me a sermon by Tim Keller about the importance of rest. I found this was interesting, considering my constant lack of rest, but I thought little of it for the rest of the day. I should interject here that my lack of rest was more than simply not sleeping... I was spending very little of my time alone and very little in prayer and contemplation. Sadly, when life gets hectic and crowded the first thing to go is typically solitude. So back to Tuesday...that evening, as I was praying, I got the strong sense that I was supposed to wake up early to spend some time alone with God. Of course, I complained at length about this idea, considering how late I was already going to bed, but with a sigh, I set my alarm a half an hour earlier than my typical dreadful awakening.

In an ironic twist, I awoke two hours later than my alarm the next morning, which was twenty minutes past the time I was supposed to be at work. I bolted out of bed and frantically scrambled to get out the door, followed by a mad dash across campus to the library. I went to apologize and explain my situation to my boss, but after hearing my faint, scratchy voice, she said, "You sound really sick. Why don't you just go home instead of working today?" I tried to protest, but she would have none of it...so I had to go home.

I think this was the best birthday ever. I always say that, but really, they just seem to get better every year. I'm hoping this trend of improvement will just increase at a steady exponential rate forever, and life will be grand.




This is a little reminder of my birthday duties from one of my lovely roommates, Lauren. I did eat cake until I was full up to there, a delicious homemade dark chocolate cake, after lots of dancing to some of the best musical hits to emerge from the 1970's and 60's (as well as some tunes from our favorite show, which is, of course, LOST....i.e. "Make Your Own Kind of Music" and "Downtown"). Such good times! I am truly blessed with a marvelous group of crazy friends.

Today was just one of those wistful days. On my lunch break, I began reading something from a blog of one of the missionaries in Prague, which led me to reading multiple other blogs and looking at pictures of all of their beautiful faces and families and stories. I felt an ache rise in my heart as the rain fell softly outside, wishing I could be with them all. As I walked out of my last dance class of the day, a fellow student beside me commented that the weather reminded her of the time she visited Prague. The familiar sadness welled up in me again, as I closed my eyes and imagined walking along the city streets, peering up in wonder at the buildings which always took my breath away. That chilly rain made me want to walk the cobblestone streets to Cafe Kalma and eat a chocolate filled croissant (or two), sipping my espresso as I write in my journal and read my Bible. Feeling rather blue, I stopped in my local coffee shop on my walk back home from campus (nothing says comfort like a warm latte). Just walking in there for a brief moment brought a surge of joy into my day. I deeply inhaled the familiar smell of freshly brewed coffee as I soaked in the sounds of jazz melodies and a million strands of conversation. Something just feels right about that sensation.

I feel so strangely out of place these days, longing for the past and hoping for the future. I suppose that's a lifelong tension, and I'll always exist somewhere in the middle.

On Saturday night I finally fulfilled my dream of seeing Derek Webb in concert. If you don't know Derek, I suggest you familiarize yourself with his music, because he is simply amazing. I'm not very fond of most things I hear coming out of the Christian music scene these days, but he defies the narrow musical/lyrical confines of the genre. He's pretty uncategorizable, actually....some have called him the Bob Dylan of Christian music, and I think that's a pretty good description. He actually played a cover of a Bob Dylan song at the concert ("With God On Our Side"...really incredible). His lyrics are raw, honest, and passionate, something you don't hear very often on fluffy Christian radio stations....hence him never being played on Christian radio.

Libraries try to fool you. They masquerade as these peaceful centers of happy learning, but really, they destroy their employees. Normally I would mean this in the figurative sense of boredom and monotony, but yesterday it became a physical reality. At the dreadful hour of 8:00, as I sleepily stacked books onto shelves on the the seventh floor, I suddenly found myself gashed across the shin with the razor sharp edge of a kickstand. Kickstands are those little rolling stools you stand on to reach the books on the very top shelf, and apparently, they are quite hazardous to your legs. Happily for me, there is this marvelous little perk of being a student employee: Worker's Comp. My boss raced me across campus to the Student Health Center in the little Library-mobile, and then I spent several delightful hours of my morning getting stitches across my shinbone (oh, the joy) and a lovely tetanus shot.

Really, it was quite an adventure. And it got me out of work for a couple of hours.

The library is not all bad. Today, as I shelved books, I found a book of Czech poetry and a book about the characteristics of spoken Czech in Prague. I checked them about immediately, and I'm pretty excited about purusing them soon.

It's been a long day, but I just finished devouring an authentic Italian dinner fixed by my lovely friend Gina. Mmmm, life is good.