Australia

I got a hankering to go through some of my old Australia photographs and see what I could do to make them presentable. Here are some of the favorites from my trip. I'll post more later.

Records. You know, Vinyl

I am in such a mood to listen to my old records but I haven't found a record player that I liked yet. I don't want to spend an arm and a leg on one right now anyway, so I'll just keep waiting. There are some really cool players out there that will record the original vinyl record into an MP3 right on your computer! I was listening to some old 40's music on XM Radio this morning. Some of the artists who I have records of were on and I wished I could hear a nice, warm, crackly, hissing version of the song. One of these days I will. I like how old records have strange noises going on while you play them and in between tracks, there is always still some sort of noise going on. You can hear the texture and shape of the vinyl itself. I have always been fascinated with it. Oh! I am so excited! I am going to go on a hike this weekend up north of here to a place I have never been. It's all go's unless somebody gets sick or something. It'll be nice to have a hike. I have to start doing my taxes here soon too. I am going to try not to wait to the last minute. Well, I should probably clean up the wreck of a room that I in the middle of since I won't have time the rest of the week.

Sick Again

Well dangit, I just got over having a cold a couple of weeks ago, and now I have an acute throat infection. At least that's what the doctor said. They put me on antibiotics for 5 days and so hopefully that will get rid of this crud. I hope I can go hiking this next weekend on a hike out near Sheep's Bridge and Seven Springs. I guess there is a cave out there that Heath and Myke said was supposed to be really neat. I hope I can go. I have been missing hiking a lot and really want to get outside. Well, I should go drink some more water and juice. Maybe I'll do some Bible study while I have a lot of quiet time on my hands. Watching this show on TV about killer volcanoes is a little depressing.

The Best Pool Game Ever

OK, so last night was the Superbowl and I was invited to a friend's house for a party. After the party had gotten well underway, a family of friends who I know showed up with their young daughter to join into the fun. Izza is about 11 or so and she is a real sweetie, but she and I didn't want to watch football so we decided to get a pool game together. Izza had never played pool before, so I told her I would teach her. Heath and Julie played on a team against us, and Izza and I decided to be the underdogs. Now an inporant part of this story is a detail about how we watched the game. From the patio where the pool table is, you can see the TV in the office and so in-between turns we would watch what everyone in the living room was yelling about on the game. Izza and I were doing great and then we had the curse of the 8-ball. She had even made a tough shot while leaning backwards over the edge of the table (her own concocotion of course) and didn't even scratch! We had gotten all of our balls into the pockets and we only had the formidible black ball to get into the last pocket. As I took the shot that I thought couldn't be made, the cue ball glanced off of the cursed 8-ball and slid right into the side pocket. Just as Izza and I started to rejoice on our win (finally), the Cardinals made a much needed touchdown and so everyone inside started yelling and screaming too! Both of these events happened within a half-second of each other. You should have heard the commotion!!! Of course, Izza and I ran in to tell her mom that she had just won her first pool game ever since we didn't really care about the football game. It was so much fun to play with her and teach her the game so she could play with us "big" kids. It is sort of strange to be a "big" kid now that the younger kids look up to and think are "old". I remember being her age and thinking that people who were in their 20's seemed so neat because they were grown-ups, but they still liked to have fun. I hope that I can be a mature "big girl" that Izza can look up to. I really love being around her and her family. It was a fun night that ended with some mad games of Taboo and Cranium. Joe and Heath and I played against Liz, Jake and another girl whose name I sadly don't remember right now. It was so funny watching Jake try to act out his impression of John Wayne and Julia Childs, and to watch Heath draw an picture of tug-of-war. We all laughed so hard. It was good fun and a great time spent with awesome friends. I am so thankful for the time that I have to spend with the people who are such blessings in my life.

Poker and Coke

I had a blast tonight! I laughed harder than I had in a while. I went and played mini-golf and raced go-karts at CrackerJax. Of course, golf turned the into ultimate mini-golf game with all of us trying to keep the others' golf balls from going into each hole. After we had a mad game of golf and had our own VERY competitive version of the Indy 500, we went to In-N-Out for burgers. Also, a very hilarious experience. Jake was talking about some movie and the bad word in it and then he kept talking about it under his breath. So just to be funny, but let him know that I didn't really like it, I poked him with a french fry. I think it hurt a little more than I wanted it to, since it was a little over-cooked and it sorta decintigrated when I smashed it into the side of his face. I felt kinda bad, but I also thought it was crass to say a word like that even in talking about a movie. I said I was sorry since it hurt. After the seven of us ate we sat around for a while and talked and then Brandon all of a sudden says to me, "Your hair makes you look like a witch." All I could do was start to laugh. I knew that I was having a bad hair day, but I didn't know it was that bad. Of course he said I looked like a good witch, so at least he tried to redeem himself. We finished up there and then decided to go to Myke's house to play poker and when we got there, we couldn't find any poker chips, so we dug up a tiny amount of change (like nine coins per person). All of the coins were worth the same amount since we didn't have very much of the same thing, and the game didn't last long since 9 coins only goes so far with 7 people playing. You know. Odds. So we are all going to go to a Superbowl party at Myke's house tomorrow and I think it'll be fun. I hope to laugh some more. Ok, so the Coke part of the title to this blog post is for the photo at the top. I have loved this photograph that I made in Australia ever since I took it, but I wanted to make it seem brighter and just hadn't taken the time to learn to do it right. So today I was out on Lynda.com and learned about quick masks and some color editing. I love lynda.com! Well, since it's almost 1am, I think I have sufficiently wound down my mind with writing this and I hope that I am not too tired to stop making sense. Sorry if I missed something important here, but it's being up since 6:30 yesterday and 7:57 this morning with late nights in-between that are at work on me now. Happy poker and Coke night ya'll... I am so glad I got to laugh. God, thank you for laughter and friends to enjoy it with!

Friendship

You know, I got to thinking tonight about friendship. I went to a young adult group with a couple of my girlfriends and had some REALLY loud but good worship time, and then a really great message on 1 John 2. It was about how we are different in our levels of maturity in our walk with God. How we can be like babies and be learning, or then we can more like a young man and be maturing, or we can finally get to where we are mature and are like adults or grandparents. The guy who gave the message said that we should seek out those "mature" Christians and attach ourselves to them and learn from them. I am going to have to go back and re-read the passage so that it can sink in even more and I can remember it better for the journey ahead. I got to talk to one of my girlfriends for a while afterward and am so thankful to have her as a friend. We haven't gotten to spend as much time together lately, but we talked and asked how we could pray for each other in the things that we are going through. To me, friendship is taken so lightly in our culture. We have 800 bajillion "friends" on Facebook or Myspace, our phones are packed with the numbers of people who we met in class and don't even really care if we see again, and we always tell people that "we should catch up sometime" but never really do. How can we say that these people are even our friends? Do we know them? Do we care? When somebody asks us how we are, don't we always say "I'm good" even if we aren't? I think the whole problem with our society today is that we care less about more people instead of caring more about fewer people. I know that there will always be people who I just 'know' as well as the ones who I get to know and am close to. I hope that whoever I know, however well, will see me as a someone who really cares. Speaking of friends, I think the best gift that I recieved this year for Christmas was a gift from an old childhood friend. He and his brother came to visit for a week and near the end of their trip, a box arrived in the mail. I opened it and found a smaller box wrapped in gift wrap. I tore through that to find a small box with a disclaimer: "THIS IS NOT JEWELRY!". We all had a chuckle as I stood in the kitchen, opening the tiny package. As soon as I saw the little box I had known what was inside. It was an arrowhead that my friend and I had found when all of us were just kids goofing around down near the creek. It was out on the edge of a limestone cliff and we both saw it at the same time. I was so shocked I couldn't say anything, and he was so scared of the edge of the cliff that he couldn't move. So he claimed seeing it first, but I went to retrieve it. To the shock of the siblings with us, we started shouting at each other for whose it really was. Finally, after crying and yelling and having to have our moms muddle through what really happened, they told us what we should do. Share it. The arrowhead would stay at his house for a while, and then it could stay at mine. Well, this had happened probably 10 years ago and the arrowhead that we had warred over had never changed territories. So this Christmas, as I opened the box I realized that this was no ordinary gift. It was wonderful and funny to receive this gift with such a history of friendship behind it, and that it was really meaningful. Just thinking of these things makes me so thankful for the friendships that I have.

Just Me

I feel like I am becoming me. This may not make sense to any of you, but I am feeling more confident in just being me. I am finding out who "me" is and what I can do and what I want to do. I have this urge to spend time with girls who are younger than me. I have no idea why, but it's been on my heart for a while. I want to pay off my camera and then start actually being able to save money to do things that I could want to do later on down the road. I am more confident that people don't just think I am a kid, and have found that people generally don't mind hearing me out and listening. I think that I am starting to be able to get a handle on the fact that I don't have to settle for less than what I deserve. I am finding out that I can handle more pressure and responsibility in my job than I thought I would be able to. I can do things without procrastinating, although I still do sometimes. I can survive being home alone and not die of loneliness. I am able to say what I want to say better than I have before, and let people know how I feel. I can feel pain and disappointment, but I can function without letting it ruin my day. I still get frustrated with bad drivers, and I hate walking past smokers and breathing in the crap they just exhaled, and I feel sorry for myself more often than I should. But I am learning that I can demand the respect of an adult and not get pushed around like a kid, and that I can be taken seriously.

Love = Forgiveness

I was having a battle before bedtime. It was my heart feeling hurt and mad, yet at the same time feeling loving and forgiving. I was feeling these feelings over something that happened not too long ago that created a hurt spot in my heart. I have had moments of feeling sad, mad, and wronged. I have moments were I feel like hugging the person and slapping the hell out of them at the same time. And tonight (or rather yesterday since it's after midnight now), I was asking the Lord to help me to deal with these feelings. I am struggling with being truly forgiving. I wanted to make sure that I am not just saying that I forgive someone, I want it to be true deep in my heart.

• Forgiveness: is the freeing of a person from guilt and its consequences, including punishment; usually as an act or favor, compassion or love, with the aim of restoring a broken personal relationship.

I was crying out to God to help me with these feelings of anger. So I looked in the back of my Bible and found the word anger and I found a reference to 1 Corinthians 13:5 which says

"[Love] is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs."

It hit me that this is what it was all about. So I read the entire chapter. It begins with the most powerful sentence in 12:31; "And now I will show you the most excellent way..."

13:1 If I speak in the tongues^[a] of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames,^[b] but have not love, I gain nothing.

4Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

8Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. 11When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. 12Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

13And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

I found that passage so comforting. It took all doubts of what I my actions and response should be to the wound in my heart. Love. The Bible tells me exactly what love is and that love is directly related to forgiveness! I am so thankful for the Holy Spirit speaking to my heart. I have been asking the Lord to speak to me through the Holy Spirit and give me wisdom about the things in my life I am dealing with now and the things I will deal with at any time in my life. I am so glad that God is specific in His Word. And I am so happy to be able to hear Him speak in my heart!

Grown Up Spaces!!!

Oh, it doesn't look like a juvenile florophile got into my room with tacky accessories! I have a fun duvet cover that is wonderfully reversible and some quirky new knobs on this little chest of drawers I have. And I put up a semblance of actual "artwork" in the bathroom, and although it's from Ikea, it still looks better than the purple "cat" clock that was previously there. My desk is clean, and there is lovely overcast light coming in through the windows. Overcast days are my favorite to photograph and create on. I just LOVE them. Oh, and speaking of l-o-v-e, Valentines Day is just around the corner. I don't think I've really told anybody, but of all the holidays Valentines is my favorite. I just love getting to make romantic looking cards and sweet treats and having a reason to be super, gooshy nice to people just because. I want to be more like Valentines all of the time with me. Sort of like, I like to give the people in my family gifts throughout the year, because Christmas isn't about that anyway and it's so much nicer to be a little unpredictable. Keep and eye out for lots of pictures and Valentiney stuff...

Letters

What is it about letters that is so special? I've always loved getting them and sending them and making them beautiful so that they make even the mailman stop and look at them. So many letters are just about business, or end up being junk mail from your local retailers and politicians. I think I love handwritten letters the best, probably because they are the rarest. You can tell who the letter is from by the size and shape of the person's handwriting. The first handwritten letter I have received in the mail in month's came today. Every time I get a letter in the mail, it's like a Christmas gift to me. Actually, I like it better than Christmas gifts. To me, it's one of the nicest ways someone can say that they care.

Not so hot with a cold

Eww. I have a cold. Although I am not finding it terribly amusing, it has given me some time at home to clean up, sort, and do some researching. I got a nice hot shower and was thanking the Lord for it as it opened up my clogged nose and made me feel less germ-y. I am doing some more de-cluttering and since I am feeling a tad better today, I am going to do some more journaling. I felt bad about dropping it for the past couple of days, but I was feeling pretty lousy. I will not give up on persevering with this, and have been thinking of how I have looked forward to the end of each day to spend time with the Lord. I think I'll wait to take my Nyquil after I journal tonight though... ;^)

Can I Get a Paint Can?

Ok, I have a major creative bug just itching to get out and do some work on this room of mine. I think one of the loveliest things would be to paint my white walls grey. I am thinking of a nice, light grey with just enough substance to keep everything in the room from floating away. A sort of uncommon neutral. I also want to make new curtains. Nice long ones that actually go to the floor. I think I am going to remake the curtains that I have now into something else useful, and colorful maybe. I think it could be a very much more grown-up room with sophistication. But alas, right now my wardrobe is in the throes of being reorganized and taken stock of, all of my decorating treasures are on the table in the middle of the room, and my photographs are strewn here and there. And I dont want to spend a whole wad of money either. I think I could move everything around enought to paint... hmmm. More to come later as the ideas materilize.

Joy In My Heart

You know, I don't think I had experienced joy for a long time until the other day. Joy is hard to describe. This was a sort of feeling that I hadn't really had since I was a kid. I was finishing up my shower about a week ago and all of a sudden I was aware of a feeling of nothing. I wasn't worried about Heath, I wasn't afraid of the decisions I am going to have to make in my life, and I wasn't insecure about... anything! For a long time, I have felt very cynical about the struggles and obstacles in my life, however small they may be. I have worried about what path I am going to take in my life next and what people around me will think of the choices I make about what I do in my life. But on this night I experienced peace which led to unrequited joy, and I just about danced out of the shower. I had been actually talking to the Lord about what is going on in my life and the things I struggle with in my character, even though He already knows what I am going to say and what I am feeling. It's like, God is real, and He likes to hear from me just like a real live human being would. I think of it this way; I would feel bad if I never said anything to my Mom and just thought about how much I love her, or if I just thought about having conversations with her. I realized that the same is even more true with God. He's not that far away. Some people may think that God is some 'thing' that we can pray to and hope that He decides to listen and possibly even do something about our prayers. But I think that God is like the invisible friend that you always had as a kid when you got lonely. When we were young, that invisible friend was just as real as any other, but the difference was that the invisible one never had to go home. I have found that the Holy Spirit is always with me and really does speak to me when I listen, and I have felt peace in my life like I have never experienced before. I have always known Godly people throughout my life, and when I have been stressed about something in my life, they always told me to just "give it to the Lord". I felt like I was missing something when I "gave it to Him", but didn't "feel" any better or different really. But the truth is, I wasn't really giving the problems and stress and anxiety to God, I was telling Him that I would trust Him if I didn't have to take a risk. Trust is reliance and confidence in a person, and the Bible affirms the total trustworthiness of God, especially in relation to his promises to his people. Christian faith is, essentially, trust in the person and character of God. Now the grounds for trust in God are His power and strength, His unfailing love, and His salvation. When we trust God, He promises results of peace, security, protection from danger, freedom from fear, prosperity (often of a spiritual nature), strength and physical life. This is how I know that I am learning to trust God! I am experiencing most if not all of these things in my own life right now. This in turn causes me to have joy in the everyday blessings of life and in the work that God continues to do in my heart, and I want everyone to know it!

Babies are the name of the game...

Well, I have been enjoying my job photographing newborn babies at the hospital. I work with First Day Photo and do professional shoots right in the hospital rooms of our clients. It has been so much fun, I thought that I should just post a couple of photos here...

The Most Disturbing Thing

I saw the most disturbing, sick, awful thing on TV today. It was an AD on the Discovery Channel about, get this, a MAN who had a baby. I had to look away. It was the weirdest, grossest thing I could have ever imagined. It blew my mind how a doctor and two people could actually endeavor to do that. The culture that we live in today is so demented and backwards from the culture we lived in 100 years ago. Since the beginning of man's existence, women have born offspring and men have been the protector/provider for the women and children. How have we gone so awry from knowing that the human physiology is specifically different in men and women for a reason and for a purpose to taking advantage of medical knowledge and rearranging our bodies however we please? I don't even know what to say...