I work nights the rest of this week until the weekend. This means I have absolutely no excuse not to go running every morning. Ugh! It's so healthy I can't stand it! But it (running) seems to be something I'm doing at the moment, despite my own disbelief as I head out in the morning about 3 times a week and mechanically start going through the jogging motions till it becomes loose and speedy. I even listen to sermons while running (it occupies my attention better than music) so it's doubly healthful. It all makes me want to take up smoking and 3am parties.
In other news, Australia sprang forward and the rest of the civilised English-speaking world fell back, so now when it's 9am here it's 5pm in Michigan instead of 7pm. Drat. Makes phone calls less convenient.
I've gotten (gone?) back to reading books. Today I actually read as I walked to work, doing just like Belle in Beauty and the Beast, reading and magically able to weave through the people on the sidewalk. I always used to do this in the halls between classes in middle school until I realized it would improve my social standing if I kept my book addiction a little more discreet. I had three days off in a row last week and read three books. I haven't done that for ages either. The concept of 'story' used to fascinate me and occupy me much as community and Kingdom-building occupies me right now, and it's been like returning to myself to be revisiting this hunger for fiction, for story, for redemption drama.
29 October 2006
19 October 2006
fyi
Today I bought two Bibles and three shirts and breakfast with a friend.
I also found a website devoted to having really long hair and determined that long hair is gross.
I also found a website devoted to having really long hair and determined that long hair is gross.
15 October 2006
It's a rainy early summer night here in ol' Sydney. Another week gone by, another amazing Sunday finished, another week peeking around the horizon waiting for dawn to unfold. I anticipate confidence and beauty, change and fear, dwelling and restlessness - the mixture I've been getting most weeks, and one that never grows old. I love Jesus Christ. No white bread life for me, but one that's robust, flavorful, strong, nourishing. Amen.
11 October 2006
1 1/2 years out of college and I'm technologically illiterate
Well, it feels that way anyway. I have just gone to Blogger beta on this site, and in the last week acquired a MySpace page and a Facebook page (I think it's facebook... maybe another such site... I can't remember) and don't really know how to use either of the two latter. Also apparently people get notified I'm on MySpace without my mentioning it to them, cause two of my friends have contacted me to be added to Friends. Thanks to them I have two friends :-) other than that my pages are daunting and blank. Yay. I feel like my mother, who recently wrote me that a year ago she couldn't even have spelled "laptop."
I celebrate technology outpacing me by eating a dinner of dark chocolate alternated with raw walnuts, the kind of meal that feels great going down but pretty foolish thereafter. But I was noticing today that over half of my diet is fruits and vegetables. There's a little whole grain bread, some chicken, nuts and seeds, occasional beef or seafood, and some sugar and chocolate and coffee. That's generally what I eat. Not too bad, I thought. I think for dessert I'll go have a piece of toast with half an avocado spread on it and slices of tomato and seasoned with salt, pepper, and cayenne :-)
So today I sat next to a snappily dressed young woman on the bus who was evidently a director of movies, and she was on the phone counseling a friend of hers who was trying to find a partner. The kind of partner to "be" with. (Don't you love euphemisms?) Sample sentence: "It's like you're casting the leading man in your own romantic movie." I don't want to get into details because the whole conversation left a bit of a grimace on my face but basically I came away thinking how messed up modern relationships are with the whole sexual freedom thing having come in and undermined the reasons for marriage, and also how Sydney it is to have women acting like they're lofty princesses for whom men must vie with each other for the privilege of pleasing and whose feet men must kiss. Jeez.
Today I also got my hair colored for $20 at a sweet funky salon that has won awards, cause Keryn's cousin works there and needs people to practice/play on for some course he's doing. He's good. My hair is darker brown now, which is good, but sadly still reddish, which I'm so sick of even though everyone says how well red becomes me. I want earthy and not so warm. I want normal boring Sandra Bullock/ Jennifer Lopez tone on tone brown hair. My new color also has trendy random blond highlights among the medium reddish brown, just a few, in the middle layers of my hair so only the ends show through. It's fine. It's not making me ecstatic but I am sure I'll get compliments on it, and it was certainly worth the price!
Today I also changed my earrings three times. Cuz I'm an earring junkie.
I celebrate technology outpacing me by eating a dinner of dark chocolate alternated with raw walnuts, the kind of meal that feels great going down but pretty foolish thereafter. But I was noticing today that over half of my diet is fruits and vegetables. There's a little whole grain bread, some chicken, nuts and seeds, occasional beef or seafood, and some sugar and chocolate and coffee. That's generally what I eat. Not too bad, I thought. I think for dessert I'll go have a piece of toast with half an avocado spread on it and slices of tomato and seasoned with salt, pepper, and cayenne :-)
So today I sat next to a snappily dressed young woman on the bus who was evidently a director of movies, and she was on the phone counseling a friend of hers who was trying to find a partner. The kind of partner to "be" with. (Don't you love euphemisms?) Sample sentence: "It's like you're casting the leading man in your own romantic movie." I don't want to get into details because the whole conversation left a bit of a grimace on my face but basically I came away thinking how messed up modern relationships are with the whole sexual freedom thing having come in and undermined the reasons for marriage, and also how Sydney it is to have women acting like they're lofty princesses for whom men must vie with each other for the privilege of pleasing and whose feet men must kiss. Jeez.
Today I also got my hair colored for $20 at a sweet funky salon that has won awards, cause Keryn's cousin works there and needs people to practice/play on for some course he's doing. He's good. My hair is darker brown now, which is good, but sadly still reddish, which I'm so sick of even though everyone says how well red becomes me. I want earthy and not so warm. I want normal boring Sandra Bullock/ Jennifer Lopez tone on tone brown hair. My new color also has trendy random blond highlights among the medium reddish brown, just a few, in the middle layers of my hair so only the ends show through. It's fine. It's not making me ecstatic but I am sure I'll get compliments on it, and it was certainly worth the price!
Today I also changed my earrings three times. Cuz I'm an earring junkie.
05 October 2006
fragment
light
Keryn asked me the other day what was most important to me, what I needed. For herself she could not be whole without God, and her family, and dance. I replied, Jesus, community, and... I laughed as it came to me... sunshine.
What is it with light? What is so fascinating to me about it? The radiant golden floods of daylight that the early afternoon sun pours out is the kind of light I feel most at home in. It feels like home. It feels natural and comfortable, an outward match of what is inside me.
Some of my best times are directly related to the light. I hold precious the memory of the summer I spent working myself to exhaustion five days a week planting things at a garden center, because as the summer progressed I got in the habit of going to bed around 9pm and getting up at 5 to spend 45 minutes of free time in the newborn morning light with some black tea [laced with vanilla and maple syrup] and one of two Christian books that fed me that season. Being up before anyone else in the house is stirring has always been something I love, and though I can enjoy staying up late at night for the same reason that no one else is awake, the thin early sun is more than reason enough to make mornings my preferred time to lose sleep.
Walks coming home from work can, on certain shifts, hit sunset or dusk just right. Tonight, for example, the sun was setting back behind the city skyline in streaks of red and pink and orange and lavender. On the other side of the sky the moon was rising high over the ocean as it does every night, white luminescence against a deep blue backdrop. I probably spent as much time staring up at either side as I did where I was going. The moon does things to me. Makes my mind go a little bit spaced out. Lunatic. My friend Craig who spent five years in the bush with the aborigines doing nothing said he got so attuned to his body and the natural world around him that he could feel his breathing shift when the moon rose so that even if he was not in sight of the moon he knew when it came up.
Keryn asked me the other day what was most important to me, what I needed. For herself she could not be whole without God, and her family, and dance. I replied, Jesus, community, and... I laughed as it came to me... sunshine.
What is it with light? What is so fascinating to me about it? The radiant golden floods of daylight that the early afternoon sun pours out is the kind of light I feel most at home in. It feels like home. It feels natural and comfortable, an outward match of what is inside me.
Some of my best times are directly related to the light. I hold precious the memory of the summer I spent working myself to exhaustion five days a week planting things at a garden center, because as the summer progressed I got in the habit of going to bed around 9pm and getting up at 5 to spend 45 minutes of free time in the newborn morning light with some black tea [laced with vanilla and maple syrup] and one of two Christian books that fed me that season. Being up before anyone else in the house is stirring has always been something I love, and though I can enjoy staying up late at night for the same reason that no one else is awake, the thin early sun is more than reason enough to make mornings my preferred time to lose sleep.
Walks coming home from work can, on certain shifts, hit sunset or dusk just right. Tonight, for example, the sun was setting back behind the city skyline in streaks of red and pink and orange and lavender. On the other side of the sky the moon was rising high over the ocean as it does every night, white luminescence against a deep blue backdrop. I probably spent as much time staring up at either side as I did where I was going. The moon does things to me. Makes my mind go a little bit spaced out. Lunatic. My friend Craig who spent five years in the bush with the aborigines doing nothing said he got so attuned to his body and the natural world around him that he could feel his breathing shift when the moon rose so that even if he was not in sight of the moon he knew when it came up.
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