Random Wednesday Ramblings

I'm sitting at the dining room table, drinking coffee. It's cool inside here. I'm listening to a new music group one of my best friends told me I should listen to. Clever fellow, Oliver. Knows what music I will like. It's "Sleeping at Last," in case any of you want to check it out. It's not rock of any sort, I assure you... in case you have been scared off by any of my harder music suggestions. =]

The coffee is quite strong. I made it, therefore it is strong. My coffee addiction helps me get up earlier (although it's not really working at this mid-summer point, with the counter-incentive of mono to keep me in bed). Contrary to popular opinion, for me coffee does not get me up by waking me up with caffeine. No, rather, it works because I am so addicted to coffee that I get a headache if I don't have it. And, because my body is used to having it at around 7am, if I sleep later than that, I wake up with a caffeine headache. And that, my dear friends, is how coffee works to get me up. However, as I mentioned earlier, it doesn't work when I have mono. No, I just lay in bed with a headache, but too sleepy to get up. Fun times.

I have a bug bite on my jaw, and another on my hand, and another on my knee. All of them terribly annoying places to have bug bites. BUT we do have lots of blackberry jam to show for the bug bites. How are the two related, you ask? Allow me to enlighten you. Blackberry jam requires blackberries. Blackberries grow on bushes, and must be picked. Picking blackberries from bushes requires close proximity to bushes. Bushes are the home of all sorts of various small biting animals. Hence, we have blackberry jam and bug bites.

I realized the other night how long it's been since I played piano, because I sat down at my keyboard and started in on one of my well-beloved pieces of music, and couldn't play it smoothly. Took me forever to get through it. I was rather disappointed, and vowed then and there to sit down at my keyboard more often.

Which reminds me, I'm taking piano lessons next semester! Those of you who know my attitude towards piano and lessons may be surprised.... I love playing piano. I don't like to be told how. But, I like to get better at playing piano, and I figured the best way to reach that goal would be to go ahead and take lessons. And, my voice lessons haven't been as terrible as I thought they would be, so maybe the piano won't be so bad either. At least it'll give me an excuse to play piano... "I'm doing my homework!" Last semester, piano was a great way to avoid homework.

And on that note, I do believe I shall go play my keyboard. That is, after I upload a couple wallpapers that I made... they are on facebook too. Yeah, I liked them so much that I kinda uploaded them everywhere. =]

Hike

The summer staff of Golden Bell (where I am working this summer) went on a hike yesterday. I thought I'd share some pictures of the hike.

Explanation of the dot on Morgan's head in these photos: I put a smiley face sticker on his forehead in the morning and he proceeded to wear it all day, to "keep a smile on his face."

Aaron found a hiking stick just his size!



As we got higher there was more and more snow. Dan asked Morgan to make a cap for his head out of snow to keep him cool. Morgan greatly enjoyed his assignment of smashing snow on Dan's head.



Morgan found a snow pile.



And Matt joined him.



There was a lady bug that showed up on my jeans.



David... uh... well... what can I say about this photo?





The hike was absolutely gorgeous, and lots of fun, if slightly exhausting.

Engaged!

Yes. I'm engaged. I've had so many people ask me to "tell, tell more! tell story!" so I thought I'd put it on my blog (which I was planning to do anyway) so I can just point people here. =]

Ok, so most of you that know me also know that I've been dating Morgan Stephenson:



And most of you also know that this engagement thing has been coming for a while. We were quite serious from the very beginning of our relationship. We have the same calling, are on the same page with God and with life, have the same worldview and just get along in a weirdly amazingly good sort of way.

Everyone wants to know "how he proposed" ... which is a hard sort of question to answer, strangely enough, because the answer begins with a question... "which time?" ... yes, it happened a few times. So here is how that works...

A while back in our relationship it just sort of happened that we started assuming that we were going to get married. Don't ask me how that started or when, but it just was.

Then, this last weekend, we were praying about our relationship, as we do quite a bit, and just working though some stuff together and we both realized that we needed to go ahead and actually make the commitment and get engaged. So, that was, I guess, the first "proposal" which was really just us, in the middle of praying and talking, promising before God that we were going to marry each other. That was in Morgan's little red car, somewhere in Kansas on our way to Golden Bell.

The next day, we went to REI in Denver (a big outdoor equipment store) and Morgan bought some blue cord. Back in his car, outside of REI, he officially asked me to marry him (I said yes) and put a piece of the cord around each of our ankles as our engagement bands. Those of you who know us will probably not be surprised at our rather unconventional engagement bands. =]




Well, Morgan is an incurable romantic and wasn't quite satisfied with that proposal. Back here at Golden Bell camp, we were talking a walk last night. It was gorgeous, there was a full moon, with just enough clouds in the sky to make it beautiful but not enough to obscure the amazing stars. Pike's Peak was glowing with snow in the moonlight. Morgan suddenly stopped on the path. I stopped with him, wondering what on earth he was doing. He knelt down and asked me once more if I would marry him. I said yes. =]



He was satisfied with that one, I think. =D

So yes. I'm engaged to one Morgan Stephenson, and I am quite happy about this fact.



Drop curtain.

Pan Pipes

So for my physics of music class, I had to make some kind of musical instrument. .... well, get three homeschoolers (me, Morgan, his brother Nathaniel) and a homeschool mom (their mom, Aunt Rene') together and give them a project like that and you can get quite creative! We decided to make a pan flute out of
1. test tubes
2. colored water
3. wax
4. hot glue
5. a glass rod

It turned out rather awesome, if I do say so myself. We put colored water into the test tubes to create the different notes, and then poured hot wax on top of the water and allowed it to cool, sealing in the water. We then hot glued the tubes together, and a glass rod across them for stability. It was really hard to hit the highest couple notes, but it all worked!

School Prayers

Well, in the middle of finals... and I realized something new yesterday. I don't like to pray about school. I realized that yesterday evening, and I immediately began wondering why. I mean, I pray about everything! God is my best friend, I talk to Him all the time. Why don't I like to pray about the thing that takes up most of my life energy right now?

I think that what it is is that I somehow feel like school is my responsibility. If I just put enough work into it, I'll get fine grades. If my grades aren't the best, well then it's just because I haven't put enough work into it. And praying about it just feels like I'm telling God that I really don't want to put the work into school, so can He please bail me out? Hm. Interesting thought.

...I really have nothing more to say, that was just my thought of the day. =]
What was that? You want a picture?
Oh, fine, if you insist.... =]