Photo: Luke Stearns

Happy Advent!

(I'm getting back in gear...)

It's been a long time. This year was too busy for blogging (and I got addicted to facebook) and now I'm a college graduate. How'd that happen? I'm full of plans and dreams for the fall, hoping and praying that at least some of them will materialize...in the meantime I'm enjoying my last few months of California.

I am dying to photoblog. I've always had an obsession with photography and I have various scrapbooks, photo albums and hundreds of loose photos, but no digital camera with which to email and blog my photos. I'm thinking that my senior year might be the perfect time to invest in a nice Canon digital camera. Nothing too fancy, just something small with the right number of megapixels.

Do not fall asleep on a pile of change (in my case, the contents of my tip bag for today). The coins will stick to your leg, even after you wake up and shake it around. And then they'll leave really cute red marks up and down the length of your leg, so that when you go to (the very un-airconditioned) church your legs will have to be fully covered, despite the heat and humidity.

Three more days until I'm in California! I've finally reached the best part of the summer: the part where I can say, "Less than a week until I go back to school!". Everyone at work thinks that I'm a total crazy for looking forward to school (they do not regard educational activites affectionately and do not, to the best of my knowledge, ever participate in them), but I really and truly am. Socializing+Intellectual Stimulation=Happy Me!

I'm almost done with War & Peace, but I'm no longer very worried about finishing it in time. This is because I just figured out that I have a four hour layover on Saturday, in addition to the six hours of the day that I'll spend flying. And if that's not enough time to finish about 150 pages, then I don't know what is. Unfortunately, though it will be productive, I know that the layover is going to suck. The flying part is tedious enough, but the sitting-around-and-waiting-to-fly part is really, really tedious.

There are mornings when no matter how much sleep you got the night before, no matter how early you forced yourself to lie down and "rest" (count me among those who believe that melatonin supplements really work), you are exhausted. When I say exhausted I mean that you're light-headed, your whole body feels heavy and you are so tired that if you are left alone for more than five minutes there's a good chance you'll pass out in the middle of whatever you're doing (in my case this would be taking orders for the drive-through). I had four of those mornings this week.

I think the main lesson I've learned this summer is that it is inhuman to wake up at 3:30 am and work for eight hours. No matter how many times you do it, your body will not get used to it. It does not get easier.

So, yesterday I shuffled into my house at 1 pm, changed back into my pajamas, turned the fan on high, crawled into bed and slept like a baby until 6 pm (also known as "dinnertime"). It was one of the most restful naps I have ever taken. Second most important lesson of the summer: no one is ever too old for naps! And the older you get, the more luxurious and indulgent napping becomes. In kindergarten nap-time was something very like a punishment, but now it's a treat and it's way better than chocolate. (But still not better than food.)

Nails were not enough to hold God-and-man nailed and fastened on the cross, had not love kept him there...

-- St. Catherine of Siena

An Update

I only have to read 336 more pages of War and Peace. If only I didn't work (and procrastinate) so much--I could've been done with it ages ago. Unfortunately, I do work full-time and when I'm not at work I'm honing my procrastinating skills. So many ways to procrastinate, so little time. Also, War and Peace would probably be a lot more enjoyable to read if I didn't dislike all of the characters.

Only THREE more weeks of work left. This is a wonderful thing. This means that I have to endure only three more weeks of: having customers scream in my face over coffee, the dubious honor of a promotion to a managerial position (The only difference that this position has made in my life is that now I am held accountable for everyone else's mistakes, too. Now when people say I want to talk to the manager NOW!, they mean that it is now time for them to serve me a heaping helping of rage.), being at work at 4:30 am, burning myself with hot coffee because we open at 5 am and motor skills just aren't all there at that hour of the morning, looking down at my hands at the end of an eight and a half hour shift in front of the cash register and realizing that they are completely blackened with money-dirt and that this money-dirt has also been transferred to my face and arms (Just for the record, I look like a complete vision while I'm at work...if by "vision" you mean "sleep-deprived slob extraordinaire".). I hope that I will never have to work there again. Though, should I need to, some of my co-workers have gleefully informed me that the store will always take you back!

I know practically nil about church history, but this summer has been good for playing catch-up. Newadvent.com is astoundingly thorough and pretty much my sole supplier of church history info.

Never a big tv-watcher, I have become totally addicted to Lost, The Office, Monk and 24. I blame the iTunes store and my weak will.

I might very well have a thesis proposal done by the time I return to school. At the very least, I will have started said thesis proposal.

I'm going shopping (huzzah!) next week and I'm trying to fight off the overwhelming urge to buy a sheepskin rug for my dorm room while I'm out shopping. Target sells sheepskin rugs and all of sudden they seem like the perfect dorm room accent: so soft to lie on, so nice and pet-like (minus the fuss of a real, live pet). Yes, I do realize that this is a weird desire.

I am literally counting down the days on my calender until I go back to school. This is sad, but true. (Also sad, but true: I miss California! Am I allowed to love two sides of the country at once?)

at the ocean

You know that Nick Drake song, Pink Moon? The moon rose over the water tonight and it really was pink against the blue-grey fog that was rolling in.

Is there anything better than the smell of salt air, the breeze that blows off the water?

I am about to go on vacation. I am going to live in my bathing suit, eat my body-weight in fried seafood and blackberry ice cream, go ocean kayaking whenever I feel like it, take early morning runs along the salt marsh while the sun rises over the ocean, go crabbing for blue crabs and silly fiddler crabs, swim whenever I feel the slightest bit warm and try as hard as I can to snag a tan (even a itty-bitty tan is better than nothing). I am going to spend tons of time relaxing with my family and take as many cat-naps as I please and read whenever I feel like it and gorge myself on fresh fruit from the farmer's market down the road. I am going to take a BREAK! (Well, I might read some War and Peace, but that's not too taxing.) I can't wait until we get off the highway, roll all the car windows down and stick our heads out to catch the salt-smell on the breeze (it's a summer ritual).