I Love Pastor Andy

I love the head pastor at my church. For those of you who don't go to my church or don't know, Pastor Andy was diagnosed with colon cancer earlier this year. He had part of his colon removed only to find out that he still had the cancer, and he's now going through chemo. Years prior to being diagnosed with cancer, he started sending out regular emails to people who signed up to receive them. They usually span a wide variety of random topics - sometimes current events, sometimes just whatever was on his mind. As you can imagine, most of them now at least reference or relate to his battle with cancer. I always loved his emails before and I think they're getting even better. Below is one that went out today.

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My Dear Friends,

Greetings from the Valley of the Shadow! Your intrepid Travel Writer has a report on an interesting point of language use by the locals here and those of you on the outside in the larger English-speaking world which we’ve previously nicknamed “Myopia”. The phrase I have in mind is the very common and well-meaning interrogative often used as a greeting in both cultures, “How’re you doing?”

It’s such a simple question. And it’s a kind question too, motivated by the desire of the questioner for the well-being of the questioned. Yet those in the Valley tend to hear and answer that question in a very different way than those on the outside. I thought I’d use this installment of my Travel Writer missives to give you all a bit of personal insight into how folks on this side think about the “how are you?” query, hereafter designated “TQ” for “The Question”.

First, you must realize that to the Valley dweller, TQ is generally a far more complex question than you might imagine. To them, TQ includes several distinct sub-questions that may be fuzzily latent in the mind of the asker but which are crystal clear to the mind of those in the Valley. I will break these down by headings and explain them as follows:

1. The “do you realize that I care about you and that’s why I’m asking TQ?” sub-question, here labeled “I CARE”. This obviously is really more of a statement than a question, and is always much appreciated. Both cultures, Valley and Myopia, use TQ this way. It’s almost like saying, “hey buddy, whassup?” We’re glad to see each other, we care about each other, and that’s how we express our fondness. Of course, the proper answer to “I CARE” is, “I CARE RIGHT BACK!” So we say, “I’m good, how YOU doin’?!” We slap each other on the back and say goodbye, another friendly interaction!

2. The “are you winning the cancer battle. . . or not?” sub-question, here labeled “R U DYING?”. To a person who is in a fight for their life, this is the sub-question of the TQ they sometimes hear. Right after I’d had a cancerous tumor along with 12 inches of my colon removed and a PET scan showed that I still had cancer spreading in my lymph system, I encountered two IBC staffers at a meeting who asked me TQ. Concerned that I had cancer cells pulsing unopposed through my veins (I had not yet begun chemo), in my mind I heard them asking the R U DYING sub-question and, before I could stop myself, answered it honestly: “At this moment, I think I might be dying of cancer. . .” Their shocked expressions immediately let me know that I’d pulled a cultural faux paus. Realizing my error, I laughed and lied, “Just kidding!” Funny thing, word must have got around staff because no one working at IBC has asked me TQ for the last three months. My bad!

3. The “right now are you physically OK or are you about to hurl?” sub-question, here labeled “DO U FEEL TERRIBLE?” People in the Valley are usually dealing with some sort of pain or handicap or discomfort that constantly reminds them of their statas there in the shadow. So you can understand that the TQ might sound like a query about their physical symptoms at that very moment. I had a friend who works at a drugstore who made an after hours delivery to my home of some much needed anti-nausea medicine—a prince of a guy! As he gave me the med’s he asked TQ, but in my mind I heard the “DO U FEEL TERRIBLE?” sub-question and answered honestly: “I’m nauseated, constipated, fatigued, and sleepless most nights. . . yes my friend, I feel terrible.” The look of horror on his face immediately told me I’d made another cultural faux paus. “Well,” he stuttered, “thanks for being honest!” “You bet!” I said, secretly vowing not to be honest like that ever again.

4. The “are you an emotional wreck or are you holding steady” sub-question, here labeled “ARE YOU ABOUT TO GIVE UP?” Many people in the Valley soon realize that their sojourn in the shadow isn’t a sprint, but a marathon. They have to come to grips with the reality that they may never again live in Myopia, but that neither might they be passing quickly through the Valley to the golden gates on the other side. Their pain or disability or suffering may go on and on and on for quite a while, and that gets more than tiring, it get discouraging. So when well-meaning friends ask them TQ, they sometimes hear the “ARE YOU READY TO GIVE UP?” sub-question.

I think this is best answered with actions and not words from Valley dwellers. For me, it comes out in certain (possibly perverse?) ways according to my sense of humor. For instance, I determined from the beginning that the way for me to show I have not given up on the fight is to name the fight and refuse to let it become the elephant in the room. For example, I recently played in a golf tournament with a bunch of my buddies and could tell they were all tiptoeing around my cancer. So I started in on the first hole begging for gimme’s with the line, “After all guys, I’ve got cancer.” At first, they caved because they didn’t get it. But after the third time I played the cancer card they got it and said, “Forget it dude, make the putt.” At that moment I knew that they knew I was dealing with the disease and had not given up. Otherwise why would I still be trying to kick their heinie’s (in love, mind you) on the golf course? I love it. It’s kind of like the note I received recently from a friend:

“I hope all is well. I wanted to let you know about a really fun opportunity that is coming up. It is called the Undy5000, and it is a walk/run to raise money for the colon cancer alliance. It is Oct. 31st at Winfrey point at White Rock Lake in Dallas. I did it last year, and it was really fun. This year, our clinic is doing it in costume. Our team is called: Heinie Herd, so several of us are going as farm animals.”

Am I ready to give up? Not as long as the Heinie Herd dress up like cows and sheep and are run-walking to help save my life! Now I’m not only “Semicolon” and “Travel Writer” and “Clipboard King”, I am also a “Heinie Herder”. Wonderful.

5. The “overall do you sense that God is still with you and that hope is alive or are you sinking spiritually” sub-question, here labeled “DO YOU STILL HAVE PEACE?” I think this is the really big part of TQ, both to the askers and the askee’s. This sub-question, while being the most profound of the five, is actually the simplest to answer. Because if the Valley Dweller confronted with TQ hears #5, an accurate and appropriate answer to “How are you?” can quite truly be, “I’m fine, thanks.” That is, having a friend express love and concern in TQ and realizing that yes, I am fighting the battle and even though I feel terrible I haven’t given up because God’s grace is all over the journey does lead me to respond to #5 in all honesty with “I’m just fine. Really I am!” Maybe even, “Never better.”

I had a young friend who asked me TQ after church one day and was clearly disappointed when I gave that simple answer, exhorting me, “C’mon Andy, tell me truthfully, how are you, REALLY?!” He was operating under the reasonable assumption that nobody fighting cancer can actually be “fine”, and that any indication otherwise was at best sugary and naïve optimism and at worse cynically expressed pessimism. As Barbara Ehrenreich recently wrote in her new book, “But I can report that breast cancer did not make me stronger or more spiritual. What it gave me, if you want to call this a ‘gift’, was a very personal, agonizing encounter with an ideological force in American culture that I had not been aware of before—one that encourages us to deny reality, submit cheerfully to misfortune, and blame only ourselves for our fate” (Barbara Ehrenreich, Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America).

I’m sorry that Ms. Ehrenreich considers the only honest answer to TQ to be one of despair and defeat. What Valley Dwellers want those in the land of Myopia to understand is that yes, it’s actually possible for people of faith to stand in shadows and still be fine, just fine, and maybe even better than fine. Answering TQ with “Fine thanks” is not a dismissive or dishonest or superficial answer but a true, genuine, and even miraculous one. That it is possible to be physically depleted and emotionally exhausted and yet walking steadily forward with faith, hope, and love. One can indeed be living in the Valley and simultaneously be “doing just fine”.

How can this be so? In his latest book If God is Good, Randy Alcorn tells the story of the late Pastor James Montgomery Boice who, in May 2000, stood before his Philadelphia church and explained that he’d been diagnosed with liver cancer:

“Should you pray for a miracle? Well, you’re free to do that, of course. My general impression is that the God who is able to do miracles–and He certainly can–is also able to keep you from getting the problem in the first place. So although miracles do happen, they’re rare by definition.…Above all, I would say pray for the glory of God. If you think of God glorifying Himself in history and you say, where in all of history has God most glorified Himself? He did it at the cross of Jesus Christ, and it wasn’t by delivering Jesus from the cross, though He could have.…God is in charge. When things like this come into our lives, they are not accidental. It’s not as if God somehow forgot what was going on, and something bad slipped by.… God is not only the one who is in charge; God is also good. Everything He does is good.… If God does something in your life, would you change it? If you’d change it, you’d make it worse. It wouldn’t be as good” (p.14).

I’m reasonably certain that, if you’d asked TQ of Dr. Boice right after he said those words, he would have replied, “Fine thanks”, and it would have been a true and honest answer. He was a man of faith, you see, and was resting in God’s promises like the following: "God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble." Psalm 46:1. "Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine. When you pass through the waters I will be with you." Isaiah 43:1b-2a. Or how about the promise of eternal life in an eternal kingdom to those redeemed by God’s grace, “They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain” (Revelation 21:3—4).” Would Dr. Boice have preferred not to have cancer? Unless he’d become light in his loafers in old age and I don’t think he had, of course he would have preferred health over sickness. But did his sickness mean that he wasn’t fine? No. He was just fine, because he knew what the anonymous author of this famous poem about cancer knew. . . and he to embraced it--“What Cancer Cannot Do”:

“Cancer is so limited...

It cannot cripple love.

It cannot shatter hope.

It cannot corrode faith.

It cannot eat away peace.

It cannot destroy confidence.

It cannot kill friendship.

It cannot shut out memories.

It cannot silence courage.

It cannot reduce eternal life.

It cannot quench the Spirit.”

Eight weeks after announcing his illness to the church, and having taught his people first how to live and then how to die, Pastor Boice departed this world to “be with Christ, which is better by far” (Philippians 1:23). He was fine when fighting cancer, and he was fine when he went home. That’s a continuous “fine” line. Get it?

Now please understand, neither I nor most of those I know here in the Valley have any plans and we certainly have no desire for an early exit from life on this planet. What we want you all to know is that if death is the worst case scenario and we can be ok facing that, then surely we can be fine with facing whatever lesser challenges life in the Valley might bring. Got it? And get this too: cancer is not the only difficult condition under which people of faith can be “fine”. God’s promises and presence and grace are available for us all no matter what hard things are cascading our way. You may not have cancer, but I suspect you’ve got your share of worries and heartaches, and I want you to know that “just fine” living through faith in Our Lord is for you as well as for me!

So, to bring our linguistic/cultural discussion to a conclusion, I’d like to review and make a suggestion. We’ve noted that big problems can ensue when a Valley dweller fails to discern which combination of the five TQ sub-questions is actually being asked. For a Valley person to honestly answer a sub-question that was not intended by the askee is to create an awkward moment indeed.

Perhaps a good practical suggestion to Myopians for avoiding these awkward moments is this: please specify your sub-question under TQ. Instead of just asking the Valley dweller “how’re you doing?”, go right for the jugular. Want to know if I feel terrible? Then ask, “Hey Andy, do you just feel terrible?” It’s hard to misunderstand such a refreshingly pointed interrogative and I’ll have no compunction in giving you an honest answer. You may also want to go with a more positive form of the direct question, “Are you feeling good today?”, but don’t be shocked if the honest answer comes back the same, “No, actually I feel terrible. . . but you wanted to know, right?” Smile, right here.

Or, if such brutal directness rocks your comfort zone, another suggestion would be to go ahead and ask TQ but resolve in advance not to be aggravated with whatever honest answer your Valley Dweller friend might give. We’ve already talked about the awkwardness of his answering a sub-question that you didn’t really want to know the answer to. But you must also resolve not to be offended with what may seem to you a flippant or even superficial answer to TQ, such as, “Fine, thanks”, because it can actually be (and probably is) the truest response you could receive.

Doing Fine, Really,

Pastor Andy

Update: Bucket List

Bungy jumping... Check!

Homeward Bound

Wow! Has it been two weeks already?!?! I'm in the Sydney airport awaiting my flight to LAX. By this time in the States, I will have been in the States for over an hour. Weird, huh? The trip to New Zealand was great and too quick! More blog posting accompanied by pictures will *hopefully* be up by the end of the weekend. Happy Halloween everyone!

This Is the Life

I'm currently sitting in the Admirals Club in LAX drinking free wine and eating free cheese and crackers and cookies, counting down the seconds (well, hours) until I embark for New Zealand. We might even work in some Monopoly Deal! (Don't worry, Amy and Chad, I didn't take your Monopoly Deal, I bought another deck today!) The game plan was to stay awake for the first six or so hours of the flight (which would be until about 6am CST), but that plan may be foiled by the time we're done with free drinks! Oh well, I guess that's what the no jet lag pills from REI are for (ironically, produced in New Zealand). Farrah and I spent the first flight (well, my first and her second) chatting and reading different copies of the same book... Much to the amusement of the guy sitting next to us (though he tried to pretend like he wasn't listening). Anyway, enough rambling, this free wine is calling my name! Adieu, friends!

Oh yeah, and...
HOOK 'EM HORNS!!!
(or gig 'em Horns as my Aggie aunt would say)
:-)

Liam James

Is this the cutest baby you've ever seen, or what?!

Welcome to the world, Liam James!

I Hate the Cold Weather

To all you crazies out there who are all like, "Yay! It's getting colder!" I just want you to know that I'm NOT with you on this one. All summer long in St Louis while everyone complains about how 89 degrees is SO HOT (come to Texas, bitches, we'll show you hot!), I have the Avenue Q song "Schadenfreude" playing in my head. To everyone on the elevator, I just smile and nod as if agreeing with them, while secretly thinking, "It's payback time! This is how I feel all winter!" And it makes me so happy! Well, now it's my turn to be miserable. It's not just the cold weather that I hate (though no good can come out of a day below 75 degrees unless there is a mountain, a chair lift, and enough snow to ski on), I also hate that the days are shorter and the sky seems to stay a permanent shade of dreary grey.

In the spirit of making this a more optimistic blog post, here are ten things that ARE good about winter:

1. You can order a hot coffee drink from Starbucks without getting a weird look
2. Pumpkin spice is in season at Starbucks
3. Baileys and marshmallows in hot chocolate
4. Time off around the holidays
5. New Year's Eve parties
6. Scarves
7. Hoodies!
8. Soup at Panera? I'm really reaching here.
9. It's hilarious to go to Austin and see college students in pea coats, hats, scarves, gloves, and... flip flops
10. Year 5 with my favorite boots!

10 Dangerous Things I Do While Driving

1) talk on the phone - almost always
2) text - a lot
3) update status - a lot
4) read emails - a lot
5) send emails - sometimes
6) talk to passengers - always, if they're there
7) read maps / directions from my phone - a lot
8) look up things on the internet - sometimes
9) try to get things out of the backseat or off the front passenger floorboard - a lot
10) change my pants - today! but not a first!

Please don't send this to my insurance company.

Speaking of Dorsal Fins

The long-awaited pictures of the shark cupcakes that Amy and I made for Tim's birthday:

MY Bucket List

A while back I posted a bucket list that someone else had come up with and checked off the things I had done. Here's MY bucket list. I'm sure I'm leaving things off, but here is my bucket list. I stopped with a list of 50 things because I had to stop somewhere.


(X) Visit Mexico
( ) Visit Canada
(X) Visit Africa
(X) Visit Western Europe
( ) Visit Eastern Europe
(X) Visit Australia and New Zealand
( ) Visit Asia
( ) Visit South America
(X) Read the whole Bible
( ) Read Pride & Prejudice
( ) Read Gone with the Wind
(X) Go on a mission trip
( ) Fall in love
( ) Get married
( ) Have (via pregnancy or adoption) kid(s)
(X) See the night sky from somewhere with not too much light pollution (ie Livingstone/Victoria Falls, Zambia)
(X) Go skinny dipping
(X) Go sky diving
(X) Go parasailing
(X) Go snow skiing
(X) Go water skiing
(X) Stay up all night
(X) Go hiking in the mountains
(X) Have at least one friend you can tell anything to
(X) Have at least one lifelong friend
(X) See ancient ruins
(X) Do something you didn't think you could do
( ) Hike the Inca Trail
(X) Visit Chichen Itza
(X) Visit Cinque Terre
(X) Visit Rome
( ) Walk on the Great Wall of China
( ) Take a cruise around the Mediterranean
(X) Take a cruise
(X) Have a girls' trip
(X) Bourbon St
(X) Stand on the star directly beneath the peak of the dome of the Capitol of Texas and talk
(X) Go to a music festival
(X) Put your feet in the Atlantic Ocean
(X) Put your feet in the Pacific Ocean
( ) Go to a small town festival
( ) Work in a non-US country
( ) Go bungee jumping....??
(X) Stay in a hostel
(X) Get your hands dirty to help someone
( ) Grow old with someone
(X) Get out of your comfort zone
( ) Do an olympic distance triathlon
( ) Run 5 miles without walking
( ) Learn more about art
( ) Learn another language

Weekend in Review: Girls at the Ranch

A couple of weekends ago some girlfriends headed out to a ranch to get away, have a relaxing girls weekend, and celebrate Michelle's last pre-baby girls' getaway! We all met up at Michelle's house and drove down to Laura's uncle's ranch "near" Killeen (though "near" is really a stretch here).

Michelle, Suzie, and I in the car on the way down:



The ranch house (below). The girls had me a little freaked out before we drove down because they told me that we couldn't drink the water! I was like, where the hell are we going?!?! Turns out that they meant not that you would end up with intestinal parasites if you drink the water but that the water isn't very tasty. Glad we got that cleared up. I thought we were going to Mexico.


I made a bunch of food for the weekend, including some desserts - pictured below on top of my favorite game!

We went four-wheeling! That was my first time to go four-wheeling and it was really fun. I think the saftey lecture we got was probably a waste of breath for Laura's uncle, as we definitely didn't get very close to flipping the four-wheelers over. Below is a picture of the cows (not Angus cows, obviously!!!) eating the bungee cords off the four-wheelers.

Saturday afternoon (after our exercise class led by Em, brunch, four-wheeling, and pedicures), we made some crafts for baby Liam!

Some finished products:

We had a great weekend! It was so fun and nice to get away and just hang out!

Book Review: The Sex Lives of Cannibals

In The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific by J. Maarten Troost, Maarten spends a couple years with his girlfriend living in the little-known country of Kiribati on the also little-known island of Tarawa. His tales of adventure and, more frequently, misadventure are entertaining and frankly somewhat hard to believe as a first-world dweller. Had I not been to Africa a couple of times, I think I definitely would have been questioning some of the stories. I definitely enjoyed the stories of travels - and the book has definitely itched my travel bug (probably partially combined with summertime as well). The book left me dreaming of travels, adventures, and blue seas with sandy beaches. The ending was also hilarious, as the couple tries to blend back into their American lives, taking a bit of time to adjust.

Weekend in Review: Memorial Day

For Memorial Day weekend some friends and I spent the weekend in Austin and at Lake Travis. Thursday night we headed downtown and went out on 6th Street. We even had Flaming Dr Peppers and worked in some dance moves!

Friday morning we started out with breakfast tacos at Juan in a Million and then toured the Texas campus (complete with some free champane!) and wandered around downtown before heading up to the lake. We went to visit the Capitol and everyone got to stand on the star and hear their voices echo. We also ate at Iron Works BBQ and enjoyed some coffee and desserts at Mozarts on Lake Austin.

On Saturday we took it easy in the morning and then hit the lake and boated around until some storms rolled in. A couple of people thought that they could do without sunscreen and definitely learned otherwise! ;)

Sunday we started out a little earlier than the day before to try to beat the crowds. We got in some water skiing, jet skiing, and wake boarding and then in rolled more storms... Check out the very grey sky in this picture!

We hung out on the boat and in the water waiting for the rain to pass over before getting back on the water skis. Once the storm cleared it was like we had the lake to ourselves! Matt and Melissa also came up to the lake and hung out with us on the boat and at the house afterwards. We played some speed scrabble and made the most amazing fajita dinner ever - which was super fun because it was a total team effort!

On Monday we cleaned up the house, packed up, and headed out. Definitely a fun weekend! And of course, left me missing Austin.

Book Review: Gang Leader for a Day

Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets by Sudhir Venkatesh is a true story in which Sudhir, a PhD student at the University of Chicago, befriends a gang leader to study how the gang functions within its community. (Sudhir is also the sociologist whose gang research is referenced in Freakonomics.) Sudhir hangs out with the gang leader for 6 years, learning many of the ins and outs of life in a gang and life in the projects of Chicago. Sudhir works to understand the finances of the gang and the roles played by the gang in the community. Sudhir also meets other leaders and members of the gang, as well as members of the project community, and gains an insight into their lives not typically seen by others.

Kaylee's 1st Birthday

Kaylee turned one back in May and here are come cute pics from her birthday party!

Playing with her very pretty cake that mommy made from scratch (it was tasty too!).

More playing with cake

Daddy, Kaylee, and Mommy

She got a couple of presents...

Playing with her toys, cousins and friends at the end of the party.

Speakin' Kiwi

Sooo... I got this AWESOME package in the mail, complete with Kiwi phrase magnets. The only problem was, I didn't know what half of them meant. With a little help from my Kiwi translator, you can now expect to hear all of these worked into my every-day American conversations:

sweet as - cool
choice - cool like, that's choice = that's cool
jandals - flip flops aka 'japanese sandals'
hokey pokey - the stuff inside of a cadbury crunchy... it's used in icecream and candy bars etc
kumara - type of potato thing that grows in NZ
kai - maori word for food
carked it - effed it up
l&p - type of soda in NZ
pack a sad - it's like when you are disappointed by something... like, i really wanted to go skiing this weekend but the mountain was closed so i packed a sad and went home
piker - someone who bails on plans
scull - chug (as in beer)
tiki tour - driving around aimlessly on a nice day
suss - figure something out = to suss it out
gum-boots - rain boots / wellingtons
chilly bin - cooler or the refrigerator
togs - swimsuit

There are a few more still coming, so stay tuned!

Book Review: Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford is a historical fiction novel set in World War II era Seattle. The main character in the book is a boy whose parents came to the US from China. In the book, he deals with cultural barriers, racism, and a war torn world. He falls in love with a Japanese girl, causing him to be practically disowned by his father. Meanwhile, the Japanese families from Seattle are all sent to internment camps to "protect" them (according to the US government). This book was not only fascinating from a historical perspective, it also told a great story of a boy growing up and finding love. The book flips between present time - the relationship between son and father, and memories from the past - and the past relationship between father and son. This is a must-read if you enjoy historical fiction!

I've Fallen Behind

I'm so far behind in my blogging! I have two pending book reviews and two pending weekend reviews... hopefully those will be coming over the next few days!

10 REALLY Dorky Things I Love

1. the freeze panes function in excel
2. how the boxes and lines connect and move together in visio
3. tiger pumping his fist after a good shot... on a ppt slide
4. the auto correct typing function on my iphone
5. pretty much all of my iphone apps but my favorites are word warp, fox sports (ok maybe that one's not so dorky), and quick voice recorder (that one makes up for it)
6. my outlook calendar...
7. ...and that it integrates with my iphone calendar
8. my travel schedule excel calendar with my weekend details inserted in comments
9. my little mouse with retractable cord
10. airline miles

Fun Quotes

This weekend some friends and I are going to the lake. Here are a couple of funny quotes from conversations about planning and getting groceries.

Me: I am splitting the grocery list into 5 sections so each person going to the store can take one part of the list. I'm giving Craft the easy section and instructing Barrett to help him once he's done getting the meat.
Adam: Yeah, I could see how Craft wouldn't have a lot of grocery shopping experience. You send him for eggs and milk and he comes back with a sixer of bud and some beef jerky.

Me: I'm sending you the shopping list.
Adam: I trust your thoroughness.
Me: Watch, I will have forgotten something really important. Although the most important thing is definitely on the list.
Adam: While you say beer, I may have an argument for sunscreen. My worst hangover has been 1.25 days while my worst sunburn has made me sick and sore for a week!

Book Review: Basic Black

Basic Black: The Essential Guide for Getting Ahead at Work (and in Life) by Cathie Black is the best career book I've ever read. Its target audience is women, but I think it is applicable across both genders, and there are only a couple of paragraphs in the whole book that are female specific. Cathie Black is the President of Hearst Magazines, and in this book she offers advice and anecdotes she has learned along the way.

Often I find career books, especially career books aimed at women, to be demoralizing. They seem to spend a lot of time trying to convince you that in order to get ahead you need to be someone you're not. However, I found this book to be motivating, inspiring, and genuine. Cathie coaches her readers to use their inherent strengths to their advantage.


My favorite piece of advice from the book was:
Value yourself by your aspirations, not your limitations.

Cathie shared this advice paired with her personal experiences of starting her career. When she first graduated from college, she didn't have any skills that would distinguish her from a secretary, though she defined herself by where she wanted to go, not where she currently was. This mentality helped her look for and gain job opportunities that launched her on an upward path. I think it's pretty easy for all of us to think we can't do something because we don't have a particular skill, but focusing on the positive and looking for opportunities will keep us headed in the direction we want to go.

Too Many Hotels?

I promise I'm not making this up.

This morning I woke up to my alarm at 3:45 am, in the middle of a dream/nightmare. In my dream, I was staying at a hotel with my parents. We had walked out to a car to head somewhere, and I realized I forgot something. My dad was annoyed that I had to run in and get something, as we were already running late (of course... have you ever traveled with me and my mom?). On my way to the elevators, I realized I needed a new room key, so I walked up to the hotel front desk to get a new key. As a very friendly rep at the front desk was helping me, I was looking anxious since I knew that my family was impatiently awaiting my return. The hotel manager (a 6 foot, 300 pound woman) walked by and noticed me looking anxious and started being rude to me. So I started being rude back. We exchanged words and were both getting pretty angry which peaked when the woman looked like she wanted to kick my ass and started to storm around the front desk. Meanwhile, I can talk the talk but, I'm not gonna lie, I was pretty terrified by the very angry, 6 foot, 300 pound woman storming in my direction. The lobby was very crowded, so I was trying to quickly weave my way through the people and to the elevator to escape her. My lead was growing narrower by the millisecond. And that's when my alarm went off. Saved by the bell!

Home Sweet Home

Finally home! Tonight I get to sleep (one of four consecutive nights to come!) in my own bed ending a stint of sleeping in 8 different cities in 11 nights! (Though, one of those cities of eight is counting my own bed last weekend.)

To recount for you:

Monday - Saginaw MI (night 1, city 1)

Tuesday - Detroit MI (night 2, city 2)

Wednesday - Denver CO (night 3, city 3)

Thursday - Dallas TX (night 4, city 4)

Friday - Dallas TX (night 5, city 4)

Saturday - Houston TX (night 6, city 5)

Sunday - Houston TX (night 7, city 5)

Monday - Ontario CA (night 8, city 6)

Tuesday - Ontario CA (night 9, city 6)

Wednesday - Vancouver WA (night 10, city 7)

Thursday - Portland OR (night 11, city 8)

Book Review: A Sniper in the Tower

This will be the first of a few book reviews in a row as I've gotten a little behind!

A Sniper in the Tower: The Murders of Charles Whitman is about just what it sounds like! This book is pretty fascinating, well I guess if you're fascinated by that sort of thing! Especially if you know all the sights and locations discussed in this book as it goes through Charles Whitman's life and preparations to carry out the very first random mass murder in the country, this book is captivating from beginning to end.

Probably most fascinating was that everyone seemed to think Whitman was a pretty normal and nice guy. Even decades later, his friends would still say they thought he was a very nice guy. He did have a brain tumor (found during autopsy) and he was taking some drugs (though due to being immediately embalmed, they couldn't determine if he had taken them prior to the murders), but neither of these seemed to impact his actions. His murders were calculated and planned in advance. He started typing a letter explaining why he killed his wife and mother hours before carrying out those actions, while his wife was still at work.

If you're sickly fascinated by the unthinkable, from Austin, or went to UT, you should definitely read this book! I can't wait to watch the TV special and tour the campus again with Matt so we can recount all we learned from the book!

Weekend in Review

Last weekend, Tim, Megan, Rocky, and I went to San Francisco and also took a side trip to Napa/Sonoma on Friday. We are a great travel group (for each other, I'm sure other people might not like our travel style) because we don't really make plans and just play everything by ear. This is probably especially fun for us because in real life we're all super planny. A great thing about traveling with Tim is that it's like you have your own paparazzi tagging along. I made sure my camera battery was charged before the trip, but I don't think I ended up taking any pictures. Below is a summary of our weekend in pictures, courtesy of Tim. :)

Tera and Tim on the bus to Napa/Sonoma. We had this really annoying bus driver who thought he was funny, but he wasn't.
Tera and Megan at the Napa visitors center.

Tera and Megan at the Madonna winery in Napa. (Winery 1 of 3)

Megan expertly swirling her wine.

Megan, Rocky, and Tera in the Sonoma town square during our lunch break.

Tim, Tera, Megan, and Rocky at the Jacuzzi winery.

Mega, Tim, and Tera at the Jacuzzi winery (winery 2 of 3)

Rocky, Megan, Tera, and Tim at the Jacuzzi winery.

Notice Rocky's hand on his hip in this picture. One of the great things about digital cameras is that you can make fun of people right away if they look goofy in pictures; you don't even have to wait to get the prints back...

So that's what we did...

We love taking family portrait style pictures on our vacations together. This one is at the Viansa winery (winery 3 of 3)

Inside the tent that totally sounded like it was going to blow away.

Another family portrait style picture, where we're all about to blow away

I love this picture

Getting ready in our hotel room to go out to dinner and then meet up with some friends. I had on about 12 layers of clothes (a normal shirt, a wool sweater, and a jacket) because California is colder than one would think.

When you have the opportunity to take a picture like this, you just have to.

Megan and Rocky in front of the Full House house.

Tera, Tim, and Megan in front of the Full House house.

What a fun and relaxing weekend! We had a great time, caught up on sleep, ate a lot of great food (to the point that we thought we were going to explode), and it was great to hang out with old friends! It sounds funny to call "work friends" old friends, but it was four years ago that we worked together. Time flies when you're having fun!

Going South

Why is the phrase "going south" used when things are going poorly or getting increasingly worse? Sounds more like going north to me! Personally, I like going south, and am very happy that tomorrow I myself will be going south. :)

TGIDBFF
Thank God It's the Day Before Fake Friday!

P.S. Damn Heineken drinkin' Yankees.

Easter Cupcakes

Since I posted the picture of the pupcakes a month or so back, I thought I'd also post a picture of the Easter Cupcakes we made for the Central Park Easter Brunch. I'm pretty sure someone had asked to see them. Yes, Adam, you can request blog posts, but keep in mind not all blog post requests will be granted. :) These cupcakes didn't take quite as long as the pupcakes, but they still took a very long time! They didn't seem quite as daunting to decorate, maybe because decorating the Easter egg tops can be kind of random and wasn't necessarily supposed to turn out looking like something - like puppies. The grass under the eggs was quite an undertaking, but we did get to test out several of Amy's 52 icing tips.

Happy Belated Earth Day!

Happy Belated Earth Day!

To celebrate Earth Day, my team and I drove around two states in an SUV. Twice. The good news is, there were four of us in one SUV. Could've been worse, right? We could have had four SUVs.

Here is a pretty picture of our planet in Greenville SC:

Friday Night Fun

So two of my friends wanted to read this on my blog instead of me emailing it to them... So here it is! The 17 Again poem.

Backwards Big from way back when
Zach Effron is 17 Again
Get a ticket in advance of the show
Cuz lots of teen girls will go
But we're old enough for our own credit
So use your plastic, ladies, to get it
7pm at the Royal Studio Movie Grill
Get there at 6:30 before the seats fill
Can't wait to have dinner with the movie
Tomorrow evening is sure to be groovy

Funny Picture

Amy found this picture while going through some old files.

Awkward!

Weekend in Review

Again, a week and a half late.

Weekend before last, I went to College Station to visit Bethany. Unfortunately we didn't take any pictures, so there aren't any to post. :(

When I first got to BCS, Bethany was doing a work thing so I went to visit my very pregnant friend Amanda. :) We got to catch up since it had been a while since we'd seen each other, had a great lunch, and I got to see her new house, meet her cat and see her soon to be baby boy's room!

Then I met up with Bethany and we went to see... the one... the only... PAT GREEN! We called Kelli and left a ridiculous message about how both of our first times to see Pat Green were with Kelli. Little known fact, Kelli not only taught us to love Pat, she also taught Lindsay and Bethany some drinking skillz which they in turn taught me... who would have known that now that Kelli is the settled down, stable mommy of the bunch? Mommy to the cutest baby in the world, I might add. :) Anyway, back to Pat. We saw Pat at Chilifest. Now, I remember back to our college years, hearing those Aggie friends of mine talk about the wonder that is Chilifest. Something about teams and tents and matching group t-shirts and, of course, beer. Well the spectacle I imagined in my head was pretty much like the spectacle that Chilifest actually is. The only parts I hadn't imagined was that the stage was quite large (for some reason, I pictured it smaller) and the field was quite open (for some reason, I pictured a lot of trees) and getting beer was quite complicated (first you have to find the beer stand, then they tell you you need tickets, then you have to find the tickets, then you have to buy the tickets, then you have to find the beer... again!). The drunken mess of sunburned college students was as imagined. As were the matching shirts! I felt really OLD. But Pat was playing, so even feeling old, all was well in the world. :)

After Chilifest, we went and hung out at Bethany's house for a while and then met up with my cousin who attends aTm and just turned 21 and just got accepted to vet school! for drinks. It was a fun night and great to catch up with my cuz, of course.

Sunday came and I was planning to leave at noon... however, after lounging around the house, going to Rudy's and then deciding to go shopping... I didn't leave til 3:30. :) You should know that Bethany and I never run on time anyway, so that was pretty much to be expected. It was a very fun weekend!

Who wants to find another Pat concert to road trip to?

One of my favorite things about spring

Bluebonnets!!!

Weekend in Review

So this post is about a week and a half late, but I figured better late than never!

Weekend before last, Melissa and I went on a 'retreat' to a resort in the middle of nowhere. It was awesome! It was so nice to get away and not have things to do or places to be. Especially since we're both pretty much always on the go - and she's in the middle of tax season! We laid by the pool, got massages, played tennis, watched Texas lose to Duke (boo!), ate lots of food and even some s'mores, walked around the hotel, read some books and just took it easy! Oh and I about ate my weight in pecans. And did I mention we talked a whoooole lot? Or maybe I talked a lot and Mel listened a lot...

That's us having a drink while watchin some b'ball.

After enjoying ourselves at the resort, we headed back to Austin. Melissa had some work to get caught up on, so while she did that, Matt and I went shooting. Afterwards we enjoyed a great Mexican dinner and Melissa and I about ate our combined weights in chips and salsa. :) More pictures below!

Quote-of-the-Day

I've heard from lots of friends that they really liked the blog with one liners pulled out of conversations, so I'll be sure to post another of those soon. In the meantime, here's a quote-of-the-day to tide you over:

Rachel: ‘So, Barrett, do you have any plans this weekend?’
Barrett: ‘Yeah, a friend’s coming in from New Orleans—I need to give her a ring.’
Brett: ‘A RING, what! Are you proposing to her?!
Barrett: ‘No, a call…’
Rachel (without skipping a beat): ‘Everything isn’t the Bachelor, Brett’.

Book Review: Same Kind of Different as Me

Same Kind of Different as Me is a great book! The book tells the stories of two men who become unlikely best friends - a wealthy art dealer and a homeless man. As I'm sure anyone who has ever provided any charitable service knows, many times the people you are serving turn out to bless you more than could have imagined, and definitely more than you'd expect. That is definitely the case in this story, as the homeless man shares his outlook on life and wisdom he has gained through his tough breaks in life.

The book also tells a different version of the homeless person's story - one you don't get from driving down an inner city street or watching the news. Often we think that the homeless are responsible for the situations they are in, and surely everyone makes choices that impact their destiny, but some people are definitely dealt a bad hand coming into this life.

Here are some of my favorite quotes from the book:

"I know it ain't non of my business, but does you own somethin that each one of them keys fits?" I glanced at the keys; there were about ten of them. "I suppose," I replied, not really ever having thought about it. "Are you sure you own them, or does they own you?"

"There's somethin I learned when I was homeless: Our limitation is God's opportunity. When you get all the way to the end of your rope and there ain't nothin you can do, that's when God takes over." (This one reminds me of being in Africa. On those trips you frequently get so far out of your comfort zone, and that is just when you see what God can do. It also makes sense out of the counter-intuitive "For when I am weak, then I am strong" of 2 Cor 12:10.)

"You was the onlyest person that looked past my skin and past my meanness and saw that there was somebody on the inside worth savin. I don't know how, but you knowed that most a' the time when I acted like a bad fella, it was just so folks wouldn't get too close. I didn't want nobody close to me. It wadn't worth the trouble... You stood up with courage and faced me when I was dangerous, and it changed my life. You loved me for who I was on the inside, the person God meant for me to be, the one that had just gotten lost for a while on some ugly roads in life."

"I used to spend a lotta time worryin that I was different from other people, even from other homeless folks. Then, after I met Miss Debbie and Mr. Ron, I worried that I was so different from them that we wadn't ever gon' have no kind a' future. But I found out everybody's different - the same kind of different as me. We're all just regular folks walkin down the road God done set in front of us."

The whole book also reminded me of how to really make a difference (in the life of a friend, people you're working with through a charity, people at work, whoever, wherever), you have to get out of your comfort zone and get into people's lives. It's really easy to hand out some money or some food, and those things shouldn't be overlooked because people need the basics to survive and have a sense of dignity before they can even begin to move forward in their lives. But people's lives are where changes are made, and people are messy. You gotta get in a get dirty to have a big impact, but it sure isn't easy.

Book Review: My Life in France

My Life in France is an autobiography by Julia Child mostly, as the title would indicate, about the time she and her husband spent in France after the Second World War. Before going to France, Julia and her husband Paul had recently gotten married after they met working for the US government in Asia during the war (Julia Child was actually a spy! But that didn't come out until Fall 2008 when the CIA released their old records.)

Julia didn't know how to cook at all when she married Paul and moved to France, and immediately upon arriving on French soil, she fell in love with her first French meal. After that, she took to the kitchen and enrolled at the Cordon Bleu. From the start, Julia took her cooking very seriously, yet she still had fun with it.

What I loved most about the book was Julia's passion for cooking and enjoying life. She definitely had a stop-and-smell-the-roses type of attitude about their time in France. She tried all sorts of new food items and learned how to make them and even improve upon some. Once she took up cooking and cook book writing, she was so passionate about inspiring others, making sure they had fun, and getting every last detail in the cookbook right. She would try recipes 20 or more times to make sure every detail and explanation was accurately captured! Now that's dedication!

The book made me want to slow down a bit and enjoy my surroundings, whatever they may be. It made me really glad that we have a St Louis to-do list (all of fun things) and that we're slowly ticking each one off the list!

Conversation Snippets

I meant to post this a while ago but forgot and just found it saved in my drafts. Below are some random conversation snippets I took totally out of context one day.



you are the only person who will get that random comment
a couple people know that i type PITA instead of pain in the ass
but you are the only one who knows it's because of a fake indian

and then didn't want to have fun naked time when i showed up adorably inebriated at his hotel

move to a different city with me?

sure, i have to live somewhere

welcome to our little blogging family

u should be on this call... i feel like im watching clueless

it is like you are a truck driver! they only get sunburnt on their left arm by the window

doesn't she know that guys are on the lookout for girls at weddings!?

i am writing the most rambly blog right now
YES! Those are the best kind

this is the kind of blog i keep typing and it gets more and more rambly as i go and then i end up deleting it

you are too much of a profectionist - just post it! It is a blog... just one level of gramar above AIM

The first picture is her yelling at me because I was wearing black socks with brown shoes... I said "wait, wait, I want to get a picture of you bitching at me"

her boyfriend... or "the drug dealer"

did you just admit to reading the twlight series?

shut up! you watch the bachelor!

they thought it was really funny to hear the white prissy girl getting off the elevator say dick

Book Review: Julie and Julia

In Julie and Julia, Julie cooks her way through every recipe in Julia's Mastering the Art of French Cooking in 365 days. Julie is from Austin but living in The City with her husband, in a dead end temp job that turned into a permanent job. The book is laugh-out-loud funny, and some of my favorite parts is where Julie yells and cusses at Julia about her commentary on "easy" recipes in MtAoFC.

I love Julie's relationship with her husband and how he encourages her in her crazy, random goal and even helps her cook through the recipes. He knows when she is on a rampage and he needs to duck out of the way and he knows when she needs to be calmed or helped. (Sad that they are now divorced, but that happened post-book. :() OMG Their kitchen sounds so gross, especially since they are constantly feeding friends and even TV crews out of it... the part where Julie found the maggots under the dish rack made me almost nauseous and reminded me of other vivid scenes of maggots (The Dante Club definitely takes the cake - I literally felt sick to my stomach and had to put the book down; the CSI: Miami episode where maggots from a dead body in a condo come through the light fixture to the condo below takes second place).

Throughout Julie's cooking project, she blogs about her trials and tribulations and gains a wide-spread reader base (hence the book deal later). She has regular readers who become a part of her life and are very worried about her if she takes short breaks from her blogging. Her mother reads her blog and at first is very concerned and tries to convince her to stop the Julie/Julia Project. By the end of The Project however, her mother comes around. One of my favorite parts of the book is when Julie goes home to Austin and cooks for family and friends and notes that even her Texan mother was appalled at the amount of butter she was cooking with. LOL Totally like my Texan family... seriously, the only thing you can ever count on finding in their fridge is butter, multiple tubs of butter.

By the end of the Julie/Julia Project, Julie is still in her dead end job, but has found a sense of passion and purpose in her life. (And gets a book deal!) This book made me want to try some more adventurous recipes in the kitchen instead of my usual easy faves... and it probably helped that I was reading this when we tackled the Pupcake Project in Florida!

Letter to AIG Execs

Dear AIG Executives,

I hate your stinking guts.
You make me vomit.
You're scum between my toes!

Love,
Tera



Name that movie!

Running in the Dark

I know, I know... I shouldn't run in the dark. (But you also shouldn't run on a stomach full of Swedish Fish and that didn't stop me either.) But last night I got home from work and put my running clothes on and sat down for a second and the sun went down way faster than I expected. And it wasn't totally dark when I headed out. And running in the dark was kinda awesome! I ran by one house that totally smelled like pot; I'm not even kidding! But according to The Economist, 5% of the adult population of the world takes illegal drugs (same percentage as a decade ago btw), and I ran by way more than 20 houses, so really I should have expected to smell more weed, right?

New Favorite Picture

How true is this picture?!I stole it from Adam's blog, which is also very true.