Tuesday, October 05, 2004

I can’t begin to tell you how much I love Dick Cheney. He’s chewing up John Edwards and we’re barely 30 minutes into the debate. I love that he’s going right after Edwards with specific, tough stuff. Edwards keeps trying to bring it back to his talking points.

This is fun.

Oh, yeah - I put my completed absentee ballot in the mail today. I voted straight party ticket since I like my current Congressman. There were a couple local bond issues that got a split vote from me. Now the wait for November 2.

Remember the townhouse that I was supposed to move into in the spring, but I turned it down so that another woman could take it since she had the more immediate need? She emailed me today to let me know that she’s moving out of the house around Christmas and that the owner wanted to give me first dibs on it.

What’s cool is that I’m not even considering it and I’m completely at peace about it, although the commute would be much better. At this point, I’m more pleased to have my expenses reduced so that I can pay off debt and start saving for my own house. If I were to take the townhouse now, I wouldn’t be saving that much money.

Sometimes I have to laugh at the timing of things in my life. I can’t wait to get a chance to ask God about these things later, because it’s highly amusing to me, so I can’t help but think that he’s got a big grin going with a sly wink in my direction. (And I don’t say that with a lack of respect at all.)

I feel like I’m spinning. Well, my head is spinning - too many things going on all at once.

It’s payroll day and it’ll take longer this time because our last pay period was split between two fiscal years, so that means that I have to split the time information. Not fun. I’ll be closing my office door in about 30 minutes in order to get this done with minimal interruptions.

I had my small group over last night. Two of the five girls I have this year actually made it. My task was to find out what their commitment was going to be to participating this semester and judging from the phone conversations I had with the three who couldn’t make it last night and the two who did - there won’t be much of a commitment. All are seniors and all are over-extended with extracurricular activities and jobs and applying to colleges. There’s not one day in a week that the majority of the girls would be able to meet - I’d never have more than one or two show up on any given evening and weekends are not an option at all.

After they left, I called our youth guy to let him know the problem and while he’s discouraged about it, he understands. So I won’t have a small group to lead this semester (which is sort of a relief because of my move) and we’ll be playing it by ear for the spring semester. It makes me a little sad - we had a great time just hanging out and catching up last night - I’m hoping that we’ll be able to work something out for the spring.

Monday, October 04, 2004

I had this great 90-day plan for the move. I was going to give my apartment complex 90-days notice of my move out, meaning that I would have to be out December 31. I was going to take the week between Christmas and New Year’s off to finish moving the big stuff and to clean the apartment. Have I mentioned that I’m a planner?

Turns out my roommate is not a planner - she’s a doer and she’s very persuasive. So she’s talked me into a 60-day notice with a move out date of November 30. Thanksgiving weekend will be spent hauling the last of my crap to the house and cleaning the apartment.

Oy vey.

Today my phone is ringing non-stop and I’m about to unplug it. OK, not really, but I wish I could. I loathe the telephone with a white hot fiery passion. What’s the most aggravating is that most of the calls are from other law enforcement who can’t figure out that they really want the criminal desk and so they’re pushing the number for the operator instead. Drives me nuts.

It’s a beautiful fall day here in the DC area. Despite a horrific accident requiring a Medevac helicopter at the intersection leading out of my neighborhood, traffic was pretty good. I avoided the blocked area by cutting through the 7-11 to get onto Rt 50. Really, I’m amazed there aren’t more accidents in that spot because people don’t drive through that median cut-thru properly at all. It’s highly annoying in addition to being dangerous.

Dang it, the Diet Vanilla Coke I just opened exploded all over the place.

I took pictures of my furniture to show ECD so that we can strategize what of her stuff should be moved and where my stuff will fit in. What’s cool is that she has some empty rooms that I can fill with the furniture that I would otherwise need to store because it won’t fit in the basement. I also have some window treatments that I think she can use upstairs, which will be nice because I love them and will hate it if they’re packed away.

She’s laughing at me because I keep asking questions about specifics of the house that I can’t remember (like the closet space). Her answer is that we’ll figure it all out when I move in, but I’m a planner. I like for things to be mapped out before hand - it saves a lot of aggravation later.

Random TV thought: if you’re not watching Cold Case, then you’re missing out. That’s such a good show. It’s a pain to catch when it actually airs during football season (if you’re on the east coast), but worth the hassle. While CBS News sucks, their primetime shows are the best on television.

Sunday, October 03, 2004

It was a full weekend, but fun. I spent most of yesterday at my future home. My roommate-to-be (now to be called ECD) was having a gathering of folks from our office and from a couple of other districts. I went over a little early to check out the house and the basement that I’ll be moving into. It’s very nice - plenty of room between the basement rooms and the few empty rooms she has upstairs, too. My stuff will fill those empty spots nicely. And I’m looking forward to having a larger kitchen and a reason to cook more often.

Her daughter is way too cute - she comes across as shy when you first meet her, but she’s hiding a precocious personality behind that sweet face. I have a standard ice breaker question that I ask all little kids - for girls it’s “do you have a boyfriend?” So after I’d been there a while and she had shown my their birds and hamster (Annie will love that!), I tossed out my question. Usually, I get blushing and giggles from the girls and gagging sounds from boys. But this one didn’t bat an eye, “I have three!”

“Oh, really? Can I have one?” I asked her, laughing.

“Nope. Besides they’re a little too young for you,” and then she expounded on the three fellas. They’re all funny - that’s the draw. (Men, take note.)

A couple hours after I got there, the others started to arrive and the party began. Let me tell you, cops like to party. We’ve got one guy in our office who is loud and obnoxious when he’s sober. Add alcohol to his personality and he becomes belligerent and louder. Despite him, the rest of the crew were pretty tame and a good time was had by all. We ate a ton of food, they drank a lot of beer and margaritas (I had just one Corona), talked a lot of shop, and played a little poker. I’m proud to say that I cleaned up at the poker game - I took all the chips.

I was one of the first to leave, since I needed to be at church at 7:30am this morning for worship band practice. So I got home by 10pm and promptly went to bed. Church was good this morning and then I had lunch with my parents, as usual. I got home and dozed through the Redskins game (My mantra this season: I will be happy with an 8-8 record) - man they’re pitiful. Penalties and poor use of time outs are killing them - they need to tighten up on that.

And now I’m catching up on my blog reading for the weekend. So what did ya’ll do this weekend?

Saturday, October 02, 2004

Just watched 13 Going on 30. It’s cute. Jennifer Garner is good as a 13 year old in a 30 year old’s body and life. I love Mark Ruffalo and he was good as the former best friend. It was fun to actually see Andy Sirkis’ face; he’s not a bad actor when he plays a human. As others have said, it’s Big for chicks, but I think Big is better overall. And I have a few nits to pick, the primary being the timing of the whole thing.

Jenna is supposed to be 30 in 2004. That means she would have been 13 in 1987ish - they did that right when we saw the date on the yearbook page. But whoever was researching the music, TV, technology, and dress of 1987 could have gotten better information by watching VH-1’s I Love the 80s.

For example, Rick Springfield’s Jessie’s Girl was a hit in the early 80s. By 1987 he was almost a has been. Michael Jackson’s Thriller album was released in 1982 and I think the Thriller single and video was a hit in 1983-84. By 1987, MJ had moved on to his Bad era. And while the way the younger Jenna and her friends dressed was very 80s, it was more the way we dressed in 1984-85. I think we were done with that look by 1987.

Sadly, those types of things were a distraction for me while I was watching the movie. How hard would it have been to get those simple things right? It’s like the production team decided to just get close and it would be good enough.

It’s a mediocre movie that I would have been ticked at spending money and time at the theater to see. I didn’t hate it, but it only gets 2.5 stars out of 5.

Friday, October 01, 2004

Kate has an amusing Cliff’s Notes version of the debate. You have to go read the whole thing, but here are some snippets to get you going.

John Kerry: This President is out of touch. Today, our country needs to be more like we were when (insert reference to event occuring between 1961 and 1972). I served in the military back then, you know. If you vote for me, I guarantee I’ll make the U.S. exactly like it was way back then.

[...]

George Bush: My opponent is clueless (which I’d expect from a Yale man). I’ve been President for four years. I know what it takes to be President. He hasn’t been President. I’ve made tough decisions. He can’t make a decision at all and, when he does, he changes his mind.

I got my absentee ballot in the mail today. The rules require a witness to be present when I open envelope A, which contains the ballot, and mark the ballot. I will be attending a gathering at my future roommates’ home tomorrow so I’ll take it with me since I’m going over there early to check out my future abode before the rest of the people come over.

I’m very excited to get to cast my vote to reelect President Bush already. I’m not excited about having to wait another month for the results of the election.

I’ve been paying close attention to the new activity of Mt. St. Helens this week. I’ve been interested in this particular volcano since I was 12 because we lived in Oak Harbor, Washington in 1980 and I have vivid memories of the eruption of May 18, 1980. (If you click on the link to the map, you’ll see the red star that indicates where Oak Harbor is, on the northern end of an island in the Puget Sound. Look almost directly south and you’ll see St Helens.)

May 18, 1980, was a Sunday. At 8:32am, I was eating a bowl of cereal before I finished getting ready for church. There was a boom that was almost immediately followed by a larger, window-rattling BOOM. My thoughts as I continued to eat after a short pause: “I wonder what that was. This is a Navy base, so it’s not artillery. I wonder if a plane crashed. Maybe it’s Mt. St. Helens finally erupting.” A little later we were in the car on the way to church and talking about the booms. I threw out that maybe it was the volcano, but Dad pointed out that it was more than 200 miles away and we probably wouldn’t feel that.

Once we got to church we got the news. The volcano had erupted and it wasn’t looking good for the people down that way because of the ash. But there was no lava, so it’s wasn’t too bad. Little did we know.

Later that day we were riveted to the television and the first video of the eruption and the destruction in the neighboring towns. Pictures of mudflows and ash covered everything. Later that week we were seeing more images of Spirit Lake (this link has a cool slideshow of pictures from 1980, including this one of the sky over a town as the ash rolled in - spooky. Actually, this whole commemoration page by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer has some great stuff.) and the downed timber that looked like matchsticks on TV. And we were learning more about the 57 people who died and how.

Then came the amazing video from a journalist who had been on the mountain when it erupted and his trek through the pitch black ash to the faint pinpoint of light that eventually disappeared ahead of him. It was intense viewing, even knowing that he survived.

We never got any ash, although most of the state got some. There was a weird V to the north and west of the mountain (over the Puget Sound) that didn’t get ash - we were in that V.

Several months after the eruption my father flew over the mountain and took a couple snapshots from the air. I’ll have to get his pictures to add to this post. My sister and I had a field trip to Seattle sometime after everything had been cleaned up, but there was still ash in the street gutters. Street vendors were selling little bottles of the stuff along with “I survived the eruption of Mt. St. Helens” t-shirts. When we moved to California in January of 1982, we drove south on I-5 and there was still ash on the sides of the road - it looked like gray snow banks, but ash doesn’t melt.

So I’m a little excited about the steam explosion today. Not that I want any significant damage, but another eruption would be cool.

Since it’s Friday, let’s party like it’s FY99!

Some interesting things have been happening in my life lately - it’s weird how God works and to see His hand on stuff that seems so random for a time and then falls so smoothly into place later.

First, I’ve been praying for a long time about making a move to a new church. There are a lot of different reasons, but it’s been on my mind and heart for more than a year and I think God’s starting to push me in a new direction a little more forcefully. I was struggling about the decision because of my love for the fellowship, my small group, the worship team, close friends, my parents, etc. So I had a conversation with our youth pastor since my leaving will have a large impact on my small group and I wanted to give him the heads up and help to strategize the timing and all that. We haven’t nailed anything down, but we do have some time because of a thing the church as a whole is doing this fall that means that I won’t be meeting with my small group in any organized way. My leaving won’t be an immediate thing, I need to start the process of visiting other churches. So I’ll still be involved with worship team, but taking the occasional weekend off to be freed up to church hop.

Another thing I’ve been praying about is my desire for a best friend. I’ve never really had a true best friend, aside from my mother and sister (both of whom know me better than anyone else, but they’re supposed to because they’re family). I moved too many times in life to really develop a deep friendship with just one gal for the long term and I have wanted to have that, especially since I’m not married and don’t have that kind of intimacy with a husband. So in the last few months a fun friendship has developed with a lady deputy who transferred to our office in the spring. She’s a relatively new Christian and is newly separated from her philandering husband (he admitted to three affairs, but she suspects there were more - nice, huh?). She’s only a couple of years older than I and she has an 8-year old daughter. And she’s started attending my church.

A couple of months ago she asked if I’d be interested in moving into her basement and I told her no because I had just signed the new lease and I wasn’t interested in sharing a house with anyone - I really like my space. But the seed was planted and I started thinking about the possibility for when my lease ends next year. Then earlier this week I was passing her desk and she stopped me, “Hey, my best friend just moved to Kentucky. Will you be my new best friend?” She was laughing about it, but I knew she was sort of serious, too. Remembering my prayers for a best friend, I couldn’t stop thinking about it, and so I started wondering if she was the answer to that prayer. Yesterday, she asked again about me moving into her basement and started to make the hard sell case.

We talked for a long time about the sharing of the house thing and there are way more pros than cons for the both of us. For her, she’d have the financial help for paying her mortgage and be able to keep the stable environment her daughter needs now that her parents are separated and their family is in limbo. But I think I’d get more out of this, the most important thing being that my housing expenses would be more than halved. That’s huge. The added bonus is that we would probably carpool and she drives a government car - no gas expenses. And she has a big screen TV with full surround sound!

I have some reservations about it, but they’re mostly little things that I’ll just need to adjust my thinking on - I’ve lived by myself for more than 10 years and I’ve gotten a little set in my ways. But I’m thinking that this house-sharing will be really good in the long run and is an answer to many prayers for change in my life.

So I’m moving in the next few months - the timing will depend a bit on the holidays, how much it will cost to break my lease, and just getting my act together to start packing my stuff. This sort of answers the small group question, too - I’ll be moving to a geographical location that won’t be conducive to continuing with leading my small group on a weekly basis. It’s certainly not how I expected the reduce my housing expenses or find a best friend or figure out how to gracefully leave my small group, but I love how God worked it out.

I covet your prayers for the working out of the details.

For the most part, I’d say last night’s debate was a tie with Kerry given the edge for style and Bush getting the edge on substance. I thought Kerry did better than I expected and Bush a little less than I expected. I was frustrated by the President’s facial expressions, knowing that the left will jump on that (and possibly SNL, too).

When I wasn’t looking at the TV, I thought the President was doing very well. He had some good lines and he was specific in his points. Unlike the Senator, who when asked for specifics talked about a “plan” but not what that plan entailed.

I was cracking up at Bush’s pronouncement of “mullahs,” which sounded more like “moolas.”

I thought he handled Lehrer’s character question well - he was gracious and I appreciated that he pointed out that it was a loaded question. Did Lehrer really think that the President was going to say anything truly negative about Kerry to his face?

A couple things Kerry said had me scratching my head in confusion:

1. His comment about making a mistake when talking about the war in Iraq, but that the President made the mistake in actually going to war. That shows the fundamental difference in philosophies about the war on terror. I thought both made their points well - it’ll come down to which philosophy voters hold on this issue.

2. I can’t remember the specific line, but Kerry said something about Saddam being a threat but that it wasn’t the issue and that the war was wrong. HUH? That’s precisely the issue - he was considered a threat and it was long past time to do something about that threat. Good grief.

Next up, the Vice Presidential debate on Tuesday. Methinks that Edwards is going to get quietly savaged by the mild-mannered, but sharp tongued and witted VP Cheney. This might the more entertaining of all of the debates, too.