Easter Fun

I have to say this was a great Easter! I played in the orchestra at all 5 of our services at church (2 Saturday night and 3 Sunday) which was tons of fun, and very moving. And my sweet boyfriend attended 4 of them. Such support! The only slightly sad part was that the orchestra was basically hidden on the stage behind some huge white screens. I guess it taught us a good lesson in humility :)

These large screens took up most of the stage and between them were these big gold doors that opened up at the end of the service when our pastor invited people who accepted Christ come up and walk through. The best part was the smokescreen coming down from the top of the doors with an image of Jesus projected on it. So yes, people walked through Jesus. At first I thought it was going to be kind of hokey, but it turned out to be really good, and pretty emotional. I cried more than once, even though all I could see from my position in the orchestra was shadows and feet.

After church, Scott and I finished up our fabulous bunny cake:


He's fabulous, I know. We brought him over to my family gathering in the afternoon which was lots of fun, especially with all the cute children we now have.


The highlight of our family time was when my cousin Christine sang a very special song for me. Christine is quite talented in her singing and guitar playing skills and has recorded some songs. So one night I had this dream that she recorded this Paul McCartney song, Mull of Kintyre, that I don't necessarily know that well but somehow it made it into my dream. Anyway, in the dream I was in the car listening to it and it was quite excellent. The next day, I sent Christine a quick message telling her she may want to consider this song for future recordings. So to my great pleasure, Christine found this song, learned it, and sang it for me on Easter. It was quite lovely.

The only thing missing from my Easter was a viewing of Easter Parade, but I am remedying that right now!

Tribute to Dean

So I have this bowling ball that I love very much. It's name is Dean and I bought it at a garage sale a number of years ago for $5. I named it Dean because it says "Dean" on it.

It's been basically the best ball ever. It's nice and light, but it has a big thumb hole which was the main selling feature for me. It's also purple.

So I've used this ball with great success for many years. Yes, everyone thinks I'm a huge dork for having my own ball, but I don't care because every time we go bowling, by the end of the night, everyone loves Dean.

But this weekend during a bowling outing with some friends, disaster struck when Dean started chipping in the thumb hole making it very painful to bowl. I tried to cover up the chip using some bowling tape (see below), but it didn't help much.


I had to start using the other bowling alley balls which were sub-par and my last 2 games were a disgrace. I averaged like 30 pins less than usual.

I'm not sure I want to get a new ball. Dean has served me well. But if it costs more to repair him than it did to buy him, then that just seems weird. Plus, if owning my own bowling ball makes me a dork, I can't imagine what it would mean if I actually paid money to repair said bowling ball.

Benji the Hunted Traumatized

This afternoon I was poking around in my Google Analytics (where I can spy on what people are searching for to get to my blogs) and came across a very interesting search term: "benji the hunted traumatized." This immediately excited me because I have seriously been holding on to this Benji the Hunted thing for like 20 years. I'm so glad to know that there's someone else out there who was traumatized by this devil of a movie!

What happened was one day, when I was approximately 4 years old, my mother thought it would be a great idea to take me to a movie about animals dying. I'm not sure that she knew there would be so much bloodshed, but there was. All at the beginning. So we had to leave like 5 minutes after it started. I truly was traumatized.

This horrific event has never left me. To this day my mother makes fun of me for it and on occasion will threaten to force me to watch this terrible, painful, disgusting movie. I've never hated a movie so much. Obviously.

Anyway, now that I've realized that there are others out there who were also traumatized, and have also not gotten over it seeing as they're just now doing a Google search for it, I figured I'd make a post about it. Hopefully other traumatized people will find this post and we can discuss our experiences. Kind of like a Benji the Hunted support group.

St. Patrick's Day

I had a lovely St. Patrick's Day, as usual.

It started out with a very fun day in Chicago on Saturday to see the green river and the parade. I'd never actually gone to check out the river which is unfortunate, because it really is quite cool! Even with the huge mass of people, we managed to get a good spot and spent some time taking pictures.



The parade was good, but not quite as easy to see. We finally sneaked around to a decent spot except it wasn't exactly legal and the cops on horses kept yelling at us. But we persisted and ended up getting to see quite a bit. Then we almost got killed by some unruley horses and a giant Leprechaun balloon/float that almost fell on us.




On Sunday we enjoyed a traditional Irish dinner with some of the family. I don't have any pictures of the actual food, but I do have pictures of some cute kids:





On Tuesday, I celebrated the day by wearing some green (and my awesome big green ring) and getting a free Shamrock Shake at McDonald's with my coworkers. Except I got chocolate because, let's be honest, the Shamrock ones are kind of disgusting. Later in the evening I celebrated with the bf (Scott) by watching the St. Patrick's Day episode of The Simpsons and drinking Green River. Pretty much perfect.

Root Beer Barrels vs. Blender

Last week through a series of emails involving my love for root beer floats and cookies, Scott (the bf) and I were basically challenged to create root beer float cookies for a get together with some friends on Saturday. Of course, we couldn't pass that up so we found a recipe online for them. I was a little surprised that a root beer float cookie recipe actually existed, but I shouldn't have been; everything exists on the internet.

Anyway, the recipe we found called for crushed up root beer barrels to be mixed into the dough so I ran to Walgreens and got like a 2 pound bag. We first tried to crush them up in a ziploc bag but it turns out that when they break up they become extremely sharp and the bag broke in 2 seconds.

Our next option was the old stand-by: the blender. Scott threw a few barrels into the blender and it seemed to work rather well. We were getting them down to a powder, so we went with it. After a few minutes, however, disaster struck when the root beer barrels blew a hole straight through the blender. Not a crack, not a ding; a full on hole. I had no idea these things could be so destructive. They're practically a weapon!


Luckily, God provided when we visited an estate sale the next day and found a mixer from the 1970's that included a heavy duty glass blender attachment. I don't think we'll have any problems with that one. Hopefully.

He Is Just That Into You

Warning: I'll probably give away the ending to this movie (He's Just Not That Into You) in some way, so if you're really dying to see it then don't read this! But it turned out rather predictable and you'll probably figure out what's going to happen about 15 minutes in anyway.

Last year sometime my mother gave me the book, He's Just Not That Into You. I'm not sure what she was implying there, but I read it anyway and quite enjoyed it. Granted, much of what they talk about in the book doesn't relate to my and my squeaky-cleanness, (He's just not that into you if he's not sleeping with you?? I'm in trouble.) but it made an overall good point: if a guy likes you, he'll pursue you. I'd seen countless girlfriends obsess (I never have, of course) over whether or not a boy liked them, only to find out he just wanted to be friends, so I appreciated the bluntness of the book.

I was hoping the film would be as straightforward and honest as the book, but let's face it, that's just not the Hollywood way!

Anyway, I went to see it with some friends last weekend and it was basically a huge disappointment. Actually, the first half seemed to hold some promise. Good points were made, and sections were introduced with a line from the book (He's just not that into you if he's not calling you, and so on ...). But then, halfway through, things took a turn for the worse.

It followed a few different characters and their stories (which I did really enjoy), the main one being about unlucky-in-love Gigi, who befriends a fellow named Alex who sees what a dating mess she is and begins to give her advice, almost straight from the book. It was good advice, I thought, and it seemed to give her a much healthier dating life. But by the end of the film, just about everything he said went out the window and the movie itself reverted back to the kind of chick-flick that gives women the very same crazy ideas that the book has tried so hard to dispel. The title itself is generally misleading as pretty much every guy in the movie is into exactly who you're expecting him to be into. Except, ironically, the married man who was not into his wife. By the end it was just so confusing that we all ended up leaving the theater depressed.

Anyway, here are the top things I learned from watching He's Just Not That Into You:

- If you're with a guy who won't marry you, it's not that he's not into you, it's that he's not going to propose until you tell him you don't want to get married. That's the secret.

- If you do get your husband to marry you (against his will?) he'll cheat on you with a skanky girl from the grocery store, so don't push it!

- Women shouldn't care so much about getting married, gosh!

- There's no such thing as a good relationship without some good drama!

- If you think a guy may be acting like he likes you, you should come on to him. If he says he just wants to be friends, you should tell him that actually he wants to be more than friends, he just doesn't know it yet. Then date other guys until the first guy realizes he is into you and finally asks you out. Then live happily ever after.

- There's actually no way to know if a guy is into you, so stop trying!

Tuesday Morning, 7 a.m.

That's right, I got up at the crack of dawn on Tuesday to take advantage of a free Grand Slam at Denny's. Actually, dawn hadn't even cracked when I woke up, which was disappointing. Anyway, I ventured out to meet a couple coworkers, Emily and Todd, at the Denny's by work. There was actually a line out the door. It was weird. Also it was like 10 degrees. Is this really what we've come to? Waiting in 10 degree weather for a free mediocre breakfast? Desperate times call for desperate measures!

Anyway, after about 20 cold minutes we finally got seated and all was well with the world. Seeing as it was highly unlikely that I would ever see a line out the door at Denny's again in my life, I took a picture:


I was so excited about this Denny's adventure that the night before I had a dream about it, except in the dream, this trip to Denny's included the entire company walking across the street to the Denny's and then gathering for a pre-Denny's meeting which I skipped out on in order to beat the rush to the Denny's.

I kind of want some Denny's now.