cheap + quality entertainment

I love shout-outs to ye olden days when I get to attend a concert for less than $15 that are still top notch. Case study: Mat Kearney at the Beaumont Club. I only paid $10 TOTAL for two tickets from a woman who won them on the radio. Apparently, there are still plenty of non-psychos left to be found on Craigslist. Hooray!


<--his song "Closer to Love" is really good.

Slowly coming out of hibernation!

A quick check of my profile tells me two sobering things: Number one: I didn't think anyone clicked onto this not-updated-enough blog, but I'm somewhat wrong. Number two: I'm 24! I have been for 3 months, but it hasn't sunk in yet.

I know 24 is still in the youngish category. But the older I get, the more likely I am to forget I'm this old! I was at CVS yesterday, and my total came to $19.89. The check-out guy informed me that was his birth year (we decided this was a good sign for him). And he didn't look like a baby. But people born in 1989 are supposed to be kids, right? Wrong. They are 20. I don't know who my audience is here, but surely most of you can relate to this.

I'm going to nip this "time flies" rant in the bud before it turns into multiple-paragraph rambling.

This isn't a news update blog, but I will share a bit of info anyway. My balcony has just been completely redone. Much to my happiness, they kept the old, Victorian columns, but put in a brand new wooden floor and updated all the paint and trimming. Now the trouble is stopping at the correct apartment instead of accidentally passing its unrecognizable exterior. I think I'll take a photo the next time I'm walking up to my building and show you all.

In other news, I just paid $3.90 to eat a DELECTABLE fish of some sort (just looked it up...Arctic Char). No exaggeration: it was 3 times better than the $29 wild salmon I had at Bristol last weekend. And at my downtown grocery store (Cosentino's), they steam and season it for you! I love fine dining on a budget. Especially when that fine dining requires no effort. :) I also love discovering a new dish. I'm often hesitant with seafood, but I'm getting better.

Twittering has gotten me so accustomed to thinking in hyperlinks and @usernames that I keep wanting to put links along with my shout-outs. That is the very reason I should deTwitter myself and focus more on big girl writing/macroblogging where you rely on your own descriptions. Writing news releases at work is also something I haven't done in ages. My superior (Marc) is nice and doesn't force me to help him with releases when I get busy, which is all the time now. So it's time to re-prioritize and start practicing one of my favorite aspects of public relations.

This update feels so short, but that's probably because I'm "talkative"<--what's the word for that when you're writing? Anyway, I will cut myself off and try to save my blogging energies for sooner instead of my usual later.

If for some reason you woke up today and thought, "My, I haven't heard any new, good music lately," look no further. Here is a VERY short list of recent discoveries/favorites. (Actually do look further...because I'm certainly no music guru.)

* French music -- is that a genre? This is not a rhetorical question. I love the style in the following clip, but I don't know what the genre is called. I believe this is from Amelie, which I haven't seen. The song is called "Guilty"

* The Way I Am -- excellent lyrics and catchy tune! By Ingrid Michaelson...I'm only endorsing this one song though. It's a must-hear.

***edit*** Do not confuse this song with Timbaland's The Way I Are.

* All of Brett Dennen's stuff, but especially this one--> Ain't No Reason -- I actually want you to watch the video with this one (usually it kind of distracts from the song...but not in this case) -- thank you Tara for this discovery

* You Are the Best Thing by Ray LaMontagne -- Tara gets ALL the credit for this one. I can't get enough of it. It's romantic, cheerful and soulful all wrapped up into 3ish minutes.

* the band Little Joy -- not ready to recommend them yet, as I just heard of them tonight
--however: Guy from Coldplay is currently at their concert, so they can't be bad, they have a good initial sound, and I love their name

* Lift My Eyes -- I rarely buy music, but I caved for this one. By Bebo Norman. You have to be talented if your name is Bebo to make up for being named Bebo.

one year as a grown up

My goal is to write a true update before I hit the one-year-inactive mark on this blog. So if any of you are out there who still check this...please stay tuned.

Keeping up with Facebook, learning Twitter, etc. has caused me to neglect dear-old blog (which I was never very faithful to in the first place).

I do have many reflections regarding my first year in Kansas City, however. So more to come.

Now I'm going to start reading Surprised by Joy. I love C.S. Lewis, joy and surprises...so this is sure to be a winner.

Word of the Day

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't a dictionary supposed to provide synonyms in order to HELP you figure out what the word means?

Today's word:
--scathing
(adjective) Bitterly denunciatory; harshly critical.
Synonyms: vituperative

Pretty sure I already knew what scathing meant, and have never used vituperative in my life. They need to reverse their Word of the Day, in my humble opinion. This will teach me not to use thefreedictionary.com when I should be using dictionary.com. Words matter.

act of weather, not terrorism

This happened Tuesday night...fortunately I saw it on the news before driving home from Shannon and Brad's apartment in Lawrence. And fortunately, I also saw it from the highway on my way home. Otherwise, when I saw the monstrous, dark cloud of smoke billowing into the sky just west of downtown on my way to work the next morning, I would've been positive that terrorists had struck.



Lightning caused this petroleum tank to catch on fire.

Tornadic weather in store tonight, perhaps. I think I missed my calling to be a storm chaser.

NPR dreams

Every morning, I wake up to my radio playing NPR. This is all well and good, and a less-harsh way to rouse a night owl out of bed.

But here is where it gets interesting...I've been having "NPR dreams." I'm bad about snoozing for quite a while, so I usually go back to sleep as the radio is blaring and dream about whatever news I'm hearing. Then, when I'm finally awake, it's hard to distinguish reality from my dreams.

For example, the other day, as I was driving to work, it dawned on me that Jane Seymour is not, in fact, running against Hillary Clinton for president. This morning, I dreamed I was President Bush's press secretary, and we were having a conversation inside his limo.

So don't ask me to tell you about current events, because I'll give you false reports.

speech! speech!

Since I've been remiss in blogging lately, and since I need to go to bed early due to an early-morning airport pick-up (Tara's coming!!!), I decided to sort of blog-cheat. I'm going to post the little speech I gave at our baccalaureate lunch at graduation in December.

I hereby dedicate this to all recent graduates:


I try hard not to say, "I can't wait." A few years ago I realized how precious life is and how quickly it passes and so I decided to stop using the words, "can't wait." I used to say, "I can't wait for Christmas" or "I can't wait for summer break." But the truth is, I CAN wait for anything. Instead, I now say, "I'm looking forward to.....being gainfully employed."

There is an old French story called The Magic Thread about a little boy, Peter, who was very impatient. Peter had trouble enjoying the present, because he longed for the future. One day, an old woman approached Peter in the woods and offered him a strange gift, a silver ball from which a golden thread dangled. She explained that if he gave the thread a little tug, an hour would pass like a second. Peter gladly accepted the gift.

The next day, when he was bored in school, he pulled the thread a tiny bit, and found to his delight, that the teacher was dismissing class for the day. So every day, he pulled the thread to speed up all the slow parts of the day. Eventually, he decided to skip schooling altogether and hurry on to his career. I am sure you guessed what happened next.

He rushed through his engagement so he could be married to his childhood sweetheart. He rushed through his children's illnesses and all other unpleasant events in his life. Before he knew it, his mother had died and his children had grown up and moved away.

One day when he was an old man, he went on a walk in the same woods he used to walk in when he was a boy. He saw the same old woman who had given him the magic thread. She asked if he had lived a good life. "I'm not sure," he replied. "Your magic ball is a wonderful thing. I've never had to suffer or wait for anything. And yet it has all passed so quickly. I haven't had time to take in what's happened to me, neither the good things nor the bad. Now, there's so little time left."

The old woman gave Peter one final wish. With that wish he chose to live his life over without the magic thread, to take life as it came. He woke to find his young mother waking him to go to school.

William Bennett said, "Too often people want what they want right now. (Or what they think they want, which is usually happiness.) The irony of their impatience is that only by learning to wait, and by a willingness to accept the bad with the good, do we usually attain those things that are truly worthwhile."

I can relate to Peter. As much as I want to be patient, there were many times when I was writing a research paper at 4 a.m. and wishing I had a Magic Thread of my own that would fast forward me to Spring Break. I am still not over my aversion to IHOP after spending an entire night there drinking from the "bottomless coffee pot" while writing a paper for Dr. McBride.

But, you know, other times I am the one who already sounds like an old woman sitting on her front porch musing about how quickly time passes. When I visited the freshmen dorms in August, I felt as though I were the one who should be moving in, not all of those kids!

My point is this--we need a balance in our lives. We need to cherish the present while looking forward to the future.

As I approached high school graduation, the advice I heard the most was, "This is the best time of your life; enjoy it while it lasts." I loved high school, but I remember thinking, "I hope this isn't the peak of my existence!" And sure enough, college was even better.

I believe if we continue seeking God's will for our lives, the best is still to come. Each stage of our life will be wonderful, and we can even learn to appreciate those times when we are refined by fire.

As with Peter's story, if we don't take the bad times with the good, we won't enjoy our lives to the fullest. If I had chosen not to go to OC just because I hate research papers, I would have missed out on an amazing 4 1/2 year adventure. The same will be true for my future. If I don't take risks with my career, I will miss out on great opportunities.

I am trying hard not to use clichés. I am not going to throw out all those "dance like no one is watching" quotations at you. But I do want to encourage all of us to get excited about all that life has to offer in the next eighty years or so. When life is going exceptionally well for you, pause and soak it all in. Tuck those good memories away and pull them out when the trials come so that you know the hard times won't last forever.

And above all else, trust that God has incredible plans for that will surprise us and make us wonder why we ever thought college was going to be the best time of our lives.

Congratulations everyone!

art & life imitating each other

"Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life." --Oscar Wilde

I can't seem to figure out my opinion on this matter. I used to have the same sentiments as Meg Ryan's character in You've Got Mail -- "So much of what I see reminds me of something I read in a book, when shouldn't it be the other way around?" But lately, I'm pleased to announce I don't feel that way as much anymore.

Instead of moping around yesterday because Tara Lynne had to cancel her trip to visit me, the day was instead filled with all things good: farmers' market in the morning, French cafe for afternoon coffee, library, 2 hours at a wonderful park and gorgeous spring weather...and finally, my first visit to the art museum here.

There were several reasons why I enjoyed the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art so much: the grounds are beautiful, the collections much better than I thought they'd be, the low cost for admission (free) and the fact I can go any time I want since I'm not just here on vacation.

And now I will tell you why art imitates life...illustrated in a few selections from the European exhibit:

Pisarro's Market at Pontoise -- because I just went to the market.

Cassat's At the Theater -- because I just went to my first opera


The Approaching Storm -- because I recently took these photos from my balcony the other night

Piazza del Popolo, Rome -- PRECISELY where my book is taking place right now...and I was having difficulty picturing it, thank you Giovanni Paolo Panini for painting this in 1741 for me. =)

And the best example...

Ingres's Portrait of the Sculptor Paul Lemoyne -- because it's used on the cover of the previously-mentioned book I'm currently reading.


Here's my proof: I bought this book in New York at the Heath Ledger bookstore (I call it that because Whitney talked to him there in October). Little did I know that the cover was taken from a painting hanging in a museum in my town! I love stuff like this.

As if I needed more reason to love the museum, look at the quotes on the outside of the building (by one of my favorite authors, Victor Hugo, I might add):

"The soul has greater need of the ideal than of the real. It is by the real that we exist. It is by the ideal that we live."

Well said, Victor.