WFMW

A few weeks ago, I went to Huntington Beach to celebrate my brithday with two of my friends, and their birthdays too. The present I got is, not too surprisingly, this week's topic.
The laptop bag that I got is cute, stylish, and just the right size for my laptop. It also has room for some paper, a small folder, and a pen, as well as my cell phone. Not too small, and not so big that is seems pointless to carry it around. Works for me.

MM

What could it be? m&m's the candy? No, not quite. mmmm, that was delicious? almost, in the sense that I had a delightfully delicious time at MONSTER MASSIVE this last weekend!!! The music was awesome, and the dancing was fun!!! I also got to spend time with Amber, a recent friend that I don';t get to spend much time with, as she lives in San Bernardino. You see, for her, it was just another dance. For my friend Jackie, well, she was in her element...obviously, because she loves to dance!!! :) For me, it was remarkably like prom, or homecoming, only in a Halloween costume. MAN. I think the funnest part of the evening was getting to spray my hair black(black hair is definitely an experience, especially when the can if colored hairspray doesn;t work QUITE the way you thought it would, like the color comes off any time it touches anything, like my hands, my neck or my face. :) ) And, staying out all night is also always a pleasure. :) I'm not sure I'll do it again, as my feet were killing me by the end of the night, but I'm not sorry I went. I had a blast. :)

recipes

This one came from Emily:(I'm gonna go ahead and give it a name, since she didn't give me one, so I don't think it has a proper name. :) )

chicken veggie casserole

rice(I used the packages of ten minute rice, so I'm guessing it was about 2 c, b/c I used 2 bags)
celery(2 stalks)
broccoli( i didn't really measure, I jsut kind of eyeballed it, but prob. about half a head to a head)
chicken(2 C, again, I didn't measure, I just used up what I had, so this is approximate)
cream of chicken soup(1 can)
1/2 can of water (to thin the soup out)

cook the rice, chop the celery and broccoli, them steam until almost tender, tear the chicken into strips, mix together, and add the soup. put in the oven for about 10 min., and enjoy!

It's quick, easy, and delicious!!! Thanks Em!

help?

A few of my friends here at school at liberals. Or at least democrats. I was raised conservative republican. That in and of itself, just the knowledge I mean, can be a cause of friction. However, it's usually not, except when they start to talk about politics. Then I have no idea what to say. They are both Christians, but have VERY different views on the presidency, and particularly the war, than I do. I have talked to my dad about it, and he tried to answer my questions, as I don't normally pay attention to politics(it's not my "thing" you see :) )but just asking him what to say isn't helping enough. Either I don't remember what he says, or they bring up something more that I didn't ask him about, and therefore don't have the information to begin with. So, can you guys recommend some websites(I don't have radio, and I don't really have the time to watch the t.v. when the news shows are on) that I could go to to read up on a) some of the causes behind the war, because I know it wasn't just an invasion tactic, because Bush is war happy. b) presidential candidates(as the election is coming up, I should probably know something about who I am going to vote for before I vote for them :) )and c) any random political issues that could become major topics of discussion in the future, or anything at all so that I don't sound dumb when trying to say something about this particular area? I would REALLY appreciate it! thanks! :)

WFMW

I've put a lot of thought into what would go into today's slot, and the winner is....
My bike! :)











as a fairly poor college student, I sadly don't have enough money for a car at the moment. I can ride the bus, they stop running at about 9 p.m., and they cost money, besides, if it's not too far, why not save myself $1.25? there's also a tram that takes students from the dorms to campus, but it isn't always terribly reliable. Therefore, I ride my bike most places. It's free, good exercise, and pretty quick. Also, the upkeep is virtually nothing.(so far the only expenses have been the original cost{which my parents paid when they got it for me 4 years ago}, and the cost to get it a tune up{whcih will, I hope, last me another 4-5 years}). Cheap, fun, and healthy...works for me! :)

YAY!!!

I just discovered that PAX(now called ION) tv has decided to be EXTREMELY smart, and start playing Doc and Sue Thomas again(albeit reruns)!!! Well worth watching, good family shows, go check em out! maybe if they get enough ratings, they'll start to make new episodes of Sue Thomas again, even though they can't really make new ones of Doc, since the ending was pretty final. However, Sue Thomas was left open, so there's till hope, although it has been three years since they ended it, so maybe not much hope, but a little bit. :)

fires

Right now, the biggest of the fires in my area is in the area of my church. Apparently. the Canyon Country fire(also known as the buckweed fire) is currently covering 85,000 acres, and is believed to be in the process of joining two other fires, the Magic fire, and one other, to make up a very large area(I forget how large). So, please pray for the safety of COC, and, for that of the families who live in that area. I'm okay, becasue Canyon Country is actually about 30 minutes away from Northridge, and it doesn't seem, for now at least, that any of them are headed this way. Also, for those of you in the fire areas, I'm praying for your safety, and that of your homes. :)

oh yeah

I forgot to mention how much I love this weather. It's cool, but not too cold during the day, and the wind in my hair...I love it, also, I love the fact that it's been raining the last few weeks off and on. I love the rain, and the wind. They make me happy. I love fall. :)

Oh happy day!!!

Today was the day I got to celebrate my birthday (granted, a month early) with my two best friends, Lauren and Jenny. I went down to Huntington Beach to Lauren's house, and met up with her and Jenny at the train station Fri. night,(no work that day!!! yay!) and then today we went shopping (I should add that we went to the pier and had hot chocolate at Ruby's last night also). I got some cute new clothes from kohls, for fairly cheap because they were having a sale, and then we ate lunch at the Cheesecake factory, which, thankfully, was not too overpriced. :) Then disaster struck(well sort of) We decided to go into this make-up shop, jsut ot look around, and see how things were priced. So, Lauren and Jenny thought it would be fun to have them do our make-up, so we asked them, and the lady asked which brand we wanted(they had everything from covergirl to bare essentuals). I chose bare essentauls, because I had tried it on once before at a Macy's kiosk. Since I had told Jenny and Lauren about it, they decided to try it too. So we tried it on, and the lady is trying to sell it to us right? so Lauren asked how much the starter kit was,(this includes three brushes, a how-to dvd, 2 foundations, blush, bronzer, and a what they call a mineral veil. The answer is $60. Now, this is not really a bad price for how well this make-up works and for the amount that comes in the starter kit, but still, it's a lot of money. I'm already to say I don't have that much money, but thanks anyway, and Lauren just asks me how much I do have. I tell her, and she says to go ahead and get it, but not only that, to also go ahead and get a thing of eyeshadow($13) she went ahead and got some for herself, as well as two eyeshadows, and (since Jenny's shade didn't have a kit, she had to get hers separately, which cost a lot more) so the whole thing cost $280!!! for make-up. Now, Jenny and I DID help pay for about $60 of it, but still! So, basically, by disaster, I mean Lauren got in her money spending mood, and spent $90 dollars on us, or almost that, if not quite. She did say it was our Christmas gifts though, so I guess that justifies it slightly, but still. So, I went expecting to have a few new clothes, cheap tho, and came away with $86 dollars worth of make-up that is supposed to last me about a year. It's a really good brand though! It really works so that you can't tell that you have it on, and supposedly, it's good for your skin, because it's all minerals, so it ex foliates while it's on, and won't break you out. Worth it? Definately, if you have the money for it. But I am grateful to her for buying it, because I never would have been able to afford it myself, no matter how much I like it. :)

OY

college life=frustrating and confusing, and a requirement to be an adult and make the right decisions, but it's hard to know sometimes what the right decision is! When it's easy to know, then I know if I make the wrong one, it's all on me, but it's rarely easy. :( frustrating? as much as possible. Little homework, till I'm going somewhere for the weekend, then I have a lot of it. Why? I think it must be a conspiracy theory. Decisions? you betcha. Mostly how to spend my money, so that I'm still saving, but am allowed to do some fun things with my friends. This costs money, and I do have it, so the choice lies with "Do I save, with the hopes that if I save enough, I'll be able to pay off my loans by the end of the year, every year, so I won't have debt to pay off when I graduate?" or"Do I go with the instant gratification, and spend the money, but hopefully not too much, so that I'll still save a little, but be able to do what I want to?" So far, it's been the latter, but I know it should be the former. Although the latter doesn't seem like an altogether evil choice does it? As long as I'm not spending more than what I'm making right?

WFMW

My sister-in-law, Emily, has this thing on her blog called Works for me Wednesday. It's kind of a fun thing to read, so I thought I'd give it a try. Mine? fun games to play!!!

At an intervarsity meeting several weeks ago, we had a hang out night for freshman, and transfers. One of the games we played was called telephone pictionary. The idea is that each person has a stack of papers, the number of which equals the number of people playing. each person writes a word or a phrase on the top sheet, and then they pass it to the right. the next person then has to draw a picture depicting what the paper says. You pass it around the circle, and when your paper(the one that you first wrote the word or phrase on) comes back to you, the game is over. The fun part is to see what phrase is now written, as opposed to how it started. One of my friends, for example, started out with "You can't handle the truth!" and ended up with "Welcome Home!" (it works best with an odd number of players, so that as you get yours back, you have a phrase, instead of a picture)

One of my favorites is a card game I learned in Awana. It's called SPOONS. The idea is that everyone sits in a circle and gets four cards. there is a number of spoons in the middle, one less than the number of people playing. The goal is to get all four cards of the same kind(i.e. four aces, four kings, four tens, etc) the first person to get all four of a kind, grabs a spoon. once the first spoon has been grabbed, then everyone else can also grab a spoon. The person without a spoon gets a letter, and when you have spelled the word SPOONS, you're out. It can get pretty violent, especially when highschoolers are playing it, but it's easy, and a lot of fun.

Mafia. Ah, Mafia. It's easy, most people have heard of it, and it's fun to hear how the mayer has decided each person has died, or almost died, and then is saved.

so there you have it. a few games that are easy to play, without a lot of setup, or props required. It works for me. :)

what a weekend

It sure was interesting alright.Friday, I had the day off work, because I was sick right? So I rode my bike to Ralph's, then home, and slept all day, saw the play, blah blah blah right? Saturday, I did make it to the mall, and my friend came over and spent the night. Then came Sunday. I haven't been to my church for like a month because I've been gone on the weekends for the last month, so I really wanted to go. So, I got up at 6:15 in the morning to make sure I got there on time. Due to the big accident on the freeway(which you can read about here) Heather, the girl who normally picks me up, couldn't get to me, because she would have had to take the freeway, and that wasn't going to work. So I decided to try the bus. Man, what an adventure. First, one bus was about an hour late, then Heather couldn't get to the Sylmar Metro station, to pick me up, again, because of the accident, they had closed one of the main streets she had to use to get there. So I got to call metro, and find out what buses to take to get me to Newhall. Well, everything was ok, for the afternoon. I hung out with Heather, and watched Sleepless in Seattle, :). I was going to take the train back to Sylmar, at 4:48, buuut it decided to leave 10 min early, so I missed it, and got take the bus back to Sylmar, then another bus home. I was expecting my roommate to be back by about nine, so I watched a movie, and waited. When it was 11, and she wasn't back yet, I gave her a call, and found out that something had happened, and that she wasn't coming back till today. So I got to spend one more night by myself. It wasn't too bad, but I must say that I definitely prefer NOT being here by myself. I think it was a good experience, but I'd rather not go through it again. Although I probably will, considering the fact that I still have four years left. :)

The time of your life

Or not. I'm all alone this weekend, as Jackie, Lizzie, and Shameka are all gone. So, I'm left to entertain myself. Plans? so far, I've slept all day, gone to Ralphs, and been an usher for the Play "The Time of Your Life". Oh, and you can't forget getting to watch Blood and Chocolate. Good movie, if you don't mind the violence, and dark themes. So, for tomorrow (or should I say today?:)) the only plan I have is to somehow make it to the mall, or Ross, or Target, or somewhere to shop for my friend's birthday gift. As far as the play goes, I think CSUN just has some weird ideas of entertainment. So far, both plays have been odd, something I've never seen before. "As it is in Heaven" was the first one, a play about a Shaker community in the mid 1800's. Mostly just creepy because it was a lot like the crucible.(or had the same feeling to it anyway) Girls seeing angels, and actually being possessed, the elderesses of course not believing them, and punishing them. Then to play tonight. I was an Usher because it meant I got to see the play for free. And I had one more play to see for my theater class. So, it wasn't really about anything. People just got together in a saloon, and hung out. It took place during the depression, so it kind of depicted their lifestyles, but they were all sort of random characters. Except for the people trying to look for work, they all had some sort of pain in their past, or present, to deal with. It was interesting, and at least not creepy, but it was kind of boring.

blah

That's right ladies and gentlemen, I'm sick. I'm glad I haven't been sick since last spring break, but still, I wish I wasn't, because I had to take tomorrow off from work, and I might have to take Friday off too. Usually, I just tough it out, and drag myself to whatever it is I have to go to, but when you work around food, they really don't want you there if you're sick. So, fewer hours=less money=yikes! yeah. pray that I get better soon!

baby steps

so, in a previous post, I talked about how over the summer God used the camp I went to to help me to let go of some major anger issues, then how He used the church I'm going to to help me understand the reason for the situations I was in that caused the anger in the first place. In comes Intervarsity. I went to Catalina this weekend with the chapter on my campus, and had a blast. I had fun interacting with new people, and going to Catalina was, of course, amazing, but the best part of the weekend, I think, was Saturday night. The speaker had been talking about we should be heroes of God for the people around us, and he showed a video of a father who made it possible for his disabled son to complete an Iron man. The analogy there was supposed to be "we need to be like that dad, and help other people to overcome obstacles in their lives, through God" but God gave me a different analogy. He showed me that He was the Dad, and we were the crippled one, who needed help to cross the finish line. Now, even though I am a Christian, I really haven't been acting like one very much. I had basically decided that God was NOT going to be the center of my life because he allowed the situation that caused the pain right? so why should I let him make any more decisions? I realized this weekend, though, how flawed that thinking really is. So, now that I've given up the anger, realized the reason for the cause, decided to make a serious effort to put God first in my life, and start having quiet times, I think I'm finally headed in the right direction.

Catalina

Gorgeous, serene, exciting, and fun. What else can I say about it? For me, going to Catalina for the first time was such an adventure. For starters, I don't get motion sick right? well, my stomach decided differently on the boat ride over. Now, the only other boats I had been on were the Staten Island Ferry, and a paddle boat in Big bear Lake. The Ferry was so big that I didn't feel the motion of the waves, and the lake water just didn't get very rough, so That didn't make me sick either. But let me tell you, riding that boat to Catalina wasn't terribly fun. I felt pretty sick, so I just slept through most of it. It didn't help that the water was kind of choppy either. When we got there, we unloaded the boat, then ate breakfast(we were supposed to go over on Fri. night, but the wind was too high, so we went on Saturday morning instead.)They make GOOD food(for a camp at least) It's a small camp, so they just had food on every table, and we shared. I got to hang out with my friends Carrie and Kate, and Carrie and I played Ping Pong with our other friend Lindsey. Hahaha, I suck at ping pong, so we had to keep chasing the balls, but we laughed and had a good time. The speaker was AMAZING. He had stories that fit each and every message perfectly. The theme of the weekend was "Heroes" So he talked about how we can be heroes for God. It was really easy to connect with the messages, so it was fun and easy to listen. We went snorkeling then, after lunch. The water was cold, but they had wet suits for us, so it wasn't too bad. The water was REALLY clear too, so it was easy to see fish, and other things, like kelp, and other creatures that didn't seem like fish, but animals in disguise(when we over by some rocks, I think I saw something moving, but didn't stick around to see what it was because it looked big, and gray, and bumpy, almost kind of like a moving, elongated rock. Needless to say, we got away pretty quick. :) ). On fri. night, they had a 70's dance party, and we played Mafia. Because my camera is a lame face and decided to delete pictures on its own again, I only have about 10 pictures all together, but you can see more here, (all of Friday's pictures got deleted :(, and since it was acting up, I was afraid to take more, so all I have are Saturday's pictures), but here you go.










That's me, Carrie, and Kate









and the ping pong tables










here's a view of the cove we were in









yeah! that's our group,all CSUN students. apparently, this is the first year in while that there's been more than 12 kids from CSUN(there were other schools there too, and a church)












Here's the Cross they had set up at the top of a hill. I t ha a gorgeous view, and was a nice place to sit and think.

Catalina. I think I might be going back in the spring. :)

That's why we're the best :)

Oh yes, living near Hollywood definitely has its perks. Mainly, seeing famous people. So far to date there's been an All State commercial filmed, I've seen William Hung(you know, the American Idol guy who sang the song "She Bang" a few years back) and for the grand finale, today they were filming part of a CSI(just the regular Las Vegas one) episode on campus. So, I got to see Jorja Fox up close, although, sadly, I didn't actually get to meet her, but still, it was pretty awesome. For those of you avid CSI watchers, look for the episode coming up with a little blonde girl in it(that's all I know about it, cuz I couldn't actually hear what was being said, I was to far away)

book review

I just finished reading the Bourne Trilogy, and I must say, it was quite an experience. They were good books(yes, all three of them for those of you have heard other people's opinions, but then again, I'm not too hard to please. :) ) So I thought I'd let y'all know a little bit about them.(I promise not to give away major plot points. )

Bourne Identity: Wow, ok, first of all, it's nothing like the movie,(or at least the whole thing is not. Basically what Hollywood did was take the three different aspects of this book and turn it into three movies) but what did you expect right? Hollywood seems to have trouble getting it right most of the time anyway. Bourne is not as likable in the books, as he has a different past,present, and future. However, if you are mentally quick enough to understand all of the "cool" strategies he comes up with to avoid capture/death(which I am NOT!) you'll definitely enjoy it, and even if you don't understand all of the strategies, when they're being explained, they usually become clear as they are being played out. Not always however, which does lend a sort of frustration to the reading.

Bourne Supremacy: Again, completely unique of hte movie, but hopefully, since they used basically just hte fisrt book to make the existing movies, they'll use parts of this one to make another one eh? we can only hope. So, Bourne is in China here for reasons that make you want to murder the American Government. However, all is made right in the end, and it really has a good ending. Of course, he wins. How else could it end? This one also has that aspect of frustration to it, or at least for me, because I felt like I didn't have three hours to pour over what was being said in a ten sentence paragraph(exaggeration, I promise) but honestly, the details are so complex that it's hard to follow.

Bourne Ultimatum: Alas, this one(and I should have mentioned that the other two do as well, but this more so, and harsher)has a lot of bad language in it. That was it's biggest downfall. Some of it could conceivably be necessary, due to the situation he is in this one, and his frustration, but a lot of it could have been left out, as the milder forms would probably have been considered cheesy. :) More frustration on the readers part, because the entire book is him hunting down an old enemy, who thinks like he does. Therefore, the elaborate setups are even more elaborate, and more confusing, because you see hsi thoughts as both his own, and those of the man he's hunting. Definately the worst of the three, because there are several parts where the books could convievably end, but it doesn't. It just kind of drags on. By the end I was thinking "is actually gonna catch him this time or not? Please let him catch him!"

Well, I hope that was helpful!!! At least for those of you considering reading them anyway.

Prioritizing

Is something I've never been good at. I just decide that I don't want to do something at that moment, and I'll get it doen later. I always did, or almost always. In Highschool I didn't really care about studying for tests because my homework made uo for it if I did badly(which I invariably did) now, however, there is no homework, or very litttle. So I have to study for tests, but I REALLY don't want to. So tonight, on the eve of my first college test(astronomy, no less, the most boring class I have) I went work, went to InterVarsity, watched Heroes, cooked meat, cleaned up the mess, took a shower, and am now trying to make myself at least sort of study, because I know I have to in order to do well on the test. Needless to say, I think I need to get my priorities straight, namely, studying should probably come fist, and it also means that I have to get off the internet now, and get to it. :)