announcements, announcements, annouuuuuuuuuuuuncements!

a) it's slicky's birthday today. boom.

b) i am going to the lake this weekend. my plans are: sun, homework, work on my book.

c) i haven't had time to generate something real yet, but in my quiet times, i have been hit with the theme of slavery and freedom over and over...so look for a blog post/chapter about that.

d) it's 3 weeks till my birthday. hope you're ready for that business.

e) both of my frisbee teams have been smashing our opponents this week. pretty great. currently, liars and cheetahs are 7-1, and once a cheetah is 6-2. not bad.

f) peace and blessings...

the monthly cooking segment: beautiful food on a beautiful day

yeah, yeah. i made a pretty similar meal last month. but i can't help it if the farmer's market is so freaking awesome.

fresh spinach.

fresh asparagus.

fresh strawberries.

amazing ravioli.

oh, and spicy cheese bread.

i love madison. good heavens, do i love madison!

30 by 30 update: avoid the tornadoes, and you'll be all right...

so. i should have posted yesterday. i had really good intentions. but frisbee ended up taking much longer than expected because we waited out a storm in our cars. don't you worry...we won. oh...that wasn't what you were worried about? also, no one got hit by lightning.

i don't have much of an update regarding my 30 by 30 list...i thought i would get a lot done this summer, but i am busy as crap. so we'll see.

1. i am still taking classes for another month. should be wrapping them up around my birthday. just two semesters left after that.

9. miranda and i DID actually go on a road trip to indiana...and we had several crazy adventures, documented here and here. but as she pointed out, we don't really want that chaos to be our documented road trip. so this one is both technically done and not at all done. are you following?

11. this was my monthly cooking segment, and looking at the picture again is making me hungry.

14. i got a different car! i traded bj novak for ron swanson. aside from the blowout picture, i don't have any of him. miranda has the official picture. so that's forthcoming.

29. i am almost done with a handful of books, but i have this huge pile sitting on my dresser reminding me every day of how little fun reading i get to do anymore.

it is officially less than 13 months until this list is supposed to be finished. yikes! (and if you have somebody with whom you would like to set me up for a blind date, you can help me out for number 25).

oh, i did actually take some pictures of life...

so here's my sweet brother and his new wife. i love them. their wedding was beautiful and funny.

and here's my sweet best friend taking good care of ron swanson when we blew a tire on our way back to wisconsin.

and here are my sweet legs after a full weekend of frisbee. this picture probably doesn't even capture the full color difference between my feet and legs. you can also see a knee brace line on my left leg. and every place that looks like i was beaten with a baseball bat is, in fact, a bruise. those are real. and there are actually many more than you can see in this picture.

one month down

i can't believe a month of my summer is gone already. CRAZY.

i am mad busy. but it's good. working for the dollar bills (and really enjoying ye olde magic shoppe)...frisbee till i wanna puke (another tournament this weekend...i'll strive to be better about sunscreen)...homework (not gonna lie...i'll be glad to be done with these classes. they're more fun in marion. lol. i have less distractions there, too.)...and trying to hang out with people. that is a surprisingly hard task.

let's see...what else has changed in the past month...

i got a new sister.

i got bangs.

i traded cars.

yeah, i think those are the highlights.

here's what i haven't been doing:

writing.

working on my t shirt quilt.

running (aside from frisbee).

eek.

we'll see what the next two months bring.

the terrain is actually rougher on 3 tires...

our adventures were not over. miranda and i drove to marion on monday morning to get some stuff from aunt betty's house and see some super cool people. and participate in the planning phase of the wigger olympics. trust me, you're gonna want to be there for those.

we were driving back to madison...about 45 miles south of rockford...when disaster struck. it sounded and felt like the back end of my car exploded. which is not a great feeling when you're driving, by the way.

i pulled over, and we got out to see what the rumpus was. my tire was not flat. nope. it was completely jimmy-jacked. as in...shredded to pieces. awesome.

good news, though. my best friend is an expert tire changer. who knew? so she got the spare on just fine, and we made it (oh so slowly) to rockford.

our pal, rex, helped us out. i obviously had to replace one tire, but it turned out the other back tire was so old that he was afraid it would blow out soon, too. and then they told me that they tested the battery, and it wasn't even registering. they had no idea how we had even made it to rockford in the first place. (you'll recall that grandpa's car had to be jumped before going to fishers and refused to take us to the movies.)

so i had to replace two tires and a battery. that was not a cheap trip.

but i made a million memories with miranda...we weren't hurt...we came up with a name for the car...all good things.

my car's name is now officially ron swanson. (and if you don't know the reference, i demand you watch 'parks and recreation' immediately.) i'll post pictures soon.

it may not be rock bottom, but the terrain is getting rough...

it was a long and strange day.

first, i should mention that my sweet brother got married to the love of his life. and i am so excited and happy for them! there was a lot of celebrating and hoopla.

second, miranda is here in indiana with me. she is integral to the story.

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so...my dear, sweet car...i've told you stories...bj novak has just seen better days...so i decided to retire him. that's why we drove him down to indiana instead of taking a nice [read: reliable and air conditioned] car on our road trip.

anyway...so we had lots of running around to do today to prep for the wedding. like take lily to the hair salon. (one of the cutest things ever.) and drive to the church and to the reception...whatev.

my grandpa, who is no longer allowed to drive, is letting me use his car for a while since bj novak has been so sketchy lately. so my cousins drove his car down from marion and took it to the reception. well, grandpa's car hasn't been driven since december, so they had to jump it before it made the trip down. but no worries. made it to the church and to the reception. and then i drove grandpa's car home while miranda drove bj novak.

[miranda would like to interject here: 'of course, bj did not start for me even though he had started every other time all day long...so i had to bang on him in my nice wedding clothes']

we eventually got both cars back to my parents' house. i emptied bj novak and put everything in grandpa's car. good to go.

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miranda and i decided to go to a movie tonight to unwind after our long day of wedding festivities. cool. so even though four different people mocked us for going to a 10:15 pm movie, we headed out. i was pretty psyched to take grandpa's car for a little test drive with miranda.

nothing doing.

yeah, that battery appears to be dead.

no problem. i went inside and bemoaned my ironic car troubles to my family while grabbing the keys to bj novak. one last little date with him. sweet.

[side note from miranda: the drive over was interesting... holly was frustrated with the car situation, but she had also had sugar cream pie. who knows what holly is allergic to? oh yeah, sugar. and for those of you who know what happens to holly when she eats sugar, we'll just say it was a fun, adventurous drive to the movie theater. no animals, signs or people were injured in this escapade.]

he did not sound great when we started him. but...we left anyway. and went to the movie and had fun and laughed and had good best friend time. awesome.

while we were in the movie, i leaned over to miranda and said, 'i hope bj starts ok, because i moved the scraper [which i use to bang on the starter to make him start when he doesn't want to...which is often] to grandpa's car already.' i am kind of prophetic.

when we left the theater, we tried to start bj. but...that didn't happen. so...........we eventually had to wake my parents up at 1 am to come and pick us up from the parking lot. great. totally what they wanted to be doing. oh, wait...they were happily sleeping.

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i don't think it's a good thing when two cars fail you in the same day.

devo thought: old testament themes

reading through the last chunk of the old testament, some themes keep popping up--words, phrases, and thoughts that have really just resonated with my heart.

see, israel and judah have made some poor choices...lots of willful sinning, in fact...and as a result, God allowed them to be taken into captivity. his people. his precious, beloved people. so they're kind of scattered all over...in places like babylon, for one.

and even away from their homeland, God chooses to do some really cool things with individuals who are still seeking him. pagan kings hear testimony and see miracles as a result of God's people being flung about the world. pretty sweet. and God does not forget or neglect his people.

in fact, he longs for them. though they prostituted themselves with idols and other nations, he desires to be with them. he says multiple times that he is returning to them because he is passionate for them. and then he calls them to return to him.

he talks about how he allowed other nations to come in and attack his people, but they did far more damage than was necessary. he wanted to lovingly correct his people, not make them suffer like these other nations did. and so he redeems his people. he brings them back to him with strong, loving arms. he fights for their hearts.

he is in the restoration business. beautiful.

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once a cheetah is 1-0

this happens when you play frisbee all day long...

so my legs got a little burnt, but the real key here is how very very white my feet are. thank you, cleats.

summer has officially begun

it was supposed to start yesterday, but something happened to our opponent.

so tonight was my first official game of the summer season.

you know i'm talking about frisbee, right?

*phew*

i was beginning to think you didn't know me at all.

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liars and cheetahs are 1-0.