Awhile back, I mentioned a song called “Whoever you are” by Geggy Tah. This song isn’t well-known at ALL, which surprised me when it came on the radio tonight. On the station 103.7 here in Seattle, they play the “Nine at 9,” where each night, they play nine songs that relate to the same theme. Tonight’s theme was “Good songs with bad lyrics,” and “Whoever you are” was one of them. I was pretty psyched, especially since Matt has never heard the song (and my rendition is pretty horrific). Of course, as soon as the song came on the radio, he got on the phone–and got off the phone right when the song ended.

But after the song, the deejay said that the band was from Burbank. He said, “This song makes a lot of sense when you think about this band being from LA. If you’re driving on the freeway and someone lets you in their lane, you write a song about it. It’s a miracle if that happens.” So funny and so true…and so different from driving on the freeways in Seattle. Thank goodness!!

This morning, our alarm company called us at 5:15 a.m., to “test the system,” according to Matt. He let it ring, but I wanted to pick it up and yell, “Do you know what time it is?!” Once I’m awake, I have a hard time falling back asleep. So while I tried to do so, I cursed the birds loudly chirping outside (it sounded like a hundred of them), but then my thoughts eventually went from praying for Rolly’s family to thinking about friends to myspace. I know the track that my train of thought is on is pretty windy, but there’s some logic to it all…or so I tell myself.

I created a myspace page for Matt and me to keep in contact with the youth at church, who have told us that they communicate with people via myspace even more than they do with their e-mails. That was new to me that people do that nowadays, but I think I’m just behind in the times. After all, I still use the U.S. postal system.

But after creating the page, I looked up old friends and you know how it goes. You go from one profile to another to another, from one familiar face to another. As I began adding more friends, I became a little friend-hungry. Who else can I add? I don’t want to seem unpopular! But as I looked over my collection of friends, I realized that everyone there had some impact on my life, in some form or other. It  also made me think about the paths that each friendship took over the years.

I would say about 25% of the friends that I regularly keep in touch with are on myspace now. And everyone else on our list of friends are people that I have lost touch with or people I contact sporadically, maybe once or twice a year. Some of them are old co-workers, friends from church camp, or friends from home that I grew up with but have not seen in a long time.

I’d like to say that I am good at keeping in contact with people, but I have to admit that I usually end up doing a better job being in touch with some people better than with others. But that’s where myspace comes in handy. It allows me to reconnect with people, but not have that awkwardness of exchanging e-mails and then wondering what else to talk about after all the catching up ends. As impersonal as the little myspace comments can be, it’s good for quick messages that keep two people in touch *just* enough to keep some form of friendship flowing. Just because I’m not in close contact with someone doesn’t mean I still don’t care about them.

Sometimes I miss more communication and interaction with the friends that I’ve rediscovered through myspace. I remember fun times we had together, like taking cheesy portraits with Karen (Don) and cutting the corners of the pictures to make them look like senior pictures. Or visits from the San Jose Alliance camp friends. Or even more recent things like hanging out with the Fit Preg crew. But hey, we all get older, move around and grow apart. But I also am quite content with the close friends that I’ve maintained contact with throughout the years via e-mail, phone, and face-to-face visits. As much as I’ve moved in the past, my close friends have “moved” with me, and I’ve met new ones at my new destinations.

So after thinking about all that, I finally fell back asleep and then woke up when the alarm went off at 6:15 a.m. What a morning!

A few weekends ago, I was watching old Footworks videos, grimacing at my permed hair/big glasses/braces, not to mention my dance moves. But the videos were full of great memories…practices during Christmas break, quick changes in the dark behind the curtain, morning practices, good times with friends.

Whenever we had to be paired with other dancers, I was paired up with Rolly, a silly guy who was just a total goofball. We were both really short, so it worked out. My second year in Footworks, Rolly grew taller while I stayed short. Argh. Anyway, it was always fun working with him, though. He made everyone laugh, and he also made everyone feel special. I remember one time he let me take his pager home for whatever reason. It’s not like I could use it for anything, really. But he would page it and leave me messages using the number alphabet that we all used to do before text messages were possible. And if he got a page, I would call him and try to decipher the message for him.

While browsing around the Valley High myspace alumnis, I saw a post that said “RIP Rolly Soliven.” My eyes nearly fell out of my head. I opened it up, hoping there would be some crazy explanation besides the obvious. From there, I found other sites that explained it all. Rolly’s motorcycle hit a guard rail on the freeway over the weekend and he died instantly. In addition to affirming my belief that nothing good comes from owning a motorcycle, I was so sad to read the news.

About a year and half ago, we exchanged some e-mails just to catch up. Rolly was working at a sushi restaurant and told us to stop in the next time we were back in town. We didn’t, and that was that.

I guess you just never know when people–whether or not they are close to you–will die. And everytime someone does die, it just reminds us all how important it is to express to people close to us how much they mean to us. You just never know.

Maybe I’m behind the times, but I just found out that Jamba Juice has secret flavors, just like how In-n-Out has secret items, too. From what I’ve been reading, not all stores may have the same “secret” options, but there are a few that are more widespread, including white gummy bear, pink Starburst, and peanut butter and jelly.

Check out these sites for more info: Mighty Foods and Slashfood

Update: I just tried the pink Starburst smoothie (or Pink Star, as it is called), and it truly DOES taste just like the candy!

A few weekends ago, I spent two hours at a landscaping class, taught by a landscaper who explained how she came up with the design of her yard. Here are a few inspirations I came away with:

(a rain barrel, a little workspace, and a veggie garden)

More pics in our photo gallery (in the Our World folder), mostly of garden inspirations and our latest house projects!

I know you guys are all probably tired of hearing my happy thoughts about World Vision, but here’s an interview with the World Vision U.S. president, Rich Stearns. When I read people’s comments at the end, it made me so proud to be supporting and working for this organization. On top of his testimony, Rich is just a hilarious guy. He says really inappropriate comments, but they just make me laugh. For example, today in chapel, he was talking about a couple who sold their house to travel across the country to advocate child sponsorship. Rich said, “They probably euthanized their dog and put their kids out on the street–they’re just 11 and 12.” Hearing that makes you go, “WHAT?!!” but after you get used to his humor, you just laugh.

Yesterday, we had scheduled to take the youth from church to see World Vision’s AIDS Experience, or World Vision Experience: AIDS as it is being called now. The 3,000-square-foot exhibit has been traveling all over the country, raising awareness of the hard-hitting realities of AIDS in Africa. As you walk through the exhibit, you’re listening on an mp3 player to the story of one of four children.

My story was about Olivia, a 17-year-old girl in Malawi who was raped twice and had two children. The second time, she contracted HIV. Her second child also was HIV-positive. Throughout the exhibit, you see photos of your person’s life and learn about the stigma and statistics of AIDS in Africa. Everything becomes a lot more real to you because you have a real person to put with the stats.

After we had gone through the exhibit, Matt and I agreed that as moving as everything was, it was really hard for us to be touched as much as other people have been after having gone through the AIDS Experience. We’re bombarded with this stuff day after day. When Matt went through the exhibit, he followed the life of Stephen, a former child soldier. Matt said, “I see Stephen’s face every day at work.” I, too, recognize photographs and stories that I incorporate into my writing projects every day. It’s not that we don’t care about these children. It’s just that we are not shocked by the stories and statistics.

It worried me a little that I wasn’t feeling as moved by Olivia’s story. I certainly felt horrible for her, but I wasn’t so appalled that this was a common occurence in Africa. After thinking through it some more, I didn’t feel so bad that I wasn’t tearing up by the end of the exhibit. I know a lot of what I read about at work still moves me. Heck, every time a video is shown in chapel, I cry. What would worry me is if I no longer cared to do what I could do help people in need. And hopefully I will never be in that spot.

I feel like it has been awhile since we’ve had a weekend where we weren’t working on some sort of house project. Last week and throughout the week, we were helping the contractor, Randy, out with replacing the siding of the house. But since Randy went out of town this weekend, we were off the hook with doing work.

Today marked the grand opening of the new Chief Sealth bike trail, which begins in Beacon Hill and ends about 1/2 mile from our house. So we dusted off our bikes and went to check it out. As soon as I got on my bike, I knew it would be a tough morning. I was huffing and puffing before we even got onto the main road (granted, the road to our house is STEEP). The trail mostly winds through a greenbelt where the power lines sit, so it’s nice not to have to worry about driving next to cars. The trail can get a little hilly, though. Even with rolling hills, I was getting out of breath climbing them.

On the way back home, we detoured off the trail and took a more direct road home. The last 1/2 mile or so was a slight incline. I didn’t want to have to walk my bike up the road, but I was so tired. I was biking at a pace slower than a leisurely stroll. I kept telling myself, “Just get to that pole…just get to the sign…just get to that stoplight.” And as I got to each benchmark, I was happy that I got that much closer to home. I was so sure that after I got to one of the stoplights that the road would decline…but it didn’t. The incline continued. You can imagine my disappointment. But I was seriously proud of myself that I didn’t stop along the way to walk my bike up the road. Yippee!

While we were out biking, we stopped at an estate sale. I think the coolest thing about estate sales is that EVERYTHING is for sale–not just someone’s junk at a yard sale that they don’t want that may not even work that well. I think Matt went a little overboard by buying a VCR ($8) and a TV ($15), but he was really excited about his finds. I bought a book about pruning for $2 and a whole case with a lifetime supply of bobbins, sewing machine needles, and other things for $10. The woman who used to live at the house was really into sewing, as she had shelves full of sewing books, closets full of fabric, and a lot of sewing supplies (notions?).

The house was from the 1960s, but everything was in good shape, and all of her decorations were definitely from that era. As we went through the house, it was sort of sad seeing how everyone was just digging through this woman’s belongings. I wonder what she or one of her relatives would have thought if they saw everything rummaging around her house, with no disregard for who she was.

I found a journal of hers, tucked into a box of blank thank you and Christmas cards. The journal was full of letters written to her (Ellinore). Apparently Ellinore (or El, as she was called) went out of town for awhile, and her boyfriend (?) wrote her letters in this journal for every day that she was gone. For some reason, going through that made me sad. Maybe because it made me wonder about how one day, someone will be rummaging through my old journals as they are looking for things to buy? Or maybe it made life and death so much more real to me to see all these things that she left behind. She had so much stuff still, and now, it’s all being bought by strangers.

I guess it’s just a reminder to me of how temporary life and possessions can be. I hope that in El’s case, she has family and friends who are still keeping her memory alive. Otherwise, it’s sad to think that as soon as her belongings are all sold, there will be no more evidence of her life here on earth.

A World Vision employee adopted a little boy from Uganda, and a local TV program interviewed her about her story. Check out this 5-minute clip to hear how she and her husband ended up adopting the boy–and you can see glimpses of what my workplace looks like! :)

This is a special couple of days…this past weekend marked one year in Seattle; today marks two years of marriage; and tomorrow is my one-year anniversary at work. It’s been a full, fun, learning experience for us!!

We spent the weekend replacing the siding on two sides of our home. I let the blackberry bushes rest this weekend, and instead, focused my energy on helping out with house stuff. I got a good workout hauling the old siding into our contractor’s truck to get hauled to the dump. After he saw what I did, he said, “You didn’t have to make it look pretty!” Fortunately, there was plenty of room left in the truck to take a huge mound of blackberry branches to the dump, too. YIPPEE! So, last night, at 9 p.m., Matt and I were grabbing clumps of bushes and throwing them in the truck, trying not to get our eyes gauged out by thorns. I’m actually glad it was dark because I might have been grossed out by the diapers that were in the mound, found in our blackberry bushes. YUCK. 

No big plans for our annniversary. I love sending out cards for birthdays and other special occasions, but with Matt, after the first few years of being together, I stopped giving him cards. It’s so unlike me, but I know getting a card (or not getting one) is not a big deal for him. Instead, I just made him some chocolate chip cookies last night (his fave), which sadly, turned out really dry and icky. Bummer.

We’ve talked about going to Vegas to see Celine before she retires, and that could count as our anniversary thing, but then I wonder why we even have to say that it’s FOR our anniversary. I wonder if we feel like we have to plan something so that when people ask what we are doing/did for our anniversary, we have something worthwhile to tell them. Otherwise, does it sound like we don’t care to celebrate another year of marriage? Does it mean we’re not a “happy couple” if all we want to do today is go to Costco, watch “Heroes,” and then sleep early? Having dinner at Costco on our anniversary might seem lame to a lot of people, but hey, as long as I don’t have to cook, that’s enough of a celebration for me!