It’s on.

Remember that friend? That (insert clever moniker here) friend? Well, in her email to me several weeks ago that I heartlessly didn’t respond to for about a month because Facebook kept imploding, she wrote this in regards to my blog:

Reading it makes me laugh. and cry. and sigh. and have memories of the past. Ok. so far nothing has made me cry.

Clearly, the gauntlet has been thrown down.

I’m not one to back down from a challenge once it’s been issued. From here on out, my aim is to make her cry.

I have some devilish plans in mind to accomplish this goal, but I think keeping her in suspenseful horror will probably increase my chances at attaining this lofty ambition. (Also, they would require me to leave my nicely heated bedroom and get off my comfy bed.)

So my friend, be prepared to WEEP.

Beethoven’s Wig

This is incredible. I heard them on Car Talk and never have I heard such a lovely rendition of the Moonlight Sonata. Car Talk and the Moonlight Sonata are not often mentioned in the same breath, so you know you have to check it out. I may have to purchase a CD.

Beffany birffday

Today is the birthday of my second sister. She’s ridiculously humorous, a musical genius, taller than me (I think) yet weighs less than my cat, and it pains my heart that in the past year I’ve seen her for all of like 3 days. So here’s to December 17th when I expect to see her and the rest of my beloved family for OVER TWO WEEKS. And yes, I have now gotten permission to leave for that time from my advisor. You might think that I should have asked BEFORE I bought the plane ticket, but I like to live on the edge. Anyway, Happy Birthday Bethany!

This confuses me.

A recent email (ok, so it was two weeks ago because I got really busy) from a friend combined with thoughts about a congregational meeting caused some new thoughts in my noggin.

I can’t just leave that saying just plain ol’ friend. My childhood-best-friend-who-I-can’t-really-call-my-best-friend-any-more-because-one-would-expect-best-friends-to-communicate-on-a-regular-basis-and-we-don’t is way too complicated, dear friend sounds like I’m 97 years old, special friend sounds like I’m either 2 years old or she’s retarded, long-time friend sounds like I’m giving an introduction at a department seminar, and I can’t think of any other ways to refer to her. Clearly I need help in the friend-titling area of my life. Also, the staying on track in blog posts area.

As I was saying, this email made me think. My (insert clever moniker here) friend lives in a place which is home to a certain somewhat controversial and polarizing pastor. Said pastor has built up two huge reformed churches in the town of roughly 22,000. The nearby town where I went to college has 0 reformed churches. In a suburb of Cleveland there is another somewhat controversial and polarizing pastor of a reformed church who has a truly giant church. And then there’s my reformed church and three others in the suburbs that are in similar circumstances. We’re having a good day if there’s over 25 people at a service. We meet in the basement of an old catholic church building. In Cleveland itself there are no reformed churches. I drive 35 minutes each way to get to church.

What gives? It seems to me that a greater number of more widely spaced smaller, self sustaining churches is the optimum way to go for fellowship and outreach. They can work together for special conferences or big projects if a large number of people is needed. So why are there these huge churches?

Since October 21…

Alright, I’m back. I turned in the first draft of my proposal to my advisor Tuesday morning.

Since my last real post, I have done several things in addition to rejoicing in my office’s heat.

I totally blanked on that Nov 1st race. I got so busy that I didn’t even think about it until yesterday, which was the 3rd, and evidently too late to race on the 1st. Oops.

I finally set up my bike trainer this Saturday. I finally went for my first ride on it about 2 hours ago. It’s not a lot of fun riding in place, but it sure beats riding in place at the gym on their awful bikes. I can watch TV while I ride too! Oh, and since we keep the place at a toasty 56ish degrees it’s a nice riding temperature, compared with the ridiculously warm temperature in the gym. Of course, when I’m not working out or moving I’m wearing a sweatshirt, shivering, and considering ordering some of those super-duper-warm long underwear. Space heaters are my friends!

I was in the lovely city of Pittsburgh for most of last week at a conference. It exhausted me! I had to be at the conference by 7:10 every morning and I didn’t sleep well the night before I left for it, so I was kinda out of it the whole time. It was fun though, and my talk went just fine.

On Sunday we met in the church building my church is attempting to buy. Initially I thought it was a bad idea, but it turns out we have a whole bunch more money saved up than I thought we did, and in my opinion the building is a great price for its perfect location and how gorgeous and well-built it is. I haven’t heard any news yet, but supposedly our offer was going in on Tuesday. Guess that means they didn’t reject it outright? I’m a bit concerned about the whole situation because either we get the church, stretching our current finances to the breaking point within a few years unless we grow dramatically, or we don’t get the church and everybody gets depressed and forward momentum vanishes.

Hi, my name is Lisa, and I’m a pessimist. But God’s will will be done! And that’s what matters.

Hooray!

I know I said I wasn’t going to post until this proposal is done, but I’m just SO excited about something I have to share it with the world.

Bet you’re wondering what could be so important that it could pull me away from my busy writing to make this announcement.

You’ll never guess.
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It’s pretty monumental.
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It marks a drastic change in my life for the next 5 months.
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I thought it was never going to happen.
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The heat in my office has been turned on!

I’m gone

I’m just popping in here to say that life is busy and that I shall not be writing or reading any blogs until I get a first draft of my PhD proposal written. This ought to be early next week, but I figure if I deprive myself of something I enjoy I’ll be more likely to strap down and do it.

Bye forever.

I ought to be studying

In an attempt to pull myself from this Fall induced laziness, I have done some things. That was the sort of sentence that any teacher would put a big fat red line through and write something completely illegible in big scrawling, disappointed looking lettering in the margin.

I set up an IRA and put the money in a mutual fund. (After thinking I ought to do it for several years.) Scary. More about this coming later. I’ve got a post almost finished about it.

I mostly decided on my race schedule for the fall.
November 1: Inland trail 5k, half, and full marathon. Guess which I’m doing? I’m going to feel like such a pansy failure next to all the people going for 2.5 to 9 time as far as me.
Thanksgiving: 5 mile Turkey Trot. Maybe I can get some friends to do this with me.
December 19: Cable Bridge Run at HOME!!!!!! If this all goes as planned with no pesky injuries, I plan to do my first 10K race.

I played hooky for the afternoon yesterday and went out mountain biking with Ken and our friend Brian who is approximately a million times better than us. It was a perfect day and a much better use of the afternoon than studying for my test tomorrow. I rode nearly all the things which I skipped in the past. The only things let to conquer are the ridiculously steep hills with a sharp curve at the bottom, a few log piles, and the big rickety table thing.

I made arrangements to purchase a bike trainer from Craigslist at approximately 35% of it’s original cost. A whole paper could be dedicated to my conflicting feelings of elation and embarrassment at purchasing a trainer. Elation: I can ride MY road bike all winter in the comfort of my house while watching TV instead of the stupid exercise bikes at the gym which hurt my butt or trying to ride outside when the roads are covered in frigid salt water/ice, idiotic drivers, and darkness. Embarrassment: What sort of moron purchases a gadget just to ride their bike indoors? Doesn’t that defeat the whole enjoyable purpose of biking?

LaTeX margins

Dear self,

For the millionth time, to get reasonable margins in your LaTeX document use the command:
\usepackage[hmargin=3cm,vmargin=3.5cm]{geometry}

Please do not forget again.

Sincerely,
Lisa

P.S. The geometry package can be downloaded here.

P.P.S. Thanks to J.Shoehorn’s blog for this info.

Have I mentioned that I dislike Fall?

I have a new theory.

For the past couple of years, I remember getting behind in things like exercising, reading my Bible, drinking enough water, keeping my house clean, and eating less than my body weight in dairy products right in the September-October-November time frame. All this, of course, adds up to make me feel like a lazy pig and a failure, so I make myself a cup of hot chocolate with Irish cream (See the dairy problem? It extends even to my alcohol consumption!) and read some sci-fi. So, I get nothing done, my jeans get too small, I live in filth, and then suddenly it’s Thanksgiving and I’m motivated to do stuff again. Before last week I just thought it’s what happens periodically – I lose my motivation and get it back eventually. However, it seems that it’s correlated with the worst of all seasons; Fall. It gets cold, but there’s no snow to make things wonderful, and why would I want to get out of bed early when it’s a. still dark, and b. cold. This means I run out of time to do anything useful, get used to sleeping more, and it just all goes down hill from there.

Now that I’ve recognized that the problem is not necessarily with me being a lazy pig, but with me being a lazy pig because the days are getting shorter and it never stops raining perhaps I can do something about it. What I can do is unclear at this point, because moving to Alaska for September through November so I can skip fall and go straight to winter seems a bit ludicrous.