alive in the mystery

so much free time, what to do with it?

2009-05-20T14:31:00.003-05:00

have you ever found yourself with a nice chunk of free time (like 2 weeks) after being ridiculously busy for a whole semester (silly master's degree!) and you don't know what to do with yourself??? that's me right now. i forgot what it was like to relax and to only do something because you choose to, not because you have to.

so here are some of the things i've been doing/plan on doing...

mowed and weed-eated the yard so it looks nice when janna comes home
added new mulch to the crep myrtle (sp?) flower bed, same reason as above
with alan's help, filled in big ruts in our driveway caused by rain. yay for brothers!
went to a wedding last weekend, have another one this coming weekend
been keeping up (sort of) with working out... still try to do my ab work every day, running has been iffy... but i'm not sitting in class all day, so i don't need the release of all the pent-up ADD-ness from sitting all day!
started reading a book for fun again... hooray for fun reading!
today i just bought a new DVD player (one of the $30 walmart ones) because my old walmart DVD/VCR combo had died, and then hooked it all up and moved the old one out of my room. i also bought two new swimsuits even though i won't be returning to the beach anytime soon... i'm ready for the next time!
alan cooked dinner for us after the garden last sunday... yay for homemade mandarin chicken and sweet-n-sour pork with veggies! so delicious! and we had a couple friends over and made it into a game night... hooray for apples to apples, and again hooray for brothers (who like to cook)
i ordered some lingerie online for one of my good friends who is getting married in a month or so... yay for the semi-annual sale!
i am probably also going to order a chalk bag and maybe a backpack from REI, thanks to some awesome summer sale deals they have going right now!
tomorrow i am going to my favorite 9 year old's piano recital
tonight i am finally making it to b-dub's for my traditional celebration meal... so what if it's a week after the end of the semester, it still counts :) and with a certain someone that i happen to be excited to spend time with ;)
next tuesday i get to go fill out paperwork to be on payroll for my new job as a GA... super excited about this, because it will be an easy job and i get paid really well for it!
next tuesday i also will be helping with orientation for the new PT kids... which means that tuesday morning shauna and i get to put goody bags together for them, fun!

well that's about all i can think of to say for now... julie, i hope you enjoyed the update, and sorry again that we couldn't get together while you are in texas! again, silly master's degree!

2009-04-11T13:38:00.003-05:00

I am procrastinating and waiting for the Masters to come on for the day, and figured I'd write a little blog update in case anyone still reads this. So here are a few random things.

1. I'm at home for Easter weekend and enjoying being around the family for a bit. Haven't seen everyone at the same time since Christmas, so it's nice to just chill out. And while I did bring notes for one class home, and am about to try to finish a busy work assignment for another, I'm pretty much going on strike against homework for the weekend to just enjoy spending family time.

2. I have had stomach bug stuff for the past week, off and on. Not cool, especially since this is my 3rd time to have it in the past 4 months. I didn't get that kind of sick that often even when I was a small child! But I was thinking about this while driving home and have decided to blame it on having friends with small children (who I often watch) and working with the kids on Wednesday nights, so I'm around a lot more germs than usual.

3. This weekend is one of the first times since I got my new car that I've had a chance to go on a bit of a road trip with it. I like this one, but it's still not Marlene. Just a few random things here and there, it's not the same.

4. There are 30 something days left in this semester. Highly exciting! Then I have about a week and a half before summer I starts, then 5 weeks of that (with Denae's wedding in the middle of it!) and then I will head up to Denver, hopefully with the brother along for the ride, for my first clinical rotation. 2 months in Colorado, in the middle of the summer when the weather is amazing for things like hiking, whitewater rafting, camping, climbing, etc, plus all that time with Denae... can't wait!

well, time for the Masters, so enough of the blog...

i suck at keeping up with this...

2008-09-05T22:08:00.005-05:00

so i survived semester one of school, and now we're a couple weeks in to semester two. it's tough, a lot more work than i ever did in undergrad (except for maybe genetics), but at the same time i really enjoy it and so i don't mind (most days) busting my rear. now that we're not in class from 9-4 every day and then straight home to study, i'm actually getting to hang out with people a little bit, sometimes even not in a studying situation :) we've played basketball a couple of times, and flag football starts next week, so that should be fun and hey maybe we'll even win a couple games... here's a pretty awesome bruise i got today playing basketball, after running into one of the guy's knee brace, and the knee brace won (the picture doesn't really do it justice)...

today i built a shelf for my closet (which is actually a clothes rack in our laundry room... whoever built this house evidently decided that only 2 of the 3 bedrooms needed closets, and i'm the lucky winner). it was a little bootleg... i cut up a scrap of OSB plywood (which is the stuff that's a bunch of chips of wood pressed into a board) from our garage for the shelf part, put in the L-shaped things that it actually sits on (dunno what they're called), and the decided to cover the plywood with some scraps of fabric we had so that it doesn't scratch up my stuff or drop wood chips into my clothing... here's the finished product:

let's see, not much else i can think to say... i hate windows vista with an intense passion and have named my computer hal after 2001: a space odyssey. it has not tried to kill me yet, to my knowledge, but it definitely has a mind of its own and tries to make my life difficult as often as possible. and if you're younger (or maybe even a few years older) than me, you're probably not gonna have a clue what that movie is unless you have old parents who made you watch it once, like my dad did to my brother and i. anyways, my brother is working on remedying this issue that he had a hand in causing in the first place by urging me to not get xp on the new laptop but go with vista (BAD choice), so he is finding me a cheap copy of xp and going to redo my computer, hopefully...

that's enough of this for one night... oh and julie these pictures are especially for you... i figured you'd like the bruise and the whole story of being resourceful to build a ghetto shelf :)

Jesus shine your light...

2008-07-11T13:41:00.002-05:00

PT school started this week... it's already got me crazy busy with homework and reading (which I am trying to keep up with for only the second time ever in my college career), but so far at least I am enjoying it. Whether I still have that attitude in a couple weeks after having a couple tests and writing assignments due, well, we'll just wait and see. It's good to be taking classes where I'm actually learning useful things though, instead of things like the internal anatomy of a turtle. (Not that the turtle wasn't interesting... just not really useful to me in real life) Anyways, it's going to be an interesting 30 months- there's some cool people in my class but at least so far from who I've been able to talk to, very different from me as far as interests, priorities, etc. It's gonna be good though, but I know I can't do this on my own... Jesus shine your light...

I'm glad I got to do all the camps before school started. I definitely needed that challenge/encouragement going into this. And now I'm also starting to mentor one of my friends from camp, and I'm so pumped about that but also glad to have that challenge to keep myself sharp. It's kind of like built-in self-accountability... can't really mentor someone else if I'm not keeping my own ducks in a row. (wow yay for cliches) Anyways, things are going great, and the Lord is definitely at work all around me!

still blown away

2008-04-08T13:23:00.002-05:00

two days, two amazing things happen. sunday, i got a message from my friend meg who lives in san angelo. she's an old fca camp friend, and i had messaged her to ask if she had any christian friends who were looking for a roommate, or just suggestions of places to live. she wrote back and said "crazy enough, we actually have an empty room in my house right now and we'd love for you to come live with us." so after some phone tag we finally talked last night and got everything figured out. she was like "i know pt school is intense, i'm here to make your life easier." plus she has connections where if i decide i want to keep lifeguarding, we should be able to make that happen pretty easily. SUCH A BLESSING!

also yesterday, i got a letter from ASU telling me they are awarding me what is called a category A academic excellence graduate scholarship. translation: my tuition/fees are paid for, except maybe in the semesters where we take 19 or 20 hours. HUGE BLESSING #2!

i'm just completely overwhelmed and blown away by the Lord's favor and blessing in this whole grad school thing... it's just more confirmation to add on, and honestly it's coming on the heels of a rough few months and so it is really helpful to me. i'm so excited for the summer, both for fca camp and to get started with school. i've even ordered most of my books already (i know, nerd) cause i'm so pumped.

smile: kansas beat memphis. props for the big 12.
extra smile: (there are no frowns today!) can i just say once again how brilliant pat summitt was for having candace parker bring the ball the length of the court with 7 seconds left against LSU, then dish to any of 3 other wide open lady vols after the whole LSU team went to guard candace. absolute genius.

go rams

2008-03-07T21:17:00.002-06:00

i'm officially going to grad school at angelo state... i accepted their offer for a spot in the pt program today. i ended up getting accepted at texas tech as well, but by the time i heard from them i had already decided on asu. i just feel comfortable at asu and i am excited to move to san angelo and get started with the program. the pt department secretary also gave me contact info for a girl who is already at asu for her undergrad and will be starting pt school with me this summer, and needs a roommate to share rent at the house she lives in. she seems nice and i'm hopeful that it might work out, cause i know no one at asu so finding a roommate was not likely.

this is also exciting because i'll only live a couple hours from my brother instead of several, and this summer i will be able to work fca camps again because my classes won't start until july 8th. now if i can just get through the rest of physics II i'm all set :)

smile: it snowed overnight last night... not enough to stick to the roads, but enough to make it pretty for me to drive to work this morning

frown: i took a 2.5 hour nap today and i'm still feeling tired... blah (julie these are for you as well)

this one's for julie!

2008-03-07T20:40:00.003-06:00

10 Years Ago:
i was in 7th grade... we'd be done with basketball season by now so i was just going to school and i don't remember what else

Things on my to do list today:
just relaxing for the rest of tonight... tomorrow we are going to stephenville to see my brother and take him some things he needs for his L.A. mission trip over spring break.

If I suddenly became a billionaire:
i'd pay for my grad school, my brother's school, parents' house... give a lot to carolina creek, fca, and ecf, and i'm sure i'd think of others... move to colorado after grad school is done, buy my 4wd suv, and spend my weekends in the mountains... travel all over the world and the US... be able to visit my friends who live all over whenever i want... not gonna lie it would be nice to have money to do that sort of stuff, but i make it fine.

Three of my bad habits:
1. wasting too much time on the computer, especially facebook
2. procrastinating in general
3. getting ADD when people are talking to me and not totally paying attention to them

Five jobs I have had:
lifeguard at the waco ymca
a little bit of everything at carolina creek
biology lab ta at umhb
sales associate at lifeway
umhb library

Five things people don't know about me:
1. although i played it in college, golf was my least favorite sport... i like playing basketball and softball (especially if it's competitive) a lot more
2. i'm a pyro :)
3. i like doing artsy type stuff- painting, drawing, photography, crafts, etc- but i'm not that great at it
4. i want to learn spanish well enough to be at least semi-fluent... probably won't happen until after grad school, cause i won't have extra time to take classes any time soon
5. i have a list of adventurous outdoor activities i want to accomplish in my lifetime... it includes skydiving, whitewater rafting, real rock climbing, hiking the grand canyon, and ice climbing

today is a fabulous day

2008-02-06T17:19:00.000-06:00

yesterday my mom got on my case about needing to get a job and help pay bills. mind you, not because my parents are struggling to make ends meet and need my help for us to continue eating and having running water, but just because she doesn't like me not working and being at home a lot. it was an awesome conversation. ::rolling my eyes::

so today, i called the ymca to see if they had any lifeguarding positions open, hoping they did but also dreading the possibility of losing my free weekends that allow me to actually see friends. they did, so i went to waco to fill out an app and talk with the super. it's going to work out perfectly... they need guards for the mornings, specifically mwf- all days that i don't have class, and mornings are great cause i still have the rest of the day to do whatever. she also said i probably wouldn't have to work any weekends unless i just wanted the hours. the only slightly unfortunate part is that mornings = 5am. holy night of american glory that is early, but oh well.

today i also booked plane tickets to fly to chattanooga on my spring break and see bethany. so that, plus i am going to colorado in just over two weeks to visit denae and go snowboarding, equals a great 3-4 week span of seeing amazing friends that i miss so much!

in other recent news, i am leading worship on friday mornings for the mcgregor jr high fca. they just got it started this semester and the coach who sponsors it got my mom to ask me if i could do their music. they're jr high kids and shy about singing in front of their friends, but it's still fun to be a part of. i also interviewed with asu last weekend and really liked their school... they're supposed to let us know within the next couple of weeks. and tech called me yesterday to schedule an interview for next friday, so now i have an even longer, more boring car ride to go on by myself. anyways i can't think of anything else to write, but hopefully the next time i post i will be lifeguarding and know where i am going to grad school :)

thinking about greece

2007-12-15T23:20:00.000-06:00

i love greece. i really hope that one day the Lord lets me go back there again.

there were so many beautiful places there. but my favorite place was out on the roof of the church. there's an apartment above the sanctuary (which is where we stayed), and it opens out onto the roof... if you look real close you can see a couple people up there on the right, above the church's name.

anyways, you can't see it in the picture, but around the other side of the tower on the left, there was a little concrete landing where you could go and sit, and it looked over the whole square (the church was on this square called the platilla terpsithea). i went out there every morning for my q.t. before we'd leave for whatever was going on that day. it was just a real peaceful place for me.

the night we left greece, i went out there at like 2am and just sat and watched the cars and people below, for probably close to an hour. the funny thing was, i'd been sick the majority of the past 48 hours and had some different frustrations before that, and honestly was ready to be back in the states. but at 2am, i suddenly wanted to just stay on that roof forever.

there's a part of my heart still on that roof... still with those people... still 8 time zones away...

a worthless saying

2007-12-02T22:48:00.001-06:00

whoever came up with the whole "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me" didn't have a clue. or maybe they were just extremely naive.

it's been four months. some days i'm fine. other days it still stings, and i struggle to make sense of it without getting anywhere.

i guess it's a process. i just try my best to cling to the truth that sets me free.

thoughts from joyce

2007-11-18T21:16:00.000-06:00

i went to a joyce meyer conference this weekend with the santuary of praise women's group (bea's church) and was super blessed by what she taught, and oh my goodness worship with darlene zschech & the hillsong band = amazing. anyways, just some notes of things that really struck me (joyce in italics, my extra comments plain)...

-it takes a lot of nerve to tell someone they're not hearing from God... if you have a feeling about what you're supposed to do and have prayed and tested it all you know how to, and there's no one who can show you it is directly against the word of God, you better follow what your heart is saying! that second part isn't word perfect, cause she said too much for me to remember exactly what she said and get it down... but this whole line of thought was the most impactful word from the weekend for me. the whole saturday message dealing with disapproval from people was so affirming to me and confirmed that i was following the Lord in the things that happened in august.

-statistic: 10% of people will not like you no matter what you do. enough said. no point in trying to please people before God.

-we tell in the light what we learned in the dark (matt 10:27)... the goal is not for me to understand what's happening to me right now, but to be able to understand what other people are going through later, because i've been there. goes back to the next top model chick... you can't have a testimony without a test.

-with opportunity comes opposition.

-we are not full of the Holy Spirit so we can just do easy stuff!

-john 5... Jesus didn't feel bad for the man who had laid beside the pool for 38 years waiting for a miracle, he told him to GET UP and clean up his mess (take your mat). be determined!

truth everywhere

2007-11-03T23:09:00.000-05:00

i was watching america's next top model this afternoon when i should have been doing homework, and one of the girls on there said at some point "you can't have a testimony without a test." the truth behind that statement just really struck me, cause that's definitely been true in my life. to look at it from a christian standpoint, Jesus says straight up that we are going to have trials, and all through the bible it talks about how when you follow God, you are going to deal with suffering. but i think part of the reason for us going through stuff is that we get the chance to see how God keeps working in our lives in spite of our circumstances, and then it becomes a part of our testimony to talk about what has happened to us and what he's done. as joseph says to his brothers in genesis 50:20, "you intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives." God will use the hard times we go through to bring himself glory and minister to others through our testimony about what he's done. it was just cool to me to see yet another example of how there is his truth everywhere, even in shows on mtv, if you just look for it.

alone with only my thoughts as company

2007-10-22T23:52:00.000-05:00

i can't sleep. for some reason this always seems to happen on nights when i have to get up at 6:30 for class the next morning.

if i had to describe my last couple of weeks in one word, it would be wrestling. if only i had a dollar for every time i've gone back and forth on the decisions i'm trying to make, my mom wouldn't be on my case about needing to get a job so i could make some money. why does everything have to be all about money anyways? whether they mean to or not, my parents put a lot of pressure on me to make decisions that will lead to being financially secure... in other words, what is safe.

what if i don't want safe? what if safe just sounds boring to me? what if i want more than a safe, average american life? when Jesus says to follow him, it never says anything about any part of that being safe. i don't like the idea of desk jobs, 'normal' jobs, 8-5 jobs. there's nothing wrong with any of that, and it's what he calls a lot of people to. i just really don't want that to be my whole life. i know that ministry will happen anywhere you let yourself be a part of it, including in an office or whatever else, but i just really have the desire to be a part of something more eternal than that. i don't want to reach the end of my life, look back on my career, and say "how much of this mattered for something that is real?"

i just keep on wrestling. i don't know what else to do when he's not giving me anything to point me one way or the other.

the blog comes alive

2007-10-14T16:01:00.000-05:00

dear bern,

today your wildest dreams come true. well, maybe not, but here's the blog as you requested. you're welcome. i expect occasional comments if you really want to stalk me.

love, k-hud

in other news, i got home from church at ecf (sidenote- a-mazing, who knew such places existed in a town like mcgregor) and had my mom tell me that for lunch, they had spam salad sandwiches. imagine chicken salad, except with spam. now i'm one of those who actually likes spam, but spam salad is a little much... gross...

and that is all.