First ever Fill in the Blank Friday!

One of my sisters does this "Fill in the blank Friday" thing where she  fills in the blanks (obvi) on some fun questions and links up with another blog...you know, I should be more technologically advanced to get this whole "link up" thing, but I'm not sure I'm going to cut it.  I'm gonna give it a go for the first time.  :)

1.  When I wake up in the morning, the first thing I do is,   pee...geez, why does my first "Fill-in-the-blank" have to be a vulgar one?!?  I can't help it though, it's always the very first thing I do, immediately followed by putting a diuretic in me (yay coffee!!!)   .

2.   I can hardly wait for   my next vaca to Oregon to visit the fam.  It's going to be for my baby sister's graduation, and I can hardly believe she' old enough for that!

3.  The quickest way to my heart is     coffee       because     it is never too early, too late, or a bad time for more caffeine  .

4. A little known fact about me is that    I didn't get my drivers license until I was 26, and now I drive like a teenager in Boston...watch out. ;)

5. The best part about my job is    when my experiments work!  I love bench research and I love getting back results that make sense.  Yay science!

6. Something I just couldn't live without is    music.  Right now I'm listening to Takk by Sigur Ros.  One of my faves ever.

7.  Something useful that I wish I knew how to do is   start a fire.  I've been watching too many post-apocalyptic movies lately.

Emotional!

I had quite the late-night tear-fest last night that now in retrospect I can laugh at, so I figured I'd share.  Let me start by saying I got 4 hours of sleep on Saturday night due to celebrating a friend's birthday - good times indeed, but I had a lot to do on Sunday and no time for a nap!  Sunday night I got the usual 7-ish hours, but clearly this is not going to help my situation Monday night....

So fast forward to Monday night, around 10:45pm.  I am delivering 4 or 5 large bags of bread from Panera to my church building as I have been doing every Monday for several months now.  It's actually my last time doing this because on Sunday the 29th, my fellow church-planters and I are being officially commissioned off to Quincy, which means no more involvement in the Arlington church.  So, I go to leave thinking how I'll miss this place and...the door won't lock.  What?  How is this possible?!?  It's late, I'm exhausted, and I just want to go home!  What do I do?  I need to call someone to help, but the pastor who runs this bread ministry lives about an hour away (plus it's late and I feel bad about potentially waking him up)...so I text him to see if he knows what I should do.  No answer.  Crud!

Now it's 11pm and I'm starting to panic.  My next thought is to pray a quick "Help me!", and then I think to call my friend from small group, Carmen.  She's great and suggests I call a couple other pastors...one of which doesn't answer his phone, the other of which I don't have a number for.  OH NO!  Am I going to have to sleep inside the church to make sure nothing gets stolen?  Then I get a text from one of the pastors saying he's not in town, but that I should call a different pastor...one with whom I have no relationship and who actually scares me a little with his seemingly-serious nature.  AHHH!  So what can I do but call him - the second he answers, I just break down crying.  WHAT IS GOING ON WITH ME?!?  I'm trying to get out the words, and I have to say, he was nothing but kind and gentle.  :)  I however still couldn't stop crying, so he asked if anything was wrong ("no, I'm just being overly dramatic because I am running on empty!" I later realized), and finally I managed to tell him about the non-locking door.  'No problem,' he says 'don't worry about it at all.'  So I promptly left, still bawling in my car all the ride home.  :)  I'm sure I was quite the sight.

Ah, feeling so much better this evening - think I'll get to bed now so this doesn't happen again!

Busy bee

I'm always telling people how busy I am, but I have a hard time explaining what it is exactly that I'm so busy doing.  Since I'm now trying out this whole blogging thing, I figured I'd write out what a week-in-the-life looked like for me:
Sunday - Easter extravaganza!  I greeted people at my church's morning service, then manned the cotton candy machine after that for a few hours for our after-service picnic.  After helping clean up, I headed to a friend's house for Easter dinner (which was a mix-'n-match of Korean food and traditional ham and potatoes...yum!)
Monday - after work, I headed out to dinner with my "old girlfriends".  These are 3 wonderful ladies who happened to graduate 2 years ahead of me, so the only way I could categorize them to my other friends was to call them "old".  We went to The Helmund, which serves Afghani food - just another delicious restaurant in Cambridge!  Then around 10pm, I did my usual pick-up of leftover breads at Panera to take to church for donations to a local housing complex.
Tuesday - Small group night!  This week, it was my turn to lead the Bible study (which meant all my free time Sat, Sun, and Mon was working on that) - we read through Isaiah 40:12-26.  It's all about God as Creator and how He is in control of all circumstances.
Wednesday - Orthodontist appt right after work.  :(  My stupid "permanent" retainer partially popped off YET AGAIN and I needed to get it removed.  That's a whole other story.  Then off to volleyball and a drink (more specifically, the Champagne of Beers!) at our team's favorite dive, Paddy's.
Thursday - Another fun birthday dinner, this time with Jillian and Jenn, ladies who used to work at MassBiologics with me.  We went to Typhoon Asian Bistro - YUM!  Lots of sushi and deliciousness.
Friday - AGD had senior rededication, which is where the we as alumnae welcome the senior class officially into the ranks of the alums.  Then we headed to the Sole for a drink (and more sushi!!).  The girls were in the middle of Teeter-totter-a-thon, so we all stopped by WPI's quad to show our support.  I didn't make it back to Cambridge until 1am!
Satuday - Breakfast at McD's with one of my pastors and a couple other people from the Quincy church plant to talk about the new webpage we're going to use for our new church.  Then I drove down to Taunton to visit my friend Lisette and her dog Lola.  It was a fantastic day of just lounging around, eating, and narrowly avoiding disaster with an oven that had a mind of it's own...stupid clean cycle!
Sunday (today) - great sermon this morning about Jesus' first miracle - turning water into wine at a wedding.  There is so much symbolism there that I just never bothered to think about, very cool.  Then this afternoon was Quincy prayer meeting followed by cooking Pupusa's and Tres Leches cake for a potluck in honor of one of our small group members and her husband - they're pregnant with their first!

So that's what I'm so busy doing all the time.  :p  I'm exhausted after writing this!

The Big 3-1

Today, I turned 31-years-old. I'm calling it "Thirty-One-Derful" in anticipation of the great things this year will bring! I know, it's pretty cheesy, but I think that's fitting considering how I've always felt about blogs. I used to think these were just a vehicle for self-promotion to the world and so not me, but I feel like now that I'm officially into my thirties, it might be nice to do a little documentation of what is going on in my life. Plus, I've really enjoyed being nosy about other people's lives through reading their innermost thoughts on their blogs, so I figured I'd start one of my own. :)

This is really the first year that I didn't (and won't) have a formal party in celebration of my birthday, but I have to say, it's been great just the same, and a little humbling too. A newly-made friend of mine invited me over for breakfast this morning, and it was fantastic! This new friend, Carmen, is someone who I met at the church I started attending regularly this year, and her friendship has been such a blessing for me. For a while during and after college, I lost touch with what it means to really be Christian, and Carmen is one of the first new Christian friends I've made in a long time. She is so loving and so willing to serve, and she's just been a huge positive influence in my life. She made a delicious waffle breakfast for our friend Allison and I, and it was a great way to start my day!

The humbling part of my birthday - I went to a Maundy Thursday potluck with my new church family (the Highrock Quincy church plant group), and I managed NOT to tell them that today was "my" day. For people who know me, this was HUGE! I absolutely love attention, and so to be quiet and enjoy this day that we used to remember Jesus' last day before his trial and crucifixion instead of drawing the attention my way was a hard thing to do. But you know what? It was wonderful. And I didn't feel any less loved knowing that the 15 other people in the room had no idea that it was my birthday.

For those who did wish me a happy birthday, thanks! It was very happy indeed.