Today was an awesome day. Got to make the cinnamon-swirl oatmeal loaf I talked about. I love being in a kitchen, I love making food and putting time and effort into something other people can then love themselves. I don't know how they turned out, I tried a piece of the uglier loaf and it was good but still warm. The other loaf I gave to my pastor and his family because we met them tonight for a new-memberish-meet-up-at-the-pastors-house.

Church today was pretty intense. The sermon, I mean. All of it applied SO MUCH to what Justin and I have been dealing with the past few days -- our car has tried repeatedly to tell us it's unhappy, we had the back tire go flat and we aired that up, then the front driver side tire completely died, so we put the spare on and then the spare went flat!!! I told Justin it seemed God was testing us or the devil didn't want us to go to church. Something like that. He kind of looked at me crazy - said why would God test us? To make us stronger, I said.

Then today at church P. Tony was talking about leadership and how sometimes we are tried and sometimes God lets us face adversity to make us stronger. It was completely what I had been telling Justin the day before!!

This morning, Justin woke up with a stomach ache. I think if it had just been him and I, he would have talked me out of going to church. He was really not feeling well. But because Cory was going to come with us, he sucked it up and we went. He was also worried about the car - but I told him when everything goes wrong and it seems like someone doesn't want me to go to church, I get that much more interested in doing that very thing.

So we made it to church and we heard the sermon and afterwards I was like, see? He nodded. Jake had orientation at work so he couldn't come, but Cory really enjoyed the service. I was really happy about that - he believes, he just hasn't been in so long and has had so many reasons not to go... it was awesome to see them both in church. We were invited to said new-member thing, which I really wanted to go to but Justin and Cory were both less than enthusiastic about. Justin's always shy about going into people's houses, and I could understand Cory's apprehension - he'd already been to church that day! But because Justin wants Cory to see how great the church is he said he'd go and talked Cory into it.

The funny thing was, when it actually came time to leave, Justin didn't want to go and it was Cory who talked him into it. The whole day was a lot of people doing something because of someone else and the end result being that everyone got something out of it.

So we went, and it's always scary to ring the doorbell of someone who you've hardly talked to - but everyone was super nice and I finally got to meet the Pastor's wife. They are doing a woman's bible study thing on Tuesday, I'm going to try to go. I think one of the people in the worship group is actually leading it. Need to branch out, meet more people. Seems like a good way to start.

Jake got to go with us to the meet n' greet, which was cool since he hadn't gotten to go to church. I think he liked everyone too. It's so awesome to have everyone going to church.

I know it's kind of silly sounding, but I honestly think if I can surround myself by better people than me, that I will then (because, in part, of their influence) become a better person. Not to say that people can influence me, but it's nice to know you're not alone in your faith. That encouragement, that reminder that there are other people who believe and passionately love Jesus. It's empowering when you're around other believers, and makes you think that you can actually maybe figure this whole Jesus thing out. I think, more than anything, that was the intent of the church. Not to make money, not even to "bring the lost in." If you have a group of people who genuinely love Jesus, and love each other... you don't have to advertise your church as being cool and progressive. Because really, that's all people want. To connect and to feel like they're not alone in their journey.

***

I cried again today. Justin was watching public access and they started showing a Veggie Tales episode - A Snoodle's Tale - about a little snoodle who listens to what everyone says about him until he learns from this mysterious person on top of a mountain (God) of his real worth and how God sees him versus how the rest of the world sees him. And I started crying because OK, it's a cute story and it's amazingly well done (kind of has a dr. Seuss feel to it) but also because the message holds true as something all of us need to hear and be reminded of.

So Justin gives me a hug like he always does, but here's the thing, and I think I finally figured out why I've been crying so much lately. How many people are missing out on so much awesomeness in their lives because they can't see what God sees? How many people in this world hurt because they have no hope? How many people can't get past what the world tells them about themselves? So many people hurting and I think for a few seconds there, when I watch stuff on TV where people tap into something deep inside of them that most people ignore... when I see people fighting for loved ones, or making the right decisions, or realizing their worth (even if it is a cute little character) I get overwhelmed at the amount of people who can do that, and the amount of people who can't. And when I hear about people who completely abandon all hope and kill 6 people, that gets to me too because they didn't get reached, they didn't get helped. I don't know how to help those people... I don't know how to reach out to the ones willing to listen (because not everyone thinks they need God, and some people don't want him, and I realize that and I don't want to shove God into their face) and I wouldn't know what to say to them if they came up to me anyways. But I do feel for them. I do grieve for them. And maybe as I make sense of my crazy life and grow... maybe I'll learn how to help them, even just a little bit.

I bought a book called Beard on Bread the other day at the half-priced book store for $3.00. Good buy! I really want this book to learn with, but we're trying to watch what we spend so I opted for a cheaper version of what I hoped to be a similar book. It's been very good so far. I wanted to start making homemade bread for myself and the guys for several reasons. One is the far superior taste to store-bought bread. Second is the general knowledge you'd gain from said baking. And third, well, I have happy memories of my house smelling like yeast bread and I'd like to one day be able to duplicate that for my children.

So two days ago I set out to make a basic white bread, he refers to it as homestyle because of the use of milk instead of water. Of everything I've read online I should be keeping a journal of my bread recipes every single time I make them. What works, what doesn't, what the temperature is like, etc. I don't think I'm ready to get all that advanced, but I can see the advantage of having notes to refer back to.

Overall it's an amazingly easy recipe and it turned out amazingly good. I thought I had bread pans but I didn't so my husband let me go to Bed Bath and Beyond to get some bread pans I had been drooling over.  The ONLY problem I had was the top crust came out pretty dark and VERY tough.  The book has a set of problems/solutions, so I think next time I bake that particular bread I will take it out after it's done and leave it in the oven, sans pan, on my pizza stone, for a few minutes to firm up the rest (and hopefully crisp the top?).  The flavor wasn't the problem at all - it was the chewyness.  So we'll see.

At any rate, the next one I want to try is from the internets, an oatmeal toasting bread with cinnamon swirl.  Sounds heavenly for breakfast, and hearty enough to be more than just a slice of bread.  I'm hopeful.

I owe you guys a post about all the fun I've been having with the boys, but it will have to wait.  Justin and Jake just got back to the house with Popeye's Chicken. Yumm-y!

This made me cry.

A lot of stuff has been making me cry lately. This song, this news article, this song, this movie (I still don't know why the movie made me cry, but I literally sobbed through the first 40 minutes of it. I don't know.)

It's not hormones or any particular changes... it's not anything other than me being my usual empathetic self. It just seems to be happening more often lately.

I just don't know.

I’d like to make a public request. Please, for the love of the sanity of myself and dispatchers across the world, please please please do NOT update your Facebook status with anything along the lines of “Help, I think someone just broke in, THIS IS NOT A JOKE!! CALL 911!!” or put a bulletin on myspace that says you’re going to end it all and kill yourself.

It causes dispatchers like me to worry about you, to try desperately to track you down even though facebook doesn’t even have a public number listed and the whois information for the website leads you to a website that is open M-F 9-5, which is useless any other hour of the day. Not to mention even if we DID manage to track facebook down they won’t give us your address or personal information without a subpoena (which is a good thing, don’t get me wrong) but still I then have to try to 411.com your friends list and pray someone on there is using their real name AND they have a phone in their name in the city they live in so that I can call THEM and beg them to give me personal information on you because I am a dispatcher, and this is my calling, to futilely search for information in whatever ways I can to try to help those in need.

And most of the time it’s a great thing, most of the time it’s a wonderful and fulfilling job. But sometimes when I’m staring at someone’s facebook that has an updated status of “haha, I played a joke on you!” two hours after the initial “help help” post and I just spent an hour and a half of my life trying to find them... it’s hard not to get a little frustrated.

Also, I am sick (still) so if that last paragraph didn't make sense you understand, don't you? My brain feels all yucky and I don’t want to go to the doctor because they’ll just try to put me on antibiotics when I just need to rest and get over it, spend the weekend recuperating and come back to work fresh as a crisp cucumber. I keep forgetting words and saying things on the radio like “yeah I guess we can check that” which is a very unprofessional way of saying “received sir I will advise.”

I just wanna curl up into a ball and sleep for a week.

Yesterday was perfect.

Doug and I went to Joplin for the weekend. We didn't do a whole lot, just spent some time with my parents, watched movies, and ate. We celebrated Doug's birthday a couple of different times, so that was nice. (His actual birthday is Thursday. He'll be the big 2-0.)

Then for Labor Day we went up to Tyson's in KC to have a cook out. We ate pork steak and cheesecake, we swam, we played some Wii Fit, and some Mario Kart. Tyson, Doug, and I played keep away with a beach ball in the pool for a while, that was really fun. My mom and dad came out with us and took pictures. It was such a pleasant, relaxing time. I loved it.

Then Doug and I had to leave to come back to Columbia. When we got back we unloaded the new bookshelf my mom bought for us (it's big and magnificent!), the coffee table my mom gave us, and an over the toilet shelf that my mom bought us. (I don't know what I'd do without her!)

After we put together the bookshelf (which took quite awhile) we took a shower and just laid down and spent some time together. Not a lot of time, since it was after 1:00a and Doug has class at 8:00a, but it was still nice. It was the perfect ending to the perfect day.

Tropic Thunder was probably the most ridiculous movie I have seen in years.

Good, but ridiculous.

Originally published at my real blog. Please leave any comments there.

I’ve been dying to talk about Leipzig but my new work duties have been so overwhelming that there hasn’t been an inch of time. I’ve been back for a week now.

I’m convinced that every European city is a wonderland, no matter how obscure or run down. Leipzig is in the midst of revitalization, which is the reason the Games Convention has been held there every year. They offered the exhibitors good deals which brought money into the city. A lot of that money has gone into reconstruction. I took a bus tour and learned all about it. My favorite example: they’re rebuilding a church that used to be a cultural landmark right in the center of the city. Then the socialists decided to put a university there, and well, out with religion! so they blew the church up. Now they’re rebuilding it to be a community center that looks like the old church did, but with modern touches. Their goal is to be done by 2013, which will be the 200 year anniversary of the Battle of the Nations (or Battle of Leipzig), one of the most decisive defeats suffered by Napoleon Bonaparte.

I ended up feeling like Leipzig is “the little city that could.” The Convention is moving to Cologne next year because Leipzig is difficult to get to (true, that is), and the special incentives they offered have run out. It’s kinda too bad.

Here’s what I mean by the gorgeous buildings. This picture rules :).

It’s the top of the New Town Hall with the German flag flying over. Built on the site of a medieval castle. The city’s chalk full of buildings like this. Several of them turned out to be banks. It’s also got lovely parks, which I of course made a bee-line for.

That’s actually looking into a cemetery, a beautiful one.

I like German better than French. It’s so cute sounding. For instance a florist is called a bloomenmart. Adorable :). Whenever I indicated that I didn’t speak the language, the first reaction was embarrassment instead of annoyance. And, I had two guys try to pick me up here when I was out walking around alone, doubling my record from Paris.

I actually went to the Games Convention the day before it started. It was the first time I saw what Josh does on these trips. Well, sort of. I saw the atmosphere he does it in. Minus the throngs of sweaty fans. It was enough for me to catch the fever. I now want to buy a gaming computer because there’s tons of games coming out in the near future that I want to play! Including The Sims 3, and maybe even Warhammer itself. They had a trailer playing with a blond female High Elf Shadow Warrior that made me want to be her!

I put pictures of all this and much more in my picassa web album. Please click on them to read the comments because the story continues there!

http://picasaweb.google.com/aubrhea/Leipzig

There’s a couple new pictures at the end of my London album covering the couple days we stayed there before heading to Leipzig. We were at the Miller’s Residence, a crazy hotel run by an eccentric antique collector who offers his own gin for free in a lounging room packed with treasures.

http://picasaweb.google.com/aubrhea/London

Paul finagled a way for me to fly upper class both there and back. Between that and the fancy restaurants, I was living in luxury. HELLO Virgin Lounge in the Heathrow airport, complete with a foot massage and Simon Pegg from Shaun of the Dead. Now my nose is back to the grindstone. It’ll be that way until the wedding, pretty much.

Via Reuters:

"You need to be concerned and you need to get your butts moving and out of New Orleans right now," Nagin said at City Hall. "This is the storm of the century."

The evacuation order, which will not be physically enforced by officials, will start with the city's low-lying West Bank starting at 8 a.m. CDT (9 a.m. EDT) on Sunday, followed by the East Bank at noon CDT (1 p.m. EDT), Nagin told reporters.

Residents have the choice to remain behind and weather the storm, but "that would be one of the biggest mistakes that you could make in your life," Nagin said.

He said people might have to chop through the roofs of their houses to escape rising waters if they stay.

"Make sure you have an ax," he said.

It will be interesting to see what course this hurricane takes. It will be more interesting to me to see what course the evacuees take. If they head here, I will not be able to travel to Houston to say goodbye to my in-laws, who plan on leaving Texas for Tennessee sometime this week. We were also supposed to pick up Justin's brother... so either way he'll probably be going to Houston. I will be on emergency staffing at the Police Department. It's hard sometimes knowing that you have to be the one to stay when everyone else can leave... but it also comes with the job.

I don't particularly know if I even want to GO to Houston this Monday and Tuesday, considering the landfall of the actual "hurricane" happens Tuesday, which means all the junk around it will land before then. And Baytown, TX is pretty um... close to the ocean and stuff.

I could go but keep the cell phone close, in case I get called in. But then I'd risk not being able to get up to Austin because I'd be traveling with the evacuees. That wouldn't go over well. I could go, and then risk being stuck in horrendous traffic on the way back Tuesday night, making work on Wednesday morning at 6:00am really stink.

So many options. And on top of it all, I've got allergies and a head cold like no other. I've blown my nodze sdo mudt i tald lide dis. Try dispatching like that... HAH! Thankfully I'm training, so my rookie is answering all the phone calls and doing all the hard stuff for me. I'm taking Claritin-D, which is helping control it but definitely not making me feel like the spry young chicken I should feel like.

Justin's right knee is giving him problems too... it started on his day off, he took it easy that day (to let his body heal from all the abuse he gives it) and when he went to stand up to go to dinner, it buckled underneath him. We bought him a knee brace to wear at work, I hope it helps. He said he'd actually go to the doctor if it didn't start feeling better soon. He loves to run and jump, if something was really wrong with his knee it would break a big piece of his spirit. So hopefully it's something minor.

This morning about 4AM I got up for my 12th nose-blowing trip of the evening and when I crawled back into bed Justin asked the time. I told him, rolled over, then accidentally banged his knee. He whimpered and said we were quite a pair this week! At least we're both yucky feeling at the same time. The time off we get is precious... if I had to spend a week caring for him, then vice versa.. that's 2 wasted weeks versus us both being sick for a week.

At any rate. I'm gonna continue sniffling along monitoring the progress. I don't know what I'll be doing this week, but either way it should be interesting.

Mccain picked Alaska's governer as his running mate. A female.

I don't care what anyone says: there is NO way to predict the outcome of this election. Polls be darned, there are way too many factors. The sexists are going to get back at the dems and vote republican (Mccain is old, they'll say, there's a possibility she'll get to be prez!). The anti-blacks are going to vote republican. Everyone who hates the war - republicans included - is going to vote democrat. We're going to have people switching sides based completely on the race and sex of the individuals running.

It's not right, it's not what we should be voting on at all. But it's going to happen. Maybe not all over the entire US. But it will happen in areas, in groups, in towns.. and it may be enough to swing one way or the other.

I know I should be more concerned for where the government is going, what the future looks like.. but when I don't like either candidate and they're so much like each other that it's not going to matter which one gets in office... I can't help but be a little excited at all the entertainment I'll be getting over the next few months.

Bring it on.

I hadn’t quite realized how much my RR Express were like the Houston Astros until last night. We got some free tickets semi-last minute and it seemed like a good way to spend the last night with Robby, Aaron, and Sam. Justin got off work as the game was starting, but he was able to make it within the first few innings.

The first half of the game kind of stank. I am a big Express fan, don’t get me wrong. But more than that, I’m a big baseball fan. So I couldn’t help admiring the Redhawks as they kicked our butts all over the field. It wasn’t even that they were that much better than us, they just had what seemed to be a lot more enthusiasm and they certainly moved quicker. There were a lot of catches they made that required a bit of jumping and a lot of hustle. So they were 4-0 and towards the end of the game, they did something that I’ve personally observed the Astros do: They started to play the game. And really play, not just hit the ball and run, or walk over to the bases. They started to work. When the Express start to work, cool stuff happens. The game up until about the 6th inning wasn’t anything to write home about. But the SIX innings after that? Awesome.

Even though we lost it was a really good game to watch once they started acting involved in the game. The first half... I don’t know if they’re fatigued or what... it hasn’t been a very good season for them and I don’t know enough about them to know why, but I’m sure at this point they just want it to be over with. But that’s not very fair to the fans. We’re going to go hoarse cheering for you... the least you can do is run towards the ball. I saw several instances where they could have caught the ball if they had ran for it (and gotten an out on the opposing team) but instead they jogged and missed it.

I didn’t get home until almost midnight, but it was an amazing 12 inning game after about the first 6 innings. And the first 6 weren’t that bad, there were a lot of good things about them. Like dollar hot dogs and chili cheese nachos! Yummm!

Now if I can just get through a 12 hour day on 4 hours of sleep...

c.o.l.u.m.b.i.a

my home sweet home


Okay, so that's a big, fat lie...I hate it here and it is already starting to ooze in and poison my life. However, I really, really don't want to let that happen because the fact is...I can't do anything about it so I'm going to have to learn how to cope and maybe even be a little happy.

My plan is to ignore where I am and concentrate on school and marriage. I think my classes will be really great this semester. With the exception of Biology 1010 all of my classes are major classes. So that is going to be nice. My Bio class will be okay, I think. There are 400 students, but my professor seems to be pretty down to earth and willing to help. I'm just going to have to read the book.

Clinical Psych is a small class and the professor is really cool. She is young and really pretty. She told us the class is really interactive, so hopefully I can make some friends. Everyone seems to be cool, there's even a girl from back home in the class.

Girl (to the prof): "I'm from Joplin."
Me: "*I'm* from Joplin!"
Girl (to me): "Really? Well I'm actually from Webb City."
Me: "Well I'm from Carl Junction."
Boy (to the class): "So neither of you are actually from Joplin at all!"

It was funny. Maybe we can be friends and she can ride home with us sometime or something. We'll see.

Abnormal Psych is going to be really cool. The professor is seemingly awesome, so good news. I think the class itself is going to be interesting, plus I'm in it with Nathan and Dorothy. So far so good.

We'll see how tomorrow's classes go.


Tonight I will do laundry. I must. There is no hope for a wardrobe this week without it.
Doug is currently at a job interview for Michael's so hopefully that goes well. It'll be really nice when he can get a job and we don't feel so scrapped for cash.

I am going to read some of my textbooks perhaps. Or maybe start reading How To Kill A Mockingbird. Not sure. I could work on this puzzle Doug and I bought. But I like working on it with him, it's a good thing to do together where you can still talk and stuff.

Okay, I'm rambling. Off to the washing machines!