How to See the Sun Rise

Man.  I keep up with this blog like I do my journal.  It's really not promising.  However!  Tonight I have reason to celebrate and reason to write.  It's official... Newsies is coming to Broadway!!!  That's right.  I'm pretty sure Christian Bale won't be reprising his role and they've added a female reporter, so I just need to spend my time between now and Opening Night finding ways to cope with what will be some inevitable disappointment. There's a lot of talk swirling about the timliness of the release with the Occupy Wall Street movement sweeping the nation.  All I can say is if the Occupy Wall Street protesters learned to sing and dance like Jack Kelly, Davey, Racetrack, Crutchy, Spot Conlon, Boots, and Mush than I wouldn't care that I have no idea what specifically they're actually protesting. The release is good timing, too, since I can also offically report that I have a job. Don't get too excited, I'm only nannying, but it w...

My phone broke Monday night.  I tried to upload the new apple operating system and, long story short, it erased everything on my phone and restored it to factory settings.  Again, keeping this to the short version let's just let it suffice to say that I wasn't an idiot (this time) and it wasn't a matter of simply resetting the phone and backing it up.  So I was phoneless.  In 2011.  I was against getting an iPhone at first.  I didn't want to be constantly connected; checking my email and playing angry birds while simultaneously having a conversation and driving my car on a 6 lane highway.  Weird.  That said, my two previous phones had their own slight personality glitches - the first literally had to be plugged into the wall to hold a charge (and for me to hold a conversation) and the second worked fine, as long as you didn't need to use the 4 key.  So it was time. I like to think I'm still not the emailing, game playi...

We adopted a dog.  Meet Fitzwallace.  You can call him Fitz. Yeah.  Pretty adorable.  He's a 3 year old shepherd mix from Chicago Animal Care and Control.  We had decided awhile ago that we were going to adopt, but we were waiting until I got a job and we got settled in the apartment.  Of course, with no luck on the job front and Nelson starting school a few weeks ago, I was getting antsy...and bored at home all day.  I had been bugging Nelson about going to look at dogs for awhile and last Friday he agreed to go 'look'.  I got a (probably fair) lecture on the way there about how we were not going to bring anything home that day and we needed to talk more before making any decisions.  Plus, we had plans that night to visit some friends and weren't going to be home most of the evening.  I agreed, but pointed out that if we found a dog we really loved, we'd have to act fast.  Nelson kind of agreed. About 40 minutes and 2 dogs la...

I've been getting some complaints about the infrequency of my writing.  And let's not kid ourselves, I love that people (okay, one person) care enough to pester me with texts (okay, one text) about my blogging.  Here's the problem.  I don't do much.  I mean, anything.  Life is kind of depressing right now and I've not been so much in the creative mood lately.  But, I want to honor you, my readers, all the same.  So you get a treat today.  Writing that I didn't do.  I've been feeling really nostalgic and a little down watching everyone head back to school this month.  Nelson has been busy with orientation activities all week and a lot of backpacks and bicycles have been passing by our window.  I felt this way last year too as I watched all of my friends talk about their new classes and professors.  Apparently, this nostalgia and minor depression isn't going to go away as long as I'm not in school.  Okay e...

I didn't do much today.  One might think that would make for a boring blog entry.  I know better.  Here's some stuff I didn't do today: 1.  Yoga.  I LOVE yoga.  Yet...I never practice.  It takes a lot of effort and energy to drag my mat out from the corner of the living room where I'm watching Jersey Shore and find my way into savasana.  2.  Read.  I LOVE reading and the book I'm reading, Finding Salvation at the Dairy Queen.  But again, it's all the way in the bedroom and I'm here on the couch. 3.  Go running.  Despite wanting to like it, I HATE running, so this one makes a lot of sense.  4.  Work on my resume and cover letter.  I bought a couple books on resume writing and interview tips the other night at Barnes and Noble (sorry Borders) and got real fired up to dive into them.  But, here it is on the list so it seems that excitement was fleeting. Here's what I did do: 1.  Made cof...

Nelson and I have been going to this great church, Broadway UMC, about 20 minutes north of us.  It's a reconciling church in the heart of boystown, the GLBTQ epicenter of the city.  We had a church we really loved in VA and I was worried we wouldn't find another so easily this time around.  But we found Broadway and I think we could stay here awhile.  Yesterday, the associate pastor preached on the story of the burning bush in Exodus 3.  She focused on Moses removing his shoes because he was standing on holy ground.  Midway through her sermon she invited the congregation to do the same.  She told the story of a friend who always removed her shoes before entering a sanctuary because she wanted to be reminded to 'expect the holy.'  I like that.  I think it's so easy to get bogged down by what isn't happening and what we aren't seeing that we fail to recognize what is.  For me, it's getting a...

I have some seriously cool and supportive friends that made this giant, somewhat stressful and slightly uncomfortable step into the intrawebs of space quite pleasant actually.  I thank you.  Some of you have inquired as to our schlep to Chicago, so here you are.  It's long.  Like our first week. The First Week We moved in Monday, August 1.  The Saturday before we packed up everything in our apartment in D.C., begged and pleaded with our friends to help us load it all into the truck on a 99 degree day, and popped our air mattress because someone filled it with too much air.  It was me.  I hate waking up in the middle of the night with my ass on the floor and my head and legs propped up like some defunct hospital bed.  Oops.  Sunday we woke up and drove, separately, the 13 hours to Urbana.  We only got lost once and waited until we were in Illinois to do it.    Monday we woke up, d...

I am doing this in an effort to be more organized with my time, to hold myself accountable for doing purposeful things, to connect to a new community, and to find some sacred space in which to do...whatever.  But in this, my first night of blogging, I'm finding I'm incredibly stressed out.  What a lot of pressure for something that may, or most likely will not, be read by someone who doesn't already know me.  I must admit, after about 45 minutes of thinking of a witty, clever, insightful, and original title (I ended up stealing mine from Ben Sollee.  It's a great song, check it out), I started to have second thoughts about this whole blogging thing.  But I (we?) press on. I guess there aren't really any rules so I'll start easy.  I'm going to list the reasons this makes me uncomfortable.  It goes back to holding myself accountable for my insecurities and one of the blogging websites said that readers find lists agreeable.  So we're off...