Blessed

Sometimes God let’s things go on a long time while he tries to teach you a lesson and sometimes only a matter of minutes before it smacks you in the face.
The same day that my car was broken in to I had run to CVS to pick up a couple things and while waiting in line, a little frustrated with God and definitely feeling very “Woe Is Me” I noticed that the man at the check out counter was taking quite a while to check out. Now everyone else was getting angry but I noticed that the clerk was a little embarrassed and that he and the man were trying to quickly count pennies while the line grew. I myself am not against paying for things with change now and again so I knew that it can sometimes take a while to count it all up, but as I watched the man search his pockets a second and third time to come up with more change I looked to the counter and saw that he wasn’t trying pick up a pack of gum or gallon of milk and just didn’t want to break a ten or use his debit card. This man was buying a roll of generic toilet paper. Just one roll. He was gathering together every bit of change that he could find to buy some toilet paper.

As I stood there, still two people back in line, wishing that I had had any cash on my (or change for that matter) the best I could tell is either they finally got to the total or the clerk gave up as he handed him back a couple dimes and he was on his way. Now for good reason my day thus far had been really bad. I only have a couple people here in Dallas that I know, so when something like the car being broken in to I just felt overwhelmed with the sense of being alone in this city. And to loose these things that I loved, and believe me I did not take them for granted one bit, it felt like one more blow that I just didn’t need. But then to stand in a line, just feet away from a man without even the necessities of life, all of a sudden the iPod or the GPS system (while things I love and still miss daily) did not seem all that important. I began to realize how blessed I am. Blessed that they didn’t steal my car, talk about feeling isolated in a city, what would I have done then? Blessed that I wasn’t in the car when they decided that they wanted the items. Blessed that I have a whole apartment full of other items that I really do love and make me oh so happy just to see them. They aren’t expensive, by any means, and I may never have that type of life, but I could name 100 material objects that I have that bring joy to my life. They would confuse you and make you laugh at me, but they do. Then put that aside and I could name about 30-40 people that I know or have known that have changed my life and thinking about them makes me feel enormously blessed.

I guess in the end possessions are just possessions. They are just there to crowd up your life and make things beautiful around you while you are living. People form your character. They help build your memories that you will reflect on for the rest of your life. But you can’t take the people or the memories or the possessions with you after you are gone so you have to maintain perspective on what really matters and live your life. So for today and as long as I can I am going to try to realize how blessed I really am, even though the things I had have been taken away. Maybe like Job, God has a plan to bring them back x’s 2, you never know.

The menu for illness

I love chinese food. As everyone who knows me can attest, I have somewhat of a "selective palette". Meaning I do not always like all types of food and all restaurants, but I typically like chinese food. I like Japanese food. I am really pretty open to them, but man last Monday I had a horrible bout of food poisioning from chinese food. It was the first place that I had ordered food from here in Dallas. I had actually been wondering about a good place here and came out of my house Monday morning and there hanging on my door knob was this amazing menu glistening in the sun, so I decided to give it a try. It took me a good couple of days to recover, but things are fine now.

Word to the wise for those in the Dallas area, stay clear of this place if at all possible.

Take-Lock-Hide

A few days ago I had the distinct pleasure of having my car broken in to. I have now been told that this is a normal part of Dallas life, so yeah, that is totally something that they should put in the welcome packet. I came out of my apartment to go watch a friend play a football game and saw the most beautiful and horrible thing. Piles of glass that looked like blue topaz gemstone, my birthstone ironically, on the ground and inside my car. As I looked around I noticed it was gone, all of it gone. My brand new GPS system, iPod, my Ralph Lauren Romance perfume and all of the chargers. As time went on and the police came and went I started to realized that my makeup was gone. I mean really, who steals someone else’s half used make-up. (I think that confused me the most.)

So for the next two days I drove around with cardboard taped up to my door and went through it making sure that there was nothing else left in the car of value or that had any personal information on it, just in case it happened again. (Including Proof of Insurance with blacked out information) Here in Dallas they have a whole campaign to help people protect themselves against auto break-ins. There are signs everywhere. I think that it should have been my first warning. The campaign says “TAKE-LOCK-HIDE”. It is supposed to remind you to lock your car and hide your belongings. Sadly, what they mean is for you to hide it inside your house. And that someone else would be the one’s taking things. Who knew?

Tonsil's

**Disclaimer: I am about to tell a potentially embarrassing story about someone, so in an attempt to protect their identity, I will just not say who it is. I will just refer to them as “person x”

When “person x” was a child he had his tonsils out. After the surgery he wanted to keep them, for some unknown reason, so they were kept in this spice jar. Occasionally over the next few weeks and months we would find out that he had taken them out of the jar and put them in his mouth. Finally I think his family took them away and hid them for a little while. Okay, so that is the end of the disgusting details.

So I have noticed something about myself over the past couple of months that made me think about this story. I went through a really tough time about 2 years ago and kind of shut down emotionally and everything for about a full year. When I think back about that time and and how things are now it is drastically different that I don’t even feel like the same person. But I have noticed that even now when things get rough I find myself drawn to thinking a lot about that time, which is so odd to me. I start to want to listen to the music that was a prominent part of that time if my life. To me it feels kind of like when “person x” would put those tonsils back in his mouth. It was an unnecessary part of his body, and it is not necessarily healthy for me to go back and constantly dwell on a painful place. Maybe this is something that that everyone does in some way or another, so it may not be a big deal, but something I noticed and something I definitely want to work on.

So this is not an entry about being sad, cause I’m not, but just a realization that I thought I would share with you, my friends.

Person of Contradiction

I have discovered that I am a person of contradiction, well at least as far as my television shows go since I have moved here to Texas. I have always prided myself as being a person who watches “intelligent television”. Who stays away from those mindless shows like Real World or Laguna Beach; someone who try’s to focus her attention more on shows like Charlie Rose, The West Wing, Gilmore Girls. Shows that challenge your mind and make you think about the world and politics and stretch you mentally. When I first moved to Dallas I started to watch The Hills as a nostalgic thing since my brother and I would watch in together before I moved. I always fought it and actually made fun of him for watching it and yet here I was watching it alone. Then things only got worse....A friend had been talking about Gossip Girls for several weeks, and there wasn’t anything good on so I thought I would check it out, yet while watching it i saw a preview for a new show, Privileged, and I was hooked. Then the new 90210 started up and all do my friends were reminiscing about the original, I was the only one not watching the new show so I thought I would check it out. That is one thing about being new to Dallas is that for the time being I don’t have a lot of friends so I have quite a bit of time on my hands and a pretty empty DVR.

So this is where we ended up, a DVR split between shows that inspire me to tears and are intelligently stimulating and then the polar opposite, shows that are an escape from the real world. Shows that are so fake that they are laughable most of the time, but somehow very endearing. How did this begin? I could blame it on my brother, on his addiction to The Hills, but sadly I think that this is where I would probably be anyway. Stuck in the contradiction.

My move, explained, after the fact

Okay, so after getting more then a handful of angry and confused emails and posts about my seemingly sudden departure from Good Ole Nashville I realized that I may not have done a great job of communicating the change. So I thought I better catch everyone up.

My decision came on very quickly and if I am honest I am probably still in a little bit of shock even now. In the very end of July I was emailed out of the blue from a colleague regarding a position in Dallas. I actually disregarded the email for several days as I had no interest in moving to Dallas and didn't really know that this was the position for me. After a couple of days I had a recurring thought of Jonah and the whale and didn't want to to just ignore it, even if it wasn't for me. So I responded just to be nice. When I received the email from him there was something in the email that just stuck out to me. I then left for a couple weeks for a business trip, still thinking that the chances of me taking it were remote. But over the time that I was on the trip it just became more and more apparent that this was the next step that God had for me. Still I had some strong hesitations (moving to Dallas, a city in which knew no one being a main one). During the trip I had little to no contact with anyone.

I came home for two days and then left to meet the leadership at Greater Dallas FCA. I prayed and knew in my heart that this trip would make the decision. I knew that in my short day and a half there I would have a feeling on whether or not I could see myself in this environment and living in this new place, and it did. While it was totally different, it didn't feel wrong and to be really honest, it still doesn't. While there are still things about starting over completely that I really don't like, as I have already listed and shared with some of you over the phone, there has never been the moment of me feeling like this is a time to pick up and go home. If that moment comes, and God calls me home, then I am there just as quickly as I came, but for now I know that I know that this is where I am supposed to be for whatever reason it may be.

So I came home from my trip and turned in my notice a couple days later. That night my grandmother passed away, which is something that we had been battling with for the past many months. While it was hard to see her go, I knew that she was ready to. So my last two weeks in Nashville were wrapped up in Funerals and then feverishly packing my place in the span of a week (with some of the best help I could have ever asked for).

For those of you that may not have heard about this until after the fact or right as it happened, I am deeply sorry. You are still very dear to me. I literally only had the two weeks and had no idea that this was also the time that God was going to call my Grandmother home, which obviously divided my focus. I hope that through this you can see God's hand was guiding me to my new home. I hope you will soon feel God guiding you here to come visit me. :-)

If you have more questions, send them on. Email me, call me, whatever. I am still here.

Sports Teams have been Chosen!!!!

Okay, the decisions have been made after some very deep soul searching. Some are based on family ties to the teams and some are based on connections to the cities. Then I did go ahead and choose one Texas team, just for good measure. Thanks to all of you for your contributions and suggestions. If you have any helpful information about the teams or players feel free to continue to send it on.

Baseball: California Angels
College Football: Vanderbilt
College Basketball: Duke
Pro Hockey: Nashville Predators
Pro Football: Dallas Cowboys

I don't like being new

So I have decided something this week.....I don't like starting new jobs. Don't get me wrong, I actually really like my new job and despite it being quite a bit different from what I have been doing, I still feel confident that this is where God has me and there are parts of it that I can't wait to get in to. But what I have learned is that I don't like being new. I don't like the slow process of learning everything, the waiting, etc. The freedom to take things on as you feel comfortable and to not feel overwhelmed and be thrown in to a loosing situation, that's great, I just think that I am not used to the pace and its so disorienting. I know every job starts like this and that I need to be patient (Patience is a Virg....Virture or whatever that saying it). I guess I have just become so accustomed to actually being able to do things and so the process of sitting back and watching other scurry around and doing research it a little bit frustrating I have to admit. huh....sorry I know that this is what I signed on for. I do know that this is what I am supposed to be doing, but man I really don't like feeling incompetent or being seen as such.

My home....post three

my beautiful pool that I can see from
my apartment.
entry way
living room, dining room below. No table as of yet. My old table broke in the move and so I will need to buy a new smaller cafe table sometime soon.

hall walkway
the reason for the bakers rack in the dining room. Every cabinet has these weird divisions in them which makes them too short for most things.
living room, some more.
and then this is a duplicate added for emphasis or by accident and then it won't let me delete it....you choose which story you would like to believe.

My home....post two

Okay, I know that these are not glamorous, by any stretch, but I have been asked a lot for them, so here they are. Bathroom (ballerina theme returns); bedroom, linen closet, etc.

My home....post one

Okay, so we have my wall of closets. Literally it goes the entire span of the bedroom. Pretty crazy, Then we have the jewelry wall, closet picture 1. Picture 2 and then a shot of the gnomes new home. My back patio.

I need sports help!

Okay, so here's the deal, it is not going over too well this whole "not into sports" thing in my new job, so I need to take on a new hobby here with my abundance of free time with no friends, no church and basically no life yet here in Dallas.  I need sports teams and I am not just talking about for one sport.  I think I need one for every sport.  Okay, maybe I can get away without a Lacrosse team, or rugby team, but other then that for all sports that are "American Past Times" I need to just choose a team and start keeping up with what's going on with them.  Sign up for a couple RSS feeds, etc.  Something, cause it is a daily issue around here. 

This is where the fun comes in for all of you, this is the crowd participation part of the blog.  I need your recommendations for each sport.  Which team you think I should choose and whoever has the most overall votes will win.  Now keep in mind, these have to make sense for me, it has to be a team that I could legitimately like.  For example, don't recommend all TX teams, as that is to generic for me to do...same would be true for suggestions for all TN teams.  I am a person who likes things that are not the norm for everyone else (aka gnomes). When  I was younger I chose my favorite baseball team to be the Toronto Blue Jays because I liked Canada and their pennant was pretty.

So here is what I think that I need, being the sports enthusiast that I am, if I have missed something you can kindly recommend.  I am going to try to take this on to a reasonable level at first.  I will add tier two in later if I am able to handle this amount of sports.

College - Basketball, Football

Pro - Baseball, Football, Basketball

Hockey (only if TX has a hockey team - does anyone know?)

Alright, so there is your task.....I am ready for your feedback.  The game begins NOW.

Life

Well, so far things are going great.  I haven't done a ton of sightseeing yet, but I am feeling pretty at home here already. Mostly I am just going to work and home each day and at night I work through any boxes or decor or cleaning.  So nothing glamorous to report but I am super excited to know that I haven't been struck with homesickness yet.  

At work it mostly consists of reading a lot and taking some tests (talk about FUN).  I did have my first meeting with the Executive Committee today so that was interesting.  Lots of listening and trying to soak up everything that is going on. 

I haven't really made a lot of friends yet (really any), but it will come.  This weekend will be exciting as I will be trying out churches for the first time.  The pictures are still coming, but my internet connection at the apartment is "borrowed" until my real service gets hooked up and it's pretty poor.  Once I can get them to upload I will add them.

Okay a brief moment to explain the blog naming,  just to avoid any confusion.  I know I don't live in Star's Hollow, Texas. I have an un-natural obsession with Gilmore Girls which takes place in Star's Hollow, CT.  I thought it would be a funny thing to name a blog.  No other reason

My Adventure Begins.....

So it was, we set out at 2am on our fateful trip from Nashville to Dallas. As the road went by and the hours dragged on it became more and more real, Jeremy in the moving van and Tash and I in the truck racing the GPS.  4 stops for gas and 10 1/2 hours later we were here. We arrived at my new home and I began the long process of signing the multitude of papers for my new fabulous home away from home. Sadly, there was a problem with the carpet cleaning and then a couple other issues so the apartment wouldn't be ready for several hours. The very tired road warriors waited out the remaining hours roaming the aisles at Target and in the parking lot of the apartment.  When we finally got in to see the apartment and stood huddled in the kitchen waiting for the carpet to dry I was struck with a horrible feeling in my heart. I stood looking around the rooms that would be my home and there was nothing that felt right about it. I just felt lost in that space.  The inside of the apartment felt cramped and old, the outside was dirty and scary. A little ghetto, to be honest.  I stood there and just knew that I could not live here, I could not live here.

I then began the frantic search for a new place to live (with just over 30 minutes left before everything closed down).  We had my dad looking places up online and giving us options and calling them as well, then Jeremy, Tash and I driving door to door to complex's trying to see if anyone had an opening for move in the very next day.  It was the craziest 30 minutes.  We finally found a place and I had 3 options and was willing to stay open to get me through the process.  The best part was that I actually liked it better then anything I had seen before. We got it all done and still made it to dinner with some friends (mind you we were almost an hour later then we had originally planned, but it all worked out in the end). We moved in as planned on Saturday as if nothing had changed.  It was pretty amazing.

The move was insane, you know the drill, boxes and boxes and boxes. Up the stairs, down the stairs.  I had great friends that helped and some of my friends family came and chipped in amazingly to make the day even possible.

Now four days in there are no more boxes left in the apt, most things have found there new place (pictures will be forthcoming) and life is starting to fall in to a routine.  The new normal that will be my life here in Dallas.