Thanksgiving, Costco-style

How do they make all those pumpkin pies?!

Come Thou Fount

One of my favorite hymns... been stuck in my head all day! :)

Come, thou Fount of every blessing, tune my heart to sing thy grace;
streams of mercy, never ceasing, call for songs of loudest praise.
Teach me some melodious sonnet, sung by flaming tongues above.
Praise the mount! I'm fixed upon it, mount of thy redeeming love.

Here I raise mine Ebenezer; hither by thy help I'm come;
and I hope, by thy good pleasure, safely to arrive at home.
Jesus sought me when a stranger, wandering from the fold of God;
he, to rescue me from danger, interposed his precious blood.

O to grace how great a debtor daily I'm constrained to be!
Let thy goodness, like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love;
here's my heart, O take and seal it, seal it for thy courts above.

007 Tonight!

I am determined to keep up with the blog... so I am posting a very quick one now so as to keep it (relatively) up to date!! :)

Just got home from work. Looking forward to having tonight off (even though I am working this weekend)... Rob and I are going to see the new James Bond movie!! I am very excited. :) I have managed to avoid reading any reviews in the fear that it might not be well-received, because I figure that I HAVE to see it, regardless of what any review might say! So that is tonight. Until then, time to get some sleep... I am exhausted. Yawn.

Pictures from PA

I got home last night from a quick trip to PA this weekend! Friday morning through Sunday night... it felt like I spent more time on the planes than actually there, but I don't think that's quite true. :) Here are a couple pictures from my trip:

My bedroom at my parents' house

Lauren and Brian
Lauren and Maddy!

The wedding cake and groom's cake


A picture to prove that I was, indeed, at my parents' house in Ardmore!!

Nuptial Madness

Winter is apparently the new spring. No, no, I'm not talking about weather or time of year for cleaning... I'm talking about weddings!

Just got done doing some cleaning of my apartment (I stayed up all night so I could sleep today before work). I noticed that my dining room table held a number of interesting objects. No, not the dead roses that sat in the vase so long that the water all evaporated. (What can I say? I am a romantic and hadn't gotten around to getting rid of them!)

What captured my attention was the plethora of wedding-related paraphenalia! I found, in no particular order: an invite to Kelly's bridal shower (my future sister-in-law), a thank you note from Jonathan & Liz for their wedding gift (with a cute pic of them on the front), an invite to Sarah's bridal shower (it's a big year for weddings in that family!), and the invitation/directions for Lauren's wedding this weekend!

There are 3 upcoming weddings of people I am close to, all within less than 2 months. Strange! Prior to the 2 weddings I went to this past spring, the last one I had been to was Ingrid & Chad's wedding in 2004!! And before that? I can't even remember. But it had certainly been at least a year or more.

What's with all the weddings? And even more perplexing... what's with all the winter weddings? Has the spring wedding gone out of fashion? Hm.

These are the things I contemplate when I have had ~5 hours of sleep in the last 43 hours! :)

Insomniac

I can't sleep!!! Definitely annoying. I am on this strange cycle... not quite 100% nocturnal. Yesterday, I was up until 3am or so (not on purpose, I might add), then slept until almost noon! I just kept hitting the snooze button. Yes, from 8 am when my alarm went off until 12:07 when I rolled out of bed in disgust that I had wasted half the day!

I was all set to go to bed by 10:30 or 11 tonight, I really was. After I hung up the phone with Rob, though, I decided to watch some TV until 11ish. Then I tried to go to bed. But I am wide awake! What?! Probably has something to do with me getting up at noon today. :) So here I am, blogging late into the night because I have nothing better to do. Last night, I laid in bed and watched a show on TLC about the world's fattest man. It was actually pretty interesting, but still! I wanted to sleep!!

It just started raining here. The forecast is for flooding rains (that is, typical November weather in Seattle). I am hoping that the sound of rain on the carport will lull me to sleep.

Not much else new to report. Today was a pretty boring day... I was hoping to pick up some OT at work but that didn't pan out. I did get my PPD read... negative for TB (yay!). They surprised me by pulling up my file in the computer and determining that I was overdue to have my hep B titre drawn... so I had a surprise blood draw this afternoon. I hate getting blood drawn! The funny thing is, I can draw blood from patients all day long... but when someone comes at ME with a needle, I freak out! Haha. :) Hopefully the results are good. Otherwise I will need another booster shot... and I do not want that! (Although I suppose I would much rather have a shot than hepatitis, but still.)

Well, this is yet another boring post. Sorry. :) Time to climb back in bed and hope the sound of raindrops works as a lullaby!

150th Post

I have been procrastinating on this post... I feel as though this needs to be a amazing piece of literature, seeing as how it is #150... but I have nothing really profound to say right now! :)

Reading the last two "milestone" posts from May and January, I am struck by the things that have changed, and the things that have remained the same. It seems like a long time ago that I was preparing for the Seafair race and to go to England/Ireland! But yet again, so much rings true. I am still struggling to lose more weight... I've maintained about the same for a while now. I'm looking for a new church to call home, and there are days I still really struggle with aspects of my faith. Maybe it is fitting, therefore, that I DON'T have some huge thing to post for the 150th post... a blog is really about documenting daily life, I suppose... and this IS my daily life. Pretty boring, honestly.

I went to bed at about 2 am last night, and woke up this morning at 5 am. I had a nightmare and then just could not get back to sleep. :( But it gave me time to think and read and pray... before the sun even came up. So perhaps that is what is most important for me to be doing. I have the day off, and have thought about visiting a new church this morning, but I just can't bring myself to do it. I hate "church-shopping". Even the phrase makes it sound like some consumer-driven thing. I just want to have a church home, is all. So far none of the places we've visited have felt like "home", or even that they would have the potential to become that. It's so frustrating. Should I just go to a church on Sunday morning because that is what one does? Should I pick one out of the phonebook because I have the day off and therefore should try it out? That just doesn't seem right.

I've often heard that Seattle is one of the most "un-churched" areas in America. After living back here a year, I believe it. Absolutely. Not only is it particularly tough to be a Christian here, but there just aren't that many churches. Believe me, I've been flipping through the aforementioned phone book! What am I supposed to do? I know that maybe I am being picky. Sure, there are churches that I could go to... but none of them seem to fit what I have been looking for. I could go be another anonymous "regular attender" at Mars Hill or Overlake, or any number of other huge churches. But I don't want to be part of a crowd... I want something smaller. I enjoy contemporary Christian music (hey, my car radio is usually tuned to 105.3)... but I want the opportunity to sing out of a hymnal, at least sometimes. At least have one in the pew rack. I want to hear Biblical preaching. I want to be with other Christians. But I'm just not sure how to do that right now.

So instead, this morning, I sat in my living room with my Bible and my copy of "Hymns of Truth and Praise". It's not much, and certainly not sustainable, but it's all I could muster this morning. Perhaps I will listen to an old sermon on my iPod or something, too, thanks to the internet. Sigh.

There you go... I haven't posted in a while and then once I start, the floodgates open! I would apologize, but it's my blog and you have chosen to read it. :) If you have made it to the end, I would love your prayers. Times are tough right now.

Elections

This is gonna be a quick post (#149!!)... It is almost 1 am and time for me to get some sleep. :-) I haven't written in a while, so I felt the need to post a quick update!

Election night! Rob and I watched the returns together, although it was rather anticlimatic... I think the dinner from Burger King was more surprising. :) But nevertheless, I was happy that Obama won, even though my absentee vote won't count for anything! Honestly, the last election convinced me that the popular vote means nothing, because it is all about the electoral vote... so... this might seem shocking... but I didn't feel like voting at all for the presidential race. I know, I know, it is "un-American"... but seriously? What is it worth? The major reason I voted was for the more local elections... WA governor, and the local propositions. Sadly, I-1000 was approved, legalizing assisted suicide in Washington. My feelings on the subject are numerous... I will summarize by saying that God is the One who ultimately decides when our time on Earth is up... and even though in my career I have witnessed so much pain and suffering, I am convinced there is a reason for it all. How could I proceed with daily life if that were not true?! Anyway, the popular vote has spoken on that issue... but my prayers will continue.

I am very happy to hear that Seattle Prop 1 has passed!! The Pike Place Market is definitely worth improving/saving. And as someone who has used the restroom facilities there... YIKES! I do not need to see people shooting up while I take care of business... so I am all in favor of some improvements there! :) And it makes me really happy that I am now a Seattle resident and able to vote on such things!!

Clearly, I am blogging in the middle of the night. I am all messed up by this night shift thing... back to day shift in January, though! Until then, however, I have resigned myself to the fact that I will be awake at odd hours. Thank goodness QFC is open 24 hours! :)

This post ended up rambling, even though I intended it to be short... better try to get some sleep soon!

~Alison