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Hi hi,
So y'all know by now that I'm not one to pass on forwards, but I've gotten some interesting news in my inbox lately that I thought deserved passing on. After watching the State of the Union address last night I realized it's a very bizzarre time to be alive and well in the good ol' US of A. It's even more bizarre for those (which I'm learning is actually a pretty good majority of this list) of us who have friends and family in the military. [For me it's an uncle currently in DC and a cousin who was just shipped to Kuwait]. Anyhoo, to quote a very wise woman: "I guess mostly I find solace in knowing how many other people there are who feel similarly".
For the sake of telling anyone who's anxious these days, "you're not alone" I thought I'd pass along these few forwarded e-mails. I've always said that I'm good at using other's words to say what I cannot so instead of the usual Lisa rambling you get the news from Lisa's inbox (which will be about equal in length to my normal schpiels). The first is kinda cheesy, but a nice sentiment. The second is the closesst to home for me. The third's (in my opinion) probably the most powerful. Feel free to read, act on, and/or forward any or all of them at your own discretion (the copy/paste feature is always nice).
forwardfully yours,
lisa :)
p.s. Jenny, you probably got these originally. Beth, my mom didn't have your e-mail address but I'll give it to her.
p.p.s. The Wise Woman du Jour is the super spiffy Jessica G. I dedicate the following quote from a Charles DeLint novel to her:
"We are wise women, not because we are wise but because we seek wisdom - which, in the end, is what makes us seem wise to others."
FORWARD #1: For our troops (it really does only take 30 seconds!)
Subject: for our troops
Sign -up and say "Thanks!"
"The greater the obstacle, the more glory in overcoming it." (Moliere)
THIS IS AN EASY AND A GOOD THING FOR ALL OF US TO DO. IT ONLY TAKES ABOUT 30 SECONDS.....THANKS ......ZERO
Please visit the Department of Defense web page below and sign in thanking the men and women of the U.S. military services for defending our freedom. The compiled list of names will be sent out to our soldiers at the end of the month. So far, there are only about 3.2 million names. What a shame...... National Military Appreciation Month. The entire exercise takes 10 seconds...literally.
Please pass it on to your email friends.
http://www.defendamerica.mil/nmam.html
DefendAmerica News
Forward #3: A prayer
Subject: Prayer Wheel
"Lord, hold our troops in your loving hands. Protect them as they protect us. Bless them and their families for the selfless acts they perform for us in our time of need. I ask this in the name of Jesus, our
Lord and Savior. Amen."
Prayer Wheel: When you receive this, please stop for a moment and say a prayer for our troops in Afghanistan, and around the world.
There is nothing attached.... This can be very powerful....
Of all the gifts you could give a US Soldier, Sailor, Airman, Marine & others deployed in harm's way, Prayer is the very best one.
When I was a freshman in college I wrote "Wonder Woman" in the name blank on the top of one of my Bio 120 exams. My lab partner gave me the nickname due to my incredible ability to BS my way through the discussion part of lab reports at astounding speeds so that we usually got our write ups done before leaving lab. So as I sat in one of the front rows of Foellinger with my 2 sharpened #2 pencils eagerly dreading the first exam from my first class in my Major I scrawled the name at the top and showed it to my lab partner all for the sake of being silly and giving myself a bit of an ego/confidence booster before the exam. What I didn't realize was that we had to turn in the test booklet along with the scantron answer sheet. My TA was cracking up when I told her I needed to change my name at the top before I turned it into her.
That was a nice stroll down memory lane. :P Anyhoo, the subject of this e-mail is actually referring to the fact that I've been doing a lot of wondering lately rather than anything wonderous or superheroesque about yours truly (and the Bio 120 story was just a random tangenty anecdote).
First off, I wonder what's up with this whole Raelian CloneAid thing. Have you people heard about this? It's been in all the Chi-town newspapers these days but apparently there's some dude that claims aliens visited him in France (I don't know why France...) with a message that he should change his name to Rael and start cloning humans. My brother keeps accusing me of being part of it. It's rather funny because I'll make some offhand remark about "my clones" in reference to my flasks of cancer cells at work and he'll say something like "How's Rael doing?" He's weird. My brother, I don't actually know Rael. It's kind of like how I gave a speech for one of my classes in high school against the use of animals for cosmetic testing and to this day my brother jokes that I'm a member of PETA. I wonder why my brother's so weird. I guess it runs in the family....
Along that whole Raelian line though, I wonder what's up with this head honcho "Rael" dude anyway. Not that I have anything against him personally or even his message which I'll reserve my opinions on for later but I'm most wondering about his sense of style. [And for anyone who hasn't seen him in the news, think George Carlin as Rufus from Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure - that's him!] And his whole crew is just as strange. It's like they all said hey we got a message from aliens let's all dress like Star Trek characters! Who knows. I wonder if that was part of their message.
I'm also wondering why it's so darn cold in Chicago. And don't say cuz it's winter (DUH!). But we're in the middle of one of the longest coldest cold spells of recent history. It figures that for the past four years I spent the majority of winter in nice central Illinois and now that I'm back up in the north (eh?) it turns out to be a freakishly cold January. *sigh*
I also wonder who first invented gloves. I got a new pair the other day. Clearance sale at Target (sweet!!) and they're leather with fleece lining on the inside and they're super warm and cozy and I think to myself, these gloves are great...I wonder who invented gloves? Then I think that there are a lot of cool things that some unknown genius invented. Like bendy straws, nail polish and Cheez-Its.
I wonder why I mentioned Cheez-Its in this e-mail and I wonder if this is perhaps the most random LoL to date.
On that note, I wonder why the Dave Matthews Band song Grey Street isn't getting more radio play too. It's for serious the best DMB song since Sattellite and I hardly ever hear it on the radio. I really like it though and the lyrics 100% describe my life right now. I like Where Are you Going too and Bartender. I wonder why I haven't bought the album Busted Stuff yet.
I wonder if the reason I don't hear it is cuz I listen to crap music at work. For those of you who remember my Windy 100.3 agony of late October to December (The grapes commercial was the WORST!), you'll be happy to know that 100.3 is no longer Windy. The good news is it's WNND best of the 80's and 90's now, the bad news is, it's still kinda crap music. Granted I like your Manic Monday, The Safety Dance, Karma Chameleon, and I've never been one to turn off Corey Hart - but I think I'm maxing out on REO Speedwagon, Chicago, Foreigner, and Journey...and I don't even know that I can tell them all apart anymore.
I wonder if I have anything else to rant about right now....
nope. Guess not.
Wonderfully Yours,
lisa :)
p.s. I just realized that that closing makes me sound extremely egocentric but it's wonderfully as in I'm wondering not as in I'm the most wonderful person in the galaxy or anything like that. I also wonder if anyone has birthdays coming up that need shoutouts or if I missed anyone...
p.p.s. And for anyone who's wondering (no pun intended) my wisdom teeth surgery went well. The four gaping holes in my mouth are still a bit of an annoyance, but I'm doing fine. When they were first putting me under I was sitting in the chair staring at the ceiling and the dentist (starting to inject me with something) said "Now you're gonna feel a bit dizzy here in a sec...." and while he said that the ceiling tiles all started to rearrange themselves. It was way cool and I think my last words before going totally out were "That's way funky..."
p.p.p.s. I breifly mentioned the "grapes commercial" from Windy 100.3 and I don't know if I ever talked about it before but it's the California grapes commercial that I list as the single most stupid and annoying radio jingle I have ever heard in my entire 22 years of existence!! To quote the part that I unfortunately remember:
"The holidays are almost here,
so many people to shop for. I fear
I'll be wrapping, decorating til I drop,
the produce section is my very first stop!
Sweet and juicy, simple and true, I wanna share my grapes with you!
Keep those candy canes and sugar plums away, you see,
it's just California goodness for my family and me!
Red and green and blue black too - I wanna share my grapes with you!
I wanna share my, my grapes with you!"
Is that obnoxious or what?!?!? It was on at least twice an hour every work day in December. And if you don't find it hideously annoying just call me sometime and I'll sing it for you. Trust me, you'll agree.
:)
(I wonder if anyone will actually call and ask me to sing that...)
Happy Wednesday everyone! Wednesday is happy (or at least I'm happy on Wednesday) cause for all partying purposes it's Friday!!
I'll come back to that thought in a minute but first, some things I've learned in the past week.
I have a neice. No, I didn't just learn this in the past week, but I've learned some things about her in the past week, which is what this e-mail is about. And I just realized that I have no clue how to spell niece. neice? niece. nice! Nice niece, (try saying that ten times fast...) but anyway to avoid any more spelling difficulties, her name is Ashley. She's my brother and sister-in-law's daughter and currently my parents only grandchild. And this amazing thing that I've learned is that she and I are a lot alike.
She's 8 months old. I'm 268 months old. (Hence the "260 months apart") I'm taking a clue from her though that it's kind of cool to count your age in months. It's sort of like the whole dog years thing, but better. Not only do you get to seem really cool by being in your two-hundreds (much cooler than your twenties) you get a birthday every month! You can throw a little "happy birthday to me party" every time your day comes around (sorry for those of you born on the 31st...) but I'm even thinking that this could work for restaurants that give free dessert on your birthday. Just walk in and say "It's my birthday I'm 230 months old!" and see if/when they figure out that it's not a multiple of twelve.
Another thing that Ashley and I have in common is that neither of us looks our age. She's fortunate enough to be off the charts for height (or rather length) at her age group so everyone thinks she's older than she is. I've never had this problem. I've always been short. At 5'6"ish - a not so tiny stature, mind you - I'm the shortest person in my family (tied with my mom). In fact, if it weren't for my can-you-palm-a-basketball?-giant handspan noone would guess that my entire family is over 6' tall! But anyhoo, I have the opposite problem of Ashley, I tend to look much younger than 268 months. It's a fact that I'm starting to take pride in but still find a little annoying at times. Here's me talking to some of the high school leaders with the jr. high group at church:
9th grade girl: So what grade are you in?
me: (laughing a little) Oh, I'm old. I graduated in May.
another 9th grader: Oh I was gonna guess you were a junior, or a senior at most.
me: (laughing even more) No, I just graduated from COLLEGE.
Their stunned expressions can't be put into words but it was a most hilarious exchange. So it's not so nice to be 22 and be mistaken for twelve, but I figure when I'm 32 and still getting carded I won't mind so much.
So the last thing Ashley and I have in common is that we're both teething. She's go the cute little baby teeth going on and I've got the pain in the...mouth wisdom teeth. In fact this is why today is like Friday. I'm taking tomorrow off because I'm going in for oral surgery to have all four removed. And since I don't know what kind of shape I'll be in afterwards, I'm taking Friday off as well. It's a yucky reason for a vacation, but it's a vacation nevertheless. (hee hee I said neeverthuless...hee hee)
It's rather annoying too, because as soon as I tell people that I'm having my wisdom teeth taken out, whoever I tell feels the need to chime in with their own horror stories of how awful it was for them or their friend or their second cousin's uncle's best friend's former roommate. Or there's just the usual quips of: "Get ready for a liguid diet!" "You're gonna look like a chipmonk for a couple days!" "Keep those ice packs handy!" "Make sure they give you some codeine to take home." "It's not so bad...after the first 48 hours." Now this wouldn't be quite so bad if I didn't already have a rather long-going fear of dentists (in the Seinfeld world, I'm an Anti-Dentite). [Flashback to my root canal at the age of 11; To quote my dentist: "That might've hurt a bit, I just drilled through a nerve"] But alas, as of noon tomorrow it will all be done. I'll have four less teeth, I'll get to pig out on yogurt, applesauce and ice cream (not all at once...eww)and even if it does hurt, it'll be better than the massive tooth infection I got last month that almost kept me from "LoTR: The Two Towers" (which is the only reason I scheduled the surgery at all).
You have to wonder too, why do they call them "wisdom" teeth? Yeah you could explain that they come in around the age of 18 traditionally considered an age when someone beomces "wise", but by having them removed am I somehow giving myself permission to be stupid again? Hee hee...this could be my new excuse for foolishness. But then again if someone says "Act your age" I can always retort "In years or months?".
Two Hundrend and Sixty-Eightfully Yours,
lisa :)
p.s. The one other thing that Ashley and I have in coomon is that we both like our naps. Hers in a car seat, mine on a train. We both wake up, rub our eyes and come to that startling realization "Hey, cool, I'm home." And finally a shoutout to Greg to say that if I'm ever rich and INfamous these e-mails will probably get published as a testimony to "Guilty, by reason of insanity". ;)
A polar bear walks into a bar and says "I'd like a gin and..................tonic please."
The bartender hands him the drink and asks "Why the big pause?"
Polar bear says "I dunno, my dad had them too."
Heh heh....thought that was kinda funny. And I couldn't think of a more random way to start this e-mail than with a polar bear joke. And it's also a special shoutout to everyone who's ever played the "Don't think about Polar bears" game.
Speaking of bears, my friend Hank was speaking at the youth group at church on Sunday and he was using an analogy about sports fans that get really excited about games and he said "I know you've all seen on TV when the Bears are playing and the camera scans the crowd and finds those four guys with their shirts off and their chests painted. The first guy has the B, then the next has E, then A, R....oh wait I guess that'd be five guys."
It was funny. And for the sake of this being a frivilously overly random e-mail, I vegged out Sunday night in front of the TV. I was reading my Entertainment Weekly (the coolest magazine on the planet!)but I couldn't help noticing that the program of choice from my parents was "The Crooked E: The Enron Scandal". Now sure the collapse of Enron was one of those tragedies destined to make it into the made-for-TV-movie hall of fame (or rather hall of infamy...) but this one surprisingly enough starred neither Sally Field nor Kellie Martin (it did have that guy who played the evil lawyer dude on Angel though...). But anyway, leave it to CBS to turn the Enron scandal into a love story.
It was totally cheesy. Speaking of things that make me really annoyed (like overly cheesy TV movies) I was on the train for an hour and twenty minutes yesterday! Normally the train portion of my commute is 35 minutes but we hit a car. Nobody was hurt or anything. Some car just stalled on the tracks and someone left it there or something. But the ironic part of this story is that normally I take a 5:22 or 5:44 train home, but yesterday I got off work a little early and caught the 5:00. Here was me all excited to be getting home at the early evening hour of 5:32 and the train goes and hits a car. Then it was funny cause when we finally got moving after being stopped for so long I look at my watch to see 6:10 and the announcement comes over the speakers to say "We are experincing delays due to an accident with a car stalled on the tracks. There are no injuries. This train is approximately 20 minutes behind schedule and Metra apologizes for any inconvenience". Some guy behind me was obviously really annoyed cause he yelled out "WE're already 40 minutes late, is Metra gonna apologize for not being able to count?!?" It was funny. But seriously, I'm still trying to figure out what kind of Space-Time CRACKtinuum exists such that leaving work a half hour early means I get home an hour later than if I leave on time. *sigh*
And speaking of weird things about work, Alex (aka Sparky, aka the really cool Russian PhD that I work with) comes into the lab this morning tosses a stack of petri dishes on the counter, says "Rats!" and leaves. I'm thinking "Uh, oh, someone's having a bad day" so when he comes back I say "What's wrong?" and he says "Huh?" so I say "Is something wrong?" and he gives me the "You're on crack" look and shakes his head so I return the "You're on crack" look and mutter "Oh". A minute or so later Tina comes into the lab wheeling a cart full of cages with our little furry friends - the rats. Turns out today was the day for rat corneal angiogenesis assays. That's a fancy way of saying we're doing some not so pleasant things to rats' eyes for the sake of finding out if a drug we have can stop tumor growth. Yeah, my conscious is a bit torn about the whole animal testing thing but what we're learning from it (and if it works) is actually worth the cost. [Would you rather kill 25 rats or a six month old baby with cancer?] It was funny to explain my misunderstanding of the "Rats!" exclamation though because Alex explained that if he was ever actually angry or upset I wouldn't understand it because - in his own words - he does all his best cursing in Russian.
Anyhoo, sorry this e-mail got really long, blame Metra.
Randomfully yours,
lisa :)
p.s. Shoutout to the super spiffy James "TheGiantPeach-Frodo-Darkknight-UnkyJames-PortableDanceParty-KFJ-TooManyNicknamesToRememberRightNow" whose birthday is on Saturday!! Happy 24th!!
**********
Some Notes:
For the newbies, I once again updated my e-mail address book so if you're getting this for the first time this is my random somewhat weekly update of my crazy so-called life and the occasionally funny thoughts to come out of it - "LoL" stands for "Lisa on Life". Replys are always appreciated and if you find my lengthy ramblings too annoying let me know and you can get off the list. :)
For the oldie but goodies, I took a couple weeks off there and y'all can read on to see why.
***********
Happy Year of the Ozone!!!!!!!
Don't worry, it's not a warning to go lather yourself in sunscreen with SPF 900 it's the so-called Year of Ozone because it's '03 and the chemical formula for Ozone is O3. (I don't remember if I said it in a previous e-mail or not but last year '02 was The Year of Atmospheric Oxygen - scientific formula O2). Hooray for all us neo-nerds who actually think that's funny!!
Anywho, for those who have been wondering if my lack of e-mails meant that I fell off the face of the earth, I can assure you that I am as spiffy as ever. My Christmas was really sweet and fun and everything a Christmas should be. Good family times. The really fun part of the last couple weeks though was that I used up all my accrued sick days (a grand total of 3!) to take off the time between Christmas and New Year's and went on a trip to Louisville, Kentucky with Illinilife (the church I was involved with at U of I. It was a really cool conference (called Ignite) with really cool speakers (Steve Bush - he rocks!!) really cool worship (Chris Tomlin!!) and above all really cool friends (love y'all lots!!!).
To give you the conference in a nutshell (which would require a very large nut...): city tours, Los Aztecas, sombreros, Waffle House, donut holes, BATMAN!, soft hands, muffin joke, Cheerio, "Hero", mad rush on Starbucks, Kristy Kam, night of worship, Mark Darliphobia, straw wrapper wars, ChipMates - Arrr!, no pudge fudge, Scooby-Jason-Doo, "How've you been Ben?", bubbles in the floor, The Gun Show, Wizard of Oz, Steve Bush stalking, The Mayan Gypsy, reasonably priced...appetizers, wandering ghetto streets, Bread Butts, "I'm sorry Jeffery....", carriage ride, statue climbing, falling off a climbed statue, wet bottoms, "-ness" problems, Brant in monkey form, Old Spaghetti Factory, worship-robics, Bio-Rock, Speed Art Museum, plus a ton and a half of learning, crying, praying, healing, and overall connecting with God in a most awesome way!!
So yeah, I'll highlight a couple of those stories (yes, I fell off a statue...slight wrist sprain...major stupidity point...) in future e-mails, but that's the summary version.
For the sake of being totally random, I just remembered that I have an overdue shoutout to Jigga-Jason with a Congratulations on graduation! And if anyone else gradutated in Dec. and I didn't hear about it, let me know and you too can get a belated shoutout!!! :)
In other news - It's a WHOLE NEW YEAR!!! And today is (un)officially Order Day!! (01/02/03....cause the numbers are in order...) In honor of Order Day everyone has to put something in order (clean a room, balance a checkbook, etc.). You don't really HAVE to, (since I just made this whole thing up), but it'd be funny to put something in order today and then immediately make it disorganized tomorrow since the 1/2/3 is gone tomorrow anyway. But since it is the new year I guess it's time to make some resolutions. And I know in the past I've been the January resolution girl, where once Feb. hits I've forgotten everything I vowed previously, and although it's terribly cliche to say, this year will be different.
Lisa's Resolution #1: The Bible in a Year. I have the guide for it and a couple really cool people attempting it with me. We'll see how it goes and if you want to take on the task with us, let me know!!
Lisa's Resolution #2: Contact. No not the Jodi Foster movie. Contact as in keep in touch better with all you super spiffy people that I miss terribly. Maria, I owe you a phone call, but I think I got a wrong number last time I phoned ya - call me back!!! Sara, Derek, Jacklyn, - haven't heard from any of y'all in forever!! Drop me a line sometime! And to let everyone know, I really do like it when people reply to these. Go ahead and give me the 411 on you - I love to know what cool stuff everyone's up to!!
Lisa's Resolution #3: Be Less Stupid. This is half funny and half serious here. Some of you have heard the whole story of why this is one of my resolutions, but looking back on a not too distant history of statue climbing, pop-can sucking, test rescheduling, syrup drinking, insomniac life of trying to impress people or just appear way cooler than I am, I hereby resolve to be less of a fool. (Note: I'm still destined to be a spazz. I can't quite change the fact that I'm a hyperily energetic caffeine addict with delusions of gradure, I'm just going to be making it a point to save my craziest actions for those times when the glory goes to God. He's the only one worth being a fool for.)
Woah. Okay done rambling now. And yeah you probably all wished that Resolution #4 was "I resolve to discover brevity" but too bad. Why use three words when twenty-eight will make things much more fun and you can even throw in your own made up one's like "Hyperily"? Riiiiight.
For the true minimalists in the audience: Happy New Year.
New Yearfully Yours,
lisa :)
P.S. I just had to share this quote from a Chicago Tribune editorial. It's hilarious and a little too true: "Courtship, like PCP, brings out the hidden reserves of strength and bravery that you didn't know you had. It also makes you do dumb things that end you up in the hospital or jail."
