Saturday, August 30, 2008

"I feel fun about it"

Stephen and I took our nephews Liam (3) and Colin (2) to the zoo on Saturday. They're remarkable children (perhaps I'm a bit biased), and both of them emit a constant stream of hilarious one-liners and unexpectedly profound observations. I loved just listening to them talk to each other in the back seat of the car.

In the morning, we had just gotten in the car and were discussing which animals we were excited about seeing at the zoo, when the following exchange took place:

Liam: I want to see the lions.
Colin: I wanna see the... giraffes!
Rachel: Ooh! Boys, remember last time when we got to feed the giraffes?
Both: Yeah!
Stephen: Maybe we'll get to feed them today.
Rachel: Liam, how would you feel about getting to feed the giraffes?
Liam: (matter-of-factly) I would feel fun about it.
Rachel and Stephen: !!!!!

The phrase is genius. But even better was the way he said it perfectly clearly, casually, and without missing a beat. It's my new favorite expression.
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Friday, August 29, 2008

6 Random Things

Melissa tagged me and that just always makes me feel so special! Here are the rules:

Post the rules on your blog
Write 6 random things about yourself
Tag 6 people at the end of your post
If you're tagged, DO IT and pass on the tag


1. I'm just a little bit OCD (aren't we all?). I've written about this before. One way my OCD manifests is in the consumption of colored candy. Because, unlike most people, I can't just eat a bag of skittles. I must organize the skittles as I go along. If I have a handful of colored candy, I try to pick off the superfluous candies of each color till' I have the same amount of each color. Or, I will eat them so that I end up with an ascending number of each color (1 orange, 2 red, 3 green, 4 yellow... etc). This makes it very difficult for me to enjoy candy in dark movie theatres.

2. Some people like to put on soothing music if they're trying to nap (like Enya or something). I, on the other hand, think the perfect napping music is Metallica. Nothing helps me to relax better than the Black Album. During high school my parents would sometimes find me asleep (while purportedly studying) on top of my books with thrash metal playing loudly in the background.

3. I love to bellydance.

4. My dear dear sister Amy and I have a lot of really strange expressions that are really just inside jokes but we often use them in regular conversation with other people. I wonder... do they think I just used a real word that they don't know the definition of but they're too embarrassed to ask because they want to look intelligent? Or do we just look crazy? Regardless, our favorite word is ZONINO, an expression of celebration or happiness. Best used in conjunction with some kind of wild hand gesture. Well... I feel that everything is best used with some kind of wild hand gesture.

5. I eat Kashi cereal every single morning. I bring a few servings in a zip-lock bag with me whenever we go for a weekend roadtrip, and the first thing I do whenever we visit Denver is go straight to Whole Foods and buy a box or two. I'm like an old lady who just can't handle breaking from her routine.

6. On stereo systems that have a numeric volume display, I insist on setting the volume on a multiple of 5. I usually have the volume in my car at 10, and sometimes when Stephen drives he will casually reach over and turn it up to 12 or 13. I then sit in the passenger seat slowly descending into madness until I simply cannot bear it anymore, and turn it up to 15. Ahh... that's better.

Sadly, I can't think of 6 people who read my blog regularly enough to get this, but here are my 4 tags:

Amy
Jennifer
Lysie
Thomg

Share your idiosyncrasies with us!
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Thursday, August 21, 2008

Tedious.

There are some people at the church doing construction work on the roof due to some hail damage we incurred recently. I should be more specific about what kind of people are here: men. Construction men. Construction men who were inexplicably given a key to my office. So I sit here in my isolated office which doesn't offer a view of the door, usually all alone, while a number of strange men have free access to my building.

Yesterday morning, one of them came in the the offices to use the restroom. He must not have realized I was here because he didn't bother to close the bathroom door. I had called out, "Good morning," because I thought it was the pastor, but Mr. Construction Man didn't hear me.

I heard him, though.
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Wednesday, August 06, 2008

Welcome to Beijing!

Obama Pictures and McCain Pictures

Tuesday, August 05, 2008

"Old Man"

I promised to post some artwork, and as I've been lazy lately and haven't done a whole lot of new work, I thought I should post an older piece. This is an 18'' x 24'' pencil study I did (I spent a little over an hour) on a photograph from National Geographic. I actually had to take a picture of it with my digital camera because it was so big. It was a sort of liberating piece for me. I tend to be a perfectionist so working on something so big was a challenge: I could either obsess over details, or I could interpret the photograph and have fun with it. This ended up being one of my favorite drawings I've done.