who i am

at my preschool graduation i kicked some serious bottom with my solo 'i am a promise' (a nice little sunday school song). every once in awhile, when i see my address here, 'i-am-a-hobbit,' it makes me think of that.

Baseball Chapel - "Asking but Not Listening"

"What would happen in our souls if we would deconstruct our hearts from saying, “I’ve got to go pray and ask God for this,” and instead, train our souls to humbly bow before Him and say “Lord, Jesus, I come before you, to seek Your face on the matters in my life. I want to know Your heart for me. Instead of demanding that you move, God I ask that you move me to pray as you teach me to pray and I believe You , my Great God, for everything that You tell me that I need.”
"It’s in praying these things that we are able to rise from our knees and walk in whatever answer He has whispered in our ears." - Leah Taylor

my mother was nice again

she made spaghetti the other day :)

Psalm 119:18

"Open my eyes , that I may behold wondrous things out of THY law."

my mother was cruel once again

her spaghetti is the best food in the whole world (with the exception of ice cream). it tastes so yummy, and it's homemade, and it's perfect. it's the kind that has to be on the stove all day.
is also smells really good.
today, she put it on the stove before she went to work. so at 7:15, wafting through the vent to my room, was the smell of the best food on earth. it woke me up, and i couldn't go back to sleep for the yumminess of it. i know that 7:15 means that i slept in two hours, but for heaven's sake. did she really have to wake me up on my day off?

Movie Review: Seven Brides for Seven Brothers

It's a well-known fact that I like musicals. It is (one of) my dream(s) to someday have an all-musical, all the time channel (and by have, I don't mean have it available to me - I want to be in charge of it [go figure]). It would have the classics, the little-known ones, the Muppets, everything.

Sadly it had been awhile since I had watched a musical. Yesterday, however, I was inspired to watch Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, which I hadn't seen in awhile. I like it.

In case you don't know, it's the story of 7 back-woodsmen brothers. Adam, the oldest, decides he needs to find a wife, because with 7 men around the house, there's a lot of cooking and cleaning and sewing that needs to be done. So he goes in to town, finds a girl, marries her, and takes her home. (All without telling her there are 6 more men to take care of, of course.) Milly is a fiesty little thing who whips them all into shape, and makes all the brothers decide they need wives, too. This is Oregon territory in the 1860s, though, so women are scarce, and the brothers have to fight for them. (And they get quite clever in their pursuit.)

Luckily, this is a musical, so some of the fighting takes the form of a dance-off. One of the best dance scenes of all moviedom. Also, luckily, this movie does not have a ballet scene that I have to fast forward through because it's so boring. There's a cheesy song and a half sung by Milly in her shrill operatic voice, but other than that it's just plain fun. And it has the song 'Lonesome Pole Cat.' Any song men sing comparing themselves to skunks is just plain a happy thing. It also has an underwear song, like all good musicals should.

And I've always had a crush on Benjamin.

So that's my review. It makes me smile.

i was going to post this a year ago, but i forgot

hobbitsister, however, reminded me of it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QIH8NrNeso

look what chelley found!

now i can get married!
http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/2009/01/sunday-sweets-lord-of-rings.html

dear harry,

you are hereby on my list. ;)

affectionately,

mel

dear joaquin (though i don't want to call you dear anymore),

i've never written a dear john letter before, so forgive any mistakes in how i go about this, but...

what the crap are you thinking!?! http://movies.msn.com/hotgossip/1-19-09_3/?GT1=28101&

you are hereby kicked off my list, until such time as you can look like this again (and stop rapping):

thanks for the years of fantasies, but any dreams of you now include an axe and a dumpster. so please stay away til you're clean (inside and out).

sincerely not yours,

mel

ooh, photo, you get another shout-out! :D

my favorite elvis album is 'from elvis in memphis.' it's not one that a lot of people have heard, but i think i agree with my brother, who said that elvis sounded his best around the time of 'suspicious minds,' and that's when this album came out. so here, in order to make you a bigger elvis fan (provided you ignore some of the pictures, this is old elvis after all), is my favorite elvis song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxnunLJ_fH4&feature=related

oh, and long before sting was stalking some girl, elvis was.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chNsn-wR8_c

hey photo,

we should buy a bar

(provided you've watched tonight's himym - if you haven't then nevermind the rest of this til you have) (actually, i just wanted to say that marshall (and lily, too, i s'pose) was very sweet, and that, yay! minnecider! he made me so happy wearing that twins jersey! :) )

i'm at the library

and there's a girl laughing over there <--. she's trying really hard to keep it in. it's reminding me of this. thus it's making me smile. :)

Melilot Classic: August 20, 2007

ethel and violet

(they're best friends and they sit next to each other at meals.)
today i stood to ethel's left and asked her how she was doing. 'oh fine, except not all the way because violet went away.' i pointed over to her right. she turned and looked. violet gave her a big grin. 'oh - violet didn't go away yet. i'm fine.'

the next book on my reading list

i'm going to try going back to 'anna karenina.' i'm very afraid.

A rare moment of honesty

[though i was honest a month ago, too. this is turning into a dangerous habit that i'm going to have to break. it's far out of my comfort zone.]

"When I'm alone
The faces, they come and they go
I wonder if they think I've changed
I wish I could stay
But be where you are
The countries and cities so far
This is my dream and my gift

"But sometimes I get
Scared
That somehow I'll cease to belong anywhere
So I need YOU when it all starts to show
When I'm alone...

"When I'm alone
I sleep late, it's crazy, I know
The world's passing me by
I guess that is why
I'm telling you now
That I haven't figured it out
The depth of the things that I've missed
They leave me like this

"Scared
That somehow I'll cease to belong anywhere
So I need YOU when it all starts to show
When I'm alone...

Is it true that YOU can find me anytime
'Cause I'm feeling like I'm there
It's about that time

"'Cause I'm
Scared
That somehow I'll cease to belong anywhere
So I need YOU when it all starts to show
When I'm alone..."
- When I'm Alone, Brandon Heath

Huh. And that reminds me of a sad Sweden moment.

[remember - blogs read bottom up]

Seeing as my father told me not to fall for a Swedish boy, and there was only one Swedish boy at school, he was naturally the boy I fell for. (Hard, gall-dang it.) Tall, handsome, Swedish, and a guy who loved GOD, how could I not? Sven was in my family group, so I was with him more than some of the other guys, and some of the things he said either in our group or when he gave devotionals for everyone, are the things that stuck with me the most. After months of swooning, came spring break. We were going on different mission trips, and as his team was leaving, I was cleaning the dining room. Sven came and found me, gave me a big hug (a very big one - he's 6'7"), and said, 'Bye, Melilot. See you in two weeks.' That was all, and then he left.

He didn't come back in two weeks. He didn't come back for spring term. And that was the first (or was it third?) time he broke my heart.

i wish i could go to church every week. it would make it so much easier to be involved and to feel at home. today as he was leaving, plaid said, 'see you in two weeks, right?'
right. two weeks. it'll be two weeks before i get to church again. it makes me sad. the end. :(

Psalm 119:15-16

"I will meditate on THY precepts, and fix my eyes on THY ways. I will delight in THY statutes; I will not forget THY word." (emphasis mine)


[(Will: to purpose an action, to decide, to determine) 'nuff said.]

here i go with the chick flicks again

'just like heaven' and '13 going on 30' in the same week is a bad idea. guys don't come like mark ruffalo. sigh.

Dear Ashida, part 2

I suppose there is a chance that you really were sick last weekend. It is very uncharitable for me to assume the worst. If Michael Cuddyer could believe A.J. Pierzynski, who is evil, that he wasn't gloating when he showed him that he had held onto the ball after all and had gotten Cuddy out in that most important game, I suppose I can believe you, who are not evil, that you were really sick when you called in on a regular day. It is the Christian thing to do. So fine.

Just don't pull it again, or I'll plow you down like Cuddy did A.J.

Sincerely,

Melilot

21 below

i saw a woman out running this morning.

funambulation:

tightrope walking

so now a happy thought

sorry. didn't mean to be whiny. just needed to vent.

and, to make it worse...

my knee has been killing me this week. it hasn't hurt this badly since i first injured it 6 years ago. and i'm sure the lack of any breaks, so i was on my feet the whole time i was at work this weekend, didn't help it. it was bad enough on friday that i was wondering if i would have to go home, but no, i decided not to because i didn't want my coworkers to have to work short. and then i had to work short for two days. bite me, ashida.

Dear Ashida,

We all know you weren't sick when you called in this weekend. We all know that you probably didn't come into work because you were out too late getting drunk the nights before. (The fact that you did some of the work for Saturday morning when you worked Friday night was kind of a dead give-away.) Being short-staffed one day sucks, but two? Come on. That was just mean. I don't care if you feel no responsibility toward the company. But show a little courtesy to your coworkers. Do you know how many times the rest of us come in, knowing we shouldn't be there because we actually are sick, simply because we don't want to screw over our coworkers? What happened to the nice reliable girl we used to work with? You know, the one who didn't do things like call in a couple months ago because she was in the hospital with a blood alcohol level nearly 3x the legal limit. I want that other girl back.
Oh, and you can forget about me trying to find a time when we can go to a Timberwolves game. I don't feel like hanging out with you for awhile.
Sincerely, on behalf of all who worked this weekend,
Melilot

i was reading old blog posts because i'm not tired because i took a four hour nap, and saw that...

one year ago today mark officially became my friend. but i haven't heard from him in months and months. that makes me sad.

i want him to love JESUS.

Book Review: "The Road," by Cormac McCarthy

Very good. It's about a man and his son trying to survive after a disaster that has basically wiped out America.

The whole book has a grey feel to it. Everything is dirty, ash is everywhere, and there is no hope of anything ever getting better. The one positive thing in the book is the love between the father and son.

The writing style is very different. The sentences are choppy, but once I decided to read it like poetry, envisioning these sentence fragments on different lines and not trying to plow through it like I would a normal novel, I found it was actually well-written. One of my favorite passages in the book (as far as the writing went, not necessarily the content) was this:

"He tried to think of something to say but he could not. He'd had this feeling before, beyond the numbness and despair. The world shrinking down about a raw core of parsible entities. The names of things slowly following those things into oblivion. Colors. The names of birds. Things to eat. Finally the names of things one believed to be true. More fragile than he would have thought. How much was gone already? The sacred idiom shorn of its referents and so of its reality. Drawing down like something trying to preserve heat. In time to wink out forever."

"The sacred idiom shorn of its referents and so of its reality." - What a beautiful sentence.

The book is haunting. It makes you think (and feel). What happens to a country when there's no country left? What happens to the people? It kind of makes you wonder what the end of the world will be like.

It's easy reading. (The fact that there aren't chapters, just page breaks, makes it go even faster, because there's nowhere to stop.) Once I got past the style, I couldn't put it down.

I would recommend this to anyone who's open to taking book recommendations. (If you aren't that kind of person, you might not like it.) It's good.

HAPPY SEVENTY-FOURTH BIRTHDAY, ELVIS!

Pedanticness

I am an admitted geek. Especially when it comes to words. Sometimes when I speak, I visualize the words in written form. (Not intentionally - it just happens sometimes. When it does, it can be a bit distracting, but for the most part, it's just something that I have accepted as part of who I am.) Sometimes I get words stuck in my head. Generally they are big words, often words that I either don't know the definition of or wouldn't be able to define if someone asked me to.
Today the word was "pedantic." Unsure of the definition, I went and asked my mom, who didn't know the definition either. I've been reading "The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien," and it sounded like a word he would use, so I went back to that book to check the letters I had read on my morning break. It wasn't in any of those. Finally my mother came to me with the definition (she had found time to look it up online).

Pedantic:
1.ostentatious in one's learning.
2.overly concerned with minute details or formalisms, esp. in teaching.

Satisfied, I went on my merry way through work. At lunch, I picked up my book again. In the very first letter I read was the word "pedantic." Two letters after that, Tolkien used the word "pedantically." Apparently, my weird obsession with words includes being psychic.

oh heavens!

I forgot to celebrate Tolkien's birthday! Shame on me! Here he is, kind enough to have me living it up at the birthday party in "Fellowship of the Ring," and I forget to live it up with a party for him. My apologies, sir. You are still my hero.

Happy eleventy-seventh birthday, Mr. Tolkien!

Tolkien thought of the day

"From a letter to Rayner Unwin [his British publisher] 10 December 1960

"[Puffin Books had offered to publish a paperback edition of The Hobbit.]

"Thank you for your news of the 'Puffin' offer, and your advice. I may safely leave the decision to your own wisdom. The chances of profit or loss, in cash or otherwise, are evidently neatly balanced. If you wish to know my personal feelings: I am no longer able to ignore cash-profit, even to the odd [100 pounds], but I do share your reluctance to cheapen the old Hobbit. Unless the profit is clear, I would much rather leave him to amble along; and he still shows a good walking-pace. And I am not fond of Puffins or Penguins or other soft-shelled fowl: they eat other birds' eggs, and are better left to vacated nests." - The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Humphrey Carpenter

i'm so confused

i went out to eat with kristi (from church) yesterday, and as we were talking, she, in passing, mentioned a women's small group about leadership and said i should join. she didn't say any more than that, and i let it slide, seeing as i'm an extremely non-commital person.
so today i check my email and there's one from my pastor's wife to everyone in this group, "I wanted to let you know that Melilot Brandybuck has joined our ranks as well...so we are now 10...Melilot - read the email below for instructions about the blog. And WELCOME! :) I'm going to assume that Kristi has taken care of getting you the devotional stuff."
huh?

funny

so as chelley and i are talking about needing to trust GOD, cousin johan's bff sends me this prayer:
St. Theresa's Prayer: May today there be peace within. May you trust God that you are exactly where you are meant to be. May you not forget the infinite possibilities that are born of faith. May you use those gifts that you have received, and pass on the love that has been given to you. May you be content knowing you are a child of God. Let this presence settle into your bones, and allow your soul the freedom to sing, dance, praise and love. It is there for each and every one of us.

trusting GOD

I often wish that GOD would show me what my next step should be, so that I can take that step of faith. I forget that sometimes it's a step of faith to let that idea go and trust HIM that there's a reason HE has me where I am right now. That's something I need to remember - that trusting doesn't necessarily mean in doing something, but can also mean trusting when nothing's changing.

my sad football story

i was (kind of) watching football with my dad a little bit ago, and that reminded me of my sad story from sunday.

so somehow or other, the last few sundays i've ended up curled up on the couch (kind of) watching football with my dad. last sunday he left for a week's vacation up north. naturally then, last sunday was when the vikings played the giants. in other words, weeks of football, and i didn't even get rewarded by getting to see eli. so not fair.