perspective, mel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jYLTn4fKYQ

i don't think my cousin posted this for me

but she posted it for me.
Psalm 56:4 "I trust in God and am not afraid; I praise Him for what He has promised. What can a mere human being do to me?"
perspective, mel, perspective.

our new pharmacy guy

we'll be using a new pharmacy at work now. their reps were there today, and i had to sit in a meeting with them. the one man in the group looked like a cross between joe mauer and wally szczerbiak.

i was sitting next to him and i seriously had to stop myself from laughing at him for being so stereotypically good-looking.

just to eliminate any confusion...

prince harry was the answer

know what's fun about programs about the royal family?

Movie Review: Pygmalion

This is the movie (play) on which "My Fair Lady" was based. Let's just say I'm glad they made "My Fair Lady." "Pygmalion" was fine, and a good deal "My Fair Lady" was taken straight from this script. But Leslie Howard is not Rex Harrison, and of course, in "Pygmalion" you miss all the songs (but still have Alfie P. Doolittle, which is a shame). Wendy Hiller was fine as Eliza, and I think would have done better if she had had more to work with ("Pygmalion" is half as long as "My Fair Lady"). And of course I knew it wasn't a musical, so that was fine (though I prefer musicals in general). Really the biggest problem was Leslie Howard. Whoever told that man he could act (even in the 30s)...I just don't know. He was always so wooden. And if you're going to be Professor Henry Higgins, you have to have life in you. It's such a great role (and I think it would be so fun to play, but I'm a girl, so I'll have to be Eliza when I finally get to perform it). I know it's not fair to compare him to Rex Harrison, but even if someone else had played the role in "My Fair Lady," I still would very much not like Leslie Howard as Henry Higgins. And poor guy didn't even get to say the best realization of love line ever. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HroAq_E075Y (Though he couldn't have pulled it off anyway.) So sad.

my new favorite website

thank you, auto! :)
http://heychristiangirl.tumblr.com/

My Alphabetical Biography List: Ibsen, Henrik, 19th century Norweigan playwright

"Ibsen: A Portrait of the Artist," by Hans Heiberg
Not the most exciting book I've ever read, but it was more interesting than Gustav Eiffel, and less tedious than Friedrich Froebel, so that's something. My overall impression of the man is that he was smug and self-centered. I'm pretty sure the only other person he ever truly cared about was his son. He liked having his wife around, too, he just wasn't always sold on her. Also, it seemed that no one actually liked his plays: people were either upset by them or confused by them. One of his plays, Ghosts, addressed how unfair it was that men could philander, but women were expected to be faithful (and also how unfair it was that these poor women had to bear the consequences when their husbands gave them syphilis). One reviewer at the time said, "'97 percent of the people who go to see Ghosts are nasty-minded people, who find the discussion of nasty subjects to their taste in exact proportion to their nastiness.'" Yet somehow Ibsen was considered great even in his own time. I don't understand that. But he gave me an "I" to read, so there you go.

what does all this crap mean in light of eternity?

i'm not here for much longer, 50, 60 years or so (please not 60, but it's not up to me). so what if things stink now? "HE gives and takes away, HE gives and takes away, my heart will choose to say, LORD blessed be YOUR Name." GOD never promised me happiness on this earth. so i just have to stick it out, and someday it will be over and i'll be Home for good. "all i know is i'm not Home yet, this is not where i belong." and there was another song that hit me on the way home from church, but i don't remember what it was. the point is, oh well.

speaking of the weepies

this makes me happy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JscAwVu2QI&ob=av2e

especially when i think about the fact that they look like me and kevin

 

coming home from applebees tonight, i listened to the weepies

who i'm now convinced are the sum of all wisdom
"you know there will be days when you're so tired you can't take another step, the night will have no stars and you'll think you've gone as far as you will ever get..."
"now it's kind of strange how we change orbit in our lives"
"i know which side you're on, and it's not mine"
"i'll make my own way in the wide world, just now i don't want to wander too far...even the stars sometimes fade to gray, even the stars hideaway"
"trying not to hope too hard for what i want, trying not to go too far with all the dreaming, oh, the disappointment so hard to handle"
"wasted on a saturday, join the great majority..."
and so on...

just to catch you all up

to spare the rest of you the tirade that hobbitsister and chelleybutton got to hear earlier today, i'm just going to sum up. (if i keep talking about it, i'll never get over it.)
apparently i am also going to be receptionist. how the crap i'm going to do three jobs, i don't know. why the heck i should have to do it without even the promised dollar raise, i don't know. basically this all boils down to me being extremely angry at the new owner for not telling me this (i heard it from my boss, who clearly thought i knew). yes, i also find it daunting, and nearly impossible to do, but mostly, i'm just very, very not happy, because that is not what i agreed to. he lied to me, which is one of my most hated things. (i'm guessing he lied in part, too, because he was too cowardly to tell me the receptionist part, what with my mom and all. [and yes, he knows she's my mom.])
basically i need to stop looking at this as my job, but with new duties, and instead look at it as, i lost my job and was hired at a new facility, and this is how it goes there. hard to see when you're in the same building with most of the same people, but that's what i'm going to have to do. at least i have a job.

aloneness

"You and I are people alone. Aloneness is a natural fact. No one else in the world is like me: I am unique. No one else feels and experiences the world the way I do: I am alone...But, as Christians, we are called to convert our loneliness into solitude. We are called to experience our aloneness not as a wound, but as a gift - as God's gift - so that in our aloneness we might discover how deeply we are loved by God. It is precisely where we are most alone, most unique, most ourselves, that God is closest to us. That is where we experience God as the divine, loving Father, who knows us better than we know ourselves." - Henri Nouwen

so sad

i went to my old (girls') choir's spring benefit concert today. there were like 40 people there; parents, grandparents, former choir members. and i looked good. such a waste.

go drewseph!

aw, yeah - scoreless inning!

Minnesota  IP  H R ER BB SO HR ERA

Butera     1.0 0 0 0  1  1  0  0.00 

http://minnesota.twins.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20120520&content_id=31830832&vkey=news_min&c_id=min

i don't want to go to bed

cuz then i have to get up. and if i get up i have to go to work. and i don't want to start doing scheduling for nursing. i don't get why the director of nursing doesn't schedule her own employees. director of dietary does. office coordinator does. head of housekeeping does. i don't see why i have to do nursing when it's way harder and i'm not their boss!

i bumped that post

i didn't get rid of it completely, but it didn't say quite what i wanted to say, nor did it say it quite how i wanted to. so it's gone, in case you were wondering what happened to it. it's gone.

i'm with Tzimisce

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2877443/posts?page=21

i have decided

i want to live in middle earth and be mrs. boromir. there wasn't one, but if there had been, i would guess all she would've had to do is sit there and be decorous.

my internet's being crappy

so i have to give up now. sad.

but if you still want something to pray for

my mom lost her job. so now they're trying to figure out what's best; collecting her pension and social security now, collecting unemployment, or getting a new job. no fun.

oh yeah

and i have a job. which is good, i spose. i don't get my $1 raise in a month, and i have more responsibilities, but as for the raise, i guess i have to be thankful i have a job at all, and as for the duties, i'm bored cuz i don't have enough to do, so that i don't mind. so that's that for now.

go me

i now have 4 essays on lotr started. :D

baseball's baseball

and i think my mother's thinking she could get into it

cricket's not baseball

but i could maybe get into it

the interview

but i wasn't down about the interview. that went just fine. it was actually more of a conversation. i feel like i've known him for awhile (could be that he has the laid-backness of my chiropractor), and he asked how i ended up working at the home, what it was like living in sweden, and then how i switched from kitchen to medical records. ("so the administrator basically offered you the job." - yep. thank you, pam, that makes me look good!) we also talked a little bit about opportunities for more education and the fact that he might be adding to my duties (it took everything in me not to say 'Please!!! Please, add to my duties! I'm bored out of my skull!').
i'm not sure when i'll hear back for sure. interviews went through this week, and then he said he's going to jostle things around (in other words, some of the office-type people are losing their jobs, but i'm guessing not me cuz i'm cheap labor [guessing i'm not going to get my $1 raise after my 90 days are up - i threw it out there to no response]), get job descriptions together, and see who fits where. i'm guessing i'll fit somewhere.

i was feeling down today

so i bought myself a pet. it made me smile.

congratulations, joshua!

4 homeruns in one game!?! holy bazoolie!!!

http://minnesota.twins.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?content_id=21274109&c_id=mlb

http://minnesota.twins.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?content_id=21269091&c_id=mlb

and the next day:

http://minnesota.twins.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?content_id=21296543&c_id=mlb

prayer ministry update

in all honestly, i haven't prayed for the players since september (except maybe a quick one here or there - like for my cuddy and for kevin when they left me). but today i got an email from the twins chapel leader asking if i'm still interested in praying for them. how does one say no to that? and so, i will say yes, and i will try this again. hopefully it will go better this time around. by the grace of GOD.

my interview will be thursday at 11:30.
(oh, and my mom's was today, and she thinks it went well.)

from "In Speech and In Silence," by David J. Wolpe

"[Psalm 19] begins: 'The heavens declare the glory of God, the sky proclaims His handiwork. Each day declares, each night expresses knowledge.' The next line in Hebrew reads: 'Ayn omer...b'li nishma kolam.' This can be interpreted to mean 'there is no speech whose sound goes unheard' or 'there are no words - their voice is not heard.' In one case it teaches the value of words, in the other how cherished is silence. The same phrase serves both sides of the message. But in either case the opening affirmation 'The heavens declare the glory of God' remains. Whether that declaration is couched in the glitter of words or in the black sheen of silence, it points back to God."

so melilot...

you know how one of your concerns about your new job was secretary butt? snacking at midnight isn't gonna help your cause.

sorry

i know, when i'm on a kick, i'm on a kick. between here and spoiling point, y'all are probably getting pottered (or even nevilled) out. i'm sure i'll move back to something else soon, though. i am seeing a need for something tolkien-y on here.

jkr said it

i can't find my dh2, so when i wanted to watch it last week, i borrowed my co-worker's, which ended up being very nice, because she has the two disc version, so i got to watch more special features. like tonight i watched a conversation between j.k. rowling and dan radcliffe. at one point they were talking about what the actors knew ahead of time, and she started to say something about matthew lewis not wanting to know anything, when she interrupted herself:

"You know, they cast what they think's this plain-looking kid, and he grows up to be this kind of rock god."

 

 yes, it's true. an oops for which we are all thankful.

(although actually he was a pretty darn cute little kid.)

another fun thing to say

when speaking to myself, i usually speak british. yesterday i was all happy because i 'got a water bottle.' i enjoyed that.

yeah, it's long

Sometimes I wonder what my life would be like if my morfar (mother's father) hadn't died when I was 15. I have a feeling it would have been different. For one thing, he wouldn't have allowed me to work in the kitchen as long as I did. He would have pushed me to excel. Where my parents have always hampered their children, teaching us to be sensible to the point of not taking (and being afraid to take) any risks, which in turn has allowed us to not live up to our potential, Morfar would have pushed me. He would have found it unacceptable that such a brilliant mind was being wasted in a trained monkey job.
Morfar was determined that I go to a top private college. He felt I had the brains to measure up to any competition. He would have loved that I spent a year in Sweden at Bible school, but when I came back, he would've made sure I was all business. If I then decided not to pursue speech pathology, he would've made sure I found something else.
Outside of school and work, Morfar would've encouraged me to have deep discussions. He would've liked to see me have fun (he had a sense of humor and all that), but he would've wanted me to move beyond frivolity. He and I would have engaged in discussions (perhaps in French, perhaps in Swedish, perhaps in English) that built me up. He was a man of such Bible-learning and integrity, he would've encouraged the same in me.
Mostly, I can't help but think, that in losing him, I lost the one person who would understand me better than any other. Morfar was a thinker. Don't get me wrong - all my friends are smart and deep and all that (and I love that about all of you), but I always feel like, I don't know, there's no one who understands the way my brain works. Like I'm different. Like my brain wasn't made for this era. (Maybe that's my big connection to Tolkien, too. One, because his brain was of a different era, but two, also my understanding of him when he felt like his brain was from a different era.)
After Morfar died, it took me 15 years to go see his stone at the cemetary. He and my other grandparents are buried at the same one, and I'd go see my Brandybuck grandparents' graves, and before Morfar's headstone was there, I'd go see Mormor's, but once his stone was put in, I just couldn't face it. I knew when I did I would completely break down, and being me I just couldn't do that. I finally went last year, though, figuring I had to do it eventually (this was getting a bit silly, 15 years later). And I did break down, but I figured that would be it. Once I saw it, I would be fine.
I went there a few weeks ago, though - it's such a nice, peaceful place to walk, and it was a gorgeous day - and I broke down again. (Dumb me, this time I didn't have kleenex.) I just sat there wishing so desperately that he would talk to me, that he would impart some bit of wisdom to me. So I sat there, by his stone, trying to think of what he would tell me. First of all, he would think it was about time I moved on to medical records. But then, as I sat there longer, I thought he would want me to think. He would want me to really truly use the brain GOD gave me. Of course, I had no idea what that meant, or how I could use it, but he would want me to keep thinking until I thought of it. So I sat there, thinking and thinking, wishing I was one of those people who believed that the dead could guide us. And then I started thinking, okay, I don't believe in the Chinese ancestor thing, but the Bible does say that we're surrounded by a cloud of witnesses, those who have gone before. Who's to say that they can't help us along in some inexplicable way? There are many things about Heaven and the afterlife that we don't know and don't understand, who's to say that's not how things are?
And so I sat there some more, thinking. I didn't want to leave until I had some sort of breakthrough. How can I possibly use my brain so as to not disappoint my grandpa? How can I possibly use it when I have no one to share my thoughts with because no one understands me? I'm so alone in this world without having my Morfar here. I'm so hopelessly alone. I want to not disappoint him. Perhaps using my brain would make him feel not so far away, make me feel not so alone. What on earth could I do?
I sat there until I got it. I can write. Write, Melilot. Write something. It doesn't matter what. Morfar would just want you to use your brain in some way. And seeing as you're not in school, that's the one way to do it. Write.

well, today wasn't an interview, it was just a meet and greet. seriously, the more i think about it, the more i don't want the job. i know i should want it. and i know if i keep it, i'll be glad i have it. and i'll definitely be happy i'm in medical records, not the kitchen. but the cook asked me today if i'm getting nervous about keeping my job. i told him no, and explained that not getting it would mean i could do something else. "what would you do?" he asked.
"exactly."

i got it today!!! :D

see that coat there?

(you would've if you had watched my labor of love video, with it's perfectly timed pictures http://i-am-a-hobbit.blogspot.com/2012/03/blog-post.html )

yeah. i own it.

i meet with the punk kid administrator (poor guy - we all know we have to be respectful, but at the same time none of us can look over the fact that he looks like he's 17) tomorrow morning at 9:45 to apply for my job. i want it to go well, because i need a job, and i think i'll like this one, and it's so convenient being so close to my house. but i also truly don't care. if i don't get the job, i'll have the summer to bum and i can start school for something in the fall - maybe medical records, maybe paralegalness, maybe plumbing, who knows? if nothing else, this brief time in this job has let me know that i could like it if i went to school for it, and it got me out of the kitchen, where i would be sure to be stuck if i were there now in this transition. so that's my prayer request - that it will go one way or the other. :)

Things I'm afraid of:

(If you're my guy friend reading this blog, please stop here. I'm almost positive you don't have this address anymore, but just in case, out of respect for a girl's online journal, please let this one go.)

1) That the times when I miss SDBGF so much it hurts will continue if I ever get married. It doesn't really seem fair to my husband.
2) That I'll miss out on someone wonderful because I'm not attracted to him right away. With the last two (okay, the only two) guys I've been set up with, there was no spark. And all I could think with the first one, and somewhat with the second one was, 'If I'm going to be with someone I'm not attracted to, it's going to be the friend I grew up with.' Seriously, he's absolutely perfect for me, and has liked me since we were kids, but no matter how hard I try, I'm just not attracted to him. He's like the Laurie to my Jo (without the nasty Winona Ryder/Christian Bale kiss).