High School Best Friend Visit YAY!

Similarly to when my sister visited a few weeks ago, my best friend of 11 years, Jessica, is now gracing Dallas with her presence; so, in the spirit of being a good hostess, I'm going to just quickly list the day's festivities (as a memory note more than anything), and elaborate on them later...

-Cheesesteaks at Texadelphia
-Buying eggs at Tom Thumb (not exciting, but necessary)
-Peering at Illuminated Manuscripts from the Sistine Chapel's collection
-Frolicking about SMU's campus
-Making introductions to various friends we encountered in the two aforementioned endeavors
-Wandering the fancy mall, including frolicking about in Tiffany & Co., a Betsy Johnson boutique, and a Vera Bradley Boutique, and resisting expensive purchases from these places in favor of buying a $4 necklace from Forever 21
-Stalking down Chuck Norris's house
-Eating the best Tex-Mex ever at Chuy's for dinner (and randomly running into a Bible Study friend)
-Eating ice cream cookie sandwiches at Pokey-O's
-Regretting the juxtaposition of the two aforementioned activities
-Watching The King's Speech
-Watching Friends (The One with the Blackout)
-Passing out from exhaustion (on Jessica's part, anyway...at this point, she'd been awake nearly 24 hours straight.  I, on the other hand, wrote this blog post).

And that was our day!  And NOW, I too will go pass out from exhaustion.  Goodnight, world.

A Day of Doing Things Inadequately

Today, nothing quite went right...nothing was quite completely horrible, but it was generally an inadequate day made up of several inadequate actions on my part.

Inadequate Action #1: Oversleeping and arriving 50 minutes late to my 80 minute morning class.  (In this class, even making a short appearance as a frazzled/poorly-dressed oversleeper is better than not going at all, which would make it look like I skipped intentionally).

Inadequate Action #2: Taking a 2 hour nap upon returning home after I already overslept (in my defense, I couldn't fall asleep until about 3:30am, and had to get up by 7:30...)

Inadequate Action #3: Spending an unnecessary amount of time bumming around on the internet when I have better things to do.

Inadequate Action #4: Replying in a misleading way to an email for work, and having my boss point out the error of my ways.

Inadequate Action #5: Taking an excruciating amount of time to turn left out of my parking lot because the various cars and runners were perfectly spaced in such a way that prevented me from exiting.

Inadequate Action #6: Almost killing an innocent Asian girl in the parking garage (as opposed to NOT causing the poor student's life to flash before her eyes).

Inadequate Action #7: Sitting awkwardly on the end of the table at sushi with friends and effectively isolating myself from conversation.

Inadequate Action #8: Never exercising today, but eating more ice cream than usual.

Etc.

By the end of the day, I did manage to get the most important things done, namely creating an outline for my exegesis paper and cleaning the entire apartment in preparation of my friend Jessica's arrival tomorrow (yay!).

So yeah, that was my life today.  SO interesting, I know.  In any case, I'm excited to see my best friend of 11 years tomorrow!!

Let's Talk About Men.

So last night I had a dream that Nick Jonas and I were in love.

Yeah.

OK, before everyone gets creeped out at me for being a cradle-robber, I should point out that Nick Jonas was somewhere in the neighborhood of 24 years old in my dream (he's apparently 18 in real life).  It was one of those dreams that is really, really realistic and elaborate, so that you're surprised to find out that it didn't really happen when you wake up.  A good example of this detail is that, in my dream, I wished my friend Amy happy birthday, and today is her birthday - little weird details like that crept in from my actual reality to make the dream seem ultra-realistic.

He's like, so dreamy, like.

To summarize the scene, I'm at the wedding of my friends Emily and Jin (another realistic detail, as they will be getting married this July, and I'm planning on attending).  Apparently, they have invited Nick Jonas, because he walks in as a (quite attractive) 24 year old (Nick Jonas ages well in my dream world).  Everyone gets all excited and starts taking pictures and stuff, but I don't because I recognize him as a real person and not just a celebrity (aww).  So anyway, he comes and sits by me for the wedding, and we basically fall instantly in love and generally spend the rest of the dream talking and holding hands and other cutesy little things.

And then my alarm starts going off, and I wake up all blissfully happy to have such a fantastic guy as Nick Jonas in my life, until slowly the realization sinks in that it was a dream and of course I'm not dating Nick Jonas, and instead I'm just as single as I was when I went to bed last night.  In my still-groggy state I find this to be very depressing, and hit snooze and sleep for another 2.5 hours or so to drown out my Jonas-less sorrows.

Unsurprisingly, by the time I actually got up around 11:30, I was over losing Nick Jonas, and instead thought that the dream was REALLY weird, if for no other reason than that I really have no interest in the Jonas brothers whatsoever and rarely give them any thought.  I actually didn't even know the name of the dreamland Jonas brother; I did know his face, though (remember, realistic dream here), and so I googled them and determined that it was Nick Jonas that won my heart.  The other weird thing I discovered was that Nick Jonas actually LOOKED older in my dream...because he was definitely older than that 18 year old kid looking at me out of the computer screen.  If 24 year old Nick Jonas showed up at my door declaring his undying love with me (or at my friends' wedding, for that matter), I'd give him a chance or two or ten thousand.  Eighteen-year-old Nick Jonas...not so much.  He's kind of 18-ish, and his rendition of "Empty Chairs at Empty Tables" (one of my favorite pieces in all musical theater for its raw emotional quality) at the 25th Anniversary Les Miserables performance flopped in comparison to less glitzy YouTube performers; I invite curious readers to compare the two clips at the end of this post if they desire evidence of this fact.

I do think that I have identified the source of my dream, though.  Last night I spent a considerable amount of time watching some documentary about Prince William and Kate Middleton's wedding.  The documentary mentioned how a lot of famous people will be attending the wedding, and one of the interviewees said something about how they hoped that William and Kate actually KNEW the celebrities, because otherwise that would be pretty weird and potentially distracting.  I guess that concept really stuck in my mind...and was transformed into dreamland in the form of my meeting Nick Jonas at a wedding.  Weird, but explainable.

The Prince of Belgium, aka my best royal shot.

Concurrent with the watching of that documentary was a lengthy Skype conversation with my best friend Brandi centering around eligible princes of the world that we could snag for our own royal weddings.  Our primary source for our research was an online photo gallery aptly titled "World's Hunkiest Eligible Princes" (seen here), which I found through some simple Google searching.  In case anyone is wondering, I've decided that my best option is to marry Prince Amedeo of Belgium.  Why?  Because before he even showed up in the photo gallery, I declared to Brandi that I should marry the heir to the Belgian throne, as I LOOK Belgian myself.  I base this assertion on the fact that when I visited Belgium for 2 days in 2009 I was consistently asked for directions to various landmarks, presumably because I looked like a native Belgian; the inquirers always seemed a bit disappointed to find out that I'd  been in Belgium for less than 48 hours and could no more point them toward the Mannekin Pis than to Zimbabwe.  Anyway, when Prince Amedeo showed up all eligible-like on my computer screen, he seemed like the natural choice.  You're all invited to the wedding.

Here's a problem I've discovered though: the term "eligible" is horribly misused in this circumstance.  "Eligible", to me, not only implies desirable and sought-after (read "wealthy royal prince in line for the throne"), but also indicates said gentleman's availability and attainability.  Let's face it, I have no more of a chance of marrying Prince Amedo of Belgium than I do of marrying Nick Jonas (though interestingly, Prince Amedo actually IS 24, unlike real-life Nick Jonas).  Yet, all these princes are listed all over the web as "eligible."  I'm sure they are super eligible for royal women or the ladies of the nouveau riche, but that doesn't mean that I'm about to run into any of them at the neighborhood grocery store.  But then there's Kate Middleton, a commoner who somehow manages to prove us all wrong and snag a royal for herself and become a princess.  Darn you, Kate Middleton.

Musing on all of this today, I acknowledged that I probably need to set my sights a bit lower than an heir apparent or a pop icon.  As I'm thinking about these things, I hear a knock on the door, and open it to reveal a very, very attractive UPS delivery guy.  Ironically, he's delivering my pre-ordered copy of The King's Speech.  A sign, perhaps, that he's my metaphorical prince charming?  Probably not, considering he hastened off to his UPS duties after I signed for the package, disappearing from sight.  Nonetheless, this isn't the first time this particular delivery guy has shown up at my door.  My apartment must be in his specified delivery zone.  The logical thing to do, therefore, is simply to keep ordering things from Amazon every day.  My friend Rachel suggested I order something with a title like "How to Date the UPS Guy"...that ought to get the message across nicely.  Or, perhaps in the "special instructions" section of the delivery form, I can say something like "After delivering the package, please invite the recipient to coffee at the coffee house of your preference."  Planning.  That's all these things take is planning, right?  Unfortunately my part-time salary doesn't quite include a budget for daily Amazon spending, and good ol' Uncle Sam didn't give me those student loans to help force attractive delivery men to my doorstep all the time.  Shucks.  Perhaps I should have offered him a cold beverage, or dropped something on the floor that I needed to pick up (Legally Blonde, anyone?)

So those were the three men that crossed my path within the last 24 hours: Nick Jonas, Prince Amedeo of Belgium, and the UPS guy.  I expect one of these gentlemen will ask for my hand in marriage any day now. Expect a Save the Date card in the mail soon.

For those of you who were curious, please refer to these two videos for the Nick Jonas vs Better Random YouTube Guy musical comparison...

I'm full, yo.

So I'm all full of burrito and it's inhibiting my ability to write a coherent and witty post.

I picked my friend Rachel up from the airport at like 8:45pm, and we immediately went to Fuzzy's Tacos where we gorged ourselves on chips and queso and our respected dinners.  It was one of those meals where you don't really realize how full you are until you stand up and then you're like "Oh...dang."  We've both just been laying around since we got back to our respective residences (I know this through the wonders of Skype chat).  Plus I'm all sleepy, so that's just compounding everything.

To quickly recap the day, I worked out, went to the library to work on homework before class, went to class, worked on homework on a bench outside the library, and then picked up Rachel and ate the aforementioned Mexican food.  Exciting, right?

So yeah, that's it for post tonight.  Have a fantastic day/evening!

Little Joys

Remaining quite burnt out on schoolwork from yesterday's library excursion, I did absolutely nothing school-related all day.  That's right.  I'm sure I'll regret this tomorrow, but there it is.  Instead, I went to church, laid around the house, took a nap, talked to my parents on skype, went to the store and bought ice cream, marshmallow peeps, and Reeses eggs, ate leftover honey mustard chicken and potatoes (quite tasty, if I do say so), and went to Bible study.  Not a bit of homework crossed my path, aside from the few pages of a textbook I read while waiting for the church service to start this morning.

Here are three other, small moments of my day that brought me joy:

1) This T-shirt, which I bought in Santa Cruz 3 years ago and which was always a bit too snug to wear comfortably, now fits perfectly.  BAM.

2) Easter-tastic hot chocolate beverage.

3) I caught the final dance scene of Slumdog Millionaire on TV after Bible study.  That scene always makes me happy.  If you haven't seen the movie, go watch it.  And, if you live in Dallas, invite me over, I haven't seen it since I saw it in theaters in Paris (yeah I'm internationally awesome), and I would like to see it again.  Unfortunately, it won't let me embed the video, but you may watch it here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRC4QrUwo9o

My Life at the Library

Yesterday I gave you a sneak peek into my life at the gym.  Today, I give you the sequel: my life at the library.

You know how some days you're super productive and get things done and feel awesome about it, and how some days you just aren't feeling it and even the smallest tasks become more difficult than necessary?  Today was definitely the latter of these two alternatives.

Welcome to the library.  Step one, return a stack of books about Christian education in the African American church.  Walk up to the desk, no one's there.  Oh wait, here comes David.  David is one of my classmates, and he's from Korea.  He's quite nice, and always greets me with an enthusiastic smile, but occasionally I have a bit of trouble understanding what he's saying because of his accent (and he, in turn, occasionally has a bit of trouble understanding what I'm saying).  I put my books up on the counter.

"Hi David!  I'm just returning these..."

"Ah okay.  May I see your ID?"

I dig out my ID and hand it to him.  I always forget if that's necessary for turning in books or not...guess it is.

"Celia, you choose your classes for next semester?"

*insert random chit chat about class schedules, the fact that I'm a CMM student and not an MDiv student, and the general state of my friendships, with confusion on the part of both parties*

David reaches for the roll of stickers.  "Yes, okay.  August 24th."

"Oh, no, I'm sorry, I'm returning these books, not checking them out."

Blank stare. "You...don't want them?"

"No, I'm finished with them.  I'm returning them."

"You don't take them?"

"No."  I pick up a book off the top of the stack, and put it back down, "I'm done with these books.  I had them, and now I need to turn them back in.  Give them back."

Understanding dawns on David's face.  "AH, okay, I'm sorry."  He starts scanning the books back in.

"That's okay, I'm sorry, I should have stopped you earlier."

And, scene.

Books "successfully" checked back in, I wander off to the Biblical commentary section, wondering if it's possible to check a book out twice, and if I would therefore need to check the book back in twice, and if I'm going to wind up with some obscure fine for an "overdue" book that was actually turned back in.  Oh well.  Scanning the commentary shelves, I locate the commentaries on 1 Corinthians, choose four that look promising, and continue into the room to find a study table (the commentaries are along an entry hallway to the Green room).  Two steps later, I stop abruptly.  All the tables are full.  I'm now one of those awkward people who stands looking about the completely occupied room and is then forced to do a 180 degree turnaround.  It's not an unusual occurrence given that the library study rooms don't connect, but it's still a relatively awkward moment for all those involved.  Defeated, I turn around, and walk back to the foyer.  My other options are the Red room or the Blue room.  The color red seems particularly stressful today for some reason, so I continue on to the calming chalky tones of the blue room.

The undergrad students who flock unbidden to the theology school library glance at me quizzically as I walk in with my stack of books.  I realize that this library is close to several undergraduate dorms, and  I realize that it's worlds prettier than the main SMU library with its aforementioned colorful rooms and colonial crown molding and window shutters...it's still a bit of a pain to have a bunch of giggly undergrads in gym attire or flouncy sundresses taking up library tables when you've got a 10 page exegesis to write.  But, all the tables aren't taken, so I choose one, switch on the lamps, and set up research camp.

The paper I'm working on is for my New Testament class, and is an exegesis of 1 Corinthians 7:17-24.  An exegesis, for you non-seminary kids, is a critical interpretation of a religious text that pulls from the text itself and scholarly commentary thereupon, and not from things that crop up in your head or ideas you want to prove (that's eisegesis, and the mortal sin of seminary studies).  1 Corinthians 7:17-24 is a passage in Paul's letter to the church at Corinth, telling them not to get their undies in a bunch over their social position because it doesn't stop you from being a Christian or from serving God.  He specifically mentions gender, ethnicity, and slavery issues.  I've already consulted four books on this passage, including one in French that ended up being the most useful of the bunch.

The book on top of the stack is "Ancient Christian Commentary", so I pick that one up first, flip to the appropriate section, and immediately have flashbacks to last semester when I got all frustrated with this set of commentaries.  The term "ancient" in the title should give this away, but this is commentary from the ANCIENT church writers...people like Origen and Pelagius and several other people who wrote important things but were deemed heretical by the Church.  Considering we're supposed to consult sources from the 1990s onwards, and considering that I don't want to get into a squabble about who was heretical and who wasn't in the 2nd century, and considering that I don't want to get labeled as a Pelagian, I shut the book and push it off to the side.

As non-helpful as the first book was, the second one, the "Sacra Pagina" commentary, is brilliant.  It has a TON of information not just on the structure/meaning of the passage, but of the historical context, specific word studies of important terms, and tells you more about 1 Cor 7:17-24 than you ever wanted to know.  Ten minutes into typing direct quotes into my research document, I know that this book DEFINITELY is telling me more about the passage than I wanted to know...but that's probably exactly the amount that my professor wants, so I keep typing.

I see movement across the room...there's an enormous black cricket walking across the floor.  Gross.

Back to typing.  I shift the book, and my headphones pop out of my computer, playing my French pop music of choice to the entire room, albeit rather softly.  I quickly find the cord and shove it back into the headphone jack.  Glancing around, no one seemed to notice the dulcet tones of Emmanuel Moire pervading the otherwise silent atmosphere.  Anyway, most of the other students are plugged in to their own music...except the woman next to me.  I try to furtively glance her way without being too obvious.  She has a Perkins water bottle.  She, like me, and unlike the undergrads, belongs here.

Back to typing again.  "...7:17-24 constitutes a distinct literary unit set off by the literary device of inclusio or ring construction..."  The woman next to me is looking at me.  Am I typing too loudly?  My college roommate always made fun of me for typing too loudly.  I carefully glance over at her...no, she's just looking at her computer.  Okay, back to typing.

"...the pericope, a digression embedded as element B within the A-B-A' structure of chapter seven is itself chiastically structured..."

Holy crap, the cricket is right beside me.

I start wiggling my chair legs around, hoping to frighten it away.  The cricket just moves closer.  I wiggle the chair more forcefully.  Undergraduate #3 looks at me in confusion.  I stop rocking.  The cricket is sitting still, still facing my direction, probably just waiting for me to look away so it can crawl under my table and hop across my bare feet.  Not okay.  I have a flashback to the Zen center last week...they had a plastic cup sitting by the fireplace, with a sticker on it that said "to catch bugs."  No plastic cup available at the moment, unfortunately.  Carefully, eyes on the enormous cricket, I remove my flip-flop.  I'll just knock it away, I think. Lightly, not to kill it or anything, just to scare it off.  I swing the shoe lightly in the cricket's direction, and it sees it and immediately leaps about 4 feet away.  Good.  Just...stay there.

Back to typing.  My hands hurt.  This book is boring.  I feel like all these commentaries are telling me the same thing, and even though I have 10 pages of direct source quotes, I feel like I have nothing.  Stop lamenting your situation, Celia.  God has called you to this, right?  Has 1 Corinthians taught you nothing while you've been reading about it for the last 3 hours?  I press on, typing line after line until I  think my head is going to explode.  I finally finish that commentary, and push my way through the other two.  Victory.

My brain is completely fried, and my eyes hurt from staring alternately at small print and the bright computer screen.  I let my brain cool off with some YouTube videos for about 15 minutes, decide that I've had enough research for one day, and pack up my things.

I walk out the library doors, and am immediately greeted by lots of nicely dressed people hovering about the entrance to the chapel.  There must be a wedding going on today.  Sure enough, there's a white limo parked on the street, waiting to whisk the happy couple off to their new life together.  I shrug my backpack over my shoulders, and walk down the stairs in my jeans and striped t-shirt, my combination flip-flops/cricket shields making unglamorous slapping noises with each step.  I'm a bit underdressed for a wedding party; what WILL the bride think of my ill manners?  My head still hurts from hours of research, and the whole world seems slightly out of focus.  An attractive groomsman comes into focus out of the corner of my eye.  He's looking in my direction, smiling.  Could this be my soul mate, right here on my campus, tuxedo-clad and waiting to whisk me off in that white limo, causing scandal to the bride and groom but not caring a bit because it was love at first sight and he's Mr. Willoughby and I'm Marianne Dashwood and we don't care what the world thinks of our naive and unspoiled love?

Sorry, attractive groomsman.  1 Corinthians 7:17-24 just told me over and over again to stay in the situation in which I was called, not getting all upset that I'm single and not trying to change my social position by marrying the first good-looking guy in a tux that I pass upon exiting the library.  Besides, Willoughby had a scandalous past and gave up on Marianne in favor of a woman with a good fortune.  So much for naive and unspoiled love.  No, attractive groomsman, I'm better off without you.

And anyway, I have an exegesis paper to write.

My Life at the Gym

Today I decided to take an independent venture to the SMU fitness center.

I've been to the gym at SMU several times this year, but I've never gone alone; I've always had some number of girlfriends with me, and it's always been at 10:00 in the morning.  But around 5:00 today, after a day of laying around all day and piling my cart with frozen dinners and chicken dinner fixin's at the grocery store, I decided I might as well go and get my fitness on for awhile.  I've been 0.7 pounds away from my current weight goal for like a week, and seem to not be able to lose it, and a fitness center excursion is more helpful to that end than laying on the couch watching TV reruns.

Getting to the gym was quite the effort.  I planned to quickly swing by Walgreens and then proceed to campus; a 15-20 minute journey, tops.  But, thanks to traffic from a broken stoplight, getting lost on a shortcut to avoid the highway, and general Dallas evening traffic, it took me a full 40 minutes to get to the campus that I live less than 3 miles away from.  Fabulous.

Happy to be at my destination, I plop myself down on an exercise bike, set the timer to 20 minutes, and start pedaling with Owl City playing through my headphones (they've been my workout music of choice lately...all peppy and upbeat).  I glance at the guy two bikes down and notice that he has a laptop strapped precariously to the front of his machine.  Trust those rich SMU kids to bring their expensive electronic devices to the gym with them.  I keep pedaling, staring at my laptop-free exercise machine, and think that I could have at least brought a book or something to look at.  The TV above my head is showing semi-intriguing news stories without captions.  No luck there.

As I'm usually at the gym with friends, I have someone to chat with while pedaling my life away.  Without a conversation partner, I suddenly realized the awkward set-up of the fitness center.  Three of the four lines of cardio equipment face the weight-lifting area and weight machines, and my recent machine of choice (the aforementioned exercise bike) is in the front of these three lines.  This means that when I'm working out on the bike, I'm staring straight at all the people lifting weights...including an abundance of young gentlemen who are far from unattractive.

Unlike the guy with the laptop, I don't have a convenient, interesting media-object to stare at unceasingly, and so my eyes naturally go to whatever movement is happening in front of me, which is all these muscular guys lifting various assortments of weights.  My scientific and well-researched observation is that big university guys are much more muscled-up (and more attractive) than small liberal arts college guys...and there I was, making awkward eye contact with practically all of them, because I have nothing else to look at.

Flirting is not my strong suit in any situation, and my flirting abilities drop approximately 10 points at the gym.  Unlike the skinny undergrad girls with their cute little jogging tanks and booty shorts, I rolled into the fitness center today in my teal French club t-shirt and brown stretchy cotton capris, with my hair pulled up into a non-elaborate ponytail.  But, if I had any modicum of flirting skills, I think I could have had some good results; maybe it was the French quote on the back of my t-shirt that made me seem all mysterious and bilingually interesting, or the fact that my straight hair generally has better double-take results with men than my curly hair, but I got my share of gym glances too.  Of course, being my non-flirting self, I generally responded to most of these by feigning sudden intrigue in the timer on my machine or the still uncaptioned TV set above my head.  Kind of counterproductive, but it's always my gut reaction when I see a cute guy looking in my direction.  Perhaps this is the root of my current singleness.

They say the gym is a good place to meet men, and perhaps it is.  There's certainly an abundance of men bopping about the various fitness machines.  But today, after completing my 20 minutes of exercise bike and 10 minutes of elliptical, I left the gym still guy-less.  Oh well.  Better luck next time, perhaps.