Guilty Pleasures of the Musical Kind

Hey Everyone!

OK, so I have been tossing around a couple of ideas. One was writing about small scarves and the judgements that I receive from wearing them.

SIDENOTE: A scarf is meant to warm one's neck, correct? Therefore, to wear a scarf that merely fits around your neck and leaves a little tail is doing what a scarf is meant to do.

OK, sidenote done. Onto the post, that I decided to write about. So, via my Visa card, I gain points and then can get sweet gift cards for various places. This time I decided to go crazy and get an iTunes gift card. So, I am very strategic in my buying on iTunes because oddly enough 25 bucks doesn't get you that far. So, I have been pondering my purchases for a few months (no joke... I'm a little weird when it comes to buying music and movies for that matter.)

So, there's this one album that I have considered buying for 2 years. Seriously. You see, back in my teen years, I was a Christian music junkie. If Lady Gaga was around back then, I probably wouldn't even know who she was. You ask me who Rebecca St. James was and I would look at you like you were stupid.

So, this is not a bash Christian music post because hey, if you put on an old Michael W. Smith album right now, I would be smiling ear to ear. But there is one man in Christian music who keeps me buying his cds to this day. And that guys' name is Mark Schultz. I can't help myself. I own all of his cds and the cd that I have been circulating for 2 years was his latest offering, Come Alive. So, here I am two years later listening to his album on repeat. I put it on my iPod and listened to it as I fell asleep and I quite literally had a smile on my face.

Mark is my guilty pleasure cause I am pretty sure if I went to his concert I would be the youngest person (let's just cancel out the homeschoolers) there!

And if you have no idea who this fella is, here's a little taste.

So, here's the rules - I told you mine, now tell me yours.

Holy Mother's Day

Hello all!

My apologies for the long silence. But there is a reason for it.

Mother's Day.

You see, I work at a floral warehouse and this is one of the biggest days of the year. So, I have lived and breathed work the past few weeks. But in that time, I have begged the question - does everyone really buy their mother flowers on mother's day? I honestly don't remember ever doing that. We always did something different. One might say that we were too cheap.

I feel like buying flowers has been lost on my generation. But perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps I am just a scum bag who doesn't buy my mom a nice bouquet of flowers. So, here is my short little blog for this week - do you buy your mom flowers on mother's day? And if you are a mom - do you like to get flowers or would you rather have something else?

I will be back soon with a longer post! Cheerio.

"Bam" and laughter - when you really shouldn't

Hello all!

OK, so in case you didn't know - I LOVE to scare people. And even when it happens unintentionally, I laugh like a little school girl. Oh, how I laugh.

And one of those unintentional scares happened today at work. I had loaded up a wagon with a bunch of heavy boxes. And so in our cooler there are two separate rooms. To get to the other room you have to go through swing doors.

I saw one of my co-workers on the other side of the swing doors but didn't think much of it. So, I barge through the doors with the wagon leading the way and my co-worker jumps out of his skin. But he seems a little flustered and doesn't say anything about scaring him. So, my first instinct is to laugh so hard but I feel like it would be not nice to say that he was scared.

So, then becomes the near impossible task of not laughing. This always happened to me at night church when I a kid. I used to always want to burst out laughing at something my cousin or my sister would say. There's something that makes it worse when you know you can't burst out laughing.

So, I unload my cart facing the wall, smiling so big. Finally, I go back to the warehouse and freely chuckle to myself. Cause, well, scaring people is just that funny.

I still laugh to this day about a time that my two roomies, Laura and Melody, scared each other by accident in our basement apartment. It was seriously the funniest thing ever. If you'd like to hear that story - let me know I will tell you the humourous tale.

So, what's the best scare you've had or given? Or what's your tale of the forbidden laughter?

The Crazies Edition - My Experience with Pot

Hello All!

So, as you know, I am living in Edmonton currently. This city is full of interesting characters. I attribute it to the northern climate. You know, people go crazy with such long winters. And there are long winters and many crazies here as a result. It doesn't really matter what neighbourhood you live in either.

I would consider my neighbourhood to be pretty basic middle class type living. So, I was walking home from church on a Saturday evening. The sun was just setting so it was getting darker as I walked home. About 5 minutes from my house, I saw this man walking toward me. He was kinda walking funny and he had these huge rubber boots on with his jogging pants tucked into them. Under my breath, I was like "dear Jesus, please keep me safe." Then as I got closer he turned his back to me and had his feet spread apart. Then my heart started beating a little more. I was like what is he doing and how am I going to get around him? I got closer and closer and as just as I was about to pass him, he turned around and looked me right in the eye.

I thought he was smoking a cigarette but then I smelled the smoke and realized it definitely was not. Living at the house I did in University, I know the smell of pot so well. Eh, Keefer ladies? The people who lived above us, smoked it a lot.

And so, anyway, as I walked quickly past him, he said to me:

"Sorry about the pot smoke."

I mean what do you say to that? I didn't want to engage him in conversation so I said, "Oh, that's OK." And then he yelled after me, "You're welcome."

Most of the crazies here are pretty harmless but I must say that I have feared more for my safety here than in Toronto. But there are definitely a lot of crazies. Dang winters.

Bus Adventures

So, I am a bit of a rare individual in that I actually like taking the bus. I like it because you really get a pulse of a city by experiencing a whole bunch of strangers stuck in small place. There can be the weird guy who mutters to himself, the middle class mom or the many students who rely on such transportation. I miss not having access to a car but I like the bus for what it is.

Though, I will confess that there are days when I feel so claustrophobic and just want to get away from people. And this happened to me this past week. I was returning home from work and that day I wished I had a car to just get me from point A to point B. For some reason, my annoyance indicator was incredibly high.

I believe in true honesty in friendships. You know, if they have an annoying habit, I will most likely share it unless its something that they can't change or if its just plain silly. I can't think of an example right now but use your own imagination...

So, the reason I bring this up is because of this man and his friend/girlfriend/wife (whatever she was) that were on the bus this past week. I was so anxious to get off the bus that day and then this couple sat down across the aisle from me. And after about 30 seconds I heard this sound. Just imagine lips smacking together and sucking teeth. Sounds like that. Lots of saliva involved. And so I thought to myself. How in the world does this woman not hear this?? If that was my friend, I would have been like shut up - do you even hear yourself? And so for the next 10 minutes, I tried my hardest to distract myself but the more I tried that, the more I focussed on the sound. You know how it goes.

Really, any other day it wouldn't have bothered me as much but that day I was just ready to get away from a bus full of people!

Have you ever been trapped by people who annoy you that you don't know? On a train, bus, plane?

On a scale of 1 to 10, how bad is it to steal from a church library?

Hello everyone!

Hope you are all well. Winter is continually dragging on here in Edmonton but I hear that we are on the home stretch so that's nice. I wore a spring jacket yesterday but realized, when waiting for the bus at night, that that was a mistake even though it was only -6... My bad.

OK, so I have started going to a church that has a service on Saturday evening. So, I arrived early last night so I decided to wander the building and explore it a little. I happened upon a smallish library. I browsed the books for a bit and upon looking a little closer at the selection - I saw them.

A bit of background before I continue. A person, whom shall not be named, (to protect the rights of the innocent but actually in this case, the guilty) borrowed these particular eight books.

I give you full permission to laugh but this series is like having a coffee with an old friend. It is a lovely experience. It is called The Glenbrooke Series by Robin Jones Gunn. Now, I am a bit of a freak when it comes to book covers so I had these lovely covers from 2001. OK, so back to the original story.

I gave these books to the person whom shall not be named and alas after a summer, they were gone! I have had a wee bit of an obsession trying to find these covers but to no avail have not found them. Until that is, last night.

My eyes happened upon, these eight 2001 versions of the Glenbrooke Series. My first thought was indeed, how could I steal these? And my second was, could I buy them from the church? I don't know what that says about me...

But alas, I left that library with a smile on my face thinking to myself that I needed therapy. But I will never let go of my search until that is, they come out with better covers. Have a look for yourself. Question: Which cover do you like best? They go in order of release year (oldest-newest):

A Profound Moment in an Ordinary Day

Hello all!

Near the end of the day at work today, I was sweeping in the flower cooler. One of my co-workers was in there cleaning up as well. She is moving to another department on Thursday and I asked if she was glad to move on. She turned to me and said,

"not really. If I could die, with a bucket of flowers in my hand while in this cooler, I would die a happy woman."

I didn't expect her response to impact me but it did. It made me a little jealous that she had such a passion for something and knew she would die happy doing that.

Aside from the obvious implications that she doesn't know God and is void of the real life that He offers - it made me wonder, that if I were to die doing something, what would it be? I'm not sure I can answer that right now in my life.

But let me throw it out there. What is your passion that you would die happy doing?