Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da...

Life goes on, brah!


Wow, thought sometimes bails after a good Beatles line (some sort of psychedelic residue inherent in the words??). I should probably take the hint and end the post right here, but... :P


January and February have jointly made some most fascinating months for moi... college was left beind, countries were crossed, conferences were had, and to cap all, it seems that two meteors who merrily orbited their own paths for a while have now collided... we'll see what comes of that.



Yet, inevitably it's Wednesday night, and I refuse to go to bed, and lo and behold... a blog.
The current conundrum seems to be how long Candace can hold out her sanity and decorum and still remain jobless... Today I received word that the Substitute teaching license which I hoped would be here soon is still probably two more weeks out (hopes of sanity and dignity were diminished, children). And the more I thought of it, the more that hatching a sort of Plan B seemed the thing to do. So, being the jobless wordy woman that I am right now... I made a whole list of plans - haha!

So:
Plan B - go get another job while I wait for my first job to become a job.

Plan C - give up on useful and productive life and successfully memorize every episode of Gilligan's Island ever made. hmmm

Plan D - scrape some money together giving plasma and use the rest of my time volunteering at different organizations around Kokomo.

Plan E - devote my life to learning 108 ways to cook turnips.

Plan F - renovate my bedroom into a lifelike section of The Pequod from Moby Dick and stump around the house with a harpoon yelling "Avast!!!" at unsuspecting moments.

Plan G - walk over to the library with a wheelbarrow and resolve to read the complete works of Dickens, Milton, Scott, and Joyce in a week.

Plan H - finish typing this blog, go to bed like a reasonable person, and pick the most reasonable of these to do in the morning (sorry Gilligan...).

Yup, I think I'll do that last one. Tomorrow there will be precious daylight in which to pursue some path.
Tonight, my friends, is simply for sleep and stars...

going off

the radar for a few days.

Has happened before...
will happen again.

'nuff said.

I wanna see miracles
To see the world change
I wrestled the angel for more than a name
For more than a feeling
For more than a cause
Singing 'Spirit, take me up in arms with You'
And you're raising the dead in me


And if I'm honest, what scares me is that I look in my heart and this is exactly what I don't see. Not this, but selfishness and bitterness, laziness and apathy... coupled with a crippling inability to see the Savior who came to change it all. How it would transform me if I could see Him clearly...

But then I remember what a much better suppliant once prayed:

Lord, I do believe, help my unbelief!


And how he was answered
the spirit rebuked, a son restored, life changed. God incarnate reached down, grabbed his hand, and pulled him up... alive.


Lord, you've been raising the dead in me all along, and tonight I get to worship you just like a father and son did 2000 years ago: afresh, alive, anew.

this rocks my world

and should rock yours too...


Jet, Bring It On Back

arg, I tried to embed the video... but it won't let me. Oh well, you can click the link and see it nontheless....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4XLleCHiU4


Double arg, apparently you can only see it if you have a youtube account. Anywho, for the record it was a video of the group Jet singing an acoustic version of this song in a London studio. I certainly cannot endorse all of their music (I certainly haven't heard it all). Buuuut this one particular video happened to rock, and I happened to try to share it with you.

Well, there's my succes story for the day.... I'm gonna leave this post up so that at least you can see that I'm still alive and attempting to enjoy artistic experiences. Ciao!

waiting

what are you waiting for???

a hug

for you
today.

abroad we go and ho ho ho...

TEA!!!

This shall be a post on tea! Or at least, the excessively good times Ben and I had at San Francisco's Japanese Tea Garden, itself an excessively beautiful place.

Note that in the space/time continuum of our trip, this comes nowhere near where I left off... But as Mr. Ben is busy slaying evil bunnies on his compi, and is not inclined to give me the rest of the pics, I had to sabotage my own camera myself and work with what I got.
And this is what I got...




Can we go in???
Turns out we could not, at least not this day, because it took $10 cash (that we didn't have) to get two bums in! But, we were happy to come back another day, and monetarily support this lovely sliver of San Fran. Because...







Skadoosh!!! Coolness was great when we got there!!







This was one of *the coolest* parts of this uber cool place... the Japanese moon bridge! Only the very surefooted, brave, or Japanese should attempt to climb it...







but it was no match for me and Ben!! Yatta!!









View from the top. Sooo pretty!







This was an uber cool little pool-inside-the-rock thing... Spiffy. (that, and I was finally learning some of my camera's focus settings - yeay!)








Fish! Japaneseish colorful fish! (and, er, not for eating either... hopefully...)








I liked the other bridges too, they were made stepping stones placed just far enough to let water through, but also easily crossable by little legs, if necessary.








Hiragana. And no, I can't tell you what it means, other than the fact that the first simbol is a "no" sound... hmmm.








Everywhere bamboo with wooden fences....










A grievous reminder that not everyone is a friend to the gospel in Japan.








Ben wisely suggested that we stop and have... what else? Green tea!! By this time we were hungry enough that the buiskets and snacks provided, though... culturally enlivening..., were devouered hungrilly








at least for the most part...










But it was, by all accounts, a beautiful time, and one of my very favorite on the whole trip.

more picthurs!

We have a site!

Ben poured his precious time into a loverly road trip site which will (more or less) bring you up to date for the past couple of days (with fewer technical errors than mine...)!   Not sure where you can comment, but you're welcome to effuse here on on facebook...

Here ye be!

www.gothink.info/Roadtrip

Ciao!

TaDa!!!

Ladies and Gentlemen...

We liiiiive!


That's right! Eight full days after we set out on our intrepid journey, we're still in the land of the living! Needless to say, it's been some trip! But rather than tantalize your imaginations we'll dive right into some photos to let you in on the fabulous adventures of Ben and Cabbage!


Sunday night

Welp, any good trip begins with packings... and this is ours: Can on left, Ben on right.



Meet me in St. Louie!

Since we left at 4 a.m. in the morning we don't have any pictures of the first five hours of travel which Ben manfully and single-handedly drove by himself. Yatta!






thusly



















Then, since we were by this big arch (silver, and not golden kids) we magically decided to stop.


thusly














in which photographic frivolities ensued...






and we basically got to rest our brains.
















But no rest for our wheels... California already???

Nope.
Kansas.
We had landed in Kansas.














But that's ok


Kansas has many memorable... memories.


Right?






But really, our first day was a good drive, through some truly lovely land.






















And we were glad when it came to an end...























(note: this was *not* actually the end of our journey. Believe us that it was dark when we finally pulled into Colorado Springs. However as we didn't bother taking pictures of the dark and this provides a serene ending to the web log, we will leave your imaginations here...)



Regrettably, in this post I cannot proceed beyond our first day... pictorially at least. But do not fear that more photographic wonders will follow! (ok, I'll admit this first day was no roller coaster ride, and I don't know what the weird spacing is tha blogger is doing... but trust me... it gets better!!)


Siyonara!

So

Once upon a time...

There was a cabbage. [what better way to begin a story??] This cabbage had waddled (rolled really) through four years of college. It had been great fun and the cabbage was all the greener and leafier because of it, but she had finally rolled out of college and that was that.

Now beyond all expectation certain kindly vegetables had granted the cabbage some funds for rolling out of college. These were unexpected, but very welcome. And now she had a choice, what to do with all this funding? Well some went where it needed to go (even a cabbage’s life has expenditures), others she traded to a potato for his ipod touch (he didn’t need it anymore), but when it was all done, she was still in possession of a sizeable fortune... at least for a cabbage, you know.

So the very simplest thing that a simple cabbage could think to do after she rolled out of college, was, quite naturally, to roll some place else.
California, for example.
Yes, there was a thought for you, she could roll to California for a few days vacation, then roll back to her home in Indiana. A perfect idea.

And so the very simple cabbage decided (after some not-so-simple deliberation) that she would in fact go to California at the next available date– Monday sounded good – and take the potato with her (he was her brother after all). They would roll over the Rockies in their cabbagemobile, see the sights of California, and roll back the same way. Simple really.

And... well... that is where the story must pause for the moment, because quite frankly the rest hasn’t happened yet. But don’t worry, we’re sure the cabbage will have some very fun and hopefully not-so-life-threatening adventures with her brother, the potato, and return to tell the tale some day.

Perhaps she will post pictures on the pea bowl during the trip. Perhaps not. But if you don’t hear from her for a while, never fear. Somewhere between you and the Pacific Ocean is a cabbage/potato combination sure to be having fun somewhere. And before they know it (at least hopefully before the potato’s school starts up again!) they will be back.

because...?

Because you are precious in my eyes,

and honored,

and

I love you

Isa 43:4



Merry Christmas all

congratulations

The temptation is great to slap up another post that attempts to quantify life in google images... but I must consign that certain moments require the effort of words from people... so here, with no particular forethought from a two-day college graduate, are some words...

I find it strange, at this supposedly auspicious junction, to actually be congratulated. Now naturally I'll accept any amount of random joy and felicitations from my friends & family, but the thought that I've accomplished something truly great is beyond me at this point. As far as I can tell, all I've done for four years is gone to a little state school three miles away, studied, worked some campus jobs, and accomplished what millions of other young adults could have done with probably less grousing. It was my job for 4 years. I was just doing it, and wonder now about all the buzz.

But that's just grousing again. For I forget easily. I forget how I got here. I forget the countless hours (amounting to *days* really, if you think about it) that they have put up with my endless babble about literature or chemistry, or French...
I forget about the dining room table that they let me take over, the cups of hot tea brought to my bedroom, the celebrations that were held each time I finished a semester.
I've forgotten that they supported, prayed, and cheered me to where I am today. They deserve to celebrate this milestone, for they helped bring me here.
And then I forget about the frantic prayers before tests, prayers that were answered... amazingly, wildly beyond my desert. About the agonizing periods of writers block into which came clarity. The moments of fatigue into which came either strength or rest. (How could I forget them??? And is the weakness so far behind me that the congratulations are now really for me?)

And I forget about the times (there were so, so few of them) that I was on the giving, rather than the recieving end, of important information. That someone who was munching their dinner or discussing their homework got a little stab of the gospel into their day. How many times, hundreds... maybe thousands? could I have said something that I didn't? I forget that the God who endures such cowardice still promises bright and beautiful things in the future. That is something to remember, when college is long gone.

Yet it's done. It's over. And in the blink of an eye I am standing with four years of unpayable mercies behind me, and the cheers and encouragements of all around me. Congratulations?? I'm just a little puddle into which He has come along and dumped a load of diamonds. And oh, if I were just worthy of the gift...

But these are all just post-graduation mumblings... a piece of clay with eyes wide at what the Potter has done. And to all the clay's startled misgivings, He simply says in Hosea 14:4, Oh yes

I will love them...
freely.

today's story...

.

thank you God

for stars
and everything between them

.

In this world of news, I've found nothing new
I've found nothing pure
Maybe I'm just idealistic to assume that truth
Could be fact and form
That love could be a verb
Maybe I'm just a little misinformed.

As the dead moon rises, and the freeways sigh
Let the trains watch over the tides and the mist
Spinning circles in our skies tonight
Let the trucks roll in from Los Angeles
Maybe our stars are unanimously tired

Let your love be strong, and I don't care what goes down
Let your love be strong enough to weather through the thunder cloud
Fury and thunder clap like stealing the fire from your eyes
All of my world hanging on your love

Let the wars begin, let my strength wear thin
Let my fingers crack, let my world fall apart
Train the monkeys on my back to fight
Let it start tonight
When my world explodes, when my stars touch the ground
Falling down like broken satellites

Let your love be strong, and I don't care what goes down
Let your love be strong enough to weather through the thunder cloud
Fury and thunder clap like stealing the fire from your skies
All that I am hanging on, all of my world resting on
Your love.

clandestinely waiting ‘til le auteur returns…

.


don't worry little blog, after the GRE we may just come back...

for the record...

for all of my computer friends who demanded that I use gmail, praised its benefits over other emails, and tirelessly haggled with me until I said I'd give it a try, here's looking at you, kids:

::gives gmail a big hug for spiriting her away from the school webmail and instantaneously making life easier::

ahh, that felt good.

And on the fourth draft she said...

How precious are your thoughts to me, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
If I should count them, they would outnumber the sand...

When I awake, I am still with You.

well...

durst we???