Is it just me or does this tree look like a troll?

Ran across a troll recently.

Luckily he had already been turned into a tree.  Wouldn't wanted to have met him (or her) as a Real Live Troll.

Exactly two weeks remain of my stay here in the D.C. area.  Three weeks until I move back to Alabama.  That's three weeks of jobless, aimless fun (and some packing), still feeling like a student but without all the homework and the pressure of graduation.  Two years since I graduated from college, seven months since I came back from Wales.  Sheesh.  If I often ramble on about the passage of time on this blog, it's because I can never quite grasp its ever-fluctuating but never-ending march onward, as places, experiences, people slip behind me.

Which is partly why I aim to be a good bit more intentional with my time and my life from here onward.  I'm sure I'll explain a little more in-depth in a future post.

The Books Strike Back

It's movin' time.

Or, at least, packin' time.  Movin' time is kind of complicated, and involves more than one car trip south.  What that means for right now is shuffling my stuff around, getting rid of the excess, and packing it all in a well-ordered fashion.  This of course is super fun for me.  I'm not joking, it is legitimately fun - I may misplace things on a daily basis, live in a constant state of disarray, and put off necessary tasks until the last minute, but I LOVE to arrange and organize things.  It's like a puzzle - how can we arrange and store these items with the most efficient use of space, with the accessibility necessary, in the most logical way possible?  (I should mention that my tendency to live in disarray means that, when I do organize things, they don't stay organized, which means later I get to organize them again.)

Sometimes, organizing or packing is like real-life Tetris.  Especially when you're packing books.  Yesterday, I fetched a few book boxes from the garage (they're book boxes because they're small and sturdy) and went Tetris-crazy trying to fill every inch of space with book.  And I did a smash-up job.  Filled a box top to bottom with books, with hardly any nooks or crannies left unused.  Then I tried to move the box, so that I could start in on the next one.

It didn't budge.

So much for the most efficient use of space.  I took out 10-15 books, tried again.  Still wouldn't move.  Took out a few more, a few more, until finally it was light enough for me to pick up with some effort.  By then it was only about half-full.  Resigned, I filled the other two boxes half-full.  I need smaller boxes, and more of them.  Or I need to get rid of some books - but we all know that's not going to happen.

I promise I did not arrange these books to make me look as nerdy as possible.  It just happened that way.

This is maybe one-third or one-fourth of my books.  MAYBE.  

Suddenly, Summer

I have been complaining for months now about the cold weather.  "I haven't had a summer since 2011, I am so tired of being cold!" was my main complaint; you see, Welsh "summer" is significantly cooler and wetter than even the coolest Georgia/Alabama spring.  Even if I say I prefer cooler weather, the (not cold) hard truth is that I'm Southern deep in my blood, and it's going to take more than 12 months to acclimatize me to a cooler climate.
Therefore, up until last week I was bemoaning the Spring that yet to show its face, still wearing sweaters and scarves.
And then Summer came.  And now I'm melting.
But at least it's pretty.

This is not a cherry blossom.  But it's still pretty.

Let's Have Dinner

 Sharing a meal is often at the center of socialization.  Eating out is often at the center of socialization.  Why is this a good idea?  Well, you have a lot of choices, you don't have to do any work, and within a couple hours you have an out if you decide you've had enough socialization for one evening.

What about eating in?  I appreciate a good meal out as much as anybody, but as far as spending time with friends goes, I'd rather have a meal in with friends rather than go out.  Here are my top 5 reasons.

1) Communication.  Restaurants are often loud, you're crowded around a table surrounded by strangers, your server keeps popping up, and once you've finished your meal you have a limited time before the server starts eyeing you for taking up a table.  It's no coincidence this is at the top of my list; maybe it's because I'm a big fat introvert, but I'd take a quiet, private venue with the opportunity for sustained, personal conversation over a noisy, public place nine times out of ten.  I like to really get to know people and enjoy their company, and I think that a private atmosphere goes a long way in fostering that.  I mentioned above that eating out is a good way to have a set end to the socialization if you need to bow out early.  That's still true - but hopefully your friends would be sensitive to time.

2) Comfort.  I think it's far more comfortable to chill out in someone's kitchen/living room than in a restaurant.  And you can pop in a movie or play a game.  Relax.

Soup is easy, cheap, and delicious

3) $$$.  Assuming we're talking about restaurants a bit nicer than fast food, if you get everyone to participate in the cost of food, it's going to be significantly cheaper to cook in than eat out.  Now, I'm not suggesting that you prepare a huge meal and invite all your friends over for a dinner party; there's a time for that, but what I'm talking about here is casual, like hanging out + food.  Share the burden - if you're not hosting, bring food, come early to cook.  It doesn't have to be fancy.  Spaghetti is good, and cheap.

4) Fellowship.  This is kind of connected to Communication and Comfort, but goes a bit deeper.  Preparing a meal with people, helping clean up, hanging around while it's all going on - you get to know people.  You're doing life together.  If you're trying to make new friends, inviting them into your home to share a meal can go a lot farther than meeting them somewhere.

5) Food.  It may feel like there's more food options at a restaurant, but as someone with food allergies, I can attest that finding a dish that's free of allergens can be a seriously big hassle.  More than once I've ordered a dish and pushed part of it off to the side - or I've had to send something back because I asked for it without dairy and it came out with dairy.  This has been getting better in the last few years as more and more people are jumping on food-craze bandwagons or discovering they have food allergies, prompting restaurants to offer more allergy-conscious choices.  But then restaurant food often turns out to be a lot worse for you than you'd expect - cooked in creamy, buttery, sweet, delicious sauces.  Sometimes eating healthy means getting a salad without dressing, and honestly that just doesn't always fill me up!  When you cook at home, if you distribute food responsibilities, you can a) know what's in the food, b) be sure that there's an allergen-free option for your friends, and c) easily have healthy options.  Also, some of us (cough, me) love to cook, and feel silly going all-out for one-person meals.  Having friends to cook for makes me really happy.  You can share recipes and ideas.

Half cheese, half no cheese - perfect for sharing!

Just to be clear, I'm not suggesting you never eat out with your friends.  I'm just advocating for swapping some of those meals out for meals in.  You might find it's more fun and more rewarding than you expected, and a little easier on your wallet.

Another perq to having spaghetti is the artistic possibilities

D.C. Bucket List

I'm moving in a couple of months (again).  An important task remains.

To see as much of D.C. and the surrounding area as I possibly can.

Sure, I've seen the highlights - the monuments, the Capitol, the White House, Mount Vernon, various exhibits in various Smithsonians - but it's time to cover the nooks and crannies of this history-obsessed place.  Time to be a professional tourist.  

Part of the Berlin Wall

Today we went to the Newseum, which is, incidentally, a museum of the News.  News/media/journalism, etc.  It's not a free museum and maybe not as exciting sounding as the Spy museum (which is a pretty cool museum) but it's massive, contains a huge number of interesting, engaging, and well-laid out exhibits, and it's interactive (if you want it to be).  Highlights include an exhibit on G-Men (the FBI) and the most famous criminals they've pursued, part of the Berlin Wall and a guard tower from Checkpoint Charlie, and a huge gallery of hundreds of newspapers and headlines  - the actual documents themselves, not pictures or copies - from the 1500s right up into the 21st century.  Papers from the American Revolution, the sinking of the Lusitania, WWII, the first Star-Spangled Banner (the newspaper of the US Armed Forces), 9/11, etc.  

Maybe you can tell that I find that really cool.  Of course, you can't touch them.  But you can peer at them in their little glass drawers.

The also have an exhibit about freedom of press and censorship around the world, with this map you may have seen, or seen the likes of:

Red covers countries with heavy censorship, Yellow for countries with a moderate amount of censorship, and Green for those with the most freedom of press.  Norway is said to be the country with the most free press.  If the status of press in a country changes significantly, they change the color accordingly.

Those are just some of the exhibits, off the top of my head.  If you go to D.C., try to take some time to see this museum.  It's not some collection of facts about news media history, it's an examination of how we perceive events (and how they're allowed to be perceived) and how that perception in turn shapes those events and later ones.  It's also a refreshing break from the ivory-columned galleries of Important Dead People's Stuff. (Not that I don't enjoy looking at Important Dead People's Stuff.)

Sorry about the lower quality photos than usual.  I was using R2D2.  R2D2 is my phone.  Because it's a (An)droid.*

Does it bother anyone else that R2D2 is a "droid" but he's not an android because he's not human-shaped?  Kind of like my phone, actually...

*I named it after R2 rather than C3PO because it's white with a blue case.  Also because R2 is way tougher.

A home

A home is full of places for people to sit.  

It's comfortable, clean (although maybe not always tidy), and lived-in.  

It brims with function and beauty.  If something isn't useful, it's meaningful. 

Love rests in the corners and quiet comfort sits on the pillows.  
Stories linger in the air.  

There is always food and tea.  

Extra beds and blankets are tucked in the closets, because well, you never know who will come to stay.  

Every one who enters belongs.

Get Smart: A Sophomore Perspective

A recent quest for some missing books and files led me to a wadded stack of student newspapers from my college days.  From sophomore to senior year, I wrote a regular opinion column, and I saved the newspapers to have print copies of the articles.  Yesterday I finally took the time to cut out and file away each article (though not the ones from senior year; I seem to have stopped collecting the newspapers after junior year).  This afforded me the opportunity to re-read all of my columns and come to grips with the fact that I have a past as a major smartass.

Truly, I was a smartass, and I reveled in it (and I think I would be lying if I said some smartassery didn't still linger within me).  I was sure that I had some special insight into intelligent, rational thought, and my column was my means for the enlightenment of others.  I was a fair epitome of the term "sophomore", i.e., someone who thinks they are much wiser than they actually are.  My column was actually called "Get Smart."

The day we took pictures to printed with our columns, we took "serious" and "silly" photos, and like any normal college students, picked the silly ones to print.  I was wearing aviators in mine and making a "wry" face.  My (affable and forthright) philosophy professor said to me once, "You know...you kind of look like a pothead in this picture!"

My column was fairly popular and sparked discussions in some of my classes, at least, and I don't necessarily disagree with most of what I wrote.  It's hard to articulate and back up an opinion in 400-500 words (just look at my posts here), and I favored the blunt, witty approach.  Towards the end of my time there I had already begun to change, though; my topics turned from political to philosophical & theological, I renamed my column "Truth in Fiction", and I requested to write less frequently.  Apparently from that point I didn't care to save the print copies.

I truly enjoyed writing the column, up until the end when I just got tired of everything college.  I enjoyed being a fantastic smartass.  Yet, while I wouldn't mind writing regularly for publication again, I think I'm going to (try to) leave the sophomore me in college and instead make clarity and perspective my bywords.

On Physical Health, from a personal experience

I fear that what I am about to write is going to make me seem like a hypochondriac - and maybe I am, just a little, but if I am, I was made into one by experience.  I'm not writing to gain your sympathy, but rather to encourage.  You are more than your physical limitations, and to demonstrate that, I'm going to tell you about mine.

I always had a lot of colds and sinus infections growing up, stubborn sinus infections that took a few weeks to knock down.  A favorite book of mine as a child was A Child's Garden of Verses. Reading this book and learning about the author, Robert Louis Stevenson, I learned that Stevenson had been a sickly child and had to stay in more often than play outside.  I wasn't sickly, but I got sick often enough that I missed a lot of lovely spring and fall days and felt like maybe Stevenson would understand my frustration.  One year when we went for a week in the mountains, I was sick the whole time.  Being sick is lame.  That's my official opinion and you can quote me on it.  After having chronic bronchitis for two consecutive winters as a teenager, I was treated for a weird and not particularly serious immune deficiency (IgG Subclass Deficiency, if you want to look it up).  And you know what?  I got better.  No more bronchitis, and only a couple of sinus infections a year.

While my family has never been particularly athletic (except for my great-grandmother, whose shortness I inherited but not her skill at sports), they've always been pretty tough.  My dad runs 4-5 miles a day, my mom has always been surprisingly strong, and we used to call my granddad the Energizer Bunny (like from the battery commercials) because he seemed to never get tired.  Although I did get some of my mom's physical strength, when I get sick or my endurance runs low, I feel like I'm being cheated out of my genetic inheritance.

Freshman year in college, I had to take the dreaded, required "Concepts of Fitness and Health."  The two options were running and swimming.  Since I'd been swimming since I was a wee babe, and running was seriously the most miserable thing ever, I took swimming.  Only, I suddenly found that I couldn't swim for very long without getting completely out of breath and feeling like it was all I could do to just tread water.  Curse your sudden betrayal, swimming pool, you had always been my friend!  I didn't know what was wrong but I tried, and I guess the teacher felt some sympathy (I did really well in all the written assignments) and I finished with an A-.  The following summer, I found out I had asthma, explaining why swimming was suddenly so difficult.

I have always loved hiking, and in late high school, I discovered I really enjoyed climbing, too.  They were ways I could do physical activity, be outdoors, and build my strength without triggering asthma.  I got some Five Fingers Shoes to hike and climb in.  Toward the end of college, I found that the more I walked and the more time I spent on an elliptical machine, the better my breathing got, until I stopped using daily medication for it.  I was feeling pretty good about myself and pushing myself harder and harder, not allowing myself to feel weak, until I fainted at the gym shortly after graduation.  I spent the whole summer feeling lightheaded and dizzy and fearing I would faint again, until the doctors finally said I had orthostatic hypotension and gave me daily medication to raise my blood pressure.  I was really afraid that if I pushed myself, I might faint again.  I stopped going to the gym, and I moved to Wales to get my Master's degree.  After I'd been there a week, I got a cold, that turned into a sinus infection that didn't really go away, that turned into bronchitis.  I felt like I'd come full circle.  I discovered that running in my Five Fingers was not as uncomfortable as running in regular shoes, but I couldn't run for more than a couple minutes.  I resigned myself to this limitation and didn't try often.  When I moved back to the US and back in with my parents, I put on my Fives and took advantage of the dry weather and nearby cemeteries, walking with bursts of jogging several times a week.  One day, I started running and kept going; when I stopped and checked my watch, it had been 7 minutes.  The next week, I jogged for 11 minutes; the next, for 14.  When the weather got too cold, I went to the gym to use the treadmill, telling myself I wasn't going to push myself so hard this time, that I was going to listen to my body, and aim for 30 minutes without stopping.  I ran for 15, 20, 25, until a couple weeks ago I finally reached 30.  Yeah, I went slow, but I kept going, and I did it without using an inhaler.

And now, I have a sinus infection.  Nobody's perfect.  Our bodies are limited.  But I can tell you, when I reached that 30-minute-mark, and I didn't feel like I was going to die, I praised God.  After 20 years of feeling physically inferior, it was a huge gift to make that slow 30-minute jog.  I have never been seriously ill, so I can't comment on that.  What I can comment on is feeling like somehow, intrinsically, constantly, you can't do.  I felt like that...but I did something that, just a few months ago, I couldn't fathom doing.  I know I'll never be an athlete, and I don't intend to be one.  I do intend to strive constantly to surpass my personal best, and to be able to manage my health without frequent doctor's visits (props to doctors, though, because they're awesome).  I want to be healthy enough for God to use my life in whatever way he sees best.

My life - not just my physical health - has been a series of "I can'ts" and "I would never's" that God utterly reversed.  I hope that continues, and I hope that by sharing it I can encourage you to believe that he makes all things possible.  Have faith!