That's spanish for "highlighter" in case you were wondering. Highlight of today (as I'm predicting it to be)? MY MOVIE DATE WITH JESSIE! :o) We're going to see Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire at the IMAX baby! In the words of the Kool-Aid man and/or Macho Man Randy Savage...OHHHHHH YEAAHHHH!

I was at work today doing nothing particulary important (I was copying thank you letters which I've determined is one of the most pointless jobs you can do at the development office, especially since they send out thank you letters even to people who donate $1) and I started thinking about what it means to be a child of God. I mean, it's something that I still don't think I have a good grasp on, but the more and more I pray about it and seek the Lord in it, the more and more I think I'm beginning to understand. I feel like a big part of being a child of God is coming to Him with this level of innocence and blind faith. It's like when you're a kid and your dad tells you you're going to Disney world. Well, your dad wouldn't lie to you about something so huge as a trip to Disney world, so you go out and you tell all your friends that your going to Disney world. Some of them may believe you right away, knowing your Dad to be a trustworthy fellow. Others may laugh in your face and say "That's ridiculous! There's no way you're going to Disney World! Your dad must have lied to you." Maybe you even start believing those kids, so you go straight home and demand the truth from your dad. "Daddy, are we REALLY going to Disney World?" That's when he pulls out the plane tickets and shoes you the hotel reservation.

God works the same way! He makes promises to us in His Word. Promises that some of our friends will believe immediately, as they know our Father is a trustworthy God. Others will laugh in our face and say things like, "There's no way that Jesus died for my physical healing or yours. That's a bunch of baloney." Sometimes we may start to believe what those people say, so we get down on our knees and ask for God to reveal the truth. That's when He pulls out the miracles and the Word and shows you the truth.

Being a child means believing what God promises. It means obeying what He commands. It also means knowing that there is someone who will never lie to you, never let you down, and never stop loving you. It's just the tip of the iceberg I know, but it's gotten me very excited.

While copying letters I also determined that life seems pretty strange to me. I mean, everyone always says that if you really want to figure out who you are and you want to understand yourself better, you should ask your friends, coworkers, even your enemies to describe you and your characteristics. For the longest time this seemed valid to me, until someone recently gave me the most wonderful praise I could ever receive. He told me that I am a true Proverbs 31 woman, a goal that I feel is always a stronghold in my faith, a place I strive after. Yet somehow, as I sit here and think about everything that encompasses being a Probverbs 31 woman, I just don't see it! Is it that I've somehow gotten everyone fooled into believing that I'm stronger in my faith than I really am? Or is it as a Proverbs 31 woman that I am just not satisfied with where I stand with the Lord and I am always seeking more? A big part of being that woman is receiving praise such as those words from others, yet somehow it still feels unwarranted, like I don't deserve it.

I've decided that I'm going to start praising my mother every day, and call her blessed. I want to do this for other women in my life, women I love, women I admire, women who simply just need that kind of encouragement. The only way I will ever be able to build myself up as a woman of God is to build others up first. I already took steps in that way at work today, pretty naturally at that. Words of blessing were just coming out towards all of the women around me today, I just couldn't keep them in! I'm excited to see where this new turn in my walk with the Lord takes me.

...and I've never been so alive.

I love how Third Eye Blind always seems to strike a certain cord in my heart with that song. "and there's this burning, like there's always been..."

It's funny, that song makes reference to summertime mostly in that song. A time of year when life is abundant, when people are running around rampant and are outside enjoying the beautiful weather. It seems as though loneliness would be limited during a season like that. The "loneliness" side of this song definitely seems to apply to winter much more. When people are shut indoors, left to entertain themselves or nap, whichever comes first. When people no longer desire to drive to see their friends or go out to the movies. Yet somehow, today, as the first snows of the wintry season fell, I never felt so alive.

It's sort of ironic that the year's most desolate, empty season in terms of sunlight, vegetation, and animal activity would be the time of year that makes me feel alive. Yet it makes so much sense. Breath becomes visible, and you are no longer breathing subconsciously but taking note of every time you exhale, witnessing the steamy cloud disappear silently before your face. You feel each inhalation as a short burning in your lungs, a sting that invigorates and revitalizes, especially if your participating in heavy-duty cardio activities. Your body remains tense and alert as you cross the uneven, slippery terrain (this is especially the case when your borrowing your roommates flat, slippery, high-heeled shoes that you slip on even without the snow). You notice muscles contracting in ways they haven't had to in months, and you feel that your instincts are the only thing protecting you from either extreme pain or utter humiliation. In the midst of all of this darkness, emptiness, and death you are more alive than you have been in months.

I threw my first snowball of the season at a boy named Jeff from my Business Negotiations class. :o) He said he was never going to talk to me again but I know that he secretly wanted to throw one back at me and get involved in an all-out war. I should have convinced him to frolic out into the courtyard to do snow angels. Oh well, there's always tomorrow.

I laughed a lot in class today because I thought of Keith and Buntie hiding in the snow a few years ago to scare random people. :o) Sheer genius right there.

I think I'm going to make a snowman on my porch.

It's amazing how slow this week is going. Usually, under most circumstances, this would serve as a complete and utter annoyance for me, but this week I don't mind yet! I'm getting lots of things done and at the same time having nothing due or any deadlines for any of the the things I'm getting done! It's like I'm actually working ahead and accomplishing things. I guess this is what life feels like when you're actually working hard and doing what you should be doing.

But at the same time, I don't feel like I'm exerting myself any harder than I have in the past. I mean, on Monday I felt pretty awful partly because of paintball and partly because of a throat thing that may be turning into a head/congestion thing today but I'm not believing for that. So, in lieu of going to two of my classes, I went home and relaxed, read, and was in bed by 7:43. I convinced my prof to let me turn in an assignment on Friday instead of that class period, even though I hadn't started working on it yet at all. Pretty ridiculous really but I guess he's going to let the whole class do it so I don't feel so bad. It's funny, but somehow he has me down for completing 3 of the 5 assignments we're supposed to do (we only have to do 3 out of 5) but I've really only done two. I guess I'll just do this 5th one just in case he realizes his blunder. It's pretty easy anyway and I should get it done today to turn in to him tomorrow.

Tuesday I think was especially slow for some reason. My internship was totally awesome though. I'm putting the final initial touches on the site and it should be up and running by the end of the week. I still haven't gotten the flash/movie stuff figured out yet but as long as we can get the site up for now we can tweak that fancy stuff later, probably next semester when I'm there on a more consistent basis. Overall, I'm pleased with the general look of it but I think there are some things that need to be changed today. Hopefully I can get it all done in three hours.

After my internship I went to my grantwriting class which got out early as usual, I came home and crunched out a page and a half of my ten page paper in like 30 minutes. I was supposed to have it relatively well done for class so that when we did a peer review I'd be able to give a peer something to review but in the end I only ended up with a total of 3 pages (1 and a half from a week ago when I was supposed to turn it in for my professor to edit and review). The cool thing? The girl I ended up partnering with didn't have any of hers done so I don't have to do any editing before class on Thursday! And what makes Thursday even more awesome is the fact that I do not have a 1-2:15 clas so I can work an extra 3 hours, a bonus since I'm only working for 4 hours on Monday next week. I could work Wednesday, but I really have a lot of catching up to do on my papers and such.

After class I went on an impromptu shopping trip at Target and purchased a pair of jeans, a cute argyle sweater, and a pink and brown scarf for my hair. I'd say that the scarf was the best purchase, as it is solid pink on one side and solid brown on the other, which makes it totally flexible for all of the pink and brown outfits I wear, which I realized recently are quite numerous (I think I managed to wear a different pink and brown outfit every day of the week one week...insane.)

When I got home I chatted online with my new pal Simms for a while and we determined that a Steak 'n' Shake trip was in order. He only lives like two streets over from my apartment so that's pretty rad! He picked me up and we headed over there for some good times with our waiter Mandon. Yeah that's right, Mandon! I guess his mom wanted every kid in the family to have names that began with M and she liked the name "Brandon" so she decided to change it to Mandon. As of yet, he hasn't met or found anyone else with his name! It was pretty neat getting into a lengthy conversation with the waiter for a change. Sometimes it seems like those that serve us just end up getting taken for granted for, but both times I've been out to eat with Simms thus far we've managed to learn quite a bit about our servers.

Have you ever noticed how everyone you meet looks like some sort of animal? They somehow resemble a turtle, or a bird, or some other inhuman creature. Sometimes it jumps right out at you and other times it takes a good few minutes of close observation to determine what animal that person would be. I determined yesterday that Simms is most definitely a bear.

I think the best part about meeting new people is you get to start brand new. You get to develop a relationship in a completely different way than you did the last one. Sometimes the person you talk to is someone you want to immediately open up to and divulge all your secrets to. Other times there's this uneasiness in the air, a denseness to the conversation that makes it just come out of your mouth and immediately fall to the floor like a block of lead. Or maybe the conversation just flows so freely from one idea to the next that by the time you get home you realized that of the stories you were sharing, you only got halfway through just about every story you told. Either way, it is never exactly like the last relationship you developed with someone and there's so much uncertainty about what this person is going to think or feel about you. You try to convince yourself the entire time that you're not trying to impress anyone, that you're just trying to be yourself, but when you go home begin to question every little thing you said or did. "Did he think I talked about myself too much?" "Did she like my story about the high-speed police chase?" "How many times did I find five dollars in this conversation?" It's incredibly nervewrecking but amazingly exciting at the same time. I feel like I've met a new person every week since I've been back here at school because every week I suddenly turn an acquaintance into a friend.

Mmm...fresh clothes out of the drier...I don't think my clothes have ever been this staticy-ridden.

Okay, I am now just realizing some things today:

1. Next week is Thanksgiving, which basically means I need to get through all of the craziness of paper-writing and test-taking this week and then I am free for some time.

2. In 3 weeks time, Craig will be home from Australia. I'm so excited about this one that I think I'll go use the bathroom right now, just to make sure I don't lose control of my bladder. Ahhh...much better. Right now I'm planning on meeting him at the airport with his mom and dad which should be totally rockin'. A big ol' Craig St. Clair hug and probably a few squeezes to the ribs and head should do my heart good, as well as my phone bill. With Craig in the states, I won't have to use 1010987 anymore! SCORE! We must plan some festivities for this reunion folks, let me know when.

3. In a little over 4 weeks the semester will be over, eliminating one more semester before I graduate. Next semester will be simply awesome, as I am registered for 5 classes, but am only taking 3 actual classes as two of those are counting for an internship (which I've actually started this semester so I'll finish early with my house second semster). I'll be able to work 23 hours next semester (the max you can do is 25) and all of my nights will be free for homework, Godwork, and relaxation. Ahhh...what an end to my college career.

4. On December 9, I'm seeing the Chronicles of Narnia with Fusion. Totally sweet for sure.

5. Within the next few weeks we will be ordering t-shirts for all of the girls at Fusion that are equally ridiculous as they are cool. Somehow we managed to decide that our women's group, which I lead on Sundays, will be named the "Juice Box Crew" as we will be drinking 100% juice, juice boxes everytime we get together. This crew determined that t-shirts were necessary. They will be pink, contain a picture of a juice box with the ingredients "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self control, supernatural power, natural flavors, Vitamin C" and the back of the shirt will ask "Have you had your Holy Spirit fruit punch?" and will contain the verses Galatians 5:22-23. Why do I have to be so ridiculously creative and so willing to do silly things sometimes?

6. I realized that Jessie and I need to have some people over this Saturday for a Disney pizza party. Everyone needs to bring his/her favorite Disney movie and money for pizza and we'll spend the evening watching crazy Disney action like "Beauty and the Beast" or "Pete's Dragon." Let me know if you're down.

You want to know what made this weekend awesome? Friday night after work. I mean, there were so many other awesome things that occurred this weekend, but Friday night I think, maybe, tops it all. Reuben, Ben, and I sat in Bagel Beanery for four hours playing hang man on the free newspapers while occasionally asking, "what do you want to do?" "I dunno, what do YOU want to do?" I must say, Ben was the reigning champion of the evening as he quizzed us with his crazy quandaries involving his favorite musical group, Radiohead. Reuben and I brought his reign of terror to an end after a while but it was pretty maddening at first.

After the bagel beanery we convinced Ben to drive us to Reuben's car, Ben somehow convinced us to get out of the car right before the light turned green, I flipped out because my mitten was left inside and flew the door open to retrieve it, and then Reuben drove me to my car so we could both drive our cars back to his place to watch "Kung Pow" Talk about a bunch of worthless driving! It was good times in the end though. We watched some of the Pistons and some old episodes of "In Living Color" and he made some totally abysmal and slightly too strong coffee that I thankfully never had to taste.

Saturday I got up bright and early at 9:00 and prepared myself for a day of pain. :o) Fusion took a big group of college folk out to Holland to engage in some mad crazy paintball action and we had a totally rockin' time. Highlights: I lost my keys in my car door in the church parking lot, I almost ran over this guy named Derek at the Speedway, we rode on a ginormous brown and white bus to paintball, I got splattered in the face by paint, I met a guy named Simeon that says "face" in the same ridiculously stupid way Jessie and I do, we made a movie of Pastor Ken getting pummeled to death by paintballs, I took a shower in Jessie's bathroom, I jumped off of a deck onto a trampoline, I engaged in some mad crazy outside-in-the-rain-with-clear-spoons olympic spoons action, I dropped a pool ball on my toe, I started a crazy tickle fight, I played the "Super Ninja Game," and I watched Rundown, where I was once again reminded that Christopher Walken is running for president. All in all, it was an amazing Saturday and is one that will not soon be forgotten.

Today was church, which I must say was totally awesome. I really appreciate everything that Ron McManus has to teach on Sundays and because the Fusion festivities were such a phenomenal success, a whole bunch of newbies sat with us regular Fusion folk in our special little seats in the front of the church. Reuben, Simeon, Matt, Anna, and I also had lunch at Cracker Barrel today which was pretty great. We had an excellent waitress named Midge who was definitely a ray of sunshine on my life. Overall, a total success of a weekend which I hope to see repeated in the near future.