Remember This?

So I haven't blogged in a good month and a half or so, and I'm not sure if I have a good reason, but I'll just say I do and move on. For those of you who are NOT aware, or if I just haven't talked to you since you last read my blog, which I don't think is anyone to be honest, I have been "busy". Now, sure, I have my internship at Cumulus Radio, I have my job at the Limited, and I've got class 3 nights a week. However, with each of those there are nice little * beside them.

With Cumulus, I haven't really gotten 'on board' so to speak, so I pretty much go in when I call in and ask if they need me, not the other way around, which stinks. I mean, don't get me wrong, it's spectacular to have an internship. I just hate not knowing when I am needed and when I'm not as a result of not being notified of anything outside of concerts.

With the Limited, we've hit a slower spot in the selling rotation, and we're over hours a lot, so I'm getting my shifts cut, which is fine, because I get annoyed with that job fairly quickly sometimes. I still need money, though, as was very evident with this last paycheck. Almost exactly 2/3 of it went to bills and I got stuck with $40 for 2 weeks. Blech. Thank goodness for FYE and their promotions.

Finally, with school, it seems like we've hit that wonderful point where everything is becoming a lot more of a breeze and we can basically phone it in and call it a day sooner than we probably can afford. I'm still learning a TON and loving it a TON, but it feels so routine. Which I actually think is great. It's not a boring routine, it's a fun routine that I don't mind. I'm just waiting for an absurd curve ball.

That's not all that's happened, however. Since my last blog, I've been to good friends get married and then attended the best wedding reception I've ever been at. Whenever a wedding reception houses an IMPROMPTU rock opera presentation of Bohemian Rhapsody, and you partake in it, it automatically makes it the best one you've ever been to. I've also attended a Coldplay concert with 2 of my good girl friends, and that was a hoot. Plus, my 22nd birthday has come and gone, and with that birthday came a visit home to see a TON of people. In fact, on my birthday was one of the first Jesus Parties in I'm not sure how long, and let me tell you, it was a different one. It felt so different I actually came home and saved a VERY rough draft of how the night progressed. How I'm going to work this is I'm going to leave the rough draft notes as what I put them at and I'm going to elaborate, okay? Here we go.

• "feeling out of place" - Alright, this one is awfully touchy, because almost everyone who was there has access to this, and I do not in any way want to offend. When I showed up to the Jesus Party, I was walking there expecting it to be a social gathering of extravagant success and for everyone to be talking to each other, about whatever, and then later on worship would start and it would transform into the actual Jesus Party element of it. This was not to be, however, as I was greeted by a slightly intense Q & A type session and it caught me so off guard that I almost left before I had the chance to talk to anyone. I mean, I would have come back, obviously, but it was so uncomfortable for me, because if you KNOW me at all, you know that while I'm a Christian.........well, we're gonna get into that right now on the second point.
  
• "wondering how we're loved if we are just content, and why it's so awful that we ARE" - So yes, this where I'm pointing to. I am a content Christian. I have been for quite sometime. All my life I have been taught that God's Love is everlasting and is such a thing of beauty that it needs to be shared with everyone and shouted from the mountain tops, and look, I GET THAT. I am not disagreeing with that as a form of getting people to learn about God, and quite honestly, people that can do that are so high on my respect meter that it's almost scary. Whether or not you're a Christian, just knowing that people go into hostile areas of the world and talk about God to people that think he doesn't exist, or go so far as to HATE God is admirable in an incredible light. My problem arises as this. That is NOT me. Look, I love God. He sent Jesus to die for my sins as well as the rest of the world, and for that, I owe him my life. It's just not something I'm comfortable discussing with anyone, unless they're on the same page as me, and believe me, I go to class with quite a few of them, and it has done plenty to help me officially mold this as my position. So to my original thing, does God love me any less because I don't share His Love to strangers who don't know him? Or does God love me because I believe in Him, I love Him, and I can talk to other believers about Him? All I know is that anyone who thinks that God loves me any less because I don't share my knowledge of Him to strangers DESPITE my love and admiration for Him is someone who I personally wouldn't want leading the Christian charge. PHEW that was a rant that I didn't want to seem like a rant, and now I feel like I've turned some people off. Sorry.
  
• "going to get coffee" - Yeah, so I'm alright with worshipping. For a little bit. I'm not knocking it at all. It's great, especially when lead by people who excel at it. However, I can't go on these marathon worship sessions when I don't know the songs. I feel uncomfortable just sitting and humming, and it ends up getting the best of me. So at this point I left to go get some coffee, digest all of this that I had been thinking about, because believe me, everything you just read was going through my head on this night.
  
• "coming back totally different and remembering why i love everyone" - By the time I get back, it has become the social experience I had PRAYED it would be just hours earlier, and all that potential feeling of being out of place disappeared in an instant because from talking to everyone for no longer than a minute the whole friendship and reasons why I loved all these people came flooding back and I was briefly angry at myself for feeling that I was out of place amongst them.
  
• "PANERA BREAD" - I have no idea how this started. WAIT! I do remember. Whitney was talking about how she needed a job, and I think Juliya said to try Panera Bread, because it seems like they're always hiring. Then Ryan and I started saying Panera Bread in really funny voices, mostly Randy 'Macho Man' Savage type voices, and hilarity ensued.
  
• "brendan's songs" - Apparently Brendan wrote love songs to Jill, and they were some of the most excruciating songs I've ever heard, but the thing about them is that I could FEEL the love in the lyrics and the emotion in his voice was there. There was a SEVEN MINUTE BALLAD, folks. That's dedication, if nothing else. Oh yeah, it's also undying love. Jill. Undying love, right there.
  
• "the amazing conversation with tasha"- Oh, wow. As some of you may know, and many others I'm sure do not, Tasha Shrock and I have one of the most interesting friendships I've ever had with anyone, and for the past 2-3 years it has focused STRICTLY on how awkward we are around each other. Before that, whenever we would hang, it seemed like we never talked about a whole lot unless it was a group conversation, but there was never that one on one. Well, eventually that changed when we realized how awkward we were around each other. Not in an 'I like you, you like me, and we both know it' awkward, but more like a 'I have no effing clue what to talk with you about' awkward, and up until this conversation, I wouldn't have had it any other way, but as fate would have it, this Jesus Party had something interesting in store for us. I had not seen Tasha in a solid 10 months as she was in Mexico doing mission work, and I talked to her on Facebook maybe 3 times for very short periods of time. So, if this was a normal friendship, you would expect a good conversation catching up on everything that's been going on in each other's lives. With TASHA, however, I was expecting to talk about nothing, make awkward signs, give awkward looks, and just milk the awkward bug for all it's worth, because it's not fun with anyone more than it is with her. We had a conversation. It was not that slow awkward, it was not even normal friendship conversation. It was like an advanced stage of awkward that is only obtainable by the elite. We talked like two valley girls who just had a pound of caffeine, and we talked like that for almost TEN MINUTES. Whoever was with Tash tried to end the convo twice, and it DIDN'T WORK! WE JUST KEPT GOING! It was so beautiful, and the fact that we covered so much ground, while reaching a whole new fun level of awkward was one of those moments in life that I would not trade for anything. It was fantastic, and it suddenly makes me miss Tasha more than ever.

At this point, I've drank almost an entire cup of tea, listened to My Morning Jacket's 'Z' in it's entirety, I've stared Animal Collective's 'Merriweather Post Pavilion', and I'm still quite awake. So I feel it would be a crime not to at least touch on what happened the day after the Jesus Party.

The next night there was a gathering at Sarah's house since she was going to YWAM (which, at this point, she actually has gone). That was fun, there was volleyball, we swam in her pool, it was nifty. This was almost rendered completely moot, however, by the Denny's trip that would occur shortly after. Now, usually when a Denny's run is called for, you expect a good breakfast meal at midnight, a little social fun, and then you go home. We got that and more on this trip. Myself, Maynard Miller, Ryan Troyer, Matt Yoder, and Jared Schlabach go to the Denny's in New Phila, and of ALL THE NIGHTS, on this night they are cleaning the carpet and Denny's is CLOSED! ARGH! WHAT? WHY? So when we ask about a reopen time, and we are informed it'll be about 12:45-1:00, we must make a decision. Do we wait? Go B.S. at Wal-Mart? Or say screw it. We waited it out! We walked over to Wal-Mart, were over there for quite a while. Ryan played some Mario Tennis on the Wii they had set up, and we were somehow able to waste enough time to get back over there and go in and eat. I'll be honest with you here. It was a really late night that night, and I don't remember everything that was hilarious about that meal, but believe me when I say it was one of the 3 best Denny's runs I've made ever. It might even be the best. One of the highlights was digging through Maynard, mine, and Jared's cars to get enough money for Jared and Ryan to eat. We managed to scrape up $7 for them to split for dinner! They each got some Pancake Puppies (I think that's what they were called). Man, I really wish I could remember what made that such an epic Denny's trip, but trust me when I say it was. It was basically the definition of the phrase 'you had to be there', because it's just something that won't be replicated.

By now, you're probably thinking that I can't possibly have anything else in store for you. WELL YOU WOULD BE WRONG! Remember WAAAAAAAAAAAAAY back at the top how I told you about that wedding? Well, at that wedding I talked to Tina Marye, my BFF (haha), and we talked about me coming down and being "summertime friends" (her words) since I live a respectable distance away. Well, this past July 4th weekend, I did just that. I traveled down to Lexington, and it was as great as I hoped it would be. I was just excited to hang with Tina, but then I meet her friends. While everyone (Shannon, Erin, Nikki, Abe, Derek, everyone else) was great, really kind, and very welcoming to the point that I didn't feel awkward or like a newcomer at all, which is tremendous, I feel that Shanna deserves special mention, and here's why. Within 5 minutes, FIVE MINUTES, we were arguing about Michael Jackson songs like we'd known each other for years. Then we go to pick out a movie to watch with the group, we both want Taken (because who DOESN'T want to see Liam Neeson beat people up for almost an entire movie?), and then, here's the kicker, she has the final song from Gladiator on her iPod, and does what I DO, which is mildly interpretive dance to it. I almost feel bad that I didn't sing it, but it's a woman singing the part, and that would be intense for me to ball DOWN and sing that. So that was like the super fantastic Shanna and Tyler bonding time that made this weekend gravy. It got so much better, though. From the multitude of fireworks shows (despite the fact that I consider fireworks overrated), to being SERENADED by Shanna and Shannon (which was fantastic on illogical levels despite the song choices), and just hanging out and feeling like I've known these people forever. Son of a...........now I want to go back again. I haven't met anyone from Kentucky that I don't like up to this point in my life. Kentucky is batting 1.000, .950 at worst. Good job, Kentucky.

Which brings me up until right now. I'm still awake because I had floor set until 4 a.m. last night, and that thing always messes with my sleep schedule for a week or 2 afterwards. Clearly. I think I'll stop, though, because it's asking a LOT to read through all this, and I know that nobody will, because who has that kind of time?


Until the next time I feel guilty for not writing in this ever.


Listenings during the typing of this blog entry
My Morning Jacket's 'Z'
Animal Collective's 'Merriweather Post Pavilion'