Hiatus from my hiatus

Summer has zipped by before my eyes...I've just now realized that I haven't posted anything in over a month.

I have this weird thing where the amount I write is inversely proportional to how happy I'm feeling. When things are going well, I just don't have the patience to sit down and be all deep and angsty...maybe just a few highlights.

Wicked: my aunt called me at the last minute with an extra ticket for Wicked and said, "would you like to go?" and I said, "do you even have to ask?" I was more excited than the kids in my preschool class were about going on the Bozo show. It was a splendid day, and now I'm burning a hole in the soundtrack with "Defying Gravity" and "As long as you're mine."

Camp: my job at camp last summer may have sent me directly to therapy without collecting $200, but I went back anyway. My friend and I pitched a tent and spent the week going down the zipline and pretty much doing whatever we felt like. My favorite doc was back, and we went off-roading in the golf cart and made fun of the kids who did stupid things to themselves.

Harry Potter: what else is there to say, really? The seventh book awakened my hibernating fingernail-biting habit and landed my youngest sister in my parents' bedroom with nightmares. It was long and frustrating at points, but the ending was quite satisfying. I thought that Harry really emerged as a Christ figure in the last chapter, but that could be my "all things" Kyuperness talking.

New Jersey: I leave on Thursday for a roadtrip to my friend Laura's New Jersey beach house with a couple of other girls from the nursing program. For some weird reason I really like roadtrips and am looking forward to it immensely.

And of course there were the trips to Holland State Park, ultimate frisbee games, and ice cream cones...the usual summer stuff. And now work has sent me my final full-time schedule, the booklist is posted, and tuition is due. And so it continues.

Pronouns...HUH!

Recently I came across this fascinating article outlining a new proposal in the search for a gender-neutral pronoun. Ever since people decided it wasn't kosher to use "he" to mean "he or she," the problem has been a thorn in the foot of grammarians. The most common solution has been to use "they," as in, "Why would somebody steal my cab?" "Well, maybe they were late." But that just sounds like nails on a chalkboard to those of use who secretly love books like Eats, Shoots, and Leaves.

So what's an anal English speaker to do? A professor of English at Johns Hopkins has suggested replacing he, she, him, her, his, and hers with "hu." Apparently this is pronounced "huh." As in, "War...HUH! What is it good for?" I can see the grammatical need, but I don't know if "hu" would ever catch on. In fact, I'm giggling just thinking about using it seriously in a sentence. Who knows, maybe I'll have to eat my words in 50 years like Old English speakers had to, after yeers of speling lyke thys (or something like that). Well then, out with the old, in with the "hu!"

Grownup?

Tonight I hung out with my good friend Laura, and we decided to grab some dinner at Applebee's and then go to the 8:30 showing of "Knocked Up." (Sorry if those quotes are out of place, Bethany.) We had some time between dinner and the movie so we wandered around Meijer's and played with the appliances.

I dawned on me recently that in approximately a year I'm actually going to be a real, live on-my-own grownup, and that I might actually need things like non-stick skillets and those mini grill sandwich cooker things. And I thought to myself, "Geez, how do people get all this stuff?" And then it occurred to me that they get married and register for everything at Bed, Bath, and Beyond. Man, how unfair is it that people who are getting married get all this free stuff and I'm getting unceremoniously shooed out of the nest with a hand-me-down toaster oven from my grandma?

Of course it's not just about toaster ovens. It's about not experiencing the unspoken initiation into adulthood. It seems as if only after I get married will my parents say, "Ok, now we won't look at you sideways when you pour yourself a glass of wine, and there is no way you're sitting at the kid's table at Christmas."

I'm fine with being single, and frankly kind of excited to be able to do whatever I want to after graduation. But life just feels goofy and undefined right now, and I'm wondering whether I'm destined to walk the blurry line between youth and adulthood until I tie the knot...or turn 40.

I've been tagged!

Meg tagged me in one of these chain-blogger things that is giving me flashbacks to all those forwards that circulated around my 8th-grade class. There's a reason these things don't die...they're fun! Here goes:

1. I have to post these rules before I give you the facts.
2. Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
3. People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
4. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
5. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

1. I got a birthmark lasered off my face in 1st grade and it got me in the newspaper because it was some sort of new technology back in the early '90's. :)

2. One time I got in such a bad biking accident that I knocked my braces right off my teeth.

3. My parents live next door to an Olympic hockey player, Mike Knuble. However, I've seen him more on TV than in person.

4. In high school I was so obsessed with ER that I could rattle off the titles of 8 seasons worth of episodes and give a brief synopsis of quite a few of them.

5. One time a friend and I decided that it would be fun to climb the roof of Commons. We made it, and then had to duck when we saw a Campus Safety car in the FAC parking lot.

6. I went to Belize this past January and learned how to dance the Punta. But only after a couple panty rippers, the national drink of Belize.

7. I was on the golf team in high school. That was a near-disaster, but at least I can hit my seven-iron fairly consistently.

8. I can't stand it when people say "good" instead of "well," but sometimes I slip and do it anyway.

Ok! I tag Al, Andrea, Bethany, Deborah, Evangelicals Anonymous, Joyce, Megan, and Melanie.

Synod Part 2

I watched the discussion of Third Wave Pentecostalism, and I have to say that I was really disappointed. Some advisory committee decided that they were going to adopt the majority report and the minority report was pretty much tossed out without giving the delegates a chance to vote on which one to adopt. Despite all the formalities, it was pretty obvious that they were all a little ticked off, raising several objections to the tune of, "Hey! What about the minority report?" But Synod insisted that they were only going to talk about the majority report. Never mind that the minority report was more clearly reasoned and grounded in scripture and reformed theology (at least in my opinion). They pretty much said that they were going to adopt the majority report, but that they wanted it revised for Synod 2009 because it lacked thorough explanations and scriptural support. I guess it just goes to show that when The Powers That Be can't make up their minds, you have to look at the material yourself and make up your own.

I saw in the obituaries (yes, I always read them) that one of my residents at Holland Home died on Tuesday. It was really weird to read that, because I remember giving him a shower just last week. And then I thought to myself, "Man, that was probably the last shower he ever had. I hope I did a good job." He joked with me a little and made me guess how old he was. It turns out that he was 100. And he was very proud that he had been a member at Eastern Ave. CRC every one of those 100 years. I hope that our generation can carry on the work of the denomination that he loved so much.