In 2008, Chuck and I, with the help of our friends, perfected the art of Walrus Day. It’s something I’m deeply grateful for and it goes like this.

Step 1: Wake up on freeday.

Step 2: Eat a large breakfast and drink a caguama.

Step 3: Take the empty caguama bottle you just drank and trade it at the corner store for a new one.

Step 5: Steal the boombox from the other Home.

Step 4: Go to the beach, drink your second caguama, and lie in the sun like a walrus while blaring metal.

Man, I miss summer. A couple weeks ago we went out on a boat and saw real walruses and noticed that they do a great deal of barking. If its warm enough to fit in a Walrus Day before I leave, we have so definitely got to include the barking.

Notice that we work with the 27% mas caguamas. I’d say on the overall, it helps to make Walrus Day about 27% more fun.

I’ve decided that since it takes nearly no time at all to make short posts, I’m going to try to post more often to siphon off some of the immense pressure that builds up whenever I don’t update. I’m going to try this for awhile and if it interferes too much with the image I try to give off of the reclusive-genius-who-waxes-not-prolific-but-every-post-is-worth-the-wait then I’ll go back to my old post-every-two-weeks policy. So, Lord bless this.

I’m kicking off with thankfulness posts from last year. There was a lot to be thankful for from 2008 and so in no particular order, I’m going to share them with you. This one is an exception though, as it’s the one thing that I’m most truly thankful for, and that is Mama’s blog. She makes blogging cool. I love, love, love the book summaries up there — if you haven’t read “Empire of Debt”, go read it. It reads like a novel, plus you’re smarter at the end of it. Thank you everyone who had a hand in the convincing her to start that site, it’s one of my life’s deep and abiding joys.

I’ve been meaning to do this for awhile. There are one million ways to get the exact same effect in Photoshop and you probably already have your own ways of doing this, but in case it helps anyone anywhere - here are two eeeHEASY (heh, heh) ways to get two effects that I use all the time for the usual little design jobsies that come up in one’s service for the Lord.

Exhibit A: You want something more interesting than a plain background for your Christmas card/birth announcement/wedding invitation so you start with a colorful photo.

In Photoshop, open duplicate the layer then go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur and adjust it to a nice state of um….blurriness.

Too easy. Here’s something I put together with this technique recently.

Exhibit B: A gradient. When I found this technique on some PS tut blog I was giddy with joy at the simplicity (oh the simplicity) of this technique. I’ve used it on things that really needed no gradient at all just because it was too easy.

Fill your background with any color (it could even be a photo)

Make a new layer. Use your polygonal lasso tool to make a shape like so, and fill it with black.

Then run the same Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur on the layer with the black shape.

And you’ve got yourself an entirely adjustable gradient layer. Praise the Lord! Here’s something I used this technique with. Gives stuff a nice little zing.

Sniff. In the interests of honesty and full disclosure, this post was partly made for the purpose of highlighting this very last image that you see here - the one with the great big 2009 on it. I’m oh so pleased with it and the Lord saw fit to break me by not allowing it to be used for reasons that make sense, but it still hurts in places deep inside of me. I had to make a different cover and my heart just wasn’t in it. Ah, well.

Hope these few novice tidbitietes of information have helped in some way. I’ve made this post after a number of glasses of not halfway bad White Zinfandel (I love that I can say that in public) while I simultaneously try to listen to Nat King Cole and cultivate my budding friendship with the new friend I think I have made in Florence (name drop) over Skype, so if this hasn’t made as much sense as I think it has, that’s well….kind of the reason. God bless you.

This post is oozing with a warm and fuzzy spirit of Christmas cheer. It may be because of the Kenny G Christmas instrumentals I’ve been listening to all morning or because my free gift of jubilee from the Lord is finally kicking in in full force or the fact that the pounding headache I’ve had for the last two days is finally over and this is my way of coping with the joy. But either way, be warned of copious amounts of fuzziness ahead.

Continue reading this post…

Every couple of months I make a post that is a accumulation of everything that’s not valid enough to be its own post. This is one of those posts. Hopefully these few tasteful tidbits it will endear me to you further, that’s kind of the main point of this blog.

Firstly, I’m moving continents. I’ve been saying that to myself a lot lately. The realization is a weird mixture of scary and wow, mostly wow. It feels weird to simultaneously be a Family member, 21 years old and moving continents for the first time since I can remember. Usually those three things don’t go together. Oh well.

I’ve decided that until proven otherwise, I’m going to maintain that I’m the tallest woman in The Family. I’d love to be proven otherwise, so if you stand taller than 6 feet five inches and are of the female persuasion, feel free to go ahead and let me know. And, maybe, we could be friends? Heck, if you’re a guy and over 6 feet 5 inches, let me know. We should definitely be friends. (There, aren’t you proud of me, Maria? I feel this is a big step in opening my heart up like a flower.)

My first time buying alcohol in the States and they don’t even card me. It was a letdown.

I realized recently that for years I’ve been extremely insecure about my usage of “its” vs. “it’s”. It was kind of a subconscious thing that I never really nailed down and decided to Google the answer to until I just came across it one day while browsing. I feel like a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders with this knowledge. Here it is in case you were wondering:

It’s vs. Its

“It’s” is a contraction of “it is” or “it has.” “Its” is a possessive pronoun, as in “this blog has lost its mojo.” Here’s an easy rule of thumb—repeat your sentence out loud using “it is” instead. If that sounds goofy, “its” is likely the correct choice.

Meh. I thought I had accumulated more stuff. Posting these kinds of posts is a dilemma for me because I know it probably won’t get any comments and comments validate me as a blogger. I’m actually very insecure about this. Maybe you could just leave a comment on any topic of your choosing, (your thoughts on the government bailout or the current state of your fingernails, for example) thereby educating us all and validating me, your friend and comrade.

Your Birthday Present

turned out to be

the best freaking night of my life

and the best part is, only you and I REALLY know why.

Key words: Downtown San Diego. Pimp Daddies. VIP lounge. Black Bouncer. Military. Respect. Long island iced tea (without the tea). HECK YEA.

Out the WAZOOO Birthday my friend.

P.S. If hot black deaf guy (Andre) reads this. You so totally rock dude!

Gimmie some Fin.

Noggin.

Dude.

(between you and me, this post makes us look so innocent and docile. If only we could explain what happened after the first 10 minutes. I guess some things are better left unknown)

P.P.S. A shout out to our man LUCA who was the best DD ever in the history of DD’ing. We so totally scored.

P.P.P.S In case you haven’t realized it by now. This is a BIRTHDAY post for JULES from CHUCK. Check it.

I was getting kinda tired of checking this blog to see if anyone had hacked into it and left something interesting to read. Since no one else is stepping up to the plate, I said “enough’s enough - by golly I’ll update, by golly I will” (I’m kidding, I didn’t actually literally say that). So here’s a nice long newsy post with all kinds of newsy news which probably won’t be as interesting as you deserve. I wish I could be like Uncle Mike or Hobbyns back in the glory days and make even commonplace blogging subjects curiously interesting simply by virtue of a stellar command of the English language. While I’m wishing, I’d also like a pony.

Anywhoo, seeing as it’s now October which was a month past my projected leaving date to Nepal and seeing as the leaving part has not really happened yet - first update of the day is that I’ve recently been getting intimately accquainted with the spiritual principle of “God’s timing” and it appears that God was not in the timing of leaving in September. He’s indicated that the end of January is more along the lines of His will and so end of January it is. In the meantime, I get to psyche myself up for suffering frostbite for the cause of Christ since (I hear) February is the coldest month in Kathmandu. Hooray! I’m going to be a real live field person for the first time since I was two and I’m pretty excited - this blog will hopefully see more updates as I chronicle my experiences of transitioning from full time office work to full time outreach on the other side of the world.

Switching subjects here - I’d just like to point out how unspeakably awesome Activated Ministries is. I’ve worked here full time since I was 17 and part time long before that. I’m in the lucky position of being one of the first people to see the reports from all the dozens of projects that we sponsor around the world and the seminars that we pull off and sponsor as well right here and whenever I think about it - I give myself a big pat on the back (not really). Seriously, all of the amazing work that we’re a part of doesn’t get half as much publicity as it should and it deserves much more because everyone here works their butts off to make completely free tools available for all kinds of Family members and projects around the world.

To name a few, we’ve sponsored free materials to projects in Thailand, Cambodia, Taiwan, India, Mozambique, Japan, Sahara, Mexico, Nepal, Fiji, Indonesia, Guatemala, Ghana, Peru, and Chile. We also sponsor the translation of tools into Spanish and Portuguese and the printing of Activated mags into Hungarian, Croatian, Romanian and Russian. That’s not mentioning every major seminar that has taken place over the last couple of years in North America which have been hugely sponsored by Activated Ministries. We’ve sponsored tool credit to every teen who attended the three previous Wordstocks to help them raise their attendance fees. There’s also the free tool credit we’ve sponsored for every single PMA mentor in The Family. In conclusion, Activated Ministries is a non-profit rockstar.

Our website (the one that I’ve been linking to more times than is considered in good taste, I’m sure) has less than half of the reports that we’ve received from every continent (save Antarctica, but give us time). I’m on a push to get the rest of our projects posted now that the Educators Seminar (also sponsored by Activated Ministries) is over and life can get back to, um….normal. So visit the site every once in awhile and be wowed, and when you see anyone from Activated Ministries, give them a hug and tell them they’re completely awesome, because they are. And yo, if you have a great work or project that you need free tools for, write me at sponsorship@actmin.org and I promise you’ll get reviewed and you may just find yourself with a shipment of brand spanking new, completely free materials with which to go evangelize your part of the world.

Furtherlmorely switching subjects, today Chuck and I got to be part of a presentation/question & answer session at San Diego State University on The Family International. To break the ice with all the students, we read parts of this article (we’re #3) to everyone. Heh, heh. We didn’t read all of it, but I think it broke the ice pretty well. It was fun, I spoke on prophecy and did better in my first public speaking attempt than I thought I would, praise God and the spirit helpers. I also came to the realization that I would like to lecture for a living at some future point in my life. Just dress nice and talk about what you know, how simple is that?

Hey wow, this post turned out not so boring after all, for me at least. I know I had other stuff to blog about but I can’t think of it now and even if I could, since I got on the subject of Activated Ministries I don’t want to steal its thunder since it really deserved its very own post, what with it being so awesome and all. I’ll wrap up with two quotes that I found two years ago and have had sitting in drafts ever since. If in two years I haven’t found the appropriate post to stick them in I don’t think I ever will. So here they are in all their à la carte glory.

To hear many religious people talk, one would think God created the torso, head, legs and arms, but the devil slapped on the genitals. ~Don Schrader

There are three kinds of death in this world. There’s heart death, there’s brain death, and there’s being off the network. ~Guy Almes

P.S. When you go to the AM website - take a nice close look at the logo. It’s flash. Jer did it. I like it.

P.P.S. I linked to AM so many times because apparently it’s good for our rankings. Hopefully one of the brainy ones will read this and educate me if linking to it a bunch of times in the same post is a good thing or not because I don’t really remember.

P.P.P.S. If anyone feels like reminding Mr. Setfree of his agreement to guest star on my blog, I don’t mean to be pushy but if this interview goes unanswered again I don’t know if I’ll recover from the hearbreak.