Life Lately

DIY Marathon Date Day.

- Melody 2 Comments

HEY GUYS. Whoops, sorry. I mean, hey guys. So Friday we had Little Bit scheduled to finally be spayed. (HALLELUJAH no more of that flippin’ crying all the time!) We had to check her in an hour away, though everything is an hour away from Laneville, at 8am. Yikes. Since it didn’t seem smart to drive two extra hours back home then back to town, we decided to make an entire day of it. We called it Marathon Date Day!

So here’s what we did and how to recreate it. (Cat optional.)

7:08-7:30: Drive.
7:30-7:40: Watch a hot air balloon race and ask Jason stupid questions. Suggestions: How do hot air balloons land? Why is fire hot?
7:40-8: Drive some more.
8:00: Drop LB off at the clinic and try not to cry.
8:30-9: Errands. (Optional, unless you are an adult. In which case, do your errands.)
9-10:30: Cave to gluttony with carb cakes! (Success!)
10:30-11: Coffee! (Overpriced Starbucks/awkward self-portrait optional.)
11-3:30: Shoppity, shop shop in the form of Target (be sure to find a friend and complain about how much your feet hurt but smile so your husband knows you’re having fun with him), Best Buy, Target again, and Kohl’s. If possible, follow your husband into the dressing room to watch him try on sports paraphernalia.
(Insert a ridiculous heat wave and me dying from it and then coming back to life here.)
3:30-4:30: Lunch at the best Mexican food restaurant ever, El Sombrero. (Not optional.) Here, I chose to become a ravenous monster and chew Jason’s head off when I became hungry. This part is certainly optional.
4:45: Pick up LB and head ouuuut. (But get your own cat. She’s mine.)

Bummer

- Melody 2 Comments

Everyone mourn with me! Waaaaaaaaa!

Okay, that’s enough.

So a couple weeks ago the lens on our DSLR started acting up. Sometimes the body wouldn’t detect it so nothing would happen when I turned it on and it would stick when zooming. J thought in his infinite tinkering wisdom (sarcasm…?) that he could take it apart, fix it, and put it back together no problem. He took it apart, fixed it(…?) and hasn’t been able to put it back together. Since we don’t have another lens because we’re saving to buy a new body, I virtually have no camera.

We had already put back some Christmas money for ourselves so we decided to go ahead and buy the lens we were wanting ahead of schedule. I bought it in nearly new condition from Adorama and paid $100 less than the price of it new. I got it, slapped it on our camera body and tested it out. This horrific scraping and grinding noise came out when I tried to autofocus. Yeesh. So now I’m sending it back to be fixed and then to be sent back to me! Who knows how long that’s going to take.

In the mean time, the DIY projects I wanted to do are postponed because little ol’ P&S can’t handle those up close shots. Outfit posts should be fine though. This one was! So thanks for hanging in there through all these silly blog problems. I’ll try to get dressed more often. 🙂

YOU GUYS!

- Melody 4 Comments

I missed you so much! Man it feels good to be back here again. So if you haven’t heard, let me fill you in. It’s the tale of tales. (Oh, and I’m going to be narrating it with pictures of how I felt.)


When school ended I kind of quit blogging. I was so overloaded with school stuff that I just really didn’t have the time. Right after my last exam I drove to meet my sister at her school to help her move back. I ended up staying with my parents for two days. Fun? YES. But I didn’t have clothes. Plus, my brain was still reforming itself from being goop for the past four months.


After sleeping entirely too much for a week I was going to hop back on the wagon and give it another go. But every time I tried visiting my site I got an error. I checked my host’s FB page and found they were doing maintenance. Cool.


Not cool. My hosting company’s server company (does that make any sense?) didn’t follow my hosting company’s orders as to how to go about shutting down their servers for the maintenance. In doing so, they fried the hard drive and the backup hard drive.


My site was on that server.


Being a good businessman (holla, Chris) he didn’t freak out his customers and let us down easy. I was distraught? Sad? Depressed? Beside myself?


Not remembering that I had a previous blog with my older posts on it I was hysterical thinking everything I’ve ever written had vanished never to be recovered.


After I calmed down, I made sure my old site was still up (it was) and Jason told me about Google caches. I filled the gap from my old site to my new site thanks to Google. However, they didn’t cache my pictures. So if you remember a post and it isn’t up anymore it’s because I have no clue what pictures go to it. Also, I might have changed some pictures because again, I have no idea what pictures go where.


For the most part I figured it out, though.


Oh, and to add insult to injury, I thought I made a backup back in February of my entire site but it turned out to be a fake. So I had to manually repost everything from a year ago. Only after deleting my site four or five times because we had installed it wrong. Yeah. I’m exhausted.


But! Here we are, ol’ pals, ready to ride the trail of cats and style again. Are you ready?

At the Risk of Looking Like an Idiot…

- Melody

http://www.ketknbc.com/news/special-report-breaking-tradition

I posted that link on Facebook yesterday in a bit of frustration with… well, with a lot of things. Watch it (and read the comments) and then come back, okay?

Watched it? Good.

Remember that part about the financial aspect of churches? Remember when that lady said there should be some give and take if you tithe? Remember my face getting tomato red when I heard that?

I paused the video, backed it up, shrieked, and played it again. I could not believe my ears, you guys. One doesn’t tithe to a church to expect something in return, other than for that money to do God’s work. One tithes because it is commanded of them.

We, as Christians, love because we are called to love. Even if you aren’t a Christian, normally one doesn’t do something nice to expect something in return. That kind of takes away from the genuineness of the nice act, doesn’t it? Unless you believe in karma, which is a whole other can of worms. Yikes.

Remember when that lady said “contemporary”* music isn’t reverent? Remember when I busted a blood vessel? Me too.

If you’ve ever been to a Passion conference, I bet you no one there would describe what goes on as irreverent. Now, I’m not knocking organs, hymns, or anything that isn’t “contemporary”* music. Half of the choir concerts I’ve performed in use strictly organ. It’s a gorgeous instrument. But, you guys, it isn’t the only instrument.

I guess my question is, when did Christians become so dang judgmental? When did we start judging the way another Christian worships? When did we begin to say that using drums in church is irreverent or unhealthy? I’d love to get your thoughts on that video and what I’ve said. I’m not the wisest person so I’d love your input.

I guess my challenge would be, for you and me, to catch ourselves when we start to judge someone for how their church service is formatted. (Actually, let’s catch ourselves when we begin to judge someone period.) Church isn’t about the format. Let’s get back to the root.

Jesus.

(Congrats, you made it all the way down! Sorry for the abrupt shift in content, hah. I just got pretty upset with that news story and felt like something should be said. Even if my voice is small.)

*(Oh, and I put that asterisk because I don’t really care for that word contemporary in reference to worship music.)

The Day We Become Grown-ups Because IT’S DISHWASHER DAY

- Melody

lace top: Liz Claiborne via Goodwill, belt: thrifted, skirt: Old Navy, shoes: Cole Haan via Goodwill

I remember when I bought this skirt. I thought it wouldn’t fit, but I bought it anyway because I never try on clothes in the store. That’s dumb, right? Anyway, when I found it in my closet and put it on and it fit, it became one of my favorite skirts.

So here’s some news. Jason bought this really fancy recording microphone so he could start streaming himself playing Minecraft. (It’s this computer game that you build stuff on…? Don’t ask me. I don’t play it.) He got the mic in today, hooked it up to his computer, started streaming, AND already has 8 subscribers. That’s crazy, right!? It’s like insta-blogging.

Today is a glorious day. Jason and I are going to buy a dishwasher. The one we have is probably from the early 1800s and smells like fire when we use it. So it’ll be nice to actually wash dishes from a week ago. Also because all we have are spoons left. And mama can’t cut her chicken with a spoon.

Saturday Stylings: We Might Be On the News

- Melody


shirt: Target, skirt: Old Navy, sandals: Buffalo Exchange, necklace: Rue21

On a lighter note…I might’ve been on the news last night, but I don’t know since we don’t have cable. Lemme ‘splain.

Laneville is suuper small and all they have is a basketball team. A really good basketball team. Like, state champs for three years really good. They go to the playoffs every year and this year was no exception. There was a game yesterday morning so, naturally, they cancelled school. Jason left way early and rode the bus with the team to the game that didn’t start until 10. I got up, left for class and picked him up afterward. We had a delicious lunch at Jucy’s and since we didn’t have anywhere to be until 6 we decided to go to Best Buy and drool over my dream camera (that I’m getting for Christmas! Yay savings!) As we were walking in I saw a lady with a hefty camera walking back towards us. In my head I thought, “Cool! I wanna be on TV!” But usually when I see someone with a big camera, they never ask me anything. It must be my intimidating good looks. Anyone? Anyone? Is this thing on!?

But lo and behold she said, “Hey guys! I’m with KETK 56 and we’re doing a story on autocorrect and about whether or not you use it or even like it.” She then hoisted the camera onto her shoulder, did kind of a nod which I took to mean, “Talk, dummies,” so I did. I stammered and uhh’d and said autocorrect about 60 times while Jason stood motionless at my side. Thanks, hub. You always know when to bail me out.

The whole process took like 30 seconds from the time she approached us to when she turned the camera off. Walking away she probably thought, “Yeah, that’s trash. Where are some more people?” I thought she’d surely ask us something while the camera was actually on instead of asking us–Awkward Queen and King–to come up with something off the cuff.

So, I have no idea whether or not they aired our little gem of an interview. So if you saw a goofy looking red haired girl that desperately needs a haircut and a bearded gent on your local news Friday night, let a sista’ know so she can protest that mug.