Abbey Road

Favorite

nobody@vox.com(Abbey) — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 08:18:53 -0800

Dane is my favorite person

to travel with

to laugh with

to whistle in harmony with

to play the rhyme game with

to burp with

to watch Battlestar with (but not Lost or anything else involving time travel, <-- = strain on our marriage)

to make fun of people's hair in the mall with

to sing with

to hang out with friends with

to drink a BIT too much wine with

to play Scrabble with

to ride bikes with

to eat Oreos with

to play with babies with

to check out new music with

to take walks with

to walk around Anthropologie smelling everything and figuring out how to make stuff we'll never make... with

to take naps with

to read books with

to solve the problems of the church and the world with

to booty dance with

to do projects with.

And I just ended TWENTY-ONE phrases and one sentence in prepositions. So there.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Music, etc.

nobody@vox.com(Abbey) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 12:26:48 -0700

In the car just now on my way to meet Dane for lunch, I put on OK Computer on a whim. It suddenly made me really motivated to do this Top Ten Of All Time thing Greg and Tim have been going on about. So I'm going to give it a whirl, and probably totally want to change it in like five minutes. And btw asking for 10 is hard enough, there's no way I'm going to put them in any actual order.

OK Computer - Radiohead

Med sud i eyrum vid spilum endalaust - Sigur Ros

Plans - Deathcab for Cutie

Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes

Funeral - Arcade Fire

Before These Crowded Streets - DMB (may or may not be tainted/un-objective-ified by nostalgia)

Thunder, Lightning, Strike - Go! Team

Either/Or - Elliott Smith

Illinoise - Sufjan Stevens

Soft Bulletin - Flaming Lips

Honorable mentions: (I know this is TOTALLY CHEATING but I can't help it!) Once Soundtrack kind of by Swell Season, Cannons by Phil Wickham, the four seasons by Jon Foreman, Electric Version by New Pornographers.

And holy cow, now that I'm looking that I'm realizing that I am totally schizophrenic when it comes to music. But it's all ME. I'm, like, multi-faceted. Or something. Like a onion parfait. (Omg, I just made a Shrek joke. See, there's another facet.)

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

untitled.

nobody@vox.com(Abbey) — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 13:09:24 -0700

Hey hey lookie here.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

I like this song

nobody@vox.com(Abbey) — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 12:54:00 -0700

These are the (abridged) lyrics to a Regina Spektor song that I like.

No one laughs at God in a hospital
No one laughs at God in a war
No one's laughing at God when they're starving or freezing or so very poor

No one laughs at God when the doctor calls after some routine tests
No one's laughing at God when it's gotten real late and their kid's not back from that party yet

(Chorus)
But God can be funny
When you're at a cocktail party listening to a good God-themed joke
Or when the crazies say he hates us and they get so red in the head you think they're about to choke
God can be funny
When told he'll give you money if you only pray the right way
Or when treated like a genie who does magic like Houdini
or grants wishes like Jiminy Cricket or Santa Claus
God can be so hilarious

No one laughs at God in a hospital
No one laughs at God in a war
No one's laughing at God when they've lost all they've got and they don't know what for

(Chorus)

No one's laughing at God
No one's laughing at God
No one's laughing at God
We're all laughing with God.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

I am blogging today.

nobody@vox.com(Abbey) — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 08:25:35 -0700

I am starting this post now so that I will do it. Sometimes I use opened Chrome tabs like a to-do list. It stresses me out while there are 15 of them but I can't close them until I do whatever I gotta do, and then finally I'm just down to Twitter and Gmail and I can sit back. So.

At the risk of breaking a big no-no rule of blogging, ie: telling everybody what you did recently, I'm going to tell everybody what I did recently. Because frankly, it's nuts. And someday when I'm, like, middle aged and my life is dull (ha, ha.) I want to look back and be like "Man. Once upon a time we were so popular and in-demand, we barely had time to breathe."

There was one week where Friday was an 8-yr-old's birthday party, Saturday was dinner club with friends, Sunday was church, a 4-yr-old's birthday party, a dinner for the new Associate pastor, and then game night with some friends who are about to leave for college. Monday we squeezed in dinner with some old friends who are about to have a baby and be lost to the world forever. Tuesday Kat and I made Harry Potter gift bags at work all day and then had the whole Harry Potter #6 movie party thing until about 3am, bed around 4. Wednesday I got up at 7:30 and went to work, then packed, then ran, then went to karate, then packed some more, Dane worked 17 hours on about 4 hours of sleep, getting home at 11-ish and then having to pack. Thursday morning we got up at like... 4:30? and headed to the airport, where we were told in no uncertain terms that we were incredibly foolish for thinking we could fly stand-by in the middle of the week (in the middle of the summer). We toyed at length with the idea of packing in the car and driving straight to Oregon, with about 6 hours of sleep behind us (that's me, Dane, and Claire combined) for the 30-hour drive. We ended up buying other tickets, shuttling over to DFW, and got to Sacramento later that evening, which kicked off an entire super fun, gluten-free wedding weekend. We got back and brought our bags of dirty stuff straight over to our friends' house we were housesitting, and just did laundry there. The next day was Dane's birthday, so of course we had a giant party. Then that Friday we went to the theater. Saturday we cleaned one house and vacated it for our friends to get home, and then went and cleaned our house top to bottom, and then hosted 9 people for dinner. In our teensy apartment. Almost all of whom we had barely, if ever, met. Sunday we went out with Kyle and Katie to Taco Diner and (500) Days of Summer and got soaked running to Starbucks and shivered through most of the movie, but it was SO worth it and so much fun, as much for a good movie as for really really great company.

The next weekend we went to New Mexico and got stuck in the Durango airport for 6 hours trying to get back, which had one vending machine, and we had one dollar. A shared bag of Cheez-its were ultimately going to be it for over 24 hours for me. Then we got to Denver at about 12:30, got to our hotel at about 2:30, Dane got on a 10:something flight home the next day, and I got about 5 more hours to hang out in an airport before I made it on standby into the last seat with the busted pocket thing that hit me in the shins, and got home about 8:30. Susanna picked me up, we got sushi, I ran home, dumped my suitcase, filled it back up, and drove out to camp and got there around midnight.

The next four days were a lot of me, who had barely met maybe two or three of the kids before, trying to be this pep team leader thing (who's idea was THAT?) on no sleep and stressed out about figuring out our like entire future. We played ultimate frisbee with giant cow tongues and Capture the Squid with stinky, smelly, ant-attracting octopuses and shaky rules, and kickball with peanut butter beards and kiddie pools and sack-races and hours and hours of playing bass. And LOTS of wally ball. It was great, actually. Maybe a little exhausting, but what can you do. I'd probably do it again, even the same way with the flights and the decisions and the not knowing the kids. Not, like, do the flights again, but I mean I'd do camp again even after that.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Quarterlife

nobody@vox.com(Abbey) — Thu, 28 May 2009 07:37:28 -0700

This is my belated birthday post. I missed it by a couple of weeks, but I wanted to put something about not being 25 any more. I honestly think this might have been my favorite year yet. I can't say that defininitively because it's entirely possible that some of the popsicles-bare-feet-and-tree-climbing years would have given it a run for its money, but I really, really, really liked 25. And actually, I probably had at least one popsicle, definitely ran around barefoot, and definitely climbed a tree or two within this past year. Here are some of the things I did for the first time while I was 25 (in chronological order):

Celebrated my second anniversary

Went on a real live business trip (and ate ~$250 in food on other people's company credit cards)

Signed a contract committing me to $17,000

Ran a half-marathon

Went to Ecuador

-Crossed the equator

-Gave food & Christmas parties to ~10,000 people living in dumps, elderly asylums, etc.

-Took about 500 Polaroids, lots of them of Quichua Indians

Sang a song in front of a couple hundred people

Went to Scotland

Passed a belt test in karate

Ran an estimated 1,000 miles from 5/9/08 to 5/9/09

I'll have to get creative to have as much new stuff for next year.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Sleepy.

nobody@vox.com(Abbey) — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 07:11:05 -0700

Today is Wednesday. Monday night Dane and I went to see Mates of State at the Granada, and while half the people that read this have already heard this story, basically the show started at 8 but instead of being MoS with Black Kids as their openers it was a co-headline tour with another opener, so MoS didn't go on until probably 1030 or so, which I am old and also employed, and that is kind of a tad late for a Monday night. But really not so bad, I was in bed by like one and it didn't really bother me yesterday.

But then last night we all went over to the Beckmans' for chicken and noodles and I made dirt with pudding and crunched up oreos and it was super fun, but as always with the Beckmans I stayed until like elevenish, which usually I blame on Dane and/or Jon but neither were there so I guess it's not really ALL their fault every other time we stay over there way too late. And then I hadn't seen Dane yet at all so we stayed up even later just catching up. And rescuing each other from huge-normous bugs with grabby legs that had crawled WAY up our pants and made us scream and jump around like a little girly crazy person. Or at least one of us rescued the other one, that one wasn't so much reciprocal.

But THEN I totally woke Dane up at about 5:45 by like completely freaking out in my sleep, I was having the WORST dream ever, it was totally terrifying and thank GOD he then woke me up. And we had to kind of chill for a few minutes and then Susanna randomly texted me at like 6:15, which I was still awake and trying to get back to sleep, but that is so random, so I texted her back, and then that kept me up for probably thirty more minutes, and yeah, I'm pretty pooped.

The dream wasn't even about junebugs, or any bugs, that's the weird thing. I shall tell you.

So we were in some kind of vacationy place with like a cabin, and the details of the first part are fuzzy but basically there were like mannequins in several of the rooms or the restaurants in this town, and there were these little kids (probably 8-10 years old) that kept coming to the door or just walking in and if we tried to cover up or put away the mannequin people they would get SUPER pissed and throw a fit until we put them back, and they always talked about them like living people, but never talked to them.

Then we were driving down this road, maybe trying to leave but I don't think so, and we started seeing all these mannequins hanging from the power/telephone lines over the road. At first they were sort of posed like they were some weird kind of advertisement, all in these brightly colored like shorts and polos and whatever, but then as we kept driving there were more and more, and several of them were hanging with the line through their belt loops so they were kind of hung/bent over, and then a few had it wrapped around their necks. Then all of a sudden something hit the back window of the car, there was this one sliding down the power line behind us almost like a zipline or something, and had bumped into the back of the car with its plastic legs, and kept bumping it no matter how fast we went. Then all the sudden (I was in the back seat for some reason) the window was open and these legs swung into the car, so I tried to push them out, still all plastic and hard, and then out the back I saw the mannequin drop off of the power line thing and then LAND, like, ninja-style, on the ground on both feet and start running after the car, which he caught, and started climbing in the window. That was where Dane woke me up all freaking out and hyperventilating.

Elements:

1) Coraline visual style/moods with the first part with the kids
2) Old Navy commercials with the talking mannequins
3) Brandon's story at the Beckmans' last night about when he rolled off a top bunk as a kid, fully asleep, and somehow landed on both feet like a cat.

Please interpret.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Sunshine and Vampires

nobody@vox.com(Abbey) — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 08:14:37 -0700

Two movies I've seen lately --

Dane and I went to see Sunshine Cleaning a couple weeks ago with Susanna and some of her friends. It was entertaining, but not really my favorite. I have really truly loved Amy Adams in a lot of movies, she's great and can be so adorable and hilarious and just light up the screen. There's the Drop Dead Gorgeous version, which was hilarious and genius, and the Enchanted version which is innocent and precious, and the Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day version which is sort of a mix of both of those and whom I could watch all day, and we're going to pretend the Talladega Nights version never existed, except that it was a lot like the Charlie Wilson version.

Then there's the Junebug, Sunshine Cleaning, Doubt Amy Adams, which is kind of all quivering bottom lip and wide blue tear-filled eyes and defeated smiles and Lucille Ball hand-wringing (know what I mean?) and this mix of innocent and sweet and pitiful and desperate. That one was just done one too many times and turned up to 11 in Sunshine Cleaning and may have ruined that whole Amy Adams for me for a while. Probably only for a while though.

Then they had this plotline with Emily Blunt, whom I also happen to love, that was kind of awkward and never really went anywhere, and I'm not sure what the point of it was. I mean I kind of get it, but sometimes it seems like "let's throw a few controversial-ish themes in there, even if they don't lend to story or character, just because it'll make us more Indie and will take the place of creative plot twists and if people have a problem with it we'll call them narrow-minded."

BUT THEN.

Last night we watched Let the Right One In, which I pretty much loved completely. I've had less time to think about it, so that could be part of it, but I was just sucked in. It was unbelievably refreshing to me how they told SO much of the story in shadows or off-screen or only showing you the few moments before something happened. It's like they actually believed that I have my own imagination, or something. Crazy, right?

I wished I saw it on the big screen, because even on our teeny one in non-HD, it was just one of the most beautiful movies ever. It opens with a kid walking through snow (or at least that's in the first couple minutes) and my immediate thought was "ew, I'm so glad we don't live where it's that cold". 20 min later I was like "I want to go to SWEDEN." Just soooo soo pretty. I was sold even with the screwed-up American subtitles. I hate it when you can TELL they say this whole long sentence and you even recognize a few words or a name, and then the subtitles are all "NO, THANK YOU." And you're like "Come on! I know that's not all they said." I guess I'll just have to learn Swedish.

Anyway, worth checking out. Kind of gory, and not really terribly cheery, but not scary like I thought it would be, not at all. Just beautiful and sweet. In a little bit of a murdery kind of way. And with the second kid named Oskar that I've loved recently, the other being Oskar Schell from Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Dane nixed it as a kid name though. Too bad.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Weekend

nobody@vox.com(Abbey) — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 09:12:07 -0700

This weekend was super fun. I think there's some rule of non-crappy blogs where you're not supposed to talk about your weekend, or something. But since mostly my mom and my mother-in-law read this, I think they don't mind.

Friday after work I was going to run but fell asleep (for like 2 hours. Oops.) Then Dane and I went to this thing at the Village about Christianity and environmentalism and why God is all about being green. It was good and I got free shopping bags. To leave in my car every time I go into the store. I'm working on that though. Roy was there and afterwards we went to Chick Fil A and then to this place called the Greenhouse I think and I had a Guinness and Roy is hilarious and it was really fun.

Saturday I got up and drove to the Colony in the like THIRTY DEGREE WEATHER with ridiculous wind and did this super intense playground workout with my karate class. Then, when I could barely lift my arms, I picked up Dane, my dad, and Anna Claire and we went to paint for like 4 hours at World Impact. It was like we were the little Trading Spaces team (ok I don't even think that show is still on and I'm sure there are new ones I would reference if I was like With It, but I'm not) except for they didn't do the time lapse montage with the funky music that makes it look really fast and easy.

Went and dropped off Dad and picked up Jill and took the girls to Monsters vs. Aliens which was actually hilarious. I laughed quite loud many more times than I expected to. Seth Rogen's B.O.B. was the funniest part, I think, but there was a lot of fun stuff. I recommend seeing it with a 7- and a 12-yr-old, if possible.

Then back to the Beckmans' house to hang out for a couple of hours. It's kind of weird when you housesit for your good friends a lot, and then when you're over there supposedly as a friend just hanging out you start to want to go over and refill the cat bowl or fold up the blanket on the couch or sweep up the kitchen or pack up the pizza and put it in the fridge. I told Denise that and she was like "you know what? Go for it." That's Refridgerator Rights to A Whole Notha Level.*

Sunday evening we went over to the Swindles' which is always sort of like being at home except 10x better. Especially when Stella isn't sick any more and is hilarious and fun and dancing around like a ballerina. I think Dane is like her favorite (non-parent) person in the world. We had curry chicken and minty-apricot couscous and this really good beer that kind of tasted like blueberries maybe? And some wine and tons of music talk that may or may not have bored Robin to tears, but was so fun for me. Oh right, and between the blueberry beer and the music talk was two pounds (POUNDS!) of strawberries, two bananas, and 4 melted Hershey's Special Dark bars that we put away in about 5 minutes. In all, an EXCELLENT evening.

*This paragraph is not meant to imply that Denise's house is in any NEED of blanket-folding or kitchen-sweeping, but I mean, she has 2 kids and is kind of renovating her kitchen right now. The work is never done, I'm sure.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Henley-on-Thames (Part 4)

nobody@vox.com(Abbey) — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 13:34:21 -0700

On Tuesday evening-ish we headed to Henley-on-Thames, on the recommendation of Angela. It was an adorable little town and I kind of wish I had money to take advantage of all the cute shopping. Mostly the rare and antique book shop. And the boots. Ugh! The boots.

We got there a little bit on the late side, having come by train from Paddington Station. Our room was absolutely heavenly (especially after our smelly hole in London, which actually was probably a steal considering how much we paid for it). We stayed at a place called Milsoms, which was another Angela recommendation. It was sort of between a pub and a restaurant, like you walked through a pub and on the left was the reception area and straight ahead was this gorgeous restaurant.

Our room, and our bathroom which was up some steps from the room:

We ate at the restaurant downstairs that night, a bit pricey but totally worth it. They catch everything in the river about a hundred yards away, or at least that's how I understood it. Also enjoyed a whole bottle of house wine and this orange chocolate tart that was fantastic. I forgot to take a picture of my fish until it was half eaten, and nobody wants to see that. Well ok, you get to anyway:

P3100251

And then that night we watched a bunch of silly BBC stuff and slept SO well in our quiet little hotel room. Next morning was breakfast at the same little restaurant:

and YES that is butter in a seashell. A real one.

So when you walked out the door of our hotel, to the right was this view (1st picture) and a bit down the street on the left you'd hit the river:

So we walked around a bit and went to this park, which was so nice and the first quiet place we'd seen since being in the UK, really. They had an obstacle course thingie and a big wide field with a great view of the town. It was also the first place we'd been in days where I could set my camera timer thing and not worry about somebody grabbing it and running, so yay for pictures of both of us:

P3100268 (2)

From there we walked around a bit more, through some adorable residential areas and past a secondary school that was letting out or in or something, we couldn't quite tell, and some more shopping, and then we got back on the train and went back to London.

That night we stayed near the airport at a really American-y hotel that had a full restaurant, a pub with pub food, a full cafe, a playground, a projector screen with the Manchester U game on, and a convenience store all in the lobby. Some British HGTV and this awesome sort of talk-faux-quiz show with Emma Thompson and Stephen Fry, and then to sleep. Next day we tried to blow the last of our pounds in Heathrow (which is totally not hard, btw), and then HOME!

And that is the end.

P.S. Dane has a lot more (and some much better) pictures here. And also tons of pictures of me, including whole action sequences of me doing riveting things like putting my hair in a ponytail or reading a book or going up an escalator.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend