7 Quick Takes: Friday's Favorites

Today I'm sharing 7 Quick Takes Favorites and linking up with Kelly at This Ain't The Lyceum.

1. Cara Strickland  guest posted on The Junia Project this wonderful post about what she learned whilst dating. I read this and cried tears of both sadness and joy to have someone articulate some of my experiences.

2. This post about getting to know a person instead of a potential future spouse made me rethink the way I think about meeting Mr. TDH.

3. Sarah Bessey wrote this post called "Damaged Goods" - yes yes yes.

4. Jayson Bradley nailed it in this post about "Christian cleavage." Thank you, thank you, thank you.

5. "To the Christian Men and Women Debating Yoga Pants" in Christianity Today - thank God someone wrote this. For the love, people.

6. Since we're finishing up the month dedicated to love and relationship-status-awareness, "Things It's OK to Feel When You're Single" and "I'm Single. Stop Pitying Me on Valentine's Day"  were especially appreciated. My Valentine's Day was fantastic, thanks, and while someday it will be a romantic day, this year it was a crepes-with-my-sister-and-friend day, and I had a great time. For real, no pity.

7. Finally, to end with some laughs, Mallory Ortberg's post on "If Stanley Tucci Were Your Boyfriend" is beautiful and perfect and true.

Enjoy your weekend, friends!

7 Quick Takes: Jealousy, Weekend Plans, and Rwanda

Linking up with Jen at Conversion Diary for 7 Quick Takes!

1. In case you missed it, my neighbor got mad that he wasn't invited to Book Club, so he set his car on fire. Ok, that may not have been his exact motivation, but it certainly seemed accurate since the flames started approximately 40 minutes before Book Club started. #jealous?

2. Speaking of Book Club, I've barely started a post about Sarah Bessey's Jesus Feminist. But it is coming, I promise. And while you wait for my thoughts, you could read the book yourself. It really is awesome.

3. So it's a three-day weekend! Woot! I have grand plans of...cleaning my washing machine. The idea of cleaning my oven crossed my mind, but then I realized that I have nail polish on and it looks good and I'm going to keep my nails looking good for as long as possible, so I absolutely cannot do any scrubbing of ovens this weekend. Another time, maybe. But these directions for cleaning a washing machine do not involve any scrubbing {unless you want the outside to look clean, too, but I think that's overrated} so I will be partaking in this fun activity.

4. Since cleaning a washing machine is just so much fun, I decided to make my three-day weekend a four-day weekend and head down the coast with a couple friends. We are going to the beach!!!! Our days will look like this:

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5. Since we are wise women and don't want to spend allllll our weekend moolah on eating out, I'm going to be making Mexican lasagna for us. This will be the third time I've made it, and you know that the third time is the charm. Excitement abounds. 

6. In case you missed it, Natalie and I "interviewed" each other yesterday! It was totes fun, and if this is something you want to try, let me know! 

7. Finally, Rwanda. Noonday Collection and International Justice Mission are teaming up for a trip to Rwanda with a bunch of amazing women, and they've saved a spot on this trip for me. Well, almost. There is an extra spot on this trip and the person filling it will be determined by vote. I applied and you can read my entry here when you vote or here in my initial post. 

Voting is only open until Wednesday, May 29th, and you can vote every day from your device{S!}. If you would take just a moment and vote for me, I'd be so grateful. This is a blogging trip, so I'm asking for you, fellow bloggers, to vote, pray, and vote again for me and this trip. 

As of the halfway point, I was in the top third of votes, and things have changed even in the past two days. To be considered, I need to be one of seven entries with the most votes, and it's going to be close. Thank you in advance for your votes!

Some Slightly Burnt Cookies and A Really Burnt Car

This weekend was full of exciting and adventurous activities. A group of ladies met and discussed Sarah Bessey's book Jesus Feminist, I finished Emma for the first time, Cami got to see a new "Miranda" episode, I baked cookies with notenough flour...oh, and our neighbor caught his car on fire. Just a day in the life.

I'm sure you all are dyyyyyyinngggg to hear this fantastical tale, and most assuredly I'll tell it unto you, but if you wanted to click this link riddy riddy fast and vote me to Rwanda, that'd be freaking amazing. Thank ye, thank ye. {Bonus: you can vote every 24 hours per device, so if you wanna hit this up on your mobile, work computer, iPad, library computer, etc., that'd be fantastical!}

So, obviously the most important part of the story is... cookies need ONE and 3/4 cup flour, not just 3/4 cup flour. What was I thinking? So while those were melting and crisping in my oven, my neighbor across the driveway was "fixing" his car. And by "fixing" I mean he was also in the melting and crisping mode.

First crisis first. My cookies were melting and crisping! Book club was starting in 45 minutes! I didn't want to go to the store!

While I mourned the first dozen cookies, Samara glanced out the window. And noticed flames. Big flames. Under the neighbor's car. And on top of the car. And there was smoke. Lots of smoke.

Suddenly, cookies seemed a whole lot less important.

The question of "what is the explosion radius of a car?" crossed my mind, and when I approximated the answer to be "really freaking large," I grabbed my phone and called 911. Samara had the presence of mind to grab our fire extinguisher {we had one in our laundry closet}, and we found that a random family had been driving by and stopped when they saw the vast amounts of smoke.

The guy grabbed our hose, but then decided our fire extinguisher was a better option. We unrolled the hose while he extinguished, and then he grabbed another hose to connect to ours so it would actually reach the car. My sister Ellen walks up the driveway at this point, and I thought, I can't let this car blow up because I don't want my sister to die and then, So much for book club. #dramaqueen.

As many of you firefighting experts know, water doesn't do a whole lot of anything when fighting fire and oil and gasoline, so another extinguisher was desired. Our condo had one in a pretty little box on the other side of my next-door neighbor's unit, and Ellen was trying to open the box without success {why why why don't those boxes just have normal opening latches, for the love of pete!?}. I ran inside and grabbed the hammer from our tool collection {thanks, Dad!} and Ellen was a total badass and broke the glass and got the fire extinguisher out.

This whole time, I'm on the phone with the 911 operator. "No, there is no one in the cars. Yes, there might be people in the building. No, the building is not on fire, but there is a heck of a lot of smoke...gray, dark smoke...now it's white. They just used the fire extinguisher. It's ok, I can hear the sirens."

The firefighters got the hose going and finished putting the fire out, and all was well with the world. The building had some smoke stains on the side, but nothing else caught on fire and nothing exploded. As you may recall from October, car explosions are one of my irrational {but now justified!} fears.

The best part of the whole adventure was after the fire was put out {obviously}. The guy who had stopped with his family came over and was all "thanks for letting me use your hose. Sorry for freaking you out" or whatever, and we told him "thank YOU for stopping!" He and his wife waved goodbye and starting walking back to their car and their son noticed my slippers and hollers victoriously, "Doctor Who!" with a big smile. Samara and I cheered "yeah!" and Ellen rolled her eyes at us all. Twas great. Whovians saved the world, one crisis at a time.

Making memories, that's what we do best up in here! Later this week I will hopefully be sharing about Jesus Feminist and our discussion, so stay tuned. And thanks again for voting!

Monday's Musings

Bek, why do you title most posts with an alliteration? Where does this deep desire {there you go again} for similar sounds {and again} originate?

I have no idea, but I offer "The Princess Diaries" as a deeply important part of my foundational years, and she knows a good alliteration when she hears one.

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Moving right along.

So what fun things happened and are going to happen? I will tell you! This is like a 7QT, but on a Monday with no link-up and more alcohol. 

This past weekend was full of birthday celebrations for Samara {yay, 24!}. Pizza, Notions, bacon, laughter, sangria, Grumpy Cat, and Miranda were all included. Proof's here. 

I tried a new drink on Friday: a Dublin Mule. My friend Julie and I went out for dinner a few weeks ago and she tried a Moscow Mule, which was quite wonderful, and this Dublin Mule did not disappoint. So we decided that we are going to have a Mule party and make our own Mule drinks. It's ok; you can be jealous.

"Call the Midwife" had sadness last week and it's making me nervous for this week's {meaning last night's} episode. My mom and I have been watching them together on Monday afternoons, so don't tell me what happens in Ep. 5, but know that after Ep. 4 I went home and turned on opera music and chopped up peppers for Mexican lasagna and was sorely depressed all evening.

My roomie arrives on Wednesday!!! It's going to be wonderful to have Catherine here, and our prayers are almost answered: the forecast for Thursday is in the eighties!! If you're not from the Pacific Northwest, that won't be a big deal for you, but for us to reach 81* on May 1st is a) wonderful and b) miraculous. So please keep praying for some lovely sunshine for us, and we'll post pictures as a thank-you.

Some friends and I are starting a book club for Sarah Bessey's Jesus Feminist. It's going to be amazing and I'm really excited for our first meeting in a few weeks. I'm going to try and re-read it before we meet, so be looking for a book review soon.

Yesterday I watched the first episode of Season Six of "The Office." Oh my goodness. Jim + Pam!!!! This show is my new binge, and I'm not ashamed! I give Samara updates from "the office world" and we both get kicks out of the pranks and antics on the show, even though I'm the only one watching it devotedly. Any other "Office" fans out there? What's your favorite scene from the show?

Finally, I'm thrilled to announce that Natalie and I will be blog swapping and interviewing each other in the next week or so {still have to nail down the deets}. It's been lovely to email and get to know one another in that special way that only the internet makes both entirely and not-at-all awkward. Tune in for a more formal announcement after we finalize a date - Natalie is so fun!

Happy Monday!

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Finish This: Week Thirteen

Linking up with the lovely hostesses of Finish This: Jen at The Arizona Russums, Becky at The Java Mama, Nicole at Three 31, and Lisa at Coastlined. Check 'em out and join the fun!

I don't get enough time with my sisters. It's been a few years since we've all consistently lived in the same house for any amount of time longer than Christmas break, and as crazy as sharing a bathroom was, I miss spending all that time with them. When we get together, we laugh until our sides ache and our cheeks are sopping wet. My sisters are bomb.

Here we are with our favorite cousin

My favorite indulgence is hanging out with friends no matter how late. I'm such a people person and my friends are all wonderful... I'd so much rather talk and be with lovely people than do something as boring as sleep! On New Year's Eve, Samara and Cami and I stayed up talking until 4am. Yikes! I've never stayed up that late/early before, but it was so fun and felt justified since we could sleep in. So much wonderfulness.

I made a major life change when I moved out into my own place. The awesome fun-ness of living on my own is very much balanced with the huge sense of responsibility I feel, and I have to say that I love both the freedom and the gravity. 

I'm going to add another life change. When I started volunteering at Care Net, my life became a declaration. Four hours every week is not a whole lot, but it is the first step of a lifelong journey, and I'm so looking forward to it all.

You should read Jesus Feminist by Sarah Bessey, the Unwind series by Neal Shusterman, The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss, The Fault In Our Stars by John Green, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, Is It Just Me? by Miranda Hart, Baby Catcher by Peggy Vincent. Y'all should know better than to ask a bookwork for book recommendations ;)

Almond bark is my secret ingredient in crack popcorn. To read the full recipe, check out this post {with a picture, no less!}. 

Thanks for another great link-up! Tune in next week for some more prompts, and please add your blog to link-up or finish these sentences in the comments. Until next time...

Oh Yeah, Real Life

It occurred to me last week that it's been a while since I've done a non-link-up post. This thought entered my brain, and the thought to follow was "I should use that as one of my 7QT." Sigh. *shakes head*

So life lately? Busy. Awesome. Full. Friends. Adulting. Books. Thoughts. Family. Plans. Allergies {ugh!}.

On Saturday, I finished Jesus Feminist. Wow. That book. So many people read it and said "this wasn't what I was expecting" and so I stopped expecting whatever I was expecting. And still, my expectations were blown out of the water. It is so different and refreshing and Jesus-focused and kind... I read it in just a few days like holding my breath and powering from one end of a pool to the other, and now I want to go back and re-read it slowly in order to, as "Bright Star" credits Keats with saying so beautifully, "luxuriate in the sensation of water." After a second {or third or fourth} reading, I will post a review.

One crochet project is finished! For Christmas, I jokingly told my friend Rosemary that I would make her a scarf "for Valentine's Day." Make that St. Patrick's Day. Oh wait, make that the first day of Spring. Crap, make that April Fool's Day. Whatever. The moral of the story is, I finished her scarf! The yarn was a bi...I mean beast to work with. Ugh. But it's finally done - hooray!

wrong color but same texture of awfulness

Samara told me that she was planning a Spring Cleaning session this {previous} weekend, and I got inspired and decided to join her separately. Unfortunately, Samara got sick this weekend, so she focused instead on getting better. I felt bad for her and sprayed Lysol and went through old documents and did laundry. No actual cleaning took place; my house desperately needs vacuumed.
Do you have any Spring Cleaning "rituals" or big tasks you save for spring? Samara's sister Melissa is writing a series on this {with a giveaway coming up!}, and I'm really looking forward to her posts.

Friday, I promised the Notions crew that I would make cookies, but when I got home later than planned, I realized that our fridge lacked eggs. {Please note the passive voice that blames the fridge, not the two residents who remove and consume items from the fridge.} Thankfully, my sister was allergic to eggs for a while and so I knew that applesauce works as a substitute for eggs {I'm thankful that I knew this, not that my sister had allergies, for the record.}.
The whole time I was mixing the batter, I was worried that the applesauce was bad {it wasn't} or that the cookies would taste awful {they didn't} or that everything would smell like baby food forever {of course it didn't}. Everything turned out just fine, and even with only 4 people eating cookies, there were just a handful left at the end of the night, and our hosts graciously agreed to keep them.

Have you heard John Legend's song "All of Me"? Oh my goodness, this song!!! Enjoy.

My friend Rebecca and I watched more than half of Season Two of "The Office" yesterday. Prior to yesterday, the only episodes I'd seen were in my Human Resource Management class {as bad examples, obviously}, so it's been fun to get the whole Jim-Pam relationship arc in order. Kinda feeling like this about the whole thing {I'm caught up to Christmas}:

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My dear friend Victoria asked me to guest post on her blog, and here is her announcement! I'm pretty excited, and I'm also thrilled that my roomie is another guest. Good manners and common sense tell me that I should invite Victoria to guest post here - keep your eyes open for that!

Well, blogging compadres, that's life. The other parts of life are too boring to blog about {like tutoring algebra or changing the water filter} or deserve their own posts {like a response to Jesus Feminist}.
Thanks for catching up on life. Tune in tomorrow for another link-up with the Not Alone Series.

7 Quick Takes: Life is Hard

Linking up with Jen at Conversion Diary for 7QT!

1. This article by Sarah Bessey {who is definitely becoming one of my favorite writers ever!} is really wonderful. I think I'm going to join her challenge on Pinterest {not like I need another excuse to be on there...}. What do you think?

2. Speaking of Sarah Bessey, for her birthday this week, her book Jesus Feminist was on sale for $1.99! You better believe I snatched that sucker up - I even shared the love with Samara, who also downloaded it. When we both got home for dinner, I confessed that I was a couple chapters into it already, and she laughed and said she was at the same spot. Oh, reading nerds :)

3. It's the Land o' Links! Rachel Held Evans' response to an article about women teaching; a great piece about being a good Samaritan; and the Church regarding our obsession with pastors.

4. It's World Down Syndrome Day! Read Laura's beautiful post about her brother, and go show some love to people.

5. A group of friends and I went to see "The Grand Budapest Hotel" last weekend. My friends had all purchased their tickets online, so they got in the "print your ticket" line. I hadn't purchased a ticket yet, so I got in the regular line. And I got carded. Yep. That's about how I felt, too. Are you kidding me? That's never happened to me at a movie theater. Purchasing alcohol? I expect it to happen, since businesses can get shut down if they sell alcohol to minors. But to an R-rated movie?? I was stunned. Because this blog can be found by anyone and everyone, I won't tell you the comments that ran through my brain as I pulled out my i.d., but they were definitely snarky, to say the least.

6. Thanks to swapping blogs with Yvonne {her post on my blog; my post on her blog} earlier this week, I learned that I can share a gif just like sharing a picture. But now that I'm trying to share my own, all knowledge has left me. Help, talented people of the internet!

7. What I don't know is the correct way to say "gif." I hear it most often with a J sound, but then I've heard tech-y people get mad and say that the only "j-if" is a peanut butter. But saying it with a hard G sounds awful. Sigh.

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Happy weekend!

Thinking About...

...how it's been a while since I wrote a non-link-up post. And then I was sick for 4 days and am still not feeling 100%, so we'll ease back into normality with a post of half-sentences of what I'm thinking about these days.

...Yvonne and my upcoming blog swap about friendship.

...what a joy it is to read a big, heavy book about one of my favorite people... almost 200 pages in to Team of Rivals!

...feminism and its many facets. Been reading a bunch of Her.meneutics articles, not all about feminism per se, but about women's issues {like this one about some Downton Abbey shtuff and this one about Lena Dunhum}. I'm really looking forward to the day Jesus Feminist comes in at the library.

...how amazingly awesome and scary it is to be an adult.

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...Lent. Technically I'm behind on my note-writing commitment, but I think that my perfectionism needs to die and so I'm not going to worry about it. 

...napping. Being sick is no fun, but napping certainly helps. Thursday, I didn't go to work; at 7:30 in the morning, I called my mom to tell her I was sick, and then I went back to sleep...until 11! It was glorious.

...autism. I'm listening to Temple Grandin's book The Autistic Brain in my car, and I must confess that I find it all fascinating. If you want to be inspired, watch the movie "Temple Grandin" or read one of her biographies {a couple of them are on my to-read list}.

...introverts and extroverts. Samara's boss loaned her Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking and she administered the quiz at the beginning of the book. Of 20 true-or-false questions {"true" indicates introverted tendencies, "false" indicates extroverted tendencies}, I answered "true" approximately five times. I say approximately because there were a couple questions that were half-ish, so I combined them for one point. This book is on my to-read list also.

That's all my sick brain can think about on this overcast Monday. Peace out, yo.