fall reading list

I have now been unemployed for 3 months, and somehow I’ve only read 4 books.  But I still have over a month left in fall, so hopefully I can finish this list!

Fall Reading List:
1. Dubliners – James Joyce
2. Tender is the Night – F. Scott Fitzgerald
3. Mrs. Dalloway – Virginia Woolfe
4. The Sound and the Fury – William Faulkner
5. First King of Shannara – Terry Brooks
6. Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell

things i’ll miss…

tomorrow morning, mikey and I will pile into our tiny little car and start the 48 hour, 4 day trek to the West Coast.  (to learn more about that, go to our joint blog.)

here’s a small list of some of the things I will miss here in the DC area:
1. family, and all the fun family events
2. friends, from church and Little Lights and CBC and everywhere else
3. the monuments, particularly when they’re lit up at night
4. fall.  it’s not amazing here, but it’s a heck of a lot better than in Southern California
5. Grace Community Church
6. our cute little Arlington apartment
7. snow, even the little tiny bit we get here
8. the Thai place down the street, where they know mikey by name and have my order memorized

Really, it’s the people I’ll miss most.  I don’t love the Mid-Atlantic area, but I do very much love our family and friends here, and it’s incredibly hard to leave them.

And now, time to finish packing and cleaning, because tomorrow, it’s on to California… (well, Memphis, actually.  and then Amarillo.  and then the Grand Canyon.  and THEN on to California!)

Top 10 things I learned at the Bakery:

Top 10 things I’ve learned over the last year:

1. Don’t ask for the nutrition information at a bakery.  If you need to count your calories that strictly, you probably shouldn’t be in a bakery to begin with.
2. Be nice to everyone, especially the people with whom you don’t particularly enjoy working.  It’ll get you much farther than being mean ever will.
3. Butter and sugar.  Lots and lots of butter and sugar.
4. A good latte should have a pretty picture in it – it means it was made well and your barista knows what the heck they’re doing.
5. Teamwork takes time, but let’s be honest – some people will never be good at it.
6. Smiling at someone can actually make them happier (apparently important in customer service).
7. Being shy is not an excuse for being quiet behind the counter, or for not getting to know your coworkers.
8. Height is a major advantage in this world.
9. People have bad days – don’t be so damn judgmental of everyone.
10. “Arts and crafts is all I need.”

summer reading list, revised.

1. Les Miserables – Victor Hugo
2. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
3. Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
4. The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
5. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6. The Shack – William P. Young

summer reading list

1. Les Miserables – Victor Hugo
2. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
3. Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
4. The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
5. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee

i want.

I want to know what’s coming next.
I want to have a plan for next year.
(I want to have a plan for next week.)
I want this awful sunburn to go away.
I want more than 5 hours of sleep tonight.
I want to go away somewhere exciting for a few days.
I want time with my husband.
I want to be able to see my closest friends more frequently.
I want to know Jesus better.
I want to have time to just sit and read for hours (perhaps even finish Les Mis).
I want to lose 15lbs.  Again.
I want to have something of substance to write about on here.
I want a break.
I want to do something meaningful with my life.
I want to be more creative.
I want to be happy.
I want to make others happy.

Have I mentioned that I want to know what’s coming next?  Because seriously, I’m losing patience with this waiting game.

adventure, revisited.

Why is it that whenever I start craving something exciting in my life, all I end up doing is buying a new pair of shoes and cutting my hair?  Seriously, is that as adventurous as I get?  (Both the shoes and the cut are pretty cute, in case you were wondering.)

Lately, I’ve been listening to “The Beautiful Letdown” by Switchfoot in the car, on the way to work; holy quarter-life crisis.  This album packs several intensely reflective songs, from ‘More than Fine,’ to ‘Meant to Live,’ to ‘Dare You to Move,’ (which is currently my ringtone for everyone but mikey).

Particularly, I’ve been drawn to the track titled, ‘This is Your Life’:

“Yesterday is a wrinkle on your forehead;
Yesterday is a promise that you’ve broken.
Don’t close your eyes, don’t close your eyes.
This is your life and today is all you’ve got now,
Yeah, and today is all you’ll ever have.
Don’t close your eyes;
Don’t close your eyes.

This is your life, are you who you want to be?
This is your life, are you who you want to be?
This is your life, is it everything you dreamed that it would be,
When the world was younger and you had everything to lose?”

 

This is my life, it’s the only one I’ve got, and I want to be living it to the fullest.  I want to be spending my time in ways that nourish my soul; I want to work a job that helps and serves my community; I want to bring glory to my Lord in everything I do.  I want a life filled with excitement and adventure and love and joy and freedom.

The bad news?  I really have no idea how to get there.

adventure.

I’m not the most spontaneous, adventurous person on the planet (though probably not the least, either).  I like to have plans in advance; I like quiet nights at home with the husband, or even just with a book; I like watching the same movies with the same people and eating the same snacks.  I don’t usually get bored.

But then, every once in a while, I get the itch to travel.  I get this strange desire to drop everything and jump on the next plane to whichever city sounds most intriguing at the time.  Usually, this sudden thirst for adventure comes after looking at pictures of a friend’s vacation, or reading something on the news about a certain country of interest, or seeing a lovely view in a movie or painting.

This time?  I want to go to Prague.  I mean, seriously:

Pretty much the most gorgeous city ever.  I could spend hours just looking at all the pictures online.

I could easily fill this whole post with pictures stolen from the interwebs, but that seems silly – I’ll wait till I can post my own pictures to do that.  Just go to Google Images and type in Prague.  So beautiful.

The castle.  The churches.  The cathedral.  The bridges.  The river.  The squares.  The markets.  The winding streets.  The museums.  The architecture.  The city lights.

 

Sigh.  Unfortunately, with (cheap) plane tickets between $800-1200, it’s not exactly high on the list of possible vacation destinations for the near future.  But someday, I’m determined to go and explore the amazing city of Prague.

lent

Did you know that Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, is just one week from tomorrow?  Yeah, crazy, right?

I participate in Lent every year, though not always successfully.  I usually choose to give up something that I like a lot, and try to add some soul-nourishing activity in its place.  Things I’ve given up in the past have been soda/caffeine, sweets, unnecessary spending, and facebook.  Things I’ve added have been more prayer and a particular devotional study.

So what should I give up this year?  Ideas include:
- caffeine.  because let’s be honest, I’m super addicted.
- sweets.  can you imagine how hard that would be, working at the Bakery?
- facebook.  but that was pretty easy last time.
- meat.  though, going vegetarian for 6 weeks honestly doesn’t seem too difficult.
- TV.  I’d have to wait until the end of April to watch more Gilmore Girls.

But I have no idea what to add in.  I feel like I need something a bit structured, otherwise I won’t really keep up with it.  Thoughts?

Are you giving up anything for Lent?  If so, what?

pay it forward

There are a lot of crack-pot customers at the Bakery.  I mean, really, we have some crazies.  But fortunately, there are several really nice ones, too.

Like this one guy, for instance.  He comes in fairly regularly (for a while, he was there every day).  Every once in a while, he’ll order just a coffee ($1.95, please and thank you) and will pay with a $10.  Then he’ll tell us to keep the change and buy the next few people’s coffee, on him.

Um, really?  How cool is that?

Yes, it’s annoying to hold on to change like that.  Yes, sometimes we lose track of how much of his money we still have.  Yes, it’s awkward to explain to a customer that the guy that just left paid for his/her coffee (some people get REALLY angry, for some reason).

But it makes my heart smile every time he does that.

And sometimes, then next person will leave their money for the next person.  And then that next person will do the same for the person after them.  And so on and so forth, until we get another angry/entitled customer that just stalks off with their free coffee.

We definitely do have some cool people that come through the Bakery.  Really cool people, indeed.