So I love listening to Sara Groves. She is a local, yet nationally recognized, Christan music artist. Here are the lyrics to one that always makes me miss my friends back in Michigan...
Every Minute
by Sara Groves

I am long on staying • I am slow to leave • Especially when it comes to you my friend • You have taught me slow down • And to prop up my feet • It's the fine art of being who I am • • And I can't figure out • Why you want me around • I'm not the smartest person I have ever met • But somehow that doesn't matter • No it never really mattered to you at all •

• And at the risk of wearing out my welcome • At the risk of self-discovery • I'll take every moment • And every minute that you'll give me •

• And I can think of time when families all lived together • Four generations in one house • And the table was full of good food • And friends and neighbors • That's not how we like it now • • Cause if you sit at home you're a loser • Couldn't you find anything better to do • Well no I couldn't think of one thing • I would rather waste my time on than sitting here with you •

• And at the risk of wearing out my welcome • At the risk of self-discovery • I'll take every moment • And every minute that you'll give me •

• And I wish all the people I love the most • Could gather in one place • And know each other and love each other well • • And I wish we could all go camping • And lay beneath the stars • And have nothing to do and stories to tell • We'd sit around the campfire • And we'd make each other laugh remembering when • You're the first one I'm inviting • Always know that you're my friend •

• And at the risk of wearing out my welcome • At the risk of self-discovery • I'll take every moment • And every minute that you'll give me • Every moment and every minute that you'll give me • Every moment and every minute that you'll give me • Every minute • •

 

John took this picture on our vacation to Roatan Honduras last week. Yes, it is an octopus! It was amazing!

For your viewing pleasure:

 

Here's to Braveheart. A good rat. A senior rat that age is catching up to at warp speed.

What American accent do you have? (Best version so far) Northern You have a Northern accent. That could either be the Chicago/Detroit/Cleveland/Buffalo accent (easily recognizable) or the Western New England accent that news networks go for.

Click Here to Take This Quiz Brought to you by YouThink.com quizzes and personality tests.

Not really a surprise given that I grew up in Michigan and now live in Minnesota...

There is something totally precious about puppies. Here is our Scout with a sandy face after her first encounter with swimming. She went in on her own and started swimming. Now I am sure that it helped that there was another dog there swimming after a ball. Nevertheless, she did it. She is bound to be a water dog. The coolest thing to me is that after she did it, she got back on the beach and then turned around and did it again. As if she thought "Did I just swim? Can I do it again? Let's try it"
She is still exhausting. I don't think I will go to work with really clean pants again. She doesn't even jump up it is just that she steps on my hem. Also the house has not seen a lot of cleaning work done. We are just strying to stay one step in front of the dog. :)
I think she won over John's parents this weekend. This is a good thing since we hope to visit the cabin often.

So learning about video games is part of my job since I will be moderating a website for one and communicating with users. I found this great website with the illustration below. Great Games Experiment. I am sure there are tons of game websites. I happen to really like the "play now" games. These little flash games that don't require downloads or money. My favorite is Indestructo Tank. You should try it. Well, only if you don't naturally form addictions to video games.

On May 5, 2007, our lives changed. We brought home Scout, a then 9 week old lab mix. She has been a lot of fun, but it has caused us to change our schedules intensively. She is definitely a puppy. Love her one minute and pull your hair out the next. :) She is learning to "come" and "sit" so things are getting better. The house training is also going very well. Since I don't have children, I don't have the authority to say that is similar, but I am guessing that is one step closer to what it is like to have children than a cat is. Cats are so easy. I just love cats. Don't get me wrong with all of this talking--I really really like dogs. I have heard it said that puppy owners are the most honest pet owners on the planet. They'll tell you everything good and bad about their dog. :)

 
If I could back date this post, it would have been put up on April 30, the day after we got home from Arizona. I had the chance to attend the North American Wolf Conference in Flagstaff Arizona. It just so happens that my sister is currently working for Americorp in Flagstaff. SO I jumped at the chance to have a working vacation. Also I had never been to the southwest before. It was an enjoyable vacation. I had to conquer or attempt to conquer a fear of mine...I really don't like being in precarious locations. We hiked 6.1 miles down into the Grand Canyon, which was amazing and grueling. At times you could look over the edge of the path and realize that you would fall a long ways before you would stop falling. The next day we went to Sedona and I walked onto a land bride that I was not comfortable being on. It is a good thing that I didn't read the sign that told people that the land bridge was not entirely stable. I feel like as I get older, my fears become more substantial. I don't like fast downward motion. We did some cross country skiing this winter and it took a while for me to really be comfortable with any downward slope. Thankfully, John is very patient with me. :) How did I start to let my fears dictate what I would do? Are fears healthy because they can keep you from doing things that could hurt you? How do we know which fears are unsubstantiated? By the way, in the picture above, John and I are standing on that little patch of rock island near the bottom of the picture.

I have made a discovery!
One that many people have already made. I learned to Stumble Upon websites. You can load this button into your web browser and then based on your entered interests it will randomly choose a website that you might enjoy. Then based on how you rank those websites, it will pick other ones similar to the ones you liked. So for example, I am a sucker for cute animal pictures and video, so when I hit my "Stumble" button, I get a website with a cute animal picture a lot of the time. There is a button on this blog on the lower right side which will allow you to see which websites I have enjoyed. As if I needed help wasting time, right?

Interesting website with personality tests. I feel like when I take the Myers Briggs test that I get different answers just about every time. Now I realize it is probably because I am borderline on a couple of the items. It is always interesting to learn about yourself. The multiple intelligence test is pretty much what I had anticipated.

So I just feel that I need to post my top five concerts that I have been to. I was discussing this with John last weekend. It's just one of those things a person needs to determine so when they get to a concert that pushes out one of their top five, they know it.

In no particular order:

Andrew Peterson-Behold the Lamb concert with Gabe Scott, Ben Shrive, Andrew Osenga, and Laura Story: This concert was so unbelieveable...I mean I cried the music was so beautiful. I wanted the concert to go on all night. If you have never checked out Behold the Lamb, you should.

U2-Vertigo tour: Being five feet from Bono is an experience. So is fearing for your life as the crowd begins to push you into a fence.. and this is in Minnesota. But they are truly entertainers.

Caedmon's Call and Jars of Clay-Acoustic show: Two of my favorite bands sounding the best I have heard them. It's hard to top.

Dave Matthews Band: The concert went by so fast, I wasn't sure if I had really been there. All I know is that I didn't sit down at any point in the show--I'm not a dancer, but I couldn't stop moving.

Rich Mullins: You just never know when that last concert you'll see of one of your favorite artists will be. I didn't know, but I am glad that I went. I admire a lot of things about this songwriter.


I like top five lists...maybe tomorrow it will be vegetables, if I can think of five that I like.

My shower curtain has an atlas on it. Directly in front of the toilet are the islands of the South Pacific. Just about everyday I contemplate what goes on on these islands. I mean it looks like someone accidently splattered paint on it. There are islands everywhere and they are so small. How do people live there so far removed from the rest of the world?

For example, the islands of Yap (which is a large island and a few smallers ones) has 6,300 residents. The islands area is about 39 square miles. They are known for their large stone money which are discs up to eight feet in diameter. Some of them take 20 men to move them. So they stay where they are and everybody knows who they belong to. Actually, they are not used as currency any more. They have switched to the US dollar.

Or how about Nauru? Nauru is the world's smallest island nation, covering just 21 km² (8.1 sq. mi), the smallest independent republic, and the only republican state in the world without an official capital. The island has a population of 13000 residents. Nauruans are among the most obese people in the world, with 90% of adults overweight. Nauru has the world's highest level of type 2 diabetes, with more than 40% of the population affected.

Just think--these are just two of the vast number of inhabited islands in the South Pacific. These islands do exist. Let me state that I did get my information off of Wikipedia, which has recently been shown to contain questionable information. See earlier blog post.

 

Here we are on the wrong side of Lake Michigan in Manitowoc WI.

We headed to this exotic locale for the wedding of a friend of mine. Her name is Clare and we worked together at Cooperstown Bible Camp in Cooperstown ND together. I hadn't seen her since she moved out of "The Cities". Going to her wedding reminded me of all the great friendships I had formed at this camp in the middle of now where North Dakota. Why is it hard to stay in touch with friends in this age of instant messaging and email and cell phones?

All this to say that I am thankful to a bunch of people that accepted me without question and without having to prove that I was worthy of their friendship. I appreciate you.

Michelle on the pier in Holland Michigan with the coastline in the background (10/06)



"I woke up from a strange rain, it was dreaming outside"

I really love song lyrics.

Anyway, I am headed to exotic Manitowoc Wisconsin this weekend for a wedding of a friend. I have never been to Manitowoc, but I am sure it is beautiful this time of year.

One thing that I do know about it is that it is located on stunning Lake Michigan. I grew up about 30 minutes from Lake Michigan, but on the other side of the lake. Growing up on a Great Lake is like growing up on the ocean. It gets in your blood. A few months after moving to Minnesota, John and I passed through Duluth on our way to the cabin. When Lake Superior came into to view, I couldn't breathe. My heart ached. I am looking forward to seeing Lake Michigan this weekend despite the longing to never leave it.

I love geocaching! This little bugger was found in Wisconsin. If you don't know what geocaching is, go to www.geocaching.com.

I am up to 64 finds. I have no idea why I don't do this everyday. Modern day treasure hunting.

So the beauty of Wikipedia is that it is easily accessible and lots of people contribute to it so it should be reputable most of the time. While looking up one of the animals from the Zoo, I ran across its Wikipedia page. It was certainly news to me that the Binturong is sometimes known as a Reticulated Wangdangdoodle. Now I searched the internet high and low to verify such an incredible common name. I was unable to confirm this name. However since I have shown this to my husband, he now refers to this bizarre animal as a Reticulated Wangdangdoodle. Does that mean that incorrect Wikipedia entry can create truth? As long as someone refers to this creature as a Reticulated Wangdangdoodle, than isn't it true that that is another name for it?

One a side note, Binturongs are very peculiar. They give off an odor that smells like popcorn and the females have a "pseudo penis". Sometimes there is nothing as unsual as the real world.

Since the picture really is terrible, I am putting a better one in my photo album for you to look at. Unfortunately, Wikipedia has since changed the entry for the Binturong.

Beware!! Guard cat with laser beam eyes!

Wow! Is it true that I haven't used this blog since 2003?!?! What can I say? A lot has happened since 2003. The absurd picture is of my husband and I at the Timberwolves game on March 2. It was crazy wig night and this picture was #5 in the quest for me to get one where my eyes looked normal--however, as you can see, John sabatoged my efforts! So just for him I am putting it on my blog.

Speaking of John, that brings us to the topic of who is he and how did he end up my husband. I have been meaning to get this down somewhere so here we go. I don't remember the first time I met John. We were freshmen at Hope College in Holland Michigan. When you are a freshman, you meet everyone at least twice and rarely remember their name, major, or hometown. So we met as freshmen. We were both on the swim team, which is a fraternity/sorority of its own. So somewhere between being freshmen and being on the swim team we met and became friends. That honestly is all I have to say about our friendship until summer before our senior year of college. We both started attending a summer Christian fellowship group called Veritas that met at the Holland State Park Beach on Sunday nights. I didn't know he was a Christian and vice versa. This started our real friendship. Our senior year we both were dating (not each other) and busy. After graduating from Hope in 1996, John moved to Chicago and I stayed in Michigan trying to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up. Since Chicago wasn't too far away, I visited once. I remember looking at John in a slightly different light after that trip. It wasn't love-it was true friendship. I decided to go back to college to become a teacher and John decided to move to Minnesota. I began classes at Grand Valley State University in the summer of 1997. By this time the internet had become a fascinating new place filled with great ways to stay in touch with friends that lived hundreds of miles away. John and I became Instant Message buddies. For the next three years, we would chat on AIM and meet up when ever he would come into town to visit his family.

On Christmas day 1999, I found out that I had won and SUV on the internet. Not just any SUV-- a Nissan Xterra in bright yellow! Now you might ask how this impacted John and my relationship, well here's the story. I decided after driving the Xterra for a few months that it wasn't for me. I sold it and put the money in the bank. Joyfully, I went back to driving my beautiful seafoam Plymouth Colt. Seriously, joyfully. This windfall let me do something that I had always wanted to do, but never did before--work at a Bible camp for the summer. I started dreaming about all the amazing places I could work at a camp--California, Maine, Oregon, North Carolina... The list went on and on and at the bottom of the list was the state I ended up at--North Dakota. All I can tell you is that God knew exactly what he was doing. Now to get to North Dakota, I had to go through Minnesota. So it was the perfect time visit John and use him as a place to rest for the night for free. So I did. I stayed an extra day and had a great time. Then I headed off to camp for the summer 2000. During the summer, I received a package from John in the mail. It was filled with things we had talked about while I had visited. I was impressed, but he was just a friend. After camp, we continued to use the internet as our primary communication. I was doing my student teaching and finishing up school. I landed my first professional job in May and decided to return to the camp for the summer. On my way out, I stopped and visited John again. It was wonderful. Again, he sent me a care package that showed he had really listened to me. Again, I was impressed, but he was just a friend. (If I hadn't won the car, so I could work at a camp in ND so I had to go through MN and visit John, our friendship probably would have just stayed minimal.)

The next couple of years were busy since I was a beginning teacher. We used the internet to keep in touch. John got into a serious relationship. I really thought that I would get the email some day saying that he had popped the question to her. It never came and we became closer friends. As he was in this relationship, I began to see all the wonderful qualities he had. I thought I had missed the boat. Eventually, his relationship deteriorated and ended. We spent A LOT of time emailing and chatting. I questioned how much work he was getting done. :) We would see each other when he would come to town to visit family. Spring of 2004, John called me out of the blue Memorial Day from northern Minnesota. We talked for a long time. It was really nice to talk instead of type. When he visited Michigan in June, we saw each other for 5 straight days-the most we had seen each other since college. Still we were just friends. He invited me to meet up with him at Cornerstone Music Festival in Illinois on July 4th weekend. I told him I had to think about it. The night before the festival started, I decided to go. We had a great time. On the last evening as he followed me to wash off my dirty feet, he asked me to consider being more than friends. I left the next morning with the promise of something more than friendship. We talked daily and prayed about changing our friendship and being in a long distance relationship. Sometime in late July, we agreed to go on a date and see what happens. Of course since we lived in separate states, this required travel. I drove out to Minnesota and we went on our first date on Friday August 13, 2004. On December 27, 2004, in front of a winter campfire John proposed to me and I said "it's about time" just kidding... I said "yes!" We got married on July 15, 2005 in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I moved out to Minnesota that summer and here I am-- now a Minnesotan and married. That's the story... thanks for reading.