Tuesday, August 5, 2008

I Love Kingdom Bound

ok, for those of you that don't know, which is probably most of you, but nobody reads my blog anyways so I guess it doesn't really matter either way, Kingdom Bound is a really amazing-tacular 4 day Christian Festival at Darien Lake amusement park, and it's awesome because I basically overdose on a bunch of my favorite bands, get completely exhausted, buy way to much stuff, and love every moment of it... except maybe the moments I spend running from the Park Stage to the PAC because two amazing bands decided to overlap their time slots.
My Kingdom Bound adventures started last Thursday, when I woke up early enough to see the sunrise and rode out to Darien to volunteer on a Load-Out shift. First of all, let it be known that if I am seeing the sunset, it is because I stayed up too late, I definitely do not wake up that early. Our group was assigned to the Houghten College Park Stage. I started my morning building snow fence, something I really am not qualified to do, basically you lift this giant blue cowbell which must weigh at least 60 lbs. and slam it down on a post repeatedly. Of course, I didn't do this singlehandedly, then I probably would have passed out, but it was still positively exhausting and got two blisters, then we wrapped big orange snow fence around the posts and secured them with zip ties, which I love. I really enjoy going up to the fence and talking to my new friend Joe the security guard, bragging to anyone around that I have blisters because of this fence. It makes me feel important, which probably isn't very healthy for my ego. I also helped build the actual stage, screwing the legs onto the deck, and helping put the tent bit up. It made me feel really cool and I'm kind of excited that it didn't Collapse.

So Monday was the first day I went to the actual festival which started on Sunday, which was my 19th birthday. I didn't go Sunday because my parents got me tickets for Monday Tuesday Wednesday after five for my birthday. Leeland played a very very short set Monday and they were amazing, they played Tears of the Saints which is my favorite song ever of all time, I also met them, which made my day. I love them. I'm fairly certain Leeland is my favorite band, I'm a very indecisive person though so I have trouble figuring that out, but I really really love them a lot.

I also saw Skillet Monday, they rock my face off, they were awesome, even better than last year, seriously hardcore. I love Skillet, but not as much as Leeland. I also saw a little bit of Thousand Foot Krutch, I would've liked to see more of them but I would've missed Leeland which would have been a tragedy. I saw a few minutes of Third Day, and they were awesome, but I was so beat that I couldn't really enjoy the wonderfulness of it and we left early. But yeah, it was awesome.

Thursday was the most Funmazing day of all because that was the day that Leeland played at the park stage. I went an hour and a half before their show to talk to my new best friend Joe the security guard, who had told me that he would let me sit on the other side of the barrier for Leeland. Unfortunately Joe was not there, so I talked to the other security guards and they said Joe wasn't coming until 8:30!!! I was very upset because Joe had said he would be there and they were telling me he wasn't coming until after they played, but the security guard who is now known as "little Joe" talked to Joe on the radio and let me sit on the other side of the barrier!!! It was awesome!! I was mesmerized by the wonderfulness of watching Leeland perform. They are so amazing live, I just feel the presence of God so much in their music so it was an incredible experience. After the show Joe let us backstage to chill with them, it was awesome, so so so awesome. After the Leeland show we decided to ride the Superman and we were 3rd in line when they decided to close it because of lightning, it was kind of a bummer. Then it started pouring like crazy and we got soaked, they even canceled the Seventh Day Slumber show :(. Luckily we managed to stay kind of dry because I had friends working the Enemy Opposition merch tent. We rocked out with the boys of Enemy Opp. to random songs about rain (Umbrella by Rhianna; Hillary Duff's "Coming Clean" etc.) It is hilarious to see guys rocking out to Hilary Duff, I'm not kidding. Then when the rain calmed down a bit we rode the Merry-Go-Round because it was the only ride open in the park. It was a great day.

Wednesday was pretty fun too, I showed up late so I missed Fireflight, but I got to rock out to Disciple and it was awesome. I tried to catch the end of Delirious? but I walk slow and stopped to get a soda on the way and ended up seeing all of half the last song. After that I had to start my load out shift and unfortunately did not get to see the amazingness that is Newsboys annual closing show with their crazy dueling rotating drum sets. The load out shift was positively exhausting, lot's of unscrewing and carrying pieces and other things that lead me to exhaustion. I didn't get home until 4 am and almost hit a deer on the way home. It was ridiculous. Kingdom Bound was still awesome though, I can't wait until next year!!

Sunday, July 27, 2008

This is what I do with my life

Holy Blog Of Doom, Batman! I just checked and I have not updated this since Hammertime was in the charts... You would not believe I spend all my time in front of a computer. I prostrate myself in sorrow and beg thy forgiveness..

I am not going to post now with any regularity, waiting for the onshore winds, just generally being asleep, dreaming and chancing to society in general, my day often feels wasted from midday to well after sun-down. I am not growing up. it will be fun fun fun till they take my TBird away.

I send you kisses although very chaste ones. Go with God, good friends. I will write more to certain yous; but it might not be you in particular who I write to.


I got this from The Lazy Bloggers Post Generator
because I'm a lazy blogger...
with a layout that hasn't been relevant to my life since December 07
I think I'm gonna go work on that now even though I'm not feeling inspired

Friday, July 18, 2008

wow, I'm really going to work on updating this more, but I just found something ridiculous
Basically it's a $50 manila folder.
yes I realize it's made out of a really cool fabric made out of plastic bottles but still, it's basically a $50 manila folder
But I guess if your dumb enough to by a MacBook air anorexic, (it doesn't even have a cd drive!!) you're dumb enough to by a $50 manila folder to put it in.

http://www.timbuk2.com/tb2/products/laptop/steve-sleeve/

Saturday, June 7, 2008

Repeatedly Getting Hit In The Face With A Ton of Bricks

OK
So it's official, I'm changing my major.
I seriously never thought I'd say that. I always had this "I'm not going to be one of those people who doesn't know what they want to do with their lives and stays in college for five or six years' I had focus, ambitions, dreams, a plan, I even had a back-up plan.
I guess I am one of those people, though I could probably still get by in 4 years, not that I even want to, I'm pretty sure I could go to Buff State for at least 5 more years of my life and not be disappointed, at the beginning of last semester I actually attempted to figure out a scheme where I could 'go to Buff State' and live on campus and not go to classes, needless to say that didn't exactly work.
This isn't going where I wanted it to go...
All through High School I've been very determined, well, I've always been very determined, but in my freshman year of high school my future plans were finally realized while reading an issue of TeenVogue (in retrospect, it probably wasn't the best place to be in to determine the rest of my life). I was going to be a fashion designer, I was going to go to Parson's, a very expensive school in NYC. I was going to be famous and rich. I might be being to hard on myself, it's not quite that selfish. I've always been a bit of a radical, and I was planning on single-handedly revolutionizing the fashion business. I was going to have positive body image ad campaigns, and I would refuse to conform to the 'sex sells' mentality. I recall even having an idea to build a non-sweatshop factory in Africa, to train the people to make clothes and give them fair wages, I was going to build a school too, to send the kids too, and of course I was going to have enough left over to have the most envied shoe collection in the world.
Fashion just always seemed right. I've loved it as long as I can remember. Dress-up was my favorite childhood game, and my I had an exponentially higher amount of Barbie clothes than actually Barbies, whose 'games' consisted of as many scenarios I could think of resulting in the maximum amount of outfit changes per day. That girl did everything. I handed my first 'fashion sketch' to my grandmother at age 3 (so I'm told, I don't recall this, it may have been closer to age 5) of a princess dress, explaining to her that she was to sew it for me and that was what I was being for Halloween that year, and I always loved to travel, not just anywhere, but too far away places, cultured places. Thoughts of yearly fabric shows in Paris and business trips to London and Tokyo put stars in my eyes.
I had big plans.
but here's the catch:
God has even bigger plans for me, bigger than I can even imagine
I'm not entirely sure God has the same shoe collection I had in mind, but there's always necessary sacrifices to make when one chooses to take up their cross and follow his will, which always even out in the end. I know this not only because there is a myriad of evidence for this throughout the bible, but throughout my life as well. I mean even in the past year and a half or so, gosh, even in the last semester, I have been so incredibly transformed by him, and I couldn't be happier with my life or where it's going.
Here's a pretty big example, I wasn't even going to go to Buff State. I mean, absolutely, positively, not not not going to Buff State, it wasn't my last choice school, it was my last resort school. The counselor said I needed to apply to a 'back-up school', preferably something in SUNY I knew I could get into. Buff State's the only SUNY school with a fashion program, and that is the only reason I applied. I needed to get away from home and pursue my big shiny gleaming future. Turns out about a month before I "needed to have all my applications in" I realize that the 'portfolio' I had assumed would be a collection of fashion sketches actually was supposed to be a full-on art portfolio. Turns out I'd overlooked that Parson's has what they call 'Freshman Foundations' a year of basic art classes before you go into your major. I wasn't about to pop out an entire portfolio in a month and still manage to have the slightest idea of what was going on in AP calc, as well as all my other classes, not to mention I wasn't thrilled about taking a year of just art, I wanted to jump right into my major. It was down to Buff State and Philidelphia University. Buff State would mean that I would continue to live in this 'godforsaken' city, PhilaU wanted me to take Gym Class. I thought Philly would be cool though, because there was a lot of homeless people there I could help, and my favorite stores headquarters were there and they gave a lot of internships to the students. (I laugh at this looking back) It didn't matter too much because I was only going to either school for a year and then I was transferring to Parson's with
About a month or two after my dreams were lying in pieces on the ground (or so I thought) I went on a "Buffalo Missions Trip" most of which was spent on the west side of Buffalo (I know, that is soo suburban). I learned a lot in that weekend, about privilege and poverty, about refugees, about Buffalo in general. I learned that the west side Buffalo was the second most diverse place in the state (next to NYC) because of the refugee population. We drove around on a 'tour' and I noticed all the murals and different cultures, I learned how the neighborhoods were slowly improving, how I could help that happen, I learned about white middle class citizens who purposely choose to live there even though they could live somewhere 'safer' in the suburbs. Buffalo wasn't as bad as I thought. This became a primary reason for my 'being ok' with going to Buff State, I figured I could maybe volunteer to help refugees or something in my spare time. This, coupled with my love for Elmwood, thanks to Saturday shopping trips with my grandmother, visiting Spot Coffee, Talking Leaves, various consignment shops and of course, the fabric store, shaped my decision. I also found out Buff State had a 3-1 program with FIT, so if Parson's didn't work out for some reason I could definitely graduate from 'the other fashion school' in New York. If that wasn't enough to convince me, they gave me a scholarship and it was pretty inexpensive for me to go there.
It all makes sense now, little did I realize at the time, God was calling me to Buff State. I remember praying for his will in my life and wondering where the heck it was (as it was hitting me in the face like a ton of bricks). My first semester was a little off color. I took a ridiculous Saturday morning sewing class, and I ended up dorming in a hotel, a strange surreality between dorm life and commuting. It was great and I don't regret it at all, but there were times when it brought me to dark places. I would get back to the hotel early everyday not having any really close friends on campus, or much reason to be there after classes were over. I went to Intervarsity, but there was this big gap in the middle of the semester where a bus ride back to my room just seemed like the better option. None of my friends were back from campus yet, so I was pretty lonely, I turned to the TV more often then not, which was little but daytime talk shows and soap operas, neither of which were really good for my state. I started falling into old habits, namely laziness, and my thought life became so off, I was spending very little time in the word and my focus was not always on God. I started coming back to Intervarsity, I was going to parties with them, these people were really accepting me and making me always feel welcome, it was just what I needed.
The night before I moved onto campus I was at the last meeting of the college aged youth group at my church, my pastor was discussing how the format was going to change, his vision for the college ministry, what we could do. He mentioned trying to start 'Life Groups' on our campuses. These groups were based on journaling through scripture in 'Life Journals' and meeting weekly to talk about it. I immediately put that thought of starting one out of my mind, I made up any excuse I could to convince myself I couldn't do it. The next night, my first night living on campus, a close friend of mine came into the room during my quiet time and noticed the life journal, conveying to me how she really wanted to start getting into the word everyday. I showed her the read the bible in a year plan and she said she needed one of those. I told her I could get her a journal for her, then I told her how my pastor had mentioned starting small groups and asked if she wanted to meet weekly to talk about it. She was in, and my roommate immediately jumped in on it too. An opportunity to go to small group leaders training through Intervarsity came up shortly after, all of the sudden everything was being pieced together, God had a purpose for me on Buff State's campus, I realized I had been called there, everything just made perfect sense. I threw myself into Intervarsity, I got to know everyone, and got involved as much as I could. My grades suffered a little bit, I wasn't thinkingi about my school work for the first time in my life. I've just been in awe of how this all worked out, I still can't believe it, I've never felt closer to God, I can actually see when his will is hitting me in the face like a ton of bricks now, which is awesome. I have such a passion for Buff State now, I love it.
Just like God called me to Buff State, he's called me to switch my major. I know I had big plans for fashion but they wouldn't work out for me. I've been wrestling with this a lot in my mind, thinking it's really no big deal what my major is because God can just call me to whatever he's going to call me too regardless, and it's too much of a hassle to switch, and it will disappoint my parents, and I really love fashion, and I've collected so many books and magazines and sewing patterns I might as well use them. As any human being I had about a million excuses and had just about decided not to make the change. I was praying on it that day, and that night I was in the word and guess what?
God's will hit me in the face like a ton of bricks. Right there, plain as day in black and white I read:
"There is a path before each person that seems right, but it ends in death." ~Proverbs 14:12 NLT
I just sat there in awe, I read it again to make sure it was really there. It was a moment that I think can best be described by the word WOAH, several times.
That's what I get for thinking about not listening to God when I finally realize what he's saying to me.
There's no turning back now, I'm switching my major to either English or English education.
Why? A lot of the most influential people in my life have been my English teachers. One of them actually wrote in my yearbook that I should become an English teacher, which if you knew this particular teacher (my high school friends reading this will) who was slightly insane, very critical and probably regarded the profession of teaching English as the most noble vocation a person could possibly enter, was a big compliment. I love poetry and literature and realize I barely read or write anymore, passions I did not intend on giving up for the sake of Fashion. My parents kind of have their heart set on me being rich still, their idea of success I suppose, so I may go with the 'plain English degree' and go to graduate school for English and doing something smart with my life that will pay well (Stephie says I could write dictionary's someday OH BOY!), maybe I'll just go with English Education because I think it would be cool to influence adolescent lives and I would get summers off. (sweet) Basically that's the only decision left to make, and I really don't regret it at all.

It's Summer Now and I Have No Life

I'm going to start updating this.
I really really need a new layout

Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Someday I'm Going to Start A Blog

So I haven't updated in about a million years
and I probably won't updated in a million more years
I'll say I will but I won't because I'm lame
I need a new layout too because I haven't lived in the hotel in almost a month, it was very sad to move out.
Have a good life.
Don't read my blog it's stupid.
 

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