5000 tweets, 450+ days, and what it all means.

well. i just reached my 5000th tweet. and some things cannot be summarized in 140 characters.

that's right, 5000 tweets in 456 days. that averages to 10.78 tweets a day, and that doesn't include those i have deleted. or my journal twitter account. yes, i realize i maaaaay be a little obsessed with twitter. but what i have i learned over the past 16 months?

-music. i have discovered many of my new favorite musicians thanks to twitter. just by following people and looking at who they follow or who they tweet about. to name a few: andrew ripp, jake ousley, rob blackledge, seth philpott. (p.s., jake's ep, times like these was just released on itunes last week. go.get.it.now. $6. seriously.) not only did i discover artists, i also have attended a lot of concerts over the past year+, and many of those were thanks to twitter - i wouldn't have known about them otherwise. and for free! i've won tickets to a mocha club event, tin pan south, dave barnes, and will hoge.

-friends. twitter has helped me to stay in touch with, and even make, friends. crazy, but true. though i guess that's the original idea behind "social networking" anyway.

-news. twitter has been my main source of news, especially since i've been cable-less. it's how i learned there was a car bomb while i was in times square, my friends and i paid close attention to nashvillest's tweets for news on the nashville flood as we traveled back into town, etc.

i think i'll end this post with some of my "favorited" tweets. first, the funny:

@donmilleris: Table next to me: Like, I don't know, cause like, he's like, you know. So like, I don't know. -Yeah, like, that makes sense. It's like, um..

@davebarnesmusic: i "love" the confusion that quotation "marks" do to a "sentence". I should "use" them more to "throw" "people" off my "scent" more often "."
@davebarnesmusic: For example - watch and learn. Will "you" meet me "today" at "Red Lobster" so i can "borrow" your "His"tory book? "Thanks!" (Confused yet?
@davebarnesmusic: Now, imagine the person who typed that is a large badly tanned barely mustached man named Toe-Nee. Gets more interesting, doesn't it?


the thought-provoking:

@LucasBoto: Leaving a vision undone often feels safer than following thru & risking failure. I think the best life decisions are tough sometimes.

@bobgoff: I want a noteworthy life. A life so engaged that I would find myself leaning forward and taking notes, while looking for evidence of Jesus.

@erwinmcmanus: ...You can protect your dreams by never attempting to make them a reality. To achieve your dreams you must be willing to lose them- to risk.

i barely recognize my own home.

i moved into this house in march. at the time, the front and back yards were both somewhat jungle-esque.

in april or may some landscapers came and spruced it up. it looked lovely.

this summer, they came and planted some new shrubs.

this fall they took away one of the shrubs.

about a month ago, they took away everything on the left side of the house. so many trees and bushes that they had JUST planted earlier this year.

today, i came home to find a new, rather large, tree. and big trench.

i'm so confused.

so here i am

i'm curled up on the couch at my mom's house. we're sitting by the tree, watching polar express. i love this movie. christmas is one of my favorite times of year, and today has been no exception.

i don't want to spend the evening writing up something profound, so let's just leave it at this:

merry christmas to all, and to all, a good night.

my mom's a cheater.

she just informed me that when i was a kid, she would find a toy on sale, and then convince me that it was a cool toy, and so then i would ask for it for christmas.

cheater cheater, pumpkin eater.

#iaintafriadtosay

that some of these twitter trending topics are just ridiculous. who comes up with these things? really now.

#nowplaying

well. day two of my "blog about the top trending topic on twitter" series. so. now playing. i guess this is where i would blog about the music i'm currently listening to. at the moment... i'm listening to my christmas playlist. the specific song playing right now is brenda lee's rendition "rockin' around the christmas tree", which always reminds me of home alone. which i have not seen in a very long time.

i love christmas time and christmas music. i seriously have 276 christmas songs on my itunes.

my top five christmas albums are:

#1 hanson - snowed in. there are just so many good memories from this cd... 12 years and counting.
#2 relient k - deck the halls, bruise your hand. another cd with great memories. in college, sara and i would drive home for christmas break together (a three hour drive) and we would sing along... loudly... and horribly... to this whole cd. i love that girl, and i love that memory.
#3 sufjan stevens - songs for christmas: volumes i-v. a set of 5 christmas ep's. sufjan's style is just so unique. there's really no way to describe this other than to tell you it's amazing. and it comes with a singalong book and stickers.
#4 james taylor - at christmas. instant classic. enough said.
#5 now that's what i call christmas. two discs of various artists. classics and contemporary. what more could you ask for?

it's a new day.

while it wasn't the main point... actually, it wasn't even a minor point... but today in church i was reminded, once again, that today, just like every day, is a new day. a day given for a fresh start.

here we go.

r.i.p. old faithful

april 2002, i purchase a 1993 toyota camry. i.loved.her. she was cute, had very low mileage for her ten years (69,000ish), and a sunroof, which i really loved.

i had a lot of good times with her. she took me back and forth from college to home for long weekends and holidays. she took me to kentucky, pennsylvania, ohio, south carolina, florida, oklahoma, and many places in between.

in 2006 i packed her up and moved to nashville. as she made the trip successfully at 14 years old, i named her old faithful. and then she started to not live up to her name.

today, i sold her. with over 160,000 miles, she lived a good seventeen years.

old faithful, may you rest in peace.

my life in pictures.

i couldn't think of anything to write about today, so i decided to share a few photos with you. here we go:

i mean. how many people can say that they have stood on their head at stonehenge? well, i can.



and how many people can say that they have pinned themselves on a map at a pirate-themed hostel? well, i can.



and how many people can say that they have met up with a former roommate in her home country of japan, and while doing so, ran into a real sumo wrestler at the subway station? well, i can.

why wait.

why wait until new year's to make resolutions?

there are a few areas of my life i would like to improve. why wait a month? i'm starting now.

-i would like to implement a monthly budget and stick to it. i tried this once before. it lasted about three weeks.
-i would like to read more. even if it's just a paragraph out of a book or an article in a magazine, i want to read something (not on a computer screen) at least five days a week.
-black coffee. i don't know why, really, but i want to learn how to drink coffee black. (i'm currently a two sugars kind of girl. sometimes with cream.)

these might be small things in the bigger picture, but it's a start. there are a few other things as well, but not everything needs to be shared in such a public forum. but i think getting these things out there will help keep me more accountable.

okay. here we go.

#bedd

what is #bedd? it's 'blog every day december'. it all started when jennifer decided to 'blog every day april'. at the time, i thought it was a good idea, but i didn't join her. i did, however, join her for 'blog every day september'. i missed a few (six) days, but that's okay.

here's to 'blog every day december', or, #bedd.

i've gathered up a handful of other bloggers to join me - as you can see by the list to your right, appropriately labeled "#bedd bloggers".

so. will you join me for #bedd? (er. that didn't sound right. but you know what i mean.)

i. love. airports.

i'm sitting here at good ole bna with about four hours to spare. not because i'm overeager or thought i would need four hours to spare, it's just the way things worked out today.

and i'm okay with that.

because i love airports.

i think i love the stories that are in airports. not that i know anyone's story here, (heck, i don't even know my own) but just the thought of so many people from so many places all colliding... i love it.

[on a side note: i don't consider myself a frequent flier, but i do fly several times a year. after three years of this, you'd think i'd have an airport celebrity encounter by now. but, nope.]

point of view

yesterday, my friend myka and i spent the afternoon photographing an old building in downtown nashville. this morning i was looking through my photographs, and her photographs.

take two different people, with two different cameras, and you get two different photographs of the same object. here's an example:

(for the purpose of this blog, it doesn't matter who took which one.)





these two pictures are the same set of spiral stairs. (they were lying on the ground outside of the building. odd.) and yet, the pictures are completely different and each portrays a different feeling.

i think this is a reflection on life, as well. you take two different people, with two different backgrounds, two different points of view, and you get two completely different results, even if you're looking at the same object, the same circumstance, or the same god.

in life and in photographs, this does not make one better than the other. just different.

question...

i have a question for my faithful blog readers (all two of you [hi mom]).

what does "hope" mean to you?

life in nashville...

is keeping me broke. entertained. and sleepy.

'cause i keep going out and spending my money supporting local artists and discovering great music.

that's okay. maybe someday those artists will buy one of my journals to write their music in and complete the circle.

but for that to happen, i need to actually sell them.

and to sell them, i need to make them.

30 (i don't remember six).

no, not the age. the people.

a new girl is moving into my house today. this makes 30 roommates that i have had. 30. kind of nuts. all since starting college.

1)shannon.
2)mariko.
3)stacy h.
4)deedee.
5)jenna.
6)lori.
7)heather.
8)leslie.
9)megan.
10)melissa.
11)stacy l.
12)audrey.
13)jen e.
14)jen b.
15)kristin.
16-21)i don't remember their names*
22)regan.
23)erin.
24)sarah p.
25)hilary
26)whitney
27)sarah b.
28)april.
29)emily.
30)krystal.

*i don't remember their names. the summer before i moved to nashville, i sublet my friend rachel's room for two months. there were seven other girls living in that house. i remember kristin, because we were acquaintances before i moved into the house and we had both gone on the trip to japan with our college. but i don't remember the names of the other girls, and as i think back (three years ago), i don't think i even knew all their names at the time. how horrible is that. i lived with these women for two months, and i don't know their names.

i guess that's all.

i'm sorry, so sorry.

i would like to apologize to.... well.... all two-ish of you who read this thing.

i did not blog at all in july. oops. it was kind of a whirlwind month. let me give you the brief lowdown.

a. 4th of july was fun. i got drenched, but enjoyed running around downtown barefoot in the downpour.
b. i dog-sat for a co-worker and stayed at her house as i did such. this lasted about a week and was sort of like a mini-vacation, just in that it put me in a semi-new environment for a bit.
c. those hanson guys were in town for two weeks mixing their album. ran into taylor and isaac at starbucks. fun times.
d. lots of trips to lots of coffee shops. i drank a lot of coffee in july. not that this is 'news' to any of you.
e. i'm starting to make journals again like i did in college. i'm hoping this will be a good creative outlet as well as a source of extra cash.

well. there was more than that but that's the gist.

in other news, let's look at what's really going on in my life right now. church was good this morning, and it provoked a conversation with my good friend erin at lunchtime. we talked a lot about finding that line between living in god's grace and the freedom that we have in him and becoming legalistic. i don't want to go into a whole religious spiel on here, but there are two definite extremes there. and along those lines i've realized this past month (as i have been importing, and thus re-reading, my old [read: 2004 and 2005] blogs) that i have become fairly cynical and jaded towards a lot of things. so i am going to try to spend the next chapter of my life uncovering why... what happened... where do i go from here... and with that, remembering (or maybe truly discovering for the first time) my story.

Woohoo it's 2:30 in the morning on Saturday and I am at GVSU visiting my good friends Krista and Holly (and Ryan??) so yeah. Like I said, it's 2:30 am and we haven't gone to bed yet, and we have somewhere to be at 10 am so fun fun there, not. hehehe. It was a nice five hour drive up here. Hehehe. Ohh boy I'm sleepy. G'nite.

I had an interesting dream last night and decided eh what the heck I'll put it up here. My mom dropped me off at this Goodwill type store, and I was walking around looking for a tan/brown light jacket. And I was wearing a prom dress - but it was like a nasty ugly one from the 80's, it was hot pink and had big ruffles that stick out on the bottom. And I was walking around and I found this leather coat that was brown and I tried it on and it was way too big for me but I bought it anyway. And when I was buying it Ryan was in line in front of me. And I slapped his butt and called him Judy (now to those other than Ryan and Lisa who are reading this, the sad thing is that's normal). Then I went outside where a bunch of my friends were waiting for me (but I don't know which friends anymore) and they were all dressed up for prom, but again all 80's-esque, like the guys had on these nasty ruffle tux shirts and stuff. And there was this big brown car that was kinda falling apart and some woman driving it who was supposed to give us a ride. Someone's tux shirt was lying on the ground behind the car and she kept driving around and getting the shirt dirty. I had a feeling she was doing this on purpose, so I went up to her at the window and flipped her off and said she wasn't getting her money if she didn't stop and she said fine and drove off without us. The end. Weird, eh?

Well it's 4:35 am and Lisa is video taping us.... we're sittin around waiting for our ride, which is coming at 5:00, to go to the airport to fly to Tulsa for spring break.... I'll let ya hear all about it.