more superlatives

Biggest "I Told You So": I dropped a cinderblock on my foot. Jordan told me to wear sneakers. :P

Biggest Surprise Birthday Present: A Tiffany's necklace from my parents!

Best Conversation: Not sure it counts as a conversation, exactly, but with Jordan on the way back from birthday in New Orleans.

Biggest Accomplishment: Pulling a 76 on my nutrition test! :)

Best Weekend Ever: This last one, when Eric, Emily, & Tom were in.

Summer Plans to Date: Goa, India?

Playlist Now Includes: Patty Griffin, Flaming Red (Thanks, Em!! I love it :) ); Shawn Colvin, Tough Kid & Cinnamon Road (with Patty Griffin), When the Stars Go Blue, Ryan Adams (Thanks, Eric, for the heads up!)

growth

I'd have to be internally blind not to see how God is using these few fall months in a big way to change and grow his daughter.

It's been a hard day. It'll be a hard weekend, it's been a hard week, month and two months. This is the most exhausted I have ever been--I can't remember the last time I got more than two hours of sleep. I'm drinking so much coffee that my hands are starting to shake. I fall asleep at Derek Webb concerts (... but not the Black Crowes--no fear of that! ;) ). I'm up at 6:30 to tool-crib it, & work until 6:00 p.m. doing the internship thang, then--once in a great while--run and shower, then eat dinner, then get to work on the whole community college thang. Human nature, I'd love to think that I can handle all this, that I've got it under control. But I so don't. Check it out.

- Despite my best efforts to stay on top of my assignments, I somehow missed three in my Child Psychology class... how do I explain that to a professor? Somehow I've gotta suck it up, put myself out there, & beg for an extra credit assignment.

- I can't seem to manage to make higher than a C on any of my tests.

- The most ironic thing is, even though there clearly are not enough hours in the day, I still feel like I'm not really accomplishing much on the internship-side of things. What's happening here? I've always gotten my sense of self-worth from the work that I do, & I'm watching God strip that away. My worth comes only from him, & I'm learning that in a big way.

Most of all, I see and feel--and yeah, it's painful--God teaching me to trust completely in him alone. I want to know what my future holds--the places, decisions, joys, tragedies, and--most of all--people it holds. And I've got my own preferences on what those should be (understatement, anyone? :P ). But as, bit by bit, I've watched the things I've thought would be good and right for me taken away, I'm coming to learn that God and God alone knows what is good and right for me.

His plans are perfect, his promises trustworthy, his faithfulness eternal, his love incomprehensible. And they are all for me, his daughter.

Eric Shaved His Head--True Story; I Was There / I Helped.

It's 1 a.m., and I'm pulling another allnighter, my 2nd this week (not that I've gotten much more sleep the other nights), for my Child Psychology test tomorrow. I'm not the only one up though--the Knoxville high school kids (from the same church as last week's UT Cross Greek group) are up, too--I can hear them outside the office watching T.V. And they've got to be up and out of here by 6:00. I'm only guessing that they must be able to sleep most of the way back. Anyways, once again, Knoxville came through in a BIG way. These kids were great. They'll be missed. And, absolutely incredible, they donated us three compressors, roofing guns, and hoses. AWESOME.

This week--running the tool crib, making a lot of Lowes runs, loading & helping deliver sheds, unloading H.A.N.D.S. trailers on the Moffet (my fave--not gonna lie), running teams out to worksites, painting benches, but most of all hanging out with Emaline. So good. Tuesday, the two of us and Jordan decided last minute to drive out to Birmingham to see a Derek Webb show, Emily Mark, Eric, and Kim. It was too short, of course, but AWESOME. I needed some tern time, bad. Hoping to get back their direction soon. Other accomplishment of this week--I've been "running" (15 minutes each time) twice. I'm hoping to get into some sort of running shape again before I leave. Not that I have the time, but whatev--I'll make time. :)

Superlatives--

Best New Lagniappe Addition: The conversion of the light pole into the Tern Direction Pole (come back! add one!).

Second Best New Lagniappe Addition: The couch in the tern office; or the cot in the tool crib. Either way, I can now work all the time and not even have to move for my two hours of sleep each day. Great. Fantastic.

Best New Food/Beverage Product: Pomegranate Oolong tea.

Favorite Verse: Jude v. 24 & 25.

Favorite Quote: The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars. --Jack Kerouac

Soundtrack Now Includes: everything Coldplay and Derek Webb, Time After Time (Erin Bode)

Comments. Do it up. It's like encouragement without having to do any actual work. :)

volunteer Volunteers, & Miss Emaline

The UT Cross Greek kids are here, and I'm LOVIN them. They can come back anytime, for sure. They've got Ethan & an awesome worship team--two thumbs WAY up. And they're extra encouraging, not to mention really hard workers. From what other team did I get three hugs, and an offer to go running at 5:30 a.m.?? That's right, none. GO VOLS! :)

Back to the superlatives.

Amount I've Slept In the Last Four Days: 10 hours.

Best New Food I've Discovered: Kashi GoLean Crunch.

A Top Ten Lagniappe Moment: Miss Emaline Schmidt getting here last night. I did the leap-forward-and-sit-on-her-waist move. People applauded. :)

Proudest Accomplishment: With Emaline, switching out the bucket on the skidsteer, hooking up a trailer, & loading three sheds. New job description--all right. :)

Hardest I've Laughed: Listening to Cliff talk to Christy Dale on my cell at Los Tres last night. PS, Inez's family is really fun, too. :)

Soundtrack Now Includes: Steal My Kisses (Ben Harper), When It Don't Come Easy (Patty Griffin), I Can't Catch You (Sixpence None the Richer), Go Your Own Way (Fleetwood Mac), What About Love (Heart), Rain (Patty Griffin), To Be With You (Mr. Big)

Right now, I'm sitting in the Mockingbird, one of those really big mugs--that you can wrap both hands around--of black coffee sitting in front of me, my textbooks and notebooks spread all over. At the table across is Erica, the Habitat coordinator (and another Vol--she was SO pumped when Tennessee beat Georgia in Athens... her boyfriend is a Bulldog, & then she had to spend the rest of the night on the phone with him explaining that she wasn't really *that* excited that the Volunteers won... funny. :) ) who lives with us at Lagniappe (Hi, Erica :) ). She's studying for her menu exam at Trapani's tonight, and I'm studying for my Nutrition exam tomorrow. She's got two hours left, & I've got 16. In reality, I have 12, because 4 of those hours will be taken up with driving to the exam tomorrow, and tonight eating with Em at Lookout 49 & then picking Jean up from the airport. And theoretically, I have less time than that, because I should spend some of it sleeping, but, let's face it, that's not happening. Thursday night I slept an hour, from 3-4 a.m., because I was up writing a paper & then taking Jean to the airport, and my nightly sleep average (NSA) hasn't improved much since then. That's why I was so looking forward to running with Ethan this morning, but equally okay with the fact that their breakfast got moved to 5:30 & so running got moved to the backburner. I needed the sleep. (Thanks, Ethan--it'll happen next time. Spring break. No worries. :) ) Anyways, I think I've procrastinated enough. This exam so isn't going to study for itself.

Grace & peace.

... continuing with the 'tern blog-list tradition

Since being back at Lagniappe, Round 2...

Best Charles Gray Quote: "Yes, and there will be a covered walkway between my houses, so that I may walk from one to the other without having to be seen from the street."

Best Surprise: Getting to meet Barbara Hunter, the lady whose house we gutted on Waveland Ave. over spring break. We're having lunch tomorrow! :)

Best Free Stuff: KARING gave free haircuts & massages at the casino last night. Two thumbs WAY up.

All My Money Is Going To... : Gas. My new favorite free-time thing to do is drive around with the ipod.

Best Night Out: two way tie between 1) Saints v. Falcons Monday Night Football!!! :) and 2) Daniels.

Biggest Accomplishment: Building Peje's cat prison (as Holly likes to call it. :) )

Scariest Moment: Taking Meri to the ER at 3:30 a.m.

Best New Discovery: The incredible coffee over at the Mockingbird off Main.

Best Conversation: With Curt, about life. Thanks Curt. :)

Soundtrack:
10. Amen Omen -- Ben Harper
9. Only A Fool -- The Black Crowes
8. Torn to Tattered -- Carbon Leaf
9. Yellow -- Coldplay
7. This World -- Derek Webb
6. Every Little Bit -- Patty Griffin
5. Horn -- Nick Drake
4. She Talks to Angels -- The Black Crowes
3. Forgiveness -- Patty Griffin
2. Nobody's Cryin' -- Patty Griffin
1. Driving North -- Chris Pureka

Good to hear from you all. Keep up the comments. :)

anyone still here??

Just updating to say:

I'm pulling an all-nighter in the main building... got a geography test tomorrow that I haven't had time to study for until right now. Hooray for caffeine!

Also--is anyone even still here? Comment so I know whether or not to start posting again!

--Ryn, the last intern