My New Love

Have you ever heard me talk about how much I hate shopping? If you have, I apologize. Complete lie. I've realized that it wasn't shopping I didn't like. It was knowing I didn't have money to spend and not finding things in my size for things I did like. New job and online shopping have completely transformed me. I love shopping! In fact, I put a shopping ban on myself during January just to catch up financially from all my trips. However, I found the perfect dress. What to do?! The solution actually was very simple. The dress was on backorder and would take 2-3 weeks to ship. That means my credit card would not be charged until February. Perfect! So in 3-4 weeks, this dress will be arriving at my door and I'm really excited. I'm ready for spring!

Way With Words

I love this post on Robert Burns. Wish I was as quick-witted with my speech.

In 1791, riled by a recent review that criticised a supposed abundance of "obscure language" and "imperfect grammar" in his poetry, celebrated Scottish poet Robert Burns channelled his anger and wrote the following magnificent letter to the critic responsible. (Source: The Works of Robert Burns, Volume 4)

Ellisland, 1791.

Dear Sir:

Thou eunuch of language; thou Englishman, who never was south the Tweed; thou servile echo of fashionable barbarisms; thou quack, vending the nostrums of empirical elocution; thou marriage-maker between vowels and consonants, on the Gretna-green of caprice; thou cobler, botching the flimsy socks of bombast oratory; thou blacksmith, hammering the rivets of absurdity; thou butcher, embruing thy hands in the bowels of orthography; thou arch-heretic in pronunciation; thou pitch-pipe of affected emphasis; thou carpenter, mortising the awkward joints of jarring sentences; thou squeaking dissonance of cadence; thou pimp of gender; thou Lyon Herald to silly etymology; thou antipode of grammar; thou executioner of construction; thou brood of the speech-distracting builders of the Tower of Babel; thou lingual confusion worse confounded; thou scape-gallows from the land of syntax; thou scavenger of mood and tense; thou murderous accoucheur of infant learning; thou ignis fatuus, misleading the steps of benighted ignorance; thou pickle-herring in the puppet-show of nonsense; thou faithful recorder of barbarous idiom; thou persecutor of syllabication; thou baleful meteor, foretelling and facilitating the rapid approach of Nox and Erebus.

R.B.

Why I Have ADD

This image captures what I do everyday for work. Now you know why I'm a bit scatterbrained after the day is over. Click the picture to see it in more detail.

Mutual Weirdness

This just makes sense to me.

Good Intentions and New Direction

My goal this weekend was to post about my trip to Washington DC, New York, and Disneyland. Well, guess who forgot to bring her power chord home? Yep. Me. But how, may you ask, am I posting right now? Well, I forgot the power chord to my work computer and the battery has now died. So I'm using my home laptop which doesn't have any of my recent pictures and posts about trips are no good without a visual aid. Never fear, I'll get those posted this week.

And now for the new direction. I'm finally, I think, out of the funk I've been in for the past while. In being so, I've decided to be a bit more honest on my blog. You all know I have a blog tracker. I seem to have regular visitors and most of you are friends and family. I have nothing to hide and hope that my life experiences can bring a smile to your face or insights into your own lives. Which means all of this may become a lot more personal. Now the really personal stuff will go into my journal. I'm starting that back up again because I needed to document some good things that happened recently. Nothing life changing. Just a tender mercy of the Lord. He does hear and answer prayers. You'll get that story soon.

To end this post, I wanted to share a quote from one of my new favorite shows Once Upon a Time. On tonight's episode, Grumpy says to Snow after her heart was broken (you have to see the episode because it really is cute), "I need my pain. It makes me who I am. It makes me Grumpy." I love this line. It helps me realize that turning off the pain or trying to drown it out doesn't help us one bit. All the adversity, struggles, and disappointments have made me who I am. It makes me Thamina.

2012 Update

Remember my three goals for the new year?

• All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.
• All you need is 20 seconds of insane courage and good things happen.
• To be surprised.

Well, I'm off to a good start. I'm also realizing I don't have as much patience as I thought. I feel like I am a speedboat navigating around a battleship. Somethings just take time and I need to slow down.

2012 Theme Addendum

"All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware."
—Martin Buber

Excited to discover the secret destinations of this life's journey.

Welcome to a New Year

I've reflected much on the past year. 2011 brought many unexpected events that I wasn't quite sure how to deal with. In everything that I had to confront and overcome, I found a resilient strength in me that I didn't know existed but that I attribute to the Lord and the consistency of family and friends.

I've also discovered a bit of personality that I knew was there but for some reason had suppressed. John Adams summed it up best when he wrote to Thomas Jefferson, "I was young, and then very bashful, however saucy I may have sometimes been since." I find myself being much more bold and sassy in conversation, in work, and in my relationships with others. I hope it hasn't come across as arrogance or pretentiousness. But I do like how the challenges of the past have helped me throw caution to the wind and give life my all.

My theme for 2012 comes from a movie quote: "All you need is 20 seconds of insane courage and good things happen."

My goal for 2012: To be surprised.

To speak completely in metaphor, last year was the year I rolled a six. This year I get so see where I land.