I can't believe I'm such a slacker

it's been AGES since i last posted!

well, let's see, what have you missed?

i have read a lot of books.

i have hung out with a lot of students.

i have made serious progress on my Pauline epistles class

i have attended a derek webb tweet-up - with about 250 other twitter fans.

i have gotten sick. and gotten better. several times. (they say your immune system gets stronger after a while. i'm hoping it's been a while.)

(it was never swine flu.)

i have to a taylor swift concert with my brother and his friend ryan in dallas.

i have been rained on a lot.

good stuff, right?

this is what i like to call...

freaking awesome. dad and i saw the most glorious rainbows - two of them - on our drive from atlanta to charlotte (post-RUF training, pre-move-stuff-to-dallas). i have never seen such vibrant rainbows, or such complete ones. you could see almost the entire arc!

dad took a lot of pictures (since i was driving), but i like this one the best, even though the apparent sky-color-change is actually due to the tinting on my windshield. ;)

rainbows are such great reminders that God keeps His promises, and that He has decided to take the blow for us, His people. after all, who do you think that arrow is aimed at, given the direction the bow is pointing?

i'm on my way, just set me free, home sweet home

so the summer has been positively loco, but not in a bad way. just in a crazy way. i am kinda ready for it to be over, and to be in one city for more than a month!

RUF staff training was last week, and it was most excellent. i really enjoyed getting to catch up with the other folks in my intern class and learned some extremely helpful things in the sessions. i also got to meet a bunch of other interns and campus ministers and got to spend some great time with billy and ashley, my new campus minister and his wife. they are pretty much fantastic.

next week (on the 12th, to be precise) i will be moving to houston!!!!!! freshmen show up on the 16th. here we go - i can hardly wait! i even got a necklace with an owl on it to get into "rice mode."

i am so excited to be moving to a ginormous city with fantastic food and old trees and an awesome home church that is so close to home. i know, i know - 4 hours isn't exactly around the corner, but it beats 17 any day!

we had this crazy adventure when we moved my stuff out of charlotte and to dallas that i will have to tell you about later. suffice it to say, none of the four of us (mom, dad, me, and kj) got a complete REM cycle in that night.

in other news, i seem to have entered a new life stage. a few years ago, it seemed like my facebook newsfeed was full of weddings. now it's full of babies.

sorry it's been so long! now that my life will be normalizing some, i expect i will be posting much more regularly.

My Parents' Printer Makes Weird Noises

it sounds like it needs some oil in the wheels. it makes such distressed noises and works so hard. unfortunately, it totally screws up at the whole printing-labels thing more often than not, and that is a trifle annoying when you need return address stickers to save your hand from FALLING OFF because you have already addressed more than 100 postcards!!!!!!!

the point is, the printer is weird. and i am raising support. and it is hot in texas.

Spring Break

i've been in dallas since last sunday, and i'm flying back to north carolina tomorrow. it is really nice out here - not even a little bit cold, but not unreasonably hot. it's amazing. i love it. i've been hanging out with my brother and my parents, seeing friends, getting ahead on homework, eating frozen grapes. it's been lovely.

i had surgery on friday, which has made yesterday and today weird. i am really glad to have been home - REALLY glad. hopefully this will take care of a ton of my medical problems from the last year. i am so relieved. i just hope the rest of my recovery is easier than the first 36 or whatever hours have been.

i love frozen grapes.

my brother rented me six movies to watch while recuperating - most of them are decidedly children's films, like bolt and horton hears a who. (both of those were fabulous, btw.) he has been looking after me too, not just my parents. it is nice to be cared for when you feel awful and are kinda helpless and a mess.

Toothbrush

i have been known to forget my toothbrush on occasion. for example, almost every time i spent the night at someone's house growing up. in fact, when i went to college and had my first "hall meeting," our RA had us bring our favorite things from home. i brought my bible and my toothbrush, and announced how incredibly glad i was that i had remembered that toothbrush this time i left home.

i flew home to dallas for spring break on sunday and - you guessed it - forgot my toothbrush. my ever-resourceful mother found a fresh one, still packaged, lying around the house somewhere, and now i am using it. apparently it makes my teeth very white (yay!).

that said, it is really strange. there's this bumpy thing on the back of the brush part that rubs against your gums and the inside of your cheek and all that and it feels very weird. invigorating, i suppose, but who needs the inside of their teeth invigorated?

what i'm trying to say is that i have no clue what this thing is supposed to do. i tried scrubbing my tongue with it this morning - it's definitely not intended for that. i mean, it's squeaky! what is the deal?!?

A Tribute to My Awesome Father

taylor swift has a precious song on her new album about her father that my brother pointed out pretty well describes our dad, who is not only the greatest earthly father i know of, but also happens to be one of my best friends in the world. i have been listening to this song almost as much as i've been listening to the aforeposted "abide with me."

i wanted to share it with you. (it's been hard for me to think of stuff to say here, in case you hadn't noticed, but i have been wracking up the lyrics, so maybe that will help my brain get going with more original stuff to say.)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Best Day

i'm five years old, it's getting cold,
i've got my big coat on.
i hear your laugh and look up smiling at you.
i run and run past
the pumpkin patch and the tractor rides -
look now! the sky is gold!
i hug your legs and fall asleep on the way home.

i don't know why all the trees change in the fall.
but i know you're not scared of anything at all.
don't know if snow white's house is near or far away,
but i know i had the best day with you today.

i'm thirteen now and don't know how my friends
could be so mean.
i come home crying and you hold me tight
and grab the keys.
and we drive and drive until we find a town
far enough away,
and we talk and window-shop till i've forgotten
all their names.

i don't know who i'm gonna talk to now at school.
but i know i'm laughing on the car ride home with you.
don't know how long it's gonna take to feel okay,
but i know i had the best day with you today.

i have an excellent father;
his strength is making me stronger.
God smiles on my little brother -
inside and out, he's better than i am.
i grew up in a pretty house and i had space to run
and i had the best days with you.

there is a video i found from back
when i was three:
you set up a paint set in the kitchen and you're
talking to me.
it's the age of princesses and pirate ships
and the seven dwarves.
my daddy's smart and you're the prettiest lady
in the whole wide world.

now i know why all the trees change in the fall.
i know you were on my side even when i was wrong.
and i love you for giving me your eyes, staying back and watching me shine,
and i didn't know if you knew, so i'm taking this time to say
that i had the best day with you today.

The Morning from the Bad Place

you would think that waking up at like 11 would preclude this sort of thing, but apparently a lot of things can go wrong in about an hour (and a half, if we're getting technical, but more on that later).

so my madre walks into my room literally 15 seconds after i grab my current fun-book, the reason for God by tim keller off the marble-top table acting as my nightstand. i had just woken up from a dream in which my dad yelled at me a lot. you have to understand two things 1) my dad doesn't yell in real life; and 2) i have really vivid dreams, and even though a lot of times they are completely ridiculous, sometimes they affect my mood, a la this morning.

so after a quick debriefing on the day, mom heads downstairs, calling back up that i need to phone the urologist in charlotte again because they still haven't gotten back to me on a urodynamic exam they ran three weeks ago. so i grab my phone, text my brother (he's at church camp in florida), and call the doc. i leave a message. i'm not feeling too badly today (on a pain scale of 0-10, 0 being zero pain, 10 being the worst pain i've ever felt, which was really horrible and i screamed and my roommate could hear me from the waiting room, i started at about a 3). text from the brother about the stingray that he almost stepped on. so far, it's annoying that the doc hasn't called back, but not killer.

i'm checking my email. lo and behold, my roommate up in charlotte had called (that explains the 6 missed calls last night), and she wrote me a facebook message to tell me that my voicemail wasn't working anymore and asking if i had changed phones. hmm. so i hop over to the at&t wireless website and start looking around for stuff about voicemail problems - what do you do when your voicemail up and disappears? but mom was like, 'we have to go,' so i said i'd deal with it later.

oh, i almost forgot, i've had mail forwarding set up, but nothing came and nothing came and we were starting to think maybe the doc had sent me the results from the exam in the mail and we hadn't gotten them. so i pull out the confirmation letter i got here in dallas, and i give them a call before we head out the door. they give me the phone number for the post office that delivers my mail in charlotte. when mom says it's time to roll, i grab that sheet with the number on it and head for the door.

only i couldn't find my purse. it wasn't that big of a deal in the long-run - it hadn't been stolen, and we knew that from the getgo, but we really couldn't figure out where it was. i gave up and we headed to lunch with dad, who was checking his car to see if my purse was in the back (it wasn't). awesome.

i call the p.0. people in north carolina. their server isn't working, so it takes quite a while to figure out if i'm in the system, if they know who i am, if anything's wrong. the guy asks for my old address, new address, and phone number, and i tell him that, of course, if they call me back while i'm at the doctor's office this afternoon, i won't answer, and i have no voicemail. but they figure things out before we hang up, so that's one less phone call i have to worry about missing. now we're just worried about the urologist's office calling.

so we pull into a parking spot at our restaurant of choice, and dad beat us there, so he called to tell us he beat us, and then he must have slipped his phone into his pocket and then bumped it, because he's standing in the parking lot waving at us with both extremely long arms (remember, he's 6'11"), and my phone is ringing and it says "daddy" is calling. so i answer, hop out of the car, walk over to him, and hand him the phone. "here," i say. "talk to yourself." (this happens a lot. i hear snatches of meetings regularly.) he grabs the phone, says "hello?" and then laughs and closes the phone, handing it back to me. i slip it into my pocket and we get inside and seated and all that.

dad wants to know if we've heard from the bug. both of us have, so mom starts talking about the sting ray while i pull out my phone to refresh my memory about which kids he's been hanging out with so far. i flip open the phone and.... houston, we have a problem.

it's an appearance of what i like to call the black screen of death.
"Boot Loader
blah blah blah
blah blah blah
some random numbers
D3R
PH SIG ERR:
number that would be time if it wasn't so large

OK to Program
Connect USB
Data Cable"

this has happened before. normally i just turn it off and back on again and we're golden.

oh no, ladies and gentlemen, not this time. this time it's dead.

not that i didn't try to resuscitate the darn thing. i think it was probably after attempt number 15 or 20 that i called it quits and gave up. so now there is NO way for the doctor to leave a message, NO way for her to reach me anyway, NO way for me to tell her - after all, all my doctor contact phone numbers were in the stupid phone - and i'm not eligible for a new phone until october. i mean, this was getting ridiculous. i turned to mom and said, "hey, at least i have something to blog about."



{fyi, mom figured out a plan that will hopefully work, and i managed to pass my bad luck on to dad for the rest of the day. [the work day ended with him locking his keys in his office...]}

The Bug

the bug turns 16 in july, and while he will be driving mom's old suburban for a while, his goal is to get an audi a-4. he is seriously in love with this car. so much so, that dad said tonight at dinner, "i'm afraid, when kj sees a real a-4, like one he can sit in, he'll lick it or something."

Random Pictures

somewhere in podunksville, north carolina.... what were they thinking?

this was the worst rental car ever.... no power windows, no power locks, no power anything. we had to propel it with our feet, fred flinstone style.

stay away from the patriot!

me and my siblings (the bug and katie) out to dinner on easter weekend

my new chair that i am pretty much in love with.

FOOD

I "catered" my brother's dinner party. I took pictures of the food so you can drool over them. It was a bit of an abnormal lineup. :)

This is the famous carrot souffle. It's one of those dishes that usually vanishes faster than the cake.

Lasagna, but with spaghetti instead of normal lasagna noodles.

A staple for sure - green beans with toasted almonds.

Edamame! This is not my favorite way to serve (or eat) them, but this is what the Bug wanted, and since I was the employee this time...

Typically, this dip goes about as fast as the carrot soufflé. Unfortunately, I think the different brand of taco seasoning threw it off... we still have this much left. :-(

Yellow cake slathered with chocolate fudge icing.... Yum!

Strawberry pie from the Biltmore House Cookbook.

The dining room table... We were supposed to have 8, but then that didn't work out... and so we set the table for 6, but we wound up with 4. :-( That makes seven diners total. Suffice it to say, we have leftovers.

Pretty Sweet, Right?

I am so proud of my Daddy.

I Swear Things Will Be Different...

the truth is that i'm way too busy doing things that either are just too much for me (i.e., 14 hours of classes) or are my mundane attempt at making up for how hard i'm working and how crazy my life is. between surprises like physical therapy twice a week for my knees and my grandfather's death and funeral last week, i haven't been able to catch a breath sizable enough to write something. but i will say a few things now.

firstly, i'm now 23. my birthday was last monday. it started off not so hot, as my grandfather had died saturday morning and i was just generally having a crappy day, but it got better. suffice it to say that i like people.

secondly, i'm grateful that my grandfather is with Jesus now, and that he's more alive now that we are here.

thirdly, i'm switching degrees (MDiv to MABS) in order to preserve my sanity (fewer classes at a time, and still graduating 1/2 a year to a year earlier than i would have in the MDiv) and give me the opportunity to do other things - like join a book club, babysit, and really develop some friendships here in charlotte.

fourthly, look at this. it's really funny.

so i hope to write more regularly once the insanity of my life slows down, and i'm thereby able to do things interesting enough to write about. or think things interesting enough to write about. or, heck, to think things at all. in the meantime, please bear with me.

Boo

no, that was not a reference to halloween. it was, rather, a reference to the fact that i haven't been around much.

this is due to a number of things, not the least of which is my utter exhaustion due to near constant activity and extremely large quantities of homework. but the fact of the matter is that today is the sabbath, and on the sabbath i relax, rest, and soak up time with God's people, and today i'm not so exhausted that my relax and rest time must be absorbed by a nap. so here i am, finally able to blog again.

i spent pretty much all day yesterday (well, i slept in late, but i stayed up late too, and i worked out when i first got up) writing 2 papers that are due early in the week this week. one of them was on the book degenerate moderns, which i've just discovered you can read online here for free. now i feel stupid for ordering it. anyway, despite the author's highly catholic tendencies, i recommend the read. it's not perfect, but it is worth your time. particularly helpful is the chapter entitled "liberal guilt cookies."

i have discovered that i am kid-deprived. this will probably lead to further insanity, such as babysitting jobs. seriously, my life is ridiculous, and i have no idea where i would fit said babysitting jobs into it, but i'm going into withdrawal here. not good.

i joined the church today, and when lindsey williams (the pastor who does all that new member business - don't worry, he's a he) introdcuced me he read out that my hobbies are "reading, volleyball, and blogging." for the record, i am confident that i put a much longer list, including watching movies, cooking, singing, napping, and especially hanging out with people. but those are the three that got read. and i was like "crap, i haven't blogged in forever." well, it turns out "forever" is a mere 9 days, but still...

i'm going to visit my not-so-little sister next weekend, which should be wonderful. i'm really excited to hang out and lay low. and get my eyebrows waxed again - her place she goes hardly hurts at all!!

has anyone ever heard of massage envy?

So the biggest reason i haven't posted yet...

...is that i know y'all were excited about hearing about the frame class. and i dropped it. because i got way overwhelmed. please don't be mad.

the one class i sat in before i freaked and dropped was really good. actually, you can listen to his whole lecture series on the topic for free - iTunesU, baby.

the rest of the news is random. here are the basics:

1) i'm joining my beloved church next sunday.
2) i'm loving clinique's 15-minute-facial.
3) i'm going to winston for the weekend to hang out with my best college buds. :)
4) i'm wracked with guilt because i don't know how to contact my beloved cousin leslie, who commented here a few weeks ago and called me. i'm hoping she comes back and emails me or something. {webs - my email is, sans spaces, l k p johnson @ g mail . com}
5) i miss my sister. i miss the rest of my family too, but i've seen them recently.
6) i hate food poisoning. be glad there isn't something like a picture for me to show.
7) seminary is hard.

A Post a Day Keeps Micah... from Logging Complaints

me and my sister at my friend emily and cousin wade's wedding (yes, the couple i set up). i'm the short one in this picture.

Still Kicking...

let's see, since i wrote last, i have...

gone to RUF summer conference

moved into my apartment in Charlotte

graduated from college

hung out with my sister in my new town

gone to Chicago to attend a cousin's wedding

family vacation, including a drive from Chicago to Myrtle Beach, stopping off in Pennsylvania to visit my grandfather en route

tomorrow is my first day in seminary.

whoohoo, eh?

i'll be back more now that my life has settled down a bit, and i'll keep you posted.

first class up: pastoral and social ethics. should be fun.