mine happened yesterday.
i was on the worship team at church for the first time since my accident ~ and i was so excited! it was awesome ~ we had a great team, everything went really well...
until halfway through 2nd service.
the worship team was coming back onstage just as jay was finishing his sermon ~ passionately, in a soft voice, exhorting us to live like the bride of christ...
i crutched all the way from the back of the room with the team, and during his very last sentence...
monumentally tripped on the 3 steps to the stage.
i'm not talking about a little stumble, i'm talking arms and crutches flailing, rear end sticking out (toward the congregation) and all my weight landing on my bad foot.
it was more than worthy of america's funniest home videos.
you could hear an audible gasp go through the room.
jay paused his sermon, stepped toward me, and then (i found out later) decided to continue his sermon once he saw me keep going because he didn't want to embarass me. (how sweet.)
so i spent the afternoon with my foot and ego on ice, reflecting that life is too short to take oneself seriously, and it sure is a blessing to laugh!!!
(and that i am exceedingly glad that i have never developed a cursing habit...)
Monday, October 29, 2007
Monday, October 22, 2007
la-D-la
that's the name of my fantasy football team.
does that make me a fanatic?
maybe... i'm not going to to waste time speculating.
i have a game strategy to plan.
so does the general manager and head coach of the oc avengers:
now that's the face of intimidation.
~see pic large on black~
does that make me a fanatic?
maybe... i'm not going to to waste time speculating.
i have a game strategy to plan.
so does the general manager and head coach of the oc avengers:
now that's the face of intimidation.
~see pic large on black~
Monday, October 15, 2007
stolen
this is the editorial from last week's TIME magazine, written by joel stein. it's one of the funniest things i've read in a while ~ enjoy!
YOU ARE NOT MY FRIEND
Yes, we're on Facebook. But I don't care about your cat. And stop poking me.
In the pre-internet days, neither of us would have even thought of calling each other friends. We'd have called ourselves friends of friends who met once and yet, for some reason, kept sending each other grammatically challenged, inappropriately flirty letters with photos of ourselves attached. Police might have gotten involved.
But now we're definitively friends, having taken a public vow of friendship on friend-based websites, wearing metaphorical friendship bracelets on the earnest Facebook, the punky MySpace, the careerist LinkedIn and the suddenly very Asian Friendster. As if that wasn't enough friendship for you, some of you have also asked me to be friends on the nerdy Twitter, the dorky-élitist Doostang and the Eurotrashy hi5. You message me and comment about me and write on my walls and dedicate songs to me and invite me to join groups. More than once you have taken it upon yourself to poke me.
This is hard to say to a friend, but our relationship is starting to take up too much of my time. It's weird that I know more about you than I do about actual friends I hang out with in person--whom I propose we distinguish by calling "non-metafriends." In fact, I know more about you than I know about myself. I have no idea what my favorite movie or song or TV show is. Last I checked, they all involved Muppets.
Also, you're a bit aggressive in our friendship. Would a non-metafriend call me up and say, "Hey! Guess what? I have a bunch of new pictures of me"? Or tell me he'd colored in a map of all the places he'd ever been? Or inform me, as Michael Hirschorn did in his Facebook status update, that he "is not making decisions; he's making surprises"? It's as if I suddenly met a new group of people who were all in the special classes.
The horror is, I can't opt out. Just as I can't stop making money or my non-metafriends will have more stuff than I do, I can't stop running up my tally of MySpace friends or I'll look like a loser. Just as money made wealth quantifiable, social networks have provided a metric for popularity. We all, oddly, slot in at a specific ranking somewhere below Dane Cook.
I'm sure social networks serve many important functions that improve our lives, like reconnecting us with old friends and finding out if people we used to date are still good-looking. And social networks all have messaging functions, which would be an excellent way to send information if no one had invented e-mail.
But really, these sites aren't about connecting and reconnecting. They're a platform for self-branding. Old people are always worrying that our blogging and personal websites and MySpace profiles are taking away our privacy, but they clearly don't understand the word privacy. We're not sharing things we don't want other people to know. We're showing you our best posed, retouched photos. We're listing the Pynchon books we want you to think we've read all the way through. We're allowing other people to write whatever they want about us on our walls, unless we don't like it, in which case we just erase it. If we had that much privacy in real life, the bathrooms at that Minnesota airport would be empty.
And like the abrasively direct ads for tinctures and cleaning products at the beginning of the advertising age, our self-branding is none too subtle. We are a blunt lot, in our bikinis and our demands that our friends go right now to check out our blog postings. We've gone 40 years back, to sales tactics predating irony, self-deprecation and actual modesty. We are, as a social network, all so awesome that we will soon not be able to type the number 1, because we will have worn out the exclamation point that shares its key.
Until we can build some kind of social network where we can present our true, flawed selves--perhaps some genius can invent something that takes place in a house over dinner with wine--I say we strip down our online communities to just the important parts. With enough venture funding--by which I mean the volunteer services of a dude who knows how to build a website--I hope to launch TrueSocialStatus.com on which users are allowed to submit only their name, their occupation, a photo, the square footage of their home and a list of any celebrities they happen to know. Then other people can vote, on a scale of 1 to 100, on how awesome they are. At the end of the year, the ones with the most points are made homecoming king and queen, which, if I remember correctly, should immediately send their scores plummeting. If nothing else, it should finally rid us of Tila Tequila.
YOU ARE NOT MY FRIEND
Yes, we're on Facebook. But I don't care about your cat. And stop poking me.
In the pre-internet days, neither of us would have even thought of calling each other friends. We'd have called ourselves friends of friends who met once and yet, for some reason, kept sending each other grammatically challenged, inappropriately flirty letters with photos of ourselves attached. Police might have gotten involved.
But now we're definitively friends, having taken a public vow of friendship on friend-based websites, wearing metaphorical friendship bracelets on the earnest Facebook, the punky MySpace, the careerist LinkedIn and the suddenly very Asian Friendster. As if that wasn't enough friendship for you, some of you have also asked me to be friends on the nerdy Twitter, the dorky-élitist Doostang and the Eurotrashy hi5. You message me and comment about me and write on my walls and dedicate songs to me and invite me to join groups. More than once you have taken it upon yourself to poke me.
This is hard to say to a friend, but our relationship is starting to take up too much of my time. It's weird that I know more about you than I do about actual friends I hang out with in person--whom I propose we distinguish by calling "non-metafriends." In fact, I know more about you than I know about myself. I have no idea what my favorite movie or song or TV show is. Last I checked, they all involved Muppets.
Also, you're a bit aggressive in our friendship. Would a non-metafriend call me up and say, "Hey! Guess what? I have a bunch of new pictures of me"? Or tell me he'd colored in a map of all the places he'd ever been? Or inform me, as Michael Hirschorn did in his Facebook status update, that he "is not making decisions; he's making surprises"? It's as if I suddenly met a new group of people who were all in the special classes.
The horror is, I can't opt out. Just as I can't stop making money or my non-metafriends will have more stuff than I do, I can't stop running up my tally of MySpace friends or I'll look like a loser. Just as money made wealth quantifiable, social networks have provided a metric for popularity. We all, oddly, slot in at a specific ranking somewhere below Dane Cook.
I'm sure social networks serve many important functions that improve our lives, like reconnecting us with old friends and finding out if people we used to date are still good-looking. And social networks all have messaging functions, which would be an excellent way to send information if no one had invented e-mail.
But really, these sites aren't about connecting and reconnecting. They're a platform for self-branding. Old people are always worrying that our blogging and personal websites and MySpace profiles are taking away our privacy, but they clearly don't understand the word privacy. We're not sharing things we don't want other people to know. We're showing you our best posed, retouched photos. We're listing the Pynchon books we want you to think we've read all the way through. We're allowing other people to write whatever they want about us on our walls, unless we don't like it, in which case we just erase it. If we had that much privacy in real life, the bathrooms at that Minnesota airport would be empty.
And like the abrasively direct ads for tinctures and cleaning products at the beginning of the advertising age, our self-branding is none too subtle. We are a blunt lot, in our bikinis and our demands that our friends go right now to check out our blog postings. We've gone 40 years back, to sales tactics predating irony, self-deprecation and actual modesty. We are, as a social network, all so awesome that we will soon not be able to type the number 1, because we will have worn out the exclamation point that shares its key.
Until we can build some kind of social network where we can present our true, flawed selves--perhaps some genius can invent something that takes place in a house over dinner with wine--I say we strip down our online communities to just the important parts. With enough venture funding--by which I mean the volunteer services of a dude who knows how to build a website--I hope to launch TrueSocialStatus.com on which users are allowed to submit only their name, their occupation, a photo, the square footage of their home and a list of any celebrities they happen to know. Then other people can vote, on a scale of 1 to 100, on how awesome they are. At the end of the year, the ones with the most points are made homecoming king and queen, which, if I remember correctly, should immediately send their scores plummeting. If nothing else, it should finally rid us of Tila Tequila.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
update on gimpy
so i haven't blogged, even though i've been laid up with not much to do.
what was there to blog about? i don't want to sit around and whine about sitting around all day... i never read other people's "whine-blogs" and i'm certainly not going to subject others to one.
so, i present... the opposite:
a short list, in no particular order, of some of the wonderful things about the past 2 weeks (exactly) since my accident:
~my incredible, wonderful, caring, patient husband - he works full time, heads up a ministry at our church, and for the past 2 weeks, has done all the housework, cooking, plus taking care of his invalid wife. always gentle and loving, not complaining, the picture of christ's love.
~everybody else - family, dear friends, church coworkers and friends, and some who i've never even met, cleaning our house, making food, coming over and helping me when joel's at work, sending cards and fun gifts, phone calls, and overwhelming us with grace and love.
~"music as medicine" - the book i just finished ... a symphony of grace when i needed it most.
~mary tyler moore and the gang on dvd - fun friends for lonely days...
~frozen vegetables - the world's best painkiller
~my new hairdo (thanks mom!) - it's cute, easy to manage, and looks great when i've been on my back all day!
~the er doc who took care of me - his name is jordan. he gave me such exemplary care; he even gave us his cell number in case problems arose over the weekend (they did) and called several times over the next week to see how i was doing.
~tupperware and plastic grocery bags - i can't carry open containers of food or drinks on crutches, so to get my own lunch or a glass of water by myself i need to put it in a closable container and put that container in a plastic bag with handles to transport... by the time i get to eating it i've already burned off all the calories!
~tim and the office crew at grace - they've done a great job managing while i've been gone - i can rest at home with confidence!
~pumpkin spice candles - mmmmmm......
~getting back to work - starting this last tuesday i've been back at work for 3-4 hour days. still taking it a day at a time, bumming rides off my coworkers (thanks guys!), and thankful for when i can be there.
lots more is popping into my head ~ like i said, this is a short list!
life is good!
what was there to blog about? i don't want to sit around and whine about sitting around all day... i never read other people's "whine-blogs" and i'm certainly not going to subject others to one.
so, i present... the opposite:
a short list, in no particular order, of some of the wonderful things about the past 2 weeks (exactly) since my accident:
~my incredible, wonderful, caring, patient husband - he works full time, heads up a ministry at our church, and for the past 2 weeks, has done all the housework, cooking, plus taking care of his invalid wife. always gentle and loving, not complaining, the picture of christ's love.
~everybody else - family, dear friends, church coworkers and friends, and some who i've never even met, cleaning our house, making food, coming over and helping me when joel's at work, sending cards and fun gifts, phone calls, and overwhelming us with grace and love.
~"music as medicine" - the book i just finished ... a symphony of grace when i needed it most.
~mary tyler moore and the gang on dvd - fun friends for lonely days...
~frozen vegetables - the world's best painkiller
~my new hairdo (thanks mom!) - it's cute, easy to manage, and looks great when i've been on my back all day!
~the er doc who took care of me - his name is jordan. he gave me such exemplary care; he even gave us his cell number in case problems arose over the weekend (they did) and called several times over the next week to see how i was doing.
~tupperware and plastic grocery bags - i can't carry open containers of food or drinks on crutches, so to get my own lunch or a glass of water by myself i need to put it in a closable container and put that container in a plastic bag with handles to transport... by the time i get to eating it i've already burned off all the calories!
~tim and the office crew at grace - they've done a great job managing while i've been gone - i can rest at home with confidence!
~pumpkin spice candles - mmmmmm......
~getting back to work - starting this last tuesday i've been back at work for 3-4 hour days. still taking it a day at a time, bumming rides off my coworkers (thanks guys!), and thankful for when i can be there.
lots more is popping into my head ~ like i said, this is a short list!
life is good!
Thursday, October 4, 2007
i don't really have an excuse
i should have posted about my accident sooner.
the only thing that's been preventing me is... nothing really.
i've been stuck on my back for a week now, computer on my lap almost every day...
blogger's block, i guess.
here's what happened:
i got ran over by a truck last thursday.
i was walking to work, and a truck was turning right onto hogan (the road i walk along) from a little side street. he had a stop sign. i watched him slow down, figured he was going to stop, so i started to cross the little side street. he did a rolling "stop" and accelerated right into me ~ never saw me (he said later that he was turning right and just looked left, didn't think to look right). i tried to jump out of the way, but my foot got caught under his wheel as he braked, and dragged along the road (not pretty). and i didn't get to drink even a sip of the nice tea latte i had in my pretty starbucks mug (which didn't break, by the way).
that's pretty much the extent of the accident part.
i got to ride in an ambulance to the hospital, i got x-rays and narcotics, and had to have surgery to remove embedded gravel...
and finally i got to go home!
and i haven't been able to leave much since ~ i haven't even been back to work yet. it's not healing quite right, so i had a ct scan yesterday. i've been on maximum doses of narcotics for a week now, so i may do something weird...
the only thing that's been preventing me is... nothing really.
i've been stuck on my back for a week now, computer on my lap almost every day...
blogger's block, i guess.
here's what happened:
i got ran over by a truck last thursday.
i was walking to work, and a truck was turning right onto hogan (the road i walk along) from a little side street. he had a stop sign. i watched him slow down, figured he was going to stop, so i started to cross the little side street. he did a rolling "stop" and accelerated right into me ~ never saw me (he said later that he was turning right and just looked left, didn't think to look right). i tried to jump out of the way, but my foot got caught under his wheel as he braked, and dragged along the road (not pretty). and i didn't get to drink even a sip of the nice tea latte i had in my pretty starbucks mug (which didn't break, by the way).
that's pretty much the extent of the accident part.
i got to ride in an ambulance to the hospital, i got x-rays and narcotics, and had to have surgery to remove embedded gravel...
and finally i got to go home!
and i haven't been able to leave much since ~ i haven't even been back to work yet. it's not healing quite right, so i had a ct scan yesterday. i've been on maximum doses of narcotics for a week now, so i may do something weird...
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