What fifty cents at Half Price Books can buy.

Coming to a mailbox near you....

or possibly Martha's live TV show.

While tooling around in Sherwin Williams the other day, I was looking for a nice green to paint my room. Like most things, I got distracted by the names of the paints. Martha's color names are exceptionally great! If you are familiar with her paint samples at all, you know she has a perforated square in the center of her sample, for maximum color coordinating accuracy. Bam, standing there I got a burst of creativity! I grabbed paint samples that had really good names, punched out the center, and put a picture of the name of the paint in the opening, and glued it on cardstock for notecards.
My dad said I should e-mail it to Martha, maybe I'll be on her show someday...until then...
adieu!

Meet my new friend:

I had the privilege of hearing an amazing musician at a local Barnes and Noble. Enjoying his quirky humor, guitar, harmonica, and piano skills, I sipped a plain skim latte and a sweet blueberry scone. He's a really cool guy, really cool.
Go to his website: http://www.ashtonallen.net (I love watching the pictures appear)!

Sunday recap

Yesterday morning at 9:20 we went to the picture perfect Mentor United Methodist Church. No really, it is. White steeple, tall white columns (I would tell you what kind they are and make Anna Pongracic proud if I honestly could remember), an over abundance of natural lighting in the sanctuary, and an amazing pipe organ. The service was nice, good sermon. Perhaps the factor that peaked my interest was the Associate Pastor- she's from England! Acts 19:1-6 and Mark 1:5-8 never sounded so good! Unfortunately she didn't give the sermon. Someday she will, someday. I can't tell you the last time I went to church at a "single digit hour", uh, that was a wee bit early.
Continuing on, I had florintine eggs benidict for brunch. The best thing ever.
Feeling a little sleepy, I fought the urge to take a nap, as all of us IWU kids are conditioned to do. Who doesn't take a nap after brunch on sundays? Instead I headed to arabica coffee house, only the coolest thing since Mcconn. I wrote some letters, watched people. Hilights include: the woman in her mid thirties with a lavender metallic jacket, and then there was the old lady with purple floral leggings and happy face stickers in her hair. Perhaps the most noticeable was that couple that forgot they were in suburban Cleveland and were kissing like you're allowed to in Paris. They were enjoying a huge piece of Chocolate cake, and I didn't look but I'm guessing they were feeding it to eachother. It was so interesting, though, because none of the other coffee drinkers were bothered by it. The older couple next to them simply commented on their chocolate cake! It's like they were oblivious to the world around them and the world was oblivious to them.
I drove down to the lake, the sky was filled with beautiful pastel colors, the lake still looked cold though!
We went back to Mentor UMC for the contemporary evening service. The fellowship hall was filled with half 8th graders and half adults, and the youth pastor did the service.
After the service, the youth pastor approached me, oh awesome. I knew who she was, but she didn't know how old I was. I smiled inside at the conversation I knew was ahead. She spoke only to me, and not my parents, asking where we moved from, why we moved, etc. Then...."so do you go to Mentor High School". UH. so annoying.
So after she found out how old I am, she introduced me to a girl my age, who went to Ball State, of all places! So now I have a friend. She was just as excited to meet me as I was to meet her.

Dinner Menu

Salad: Oranges drizzled with honey, and sprinkled with coconut.

Entree: Gado Gado (a spicy brown Indonesian peanut sauce with ginger, onion, garlic, peanuts, peanut butter, coconut milk, and red pepper!) on a bed of jasmine rice surrounded by fresh veggies (sugar peas, broccoli, carrots, tomatoes, cucumber)

Dessert: Ben&Jerrys- half baked and dublin mudslide


Trust me, it was good.

My Beth is in Ireland

As of Saturday Morning, Beth is in Ireland! She'll be teaching "fifth year" students for the next 3 months at St. Malachy's National Boy's School in the suburbs of Dublin.


Here is an excerpt from an update:
......"Eammon(the principal) gave the boys a homework assignment to find what the major industry is in Kentucky. When Julie (the teacher she is student teaching for) and I came back into the classroom, Eammon was asking the class, "if her name is Beth, what do you suppose the name is that she was baptized with?" They answered a correct "Elizabeth". .............

Come and go with me on a Pictoral Tour of my Grandparents House

Goin South

Well tomorrow morning I am headed down to Cincinnati. I thought my main purpose in this trip was to bid farewell to Beth (who is traveling to Ireland). Ok, with the possible ulterior motive to hop in her suitcase. I think Beth has other goals for the week:

Beth: "tomorrow night we'll make white chicken chili, and domesticate ourselves"
Me: "yum, with cornbread? wait- I've always thought we were pretty domestic, Beth!"
Beth: "Not if we can't make white chicken chili without a recipe, we aren't"

The test is on.

So this coming weekend we are having a "post Christmas family get together" with the Cincinnati fam- it's actually family Christmas with them, cause we weren't able to all be together before now. whatever. I'm all for extending the holidays.

I have been informed that as it all pans out I will be staying with my Aunt and Uncle's exchange student from Thailand. We will be staying in the neighbor's guest house across the street. I guess at this pont I am trying to think of conversation topics with her. I don't know how much english she knows.

any brilliant ideas, oh creative friends?

A Breath of fresh Vermont Air

Last night and this morning i had the pleasure of having a delightful houseguest: Nate, my dear friend from Camp.
He was en route to Chicago from Vermont, and Cleveland was on the way.
Nate arrived around seven and brought a light snow shower with him. We had appetizers of chips and salsa; accompanied by a woodchuck (what the heck else would we drink? Just like Guinness and an Irishman) followed by dinner of chicken&swiss cheese and stuffing with veggies and a terrific orange and almond salad. Finished off with a gooey caramel chocolate cake.
we chatted, caught up on what's been going in life...reminisced about camp- came to the conclusion that camp is one of those things that you look back on with fondness, but during camp, well sometimes there were those days where you were about to quit.
We spent the rest of the evening digging up some dirt on our boss (the camp director). I mean you have to question a guy in his late thirties that was a high executive in California then left it all to be a gym teacher (and camp director by summer) in Vermont.Gotta wonder. We embarked side by side on my bed with our macs scouring the Internet, alas,we found nothing. We're still skeptical.

We called the Vermonters (Scott Hess) and found out they were having a bit of a get together/ camp reunion. We told them we were too, just Midwest Style. We tried to convince Beth W. to come up. "Meredith, are you actually suggesting I drive to Cleveland, like now?" "Beth, don't even- you know you've thought and we've done crazier stuff"
Due to Beth's wussiness, she says her car wouldn't make it to Cleveland, but it could make it to Columbus. Given that my car doesn't start/ is incapable of backing out of the garage.... we were in a jam. I tossed and turned all night trying to come up with a genius plan so we could all hang out. I got up in the middle of the night, filled my Guinness glass with water and tried to get some rest.

I awoke, without a Columbus meeting plan, nor a plan of what to do with Nate all morning. When we were eating breakfast, I pitched the options. A) play on our playground in the backyard
B) play down on Lake Erie
C) take a tour of the Mormon Temple near Mentor

Option C was pursued, the Temple unfortunately was not open weekdays in the winter. There went that option, even though Nate tried to convince me they wouldn't turn us down, he even wanted to wear a tie, and try to convert them.

Option B was fufilled, we went to the lakefront, pondered who the residents of the cute lakeside homes might have been. We also saw a Morton Salt Mine, random. It reminded me of the time Jon and I were driving to PA and i was like, "it smells like dog food!" We turned around to find a dog food factory. The salt mine was less smelly. (I should note here that when we were out, Nate opened the car door for me! +points)

After our lakeside expedition, we came back to the house and made sandwiches and then my pal headed home! He's a sweetheart!

Things that make me smile

(a limited list, in no order)

-•green license plates

-anonymous voicemail messages with songs that sound like "happy birthday mr. president" but are really saying "merry christmas dear Meredith..."

-•one liner emails from people I adore

-art museums

-accidentally taking a 5 1/2 hike with my Dad. Three and a half miles were on a Michigan state highway.

-•being captivated by my Momom's stories of Norway.

-•discovering a great new band