Murly Christmas

I have a week off from Indiana, and I already spent a wonderful weekend with my family for Christmas.  This year, for some odd reason, my immediate family decided to open our gifts the day before Christmas Eve.  That meant that Christmas Day was for SLEEPING IN!!!  That equals best Christmas Day ever.  Dinner that day was grilled cheese sandwiches, not even copious ones.  We almost had to use heels, and we definitely had to dip into the cheddar, which, we all know doesn't hold a candle to the melty goodness of velveeta...Then we watched Pirates 2.  I don't care what anyone says, I liked it.  It was an impossible movie to do a sequel to, and I thought it was fabulous.  Can't wait for number three.

 

More Later.. .My body is still digesting the pile of food it ate this week...not enough juices to write....

--
Hey YOU want G-mail?  I can hook you up...
 

Counting Crows.

The trees are heavy with crows. Saturated...I can't even begin to assign a number..thousands? Yes it's thousands. A dark fluid cloud of 58,000 crows plague the city.  Like a scene from a Hitchcock movie, they swarm in a giant amoeba above the tree tops, snagging on the thick branches now and again.    I crane my neck to the front of the window of the truck to see them circling overhead.  The black long arms of the cloud seem to be performing an incantation rite above the cauldron that is Terre Haute.  Aimlessly, they wander, purposeless, dark and strange.

 

I understand that feeling sometimes, my friends.

 

More Shrapnel from my Brain Cloud.

Black Hair Dye, yipes.

Awkward Situations.

Rainy Indiana

Madly in Love

Tripped and Fell over a Rug that was advertising safety in the workplace

Feeling stupid at work

Feeling pretty good at work

Feeling pretty cold at work

Miss my best friends.

Houlihans, Kayaks, Kaldis whatever.

Miss my Missouri Life

Still stuck in Indiana for awhile.

Brother is the best guy on earth, no kiddin.

TM is up there too.

No two guys would I rather have in my man-rig.

Christmas is merry.

Vmars was not on TV last night.

Who else is NOT a fan of Hayley Duff?? what the heck.. you're all "Vote for Summer" and all of a sudden you get to host an award show with Reverend Camden? Pshaw.. as if.

Bible Study teleconferences with TM, unbelievable.

God is so big.

Artie... heh. Heheeheh. HAAHAHA. We all have had imaginary friends, haven't we?

"DO not be afraid, Abram..I am your sheild. Your very great reward." (even though you lied about your wife being your sister twice i am the LORD and I will use you anyway..)

Proof of me being the biggest losesr: Retainers, badges, powercords, alarmclocks, phone chargers, phone numbers, sewer checks, receipts,

Willie and Annie prankin me on the day of Willie's birf. Not fair.. but funny.

Miss volleyball, because I need a vetrinarian.. because my pythons are SICK.

I can't even type that with a straight face.

I wonder how people really see me. I know the way I see me is so distorted.

I wonder how God sees me. My twisted mind says no one could possibly see the good, my sinful nature says the truly bad isn't that bad... how far from the truth.

Beth Moore reunion is new and not a rerun? How can that be?

I wonder if I will ever live as simply and as freely as Jesus would want me to? For my sake, not only his.

I wonder if I will ever make a good mom. I'm so selfish.

I wonder if I will ever trim my toenails again. I'm going for a Guiness over here.

I wonder if JL knows what an idiot she is, what a gold mine she has. Had? Has? who knows.

I wonder if anyone really eats the pickles at the chinese buffet in Terre Haute that are in the big vat inconveniently located next to the cottage cheese compartment... ahem... ew.

I wonder if anyone reads me anymore. I've become sparse.

Biggest Losers is on.. Crying. Slightly comforting to know that in order to lose 50% of my body weight, I would have to chop a leg off. Even thought I eat the sausage biscuits at the Drury Inn breakfast buffet with no shame.

Hotel comforters... can they even be classifed as such?

If you are reading this and you are in Missouri..or Illinois, or Pennsylvania, or California, or Texas, or Minnesota, or Washington....chances are I miss you.

Take Another Very Painful Vote...

What is the WORST part about finding the retainers (that you thought were thrown away by a cleaning lady at the Drury Inn) neatly tucked in the least likely place, the retainer case, that is actually in your purse.

 

A.  You are out 100 bucks.

B.  You had to cancel a perfectly good dentist appointment, miss work, and drive thru an ice storm to get said retainers made.

or

C.  You are just a complete and TOTAL idiot.

 

Oh the horror.
 

Take a Vote

If you leave your retainers in your hotel room on a paper plate on your unmade bed, and the housekeeper throws them away... who should be held responsible for replacing them?

 

A.  You are an Idiot.  Cough up the dough.

B.  You are entitled to some sort of re-imbursement.

 

OR

 

C.   Other (Please specify).

 

BTW, "You" is "me'. 

 

 

Murl's Anatomy

Hello all. For those of you I haven't spoken with in awhile... I took a mini-unscheduled vacation. To the hospital.

Last tuesday I had the stomach flu. I was becoming a pretty good shot, vomiting into the tub while sitting on the toilet, when I decided I needed some help. So my CLIENT came back to my hotel and took me to the ER. Where I was given some fluids and some nausea meds that WIPED me out. So my mom and my Monty drove out to Terre Haute to take me home. Before they arrived I was given fluids so they could get a urine sample. I had been too dehydrated before to give one, so they had to wait a little while. I finally had stopped, ahem, ejecting things, long enough to fall into a drug-induced coma. But apparantly I was getting too comfortable. A bald, giant, earring clad nurse bursts in, wakes me from a good REM sleep flips the light on and demands a sample. I wasn't moving fast enough for him yet, so he unhooks my fluid bag, throws it on the bed and wheels me out the door to the bathroom...which was less than 5 feet from my room. It was so disturbing, like coming out of the womb must have felt. I was cold, disorented, nauseous and surrounded by people in scrubs. He really wanted this sample.. maybe for himself.. maybe he was trying to play football and needed a clean one? Who knows. I asked him if I could have a pink tray before I left the bed.. and he said "What? Oh sure, but.. we refer to those as 'pukin-buckets'!"

Lovely.

I finally was discharged and rode home. The next day and a half I spent in a coma and the world just passed by without me. I didn't answer any e-mail or go to work so I ended up with six impromptu days off, and it was wonderful and tomorrow it will be horrible, but for now, for a few more hours it is still wonderful.

Thanksgiving turned into a mini-vacation and I got to visit a ton of folks. Closest to my heart being my good friend Coralea and her baby boys who I hadn't seen in YEARS. But the oldest son remembered me and both boys were so adorable and loving. Most kids I'm around are shy and not so quick to warm up to strangers, but these two didn't have that problem, I think it is an environmental thing. Check out these cuties!

Shards of Skull... the name of my new cover band...if I had a cover band...

Many tings.
My roomate Katie's weddin. Much belated post on the week-ago event... but Indiana happens.


Anywho. Great time. Ended up being a mini-DR reunion special.. Tons of old familiar wonderful faces.. speaking of faces.. This was my super-slick trick on Markus and JRo...


So super... so slick...so unnoticed.. so captured for-ever on film...




Willie!'s attempt at revenge didn't fare so well, totally knew he was there, and captured the pit stain for-ever on film.... :)


In other Katie and Patrick wedding related news... I "hosted" a part of the wedding party at my place, which would have been fantastic... except I picked that weekend to have my sewer pipes replaced in the front yard. In a deft flash of brilliance and planning skill, I had a bobcat and several savory characters in my front yard, a giant truck blocking my drive, seven women in the house and a pile of poo in my basement.

Got that cabled out after the fact and find to my horror, that the bobcat and his band of merry men did not unclog my clot, didn't straighten my sewer... didn't really help my problem. My problem may be under the house, where no man can go...

So stay tuned for the continuing saga of my money pit. I'm sure it will be blog-worthy.

Thankfully, Tim helped me clean up before when went and saw The Departed.. which by far gets my vote as best use of skull shards in a dramatic action film. Loved Leo in that one.. Hate Leo in everything else..

This week I blew a tire on the rented Jeep Liberty.

Good thing I had some good ole' boys there to help me change the tire.. It was a cold, rainy, bone-chilling, frosty windy, not warm 'Cheeseburgers in Paradise' parking lot in lovely urban-sprawling Terre Haute.

Of note.. the good old boy number one asks me where my jack is on the jeep.. since it's not mine, I do not know offhand. They take off on a 21 point inpection of the vehicle to locate said jack.

I look in the manual...The other female in the car says sarcastically under her breath... "Now Lindsey, why would you look in the manual?" I am the first jill to the jack.

O-E-yes!

Warning... Enginerd humor. Safe to say the whole room was crakin up when maybe the dearest little Indian Man on earth dropped the following bombs-o-funny. .

Structural Engineer: "We should put a note that says... Don't drill through beams...seems obvious, but I think it needs to be said."
Structural Engineer, disdainfully, on what scale to draw certain section in: "3/32 is a bastard scale".
Structural Engineer on which floors to pour: "Do the second first and then the first second."

Love that guy.

V Mars slips in the Murl ratings..

Before: After:

Yes.. Jim, Mark, basically I'm dissappointed with VMars after her big change to the CW. They took the best TV detective/comedy/drama and made it the O.C! The show started out with Veronica being a junior in high school with a big story line, great deeply developed characters.. from the gold-hearted motorcycle gang leader, to the confused sarcastic lovable bad boy, to the bumbling simple minded local sheriff who you love to hate, and taken it and scrubbed it of all it's unique-ness and turned it into a typical college drama. Shouldn't the writers have known from the examples of 90210 and Saved by the Bell, that you CAN'T transition a high school drama into a college one effectively... heck.. you can't even do it in real life. This season of VMars has turned Veronica into a jealous "girly-girl", had dropped or ignored HUGE plot lines (maybe because actors didn't return for this season.. but we are just left hanging on major parts of the story..like where is Duncan? Where is her mom? There is no emphasis on the relationship between her and Wallace.. (which is one of the best story lines, and relationships they had going). Ugh.. and NOW her Dad (who also constitutes one of the best Father-daughter acts of all time) is having an affair with a married woman. BOOOO, I say.. HISS BOO. Another example to follow many others of a show that had GREAT potential and was so different, turned into every other pop show on TV.

Yeah. I was scared to admit it.. but I'm not happy. I will say the first two seasons are some of the best work I've seen on TV, and this third season leaves me with an "eh" feeling.

Don't get me wrong.. it's still a good show.. it just used to be a great show.

And it make me sad.

Bold, Scandalous Hope

Ok. So I think I've had a revelation. Not one that I haven't had before... but somehow it seems to have more stick power, and less emotion driven as previous "yay-God-type" revelations. Ever since my bff Angela mentioned the lack of a "Bold Hope" driving back from Greenville, the ring of that phrase hasn't left my brain. There are so many reasons to be cynical. Countless reasons. It is absolutely justifiable to be hard, and cold and self-protective and to look out for number one. It really makes a lot of sense. Good advice from the 'wiser' older to the younger. Watch out for you, because no one else will. My spirit is crushed daily with the weight of this world, I stood at the polls today wanting to kick the booth over with angst for the lack of real solutions, I see the droves of homeless around Monty's loft and I want to get a bull horn and chant "GET A JOB" out the side of the car, but I also want to make them sandwiches, but I don't want them to mug me. (How awful am I?), I want to take the fowl mouthed people who yell at each other on the reality shows and I want to force them to watch video of themselves while tied to a chair, but I keep watching them while not tied to anything. I want all politicians put in a boxing ring in sumo suits with built in tasers and let them fight to the death. I want fat people to be thin, I want emaciated people to eat, I want the sick to be healed and I want wrong to be RIGHT. But how? It's overwhelming to the perfectionist in me that says ALL or NOTHING. But there is one BIG giant reason to be hopeful. And that reason is that God is at work. And the God of scripture DOES have power and has purpose and is all that is good and light in the world. It is all things worth forwarding in an e-mail that warm your heart, it's all things that are so beautiful, that stand out against the stark white cold hardness of the world we live in. They are often very small things. The diary of Anne Frank was a very small thing. Very small words from a little teenaged girl, in the midst of a hurricane of hate and tragedy. Those whispered words spoke much louder and lasted much longer than the Hilters did. The trials of Martin Luther King Jr. who was up against violence and hate whose voice now rings out victoriously in a world that more and more (I feel) sees people being judged by the content of their character. In a backyard example...I see men like Monty. He may be unpolished on the surface..the things he says make me cringe sometimes, he may have scary tattos, but his heart is one that is beautiful. He loves people who can't love him back. He loves people who have hurt him.. loves them radically, even monitarily and wouldn't imagine playing it any other way. He cares for people whose lives are messy, and he gets into the mess for them. He loves freely and often and doesn't count costs before deciding to love. He isn't ruled by fear. Period. He isn't concerned with appearances, says what he thinks and isn't afraid to be wrong. He feels things and isn't afraid to feel what he's feeling, fully and completely. Isn't afraid to chase after a girl who dumped him. Is isn't afraid of anything really..except God. Mmkey that was a mush-fest-over...sorry. With all of the examples I could give of the merits of hoping, of trying. I still I see people, including myself, plugging into a world that wont heal. It refuses medicine, it refuses love, it refuses to drink, it refuses to breathe. I get too smart for myself sometimes because i don't "see" God working. Or it seems better and smarter to play the odds that things are going to turn out badly, that people are going to hurt you and that life is going to dissappoint you terribly if you start getting this "hoping" notion into your head. Can we rise up? We are engaged in an epic battle (oh geez John Eldridge...) and it is a grand shame that i forget it so often, because I'm surrounded by smart people who don't believe. People I admire for their brains and talent, who can't see what I can see. And it, honestly, makes me feel a bit stupid. It makes the little girl in me stick her chin out and fold her arms and choke back hot angry tears. B-but he IS real. Why wont you see? Oh ok, to maintain the 'coolness' factor, I'll take my God down a notch. I'll what? Am I serious? I can do no such thing. May God not smite me. I can't because it isn't true. It shames me to say that these are my thoughts. I pound the nails in further. My revelation is this. It's ok to hope. It's the better deal. And I'm going to...damn it. Don't care who thinks I'm a Pollyanna. I don't care. I have reason for hope. I mean the Cardinals won a freakin' World Series this year... ANYTHING is possible... ;)

True Story.

My brothers hilariously inappropriate friend, Steve, sent Dusty this video he took on his phone.

This is in a long drive comptetition. Note this particular contestant's lack of shirt, shoes and the presence of the HOUSE ARREST anklet.

Oh yeah.

Riddle Me This..

How do you find exactly THREE white castle burger boxes in the abandoned fish tank in the backyard? One, maybe... I could see it accidentally getting blown in there from God knows where... but THREE? I'm thinking deliberate deposit of the crave cases into said water-laden fish tank. Oh yes.. someone..some late-night good-timer PURPOSELY used the abandoned fish tank in the backyard as their own personal trash-can... and WHY are they wandering out in my backyard??

I'm setting up cameras...
Crochety. party of one.

Go Crazy Folks!

Yeah Birds!

I DIDN'T JINX HIM!!

http://www.longdrivers.com/news/remax/102606.html

Un-believable, considering he didn't get out of round one last year...

I was trying to get to Vegas this weekend to see it myself.. but no tickets cheaper than donating my left kidney.

Probably just as well..

Keep your fingers crossed for my bro!!

Not to Jinx....

Saying "not to jinx" ensures no jinxing..

And I'm not superstitious anyway...

So I don't mind telling you that Dusty is in round 6 of 9 in the Remax World Long Drive Championship.

Boo-to-the-yah...

He knocked out the previous world champ...

How cool?

Too Long.

Who knew that Boston's Pizza had a wireless connection? Who knew that there was such a place as Boston's Pizza?

Long time no blog.

Life on the road has obstructed my ability to blog as of late.. and I’ve had some crummy internet connections in my hotels as of late as well. And lets just be honest… I’m spending some serious time being smitten with a certain someone. It’s a very good thing.

Only… I feel as if I’ve left a club of sorts.. I feel as if I finally don’t get to be the one who knows what it feels like to be single. I hate that feeling. I hate knowing that people most dear to me now put me in a “them” category. Ugh. The sheer “Ugh”. Does it not count that I’d been exactly there for ten years previous?

I want to be like the Cary Murphy’s of the world. Cary Murphy, who last year, at her New Year’s Rockin’ Eve party noted I was one of the only people there without significant other to smooch and walked up to me and planted one fat on my cheek. She had no idea at the time how much that meant to me. As if she were almost saying… you know it’s great… and all, but not worth the heartache you make it… you don’t have to “be” anyone to be here with us… it was sweet.

That said, I’ve had some very good teachers on how to be a good fighter, a good receiver, and a good woman, so it’s nice to put those into practice in an actual, real-live relationship. He’s great. But he’s still just a guy.

He’s still not Jesus and will never be.

That said, I have a large text message bill.

In other news, I have elevated my golf game. Wow I shot an highly questionable 85 the other day. On the back 9 I shot at 39. That is absurd for me. It wouldn’t pass USGA scrutiny, but I was hittin the sticks.

Speaking of sticks. Dusty is in Vegas as we speak hitting his sticks, hopefully for some big money. Proud of my bro. He’s da man, the quintessential “Big Deal”.

Cardinals wins remind me of nostalgia of days past. When the Cards won the series in ’82 (saying “in ‘82” makes me sound like a sports bad-ass, yes?) Getting to see my dad jump straight up out of his lazy boy and clap his hands over his head and almost TOUCH THE CEILING made my three year old self much impressed. I mean… the CEILING was far far away to me then. When did world series tickets get to be like buying a small business? I went to the series in 2004 with my Dad on standing room only tickets and they weren’t quite so absurdly expensive. I dunno what happened there. But looks like I’ll be watchin’ from the couch this time.

Speaking of Tickets.. if anyone knows anyway to get USC vs. Notre Dame tickets and can assist me in getting said tickets.. I’ll… I’ll…. Be your best friend. Yeah.. move over Joaquin Phoenix.. the position will be filled.

I hit a possum on the way to Terre Haute this time. That makes my wildlife bloodletting streak go up by 50% in the last two months. I got a squirrel earlier this fall.

Someone told me that if the department responsible for clearing road kill ever went on strike we’d be knee deep in otter brains before Christmas.

Someone else who was not a native St. Louisan or a Cardinal fan told me that if the Arch fell over and crushed the stadium tomorrow, he wouldn’t bat an eye. Heh.

Does anybody remember the Carol Burnette Show?? Wow. I caught a glimpse of an infomercial peddling her collectors edition DVD’s for her show and I was just reminded of how funny that lady really is. Great gams too.

I’m going to buy them, or request them for Christmas or something. The DVD’s not the gams.

I became a statistic for the second time by running over my upper retainer with the lawn mower. Curse that Orthodontist for telling me that his adult patients NEVER lose their retainers.

Reaching way back in blog-history I would be CRAZY not to mention the TOOTH BIKE, Boneless Arm Roast Anniversary special, and horse-drawn carriages build from cornstalks. Thus IS Greenville Illi-noise.

Boo to the Yah.

The crazy hippy pirate praise band the Psalters were there. And they were fantastic. I danced. I danced with the wild abandon of someone who didn’t care who was watching.. I used to never care who was watching. Something changed. Not sure when, but regardless… I danced. In my bare feet in a carpeted almost “garage” in the middle of nowhere… where they had no tickets to purchase, and homemade snacks at the door. Oh memories of college. When shirts were flannel, and things were simpler, only we thought they were much more complicated. Hooray for being the oldest people in the room. Hooray for my two dear friends who make me laugh so hard and who have bacon wallets. YES BACON WALLETS. Oh man.

Stick that in yer bacon wallet and fry it.

Oh Thank Goodness

For the little church volleyball league I find myself playing in.

We play in a gym in a church, the gym behind the kitchen. It's carpeted. We pray before we play and large tattooed men in muscle shirts who love Jesus tell us about the ministry of the church and then we bang balls around in the name of Jesus.

It's even the marooney color of my church that I grew up playing basketball in. Felt weirdly good. Like I can't believe I forgot that this happens around the midwest, I can't believe I forgot. I'm so glad it still happens. After the too-cool-for-school days at washu, the snobby anti small town place for your mind to 'expand', I'm so glad we got to play with Josh, the mentally handicapped sixth man on the other team who never ever stopped smilling the entire time.

The small towners got it right.

On completely different note, I find it ODD that we cant end sentences with prepositions... sometimes there just isn't a better way to say it. Anybody with me? It seems completely arbitrary.

The Apple Picker

He says:
"That's great news".
"I called Adelaide today".

"Lives of Service".

Things are "Stupid Good".

I say things are stupid good.

Greetings from The Haute.

Many things have happened since we last posted.

I turned a year older. Twenty seven is delicious so far. Heard it described most perfectly by a sara of mine, "Old enough to be making decent money, and still young enough to not have old people responsibilities." Yeah, I'm down.

I now have a beaux. I'm not going to put much info up here about him. He's in the public eye (well, ear, rather) enough. But he's great, and great for me, and I'm very excited about this developement.

I have started week number in Terre Haute in 'Lindsey-style'. Hows that? By leaving the lights in my rental car on all night, requiring a member of the Hampton Inn housekeeping staff to jump my Ford Taurus. I was a half hour late to my first day of training, but that got worked out. I didn't miss anything and I now have a badge on a stringy bungee thing that I pull out and let snap back to my hip.

It's fantastic.

I have also already snagged a spot on a volleyball team for Monday nights in Terre Haute. Which is also fantastic.

On the way home I definitely drove by a semi-sized caged truck that was chock full of live chickens, not terribly unlike this one:


Only in Indiana.

Branson, Busch Stadium. Whatever.

"I got Shoji Tabuchi's Autograph!"













Who?

"Uhm...I mean So Taguchi's autograph.. "







Love, Love, Love you, Mom!.