Everything’s Changed

Well hello there. I’m not sure if I should be all cavalier about dusting off the ol’ blog; act like a five month drought didn’t actually happen. But there, I just said it, and you might as well know I’m humiliated. Okay, not really. It’s a blog, guys. But I do feel a bit of loss, sad that I haven’t posted since October 19 (!).

Anyway. I thought I would get you caught up on a few things. Here’s the big stuff first:

1) I got married on December 10, and the wedding was absolutely perfect. I just have to say, my husband Robert was THE most handsome groom I have ever laid eyes on. We took a gamble on an outdoor winter wedding, and Southern California delivered her most perfect December weather. The ceremony felt sacred and momentous and almost unreal; the reception was full of our signature cocktails (the Bourbon Bear and the Red-Tailed Fox) and dancing the night away. (You can see some photos HERE)

2) I am married. This is a big change, people. BIG! And it’s good. I would not recommend merging your life with another person during your 3 week Christmas break, not to mention the utter craziness of the holidays, chock-full of family gatherings. But the wedding decorations are finally out of the living room, the gifts are (mostly) put away, and as we find our groove as the Thompsons, life is getting sweeter.

3) I am about to enter finals week of the winter quarter, which means in 2 weeks I will begin my last quarter of my master’s program. I really, really wanted to write that in all caps, or with a period after every word, but that is way too bloggy-cliche. Just know, this is a huge deal. This may be the last time I’m ever in school…and I am so ready for it!

Poodles Doing Yoga Will Change Your Life

Breaking news: my big sister, Sarah, started a blog, “Poodles Doing Yoga.” Sarah is a high school teacher working with at-risk teens in the ‘hood of Long Beach; she also is currently crazy about yoga, sewing, and starting her 30s off right by living “out of the box.” Long-time loves include reality television, cardigans, gossip magazines, and poodles (which is a given, for our family). Sarah is unflinchingly honest, and is an expert at giving a hilarious and dramatic spin to everyday life.

I’m sure that Poodles Doing Yoga will provide a regular dose of real-girl humor and insight…check it out! For future reference, I’ve added Poodles Doing Yoga to the blogroll, so you can always get to it from there. Enjoy! (Oh, and also, maybe try to picture a poodle doing a downward-dog pose…it’s pretty funny).

Forerunner of the 21st Century Enlightenment?

Click here to check out my new blog post for the Brehm Center for Theology, Worship, and the Arts. It’s about William Wilberforce, Eat Pray Love, and this animated lecture:

Sensuality, Italian Style

A more thought-out, cohesive version of the piece below was featured on the blog of Fuller’s Brehm Center for Worship, Theology and the Arts. You can check it out here.

The picture to the right is a small bit of Signorelli’s The Resurrection of the Flesh, featured in Orvieto’s cathedral.

Travels in Hypersleep

Dreaming runs in my family. I don’t mean daydreams, I mean that almost every night I have intense dreams and I usually remember them in flashbacks throughout the day. My mom and my sisters are the same way, as was my grandfather and his mother.

We dream about what we did that day, or what we’ve been anxious about, or problems we’re trying to figure out. When I started at Fuller, I spent many nights dreaming about fuzzy theological concepts, trying to weave them together into cohesive outlines as I slept, and when my sister started her physician’s assistant program, she was also plagued by intense dreams of studying.

Most of my dreams are relational, working out issues I have with loved ones, with “frenemies,” or with intriguing acquaintances. It’s the way I process my life, especially if I’m too busy to think and feel deeply, or to talk and write about my feelings and experiences. I’ve been aching to write since I’ve been back from Europe, but I just haven’t had time. All my memories and thoughts from the trip are raw material building up inside me, and I need to get them out on paper or on a screen so that they can take shape and become something useful, or beautiful, or both.

But I haven’t been able to write. Even now, I’m just tapping this out at my job as a substitute teacher, in between helping students. So my dreams have been on overdrive, sorting my memories and feelings and sending me off to other places every night: back to the monastery in Italy, back to the water in Cinque Terre, even to random places I didn’t go on this trip, like Sweden and some weird warehouse where I meet a bunch of people from my travels. It’s exhausting!

So hopefully I’ll have some time to write soon, and some new material for this blog, and some less interesting dreams…

P.S. The trip was fantastic!!

Eeper’s Growing Up…

This month marks the three-year blogiversary of little ol’ Eeper. I’ve seriously loved having this blog; it’s been an outlet for writing and processing my life and travels, and a way to keep everyone updated while I was abroad. I was going through my old posts to find my favorites and post links here, but there’s a LOT! I think I’m going to split them up into categories…Feel free to check these out! I think the best part of having a blog is that, when I posted about events, it was only about really exciting stuff like getting tear-gassed in Oslo, so now my life through this lens looks pretty sensational!

Travel posts

2007 - “Jerusalem, If I Forget You”

2008 – “Yo Yo Cruisa”

2008 - “Norwegian Sunday”

2009 – “Report from Outside My Comfort Zone”

2009 – “Middle East Conflict Spreads to…Norway?” (This is the one where I get tear-gassed)

Theological/Philosophical/…er…Pensive

2008 – “Embryo or Jew: Which Bleeds More?”

2008 – “The Lucky One”

2009 - “Quotable Friday: Monday Mash-up Edition”

2009 - “Treasure of Bread and Seeds”

2009 – “Wayfarers All”

2009 – “The Last Illusion”

2010 – “Spider Theology”

Food and Fun

2007 – “Schoolhouse Rock”

2008 – “Conga What?”

2008 – “Confessions of a California Foodie”

2008 – “Lunch Date”

2008 – “OMG” (The one where I eat horse meat)

2009 – “Ring of Fire” (This is a fave….the one where my car catches on fire…)

Dammit, that took me a long time to put in all those links! Hope you enjoy ‘em.

Legolas Was Here

Apparently, a lot of people have been finding my blog lately by typing “Legolas” into the Google Image search engine.  The picture I used for this one post is the first image result to pop up!  Weird.  If you’re reading this blog and feel upset that it’s not a fansite, may I offer you this consolation: the author of this blog is an Orlando Bloom lookalike.  With that comforting knowledge, feel free to wander the archives and comment if you like.  Doesn’t matter how you got here…the more the merrier!

A Question, Sir

So, I was reading through some of my old blogs today (oops, did that just tag me as a narcissist?) and one thought was running through my mind: when did I get so effing boring?  In other words, when did I start to take myself so seriously?  Sheesh.  I started this blog with references to Zach Braff’s unfortunate profile and lists of words I love or hate.  Now it’s all heavy quotes from heavy books leading to heavy pondering about life.  Who am I?  Like, seriously, who writes about sun-warmed tomatoes?  I have to laugh at myself.  Okay, here are some justifications, though – 1) I’ve been going through re-entry (not just from Norway back to the States, but from one lifestyle to a totally different lifestyle) and so I’ve found writing to be a natural and helpful outlet for me.  And once I finish a piece, I think, why not throw that up on the ol’ blog?  2) I’m not working so much, and I have a crappy Internet connection at home, so I don’t really have oodles of time to piece together fluffy blogs filled with images and links to Amazon and Wikipedia.  3) I don’t know, I just feel like there needs to be a third.  Maybe I’ve become a bit of a snob?  Maybe I think my readers have come to expect more from me than valley-girl reviews of movies and TV shows?

So I just wanted you to know that I understand this blog has evolved into a bit of a literary review, philosophical/spiritual journal type of blog.  And that’s not all bad…but is there still room on here for current events and confessions of guilty pleasures and celebrity crushes?  Or is the only place for that now my status updates on Facebook?  Bah.

Okay, here are a few randoms running through my mind that I (generously) put pictures with:

- I read an interview with Jennifer Aniston in Marie Claire where she called Diet Coke her “brown monkey.”  Love it!  And if Jennifer Aniston, with her amazing yoga body and glowing skin and there-is-NO-WAY-she’s-40 looks, can still be semi-addicted to Diet Coke, I think it’s just fine that I drink it a few times a week.  Thanks, Jen!

- Do you think that wearing a hat is ALWAYS making a statement?  I read somwhere (poss. Esquire) that it is.  My sister gave me a freaking sweet straw fedora for my birthday and I’ve worn it a lot already, always with many compliments and girls being like, “No, seriously, where did you get that, and do you think they’ve already closed for the day?”  The hat had its big debut at a friend’s bbq/mini-concert/dance party (yeah, it was fun) on Saturday and was warmly received.  But I couldn’t help feeling like that girl the whole time…you know?  Plus, I might look cute in a hat but I NEVER look cute when photographed in a hat.  Sucko.

- Seriously, are they EVER going to make a Gilmore Girls movie?  Because I would totally watch it.  Logan, I didn’t forget about your proposal and the house in California with an avocado tree in the yard.  If Rory’s still following Obama around, I’ll come hang out.  (NERD ALERT)

- …and The Bachelorette.  So, SO good.  Could you believe the Men Tell All special?  Those guys were crazy!  Even Chris Harrison was later quoted to say that they came off as “knuckle dragging cavemen.”  I fully agree.  I also stand by my theory that men are worse gossips than women.  The only thing is, they don’t get as hurt when someone talks crap about them.  If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there to hear it, does it make a sound?  If a guy talks crap about his friend and said friend doesn’t care, is it still gossip?  Oops…I’m wandering too far into pondering mode.  Back to The Bachelorette.  Who will she choose?  I think my vote is for Kiptyn.  He’s totally cute and grew on me, but I’m scared that when the going gets tough, he’ll drop out and go back to having tacos at Wahoo’s in San Diego.  I love Reid for her, but I think she’ll never be satisfied because he seems to be too much “in her league.”  What do you guys think?  And would you still love me if I was the new Bachelorette?  It would be so fun and you would get so many cute clothes!

And…comment!

Dancing Like No One’s Watching

You know that sappy little quote, “Live like there’s no tomorrow, love like you’ve never been hurt, and dance like no one’s watching”?  I’ve kind of been thinking about that lately, but with my own twist: “blog like no one’s watching.”  Because lately, it feels like everyone is watching.  On Facebook, too.  Now when I post a status update, I have to think, “Okay…my mom, my grandmother’s friends, my former professors, future employers, friends, ex-boyfriends, distant relatives, frenemies, and possibly Erwin McManus are going to read this – is it worth it?”  And by that I mean, is it worth it to deal with the awkwardness of when someone brings up what I wrote on a status update last week (hello…isn’t that like an unspoken rule, don’t bring FB status updates into real life?) or worse, when my grandmother told me the other day that her friend enjoyed reading my posts on Facebook.  WHAT!?

And blogging is the same story, only magnified.  A blog post is a bit like a glorified status update…or a status update is a condensed, pocket-sized blog post.  At least, the way I do them.  I kind of pride myself on the fact that I don’t blog OR post status updates that are incredibly boring, i.e. “just got to work, it’s Monday.”  Or, “Waiting at the doctor’s office.”  Dude, save that for Twitter and the boundary-less, cyber co-dependent mess that is.  I guess people don’t blog about such boring topics, but some come pretty close.

Like this post, if I don’t wrap it up soon.  Besides not having enough “creative me” time, I’ve also had a major writing block called “self-censorship.”  I’ve dealt with this before, but now it’s back even stronger.  The thing is, it’s basically calling me to live a life of higher integrity.  Meaning, whatever I’m going to do, I should be able to do it in front of anyone – friends, coworkers, grandmas, teenybopper second cousins.  However, I need to be real about who I am and that I’m not perfect and that there is no way in hell (that’s right, I said it) I can please all of those people at once.  Hence, blog like no one’s watching.

And hey, I think dancing like no one’s watching is pretty fun, too.

Guilt Trip

I am ashamed.  I’ve got my hands behind my back, my head’s down, and I’m making little circles in the dirt with my foot.

I know it’s been a long time, guys.  This might be the longest I’ve ever gone without a new post.  And I left you hanging with such a lame one, as well!

I’m sorry.  

But I made it safely back from Germany.  I’m not going to lie, it was really hard and I was pretty broken and empty when I got back to Norway.  BUT, once I got back to Norway, things quickly started looking up.  For instance, I saw a moose wandering through a snowy field on our way to Grimerud from the airport.  Cool!  (By the way, this picture is taken from the plane as I descended into the eternal winter that is Norway.  Okay, it’s not THAT bad, but dude, look at all that snow!)

No, but really, it’s been amazing to be back here at Grimerud.  Being away has made me realize even more what a special place this is.  I’m not going to get started on all my feelings about that – it’s a post for another day.

But last week we had a really fun, memorable week of debriefing with the DTS.  So…not much time to blog.  And this week I’ve just been trying to soak in my last few moments in Norway, so I’m not really into hanging out in front of my computer until just before bed when Facebook calls my name like the crafty siren she is.

I just wanted you all to know that I’m doing well, I’m still alive, and I’ve got a few ideas for new posts in my head that hopefully I can get up soon…maybe even this weekend because most of the base are working like busy little ants for the Easter Festival this week.

Kisses!