bring it back

Let's* bring this great name back:

Abner.

Those great old names are all coming back - Oliver, Max, Henry, Owen - I think Abner would work really well. Ab. Abe. Abie.

Nobody's really going to remember this comic soon, right?

-Abner was the name of the pet pig in Hey, Arnold! (I loved that cartoon.) (Also, I love pigs. We had a pig one time, his name was Hector.)
-The name is Hebrew, meaning "father of light."
-Abner Doubleday probably invented baseball.
-Bonus - it's gone way down in popularity in the last 200 years. Which probably means it's time for a comeback, right? (Thanks for the info, Nameberry)
-Bonus bonus - it doesn't rhyme with anything nasty that I can think of.

*By "let's" I mean "let the other** people having babies bring this name back."
** By "other" I mean "let those people*** having babies bring this name back."
*** By "people" I mean ladies. With lady parts. Having babies. Which doesn't mean they all name their babies. I suppose I should say "let the people naming babies bring this name back."  Unless you're letting your child name him or herself, in which case you should be really impressed that your kid came up with Abner instead of Unicorn or Kittycat.

I love list

I'm so in love with this list of 100 things to do instead of procrastinating on the internet. I'll be the first to admit I'm really bad about getting off of the computer, whether or not I'm doing anything worthwhile on it.

Amazon's best books of the year so far.

Here's what I've read so far this year (well, since I got my Kindle at Christmas):
Hunger Games trilogy
first 5 books of A Song of Ice and Fire series (aka Game of Thrones)
Mill River Recluse (meh)
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (sob)
Let's Pretend This Never Happened (The Bloggess' (Jenny Lawson's) book) (ohmygod so funny)
A Thief of Time
Outlander (um, who needs Shades of Grey when you've got Jamie Fraser?)
Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter
Envy The Night (Michael Koryta is by far one of my favorite authors)
Winter Garden (have you read many books on the seige of Leningrad? Me neither.)
House At Riverton (Downton Abbey, but not. Still looking for a good book from this time.)
Currently reading: Fevre Dream, by the guy who wrote Game of Thrones. Highly recommended, especially if you like steamboats, books about pre-Civil War South, and vampires.

Me: ew, stay away from my neck, I'm reading a book about vampires right now and...
David: Oh really? A book about vampires? Of course you are.

Basically, I'm one cat away from being that crazy cat lady who reads a lot. Actually, I think one cat might be enough for that designation.

Keep your legs together, Walter. That's just indecent.

June 14th - Part II: Why I Love Our Flag

My grandmother wrote the following letter to her mother back home in Minnesota while she was stationed overseas as a nurse in WWII. She was somewhere in either North Africa or Italy.

‘Old glory’ is flying here on our post for the first time and oh is it a beautiful sight to see her
waving in the breeze, with the small red cross flag beneath it. Honestly, you never know
how much that symbol can mean until you’re away from home. It certainly is a beautiful
sight and is impressive. Just to think that each star stands for a state and there are 48 of
them all working hard to get us back home in a hurry. Next time you see it be sure and
take another look at it and think of all it stands for. At 4:45 pm we’re going to have formal
retreat nightly. We’ll all stand at attention, face the flag and salute. It undoubtedly will be a
very impressive sight.

We had church services this morning on the hillside, and the message was very good. An
older pastor spoke from Galatians 6:7. It hit home for all of us. They had an alter fixed up
and it really was attractive. They took a box, covered it with a piece of blue paper and had a
white cross in the front. On the top there was a cross, our flag and a little silk red cross flag.

We had another super dinner today. Roast veal, rice, gravy, sweet pickles, bread, butter
and jam and pineapple rings. This morning we had pancakes and were they good. They
couldn’t even compare with the light fluffy ones you make mom, but it’s a long time since we
had them, so these tasted very good.

Last night they had a show for us on the hillside. It was an old picture, but a good one.
‘Hudson Bay’. The pictures are shown outside and we sit on the ground and watch them.

Last night we had quite a bit of excitement outside our tent. The guards killed a snake, so of
course we were all plenty worried. Don’t know what we would have done if we found one.
I suppose we would have called ‘Corporal of the guard – Tent Number 2’.

Thanks for taking care of my insurance for me.

Lots of love,
Dorie

Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows.

Galatians 6:7 (NIV)

June 14th

Happy Flag Day!

Home on the Fourth of July (only flag picture I could find)
That Elm tree isn't there anymore, unfortunately. It got blown down 2 years after this.
How fun seeing all the people in this picture, not knowing where they'd be six years later:
Two are married
One is engaged (the one I was dating)
One has had heart surgery
One has lost some serious weight
One has a mustache
One is a lawyer in Texas
One has, sadly, passed away.

dare

23 years later

 

I need to take lessons from my 2-10 year old self. I used to play dress-up all the time (or be played with, like a big doll. <3 my cousins) and not care what I looked like. Now I'm 6' and really strong and I just feel big. Not fat by any means, but big. I can bench over 100 lbs. I can squat more than double that. I revel in my strength and my abilities, but it's hard to fit them into some of the things I think I might like to wear.

But it's not distressing. Just thoughts.

WC

Murphy Hall

University of Kansas

Lawrence, Kansas

(my mom went to school here, too, and she said this powder room was exactly the same 35 years ago)

aka what should be inspiration for every bathroom, ever.

love light

One of my oldest friends got married this last weekend, and at the end of the rehearsal dinner on Friday everyone walked to the bridge to release these beautiful lanterns over the river.  The weather was just perfect and the wind was ideal, and all of the lanterns lit easily and once they were full of hot air, they floated peacefully up up up up and away until they blended in with the stars and turned into their own constellation.

The rest of the weekend was so wonderful and the rest of the wedding was amazing - amazing enough that I couldn't take any pictures because I was having way too much fun. David played piano for the ceremony (Boyz II Men, K-Ci & JoJo, Joe Cocker, Prince ---- of course) and I had to direct traffic last minute (people, not cars) and we danced and played and loved all night long. I love seeing all my friends happy.

slowpoke

How is it only 4:19 p.m.?? And how is it still only Thursday? I keep looking for everyone's weekly wrap-ups and links from around the web and they're not there yet. Because it's not Friday. This week, I tell you...

via

Venus, if you will

Did I get it? Did I accidentally get Venus in the shot?

(don't laugh if I'm just being completely ridiculous)

I just figured I should take a picture of the sun "just in case" because this is a "once in a lifetime opportunity" and we'll all be "dead" the next time this comes around. 

If it is Venus, that's super awesome. If it's not, the Kansas sky is still pretty beautiful.

on blobbing

I recognize that blogging isn't really "my thing."

I don't take beautiful pictures (but I can make pictures somewhat beautiful! Thanks, Instagram. @karamore)

I don't write, draft, or edit beautiful words into beautiful paragraphs.

I don't ever write or say what I mean, because I just can't, about how much I love people. Whether it's to them or about them, I get horribly tongue-tied. When a friend asked how me and D were doing a few years back on the phone apparently I told her "it's great, y'know, it is what it is." Really, Kate? No, it's not just great; it's amazing and I'm so happy that I sometimes don't even realize how happy I am because it's supposed to be this way.

 But it's fun!