Miss Macchiato

I have too many websites. It probably doesn’t seem like too big of a deal since I’m not required to post anything anywhere, but I’m going through a season of examining all of the irons I have set out in different fires because, you know, I have a lot of them. This isn’t the first time I’ve brought this up. I’m looking at everything in my life now, even the small things, trying to figure out how I can stop spreading myself so thin.

One thing I want to do is consolidate a lot of my web interests to my personal blog. That means what I was doing on my old WoW guild website will start appearing here — in the form of abusive and hilarious and somewhat inappropriate screenshots, for which I’d like to apologize in advance. As Kerry politely pointed out to me, this will label me as a huge nerd, but you already knew that so it won’t be a surprise to anyone. Food will probably start appearing here as well. Ken and I are in discussions over what we’d like to do with AwK, but nothing conclusive. It’s been fun thus far, but I’m rethinking the effort I’ve been putting into it. Do I want to continue to put all of my energy into that? No, I don’t. We may continue AwK, we may not. Either way, we’ll make a decision and get back to you because, if we aren’t going to use it, Tom will probably want to stop paying for the domain when it expires (ha!).

The point of this post is to warn you that I’m about to revamp this tiny, personal blog, and you’re about to see a wider variety of things here.

~jleigh

HELL YES. Used to watch the original cartoon with my brother every Sunday…

Just want to say Happy New Year to all of my family and friends. Like everyone else, I have just a couple of… well, I don’t know if I’d call them resolutions, per say. I equate resolutions with “giving up chocolate” (which you know I’m not going to do) and “losing 10 pounds” (I like food too much to say that without laughing). This year, I’m putting some very realistic goals on the calendar.

1. Finish two books and have them available for readership via the web. One will probably be available for purchase on lulu.
2. Write and record a record. (Construction on my studio begins soon – woo!)

I hope you challenge yourself with at least one life goal this year (maximum of 3 – make it attainable!) and do your best to form a plan to accomplish it – then put it into action! Life is for living, so let’s get to it.

I love you all. (Except Ed. You suck. <3 )

~Jen

Final grades have been posted online. Woo!

I knew it. I just knew. On Saturday night, I posted to twitter “My Sunday worship set is done”. It seemed like such an innocuous comment at the time, but a couple of hours later I had a real funny feeling. For no reason at all, I went back to my account and re-read what I had written.

The second time around it seemed… funny… almost poignant in some strange, adumbrated way.

That night, I woke at 3:00am and tossed and turned for a good half hour before I started to pray. While I was praying, I realized I hadn’t fully given up the worship ministry in my heart and needed to do so. So I prayed about it. It was a quick prayer, nothing fancy — no bells or whistles, no trumpets of angels or anything odd that signified it was done. In fact, when it was all over I just felt “okay”. I can’t even say I was at peace about it; it was just one of those things I knew I had to do simply because I was being asked to. So I turned it in, like the badge and gun of a seasoned cop. A done deal. After that, I knew Sunday was the end of worship for me, even though a replacement worship leader hadn’t come forward. I had faith that something was going to happen.

And it did. Church was really weird yesterday and I can’t explain why. I mean, I know why it was weird, I’m just not sure I could put it into words. You’re just going to have to trust me that the whole thing was weird. The worship service was just… the strangest one I’ve ever done, not to mention the shortest. Everyone was distracted for one reason or another, myself included. People were coming in and out, totally late (per usual) and I found it a lot more distracting than I typically do. And there was this guy — when he came in, there was a group of people in back who were really excited to see him and it added to the distraction. When he came up for communion, along with everyone else, for some reason I happened to look up when he was near my piano and I realized that for some inexplicable reason I was smiling, and oddly enough, he was looking at me and smiling — we were both grinning at each other like idiots. Why the hell were we smiling? I don’t even know. Then I went back to the worship set thinking just how weird that was. It was all just weird, man.

I ended worship early because I was so distracted. Afterward, I confided in a good friend of mine, Yvonne, what had happened the night before and that I knew worship was going to be resolved that day. She said she’d be praying.

Sure enough, an hour after I got home, I got a call from my pastor saying someone had come forward and said that they felt that the worship was something they were supposed to do.

My response: So when do they start????

No start date yet, but I’m praying it’s ASAP. I still have the Christmas Eve service to do on Thursday which is fine (I guess). I’m ready for change in a really strange way… Now I’m ready for the next step, though I’m not really sure what that means.

And another semester comes to a close! This was an interesting class, sometimes frustrating, because it’s a freshman level community college course and the teacher was trying hard to pander to a bunch of 18 year olds who really don’t understand what to do. But it was good and I’m fairly confident of an A.

Today we took our final exam, and I feel somewhat good about it. I got into class early enough that I could flip through my flash cards one last time as a refresher right before the test – very important for me because the dates sometimes escape me, and it’s good to re-read those little, last details. You know. So, despite the snow, I got in early, sat down and started flipping through my cards. Three minutes before class starts, I still had a small stack to go through, but the instructor stands up and says, “Okay, we’ve got three minutes before the final, so everyone put your things away and move your bags and books to the sides of the room.”

Um… lolwut?

I quickly (and frantically) flip through three or four of the cards sitting directly on top of my stack and and reluctantly put everything away. The test then started early.

Luckily for me, the 10 identify slides she put up were ones I had looked through that morning, so I managed to get them all right. Hopefully I mentioned all of the terminology she wanted and will get full credit for everything. You never know though, because on my first exam she wrote “Excellent, I couldn’t ask for more!” and gave me a 96.

And before you ask, yes, I’m still wondering where my other 4 points are.

Otherwise, I have very few other complaints… but here’s one. (Ha!) A month ago, we all turned in a five-page paper (12 pt. font, double-spaced, so… 2 pages of actual text?). We didn’t receive them back until today, after we turned in our final exams. When she handed me mine, she said, “Great job.” I said thanks, took it and walked away. The front page said “A”. Inside… no notes. No number. An arbitrary A-grade. Who knows what that means — full credit or the “couldn’t ask for more, here’s your 96″? I don’t know!

But beyond that, I think everything went okay and unless something mysterious happens to my test I will receive my A. Lots of changes happening for me right now so I’m debating whether or not I even want to take the CAD class next semester. I probably will because it’s all project-based and will give me a break from paper-based study.

A couple of random items… I’m working on some new things that have me very excited right now. This coming Tuesday, one of my friends, Dan, (who is also my guitarist) is coming over to measure out a section of the basement so we can build a sound room. Once it’s up I can make noise and write music without having to worry about Tom overhearing. (Making him wear headphones and blast metal just isn’t working for me — I need a room of my own to create in.) So that’s another project on top of my other projects. Right now it’s my priority so I’m very excited.

I also started playing WoW again and transferred my druid to, um, that server Kerry’s on. Her name has been changed (yet again) to Sodi. I also started another noob shaman named Saere so those of you on the new server can find me. Ken and Ed are still on Agg, and I’ve still got toons there so I can hang out with them…

…but only a little. I’m very busy and strangely addicted to Fat Princess on PS3. If you’ve been following me on Twitter, you also know I’ve been trying out a little Assassin’s Creed 2, though Tom and I are trying to figure out why the game has such a good rating. It’s a long, long time before you get to the good part of stabbing anyone and the story is lamesauce.

Full of win.

If you’ve been following my twitter feed or have talked to me in the last couple of days, you’ve already heard the news, though it’s worth it for me to say again: A home for Jonah has been found.

Thanks to Tom’s parents, on Saturday night we gussied Jonah up as best we could (via a hefty handful of nice-smelling kitty wipes, a pair of scissors to hack off his hairballs, and a thorough brushing) and drove him to Tom’s sister’s house. The resident mastiff seemed very confused about the fat, fuzzy thing gobbling up the dog kibble, but the kids loved him. We are hopeful that this will be a good relationship.

And me? Well, I’ve been cleaning like a crazy person. This morning when I got up and saw my house was still clean, I almost cried. Despite being separated from her housemate of three years, Maggie-Toes (who I am now referring to as Maggie Dubois after Natalie Wood’s character in The Great Race) is doing very well. She’s finally getting the attention she deserves and has the run of the house, minus the computer room.

I know this sounds horrible, but I don’t miss Jonah at all. I’m praying all goes well with him at the new home because I don’t think I could handle taking him back. We’re finally free and Jonah has the active and large home he deserves.

What is it that keeps me in my comfort zone? Fear. Of what, I don’t know. Usually it’s fear of the unknown. Fear of failure. Fear that if I close one door, I will have just missed something great and I’ll be kicking myself about it for years to come. I guess I just have to trust God and believe that I know what he’s doing.

Remember when you were in high school and it seemed like your whole world? Then you graduated and your world became a lot bigger. In a certain sense, I feel as if this is going to be happening to me again. Odd. All I can do is keep going and have faith that I’m not going to blow up.

I had the best day that I’ve had in a long time, for no reason other than it was just so productive. I spent my time finishing up my term paper (DONE!), got started on the art project portion of the term paper, came up with the idea for my next book, and am really cruising through the editing of my current book. I even finally came up with the name for the book: The Fourth Channel (italicized because my web admin is lame and didn’t give me a button for underlining, haha). All day yesterday I tried so hard to get things accomplished, but no luck. Today was my day! There’s just something about having the house to yourself that makes for a most productive day. I can’t explain it.