scenes from the weekend

1. Baked peanut butter Hershey kisses cookies and ate way too many of them.
2. Pretty Christmas dish towels I just received as a gift.
3. Relaxing and reading the Brothers Karamazov.
4. Sealion exposing his soft white tummy.
5. Our Christmas tree.
6. Sealion in his bed that Tim's mom gave him. He loves to lay in it and stare out the window.
7. Wrapped a bunch of gifts in engineering plans from Tim's work.
8. The lovely, festive interior of the Mt. Washington Tavern, where we ate dinner tonight.

christmas tree day

One of my favorite days of the year is Christmas tree day; it is glorious.

We cut our Christmas tree down the weekend before last. We chopped one down last year, and want to make it a tradition every year.

This year, we went out to Thomas' Tree Farm up in Manchester, MD, which is about an hour away, but it was certainly worth it. It was freezing, but sadly, unlike last year, it was not snowing. Because we have a bigger living room this year, we were able to afford a larger tree. It was a lovely day, especially since we ate at Five Guys on the way and watched Holiday Inn after we decorated. :)

Five Guys had Birch Beer as a selection in their fountain sodas!

Sheep and Goats

I'm reading The Hole in our Gospel: The Answer that Changed my Life and Might Just Change the World, by Richard Stearns, President of World Vision.

In one part, he talks about Matthew 25 where Jesus describes the final judgment where people will be separated into sheep (those who fed the hungry, clothed the clotheless, cared after the sick and neglected--those who were truly transformed by Christ's message) and goats (those who did not feed the hungry or care for neglected, etc--those whose lives were not transformed by Christ.)

Heaven is prepared for the sheep because they fed the hungry, gave a drink to the thirsty, cared for the sick and visited prisoners--in turn, actually feeding and caring for Jesus himself because as he says, "Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me."

Anyway, the reason I'm posting is because Richard Stearns paraphrases part of this scripture in a really poignant way. Here's the original text from the Bible where Jesus dismisses the goats because:

"I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me."

And he paraphrases it:

For I was hungry, while you had all you needed. I was thirsty, but you drank bottled water. I was a stranger, and you wanted me deported. I needed clothes, but you needed more clothes. I was sick, and you pointed out the behaviors that led to my sickness. I was in prison, and you said I was getting what I deserved."

Isn't that gripping? That passage in Matthew 25 is always a startling passage to me, but in this paraphrase, it is even more convicting.

saturday in the park, i think it was the fourth of july

Today was a gorgeous day. We headed to Gunpowder Falls State Park, 45 minutes northwest of Bmore, because our friend Greg told us there was windsurfing there. None of us had ever tried windsurfing before, so we thought we'd give it a try. When we got to the park and were ready to pay our $20 each to have an hour of windsurfing, we were disappointed to learn that they require you to have taken lessons before they let you use their equipment. Psh. And they weren't giving lessons today. And one lesson was $60.

Although we didn't windsurf, we still had lots of fun. We went swimming, and the water was actually warm. Coming from the north, it's so weird to have water warm in May; usually it's not warm until mid or late July. We also tossed around a football in the water with a bunch of kids. And flew a kite. And we met a new friend who played soccer with us. 'Twas a day full of sunshine, warmth, smiles, friendship, interacting and playing with random people, milkshakes, sunburn, and sport; those are the things that pretty much comprise a perfect day, in my opinion.

profile of a friend: Greg

This is Greg:


He is our friend.

Greg, among others, told me I should write a blog post because I haven't written one in so long. And because he was so forceful, I'm punishing him by writing a post about him.

The above picture was taken almost three weeks ago when he ran and finished a marathon (by the way, Tim ran the half-marathon, which was so impressive, and is running a full marathon in October).

Greg is probably the most positive person I've ever met. You can probably tell this quality of his by how sickeningly happy he looks in the picture. When it was taken, he had just run 13 miles and had 13 left to go; any normal person would probably be wearing a scowl at that point, but just look at his beaming smile.

We like to play tennis with Greg. In fact, we've been playing so much that I think I'm probably good enough to beat my sister, Kelsie, who is really good at tennis.

Lately, we've been getting into golf. Yesterday, we went to the driving range, and Tim beat him in HORSE.

Greg is a US-2, which basically means that he doesn't have a real job. And next year, he's hopping around aimlessly overseas, so who knows when he's going to get a real job.

In reality, Greg does a lot of great community work in Hampden, the neighborhood I work in. And next year, he's going to Haiti to work with an orphange and to Kenya to do some work I'm not sure about at the moment. He likes to keep things secret.

Sadly, Greg is leaving us in mid-July to go back home to Charlotte, NC for a month before he travels to Haiti. We will miss him.

That's enough for now.

weekend

Last weekend, it was 75 degrees and beautiful. Tim and I went to spend Saturday in D.C.. When we got to Greenbelt, Maryland where we take the metro in, there were a bunch of tea party protesters there clogging up the station unfortunately. But we got there unscathed.

We first went to the National Portrait Gallery. Our favorite part was the gallery of presidents.

Tim's favorite president, Andrew Jackson.

John Kennedy's portrait was definitely the most unique and pretty.

After the art museum, we walked over to Georgetown. It's so beautiful and quaint there! And historic, of course. After walking around the neighborhood and admiring all of the old houses and brick sidewalks, we went down by the waterfront area and sat on the ledge on the river watching the planes flying overhead and enjoying the sun.




After church on Sunday, we played tennis with our friends Greg and Stephen; it was so much fun! Then we watched Cornell beat Wicsonsin, advancing themselves to the Sweet 16. It was a sweet day.

Hopefully Cornell can beat Kentucky tonight. My two uncles who are college basketball fans live in Lexington, KY, so it will be nice to be able to brag to them if Cornell wins.

walk to work

I walked to work today because it was so nice out and because it's now light when I leave at night. I only work about 2 miles from our house, so it's only about a half an hour walk, which is convenient. I hadn't been walking to work previously because it would be dark or near dark out when I got out of work and because it's been cold and snowy.

I enjoy walking to and from work. It makes me feel more a part of the city. Plus, I get to look at all the interesting row houses and people and such.

For example, I walk by the Baltimore Museum of Art, which is very close to our house, and today I noticed that there are flowering trees that have already bloomed! I wouldn't have noticed that if I just drove by.

st. patrick's day craic

Happy St. Patty's Day, everyone.

Tim and I celebrated by eating Indian food.


Yes, that's right; we ate it on our porch because it was so nice outside tonight. Tim actually made the food; it was sort of like chicken masala.

After we ate, we (I) felt guilty about not really celebrating St. Patrick's Day, so we went down to Fells Point, a historic neighborhood on the waterfront, to an Irish pub to listen to some Irish music.

Said pub. Pic via tripadvisor.com

Even though it was so crowded, we got a good spot near the front window which opened up to the harbor.

Tim's Guinness on the windowsill with the water in the background.

As the Irish say, we had loads of craic.

a million miles in a thousand years

I recently read Donald Miller's new book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. It's a great book, as are all of his others. I'll simply leave you with an excerpt that I liked:

"The oldest book of the Bible is supposedly the book of Job. It is a book about suffering, and it reads as though God is saying to the world, Before we get started, there's this one thing I have to tell you. Things are going to get bad.

Job is a good man whom God allows to be destroyed except for his life. God allows Job's family to be taken, along with his wealth and his health. Job calls out to God, asking why God would let this happen.

God does not answer Job's question. It's as though God starts off his message to the world by explaining there are painful realities in life we cannot and will never understand. Instead, he appears to Job in a whirlwind and asks if Job knows who stops the waves on the shore or stores the snow in Wichita every winter. He asks Job who manages the constellations that reel through the night sky.

And that is essentially all God says to Job. God doesn't explain pain philosophically or even list its benefits. God says to Job, Job, I know what I am doing, and this whole thing isn't about you.
Job responds, even before his health and wealth are restored by saying, "All of this is too wonderful for me." Job found contentment and even joy, outside the context of comfort, health or stability. He understood the story was not about him, and he cared more about the story than he did about himself."

Don then talks about an analogy someone once told him:

"He said to me I was a tree in a story about a forest, and that it was arrogant of me to believe any differently. And he told me the story of the forest is better than the story of the tree [...] I sat by the fire until the sun came up;. and asked God to help me understand the story of the forest and what it meant to be a tree in that story."

I too pray we will know what it means to be trees in God's great forest.

plants and ironing

We went to a nursery yesterday to get some plants! We ended up getting some ivy and a zebra plant, which I've never heard of before. We added them to our little corner near our window in the living room where we had our succulents, and we really appreciate the greenery.

Isn't this zebra plant so interesting-looking?

After dinner, I switched out my winter clothes for my spring clothes; I think it may have been the earliest I've done that since I lived in Virginia like 16 years ago. It's supposed to be in the 60s the next couple of days. I also did some ironing, which I never do.



Woohoo.

Opera, Pit Beef, etc.

Opera

Last night, Tim and I went to see the opera Die Fledermaus at the Peabody Institute. Our friend, Stephen, who is currently a grad student studying opera performance at Peabody, was the lead actor/singer, which was pretty neat because I've never known anyone personally who has been in a big production of anything that I've seen. We had never heard him sing before, and it was a big surprise because Stephen has a very big, strong and wonderful voice, even though he's sort of a slight guy. I felt so proud of him. It makes me look forward to when Tim and I have kids who are doing sports or music or art or dance or whatever--it will be fun to watch them perform and feel proud. Anyway, keep your eyes out for Stephen Campbell in the future; he's going to be famous.

pic courtesy of the Baltimore Sun

picture courtesy of my low-quality camera phone

Pit Beef

Tonight, we went to Chaps's Pit Beef here in Baltimore, which was featured on the Food Network show Diners, Drive-ins and Dives. It's a real hole in the wall, but the food is delicious. I ordered their classic pit beef sandwich and Tim had the pit beef/corned beef combo sandwich. I bet my parents would love this place, especially my mom.

Vase

I acquired an antique green glass bottle/jar/vase the other day. Isn't it pretty?

Snowmageddon

Here are some pictures from the huge snow storm last month...

Tim buried under the snow

A car buried under the snow



Charles Street, a major thoroughfare in Baltimore, completely shut down


Dragon made of snow