i rushed this; we moved too fast

-title track, death cab for cutie

yesterday the BEST THING HAPPENED!
lindsey was in town from arizona to see swan lake with allison on friday night. since she was in town all weekend, i went up to LA and we had a slumber party last night. we went to get mexican food, and on the way back we were driving through hollywood when lindsey exclaimed "LA INK!!!!!!"

yeah. we DEFINITELY were driving past kat von d's tattoo shop. anyone who has known me in the last 9 months should know that i am obsessed with her. i love her so much! ahhh!

anyway, we pulled over and walked past the shop 4 times. we didn't see her inside, so we left. either way, i can't tell you how incredibly happy and excited i am/was. so great.

also, this obama t-shirt is for sale on nataliedee.com, and i am tempted to buy it, but i don't think i will.

design coding

so, recently the bane of my existence has been building landing pages for my company. today my friend rion sent me this video because i was complaining to him about it.

it's only going to be funny if you code, especially if you code pages that are meant to generate conversions, but here it is:

christvertising

okay, i've thought about it, and i've decided it has to be a joke. either way, it's awesome.

christvertising.

the blessing

all our problems of this life on earth...
we send to the Cross of Christ.

all the difficulties of our circumstances
we send to the Cross of Christ.

all the devil's works from his temporary power
we send to the Cross of Christ.

all our hopes for wholeness and eternal life
we set on the Risen Christ.

i love holy week.

Christ is Risen!!!
Alleluia! Alleluia!

i was so warm

there is a river whose streams make glad the City of God

my friend ian took this picture. i like it.

oh, how i miss the city.

i made this, parts 5 & 6

i haven't had much time for sewing recently, but here are a couple of things i've made in the last few weeks. nothing too epic, but cute and fun regardless.


this was for my roommate. very simple, but also very pink, which is key if you are giving my roommate a present. she's actually wearing it right now because she just baked cookies.


this is a coin purse for laura. when she was here visiting she picked out this fabric and i told her i'd make her something out of it before i went to chicago again. since that is quickly approaching, i just made this today.


the inside is lined with the same fabric as the outside. i like it. i got the tutorial from the craft blog i read every day.

i also made two sets of curtains out of crazy bright colored fabric for the house in mexico that my life group went to build this weekend. i didn't go, but i contributed. i didn't take pictures of those, but the fabric was awesome. hopefully someone took some pictures that i can post later.

google analytics

so, I've been doing a lot of work recently with a little thing called google adwords. One of the things that you do when you use google adwords is figure out who is looking at your page and where they are coming from in order to better target your advertising and whatnot. One of the ways to do this is by using google analytics. This is unimportant, but I wanted to give a little background.

I've been having fun using google analytics for work, and decided to try it out on my blog. It's only been tracking data for a couple of days now, but I've already had a lot of fun looking at the results. It's also kind of creepy, seeing as how I was under the impression that like 3 people looked at my blog regularly, and a handful of my friends accessed it via google reader.


Here is what I have learned thus far:

1) If you use catchy song titles/lyrics in your blog titles/posts, people will come to your page via search engines. Unless your blog is particularly captivating, they won't spend more than 50 seconds there; BUT they will make it there, regardless. I should have figured this out the other day when I got a random post from someone who said "I googled [enter song lyric here] and you were the first thing to come up" but I guess I didn't believe him.

2) Travis, Robb, and Kim have all sent traffic to my site by linking to me on their pages.

3) Some people visit my site directly; they open a browser, and type in my address. Who are you people? And why do you have my blog address memorized?

4) two of my page visits were from India and Germany. random.

Anyway, I'm done now. I just thought it was interesting*.


*Tiffany probably thinks I'm a big nerd. huh, Tiff?

this makes me want to stop eating meat for reals...

they move the cow with a forklift...

also, this meat made it to the irvine in-n-out (i'm assuming the one i go to in the marketplace, since i don't think there's another one). apparently they cut ties with the company about a month ago, and i think that's about the last time i had it. eesh.

carolyn arends

so, as i mentioned in my previous post, crissy was asked to be a part of conversantlife.com. honestly, i think the site is kind of funny. i mean, i subscribe to one of the feeds and every once in awhile i find something i think is interesting to read, but for the most part, i think it's full of uber conservative people whose writing i can't take seriously. but this is not the point of the post.

the point of the post is that i was looking over the blogroll and i saw the name carolyn arends, who actually describes herself as a "popular singer/songwriter". this made me laugh. then i thought, hmm, why is that name so dang familiar? OH RIGHT. i LOVED her when i was younger. anyway, i just had a little flashback to 6th grade when i listened to seize the day and wanted to share that with everyone.

last thing then bed

yesterday i spent about 2 1/2 hours getting crissy (she's the exec director of mika cdc that i've been working with) set up on facebook, linked in, and conversant life.

check out her blog here and the mika blog here.

funny that her first blog ever was about connectedness, since we spent a good portion of the afternoon developing connectedness... not through the neighborhoods, but through the world wide web. it was a good time, but i still think i like the neighborhoods better.

switching it up

i needed to change my page colors. it was too depressing. now its really bright and kind of hurts my eyes. i'm going to see if i can get used to it, and if it doesn't dim down in a couple of days then i'm changing it again.

happy reading everybody!


p.s. i'm having a great day.

i hate getting woken up by the phone

so.... i finally made it onto the site! (scroll down a little to see my title-- 'i hate being woken up by the phone')

yeah, it's a dumb title, but in my frantic state to get it mailed off in time, nothing better came to mind. (i know, right?). regardless, a year and a half later, apparently my title didn't get lost in the mail and should be arriving on my doorstep in the next couple of weeks. AWESOME.

swap meat

this site is amazing. basically, you send them stuff that you've made, and they will most likely send you something back of approximately equivalent value. so far my favorite thing that i've seen is the chicago neighborhoods poster including El buttons.

i need more time

things that excite me

1) i just realized that only like 5 people see my shared items, and i think that is TRAGIC. first of all, that means only a few of my friends use GOOGLE READER which is the best thing ever. second of all, i share things because i think they are awesome and other people would enjoy them. the point of this story is this: i have added a column on the side of my blog that automatically updates all my shared items so all you lame-o's out there that don't use google reader still get to benefit.

2) may is going to be the best month of this year, hands down. here is a list of reasons why:
a) narrow stairs.
b) animal!.
c) the echo.
d) the casbah.
e) the echo... again. but actually, first. but second in order of priority. (may 13)

the first pictures

i figured out how to steal these pictures from the marathonfoto website. did someone say mac screenshot?


the start


"whoaaa, you're halfway there, whoooaaaa! livin' on a prayer" --bon jovi
please note the arms in the air pose that white people like doing during a marathon.


that's christine next to me


this is me about to die right before crossing the finish line

more to come when i can get people to send them to me....
also, if you're wondering about the mindfireinc singlet, they paid for my registration and that jersey if i'd wear their name. shoot. apparently i will sell my soul for $100.

finally... apparently the link to see the full results in the post below stopped working. i tried updating it, but in case it doesn't work, you can just search for my name and/or bib number (8645) and you can get the results that way. if anyone cares, that is.

sick day

if ever there was a reason to take a sick day, i think today qualifies. here is a recap of my weekend, for those who have been out of the loop:

my brother called me on thursday afternoon while i was at work and told me he was eloping in vegas the next day. after much deliberation and many phone calls and arguments, on friday morning i bought a plane ticket to vegas for 5:45pm. i flew to vegas, met up with my family, watched my brother get married, ate dinner, and came home. all things considered, i made it back to my apartment around 6am on saturday morning. all of saturday was spent running errands and freaking out and being exhausted.

saturday night, for various reasons, i didn't get to sleep until 11:30pm, and got up at 5:30am. i got ready and got on the marathon starting line around 7:30, and had to wait for a good hour before it started.

so.. my time was 4:57:59. you can see the full results here. i was going for 4:30, but all things considered (including the fact that i got dehydrated and overheated), i think 28 minutes over isn't that big of a deal. i will take under 5 hours. :)

i blame pure exhaustion and dehydration, but around mile 18 i really thought i was going to pass out. it was about 75 degrees, and the sun was shining directly on me for about 3/4 of the run, and i clearly wasn't taking in enough water/gatorade. my arms were swollen and tingling, and i put all of my energy into putting on leg in front of the other.

about mile 22 is when God brought me an angel: her name was christine and all she said was,
"hey, how are you doing?"
"i am struggling. how about you?"
"struggling."

we proceeded to run the rest of the race together, and she was the only reason i made up any time at the end. i honestly wouldn't have been able to finish in any timely manner had it not been for that girl.

so christine, if you ever read this: thank you. seriously.

anyway, it's over now. and i am excited to get on with my life, starting tomorrow. today i am just taking a day to recuperate. this weekend was physically and emotionally one of the most intense and draining weekends i have probably had, ever; i am so very, very glad that it's over.