Love. Love. Love. (Volume 3)

Well, seeing as I wasn't very good at blogging this week, how about a post about nothing?
Here's yet another list of items I've just recently come to love:

{Inglorious Basterds}

{Parks and Recreation: Season 2}

{The Royal Sons}
Listen here. Download here.

{The Sartorialist's series: Easter In Harlem, New York}

{Yogurtland}
I know, I'm behind the times.

I Love Clean Water. Don't You?

A combination of favorites: Charity Water and Kristen Bell.

Love. Love. Love

Just a short Monday list of things that I love:

Little Bee by Chris Cleave
I mean, so good. I read it in about three days.
So good.

Stick Wars

{evidently, I'm pretty in to iPhone games right now...
who would've thought?}

I really love Daily Dose of Imagery
this is one of my favorite photos from this week

This gigantic Scrabble board
{Also from MIT; the same project as the Settlers board}

I don't really cook...
because, no one is all that interested in spaghetti or fajitas
{though I do make incredible grilled cheese and tomato soup}
But I'd like to think I could get some mileage out of this:
Skewer Station from Sur La Table

Hope your Monday is as lovely as mine!

Settlers of Catan

Last Saturday night, Dom and Luke came over to teach us (me and Bre) to play Settlers of Catan.

For over a week, Bre had been talking to Dominik about making this game happen. In the meantime, she had taken notes on the rules and strategy. She entered in to the evening, convinced she would win the game.

It took about 15 minutes to give the rules and instructions. (Bre was quick to pretend all of this was foreign to her.)

And then we played.

Typical game board

Life-size board, built at MIT

--Pause--
I hate being bad at things. I dislike being inefficient or unsuccessful.

This translates in to all areas of my life: it is so much more enjoyable to fill my time with things that I can do well. This is the main reason I do not play sports. If I'm not going to be one of the best or fastest, it will only frustrate me.

Yes, yet another similarity to Monica Geller.

--Play--
So, these three people are equally as competitive as I am, (if not more so). Two had been playing for years and the other had been mentally playing for a week.

I had to prove that I could hold my own. I tried my best to place my pieces strategically and purchase resources in a way that made it look like I knew what I was doing. I really, really didn't want to look like an idiot.

Dom and Luke went easy on us (though, not on each other). But that didn't stop Bre and I from competing. (I may have raised my voice at both Bre and Dom--on separate turns--for rushing me.)

Ten points wins the game.
Bre and I each had nine.

I needed to trade one resource to make the right combination to purchase a settlement and win the game. Bre was next and only needed to play her Development card (worth one point).

The boys could not choose to let me win (and, so, choose to let Bre lose) by giving me that resource, so they stayed out of it...

And, so, I lost.
And Bre won.
And she was amazingly excited.

We played two more games last night...Dom won both.
Bre was not as happy with that ending.
So I suppose we'll be playing more often.

Come join us, if you'd like...but be prepared for some heated competition.

Jascha Heifetz

I've been listening to Classical KUSC on the radio...all the time.

Seriously, I only want to listen to classical music nowadays. (I have no idea how that came about...it's akin to my sudden love for orange juice.)

This morning, they were playing pieces by Jascha Heifetz, calling him the world's most renowned violinist. Which, of course, is really intriguing to me...

I'm also really intrigued by the era of the Second World War. I'm so interested that life continued for those that were not fighting in the war. People made movies and music, they went to school. (I knew that was happening, but knowing all the chaos that happened during those years, it's fascinating to me.)

So having discovered that Jascha played in mess halls for the soldiers, only makes me want to see this movie even more.

Love. Love. Love.

How about a little list of things that I have recently come to love?
Well, I thought you'd never ask.

The African Queen

Claude Debussy {I want to love other composers,
but Debussy has really captured my heart}

Rosemary and Olive Oil Triscuit Crackers {yum}

Bubble Xplode {I love this too much, probably}

I also really love making my lunch and bringing it to work...though I'm not sure I could find a Google image of that.

What do you love that I might need to check out?

The Roommate (But Not Creepy Like Leighton Meester)

So, I have a roommate. Her name is Bre.

She is, easily, one of the most entertaining people in my life.

We met a few years ago, when she asked if she could come to Kenya with me.

We stayed there for 7 weeks...shared a bed, even...about 3 days in, she put the mosquito net down around our bed and said, "Oh, how romantic!" Yep, she's a creep...a big, hilarious creep.

Clearly, we were going to be friends.

{me, Bre and Cleophas: the Kitale compound guard}

{at Boys House 2. She said,

"If I ever have a Facebook,

this will be my profile picture"}

{Bre went back to Kitale last Summer,

and stayed for two months.

This is on the way to a mobile medical clinic

with Jennifer and Baby Chris.}

In September, we figured that if we could share a room (and bed) in Kitale and still want to be friends, we could certainly share a two-bedroom apartment in Irvine.

I knew that she'd be fun to live with, I just didn't know how funny she'd be to live with.

So funny, in fact, that I began a twitter account just to keep record of the ridiculous things she says.

Here are a few examples:

"You know what I love about The King's Speech? That it's a movie with a bunch of nobodies! Oh, they're famous? Not in my world they're not."

"I want to make one thing really clear: I'm no longer in to The Black-Eyed Peas. Only Fergie."

"Today is One Day Without Shoes? Pssshh, I never wear shoes on Tuesdays."

I know. So good.

She allowed me to create the account with three conditions:

1. I never tell her when or what I've tweeted
2. I never tell who is following the account
3. The stream is never, ever linked to Facebook

So, if you are willing to abide by these rules, you are welcome to Follow bredoordee on Twitter. If you'd rather not, that's fine, but please, don't mention it to her and ruin it for everyone.

She really is the best...wouldn't you say?

{last Sunday at my Grandpa's 70th birthday party}

I Adohr Spring Cleaning

On Monday, I took another trip to my storage unit.

As I worked, I realized that many of these boxes were packed while I was living in Kenya and have been moved twice, but never opened since. That was almost three years ago.

Some boxes were filled with trash: old paycheck stubs or bills that had been paid online, stacked in a corner and then tossed in to a box in the madness of packing. There was a LARGE collection of trash bags, boxes and containers...

Other boxes were a mix of textbooks and personal reading books. My bookshelves were organized, not by author or genre, but by type of book, (for example: text books, scrapbooks, "to read", favorite books, borrowed books) but since everything was packed quickly, I did not pack my bookshelves and everything was mixed together. This meant there were also quite a few books in a DONATE box.

Still other boxes were filled with memories: old letters, mix CDs from high school, and some items that I kept when we cleaned out my great-grandparents home.

I worked for four hours...listening to playlist after playlist, drinking my coffee (and water, of course) as I opened box after box, talking and laughing to myself about all that had been collected and has been stored for the last two years.

{my great-grandpa's name tag and uniform patch, from
when he worked as a milkman for Adohr Farms,
found in a box of my Nana's sewing needles and thread}

{About halfway through the process, when I stopped to go to the bathroom,
but ran there and back to make sure I could be around
if someone was actually trying to get in to the storage units
on either side or directly across from mine.}

{I'm sure you can't tell, but it is sorted:
trash, keep, donate to the Mariners Resource Center,
donate to a Library, give away as presents. Papa, do you see the
Cardoza DiLallo Harrington sign in the corner? I'm keeping that!}

{A small glimpse of the untouched-half of the space...
if anyone is looking for a small "apartment refrigerator", I have a spare!}

{The storage facility does not have a dumpster on-site,
so everything was tucked in to my car...
I drove straight home and unloaded,
mostly in to the recycling bin and trash dumpster.}

It feels great to have lost all of that stuff...one step further from being classified as a hoarder.

Trying To Get Down To The Heart Of The Matter...

I have had several conversations around the topic of forgiveness in the last week.
Church was all about forgiveness last week.
It seemed as though every student I met with this week was dancing around forgiveness.

And I just kept thinking, "Is there anyone in my life that I need to forgive?"
And the answer was always no.

I am quick to forgive.
most of the time.
I {in the last few years} have grown incapable of not saying how I feel. That is to say, of keeping my emotions inside.

It seems like so much work to expect someone to know what I'm thinking or feeling; like unnecessary amounts of frustration or tears because they are not responding they way they should know that I want them to.

So, instead, I just tell them...

I do my best to "speak from my 'I' voice" (you know: "when you do this, I feel this"). It is never my intention to hurt feelings simply because my feelings are or were hurt.

I think I resolve conflicts. (I don't think I run toward them, but I don't shy away from them.)
I think I talk it out, forgive and move on.

but...

I don't think I'm great at asking for forgiveness.
Often, I'm unaware, in the midst of my selfishness, busyness or noisiness.
I forget that I could whirlwind others in to feeling left-out, overlooked or even blatantly hurt.

And so it is with new eyes that I have been facing the world in the last few days.
I suppose there is some growth in my future...