ONE. My sister told me about Followgram and I thought it was a really great idea. People mostly use their phones for things like Twitter and Instagram, but it helps to have a site to go to if you want to check your feeds and either don’t have your phone handy or don’t feel like opening an app. Followgram is just that. You can’t upload pictures and put the Instagram filters on them, but it’s just a place for you to check in with your Instagram feed and see what’s going on. Super cool!
TWO. I can’t remember how I found Wanelo. Wanelo is sort of like Pinterest, but mostly focuses on clothing and accessories. You choose which stores you’d like to follow, and then browse the things they have posted. The cool thing about Wanelo is that it tells you the price of everything and where you can find it. Another neat thing about it is the ease of finding really great stores that you’ve never heard of before. It’s a great way to expand your shopping horizons and check out all that’s really out there. If Pinterest hasn’t already drained every spare second of free time you have, this site definitely will!
Well, finals are over, Summer is finally here, and now it’s time to relax and forget about school for the next three months. This semester was probably the most fun I’ve had since I started on this little college journey. I made and maintained a lot of new friendships with relatively no drama, and had a blast exercising my responsibility muscles as an officer in our chorale. I was talking to my best friend the other day (she’s a business major with a journalism minor at “the real A&M”) just about our college experiences and how we don’t regret for a second our choices to go to school where we did. Our conversation just got me thinking about how much I’ve learned. Not just in classes, but about myself (especially living on my own and having to survive on a college kid budget) and how to deal with meeting new people. It’s been a blast, and kind of weird to think about these next two semesters being my last. Time flies.
Now, on to the real stuff!
ONE. I love Downy Wrinkle Releaser. This stuff saves my life on a regular basis. It’s like an iron in a bottle! I own an iron, but 99.9% of the time, when I need to use it I have no time to, so little time, in fact, that this stuff has now become something that I use almost every day. You spray it on the wrinkled mess of a shirt you’ve grabbed to wear, and in about thirty seconds you’ve got a perfectly acceptable, not wrinkly, garment to don for your day. The bottle’s directions say to spray it on the shirt then gently pull and smooth areas on the shirt until the stuff dries and the wrinkles are gone, but who has time for that?! I just spray it on the shirt (or pants. It works great for pretty much any fabric) and thwack it around in the air for a few seconds until I’m satisfied with how the shirt looks. Thwack meaning shake it around like you would when you put sheets on a bed, only a little more violently. You know, or grab two corners and wave it like you did with the parachute in 1st grade PE (boom. thwacking.). This should do the stretching and drying that the instructions tell you to do, only in about half the time. I love this stuff.
TWO. Sons and Daughters, also known as All Sons and Daughters, are my new favorite. The music they make is exactly my taste, and exactly the kind of music I hope and try to write and sing. They’re a worship group with incredibly powerful lyrics for the church. Give them a listen, and support them. Their music is the kind that will stop you in your tracks and catch you by your heart with that awesome kind of conviction that we, as believers, should crave; or grab you with a message so clear that it’s exactly what you didn’t know you’re heart was feeling. The latter is what happened to me when I heard Reason to Sing the first time.
This week I was inspired to tell you all about one of my new favorite things, outer space. Most universities require you to take two science courses to graduate, I’m working on finishing up the my second right now. My first was Astronomy: The Solar System, last semester, and this semester is Astronomy: Stars and Universe. Both of these classes have been a lot of fun, at least for me, mostly because I’ve had really great professors. I can’t imagine how awful these classes would be if the professor was horrible.
I’ve always liked stars, but these classes have made me come to love them! Part of the labs for the class have us in the school planetarium (first thing going in my house if I ever hit it rich someday) learning and memorizing a ton of constellations and other things in the sky. It’s just been socool to be able to go outside at night and look up and know stuff like that. Instead of a bunch of random stars, my mind catches the patterns and says things like, “Ooo, there’s Orion!”
Learning about how the universe works (from a slightly less God-centered point of view than I’d like, but it’s still incredible) and all the different things that are out there has turned every class session into a whole new worship experience! As we learned about different nebula one day, I actually teared up first at the sheer beauty, and then at the fact that the God that created those far away things knit me together (Ps 139:13), has numbered every hair on my head (Luke 12:7), and planned every second of my life for His glory and my good. Doesn’t that thought just give you chills??
So the cool thing I want to tell you about today is a website they let us play with in our astronomy lab called Zooniverse.
There are tons of telescopes on earth that have gathered so much data and taken so many pictures that it takes a group of astronomers years to sort through it all to give the world any new info about what’s happening out in space. So years ago these groups started putting all the raw data online and asked ordinary people to help them sort through it. The first test of this, they’re calling it “civilian science”, was of a whole bunch of pictures of galaxies. They asked people to help narrow them down into three or four categories based on their shape, really easy for people to do and it doesn’t require a PhD in astrophysics. They expected it to take about a year for people to get through all the pictures, but it only ended up taking two weeks. So lots of different groups are now asking civilians to help them with their data, and that’s what Zooniverse is all about. You can choose any project that interests you, and they tell you exactly what you need to do and how to do it. Neat, right??
ONE.Jonas Peterson is one of the photographers that I constantly stalk. I love his work and everything about the way he shoots. He’s based in Brisbane, Australia and is aparently very well known because he does weddings in places like Bali, Sweden, New Zealand, and all over the US. There’s not a huge story behind this one like almost all the others things I tell you about, but trust me, this guy is golden.
TWO. As a lot of you know, Picnik is going offline on the 19th. And if you had a Picnik account they probably sent you an email sometime this week reminding you. Since I’m a horrible person and don’t read emails that often, my sister had to be the one to tell me about this new place in a Facebook message yesterday. It’s called PicMonkey (they got REAL creative with the name didn’t they?). The great thing about PicMonkey is that everything is free, unlike Picnik where you needed a premium account to use the coolest features. PicMonkey is pretty much the exact same software as Picnik, so there’s nothing really new to learn. There’s also another website, pixlr.com, that you could use too.
I thought I’d share this with you all because a lot of people have been freaking out about Picnik going offline. For those of us who are too poor to afford Photoshop, these online editing sites are something of a life saver.
March was the busiest month I’ve had in a long time. It was definitely the most traveling I’ve done in that short of a time. In 30 days I went from New York City to Florida, back to Commerce, College Station, Austin and then San Antonio. It’s been crazy, but I’ve loved every second of it.
We had some storms come through on Monday, and then Tuesday an even worse batch came through. I’m sure you saw it on the news (it even made national news!). The tornadoes started west of Dallas, and just kept on coming. By the end of it I think they said 6-12 tornadoes actually touched down in the DFW area.
Commerce is about 50 minutes east of Dallas, and as I watched the news and radar it was clear the worst of it was headed straight for us. When the first line came through I was in the music building practicing for a piano lesson. As I played, people just started coming in my practice room saying our department head was telling everyone to get in the practice rooms to take shelter. I had no idea the weather had even gotten that bad because the rooms that I use are in the center of the building and are mostly sound-proof. We sat in the practice rooms for about an hour as the storm passed and then they let us leave, but with a warning that another group of storms would be in town in an hour. So I got my things (my piano lesson was cancelled, thank goodness!) and drove back to my dorm. I walked in my door with my mind racing, trying to figure out a plan in case a tornado really did come. And the chances for one coming seemed to climb higher and higher as I watched the news. They were reporting on all these funnel clouds that were cropping up in almost every city from Dallas to Commerce. Not good.
I finally decided that if I heard the tornado sirens that I was going to grab my purse, laptop, chargers, a pillow and blanket, and my camera bag (couldn’t let it get sucked out to Oz) and go get in a shower. And about twenty minutes after I’d made that decision I heard sirens. Such an eerie feeling.
It was raining so hard that I couldn’t see out my window if there had been a tornado out there, so I grabbed my things and headed for the community shower room (yep. gotta love dorm life) down the hall. It’s central, all tile, and no windows. Just about the best place I could think of. My WiFi reached down the hall, so I snuggled up in a shower stall and waited it out with about twenty other Smith Hall residents. We couldn’t hear anything that was going on; all we could do was wait, and it was pretty scary. I kept the radar going on my laptop which pretty much appointed me chief meteorologist of our bathroom club. So once the massive pink blob had passed and only green spots hovered over Commerce I let everyone know that we could leave. I have officially survived my first tornado scare. Booyah.
There was never a real tornado in Commerce, though I have heard rumors that there was a funnel cloud by one of the dorms. Still, it was a pretty epic day.
Now, on to the fun stuff!
ONE. I got a text from my best friend last week that went a little something like this:
And, well, I did! If your best friend tells you to check something out, you do it. They have such cute clothes! If you like Anthropologie, then this is your store. It’s like Anthro, but a lot less expensive. Cheap clothes?? Yes please!!
TWO. People of Earth, I’d like to introduce you to the coolest app ever. It’s called SoundHound, annnnd you’re welcome.
It’s like Shazam, but a whole lot better. This app lets you sing to it or hum the tune of a song and it will tell you what it is! With Shazam, you need the actual artist’s recording, and need lyrics for it to work. But with SoundHound you only need a tune! It’s free too which is a huge plus.
Now whenever you’ve got a tune in your head and can’t remember who sings it or what song it is, this app will be there to save the day!
This Thursday is a day for laughing. I don’t have class tomorrow because the choir and wind ensemble are going to Austin/San Antonio to do our Carnegie concert for some pretty important people at this conference called CBDNA, so today is like my Friday. And there was much rejoicing.
So because this might as well be Friday, I am in a great mood. Here are a couple of things that I hope make you smile.
ONE. I can’t believe I’ve never shared Stuff Christians Like with you all before. SCL started as a blog by a guy named Jon Acuff (ayycuff, not aaaacuff or ahhhcuff) and it. is. HILARIOUS!!! He’s most well known for coining the term, “Jesus Juke,” which is when someone basically guilt-trips you by drastically turning the conversation to things of God. Here’s the example he uses in the original blog post on Jesus Juking:
Preface: he’s talking about weird stuff that happens to him when he flys.
“At another airport I went to, a humongous bodybuilder spent his time in the terminal doing ferocious push ups right beside me. I tweeted about it and folks told me to prove it with a photo. Not likely. One of my rules for twitter is never snap photos of people who can snap you. And this guy could have broken me in half like a thin blogger branch.
But in all the responses from people asking me questions about the terminal B2 bodybuilder, one stuck out. It was different than the rest, but is something I am growing familiar with.
I call it the ‘Jesus Juke.’
Like a football player juking you at the last second and going a different direction, the Jesus Juke is when someone takes what is clearly a joke filled conversation and completely reverses direction into something serious and holy.
In this particular case, when I tweeted a joke about the guy doing pushups, someone tweeted me back, ‘Imagine If we were that dedicated in our faith, family, and finances?’”
Continue reading once your laughter has subsided…
Now you’re thinking of all the times someone has done that to you, aren’t you?? Sunday School teachers, family members hoping to squeeze in a little Jesus into the awkward holiday dinner. I know it’s happened to me. It’s become a joke, when I’m at home, to try sneak a Jesus Juke into normal conversation. My little sister talking about how far she ran in gym that day. My response? “If only we were all that dedicated in our Christian lives…” (spoken in a “Well bless your heart” kind of southern accent of course, for effect.)
The blog quickly popularized and the posts kept coming. Hilarious things that Christians do that no one really can explain or find a reason why. The friendly side hug is another SCL favorite. Read here for more about the side hug.
I read Jon’s blog almost daily, and I absolutely love it. I love people who break down the pretense that Christians have somehow become known for. Breaking down walls and helping people laugh at themselves is never a bad thing. It helps keep us real, and a lot of times humble. So if you’re in the mood to laugh, or need help getting over yourself (sorry if that sounds harsh) then I HIGHLY recommend you pick up this book and/or start reading the blog.
P.S.- It’s totally God-centered. It’s not some Atheist guy bashing Christians. Go here to read his bio.
TWO. This week I had every intention on giving you guys some new music to check out, but for the first time in a while I was disappointed by the reference I’d gotten. I was up late a few nights ago and after watching one of my favorite late shows, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, Carson Daily’s show came on and I didn’t turn it. He was at SXSW and was featuring this “up and coming artist” named Ed Sheeran. They played a few clips of him doing some acoustic stuff and he sounded great, “He’s like a male Adele,” I thought to myself. But no. No he most certainly is not. He does have an outstanding voice, but his style is leaning more toward the whole Owl City world than the sultry sounds of my precious Adele. He’s actually more of a rapping Owl City Bieber (or something…) than Adele. When I went to find some YouTube vids of this fella, I quickly learned that my expectations were wrong. One of the videos I clicked on was the official music video for his song “Lego House.” I clicked because of the interesting title, and it turned out to be more than just the title that was interesting.
Take a look at the first 45 second of this video…
“Wait…”, you must be saying to yourself, “Who is that guy!? That looks JUST LIKE that dude that played Ron in the Harry Potter movies! Like FREAKISHLY similar to him.”
Well you’re instincts would be correct! That’s right, Rupert Grint plays a crazed stalker obsessed fan of Ed in the video and I thought it was hilarious.
I mean, look how similar they look!
I don’t think the video was supposed to be a joke, but when he sticks that piece of chewed gum in his mouth and you realize that he’s pretending to be Ed, it was just so bizarre that it was funny!
Hi everyone!
So, it’s been a while hasn’t it?? My apologies you guys. I’d say I’ll try to be better, but Lord knows that probably won’t work out. I do know of this great blogger. She’s super faithful (unlike me), hilarious, interesting, and incredibly fashionable! She’s also pretty cute, and I’m not just saying that because she’s my sister. Check this chick out, and tell the world! www.therichstyle.com
Now, on to the good stuff!
ONE. My little sister got the newest Coldplay album for her birthday last week, and had to import the CD to my iTunes to get it to go on her iPod, so I figured I’d just go ahead and put it on mine too. I’d heard good things about it, so I was pretty anxious to give it a listen. Turns out, it’s fantastic! I’ve been a big Coldplay fan for a while now, and this album certainly doesn’t disappoint.
A few of my favorites:
TWO. I stayed at someone’s house a few weekends ago and kept noticing how amazing the place smelled all the time. I never saw any candles burning, or heard any of those annoying air fresheners on a timer (you know, like the kind you see in public bathrooms that always have the most random scents in them like “Pine Forest.” Who wants their bathroom to smell like a forest?!) going off. But eventually I figured it out. This person had, stationed in just about every room, these cute little ceramic pot things plugged into the wall and on top of it was a little pool of melted wax that smelled divine. I later learned that these were from a company called Scentsy, I’m sure you’ve heard of it. They’re sort of perfect for my dorm-life situation because there’s no open flame, so the chances of me torching this place significantly lessen with this nifty little crock pot of aroma-therapeutic goodness. I bought mine at Wal-Mart. It’s not Scentsy brand, but hey it gets the job done and Wal-Mart’s selections were more than enough for me. Other pluses of these scent warmers? The stuff lasts forrreverr. The wax comes in little containers like this
and I put two cubes of wax in mine two weeks ago and it’s still going strong (and I have mine on almost constantly). Unlike candles, these things seem eternal, and at around $15 for the pot and $2 for the wax, this thing beats candles hands down in my opinion! Totally worth the money, and pays for itself in no time. Give these a try and you won’t be let down.
