Seattle Photo Shoot

Well, I took more photos for the cd project and I realized that I really need to spend 10,000 hours on modeling or smiling believably or something. Wow. I am a serious nerd with no photogenic gift. Here are some funny ones. (Please, please laugh at my expense. I think these deserve to make you happy!)

There were some good ones but out of 1000 photographs (taken over 5 hours) there were only a handful of ones that looked natural.
Wow! I had no idea it was so hard to be believably happy. AND I AM A HAPPY PERSON!!

My favorite one of these (I hope I didn't make them too small so you can't appreciate how goofy I look) is the twisted up lips one. It looks like I'm grimacing- probably am, come to think of it.

Decades and Principles

I have been thinking about the next ten years.

I have also been thinking about principles and what they really mean.

Dave Ramsey (who wrote, ahem, "The Total Money Makeover") has been getting my full attention lately and he said something about principles that really got me thinking: basically, to paraphrase, 99% of your decisions are made for you if you have principles. I think he's on to something..not quite sure what exactly, but I have been stymied several times recently by what my mind thinks of as "gray area", decisions that are confusing and don't seem to fall into a clear "yes" or "no" deal. Soooo, I am wondering if perhaps I am not being led by my principles and more by my wants. Well, I mean, it's happened before. :)

Back to my comment about the next ten years. I read in a book called "The Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell that virtuousos in their field have spent 10,000 hours doing that that thing they do. Wow. 10,000 hours is about 20 hours a week for ten years. So, what do I want to be really good at in ten years?

songwriting- yo, I want to write hits and make millions from the royalties!
performing- I want to be able to give a great show and share music that matters with people.
playing- I am a stinky pianist. It's time I got serious. I have my first background solo gig in January. I am earning a ton for it (by my standards) and I'm a little scared about not being able to pull it off. (At least it's not in my hometown.)
singing- I think this is where I've spent about 7000 hours. And I feel most confident in this area. Still, there's more time and work here that needs to be done!

So, ten years...just with these four areas I have four part time jobs! They overlap some, but it will still take dedication to pull that off.

Huh. I better get to work.

So, in the next ten years, what would you do? Wouldn't it be interesting to take a poll and see what people really want to do and be?

Let's do it!

Two exciting things

Yay! I've hit twenty students this month. Actually, I've hit it three separate times (once, 21!) but each time I gained one I lost another. Ah well. I'm still aiming for 30 total.

Let's see, the Homeschool Writing Class I'm teaching is going well. The class includes students from 5th-11th grade, so it's a fun challenge to not lose the ten year old's and keep the 16 year old's happy too. Our focus is writing about art- mainly developing a thesis based on the terms of the artwork in question and fleshing out arguments supporting our ideas. It's great fun and I'm learning so much myself!

As well as writing and learning key terms and definitions, each student is also memorizing by title and artist an art collection I put together exclusively for the class. It has 24 pieces of art, mainly paintings but also some sculpture, architecture and music. Here's some of the pieces we're studying- test yourself and see if you can correctly recognize by official title and artist...have fun! (I don't yet know how to tell the pics where to go- if you know, will you tell me? Thanks!)

Family Wedding Fun

At a recent family wedding...







We had a blast as you might be able to tell. At this point, Laurel, Wyatt and I are getting ready for a serious family photo and had to get in the modeling mood.

Email Etiquette

I had an embarrassing snafu come up today. I use a Gmail account and even though I've had it for about a year, sometimes the layout is confusing to me. See, I've used Outlook for ages and in that program, whenever a new piece of mail comes in-whether a reply, forward, whatever-it will show up as unread and new.
With Gmail, new mail shows up like that but replies are a little different, they show up as a new piece of mail attached to the original...great idea right? It keeps all your conversations tied together, very cool, love it, awesome, yada, yada. BUT! Sometimes I'm not the best at keeping up on mail- I mean I let weeks go by sometimes without checking email (horrors!) and so there are times where the inbox gets full of (usually J.Jill offers) stuff and replies to older mail get lost. Are you following me? As my brother would say: it's user error and I take full responsibility for my careless email habits.
Very unfortunately though, the snafu came up in a business/professional relationship and while the other party involved was incredibly gracious, I still felt like a real heel for not staying up on my correspondence. How lame!
So, here's to being a little more responsible regarding my email etiquette.
Has anyone else felt my pain or am I the only one who has made this mistake? (Please say I'm not the only one...)

Top Three Baby Names

Last night, Claire, Laurel and I went on an impromptu "lost in the wonders of a beautiful summer's night" bike ride. After visiting briefly with friends Kenny and Sherri and seeing Dad on his motorbike, Claire and I went on to the O'Brien's to hear about some mutual friends' new baby.

As we looked at the baby pictures online at their birthing clinic's website, our eyes were drawn to other babies recently born at the clinic. From this, I compiled a list of my top three baby names; I leave you to decide if I am serious, sarcastic or silly.


#3 Faisal Stephen Hanna Hishmeh (the big question here: boy or girl?)
#2 Alekzander Apollo Knight (reminds me of that Olympic skater guy)
#1 Wambli Jeremy Barsano Bad Hand (this is just terribly awesome and defies all attempts to describe, explain or understand)

So what's your favorite of these three?

Fun memory

This morning, I remembered a particularly fun morning spent in Pieterlin, Switzerland with friends Esther, Elias and Elias' parents Martin and Barbara: Barbara made the most spectacular breakfast. Here I am inspecting it all and salivating!
We enjoyed croissants, cheese up the kazoo, meats, eggs, züpfa (like challah bread) coffee, tea and fresh orange juice.

Claire, Laurel and I ate heartily (as usual) and Elias' brother was impressed. He commented in Swiss German that he had never seen girls who ate so much. Of course we didn't know that until a few minutes later when Esther translated for us. We were embarrassed but it made a hilarious memory for a day like today!

The delightful, grand and frustrating: my last two months

My sister Claire informed me that I need to update my blog. Has it really been two months since I wrote last? Here are some highlights:

My list of students has grown to 14 from 2. Praise to God for this since I was really wondering if I would be able to get students at the start of summer. I have a nice mix of kids, teens and adults. They are a pretty interesting and fun lot.

Finished Spring quarter and that darn American Lit. Class -what a waste of time! I appreciate a lot of American authors (like Nathaniel Hawthorne, Willa Cather, Edith Wharton, Mark Twain) but in this class, we read and discussed more fashionably elite and politically acceptable writers whose works focused primarily on how their ethnicity, background, dysfunctional family and/or strange ideas of reality has left them damaged and unable to be productive and happy. Every short story we read dealt with the seamy underside of life in America: it distorted the country I know and love into a land of oppression, injustice and idiocy. I won't deny all absence of these things but sheesh- there are good qualities too! Argh. That class was frustrating.

Attended the Bradrick family picnic this past weekend! I so enjoyed meeting some new and old friends and hearing about their lives and dreams. There are godly young people out there who have character, intelligence and creativity- these people are inspiring! A low point of the day was when Sarah Cowles and I tried the three legged race and lost horribly- sorry Sarah, that was quite an embarrassment. The high point was when I tied for the grand prize in the pie contest. What a shocker! I had labored over a pecan chocolate chip pie (wish I'd taken a picture now) but more with the hope that I wouldn't be terribly put to shame by the other bakers. Imagine my joy to hear that I had tied for top prize! Claire took 1st place in the "other" category (non-fruit) for her lemon cream pie so we have two beautiful ribbons at home. Here's the truth though: I was pressed for time when I made the pie so I used a pie crust MADE BY CLAIRE from the freezer. Obviously, top prize really goes to Claire.

Here's to a productive summer! I am going to start posting some pics soon (wow, I am so high tech) since I've decided that pictures really make a blog more interesting. Kudos to Paige, Allison, Sherri and Claire for showing me the way to a better blog!

Books + People = A Cool Life?

I heard a quote recently and I've been turning it over in my mind; I think it is an interesting and profound thought. Read it for yourself and tell me what you think:

"A man or woman is the same person a year from now except for the books they read and the people they meet."

It was said at the Christian Heritage Conference by Doug Phillips, one of the speakers. I think he attributed it to his dad.

So, reading...ya, I agree with this one! And meeting people...what a great way to learn! The only thing that I wonder about is the discounting of experience as a teacher. I've always thought that just by living and walking through different situations I would learn; of course I have to have an attitude to learn in every situation and a willingness to change but human experience is a powerful thing.

Or is it? Is it necessary to live to learn? Is it just as valuable to read from the wisdom and folly of mankind, read the true words of God in the Bible, to meet as many different people as possible as it is just plugging along in my everyday routine?

Perhaps by introducing good books and wise people into a normal routine, one's life can become better. Maybe that's more what the quote is talking about. Interesting!

International Night At WCC

I'm playing at the college's International night tonight- I'm excited.

Also, my brother Jia Tai just learned to say his abc's...check my sister's link for the video of it (Claire's on my blogroll).

I'm drowning in a sea of assignments to get done before next Thursday.

Groaaaan.

And now I'm 26.

Yep, crossed over into the second half of late 20's land, early Monday. Near as I can tell things look alright from here, though I swear I can see more wrinkles on my face.

I celebrated over a couple of days- Sunday in Seattle with a new friend, Nanako. Breakfast at Cafe Besalue in Ballard, lunched in Fremont at Roxy's, had two donuts at Top Pot downtown and then ended with dinner at Thai Tom's on the Ave near the U. I was stuffed by the end. Oh, and three different coffee drinks. Yikes. Hey, you only turn 26 once.

Monday, I had school and homework but my aunt and uncle and Stephen and Paige made me a delicious dinner: crab cakes and salad and chocolate madelines with coconut ice cream.

I started exercising today.

In other news, there are new residents at the Bee Hive...which I thank God for. I was starting to really worry about paying that mortgage payment. He provides.

I read a great book over the weekend, "Peace Like A River". It's a must-reader.

YAHOO

Well this will just confirm any lingering suspicions about my status as an official nerd, but yes, I'm actually posting here the fact that I just got a letter saying I made the Dean's List at Whatcom. :) I'm so happy about that!

Oh and an update on cost: Another textbook I didn't realize I needed:

$86.00

Tuition update- another milepost is in front of me.

Tomorrow begins another segment of the life in pursuit of a degree. Winter quarter and I'm looking forward to it! I love starting things...not so good at finishing. Anyway, I wanted to update anyone interested on my tab of the real cost of a college education in the U.S. today. So, here it is:

17 credits= $974.00
Books= $77 math book (ebay)
$27.50 humanities book (ebay)

Fortunately I get to use the expensive accounting book from last quarter (the one whose price tag gave me a heartache almost!) for another class. Good.

So...this quarter comes to: $1078.50

I'll try and write more often. My life is fun but I don't keep track of it like I'd like to!