sister act 2

i seriously LOVE this movie. i always list it as my favorite 'guilty pleasure' movie because most people might think it's kind of stupid or uncool. except that i don't even feel guilty about it. near the end of my sophomore year of high school, my best friend karli had just gotten her license and inherited an old ford pickup. one afternoon after lunch we decided to skip the rest of the day (only once out of the maybe two or three times we did this in our entire high school career...we were honor students, band geeks, and sports team players...we LOVED high school) and go see this when it came out.





i find myself singing the soundtrack in my head at work all the time. "if you want to be somebody, if you want to go somewhere, you'd better wake up and pay attention!"

staying cool

well, hello!

i feel a little like cinderella on sunday nights. this is my closing night at work and it entails a lot of manual labor...sweeping, mopping, scrubbing floors, bathrooms, dishes...whew. like changeover at camp...but all by yourself. it's satisfying but exhausting. i commend those who do it almost every night. needless to say, i tend to sleep very well those nights.

so i have two days off stretching before me which i'm really excited about because they happen to be the two days of the week where the house is virtually empty, and this means i can indulge my selfish nature a bit by making plans with only myself in mind...meaning, i can do WHATEVER I WANT.

so, this morning i'm going to putter around, drink some coffee on the deck, eat a peach, watch last night's entourage, do some laundry, attempt to box up some of my piles of belongings that are STILL towering all over my little room. then i get to spend a couple of hours with one dear friend and the evening hours with another! two in one day; i feel like i won a prize. (it used to be common but not so much anymore.) plus: hot yoga! yesss. i haven't been able to go since february and i'm so excited to stretch & sweat.

a co-worker asked me last night what i've been up to lately when i'm not at work. um...hm. i struggled to come up with an entertaining answer. i've done a lot of quiet, satisfying things that might not be impressive. but this summer i thought was going to be so LONG is zooming by! and i love it. i haven't been taking many pictures...so i'll have to make a list. in the last couple of weeks i have:

*been reading about the small plane crash my friend dan parris (mandy's friend from biola) was involved in two days ago while filming a documentary about poverty in nairobi, africa: http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/africa/08/02/kenya.plane.crash/ (for more info on the filmmakers go to www.giveadamndoc.com or look up @giveadamndoc on twitter.)

*visited camp a couple of times...once i got to cook for two days with my dear aunt sandy while max was a camper. the second time was just for an afternoon during high school camp...how i WISH i could have been there all week...so much fun. coffee with emily and julie, finally swimming in deer lake, chatting with jamie at water's edge, trying out the new water-totter with brian.


*two saturday-night slumber parties with stephanie a. involving hours of dawson's creek (i still love pacey witter after all these years), catching up, breakfasts & church the next day. it's funny for me to have girlfriends over to my parents' house again...this hasn't happened in a LONG time.

*lunch in the city with sarah & marta. le pichet...delish. it felt so continental!

*dinner and the bachelorette finale with mandy. i love having her home and close. i don't think i'll ever be able to watch the bachelor/bachelorette again. this was my first season ever and i really didn't start watching it consecutively until there were about 6 guys left. it is TOO STRESSFUL for me. i get sooo anxious during the rose ceremony. i guess it's because broken hearts are close to MY heart and it makes me so uncomfortable to see these poor guys lay themselves out there just to get rejected. (also, jillian and i do not have the same taste in guys. so she was always sending away the ones i liked best.)


*i finished reading 'happens every day: an all-too-true story,' by isabel gillies...a memoir which i first encountered in vogue, about the dissolution of a seemingly fairy-tale marriage. heavy stuff, and fascinating. now i'm on to 'eat, pray, love,' which my mom bought me for christmas two years ago.

*i'm one disc away from the end of the HBO series 'in treatment,' season one. soooo good. but 45 episodes a season! FORTY-FIVE fifty-minute episodes! it's exhausting. it's about a therapist and four of his patients...it's aired every weeknight according to which patient's session is that day, and on fridays the therapist himself goes to therapy. i'm so invested in these people's lives; i want to know so badly if they'll be OK.


*shopping and lunch with my mom...another rare occurance in modern life.

*pool party at anne & ben's! so fun to bob away for a few hours laughing over old camp stories and wondering what happened to names i haven't heard in years.

*harry potter and the half-blood prince. i've seen it twice now; the first time was a huge disappointment so thank goodness bridget was willing to swoop in and restore it to childlike magic for me. i think i did like it but they did change the ending...which happens to be probably my single favorite chapter in the entire series.

*(500) days of summer. good, but i think my expectations were too high. i despair that maybe i'm not capable of LOVING films anymore. i haven't seen anything this year so far that i truly loved. the company, however, was perfect. thanks sarah and sarah.


*spending the hottest afternoon in the history of the city with my oldest friend maggie lunching on capitol hill. maggie, her husband andy, and their one-year-old daughter lily are moving to japan for two years this week and i am planning on visiting next spring (cherry blossom time!) that will only leave antarctica, everyone. victory is so close i can taste it. all seven continents!

then, perhaps...the seven seas?