I know it has been awhile since I have written. I just – haven’t had much to say. It has been really busy – although for the life of me, I couldn’t say what with. It isn’t like I have been working out or anything. Or even traveling that much. Life just happens. It’s actually a pretty quiet time at work right now, which is a nice change from the last few months. I actually find myself without anything to do sometimes! Other than taking the online FEMA Training courses – but who wants to do that? It is only noon, and I have already turned in a news article and meeting minutes – and, really, I should be sorting emails or doing that dratted old FEMA training course – but neither of those are really high priority, so I thought I would ramble on here instead. I really have my best friend Abby to thank for this post. She noted disappointedly to me yesterday that I hadn’t written in awhile. I am not sure this counts as writing, really, but here it is anyway. 😛
I hope you all had a wonderful July 4th! I certainly had a great weekend. Daniel and I went to the beach Friday. We left work early on Thursday, drove out to Virginia Beach, and got a hotel only like 20 minutes from the beachfront. Thanks to the crazy amount of Hilton honor points I have been collecting via my travel, we were able to stay in a Hilton Garden Inn King Suite with Whirlpool for a mere $75 + 12,00 Hilton points. Daniel has now forgiven me for all my travel. According to AccuWeather.com, it was supposed to storm all day, and I was properly depressed about it. Daniel assured me that we could sit at a beachside restaurant and drink Margaritas all day if it rained, so that cheered me up some. And he took my hands and prayed that it would be sunny for me, despite my rebellious comment that it wouldn’t work because I had already prayed and the forecast had just gotten worse. I really don’t do well without having had warmth and sun in a while. And it seriously has been raining here almost nonstop for a couple weeks. That point aside, however, God decided to show me how much He loved me despite my stubborn belief He wouldn’t do anything about the weather, and even though the weatherman consistently maintained it was going to be and rainy all day, we had an incredibly gorgeous sunny day from the time we woke up to the time we got into the car to drive home, whereupon it immediately clouded over and began to rain. How amazing is that? I apologized to God multiple times for my lack of faith. We both even got epically sunburned. Which was totally worth it.
Abby, thanks to her amazing “friends and family discount”, decided to fly out for the Fourth of July and visit me for a day! I was so excited! She ran a 5k Saturday morning, and then ran an additional race immediately after – through the airport to get to her flight in time. She landed, we picked her up and went straight to a party, and enjoyed the beautiful DC Fireworks display from an incredible rooftop view. Man, I love having friends who have private rooftops – especially when they invite me to their party.
It was raining most of the day, which surprised us, since we don’t really remember a fourth that was so rainy before. But Daniel mentioned it was probably due to the Supreme Court’s recent decision. And I think I agree with him – I feel like God was crying for the people in the country He blessed us with, and how we are treating the independence He gave us by letting the country go to hell in a handbasket. I, too, am sad for this country and the decisions it has made, and am fearful of the repercussions that will come from it. I have many more thoughts in that score, but don’t feel like sobering this post up that much quite yet.
Oh, going back to the news article mentioned above, it was the first time I have been giving just a plain writing assignment! Most of the writing I have been doing has been documentation, based on previous templates. This time, I was asked to just write a news article on one of our exercises, focusing on the human interest angle – what people got out of it. So I used [minimal] creative license, and wrote the article. And to my delight, there were minimal edits before it was submitted to the newsletter for publication! I hope they accept it, and I hope that it paves the way for me to write more articles!
My sister’s wedding is in less than a month, and I feel so ill-prepared to sing the song she asked me to! I just feel like my voice isn’t quite right for the song, and haven’t sung enough in the last couple years to feel up to par. I really need to crack down on practicing!
Well, I have a 8 minutes so should probably sign off now. If you read this entire post, you are probably either too bored to do anything else, or also avoiding work. Have fun browsing for other stuff to read now! 🙂
Forest Idylls 