saturday, sunday, monday - this is a long one

i kept thinking of things i wanted to blog about and taking pictures of them... but i never blogged, so i'm doing it all in one large post. hold on to your butt.


saturday, i went to breakfast with andrew at the cameron village carolina cafe. we have had terrible experiences there, but this time the food was great. despite the girl at the counter who looked like she might die in the middle of taking our order, it was a completely enjoyable experience. afterwards, andrew went to work, and i hung out in "la di dogs", the fancy designer dog store (also in cameron village), owned by one of our oberlin clients - such a sweet lady. after chatting with her for a while, i met monica at caribou coffee for a catching-up session. we took our coffees to the hunt horse complex for a little horse-watching and chatting. after that, we explored the flea market, and i bought a beautiful antique cherry hope chest. where i am going to put it, i have no idea, and it is currently sitting in our living room. after that, i hung out with tex, megan's cat, over at megan's. we chatted, snuggled, and hung out until andrew got off work that night.

sunday morning, andrew and i went to church and heard a sermon on idols. tyler (the head pastor) asked us lots of questions that really make you think about what drives your life. i really think you could analyze the answers to these for months and not run out of things to talk or think about.

• what are you most afraid of?
  
• what do you long for most passionately? what gets you out of bed?
  
• where do you run for comfort? what comfort do you treasure the most?
  
• what do you complain about the most?
  
• what makes you the happiest?
  
• how do you explain yourself to other people? what do you brag about?
  
• what has caused you to be angry with God?
  
• what do you want to have more than anything else?
  
• what do you sacrifice the most for in your life?
  
• whose approval are you seeking?
  
• what do you want to control or master?

the whole idea being that these things are our idols, and when we feel like we can't live without these things - beauty, a house, a new tv, etc. - then living without them becomes our "hell". and we spend our whole lives trying to escape this hell and save ourselves. and that's not a great way, or even a good way to live.
i'd love to have a biblestudy based on this topic - please let me know if you're interested!!

upon leaving church, lora called to see if we wanted to go climbing. andrew had to head to work, but i joined in and had a great time. i was not very good, and i'm in a lot of pain today, but that's ok because getting back into it is exciting no matter what. the new gym, triangle rock club, is much nicer than the others in the area, and the company was also excellent. lora forced me to take my belay certification test (thanks), and even though i let her drop like two feet on her ANNOUNCED fall... they still passed me. hehehe. i do blame my very friction-y belay device for making it difficult to get the rope through (hence not keeping up with lora's climb as well as i'd like to), so i switched devices for lora's regular atc and had no problems for the rest of the day. i tried, unsuccessfully, to do some pull-ups at the end of the day, but that's ok, now i have a new goal :-)

afterwards, lora and i hung out for a while, drinking protein shakes and chatting. then the two of us met up back over here for dinner and pie-making! for dinner, we made eggplant parmesan with spinach linguini. andrew joined us before the food was finished cooking, and we all enjoyed dinner with a nice bottle of wine. we followed it up with a scratch-made apple/rhubarb pie. also delicious. the dinner was only successful because of the awesome three-person teamwork. we kept that great team vibe going for the rest of our hanging out. complete with toenail painting.
after going to bed late, i woke up sore and exhausted. today was fine, but parent conferences make me feel like this: until i go to my car and receive this:
true romance from the husband to celebrate our 6-month-iversary of being married! my husband is great!