More recent pictures:

Spring Break in Austin, March 18-26 (5 pics)

Easter, April 17 (3 pics)

Wow- it's been months- sorry for the lack of updates. Life is busy. As such, a picture is worth a thousand words... and saves time.... so here are some recent pictures. Enjoy, anyone who actually still checks my blog. :P

From bottom up(?)

Liturgical Arts Conference choir, February 10th (1 pic)

Birthday game night, early March (2 pics)

ADA Public Policy Conference in D.C., March 13-16 (5 pics)

I've been pondering love a bit lately...
This is a great, succinct article from one of my new favorite websites (www.BustedHalo.com)- it has some wonderful reflections and statistics about love, what it means, and how ideas about it have changed over time.

http://www.bustedhalo.com/features/PureSexPureLove14-WhatisLove.htm

One idea I especially like, from the author's professor who's been married over 40 years:

"One afternoon he told our class that getting married didn't make logical sense: Binding yourself to one person for an uncertain future would usually seem foolish. But, he said, love is the necessary ingredient that makes it happen. It makes you starry-eyed and hopeful. It gives you faith and hope. It binds you to another person and blinds you to their faults. And if all goes well, this burst of love will carry you on to commitment-where the real work of a relationship begins."

January....?

Once again, I'm enamored with New England winter weather... yesterday it was sunny and in the 50s and this morning it is snowing heavily like it's business as usual (which is close to the truth for here I think).

Is there an equivalent expression to "raining cats and dogs" for snow? The flakes are literally the size of small animals. It's like God has torn up millions and millions of kleenex tissues and is pelting them down all at once in whispy chunks. They have the feathery texture of the early ashes of burnt paper. I wish I could measure some on rulers- these "flakes" are more like snow clusters.

I'm glad I didn't have to go out in it this morning. Although, I might have liked to feel and taste the "flakes."

Only a Texas girl would mistake the morning sounds of snow blowers for grass mowers in Boston in the middle of January. O:)

I think I have a few more "white" days, weeks, months to go. I feel like I'm on vacation, like this is abnormal and beautiful and worthy of all my attention. And yet, I have to go to class tonight, and do everything I'd normally have to do in Texas (with a few more layers on). Sorry to linger on a seemingly mundane subject like the weather, it's just such a big change!

TEXAS LONGHORNS

win College Football National Championship!
Get the picture?!!
I just realized I haven't sent a virtual yee-haw out about Texas winning the National Championship at the Rose Bowl! Just like all the other UT fans around the country, my heart rose and sank and anxiously beat throughout the Rose bowl game last Wednesday (can it only be a few days ago?). And, like all the other fans, I jumped and screamed and hugged and hi-fived and hook'emed when Vince ran in for the winning touchdown at 19 seconds left to play.

Thank goodness something is backing up my Texas pride up here in Yankee land. Tonight someone asked me why there is such Texas pride.... I was kind of at a loss. Why wouldn't there be? We're big, we're special, we were our own country at one point in history, we are the reason Six Flags is called six flags... what more do you need? ;P

As far as University of Texas school pride, I can't say exactly how or why that happens, at least to the extent it does, or if it happens more than at any other university. I just know I was born and raised in Austin, so as the saying goes, I bleed orange. Personally, I think the traditions, programs, and alumni and respect garnered for all those are part of what makes THE University so great. As Walter Cronkite says on the UT "commercial," WE'RE TEXAS. What happens here changes the world."

Enough explaining. Under the circumstances, some choice words will do.
TEXAS FIGHT!
The Eyes of Texas Are Upon YOU!
Texas, our Texas, all hail the mighty state. 0.

Hook'em.

What color is your blood?

The Oliver Family Christmas self-photo, Dec. 24, 2005 (missing Lee)

Dec. 22, 2005

Roomie Heather and me, with our Christmas cards to each other!

January 3, 2006

It's snowing here right now. As I was walking downtown earlier, I actually realized that the cold particles hitting my face felt more like snow than rain (a biting, cold, yet lighter landing than the wet splatter of a rain drop), even if it appeared to be raining. I guess that is the wintry snow/rain mix I'd heard tell about on the weather forecast. Call me crazy, but I like that the weather matches the season here. It's January. It's winter. It's supposed to be cold. The Texas heat wave (80 degrees some days) over holiday break was a nice hiatus from the Boston chill, but it didn't quite feel right. This feels appropriate. Now, when it's still snowing in March and possibly April, I will be changing my tune. But for now, the novelty of the snow and wintry weather has not worn off-- yet.

On a different note, I'm thinking of using this as a bit of a quote journal. If you know me well, you know I have a few favorite quotes, and that I love reading my daily quote calendar, even though I have a lot of the quotes memorized from reading the same ones every year, day after day. If I can't say eloquent, poignant things, other people can, and have, and I often like to latch on to the compact expressions, ponder them, and share them. So, you're my audience if you so choose. Of course, every once in a while, I may actually say something elegantly phrased and deeply substantial or touching, too. O:)

From my quote calendar Dec. 23rd (for all you who, like me, think the Christmas season always passes too quickly with too little true celebration):

"Peace is not a season...it is a way of life. When the Spirit of peace becomes part of our life, every day will be Christmas, and every night will hold the promise of dawn."

Well said, whoever you are. What a challenge. 'Tis the season of resolutions! Happy New Year! Have a wonderful 2006! and Hook 'em!

Texas Thanksgiving

Somehow, after a lovely couple of months of beautiful, crisp, cool fall weather here in Boston, it seems strange to go home to an 80 degree Thanksgiving.

I experienced today just a few of the perks of living in a place with multiple seasons:
1) (realizing) the frog pond at the Common has been transformed into an outdoor ice-skating rink
2) (chuckling at) fat squirrels that scurry out of trash bins and over the ground, with white bellies and thick, winter coats of fur
3) (feeling the) exhilirating rush of blood and heat back to your chilled cheeks upon re-entering your warm apartment building (kind of the opposite of the lovely rush of cool on your body from the blasting AC in a sweltering Texas summer)

Still, I'm thankful that I even get to go home to see family, friends, my house, and my hometown. The Lord has blessed me so richly.
I like this quote from Abraham Lincoln:
"We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven. We have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no other nation has grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own."
I read it in an article by a priest who wrote, "If I were pressed to reduce the meaning of all religion to one word, that word would be 'gratitude.' "

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! :) THANK YOU for reading my blog!

Book reports

So, I'm reading Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller. And loving it. It makes me smile and giggle on the T, even after a saddening evening. In Boston. A very impressive feat.

Pretty much every other sentence is one I want to reread, etch in my brain, and apply to my life. His writing is so simple and conversational and yet so profound. Here are a couple passages from the most recent chapters I've read. I can't type all the parts I like, but this is a delectable sampling for your reading pleasure. Enjoy!

"Confession: Coming out of the Closet...
So much of me believes strongly in letting everybody live their own lives, and when I share my faith, I feel like a network marketing guy trying to build my down line.
Some of my friends who aren't Christians think that Chrisitans are insistent and demanding and intruding, but that isn't the case. Those folks are the squeaky wheel. Most Christians have enormous respect for the space and freedom of others; it is only that they have found a joy in Jesus that they want to share. There is the tension."
AMEN to that.

"Belief: The Birth of Cool...
The problem with Christian belief- I mean real Christian belief that there is a God and a devil and a heaven and a hell- is that it is not a fashionable thing to believe.
I had this idea once that if I could make Christianity cool, I could change the world, because if Christianity were cool then everybody would want to deal with their sin nature, and if everybody dealt with their sin nature then most of the world's problems would be solved."
I'm ashamed to say this does ring a bell.

Before this (week before last) I read C.S. Lewis's The Magician's Nephew (book 1 of the Chronicles of Narnia). It was also fabulous. I love fantasies written for children: A Wrinkle in Time, the Giver, Harry Potter, even 1984 and Brave New World to a lesser extent. I think I've read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I know I've seen the movie, but I wanted to read the entire series, especially with the movie coming out. I have a hard time finding books that keep my attention. Or, maybe I was just always too busy with school books and studying, and now I'm not so much. At least until next semester. Yay for reading. Amy, in your honor, I thank all the people who ever helped me learn to read or to appreciate reading. :)

Me at the edge of the Medford Tufts campus this past weekend- gotta love the colorful New England fall!

Me on the Boston Harbor Cruise in early September...(I'm learning how to do cool things like upload pictures to the blog.)