We're going to the zoo, zoo, zoo...

Well, it's been quite the exciting time in Ye Olde Towne of Sussex (I read somewhere recently that the Y in words like "ye" is actually a "th" sound. Whenever they were establishing letters and things like that, they based a lot of it on Roman letters. The letter Y was the closest thing to the Roman letter/symbol for "th," so that's what they went with).

Random thought - I find it ironic when there's a fire on the same day as a huge rainstorm. It's like... shouldn't everything be really wet?

Last weekend (my first one here) was fantastic. I laid around all day, watched Friends, and drank coffee. I also ran into Christine Blaikie, which was really fun, and she invited me over to her house on Tuesday night to watch Pirates of the Caribbean. And trust me, living alone in JP, an invite to anything is pretty much the most exciting thing ever. Plus I love Christine!

Last Sunday night, it rained, and I was feeling a little stir-crazy, so I went outside (barefoot - soo nice, plus it was warm), and wandered around for a while. I had a squished loaf of bread that I didn't want any more, so I ripped it up into little pieces and threw them all over my lawn thinking it would be fun to watch all the birds come and eat the bread.

Yeah. They wouldn't come.

So I took some of the little pieces of bread, and followed the birds around with it, throwing it on the ground, hoping they'd eventually come. I even tried yelling "Hey, come eat my stupid bread you dumb birds!"

Still nothing. So I gave up.

Monday morning the bread was still there, but Tuesday it was mostly gone. When I came home for lunch that day, it was all gone - and that's when I remembered that I'm actually kind of terrified of birds. You see, last summer, there was this one spot on my walk to work where there must have been a nest or something, because there were two birds who would literally swoop down at my head (and yes - they made contact on several occasions) as I was trying to walk past. I actually had to find an entirely new (and longer) route to work.

Well, since I threw bread all over my lawn, and the birds finally found it, I guess they got kind of territorial. For the last few days, whenever I come home, these two birds fly behind me, hopping from perch to perch, cawing at me and being very menacing. It's quite scary.

Well - this morning, I came out to leave for work and guess what I almost stepped on: a desgusting, dead bird. It was right on the sidewalk, about 4 inches from my doorstep. I called Kevin to have him come take it away but he must've gotten busy, so I guess it'll be there all weekend. The other scary bird didn't bother me this afternoon, so maybe this will be the end of the bird saga.

Living alone has forced me to really see what I'm made of - and it turns out, I'm a big baby. I've successfully killed 3 spiders this week, but I've screamed out loud every time I've seen one (and I live in fear of the one that I flushed down the toilet - I'm convinced it's going to come back up while I'm sleeping and eat me). I bawl my eyes out over silly TV shows (tonight they played the Full House episode where Papouli dies... I was done for), or sappy songs, or pictures, or even just when I wake up in the morning (waking up is HARD!).

Working 8-5 every day, I've decided to switch (partially) to decaf. While I'm not actually addicted to caffeine, it does have an effect on me if I drink it too late. So now, I drink coffee in the morning, then at noon I switch to decaf. It's working out really well so far - I think the decaf is having a placebo effect, wherein simply the taste of coffee perks me up. :)

Robyn and T-Shane have been gone all week, which hasn't really been all that different - I only hung out with them twice between when I got here and when they left anyway. It will be nice to have them back though, and hopefully we can hang out more.

I found out yesterday that I'm moving in to TP (the really nice dorm) next Friday because of a basketball camp, and Kirk's letting me stay all summer since I'll be living there in the fall anyway! I'm really excited about this. It'll mean being a lot farther from the lounge (kitchen and living room... kind of crucial when you're living alone), but it'll be a much bigger room and I'll be able to really settle in.

Oh! Today, I had a bunch of work to do in the chapel for Dave, so I dug out AJ Thomas's tapes from his two sermons at Bethany (Body Life [Encounter], and MOSP). They were really good. It was neat to hear how his preaching had changed and improved over the last 7 years. My favorite quote was this:

"I honestly think that MacMillan and Branscombe know more about some books of the Bible than the people who actually wrote them. ..... Someday Branscombe will be sitting up in Heaven with David, and he'll say, "Look! A chiasm!" and David will say, "Well, would you look at that...""

It was really neat listening to his sermons in the chapel, too - knowing that he had preached them in that room, and like.. I don't know. It was almost like the ghosts of all the people who were there were in the room again - not in a creepy way, just in a legacy kind of way. I was setting up chairs in the chapel, and listening to AJ preach from the platform right in front of me. If I closed my eyes I could almost pretend it was happening for real life instead of playing on an old cassette. Maybe that doesn't make sense to anyone else, but it was cool for me.

Well, anyway - my coffee (decaf) is gone, and the mosquitoes are driving me crazy. Oh, did I mention my internet disappeared? It was there at lunch today, then when I got home, it wasn't even showing up on my computer. So I've been sitting outside TP using the wireless here. Oh, the joys of living on an empty college campus...