it has been a while...

and what can i say but that 2005 has indeed been a happy 24 days so far. =)

wow, considering my last several months when there was no such thing as a 24-day stretch of peacefulness, it's been amazing. That experience has definitely taught me to appreciate the mundane, routine, quite ordinary days.

my only tears so far have fallen during a movie. life is good when you can say that.

yesterday I went with my small group to a homeless shelter. This particular shelter is pretty cool in that it provides concrete solutions to help people off the streets and devotes most of the time to providing work skills and connections to employers for the people who stay there. Within a few months, most of their residents do successfully move on. Anyways, we cooked dinner for them, and it felt so good to be serving as a group. I forget how isolating work can be. As a teacher, I rarely have more than 5 minute conversations with other adults during the day. And at church when I'm teaching the 3 to 8-yr olds, I am constantly engaged with the kids and don't get much of a chance to really serve "with" my assistants. But i think that's partly why I was so heavily involved in my fellowship during college. There's a safe, fun "wackiness" that comes out when you're doing God's work with others. It was so refreshing, and the residents we met were definitely cool. I am looking forward to going back next month.

random happy thing: i just bought a new laptop. okay, being as adverse to spending money as i am and also not being the most technologically "ept" person, it's kind of a big deal that I bought 2 computers within the last 6 months. but can i just say...together, both computers cost me a tad over $1000 including tax. something like $460 for my desktop and $570 for my laptop. pretty good, eh? i *love* sharing about my bargain deals.
---------
can i do one last blog on cars? a few weekends ago, i went to the LA Car Show. It was a different way to spend a rainy Sunday afternoon, but I walked out of the convention center not quite as impressed as everyone else seemed to be. One reason may be that i'm actually not all that into cars (despite the fact I write about them so frequently). Another reason may be that i don't enjoy "browsing" all that much, hence the reason I don't really like to go shopping. But I think i recently hit upon the most accurate reason: I had had my own personal car show over the last few months when I got to drive or ride in rental after rental. With that at least, I got to do more than just look or sit in an idle car... All told, there were 6 rentals (4 of my own and 2 my parents rented when they came). In the end, i found out that i am quite satisfied with my little corolla. It really does fit my needs exactly for now and i'm happy to be back on the road now; although i don't know too many people who want to be in the car with me anymore... =)