jai guru deva.

thanks to the Heavenly Teacher.

even though it's a Hindu mantra, man, is it true.

thanks be to God for all he has blessed me with. i was complaining all yesterday about how i hate my new job and how horrible my first day was (which arguably, having everything fall apart 5 minutes before closing with no one there to help is a pretty nightmarish situation), but after church last night and finishing Frank Peretti's The Wounded Spirit today during work, I realized how good I have it.

God has blessed me and provided for me so much throughout my life and when one little thing goes wrong, I completely fall apart. Why? Is there any possible way I can convince myself that these mediocre problems I'm facing can even slightly compare to some of the horrible things going on with other people that still manage to trust that God will see them through? No.

Even looking at the people in my own life, like mum. She's had to lose one of her babies, her father, and in not too long, as Nonnie's demensia gets worse, her mother, yet she remains strong in her faith.

Things like seeing my mom stay strong, reading the words of authors like Peretti and Lewis, and of course being immersed in God's Word through church and the Bible have been great inspirations and given me the necessary push to remember what I'm going through is not that bad, and even if it seems like it is horrible at the time, God is still with me, helping me through it.

so in the words of Paul & John:
"jai guru deva...nothing's gonna change my world"
mjl.

"So do not fear, for I am with you;
do not be dismayed, for I am your God.
I will strengthen you and help you;
I will uphold you with my righteous right hand."
Isaiah 41:10

bailando queen

the majority of evita rehearsals tonight was dancing.

i cannot tell you how good it feels to be dancing again :) it makes me miss dancing at Civic

...but anyways, the Buenos Aires dance looks like it's going to be really cool, especially the partner stuff, once it gets all fixed up. michael and i are skilled and were doing pretty well. i love being twirled in and out, it reminds me of Dancing With the Stars :) though michael insists So You Think You Can Dance is better...psh.

but yeah, the dancing is cool and marilyn is so great to work with :) i'm very happy with life right now, until tomorrow when I have to go to my first day of work training at the stupid tennis pro shop. i need to find another job so i can get out of this one before i even start it. mum insists on starbucks....i'll take what i can get.

xoxo,
mjl.

oh the drama.

jonas brothers tickets went on presale this morning.
there's three hours of my life I'll never get back.
don't get me wrong, i love the brothers jonas, but the attempts made by tens of thousands of teenage girls to get presale codes and tickets all at the same time causing the server to crash multiple times was ridiculous.

i didn't even end up getting tickets since the irvine presale won't be happening for a couple days, but i may have blown my only chance at getting a presale code since i was going to get tickets for the san fran show and still have the code for it which i don't plan on using. oh well.

the real drama arrived about 20 minutes ago when i was making myself a ciabatta sandwich (the most delicious thing known to man). i opened up our cupboard and felt a sharp but subtle pain in the bottom of my foot, like barely stepping on the point of a thumbtack...the pain grew rapidly and i looked down to find a live bee attached to the bottom of my foot.

*cue freak out*

i've never been stung before and therefore had no idea if i was allergic or not. which caused me to jump around, screaming about the pain that was now spreading throughout my foot and the fact that i may be allergic and die at any second.

this was followed by mum coming at me with a huge steak knife. which, as you can imagine, was not the most comforting sight in the world. according to her, a knife is the best thing to use when flicking out a bee stinger.
.....
i was less than assured.

so there i was. leg up on our kitchen counter, mum going at my foot Sweeney style with a huge steak knife, followed by her tweezing it out.

quoth the mum, "wow, he left his whole bottom half in your foot."

....

mum has just informed me that there have been 16 bees found on our floor, some dead, some still alive. this includes the kamikaze killer who tried to murder me.

so this is basically the floor of the first story of our house right now.


stay away from bees, kids.

the end.
mjl.

*interesting side note* my name, melissa, is greek for honey bee. ironic, no? i am comprised of that which seeks to kill me.
put that in your pipe and smoke it.

mejor tarde que nunca

i have no idea if that's correct or not...my spanish has gone nowhere but downhill since taking it last year....but yeah, Happy (late) Easter!



oh yeah. and JB presale tickets go onsale in 10 hours...except the irvine show, which is the show i'm going to.....*unenthusiastic* yay.

oh yeah. (part deux). first night of Evita rehearsals were tonight. it was basically all dancing and tomorrow will be basically all singing. this is pretty much my dream of what rehearsals should be like: singing & dancing. it's like nothing but pure expression of art. i am excited.

hope all your Easters were blessed and spifftastical.

until then,
mjl

thank you and have a Good Friday

what's more surprising than seeing my dad come out from behind a screen dressed as a disciple of Jesus?

a)mom's very un-surprised face at seeing her own surprise party
b)jean pierre destroying a 500 year old tapestry
c)a fox news report on pandas watching other pandas getting it on
d)going to one of the best Good Friday services ever only to have it interuppted when we hear the creaking of two curtains being pulled apart revealing the kid who played jesus last night up on our church's cross wearing what looked like a paper machette diaper

if you guessed "d" then congratulations!

i literally had to close my eyes and bow my head for the remainder of the time he was visible in order to stop myself from laughing. it was not good. which saddened me because it really was a good service, apart from...that.

so happy Good Friday world, hopefully your serivce went better than mine.

♥
mjl

panda porn and maundy thursday

Happy Maundy Thursday everyone.
For those that don't know, Maundy Thursday is our celebration(?) or commemoration rather of the Last Supper.

So today started out with a huge deposit into the bank account which I planned on using to buy Jonas Brothers tickets later this week. That plan was short lived as Da informed me not 20 minutes later that he needed to borrow like $100 for gas and car washes for his and mum's car. T_T

After donating my Jonas $, chunk and I ventured to Food Maxx to buy groceries for mum to make party potatoes (= my favorite food of all time). On our way into Food Maxx, we passed a nasty dirty van which megan pointed out "needs to be waaa-", she was cut off because the scary, motorcycle leader-looking mama who drove that car was standing right next to it on her phone...scary. We later passed motorcycle mama 3 or 4 times in the store...scarier.

So yeah. Made some chocolate chip cookies later at home ("the best you've ever made" according to mum, i disagree) & when mum came home and flipped on some Fox News, we were privileged enough to watch one of the strangest reports I've ever seen...Panda Porn.

Apparently, the panda population was going down in China and the chinamen needed a way to spur the mating of the pandas...they tried viagra. didn't work. apparently male pandas were too lazy to mate and would rather chomp some bamboo (& who can blame them), but then someone got the idea to show them panda porn. weird.
the report went something like this:

british FN correspondant: "they show the pandas videos of other pandas getting it on which then makes those pandas want to get it on"

....yeah, it was weird. only slightly more weird than the maundy thursday service later that night...

for all my years of being a christian (i'm entering my 19th year of living as well as my 19th year of being a christian), i'm fairly certain i've never been to a maundy thursday service...soooooo, i didn't know what to expect tonight, but i know there was one thing i did not expect and that was seeing my father come out dressed as one of jesus' dsiciples...yeah.

the service paper thing said "'The Last Supper' - Presentation" which for our church usually means something a little werid...i'm expecting a video, maybe a skit. so when the time comes for the presentation to start, we hear some voices over mics from offstage and then faj comes on dressed as a disciple and i'm thinking ".....what is this?"...he was followed by 12 other men from our church (most of whom i recognized since most of them are our Elders), all dressed as disciples with the exception of the young guy dressed as Jesus who wore an acolyte's robe.

so the whole presentation was a bit on the odd side.
Jesus wasn't memorized and had to keep looking down at the table for his lines and then we had to receive communion from them which was even more odd and awkward.

upon approaching the table megan commented "oh no! i'm too short" which made me laugh/try to disguise my laugh as a cough (which didn't work). then mr. burzlaff (i don't know which disciple he was supposed to be) was attempting to break off the weird looking bread i was supposed to have but was having trouble. when he finally did break it, not only did he hand me a huge chunk, but also the several crumbs that went with it.

i ate the big chunk (which tasted like pie crust, of which i am not a fan at all), downed my wine to get rid of the taste of the pie crust body of Christ, and walked back to my seat with 4 or 5 good sized chunks of the same nasty pie crust in hand.

easily one of the more bizarre communions i've ever had.

though it was pretty funny when one of our senior pastors also got too much bread from mr. burzlaff. he was smarter than i and ate his big piece, then saved the smaller pieces to dunk into the common cup of wine, which broke off into the common cup when he did so, ahahaha. i love church :)

so that was my day in a walnut shell.

lessons learned:
-don't insult butch women's cars unless you're sure they're not in earshot.
-porn should only be advocated when advancing the panda population.
-dad doesn't need to wear disciple robes anytime soon.
-don't dunk your communion bread in the common cup.


amen.
mjl

happy birthday hayley

Today would've been my little sister Hayley's 15th birthday. :(
But she gets to celebrate it in Heaven, which is cooler than anything we could've done for her here. I love you Hayley.

Ironically enough, we celebrated mum's birthday today...even though her birthday isn't til april 5th....but it had to be a surprise party since it's her 50th and we had to find a time when Amy was here...so it was tonight...surprise.

Mum looked less than surprised as she couldn't figure out why her friends were all standing in the corner...yelling "surprise"...I enjoyed replaying her face for my family as often as I could...that was fun.

I also poned at Scattergories.

Letter: L.
Cattegory: States.
Everyone Else's Answer: Louisiana.
My Answer: Lethargy.
Conclusion: I rock.

Though arguably some of the best Scattergories moments came from Maddy's and Megan's answers.

Letter: M.
Category: Crimes.
Megan's Answer: Mutilation.
Conclusion: Megan is a little creepy sometimes.

Letter: A.
Category: Author.
Maddy's Answer: Alfred Einstein.
Conclusion: Einstein had an unheard of brother who wrote books.

amen.
mjl

There's No Place Like Home

And there's no better way to start a blog than with a cliche.

Home at last after a daunting three days on various coasts of the Pacific Ocean. This trip has been fun. I can't even begin to say how cool it's been to get to spend time with no one but my family after what seemed like months on end of not getting to see them for longer than an hour or two each day because of rehearsals or stage managing, and it was cooler cause Amy was actually with us rather than thousands of miles away in Wisco.

Today's adventures consisted of checking out of our suite, a quick trip to Morro Bay to buy some British Candy (Aero bars are now officially my new favorite thing), a long tour of Hearst's Castle, and a dinnerish type meal in Cambria.

I'd been to Hearst's Castle before when I was like 11, so needless to say, I'd forgotten what it was like. Our loverly tour started with a 40 minute long IMAX film on the history of Hearst castle...this was somewhat less than amusing. Especially considering there was a Hispanic woman talking to her little daughter in Spanish throughout the entire movie...even more than somewhat less than amusing. Plus the fact that Hearst kind of looked like a child molestor and was a bit of a creepo was even scarier on a huge IMAX screen.

The tour itself was actually pretty cool. We got to ride up on this bus and as we were driving up to the castle, we had an amazing view of the Pacific Ocean which had a magnificent blanket of cloud over it, with little mountain and hilltop peaks peeking out at various spots...I attempted to take a picture with my phone, but I assure you, it does not do justice to the awesome creations God has made.


When we finally got to the castle, we were introduced to a man named Frank who we found out would be our tour guide for the next 75 minutes *cue eye roll from megan, amy, and myself*. First we got to see the awesome Neptune pool, which was re-done 3 times because Hearst was a freak like that who was never satisfied, though I will admit, it was somewhat amazing to look at.


While listening to Frank ramble on about some fun little tidbits of Hearst trivia, our story received the addition of another interesting character whom I have lovingly christened "Jean Pierre", named as such because his parents spoke nothing but French throughout the entire tour. We were introduced to Jean Pierre as he began pounding on one of the tables on the veranda overlooking the Neptune pool *cue stink eye from mom to frenchie parental units*
Here is Jean Pierre in action. The woman with the motionless, seemingly-dead baby in a hat strapped to her abdomen is Frenchie Parental Unit Part 1 (aka the mama). Daddy Frenchie was wearing an orange shirt with a big blue stripe across the chest...for being french they knew squat about how to dress. I know, this picture kinda sucks, but such is the life of a stealthy photographer with a gold razr for her stealth/spy camera.


awesome ceiling in one of the guest houses...casa del sol, perhaps?


Frank, our tour guide, and the vomiting dog-thing fountain


stealthy photograph part 2. victim: megan.


this thing was pretty awesome simply because it's like 3500 years old or something. Frank said it was around when Moses was floating down the river in Egypt as a baby. How cool is that???? It's a statue of Sekhmet, Ra's daughter and guardian.


Here's the front of Casa Grande. Hearst's big house...I think this is the "castle" in Hearst's Castle.


Stealthy Photograph Part 3. Victim: Jean Pierre.


The living room of el Casa Grande. We were instructed to only walk on the gray guest carpet laid out for us to walk on, since most of Hearst's furniture and artifacts are hundreds of years old. This rule did not apply to Jean Pierre, who ran off the trail and tried to jump on one of these couches. Frank was less than amused. As was Mum.


I thought this was a cool statue of Mary and Baby Jesus. Hearst had some pretty awesome furniture and artifacts. Seriously amazing stuff.


This dining hall inspired the set designers of the Harry Potter movies for how they built the great hall for Hogwarts. Pretty cool.


These choir seats lined the walls of his living and dining rooms. This would've sucked for me whose butt would have most definitely broken it. This was pointed out when Amy dared me to sit in one of them.


Awesome indoor pool with gold tiles hand placed, one at a time on the bottom. This guy had way too much money on his hands.


So, that pretty much concluded our tour. There were a few more outbursts from Jean Pierre and the Frenchie parental units, but none that I was able to capture with the gold razr. It turned out to be a pretty cool tour though. Definitely some beautiful architecture and furniture.

After leaving Hearst's, we drove down into Cambria to find a bite to eat. After much driving and arguing over acceptable parking spots/dining locations, we found an open spot near some pizza place (which also served "Mexican Burritos and Tacos", as opposed to those Swiss tacos you keep hearing about). The car next to us had a pretty sweet bumper sticker that reminded me why I'm glad I'm a republican.


The pizza was good, though we were only allowed one re-fill on our sodas, which sucks for my family since we go through our diet cokes and arnold palmers like celebrities go through spouses (or adopted 3rd world babies).
I think the restaurant's initials were JBJ, though I was only concerned with the JB, for obvious reasons...well, maybe not so obvious if you don't know me...here's a hint ()....and here's a picture of the table which was branded with the restaurant's initials...


So that concludes my out of town adventures with my family. It's been fun. Now I can look forward to chilling with them at home for a while until Amy has to go back to Wisco, and we all start school again :( Though I am looking forward to next quarter's easiness of philosophy (blegh), music classes (huzzah!), and Evita rehearsals.

I love you all and thank you for listening...or reading, as it were.

Until Then,
mjl

happy st. patrick's day

i managed to go the whole day without wearing green and/or getting pinched.

kudos for me.

kudos for st. patrick for getting a day named after him.

kudos for God for getting st. patrick through his trials and getting me through mine.

no kudos for whoever thought to put a creepy looking yorkie in a st. patrick's day graphic.

Amen.
mjl

X-Men Perfume, Avila Pier, & Clam Chowder

day two (or maybe it could be considered the real day one) of our Easter vacation commenced this morning.

i finally fell asleep at 2:30 AM & woke up 6 hours later to a "continental" breakfast of pancakes and exceptionally good hasbrowns & eggs...this was followed by shopping at the nearby outlets, a trip to the Avila pier, and then off to Pismo for lunch at Splash cafe...fun times, for serious. the coolest part of the day was finding out that one of my cousins lives in a hotel above a bar in pismo...ok, that's probably not the coolest thing, but i thought it was kind of interesting...
apart from that, it's been pretty chill.

i love getting to spend time with my family like this, especially since it seems like i always have rehearsals or a show to run off to and don't come home till the wee hours of the morning when my family's asleep...thank God for Easter vacation...literally...since we wouldn't exactly have Easter without him.

this year's been pretty cool thus far (even though we've only been in it a whole whopping 3 months). i've been feeling closer to God and my family and feeling utterly in love with what God's given me. i hope to write again soon.
But for now, here are some loverly pictures from today's adventures...

As is now a custom when we go shopping in Pismo Outlets, I stick a stocking-esque sock over megan's head in a shoe store...don't worry, it was clean.


You can't tell, but this strip of paper has X-Men Perfume on it...or maybe it's cologne...either way, it smells awesome


Mom (& part of Amy's head) on the Avila Pier...mom's favorite beach, for whatever reason


Megan was probably the most excited out of all of us to be on the pier...she kept thinking she would fall through the cracks between the planks and get eaten by Jaws


Dear old Mum and Da...who will be celebrating their 25th year of marriage this July and their 50th year of living this April and October, respectively...I do love them quite a bit


♥
mjl