Photo of the Day

I love tomatoes probably more than the average person. However, I have to be honest...I can't eat another one of those little ones. These were pulled off a few days ago and there are 4 bushes that are still full of them.

Remind me not to plant so many next year.

Things I'm looking forward to:
Mums
Apple Cider
Apple Butter
Pumpkins
Sweaters and jackets
Pies of all sorts, cakes too
Lattes, especially those pumpkin spice ones
Candy apples
Salted caramels
Leaves changing colors
Halloween
Thanksgiving
Fall Festivals
Friday Night Lights
Grey's Anatomy
Finding new shows to love
Soups and stews

Not looking forward to:
Italian
History

But you know: you take the good, you take the bad.

The Great Procrastinator

My major requires that I take a foreign language.

1. Because I was dumb and didn't think to choose a major that didn't require one.
2. Because I once was a major that didn't require one.
3. Because I thought I could put it off and put it off until it magically disappeared.

...is why I'm spending this last year of school slaving over Italian.

I really don't have an interest in learning Italian. But Spanish or any other language would cause me to have to drive to Lexington five days a week. And I don't have the money nor the stamina required to do such a thing.

So that's how my first day of classes went. Me in Italian learning how to say what my name is and what my hobbies are.

Ugh.

I also may or may not have put off my math requirement until this year.

What?!

I know! My procrastination skills are EPIC...let me just tell you.

But thankfully I'm in the dumb math that doesn't care if you are going on to take calculus. Which means I wasn't terribly bored by voting theory yesterday.

Other notes of interest: my history professor is a total NUT. I mean this lady is crazy. In a I'm kinda terrified yet also amused and it's weirding me out kind of way. However I love the heck out of my English professor, who I've now had for 3 semesters in a row, I hope she doesn't think I'm stalking her.

I'm also on the verge of being very broke and running the balance way up on my credit cards. But that's another story for another day.

Bright light at the end of the day? My car. My gloriously fun to drive car. I'm in love.

Quote of the Day

Love is fundamental. It’s more important than being right. It’s more important than having all our theological ducks in a row. It’s more important than any commitment to absolute truth or a particular hermeneutic or a “high view” (read: “my view”) of sovereignty or the Bible or faith or the Church.

Writes Greg Boyd, “For the church to lack love is for the church to lack everything. No heresy could conceivably be worse! Until the culture at large instinctively identifies us as loving, humble servants, and until the tax collectors and prostitutes of our day are beating down our doors to hang out with us as they did with Jesus, we have every reason to accept our culture’s judgment of us as correct. We are indeed more pharisaic than we are Christlike.” (The Myth of a Christian Nation, p. 134-135)

What’s wrong with the church when folks like Shane Claiborne who have reputations for loving their enemies, giving without expecting anything in return, and withholding judgment can’t get speaking gigs because of their “questionable” theological positions? What’s wrong with evangelicals when surveys show that people perceive us as gay-hating, judgmental, hypocritical, and closed minded? What’s wrong when people can get kicked out of churches for getting pregnant or being gay, but not for being unloving or prejudiced? What’s wrong when folks in theological societies scream and yell at each other over a disagreement about divine foreknowledge? We’ve labeled all kinds of things fundamental…but we’ve left out love, which is why I think it’s time for a new kind of fundamentalism.

-Rachel Held Evans, A New Kind of Fundamentalist

Read the whole thing. Read her entire blog. Amazing.

Photo of the Day

In the epic Tumblr Sharks vs. Cats battle (don't worry if you don't get it, you'd have to be there) I uncovered one of my favorite photos ever that I've personally taken.



I simply don't revisit the early days of my Flickr page often enough. There were so many fun pictures to recall. Are we to that point in the digital age when reminiscing about old photos involves perusing online archives instead of old boxes? I think so.

The Grey Blur

I own a brand new car. I just keep repeating that over and over to myself. If you follow me on Twitter or we're friends on Facebook then you already know, and I assume if you're reading this you do one of those things. So I'll skip straight to the story of how I came to acquire the 'Grey Blur', Jon's nickname for the Nissan Versa...but we'll do this photo essay style because I'm not terribly good with words this week.


At the dealership.


I love this one of my Mom. It was just her and I at the dealership working on the deal. She was totally cool, calm, collected and...assertive.


The view from the very back. The Versa is suprisingly roomy. More so than the Aveo and bigger than most in its class from what I've read.


I have cruise control for the first time in my life! Words don't express how excited this makes me.


Not cool? Saying goodbye to my Dad's old truck. That thing got us through many a doctor trip and honestly never had anything go wrong with it (although it was on the verge of blowing a motor and needing a transmission.)


I'll never forget the day he put this sticker on the back window. He was so proud to be a UK Dad. *sniff, sniff*


Jon was super bummed.


We were a family of 5 vehicles for a brief moment. And then it was time to downsize. We also apparently don't like color, 2 whites and 3 silver/greys? Wow. It's an accident, I swear.


And then it was done.

Our Nissan experience was awesome. I have no complaints about Neil Huffman on Shelbyville Road at all. Our interest rate is fantastic and the payments are exactly where I need them. And they processed the Aveo and the clunker with no trouble at all. I'm anxious to see how the Versa holds up. First impressions are it reminds me more of the Toyotas we've owned, more substantial and less plastic-y than the Aveo. It seems sportier, which isn't surprising since we've long referred to the Aveo as a mini-minivan. The 1.8 liter engine is a nice pick me up over the Aveo's 1.6 and definitetly adds horsepower than is noticable. The handling is smooth. I'm adjusting to the steering wheel and seat placement, but initial thoughts are I'm having more 'fun' driving it than I was with the Chevy.

My parents are rockstars to help me like this. Oh my gosh, words just do not express how thankful I am for them. At one point I was on the phone with my Dad at the dealership crying to him over how much I appreciated his support. All he asks is that I remember them in a few years and take us all to Hawaii or something. Haha. I love it and will definitely do.

But, in all seriousness, he tells me this is just what parents do and that as a family unit, the four of us will always have each other's backs in times of need. I adore our foursome! Jon figures this puts him in a good position in the near car future, which makes me laugh. Who knows, perhaps I'll pay it forward one day and help him get a deal at a car lot on something he needs and loves.

Now my focus shifts to less pleasant things: securing a job and starting school. One more year is the phrase I keep chanting silently to myself. I can do this.

Chicken Pot Pie

I woke up planning to make Ina Garten's chicken pot pie, which I've heard from many credible sources is amazing.

But sometime this afternoon I found another recipe, from an old Marshall Field's cookbook. It seemed a little less intense, so ended up kind of merging the two basic ideas in my brain and coming up with a version of my own.

Ingredients
*a refrigerated pie crust (because I do not own a food processor and I'm not about to cut butter into flour by myself unless forced to)
*mixed veggies of your choosing (I'm not picky, if you like a can use a can, if you like frozen use frozen, if you like fresh, go with that. I used a mixture of can and fresh.)
*1 whole stick of butter
*1 small onion, chopped pretty fine
*1/2 cup of flour
*1 1/2 cups of heavy cream
*2 1/2 cups of chicken stock/broth (I added 4 bullion cubes to the water I pressure cooked my chicken in)
*1 pound of chicken (you could roast like Ina does, or pressure cook as I did, or pull some off of a store bought rotisserie)
Salt and Pepper to taste

Melt stick of butter in a deep saute pan, add onions and cook until translucent. Add flour, wisk together and allow to cook for at least 1 minute (must cook off the taste of flour), then add chicken stock/broth, stir. Add cream and allow mixture to thicken. Turn heat to low, stir in chicken and veggies of your choosing. Pour this mixture into an unbaked pie crust, top with another crust and bake at 425 for 35-40 minutes, until bubbly.



This is not light cooking, and in retrospect I feel somewhat guilty about the butter and cream. But it was seriously perfect, easy and comforting.

Photo of the Day: Main Street