Today I heard a sermon that challenged me. We go to a great church where they love the Lord, and His people. The church is involved in quite a few city ministries and outreaches. City Church loves God and therefore loves San Francisco.
My confession though is...
...sometimes I don't love San Francisco.
...sometimes San Francisco bugs the crud out of me.
Sometimes I feel really jaded. Of the pushing, the shoving, the city bustle, the extreme in your face liberalism, the narcissism, the incredible wealth that just seems...wasted (on things like $1500 Louis Vuitton bags). Sometimes I'm numb to the homelessness, the poverty, the need. There you have it. The honest truth.
I feel like in a city that has so much need...I have served less here than in SLO. I have the excuses, like getting home late from work, and etc. but in the end...I usually don't want to do it. Well, I do, but I can easily talk myself out of it.
So, today I was challenged deeply. To love when all around is unlovable. To do this because Christ has done this for me. Who am I that I should judge or withhold love from anyone? Who am I.
The sermon isn't posted online yet but I will link it up as soon as it is. I think you should listen. It even includes a street fight. haha. Does that perk your interest?
Anyways, I was encouraged...challenged. So good.
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Monday, June 13, 2011
Have I Ever Showed you My Livtching Room?
Oh. What's that? You don't know what a Livtching Room is? Weird.
:)
Wanna know why you don't know what that is?
'Cause you don't live in SF.
Yeah.
We have one. It's a Living-Kitchen-Dinning Room all wrapped up in one.
Sometimes it drives me nuts. It can become cluttered and messy in .2 seconds. Usually though, I'm a fan. With the 2 of us... It's enough space. Usually. :)
One down side. The kitchen is tiny. Itsy bitsy. I need about 3 x's the counter space and I have enough kitchen stuff that I could open my own small gourmet restaurant. Seriously. BUT...I've made cakes, pies...and I'm about to make chocolate eclairs in it. So it does the job. :) AND, AND I have a full size oven. Pretty much unheard of in a small rental like ours. But I have one. And love it. And I may or may not blow it kisses every night. "Good night oven. I love you." You see, when we were looking at rental units about 90% came with an electric cook top and a toaster oven. Em. Hmmm. I was actually resolved to be okay with it and accept it. Then we found our current house and when I opened the door to the Livtching Room and I saw that oven it took about all I had to not hug the landlord and say, "You beautiful woman, THANK YOU for choosing to put a beautiful brand new full size oven into this unit. I will love you always." (We are the first to live here since they remodeled it so all is new).
So without further adieu...here is our abode.
First we enter into a door next to the garage which opens into a room where we keep our outdoor activity toys. Then we walk down this ridiculously long hall...where the floors still aren't finished. eh. Doesn't bother me. So this is our "third" front door...the main one that actually leads into our house. **Side note: Don't attempt to walk down this hall with the lights off, figuring that you'll know where the door is since you've walked it a bazillion times. If you do, you may walk flat, face first into it. That is all.**
Then we enter into the Livtching Room. There's our couch, our 500 year old, 300 lb. TV, the edge of our kitchen table that we eat on, and the refrigerator. The 2 doors lead to our own separate bedrooms...totally kidding. :) No bathroom though. Kinda a bummer but we've grown to love our outhouse. Totally kidding on that one too. You just can't see the door for it. :)
Here is the kitchen part of our Livtching Room. Pretty oven. Oh, and yes I DO have 3 jars full of cooking utensils. And yes I DO know I have a problem. But I use them...and I'm pretty sure I've only bought like one of them, haha. :)
And a blurry picture from the other angle (from our bedrooms). The door you see is the front door.
So there you have it. What it's like to live in San Francisco....and utilize an itsy bitsy space. We have rearranged a ton and moved things here and there. I think finally though we are some what satisfied. :)
Hope you enjoyed the tour.
:)
Wanna know why you don't know what that is?
'Cause you don't live in SF.
Yeah.
We have one. It's a Living-Kitchen-Dinning Room all wrapped up in one.
Sometimes it drives me nuts. It can become cluttered and messy in .2 seconds. Usually though, I'm a fan. With the 2 of us... It's enough space. Usually. :)
One down side. The kitchen is tiny. Itsy bitsy. I need about 3 x's the counter space and I have enough kitchen stuff that I could open my own small gourmet restaurant. Seriously. BUT...I've made cakes, pies...and I'm about to make chocolate eclairs in it. So it does the job. :) AND, AND I have a full size oven. Pretty much unheard of in a small rental like ours. But I have one. And love it. And I may or may not blow it kisses every night. "Good night oven. I love you." You see, when we were looking at rental units about 90% came with an electric cook top and a toaster oven. Em. Hmmm. I was actually resolved to be okay with it and accept it. Then we found our current house and when I opened the door to the Livtching Room and I saw that oven it took about all I had to not hug the landlord and say, "You beautiful woman, THANK YOU for choosing to put a beautiful brand new full size oven into this unit. I will love you always." (We are the first to live here since they remodeled it so all is new).
So without further adieu...here is our abode.
First we enter into a door next to the garage which opens into a room where we keep our outdoor activity toys. Then we walk down this ridiculously long hall...where the floors still aren't finished. eh. Doesn't bother me. So this is our "third" front door...the main one that actually leads into our house. **Side note: Don't attempt to walk down this hall with the lights off, figuring that you'll know where the door is since you've walked it a bazillion times. If you do, you may walk flat, face first into it. That is all.**
Then we enter into the Livtching Room. There's our couch, our 500 year old, 300 lb. TV, the edge of our kitchen table that we eat on, and the refrigerator. The 2 doors lead to our own separate bedrooms...totally kidding. :) No bathroom though. Kinda a bummer but we've grown to love our outhouse. Totally kidding on that one too. You just can't see the door for it. :)
Here is the kitchen part of our Livtching Room. Pretty oven. Oh, and yes I DO have 3 jars full of cooking utensils. And yes I DO know I have a problem. But I use them...and I'm pretty sure I've only bought like one of them, haha. :)
And a blurry picture from the other angle (from our bedrooms). The door you see is the front door.
So there you have it. What it's like to live in San Francisco....and utilize an itsy bitsy space. We have rearranged a ton and moved things here and there. I think finally though we are some what satisfied. :)
Hope you enjoyed the tour.
Saturday, June 4, 2011
Call Me a Nerd, Call Me a Bookworm...
But ONE of the top five reasons I love living in San Francisco is.... drum roll por favor...
LA BIBLIOTECA.
So, back in the day when I was a wannabe Southern Belle living on the East Coast we visited the library all.the.time. The library was amazin. We could get any book we wanted. Fantastic.
Then we moved to SLO. SLO is beautiful, it has outdoor activities galore, I love SLO, BUT...the library sucks. Seriously. It's hard to find a book you want and when you do, all the books for some reason seem to be in Lompoc. The transfer system is slow as molasses and thus, I quit frequenting the library. (granted this was all about 4 years ago so maybe it's changed).
When we moved to SF I thought, hmmm, big city, I bet the library is better. Sure enough. Who needs Netflix when you have the SF Library. They have hundreds of movies...and most all new ones. They have EVERY book you can imagine. AND they transfer it quickly and efficiently to your small local branch. yay.
I was noticing though, as I was reserving my 29 books :) (don't worry, the max is 50) that a lot of them needed to be transferred from the "Main Branch". I thought. Hmmm. Where is this "Main Branch"? I want to go to this "Main Branch." So I Google Imaged it and THIS my readers....is the "Main Branch".
*The Choir Angels Sing*
Pictures not mine....but no one to give the credit too. Boo. So, picture credit: unknown but not mio.
We live in a society where we would rather spend 2 hours at the mall then at the library (give me a pocket full of money and I'm right there with you ;) ). No wonder! Our libraries are so drab and dismal sometimes. But this one is beautiful. I think I shall live their forever. Yay. I'm so excited to go.
LA BIBLIOTECA.
So, back in the day when I was a wannabe Southern Belle living on the East Coast we visited the library all.the.time. The library was amazin. We could get any book we wanted. Fantastic.
Then we moved to SLO. SLO is beautiful, it has outdoor activities galore, I love SLO, BUT...the library sucks. Seriously. It's hard to find a book you want and when you do, all the books for some reason seem to be in Lompoc. The transfer system is slow as molasses and thus, I quit frequenting the library. (granted this was all about 4 years ago so maybe it's changed).
When we moved to SF I thought, hmmm, big city, I bet the library is better. Sure enough. Who needs Netflix when you have the SF Library. They have hundreds of movies...and most all new ones. They have EVERY book you can imagine. AND they transfer it quickly and efficiently to your small local branch. yay.
I was noticing though, as I was reserving my 29 books :) (don't worry, the max is 50) that a lot of them needed to be transferred from the "Main Branch". I thought. Hmmm. Where is this "Main Branch"? I want to go to this "Main Branch." So I Google Imaged it and THIS my readers....is the "Main Branch".
*The Choir Angels Sing*
Pictures not mine....but no one to give the credit too. Boo. So, picture credit: unknown but not mio.We live in a society where we would rather spend 2 hours at the mall then at the library (give me a pocket full of money and I'm right there with you ;) ). No wonder! Our libraries are so drab and dismal sometimes. But this one is beautiful. I think I shall live their forever. Yay. I'm so excited to go.
Thursday, June 2, 2011
I Came Home with a 20 lb Bag of Flour
20 Pounds
of Flour
=
BLISS.
My mother knows how to win my heart. :) She also may have possibly given me a 2 lb. bag of yeast to go with it. Oh my. Watch out.
So, obviously, lots of breads/cakes/pastries are in my future. Did I mention that I have a father with an amazingly fast metabolism? Thank you Father. I appreciate you passing that gene off to me.
Anyways, the huz and I went down south last weekend. We headed out Friday afternoon and got back last night. It was quite refreshing to have so many consecutive days with no work. I will say though...it's HARD getting back into the swing of things again. I felt ready to go home today at about 2pm. I also kept forgetting to do random things at work. My mind was obviously still off surfing/mtn. biking/pigging out on Dorn's pancakes. Dorn's pancakes. There is a post-worthy topic...all on it's own. So, in Morro Bay there is a place called Dorn's. The BEST pancakes ever. I mean, melt in your mouth, buttery, flaky/fluffy fantastic-ness. Pancakes are pretty high up there on my "favorite foods" list. I may or may not be able to list off every b-fast place in SLO that has good pancakes...and all the places that have so-so one's. Yeah. I think I've tried them all. Anyways, we splurged, and made ourselves feel sick but it was so worth it. You should have breakfast at Dorn's. And get pancakes.
We occupied ourselves with family, friends, and outdoor activities. Surfing, mountain biking, walking. Good times. Loved being away from the ridiculously crowded city. Seriously. I kept saying to Jason while in SLO, "Is it always this dead? Or is this normal?" Weird. I didn't like that I was becoming "used to" crazy amount of cars and people. blak. I also have apparently taken on the Bay area aggressive driver techniques. That didn't seem necessary in SLO. Oh well. So, sorry if I cut you off...it's not my fault. I live in the Bay Area! :)
of Flour
=
BLISS.
My mother knows how to win my heart. :) She also may have possibly given me a 2 lb. bag of yeast to go with it. Oh my. Watch out.
So, obviously, lots of breads/cakes/pastries are in my future. Did I mention that I have a father with an amazingly fast metabolism? Thank you Father. I appreciate you passing that gene off to me.
Anyways, the huz and I went down south last weekend. We headed out Friday afternoon and got back last night. It was quite refreshing to have so many consecutive days with no work. I will say though...it's HARD getting back into the swing of things again. I felt ready to go home today at about 2pm. I also kept forgetting to do random things at work. My mind was obviously still off surfing/mtn. biking/pigging out on Dorn's pancakes. Dorn's pancakes. There is a post-worthy topic...all on it's own. So, in Morro Bay there is a place called Dorn's. The BEST pancakes ever. I mean, melt in your mouth, buttery, flaky/fluffy fantastic-ness. Pancakes are pretty high up there on my "favorite foods" list. I may or may not be able to list off every b-fast place in SLO that has good pancakes...and all the places that have so-so one's. Yeah. I think I've tried them all. Anyways, we splurged, and made ourselves feel sick but it was so worth it. You should have breakfast at Dorn's. And get pancakes.
We occupied ourselves with family, friends, and outdoor activities. Surfing, mountain biking, walking. Good times. Loved being away from the ridiculously crowded city. Seriously. I kept saying to Jason while in SLO, "Is it always this dead? Or is this normal?" Weird. I didn't like that I was becoming "used to" crazy amount of cars and people. blak. I also have apparently taken on the Bay area aggressive driver techniques. That didn't seem necessary in SLO. Oh well. So, sorry if I cut you off...it's not my fault. I live in the Bay Area! :)
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