Engagement Photos are Online!

Our engagement photos are now available for viewing online:

http://gabrielboone.com/showit/Heather

Free Time? Huh?

Apparently I've been pretty busy lately. I didn't realize it until this morning when our engagement photographer asked, "What do you do in your free time?" and I responded, "Huh?"

Lately, free time has consisted of premarital counseling, driving around Arlington checking out rental units, a bit of wedding planning, and applying to Grad School. Apparently what I do in my free time is nothing that could or should be considered leisurely. You should know that I don't prefer to live my life this way. I love free time...vast spaces of nothingness that can be filled with whatever desire happens to be floating by at that moment.

However, even if life right now is a bit more busy than I'd like, I'm still stubbornly convinced my life should not be classified as busy, so here is a list of interesting things I have done recently that are not about weddings, grad schools or leases:

1. Watching Seasons 1-7 of Friends (on my second series watch-through). Mostly, I watch it while I'm doing my taxes or updating Quicken. Joey is a very funny man, even moreso when you've been doing a budget analysis for the past 45 minutes.
   
2. Reading my Better than Oprah book club book for the month: The Hero and the Crown. This book is actually a fantastical biography of the life of my maid of honor, Renee, who makes a very good fictional character.
   
3. Cooking fabulous dishes. Recently, I made a fantastic asian noodle soup (with bok choy!), a healthy bean dip (with homemade whole wheat tortilla chips) and a ginger pear cheesecake. I cannot wait for my Pampered Chef Bridal Shower in Ohio next month!
   
4. Listening to my latest set of purchases at Best Buy and iTunes:
   Derek and Sandra's Ampersand EP
   Natasha Bedingfield's Pocketful of Sunshine
   Anna Nalick's Shine EP
   Sara Bareilles' Little Voice
   Jon Foreman's Fall EP, Spring EP, and Winter EP
   Caedmon Call's Overdressed
   Also, I'm still enjoying some Christmas gift/purchases:
   Allison Krauss and Robert Plant's Raising Sand
   Levon Helm's Dirt Farmer
   Shawn Colvin's These Four Walls
   Gillian Welch's Soul Journey
   (n.b. Recently, I discovered that in Clay and I's shared music tastes, female pop singer/songwriters don't really make his cut...thus many of these purchases have been either reactionary, or to fill in a void in my life. It neglects to inform you how much Counting Crows and Ryan Adams I've soaked in over the last few months.)
5. Purchasing tickets to see Radiohead in Seattle the week after we return from our Honeymoon! I'm so pumped! Thom Yorke, the lead singer for Radiohead, looks very much like Clay's very good friend DeJon. If you want, I can get DeJon's autograph for you.
   

Okay, honestly, I feel a lot better about myself now. I was seriously beginning to worry that my life was no longer in my own hands, but apparently, through music and cooking, and the occasional book and episode of Friends, there is my sweet respite.

Thank you sweet respite. You are being good to me these days.

I Love to Tell the Story

I don't know if I'll ever get tired of telling people the story of the way Clay and I met.

Last week, we were looking at a condo to rent, and the real estate agent asked off-hand where we'd met, and we breezily replied, "Oh--we were at a convention in Austin, and Clay posted an ad on the convention bulletin board looking for people to go to a concert with him, and I just happened to see his ad and call." We turned sheepishly to see her eyes wide, and her jaw a bit dropped, and we laughed a bit, because although it's a bit surreal at times still, it's what happened. We love telling our story.

Yesterday morning, we went and spent a few hours standing (freezing) in the middle of a bright red tulip field telling our story. We hired my coworker Aaron, who runs Hands On Films, to create a video documentary of us telling our story. It's a piece we're putting together to share at our wedding--so that for those who don't know Clay so well or for those who haven't seen Heather and Clay together at all--they can feel more a part of our story.

It might seem a little taxing to stand in a field talking to a video camera for 2 hours, but it really wasn't. Just being able to look out at a hazy Northwest gray sky, across acres of bright red, pink, and purple tulips, and green, green grass...and tell someone how we got together, how we got engaged, why we're getting married, and why we love each other, it was such a blessing. We loved telling our story.

And telling our story was energizing. At the end of it all, we were able to just look at each other and say, "I love you so much" because we'd been so reminded of where we'd come from these past 18 months.

Growing up, we'd sing the old hymn, I Love to Tell the Story:

I love to tell the story of unseen things above,
Of Jesus and His glory, of Jesus and His love.
I love to tell the story, because I know ’tis true;
It satisfies my longings as nothing else can do.

I love to tell the story, ’twill be my theme in glory,
To tell the old, old story of Jesus and His love.

It's been awhile since I told the story of how Christ has worked in my life...how we met, how I fell in love with Him. I don't even remember the last time I told my story of meeting Christ. But when I see how energized I was to tell Aaron and the video camera how much I love Clay, and how satisfying it was to share that love...well... I think it's a story I should share more than I do.

I think this is how we are supposed to be sharing Christ with others anyways:

When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I came to you in weakness and fear, and with much trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power, so that your faith might not rest on men's wisdom, but on God's power. (1 Corinthians 2:1-5.)

Sci-Fiiiiiiiiiii

I've decided to become a sci-fi nerd.

Now, to just be a sci-fi nerd is one thing, but to consciously become one certainly attains an even higher level of nerdiness.

Why would I want to do such a thing? First of all, because sci-fi is freaking cool. What's not to love about Star Wars, Star Trek, Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Jurassic Park, Transformers. Face it, you love sci-fi too.

Second of all, because there's more amazing sci-fi out there to be read and seen, and honestly, Star Wars and Star Trek are just the tip of a very extensive genre. Last week when Chris and Janelle were visiting for Spring Break, we all went to the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame. It was pretty awesome to see the original Death Star, the Rocketeer's jet pack, and loads of other stuff from Paul Allen's personal collection.

But I was actually embarrassed to be in the Science Fiction Museum having never seen Blade Runner or I, Robot or having never read Ender's Game or Slaughterhouse Five. I was like, "What in the world!? I'm missing out!"

In response, Chris, Janelle, Clay and I promptly returned to my house to watch Contact and I Am Legend, in order to make up for lost sci-fi time.

And now I have printed out the list of the top sci-fi books, where I have sadly discovered I've only read eleven of the top 100! So--slightly more interesting than my last top 100 goal (to watch the AFI Top 100 Films), I will now attempt to read the top 100 sci-fi books. This will at least be good, in that it will require me to read Ender's Game, which will allow me to be better friends with both fiance Clay and maid-of-honor Renee.

At this point, pre-top-100, my favorite sci-fi book is probably either The Time Machine or Brave New World...and my favorite sci-fi movie is probably Return of the Jedi (who doesn't love the Ewoks, eh?), although I still have a soft spot for Batteries Not Included (which may seem dumber now than it did 20 years ago...) And I loved Firefly...

How about you? How do you stack up against the top 100? And what's your favorite sci-fi book/movie?

TU on Dateline

I missed the Dateline episode last week, but here's the coverage...

A Dateline special on the Taylor Accident of April 2006 and the case of mistaken identity. It's incredibly moving...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23849928/