Begone, unbelief - John Newton 1779

Begone, unbelief; my Saviour is near,

And for my relief will surely appear;

By prayer let me wrestle, and He will perform;

With Christ in the vessel, I smile at the storm.

Though dark be my way, since He is my guide,

'Tis mine to obey, 'tis His to provide;

Though cisterns be broken, and creatures all fail,

The word He has spoken shall surely prevail.

His love in time past forbids me to think

He'll leave me at last in trouble to sink;

Each sweet Ebenezer I have in review

Confirms His good pleasure to help me quite through.

Determined to save, He watched o'er my path,

When, Satan's blind slave, I sported with death;

And can He have taught me to trust in His name,

And thus far have brought me to put me to shame?

Why should I complain of want or distress,

Temptation or pain? He told me no less;

The heirs of salvation, I know from His Word,

Through much tribulation must follow their Lord.

Since all that I meet shall work for my good,

The bitter is sweet, the medicine, food;

Though painful at present, 'twill cease before long;

And then, O how pleasant the conqueror's song

Update

Well, Jeff and i both passed our GRE. It went fine, thank goodness.
We also went down to CA and had a great time with a bunch of friends. Go to Jeff's page and read about our crazy adventure on our drive home.
I'm just able to make it through my 7 days of work... the only thing that keeps me from crashing is looking forward to my 7 days off.
El Salvador is fast approaching... I leave in two weeks.
Jeff and I enjoyed a three day weekend at the beach with my folks. It was sunny, beautiful and a lot of fun.
I'm trying to study for my next board exam, and failing miserably. Maybe I'll take it cold and see what happens :).
Otherwise, I'm just tired.
I'm realizing how fast the rest of the year is going to go....
Next week's my mom's birthday, then my birthday and ElSalvador, then our anniversary, thanksgiving, Jeff's birthday and Christmas. It's going to be a busy 10 weeks.

More later

GRE?!

Studying for the GRE royally sucks.
Too bad Jeff and I can't take the exam together. He rocks at the verbal, and I'm not too shabby in the math section. Apart, we're doomed.
Jeff's possible scores: Verbal: 780 Analytical: 300
Elaine's possible scores: Verbal: 300 Analytical: 780
Writing section for both of us?? Who knows!?


Two weeks and we will find out....

Liz!!!

Liz came out to visit me a few weeks ago. She was able to stay for 10 days, and I enjoyed that time so much! Here are some pictures of our adventures:

We went to Seattle on Wednesday with Joy and two of her friends but Liz and I spent the majority of the day on our own exploring the city. We went to Pike’s Place Market

Went on the underground tour (fascinating – I highly recommend it to people who have never done it before) and learned all about Seattle history, crappers and whorehouses.

Here we are on the pier enjoying the bay and eating crab and artichoke dip.

YUM! On Thursday we drove out to McMinnville to visit my auntie. We picked a bunch of blackberries and apples for free at my aunt’s house, went downtown for the concert in the square (see crazy lady dancing below), visited the farmer’s market where I purchased the BEST coconut macaroons on the planet…

...and then drastically changed my hair. My good friend Stacy’s mom is a hairstylist and so I entrusted my drabby head of hair to her capable hands. This is the before, the crazy 80s rocker look, and how I’m doing it every day.

I’m super happy with how it turned out. I’ve gotten millions of compliments from people. My favorite was “Wow! That makes you look 10 years younger!” Hmmm… I don’t think I was going for 18, but OK. Now I’m joking that I’ll get carded at R-rated movies.

Saturday, mom and I took Liz to the Portland Farmer’s Market downtown. It’s usually packed, but this was just crazy. Unfortunately PSU’s commencement ceremony was on the next block, so it virtually tripled the number of people in a three block area. Yikes! We had fun though. I was stoked that I found 5 pounds of blueberries for $10, and the hugest heads of lettuce I’ve ever seen for $2. It was super fun, and we topped it off with a peach & almond tea latte at the Tea Zone. I was thinking about Pammy and Rachelle the whole time I was sipping its deliciousness! Wish you two could have been with us!

Monday was cold and raining (go figure…. It’s Oregon). What else could we do but go to the beach?! Liz and I spent several days camping on the coast last year but we didn’t get farther south than Pacific City. So, we drove the Lincoln City to Newport stretch this time. We showed Liz Jeff’s contribution to the Oregon Coast Aquarium (the mosaic wall), went to the Hatfield Marine Research Center, ate at Mo’s for dinner, and stopped at every beach on the way. At Depot Bay we saw several gray whales. It was my first experience seeing flukes, and anything that close to shore. It was awesome.

Miss you Liz! You are such an awesome friend and I LOVE it when you come to visit! Love you tons…

Take it

I have the next 8 days off all you 9-5ers.....
See what I think of THAT.

Movies

Ok, since everyone expects it, I thought I'd tell you what I thought of the X-files movie.

Crappy. Who wanted to see a merely semi-decent 30 minute plot that should have been for TV turned into a movie? Not me. Good news - Mulder and Scully are still officially together. That's about all I got out of that.

Boo Chris Carter!

However, since I had a gut feeling to expect nothing more than the above, Jeff and I planned for a double feature and ended on a very high, very awesome note - The Dark Knight.

The fantastical Christmas tree - concerning Erica's post

Ok,
I have to explain the following comment:

Erica said...
You really do have enough stuff to decorate a tree! I just saw a commercial for the new movie and thought of you.

The other night, during Bible study, Christmas popped into the conversation. Alas, it IS only July, but oh well.... I think I was actually the one to bring it up.

ANYWAY,
Jeff and I had this fantastic idea to make "themed", Christmas trees this year. We are going to make them as nerdy as possible and since we have differing opinions about the best tree decorations, Jeff and I are going to have a contest to see who decorates the best tree. You the blog readers will determine who wins the "Most Fantastical Christma Tree" award.

Just to give you a head's up...
Jeff's tree: Magic card related
My tree: X-files.

Oh yeah. Let the plotting begin....

July so far

I haven't posted in a while.
We've had a lot of fun things happen this month, and it's time I shared them.
We got rid of our internet since it was way to expensive, so we are having a harder time keeping all this up to date.

Right after we got back from Hawaii we had Eric and Steve up for a visit, which was great! I worked a few days and then had a few off, so I was able to hang out while they were here. We really didn't do much but watch a ton of movies, and get through a good chunk of Flight of the Conchords. It was great.
Jeff worked really hard and completely organized the garage before they got here, so we were able to enjoy it for the first time in a while. Here's some pics of ping pong, Jeff standing proudly next to his garage "aquarium", and Jeff putting up his black lights (that's Steve's hand... I don't know). It's pretty fun in there right now.





While the guys were playing ping pong Eric and I whipped out my X-files "obsession box". It is a remnant of the old days when I was addicted. Really - addicted. I think everyone was surprised that I actually own X-files trading cards and action figures. Crazy, huh? Here's a picture to prove it.



Other very nerdy nuances about Elaine include:
I have been to a Star-Trek Convention, loved it, and would go again in a heart beat if one was coming to Portland.
Some of the best money I ever spent:


Yes, I met Chewbacca!

I also play Magic cards. Not very well, I admit, but I’m slowly learning. We are establishing a modest collection. I love anime! We own a lot. My family regularly would watch all three Star Wars in a row to discover nuances in costume changes, plot and character connections etc. We also watched Star Trek… my mother is responsible for my Voyager addiction. I am an avid sci-fi reader. I have a level 82 Sorceress in Diablo II, a Night Elf WOW character, have attempted Starcraft, Halo and various other games. I’m currently engrossed in Persona 3. I regularly check out the current issues of National Geographic, Discover, Smithsonian and Science from our local library. Yes, we go to the library… a lot.
So there ya go... I'm definitely a nerd.

ANYHOO,
After the guys left we took it pretty easy. We went with our good friends to Manzanita on July 4th to watch the fireworks on the beach. I don't have pics, but look here and see what we were up to!

July 5th was Jeff's mom's birthday. We met the family and a few friends of Joy's at their house and went wine tasting for the afternoon. We had an incredible BBQ when we got back to the house, played with a giant sling shot and water balloons, and went in the hot tub. It was a really good day. Here's some pics of the wine tasting and the sling shot!

The weather's been beautiful so Jeff and I have gone on many walks, played Frisbee, and just had a great time outside. I'm really bummed because I accidentally deleted a bunch of pictures from our amazing date the other day. Grr! I don't know how in heck it happened! I had some good pics of us too.

Anyway, we went to the art museum in the morning, had a picnic at the Hoyt Arboretum, and went out to a fancy dinner downtown. It was great!

I had this entire last week off work because of how the scheduling worked out. Jeff and I got a lot of work done in our yard, which was nice.

I also went out to McMinnville to visit my aunt. We went downtown for the concert in the square, the farmer's market, and then just hung out a bit at her place. We picked a ton of cherry's, which I'm enjoying right now actually. It was great!

Hope you all are having as good of a summer as I am!

Last Day in Hawaii

Yes, this post is about 10 days late - so sue me. I've been busy.

But here it is folks - the day I burned myself to a crisp.
After packing in the morning we all decided to go to the beach to bodysurf. We were there a total of three hours and I was wearing 50 spf. Well, all I can say is I'm glad I burned on my last day in Hawaii and not my first!


Here are the fun picks of us at the beach!







AND... We developed the pics from our underwater camera.
Here are pics of us snorkeling:






Jeff and I on the waterslides at the Hilton:



And here's my favorite picture from our trip: