the promised link

Well here goes...I've been blogging on another site for a while, and I love it! There are tons more options, and although I haven't used a lot of them yet, I plan to. SO...follow the link to see what I've been up to for the past month, and start watching that blog for updates. This link will be here for a little while, and then I'll delete the entire blog.

New blog

wordpress!!

Oh I'm SO excited! I got an invitation to use WordPress!! I've never tried it, but I've heard that it's great, so we'll see. I'll post a link to the new blog at some point if I decide to switch. Back to work! More later...

official name change

No, I'm not changing MY name, but I AM changing the name of this blog. Obviously I have not posted every day, so I shouldn't call it Meg Daily. ;)

Life got really busy over the past month, and my job has been absolutely crazy. I'm not working any extra hours or anything, but the stress level has risen because of some recent changes. I was just talking to a friend from UND, and after talking about work for a few minutes, he said, "Hmmm...maybe you should work in the library!" :) That sounds kinda nice...check out books for people, put books back on the shelves, don't deal with money or houses...sounds pretty stress-free to me! :)

Dealy Plaza

B and I drove downtown in Dallas this morning to see “the grassy knoll” and Dealy Plaza where Kennedy was assassinated. It was weird…it was just this place in the center of the city with cars driving past. There was a white X painted in the center of the road where the fatal shot hit him, and there were all of these tourists around walking up the grassy knoll, pointing up at the window where Lee Harvey Oswald was found, and taking pictures of the surrounding buildings. There were also men going around trying to sell commemorative newspapers with pictures from the video footage of that day, maps of the area, and ideas about the conspiracy theories. The grassy knoll was a small hill beside the road, and there is a fence on top with a cement building of some sort set up to block off the parking lot behind.

My favorite part was beside the Kennedy Memorial. There was a row of tall trees on either side of a sidewalk, and they had been trimmed just perfectly so that they made a tunnel to walk through. It was more peaceful there than in the rest of the city, and the shade from the trees made a cool hiding place from the hot sun. We walked around for about a half an hour, and then we got tired of people trying to sell us stuff, so we left.

We decided we don’t like big cities ‘cause there are too many crazy people around who won’t leave you alone and always want your money (even when you don’t have any with you). I think if it weren’t for that and the crazy drivers, I’d enjoy being in a big city every so often. It’s fun being surrounded by skyscrapers and being near almost any store you’ve ever wanted to shop in. I can definitely see why L loved Atlanta so much!

a texan

B and I are officially Texans! We moved to Dallas this past weekend and have spent the week settling in and applying for jobs, and yesterday we went in to get our Texas drivers licences. We don't actually have the official ones yet since they have to mail them to us, but we have the paper ones that say we are Texas residents.

It's pretty nice down here. Dallas is really busy with lots of traffic, but once I get used to that, I think I'll like it a lot. It's nowhere near as pretty as Virginia (but I guess I'm kinda biased there) but it is pretty in different ways, like the wide open sky and the good storms.

I've met a few people from Virginia here, and just this morning I met a woman in PBT from Decatur! She and I talked about all sorts of places there, I told her where we used to live, and we asked each other about different people we knew up there to see if the other knew them. We didn't find anyone in common, but it was fun to meet someone who's from one of the places we used to live.

Tonight we have a party with PBT people at S&K's house. They are a couple who are in charge of recruits for PBT, and we're all going to their house for snacks & games. It should be a fun time, and it will be good to hang out with some PBT people!

wonderful book

God is so good! He has provided so many ways to teach me about Himself and to point me towards righteousness. I am reading a wonderful book called Stepping Heavenward by Elizabeth Prentiss. It tells the story of her life through her journal entries, and it has so many wonderful insights into God's love and forgiveness and into striving towards holiness. I know I sin in so many ways each day, but the examples that this woman sets, even in talking about her mistakes, are priceless because they show her growth over the years. I long to have the patience that she had and to see everything that I come up against as a gift from God for my good. I want to see the people I find difficult to be around as tools God is using to make me more like His Son and trials I face as events that push me closer to Jesus. My trials and temptations are not new, and God wants to use them to refine me. I am so thankful for this!

I started writing this a few days ago, and I have been interested to see the way my thoughts have changed in just a short time. I' ve known the truths in that book for a long time, but it's so easy to forget to apply them to daily life. What a fitting reminder I had from reading Stepping Heavenward this weekend, since yesterday and today have been filled with those little daily trials that so easily discourage me. I don't always meet the challenges or think of the trials as I should, but with Christ's help, I hope to see each part of life as He sees it.

funny colors

Last night, B and I were leaving one of the academic buildings after listening to a presentation on "Ethnogrammar" when we noticed something funny outside. The sky was covered in clouds, and we could tell a storm was on its way, but the light outside all looked orange and eerie. We walked back to our dorm and kept watching it through the huge window in our room. There was a small area where the sun was setting behind the clouds that had a faint pinkish glow, but then up in the middle of the sky there was a bright spot that was a light orange color. This bright spot threw the eerie light on everything outside. It got brighter, turned to pink, and then faded away into the darkness. It was quite a sight!

landlords

I've run into two unusual landlord behaviors lately. The first is with the school that I rented my apartment from for the past year. We moved out around May 20, and I still have not gotten my security deposit back even though NC law says they must return it to me within 30 days of vacating the apartment. When I called today to ask about it, the financial manager said she had been waiting for the electric bill. However, I had called three weeks ago, and someone else told me that the bill had just come in and they would be immediately sending me my check. I'm definitely going to look through my records to make sure I'm not getting charged for an extra month of utilities.
The second strange landlord behavior is from our perspective landlord in Dallas. We were filling out the rental application & got to the financial section. There was a part asking about our employment status, and then a section asking for our bank name, the kinds of accounts that we have, and our account numbers! That seems VERY strange to me. I'm happy to tell them that we have checking & savings accounts, but actually giving them the account number after having already given them our social security numbers seems to be giving them the possibility of control over our accounts. That's definitely not going to happen :) Is this a normal thing for landlords to ask for???

auto-what??

I got back from my first class just now to find B quite excited about a new theory he learned in Phonology class. They touched on autosegmental phonology today in class, which is the same theory I've been studying in Tone class. He told me how great it was 'cause it accounts for all sorts of changes in data that can't be accounted for in the old theory, and how it really seems to show exactly what languages are doing. We got SO excited talking about it back & forth, and finally I burst out laughing realizing how funny it all was. Here we were getting excited about a theory because we're totally emersed in this stuff and it will really affect how we are able to do our work on the field later, and most "normal" people listening to us would have absolutely no idea what we're talking about! We're such nerds, but wow, it's fun :) I guess it's times like these that I know we're doing what we're meant to be doing. :)
(P.S. The link in this post takes you to the lingualinks website definition of autosegmental phonology. From that page, you can get to all SORTS of other fun definitions and explanations. Enjoy ;) )

Friday

 Today was a stressful day. The morning started off slowly since I didn’t have the usual morning work assignment to do. Each student here at SIL-UND has a job assigned to them that is supposed to take around an hour a day for 4-5 days a week. This takes the place of paying an extra $300 or so over the summer to have housekeeping staff in our dorm. My work assignment this year is to help with grading papers for Syntax and Morphology. It’s really quite fun, but it is nice to have a day off from it every once in a while.

Later in the day, after tone class and lunch, I started working on homework. It’s really amazing how fast homework piles up. I guess that was the stressful part…working on homework that seems rather pointless & much more like busy work than anything else for only a one-hour class.

So now, bring on the weekend!

haircut

Well, the haircut was a success this time :) Whew :)

I'm currently putting off working on homework by playing with new blog software. I'm using Sauce Reader right now. It's helpful since I don't have any knowledge at all about html. I'll have to find out more about wordpress...although i'm not too certain it would work on my computer. It's becoming more apparent to me that my computer is quite ancient. :)

how does this work?

I've never had an ongoing blog before...I've tried one, but it was more like an online journal. Perhaps this one will start that way too. I've really enjoyed keeping up with the Hollands through Joe's blog, so I decided this would be a good way to keep everyone updated on us. When you're far away in a place like North Dakota, it's hard to let people know what life is like without talking to them on a day to day basis.

This has been a really good summer so far. Bryan and I are still getting used to being married, and as every married couple always is, we are learning to communicate. Who knew how easy it is to let that slide? We're having fun learning, though...and we have a good time guessing what the other one is thinking when we're in a group and then talking about it later.

I got my hair cut a few days ago. It's short again - close to chin-length. I'm going to get it fixed this afternoon because instead of turning out rounded like we talked about, it's more of a mushroom shape. :) Let's just hope that when she fixes it it doesn't get worse!