Pretty in pink (and red polka dots)

My friend Lela is turning 40 and celebrated by throwing one of the greatest parties in history. Her "Pretty in Pink Totally Rad 80s Prom" was a very fun evening.

I've been planning my outfit for some time, but I didn't realize that "vintage" meant "too small." Joe had to help squeeze me into my dress and we were afraid it would bust at the seams all night. Luckily, it did not. All week sales clerks have been staring at me strangely while I purchased red hose, a hair crimper, and blue eye shadow. I really want to scream, "People, you're stocking this stuff... why are you surprised that someone is buying it?" I was a bit concerned that the crimping would cause irreparable damage to my hair, but it bounced back nicely this morning.

I've got to tell you, I had more fun last night than I did at my real proms. Sweet Joe even brought me a fancy (read: gaudy) corsage to wear. Then we slow danced to "Crazy for You."



If you're interested, the rest of the pics are here.

After breakfast this morning I headed to Rogers for the Saving Grace Open House. It was such a great afternoon! Hundreds of people showed up and I got to tell them about the amazing ministry there.

I'm trying to rest up for my busy week in Boston. I went to the doctor on Friday with a sore throat and sinus pressure, and the doctor was a bit befuddled and never really gave me a diagnosis. He finally just said, "It could be swine flu (it's not). It could just be allergies (more likely). It looks like you just need to get lots of rest this weekend." Yeah, that cost me 35 bucks and exposure to disease during my 45 minute sojourn in the waiting room.

So, it's been a great weekend. Busy and cold week in New England ahead. Can't believe it's almost Thanksgiving!

Time flies

Remember when you were a kid, and time seemed to drag? The minutes between lunch and afternoon recess seemed to tick by slowly, and it felt like summer vacation would never get here. When it finally did, I couldn't wait for my birthday, but it seemed that month or so was an eternity... time filled with Bible school and slip-n-slides by day and chasing fireflies at night.

Now I'm reeling from the breakneck pace of the past four months, in disbelief that it's nearly time to blow out 36 candles on my birthday cake. I've been driving for 20 years, but it seems like yesterday that I took my first drivers' test, right after Mom and Dad bought me my dream car, a '88 Pontiac Grand Am with a cassette player. I drove it to basketball practice listening to "Must Have Been Love" by Roxette and checking out my hair in the rearview mirror, which I'd sprayed with hair spray and blown dry to stick out as far as possible.

Time, it seems, doesn't just fly when you're having fun. It flies when you're busy working and buying groceries at Wal-Mart. When you're paying electric bills and doing laundry.

I'm not quite sure which is worse: time passing too slowly when you're a child or too quickly when you age. There's either too much or not enough. And you wake up one day and realize you didn't appreciate those lazy nights of bike rides and lightening bugs nearly enough.

People in their 30s

A pal sent this to me, and I thought it was fun. So enjoy and read with a grain of salt, young 'ens.

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TO THE SPOILED UNDER 30 CROWD...

When I was a kid, adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious diatribes about how hard things were when they were growing up; what with walking twenty-five miles to school every morning .. uphill BOTH ways yadda, yadda, yadda!!!

And I remember promising myself that when I grew up, there was no way I was going to lay a bunch of crap like that on kids about how hard I had it and how easy they've got it! But now that I'm over the ripe old age of thirty, I can't help but look around and notice the youth of today.

You've got it so easy! I mean, compared to my childhood, you live in a Utopia! And I hate to say it but you kids today, you don't know how good you've got it!

I mean, when I was a kid we didn't have The Internet .. If we wanted to know something, we had to go to the library and look it up ourselves, in the card catalog!! (ooh, card catalog... blast from the past!)

There was no email... We had to actually write somebody a letter ..with a pen! Then you had to walk all the way across the street and put it in the mailbox and it would take like a week to get there!

There were no MP3's or Napsters... If you wanted to steal music, you had to hitchhike to the record store and shoplift it yourself! Or you had to wait around all day to tape it off the radio and the DJ usually talked over the beginning and mess it all up!

We didn't have fancy stuff like Call Waiting... If you were on the phone and somebody else called they got a busy signal, that's it!

And we didn't have fancy Caller ID Boxes either... When the phone rang, you had no idea who it was! It could be your school, your mom, your boss, your bookie, your drug dealer, a collections agent, you just didn't know! You had to pick it up and take your chances, mister!

We didn't have any fancy Sony Playstation video games with high-resolution 3-D graphics... We had the Atari 2600! With games like 'Space Invaders' and 'asteroids'. Your guy was a little square! You actually had to use your imagination!! And there were no multiple levels or screens, it was just one screen forever! And you could never win. The game just kept getting harder and harder and faster and faster until you died! Just like LIFE!

When you went to the movie theater there no such thing as stadium seating.. All the seats were the same height! If a tall guy or some old broad with a hat sat in front of you and you couldn't see, you were just in trouble!

Sure, we had cable television, but back then that was only like 15 channels and there was no on screen menu and no remote control... You had to use a little book called a TV Guide to find out what was on! You were in trouble when it came to channel surfing! You had to get out of your chair and walk over to the TV to change the channel and there was no Cartoon Network either! You could only get cartoons on Saturday Morning. Do you hear what I'm saying!?! We had to wait ALL WEEK for cartoons!

And we didn't have microwaves... if we wanted to heat something up we had to use the stove or go build a fire ... imagine that! If we wanted popcorn, we had to use that stupid Jiffy Pop thing and shake it over the stove forever like an idiot.

That's exactly what I'm talking about! You kids today have got it too easy. You're spoiled. You guys wouldn't have lasted five minutes back in 1980!

Regards,
The over 30 Crowd

{Sigh... it was a tough time to be alive}