Sizzler and Hometown Buffet

Tonight Jesse, Aaron and I went on a date. To Pizza Ranch. For my California friends and family, Pizza Ranch is a pizza buffet. It's like Soup Plantation, but instead of soups, it's just a bunch of pizza and also some additional fried foods. I had a bread stick, a pepperoni slice, a combo slice, a BBQ chicken slice, a few greasy chips, a couple different kinds of fries, and Jesse and I shared some dessert slices. Don't worry, I put some lettuce on my plate a couple times too. That sounds like I ate too much. I didn't. They were small slices and I wasn't even really full when we were leaving. I probably could've had more but I think I hit my carb and grease limit so I called it quits.

I really love buffets. I'm not very good at them, or I'm VERY good at them, it depends on your perspective. I love food and I love not having to wait for it and I love not having to commit to one choice for a meal, so buffets are sometimes perfect.

When we were growing up, if we went to a restaurant it was one of these four: Sizzler, Hometown Buffet, Denny's, or IHOP, but I always wanted to go to Sizzler or Hometown.

Sizzler had a great salad bar with a whole side of it that had other not-salad things like a build your own taco section and spaghetti and there was soft serve. What else could an eight year old want? One pitfall was that the whip cream and the sour cream were really close together, and they weren't easily distinguishable. There were a few gross tacos and some really nasty jello with sour cream on it. Jello is pretty gross on it's own already, so I'm not really sure it was the sour cream's fault if it tasted gross, but it didn't help. Sizzler also gave you cheesy toast. I just want you to know that as I'm recalling the Sizzler, it's magical and special and delicious in my head. I know that it's a chain restaurant with okay food and a salad bar, but eight year old me believes it's so much more.

Hometown Buffet was also pretty good. My memory of it isn't quite as magical, but still a little magical. There was a build your own taco bar, but it wasn't quite as good as Sizzler's. It had rotating main course meals, which was good and bad. It lacked the constancy of Sizzler's, but if we went on a night with pasta or even more Mexican food than just the taco bar, it was the best. All that aside, the reason we went to Hometown Buffet is the dessert section. They had so many desserts. Cake, brownies, some kind of bar, and soft serve with like ten different toppings. There was no shame in getting all the desserts, and again eight year old me thought this was the best thing that could happen.

You know, this seems like an abrupt ending. But, I already wrote 4-5 paragraphs about some buffets and there really isn't much more you can say about that.




  

I don't want to watch myself watch tv

Sometimes people talk about how when you die, you get to watch your life flash before your eyes. I'm not sure this is something that actually happens, and I won't be able to say for sure if it is until I come to the end of my life. Here's what I do know, if it's true, I don't want to watch myself watch tv. Or look at my phone. Or other boring things like that. Sure there's a lot going on in some of the shows I like to watch, and you can connect well to people online, but there's no substitute for real people and doing real things. If I have to watch myself binge watching netflix, that will be a pretty boring life to watch. I try to think about that when I'm binge watching netflix.

If you could watch your life, would you be bored by what you saw? If so, maybe go do something else. Maybe even do something kind of brave.

Here's a good Donald Miller quote: "Right before you die, you'll realize your whole life was about loving people. And you watched too much television."

Millennials

We talked about millennials for a little bit during our Wednesday Lent bible study/ service that we're doing, so today seemed like a good day to say a word or two about them. Not really them, more like us. I'm one of them. That's mostly what I want to say about Millennials, that I'm one of them. I was born in 1986. I'll be 31 in October. The oldest millennials will be turning 36 this year I think. I know that might seem very young to some, but I think it's pretty solidly adult. I get there isn't an official end year to the millennials (at least that I know of), so there's a wide age range, but I don't get the sense that when older generations talk about the millennials that they're imagining people in their 30s. The Millennials seem to have been immortalized somewhere between 16 and 22 (is immortalized the right word?). I just want to remind people that some of us are parents and are getting gray hair and definitely did have cassettes and know what life was like without cell phones.

Internet Trolls' Gift

Internet trolls are the worst. They spend the day posting rude comments, usually with a lot of spelling errors. And they like to keep the caps lock on so you can read them yelling. They like to push people's buttons and get them all defensive and upset. They're the worst worst in the comments section of political posts. But let me tell you one thing they are very good at: coming up with clever insult-like nick names for our presidents. The favorite for Obama I think was Obummer and I'm not quite sure what the favorite for Trump is yet, but I'm thinking it's just Orange. I've also seen Cheeto used a few times. We all have different gifts.

Be

It's another writing a post from my bed on my phone nights. My baby is currently "talking" to the pictures on the wall from his little bed and periodically spitting out his pacifier so that I can put it back in his mouth.

Life is really good these days. Its somehow more busy and less busy at the same time. It's the end of the day and I'm not  quite sure how we got there. I have a million things I want to do and I didn't really do any of them. These are most of my days now. It's good and challenging.

My sis has a tattoo that says "be". I think what it means to her is to find joy in simply being her. You don't have to be something you're not or constantly doing things to find meaning. Just be. That's what I think she thinks, so you'd have to ask her close I was to getting it. If I was, that's a good lesson for these days. I keep trying to do so many things and I time runs out and I can't. Just be-ing sounds really good. And healthy. And wise. Thanks sis for the wisdom on your arm.

And I already fell asleep, 3 times now. I'm going to just BE asleep. 💜

I hate facebook

Listen, Facebook, it's not your fault. It's not really you that I hate, but there are a few things that I don't really like that are (partially) because of you:

1. My addiction to mindless scrolling. Sometimes I don't even think I'm reading what people post, I'm just scrolling. I guess it's soothing?
2. How much time I waste not doing things because I seem to think I need to check Facebook. What do I think will have changed in 5 minutes time? No idea.  
3. Getting sucked into the excitement of seeing how many likes I have for something I've posted. I want to make fun of people who are all about the likes, but let's be real, it makes me feel good when people think I'm funny or support something I'm doing, etc.
4. Seeing people that I like that I don't live close to anymore doing fun things without me.
5. That it's become the news, but filtered through my friends' views. 
6. Political memes.
7. The comment sections on most news posts- why are people so cruel?
8.  Probably the thing that I struggle with the most is getting glimpses of people's political views or opinions on social issues (which are sometimes surprising or disappointing) but not really being invited in thoughtful conversations about why they think the way they do. I would prefer to have a real life conversation with someone that I trust enough to disagree with and learn from, but facebook feels more like I've walked up to a group of people- some that I know and some I don't- and force my way into a conversation where I'm bound to be misunderstood or I'm bound to misunderstand someone else. Plus, it's hard to have much empathy for each other when we're reading verses having a real conversation. 
9. When I scroll over a video in the middle of the night and accidentally click on it with the sound on.
10. The creepy marketing on the side that's specifically targeted just to me.
11.   When the chat feature turns back on, even though I've turned it off. I don't like when people know I'm on facebook. 

Well, I don't want to be a Negative Nelly, so here are a few things that I DO really like:

1. Getting to connect to friends from a million different places.
2. Networking.
3. Sharing pictures with each other.
4. Having a place where pictures and memories are saved from the last ten years.
5. Getting to support people in their life accomplishments and getting supported in mine.
6. Staying up to date with people I don't get to talk to as often.
7. Recipe videos, especially the ones that are really elaborate desserts.
8. Thoughtful articles that help me learn or give me words to describe my thoughts.
9. Friends' baby and puppy pictures.
10. BFF group messenger threads.
11. Funny things.
12. Being able to invite people to a party pretty easy.
13. The "on this day" feature- I love memories and I'm always nostalgic. I love being reminded of good things that have happened.
14. The internet reminding me when it's a friend's birthday.

THE END.

Distraction (yes, it's a similar title as yesterday's)

I'm going to distract you with this cute pic, so you won't realize I didn't have time to write a real post tonight. And I am too tired and need to get up too early to do it now.

Distracted

Sometimes I think I have ADD. I've never been tested so I can't tell you for sure. It doesn't really matter if I am or if I'm not, what matters is that I think a lot of things at the same time and it's very distracting. I'm going to take the next five minutes or so and just write down a bunch of random thoughts that I have:

• Hi grandma! My grandma reads this blog the most faithfully. She even prints out the pages.
• Aaron just made a cute squeal and it made Jesse laugh and I like that.
• I'm actually already having a hard time with this because it takes me too long to finish typing a sentence before I think about something else.
• I stopped to watch a weird basketball commercial.
• I just imagined a bunch of people who could possibly read my blog.
• And a memory about when me and a couple friends in our contemporary social theory class in college would study over margaritas because it helped us focus.
• One time in seminary, I wrote a 10 page paper in about an hour at this dive-y bar with Heather.
• Oh yeah, Heather wants me to play trivia crack with her.
• I hope people don't think I drink too often, since I referenced drinking two sentences in a row.
• Those two memories were several years a part, so I shouldn't worry about that.
• Why is my skin so itchy?
• I need to get the laundry out soon.
• I wonder if Jesse will make pancakes tomorrow morning.
• I'm too full to want pancakes right now.
• Why did I eat so much food tonight?
• Tomorrow I'm not allowed to have any sodium. That's a rule that I just made up for myself.
• Did you know that the serving size for green olives is 2 and they contain 13% of your daily value of sodium. I ate like 10 of them today before I knew that. And then I ate 2.5 pieces of pizza. I feel puffy.
• Aaron is the cutest baby that exists.
• Jesse's a good dad.
• I'm really glad he already got Aaron ready for bed.
• I thought I wasn't that tired earlier, but I fell asleep right after dinner.
• It was probably the pizza.
• Now I'm guilty again for eating so much tonight.
• I also had ice cream after the pizza. 
• It'd be fine if I hadn't had 3 days worth of salt.
• It was soy ice cream and the pizza had fake cheese for anyone who was worried.
• I really think a lot about how other people are interpreting what I say in this blog. I've already caught myself wondering about what kind of judgments people are making like 7 times. That's a facinating realization.
• It might be a good practice for people to just write down all of their thoughts.
• I think weirder things that what I've typed. I'm leaving some of the weirder ones out. I just don't trust the internet with all of my ridiculous and private thoughts. Just some of my ridiculous and private thoughts.
• I miss some people from Hastings.
• And from the Twin Cities.
• And from Thousand Oaks.
• And other parts of California.
• Johanna lives in San Diego and she's in Lebanon right now. She's so cool.
• Stephanie's middle name is Lavonne and I gave her the nickname Stephanie Lebanon a few years ago. I don't know why. But I do kind of like it. I've since shortened it to Stephanie Lebs. I don't know if I told her that or not though.
• When Stephanie I first hung out we were in seventh grade and our church beach day got cancelled because no one wanted to come and it was kind of cold. So, my mom dropped us off at the mall and we saw Notting Hill at the movie theater. We got the giant bag of popcorn and refilled it after the movie. Then, we went to Sweet Factory and got a bunch of candy. Then, we went to my house and ate a medium pizza. Then we had a sleepover. Then Stephanie got sick and had to go home. I'm feeling sick just thinking of all the stuff we ate. And guilty again for all the salt I had today. Also this memory is how me and Steph became BFFs.
• Lots of other random thoughts about lots of friends.
• The Office and all the best quotes.

Well, that was more like 10-15 minutes. Welcome to my brain.

Cool Wedding Hashtags

Jesse and I got married right before people started making those cool wedding hashtags. I kind of feel like we missed out on something. I wanted to make a list of fun hashtags that we could have used if we just got married like one year later, but I could only think of one and I don't even like it that much: #nicedayforaweisswedding. I feel like there's a lot we could do with Weiss and also JK (Jesse Kelli and Just Kidding), but I'm not really sure what. People must spend a lot of time working on these or they're much cleverer than I am. #hashtags

Senior Quote and/or Smiling

In our high school year book, the seniors got to put a favorite quote under their name (do all schools do this or just mine?). I spent a lot of time reading through all of my best quotes from my quote book, so I could pick the perfect one to represent myself (and also inspire people [insert the cry-laughing emoji]). 

After lots of research, I landed on: "A smile is a curve that can set a lot of things straight."

It's a little cheesy, but I also think it's wise. Smiling makes things a lot better sometimes. If it's a tense conversation, a smile helps diffuse it. If you're annoyed and you force yourself to smile, sometimes you can convince yourself that you want to smile, and sometimes after enough smiling, you might not even be annoyed anymore. If you're saying something potentially contentious or divisive, a smile can communicate some of the following: "I could be wrong" or "I don't take myself TOO seriously" or "if you disagree, we can still be friends." If a relationship is on the mend, a smile can speed the healing process along. A smile can connect strangers walking by each other on the street. A smile can say "I like you" or "I love you" or "I'm here for you." All in all, if you're not sure if you should smile, I'd err on the side of smile.

To quote Buddy the Elf, "I love smiling. Smiling's my favorite."