commas and ampersands

I smile big in photos. Closed-mouth smiles, half there, look silly on me. My eyes are big, and they get bigger, somehow, when I smile. I look like a goof when I try to smile with my lips together.

He smiles small. His favorite pictures of himself have his mouth closed, and he looks like he's got a secret that he's not telling the camera. He doesn't like photos where he smiles with his teeth showing.

When we smile--and I mean really, genuinely, deep-down smile--I sparkle; he glows.

I'm still waiting for a transcendently beautiful picture of the two of us laughing together, but whenever someone takes one, one or the other of us has our eyes squinched up funny, or a huge double chin.

At first glance, this is the best description of the two of us. I'm more outgoing, more verbose, more likely to be the one heard across the room. He's less likely to talk for the sake of making noise, more likely to think before he speaks, less brash, more likely to back up what I'm saying and distill my ramblings.

And maybe the fact that those first impressions are as one-dimensional as a photographed smile is why we complement each other so well. It's a clear, accurate picture, but it's far from being the full spectrum of smiles that either of us has.

Maybe the squinchy-eyed, double-chinned, weird-angled laughing photo is transcendently beautiful after all.



For the visually impaired: There is a photo of Colin and I standing in front of a Christmas tree. We're both looking straight at the camera. I'm smiling a wide, full smile. He's smiling more gently, with his lips together. It's one of our favorite photos of the two of us together.

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This has been an entry for therealljidol. Other entries for this topic can be found here.

Well, I'm back. My little blog-cation has served its purpose, and it's time to re-enter the world of the communicative. It's been a full few weeks, with Esther's visit, more hours at work, the semester gearing up to the end and winding down at the same time, and the various and sundry day-to-day things that happen.

There were a thousand little things that I thought of to write about while I was away from lj-land (at least, away from the posting side; I kept up with everyone else's journals), but, of course, I didn't write them down, so they're lost in the netherworld of the space in between my brain and my keyboard, never to be recovered. Most of them. Some of the ideas will likely resurface at some point--I find that I mull over certain entries for quite some time before writing them--but many of the trivial, fleeting ideas are gone.

That's okay, though. Not everything that passes through my head needs to find a voice on the internet.

So, what's new? Well, my laptop's keyboard is pink now. I have pictures of my own computer, but they're still on my camera, so in the meantime, you can look at that and envision. My favorite is that the backspace key is now a magic wand. The stickers are removable, so the fun won't last forever, but in the meantime, it's very exciting. ;o)

Mariah and I are discussing our options for our apartment, the summer, and the fall. We need to come to a decision in the next few days, and suffice to say, I may be having to make different arrangements than I'd originally planned for.

I leave for a weekend in Calgary tomorrow morning. I'll get to see the show that Colin composed the orchestrations for (and which numerous other people that I know are in, but that's all kind of secondary for me). I'm ridiculously proud of him, and having heard the various pieces in their electronic incarnations as demos, I'm excited to hear them as done by real instruments played by real instrumentalists. It's the biggest project he's ever done, and he's certainly put the work into it and should be very, very proud of what he's done. I know I am. :)

We'll have the usual kind of holiday weekend. Colin has both Friday and Monday off work, which is absolutely fantastic, so I don't have my usual dilemma of having time while he's at work. Usually, when that happens, I try to schedule coffee with my girlfriends, but I'm completely okay with not having time for that. We'll have Easter dinners with both our families (Saturday brunch with mine, Sunday dinner with his), two performances of the Easter show, Easter Sunday morning service, and Monday to just chill and hang out. I fly out on Tuesday, but not until early evening, so since Colin's back at work, that's when I've scheduled my meetings and things to get done. Bank meeting, internship meeting, and probably coffee with my mom (y'know, since my parents paid for this flight...).

Today--my birthday!--has been pretty normal. It's a regular Thursday, with school, work, more school, more work. The girls in the Public Affairs office made me cupcakes, but that's about it. I work tonight, and I still have some packing and cleaning to do when I get home, so it'll be a short night before I head to the airport in the morning.

I'm very excited. Since our visit last month got cut short by about 6 days, I really need this weekend.

Anyway. Hopefully there'll be lots of pictures. Lori promised to have her camera on hand. :)

Two days is never enough time, but in this case, it was definitely the best decision to shorten Colin's trip down here and make it just a weekend. Both Saturday and Sunday were long days, in the good way; Saturday night was a long night, in the "we didn't get up until 1:30 Sunday afternoon" way; and it was relaxing, especially for Colin.

Saturday, his flight got in at 11 a.m., and we just hung out for the afternoon--had lunch, went for a walk, started watching Everwood season 1 (which is going to be our next marathon, since Colin has never seen the series). We headed up to the school at around 6, and then after the show, I was there until 2 for strike. Colin was, too, but he went out to the car and fell asleep at around midnight, since he hadn't actually slept, except for a bit of dozing on the plane, since he got up at 9 on Friday morning...

... which explains why we decided to be heathens on Sunday morning and not even try to get up for church. Instead, we got up at around 1:30 and decided that we'd go for a walk to get some lunch, come back, and watch some more Everwood. And this is where the weekend gets interesting.

We left the apartment to have lunch, planning to walk there and back, about 2 miles each way. Not that far, but far enough that I didn't really want to carry my purse with me, and since Colin had his wallet and phone, I didn't take anything with me. Including the keys to the apartment. Which I realized when we were about three steps out the door, which was firmly locked behind us.

Mariah was in Vegas for the weekend, and she wasn't going to be getting home until around 10, so we called a locksmith to see how much it'd cost to get in, but decided that the $60 was more than we wanted to pay, and we'd just figure out something else to do. Colin had his car keys in his pocket, so at least we had a wallet and a set of car keys, so we could entertain ourselves for the rest of the day.

Except that it turned out that Colin didn't have his keys with him. So, we had an afternoon and evening to kill with a wallet and some decent walking shoes. Instead of walking to the restaurant we'd originally planned to go to, we went to the mall a little further away (about 3 1/2 miles), which has more sit-down restaurants and a movie theatre, and figured that we'd see a movie, and by the time that was over and we walked back home, Mariah would be getting back.

That part of the plan worked beautifully. We walked to the mall, had lunch, wandered around Borders for a while, saw Coraline, and walked home, getting back at around 10... only to find out that Mariah's flight had been delayed, and it'd be at least another couple of hours before she got home.

And, of course, I had to pee. I figured we should walk to the 24-hour grocery store, since nothing closer was open by 10:30 on a Sunday night, and wait there until Mariah got home. So, off we went, walking about a mile to the store--and when I was finished, Colin figured that we were going to just head back. I'd thought we could just wander around in the store for a while, but he didn't really want to, and I told him that as long as he was going to keep me warm (fortunately, it was a mild night, although sitting on the cement steps outside the apartment was a little chilly), that was fine.

We sat on the steps outside for a while, then decided that we wanted to go to 7-11 a few blocks away and get some supper, since it was about 11:30, and lunch had been quite a while ago. Mariah came home at around 12:15, just as we were finishing chili dogs from the Tommy's beside the 7-11. (Chili dog and hot chocolate. Nice combination, no?)

If nothing else, the day was our first really good training walk for this year's breast cancer walk... we did about 9 miles (almost 15 km) over the course of the day.

Once we got inside, we ended up watching another episode of Everwood and not going to bed until almost 3. Of course, the alarm went off at 5:30, since we had to leave for the airport by 6, but I was back home by 7:30 and in bed for a couple more hours of sleep before heading out for the rest of my day.

Now Colin is back in Calgary, likely working on music by now. He's planning to still take this week as a vacation of sorts and not go to the rehearsals that he's already planned to have covered by someone else, so he'll have enough time to really work on the show. He might go back to work on Thursday and Friday (and save those two vacation days for some other time), but that'll partly depend on how the music is coming. Even if he does, though, this is a "days" week for him, and it's always easier for him to get work done outside of work when he's on days, rather than nights.

So, like I said when we first decided to do this, it's the best decision. He got a couple of days away from the work, and we got to spend some good, uninterrupted time together for a few days. Easter weekend will be a little longer and a little busier, with a lot more people to see, but it was nice to have this interlude that was just us for a little less than 48 hours.

Two years later, here we are.

Submission isn't something that people like to talk about much. It conjures images of being a doormat, of being weak, of abuse and domination, and of power struggles and inequality--and all those things are part of the cultural baggage that comes along with submission. And yet, submission is a biblical, godly concept that reflects an image of who God is and His relationship with humanity, and because of that--because of the inherent fact that everything that God has created is good--it has to be redeemed and understood somehow.

( Read more )

Colin and I don't fight all that much. At all, really. We argue occasionally and disagree about some things, but neither of us are fighters. We don't name-call, throw accusations, or have big tempers, and we're really good at talking it out, being respectful, and not walking away from an argument before it's resolved.

But even when it comes to arguing and disagreeing, it's pretty rare that it's about the big, important things. We're pretty much on the same page when it comes to major life decisions, finances, ideas about marriage and family, faith, and all those big-picture things, but every once in a while, we get into the most ridiculous arguments about the most random things. We're both stubborn enough that we'll stick to a position and not budge, but it's definitely fun to make the other one try. And really, those kinds of "arguments" are the best kind. A lot of the time, they actually end up being kind of fun, and if nothing else, it's good practice in debating and being persuasive.

Last month, we were driving down to High River for Thanksgiving dinner, and Anne of Green Gables came up in conversation as we drove by a "lake of shining waters." Colin made a comment about not having seen the movies or read the books in quite a while; I commented that I hadn't read the books in a while, but while I think that Megan Follows is the one and only Anne, I'm not a big fan of the movies, particularly The Continuing Story. That movie bothers me on so many levels, mainly because the books are set 30 years earlier, and the film plays with the timeline in a way that's unacceptable to me. World War 1 was the war that affected Anne's children. Rilla of Ingleside is the book set during that time period, and the main character is Anne and Gilbert's youngest daughter. The orphaned baby was taken in by Rilla, and it was Anne's sons who fought, not Gilbert.

Anyway, I made all these points about the books, and the thesis of my argument was the fact that it's impossible for a viewer of a movie (based on a book) to fully appreciate the movie without having read the book.

And then the argument started. :)

For the next hour, Colin stood by his point that the viewer can have a complete, full entertainment experience by only watching the movie. I stood by my statement that a reader can have a full experience of the author's original intent by reading the book but not watching the movie, but not vice versa.

The funny thing is, I don't think we entirely disagreed with each other. I think that a movie-watcher can have a complete entertainment experience with the movie alone; I just don't think that it's possible to experience the fullest world of the story the way the author intended. Watching the Anne movies may be an entertainment experience in and of itself, but it's not the story experience that L.M. Montgomery intended. In this case, it's not even the same story, but even if it was, I still say that the story and experience is incomplete.

I used the example of the Harry Potter books, too. Aaron refuses to read the books, and I stand by my claim that he's robbing himself of J.K. Rowling's full story. The movies are an adaptation of a written story, and without reading the story, the visual story is incomplete. She may have put her stamp of approval on the screenplays, but by the very nature of an adaptation, there are things that had to be cut and sacrificed; therefore, the representation of the world she created is not complete, no matter how accurate the pieces may be.

Colin held to the position that it's possible to fully enjoy a movie based on the book without having read the book. He stood by the fact that he separates the book and the movie; for instance, in the case of Anne of Green Gables, he's fully aware that the movie is not the story of the book, but he looks at them as two separate pieces of entertainment that are only partially related to each other.

Because film and literature are two distinctly different art forms, they can't be judged the same way. A story told on film and the same story told on paper are two different artistic experiences--the story on film fleshes out the visual narrative in a way that the story on paper is unable to. In that way, he argued, it could even be said that the film completes the story of the book in a way that makes the reading of the book an incomplete rendering of the artist's original vision.

He also used the Harry Potter example to differentiate between casual and obsessed fans. He claims that someone could be an obsessed fan of the movies without ever having read the books; I claim that someone who is truly a fan of the Harry Potter world would never claim to be so without having read the books. A person (like Aaron) can be a fan of the movies, independent of the books, but I would argue that he can't claim to be a fan of HarryPotterTheGlobalPhenomenon while steadfastly refusing to partake in the original manifestation of the characters and plotlines.

Colin said that's discriminatory towards people who don't enjoy reading; I say so be it. Being a "fan" in the most obsessed sense of the word (and I'm not talking about being a casual fan/appreciator of the work) includes being familiar with all its facets. I enjoyed Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, but I'm fully aware that my knowledge of the source material is spotty at best, and because of that, I couldn't consider myself a "true" fan, no matter how much I enjoyed the movies.


Now, a few caveats: I'm not saying that books are necessarily a superior form of entertainment to movies. Movies, both originals and adaptations, are an art form in and of themselves. I would never say that film is a lesser art form than literature or theatre. Each one is a different storytelling medium, and I'm not making a judgment of value on their relative worth.

I'm also not saying that an adaptation can't be entertaining without having read the book. There are many, many movies that I've watched without having read the books, and I can appreciate the filmmaking and acting and story, but I'm also fully aware that I'm not getting the full experience. I can enjoy it for what it is, but I know that "what it is" is less than 100% of the author's intention.



And just to top it off? My proudest moment in that whole argument was the fact that Colin got so frustrated that he actually growled at me. Ha! In the middle of a sentence, he actually growled in his throat, and it cracked me up so much that I had to pause the discussion and laugh really hard before I could resume.


So, friends, what do you think? What is the relationship between a book and its film adaptation? Is it possible to enjoy one without a working knowledge of the other?

I was treated to a birthday date tonight.

Oh, wait--what's that? It's not my birthday? No, but it is Colin's, and today, the whole "what's yours is mine" thing extended to birthday celebrations. (Hey, he's at work tonight; one of us needs to celebrate, and while I'm sure that he considered sleeping in this morning a pretty great celebration, I thought someone should go see a movie!)

So, in honor of Colin's birthday (actually, for several other reasons, but that one sounds better and made us laugh more), Mariah treated me to a movie and McDonald's tonight. Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2, which Colin wouldn't see with me anyway, so I had to make it a girls' night out!

She really is the greatest roommate, and she makes a pretty good substitute husband until Colin gets down here. ;)

What could make for a better birthday than huge servings of frozen yogurt, gummy candies, 3 other people in the entire movie theatre, and then McDonald's (with the fries still piping hot!) afterward? I'm not sure. It seemed pretty great to me.

In fairness, it can go the other way, too, and the "what's mine is yours" means that he's entitled to a guys' night out on my birthday. But only as long as we're not actually in the same city on my birthday (or his, for that matter). In that case, no substitute dates allowed.

Well, Colin should be somewhere in the air right now--his flight was supposed to leave at 11:50, and it's now 12:30, and I haven't heard anything, so I'm assuming that everything went as planned and he's on his way home.

( The rundown )

Look where we were a year ago today.

Crazy, hey? In some ways, it feels like we've been together forever. Like we're an old married couple and like our lives are so intertwined that it can't possibly have only been a year. In other ways, despite how slow the first semester felt, it seems like the past year has just flown by. Mostly, though, it's the first one. There aren't all that many times when I look back and think, "Wow, can it really be a year already?" Most of the time, it's, "Seriously? It's only been a year? And we're not married yet? And we haven't been together as long as all of our married friends?" (And it's usually the same thing on their end: "Oh, right--you guys still go home to different houses at the end of the night!" Kat has mentioned many times that she often forgets that we're not actually married yet.

But here we are. One year down; many, many more to go. It's a good feeling.