FlowerDust.net

Your favorite Christmas movie is………?

Click the title of this post to be taken to the audio player below. You must listen to this quick mp3 and I guarantee it will put you in the Christmas Spirit. Listen ALL the way through. It only gets better as it progresses, and the ending note is amazing. It almost brought tears to my eyes.

In other news (and something to read as your song is playing)…A lot of us are getting winter weather! Right now in Dallas it is 72 but is supposed to drop to the 30s in the next hour or so! We are under a Winter Storm Warning for 1/4″ ice AND 1-2″ of snow tomorrow. I love work, and I can work from home…but snow days just rock!

Enjoying the song?

::Edit::

Just in the last hour hour and fifteen minutes, it has dropped 20 30 degrees!

So it now day 8 of 42 on Wellbutrin. Today was my first dose of 300mg versus the 150mg I was taking last week. The first few days I felt really tired and spacey on it (and it’s a stimulant, so I should have been more awake!) and kind of dizzy, but nothing too bad. I am waiting for the appetite-suppressant effect to kick in…

Maybe it was the double dose but today was the first day I noticed a huge difference in the way I felt. At the risk of sounding corny, I actually felt … SUNNY … today. It was weird, but that was the only word that popped in my mind all day. Side effects have changed a little bit…the stimulant part is kicking in as I was seriously CRACKED OUT several times today. It was like I had 10 shots of espresso or something (and I don’t drink coffee much anymore so that’s a huge thing) - I was really hyper and weird, but a  least Chris found it to be entertaining. It would come and go in waves of spastic-crazy-psycho-lady to normal-I-keep-going-to-bed-really-late feelings. A few headaches that come and go, but really nothing too extreme.

So that’s the story so far. How are YOU doing today?

over the holiday, i read two great books - the starbucks experience: 5 principles for turning ordinary into extraordinary and you don’t need a title to be a leader: how anyone, anywhere, can make a positive difference.
in the leader book, one of the phrases that has stuck with me is “obligation or opportunity.” so many things in our routine, day-to-day tasks we often deem as obligation: returning emails, answering the phone, responding to messages, interruptions by colleagues…the list could go on forever. one of the ways we can lead (to positively influence) in our lives is by changing our perspective on those mundane things.

instead of looking at them as obligations, try viewing them as opportunities to positively influence someone. next time your phone rings when you’re in the middle of something, think about going above and beyond what that person is going to ask of you. blow them away with your kindness.

obligation? or opportunity. you can decide, regardless of your title or position in your career or your life.

i wonder this. so many churches, big and small, all over our country (and in my traveling experience, yes, just our country…perhaps our canadian neighbors? i dont know…) seem to shove food down our hungry little throats.

i understand there is personal responsibility, and aside from that, are we feeding our culture’s hungry consumeristic monster as well as the people who walk in the doors of our church? 

let’s think about it.  in the churches i have visited in the last four years, we either give away or sell the following:

• donuts
• candy (available at childrens/youth services)
• sodas
• lattes, mochas, smoothies
• orange juice (the bad, concentrated kind)
• bear claws
• pizza, pizza, pizza
• more soda
• more candy
• more coffee

this isn’t about whether or not church can make you fat.  but are we (generally speaking) setting an example on how we should care for our bodies and/or spend our money by making these things so readily available?

we say sacrifice your latte and help pay for our building yet we sell you a four dollar latte. we say don’t sleep around and exercise and get sleep but we’ll stuff you full of krispy kreme.  we say teach your kids the importance of a dollar, don’t spoil them, yet we give them $2 before their children’s program so they can buy a soda and a nerds rope and some reeses?

i say this of course after eating far too many christmas cookies and drinking two cups of peppermint hot cocoa…

what do you think?

 

 

surprisingly, the ol’ kc is quite mild for this time of year.  we arrived last night with no problems (sans the typical gas station food) and enjoyed the culinary delights of both the wilson and jackson families. 

at this time i would like to say hello to my 82 year old grandfather-in-law who i discovered today reads my blog, when he asked my why i hadn’t updated flowerdust in a couple of days.

chris and i went down to the country club plaza for the 77th annual lighting of over 80 miles of christmas lights.  it was so warm, i didn’t even need a jacket.  we took a spot on the top floor of a parking garage and enjoyed the ill-timed switch on along with synchronized fireworks.

tomorrow night is girls’ night with four of my old gal-pals.  not sure yet what kind of trouble we are going to get into, but i’m sure between the five of us, something mischevious will be going down tomorrow night…

happy turkey day!

in a couple hours, we leave for kansas city. chris’ family lives on the MO side, but we’ll be going in between both KS and MO most of the weekend. i hope you have a happy thanksgiving!  we’ll be back late sunday night.

Hi, I’m Anne. And I’m officially on an anti-depressant. I work at a great church, I am married to the most incredibly patient and loving man, I have some great friends, and I suffer from mild bouts of depression. There. It’s said.

I popped my pill right before eating breakfast this morning. One down, 41 to go. I marked the days on my calendar (perhaps being a wee overdramatic?) and realized that my last day of meds is January 1. Appropriately so. A new year, and hopefully new chemical levels that my body will enjoy.

Thanks for your encouraging words and emails and prayers. I’ve gotten a few emails from people who have been thinking about getting some kind of anti-depressant, so occasionally (maybe weekly), I will post the good, bad and ugly of how Wellbutrin XL is effecting me.

The biggest way depression has effected me in the last couple of years is I have lost my motivation. I used to be extremely movtivated, would love to hang out with friends late into the night, was spontaneous, and lived for the freedoms the weekend brought. Now when my mind isn’t kept busy, I tend to enjoy just being alone - all the time - and feel really sad. And worthless. Sometimes I’d think Chris would be better off not being married to me. Pretty much a selfish pity party I wouldn’t mind wallowing in, but could control when I needed to.

Looking forward to seeing how this will change…

he knows my addiction to christmasy warm fuzzies. i am out of my office for a few moments this morning and return to the following items:

1. A Santa Baby Christmas CD from Starbucks
2. A grande non-fat, decaf Peppermint Mocha with whip and sprinkles

And that is why my husband rocks. Well, one of the many, many reasons!

if jesus tried to get a job in the american church today, he’d have a heckuva time unless he graduated magna cum laude from some institute of higher education and paid his dues to the local seminary. and some of the disciples? completely uneducated and unpolished. good luck there.

chris and i had coffee at texas roast on wednesday evening with a new friend we’ve met. he’s going to be planting a church down in austin in the next few years. anyway, we were talking about church health and two factors to a healthy church: obedience/listening to the direction of the spirit and cultural relevance (not exclusive from each other). but with all of our combined church experience it was really easy to see the churches who are having the most health issues (leadership/staff issues, money problems, not fulfilling the great commission) were the churches who had flip-flopped those priorities…trying to be cutting edge and relevant FIRST while, although a close second, submission to our biblical callings was placed after that.

maybe it is a process all churches must learn and grow through. maybe not. i would love to sit and talk for hours with pastors of churches all over on why they spend more money on paint than missions or why their job descriptions sound more like managers of a GAP while they leave out things like passion, calling, holiness, accountability and replace them with networking, stamina to work long hours, and degrees. then they wonder why budgets fall short, ministries grow numerically but not spiritually, and burn out is at an all time high. when church staff turnover is the same rate as retail turnover, something must be amiss.

Today was a very Christmasy day.  I played with my twinkly Christmas lights widget.  I bought Bing Crosby’s White Christmas CD on iTunes.  I had a Peppermint Mocha Frappucino (it was rather warm out after walking to Starbucks).  I got a Christmas bonus from work in the mail and an invite to a Christmas party.  Just to let you know, you’re going to get really sick of hearing about Christmas because between now and then, it’s pretty much all I’m gonna write about. :)

I need your grace to remind me to find my own. (SP)

Please take the thirty seconds necessary to skim through this review of Tenacious D – The Pick of Destiny. I am trying to save you from wasting 90 minutes of your precious life. In fact, this introduction in itself should keep you away from this movie. At this moment, if you are convinced not to see this movie, please move on to the next meaningful thing in your life. I refuse to let this movie even indirectly (via means of this review) steal away the sand in your hourglass.

If you are still thinking of seeing this movie, let me take a clear approach and encourage you by one simple word:

Don’t.

Jack Black is funny, yes. Nacho Libre, School of Rock – all favorites of mine. I laughed and talked about and quoted them for weeks and months after seeing them. However, when Jack Black partnered with his Tenacious D buddy Kyle Gass on The Pick of Destiny, a strange reaction occurred that removed all humor and intelligence and wit from this film. I have been thinking on this movie for the last 10 days and still have not found words dumb enough to describe the complete disaster this movie ends up being. The plot is simple – Jack and Kyle are on a search for the Pick of Destiny which will turn them into the most amazing rock stars ever. That is really all the plot entails.

I highly recommend you participate in one of the following events that will be a much better use of your time than seeing this movie:

• Help the Fall season along by climbing the tree in your front yard and plucking each and every leaf off. Watch each one fall to the ground slowly.

• Polish your mother’s silverware for Thanksgiving. Seven times.

• Speaking of Thanksgiving, try roasting your turkey with a lighter.

• Knit a scarf or two. For each member of The Rockettes. They always look cold.

Please. Save your 90 minutes. I give this movie a 0.25 out of 5. And that is simply for the fact there were no typos in the credits.

will smith kissed me tuesday night.

granted, it was only a big hug and a kiss on the cheek (i am married you know), but it’s not everyday one can say that.

i got an IM from matt (the one who assigns me movie reviews) late last week saying “too bad you have plans tuesday night. you could interview will smith” to which i said “shut up, liar” and he copy and pasted the official announcement that indeed, mr. smith was to be in dallas and doing a red carpet event for his new movie, in pursuit of happyness. we would get to spend a brief moment with will and ask him a question or two about the movie.

so, chris and i rearranged our tuesday night plans and headed out to the cityplace theatre. we were third or so in the press line. after standing (in very uncomfortable shoes i’ll add) for a couple hours, will makes his way down the carpet. matt introduces himself and me (chris is behind me on still camera and joel is video taping), and that is the moment he leaned over the line of celebrity and crossed into the world of press, arms open and planted a big one right smack on my right cheek.

i can’t reveal the question we asked or answer we received, but soon the video podcast containing such interview will be released and i shall post a link to that as soon as it is available. but for such the big “movie star,” that he is, he was a genuinely nice and down-to-earth guy. he didn’t have the slightest bit of arrogance or cockiness about him. he was really a very polite and sweet.

so…there you have it.

i talked with a new friend about his upcoming project. (you will need to click into this post in order to view and click on the links - they won’t show up on the preview).  all the juicy details (and i do mean juicy) to come on thursday.

sometime saying i’m sorry isn’t enough. so i don’t say anything at all.

(and i HATE that.)

tomorrow evening is going to be one of the craziest nights of my life! big stuff happening, big stuff! photos to come as soon as possible. you will NOT want to miss it!!!!!! (for the small amount of people who knows the events of tomorrow evening, hush hush!!  i’m just trying to build some suspense!!!

i’m bored.

call me opinionated. call me critical. either way, i love providing thoughts on whatever. movies. make up. blogs.

despite all the fake “make money while doing practically nothing” ads out there, it’s nice to find something that’s actually legit. at least i think so. i read about this thing called ReviewMe on spitbox. it’s a site that solicits advertisers to find bloggers to review their products. to kick it off, ReviewMe offers new reviewers a pre-determined amount of money (based on technorati rankings) for reveiwing their own site.

simple and clean, it’s easy to sign up to be a reviewer. you can add up to six of your blogs, you create a description, and let advertisers come to you. my blog is worth $60 to an advertiser. ReviewMe takes a steep 50% cut, but honestly, i don’t mind. any extra money is welcome in my bank account. even if it is only $30. you get notified you have a review opportunity, you write a 200 word review and post it on your blog. the check (or paypal) follows.

the only thing i don’t like about ReviewMe is their logo. it’s honestly a little cheesy. it’s kinda mickey mouse looking, and i find that oddly disturbing. nonetheless, it seems like a pretty easy way to make some extra cash, try some new products and write!

(the above was a paid review. they make me say that!)*

i don’t know about you, but i have one of “those people” in my life that will forward me every email ever published by the american family association. you know the ones that say walmart is giving away 5% of it’s online profits to a homosexual organization, that ford supports gay marriage, the ones that scream “boycott…if you’re really a christian who cares about america, you will boycott!!!” and now the latest…did you know best buy is using “holiday” instead of “christmas” in their advertising?!

best buy states their reasoning is their advertising is for many holidays from thanksgiving through new years. duh. kind of makes sense to me. and i’m sorry if you are one of these afa activists and this is offending you. but since when do christians have the right to demand america’s allegiance to celebrating christmas - and christmas alone?

last time i looked, america had some little law or something that said people have the liberty to choose their own religion and to practice it without persecution. ironically, that is one of the reasons why we hopped on a boat and sailed over - because a religious agenda was being forced on our ancestors. so, maybe i’m just one of those crazy liberal women, diguised in an elephant’s costume with a bible under my trunk…but by shouting how all these other “holidays” are “wrong” and now we’re going to boycott anyone who doesn’t use the world “christmas” in their advertising…YOU are the one doing the persecuting. you are the one forcing your agenda on others in a country that clearly states everyone has the right to celebrate in the context of their personal religion. ironic, isn’t it? our history is of us escaping the very thing we ourselves our guilty of doing…taking pride in our beliefs and pushing them on society.

i apologize for the recent political undertone my posts have been taking. hopefully i’ll snap out of it soon.

oh. and happy holidays.

although it is a grand 85 degrees outside today, i have been in the christmas spirit this week.  i’ve had a record three peppermint mochas (two of which were free), we are starting to get christmas stuff ready up at work, and the twinkle of christmas lights has been slowly but steadily filling the night sky.

i am so excited to be back in dallas this christmas.  one, it’s warm.  two, there are a million ways to get your fill of the holidays.  besides the obvious things, like more time with family and friends, below is a list of some of my favorite christmas past-times which i’m looking forward to this season.

-Volunteering at the Neiman Marcus Children’s Parade
-Caroling at Hotel Adolphus (We listen, The Church of the Incarnation performs)
-Peppermint Mochas
-Christmas lights in Highland Park & Interlochen

What are yours?

in the later part of the summer, i had taken a break from reviewing movies (around the time of our scotland trip) but i’m back! monday, chris and i screened the UK film, copying beethoven,at the magnolia in the west village. it truly was a beautiful piece. my review is below. enjoy…and go see it if it’s playing in your city! the release date is this friday, november 10th.

Copying Beethoven

* In theaters November 10th, 2006
* Rated PG-13 for some sexual elements
* Runtime: 104 min
* 4.5 out of 5

You can’t compare apples to oranges. You can’t compare composers. The Classical Era crosses over two centuries of timeless composers, each with distinctive styles and stories. Beethoven is not Mozart. Bach is not Rosetti. Schubert is not Salieri. And in the same way, you can’t compare director Agnieszka Holland’s Copying Beethoven to Milos Forman’s 1984 film Amadeus or Bernard Rose’s Immortal Beloved, which is sadly what many critics are doing. With any references to Amadeus or Immortal Beloved aside, Copying Beethoven begins at the end. Ludwig von Beethoven is on his deathbed, his fictional copyist Anna Holtz (Diane Kruger), rushing to his side. They share one final, emotional moment.

Soon after, we are transported back to the year 1824. Anna Holtz is sent by her school in Vienna to work with the eccentric and slightly contemptuous Beethoven. She sees past Beethoven’s unfriendly demeanor and works tirelessly for this man whose musical genius she hopes will flood into her own life. After fighting through the stigma of being a woman in the nineteenth century, Beethoven realizes the natural talent this twenty-three year old possesses in not only copying his messy, unreadable scores but in understanding the place where his music is birthed from, his very own spirit. Fighting through such trials as his deafness and unstable relationship with his nephew, as well as his ambition and calling to decode the words of “God’s language” into symphonies, we are carried through his varied emotional states as we hear the fusion of his inner silence and composition.

Historically, this film captures the very essence of Beethoven in the time period in which he lived. Officially noted as one of the first composers of the Romantic Era, he follows a long list of Classical composers with similar compositional structures. Beethoven, although almost studying under Mozart himself, took the progression of movements to a new level, allowing them to flow more freely in transition rather than have a specific beginning and end. Copying Beethoven shows the reaction of his aristocratic audiences responding to these innovative changes. The ten-minute snapshot of his Ninth Symphony (which Holtz assists in conducting) is nothing short of a masterpiece, including the famous fourth movement, which involves a full chorale singing Ode An die Freude.

During my childhood and teenage years, I was fortunate enough to have chosen Beethoven to study for theory and composition as part of my piano instruction. Copying Beethoven, although a mixture of fact and fiction, ebbs and flows as seamlessly and emotionally as one of Beethoven’s very own grandiose movements and increased my own appreciation for this extremely unique and extraordinary composer. I give it 4.5 out of 5.

i know some of you are passionately patriotic, proud to be an american, and think that christians should rule the world. and for those of you who hold the previously mentioned beliefs up high and loud, i ask for you not to go on a blog-flaming rant. please express your opinions, but please be graceful and polite in doing so. responding in a moment of passion is never a good idea.

i have read a few friends blogs this morning, and many of them were dreading going to the polls, or hated being there. even those who researched candidates were surprised by new names on the ballots who couldn’t afford thousands of dollars in tv ads, or weren’t considered legit enough to get into local or state-wide debates. the lines were long. some electronic voters had to vote the whole ballot for any of their vote to be counted. and generally speaking, it’s the same old kind of people and issues and promises that lead americans to believe their vote makes a difference.

my problem isn’t solely with voting. if you’re really an american, i hate to break it to you, but you’re not fulfilling your “duty” as well as you can by simply going to the polls. sure, you are influencing the numbers on MSNBC, and you represent the popular vote for the presidential election. and even occasionally, there are a few surprises. let’s play a quick quiz. i say a state, you say a color.

texas. california. kansas. washington.

minus a few counties here and there, these states never change. and most of them don’t. at least not in the last 12 years of elections. (see here.) a sign that things aren’t working right? perhaps. i can’t speak for before then. i was only in my preteens and was kinda clueless.

i have voted one time (under pressure, too) and that was in the last presidential election. i cast my vote for a candidate and one for a local government official who had some great ideas. and that is all. it’s not some Gen-X statement on nonconformity. it really is my way of saying, “if you want my vote, something’s got to change.”

if you really want to make a difference in the way things are happening in america, find a cause. or two. or three. whatever. find something. discover who your senators and state reps are. get to know your local government. participate in public meetings. write letters. show up and support the little guys, which is where the change begins. have your friends sign petitions. and pray.

i wrote my first letter to a state representative when i was 12, after watching the 92 presidential election unfold on tv. afterward, i went to my mom and said, “this doesn’t make any sense,” followed by a list of questions and problems i saw with the system. she said “write a letter” and i did. the last letter i wrote was maybe a year ago in kansas, to show my support on having the wright amendment lifted in dallas. a petition was sent out and i signed it, and emailed everyone i know to sign it. over the last few months, progress has been made and bush officially signed the bill october 13, 2006 for the amendment to be removed. my next issue of choice is healthcare reform. i start working on that in a variety of ways at the beginning of 2007. (which if this is a topic that also concerns you, let me know.)

to conclude: yes. i believe your voice will be heard at the polls. whether you vote or not (otherwise, you wouldn’t hear about low voter turnout. so don’t tell me the non-voters aren’t being heard). i just so happened to exercise my right to vote by saying no thanks. you may have exercised yours via touch screen voting.

but don’t stop there. if you really want your voice to be heard, go to the mattresses for what you really believe in.

“I have something to tell you. I didn’t vote.”

“What?”

“In the last mayoral election, when Rudy Giuliani was running against Ruth Messinger, I went to get a manicure and forgot to vote.”

“Since when do you get manicures?”

so, it’s inevitable. with the whole ted haggard scandal, the cynics are hammering out some hate for evangelicals. this group of cynics also includes some of my friends and acquaintances, and being the “strategic” person i am, i start planning how conversations with these people might go.

instantly, my mind goes to the “it’s christians like that who give other christians a bad name” and “i’m not that kind of christian” and then i realize…

i AM that kind of christian.

since becoming a believer, i have lied. i have stolen. i have used god’s name in vain. i have dishonored my parents. i have looked at porn. i have abused alcohol and other mind altering substances. i have thought lustful thoughts and have done lustful things. i have neglected my husband and put ministry and career first. i have been bitter. jealous. materialistic. i have been unforgiving.

yet i am scandalously forgiven by a provocative father who loves me.

so, mr. haggard, i don’t know you. and you don’t know me. but at least on this little piece of cyberspace, i am standing right with you.

i am that kind of christian.