South Dakota Get-Away

Here are some pictures and highlights from our much-needed vacation. The time away really helped us reconnect with each other and with God. Camping in the great outdoors has a way of doing that. :)

Sylvan Lake - One of my favorite spots (and there was going to be a wedding later that night!)

Me holding up one of the huge rocks.

Josh exploring a roadside cave. We also toured Wind Cave and Jewel Cave but didn't take pictures inside them (too dark). Jewel Cave was my favorite. The amazing rock formations made you feel like you were walking through a corral reef. I can't even adequately describe it!

More remarkable rocks we drove through on Needles Highway.

And, of course, Mt. Rushmore.

New homestead

After a crazy weekend of moving, cleaning, and sporadically working, we are finally settling into our new apartment. The place is a mess, naturally, but already I feel better about life. Something about being able to have fresh air blowing in all day, extra sunshine, and more room to spread out.

I'm really excited to start unpacking. Unfortunately, I need to wait for Josh to come back from work to help me move the furniture. And set up his computer. He has this cool new thing on his Mac called Delicious Library where I can use the camera on the computer to scan the barcodes of all my books and movies and keep a record of them. And then, if I loan them to people, I can quickly and easily check them out. So exciting! (I know, I know, I am such a nerd.)

And for more exciting news, someone at the new place has really fast unsecured internet! We're hoping we'll be able to borrow that from time to time. ;) And for the time being, Josh has the T.V. set up in the bedroom, which is becoming a dangerous situation. I really like it there! Would it be redundant to get another one for the living room?

Anyway, it's good to have a new place to call home, especially one that feels more welcoming. And I can't wait to get the place looking all organized and cute and to have people over to visit!

Titanica

"Women and children first," they said, and I knew that was my only way of

safety and also the way towards my biggest loss - the life of my husband.

- 1st class passenger

Oh my. Something about having a husband yourself makes you feel differently about the Titanic disaster. Josh and I went to the exhibit at the Science Museum on Thursday, and it was quite the intriguing and sobering experience. We were there about two hours, but I probably could've stayed longer. Let me list some highlights of the day:

1. As we entered the exhibit, we each received a "boarding pass" with a name of an actual passenger and a bit of his/her history. At the end of the exhibit, you found out if your person survived. I was Margaret Brown (a bit anticlimactic since she's the "unsinkable Molly Brown"), and Josh was a Frenchman traveling with his family to Haiti (he was the only colored man on the Titanic. Kinda cool). Of the two of us, I wonder who died? ;)

2. One of the artifacts retrieved from the bottom of the ocean was a steward's jacket. After being underwater for close to eighty years, it was still in tact! The steward, named Broome, had written his name on the inside of the collar, and you could still read it. Remarkable.

3. They had some role-play people wandering the exhibit giving tidbits of info in British accents. That's how I learned that the Titanic was one of the first and only ships to offer meals to the third class passengers. On other ships, those passengers were required to bring their own food to last the duration of the trip. That would lead to some interesting smells, I imagine. And the steerage passengers had real mattresses rather than sacks stuffed with straw. The ship was glamorous even in steerage!

4. We touched a huge block of ice that represented the coldness of the ocean on the night of the sinking. *shiver* I'm surprised people didn't die instantly.

5. I discovered this fantastic website that has biographies of all the Titanic passengers. I can't wait until I have more free time!

6. And lastly, we watched the omni-theater presentation, which was incredibly interesting, and I didn't get motion sickness! :)

Love,

Heidi

New job!

I cannot believe what a whirlwind this week has been. After I got over the excitement of getting the internship, the reality that I needed a paid part time job started to sink in. I called a couple book stores. No luck. Then, out of the blue, I remembered that there is a Once Upon A Child in Roseville, and since I'd worked at one for two years during high school, I thought I'd give it a shot. And I totally have a job now! Wow. God is so good.

Now, I hope my life will settle into some semblance of a routine. But probably not. And I should probably work on packing up the apartment, since pretty soon, I will have very little time.

Love,

Heidi

p.s. I absolutely LOVE this picture. This couple set up the timer on the camera, posed, and this little squirrel decided to investigate the situation right as the camera flashed. Makes me giggle every time.

From one internship to another

I have had the craziest week so far (and it's only Tuesday!). Yesterday was my last day at my internship. I was a little sad, because I really enjoyed the people and the pay, but I'm ready to start something new. And I was waiting to hear back about a new job position. I figured I had a good chance of getting it seeing as I made it through three interviews. But apparently, they made an offer yesterday, and I was left out of it. I got the email today. Very sad. But I'm glad they didn't call me with the news. How are you supposed to react when you have your hopes up about something and then they are crushed? "Oh, thanks. I was really hoping the other person would get it." But anyway, I'll stop sounding bitter about it and won't go into all the details of how perfect it would've been and how Josh could've quit his one job and not be so tired all the time, because obviously, this job was not meant to be.

So, after I cried and moped for about ten minutes, I got a phone call from Milkweed Editions. Two weeks ago, I received a rejection letter from them as well, so naturally, I had completely taken them out of my mind. But miraculously (because God is crazy good about stuff), they had another opening, and they wanted me! Seriously, I sat holding the phone with my mouth hanging open. I had NO idea how to feel. From rejection pains to extreme excitement in ten minutes? Kinda hard to handle.

Talk about your "one door closing, another door opening" experience.

Now all I have to do is find a part-time job that actually pays. I don't want Josh to have all the pressure. And seeing as the first two days of this week have been completely unexpected, I hope some other crazy good things will happen.

Love,

Heidi

Alcoholics Anonymous

Professor Hougen gave me this lovely little book called "Listening to Your Life: Daily Meditations with Frederick Buechner," and over the weekend, I read something very powerful. I'll type it all here and let it do the talking for me:

Alcoholics Anonymous or A.A. is the name of a group of men and women who acknowledge that addiction to alcohol is ruining their lives. Their purpose in coming together is to give it up and help others do the same. They believe they can't pull this off by themselves. They believe they need each other, they believe they need God...

When they first start talking at a meeting, they introduce themselves by saing, "I am John. I am an alcoholic," "I am Mary. I am an alcoholic," to which the rest of the group answers each in unison, "Hi, John," "Hi Mary." They are apt to end with the Lord's Prayer or the Serenity Prayer. Apart from that they have no ritual. They have no hierarchy. They have no dues or budget. They do not advertise or proselytize. Having no buildings of their own, they meet wherever they can.

Nobody lectures them, and they do not lecture each other. They simple tell their own stories with the candor that anonymity makes possible. They tell where they went wrong and how day by day they are trying to go right. They tell where they find the strength and understanding and hope to keep trying. Sometimes one of them will take special responsibility for another--to be available at any hour of day or night if the need arises. There's not much more to it than that, and it seems to be enough. Healing happens. Miracles are made.

You can't help thinking that something like this is what the Church is meant to be and maybe once was before it got to be Big Business. Sinners Anonymous. "I can will what is right but I cannot do it," is the way Saint Paul put it, speaking for all of us. "For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do" (Romans 7:19).

"I am me. I am a sinner."

"Hi, you."

Hi, every Sadie and Sal. Hi, every Tom, Dick, and Harry. It is the forgiveness of sins, of course. It is what the Church is all about.

No matter what far place alcoholics end up in, either in this country or virtually anywhere else, they know that there will be an A.A. meeting nearby to go to and that at that meeting they will find strangers who are not strangers to help and to heal, to listen to the truth and to tell it. That is what the Body of Christ is about.

Would it ever occur to Christians in a far place to turn to a church nearby in hope of finding the same? Would they find it? If not, you wonder what is so Big about the Church's Business.

Changes and such

This past week has been crazy for us Thulins. We decided that we will not be resigning our lease and will be moving to The Palisades at the end of September. We're tired of living halfway underground, and we're afraid our rent will go up. I'm especially excited, because we'll be on the second floor (meaning we can have the windows open at night), and we'll have a balcony where I can people-watch and journal in the sun! We'll also have more room in the living area, meaning we'll be better equipped to host people :) As strange as it may sound, I really like packing and unpacking and rearranging everything. Gives me something to do while I wait for a job.

Speaking of jobs, I just got an email from someone this morning asking if I'd be interested in a position. Apparently, my resume was forwarded to him by someone who was impressed by my experience! What a happy surprise! AND the company is literally 500 feet from where Josh works, so we could still get away with having only one car! But I am still keeping my fingers crossed for the publishing company internship. I would love that so much, but I'm afraid that I might have to make a hard decision - choose the internship and love what I'm doing, but make no money or choose a full-time job that isn't exactly up my alley but gives us good money. *sigh* I'd rather get a "no" from someone rather than have to make that decision for myself.

Love,

Heidi