hidden talents

Did you ever discover a talent that you didn't want to have? Something you really never wanted to do, but then you were forced to do it once and people who know about that sort of thing kept telling you how great you were at it. And you wished you could undo. No! I don't want to be good at that! Undo! Undo!

For no apparent reason, I started thinking about this today. The memory of discovering an unwanted talent has been haunting me since about 3:00 this afternoon.

I was making some tea to get me through the afternoon. As I was waiting for the water to boil, I was just standing in the kitchen with nothing to occupy myself. I caught my reflection in the mirror and started making faces at myself. This reminded me of a man who told me that he used to do that all the time as a child and that's how he practices now that HE'S A MIME.

While I was on Doulos, I had one day each week devoted to ministry outside my job. Sometimes, if there wasn't enough ministry lined up to do, they would hold ministry training sessions and assign us to attend them. They aren't actually training you to minister to people at all, but teaching you skits, miming, and the like. Once, I was assigned to a mime training session, led by a mime who happened to be staying on board with us for a week or so. As we know, a mime is a terrible thing to waste, so I went to my assigned training, grudgingly, as I have never wanted to be a mime.

So he taught us a mime to a song, probably by Ray Boltz (his songs naturally lend themselves to miming). We went step by step, verse by verse, practicing it for about an hour or so until we had it pretty well memorized. He also taught us a cute mime about a person picking an apple from a tree and giving half of it to a worm.

One of my friends deserted the training, feigning a headache. Actually she's severely creeped out by mimes.

I stuck it out to the end.

The next day, I was at work at the info/reception desk. This mime came up to me and told me how great I am at being a mime. He told me that I have great facial expressions/body language and should stick with miming.

I did not take his advice.

I have never wanted to be a mime and never enjoyed the times that I did miming. I don't ever want to do it again. It was a hidden talent of mine that I didn't want to discover. And now something as simple as making faces at myself in the mirror can bring up memories of the discovery which haunt me for hours.

[shuddering]

celebrating

It seemed to take forever. Some days I wondered if I would wind up having to walk everywhere in the future. But I did find a car to buy.

It's a 99 Camry, and it was a pretty great deal.

Meet Tallulah:

bacon

I always thought it looked like bacon. This cracks me up!

It would be a great way to get bacon, though.

the misadventures of Rachel - trying to buy a car

I've been looking for a car to buy for about a month now. Several times there has been a car which I thought I might buy, but then something happens when I go to look at the car, and I know that I'm not going to buy that car. Allow me to elaborate.

First I found an Alero that looked nice online. It had 150,000 miles on it, but the guy at the dealership who I corresponded with told me that the new motor had only 30,000 miles. When I went out to look at the car, I found that the "new" motor had not yet been installed in the car. The old motor was already taken out, so the car was ready to have the motor replaced, but the day I went there, it had no motor in it at all. The dealer was afraid that there might be more things wrong with the car as well, which would be discovered after the "new" motor was put in, when the car could be driven again.

While I was at that dealership, Dad left a voicemail for me about a car my grandparents' next door neighbor wanted to sell. I was going down there that weekend, so I looked at the car while I was there. It has great fuel efficiency because it's a diesel. It is also a stick shift. I have driven a car with manual transmission before, but I couldn't seem to get the hang of it in that car. For some reason, I couldn't drive it at all.

This week, Trey found a really nice looking Accord Coupe listed on AutoTrader.com, in Dallas. I sent an email inquiry to the owner, asking where the car was and if I could come look at it. He emailed me back, stating that he had bought the car here and took it with him when he moved to SCOTLAND. He said that because it's an American car, built for American specs or whatever, it was expensive for him to keep in it Scotland. He wants to sell it cheap to someone in America, and has arranged the shipping and insurance for shipping and everything. It's very nice - fully loaded. But buying a car that I've never seen before? I don't know about that.

Yesterday, I went out to a dealership down the street to look at a car they had listed on AutoTrader.com. A 2004 with 85K miles on it for under $5K. It looked pretty good. Unfortunately, when I got there the salesman told me that it had just been pulled for servicing because the check engine light had come on the day before or something. What's up with that?

Three weeks ago this coming Tuesday (the 15th) I called a Wycliffe man who goes to auctions to find cars for Wycliffe people. Everyone I've talked to says he found them their car in a week or less (one only took 2 days). It's been almost 3 weeks and he hasn't found anything for me! He has a few cars right now, but they don't seem so great to me. The ones in my price range have been in accidents and written off as total losses by the insurance company; then they were rebuilt. So they have "rebuilt" or "salvage" titles, which he tells me is usually not something a bank will want to give me a loan for. They are older and have more miles on them than the cars I have been finding myself that do not have salvage titles, for the same price.

There are a few other cars I've found online for sale by owner, not at a dealership, but all my inquiries about those car go unanswered. So either they've already sold the cars or they don't want to sell them anymore.

I'm reading 2 Kings right now. This morning, my reading was all about Elisha and miracles God performed through him to provide for different people. It seems kind of ridiculous how much trouble I've had with the cars that I've really thought I might buy. I think God must have something in mind. All I want is something cheap that's in good condition and gets good gas mileage. It's no good to buy a cheap car that will cost me a fortune in maintenance or gas. Except in the case of the miraculous, which I don't rule out as impossible, I will have to have a loan to pay for the car. But it would be nice to keep my payments low and not have to take an eternity to pay the loan off. I already have my student loans which I will be paying on for an eternity.

making fun of someone

I really felt the need to make fun of someone today. Unfortunately, no one was with me. It doesn't really work to make fun of someone to yourself...But I believe that is what blogs are for.

This person seemed to have never gotten the hang of blinkers. It would have driven me crazy if I wasn't so amused by their ineptitude. There is a fine line between stupidity driving me crazy and amusing me. I'm not sure what exactly will make something cross that line, though. This was definitely on the amusement side.

The person was driving in the leftmost lane of 4 lanes on I-30. He put on his left blinker and proceeded to change lanes into the second lane from the left - that is, he put his left blinker on and then moved to the right. He drove in that lane with his left blinker on for about half a mile. Then, he turned off the blinker and changed lanes again, to the right. After arriving in this lane (now the 3rd from the left or 2nd from the right), he put on his right blinker for 2 blinks, turned it off, and continued driving in that lane for about a mile. Then, he abruptly moved into the right lane and exited the freeway, using no blinkers at all.

I guess it amused me most because every time he changed lanes, he used the blinker differently, and none of them were correct. Blinkers are really not that complicated.

There are other things about driving that a large percentage of the licensed population doesn't seem to get, such as how to use a passing zone, but that is a rant for another blog post. Our drivers' education program is failing us in many ways.

wisdom teeth

Having wisdom teeth extracted seems kind of like a rite of passage. It is one which I experienced this week. Prescription pain medication is awesome. The only problem is that it clouds my mind. Makes me feel like a cotton-headed-ninny-muggins, as Buddy the Elf would say. But it gets rid of the pain. The only thing it doesn't get rid of is the puffy chipmunk cheeks. You can see them here: http://picasaweb.google.com/justrachet/ChipmunkFace