Belly-Aching Fire

disneystyle:

DIY your own Map Plates with our tutorial! 

disneystyle:

From the blog: find out how to use old @waltdisneyworld and @disneyland maps to create these adorable dishes.

Love

This is the worst.

edwardspoonhands:

pooped:

I was supervising Study Hall when suddenly… Hank Green appeared behind me!

I appreciate their classroom curriculum.

…is your school space?! Under the ocean? In the future?

This looks just like where I went to high school.  District 230 in IL?  Andrew, Sandburg or Stagg?  If not, I’m shocked there is another school that looks like this.

(via edwardspoonhands)

It simply will not stop raining wherever I go.  

Here comes summer.

U

fishingboatproceeds:

rachelfershleiser:

rainbowrowell:

“Eleanor & Park reminded me not just what it’s like to be young and in love with a girl, but also what it’s like to be young and in love with a book.” 

So John Green reviewed Eleanor & Park inThe New York Times this weekend, and I don’t have enough exclamation points to express how I’m feeling. 

If you’d like to read my book, you can find it in lots of great bookstores — and online here:

Amazon  Barnes & Noble  IndieBound  iBooks

I accidentally read 223 pages of this last night.

Right? It’s SO GOOD.

(via fishingboatproceeds)

it’s good to be young but let’s not kid ourselves
it’s better to pass on through those years and come out the other side
with our hearts still beating
having stared down demons
come back breathing

“You Were Cool” - The Mountain Goats

I have been terrible at updating lately, but it feels like every moment is spent in the car, on site or sleeping.

But hopefully this next month I can spend many of those free moments (or at least 30 minutes of them a day) running. 

It turns out that I will be in Minneapolis between sites during the Color Run.  For those who do not know what this is, it is a 5k in which you wear all white clothing and spectators through colored powder at the runners, making us a tie dyed mess by the end.

I am really looking forward to this, but I also just stopped to think through the fact that I have a month to create for myself a consistent running routine.  For those who may not realize this, there is very little that is consistent in my YW summer life.  While at the same time it consists of doing the same thing every week at every site.  But there is never a week without hiccups, and as an Area Director, there is seldom a day without a surprising phone call or small fire to put out.  

These inconsistencies are what really make me love this role.  Adaptability is one of my greatest strengths and it means that I can easily be bored by routine, I prefer to drop what I am doing to work on problem solving.  

So running.  Consistent, well paced, disciplined running.  This is what I have just committed myself to for the next month.  A month of 30 minutes at least 3 times a week.  Hot runs in Oklahoma and Minneapolis.  Mosquito filled runs in Cass Lake and Red Lake.  Runs in which I need to go to sleep without a shower until the next day.  Runs in shorts I haven’t been able to wash all week.  Runs on cracked pavement, on small town streets, on pathways next to lakes, on high school tracks.

At any other time of the year, this would be a small step of dedication, but in the YW summer, it is choosing running over sleep, calls home, long showers, sleep, checking facebook, reading a book, sleep, I think you get the picture.

I am hopeful that this discipline will bear fruits as all discipline does, and hopefully I will share those fruits as they’re revealed.

Here’s to my newest SMART Goal.

I was talking with the Osage Staff over lunch and mentioned Chicago was the city of big shoulders, and in an effort to find out where that comes from, stumbled upon this Sandburg poem I had forgotten. Fills me with some Chicago Pride.

CHICAGO

HOG Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders:

They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I
have seen your painted women under the gas lamps
luring the farm boys.
And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it
is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to
kill again.
And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the
faces of women and children I have seen the marks
of wanton hunger.
And having answered so I turn once more to those who
sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer
and say to them:
Come and show me another city with lifted head singing
so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.
Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on
job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the
little soft cities;

Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning
as a savage pitted against the wilderness,
Bareheaded,
Shoveling,
Wrecking,
Planning,
Building, breaking, rebuilding,
Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with
white teeth,
Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young
man laughs,
Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has
never lost a battle,
Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse.
and under his ribs the heart of the people,
Laughing!
Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of
Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog
Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with
Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.