so sus.

Sus is Australian slang for, suspicious.

It's common sense right that nothing you do online is hidden, right? Therefore it shouldn't come as a surpise that anyone reading this is tracked to an extent, right? Ever since I started my blog I've had a tracker that tells me where a viewer is from & the duration of their visit. Semi for wonders sake, semi for safety and semi for reassurance that I have an audience :)

Which brings me to my very sus situation... (and now whoever is viewing this will be found out!) Ha. I only know a hand full of people from Canada and none of them live in Ontario... so WHO in the world is CONSTANTLY viewing my blog posts!?

Now you see why I'm so sus... should I be concerned? should I be flattered?! It's wierd & creepy... literally some days they view it every hour... because I'm such a worrywart, I looked into password locking my blog, but you can't do that on blogger. Lame, right!

Anyways, I'm probably just making a mountain out of a molehill....

hodge-poge

1. I'm in the middle of drafting a HUGh-MUNG-Oh update on what God has been teaching me... it makes me excited & gives me chills.

2. The other day I was reading my journal from this year, looking back on this year also gives me chills... I still can't believe what has happened in this short span of time! God has be so evident, His fingerprints are all over my journal... including the Aussie flower I smuggled into the US... don't call Homeland Security on me!

3. I saw this on TMFS [warning: addictive time waster] the other day. Hopefully my future husband is thinking this, one day... because I'm totally keen :)

4. As the weather is changing, I'm missing Australian summer.

5. Did I mention I L-O-V-E my new admin job!? I seriously can't believe I get to do what I do!? God is so good. This weekend I got to connect with heaps of people from the ministry I've never met before...it was so great!

6. Though the bitter weather is coming, I do enjoy the signs & sounds of the coming holiday seasons!! Including the red cups from Starbucks.

7. A friend of mine down unda' sent this to me the other day.. it made my day!

the end.

let men be men!

First of all, the photo has nothing to do with this post, I just like it a lot :) Brit left for Haiti this morning, so she stopped by yesterday arvo to say goodbye.

Here we go...I L-O-V-E the weekends. What a great break from "normal life", right?! Funny story time::: When I tell people I live in Detroit classic questions tend to follow; do I own a gun, have I been to 8 mile, do I know Eminem, or am I in a gang?! It's like when people meet someone from California and just assume they know Miley Cyrus & have been to Hollywood...CA is a big state, what are the chances, honestly. That's besides the point... my grandma lives off of 8 mile... I don't own a gun and I'm not in a gang!

Anyways, Detroit is great... there is lots to do there, cool shops, cafes, museums, parks, ect. It's like every other metropolitan city in North America, except the crime rate is a tad higher & there are heaps more gutted buildings, so what's the big deal? OKAY...so what I'm trying to get at is, roaming the D is all about being smart! You can do whatever you want down there, as long as you're smart. Examples... fill your tank with gas in the burbs, charge your phone, perhaps you should carry pepper spray, and maybe don't go by yourself.

So this brings me to my weekend... Steph and I went downtown [totally prepared; full tank of gas, charged phones, and with each other] on Friday night, so we could see Lecrae live...judge me, it was so good! Very crammed & sweaty, just like when I would go to concerts in high school. We had fun, saw friends and found out what it was like to be the minority...fun times. Post concert nights usually involve getting food, IHOP on Woodward seemed to fit the bill this time around. We got in the car and headed to IHOP. As we headed down the entrance ramp to I-75, we hit a gnarly pot-hole and got 3 feet onto the free-way when Steph's car just stopped. I'm usually not that afraid of situations like this... but we had just come from 7 mile and it was 12 at night... recipe for worry!

I must watch the news too much, because all I could think about was how scary it would be if someone pulled up behind us and got out to "help us". God only knows who/what could pull up behind us to help. After sitting there for maybe 20 minutes, which seemed much longer...trying to start it, again and again, making that call to our dad's...we settled on finally calling AAA to come save us! Literally right when we made the plan to call them, a car pulls up behind us and I looked at Steph & said "this is where it's going to get scary". Side details, it's dark out, her vanity plate reads "BLOND1E", and we're literally in the ghetto of Detroit.

To our delight & relief the car that stopped happened to be some guys from church that we were just with. They saw us & stopped to help... knowing we weren't in the safest part of town & offering all of their prior knowledge of cars. They gladly helped jump/start the car, but nothing worked. We ended up having to get it towed back to Steph's house. The guys offered to drive us back to her house, so we wouldn't have to drive with the tow-truck driver. I was all for this idea! There was no way I was about to pile into a tow-truck with some strange man at 1am in downtown Detroit! Steph... being Miss Independent [love her!] figured we would be fine and protested the idea, the guys insisted...then I reminded her to just let them be men!

What a simple concept right?! Let men be men! Men are good problem solvers and want to rescue/protect, that's how God wired them.... so why do we as women today cringe & dislike assistance from men so much? We want to do everything on our own, we feel like we need to some how prove ourselves. Our society today is fixated on equal rights among genders, which doesn't really make any sense if you think about it... because men are so obviously different than women... each gender has very different qualities and characteristics to contribute to the world and that can't happen if men aren't given the chance to man up!

So ladies... let the men in your life; fathers, brothers, friends or strangers be men!! Let them open the door, fix your car, carry something for you, or assist you in some fashion...even if it's just simple things that allow them to feel appreciated and needed! Okay I'm done ranting...just some thing to consider / think about for your Monday night.

WARNING: Work Complaint

My first "real job" was working in a Bakery at a Whole Foods-esque grocery store in a wealthy suburb. Therefore, I became familiar with dealing with snotty plastic women who need their gluten free bread sliced a certain way, no matter how many loafs it takes. While learning to ignore arrogant slimy men, who try to make conversation more than what kind of coffee they'd like. Here I thought those were the only kind of annoying people....

Now after almost two years of working at the local Library, I've grown to long for the days when I was scolded for a stale cupcake or having to explain ten times that we were out of multi-grain for the day. The customers at the bakery seem like saints compared to the patrons [the Library likes to give customers a fancy name] that come into the Library on a day-to-day basis!

Maybe it's because the Library is a free service, right off a busy intersection and that's why we get so many crazy people all at once? Maybe it's because I am just not equipped to work with the general public? Maybe it's just me and this is how ALL people act?! Whatever the reason...I miss the nights I would come home from work and the only story I could tell was that a customer caught me bagging their bread with one glove on.

There really is NO one - way to describe the assortment of people that come into this library. They are simply a bunch of CHARACTERS! Coming in all shapes, sizes, races, and age. It drives me crazy sometimes how they treat me, other co-workers or other patrons.

I deal with... People who become regulars and it's weird if I'm at work and they are not. Bratty school kids that come in to "study" and tend to act up instead...making me second guess ever wanting to raise kids! Computer illiterate people who honestly have never touched a mouse in their life. Straight up bizarre people who ride around my department in a scooter, yet I see them walking perfectly normal through the parking lot or around the library. Foreign people who can't speak English and get upset at me for not understanding my directions. Creepy men who make inappropriate remarks to younger girl patrons. People who argue me. People who thank me. People who I know from high school. People that ask me what their email password is...how would I know their password!? People that online gamble for eight hours straight. People who are looking for jobs. People who can't control their own children. People who don't save in time and lose a whole days worth of work, because our computers shut down automatically. People who call me raciest for removing their belongings out of a 30-minute plus vacant study room. People who tell me what to do...yet I'm the one getting paid? People who tell me that I am a mean person, then ask for my name to make a complaint...just because I didn't know how to answer their question. People who are grateful for my help. People who know my name. People who I see when I'm out with my friends. People who need computer help. :: s i g h ::

ALL that to say... it's such human-nature tendency to not love the unlovable. In this case, the unlovable being the annoying people that come into a Library on a daily basis. We tend to not like the people that don't like us. No matter how nasty the attitude is of someone I'm working with is, I still have to love them. No matter how I'm being treated, I still have to show love to the person whose mistreating me. Of course, this is applicable in ALL areas of life... family, friends, coworkers, professors, and strangers.

These people that come into my story every day at work are just characters that the Author of my life added to make life less boring I guess....now I just have to choose daily to love them whether they annoy me or not.