remembering jesus

so, as you may already know, i live in the magical, muggy ohio valley city known as cincinnati.  about 30 miles north of here, in monroe, ohio, a neon megachurch erected a GIANT 62-ft statue of [half of] jesus emerging from a pond in the middle of a field, directly on the side of I-75 in 2004.  it had [rightfully] earned several nicknames since then, my favorite two being  butter jesus [for the statue's weird buttery color] and touchdown jesus [for the 'touchdown' pose his arms made], though it's technical name was 'king of kings' or something of this nature.  it looked like this:

and there he is, in all his glory, complete with a cross and what i only imagined to be the ten commandments-type 'tablet' or something in his mostly submerged lap.  the structure you see in the background is the weird neon megachurch.  neon because, well, at night, it's lit by neon, like all good megachurches should be... er...  not really.  there were MANY jokes about this statue around these parts, and across the country, just google one of his two nicknames to find some.  anyway, we had a wicked storm tonight, sending most of the tri-state to their basements, complete with tornado touchdowns [pardon that pun] and severe thunder, lightning and loads of rain.  apparently, it wasn't the best idea to put a fiberglass statue in front of a pond in the middle of a mostly-open field, however, because jesus totally got hit by lightning, caught fire, and completely burned [or melted, if you were one to call him butter] to the ground, leaving just his inner structure.  here is what butter-turned-toothpick jesus now looks like after tonight's storm:

 photo credit:  vincent rush

robot toothpick jesus and neon.  crazy.  i guess God was serious about that 'false idols' thing, eh? 

RIP, touchdown jesus.  i will miss all the jokes that cincinnatians made about you.  i will be glad to not see you along the highway when i take road trips, however, but i will still yell "touchdown!" as i pass, like i always do.  and megachurch?  take it as a sign.  real jesus did not like your butter jesus, which is why he smote it.

two saturday nights in a row?!

working for the corporate retail giant that i do, some of you may already know that i hardly ever get a saturday night off, let alone two consecutive ones.  it's really unheard of.  but its true, i just got home from work, and i'm off by 5 next saturday.  unreal.  good timing too, as next weekend, mike and i celebrate 3 amazing years together!  it's somewhat hard to believe that we've been together 3 years.  on one hand, it often seems like we just started dating.  on the other, it feels like we've known each other our whole lives.  i think these are both good things, a nice balance.  in any case, the 3 actual years together have been some of the best of my life, even with all the craziness that's happened outside of our relationship in my life.  i am quite thankful for him, and i am looking forward to celebrating many, many, many more anniversaries with this particular fella.  he makes me a better person, and he makes me want to be a better person.  i'm a terribly lucky gal.

i had a great conversation this morning with my dear friend, karen, and she reminded me that i haven't given the update on foot status on here yet, so my apologies, dear readers.  i've been a little skattery lately, in addition to working too much.  so, to kill whatever lingering suspense is out there, here is the scoop.  primary doctor called foot/ankle specialist fella to clarify this weird diagnosis.  he then called me to give me said clarification.  i have tendon damage, a bone out of place due to tendon damage, and significant arthritis.  i will likely be getting not-so-foxy arizona brace at some point this week, which i will have to wear for 3 solid months.  after 3 months, if things are not repaired as they should be, i will likely have to have fairly extensive foot/ankle repair surgery.  now, if you are paying attention, this puts us quite close to impending wedding day thing.  so the plan is to wear the dumb brace thing, go back in 3 months, and if they say i need surgery, mike and i get married, go on super fun honeymoon, and then i will have surgery after that.  we're all hoping, however, that dumb brace thing will do what it's supposed to and my body does what it's supposed to and then everything will be cool and the gang and i won't have to go under the knife for the 15th time.  because that's just way too many times to go under the knife.  i'm trying not to look too far ahead, however.  day by day, and we'll just see.  as of the moment, all the rain we've been getting which causes the wonder that is cincinnati humidity is making the day to day quite painful for me.  i'm dy.ing. at work.  i'm usually laying in bed awake for hours in the morning waiting for the pain to mellow enough.  it's not a fun place right now.  none of my docs seem to know if i'm going to be able to work with this brace thing yet, so it's a 'wait and see' game.  we'll find out this week, i guess.  if not, i'm going to be out of work for 3 long months, which would really suck.  let's hope this doesn't happen either, eh?  otherwise, i'm going to be calling people too much and pathetically asking, "so, what'cha doin'?", and nobody wants that, including me.  i try to have standards.  :)

so there's the skinny for all of you who were waiting for me to get my act together.  as soon as i get the stupid brace thing, i promise to take a photo of it and show you just how awful modern healing orthotic devices can be.  in the interim, mike and i are gonna go grab some dinner and hit the town for a little socialization this evening, in what might be my last weekend without the brace for the summer.  boo.  hope you're getting into something fun this weekend, y'all!

hello cheesy!

so, when you sign onto wedding-organizational-type sites, they do this horrible thing where they tell you how many days until you get married.  today it told me that i have 108 days.  hence my internet quietness.  we had to get our butts in gear a little, so my apologies for absense.  i'm back.  i get a little stressed with tickers reminding me of impending deadlines...

we've been getting a lot of the smaller, more tedious things taken care of.  we have a finalized guest list for our extremely tiny ceremony, which led us to start a cheesy website up for details about the reception and other self-absorbed things [although it's pretty cute in design, as it's a whimsical depictation of SF, which is where we want to go for our honeymoon, done by the design mavens/sisters at hello lucky!].  although the wedding website thing might be a little cheese, it is completely justified to me, based on a few things, such as RSVPs without paper, tracking RSVPs, this sort of thing.  i digress.  we have registries.  we've also finalized the mental idea of our invite for our families, nailed down some cute decorating ideas, found a bartender for the ceremony, 2 djs for the reception, a band, that sort of thing.  we still have to send out some checks.  sigh.  all in due time. 

in the interim, all of your questions and curiosities can be answered right here.

hello, cheesy website.  :)

we got our website at mywedding.com, as it was free and not completely aesthetically lame.  

we suggest you do the same.