Dreams Do Come True: my run-in with Anderson Cooper

Anderson Cooper = The Silver Fox.

And my celeb crush.

I met him on Friday!?!

I know most people like the super buff, beautiful young Hollywood it-guy.  Butttttt, I adore the nerdy news anchor and I'm ok with that :)

Listen, I know he is old (and quite possibly/probably gay) but I don't care.

He is so smart and funny and then there are those beautiful blue eyes of his.

And the gray hair. He totally rocks it.

I have been a loyal fan of his for years now.

I have seen some Channel One days annnndddddd his giggle melt-down that is quite possibly the most adorable thing I have ever seen + it has oodles of witty puns that you cannot help but appreciate, I promise:

Seriously, if I'm having a bad day, I just watch this and it makes ME giggle!

Having said all of that, I cannot express to you the giddiness I felt upon hearing that he - the one and only Anderson Cooper of AC360 - was coming to Charleston.

 A lot of students showed up despite that it was the start of the weekend and a little rainy:

But, have no fear, I showed up early so I was in the front row :)

I got an up-close and personal look at his super cute self and was near enough to hear him:

Oh, ANNNNNNNDDDDDDDDD near enough to get a hug. Yes, a hug!

He was coming around and shaking hands but when he got to me I said, "Can I have a hug? I'm a hugger. Can I have a hug?" And he said, "A hug?" And I said, "Yes" with my arms out.

Then. He. Leaned. In. And. Gave. Me. A. Hug.

Naturally, I squealed.

Unfortunately, it was mid-hug and, therefore, directly in his ear. I just couldn't help myself. This was my reaction just seconds afterwards; I hate that I had not thought to give my camera to a friend nearby to document this but, take my word for it: the hug happened =D

 

It was interesting seeing how the show happened but most of all it was interesting seeing Anderson Cooper during the commercial breaks. 

He was so nice and funny and relaxed. He gave hugs and signed books. He chatted and checked what he think were his tweets or texts. At one point he eve spoke on the phone to a girl's mom who didn't believe her daughter really had met him. 

As if I wasn't already on cloud 9, it got even better when he started taking pictures with people after the show. That is when his true kindness and patience shined because I would have been claustrophobic and cranky:

See his little white head and glowing eyes in the top right of the crowd? Crazy, right?

But he was so gracious and friendly to all of us, posing and smiling for countless photos, including this one with me and my friend Susie:

Isn't he dreamy??? ;)

I feel like this was a dream. But, fortunately, it wasn't.

He did in fact visit College of Charleston (which he said was one of the most beautiful college campuses he'd seen) and he had our mascot Clyde on the show during his Ridiculist:

It was a wonderful evening!

It's crazy to think that I met him whenever I tune in and see him on his show now.

This was definitely a highlight of my life so I just had to share. I hope you enjoyed hearing about it and that you aren't too jealous ;)

Baptized in Sweet Tea: a book review

Baptized in Sweet Tea.

I didn't write that book, but.... (to be read in a slow, southern drawl) .... I declare, I sure do wish I had.

It is by far one of the best books I have read in a long time.

It captures the south in such a vivid and heart-warming way. It makes me love being born here even more than I already did!

The book is an easy read with pretty pictures mixed in between a collection of columns written by Ken Burger.

He covers topics like seersucker suits, college football, things my mother used to say, going home for funerals, hot cars and hot summers, the art of using cusswords, the art of returning phonecalls, and sounds of a southern summer.

Those are just a few of his fantastic angles used to capture the southern life.

He has a way of writing that is funny and each person or place he describes seems familiar.

Whether you were born and raised here - or just wish you were - be sure to pick up a copy of this book.

Some part of it, I assure you, will reach out and grab your senses whether in your memory, your present or your fantasy of life as you'd like it to be.

Oh, and be sure to pour a glass of sweet tea as you read it ;)

This is How we Praise the Lord - and it ain't like your grandma does!

                45,000ish college students
            +  4 days
            +  the power of Jesus
            =  over  3 million dollars raised!?!

Why?

Because we believe that:

However, people are sold. 27million people, in fact.

There are more slaves today than in any other time in ALL of human history.

We focused on this at Passion 2012 in Atlanta which leads me to....

The first way that we worship differently: 

We discuss tough topics.

We are not in denial that bad things happen. We learned about slavery, sex trafficking, bonded labor, children being raped, people being starved/beaten/devalued, etc.

And then we decided to

Plenty of Christians are criticized for not putting their money where their mouth is. Not us.

The next way we worship differently is... 

We do give to the poor and needy.

Between the hours of 7pm on January 2nd and noon on January 5th, we raised $3,066,000.

That means that us - poor college kids - gave almost 50 grand every hour.

Why?

Because we believe that:

And we believe that we should be because we are called to...

"Learn to do good. Seek justice. Help the oppressed. Defend the cause of orphans. Fight for the rights of widows."             

                                                           - Isaiah 1:17

Oh, and did I mention we were in the Dome???

Yes, third way we worship differently: 

We were not in a church. We were in the Georgia Dome!?!

So many, MANY people.

It was amazing.

My boss asked the neatest question: "Just look at all of them. Can you imagine what heaven will be like?"

Psalm 89:5 says

All heaven will praise your great wonders, LORD; myriads of angels will praise you for your faithfulness.

And, last but definitely NOT least, the final way we worshiped differently was:

We sang songs like this... 

Not quite the typical hymn (although those are also beautiful!).

We also praised Jesus with rap. 

Not my favorite BUT all rap is not crap and this guy's lyrics are solid:

You can't help but get pumped up listening to LeCrae; watch for the back-flip around minute 2.

And, what was one of the most beautiful moments in the whole conference, we sang "How Great is Our God" in many languages:

And this was the final song of the conference :)

This is the Jesus generation:

Join us to end this:

Worship differently.

Care.
Give.
Do Something Now.

An Almost Resolution, An Interesting Card, and Thoughts on Timeliness

It is 2012!?!

Today is January 1st... otherwise known as a new beginning.

So much potential - endless and exciting possibilities on the horizon.

The chance for improvement, to better yourself and your life.

Gah! I love New Years!!!

Having said that, yes, I am one of "those people"... the kind that actually do make resolutions.

There are the classics like "lose weight/work out more," "quit smoking," "eat better," etc.

But, none of those were for me.

An Almost Resolution

I considered this one: "Learn to be on time."

I hate to be late because I don't want to disrespect others by wasting their precious time but I am afraid I am often late.

I blame it on my birth.

Yes, my birth.

You see I was born late, in the wrong month in fact (March 2nd instead of February 23rd), so I simply got off on the wrong foot and haven't seemed to be able to catch up since.

This lack of punctuality was fostered by growing up in the Lowcountry of South Carolina where people run on a lazy, laid-back internal clock and everything just moves a little slower.

I recently came across this t-shirt which sums it up pretty well:

That is how it is for many in the south, including me.

And my aunt.

I think she is the one I inherited my tardiness from ;)

Case in point, this recent "Christmas" card I got from her...

An Interesting Card

I got a card from her on December 22nd and was pleasantly surprised to see it came before Christmas, as I have often received Christmas cards and gifts from her well into January and sometimes even into February.

Although, I was a bit confused when I opened the envelope and read this:

Congrats on making it to Christmas? Congrats on my Savior being born? Congrats on getting presents?



I was perplexed.

This is what the inside said:

The reason this was so odd was that I did not graduate this semester; I graduated May 7th of 2011.

That means this card was just about 7 or so months late!?!

But she wrote a sweet message inside and included a check (which was well-timed after I spent a ton of money on gifts for Christmas) so I am absolutely not complaining.

In fact, I am grateful.

She and her card helped me realize that this lack of punctuality pumps through my veins. I think it is a part of who I am. As aforementioned, I was born this way. (Cue Lady Gaga's "Born This Way" playing in your head now ;) Sorry I couldn't resist!)

So "Learn to be on time"- at least for now - is simply an almost resolution.

I try not to set myself up for defeat. I mean, in making my resolutions, I am up for a good challenge but I do like them to be feasible ;)

Having said that, I resolve for 2012 to 

- Serve regularly, hopefully once a week at a soup kitchen
- Call at least one friend from home/college each week
- Try to get something (maybe a blogpost???) published
- Memorize more scripture
- Learn to cook at least 7 meals (that way I can make it through a week!)

I hope you can come up with - and keep - some resolutions of your own...

Happy New Beginning on this New Years of 2012!

Girls Like Super Heroes Too - a wise little girl's rant on toys

Girls like super heroes too.

It's true.

Ask Riley:

I saw this adorable little girl (who is wise beyond her years) on CNN recently and she got my attention.

Why do girls have to buy the pink stuff?

Now, when I was younger, I definitely liked the pink stuff and princesses. Heck, I still do!

However, I also liked the boy stuff.

I did not realize how blessed I was because, as a little girl, I also got to play with super heroes. And blocks. And sling shots. Plus, tractors, army men, cars... You name any basic boy toy and I probably played with it.

Not because my parents were super progressive or because my relatives mistook me for a tomboy.

I was just lucky enough to have a twin brother.

Annnnndddddd, I had access to all of his toys. The non-pink-princessy stuff that Riley so rightfully pointed out is usually unavailable to most girls.

I wonder for only daughters or families full of sisters, when do those little girls race their first set of hot wheels, have a sword fight or build a Lego tower? I did all of the above before age 4.

I didn't realize how lucky I had it: my toy selection went across the entire gender spectrum.

Same goes for my brother. Though he might not appreciate me sharing this, he joined me more than once to play Barbie, dress up or have a tea party.

And that is ok. In fact, it should be fine... desired even.

The "pink toys" pull out a different side of kids imagination and creativity. And by boys playing house and girls playing super heroes, they expand what they are in their imagination AND, consequently, what they might dream themselves to be when they grow up. If more kids could play with toys across the gender spectrum, we'd have more male nurses, dancers, stay at home dads. Or more female presidents, surgeons, pilots, etc.

But, why do we separate toys? Blue for boys and pink for girls? Super heroes verses princesses? Why do - as Riley pointed out - the companies (and society I might add) trick the girls into buying the pink stuff?

Because toys are way more than just playing.

They're socializing kids into gender roles. This paper details the process as does an article on education.com.

Don't get me wrong. I have no problems with a female nurse or a male pilot. To each their own. I just want to make sure kids have the option to decide what they want to play with and what they want to be when they grow up.

So the Rileys of the world can play princess or super hero.

Next time you're babysitting or hanging out with children in your church/family/neighborhood/wherever, spice up their imagination. Give a girl a sword and give a boy a doll. Have the whole group play house and then have the whole group play super heroes.

Open up their imagination.
Expand their dreams.
What they play and dream as a kid will one day become reality.

Four iPhone Fails

Santa brought me an iPhone 4s for Christmas.

I am grateful, truly, BUT me and gadgets don't always get along. Since my daddy - who is also not super tech savvy - has been managing to operate his iPhone, I figured I had a shot.

Hmm. Silly me.

Here are four (and probably only the first of many) iPhone fails that I have had:

1. "Mass" Text Mix-up

This first fail happened literally within minutes of me activating my phone. I sent a message as soon as I got into my car after leaving the store.

First, I have a confession to make: I send mass text messages. Yes. Judge all you want.

I know some people think it is poor etiquette to send the same message to multiple people but I simply found it incredibly convenient when setting up when to meet for dinner, who I need to drive to church, sharing updates about boys or redneck weddings, etc. etc.

Well apparently, some of those people who are anti mass-text-messages work for apple and they have imposed their own moral messaging code on iPhone 4s users. It seems (at least to my tech-savvy-impaired self) that one cannot send a mass text message without revealing all recipients and their responses to the group.

Yes, it seems that instead of a "mass text message" like I had on my old phone, the iPhone has a "group message system."

I learned this the hard way with the very first text message I ever sent out on my iPhone.

I simply said "Guess what is exciting about this text?" and sent it to 3 of my friends who I know own iPhones.

PS - 2 of those friends are boys.

My girl friend who I sent it to responded first with this:

"I'm guessing either (a) it came from your new iPhone or (b) you just got a text from [she used the name of my current crush whose identity shall stay a secret ;)] and you're texting me to tell me about it"

 Both a and b were good guesses ;)

Then I responded to her AND, unbeknownst to me, my 2 guy friends with:

"I wish it was option b ;) but it is option a :)"

And not long after, I got this text from one of my guy friends:

"Woo hoo for an iPhone"

I was confused because he wasn't supposed to know I had an iPhone... that was why I sent out the exciting text. My girl friend and I had already discussed me getting an iPhone but he was supposed to be surprised. So I texted back to him:

"Hold on. Did you just take a lucky guess that I got an iPhone or did you see a message about options..?"

To which he responded:

"Both :)" 

I thought, "Crap!" And then I thought, "Praise the LORD I didn't send this to my crush!"  That would have been awkward.

No more mass text messaging for me!

2. No Alarm

My second iPhone fail was within 24 hours of owning the phone. I got it at 7pm on Thursday night and then by 9am on Friday, I was supposed to be up, showered and hitting the road to visit my brother in the upstate.

That would have happened if I had correctly set my alarm.

Instead, at 10 am I awoke to find that I had either snoozed it (which is unlikely since I was not familiar with the phone) or silenced everything including the alarm the night before or maybe I set it for pm instead of am...? I still, frankly, am unsure of what precisely I did.

But I do know I did not wake up on time. Fail.

3. Mistext 

Next, I was trying to get fancy and use the microphone to tell Siri what to text to my friend Nathan. However, I was suffering from a cold so either my congestion or simply the fact that I always talk too fast and my words run together made Siri mistext my message. 

See below (I'm in green and he is in white): 

Note - Nathan knows me and the iPhone well enough to understand what I was saying even though Siri didn't. Also, note that I did not learn from my mistake in the first message on the top right; my second to last response says "seen" instead of "soon." Hopefully I will figure this out SOON enough :) 

4. Sweet Landing

If you have known me or followed this blog long enough, then you are well aware of the fact that I am a klutz. As such, you probably are not surprised that one of my fails included me dropping the phone.

However, I outdid myself.

I didn't simply drop the phone, I dropped it into a plate of cake.

And, I couldn't have dropped it on the glass part or the section covered by the $40 case that I bought,  no, that would have been too easy to fix.

Instead, I dropped it on the bottom where the teeny tiny sliver of exposed important parts that plug the phone into its charger were vulnerable to be coated in cake icing.

I tried to wipe it off with a napkin and even poked at it with a plastic fork but all to no avail. There was a resilient glob of yellow butter-cream icing making itself at home.

Fortunately, my friends' parents operated on my phone with a bit of compressed air and some toothpicks. I'm happy to report it is up and running, free of any icing or cracks.

Good as new :)

Which is a good thing because I haven't even owned the phone for two weeks!

Fingers crossed for no more iPhone fails but I'll keep ya posted if any more occur...

Christmas Sweater + Cop + a Crane and a Camera

CHRISTMAS SWEATER

To begin, I recently went to a Tacky Christmas Sweater party. I was dressed from head to toe: light-up reindeer antlers, light-bulb earrings, an elf shirt, tacky sweater and polka-dotted furry Santa socks.

That would be me on the left ;) 

 And these were my favorite part!

When it comes to things like this (dressing cheesy for partys and such), I always say "go big or go home" ;)

But, not "go to jail."

Yea, that is not how that saying goes.

Don't worry. I didn't go to jail.

COP

But I was pulled over. By a cop WITH A CANINE UNIT. Annnnndddd, I had some of my students in the car. Classy, right?

Such the role model BCM intern ;)

Anyways, it was after midnight and I was running late for an event called LoveGave at a local Walmart that I was volunteering for during the midnight-3am shift.

Despite that I was running late, I wasn't even speeding. I had no idea what I had done when the cop knocked on the window and asked "Ma'am. Do you know why I pulled you over this evening?"

Turns out, it was all a big misunderstanding.

I didn't realize I was in a turn-only lane when I came to a light so I paused with my blinker on til I could get back over in the lane going straight; I did not have time to get off the main road and risk getting lost which I have a very high propensity to do. Plus my gas light was on (naturally) so I didn't want to waste gas since I knew I wouldn't fill up until the next day as I would definitely not be stopping on the way home at 3am to fill up.

Anyways, from wherever the cop was (I didn't see him until blue lights were in my rear-view mirror!) he thought I ran a red light turning onto the main road. 

OH AND DID I FAIL TO MENTION, I WAS STILL IN MY TACKY-CHRISTMAS-SWEATER-OUTFIT?????????????

Yes. Recap:

• it was after midnight
• I was driving a car full of college students
• you saw how I was dressed!?!
• I stopped in traffic with my blinker on to turn the opposite direction of what the traffic signal was suggesting
• I told him I was headed to Walmart to volunteer til 3am???  Granted this was the truth but it sounded crazy nonetheless.

I can imagine the guy thought I was drunk as a skunk.

But, no, I hadn't had a drop to drink. I'm just directionally challenged and enjoy going overboard in cheesy attire for Christmas parties. 

Fortunately, once he spoke to me and could tell I was completely coherent and sober,  he realized the misunderstanding and let me go with just a warning for improper lane use.

So, running almost half an hour late now, we headed off towards Walmart - carfeul not to go over the speed limit by even 1 mph. 

A CRANE AND A CAMERA

I generally try to stay positive and view things from a glass-half-full perspective.

Turns out, there was a silver lining to that cloud: my volunteering task (unbeknownst to me until a few hours before my shift) was to be in a crane live on camera. That is just part of a publicity stunt that LoveGave does to raise awareness and money, this year in an effort to feed low-income children over the holidays. Essentially, 1-3 people are live on camera (which happens to be on a crane in a Walmart parking lot) talking sometimes about Jesus and the church but often about random stuff, especially the shifts that are past midnight. Those are the ones that tend to be the most random and entertaining. Since I was late for my shift, someone else went up in the crane to be on camera.

Praise the Lord. I thought I had escaped.

But when 2am rolled around, I was up... literally... in the crane and going live on camera.

Turns out from my vantage point in the crane, I happened to see... guess who? No, not Santa. The cop. Yep, I guess he was just coming to investigate if I truly did head to Walmart. I saw him drive around the parking lot and stop near my car but, fortunately, after that he left.

Somehow (maybe a miracle of God to spare y'all from any further torment and me from any further embarrassment), the internet connection died halfway through our camera shift but in case you're curious to see my short-lived airtime, here it is: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/18895670.

All is well that ends well: we met - and exceeded - our goal for LoveGave to feed low-income families but if you want to learn more, here is the website: http://lovegave.com/live/

Go big or go home!