grateful

Thanks...to you who...

Took care of me on orchestra tour. Who asked me how I was doing--even if I just grunted or scowled. Who were compassionate. Who hugged me and didn't care that I was sick. Who bent over to listen to what I had to say because it hurt to talk. Who rubbed my back. Who sang me lullabies at night. Who walked around with me in Brussels (even though I wasn't very much fun), dropped me off at the library, and then came back for me when it closed. Who gave me food. Who walked all around Sneek looking for soup. Who sat with me when I didn't talk. Who piled coats on top of me on the bus when I had a fever. Who laid down on the floor to talk to me when I had said fever. Who played my orchestra part when I dropped out. Who lent me Euros. Who told me stories of violin and cello teachers on the bus. Who called me yesterday and said "don't even think about coming to work tonight!" Who missed two classes to take me to the doctor.

I feel so blessed to have such wonderful friends. Thank you! I am so appreciative.


And the King will answer and say to them, "Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me." Matthew 25:40

the power of love

"It is because selfishness exists in our hearts that temptation has power over us. But when we behold the great love of God, selfishness appears to us in its hideous and repulsive character, and we desire to have it expelled from the soul. As the Holy Spirit glorifies Christ, our hearts are softened and subdued, the temptation loses its power, and the grace of Christ transforms the character."

Thoughts from the Mount of Blessing, p. 118

So it must be that because selfishness hasn't been completely excluded from our lives we are given into temptation. We haven't totally given ourselves to God. What a formidable thought.

Lord, help me to unselfishly look to you.

dreams for Sally

Lorrie and I came back from the pops concert to prepare for a Bible study on salvation we were team teaching to Sally the next day. It was late. We were tired. We wrote an outline for ourselves, picking out key verses and tried to come up with examples and analogies that Sally would understand. One of our verses was Romans 2:8, "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God." We tried to think of a story where we had received grace. It shouldn't be that hard, right? We were drawing blanks. Lorrie suggested that we move on, and maybe think of a story in the morning when our minds were fresher. After we finished our outline, I took Lorrie home, and went to bed. I had a most interesting dream...

Lorrie, Christy, and I were driving down the highway from North River church when a white car abruptly cut in front of us (which actually did happen yesterday). Somehow, it became the next day. Lorrie and I were driving somewhere in front of Southern. I saw blue lights in my rear view mirror. Oh no...I pulled over. I definitely wasn't speeding. The officer who pulled me over was young :). He was giving me a ticket for yesterday on the highway. Apparently he was going to pull over the white car who cut me off, but instead decided to pull me over (the next day). I was going 10 miles over the speed limit. (I would just like to interject here that I hate how the drivers here think the speed limit on 75 is like 70.) I tried to talk him out of a ticket. "But officer...I was only going 65, and everyone was passing me!" This did nothing. I began to dread calling my parents to tell them I had gotten a ticket. I remembered my mom's gentle reminder when I left NY that tickets make insurance go way up. My parents have never gotten a ticket. Here I was breaking the record at 21 getting my first ticket. I begged some more with the officer. It was later in the day now, and we ended up in his police car. We were all sitting in the front seat--I was in the middle and Lorrie was in the passenger seat. I tried one more time. I told him "You have give me a break! You see, we're doing a Bible study tomorrow, and we need an example of grace. If you let me off the hook with no ticket, I can use this experience as an example!"

I never found out if he bestowed grace upon me or not. Thomson, Joel, Lorrie, and I went today to give Sally her Bible study at Patten towers. We informed Thomson and Joel that one of them had to tell a story where they received something undeserving--a grace story. Sally's room--the eleventh floor. I rang the doorbell and knocked. Silence. Thomson knocked harder. Finally we hear Sally croak, "Hold on!" She gets closer. "Who is it?" "It's us, Sally!" "Oh! You can't come in today! I'm sick. I have a temperature of 103. I don't want you guys to get sick." Her normally hoarse voice sounded worse. My heart sank. You see, when we came to study the Bible with Sally last week, she wasn't too sure about it. We were hoping that this week would be better. I asked her if she needed anything. No. I told her we'd come back next week. Pray for Sally...that she gets better, that she yields to God's Spirit, and that she is strong against Satan's attacks.

a note job

I am in orchestration and arranging with Dr. Ashton. We had this assignment that was described as the following:

"Copy parts for the 1st and 2d oboes and the 2d clarinet from Haydn's Symphony No. 104 in D Major. Place each instrument on a separate staff on the same page. For the last eight measures, give the 2d oboe a performance cue of the viola line (watch the clef) and provide a performance cue of the 1st oboe part for the last 8 measures in the clarinet."

Ok. What does that sound like to you? I assumed it was in score form, since that is what we had done the day before, and it said "on the same page." So that night I began to work on it--for two hours, completing a whole 5 measures out of 15. I labored on it painstakingly--drawing all lines and stems with rulers. Lining up all notes vertically with my ruler. My pink pearl eraser was my trusty side-kick the whole way. (It has undoubtedly lost a little weight through the journey.) Then I got to the "cues" part. This seemed odd to me. Why would the book want me to write cues in for a score? Then I read "copy parts." Oh no! Could it be that I was supposed to extract separate parts for each instrument? (Who would want a score of 2 oboes, 2nd clarinet, and viola cues anyway?) I immediately stopped what I was doing. I would ask Dr. Ashton later. I checked his office multiple times, but alas he was in absentia. I waited until after orchestra to ask him. Yes, I was supposed to have extracted the parts and made them separate. The book told us "on the same page" so we could save paper. Wasn't that nice of them? "Well...I already started doing it in score. I've been working on it for two hours...do you think I could do surgery on it?" He said, "Ok, this time, and if it's neat." Yes. I didn't have to start over.

So tonight I listened to Mahler 1 (By the way, I adore how Claudio Abbado and the Beliner Philharmoniker start the 2nd mvt. slower and then do an accelerando.) whilst doing the cutting. It started thunder storming.

^My beautiful score. (Sorry it's a fuzzy pic)

^I don't want to cut up my beautiful work!

^After I cut the Oboe I part off the top.

^The Oboe I part, surgery complete. Cutting and pasting is much easier on a computer.


^The Oboe II part, complete with Viola cues.


^I just finished. I'm going to bed! Being a surgeon is stressful.

geocaching

Coming soon...geocaching with the Reynolds

should be sleeping...

It was 12:45 and Health for Life was ending. I was starving! All class I’d been thinking about making meatballs and spaghetti. I walked home and started grinding the walnuts. Bah, the walnuts were crowding to the bottom of the food processor. It just wasn’t working. I finally got them put together. I like to fry meatballs on the stove, but at school I’ve been putting a little oil on the pan and baking them in the toaster oven. I poured the oil on...a little bit more than usual. I had spaghetti boiling, sauce cooking, and extra sharp cheddar cheese grated. I was washing some dishes, and I turned to see flames shooting out of top of the toaster oven. It was making some alarming noises (insert onomatopoeia here). I gaped at it for several seconds. I timidly reached over and turned it off. It continued to pop, sizzle, and flame. Then I unplugged it. It calmed down. Apparently I had put too much oil in it...and the pan may have still been wet. Whoops. Oh well, nothing like a little grease fire, and I was still starving! I decided to resort to preferred method #1 and fry them. I poured some oil in the frying pan and put it on the back burner. The electric burner. I despise electric stoves. I can never tell if they’re on. (I have a gas stove at home. I like to see the fire. They’re more practical too–if we get a snow storm and the electricity goes out, at least we can eat hot food! We have a gas dryer too, so we could have warm, dry clothes...but that doesn’t have anything to do with this story.) And it just so happens that we have a problem with our front right burner on our stove here. Sometimes it doesn’t come on. I usually notice five minutes later when the water isn’t boiling. My remedy for that is to assume it’s not on, barely touch it to make sure it isn’t, and then reposition it. Alas, the oil in my frying pan on the back burner didn’t seem to be getting hot. Therefore, I touched the burner, as was my habit. Ouch. The pads of my fingers seared with pain. As I rushed to put my fingers under cold water, the first thought that popped into my mind was oh no. Juries are coming. How am I going to practice with blistered fingers? I grabbed my strawberry freezer jam jar and held onto it while I finished the meal with my left hand. Praise the Lord, it turned out that the skin on my fingers....well burned, but it didn’t blister. It became hard and I had no feeling at the area of devastation. I began to think that burners are like life. I hope that my life is like a gas burner. Can you see Jesus shining out of me? Or are you left to wonder if there’s anything burning at all? Can others see the flame? Don’t be like an electric burner.

Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven. Matthew 5:16

should be working...

So I'm at work right now, and I should be studying. (Instead I'm writing my first blog!) On the way up to NY for break, Erin and I decided that we were going to start blogs, starting w/our adventuresome trek to the lovely, cold state of NY.

Our trek started at the horrid hour of 5:30 am. I warned Saralyn the night before that I probably wouldn't talk to her. She and Emily were eating breakfast when I clomped out to the kitchen. I grunted and waved my arm. Erin and I started our 800 mile journey. I eventually fell asleep, and around 8:00 I woke up for the day. We decided to stop for breakfast somewhere, and on our last journey we had found an awesome grocery store called Ingalls. We pulled into a Food City. Never go there. Ever. I bought a bagel, cream cheese, and egg nog. At the car I realized that I didn't have change or a receipt. 17 dollars. We went back inside and the man was bagging groceries. "oh, here's your change." I gave him a perplexed look. "Thanks......" Don't they usually like come out and find you? Or at least try? Weird. We started on the road. I tore off some of my bagel and wiped it in the cream cheese. It tasted a little funny. whatever...I kept eating. Then I opened the rest of the package. Gross! Moldy. Now that's a color of green that I don't appreciate. yeah, it was moldy and smelled terrible. Let the adventures begin! I pretty much lost my appetite, and now the egg nog tasted funny as well. Later down the road, (exit 50 in VA, to be exact) we hit something. flap, flap, flap went our tire. A very nice man ended up helping us. He lived over the hill, as the crow flew. His cell phone ring was a rooster cock-a-doodle-doing. He put the donut on, and we watched (which is just like changing a timpani head, i might add). He would stop and talk to us every now and then, in his nice southern accent. Then he told us to go to exit 70 to the tire place there. We started down the highway. He was following us. What a nice man! Then he led us to the tire place. Once we got there, he continued to talk. It was his day off work. He built and raced cars. He took turns with his siblings taking care of his dad. I'm sorry, but this is a very boring blog. I seem to have no inspiration. We got a new tire, and it was a pretty normal trip from then on.