A short recount of the past 4 months of my life.

Hello, world. I’m back. I realize that it’s been 18 years since I’ve blogged, and I just figured the blogging world would not be the same without me. Since it’s been a few months, here’s the short (and slightly exaggerated version) of what’s been going on in my world:

In December, I headed to Russia on a mission trip. At some point during my 12-hour layover in Frankfurt, Germany, my passport/visa sprouted legs and running shoes and left me. Stranded. If you want the long version, ask me about it later. I ended up hitching a ride on an old 70s Volkswagen van and backpacked my way through Europe, married a Spanish prince, and now I’m royalty. OK, not really. But everything did work out OK. I made best friends with the front desk clerk at the Hotel Victoria, I got an emergency passport from the scary/intimidating U.S. Consulate, and I hitched a train to Dusseldorf, where I met up with some people and worked with them all week. I am now officially a connoisseur of the Frankfurt public transportation system. I seriously considered getting a T-shirt printed that said: “I survived the S-Bahn.” I’m back home. Still haven’t been to Russia. Germany is quite beautiful, though. Second time I’ve been there.

Now that you have an idea of my luck, fast-forward 3 months later. I live in a house with 3 awesome girls in a quiet neighborhood near campus. I came home after Paradigm one night after getting a nifty text message from Mindy that some young hoodlums had kicked in our back door, stole her pillowcases, and stuff them with all our electronics (computers, cameras, ipods, etc.). Our poor blind dog wasn’t successful at scaring them off, considering he can’t see. It wasn’t enough that they took our expensive stuff, they had to leave mindy pillowcase-less. No remorse. I think we finally have most of our stuff replaced, and I basically keep my laptop with me at all times…I sleep on it, shower with it, buckle it into my car with a seatbelt, play softball with it, etc.

Now that you have an even better understanding of my luck, here goes: the week after our break-in was spring break. Spring break is God’s gift to students everywhere. Every year since I started college, I’ve gone on a trip to LA with FBC to do renovations on churches who can’t afford them. Basically, we go an do manual labor for Jesus. Which is awesome, I’m not being sarcastic. Well, before I left our house to head toward the church and load up the buses, I decided to lock the door to my room. I’m being cautious, right? Because our house got broken into? Well after I locked it and shut the door, I realized my wonderful suitcase was still in my room. Great. So, I whip out my handy-dandy house key to unlock my bedroom door and obtain said suitcase. Goodness me, the key didn’t work. Oh myyyy goodness. That’s correct. Silly me, thinking that the key I was given would unlock my bedroom door, which has a lock. So silly. The short version, I ended up going to town on my doorknob with a metal hammer until it fell off – all the while Mindy was taking pictures for visual documentation purposes that this did actually happen. So, becauase I locked my door to be super safe, I ended up with a pulverized doorknob and my door hanging wide open. Yes, you can applaud.

Alright now that you REALLY know about my luck, fast forward 2 weeks. I was pulling out of my driveway on a lovely sunny spring morning on my bike, when I looked at my car and noticed that a white laundry basket that was formerly in the trunk was now sitting in my front seat. Hmm. Went in for a little lookskie, and noticed the busted in passenger window and the contents of my vehicle scattered in a disorderly fashion. Super. So I went back in the house, e-mailed my professor, and called my new best friends (the Lubbock police dept.). Don’t worry I got the window fixed before Paradigm. Dang Thursdays, it’s not my day apparently.

Don’t worry, everything’s fine and my spirits are high. Megan and I had a good talk, and I decided to move out for this coming year. She’s been super understanding about all the move-out stuff, I think everything will go smoothly. And Emily, I will replaced my doorknob before you move in. And this one has a key.

I hope that the 5 minutes it took you to read through the short recount of the past 4 months of my life have been worthwhile. Since I now have a computer, I will try to blog more often.

Oh…and next time you have a bad day, just think: at least you’re not stranded in a foreign country with no passport or visa.

Computerless.

Well folks. I haven’t written a new blog in a while so I thought I would. This blog is about the reason WHY I haven’t written a blog in a while. It’s because the neat little computer store on Tech campus has my broken computer and won’t give it back.

I have an Apple iBook. My parents who love me surprised me with one for my 18th birthday. Her name is Nora. Yet, because Apple has a new product out every 3 days, my laptop was old news in about 6 months. I’m not complaining, though. I love Nora. She’s like my personal little box o’ fun. Nora has lasted me through good times and bad for about 2.5 years.

This spring, Nora started freaking out on me. I didn’t know what to do. I called the Apple help number, I everything the troubleshooting Website told me to do…nothing. So I took her into the computer hospital…a.k.a. Texas Technology store. Luckily I could get to my files to back them up onto my external hard drive. Unfortunately, the computer messed up my external hard drive and I could not retrieve them. Also fortunately, I double-backed up all my files on dvd-roms. The computer hospital had my computer for a few weeks, told me it needed a new logic board (whatever that means…sounds important), and everything was covered under my 3-years AppleCare plan. Voila.

Nora and I were together again. I uploaded all my files back onto Nora with my dvd-roms and we were in perfect harmony. Except her speakers didn’t work…but I could live with that. I didn’t want to be apart from little box o’ fun for another 2 weeks. Unfortunately, about a month ago, I went to restart my little friend and she didn’t want to boot up.

I took Nora to the hospital. About a week later they called me to tell me that Nora’s hard drive had gone bad but they replaced it and all of the data transferred. My speakers were fixed, and I didn’t have to pay a dime. Yay, AppleCare. Unfortunately, As soon as I booted her up and tried to connect to the Internet, she wouldn’t. Also unfortunately, I bought a brand new c.d. and attempted to put it into my cd-drive to upload my new c.d. to iTunes – but the computer hopsital put her parts back together wrong and the cd-drive scratched through my c.d. Yaaay.

So I backed up my files to my external hard drive (which I re-formatted and now works), and pranced her back to the computer hospital. I said…very politely…”umm…I just got my computer back and other things are broken. And my AppleCare plan is up next month…sooo….yeah.” So the nice girl told me “sure, I’ll have him look at it today and we’ll give you a call.”

A few days after that, the nice man called me to tell me the airport card went bad but fortunately I was stilled covered under AppleCare. And that he put the c.d. drive back correctly. Ok…I can handle that. He told me the parts were overnighted and would be ready the next day. 2-3 days later, no call. So I went by the store…he told me that the airport card he had ordered wasn’t worked so he had ordered another one and it would be overnighted and ready the next day. After the weekend…no call. I called the store…the nice man told me that the second airport card didn’t work…so it was my logic board that needed to be replaced, not the airport card. I said “nice man, I just had my logic board replaced 5 months ago.” He told me that since it’s an older model computer and they used refurbished parts that sometimes they don’t last as long. He told me he had the parts overnighted and that it would be ready the next day. That was last week.

At this point I have forgotten that I ever had a laptop. My gracious roommates and best friend have let me used their functional computers to print out notes and such. I fear I shall never feel the stroke of Nora’s keys under my fingertips again. If there’s a computer heaven, I worry that Nora shan’t be far away.

I’m still awaiting a phone call from the computer hospital…or the computer mortuary.

World…meet Ralph.

World…meet Ralph.

Some of you may not be familiar with my chronic muscular deformities. It’s possible the giant inhuman maneating knots spawn from the incredible amount of strumming on my guitar. It’s possible they spawned from Satan. No one really knows. But this I do know: there is a an epicenter of pain on my left shoulder blade that became so lifelike that I named him Ralph. In real life it’s more like Ralph, Ralph Jr. #1, Ralph Jr. #2, Ralph Jr. @3, etc.

Ralph and I do not get along so well. Sometimes he hates me so much that he does not let me sleep. Sometimes I think he talks to me. (“Ralph, is that you?!” “Yes, it’s me. I hate you.”) I’ve been to the doctor a few times so he can pop my ribs into place with his knee while 3 med students watch and tell you that they’ve never seen anything like it before.

Today, I had enough with Ralph. I went to the Rec Center today to get a “deep tissue” massage. I’ve had a few massages before. For those of you who have never experienced a delightful massage before, you get naked and a person rubs all over you with lotion while a thin sheet separates you from the rest of the world and Enya is playing in the background. And sometimes they try to make small talk with you. Scrumptious.

For those of you who are young and naive: you may think that massages are supposed to be enjoyable. I hate to break it to you but…h#&% no. Let me explain to you a “deep tissue” massage. You lay down on a nice little cozy massage table and the nice masseuse starts rubbing your neck and shoulders and lures you into false safety. Then, while you drifting into a happy place, he pulls a Japanese ninja move on your Ralph which renders you defenseless and unable to move any of yours limbs because you are now paralyzed from the neck down. Then he asks you if it’s too much pressure, to which you respond: “No, no. It’s delightful.”

After 30 minutes of this (or an hour…depending on how courageous you are), the masseuse leaves and you re-dress. You now have a red splotchy ring around your face from laying on the headrest and your hair looks like you just went for a spin in a B-52 with the hatch open.

Then you go home, tell everyone you got a splendid massage, and live in peace for a short time while Ralph rounds up the troops to plan a new and more powerful assault on your posterior.

Blog #2

For those of you who were bored enough to read my first blog, I decided to write a second one. I’ll begin on a serious note:

On Thursday I found out I was accepted to go on a mission trip to Ufa, Russia for about 10 days in December…I am sooo excited! The International Mission Board is trying to put together a team of 12 to go…I don’t know how many other people are on board yet. I’m nervous about raising money so quickly for a plane ticket, but I know God’s going to take care of it.

On mission trips: As Christians, God tells us to go and make disciples. To spread the “good news.” It’s selfish to keep it to ourselves. “For God so loved the world that He gave his only son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.” We call ourselves Christians but we slap God in the face when we do not devote ourselves wholly to Him. I do it every day. I’m not trying to sound all “churchy” and righteous. I’m just saying. The world is dying without knowing Christ – we have the resources to do something about it, yet we sit back and our American Bible belt church bubbles and just marinate.

We check off our list the things we did and didn’t do, we follow the rules, we judge the people who we’re afraid of because they might rub off something “worldly” on us. Yet there are people across the globe who are literally dying to know Christ. In America, we hear the gospel all the time, but we don’t know if that’s what we want to believe in because it doesn’t fit the “religion” we want it to be.

If you need a God more real than the one you’ve seen, travel to China and watch the martyrs, dying for their faith. Faith. We don’t know what faith is. We have comfortable lives, and clothes, and education, and stuff. We don’t need God. Travel to Africa and see the children dying every day from starvation. They have faith.

So, instead of spending a week of my Christmas break sitting on my couch at home in front of the fireplace and enjoying my cushy life, I’m going to go to a city who knows nothing about my God and do something about it. Americans have become hardened and desensitized. The people of Russia are thirsty for the truth, so I will go take it to them. I may just be one person, and it may only be for one week, but my God is big enough to use an average college student like me to make a difference.

On a lighter note: I made a chocolate pie this weekend. I went to Market Street about 79.4 times on Saturday alone; so when I realized that I didn’t have exactly all the ingredients to make the meringue part of the chocolate meringue pie, I attempted to improvise. Keyword: “attempted.” I baked my crust (that’s what she said), I cooked my filling (ditto), and I started mixing the meringue.

For those of you who don’t know me very well, I like to cook. I know it doesn’t fit the mold, because I’m not too terribly girly/domesticated. But, I do. And I like to improvise. I rarely use recipes, because recipes are for those without imaginations. In most cases when I create a culinary masterpiece, it is just that. A masterpiece. “Christmas in your mouth” if you will. Not this day, my friend. I took out golden-brown chocolate meringue pie. Looks are so deceiving. It tasted like death. It was basically the worst pie I ever tasted. Or so I’m told. Thank you. After curling up in the fetal position on my couch for a few hours and calling myself a culinary failure, I decided to get up and do something about it.

Naturally, cut a small piece for my roommate Megan to try, and buttered her up and told her how delicious it was. Haha.

After I had my fun, I decided that it was a shame to waste a pie. Since the meringue was the only part that made you drop to the floor in convulsions and make you wish you could never taste again, I decided to scrape off the top and just squirt some Reddi Whip on top. Haha, Reddi Whip.

So, the end result: A decent-tasting chocolate pie with little chunks of meringue on the top that I couldn’t quite scrape off. It must have been OK, though, since the entire thing magically disappeared over the course of 24 hours.

The moral of the story: “if at first you don’t succeed, try try again.” You win some, you lose some. Also…don’t try to substitute ingredients in a chocolate meringue pie.

Ashley Jones: A Blogging History

So…I decided to create a blog. Woohoo. As an until-recently “former” blogger, I was a nobody. Now that I’m a blogger, I will have lots of friends and be cool and popular.

But…first things first: I dedicate this blog to Kristin K. Thomas (a.k.a. Mocha). You have inspired me to blog. I never thought such graceful poetic language could touch a soul like you do. Phrases like “I was dead set on having a bad day just because my hair looks like a cross between 1980s Cher, Gene Wilder, Donatella Versache and a socially awkward poodle,” and “I stood up from my chair and realized that my skirt was resting nicely above my lovely lady lumps,” bring tears to my eyes. My only hope is that I can do for someone else what you did for me.

Now that I’m a blogger, I guess I need something to blog about. So, I found it: blogs. I’m going to blog about blogs. Say that 5 times fast.

So, to begin: a personal history of my blogging habits.

When I was young and naive, I used to journal. Since a blog (formally known as Weblog) is in essence, a web “journal,” I thought I would begin here. I had the cute little journal with the locking clasp that could withstand extreme heat and explosive devices. For a short time period, I wrote in my journal every day, sometimes pages. I wrote about the normal things that a second-grader journals about: life, love, and mystery. One fateful day, to my dismay, I discovered that my adorable, sweet, precious little sister had broken into my journal. To my dismay, I discovered the hard way that my journal was maybe not secure as I had believed it to be. My secret was about about my soul mate, Jerry Rodgers. That was journal privileged information only. Needless to say, my journaling days were over.

The next journaling endeavor I embarked on was Xanga. (Pronounced zanga, not ecks-anga.) I’m never one to jump on the bandwagon of the new cool hoopla, but my friends finally convinced me that my life was not complete without one. As a freshman in high school, there are alot of important social issues that are discussed on sites like Xanga. I feel like it really molded me into a more educated and responsible citizen of the United States as a whole. As I felt like I was maybe becoming too powerful for the Xanga world to handle, I quietly dismissed myself from the online blogging world.

After a few years preparing my re-entrance into the online world, I decided to create a MySpace. It was the perfect opportunity to keep up with my friends while trying to escape the gaze of creepy MySpace stalkers. There are so many of them. It was fun for a while, the commenting, the messaging, the “if-you-don’t-read-this-bulletin-a-curse-will-follow-your-family-for-the-next-45-years” bulletins. Slowly, the excitement of the social networking adventure began to wane. In the beginning, I would log in after school and the little red “new comments,” “new friend requests,” or “new messages” notifications would light up my computer screen. Someone wanted to be MySpace friends with ME? Wow! After a while, people got bored, and my exciting after-school login turned into a sad after-school disappointment. No more shiny “new messages” or “new photo comments.” My purpose in life began to become unclear, I almost gave up

But I discovered the “music” MySpace. Anyone can create one and you can post your music on it for real people to listen to! So I did it. I put my all into this Myspace, the other one was so much less important now. I had friend requests left and right. I was gaining momentum, getting my music out there. I could probably compete with Coldplay on number of plays in a day.

Then college came along. The big buzz was this new Website from the future, Facebook. The summer after I graduated, I sold my soul to Facebook, and I never looked back. I could keep up with my friends from Georgia while I went to college in Texas – I could post as many pictures as I wanted and TAG people in them! – I could poke people (whatever the H that means) – I could even inform everyone of my “status” (because obviously all of my friends wanted to know what I was doing every second of every day). Some people now would say that Facebook has gone downhill and become more “creepy” and “MySpace-like” but I would be willing to bet that they still check their facebook about 294857.3 times a day.

I still have my Facebook, and I still have my “music” MySpace, and now I have created a blog to complete the triad of power. It’s highly possible that no one will even get to this concluding paragraph of my first blog post because they got lost during the Xanga portion of the program. That’s OK.

Enter at your own risk: the inner-workings of the mind of Ashley Jones are perilous and few will make out alive.