This is a good day so far.

Plenty of sleep, happy-sounding indie music, all the dots connecting on my sociology project, vanilla caramel tea, Colossians 3, a house all to myself for a few hours.  Acting under the assumption that schoolwork will continue to progress excellently, I also have an episode of Sherlock lined up to watch later, and I might settle down with some theology books later, or maybe a novel (because *SincerityMode* I haven't done nearly enough reading of that sort lately) and more tea.

Tea and homemade scones!

'Nuff said.

Break out the party horns! Kiersten finally got around to writing something!

All right.  I have been very remiss in blogging—on writing, journaling, vlogging, talking to people, period.  Mostly.  So I am here to remedy a little of that.  Hopefully in a relatively succinct and pithy fashion.

1. Ignition!  I want to blog about this eventually.  i just can't write a good post about this.  I'm sorry.
In a nutshell, lacking spit and polish and articulacy:
Friday night/most of Saturday = general feelings of I've-been-here-I've-done-this-what-am-I-going-to-get-out-of-this-but-emotional-high?  Kind of depressing.  Great conference, but I felt kind of on the outside, like I juts didn't have any really good reason to be there.
Saturday night = really good message.  God also kind of pointed out my "daddy issue" with Him.  I cried a little bit.  My hands did this weird shaky thing.  Chrissy and Emily and a couple of other blurry faces came and prayed for me, and I love them lots and lots and lots.  I might have made friends with Erica, which is pretty cool.  She's sweet.  And I love God.  A lot. And He's letting me know that He;s not passive about me.  He does care when I miss spending time with Him.  He really, really does.  And He cares whether I care.  Simple, right?  I feel like I should feel stupid for not realizing that before, but it was always one of those things that went in one ear and out the other, you know?  I never really felt like God loved me so much that he wanted to spend time with me every day.  I think I might have had a breakthrough there. *insert interjection for emphasis here* I hope so.  And having people pray for me was incredible—because, not by any fault of anyone else's, sometimes I forget that my friends love me too.  
I think spending my weekend on a youth retreat was worth it.

2. School.  Mostly, I like college.  I spend an astronomically smaller percentage of my time now being miserable than I did in high school.  But the last month has been insane.  It's spring break this week; I'm gad to have a breather.  I feel like such a wimp, taking 12 credit hours (which is full-time, but less than the average for an honors student.)  (I am so sick of hearing "honors" anything.)  and still feeling behind all the time.  But I am hanging on.  I really need to come up with a topic for my minimum-ten-page humanities paper about an aspect of life in a major urban city.  And I need to take this gargantuan International relations exa—worth 20% of my grade— which my professor has postponed for three weeks already and which will be five weeks late if we finally take it after spring break.  (Tuesday, March 8th—I get to take three exams on my nineteenth birthday.  Yahoo.)  I've  never wanted to be done with any exam so much.  I also need to study my part as Alice the Intern for a "team simulation" so I can…do…something that is a necessary part of my grade.  My, my.

3. I want a vintage chocolate pot.  I've always thought they were cool, and today I got to hold one in an antique market and it was GORGEOUS.  Unfortunately, the cheapest one I've seen thus far—doing a little hunting on the Internet—is about $95, and the most expensive was upwards of $4000 (though that one, admittedly, was somewhere around five hundred years old.  I didn't even know they had chocolate pots back then).  So—we shall see.  I want one.  A lot.  But I certainly cannot afford one myself, unemployed collegiate that I am.

4. Spring break…what am I ever going to do with myself for a whole week with no school?  WRITE. Hang out with some of my amazing friends, both the Kalamazoo residents and those visiting from elsewhere.  Try to get together enough of a D&D campaign to run an opening adventure.  Get tight with God, because I want so much to be in love with Him and I don't think I am.

So…life.  Crazy.  Right now i need some sleep.  Hopefully we (I'm not sure precisely who comprises that 'we" yet) making a trip to the Kalamazoo Art Institute after church tomorrow—should be fun!  Hopefully I'll also make it to C&C (remonikered Dwell) tomorrow night!  (For the first time in a month, dang.)  Sometimes I want my life to slow down and sometimes I want it to throw me for an insane loop, and right now I can't even tell the difference.  I just need to get some sleep.  I think.  I sort of want to cry for no reason, because crying, even when I'm not really upset, always seems to clear my head.  An oddity of Kiersten or a normalcy of my species?

Guten nacht.

My "just because" gift from a lovely lady—

As of this morning, I own a teapot!  Janet Mueller bought it for me  "just because."  :)  I am über excited about this.  When I was little I wanted a tea set.  I asked for teapots for Christmas and got two doll-size sets (which I still have in my closet), but now I own a real person-size teapot! (And it comes with a teacup.)

According to the box, it was designed in England by a company based in Kentucky, made in China, packaged in Mexico, and sold in the United States.  It's a very well-traveled teapot. 

It has pictures of books and names of classical authors on it, so it seems well time-traveled and literarily versed, also.  I think we'll get on fabulously.

It doesn't have a name yet (I, too, am taking suggestions.  There seems to be an epidemic of incognito teapots going around this week).