My sister Katie sent me this

"...it's questions that
you answer about me. You fill this out with the answers about me and send it to
me."

~Oh no... how well do I really know Katie? Is she in doubt of our relationship? Maybe I don't know her as well as I thought...

1. My name?
~Well, Kate, presumedly the same as mine-- unless you got married on the sly

2. Where did we meet?
~Soon after you popped out of the womb

3. Take a stab at my middle name:
~Eileen, although I forget for which non-Irish relative's sake it is

4. How long have you known me?
~I guess this survey will tell whether I really know you

5. When is the last time we saw each other?
~Well, I heard your voice when you tromped up the stairs with Roxy an hour ago--does that count? Oh, there you are again.

6. Do I smoke?
~*shocked* I should hope not!

7. Do I believe in God?
~Not only in Him, but in Jesus his son and angels and the Holy Spirit, and dinosaurs.

8. When you first saw me what was your impression?
~Probably... "Goodness, that baby's almost as big as me!"

9. Month of my Birthday?
~May

10. Color hair?
~At what point in your life?

11. Color eyes?
~Bluish-gray, unless you decided to get those red contacts

12. Do I have any siblings?
~O! O! O! I know this one! It's me!!! And Cheryl too, I guess:)

13. What's one of my favorite things to do outdoors?
~Paint limpets with fingernail polish to track their movement

14. What's one of my favorite things to do indoors?
~Gut Salmon

15. Do you remember one of the 1st things I said to you?
~Probably "Mine!" or "No!" or something

16. What's my favorite type of music?
~Loud stuff with a beat

17. What is the best feature about me?
~Your smile!

18. Am I shy or outgoing?
~Neither

19. Would you say I am funny ha ha or funny sarcastic?
~What's the difference?

20. Am I a rebel or do I follow all the rules?
~You're a rebel, but only when you care enough and don't believe in the rules

21. Would you call me hippie, glam, nerdy, snobby, or something else?
~Glam? What's glam? If that means GAMe Lover, yes. Definitely nerdy, but just about as much as I am. BTW, I have one nerd point that you don't for reading Ender's Game.

22. Have you ever seen me cry?
~Yes, baby.

23. If there were one good nickname for me what would it be?
~Boodle-do or Snuffle-Puff. Wait, no-- those are our dog's nicknames

24. If I had broccoli stuck in my teeth would you tell?
~Hehe.

~I guess I didn't do too badly. Silly questions, if you ask me.

Break is great!:)

Sliding

Mold grows in our apartment like it ain't no thing. I've never seen mold grow on the surface of tea after it'd been sitting out just two days, but there it was. Go Raeleen!

Wednesday I baked erratically. Baked apples and pumpkin bread from scratch, and warmed up a frozen pie. My guests seemed to be a over-awed. They didn't understand that I baked because I had just suffered a baking famine of three weeks or so.

Here's a quandry: what does one do when one is told that one cannot participate in ministry for six months following marriage, but cannot stay in "College Group"? Because of the way our church's Sunday School classes are specified, the only option for Ben and I after marriage is the "Young Married's" class. We cannot join High School staff or forge a new class composed of single and married twentysomething's because of the "No Ministry for 6 months" thing.
Ben's optimistic, saying that it's easy to know God's will when there are no other options. He does have a point. I just have bad presuppositions about "Young Married" type atmospheres (where most everyone is five years older than us) most of which take a while to explain. I need a change of options, or heart.

So Ben, my mom and I are going to the wedding expo in January, along with Raeleen, Andy, their three mom's, Lindsay, and possibly Krista.

I recommend "Noises Off" at the Seattle Rep. (can't spell the word that goes with Rep., can you?) Hilarious play about what goes on behind the scenes during a play.

And I hope to spend more time with God during break. More and more I realize that my only abiding hunger is to know him more-- it's the one theme, the one relationship that turns up at every point in my life. I really need to spend more time with him.

We really should find out what that play is soon

Ah, Christmas break. A great time to relax, kick back... and squeeze in all of the things you didn't do during school!

I'm not going anywhere during break. But I don't think I'll have the chance to even miss being gone, because during break I'm going to:
*make a job portfolio -- this involves photographing and photoshopping my work
*make a resume from scratch -- the previous ones were on my stolen computer!
*start sniffing out possible job locations... *ahem*, call eMi and say "Say, could you possibly slip me the inside tip of a list of our your favorite volunteers from Seattle?"
*sit down with Mom and start planning a wedding
*spend time with my family
*spend time with my future family-in-law
*spend time with the other people I don't see when I'm in school. Ya know, friends, etc.
(seriously, last week I got four hours of sleep a night and spent prettymuch every waking moment on the computer doing my final projects! It was insane, and I missed human interaction)
*Go to parties. hehe:)

But in the next two days, I'm going to:
*See a play. Ben and I don't know where it is or what it's called, but someone gave us free tickets to it.
*Go grocery shopping. This is a trickly one, being as I'm out of food, but not sure how much of Christmas break I'll be here or at my parent's...
*Completely clean out my apartment. And it needs it! Seriously!
*Throw a party. Girls who want to drink French-pressed coffee (Ben's x-mas present to me:) and eat blackberry pie Weds at 2, feel free to come on over
*Get engagement photos taken. By renowned photographers Adam Morrell and Cheryl Massingill. Check out their deviant sites sometime. When I give you the URL, that is:) Wait, you've already seen Adam's-- he posted the proposal pictures.
*Move out of architecture hall
*Christmas shopping!

And none of the things on the first list-- things I want to accomplish-- are a part of the second list. Except maybe spending time with family and friends:) What do you guys want for Christmas?

HOWEVER, I am glad I don't have to move. Ever since high school graduation, I've been on the run.
Summer 2001: Lived at Lake Retreat Camp 2 months, and my parent's for 2
School 2001-2: Lived in the dorms. Bleh. 9ish months
Summer 2002: Parent's again. Partly.
School 2002-3: UCU, which involves moving rooms every three months
Summer 2003: Parent's again.
School 2003-4: Ditto with UCU.
Summer 2004: Lived in Colorado for 2, and parent's for 1
School 2004-5: In my new apartment for almost a year!!

So this will be the longest I've been in the same bedroom. I guess moving around is pretty typical for a college, except that the UCU-changing-rooms-thing kept me hopping every three months. Okay. Nuff writing for now! Time to go out and live!

:) lis

lil' sampler

One of the digital models I photo-chopp-ed collegued for my final poster:

persp copy.jpg

*although in the poster I added a Prius and a couple of playing kids to make the owners look like a happy, environmentally friendly family.

I would try to put in my whole poster but it would probably blow up your computer. It took a full half-hour to spool to the plotter last time I printed it:)


One of the architects looking at it called it "Monty-Python-esque." What do you think?

A Rich Heritage!

Yeah, I should be working, but I've got to record the stuff I've found! Thanks to a link from the fabulous Heather Ehle's page, I found the Ancestry webpage!

I already know that "Lisa" means "consecrated to God," (and comes from 'Elizabeth'--Yay!) and my middle name "Marie" means "exalted of God," (and comes from 'Mary.' Elizabeth Mary. Hmm.) So the first thing I looked up was my last name.

All this time I thought that "Massingill" was German, but I found out that it actually comes from "Masongill," which was a place in North Yorkshire, England. A place filled with stoneworkers and fish, no doubt. A people from there would be called "_____ of Masongill," which would get shortened to "______ Masongill."

I wasn't terribly impressed, so I looked up "Yoder," my mom's maiden name. I already know a lot about "Yoder," having watched a movie on it once. St. Theodor in Switzerland was a cool guy, a rebel. So cool that people started taking on a shortened version of his name: Joder. They also faced religious persecution; there are records of the first four Joders coming to America because of this. They were the first Amish! If you google "Yoder," you'll see that they're all Amish or Mezzonite, which is a less strict version of Amish.
In fact, my Great-Grandpa was Amish, and disowned because he became a college professor. Too much education is vanity, they said. My Great-Grandpa died in a motorcycle accident when my Grandpa was 15 years old. My Grandpa still rode motorcycles for years after:) Just a few years ago, Grandpa got a call from the Mezzonite Yoders in Indiana. He finally got to meet his long lost relatives! Yay!

Here's what it says about Stewart, my Grandma's maiden name:
Scottish: originally an occupational name for an administrative official of an estate, from Middle English stiward, Old English stigweard, stīweard, a compound of stig ‘house(hold)’ + weard ‘guardian’. In Old English times this title was used of an officer controlling the domestic affairs of a household, especially of the royal household; after the Conquest it was also used more widely as the native equivalent of Seneschal for the steward of a manor or manager of an estate.
When I went to a Scottish festival a couple years ago, I got to meet some of the people from "my clan:)"

Finally, I looked up "Morrell," which will be my name once I get married:) "Lisa Marie Morrell" has a funky fun ring to it, don't you think? Ancestry said "English: from the medieval personal name Morel, a diminutive vernacular form of Latin Maurus" So I looked up "Moor," which is Old French for the Latin maurus.
"The Latin term denoted a native of northwestern Africa, but in medieval England the word came to be used informally as a nickname for any swarthy or dark-skinned person."
also, "English: from a personal name (Latin Maurus ‘Moor’). This name was borne by various early Christian saints. The personal name was introduced to England by the Normans, but it was never as popular in England as it was on the Continent."
It sounds like "Morrell" has something to do with dark, swarthy skin. Ironic that the Morrell family is as white as can be:) Dark hair, pale skin. And for me, general paleness. Ah well. The affinity for me is probably as strong as it was with "Masongill."

Kate just called me to ask my pants size...

think she's Christmas shopping?


Ben came over about three hours ago by surprise-- and it was a creepy experience! I was sitting happily Auto-CADing away my project when I heard some tapping. That's not unusual-- the people upstairs are pretty noisy sometimes. But it continued, and the cadence suggested a "knocking to get someone's attention, as in on the door." :) As I'm wondering about the motivation and reasons for this sort of knocking upstairs, I lift my head-- and over the computer screen, there's a face in my window. Quite a startling experience!

So Raeleen's real wedding date is August 13th (a saturday). It was originally two weeks earlier but she couldn't get the location she wanted at that time. Just in case you guys were wondering, or under any misapprehensions...

I'm surprisingly happy to go into crunch week. It's as if a fog has lifted, and I suddenly have the ability to focus-- Praise God! My work will mostly be on AutoCAD AND Photoshop (working on my final poster) so I can sit at my computer at home with candles burning, music playing, tea and goodies within arm's reach, and whatever other luxuries I desire (within reason, of course;) Even though I'm tired I have just the perfect amount of stress-- it's motivating me not to sleep all of the time (my bed's right by my computer too... *sigh*) but not enough stress to put my emotions in dire straits.

Today's music recommendations:
Gilbert and Sullivan Operettas -- I find these highly amusing
Happy Christmas Vol. 1 and 2-- Christian rock versions of Christmas songs:)
Michael W. Smith's Christmas album
Anything Nickelcreek
"O Fortuna" or any other songs from Carmina Burana -- a latin choir/symphony deal

Ben thought we should use the last one in our wedding. What do you guys think?


Hmm... posting not as hard as it seemed for awhile. As long as this publishes. Praise to the one who put the stars in the skies, and made a world larger than my small view filled with wonderful people! Whom I will see once I emerge from my room at the end of the week:)