take 5.

so if i had to narrow down my five favorite bands, i could do it. easily. i was discussing lyrics with a friend this weekend and decided that i don't really care about them. i'm much more into musical skill and technique, and i guess overall sound quality. if the lyrics are dece, sweet. if not, i just tune them out. don't get me wrong, i'll never play "Colt 45" as a lullaby for my children. i have some boundaries. here we go.

5. david crowder band.

• seen live: 4x
• their music is nearly impossible to recreate
• his beard. also nearly impossible to recreate
• love the slow stuff..love the fast stuff.
• favorite song: foreverandeveretc.
  

4. nada surf

• seen live: 1x
• 3 members in the band & still so quality
• lyrics are actually pretty great
• their bassist looks like capt. jack sparrow
• favorite song: imaginary friends

3. cake

• seen live: 1x
• them singing sober would just be wrong.
  
• lyrics are so pointless it is glorious.
  
• they covered a song by bread. cake made bread better.
  
• favorite song: short skirt, long jacket
  

2. switchfoot

• seen live: 8x
• never been disappointed by a show
• the beautiful letdown is perfection in an album.
• tim foreman is going to be the father of my children.
• favorite song: faust, midas, and myself

1. guster

• seen live: 0x (!!!!)
• been a fan for about a year, can't get enough
• i would pay an inelastic sum of money to see them live
• hearing the live version of demons gave me chills
• favorite song: too many
  

sugar high.

i'm on an incredible trip right now. i had my midday dew about 8 hours ago and i still have not come down from it. as i twitch, these are my current thoughts:

1. the minnesota twins > your favorite thing.
2. i heart lovedrug. almost enough to skip the fall retreat. almost.
3. two of my favorite people alive are at the hanson concert right now, which is almost enough to make me go to a hanson concert. almost.
4. mountain dew = nectar of the gods.
5. bensonwells is suckier than the suckiest band you've ever heard. and i have a poster of them hanging above my desk.
6. jim and pam are engaged. and stanley/phyllis/kevin are getting liposuction.
7. i want to express my inner anguish through the majesty of song.
8. fewer things trump the deliciousness of charlie's pizza.
9. there is a pirate flag in my bathroom.
10. i'm almost finished with my october playlist.
11. i'm obsessed with pandora.

cakewrecks.

my blog is no longer worthy of your time. thanks to cakewrecks.blogspot.com, my blog now sucks. go read that one. it's hilarious. if it doesn't make your day, i will give you $4.

"I don't have any money, I get paid for dogsitting in pizza."
-- an unnamed nearly 22-year-old

song of the day: sweet & low (augustana)

have a good night!

last night after class i made a quick target run for some "personal items". there was only one checkout line open (of course) and the cashier was of the male persuasion. it's not a problem for me, but these types of men always make buying tampons awkward. after i checked out he serenaded me with the classic "have a good night!" and i couldn't help but think..

it is the first day of my period. of course i'm not going to have a good night. i'll probably be cranky, eat a lot of chocolate, and do a good deal of moping around. but thanks for the encouragement.

on the flip side...

in my good ol' days as a CSR (customer service representative) at superamerica, we were trained to say "have a good .. (fill in what time of day is left)". and of course attach it with a "genuine" smile. one time a greasy-type man came in and bought a pack of condoms. the economy pack. he was clearly quite proud of his purchase and let me know with a wink. on his way out i fulfilled my duties and gave him the line. i couldn't help but think...

of course he's going to have a good night. he's a perv. or maybe he just bought them to show off? what a waste of $8 if so.

this ends my thought for the day.

i wear my sunglasses at night.

so i love sunglasses. no really, i LOVE sunglasses. i own a double-digit amount of pairs and quite honestly use only two or three of them to actually shield the sun. no, wearing sunglasses is an art.

here's the saga of my sunglasses history. in 9th grade i found the perfect pair of sunglasses. they were the greatest. whenever they were on my face i felt alive, no one could bring me down. i wore them occasionally at soccer practice and even dubbed the name "j. wo". cool right? well, one of my sisters (who shall remain unnamed) stepped on them mere weeks after i got them. i was crushed. this will stand out as the worst day of my freshman year, perhaps my life. luckily i went back to the store in the mall and they still had them, so i bought two pair. a decent investment if you ask me. well time goes on, and i ended up losing the first pair and dropping the second. i went back to the store yet again, but this time they no longer had my favorite pair for sale. i bought three other pairs to serve my broken heart.

ever since this saga took place, i have been obsessed with sunglasses. i buy at least one pair every time i go shopping - sometimes two. or three. i was modest and only brought 6 of them to camp with me this summer. and sported them always. indoors, at night, pretty much anywhere but chapel (God's place). i had two favorites at camp this summer, one of which was stolen, broken, and feebly returned (again, unnamed), and the other was lost in the shuffle of packing. which friends, is the sole reason i was having camp withdrawals. juuuuuust kidding. but seriously.

to end this post i will honor your eyes with a fashion show of a few of my current collection. peace out.

quote of the day calendar

quick blog today, i'm important and i have things to do.

for christmas katie gave me a quote of the day calendar from "the office". i like to have a ceremony each morning when i rip off yesterdays quote and then i look to see how today's quote is going to apply to my life. hardly ever does it apply to my life, BUT i was looking through some old quotes the other day and hit the jackpot. on may 28th (the first day of staff training) the quote was:

"open that top button, let those things breathe." (michael, in reference to pam's blouse)

and i didn't, that's probably why i got such a slow start.

wedding bells.

every once in awhile, there is an event. an event so epic that a blog isn't even worthy of reporting it. but this so-called "rachel's reality" will attempt to explain the sequential events of this past saturday: a woltjer wedding.

sarah and i decided to carpool from the "greater metro area" to st. cloud to meet up with my dad and TJ. good times are always had in a car ride with sarah. we can discuss issues such as: our grandfather's criminal history, false depression interventions, and also the intensity of the weeds finale (she's pregnant!?). upon reaching st. cloud, we joined vehicles with our friends ronald and t-jen. [sidenote: i have quite the history of car rides with those two. my dad finds it necessary to find the smallest rental car possible whenever we go on vacation, and proceeds to leave the person behind the driver's seat with 2.5 inches of leg-room. don't even get me started.] our car ride was fairly uneventful, i'm sure sarah and i told my dad at least 49 times to turn down NPR because the reason he couldn't hear it is because the speakers were located in the back of the car, not the front. hence turning it up louder only served to deafen those located in the backseat. not that hours of speculation about sarah palin's pregnant daughter isn't my cup of tea...

somewhere along the two hour car ride, sarah and i discovered a few of tj's hats in the back of the car. of course it was time for a fashion show. not gonna lie, that kept us entertained for a good ten minutes.


when we reached new london, my father realized that he had forgotten to get his niece a card. nice. sarah, being the mature adult in the family, had a card but had already sealed it. ronald insisted that she tear it open so he could put some money in it and sign his name. he rifled through his pockets and found $41 of odd bills. i'm not kidding you. he wanted to put $41 in a card. that had been ripped open. sarah kept the one dollar bill to save a little embarrassment for our branch of the woltjer family tree.



we arrived at the wedding a half an hour early. let me tell you, this has never happened. usually the bride and groom lie to ronald about the time of the wedding (an hour earlier, sometimes two) so that he will be there on time and not walk in during the vows. laugh, but it's happened more than once. and i've been in tow both times. bitter.

my uncle danny (we'll talk about him later) was videotaping the wedding (not sure if he was hired or just bored?) and was on top of every inch of footage he could get. like when the mother of the bride was escorted down the aisle by the usher to the front row and informed my grandfather that he needed to move over one seat. this process literally took about two minutes for my grandpa to actually stand up and move over a seat. but it's ok people, we got it on tape. i mean, we missed three bridesmaids walking down the aisle, but we will never forget that my grandfather sat in the fourth seat of the front row and not the third. and also that he was wearing his signature suit (tailored when he was in high school, roughly 60 years ago) and a trucker hat supporting his favorite state: florida. he wore it through the whole ceremony, including the prayers. such a gentleman. my mom would've had a stroke if she had seen that.

i missed most of the ceremony because little nate was ripping apart my necklace and clawing my chest (i still have scratch marks). he's a pretty cute kid though, he can get away with anything. even biting my eyebrow ring. thanks bud. but he almost ripped all of sarah's hair out, so i should really count my blessings.



overall it was a beautiful outdoor wedding. the reception was pretty great, the food exceeded the typical woltjer "ham sandwich bar". always a nice surprise. my dad recently discovered the "camera feature" on his blackberry and his been a picture whore ever since. he always seems to get the most "candid" shots of me. i pray he never learns how to send them/put them on his computer. as we were leaving he decided it would be a good idea for sarah and i to have a picture with our favorite grandpa. my g-pa literally was holding sarah's right boob in the picture. too great. and i'm so glad i was not on the side of his "good arm".

this is a really long story spattered with many woltjer family histories, and i'm sorry that you just spent ten minutes reading it. but this is my life. and i love it.

striking resemblance.

okay, so i will be the first to admit that i was "different" when i was a child. thank you to my eldest sister, pictures of my childhood self have been splattered all over facebook. and thank you to kayla flynn (friend? foe?) i have come to the realization that my childhood self bears a striking resemblance to nathan alnes. so here you go.

top 100 moments at LBBC summer 2008

ahh, the long awaited list. these are my favorite (or most memorable) 100 moments/things about lake beauty summer of '08. if i miss a few of yours, my apologies. but it's all about me anyways. it always has been. ha. here we go.

100. max's tanktop not meeting the two-inch strap requirement
99. heeey brandon! (not my favorite, but very memorable)
98. jamie (in full pirate accent of course): "blackbeard mounted forty guys..."
97. k-dawg informing me that my face is very distinct (in a good way)
96. jd and i choking on fire during outdoor chapel (makes g. of wonders quite worship-ful)
95. camper: "my face is numb"
great counselor (me): "why?"
camper: "i got hit in the face with a tetherball - AGAIN!"
94. charlie's runs..yum.
93. candy cane
92. manteen
91. nathan alnes as a lifeguard
90. serf camper explosions
89. senior high camper during chapel: "what does circumcise mean?"
88. the "counselor brake schedule" (i still have that one, by the way.)
87. to tell the truth anti-climaxes
86. brenda saying va-jay jay in front of a trailblazer
85. the rumor (s).
84. celebrity stories, sarah johnson: "hannah montana is my cousin."
83. bensonwells
82. the middle men: jacky, jerry, mickey, and nancy
81. i said a tail chicka tail!
80. princess genevieve
79. bazooks:

• chiggers
• punching me in the leg when i forgot to bring her to horses
• obsession with candy cane & hot chocolate

78. "it's so damn hot. milk was a baaaad choice."
77. my cousin's end of the week eval for paul:
comment on your counselor: annoying
76. clip clop
75. laying hands
74. bm's prayer stares
73. man spooning party next to the campfire during staff training
72. the quote board
71. the following conversation is taken out of context. do not be offended.
k-dawg: "aww i wanted to serve the meat!"
alan: "you can just flash mine!"
70. tiffanie's domination of the lost and found
69. having soup for lunch on 90+ degree days
68. u-turn night TB1:
camper: i have two questions. is max your boyfriend? can we play tetherball?
67. getting peed on by a TB en route to a bathroom from outdoor chapel
66. d lights
65. program staff playing texas hold em with wooddale's money
64. max clotheslining a trailblazer during a fieldgame
63. k-dawg exposing herself during the staff training photo scavenger hunt
62. melting eyebrows (family camp)
61. racing kflynn up the rock wall in flip flops (and dominating, mind you)
60. injured "pee-pees" during the water carnival
59. brenda going through jordan walz's legs on the slip n'slide
58. sarah walking horses in a clubbing top
57. duncan farting on chelsey on low ropes during staff training
56. kayla flynn's hog
55. jordan walz hitting the piano during the chisel skit (i warned him)
54. ben jacobi's chapel entrances (especially with the safari hat)
53. my beautiful tie-dye shirt
52. wrestling in the basement of edlund. and just in general.
51. mandatory staff bonding
50. max regifting michael's secret santa gift and giving it back to him.
49. jessa deach praying for the lifeguards before rotations:
jessa: "lord thank you for the lifeguards and all the hard work they do down at the waterfront"
rachel: *chuckles
jessa: "and also help rachel be mature..."
48. ebeth teaching jacobi the trustfall handhold
47. brenda's niece plugging her ears during the benediction
46. kflynn's serving mishaps

• "you have sausage written all over you"
• "hey bun!"

45. the camping trip

• "kayla flynn..." "what?" "was born with a tail..."
• downpour @ 6am

44. sarah trying to draw "hollaback girl" for pictionary during staff training
43. dancing to sexyback with bill during the extra week
42. ben michel taking out a JJ while dancing to undignified
41. tb1 wooddale chaos. chaos. chaos.
40. lice outbreaks
39. face-melting bonfire during senior high
38. sarah jean: "you have the cross-eyed girl in your cabin?!"
37. fruitful prayer war
36. cut-offs day (homage to JD)
35. chapel intros: i'm the subcontractor for crew 15, AKA THE ROOFERS!!!
34. the dam festival. nuff said.
33. land of the free, home of the awesome
32. the chapel let-in's controversy
31. max & the turtle
30. low ropes wall fiasco/bear attack/lost pants
29. mary lou!
28. verse girls strike
27. ben michel falling on top of me during the beans skit.
26. lanet: "i've never worn sunglasses before."
rachel: "is that a mennonite thing?"
25. helloooo everybody! (again, just memorable)
24. the missions video
23. kdawg: "tiffanie, shouldn't you be wearing gloves? that water is hot."
22. blunt head trauma
21. sarah's menstruating JJ
20. i am a CH
19. go to college!
18. tiffanie (during chapel skit): "that's what guns are for!" (cocks rifle)
17. k-dawg and sarah switching bras in edlund
16. capture the flag casualties
15. "put on a harness"
14. ben michel: "oh yeah!" (after i informed him that i was rubbing lotion all over my body)
13. praise that chelsey's homesick camper is no more.
12. k-dawg's dramatic discovery of her first stretch mark.
11. paul doing low ropes in a walking cast

and the much-awaited top 10....

10. nathan alnes: "put my wallet down!!"
- for those of you that weren't there/don't understand, i pity you. it was SUCH a quality moment

9. fugitive senior high moment #1:
ben michel: "ben, are you ok?"
amy (not ben): "umm, i'm amy.."

8. brandon: "ok, i have some good news and some bad news. the bad news is i'm leaving. the good news is that rachel woltjer is taking over!"
campers: (amidst much booing) "make her leave!!"

7. k-dawg: "you can't see me, but i can see you, and if you're not dancing i will KILL you!"

6. jacobi's cabin clean-up acceptance speech.

5. leland: "well you guys have fun whatever you're doing tonight!"
tiffanie (under her breath): sugar daddies...
leland (stops): "i sure hope not!..(continue 5minute speech about how every time they pass sugar daddies, he and his sons pull over and pray)"

4. flashed camper vomiting episode.

3. the movie theater kiss.

2. jacobi getting lost during fugitive senior high. and all the events that ensued.

1. hannah manitoba (celebrity paul hype)

the end. that took like 4 hours.

ID badges are long overdue

so every day on my way to class i walk through the biology hallway. they have a nice display of pictures of the professors. and every time i walk past professor bryan anderson's picture, i have to imagine what that photo session was like. "ok now bryan, i need you to cross your eyes, yep, that's good, ok now look at the ceiling, yep that's great, now give me a big fake smile!" i hate to mock him (well sort of) because i don't know him, but i look at this as more of a "thank you" for putting a smile on my face every afternoon.

this picture also reminds me of one of my top 3 favorite office episodes: conflict resolution. if you haven't seen it, go rent season 2 (episode 21) and watch it. i can only imagine how disappointed dwight would be in bryan's picture.

"I never smile if I can help it. Showing one's teeth is a submission signal in primates. Whenever anyone smiles at me, all I see is a chimpanzee begging for it's life." -- Dwight Schrute

change. is good.

i can't believe how much i've changed in a year.
coming out of high school, i was a pretty confident person.
my friends were comfortable with ridiculousness and i could do anything i wanted around them.
last summer, along with the "crew", i started casually drinking.
the casual turned into a bit more of a drunken phase.
i came into college seeking out those who were covenant breakers along with me.
i found a few. we hung out.
definitely blew a couple good friendships with my immature habits.
i was far from reaching my potential.
i became quite the homebody and lived in my room and on my floor.
going home for christmas break i couldn't help but be disappointed.
i fought everything inside me to go back for second semester.
i prayed for friends..odd..but i really didn't have any.
and quickly..very quickly..they arrived.
i was at a point where i was like 84% rachel.
which was pretty good.
the year dwindled down and just got worse.
much worse.
i didn't know who i was anymore.
as bethel freshman year came to a close, lake beauty neared.
i had zero expectations for lbbc..maybe a few bad ones.
got to camp, the first few days of staff training confirmed my lack of excitement.
gah, another 3 months of suckiness.
nope, not so much.
sarah jean johnson had some different plans for my summer.
according to brian alnes she "ripped me out of my shell".
spooning in a tent during a rainstorm will do that to ya.
things began to blossom.
i'd go to bed smiling (?) even though i was sleep-deprived and starving.
people appreciated my presence for once.
i had people to confide in.
i loved every second of my summer.
every second.
i loved living in a place 24/7 that i actually fit in.
twas great.
i was introduced to the "well of friendship".
my friends at camp changed my life.
i miss them.
i long for them (?).
leaving camp was one of the hardest things i've ever had to do.
saying goodbye to people i didn't have solid plans to see again.
amidst the chaos of camp i forgot that i had to go back.
to bethel.
a place that i currently was afraid of.
hoping sophomore year wasn't a sappy sequel.
this past month has been so hard.
i don't know what to do with myself.
there aren't bells telling me where to go and what to do.
i miss the busyness.
so as blessed as i feel for an amazing summer, i'm distraught with what to do now.
i was reading my bible last night (of course, i go to bethel.)
came across a fitting psalm.
"He renews my strength".
i had an immense strength this summer.
a confidence.
it's gone now.
but He renews it.
He will.
college is looking up.
i haven't had a drink in just about a year.
the habit gets old.
i just feel like i've grown up a lot.
petty problems disappear.
my roommates are phenom.
i'm starting to count my lbbc blessings for what they were.
and are.
but it's time to move on.
aaaaand go.

september playlist.

1. lovedrug - rocknroll (acoustic)
2. onerepublic - say
3. guster - one man wrecking machine
4. kansas - carry on my wayward son
5. hanson - hey
6. jimmy needham - lost at sea
7. ben harper & the innocent criminals - in the colors
8. metro station - shake it
9. carrie underwood - so small
10. michael jackson - will you be there
11. leona lewis - bleeding love
12. goo goo dolls - big machine
13. switchfoot - faust, midas, and myself
14. lenny kravitz - lady
15. blackeyed peas ft. justin timberlake - my style
16. third eye blind - semi-charmed life
17. scissor sisters - take your mama out
18. beck - black tambourine
19. flo-rida ft. t-pain - low
20. tobymac - suddenly