a collection of moments.

In all honesty, 2008 was a pretty rough year for me. There are a lot of reasons, and a lot of bad memories, but negativity only slows people down. So here's to focusing on the positive: I give you my best moments of 2008, in chronological order.

Winter Retreat
My last retreat with a youth group I used to hate. Fortunately, it’s now one of my favorite groups of people and something I have lots of good feelings about. I spent this weekend mostly walking around in the woods talking to people who I wanted to talk to, enjoying being outside, playing keys, loving my friends, and just being happy.

Prom!
A surprise appearance by Benjamin Olson, Vegetarian dinner at the Sunflower Cafe, best chocolate cake ever that also happened to be vegan, classy limo ride, classy dancing at the Fox theater, being on prom court with one of my best friends, classy limo ride, classy after party, all descending into ridiculous regina spektor impressions. All with some of my favorite people in the world.

Vintage Beach Vacation (also referred to as SB08)
At some point in the fall of 2007, my dad bought a week at this really sweet beach house called the purple parrot on Dauphin Island. So for spring break, we headed down accompanied by my parent’s best friends and alina. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to dauphin island, but it is a common spring break destination not for oversexed college students but for what are possibly the least offensive people ever: bird watchers. Alina and I spent the week riding beach cruisers, flying kites, wandering around bird sanctuaries and hurricane katrina ruins, buying icees and ice cream sandwiches, taking dumb pictures on photobooth, talking in fake southern accents, waiting for the sun to rise, and exploring HISTORIC FORT GAINES. Also, watching America’s Next Top Model. best week ever.

Climbing a mountain at one in the morning
I was a leader on my church’s junior high retreat this summer to Awanita, and that week was a pretty great one as a whole. The last night, around one, though, some of us decided it would be a really fun idea to climb up the mountain that the Hummer usually drives up. So armed with a walkie-talkie and a giant water bottle, Ryan Beach, Lindsay Clark, Megan Lubben and I trekked up the surprisingly steep hummer trail. When we got to the top, we could see forever. It was a full moon, and everything was silver and blue. There were mountains and valleys as far as we could see, and the valleys were all filled with mist. Lindsay and I sat on a ledge with our feet hanging off and a had a fantastic conversation. Perfect night.

Crimpact goes to Roswell Mill!
For some reason, only nine people showed up on this particular wednesday, so Kendall packed us all into two cars and wouldn’t tell us where we were going. We ended up at Roswell Mill, which happens to me one of my favorite places to be. So favorite place, with favorite people. We all abandoned our shoes at some point and trekked up the creek by rock-hopping. We stayed until the sun went down.

Nighttime in Trinidad
I don’t remember what night this was. It had rained that day, but it was late in the night so all the clouds had gone away. I brought a chair out onto the basketball court behind the church, which is surrounded by a grazing field for water buffalo and cows, and put it right in the middle of a huge puddle that reflected all the stars above me. I sat in the chair and listened to Sufjan Stevens’ Michigan album and thought about how big the sky was and how small I was.

A sunny day.
Not everything is complicated. Shortly after I moved in at Georgia State, I was sitting on my floor cutting out paper birds, listening to Rogue Wave. My floor was a patch of sunshine.

late night music sessions
Mica and I discovered the best way to celebrate our friendship was to trek to the music building around 11:00 pm and play sweet music, discuss the mysteries of the universe, shout insults at each other, and also hug.

Athens
I went to Athens at the beginning of October to see Okkervil River at the 40 Watt. The entire show was fantastic in a way that I can’t even begin to describe. I stayed at Michael’s dorm that night and helped him write his french paper (read: we stayed up talking until 7 am). The next day, he, Alina, and I hung out some more. Then Alina and I semi-road tripped back home. Simple, but perfect.

the Michigan/Georgia music exchange.
as many of you know, in mid-october both my ipod and my laptop were stolen, which were the homes of my music collection that I have spent the past three years or so meticulously constructing. I teetered on the brink of madness when I was in my dorm, with no internet, no television, no camera, and no music. Not a good time. I wrote a note on facebook calling all my friends to help me out by sending me CDs and mixes. A couple weeks went by and it seemed no one was going to help me out. Then one day, I found a thick envelope in my mailbox from an unfamiliar town in Michigan. Inside, I found three CDs with hundreds of mp3s on each one from people like Neutral Milk Hotel and Sufjan Stevens, and a little note from Chelsea Graham, a friend of a friend, whom I have never met. Random acts of kindness ftw!

oh, hello

and this is what you have missed in the past two months of absent blogging:

1. I lost a computer, camera, and iPod ("lost" isn't really the best word in that situation, actually)
2. I lost a friend (it's not here, either)
   
3. I discovered Candler Park and how lovely it is
4. LeFlash! (bizarre art festival in Castleberry Hills district. I don't think I'm enough of a serious artist to understand it. I'm okay with this.)
   
5. I got dumped
6. I had a lovely Thanksgiving with my family
7. I saw Twilight (hilarious, if you're wondering.)
8. I had quite a few waffles
9. I made a new friend
10. I found a new church (Trinity Vineyard)
11. I found the beginnings of new friendships
12. I got a new computer
13. I have a semi-functioning iPod
14. I am going good places.
15. I fell madly in love with drawing letters.
    

Something good that has come out of my camera being stolen is that I have had time to devote to the areas of the arts that I have been neglecting: namely, art by hand. Tonight I took it upon myself to draw this turtle. Turtles are not easy to draw. They are incredibly frustrating. I hate turtles. But I forced myself to do it, even though it took me half an hour to get up the courage to put a mark on my paper. Typical Cara. I'm happy with how it turned out though. I'm going to revamp my apathetic tortoise design for Threadless and see what happens.

Tomorrow I'm getting up at eight am to make muffins. It's 4:19 AM. Why do I do this to myself?