Just a drop in the bucket.

So I know you've been wondering about this mysterious maid career I've been working on every Saturday from dawn till dusk. And now, the mystery is revealed! I have been working for the rich and famous, and that is a truth.

Every Saturday I hop into Big Bertha with Karri (the boss) and Rachael (my really cool maid partner) and we frolick off (as well as a big black suburban can frolick) to Kiawah Island: Land of The Rich and Famous.

This past weekend we had a lovely surprise. Thelma, a great grandmomma and a cleaning machine, joined our giggly, silly team. Thelma meant business. And that's just what she did. We whipped out clean houses like they were Krispey Kreme doughnuts. The last house we worked on is pictured below. It was magical. (I threw that word in there for you, Annemarie).

Here's the kitchen. I made it spic n span. Also, I ate three of the popsicles leftover.

The popsicle sticks had jokes on them.

What is the alphabet's favorite part of the beach?

The C shells!

Good one.

Rachael didn't really want her picture taken. Ms. Thelma didn't really care.

Dining room. Half of it.

Living room. The fluffy rug felt like a shaggy dog. It was just as hard to clean as one too.

The master bedroom complete with a customized ceiling fan.

Half of the master bath. Some people don't seem to like to have much privacy when they shower. Also, having feet on your bath tub seems to be a sign of wealth. Am I wrong?

I haven't named that house. We've only cleaned in it once. And you can't very well name a house that you have no personal connection to. The house below, on the other hand, I have cleaned every week since I started working. This house is a massive 6 bedrooms and 8 bathrooms spread out over 3 floors. That's a whole lot of house. According to bookings.com, this house is 4800 square feet and "set among 30 magnificent towering oak trees." Good to know. I haven't actually seen those 30 oaks, but next time I go there, I'll have to see if they are telling a fib or a truth. Here's a picture of this hound of house.

And here's the house next door. Poor house. It's a perfectly nice house. It just doesn't have a chance sitting next to Eugenia. That's what I named her. She and I have gotten tight. Eddy. That's the house you see below. Eddy is the more practical, home-style house of the two. Eddy is a house I might rent. Or I might just camp out on the beach. That seems most practical.

So here are a few pictures of the inside of Eugenia. She's got a lot to offer. So, if you ever have 16 friends, an itching for a beach vacation, and a spare $12,000 to blow, go for it! Yes, I said $12,000.

$12, 918.98 to be exact. I'll provide the $0.98 if you'll take care of the rest. Sound good?

If you want to see some even better pictures of Eugenia and a more-than-thorough description of her every curve and corner, you should check out: http://bookings.aetrealestate.com/Unit.mvc/Details/50132.

They've got her covered. And you.

So, yep. That's what I clean! Eugenia is my baby. A rather large one. It is strange how you can get attached to a house. But you know, she's the reason I can put gas in my car every week. So I love her. That's legit I'd say.

The Best.

Have you ever spent a weekend in Columbia in July? If you have, you may have come to the conclusion that it was the worst decision of your life. You may have sweated your face off. And in the heat of the moment, you may have scoffed at Columbia, saying it is "The armpit of the south!" But Columbia is, in fact, "Famously hot, surprisingly cool." Or so it claims. And I, for one, would agree.

On my recent adventure to this controversial city to see that boy named William, I made a pit stop on Burke Road. Just for kicks and giggles.




The first 24 hours were a crazy good time. Monday morning called for kayaking down the Saluda River rapids with Burks. (Does that sound legit? Oh, don't doubt, because it was. Class II baby).



These high quality pictures were taken by William's survivor of a phone camera. I think that's why we look like brilliant angels surrounded by holy light.



Then the next 24 hours were a crazy good time. After spending some QT with Heather Mack and Rachel Montgomery (and getting dominated in pool by Rachel Montgomery, who is an official RN now, by the way), who do you think showed up at the door? No, not Patrick Swayze, but he came a little later to do some dancing. The front door opens up, and there stands Ms. Lauren Poleynard! All the way from Clemson to surprise me! What a woman.

This is my favorite picture of us. There are a lot of good ones. This is the one where she and I rode off into the sunset together on a moped in India. And then she almost died in a moped crash. Yes, she. Not we. But that's another story for another time.


So after, an evening of dancing with Swayze and some cuddling and snacking and sleeping next to Rachel Montgomery, Tuesday morningarrived.

Now you should know, that if you are Emily Kurtz, or someone like her, it's not every day that you get to hang out with someone famous. The events of Tuesday turned out a little differently than we might have planned them ourselves. And it was wonderful. We had a lovely Starbucks catch up with many good friends, including, but not limited to, Amy, freshly back from Uganda and Kelly, freshly back from China.

Afterwards, we decided to take a meander up towards the capitol. Now, to protect the identity of the protagonists of this story, I will use a few stage names. We will call my dear friend, Annemarie by her affectionate nickname, Lil' A. Her father, we will call Mr. V. Now you may not know this, but Mr. V is a grand, faithful, hardworking Senator for our great state of South Carolina.

Well, of course, Lil' A needed some money from Mr. V in order to buy some watermelons. Seven watermelons, to be exact. So, we trekked up the road to the Senator's office building. After security checked us for weapons (we didn't have any, because William hid his knife in a bush outside), we got on the Senator's elevator and headed up to the Senator's office. There we were greeted by the Senator's receptionist and ushered in to sit in the Senator's chairs. We then proceeded to go through the Senator's desk and help ourselves to a few of the Senator's breath mints. Don't worry, he didn't mind.

Here's Kelly chilling in Mr. V's chair pretending to be Mr. V.


Once Mr. V arrived, we all were on our best behavior. I may or may not have gotten Mr. V to sign a library READ poster to put up in my room. He pictured in the poster posing with the book, "I Love You, Ronnie," which he says he has never actually read. I don't think I've read it either. But I will now.

Well, Mr. V likes Lil' A a lot. So do we. And he likes us. So after some convincing, the plan was for Mr. V to present us to the Senate as Clemson Tigers and Lil's A's friends. Great plan Mr. V! An excellent Tuesday afternoon activity for a bunch of college grads. Nbd.

At 2:30pm we arrived at the state house, dressed appropriately in jeans, lobster shorts, tshirts and v-necks. All the important people in suits looked at us funny until Mr. V proudly introduced us as really cool people. After talking some politics with a few politicians, we got the down low on the government and found out about the hoohaah that's been going on with the national debt lately. Unfortunately the Senate was doing something fancy they call "recess" and then planned to "adjourn" shortly after, so we could not be officially presented to the Senate after all. Not this time. But next time, of course. Kelly will be giving a speech.

Here's Mr. V in his snazzy Senator suit. If you print out this picture I bet he would sign it for you. What you can't quite see in this picture is that Lil' A is wearing a pair of excellent lobster shorts. I just had to point them out. She loves when I point them out.


Do I look star struck? I wasn't. Just hanging out with my homies on a Tuesday, that's all. Please notice my casual attire. Inappropro for hanging out with Senators.


My Columbia visit ended with some excellent bonding time with some old friends and some new ones. Comida mexicana, boggling and $1 bowling with these jokers... never to be forgotten.


These guys not only agreed to be friends with me, they also agreed to be friends with Greg, who came along. They also remembered to lock Jimmy's doors. It's always a very good sign of a life-long friendship when someone remembers to lock your car door for you. So take note.

Bye Columbia!

I'm a little behind.

And by that, I mean on my blogging. Don't get ridiculous.

So, last Saturday, my family and I pulled off a pretty epic yard sale. You should have been there. We pulled off this wonder of a sale in order to raise money for GenerationLINK Clemson: the international and college ministry I will be doing in Clemson for the next year.

I spent a few weeks running all around town to collect many generous donations from various Charleston residents. Thank you to everyone who contributed!!



Organizing and unpacking was quite a bit of work. So Abby and I got a 44 oz Dr. Pepper and Free-Queso-Day queso from Moes to help us tackle the job.


And we unpacked those boxes...



On the day of, at precisely 8:01am, the house was packed. The bake sale was kicking. And Evan refused to smile normally for a picture. It was too early I suppose. Or he was just being an Evan.



I had to leave soon afterwards for work. But there was still a full house when I headed out.




We even sold the carnival popcorn machine! Someone decided their house just wouldn't be complete without it.


I feel like I should have given an acceptance speech. To thank my mom, my dad, my brothers, my sister, my God. Cause they were awesome. All of them.

$650. That's the number of buckaroos God raised for His cause that day. Praise Him.

And that is all.

MUSC Students ONLY:

That is the particular library lounge that I am currently in. It is pretty cold in here. You didn't know I was an MUSC student did you? Well, I'm not. But I've got the connections. NBD, friend, NBD.

Did you know there are seven muscles in the tongue? Well now you do. I wonder why God decided to do that. Hmmmm.

Here's a picture of my mystery connections.

They are working hard studying the head and neck. I'm super impressed with them because I can only understand 48% of the language they are speaking. The only thing I've learned so far is that SOME ANGRY LADIES FIGURED OUT PMS. These are the parts of the exterior carotid artery. Even though I'm not actually sure what that is exactly. But no worries, if I stick around these smarty pants students, I'll be a Physical Therapy pro in no time. I am even drinking coffee, courtesy of MUSC. Sshhh, don't tell anyone. The only sad fact about this little get-together is the lack of a second Emily, who is studying elsewhere this afternoon.

This is a shout out to you, Emily Windham! Keep on keepin on!

(Here's a picture of her beautiful self that I stole from her Facebook profile picture album).

So, it is in honor of anatomy students here and everywhere, specifically my dear friends who have a monster test on Friday, that I write this blog post. GOOD LUCK!

These are a few of my favorite things...

Considering I have had that song stuck in my head for the past little while, I figured it would make sense to be bloggingly inspired by it. So, here are a few of my recent favorite things. Not necessarily in chronological order. (Cause let's just be honest, I don't actually know how to easily move the pictures around on a blog draft).

#1. Hearing Willie's stories from Africa. This is my very favorite picture. Yes, I made it my computer background. Look at those smiles!

P.S. He took that picture. ^

Aaaaaand.... telling him about every detail of my last two weeks. You'd think a man would get tired of listening to me ramble on and on! But, no... At least I don't think so... Here's my bulletin board of lists for the past 14 days. If you get passionately enthralled by lists then maybe you'll like this sucker.

#2 God's slow and steady provision of support for Glink. The sooner I raise that $9000, the sooner I can be back in Clemson for the sake of the gospel working with these wonderful people every day! Can you find me?

#3 A trip to the mall with my sister followed by a spontaneous stop-by Claire's to get her ears pierced for the first time. Spontaneous ear piercing = sister bonding.

#4. Video chats with these jokers in India. This one was a full 19 seconds but I think our goal is to double that next time. You know you have a wifi problem when you're talking to someone in India and the video cuts out because of your own turtle internet connection, not theirs.

#5. Krispy Kreme with magical friends on a magical grassy knoll in downtown Charleston. After we got kicked off our grassy knoll by some sketchers, we settled comfortably on a bench under the Spanish moss. Still magical.

#6. Annemarie Verdin and Lauren Poleynard and their visits to Charleston. Enough said.

#7. Giraffes.

Courtesy of National Geographic Photo of the Day

Happy National Ice Cream Day! I am going to go eat a spoonful to CELEBRAR!

P.S. Sorry I missed the periods on #2 and #3. It's only natural that I would make one or two little mishaps. I'm Emily Kurtz!

6 months.

Today, Tuesday the twelfth, marks six months that I have been dating a pretty cool guy. I don't write this to be mushy or annoying. It's just that this day is special to me. Let me explain. It is especially special to me because...

1. Just nine short months ago I was still planning on being contentedly single on July 12th, 2011.

2. This is because I have always been a gung-ho-singleness-till-I-die-you-go-girl kind of person.

3. Because of this, William is the first guy I've ever really dated for real, and I did so very warily at first.

4. Turns out, he is a really awesome man of God, and I actually really really like dating! (this surprised me)

Funny how things change. I'm so thankful for how faithful God is. Not just that He provided me with a really awesome boyfriend (I'm still getting used to that word, by the way). Even though that is really great. And not just that He made this relationship last for the last 6 months. Even though He's the One that did. But most of all, because God is my true Love and will always be. Because He is constant, He is loving, He is gentle, and He is the ultimate Man.

Jesus has grown me so much more in love with Himself over the past 6 months. He's challenged me, sanctified me, pursued me and somehow continues to love me even when I screw up over and over again. Even when I don't love Him back nearly enough. He knows me better than anyone ever will, and I am in love with Him.

So, today is kind of special for me. For a lot of reasons.

"Because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, 'The Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for Him.' The Lord is good to those whose hope is in Him, to the one who seeks Him; it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord."

Lamentations 3:22-26

Let's Just Be Honest...

It can be a tad difficult to run a successful photoblog when your Nikon D40 18-55mm lens is broken. I think the technical term for the problem is "loose lens." Well now, for months I have been not-photo-taking and therefore having some small difficulty with photo-blogging. I've worried about how I would find the money to pay for a camera-fixer or even worse, a replacement camera! I finally resolved to suppress my photography habits for a good while until the necessary arrangements could be made. Just this evening, I took another sad and longing look at my camera.

At that moment, what had never dawned on me before suddenly dawned on me! What I had failed to notice this whole time was that the lens was not actually broken! Interesting indeed. In fact, the lens was simply loose. Clearly, the Radio Shack camera guy also failed to notice this small detail. I think the technical term for the real problem was "loosely-screwed." After digging in an old forgotten drawer for a teeny tiny screwdriver, I screwdrove those small screws and held my breath a little, and wahlah! my long lost camera is as good as new!

Wow. Three months of no photo taking for a few loose screws. Ohhh, Emily. Now, step #2 is to sell this camera and buy my beloved dream-of-a-camera, the Canon Rebel (amateur, I know, but bear with me, I've been using a Nikon D40 for the last three years). Anyone interested in buying a newly-screwed Nikon D40?

Here's the dream-come-true screwdriver that did the job!

And here's a picture of me in a cow costume. Just for kicks and giggles. We got five free meals outta this joint. The I'll-do-almost-anything-for-free-food college mindset doesn't die too easily with post-grad life.

In other news, tonight I picked several hundred straight pins up off my carpeted bedroom floor. I only got stabbed once. Note-to-self: From now on, keep straight pins in a closed container in a far away place. Got it.

Good night!