r y l e e :)

Sorry for Party Rockin'

2012-01-31T15:12:00.004-07:00

I am officially bored enough to recommence blogging. So here I am. I'm pretty sure I have a post about last semester somewhere in my drafts that I will have to break out, because I don't feel like typing it twice.

2012 has been an awesome year so far. I started it out in the best way I can think of, down in Tijuana, Mexico again with Charity Anywhere. I've officially been down there four times now, and who knows, I'll probably go back. I met a lot of cool people and had some crazy experiences! Here's my brief summary in one long run on sentence. I built an extra room onto a house for an elderly couple to live in, got lost and drove the hills of TJ for fun, saw a van roll over down a hill, actually made it across the border without being stopped, climbed a mountain, hopped plenty of curbs and potholes in Chester the van, played soccer in a garbage pit (several times), nearly saw someone fall off a 10-foot ladder, ate lots of tacos, drove Chester around filled with neighborhood kids and was not arrested for kidnapping (only in Mexico), slept in a hospital bed, latin danced, rode a horse on the beach, was part of a parenting team for one night, shot guns in a backyard in Nevada, and got to see/met a lot of friends! One cool thing also was that I got to see and talk to the woman whose house I worked on back in May when I was last in Tijuana.

I have a lot more time on my hands this semester because I am no longer working at the Police Department. I'm getting paid for my research, which is a much easier job because I pick my hours. My roommate Brynne and I are donating plasma though too for some extra cash. I have always had a serious fear of needles, but I've been slowly working on getting over it over the past year or two. I think I'm officially cured now. I figured it was something I should get over if I'm going to be sticking people with needles the rest of my life. I'm only taking two classes plus my senior capstone so I don't really have a lot of school work. Working on my thesis is actually more time consuming than all of my classes. I am taking a gymnastics and a dance class though, and loving it. I have realized, though, that I am seriously out of shape. More than I had thought. My body can't take the beating it used to! So the pulled muscles and soreness has been fun. But in all honestly I really enjoy the classes. I'm also starting as a volunteer for hospice. Basically I will be visiting with a hospice patient every week, just to chat, see how they are doing, and do any little things I can for them. Once I get off my butt I'll hopefully be doing a lot of doctor shadowing as well. I definitely planned a good, easy last semester.

I had planned on writing about my social life (see title of this post), but I'm already getting blog-exhausted (I'm not used to sitting and writing for this long!), so if you really care about that (doubtful), refer to my Facebook. Yep. I just used Facebook as a copout. The moral(s) of this entire story is that this semester is going great so far, I can't believe I'm graduating, and this year should be a great one. But please don't ask me about my plans after graduation because I'm really just winging it. At least until medical school in Fall 2013. Stay tuned for whatever crazy and whimsical ideas I get to fill that block of time!

Senior Year

2011-10-20T15:13:00.000-06:00

(NOTE: This entry was written in October but not posted until January.)

You can tell the semester started because I haven't had any time to blog...that aside, I really have been pretty busy and have time for a quick update now only because it's Fall Break. I'm busy, but happy busy. I'm genuinely amazed at how I've been able to handle it so far actually. I feel like my life gets exponentially busier every semester/year. You know that scene from I Love Lucy, where Lucy and Ethel are working in the candy factory wrapping candies, and the conveyor belt keeps getting faster and faster? That scene = my life. So far it hasn't gotten too out of control though. I'm taking my usual 18 credits, but somehow this semester that equates to seven classes, which mostly just makes for a lot of exams. I'm also doing research in Dr. Chang's lab for my senior thesis, which equals about 4 credits that I'm doing the work for now (should be more but I just don't have the time) but won't show up on my transcript until next semester (so yes, that is in addition to the other 18 credits). I'm still TA-ing for Human Physiology, but thankfully I am no long a volunteer. This semester I was pleasantly surprised to be made the UTF, equating to a $750 check (or more likely direct deposit) in my bank account on Christmas Eve. I'm also still working dispatch an average of 24 hours a week. Problem is now that I've also got to fill out the Prehealth Committee Packet by December, and at some point start volunteering as a Spanish interpreter at the hospital. Did I mention that I at some point I have to also write my 15+ page thesis? And no pressure, because it's not like it's going to be published as an article in the school electronic library database, so it will be publicly available. That's the part that I think I'm going to struggle finding time to do. Everything's been working out fairly well so far though, so I'm not too worried. Just gotta keep doing what I'm doing. :)

I am visiting my sister in Hawaii for Thanksgiving, which will probably be the best five days of the semester, but that is yet to be seen. I've had some pretty good ones already. :) I decided not to work at the Post Office this Christmas, which is going to be really weird for me. I've done it the past three years, and loved having the money, but it starts too early this year (I won't near done with classes and finals) and I will have to make do without it. It will be a relief to actually have a Christmas break after the chaos of this semester though. The good part is that next semester won't be near as busy--not even close.

Summer Hobbies

2011-07-20T17:25:00.010-06:00

So I've picked up a few new hobbies this summer because I've had a lot of free time on my hands. Without schoolwork or studying, I don't haveanything to do at work but sit there and watch endless episodes of Psych and Scrubs. That got old pretty quick. So here are a few hobbies I've picked up and a little about them:

Friendship Bracelets

My sister got me a kit with threads for friendship bracelets for my birthday and now I have like ten of them on my wrist. They are great to make while I watch TV or a movie at work and pass the time really well. I've tried some really cool patterns, but this one is my favorite so far:

Peruvian Double Wave

I've done it with just one strand in the middle too which just makes it a little smaller. Let me know if you want one because I'm running out of arm space myself haha. I've gotten a lot of traffic looking for how to actually make these, so here's the video tutorial I used. My only addenum to the video is she tells you to use way more thread than you really need. I would use only about 2/3 of what she suggests just to be safe, but even then you will probably have some left over. It is also way more important than you will first probably think to knot the threads loosely, or else you won't be able to give the base threads the zig-zag kinks and it will be a straight bracelet that is not as cool.

Gardening

At the beginning of the summer my roommates and I decided to each buy a tomato plant. We got cute pots that we decorated and everything. Well my tomato plant has well outgrown the original painted pot and little baby green tomatoes are growing! I just hooked it up to a cage today because it was getting droopy, but I think I probably need to trim the bottom of the cage so that the plant can reach the circled parts near the top. I don't think it's going to get quite as tall as Sam's (to the right). I also have a basil plant, which I put in the original painted tomato pot. I also have a hanging strawberry plant that I put on the front porch. I've still got to play around with the best place to put it though. I wish I had started everything a little earlier in the summer because it would have been cool to plant a whole garden in the ground. Alas I was too lazy to weed out the area that looks like it must have been a garden a one point in the backyard. Maybe next year!

The potted garden on the back porch and my awesome watering can.

Super Fantastic

This is the brand of tomato that I got. Sam has Mr. Stripey and I think Emily's is Celebrity. Hopefully when they are grown they taste super-fantastic.

The basil in my painted pot and the strawberries hanging out front.

A Song of Ice and Fire, by George R. R. Martin

This is an epic fantasy series that I've gotten hooked on. There are currently five novels out (with seven total planned), and I am about halfway through the fourth. HBO just finished up the first season of a TV adaptation of the series(called Game of Thrones, which is the name of the first novel), which is why the series caught my attention in the first place. This gets classified as a hobby because each book averages over 1000 pages. Yes I said EACH. They are set in an alternate reality with Middle Ages type technology. What really got me hooked is the unpredictability in the plot. There are so many characters, and so many different groups and families fighting for power that you never know what is going to happen. One thing I learned pretty quick is not to get too attached to any particular character, because George R. R. Martin has no scruples against killing off main characters like it was nothing. It will be interesting to see how he plans on ending the series, because I have no idea who will end up alive, dead, powerful, weathly, destitute, etc. It's sort of anything goes. Warning: they are definitely for mature audiences.

MISC

I am also volunteering in a lab on campus testing antibacterials on various bacteria and growing C. Elegans (basically a type of little worm). I don't count that necessarily as a hobby though haha. I drive a lot back and forth between Logan and Murray but I hate it so that hardly counts as a hobby. I've only got one more month before school starts back up again, but who knows what other hobbies I might dig up before then.

Summer of Travels

2011-06-22T11:26:00.004-06:00

It's been a crazy past few weeks. Out of the last five weeks I have spent about seven sporadic days at home. I've traveled over 17,000 miles. I've traveled by car, bus, train, cable car, plane, boat, funicular, bike, scooter, subway, and my own feet. I loved every minute of it. I can't get enough of traveling. But let's get into some more specifics.

First I traveled south to Tijuana, Mexico. It was definitely a last minute trip. A friend of mine asked me if I would like to go down to help with a construction group from Orem about a week before I had to leave. Miraculously, I had already gotten that week off of work for no particular reason except to have my work schedule more consolidated so I surprised him by saying yes. A few days after this my friend Brandon heard about the trip and also fortuitously already had the week off of work, so he decided to join. We picked up the A-Team van from the Charity Anywhere Consignment Store in St. George (where we spent the night on couches--interesting experience) and made our way to Mexico. We ended up helping a group of home schooled high school kids from Orem and a few of their parents complete projects at three separate sites. We didn't get as much done as we had planned at the beginning of the week, but that's how these things go. I was able to insulate and sheetrock a room that was added onto the house of a family of five (previously the house had been all one single room). It was definitely a hectic week because I was left in charge of the group starting Wednesday. So I did a lot of driving around and paying people haha. I definitely feel like I know my way around Tijuana now though! It took almost 24 hours to get back to Logan due to various delays like needing new tires and the traffic caused by Tijuana's soccer team winning a playoff game right as we were trying to get through the downtown area. On the way home we ended up sleeping in the back of the van at a truck stop in Vegas because we were too tired to make it to St. George. All in all it was a great trip though and hopefully I can get back down there soon.

After Mexico I spent a few days working in Logan before I headed back out west to San Francisco. My cousins Missy, Owen, and I drove out and met our cousin Jessie in San Francisco. Jessie goes to school in Oregon so we figured it was sort of a meet in the middle kind of thing (even though it wasn't quite in the middle). We spent the weekend sightseeing and shopping. We ended up cutting the trip a day shorter than planned, but it actually worked out pretty well. We got to see everything we wanted to see. I bought way too many things, but that isn't anything new! Haha. We went to the Wharf, Golden Gate Bridge and Park, Chinatown, and Carnivale. A trip to meet Jessie has sort of become a Memorial Day tradition for us, and this year definitely topped last year. Maybe next year will even beat this year!

After San Francisco I went back to Logan for a few days to work again, and then changed directions to head east for ITALY!!! My family and I spent two weeks traveling around Italy. We started in Venice. Our hotel room (well at least Savanna and I's hotel room...) had a great view from two sets of windows. Unfortunately the hotel was on the Lido island, which was about a ten minute boat ride to the islands where St. Mark's Square and most of the sightseeing was, but we were still able to make it out there enough to see a lot. We saw a glass-blowing demonstration that was really cool. We weren't able to take a gondola ride though because it rained pretty badly. We were able to visit two other islands called Burano and Torcello. The houses on Burano are all brightly colored in different colors, and their trademark is handmade lace. Torcello is a quieter island, with a few middle ages churches and buildings. My sister wants to get married there now haha. Personally though, the middle ages churches creeped me out. I think Catholic art from the period is disturbing, and I think it's weird that they keep body parts from dead saints as relics in glass cases. After Venice we headed south to Florence. I loved Florence. I loved the atmosphere. I loved that you could be walking past a bunch of little shops, turn a corner, and BAM, there was Santa Maria del Fiore. The cathedral was huge, and decorated much differently than other churches I have seen. I loved the green, white, and reddish marbles they used. Savanna and I hiked 426 steps to the top of it and had a fantastic view of Florence. We were also able to see Michaelangelo's David in Florence. It was enormous and very cool to see. While in Florence we took a day trip to see Pisa. I know this sounds stupid, but that tower really leaned! A lot more than you would expect, even from the pictures. We laughed at all the people that were standing on the lawn in front of it taking pictures of themselves "holding it up." We had the best gelato of my life in Florence. It was from a place called Vivoli's, which was near the Santa Croce church. It really was to die for. My only complaint about Florence was the rain. It rained almost every day, and it rained harder than I have ever seen. While the rain was really cool because it was so heavy and the thunder was really loud, we didn't have a lot of time there to spend and the rain made it hard to sightsee. A few funny experiences from Florence: one, a few members of the cast of the Jersey Shore were getting tattoos in a parlor right next to Savanna and I's favorite 99 cent store (haha...yes...) while we were shopping for lunch snacks; two, I heard one of the best pickup lines while we were walking through the market. A guy selling some purses (I think it was purses) said to me as I walked past, "Hey you dropped something." When I turned around to see what I had dropped he said, "My heart." I couldn't help laughing at that. After Florence we spent a day in Orvieto, which is an old city (used to be Etruscan) that was used by popes in the past as a country retreat. The city is built on hundreds of underground tunnels. We were able to tour a few of them, but most of them are used/owned now by residents. The city is on top of a hill, and had great views of the surrounding countryside. After a day in Orvieto, we headed to Rome. I also really loved Rome, but there were way too many other tourists for my liking. Rome was incredible because it's set on hilly landscape, so the buildings are staggered vertically. It also has literally thousands of years of history and architecture all thrown together. All in one view, you can see ruins from the Roman Empire, palaces from the middle ages, and structures built by Mussolini. There is something incredible about seeing Roman structures towering between the more modern buildings. The first day we arrived in Rome the EuroPride parade was happening right outside our hotel, which was really cool to see, but it did make it hard to get to the hotel (well mostly to get our bags to the hotel). Lady Gaga also performed a few songs that night at the Circus Maximus for the event! When everything sort of settled down, we saw the Colosseum, Roman Forum, Trevi Fountain, Spanish Steps, Twin Churches, Circus Maximus, Mouth of Truth, etc. We also spent a day at The Vatican. We were fortunate enough to drive past the Vatican a few times when it was dark, and I think that is when it is at its best esthetically. St. Peter's looks really impressive lit up. I can't believe the size of the cathedral either. We also had an authentic Italian dinner in Rome. We literally had like 10 courses. They started by bringing us assorted salamis that we cut ourselves (which put my mom in heaven) and the food did not stop coming. It was definitely our best meal of the trip, quality-wise as well as quantity-wise. Towards the end of the trip we took a train our to Naples, where we had some delicious pizza and gnocchi (for half the price in any other city we had been in!), but Naples was also very dirty in the sense that there were literally piles of garbage everywhere on the street. From Naples we took a train to Herculaneum, which was an ancient city that was destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. They had some very cool ruins. Herculaneum is smaller than Pompeii, but it also has better preserved ruins. Next we headed to Pompeii. I really enjoyed Pompeii. It was enormous. I loved walking down the completely intact streets. It almost felt like we were back in time. The last day in Rome was a little lazy. We just saw the last few things we had left to see and did a lot of sleeping. We did see a very cool church that day called the Capuchin Crypt. It contains the remains of about 4,000 monks. The strange but very cool (in my opinion) thing they've done is decorate six rooms with the bones of these monks. The decorations were beautiful, if a little morbid. The last room held a message in several languages that reads, "What you are now, we used to be; what we are now you will be..." It really was surprisingly beautiful, as creepy as that sounds.

As soon as we got back from Italy I spent the weekend in Park City for Jocie's Bachelorette Party. It was a lot of fun! We mostly did a lot of talking, but it was good to catch up with everyone. Now I'm back in Murray until the wedding on Thursday and I will be heading back up to Logan. It's really sort of sad how little I've spent at my house there in Logan, but I should be there a lot more after this week. I'm not sure how I feel about being back for the for the foreseeable future. We'll see how long I last before I decide it's time to leave again!

Spring Break in Tijuana, Mexico

2011-04-07T09:41:00.005-06:00

I know I'm a little late in posting this, but better late than never, right? I spent my Spring Break in Tijuana, Mexico doing charity construction. I went on the same trip two years ago as well. It really was an amazing experience. I worked on two different projects. First we fixed a roof by re-shingling one section and reframing and re-shingling another. I'd never done roofing before, but I caught on pretty quick. For the second project we framed and closed off the front wall of a restaurant. The restaurant's profits go to a children's home nearby. It was originally built to be open air, but because of this they had to move everything into a back room with a door on it every night so it wouldn't be stolen. So we closed it off and put a door with a lock in.

The group that went was a lot bigger than the last time I went, and we were also allowed to do a lot more around Tijuana. We went downtown twice and did some shopping, dancing, etc. The weather was really nice. I wasn't expecting the sun and warmth, so I got a pretty good sunburn (yes with a great t-shirt line). We slept on the roof a few nights, which was fun. The stars and the sunrise (at least when it wasn't cloudy) were really pretty. We weren't able to go to the beach though, due to the earthquake in Japan. I got to use my Spanish a lot more than I was expecting, which was good. We had less Spanish speakers than I was expecting. It really was an awesome week and I hope I can go back again!

Attitude

2011-02-22T13:14:00.000-07:00

One of the biggest things that my mom stressed when I was growing up was that attitude is everything. I didn't always understand what that meant, or what attitude even was, but it's come to my attention lately that my mom was completely right. (I can't wait for the phone call rubbing that statement in.) I found a really good quote that describes attitude and its importance perfectly.

The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failure, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness, or skill. It will make or break a company...a church...a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice everyday regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past...we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it. And so it is with you...we are in charge of our attitudes.

Charles R. Swindoll

We choose how to react, how to cope, or how to not. You can be passive, and let what happens to us push us around, mold us, or we can be active in our own lives, and move on. I have a close friend that is really struggling with this concept lately, and I've been reading a lot into different ideas on attitude. This has really helped me realize the importance of attitude, even if it hasn't worked so well on him yet. We aren't defined by what happens to us, or what other people say or do. Some people let themselves be defined by those things, but I don't think that's any way to live. The biggest thing you can count on in life is your own thoughts, emotions, feelings, and actions. Everything else is insignificant. You can use the actions of others to help lift you up, but you then have to choose not to let the actions of others also bring you down. Another quote which I've had in my anthology for a while now I think pertains to attitude and reacting to other people. It's one of my favorites.

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

Eleanor Roosevelt

This is a little bit easier said than done, of course, but that doesn't make it completely true. I know it sounds a little childish, very "sticks and stones may break my bones," but things really only get to you if you allow them. The same applies to every situation that we could possibly be faced with in life. You can choose to stay upset about failing a test, getting dumped, having your car towed, etc. or you can learn from what happened, move on, and see the bright side of the situation (because no matter what you think, there always is a bright side).

So now that I've had my little soapbox...I have nothing exciting to report going on in my life so I will end here. :)

Busy Bee

2011-02-07T18:37:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I've posted solely about my life, and I'm sort of feeling it right now so here goes. I've been super busy. I'm taking 18 credits, working 24 hours a week (at least), and teaching a lab section of Human Physiology (which is a lot more time consuming than I had planned). I also should be volunteering at the hospital and working in a biochemistry lab on campus, but those two are in the works. I just finished up my first round of tests for the semester and they were decent--could have been better, could have been worse. I'm not pleased or displeased really. Aggie Basketball is in full swing. We're ranked around 17 right now, we're 22-2, and we're on a 17 game winning streak. That takes up quite a bit of my time because I like to go a few hours early to sit on the front row.

I actually went on a date last week. (dramatic pause for appropriate exclamations) Although, it was something of a disaster. I had two tests that Monday so I was stressing and shouldn't have taken the time out of studying in the first place, but I felt bad -slash- was taken by surprise when he asked me two minutes into our conversation at Chelsie's FHE. We went to dinner at Indian Oven and I told him that I needed to get back to studying after. He wasn't that great with conversation, so I ended up babbling on about nothing the entire time trying to make it less awkward. Did I mention that I had to drive? Yeah, I had to go pick him up. So when I went to drop him off, he topped the awkward night off by asking me if he could kiss me. I mean really? We spent an hour at Indian Oven while you listened to me talk about random movies I've been watching. You really think that merits a kiss? Naturally I said no and he awkwardly got out of the car and left. While it was definitely far from the ideal date, it was the first date I've been on in two years, so I guess it gets some recognition for that.

Like I said earlier, I've been teaching a lab section of Human Physiology. It's been an interesting experience so far. I thought I would like having a partner (I team up with another girl) who has done it before and knows what she's doing, but I'm not so sure about that now. It makes it easier for me to sit back and let her be more in charge, and makes me nervous to do anything besides stand there. I subbed for another lab last week and felt way more confident. I'm getting better at it though. The biggest obstacle was realizing that yes, the class was actually listening to me and they aren't questioning my authority on anything (although to be perfectly honest they probably should). It's been good to have to review the material, in order to teach it to them. Hopefully I continue to get better at it.

It's funny because I've had a few different people ask me recently what I like to do in my spare time and I've been at a loss as to what I should say in every case. I guess that is mostly because I don't really have free time, but it's also not a good testament to me as a person if I don't have any hobbies besides school and work. I'm going to try to be more productive with my free time, because I think a lot of the time I just sit on my computer or stare blankly at a television show I don't even care about. Neither of those activities accomplish anything. I never feel like I really had a break from whatever studying or working I was doing when I spend the time on the computer or TV. So I guess you could say that's the goal for the rest of February. Actually do something in my spare time. Even sleeping would be more productive than sitting on my computer and hitting refresh every so often.

Speaking of being productive, it is definitely time for me to get back to my homework. Until the next time I get bored enough to post something. :)

Famous Ancestors

2011-01-13T18:08:00.002-07:00

So I've been doing a lot of genealogy recently. I found a book that my mom started filling out when she was twelve or so with names, dates, etc. and was hooked. I think a big part of the appeal was it was a distraction from things I should have been doing, like school work, but that's another story. So far I've entered and found about 1400 names, with many many more to go. I have fully completed five generations, and have gotten as far back as the 7th century in some lines. Here's what it really breaks down to [beware, ultra-nerd warning]:
I am approximately...
53% English
25% Italian
13% Swedish
6% Welch
3% German

The German and Welch were a surprise. I had thought I was at least 25% Scottish (at least my dad told me we were, shows what he knows), but turns out there weren't any Scots in the last 300 years that I could find. Granted many of my ancestors came to America even before the revolution, and their records before immigrating are hard to find. I was surprised to find a number of famous (or infamous) people connected to me genetically. Here are a few of my personal favorites:

Sir George Calvert - 1st Baron Baltimore (7th great grandfather)
Lord Baltimore was a Secretary of State for King James I. He worked to establish the colony of Maryland, meant to be a colony where Catholics could live and practice without persecution. He died shortly before the charter for the colony was sealed, and left the job to his son Cecilius. Cecilius' brother, Leonard (my 6th great grandfather) was the first governor of Maryland.

Edward III of England (21st great grandfather)
Edward III was one of the most successful English monarchs of the Middle Ages. He was crowned at the age of fourteen, following the deposition of his father, Edward II, whose reign was disastrous. He remained on the throne for 50 years; no English monarch had reigned for as long since Henry III, and none would again until George III, as King of the United Kingdom. When he was only seventeen years old, he led a coup against his regent, Roger Mortimer (to whom, oddly enough, I am also related haha), and began his personal reign. He started the Hundred Years' war in 1338 when he declared himself the rightful heir to the French throne.

Charlemagne (38th great grandfather)
Charlemagne, meaning Charles the Great, was King of the Franks from 768 and Emperor of the Romans from 800 to his death in 814. He expanded the Frankish kingdom into an empire that incorporated much of Western and Central Europe. Today he is regarded not only as the founding father of both French and German monarchies, but also as the father of Europe. His empire united most of Western Europe for the first time since the Romans, and the Carolingian renaissance encouraged the formation of a common European identity.

de Berkeley
Berkeley Castle (historically sometimes spelled Berkley Castle) is a castle in the town of Berkeley, Gloucestershire, UK. The castle's origins date back to the 11th century and it has been designated by English Heritage as a grade I listed building. The castle has remained within the Berkeley family since they reconstructed it in the 12th century, except for a period of royal ownership by the Tudors. Anne de Berkeley, my 13th great grandmother, born 1474, was my last de Berkeley relative. However, the castle and family still have some really cool stories. Apparently Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream was written for a Berkeley family wedding. The murder of King Edward II (another of my ancestors discussed above) took place at the castle in 1327. The Barons of the West gathered at Berkeley before setting out to meet King John at Runnymede where the Magna Carta was signed. The last court jester in England died at the castle when he fell from the minstrel's gallery in the Great Hall. Francis Drake, Queen Elizabeth's most famous sea captain, was a regular visitor of Berkeley. Many of those events occurred after my direct relations left the castle, but they are still pretty cool.

Mildred "Millie" Bubna Tomassi (wife of great uncle)
Millie was my maternal grandmother's aunt, married to her uncle Carmen. Millie and her brother "Big Mike" Bubna were allegedly involved in a auto-theft gang in Erie, Pennsylvania (where my grandmother was born and grew up). Robert Fischer, another member of their gang, was murdered in Millie's home and buried at the local golf course in shallow mud and leaves. Fischer had been called a "double-crosser" by Big Mike and Millie. That night, Fischer got drunk at Millie's home. While he was inebriated, she shaved off his eyebrows and gave him a weird haircut, saying that this would "make him the laughing stock of Erie." Fischer was then dragged down to the cellar where he was beaten and shot to death. The body was found with a broken nose, knocked-out teeth, blackened eyes, missing its fingernails, and with five fatal bullets in the head. While Big Mike took the blame for the actual shooting, the truth is not certain. One story claims that when Big Mike sat on the electric chair, waiting to die, he was instructed to shake his head if he had not actually killed Fischer. Just before he was killed, Big Mike shook his head. If Big Mike had not killed Fischer, then who had? Possibly his sister, Millie Thomas. Millie was sentenced to life in prison, where she eventually died. My grandmother said, when recollecting memories of her Aunt Millie, that she had always been impressed by her. Millie seemed very glamorous, with her flashy clothes and make-up.

Hillary Clinton (9th cousin once removed)
Yeah, not so closely related, but still. Hillary Clinton is currently the U.S. Secretary of State, and the wife of former president Bill Clinton.

Uma Thurman (9th cousin once removed)
Also not super closely related. Uma Thurman is a famous actress known for her roles in Kill Bill, The Producers, and Pulp Fiction.

In doing more research on genealogy itself, I found that some of these ancestors are not that impressive. Apparently they think that Charlemagne lived so long ago that the majority of the western world is descended from him. He is thought to be a possible "Most Recent Common Ancestor" of westerners. As I continued searching back, I actually found that I was related to him from both sides of my family, sometimes in more than one line. It's still kind of cool to think that he's my 38th great grandfather. Sort of a random side note, I watched the Da Vinci Code yesterday at work. Spoiler alert if you haven't seen it or read the book, but one of the main characters turns out to be one of the last living descendants of Christ and Mary Magdelen. However, considering that Christ lived 2000 years ago, it is unlikely (if he even had children in the first place) that there would be only a handful of living descendants, regardless of whether or not the rest of the world had been trying to kill them off. Genealogy just doesn't work that way, not even in royal lines where they definitely inbred to the max.

All of this makes me want to travel in Europe even more than I had previously wanted, if that is possible. I want to see all the places my ancestors lived or built, because many of them are still standing. I'm hoping to get a lot more of the Italian side's genealogy from my grandmother soon. She's been doing a lot of work on her family recently, and as soon as I get the time I'm going to go over to her house and steal all her names. All this work has definitely made me appreciate where I've come from, and even just history in general more. It's fun to be able to connect yourself to history, even if to say that so and so your 20th great grandmother was alive when this happened and was living in this place. I hope to continue to find out lots of cool stuff!

Reasons Why Today Sucked.

2010-10-27T00:59:00.000-06:00

Reasons Why Today Sucked.

The sink blew up in my face.

It snowed and come to find out my sister didn’t leave me a window scraper in her car. Did I mention my car broke on Sunday? Yeah now I’m driving my sister’s fugly car.

I had a paper due tonight at 11:59 PM. Our professor decided to tell us that it was supposed to be six pages instead of three today at 1:15 PM.

I had to work tonight. Normally that should be enough explanation, but no. There were five officers on duty as opposed to the usual one or two. That meant that they continued to fight over who had to take the calls and run lots of inconvenient traffic without making sure I had a pen ready before giving me any information over the radio.

The exit to Aggie Terrace was malfunctioning, and for some strange reason that becomes my problem after 10:00 PM. And yes, I did know that there was a long line of people trying to get out of the parking garage, in case you were all wondering. That seemed to be the question of the night.

I have two tests and a quiz tomorrow, only one of which I have successfully studied for.

I went out to get the mail after getting home from work, only to find that I had left my keys stuck in the front door. Smart.

Even though there were five officers working, I couldn’t seem to find one that could relieve me while I ran to the bathroom. Instead I had to hold it for two hours.

I haven’t really eaten all day. Although, that isn’t unique to tonight.

The internet still isn’t working at my apartment.

Today when I went to drive to work, our idiot of a property manager decided to park next to me, but not to leave me any space to get inside my car, let alone to squeeze in my oversized backpack.

The water heater in my apartment likes to make a really loud noise when the tap is running.

I was woken up at 7:00 AM to the sounds of shouting in Chinese echoing from the next room.

It snowed.

I had to scrape my car windows down with an old Cafe Rio gift card.

Since the sink blew up in my face, I had to leave a sink full of dirty dishes. Okay maybe it’s only four or five things, but still an eyesore.

Did I mention that the internet isn’t working at my apartment?

I still don’t have a Halloween costume.

Tomorrow won’t be much better.

10.26.10

Drama Central

2010-10-06T00:47:00.000-06:00

Life's been pretty dramatic as of late. I had a roommate move out, not going to go into too many details but we all didn't get along very well and I hope that everyone will be happier now. So right now we just have the three of us living in our apartment. If you know anyone that wants the contract, let me know. It's a private room at Appletree Cove. I was also told by a friend not to come to his band's concert (they're opening for Allred, so it's kind of a big deal) because one of his friends doesn't want me there, so that made me feel really good inside. Whatever. I couldn't go anyway. Writing that out makes it seem like it's not that much drama, but it's way more than I've had to deal with in the last...two years I swear!

Classes have been going really well. I really don't know what happened to me last year because now my scores are back up and I'm less stressed and I'm not that sure what I'm doing different. I think a lot of it is attitude. That and I had some serious hormonal issues when I got back from Spain, but that doesn't explain everything. I work a lot, but I'm better at doing homework at work now than I was last year. Also a matter of attitude I think. Utah State has been doing really well in football (at least a lot better than the past few years). We killed BYU last week, which was wonderful. I've even been keeping my room a lot cleaner than last year, surprisingly. I know a lot of people will find that hard to believe ;) but it's the truth! Basically it's been a better year in every aspect, except maybe a little more drama than I would like, but hopefully that's on the decline.

Last week at work I watched the Godfather trilogy and loved it. It made me want to go to Italy and learn Italian 100x more than I already did. I think my mom is booking our trip for this coming summer tomorrow! I'm super excited. We are doing a 14 day (at least the last time I talked to her about it) trip going from Venice to Florence to Rome. It's going to be super awesome and I am so excited. We're going the first two weeks in June, I think starting the day after my sister's high school graduation. So pretty much I had better start working on my Italian because that is a little less than eight months away!

I don't have too much else that I want to say I think. I'm just sitting at work and should probably get to some homework and/or movie watching.

Then and Now

2010-09-02T01:10:00.000-06:00

(L-R) Owen, Krysta, Missy, Katie, Jessie, Me

(L-R) Krysta, Me, Owen, Jessie, Katie, Missy

Savanna and I fairly soon after she was born

Jessie and I (Easter 1991 or 1992)

I've been reorganizing a lot of my files onto a new terabyte hard drive that I got for my birthday, and I found a few old pictures from when I was very young. I thought they were funny and that I would share them here to compare 18 or 19 years later. They all include my cousins. I'll have to dig through some boxes next time I go home to find the pictures with some old friends in them (because I know they are in my house somewhere). I thought that the picture of my sister Savanna and I was too cute to pass up. I don't have too many recent pictures with the cousins (sadly) to compare. Sometimes I think they look like me, and sometimes I don't. I guess you can decide for yourself! I've decided that Katie looks like an asian in the second picture, Jessie looks like a cabbage patch doll in the picture of the the two of us, Krysta looks a lot like herself in the second picture, and Missy looks like a mix between Steven and Anna in the second. And, even though I doubt Savanna will read this, she looks like a Jewish man.

Robin and I (Halloween)

John Mayer Concert (Chels and I)

(L-R) Jessie, Owen, Me, Missy (Lava River Caves)

Me with roommates Natalie and Kylie at Red Jumpsuit Apparatus concert :)

The Summer of Movies

2010-08-29T22:42:00.000-06:00

This summer I've had a lot of time to sit around. Whether I was at work, doing homework, or just plain bored, I ALWAYS had a movie playing. I thought it would be fun if I kept track of the names of the movies I watched to keep a tally of just how many. Well tomorrow is the first day of school, so I've had to end the list tonight. The results are all tallied, and the totals are as follows: 100 movies, 5 TV miniseries, and 13 seasons of television. That is both impressive, and depressing in retrospect. But I can argue how well the movies kept me focused on my mountains of homework and my long hours at work. You can choose to agree with me, or not. Here is the list, though I doubt many are interested. A few of them I watched twice, and I did count them twice. I probably watched Beauty and the Beast over fifteen times and Sleeping Beauty a handful (falling asleep to them) but I didn't count those multiple times because I don't think I ever got the full movie before I fell asleep. There were a few more that I watched maybe one and a half times but I just rounded down to one. I'm kind of weird so I categorized them by whether I watched them from Netflix, in theatres, or from someone's DVD. For the most part they are in chronological order of when I watched them, excepting the last few in each category that were probably afterthoughts. I keep remembering more that I've watched and didn't record as well. I didn't start writing them down until well into June, so I wouldn't be surprised if I've missed a few.

TV SHOWS
True Blood 1-3
Firefly
How I Met Your Mother
The Mentalist
30 Rock 1-4
The Simpsons 21
Family Guy 8
Supernatural 1-2

TV MINISERIES
Wives and Daughters
Emma
Tin Man
North and South
Daniel Deronda

DVDS (25)
Downfall (Der Untergang)
Sense and Sensibility
Clue
The Blind Side
An Officer and a Gentleman
Blue Harvest
Something, Something, Dark Side
Pan’s Labyrinth
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
Kick Ass
Charlie’s Angels
A-Team
Definitely, Maybe
Just Friends (2)
Emperor’s New Groove
Sleeping Beauty
Maid in Manhattan
Beauty and the Beast
Hercules
Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
Star Wars: Attack of the Clones (2)
Barbie and the Magic of Pegasus
Aladdin

NETFLIX (64)
Legends of the Fall
Casablanca
Sin City
Dear John
Airplane!

Shutter Island

3:10 to Yuma

The Time Traveler’s Wife
Schindler’s List
Valkyrie
Almost Famous
Leap Year
Gangs of New York

Lost in Austen

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

We Capture the Castle

Brideshead Revisited

A League of Their Own

Bolt

Forever Strong

Never Back Down

Black Hawk Down

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2)

Reign of Fire

Picture Perfect

When Harry Met Sally

The Shawshank Redemption

The Karate Kid

The Neverending Story

Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves

South Park: Imaginationland

Demitri Martin: Person

It Happened One Night
A Streetcar Named Desire
Interview with the Vampire
How to Marry a Millionaire
Confessions of a Shopaholic
The Karate Kid Part II
Hook
The Prince and the Showgirl
Cool Hand Luke
Serenity
There’s No Business Like Show Business
Seven Pounds
A River Runs Through It
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Jakob the Liar
Paul Blart: Mall Cop
The Seven Year Itch
The Pianist
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
Rebel Without A Cause
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
East of Eden
Letters to Iwo Jima
Independence Day
Planet 51
District 9
SNL Best of Jimmy Fallon
So I Married An Axe Murderer
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
Stand By Me
Doubt

THEATRES (11)
Iron Man 2
Eclipse
A-Team
Shrek 4
Inception (2)
The Last Airbender
Letters to Juliet
The Karate Kid
Charlie St. Cloud
Step Up 3

The Hunger Games

2010-08-25T01:29:00.000-06:00

So not a lot has been going on since I finished up Summer Semester. I went down the the Utah Shakespeare Festival with the fam, which was fun. We saw Much Ado About Nothing, The Merchant of Venice, and Macbeth. It worked out well because Much Ado is my sister's favorite Shakespeare and Macbeth is mine. It was a little weird to see it on a small stage though, because I've seen so many movie versions of it. But it was good, I definitely enjoyed it. We had some interesting experiences with small town restaurants, and I spent a lot of the trip listening to the first two books of the Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins. It was actually these books that prompted me to write today, or tonight I guess. The final book in the trilogy, Mockingjay just came out last night and I spent most of the 15 or so hours after midnight last night listening to it on my iPod. Normally I like actually reading the book better, but I didn't want to have to drive over to the bookstore to get it (lazy I know but my hair was dirty). I've now spent the last few hours processing everything from the new book, and a little more from the other two--something I haven't done with a book in a long long time. I highly recommend the series, even to those that aren't big readers. I won't give away too much from the third book because the rest of my family wasn't as quick to finish as I was (mostly because they didn't have 15 hours to just sit around all day), but I will say that I was satisfied with the ending. I wouldn't necessarily call it a happy ending, more a peaceful resolution. Problem is now I want a Peeta Mellark of my own (and I think many of you that have read the books, at least the first two, will agree with me). But I don't think I have the same effect on people that Katniss Everdeen does haha; I guess we will see.

Other than that, I've done a lot of sitting around, watching Supernatural (my new TV show) online, and aimlessly wandering the aisles of Walmart, Bed Bath and Beyond, and Michaels because I got sick of sitting in the apartment. I am definitely counting on a lot more excitement in my life once school starts. I always end up feeling ready for it to start again though, no matter how much I'm ready for it to end when May rolls around. This year was a little weird since I only had three weeks of summer vacation, but there's not much for me to do in Logan in the summer and having nothing to do bothers me. I'm headed up to Logan for good tomorrow morning, and there should be enough going on with everyone moving back up to keep me busy. Now I'd better get to sleep so I can get my sleeping schedule back on track after two nights of staying up obscenely late. ;)

Sixth Grade

2010-07-24T10:48:00.000-06:00

While I was perusing the archives of my computer, I stumbled upon almost every homework assignment that I completed using a computer since the sixth grade. When I got my laptop I just transferred every file in my folder on our family desktop, and I'm glad that I did. I have spent hours laughing over some of the things that I wrote. The stuff from the sixth grade is definitely the best, although there is a wealth of great poetry that I had to write in the seventh grade as well. This piece is by far my favorite. I don't remember writing this, but I'm assuming that we were prompted to write a persuasive letter to our teacher. My topic of choice was "why Mrs. Laidlaw should move Tyler R. away from me." Gold star for you if you can figure out who "Tyler R." is, shouldn't be too hard if you went to high school with me. For reasons that I can't remember anymore, I did not like Tyler. Hence the following letter:

Mrs. Laidlaw should move Tyler R. away from me and have him never sit by me again. I already sat by him this year, and it is horrible!!! Tyler is annoying and repulsive. He constantly disturbs my work time and peacefulness. He is also constantly stealing my possessions, and refuses to return them. Often, these possessions are ruined or destroyed. This mainly happens when I am away, and I cannot do anything about it personally. He won’t ever listen to me when I ask him to stop!!! Tyler is a nonstop talker, furthermore giving me more work to do at home. It is a living nightmare to sit by him. I don’t deserve this cruel, unseen punishment.

Your student,
Rylee Ann Gregory

I laughed so hard when I first found this. Scratch that, I still laugh when I read this. I can't believe I handed this to my teacher! I particularly like my use of exclamation marks. I also wrote a pretty good persuasive letter to my parents about why they should raise my allowance, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't as heartfelt as this. The allowance letter did have some good lines, my favorite being, "I always feel left out because my friends have a couple shopping bags full of stuff they bought each week. I’m usually lucky to get a little trinket’s worth of something. It is very shameful, because Kelli makes fun of me." I also had to write my own American folk tale, similar to Paul Bunyon and Johnny Appleseed, that explained some part of the U.S. (geographical, cultural, etc.). When I first read it again, I almost didn't believe that I wrote it. I honestly thought my sister wrote it. It was about a giant named Dawson who liked to draw and had a pet wolf named Shira. Well Dawson goes on this journey where he meets a flying shower cap named Bob Henry, and the group ends up drawing the state boundary lines so that people know in which state they are traveling (apparently everyone was getting lost). Well I had to think pretty hard about it, but I'm pretty sure my sister (who was seven or eight at the time) found a shower cap in a hotel where we stayed and named it Bob Henry. I don't think I would make something like that up out of thin air.

Those few were definitely the best, but I also have a few reports that I wrote (on Rome, Croatia, Copernicus, etc.), notes from the mock trial we did in perspectives (I believe I was defense attorney), and a flier that Jocie and I made to try and convince our friends to rent a limo for sixth grade graduation. I had a lot of fun reminiscing over these old assignments, especially those infused with my personality like the persuasive letters. Reading them now I also understand why ever teacher I ever had in elementary school was sure my parents were writing my papers for me. What eleven-year-old talks like that? Haha. I don't even talk like that now, ten years later. It's crazy how long ago sixth grade feels, but reading these old assignments makes it feel more like it was last week. Oh how time flies!

Get Fuzzy on Soccer

2010-07-23T00:40:00.000-06:00

The recent World Cup, or as Bucky puts it, the "Planet Mug Thingy," was a huge deal with a lot of people I know, but I've never been a huge soccer fan. I have a hard time watching an entire game. Even my stay in Spain couldn't get me to like the sport any more. One of my favorite comics, Get Fuzzy, did a running storyline on the World Cup and I thought that what it had to say was comical. Enjoy.

Top Twenty "Bushisms"

2010-07-10T15:26:00.000-06:00

So I was bored and decided to revisit a website of George W. Bush quotes that I found years ago. Needless to say, they still had the same effect on me today as they did back when I first heard them. It blows my mind that not only did we allow this man to run our country for eight years but that some people still think he was a good president. Maybe I'm just beating a dead horse with a stick here, but I feel like those eight years shouldn't be forgotten. You know, "history repeating itself" and all.

The contents of this list, along with the countless other nonsensical babbling and flat out lies he's been quoted as saying, sure make Obama (and dare I say it, even Biden?) look a whole lot better, don't they?

Top Twenty “Bushisms”
(as decided by me)

20.
"I think I was unprepared for war." –on the biggest regret of his presidency, ABC News interview, Dec. 1, 2008
19.
"You teach a child to read, and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test." -Townsend, Tenn., Feb. 21, 2001
18.
"We spent a lot of time talking about Africa, as we should. Africa is a nation that suffers from incredible disease." --Gothenburg, Sweden, June 14, 2001
17.
"They misunderestimated me." --Bentonville, Ark., Nov. 6, 2000
16.
"Too many good docs are getting out of the business. Too many OB-GYNs aren't able to practice their love with women all across this country." --Poplar Bluff, Mo., Sept. 6, 2004
15.
"I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we're really talking about peace." --Washington, D.C. June 18, 2002
14.
"There's an old saying in Tennessee -- I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee -- that says, fool me once, shame on --shame on you. Fool me -- you can't get fooled again." --Nashville, Tenn., Sept. 17, 2002
13.
"You work three jobs? ... Uniquely American, isn't it? I mean, that is fantastic that you're doing that." --to a divorced mother of three, Omaha, Nebraska, Feb. 4, 2005
12.
"Rarely is the questioned asked: Is our children learning?" --Florence, South Carolina, Jan. 11, 2000
11.
"I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family." --Greater Nashua, N.H., Chamber of Commerce, Jan. 27, 2000
10.
"I'm the commander -- see, I don't need to explain -- I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being president." --as quoted in Bob Woodward's Bush at War
9.
"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator." --Washington, D.C., Dec. 19, 2000
8.
"I wish you'd have given me this written question ahead of time so I could plan for it...I'm sure something will pop into my head here in the midst of this press conference, with all the pressure of trying to come up with answer, but it hadn't yet...I don't want to sound like I have made no mistakes. I'm confident I have. I just haven't -- you just put me under the spot here, and maybe I'm not as quick on my feet as I should be in coming up with one." --after being asked to name the biggest mistake he had made, Washington, D.C., April 3, 2004
7.
"We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories ... And we'll find more weapons as time goes on. But for those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they're wrong, we found them." --Washington, D.C., May 30, 2003
6.
"Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere!" --joking about his administration's failure to find WMDs in Iraq as he narrated a comic slideshow during the Radio & TV Correspondents' Association dinner, Washington, D.C., March 24, 2004
5.
"The most important thing is for us to find Osama bin Laden. It is our number one priority and we will not rest until we find him." --Washington, D.C., Sept. 13, 2001
4.
"I don't know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority." --Washington, D.C., March 13, 2002
3.
"Oh, no, we're not going to have any casualties." --discussing the Iraq war with Christian Coalition founder Pat Robertson in 2003, as quoted by Robertson
2.
"Do you have blacks, too?" --to Brazilian President Fernando Cardoso, Washington, D.C., Nov. 8, 2001
1.
"I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully." --Saginaw, Mich., Sept. 29, 2000

You know, I laugh when I read these, but at the same time they give me a sick feeling unease. This all sounds like it's straight out of a sitcom, said by the typical stupid-but-funny character. But this isn't a sitcom, it's real life. While I know this is probably wishful thinking (seeing that people like Sarah Palin have so much support), I do hope that in the future America can avoid electing people like him as it's leaders.

Credits: http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/blbushisms.htm

Independence

2010-07-07T20:21:00.000-06:00

Since the Fourth of July happened to be on a Sunday this year, each city planned it's activities on the days either before or after the actual holiday (at least in Utah anyway). This basically meant that the entire weekend was one giant party. It also helped that one of my very good friends got married on Thursday. That makes a...five day weekend full of festivities, and I loved every minute of it! (Except the part where I had to work graves every night.)

Thursday I went over to the Logan Temple for Abbey's wedding. We watched Abbey and Ken exit the temple and took lots of pictures. They both looked so happy, I couldn't be more happy for them. Abbey looked beautiful, of course. It was weird though. I drove up to the temple, and I couldn't help thinking...Abbey is in there, right now, getting married. She's, technically speaking, my first good friend to get married. I don't feel old enough for that to be happening but it's started and it's only going to get worse. I've got another friend getting married this summer, as well as a handful that are on their way there. After the temple I drove down to Murray and went to the reception with Chels. Jason met us there and we all hung out after my house after. It was so nice to just sit on my front lawn, sun gone down, in the 80 degree weather and relax. Sadly, I had to work that night/morning so Jason was nice enough to take me with him to Logan so I could sleep on the drive. I also had a Stats test Friday morning, so I spent most of the time at work studying for that. I had about an hour window to sleep between work and the test, but that turned out to be a bad idea because I woke up five minutes after the test started. Luckily the test was only supposed to take us a half an hour and we were given about an hour to complete it. After the test I crashed and slept til around five. Then Jay and I went shopping and hung out with Mary.
Logan did their fireworks that night. We staked out a pretty good place, mostly due to the fact that we accidentally walked right into the area where they were setting the fireworks off, so we knew just where to sit to get the best view. After fireworks I, again, had to work. That was one of the longest nights of my life. I've found that lately, around four AM my body just doesn't want to be awake anymore. Doesn't matter how much sleep I got beforehand, I just don't want to be awake all night. I've never had that problem with graves before.

Saturday I slept again til around four-ish and then we had a BBQ with steak and shrimp that was delicious. So Logan has this odd tradition where they don't have a Fourth of July Parade. Instead they have this tradition that they call "cruisin" where a bunch of nice and/or old cars line up and drive down Main Street and everybody comes out to watch them. People had chairs set up and sections of sidewalk staked out all week prior. To be honest, I thought the whole thing was kind of boring. The cars were kind of cool to see, but then they did a loop where they all drove past like five times. I don't care to see you drive by in your old Mustang five times. None of them even threw any candy. After cruisin we played volleyball at Ryan's Park, which was fun, even though we all basically sucked. Another tradition that goes with cruisin, and happens all night after, involves piling into truck beds and driving Main. People put couches and lawn chairs in the beds of their trucks and drive around, picking up different random people and driving Main. I didn't participate in this activity directly, but we did get into the back of Ryan's parent's convertible and drove Main a few times. I was unimpressed. Afterwards we got a bunch of sparklers at Walmart and attempted to make a sparkler bomb, but that was an epic fail. The Walmart sparklers sucked and didn't light easily. After that...you guessed it, I went to work. This was another painfully long night. Sunday I went to church, napped a little, and watched a movie at Ryan's. Everyone else fell asleep, which is funny because I was the only one that had actually seen the movie before. After the movie Jay and I drove back down to Salt Lake and I ended up just falling asleep because my family was at the Bee's game and I was exhuasted.

Monday was pretty laid back, which was nice. I went shopping with my mom and got a bunch of pants. Then I laid out at Chelsie's until she had to babysit. For dinner we went to Kara's new house for a BBQ. We took a bunch of parachute fireworks to do and Carson loved them. Of course Savanna never caught any of the parachutes without his help (according to him at least). We played duck duck goose, but he liked being the "ducker" so much that I rarely ever had to even stand up. Monday night I tried to do some much needed studying for my Physiology exam Tuesday. Tuesday morning I drove back up to Logan, took my test, went to the gym and fell asleep pretty early. Today we had a BBQ for all the dispatchers at work Travis Dunn's house, the new sergeant in charge of us all. I was a little worried because most of my coworkers are married, but it wasn't bad. I felt pretty lame RSVP-ing over email because we had to say if anyone was coming with us, and, surprise, surprise, nobody was coming with me haha. Now I think I should probably do some homework since I've basically taken like a week off from school recently. It was a great, busy week though for sure!

P.S. I think I might be catching Bieber Fever. No big deal. Haha!

Success

2010-06-28T01:20:00.000-06:00

"Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up."
Thomas Edison

I have loved that quote ever since the first moment I read it years ago and it's been one of my many mantras, you could say, ever since. It's been a while since I have been able to feel like I've been successful. Not that I've failed at everything for the past few months, but my life has definitely not been in a place that I would have liked it to have been. I've struggled a lot with school, which is something at which I've always been fairly good. Never has it been something that I've particularly had to worry about. However, this summer has put an end to that. I've miraculously gotten my old spark back, and I'm proud to say I'm back with a vengeance. When I think back on it, I'm not really sure what's changed. For months I've tried all kinds of different things to help me, and now all of a sudden, it's like those months never happened. I think a lot of it has to do with how condensed and fast paced my summer classes are, and I'm positive that God has helped me immensely. But I also think that my attitude has changed. Having everyone leave Logan helped me spend a lot more time alone to clear my thoughts and get things done. I go to classes and I absorb the information so much more readily than I did both of the last two semesters. I sit down for an exam, pour my brains out onto the page, and actually feel good about what I've accomplished (something I haven't felt all of my sophomore year). It's refreshing. It's refreshing to have that feeling back, instead of worrying and not seeing the test clearly and receiving a mediocre result. I will say that I am finally starting to get burned out. I could definitely have used a break between some of my classes this summer. Hopefully the break I get in August before Fall starts will be just enough to relax me, but not enough to get me out of the habits I've remade.

While I can't exactly say why I did so poorly this last year (I'm sure it was influenced by many factors), I can say that as much as I wish that I could have prevented it...it was bound to happen some time. Life isn't about 100% successes, as great as that would feel. Some people have to fail in order to become better, and sadly it looks like I am one of those people. I found this quote from J.K. Rowling that I think embodies what I am trying to say here.

"So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.

Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more than any qualification I ever earned."
J.K. Rowling

As much as I hate the fact that it happened, I have to accept and embrace what it's done for me. You can't change the past, as much as you would like to. I really like how she says, "the knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive." The fact that I've overcome this trial, and I like to think that I've learned something from it, just proves my "ability to survive." That I can prevail, even though for months it felt like I couldn't. Besides, as Evan Esar says:

"Failure is not falling down, it is remaining there when you have fallen."

So I haven't failed. Failure is not the complement of success. I may not have succeeded for a while, but I have clawed my way back up and removed myself from the pit into which I fell. "Remaining there when you have fallen." That kind of failure scares me, and haunts me. I can imagine few feelings that might be worse. Hopefully that fear will be enough to fan the flames that keep me out of that hole for as long as possible.

Persuasion

2010-06-09T19:45:00.000-06:00

For a few months now I have been compiling quotes and excerpts that I read or hear that I enjoy. Sometimes they're lyrics, sometimes from books or TV shows, or just things I find on the internet. It's always frustrating to me to love a passage or quote and end up forgetting it. I've written them down in the past, but always in notebooks and I've got too many of those to remember in which one it was written. So when finishing Jane Austen's Persuasion, I was struck by a letter that Captain Wentworth writes to Anne Elliot and decided to put it in my computer. And that is how I now have an eight page document filled with quotes. Call it an anthology, if you will. And since my life is fairly uneventful as of late, I am going to begin posting them here. So here goes.

Despite Captain Wentworth's general lack of bravery or strength of personality, he does have a way with the written word. This is a note that he writes to Anne Elliot as he listens to her converse with a friend about the strength and constancy of the love of women vs. that of men. Anne argues that it is hard for women to forget, while men may divert their attentions with various activities.

“I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone forever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own, than when you almost broke it eight years and a half a go. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. You alone have brought me to Bath. For you alone I think and plan.--Have you not seen this? Can you fail to have understood my wishes?--I had not waited even these ten days, could I have read your feelings, as I think you must have penetrated mine. I can hardly write. I am every instant hearing something which overpowers me. You sink your voice, but I can distinguish the tones of that voice, when they would be lost on others.--Too good, too excellent creature! You do us justice indeed. You do believe that there is true attachment and constancy among men. Believe it to be most fervent, most undeviating in
“F.W.”
“I must go, uncertain of my fate; but I shall return hither, or follow your party, as soon as possible. A word, a look will be enough to decide whether I enter your father’s house this evening, or never.”

Persuasion. Volume II Chapter XI (p 222-23)
Jane Austen

Four words in particular had a strong effect on me. "You pierce my soul." Those four words carry so much emotion, and yet, they are very simple. The meaning is straightforward and powerful. Can you imagine someone saying that to you? "I am half agony, half hope." The acuity of his hope is only heightened by the presence of agony. This is a special kind of hope, a bittersweet one. This hope is fueled by the possibility of failure. In turn, the hope fuels his agony. This is something I think we've all felt to some degree or another on occasion, and it almost holds a bit of excitement, as well as a spark of insanity. His rushed and often interrupted stream of words run like frantic thoughts, only further displaying his true investment in what he is writing. "I have loved none but you." His anxiety would have been unimaginable after writing that. Waiting for some sign, "a word, a look" to push his heart from the teetering brink, either to despair on the one side and joy on the other. I think that his words embody the emotions he is feeling perfectly. I love words for that reason, the way that they can convey thoughts and feelings so acutely. And yes, in case you didn't already know, I am one of those book nerds. There, I said it.

Well that was fun. Maybe I'll write about another passage from my list another day if my life continues to be boring (which is very likely).

doesn't feel like summer

2010-06-01T20:45:00.000-06:00

It has officially been summer vacation for 25 days, but it sure doesn't feel like it. Two days after my last final I started summer classes. Unfortunately the class that I am presently taking is at Weber State, meaning I have to commute four days a week for a 7:30 AM class. It surprisingly hasn't been that bad, I think mostly because I didn't have any time to get out of school mode. I have lecture four days a week and lab two days a week. My carpool has alternating schedules (yes I thankfully found a carpool) so I end up staying and studying the days that I don't have lab. That or falling asleep in the backseat of my car. This ends up to a total of eight hours spent at Weber and in transit. Then I collapse on my bed for an hour or so, get dressed, and drag myself to work where I sit at a computer for 8 more hours. It isn't so much that it's exhausting, just enough to fill my entire day. It is kind of sad because I don't really have a life other than this routine, except for a few weekends at home where I generally fall asleep on the couch watching Cash Cab. I have seen a few movies at least haha. I'm not completely pathetic. It's a little depressing because I don't even see my roommates (some of which are still unsure of my actual existence), let alone any of my friends. I just have to keep telling myself that it's just for two more weeks. June 17th I will be done with Ochem and Weber, and although I am beginning two classes at USU that week, I think that I will have a little more time on my hands. Sixteen more days.

I did have a brief respite from my packed schedule for Memorial Day Weekend. I drove up to Oregon with my two cousins Owen and Missy to visit my cousin Jessie who attends Oregon State. We drove out Friday morning and back Monday morning. Friday night we found something to eat and crashed at the hotel. Saturday morning we drove to a city called Sisters. It was a cute little picturesque tourist city. We did some browsing in all the shops. After Sisters we went to the outlets in Bend and did some more shopping. After shopping we went to see Prince of Persia. It was okay. Better than I expected, but still a bit on the cheesy side. Robin Hood beat it out for sure. After Prince of Persia we went to dinner with some money that grandma gave us. We went to a really hokey steakhouse. It was overpriced, but they did give us a lot of food so we ended up eating it for lunch the next day as well. The waiter definitely thought we were crazy because we couldn't get any of the credit cards we tried to work, and Missy thought he was attractive (despite the long slicked back ponytail and shifty eyes) so we kept laughing when she would talk to him about getting us more bread. After dinner we watched all fell asleep watching the Princess Bride at the hotel. There was no need to really watch it seeing as we had quoted practically the entire thing in the car on the way back from dinner. Sunday we went to the Lava River Caves. The cave was about a mile long. It was really cool. It looked like a basilisk tunnel haha. Alas we did not find the Chamber of Secrets at the end, but we did make it to the end at least. Most people didn't go to the very end because it got rather small. Jessie and I decided that we needed to touch the end, so we basically crawled for probably 500 feet to get there. I am proud to say, however, that I did not once have to put my knees in the dirt and get my jeans dirty. For the last 5 feet I did have to put my hands down which made me upset, mostly because I had worked so hard to not have to do so for the last 495 feet by walking like some penguin frog mutant. Once we got the end we took some pictures and Missy and Owen decided to join us. After the cave we stopped at the High Desert Museum, which I'm afraid to say was a big waste of the $15 it cost to get in. The displays were minimal, although a few were interesting. They had a set up of a saloon as well as what they termed Hell on Wheels (which is like a saloon in a tent) and some gambling tables. They would have been really cool if people had been there to deal and such, but they just had one guy in the tent that Missy was sure was not real despite my testament that I had seen him moving and speaking several times. I got to pet a snake, so that was pretty cool. All the other animals they had were hiding in corners and sleeping so they were hard to see. After the museum we went back to the hotel to eat our leftovers and it started raining. So we ended up watching episodes of How I Met Your Mother and The Mentalist all night. We spent probably 40 minutes debating on what to eat for dinner before deciding to get Pita Pit (which we had initially chosen of course haha). The next morning we left pretty early, and I was back in Logan by eight.

So now it's back to school, work, sleep, repeat. At least for the next 16 days.

Testimony of the Book of Mormon

2010-05-03T22:06:00.000-06:00

Hawaii Pt. II

2010-04-23T01:31:00.000-06:00

Monday Kels and I went out to the Dole Pineapple Plantation. It wasn’t a bad day outside, despite the clouds. We just sat outside on the patio and ate our Pineapple Dole Whip ice cream. We did the train tour as well. The pineapples did not look at all like I had expected. They were really cool, they grow from the ground in these giant bushes. They were all different colors too. After the Plantation we tried to go to the beach, but it started to rain once we got there. We stopped at the temple on our way back. It was beautiful and the missionaries gave us fresh flowers to put in our hair. We walked around the BYUH campus a bit and then headed back to the apartment. When we got back to the house, a new group of people had arrived. They were Justin (who I worked with at the post office), his girlfriend Melissa, and Brittney. They didn’t have a car either and were wanting some dinner so I went with them down the street to a place called Papa Ole’s. It was really good. They invited me to rent a car with them, but there ended up being exactly four extra seats (two together in two different cars) for us in different cars. Brittney and I went with three other girls (Keisha, Brittany, and Katie Jo) that had traveled with Justin, Melissa, and Britt. Kelsey decided to go to Waikiki to stay with a couch surfer that she had found for a little while, and she left Monday night.

Tuesday the group (meaning the majority of the house) decided to get breakfast at the Hukilau Cafe in Laie. Apparently it has the same name as the cafe in the movie 50 First Dates (but it isn’t the same cafe). I ate some leftover pizza for breakfast and just tagged along. Our group was the first one out of the house, so we got to the cafe a lot earlier than everyone else. We were finishing as the rest of the group showed up. Trevor joined our table because he wasn’t planning on ordering anything, and ended up joining us for the rest of the trip actually. His car wasn’t as ready to go out and do things as ours was. After breakfast we headed over to the Dole Plantation. I would have rather not gone a second time, but we weren’t there too long and I got some more pineapple ice cream so that was good. After the plantation we headed to the Polynesian Cultural Center. One of the girls had a friend whose husband worked for the PCC, and he got us in on super discounted tickets. Trevor’s friend Mark is a tour guide there as well, so he gave us an outline of what to see and what to skip. It was pretty fun, we saw a few shows and tried a few activities. The Samoan and Tongan shows were good. We threw spears, tried to make fire with sticks, played with poi balls, and played stick games. The luau was sold out when we arrived so we just got tickets for the buffet. I tried crab at the buffet. Didn’t like it too much. It didn’t taste bad, just kind of weird. After dinner we went the the show HA Breath of Life. I liked a lot of the dancing, but the first half was kind of boring. After the show we went back to the house and watched a movie (aka I fell asleep on the couch).

Wednesday we planned to go to Pearl Harbor and the swap meet at the stadium. Kelsey came back to the house Tuesday night so that she could go to Honolulu with us. The swap meet was amazing, I could have spent all day there I think. Unfortunately we only had about an hour and a half before our reservations at Pearl Harbor. I got a bunch of jewelry and fake flowers for my hair. Pearl Harbor was very interesting to see, but I would have liked more of a guided tour type thing. Basically they loaded us onto a ferry and left us at the Memorial for 45 minutes to just hang out. It’s not a very big memorial. I would have liked to go onto the submarine (I think it was a submarine) they had docked there but I think everyone else was done with Pearl Harbor. Next we went and rented snorkel gear in downtown Honolulu and headed to Hanauma Bay. I’ve heard that it’s best to go really early in the morning before the water and sand get all stirred up by the patrons, but I didn’t think it was too bad. We saw some amazing things, and the beach was beautiful. I saw a bunch of turtles, and these really bright giant fish that I think are called parrot fish (they had parrot-like faces). I was literally mere inches away from the fish. In some areas, the water was only about a few feet deep. Trevor and I snorkeled until they literally were kicking everyone out of the beach. When we got back to the Hau’ula (where we were staying) we ate at a Korean BBQ place. It was okay. The sides that came with my meal were very odd and I didn’t like them at all. I didn’t feel too good after eating it either. After dinner we played scum for a while, and I’m proud to say that I maintained the spot of King for a fair majority of the game. It was mostly a battle between Trevor and I for the top spot, which is surprising because I usually suck at scum. We ended the night with yet another movie that I fell asleep to on the couch.

Thursday we didn’t have as much planned. We drove southeast toward Honolulu in search of a decent beach because the waves on the North Shore were too large. We stopped a couple of times to try and watch the surfers on our way. We finally stopped at Lanikai Beach. The beach was beautiful. It had some of the whitest sand I’ve ever seen. Sadly, it was a cloudy and slightly windy day, so I was freezing to death trying to lay out on the beach. Eventually I had to just wrap up in my towel and lay there. When we had had enough of trying to tan in the cold, we headed back to the house. We changed clothes and headed for a small island about half a mile or so off the beach called Chinaman’s Hat. We were told it was so shallow that you could walk all the way through the water to the island. I opted against using my snorkel gear (because I was told I could just walk) and greatly regretted that. After we walked about half way (which was difficult because the water level was never the same) nobody could touch. We had to swim the rest of the way, which wouldn’t have been too bad except that the water was a little choppy and I didn’t want to put my face in it because I hate the salt. Luckily we had brought along two boogie boards for floating the way back in, so the few that struggled swimming could hold onto them and kick. When we made it to the island, we decided to hike to the top. It was so worth it, although probably not the best idea I’ve ever had. A lot of the way was completely vertical cliffs that we had to free climb. Because it had been a little rainy for the past few days, it was also pretty muddy. There were bushes lining the trails that scraped our legs. Eventually we just all had to ditch our shoes because the mud made them too slippery. Did I mention that the entire island was COVERED with giant red ants? That was the part that got me, not the rest of it. I had the hardest time just climbing like I didn’t see them, and shaking them off when the started to crawl all over my feet and ankles. But I did it and we made it to the top and the view was amazing. The sun was just starting to set, and we could see basically the entire northeast side of the island. We took a few picture and hurried back down so that we could swim back in before the sunset. After the hike we decided we deserved a nice dinner, so we went back to the house, got dressed up, and stopped at a nicer looking restaurant that we had been driving past every day. Turns out we were the sole patrons. The food was pretty good. I shared coconut shrimp with Katie Jo. After dinner we again decided to play scum (at which I dominated, again) and watch another movie.

Friday was the dreaded day when Kelsey and I had to leave. Our flight left around 1PM, so we had to leave the house fairly early to make it there on time. We took the bus back again (this time we made sure we knew we were taking the right one). The flight wasn’t too bad. I finished Persuasion by Jane Austen and loved it. I’d been carting it around all week thinking I would read it on the beach, but I always just ended up taking naps instead. We slept in the airport in Santa Ana again. This time I froze to death though, because I gave my blanket to Kelsey. I got up in the middle of the night to put on my jacket though and then I was fine. We tried to stay behind security but they kicked us out. The next morning they made me throw away a bunch of food while scanning my bags at security. Funny that they had no problem with canned soup at the Honolulu Airport but made me feel like a criminal for having it at the John Wayne Airport. I had forgotten that I even had the stupid stuff. They made a huge deal about the several coconuts that Kelsey was bringing back for souvenirs as well. They literally scanned the things five or six times. The flight the Salt Lake was short. Finally, over 24 hours after beginning our return trip home, we arrived in the Salt Lake International Airport. I spent a few hours at home (mostly to eat the breakfast my mom made) and then drove back to Logan so that I could work. I loved my trip to Hawaii. I have never been more tempted to move there than I was during that week. Everything is so much more laid back there. I hope to return soon!

Hawaii '10

2010-04-15T15:14:00.000-06:00

Spring break!!! This year for spring break I decided (very last moment) to go to Hawaii for the week. Some friends of mine that I met working at the Post Office were going and renting a house on Oahu. Well they finally convinced Kelsey and I to go maybe a week before we actually departed. We bought tickets from California originally and had hoped to drive there to save some money but that was vetoed by the parents and we had to buy plane tickets from SLC to Cali (which cost an arm and a leg, but oh well.) We left Salt Lake on Thursday the 11th late at night. We had to spend the night at the airport in Santa Ana, California. It wasn't so bad. I slept the whole night on a bench, but Kelsey had a harder time sleeping. I can sleep anywhere though; I'm weird like that. We finally made it to Hawaii around 1 PM on Friday. We took the bus to the house, and got a little lost on the way. We were instructed by the info desk to take the westbound bus but we accidentally hopped on the eastbound bus because it was sitting there about to leave when we got the the bus stop. By some odd miracle we finally decided to get off the bus about half an hour later right across the street from the only bus that goes over across the North Shore. We were the first ones to the house, so we hung out a little, had some dinner, got some slurpees from the 7-11 down the street. The rest of the group (at least those that had flown in Friday) showed up around nine and we went down to the beach and walked around a little with them. After that they went on a drive and Kels and I fell asleep watching a movie called the 10th Kingdom.

Saturday we were a little slow getting going. We had read about a place that did Scuba diving even if you weren't certified, so we headed to Hale'iwa where the shop was located. We missed the first bus that came by because we were sitting on the bench and didn't realize you had to be standing or the bus driver would just leave you. When we got on the next bus a half an hour later I heard some guy that got on at a stop after us complaining about how the bus had left him too haha. Not sure if it was just the bus driver or what. When we got to the Surf N Sea we signed up for a dive but we had to sign up for the next day because they had already left for that day. We looked around their store a little bit, bought some sunhats, and hung out around the few little shops there. We ate lunch at a shrimp shack (I forgot the name, but there were a lot of them in that area) and I got garlic shrimp and steak. It was amazing. We headed back towards the house to try and find a beach on the way. We had seen a bunch of BYUH students get off at a certain stop with their towels and beach gear so we decided to try that one. Turns out it was Waimea Bay, one of the most famous beaches on Oahu. It was beautiful, and not super crowded. We stayed almost til sunset. We didn't stay for the sunset, however, because it got a little cold and we were worried about missing the bus. Well turns out we could have stayed for the sunset because we were at the bus stop for what seemed like forever with some teenagers that were making out hardcore on the bench. It was appalling. When we got back to the house we ordered Domino's and watched a movie again.

Sunday was the big day, our scuba diving adventure. We got up early and checked the bus schedules so that we could get to Hale'iwa on time but we still ended up missing it. It was literally at the stop when we were across the street. So we got to wait in the pouring rain for the next bus for 30 minutes. I kept calling the shop but they weren't open yet. Thankfully when I did get a hold of them they said it was no problem that we would be 40 minutes late. We took a van over to the west side of the island (Electric Beach) for scuba diving. A man and his two sons were going on the dive with us, and we had two instructors. The other group was from Alaska, which is pretty cool. Our instructors were awesome. I loved their enthusiasm. They were patient with us too, especially for us all being first-timers. Their names were Drew and Charlie. The diving was AMAZING! We did two single tank dives with a little break between. We saw a barracuda, a bunch of turtles, a shark, a goat fish, and a bunch of octopus. I even got to hold an octopus on my hand. It was so cool. I would definitely love to go again, and would recommend Surf N Sea in Hale’iwa any day, especially if you have never dove and are not certified. We got back from the dive pretty late, and we discovered that there was a lot more to Hale’iwa than we had noticed the day before, so we stuck around. We did a lot of store browsing. We got shaved ice at Matsumoto’s. While we were eating our shaved ice, two cars full of people from the house pulled up to the Tai restaurant where we were sitting. Turns out someone from BYUH had recommended it to them. I stayed and ate with them. It was really good, I got pineapple fried rice with shrimp. After dinner we drove back to the house and hung out for a few hours before making a fire on the beach. That was a lot of fun. Mark, a high school friend of some people staying at the house that now goes to BYUH, took us to a secluded beach area. After the fire I went to bed.

That’s all I have time for now. I’ll recap the rest of the week a little later!

anna howard shaw day

2010-02-16T14:24:00.000-07:00

Hello again. So the first leg of the semester is over, with mixed results. Overall though, I'm doing a lot better than last semester which is definitely a good sign. I spent last weekend working and studying for my ochem test, so I didn't have too much time for anything fun. I made waffles for everyone Saturday morning, wasn't planning on it though haha. Jason, Abbey, and I were going to go up to Beaver to snowboard, but Jay and I stayed up til 4 AM doing absolutely nothing and we decided we were too tired to go. So in the morning Abbey suggested that we make breakfast because she had been wanting to try this scone recipe. Well she says she'll be at my apartment around 11 AM to start the breakfast, and sure enough at 11 AM on the dot I hear voices walk into the apartment. It wasn't Abbey and her friend Ken like I was expecting, however. I opened my bathroom door (I had been doing my hair) to find Colin, Nate, and Petey standing in the hallway with hungry looks in their eyes and asking me where the waffles were. So I went upstairs and started the waffles without Abbey. Jason had mentioned that we were making breakfast and that had brought the crowd running over of course! Haha. The scones turned out really good, and the waffles too of course. By some miracle I had whipping cream, blueberries, and raspberries on hand to use on the waffles. After breakfast everyone headed up to the Spectrum to wait for the basketball game against Nevada that night. Abbey and Ken went shopping and I finished cleaning up. Jason had used my computer to look something up on Facebook during breakfast, and left himself signed in. I had a lot of fun with that. I changed his status to say that he loves me and I'm his best friend, and changed him to "Interested in Men" and changed his birthday and a few other random things. Oh! I changed his language to Japanese. I thought it was pretty funny. He didn't really. Ha. Then I remembered that Best Buy had called me that morning to tell me that my iPod was fixed and ready to pick up so I headed over there. It's a small world because I pulled into the parking lot right behind Abbey and Ken, who were also headed for Best Buy. After that I set up my iPod and headed to work.

This weekend I went home to Murray for Saturday and Sunday. Friday we played a mad Nertz tournament at my apartment. I'm really not very good at that game haha. Saturday morning I had to work, but then I headed down to Murray. I was going to hang out with Kelsey, but she got set up on a blind date by her sister and had to do that instead. So Savanna and I went to In N Out and watched Enchanted and the Spongebob Movie and ate sugar cookies all night. Sunday I visited Nonna, but it was a short visit because she was going to the temple to prepare to be endowed sometime next month. I took a little nap before dinner, and after we played games. We played Clue and I taught the fam how to play Nertz. Dad wasn't so good at it, but Mom and SJ were. Then SJ and I did our blood types with the kits that I bought her for Christmas. I went first but she still had a really hard time letting me prick her finger. That took surprisingly long because we had so many little tools and steps, and then actually getting any blood out of SJ haha. She turned out to be A+. Mine came up AB- but I think that the Rh reagents didn't work because I'm pretty sure I'm +. After that I headed to Logan so I could snowboard Monday. Monday Beaver was more crowded than I've ever seen it. They had people parked in the middle of the lane horizontally, if that makes sense. When I walked up it looked like a line of cars was trying to drive out of the parking lot, but they were really just parked that way. Colin and I had a good day boarding, even though it was a little wet and pretty crowded. After boarding I took a looong nap and went to the gymnastics meet. It really just made me want to tumble again though. Whitney said that she takes the gymnastics class on campus though, so I think I'll finally take it next semester hopefully. I barely noticed it was Valentine's Day Sunday, except for the massive amount of heart shaped sugar cookies that I ate. My mom gave me an iTunes gift card and a knit headband though. :) I've never had that hard of a time with Valentine's Day though. I don't really care that much about it I guess.

This week kind of sucks because we had Monday off, but we had Monday classes today instead of Tuesday classes. So basically it was just like any other week (because I only have one class at 4:30 PM on Tuesdays) except I didn't get to have dance class, and I couldn't meet with any professors or do anything on campus because everything was closed on my day off. I had a doctor's appointment scheduled for this morning and didn't realize I had class until Saturday when it was too late to call them.

Well I think I'm going to take a little nap now. I have to go over to work around three to do an evaluation on our eForce CAD software. And later tonight...LOST!!!

2010

2010-01-30T05:30:00.000-07:00

Yes. I am posting again at four in the morning. What can I say, I get really bored in the late hours at work! I know I've skipped a lot, but in a way I'm kind of glad I didn't document too much of last semester here. It was not the best time for me. Let's just say I gave the term "sophomore slump" a whole new meaning. Basically I'm relieved it's over. 2010 has been pretty awesome so far though. I started it off with Kelsey. We went to the institute activity at the U. Nothing too crazy this year (haha) but I wouldn't say that's a bad thing, considering some of the New Year's Eves we've had.

I had a good two weeks of doing whatever I wanted before spring semester started, which felt really nice after the crash-and-burn of last semester. I hung out in Logan for the most part. Ryan, Colin, and I had a movie marathon and watched old movies for days. I went up to Beaver a few times, but the snow was pretty crappy and sparse. I went back to Murray for Ashlyn's wedding but I had to work the next day so it was a short trip. All in all I'd say it was a pretty good break.

School hasn't been too bad yet. I'm sure I'll be singing a different tune next week when I start having tests. I'm taking one less class this semester so I shouldn't be as stressed and pressed for time. I also decided to take a few fun classes. Chelsie and I are taking a big band swing dancing class and I'm taking individual guitar lessons. So far swing has been interesting, a little slow in the learning and a little awkward but I like it. I have a hard time following sometimes though, especially when the guy is a little unsure of himself. I'm too used to set choreography and always knowing the next move, so toning it down and just following has been a bit of a challenge haha. Guitar lessons have already been beneficial and it's only been two weeks. Right now we're focusing on finger picking, and next week I'll hopefully be starting on some songs.

The weekend of Martin Luther King Day I took a trip to Massachusetts to visit Marissa (from my program in Spain). I had never been to Boston and I had extra skymiles burning a hole in my pocket so I decided to go visit her. It was a lot of fun. It was kind of a laid back weekend. My flight got in super late Thursday night (due to the ridiculously thick fog in Salt Lake City) so we just went straight to bed when we got to her house. Friday we drove down to see Marissa's college (Bridgewater State) and stopped by her work. She works at a preschool, and the kids were, of course, adorable. In Bridgewater we got this amazing iced coffee that tasted like the thin mint girl scout cookies. Mmmmmm :) Saturday we drove into Boston. We had some "chowda" at Quincy Market and looked around at all the merchants there. I left my phone in the bathroom. I know, surprise surprise, right? Well I realized right as we walked out of the bathroom. We walked straight back down the stairs and into the bathroom and it was already gone. I was sick to my stomach. I freaking got that phone not even two weeks before! And this time I wouldn't be able to file a claim with the insurance because it was cancelled. Marissa started calling it over and over and we asked around to see if it had been turned in anywhere. Of course it hadn't. We didn't really know what to do next, so we were kind of just standing at the top of the stairs, still calling my phone incessantly. I didn't really want to leave just yet. I still had a small sliver of hope that it would magically appear back in the bathroom the next time I checked. I also knew I should call AT&T and shut off service just in case, but I didn't want to do that either, in hopes that whoever took my phone would decide to pick up on the 50th call from Marissa. I was honestly starting to tear up because I was so upset at myself when someone picked up on the other line. They had been on the phone with my Dad, and were standing maybe 100 feet away from us. The woman hadn't wanted to turn it in to anyone because she wasn't sure that it would get to me if she did. I was still a little too upset to be completely relieved, but I recovered and we headed out toward the water. We walked along the water a little, looked at the seals at the aquarium, and headed to the North End to see some points of interest on the Freedom Trail. We stopped at Paul Revere's house but it cost money to go inside so we bypassed it. We did go to the Old North Church, which was pretty cool. We also had these amazing pastries at a place called Mike's Pastry in the North End. It was really the most happening place we saw in Boston. We sat down to eat our pastries, a cookie for Marissa and a creampuff for me, and everyone that walked past ogled our food. A couple asked where we got them, and one even said "wow, that looks amazing" as he walked past. We left before dinner and ate at her house. Sunday we went to Rhode Island to see the mansions in Newport and walk the Cliff Walk. The mansions were amazing. They literally reminded me of European castles. We didn't get to walk too much on the Cliff Walk because it was too icy, but we walked around all of the little shops. Monday I flew back to Salt Lake so we just hung out for the morning.

Yesterday Chelsie and I drove down to Orem to watch Drill State. It's the last year that we can go and watch girls that were on the team with us. We missed military by mere minutes, which is exactly what happened last year. Grrrrrrr. Oh well. You can't predict how long the line to get in is going to be. We met up with Liz and Murray and Heidi in Orem. The four of us went to lunch during the breaks together. It really made me miss dancing. I'm definitely going to have to do something about that.

Fun fact: I haven't had a single five day school week this semester so far. The first week I missed Friday to be in Massachusetts, the second week had Martin Luther King Day, and the third I missed Friday for State. It feels pretty good. I should probably do something productive with the last two hours I have here at work. Chels and I are going to see "When In Rome" this afternoon and then there is a basketball game tonight so my day's pretty full after this. Until the next graveyard shift I have to work!

Sophomore Year Begins

2009-09-16T03:15:00.000-06:00

So I understand I've missed a big chunk of time here, but not too much else exciting happened over the summer besides my trip to Paris. Maybe I will recap that later, but if you haven't heard about it from me yet, then you probably don't care to hear it that much.

Well I've been back in Logan for about three weeks and it's been going fairly well. I got a job the first day of classes at the USU Police Department as a dispatcher. It's going pretty well so far, today is my first day on my own. I've only had one call though, since I ' working graves this month. Mostly I sit here and do homework, sit on facebook, and watch movies. Right now I'm watching season one of Arrested Development.

My schedule is pretty full this semester, I'm taking five labs. Basically that adds up to 13 hours in a lab per week. Then I work at least 24 hours per week, plus class time, homework, SI and review sessions, and hanging out, I'm pretty busy.

I'm living in Appletree Cove this semester, and I'm liking it pretty well. I have my own room and bathroom, although my bathroom is kind of small. My roommates are all really nice. It's really close to campus, except I have to go up a hill of death to get to campus. My apartment is right next to my friends' (Jason, Nate, Colin, and Ryan) apartment, which is nice because I can just walk over whenever I want.

My mind's drawing a blank on things to say right now, but I'm sure I will think of a lot more when it isn't four in the morning. Four more hours of work to go!

Last Week In Spain...how sad.

2009-06-29T15:46:00.001-06:00

Monday I had to do a presentation on Vicente Aleixandre, the author from La Generación 27. It was okay. My part of the presentation was describing his style. There were two other ISA girls in my group, Marissa and Marian (no different Marian from the señora that I live with). Needless to say, Marian was not much help. All she did was pick out a poem to read. And then she got mad when some of it was messed up on the powerpoint (my computer doesn’t have powerpoint, so when I make presentations they don’t always transfer to powerpoint correctly). Oh well it’s over. We had a substitute for Language class, and she didn’t know that we were all also in culture classes so she ended up teaching us about Flamenco for two hours straight. I kind of wished I had gone shopping instead. After class Neeka and I went shopping but we didn’t get much done. At 8:15 PM we had to meet for a farewell dinner. Most of the directors had to go to Madrid to pick up the next batch of students Tuesday, so the dinner had to be a week early. We went to a vegetarian restaurant, it was interesting. The first half of the dinner was really good, it was a mushroom risotto with an egg roll, but the second half was a soggy quiche that I did not like. Yes, that description was for you dad. Sorry there wasn’t any ham though. Tuesday there was a ham/wine tasting at the CLM but Neeka and I decided not to go because we had missed dinner with Marian the night before. Thursday night we all went out to a discoteca called El Camborio. It's this really cool place in the Albayzin near the Alhambra that has two floors. Downstairs you can dance in the caves and upstairs the walls are glass and you can see the Alhambra all lit up a little ways away. It was really fun, most of the ISA group was all there. I had some creepy Spanish guy try to dance with me though, he kept telling me that I was very guapa and he liked me a lot hahaha. Yeah he was a creep. We didn’t leave until 5:00 AM. We had to walk down the hill to Plaza Nueva, about a 15 minute walk, in order to find a cab. I’m not sure either of us would have made it the rest of the way walking home because we were so tired. I didn’t get to bed until 6:00 AM. The next day I still went to classes though. It was funny because Marian, my host mother, asked me if I had a hangover. When I laughed and told her no I don’t drink she was so surprised. She said, “So when you go out for tapas you don’t even have a cerveza? No vino de verano?” As if beer and wine don’t count as alcohol hahaha. She was super surprised though. Friday night Neeka left for Madrid for the weekend. I don’t think I really did anything though because I was so tired from the night before. Saturday I slept in until 1:30 PM. I got up and Marian asked me if I wanted breakfast, she almost insisted. We usually have lunch at 2:30 though, so I thought it was funny that she was so adamant. After lunch I went out to make some last minute souvenir/gift purchases that I’ve had my eye on for a while. Then I did a bunch of research on traveling to Paris at the internet cafe around the corner and talked to my dad on Skype. After that I had dinner and watched Stuck on You, the movie where the two brothers are literally attached at the hip, on TV. Sunday I finally made it to church. I still got lost though, it took me twice as long to get there as it should have. Words cannot describe how happy I was when I finally saw that steeple out in the distance. Church was interesting. I stood out right away, which was lucky for me because then I was able to easily get directions on which rooms to go in. It turns out that a group of students from SUU has been here, studying at the same school, this entire time. They’ve been going to church every week too, and they got to know a bunch of the locals. I really wish I had gone before, but I was always out of town. They invited me to hang out with all of them that night, but nobody ever called me. I was pretty sure they were meeting at the church at 9:30 PM though, so I went to take the bus there anyway, and missed it by about 20 seconds. Yep, I saw it drive away from across the street it was delightful. I decided that it wasn’t worth it to wait the 20+ minutes it would take for the next one to come because it was also about a 15 minute bus ride to the church and I would have been very late. I went home and watched some silly TV show called Merlin and the movie Superman Returns. The commercials are incredibly long here, but not as frequent, so I went downstairs and got myself an ice cream during one of the breaks. It still turned out to be a pretty good night. Today, Monday, was our last day of classes. We didn’t really do much though. I’ll probably spend most of tonight studying and trying to plan more for Paris. I’m not too worried about Paris though because our hotel has free WIFI, so all I really need planned out is how to get to the hotel from the airport. The rest can come after. Tomorrow we have exams. I’m not too worried about them, except maybe a little for my Literature exam because we’ve gone over a wide range of topics. Then, at 9:30 PM tomorrow we leave on a bus for Madrid. We’re supposed to get there around 3:30 AM because some people have early (6:00 AM) flights. My flight to Paris isn’t until 1:50 PM. I’m hoping I can go out into Madrid for a while then, instead of spending 12 hours at the airport. I’m not sure how much more time I’ll have to be writing this before I get home, so I want to write this as almost an ending. I’ve had a great time here in Spain, I only wish I could stay longer. However, I also can’t wait to be home and see everyone and have ice in my water again (haha).

the beach!

2009-06-23T10:48:00.000-06:00

This week was not the best week here in Spain. I felt fine Monday. We went out for drinks and tapas that night for Marissa’s birthday, but most people were sick from Morocco so we didn’t do anything too crazy. Tuesday morning I woke up SO sick. I must have had a fever all night because I woke up with that feeling that I was really cold but I could tell that I was really hot. I got up and tried to get ready because that morning we had a tour of the cathedral and La Capilla Real where Ferdinand and Isabella (Los Reyes Católicos) are buried, but I couldn’t do it. My body ached everywhere and when I was in the bathroom washing my face my feet went numb all of a sudden and I couldn’t stand up. I slept the entire day until Neeka came home for lunch around 3:00 PM. That was when Marian (the señora that I am living with) realized I was sick. She took my temperature and I had a little bit of a fever. The bad part was that I was feeling a lot better by then. I hadn’t wanted to tell her really because it wasn’t too big of a deal, and I also just wanted to sleep. Well she freaked out and called ISA and set up a doctor’s appointment for me at 5:00 PM that same day. She then went to siesta for a little while. Well I called my mom and we talked about it, and decided I should wait to go to the doctor. It was going to cost me 40 euros to see a doctor that would tell me to rest and drink more fluids. I was feeling better anyway. I felt really bad about it, but I called ISA and cancelled the doctor’s appointment while Marian was asleep. When she got up I told her, and I could tell she was a little mad at me, but she took my temperature again and I no longer had a fever. She then called ISA herself and talked to them for what seemed like forever. When she found out that I had taken some ibuprofen earlier she was not very happy with me. I swear she lectured me forever about how if I was really sick then the ibuprofen would only lower the fever for a little bit it wouldn’t really help. She told me over and over again not to take any more medication and that she would take my temperature again later to make sure that I wasn’t sick. I don’t quite understand her logic there but oh well. I didn’t have a fever later either. I was pretty mad though because I missed the tour and I missed a movie that a group of people went to from the film festival. I should have missed this food tasting thing too but they moved it back because too many people were sick from Morocco. The next day I woke up with the worst stomach ache I have ever had. It wasn’t like a stomach ache where you want to throw up, my stomach just hurt. It was like a giant cramp-ish feeling in my abdomen. It went away after a little while though. The walk to class felt twice as long as it usually does. After lunch I got the worst sinus headache, it was so weird. It was awful. Slowly but surely all of this went away though. The rest of the week I didn’t really feel 100%, but at least I was better than Tuesday. Friday night everyone went out again for Marissa’s birthday. We went out for drinks and tapas first and then went to a discoteca called Granada 10. I’m not going to lie I didn’t really like it that much, but we didn’t have to pay and it was for Marissa’s birthday so I put up with it. They played weird music and there weren’t really that many people there. We stayed out until probably 4:30 AM before calling it a night. We weren’t even the last ones to leave. Saturday morning we left for Málaga at 9:00 AM. Málaga is a city on the very southern tip of Spain, on the Mediterranean. You may also recognize the name because that is where Pablo Picasso was born. We got there and did a tour of some caves in Nerja (a small beach town in Málaga). They were okay I guess. The tour guide just pointed out rocks that were shaped like animals or trees and then told us how great the caverns that we couldn’t walk through were. After that we finally got to the beach. I was a little worried at first because it was very cloudy and foggy when we first got there, but it cleared up real fast. The sand was weird, it had lots of pebbles in it. When you got really close to the water the rocks got bigger too. It was pretty painful to walk on. We mostly just laid on the beach for the day, going into the water periodically. You had to sprint to the water though, because the sand was scorching hot. The first time I didn’t run, and my feet were so burned. Then when I got to the water they just got cut up on the rocks; it was painful. The water was a good temperature. It was cold but it felt good to cool off. We left around 6:00 PM. That night Neeka and I were so tired that we didn’t go out. Marian was not around because she also went to the beach (not the same beach) to stay at a house that she has there for the weekend. I stayed up and watched movies on the couch. I was lucky enough to find one that was originally in Spanish. It was called something like the 4th Floor and it was about some boys that lived on the 4th floor of a hospital and had had cancer almost all of their lives. It was really good. The next day, Sunday, I decided I wanted to go to church. The closest branch was about a 45 minute walk from my apartment, but that isn’t too bad considering how much I walk every day. I didn’t set out at prepared as I should have because I ended up getting lost and never finding the place. I had accidentally written down the driving directions instead of the walking directions, and they were significantly different because there are so many one way streets and roundabouts here. I ended up walking around, completely lost, for about two hours because I magically ended up back on my street. It really was some sort of miracle. I was ready to hail the next taxi that I saw drive past because I was so lost and tired and hot. So instead of church I sat and watched The Flintstones Movie dubbed in Spanish and ate cherries. It wasn’t too bad of a day I guess in the end. I got my room completely cleaned and organized and I cleaned up the kitchen too. Neeka had gone to Las Alpujarras, small mountain towns in the Sierra Nevadas for the day and didn’t get back until 9:30 PM. Marian got back from the beach around 9:00 PM. She brought a fan for our room with her, and it is sooo wonderful. So sad/scary story. I found a cockroach in our bedroom yesterday. It scampered out from beneath a pile of my purses. Luckily I was able to hunt it down and kill it though. Gross. That was basically the reason I did such a thorough cleaning of our room today. Well I really should get to bed now!

Morocco!

2009-06-14T14:58:00.000-06:00

We left for Morocco at 4:00 AM on Thursday morning. Basically I just never slept Wednesday night. We went to the feria and I came home, showered, packed, and left to catch the bus. It was good though because that way I slept the entire 13 hour drive. We took a ferry across the Strait of Gibraltar and I slept through that too. It really felt like 30 or so minutes and then we were already in Morocco. The first night, Thursday night, we didn’t do much. We had dinner at the hotel where we were staying in Fes. A little later we went out to look for tea but were afraid to go to far in the dark so we settled for a little cafe place. I wanted an orange Fanta but for some reason he brought me this giant glass of orange juice. I drank it any way, even though I don’t like orange juice. It wasn’t as bad as I remember orange juice being. Still not my favorite. The next day we took a tour of Fes. Fes is known as the handicraft center of Morocco. The city was not very modernized/westernized. The streets were all about as wide as a sidewalk and very dirty. We saw lots of starving kittens it was awful. A lot of the streets were covered, but I definitely wouldn’t have wanted to be standing under the coverings during the rain. I figure the water that would run off of the coverings would not be the cleanest. First we went to an apothecary and I spent way too much money, but I didn’t realize we would be going so many other places. He totally scammed us all, but whatever. He did a really great demonstration of a bunch of his stuff though. I got gifts for a lot of people there. Next we went to a place that makes handmade carpets. They were all so beautiful. I got a small one that is close to the size of a doormat, but I will probably just put it on a table or hang it on the wall because I hate to walk on it. It’s really pretty it’s got a yellow background with blueish-purpleish designs. Next we went to a clothing/scarf store. It was really cool because they let us try on the clothing and take pictures. One guy, Stephen, even bought the traditional men’s wear, I forget what it was called. I really liked this one style of dress, I’m going to try to explain it. It was a halter top, but really really long in front. You then took the long part, put it through your legs, and it came around as a little jacket in back. So it looked like a dress, but it was technically those really billowy pants because it went through your legs. It was really pretty, but I couldn’t think of anywhere I would actually wear it. Next we went to a tannery. It smell SO BAD. As we were walking in they handed us all a branch of mint to smell, but it didn’t always help. Wow it smelled awful. They had some cool leather stuff, but I already bought a purse (one that I saw all over Morocco) in Granada. I literally saw the exact same purse, it was pretty funny. I really wanted to buy some of the cool pointed leather shoes that they wear but I talked myself out of it because I don’t think I would wear them. Next we went to a place where they make ceramic things and lots of mosaics. They had some really cool tables and fountain things. I thought about getting a plate, but I figured just one plate would be kind of useless and there was no way I was buying more than one. After that we left for Meknes. Meknes was definitely more European. It was still dirty, but it looked a lot more like Europe than Fes. That night we were supposed to be going to some music show, but something happened and we couldn’t. Instead they took us to some arabic baths. Students from the University in Meknes took us in groups of about 5-8 people. It was one of the oddest cultural practices I have ever taken part in. Seriously. So I was expecting some sort of community hot tub like thing, like the Romans. No. It was a giant shower basically. The floor and walls were tiled, and lining the walls there were a bunch of faucets. They were low to the ground though, just high enough to fill buckets. So, we sat there on the tile floor and washed ourselves out of the buckets. Yeah. The best part? Well they told us to wear swimwear, and if we didn’t have that then just your underwear was fine. Well apparently you don’t wear a top and they did not tell us that. I get into the room and everyone is topless, some old women completely naked. Not a pretty sight. One of the girls that escorted our group came up to me and tried to unhook my bra (I guess she had already made everyone else take their shirts off) but I refused. I was the only one, but I honestly didn’t care it was too weird for me hahaha. So we sat there on the tile for a while. I still had my Aggie sweats/shorts on because I didn’t want to sit on the gross tile with my skin touching it too much. They gave us this goopy stuff called “Moroccan black soap” and we were supposed to use it. Kim’s melted (she was sitting next to me) so I let her use a lot of mine. Then this old, fat women came in and started scrubbing people with this glove thing. She wasn’t wearing a shirt either. Her breasts seriously went down past her belly button. I’m sorry but there really is no easy way to say that, so I just put it out there straight. She threw the people she scrubbed around like they were rag dolls. They were on her lap half of the time like babies. It was so bizarre. Luckily my Moroccan guide came in and said she was ready to leave before it was my turn to be scrubbed. The weird part? A lot of people loved it. They want to go back to some arabic baths near Granada. I don’t really understand it. Well after the baths we had dinner at the hotel and went to bed pretty early. In Meknes (Well they could have done it it Fes but I doubt they had the electronics/equipment for it) every day they have a sort of “call to prayer” five times a day. They blast it over loud speakers throughout the entire city. Well, one of the announcements happens sometime in the middle of the night. I never did figure out what time it was happening because they never have clocks in hotels here, but it was definitely a time when the world should be sleeping. It woke me up both nights, and I’m a pretty heavy sleeper. It takes a lot to wake me. The next morning we drove to Volilubus, a city of ancient Roman ruins not far from Meknes. The ruins were pretty cool, except that everything that was still standing had been reconstructed. I guess there was an earthquake in the 16 or 1700s that leveled the entire area and archeologists reconstructed some things in the 19th or 20th century. There were a bunch of mosaic floors that were still mostly intact though, and they were really cool. I’m proud to say I recognized most of the characters that were pictured thanks to my Classical Mythology class last semester. It finally paid off! Haha. Although a lot of the stuff the tour guide said was a little different from what I learned, I think mainly because he was talking about the Roman stories and I learned them mainly in the Greek versions. The sun was blazing that day, it was really so hot. There were no trees anywhere near either, and most of the stones were fallen on the ground and provided no shade. After Volilubus we stopped at a town just next to Volilubus that was nestled into the hillside of the mountains. It was a really cute little town. The people were so friendly to us, so much different than Fes or Meknes. I wish we could have gone a time when it was either 10 degrees cooler or we were more rested because it was hard to enjoy in the 105 or so degree weather with no water. After that we finally drove back to Meknes and had lunch, but the place had no air conditioning and was short on water bottles. They kept trying to sneak us bottles that had been opened and refilled. After lunch we took a guided tour of Meknes. The ISA directors told us that we were going to do a short walking tour instead of the long bus tour that they had planned. There is no way that the tour we took was shorter than what we were going to do. I can’t imagine a longer tour of that city. We seriously walked around for three or four hours. It was pretty cool though because we got to see the Medina (market area of town) and the Imperial City. Meknes is divided into three parts: The Imperial City, the Medina, and I believe the third is the residential area but I could be wrong. We went there but it wasn’t as exciting as the other two. The Medina was so interesting. It looked very similar to Fes, but the shops were all selling modern products. They had European designer clothing (most likely knock-offs), electronics, toiletries, shoes, purses, toys. You name it, they were probably selling it. It was so interesting to see the contrast of new and old. The Medina’s buildings and construction looked straight out of a history book, except for the products they were selling. We honestly saw a kid ride past on a donkey, texting. He was texting while riding his donkey. So odd. The fruit was all arranged perfectly, it looked really cool. We also passed a butcher stall, which was sooo gross I might add, that had the legs and hooves of some animal as well as a full donkey head and what looked like the liver of a large animal just sitting there. The butcher was messing with the liver as we passed by it was super gross. So a little side note: in general it’s best if we don’t make eye contact with any of the men/boys sitting on the streets (we meaning any of the girls) just to be safe. This can be kind of hard when you are looking around and trying to see the sights so we got a lot of comments and catcalls and such, which isn’t anything surprising. Well while we walking through the Medina, I had a guy come up to me out of nowhere (I hadn’t glanced at him, hadn’t even noticed him before) and start walking next to me and talking to me in English. First he asked me if I spoke French (in English though which is odd) and I made the mistake of saying no. I should have said something like “no te entiendo” or “no comprendo” meaning I don’t understand you in Spanish to get him to leave. Then he proceeded to follow me, saying how “liked me a lot” and even that he wanted a “relationship serious” with me. Yeah, I said “relationship serious” haha. Finally he stopped following me after I just kept shaking my head and not answering anything he said. I thought it was pretty funny though, at least the “relationship serious” part haha. After the super long tour we finally went back to the hotel and had about an hour to rest before dinner. Here is where my story gets interesting. So a big group of us were sitting/standing in the hotel lobby waiting for dinner to be ready and/or waiting to get a henna tattoo. Well I’m standing there and I notice this man wander into the lobby who clearly looked out of place. I would say that he was probably the equivalent of a homeless person in the U.S. wandering in, but I couldn’t say if he was homeless in Morocco there isn’t really a way to differentiate very well. He had the weirdest look/crazy old man smile on his face and I remember thinking that he shouldn’t be there. I could see the hotel staff in the background starting to walk towards the old man, probably to escort him back outside. That was when he lunged at me. He latched both his hands securely around my thigh just where my shorts ended (they ended just about my knees). He literally wrapped both his hands securely around my leg. His whole body went down with him, it’s kind of hard to explain. Well I’m pretty sure I screamed, or made some sort of equivalent noise, and the next thing I knew I was being ripped from his grasp. The girl behind me sitting in a chair, Amanda, grabbed me around the waist and tore me away from him while the hotel staff apparently grabbed the old man to take him outside and slap him around a little (or so I’m told. Honestly I have a hard time remembering what exactly happened because it was all such a blur). Everyone was freaking out, asking me if I was okay. I was, for the most part. I wasn’t really scared, just shocked. I couldn’t stop shaking. It was SO bizarre. Every time I think about it I just get more confused about why it happened. However, as he was walking away (or being dragged away I’m not really sure) I could have sworn his pants were not done up. So I really don’t want to think about what he had been planning. Ew. One of the boys, Dylan, asked a man at the front desk why the crazy man had grabbed me. The man at the desk told Dylan to go over to the desk to talk to him however. I’m not sure if he didn’t want to shout it to everyone there or if he just didn’t understand the question and needed clarification. It could be my imagination but it seemed like he was trying to be hush hush about the whole thing. I thought about asking Dylan what he had said, but decided that I would rather not know. I’d rather just think he was an mentally incapable old homeless man. I have a bruise where apparently he either pinched me or just grabbed on really tightly. I didn’t even notice it at first. It really just felt like he had grabbed it hard enough that I could still feel the spot where his hands touched but someone was telling me that it looked a lot like a pinch. I guess I was too shocked to notice any sort of pain I don’t know. After I decided to eat dinner, but the man selling the drinks wouldn’t take my 100 dirham bill. A group of people was going down the street to get cheaper drinks somewhere else so I joined them. I was surprised to find that I was pretty scared to go outside, but we Katie and I were with four boys so I kept telling myself I didn’t need to worry about anything. It was still made me a little nervous and jittery to go outside, but nothing happened and there was no sign of the crazy old man so I was fine. After dinner I got henna designs all over my hands and wrists. It looks really cool, I just wish it was darker. It’s already starting to fade on my palms. The women that did it was amazing. She worked for around five hours straight. Sometimes she would talk on her cell phone and continue drawing while she chatted away. Every design was unique. Mine looks a lot like lace because it had lots of dots. It was interesting because she looked at each person a little first before starting, I’d like to think to get an idea of what design she thought fit us but who knows. She didn’t speak English. I sat there and waited for it to dry in the lobby as she continued to draw on other girls because Neeka my roommate was asleep and I would have nothing to do in our room except fall asleep. The next day we left pretty early. The drive was not as peaceful as it was on the way there. I wasn’t tired enough to just sleep straight through, and we took a really mountainous and windy road. We had to stop actually for almost half an hour because of a fatal car accident that I guess killed six people. It was awful. I guess we were supposed to be able to see it as we finally drove past but I think our bus was too bid to see anything on the side of the road. We watched Vicki Christina Barcelona and Kung Fu Panda (both movies that I wanted to watch) so that was two more reasons not to sleep. I should have taken a dramamine but a kept telling myself that it would get better as soon as we were out of the mountains. So lunch that day wasn’t included, but we didn’t stop for lunch until we got back into Spanish territory and all I had left was dirhams. All I had was an apple that Neeka had saved from lunch the first day and a small chunk of bread, that probably didn’t help the sick feeling. I felt awful when we got back to Granada, mostly just a really bad headache though. I talked to my parents for a while on the phone and then took a bunch of medication and passed out for the rest of the night.

Corpus Christi

2009-06-10T14:54:00.000-06:00

It’s been a pretty laid back week because Corpus Christi started last night and the city really goes all out for Corpus. We only had classes Monday and Tuesday. Monday and Tuesday I didn’t do much. Wednesday was when the fun started. Wednesday morning/afternoon (I think it started at 12 PM) was La Tarasca. La Tarasca is a parade type thing that goes down two of the main streets in the center of town. It turned out to be kind of disappointing. Neeka and I were supposed to meet some people at the Burger King where the parade was starting, but they decided the streets were too crowded to walk that far. We got to the plaza where Burger King is and saw a boy from two of my classes who said that we had already missed it. I think we were maybe 10 minutes late. So, we decided to chase it down and walk in the direction that it had gone. We caught up with it on Gran Vía only a few blocks down. It was cool, but really short. All it was was a crazy alien or swamp monster looking puppet at the front, giant dolls of Ferdinand and Isabella (Los Reyes Católicos) and then two dolls that I assumed were some famous Sultan and his Sultana, and a bunch of people wearing giant heads that were smacking people with these little balloon things. We followed the parade for a little while to make sure that we had seen everything and then got some ice cream and decided to explore south because we haven’t gone that direction much. We found a store that sold Lladró but they didn’t have a bride and groom. The woman working there though told me to look at a hotel across the street, and if they had one that I liked that she would give me the same one for 20% off. I still haven’t had time to go back though so I hope when I do it’s the same woman. We went to El Corte Ingles to find me a travel security belt and then we had to race home for lunch. Later that night was the Bull Fight, the Corrida de Toros. We left super early because some people wanted to get drinks before the fight, but we ended up getting off the bus at the wrong stop and getting lost. Luckily for some strange reason I can’t remember I had put my map of Granada in my purse. By the time we found the Plaza de Toros it was too late to go to any restaurant. We bought giant waters at a supermarket and just chilled outside on a bench until the fight started. Our seats weren’t as bad as I thought they were going to be. We were on the second to last row in the upper bowl, but it had a pretty good view. It was blazing hot though. Luckily we were high enough up that we were shaded for a long time before the sun started to set. Even then it wasn’t directly in our eyes so I didn’t even wear my sunglasses for a lot of it. The bullfight was...an experience. To be honest I didn’t like it at all. There was nothing exciting about it, and the only times I got a little into it was when a bull knocked one of the matadors over. We sat there while they tortured and then killed six bulls in a row. It would have been more exciting if it had been more of a fair fight, but the bull was usually outnumbered four or five to one. By the time it was just the bull and the matador the bull was seriously injured and not at the top of his game. I think that maybe when the tradition first started it was more of a fair fight and therefore more exciting or at least suspenseful, but now they do everything they can to keep the matador and picadors safe (obviously) but at the same time they remove any element of excitement. The worst part was the very end. The matador would finally take out his sword and pierce it through the bulls back/shoulders in an attempt to stab its heart. Most of the time, however, he missed. After this then, the picadors would run back out and make the poor thing run in circles until it collapsed on the ground in agony. Then, they would take a knife and stab it through the back of the bulls head to kill it for good. They always stabbed it with no mercy, and the bull would jerk and die. Then they cut the ears off the matador would parade around the ring holding up the ears. Another thing that bugged me was how pompous the matadors acted. They kept making big gestures and acting like they had just done something incredible even before the crowd would start to cheer. The order just seemed wrong. Usually you bow and parade around if the crowd is going wild. Instead, the matadors would parade around and then the crowd would cheer. I don’t know I just didn’t like it. After the fight we had pizza at a little place and wasted forever there. We were just with some girls that are a little flaky and can’t make decisions to save there lives, so we sat there while they decided what they were going to do the next day. I tried to get everyone to hurry up but it didn’t really work. Then when we finally were going to go to the fair did they realize how late it was. Yeah, because you wasted so much time just sitting at that restaurant! Anyway, the group split in half and only three of us ended up going to the fair because the rest had been the night before. The fair was cool, a lot like a state fair though just minus all of the animals. One cool thing they did have was a bunch of tent discotecas. There was an entire section of them, some free and some not. We didn’t really have time to go to any of them though. I had this really good waffle thing called a “gofre” with strawberries and whipped cream on top. The weird part? It had some sort of sugary filling. I wasn’t expecting that. It was super sugary, but still pretty good. After the fair I went home and showered, packed and then it was time to leave for Morocco!

Sevilla - Triana

2009-06-08T10:32:00.001-06:00

The drive to Sevilla was fairly uneventful; I slept the entire way. When we got to the hotel we found out that they the hotel didn’t have enough room for us so we had to group into groups of three. Neeka and I were split up and I went with two girls named Lauren and Krissy, but I know them pretty well so it wasn’t bad. We went looking for food and it probably took an hour just to find a place where we could sit. Everywhere we went was crazy busy it was unbelievable. When we were finishing our lunch, it started to rain. It was super windy too so umbrellas didn’t help. We jumped from shop to shop on the way back to the hotel but I didn’t really see anything appealing. By the time we got back to the hotel it was warm again so we got some ice cream across the street. It was way expensive compared to ice cream in Granada. I’ve realized that I picked a very good city to live in because it doesn’t cost as much as a lot of the other Spanish cities. After ice cream I took a little nap. At around 9 PM we had a walking tour of the area around the river. Sevilla has a fairly large river (I think the only navigable one in Spain actually), and it separates the modern side (called Sevilla) from the older side (called Triana). Apparently Sevilla was where all of the mariners from Renaissance times would go to learn how to sail, and they would all said out of Sevilla to go explore the new world. Interesting fact: Sevillanos (people of Seville) spoke (and still speak) differently than the rest of peninsular Spaniards. Most Spaniards have a thick accent called the “theta” that is basically a lisp. Sevillanos, however, do not. Since all of the conquistadors sailed out of Sevilla, the people of South and Latin America do not have the heavy Spanish accent. Well at least I thought it was interesting. After the tour we ate a place with pescaitos fritos (little fried fish) that are supposedly a specialty in Sevilla. I didn’t order it but I did try some of Caitlin’s. Didn’t like it. After dinner we sat an outdoor bar right next to the river. When we returned to the hotel we found the street completely blocked off, and there were a bunch of people just standing and walking in the street. We asked the concierge at the hotel and he said that the procession would be coming by in about half an hour. The procession is part of a Sevillan festival for their patron the Virgen de Esperanza. It should have gone by hours earlier, but it was delayed by the rain. We decided to wait and see the procession. It was very slow. There first were men holding really long candle sticks, then a statue of a virgin carried on a litter, and then a band. They would stop every 15 feet or so, so it was very slow. It also went straight through the crowd, so it was slow getting people out of the way. It was pretty cool though. The next day we went to El Alcazar, which is a royal palace that was once a Muslim palace also. There were three different palaces: the Arab palace, the baroque palace, and the renaissance palace. It was interesting to see the contrasts of the three different architectures. Of course the palace also had beautiful gardens. After El Alcazar, we had a break for lunch. Lunch was disgustingly over priced but we didn’t have much time to shop around. After lunch we visited La Giralda and the cathedral. La Giralda is a giant tower, first built by the Muslims, then turned into a bell tower by the Christians. The cathedral is the third largest in the world, and was beautiful. We even climbed La Giralda, it had a really great view of the city and the tops of the cathedral. The tower is taller even than the cathedral. After that we walked to the Plaza de España. We weren’t there long enough for me to figure out exactly what its significance was before the buses came and picked us up. I slept again on the way home. I found the perfect seat on the entire bus. There are two doors to get on and off of the bus: one at the front and one in the middle. If you sit right in front of the middle door, you can lean your seat back as much as you want without crushing the person behind you (because there isn’t anyone behind you). It’s great. Now I should probably unpack.

One Week Down

2009-06-05T10:08:00.000-06:00

This week of classes hasn’t been so bad. I have Spanish Literature from 12:00-1:00 (my first class of the day), Spanish Culture and Civilization from 1:15-2:15, and Spanish Language from 4:00-6:00. I got lucky because my classes are back to back (at least my culture electives). Most people have a break between all three. The break at 2:15 is barely enough time to race home and eat lunch. I wish we had more time, or they had another way for us to eat lunch though. I don’t really like my Spanish Literature class, mostly because it seems very basic. That and we are supposed to make commentary on things in Spanish which is hard. It gets really boring. Culture has been pretty cool so far. There are only 10 of us in the class. The first day the room filled up and they had to split the class into levels. The first day we just played get to know you games, and now we have been talking about geographic and demographic things about Spain. Population, migration, etc. Yesterday we listened to a little bit of each of Spain’s four official languages (castellano, vasco, gallego, catalan) and then a song about the African immigrants that come over on boats. I guess that a bunch of them die from the boats sinking on the way, I’d never heard anything about it. We watched a video with a bunch of clips and pictures, it was really sad. My language class has been...interesting. The first day we played get to know you games a little, and then we did an activity where we had to write stories about each other. Basically we sat in a circle, everyone had their own paper with their name at the top, and then we passed them around the circle. You would write something that you know about the person, or something that you imagine about the person on the paper until the professor said to pass them again. I had a lot of fun with it. I made up a bunch of stories about how someone was related to Brad Pitt and someone else was a shoe designer. Silly things like that. Then we had to go around the room telling one truth and one lie from the paper. Most of the lies people said were written by me, I am proud to say. I made up stories mostly because I didn’t know anything about the people I was writing about. The next day we did some really odd “personality tests.” The first one we did completely orally. We listened to a tape that told us to visualize things. It had us visualize this journey though a forest and a few different things that we encountered. We had to each say out loud what we encountered. For example the first thing was what is your forest like and why are you there, then we got to a wall and we had to describe the wall and how we would get around it, etc. In the end each of the obstacles meant something in our personality. After that we drew pictures out of some basic shapes that basically did the same thing. Yesterday was the first time we actually did grammar activities and learned something. Tuesday after classes a bunch of us went out for drinks and tapas, but we ended up going to an arabic tea place. It was really cool we sat in this room with cool fabrics all over the walls and mirrors and such. I got a milkshake that was so so. I wanted raspberry, but they didn’t have it so I got strawberry (he didn’t tell me this until after he brought everyone else’s orders to them). We stayed there for a long time and just hung out, it was fun. After we met up with some people at Mae West again but only stayed a few minutes before going home. Wednesday night Neeka was meeting some guy that was a friend of a friend that lives here in Granada. I just stayed at home and got a lot of stuff done. It was funny because as I was doing my homework I got really really tired and so I decided to go to bed. I practically passed out I was so tired, but of course she came home not even five minutes after I had turned the light off. I tried so hard to talk to her and ask her about it but I think I kept falling asleep during the break between each question or answer. Tonight we went to karaoke again. It was okay. We sang Dancing Queen but that was it. I think that because everyone had class it wasn’t as crazy as last week. Oh another thing, we had a meeting about the trip to Morocco next week. I’m pretty excited. However, we were told not to wear sleeveless shirts (at least the girls) or shorter shorts. Shorts should be at least halfway through your thigh. We also were told to wear closed shoes. The great part of this story is why we were told to wear closed shoes. Apparently we will be walking through some markets, and at these markets they sell animals too. Well this means that the street will have feces, urine, and blood of animals in it. Charming, no? Haha no I’m joking I really am excited. I really want to ride a camel, so tomorrow I’m going to ask Eugenio (the guy in charge of the trip) how I can make that happen. I guess we won’t be doing too much with the group the way we do on our other excursions. We also can’t drink any water that isn’t bottled, or eat any food that hasn’t been cooked. I also bought a ticket for a bull fight yesterday. The fight is next Wednesday (I think it’s part of the big festival for Corpus Christi) and a bunch of us are going. I don’t necessarily want to see it, but I feel like it’s something I should do while I’m here since it’s such a big deal here. I think as long as the matador doesn’t get gored I’ll be okay, but I saw one get gored on tv and it wasn’t pretty. It happened sometime last week and they kept replaying it on the news. I had my first gazpacho and Spanish tortilla last night for dinner. Until then we hadn’t really been having any specifically Spanish dishes. We had flan too for desert but I have had that a few times already. I love flan by the way. But the tortilla was good, just like an omlette. The gazpacho was...weird. It tasted like I was spooning salad dressing into my mouth. It wasn’t bad, it tasted pretty good, but it was weird to be practically drinking it. It was better with bread. Today not much has happened except for classes. I guess that Marian (my senora) is leaving for the weekend though so we are on our own for dinner tonight and Sunday when we get back from Sevilla. We leave tomorrow morning, I’m pretty excited. Tonight I think a bunch of us are going to go out for churros con chocolate but that’s about it since we leave pretty early in the morning. But now I need to do some other things while I still have the internet!

Classes Starting

2009-06-02T10:31:00.001-06:00

So I thought I was writing too often but turns out I'm not writing often enough haha. Anyways.

Sunday we didn’t do much after lunch. We went down to a park that is around the corner and just sat on the grass for a few hours. We also stopped at a pasteleria and tried some interesting looking pastries. Mine was way too sugary. We got a new roommate (well she’s not a roommate but she is living in our apartment) that night, her name is Eden. She’s from Kansas City, she’s 31, and she teaches English as a second language. She seems pretty nice. Monday was not the best day. We got up extra early so that I could stop at an atm, but the atm still wouldn’t give me enough money to pay for the Morocco trip. I was talking to someone as I was trying to get out money and I guess I didn’t notice that it was telling me to take my card because the next thing I knew my card was going back into the machine and it told me to contact my branch. Luckily the bank was opening within the next five minutes. I tried to call the support line but I couldn’t hear anything because we were on the street and cars and buses were going by. I stood in line for a while before asking a lady at a side desk about it. It was super easy to get out, thank goodness. We did have to race to get to our exam though. The placement exam was the hardest Spanish test I have ever taken in my life. We had to write an essay, do two listening selections, 45 multiple choice grammar questions, and an interview. I had been really worried about the interview but it turned out to be the easiest part. The essay was hard because we had to write about Spanish political problems and immigration problems. I had no idea about any of it. I could have written the essay about the United States easily. The listening selections were so hard because the recordings were really bad. The grammar section was impossible. It had a bunch of phrases and set saying that I had no idea what they meant and you were supposed to choose the right one. I left the test feeling like I knew nothing. I did place into high advanced though somehow. The levels are beginner, intermediate, advanced, and superior, with each level having an upper and lower division. Besides my roommate Neeka, only fluent bilinguals were placed into superior. After the test we visited La Alhambra and El Generalife. We had to walk there though, and it is basically on top of a mountain. It was quite the hike in the hot sun. The palace and the gardens were beautiful though. I only wish we didn’t have a guided tour. This is the first time I’ve thought that, just because our tour guide talked way too much about things that didn’t even relate to the palace or gardens. She did tell us an interesting story about one of the Sultanas (the Sultan’s favorite wife). I guess she was having an affair with a man from one of the noble families, but the Sultan didn’t know what man he only found out which family. So, he took every man from the family into a room to dine with them and had them all beheaded. This way he was sure that he killed his wife’s lover. Kind of disturbing. After La Alhambra we got our schedules and mine is pretty good. I have Spanish literature from 12:00-1:00, Spanish culture from 1:15-2:15, and then Spanish language from 4:00-6:00. Neeka wasn’t so lucky as to have classes back to back so she has to sit across town for an hour waiting between classes. We both have the same culture class though, and our language classes are at the same time so lunch works out really well. While I was waiting for a computer so that I could check my schedule, I smashed the screen on my Spanish rental phone. Only I would, right? So the computer lab is really cramped, and the computer line the walls with a table in the middle. I was maneuvering around the table and the corner caught me in the thigh, but it turns out that it hit me directly where my phone was in my pocket right in the middle of the screen. Who does that? So now I’m going to probably have to pay to replace the stupid thing when I’m done with it. After schedules luckily a girl named Kim lent me 30 euro so I could pay for my Morocco trip. Apparently I can only take $300 out per day, but the entire weekend counts on Monday and I needed about $350 (245 euro) to pay for Morocco. After that we all went and got ice cream and lemonade slushies that were really good. We had dinner and chatted with Marian for a little while. Turns out she used to be a travel agent, used to run her own company actually. She got to travel all over the place, and she looked over our itinerary for Morocco to tell us how it was going to be. She said she really liked where we were going and what we would be doing and that it would be a really good trip. That night Neeka and I talked 90% in Spanish to each other, it was really good. We did laugh a lot though because it was pretty funny at the same time. Hopefully we can keep it up and get better too. Well I need to get ready to go to class now.

Granada, the city of noise

2009-05-29T06:57:00.000-06:00

Well today is the third day that I’ve been in Granada, and it’s been a crazy last 48 or so hours. Wednesday night there was some championship soccer game between Barcelona and Manchester United. Ian (the Norwegian man living with us for a while) turned it on and was watching it. I tried to watch, but I got too bored and left. Well throughout the game, whenever anything important would happen in the game, we could hear all kinds of people shouting, like the entire neighborhood was watching. After the game, the chaos began. Barcelona won, and everyone was going crazy. People were honestly shouting and singing and jumping around in the streets. Cars were honking their horns like crazy, especially in the form of a little jingle type thing. This insanity went on for almost two hours, not ever exaggerating. It was about 10:30 PM when the game was finished too, so the noise was all happening when I was trying to sleep. I finally got to sleep by turning up my music really loud. The next day we had orientation classes in the CLM (Centro para Lenguas Modernas - Modern Languages Center) where we basically reviewed all kinds of concepts. We have a placement exam on Monday that will determine what level we can study. The class was okay, it was a little long though, five hours. After class we hurried home and Ainoa had left us some strange microwaved concoction to eat. She had to go pick up our senora, Marian, because Marian had been in Ireland. Neeka and I both fell asleep though and I think Marian got here around 4:30 while we were sleeping. We both got up around 5:15 and Marian was on the phone. She stayed on the phone for at least 40 more minutes before we were able to meet her. I guess her aunt (who lived in Ireland) died recently and that was why she was in Ireland. She was on the phone a lot talking to family. She seems really nice, I haven’t seen her much yet though. She really liked the book of pictures of Utah that I gave her. She doesn’t know where it is on a map though, haha, and she had the hardest time pronouncing my name. I’ve found that a lot of Spaniards have a hard time with it. It’s a bunch of sounds that they don’t really have in their language. We had to leave pretty soon after that though because we were going on a tour of Granada on foot and then going to see Flamenco dancers. I was a little worried about the tour at first because we went a bunch of places that I had already been to many times, but then we got into the older part of town near La Alhambra and it got really cool. There were a bunch of little shops with the coolest arabic influenced things. The streets were a lot smaller and the buildings older. It was a little scary though because I guess there is a lot of drug use over on that side, mainly things like Marijuana though. We saw lots of people just sitting in the street and lots of people with dreadlocks. We got to see La Alhambra from a distance and take a lot of pictures, it was beautiful. La Alhambra is an old arabic palace where the Arabic royalty lived when the city was under Moorish control I think around the 13th or 14th century. We are going to go there on Monday. We then went to see Flamenco dancers. They literally performed in caves in the mountain (we were in the Sierra Nevadas). We sat in this really narrow room that was painted white, but clearly the walls were rock, and watched the dancers go one at a time on the little stage at the end of the cavern. The first group was older people and I was a little disappointed because it wasn’t as exciting as I had expected. The oldest lady (probably in her 60s) got really mad because everyone was taking pictures and videos. She kept scowling while she was dancing and saying “no video.” However, the Asians that were there with us didn’t listen and just kept video-ing her, which just made her more mad. It was very odd, I couldn’t believe how upset she was about it. What do you expect when you perform for a bunch of tourists? The next group of young people was really good though, I loved it. I can’t believe the stuff they do, their feet go crazy! Haha. After the show we walked back to the central part of town and a bunch of us went to a karaoke bar. It was fun for a little while, but it got old. Everyone was drinking I think except Neeka and I, and most of the people there were in our ISA group and therefore Americans that we already knew. It was still pretty funny though, they had all English songs. We stayed until about 1:30, only because we kept waiting for our song (a group of us did “Say My Name” by Destiny’s Child) and got home around 2:00. This morning we had orientation/review class again. It was just okay. I swear it makes me feel even more confused though. After class we had a meeting where we filled out paperwork, and then I went to the computer lab to get some information about my cell phone off of my email. On my way home I was talking to my mom on the phone (I had just barely activated it) and I accidentally took a wrong turn because I wasn’t paying attention. I literally walked for like 10 minutes in the complete wrong direction before I realized it. I turned around and headed the right way but I didn’t get back for lunch until around 4. I guess Marian was a little mad that we weren’t home on time (Neeka got home around 2:45 ish) because of the meeting and went in her room to sleep a little. I feel kind of bad, but neither of us had her phone number so we couldn’t call her and let her know. Now I think I’m going to take a nap for a little while.

Granada (Finally!)

2009-05-27T06:57:00.000-06:00

We left for Granada around 8:30 AM. I didn’t get up early enough for breakfast, but I wasn’t really missing anything. The bus ride took about 5 hours, but it didn’t feel like it at all. We only stopped once to use the bathroom and get some snacks. I read a book and a half and slept the rest of the way. Once we got into Andalucia (the province where Granada is located) I started to look at the landscape. It was beautiful. The Sierra Nevada Mountains are very near Granada, and the landscape around it is very hilly. There were thousands of olive trees planted all over the hills and up the mountain sides. Once we got to Granada everyone started freaking out about meeting their host families. The bus pulled up to the sidewalk somewhere and a bunch of people were just standing there waiting for us. They then called us as roommate pairs out of the bus to greet our families. Neeka and I were about halfway through everyone on our bus, so we got to watch quite a few people meet their families but we didn’t have to wait too long either. Unfortunately our family is currently out of town. Our senora, Marian, has been vacationing up north and will return tomorrow morning. Her son, Alexander, is in China with his girlfriend. I guess he has a friend that lives there. Instead, Marian’s daughter Ainoa (I guess it’s a Basque name) greeted us and took us to the apartment. Ainoa lives a couple of blocks away. She made us comida (salad and tortellini) and showed us around a little. There is another man staying here from Norway and studying Spanish, but he is old (60s ish). His name is Ian but he is leaving this weekend. After lunch Ainoa showed us how to get to El Corte Ingles so we could buy a blow dryer and a straightener. Then we found the ISA office where we could get free internet and stayed there for a couple of hours to catch up on everything from back home. We took our time getting back to the apartment and took a bunch of pictures. We found an old moorish ruin of some sort, not sure what it was but it was really cool. It had a courtyard in the middle, and two floors worth of buildings around it. We just finished unpacking and now we are waiting for Ainoa to come back for dinner. Our apartment is really cute, but not too close to where we will be having classes. There is no air conditioning, which really sucks since it is almost 90 outside now. Neeka and I share a bathroom. Our bedroom has a fairly big closet, a desk, two chairs, a lounge chair, two end tables, and a bulletin board. Our bathroom is fairly nice, but the toilet has a chain to pull when you want to flush it. I thought that was pretty funny. I really like the decorations in the living room. We are on the 5th floor, but we don’t really have any good views because there are buildings just as tall all around us. The floor in the main living and kitchen area is beautiful, I think it’s marble. There are a few couches and a small tv but I don’t think I will ever use that. I think I hear Ainoa now here to make us dinner so I’d better go.

Toledo

2009-05-26T06:48:00.000-06:00

We had dinner at a place that turned out to have a variety of mostly American food. That was okay though because we needed some substantial food that we could count on. The first day in Madrid I barely ate anything. It was funny because the menu was translated into different languages, and some of the English translations weren’t correct. For “oregano” it said “oregin” and for “tuna” it said “tunny.” I thought tunny was odd. After dinner we tried to find something to do but because it was a Sunday night everything was closed. We did get some ice cream bars at a place owned by some Asians. It was interesting because it had a mixture of American, Spanish, and some form of Asian foods.

We got to sleep in the next morning until about 10, which was nice. I finally got up early enough for the breakfast buffet. Before we left for Toledo a few of us went out shopping just to see Madrid a little more before we had to leave. Mainly we shopped in El Corte Ingles, which is probably the only department store that they have here. It was literally on every corner and they sold everything you could possibly think of. Toledo is a beautiful little city. The old part of the city looks like Disneyland, it doesn’t look real. All of the roads are cobblestones and the architecture is old. It is a fairly small town so it closes early, so we mostly spent the nights at the hotel. The first night in Toledo we were dropped off and had dinner. Lunch (called Comida) is their main meal so we don’t usually eat much for dinner. Most restaurants have a good deal called “Menu del Dia” where you choose a first and second course from a list and you get a drink plus dessert or coffee. Most of the time we have all been getting this and I just ended up getting this for dinner. I had Filet de ternera (a thin steak) that was really good with pasta salad. We had to take a taxi home, but it was really cheap because it was close. Our hotel is in the hotel district and not in the old part of Toledo. The next morning we took a panoramic bus tour around the city (it would be difficult to drive a charter bus down the small streets of the actual city) and had a guided walking tour of the city for about 4 or 5 hours after that. We went to a cathedral/monastery and a synagogue that was once a muslim temple and also a Catholic church it was interesting. You could see all three influences in the design. For lunch we had Menus at a modern-ish place and I ordered a bunch of stuff I’ve never eaten before. It turned out to be a bowl of tomato slices with tuna for my first course and medallions of wild boar in two strange sauces along with stuffed potato skins for the second course. It came with cheesecake which was good but the wild boar I didn’t really like. After lunch we did a little shopping, yes I got a postcard for SJ, and then went back to the hotel to sleep until our meeting. After the meeting we had dinner at the restaurant and I had duck with pears and a pear sauce which turned out to be delicious. I really really liked it. Now we are just packing up because we have to get up extra early in the morning. Tomorrow we are finally going to Granada and meeting our host families. I’m really excited to meet them and see what kind of people they are. I should probably finish packing now.

Madrid!

2009-05-24T16:22:00.000-06:00

I can’t believe I’m finally here! For now I’m staying in Madrid, we won’t get to Granada for a few more days. We are staying in a hotel called Princesa (it is located on Calle de la Princesa - Street of the Princess). Our room is on the 14th and top floor so we have a good view of the city because not many of the buildings are as tall as our hotel. You have to put your key into a slot next to the door in order to have the lights work (the key has to stay in the slot) which is weird. We just made a paper key though and have been using that. I guess they are trying to conserve energy, which is cool. The beds are pushed together, I laughed when I first say it. The beds are a little larger than twins, but they are directly next to each other like a giant bed. We have a couch and stuff the hotel is pretty nice. The plane ride was okay, I slept probably 5 hours. The dinner was better than I expected. I sat next to a man from Texas who was going to Southern Spain to help a company make some shoes. He was a women’s shoe store owner. It was very interesting, he gave me his card and I’ll have to look up his store later when I get more internet time. When we arrived in Madrid it took forever to get the the meeting point to take the bus to the hotel. We went through customs really quickly (they didn’t say a word just looked at my passport and let me pass) but baggage claim took forever because I was waiting for two other girls to get their bags also. When we all had our bags we had to find a shuttle to take us to the right terminal. It turns out that our terminal is almost 5 miles away from the terminal where we were meeting and it took forever to get there. We had missed the Granada bus but luckily there was room on the Salamanca bus to take us to the hotel right when we arrived. We were the first ones on our flight to arrive so we didn’t have to wait for the next shuttle. Our rooms weren’t ready when we got to the hotel so we (Jalecia, Rashae and I) went looking for some lunch. We didn’t find much. I had a little sandwich with tomato and tuna and that was it. It was raining so we had to buy umbrellas. When we got back to the hotel our rooms were ready and I met my roommate Neeka. She is really nice I think we are going to get along well. We both took a nap for a couple of hours and we almost missed our group meeting, but Neeka woke up randomly right when it was supposed to start. We rushed downstairs and made it just in time, but I didn’t take anything with me because I was in a hurry. Turns out we were leaving right after the meeting for a bus tour of the city. I had to run up and down 14 flights of stairs to get my stuff because the elevators were crowded with people going out on the town Saturday night. The bus tour was cool, too short though and I had a hard time seeing or getting pictures because a) I didn’t have the window seat and the girl next to me was asleep and b) I was sitting next to the emergency exit sign (so you might see it in some of my pictures sadly). After the tour a group of us went in search of dinner. We took pictures at La Plaza de Espana first. We stopped at a place called Museo de Jamon (Museum of Ham, I guess ham is a big deal here) and had seafood paella. It was a rice mix with prawns, shrimp, calamari, chicken, asparagus, and who knows what else I think peppers maybe? It was okay. Not my favorite, but oh well. Dinner took a really long time because it took about 30 minutes to prepare. After dinner we all went to bed because we were exhausted.

Sunday morning we woke up to the wake up call (even though I had set my alarm 30 minutes earlier and slept through it) and got on the bus to go to the Reina Sofia Museum, a modern art museum (art from just before the civil war to the present). It was interesting, we had a very good tour guide and my group was the all Spanish group. However, it was a little too long and some of the information I didn’t really care about. A lot of it was history from the last 150 years of Spain. We did get to see Picasso’s Guernica, which was massive and pretty cool. It had two guards around it, and you couldn’t get within 10 feet of it or take any pictures. After Reina Sofia we took the bus to the monastery San Lorenzo de el Escorial (Saint Lawrence of the Ashes, he was “grilled”). The story behind San Lorenzo was odd. They honestly had symbols of grills all over the place, and in the chapel (or whatever they call it) there was a giant painting of the event of San Lorenzo, in the words of our tour guide, “being barbecued.” It turns out that El Escorial is where all of the royalty and most of the nobility from the last 500 years are interred. We got to see the burial room, with probably 20 or so coffins named in latin of all the kings and queens (only queens that fathered kings). There were three empty coffins, but they have already been reserved for three dead monarchs (the current kings grandmother and his parents I believe) who are currently awaiting their interment in the nearby “rotting rooms.” (Yes our tour guide had a morbid sense of humor.) There were also many paintings, both famous and not so famous, in the monastery. We saw portraits of most of the royalty and also some paintings by El Greco and Vazquez. We didn’t get to see the entire building however, because a good part of it is still used as a monastery and another part as an all boys high school. It started raining while we were inside the gift shop and I had to run the buses in the rain. I got soaked, but I did get two postcards for Savanna so it was worth it. Now we are back at the hotel in Madrid having a little break before we go back out for dinner.

oh those summer nights

2009-05-11T22:33:00.000-06:00

Well it's finally summer. I thought I would be a lot more bored, but I've been fairly busy. I think that's just because it's only been a week or so. I'm lucky; I'm leaving the country right when it will start to die down. I got right to work the afternoon after my two finals. I was only scheduled for four days the next week though, and I just sat there at first staring at the schedule. What was I going to do with two days off in a row? Besides the fact that I only work about 4-6 hour shifts. I had no idea what I was going to do with myself. Well it turned out okay because I did get called into work I think all but one of my days off so far, plus I've had lunch dates and get-togethers with old friends and family that I haven't seen in a while. Plus I sleep in until 10 every day that I don't open at work so that kills some hours. I've also been planning for Spain (10 days!!!), which is quite a bit of work since I will be gone for almost two months. I have to call both of my banks, let them know I'm going, get international pin numbers, order some euros to have right when I get there, etc. I also had to call the phone company and set up some world-traveler plan so that people can text and call me for free. I had to buy adapters for all of my electronics because they have different voltages and plug sizes over there. I am still looking at my travel options on my three free weekends, I'm hoping to get to Paris for one of them and that is quite a hassle. I've got to make sure I have all of the necessities like shampoo and toothpaste (enough for two months) and I still need to go shopping for summer clothes. I also am in the process of gathering all of my necessary paperwork. Not only all of that but I have been reading up on Spanish culture, sort of the do's and do not's, and some of it is pretty bizarre. Like you aren't supposed to smile at people you don't know, nor do you hug people that you haven't seen in a while. Instead you give two kisses on the cheek. You don't touch anything in stores and often don't even try on the clothes. Yawning is bad, as is putting you feet up on anything. It's crazy. Also, I haven't been eating any "bad" processed carbohydrates or any sugars. Basically all I eat is chicken, shrimp, vegetables, olive oil and cheese. This means that I have to spend extra time cooking. It's been good though I've lost 5 pounds doing it since I've been home.

Last weekend I saw both Star Trek and Wolverine and I liked them both very well. I was very impressed with Star Trek, I think I liked it better than Wolverine and I am a pretty avid X-Men fan. I swear I've eaten out more in the last week and a half than I did all of Spring Semester, and it's not on purpose. I've been good, I don't ever eat out by myself or anything, but when I am meeting people for lunch or that kind of thing it's hard to say "sorry I don't like to eat out." I babysat for Abbey's niece Mia the other day while their family went and saw Star Trek, that was fun. She's a really cute kid, she got super hyper right before it was time to go to bed and it probably took me 15 minutes to chase her down and get her PJs on her. For a while she ran around with her pants off yelling "nakey bum" it was kinda funny I had to admit.

It's been weird because the rest of the house has to go to sleep fairly early. I always forget that my sister still has school. My parents worked during the summer before too so that's not so weird. The weird part is my sister still in school. I opened a new checking account at Key Bank today, to go along with the credit card I got last week. Basically I'm sick of Utah Central, plus Key Bank was giving away free GPS systems if you opened an account so that was nice. I probably won't get it until I get back from Spain, but it will come in handy when I go on road trips next fall (which I hope to do since I will finally have my car). I also think that I might be able to get a job with Key Bank in the fall because my mom's best friend's son is the Vice President of one in Midvale and he knows the guy in charge of all the Logan area branches. He said he would talk to him when I got back from Spain. So score! I should be able to afford Greece and Africa next summer but it will probably still be close. I just hope that I can still work at the post office this Christmas because that will be key. Well that's about all that's been going on lately. Did I mention that I leave for Spain in 10 days? AHHH I'm so excited. And I looked it up now that I have my official address, I will only be 2 miles from the LDS church in Granada. And it is a fairly short walk down a main avenue. So relieved. Oh, and I'm staying with a 73-year-old senora and her 33-year-old student son. It should be interesting. My roommate goes to the University of Florida and I talked to her a little bit on Facebook. She seems cool. Well I better go to sleep. Jocie and I are taking a CORE exercise class tomorrow morning at the Rec Center. We went to spinning last Thursday and liked it so we are trying out another class. Should be good.

<3 ten days til SPAIN!!!

finish line

2009-04-20T00:23:00.001-06:00

We're finally nearing the end. I can't believe it. I have 11 more days left this semester. Then only 31 days til I leave for Spain. It's crazy. I have so much to do in those 11 day though. I have quite a bit of homework (meaning like 20+ pages worth of essays to write), I have to study for my finals, and I have to pack up so I can move out May 1. Luckily I have been pretty good at focusing, especially today, and I've gotten a lot done. This weekend was fun, but we didn't really do anything outrageous. Chelsie and I caught up on all of our tv shows Friday (we literally had over four hours worth) and that was it. Saturday Abbey and I volunteer at the Run For Your Life Fun Run which was fun, we met a lot of cool people and I got invited to a couple of clubs I'd been interesting in. I can finally go to Women in Medicine and know somebody there, the president actually. After that we just hung out and watched How To Lose A Guy In Ten Days. Then I cleaned up my room and organized all of my papers, they were definitely getting out of hand. I read The Medea by Euripides for Classical Mythology and then Chels, Brooke, and I saw "17 Again". Zac Efron is fabulous, and sooo attractive. I mean wow. He definitely broke into my Top 5 List (we all made lists like they do on "Friends"). After the movie we just hung out for a while and later we made a fire up Green Canyon and just hung out there. Today I went to church and then finished up the rest of my homework. We made this really yummy veggie lasagna too, it was delicious. Then later we were all in pretty weird moods and we made roasted bananas with all kinds of toppings as well as cinnamon apples. Kevin, Jason, and Mike all came over and had some too it was wayyy yummy.

So I'm pretty worried about my finals this semester. What a change from last semester, I swear I didn't even have to try at all last semester. I am going to have to study for my Calculus final probably two hours every day until the final, and then I still don't know how I will do. I don't know why it's so hard for me, I've never struggled with a class so much in my life. Chemistry I'm not really worried about, but I told Kevin I would score higher than him so now I really have to haha. Finals still aren't that bad though, at least they only cover material since January. AP tests were worse in my opinion because you had to go all the way back to August and remember. I should do fine if I just study consistently until then.

I have to work at the Credit Union again this summer, and I'm not too happy about it. However, it's my best bet with the bad economy and the fact that I'll be gone for a month and a half straight. I just hope they can give me enough hours because I don't know if I'll be able to get a job next semester. I had an interview to work in Dr. John Morrey's lab doing antiviral research but they needed someone that could start training right when this semester is over. They did tell me to contact them when I got back from Spain and we would see what we could do though, so hopefully I will be able to work there eventually, Spring 2010 if not this Fall. Well I had better get to sleep so I can get up and go to Chemistry in the morning. I've been going for the last week and a half it's a record.

<3 eleven days til my freedom.

...l-o-v-e is just another word i never learned to pronounce...

my life the soap opera.

2009-04-13T01:12:00.000-06:00

So it's been a while, but I have been very very busy. Last week was a mess. Worst week all semester, maybe even all year. It started out Sunday night when we had people over for a movie night and it was like a freakin' soap opera we had so much drama. It was pretty much all downhill from there. I'm not going to go into too many details because I don't want to relive the terrible week, but we'll just say I was relieved to be going home. Friday Jeff and I left at 1:30 for Salt Lake. I had to scramble to get everything packed up (I took home a bunch of clothes and odds and ends to start moving home), but it was good to be out of Logan. We almost died on the way down. The car in front of us somehow slammed on their brakes, so we had to swerve and drive between lanes, while the truck behind us swerved off of the road and into the dirt. It was terrifying. When I got home, I talked to my mom for a little, and then Jocie and I went to the mall. I think she bought a shirt but that was all that happened at the mall. Then we went to Olive Garden for dinner and had a terrible waiter. First he gave us a salad when we both ordered soup, then he brought the wrong soup, and then he couldn't figure out our bill. For some reason I got two three-tined forks in my napkin, and when I asked for a four-tined fork he gave me a new set in a napkin, but they both were three-tined so I just gave up there and used the stupid thing. After dinner we went and saw the Hannah Montana movie. It was dumb, but not too bad. The beginning was really dumb though. After the movie we went to Walmart to get nail polish for Jocie (she was going to Jr. Prom the next day. Yes I said JR Prom hahaha) and we ended up standing in line for like half an hour because people are retarded and don't know how to use the self checkout. Then we just hung out at my house and painted our nails and tried this website that lets you see yourself with different hairstyles; it was pretty funny.

Saturday my mom woke me up bright and early (okay so it was only 11, but still) and we started working on my paperwork for study abroad. I don't think I've mentioned yet, but I'm going to Granada, Spain this summer for six weeks. I am so excited, it's unreal. I leave May 22. Anyways, we filled out all of that paperwork, and then we went to the Bees game. It was pretty dismal, we lost 2 to 7 and it rained the last four innings, but it was still fun. I love our seats. It was kind of awkward though, because some of the Andersons went with, and Greg just had to bring up that I was old enough to date most of the players now. That is something I did not need to hear. Funny story, I guess Austin is now dating Mallory Hyland, and he got kicked off the baseball team for getting in a fight over her. Hah. What are the odds? Actually pretty high seeing as he has dated like what, five of my friends now? Or is it more like eight? Anyways, after the game we made tacos, the real kind of course, and they were delicious. Then I watched the Italian Job with my mom and dad. I officially want a Mini Cooper again haha. After that I sat up and cleaned my room while SJ watched Hercules in my bed and I listened. I got most of my room all cleaned out and dusted/vacuumed. It is now ready for me to move all of my stuff back in. I just hope that it all fits.

Sunday I was yet again awoken bright and early. I finished up my room and then Grandma and Grandpa came over for Easter lunch/dinner around two. We had ham and twice baked potatoes, it was very good. They told me that they are going to Greece next summer, probably on a cruise and I told them I really want to go with. I think my cousins Katie and Jessie are going with too and that would be sooo much fun. Problem is that I am broke and I don't have a job, so after we ate I went and planned out what I would have to do to be able to go to Greece and Africa next summer. PS Brooke and I decided we are going to Africa next summer to do humanitarian work. We want to go to Ecuador too, but we aren't made of money haha. Basically I could pull it off, along with a few other trips, only if I got a job next semester during school. This is a problem because I have so many hours of classes next semester thanks to my five labs, besides I don't really want to have to work. But, if I don't get a job I have to choose between Africa and Greece and I don't want to choose, so work I will! I was actually planning on maybe flying to Greece for the weekend once while I was in Spain (that or Italy) just because airfare would be fairly cheap, but I will have to see. After I sat and tried to figure that out forever, I watched Mulan and packed up my stuff to go back to Logan. Jeff and I didn't leave until around 7:30 though. When I got to Logan I unpacked and Trevor came over to try and help me with my Calculus but he didn't know either. I effing hate Calculus, I hope I never see vectors or sequence and series ever again in my life. I had better get to bed now though, because I'm starting to go to Chemistry at 8:30 AM now like a good little girl.

<3 18 more days til my freedom.

...everything you say, everytime we kiss i can't think straight but i'm okay, and i can't think of anybody else that i'd hate to miss as much as i hate missing you...

viva mexico

2009-03-22T19:36:00.000-06:00

I went to Tijuana, Mexico for Spring Break to build houses for the poor. It was one of the best experiences of my life. The poverty was eye-opening. People living all together in one room, children that can't afford to go to school, single mothers, and houses made of garbage. There were piles of garbage, flowing down the hillsides. I strongly believe that it is our duty, as much more fortunate people, to help improve their quality of life through service. We stayed in a suburb called Miramar in a Catholic hospital clinic.

We left Logan around 6:30 AM (once our driver finally rolled out of bed) and were on the road for good around 9:00 AM. We had to make a few stops in between Logan and Murray that slowed us down. The drive was excruciatingly long. It probably took around 14 or 15 hours total, and we had five people crammed into a Honda CRV. We stopped for lunch at In N Out in St. George (one of the best restaurants EVER) and didn't eat again until San Diego. Once we got to San Diego, we had to wait for the Uhaul carrying a bunch of supplies and donations to catch up to us so that we could cross the border together. We had to wait almost two hours, and by the time they caught up we still had to wait at the border for about half an hour because they didn't want to let the truck across without paying some extra taxes. We had put all of our luggage into the truck, and we had to leave it at the border. I had to sleep on the tile floor with an airplane blanket that night, it was not so pleasant.

Sunday we went to church with the local ward. We only went to Sacrament Meeting though because only a handful of people spoke Spanish in our group. After church we drove around to potential work sites and ended up playing soccer with some local boys for about an hour. Then a group of us went for a walk around our neighborhood. We bought this weird candy to try, and it was awful it was plum in this weird salt and chile sauce. Ugh. For dinner we drove closer into town and ate at a taco restaurant. After dinner we played cards at the clinic.

Monday Brooke and I were assigned to go to La Gloria to do sheet rocking. Our group included Nick, Justin, Evan, and Scott. We started out digging the foundation for a house. The house was for Oscar and Veronica who were living in their brother's house with their two children. The brother wanted to move back in, however, so the family needed somewhere to live. After a little while though, Brooke, Justin, Nick, and I went across the street to start sheet rocking. This house had a grandmother, her two daughters, and their combine five children living in it together. The house was one room and a bathroom. While we worked they had to all move into a shack behind the house. The house had been built by the foundation on a previous expedition, but had no insulation in the roof and no sheet rock. We put insulation in the ceiling and sheet rocked most of the side walls. After work we went to a member's house for dinner. His house had been destroyed in a mudslide, and a year ago the foundation rebuilt his house. He's been helping out with other projects ever since. He read Gordon a letter that he wrote thanking him for all his help, it was really touching. Later we went back to the clinic and played cards.

Tuesday we started sheet-rocking the roof, which was a lot harder than the walls. Nick left us to try and get supplies across the border, and we got Craig instead. Shaylene and Kylee joined us and put tar paper on the outside of the house so that we could put stucco on later in the week. Gordon left town and forgot to set up lunch for us so we had to find some ourselves. Veronica drove us to a taco stand, it was pretty good. After work Nick and Aimee were stuck at the border with the van so we all had to pile into Scott and Julie's Subaru Outback. We had 11 people riding in it all the way back to the clinic. That night Ellie, another ward member, made us rice, beans, and tortillas for dinner. Later that night a bunch of us played soccer in the basement of the clinic with a flat ball. It was really fun, even though my team was slaughtered. After the game we all sat out on the roof for a while and just talked.

Wednesday we finished most of the sheet-rocking except for some in the bathroom. We also put up the rest of the tar paper on the outside of the house and started nailing in the chicken wire. The chicken wire was awful because it kept wanting to roll back up, and the nails were so short that you always hit a finger no matter now careful you were. For lunch Veronica made us salsa verde with rice, it was very good. We were supposed to go to the beach that day, but Aimee changed her mind. Ellie made us dinner again, and I'm sad to say that I did not like it at all. It was mole, which is a dish with chicken in a chocolate and peppery sauce. I tried so hard to cover up the taste with rice and bread. The dentists also arrived that night, along with one other dental student. I played this weird game called Jungle Speed for a while, but got sick of it and we all just sat in a circle and talked.

Thursday morning Brooke and I had to get up extra early to make pancakes for everyone (we volunteered). They were fairly hard to make though because we had a bunch of tiny little pans. Besides I guess I'm just not so good at making pancakes, I forgot that I've never really made them that much. We worked mostly on the outside of the house, well at least I did. Brooke and some of the other girls did a lot of mudding while Craig and I put up chicken wire. We had BBQ chicken for lunch that Veronica went out and got for us. After dinner a bunch of us played catch phrase, and it turned intense. Brooke and I were on opposite teams, and one of the dentists proposed a bet. The losing team had to make the winning team breakfast in bed the next morning. My team dominated, three different times. We were money.

Friday morning I woke up to someone bringing me a pancake, it was nice. I didn't think they would really do it, but sure enough Morgan was up bright and early making pancakes. At work we finished mudding and did a little bit of sanding, but we didn't get to finish because the mud wasn't dry. Mirella's mother and sister made us lunch, mole again. This time though it wasn't so bad. And the rice was amazing, best rice I've ever had. We left around 3:30 so that we could go to the beach, but we didn't make it to the beach until around 5:00 PM. We did get to see the sunset, which was pretty, but it was very cold. I didn't get in all of the way, but I did learn how to skimboard which was fun. After the beach we had tortas that Ellie made, and they were some of the best sandwiches I've ever had. So good. We started playing catchphrase again after dinner, but Brooke and I left to get tacos with the dentists and Jason and they were done playing when we got back. We had the best taco/quesadilla I've ever had in my entire life. It was amazing.

Saturday our group got up around 5:30 AM and we were out of there by 6:00. We were the second group to leave. Once we got across the border (which took about an hour and a half, we had to get x-rayed and everything) the drive wasn't so bad. I slept a lot, and once we got to Barstow we stopped at In N Out for lunch. After lunch I got the front seat and I had it the rest of the way home. We dropped Kylee off in St. George and Scott off in Spanish Fork. I got to my house around 10:00 PM and just talked to my parents the rest of the night.

All in all it was an amazing experience and I hope that I can go again in the future!

i'm not old enough for this.

2009-03-04T13:22:00.000-07:00

I don't feel old enough for everything that's happening around me. When did it suddenly become normal to be married, or going on missions, or finding a career? I don't feel that old. I'm not ready for any of that to happen yet. Sure you hear about people getting married at 18, plenty of people go straight from high school to the work force, and I've known my share of missionaries before...but it's different when it's happening to people close to you. Scratch that, it's more people you've either known for a while or don't know very well but are you same age. Apparently Kirsten's cousin that I've been seeing at birthday parties since I was six is married. Has been for over three months now. It blows me away. Just this last weekend when Chels, Lexi, and the boys went to the temple, Soup and Trent were able to baptize them because they're about to go on missions. It's weird to me that people my age can do that kind of thing, I don't associate the higher realms of the priesthood with 19 year olds, maybe because I haven't been closely associated with too many before now I don't know. It's not that I don't feel grown up, because I do, but not in every way. It's hard for me to imagine a time when any of this will actually feel normal. I don't even like thinking about it, I have so much to do before I want to be bothered by any of that grown-up stuff. I still have seven years of school left if everything goes according to plan. Those are going to be a busy seven years. I want to see the world. I want to live all over, meet all kinds of people. I want to figure out who I am. For me, at least, all of that comes before any of the grown-up stuff, but maybe I'm moving at a pace slower than the rest of the world. I think I'm okay with that.

"My, what beautiful blossoms we have this year. But look, this one's late. But I'll bet that when it blooms, it will be the most beautiful of all. "

stressed to the max

2009-03-02T22:18:00.000-07:00

I didn't get my paper back in Mythology today. Not that I was expecting it, but she gave back half of them and sadly mine wasn't in that half. We didn't get our math tests back either, thankfully, but she did say that everyone was doing terrible. Because everyone was doing so awful, she is going to give us a way to get credit from reworking the problems we missed, which is a plus. After class I meant to do a lot of things, but of course I didn't. Surprise, surprise. I did call Gordon though, but he was no help at all because he hadn't looked to see who had payed for Mexico yet. I made myself a pita pizza for lunch but it was kind of weird because I didn't have any sauce I kind of made my own out of some crushed tomatoes, basil, garlic salt, onions, and oregano. I spent a whole lot of time trying to figure out what to put in the email with all the information for the trip next week. I called Josh to see what he had to say about the whole situation and he said I should call the Dental Club guy, even though he was a jerk. I didn't end up doing that. I should have. I'll have to call him tomorrow. For a while I helped Chelsie set up her blog and change all the backgrounds and stuff. Then we had baked potatoes and left over parmesan chicken for dinner, it was way good. Chelsie and I watched Heroes, but we were both on our computers the whole time so we missed quite a bit of it. It's getting weird anyways. After Heroes we printed off some pictures of skinny actresses from the Oscars and taped them up by the food because we decided we are fat and eat too much junk food. Now I'm trying to get Chelsie off of her computer so we can go do our workout and I can go to bed. I really should review for my Chem test on Wednesday or do some other homework but I'm too tired. I couldn't get to sleep until 4 AM last night and then I got up at 8:30. Maybe I'll fall asleep to some of my reading...

<3 my head is numb.

...so you wanna be a hero kid well, whoop-de-doo. i've been around the block before with blockheads just like you...

i like chasing cars...with my by myself...

2009-03-01T20:14:00.000-07:00

I am so mad right now. I just typed everything that happened Thursday, Friday, and most of Saturday, but then my internet randomly closed by some error. It took me almost an hour to type everything that happened and now I have to do it all over again! Well anyways, I better get started.

Thursday
Classes were forgettable. After English I started watching Troy. I got about halfway through and I started making dinner. I was trying to make something Mexican that Abbey could eat with us. I had a bunch of chicken, and some other random ingredients so I just basically made up a recipe. It actually turned out really well. I liked it a lot. After dinner Abbey and I met Colin, Jason, Ryan, and Nate at the basketball game. We won by a lot, it was fun. We won the WAC Championship so after all the players got to cut down the net. After the game Colin tried to get us to go to some concert and play cribbage, but we had too much to do so we went home. I finished Troy, but it took forever. I tried to write some of my paper, but I was too tired.

Friday
I woke up super early, around 6, so I could finish my paper and study for my math test. My paper turned out fairly good I was pleasantly surprised. My math test went badly. I couldn't even answer one of the questions at all. I don't want to know what I got on it. I got my Spanish test back and I got an 88, which is okay. I still wish it had been better. After classes I hurried and showered because the boys were supposed to be getting here around 3-ish. Then Chels, Lexi, and I started cutting up stuff for the pico de gallo. We had Cafe Rio pork salads. Brooke's brother and some of his friends were here in Logan that day because they were doing an overnight campus tour, so they hung out here before they had to check in. We had to make some of the chicken from Thursday though because we didn't have enough pork for everyone. Chels and I had to go get the dressing from Cafe Rio and we stopped and got more tomatoes at Walmart along with some $1 sweats that I was pretty happy about. The dinner was really good. After dinner everyone went to the temple and Brooke and Abbey left for Salt Lake. I had to stay home because I didn't get my recommend renewed on Tuesday I forgot to. It was good though because I got a bunch of stuff done. I made some lists and replied to all the emails for Mexico. I also got all of our application and payment materials sent in and sent in my housing contract for next year (yay!). When everyone got back we made some cookies and then went to a park at some elementary school. It was fun we just messed around on the playgrounds.

We got too cold after a while though, so we went to the Fine Arts building to play around there. I showed everyone how to get up into the rafters of the Kent Concert Hall and then we just sat on the stage in the dark for a while. After that we came back to the apartment and set up our beds. It was really funny because we tilted the couch up on its side so that it would be out of the way and we could fit more mattresses into the room. We got four mattresses in, plus a bunch of pads in the corner where another mattress wouldn't have fit. Then we watched The Holiday, but I fell asleep almost immediately. Somehow I ended up on the end by the window, and it was freezing because Trent insisted on keeping the window open and wouldn't let me close it. It wasn't too bad though because I had my feather blanket.

Saturday
So we had planned on making breakfast, but we hadn't realized that we used all of the syrup the last time they were here. Instead we drove over to Village Inn to get some breakfast, but it was a 20 minute wait for seven people. So Chels, Lexi, Soup, and I waited at Village Inn while Trent, Matt, and John went to see how long the wait was at IHOP. They didn't get far before they spotted Chili's and went inside and got a table for us. So we met them at Chili's for breakfast/lunch. It wasn't so bad though because it was already 12:30 PM by this time. Chelsie and I shared a fajita trio, it was delicious.

After Chili's we came back to the apartment for a while, but Matt had to leave for some family thing. We sat in our bedroom and listened to Soup play the guitar for a while and took some pictures. Then Soup had to leave too because his family was coming up so they could all go through the Logan temple together. It was pretty sad because this was the last time Chelsie and Lexi would be seeing Soup before he left for the MTC Wednesday. So after he left we made honey bunches of oats crispies and played Scene It. After that got boring we put in Superman Returns and I fell asleep again. After Superman Returns we rearranged the beds. We put a blanket over the window so that no light would come in and wake us up in the morning. We leaned one of the beds against the window also. Then we ordered a bunch of pizza from Papa John's with my gift card and we started fighting on the beds. Basically I'm screwed if I ever have to fight a guy. Trent took me down like it was nothing. John was easier to fight, but he was my size. It was fun though. Then we went and borrowed Anchorman from 306. I love that movie, it seriously cracks me up. After we watched Anchorman, Trent and John went to get some energy drink that Trent wanted. For some reason once they left, Chels, Lexi, and I got super hyper. Chelsie and Lexi put their hair up in ponytails on their heads. I didn't need to do anything crazy to my hair because I had been sleeping on it and it looked fabulous anyway. Then we took a bunch of crazy pictures.

After the pictures we went over to 306 to get Dodgeball to watch. I don't know if they've ever seen that side of us before I think they were kind of shocked. It was funny. Once Trent and John got back we watched Dodgeball, which is also very funny. After Dodgeball we put in Zoolander, but I fell asleep about half way through. This time I got my own bed (meaning my bed from my room) which was nice, except that then I was in between Trent and Johnny. It wasn't too bad, although I think I hit Johnny in the face once in the middle of the night on accident. I had the weirdest dream that night that I made out with some guy dressed as a pirate (probably taken from Steve the Pirate in Dodgeball) and he had a hook for a hand but it was a tiny hook. It was weird.

Sunday
We woke up a ton later that we did Saturday thanks to the blanket blocking the window. I got up around 10:30 or 11 I think, but everyone else slept until 12. When we got up we just ate a bunch of random left overs. Then we cleaned everything up, the apartment was a mess, and put everything away. Then Trent and John left with Chelsie's car and Abbey and Brooke got back not too long after. Chels and I finally showered (we had been in the same clothes that we put on to sleep in on Friday night) and semi got ready. Abbey and Brooke made some really good squash, asparagus, and potatoes and Chels and I made spaghetti to go with it. Then we watched Pocahontas. That brings us to now. I think we are going to watch Open Season now, but we've been waiting for me to finish typing so that we could plug my computer into the TV and watch it. That is all.

<3 one crazy weekend.

...you think you own whatever land you land on. the earth is just a dead thing you can claim, but i know every rock and tree and creature has a life has a spirit has a name...

shush girl, shut your lips, do the hellen keller and talk with your hips.

2009-02-26T00:59:00.000-07:00

Sunday
I got up fairly early, I was proud of myself. Mom made waffles, then we started packing up stuff for me to take back to Logan. I think I sat around a lot too, obviously. What are Sundays for? Around 1 or 2 Mom drove me up to Logan. We stopped by Appletree Cove just to see where it was and what the outside looked like. There were a couple other places in the area that I really liked so I looked them up when I got home. They were nice, but not as perfect as Appletree Cove. We went to Smith's because I needed something...I don't even remember what it was. We ended up getting a bunch of groceries and chinese food from Rice Garden. Then we came back to the apartment and ate our dinner. Mom stayed for a while, but then she went back to Murray. I was the only one back (besides Ivy) so I sat on the computer for a very, very long time looking at all the different apartments. Finally I texted Chelsie because it was maybe 8 or 9 and nobody was here yet and I was dying of boredom. She ended up walking in the door a few minutes later though so it was okay. I did my workout again, but I was pretty sore so I didn't do it for as long. Then we went to bed, pretty uneventful. I did make this really funny picture using faceinhole.com with the Spice Girls. I put Me, Brooke, Chelsie, Abbey, and Lexi in one and Sid, Jordan, Blake, Jeff, and Mike in another one. It was really funny, I laughed a lot even though they didn't look too real. Brooke and Ellen didn't get to Logan until maybe 4AM apparently. Tom is leaving, well I guess he left today, for the MTC and they were saying goodbye to him until 2 in the morning.

Monday
Classes weren't too bad, no falling asleep at least. After class I think I took a nap and ended up sleeping longer than I had planned. I didn't get to go visit Appletree Cove because I thought 5 would be too late to call. We finally made the lemon-glazed pork chops I've been dying to try. That's what I needed at Smith's. Stuff for the pork chops. I remember now. Anyways, they were so so good. I had to cut them in half though because I only had two, so we had green beans and scalloped potatoes to go with them. After dinner Chels and I watched Heroes. Then we decided that we were addicted to Facebook and we never got anything done thanks to Facebook, so we made a pact. We changed each others' passwords so that we can't get on Facebook until after Chelsie's last class on Friday. I definitely regret that decision. It has let me get a lot done though, which is good because I have two tests (well already had one) this week, one next week, and I have a paper due Friday on a book I still need to read.

Tuesday
Tuesday was so busy. I had to get up early to write a paper for English because I had been to lazy to do it the night before. I got back from English early and made some lunch. Then I decided that I didn't want to go to my lab because I had too much to do. I finally called Gordon, called Appletree Cove, emailed everyone back about the Mexico trip, reviewed the first half of material for my math test Friday, and finished my lab work. I seriously was doing homework for almost three hours straight. Luckily then Abbey got back from Salt Lake and we went to Free Pancake Day. We looked at fish for a while at Petsmart while we waited for a table, and then after pancakes we went and visited Appletree Cove. Let me just say this. I am in love. In love with an apartment, if that is possible. It was wonderful and I will cry if I can't live there next year. Then we tried to find this other apartment that Abbey wanted to live in, and we knocked on a door and this couple answered and they looked so pissed. They let us look around but you could tell that they were mad. You could tell that we had interrupted them. They had hookah sitting on their counter too I was trying so hard not to laugh. Well turns out that was the wrong apartment complex anyway ha. So then we are about to get in the car again, and I feel my phone vibrating. It was Austin Bytheway calling me. I almost didn't answer but Abbey told me to so I got out of my stupor and answered it. He wanted his baseball pullover back. Yeah...it was quite awkward. Haven't talked to him since I got really mad at him back in July. When we got back to our apartment, Chels, Lexi, and I watched Everything You Want. It's some tv movie with Nick Zano from What I Like About You. It was cute, a little weird because the main character has an imaginary boyfriend. Towards the very end of the movie Abbey dragged me to the Enrichment Committee meeting. We're planning a birthday activity for March. Well after the meeting Lexi and Chelsie re-watched the end of the movie with me anyways. After we finished the movie, Brooke came out because she was trying to stay awake so she could talk to Tom on his last night before the MTC. We listened to the story of when they said goodbye on Sunday, it was the cutest thing ever. Then Chels took Lexi home and we went to bed.

Wednesday
Had a test on the subjunctive in Spanish, I think I did a lot better than the last two or three. I had better have done better. Ha that sentence sounded weird. After class Chels and I made mini turkey avocado croissant sandwiches, they were so delicious. Then I emailed everyone back about Mexico, emailed the pork chop recipe to my mom, and looked up airfare to San Diego. I got a lot done out of the non-school things that I had to do, but I didn't do nearly as much homework as I should have. I tried to read the Illiad for a while but I couldn't read much before I realized I still had to go to Honors Inquiry. I do actually enjoy that class though so it wasn't too bad. I like how the professor treats us, he doesn't look down to us at all. After that class I sat and talked to Brooke and Chelsie for a while. Then Brooke had to go to her meeting and Chelsie went to Salt Lake because Joey was opening his mission call. Then Trevor texted me and asked if I wanted to watch a movie later, so I said after I did some math homework. I didn't get much done though between dinner and all the people that kept coming over. When he did finally come over we watched Willow. It was really cheesy 80s, but not in a way that I hated it or anything. Then after he left Abbey, Brooke, and I sat on Brooke's bed. We really just laid there because we were all so tired and out of it. Now I should probably go to bed because Abbey and I are going to get up early to get Brooke a parfait from McDonald's before she has to go to work. Peeeace.

<3 busy bee.

...t-t-t-tongue's, always pressed to your cheeks while my tongue is on the inside of some other girls teeth, t-tell your boyfriend if he says he's got beef that i'm a vegetarian and i ain't f-ing scared of him. she wants to touch me woah, she wants to love me woah, she'll never leave me woah oh oh. don't trust a hoe, never trust a hoe, won't trust a hoe 'cause a hoe won't trust me...

dance to the music

2009-02-22T00:15:00.000-07:00

So I didn't do much today, surprise surprise. For some reason I get 10x lazier whenever I come home. I feel bad but it's so hard to not be lazy here, I really don't know why. Mom and I watched the aggie game (still mad that they lost), made dinner, and watched My Cousin Vinny. I had to stop watching the game when there were about 10 minutes left, I actually fell asleep. I was so tired plus I had no will to stay awake and watch to aggies play so badly. I did wake up when there were two minutes left, and sadly I couldn't make myself fall back to sleep. For a while I just listened and tried not to watch because we were only down by three, but once I opened my eyes to watch they did worse. We had penne, garlic bread, and salad for dinner. My Cousin Vinny was good, kind of cheesy though, but funny. After that I watched the end of Shanghai Knights, and then I came upstairs and exercised for about 45 minutes. It was good, I just better be sore tomorrow because I worked my butt off. Now I think I will try to read some of the Illiad and sleep.

<3 exhausted.

...maybe it's just me, couldn't you believe that everything i said and did wasn't just deceiving? and the tear in you eye and your cold hard face makes me wish that i was never brought into this place...

f e a r l e s s . . .

2009-02-21T15:19:00.000-07:00

So I forgot the recap the rest of Wednesday. Chelsie's friends Trent and John came and visited. They were really funny. When I got back from dancing they were all tangled up on the couch, apparently they had heard me coming though and wanted to make the situation awkward...ha. Well after that they listened to my whole story and helped me reaffirm my previous decisions, which was nice. It was good to hear that I wasn't crazy, and that it wasn't worth it anymore. We sat there for a while and talked, took some more pictures, and then they decided they wanted food. By this time Abbey was back from playing cribbage at Cobble Creek and she came with, we went to Rancheritos because it was really the only thing open at 2 AM. We took more pictures and talked about random stuff, of course Abbey had to bring up kissing and that type of thing. It was funny though because Dallin from our ward was at Rancheritos when we got there, but he was with this guy that I sit next to in calculus and who is in my honors class, and it turns out this guy was Lexi's true aggie kiss. So it was sufficiently awkward, because I waved to Dallin (still don't know why I'm supposed to know him, which adds to the awkwardness) and I know that guy recognized both Lexi and I but he didn't say anything. After Rancheritos we dropped Lexi off and went home to finish The Dark Knight. I fell asleep almost right away, but they kept throwing pillows at me and waking me up. They finally let me sleep around 4 or 4:30. I woke back up around 5:30, and for some reason I thought everyone was asleep. The movie was over, and it was dark, and I think John was asleep next to me so I just assumed that everyone was. I got up, turned off the tv and went to my bed. Apparently Chelsie and Trent were awake though, kinda funny, and they didn't even say anything when I got up. Trent and John slept on our floor, I think they came in around 6:30, and we all woke up around 9:45 because Chelsie and I had class. I went to my recitation but Chelsie just stayed home. After recitation we made waffles and watched Just Friends and Lexi came back over after her class too. Around 3 they had to leave though because Trent was flying to Portland that evening. They say they might come back next weekend, and I hope they do they were fun. It was good to just hang out and have a good time again for once, be normal. After they left...I don't really remember what we did. I know I didn't sleep. Oh that's right. Lexi came back over again later (I think she had another class) and we all watched Lost, Friends, and The Office. It was too much tv. After that we just hung out and talked.

Friday...
After classes I made some pizza, it was pretty good. Then I tried to read some more of the Illiad, but I fell asleep (which was kind of the plan anyway). I needed sleep, besides sleeping kept me off of Facebook at the opportune time. When I woke up I started reading my old posts, it was pretty funny. When Abbey got back from her lab not too much later she started reading some of hers too and we would tell each other really funny stuff. Then around 6 we went to Jason's because he was making Brazillian BBQ. I had to leave when he started making the meat though because Kara and Robbie were in town looking at a truck and they took me to dinner at Cafe Rio. They had Carson with them, but they left Dylan with Lynne. Carson is such a cutie he's at the stage where he talks to everyone all the time. After dinner they dropped me off at Jason's and we played cribbage for a while. Then we went to Chili's to get some dessert. We all shared the three different molten ice cream cake things. They were good. After we were done, we tried to get in Colin's car, but all of the locks were either broken or frozen. So Nate ran back to Oakridge to get his car, and the rest of us sat on the waiting bench inside the doorway of Chili's and watched the end of the Laker's game. Then we went back to Jason's and played more cribbage. Today we got up pretty early and now I'm back in Salt Lake for the night. I'm supposed to maybe hang out with Sully but we'll see if that actually happens I doubt it will.

<3 free birddd

...i feel so untouched, and i want you so much that i just can't resist you, it's not enough to say that i miss you...

musica

2009-02-03T01:34:00.000-07:00

Step 1: Put your music player on shuffle.
Step 2: Post the first line any line from the first 35 songs that play, no matter how embarrassing.
Step 3: Strike through the songs when someone guesses both artist and track correctly in the comments.
Step 4: For those who are guessing -- looking the lyrics up on a search engine is CHEATING!
Step 5: If you like the game post your own.

1. Go ahead as you waste your days with thinking, when you fall everyone says...
2. Ladies, I'm gonna need you to all back away from the door, we are trying to make way for Chris Brown.
3. Take time to realize that your warmth is crashing down on in.
4. I'm bringin' sexy back, them other boys don't know how to act.
5. Oh, is this a quiet place where you should be alone, is this where the tortured and the troubled find their own?
6. Sometimes I feel I've got to run away, I've got to get away from the pain you drive into the heart of me.
7. Girl you wanted to shut it all off and make a run for the door.
8. Where are those happy days they seem so far behind, I try to reach for you but you have closed your mind.
9. There's a broken needle scratching my 45 collection through a burned out, blown two speaker combination.
10. I can ride my bike with no handlebars, no handlebars, no handlebars.
11. It feels so right now hold me tight, tell me I'm the only one and then I might never be a lonely one.
12. When we were young our future was so bright, the whole neighborhood was so alight.
13. Just listen to the politician wishing his position wasn't missing everything his heart would like to say.
14. Boy meets girl, you were my dream my world, but I was blind you cheated on me from behind.
15. I've been holding out so long, I've been sleeping for so long lord I miss you.
16. I'll lay me down tonight, much further down, swim in the calm tonight this art does drown.
17. Open up you heart to me, and say what's on your mind oh yeah...
18. And I'm good good good to go, and I'm good good good to go I gotta get away, get away from all of my mistakes.
19. Boys call you sexy, and you don't care what they say cause see every time you turn around they screaming your name.
20. The only way to get what you want, is to become a human yourself!
21. I'm not a perfect person, there's many things I wish I didn't do, but I continue learning, I never meant to do those things to you.
22. It won't be long, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it won't be long, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it won't be long, yeah, til i belong to you.
23. Oh I don't believe it, that I could be so deceiving, and bringing you down to feel this lack of loyalty.
24. I just got off the phone with you, and something wasn't right, I wish that what I said was true but I messed up tonight.
25. Yo this is nappy boy radio with your boy T-Pain, we love rap music.
26. Senorita I can't forget your eyes your hair your Spanish eyes I don't care what you tell the other guys hear me out I'll do what you say just...
27. Hit it, oh boogie boogie...get down hit the floor!
28. How, how am I supposed to feel when everything surrounding me is nothing but a fake disguise?
29. What would the music be without sound?
30. Hey, I could feel it from the start, couldn't stand to be apart, something bout you caught my eye, something moved me deep inside.
31. Love love me do, you know I love you, I'll always be true, so please love me do.
32. Choke me something awful just like kisses on the neck two best friends, we need a key to feel like it ends.
33. Go, yes go...I received your letter in the mail, sounds like times are hard for you again.
34. It's our time to shine through the down, glorified by what is ours.
35. I'm the son of rage and love, the Jesus of Suburbia, the bible of none of the above.

Good luck!

stupid cupid, stop pickin' on me

2009-01-06T00:48:00.000-07:00

So it's been a while. Chels and I are watching The Princess Diaries, hence the stupid cupid song reference. Basically the creepy guy that's supposed to sit in the closet and play the cello with the crazy colored hair is cuter than Michael. So I'm back in Logan. It is now officially spring semester. My second semester of school! I had four classes today, all in a row 8:30 to 12:20. Chemistry II, Classical Mythology, Calculus II, and Spanish. Chemistry was boring, not sure if I'll go to it very often. Classical Mythology will be...interesting. There are a couple of girls that I can tell are total biotches and they are going to bug me but hopefully I won't sit by them and it won't be a problem. Calculus is not going to be fun. I don't like the teacher, she teaches weird. She is also going to make us turn in every homework assignment. I know people in all of those classes though actually. Spanish. Haha. Spanish...so here's my story. I walk into the room, it's about one minute until class is supposed to start because Calculus got out late. So I went to sit down, and when i went to pick a row...and there were no girls. None. I stopped, because I thought I might be in the wrong classroom! I didn't print out my schedule I just put the room numbers in my phone so I could have made a mistake. I looked around again for a minute then sat down anyway. The guy in front of me turned around and said, "You've got pretty good odds," and laughed. I laughed nervously back, "Yeah I was wondering if I had the wrong room..." I kept looking around for clues to what class was going on in the room, and the guy next to me was writing Spanish in his planner so I figured I was safe but I was still confused. By the time the class started I was trying to suppress my laughter. The situation was seriously unreal. There were a good 40 boys in the class! And me! After about 20 minutes two other girls walked in, one a native speaker obviously and another a bigger girl with curly hair. Still, odds were about 3 : 40. Hahahahaaaahhhahahahaahahhhhhh. Wow. But I figured out that I'm in the class that they dump all of the return missionaries in because it's for fluent non-native speakers. So I was sitting in a room full of brand new straight off the plane missionaries. Need I say more? I got home and I was so excited I wanted to go back! The problem was that I was too afraid to look around and see if any of them were cute! I knew that they would all notice if I looked around again because I kind of stood there for a while when I first walked in and surveyed the room, I just didn't notice any of the faces! I'm going to have to be sneakier Wednesday and take a better look around. Tomorrow I have Calculus again and then Honors Intermediate Writing. I should have my Chem Lab but it doesn't start until next week for some reason.

So I went and saw the Premed Advisor today. I was very disappointed. Basically she told me that the major doesn't matter and that I could do whatever I wanted. That is my biggest problem!!! I can do whatever I want! I don't know what I want! I want so many things. I went to Career Services and spent hours researching careers in order to pick a major, I finally pick a career path and the tell me it doesn't matter what major I do and I should base it on the idea that I might not make it to med school! ARGH! I went completely full circle, and got nowhere after all of the stress and work. So I still need to pick a major, and I need to do even more research to see which would be best to get me into med school. Let's just say I am NOT happy.

After that we went to the basketball game, and we ended up sitting by Alex and Jason, which was odd and awkward because of the whole hand-holding incident with Abbey. The game was good though. But yeah. Basically it's been snowing almost non-stop since I got up this morning at like 7:30. There is so much snow. I guess last night it was like -5 degrees outside. This morning, on my way to Chem, I had icicles in my nose. I kid you not. I was sniffing, and all the sudden I felt stuff in my nose and at first I panicked because I couldn't really feel the outside of my nose so well, or my hands, so it would have been hard to get whatever had flown at me out. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that it had to be ice! Weirdest thing ever!

Writing this is giving me a headache because I've missed so much! I haven't written in so long that so much has happened and changed I don't even know where to begin. I guess beginning right where I am today is fine for now. I think I'm going to go read something now I guess. I should go to bed...but it's still too early. I have this little problem, I think it's formally called insomnia, where I just don't sleep. I will go to bed and sit there, or I will decide that there are a million other things I could be doing and do them. It's getting a little ridiculous. Having a laptop with wireless internet doesn't help the problem. Well I'm done with this for now. Tata.

<3 just a girl trying to find a place in this world.

...miracles happen once in a while...

thank you for the music

2008-09-26T02:45:00.000-06:00

Alright. Someone in charge of this “My Heroes Ability” game has it in for me. My new ability? Healing. As in healing other people and myself whenever I feel like it. Cool ability? Yes. Useful as a fighting ability? No. This is the kind of ability that you get after you kill a bunch of people with a cooler one like cryokenisis or memory manipulation. I’m going to change it again tonight hopefully. But anyways, on to today.
Ballet was pretty good, I remembered the dance and I did it with the best timing in the class if I must say so myself. Ha. But really. After than I came home and crashed, taking a three or four hour nap before Media Smarts. I meant to take a shower before Media Smarts, but I was obviously not thinking coherently when I set my alarm to wake me up from my nap. I really don’t know what I was thinking it was such a random time. We were meeting in the library today for Media Smarts, so I waited until like 2:52 to even leave the apartment. Problem? I couldn’t for the life of me find the room we were supposed to be in. Even the library staff didn’t know. It took me and the info desk at the library 20 minutes to locate my class. I was 15 minutes late when I got to the library five minutes before class was supposed to start, it was ridiculous. So after that I finally got in the shower, but while I was in the shower everyone left me and went to the Will Smith Birthday Party BBQ down on the lawn. By the time I got down there most of the food was gone and everyone was done eating. At least all of my friends. So I sat there and waited for a burger to be done so I could take it back up to the room with me (Chelsie and Royce waited with me) and then ended up dropping it on the ground when I was trying to pour myself some Raspberry Soda. Did I mention that I spilled the soda all over me? Yeah. So then I had to wait again for another burger to be done, and this time I had to get it from Mike. Mike is not good at grilling burgers. It was pink and soggy. If not for the bun it would have collapsed into a puddle of grease and...pinkness. I ate it anyway because I was so hungry and mad that I dropped my good one. So after that we meant to watch The Office season premier but forgot and played heroes abilities instead. Then we went bowling with Cole and Mitch. I sucked it up. I think I got like a 60. After that we came home and Abbey and Chelsie made us all broccoli pasta. It was ok. Not my favorite. Too lemon-y. And now here I am. And I need to sleep. So...Seacrest, out.

<3 too gay...i mean tired to function

...so what, i'm still a rockstar, i got my rock moves, and i don't need you and guess what i'm having more fun and now that we're done i wanna show you tonight, i'm alright...

love story

2008-09-24T03:22:00.000-06:00

love story ♥
taylor swift

we were both young when i first saw you.
i close my eyes and the flashback starts.
i'm standing there on a balcony in summer air.

see the lights, see the party, the ball gowns.
i see you make your way through the crowd and say hello.
little did i know...

that you were romeo, you were throwing pebbles.
and my daddy said stay away from juliet,
and i was crying on the staircase begging you please don't go, and i said...

romeo take me somewhere we can be alone,
i'll be waiting all there's left to do is run.
you'll be the prince and i'll be the princess,
it's a love story baby just say yes.

so i sneak out to the garden to see you.
we keep quiet cause we're dead if they knew.
so close your eyes, escape this town for a little while.

cause you were romeo, i was a scarlet letter,
and my daddy said stay away from juliet.
but you were everything to me,
i was begging you please don't go and i said...

romeo take me somewhere we can be alone,
i'll be waiting all there's left to do is run.
you'll be the prince and i'll be the princess,
it's a love story baby just say yes.

romeo save me, they try to tell me how to feel.
this love is difficult, but it's real.
don't be afraid, we'll make it out of this mess.
it's a love story baby just say yes.

oh oh

i got tired of waiting, wondering if you were ever coming around.
my faith in you was fading when i met you on the outskirts of town, and i said...

romeo save me i've been feeling so alone.
i keep waiting for you but you never come.
is this in my head? i don't know what to think.
he knelt to the ground and pulled out a ring and said...

marry me juliet you'll never have to be alone,
i love you and that's all i really know.
i talked to your dad, you'll pick out a white dress,
it's a love story baby just say yes.

oh oh oh

oh oh oh oh

cause we were both young when i first saw you...

change

2008-08-14T03:20:00.000-06:00

c h a n g e
☮

it's just a sad picture,
the final blow hits you.
somebody else gets what you wanted again.
you know it's all the same,
another time and place.
repeating history, and your getting sick of it.

but i believe in whatever you do,
and i'll do anything to see it through.

because these things will change,
can you feel it now?
these walls that they put up to hold us back will fall down.
it's a revolution, the time will come for us to finally win.
we'll sing hallelujah, we'll sing hallelujah, oh...

so you've been outnumbered,
raided and now cornered.
it's hard to fight when the fight ain't fair.
we're getting stronger now,
from things they never found.
they might be bigger, but we're faster and never scared.
you can walk away and say we don't need this,
but there's something in your eyes, says we can beat this.

these things will change,
can you feel it now?
these walls that they put up to hold us back will fall down.
it's a revolution, the time will come for us to finally win.
we'll sing hallelujah, we'll sing hallelujah, oh...

tonight we're standing on our knees,
to fight for what we worked for all these years.
the battle was long, it's the fight of our lives.
will we stand up champions tonight?
it was the night things changed,
can you see it now?
when the walls that they put up to hold us back fell down.
it's a revolution, throw your hands up, cause we never gave in.
we'll sing hallelujah, we'll sing hallelujah, h a l l e l u j a h . . .

2008-08-14T03:14:00.000-06:00

freedom

2008-08-06T01:37:00.000-06:00

It's so close that I can almost taste it in the air. Freedom. Freedom from who I am, who I was. Freedom to be whoever I want to be. Freedom to do whatever I want to do. I can already feel the calming breeze stirring the solid weight I feel inside of me, breathing air through places that have been compacted for a very long time. It's a liberating feeling, and I haven't even tasted of it fully yet. I have exactly 10 days left. Ten more days of this life before I move away and can start anew. Just the thought of it gives me an intoxicatingly heady high, but some of the abandon comes from my doubts that it is truly possible. A part of me doesn't believe that I can ever be free, and thus merely obliges my senses by letting them loose before my hopes can be shattered by reality. The anticipation, as is often the case, is better than I can imagine the actual freedom will be. If I've learned anything in 18 years it's that you can never be free of your past. At least someone with a conscience and high self standard like myself can't ever escape it completely. However, I can't keep my mind from fantasizing about a place where it can all be washed away. Somewhere I can start with a fresh slate. That's how I envision college, or at least my highest expectations of it. And even though I know deep down that it won't be quite as liberating as I could wish, I know that it will be something. It has to be better than this. Anything would be better than this.

Taylor never said anything to my most recent message. The one where I finally got angry with him. Instead he just added a whole bunch of pictures of him with his new girlfriend. That was the point where I said I had enough. I couldn't keep torturing myself. I took him off my top friends, but it wasn't enough because I still checked his page constantly. So I did something I might regret later, but definitely lifted a giant weight off of my shoulders. I deleted him. Just flat out deleted him. Part of it has to do with the fact that I can no longer access his page at all, but I would be lying if I said that it was only for that. The selfish part of me wanted to prod some reaction out of him, whether it be good or bad. I just needed some kind of acknowledgement of my message. I still seethe when I think about Austin and how he never said a word about my voicemail. It's a sensation that I would imagine is similar to having something crawling beneath your skin, just barely noticeable. I could care less if he was pissed at me, or thought I was stupid or felt bad or whatever, as long as my say was acknowledged, and it wasn't. Indifference is something far worse than hate. It denotes a lack of any emotional attachment at all. I'm not about to let the same thing happen with Taylor.

I'm tired of being the rug just inside the front door that wipes the boots of the more "important" people. I have every right to be mad sometimes, and I'm tired of people guilting me into thinking that I don't. I am going to salvage what is left of my dignity before I pack up and start my new life. No more push-over Rylee. That part of my life is definitely something that I want to leave behind in Salt Lake.

Well now that I've worked myself up into a fervor for change I feel like I should get up and do something, like I should start making the new me right now despite the late hour. I need to calm down, but not forget this feeling. I'm going to need it in the days to come.

<3 determined to make true of "carpe diem" in my new life.

...forever and ever life is now or never, forever's gonna slow you down. you'll never see me again so now who's gonna cry for you? you'll never see me again no matter what you do. you'll never see me again so now who's gonna cry for you? you'll never see me again no matter what you do...

a perfectly good heart

2008-08-04T02:44:00.000-06:00

a perfectly good heart ♥

why would you wanna break a perfectly good heart?
why would you wanna take our love and tear it all apart,now?
why would you wanna make the very first scar?
why would you wanna break a perfectly good heart?

maybe i should've seen the signs, should've read the writing on the wall.
and realized by the distance in your eyes that i would be the one to fall.
no matter what you say, i still can't believe
that you would walk away.
it don't make sense to me, but:

why would you wanna break a perfectly good heart?
why would you wanna take our love and tear it all apart, now?
why would you wanna make the very first scar?
why would you wanna break a perfectly good heart?

it's not unbroken anymore.
how do i get it back the way it was before?

why would you wanna break a perfectly good heart?
why would you wanna take our love and tear it all apart,now?
why would you wanna make the very first scar?
why would you wanna break, would you wanna break a:

why would you wanna break a perfectly good heart?
why would you wanna take our love and tear it all apart, now?
why would you wanna make the very first scar?
why would you wanna break a perfectly good heart?

i <3 ?

2008-07-31T02:56:00.000-06:00

i heart question mark

wish i had concentrated.
they said love was complicated, but it's something i just fell into.
and it was over-rated but just look what i've created.
i came out alive but i'm black and blue.

before you ask me if i'm alright,
think about what i had to do, yeah.

wake up and smell the break-up,
fix my heart, put on my make-up.
another mess i didn't plan.
and i'll bet, you thought you'd beat me,
wish you could only see,
i've got an i heart question mark written on the back of my hand.

i'd be fine if you just walked by,
but you had to talk about why you were wrong and i was right.
but i can't believe you made me sit at home, cry like a baby,
wait right by the phone every night.

and now you ask about you and i, there's no you and i.
remember what you put me through?
i had to...

wake up and smell the break-up,
fix my heart put on my make-up.
another mess i didn't plan.
and i'll bet you thought you'd beat me,
i wish you'd could only see,
i got an i heart question mark, written on the back of my hand.

and when you're home alone at night,
you'll still wonder why you took everything i had, oh baby
i had a lot about you and i, there's no you and i,
and i know, someday you will...

wake up and smell the break-up,
realize that we won't make-up.
it didn't go the way you planed.
and you'll know you didn't beat me,
when you look down and see,
i've got an i heart question mark written on the back of my hand.

written on the back of my hand,
an i heart question mark, yeah.
written on the back of my hand.

the lighthouse tale

2008-06-18T15:55:00.000-06:00

♥
I am a lighthouse worn by the weather and the waves.
I keep my lamp lit to warn the sailors on their way.
I'll tell a story, paint you a picture from my past.
I was so happy but joy in this life seldom lasts.

I had a keeper, he helped me warn the ships at sea.
We had grown closer 'til his joy meant everything to me.
And he was to marry a girl who shown with beauty and light.
They loved each other, and with me watched the sunsets into nights.

And the waves crashing around me,
The sand slips out to sea.
And the winds that blow remind me
Of what has been and what can never be.

She'd had to leave us; my keeper, he prayed for a safe return.
But when the night came, the weather to a raging storm had turned.
He watched her ship fight, but in vain against the wild and terrible wind.
And me so helpless, as dashed against the rocks she met her end.

And the waves crashing around me,
The sand slips out to sea.
And the winds that blow remind me
Of what has been and what can never be.

Then on the next day, my keeper found her washed up on the shore.
He kissed her cold face, and that they'd be together soon he swore.
I saw him crying, watched as he buried her in the sand.
Then he climbed my tower, and off the edge of me he ran.

And the waves crashing around me,
The sand slips out to sea.
And the winds that blow remind me
Of what has been and what can never be.

I am a lighthouse worn by the weather and the waves.
And though I'm empty I still warn the sailors on their way.

i'm seriously on the verge of an anxiety attack

2008-05-14T16:59:00.000-06:00

And I don't know why. Well I kind of know why. So ever since saturday when I went over to Nick's house I've had this awful feeling in my stomach. I can barely eat anything. It's like the anxious feeling, but it won't go away! If I was anxious...

ok. Now I need to go to Austin's game. But I will be back, because I guarantee I will still feel the same after, if not more. I will explain.

living life in the...slow lane?

2008-03-10T21:53:00.000-06:00

I can't seem to suppress this feeling. I feel stationary, but inside I'm dying to get moving. It's making me a little restless. A couple of weeks ago I changed my mood headline on myspace to "rylee needs some change." It was the only way that I felt I could describe this feeling. Well first I had it say "rylee needs a major vacation, like a sabbatical," but I got kind of tired of that one I guess. So one day I get this message from Evan that asks me why I feel like I need some change. So I got to thinking. Why do I feel this way? The reasons came flooding out of the gates of my mind. There's the fact that I'm suffering from a bad case of senioritis; I haven't heard from any of the colleges that I applied to about admissions decisions (aside from Utah State); I really only have one friend that I hang out with all the time; I go to school; I go to work; I go to drill; I lay around procrastinating my horrendous amount of homework, pretending it doesn't exist. I'm just plain bored! No, make that bor-ing. I can barely bring myself to do my homework anymore. And this is really a stretch for me. The other night I told my mom that I didn't want to take the AP Calculus test, and she almost mocked me. It really made me frustrated, she acted like I was joking. The condecension in her voice was demeaning in a way that it hasn't really ever been before. The sad fact of the matter is that I couldn't bring myself to really care, and it kind of scares me. It scares me because she's right. I'm not like this, I don't back down from a challenge. It's odd to think about, to try to picture. However, over the past few months I've started to notice that not everyone succeeds, not everyone lives their lives the way that I do, or have in the past. It's been hard for me to accept. I always knew that there were people that didn't get good grades, or didn't participate in sports, or didn't really try when they were challenged. I guess that until this year they didn't really seem like people, because in my world people, at least unmarried teens, didn't get pregnant. They didn't kill themselves. They didn't skip school just because they wanted to, and except a sluff or unexcused absense. Real people didn't drop out of school, or accept a C as a grade; I never had. As sad as it sounds, I really had this bubble built around me of self-induced ignorance. I'm still adjusting to the standards of others. It feels like I'm actually becoming a part of the world, and I feel ashamed that it's taken me this long to open my eyes. I guess that's another reason I feel like my life is in freeze frame. All of this time I've had a certain view of the world, certain goals for myself. Now...I just don't know. It all seems so confusing to me. The world is definitely a lot bigger, and a lot more corrupt that I had once thought. It makes me question my constant strive for perfection in all things. If nobody else is trying, or really cares, why should I? It amazes me, the standards that I have held myself to for my entire life. In a way I kind of wish that things had stayed the same. That I hadn't become so lazy, or realized that I didn't have to be perfect. Because that makes it that much harder for me to want to be so. Funny thing is, here I am, doing exactly what I wish I wouldn't. I really should go do my Spanish homework. And then I have a math assignment that I could do. I also need to read the last act of Hamlet sometime, and I still have to finish my health independent study, and I could always be doing some scholarship applications, and I have lots of chemistry questions to catch up on, I could start some laundry if I finished all of that, or I could organize my closet, or find a new Spanish binder, or read the library books I just got, or go by a copy of Brave New Word, or a million other things! I think that's another reason I don't like even starting, because I know that I will never truly be done. My list has piled so high that it would be impossible to get through before another stack of things to do took its place. Ahhhhhhh...

<3 restless mind in a crazy world

...lay my bones at the feet of the ministry, I need the guilt and the company, I need the chance to be judged and then long forgotten...

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity.

Einstein

pop pop fizz fizz

2008-03-08T11:25:00.000-07:00

Well, I don't necessarily want to continue from last night, mainly because I know it would get repetitive and just make me sad. But I do want to say one other thing. Mainly I was just going to say that Melinda opened my eyes to this truth (that you don't know when it will be the last time you see somebody). I can't believe how strong she is being and I admire her for that. There, that was all I needed to add.

It's still early for anything exciting to have happened today. I got up and went to work. End of story, here I am, sitting at work. It's especially slow, and we've only been open for about an hour. I guess I could talk about last night. SJ and I saw Penelope. It was cute, definitely your feel good movie, something you go see when you're feeling particulary fat or ugly and rejected. Now i just need to find myself a dark troubled, but still attractive, gambling addict. Haha. I'm working with this girl that I've never met before, so it's really quiet. We're the only two people working today too, so if I never come home it's probably because I died of boredom. I'm not sure if I like her yet or not. At least she seems to know what she's doing, despite her newness. She did however, interrupt me when someone asked me about the movie tickets we sell. I hate when new people do that, as if I don't know what the difference between a regular and a platinum ticket is. It's not like I haven't been here, and haven't been selling them for oh, two years!!! Oh well. I'm over it. Weeelll some guy just came in and yelled at me because I said he couldn't get cash back off of a check that he wrote to himself. He said some not so pretty words. Meh, I think it's kind of funny how worked up people get. It's not my fault his account is in the negative and he is trying to float checks to get some money! Haha, some people are so stupid! Especially when they try to be mean. If only they could see themselves, all they do is look like fools. Okay, I'm done writing about nothing.

<3 headed for a boredom overload.

...you caught me off guard, now I'm running and screaming. I feel like a hero, and you are my heroine. do you know that your love is the sweetest sin...

p.s. Vote for David Archuleta on American Idol!!! Murray High, represent! Haha. Jk. But really. Vote for David. We're pals. And he is amazing.

life is so short.

2008-03-07T22:16:00.000-07:00

I wasn't really planning on writing about this. I was actually planning on writing this entirely en espanol, pero I decided off-handedly to look at Garrick Habel's myspace. And now it's brought everything back. On March 1, around 3 in the morning, Garrick hanged himself at willow pond park. When I first heard about it I was shocked, I didn't quite process what Heidi was saying. We were in Disneyworld and it was completely contrary to everything that had been going on that day. Honestly, I didn't really know Garrick very well. But that doesn't make it any less sad, partly because of the way I felt when they cut me from the softball team this year. It was like a sign, like someone speaking to me, telling me that I had been foolish to even contemplate purposely crashing my car on the way home from tryouts. Now I think back and tell myself I would never have done it, that it was just a passing thought in a time of utter despair, but Garrick proved to me that I was wrong, on many levels. First of all, he proved that suicide does happen. That the world can overpower us, despite how distant or improbable it may seem. It also showed me the utter selfishness of suicide. Garrick left so many people behind. People that genuinely loved him, and depended on him for support. Now those people will spend the rest of their lives contemplating what they could have done or what they did wrong with regards to him. They will always carry the guilt of not being able to better help him, when in truth his death was no one's fault but his own. Another thing, you never know when it will be the last time that you see someone. Death in general, not necessarily just suicide, can come any time. Death is color blind. Death doesn't pick and choose only certain types of people. It comes for everyone eventually, and you never know when it will. Well I'm not really finished with my soliquizing, but I told SJ I would take her to a movie, and we have to leave now. Maybe I'll finish later. Maybe I won't.

<3 still in shock.

...However you feel, whatever it takes. Whenever it's real, whatever awaits me. Whatever you need, however so slight. Whenever it's real, whenever it's right...

i can no longer see the sky.

2008-02-13T17:31:00.000-07:00

Monday.

Let's try to remember. School was boring, surprise surprise. At Big Brother Big Sister, my little finally moved to Clearfield. So I'm in the market for a new one. I've had a couple of offers, but I'm not sure yet. Haha, there were two boys that I have played with before when Abby was gone that were pretty sure I needed to march right up to Ashley and tell her they were my new little. It was really funny, because they had both written all over their arms, and one wrote, "I love Hannah Montana, she rocks," and the other tried to write "Harry Potter" but failed miserably. They're cuties. Sad thing though, I was watching the Simpsons yesterday, and it was the one where Bart plays with Ralph. And one of the boys reminded me of Ralph in some ways!!! But not so stupid. Haha.

Tuesday.

School wasn't so bad. In chemistry we just worked on balancing some redox equations all period and didn't learn anything new or watch any powerpoints! Yay! After school I came home and watched tv (suprised again?) instead of doing my homework. Not that I had much. Then I went to the basketball game where we performed kick routine. The basketball team won, it was against Granger, but barely. It was a good game. After I went home to watch David on American Idol!!! YAY!!! I'm way excited for him. He is amazing.

Today.

Senora Smith wasn't here today, so Spanish was great. We didn't have to do our presentations in front of the class! We all just did them at the same time! It was great. Then we sat there for like 10 minutes at the end of class with nothing to do. It was a miracle. Finance was so boring I almost died, same with calculus. Which reminds me. I wrote a running commentary of my feelings during calculus today. Aqui es.

Oh. My. God. I think I'm going to shoot someone. Particularly someone in this room. Someone who doesn't shut up and think that they are really smart. Oh wait! That's half the class! Seriously. I'm surrounded by morons. Some of them extremely close-minded conservative morons. I would be okay if I didn't have to hear them speak, but every word grates on me! GAR!!! Someone save me from this idiot hell! It doesn't help that my only reprieve is the time that we are learning calculus, which i also hate with a passion. Sometimes I really wonder if they know. If they have any idea at all. It's doubtful. I should record some of the conversation, seriously. It's bad. And I mean bad. Why? Why would someone say such things? It should be comical, but it's way beyond that. It's distrubing that there are seriously people like this! What is going to happen to the world if left in such incapable and bumbling hands? If I am found at the base of a third floor window, made one with the frozen pavement, this letter is a testament to why.

It was bad. *shudder*

Well. Time to go watch some movie called Rob Roy. I have no idea what it is, but it's free OnDemand, and I'm not picky when it's free. Until next time, and may the force be with you.

<3 exhausted senioritis victim.

...he's the reason for the teardrops on my guitar, the only thing that keeps me wishing on a wishing star. he's the song, in the car, I keep singing don't know why I do...

no hay nadie que...

2008-02-10T22:42:00.000-07:00

I will be brief. Hoy hice poco. Miré mucho la tele. No hubo iglesia, aunque sj y yo fuimos a la iglesia. Okay, don't really have time to continue in Spanish. I just got done watching O, Brother Where Art Thou. I also watched the Fast and the Furious, no I didn't end up watching it last night it was too late. Um...didn't do much else. Now I need to do my Spanish homework becaue I am lazy and left most of it until now. I would like to note, however, that I did in fact do portions of it, and of this I am very proud. I only left the really annoying part for last haha. Don't you hate how you watch a movie, and if they talk in accents, you talk like that in your mind for a while? Well right now my mind sounds like it was born in Mississippi haha. So I really should get to my homework. See ya later alligator.

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.

<3 I don't really know what I am anymore.

...what is this illusion called, the innocence of youth? only in this wild belief will we ever find the truth...

to be or not to be, that is the question.

2008-02-10T01:41:00.000-07:00

I really don't know how to describe how I feel right now, but I feel like I need to. It's not a good feeling, that's for sure. It's like a mix of rejection, loneliness...confusion, and a deep sad regret. It feels awful. I tried watching the Simpsons, but I still felt terrible. So Simone came over for the first time in who knows how many months, and it was kinda weird. It just got me thinking. About how I have no friends anymore, and it made me sad. It's a choice that I have sort of made for myself, and I'm starting to regret it. I regret the way that I treated him before also. Maybe this feeling is regret, I just don't know. It's like the evil twin of nostalgia, and it won't go away! I know it sounds terribly cliche, but my heart is aching. There's a weight on my chest, and its making my entire body collapse inward towards it. Like my heart is a vaccum, sucking the rest of me in but painfully slow. I did next to nothing today, I don't think that helped. I slept until 4, then watched some tv. I went to see Fool's Gold with Jocie, Kendell, and Kendell's friend. It was good, but way too long. It didn't help also that Jocie wasn't in a very good mood. She's had a headache for the past two days, most likely due to the fact that her dad started chemo yesterday morning. I feel awful because I don't know what to say to her, I don't know what she's feeling. Neither of us have ever really been very openly emotional. We hardly ever cry in front of each other even though we've been best friends since we were three years old. I don't know how to tell her that I'm sorry. I try to just act normal but I don't really care what we do as long as she doesn't have to think about it too much. I think I'm going to go watch the Fast and the Furious, but I don't know if I will be able to get into it. I could barely make it through one episode of the Simpsons, and I love that show. There's never a dull episode. I can't sleep, I know I wouldn't be able to. I'd just sit there and think some more and dig myself into an even deeper despair, or whatever it is. I wish I knew what it is that is weighing me down, and why! I guess it's just a depressing day. Everybody has those days, right? (get the Hannah quote? haha) It makes me wish I hadn't slept so late today, so that I could actually sleep tonight. But I guess this feeling kind of started last night. I couldn't really sleep after I watched the Matrix. For some reason I wasn't really tired, despite it being 1 in the morning, besides my mind was reeling with the possibilities that the movie presented. I sat up for two hours and cleaned my room and did some homework. For some reason I don't want to sleep, I think that's it. It's not that I'm just not tired, because I guess I kind of am. And last night I was definitely tired. For some reason I can't bring myself to sleep. There's some part of my mind that's telling me not to, and I wish I knew why. I had some vivid dreams last night, but nothing terrible. They were pretty good actually, despite the fact that my little sister had a baby with some faceless mexican guy. The baby was cute. I could have sworn it was real, especially when I woke up. At least the part about the baby. I love vivid dreams like that, but at the same time I hate them, because they are hard to shake. SJ came in to watch tv with me and I couldn't stop thinking about the dream; I was trying to convince myself that it wasn't real. Well...if I don't start the Fast and the Furious soon, I'll be up til 3. Hopefully it will keep me distracted, or even better put me to sleep. I wish this feeling would go away! My head feels numb, but at the same time the weight on my chest is stifling. I feel like a zombie. Oh yeah. I forgot about the writing in Spanish thing. I think it will only work when I don't have something passionate to say. When I write because I'm feeling something, it's much easier in English. The Spanish will be good for when I'm just bored though. Bueno, necesito quitar esto ensayo. Pero, una parte de mi no quiere quitar. Adiós por ahora, y hasta luego. Es posible que escriba mañana tambien, porque no tengo algo que puedo hacer. Tengo tarea, pero la no me gusta y necesitaré algo para hacer cuando esperando hacer mi tarea. Aunque estará un nuevo episoda de Brothers and Sisters mañana. Es algo bueno. Algo para ver por. Pues, esto ensayo ha estado muy largo. Adiós. Oh yeah. I just remember another thing. So yesterday was Devan's birthday. I only know because it told me on my Facebook homepage. So I sent him a text that said happy birthday. Just "hey, happy birthday," that's all. He didn't text me back. Yep. I decided I don't care. Well I decided I'm going to make myself not care. That is all.

<3 living dead girl

...lately I just can't take it, I count the days and seconds and minutes, hours and hours the subtlest shards of glass in my skin...

all i want is to rock your soul.

2008-02-09T00:52:00.000-07:00

So I thought I would recap my somewhat less than stellar day. But instead I am going to go watch the Matrix. Aurevior. Or whatever it is.

<3 tan viejo para su edad

...lay my bones at the feet of the ministry, i need the guilt and the company, i need the chance to be judged and then long forgotten...

p.s. Pienso que sería divertido si escribiera en español. A veces puede ser interesante.

lost in translation

2008-02-07T21:45:00.001-07:00

So. Here I am. wow. Sorry, I'm watching Revenge of the Sith and I keep losing my train of thought haha. Anakin just started battling Obi-Wan. Intense, I know. Even though I know what happens. I hate that feeling: watching a movie, and praying the whole time that the main character won't do something he shouldn't. They always do anyway. Feel the frustration!!! haha. Nooo! Anakin!!! Obi-Wan just cut off his legs!!! AANNAAKIINNN!!! Ah so tragic.

Oookay. On a lighter note...well I don't really know what to say on a lighter note hahaha. Ah great now I get to see Padme die. Oh joy. So today. Ah yes.

Today was the last day of UBSCT testing. I was supposed to be at the school at 9 though to finish choreographing seniors. However, funny story on a side note. Yesterday I came home for lunch because I got ditched again, and I made myself some chips and bread. Well I didn't get time to finish it so I left it in the car. When I got back to the car after school however, I threw my calculus book (the piece of crap) onto the passenger seat, and I think you can probably guess what happened next. Because I have the best luck in the entire world, the book caught a corner of the tupperware holding my chips and bread, sending it spiralling through the air along with its contents. Needless to say I didn't get a chance to vaccuum it up yesterday because the garage was already full. Well my dad saw the mess and my mom flipped and wouldn't let me drive the car. We had a huge fight and I didn't end up getting to school until 10:15. School was blah. After school I stood there while Stacey told the Prince Charming boys what to do. Chelsie had to give me a ride home. Then I came home to watch Underworld: Evolution but my mom came in at a not so good part and made me delete it. So I watched the Simpsons instead. Then...I sat on the computer haha. Then I...started watching Revenge of the Sith! I was lucky enough to catch it right as it was starting on HBO. And now it's time for LOST!!! Ahh I'm excited. It's only the second episode this season. So. Until later.

<3 just plain confused.

...Anakin! You're breaking my heart!

*

2007-11-06T18:11:00.000-07:00

What Type Of Slytherin Are You?

Slytherclaw.
Snob! You have difficulty reconciling your desire to wipe out all lesser mortals with your desire to rule them, and you might just be happy locked away in your ivory tower, reading books for eternity.Notable Slytherclaws: Tom Marvolo Riddle, Severus Snape.
Take this quiz!

Quizilla | Join | Make A Quiz | More Quizzes | Grab Code

Or perhaps in Slytherin
You'll make your real friends
Those cunning folk use any means to achieve their ends.

shocked? yeah me too.

2007-11-04T15:16:00.000-07:00

O. M. G.

no really. wow. so...last night. last night jocie and i hung out nate from st george (who recently moved up to saratoga springs) and i found out A LOT of stuff. the flashing cursor makes me anxious to say something but i don't know how to start. well. lets make this a little more specific. i found out a lot of things about deric. so, i don't remember if i mentioned how he was being way weird the last time he was here and then he just stopped talking to me, but thats what happened. we hung out and stuff, and then he started texting me and telling me all of this weird stuff. and telling me about how he's like, not a good guy and that he had sex with his ex girlfriend and stuff, and that i shouldn't bother with him, just that kind of thing. yeah. well...apparently he got her pregnant. there i said it. i know!!! OMG!!! i was so confused as to why he was being so weird, and when i heard that it all made sense. he wasn't about to tell me that he got her pregnant, so he was being all psycho about other stuff. i swear he was just giving me a million reasons to never talk to him again. i even said that to him! haha. well. there's more. and it kinda has to do with why nate moved up here. i guess deric's into drugs. like major drugs, bad. we're talkin heroine and i don't know what else. nate said he's started pawning off his stuff just to buy it. he said he saw him selling one of his brand new tvs for like 100 bucks. he told his dad someone stole it. nate and deric apparently had a huge fight too. because obviously when you're on heroine you're an ass. so nate got sick of trying to help him and just getting put down and stuff. and obviously deric was sick of nate nagging on him. apparently they were going to fight. nate said he was so mad that he honestly wanted to kill deric. i guess deric said...

to be continued!!!

and i'm back! even though it's now november 6th haha. now, where was i...

well deric said that he was going to go over and fight nate (nate was at outback steakhouse with his family haha). apparently he was talking all this crap about beating him up and doing it fair and stuff, but he was taping stuff to his knuckles and trying to be all tough. well he never showed, and he ended up telling nate he wouldn't fight him i don't remember his reasons why, but they were stupid. so...nate moved up to saratoga springs, he said in part to get away from it. crazy huh!!! so his girlfriend is having the baby (apparently they never did break up but idk) and...he's on heroine. i can't believe that someone could be so stupid, but i guess i shouldn't jugde. i don't know everything. but still. come on! is that not like, the total life ruiner right there? his life, his WHOLE life, is now ruined. well ruined in a sense that he has a responsibility to do something about the baby. and the fact that he's a heroine addict. who knows what else. you can't believe how relieved i am that he stopped talking to me right now. like really. i was pretty pissed. well not really. but i was of course a little put out that he was being such a psycho and that he just stopped talking to me. but now it feels all better! haha. well i guess i shouldn't laugh. it's really a terrible story. it's sad how easy it is to ruin your life. but anyway...i had to get that off my chest haha. now i should do some spanish homework, because my teacher is a nazi. no seriously. well maybe not a nazi, but she's a facist. thats it, a facist. we'll see if i make it the entire year. and i'm not someone that just gives up, but honestly that woman is going to kill me. we've already had 2 people drop off haha. but yeah. so i'm off. stay classy san diego.

<3 frazzled student but too lazy to do anything about it.

...como sobre vivir, como calmar mi sed, como seguir sin ti, como saltar sin red. con ese adios tan salvaje y cruel me desojaste la piel. la enternidad en final se quedo, y un desierto es...mi corazón...

say what?!

2007-10-13T21:54:00.000-06:00

well. uh...yeah. yes, it's saturday night and yes, i am sitting at home, but trust me there is a reason for this. and her name is kirtsen. so jocie and kirsten were going to go to a haunted house tonight with some weird junior boys that kirsten thinks she likes. jocie invited me though and kirsten flipped. at first she was way pissed. i know, what a jerk! so then jocie texts me and says that i can come but kirsten can't drive me, meaning i would technically be driving all by myself. i was offended that she would even suggest that. i sure hope that they didn't think i was that desperate to go because honestly, kirsten bugs me. and she always has. and the 2 guys they were taking are weird. but anyways...

i think i want to play sims now. or ddr, but i'll have to wait until the baseball game is over for that. go indians! i only say that because i hate boston! they just need to fade back into the oblivion that they slithered out of 3 years ago. peace, love, and star wars.

<3 too pissed off to come up with a good name.

always remember, your focus determines your reality.

almost lover

2007-07-17T16:33:00.000-06:00

♡

your fingertips across my skin,
the palm trees swaying in the wind.
i m a g e s
you sang me spanish lullabies,
the sweetest sadness in your eyes.
c l e v e r t r i c k

well i never want to see you unhappy,
i thought you'd want the same for me.

goodbye, my almost lover.
goodbye, my hopeless dream.
i'm trying not to think about you,
can't you just let me be?
so long, my luckless romance,
my back is turned on you.
should've known you'd bring me heartache,
almost lovers always do.

we walked along a crowded street,
you took my hand and danced with me.
i m a g e s
and when you left, you kissed my lips,
you told me you would never, never forget
these images

well, i'd never want to see you unhappy,
i thought you'd want the same for me.
goodbye, my almost lover.
goodbye, my hopeless dream.
i'm trying not to think about you,
can't you just let me be?
so long, my luckless romance,
my back is turned on you.
should've known you'd bring me heartache,
almost lovers always do.

i cannot go to the ocean.
i cannot drive the streets at night.
i cannot wake up in the morning,
without you on my mind.
so you're gone and i'm haunted,
and i bet you are just fine.
did i make it that easy,
to walk right in and out of my life?

goodbye, my almost lover.
goodbye, my hopeless dream.
i'm trying not to think about you,
can't you just let me be?
so long, my luckless romance,
my back is turned on you.
should have known you'd bring me heartache,
almost lovers always do.

ode to the helpless. . .

2007-04-07T23:37:00.000-06:00

Top Ten Reasons My Life Is Slipping Away From Me
10. I lost my iPod. Absolutely no idea where it is.
9. I need a new bat, but I want a RockeTech. That won’t happen.
8. My mom was looking at buying a third car. I highly doubt she will continue that search.
7. I never play in softball. I probably played a total of 3 innings tops in the JV Tournament.
6. Deric came up to Salt Lake and we didn’t hang out. He said his phone got taken away but who knows.
5. Last term, despite all of my efforts, I still got 3 A-‘s.
4. I didn’t make captain for Drill next year. Heather did.
3. I probably won’t be able to drive for another month because of that stupid accident.
2. I crashed my mom’s car when she let me take it 300 miles to St. George for Spring Break. That couldn’t have come at a more opportune time or place.
1. Deric. I made a fool of myself and I lied to him, and I don’t even know what he thinks of me anymore because I had to come back up to Salt Lake and apparently he is grounded and stuff but again I just don’t know.

So. Here I am. I'm feeling rather pathetic. No. Not rather. REALLY pathetic. My life is falling apart. I don't know what's happening to me. No matter how hard I try to make everything work, to remember every detail, I end up missing something and it all ends up practically for nothing. And now for my sob story. It all started when I got home from New York. I had so much homework I thought I would die, meaning literally. I don't remember a day that I didn't stay up until 1 or 2 working my butt off doing homework. I had a bunch of stuff to do for my research paper in english, and I had another unit due in history. Plus I had to study for my math and chemistry finals. Freakin Ms. Fidel told me to wait until I got back from NY to worry about all of our research paper packets, so I did. BIG mistake. I get home and she says I have to have both packets (which are meant to take a week of work) turned in by friday. Meaning in...3 days. No kidding. Well I will continue this after I go eat some ice cream and contemplate the depth of my despair.

Okay. So I've cooled off. It's Easter Sunday, and I feel just a tiny bit better about myself. I've even passed the numb stage, to the point where I think I might actually be okay. Now where was I...

I'm just going to skip straight to Spring Break because at this point that is the real thorn in my side. I couldn't believe my mom was going to let me drive down to St. George. I was so happy. No one else's parents would ever let them. Everything went great going down there, although it was a little boring. I was kinda bugged when we got to Kelsey's sister's house in Cedar City though, cause I didn't feel like I belonged there, plus I would have rather been in St. George. We watched a pretty good movie with a very hot guy in it called The Covenant. I was feeling pretty cool actually. Then we went to St. George. I got kind of anxious when we got there cause I really just wanted to see Deric, but I was hoping for some chance meeting on the street (which was a one in a million chance). We went to Fazoli's and ate, sat by the pool for a while. We ate at some Mexican place called Pancho and Lefty's which wasn't bad, except that the waiter was sort of hitting on us. Then the moment of truth. We were going to the Quizno's where Deric works to see if maybe he was working. It's next to a Coldstone, so I chickened and dashed into the Coldstone before I could even glance inside Quizno's. We got our ice cream and tried to sit right outside the Quizno's and look in. It took like 20 minutes of torture to figure out that Deric wasn't working. Kelsey threatened to go in there and ask about him, but luckily he wasn't there. Then she talked me in to texting him, even though I hadn't talked to him since August or September sometime. I can't believe I did it, but I did. I texted him saying something about how we hadn't talked forever but I was in town and stuff. Amazingly, he texted back. Except that he said he had a new phone and didn't know who I was. When I said I was Rylee, surprisingly again, he remembered me. He asked me for a pic, and thats around the time we were driving back to the hotel via the Boulevard. I hate that stupid Boulevard with a passion. There's a freakin stoplight every 50 feet, I swear. I was, of course, elated that I had just had the guts to text Deric and he remembered me, so I was talking really fast and I was a little jumpy. That's when it happened. We were stopped at one of those godforsaken stoplights, when the light turned green. I could have sworn I saw the truck in front of me start to go, so I started to ease the car forward. Then I turned my head to the lane next to me, I don't even remember why. All of a sudden Kelsey was screaming bloody murder, I turned my head, saw the truck had stopped, and slammed on my brakes. Alas I was too late and still rammed into the back of that stupid truck. Somehow the police were there, probably when it happened, because they appeared out of nowhere as I was examining the damage to my car. They told me where to pull over, so I did. At this point of course, I was balling. Do you realize how much I ruined, how many things died, when I turned my head to look at who knows what? Just typing all of this gives me a headache. So we sat there for a while, got a ticket, blah blah blah, talked to my mom, etc. etc. The cop found a cigar that my dad had left in the car door and I thought he was going to arrest me for it, but for some reason I didn't care. At that point Deric texted me and told me I take too long to text back and that he was going to bed. Kelsey's mom had to come over, and she followed us back to the hotel. There we went down to the pool, but then Brannon called me. Apparently my mom had called him asking him to come take a look at the car and make sure it was safe to drive. At that point my ears were practically ringing with the stress and pressure. We went to bed, but I couldn't sleep. I woke up at 7 am and finished Kite Runner because I really couldn't sleep. That day we just sat by the pool mostly, and went shopping a little. I texted Deric when I thought his school would be out, and he said he wanted to hang out. He wouldn't decide on something to do (when really it was his responsibility since he was the one that lived there!) so I suggested seeing Blades of Glory, even though I'd already seen it (which I failed to ever tell him). Because we were texting it took forever to get any plans set. He also couldn't find a friend to bring for Kelsey (cause Nate bailed) so I really didn't know what to do. Her mom and sis had gone to dinner, so I couldn't just leave her there, but I also didn't want her to be the 3rd wheel. Luckily as we were driving to the theatre, Deric said he found someone. We got there and had to buy our own tickets because the guys had already gone in the theatre to "save seats" apparently. I didn't really mind because we were so late (no thanks to Kelsey). As we were walking in the door, we bumped right into Deric, who was apparently going to the bathroom. He showed us where we were sitting and left to go to the bathroom. When he got back I didn't know what to do. The two of us were on the end of the isle. When he sat down he asked me if he could put the arm rest up, and of course I said yes. He grabbed my hand, and I still didn't know what to do. Was I supposed to keep watching the movie or what? He kept talking to me so I would turn my head to listen. He asked if I had a boyfriend, I said no. He asked how long we were staying, etc. So then he started playing with my hand and stuff. Then, all of a sudden his face was right next to mine, and it surprised me. I figured he was just trying to tell me something, but then I realized what he was doing (a little late I might add). So his lips just barely brushed mine before he pulled back. (Did I mention that I told him I'd already had my first kiss? Yeah, well I did, and I really hadn't. You can thank the advice of Kelsey for that one. Then when he said he would have given it to me, Kelsey told me to say that lucky for him now I was more experienced. Yeah. So I'm thinking that he took that as a sign, cause I swear I hadn't been in that theatre for more than 20 minutes before he tried it.) Then all of a sudden I get a text, (of course my phone happened to be in the pocket that our hands were resting on when in vibrated, haha) and I really had no idea who would be texting me. Inside my head I was praying that it wouldn't be another guy cause I was sure he'd see the name on the text (silly me I know). I was way surprised when it was from him. I gave him a weird look and read it. In it he apologized for trying to kiss me. I didn't know what to do then either. Technically, to me at least, I thought we kinda had kissed and I hadn't realized that he was so embarassed (good old naive and inexperienced me again). I just typed don't worry about it and showed it to him. The rest of the movie he just tried to rub my leg, which was really weird I might add. Of course through all of this I wasn't sure if I was supposed to look at him or watch the movie or what. I was so darn confused, I honestly had no idea. When the movie was over he suggested that we go swimming at our hotel's pool. We all agreed, so he went back to his house to get a swimming suit. When we were walking out to the parking lot, I didn't want him to see my old wrecked grandma car (cause he drives a freakin mustang), so Kelsey pretended she was trying to find something in her purse and we stalled until he drove away. Then, when I was pulling out of the parking lot he called me. He asked if we had gotten dropped off or if we had a car, cause he was worried that he had just left us there, haha. Then, he texted me. He apologized again for trying to kiss me and said I was sending mixed signals, but it was his bad. So I'm typing my reply and I get the text again, or so I thought. I looked over the text and figured he had just sent it twice, when really it was way different. Instead of saying that I was sending mixed signals, it said I wasn't. BIG difference that I didn't notice until later of course. So we got back to the hotel and hurried and changed so we could beat them to the pool. I really didn't want him to see my freakin fat legs, lol. So when they got there we sat in the hot tub for a while. I could totally tell that he was embarassed to get too close to me (probably because of the whole movie kiss fiasco), and I didn't know what to do. We talked a lot, him mostly about sports, working out, and how he was trying to gain weight (yawn, i know). He only tried to hold my hands once, and I didn't know what to do. Now that I think about it I feel like a fool cause he was probably trying to pull me closer, but I honestly didn't know what to do. ARGH! Sometimes I hate my stupidity and naivety. These are the things that keep me from sleeping and give me major headaches! (Just thinking about how stupid I was.) We chicken fought Kelsey and Blake and won both times. After a while I felt like he was doing all the talking, but I really didn't know what to say. What do I know about football and wresting and gaining weight by eating protein shakes? Only the things he told me! At 11 they said they should probably go, so we got out. Kelsey had left our key inside the room, so we had to walk around to the front to get back into the hotel. We walked them to Deric's car, and sat there for a while. I swear he hugged me like 4 times cause he said they were leaving but they didn't end up going, haha. Then they left. Ooo there are some things I didn't mention. I found out Deric got suspened from school for 10 days, but he wouldn't tell me why. Also, he said he was coming up to Salt Lake on friday. (I really thought I would die when he said that.) He suggested that he catch a ride with us cause that was when we were going back up. (That would have been pretty awesome by the way.) He said he would text me the next day to tell me what his dad said about it. Before they left, they joked about us going back with them and sleeping at one of their houses. I sarcastically remarked to Kelsey that we would never do something like that now would we Kelsey? Haha. Well I guess Deric took me seriously. After they left he texted me and said that he understood if I didn't want to hang out with him again cause he got suspended and has sleepovers with girls. I really wanted to laugh when I read that. I told him I didn't care, and that I really didn't think he was some bad guy or anything. Well the next day he didn't end up texting me. I texted him at 2:30 to tell him we were getting ready to leave, but he never replied, so we just left. We had to stop in Cedar City to drop off the movie we rented and say goodbye to her sister. It wasn't until then that he finally texted me back saying that his dad wanted him to drive up with him. I said that was fine and asked him when he would be in Salt Lake and he didn't reply. I sent it 3 times at different intervals that day. That night I had to take some Tylenol PM to get to sleep, and even then I sat there thinking and giving myself a major head ache for a couple of hours before I got to sleep. Saturday morning, luckily, I worked with Devan. I think that helped me not be so freakin depressed. It would have been better though, but Kara worked with us. We couldn't play any rubberband games with her their, and it was awkward to talk in front of her. She kept trying to get us to start a conversation, but everytime she brought up something stupid or embarrassing. Most of the time we talked when she was helping someone or cleaning the other rooms, haha. So I texted Deric one more time asking him what he was doing and he didn't reply. I figured that he had decided he didn't want to hang out with me afterall and tried to get over it (of course I failed miserably). I was supposed to hang out with Jocie, but she went to a movie with her cousins instead, so I sat at my house and moped. When she finally got back I went over and played with her new puppy boxer. We were going to go get ice cream at Coldstone (and of course I was hoping to drive past Deric's mom's house, or apparently her old one cause he said she had moved, to see if maybe he was there), but then she started texting Tyler. Can I say one thing? I despise Tyler. He drives me crazy. And she always invites him along, and practically forgets me. So he came over, and by the time he got there and they talked for a while Coldstone had closed. I really wanted to kill someone at that point. Namely Tyler. Instead we went and got slurpees. When Tyler left I got Jocie to text Nate and ask him why Deric got suspended. According to Nate he was there when some people were passing drugs, but he didn’t do it. But, Nate had also said that Deric did some bad stuff and that it was a long story (before Jocie coaxed it out of him). It was kinda funny cause after he told her he said not to tell me cause obviously Deric hadn’t wanted me to know. Oops. Too bad. I figured it probably had to do with drugs cause I couldn’t think of anything else he would be embarrassed about. Then, Jocie said that sucks that his girlfriend dumped him to Nate (talking about Deric). He really didn’t tell me who dumped whom, but she said it just to see what Nate would say. If he said yeah I know that would mean that she really did dump Deric, and if he was all what are you talking about we would know that he dumped her. He texted back a while later and just said yeah, sorry I fell asleep I’ll text you tomorrow. So I’m assuming that she did! Haha. The only problem is that now I think Deric will find out that Jocie was asking Nate about him. I’m kind of worried about that. Plus, Jocie texted Deric Saturday afternoon to see if he would text back (meaning he was just ignoring me). She said something stupid like hey whats up d-rock, haha. Well he didn’t text her back. Then I called his phone using my dad’s phone (just in case her really was avoiding me), and his answering machine said that his phone would be off for the rest of easter break, so if it was important to call him back later in the week. That’s when I figured that he just got his phone taken away, but it didn’t make me much less mad. I still couldn’t get a hold of him, and he was probably only like 15 or 20 miles away. Let me tell you, that is agony. So this morning he finally texted me back. He said his dad told him mom to take away his phone, so he hadn’t had it all weekend. Also he said that he was on his way back to St. George already. He said he had gotten into a fight with his dad because his dad wanted him to cut his hair, but Deric didn’t want to. So apparently he’s not going to have his phone for a while again. ARGH!!! That gives him a perfect window of opportunity to just never talk to me again. You see, I won’t ever really know when he gets his phone back unless he tells me about it. My only hope is going down there with Jocie and having her talk to Nate, and then get Deric to come. But that has proved to be hard in the past, because I already tried that back in October and he didn’t show. Jocie said Deric texted her back too (remember she had prank texted him to see if he would answer), and somehow he found out who she was. So I’m also worried that he’ll draw the connection to me. I don’t really know what he thinks about all of that because he either got his phone taken away again or he’s just ignoring the both of us. Grrr…I hate not knowing things. I hate being left in the dark. Its makes me worry, and it makes my anxiety quadruple. I’m already stressed out enough about all of this shit with Deric! It just makes it worse that I don’t know what he is thinking right now, I don’t know if he still likes me or anything, and I have no way of finding out. I always get things resolved. Its what I do. If life throws me lemons, I make some damn good lemonade. But the problem here is that I can’t, and I hate it. I feel powerless because I can’t manipulate it to better suit me. It’s the same with that stupid car. There’s nothing I can do but wait, and I absolutely hate that. I’m not a patient person, especially when it comes to things like this, things I would normally fix. And that is primarily why I feel so completely hopeless right now. All of these situations wouldn’t be so bad if I wasn’t powerless to change them. I don’t remember a time that this has ever happened to me before, and it scares me.

I keep having to tell myself that everything will be okay, but it isn’t quite working. Hopefully when school starts tomorrow I will be so busy that I won’t worry so much about things like Deric and the car. Because honestly, they really aren’t that big of a deal. At least the whole Deric thing isn’t. That also drives me crazy, knowing that its something insignificant but not being able to stop worrying about it! Well I really should get going on the 8 page research paper that I am supposed to have finished by tomorrow. I just really needed to get all of that off of my chest, because I can’t stop thinking about it! I can’t focus on anything besides everything that is going wrong in my life. Hopefully putting it all out there will help me move on. It was worth a try.

<3 Pathetic Excuse for a Girl

...when somebody loved me, everything was beautiful. every hour we spent together lives within my heart...through the summer and the fall we had each other that was all...lonely and forgotten, never thought he'd look my way, smiled at me and held me just like he used to do, like he loved me, when he loved me...

and now? we dah-nce.

2007-03-19T22:12:00.000-06:00

Today Chels, Heather, and I went to starbucks before team class. It was the first frappacino I've had in a real long time! In English we did the essay on Kite Runner and took a bases quiz (which I completely failed because I thought it would be multiple choice and it wasn't). Then our game was at home against Highland. Varsity beat them 21 to 0. And that was in 2 innings. Yeah they went through the batting order 3 full times and started on a 4th all in the 2nd inning. 4 people had home runs (Britt, Ciera, Lindi, and Kobe) and Britt had a grand slam. Yeah. Wow. JV won 10 to 0, but we have a 6 run rule per inning or it would have been more. My 2nd time up to bat, I was running to 3rd base, and somehow I tripped when I went to slide into 3rd. Completely screwed up my ankle, I couldn't even get up. I was safe though, lol. I practically fell on the base to make sure. I had to be carried off the field and then carried again into the car to go home. I've been sitting in front of the tv since 6 and had to beg my mom to let me come into the computer room. I think I watched like 8 episodes of Jeopardy! haha. Well I'm not sure what else to say...so peace!

<3 the stationary girl

...can i believe that your heart still beats for me? let me receive a sign that you're my destiny, i wanna know give me a reason for me to believe in, can't you see it in my eyes? that i need a reason for i'm still breathin', is it time to say goodbye?...

i'm just too sexy, what can i say?

2007-03-18T21:10:00.000-06:00

Today we had a test in Chem. I think I did okay, probably not my best though. Our take home test was due in Trig and I didn't really finish it, but I decided I don't care. I'll just retake it later. Our make up game got cancelled, lol. It was snowing today! In April! I guess I shouldn't be surprised though. For practice we got to play Ultimate and we scrimaged but it was like a bunting game where you only do bunts (you get signals from 3rd base). I did pretty good, although i screwed up sorta running the bases and now I'm almost positive Parker will never put me in to run in a varsity game again. But I decided I don't really care because it's a huge weight off of my chest. So now I'm evaluating someone else's research paper, and it's on Disneyland, lol. When Fidel handed it to me I almost screamed cause I was so excited. What a good topic! Why didn't I think of it? Well I gotta get going on it cause Lost is on tonight! Ciao!

<3> (okay maybe not.)

...listen up it's just not happenin', you can say what you want to your boyfriends. i'm not here for your entertainment, do you really wanna mess with me tonight? just stop and take a second, i was fine before you walked into my life. cause you know it's over before it begins!...

back to the future...er present

2007-03-17T22:58:00.000-06:00

It did feel good to have all of my sources and everything stapled and ready when class started. We played Olympus today. Of course we won, it’s almost not even worth mentioning, lol. Jk, now I probably jinxed us. I screwed up. Again. Parker put me in and I got out on first diving back. GR!!! I didn’t run again and I’m not sure when I will. JV was good though, I was 2 for 2, and I think the second hit was pretty good. I used Jocie’s RockeTech and I loved it. I’m trying to convince my dad to buy me one. I think I can talk him into it, as long as my mom doesn’t hear me talking about it. Then when I was playing second I made the last out of the game when the ball came to me and I tagged the runner out. Not an amazing play, but it was a play, which is more than I usually get, haha.

Well I’m not sure what else to say. Right now my mom is trying to kick me off the computer. It really feels like I’ve just been telling you a story about someone else’s life. Well…sayonara, and may the force be with you.

<3 stranger in my own life

...i'll be your cryin shoulder, i'll be love's suicide, i'll be better when i'm older, i'll be the greatest fan of your life...

Monday (2)

2007-03-17T22:55:00.000-06:00

I left my phone at home. I thought I was going to die, it was a terrible feeling. I felt so helpless! I know it’s sad, but it’s true. I kept telling myself that I would get home and have no messages or missed calls and that I was worrying for nothing, but I was glad to see that I had 1 missed call and 2 texts waiting when I got home. We did hotbox for the entire practice today. Yeah. And I was playing second base, meaning I had to run A LOT. More than the girls actually running the bases, lol, cause they got to switch off. After we had team dinner at Ciera’s. So apparently I told Joce and Kirst that if Ciera made fun of me again I was going to stand up to her. Yeah apparently. I did say she makes fun of me a lot, but I said it didn’t really bother me. Well they told her that I was going to stand up to her, so she started teasing me x10 now, haha. She always talks about how I said I was going to beat her up to, lol. Right. Like I would ever be stupid enough to pick a fight with her, or ever really have a reason to. I like Ciera, I think she’s hilarious, but oh well. My family went to the Jazz game, but I had to finish the final draft for my research paper, so I stayed home. I was totally planning on working on it for maybe 2 hours and then watching tv or doing whatever I wanted. Yeah, I worked on that stupid thing from 7:00pm to 2:00am. And I didn’t even finish then! I got up at 7:30 to work on it again the next morning. Didn’t finish again, so I had to do revisions in Photo Digital, and hurry and fix and print it before lunch. But that’s getting in to…

Thursday

2007-03-17T22:53:00.000-06:00

Cyprus game at Murray. We had pics before too. I screwed up major. Parker let me sit in the dugout (suck on that Cassie!) and I missed some steal signals. She switched me out while I was still on base. I was so humiliated. We were done early though cause someone needed our field. Deric had to go to dinner with his family so we didn’t hang out, but I’m not sure if I would have been able to do much cause I was supposed to be grounded anyway.

Wednesday

2007-03-17T22:52:00.000-06:00

Granger game. We kicked trash. I even got to do some running in Varsity. But guess who texted me during the game? Yeah, Deric. He asked me for Kelsey’s number and said Blake wanted it, but I don’t know cause Blake doesn’t even have texting. Then he said he was driving up. Right then. And he’d be here til Sunday. Scream!!! I almost died. He said we should meet up, maybe Thursday. Yeah the Thursday I was supposed to be grounded, haha (oh the irony!). After the game I helped Joce with her Chemistry and watched Lost (very good by the way).

Tuesday

2007-03-17T22:51:00.001-06:00

The game was cancelled so we just had practice and scrimmaged. Kirst had to ask Greg to Spring Fling, so we went and found some stuff (Spring Fling with me? Priceless.) My mom flipped though when I asked to go help give it to him. It was 8:15 and I had to beg to even get to leave for 30 minutes. My mom said I had to be back at 8:45. Yeah. Greg lives in freakin South Jordan, so of course I was late. My mom said I couldn’t go out Wednesday or Thursday, but I figured I wouldn’t anyway so it didn’t matter.

Monday

2007-03-17T22:51:00.000-06:00

We turned in our rough drafts of our research papers in English, but mine wasn’t finished. Team dinner was at my house. Ciera kept throwing creampuffs at everybody. Ciera and I helped Jocie ask Thomas to Spring Fling. She used my silly idea (“Wood you go to Spring Fling with me?), haha. It came to me when we walked past the firewood on our way into Smith’s. I started texting Tobin and he told me Parker was having a surprise party at the ice rink, so Jocie and I went over. It was pretty fun. It would have been better if I had known more people. The only people I knew came in pairs (if you know what I mean), which made it awkward. I was 15 minutes late getting home so my mom got pissed.

13 is my new lucky number

2007-03-17T22:49:00.000-06:00

So. Here I am. So much has happened and it’s only been a week, if I recall correctly. It really feels like I'm living someone else’s life. Ever since my mom said I could go to St. George and I drove away. My life has completely changed. Honestly, if you had told me what would happen to me in the past 2 weeks I would have laughed. St. George. The beginning of both my heaven and my hell. But first a quick (well we’ll see how quick it turns out to be) overview of this past week, at least up until the weekend.

* Zombies! Aliens! Vampires! Dinosaurs!

2007-01-09T18:02:00.000-07:00

Well hello again empty cyberspace. It actually hasn't been that long! I'm surprised I even have time to do this at all right now. Luckily the semester ends this thursday, so I haven't had too much homework-- mostly studying. Today I had my Grammar/Vocab final, which i aced. I also had a final in AP U.S. history, which I did okay on. Good for that class I guess. I think I got one of the highest scores. I ALSO took the first half of my 1050 algebra final. It was way easier than I had expected. I sat there in seminary and studied my butt off and then none of the formulas that I had studied were even on that section of the test. Oh well.

So I'm feeling really weird right now cause I'm typing without my left middle finger. I sprained it pretty badly at Falcon Classic on Saturday, not even when we were performing. I was just practicing aerials in the practice gym and landed on my hand. Needless to say it hurt really bad and swelled up to the size of two fingers instead of one. I still had to do kick and dance routine with it hurting too. Everyone thought it was broken it was in such bad shape, but its not so bad now. We didn't do as well as we had hoped at Falcon, but I guess we were a lot closer to placing well than we had all thought. I won the 4A Drill Down Competition. Woot!!! Finally. The problem was that I had mistaken the time my mom said she was coming back for awards, and didn't call them to tell them that the comp was running an hour early. They got back just as we were leaving and missed the whole thing. Figures. It was funny too because after I won the lady who gave me the medal and had me say my name into the microphone was all, "You don't seem very excited about this." I wanted to say, "Yeah well I think I might have broken my finger earlier today and I haven't eaten any dinner!!!" Jerk. What did she expect? It hadn't really sunk in either because I still don't really know how I won. It was down to me and two other girls, and after this series of commands the caller stopped and all the jugdes were whispering and pointing. We hadn't even done any of the real difficult stuff that makes you think! Then they took my up to the table and it was funny because the whole team looked disappointed, but really I had just won. The other two girls had to compete for 2nd and 3rd place. I guess the other two were late and I did it right or something. They didn't even directly tell me that I had won, they just whispered to eachother and I heard one say, "No, this one was right she gets first."

And now I am realizing how pathetic it is that I just filled that whole paragraph with absolutely nothing. It's amazing how little you can say with so many words. So yesterday I went to the first day of softball conditioning. You wouldn't believe how many young girls, girls that looked like they weren't even old enough to tryout, were there. I guess they could have been freshman that I don't know, but still. I'm still not sure if I'm going to tryout this year or not. It depends on how much it will conflict with drill, and how sick of drill I am by the time tryouts come around. Dang it my splint is itching like crazy!!! haha I am listening to this audiobook that I got for free on iTunes called "A Brief History of Alagaesia." Brief? You call 30 minutes of history about a fictional place brief? lol. I'm listening to it becaue I can't read the book until I read "Death of a Salesman" and unit 8 of my AP U.S. book. So it looks like I won't be able to read it until...summer. Or at least until after the AP test in May. Which is practically summer. I need to do my homework. ahhhh... I really don't want to. What a world it would be without homework. I can't even imagine such a place. I don't even have that much, compared to usual. The thing is, though, that it seems like no matter how much I work, I will always have some distant homework. I could always catch up on my AP U.S. reading, or study my notes, or even write my notes, or study for finals, or finish some project, or read some book. It's never ending! I think that's half the horror of it. What's the point of finishing it all if there will always be more. Why do today what you can put off for tomorrow? (sigh)

La la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la...This Christopher Paolini guy is kind of annoying to listen to. Especially when he talks about something called an urgel. He talks like he's some sort of genius lord guy. It's rather annoying.

<3> (help!)

...keep holding on, cause you know we'll make it through, we'll make it through. stay strong, cause you know i'm here for you, i'm here for you...

2006-03-15T18:50:00.000-07:00

Well hello again. heh. You'll never guess what I'm watching right now. Yep, that's it. Sleeping Beauty. hehe. I usually just pop it in whenever I'm just sitting here and use it as background music. Ahhh! It's my favorite part! She just met the prince! Well. Anywho...

Yesterday was probably the worst day I've had in a while. I woke up late. Always a sure sign of a bad day. My hair wouldn't work. I had waited to print my essay until that morning, and I turned on the computer and the printer wouldn't work. I had to go to my dad's work to print it...which made me about 20 minutes late to second period. My dad wouldn't write me a note because he thinks he's being 'disciplinary', which means I now have a sluff in 2nd period. If i don't get it excused in a couple of days, I will get a truancy, and then I will probably be kicked off the drill team. ha. Then, I forgot to do my Readers Journal for history, so I was rushing to do it at the end of class, and I didn't finish. I didn't have time to check on extra credit options either, and they are due tomorrow. I went to Spanish and we had a test. Anthology is due tomorrow. AHHH! Well the half-way point at least. After school I had ballet, which always sucks. After ballet I had to go to my sister's choir concert, which pretty much sucked. I'm sorry but they're what, 12? After the concert I went home and worked on my Literature Anthology for about...3 hours. Oh joy.

Today was boring. We worked on Novelty in drill this morning, which took forever. We went over our itinerary for San Antonio, which also took forever. We got into the locker room late, and I got to 3rd Period late. They also decided to give us an assignment at the end of the term, as if we don't have enough work in the real classes already. Kirsten was being her idiot self at lunch and trying to brag about her nerdy date and the fact that she is 16 now. In Biology I thought I would die. We just sat there for 20 minutes, literally sat there, because Green was in a bad mood. Then we did some activity where we had to pick up paper, toothpicks, and metal nuts with either a spoon, a pipette, or some tweezers. In math we had a review for the test. I need to retake the last test tomorrow. If I don't get 100 on the retake and the new test I won't get an A. bleh. After school I had to go to Heather's to make posters for Drill Tryouts. Which was boring because we just sat there while her dad did it on his computer. That wasted a lot of time. And now...here I am. I'm supposed to be finishing my Literature Anthology, my Spanish project, and my AP European extra credit and reading. BLAAAAHHHHH. I'm watching Sleeping Beauty instead. yay.

<3> (haha)

7 Days til San Antonio.

This one last gift, dear child for thee, a symbol of thy royalty. A crown to wear in grace and beauty, as is thy right and royal duty...

2006-03-15T18:42:00.000-07:00

hm. Sunday was boring. After church I just sat around...watched tv...did homework. Monday I got to sleep in because I didn't have drill. Problem is, I slept through my back-up alarm, and woke up at 8:45, when i had to be to school by 9:24. I had to shower and get ready in about...20 minutes. ha. fun times. not. We watched Remember the Titians in Careers. I was late so I only got about 5 minutes for my SEOP. We used the laptops again in Biology, and we did graphing in math. I didn't have piano, which pretty much rocked. After than I pretty much sat there on the computer looking up stuff for my Literature Anthology. And watched Sleeping Beauty. heh.

<3 Cinderella's evil twin.

One day you'll awaken to love's first kiss, 'til then, Sleeping Beauty, sleep on...

2006-03-11T18:18:00.000-07:00

Wow it sure has been a long time. Almost a whole year!!! I really don't even know what to say. I was just really bored and decided to fix this place up a bit. Does anyone use these anymore? I wonder...hmm...this is what I've done so far this weekend...

Well...lets see. Last night I slept over at Ashley's house. I don't think she was very happy about it though because technically she didn't invite me, Morgan did. heh. I hate drama! oh well. Before we went to Ashley's we went over to Brock's for some reason. Let me just say one thing. That guy is freakin rich. I mean...his house was at least 5 times bigger than mine, if not more. Not to mention the home-arcade, movie theatre, and indoor hot tub room. I was pretty much blown away. When we finally made it to Ashley's we all fell asleep watching Just Friends. Someone toilet papered her house and Elise's car while we were asleep at some point though, lol. Elise was pretty mad, even though they only got toilet paper on her antenna. Today I went to the mall to get some pants, but I didn't get anything, I wasn't in the mood for shopping. Bleh. Now I'm sitting here watching my favorite movie, Sleeping Beauty. hehe. I stole it from my grandma and I have been watching it all week.

"I know you I walked with you once upon a dream. I know you the gleam in your eyes is so familiar a gleam. And I know it's true that visions are seldom what they seem!"

ahhh...sometimes that movie makes me happy, but other times it makes me want to cry because of depression. Why can't it be that easy in real life? Well, since I am such an incredibly boring person, I have nothing else to say. Except that its...11 days until I go to San Antonio! Hooray!

<333> (ha I wish)

Wow. I forgot how much fun it was to write in these, even if no one actually reads it...

touch the spindle...touch it I say...

2005-04-05T12:11:00.000-06:00

spring break! heck yes! im so glad theres no school. 10 whole days...im in heaven.

well, saturday i had a dance competition at Roy High School. i'm not sure how we did, because i didn't want to stay to find out. we had to go 4 hours early, and then, they put 2 of our dances at the same time in different rooms. i was so mad. PLUS, i sprained my left middle finger during our hip hop dance. i know it sounds lame, but i'm not quite sure how i did it, it just started hurting at the end, lol. saturday night i went to urgent care because it looked pretty bad, and they sent me to the hospital for an x-ray. they gave me copies, they're cool.

tomorrow i'm leaving for cali! wednesday night we are going to an angels game, and the thursday, friday, and saturday were going to disneyland and california adventure. i haven't been to california adventure, and i heard it was fun.

i never got a partner for dutch oven. i was so pissed at kirsten that i threw my coke on her at mcdonalds on wednesday night after she dumped her nuts on my head. (yes, again) half of it was that she just dumped nuts on my head, the other half was that she stole my partner and lied. i was going to be with jocie, but kirsten told her that i thought it was stupid and didn't want to do it, so jocie signed up with kirsten. grrrrr. and you know whats worse? she wants to do MY dessert. chocolate cake. its not a coincidence either. i TOLD her thats what i wanted to do. i probably won't even come on dutch oven day. if i do, i wont buy one thing from them.

well, i still need to do my chores. *sigh* my sister ditched me and went to the zoo with the andersons while i was still asleep, lol. i wonder if she did her chores...?

<3 rylee

¤ He counts them, he checks them, he looks for clues and finds the ones with hearts on the outside. Some postman is grooving to all our love letters, some postman is gonna cry...

[x] I am a teenager.

[ ] I have smoked/done drugs before.

[x] I have a friend who smokes/does drugs.

[ ] The last time I cried was while I was watching a movie.

[ ] I cry often.

[x] I love shoes!

[x] Whenever I'm bored, I usually just listen to music.

[x] I'm ALWAYS bored.

[x] McDonald's is better than Burger King.

[x] I prefer rock music over rap or R&B.

[ ] The reason I couldn't answer the last question is because I like all or most types of music.

[x] I like to read.

[x] I have good grades and I'm still better than you!

[ ] My CD collection is so big I took a whole day just to count them all.

[x] It didn't take a whole day, but my CD collection is still big.

[x] Troy is one of my favorite movies.

[ ] I have at least 2 siblings.

[x] I love cheesecake!

[ ] I cuss too much, and I know it.

[ ] I have a friend that I look up to because (s)he is a great influence.

[x] I am obsessed with a hot celebrity.

[x] Ah h8 pPl DaT tYp3 lYk Di5.

[x] The reason I couldn't answer the last question was because I COULDN'T READ IT!

[x] I think homework on the weekends should be outlawed.

[x] I think homework period should be outlawed.

[ ] My favorite color is red.

[x] I love changing my layouts.

[x] I have taken a shower with more than 2 people of the same gender as me. With or without bathing suits. ;) ((when I was like…2!))

[ ] I am going to/planning on going to a concert in the next month.

[ ] I like cats better than dogs.

[x] I can't wait for Pirates of the Carribean 2 to come out!

[ ] I live in California.

[x] I want to live in California.

[x] I like football.

[x] I should be doing my homework now, but ... hey, I was bored, what can I say?

[ ] I only put an "x" on the last one because even though I don't have homework to do, I should be doing it anyways since that's how I am. It was all out of guilt.

[x] I hate eggs.

[x] SpongeBob is awesome!

[x] Randomness makes me laugh. Really loud.

[x] I'm thirsty.

[x] I like DVD's.

[x] I can't wait for Christmas.

[ ] I have a certain name for idiots, and I claim it as my own!!!!

[x] In the last 24 hours, I've talked to somebody on Instant Messanger.

[ ] I am currently on a laptop.

[ ] The laptop belongs to me.

[x] I wish for a lot of things.

[ ] My birthday is coming up sometime this month