A Day In The Life..

Just a thought for you guys.

2012-02-09T23:47:00.000-08:00

I read a quote today and I think it sort of helped me figure out how best to motivate yourself to learn.

"Nobody works harder than a curious kid." David "Doc" Searls

Just think about that. When was the last time you worked really hard on something that didn't involve your own curiosity somehow?

Clash at Demonhead

2012-01-06T20:49:00.000-08:00

I'm not totally sure if I've ever blogged about this but, I love Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. Like, a lot. Like, I bought it the day it came out on DVD and watched it every day for a while. I love it because you can watch it over and over and see something new almost every time. Edgar Wright apparently is known to cause this in movies he touches. The awesome thing about this particular movie is the sheer number of retro video game references it contains. Which is awesome because for some reason, while other girls will see a barbie or a pink bunny or a little plastic tiara or whatever and be reminded of all the good times they had when they were little, nothing seems to give me the warm nostalgic fuzzies like seeing an old gray game cartridge or hearing some 8 bit music. Also lego bricks. Definitely legos. But that's another post.

I always loved these games. I love the amount of intricacy that some of the game developers were able to achieve trying to paint pictures with pixels, I love how much variety they eked out of the same limited set of "instruments" and sound effects. Both of these things are a little more evident in the super nintendo era, but still definitely there in the regular nintendo realm. After all, some of the most memorable games started out from the very beginning. Mario, Link, Donkey Kong, and Samus, among others, have been around for EVER. I could go on forever.

And I have played these games forever. I really just enjoyed exploring because really, a 5 year old is pretty unlikely to understand the storyline of Final Fantasy 3 or Super Metroid yet still I had so much fun playing around anyways. I don't know that I would feel the same way about games today. Back then it was so much easier and also harder and nicer because there were less buttons to push with less precision, making the game usually pretty easy to figure out, and in games like Super Metroid, there is not a single speck of explanation about your new upgrades that you just got and how to use them. You just figure it out. If it's a really tricky thing, some weird animal creature will show up and do what the game needs you to do in order to continue on until you understand how to do it. This leaves a lot of time for exploration. And none of these 20 minute long theatrical cut scenes!

For me, finishing the game is less important than playing it, I think I get that from my youth when I didn't know what the point of the game was anyways. I have only beaten one NES game that I can think of and that happened last May.

Now, after my lengthy tangent about my little hobby (PS you never know how well versed in video games you are until you go to a store that still sells every kind of game and you see how many of the games lined up on the wall you remember playing), I have to tell you something amazing that I found out about today. I was at one of these stores that I mentioned, just looking at the NES games after I found what I had been looking for and lo and behold, there was a game marked Clash at Demonhead. It's a game!!! So now maybe I am officially the youngest person to recognize every reference in the movie? It was pretty cheap so obviously I bought it, figuring that even if the game was terrible I could... frame it...? I dunno. My nerd instincts took over and I bought it. So I got it home and played it, so far it's the coolest game ever that I have played today. I'd like to point out that this guy is way better than me at this game. Also you really don't need to watch the whole thing. My favorite part is that it says "talking time" every time the game stops for some dialogue. You just don't get cruddy translations like that anymore!

A Few Scattered Thoughts About Sitting At David's Bridal

2012-01-02T23:06:00.000-08:00

My sister is engaged! As of Christmas Eve. They've had the date, which is set for early March, since the beginning of december and the ring finally came. Understandably, we women of the family are doing a little bit of running around like chickens with no heads because that's coming up! So today we went to look at dresses. During the first 10 minutes that we were there, I heard two different versions of "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun". First, a well meaning cover, then the real thing. I hoped I wouldn't need to hear it again, luckily I didn't.

So then they gave us a little tour and we walked past some ugly looking veils (Okay, I don't like veils so I'm biased. None of us seem to though so it's all good. and some satiny shoes that can be dyed to match your wedding colors. I was a little shocked and amazed that that is a thing.

Then we sat in chairs, my mom and I, while she tried the dresses on and while we were waiting under the fluorescent lights with mirrors on every side, I first noticed (again) that my eyebrows are half invisible. So I'd like to make a shoutout to my Scandinavian ancestors for that. I can't be too mad though because really, everything else I got is pretty spot on. Poor little eyebrows though.

So then my sister came out in dresses and looked beautiful because she knows how to pick a dress, and she felt very reinforced by the Mexican family nearby who also had a daughter trying on dresses who would look up and smile adoringly every time she came out, just to back us up. She was very distraught when they left while she was in the dressing room without even saying goodbye.

New Year's Eve

2012-01-01T16:08:00.000-08:00

New Year's Eve this year was nice. We went and saw The Muppets, had a little dinner, then finished the year off with Call of Duty followed by some classic Smash Bros. and then watching the ball drop. Nice. Not super exciting, but definitely not the worst ever.

That said, I miss the old New Year's Eves. You see, every year we used to have a big New Year's blowout with the families of the other two names in my dad's firm. There was always some event, which, at my house, was usually foreshadowed on Christmas by a gift. There was always a trip up to Evanston for some fireworks. The most memorable of these was the year (take this with a grain of salt, I can't remember if these were both in the same year but I think they were) of the foam disc guns. You (hopefully) know the type. Little guns that have little batteries in them that make fan sounds which shoot little discs made of foam. Anyways, my mom and the other mothers spent a considerable amount of time coming up with a scorecard so that at the end of the skirmishes we had every half hour all night, points could be tallied and prizes awarded. Naturally, it was negative points to shoot a mom. fortunately, the kids in the younger age bracket (including me) were also less points but the dads and teenagers were like prize bucks. In addition, all discs picked up were worth a point. My mom wanted to do less picking up herself, which is fair given that there were about 20 of us who all went mad with rage every time my mom rang the bell that meant the beginning of a skirmish. The house was a war zone.

The good thing about the point per disc rule was that my mom had no shortage of help getting them picked up. The bad thing about it was that I was kicked in the face multiple times by 18 year olds who were eager to get all the points.

So for that whole night I was like a happy warlike refugee. It was all about shooting everyone, somehow keeping track, and then loading up for the next time. This went on for a few hours. At the end, my brother won the prestigious award of a monkey (which we still have) that plays a little song while endlessly clapping cymbals together, and when you hit him on the head he gets really mad.

So after these jealousy inducing awards were handed out (I think I won a felt dr seuss hat. I think we all did), it was just about midnight, therefore time for fireworks. My mom, in her busyness, decided my brother should make himself, his car, and his driver's license useful by driving to Evanston for the fireworks. You should know, they have plenty of fireworks in Wyoming that are just not available in Utah. A lot, in fact. My mom told him to keep it pretty low key, so naturally he bought a few of the standard fare, then he bought like 15 mortars. You know, the ones you put in a tube, then you light them, and they shoot up 30 or so feet in the air. We stood there, bathed in light and awe, wondering how the police would feel about three lawyers firing off illegal fireworks.

Luckily no cops showed up. I guess they were probably busy watching for drunk drivers?

Those were good times. Other times we did other things, but that is the time that truly shines on in the memory.

Perceptions

2011-11-01T13:21:00.000-07:00

So. I just read this post by a friend of mine from high school. It's here. I think that in high school, probably people didn't think much of me. Not that they didn't think well of me, because I'm usually on pretty good terms with people, but I've been pretty hard to get to know in the past. It's something I work on, sure. Definitely. Like Jeff, I was weird in high school. Actually I thought he was pretty cool but I was pretty quiet about things. But like Jeff, I think I've come into my own, whether because I have matured nicely and come closer to the thread of similarity that runs through humanity, or because I have found my tribe, or probably both.

For some reason, the last couple years I didn't put a ton of effort into making lots of friends in the graphic design program. Not that I had no friends, I had a really solid handful and I was happy to know them! But when I went to Switzerland this summer, I got to know like 40 people and they all were so awesome. There was not a single person that I would have wished was not there. There were a lot of people on the trip that I had known vaguely from my classes here, but I just never got to know them because I didn't feel like I would have anything in common with them but I was so wrong. And now I have so many more friends because I learned to talk to people around me. It turns out I get along with a lot of people, especially within this program! I was talking to one of my very good designer friends last week about how we both kinda had that round peg in a square hole feeling when we were in high school and yet we are so so happy in the design program here because we feel that we as a program have sort of a collective sense of humor. We specialize, absolutely. Every single person has something they get extra nerdy about. I guess for me it's things like Scott Pilgrim and skateboards. Other people, are into say, jpop or... a lot of anything can go here. But everyone has their little thing, but everyone likes certain things, like lame typography jokes, certain movies, certain fashion, just certain things that we all just seem to like. I spent a lot of time thinking about how awesome it is to be different, and I'm still different, but it's nice to belong to this cohesive group.

So I guess what I'm trying to tell you is, find your People. Get to know them, don't worry so much about weirdness because I truly believe that everyone in the world is weird, and that is why anyone can find something in common with someone else. We're all weird. I think you'll have more fun this way and let me know how it goes!

"The parents"

2011-09-08T13:26:00.001-07:00

My family had a tradition of going to the beach all together every year from when my dad was a little kid until a good percentage of the family disbanded from participating in this trip in favor of other things when I was in my early teens. For one glorious week every summer, we all would arrive at our rented beach houses and our parents would set us loose, unconcerned about our whereabouts until bedtime every night. We became the village that raises the child, savages on the beach spending all day every day either in the ocean or inside playing nintendo 64. Instead of 'mom' and 'dad', we had 'the parents.' if we wanted to go to the military surplus store, taco bell, or the mall, one person was nominated to go ask 'the parents.' at this time of the year, our parents were all suddenly either the parents of nobody, or everybody in the house. Their jurisdiction only covered the geographical area and at any time any parent could find themselves trying to get the ocean out of a small child's nose, stop an unruly child frommjumpng through the seat of a chair and breaking somebody's beautiful garage door with their skateboard, and turning away people that are too sandy, or they could just be reading a book. It all depended on the movements of the tribe of no man's children.

What I've learned so far.

2011-08-02T20:05:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been a while. It's been a crazy summer. Probably the best yet. I feel like I learned a few things this summer, along with the rest of my life so I'll share.

1. Don't take your family for granted, they will often wish to help you if they know you need help or that you were wanting to go snowboarding on the 4th of July.

2. I did a few pilgrimages this summer. I might elaborate on that a little later but for now suffice it to say that even if they are hard, the more you suffer (to a point), the more you'll get out of it later when you get a chance to think.

3. Do make sure to take a little time out to think. Better yet write. You might want to look back.

4. In situations (be it a budding relationship or a budding job, etc.) where the other person says "yeah, just show up whenever you feel like it," you will likely be putting much more in than you will be taking out so approach with caution.

5. Don't work for free. In my case, I find that no matter how much I care about this free project that I'm doing, even if I care more about it than I do about the other stuff that I am getting paid for in some way, it will always fall to the bottom of priority even, usually, with a short deadline. Not only that, but it devalues graphic design as a profession. You wouldn't ever walk up to a doctor who you are just beyond acquaintances with and ask him to set your broken leg right? I have made the decision not to set people's artistic broken legs for free anymore. If I don't think my work is worth money I should probably do something else.

6. Do make time to have fun. Own your stupid hobbies. I have 4 longboards, a snowboard, and a bike which will soon be turned into a hipster machine (finally! I've been trying to save up for so long!). I also play video games intermittently. Sometimes even embarrassing ones that I won't admit to playing at this time. I'm certain that there are lots of people that think all or most of those things are dumb. In the past I have sometimes gone to such great lengths to avoid letting people know that I enjoy these things that I have stopped doing them for periods of time. Now, I just make sure I'm really into the design side of these things so that nobody can ever question me. I also just don't care because most of the friends that are around at this point either enjoy these things as well, or are very understanding as long as I understand their stuff too. Which brings me to:

7. Don't waste your time trying so hard to be friends with these people that look like they have amazing lives if every time you are with them trying to be impressive you are suffering and bored and thinking about your friends that are longboarding or playing telestrations without you. The people you are thinking about when you are off trying to be impressive are your real friends. Stay with them and you will get happier.

8. This one's mostly for the artists out there, but could likely be applied to everyone else: Do make sure to spend time doing something within the area in which you try to earn a living doing something that isn't for anyone else. Those turn into the best projects because you have time to try ideas you might not have time to play with otherwise and other people usually like them too.

9. Be maybe even a little too polite. I met someone recently who blew me away with how friendly and polite he was and for the first five minutes I was a little thrown off, but I realized that he is genuinely pleasant to be around. This is something I could for sure work on. So I work on it.

For now, all the other things I ever learned are eluding me. What have you guys learned in your lives?

I fried my friend and that's the end.

2011-06-11T11:10:00.000-07:00

Well, this happened a long time ago, but it did happen so you all should know. This blog post is in memory of a dear friend of mine that I had known for a couple of years. My straightener. I plugged it in with all the proper ceremony in hopes of preserving its life, and it seemed to work, alas, the moment I was finished straightening my hair (sort of) it gave up the ghost and began to smoke. I haven't actually checked, but I'm pretty sure that it will never turn on ever again. The poor dear. I liked it really a lot. I suppose I should have left it home but I had thought that I had used it successfully in Italy. Ah well. Que sera sera.

Anyways, Switzerland is AMAZING! Everything I hoped for and much more. No pictures because I'm on a bandwidth diet but maybe sometime I'll take a good one before I leave. The first week or so was brutal you guys. We hit the ground running and I can't tell reliably how long we have been here because I don't remember many of those first nights and even still I hit the pillow drooling every night. Being so tired, sometimes I'm not sure if I've slept lately.

But yeah, some guys the other day were saying "TOURISTS" and some other french really loud and I was sorry that I didn't know how to say I CAN UNDERSTAND FRENCH but now I'm prepared. My roommate taught me how to say it so now I have to learn to say it right and now I'm just waiting for my chance. I am so excited. But I will have to leave so fast because that's almost all I can say.

Ok now I'm in Switzerland!

2011-05-30T05:20:00.000-07:00

And I'm trying to stay awake because we left at 9:20 AM Salt Lake time and got here at 8:55 AM Switzerland time! Staying awake until a bedtime! I've been awake for I think 22 hours now.
Here's a little photo evidence that I really am here. I've had to resort to using my phone's camera because... I forgot to charge my camera battery so it's been doing that. Hub sweet hub. You're never far from home. (for those not attending USU, the food court in the student center is called the Hub.)
This is where I sleep this month. Up in the loft! Huzzah!
View from my window. Ping pong table, and a tram.

Also, this is what the first class chairs looked like on our plane.
That's like a freakin inception chair. It even folds flat into a bed. A BED. I am a first class hater because we had the regular chairs. Come on.

So long farewell.

2011-05-29T13:32:00.001-07:00

Well, here I am. Specifically, the Dulles-Washington DC airport. In a while, I'll be getting on a plane for... 7 or so hours at which point I will be in SWITZERLAND. I am stoked. A little worried for that first day though. I guess I'm getting there in the morning and we're staying up all day to try to beat jetlag as fast as possible. Trouble is, I don't really sleep on planes so... I'll be clocking in a lot of hours. I think it'll work though, I managed it in Italy it was just really hard. BUT I AM UP FOR A CHALLENGE. This trip is gonna rock you guys.

PS don't text me I guess it costs like 50 cents for me to receive a text in not america which is kinda a gyp because I can't truly control you guys and make you not text me, but, que sera sera.

Here's hoping the food on the plane rocks! Expect to hear from me soon.

I haaaate washing my hands.

2011-04-11T22:40:00.000-07:00

So much. I'm sorry if you are troubled by this knowledge. Please know that I almost always wash them. I have trained myself because people that don't always wash their hands are looked down upon by society. I know why it is that I hate it now, but I'll get back to that. I'm not sure where my loathing began. Perhaps it's just that people act like it's such a quick health saving step that you do 50 times a day but I don't buy it. First, you try to get enough soap (there's almost never very much). Then you try to get the water on. In all cases of every different kind of sink, it's hard, especially if you already have the soap. Either you have jedi sinks that ignore the waving of your hand, a one lever deal (probably the easiest, although in my apartment the temperature of the water has a large range but very little gradient. For the most part it is flowing ice or liquid steam.) or the twist two different knobs deal. In one very old apartment I occasionally spend time in, they have a hot faucet and a cold one. Like 4 inches apart. If anyone can explain how to work that one, PLEASE tell me. I feel like washing your hands in that sink is a 2 player game because one person has to direct the two terrible extreme streams together with their hands so you can have a somewhat reasonable temperature of water to wash your hands in. Whoever thought that was an idea that should go into production was kind of dumb. So finally you get through the ordeal of washing and you turn off the sink again (If you're a germophobe this is a problem in itself because then you have to touch something dirty with your clean hands). Next, and most cumbersome, you must dry the hands that are wet. Choices: 1.paper towels. 100 of them because they do not absorb very often. 2. terrifying rotating towel thing like they used to have everywhere. I think these are all gone now but I remember them and they never looked clean at all. I think they probably made your hands dirtier than they were before you started washing your hands. 3. ineffective hand dryer. followed by 4. your pants. and then your hands are still damp and it's annoying and you can't get back to creative pursuits for a while because your paper will get wet and it's just awful.

The dry off the hands stage is especially awful to me now because of all the metal in my hand which is covered by just a small little bit of skin and it has sharpish corners and I just don't like having my hand rubbed which is what you do when you dry your hands. It hurts. (So does shaking hands with old men at church who grab on too fast.)

So I just hate washing my hands.

UNTIL NOW. The Dyson air blade has come onto the scene and changed the world. It's fast, super effective, and your hands feel like they were never wet. Good for everyone and the environment. And your little dog too. It would probably dry a very small dog quickly. All you do is stick your hands down in it, it starts blowing at a colossal speed that actually squishes the skin of your hands a little, and then you pull them out sort of slowly. You don't even have to touch anything. It senses you. And it actually does! This is the greatest invention since adobe illustrator. I washed my hands 3 times the first time I encountered one just because I was so happy about it. Every time we go to smash burger I make sure I drink plenty of water so I can use the bathroom and joyfully wash my hands. I am only a little bit kidding. I hope every place in the world has them soon because I think the incidence of hand washing would go way way way up. I would really like to own one. Someday I will.

No, I am thinking too small here. When I am rich from doing something incredible but not something that makes me famous because that is not wanted, I will get one. A big one. So big that it can dry my whole body. Then when I take showers, I will be dry in 2 seconds. No need for a towel. Not that I hate towels, I like them. This is just awesomer. I like showers, don't love the lingering wetness, except in the summer when it feels really good because it is less hot. I take a shower pretty much every night in the summer just to keep from dying of being baked in my bed.

So now you know my life's plan. Please don't be disturbed. I do wash my hands like 95 percent of the time and always when it is absolutely necessary such as when cooking or at work. But just because I do it doesn't mean you can make me like it. Usually. Get a slab of metal in your hand and perhaps you will understand.

BFA was on friday.

2011-04-10T23:01:00.000-07:00

For those of you unfamiliar, that is when all the graphic design program hopefuls bring in their portfolios and leave them for a few hours and then they come back, pick them up, and check the list that the graphic design fairy left to see if they got in.

I was not on the in list.

So, I guess that means, for now, that I am joining Cassi Gail in the ranks of the art school rejects.

We're thinking of starting a band, or better yet, becoming marauding pranksters until we get in. So if you happen to see us marauding, feel free to join in and maraude with us. (Don't worry, we'll only be marauding peacefully. We're not that bitter. Marauding is awesome though.)

Until next time.

Ads for shoes

2011-03-29T18:02:00.000-07:00

In Typography we are making ads for shoes. So I whipped up a few and here they are.
You guys should tell me which is your favorite.

I went running one time last year.

2011-03-23T21:32:00.000-07:00

Yeah, no joke. Before I get to my story I have to explain something. I have never been one of those people who liked to go work out hardcore. I always felt like whatever muscles I had or whatever should come from stuff I actually do. And it does work out fairly well, my legs are strong, sometimes my arm is strong if I play squash, but I've been noticing lately that I have zero cardiovascular fitness and not a lot of energy so I decided I should start running. Last year. So I grabbed my earphones (last year) and went to get my gym shoes then remembered I threw them away because they were from freshman year of high school and the soles had gotten so lousy that I could slide across the floor of the squash court so I ran in my allstars because that was the best I could do and I thought I should get in shape. I was actually pretty impressed (last year) with how well I was holding up against the running, but afterwards my knees hurt like something that hurts really bad. So I decided not to run again until I got some shoes.

Then I broke my hand. So then I could do remarkably little in the way of physical exertion, wasn't even allowed to skate to class. So it got worse.

Over the summer, I got some shoes but didn't run. I did ride the satan bike to and around sugarhouse park a few times. Then this year I was totally gonna do it but I dunno what happened this fall. Then over winter break I decided to start drinking a bunch of water because it would be good for me and I was like yeah! I'm gonna start running so I can be in good shape!

But then I got my wisdom teeth out and I was supposed to take it easy for a little while and even though I went snowboarding within 5 days, I thought I should take it easy... You know, don't wanna start anything dangerous after having had surgery. Then my earphones broke. Then two days later my headphones snapped in half. So I sent in the headphones and held onto the earphones because they...Sorta worked. So finally I got my new ones over spring break and it was warm enough to climb to the fieldhouse in shorts so I decided it was now or never even though there were extenuating circumstances last Friday.

So I ran my butt off. I felt like I was dying, but I pushed myself a little because a little exercise never hurt anyone. I never ran any higher than 6, and that not for long. (Does anyone know what those speeds mean? Is it mph or is it just a number?) Meanwhile, the guy next to me started running and continued during the last 20 minutes of me running, he ran along at 9. Never slowed. Just goin strong. He is probably still there now. So I stopped after half an hour and felt like I was about to pass out as I stepped off the treadmill (yes the treadmill. I can't be depended on to keep a pace. I run at the speed of my thoughts if left to my own devices and that is really fast. And then I have to practically crawl for a while and then I sprint again. Bad.) I thought I was about to pass out. As I walked out of the building, I felt like nothing was real. I decided it was just a runner's high or whatever. Then I was bored so I got out my balance board and now I stand on it all the time pretty much whenever I'm standing around I'm standing on it. Then I went to the African Banquet and ate Ethiopian food. I came home that night feelin good, then all of a sudden I crashed and I felt like I was going to die or throw up (I did neither). I dunno if it was the lack of sleep, the exertion, the unusual food, or what. That was a rough day though. And then I was stiff as though I was dying. And now I've been running again like twice since then and felt great. Apparently there's sort of a one day major break in period.

I do still feel like passing out after I step off every time though.. And today my left leg felt shorter than my right one. Does this go away?

An open letter to cereal eaters

2011-02-28T10:59:00.000-08:00

As a non cereal eater, there are some things I don't understand. Well, I eat cereal, I just don't put milk on it so I am disqualified from this discussion. Or I eat oatmeal. Still not the same.

Anyways, why do people feel like it's a good idea after they eat their cereal to leave the bowl of milk just sitting there?? I swear this is universal and I have no idea why. It used to be my job to set the table for dinner and there would always be a bowl or two of dead cereal milk on the table from breakfast if it was summer or if not then from my brother's hourly feeding frenzy. Steve only ate cereal when he was in high school, I think. And all these people in my family are, or were, sloppy eaters too, therefore the milk would run down the side of the bowl, making a ring on the table. After they finished, they left it there, Or maybe they would drink the milk out of the bowl, leaving little pieces of cereal in the bottom of the bowl with a few drops of milk along with the milk on the table. Over the day, this milk would dry out and petrify the cereal to the bowl and the bowl to the table. Or there would be a bowl of milk petrified to the table. Both of these things were equally my favorite. Either I had to pry the bowl off the table and then pry the cereal off the bowl, or try to pry a bowl of milk off the table without getting it all over my hands because that is nasty. The way my house is set up, chances were good that this person would walk past the sink on the way to their next destination. How hard could it be to pour the milk out in the sink on the way?? Or just rinse out the little bits of cereal even? I would be happy with that, even though for a gold star you would need to also stick that bowl in the dishwasher.

Today, I came out to our little apartment kitchen here to see that some roommate of mine had cheerios for breakfast and then left the bowl, milk and all, sitting in the sink. It's like the world is taunting me. Why don't I bring this up with whoever that was? Because it's not actually a big deal, that bowl is not my responsibility and I will not clean it but I'm still ticked that my sponge fell in that milk. I do not like milk.

Horrifying dream.

2011-02-27T16:02:00.000-08:00

All those who are tired of hearing about typography, turn back now. It's getting worse. I had a dream that was terrifying on a couple levels. First that the subject matter was scary, second it was scary that I was even dreaming about this.

I dreamed that I got to my Typography class to find that my teacher was there, looking crestfallen. He informed us that a virus had swept the computers of the earth the night before and had deleted all the fonts. And all record of the fonts. And packs of the people responsible were roaming the earth finding all copies of all fonts and burning them in a horrible possibly ozone destroying fire. I assume that all the plastic discs that these fonts are probably stored on somewhere would not be very good for the sky.

Now, when I say all the fonts, I don't mean all the fonts. Obviously they had to leave a way to communicate. So all that was left was papyrus, comic sans, marker felt, that one font that looks all old westy and like it should be on a saloon door, and arial. Everyone in my class and all the graphic designers in the world were immediately traumatized. Not surprisingly, the general public of the Mormon world (except for the designers) went on, completely unaffected.

Begrudgingly, I used arial for the rest of my life but I was not that stoked about it. I also kept old typography projects that I had printed out that were from "before" and passed them down to my children so they would know what good type looked like.

Framing things in terms of the percentage of your life is weird.

2011-02-20T19:59:00.000-08:00

For instance, I took down a huge portion of the junk on my walls that I used to blog about this weekend. There is a whole stretch of wall that I have not seen in 10 years. That is half of my life. Another example, my brother and his wife are coming right up on their third anniversary, and counting when they were dating they've been together around 5 years. That is a quarter of my life. Yammy's been around for 3 years or so. Given that I'll be 20 and a half (yes half birthdays are important to me) in a week or so, he's been existing here for nearly a seventh of my life. at the end of this school year I will have been living in logan for about a tenth of my life. I've been snowboarding for 6 years now. Over a quarter of my life. Before that, I skied for 6 years. Makes me feel pretty old.

And yes, half birthdays really do matter to me. For one thing, my birthday is always like the first day of school and then I make all these friends who would have celebrated with me but then they didn't know me because it was the first day of school. So I am planning something for my 20-and-a-half.

I love typography so much that it is ridiculous.

2011-01-21T15:01:00.000-08:00

I always knew that I would have a special place in my heart for it. The more I look back, the more I realize that all things in my life point either to typography being awesome or just to graphic design in general being the best. It really hit home last night though. Various friends have been telling me how great the textbooks for typography are, so last night I decided I would read a page or two of The Mac is Not a Typewriter before I dove back into the book I'm actually reading. An hour and 50 pages later, I was still enthralled but had to go to sleep. Who knew that em dashes and quotation marks could be so awesome?

Animal Cruelty

2011-01-15T13:04:00.001-08:00

I was driving past the field by my apartment (No you guys, there seriously is one.) and I noticed that 2 out of the three horses there were wearing jaunty and fashionable plaid horseblanketcoats. The odd one out had no horseblanketcoat to speak of at all. Not even a lame cow print one or a plain one. He just stood there shivering while his more fashionable friends contentedly hung around digging in the snow to eat grass.

Why didn't that horse have a horseblanketcoat?? What a jerk urban farmer. does he hate that horse or something? Is he hoping that the horse will take the hint and painfully climb over the barbed wire fence and leave? You can't do that to a horse in an urban environment like Logan! Where's he gonna live? most of the places I know of around here don't allow pets. It's several miles I believe to the next farm.

AND ANOTHER THING. Why do the horses have to dig their faces into the snow just to find food? That's not fair. Their little nostril hairs are gonna freeze and then they will never smell again until they get warm. At some point they're gonna run out of grass too.

And my final point? Why just horseblanketcoats? Horse bodies don't stand in the snow, horse feet do! That jerk farmer should buy those horses some fashionable boots. Warm ones too. Like mine. I have cool eskimo boots and when I remember to have them with me they keep my feet and legs so warm. Pretty sure those poor horse legs are really cold from like the knees down.

And I don't even like horses. Don't get me started on cats.

Every time I get some great news related to Utah State, I have been injured recently.

2011-01-06T16:59:00.000-08:00

When I received my acceptance letter to Utah State, I had recently caused severe damage to my right pinky toe. I was running down the hall at my house at top speed and there is a corner in that hall as it kinks to the left just a tad. As it was rather early and I was trying to get to class, I caught my toe on the corner and dislocated or broke it or something. To this day I still have to put it back in place occasionally. Just as it started to heal, I did the same thing again. Could hardly walk for so long. Right around that time, I found out I got in. Enclosed was a piece of paper that said I'M IN! on it with instructions to run around shouting holding it above my head.

I couldn't.

Last spring, I received an email informing me that I had been accepted as a general art major.

Had a broken hand, screws and all.

Today, I found out I'm going to Switzerland in June! Graphic Design study abroad! So unbelievably stoked.

Got my wisdom teeth out on Monday.

So this Spring I am applying into the graphic design program.

Anybody wanna make a guess about what the damage will be then? Assuming I get in?

...And that was when I knew I was destined to become an art major.

2010-12-24T13:21:00.000-08:00

It was Christmastime. The year 1995 or 6. I was five or six years old. These were simpler times, my sister and I still shared a bedroom which had lots of floor space for playing. One day, my parents brought home a little playhouse for us, made of cardboard. It was white with black outlines of things like doors and bricks. A giant coloring book house, if you will.

At that age I was notorious about finding markers and making interesting murals on the walls, so my parents had all but eradicated the threat of markers in the house. (Almost. My mom did use markers for art type things and also coloring in invitations she printed out because this might have been before the time of colored printers. But she kept a very close eye on her markers.) Therefore, we were using crayons which is probably a good idea in hindsight, because crayons don't stain the carpet when you drop them and we all know my dexterity was not that great when I was 5.

Being a child who loved to color, (this is not why I was destined to be an art major, every kid likes to color. Please don't assume.) I attacked the house with great fervor, coloring the bricks and everything else. Pretty sure my color choices were pretty accurate too. My sister, however, was a slightly evil demon at that age. Mostly she just liked being in charge, I think. Remind me to tell you guys the story of every time we sold snow cones on the corner and every time we played in the snow. Perhaps in my next post. Speak up if you want to hear it.

Anyhow, she saw my coordination in staying in the lines as being somewhat substandard. She hatched a scheme which would allow her more control over the aesthetics of the outside of our house. She handed me a forest green crayon and told me that that should be the color of our inside walls, similar to the walls of our room at the time and my room now, although the paint color as opposed to the crayon color is closer to kelly green. No I don't know why they call it kelly green. I guess kelly likes it.

I thought it was a great idea and, with crayon in hand, dutifully marched inside the house and began to color. Unlike a normal child, who would be tired of that in two minutes, I kept it up for some amount of time between 20 minutes and 20 hours. It's hard to tell how much time has passed in your young memories, sue me. After finishing about a quarter of an interior wall, I got tired of my efforts for the time being and wrote FOREST GREEN as large as I could several times on each wall, figuring that would suffice.

I may have come back later to put in some more time on this job which felt slightly pointless but it mattered because it would look good.

You guys, I really like nalgene bottles.

2010-12-21T17:22:00.000-08:00

I seriously do. They are amazing! It might be for largely the same reason that I like ski goggles. Not because of how they smell, although I do like that about goggles, but because of the colors. They come in so many! My favorite nalgene of all time was the one that came with my awesome backpack with the gooshy straps that my mom bought me in 7th grade in order to soften the blow that I would be walking home from school from now on. I went to a school that is at least 5 miles or something from my house for elementary school, and so till this point in my life my dad had dropped myself and any applicable siblings off on his way to work and we carpooled home. My middle school, also known as "the worst place in the world which I have blocked out so well that I barely remember what the building looked like" was only a mile or so away. So I walked. It was then that I discovered my love for walking. Seriously you guys I walk around a lot! I can often be seen wandering campus when I am trying to dream up an idea for the next art project. Anyways, this nalgene bottle was neon yellow. Like the visors on lego helmets! I always thought those looked pretty sharp on black helmets and hey my water bottle had a black lid. It was amazing. So good. Then the handly part of the lid broke which was a shame but oh well. The last time I remember seeing it was on field day in 7th grade. I believe that somebody stole it which makes me mad because that color is actually very hard to find. After that, I used my brother's red one for a while because he was on his mission and wouldn't care, but that one also did not have a loop and I abandoned it back in the basement. Then I commandeered a chlorine blue one and covered it in stickers and attached a carabiner. Yes. Still got it. My collection contains 3 others, most have stickers. With the exception of the regular blue one which doesn't so I can put it in the dishwasher without the stickers dying. The rest I clean by myself. I have an orange one and a green one and my mom went to a lot of effort to find me the orange one so I will never lose it ever. Drinking water is awesome.

So make this post more christmas related, I'll tell you about some of our funny Christmas traditions. We hang a pickle ornament on the tree every year and whoever finds it is supposed to get some sort of reward. People find it all the time but there is not actually a reward. Also, every year we have Crown Burger for dinner on Christmas Eve. This tradition sprang up from my dad being starving along with the rest of us one Christmas Eve night after delivering gifts to the neighbors and my mom, having preprepared as much of dinner for the following day all day long, was not cooking anymore so somehow we went to Crown Burger and now it is just the no brainer thing to do. After that we siblings exchange gifts, nothing too unusual there, and then we, with the exception of Steve, sleep in the attic above my room and fall asleep to the Christmas Story marathon. Not sure why Steve never joined us. Maybe because he was a teenager by the time we had an attic and valued his sleep in a bed with no younger siblings waking up excited at 5:30 in the morning present. And then Santa always leaves a present at the bottom of the ladder to distract us from sneaking downstairs too early since we are not allowed to see the presents until grandma has arrived and is seated in the room, the fire is lit and breakfast is ready to be carried in. My favorite was the year that we got an I Spy book and my Great Grandpa was still alive and we couldn't find the school and he got so frustrated that he started telling us that he had to walk a mile uphill both ways in waist deep snow to school every day but he sure didn't have to search for it.

Please insert a logical conclusion to this post here.

Textbook pages.

2010-11-22T18:22:00.001-08:00

You know, it bugs me a little that textbook pages are always so very shiny. I dunno why they do that. Regular books with their matte pages that can be read from pretty much any angle are so much nicer. Perhaps it is that the kind of paper necessary to keep textbooks as thin as possible only comes in shiny? Seriously though, I think I am much more likely to read my textbook from an odd angle whilst trying to do an assignment than a book that I am reading because I like it and I want to pay attention to it.

I mean, I'm reading Mockingjay right now and I am riveted. Every night I lie in bed for like an hour with my little worm light and take in a couple chapters. My textbook on the other hand, I read it to glean information to complete an assignment. Even when the material is interesting to me there are always little things like pictures and diagrams and definitions to distract me. I'm a visual learner ok? My attention goes to the highest bidder. Even when it was my photoshop, illustrator, and indesign books that I was supposed to be reading I had a hard time.

Maybe even the hardest time! That book would give you the longest possible form of every step. It's a wonder anybody knows shortcuts anymore. And don't even get me started on tools folks. Every time a step would tell you to use a tool you hadn't used yet as far as the book knows, it would give a page long explanation on the tool and all the incredible things it does. They should put that at the beginning of the tutorial! Hey by the way you're gonna use the pen tool now. It can draw lines. It can draw straight lines. It can draw curved ones. If you are patient enough, you can force it to bend to your will and create any sort of line, making a picture of something hopefully recognizable that was never even there before! ...Oh you wanted to do a tutorial? But if I don't tell you everything this tool does, you'll never succeed at making it do that one thing that will be explained in a second anyways!

Someone needs to rewrite the adobe textbooks with the idea in mind that art students are often prone to distraction. I was so close to standing a chance at completing all those tutorials but then I broke my hand and there was no way. I gave up completely. Trying to wade through those dang things with one hand tied up and a brain addled with pain killers? Yeah right. It was all I could do to get my layouts for my projects done. Thankfully my teacher Brian was patient and understanding and I pulled an okay grade.

I blame the shiny paper.

You guys, I really like bunk beds.

2010-11-22T12:31:00.000-08:00

I was visiting my friend's apartmenthouse the other night and saw, again, her bunk beds. Instantly, I pictured myself camping out on that top bunk. Just all the time, chillin, reading with my little booklight, whatever. I have always loved top bunks. Except when my brother would want me to come have sleepovers in his room when we were little. But come on. There were like 2 feet between the mattress and the ceiling and his room was always so hot. I'll admit that on the occasions he got me to sleep there I really liked it.

I dunno what it is. Maybe it's that I hate it when I wake up and my roommate is looking at me. Even if she isn't. I get annoyed when people witness me sleeping. I dunno why. I have told my other friend that we can live together next year only if we can have bunk beds, no meal plan, and at least a short commute to school for me because really, I can't roll out of bed, get dressed and stuff and then instantly be in class. I need to prepare myself for the nasty shock ahead.

Bunk beds just rock. Even the bottom bunk. it's like a secret fortcave no matter how you slice it. I will of course have the top though because my friend says she hates having to climb up to bed. Joke's on her, I already have giant risers. I vault into bed every night just for the sake of a little storage.

At the very least I want a loft bed. That might actually be better. Then I can sleep by the ceiling and have a secret art cave! I could put up sheets and then I would have a secret do anything place. I'm gonna work on that.

Went to the dentist.

2010-11-03T13:57:00.001-07:00

I had a different tech or whatever cleaning my teeth than usual, which put me out a little but whatever. She took the xrays as they are wont to do once a year and I did my best to not throw up as the xray things poked me in the back of the mouth as usual. She cleaned my teeth and told me how much she liked Switzerland since I was talking about how I am likely going there on a study abroad this summer. Apparently she was married to a military type and then divorced whilst in Germany and she stayed there because she found a dental job and also joined a band and toured all over. So then she grabbed the xrays and said, "So what's the plan on these wisdom teeth?" Well, I've been asking that for years, wanting it over with and my dentist would repeatedly tell me that we should wait another year. No more waiting. He said if you were my daughter... (something he has said all too often in conjunction with painful things like braces) You'd have 'em out by summer break if not christmas. So, what followed was an argument about how I already missed months of snowboarding from March onward thanks to the broken hand so, we agreed the last week of christmas break would be okay. I do want them out sooner than later after all, since I have in fact been feeling them the last couple of weeks or so. It's not bad if I'm busy but if I'm just placidly walking home or dynamically sitting and waiting for things to be done in photo, I have pain in my mouth as though there are cavities between all the teeth which I thought must be impossible since I brush and floss daily and my dentist has been praising my dental hygiene of late. Voila. 4 giant ripe teeth. Should be a great new year. Any year that is started with oral surgery is great right?

(Let the stories about experiences with wisdom teeth commence. You know you want to.)

I am a serial killer.

2010-10-02T21:07:00.000-07:00

Of can openers. This is getting ridiculous. I am going to need to marry someone who will open all the cans or else we will have to figure can openers into the monthly budget. Luckily most of my food does not come from cans.

Here is a chronological list of all the can openers my life has known:

1. The electric can opener we had all my life until I was in my teens: This guy was legit. So I guess that was more of a slow kill. It might have died of age. Very nice though. It had a magnet that sometimes worked (??) and would grab onto the lid you were creating on the top of the can so you wouldn't have to touch it.

After the can opener I grew up with died (perhaps you could call it my can opener, kind of like how a lot of us call the late President Hinckley our prophet) we had:
2. The really cool can opener: this one survived pretty much until I went away to college. I don't know what my family has now but this was legit and didn't work like most of the other can openers, therefore screwing up my ability to work can openers for the rest of my life. It cut around the outside of the top of the can so that you didn't have sharp edges to flavor your soup and stuff with blood and you could just lift the top off! I wished it no ill will.

So then I went off to school and in my first year we had approximately 3 can openers. One night I came home from a weekend in my ancestral home and really just wanted a can of soup. After about 20 minutes of angrily trying to make the can opener work (we only had one that functioned, I think) and no roommates to teach me how to properly open a can, I figured it out with the internet. Thank goodness. I guess that was
3.

and then,
4. This week I wanted to make coconut rice and the only way to do that is to open a can of cream of coconut (well there must be other ways but that is the way). (Why can't all the cans just have pop tabs on them?) so I pulled out a can opener and started to try. It took a minute to remember not to try to cut the top off the can but I did, then I was just going along, hit a rough patch, twisted a teeny bit harder and therefore beheaded the can opener. Sorry roomie...

Rest in peace, old microwave.

2010-09-30T17:20:00.000-07:00

So last year 3 days before we moved out the microwave stopped shooting waves. The managers said that was okay, it was old and they were working on replacing the ancient ones as they died. So when I found out that I would be living in this place again I was a little excited because for sure the microwave would work. However, my beloved old microwave, who we'll call Oscar, was still here! But he worked so that was just fine. Last week though, this microwave ceased to shoot waves again, although the lights turned on, the table spun and it made waving sounds. So we got a new one for real a few days ago.

Last night, I decided to christen it, even though I think everyone else that lives here has used it by now. I wanted popcorn. Now, the popcorn button on the old microwave worked pretty well so I thought I would trust the new one. It reached the end of the popcorn cycle and the bag was not very inflated so I told it to keep going for another 30 seconds. However, it started smelling like it was starting to burn so I stopped it after 20. I pulled the bag out only to find that the popcorn had become so enraged by the new microwave that it had burned through the bag in several places and was smoking.

So I went to use the neighbor's nice old microwave the end.

Life Lesson: Don't bite grapefruits.

2010-09-09T13:34:00.000-07:00

While almost all my aunts and uncles live within the Salt Lake valley now, There used to be about a third of the family living in Phoenix. Given that, we used to go down and visit occasionally. So when I was 3 or 4, we were down there and my aunt Nancy was talking about how they had grapefruits. Or a grapefruit tree or something. I was fascinated by this idea because I love fruit and also, sometimes, grapes. Because I was so excited, my aunt told me I could have one. I had no idea what a grapefruit was. It was big and round though and I thought maybe it was like a giant grape. Yeah, I didn't look at it very hard. So she set it down on the table, maybe so I could become acquainted with it and then went to get a knife or something. I was feeling adventurous so I picked it up and took a bite. That must have been one of the most horrible things I've tasted. (Also cranberry sauce at my grandma's when I was 7.) I think it was so bad that I cried. This is not surprising because citrus fruits are typically not renowned for the deliciousness of their skin. Everybody laughed at me and I learned not to ever eat grapefruit again. What a stupid name.

Just so you know, I still don't like grapefruit or cranberries. Yech. I prefer kiwis and gravy.

Not together.

Kinda weird to be back in Logan.

2010-08-28T10:10:00.000-07:00

Don't get me wrong at all, I am so ecstatic to be here. It's just that it's like it almost never occurred to me that I would be back. I was thinking about that as I was driving here with all my belongings packed up in boxes in the back of my little ole car. Once I thought about it, it started to make a whole lot of sense. For one thing, my family tends to travel a lot, but there are so many places we want to go that there is only one place so far that we've been to twice other than the trips that are annual family things. No matter how much we like a place it's usually on to the next adventure. The other thing is, I had been in college for 2 years, split between two schools. I had to remind myself when I was moving home for the summer not to be all emotional about my goodbyes because I would be coming back. And here I am. This is my life. Could not be happier right now. Just had such a good birthday. Most of the family came in little chunks to visit over the week, I had cafe rio 3 times this week because of that, my roommates trashed my room and bought me a sword, Cassi built me a cake, we watched What's Up Doc, and then today (I guess yesterday it's past Midnight) I convinced all the old roomies from the projects last year that we should all go see Scott Pilgrim vs the World. A movie I was not planning on seeing because I have been worn out by Michael Cera always being George Michael Bluth in everything. Man am I glad we saw it though. It's on the list of my favorite movies of all time. It had all my favorite things in it except snowboarding (and I guess technically no robots either), but that one can slide because the whole movie reminded me of my favorite snowboarding game ever. This whole birthday has just been so good to me. So good to have the whole crew together again. This year is gonna rock. Sorry this is very journal entryish for me.

PS I'm glad the movie wasn't in 3-D. I dunno if it is in 3-D anywhere but it definitely wasn't at the ghetto theater way up in North Logan that was having one showing that was our only option. I am so sick of 3-D movies. I promise they are not even that great. I don't think so anyways. There's only so far the 3-D can go before it falls off the screen. I guess I heard Avatar was good in 3-D though. Only saw it in 2-D twice though.

Catching a fish with one's bare hands.

2010-08-13T22:03:00.000-07:00

My mom once caught a fish with her bare hands. She was young, like a child, and she was at some sort of a lake or a river, I guess, and I believe the story goes that she was lying on a dock staring at the water feeling bored when she saw a fish and tried to touch it. She then proceeded to pick it up and pull it out of the water, to the amazement of everyone, including, perhaps, a creepy man in the bushes who thought he had found the next amazing fishing prodigy. However, people were less impressed when it was discovered that this fish was, in fact, very sick. When he was placed back in the water he had a tendency to swim a little sideways. However, that is her fishing claim to fame.

I myself have never managed to catch a fish with a fishing rod even though I tried a few times, but I too have followed in my mother's footsteps and caught one with my hands. (Must run in the family right?) This fish was not even sick! He was, however, very small. We found him up at the beloved lake in Montana, bumping around near the dock. He was most certainly some sort of a trout, but he was just a baby. Like the size of a fairly sizeable goldfish. He was not exceptionally fast, and my brother and I took turns catching him. His name was Harman.

Shifts in thinking

2010-08-08T22:36:00.000-07:00

Okay back to the shower thing I was talking about earlier. Between wrangling the plucky 2 and three quarters year old, I did get some idle chit chat in and Micah and I were talking about what a difference 4 or so years can make. We can both remember being in high school and going to wedding showers and seeing people open their gifts and be so excited. And it was like, okay, you just opened a frying pan. Why would someone buy that for someone else or be excited about it?

Now, all of a sudden it's like, oh! Those plates are so cool! And those spatulas? So handy. And oh my goodness! Look at those sealing containers with the fun buttons on the lids! When am I getting married so people can buy me cool stuff too?

Adoration.

2010-08-08T21:59:00.000-07:00

Well, I haven't said much about Yami the kid I used to nanny lately, partially because I don't see him as often as I used to, and yet he keeps getting older. Sometimes I just cannot believe how much I love seeing that kid. Most of the time I only see him during sacrament meeting at church and so we have to try to be quiet (hard), but last night we threw a shower for his aunt Sarah who is getting married and babysitters fell through for him and his sister so his mama had to bring them along.

Happily, he ran right up to me and jumped into my arms, which is where he stayed for a good portion of the night. He didn't really want to walk around because of all the strangers hangin around the house and even though he wanted to talk to his grandparents and his aunts, he wanted to play with me. I was a bit ecstatic because I haven't seen him outside of church since about June. Now, the last time he was at our house I'm pretty sure was during last fall's general conference. And the time we blew bubbles was even longer ago. Probably a little over a year. Somehow, he remembered that I keep the bubbles in my room and he also remembered that said room is upstairs, last door on the right. So we got the bubbles and blew them with Steve and Micah.

I just love this kid when he's happy and excited. He's so shy and timid and quiet but when he opens up a little he has the winningest little smile and the biggest laugh. It's almost more of a shriek. It's so funny that when it happens people often turn and stare at where this sudden beam of light came from. I absolutely love that I can make him laugh like that.

We also gave some snacks to the fishies in the pond, including the big orange one with the black spots who is now a tigerfish because Yamato loves tigers. He's going to be the ring tiger at the wedding because he thought people were asking if he was going to be the ring bear and he doesn't like bears.

My papa, and technology.

2010-08-07T22:13:00.000-07:00

Something I have noticed this summer about my dad is his adoration of technology, especially apple products. I just love it. Not only that, but he is incredibly committed to making these things work. Case in point: He got the new iphone, as did my mom. Now, we had tons of fun playing with facetime together with the two phones all sitting around the table some Sunday recently. Good fun. I actually think I might want to get this new iphone. I didn't like the old one but this one is way prettier. We'll see though.

One thing that doesn't work so great, though, which I'm pretty sure has never worked very well on any cell phone since the beginning of time, is the voice command feature. I have a hard time understanding why phones have this, period. To get his phone to call his own wife, my brother has to go out of his way to mispronounce her name and say, "call, (comma implies a necessary pause) Meekah." At which point the phone will then say, "calling, Micah." The phone says it right but if he says it right it won't understand. I know.

My dad tries to use the voice command to get his phone to call people all the time when he is in his car. Never once have I heard it choose the right person to call. Often, it tries to call Cafe Rio instead. Once, when my mom was in the car, he was showing her how great it is and he said, "Call, Maren." The phone wittily replied, "Calling, Rose." (Last names avoided here, but Rose is my grandma.) I can't say my mom was terribly pleased by this.

Apparently the voice control feature on the new iphone has a genealogical glitch?

Narcotics

2010-07-24T19:48:00.000-07:00

You know, I was thinking back to when my hand was in dastardly amounts of pain and I had to take drugs to take the edge off and get to sleep and how I would read some of the text messages I would send out between the time when the drugs kicked in and when I fell asleep. But especially the day that I had the surgery and there were an exceptional amount of who knows what drugs in me to the point that I could tell I was in pain, I just didn't feel anything until the next day. At all. I had a very interesting random conversation with a friend that day via text that started almost after I woke up. It covered such topics as how I wished I was a computer instead of a person because they handle being switched off and back on much better and how the drugs were making me breathe a lot. I'd have to ask him what else I said because all else has faded into the fog for me and the texts are long gone but I realized that my brain might be a little different from many people. How?

Well, when I read those texts the next day and the other ones other days I usually remembered that I had been talking to someone but not remember what was said. At the same time though, once I read them I totally understood what I was thinking because these are the kinds of things I think about almost always. So as far as I can tell, the main effect that these drugs have on me is that they loosen up my tongue, kind of the opposite of ritalin which I took when I was little and made me very shy and quiet to the point you could tell exactly the moment when it wore off because I suddenly had a hundred questions. Anyways, yeah. The only main difference between me and me on drugs is that I am more vocal about exactly what I am thinking about.

Now, I have the impression that other people tend to get a little more mindwarped when they are on lortab and such, although I could be wrong. But I never felt euphoric or had any other change in mood, just felt a little sick and wanted everyone to know what I was thinking. Am I normal or weird? Anybody got stories of comparison?

Yami is the most articulate child I have ever met.

2010-06-30T18:41:00.000-07:00

For those of you unaware, Yami is the half Japanese fantastic child that I used to nanny and I still make appearances in his life as frequently as possible. I took him to the zoo today. We saw the Baby Elephant. He then asked to see the Rhinoceros (not the rhino, rhinoceros) but the baby elephant seems to be living in his house. We then saw various other uneventful things on the way to the giraffes (which he was super excited for by the way. He REALLY wanted to see them). I should stop at this point and say that I am always a little entertained and maybe fascinated by the things that scare him. He's a very different kid. Sometimes I think he takes after me. He is left handed after all, and somethings come from upbringing and not genetics and I do assist in bringing him up when I can. Anyways, we got to the giraffes and he was very excited as we stood by the fence. I put him on my shoulders so he could see better. We saw a giraffe scratching his neck on the doorway to his house and it was the coolest weirdest most interesting thing I maybe have ever seen a giraffe do.

I thought perhaps we should go into the giraffe house and get a better look since Yami likes them so much and all, he agreed. So we went in and we were skulking around, checking out the animals that are 3 times bigger than me when he starts screaming. Alarmed, I get outside as fast as I can and ask what's the matter when he calms down a little. He then says to me, word for word, "I got scared because the giraffes are so much bigger than me." This kid can communicate. Did I mention he's two and a half? He also was very scared of the reptile house. The building, not the things in it. Once I got close to the door he was very upset. Once we got inside and saw the "flying turtle" he was fine. Except he mostly refused to walk on his own but that was okay. Even though I felt like I was going to drop him because my hands were all slicked up with the sunscreen I rubbed all over him so he wouldn't be a fried dumpling. He also weighs 23 pounds. A little low, I think, for a two and a half year old, but it's still plenty.

He was upset a lot because my shoes are broken. The dear things have holes in them and they're almost ready to retire.

I can now be mistaken for a speed skater!

2010-06-28T13:33:00.000-07:00

I decided it really was high time that I pony up for a helmet for my on-land not snowboarding so I don't need a really warm helmet activities. It's just so frustrating to find one that fits! Finally, I came to the discovery that The same company that makes my really warm helmet for snowboarding makes the same one only not hot! Now, this helmet fits like my scalp so I jumped on it. Did I get black again? Heck no! If I'm going to wear this thing out in the street on my skateboards and my bike if it ever has wheels, I'm gonna stand out.

What color then? Yellow. So maybe I will also get some rollerblades and pretend to be a speed skater. Everyone knows that speed skaters wear yellow helmets. At the very least they seem to do so in the olympics. I don't know why, I haven't researched the whys behind their color choices, I just want to try it. So this should be fantastic! Everyone can see me and really, I love armor.

I also pulled out my snowboarding goggles just to make sure in the event of some skateboarding goggle necessity I would be covered. Oh my heck. I adore the smell of goggles. I forgot how much I love it, but as soon as I opened the goggle bag the smell came seeping out. This is why I use a pair of old goggles my mom had in my childhood for something that mildly has a smell and hangs off my rear view mirror instead of a little fake pine tree. Well, and they look cool. Just the delicious plasticky foamy smell of that foam reminds me of when I was 4 years old and I used to wear the aforementioned goggles all the time in the house because it was determined that I was not yet old enough to ski and I would run around pretending like I was a superhero or pretending that everything I could see was on fire (orange lenses) and then when I took them off water must have fallen on everything because then it all looked blue for a minute.

Don't worry, they fit.

You know, owls are kind of terrifying.

2010-06-28T00:25:00.000-07:00

I just want you all to know that on Wednesday I valiantly and passively shattered my record for number of visits in a day. By one visit. 17 in one day. I am moving up in the world.

Anyways, It's 1:43 am and I am having a tough time sleeping. Just as I laid my head down for the third time tonight preparing to maybe smother myself into unconsciousness because my sleep schedule is wacked, my eardrums happened to detect a noise. Perhaps one similar to the ones an owl or two would make. Excited, because back before we left for Peru (does anyone want more stories) there were 3 of them in my tree for a night or two, and I thought they had moved on and I was sad, I pulled up my blinds hoping that the dimmish light of my lamp would not frighten the dear thing(s). Lo and behold, there is an owl perched above my head! Hooray!

Aw geez. It is staring at me. Every time I turn my head or shift from side to side the owl follows me. Just staring. Hooting a little bit. I think back to the time in fourth or fifth grade when I made a little family of owls for a report or something out of homemade pom poms. Maybe he knows about that. Maybe he's offended at my portrayal of owls when I was littler. Looks to me like I did a pretty good job... He sure is hooting a lot. Who/what is he communicating with?? Another owl? Or something more sinister? Like a monster or an alien?? I shine a bright light at it, thinking to startle it. No dice. Maybe it's a robot owl. With camera eyes.

Am I that interesting when I sleep that a robotic owl would want to catch it on tape?

Highly suspicious...

Perú Part One. Or: We really should just abolish delicacies.

2010-06-20T17:26:00.000-07:00

You know, every country has a delicacy. In America, you could probably say caviar (fish eggs). France, escargot (snails). Scotland, perhaps haggis (I just ate so I'm not gonna look up what goes into that). Perú, cuy (guinea pig). Granted, mormon delicacies are pretty good (funeral potatoes, green jello, I dunno what else. I dunno if you could call these delicacies). But really. Besides those last two, and I'm sure there are some really good delicacies in Asia as well (don't they eat dogs in China? Do they count that as a delicacy or a way of keeping canine population down?), which of these are even good? Do people really like any of these things? I'm gonna admit here that I have only had cuy, but none of the others sound good. It is hard to get much meat off of the ribcage of a guinea pig, which is the part I ended up with, so I didn't get a very good bite but I don't really have a problem with that either. I ate it because, well, the opportunity presented itself and I was trying to be on an adventure and all. John my brother also tried it. I'll go with his description: It tastes more or less like the smell of the place where the guinea pigs live. So why do people subject themselves to such delicacies? I'm declaring frozen yogurt and also fries and pizza and anything that comes from Café Rio to be a delicacy here and now. And also all fruit. Delicious.

Rainy Friday.

2010-05-28T17:13:00.000-07:00

You know, I feel like I don't have a lot to say lately. I guess I will give you all an update on what's going on as much to get me talking as to get you reading.

I'm at home here, working on finding a job although it's... I wouldn't say it's going badly, I've had a couple interviews but the store I interviewed at seems to be taking its time calling people back again and the other places seem to be taking their time getting to the interviews... Zumiez said they'd start calling in about another week. I hope they don't call when I'm out of the country. I really wanna work there. Hopefully something turns up soon because I really need money if I am ever going to get to Switzerland.

We had a lovely waffle party last saturday morning that dissolved into a several hours long war on call of duty. On that note, we're going to the midnight premiere of Eclipse. And we're dressing up! As Batman characters! I cannot even wait.

I took the dog for a walk yesterday.

2010-05-13T17:35:00.000-07:00

It was kind of like trying to walk a boat that is simultaneously trying to pull a wakeboarder. Also kind of like an elevator in that if I jumped right when she started moving, I felt like I could fly for about a minute before touching the ground. Bless her little heart the dog likes to run. If you attach her to a bicycle or drive alongside her late at night, she runs at almost 30 mph. And continues that way for almost 30 minutes. Then she runs about 15. Does anyone have any sheep or goats or baby chickens or baby people? Like a large number? I bet she could herd them so well. She is, after all, some kind of an Australian cattle mix. So, kangaroos too. Didgeridoos in a pinch. My mom was telling me that my brother likes to take her out on his ripstik and suggested that I could do the same or take my longboard... Having taken her on a normal walk, the idea of taking her out with my longboard terrifies me. First I need leathers and a fullface helmet because I would be doing downhill skateboarding up hill. The sheer speed of this pooch is enormous.

Ode to Pine View 48

2010-05-03T22:13:00.000-07:00

I am gonna miss this place, this place of the loudly buzzing and clicking furnace, I'm going to miss South of Nowhere and Felicity. I will miss the egg residue on one window and the view of the ultimate aggie bull out of the window right by where I have slept all year. I will miss watching Jen cook scary food, I will also miss the remnants of her scary food that lingered all through the entire second semester, even though she left us in January. I will miss the mangy green carpets that are fluffy along the walls where nobody but me ever walks. I will miss my feather bed that sheds feathers in all of my clothes, even the ones I don't sleep in... Even though the feather bed is coming with me. I'll miss my wall collage even though I'll just make another one next year. It was a really good one. I'll miss these girls that have been living in the shoebox with me. I'm gonna miss the time when we tried to make popcorn on the stove and lit it on fire. I will miss the garbage can that magically fills up every two hours. I'll also miss the 6 gallons on average of milk that inhabited the fridge, even though I never bought any besides the half gallon of chocolate milk I bought this week. I will also miss that we all had our own personal peanut butter, raspberry jelly, margarine, ranch dressing, and salsa. We shared something real when I think almost every single one of us had a yellow towel. Channing Tatum movie marathons were something truly special. I'll always remember how Caroline inexplicably had the most comfortable bed and she slept here the least because she slept at work sometimes. I remember how some of us thought everything was funnier in the morning, and others were not the type to be having a personality first thing in the morning. Speaking of which, Caroline and AJ were not that happy to see me when I triumphantly returned to Logan after being out for a week from hand surgery because they were gone until early that morning in Wendover. I also remember how they paid tithing on their gambling money the next day. I will miss the quality time that AJ and I spent together many nights in the sculpture lab this semester. I will miss our group dinners that were incredibly far and few between, but so good.

It was so weird moving in with all these people, only one of which I knew, but it's weirder moving out.

We just declared independence.

2010-04-30T11:29:00.000-07:00

By we, I mean the town of Logan. I hadn't realized this had happened until AJ was trying to watch a show on ABC.com and she was told that she seemed to be trying to access the shows from another country, which is not allowed. I knew it was coming soon. We as a small college town have seceded from the United States. I don't have a problem with this, per se, although I didn't think the repercussions would be so immediate. I'm sure it'll last though, the whole secesion, Logan has a really strong military. This is gonna make moving back to Salt Lake for the summer a pain though. Can someone bring me my passport?

Well, I'm dropping out of school.

2010-04-29T18:31:00.000-07:00

And I'm selling my longboards and snowboards and all other miscellaneous boards I own so I can fund and fully concentrate on my new hobby. Fingerboarding. There are companies out there that press them out of actual wood and they have exact replicas of skate trucks only really small and real urethane wheels with bearings. This is too legit to quit. Probably better sell my car too (Just got her back by the way, she looks fantastic). I just spent tons of time watching this one guy's videos. He is a passionate fingerboarder. He built his own little baby concrete skatepark in his backyard with rails, kickers, steps and a bowl. He is also sponsored by razor. Yep, the scooter company. Would that I could be this great. He's legit. But man, I just do not trust those things on flat land let alone a halfpipe. I'm sorry.

Why so very large?

2010-04-24T01:03:00.000-07:00

So I'm helping build a 10.5 foot tall Rubik's cube lately. We have 6 days to put this together. I feel bad that I am a little less than enthused about the whole idea... I try to work a little harder to make up for it. Seriously though. At first I was like 10 feet? That's not so big... (The assignment is to make a sculpture that is at least 10 feet tall and can be displayed outdoors. In Logan the wind tunnel. Possible rain.) But then we got our first piece of wood of full frame size done and oh my heck. It really is about the size of two of us stacked on each other. This thing is gonna be all time.

In other news, Wednesday was a fantastical day. I got up and went to class then blitzed on down to Salt Lake for a marathon of doctors. First, the hand doctor (remind me to tell you about him). He took a few little old xrays, looked at them, and proclaimed that he absolutely loved them. Not only was the picture quality great, but my bone, having been healing for 4 weeks (I'm told it takes about 6 before it's totally solid), is now healed enough that I can now work on doing anything I want to without worrying about the bone too much. Even longboarding! Even though that's a terrible habit! Therefore, I'm going snowboarding soon. Soon as finals are over, I guess. As far as a little more of an update on the hand, it's doing great! Feels better all the time. Range of motion is feeling pretty close to normal and it gets stronger all the time. I give it another week, maybe two before the dang joint bends the way it's supposed to at the rate I'm going.

Next I went to the dentist and told them all about this entire debacle that started 6 weeks ago and they pointed out that I can even floss again! Har. (Don't you fear, I found a way). I was told my teeth look great so that's always good. No xrays this time so no news about whether my wisdom teeth are being an imminent problem.

Then I went to the car doctor to pick up my beloved Bekara. She looks absolutely goreous. Even better than probably ever in the history of the owning of my car. Repairs ended up adding up to more than the cost of the car so consider her effectively resurrected. So good to have her back. It felt amazing to drive my own car again. Sadly it was a little short lived. I also didn't get to do it the way I wanted. Two complaints about the car: First, my secret ipod cable was missing. Turns out it was just stuffed back up in the dash and I just had to find it, but it was a quiet solemn drive home instead of listening to Empire State of Mind so as to finish the song I was in the middle of listening to when I was so rudely interrupted. Other slightly bigger complaint: Bekara smokes now. Hence the short lived. Gotta get her checked on before taking on a major undertaking like driving to Logan. So, I still have the Explorer which I am very grateful that my mom is letting me borrow it. Poor John is turning 16 and is sort of but not really inheriting the thing on the 5th, and he will not be able to have it (assuming he finishes his eagle by then) until I get home which will be later than that because my final is on the 6th. (Yeah... just one... think of my 10 foot tall rubik's cube and also a magazine layout before you get too jealous though.)

But yeah, so much good news! Night everyone it's 2:30.

ABC 123

2010-04-17T12:27:00.000-07:00

It's been a little while since I said anything around here so here. I don't usually do these but I kinda like them.

A - Age: 19
B - Bed size: Twin. Nice and cozy. Any bigger and I roam across the bed all night. I'm very territorial.
C - Chore you hate: Iunno, mopping the floor?
D - Dog's name: Koda the kangaroo with teeth.
E - Essential start your day item: Music. Can't move in the morning without it.
F - Favorite color: Purple.
G - Gold or Silver or Platinum: Platinum.
H - Height: 5'5.5"
I - Interesting fact about yourself: Well I mean everything is interesting to someone... I have plates in my hand?
J - Jewelry you wear every day: ETTE ring, Pay It Forward bracelet, koru.
K - Kids: nothing so far...
L - Living arrangements: I live in a shoebox with 5 awesome girls.
M - Mom's name: Maren
N - Nickname: Annie, Anakin, skywalker, Kannie... Iunno.
O - Overnight hospital stay other than birth: Not yet. Knock on wood.
P - Pet peeve: Spelling.
Q - Quote: I had a good one not too long ago, can't come up with it right now.
R - Right or left handed: Left... Both. Mostly left. Maybe only left now since I broke the right one.
S - Siblings: My family goes boy, girl, girl (me), boy.
T - Time you wake up: 8:15 most of the time during the week, 10:30 or 11 on weekends.
U - Underwear: ummmm. Yes, I always wear underwear
V - Vegetable you dislike: Are pickles a vegetable?
W - Ways you run late: Being convinced that the time I'm supposed to be somewhere is later than it actually is, traffic.
X - X-rays you've had: Left leg in the knee-ish region when I was 4, Left thumb when I was 6, Right hand a month ago and also a week or so ago.
Y - Yummy food you make: Pasta of all kinds, robot cookies, etc.
Z - Zoo favorite: The monkeys in the soccer ball.

I love physical therapy!

2010-04-11T14:09:00.000-07:00

No, I really do. Let me explain why. Those of you that know me (should be the fair majority, not that those of you that are minor are not also fair) should know that I really and truly have Attention Deficit Disorder. Also known as I can entertain myself in an empty room that has stuff in it for hours, even if all that is in the room is dust. True story.

So the thing is, for a person like me who gets yelled at for doing weird things when left to my own devices, being told to do things that I would do if I was bored and alone is like Christmas! Without all the family members and delicious food! At the same time I feel very silly though because I am told to do these things persistently for certain periods of time, these things that appear so very pointless, and so I begin to feel like the little child who is attaching way too much importance to some trivial instruction by a parent.

It's great though! I get to play with milk jugs tied to sticks and also hammers! And silly putty!

My new least favorite thing.

2010-04-01T20:11:00.000-07:00

Now that I have a broken hand, my least favorite thing is talking on the phone. Not that I liked it that much in the first place. Problem is, I am a natural multitasker. Being that I'm ADD I almost can't function if I don't. Holding the phone to my ear makes it impossible to do anything else! Woe is me...

Why I hate Lortab.

2010-03-29T11:41:00.000-07:00

So I took Lortab every night for about two weeks to help me sleep because of my hand. First problem is that I am and always have been a terrible sleeper and now I have to teach myself to fall asleep again.

However, it was kind of hard to sleep when I was on the stuff and here is why I hate Lortab: Consider the normal person's breathing cycle.
1. Breathe in.
2. Breathe out.
3. Repeat.

Oh my gosh there is a girl in front of me in nutrition who must be wearing approximately 6 bumpits in the back of her hair.

Anyways, observe my breathing cycle on narcotics.
1. Breathe in.
2. Breathe out.
3. Breathe out a little more. Make sure the lungs are totally empty.
4. Hold lungs for 5-15 seconds.
5. Panic.
6. Repeat.

Maybe the reason I fall asleep when I take Lortab is because I pass out from air deprivation.

I am going to be part robot!

2010-03-19T15:33:00.000-07:00

Or at least part metal. Went to the doctor today to get my finger set only to find that the doctor thought it would be a resoundingly good idea to operate. The bone is broken into a 27 or something close to that degree angle which is very distantly far away from being ideal for a pointer metacarpal, those wanna be totally straight if possible. So. Tuesday morning they will open up the hand, coax the bone back into place and add a plate and some tiny little screws for good measure. Sounds maybe a little invasive.

But hey. Being that I'm a Skywalker, it's almost fate that I would have at least a little metal in me right?

Hi. Broken hand.

2010-03-14T16:40:00.000-07:00

On Friday, the first day of Utah State spring break, I was driving home to my family home in Salt Lake, when I got there, I decided to drop in on Slade and maybe also Lake but when I was getting to 8th and 13th, I realized it was like 3:30 so I decided to go through the light and go home. Well, the light turned red as I was approaching so I courageously stopped and followed the law. A few minutes later, it turned green so I valiantly proceeded into the intersection. Empire State of Mind was on. Good song. So I was driving through the intersection, enjoying the air through my windows and the music, thinking how great life is, when I was interrupted by a rather large thud. I then noticed the pain in my head followed by my hand. I took a moment to notice that it was almost surely broken, it seems that it flew away to find the stereo on impact. It then occurred to me that I had been t-boned and I thought, not now but later because at the time my head was pretty spinny, that it was ironic because my car was the replacement car for a car my sister once drove that met the same untimely end. I am ok, by the way, just the busted hand, head injury is not hardly existing at all, waiting for my hand swelling to go down so they can set the bone and cast me up, should be really great. I'm feeling really fortunate that I'm walking away from my t-boning with a lot less damage than the one my sister was in 6 years ago that she's still working on. Just because I'm so happy to be alive, fully repairable and mostly functional doesn't mean I'm happy though. That man just derailed almost all my spring break plans, ended my spring snowboarding season before it could start, quite possibly totaled my car which you all probably know I really really loved, and made school much harder for me given that I am an art major and my hands are my livelihood. Probably no snowboarding or riding my fixie for a while either. I hope he's sorry. Didn't really act sorry. Sure started my spring break with a bang.

Anyone know of things I can do with just a left hand? (good thing I write with the left one huh?) So far I have watching movies, reading, drawing and walking around.

I live in the projects of Pine View and I have white lung.

2010-03-10T23:42:00.001-08:00

We were talking about our apartment and how great it is and then my roommate who used to live in the really nice new dorms last year compared it to the projects. The boys from across the hall don't think it's as bad in their place, so I guess we live in the projects. The fridge is cold about half the time, the furnace shakes back and forth banging as though there's a dead body in it, the carpets are mangy, sometimes the ceiling in the bathroom gets moldy, and all our windows always get fogged up.

We love it here though, and now I have street cred for my budding rap career. Also, in the lobby in the middle of the night when I come home from slaving in the art building people are usually playing deathball, a game that I don't understand at all except that people get hit by the ball a lot. Kind of like a drive by shooting right? Iunno, not really. Dangerous stuff though.

In the meantime, slaving in the sculpture lab, I have been sanding my plaster for about a week now, and it's finally done!* I think I have white lung now. This evening we went on an adventure to walmart to get paint (I only go there late at night for art project supplies with other people whilst being crazy. We act like we're 16.) And then we came back, and Mike had been dremeling his forever and ever all night and it was a white haze. I felt like I could almost not see the other side of the room. I feel like this is most likely really bad for you and we should have been having respirators but yeah. I'm willing to bet that if you took an xray of my lungs you would find a chunk of plaster in there. Probably end up with pneumonia or something because of it. Good news is, it's over. Bad news, right now I feel like only half my lungs are actually filling up. Augh.

Just gotta make it through tomorrow and then make it through nutrition on Friday and I am golden. All I have to do is not speed all the way to Salt Lake because if I get any more tickets my license is suspended for 30 days which I am not prepared to deal with. Wish me luck everyone.

*as it's gonna get at this time, might touch up and polish a little more later.

Oscar night.

2010-03-07T22:59:00.000-08:00

Yeah, who am I kidding! I don't have cable. Not sure I care too much about them anyways although Ann Cannon of Deseret News was live blogging all her thoughts about it and it makes me have second thoughts. If you enjoy my blog you would really really love her column that is every Monday. Anyways, I watched TMNT (half of it instead) and then almost died laughing at this picture that I found when I decided for some reason to Facebook stalk Jim Heiner. Finding it for your love and enjoyment. Cropping it.
That is, coincedentally not Jim Heiner, just for your knowledge. But it's the best costume I think I have ever seen. I saw that at 10:30 or so and it is now 12:05 am and while I stopped laughing continuously after the first 10 minutes (first time this year I laughed until I cried) I still have the fits randomly if I think about it too hard. I hope you all feel the way I do. All I can say is if I owned this costume, this exact one, I would probably wear it all day every day. Not really. But really.

Anyways, with an s to bother Kristin I think it is that hates that, I think that most of my pants and some of my shirts are now 50% plaster. So that would make my shirt that I am wearing now, if it was part of this, 50% plaster, 50% cotton, and 50% polyester. Been spending a lot of time in the sculpture lab again. Carving plaster. In case you were wondering, it's not as peaceful as it may sound. For some reason, when I think of the word carving, I think of someone, probably an old kind grandfatherly man, peacefully whittling some wood. That's not the kind of carving we do. We hit the plaster with a chisel that we bang on with a hammer. 20 people or so in class all slammin' away. When you get done with that you grind away at it with a file then maybe later sand it. Intense? Yeah. Therapeutic? Absolutely. Especially at night with Lars and Joni. I have learned from being in the sculpture lab at night that I am actually a very interesting and creative dancer. You all should take the opportunity to sit in sometime, it's a treat, as they will tell you.

Not too much else going on, just living in a den of plagues again, in one room this weekend, we had one roommate hacking up lungs and the other one hacking up lunch. Sad day. I think I am still living though which is nice. It is probably because I have been physically unable to keep myself under a roof this week on account of the gorgeous weather. It's been 50 degrees out and if I had any shorts worth wearing outside up here, I would wear them. Can't wait for next week when spring break happens (sorry U people, I know you have about another week.) I'm so close I can taste it though and it couldn't get here sooner.

Pet peeve.

2010-03-05T10:43:00.001-08:00

People with music players on their blogs. I apologize, I know there are a lot of you people out there that drop in here sometimes, but it drives me crazy. Here's what I'm doing on my computer most of the time. Multitasking. I usually have itunes or some hulu going, or I'm watching a movie on TV or whatever, then I decide to check the blog roll. Well hey there are 3 to 4 new posts! So I open them all in new tabs and all of a sudden once they have loaded I have this giant cacophony. Then I have to scroll down every blog and search for the player, it's usually towards the bottom. I'm sorry, but you people drive me crazy! It's not that I don't wanna know what you're listening to, but does your little player have to be autoplay?

Weird stuff goin' down this weekend.

2010-02-28T21:00:00.000-08:00

So this weekend, I went home. It was a great weekend. But we're going back to the roots of this blog, the second or third post where some pliers or something materialized on the roof of the car and almost killed me on the way to work. Anyone remember that? Points if you do.

Anyways, last night I was at the apartment of a couple friends of mine and I left just before midnight. I drove home and I heard something sliding around on my backseat but I think nothing of it because that tends to happen in my car. When I get to my home, I open the door and happen to look back as the lights are on in my car. Sitting on the seat, in its box, is a dashboard hula man. I do not know where it came from. I am so creeped out right now. There are about 3 possibilities. Went on a date Friday night that included me and the guy looking in the back of my car at my bike, he could have planted it, then Saturday my family and I went up to Park City for the annual Durham ski day, perhaps I didn't lock my car and some random put it in there. Not likely. Or at the aforementioned apartment, I spent about 10 or 15 minutes in their bathroom trying to wrestle my extra pants off because I was freaking hot and they were itching me because I wore them all day. They could have gotten away with murder while I was in there.

OR MY OTHER THEORY: It materialized out of thin air. This has happened to me once before in my life, back in high school. Simpler times.

Freshman gym class. I went and suffered through class and everything and then came back and was changing back into my clothes and I found that I could not find my phone anywhere. After taking apart my locker searching for it (not like there's very many places for things to hide in my locker, it was a gym locker.) Finally I gave up on it and disappointedly slammed my locker shut, wondering who would steal a phone that cost $30 and had a $30 rebate, making it free. Nokia brick. Screen was cracked from me falling on it rather forcefully in a bike accident. As soon as I slammed the door shut, I heard my phone drop to the floor of the locker and there it was. Random materialization. I do not know where the hula man came from.

I think someone broke into our apartment last night...

2010-02-22T10:12:00.000-08:00

And stole my water bottle. There have been a lot of breakins in the general Logan vicinity lately, more like walk in and steals, because people forget to lock their doors. We've been really good about locking up ever since but I forgot to check last night so I don't know if it got locked because we had people around until late. This morning I can find everything except for my beloved orange nalgene bottle that my mom went to great great lengths to find just for me because she really really loves me and I love her for it because my mom is awesome to her kids and she is way too good for us. I still have my blue one with no stickers on it (as opposed to my blue on in salt lake that is covered in stickers), but I can't find my orange one and it's the one that has water in it right now! I rotate water bottles so they can air out.

Never mind... I found it on my roommate's bed where I left it yesterday and it was never found and returned to me because she was sleeping at her workplace (that makes more sense when you know she's a nanny type person.) Thank goodness though. Not to boast but I love this water bottle. It's the coolest one.

In other news, I never ever told you guys about my pony. The one I got for Christmas in case anyone is truly interested and keeping track. I ride it all over campus joyously all the time. And then I lean it against the walls of my classrooms. It is not actually a horse because it is really a longboard. I should take pictures of it myself but I'm a little lazy. http://forty2longboards.blogspot.com/2009/12/34-annies-double-drop.html There is a link to it. Custom built. Sean, the guy who custom built it, is such a gem. If you look at his other boards on that blog, you will see that while the shape of the board is very typical for what he builds, the general appearance is something totally new and different. While I was making all these requests as to what I wanted the bottom of the board to look like, he was so gung ho and willing to give anything a shot. Not only that but he was totally willing to talk with me at great length about what it was that I wanted. Not only does it look pretty but it rides so great. just completely loving it. So if any of you wants a custom board built (I know most of my regulars around here don't longboard), for sure hit up forty2. Even the price was great. Cost me just a little bit more than my other deck which is mass produced. Beautiful.

Also, my mom got me a book on crocheting robots for valentine's day. (Actually I was with her at Barnes and Noble when she was finding books for everyone and I found it. "How do you even find these things??" -my mom. I dunno, they just come to me. I think I'm magnetic even though these robots are made of yarn and my robot cookie cutter is made of plastic. I'm robot magnetic! What an interesting and long parenthetical aside!) But yeah, I should be starting to crochet robots any minute now. I think I am gonna start teaching myself how in nutrition today. I am a bad bad example don't be inattentive like me or you'll never get anywhere kids!

Couple weekends ago me and my roomie AJ had this project due the following Tuesday and we spent long long nights until wee hours of the morning in the sculpture lab. Freaking love that place with the people that were there all weekend in the middle of the night. One night AJ and I went to Walmart around 11 or so (even though I am opposed to walmart. It's open late what can I say?) because she needed some stuff. I ended up getting bagels and cream cheese. AJ got some food and also a hairdryer that fights breast cancer! The entire time we were there this girl was following us around and it was scary and then whilst she was deliberating in the feminine hygiene aisle she nearly got run over by a rather disgruntled man who was trying to wash the floor with a large zamboni type floor cleaner even though we were standing on it. Then I was reading the headlines of the tabloids in my big sleep deprived reading voice while we were in line and a creepy boy asked us where we lived and wouldn't stop talking to us. I think we told him we lived in a cardboard box or something.

Last week was so warm!* In honor of this I almost never wore a jacket of any type. Just a flannel shirt. Even though usually by the time I got home again I couldn't feel my hands. So warm! I also walked to the fieldhouse in my shorts. Fantastic. My friend Cappy did too but she went at like 8 in the morning and her hand got frozen to her water bottle because it was a little wet. Dedication. We laughed a lot because I just got some new jeans in a very dark wash and my legs are dyed blue a little bit and so I look extra sun deprived (not that I'm not sun deprived, I certainly am). We also met Cappy's roommate's brother and it was scary because he is the same person only with shorter hair and he is also taller. So double dose of weird roomie there. (She left me alone with them! What a horrible friend!)

*it was about 40 degrees maybe?

I think that's enough for now, check back soon. I feel verbose lately.

I wish my apartment was a TV show.

2010-01-27T19:47:00.000-08:00

It would be a great sitcom. Every other night or so two to four of my roomies go to a workout class like hyper kick or yoga or piyo (pilates and yoga, apparently). When they come back, we get a reenactment of the class and how weird the teacher is every time. Then there is Caroline, who gets in these crazy moods and usually ends up serenading us or starting a singalong. Or a shouting match. We get obsessed and bond over shows together (Felicity and South of Nowhere, I'm lookin' at you) and then we relate everything to the current show of our lives. Everything. We don't even do it on purpose. We have two art majors who are usually working on something really weird, an english major who writes poetry against her will all the time, two elementary education majors (I think?) and a freshman from Canada. Speaking of which, our Canadian resident loves to hang up the other art major's homework on the fridge and on the walls all the time and it drives her crazy (she'd hang mine up too but I haven't really had anything two dimensional yet). Speaking of the walls, they are a total melting pot of all the decorations everyone has.

And then the fridge. (there are 6 of us in case you lost count) 6 gallons of milk, even though I don't drink milk. At least 4 jars of salsa at all times. Tons of cheese. 4 or 5 bottles of ranch dressing, pretty much everyone has their own butter too. If you open the freezer, you will be buried in an avalanche of garlic chicken pasta stuff. In the cupboards, thousands of dishes. I think if we were all horrible dish doers, we could go a month. I could go on about the 1:1 ratio of hair straighteners to girls but yeah. I dunno I'm just a little entertained by all of this.

So I read on MLIA that if you rub garlic on the bottom of your foot you can taste it 15 minutes later.

2010-01-23T22:08:00.001-08:00

Does this mean that if I were to stick my tongue to the bottom of my foot for a little while I'd be able to taste my tongue? Also, is that why everybody's parents always want their kids to wear clean socks? I guess I can see how your day would be improved by tasting clean socks through your feet instead of dirty ones. Maybe THIS is why I am always happier on the days that I am wearing brand new socks.

How come our feet get to taste things?? I can't help but wonder if this works on other parts of the body. I don't think it works on the armpits, however, or else that girl we paid 10 bucks to lick the stick of deodorant that we found in the locker room on the floor freshman year would have been much much happier about it afterwards. I would imagine that all the things that smell really good but taste horrible (shampoo and perfume anyone?) would taste really good. Heck, I'm sure that if we could taste stuff through all of our skin everything would be delicious and probably edible. Just a thought.

Ok, new year's resolution.

2010-01-23T20:10:00.000-08:00

I don't usually bother with new year's resolutions, it seems to me like to make the resolution is to doom the effort. But I'm gonna make this one. And yeah I know I'm a little late but I've been a grump this year. I just wanna say, by the way, that I hate this year a whole lot more than last year so far. Although the first month of last year wasn't all that hot either. I've been reading mylifeisaverage.com in an effort to find some life inspiration lately and I've decided that this year I plan on putting forth a concerted effort to make my life average like these people's lives.

So there was a demon in my sunday school class today.

2010-01-17T18:22:00.001-08:00

I came home for the weekend. There is a woman in my home ward who is very hard of hearing yet insists on sitting on the back row in relief society. I found this out today, and that is why people have been shouting into the microphone giving me a headache in relief society last month when I was home. They also have begun passing the mic around when people have comments which, as you might imagine, slows down the flow of the lesson considerably. Because of this, the bishop got somebody in the ward to set up 2 wireless mics that could be handed around. Should be good, right? Well, it is except for the part where we were blissfully listening to the lesson (as blissfully as one can listen to a lesson whilst people are shouting into the mic), suddenly, the most piercing, horrible noise graced the ears of everybody in the room. It was later described by my sister as the sound of demons, screaming in some nonunderstandable language like the mermaids in Harry Potter, "NO! DON'T TEACH ABOUT THISSSSSS!" Moments after the noise stopped, a thin, sad little wail came from the child across the aisle from me. This happened two more times during class. We decided it had to do with the bell system in the building.

I'm starting a petition to get this woman to sit in the front row.

Okay, so impressions of my new classes or whatever.

2010-01-13T10:05:00.000-08:00

First off, on Monwedfri, I have Nutrition. That's it. One class. 12:30 not bad huh? Well, according to what the teacher says it's one of the highest risk classes on campus. Depending on what you think that means I have a high chance of being murdered, or a high chance of failing because it's tricky. Actually both. I mean, this class has 400 people in it so... The more people there are the more likely I am to get murdered right? I kid you not, this is one of those GIANT auditoriums and every seat literally is filled. People I know keep coming up to me and telling me I'm in that class with them. I'm not all that surprised. Have to get an i clicker, should be the best fun I ever have getting it.

And then on Tuthursdays, I have introduction to basic sculpture bright and early at 9 with AJ (my roomie for those of you not up on the lingo.) I am absolutely not taking it from the guy who taught my 3-D design class, much as I actually eventually liked the class, I just can't wanna make a double life size sculpture of my own head. Instead I'm making a life sized one. Can't really wanna do that either, but I don't really have a choice. There is one of those odd guys who is completely separate from the human race in that class. I got the feeling that if I took my phone out and started texting he would make outrageous amounts of commentary about it so I tested my theory. He did. "You kids and your cell phones... I can always tell when someone is straight out of high school because they know how to text." Weird thing is, this guy is not that old looking. I mean, 25 maybe? Not much older than that. Jin Man Jo is our teacher, he's from China or thereabouts. Very very thick accent. This will be fun.

After that, Intermediate Racquetball. Me and Cappy signed up for it because there's no squash class and I do not wanna take tennis. Why intermediate? Because I hear it's stupid easy and a lot like squash and the beginner class was full. So we get there yesterday and the teacher informs us that she's just gonna let us play, pretty much and that if we want her to teach us something she can but she'll have to look it up because she doesn't play. Cue raucous laughter from our corner of the room. This should be fun.

If all goes according to plan, I'll be in the first half of art history soon. If this happens, I will be at school for a total of 12 hours on thursdays thanks to my seminar class on Thursdays that is from 6 to 9. Oh joy.

We'll just play it by ear and see how this goes...

There's something about goggle foam.

2010-01-06T18:50:00.001-08:00

Something about the smell of it is just so nostalgic to me. It's another of my favorite smells. A little better for me probably than some of my aforementioned favorites. (I also like the smell of gasoline, by the way. Don't think I mentioned that one. Reminds me of exploding out of the car at every rest stop in Nephi, St. George, Somewhere after Vegas, Some Miscellaneous Town in California I Can't think of, and Newport Beach every year when I was growing up. Also countless other road trips but I am off subject so I will stop speaking parenthetically.)

Back on subject though, this metal piece that is really more decoration than anything fell off the side of my goggles sometime last month and I was lucky enough to be taking them off at the time and therefore I noticed and held on to it. It's been driving me crazy for a while, but tonight I remembered so I could superglue it back on. So I did. After I pried at the piece a bit and shook the goggles on to test the bond, I then put them on. What? I love wearing goggles.

Anyways, I put them on and immediately got this glorious whiff of goggle foam. Somehow the whole coat closet in my house smells like it, even though there are only a couple of pairs in there and like 100 coats. This smell pulls me right on back to when I was 4 or 5 and there was nothing in the world I loved more than putting on my mom's goggles, the very ones that now hang off of my rearview mirror, and charging through the house, pretending I was a superhero. Or that everything was on fire. The lenses are orange, you know. For some reason, those goggles have always really really smelled like goggle foam. Whether it's because my face was too small and the foam squished on my nose or because I always wore them inside, I don't know, because goggles these days for sure have even more foam to them. But I usually don't get to smell the smell when I am boarding. Perhaps it is because there is so much good about snowboarding that some of them get dropped off the list of things I'm noticing.

Or maybe it is because my ninja mask is ready to get washed bleah. It has dragon breath.

Ok here's the plan.

2010-01-03T21:58:00.001-08:00

No wait, first things first, I got a pony for Christmas, expect more on that at a later date when I have had more of an opportunity to ride it.

Back to business. Speaking of business, I have
figured out the plan for my life.
1. Find a boy who falls madly in love with me.
2. Hopefully fall madly in love with him and become married.
3. if step 2 fails, repeat until successful.
4. Kiss him copiously.
5. Buy a little piece of land.
6. Build a laundromat, preferably near a college campus, I bet business would be fairly booming.
7. Don't forget to build a little apartment in the back of said laundromat.
8. Continue with all the educations during all of this, of course.
9. Live in the little apartment behind the laundromat, be the happiest little couple ever because who could ever not be happy whilst basking in the wonderful smell of laundry?
10. Create art out of scrap metal or something on the side, as supplemental income. I dunno, be creative.

Should be good, yeah?

I love watching people talk on the phone for long periods of time.

2009-12-14T21:08:00.000-08:00

Seriously have you ever watched this? Or noticed it yourself? 99 out of 100 people will get bored of just talking into a piece of plastic after 5 or 10 minutes so they'll start finding other things to do while they talk so as to be more occupied. But you have to find something that's pretty silent. Maybe it's because you start to feel weird that you don't actually have someone's face to be looking at as you talk to them. I dunno.

My mom often will start coloring in squares until she has a cool design on the pad of graph paper that is usually by the phone. Me, I usually end up wandering up to my bedroom and bonking the rope that hangs from the ceiling with my head or standing on my balance board.

Other people will tie themselves up with the phone cord or contort into the weirdest positions. The other day I walked into our room in my apartment to find that my cousin was on the phone with her boyfriend. I gathered that they had been talking for a while because she was stretched out and all twisted up, taking as much space on both the bed and the chair by the bed as she could.

What weird things do you guys do when you're talking on the phone?

For any of you who may have looked at the hambot blog and despaired because of the emptiness thereof,

2009-12-14T16:53:00.000-08:00

Despair no longer! It is pretty much all the way up to date now! Even has my brother's shoes that I finally finished(his birthday was May 5th). I recommend viewing them, they're pretty cool. Luckily he's barely taken them off since he got them so I think that means they were worth the wait.

A little background music would be nice.

2009-12-12T18:45:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I feel like my life is a movie. Different kinds of movies, depending on the day.

Sometimes I feel like it would be handy if my life actually was a movie. I like to think it would be a "something for everybody" kind of a movie.

See, if my life were a movie, there would be background music. I mean, I guess there wouldn't necessarily be music in the boring parts, but in the interesting parts there would be so I would know when to pay special attention. For instance, I'd know when I needed to be paying attention because if my foot twitches a little I could eat my weight's worth in snow as I slid to a stop. Well, I'd probably already be so focused that I wouldn't notice.

But what about romantic music so I would know when I was being swept off my feet? But then I guess that's usually pretty obvious too?

And I already know when I'm having a really awesome day. Don't necessarily NEED an awesome song playing as my day goes into awesome montage mode.

I guess maybe I'd settle for having music during the boring and less than satisfying parts of my day.

OKAY NEVER MIND EVERYONE. Might as well keep it the way it is. But hey, I wouldn't mind a greater percentage of the times that don't need music because I already know what they are.

The boiling water tap at my house has facebook...

2009-12-09T17:46:00.000-08:00

So for background, my house, specifically the kitchen, has a special little tap that makes steamy water on the spot for you. Very handy for instantly making hot chocolate and also for making top ramen faster. The old one gave up working, and we got a new one.

This morning I was sitting dramatically at the kitchen table, reading the comics. Dramatically. Then, I dramatically heard a noise. A very familiar noise. So familiar it almost seemed dramatic. A little popping noise. Facebook, I thought, as my eyebrows scooched together oh so slightly and dramatically. I then looked around the kitchen to see waht I could see with my dramatic shifting eyes, wondering who could possibly be dramatically browsing the facebook. Wasn't me. I have a good alibi. My computer was sitting up here in Logan where I now am. Finally, I asked my mom, dramatically, if she was hearing that sound. She said it was the tap.

From this I gather three things: 1. My boiling water tap has facebook and 2. I guess it is too cool for me because I am not friends with it. 3. It must have a lot of friends because it was making the facebook noise a lot.

Bonus, dramatic.

My nose has a run and a stuff...

2009-12-09T16:36:00.000-08:00

But I'm not gonna talk about that, in my monologue! Seriously though, this is what I like to call the finals flu.

Anyways, Has anyone ever noticed how the Jif commercials are growing up right along with us? I remember when I was little and they all had little kids in them. Like the one where the two brothers want a sandwich but they only have one slice of bread so the mom puts peanut butter on it then she makes one cut it and the other pick. I dunno, there were a lot of them.

Today, I saw one with this girl sitting in her dorm. She gets a package and opens it and suddenly there is a jar of peanut butter in it! She gets so excited and calls her mom to thank her enthusiastically for it. Then she eats a spoonful of it.

I never saw a jif commercial with a college kid till I was in college. THIS IS SPOOKY. THEY HAVE BEEN WATCHING ME GROW UP. They probably didn't even have commercials until I was 3.

My favorite smells are so weird.

2009-12-03T15:48:00.000-08:00

I was reading someone's post the other day before I romped off to class, might have been Jocelyn's? Whoever. She said she liked the smell of the laundry aisle, which made me think of how I love the smell of leaving my window open in the spring because the laundry room is right next to my room so the blower of warm smelling laundry air is by my window.

As I went off on my jaunty way to class, I started to ponder what my other favorite smells were, after all, Jocelyn has 4 of them. (I just checked. It was her.) So as I walked along campus, I thought about smells. And I actually smelled two that I really liked!

First, I'm standing on the corner. Waiting to cross the street. A bus was there, waiting to cross the intersection. He got to go first. As he started moving, yes, he was a boy bus, he vomited forth some nasty pollution. I happened to inhale at that time, and I felt so happy.

Because, it reminds me of elementary school when we would go up to Snowbird every Friday after school with the ski program. Then, at 3:30 or something when we were being finished, we would stand in the parking lot waiting for everyone to trickle back off the hill among a fleet of busses. Which were vomiting out pollution. Happy association.

Then, I was walking past a piece of new pavement that they worker guys were putting some kind of stuff on that I guess makes it more shiny? I dunno. Smelled kinda like turpentine. Again, happy. I stood there and smelled for a minute.

Because, in the graphics lab you tend to use a crap ton of "solvent" when you clean up anything that has to do with ink. Smells great to me, I spent months of my life in that room with that smell.

And thus we see that I have a dangerous taste in favorite smells.

Remember the red room?

2009-12-02T10:01:00.000-08:00

Let me set the scene. It takes place in a middle school close to my home but not close to my heart. Scads of awkward young teenagers are sitting in rows on the floor. White t-shirts with names scrawled on plus red shorts, except that one rebellious kid wearing tarheels blue. Not a one of these kids is feelin' all that hot, except that one boy who keeps faking people out like he's gonna jump on their heads.

The teacher, who looks a little like a female body builder, comes out and says the one thing that could make the class happy. "Today we're gonna be in the red room." She brings out this ball. It's pink. And like 3 feet in diameter. And resembles a volleyball. Crab soccer. Everyone spends the rest of the period crab walking around this nasty nasty foam mat kicking this ball/ each other.

I wondered even at the time why this was so fun.

Oh man.

2009-12-01T19:23:00.000-08:00

Tell you what, it was a gorgeous day in frigid Logan today. Blue skies, not very cold at all, I was wandering around in a long sleeved shirt is all. But oh my goodness. The inversion is a little lousy. So bad that I could smell all the pollution in the air. I guess it's true, Logan does have worse inversion. Or it could just be that I was just up above this all at Brighton last friday. Awesome day. We (me and natalie and john) took pictures of everything we were thankful for. Starting with the fact that THERE WERE NO CARS on 13th. And then the freeway. We were also thankful for not being in the inversion, the kid on the deck below us at lunch with the basketball jersey who was just so cool, it was a Jazz one, and it was fake. He tried to hit on Natalie, funny because she's just about 22 and he was oh... 14? Another thing we were grateful for, eventually, was the guy directly in front of us coming down the canyon. You know the type, California plates, very obviously not up in the canyon for the snow, but to see the sights. Guy's going around 10 under the limit yeah? Pretty annoying especially when your car has a check engine light and the engine isn't quick enough on the accelerate to pass him. The line behind us was so long that you physically could not see the end of it. Finally, he slows almost to a COMPLETE STOP. In order to more properly look at that cool old building towards the bottom of the canyon (Anyone know what that is?). So we do what any rational human being would do and we honk. Just a quick little nudge that he needs to stop parking in the road. This guy TAKES OFF. Limit's around 55-65, Iunno, something like that, I honestly just drive as fast as I think is safe, works out usually. This guy is flying down the road. At least 10 over the limit. Doesn't even brake in the corners anymore, just cuts 'em. It was the most amazing thing that I have ever seen. I am thankful for him.

Peanuts.

2009-11-22T08:08:00.000-08:00

I'm sitting on the couch with my computer on my lap. It is pretty warm and is therefore keeping a part of me warm, but the rest is really cold. Know what this reminds me of, for some reason? Christmas tree shopping. When I was little, it was a huge production. Everyone would get all bundled up, nigh unto "I can't put my arms down!" and pile into the car so we could all go wander around into a parking lot turned forest and look for a tree. I always thought this was the greatest thing ever as a kid. Various siblings and I would run off through the trees, ducking under branches and jumping out at each other just like if we were with mom shopping at the rack.

After a while though, I would invariably notice how it was subzero outside and promptly lose feeling in my fingers. At that time it was customary to head back to the general entrance area to stand by the furnace thing that the guys who work in the parking lot always set up to keep warm. My family could find their own dang tree for all I cared. I remember they have this cage thing around the outside of it so people don't get too close and so they could hang their gloves on it. The other awesome thing about this furnace thing? They had a huge barrel of peanuts just hangin around in their shells and the guys working the tree lot thought I was adorable so pretty much they would feed me peanuts while I stood around waiting for my family to find a tree. And that was what made it worth it to me to go freeze to death looking for a tree.

I like college because you don't get in trouble for running in the halls.

2009-11-21T20:09:00.000-08:00

Sometimes it's the little things that make it all worth it. In my drawing class, we started figure drawing last week. Now, on a regular day where we are drawing still life, I have no qualms at getting up and walking out of the room and stretching my legs and getting my wiggles out a bit, but I feel like it's a little rude when there is a living breathing person standing there to walk away. That and you kinda miss the pose if you leave. So on Tuesday, when we finally got a break after about 2 hours of agonizingly sitting and drawing, I convinced my friend Cappy that she should run through the building with me because I felt dumb doing it by myself. Sure enough, as soon as we got past the threshold, we took off like bats outta heck. I've always wondered about that saying, by the way. I feel like bats fit the atmosphere there pretty well. You'd think they liked it. Maybe the saying should be like dragonflies outta heck. I don't think they would like it there at all. Their wings would shrivel up.

ANYWAYS. We seriously were pretty much sprinting down the hall. When I hit the corner I was at like a 45 degree angle with the ground. This is fast running. We did that all the way down the hall, around the corner and down the first ramp before we decided to slow down and cool off before going to class. When we got back upstairs this guy that's in our other class wanted to know what the heck that was about.

That was all we heard about the fact that we just tore through the building. You could almost never get away with that in high school, and really definitely not in middle school or elementary school. So here's my shout out to college for finally making it acceptable for me to act like a little kid. (Within reason. We ran as quiet as we could given the speed.)

This is familiar...

2009-11-11T11:29:00.000-08:00

I just got Neverland by Absinthe Films. It's a snowboarding movie. For those precious few of you that read this that would be interested in knowing what I think of it, I think it's my favorite one I've ever seen. Keep in mind though, I haven't seen an exceptionally large number of snowboarding flicks. This one has a lot of powder and backcountry riding though and it looks, well, fun!

As I was going along watching it, I was reminded of my little brother when he was little. Like 6. He used to always have friends over and they would have their little matchbox cars and they would make up "levels". They'd pick a part of the house or outside and use whatever was available to make little tracks for their cars to go all the way from one end to the other. They were usually nearly impossible. I used to think it was so stupid, but that's what I think of when I see this guy hitting a kicker and landing on one roof, then jumping to the next one, then crashing into the next one over and over. But it looks fun!

New blog!

2009-11-09T22:10:00.000-08:00

Hey all, just wanted to announce that I now have a blog especially for my shoes. Only one post right now, but when I get the time, I'll put more up. But yeah, if you're into that stuff, head on over! The whole layout's still a work in progress as well, so if anyone has a bone to pick or suggestions to make, I'm all ears.

I have reached level 21 in Farmville.

2009-11-06T18:08:00.000-08:00

Do you know what that means? It means that I can give people horses if I want to. That does not mean I will, but I could. At no cost to myself, because after all, I earned the ability to give out horses at will. Not anyone can do that. Only people 21 and up.

In other news, snowboarding tomorrow.

Know what creeps me out?

2009-11-02T20:45:00.000-08:00

When I walk into a bathroom and the shower curtain is pulled across the tub. Seriously. I can't rest until I make sure there's nothing waiting on the other side. I mean really! You don't know what might be lurking in there! Could be... The creature from the blue lagoon, a spider, a swarm of scarabs a la The Mummy, one of my roommates waiting to play a prank on me, one of my roommates... Sleeping?, a dead body, an almost dead body, some skittles, a baby, two or three red paperclips, some thumbtacks of varying hue, my missing squash ball... I mean, the list just goes on and on. And on.

I dunno why it bugs me so much. I mean, I live here. And if it isn't here, then it was at the house where I used to nanny, they did that sometimes too. And I could not rest until I looked behind the curtain because otherwise I was sure that there was just darkness back there, which was home to a monster with glowing red eyes and huge sharp yellow teeth with disgusting amounts of drool dripping from out between the teeth because monsters that I remember from Calvin and Hobbes do not have lips.

Nonetheless, every time I walk into the bathroom, one of my lovely roommates has closed the curtain and it does in fact look very nice, we have a very nice striped shower curtain, but I can't do anything until I have satisfied my morbid curiosity as to what is back there. I'm hoping one of these days I'll open the curtain and there will be a bunch of money in there! Or chocolate coins! Heck, some Toblerone would be nice.

If I had a dollar...

2009-10-27T22:08:00.000-07:00

For every time that my friend and I have gone to our other friend's dorm with the intention of dragging her out of said dorm in some strange manner, only to find that she is not there, but her roommate is, well, we wouldn't have too many dollars just yet. But I predict that we would have a lot of dollars by the end of this year. So far, we have scared the crap out of said roommate by banging on the door with my longboard wheels, which is apparently much louder and violent sounding than our usual method of knocking, which is actually often more like throwing our bodies at the door like so many desperate 16 year old girls, throwing themselves at the man candy 16 year old boys. We also showed up twice this evening, roughly dressed as ninjas because we were planning to drag her away to cafe rio for taco tuesday, but alas, she was at work. And when we came back and were going to feed her salsa because obviously everybody loves to just eat salsa, still at work. Bugger. Still, friend's roommate is, I think, very amused about the fact that we have stumbled into her life and keep providing comedic scenes for her to find on the other side of the door when she opens it.

Know what I hate about sweats?

2009-10-11T23:12:00.000-07:00

Washing them. Seriously. When you first get them, they're so very soft. Just totally plush. Every time you put them on, you're in heaven. Same with sweatshirts. Then you wash them consistently and they just get mangy on the inside. I hate it. This is why I avoid washing all my sweatshirt material clothing for as long as seems sanitary.

Also, the water in this place. Geez. dealing with the tap is like pulling teeth. On one end of the faucet, you have flowing ice. On the other end, you have hot lava. I can't believe it doesn't melt the sink. I think I'm gonna be qualified to work in the burn unit at the hospital soon. And in between? There is almost no in between. There's about one sweet spot where you can bear to touch the water. Good luck finding it...

DownEast is the best.

2009-10-10T14:40:00.000-07:00

Seems like I always find my soulmate jeans there. 4 or so years ago, I was there looking for jeans. Every pair I tried was just kind of lousy. Close but no cigar. Great fit, terrible color. Great color, terrible fit. Then, there was this one pair rumpled on the floor. Sadly rejected by the previous inhabitant of the dressing room. I picked them up. They were luckies, retro fit, extra long length. Size 6... I figured there was no way they were gonna fit very well, but for some reason I put them on anyways. And it was love at first sight. I mean, extra long length is too long for me. Regular length even is pretty long. I like my pants long though. Magically, they just fit. Those pants and I had a really good run, but when the back rips out of your pants, you know it's time to move on.

Fast forward to yesterday. I loaded my friends Cassi and Cappy into my car and dragged them down to DownEast Outfitters so they could tell me their opinions as to how my behind looked in all the pants I tried. Cassi was very helpful although Cappy got distracted while she tried on everything she could find in a certain shade of blue. And some green here and there. I was looking at the True Religions because they were in the clearance area. I pulled out a pair and tried them on and found that they fit quite excellently. I then braced myself so I could look at the price tag. Originally 300 bucks. Stickers all over showing how it was marked down, finally arriving at 69.95. Not bad at all. After trying on a lot more pants, I arrived at the conclusion that I was getting the pants. And Cappy had arrived at the conclusion that I was gonna buy her the couch they were sitting on for Cassi's birthday. We had to carry her out of the store. I was then informed that because they were clearance, I got to take an additional 30% off. So I got them for a grand total of 52 or so bucks. I feel like a million bucks.

Here's hoping these pants last as long as the last ones and that they break in nicely and prove to be an excellent replacement.

One more thing today.

2009-10-03T22:10:00.000-07:00

So, I've been here on this blog for about a year now and I feel like I've been pretty faithful most of the time in keeping it up. I can confidently say that there is more or less a wealth of generally useless information to be found here. My greatest desire is that all of you, whoever you are, that are reading this have been here always and are checking every 10 minutes or so for new posts. However, if I really and honestly believed this were true, that would be a little over optimistic. It takes a while to whip up such a rabid following as I have, after all. (10 followers! Woot!)

Anyways, I've always wished my blog would have its own personal search engine and lo and behold, as I was looking through the little, er, blog charms that blogger offers, it can! So now, if you're trying to find a post you remember but can't remember the odd title I gave it, or if you're wondering if I ever spoke out on an important issue that's been on your mind lately (Plaid pants, anyone?) now you can easily find out.

And, if you feel like I've left something really important out by not having spoken of it yet, now you can know this for a fact and inform me of my grievous mistake. If I like your idea enough, I will probably run with it. I might even run similarly to a happy little girl frolicking through a meadow, only faster.

Anyways, I just felt like I like my little search bar so much that I wanted to call everybody's attention to it and give it a little introduction.

Why do they cost so much??

2009-10-03T21:39:00.000-07:00

It has come to my attention, from overhearing someone complaining about their terrible experiences at their terrible department store retail job, that mannequins, full body mannequins, often cost over a thousand dollars.

Yeah.

You heard me, these places are dropping several grand on all those plastic people that they set up all over the place in strategic locations so that they can surprise you with their presence. Or scare the bejeebies out of you when you turn around too fast. Or so you can stand and stare at them in awe whilst you think of how great the fashion sense of this mindless lump of plastic is.

But why, why on earth would they be so expensive?

Perhaps the heads of these mannequins have cores of gold.

Or maybe, their skeletons are made of diamonds, crushed into a fine powder (can you crush diamonds?) and then molded into mannequin bones and held together by elmer's glue.

What if it's because they are actually living beings, slaves if you will, not quite human but still, forced to live in the stores with the music that motivates you to shop and the ever present asthma inducing cloud of 5 different perfumes, cursed to wander forever until some angry customer destroys them or they fall out of fashion, I guess. This would be a good explanation for why I always feel like they're sneaking up behind me. After all, if I were a mannequin, I'd probably resort to doing that at some point.

Do you think the mannequins have rules that they have to live by?

It's probably pretty similar to Toy Story. You know, be still as long as there are people watching, but other than that do whatever you want. Within reason. I wonder if they have raves after the mall is shut down. Some of those stores have some lighting that, if used properly, could be pretty crazy. Plenty of speakers to blast the music. I think they probably deserve that, I mean nobody pays them. They're slaves.

I wonder if there's a rule against sneaking up behind people though. Maybe it's kind of like the hall pass rules in high school. Nobody really worries about having a hall pass with them in high school except freshmen. It's all about knowing which rules are less important and how you can go about breaking them. Walk with a purpose and don't be disruptive, people! So maybe it's ok as long as the mannequin just stands there behind you, as opposed to if it were to ambush you against a wall with its arms outstretched so that you had you really work to extricate yourself from this object that really should be inanimate.

That would be freaky. Yeah, I'd say that's most definitely against the rules.

Can't not even post a stinking comment...

2009-09-26T20:55:00.000-07:00

So my friend Cassi has a blog. I read it yesterday. And I wanted to comment on it. I like commenting. It's a nice thing to do. Makes the blogosphere feel like a little community yeah? Yeah. What I wanted to tell her is that I have the same problem. I too cannot sit still through anything. I don't get it. It's like these people walk into a theater or what have you, sit down, and as soon as the lights go out, they are paralyzed from the neck down. Does someone hand out tranquilizer darts at the door of the theater and I am always just too much in a hurry to get one? Because every time I go to a movie, play or concert of the more classical not rowdy variety, I have a very hard time. I begin by sitting in my chair, similarly to a normal person. Both feet resting on the floor, it's fairly straightforward. Then I might cross my legs and switch back and forth between which leg is on top for a half hour or so. Then maybe I pop my ankle up on the corresponding knee. More switching. Then I might sit on one foot at a time. Or both feet. Indian legs! If I'm being a little rude, I might slump down and rest my knee or foot against the seat in front of me. The possibilities are endless. Just as long as I don't sit still.

The comment I wanted to leave was something along those lines, maybe a little shorter. But I was denied. I think her layout secretly hates me. I clicked on the little link that said no comments. Then I clicked on the one that said "Post a comment". The page refreshed. I tried again. Nothing. Angst! My life is so hard. I just wanted to be friendly at my friend... Mope.

Haunting.

2009-09-26T00:07:00.000-07:00

So, you may or may not know that I play squash. You may or may not also know what squash is. Think of racquetball but harder because the ball is less bouncy and therefore it is better. It is a very neglected sport if you are living in America like I am, and like all the people that read my blog are. As far as I know. If you live in not America and you are devoted to stalking my blog and you like squash, can I get a hello? You don't have to say hello, you could just tell me how to tell people that I am a little fish in your native language, assuming it's not English. I've already mostly got that one down.

Anyways, yeah. Most people are not terribly aware of the existence of the sport so I was blown away when I heard that there was in fact a squash court up here at Utah State. Best school ever, I say. The only other squash court I could think of in Utah is Squashworks in Salt Lake. Very nice squash club, by the way. Top notch courts and all that.

So I gathered up my friend Sarah while she had a spare half hour so we could go esplore the HPER building and see it. Turns out, there are six racquetball courts. Not quite the same dimensions, not quite the same lines on the ground. Shucks. I then walk myself over to the counter of renting things to ask the lovely chap a question. "Loevely chap," I say*, "Might anybody care if I were to play squash in those other courts?" I then have to explain that it just uses a different smaller black ball and a longer skinnier racquet. Lovely Chap continues to look confused and then looks like he is giving this a lot of thought. Finally, he gets on his walkie talkie and asks the world in general if it is ok if I play squash in the racquetball courts. A woman, who sounds kind of annoyed, informs him, and probably anyone else on that frequency, that they have a special court for people like me across the street in the field house. I then tramp over there all by my lonesome, for Sarah had a lab to go to or something.

I then ask the lassie at the desk where the court is and she gives me instructions that sound tricky. Eventually I find it in some out of the way place. Now, a squash court is roughly the size of half a tennis court. You would think it would be hard to hide one in some out of the way place, but they managed quite nicely, actually. Whoever designed this building is an architectural genius.

This court is like something out of a scary movie. Creepy narrow white hallway leading to it, just long enough that if you were screaming, by the time someone got to you it would be too late. When you close the door, there are only two windows that are each about a square foot to help you see the outside world and vice versa. They make me paranoid. Judging by the walls, the nazis like to meet there. (I'll get pictures sometime.) Also, out in the little area right outside the door, pieces of the ceiling are just... missing. Maybe just big enough to drag a body through. The paint on the walls is crumbling off, the echoeyness of the room generally prevents you from hearing anyone you're trying to talk to in there, whilst also amplifying footsteps and the sound of the bouncing of the ball.

This creepy place is where I spend my time when I have too much energy. Often all by myself. Wish me luck.

*wording may be inaccurate, overdramatized, or just completely fabricated for the sake of my boredom.

The apartment part 4

2009-09-17T22:43:00.000-07:00

So we have a zombie fly in our apartment. Or maybe there are a few flies around but there is a zombie fly. He's been stuck between the blinds and the window for what seems like a couple days now. One of my roommates decided to take a nap on the floor when she noticed that said fly had fallen on the ground and was kind of twitching. She thought he was just about dead so she left him alone to die.

Suddenly, he flipped himself over and purportedly began hopping towards her. She flicked him away repeatedly. I suspect he was heading for her because she was warm and nobody quite knows how to wrangle a thermostat in this place and so it is either a death valley inferno or a siberian frozen wasteland at all times. I don't mind the frozen wasteland part so much, to be honest, but I hate it when I wake up in the morning and I am stuck to the sheets because it is so hot. So she threw the fly across the room and he evaporated into thin air, only to be seen crawling across the kitchen floor (that's like 6 or 8 feet away, at least!) about a half an hour later.

I don't really fancy this. I don't fancy it at all. What I'm getting out of this is that in Logan, not only do you have to deal with the occasional annoying fly buzzing in and out and around, but you gotta worry about the zombie ones either hopping or dragging themselves across the floor. What am I supposed to do with that?? There's more or less no way to avoid them anymore. Geez.

So, today I played a very minor part in the apprehending of a fairly minor criminal.

2009-09-15T21:08:00.000-07:00

It all started on Sunday night when I got home and my roommates informed me that they had been scammed by this guy who was going door to door trying to collect money, supposedly he was with habitats for humanity trying to help Katrina victims. They gave him $7 (one gave 5, one gave 2) despite the fact that one of these people has a boyfriend who told her that this guy was definitely a scam and not to do it.

Next day, there was an article on KSL (http://www.ksl.com/?sid=7906708&nid=148) about this man and how he was, in fact, a scammer and that you should not give money to him as it would not be going to a good cause, unless you call supporting a man who is paying for a hotel room and buying cigarettes and alcohol with your money a good cause. They then were a little frustrated that Austin (the boyfriend) was right. They thought it would be so cool if they managed to catch him.

Today, one of the ones who was not part of the original scamming, came running and screaming into the apartment to tell one of the ones who was involved that she thought she had just seen the man in question. What with all the commotion and the fact that our door was open, two of the guys from across the hall came to see what the excitement was about. We then all out our heads together above the phonebook until we found the number for the police station that wasn't 911 because we decided it wasn't quite that big of an emergency. The boys also noticed that when rolled up, the ends of our little bamboo placemats smell really good.

So we called the cops and they said they would send someone over. So after a few minutes, we thought it was a great time to go for a nice little walk in the general direction that this man was headed. So we walked ever so nonchalantly and innocently to the corner and started walking down the street when the very man in question walked out the door. My roommated flipped out upon seeing him, but managed to keep it cool. At that same time, the police car pulled up. I dunno if it was perfect timing or what. We then turned around, still nonchalant, of course, and walked back to our apartment. Then we recreated the scene for the two that were straggling way behind us.

Then, the officer called the one who was actually involved and had called the police to ask if she and the other one involved in the giving of money could give him some written statements.

I went down to the parking lot where they were doing it, just to be a part of the magic, and asked the police officer if he would handcuff me, just so there would legitimately be something for all the people staring at us to look at and speculate about what had happened. He declined, so then I asked him about longboarding laws in Logan, just to be safe. Apparently it's all good as long as I'm being intelligent about the time and place and stay in my lane.

So what did I contribute to this apprehension of this man? (Who, by the way, had just gotten out of jail on August 11th for doing the selfsame thing. The officer said they were gonna hit him hard in court this time.) Well, I'm glad you asked. I did some walking, I smelled a bamboo placemat, I helped find the number for the police, and I did some very good impressions of my roommates and their reactions to the happenings of today.

Wow. What a day.

2009-09-14T20:35:00.000-07:00

Today I got up at about 10 am and began to work on finishing my wire sculpture pineapple. I worked on it steadily until 10 minutes before class, which started at 4, with only one break for food. (It was the best stir fry I think I have ever made, by the way. Onions and corn and zucchini and red peppers with pepper and garlic salt. Does that not sound amazing?) I was kinda skeptical about my pineapple and all, (fun fact. Pineapples were never a fruit I especially loved, but now I hate them with a passion and by the end of this I want to kill the one I was using as a visual reference and wear its skin.) but I finished it as best as I could. About an hour before I struck out from my apartment, it began to rain. My roommates were all exclaiming about how it, like, never rains here. By the time I was walking to class, it was comparable to a hurricane. Funny how yesterday as I was about to roll out of Salt Lake I almost grabbed something that was at least a little waterproof, then I didn't. It was not all that cold though, so I decided since I was gonna be sopping wet no matter what I wore, I would just wear a flannel shirt. During the critique of my piece, one of my classmates kindly informed me that my pineapple most closely resembled a wastebasket that had been set on fire. Another person said she liked it because it was abstract to which my teacher angrily replied that it can't be abstract unless it actually looks like the thing it's supposed to be an abstraction of... Or something like that. What I got out of that was that my sculpture looks absolutely nothing like a pineapple? FML. Also, about 15 minutes after I got to class, the weather cleared up and the sky was blue. I figured that was at least one thing that happened in my favor today. Then, right as I stood up to present my sculpture for critique, hurricane The Sky Hates Annie started up again. No worries though, the sky dried up again about 10 minutes after I returned home. So yeah, today I got insulted by my teacher once, had several students try to find something they liked about my work, and got drenched twice. At least I got to have grilled cheese and tomato soup for dinner... I'm going to bed.

I am so tired.

2009-09-10T18:23:00.000-07:00

So tired. I kid you not. My ADD is acting up today. Every 15 minutes or so I'd be sitting in class trying really hard to pay attention/figure out how to properly shade the egg/keep going on my wire project and suddenly I would be thinking about something wildy unrelated. Not only that, but I would notice that my eyes were comparable to a desert because it had been some stretch of minutes since last I blinked. People have been asking me if I was ok/awake/alive all day.

Now I'm sitting/lying on the couch, kinda dead. Couple of my roommates are in the kitchen and I noticed after a while that I was staring at them with some kind of fascination. I felt like I was watching a play. That's how disconnected/severely exhausted I am.

The apartment part 3

2009-09-06T19:48:00.000-07:00

Maybe I'm a spoiled brat. I mean, I grew up with an unusually nice kitchen. Granite counters, all-clad pans, and a gas stove that has a level top to it. This is maybe a lot to ask. But really. I kind of hate cooking in our kitchen. The pans we have are kinda clunky and don't heat as evenly as I might like, the counters are... I dunno. Shoebox apartment counters, which makes it imperative to have a cutting board which ours is about 3"x4". And the stove. Don't even get me started. Electric coil heating elements. They bug me because the second you turn off the heat the heat is still going and I have to remember to pick up the pot and gosh dang it. It's not a habit I have. None of this is all that bad though. What is bad is how the stove has a very slight downward slope to it. Just barely. If you set a pan on it, it will most likely... usually... Stay put. but if you bump it, look out. Because if you don't have ninja reflexes and catch the handle of the zooming pot of killer death with stuff in it that probably smells good, it's gonna fly off the stove and dump on you, or just hit you and burn you. In a way, it's kind of exciting. Extreme cooking you know?

Then there's the bathroom portion of the apartment. In this case, maybe I'm reverse spoiled. My shower at home is a tiny little cubicle of white tile, a little on the old side. I remember when I was young and I switched from baths to showers, I was afraid of it. It's very basic and angular and reminded me a little of a white cave or something and for this reason I used my brother's shower for the longest time. Our shower, on the other hand, is also a tub. There's nice friendly curves to it, some of them even form a shelf on the wall next to you where you can keep things like shampoo and razors. It also has a pink curtain. And a pink shower mat... Okay. It's a given that I probably won't like the pink portions but heck. I should relish the fact that I have so much more space in which to bathe and that it's such a friendly seeming shower. But no. I want my tiny little square cave. It's comforting to me, perhaps comparable to the way that newborns like to be swaddled. It's just so open in there...

The Vomit Story. (Not for the faint of heart.)

2009-09-02T10:26:00.000-07:00

This is your only warning people, if you don't want to hear a tale of vomit and more vomit, leave now.

I promised Anthony I would tell this story so here it is: Bit of background, when I was going to go back to Emigration for the summer, my manager informed me that she would only take me back if I was willing to work the 4th of July. I decided I could handle that, so back I went. I also somehow got forced into working on Memorial Day. You could possibly imagine that I was the slightest bit pissed off about this because there are plenty of employees and it's not terribly fair for one of them to have to work every holiday. I brought this up with said manager and she scoffed at me because she was working all the holidays, but agreed to give me Pioneer day. So I have fought reasonably hard for this day off! I was looking forward to it. My family had plans to go see the Harry Potter movie and I was fairly excited for that, I like Harry Potter.

So the 23rd rolls around and I am working. Closing. No worries, it's what I do. It was my job to clean the women's bathroom, which really isn't that bad. So many people don't even seem to be aware that there are bathrooms at Emigration. Generally all that needs doing is clean the sink/wipe up the puddle of soap on the counter and windex the mirror then take out the trash. It's that last part that got me. Apparently, someone had thrown up in said garbage can that morning. How did they get it only in the bag and not on the outside of the can at all?? (I dunno but I am grateful for that, just for the record.) It was very odd because the smell of the vomit had not done any permeating of the tiny room whatsoever. In fact, I never smelled anything until I was putting in the replacement bag and in the act of pushing the bag in, I got a big whoof of it in the face. I was ok though. I spent the rest of the evening telling my coworkers about it, and they all agreed not to make me take the trash out again for a while. I was over it, we were all over it, I went home and later went to bed, as is customary in this culture.

Suddenly, I wake up and it is 8 am and I am suddenly burning up. Followed by throwing up. I think it was about 5 times between then and 11. That in itself was creepy because in a typical bout of, Iunno, the stomach flu? It takes me about 3 times to thoroughly clean out my guts then I feel better. So around 3 or 4 I decided it was probably safe to eat so my mom got me some soda crackers and ginger ale. All was going well, so I decided that it would be just fine to go to the movie with my family at about 6. So I sat there watching the movie with my saltine crackers and some water, even ate a little popcorn because I physically cannot be near the smell of popcorn without eating any (that may have been the source of my downfall that I am about to talk about). PS has everyone who made it this far seen the movie or at least read the book? I'm guessing yeah, but otherwise I'm about to spoil it. Stop reading. So picture the most exciting part of the movie (so I'm told...). The part where Dumbledore just drank all that potion and Harry is desperately trying to conjure up some water. That is when I felt like I was burning up again. WATCH OUT IT'S ABOUT TO BE GRAPHIC HERE SO IF YOU HAVE ANY DOUBTS AS TO IF YOU WANT TO READ THIS, TURN BACK NOW. I decide to walk over and stand by the doorway, you know, just in case. As I am getting halfway to the doorway, I'm suddenly running. Then throwing up in a garbage can right outside the door while people are pouring out of a nearby other theater. I apparently have a talent for vomiting almost silently though, because I don't think anyone noticed. I then sprinted to the bathroom and managed to projectile vomit into a garbage can that was about 3 or 4 feet away. I have to admit, that was kinda cool even though it sucked at the time.

So I go back to the movie just as Dumbledore gets killed. Cool. I missed everything. Movie ends, my brother asks me why on earth I would leave the movie at such a pivotal moment. Just then some girls are walking out of the bathroom throwing a scandal about the puke in the garbage can. I decide this is as good a time as any to encourage my family to leave immediately. Next day, I feel fairly fine but not great and then the day after that I throw up again in the morning. Awful. After that I was fine. Still have no idea what I had.

The apartment part 2

2009-08-31T09:53:00.000-07:00

So like I said yesterday, (sorry Anthony, I'll tell the barf story later. Don't let me forget.) I was home for the weekend. There are some key differences between my apartment and my room at home. We can put them into categories: Size, Color, Pillow, Feeling like being in a mental hospital, and Noise.

Size:
At home, I do in fact have a pretty sizeable room. Probably about double the size of the shoebox I share with my cousin in Logan. When I came home, I was in slight shock and awe as I walked into my room and remembered how big it was. And that doesn't even include my secret attic room. I have quite a bit of territory.

Color:
You may or may not be aware of the fact that my walls at home are crayon green, although I have so much debris on the wall that it sometimes becomes difficult to tell for sure what color they are unless you take a good look at the ceiling. In Logan, the walls are stark white and blank, although I am working on the blank part. It is becoming quite liveable. It is unfortunate, although not all that surprising I guess, that I cannot seem to find a poster of Andreas Wiig for my wall. What an attractive pro snowboarder he is...

Pillow:
My mom decided it would be a good idea to buy me a new pillow to take with me so that I would have a pillow for each bed and I wouldn't have to try to remember to bring the one back and forth. So I have one pillow in Salt Lake that has been pulverized into comfortable oblivion and is perfect for the fact that I tend to wrap myself around my pillow and tangle myself in my blankets when I am sleeping. The other pillow has great potential. I am thinking it will be great as soon as it gets beaten in a little more. Once I get my squash racquet up here I will be sure to beat some sense into it.

Feeling like being in a mental hospital:
Like I said, white walls. Just like good old East High. While my side of the room is starting to be at least a little homey, my cousin hasn't had time yet to put anything up on the walls as she is always blowing in and out for work and class and what have you. So if I wake up facing her side of the room I open my eyes to a stark expanse of white. If I have managed to tangle myself in my blanket just so, my imagination sometimes informs me that I am in a strait jacket waking up in a room that maybe should be padded.

Noise:
This is possibly the biggest difference, although the pillow thing is a bit of a difference too, but my pillows are slowly beginning to feel like one another. But this one is never gonna change. You see, my house is on a nice peaceful sleepy kind of a street. Sure, we're kinda close to 13th east, but you don't hear all that much. My apartment window looks out onto quite the busy intersection. There are motorcycles and loud cars and people yelling outside all the time. The first night here I was thinking about how I thought everyone in Logan should probably start driving nice quiet hybrids, just for my convenience. However, I have apparently begun to get used to it because as I was lying in bed on my last night in Salt Lake I was idly wondering to myself if there was possibly a CD on iTunes with a title along the lines of Ambient Noises of a Busy Intersection. Or, perhaps, Sounds of the Freeway. I guess it is good that I am beginning to be able to sleep through revving motorcycles. The hairdryer chorus at 8 in the morning is going to take some more time though.

Also, I'm nineteen! Chain smokership, here I come!

I leave these people alone for less than a week...

2009-08-30T22:36:00.000-07:00

So I came home this weekend. It was my birthday Thursday and my parents were dying to see me so I made my way slowly home that day, stopping in Ogden to see an old friend. Got home around 10:30 or 11. I then passed the time over the weekend hanging out with a couple people and getting some vital errands done. Very nice weekend, I'd say.

Then, Sunday (today) comes. All in all, it was a very nice day. In sacrament meeting, there was Jon Pulsipher's homecoming, Petey Hughes' farewell, and Mei's baby blessing, The event that made me decide to remain in Salt Lake for the entire weekend. It was a good meeting, Jon's talk was interesting, Petey's was heartfelt, and the blessing was good and Yami was adorable. We then had a nice family Sunday dinner with all 7 of us around the table. Very nice. Then my mom decided she was gonna cook up some fritters. A likely story. I almost believed it too, but then I saw the "candy thermometer" she had in the "pot" that she was heating up the "oil" "in".
I dunno if you guys can read that, but on either side of the 300, it says "crack" and "hard crack". Mmmhmm. I leave for 6 days and my mom gets so lonely and sad that she turns to making a meth lab in our kitchen. Explains why those fritters are so addicting. I should have expected this... I mean, my mom loves to make things. She loves to cook and play around with recipes, she loves to sew and quilt... It was only a matter of time until she set out to make the best recipe for crack. Where did I go wrong...

By the end of the school year...

2009-08-28T22:28:00.000-07:00

One of my legs is going to be massive. Slowly, day by day and little by little, the muscles in my right leg are just going to expand. Walking will become a very strange feeling way of getting around. Eventually, it might not even be possible. Buying pants will be tricky. I will be one of those rare people who truly has a good side and a bad side. My odds of finding a suitable mate will be greatly decreased, unless I can find a man with a similar affliction who can understand the lopsidedness.

What on earth am I talking about? I'm talking about the copious amounts of time I spend on my longboard these days. It is wonderful. On Tuesdays and Thursdays I have to travel all the way from one end of campus to the other 4 times a day. To anyone else, this would suck. But to me, it's like having a day at school with 15 minute skate breaks. I dig it. It gets kind of tricky to find a place to park all 47 inches of my board in class sometimes though. Especially planet earth. That class is packed like nobody's business. It has some lefty desks though. I feel so accomodated for.

I guess there's hope for when the snow falls and I can no longer use my board for transportation in fear of the wheels slipping out and throwing me to the ground and my bearings rusting and seizing up. Of course... With snow comes snowboarding. Never mind... Ah well, I'm sure I can eventually find a guy who appreciates my lopsided muscles and the fact that I enjoy a good conversation.

People from the UK and Egypt have visited my blog multiple times lately. Cool or what? There's also been 3 hits from some weird city in Utah called Logan. What the... I mean really, who would live in a city named after a person that could either be a guy or a girl? It's such an ambiguous name! I bet nobody there ever has any fun at all ever. I would never live there, that's for sure.

The apartment part 1

2009-08-27T14:45:00.000-07:00

I brought some kitchen towels with me. Just bought 'em at TJ Maxx not too long ago. They're pretty snazzy. Lime green and white stripes. So my cousin went to Salt Lake the other day and a boy gave her flowers which she brought back and put in a cup (vase?) on the table. Fast forward to yesterday or something, I was at school because I keep ridiculous school hours on Mondays and Wednesdays, the rest of these kids were I guess hanging around here sitting at the table I mentioned before doing homework. One is doing something on her laptop and one is reading the bible because she has to for her Humanities class or something. She's never read it before, or any scriptures, she says it's very interesting though.

So one of them spills the flowers all over the table including on the laptop and the bible. Being logical people, they pick stuff up and shake it off then go for the towels to wipe up the water. Lo and behold, my towels are waterproof. If you hold them under running water, it looks suspiciously similar to what it looks like if you do the same to my snowboarding jacket. I think this is absolutely hysterical. If you want to, say, do dishes and then dry things off, you have to pretty much polish the dish, therefore driving the moisture into the fibers or it doesn't work.

Theoretically the towels will be less waterproof after they've been washed...?

Moving out, (Part 3)

2009-08-21T23:15:00.000-07:00

Today, I woke up and decided I better pack. Therefore, I sat around for an hour and a half or so while I waited for Jim to return my skate tool that I completely forgot at his house. Then, I stood in my room for a half hour or so trying to imagine how to even go about packing until Taylor came over at which point we decided it would be best if I handed things to her and she put them in my handy dandy containers. Mom had to leave and take John to work, and so I was absolutely forbidden to leave until after she came back. So there was packing and packing and she came back and I got some dry ice for my frozen vomit smoothie ingredients and we packed up my car. I felt like I should really have more stuff... Apparently I'm low maintenance/ not bringing up my super cold weather gear yet.

I closed the door of my room for the last time in a little while and there was a painful wrenching sound as my identity extricated itself a little bit from the walls I've come to love. I then courageously climbed into my car and drove away. It seemed very odd and perhaps a little illogical to me to be setting out in my car with my longboard in the front seat next to me and all my possessions in tow. Seemed a little crazy to be taking off, leaving the house where I have tons of space to my name, in order to live in a shoebox with 5 other people.

Upon arriving, I was making brave efforts to get my stuff inside when 3 nice boys volunteered to help me. They were fairly attractive. I think I like it here.

Oh my, the church is awesome. I was sitting around wondering as to what ward I'm supposed to be in and all, when the ward clerk (Nephi) dropped by with some information. I am so amused.

Remember when sticking your tongue out was so bad?

2009-08-20T20:10:00.000-07:00

Like, so bad that it was the naughtiest thing you could even think of doing, especially if you were calling someone a stupidhead? I kinda miss that.

Moving out, (Part 2)

2009-08-19T14:07:00.000-07:00

I am gonna miss Yami because:
-He looks like such a little angel when he's asleep
-He has Japanese rockstar hair
-The way he plays in his bathpool outside is standing outside of it and dipping a bucket in it so he can carry it all over the place and dump it on the driveway.
-Golf balls and basketballs are of extreme importance.
-He thinks that a fly flying around the kitchen is the most hysterical thing.

Today was the last time I'm gonna see him and Mei for, well, probably a while. I dunno how long. That's probably my hardest goodbye. Generally the only one. Kid's got such a short memory span he probably won't like me the next time he sees me.

Moving out, (Part 1?)

2009-08-17T20:20:00.000-07:00

I dunno whether this will be the only blog entry about moving out, but probably not, thus the part 1. Today, we started in a bit on doing the shopping for things I don't have but need. Or rather, things I have that can't leave the house to take part in this epic saga of my life with me. First, I went to costco with my mom and she was telling me all about how I should start making lists of all the things I need to be packing so it can go with me when I get around to packing. Then tonight we went to TJ Maxx so I could get towels and sheets and a pillow. I got the best towels. They are Lacoste, which means that while I haven't managed to own a polo with the crocodile on it, I now have towels and a bath mat. I guess I could pry one of the crocodiles off and sew it to a shirt...

I'll keep you posted.

I also got some heather gray t shirt material sheets. And when those are being washed, I have red ones. 300 thread count cotton. Be jealous. Be very jealous.

Know what bugs me?

2009-08-14T20:51:00.000-07:00

When people on facebook have like 50 inspirational quotes in their statuses. I mean, you read through them, and they're all good quotes and maybe you can even read each one and be inspired. But when you read them all in a row one after another, BAM. BAM. BAM., I feel like it really cheapens the quotes. I mean, come on. You read one quote like that, and you can sit and ponder it for a minute, really find the meaning. But when you read 50 of them? They start sounding so cheesy. Real annoying. I say, if you're gonna have quotes on facebook, have one favorite one. Maybe two, but definitely no more than three. Save the rest of the space for stupid inside jokes from being in the car with your friends too long.

8/11/09

2009-08-11T12:25:00.001-07:00

Everyone I know that is moving out has been packing for at least a week if not two now. It kinda makes me feel a little panicky, because I myself have not started packing at all. In fact, I haven't even started getting my room all sorted so that it would be easy to pack my life up fast. I predict that next week is gonna be all packing, all the time. (I'm really responsible. That's why I haven't packed yet.)

For today's exerpt from the wall, we have this lovely... Work of art?
As you might be able to see, it is a piece of lined paper with something black sprayed on it. (Before you ask, I have no idea how and why I keep these things.) It is from junior year. The day of spirit bowl. I had two cans of black hairspray and some black lipstick and we were going to town on each other in junior choir. (Although I wound up having to go back home to get the lipstick off because while it made everyone else look cool, I looked horrible.) I was using this piece of paper to protect the back of people's necks and shirts and faces from getting sprayed. Man... That black lipstick was such a pain to get off... My lips are almost always all dried out and peely and cracky and so the black sank down into every little crack. It was magical. I think I ended up flushing the color out with copious amounts of Burt's Bees or something.

So, I inherited a food processor.

2009-08-09T14:39:00.001-07:00

It's the one my mom's had forever. She decided to upgrade just a little, so I get the old one. It doesn't grate cheese anymore because the stick for holding up the grating part broke but... It sure does chop stuff at high speeds. So basically I'm gonna be a gourmet chef and you all are gonna wish you lived in my apartment so you could eat... The guacamole that I make. Yeah, that's all I can think of that I use a food processor for right now, but I bet there's other things that I will make too that will blow everyone's mind. I will be the grand master of all cooking.

Here's hoping anyways.