Guitars Unplugged

I really wasn't planning on going tonight. Well I was, sort of.

Guitars Unplugged is a yearly/semesterly (not sure which) event. Basically, they get all the students in the school who are stinkin' awesome at playing guitar or have a band and said bands get to play on stage.

You have to pay to go see it. I had an FHE brother who was in it one year. He was inCREdible at guitar. No seriously, he could have been the best one up there. Tonight, I saw a kid from one of my classes who played. He was super duper amazing too. Sometimes it amazes me how talented some of the people at our school are.



Well, I've been to Guitars Unplugged before. I wasn't really planning on going tonight either. I didn't have friends who were going. I just went to hand out bracelets for our Student Safety Committee. People actually collect those silly rubbery bracelets people hand out all the time. I had people coming up to me asking for them and more for their friends. Funny...

Because I handed out bracelets they stamped my hand. So I got in for free. Something I was totally not expecting. So I stayed. For a little while. One of the guys got up to introduce his band.

"Hey there! We were going to dedicate this song to a special someone tonight.... but decided that might be too risky! So instead I'm dedicating it to all you people out there screaming!" And he began to play.

Guitars Unplugged is pretty cool with their effects. They had the lights and the smoke and the lasers. Partway through the song these white lights started going off all around the gym. "That's a cool effect. I didn't know we had that in our gym!"

Then I heard a noise. Sounded sort of like a buzzer, right in time with the music. "Wow, the buzzer and the lights go off together nicely. With the music. Nice! I didn't know they had such awesome effects."

And then I heard this woman in a formal looking outfit come through saying something about fire alarms in a panicked voice.

"Oh. Crap."

It took like two minutes for people to realize it was the fire alarms. All the lights and stereo equipment up front suddenly shut off. People were screaming, "KEEP PLAYING! SCREW THE ALARMS! KEEP PLAYING!!!!"

And then the loudspeaker system came on. "The fire alarms have gone off. We need to calmly evacuate the building. If everyone could calmly make their way to the nearest exit and--" Yeah, I didn't even hear the rest of that statement. When there's five thousand people in already energetic moods in one gigantic room with fire alarms going off, the word "calm" isn't even an option.

People weren't really freaking out or anything. No running or anything. We just all walked slowly out of the building saying to each other, "Well that sucks! Ruined a perfectly good song." But it was loud. Opposite of calm.

I have to say, I myself thought it may have been that "special someone" that the boys decided not to risk dedicating their song to tonight who pulled the alarm.

But it wasn't. Too much smoke got caught in some pipe. Five minutes later we were all back in our seats, excited as ever to continue the show. And the show went on.

And all was well with the world. The End.

The Best Teachers

I found this typed in bold print about half way through my midterm exam.

"Did you know that there is a tribe of dyslectic devil worshipers in the Ozarks who have sold their souls to Santa? Sorry. Just trying to break the tension…."

Seriously. I love this teacher.

And So It Begins

Midterms were this week. I was doing fine with twenty credits until this week. Now I'm kicking myself that I didn't work harder last week so this week wouldn't be so terrible. But then again, last week there wasn't much I could do about it.

I have a take home exam to do (about ten pages worth of writing.. the teacher told us it should take us at least 6-8 hours), an American Humanities exam to study for and take, Spanish homework (ten workbook pages worth), an Illustrator project (I have to make up a company and make up a logo, stationary, business cards, etc.), and Case Study paper to write all by Monday.

If I were smart I'd be working on all of that right now. I've sort of begun some of it. But definitely not as well as I should have. Today the plan is to get the Humanities midterm and the Comm midterms both taken care of and maybe start on the Illustrator project.

Tomorrow I'm hoping to finish everything else, but I also have a meeting tomorrow at 7 for Guitars Unplugged (our commercial is airing and we have to hand out these bracelet things).

Even though I've had four canceled classes in the last two days I'm still swamped. Mainly because when a teacher cancels class, he takes it upon himself to assign extra homework to make up for it.

Oh shoot, that reminds me.. I also have a paper to turn in today. Fortunately I already wrote it. I just have to print it and take it to campus because the teacher only accepts hard copies.

Better get to work.

Pirates Trivia... Sort Of

When I worked at Disney we worked a lot with pins. One of the pins sets is a Pirates set (actually I think there are a lot of pirate sets) from the Pirates of the Caribbean movie. I can't remember if I wrote about it at the time, but each pin in this set had some sort of Chinese characters on it. I asked the Chinese people I worked with to translate for me.

One of the pins translated in English as "Pirates of the Caribbean" and another was "The Black Pearl." But there was one pin in the set that no one could really figure out the meaning of at the time.

I remember asking Jean. She couldn't think of a way to describe what it meant. "It's a Chinese saying." She would tell me. "It's complicated.

I asked Evan. He probably described it best of all the Chinese people I asked. He said, "It's hard to explain. But it means that if someone does a crime. And then they are killed.... then the secret goes with them." I still didn't get it. So he took my pen. "If I steal this pen. And then I die... I am the only person who knows that I took your pen though. There's no way for you to prove that it was I who took your pen. Yes? Okay. You get it."

I couldn't believe how just the two or three characters on a little pin could say all of that. I never got what the saying was in English. But then, a short time ago we were watching Pirates of the Caribbean and there was a line in that movie that made me realize the exact English translation of what my Chinese friends were trying to tell me. There is a short English saying that could be said in place of the description my Chinese friends gave me.

Can you figure out what it is? I'm gonna feel like an idiot if I'm the only one who had trouble making this connection. However, at the time it didn't even occur to me that we would have the same type of saying in English so I didn't really think about it.

I'll post the answer in my next post if no one gets it.

The Return Of Walt Disney World

I got my acceptance letter today. It came in the from of an email this year. I guess Disney is seriously working on that "eco-friendly" image. I must say it's way less exciting to get an email. And it's way less exciting the second time around.

But I still squealed and called/talked to pretty much everyone I know who would care. I've already contacted all my friends from Disney and told my roommate and called the parents.

But I'm not in Merchandise this time around. I'm going to be in Main Entrance Operations. I don't totally know what this means exactly...

Oh well. I'm excited as ever! Time to celebrate! Pizza/movie/brownie party! Tomorrow night (cuz tonight's FHE). YAY!!!

The Tiniest Bit of Excitement on a Potentially Boring Day

Last night around ten I was chilling on my computer as my roommate went to bed (yeah, she goes to bed early, my roommates here are just way too mature). As I was listening to music on my computer I could hear a light tapping noise coming from our bedroom wall. I thought someone was tapping on the wall. As I took out my headphones I could hear that there were actually two tapping noises. And one sounded a lot like water was dripping.

I ignored it at first. I'm really good at tuning noises out when I don't want to hear them (pretty bad during class when the professor is discussing something important though). I got into PJs and did all my nightly routine stuff. As I went back into our room just about to climb up into my bunkbed, I heard the tapping noise again. It had been going on the whole time, but it just entered into my head again.

I was really curious what the noise was. I heard water. I knew our old apartment used to sound like water was running through the walls all the time. So I wasn't really worried about there being a problem, I was more just curious where this noise was coming from. First I asked my roommate. She said she heard the noise too and it had been going on for a while, but didn't know where it was coming from.

Finally I went into the hall. Just on the other side of our closet wall is our utilities closet. I opened the door and immediately knew where the water was coming from. The floor was covered in water, and more water was dripping from like five different places. I didn't even know where it was beginning. It was like every pipe in the whole closet was leaking.

I called my roommate and told her I was pretty sure it was raining inside our apartment. We both looked at it for a second, trying to figure out what to do. I mentioned getting a bowl, but as she pointed out, what good would that do? There was so much water on the floor already and it was dripping from so many places we'd need a lot of bowls.

We pulled the vacuum, mop, and other stuff out and then decided to go to our neighbors upstairs to see what was going on. We knocked on their door and explained what happened in our apartment and went to their utilities closet to figure it out. And of course you could hear the problem walking down the hall. As we opened the door we saw the cause. It was as if someone had turned a faucet on full blast from one of their pipes. Hard to explain, but it was a LOT of water.

We went to get the managers. It was about 10:30 at this point. The manger came and spent about three minutes in there fixing it, draining off water into a jug and doing other random stuff. I think they said it was the hot water heater... and something about freezing from the cold. I don't really know. The manager didn't really know either. But apparently the same thing had happened in another apartment. He said he'd have our maintenance guy come over first thing in the morning.

We went back downstairs.

Fortunately, our utilities closet has a drain in the floor so the water didn't spread much further.

Unfortunately, my side of the closet is the one that shares a wall with the utilities closet and so there was water all over the floor of my closet.

Fortunately, it was only my already dirty clothes that got wet.

We made sure the water had stopped leaking, *texted our other roommates, and then went to bed wide awake. Pretty fun final twenty minutes of the night.

*I think it's totally hilarious that my computer doesn't know the word "texting" or "texted" and is telling me I'm spelling it wrong. Just thought I'd throw that in there. :)

Lesson Learned

Don't eat five day old leftover meat with stale bread and expired sour cream. It's just not worth it no matter how poor you tell yourself you are.

Anxiously Waiting

I have to admit, this is not nearly as exciting as it was last year.

I applied for the Disney College Program on Feb. 1st. The letter should be here any day starting today pretty much. The excitement is building. And yet, there's no way it could even begin to compare to last year's excitement.

I have to say though I'm pretty bummed that the mail here never comes until 4pm. I'll be checking it as soon as I get out of class this afternoon.

I sure hope the letter comes today, because I want to buy pizza to celebrate/cry and Pizza Hut has the $10 Tuesdays deal where you can get any large pizza any way you want it for just $10! (no, I was not paid for that sentence... but it'd be nice if I was)

Anyway, on a completely different subject, we shot a film on Monday. Well, I shot the film. The other three were actually in it. If I ever learn how to put videos up on my blog I'll show you it. Well, parts of it. We have quite a bit of editing. But I have a blooper that's pretty entertaining. More on that later... maybe. :)

Heart Attack Pictures

Something Mormon girls just love to do is "heart attacks." Because of the holiday around the corner, this gave my roommates the perfect chance to decorate our empty apartment. They cut out hearts and placed them all over our apartment. All over.



I'm not really a "pink hearts and butterflies and flowers" type of person. They're nice. In moderation... but seriously... you should see the faces of some of the guys who enter here now. Anyway. Our apartment has been officially heart attacked. I tried to get into it. My roommates can vouch for me, I really did try to enjoy it. But I ended up getting banned from cutting out hearts (I blame my lefthandedness... I seriously can't cut anything worth a darn). So instead I took pictures. My roommates were happy to be models.

Lizzy was the official "heart shape cutter outer" or whatever you'd call that.



While Alexis put words like "sweetheart" and "my love" on them.




And Erica was putting the hearts up around the room.



Now this is what I'm proud of! The colored igloo! I was too cold to actually go outside and get a good picture of the thing, but it is dang awesome. This was taken from my apartment kitchen and you can see the boys apartments just past the igloo. That's how close we are. But check out that igloo! They bought a $10 couch from DI and sawed it in half and put it in there. They were talking about putting a TV in there too. Pretty cool!



I thought when we sprayed colors on it they would mesh together and make the whole thing brown. While it's brown now, but a week ago when it was first colored, it looked fantastic.

Awkward Moments Define My Life

I ate lunch with a friend in the Crossroads (campus cafeteria) today. My first time there, it wasn't too bad.

As I was leaving I thought I saw one of my old roommates. I called her name kind of quietly behind her because she looked way different. Much fatter, certainly.

She turned her head and smiled when she saw me. It was then that I saw her big belly. I knew she was engaged with a guy when she was my roommate last summer. But she was so big I could have sworn she was pregnant. But they only got married in August. I didn't want to ask, just in case. But at the same time I didn't want to give her the impression that I simply thought she was fat if she really was pregnant.

So I just stared at her big belly... trying to decide if I should chance mentioning the fact that she had gained weight.

Instead I looked up into her face and asked, "So you're married now, right?"

She looked at me for a second and just said, "Uhh. Yeah."

"To... umm.... John was it?"

"Kevin."

"Oh, right. Yeah... How's that going?"

"Good."

"Great! .... You look so.... uh... different!"

"Yeah well, I stopped trying to make myself look nice anymore."

"Uh huh. Well, uh. Nice seeing you!"

"Yeah, you too Dianna!"

And then we both took off walking in the same direction down the hall. Which always adds to akwardness.

Why do I even try to be social!?

Oh, and by the way, because I was dripping with curiousity as to whether or not she really was preggers, I stalked her on facebook. She is.

Weird cuz they only got married in August and she is waaaaay showing. They must have gotten their groove on fast.

Stupid Projects...

I didn't do my assignment for Visual Media today. Shame, too, because it was photoshop which I think is really fun to play with! Why did I not do it? Because I had no idea it was assigned.

I could have sworn during our Monday class I heard the teacher say that since we were doing the second half of photoshop today, our final project wouldn't be due until next week. He told us we would get credit for the work we did in class for the rough draft.

Well, only part of that was right. The in class stuff did count as the rough draft. And a second final project is due next week. But apparently we had another project that was due today that I completely missed.

In my defense it wasn't really on the syllabus. I put really in there because it did say "Photoshop Assignment (in class)" But I figured the (in class) part meant that we would be working on it "in class" because what else would "in class" mean?

Apparently I'm the only student in the class who didn't get the memo. Actually, there were four of us. Apparently the (in class) part meant we would turn them in "in class" (duh! what assignment isn't due in class? none for this class) and the fact that the ink was the color orange meant it was a big project that was due on that day. I would have known that if I'd have noticed that the pretty colors all over the syllabus weren't just for decoration. Lame.

Fortunately the teacher had mercy and is allowing me and the other few students to turn in the project up to 2 days late with zero impact on our grades. He allows each student in this class to do this ONE time during the semester. So now I used my chance up, but I'm so stinkin' grateful for it.

Oh, and I broke my favorite pair of earrings today. :(

Empty Campus

Campus was empty today. In my Spanish class the teacher split us into our groups. Five people per group. I was the only person there from my group. Leana came late so there were two of us. But really... lame!

Then as I passed through the Crossroads on the way to my next class there were empty tables everywhere. Very rare.

And then about half of my Humanities class was missing. Where was everyone? We got out of my class and as I walked down the hall I had to double check my watch to make sure we didn't get out early today because the halls were just empty. So weird.

Anyway, life's been fun. I haven't really updated much recently. There's not a whole lot to say. I thought 20 credits would be killing me. It's certainly keeping me busy, but the only thing that's killing me is my Spanish class.

In high school Spanish was easy. I was pretty much teacher's pet and the class snoot. This semester I'm no longer one of the smart kids. In fact, I could possibly even say I'm the dumb one. I have a great teacher. He's fantastic and patient. But it's ridiculously hard.

Por and para both mean "for" but in different settings. Como and que both mean "what" but in different settings. I study and study and try and try. And just when I think I'm beginning to understand it, I'm introduced to all the exceptions. So annoying. It's kicking my butt.

But yeah, not much else. I better study now though. As I said, I'm definitely staying busy. :)

Boggles My Mind

I have this slideshow on my computer that filters through my photos... or the few photos I've chosen to put on this new computer. And I just can't help but be amazed at how ridiculously lucky I am.

It never ceases to amaze me, the wonderful works that we humans can do.






























God's creations amaze me even more. If I had all of my pictures this would be better, but we all know what's in this world.








































And it boggles my mind even more that I get to be a part of it!