Darn Good Day, I'd Say

I just wrote a post going through all the rest of the assignments I need to turn in until school ends. Then I figured no one cares about that. So I deleted it. But sum it up: Two presentations, a newsletter, an open book exam, and a mountain and a half of never ending Spanish homework that I'm totally dreading.

I still have no clue what grades to expect, but I'm pretty sure I'm gonna get my first C in college this semester. And I openly admit, I totally deserve it because I've been lazy as ever.

Enough with classes, though. I'm going on a cruise next month! A Disney cruise! I'm so excited I can actually feel my heart flutter in my chest sometimes! I was reading about it today and it turns out there'll be a Pirate night one night! Complete with fireworks! On the boat! How freakin' awesome is that!?

Today was my friend's birthday, too. We threw her a little party. I got her some presents and Daisy wrapped them with Jeanette's wrapping paper. We went to the park to help Kelly (birthday girl) do an assignment for class. She had to videotape herself teaching us how to play certain games. Then we came home and Daisy made us lunch. Tuna fish sandwiches that were also incredible. I made Ghiradelli triple chocolate chip brownies from scratch (yes, I know, they were AMAZING!). It was the thickest brownie batter I've ever seen in my life and adding the chocolate chips only made it thicker. This worried me, but they turned out incredible!

What a totally fantastic day!

Oh, and also, there's a thunderstorm outside. I haven't seen a good thunderstorm since Florida. And let me say, this is no Florida thunderstorm. But it'll do considering the circumstances. :)

I Hate Macs (Volume Five)

We have to create a book for one of my class projects. Carol had the book on her Mac because she was using InDesign and it was her job to compile the book.

Well, she titled the book on her computer as Wildhouse.indd. The name of the organization we're sponsoring is called Wildhouse. She saved it in a folder called Wildhouse.

Well, part of my job was to come up with pictures for the book. So I put a bunch of the files on my computer and titled the folder Wildhouse. I put that folder on my thumb drive and gave it to Carol.

She went to copy the folder to her desktop. She clicked and dragged as I watched, and a little pop up screen came up. As I asked her what it was and if we should rename it, she responded no. She said she knew what that was and was sure it wouldn't be a problem as she clicked OK.

Except that it was a problem.

Not only did it delete the entire book we've spent the last month creating and writing. It deleted the few pictures we already had, all the writing and pretty much anything and everything else linked to it. Because on Macs you can't just copy and paste. You have to create links.

By clicking OK we replaced the file with nothing but a bunch of pictures.

This is bad. Very bad. The book is due in less than a week. Very very bad.

I'll admit, a PC would have probably done the same thing.

Fortunately for me, I don't have any extra work to do since my writing part I have backed up on my computer and can simply send to her again. She's the only one who has to start over. But still, that stinkin' sucks!

What Did I Do Today?

Seven hints ought to be ample. :)

It involved people...



and tape...




the stadium...



many, many cameras...



proper placement...



and a couple thousand of these shirts.




And everyone sure cleared out of there quickly... this was taken within five minutes of the previous photo.

Fourth of July

It was a fun weekend. But I'm too lazy to fully write about it. Basically, Disney World pretty much ruined all other fireworks for me. :) But the IF fireworks were still somewhat impressive I guess. I got a lot of homework done. It was nice having the apartment to myself!

I've been getting progressively more and more excited for school to end. Seriously, I don't even know what I'm gonna do Senior year if I'm already this psyched for school to be over. Not that I dislike school. I love friends and parties and weddings (oh my gosh, the weddings! ugh!) and learning and stuff, but really I have way more exciting things to look forward to.

First off school ends exactly two weeks from today. That in and of itself will be great! Two-ish days after that I'll be on my way home. We're driving. In a car. Across the country! 32 hours in a car. This is gonna be so much fun!

After that I'll get to be home for a few weeks! I can tell right now I'll be bored out of my mind, but my mom usually has a pretty long list of work for me to do. Plus I'll get to see the people in my home ward again!

Then we'll drive down to Florida. 12ish more hours in a car. Depending on how fast I drive. Heehee! I'll get to see my Grandma... maybe both my Grandmas. I haven't seen them in a while. Plus I'll get to see the new place my one grandma is living in. She's lived in the same house for like sixty years, so it's kind of a big deal that she moved.

Then I'll go down to Orlando. I'll get to see Kimmy who I haven't seen in a while (we may even be able to be roommates again! Long story....).

Then Heather and I will go on a five day cruise! That'll pretty much be the coolest thing ever. Especially since I've never really been on a cruise. At lease, not a real one!

Then Heather will leave and my other friend Laura will come. On the 18th Laura and I will check in to work at Disney World! I'll be in Main Entrance Ops and she'll be in Merch.

Now, if I can't be ridiculously excited about that, what can I be excited for?

Captain EO

When I worked at Imagination in Disney World, I heard rumors several times about how Captain EO would make it's return sometime in the "near future." For those who don't know, Captain EO was an attraction in the place where I worked from 1986-1994 centering around Michael Jackson. Since Michael died last year, they were talking about bringing it back in his memory.

I heard the rumors. I didn't care. I'm not really a die hard Michael Jackson fan. I wasn't totally sure where they were going to put the attraction, but I definitely heard people talk about it. I thought it was one of those rumors that was just a rumor though.

But it's true. As of two days ago, the new Captain EO attraction opened up in the place where Honey I Shrunk the Audience used to be, right outside the doors from where I used to work. Honey I Shrunk the Audience was a pretty good show in my opinion. But I'll be honest, it scared the kids.

I remember one day I was working in strollers. As people return their strollers I would sometimes make small talk with them. One particular family with a little girl came to return theirs. I asked the little girl what her favorite part of the park was. She said Test Track as probably 90% of the little kids enjoy that ride the most. Her dad then completed this by saying, "Yep, but she sure didn't like the snake in the Audience show." The mom of the family pushed her husband and said, "Don't remind her!" as the little girl began crying. I had to try really hard not to laugh. Apparently she was deathly afraid of snakes. And there was a giant snake in the 3D Audience film determined to freak out small children. That why the signs say, "Warning, may be frightening for children!" Although, the Ellen DeGeneres ride also says it's frightening and it isn't at all. Meh.

Apparently Captain EO is supposed to be frightening as well. I will have to see. The only ride at Disney World that seriously freaked me out was the Dinosaur ride in Animal Kingdom. I rode it several times and each time I can say I was genuinely freaked out of my mind almost to tears. It was awesome!

Only At BYU

My friend Stephen just got engaged to a girl named Stepheni. Both spelled exactly like that. It becomes confusing on Facebook because the other day he made his status "I love Stepheni!!!!!"

Well, it was funny for me at least. I guess when I write it on here it's just not as funny. Needless to say he got a lot of comments from people asking why he loved himself.

In other news I'm helping a friend with a photography project tonight. For her photography thing she has to take pictures of a group of people. Because our clothes have to be coordinated, I was told to come in a white T-Shirt and jeans. I own a white button up shirt and a few white tank tops, but no T-shirt. So my roommate loaned it to me. Now I just have to hope against hope that it doesn't rain (even though rain is in the forecast and this is Rexburg, The Land of Horrible Weather).

All Kinds of Random Stuff

Today was clean check. We did nothing. And we passed. I love my roommates!

The rice that I ate when I had lunch with Pres Clark was rice pilaf. I had just forgotten the word for it, but yeah. There it is!

Only 21 more days of school! And if you take out weekends that leaves only leaves 15! Actually, that's kind of scary considering all I have to do in that time.

I just got back from the pet rescue. Apparently they found out that their newest bird rescue has Parrot Herpes. Yeah, that's disgusting. But it's contagious to the other birds (not to humans, thank goodness, but I'm taking a shower anyway cuz I'm freakin' disgusting from all the cleaning we did!) so we had to clean everything.

Both my papers that were supposed to be due Friday were pushed back another week. I'm still planning on getting them done by Friday, though so I'll have more time for this one big project.

Tomorrow's Rabbit Rabbit day. Don't forget!

Did you know it's possible to sunburn your eyes?

Exotic Pet Shelter

So as an explanation to those animals I posted a little while back....

I've been volunteering with a local exotic pet shelter. It's sort of for one of my classes. My persuasion class requires us to find a community organization and then work with them to win this $200 grant. We went to talk to the owners, and I just fell in love with the animals and can't stop going back.

Off the top of my head, these are the animals that they currently have and I've gotten to play with:

Seven snakes (one is missing at the moment... slithering somewhere in the house), a chameleon, two spotted geckos, a bearded dragon, two turtles, three sugar gliders, two chinchillas, three chickens, one other kind of chicken (not sure the exact name), two conures, one parrot, four budgies, four ferrets, one "normal" bird (one that you'd find somewhere outside... a family tried to house train it and they couldn't put it back in the wild), two dogs, a pygmy goat and one more animal that I can't remember what it's called but it can walk on walls which is freakin' awesome!

At least I think that's all of them. They all have names too, but I'm not even gonna try to go through all of those. I'm still learning their names.

Anyway, they're really nice people and I love helping them out. It's so much fun! I doubt I'll do something like this in the future, but for now it works out perfectly! And I've learned some really cool things about animals. More on that to come later. :)

Looking Ahead... Way Into the Future

I've been thinking a lot lately about the toys I want my kids to have(assuming I ever get married and assuming, after that, we have kids). Here are some things I remember from my childhood that I wonder if kids will still think are fun years from now. I mean, I look at some stuff from my parents generation and think, "Really? They thought that was cool?" Anyway, here goes (and actually I'm pretty sure some of this is from my parents generation):

-Jump rope
-Skip it
-Hula hoop
-Jacks
-Marbles
-Pogs
-Magic/Pokemon/or even Yu-gi-oh cards
-Hopscotch/chalk games
-Hacky sack/bean bags
-Stilts
-K'nex (I"m specifically not including Legos or Building blocks because I doubt those will ever get old or go out of style)
-Lincoln Logs
-Polly Pocket
-Giga pet/Tamigotchi (okay, so kind of like a computer game but still, I think they're cute and usually you get bored after playing for like ten minutes at a time)
-4 Square (I had some homeschooled roommates who had never heard of this game!)
-Cardboard boxes (Every child should know the joys of a good, giant cardboard box and some colorful markers!)
-Rubik's Cube
-Pickup sticks
-Cat's cradle (and all the stuff that goes with it)
-Yoyo
-Bop it
-Slinky
-Etch-a-sketch
-Sprinklers
-Barrel o' monkeys
-Choose your own adventure books (I always wished I could find more of those. The few that I read I really enjoyed though.)
-Games: Guess Who? Twister. Battleship. Chess. Jenga. Sardines.

....what did I miss?

Things that will never be in my house:

-Tarantula
-Snakes... except maybe a small corn snake or two... nothing else though
-Bratz... I just think they're stupid
-Easy bake oven... my kids will learn the real way to cook. They will not be pansies.
-Furbies... Those things are so freakin' annoying!

I hope this doesn't offend anyone. I've just been thinking about this a lot lately, especially with the new Toy Story 3 coming out. I hear it's great!

I understand this list may entirely change in just a few short years. I may change my mind about any or all these things. Since I'm not a parent I have no clue what it's like. Sometimes I wonder what kind of mom I'm gonna be.

There's a water play area at one of the local parks around here. It feels like every single time we drive by I either witness, or hear about, another story where a little kid cracked their head open there (I can still hear the screaming of one little girl and see the blood going into the drainage area). It's super dangerous.

But yet there's always tons of people there. I wonder if I would let my kids play there or not. I mean, I wouldn't want to be over protective and I'd want my kids to have fun. It's lame to be like the only parent who doesn't let their kid play because it's possible they might get hurt. But at the same time, I would not want my kid to get their head busted open!

Yeah, you could take your kids there and say "No running." But that's like putting a bowl of M&Ms in front of a kid and saying, "Look at them, but don't you dare eat any!" It's just no fun if you can't run.

Good thing I don't have to worry about that right now. All I have to worry about is whether or not I'm gonna graduate college next Summer. No big deal.

Oh, and did I mention I'm going on a cruise in August!?

Lunch With the President

I ate lunch with Pres Clark today. The food was incredible. The first course was a small salad with vinaigrette dressing and fruits and spinach and stuff. Then our main course was this weird kind of rice (none of us knew the name of it but we'd all seen it before... it's like super fat rice), squash and zucchini, and this chicken stuffed with asparagus and some sort of cheese. Dessert was this amazing three layer white cake with strawberry something in between each layer and topped with cream cheese frosting and whipped cream. Amazing.

Of course the company was unbelievable too. I got there a couple of minutes early and they had all of us students sit in this room and chat for a while. There were about ten of us. Fortunately after I got there I found this guy Shawn. He was in my Spanish class last semester so we already knew each other so we kind of stuck together. After chatting and getting to know each other in the first room we all moved over into the "dining" room. The table was in a big octagon shape so everyone could see each other. To my left was this girl Lindsey. To her left was Sis. Clark and to her left was President Clark. We all had assigned seats.

We talked about a lot of stuff. It was really fun. I don't really want to go into the details of what we talked about, but if you're really dying of curiosity you can ask me. I talked to Pres. Clark a bit. More to his wife actually. They are all such incredible people it just totally blows my mind. I'm so grateful that I get to go to this school! And I'm especially glad that our president does things like this. It's such a good idea!

I got to sit on the stand at devotional. It was really cool looking at the auditorium from there and reading the teleprompter along with the speaker. All over a really cool experience. I'm grateful to have been picked for it!

Gotta Love College Fun!

This was in my inbox today...

Title: Lost Pants

Hey my dear Greenbrierites!!! I have received reports of someone that hid a pair of pants in a tree as a joke and then when they went back to return said pants they were gone! So if any of you happened to eye some pants in a tree please let me know and if you have them...please get them to me asap! Thank you all so much for your help on this truly dire matter.

So Cool!

You'll never guess what I've been up to the past two days!

But if you read my facebook status you'd have a pretty huge hint. :)








Oh yeah, and here are some more hints. Heeheehee.

More details later.

On Saving Money

When I worked in Disney World one of my roommates, Natalie, liked to be frugal. One of the things she did to save money was, instead of buying expensive tupperware, she would keep old plastic sour cream or cream cheese containers.

One morning, she made herself a lovely salad for lunch before work. She put in some carrots and lettuce and tomato and all kinds of delicious greens. She then put it in the fridge as she took her shower and finished getting ready for work. I watched as she happily went to the fridge, pulled out her salad in her giant sour cream container and chuckled to myself as I thought about other people at work might think she was eating nothing but sour cream for lunch. However, her idea was a smart one to save money.

She came home from work that night, though. Upset with me for not noticing and not telling her (sarcastically of course). Turns out she had two identical looking sour cream containers in the fridge. One with her lunch and the other with, surprise! sour cream. She took a container of sour cream with her to work for lunch. Gross!

Apparently, to make things better, she had taken it to work and a coworker did make fun of her for bringing the sour cream with her. She opened the container to prove she wasn't just eating sour cream for lunch. But failed. I love Natalie!

There Are No Words...

...for the excitement I feel.

Food!

I like food. A lot. I also like cooking. A lot.

I've been trying to learn and make new stuff lately. I'm pretty sure I'd never eaten spaghetti squash before. Every time I go to the store and walk through the fresh produce aisle I always want to learn how to make some of the vegetables there (artichoke is next on my list... and someday I want to figure out what the cactus leaf is all about). Apparently, while I thought we ate loads and loads of veggies growing up, there's still a ton I've never tried.

So I made spaghetti squash the other night. And it was actually really really good! I think I can make it better though. All I did was put butter on it and pop it in the oven (after cutting and gutting it of course). But it tasted surprisingly like spaghetti (duh!). I want to start eating that more than just spaghetti cuz, hey, it's healthier and somewhat yummier!

I also made fettuccine alfredo last night (mostly) from scratch. I was surprised how totally delicious it came out to be. I added chicken and peas and it was super delicious.

Jeanette and I were talking about cooking today. We were talking about how it's different to cook in Idaho than out east (she's from Tennessee). We both feel like we're probably gonna be those wives who try to cook these great meals (that we really can cook sometimes) but they just never work like they're supposed to and then we're gonna get all sad and our husbands are still gonna try to pretend they like it even though it's totally no good and then we'll get even more frustrated.

Hopefully I'll be a fantastic cook by the time I get married. I can usually cook stuff, but I hate cooking for other people. I know what I like and how I like it, but I'm always worried other people aren't going to like it. Especially since I do things a little weird. Like I never ever add salt or pepper to my eggs. And I like creamed spinach, something none of my roommates have ever wanted to even try (they all always hate spinach).

Anyway, Jeanette and I are going to the store later today. We want to buy stuff to make a super delicious pizza. There was this show on TV talking about the best pizza places in Chicago and it made us hungry. Wish us luck! Hope we don't burn down the apartment!

Little Happy Update... With Nothing To Say

It's been beautiful weather lately. That always makes things happier. Me particularly. :) I love this kind of weather. I especially love waking up in the morning and walking to school listening to the birds chirping in the nice cool weather with blue skies going past the beautiful green trees and grass. I like this apartment complex because we actually have a yard. In a way we have two yards. But the second isn't really a yard. We just have this giant tree with a tire swing that random people like to play on. It's great!

I have officially started counting down the days to the end of the semester. I don't actually do this typically until we have like 5 or 10 days left. Right now there are 40. August can't come quickly enough.

I'm still frustrated with my teachers, but I have to say I have the best roommates this semester that I've had in my entire life. I don't think I've ever had a better apartment atmosphere in my entire life. Usually there's at least one of us who doesn't like another or one super messy person or one super clean person or one arrogant brat. But no. We all get along surprisingly well. We're all friends. And it's GREAT!

I can't wait to move back to Disney World. I feel like every day I'm reminded of it somehow! Oh sad!

And yeah. So there's my update on life. :)

Note:

Tomorrow is Donald Ducks birthday.

Just thought I'd warn you.

LOVE It!!!!

You know that feeling when you're just so happy and excited you can't possibly wipe the smile off you face?

I freakin' LOVE that feeling!

That's Kinda Cool... But I'm Shy!

Weird... I got an email today inviting me to eat lunch with President Clark (the dean of our entire school) and his wife next Tuesday. Me and seven other students at a fancy white tablecloth meal. (They do it every week, it doesn't mean I accomplished anything awesome or successful. It just means I'm a random lucky kid.)

I'm nervous. I haven't responded to the email yet. I'm sort of shy.

But don't worry. Of course I wouldn't pass this opportunity up. I mean, seriously. Free food!!!! :)

Dreams

Most of the time my dreams are random places I don't know with random people who I don't know doing things I don't understand (You don't get it! I have to put these worms in the peanut butter jar! If I don't, the world is going to explode!!).

Lately my dreams have felt very realistic though. Things I know won't really happen, but feel like real life and I don't realize I'm dreaming. Here are two:

Last night I dreamed someone in our apartment complex died. I even watched them carry the casket out of the apartment and put it in the hearse. I can even tell you which apartment it was at my complex it was so vivid. Creepy!

I dreamed I was at graduation next year. But as I went up and handed them the paper to call my name, they paused. Apparently, I had forgotten to fill out the proper paperwork so they wouldn't let me graduate. When I woke up it took me a while to realize that I'm still just a Junior.

I remember thinking last night just before falling asleep that there was something important I had to do today. I told myself, "Self, you better get up and write that down or your gonna forget." But then my other self told me, "No way! I'm tired. I'll remember it. Usually important stuff I can remember. I'm so exhausted." And then my other self said, "ZZZzzzzz" and I fell asleep. Now I have no idea what the important thing I had to remember was. All I remember was that it felt imperative that it had to get done today and that I don't have a clue what it was.

Anyway, there's part of my sleeping life for those interested. I guess I just have really dramatic fears!