Wednesday, June 30, 2010

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?

Thursday, June 24, 2010

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. :)

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

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!?

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

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!

Monday, June 21, 2010

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.

Saturday, June 19, 2010

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.

Sunday, June 13, 2010

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!

Saturday, June 12, 2010

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!

Friday, June 11, 2010

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. :)

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Note:

Tomorrow is Donald Ducks birthday.

Just thought I'd warn you.

Saturday, June 5, 2010

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!

Thursday, June 3, 2010

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!

Saturday, May 29, 2010

Rainy Day With No Roomies

Of course, as Idaho weather is horrible and unpredictable I'm not even surprised that the canoe trip was canceled. Again.

In happier news, Breyers ice cream is on sale for $2.88 at Broulims. I bought some last night because my roommates wanted smoothies. But I'm not really a smoothie lover so I made a milkshake. I inherited a smoothie maker from my previous roommate. I figured we should use it at least once.

Our apartment has officially dwindled to half it's usual capacity and I'm left with my own room! And an entire day to relax! I was supposed to have an exam open today, but my teacher still hasn't opened it. I'm hoping she forgot and I won't have to do it this weekend! Yeah, that is a real possibility. She forgets things a lot.

I'm kinda freaking out about classes because of the five classes I have only received one grade back in three of them (two exams and a project) and nothing back from the other two. And we're halfway through the semester. Seriously, I have literally no clue how I'm going to do this semester.

Anyway, hope your days go great! It's wet and cold and slushy and mucky outside with all gray skies and disgusting mud. It's one of those days where I think I'll make soup and curl up in my nice warm blankets and play with my new ITouch read. It's gonna be a good day now. I can tell. :)

***Oh, and so far every single person I've asked has responded that a vacuum tube is a tube on a vacuum and nothing more, however some asked if there were dirty connotations***

Friday, May 28, 2010

Long Weekend

It's a three day weekend and I have hardly any plans. One of my roommates is going to IF to be with her mom and my other roommate is going to Provo to hang out with her family.

My friend, Ashley and I have been trying to do this canoeing thing since last summer and finally this weekend will hopefully be it. It was canceled other times due to Idaho's crappy weather (99% of the time Idaho weather is crappy. This is why I will absolutely never ever live here ever never never ever ever.). We got an email today saying it may be canceled tomorrow since it's been rainy and gray all day today, but they're going to try and meet anyway. They're gonna make us wear wet suits because it's supposed to be cold. Ah well, I'll just cross my fingers!

That's my only plan for the weekend, though. Unless you count that on Monday my friend and I are going to watch a movie that's required for my Sociology class.

Just gonna be me and Kiara all weekend. Unless of course Kiara decides to go home (she lives only two hours away). Then I get the apartment to myself.

I'm ready for a nice, relaxing weekend with lots of sleep and down time. (Except for the exam I have to take tomorrow and the two huge upcoming midterm projects and my mountain of Spanish homework)

Monday, May 24, 2010

Boys!

I wish I had more to say.

I Think I'm That Kid Everybody Hates

I have a class this semester that I don't like. It just annoys me and I disagree with some of the stuff we have to learn. I haven't read the book all semester. Well, no I tried to read the book but it annoyed me.

We had our first test last week. I hardly studied because I'd get frustrated with the material. The teacher gave us this diagram in class and said, "Memorize this. It'll be on the test." So I memorized it but didn't care what it meant or why all the arrows pointed in the directions they went.

I went to take the test and obviously knew almost nothing about what was on it. To make things worse it was all short answer. Only two of the questions were multiple choice. It asked about some theories that I remembered hearing about but didn't remember much of what they were. I faked almost all my answers.

The final question asked about Jonathon Turner's Theory. Who the heck was Turner? I had no clue. I stared at the question trying to at least come up with a funny or witty answer. Nothing.

So just as I began to write "I have no clue who this dude is. Sorry." I happened to look down at the diagram I had to memorize. And there was Turner's name. His theory was that chart thing. So I quickly scribbled out "I have no clue" (I was using pen because my pencils are all broken) and made up an answer with that.

We got our test scores back today. I got that question right. Also, I got a 94% with "Excellent job!" written across the top in red ink. At first, I thought he just curved the grades. A lot. But the class average was 84% and the lowest score was a 40%.

How does that even happen!?

Thursday, May 20, 2010

This Is Not Okay... Except for the Ice Cream

I just haven't been feeling great lately. Maybe it's the fact that I have been having so much trouble breathing. I've actually been having breathing issues pretty much since January, but I've been able to just ignore it and get over it. Except now my roommates actually care that they can constantly hear me gasping for air and breathing heavy and they point it out and threaten to call my parents if I don't do something. The other day a girl in my class even looked over at me and asked if I was dying. This is not okay.

The breathing thing makes me feel better if I try to force myself to do a huge yawn. Needless to say I've been trying to yawn way too much lately. This makes me tired, and I think is the reason for my sore throat. Plus the other day I somehow got this big blister on the roof of my mouth and the skin tore off and it tastes bloody. This is not okay.

My abs hurt from doing this new ab machine yesterday. Good workout. Sore stomach. Especially since my diaphragm already hurts from breathing so heavily. Again, not okay.

Add on top that on my way to the store today I walked into a hole. Well, I walked into a car, and then into a hole beside the car. Who freakin' parks their car on the sidewalk and then puts a hole right beside it!? I seriously looked around for some kid with a camera pulling a prank. This is NOT okay!

Okay so in all honesty I'm laughing most of this off. Yeah, I think the hole thing is funny and was practically rolling on the floor as I explained my grass stain to my roommate (seriously, do those ever come out?) which was not okay because if you recall from complaint numero 3, my abs hurt!

I came home and ate a Neapolitan ice cream sandwich. And then I ate an apple. Then I ate chicken pasta roni. Then I ate another ice cream sandwich. Then I took a nap. Then I ate another ice cream sandwich.

So maybe I'm a piggy. Correction: I am a piggy. But this little piggy's had a hard day.

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Personal Triumphs

I have a confession. I'm super competitive. Not many people know or believe this about me. I'm not competitive in the loud, obnoxious, "If you win I'll hate you forever" type of way. I'm competitive in the "I have to beat you or else I can't feel good about myself" kind of way. I'm usually able to, in general, keep quiet about my little obsession with having to be better than everybody else (which, by the way, I'm totally not).

Pretty sure I've been this way my whole life. At the bookstore we had to sell discount cards. If I hadn't sold more discount cards than anyone else, I was going nuts inside my brain. I also tried to make sure I had more sales than anyone else. Not that my bosses (or anyone for that matter) saw or cared in the least about that, but I sure did.

In school I always secretly compare my grades with everyone else. Anytime I get the chance to figure out another students grades I always grasp at it to make sure that I'm doing better, or at least as well as said student. If not, then I get all depressed and work super hard until I make that happen. I force myself to try and be in the top ranges. I don't necessarily have to be the best (cuz that's totally a lost cause), but I have to just be better than usual.

Last winter my roommate Ashley worked really hard and got a 4.0 GPA at the end of the semester with 15 credits. I love Ashley to death. She's very smart and a great roommate. But I just felt like I had to beat her. Secretly, of course. I never told her how much it bothered me. But that's one of the reasons I took 20 credits last semester and did so well. I had to just prove to myself I could do it.

It's a bad obsession overall. But in some ways it's good because I push myself so hard to be better, and I actually do become better.

Today at the gym I was really excited that I finally made my goal of running 4 miles in 50 minutes. I ended up going over 4.5 miles in one hour. I was really really proud of this little triumph of mine. Until I looked at the guy on the treadmill beside me who was on mile 6 in 45 minutes, running without even wheezing. There's no way I'll ever be able to do that.

Then I went over to the weights. I was really proud of myself for being able to finally do this one arm machine at 40 pounds. I felt like this was a super successful workout. Personal triumph. As I got up, feeling the burn in my arms, I noticed the guy sitting down right behind me. He changed it to 110 pounds. Again, no chance I could ever beat that it seems. Fail.

For me, going to the gym and improving on my exercising is a great personal triumph. I have to be careful not to let other people who are way more in shape than I am ruin that for me. It's nice to go to the gym with my old roommate Ashley because we're both about the same level and we both push each other to do a better workout. Well, at least she helps me, I don't know if she has that weird competitive thing or not.

It made everything better when I came home and my roommate, who also works out, told me it looked like I lost weight. I'm not sure if she was just trying to be nice or not, but that made it all totally worth it.

Now I just have to stop comparing myself to people all the time. That can be my next triumph.