pimpleface.

so tommy and i have been volunteering at the boy's and girl's club for the last few weeks. we go on different afternoons, so we're not actually there at the same time. (lest you think better of us than we deserve, we started going so that we can get our free disneyland passes. but we have enjoyed it.) it's kind of sad, because you can tell a lot of them have pretty rough home lives. most of their time at the club is spent running around, and everything is always on the brink of chaos. a lot of the kids are really cute, though, which makes up for the horrible ones.

one kid in particular, though, drives me crazy. this is a typical conversation that i hold with trevor, every time i go in:

alyse: hey, trevor.
trevor: you're weird! pimpleface!
alyse: wow, thanks, trevor.
trevor: you're weird! pimpleface!
alyse: okay, well, do you have any homework i can help you with?
trevor: you're weird! pimpleface!
alyse: oooohkay. i'm going to go help someone else.
trevor: you're weird! pimpleface!

and i, although i KNOW i don't have any pimples on my face, suddenly feel as self-conscious as a seventh grader.

funny how a nine-year-old can do that to you.

BJ. EJ. 2010.

it's been a long time coming: this is when we first bought the tickets. this is when it was canceled the first time.


BUT IT HAPPENED ON FRIDAY AND IT WAS WORTH IT. billy joel, elton john. face2face. 2010 tour.

when i was on my study abroad, i made a list, a List of Things To Do Before I Die. i achieved one of these life goals on friday: going to a billy joel concert. i was worried he would die before i made it. but it finally happened, and i couldn't have been happier. i even got a t-shirt that i will cherish forever.

oh, we also went and visited the utah state capitol building (one of our activities we wanted to do before leaving utah). and went skiing with tommy's dad and sister. it was a fun-filled, homework-avoiding weekend.

extremely loud and incredibly close

"I walked through Long Island City, Woodside, Elmhurst, and Jackson Heights. I shook my tambourine the whole time, because it helped me remember that even though I was going through different neighborhoods, I was still me."
-Oskar Schell (age 9)


love. love. love. this book.
it makes me want to laugh and cry the whole time.
and it makes me think of sister rique.
we're reading it for a class right now--i love when we read books i already like for school.

jump. drive.

this is my jumpdrive.
i vividly remember going to office max in irvine, buying random school supplies before my first semester at BYU, and my mom getting me this jumpdrive. little did i know that this jumpdrive would become my best friend and most constant friend throughout my college experience.

this jumpdrive, aptly named "murweather" by the MIA sister fairweather before she left on her mission, has held all of my files since starting at BYU. it's red. it has no cap, unlike the misleading picture. it only has 1 gig of space, yet i've never been unable to add more files to it, even while it was holding tons of wedding pictures. my faith in murweather is unfailing.

i've probably lost this jumpdrive approximately 37 times over the course of my time here at BYU. and every time, a good-doing cougar returns it to the lost and found and they email me to let me know that it's there and telling me to pick it up.

i went and picked it up today for the 37th time, after a week of not knowing where it was. it was a joyous reunion. i love this jumpdrive.

long weekend and loving it

mom and camille came for the long weekend, and of course, we brought our camera everywhere and didn't take hardly any pictures! this is basically the only one to prove that they came down. we had brunch on saturday at gma and gpa murphy's house, which was a lot of fun. tommy got all the girl cousins (and mom, and grandma) valentines with chocolates in them, which is what we're all holding in the picture (haha).


(from left to right: mom, jolysa, aubrey, jenica, tommy, alyse, camille, and gracie coleman, who came along with jenica for brunch. and, of course, grandpa murphy, looking serious.)

we had a good time with mom and camille. we watched a lot of the olympics and 2 movies (julie and julia and bride and prejudice, our family favorite bollywood film), went shopping (kind of), went to tyler mcarthur's homecoming with all the myres family, and took camille to in-n-out in draper. it was a lot of fun! i wish my fam could come to UT more often. but i understand.

you'll notice that i didn't mention any homework in that list of things we did. because i definitely did not do any. so i'm trying to do some now . . . which is why i'm blogging instead.

i really appreciate having a day off today. sadly, this is the only day we get off for the rest of the semester. good luck BYU . . . i don't know how they can justify doing that to us.

to read:

i used to never read for fun during the semester because my homework is usually 90% reading. but i've turned over a new leaf (partially in thanks to tommy for being a good influence, and probably partially in thanks to not having a facebook) and i've read several books so far this winter. these two books are my most recent favorites:


i kept walking past them in the BYU bookstore and finally bought them on a total impulse. they're books that change how you think. in blink, he talks about research going on now about how people make split-second judgments and decisions, how those decisions are sometimes more accurate than thought-out decisions, and how stereotypes endanger people's abilities to make decisions. in the tipping point, he talks about what factors turn small trends into crazes (like contagious diseases) and why some things "catch" and other things don't.

they were crazy interesting. you should read them.

next on my list: outliers, by the same author.

this makes everything better.

some songs just make my day/week/life better, all in just one listening. this is one of them. the music video makes it even better.



i'm learning it on the piano, and waiting for tommy to become a pro at the violin so we can play it together.

we love sigur ros.

so, what are you going to do with that?

one of the worst things about being an english major is that everyone asks, "so, what are you going to do with that?" i usually just say, "no idea," because it's true. they say the same thing about how i'm applying to grad schools: "so, what are you going to do after grad school?" still, no idea. i didn't choose this major based on what i wanted to do with it. i chose to major in english because i LIKED it. and i still do like it. i didn't choose it because i thought i would be able to start making money from it as soon as i graduated. it would be nice if i really loved nursing or chemical engineering and wanted to major in either of those, because then i would be assured of some kind of job when i graduated, but i don't love those things, so i'm not studying them. but let me tell you--i didn't choose english because it was easy. it's not, not if you're doing it right.

some people (probably most people) at BYU look at their education as something to get through so that they can get into the work force and start making money. they complain about their GE classes and major in business management so that they look like they're going to become contributing members of society. which really is fine, but doesn't mean that everyone has to do that.

i think that education should not be meant only to increase your earning power in the marketplace. it should expand your mind, improve your ability to think critically, introduce you to new ideas and concepts you never would have encountered otherwise. you should be able to think about moral, ethical, political, social issues and decide your own stance on them, based on all of your available information. education should help you to not only be a monetarily contributing member of society, but also a CRITICALLY THINKING and ETHICALLY INDEPENDENT member of society--someone who can make their own decisions based off of what you believe and you alone.

but most of all, you should love your education. if you don't love it, you're probably not studying the right thing. that's why i'm majoring in english and (hopefully) going to grad school to study it some more, not so that i can "do" something with it.