choir people

yesterday, while sitting with university chorale in the marriott center before the devotional, the girl next to me turned to me and asked,

"do they ever play any sports in here?"

yes, she did. annddd she was serious.

2 am

it's 2 am and i'm writing a proposal for my biggest paper of the semester that's due in seven hours and i just realized i don't actually have a thesis statement.

and i think i'm going crazy. i'm thinking about other things instead of actually developing a thesis statement, like:

-this was one of the best weekends that i've had in a while.
-why on earth would anyone not get an epidural when they're birthing a child?
-i still haven't seen the episode where pam and jim get married.
-i really want to watch hercules, robin hood, and prince of egypt. classics.
-it was probably a bad decision to write a paper analyzing mormon mommy blogs. now i can justify reading blogs as gathering research.
-this is probably only going to get harder in grad school. dang.

junk email

here's a confession: i HATE junk email. junk email meaning any email that isn't actually meant for me; it's a forward or an ad. whether it comes from payless shoes or a relative. i just don't like having random things unnecessarily cluttering up my inbox. and it makes me a mean and horrible person, like i'm about to prove to you.

the worst offender at sending out junk email is the editing department. i get at least six emails a day from them with worthless unpaid editing internships and offers from random ladies who wrote their own "pseudo-electro-psycho-fantasy vampire novel" and will offer "experience" to any student who will edit it for free. phyllis daniel, the editing department secretary, whose name appears as the sender of all of these emails, has long been on my "delete immediately" list.

but today was the last straw. phyllis got a bit email trigger happy this morning. she sent out her average three or four morning internship emails, accompanied by another email advertising a random indian man who is coming to speak on campus. an event that has nothing to do with editing, just a random lecture by a random, probably very intelligent and nice but not-interesting-to-me guy.

that was it.

so i responded saying this (it's unedited, so you can see how spiteful i am over such unimportant things):

"Why are we receiving this information? This has nothing to do with the editing minor and therefore should not be sent to us by the editing department. I feel like this is an abuse of power to be able to send out so many unimportant emails."

a few minutes later, she emailed me this back:

"I am sorry, I thought it would be something that might be interesting to you. I can take you off the email list if you would like."

whoa--phyllis is actually a person! and she was reasonable! i immediately felt like a bad and horrible person for questioning her authority to send out useless, unimportant emails to all the editing minors. i just said back:

"That would actually be great. Thank you."


and then six minutes later she sent me another two emails about more useless editing internships. i stopped feeling bad.

it's official

tommy and i know where we're going to be next year! after months and months of planning and hoping and waiting and thinking, we can finally say that . . .

come august, we're going to be moving to NORTH CAROLINA! tommy's going to be getting his phd at duke and i'm going for my master's at nc state, just a short 25-30 minute drive down the road. we're going to be there for four years, at least.

yes, duke was tommy's first choice and yes, he is ridiculously smart. yes, we are so lucky to have gotten into schools near each other like this. and yes, we are oh, so excited. a true blue new adventure that i can't wait to experience.

hello, deep-fried foods.
hello, people who aren't lds.
hello, duke basketball.
hello, living on the east coast(ish).
hello, north carolina. we can't wait to meet you.



p.s. also, tommy and i finished the crossword today. with minimal help from google (who REALLY knows howard from ghostbuster's last name?). i felt accomplished and i can feel the alzheimer's receding from my brain already.

bucket list

one of the girls on my study abroad made a bucket list years ago and had almost completed it. seriously. it inspired me to make my own list of things to do before i die. i'm slowly checking things off. who knows whether i will finish all of them? it doesn't really matter. i just think it's cool because it keeps me from staying stagnant and gives me some great eventual life goals to work towards. i highly recommend you all do the same.

Things to Do Before I Die:

-See Billy Joel in concert (done)
-Be an extra in a movie
-Learn sign language
-Finish my book list (probably will never happen, since i am perpetually adding to it)
-Learn to play the guitar (done--took intro to guitar two years ago and still remember some things)
-Participate in a triathlon
-Learn to drive stick shift (for reals)
-Live on the east coast again (looking more and more likely every day)
-Visit all fifty states
-Drive across the country for a road trip (planning on it this summer)
-Take a photography class/learn how to take good pictures
-Be in a band (done, if the writing fellows band counts)
-Learn how to flamenco dance (tommy and i did take social dance ... doesn't count)
-Go to Iceland (we're going to go in two years when we go on our trip to denmark to visit lindsay and travis)
-Serve a mission
-Be a street performer and play on a street corner for money
-Win a food-eating contest (or just participate in one)
-Visit the completed La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona

and the great thing is--i'm going to keep adding to it. forever. and the other great thing is--tommy and i are going to do all these things together. which is so much better than doing them all by myself.

and, wow.

okay, another post in the same day, but.

i just went and applied for graduation (!!) and do you know what they told me?

i have to pay $15 to receive my diploma.

are you SERIOUS? i mean, it's only $15, but AFTER FOUR YEARS AND OVER 150 CREDITS AND THOUSANDS OF HOURS AND DOLLARS I DON'T GET THAT STINKING PIECE OF PAPER FOR FREE? BYU, are you serious? couldn't they have taken those $15 out of one of the our tuition payments? that's just the most ridiculous thing i have ever heard.

i can't believe that. i am appalled, and almost tempted not to pay it in protest. but yeah, after four years and almost 150 credits and thousands of hours and dollars i want that stinking piece of paper.

snooze

the bane of our existence is the snooze button. i mean, it's really the best thing in our existence because it lets us sleep in far longer than we were planning to. but then we slack. a lot.

since we did negative homework this weekend (we actually ended up with more to do than we started off with) tommy and i decided to wake up early this morning and do some. we did, we got up WITHOUT HITTING SNOOZE and worked for about an hour and forty-five minutes.

and then we went back to bed for a "quick nap" before getting up for class and ended up hitting snooze for the next hour (on my part). we fail.

i seriously don't remember if i've always been this bad at waking up in the mornings or if it's just because of being married. but i CANNOT get out of bed without hitting snooze anymore. it's a problem.