Its Been Awhile

Well its been ages since I last posted so I thought I give you a quick summery post and then I'd detail a new adventure that I have been undertaking. First off I got a job, actually I have two jobs. I work for America First Credit Union and at a make-up store called Merle Norman. Each job has its ups and downs. The best thing about the make-up store is the amount of freedom I have I can pretty much do anything because its only me in the store. The biggest downside, hardly anyone ever comes in. The credit union's biggest up some seriously fun co-workers. The downside co-workers that leave and impatient people.
Oh yeah, Taylor is in Kentucky running, sweating, shooting, and learning how to keep the U.S. a safer place. He loves it! He misses everyone but is really thriving in the Army. As a family we write him a ton and his letter are really funny because most of the time he writes them when he is really tired. Who knew he could be so funny unintentionally. All the animals are still alive which I suppose is good. However, feeding them is a downside. Tuesday, I had to make a decision, either they could go all day with no water or be flooded out. So since the mercury was pushing 100 that day I chose to flood them out. I figured too much is better than too little. And that's about it when it comes to updates. I know I've become boring since leaving school! Who knew that was possible?!

The End of the Season

This weekend marked the end of Beaver Resorts ski season. So yesterday Lace and I went to beaver and the snow was amazing! It snowed the whole time and the wind was blowing sideways but it was still lots of fun. There is something surreal about boarding of fresh snow. The freedom and lack of edge catching makes me think that perhaps fresh powder is what surfing feels like. One day I'll be able to answer that question...hopefully. There is something amazing about the crisp cold air filling your lungs and the freeing power of finding out just how far you can push your body. There is something amazing that comes over you when your going down the hill in silence and you can hear the board edges catching the snow carving beautiful S's into the fresh snow. Its an exhilarating, artistic, and inspiring dance between the rider, the board and the terrain.
Snowboarding reminds me of life in a way. Try as we might the more you try to control the board and have a plan for where you want to go, the more you tend to fall down and end up going the wrong way. Up in till now I feel like I have been trying to fit my life into a path that it doesn't feel like going. I've been falling down and trying to learn and readjust but I feel like I am making the same mistakes. So this is me relaxing my hold on the board and letting the board do the work. I need to put myself in the proper position but after that let the "chip just fall where they may." I have spent too much time trying to figure out where I need to be and what I need to be doing that I have forgotten how fun and enjoyable life is suppose to be. We work but we also need to remember to take time out to have fun and remember how wonderful life can be. So this is my end of March advice! Enjoy.

The Close of Another Month

Well the shortest month of the year has come to a quick close. I learned a lot about myself this month. So I decided to dedicate an entire post to what I learned this month:

I learned that trying to read the book of mormon in 28 days is impossible if you get behind three days. I never re-caught up and so thus did not finish the book, but I have great aspirations for this next month.

I learned that sometimes the only way to learn is to fail and fail again.

I learned that you should be very careful what you read in Barns&Noble because if its a book on dating and a guy comes and talks to you its going to be slightly awkward.

I learned that when I am sick, I apparently look good enough to get invited to a modeling audition. I'll let ya'll know how that goes ;)

I learned that sometimes shorter is better especially when dealing with family.

I learned that sometimes the Lord puts people in your path that you need to meet in order to grow and be the best YOU, you can be. Sometimes this person comes as a stranger you meet on a plane ride, and the only reason you meet them is because the brake lines have a leak on your plane and you get an hour and half lay over. Always be greatful for the adventures in everyday.

I learned that babies are beautiful and so tiny they really are straight from God. This is a shout-out to Martilyn's baby Rachel if you haven't seen her go and see her because she is beautiful. I still can't believe how tiny she is. And for the record I was the third person to see her on her birthday!

I learned that life is often times a cold place to be, but that is why we have friends and family. They keep us warm and battling against Murphy and the downfalls that happen all the time.

I learned that hope is the most AMAZING emotion humans are privy to feel. Hope is what gets people through wars both physically, mentally, and spiritually. Hope can be shattered into a million pieces and bounce back bigger and stronger than before.

I learned that job interviews are all about bluffing people into choosing you. It's like the ultimate game of dodgeball and everyone is picking teams. You want to be picked but you also want to win, so being picked by the winning team is ideal, but doesn't always happen. P.S. I am still looking for a job so if you know of anything let me know.

I learned that USU basketball is a great place to find a backbone, along with a friend to help prop you up while you find said backbone.

I learned that not seeing your best friend for over two weeks is INCREDIBLY hard! As a girl you gotta have your best friend! One that tells pirate jokes and laughs at the same things you think are funny. Who thinks like you think. Because at the end of the day you need to look people in the eye and say at least she thinks I am funny.

I learned that less is more in dating. If you try to hard or want to help someone too much it just makes, you the giver, feel bad. Best to just keep your self a tad aloof/mysterious and let the chips fall where they may.

I learned to always say I love you to the ones that really matter because one day they may not understand you or know who you are and you NEVER want to look back and think or regret not saying I love you to someone.

I learned that Mom's are amazing, I mean I knew this before but really mom's are amazing. They are there to help you get out of bad situations, they know about medicines, and recipes, and how to get stains out of clothes. They know all the best ways to make people feel happy and they are also willing to help you when your sick. MOM'S ARE AMAZING!!

So in this very short month I learned a lot of good lessons. I am hoping that soon I will be one step closer to finding out what I want to do with my life. Until next month...

Today...

Today I had a lot of time to think and with that came a whirlwind of thoughts the most dominate however was what if people just said what they ment or how they really felt. Would it really be so bad? I mean then you would never have to spend time thinking what is he/she/they thinking and why, because you would know. What are we afraid of? Is it really the unknown because if you knew you would no longer have to worry or think about the issue anymore. Maybe knowing exactly what people thought of you all the time would be difficult and often times it would probably be mean, but maybe we would all be different if we all knew that the stranger next to you was really going to tell you if you looked ridiculous in an orange pea coat purple jeans and yellow rain boots. Or another example a job interview you go in, start talking, and before you leave the company gives you an answer,because lets me honest people the majority of the time we know whether the person interviewing is the right fit or not within the first few minutes. So why the drama of letting them hold on to the hope that they might be chosen? Why does hope hurt so much when its dashed? How many times have we found ourselves picking up the shattered pieces of hope with tears streaming down our faces? I spend a lot of time now-a-days hoping, hoping for new job postings, hoping that today I might get an interview with one of the 100s of places I have applied to, hoping that my friends remember me, hoping that I am making the right choices in life, hoping that later when I look back on my life I won't regret the choices that I have made. But mainly, realistically, just hoping. The miraculous thing about hope is that it seems to be constantly mended and reshaped. People who have nothing to hope for or are pessimistic about everything repel people like skunk spray. But if we really stopped to think on how resilient hope is perhaps we could pass on our knowledge to the few less fortunate whose hope seems to be lacking.

Dropping out of grad school has given me a lot of time to stew and to self reflect. It has also given me a lot of hours of silence. And anyone who truly knows me will know that silence is something I strive very hard not to venture into. It makes me nervous. There is a famous philosopher, and this is me wishing I remembered his name, said that the reason we rely on so many distractions ipods, cell phones, the radio, chatter, video games ect. is that we are afraid of our own silence. We are in essence afraid of our own selves. Our own minds even. Being afraid of my own silence is funny but very relevant. I live in a world were ignorance is bliss, what you don't know can't hurt you. Its naive and illogical but I love it because it provides me with a safety that is dissipating in society. Now before you get too excited about ignorance, its not on big issues i.e. race, religion, abortion ect. its on a personal sense. I keep myself ignorant to things that I feel like I don't want to come into my life. I realize that is basically the definition of ignorance but we all have to honestly admit that their are things in this world that have no place in our lives. They neither make us a better person or help us grow and learn from them. It is to this ignorance that I refer to, everyone has this is their lives and it is this ignorance that provides me with a safety that I enjoy.

On a much lighter note the Utah State Aggies play tomorrow on ESPN ( I believe) at 10 MST and you should all watch because if nothing else the student body will be entertaining.

October-snore-fest

The older I get the more I notice that time seems to get faster and faster. As a small child things seemed to take forever, but nowadays life just seems to be on the express bus. Get a ticket and get on or get hit whatever. The month of October has been slow in passing but definitely not dull! The month started off same old same old with the majority of my time being spent within the confines of the library. Okay really I spend the majority of my time in the library. Hence why I can make this observation. The USU library really needs to work on cleaning their book shelves. I was laying on the floor in between book shelves E and F last week and there was a layer of dust just sitting on the bottom shelf. Needless, to say I shelved some of my stray books there so that a) the area would get clean and b) I would be able to find them again.
Let's see activities this month have been a bit sparse in part because of the work load but more so because I have come to the realization that well I might be just a bit lame. In fact I should probably be doing homework instead of writing this but I figured how much am I really going to get done at 10:50 pm? Grad school is a lot harder than I anticipated and quite frankly it is far more dull than I thought it would be. However, quitting is not in my nature so I am hoping to stick it out for three more semesters. I am working towards getting my degree in History with an emphasis in Public History. Public historians get to do all the good stuff, musuem tours, state historical sites, archiving. Think of them as the jack-of-all-trades kind of historians. I am also thinking about teaching at least for awhile and hopefully somewhere in there find time to coach swimming because that is something that I want part of my life I just need to find that ever elusive happy balance.

The highlight of the month was our girls trip to Island Park. The trip consisted of Jalayne, Cassie, Baker, Lacee, Crystal and I. We stayed in Jalayne's grandparents cabin aka mansion. It was so fun the major house highlights are the indoor tramp and ultimate ping pong game lace and I played...she won. Not really surprising she wins everything: boggle, ticket to ride, balderdash. I guess that's just one of the perks of being the Vally D. Lace's winning streak continues to grow tonight she beat Jalayne twice in Trivial Pursuit. Trivial Pursuit is like the apartment past time. Winning a game that is based completely on useless trivia is probably pretty nerdy but I always feel so accomplished. Anyways back to Island park. We decided to go to Yellowstone, because who drives for three and half hours to sit in a house? But to enter the park there is a catch. For every car you take into Yellowstone you have to pay 25 dollars and we didn't really want to split everyone up to drive through the park because that defeats the purpose of being together. To compound the problem we have to get past the Forest Ranger station and we didn't really want to get a ticket from the park ranger for not having everyone in a seat belt so we came up with a plan. We put Baker in the trunk of Jalayne's car and drove through the station and then let her out on the first turn out we saw. We felt like true renegades, however adding one more person to the backseat presented its own set of problems, Jalayne drives a Honda civic and when filled to passanger capacity its squishy. We added one more body than recommended and it was possibly one of the most uncomfortable rides I have ever encountered. But the memories we made in the back seat were well worth it. The pictures of this grand adventure can be found here...at possibly a later date. I am working on getting them posted.

We ( Crystal, Lacee, Jalayne and I) went to this years pumpkin walk, however, for the record last years was twice as much fun. Part of the problem was our camera gave out halfway through the walk, and for some reason we were not nearly as picture happy this year as we were last. Weird how that works sometimes.

It wouldn't be October without dressing up and that is just what Lace and I did for the annual mow crew Halloween party. Sometimes I get to hangout with the mow crew even though I have never actually mowed a city lawn. Anyways Lace and I went as grad students... I know lame right? In all fairness we both were swamped with homework and had little to no time to prepare anything amazing. We looked pretty dang awesome but not nearly as cool as Justin and his family of pirates, Tyler and his ninja gear and Jason and Jen as a ninja turtle and a Keebler elf respectively...again pictures of the event are coming soon.

I suppose that pretty much sums up the month... I hope that this post finds everyone well, and I will try to up-date this thing at least monthly unless something super exciting happens. Well I am off to bed. Goodnight and God bless