parting gift?

One of my roommates got married over the break, so prior to Christmas, the apartment was full of Mel's explosion of stuff. She had many possessions, and I was looking forward to the ever-present bins (yes, they were in our living area all semester) and scary rubber ducky gracing our mantle finally making an exit.

So I get back from break and take stock of the apartment: clean, tidy, a few new pictures on the wall belonging to my new roommate, and . . .

this. This used to be Mel's. And I couldn't wait for her to take it away. This lovely life-size, cardboard--yes, cardboard--GAP locker was one of the items I was most looking forward to losing.

And she left it. Thanks, Mel.

cruel hoax

I bought several chocolate bars to make s'mores at a bonfire that I went to over the weekend, and there were still several candy bars left. I'm good at sharing and divvied many out to friends. There was one left, and I was looking forward to taking it with me to school today. I went to grab it out of the box, and there was nothing there. One of my roommates took it. And she just left the wrapping there to taunt me and my candy-bar-less self.

Cruel hoax.

a rarity

I came home from campus, and no one was here. That almost never happens. Ever. It's glorious. I really did get lucky as far as roommates go: they all have their idiosyncrasies of course, and I'm not sure if I would ever spend time with them if I wasn't roommates with them (with the exception of Katie of course--she's just amazing), but to not have to deal with three extra personalities after a long day of work and school is just such a nice break.

With this time completely alone I have, I think I'm going to read my scriptures, read my Great Expectations assignment, and get a head start on my 500-word article due in editing on Friday.

General Conference: The Cabin

General Conference time is come around again, and I love it! My weekend is going to be pretty varied with where and with whom I watch Conference this time around. Last night after I helped out with Katie's family's mission reunion (more on that later), I headed up to Heber with her family. Her parents just bought a cabin up in that area, and I was invited to come up with her to watch Conference today!


Their cabin is beautiful: it is totally the kind of place my family would love for a family compound. If you want to be by yourself, you can; but, if you want to be with everyone, you can do that too. The ceilings are high and vaulted, the kitchen is big and open, the lighting is cozy, the decks are large--it's just amazing!



Anneli and I slept in the "dormitory" room. It's this long room with four beds in it, so it's perfect for having lots of people over. There are three levels to the cabin, and we watched Conference on the ground level in this cozy room with a big TV and a large, way comfy sectional.

The decor wasn't necessarily to my taste, but it was definitely mountain-y and cozy. There was a big stone woodburning stone fireplace, and several fun little family rooms complete with a ping pong table, a chessboard, and a piano.

In between sessions, Katie's dad took us out on a "cart ride," which was really a ride in a four-wheeler-esque type of vehicle. It was completely open, and it was raining, so I put up my hood and had quite a ride bumping along the muddy roads around the area. It was a definitely a stellar--and wet--20 minutes!

The colors up there were absolutely breathtaking--it was just beautiful. This was outside my the window by my bed:


I brought schoolwork that I need to do, but did I? Not really. I did a little bit of editing, but read only about two pages out of Great Expectations. At least I tried, right?

General Conference since I've been out at school has been a bittersweet experience, because I love love love love love Conference, but I really miss being with my family. So being up in the cabin with Katie and her family was great, because I was with a family, even though it wasn't my family. After the first session, we had a family prayer, and afterwards, I almost got ready for a family cheer--it pulled on my heartstrings a bit.

Some quick highlights from today's Conference sessions:

• The 5 new temples!
• Elder Andersen's talk about how we don't know everything, but we do know enough. That was so encouraging.
• Elder Oaks's saying "texting" in his talk. Not text messaging or using your cell phone, but he actually said "texting."
• President Uchtdorf's connections between hope, faith, and charity
• Elder Holland's talk about how angels are always among us
• Elder Bednar's instructions for having more meaningful prayers
• The children's choir. I loved seeing the kids see the camera and then look away smiling; that one boy who frustratingly thrust his arms down at his side; and the boy who was standing sideways when everyone else was standing facing the right way. Ha!
• The overall theme I saw of hope and faith and comfort: we are never alone.

I loved it, and I can't wait for tomorrow! I probably would have stayed up in Heber for tomorrow's sessions, except that Emily and I have tickets for the morning session tomorrow! We'll be off around 7:00 a.m. . . . Can't wait!

crazy, crazy, crazy week take 2 and recap edition

I'm in for another crazy week, though hopefully not so crazy as last week. I wanted to do several posts about my week and everything that's been going on, but it's just not going to happen.

• Dinner at the Olive Garden and watching "P. S. I Love You" with Katelyn on Friday night. It made me just happy to be her friend
• Lunch with Brooke and a few of our friends on Saturday
• RS Broadcast--I wasn't up for going, but really glad I did
• Emily and her roommate Jessica over for Kraft Mac 'n' Cheese and a movie on Sunday--I love having Em out here with me
  
• Still feeling overwhelmed with my job. My boss said give it a month and I'll have a groove, but right now, a month is seeming like a very long time. Editing is a bit different from the exercises I do in class.
• "Chuck" season premier=awesome
• Great roommates, still
• Still a dishwasher that never gets loaded or unloaded
• Not nearly as much sleep as I'd like. I could have gone to bed at 8:00 tonight and been completely, 100 percent happy with that
• A great family cheer that made me feel like I could do it--thanks :)

Here's to Tuesday. . . .

roommate rave

I came home from my day close to 10:00 tonight, and my roommates had cleaned my part of the apartment for cleaning checks. Wow.

roommate rant

Is the dishwasher a recent cleaning revolution? Is is one of those things like big sunglasses that didn't become popular until fairly recently? Is there somewhere in the continental United States where dishwashers are the "new" thing, the new appliance which everyone has a hard time figuring out? . . . I didn't think so.

I always thought the dishwasher was a staple appliance for those of my generation. And why shouldn't it be a staple? I mean, all you have to do is rinse off your dishes, put them in the dishwasher, and turn the dishwasher on. It's really that simple: no gimmicks, no tricky instructions, no ridiculous plastic ties like Barbies have to strap them in the box.

So, if the dishwasher is such an easy and user-friendly appliance, then why in the world do people have such a hard time using it? It's a machine that says, "Hey, let me do your dishes for you. All you have to do is load and unload--it's that easy!" It's like we won the dish-cleaning lottery; it's like having a personal maid but not taking advantage of it.

Why can't roommates just load their dishes into the dishwasher? Why?!

weekend miscellany

My weekend in review:

• I was reunited with my Chicago Manual of Style. We were meant to be. Thanks ELang 410 for giving me another chance with my one true love: commas.
• I started reading Eats, Shoots & Leaves for the first time (if you can believe I haven't read it yet--I mean, it's a whole book dedicated to punctuation). Favorite phrases and clauses include "satanic sprinkling of redundant apostrophes" and "anger [over egregious punctuation errors] gives way to a righteous urge to perpetrate an act of criminal damage with the aid of a permanent marker."
  

• The fridge froze at least three of my eggs. Frozen eggs=weird, no?
• I watched the new episode of "Monk" at Brooke's after we watched a whole disc of season one at my apartment. Picture freezer!! Picture go regular!!
  
• I went to my first ever BYU dance. Granted, it was only for half an hour, but I met up with my friend Brennen there and we had fun partying it up.
  
  

• Emily hiked the Y: this is a picture of the Y when Emily was on it. Kudos, Em!
  

• I helped Katie purge her closet. Sometimes you just need someone to tell you to throw out stuff. I learned that from Mom.
• Lunch at Katelyn's on Saturday: Kraft Mac 'n' Cheese, just like the old days.
  

• Emily came over Saturday night and we went to Smith's and watched "Sliding Doors" afterward.
  
• Saturday, there was a banana pancake party at Katelyn's, complete with "Seinfeld."
  
• We had regional conference today: President Uchtdorf and President Packer spoke, and it was stellar.
• There was a CES fireside tonight with Elder Holland, and it was beyond incredible. It's like he knows me or something. He talked all about the lessons we learn from Joseph Smith's stint in Liberty Jail. It was so personal and touching.
  

• I watched a few episodes of "Alias" online. I'm a huge fan. Because, you know, it's not like I don't need another TV show to like. Good grief.
  

• And probably my favorite highlight from the weekend: B-Money. He's a salesman who carries t-shirts he designs himself around in a large duffel and tries to sell them to students. He's especially popular among the 700 East crowd. One of Katelyn's friends invited B-Money to crash the banana pancake party, and so for the first half hour, B-Money was trying to bargain with us on t-shirts (which have his face on them, no joke). He also makes his own hip-hop CDs and was selling them for $7. (The CDs were called "Rag$ to Riche$.") If only I had cash on me. He just hung out for a while, and then went back to pounding the pavement. I wish you all the luck in the world, B-Money.

And now I get to start another week. Hopefully I can find a good school groove: I'm finding motivation hard to come by. Maybe if I buy a B-Money shirt. . . .

Edit: Google "B-Money" on GoogleVideo and enjoy.

new level of shallow

Yesterday, I went for a run for the first time in a long time. It was kind of hard, but overall, very satisfying. Afterwards, I was sweaty and gross, and spontaneously decided to go to with my roommates to the complex hot tub. It was kind of fun putting on my swimsuit and strolling on over to the pool area for a bit of hot tub relaxation before I had to bunker down and complete some homework. There were several people already in the hot tub, but I didn't really think anything of it, seeing it as maybe an opportunity to just meet more people.

Boy, was I disappointed.

These people were ridiculous. I sat on the other side of the hot tub where it wasn't so crowded, and so I wasn't by my roommates. I didn't think this would be a big deal, because you know, people, in general, are friendly around here. Nope. Not one person even acknowledged my presence, and one of the boys there, I'd even met! There was this one girl in the hot tub who didn't even live in the complex who was doing everything she could to keep everyone's attention on her. It was ridiculous. (She even complained once that people always think that she's younger than she is, but my reaction was, "Well, stop acting like a sixteen-year-old and people will believe you're twenty.")

Not that I need attention whenever I enter a social setting, but I do think it's common courtesy to simply be friendly and acknowledge people, even if you're already in the middle of a conversation. My roommate Katie was interrogated about her major and overall life plans by another guy in the hot tub, (he was asking rude, attacking questions like, "Well, what if you don't get into the master's program?" and "Why in the world do you study English?"), and basically no one talked to us the entire time we were there. Katie and I both felt that our IQs dropped by at least ten points after being around those people. I mean, they were discussing the attractiveness of tattoos and how funny it would be if one of the girls lived in an apartment with the boys. Seriously?

After about ten or fifteen minutes of this hardly durable moron-fest, Katie and I left, appalled at that new level of shallow.

I like having a hot tub so close and all, but if these are the kind of people I have to be around to enjoy the hot tub, I'm out.

I bless the rains down in Africa

I think that everyone needs a bit of excitement on the everyday level, and I think one of the most effective ways to do this is to make certain days special. Yesterday, as deemed by Katelyn and me, was Safari Day.

Safari Day started with a trip up to Salt Lake to visit the Hogle Zoo. So, my whole apartment (pictured below: me, Jenica, Emily, and Katelyn), and Katelyn's man friend Alex, all drove up to Salt Lake and spent the afternoon exploring the Hogle Zoo. It was the perfect weather for such an excursion, and we felt very comfortable temperature-wise walking around the zoo. Some of the animals were particularly active: the elephants were eating hay they stashed in their tusks, and we got to see the elephants take water through their noses and redeposit it in their mouths. I hadn't actually ever seen that before! There were way cute baby giraffes, and I steered clear of the chimpanzees (reference chimpanzee post). I started getting a headache about mid-afternoon, but it wasn't too bad.


It was such a fun day! I spent time reading a bunch of the animal plaques, which were pretty interesting, but because of my refined editing skills, I noticed several editorial errors. There was the inconsistent use of the serial (or Oxford) comma (that's the comma placed before the conjunction at the end of a list. It's usually optional, but I like it), incorrect usages of the colon, and inconsistency in capitalization and other sorts of punctuation errors. Alex commented, "Charlotte, if they had you working for them, they'd avoid people like you." So true, so true.


We headed home from the zoo about 5:30, dropped Emily at her house in Salt Lake, and stopped by Chipotle for dinner. I dozed on the way home, and then when we got back to Provo, we got our blankets and pillows and headed up to campus for the Indoor-Outdoor movie in the Wilkinson Center ballroom. The picture below features Katelyn and I waiting for the movie to start. (The people at the desk told me when I bought the tickets that the movie started at 7, when really the doors opened at 7 and the movie started at 8. Oh well.) This year they showed "The Lion King," (hence the Safari Day--this was all inspired by this movie showing). Tickets were only a dollar, and we brought our blankets and pillows to make ourselves comfortable on the ballroom floor. They had free pizza and popcorn, and we saw a bunch of new movie previews (including "Walle," "Indiana Jones," and--my most looked forward to--"Twilight"), and then they turned down the house lights, turned up the volume really loud, and the "Ahhhhhhhh sven yaaaaaa wada heeeee seda mohhhhh" began "The Lion King," one of my favorite Disney movies. It was so much fun to see that movie again and to laugh at all the clever Disney wit (hahahahaha). I laughed the whole time, plus I could easily quote most of the script and could sing along with all the songs--it was amazing.


So, Safari Day was a huge success. On a beautiful Saturday afternoon and evening, what more relaxing, enjoyable, and nostalgic experience could you have?? You should have a Safari Day sometime--it's just great!

you're killin' me Smalls!

So, if you've seen "The Sandlot," you know it's pretty much a kids' classic, and last Saturday (I know I'm posting about this a week late . . . ) my apartment went to the baseball field where they were showing "The Sandlot" on a screen on the field. It was so much fun! It's always funny and I think every girl who's seen that movie has a crush on Benny.

ps--the two girls besides Katelyn and me are our new, socially ept roommates, Emily and Jenica. from left to right: Emily, me, Katelyn, Jenica.

okay, i overreacted

So, I overreacted to the prospect of new roommates. We have two new roommates, they're really nice and normal and I'm not feeling compelled to label the silverware. Their names are Emily and Jenika, who both just finished their freshman year. They're socially ept (which is a bit of a change from my last pair of roommates) and I don't think either pair of roommates cares enough to be best friends, but we'll definitely get along and not have major problems.

So, class yesterday was good. I'm going to give it a couple more class periods to officially decide whether or not I like it; the first day of class is always kind of blah because you just go over the syllabus and everything. With spring though, you go over the syllabus, and get started into the actual material. Last week, I got an email from my professor asking us to read 32 of Shakespeare's sonnets before class yesterday, because we need to hit the ground running. So yesterday was a weird conglomeration of boring syllabus talk and actual material. I have Shakespeare every Tuesday and Thursday for two and a half hours--that's a long time . . .

I just came back from editing and I'm actually really excited about it! The material is pretty compacted and the work load will be intense, but it will be good. This class focuses mainly on copyediting, and then the next class I'll be taking hones in on substantive editing. I'm feeling reinvigorated in my career choice as an editor, and I think I'll really learn a lot in this class. I had to buy $150 in books for this one class, but at least I'll be using them all. I have my first test beginning on Monday (?!@#%*@$) and hardcore intense from there on out.

Yesterday in general was just a weird day. The weather was weird (the impending storm feel without any actual storm or rain and it felt like the same time all day), campus was super quiet and empty, Provo in general is super quiet and empty, class was kind of weird, my schedule was kind of weird, and I basically felt like I was in a Twilight Zone episode all day (sans any extraterrestrials). Last night got better though: Katelyn and I went out to Guru's to eat (it's delicious), went to the gym to swim, went to Dairy Queen for Blizzards, and watched the pilot episode of "Prison Break." Last night though, it was unusually hot in the apartment, and we didn't really realize how hot it was until we were both awake at 2:30 in the morning mad because we couldn't sleep. It's been a long time since I haven't been able to sleep because it's too hot. Gross. Once I turned on the A/C and it cooled down a bit, I slept great; I was freezing when I had to get out of bed, but at least I slept soundly from 2:30 to 6:30.

ideas anyone?

So, Katelyn and I are staying in our apartment for spring term, and our other roommates are moving out. We are desperately hoping that we won't get new roommates for the next 7 weeks. We have so many fun plans that would be best if it were just the two of us in the apartment. I'll honestly be surprised if we get new roommates, but not wanting to count our chickens before they hatch, we're devising plans to chase our hypothetical new roommates out of the apartment. Here's what we've come up with so far:

• For one day, we get work off and spend the entire day in our grubby clothes watching soap operas, eating gallons of ice cream, and crying over boys. Emotional dysfunctionality might be enough to chase some away.
• Be really, really loud late at night and early in the morning. A forced lack of sleep could really do the job.
• Never take out the trash. We could accumulate a few bags and place them strategically around the apartment to greet hypothetical new roommates. They wouldn't be actually full of garbage--just look it.
  
• A sign on our door with skulls on it saying KEEP OUT.
  

And my personal favorite:

• Label ALL of our stuff in the apartment.
  
• "These are mine and Katelyn's kitchen chairs--you can't sit in them."
• "This is Katelyn's TV--you can't watch it."
• "This is our couch--you have to sit in that one."
• "This is my mirror--you can't look in it."
• "This is my lamp--you can't use it."

Seriously, what more do you need to drive out unwanted spring roommates?

Any ideas??