-<...>___<..>-

Sometimes there are moments in life when you are able to see outside of your world. I have had a few of these opportunities recently. One was Friday night when one of my friends stopped by and we talked for while. This friend was someone who until that point had been a quirky, crazy-dancing, music -loving, all around nice guy. Then he started asking questions. Not "how's life" questions, but questions that I actually had to stop and think about. I usually have a hard time with those types of conversations because I have to shift from left-brain to right-brain thinking and at first I couldn't even follow his conversation. After a few thought provoking questions I was able to keep up and even contribute a little. He helped me to realize a few things: 1) people are people and not positions to be filled. 2) The only thing that matters in any loving relationship be it friends, family, etc. is that you both realize it is YOUR responsibility to make that relationship work. I used to think I could only get along with certain people but that idea is false. I can get along with anyone if I choose to, I may have to try harder with some people but isn't it worth it? I wish I could relate my experience with this friend better but that is one of the flaws of being mainly left-brained. I am able to recognize and appreciate creativity but I have a hard time creating and describing it. I am grateful to those who pull me from my limited dimensionality. That being said, another of these experiences was last week at a concert which for me is one of the best ways of stepping out of my perspective. If you have never experienced a good concert, one where when you look around you and everyone is feeling exactly the same pull that you are, I highly suggest you do so. It probably won't work with some concerts though, I think you can figure that out. It seems to work best when the motive behind the music is personal, artistic, and passionate. The concert I went to was Arcade Fire. I had always liked their music but it took a live concert to recognize the passion behind it. Children wake up, hold your mistake up- before they turn the summer into dust. If the children don't grow up, our bodies get bigger but our hearts get torn up. we're just a million little Gods causing rain storms, turning every good thing to rust. I guess we'll just have to adjust.

This is my life.

This is the Harold B. Lee Library at BYU. It was ranked 3rd best college library by the Princeton Review. This is also where I spend most of my time in life. It is a very nice library as libraries go but...it is still a library and you still have to be quiet. Not only do I choose to spend many late hours here filling my brain with information that I will then be required to regurgitate as an evaluation of my supposed learning but I also have chosen this place as my source of income and the effects of which I am only now beginning to see. Pros: I have access to secret library employee lounges where I feast on countless vending machine pseudo-foods, I don't use gas driving to work, I study more (most important). Cons: I am always on campus, I never leave campus, I live/work/study/eat on campus!!! WHAT WAS I THINKING! The conclusion I have come to is this is my life. I am student. Campus is my life right now and sometime I think maybe it will be worth it and I will look back and hopefully remember the good times. This is an amazing place. i.e.
Princeton College Review 2008 for BYU

Rank/Category

No. 1 — Stone-cold sober (good)

No. 1 — Future Rotarians and Daughters of the American Revolution (wha?)

No. 1 — Got milk? (low beer consumption) (- wait...isn't that the same as the first)

No. 1 — Scotch and soda, hold the scotch (low hard liquor consumption) (how many of these categories are there??)

No. 1 — Students pray on regular basis/most religious students

No. 2 — Don't inhale (low marijuana usage reported) (NUMBER 2!?!)

No. 3 — Best college library (all right HBLL!!)

No. 4 — Students most nostalgic for Ronald Reagan/lean right politically

No. 11 — Alternative lifestyle not an alternative (low acceptance of gay community)

No. 12 — Town-gown relations are great

No. 14 — Happiest students (I bet the didn't do this survey at 11:45pm when everyone leaves campus with their heads hung low at the thought of doing it all over again tomorrow-oh wait, thats just me)

No. 17 — Everyone plays intramural sports

No. 19 — Best quality of life

No. 20 — School runs like butter (administration gets high marks)

Source: Princeton Review's "Best 366 Colleges" 2008 edition

Ok, so just to prove that I don't actually spend every waking (and sometimes sleeping) moment at school here are some pictures of my birthday parties.

(Borders Books-waiting for a table, Happy Sumo, impromptu dance party)

My 11,749 foot nap.

Last summer I hiked Timpanogos in the middle of the night and got lost (thanks to a few "we know the way" boys who didn't actually "know the way" and in fact had never done it before) We planned on hiking through the night and making it to the top to see the sun rise. None of that happened. The four hour hike took us six hours and we only made it to the saddle of the mountain (about an hour from the top) We did however manage to use up all the batteries in all but one flashlight (and accidentaly drop the few spare batteries we did have down the cliff), drink all of our water, and forget to bring any food with us and thus had no energy for the hike back down the mountain. It was one of the single worst nights/days of my life. I was so hungry/tired/thirsty that when I got home I couldn't eat, sleep, or drink anything. I remember thinking to myself after the experience "I don't like hiking, it is not fun" but I conviently forgot making that statement and so I tried again. I was finally going to slap that mountain in the face. I wish I could say that was what happened but the truth is: you can't really slap a mountain in the face. Lets just say that if a mountain could "theoretically" hurt a person, then I was body slammed by the Mountain Timpanogos. I remember now why I do not like hiking: because it is hard. It took us 4 1/2 hours to get to the top which is about average and then we ate and took naps on the cliff and finally headed back down. This is where it gets bad. I don't remember a lot about the way down on my last Timp hike except that we ran most of the way. Not because we had energy and strength to run but because it took more energy and strength to go slow due to the downward momentum. I did not run this time. Instead we took it one slow painful step at a time. The first part of the descent is so steep and covered in gravel and boulders that one wrong step will send you down one of many sheer verticle cliffs and so by the time you finish that part and the trail turns to meadow and dirt, your entire lower body is shaking (or at least mine was). I also realized that I had a gnarly blister on the back of my foot that I hadn't noticed before then but could do nothing about. Then there was some kind of time/space continuum after that and it is all a painful blur. Remember in hiking that the way up is harder on your mind and the way down is harder on your body. At any point on the way up you can say, "I quit. I'm done." Turn around and you're done. But you don't have any options on the way down except to get it over with. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad I did it, I'll just never do it again. (Oh wait, didn't I say that last year?)

You Stay Classy, San Diego

Its time to talk about some things that I love. The first is road trips and the second is San Diego. Something I like even more than those two things is when you combine them. That is what I did this summer thanks to my generous San Diegon roommate. We began around 10 in the morning and of course we stopped in Vegas for In n Out but other than that, we went straight for So Cal. (and by "we", I mean, Jack and I. Our richer roommates took a plane) My roommate Lexi's family lives in Escondido but we went straight past it to Coronado and straight into the water. Some people may have been surprised by two underwear-clad girls playing in the moonlit waves but if they had known that it had been way too long since this California girl had played in any ocean, they would have understood and so would you.
Over the next two days we went body surfing at the beach, saw the Star of India in the harbor (and Jack Sparrow), went shopping downtown, ate real Mexican food, fish tacos, In n Out (duh), and swam in Lexi's backyard. Agoodtimewashadbyall. In life, people ask what you are going to do after you graduate college and such. Here is an example of one of these conversations: Are you staying in Provo? No. Are you going back to Bakersfield? No. Well, where are you going to go? I usually answer, I don't know, I guess anywhere... as long as its San Diego.

These are a few of my FLAVORITE things

little miracles

I was watched a movie or a TV show one time and someone said "Everyday we're alive can be a miracle." I've had a few examples of everyday miracles in my recent life. The first miracle was Sunday night when I was able to witness the annual Perseid meteor shower when Earth passes through a cosmic river of debris following the Swift-Tuttle comet. My roommate, Alexis and I and some other friends drove to the hills south of Utah Lake to get away from city lights and spend quality time with Amazon-sized mosquitoes. It took 20 minutes and some 4X4-ing up some really steep hills to get there. The meteors were amazing and we saw everything from tiny faint streaks across the sky to huge, brilliant, softball-sized shooting stars. There was even one that, instead of shooting across the sky, slowly and gently fell towards the earth and then broke up into hundreds of tiny points of light. They were beautiful. We had fun passing the time by listening to friends play the guitar and laughing about Bryan Reagan. It was one of those celestial events that inspires unanswerable questions and reminds us how truly small we are in this universe. That leads me to my second miracle of the week. I woke up the next morning and could not find my cell phone. I wish I could say that it had no effect on my life and I didn't really miss it that much but that would be a lie. I just got a new job and was waiting to hear from them about when to come in for training and my mom was here visiting so we were coordinating airport trips and so on. If it had been any other week this summer, a missing cell phone would have gone mostly unnoticed. So I of course asked myself the inevitable question "Where did I last have my phone?" I remembered getting a call right before we went to Utah Lake and then putting it back in my purse before we left. That was the last time I saw it. My purse, like so many other purses, is full and items tend to fall out... a lot. So I recounted my activities after leaving the house so I could retrace my steps and hopefully recover my phone. First we took a load of blankets down and I sat in the grass waiting for Alexis to bring her truck around. Then we stopped at 7-11 for slurpees (duh). Then we picked up some friends at their house. It could have fallen out at any of these places for all I knew which would have been ok because people live around these areas and would likely see it and return it. The one place we went that night where people don't live and probably doesn't have a lot of visitors is the top of the hill where we watched the stars. Now, I'm a religious person and when I have a problem, I ask for help. So of course I prayed, and this is kinda how my prayer went: Father in Heaven, I've lost my phone. I know my cell phone is not essential to my eternal salvation or anything but it is kind of necessary in my life right now. Please help me find it. Please let it be somewhere that I will be able to find it and let it not be lying in the fields south of Utah Lake playing Imogen Heap Hide and Seek for all the mosquitoes to hear every time my mom calls. Amen. So I went about my day sans cell phone and when I got home, there was a post-it note on the table saying: "Robert (408) 567-blah blah blah. He has Sar's phone!!" I of course freaked out and called the number (using a roommates phone) This guy Robert explained that he had casually driven out by Utah Lake to do a little recreational shooting early Monday morning and had seen a black phone just sitting in the dirt. My phone was in the one place I had prayed it wouldn't be!! but this guy just happened to see it and called the last person I had called on my phone, which was my roommate Jackie. So, to conclude my really long explanation of my recent not-so-everyday miracles, I got my phone back. The Church is true. Robert: if by another miracle you happen to see this blog, THANK YOU for being in right place at the right time, for me.

Tagged?

I guess I'm "IT" in this online blog-version of tag and that means I have to list some mortally important details of my life such as "things I hate" and "things I love."


Things I love:
1) Family
2) happy weather
3) Peanut Butter
4) New (to me) Clothes
5) Interesting names that do not sound made up
6) Laughing
7) laughing babies
8) whole milk, dark chocolate, wheat bread,

Things I HATE:
1) Being cold
2) When people ignore/are mean to other people
3) TV (except so you think you can dance...and grey's anatomy, crap)
4) wasting food/money
5) anything made by Hostess, little debbie. (or any food that comes sealed in a clear, plastic wrapper, excluding graham crackers)

Places I want to visit: (In order of desire, sort of)
1) Costa Rica
2) Thailand
3) Spain
4) New Zealand

Books
Currently: The Great Divorce. wow
1) True Love, All I need to know I learned in Kindergarten
2) Twilight & New Moon (guilty pleasure)
3) Tuesdays with Morrie
4) LOTR

MovieS:
1) Forrest Gump, Meet Joe Black, Reality Bites, The Pallbearer, Anchorman, LOTR
2) Phantom of the Opera
3) Notebook
4) Gladiator
5) Amelie

I'm not very good at:
1) getting the oil changed in my car
2) saving money
3) being outgoing/brave
4) relationships
5) studying
6) Drawing conclusions
7) Sleeping

I am good at:
1) shaving my legs
2) reading people
3) being patient
4) eating
5) cuddle/snuggling

Thinking about:
1) why am I not cuddling or snuggling right now?
2) preparing my winter wardrobe
3) Thai food
4)http://health.discovery.com/convergence/duggars/jennifer.html

hoping:
I can find a warm pair of boots to wear this winter *sniff*