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if this works, congratulations you can now all watch videos on my blog. welcome to the 21st century and the year 2011!

Presh

oh, anthro

It's been a long time, I mean a long time, since I window shopped on anthro's website. It's nice to see they still have it. I have never enjoyed internet shopping, but I may have to pay my friends a personal visit, gift card (thank you, Mom and Pops!) in hand.

Porter's Words of Wisdom

Porter unintentionally made me lose it, just burst into laughter, about ten times in the twenty hours that I was chillin with the Monds fam. I wish I could remember most of what he said. This one I did hang on to because I immediately texted it to a friend:

"When you get old and your skin gets all crinkly that's a sign that you're going to die."

Good. Now we're clear on that.

Wait, OK I just thought of something else. Friday we went to the new Narnia. It was bomb but that's not the point. The opening scene of the movie takes place HERE:



Can I just go back? I don't even have to go back to King's. I'd settle for any of the other 30 colleges. I'm not picky.

el fuego

So now the total count of pretty buildings left standing in Provo has been reduced to 3:
Maeser Building
Provo Temple (on the inside?)
Missionary Training Center building 17-M

I'm really grateful for that time December 2008 when I went on a date with Kevin Butler and we saw the live creche... or creshe... or nativity. I couldn't stop petting the baby camel and baby donkey. My hands smelled like carnie hands so I went inside the tabernacle to wash them. The one and only time I went inside. We're outside the remaining structure right now. Its still burning inside after 9 hours. Sad stuff.

more Christmas

It doesn't feel much like Christmas, maybe because I'm not home in Arizona yet or maybe because I don't know what I want to find under the tree this year. Yesterday I got in my car and saw exactly what I want:



A windshield that doesn't have a ginormous crack across it.

And thank YOU, frigid Utah winter, for adding your special signature to my car. The crack sucks and so do you.

So, back to what I was saying... if anyone needs assistance gift wrapping a giant sheet of glass (wink wink), I'll gladly help out and then act real surprised Christmas Day.

Dear parents,

(not my parents, just alllll the parents that read this blog. all of you out there. every last one of you. there should be at least 3.)

Have you seen Despicable Me? Have you seen the Dragon movie? Two of the greatest cinematic achievements of this year. Unless your children have more sophisticated taste in movies than I do, which I wouldn't doubt (Easy A, anyone?), I think they will enjoy it.
Christmas is coming soon. If you buy these movies I will watch your children for an hour and a half while the movie plays and you go run errands or something. Yes, I'll watch them anyway, but we would have so much more fun watching Hiccup or Gru be hilarious.
Oh shoot I just remembered a very important question: What is the plan for presents this year? Are we still doing grandkid presents? I haven't actually gotten anything yet. What about books? Can I be THAT aunt that gives books and educational material as presents? Books are the bomb.
I read True Grit last week. Cass borrowed it from Dad and then loaned it to me, which is a good thing because Dad probably wouldn't have loaned it out to me for fear that I could smear PB&J on it or something. True Grit is fantastic. Who's pumped for the movie? I said WHO'S PUMPED FOR THE MOVIE??

Statement of Purpose

The first round of applications are due exactly a week from today so I am spending a lot- A LOT- of time working on them. I have gotten the letters of recommendation situated, all my personal info entered, and I'm doing more research to add a few pages to one of my Cambridge supervision papers. The only thing missing is the Statement of Purpose AKA Essay on Why I'm the Shizz and You Must Accept Me.

Believe it or not I'm not big on this kind of stuff. Selling myself? No thanks. The Statement of Purpose consists of much more than that, such as my experience and what about me makes me a good fit for a particular institution but the entire thing in general is just giving me grief. I have been working here and there on putting some basic ideas together. Today when I opened the document I've been piecing together I found a rough (very rough) draft of a Statement of Purpose I must have begun a month or two ago before I forgot about it. It made me laugh. Here it is.

Statement of purpose or intent or something like that: (that was my working title)

I had my first scholarly experience with art history my freshman year at Brigham Young University. I signed up for Art History 107 or 111 or 112, something like that, Friday nights from 4:30 to 7:00. It sucked so hard and I was a fool for thinking a Friday night class by an apathetic, pregnant grad student held any merit. The rest of the students spent the time staring at slides and memorizing names while I slept on my 5 subject notebook. At the end of the semester I passed the final thanks only to a providential encounter with my classmate in the cafeteria an hour before the test. No, I’m being serious. Sean Bradley- I owe you everything. The only part of the class I enjoyed was the paper. I chose Norman Rockwell’s Four Freedoms and then I spent days and weeks analyzing those works. I believe my paper went beyond the assigned page limit but my teacher was probably too indifferent or too in labor to care. With one finger in the air I bid farewell to that class after three and a half long months, never to return to such monotony. Flash forward 5 years...

It lacks a bit of polish. I'm thinking I might not use it.

as I lay dozing

Maybe it's because grad school application deadlines are rapidly approaching, but I could not for the life of me go to sleep last night. I think I finally zonked out around 3:30 or 4. My problem is that my mind races. In fact, night time is my most productive time of day. Behold the workings of my post-midnight mind:

I'm hungry
I could go for a cookie
No, I want one of those shortbreads I ate in Scotland
Hey, what about the rest stop/ kilt store with the free shortbread samples?
I'm so glad I was one of the only suckers who didn't a plaid scarf or some nonsense
But I sure loved their free shortbread samples
I wonder why we stopped there going in AND out of Edinburgh...
Our bus driver probably got some kind of kick-back
No way, he was the BEST
What was his name?
... Seriously, what WAS his name?
Frankie?
No that was our Germany trip.
Johnny Boy?
No, I only thought that because of Frankie Boy. Dang it, Ari.
Jakey Boy?
Danny Boy?
Stop it. That's not his name. And he's Scottish, not Irish.
He put all the other Scottish bus drivers to shame
If worst comes to worst I can ask Facebook friends
"Ten points to whoever remembers bus #1's driver's name in Scotland"
But then ten points for what?
I would have to establish that the points don't count for anything
It would be like Who's Line Is It Anyway?
Man what a great show, both the British and American variety
But I love Wayne Brady best
...
GOOD HEAVENS! I don't think Who's Line Is It Anyway? is on the air anymore!!!

Then I panicked. I can probably pin my insomnia back to that single realization. RIP, Who's Line Is It Anyway?. Sorry I only just noticed that you're no more.