Stress

Man do I have an excessive amount of stress in my life right now. I feel like I can't waste a spare minute from now until finals because I have so much to do.
It's good though, I have a great life, with roommates I love, and jobs that I enjoy, and my classes are good too, albeit the source of much stress. On the other hand, it's not like I didn't sign up for this. There are those who would do anything to be where I am. So I've got to appreciate it. And I do. A lot.

"Wish your Mom a happy 31st for me."--Taylor

Wow, what a great day today was! My morning was all right, I didn't get enough study time in, but isn't that the way it always goes? Then I went down to campus to run a few errands, and I called my Mom on the way down there because it was her birthday today!!! She informed me that in honor of her birthday she was taking all of the kids (my siblings) and their friends bowling, so if I wanted to take some friends bowling in honor of it as well, she would fund it. I said "Ok! If i have time." and it turned out I did have time, but I'll get to that later.
Post-errands I came home and cleaned my apartment, which was a great feeling. I made myself an excellent lunch and then post cleaning took a nap; supposed to be only 20 minutes, but ended up being more like...an hour. Go figure. It's vacation. Then I posted about Thanksgiving, Diana came home and I talked with her, and I will admit (much to my everlasting shame) I started to watch "America's Next Top Model" with her. I loathe every principle of that show, but somehow I can't stop watching it. We all have our crosses to bear I guess...
Then I called Dad to tell him I saw William Shatner on TV hawking World of Warcraft III, which is just incredibly weird to me, and Dad laughed, and of course we ended up talking on the phone for an hour or so, getting updated on all of the family news/Green Bay happenings. I get to hear more about my siblings that way. I also worked on my author presentation for ENGL 420 a bit.
Then Taylor Kelly came to pick me up, and he, Nicole, and Dylan went bowling as per Mom's request. It was a really good time, I wish one of us had thought to bring a camera to document the event, but alas, we did not. I know for a fact however, we mentioned it was Mom's birthday and how glad we were that she was born, and cool enough to sponsor fun on her birthday at least 4 times throughout the evening.
Post-bowling (the bowling place closed early, like it's a holiday weekend or something) we all came over and had a rousing game of Chutes and Ladders, narrowly won by Taylor. Much to Nicole's chagrin. He was kind of beating her all night, because she went right after him in bowling too. However he did it with such class, I don't think I would have minded. It was a fun talking point. While we played, everyone looked over the books I brought home from the library; I have this really amazing one called "Go! A guide to the world of transportation," an informational text about EVERYTHING transportation, "Robot Dreams" which is a wordless graphic novel, much enjoyed by all, and "The Invention of Hugo Cabret" by Brian Selznick, who is a Caldecott award-winning illustrator who decided to write a book, but he was so used to illustrating that he would want to illustrate instead of narrate sometimes--the end product being a hybrid picture-chapter book, which is amazing. I recommend all three. Dylan had me write down all of my favorite books for him, no mean feat; and I even ranked them for him.
Then Dylan discovered that I owned the movie "Little Manhattan" which apparently he dearly wanted to see, but of course him wanting to see it prompted me and Nicole wanting to watch it, so we agreed to watch it, and Nicole would bring it to him tomorrow (by the way, I forgot to give it to her).
So Nicole and I watched it, and for those of you who don't know, it's pretty much the best movie ever, with the most likable narrator/protagonist I've ever met. I think it's excessively well-written, but I am kind of biased because I like it a lot. Nicole liked it too I think. Diana made us peanut butter cookies and I erroneously let Nicole have some ice cream, which is really not good, but I quickly realized that was a problem and took it away (with much grumbling on Nicole's part).
Nicole stayed over for a little while talking, and then hugged and parted ways.
It was a really, really, good day.

Giving Thanks!!!

So my Thanksgiving was awesome this year. It's probably against the rules of life to have an awful thanksgiving, but you never know. I'm grateful mine are rad (haha).

This year I headed down to Heritage Halls to have Thanksgiving dinner with my pal Nicole, she's a freshman this year, and I know her through her older brother Jimmy--who coincidentally I also had Thanksgiving dinner with my freshman year a couple of years ago. :) That one was a great time, and I figured if it ain't broke, don't fix it, so I was all up for another thanksgiving dinner in the dorms.

We, meaning mostly Nicole and a little bit of I, cooked the turkey. Nicole has some amazing neighbors who let us have a turkeybag to help out, and she was actually the one to rinse out the turkey and prepare it to be put in the oven. You can see this documented really well on facebook, if you've got time. She also had some fascination with the neck of the turkey, so we shoved that in the bag too, but I want to make clear that was all Nicole's doing. I was grossed out by it, and Nicole's roommate Genevieve said she was almost going to throw up. We listened to a lot of great Veggietales tunes while cooking too, I also highly recommend the "Barbara Manatee" part of the photo album. It's very true-to-life. It's awesome to have friends who have good taste in music. And by "good taste in music" I do specifically mean "love to sing along with/act out Veggietales."

I made the potatoes, and having asked my good friend Seth for the most amazing recipe ever. He had some pretty specific instructions like "boil until you stick a fork in them and pieces fall off" and other more hilarious oddities. I would like to state that I followed them to a T. Also very well documented on facebook. To get the full experience you totally have to listen to "Hooked on a Feeling." HIGHLY reccomend it.

Overall we had a great time. The food was amazing for a couple of college kids. I was really proud of us.

Turkey
Gravy
Mashed Potatoes
Bread and Butter
Grapes
Salad
Kiwis
Cinnamon Rolls! (not pictured)

we realized the only thing we were missing was pie, but also I didn't miss that "I'm going to explode out of my waistband" feeling. Although that is kind of traditional.

It was a great experience. Nicole carved the Turkey b/c let's face it: she's Nicole, she runs the show. That, and I remembered when I had Thanksgiving with Jimmy it was him and me and two other girls, so we made him cut the turkey because he was a man. So I'm a little sentimental about the Gillie-ness. *shrug*

I helped clean up, then exscused myself politely because I wanted some Betsy time. And I spent the rest of the night alone, which sounds sad, but really isn't very much. I recorded myself reading a chapter of Ella Enchanted--one of my favorite activities, and it made me very happy. I don't know why I love to narrate, but I do. And as I've done it more often, I've gotten a little pickier with how I record things. There was this one passage I couldn't get just right, and I had to splice it, and tape over it a few times before I was satisified. And Ella Enchanted is without a doubt my favorite book ever. I really enjoyed it. Then I watched Pride and Prejudice (the new one) because I was in the mood for some lush orchestrations and sweeping landscapes, and as reading Ella had already made me eager for a spunky female protaganist, it was a good fit.

It was, without a doubt, a great Thanksgiving.

p.s. Thought: I am also really grateful for my family. I'm not super close to a lot of my family, I mean, I love them and all, but we're not BFF's. But I am really grateful for my relationship with my Dad. Nicole has this picture of me starting to scrub potatoes while I'm on the phone with him, because I had talked mostly with Mom, and then she handed off the phone to him, and when I'm on the phone with Dad, mostly he asks about the boys in my life (none really, presently) and then he proceeds to tell me the local ward news in Green Bay. I think I'm a lot more like my Dad than any body else in my family, which is why we get along so well.

Peace

So today, I was running on the track, and there were two more serious runner guys there, and it's not like they were racing or anything, as far as I could tell, but as one passed the other for the first time, he held up his hand with two fingers sticking up, and sped past the first one.

I thought it was hilarious, and had to stop running so I could laugh. That and I felt like I was going to die because running is hard.

Publishing

So who would have thought that I would get such a kick out of publishing my own blog? It's not as if I'm not used to talking or anything, I do it pretty regularly. But hey, I like this "send my thoughts out into the universe" gig. It appeals to me in some sort of poetic way.

So just now, my little internet radio, either by fate or fluke decided to play me the same song a few times in a row. But I didn't really mind it. It was a good tune. "The Shadow Proves the Sunshine" by Switchfoot, if you're interested. It was one of those opportune, symbolic teaching moments. Of course the song is basically talking about "opposition in all things" you can't taste the sweet without having the bitter, and that line of thinking really appeals to me right now. I wonder why it didn't occur to me before, not like it's in any curriculum I study daily...like the scriptures. 'Cause I kind of feel like I'm tasting a little bitter in my life right now. Don't worry, only a very little bit. I love my life. Generally, I have no qualms with it. I never get enough sleep (and now I'm going to get even less because I'm sure I'll be up blogging), but I don't know anyone who does. Life is good. Mostly. The mostly good bit comes in when I have an undue amount of stress in my life, which I don't usually, but I do right now (funny b/c it's thanksgiving break).

Today I had a really good day actually. Just went to work for 8 hours, nothing huge. When I got home I had some errands to run, and then me and my pal Taylor went over to watch a movie with some friends I grew up with. It was cool, but it was kind of weird at the same time. I feel like none of the kids I grew up with from church really know me. Because we pretty much just hung out and watched movies (which is what we did just now), but for some reason, I never felt like I fit in. Which is dumb, because it's not as if I wasn't a member of the group. Maybe I just have some strange high school insecurities ambushing me from behind or something, but I feel like I never had a best friend at church. I don't know why.

I got to talk to Mike Stewart lately, which was super rad if you ask me. For those of you who don't know, Mike was my first sweetheart, we fell in like before I turned 16 and dated for a little while after that, and we've always remained friends, which is something I'm really glad for. He set a pretty high standard so far as boyfriend behavior, which is why I've only had one steady one since; but I haven't given up hope yet. :)

I don't know what I'll do with myself over break. I can't remember the last time I had this much free time. But tonight, I'm going to read Ella Enchanted, possibly aloud to myself. I have another book I'd like to re-read as well. And maybe I'll do some mending.

Our Stake President (clergy, for those non-familiar with Mormon terms) challenged us to read the Book of Mormon by the end of the year. I am approximately on page 18. There are 535 pages in the book. Wish me luck. Not like I don't love to read the scriptures, I do. But I think I like to study them more than I read them, and I'm pretty sure a month is NOT enough time to study the whole Book of Mormon. People do that for their lives.

Start

So today is the start of me keeping this blog, or at least trying to keep it semi-up-to-date. I can't promise anything, but it occurred to me: this is a good way for keeping in touch with people.

What I have to say about today? I'm not exactly feeling profound at the moment, but I did enjoy meeting a girl on the bus today who complimented me on using the term 'kindred spirit.' It's an out-of-vogue term, but I like it. Other words I would like to nominate to that category:
Twitterpated
Sweetheart
Jaunty
Dapper
Amiable
Ravishing
Smitten
Exchange (referring to a conversation)
Delightful
Sinister
Splendid
Any and all nautical terms
Deliberate (verb)
Extrapolate
Ingenious
Brilliant

Words/phrases I think should be out-of-vogue:
anything ending in '-izzle' (with the exception of sizzle)
loaded (describing rich people)
crap
dude
'oh my heck' (Utah-dwellers, this means you)
gay as a derogatory phrase ("That's so gay")

That's all for now. I'll notify you of others as they come to me.