I Feel A Countdown Comin' On

It's Tuesday night...one week and three days from now I'll be in my toasty (no heat....in...this...apartment), oh-so-warm home in Utah. Did I mention it will be nice and hot? Heh...okay. But who woulda thunk that 30 degrees would seem like a paradise to me? Yep, I must live in Rexburg. We're getting down to the wire now, folks. I know I was just saying we had such-n-such weeks until Thanksiving, but that's gone and done now and I officially have only one week of actual classes, two days of tests, and one day of white glove scrubbing to go (hopefully just one hour). Here are the numbers:

• Number of cans of soup leftover from this semester: 2
  
• $ spent on quarters this semester: 20 bucks
• Number of hours of sleep lost this semester: 50...ish?
• Number of times gone to Utah and back: 6
• Number of times accidentally sprayed myself with hose in locker room at 1am: 1
• Number of broken Pyrex dishes: 1 (overheated glass=explosion in the oven)
• Numberof WinCo trips to buy nuts...in bulk: 6 or 7
• Number of packs of gum consumed: 30
• Number of devotionals: 12
  
• Number of sick roommates: 5 (doesn't include me)
• Number of late-night library jaunts: countless
• Number of random meetings with Broulim's employees/Hollywood employees (belt-buckle guy, Global Warming Guy, Die Hard Guy): 3, obviously
• Number of temple trips: 10
• $ spent on paper in the library (4 cents a page): $10
• Number of papers written: 4 (I know, a record for an English major!)
• Number of times fixed the broken toilet: 4
• Number of recipes collected: hundreds
• Number of missionaries written: 3
• Number of times missed class: 8
• Number of days left as underclassmen: 10
  
• Number of times fell asleep thinking about home: every night
  

baby, it's subzero outside

For those of you who have never been to Antarctica (no need to raise your hands, I can pretty much guess), I just wanted to let you know--you don't have to!

To experience the barren wilderness and freezing cold temperatures, just come here.

I live here. Only for 2 more weeks, but still. This morning I was scraping my car for about ten seconds and then decided the small window of vision was enough. That and I couldn't feel my hands. Ten seconds, people! Also, when I walk from the library to the Hinckley, I have to re-teach my face how to smile. You think I'm exaggerating, right? Well, I didn't used to believe all of the horror stories about Idaho winters. I figured that since I live in Utah, it's pretty much the same, right? That's like thinking that the weather in Oregon and Texas is the same. I know that now...and I have been humbled by the black ice and snow and the -12 degree mornings. Yowza!

Last night the Bedkes and I had our annual "freeze-out" where we walk down Main Street to look at the lights. We didn't make it very far.... mostly we got to the grocery store, which is only four or five blocks from my apartment. The weather has finally one-upped me!

Just Plain Awesome

Because we like dancing so much, if we didn't get sealed in the temple, I think this is how Mormons would make their entrance at a wedding. :)

this is the original:


and this is one performed at jim and pam's wedding:

Let's Be Thankful for Stuff

I made it home. It's kind of a miracle because 1, I was driving on two hours of sleep, and 2, I drove through one of the busiest parts of Utah on a Friday night...on Thanksgiving weekend...with construction all around. As I was leaving Pocatello I narrowly avoided a head-on collision that had just happened in the lane next to mine. I must have been driving by seconds after it happened. There were three cars total, and one of them was in the embankment. Yikes! So thank you for all of you who prayed me home. I'm safe and sound in my own bed (hooray!).

There was an article in today's paper about how Thanksgiving gets overlooked because of greed--everyone wants Christmas to happen, and now! I know that not everyone thinks this way, but I do believe that Thanksgiving sometime does get a little bypassed as "another holiday when we eat a lot." Heheh. So, in honor of this upcoming Thursday, I'm going to make a gratitude list. Feel free to add to it!

I'm thankful for...

1. rest stops, especially for an exhausted girl who also drinks too much water
2. a working car heater, even though I had to turn it off a few times so it wouldn't lull me to sleep
3. a home-cooked meal from my mom almost as soon as I walked in the door
4. Chinese midgets
5. fast internet
6. November weather in Utah--crisp, chilly, scarf-wearing weather, minus the wind!
7. temples all along my way home (that's kinda symbolic, isn't it?)
8. Ben Harper, Joshua Radin, and Damien Rice (perfecto November music)
9. my scriptures, even though after 11 years, the cover is finally showing signs of shredding :(
10. Christmas lights!
11. realizing that next Thanksgiving, a certain 6-foot blond will be across the hall from me once again
12. free laundry...ahhh
13. professors who understand why we have a week off and don't give us any homework
14. going to bed before 6am
15. "Sample Saturday" (anyone who loves Costco knows what I'm talking about)
16. new, healthy cousins (Abby and Maggie, hooray!)
17. Food Network on Thanksgiving week--I wanna be friends with Bobby Flay so he can make me sage and apple-glazed turkey and mulled cider (yes, he did)
18. socks straight from the dryer
19. clean sheets
20. temple clothes
21. driving past my high school...I don't know why it just makes me happy
22. giving people my parking space
23. knowing that when I go back to Rexburg there will only be 2 weeks of school left
24. my parents. they're pretty cool, huh?
25. not using capitalization at the beginning of my sentences. I feel like a rebel (but I can't bring myself to de-capitalize the "I." See? I just tried it and I had to change it.)
26. dogs. they're smelly but I still love 'em.
27. best friends
28. newspapers (yes, I still read the paper!)
29. planning Christmas presents for family members...I feel sneaky. It feels good.
30. reading books that I've been reading since I was a kid to the other chilluns
31. shampoo+water that isn't so hard it makes me look like I have dandruff
32. Christmas cards
33. the beloved instrument in our front room
34. broken headphones (I was forced to clean the fieldhouse and the raquetball courts all by myself on Friday morning for 6 hours....without any music. It was quiet but still. You know?)
35. parks and recreation/the office/30 rock/community (NBC is taking over the comedic world....uh-oh)
36. parades
37. holiday movies
38. lists in general
39. old journals
40. Asics
    
41. poetry contests, especially poetry contests that other people win ;)
42. BYU football
43. snow on the tops of the mountains
44. driving past the "Welcome to Utah" sign
45. good hygiene
46. hand turkeys
47. William Bradford and Squanto, for welcoming us in English!
    
48. A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving
49. songs sung in Chinese by a Chinesean (yep, Caleb thinks he's Chinesean, which is a species)
    
50. all of you who have bothered to read through this list....you sure are curious! LOVE YOU ALL! HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

I tag...everyone who reads this. Make your own gratitude list!

Six Boys, A Girl, and a Mop Bucket

Do you know who cleans the bathrooms you use at the mall? What about the toilets at the grocery store? Do you know who scrubs the shower floors in the locker room at your local fitness center? Who picks the hair out of the drains and sanitizes the weight machines? Who makes all of the chairs perfectly straight for stake conference every Sunday? If you know someone who fits this description, you should really give them a big fat hug and say, "Thanks for doing what you do. And wearing gloves while doing it, so I feel comfortable enough to even touch you right now."

For those of you who don't know, for the past month or so I have been doing late-night custodial work in the Hart building on the weekends. I work (and stay awake) from 11pm-5am, all with the help of Heavenly Father and a few rambunctious individuals who belong to the "night crew." Sounds like some kind of illegal, underground operation, doesn't it? Well, there are a few things about this job that make it feel like an exclusive club. If you'll bend your ears in my direction for a few, I could tell you some top-secret stuff. Stuff that may make you think twice before before using a locker room shower ever again (but I pray that all of you, as hygiene-aware people, do not even think about using locker room showers). Shall we begin?

• There are two breaks during the shift: one at 1am, another at 2:45. Almost every night, without fail, the boys will go to the Auxilary Gym during break and play "Pig," which is basically like Around the World. They get really into it, and sometimes, our break lasts longer than an hour. I'm talking...an hour and a half. All so my boss Jace can sink a half-court shot and then Dallin will attempt to get the basketball into the hoop by bouncing it off of the adjacent wall. Yeah, I get paid to watch this stuff. It's like Harlem Globetrotters, Night Custodian Style.
  
• Some of the chemicals are supposedly "deadly" that we work with. One guy, Cameron, said that one of his coworkers got some of the "foamy" (just pink soapy stuff we use to scrub the toilets and floors) on his pants and it ate a hole in them. The guy, totally serious, said, "I heard this stuff can kill a man." Rrriiight. Well, guys, I guess this will be my last blog post because last night I got a bunch of it on my pants, on my arm, and on my shoe. Snap!
• Speaking of chemicals...one night we got done with all of our duties a little bit early. Since we can't just stand around and do nothing (cough basketball cough), Jace sent us to the men's locker room showers with the foamy and toothbrushes. Yeah, toothbrushes! You know those horror stories about scrubbing floors with just a toothbrush? I can actually say that I have experienced this! I won't give you too much detail (just think mold, lots of mold), but we had to spray the foamy all along the walls. It was flowing down in a pinkish-white waterfall. Early-morning entertainment. In the men's locker room showers, no less. Such is life!
• One night, after Jeff won Pig and therefore secured a homemade pie from Rachel (it's a running bet, mostly because Jeff hardly ever wins), we had lots of treats. At the 1am break we went into one of the classrooms and had pumpkin pie, pumpkin cream pie, chocolate pie, cookies, soda.....yeah. Don't worry, I didn't pig out like the rest of them did (but they're boys, so where does it even go on them? Cruel, cruel world.), but I sat there at 1 in the morning thinking, is this really happening? Are we really just chilling in this dark building eating pie and talking about Jim Gaffigan? Yes, we really were.
• Saturdays aren't as structured because they're "set-up night." In other words, we put up the chairs for stake conference and then find random jobs to do for the next five hours. Last week Jace assigned Rachel and I (the only other female on the crew) to take out the trash. And we took it out alright....nice and slow. Honestly, taking out trash shouldn't take three hours, but we managed to drag it out. By the time the second break rolled around, Rachel thought breakfast was sounding good. We convinced Jace to let us leave for "only ten minutes" and get donuts at Maverik (the only thing open in Rexburg at 3am). I don't think the girl who rang Rachel up knew how to categorize us. We probably looked a little frenzied and I know we smelled like chemicals. But then again, we were dressed modestly and carried that Spirit of Ricks with us all the way to the donut counter. So how do you say, "Don't worry, we're not high, we're just really tired and smell like toxic bleach"?
• That same night, when we finally took all the bags of trash out to the dumpster, we got locked out and stuck in this little hallway between the back door and the rest of the building. I'm not gonna lie, it was little scary. I had to run around the side of the building and through the bushes to see if the door was unlocked. The running in the bushes, well, that was unintentional...you see, I had meant to run through the bushes but it turns out there was no real empty gap for a person to run through. So I ended up getting thrashed by the tree branches and promptly turned around, half because of being slapped in the face by an evergreen (ouch, there goes my pride), and half because I thought I heard a lurker lurking. You can never be too sure, after all, it was 4:30 a.m. We waited patiently in the claustrophobic space for Jace to come and free us. It's funny how much you can appreciate life after being attacked by a tree...
• One night it was just me and the boys, who proceeded to play pig for most of the evening after the chores were done. I sat patiently waiting in the fitness center, reading National Geographic and writing in my journal. At 4:30, Jace suggested we all go around and turn off all of the lights (all seven of us....yeah, I dunno why either) and lock the doors. I guess he wanted to justify getting paid for shooting baskets for half the night. Haha... This job rocks. Anyway, we went up through a secret doorway, through this maze of piping and tubes, and then up a ladder. Then shazam! I found myself walking on a metal grate about a foot and half wide, above the swimming pool! It was kind of eerie because all of the lights were out except for the ones in the bottom of the pool, and it was really hot at the very top because we were practically touching the ceiling, but I made it almost all the way across. So I think I passed initiation! Ya think?
• Last night after we cleaned the fitness center, Jace had Jeff and Kyle wash the stairs as an extra job. To do that, they had to use this chemical called "Swish." I'm just going to come right out and say it--the boys reallllly like the smell of Swish. They sort of get high on it. Rachel and I stood outside the doorway trying not to dry heave, while all of the guys hovered around Kyle and Jeff as they scrubbed the stairs. It was kind of like watching a herd of lions watching some hyenas prowling around their dinner. You catch my drift?
• On Thursday night the guys opened a door in the Varsity Locker Room, which led to yet another locker room, which we have now dubbed "the secret locker room." We get pretty creative when it's this early. It had tons of sports equipment in it, but no dead bodies. I think the guys were disappointed. Jace is always saying that someday we'll find a girl passed out in the showers. To that I say, as long as I don't have to pick the hair out of that drain, I'm okay.
  

p.s. I have no clue why I picked this picture. It's kind of like saying, "I know you don't really need to know what the inside of a vacuum cleaner looks like. But you also probably don't need to know about Swish, or the fact that the boys call the girls' special trash receptacles "the magic boxes," or that sometimes during break we listen to Jim Gaffigan or watch Mythbusters. But hey, it's all a part of the college experience... "

Been Tagged

5 Things I Don’t Leave The House Without

1. green humility bracelet (going on 5 months without taking it off!)
2. CTR ring
3. underwear, depending on how early it is (heheh gotcha there for a second, didn't I?)
4. a pack of gum
5. water bottle

5 Cartoons I Watched When I Was Younger

1. Rugrats
2. Recess (every Saturday morning, without fail)

3. Hey Arnold! (best cartoon ever, hands down)
4. Doug

5. Angry Beavers (can you believe there was actually a show in existence that was called this?)

5 Things That Terrify Me
1. Car accidents
2. Natural disasters
3. Dark shadows at night
4. Being home alone and hearing noises
5. Creepstaches/kidnappers

5 Things I Hate/Dislike That Everyone Else Seems To Like

1. I'm gonna copycat Amy and say the Twilight movies as well. Yesterday I saw the trailer for the next movie on TV and I started cracking up. I bet they didn't know they were making a comedy when they made that movie. Some of my roommates half-glared, half-stared in my direction. Haha it really is funny! Sorry...
2. Artichokes--baked, broiled, slathered in mayo, the hearts...ick. Ick ick ick!
3. Swimming in public pools....yeah. I dunno either.
4. Satanic/demonic scary movies. Come on now...if it involves evil spirits of some kind, that's kind of a warning sign that you won't feel very peaceful after watching it.
5. Math! I bet half of the world agrees with me, so maybe not "everyone" hates it


5 Things I Want To Do Before I Die

1. See the Northern Lights/go to Alaska (I figure they'll both happen at the same time)
2. Go to Europe, especially the Scandinavian countries
3. Speak Spanish fluently with a native Spanish speaker
4. Go to a temple in a foreign country (preferably not on this continent)
5. See the gospel go to a place like Somalia or the Middle East

5 Friends/Family I Tag

1. Chelsea
2. Niki
3. Mom
4. Savanna
5. Jen

One Week Just Isn't Enough

There's only 16 days until the students at BYU-Idaho are going to be let loose for Thanksgiving Break. My English teacher explained to us how we got to be so blessed with a full week off, unlike most other universities. He said that the school has to have a certain number of school days in a semester, which is why we usually don't get such long breaks. So to get our seven days in, the administration calls the first two days of the break "Exam Days." He also added that most teachers won't give exams on this day, unless they're online. Another big woo-hoo for the Lord's University here in Rexburg!

Alright, so that's the good news. The bad news is--of course, what else could it be--swine flu. Is anybody else getting tired of hearing those two words? Every time I hear them I think of dirty pigs spreading disease. Ick. I know it has nothing to do with pigs, but geesh, they could've picked a better mascot. You're probably thinking, "C'mon, it's a virus, it's supposed to be yucky," but they could at least make it sound more appealing. I don't want to think about the symptoms of a literal swine flu--we'd all be turning into pigs like in Willow! Why couldn't they have called it the Lilac Flu? Or the Honey Bee Flu? Clean Underwear Flu? Something not-so-dirty, and more springy and clean. I'm just sayin', if they're going to name it after something with which it has no connection, they might as well name it something pleasant. Whoa tangent! Back to the real bad news--BYU-Idaho's infected population. I guess when the school hits the 25% infection mark, they have to close down school for a week. Right now it's at 18%. I can attest to this because all of my roommates have been sick (minus yours truly). I've been drinking orange juice and taking vitamins and washin' my hands every day in the name of my immune system, but I can't help but feel like I'm in the middle of a bunch of panicky individuals who are just waiting to be coughed on so that they can stay home for a day. When it was discovered yesterday that my roommate Courtney had a lot of the symptoms, my other roommate (who is a nursing major) took out her thermometer as if on queue. She flinched a little bit when Court reached out her hand to Kim to offer her some candy. Yikes! Luckily Courtney wasn't running a fever, but I made her stay home anyway. Our apartment is relatively clean, but now I'm wiping down and spraying every surface I can with disinfectant. Is this usually how frantic flu season gets? Geesh! I'm happy to be alive, happy to be at this school, happy to see the temple at the top of the hill every morning when I walk to class. I'm not worried, so let's just all wash our hands and not hock lugies on each other. Deal?

As a sidenote, some people are really serious about getting that extra week of school off. A guy came over to our apartment the other day having just found out about the "25% rule." He said (and I quote), "Cough on everyone you know!" We're all in this together....I guess. Cough.

image from: http://www.ktis.fm/blogs/lisa/wp-content/swine-flu.bmp