Beef vs. Cheese an Analysis

Right now I'm eating a bean and cheese burito. My family has one of those huge beef/bean and bean/cheese combo bags from costco and I just happened to reach in and take out a bean and cheese burito. However, I kind of wish that I had grabbed a beef and bean. I'm a very picky eater. Being the youngest of a big family, it seems that the role of picky eater is my job(although don't get me wrong, I have many other more logical reasons for being a picker eater that I won't go into for your benefit). Anyways, so I used to really enjoy bean and cheese buritos and refuse to eat beef and beans because they were "gross" even though I had never tried them before. But then one day one of my brothers secretly gave me a beef and bean and didn't tell me what it was. I ate it and I truly enjoyed it (as much as you can enjoy buritos...I really don't like them all that much but I can't think of anything else to write about). Ofcourse when I found out it was a beef and bean my opinion immediately changed, but I never really got over that actually delicious beef and bean burito. So gradually( so that no one would notice and tear down my credibility that I really don't have in food tastes) I started eating beef and bean buritos and now I'll admit that I like them better than bean and cheese. So you know we can never really trust our first instincts about food until we actually try it (wow this sounds really strange coming from me...I get teased and made fun of all the time for the things I don't eat). Yeah so don't think before you eat...eat then think (wait a minute who actually thinks about what they're eating?..Oh never mind I do).

I'm the Biggest Competition

The other day at one of my flute group lessons, we were all performing for and critiquing each other on the pieces we're all playing for flute federation (that's this weird kind of messed up competition thingy up in Salt Lake that I'm not excited about). Anyway, one of the problems I had with my performance was that I appeared to be a little nervous. So my flute teacher says to all of us, "there is no one to be afraid of. You're biggest competition is yourself." These words really rang strong to me. It's so true! It's not really how good you did compared to other people, but how good you felt you did compared to how good you thought you could have done. With this in mind it's much easier to control nerves and focus. If you truly think about it, the only person you're competing with is yourself. I've always told myself this when I'm playing sports and I've always been able to focus because of it, but I've never really thought of applying it to nerves in general. Whenever you're not feeling good enough or are nervous about something, all you have to do is tell yourself,"I'm gonna show myself how good I am and have fun," and you'll survive.
PS this was cheesy, but at least I'm starting to write shorter blogs.

Nessun Dorma

I just watched the olympic games opening and it was pretty intense. Everything was pretty amazing, although some of the more modern types of dance thingys sort of confused me. I was pretty excited at the end when some guy sang "Nessun Droma" by Puccini which is an opera song I actually know(since when do I know opera songs? Well...um I guess since piano lessons). Anyways its a very beautiful song up until the ending which is just awful! It does this sequential kind of thing and you think,"oh my gosh! This song is actually going to go somewhere else! And I thought it couldn't get any better!" But then to your dismay it just ends right there. It's terrible! Way too deciving! I just can't stand it! So this has brought me to the conclusion that endings are huge. You can have a wonderful piece of music, but without a good ending it's nothing.
Ps speaking of messed up ednings, I just can't get over Alfred Hitchcock's (who died on my birthday by the way) Birds ending! It just ends! I don't understand! Let me know if you do.

Smelly Dogs

My dog smells horrible. When she was younger we used to always put her outside on a chain, but now that she's older, she's developed some trust and we let her run outside by herself in the mornings and evenings. She'll always come back, but not always clean. For some reason dogs like to smell bad. Sometimes my dog will even sneak into our laundry room and steal dirty clothes and then roll all over them. It's only funny until I have to give her a bath. Then once she's had a bath she realizes that she smells good and tries to get dirty all over again. It's a never ending cycle. Dogs have better noses than humans. Maybe the bad smells actually smell nicer than the good smells. Maybe dogs need to wear a distinct perfume to show themselves off to other dogs and well, bad smells certainly are distinct and noticeable. Also maybe they know humans don't like bad smells so they wear them just to spite us. After all if we're their masters, aren't they our slaves? It's pretty baffling. The only conclusion I can come up with is there's communism somehow involved here. Anyways whatever it is, it's not very nice because now I have to go give my dog a bath .

Thoughts on a pretty boring life I guess (read at your own risk)

In my last blog I told you that this week I'd write about being alone with my parents now that my closest brother has left for the MTC. A couple weeks ago I thought I was probably going to die, but well...I guess I haven't yet. My extended family only left yesterday so maybe the reality of being alone just hasn't quite kicked in. So I guess today I'll analyze why I haven't started feeling completely alone after my brother has left on his mission.

I've had five brothers before this one leave on missions, and none of them ever really phased me (ofcourse they were all at least seven or more years older than me, not just two). Possibly I don't feel too abandonded because I'm so used to having brothers leave on missions.

Also like I said before, my extended family only left yesterday so maybe I just haven't noticed that I'm by myself yet.

Now that my brother is gone, I get all of his stuff. His car, his phone, his palm pilot, his hamster etc. Maybe all of his stuff has replaced him.

Maybe I'm too unemotional to care that my brother has left me with my parents. Probably not, but there could be some evidence to prove this though. At the MTC when they said," missionaries this way, families that way," my other brother and I were kind of chuckling because our family was the only family not crying. My family is extremly unemotional and I'm part of it.

I think the true reason I'm not feeling too much withdrawl is that I just haven't realized he's gone yet. I'll hear the door close downstairs or something and I'll still think,"oh Greg's home," or I'll see something dumb happen at school and I'll think, "Greg will get a kick out of this." Even at this very moment I'm subconsciously waiting for him to come home from his single's ward so I can tell him about this stupid thing I did at church today. Well anyways so that's why I'm not feeling too alone yet. But probably it'll hit me sometime next week that I don't have anyone to play football with or to rub my parents off onto. So don't be surprised if I'm suddenly really insensitive and mean or something next week. jk

Toothpaste Predictions

Well, I'm pretty much depressed because my brother Greg is leaving on a mission in three days and I'm going to be stuck home alone with my parents for two years. However you've probably already heard me complaining about this way too much so to put you in a better mood I'll try to write about somethingelse and give you a depressing report on what happened after he has left next week. Now ofcourse I'm probably going to give you a wonderful personal experience and then analyze it .

So here goes... maybe... um...Oh! Okay so the other day I had a really weird dream. I hardly ever have dreams, and I usually can't rember them, but this one was just weird. So first I was just at Mountain View, walking down the fine arts hall to some after school class or something, thinking how busy my life is and how dumb it is that I keep having to stay after (which is weird for me to be thinking because my life is actually pretty dull at times). So I get to my class and it's in the band room and Mr. Bowman is teaching. It was supposed to be some kind of choir class, which is weird becuase I don't sing. We were practicing singing intervals except nothing was happening because there were so many distractions .Suddenly the chamber choir or something is sitting behind me and they'd keep showing off singing the same interval over and over again. It was really annoying and I remember thinking,"Gosh what are you doing?! We're in the middle of a class." Then some girl starts playing the piano out of nowhere and I was thinking, "Ya konw if you're gonna play the piano, it had better sound good, and what are you doing? Show some respect!" Then suddenly the band room evolves into the Provo library and we're all on the second floor with these two big windows on either side of the classroom. Everyone rushes over to the windows and we see these two black guys with gold hair, dressed identically and both walking white dogs. Then we all realize," Oh no! They're going to rob the school and fake out the security cameras." So Mr. Bowman yells," hold the doors!" which doesn't make sense because the bad guys, or whatever they were had already come inside and were on the floor underneath us. So then I start thinking,"Ya know somebody mayve aought to call the police." So I run outside (somehow from the second floor ) and run over to the Mountain View seminary buliding(from the Provo Library). I get to the door and then I realize, school ended hours ago and doors are probably locked! But I try them anyways and amzingly they were left open and I was thinking, "Wow this is just ment to be!" So I run through the seminary building and finally find a phone which was in sombodie's kitchen(it's a really familiar kitchen and it's really bugging because I can't figure out who's kitchen it is!). I'm about to pick up the phone and call 911 but then I think,"Wait! I need to brush my teeth first!" So I get some toothpaste and just rub it all over my mouth with my fingers. Then I called 911 , but I couldn't understand the operator and I wasn't sure what kind of situation I was in so I hung up, but then I realized that now the 911 people would come to the seminary building instead of Mountain View. So I picked up the phone to try again but then a doorbell rings from somewhere and so ofcourse I think, "I need to brush my teeth!" So I run upstairs (suddenly I'm at my house) to brush my teeth, but someone had left the cap off the toothpaste and there was toothpaste all over the place! So I ran back downstairs to answer the door with toothpaste all over my shirt and face. I open the door and there's some guy standing there smiling, acting like he's a friend of the family or something, but I don't recognize him . So ofcourse I smile too thinking, "Oh geeze! I'm being such a nice person!" Then the guy steps into my house and hands me this brown glove, and I'm just like," Um, what are you doing?"and he says, "Oh this is a decoy, I'm just kidnapping you" and then he tries to grab me and I'm like, "Not if I can help it!" and I start fighting him and then my dream ended.

Okay. Sorry if you had to read all but here's my analysis. So I guess think that dreams can predict the future. I was working at the library (Provo Library almost) the other day after I had had this dream and as I was reshelving some books, I found this toothbrush just sitting there on one of the shelves. See there's some evidence for you. The toothpaste in my dream was telling me something. Also I usually have to play piano for my ward choir on Sundays, but this sunday I didn't have to (singing intervals with the chamber choir). However the parts in my dream with the robber guys and the kidnapper haven't quite come to pass yet. But since dreams do predict the future (I showed you some evidence) don't be surprised if I show up on the news for being kidnapped some time soon.
Ps I would usually spell check this but for some reason the button isn't working and I don't want to take time to reread this all over again so forgive my grammer errors and mispellings.

Forgetfullness

Well, I pretty much forgot to write this blog so I think I'll write it on forgetfulness. So then here's my lovely analytical question for you. Why are we forgetful? (Pretty profound huh?)

Maybe we're too busy to keep up with ourselves. We get so caught up in all of our activities that some things just get overlooked.

It could also be our personalities. I have a friend for example who always forgets to write her name on school assignments. It's just how she is. Whenever there's a paper with no name on it, you can almost automatically assume it's hers. Some people are extremely forgetful, others just aren't.

Yes, being busy and having a careless personality are definite factors in being forgetful, but we all know who's truly responsible for forgetfulness. That's right, you guessed it, the communist. Who else would tell that you it's okay to be too busy to ever remember anything, it's okay to forget your name on your homework, and it's okay to forget to write your blogs? (It's obviously not okay, seeing that it is 1:30am as I'm writing this blog and my writing, um, well you could hardly call it writing, and I can't even remember how to properly use parenthesis or spell parenthesis for that matter) The communist are slowly trying to make us forget ourselves and be corrupted into thinking only of them. This must not happen! Capitalist unite! Destroy those cunning pigs who are taking away our lives and our ability to remember to write blogs! (Wow, that sounded pretty lame.) Well yeah anyways it's the communist's fault that we forget, so since there's so many of them around I guess it's pretty much inevitable that we are going to forget stuff... so um, don't you forget it!

It's a Terrible Life

Well now that the holidays are pretty much over I guess it's time for me to complain about them :D . Actually there's not that much to complain about, being out of school and all, so if you haven't guessed this blog hasn't been very well thought out so don't read this if you're already feeling depressed or get offended easily. So here goes. With all the wonderful Holiday cheer around, presents, food, and family etc. ,you'd think that everyone would be having a "Wonderful Life." Well I'm not if that movie is playing all the time. Sure It's a Wonderful Life has great intentions and was a good movie about the first eight times, but after the two-hundred and twenty-second time you've seen it, it starts to get a little old. For some reason everyone just has to see this old movie every Christmas year after year. It's ridiculous! I'm sick of it! Sure Jimmy Stewart is an amazing actor and all, but how many times do I have to watch him almost commit suicide and then change his mind and run around yelling "Merry Christmas!"? I used to love It's a Wonderful life, but now I just hate it after seeing it so many times. I would much rather watch It's a Beautiful Life or listen to the song " It's a Beautiful Life" than put up with seeing It's a Wonderful Life again, because obviously watching it doesn't make my life wonderful after seeing it one thousand times before. Another thing I don't like about it, besides its repetitive-ness, is the way Jimmy Stewart breathes (by the way this is the only complaint I'll ever make about Jimmy Stewart because he's actually one of my favorite actors). "Mary (WHEEZE, GASP, MICROPHONE MESSES UP, GASP , OBNOXIOUS BREATH) Oh Mary."(MORE WHEEZES AND ANNOYINGLY LOUD BREATHING) I just can't stand how loud he breathes! Sure I guess maybe he's trying to get into his character and be dramatic and all, but ugh! It's SSOOO ANOYING! Well there! I've explained why I hate It's a Wonderful Life. Now I'll probably get a bunch of hate mail from all of you because most everyone likes It's a Wonderful Life but me. Hey maybe that's another reason I don't like that movie is because everyone else does. But no, I think I'd probably still hate it anyways after seeing it so many times and listening to Jimmy Stewart breath. Well now you've heard my complaints. I'm actually really not that against It's a Wonderful Life, I'm just dead tired of seeing it over and over again and I don't have anything else to write about. Sorry if I depressed you.

My Encounter with some Communists at the Library

Since it's New Years today and all, I was planning to write about the New Year and last years failures ect., but yesterday I had a traumatic, historic, intense, amazing, insane, disastrous, special and explosive experience. Actually it really wasn't that huge at all, but it got me speculating about a lot of stuff so here it goes... I hope...I'm a little low on sleep so read this at your own risk.
Yesterday I was working at the Orem library. One of the main things I do at the library is unload the book drops and check in books. Now it was New Year's Eve ofcourse so it was a pretty slow day, infact it was so slow even, that the girl who usually works with me in the "back room"(the place where the book drops lead to) left me alone and went out to shelve books. So there I was, pacing around, just waiting for someone to give me a single book to check in or just anything to do because I was dying of the slowness of the dragging day. Well, be careful what you wish for, because that's when the communists start appearing. Suddenly, out of the middle of the rainy street, a small silver car came up to the book drop(ps it's terrible when it's raining outside, because all of the books come in cold and sticky and it's disgusting!). Then a rather large older lady got out of the car with a maybe nine to eleven year old boy. They started unloading what I thought would be a few books from their car. "Oh good," I thought looking at the empty book drop, "something to do." But the problem was, they had a little more than a few books. First they unloaded the entire back seat of the car. By then the book drop was already overflowing and I was rushing back and forth trying to move books so there'd be more room in the overloaded book drop. The books just wouldn't stop coming! I was just baffled that anyone in the world could check out so many books for themselves and return them all in at the same time. After what seemed like years of futily attempting to clear just inches of space in the book drop, the books seem to stop for a little. I raised my hands in the air and almost shouted. But then, I noticed that I hadn't heard their car drive away. I jumped to get a better view out the window of the car and the obviously insane (at least to me they were) people. To my dismay they were only opening the back of their trunk to reveal what appeared to be yet another eight year supply of books! By now they were literally stuffing and forcing the books through the completely overflowed book drop and I was desperately trying to save all the books that were helplessly being crushed and jammed in the exploding book drop to no avail (wow that was a long sentence) . Finally, just as I thought the end was near, they stopped and drove away. I gave a sigh of relief and stepped back to gaze at the endless supply of books that were now my job to check in. What was once a slow day, had now turned into a frivolous torture. It was just ridiculous! How could anyone possibly have that many books?! The book drop and entire back room was completely empty until one tiny car just happened to drive up and unload more than 90 truck fulls of books! I just couldn't believe it!
Well, now you've heard my experience, so here's my analysis I guess. Considering that it was the last day of the year, it is quite possible that these people have some kind of ritual of going to the library and unloading their whole year supply of over due library books to start a fresh record at the library for the New Year. Another possibility could be that they knew I was in the back room by myself and so they gathered all the library books together from everyone they knew and shoved them all into the book drop at once because they have some sort of prejudice against library pages like myself. All of these possibilities are possibilities I guess, but the only conclusion that I can peacefully rest my case on is that these ridiculous people were communist. For years they've been chasing me around trying to make me one of them. They thought that my working at the library promoted capitalist propaganda so they were trying to sabotage it. Obviously they failed, because ofcourse I'm just an amazing person, but they did make me realize that there is never a slow day at the Orem Public Library.
Ps I work on Saturdays. Come visit me sometime and I can introduce you to some communist. ;)

Why I'm against karaoke machines

Well yes it's Christmas today so since I don't have anything to write about and only 20 minutes until this thing is due, I'll write about it. Christmas should be a quiet special day full of gratitude and joy and stuff that maybe I shouldn't talk about in a blog (Yes Happy holidays to you... no more Merry Christmas...Sigh, what's the world coming to?). But well, this year wasn't too quiet for my family because we got a new karaoke machine. It was awful listening to my siblings attempts to sing songs they didn't know and almost being pulled in to the torture of singing with them. Not that all the people in my family are bad singers, in fact for a lot of them it's the complete opposite of that, I guess I just wasn't so excited about the karaoke machine maybe because of all the loudness. People are loud. Karaoke machines are loud. Whatever happened to the wonderful Christmas afternoon naps? Yes Christmas morning with little kids opening presents ect. can be loud, but everyone knows that the afternoon must be quiet for underslept people like myself. Christmas without quiet afternoon is like a car without a horn (sorry that analogy doesn't make much sense it was just off the top of my head). Even though Christmas afternoon should be quiet, it wasn't for my family this year, so the bottom line is, if you need to catch up on sleep and are loyal to quiet Christmas afternoons, don't ever buy a karaoke machine for your family.

PS sorry if I sounded really bitter in this blog, the karaoke machine and everything else about Christmas was great this year, I just needed something I could complain and write about.

It usually pays to be prepared

Well it's blog time again, but this time I almost know what I'm going to write about... well almost.
Okay fine! I don't know what to write about. But you don't have to rub it in, gosh! Um... Well, so yesterday (there you go I'll tell you what I learned from a past personal experience) I had my very first ever flute recital. I've had thousands of piano recitals in the past but never before a flute recital. It was pretty intense. I'd say I played pretty ugh but not extremely terribly. So probably the reason I played ugh instead of good was because I was feeling unprepared.

A scout is always prepared, but some of us aren't always scouts. Now judging from the past, when I'm prepared for something, or I'm a scout so to speak, I usually do much better than when I'm not. I was definitely a scout last week when I was accompaning a singing quartet on the piano, but quite often in my procrastinating world, I am very far from being a scout (like my flute recital yesterday). However, not being prepared doesn't always mean that you're going to die. Just the other day we had a huge test in one of my classes at school. I didn't study or prepare for it or anything, in fact I had completely forgotten all about it, but I took the test anyways and I did just fine. Yet, if I would have been prepared I would have felt much more confident in myself and probably had done better on the test.

Even though preparedness doesn't always have the greatest influence on the outcome of certain events, in the end it's much safer to be prepared. Trust me I should know by now(or at least I hope I know by now. Arrgh! I only wish I had taken this advice before my flute recital).

Freedom accomplishes more

My parents left yesterday morning for Arizona and they won't be back for another four days. The freedom is wonderful! Yet every time my parents leave my brother and I home alone there's just one thing I can't understand. When they're gone, the house is amazingly clean all the time and everything seems to get done faster and run more smoothly. You'd think that when my parents weren't home, we'd just slack off and party, but actually it's the opposite. Everyone becomes much more responsible and does the stuff they're supposed to, and at the same time we're all more relaxed and life is easier. My brother doesn't neglect to take out the garbage like he usually does and I kind of take over the kitchen and keep it cleaner (I can't stand dirty kitchens!!(Ps when my mom is home I see it as her job to take care of the kitchen so I let the cleaner kitchen ambitions slip)). Anyways it's just weird that we're more productive when my parents aren't home, so to me it proves one of General George S. Patton's quotes:"Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity." Or maybe one of Abe Lincoln's too:"No man can govern another without the others consent." You see when my parents are at home telling me what to eat and when to got to bed, I'm going to rebel and eat what I want and go to bed late just in spite of them, even though I probably had the intention of eating and going to bed on time. But when they're not there nagging at me I'm free to do what I want or feel like I need to and that's usually something they would have been telling me to do. I guess the same thing can be said about piano lessons. A lot of the stuff my piano teacher assigns me becomes boring and burdensome, not because they're hard pieces or stuff I don't enjoy playing, but because they're things she assigned me, not that I assigned myself, so I don't want to practice as much and the pieces suffer. However, the pieces I like to play for fun and assign myself are often much more difficult then what she assigns, yet sound much nicer because I enjoy practicing something that I'm solely responsible for. Anyways I guess the bottom line is whether it be keeping the house clean or practicing the piano, a person is much more likely to get things done on their own accord then they are with someone else there constantly telling them what to do.
Ps even though everyone is more responsible when my parents leave, no one can get up as early as they do to turn on the heater, so you should be amazed at how long I've left my hands freezing hands out in the cold to type this blog.

Deprived

Yes, I the spoiled youngest daughter of eight kids, most of whom have left the house, am feeling deprived. Not from food, money or possesions, but from quite possibly the most vital thing our busy world has to offer. Sleep. I slept for 17 hours straight a few days ago, and even that wasn't enough to settle my undying need. Then why am I still sleepy?!! I could pin it on the communist like I usally do, but since this is supposed to be an analitcal blog I will enlighten you further.

School. Five out of the seven days of the week, millions of other students and I, are forced to stagger off to a disguised jail house and stay imprisoned there for 6 or more hours. We then sit through what seems like decades of monotnous lecutres and busy work. And if this torment isn't enough, after those six or more hours are finally over, we are un-lawfully given more busy work to take home with us. Isn't 6 hours enough? I'm already taking 6 whole hours out of my already sleep deprived day to only be given even less time to sleep? What is this world coming to?!

Work. I definetly shouldn't be the one talking when it comes to complaining about work,but I am anyway. My job at the library is great, especially compared to most other teenagers', but nevertheless I do work, and I still condsider it a crucial factor to my sleep loss. Every Saturday instead of trying to catch up on sleep, I have to force myself out of bed and go to my repetitve book job early in the morning. I wouldn't mind this so much if I weren't already feeling dead from my non-sleeping school week, but I have no control over that. Saturday is pretty much the only day that I could sleep, but instead it has gone down the drain to that wicked sleep stealing work monster.

Parents. My parents have absolutely no mercy when in comes to sleep deprived children. No matter how hard I try, there's just no use fighting against my parents' nagging in the mornings. Every day my mom comes into my room at unreal hours and tries to make me feel like a terrible person for sleeping. Pretty much now I've learned to ignore her because it's always the same: I haven't gotten out of bed yet, and I could have done so much, and I could have vacuumed the basement, and I made her take the dog out and the whole day is gone, and I could have finished putting up the Christmas decorations(wait! Seriously, who puts up Christmas decorations at 6 AM in the morning?) . Anyways she just goes on forever with these totally irrational things I "missed out" on for sleeping 15 minutes longer. It's ridiculus! But if I don't get up somewhat promptly she's in a bad mood for the rest of the day. Yet it's not fair because when my sleep deprived self gets up that early, I'm in a bad mood for the rest of the day. It's hopeless. Next week my parents are going to be gone for four days which could be sad for some people, but as for me, man! Am I looking foward to the sleep( which, however, by now I don't think is possible to cath up to ) .

Yes, we are all sleep deprived from time to time. It would be nice if the need for sleep would just go away, but then again maybe not because sleep is great. All I can say is, with this holiday season coming up, I know exactly what I want for Christmas. SLEEP!

Is it the food?

Well I just about died a few hours ago. Seriously, it was a very scary life threatening experience. You should be happy I'm still alive right now...or maybe you're not, but anyways. I ate two whole spoon fulls of my grandma's lettuce, raspberry, cranberry, pineapple, mayonnaise, jello and who knows what else concoction. Yes that's right two whole spoon fulls. But that was more than enough for me. I survived this same concoction on thanksgiving by casually handing the plate of whatever it was over to my mom, but today was different. When I tried to make my mom eat the stuff she mumbled to me in French, "Il faut que tu manger. Si tu peux manges un peu je vais finir." or something like that, I don't care much for proper French grammar, but it roughly means: "You have to eat. If you can eat a little, I will finish." So I ate some and it was terrible. I'm still gagging right now. I've decided that if there is one true reason as to why we celebrate Thanksgiving, it's not to give thanks, or gather with families, it's to deliberately try out disgusting food recipes on our relatives who can't complain and bring back the same disgusting foods year after year to torture them.

Now I'll admit, not all food at Thanksgiving is disgusting, especially foods like French silk pie (mmmm), but the small portion of Thanksgiving dinner that isn't so tasty out-does the other foods. It's like that one Mormon add with the delicious looking ice cream cone on it, but when you look closer at it, you see a bug sitting in the middle of the ice cream. Then at the bottom it says something like,"it's all good except for." Well that's the same way I feel about thanksgiving dinner. It's all good except for the stuff that isn't.

And why is it that after thanksgiving dinner you always feel as though you're about to explode? No, it's not because you've been eating too much food for too long like everyone says, it's because of the food you've been eating that shouldn't be considered food. I mean who ever heard of food making you full? Is it really the food that makes you full? Or is it... something else.

Well anyways you're probably sick of my talking about gross food. I guess we all just need to be thankful for the food we have on Thanksgiving, not how it tastes. But nevertheless, I will say that I'm extremely thankful that my grandma didn't bring her purple sour crout to Thanksgiving, but then again she usually brings that closer to around Christmas time so I should probably hold my tongue.

Hark! The Harold Angels Bring!

Okay, it's late and I've forgotten to write my blog so I'll write about the first thing I see which is a newspaper.
Newspaper deliverers are never given enough credit. Could you picture what life would be like if you opened your door every day to find your porch bare save that unwelcome welcome mat that you've had out since spring and need to replace with a Christmas mat soon? (Yes indeed, I'm excited for Christmas!)Horrible! News is a huge and vital part to our society and without it we would be extremely misinformed let alone informed at all. So who is the savior of our society, the angels of the harold? The Deseret in the Deseret news?(Or I guess it's Deseret Morning News now) That's correct the newspaper deliveres. I was once one myself for six years and boy was it an excellent experience. Even though I hated it like nothingelse most of the time, it was a once in a life time opritunity that I would never take back.

Imagine every day, no matter what the weather or special occasion, folding numerous papers with hands bleeding ink, making trips to billions of houses and giving the gift of intelligence. Its a tough job but somebodies got to do it. Most newspaper boys today (I'm going to say boys because its shorter than delivers and less confusing than carriers) drive wimpily around in cars. This is still pretty brutal, but back in my day, my brothers and I had to carry these huge newspaper bag thingys on our shoulders and walk from house to house. It was pretty rough, but at least I can say I got a pretty strong upper body from it, or at least I hope I did. Anyways, whether you're driving, walking, biking or scootering, delivering newspapers is harsh, yet extremly essential.

There's no slaking off when you have a newspaper out. I can rember every Christmas day and thanksgiving, dreading going out in the cold delivering papers and missing out on all the holiday fun. I have an older brother who once tried dumping all his newspapers into the canal that used to run by the side of our yard. Well it wasn't worth it, because they just reprinted more papers and expected him to deliver them, not to mention he got chewed out pretty well by my mom. Even when you try to go on vacation, there's no escaping your paper route. You have to find a dependable substitute and pay them way more than you would have gotten payed for delivering newspapers for a week or however long it was.

You'd probably expect me to say now that being a newspaper carrier is not worth it like I always say in my blogs, but no, newspaper people are amazing. They're like the pit orchestra in a play . :) Barely recognized yet so important.Jk, we're recognized but I hope you see what I'm saying. Newspaper carriers work hard and deserve much more than what they get. I expect all of you when you read this to wake up really early tomorrow and tell your newspaper boy how much you love him. No jk, you don't have to... unless you want to. But I hope you get my point, LONG LIVE THE NEWSPAPER PEOPLES!!

My Biggest Fear

There's a poster in the band room that says something like " nothing is boring." However, in that same band room there's another poster with my hero Yoda on it saying, "Adventure, heh! Excitement, heh! A jedi craves not these things." So which do I believe? Neither!Everything is boring! That's why a jedi like myself craves adventure and excitement. Seriously, probably the most exciting thing that happened to me this week, was... well I can't think of anything, so my week was obviously not that exciting. Why was it boring? I don't know I guess it was my own fault. I'm too shy and wimpy to ever do anything spontaneous. At the beginning of the school year I told myself I wasn't going to be annoyingly shy this year and actually talk and say hi to people in the halls ect. Well if you haven't noticed already I've completely failed. So I've got to thinking more about being shy lately. Why are people shy and what is shyness anyway? I've come to believe that shyness truly isn't bashfulness or embarrassment, but fear. Yes the fear of people. I can attest to this myself. I'd say my biggest fear in life is people and if I didn't have that fear, I'm sure I wouldn't be shy. So then why does a shy person fear people? Well who wouldn't? People can do such a variety things and be so scary, mean and powerful. There's no escape from them.
" They're everywhere!" It's not worth being a shy person, because the thing you fear the most is all around you. So if you're shy you're going to constantly be scared for the rest of your life. I'll remind you, "fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering" and all this is enough to make anyone bored with their lives. So if you're shy, now is the time not to be! Don't just try not to be shy, be not shy("Do or do not, there is no try")! I'm going to try (again) to take this challenge on myself, so if you start noticing how weird I am more often, you'll know that it is "A Change in Me"(lol pit orchestra). Now if you're still reading this, don't think you're bored because you're too shy, it's because you've put up with reading too many Yoda quotes, oh and one lord of the rings quote and a song from beauty and the beast... I think. Well anyways Happy not school day ( or maybe it is a school day when you're reading this, then in that case you're out of luck).

Yourself

The other day I was talking with(or at least she was talking to me) a friend. For some reasons she could not stop talking about herself. She just kept going on and on about how bad of a day she was having, and how tired she was, and oh my gosh she just tripped a second ago and it was embarrassing and how she must have done so bad on her math test etc. Well, I did what was asked of me and nodded every once in a while and tired to seem interested, but did she really think I cared? Now I'll admit, I'm not a very emotional or sympathetic person, especially for a girl, but this, as well as many other experiences of talking with people has made me realize that it's always a losing deal when you talk about yourself. All the good things you say about yourself, no one will believe, and all the bad things you say, people believe too much of. I myself am considered to be a fairly quiet, and un-talkative person. Part of the reason I don't talk so much is from experiences I've had of being annoyed with how much other people ramble on about themselves and being determined not to be like them. Sure maybe sometimes it's good to share a little bit about yourself, but when you share too much , it just turns into a discourteously to others. Talking about yourself can also be dangerous. I have a cousin who, whenever I say one little thing like,"I love chocolate ice cream," she'll immediately respond with a come back like," well so do I, and I this, and this" and suddenly it has turned into a competitive conversation, when all I said was that I liked ice cream. However it is pretty hard not to talk about yourself sometimes. We all know that everyone's favorite topic of conversation is themselves, but if you can refrain from this and just put up with listening to other people, I can guarantee you your life will be better. People will respect you for thinking that you're actually listening to them and you'll seem more humble. The question really isn't who actually likes listening to other people talk about themselves, but who likes being listened to?

Peter Pan was right about growing up

I once talked about how being the youngest of a big family is the best. I take that back, it isn't the best... it's the worst! Why? Well just the other day, my older brother Greg recived his mission call to the Vantura (spelling?) California spanish speaking mission (lol after 5 years of French) and just then when he received his call it hit me: what in the world am I supposed to do for two years while being cooped up in my house with my parents? Who's going to play football with me? Who's going to tell me what to do with my life? Who's going to make me almost good at tennis? Who's going to mow the lawn? The answer? Me! Being the youngest is great when the rest of your family is there, but when they leave, you're screwed. You know there's a reason I'm writing this blog right now. So I can practice speech writing for when I have to speak at all of my brother's and sister's funerals! However, I should also probably be practicing my hospitality and old people friendliness because I'm going to be the spry younger person who will have to take care of all the dying old people in my family. Yes being the youngest is great when you're young, but you're not young forever.

Concerning Color Guard

If there is one thing I just can't comprehend at any half time show or parade, its the flag twirlers in the marching band. I have nothing against the people themselves, infact I have many friends who are flag twirlers, but I just don't understand their purpose. Seriously, who actually knows what those gun-like baton thingys they have are supposed to be? Recently, I attended a football game and for the half-time show, out came the marching band with the color guard. The band was playing a tune in a minor key and the color guard came running out with these ridiculous black wings attached to their arms. At seemingly random parts of the piece, the flag twilers would flip in the air and flap their wings. Then when the music changed, they'd quickly run off the field, take off their wings, and pick up purple colored flags. Finally to top it all off, at the end of the song, one of them runs out all dressed all in black onto center field and begins frantically waving this tall black flag. As you can imagine, I was just completely baffled after watching all this .I can see the reason for the marching band being out there, playing entertaining music for people's ears, but why in the world do they have the color guard!? Once again, no offense to the color guard people themselves, but seeing that everyone I've asked this question to has yet to come up with an answer, I'm quite sure now that there is really no purpose to color guard, if not just to confuse me. PS If you have a legitimate reason for what color guard is there for, please email me or let me know. This question is very agitating.

You win, you win. You lose, you don't win.

Last Tuesday I played in a regional tennis tournament. I couldn't have asked for a better draw than the one I got. In my first round, the girl I was supposed to play was sick, so I got a buy. In the second round I had the opportunity to play someone who usually played 2nd doubles. Finally in the championship I was playing an old friend of mine from a summer league that I could easily beat. Then why did I lose!? When I was warming up, I was playing my best tennis. Then in the second round I was playing terribly, but luckily I still won. In the championship I was playing awful and so ofcourse I lost. After watching other people play tennis, and seeing myself winning all my region games and losing in the tournament, I've come to the conclusion that tennis requires more mental game than any other sport.
Tennis is the only sport in which it's just you against them. When you mess up, the only person there to blame is yourself. Other sports are never quite as individual and direct as tennis. In track, swimming, and golf, sure you're competing by yourself, but your opponent isn't right there in front of you immediately responding to all you do. And then to top that off, after every point you always have time to think about your mistakes or accomplishments.
Intimidation is another factor that heightens the mental game of tennis. Some people on my team who played doubles, once had the opportunity to play against this extremely intimidating girl. She was very tall ,muscular and blonde and she would wear a sweat towel on her head while she entered the court. Our team won , but it took a lot of mental ability for them to beat the "towel girl."I've even tried a little bit of intimidation on other people myself, and boy does it work. I used to play doubles over the summer and my partner and I would stand on the other side of the court and act like we were discussing the other teams strategies. Then we'd point at random places on their court as if they were weak spots or something. It worked. The other team would be focusing on those spots that we were pointing out and they would forget to focus on the game. We would also try grunting for each other, but I'm not sure that had the same effect. Also, mental game is such a big factor in tennis that on the video game Topspin, they've even included a button you can press after ever point called the "attitude now" button that raises your players mental ability. If you press it a lot, your player plays better and makes harder shots, just like you'd play in a real game with a good mental game.
The mental game of tennis is huger than any other sport's mental game. You can be physical and athletic, but you could never survive in tennis without a good mental game.