Goodbye, Friend

My friend moved away on Sunday. Things around here don't feel the same without him.

One of my friends told me something his mom said one time when they moved to a new state. She was leaving a dear friend behind and she said something like, "Don't make friends. Every time you do, you just end up having to say goodbye."

I don't share her philosophy deep down, except when I have to feel a goodbye--that emptiness--and it brings out the melodramatic in me.

I'm Happy I Was Born

1. Archie came to get me at 8:30 this morning and took me here: I had french toast and amazing syrup. Mmmmmm.




2. Walked into work. There are two lines for pick-up. The first says this:



I don't know if you can read that, but it says "Order Pick-up." The other one says "Customer Service." Only when I came in to work, dear Curt had changed out the sign to look like this:




3. Got this card at work today from my co-worker, James. He was embarrassed by it but I love it.



Check out the inside...









4. Went to lunch with my beloved co-workers, Curt, James, and Laura. Getting our food took over an hour, and in total we were away from work for about an hour and 40 minutes. It seemed okay because it was my birthday.

5. Went to a birthday bonfire at the Hansens' house in Payson. Roasted hotdogs, marshmallows, and starbursts. Maggie is my best friend and so thoughtful to get a lot of my favorite people together for my birthday.





I'm pretty sure I have the best friends and family in the whole world.

Wanna know what keeps me sane at work?

It's a fishing pole.

After working here for about 5 months, I decided I deserved a seating change. I selected a cubicle right next to favorite co-worker #1, and right across from favorite co-worker #2. Favorite co-worker #2 fashioned a fishing pole out of two wooden dowels (not sure where he found them) taped together, with a couple of shoe-laces tied end-to-end forming the line. Whenever one of us is bored, we have but to lower the line down onto the other side of the divider between our desks, and wait for the other to attach some prize. I've fished out all kinds of things. Yesterday, it was a pack of Gushers. Another day, it was a mouse pad. Once it was a cleaned-out Wendy's salad bowl (Weird, I know, but FC#2 knows I like to reuse them).

This kind of fishing is still just as thrilling as I remember it being as a kid.

If I wasn't moving to Alabama...

I would buy a pull-up bar.

And maybe a punching bag.

I feel like both of those things would make me feel tough. But, since I have to cram myself, my Dad, and everything I own into a Toyota Camry this August, and the lot of us has to make it across the country, I won't. I guess I'll be glad I still have the money, if not the muscles, when I go to buy my textbooks.

I think my Dad would be proud of my reasoning abilities and my (if intermittent) bouts of self-control.

What to do in the middle of the night?

So, I don't generally get a ton of participation from readers. Possibly because I don't have many readers. But if you are a reader, even if I don't know you're a reader, I want you to leave your comment to this post.

I have spent the last 2 months working a graveyard shift at a residential treatment center for adolescent girls. The hardest part about my job is staying up all night. I just put in my two-weeks' notice (Yaaaaay!!!), but I've still got two weeks left.

Here is a list of my nighttime activities, in case you ever wondered.

1. Transcription. I'm typing out all the Aruba tapes (from my research this summer), word for painstaking word. Maybe I should have worked on this more than I did.
2. Studying for the GRE. I could have worked on this more, too. But, I successfully finished the test, so that's cool.
3. Studying my scriptures.
4. Writing in my journal.
5. Writing on Aruba postcards to send to my missionaries from my last MTC district.
6. Composing serious emails to people I really needed to say serious things to.
7. Shopping at Forever21, but refraining from buying since I could have easily wasted a night's work money in one go.
8. Writing lyrics to a song I had already composed the tune to.
9. Watching a bunch of stupid movies and a couple of good ones. I really liked a foreign film called August Evening.
10. Eating. Huge quantities of baby carrots, grapes, and wheat thins.
11. Checking out craigslist: applying for new jobs; browsing the "free" items.
12. Making blog entries.
13. Writing a sample letter of recommendation for a professor, writing my letter of intent, and doing some other graduate school application stuff.
14. Reading: The Alchemist, Clara's War, Serendipity, Corner Shop, and this comedy book called "I Shudder..." until it got too crude for me. But there was a hilarious chapter about this guy's affinity for marshmallow Peeps. He does a pretty good job of describing what makes Peeps the most disgusting food you could ever imagine, and it was really funny. If you read the book, only worry about reading that chapter.
15. Watching almost every single episode of The Office ever made.

My question for you is this:

What would YOU do, if you had to stay awake all night, to keep from sleeping? I will accept movie or book recommendations, or just funny things you have done/would do if forced to stay awake.

Summery Tales

Here I am for my er, quarterly update.

I'll try to attach some pictures of the highlights.

1) Triathlon training. This Saturday, I will participate in my first triathlon--ever. I am half scared out of my mind, and half excited. I swam the full distance for the swim portion for the first time yesterday, and did it again today. It's a sprint triathlon, so it's just a 1/2 mile swim, but there was a point (yesterday before I swam it, actually), when I thought that distance would kill me. But now that I've done it twice, I feel a lot better about Saturday. Tack on a 10 mile bike ride and a 5K run, and I'm there! Yeah! I feel so hard core.

2) The mental hospital. No, I was not instated. I started teaching piano lessons there for volunteer hours for a psychology class, but I have loved it so much that I've kept doing it. I have just one student, and he is great. Tonight I am going to a talent show he will be playing at. I am so proud! Funny story, though. So, the other week I asked him about a book he carries around sometimes called "The Art of Power." He informed me that it was a tai chi book, with instructions on how to do the different poses and things. I was intrigued, so I asked him some more questions, and then he said, "Do you want me to teach you?"

"Well," I thought, "why not?"

So, there I was, in what I thought to be a pretty private setting. In the group room in this particular wing of the state hospital, with my piano student, doing tai chi. It wasn't until a couple of weeks later I realized the possibility of having been observed. I came for a lesson, and the desk attendant wasn't sure where my student was. I said, "Maybe he's in the group room already, practicing."

"Nope," he said, "I can see the camera right here and he's not in there."

Doh! Oh well...I hope someone got a smile out of watching our piano lesson-turned-tai chi lesson that day. :)

3) Tennis Intramurals. I played in BYU's mixed doubles intramurals a few weeks ago with a good friend, Craig Estep. And we won! It was awesome. I was pretty surprised when they put us in the top division, and I figured we'd meet some pretty stiff competition. But, well...we didn't really. I mean, we only had to play 3 matches to win the championship, and two of those matches were against the same team. But anyway, that's not the point. It was great, and glorious, and I've got a shirt now. I guess there's nothing else holding me back from graduating, now.