Something to Get Excited About

Today was my first day of school for Winter semester. I am only taking one class, it's a computer design class. Basically we are going to learn all the design software we are going to need to know to be graphic designers. I. Am. Stoked. Once I finally learn all the complicated software I can finally get a graphic design job and do something I actually care about and get all my ideas out where people can see them. I know this might surprise you but I'm not passionate about selling sporting goods online (which is what I'm currently doing). I also found out that we are going to get to do an art show in the HFAC gallery which I haven't done since my 2D class forever ago. I am very excited for that :) I like seeing my work up on the wall. Makes me feel accomplished somewhat. This semester is going to be a very good one :) 

You Get What You Pay For......Or Do You?

I am in disbelief right now. As I am trying to force myself for the third day in a row to study for the Contemporary Art midterm I have tomorrow, I am stuck focusing on one thing: my Contemporary Art teacher is a moron. 

I don't say this to be mean. I am stating it as a fact. My teacher is a first year teacher at BYU. She's never taught before, but she teaches three different subjects. She's young, and the more I'm around her I realize she has no idea what the hell she's talking about (excuse my french). Here are some examples:

1. She said Machu Picchu is in Mexico. False. It's in Peru. 
2. She referred to "Gumbi" as "gumbo". False again. Gumbi is a stretchy man and gumbo is a Southern stew or soup.
3. She was teaching us about one of Rene Magritte's paintings that says "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" underneath an image of a pipe and told us it translated to "This is not a penis." 

HUGE FALSE. It translates to "This is not a pipe", which plays off Magritte's idea of no matter how realistic a painting looks, it is not actually the object it is depicting. It looks like a pipe, but it isn't an actual pipe. I don't know how she got to teach at BYU without knowing this BASIC concept from one of the most famous artists there were during the 20th century.  He did a whole series of images based on this idea of "Ceci n'est pas.....". She's a moron. 

If she has gotten all of these things wrong in the 3 times we've had class, I can't imagine what else she has taught us that has been wrong that I haven't caught. What makes me even more mad is that I was signed up for this class for last semester with a teacher I had already had before and really liked, but the time it was conflicted with the class you have to go to before you go on a study abroad. I was gonna do that study abroad in the spring but then ended up not having enough money so I ended up having dropped it for no reason. Then this semester there was only one teacher available for this class so I signed up for it. And now I'm mad at myself, even though I had no way of knowing that my teacher would be such a moron. She is completely unorganized, scatterbrained, rude, and full of herself. She is making me hate learning about art, when normally art history classes are some of my favorite classes. I can't believe I'm paying to learn from her when all she's doing is teaching us false information. I guess this is why I'm so worried about my midterm tomorrow. I could get all the facts right but she might not know they're right so I could get a bad grade haha. But seriously. I'm having such a hard time focusing and studying cause she has given us no real direction of what to study and what is expected of us. I hate this. 

100 Ways to Get Rid of An Obnoxious Roommate

To all of my facebook friends who may be reading this.....you probably know by now that my sister and I DESPISE our roommate. I nicknamed her FON the first week we lived together (stands for Freak of Nature). The list of freakishly obnoxious things she has done grow longer and longer by the minute. 

FIRST OF ALL.....she is dating the definition of a hipster and he is at the apartment more than my sister is. He sleeps over on almost a daily basis. They giggle and talk late into the night while taking over the whole first floor, which consists of our kitchen and living room. Leann and I have to stay in our rooms to avoid the awkwardness. I can constantly hear them while I'm trying to sleep and it makes me so frustrated and mad that I want to run down there and force feed her gluten until her irritable bowel syndrome acts up and turns her intestines into Old Faithful. 

SECOND OF ALL.....she thinks she's God's gift to this world and acts like the princess of our castle. She clips her toenails in the living room and leaves the clippings all over. She leaves her billions of dirty dishes around the kitchen along with her mountain of garbage. She leaves all the lights on in the apartment all the time and doesn't care because her parents pay for everything for her. She isn't in school right now so all she does is work 5 hours a day and then hang out in our living room with her stupid boy toy ALL THE TIME. When Leann and I have friends over, FON hovers with her boyfriend, awkwardly standing in the doorway, until we vacate the premises because of how awkward it is. The list of obnoxious things she does goes ON AND ON. 

Today was a breaking point. After her boy toy constantly being here and her doing all the obnoxious things she does, Leann and I finally decided to do something about it. So we are currently blasting rock and metal from the top of the stairs hoping it will force their anything-but-folk-music-intolerance to act up and leave so we can actually go downstairs. If that doesn't work, I guess Leann will just have to confront her since I am completely non confrontational and get anxiety at the very thought of having to deal with that awkward situation. OR.........we could try any number of the 100 Ways to Annoy Your Roommate that we found while googling how to get make her move out!

Here are some of my favorites:

1. Get some hair. Disperse it around your roommate's head while he/she is asleep. Keep a pair of scissors by your bed. Snicker at your roommate every morning. 
2. Every time your roommate walks in yell, "Hooray! You're back!" as loud as you can and dance around the room for 5 minutes. Afterwards keep looking at your watch and saying, "Shouldn't you be going somewhere?"
3. Every time you see your roommate yell, "You son of a..." and kick him/her in the stomach. Then buy him/her some ice cream.
4. Set your roommate's bed on fire. Apologize and explain that you've been watching too much Beavis and Butthead. Do it again. Tell him/her that your not sorry because this time they deserved it.
5. Eat lots of Lucky Charms. Pick out all the yellow moons and stockpile them in the closet. If your roommate inquires, explain that visitors are coming, but you can't say anything more, or you'll have to face the consequences.
6. Draw a tiny, black spot on your arm. Make it bigger every day. Look at it and say, "It's spreading, it's spreading!"
7. Buy a Jack-In-The-Box. Every day, turn the handle until the clown pops out. Scream continuously for twenty minutes.
8. Buy some knives. Sharpen them every night. While you're doing so, look at your roommate and mutter, "Soon, soon..."
9. If your roommate comes home after midnight, hit him/her on the head with a rolling pin. Immediately go to bed, muttering, "Ungrateful little..."
10. While your roommate is out, glue your shoes to the ceiling. When your roommate walks in, sit on the floor, hold your head, and moan.
11. Make a sandwich. Don't eat it, leave it on the floor. Ignore the sandwich. Wait until your roommate gets rid of it, and then say, "Hey, where the hell is my sandwich!?" Complain loudly that you are hungry.
12. Collect potatoes. Paint faces on them and give them names. Name one after your roommate. Separate your roommate's potato from the others. Wait a few days, and then bake your roommate's potato and eat it. Explain to your roommate, "He just didn't belong."
13. Cover your bed with a tent. Live inside it for a week. If your roommate asks, explain that "It's a jungle out there." Get your roommate to bring you food and water.
14. Talk back to your Rice Krispies. All of a sudden, act offended, throw the bowl on the floor and kick it. Refuse to clean it up, explaining, "No, I want to watch them suffer."
15. Sign your roommate up for various activities. (Campus tour guide, blood donor, organ donor)
16. Hit your roommate on the head with a brick. Claim that you were trying to kill a mosquito.
17. Instead of turning off the light switch, smash the light bulb with a hammer. Put a new bulb in the next day. Complain often about the cost of lightbulbs.
18. When you walk into the room, look at the roommate in disgust and yell, "Oh you're here!" Walk away yelling and cursing.
19. Buy a watermelon. Draw a face on it and give it a name. Ask your roommate if the watermelon can sleep in his/her bed. If your roommate says no, drop the watermelon out the window. Make it look like a suicide. Say nasty things about your roommate at the funeral.
20. Drink a cup of coffee every morning. When you finish it, gnaw on the mug for about ten minutes. Then look at your roommate, immediately put the mug away, and quickly leave the room.
21. Hold a raffle, offering your roommate as first prize. If he/she protests, tell him/her that it's all for charity.
22. Watch "Psycho" every day for a month. Then act excited every time your roommate goes to take a shower.
23. Go through your roommate's textbooks with a red pen, changing things and making random corrections. If your roommate protests, tell him/her that you just couldn't take it anymore.
24. As soon as your roommate turns off the light at night, begin singing famous operas as loud as you can. When your roommate turns on the light, look around and pretend to be confused.
25. Late at night, start conversations that begin with, "Remember the good old days, when we used to..." and make up stories involving you and your roommate.
26. Sit and stare at your roommate for hours. Bring others in to join you. Eat peanuts, throwing a few at your roommate. Then say, "Boy, these zoos just aren't what they used to be."
27. Buy a lobster. Pretend to play cards with it. Complain to your roommate that the lobster is making up his own rules.
28. Make pancakes every morning, but don't eat them. Draw faces on them, and toss them in the closet. Watch them for several hours each day. Complain to your roommate that your "pancake farm" isn't evolving into a self-sufficient community. Confide to your roommate that you think the king of the pancakes has been taking bribes

And this one I just want to do for fun :)

   29.  Buy some turtles. Paint numbers on their backs. Race them down the hall.

I'm hoping the blasting music thing doesn't work just so we can try some of these things.

Wish us luck with expelling the spawn of Satan!

So This Is What Adulthood Looks Like

Oh geez. Facebook is getting kind of obnoxious. Every other day, and sometimes every day, another person posts that they are engaged, or married, or pregnant, or things related to these subjects. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against marriage or pregnancy, but when that is what almost EVERY SINGLE POST on my news feed is about, it gets kind of old. Especially when I am nowhere close to relating to any of those things. Don't get me wrong, I really am happy for all of them. I'm not bitter about it or gonna go cry that I'm not married, I'm just in a different stage of life. I'm sure that once I get engaged, married, and pregnant I'll post all about it all the time too. But it's weird being one of the last ones of my friends not married. Now I gotta make all new friends, cause for whatever reason, married people don't hang out with single people that much. Probably cause like I said, we're in a different stage of life. Oh well. 

I did, however, make a grown up move today. I finally signed the lease to my new apartment after trying to get ahold of the landlord for over a week. 16 days till I move with my sissy poo to good ol' Provo. I'm excited :) But nervous to see what random person gets put in the apartment with us. I'm hoping for either a really weird person or a really cool person. Either way it will be entertaining. And school starts in exactly 3 weeks. Super weird cause it feels like I haven't gone to school in forever. But I'm excited for that too. Finally doing something productive other than working. So now I get to pay for school and rent on top of my car and insurance and all that crap. Yay for being a responsible adult :) I'm glad I can take care of myself. Thanks, Mom, for raising me that way :) 

Uphill Both Ways

You know how old people say, "When I was your age, I had to walk to school in the snow, uphill both ways!"

And you know how you would always laugh and say, "Oh silly Grandpa, that's not possible. Go take your meds." 

 Well guess what. It IS possible, and I can prove it. "How?" You may ask. Well it's because I do have to walk to school uphill both ways. I took pictures on my walk from school back to where I have to park out in the boonies to prove it to ya. 

Here is where the walk began.

Today was a chilly, yet gorgeous day. 

This gorgeous view makes waiting at the crosswalk in the freezing cold totally worth it.

After walking across that street, you look to the right and see this:

 

But instead of getting to walk on the beautiful, flat path I get to hike up Hill #1:

Which is essentially, three flights of stairs. I hate these stairs mainly because they are too short to take them one at a time, yet too wide to take two at a time. So the options are to take lots of little baby steps or fewer really long steps which are basically uphill lunges. Either way, you get a good workout.

Once you get to the top, you get to walk down Hill #2.

 

I took this once I got to the bottom. But this is how it looks when you are about to go up it on the way to campus. It's not super steep or anything but a hill is a hill. 

Here are some pictures I took walking down the hill.

That is on the left when I walk down.

Ain't it perdy?

On the way to school, I go up this hill and down the stairs. When I go back, it's the other way around (obviously).

So I made my point about the uphill thing, but I took a bunch more pictures on the rest of my way home because today was gorgeous.

This is the view from where I park every day.

Even though I've lived in Utah my whole life I'm still amazed at how gorgeous the mountains are.

I live basically on a mountain. So to get up the mountain, you have to go uphill. Yep, more hills. I took this while driving when I was about halfway up.

Where that huge cloud is is basically my backyard. 

Here's another shot of it. I think it looks awesome:

This is as far up as I go, right before I turn:

And here is the last stretch of road before I get home:

Here is the view from my front porch:

You can't really tell but it was snowing when I took this. 

And here is a pic of my backyard,  when it was also snowing. You can see it better in this pic.

I am lucky to live somewhere so gorgeous. 

This is my favorite time of year so I hope you enjoy these pictures as much as I do :)

If You Put a Boot On a Girl's Car, Don't Hit On Her

Once upon a time, I parked in an almost completely empty parking lot in Provo, and came back 2 hours later to find a big, fat, ugly boot on my car at midnight. 

Yay.

So I called the number on the stupid paper on my window, the guy said he'd be there in 10-15 min. 

25 min. later I call him, he said he'd be there in another 10 min.

20 min. after that, he finally pulls up.

He "apologized" for the inconvenience, and then proceeded to hit on me while he charged my credit card $50 bucks
 (which I think is completely excessive, a warning or like a $10 fine would've been understandable. Plus, that was all the money I had gotten back from my insurance company, so that buzz was killed). 

I was dumbfounded. 

Seriously dude, do not hit on chicks after you put a freaking boot on their car and then charge them ridiculous amounts of money. 

I hate Provo.