I think this day was predestined to be special. As such, it proved worthy of a post.
For some reason, I was able to get up early this morning. 6:50 am. I was up before any of my room mates, actually. This led to me being able to take a shower before anything in my day went down. If only you knew how crazy all of this is. I never shower in the morning--ever. I never get up on time! Even if I've had plenty of sleep the night before (like I did last night), sleeping in just takes its natural course everyday. If sleeping in were an olympic event, I'd be a gold medalist.
8:50 found me showered, makeup'd (miraculous, I know), and dressed. My bed was made (what the?), my schedule for the day planned out on paper, my notes for classes that day reviewed, and my bookbag packed and ready to go. Breakfast would have been consumed at this point, but I'm currently out of food, so all I ate was a measely (which, according to dictionary.com is not a word. You know what I mean.) piece of toast. Classes for the day started at 9:30, so I decided to head over to the bookstore and pick up a manual for Communicable Disease Control , and a notebook for Institute.
This is where things took a nifty turn. While browsing around the bookstore for the most suitable notebook (I'm picky when it comes to these things. It's got to be sturdy, but nothing fancy. Thickish. Preferably smaller than standard size notebooks. Color? Irrelevant.) a voice came over the speakers in the store. "Attention Book Store customers. It is now 9:09 on September 9th in the year 2009. In honor of this special occasion, the first nine customers to purchase at the front will receive a token for a free scoop of icecream! Enjoy!" That announcement alone lifted my already perky spirits. I looked around the store to see if I had a shot at this opportunity for free icecream. I most certainly did. At the checkout counter, I was given the promised token for being the third person to buy something at 9:09. So cool.
The rest of the day proved to be out of the ordinary, and most enjoyable. I stayed awake in each of my lectures, and found them to be interesting and study-provoking. At work, I had tasks to do and was given more to do. I know that sounds strange, but at the lab sometimes you're up to your neck in dirt to work on, and other times there's nothing to do. I need money--bring on the work. At orchestra tonight, aside from playing gorgeous Ralph Vaughn Williams, I was given the opportunity to put my name on a list of private teachers interested in taking on students for music lessons. Maybe something will come of that! Who knows. The greatness continued even then. When I came home from orchestra, my room mates had saved me some fixings from their homemade pizza feast. The pizza was delicious.
9/9/09 will never come again. I'm glad that I was here to see it. The magic sixty seconds of 9:09 only came twice today. I'm looking forward to see if October 10th of next year will be special too. Oh, and by the way, I didn't use up my icecream token today. Since ice cream makes everything better, I think I'll save it for a day with less character, like September 18th, that might end up being a not-so-good day.
Nearly every Friday night, the LDS Institute in Logan puts on an activity of some sort. While all are invited to attend, they don't tend to attract the large crowds that they could. To be fair, you could say that some are more successful than others, but for the most part, they get a small turn out. Then again, what is your definition of small?
Last Friday, I was telling my room mate Eden about the crowd that these activities tend to attract. From my own harsh personal observation, I informed her that you'll always get a few geeky boys that show up right on time who are obviously girlfriend (and quite possibly friend)-less and are hoping that the night will introduce them to their eternal companion. It seems like they force themselves to go for this reason, not because they're just looking for a good time. They've no other options, and nothing better to do. Then, as the night goes on, the crowd that joins them isn't much better according to social standards. Man, I'm brutal. I apologize. As you'll see if you keep reading, I've no room to talk.
In any event, she was intrigued, and wanted to go over and have a look at these creatures. I didn't have any objections, and so we went over right as it started at 8 o'clock. Like a knife would fly to a magnet, I was immediately pulled into the gym upon entering the building when I heard a live jazz combo playing for the activity. I'm not sure why they were there, because the activity was advertised as a "MexicanFiesta", not "Big Band Dancing."
Just as I had promised her, there were two couples dancing on the floor, and about three guys standing off to the side. There was one boy in particular that I pointed out to her as being a prime example of these socially-challenged specimen. Gah! I'm terrible! Somebody please stop me.
Done. Before I could go on in my judgmental ways, this boy made a B-line for us, and asked me to dance. It wasn't a question though, for before I could answer he had taken my hand and dragged me out to the middle of the gym. What followed was one of the most humbling, embarassing, and yet hilarious moments of my life. And sadly, only three guys and Eden were there to see it.
I had no idea how to dance with this kid. He didn't say a word to me the whole time.
"What's your name?"
Silence.
"Uh..what am I supposed to do?"
Silence.
(I collide with him as he tries to spin around me or something)
"Oh! My bad! I'm sorry, I'm really bad at this."
Not even a smile.
(I continue to fail at trying to be smooth about this)
No reaction.
It was awful, but everytime I looked over and saw the look on Eden's face, I had to laugh at myself. Even still, this kid had not showered in who knows when, and so I looked over at the band with a look of "Please. Just stop playing." By some miracle, it worked. The last note came, and I left.
This would be a good place to end, wouldn't it? Well, too bad. The point of this post has not been presented yet. We're getting there though, I promise.
Being Friday as it was, and finding myself alone back at the apartment, I actually wandered back to the institute building. The Jazz music was pretty good, and I wanted to hear more of it. That was all I wanted though. It's funny- I often complain about being alone even when I am surrounded by others. Here was my chance to meet people even though I was alone for the chance to make friends and avoid loneliness in the future. And yet, I didn't want to talk to anybody. I wanted to get lost in the music, and not be bothered with random, 'Would you like to dance?'s and subsequent small talk. I was terrified at the thought of such things. (For those of you who know me, my dance anxiety had very much kicked in at this point.)
So, my question now was how do I listen and watch the music without having to talk to anybody? We saw how well being a wall-flower had worked out for me with Eden. To my relief, I snooped around and found a little curtained room up above the gym and stage. You can see everything going on down below and not be noticed if you peer through those curtains. So, I ran to the snack table, hoarded as many chips with salsa (Ah. We now see why it was advertised as Mexican Fiesta. Clever, eh?) and trailmix as I could carry, and ran up to my secret spot to enjoy the show by myself. I did embark on a few dangerous missions back to the snack table for lemonade and refills, but I slipped back and forth almost unnoticed.
I spent the next two hours overlooking local musicians, watching people having fun and dancing, and eating chips and salsa like there was no tomorrow. During the intermission, I did go down to compliment the band and request that they play Blue Bossa (which took them by surprise. Blue Bossa? Who would request that? A jazz major. They were afraid of that. But that's a post for another day.)
As the activity drew closer to ending, I couldn't take it anymore. You may think, based on my behavior that I've told you about, that I don't like being around people. That I enjoy being alone, and antisocial. That couldn't be farther from the truth. I hate it. I long to be outgoing and friendly. I yearned for someone or ones to be with and dance with. For some reason, there is a barrier there that I can not seem to master. I chicken out everytime. You'd think that chickening out would be the more comfortable route, but it's not at all. It's kind of like an endothermic reaction requiring a high activation energy: Before the reaction occurs, you're at a state that's lower than where you want to end up, but there's a huge hump to get over that requires a lot of energy to spark. Very rarely can I get over that hump, so I stay down low in the dumps instead. That, world, is why Brittany has a hard time with dances.
As I said, I couldn't take it anymore. I had to dance. But I couldn't go down to the gym! I couldn't dance there alone, but dancing with someone was impossible for me too. So, looking about me and finding a dark room occupied by no one but me and old chairs and risers just taking up space, I began to dance. It was great because no one could see me- not even me because it was dark. I danced, and I danced. I even pretended that I was dancing with someone else. Ridiculous? Pathetic? Perhaps so.
I learned something about myself that night. I'm no better off then those boys who show up to activities right on time. I don't even go, and it's not because I'm doing other things with other people. I have no one to go with, and I'm too afraid to go by myself. If I did have someone to go with, that would mean I would have a friend and I'm sure that if that happened, going to the institute activity wouldn't be on the agenda. At least those other guys/people try. They have more than I have, and I of all people have no room to judge them.
This is not a picture of my hand or Timmy Willy. I only have pictures of him on my phone, and the phone will not let me send picture messages to my email address right now for some reason. Timmy was a brown fancy mouse, so really the only thing this picture portrays that's relevant to my story is the fact that Timmy was tiny just like this white one. Actually, he may have been smaller.
A couple of days ago, I went to Petsmart to see if they had any bunnies or chicks for Easter (which, by the way, they did not.) While looking at the rodents there, I noticed an adorable tiny brown fancy mouse. He was smaller then the other mice in his cage, and had a perfect fluffy coat and tiny mouse features. While being endeared, a bigger mouse came over and attacked the tiny brown one. It was horrible! The brute chased him around and kept biting his little tail and hind legs. The brown cotton ball tried to fight back with bites and such, but it didn't appear to do him much good. Some sort of "save the helpless creature" instinct of mine kicked in as soon as I saw he was bleeding, and I knew that even though I can not keep pets in my apartment, I needed to take him home to save him from dying.
The mean black and white mice continued to pick on my mouse as I waited for an attendant to come and rescue him. While it wasn't my first pick, he received the name Timmy Willy during the wait. When the Petsmart employee finally arrived, she looked at Timmy and recommened I take another brown mouse home since he was pretty beat up. She said something about how she meant to separate him from the others for a few days so he could heal, which I recognized as being code to the customers that he was going to die. But I didn't care. I'd become too attached after naming him and all to let him die in Petsmart. Since he was so mangled, she adopted him out free of purchase. It was a fun feeling to walk out of the store holding a little box with holes in it in one hand and a little bag of mouse food in my backpack.
The whole bus ride home was spent pondering where I would house Timmy. I decided to keep him in a plastic drawer from my room that seemed deep enough to keep him from getting loose. However, after holding and watching him for a few minutes, it became apparent that the plastic drawer would not be needed, because Timmy was very still. He didn't move around much. Even though it had me worried, it was kind of nice to be able to hold him without him squirming all about. I spent the next several hours in the apartment of a friend who didn't have roommates so we could keep Timmy a secret. We watched over Timmy the whole time. We heated some soy milk for him, and tried to help him drink some water too. He drank a little bit, but not much. He also didn't eat anything. While it was nice not having him poop at all, him not eating was sad to see because it accentuated his poor health.
I ended up sleeping over because I didn't want to leave him. The Petsmart lady told us to rub some Neosporin on his wounds to help them heal. We did so, using a Q-tip to be gentle. I think that Timmy was infected, because he didn't smell very good even for a male mouse. It was wonderful to hold him. If I put him on my stomach while laying down, he would crawl up and tuck himself under my chin, or between my neck and shoulder. His whiskers and tiny paws tickled. We didn't want to sleep with him since we might squish him and...sleeping with a mouse would be kind of gross, so we put him in a small box padded with tissue paper and placed it on the night stand next to her bed. I got up to check on him a few times during the night, given a bit of hope everytime I saw his heart still beating.
Timmy died sometime between 3:30 and 7:30 in the morning. When we woke up, he was on his back, stiff, legs in the air, and tiny teeth poking out of his mouth. It was a sad day. I miss the little bugger. He was darling, and seemed so sweet and docile because he was sick. It was a lot of fun to just watch him crawl around or close his eyes upon being petted. I have a new respect for rodents. They're not the ideal pets, but definitely have some perks. I'm glad that Timmy was able to die away from the other mice that caused his death in the first place.
I am fully aware that it's been awhile since the last installment, and much has happened to me in life that would be more relevant to blog about than what I am about to post now. In fact, this post is quite overdue. Here's the story behind it: Approximately eight months ago, mis amigos Alex and Matti from the University of Utah and I were hanging about in the halls of Chapel Glen 803 during the wee hours of the morning. We saw a flier about housing at the U (which I shall type up for your reading convenience) and had a good laugh about it. I pulled it off of the wall, said I would blog about how misleading it was, but put it away and forgot about it. Yesterday while I was going through some old papers, I found the sales-pitch flier and had a good chuckle again. Even though I don't live at the U anymore, it's still worth the blog.
The poster looks something like this:
- At the very top, it reads "Live the life. Live on campus."
- Directly under this is a very large picture of a female student (taking up roughly 50% of the poster face). Above her is a house with a caption beneath reading " Why live there?...", and below her is the same house surrounded by the signature University of Utah "U" with the caption "When U could live here?". There is a dashed line connecting the two that swirls and loops around in the same way that someone might illustrate the path of a flying bee.
- Beneath the picture is the following text:
And by the way...
- Free Internet, cable, and utilities
- Eat from dusk until dawn in the Peterson Dining Room
- Suite style rooms
- No commuting and parking hassles
- Late-night trips to the library with ease
- 2,000 built-in friends (you can all rendezvous in the MUSS)
- Crimson Nights, free movies, concerts, and more.
Imagine not having to wash a single dish, take a weekly trip to the grocery store, pay a single bill (other than rent), or hunt for a parking space ever again. As a student involved on campus, you can walk to and from meetings, you're closer to labs and your faculty, you can drop in to the free drop-in tutoring in the Peterson Heritage Center and never miss an activity because you're only a few steps or a shuttle ride away! That's what students living on campus are already experiencing.
I suppose that it wasn't really necessary to give you that much detail about it, especially since I am going to retype the points I would like to focus on. Oh well- what's done is done. I'll start with the bulleted section in red:
Free Internet, cable, and utilities- Explain to me how paying to be in a room where the costs of those things are included is free. You can't tell me they just threw those things in generously. I think a more appropriate statement might have been "Don't pay for internet, cable, and utilties separately!" If it's not coming from rent, then it's coming from tuition or taxes...both of which you pay. Ta Da! Next.
Eat from dusk until dawn in the Peterson Dining Room- This is humorously misleading. Why? Well, to me 'dusk to dawn' means from about 8 o'clock at night to 7 o'clock in the morning. Guess what. The HC isn't open during that time period-- ever. In fact, it's hours are a little inconvient, especially on weekends. I could be forgetting, but I believe they aren't open from 2 to 4 in the afternoon, and they close around 8 o'clock at night ("dusk"). Natalie, please help me out with the weekend hours. Also, they make it sound like you can just come in and eat whenever you want during all those hours, but that is a lie. Depending on your meal plan, you have to be careful to make sure you spread them out. This leads me to another complaint: the meal plans are really crappy-- no happy, reasonable medium to be found. They only offer plans with more meals than you could use but would still have to pay for, or not enough. Obviously, the minimum that should have been said was Dawn to Dusk.
Suite Style Rooms- Again, extremely misleading. While they do have some "suite style rooms" (which are really just bedrooms and bathrooms and a room in a hallway that connects to the main hallways of the dorms) most of the on campus housing at the University of Utah is strictly dorms. It's like living in a hotel pretty much. You have your room which connects to the bathroom, and that's it. Suite Style Rooms? While they did have lofted beds and a reasonable amount of floor space, there was nothing sweet about them. Some Suite Style Rooms would be a better description for incoming students to know.
No commuting and parking hassles- I suppose they said this because there are many people that drive up to the U from the southern end of the valley, or Tooele even, so comparatively it's not that big of a commute. But as far as commuting goes, being on campus wasn't necessarily super stellar. I had a fifteen minute break between classes that were on polar opposite ends of campus: The music building on President's Circle, and the Honors House on Fort Douglas. If I walked it, it took at about thirty minutes. Shuttle? About twenty. It's still a commute-not a walk down the street. As for parking, HA! Everyone knows that parking at the U is the worst! It's no exception for those that live on campus. Whenever I went anywhere with someone in their car from the dorms, we usually had to park far away (which, wasn't that bad, but kind of annoying when you were carrying something or if it was freezing) upon return.
Late-night trips to the libaray with ease-This kind of goes along with the commuting thing earlier. It's not really the safest idea to walk the 20 minutes down to the library late at night, especially if you're by yourself like I usually was. That means you would have to shuttle it. The shuttle doesn't run as often at night--especially late at night. Also, the normal blue and red routes absorb the green route at night, so it takes longer to reach the normal stops. Ease? Well, that depends on what you call 'ease'.
2,000 built-in friends (you can all rendezvous in the MUSS)-First of all, I love that they used rendezvous as a verb here. It reminds me of moutain men (like, Jim Bridger mountain men) for some reason. Anyways, this is also a little bit of a joke/stretch. 2,000 friends? My year at the U was one familiar with loneliness, and that wasn't because I didn't try to make friends. It's hard- mostly because of the U being a commuter school, and a lack of people on campus that you would want to hang around. It wasn't unusual for me to come home to my bathroom smelling like marijuana. My entire floor smelled like it actually. It also wasn't unusual to see people outside smoking hookah and whatnot. Not the friendliest of environments.
Imagine not having to... hunt for a parking space ever again-Shame on them for throwing this in twice. As I said before, the hunt for parking was constant and never-ending.
...you can walk to and from meetings...because you're only a few steps or a shuttle ride away! - I guess their definition of 'a few' and my definition differ. I usually think of it as not many. I wonder how many steps one takes on the 30-40 minute walk across campus. If you could get there by taking a step a minute, even then you're up to 30. We'll be kind and say this was kind of an exaggeration.
You know, I really enjoyed this. Perhaps I should blog more often. I sort of regret that this post is mostly pessimistic and critical. I promise I'm not like that most of the time. It was just interesting to note the numerous flaws in this advertising. Now the world knows the truth. Goodnight.
I had a couple requests to blog about the Osmond Family and Tabernacle Choir Concert that I went to on Friday, July 25th. While I suppose it was a blog worthy event (because really, anything is) this will probably end up just being a bunch of random comments and thoughts. I can't really think of a way to piece it all together in a flowing, sensible manner.
The Osmonds make up a tiny bit of who I am because they are a big part of my mom's family. My mom and her siblings were huge fans, and still are. I have listened to a great deal of their greatest hits and not so great songs over my years. The Osmonds are ok. I like to think of them as a clean Backstreet Boys type of band from the seventies. Most of their songs, and their TV shows were extremely cheesy. I mean, let's face it. The Plan? Yeah. Enough said. However, they are good singers-- no one can deny that there is a lot of talent in their family. The one thing that endears me personally to the Osmonds, and in my opinion gave them their little niche of fame, is their harmonizing ability. My great-grandparents had a record (that our family inherited, much to my delight) of the Osmond Brothers singing as a barbershop quartet back in the 1950's. The oldest of the four brothers at the time was twelve years old, and the youngest was six. It's adorable.
In any event, the purpose of this concert was to celebrate two things: 1. Pioneer Day, and 2. The Osmond's 50 years in show business. As a result, the songs on the program were a mix of pioneer and hertiage songs by the choir, and old favorites from the Osmonds. I went with my dad and his mom, and my brother. Oddly enough, the biggest Osmond fan in our family, my mother, didn't go. That's only because she was in Idaho at the time. No worries though, she's going to see Donny and Marie in Las Vegas in December. Good ole Mom. Commence comments about the concert...now.
We'll start off with my only complaint. The eight brothers allowed their little sister Marie to take a solo for the evening. I have never been a fan of Marie Osmond. She sang How Great Thou Art. They turned it into a pop arrangement, and she wore a very gaudy dress for the number. Putting all my negative comments and criticisms aside, I didn't care for it.
It was interesting to note that the volume of this concert was much kept down in comparison to rock concerts I've been to. I felt like I couldn't hear! It was kind of funny. I know that the conference center has the capability to knock your socks off, or blow out your ear drums. But, they kept it down to a reasonable level.
My brother and I were familiar with every single "Old Osmond Favorite" from the 70's that they played, including Down By The Lazy River, Yo Yo, and One Bad Apple. We knew that Donny has long since gone through puberty. When it came to the parts where Donny used to have really high solos, we looked at each other and smiled. Those songs won't ever be the same.
While there are nine siblings total in the Osmond family, only seven of them were well known in the world and attained any sort of fame. The two oldest brothers are deaf, or hard of hearing people. Have you ever received a ...oh wait, just kidding. Anyways, for the last number they had those two come up and join the other seven on stage and sign during the song. It was kind of cool.
The other day, I was introduced to an extremely catchy tune. The bass line, though repetitive, is irresistable. In fact, I wasn't even aware of what was going on lyric-wise the first six times I listened to it because I couldn't get over the bass and the way it gives the song a nice tone touch, moves around in a cool manner, and blends in perfectly yet directs the underlying harmony lines. It's one of those songs that was made to be played when you're driving in your car so that you feel like the king/queen of the world and at the peak of being cool.
I was so happy that I had stumbled upon such a find. Because I had never heard it before, I thought that it was a rare find and that I had been the one to discover this. For some reason, I had it in my head that I'm pretty up to date with what's going on in the music world. I don't know why I thought this, because I never even listen to the radio. But somehow, I got all puffed up about discovering this new cool song. And then, my sister came in and said, "Whatcha listening to?"
I was quickly humbled. Apparently, this is a hit tune everywhere. It was kind of funny, I was actually disappointed to find out I wasn't the only person on the planet that knew this song besides the band members themselves. That didn't last long though. As disappointed as I was at not being able to introduce my sister this really cool song, I couldn't help but smile and laugh as she said, "Oh my gosh! I love this song. They play it on X96 all the time! Everytime I hear it, I get out my bass guitar!" and proceeded to whip out an air bass guitar. We aired and danced through the rest of the song, and had a jolley good time.
And yes. I did listen to that song while I typed this post.
