False Advertising

Welcome to my 34th (now) Semiannual Post-on-de-blog!

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.

Osmond's 50th

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.

This always seems to happen

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.

And...we're finished!

Attention, World! I have an announcement to make:

I, Brittany Doyle, am the proud owner of a sixty thousand dollar mouth. (Yay for insurance! And parents!)

Yep, that's right. You read that correctly. After eleven years of oral surgeon, orthodontist, and dental appointments, I am through! My mouth is finished. I can't describe to you how elated I am. Here's the tale:

It all started when I was in third grade. The dentist said I was missing many teeth, and that I would never be able to chew again unless I had major oral surgery work in the future. My parents took me to several oral surgeons, who all said, 'Alrighty! Looks like you need our help. Come back when you've gone through puberty!' And so, things didn't really start kickin until high school. From sophomore to senior year, I suffered through braces just like everyone else. Right before they were ready to be removed, I was given the ok to have my severe underbite corrected by oral surgery. Best two weeks of my life....not. But hey! I lost ten pounds in a week thanks to the liquid diet. Great as that was, it wasn't the end of things, oh no. Next came the five implants (four on top, one on the bottom [front and center]), which required three surgeries in and of themselves: one to put them in and cover them, one to uncover them, and then the pesky one in the back had to be "reuncovered" because some funky growth regrew after the first time. ("Fascinating!" Dr. Austin said. Ha.)Once the rods were in place and properly uncovered, and once I had visited a special shades doctor to get my teeth bleached to the max, my dentist finished the job by placing fake porcelain teeth on top of each one. I had my last crown put on this week.

And that's it! There's a good chance that I will undergo a little procedure about a year from now to fix a receding gum line (don't I sound like an eighty year old?) that happened in the hub bub of all this surgery business. But it doesn't really count because it wasn't supposed to happen, and isn't completely necessary.

Here's the best picture timeline of all this jazz that I could come up with:

Before. This is a terrible picture that was taken my sophomore year before anything serious went down. I look...greasy and gross. But here you have the braces and underbite thing going on, so...yes....

I love this picture. This was taken at the hospital after my jaw surgery. I am hooked up to an oxygen machine, an IV that is also connected to pain killer distributer of some sort, and another mechanical contraption that kept track of my vital signs. Yay for complimentary teddy bears of the pediatric ward!

Ice-packs are a boat load of fun. Really.

I had to wear a funky retainer with a fake tooth on it for many months while we waited for the implants to heal. I kind of miss it.

After. Yay for being able to chew!