here, but only just a little.

i've been in ohio for a week and a half now. i already feel incredibly far removed from utah. i mean...was it really just a few days ago that i was going to finals and working in the newsroom and living in my own room and driving my car and making fires in my fireplace and driving up to slc to hang out and working in the theatre??

seems like a million years ago.

it's never the same when i come back here. i mean, there's a lot of the same people. it's fun to hang out with them and i always seem to make a few new friends when i come back. but somehow...everything is always a little different. i was here and then i left. there's a definite disconnect here. obviously i always know this will happen. it's still always kind of weird. things keep going after i leave. and i keep going after i go, too.

everytime i come here, i wonder if it will be the last time. sometimes it seems like it might be easier to leave and never come back. and yet...there's still a lot here.

everyone keeps asking. and honestly, i don't know.

so much has happened. so much i'm happy about and so much i'm angry about and so much that i'm confused about and so much that i just can't believe at all. so much. and it's only been a week.5. double weird that a week from right now...i'll be back in provo.

just thinking.

"Those who make happiness the chief objective of life are bound to fail, for happiness is a by-product rather than an end in itself."
-Elder Joseph B. Worthlin, November 1980

i never really thought about it like that.

practically christmas. omg.

nothing like christmas break to totally break any good habits you have formed over the course of a semester (such as eating and sleeping on a semi-regular basis) and turn you into something ridiculous and crazy that stays up late and works all the time and hangs out at other people's houses til the wee hours of the morning and lives out of a suitcase.

okay. i guess i always work a lot.

anyways, i would probably be lying if i said that i had even anticipated this "vacation" to be anything close to relaxing. between balancing a job, old friends, newer friends, family, my own personal time (for sleeping, running, or whatever) and everything else, there really isn't time to relax. at least when i get back, it will be a whole new slew of classes that i can fall behind in, instead of the ones i've already given up on in the past few months.

speaking of which, i'm thinking of getting a hobby. i won't be working nearly as much next semester and i will need to think of something to fill my time with. so far, i don't have any leads. but i'm working on it.

yay christmas tomorrow. glad i spent way more money than i had.

but if you can't spend too much money on the people you actually like in life, what's the point in saving it for dumb things for yourself for whatever else during the year? that's what i decided.

p.s. did i mention i had ridiculous layovers for the first time in my life this christmas? i spent an extra six hours in the salt lake airport (omg) plus a few more at o'hare. i guess everyone's got to pay their christmas layover dues sometime in their life...this happened to be my year. awesome.

it's official

if it's officially friday, i'm officially going to be in ohio tomorrow.

yay.

i played rock band for the first time tonight. i've played guitar hero before, but it's just not the same. it was tons of fun. then i drove back from slc and remembered how much i love driving and how fun it was to drive across the country a few months ago. i'll be flying back to ohio this time around but it was kind of nice to drive. there's something relaxing about being in total control of where you go and how fast you get there. but it's also nice to turn on the ipod and chill while the pilot takes you to ohio (hopefully...if it's not all snowstorming or something).

i keep meeting new people. i like it. it makes you wonder about reoccuring characters though. i think i've mentioned it before. and now...who knows. oh well.

new balance

this weekend was fun. i relaxed. i hung out with my friends. i went to spark. i met new people. i got to church on time even though i had to go by myself. i made brownies. i saw a run through of the new play i'm working on. i went to bed after 6am (on saturday night) and before 1am (last night) -- both pretty solid accomplishments and even more so since they were back-to-back nights. i didn't finish much of anything, but i figured out what i need to do so this week should go a little more smoothly after so much planning. this weekend seemed to balance itself out. and this morning i woke up nice and early even though i didn't have to. i think i'll go running before i get so busy. because, why not?

oh. and it snowed this weekend.

plus i'll be back in ohio in five days. wow.

in anticipation of the weekend

so it's friday. i realize that the past few weekends have shown my extreme lack of discipline when it comes to cracking down on the weekend. i would have to say that my productivity level for the last few weekends is hovering around 7%. not that my free-wheeling-weekend activities have made me turn in things late or anything that would make me do terribly in school. just that i think i could be more productive if i tried. so the big question is...will this weekend be different?

only time will tell.

in other news, i just got this program that changes my desktop background to different pictures every couple of minutes. it is super cool and i feel like a complete loser for being so excited. but for real. it is TOTALLY AWESOME.

plus i still want to see nick and norah's infinite playlist. is it even still in theatres? seems like movies just make their rounds to the theatres, then move off the screens without much recognition or anything. and then it takes FOREVER to come to dvd. frustrating. maybe by the time i get around to seeing it, i can just rent it. oh well. for whatever reason, i really really want to see it.

and by "whatever reason," i really mean michael cera.

finished.

so i finished writing that paper. it's actually pretty okay. i like writing, and i think i'm at least slightly good at it. for some reason, i just loathe the writing process. i just like to write.

i've become more political lately. i wrote about how obama faked his way into the presidency. not in a bad way...just in the way that he "acted" like a president wayyy better than mccain did (among his many many other fatal campaign flaws) and the american people perceived him to be a better candidate because of the way he portrayed himself in debates, interviews and other such events.

i wrote a similar paper last semester, about how politics is all about performing. only this other one was about how obama and hilary "performed their minority status" in their race to get the democratic nomination. and who performed it better? obama again. (i got a perfect score on that paper. not that i'm bragging, just that i'm awesome (at writing that one paper). only perfect grade in the entire class. yessss.)

it's not that i think these candidates are bad people. or even fake ones. they just know how to show certain parts of themselves to make them look best and that's why they win.

this reminds me of the anderson cooper lecture last month. he said that he always wondered why people wanted to be news anchors first, instead of being reporters or something else. he said something like, "it's like...why do you want to be a politician? why would you want to be a fake person when you could be a real one instead?" i thought that was funny. i don't think i'll ever be an anchor, but mostly because i'm pretty sure i'm terrible on camera. it's safer for me to hide behind a computer and produce or write stories where the american audience doesn't have to watch me. maybe someday though...

writing a paper.

i'm always slightly amazed by all the things that i get done that are not what i need to do.

let's just say that.

day five.

i started a facebook fast last week. it's been pretty fulfilling so far and after a while, i hardly notice it. i've never been a facebook fiend, but i always found myself looking at it when i knew i should have been doing other things. i tried to fool myself, saying that i was just browsing as i settled down for the night and collected my thoughts, but then i decided that i could just do without it for a while. so that's how it started.

it's been since last thursday. i feel pretty proud about it. i wonder about what's happening there without me, but at the same time...i don't really care. if anything super-important happens, i'll find out somehow.

i think i'll do it at least til this next thursday. that's the last day of classes, and if i can finish everything for my classes without stupid distractions like that, i'll be happy.

with that said, i love facebook. while it can be time-consuming and crazy, i definitely keep up with a lot of people through it, which is definitely nice. if i had the choice between never talking to people and sending messages via facebook every once in a while...i think it's way better to stay in touch. just...not this week. maybe next week, when i'm less stressed and busy.

time for class. we're doing an in-class final for the class i teach. everyone is surprised when i tell them i teach a class for byu...yes -- real undergraduate students come to my class and i teach them. no, i'm not the t.a. i'm the teacher. and i'm awesome.

i'm even bringing brownies to the final. what more could a class ask for?

we got a christmas tree!!

back home in ohio, we always had a fake tree. i guess i never really thought much about it, but emily really wanted a real tree for our house...so tonight we got one. this guy that andrew knows has a bit of land and there's some christmas trees there. so tonight after fhe, we loaded up in the truck and headed up to the mountains to begin our search.
















emily was super-excited to get a tree.
















it was really cold out, even though it's been super-nice weather lately (around 50's today in the afternoon). it was icy up there in the mountains and the path was steep and we slipped a lot. but finally...we found it. the perfect tree!!















andrew, our resident fire-fighter-slash-tree-chopper-down-er was sawwing away as i clung to the trunk for dear life to try to "steady it" so his job would be easier. i don't know how much help that was, but he said it was good and we got it down pretty quick. you can see me a little bit in that picture (black sweatshirt, white writing). then andrew carried the tree and me and emily slid down the mountain on our butts (since it was safer than walking...)




















we ended up having to trim it a bit when we got home since it's too big for upstairs living room but we still wanted it up there. it's huge. also awesome. hopefully it doesn't die before we get around to decorating it later this week. yay christmas!!!