bikini night.

this post is for everyone who says i work too much and never do anything fun.

last night i got home from work at about ten. emily and i kicked off our evening by browsing through ksl classifieds and looking for cute pets that we wanted to buy.

^ decided we really want this bunny. it is super fuzzy and super cuddly and super cute. and only ten dollars!!!

then we decided to watch cute animal videos on youtube. it was awesome. then we decided we were hungry so we went to the store. here is a list of things we bought: oreos, cool whip, pudding, gummy worms, three different kinds of cheetos, french bread and some mix for oreo brownie things. we also got a redbox movie - "he's just not that into you." and then we came home.

^ here is one of the many, many things we baked / ate last night. it was like junk food heaven, which was interesting since we have both been eating healthy food for like the last two months. before we started baking, emily decided we should wear bikinis, so we found some and put them on.

here is a list of things we did while wearing our swimsuits: baked at least three different kinds of food. watched a movie. ate tons of food. had a dance party. went running outside at three in the morning (yes...it was freezing). watched the awkward deleted scenes from the movie. watched the end of the movie again about three times. and then had another dance party.

so there you have it. i still have fun sometimes.

halvsies / halfsies.

on friday was halfway between my little brother's 11 1/2th birthday and my 23rd birthday. so for one day...he was exactly half as old as me. i just love my little brother sometimes ( :

bangs.

my grandma adelina lived in chile. i remember that everything she did was so cool and everything she wore was so cool and i wanted to be just like her. i remember the sweaters that she had and the smell of the perfume she wore and the way she smiled and laughed and bought us treats at the tiny stores in chile. everything we did with her was awesome.

she came to visit us in ohio once. i remember her staying in the guest room next door to ours and the little bag she kept in the bathroom with all of her things inside. and i remember the tiny scissors that were inside that little bag.

and i remember one day that i went in the bathroom and found those little scissors and decided to sit on the counter in front of the big mirror and cut my bangs right off.

(i don't remember what i was thinking when i did that)

and i don't really remember ever having bangs after that.

it's been years since i've seen her and i'm sure her little scissors are long gone too. but i'm older now and a while ago i decided to get some long-ish bangs cut into my hair. the hair cutting lady made it so the ends of them were just barely touching my brow line. since then, they've grown in quite a bit and now they are usually right in front of my face. people always ask me if it bothers me or how i can see with my hair in my face.

i don't really mind them and i have no problem seeing things, but i guess they're probably distracting. and then when i watched my live report today with my hair all in my face, i decided i probably (definitely) need to trim my bangs. and i'm pretty sure the last time i did that was...well...way back then.

i miss those little scissors. and i miss my grandma adelina.

come see how great i am at cooking.

i love cooking. let's look at pictures.

this week...sweet potato croissants (from scratch)...

^ obviously, you can't make these without first starting with some sweet potatoes. yum yum yum. any excuse to use the potato masher means you have a good recipe going.

^ after mixing all of the (secret) ingredients together, it looks like this.

^ and then after you let it rise...it turns GIGANTIC.

dad, this is the point when you called me and emily starting trying to punch the dough before i took a picture ( :

^ after rolling out the dough, you cut it up into little triangles (just like they come in the tube). this is how you know you are making croissants and not something else, even though all of mine were fatty but baby-sized...kind of an oxymoron, but you'll see in a sec.

^ here's all the food i made...croissants, steamed broccoli and cauliflower, three-color spiral noodles and homemade alfredo sauce (sooo good...just don't ask what's in it because it's SO not healthy).

and that was my sunday. i love hanging out with r & s and the rest of the dowlings because it gives me a good excuse to cook for more people than just me and emily. plus now we all have tons of cookies / croissants / food to keep us full for the next few months or so.

hope.

as an executive producer, i have a lot of power. out of all of the millions of things that are happening across the country and around the world, i am the one who gets to decide what are the most important things to have in my newscast. i look for stories that are compelling, video you couldn't see anywhere else and characters who are trying to stand for something. there are things we feel obligated to cover...arrests, homicides, accidents and weather reports. but there is still so much more.

to me...news is about people. it is about stories and feelings and the human experience. it is opening up the world to people who barely have time to look past their own front doorstep. there are so many awful things in this world: earthquakes, tsunamis, massacres, unfair dictatorships, genocide, wide-spread poverty, people from all walks of life who are just trying to make it from day to day. there is so much heartache, both man-made and beyond anyone's earthly control.

so we look for stories of hope: the orphans who make the trek to the states to start new lives with foster parents...the survivors who persevered...the compassion and love of the poor people towards one another, from those who have nothing at all to those who have even less...the charity dollars and the telethons and fundraisers...but there is still so much more.

there's so much i will never see in my life, so many hardships that i will never have to experience because of my circumstances and blessings. how did i get so lucky? and how did they end up where they are? i would never consider myself rich, since i know it is sometimes a miracle that i am even able to pay rent and still have money in my bank account for food and gas money. but it's impossible to have less than most other people in the world, when they have nothing at all.

so what can i do? i tell their stories. even if no one is listening or watching, i strive to give a voice to the voiceless, to help those who can't help themselves and give them hope for a better tomorrow. because there's not much i can do for them, but maybe someone else can. and if i can inspire them to do it, then i am doing my job.

drugs.

i had a headache today. this isn't unusual...i get headaches kind of a lot. so i took three pills with my dinner. well, technically four. three excedrin - migraine pills and one multi-vitamin (thanks mom!).

the label on the (excedrin) bottle says to take two. but let's be real. i get bad headaches, and in the past when i have taken two, it doesn't really help. three usually does the trick, and tonight it did.

so what's the big deal? let me tell you.

last week, i was sick.
i don't ever get sick, so i didn't really know what to do.

on thursday (the 7th) i was starting to feel sick and i remembered my mom told me to take some ibuprofen. so i took some of those.

on friday (the 8th), i spent the night at rachael's and was still feeling sick. she gave me some cold & flu pills. took a total of 4 of those.

on saturday (the 9th), i was totally stuffed up. i remembered that i had some liquid dayquil from last winter so i took some before bed.

on sunday night (the 10th), i was feeling worse, so emily offered her nightquil (also in liquid form and equally yucky).

on monday (the 11th), i was at the grocery store, still feeling miserable. i called my mom, wondering the difference between generic and name brand drugs (since i obviously have no idea). she gave me her advice and i came away with some new drugs...this time in liquigels (thank goodnessss) -- with options for both day and night.

i used those pills throughout last week, along with some "vitamin c added" cold pills that i also found from last winter (but not expired...no worries). i had a headache at some point and took some excedrin. probably i took three of them at that point too.

by thursday night (the 14th), i decided that i'd had enough. i had spent an entire week sleeping a ton and taking a cornucopia of different drugs that were supposed to help me and i still felt totally awful. so i decided that i wanted to stop taking drugs and just feel better.

today is the 19th...i'm still not totally better. i continue to find myself running for tissues every so often and feeling kind of icky a lot. but at least i'm not giving myself any more excuses (or drugs). humans have survived plagues and diseases (well, SOME people survived them anyways) and i feel confident in the science of the human body, even though i have no idea how it works.

let me conclude by saying three things...
-NUMBER ONE: i drank some diet root beer with my pills today and i have not stopped burping since then. seriously...ridiculous.
-NUMBER TWO: in retrospect, i took a ton of medicine in the past week and a half. holy cow.
-NUMBER THREE: i continue to have no idea how drugs work. how does the ibuprofen KNOW where you are hurting? how does the excedrin find the parts of your brain that are in pain? i have no clue. ah...the magic of science. it will always be a mystery to me.

stressed / desserts

life has been pretty crazy lately. if you don't believe me, just look back at how often i've blogged in the past week (because...not much). my mom got me a card remarking about the similarities in the spellings of "stressed" and "desserts." so last night, me and emily made some desserts.

^ emily made ice cream in plastic bags, which was pretty yummy, even if it didn't get as frozen as we thought it would.

^ and i made fudge with colored marshmallows, even though i couldn't find a hand mixer (so basically everything is mixed, but probably not as much as it should be).

it was one of our "ambitious cooking" nights so that was fun.
and then we watched keeping up with the kardashians.
the end.

mom always knows.

i called my mom's phone yesterday and my little brother picked up since she was sleeping. i talked to him for about ten minutes or so before he handed the phone to my dad. i talked to him for a while longer and then my mom woke up from her nap and got on the phone.

before i was even on the phone with her for a full minute, she asked if i was feeling okay (i wasn't and i'm pretty sure it sounded like it).

not that it's a big deal and not that my dad or 11-year-old brother should have noticed something different in my super-congested voice or sniffly sneezes. but still. mom always knows.

so whether it's how long to boil eggs, how to alter a skirt, how to wash a scarf without ruining it, or what the difference is between the generic and name brand medicines...there's only one person to ask.

thanks mom ( :

cold.

wintertime means cold times. multiply this times at least a zillion because i think our heater is broken (which hopefully will be remedied soon since the landlord just stopped by). because seriously. when the thermostat is turned to 75 but the thermometer still reads in the 50's -- overall that's not a good sign.

luckily, the cold brought some cool things into my life this weekend.
cold thing #1: hanging out with rachael (and jon and kurt) in park city and going tubing! i had never been to park city before (it is gorgeous) or gone tubing either (it is scary but awesome) so it was a pretty sweet adventure. plus we had some yummy sandwiches at this pizza place and i had this green drink (basically a very lime-y sprite) and then we had fudge at the candy place next door.

overall an awesome night because it was cold but we had snow clothes. later i passed out on rachael's and jon's couch during robin hood and jon found my car the next morning (which was really good because i couldn't remember where i left it...) and they went to see a movie and i went home to try to feel not-sick.

cold thing #2: my sister went running outside and got stuck not wanting to run back to her house (duh, because it is cold outside) so i picked her up and brought her home (in my warm car). then i went to the gym (where it is not cold) because that is what you do when it's cold outside but you still want to go running and not die.

cold thing #3: hot showers are so much better after being outside in the cold. ditto for hot chocolate. and cuddling under lots of blankets.

cold thing #4: i never get sick. keeping that in mind, i'm pretty sure i am sick. i think i have a cold or something and it is lame. people say that when you are sick, it is your body trying to tell you something. overall, all my body has told me lately is that it wants to sleep in 12-hour stretches and be full of snot and make my ears pop (why does that happen when you're sick??) and do nothing all the time.

cold thing #5: i already sort of mentioned that i slept a ton last night. not surprisingly, i woke up in the afternoon and still didn't feel like doing anything so i got some cereal and sat on the couch with my pile of blankets. the tv was set to nbc and there was this gymnastics / ice skating extravaganza on (with ashley tisdale omg) and it was really cool. i always wanted to be a gymnast but my parents never let me (because it was dangerous and i would probably die) but i still love watching it. and the ice skating was cool and reminded me of how the winter olympics are right around the corner and that is something good that happens in the cold too.

so yeah. my house is freezing. my ears won't stop popping. and i feel like rolling up in some blankets and hibernating til spring. the end.

more adventures in cooking.

there are some days when emily and i come home from school / work and are just too tired to make anything so we have peanut butter sandwiches. that's what happened last night.

and then there are nights when we get really ambitious and make a ton of things and then we are set for a few days. tonight was one of those nights.

we started off by baking five kinds of chicken. did we just make up five different kinds of chicken? why yes, we did.

clockwise from top left: cajun barbecue chicken, ginger and brown sugar chicken, coconut curry chicken, rosemary and lemon pepper chicken (or, as we like to call it, "christmas chicken" since it looks like it has pine trees in it), and basil chicken with cumin and nutmeg. and we split the chicken in half so we have healthy-sized portions for lunch or dinner.

we also made mashed potatoes out of red potatoes...yum! boiled them for 20 minutes and then em started mashing.

^ added some garlic and harvest peppercorn to make some of the best mashed potatoes ever.

so...overall a productive evening. we now have enough food to be lazy for the next few days.

the best part? i probably wouldn't have done so much cooking if emily wasn't here and she said the same was true the other way around. best roommates ever.

drunk people.

i should be writing about my new year's resolutions, but first i need to get something off my chest.

i don't mind drunk people. i have a lot of very good friends who like to drink and i like driving them around so i know they're safe and hanging out with them sometimes. do i think drinking is a very good idea? no. but they're my friends and i still like them.

i tend to encounter more people of the drunk persuasion when i go to ohio. and i went to one party over christmas break that had a lot of drunkies, some of which i knew and many who i didn't. it was a fun thing...i watched a movie and played some games (because you only have to drink if you lose, and when you are sober, you basically always win) and visited with some people i hadn't seen since the summer and it was great.

due to the nature of the party, people were going inside and outside a lot. it was freezing outside (duh, because it's the middle of the winter) so i would take my jacket* outside and then bring it back in and leave it upstairs in my friend's room. there were some other people who had the same idea so there was a nice jacket pile and i just tossed mine into it each time.

(*by jacket, i actually mean two jackets. i just bought a new black hoodie earlier that day and then wore this track jacket over it so it was like a double-layered jacket and it was nice and warm)

by the end of the night / early the next morning, i was ready to go home so i went to look for my jacket. and guess what.

ONLY HALF THERE.

someone took my brand-new black hoodie -- pulled it out of the jacket it was inside, turning the sleeves of the track jacket inside-out -- and left the other jacket on my friend's bed.

i literally had just paid for it earlier that day, which made me even more upset. and i tried to reason with myself, maybe someone accidentally thought their jacket was inside of mine (no way) or maybe i shouldn't blame the drunkies because they do some dumb things, but still. overall not pleased.

needless to say, i never got my jacket back and i actually ended up going back to the store and buying the exact same jacket again. i don't think i've ever done that before and i don't hope to have to do it again because it's a total waste of money. but i really liked the jacket so i did.

what is the moral of this story? i don't know. i'm trying to think of one, but all i can come up with is, "keep a closer eye on your new clothes if you don't want drunkies to steal them."

BUCKEYES WIN THE ROSE BOWL!!!

let's just say tonight was one of the BEST. NIGHTS. EVER.

buckeyes win. haters lose. and terrelle pryor has a stellar game.

and i'm leaving ohio in like 12 hours / :

a good christmas break overall...let's talk more about it later.

time to watch some invader zim with daniel and sarah. xox.