An email to a roommate MIA

Dearest Katie,

I have to be honest with you.  Ever since you left, we've had a hole in our hearts.  We were afraid that our apartment would be forever lacking one, and we couldn't bear living like that.  But then, something marvelous happened!  We replaced you!  Hannah is great, but after a few days we knew that she would never fill that hole in us created when you went to Jerusalem.  This led us to think:  Is Katie the reason for that hole?  We have replaced you, you'd think the hole would be full.  But no, after a few weeks thinking on the matter, we discovered the real reason for the hole: Zac Efron.  He's gone, Katie.  You dragged him out of our home, and we miss him terribly. Hannah doesn't replace him the same way she does you.  We needed another "Zac Efron"-esque roommate.  And we needed him fast.


That being said, it was Jessie's birthday yesterday!  We had a party and balloons and cake and the whole shibang.  It might be worth mentioning that it was Tyler Nicholas' birthday as well.  Have you ever met Tyler's sister, Sarah?  I've only met her once, but she's fantastic.  In fact, she printed out ginormous pictures of Tyler and hung them up in the halls of Building 4 so that anyone passing by would be bombarded with his smiling face, with text on the picture announcing it was his special day!  


It is now that our two stories combine.  It is here that I feel I must also warn you.  It has been far too long since we've seen you, Katie.  Like, a whole two weeks!  You may have forgotten.  Katie, I beg you to remember that we are the kind of people who would keep a bottle of urine in our fridge until it starts to freeze and turn to slushy pee.  We are the kind of people who get very excited over a new product known simply as "Handerpants."  And yes, Katie.  We are the kind of people who take full size pictures of other people's boyfriends and hang them on the walls of our apartment.  Especially if said pictures are this one:

Yes.  T-Nick is in the house.  Specifically OUR house.  And though he may not be a celebrity like Zac, you've got to admit, we've definitely got the next best thing.


Hope all is well with you and yours!  Have a wonderful day.  And please, try your hardest not to miss us too much.  Crying like that is just embarrassing.

-Sara

Matt Is the Best.

I have all sorts of problems with my computer.  I'm pro at picking up viruses and malware. It's probably all of those "You're the 1,000,000,000th Visitor" notices I keep clicking on.  The flashing banners get me every time, darn them.  Since my fields of specialty don't extend past Facebook stalking, hoarding candy corn, and making a fool of myself in public, I leave technology to technology people.

Enter my friend Matt.  I took my computer to his apartment last week and left it there with a vague "something is wrong, please fix it."  I picked it up a few hours later with high hopes.  Matt said he cleaned several viruses off and handed it over.

When I got home, I realized what he really spent three hours doing.  Messing with my settings.

I thought I was crazy at first, because computers don't talk.  Well now mine does.  Every time I turn it on, off, open a new window, open a new tab, click a link, etc., my computer reminds me that I shouldn't trust Matt with my computer every again.  It alerts me to system changes with a kindly "Matt is the best."

Sometimes, if I leave my computer alone for a while, it reminds me anyway.  Just to keep me on my toes.  It might be the best thing that's happened to my computer, and I kind of lovehate it.  For now, anyway.

Eat All the Food!

So Katie and I are in a cooking class together.  Yes I realize many of you might be laughing about this, thinking, "Seriously? You're in college and you're choosing to take a cooking class?" (or maybe that's just my mother thinking that).  But let me point a few things out.
1. This is my only class on Fridays.  All I do is cook and eat delicious food for 3 hours.
2. We get a free meal every Friday.  We usually stuff ourselves to the point where I don't even really need dinner, so it's basically two meals at this point.
3.  Since we are the last class on Fridays, we get all of the food that they have to throw out.  So I get even more free food!!
4. We get delicious recipes out of this as well.
5. We get to rock out to Rebecca Black's "Friday" every week.

Ya I know, the last point doesn't get me either.  But the first four are great ones!  While we're cooking, we love to sneak food.  We're hungry, poor college students!  We can't help it!  Our favorites are the batters....This is a problem.  There is a rule against eating batter.  How rude!!  No worries readers; we found a solution! We said, "Smerf it!"

This was taken by our lab partner.  That behind us is our sink: the only safe zone in the lab.  We both suddenly ducked down and started licking this delicious chocolate frosting off of the beaters.  A couple people saw us (luckily none were the teacher or strict TA's).  We got some weird looks, but I think they were just jealous they didn't think of it first.

Foot In Mouth Disease.

I celebrated unofficial "Ugly Sweater Day" on campus yesterday.  On my way to my first class, I passed a girl wearing a borderline ugly/ironic American flag sweater.  I was booking it to class and clearly high off endorphins.   As I passed her, I stopped and shouted "Hey, ugly sweater day?"

No.  She was just wearing it.

I mumbled an obligatory "Oh... well I like it?" and ran away.  I really hope I didn't ruin the sweater for her.  Thank goodness there are 30,000 students here.  Although by Murphy's Law, she will be joining me when I go abroad next semester.  And possibly be my roommate.  That's kind of how my life works.

I'm good at breaking and entering. Or others are just bad at locking doors.

Our building, good ol' Glenwood Number 4, is the furthest one from campus.  It's so far!  Once I even get to the Glenwood parking lot I have to walk past 3 buildings just to get to ours.  Sometimes my subconscience gets impatient, and I become sure it can't be that far.  So I unconsciously turn into the third building and go into the matching apartment there.  The first time this happened was during the first week of school.  We were still unpacking, and there were boxes and dishes and misc. items all over the kitchen. We all left that morning vowing that we would organize when we got home.  Well, when I walked into the apartment after school, everything was clean and tidy, and there was even a vase of flowers on the kitchen table!  I froze, thinking to myself, "Wow!  My roommates have been busy!  I wonder who got the flowers!"  As I continued to walk through the entry way, however, something felt off.  The couches were in different spots, and the decorations that we had haphazardly put on the wall that morning had disappeared.  That's when it hit me.  This was not the apartment I was looking for.  I quickly exited that apartment and shut the door, then walked out of the building like nothing had happened.  When I finally got to our building and entered our real apartment, there were the boxes and dishes and a distinct absence of flowers in a vase.  Home, sweet home.

This has happened numerous times since then.  You would think that I would learn that we live in building 4.  Actually, no, let's be real here.  I'll never learn that, but you would think that the owners of the apartment I keep walking into would learn to lock their door.  I've met them now, they're very nice.  They were pretty convincing when they pretended to understand why I can't figure out where I live, even after 3 months.  I'm sure we'll soon be on first name basis, and then they can give all my information to the psych ward and have them come pick me up.  They know where I live and everything.  So, if one day I just up and disappear, I'm either at the matching apartment one building over, or in the psych ward.  Either way, please come get me.

Wow dad, your Alzheimers has really gotten bad!

We think we are hilarious.  Sometimes I'll relate our stories to a member of my family; I can barely get the story out due to laughing so hard.  Our antics our met with silence and occasionally a courtesy laugh.  Every now and then I get lucky and can get actual laughs.  That's when I know we've scored; we've been validated.  As this only happens every now and then, there's a small part of us that hates those people who are naturally hilarious.  Mostly it's respect, but jealousy is definitely in there.  We wish we could be that funny on cue.

There's one person we know who we can't hate, even though he fits the funny person profile perfectly.  We love him too much.  His name is Ian.  He was the RA of the boys hall we were paired up with last year.  Since we moved, we don't see him anymore (which is rather depressing).  One day on Facebook, Ian posted about how he needed to borrow some racquetball equipment.  Being the lovely person that I am, I told him he could use mine.  A day or so later I receive this wonderful voicemail from him:

Ian: "Hey Jessie. How's it going?  It is Ian.  I just want to thank you for letting me use your racquetball racket.  I'm actually using it for a date on Saturday morning.  So if things go well, I'll name my first daughter Jessie "Smerfson".  Then one day in the future, she'll ask me, 'Dad.  Why am I named Jessie?' And I'll tell her, 'Well Jessie, I actually don't... I actually don't remember anymore.' And she'll be like, 'Wow dad, your Alzheimers has really gotten bad.'  Sorry I couldn't say that without cracking up."

You see why we love this kid? I listened to this voicemail on the way home class.  I had to control my peals of laughter seen as how I was around random people and did not want to look psychotic.  As soon as Katie arrived home, I played it for her.  Repeat with Sara and Marina.  The only reason we could hear the rest of the message is because pillows were near by that we could shove our faces into.  All of us loved it.  It still remains saved on my phone.  Every now and then, we pull it up just so we can listen to it again.  Our dream, maybe with some practice, is that we can be on the same playing field as these type of people.

Hold the Carrot

In the middle of our adventures this morning, Jamba Juice called.  They asked us to please never ever ever (like ever) apply for a job there.  In fact, I think we could get them to pay us to NOT work there!  Why you ask?  Great question.

Last night, we had an Avatar: The Last Airbender marathon with some friends who had never seen it.  It's a wonderful show and if you haven't seen it, you'll love it.  Anyways, as most marathons go, this was a call for major amounts of junk food.  We did not skimp.  Double stuffed Oreos, donuts, two bags of chips, jelly beans, 3 bags of popcorn, and a tube of cookie dough.  Unfortunately, a better part of the food was eaten that night.  Katie and I stayed up even later after this watching a chick flick.  We woke up this morning wondering what to have for breakfast.

After so much junk food, we were so sick to our stomachs and overloaded on sugar that even Pinterest's deliciously sugary recipes had no appeal.  That's when you know it's bad! We have recently acquired a blender and thought it would be a fantastic idea to make a smoothie!  We thought we would throw in all sorts of healthy things such as an apple, strawberries, yogurt, and juice.  Having seen my parents my make an extremely healthy smoothie everyday for years, I thought, "hey! why not throw in some of their ingredients!  You can't even taste the carrots they put in!"  I just received some free carrots from our cooking class so we pulled them out.  I grabbed the biggest one thinking the bigger, the healthier!  Can't go wrong with that right....wrong. very wrong.

We threw the massive carrot in and cranked that puppy up!  Excited to taste our masterpiece, we grabbed a spoon and tried it out.  Note to the audience: carrots have a very dominant flavor.  It tasted heavily of carrots!  This is not how we imagined our delicious fruit smoothie turning out.  What else could we do but add in more ingredients to make up for the taste!  Lots and lots of strawberries were added and a splash of juice. Repeat.  No matter how many more ingredients were added, it still had a slight taste of carrot we could not shake.  We finally cut our losses and gave up at the point when our blender was full.  We could not repeat anymore.  That smoothie was about as smerfed up as it would get.  All in all, it was still pretty decent!  Although we might have just been saying that to make ourselves feel better...please just let us believe the former.

The Story of Why I'm Not Allowed to Go Back to the Library. Like, Ever.

There are two places in the library where I study.

1. The periodicals, my favorite place on campus.  Open, well lit, lots of windows, some trees (real ones, I kid you not), and plenty of space.

Unfortunately, I have a hard time focusing, so if I need to study hardcore, I can't stay in the periodicals.  There are too many people and far too many loud librarians who think loudly refilling the printers with paper is an hourly task.  In such conditions, I peace out and head upstairs to my second study spot.

2. The carrels on the opposite side of the south elevator on the fifth floor.  There are just two, they face a wall, and they are very hard to find.  Seriously, you go around a corner, then around another corner, then around another corner to find this little nook.  There is even a window to gaze out of when I feel stir crazy.  The big problem?  There is no local outlet.

Luckily, I'm a problem solver.  There is an outlet about fifteen feet away, and if one doesn't mind disturbing the tranquility of the fifth floor, you can shove the carrel over to sit by an outlet.

One lovely Tuesday, in an attempt to get into study mode, I went to the fifth floor and started to set up camp.  I started pushing the desk to an outlet when everything went smerfishly awry.

One of the legs of the desk broke.
(In my defense, I'm pretty sure that thing was structurally unsound before I got there!)

So there I was, panickily holding up a desk that was getting heavier by the second, with no idea what to do.  And the longer I stood there, the more hysterically funny the situation got.  Do other people get into these situations?  Seriously.  I was just standing, supporting the desk, trying so hard not to burst into laughter, doing my best to look completely innocent whenever someone came near.

Although the leg was precariously loose and threatening to snap, I managed to wrangle the desk back into a moderately reasonable position against the wall.  As soon as I was convinced it wouldn't fall over, I high tailed it out of there and have since resolved to avoid the fifth floor

I'm still trying to decide if I should a) never speak of this again, b) leave an anonymous note for the library staff about the broken carrel, c) show up in a carpenter's disguise (complete with mustache and toolbelt) and attempt to casually fix the problem on my own, or d) break the other legs (in for a penny, in for a pound).  

S"NERF"ING ADVENTURES

So, today, we went crazy.  But that's normal here.  We went a special kind of crazy today.  Our roommate Jessica came with two nerf guns (one with a laser to help you aim... so cool!) so we've been randomly attacking people throughout the semester.  But today, the flame within us grew to a forest fire.  We began to desire something more.  A full out war, instead of just sporadic battles.  So we all went out and did the practical thing: bought all the nerf guns we could afford!!!  Which, albeit, was not many, but now we all have one.  We defended the decision with the fact that these guns would probably come in handy if ever a zombie apocalypse were to occur.  At least, they couldn't hurt.  I am the proud owner of TWO nerf guns.  Be afraid, cuz I've been practicing my aim.

See?  Aim at Marina:  Check! 

Aim at the camera: Check!

And lastly, aim at the ceiling: Check!  I'm good at this.

We plan on attacking any unsuspecting intruders.  Or non-intruders.  If you walk anywhere near the vicinity of our building, watch your back.  Or don't, and then you can be blissfully unaware of what is sneaking up behind you.  Mwahaha....

Dance shoes off the Black Market

Yes.  So sketch.

So, here are my new character shoes for folk dance:

**Disclaimer: These are not actually my legs.  I found them on the internet.  I love the internet.... I claim no right to these legs.  No copyright infringement was intended.  The right to these legs remains with the owner, whoever she (or I guess it could be a really strange 'he') may be**

I finally got them today after procrastinating and somehow getting away with not having them last year.... but I finally did have to get them.  $56.  Guys, I have a somewhat expensive hobby.  But that's not even the worst part.  The worst part was going to get them.

So, folk dance is pretty political, in that you can't even try out for the higher level teams unless you have the right shoes.  Not just character shoes, the right character shoes.  But no one is allowed to tell you where to get them.  If they were to tell you a certain store that sold the right character shoes, then other places could sue BYU and say that they are favoring that store.  So, legally, they aren't allowed to tell you who sells them.  The politically correct answer when faced with the question is, "oh, you know, you just get them around..."  You have to know who to ask--who is exempt from the law, and can give you this secret information. 

I ended up finding out where they were sold through a friend who had been on one of the top teams.  You'll never guess where you go to get them.  A tuxedo shop.  Of course, right?  It's a small shop--and I mean really small.  The shop is tucked in the corner of a shared business complex with a tiny sign.  It's owned by the head of the folk dance department's husband.  But technically he's not allowed to sell them, so he keeps them in the back room.  And when you buy them, you have to use cash or check--no credit card.  Too many legal issues. 

So here's how it went down.  I kept my ears open for mentions of people who might have access to valuable information.  I would track those people down and hope for a more specific answer than the usual "oh, you just find them around..."  Eventually I was able to get the name "Perfectly Suited by Garth."  Then the trouble was finding it.  I went down University Avenue until I was around the right place, and went into an old salon/tattoo shop.  Some one noticed me and said, "Nice weather we're having, isn't it?"  I answered, "Yes, but I always carry an umbrella."  Apparently those were the secret words, because then they told me to go down the hall to the back of the store and enter the second door on my right after knocking four times in quick succession.  I did so, and an old man let me in.  "I'm assuming you're not here to buy a tux," he said.  I then told him I was there to buy dance shoes, and he took me into the back room of his already "back room" shop.  I tried on the shoes, found some that fit, and then paid for them in cash.  As I left, I had the strange sensation that I had better keep a look out for cops, but without looking too guilty.  I was smuggling drugs guys.  Or something like that.  Dance shoes off of the Black Market.  Sketch.

A Tribute.

During finals week, I almost quite literally lived in the library.  I was at the library by at least 11 every morning and stayed until it closed at 2.  Obviously, I had lunch breaks, DrawSomething breaks, dinner breaks, napping breaks and exam-taking breaks, but I was basically in the library all day, every day.  So when I came home with Jessie on Wednesday night/Thursday morning to find my door locked, I was really mad.  Really mad.  Sara and I taped a magnet over the doorjamb so the door couldn't lock.  With complete trust in the magnet, neither of us carried our keys anywhere.  So here I was, locked out at 2 AM, still needing to be ready for my most important exam in less than six hours.  Jessie, who carries her keys with her, got into her room and found this on her bed:

Although Jessie and I were tempted to keep fifteen mini M&M tubes to ourselves and tell Sara and Marina (who were not present) that there were only four total, we reluctantly divvied them up fairly.

 With the following note from Ashley, addressed "to: The Smerfs"

While she was in her room finding this, I was grumpily making my way down the hall to Ashley's room, where I would have to wake her up and ask her to open my room for me.  Once I found out that it was just a loving joke, I felt so bad about how bitter I was, and immediately decided that Ashley is amazing.  True story.  And this time, when I say true story... I mean it!

Ashley- you rock.  You were a great, very patient RA, we smerf you with ALL of our hearts, and we will miss you muchly next year!

i'm too tired to title this.

if you know us or follow our blog, you might be familiar with the urine bottle debacle. now this is a little outdated, but we all assume someone else will blog about group experiences and then no one actually does it for weeks. so this post is the continuance of our prank war shenanigans.

when i left off, leah had messed around with our room, and it was our turn for revenge.

saturday night following the long weekend incident, we took Jorge to the creamery where i purchased 216 plastic cups. leah likes to stay up late watching animal videos on youtube and italian movies on netflix, so we decided to wait until the following morning to really smerf her.

keep in mind that we have church at 1:30, so we are accustomed to sleeping until noon on sundays. the sacrifices we make... we woke up at nine in the morning to mess with leah. the plan was to stack plastic cups on top of each other in her doorway in such a manner that she would be rendered unable to leave the room.

to make sure she wouldn't just godzilla her way out and rampantly rip the whole thing down, every other layer of cups had water in them. it took us about 40 minutes and like 150 cups to create this masterpiece:

nearly six feet of glorious shenanigans.

and here is her very tired reaction:

texts to a stranger.

every sunday and wednesday nights in our hall, we have visiting hours. for two hours, twice a week, boys are allowed in girl halls and vice versa. i have a guitar class during the wednesday visiting hours, so i come back from class once a week right as the boys are asked to leave. this particular wednesday, we were left with this gem on our hall mirror:

i'm always down for a good thyme. especially when i don't have to worry about the repercussions of making a fool out of myself.

after some brief inquiry, i found out it was a boy's number- he was visiting one of our hallmates and left his number behind as a joke. a few girls in the hall had already called, but he didn't ever answer.

so i texted him. and our conversation went a little something like this:

me: hey. i'm looking for some oregano. can you hook a girl up?

stranger: Oregano huh. Depends who and where this girl is.

me: look i'm just a girl from pocatello, idaho who loves her herbs.* and you come highly recommended.

stranger: I think people misunderstood my message. Thyme was just how we decided to spell time. I don't have special herbs.

me: what?! i was really hoping to impress my fhe group with my famous oregano spaghetti sauce!

stranger: I'm terrible sorry to disappoint you and to have deceived you.

me: no, its cool. i get it, there you were, taking artistic license with the phrase "looking for a good time" and here i am, hoping for some high carb deliciousness. whelp if ever you're in town, you bring the oregano, i'll bring the pasta, and we can party like it's 1994.

me: or if you're more suited to basil or frankincense, i don't actually know what oregano is. just bring party hats and we'll call it good.

we continued to text a bit longer. turns out we both love reading, and share the same favorite books- twinners! the conversation died off a little after that, and i haven't heard from him since, but i'm still waiting for our party. i told him we should meet at chuck-e-cheese, as i'm pretty sure they provide party hats there. but this whole debacle was three weeks ago, and i'm so sure i'll never hear from him again, i'm practically deodorant. in the case of a mad part-ay, everyone is absolutely invited! hope to smerf you there!

*i was hesitant to say herbs- i didn't want to imply that i was looking for pot, and i think that's what he interpreted. although if i'm being real here (which i usually am), he could've maybe actually given me pot, told me it was oregano, and i wouldn't have known. "famous" spaghetti sauce, indeed.

Our Obsession

It started out as my obsession...and then...it spread like wildfire.

I have what some might call an addiction. I love mini m&ms. Really, those little guys are amazing! They taste way better than regular sized m&ms. I was ecstatic when I happened to find a giant bag of them at Wal-Mart a year back. Ever since, I always had at least one in my possession. When I came up to college, I figured I better be prepared lest there was a shortage. Not only did I bring my already open bag and a couple tubes (for on-the-go purposes), but I bought a brand new bag and my best friend sent me with a bag! A little farther in the year, my parents sent me a bag. For my birthday, as part of my present, the 3 gave me a bag as well. Needless to say, I was set for a while!

Now I should mention our little habit. When sitting in these dorms, we tend to get the munchies. Not only do we blow through our whole food stash, we blow through each others too. We all just help ourselves to each others food. With this being said, I had to take care to not leave my m&ms out in the open.

But as I said, I have a slight addiction, so often I would tend to be eating them when someone wandered into our room. Pretty soon, all four of us were hooked on them. I was blowing through my m&ms like never before! We had to find a solution. We already pay an extremely hefty sum for our meal plan- we couldn't afford to buy bags of m&ms, much less from somewhere that doesn't accept dining plus money! What do they think we have, real money? Psh, we're college students!

So we thought long and hard and came up with a solution. The ice cream toppings bar!!

We were in luck. You see, the cannon center has a nifty little ice cream machine and a topping bar. One of the items in said bar were mini m&ms! So every time we left we would begin to take little cups of m&ms. Figuring we would start stocking up for next year. Upon returning to the room, we would proceed to dump them into a bowl.

...sometimes we smuggled out a lot at a time. Katie temporarily gained a lot of weight around the front middle as we stuffed her pockets with the little buggers. I think we'll have to find a new solution for next year because with an unlimited access to so many, the bowl seems to empty rather quickly. But for the time being, we are happy!

As a bonus- besides being delicious, sometimes they even provide entertainment:

we are the BEST home teach-ees.

recently, we were informed that one of our home teachers, tyler, was sick. more specifically, the boys told us "he's really sick. and also, he's dead." so we got to thinking. about once a month, tyler provides us with a great home teaching lesson, followed by like 45 minutes of fantastic guitar playing (sara and i are a little bit creepily obsessed with his mad guitar skills). what if he dies?! scotty, his roommate will have to take over sole home teachingness. which is not entirely a bad thing, because scotty is awesome also. but then we can't creep on his guitar skillz anymore.

and that just won't do.

so sara and i decided that the only way to make him feel better was to assemble a care package. at 11:20, we ran to the creamery and got him some power pills (m&ms, reese's pieces and skittles) and lots of chicken noodle soup.

but obviously no please-stop-dying care kit is complete without a card! we mustered forces with jessie and marina and composed this gem...

a lovely rhyme and heartfelt message on the inside, with pictures of his favorite things on the outside. i guess it worked, because he's still kicking. but for real- are we not the nicest people ever? just click on the picture if you're having a hard time reading our loving note.

are we mother theresa incarnate or what?

if you too want to fall in love with his guitarism, go ahead and smerf on this link:

or this one

Next Olympic Sport

Occasionally, on the very extremely rare chance that we decided to procrastinate our homework, we get creative on ways to entertain ourselves. Seriously, this is good stuff. So good that I believe they should give us our own reality tv show. We'd be international celebrities which would fulfill many other desires of ours...but that is another story. This story tells the tale of how we began mattress rolling.

It all started when Katie drifted into my room. She was tired of doing homework and wanted to be provided with a distraction. She didn't find one as Marina and I were busy working on our own homework. So Katie took to laying on my bed and speaking every off topic thought that came to her head. As Katie likes to live life on the edge, she laid on the very edge of my mattress- her favorite spot. One such thought that came to her mind (and she of course voiced. why deny us the privilege into the extraordinary world of Katie? it's a fascinating place, let me tell you. You wouldn't believe the smerfing that occurs there!) was what would happen if she rolled right off the edge of the bed? I of course responded that she would be injured and probably seriously regret it. She was feeling brave. She began to tip herself off the bed. However, she lost her nerve at the last minute, screaming and righted herself. I felt bad! Katie was not being able to live her dream! Who was I to sit back while her world fell to pieces around her? This injustice could not happen! I had to do something. Call me an angel if you will.

I thought about it for a minute and then asked Marina if she would particularly mind if I borrowed her mattress. Not being one to kill the prospects of a good distraction, she agreed. I maneuvered the mattress until it was right underneath Katie...then I told her to try again. Chaos ensued. See for yourself:

The Rules

Several months ago we decided that, just to simplify things, the four of us would only hate people as a group. And it really did make things easier for a while. Every once in a while, one of us would just announce, oh by the way, we hate _____ now. And so we would. It's almost always a man. Make of that what you will. It never lasted very long though; we just don't have the commitment for long-term hatred.

Yesterday, though, things got complicated. It all started when Katie and Jessie asked Sara and I to save them seats in church. We did, but they were stolen a couple of minutes later. This evidently ended our friendship. And since they hated us, we soon realized that WE were obliged to hate us. We wallowed in self-loathing for a couple of hours before we were forgiven. But it got worse. Evidently, during our brief seperation, Katie and Jessie began planning for the Civil War. They started recruiting boys for their team. When they had recruited Alex, and Michael supported us, we suddenly realized that we all hated both of them. So, naturally, we spent the rest of the afternoon asking people which side they would support. No matter what they said, we responded, "Good. We hate you now." Many people were confused. There was no correct response. Except for what Asa sent, which consisted of just this picture:

There's no way to argue with that.

Scooters, and the Many Uses Thereof.

We got ourselves some brand new wheels, y'all!  

Isn't it hot??  We named him Jorge.  It's a Spanish name, apparently.  Which means it is not pronounced like "George."  Duh.  Who would think that?

In testing out our new wheels, we've taken Jorge all over Helaman Halls.  Outside, inside, even up and down the stairs.  We've discovered that it's so much easier and faster to scooter down the hall rather just walk.  Psh.  We don't walk.  Come on.  That's so mainstream.

Because of Jorge the scooter, we have stumbled upon an important truth- and we even did it using the
scientific method.

Step 1: Ask a question.
Would it be beneficial to you to have a scooter if you were randomly being attacked by a mad man?

Step 2: Do background research.
Surprisingly, there are not many scholarly articles on the most effective use of a scooter if one is being raped or molested.  Too bad.  So we settled with asking a few of our hall mates what they thought.  Mostly, we just got weird looks, so we abandoned our research and moved on to step 3.

Step 3: Construct hypothesis.
Having a scooter like Jorge with you in the event of unsuspected attack would be beneficial because you could scoot speedily away.

Step 4: Test with an experiment.
This was easy enough.  Katie and I took turns playing "Mad Rapist" while the other scootered down the hall at high speed.  Turns out, no matter who was running and who was scooting, the runner could always catch them.  We wanted more evidence, however, so we recruited Leah to help us.  She was very willing to chase us down the hall, and the same thing happened.  It wasn't until she switched roles that we realized there was more to this experiment than met the eye.  Leah, upon being chased, turned around to face her attacker.  She picked up Jorge the scooter and began to beat the "Mad Rapist" until she no longer felt threatened.  Then she calmly set Jorge down and walked back to her room.

Step 5: Analyze results and draw conclusion.
If you are ever scootering through campus, be aware that although it may be faster and less work than walking (especially down hill), nothing is faster than just plain running.  So if your fight or flight instinct tells you to run, ditch Jorge.  He'll live, I promise.  And he might even find it in his heart to forgive you.  Eventually.  But if your fight or flight instinct tells you to beat the living daylights out of the creepy man behind you, smerf off and let Jorge do all the work.

we ♥ summer.

today is a beautiful day. it's snowed probably four or five times in the last week. generally, it's been depressingly cold. so cold in fact, that i actually wore pants under my pants twice last week. but today is different. it's sunny. it's breezy. it's warm. and when it gets warm, great things happen....

...the track kids emerge from hibernation...

because who needs real men when you can take hyper-zoom pictures of shirtless strangers and then use the computer to zoom in further and check out their ab muscles? not us. we don't do that. we just shout things at them. after all, why not abuse the excellent view we have of the track? we're nothing if not opportunists.

it was so nice that even we were outside for a while, studying. and by studying, i mean meditating. and by meditating, i mean napping. and by we, i mean me. jessie and sara might have been legitimately doing things... but i was too busy smerfing the warm sunshine behind closed eyelids. anyway, enjoy this collaborative shot of people enjoying the beautiful warm weather. because here, it never lasts long.

Mercenaries For Hire

Ok well maybe not mercenaries, it just sounded cooler. Actually, Katie and I are now master Private Investigators. But I mean that's basically the same thing right? Who hires a PI unless they plan on killing people. We just multi task. I guess that means we can charge you double! Anyways...

Once upon a time, there was a girl named Marina. Marina was in the process of obtaining housing with her friends. But you see, Marina was running late for class and did not pay attention to the instructions given to her by her friends. Those instructions were to fill out her information on the last sheet of her contract. At least she was kind enough to provide her signature (but only one, don’t get crazy).

[Insert Marina’s friends: Katie and Jessie, here after told from Jessie’s perspective]

So we made our decision on where to live for next year. We read the contracts…well really I read the contract and told them the important stuff. Now all we had to do was sign and turn in our contracts. However, we were having trouble finding a time where we could all trek over to the office. You see, we all have very different schedules and there is never a very good time that all of us are at home. It was then decided that Katie and I would have the honor of representing everyone. As they both had class and would be gone by the time we retrieved the documents, we told Sara and Marina to fill out their contracts and leave a blank, but signed check in the rooms and we would handle the rest.

Apparently Marina felt we should get to know a little bit more about her.

The back of the contract held tons of information such as home address, emergency contact, driver's license number, social security number, birth date, etc. There were also portions that needed to be initialed and a signature at the bottom. Guess which part we needed Marina to fill out? Yes, that's right, all of it! Guess which part Marina filled out?....only the signature. This put us in quite a bind. I had a class that I needed to be back for shortly, the office was closing, and Marina had no service for her phone nor would she had seen it if we texted her. So we did what we do best..creeping :)

That's right. We stalked Marina. We started with what we knew: her name, birthday, phone number, favorite color, age, email, and we hoped for our sake that we assumed correct on her criminal record. Next came the ward directory which had her home city. Then we moved to Yellow Pages where Katie searched her last name in the right city to find her home address. Using Facebook's contribution of her mother's name, we confirmed the address. All that remained was a social security and driver's license number. Being Marina's close and personal bestest friend...or her roommate...I happen to know where she keeps important documents. Luckily this super secret place was unlocked. I rifled through all of it until I held in my hand that golden little card with her SSN on it!

Yes, I know you are thinking how we failed to obtain every aspect of information, but cut us some slack, it was our first job. And if I had my dear friend Matt on call, I'm sure he could have easily walked me through hacking into the DMV to get her DL#. But seen as how I had already reported on my contract that my criminal record was clean [and it was written in pen!!] , there was no risking it. I don't think they would take lightly me smerfing government organizations.

Katie willingly took the identity of Marina long enough to initial all spots. And there you have it folks: a finished contract, completely and totally true. That is the whole and honest story of how Marina got hijacked. So the lesson here is...do what Jessie tells you! Or you run the risk of identity theft.