bribery. done right.

as mentioned previously, Jessie and I were enrolled in a physical science course this semester.  as you may have gathered, I'm not particularly fond of physical science- in fact, I equate physical science with grapes and crocs on a scale of things that disgust me.  correspondingly, my grade was a little low.  so when our TA offered extra points if we would bring treats to the last lab session of the semester, I jumped at the opportunity.

unfortunately, I got the dates mixed up and forgot. undaunted, I decided to follow through on my quest. I promised delicious treats, and I was determined to deliver. after I finished my accounting exam, I went back to the creamery to get the necessary supplies for brownies. they had plenty of mix... but no eggs.  luckily, I remembered the plates of brownies for sale at the Cougar Eat that I had seen just the day before.  I met Jessie and Sara at the Cougar Eat and continued my search.  turns out the brownie plates were a one time thing.  feeling a little panicky at this point, I went to the Sweet Shoppe, where there are always brownies... except for today.  when Sara mentioned that the Cannon Center might have brownies, I made some frantic calls ro Marina, begging her to steal me some.  reluctantly, she acquiesced.  fifteen minutes later, she delivered this:

brilliant, right?  i really love marina. she walked into the Cannon Center, stole as many brownies as she dared, then made Dallin steal some more brownies for her, then wrapped them up in a napkin and stuffed them all in her pocket.

Rachael, the TA, told me she was in the Benson building, and I could leave the brownies for her by either of the classrooms next to the elevator.  I went to the science building, where I did not see any classrooms by either of the elevators.  confused, I left the brownies in a mushy, napkin-y heap on the ground by the elevator with a brief note.  feeling significantly shady, Jessie and I informed Rachael of the successful drop off and called it a job well done.

turns out I went to the wrong building.  hence the lack of classrooms.  I mindlessly smerfed my way to the science building in which we had our weekly lab sessions, not the building she directed me to.  she found the brownies, but the whole thing made me feel like an idiot.

in sum, I was unable to bake the brownies.  I was unable to buy the brownies.  I was unable to even personally acquire any brownies.  then, when I finally got ahold of brownies, I delivered them to the wrong place.  as Rachael rightly pointed out, the whole thing was eerily similar to a sketchy drug deal.  a Mormon version of a drug deal, if you will, in which I bribed my TA with stolen goods for a few extra points that ultimately didn't even change my grade.

best attempted bribery. ever.

update on lyfe

well, winter semester is over, so i decided to stay for spring term since it's only 7 weeks long. i'm in a new apartment with two of my best friends. we're supposed to have 3 other roommates come sometime soon, but since school started 4 days ago and it's suicidal to miss 4 days of school during a term, we have come to the conclusion that they must not be BYU students and are probably strippers who work late nights and haven't come to check-in just yet because they're staying over at their friend's houses and are covering day shifts to pay for their extensive parking tickets. it's bittersweet if/when they come. we'll meet new friends, but right now each of us has our own room and it's heavenly, so needless to say we'll be a bit bummed to lose that, but mainly to have to sleep with pants again. anyways, now that i got off on a tangent, what i really wanted to say was...
there i was in a deep sleep, dreaming that a huge ball of red velvet cake was rolling down my home street, crushing houses and cars (i don't like red velvet cake, so the dream was not completely out of place), when my alarm woke me up. i looked at the time and see that it's 10:50 in the morning. i don't have class till 12, so i was like "oh my gosh i feel so good. i just need to stretch and lay here and enjoy..." suddenly, i heard a door bell. (i wasn't aware that we had one, so that freaked me out). i immediately thought, "oh no the roommates are going to see me like this. great first impression." so i began to get up expecting them to wait a minute at least, but then literally 2 seconds later there was a huge banging on our front door. whiskey tango foxtrot , right? i got scared and threw my hair up, threw on some shorts and my glasses and ran to the door still half asleep. i find my roommate, rachel, letting two men into the apartment and they wasted no time, because they immediately started washing our carpet. you can bet that we were both quite confused with us being half asleep. okay, so they're washing our carpet. thank heavens because the people before us were messy. i mean really. it looks like a ja-poo-zzi overflowed in here. anyways, rachel and i decide to eat breakfast. i make myself oatmeal. i prefer eating my oatmeal with cinnamon. i remembered that i had some on my spice rack. but wait! the spice rack is on the carpet. oh well. so i walk over and get it. i notice that they have already washed where i was walking so it was pretty wet. the first thing i think is "oh smerf, it's wet. i'm going to slip on the tile. nahhhhh". what do i do when i come back to the tile? first step i take, i slip, bang my head on the wall behind me, and throw the spice rack at the opposite wall. mind you, where i slipped was about 4 feet wide, so the spice rack i threw at the wall landed on me after i was already unconscious and  crippled on the floor. needless to say, it was a great start to the day. now off to conquer the world. huzzah!

The Day I Almost Accomplished Something

Yep, that pretty much sums it up.

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:

Disregard this post.

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:

Festival of Colors: Not a Myth (Probably)

This weekend, Katie, Jessie, and I decided to attend the Festival of Colors, or Holi. For those of you not aware, this is a Hindu festival celebrating the beginning of spring (by throwing colorful chalk everywhere)...filled mostly with Mormons. Because everyone likes a good festival. Our adventure began right away, as getting to Spanish Fork, Utah turned out to be a lot harder than you'd think. (Incidentally, what makes the fork Spanish?) Our first thought was to take the bus. We duly trotted out to the front of the Wilkinson center, where the bus was due to arrive every hour. However, at about 4:02, we began to get nervous. Were we in the right place? Suddenly spotting a bus on the other side of the building, we sprinted over, leaping flowers and small children alike, only to discover that the bus was not free, and it was cheaper to drive after all.

When we finally arrived in the generally right area, we discovered that the event itself was difficult to find. We quickly resorted to following cars in which the passengers appeared to be wearing white (most attendees of the festival wore white). This went about as well as you'd expect it to. When we had just about given hope, we discovered a steady stream of people in white shirts heading in one direction, and people covered in chalk heading in the other. Excitedly, we parked the car and began to follow the masses of people.

Our enthusiasm could not be dampened by the many people who chose to throw chalk at us before we had reached the festival. In fact, we kind of enjoyed it. However, after we had been walking for quite a while, we began to doubt ourselves. Blisters started to form, time continued to pass, and there was still no festival in sight. When we asked a passing stranger how much farther we had to walk, he merely responded, "far as flip" (edited). Sounds scientific. We soon formed a theory. There was no Festival of Colors. The entire event consisted of people pelting us with chalk as we passed on the sidewalk. Just as we reached the approximately two mile mark, and began to seriously consider demanding that someone come and pick us up, the festival came into sight.
And that's why you should always wear comfortable shoes.

Before

Upon Arrival

After

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

Katie's Love Will Never Die

I have this friend...we have come to call it the Magic Balloon of Love.

Let me take you back to Valentine's Day.

The cannon center was selling delicious cookies and balloons that you could get for your lover or friends. The cookies came complete with hearts drawn in and your name scripted on it. Katie, being the lovely person she is, decided to buy a cookie and balloon for all three of us. Treasuring my balloon, I lovingly tied it to my nightstand so that I could gaze at it while I laid in bed at night. Marina and Sara decided to turn their balloons into toys, proceeding to punch it, hit it, bat it, draw on it, smerf it, hug it, tell it they love it, and ...even blow it back and forth between each other. Needless to say, their balloons were dead in about three days.

Panicking at the life span of Sara and Marina's balloon, I laid down the rules! My balloon was not to be touched or messed with in any way!! One could simply admire from afar. If they broke these rules, they would face my wrath. The fact that I like to stab things with knives may have been enough of a threat because they stayed away.

My balloon continued to be a beacon in my life. It floated, never faltering for at least THREE weeks. We were amazed by its super powers. Even after it began to lose its hold on life, it still did not touch the floor for almost another week. In case you struggle in math, that's about four weeks folks! Who has heard of a cheap helium balloon lasting that long? The only explanation was this: the balloon took on the tremendous task of representing Katie's love for me. Obviously it knew our love is undying!