My Exciting Life #4

I'm getting absolutely nothing done right now, so I guess it's time for the weekly update of my thrilling life.

Earlier last week I pretended to be Polynesian.  I danced in the New Zealand section for BYU's Lu'au. Basically, I was awesome.  That's probably why I was in the back row the entire performance.  I pick up on most things pretty quick, but that was NOT the case for twirling poi balls.

See? Doesn't look so easy huh.  Ok, so our moves weren't nearly that difficult, but you get the idea.  I'll just stick with my nunchucks.

Samoa section.  I would include New Zealand, but I was a little busy at the time...

Thank you Treana for making this picture so much better.

Jenai came!

Then I had class for the rest of the week, blah, blah.

BYU doesn't have a spring break.  Yeah I KNOW.  So I don't get a spring break, but my little sister, Lily, does and she came on Saturday to spend the week with me and Jenai!

Tiffany and I picked up Lily at the Salt Lake Airport and somehow we managed to get off on two wrong exits before we got to there.  Mind you, it's a straight shot to the airport on I-15.  We're both half asian, so together we make one full asian, and you know what they say about asian drivers...So we finally picked up Lily and then Tiffany failed to get on to the freeway and we wandered around for 20 so minutes.  Then we finally got back on track and we missed the exit by UVU.  Hey, maybe we WANTED to take the scenic route home.

I am happy to announce that we did indeed make it back to the dorms, and because of the delay, we had to leave for the Holi Festival of Colors right after.  Let me tell you, that was an experience; a highly overrated experience.  Of course I had fun, but based off of all the pictures on facebook, I feel like people go mainly to get a new profile picture.  That, or they enjoy enhaling colored powder. 

Considering the majority of us were mormons, I'm pretty sure they weren't there to actually worship Hare Krishna.

 my poor left eye.  the contact was died purple.

facebook

This is Mark Zuckerberg:

He created this:

He also spoke at BYU today.  Too bad I forgot my camera, I could've added the pictures on my facebook page to make all my friends jealous.

I will now commence to discuss facebook.  First of all it's genius.  Second of all it's genius.  I don't even want to know how much time I waste on facebook each day.  And I don't mean spend time on fb, I mean WASTE.  Mark Zuckerberg created a social network, but you can only spend so much time being social on facebook.  The rest of the time is spent creeping on others' pictures and lives in general.

I will now narrate my life in context of facebook. 

First, I wake up, get out of bed, open laptop, check facebook.  Get to class, pull out my laptop, check facebook.  Get on laptop to check weather, automatically go on facebook, then remember why I initially got online.  Get home, get on facebook.  Start homework, open facebook, do some homework, check facebook, write a couple sentences of my essay, check facebook.  Get ready for bed, check facebook.  Go to bed.  Repeat daily.

 Note: My life consists of more than just going to class and homework, but the facebook part is true.

I was a freshman in high school wen I joined the dark side.  I had a Myspace, but my older sister was in college and used facebook.  That was the new cool thing, so I got one too to keep in touch with her.  Basically no other freshman used facebook yet, so it was kind of worthless.  Then people caught on and the rest is history.  Now little fourth graders friend me on facebook.  That may be a bit ridiculous.

A lot of things have changed on facebook since then.  And every time we all freaked out.  Then we got used to the changes.  Then they'd change something else, and we'd freak out again.  It's an endless cycle, but in the end they were improvements.  Except for that weird black thing that pops up when you view pictures.  That's just plain annoying.

Facebook has been great to connect with old friends.  You kind of say "hi remember me?"  have a little conversation, and then commence creeping on their wall.  Nothing is more interesting than seeing how different your friends look 5-10 years from when you knew them.  The difference is even better for the older generation of reconnecting facebook users.

You can tell a lot about a person by their facebook.  Of course you have to do some snooping to do this, but we're all natural born creepers; that's why facebook is such a success.  You can see if you have mutual friends, where they live, where they got their education and when, where they work, what languages they speak, and their relationship status.  This is just the basic stuff that is listed at the top of your profile.  The rest of the information comes from actual creeping.  And for the record, no relationship is official until it's FACEBOOK OFFICIAL.

Even though I love facebook, there are some things that really bug me about it.  Actually, facebook doesn't annoy me, it's the people on it.

 So here's a list of all the things that make me cringe:
1) People who post lyrics as their status.  I never catch on and automatically assume they're depressed.
2) Photo albums that are of the same three girls posing in 40 different positions/faces in front of their mac.  We got the idea by the second picture, the 38 additional photos aren't necessary.
3) Statuses that tell where you are and what you're doing.  I really don't care if you're going tanning and then hanging with your bffs for the night.
4) People that play lots of facebook games and then never clear their cluttered fb wall.  This makes creeping hard.
5) People who still invite me to play farmville.  My name is Kristen Oda and I've been sober from farmville for over a year.
6) That 30-Day Challenge thing.  I don't know if I'm the only one, but I'm not interested in your biggest fear or favorite childhood memory.
7) People who end their status with "text me :)"

Believe me, I have more, but I don't want to make this blog totally negative.  Plus, I don't want to offend more people.  I'm sorry if you are guilty of some of the things mentioned above.  It's just my personal opinion...which I value highly.

My roommate recently deleted her facebook for the second time.  I have a lot of respect for her.  Why?

Because I'm addicted to facebook and I'm not planning on going to rehab anytime soon.

My Exciting Life #3

I've been done with class for about two hours now and I've already worked out, showered, and started my laundry.  I'm kind of proud of myself.

Speaking of laundry.  I HATE IT.  I like clean laundry, but the process of getting clean clothes is such a pain in the butt.  Usually I do my laundry about every two weeks or more; basically whenever I run out of underwear.  It's a good thing I don't have tons of underwear, or I'd never do my laundry.  So when I finally force myself in the basement with my overflowing laundry basket, the other washers are usually all full.  They're not actually washing though, the clothes are just sitting inside the machine because the other girls are too lazy to keep track of when their load is finished.  That's when you have two choices:

Choice #1: Wait around for the girl to finally come and get her laundry.

Choice #2: Grab the clothes of the anonymous girl and stack them on top of the washing machine and fill it with your own laundry.

Both of these choices stink.  Either you can wait around for who knows how long, or you can grab the clothes/underwear of a stranger and take the chance of the girl walking in on you in the middle of the act. Awkward.  I decided to the second choice.  Luckily no one saw. 


Today I also decided to straighten my hair for the first time in about a month, and then realized after 10 minutes of blow drying that I didn't want my hair straight for Luau tomorrow.  That made me mad.

So that's what's going on in my exciting life at the moment. (Actually I wrote this on Monday, but I'm posting this Tuesday).

Last week was different from the average week.  My friend Oscar came up to visit for a few days during his spring break.  It's hard for me to make these blogs about my life interesting, but I learned it's even harder to make your life seem exciting when you're trying to entertain a guest.  My life isn't that thrilling on the weekdays.

So the rest of the week was pretty uneventful, but then came Thursday, and then FRIDAY!  If I could sum up Friday's in one word it would be FUN FUN FUN FUN.  If you don't understand my enthusiasm, it's because you live under a rock and haven't seen the Rebecca Black music video for Friday.

I hope you enjoyed it.  I certainly have.  I've probably contributed about 30 views to the 30 MILLION views on youtube.  This time last week there were less than 3 million views and it skyrocketed.  I guess the term is viral.  It's like this sickness that she spread to the whole world through youtube.

So Saturday night we were just sittin around and decided to make a music video in honor of Rebecca Black.  I now have all the words memorized.  I was gonna post the video, but I don't know if it's on youtube.  If you want to make the effort, I'm tagged in it on facebook...

This has been another edition of My Exciting Life.

St. Patricks Day at BYU

It's St. Patrick's Day.  How do I know this?  Because my non-mormon friends have been talking about it on facebook for the past week.

This Irish "holiday" is a big deal to a lot of my college friends, but not at BYU.  I'm not going to rant about how people in Ireland don't really celebrate St. Patrick's Day, or that it's just an excuse for Americans to get drunk.  No, I'm not going to do this because that would be stating the obvious.  Instead, I'm going to compare the atmosphere of BYU on this holiday to the outside world.

This morning at breakfast I heard a girl at a nearby table say, "Wait, why is everyone wearing green?" She was totally clueless of the fact that it was St. Patty's Day, even though people were decked out in green attire, the food was died green, and it was March.  For the record, green omelets and pancakes are not appetizing.

Saint Patrick's Day just isn't a big deal at BYU because we don't drink.  I'm wearing a green shirt to avoid getting pinched; my religion professor even wore a tie with leprechauns and rainbows, but that's basically the extent of our festivities.   I might eat some lucky charms later, but I won't be doing any drinking unless it includes water and chocolate milk. 

I love BYU.    (no sarcasm intended)

So if you're gonna celebrate St. Patrick's Day a little more diligently than me, have fun and be safe.  I truly hope tomorrow morning doesn't suck for you.

Happy St. Patrick's Day,  and watch out for those leprechauns.

My Exciting Life #2

Last week actually was pretty exciting.

It was my birthday on Friday, but I had a surprise birthday party on Wednesday.  Meghan, one of my roommates, was leaving on Thursday, so they wanted to celebrate my birthday before she left.  Amazingly, I was still surprised even though there were plenty of reasons why I shouldn't have been.

Reason #1: Meghan basically told me they were going to do stuff for my birthday before she left.

Reason #2: A few days before, my roommates stopped talking about my birthday altogether.

Reason #3: Meghan opened the Facebook surprise birthday invitation right in front of me.  I pretended not to see, but I definitely did.

Reason #4: Alyssa wished me happy birthday on Wednesday, when it wasn't till Friday.

So all those things combined made me pretty sure they were gonna do something for my birthday on Wednesday.  It doesn't take a genius to figure that out.  Nevertheless, by 8pm I was pretty sure nothing was going to happen.  Tree and Meghan had gone on one of their late-night walks and Tiffany was just lounging on her bed.

Or so I thought.

Emily sent me a text at 9 to come over.  So I did.  Then she told me to go to the vending machines with her.  So I did.  It didn't even cross my mind that this may be an excuse to get me into the Taylor Hall Lobby.  Then I walked in and there was the party.  So after all that, I actually was surprised.

My loves.  For some reason we look really top heavy.  Especially Tiffany...

It took me about 4 times to blow out the candles.  

Just some lovely girls.  They wore orange b/c it's my favorite.

This isn't a very flattering picture. Our heads look huge, but I needed to include my roommie!

Later that night I opened my presents that came in the mail earlier that day.  I told my mom I would wait till my birthday to open them, but obviously that didn't happen. 

Tiffany was just as excited as me.

Thanks Mom, she really loved the bubble wrap.

Yay purple case for my laptop.

Then on Friday, my REAL birthday, I went skiing Jacob and Sheldon and then hung out with my girlfriends.  Can you believe it? I actually have friends, THAT ARE GIRLS!!!

On Saturday I basically went to Luau practice all day.  It was ok, except for it was dress rehearsal and I was the ONLY person without a costume on.  Want to know why?  Because my butt was too big. Really, it was so tight, it pulled my underwear down when I tried it on.  I skipped last week's rehearsal for the Wyoming game, so I didn't get fitted in my costume.  That was part of the problem, but Tree didn't either, and her costume fit perfectly.  Gahhh that sucked.

Our ward rented out the Varsity theater and watched Tangled. But the best part was when we premiered our music video.  Pure gold right thar.

Impressed? You should be.  I always knew I was meant for the spotlight.

Sunday I got to celebrate my birthday for a third time at Jenai's place.  She made me delicious pierogies.  I ate a lot.  I really love pierogies, which is why my first email address and most of my usernames are iloveperogies92.  Yes, I spelled pierogies wrong in my email...I don't want to talk about it.  I also had my mom's awesome cheesecake which Jenai also made.  It was delicious.

So that's my exciting life at the moment.  Sorry if you were bored.  But you know what they say...only boring people get bored.

Freshman Fifteen

Ahh the Freshman Fifteen.  I thought it was a joke until I actually got to college.  I'm pretty sure I haven't gained 15 pounds, but I've definitely gained a bigger butt.  It's just something that all freshman have to deal with, so we don't exactly judge each other because we're all gaining weight together.

The scary part is going home.  The first thing the people notice is if you've gained weight, and even if no one mentions it, you're all thinking it.  Great.  That leaves me a little over a month to lose this extra cushion.

If you knew me before I went to college, you'd be surprised that this would even be a problem.  I was basically a health freak and obsessed with working out.  I still work out a lot, but the whole food part has gone down hill.  It's not hard to eat healthy at home.  It's hard in college.  There are vending machines everywhere filled with mostly junk food.  Sometimes they have apples and string cheese, but those are gone in a matter of hours.  I think we're part of the problem.  We always stalk up on apples when they're available.  For example, my roommate bought three apples yesterday, and I bought two today.

Not only do the vending machines provide lots of temptation, the Cannon Center (where we eat most of our meals) has basically 20 different dessert options at every meal.  It was never really hard for me to pass up desserts before, but I'm not so strong anymore.

At BYU we don't get beer bellies, we get chocolate milk and ice cream bellies.  BYU wins the stone cold sober award almost every year, and we consume the most milk out of any university.  BYU has the best chocolate milk.  SO GOOD. We take pride in our  Creameries where they sell lots of quality ice cream, and I have a meal plan that pays for all the ice cream I want.  Like I said, I'm weak.

I may or may not have gone to the vending machines 

to buy milk solely for the purpose of this picture...

I have also found a love for nutella here.  Especially nutella and peanut butter sandwiches.  I got a craving for one yesterday, so I made one.  I had the bread, the peanut butter, and the nutella, but no knife.  Usually that's not a problem because I'll use a spoon or fork instead, but we didn't have those either.  I had to settle with a straw.  This was the result:

Turns out straws are only good for one thing, and it doesn't include spreading peanut butter.

I eat lots of bagels here too.  Today I ate breakfast at the Cannon Center and toasted a whole wheat bagel.  (At least I'm eating whole grains).  After it was all nice and golden brown I put cream cheese on it.  Or so I thought.  Then the cream cheese started to to melt, and I realized I had spread butter on my bagel.  Lots of butter.  I like butter, but I use it sparingly, and this was far from sparingly.  Since I've been programmed as a child to never waste food, I had to eat it.  I ended up scraping off the top half of my bagel to avoid all the butter.  It was kind of gross.

So when the semester's over and you see slightly chunkier freshman, try not to judge, because it's just reality.  It happens to the best of us, and when I say us, I mean ME.  Don't worry too much for our health; freshman year only happens once, and we'll eventually lose the weight over summer break.  At least that's what I tell myself...

My Exciting Life #1

So my mom mentioned that I might want to talk about my college life and the experiences I'm having here at BYU.  I tried to avoid journal-type entries because they aren't very fun for the public, but she had a point.  I basically stopped writing in my journal, so I'll write one entry every week about the things I'm doing.  Sorry.

I looked up "exciting" in the thesaurus to come up with a more interesting title for these journal entries.  The other options were: astonishing, breathtaking, impressive, mind-blowing, and so on.

I decided to stick with exciting.

Last week was killer.  I don't really want to complain, because I wasn't the only one with midterms and papers.  But it still wasn't fun.  Luckily I made it through the week alive, and then had and awesome weekend to make up for it.

I camped out on Friday with some awesome girls for the basketball game.

The tents were pretty small.

Then we won.  MWC champs!!

On Sunday I got to see my Steven Lew again!  He's on spring break right now because unlike BYU, Utah State actually has a spring break.  We went to the CES Fireside where L. Tom Perry spoke.  Elder Perry and I are basically best friends. I met him earlier this year and he gave me a water bottle.  Yeah. Be jealous.

Gahhh I have photos to prove it, but they won't load or something.  Sometimes technology is really annoying.

So that's some of the things I did this weekend.  For a status update, I am sitting in the basement of the JFSB watching devotional on the projector because I'm too lazy to walk to the Marriot to watch it in person.  Also, my sociology class is in this same auditorium right after devotional, so it's too convenient to pass up. 

P.S.  My fingers are swollen.

Basketball Fanatics

The main topic at BYU would most likely be basketball, Jimmer, and recently Davies.  I don't like to dwell on the negative, so I'm going to ignore the Davies discussion and try avoid talking about the details of last night's loss.

Proof that I went to the game.

So I don't really want to talk about last night's depressing game, but rather the type of fans I was surrounded by. 

Sporting events are interesting.  People's personality traits can easily augmented, and fans automatically turn somewhat crazy and ridiculous.  I'm not saying this is bad, it's just weird when your watching from an outside view. 

Last night everyone started off pretty excited and pumped including me.  We were ranked #3, and feelin pretty good.  Besides the fact that we lost Davies...but I'm getting off topic.  So in the beginning everyone was basically equal in loudness and obnoxiousness (is that a word?) but it didn't take long for the different fan personalities to show up.

I will list the types of fans in order of least annoying to most annoying.  Of course, these are my opinions, so if you disagree with me, you're wrong.

The Average Fan:  This would include the majority of fans such as myself.  We care about our team and hope for the best.  We cheer a lot when our team does well, get mad at bad calls, but nothing crazy.

The Die Hard Fan: Typically male. Camp out days before the games to get front row seats. Jump and yell a lot.  Lead cheers.  Obnoxious, but not annoying.

The Kind of Die Hard Fan That's Mostly a Follower:  Yells really loud insults to the refs.  Sometimes funny, but mostly weird/annoying.  Won't start cheers, but will be the first to follow.  Looks to the leaders for acknowledgment.  Most likely nonathletic.


The Freaking Annoying Girl Who Pretends to Care About Sports and Yells  a lot:  The title says it all.  Yells insults to the refs that don't make sense.  Complains in yelling form.  Yells profanity (very uncomfortable in BYU student section).  Has high pitched voice that pierces ears.  ANNOYING.

So if you were wondering, yes, I sat near all these people.  It was an interesting game.