Today I got my old journal out and flipped through the pages. You know, those navy blue books, that say JOURNAL across the front? (Well, if you're mormon you know what I'm talking about). I got this journal on Christmas when I was five years old. I finally filled the 200 pages last year, so basically in a matter of seconds you can see me transform from a little girl, to an annoying preteen, to an obnoxious teen, to a beautiful and virtuous woman. Not really, my journal entries weren't that deep or meaningful.
The first couple of years, I was still too young to write anything comprehensible, so I'd tell my mom what to write, and then I might draw a picture to make it pretty.
That was my first journal entry. If you look closely, you will notice that it is a free verse poem that is slightly emo. I don't know where all that talent went.
Then I started to write my own entries, and my spelling and handwriting was horrible. Here is an example of just one said entry:
"on the fourth of July I bot my bike. I wanted a bike so much that wenever mom or dad wood by sumthing that kost as much as a bike I olways say I cude hade goten a bike for that much money. it is my favorit bike that Iv had. it is a boys bike that is red. I got a boys bike be cus all the Girl biks were pink or purple yuk!"
This example also perfectly exemplifies my tomboy stage that dominated a good three or four years of my life. But I was right, those pink and purple bikes were ugly.
Not only did my handwriting, spelling, and writing abilities improve over the years, my artwork did too.
Hey, that's pretty good for a six-year-old.
Then in 5th grade I found a new form of art. Basically I added eyes, hands, and legs to any fruit, vegetable, or inanimate object I could find.
Everything's cuter with eyes right?
Sadly, the pictures stopped after a few years, and Stitch was my last picture I drew in my journal. I was almost 11, it was time to move on.
I really hate writing in my journal, but it is so extremely entertaining to read what you wrote from previous years. It's even better because you can laugh at how stupid you were, but you're the only one reading it. It's not as juicy as some girls' diaries are, I tried to keep them more sane, but I did have a few entries about a friend I was mad at, or some boy I liked. I even wrote about my first kiss. That entry was hilarious.
Switching subjects again. This week I filled up my 30G iPod. Yeah, I'm cool and musical like that. In other words my iPod had around four thousand songs on it, but I only know about 25% of them. Probably less. I don't download my music illegally, but I don't exactly pay for it either. I get all my albums from the library and rip them on my itunes. That means I only know about three of the 10 songs on an album. But I still think I'm cool.
I have lived in Ohio my whole life. I have never really dealt with much diversity. I'm not talking about racial diversity -- which btw we have none -- differences in speach.
Then I went to college.
BYU is different than most universities. It is an LDS school, so most of the students are Mormon. That also means we're not just from Utah, we come from all over the country. It didn't take long to notice some differences in things we say.
1) Skipping school / Ditching school / Playing hookey / Sluffing school
I'm pretty sure normal people say the first three. Utahns say the last.
2) Ramen vs. Saimin
My favorite brand.
I should explain from the start that two of my roommates are from Hawaii, so most of our arguments revolved around what we called things. This was one of them. I had no idea what they were talking about when they called Ramen Saimin. It doesn't say it anywhere on the package, so don't freak out when I call it by it's REAL name. Well, I just googled it, and apparently Saimin is the chinese term used for the noodles, and Hawaii has lots of Asians. Problem solved.
3) Flip flops vs. Slippers
This is another Hawaii against the rest of the United States argument. They call their flip flops, slippers. I tried to explain that you're supposed to wear slippers inside your house to keep your feet warm, not the beach. Well, that didn't make much sense to them. The usual response was, "Why would I wear shoes inside? It's already warm." Honestly, I prefer the term "slippers" because it doesn't take as long to say, but I feel like a freakin poser trying to use their slang.
I'm just glad people hardly call them thongs anymore. I don't think of shoes when I hear the word "thong". Once one of my church leaders told us to bring thongs for Girls Camp. I nearly fell out of my chair when she said that.
4) Backpack vs. Bookbag
I didn't really notice this one until someone pointed it out. I knew a couple people in Ohio that called it bookbag, but we just made fun of them because it sounded so nerdy. I'm not sure where they say bookbag more often, but plenty of people at BYU called it that.
5) Pop vs. Soda
The ultimate argument. I still can't believe how mad people would get when I called a carbonated drink, pop. Awesome, you call it soda. I don't care. I call it pop. Basically I had to start calling it soda at BYU, or people would suddenly hate me. Then a friend of mine posted this picture on facebook.
This made me SO happy. Oh well look at that. Most of the country calls it pop. There are a lot of students from California and Arizona at BYU, so they call it soda. If you look very closely at Utah, you can see only two little sections that are yellow. The northern area is Provo. That's where BYU is.
I guess I should include those who call it Coke. That just doesn't make any sense. Coke is a type of pop. If you ask for a coke, I'm going to give you a coke, not a Mountain Dew. Freakin hillbillies.
I can't think of any other examples right now, but I'm sure there are tons more. This is just my opinion on the whole subject. We all say stuff differently, but don't get mad when I call it something else. In my eyes, you're wrong too.
I thought it was pretty cool that I cut through the nail. I guess it would've been more impressive if I took a picture while it was all bloody.
So as the title says, I drove to Washington D.C. to visit my BYU friend, Emilee Crowder. I bet you're thinking that I was willing to drive five and a half hours to Maryland, because I don't have friends in Ohio. Well you're only halfway right. I also was willing to drive that far because I love her lots and she's totally worth it.
I've never driven that far on my own, and I was only a little nervous. I had our trusty GPS and was driving in our family minivan. I left Ohio with a full tank of gas, an empty bladder, and the fourth Harry Potter audiobook. Most of the drive was really pretty. I miss the mountains in Utah, but that's about it. Everything was so green the whole way. At one point on I-70 it looked like Ireland.
OK I'll stop. I sound like my mom.
Then I approached these tunnels.
Don't worry, I didn't take this picture.
When I was younger I used to hold my breath when I went through tunnels, so I decided to give it a try. After about 30 seconds, I decided to start breathing again since this time I was driving, and I really could kill someone. It's a good thing I gave up because it took 1:40 to drive all the way through. I timed it on the drive home.
Everything was going well, and then it started to rain. It was pouring and it was dark by then, so it was really hard to see. I even had to do the unthinkable, and turned off Harry Potter because I couldn't hear over the drumming of the rain. Then all of the sudden the car in front of my swerved over into the left lane. I did too for precaution, and watched a torn tire fly by. Then I had to swerve back into the right lane because the car had lost its tire and basically stopped in the middle of the highway. Did I mention I nearly died?
Well, I didn't die, and I made it to Emilee's home safe and sound. Without stopping for anything. Both ways. I'm very proud of my little bladder.
Emilee lives in a cute house with a cute family. But really, I love her family. I felt comfortable with them right away, and they were lots of fun.
On Saturday we took the Metro to get to Washington D.C. We also took our bikes with us. That was an adventure. Just combine an overcrowded train, three bikes, and automatic doors and that describes our situation. We missed our original stop because we couldn't get off before the doors shut, so we had to get off the next one. The same thing happened heading back.
We also had multiple problems with our tickets.
Yes, it's upside down, and yes, I know how to rotate pictures. But it won't work.
This is the only picture we got on the metro. We were whipped.
But don't get me wrong, bringing bikes was the best. I'm the kind of person that doesn't mind museums if I can look really quick and move on. The same goes for monuments, and with bikes that was exactly what we did. We saw lots of the monuments while riding bikes and didn't have to kill ourselves walking everywhere.
It was a beautiful and fun day. Then we took it easy that night. Emilee kept on apologizing for not doing much, but believe me, some of my favorite times were just chillin at her place on her couches. That means I'm either very laid back, or really lazy.
On Sunday we watched Stake Conference in the visitors center, so I got to go on temple grounds.
We love each other.
I'm kind of jealous that their temple is the D.C. temple. It's awesome.
So I'd say it was a good weekend. Emilee, now it's your turn :)
Our bodies are amazing. They really are. Every time I get sore from exercising I discover new muscles that I never knew existed. Simple tasks are suddenly painful. Today I can't really move anything without moaning, but it especially hurts when I try to get off the couch, wash my hands, bend down, and brush my hair. (That last one was a joke; I never comb my hair). Those are all killer, but the absolute worst everyday task is climbing the stairs. I literally have to climb the stairs. Of course I can walk up them too. I just have to waddle up them like a duck. It's really a lose-lose situation.
By now you're probably dying to know why I'm so incredibly sore. It's all because of Cross Fit, and nothing to do with the fact that I'm a wimp and out of shape. OK, so I don't really think I'm wimpy, I actually think I'm quite strong.
Just get used to the fact that I'm not normal.
I'm not normal, because crazy things like Cross Fit make me totally excited.
I always liked to be strong. My family LOVES to tell people about how I used to show everyone what I thought were impressive biceps. I can remember telling an old man in the supermarket, "Want to see my muscle?" I had no shame. I remember doing pushups and situps every night before I went to bed in elementary school. By middle school I had dumbbells in my room. By high school I was obsessed.
The obsession all started with P90X. I saw a infomercial a few years ago, and I HAD to have it. I got the DVD's for Christmas.
That's my excited face.
Those first couple of weeks were painful. No one knew what P90X was yet, so they didn't understand what I was complaining about. Yeah, I was way ahead of the game. A year later P90X became really popular and I bragged that I had already finished it.
The truth is, I didn't do the full 90 days. I did 60. Then I started to get too muscular. I think I gain muscle easier than other girls. Plus, I needed more cardio.
BEFORE
AFTER
Ignore my face.
See why I stopped at 60 days? I like to be muscular, not manly.
After P90X, I started to train for a triathlon. I got way in shape and was one week away from the race, but then I hurt my knee. No triathlon. I didn't do one last year either. But I WILL do one this year, August 6th. I'm telling you this so that it actually happens.
Last year I was watching P90X before and after transformations on youtube to get me excited about it again. Hey, it works. That's when I started to see some testimonials about Insanity.
I had to have it. Guess what I got for my birthday?
Insanity was...insane. I did it the full 60 days and I saw awesome results. I don't do Insanity everyday anymore, but I still do it once or twice a week because it's one of the best cardio/strength workouts I can do on my own.
Most girls want to be thin. I want to be strong. Well, strong and thin. I like having muscles. I already told you, I'm weird.
Oh, and I don't show strangers my muscles anymore. Just my friends and family. Wait...
Last week I got to hang out with my favorite friend, Teresa. It was a b-e-a-u-t-i-f-u-l day, so we went biking on the towpath.
Teresa took this picture last summer.
Also from last year. Like my pretty bike?
We had to take at least five pictures to get this.
I love the towpath because there aren't hills. I love biking because it's not running. Last year Teresa and I would bike 20 miles easy. The problem was I hadn't sat on a bike seat since last August. About three minutes into the ride my butt started to hurt.
A LOT.
By the end of the ride I felt like my butt was going to die. Afterwords I couldn't sit normally on any chair and it even hurt to walk. I don't understand saddle sore. It feels like your butt muscles are bruised all the way to the bone. Like a nerd, I looked up saddle sore on wikipedia, but it explained it as a skin ailment, which was definitely not my problem.
Enough about my rear end.
I've been making some AWESOME sandwiches lately. And I'm not talking about the sandwiches I make at Subway (though those are amazing too), I'm talking about the sandwiches I make in the comfort of my home. My mom bought Schwebel's Jewish Rye bread last week. AKA sandwich making time.
Doesn't that look marvelous? That delicious sandwich right thar is made of rye bread, swiss cheese, turkey lunchmeat, spinach, and Stadium Mustard. Lightly buttered and toasted on the stove. I can't even describe how good this sandwich is. I do prefer pepper jack over swiss, but it's not like we have the selection of a Subway.
I also had another encounter with a spider today. It was the evil twin of the spider in the shower from last week. Or it was the same spider back from the dead. Either way, I freaked out because once again it appeared while I was naked in the shower. This time it was on the ceiling above me, so it could've fallen on top of my head at any moment. Needless to say, I ended my shower quickly. Then it crawled over to the ceiling vent/fan and got sucked up.
Oh, and remember how I mentioned in this post that my mom said those two ridiculous princesses looked like the Cinderella's evil stepsisters?
I lied. I actually do think women are funny, but I figured the controversial title would lure more viewers in.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately because I read Tina Fey’s new book, Bossypants. Well, truthfully I didn't read it. I listened to it. I ordered the audio version like a dummy from the library without noticing that it wasn't the printed copy. But do not fret, I am now a fan of audiobooks. You just put them on your iPod and all the sudden you can do all the things you couldn't do when you were actually reading a book. For example I got to go on ridiculously long walks while listening. I made dinner with my headphones in. I listened whilst mowing the lawn. Or you can simply lay on your bed and stare at the ceiling for a couple of hours while listening to Tina Fey's voice...She’s a funny woman. Seriously. You can’t read/listen to her book with out laughing. She’s got this smart, partly sarcastic humor that is so entertaining.
But this post isn’t to promote audiobooks or Bossypants (though I highly recommend both), it’s to prove the fact that women can be funny.
Not that long ago I accepted the idea that women aren’t funny. Sometimes they are, but mostly they just try too hard and aren’t. Well, in some cases I still agree with that statement. I could think of tons of funny men like Will Ferrel, Adam Sandler, Steve Carell, and on and on, but it was much harder to do the same for women. I used to claim that the only funny woman I could think of were Ellen Degeneres and Tina Fey. Ellen didn’t help my cause much because she’s a lesbian. As in, she’s not the typical female.
I went to watch Humor U, which is the stand up comedy group at BYU. There were only two females in the group out of 11 people. One of the girls, Callie Petterborg was hilarious.
See? She’s funny, but she’s not exactly girly either. I have to include another video just for entertainment purposes.
Then there’s Tina Fey, who I’ve already mentioned. (I kind of have a girl crush on her if you couldn’t tell). She’s funny, but knows what she’s doing. She used to write for SNL, is almost better at being Sarah Palin than Sarah Palin herself, and has an awesome show (30 Rock), which really should have higher viewer ratings. Oh, and Betty White. She's cute, old, and crude. Always a good combination.
Women aren’t seen as funny, because it’s much harder for us than it is for men.
I’ll put this in a real-life scenario. It was freshman year at BYU. The boys in our ward made a music video to Katy Perry’s song, Teenage Dream. It was a battle, so the girls had to make a music video back. We were worried. The guys’ video was pretty funny, and we were afraid that ours wouldn’t be. “What are we gonna do? Girls aren’t funny.” Yeah, we didn’t have much hope in ourselves. We tried thinking of different songs which would set up funny scenes, but we knew most likely they’d crash and burn. So instead we went with a classic Hall & Oates song, and just made the video good. The humor came naturally, we didn’t try to force it. No offense to the boys, but in the end, our video was better. Guys got the cheap laughs because acting slighty feminine to a Katy Perry song is automatically funny. Girls can’t do that.
So I've come to a conclusion. Sort of. It's a work in progress actually.
1) I've decided that to be a funny woman, you don't necessarily have to be butch, but you can't be the stereotypical girl either. Most of the time we're not not ladylike and perfect, but some like to pretend that they are and won't just relax. You can't be very funny when you're perfect.
2) You have to be smart about your humor. It's a lot harder to get a cheap laugh as a woman. And honestly, I don't want cheap laughs.
3) Be yourself and be honest. Unless you're doing a skit... Then be someone else.
I'm probably not right about any of this, but so far it seems persuasive. It's not like I know much about being funny. People have told me I'm funny, but more have told me my blog is funny. I bet when they read it they picture a guy talking, not me.
Looking back at this post, I discovered that I was mostly trying to prove that woman are in fact funny, but the actual post was boring and definitely not funny. So I am going to tell you a joke to lighten the mood.
- Why did the raccoon cross the road?
- To show his girlfriend he had guts.
Man, I crack myself up. I'd like to add that I know about three jokes, and I've been using the raccoon one since I was five.
Maybe I didn't persuade you that women can be funny. Maybe I did. The impressive thing is: You're still reading this post.
So I decided to ditch the My Exciting Life title, because it's non-informative and really not that exciting. Still the same system though.
This week I had two encounters with spiders.
No. They weren't that big or scary. That doesn't matter though. I'm normally not that scared of spiders, but both situations were different. The first spider I saw was in our bathroom. It was just chillin out on the ceiling, and since it wasn't goin' anywhere I didn't give it much thought and left it there. Later that night I was taking a shower and the same spider crawled in and joined me. Something about being naked makes you feel much more vulnerable, which was probably why I was terrified. Then I killed it with a bottle of shampoo.
A couple days later I was eating a frozen banana at the kitchen table. (If you didn't already know, frozen bananas are DELICIOUS). So all the sudden I felt something on my arm. Great. Another spider. Since this time I was clothed, I wasn't so scared and casually flicked it off. Instead, I smashed it on my arm. I finished eating the banana, and then I washed my arm.
I've seen three movies since I've been home, and two of them have been matine showings. That's when you know you have nothing going on in your life. I saw Source Code with Lily, and a couple days later I saw Atlas Shrugged with my mom. Yeah, I'm cool.
I thought Atlas Shrugged was decent, but if I hadn't known Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism, I probably wouldn't have understood the movie very much. I don't agree with her idea about faith or religion, and she's got a seriously twisted opinion of sex, but everything else is pretty good. Junior year we read Anthem and I loved the book. I wanted to read more of Rand's stuff so I read The Fountainhead for a project last year. Right after we got home from the movie, I went to the library to get Atlas Shrugged. I'm such a nerd. I've been to the library at least 5 times in the past two weeks.
It runs in the family.
So today I was looking through my parents camera, and I found some pictures I forgot about. Two Christmases ago Lily and I decided to take close up pictures of our eyes. It was harder than expected.
My eye.
Lily's eye.
Look at the camera Mom, it looks creepy now.
Maya's eye.
Maya is our little cousin, and obviously she's 100% japanese, so her eye could only get so big...
I'm pretty sure you guys have no interest in all these grossly close pictures of our eyes, but too bad. I'm in charge here.
I've been getting some nice feedback from you guys, and I'm mostly writing these blogs for your entertainment, so let me know of any topics you'd like me to write in my weekly rants. Oh, and maybe you could tell every single person you know about my blog? But I'm not gonna beg or anything, I'm above that.
I'm half Japanese, but that doesn't mean I actually enjoy Nintendo. That includes the wii. The only time I play it is to avoid awkward situations when people are over and I have nothing to entertain them with. So if you've been to my house only a couple of times and played on our Wii, that means I was uncomfortable. I probably shouldn't be saying this...
The Nintendo Wii was the first of its kind. You actually have to move to play the games. There are now a million different ways to look dumb while playing a video game. Whether it was from virtual boxing, bowling, tennis, etc. you looked like a nerd who can't play the real sport. Then a game called Just Dance came out. It got people who normally don't dance to dance. It's a pretty fun game to play with friends when you all look dumb together.
But sometimes people play by their lonesome. Picture my dad alone, playing Just Dance, dancing to Spice Girls. Actually, you don't have to, Lily and I made a video reenacting it.
Basically this video is totally accurate. My dad really did chase Lily up the stairs. I really did run to grab the camera thrown from Lily's hand. He really did say all those things at the end. So since my dad made us swear that we wouldn't share the video of him dancing to the Spice Girls, we made a video to reenact it.
My mom thinks the video is funny. I'm just hoping my dad does too.
Oh, and here are some of the clips with the audio. Kind of funny.
My life has not been exciting this week so I'm going to list off some of the non-exciting things I did. To make it more interesting I will try to add as many relevant photos as I can.
I worked out a lot because I didn't have anything else to do. It doesn't matter if it is really cold or hot outside, my face always turn bright red.
I took this picture back at BYU. That's Treana's head in the background.
I shot some hoops. No seriously. I broke our basketball hoop.
It's hard to see, but there's a whole chunk missing from the backboard.
I ate Spam Musubi three different days. I'd go into more detail, but I think Spam deserves its own blog post. Expect one in the near future.
So freakin delicious.
I watched way too many communitychannel videos on youtube. They are so addictive. Her videos are very funny, but the viewers' comments are just as great. People compete to have the meanest or most witty comment because she features them at the end of her videos. I'm proud to say that my first ever youtube comment got 20 thumbs up.
In case you didn't see it. Here's a close up. Actually, you're gonna have to click on them to read my comment. THAT'S AN ORDER.
Obviously the highlight of my week wasn't getting my hair cut, it was seeing my comment in the Top Comments section. Duh.
I deleted my Myspace account. It's about time.
Typical myspace picture from freshman year.
I made cookies. This is kind of pathetic, but this was the first time that something I baked actually turned out right.
Oatmeal chocolate chip awesomeness.
I woke up dark and early to watch the Royal Wedding. Yes, I Kristen Oda watched the Royal Wedding. I really didn't care that much about it, but these things only happen so often.
Can we just talk about the ridiculous hats? I don't know much about European fashion, but is it normal to wear hats like this?
My mom says they look like Cinderella's evil stepsisters.
Let's get a close up please.
Whoever's giving her wardrobe tips should be fired.
I also want to quickly mention some other things about the Royal Wedding that I found funny.
First, how Victoria Beckham wouldn't crack a smile.
How Kate's ring got stuck on her finger and Prince William had to use both hands to shove it on.
The frowning girl
Yeah that's about it. The rest was pretty boring.
This post is turning out to be lengthy, so I will try to wrap things up. I just have to mention one more thing. I went to Canton Ward's Primary Talent Show yesterday and 53 kids performed. I thought I was going to die when I saw the program, but it turned out to be hilarious. There were your typical talents like singing, dancing, and playing the piano, but these kids had many other talents. Let me just list of a few.
jumping over a pillow (my favorite)
blowing bubbles
dribbling a basketball
headstand (her mom held her legs up)
fake gun fight
math
I wonder what people would think if I told them my talent was jumping over couch pillows...
