You're the Great Pumpkin, Prince Eric!

Look at my feet. Am I nervous?
Well, I'm holding Prince-freaking-Eric!

Oh yes.

I went there.

MERRY PRINCE ERIC DAY!!

I mean, Happy Halloween!

;-)

Once Upon a Time...

I had a cell phone named Clark. No, I did not name him after my country dancing teacher.

If Clark could talk, he would introduce himself as

"Kent, Clark Kent."

Sadly, he died one cold wintry night on the icy asphalt.

He decided life was too dull in my coat pocket,

and thought it would be a good idea to jump out of it

and dive off the balcony.

Just like Superman,
my cell phone was not as indestructible as I thought.

About two years ago, before Clark passed away, my roommate and the boy she was dating at the time decided to take all our apartment's cell phones and decorate the insides with unique stickers. See, when you drop your phone, the back often pops off and the battery flies out, and sometimes you get angry, so the idea was, if you had happy stickers in your phone, maybe you wouldn't get all grouchy-like and such.

Well, my happy sticker came in handy two summers ago. 

I went to Lagoon (amusement park) and I lost my phone on the white roller coaster. They took it to the Lost and Found, and when I went to claim it, they asked me to describe it. I couldn't remember the exact model, but I tentatively said it was a black Motorola flip phone. Unfortunately, they needed a little more detail, so I told them to take the back off it and look at the sticker. 

"What kind of sticker?" they asked.

I giggled and blushingly said, "Uh... Jesus Loves You."

(Know what though? He does.)

Definitions and Things to Say...

When someone leaves you hanging on a high-five:

"High-five my hand before I high-five your FACE!"

A party whose guests are nothing but English majors:

"Nerd-ist party."

(HAHA)

When your gal pal is being a wussy face:

"Woman up!"

Larger Than Life...

My friend Clark (background story here and here) and I are both from Orem. If he weren't so extremely good-looking and slightly cocky, I might be in love with him. As it is, we are just really, really good buddies.


Let me tell you how we were brought even closer together. See, it was fall break this weekend, so I hitched a ride home to Orem and back to Logan with Clarkers. Clark likes to talk. I like to talk. There's never a dull moment and always an educational adventure when you spend time with this boy.


Things I learned:
-- A few off-color jokes
-- What guys really consider in relationships (in particular, he likes a girl who has had to work in order to pay for what she wants, and doesn't spend all of it shopping)
-- A tooth implant or something can be really expensive
-- I'm known as "the short girl" at the Fun Park (where we go dancing every week)
-- Clark's and my dancing is "inspiring"
-- Those last two were told to Clark by some goofy guy at the Fun Park, who also told him he was "dreamy"
--It is never not cool to belt along to Savage Garden. Truly, madly, deeply.
-- Most importantly, the Backstreet Boys are totes better than *NSYNC


And how.


See, what happened was the first bars of "As Long As You Love Me" started floating out of the radio, and sharp, excited intakes of breath from Clark and me. 


Transcript of conversation over duration of song:


Clark: I LOVE this song!! 
Chess: I know!! I haven't heard it in ages!
Clark: (turns up the volume) I'm warning you. I'm singing every word.
Chess: Psh. Whatever, man. I was totally planning on it!
Clark: Ready?


Clark and Chessie proceed to BELT out every. single. word. With frightening accuracy.


Chess: Are we really doing this?
Clark: Oh. This is happening.


During instrumental interval...


Clark: This was the first CD I bought in the seventh grade!
Chess: I know! It's the coolest!


In-depth discussion of BSB members, all by name: Kevin, A.J., Brian, and Nick.


Song resumes, and so does the belting. 
Failed attempts to do runs.
Song ends.


Chess: *NSYNC sucked. 
Clark: Total crap compared to these guys. Except for "Bye Bye Bye."


Off-key rendition of "Bye Bye Bye."


Chess: Did you ever see the music video?
Clark: Not that one, but I remember that one where they're coming off the plane and all singing in the crowd. Oh yeah.
Chess: We are so cool.

For Your Viewing Pleasure:

Oh yeah.
I want it that way.

Erie, I Love You...

But it is NOT fair that I do not get to the be the cute roommate in this situation.

And this is my blog.

So I am saying it. 

I'm Not Lazy At All...

I just happened to watch

All Dogs Go to Heaven

Robin Hood (Disney)

Hercules

Anastasia

All in a row last night. Feature animation heaven. 

PS. My roommate and I may or may not have even made it back to our bedrooms. Just sayin'.

Things I'll Never Be Too Old For...

• Playing 4-Square
• Eating cookie dough and ice-cream at 10:00 pm
• Running through sprinklers
• Quoting She's the Man
• Giggling about boys
• Dancing
• Corn dogs
• Jumping rope
• Skipping
• Coloring
• Singing silly songs
• This blog

Please Help! (With a Good Thing)

Hello Groupies!!!

Are you feeling charitable today? How are your thumbs? Stretched and limber?

Good.

Because I need your thumbs.

If you are new to my blog, a most warm and cheery welcome to you!! The rest of you probably know that I work for USU and America Reads (a national children's literacy program). Basically, what I do is tutor and mentor at a high school and a middle school. 

We have a new literacy program here in Cache Valley called P.A.W.S. (Pursuing Academics with Success), and we are trying to help Wilson Elementary School win a $250K Grant from Pepsi. You can read more about what the program is about here (Todd Milovich is my boss, and he's the raddest guy around) and here. Last month, we were in 24th place in the running, and I need your help to launch us into first place. 

It is so easy. You just send a text. I'd be willing to bet that we all text quite a bit everyday. Haha. So all you need to do, right now, is to pull out your phones once a day, every day and text six little digits to five other digits. Like so.

 TEXT: 102480

TO: 73774

It's really important that you vote once everyday, and the best way I've found to remember is to program a daily reminder on my phone. It would mean so much to me if you could take the time to do this. I will also put a reminder on my sidebar. 

Now, get out your phones...

Put those thumbs to work!

Text!

Text right now!


Or you can go to P.A.W.S's voting page
HERE
and click the "Vote for this Idea" button near the top right.
[You have to fill out a tiny form once, but it will help you non-USA residents to vote,
and you can vote everyday. It makes a cool fizzling sound when you do. Haha!]


You know what would be awesome?
If you did both. But you don't have to.
Either one would be wonderful. :-)

Thank you so much!!!

(Those of you, my bloggy buddies... Those of you with blogs, if you could mention this contest and include the numbers to text on your own pages or even include a link that directs your readers to this post or to the P.A.W.S. voting page, I'd be most grateful!)

What's Cookin', Wednesday?

Oh my, Sunday evening was frustrating.

I had these oranges that I've had sitting in a bowl for weeks, because even though I love them, I have a hard time eating them sometimes. I also had some leftover orange juice in the refrigerator. So I thought I'd bake a cake.

This Week's Kitchen Adventure:

Ruby Grapefruit Cake [original recipe found here]

This cake comes to you from Not So Humble Pie. Love that blog. She's so science-y, and a great mom, and a most fabulous cook. Check it out! 

As you can see, the recipe originally called for grapefruit, but you can substitute any kind of citrus, so I used my oranges and orange juice. For the syrup, I used a little less than a cup of orange juice and made up the difference with lemon juice. Then I added half of a 1/3 cup of sugar to the 2/3 sugar already called for. I didn't end up making the icing, cos it was already very sweet, and what's the point of icing a cake that ended up looking like this?

If you can't tell, it fell. I was so upset. To the point where I had to tell my Mom that I had to hang up, because I was about to cry. I know. It's just a cake. But when I barely have time to do anything other than homework and work, to bake a cake and have it fail like that was like unto heartbreak.

But that didn't keep me and my roommates from devouring it by the next afternoon.

It was absolutely delicious. 

Monday...

I know.

You are asking why I am writing about my Monday on a Tuesday. Because I don't have time to write about Mondays on Mondays. Nor do I have time to write about Sundays on Sundays. And if I had had time on Sunday, I would've written you about Friday and Saturday, but I didn't. So today, Tuesday, I will talk about my Monday, on which I would've written about Sunday, on which I would've written about Friday and Saturday, if only I had time.

If I had blogged on Saturday, I would've told you how on Friday, our team beat one of our biggest rivals, BYU, in football for the first time in 17 years. I would've told you that I finally got to rush the football field. I would've told you that I pretty much ate my weight in pizza and Jamba Juice.

If I had blogged on Sunday, I would've told you how much I love General Conference. That I love going to the grocery store with my tall guy friends because they can reach everything on the top shelves. But those jerks made me push the cart most of the time because, "That's what ladies do! Why do you think we invited you?" I would've told you how much fun I had making this shirt:

(The back says, "Oh yeah. I was there.")

Picture courtesy of Garrett's phone 

If I had blogged on Monday, I would've told you how much I loved seeing President Monson at the Sunday morning general session in the Conference Center (my first time going!!), and maybe I would've left out the part where I slept through Elder Oaks' talk and ALL of the second session. And I'd've told you about the horribly ugly, most delicious cake I baked (which I'll tell you about tomorrow). I'd also keep the part where I saw Iron Man 2 for the first time.

But, it's Tuesday, so I'll just leave all of that other stuff to the imagination, and tell you that I'm really tired today. Because yesterday, on Monday, I was at school and work and school again ALL day until 10:30 pm. And then I went dancing until midnight. And then I talked to the roomies until 1:00 am. And then I chatted with blue-green eyes boy on FB until 1:42 am. So you can see why I'm slightly sleepy right now. Which stinks because I have SO MUCH HOMEWORK and a work meeting at 9:00 tonight.

Sometimes, I feel like falling over 

and 

never getting back up again.

But you know something?

I'm kinda happy anyway. 

:-)