Update

I've created a youtube channel with my news stories and dance shows.
Mostly, this is for my family: they need things to be simple--meaning all on the same website-- but anybody is welcome to take a look :)

http://www.youtube.com/2lydianelson

Do you have any idea...

... the number of times I write an almost complete post and then delete it?

I think too much about what I'm trying to say and how it'll come across to others (not that there are that many others that read this. It's just my own illusion of writing for an audience.)

Actually, these words are just being thrown out into cyberspace somewhere; maybe they'll float around for a little while and maybe someone will even google search "cyberspace" and find this post.

Finally, a sunday worthy of its name!

We finally had a chance to go up the mountain; there was a lot more snow up there than I anticipated, but it was still beautiful and Andrew even built a snowfort!

I got to practice shallow depth of field, which is really cool. Like this:

and this:

Andrew playing in his fort :)

We even saw a half-iced-over pond that I didn't have the guts to walk on...

Olympics!!!!!!

Guess what??!!! It's the Olympics!! (yes, I put lots of punctuation marks on purpose. I am very, very excited.) I won't go on forever, I'll just say that Winter Olympics!! are by far my favorite, purely because of ice skating. And ice dancing. I get shivers just watching reruns and pictures; I think it's so sad that people don't really care about the olympics anymore and that it's supposedly not what it purports to be, but I actually (probably naively) believe 100% in the principle of it. I love that for a short while, the entire world is stopped (actually not really, but there's still a big majority, no?) and we all send out the best of our best and watch them do their thing. Watching world champions is just an absolutely thrilling experience, and I'll admit I tend to tear up quite a bit when I watch Ice skating. Anyway, I'll stop before you die of an overdose of overzealousness.

My favorites:

-Yevgeny Plushenko (Russia) in men's solo ice skating.

He's the man. (Gotta love the hair...)

-Isabelle Delobel and Olivier Schoenfelder in Ice dancing.

They're French, PS. And amazing, as if being french weren't enough. I also really really like Tanith Belbin and Ben Agosto (US),

they're too much fun to watch! I thought they should have won in Turin, but nobody listens to me.... :(

After that, no opinion; I'm excited to see the figure skating too, but I don't really remember the couples all too well.. I'll just let myself be surprised!

Oh wait, I remember: I also want Finland to beat Sweden. That's all.

Here's a schedule to the events http://www.nbcolympics.com/event-results-schedules/index.html

On bus drivers...

I have been riding buses regularly since I was 11 years old, so I consider myself somewhat of an expert on buses. I won't even get started on the bad quality buses and lines here in Provo, because that's not my point: the truth is, most of the bus drivers are great around here.
Many times, I've gotten onto a bus after a grueling day at work/school/dance to go home and then been uplifted by the kind bus drivers. There's the nice and slightly quirky one who likes to talk a lot, and then there's the smiley lady with nice skin, and there's the nice old man who compliments me on my smile and tells me to make sure to stay warm when I get off the bus. I love bus drivers!

Except for one.

I can understand hating your job, but in his case... he just hates people in general. WHY IN THE WORLD would you do a job where you are CONSTANTLY in contact with people every minute of the day if you can't stand people! You might be thinking "oh maybe he just doesn't like blondes, or just you." NO, he hates everyone!

I have NEVER seen him smile, ever. as if it wasn't enough that he's just plain grumpy (which I could live with), he goes out of his way to get annoyed at me. Once, while getting on the bus, I swiped my card as usual and the machine made a particularly loud BEEP! so I figured something was wrong -- (turns out it was just a new one so the beeps were louder-- I had validated my card just fine) so I swiped again to see if maybe I had just swiped wrong and this time the machine was just beeping at me with a red light-- I turn to him for some help and he looks at me with an annoyed look and says "why did you swipe it again idiot" (ok, he didn't really say idiot, but it was in his tone, and he rolled his eyes at me) and then he turned away from me and I just hustled on to my seat so as to avoid further contact.

People, it's not that I haven't tried to be nice. I've flashed him my biggest grin. I've said hello as loud as I could while climbing on (I figured maybe he's just hard of hearing and that's why he never says hello back). Nope. definitely heard me, he just ignored me on purpose.

Oh, did I mention the time I dared to sit on a bench two yards from the actual bus stop sign? Mind you, the bench is on the same corner as the stop, and the stop happens to be where there is no sidewalk and a tree with low branches. I have a 15 minute wait and it's already freezing, so of course, I wanted to stand a foot deep in the snow right? Silly me. The bus stopped at the stop because someone else WAS standing at it, but when I got on I got his snide remark: "that bench isn't the bus stop." oh EXCUSE ME! Why in the world would somebody put a bench in the middle of nowhere? Mind you, this is not a park, not a play area. It's a corner on a street. No logical reason to stick a bench there UNLESS it's because... oh wait, the bus stops on the same corner. Yeah, forgive me for making THAT mistake.

You know what I love most about my (future) profession?

I get to meet people. All sorts of people! The other day I did what might sound like a fairly boring story (Ream's grocery store closing in Provo). But it's the sort of thing that matters a lot to a community-- the people there had been working/shopping there for a long time, the employees knew most of the customers... We ran into this adorable tiny little older woman ( I mean TINY) who as soon as she saw the camera started to show off her scarf and model for us-- She had such a huge smile! She then proceeded to tell us how reporters always wanted to interview her back in Spain, and then how she was a genealogy buff and that her whole family descended from "Granada!" And she was so excited to watch my news story the next day. Unfortunately I wasn't able to fit the footage of her into it, but it was so fun to meet her. Last week on my teen pregnancy story, we went to a community health clinic, and I expected the people there to be grumpy and too busy, but they went out of their way to help and all of them seemed so caring towards their patients. The CEO was such a humble, compassionate man who took time out of his busy day to talk about his clinic.

Meeting people like this make it all worth it.