Bleh

I don't want to not get the internship I want. It will make me very mad. And discouraged.

Story. of. my. life.

From Overheard in the Newsroom:

Editor: “We need a new way to mark stories. 
Instead of ‘Ready’ it should be, ‘I’m just tired of looking at it.’”

MWP Salon

I would like to take a minute to invite you to come to the Mormon Women Project Salon on November 5th. It's going to be absolutely amazing and you really don't want to miss such an incredible opportunity to meet LDS women from all sorts of backgrounds and hear some incredible speakers (Valerie Hudson!! Yes!!) on some great subjects. Plus you'd be supporting me in a roundabout way since the point of this is also to raise funds for the MWP and hopefully eventually be able to pay for transcription services and the such--which means more awesome interviews for me to conduct (like this one) and you to read! See, it's win-win-win. So please come, I'd love some extra company, and I know it'll be amazing. Register here.

Wow

It's been a while eh?

I've even started writing two or three posts in the past week, until I realized I had little to say. I'm kind of tired of school these days... and working on longer projects is tiring, so I've got no writing left in me. This weekend was great though. I am so grateful to be able to enter a grocery store and fill up a cart with food. All I have to do is grab it off the shelves and swipe a piece of plastic. Sometimes we don't realize how blessed we are. A girl in one of my classes made some comment about how she's a starving student and I was kind of annoyed. I mean yeah, she's probably not rolling in gold--neither am I--but she has nice clothes, a place to live, food to eat, a good EDUCATION, a brand new haircut... I hardly think we get to complain.

Sometimes I want to, but deep down I know how good I have it. My life is incredible. As stressful as it is to be in school and have a demanding schedule, as scary as it is to be making life-changing decisions for the future... what a wonderful life it is that I even get to make these choices. I have the awful dilemma of getting to chose between a career and having children. Or doing both.

In fact, we're living like kings right now. It really couldn't get much better. (Well, KSL could just decide to hire me straight out of school, that would be pretty awesome. Also, my dad could come for Christmas, that would be cool too. But hey, you can't have everything you dream of.)

Sigh.

But we did have a last hurrah barbecue last week:

aw, ketchup makes him happy

I have to take pictures of myself otherwise it's like I was never there

Look! A sunset!

Or I could make my husband take my picture.
And actually, this "pose" was totally accidental, believe it or not.
It must be my inner repressed fashion blogger.

On a completely unrelated note, I just watched a really good movie. Exam. The British accents probably don't hurt either... But in all seriousness, it's awesome. Go watch it.

Oh also, I learned in stake conference today that I was born to be a homemaker. Awesome. The worst part is that this came from a girl: all the members of the stake presidency gave spiritual, doctrinal talks, but this one girl went on and on about cleaning and decorating. Ugh.

And tomorrow I'm giving a mini presentation on euphemism and hyperbole. Because I NEVER use hyperbole inappropriately. Ever. Ha.

And for a last bit of Sunday night humor:

Can I just say...

Fantastic, scathing writing. I love it.

To the villainy-of-the-rich theme emanating from Washington, a child is born: Occupy Wall Street. Starbucks-sipping, Levi’s-clad, iPhone-clutching protesters denounce corporate America even as they weep for Steve Jobs, corporate titan, billionaire eight times over. These indignant indolents saddled with their $50,000 student loans and English degrees have decided that their lack of gainful employment is rooted in the malice of the millionaires on whose homes they are now marching — to the applause of Democrats suffering acute Tea Party envy and now salivating at the energy these big-government anarchists will presumably give their cause. Except that the real Tea Party actually had a program — less government, less regulation, less taxation, less debt. What’s the Occupy Wall Street program? Eat the rich.

Read the whole article here

Today I saw

A really big desert.

Lots of sage brush.

Roadkill (I'm pretty sure it was a fox)

A hare -- it jumped out of a bush two feet away from me and hopped off

More flies than I care to count

Several lizards

Some very fancy equipment made to measure ultra-high energy particles coming from outer space.

And a bazillion butterflies. Sadly, I killed most of them with my windshield.

Have I ever mentioned how much I love The Office?

I wish I were this creative. And that I had an arch-nemesis. Well maybe not, actually. Random story: a guy in my English class told everybody the story about his high school "arch-nemesis" stealing the girl he had a crush on... in complete seriousness. Somebody's been reading too much sci-fi... (Says the girl who posts star trek clips on her blog. Ahem)

Matters of scale

Random fact set I stumbled upon recently. This is kind of old (1999) but I doubt the proportions have gotten much better... the comparisons are powerful:

Amount of money needed each year (in addition to current expenditures) to provide reproductive health care for all women in developing countries $12 billion
Amount of money spent annually on perfumes in Europe and the United States $12 billion 

Amount of money needed each year (in addition to current expenditures) to provide water and sanitation for all people in developing nations $9 billion
Amount of money spent annually on cosmetics in the United States $8 billion 

Amount of money needed each year (in addition to current expenditures) to provide basic health and nutrition needs universally in the developing world $13 billion 
Amount of money spent each year on pet food in Europe and the United States $17 billion 

Source

These numbers kind of remind me of an article I came across today about mental illness in the US, and one thing that really stuck out to me was that depression was a "luxury" illness. Our women have problems like anorexia, cutting and self-loathing because of images projected by our culture so we buy cosmetics and perfume by the boat-load... but the money we spend on the beauty industry could solve, well, world hunger, basically. (I do not in any way wish to minimize the seriousness of these psychological issues.)

Sometimes things turn out not quite the way you expected

By the way, this is my new dress that almost turned into a train wreck. It worked out though, after a bit of stress that Jourdan can attest to...

and a failed dye job that actually turned out to be pretty cool. So I kept it that way, even though I slightly remind myself of a high school senior photo backdrop...

Best Birthday/weekend ever

"Birthday week" really felt like it started last weekend with the Relief Society general broadcast -- I went up to see it "live" with my former roommates and turned it into a girls' night out. It was great.

Sushi - mmmm

Then last week was a bit stressful, but by Friday it was good, classes were cancelled, a really awesome research paper is in the works, and we went out for dinner and dancing. And opening presents was quite nice :)

Saturday was awesome because of General Conference and then going out to dinner at Pizzeria 712 (Delicious. It's fantastic.) with everyone! And then all the girls came back home and we hung out while the men were at Priesthood. I'm so happy that we were able to get everybody together, and that Allie was in town and we got to meet Meghan's baby and cuddle them and talk and eat chocolate cake and just... be all together again. It had been SO long! Gosh and now I want babies because let's be honest they're just too cute and I didn't want to let either of them go. Oh dear.

And then today watching conference at Cassi's place and eating fantastic quiche and salad with real vinaigrette and homemade french bread made by Ashley. All kinds of good stuff. What a great weekend!

That dressing was fantastic by the way. A chopped shallot, a few mashed garlic cloves, grainy Dijon mustard, walnut oil, apple cider vinegar, sea salt and thick black pepper. No, I don't know quantities. You want to use quite a bit more oil than vinegar though.

I think it's safe to say

that at this point: it's official.

http://newsroom.lds.org/article/new-temples-announced-for-france-africa-colombia-utah-and-wyoming