Exciting Future Plans!

Happy belated Halloween, guys.

I was going to post pictures of my Halloween costume, but my Mom insisted on having far away photos (to get the "full effect" of my costume) and I think they ended up ugly, and apparently I was elusive at my parties so no photos! Oh well.

Left is the pumpkin I carved! I tried to make it a pumpkin-carving gathering but neither Parker nor Alex wanted to, so I just carved it myself! I thought this badboy was pretty awesome, I even carved open the back of the little pumpkin so that it would light up too when I had a candle in the big one. I usually don't like to carve large pumpkins (because of how tedious it is to carve through something that thick), but this one wasn't so bad. My niece Ivy seemed like she wanted in on my carving, so she carved the tiny one. She was pretty expert at it.

Let see what else is new to me recently. Well, last week I applied for graduation! I should be graduating next spring if all goes to plan (aka, if I don't fail my classes-- grr p-chem, hardest chemistry class, ever.) I recently took Advance Organic Chem Lab, which is a half semester class. My whole grade depended on how well I did the reactions. In the first week I made something, and with that product I had to make something else with it, etc, so basically if I messed up anywhere and didn't get a yield, I was screwed. In the end I had to write a paper (ended up being exactly 60 pages) which was basically my entire grade for the class. So say the least, I've been pretty busy.

The last thing on my agenda, and probably the most exciting was that I applied a few months ago to International Student Volunteer to go on a month long humanitarian trip (well, two weeks humanitarian trip, two weeks of FUN). My location choices were 1) Thailand, 2)Australia, 3) Ecuador, and I recently found out that I'm going to Thailand August 5th! I haven't received my humanitarian assignment yet, but I am hoping that I will get to take care of elephants and monkeys. (YES ELEPHANTS AND MONKEYS). Then some of the fun things I will get to do for my last two weeks are snorkeling around Koh Phi Phi, rock climbing and cave exploration in the deep caverns in the north of Thailand, sea kayaking around the islands and hidden caves around Phang-Nga Bay, and a two day hill-tribe jungle trek which hikes to indigenous Hill Tribes in Northern Thailand.

IT'S GONNA BE SO SWEET.

First exam of the semester!

Today I had my inorganic chemistry exam. I didn't do as well as I had hoped. When I was doing the old exams I was getting 90-100% correct, but this exam I guess he decided to throw some curve balls and so I probably got around 80%. Which, I suppose, is fine. I just really wanted to get an A in this class because it's definitely my favorite this semester.

I have come to find that I like classes based on two things, a) how approachable the professor is and how willing he/she will answer my questions, and b) if the class is logical. I like things to be logical but I think the approachability of my professors is directly proportional. If I think of organic chemistry, and how much I loooooooved that class I know it all winds down to my professor, Holly. Versus classes like pchem in which I feel like if I ever ask questions in class everyone will look at me as if I was being an idiot (which might be true because sometimes I just don't know what to ask, I always want to ask "what does this have to do with anything? I understand the math of it all but whats the point?" which I might just do one day when I've had enough). I just hope I can get a fairly good passing grade for pchem class and that's all I care about because I doubt that it will have large part in my life. (Maybe pchem 2 with thermodynamics but the probability of where electrons are? Little to none significance.)

Anyways, Peter and I are going to zoo for post-exam celebration! THEY HAVE A BABY ELEPHANT NOW!

Edit: Back from the zoo! I got pooped on by a bird in the jungle area of the snake house. But! Guess what?

THEY HAVE BABY EVERYTHING!

Baby elephants, baby tigers, baby giraffes, baby snow leopard, baby tamerans, baby monkeys! BABY EVERYTHING!


The baby elephant! She was super cute, she laid down in the mud, she played with her plastic toy balls, tried to fall asleep standing up, and only until later did I realize I had a camera. So the only one I got was with her hiding by Mom's leg!


This picture is SO STINKIN' CUTE. I CAN'T GET OVER IT.
When Peter and I got to the giraffe house the two adult giraffes looked like they were gonna get it on, but unfortunately it led to no where. I doubt I was the only one who was unsatisfied. WINK WINK.

Now for some other normal zoo pictures:

Trying to escape! (Then later he decided to just eat the pine tree).


This one is for Devin because I know how crazy he is over red pandas.


D'aw the bear. Did you know that black bears can be between black to almost white? NOW YOU DO! All the animals were so active! We decided while watching this black bear that he was trying to find a way to jump the gully and try to escape. He looked like he really wanted to at the end, but knew it was too far away!


My only evidence that Peter was there (I couldn't pinch it's nipples AND take the picture!)

P.S. My sister read my blog and she told me that they have glasses that you can wear to look at gorillas so they dont think youre challenging them with eye contact. You should check them out because they look pretty hilarious.

First Girl Scouts of the Season!

Last Friday was Girl Scouts and it was pretty good. We did Investiture in which we made my Brownies into Juniors.

Back Row (Left to Right): Grace, Michaela, Ivy, Me, Billye, Mom.
Front Row(Left to Right): Brenna, Alannah, Mary

Last year I was just the Brownie leader, but this year my Brownies graduated into Juniors and I will be helping my Mom with lessons as well has planning some of my own. We are working on an arts and crafts badge and so we painted dongles (which are little pieces of wood that can be used as name tags up at camp and things). We also colored special paper in which would be transferred to melmac plates. I mostly helped with the dongles, and I was able to paint my own!

I've missed painting, and oh sweet lordy when I got out my paint brushes it was like greeting an old friend. I've wanted to paint more, I've missed the feeling of paint inked all over my hands for forever but it's always such a hassle to get everything out. I had the ambition in the summer to make a section of the garage into a painting studio, but then we used that space to help our moving neighbors and it kind of fell on it's face. I suppose I can work on that. I wonder what I should paint? Any suggestions?

Snake Adventure

Today I was coming back from my physics final review, my mind distracted on equations, Gaussian surfaces, electromagnetic waves, and whether or not I had time to take a nap when...

WHAM! MOTHER EFFING SNAKE IN MY MOTHER EFFING DRIVEWAY!!!

I always get a little creeped out by snakes when I go hiking, because I never see them. Peter always go "oh hey there's a snake right there" and I can only hear it slinking through the undergrowth even after Peter plain ol' points it out. I went right inside and called my Dad at work to let him know, and we called animal control. He was just lazing about in my rose bushes for quite some time, and we figured he was probably sitting digesting something he just snacked on. I decided to come back outside and check on him after we called animal control and he was on the move. He was stretched all the way out-- the full length of my driveway!

He headed straight for a tree in my neighbor's yard and I thought I was going to be shown a magical treat of watching a snake climb a real tree. But he wasn't having any of that so he cut diagonally across my neighbor's yard into the gutter. I was extremely grateful that he decided going into the road was a bad plan, because I didn't want to block the road while the snake finished his leisurely slink around my neighbor hood. It greatly reminded me of that movie, Baby's Day Out where all he wanted to do was to visit all the sights he was told about.

I followed his path up the street, curious about why he would occasionally hiss, (maybe he was scared he was lost! poor thing!) and wondering how long it was going to take animal control to find us. It was pretty exciting following up an 8ft snake up the street, especially when people would walk past. It was pretty hilarious, this woman with her kids in the stroller started walking up the street just parallel to where the snake was making his gutter walk. I told her there was a snake up here and that she should go around, and when she walked around and saw the snake all she could say was "hell yeah there's a snake right there!" and just sit and stare with me at the snake.

Eventually animal control showed up, and was pleasantly surprise to find out that it was indeed a python. Apparently everyone thinks "python" or "rattlesnake" are the only two options when describing a snake. What he did to capture it was to grab onto his tail so that the snake got really pissed off and curled up into a little bunch, and then he placed a blanket over it and grabbed it's head. Then, naturally, the python proceeded to wrap around his arm nice and tight. The animal control guy was extremely excited and wanted a picture of him with the snake was much as I wanted a picture for evidence of my adventure. So, we just sat around taking photos.

The animal control fellow told me that it was an 8ft male burmese python with a healthy girth and well taken care of. He said that if it was a female, it's girth would probably would have been double of what Mr. Snake was (so imagine the snake at Hoogle Zoo). The AC guy also said that although it was well cared for, it was probably not handled very often which is why the snake sure was grumpy when he was picked up. He said that they would probably post "found" ads online for the owner to find, and if no one claimed him the snake would go to the adoption center and maybe eventually the reptile rehabilitation station. So I'm glad to know that he's in good hands.

I hardly felt dangerous throughout my adventure, but there is just something about seeing a huge ass snake in your front yard that makes the heart skip a beat. It sure was one adventure.

Getting on the ball.

So I was blog hopping and I noticed that I haven't updated this thing in a bazillion years, so here I am getting on the ball.

I am currently taking summer semester classes. I am taking Physics for Sci. & Eng. II and Quantitative Analysis. Physics is pretty straight forward what it's about, with this level of class though I get the annoying aspects of normal physics added with calculus. Not so bad so far, but I have an exam tomorrow and so we'll see how bad it really is. Quantitative Analysis (QA) is an upper divisional four-days-a-week chemistry class. Two days are dedicated to 2 hour lecture about the theory, while the other days are limited to four hour chem lab periods. The main objective of this course is to learn the ability to find an unknown substance's composition and how much of those components are present. Basically if you imagine any professional career involving chemistry, that's what we're doing, "What is in this person's blood" "What percentage of contaminates are in this water" etc. Eventually in the semester we get to pick a "special project" in which we get to pick our own subject to anaylize. I haven't picked mine yet, but I was thinking of finding out how much sugar is present in coke zero (because I sure don't believe that there is NO SUGAR in that!). I will probably pick something else because my professor said food related topics are typically hard to do, and I want to succeed in my decomposition of my project's elements. Okay, enough about geeking out... moving on..

Last Saturday my Girl Scout Troop had it's Court of Awards and since I was the leader of the Brownies, I was the one passing out the awards! It was definitely weird giving badges instead of receiving badges (haha). I am hoping that I will be able to do girl scouts next year, but my schedule next semester is hella busy and I'm not sure if I will be able to. I definitely enjoy doing all the fun girl scout badges again, and it's surprising how much I do remember from the days I was a girl scout. Brenna and Alannah are sure fun to spend time with, especially when they want to act silly (as seen in the picture-- they wanted moustaches one day we were painting and so I gave them the obligtory handle bar and old man 'staches.) The badges we covered this year was the Journey patch (which taught the brownies how to be a leader), Friends are Fun try-it (in which we made totally awesome braclets out of cut up toliet paper rolls and yarn), two science try-its (in which we did awesome acid-base reactions, played with magnets and static electricity), and eventually a stitching try-it (where we stitched a sock creature together and did cross stitching). We also did a service project in which we tied felt blankets together and gave them to elderly individuals around the Holidays.


Besides work, school, and girl scouts I am have been spending as much time as possible with my friends. My latest hobby is to go hiking, and boy do I enjoy it. I typically go a couple times a week with my friend Peter, but I do like to switch it up with a variety of friends. Peter and I are working up to the long mountain hikes by hiking along the hills while its still cool in the valley but soon enough we'll head up into the real mountains and I can really be at peace with the earth. It is so relaxing and soothing to my soul to just stop and listen to the wind through the trees and the crickets of all the bugs. Here are some more cute hiking photos of me and my friends. I am missing one of me and Parker up in the hills, but since it's on my camera which is at home this will have to do until I can really get on the ball and upload some new ones. That top picture of me is at Red Butte at the Living Room! It's called the living room because people moved the sandstone around to form little chairs in which you can wonder out at the landscape. The next two was a hike that I did with Peter, Sam, and Kristen and the mission of that hike was to get to these caves that Peter and I spotted at the Pit. Unfortunately, we didn't make it up to the top because some weren't as experienced hikers and so we just made it to the top of the ridge (which is next to Ensign peak). Someone mocked me for hiking in a skirt, but LET ME TELL YOU, hiking in a skirt is the best-- especially when you've got to go pee, haha. ***Edit! I got that picture of Parker up! There's a picture of him and his dog Maxi, she was afraid of being in the woods and was running on Parker's heels.

My life as of recently.

I am currently reading Watchmen. I decided to pick it as my book club with my sistas because none of my sisters ever been into the comic books scene and I thought it would be edgy. I was going to pick Y! The Last Man because that series is effing amazing, but I decided to pick one that I haven't read before (so I don't accidentally give away plot points from later books. Plus, Watchmen is one book and not a series). So far it is... alright. With all the hype from it I thought it would be so amazing, but so far if I didn't pick it for book club I would probably stop reading it. In addition to reading Watchmen I am also reading the second to last installment of the Outlander Series (which is a series about a WWII time traveling nurse!) and so far that one is pretty good. The way it is written seems overly wordy and elaborate on details that have no pertinence to the story, but they are entertaining enough.

Last night I went to show featuring Peter's band, Knife Tornado, at Club Vegas. He's in a metal band, and although I don't mind the drums and the guitars I hate the screaming/singing. I've heard Peter play me some songs on his drums at his house but this was the first time I saw him perform (well perform non Taiko drums), and it was quite exhilarating. All of their songs were incredibly powerful and energetic and they would have been pretty cool if they would just stop screaming and sing instead! But also, last night was the first time I met pretty much all of Peter's friends. Over the years that I've known him he would always say things like "oh hey we should hang out with so-and-so" and then it just wouldn't happen. I use to feel like he didn't think I was cool enough to meet his other friends, but dunno then I got to know him better and that seemed a silly assumption. It was an odd feeling meeting his friends. He always talks about so and so and naturally I envision an idea of what they look like and what I imagined Logan (one of his friends that he talks about all the time) to look like was almost exactly as he was, whereas with Paul (another one he talks about always) was nothing at all what I thought he would look like.

Today I had a physics exam. (I know, right? Go to a concert the night before your exam? Not the wisest. But Peter should give me super props for being so dedicated to the cause!) I think I did fairly well on the exam, there was one problem though that I thought was insanely ridiculous and I was worried that whatever way I was trying to solve it was excessive and a way round about way of solving it. I felt so bad though, on our exams we circle which TA we go to for discussion so we can get the exams returned and my TA, Rhett, is a pretty good TA but one day he was sick and this other TA, Ren, substituted for him and the way he taught was waaaay easier for me to understand than for Rhett so I decided to go to Ren's class but when I turned in my exam today Rhett was there and he was asking about how I thought I did and he freakin' knew my name. I mean, most TAs don't bother learning names and might recognize you by how you look, but sigh, he knew my name and I had an exam that the other TA's name was circled. He was like "oh, did you mean to circle me?" and I was like "Um.. no.." to say the least it was awkward and I felt bad making him feel like he wasn't a good teacher or something.

Let's see, what else? My friend Ziv has been trying to play match maker with me. At first he wanted to set me up with one of his friends because his friend "likes big boobs" and I was like "ehhh, I don't think so." I mean, even if he was dreamy I wouldn't want someone who's criteria for dating is if you have big tatas. Then he told me his friend Feliks was interested in me, and I had anatomy with him and at the time I always thought he was kind of cute but I definitely got that vibe of "totally not into you". I've been texting him now and again, and sitting with him in bio chem 2 (in which we found out we had together) but still he gives off that "ehhh" vibe to me. So who knows where that will go, if anywhere.

Tonight I have plans to hang out with Sam and her posse plus Peter (and maybe Paul?) and watch this movie called Southland Tales, which might I add looks completely stupid but a few of my friends have been freaking out about how awesome it is so I figured I would give it a try.

Okay, that's my life as of right. now.

new computer and spring break!

Spring break is next week! Yes!

Although I will be sooooo happy for when I'm done with school I have to admit I sure am going to miss vacations like spring break and month off for Christmas holiday. It will definitely be a sad day when I only get a few days off for xmas and a even more sadder day when I might actually have to do work on my birthday. Haha.

Ugh, my hair has soooo many split ends. Pfft, the universe is teaching me to want to straighten my hair. Do you guys have any helpful hints of getting rid of spit ends (besides cutting it) because quite honestly it drives me kind of nuts.

I'm at work currently and I am slightly bored... okay really bored. I figured I would have physics homework that could distract myself with, but thankfully it was incredibly easy.

School is going pretty good so far. Although I have been slightly lazy and not the best student this semester. I've done fairly well but not like 100% effort.. so I guess I better kick it into gear. I have decided though, despite my laziness this semester that I have definitely refined my study habits. When I first started college I was straight from high school where all I had to do was go to class to get an A. Plus not caring exactly what grades I got (as long as I passed) didn't help much but here at the end of my undergrad career I notice that I do spend time actually reading the text books and devoting large amount of time to finish my homework and making sure I understand it inside and out. It took me awhile to get like this but I have remembered how nice it is to get 100% on quizzes and exams and to be able to teach other people the ins and outs of school like how it was in high school.

In other news, the other day I bought a new computer! I've been saving up for a long time since I didn't want to go further into debt and I decided on a beast of a machine: 24 inch iMac with 3.06GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 4GB of memory, 1TB hard drive, 8x double-layer SuperDrive, and my favorite: ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB. It's going to be amazing.

New Years resolutions so far.

I thought I would spam out my latest update. Since I haven't really done that in ages.

Well, to be honest things there for awhile was like a nightmare. Parker started dating someone new just when I was starting to believe that he wanted to be with me again, that he dated enough other people and realized how good we had it so that he would want to date me again. Well, guess that all changed when he started dating someone new. Things were a bit dark there, and honestly I saw my future and everything I had planned for myself crumble around me. I realized that I have been pining over Parker for the last three years, and I suppose this was the last straw so I made a new years resolution to get over Parker. Those last few years I would always say "oh I should just get over him, things would be better that way, etc etc etc" but I never really meant it, well until now.

It has been about a month since my resolution, and although I know that I'm not over him yet I can feel so much better about... oh everything. I never really realized until I tried to give him up how much he was still apart of my life when he shouldn't have been. Like, for the last 9 years if I had a problem or a worry, or even just telling someone about my day, I would always go to him. I have forgotten how to cry on my own-- how to self sustain... which causes a lot of problems if the thing is bothering me is the person I'm talking to. Really, these last few years have been just bickering on top of bickering.

I am relearning how to do things on my own. Learning to be dependent again. So far I am incredibly proud of my progress. I suppose all I really had to do was set my mind to the task.

In other news, I started the new semester. This year's schedule is very nightmarish. With how my school schedule is set up, I go to school from 7am/8am-about 2 and then I work from 2-7. Basically I'm at the U campus for about 12 hours straight. It's been quite hellish, but it gives me time to work on my homework? I noticed though, when I get home from school and work I never want to do anything (like, finish my homework, study more, etc). Which might become more of a problem, like for instance I should be studying right now but I much rather watch The Office and update my blogs. Such a silly girl I am.

New Phone!

It has been ages since I've updated. Sorry about that.

Last semester I passed with top marks, getting the class high in my Ochem class and getting in the top three in my calculus class.

I'm not that excited for next semester but I calculated how much longer I have in school and only three more semesters if everything goes to plan. Then I anticipate on doing some internships living on my own for awhile, then most likely going to school out of state. I suppose I have nothing holding me back now.

In other news I lost my cellphone yesterday. The first time that's ever happened. But my new phone is quite beautiful, maroon and it flips open to a keyboard. I am quite content with it. I also think the way the menus is organized is much more efficient than my old phone's menu. The only thing that is a pain is that I lost all my contacts so, PLEASE send me a text or send me a message with your number so I can add you back!