I'd Like to Thank My Father for Teaching Me to Use A Screwdriver

When I left work last night, the view of campus looked like this:

Magical, huh? It sure was gorgeous, but it was also very, very wet. It was so warm that when you stepped in it, it melted under your feet. Good thing I shoveled the sidewalks, because last night the temperature dropped almost 40 degrees and all that slush turned into ice. My walk to the office this morning almost killed me (okay, I exaggerate -- it almost dropped me on my tush) at least four times from the hazardously icy sidewalks. On the upside, though, there was this:

Since the semester is now officially over, the office is, how shall I say this, extremely slow. At least one person came in yesterday, and I did get a few calls. However, today: zilch. Good thing I Had A Plan.

This is what my office looked like my first day of work back in August.

This is what my office looked like at noon after I spent the morning rearranging it.

Okay, it wasn't that big of a rearrangement, mostly I just switched the orientation of my desk. You can't see it in either of the above photos, but my office houses the office's library on a couple of bookshelves just out of the picture on the left. That means people are popping in and out of my office looking for things. In the previous orientation, that meant getting out of or back into my desk space was really annoying if people were perusing our collection, and since people do that pretty often, the situation was less than desirable. So with all the lovely time I have on my hands while the semester is out, I hatched A Plan to fix that.

I have to say, I'm pretty darn proud of myself. That desk is huge and while it's not massively heavy, it is unwieldy. The two parts are actually screwed together, a fact I found out after clearing it off and trying to move it. Unscrewing it was easy, and once the two parts were separated it was pretty easy to get them moved to where I wanted them. The hard part was getting them screwed back together. You have to hold the smaller piece in place to make everything line up correctly, and obviously I can't hold it in place and screw it together at the same time. (Believe me, I did try. I tried to hold it up with my legs and  screw it in (with my hands, obviously), but it was a no go.) No one else was in the office, and I couldn't just go pop into the Controller's office across the hall and ask some startled accountant if they'd like to come hold my desk in place while I screw it together.

The solution I came up with is, I think, certifiably genius. Or at least worthy of being dubbed "MacGyvered".

Yup. That's a camera tripod. Genius, right? Sometimes I just really love myself.

Well, that did the trick, and I had the two pieces back together. Then I spent about a half-hour wrangling the appalling tangle of cords sprouting out of the back of my computer into a manageable tangle...

...and put everything back together. I have to say, I'm pretty impressed with myself for getting it all right on the first try. I didn't even have to hunt for the reason why my second monitor wasn't working or (fake) swear at my printer for doing wonky things. Nope, it all turned back on perfectly.

Here's the view from the back corner of my office, looking out the door into the hallway leading to the rest of the office. You can see the bookshelves I mentioned above behind the lamp. And that's a picture of one of the bridges over the Han River in Seoul on my computer desktop.

All in all, it was a pretty good day. I feel accomplished.

Homesick

Today is the official last day of the semester, and most of the students are long gone. That means things are slow at the office. I'm flying home for Christmas next week, and I'm starting to get (more) homesick, in more than one way. How many ways can you be homesick? you ask. I'm anxious to get home and see my family, of course, but I've been missing Korea more and more lately.

Last night after work I took the bus downtown and had dinner at the Korean place. The proprietor and I are  pretty close. We chat about Korean politics (more like he lectures and I nod - my grasp of Korean-politics Korean is very tenuous), I hang out in the kitchen and chat with his mom (who makes the food), etc. And I can always count on him telling me I look like I've gained weight. (The topic is not taboo like it is in the States.) I've got to start working out regularly again, just so I can finally hear him tell me I've gotten skinnier.

I'd really like to go back to Korea soon. It doesn't look that will happen, especially not if I get into grad school this fall. The problem is that I don't know what I'd do there even if I went. I could teach English, but I don't know if that's something I'd want to do. I'd love to go to school there, but that's an expensive proposition. What I need is an American program that incorporates a study-abroad component, like the University of Hawaii's or American University's, but let's face it--I can't afford either of those places.

Actually, at this point, I'd like any kind of direction. Don't worry, I'm not all mopey like in my last post, but the frustration at my lack of direction is still there. I'm not any closer to knowing what I want to do with myself than I was three weeks ago or three months ago. It makes me feel a little lonely and pointless.

A Journey Without a Destination Is More Like Aimless Wandering, Part II

Here I am. I'm 26, barely graduated from my undergrad, working two part-time jobs (but thankfully with insurance), and I've got a GRE Analytical Writing score that could very well keep me out of grad school. (At least this year.) The kicker is that when I checked, I saw that I only needed another half-point (or a 4.5) to jump all the way to the 73rd percentile. Basically, the difference between my reader being in a good or generous mood and s/he being anxious to get home or go to lunch. When there's a-- wait, let me do the math...29 percentage-point difference in just a half a point on your scale, you need a new scale.

Mostly I'm just mad. But there's another part of me, a not-very-small-and-in-fact-growing-increasingly-larger part of me, that wonders what the heck I do now. To be honest, I decided to apply to grad school more because I'm not too keen on continuing to do what I'm doing now more than because I finally know what I want to do with my life. Having an MA at least means I can start looking for work in my field, or I could move on to a more prestigious program and get a Ph.D. I figured the U would be a good choice; I could finally take some formal Korean classes, deepen my understanding of the culture and history of the region, and yet the tuition wouldn't totally break the bank and I'd have a decent shot at a fellowship, not to mention friends and family who live in the area. And the U is thankfully in a bigger city than Logan. It would be a leap of faith, but not a huge one.

So...now what? I could take the GRE again, but that's another $175 and I'd have no more time to prepare than I did last time. Not to mention, because I waited so long to take it the first time, now I have only about two dates I could even take it -- and that close to the application deadline, there's no guarantee that they'd receive my scores in time, anyway. I could call up the ETS people and keep squeaking until they give me some grease and take another look at my writing score, but let's face it, the probability of that happening is slim to none. I could throw myself on the mercy of the admissions committee at the U and try to explain my way into getting them to admit me. Or I could just give up.

Honestly, that last option was my first inclination. Just throw my hands up and say, Oh well, there's nothing I can do about it and resign myself to being a 26-year-old BA working two part-time jobs in a small city with no real job prospects in her field (but thankfully with insurance). But isn't that too pathetic? I already feel like I'm a pretty amazing failure, but that would really take the cake, no matter how much I just want to sit down and have a good cry. It's hard to feel upbeat when I look at so many of my friends and peers and they're working on their Ph.D.s or Master's, or traveling the world, or living and working in other countries, or gainfully employed and have cars and houses and kids.

Even worse than the (not inconsiderable) blow to my pride is the lack of direction, the shattering of expectations. I don't know what I want to do with my life. The pointlessness of it all is inciting an existential crisis. I want to do something, but it's eternally frustrating that I just don't know what. I wish I had that clarity of purpose and utter conviction I had as a three-year-old who wanted to be a ballerina. I'd settle for the naive confidence of the high school sophomore who was convinced she wanted to be a biochemist. (Whew, dodged that bullet.) Heck, I'd love to even have the optimism of the brand-new college freshman who wanted to become an English professor.

What am I doing with this time I'll never get back? Nothing very fulfilling. Please don't mistake me, I am so grateful to have a way to support myself, somewhere warm and dry to live, good food to eat, a little expendable income for fun things and to pay down my student loans a little faster, a family who loves and supports me, and an education. I am tremendously blessed, and even if that was all I had I'd still be one of the richest people alive. I've been trying to concentrate on those things, and I've been glad to be here in Logan for some things happening in my life and in the lives of people around me, but I feel like I'm stagnating here. The problem is I don't know where I want to go, let alone how to get there, to get myself moving and cease stagnating. I have no idea what the future holds or why this happened to me when everything suggested it wouldn't. I don't know what I want. I don't know what God wants me to want. I feel like every time I think I do know, it turns out not to be the case...? At this point I just want to stay in bed all day and stare at my ceiling.

A Journey Without a Destination Is More Like Aimless Wandering, Part I

The annoying thing about life is that it's impossible to do perfectly.

As much as I would like to be able to, I can't. And sometimes, Life throws you a curveball just to drive that home.

When I graduated earlier this year, I had no idea what I was going to do next. I'd kind of decided to move to Korea to teach English, and so I hadn't worried about doing silly things like taking the GRE or filling out a FAFSA. Well, Korea didn't pan out, much to my disappointment, and so I spent the summer pretty much lollygagging around until I finally got my act together and found a job. Then I got a second job because the first job was only half time. I vaguely figured I'd work for a year, pay down some of my student loan debt and regain my sanity, then plunge back into school the next fall.

It was a good plan. Okay, at least it wasn't a bad plan.

The only problem was, I forgot that grad school is not something you decide to do and just do in the spur of the moment. You have to plan ahead, waaaaay ahead, and do silly things like take the GRE and fill out a bunch of applications and ask a lot of people to write letters of recommendation and fill out the FAFSA. By the time I realized, Crap, I have to take the GRE and start looking at schools stat if I want to go to grad school in the fall! it was already early October. But the whole thought of that (and all the money it would require) was so overwhelming I procrastinated dealing with it. Finally, in early November I bit the bullet and went for it...but many of the places I was looking at had application deadlines on 1 December or in the middle of the month. If I wanted to even have a shot at applying to them I'd have to have my GRE results in to them by then, which means I'd have to take it in the middle of November at the latest. So I registered, paid my money (watching $175 go out of my bank account just for the pleasure of taking a test hurt a little bit), and took the test on 15 November at 8:00 in the morning.

I spent the lion's share of what little prep time I invested reviewing math concepts I was supposed to have mastered in middle school and the first couple years of high school. I'm sure this will not come as a shock to any who know me, but my mastery of math concepts basically stops at multiplication...if that. My grasp of even basic math was pretty rusty at best. I was not terribly worried about the vocabulary sections, since I knew about 90% of the words on the vocab lists in the prep book I borrowed from the library. (Let's face it, with my parents and my bookworm childhood, I'd be worried if I didn't.) Likewise, I was pretty confident about the analytic writing portion; if I managed to procrastinate every single paper I'd ever written at USU (some pretty spectacularly) and still not lose any points, I figured a half-hour to write one one-page essay was not going to be terribly taxing.

What's that scripture again? "Pride goeth before the fall"? (More accurately, "Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall. But it still applies.)

The morning of the GRE I wasn't feeling too bad about life. Nervous, but confident. I'd said my prayers, and I figured any Asian Studies program probably wasn't going to look too closely at my math score anyway so I'd be okay. The analytical writing section came first, and I felt like I did a good job on the two essay prompts I'd been given. I asked the Lord for the inspiration and guidance of the Spirit and for His help in doing my best, and I felt like I'd received it. I moved into my first math section feeling confident. (I didn't end it feeling confident, but that's a whole 'nother ball game.) The rest of the GRE went pretty quickly, especially the verbal sections -- I finished those with almost half the time to spare. The new computerized version of the GRE tells you your raw scores for the math and verbal sections as soon as you're done taking the test, so I knew I'd done okay with a 163 in verbal and a 154 in quantitative. I left feeling pretty upbeat, which was only confirmed when I looked up the table that converts your raw score into the percentile score grads schools use for admissions. I was 91st percentile in verbal and 60th in math, definitely good enough to satisfy admissions requirements. I was sure that when I got my writing scores I'd get a 5.0 or a 5.5 (out of 6.0) and be fine.

I realize that sounds incredibly cocky, but nothing in my education to that point had ever given me reason to disabuse myself of that notion, so you can imagine my utter shock when I opened my official scores Sunday morning to see a glaring "4.0 -- 49th %ile" staring back at me. I've never been hit with a 2x4 before, but I imagine the feeling of stunned bewilderment and disorientation is somewhat similar to how I felt at that moment. In case your math is as bad as mine, the 49th percentile is 21 percentage points shy of the 70 I needed to be admitted to the program I was most seriously considering, the Asian Studies MA at the University of Utah. The 49th percentile is average. Average. I went down to my room and sobbed.

The thing is, I realize that I'm being compared to other takers of the GRE, who are on average a smarter  bunch of people (or at least better test-takers) than your average US citizen. I know that, I do. Yet I find it utterly incomprehensible that my math score could be higher than my writing score, ever. Maybe back when I was two and learning to count but couldn't read yet. Definitely not now, not after not taking any math class for more than two years and not having a "real" math class since my second semester at UTM taking college algebra (and I got a B, by the way) more than six years ago. I felt like calling up ETS then and there and demanding to know how the heck this had happened. But I'm a chicken so I didn't. Now I'm desperately scrambling to find a way to fix this and I feel like my life has just been knocked into a flat spin. This post, however, is getting long, so I'll talk more about that in my next post.

Skyfall

I went and saw Skyfall this afternoon. And it was awesome. I think Casino Royale has a better story, but Skyfall is definitely more epic (we won't worry about that other movie). The cinematography was fantastic, and I loved the lighting, too. Plus I enjoy how Daniel Craig plays Bond - much more restrained and dryly humorous than any of the previous actors. Not quite so smarmy as Pierce Brosnon (but I'll always love him nonetheless), but still suave. I thought the opening credits were fantastic, and the titular title track [is that redundant?] was an instant hit with me.

All in all, it might be a movie I have to see twice in theaters. Yes, it will come out on DVD and still be awesome...but not as awesome as seeing Daniel Craig's face five or six times as tall as a man on the big screen.

I'll Tell You What I'm Not Thankful For

...the GRE. Specifically, that I have to take it in T-6 days. The Quantitative Reasoning sectioning is gonna kick my booty. Just reviewing the properties of numbers -- you know, with those fancy ones like exponents and roots thrown in for fun -- is giving me headaches. And obviously my times tables have suffered a little since I memorized them in second grade and was quizzed on them in fourth. And it's been ten years since my last geometry class. Well, okay, only five and a half technically, if you count Euclid freshman year at SJC. Which was awesome, but it's not algebraic geometry. Sadly, the GRE isn't going to ask me to construct an equilateral triangle using only circles and a line. (I probably couldn't do that, either, but I bet I could make a decent go of it. A better one than remembering the rules of exponents or roots.)

2 + 2 = ...4? Really?

If the GRE tested on Korean pop culture, I would totally rock that section.

Gratitude, Part I

November is the month of Thanksgiving, but that's not the reason I've decided to list at least five things I'm especially grateful for each day. It's just a happy coincidence. That being said, here are today's five things.

1. I'm grateful I have a job. I have spent too much of my recent life unemployed to not appreciate being able to bring home a paycheck each month, even if my income and my time is split up among three different jobs. I may not have been particularly productive this last summer, but I have learned a valuable lesson about work: work is not something to be avoided (which is my first inclination), but in fact a divine principle. Work is enlightening and ennobling. Unemployment is degrading and soul- and self-esteem-destroying.

2. I'm grateful I can walk to my job. It's not terribly fun to be without a car, but every time I'm tempted to grumble (...very loudly...) about it, I remember that I'm so blessed to be so close to my various forms of employment. Without a car I could be jobless, but I'm not. Plus, walking is healthy and keeps me active. 

3. I'm grateful that the local public transportation is reliable and free. It's not as nice as Seoul's public transportation, which is both vast and much more efficient, but I save a tremendous amount of money each month by not having to pay anything for transportation costs. Yes, it's inconvenient when I want to go grocery shopping or go anywhere after 8:00pm, but it's hard to argue with free and reliable.

4. I'm grateful for a good education and parents who value education. For this reason taking the GRE with only two weeks of preparation is only stupid and stressful instead of impossible.

5. I'm grateful that I listened to the prompting of the Spirit when I walked out of the library from picking up my GRE prep book (see above) and stopped to ask the girl crying on the bench if she was okay. As soon as I saw her I knew I needed to ask if she was okay. [Side note: It always puzzles me that we ask that question when people are obviously not okay.] I walked out the door of the library and immediately made eye contact with her tear-filled, red-rimmed, pleading eyes. As soon as I did I knew I needed to talk to her; as soon as I knew that my first impulse was to squash that knowledge and walk on past pretending she wasn't sitting there crying her eyes out in public. I took a half step past her and immediately felt horrible about myself, so I stopped and asked, "Are you okay?" I asked if she needed anything. She gave a half-choked sob-laugh and said something about relationship stuff. I sympathized a little bit and tried to be comforting. She stood up and gave me, a complete stranger, a hug. I think it was more for herself than anything, but it felt like a thank you. I complimented her scarf and told her to have a good day. I hope she did have a good day, because I sure felt fantastic as I walked to the bus stop to catch the bus home.

6. I'm grateful for friends who are awesome enough to crawl under my bed to help me put it on risers. No kidding, my friend Wendy did this last night, and in a dress no less. That's friendship, people. Thankfully for my embarrassment level under my bed is clean, uncluttered, and dust-free so it wasn't a terrible ordeal for her.  

7. I'm grateful for gorgeous fall colors. I love fall. Right now the tree in our front yard is a stunning, intense yellow. Sadly most of the trees have lost most or all of their leaves, but a few brave souls are holding out. 

Presto Clean-o!

I spent my Halloween 2012 making this...

 ...into this.

If only the actual cleaning was as easy and instantaneous as the pictures make it seem. I still have my desk left to tackle, but first I have to figure out where to keep all my hoodies (which are currently draped over my desk chair). My closet is full to capacity; I certainly can't fit four bulky hoodies in there. The two peacoats in there already are pushing it.

You can't see in the first picture, but the bookcase that is now on the far wall used to be where the shoe crate is now. I liked it there better, but since I put my bed up on risers (which have a wider footprint than the bedframe) it doesn't fit in that space anymore. Boo. But I need the storage space under the bed more than I need my bookcase within arm's length.

Just FYI

In case you were wondering, if you're "smart" enough to wrap your chicken breasts in saranwrap before you freeze them, in an effort to save time so you won't have to unstick them when you want to use them, you will spend approximately 20 minutes trying to pry saranwrap out from in between the parts of the chicken that have been frozen together. You know, just a helpful life hint.

Yeah, Baby

Life and Timing and Lack of Control

Not long ago I was talking to my dad on the phone. With a very few, rare exceptions this is an activity I enjoy immensely. While I no longer think my dad knows everything, he has the advantage of years of experience and has struggled with many of the same things I do. On this particular occasion we were discussing life, and how it never seems to go the way I want/expect/hope/plan for it to. I am hard-pressed to come up with even a single example of life working out that way. On the other hand, the list of things that have gone in a completely different direction than I thought they would is long. 

During this talk with my dad, I brought up something a friend and I had been talking about previously, about how very little of what we want for ourselves seems to be what the Lord wants for us. We both confessed to being concerned about this -- are we too stubborn? too prideful? not in touch with the Spirit enough? Surely I should be concerned that every single big life-changing event in my life has included a long period of denial before I finally resigned myself to it, and that none of my life plans have unfolded remotely like I wanted them to.

Just a little while later, that same friend was teaching in church and shared this quote from this talk by Elder Dallin H. Oaks of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles:

"How fundamentally different my life is than I had sought to plan. My professional life has changed. My personal life has changed. But the commitment I made to the Lord -- to put Him first in my life and to be ready for whatever He would have me do -- has carried me through these changes of eternal importance... It never ceases to amaze me that even when we plan out our lives to match up what we think would please our Heavenly Father we very rarely get the plan quite right. It's a good thing he is willing to make changes to our plans even when we don't understand the changes. It allows us to grow and become so much more than we ever would have made of ourselves had we stuck to our original plan."

It struck me upon rereading it today: If an apostle of the Lord hasn't had his life work out the way he expected, I'm certainly in good company.

The difference is, I'm sure he has handled it with much more grace and faith than I have. Particularly lately. I have been struggling so much with finding purpose and direction in my life when I know whatever plans I make will ultimately just get interrupted or derailed. I struggle with flexibility and adapting myself and my goals to situations that are thrust upon me. I feel overwhelmed with the magnitude of the choices facing me and paralyzed at the thought of somehow screwing up and loosing opportunities I desperately want, personally and professionally. But, as my father has told me repeatedly throughout my life, making no choice is still making a choice. The irony of the situation is that by procrastinating or shelving making decisions I end up losing all the opportunities before me I'm delaying having to decide on and am forced to choose things I would never have wanted for myself.

The truth is that no one's life works out exactly the way they thought it would, because no one can know what's waiting for them just ahead, invisible around the bend in the road. We cannot control the decisions of others or the Lord's timing, both of which have tremendous impact on our lives.

However, Elder Oaks addressed this in another version of those same remarks:

"Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ prepares us for whatever life brings. This kind of faith prepares us to deal with life's opportunities -- to take advantage of those that are received and to persist through the disappointments of those that are lost. In the exercise of that faith, we should commit ourselves to the priorities and standards we will follow on matters we do not control and persist faithfully in those commitments, whatever happens to us because of the agency of others or the timing of the Lord. When we do this, we will have a constancy in our lives that will give us direction and peace. Whatever the circumstances beyond our control, our commitments and standards can be constant."

As much as I'm resisting what I'm being taught, I know that this is what I'm supposed to be learning. To let go of my rigid, detailed expectations and trust that the Lord knows what is best for me, and the best time for those best things for me.

"It is not enough that we are going in the right direction. The timing must be right, and if the time is not right, our actions should be adjusted to the Lord's timetable." 

Not that that faith and trust is a passive thing. It requires me to make those preparations so that I can take the opportunities that the Lord would have me pursue. And I also need to remember something my father said wrote:

"The lesson for me is that, certainly the Lord shapes us, but he does so chiefly within the circumstances we are handed and we choose. He helps us make the best choices based on his vision and our willingness to be shaped and to be patient. The lesson is that “this is a test,” and that as a test, it will hurt sometimes. In the end, however, the atonement is large enough to “wipe away all tears.”"

Sister Therapy

Amen.

Night Hiking: NOT a good idea

None of these are from this hike (my camera's  dead). They're from my mission.

It's officially fall here. It's been getting gradually cooler and the leaves have been starting to display hints of color for weeks, but this last Wednesday it was like someone suddenly flipped a switch and it was autumn in earnest. The daytime temperature dropped about fifteen degrees Fahrenheit and the nighttime temperatures dipped into the low forties. I woke up Thursday morning shivering (I only had one blanket on my bed and my bed is right under the window) with a cold nose for the first time since probably March. Since autumn is my favorite season this isn't really a bummer. I enjoy cardigans and sweaters and hoodies and I almost always wear long pants anyway.

But that's not the point of this post. Or rather, that's only to give you the necessary background for this post. Along with the gorgeous autumn leaves and the cooler temperatures comes the only thing I don't like about fall: less light. It gets darker faster. Well, a friend and I, hearing how gorgeous the canyon was with all the fall leaves, decided to leave right after work to go do a hike up there. We'd decided on a 3-miler that winds up the mountain, across the top of a small ridge, and back down again. Since it's not an up-and-down hike, we'd also have a 1.5 mile walk back to the car once we got back down the mountain: all together, 4.5 miles. We got there in pretty good time, and we started up about 5:30. The thing is, that hike is steep. And I am out of shape. Plus, I like to stop and admire the scenery from many different angles on the way up (and rest, because I'm very out of shape).

The rumors weren't wrong -- the trees were stunning and the views on the way up the trail and at the top were gorgeous, especially as the setting sun sunk behind the mountains. The problem is that we were only about halfway done by about 7, which is when (right now) the sun starts to set in earnest. On top of that, instead of hiking east to west so we'd be on the west side of the mountain coming down, we'd hiked west-to-east and were making our way down a very steep path in the rapidly fading light. And we hadn't thought to bring a flashlight. Or rather, we'd thought, but hadn't turned that thought into action. Let me tell you, coming down a mountain when you can barely see five feet in front of you is a little nerve-wracking. Thankfully (and with the help of some whispered prayers), we made it to the bottom right as full dark fell. That still left us with a 1.5 mile treck along the river at the bottom of the canyon to make it back to the car in the dark. With no flashlight.

Well, obviously this story ends well since I'm here to update about it. But it certainly wasn't my finest hour. Nor am I particularly anxious to reprise the experience. Once was one time too many. And it was great to sit in a car with headlights (the climb up did something painful to my left hip flexor, and the climb down made my knees and toes very unhappy). However, it was almost worth it for the chance to see the amazing fall foliage up close and breathe in the crisp, autumn air. On the other hand, my poor legs hate me today, particularly that hip flexor. I've been hobbling around like an old person and avoiding stairs (a challenge, since I live in the basement). Next time I'm going to take a sturdy walking stick with me. Gandalf's staff with the glow-y crystal would have been handy.

September Recap

Green Day released a song when I was in high school called "Wake Me Up When September Ends". Now, I've never wanted to sleep through September; it's one of my favorite months, and not just because I was born in it (though that does make it pretty awesome). But it does feel rather like I have slept through it, just because it's zoomed by. A lot has happened this month, actually -- I moved, I got my first grown-up job paycheck, my mom came to visit, I had a birthday, I got a second job, there was a temple open house and dedication, my best friend left on a mission, I made new friends, and I made old friends better friends. Oh, and I ripped my favorite pair of jeans. You know, got to make sure I get in all that really important information. So, since much of that I neglected to blog about, here's a short recap of September.

1 September: I moved out of my friend Jordanne's house, where I'd been living all summer with her and her family while I figured out what I was going to do with myself. I also got my very first grown-up job paycheck from IELI (albeit only a half of one, since I only worked half of August).

2 September: The high councilman over stake emergency preparedness asked me to accept a calling as the stake emergency preparedness committee co-chair.

3 September: I finally got all my boxes and the furniture in my new room unpacked and organized. And it was my first official paid holiday, too (yay for Labor Day!).

5 September: My mom flew into Utah and stopped by to see me for about three minutes on her way up to Bear Lake with her sisters and cousins for a reunion. She also dropped off a memory foam topper for my bed, which has radically altered my life for the better.

7 September: I left work early for the first time to go to Shannon's (my best friend's little sister) own endowment session. Afterwards, I met up with a friend to explore the Gallery Walk downtown, and we hung out at Coldstone afterwards, eating ice cream and listening to the screaming in the stadium during the Utah State vs. University of Utah game. (It was loud screaming, people. We could hear it a mile+ away. For the record, Utah State won. Go Aggies!)

10 September: My mom back from her reunion, she picked me, my brother, and my cousin up to drive over to Brigham City (about a half-hour away) for the Brigham City temple open house. We meet up with some of my dad's sisters and their kids (and one husband) to tour the temple before it's dedicated. It was absolutely gorgeous! My favorite part, though, was the ceilings in the sealing rooms. The picture below doesn't show it, but painted on the ceiling was a large circle of brilliant blue with flowering branches of peach blossoms. They were stunning.

Picture here from hjnews.com

After that, we drove to my aunt and uncle's house for a family dinner of delicious minestroni soup and fresh french bread (with donuts for dessert!). My uncle asked if I'd like to drive his manual 1963 Jeep, which in his words has "no power-anything" (no power steering, no power brakes, etc). I drove down to the river bottom and up and down a veeeery steep hill. That was a blast, even if my 15-year-old cousin drove on the way home. I only thought we were going to die about three times, so she did pretty well, I'd say. Riding standing up in the back was definitely a fun time.

11 September: I went to work, then went over to my grandma's house to spend time with her and my mom. We stopped by my friend Jordanne's house to say goodbye to her; she left for the Provo MTC and eventually a mission in Chile the next day.

12 September: I met up with a friend for Aggie Ice Cream after work to officially kick off my birthday celebration. Nothing in the world is as delicious as Aggie Blue Mint.

13 September: Happy 26th birthday to me! I woke up super early (630!) for some reason, but lay in bed until about 830 when my mom came over to make me a birthday breakfast of French breakfast muffins and orange juice. (Well, she bought the orange juice.) After that we spent a few hours shopping, and we made sure to stop by the Distribution Center so I could purchase my parents a present with my very first paycheck (a Korean tradition). She dropped me off at work, where this was waiting for me on my desk:

My boss had stopped by to pick up a brownie for me, and our director found a tea light, lit it, and sung happy birthday to me. The whole department signed a birthday card for me, too. My mom picked me up from work and took me over to my grandma's house were we made dinner and I put my candles on my brownies (I don't like cake so I have brownies instead). Most of my family that lives in the area stopped by for some birthday brownies and ice cream and some catching up. 26 candles makes for a lot of light!

14 September: I met with a couple looking for someone to watch their 8-week-old baby girl in the mornings. Since my office job is only 1-5, I was looking for a better way to spend my mornings than sleeping late. The couple seemed nice and I adored their baby girl at first glance, so I was hoping to get the job. After meeting with them, I met my mom and grandma at the temple and went to lunch downtown at Great Harvest, where we had fantastic sandwiches and a delicious cinnamon roll for dessert. We ate outside, and the weather was gorgeous!

That evening, I went for Korean food with a friend and saw The Amazing Spider-Man for the second time (the first time I went to go see it on the Fourth of July with my little brother). It was just as good the second time around.

15 September: I worked in the temple cafeteria for the lunch shift and had a great time with the two other girls who also volunteered. I also had my first emergency preparedness committee meeting, to prepare for the stake training meeting the next day.

18 September: I got a call from the couple I interviewed with the last Friday, and they offered me the job! I'm so excited to start in October. I think I'm really going to enjoy it, and I'll finally be working full-time, albeit at two different jobs.

21 September: The week was pretty slow and not very eventful. I met up with a friend for dinner and to explore our local (tiny) zoo. That's where I discovered this little gem I blogged about before. It was also the last day of summer, since the autumnal equinox was the next day.

23 September: Regular church was cancelled in order for us to be able to attend one of the dedicatory sessions of the Brigham City temple, which was broadcast to all the meetinghouses in the area. It was a special event, especially hearing President Boyd K. Packer talk about growing up in Brigham City and his memories of the city and how the temple came to be built.

26 September: I get a text from my mom in the afternoon that my little brother (the one who lives and goes to school here in the very same town that I live in) was being admitted to the hospital. They didn't know what it was yet, but it didn't seem too serious. That evening, I went to help my dad's mom put up some decorations for fall. While stepping off the top of a step ladder, I managed to rip my favorite pair of jeans. ~sad face~ But my grandma and I still had a good time, and the decorations look pretty good, if I do say so myself.

27 September: I went to visit the little brother in the hospital, and it appeared that he was anything but wasting away in sad loneliness, since he had an almost constant stream of vistors. We had a nice chat, and then I met up with a friend for gelata at Zeppe's (only the yummiest place ever).

28 September: Our director at work took the office staff (me and our secretary/adviser) out to lunch at a local (and delicious) Italian restaurant. After work, me and some girlfriends drove down to SLC to wander around the new City Creek Mall, have dinner at The Cheesecake Factory (so. much. food), and spend the night at the Marriott downtown. It was a fun getaway, and our stay was free, thanks to my friend's aunt's Marriott reward points.

The view from our room on the very top floor of the Marriott in downtown SLC

My ginormous dessert, the delicious warm apple crisp. It was good cold the next day, too.

29 September: And now to today! Whew! My girlfriends and I slept in, laid around chatting about life until checkout time, ate brunch at Denny's, and drove home. This evening was the General Relief Society Meeting, the very first one with Sister Burton (my mission president's wife) as General Relief Society president. She gave a great talk! I was only sad that I wasn't able to go with my friends to the meeting in the Conference Center in SLC. Sometimes not having a car is very inconvenient.

And there you go. Not exactly a short recap of my September, but hopefully it wasn't boring.

Versions of Me

One of my senior pictures, summer 2004

Have you ever gone back and looked at old pictures of yourself? I do, sometimes. We spend so much time looking out from behind our eyes that looking into them can feel like you're looking at someone else. 

Hanging out in a friend's kitchen, summer 2007

Sometimes, I look into the eyes of these old mes and remember how innocent and hopeful I was. Innocent of all the hard and challenging things that lay ahead of me, innocent of the disappointment of not facing those challenges head-on and overcoming them the way I would like to think I can. Hopeful that things would unfold the way I thought they would, hopeful that all those things I'd dreamed of were coming to me just the way I'd dreamed they would.

In the Young Adult fiction nook of our town library (my favorite place), fall 2007

The old me could have never have imagined the current me. In some ways we're very different people, and in others we're very much the same. I wonder if parts of her still linger, or if somehow the current version of ourselves gets "saved" over the older ones, like drafts of a Word document, and the only hints of those old versions of ourselves are the moments captured in photographs.

In the MTC, winter 2007

Happy Autumnal Equinox!

Fall leaves at the traditional Korean village just outside of Seoul, 2008.

Autumn has always been my favorite season, and this year is no exception. The weather has been cooling off lately, which gets me all excited. I've been trying to wear my sweaters for the last week or so. It's still too warm to really pull that off, but I know I shouldn't wish the warm temperatures away; come January I'll be begging for them to make a comeback. Until then, however, I'm reveling in the crisp evening air and the occasional smell of woodsmoke that drifts through my window.

A Short Laugh Break

I'm terribly behind on all the things that have been happening lately (I turned 26! my mom came to visit! I got another job!), but I thought I'd share this. I saw this at our local zoo tonight and got a laugh out of it. Sorry about the crappy picture, I still must rely on my dumbphone's 1 megapixel camera for all my picture-taking needs.

All Moved In

After procrastinating it for a few hours this morning, I finally dragged myself off my bed (where I had returned after getting up to make breakfast) to go do something about the huge mess in my room you saw in the pictures yesterday. I always require a sit-on-the-floor-and-look-around-in-an-overwhelmed-fashion period of adjustment before I tackle anything, and this was no different, but I finally managed to decide where I want my bookshelves (yes, I have two! ^_^) and get my books unpacked and put away. After that I took a break to watch a drama (hey, it's a holiday). But after a big push and some "just do it" mental chivvying, this is what my room looks like now. Here's the view looking straight in from the door (which opens, inconveniently, to the left).

That little nook is darned inconvenient, I must say. The dresser was originally in the closet, but the closet isn't very wide and I couldn't open the drawers because the closet doors didn't slide open wide enough. So it got relocated to The Nook. (I think I will use the capitals from now on.) I'd have it facing forward, but it's missing a bottom drawer, and that looks kinda weird from the door, so it's sideways.

This is the view from the wall to the right of the door, the one the dresser is on. It looks a little cramped with my second bookshelf on the right, between the foot of my bed and the closet...but there really isn't a good place to put it. So it's here. Which is good, because I like having my books within eyeshot / arm reach. This way I don't have to get out of bed to get a book I want to read. (And I just want you to know, I made my bed just to take this picture. I hope you appreciate my sacrifice.)

Here's the view of the head of my bed (whew, those satin pillowcases are shiny!), my desk, and my other bookshelf (all of which came with my room - the other, taller bookshelf is mine, though). The door swings in front of the bookshelf when it's open, but thankfully the bookshelf isn't very deep so I can open my door almost all the way.

...and here's my view while I'm lying in bed, looking toward my bookshelf and closet (see how narrow it is?). I apologize for the lighting and the bad quality of the pictures, but the only camera I have is the one on my phone, and it's not even a hi-tech smartphone. It's just a 1 megapixel-camera dumb phone with no zoom. Still, you get the idea, right?

 I still haven't hung any of my posters, and the pictures / artwork might move around based on how cool the landlords are with nail holes. I think I'd like to hang my mirror lengthwise on the wall opposite the window. I'm hoping if I do, it'll throw around some light and hopefully make things a little brighter. I'm lucky, though, that my window faces south, so it's not a dank, dark, gloomy place and stays pretty light all day long. Still, I'm a big natural light fan, and the more the better, right?

I'm not sure how well you can see them, but those are some of my glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling. My siblings gave them to me for Christmas years ago, and they've been on all my ceilings since. They're the last little touch that always makes every new place feel a little bit more like 'home'.

My New Place

Yesterday was a big day for me. It was my very first "grown-up job" payday, and it was also the day I moved into my new place (made possible by my first grown-up job payday). So come on in, and I'll give you a little tour of my place, all from the door of my room (please excuse the mess, and be careful on the stairs).

My room is in the basement, at the bottom of the stairs. Those stairs, to be precise. ~gestures to the picture below~ Those stairs lead from the side door. If you come straight down you enter my room; if you turn left on the landing and take two steps up, you're in the upstairs kitchen.

I say upstairs kitchen because there's also a downstairs one. The picture below on the left is the view from my door, facing out and left. There's also a table to the right, but it's blocked by the wall in this shot. To the left of the kitchen is the downstairs bathroom. Further to the left down a very short hall is the downstairs living room, and just off of that is a large bedroom shared by two of my roommates, Taylor and Megan (who are cousins). If you stand at my door and look out and right, you see the laundry / storage room.

This view below on the left is standing at my door looking to the left. The one on the right is standing at my door and looking straight ahead. The wall color doesn't look quite right, but it's a kind of dusky dark pink, with more purple than red in it. The other three walls are white painted paneling.

Here's the view from just inside my door toward the far left wall. That the wall my window and my bed are on. I've rearranged the furniture a little, and now the desk is against the same wall as the headboard, right up next to my bed. I'm typing this sitting at the head of my bed with my computer sitting on the desk. I'm going to pause just to complain a little bit about sleeping on a twin bed again. I sure do miss my lovely queen from my other house. ~heaves a heavy sigh~

And here's the view from the foot of my bed, looking back toward the door.

 So, really nothing too spectacular (and not nearly as nice as my last place - but cheaper!), but I'm hoping when I get everything unpacked and put away and organized and hopefully get all my art hung it will feel more like home. I have to admit that I felt a little lonely and sad last night. Jordanne and her family were very good to me and I'm going to miss them. Still, one has to be independent eventually, right?

When I get more settled in, I'll take some more pictures and show you how things look in that configuration. In the meantime, I'm excited that my mom will be coming into town this week and will be staying for my birthday!

My baby's back!

My baby (aka my Macbook) is sporting a sassy new hard drive (the nice people at Expercom were able to retrieve almost all of my files!) and it's back in my loving and anxious arms. After almost three weeks of separation, I have to say I'm pretty over the moon about it. ^_^