the view from the shard

i came across this trivia question yesterday: "what is the tallest building in london?"

i tried a couple i thought it might be, but london isn't really known for skyscrapers, so i came up empty. the answer was then revealed to be "the shard." the shard? i thought. that doesn't sound familiar at all.

so i looked it up.

it's that thing. 72 inhabitable floors, panoramic views of the city, the tallest building in the european union. construction began in early 2009; the building officially opened to the public in february of this year.

so, this whole building was built after i was in london. the shard doesn't figure into my memories of london at all. there's a huge part of the london skyline that i haven't seen in person.

this makes me want to cry, and the panoramas i looked up didn't help much, either.

oh well. all of this just means that i need to go back, sooner rather than later, preferably.

today i...

turned in two papers, early, i might add. i was in the zone, thankfully.

got back together with the library. we've been off basically all semester, but the library was good to me today.

watched the "goodbye michael" episode of the office and remembered how incredibly good it was. i cried, sitting in my little carrel, and i thought about how much i'm sure i will cry during the series finale in a few weeks.

wore a neon shirt and loved it.

watched a sweet mormon message about living up to our privileges. (i made a goal to watch a talk every day--when i don't have time for a talk, it's a mormon message.)

went to chipotle for dinner. in sandy. we really need one of those down here.

for a day that i thought would be spent entirely in the library stressing over papers, this one turned out to be pretty good.

anyone seen this?

the church is awesome. and, this is kind of earth day appropriate, right? maybe i'll bring it out again for father's day.

happy earth day!

things i like about the earth:
rainy days
sunny days
tulips
other colorful flowers
swinging in a hammock beneath the leafy trees
walking on a nice day
breezes
nature walks and pondering
arches
oceans and beaches
rainbows--i really love rainbows
delicious food like artichokes and bread (which come from the earth...)
cumulus clouds (does this count as being from earth? i say yes.)
mountains
gardens
trees
apples and oranges and grapes and cherries and strawberries
strawberry days
peach shakes
mud
puddles
butterflies
lady bugs, like the one that landed on me last week
sand
red rocks
foliage
green
air
photosynthesis
water--i really like water
icicles
snowflakes
lakes
islands
rainforest, including the canopy
rivers
swimming
hiking
seasons

the earth is pretty great. i hope i see the earth day car today. will you do anything to celebrate?

crushing

last year, i tried to make a comprehensive list of all the boys i've ever liked. this was right on the heels of 1) my essay class and 2) my reading of bossypants and is everyone hanging out without me?. i thought a list like this would be useful when i eventually write my autobiography/memoirs/collection of essays.

anyway, this list. it's pretty lengthy. it starts in kindergarten. i had a preschool crush but i can't remember his name, so i started things off with wally, who also has the distinction of being the only crush who ever made me bleed (thanks to slamming my face into the classroom floor...i guess i liked the bad boys back then). and, of course, the list comes up to the present. over half of my total crushes come from these crazy college years.

it's been a while since i had a really good crush. this is both a good thing and a not-so-good thing. on one hand, it means i can actually get things done. but on the prospects-for-marriage front, it's not really that fun.

at these times, i usually say to myself, you need a good crush to take your mind off of the crazy other stuff that is going on in your life.

and then, typically, the heavens are opened and i am blessed with a big ol' ginormous crush. prayers are answered, am i right?

but it is often a large case of "be-careful-what-you-wish-for"-itis, because a crush for me usually ends up taking over my life. i want to be with the person all the time, i'm thinking about him all the time, i hope he's thinking about me all or at least some of the time, i start to daydream about how it will be if/when we start dating. it can get a little overwhelming, for me and for the guy, if he ever knew.

a boy once told me that he didn't really have crushes. it was a foreign concept to him. this, in turn, was incomprehensible to me. how do you like someone then? what does it feel like when you think about that person? or do you not really think about them? does that mean you are so easily able to compartmentalize your feelings that your day-to-day life isn't really affected at all? thinking about it now, maybe he just hadn't found the person who would make him feel the flutter of a crush.

this is what came up when i googled "exhilarating." i think it sums things up pretty well.

i'm not sure if i'm that point again where i'm ready. i guess i can't really control it, but crushing on someone is exhausting and exhilarating at the same time. maybe that crushless boy has all the luck.

things i will miss about the provo smith's

• a wide variety of hairstyles and other head-coverings
• running into (or sometimes avoiding) people you know literally every time you go in, which is usually between 9pm and midnight
• people in their pajamas 
• so many self-checkout stations!
• chocolate milk always being sold out--just kidding, i won't miss that.
• mini carts that are the perfect size for a college student buying a random array of groceries because smith's is convenient, not affordable
• aisle signs in english and spanish

smith's in an all-around entertaining provo hangout, especially the closer you get to midnight. what will i do when i leave?

things a lifelong love of english has taught me

i've loved english/language arts as long as i can remember. this stemmed from a love of reading, of course, but that's not the only part of it that i love. i resisted for a couple years, trying to deny my love of language and literature and my eventual love of teaching, but i couldn't hold out for long. here are some things that have come in handy throughout my life as a result of my studies.

• "every slaughtered syllable is a good deed." (mr. phillips, 11th grade)
• latin and greek word parts (mrs. hippie, 10th grade)
• spelling is awesome and will get you far in life--but spelling bees are nerve-wracking (mr. harman, 6th grade; mrs. adams, 5th grade)
• i will pretty much read anything. i won't like or love or even remember all of it, but i will try my best to read all of it. it is a rare occasion when i don't finish a reading, if it's a novel at least. don't ask me to like and, presumably, finish a bunch of poetry. blech. (disdain of poetry--susan howe, winter 2008, i think...that was a long time ago.)
• british literature, especially victorian novels, are my go-to (lorraine wood, winter 2009)
• shakespeare is king, and hamlet is particularly important (pretty much every english teacher ever, especially mrs. riley, 12th grade)
• even though i love to write, i'm not sure i have the imagination to do it for real. but that doesn't mean i haven't tried (or won't try again) (creative writing classes through the years, but mostly pat madden, fall 2011. though that essay class did give me the most hope and the best tools for future creative writing.)
• i really love vocabulary (mrs. adams, mr. phillips, mrs. gregg)
• grammar is important no matter how boring it seems (debbie harrison, winter 2010)
• really beautiful writing is sometimes more important to me than story--this semester i read edith wharton's the custom of the country. the story is pretty fascinating, full of intrigue, with an anti-heroine you love to hate and a transatlantic plotline, but what really amazed me was wharton's prose, lines like these:

  words were flashing like brilliant birds through the boughs overhead; he had but to wave his magic wand to have them flutter down to him. only they were so beautiful up there, weaving their fantastic flights against the blue, that it was pleasanter, for the moment, to watch them and let the wand lie.

  there are probably more lessons, though not including how to get this aligned all the way to the left again--i'm definitely not in computer science. sometimes i question this decision i've made to devote my studies to this discipline that can feel stale, but then i remember that it has brought me a lot of joy and taught me some things that have made me who i am. this is starting to sound cheesy, so i guess i'll wrap it up and go finish my peer review for tomorrow :)

the big move

the time has come. after seven years, i'm moving out of provo.

well, not quite yet--after the summer. i've gotta have one more provo summer. what else is the pass of all passes for?

but in the fall, i'm heading up to salt lake. i'm breaking up the beesley sisters, starting a new chapter, moving on. it's time.

so, i'm kind of on the lookout. it's hard to know where to look for housing, so any advice is welcome :) i feel like it's a little too early to find somewhere for the fall, but i really have no idea what the possibilities are.

anybody up for partying with me in salt lake come september? 

conference report

once again, conference was awesome. i came with some questions, and, like always, i received some answers, which is always a cool experience.

i loved that one of the themes of conference this time was the family, without becoming embroiled in the often bitter and attacking debates that sometimes emerge out of such discussions. there is doctrine we accept, doctrine we believe to have come from God himself; talks that dealt with these subjects presented the doctrine in that light.

i am so grateful for the prophet and other leaders of the church who are authorized to receive and proclaim the word of God. i can't wait to study the talks from the last weekend!

this week in review

monday
i had a meeting with one of my professors, and it was very productive, i thought. i've met with a lot of professors during my time here at byu, and this particular one is one of the best i've run into because 1) he is helpful and 2) i feel like he actually wants to listen to my ideas, which is why he is helpful. i want to be a teacher like that. it's more common to go into a professor's office and feel like the person is simply enduring your time together rather than trying to give constructive feedback. (this relates to one of my biggest beefs with my master's program: they try to give us (me) too much independence--i'm not a seasoned scholar! sure, i've written a ton of papers, but i'm not a genius-idea machine! i still need help! everyone still needs help!)

tuesday
i received a job offer from sylvan learning center in american fork. i interviewed a few weeks ago and finally heard back. so, for the summer and maybe beyond, i'll be working as an ACT instructor and a regular classroom instructor. as part of the interview process, i had to take a practice ACT, and boy, am i rusty on some of those math concepts. i'm secretly kind of pumped to re-learn it, though. in general, i'm pretty excited, mostly because i'm anxious to be teaching again. i start training next week.

wednesday
last zumba class of the semester :( we don't start up again until the end of april, which means i'm going to be doing some just dance and zumba workouts on my own over the next month. and maybe some hip hop abs.

thursday
after class, i went to the bookstore in the hopes of finding some of my journals, since conference is almost upon us and i need new writing material. i've been checking every so often over the past year or so, so i wasn't super hopeful that i would find what i was looking for. but it was my lucky day! i found three medium sized notebooks, each on sale for 6 bucks! so awesome!

we also went to berg's intramural basketball game last night. it was their second tournament game, and, sadly, they lost, but it was a good effort. i'm pretty proud of berg for being an intramural-er, since i was never brave enough to get out there and perform on a team. sure, she's a little afraid to dribble, but i probably would have been, too, and she's the one who's actually doing it.

friday
for months, since the brigham city temple dedication, i have been searching for this bag of study abroad paraphernalia which contains, among many other things, a handkerchief that i bought in one of our first stops, the lovely little town of adare, ireland. i looked everywhere for that bag of stuff, and i couldn't find it. it wasn't at home, it wasn't in provo. i was very sad. the other night, i was thinking about some of the other stuff in the bag and getting even more sad. anyway, friday meredith and i decided to start the process of cleaning out the basement so we could bring stuff home this weekend, and i thought that was my last chance to find the bag. no luck. it wasn't in any of the bins down there. back in our room, i said to meredith, well, i think that stuff is lost. i don't know where else to look. about five minutes later, i decided to look under my bed, at her prompting. lo and behold, that sneaky grey bag from the jewel house, stuffed with all sorts of memories from a six week tour of the british isles, was hiding in a bin under my bed. best day ever!

later that day, we went to the shabby apple trunk show, where i got two adorable dresses for the price of about 2/3 of one. steal of a deal!

saturday/sunday
one word: conference! (more on that later)

to my future children: installment four

i want you to figure out who you are and what you like for yourself, so i'll try as hard as i can to not force you to figure those things out before you are ready. i'll try to teach you what it means to be a good and productive person and member of the church, but, as far as your own unique personality goes, i'll do what i can to let you develop that on your own. (and hopefully you'll turn out pretty great, not weird or creepy :))

we'll have family scripture study. as much as i hated getting up even earlier during my school years to read (and as much as i hate to admit this, i kind of miss getting up so early back then. i will probably regret saying this in the future, but i got so much done then. but anyway.), it's good for you to have some experience reading the book of mormon even when you don't quite get it yet.

and, you will know that, though we love all of heavenly father's children, marriage is a sacred union between a man and a woman. i don't know what the world will believe or teach about this when you are growing up, but i'm going to make sure you know what's up and what we believe/know.