thoughts on saturday

how is this my first february post? february is the best, and i haven't even acknowledged it in social media yet! valentine's day is arguably the cutest holiday, this february has been pretty moderate, so far, weatherwise, and of course the coolest people have birthdays this month. i think having a february birthday is actually a pretty good thing, because it peps me up enough that i usually avoid the february doldrums that some people seem to suffer.

i'm feeling like it's almost time to read harry potter again. it's been too long since i've been immersed in harry potter, and my life could use a little bit of that magical wizarding world right now.

i keep buying notecards and thank you cards. i can't help it! why are there so many beautiful notes out there? is there any possible way that i can actually send all these out? i don't know that many people. and think of the postage costs! but, the thing is, i really do want to send notes and cards to people. so, if you want to get a beautiful, thoughtful note from me, just let me know. i have plenty of  stationery options to choose from :)

this week i got some cardio in by watching this amazing jane fonda aerobics video. i have a deep love for aerobics, but it's been awhile since i've done one of these. so classic! the outfits alone are priceless. but the best/worst part was that the next day i was so sore! my calves are still tight and it's been four days. that jane fonda, man--she knows how to get you working.

oh, the olympics. here again to take over my life. more later.

have i told you guys yet about my quilt? well, i'm quilting. i'm almost done with the top, too, and it's pretty awesome. i have to take frequent breaks or else i get overwhelmed by weird perfectionist tendencies (i don't get it--i am not really a perfectionist. i like to do a good job, yes, and i work hard, but i'm not someone who has to control every detail. but the sewing thing makes me really self-conscious, for some reason. that probably says some things about me, but let's not get into it.), but it's coming along nicely. i'm excited to get it done and have a real thing, that i sewed, to have and use.

oh, and can i just say how bummed i am that the third series of sherlock is over, just like that, and i am once again without benedict cumberbatch? three episodes is not enough! not nearly enough!

thoughts on thursday

today we bought tickets for the katy perry concert in salt lake on september 29th. i logged on for the facebook presale kind of on a whim, and i lucked out and found fairly good seats at a fairly good price. i literally could barely contain my excitement at work (yes, i took ten minutes at work to buy katy perry tickets. time theft? hopefully not.), so when somebody eventually asked me how i was doing, i blurted out that i'm going to the concert, just two weeks after we see one direction in los angeles. and my coworker said, you're really living the teenage dream, huh? and i was like you have no idea.

i went to institute with abby at the u on tuesday. i felt like a traitor. it was still pretty good though.

my room is pretty much done, for reals. look out for a room tour post soon. i'm pretty happy about it all, especially since there was so much that i ended up doing myself/with the help of others. i found this quote that has been inspiring me through this process:

if you wait until you have enough money to decorate and make your home your own it will never happen. if you wait until you can afford to buy everything new you are missing the point. it is the old, the new, the made, the hand-me-down, the collected, the worn (but loved) things in your home that make it your own. {stacy risenmay}

i am really proud of the made pieces in my room, from the embroidery to the headboard to the ikea nightstand that i am taking full credit for (i spent three hours building it--it was made by me). i also love the new things i got, like my bedding and my salty bison sign that i loooooove. and i revamped some of the old things i had. i'm in the market for more awesome hand-me-downs, though. i just saw one of my friends who inherited a sweet wingback chair from her grandma--i could really use a chair, people. and our house is in need of a couch. help a sister out.

and, in conclusion: i had no idea how much i missed sherlock until i was finally watching sherlock again tonight. seriously. but i'm still unsure how benedict cumberbatch could be both so sexy and also weirdly weird-looking at the same time. ah well. people probably say the same about me.

kinda weird, right? a little alien-esque.

but here? super sexy. it's also his voice, though, too. i guess he needs to be experienced with multiple senses. not in a weird way.

thoughts on thursday

for the past few weeks, i've been going to water aerobics a couple times a week with mom. i am, by far, the youngest person there, since probably most people my age are either at work or school or getting ready for one of those at 8 in the morning. just another aspect of this funny time in my life. but water aerobics is pretty cool. it's exercising without really realizing that you are. probably the best moment, though, was last week when we warmed up to a version of "mmmbop"--i'm fairly certain i was the only one who knew the song. rec center water aerobics: always a good time.

now that i have a job, i'm all of a sudden in the market for a car. it feels weird. so many things are happening! pretty soon, i'll have my own medical insurance and my own car payment and i'll be living in a place where i probably won't know anyone. life is crazy. but back to the car: i really wish i could get a little suv, but i don't know if that will happen. so yeah, that's going on. i'm looking to become a car owner.

i'm listening to the new avett brothers album on npr's first listen as i type. can i just say that it is one of the greatest saddnesses in my life right now that i most likely won't be able to see them anytime soon? so good.

i got this book/kit from amazon last week. i like to doodle, and i would love to be able to do some hand lettered, hand doodled art projects. since i had just gotten the kit the day before, my notes from conference are the most artistic they've ever been.

i downloaded the app duolingo earlier this week and now i'm learning how to speak french. on my phone. so far it's pretty cool, and the lessons get pretty advanced as you go along. i'm kind of excited about it. anybody want to speak french with me when i can actually hold a conversation? maybe next i'll try to master german.

last week the last season of the office went up on netflix, and, naturally, i watched it in about three days. and i cried in probably a third of the episodes. it's still really bittersweet that it's over, even though the ending was perfect.

why haven't i made this my cover photo yet??

i'm still deep into the old testament. i'm hoping things spice up a little bit soon, because numbers and deuteronomy and joshua, while informative, were pretty dry. but i will be vigilant!

i also need to recap conference, which was amazing. coming soon! in the meantime, life is still good. happy thursday!

that one time we saw hanson and it was amazing

i have been a hanson fan for a very long time. back in 1997, i kept hearing this catchy song, and then the djs would talk about these three brothers with long blond hair from oklahoma. i had to get in on that action, and eventually i was a full-fledged fanson. i got their first album, middle of nowhere, for christmas. i got their tour video for my birthday. i collected posters from j-14 and tiger beat and hung
them up in my room. i tracked their television appearances, from snl to good morning america to sabrina the teenage witch. and i've loved them ever since. i have every album, including their brilliant christmas offering, snowed in, and i've still never gotten
to see them live.

when i was younger, it was never really an option. they were pretty huge at one point, and we weren't really a concert-going family. then, though i was still a fan listening to the music they put out every couple years, i wasn't thinking about going to a show and being able to actually see these guys that i had loved for so long. i mean, as a boy-crazy preteen, i stayed up late in my room pretending i was a recently added member of hanson--asked to join because they were missing a beautiful dancer to spruce up their live performances. and also obviously zac was in love with me.


all of this is leading to the fact that, after 16 years of devotion, i finally got to see hanson live. i still a little bit can't believe that it actually happened, but my sisters and i bought tickets, went on the walk, and saw a hanson show--on berg's birthday, of all things! i could write so much about the details--how almost everyone in the audience was a female in her mid- to late-twenties or early-thirties (except for those random older people that creeped us out), how we met a hanson fan from slovakia, also a
first-time concert-goer, how i couldn't hear the next day, how everyone sang along to every song. it was seriously a dream come true for me, and i know how silly that sounds. after so many daydreams, i was a tiny bit sad that all of them are married and therefore not looking in the audience for a potential mate, which was always the way i envisioned getting into the inner circle, but i got over it ;)

in a word, it was great. amazing, even. nay, fantastic. no, more: exceptional. i might go so far as to say it was the greatest concert i've been to, and i saw taylor swift from the pit. for me, this concert was perfect. and i would go again in a second. thanks for going with me, sisters! thanks for being born, berg! and thanks, hanson, for still being my favorite band of all time. fanson forever.

we "took the walk"--we met up with zac and taylor a few hours before the show and walked a mile around salt lake barefoot. they do this before every show--they donate a dollar for every person who walks. and this is how close i got to zac. close enough to give him a little pat on the butt, if i had wanted.

thoughts on tuesday

--i just finished alma in the book of mormon challenge--i'm on track to finish at the end of the month, and it has been pretty awesome. one thing i've learned is that it isn't impossible to be spending a good amount of time in the scriptures every day. i think eventually i won't have this much down time, but setting aside time will be doable.

--i'm obsessed with
 this song:

this video:

and this album:

--when you move, you care a lot less about the stuff you've been carrying around for years. things that had significance at some point, or especially the stuff that had little to no significance, seems fit for nothing but the dumpster or, for the lucky ones, the d.i. box. but even after getting rid of bags and bags of my stuff, i still had so much to move.

as for moving itself, it wasn't as emotional as i thought it would be. if i start thinking about it too much i tear up, but i've been okay. probably when i don't go back to provo in a few weeks or when i move to a completely new place in salt lake it will really begin to sink in. but, i did try to celebrate provo life by going to some of my favorite haunts, which were mainly restaurants. you know how it is. my last meal as a provo resident? brick oven. my mom thought all of these "last meals" were pretty silly, since there's a 100% possibility that i'll go to all of them again, probably in the next few weeks even. but it won't really be the same.

i don't live in provo anymore.

--i've been doing some creative workouts the past couple days, including some treadmill time, some ab work, and, my personal favorite, the exercise ball aka fitness orb.

here's to getting toned!

--i meant to write a bunch of great flashback type posts about study abroad, taking things from my journal, especially that day that i was stranded in the dublin airport, which was also, obviously, pre-blog. but, that didn't happen, at least not in the timeline i planned. so maybe that story will be told sometime.

--also, today's my half birthday. how did it get to be august, the middle of august no less? time marches on.

it feels like a perfect night to hang out with taylor aka the coolest thing to ever happen to us

when we first heard that taylor was coming to salt lake again, we knew that, as with her two previous tours, we needed to go. we got online at the appointed time...and could not get tickets. it was pretty devastating. the concert sold out in like less than a minute, so it felt like we didn't even have a chance. and we said, well, it will be fine if we don't get to go.

after christmas, nana gave each of us a generous gift and told us to spend it on something meaningful, not just food or clothes or something temporary. cut to one of my greatest ideas: we could put that money toward tickets for the concert, which were on sale for outrageous prices online. so eventually we found three tickets together and we were going.

fast forward five months. for the past few weeks, we've been diligently looking up ways to meet taylor, watching videos, listening to the set list, planning our outfits, making posters, and reading all about her and this tour.

finally, the day came. june 1st. we got to the arena way early, in an attempt to catch the attention of someone who might see how awesome we are and let us go to club red, where you get to meet taylor after the concert.

us in front of one of the probably 30 semis/buses lining the block next to the arena.

nothing happened while we walked around for 2 and a half hours before the doors opened except that we saw other fans, though none who were quite as cute as we were. when we finally got in, we went straight to the t-shirt counter--the biggest mistake we made at the fearless tour concert was not getting a sweet tour shirt, and we will never make that error again. then we went up to our seats, which ended up being even deeper in the nosebleeds than we originally thought. but, we were happy to be there, so we settled in, singing and dancing and waving our posters anyway.

a little before 7, the first opener, joel crouse, started his set. he was pretty good, even though we didn't know any of his music. next was ed sheeran, which i was excited about. for whatever reason, we were the only ones in our section standing up and dancing and just basically looking like we were having fun. after ed played "lego house," we were waiting for the next song, and meredith said, look, there's taylor's mom! i looked, and, yeah, there she was a the bottom of our section inside the portal. (we knew all about mama swift from all of our research--she walks around the venue looking for people to bring down to the floor. so it was a big deal to see her.) i yelled, ANDREA! to get her attention, but at the same moment we realized that there was a woman at the end of our row telling us to grab our stuff and come with her.

it happened just the way we had heard it would--we ran down the stairs and there was taylor swift's mom, asking if we wanted to get a little closer. so we were in shock for the next ten minutes as she gathered a few more devoted fans with stinky seats to take down to the pit.

apparently i didn't get the memo that we were doing cute faces, not excited faces.

i still can't believe this happened. and don't we look like we could be part of the family?

 the whole thing was so surreal. we got our wristbands, took a picture with mama swift, and went backstage to get to the pit. ed sheeran was finishing his set, and we were so close to him--i might have shed my first tears at that point.

the rest of the concert passed by in a blur. we were within arm's reach of taylor herself for much of the concert, which was amazing in its own right. but it was made even better by the fact the we had been chosen out of the audience, out of the nosebleeds, by taylor swift's mom. not a ton of people can say that. and it was all because we were dancing and having fun. and maybe also because of a lot of prayer. and also because of nana.

in the pit

that bright white spot behind us is taylor, and once again i ruined the cuteness of the picture.

yeah, she was that close.

bah, looking at these brings it all back again. it was so amazing! sadly, we didn't get to touch her or meet her, but our experience was the next best thing. some things about the pit, though:

1. we were still pretty much the only ones dancing, and some people didn't even know all the words, which was really weird to me. 
2. being so close, you want to document it. but having the camera or the phone in front of your face kind of takes away from the actual lived experience. so we decided fairly early on that we weren't going to try to document everything. 
3. down in the pit we often had a really great view of her back. and often, if we were looking at taylor upstage, we were missing what was happening downstage with the band and dancers and stage. so we weren't always getting the full effect. but, small price to pay for some of the best seats in the house.
4. we were standing the whole time, and it was blazing hot down there. but that probably would have been pretty much the same whether we were sitting up in the rafters or not.

all in all, even with some drawbacks, the show was incredible and we had a once-in-a-lifetime experience. we were up close and personal with taylor, her band, and her dancers, and we met her mom. it was a perfect night!

a brief tribute to alex trebek

my love of jeopardy runs pretty deep. i go through spurts of watching, but i always come back to it. it's been a part of my life for about as long as i can remember, and a lot of my memories are tied up in alex trebek.

before yesterday, when i visited his wikipedia page, my knowledge about alex was limited to what i saw on episodes of jeopardy. just from that exposure, i gathered that he is intelligent, cultured, and genial. if i were ever to appear on a game show, my first choice would be jeopardy, and i would be not a little starstruck if i got to meet alex. but hopefully i wouldn't be weird and awkward like some of those contestants. hopefully i would blow him away with my storehouse of useful and useless knowledge.

anyway, alex trebek is great. a treasure, if you will. a canadian, naturalized-american treasure. let's go to the video.

(apparently some people think he's a jerk--from what i've seen, i obviously do not share that opinion. he's just awesome. and jeopardy is the best too.)

the end of the office (may contain spoilers)

 

well, it's done. the office is over. i don't know what to do with myself.

the finale itself was perfect, for me. i laughed, i cried, i screamed--it was perfect. i loved seeing how all of the stories were wrapped up, how the characters have progressed. i didn't want the episode to end, but, if it had to, they did it in such a perfect way.

i jumped out of my seat and shrieked when michael came back, which meant i missed the "that's what she said" until the next morning when i was looking up recaps.

this was one of my favorite quotes from a review from vulture, and i think it sums up my feelings about the office in general pretty well:

In fact, these two [final] episodes were so consistently fine — goofy, clever, surprising, and unaffectedly emotional — that they reinforced the notion that the relationship between a show and a viewer really is a relationship, or at least a self-contained, virtual version of a relationship. There are great times, okay times, and bad times. Sometimes you’re more attentive or affectionate or otherwise invested than other times.  Sometimes you check out emotionally, or give up, then sort of wander back into it for whatever reason and start caring again — really caring, to the point where you feel a bit guilty for not having appreciated its better qualities during the hard times. But if the relationship is fundamentally sound — if, for the most part, it’s making you happy, or at least content — then you consider it time well-spent and become increasingly sad when an irrevocable end draws near. “It’s like a long book that you never want to end, and you’re fine with that, because you just never, ever want to leave it,” Pam told the audience at the panel discussion during last night’s finale. (from matt zoller seitz of vulture)

it's hard to even think about how much i'm going to miss these characters and this universe. it sounds stupid that a tv show has affected me so much, but it's true. and i can't imagine loving any other show more than this one. thanks, office staff: writers, creators, cast. it was great for me. {insert joke here}

thoughts on saturday

first of all, it's 45 degrees right now. whenever i write "degrees," i always want to say "dees-grees," like rick dees, the legendary dj, because i used to listen to "rick dees and the weekly top 40" on kiis fm every saturday when i was growing up. those were the days. but i digress. this time of the year is one of my favorites, when it is just starting to warm up and you don't have to wear a coat but it is still breezy and a little chilly so you aren't sweaty and hot. probably it will get cold again before spring really hits, but i'm going with the sun for now.

last night, i went to smith's for some provisions (read: cpk pizza and trix cereal). the provo smith's on a weekend night is always an adventure. as i was walking out, a girl and a guy were walking in. the girl veered toward me and said, "oh, your hair is so thick. it's so pretty." and then walked away. it was really weird and really funny at the same time.

this is a cool essay, because 1) the author ghost-wrote a ton of Sweet Valley High books, which, how awesome is that? and 2) she captures exactly how i feel about graduate school sometimes all the time:

How different were any of us, despite our attenuated lives as graduate students, from anybody else? The darkest of dark secrets: how much I hadn’t read, and didn’t know. How little I felt I had to say that was different, or new, or mattered.
Your task, my thesis advisor in Oxford told my tutorial partner and me, is to be original. Your thesis won’t pass otherwise.
I haunted the bookshops, certain my argument had already been written. Afraid to ask him: is original the same thing as different? As important, or relevant, or even good?

people should watch alias. it's so great. i just finished the fourth season, and i think it might be my favorite. and jennifer garner is awesome, you guys. i'm grateful argo was nominated for stuff this year, only because it meant jennifer garner went places looking amazing.

see what i mean?

and, finally, we heard this song at the cougarettes concert and we've been obsessed with it since then. when i saw the show the second time, i decided the dance to this song was my favorite. (couldn't get the real video to play, so you have to look at teen wolf, apparently.)

have a great weekend!

thoughts on saturday

i think my feet have shrunk over the past year or so. is that normal? i mean, it's not really a problem, but it's kind of weird, right?

who would have ever thought that i would watch, much less love, pretty little liars and the vampire diaries? i was a firm non-believer and facebooker-scorner. but, although they are pretty dumb sometimes, they are both actually pretty awesome, too. i mean, how do we still, after three seasons of pll, not know who A is (i've only seen up to the end of season 3 because hulu plus and abc family apparently don't like each other all that much)? and why is the vampire thing still happening, and i'm into it? and boone from lost is actually really hilarious and great?

i have a bunch of posts half-written because i haven't wanted to finish them because i know it's going to take a while. so...yeah.

this semester, all of my classes and work overlap. the things i'm learning about in my classes come up in my research, which is cool. too bad i can't really make a project out of all that, though.

it's almost valentine's day, which is one of my favorite holidays. more on that later.

i've used my all-sports pass more this year than i have any other year. men's volleyball=so awesome. have i said before that volleyball players have the most attractive physiques? they are tall and muscly, but not too muscly. anyway, that's all i have to say about that.

and also this

oh, and here's another reason these olympics are so good:

good times

reading this list took me back to the good ol' days. have fun reminiscing during these crazy times. i sure did.

and, one of the amazing songs i've been listening to these days.

i have little private dance parties when i go to the library because my studying mix is so good. one bright spot to going to the library, i guess.

a shrine to my former shrine

when i was younger, i, like many tween/teen girls, was rather boy crazy. (who am i kidding, really? i'm still pretty boy crazy.) i have had crushes on many boys who were actually in my life, like the one who in kindergarten slammed my face into the ground or the one in my ward who i swooned over every time he blessed the sacrament or came to home teach. but i, like many tween/teen girls, have also had many celebrity crushes. and i put their pictures on the wall above my bed so they would be near me always.

i got nostalgic for those good ol' days of shrine-making and magazine-hoarding when i was listening to the new incubus album last weekend. lead singer brandon boyd was on my wall, and i still think he is very attractive. and i love his voice and his music. he writes lyrics like "i dig my toes into the sand/the ocean looks like a thousand diamonds strewn across a blue blanket/ i lean against the wind/pretend that i am weightless/ and in this moment i am happy." listening to him the other day took me back to the days when i would listen to morning view and pretend i met the band and he fell in love with me. does that sound a little crazy? possibly. anyway, this was one of the swoon-worthy pictures taped to my wall.

anyone remember the magazine ym? i forgot about it until today.

also this one.

whew. love that guy. and apparently he likes to go shirtless. sorry about that, guys. so anyway, thinking about brandon boyd reminded me of all the other unreachables who made my wall. there was tom welling, of smallville fame.

heath ledger in the poster for a knight's tale. i ripped this out of a magazine and put it up on my wall.

what girl growing up in the 90s didn't have a huge thing for jtt? i sure did. i ate up those teen magazines like tiger beat if only for the full size posters of him and devon sawa. and i'm pretty certain that this ad graced my wall at some point. that hair!

of course, hanson. and, though i loved them even when they had long, somewhat-greasy-looking hair, i loved them even more when they cut their hair and started dressing with some style. i had many a late night, dancing and singing in front of my mirror, pretending i went to one of their concerts and they saw me and i joined the band and eventually zac fell for me.

i don't put pictures of hot celebrities on my wall anymore, maybe because i don't spend quite so much time thinking about hot celebrities anymore. times were simpler then.

much deserved harry potter post

so, it's over, i guess. and it's taken me a few days to write this post, maybe because i've been in denial. (or maybe because i've just been busy doing other things.)

anyway. i saw the last movie on friday afternoon with little bro carter, which was lovely, because we both love HP and we didn't even have to stay up until all hours of the night and suffer from (further) sleep deprivation. i do wish berg could have come though--dang girl's camp! i pretty much knew i was going to lose it through the course of the movie. and i did. as soon as harry and the gang stepped back into hogwarts for the big search and battle, i was a goner. i bawled through the rest of the movie.

i've talked to some people since friday, though, and they were saying that this last movie didn't have as much of an emotional pull on them, or at least that, if they did have an emotional reaction, it was based on their own feelings about the series, not necessarily how the movie was making them feel. i guess that's a valid point. much of my reaction was based on how much i love harry potter and how crazy it is that i've basically grown up with it and now these kids are all grown up too and now it's over. but then i realized that i don't really care if it was the movie or if it was just me. the movie and the series are still awesome, and i don't think my feelings are going to change all that much even without the buildup of seeing the last movie on its opening day.

thinking about harry potter over the last couple weeks has reminded me just how great literature is and how much i love it. i mean, specifically, i love harry potter. (have i said that already?) j.k. rowling is amazing and i want to meet her someday. and i'm interested to see what will go down and come out with this whole pottermore thing. but, in general, how awesome is it that a series of books inspired all of this craziness? literature can do pretty amazing things. i know that my kids are definitely going to be reading harry potter.

another plus is that, after i watched all the movies, my thoughts were totally in a british accent. gotta love it!

and look how crazy this is!

they were so adorable and little, and now they're all big and grown up. i hope they all turn out okay and don't do dumb stuff. because that would be sad.

and, the biggest surprise of all: neville is hot! who would have thought he would be the most attractive of the hogwarts guys?

wow. i have a newfound love for neville. although he is pretty great in the last book. and i'm glad the movie kinda hooked him up with luna at the end. they are both awesome.

so, even though the last movie is out and everything is technically "over," i for one am not going to let harry potter mania die. people are still going to have to listen to me talk about the books and the movies and how much i love them and how awkward daniel radcliffe is whenever he kisses anybody.

thanks for the memories, j.k.

not one of my best ideas

it may have been a mistake to immerse myself in harry potter this week. not only does it make me want to avoid everything i actually need to do, it's also making me really sad and nostalgic.

i'm still trying to sort it all out, and i think harry and ol' j.k. deserve a proper post, so more on this later.