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 :)