thoughts on thursday

attending a dance party  the other night really reminded me how much i love dance parties. it has been way too long since i've danced with such abandon :) one of the downsides to my sugarhouse life is that there aren't nearly enough dance parties. like, zero, that i know of. dance parties are great, people.

attending a dance party the other night also reminded me why i love provo. so many of my good friends are there, people that i don't see all the time but that really know me. it was good to be back adn have one of those classic provo nights, where you are surrounded by fun people and just living the twentysomething life.

i'm getting worried that being at work is actually making me sick. i feel fine when i'm at home and the first hour or two at work, but then i just start feeling gross--feverish, headachy, weak, dizzy. what the heck? probably what this means is that i just need to go to the doctor and get a real diagnosis for a real problem, but that's a little scarier than thinking that my job is slowly killing me :) so maybe one of these days i'll make it to a qualified physician's office and find out what's really wrong with me.

i started getting birchbox last month, and it's pretty cool so far. each month they send you samples of various beauty and health products to try. then if you want to buy the full-size version, you can find it on the website. i don't plan on buying a ton of the full-size products, because some of them are definitely higher end than i need, but it's fun trying out new products. this month i got a mini nail polish, black eyeliner, and a delish granola bar with maple syrup and pumpkin seeds. awesome, right?


a couple weeks ago, i bought if you wait, london grammar's debut album. i'm OBSESSED with it. wikipedia describes it as "trip-hop", which is kind of amazing, and it is that type of hard-to-define music that is also really beautiful and catchy. give it a listen, if you are so inclined.

and there you have it! thoughts that mean mostly nothing :)

happy casimir pulaski day!

do something extra-mustachioed today in celebration :)

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.

starting the season: the messiah sing-in

who am i kidding, though: the season actually started weeks ago. technicalities.

when i was a teenager, our stake in california performed selections from handel's messiah a couple christmases in a row. it was so fun learning the crazy choruses and then singing as a congregation about the birth and life of the savior. the messiah is an amazing piece of music, and i love hearing it performed.

a lot of communities host messiah sing-ins, where an orchestra or symphony plays and the audience sings the choruses, with performances by featured soloists. for years (seriously, years) i have been looking into the sing-in at abravanel hall, but i either miss it by a few days or we have some set-in-stone prior engagement that night. this year, even though the performance fell on the day we got home from an exhausting trip to disneyland, i convinced my mom and sister to come with me.

it was the perfect way to start the month. the music was beautiful, the setting was wonderful, the company was splendid. some of the choruses were new to us, but that was just motivation to learn them better for next year. in a nutshell, i will totally go again.

this picture taken illegally during the performance...

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.

a full fourth

this year, the holiday was dedicated to spending time with family and generally having a lot of fun. we went to the north salt lake fireworks extravaganza, like always, and they were amazing. a little girl in our ward, and one of mom's best friends, ruby, sat by me during the fireworks show, which made it all even more entertaining :) can we add some kids to our family already or what?

on the morning of the fourth, we crawled out of bed for the annual foxhill ward fourth of july breakfast. the food was plentiful, and we had a beesley family first when five of us, everyone minus dad, performed the star spangled banner. i think this could be the beginning of a wonderful and successful career for the star spangled beesleys.

that night, we headed down to provo for the stadium of fire. how we convinced dad to get us tickets for that, i still don't know, but it was awesome. sure, it was hot, and we were packed into the bleachers like shoes in my suitcase, but we still had fun. at least, i did. as the concert approached, i started to get more and more excited to see kelly clarkson. i don't consider myself to be a huge kelly fan, but i realized, in the days leading up to the show, that i know a lot of her songs, and most of them i actually really like. so her set was pretty great--i knew every song, and she even played this duet, originally sung with jason aldean, that we are obsessed with.

 

 she was so good, singing her heart out. it was altogether great. i would definitely see her again, and even though it took us about an hour to get out of the parking lot (and even though we had talked about ways to avoid all of that...), i would totally go to stadium of fire again, depending on the performer.

and that was my fourth! happy birthday, america!

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!

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!

purchased, finally

as of tonight, we are going to taylor swift in june.

and it will be amazing and epic.

thanks, nana!

mid-december

you know the magic of the season is in full swing when you are scatting "sleigh ride" in the car and you reach over to turn on fm100 and what do you happen to hear in real life? yeah, "sleigh ride".

also when you get a gorgeous royal purple top for FIFTEEN DOLLARS at j.crew without even trying.

yeah, christmas is magical.

it's beginning to look...

christmas is finally in full swing in our apartment. i mean, i've been listening to christmas music since halloween, but now it's officially okay. i just spent about an hour compiling all my christmas music and filling out my holiday music library. it just wasn't complete without the contribution from celine dion. and really, what collection of music isn't complete without a contribution from celine dion?

i picked my annual peck of ornaments from the sparkly selection at walmart, then we trimmed the tree. it's been a couple years since we've put up my cheap tree, but it has sentimental value, you know? we were sorely tempted to go for a real tree this year, but i didn't want to wait any longer, so up the fake one went.

i made an awesome christmas decoration!

the lights are strung, the mistletoe is positioned, the tree is trimmed. the cheesy christmas movies are playing. and now, the snow is falling. bring on the christmas cheer!

listen to this: RED

ever since taylor swift announced her new album (and i really debated putting the actual video on here, since it's awesome and taylor videochats with people and it's hilarious, but you can link to it on your own), my sisters and i have been counting down the days to october 22. our love for t-swift is well documented, so our excitement levels for the past few weeks have been pretty high. we've had several taylor sing-a-longs, had video-watching marathons, and scoured the internet religiously for news of the new album and the songstress herself.

finally, yesterday, the long-awaited date arrived. we decided to make buying the album an adventure since, hey, we're crazy college kids, and we went to the orem wal-mart at midnight on sunday night to snatch up our copies. even more awesome, we weren't the only group of girls who thought of that same plan--we met a few other taylor enthusiasts during that midnight trip.

then, because, again, we're crazy college kids (though i'm thinking i might be getting a little too old for this...), we went to denny's for breakfast at midnight. bottomless hot chocolate, a new taylor swift album, lovely ladies, chicken fried steak--what could be better?

a magical night

i've known about book on tape worm for a few years now. back in my younger days, i became pretty good friends with a fun guy who had a brother in one provo-based band and a roommate in another. through andrew, i went to the sego festival in 2008 and saw neon trees in the middle of 100 north between velour and central bank. my memory from that night is of being crushed by people rocking out and of seeing people sitting on top of the central bank building. the next night, we went up to the castle to see scott shepard, who was playing in this little clearing of trees with all these electric lamps everywhere. we sat on the grass. my memory from that night is of feeling like i was in a magical fairyland. i still wonder how all those lamps were powered.

fast forward a few years. i guess i lost touch with the provo music scene or something. this summer, i finally started going to the rooftop concert series, and probably my favorite show was isaac russell with book on tape worm and john allred. the whole night was great, but i was captivated by book on tape worm. the lyrics--how could an english major not fall in love with songs about a wrinkle in time or death of a salesman, so full of figurative language that they make me want to shout for joy and point my students in their direction so they can understand what personification is? and scott's voice--i sing, and it's amazing to me how perfect his vocals always are. he truly has a gift. and the arrangements themselves--there were times that night when i just closed my eyes and let the music cover me like my most cozy blanket.

needless to say, i knew i needed to go the album release show on october 13.

oh my goodness, it was so great. from the gorgeous set with twinkle lights to the lovely opening acts to the glorious music played in four acts i was entranced. i think my mouth was open most of the night from being so awestruck by the beauty of it all. i was thinking the whole time, i'm so glad i was here. i was already thinking about how that night would affect me in days to come.

also, the album itself is soooooooo beautiful. i don't know what i was expecting, but it definitely wasn't this:

yes, you are seeing correctly--this is a pop up stage!!!!!! i gasped when i opened the album. so lovely.

also, lyrics booklet! i was pretty stoked about this, because the lyrics are so full of figures of speech that i knew i would want to study them a little bit more. so, thanks guys, for the lyrics booklet.

so, basically, it was a fantastic, spectacular, heartfelt, awesome, thoughtful, beautiful, magical show. and, again, i'm so glad i got to be a part of it. and i still kinda want scott shepard to date me, so there's that, i guess. now go out and buy this album.

it's things like this that make me want a husband and baby so bad...

this song...it's been on my mind since i first heard the album, and it is so beautiful. "a father's first spring"--scott avett's thoughts on being a new father and how he felt about his new daughter. i especially love the line "i was a child before the day that i met eleanor."

photo dump from summer

as i was going through my camera last week, i discovered that i had taken a few more pictures this summer than i realized. so, pretty much for my own purposes, here is some evidence that i had fun this summer. which i did.

lake powell sunset cruise. remember how i meant to do a whole post on lake powell? yeah, that never happened.

siblings! also, how you look after you've been at lake powell for a week.

the cave we went in where bats flew around us

me and berk. apparently he didn't want to touch me or something? he's leaning so far!

beach house

at the twilight

joshua james