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.

not sure if this really warrants a good title

i'm in the mood to blog, so i figured i would just jot down a couple of the things i've been thinking about/doing in the past couple of days.

yesterday and today we had a massive harry potter marathon. we started the first movie yesterday morning at 10 and finished the last movie in the theater today at 6:30 pm. it was awesome. i probably won't watch any movies for the next few days, but it was pretty cool to, one right after the other, see all the movies and how the actors change and what becomes more relevant later on. and the last movie was just as good the second time. i pretty much want to watch it everyday. i'm still not ready to quit harry potter mania. so i won't for a few more weeks.

i finally finished grading rhetorical analyses. nothing more to say about that. on a related note, only two more weeks of class this summer term.

as my post on saturday intimated, i taught on sunday about the resurrection, and it reminded me how amazing the second coming will be. even more incentive to do what i'm supposed to be doing here.

and, finally, here's what i'm listening to right now.

good night :)

i want to ride my bicycle, i want to ride my bike

i can't ride a bike. i maybe shouldn't be making this so public since i often use this as one of those "two truths and a lie" statements that could possibly stump someone, because how often do you come across a 23 year old girl who can't ride a bike?

but i digress. i've never had a desire to ride a bike, especially after that incident where i was riding down the slightly-sloped sidewalk in front of our house and my chain fell off and i didn't know what to do and i just kept going faster and faster until i ran into our neighbor's van which was parked out into the sidewalk. and then i was too embarrassed to tell anyone about it so it seemed like i just inexplicably left the world of bicycling and never looked back. my mom used to ask me what i would do if, at some point in the future "at college," some boy wanted to take me on a bike-riding date. and i said, well, i wouldn't go on a date with that boy, then. because why would i want to date some bike fanatic if i can't ride a bike? i was also skeptical that such things as "bike dates" actually existed.

in the past few months, though, i've felt a growing desire to get back on the bike. i'm not sure why. seriously, i've never felt like anything was ever missing in life due to my lack of bike skills. but now i'm feeling it. i want a cute little beach cruiser with a basket that i can ride through the streets of provo. i guess i want to become one of those bike people that i have thus far scorned.

my one stipulation is that i don't really want anyone to teach me. i just want to get access to a bike and go somewhere secluded and teach myself. i know if someone tried to teach me one or both of us would get frustrated and embarrassed (well, probably i would get embarrassed) and it would once again turn me off to two-wheelers. i think i could catch on and teach myself if i just had some time. so if anyone has a bike they'd like to donate to my cause for a few hours one day, let me know.

so there you have it, world. you got me. i want to be a bike rider.

saturday doings

there's not much that could be better than spending a saturday afternoon thinking and reading about the resurrection of Jesus Christ. and that study has led a lot of other good stuff, like buying new jenny phillips music on itunes and rediscovering mormon messages, like this one based around my favorite favorite talk.

life is pretty good. it's good to remember that every once in a while. or all the time.

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.

a summer list

things i love about summer:
longer days
sundresses
swimming
beautiful sunshine
summer tv programming
time to read
open toed shoes

things i hate about summer:
bugs and bug bites

the itching woke me up in the night. it's miserable.