The Goo Goo Dolls

After Grandma & Grandpa left our little New Years Eve shindiggy, I watched the last minute or so of the Chick-fil-a bowl with dad and then he left to go check up on other bowl games online. I flipped through the guide on tv and found a Goo Goo Dolls concert... and ya know what I learned? The Goo Goo Dolls, while they make some really pretty music, are really ugly people. I'm kind of sad that I watched this. They are not attractive like Chris Carraba of Dashboard Confessional. They are just unattractive men. Just thought I would share that insight with you all.

Because I was so excited about the concert (before I realized how ugly they were) I just opened my computer and played a couple games of solitaire and listened to the concert. Maybe it would've been easier to just open iTunes and play my favorite Goo Goo Dolls songs. Hmmm, there's a thought.

Happy New Years!

I like...

-sleeping in.
-taking naps.
-eating real food without having to cook it.
-playing "my" piano.
-playing hand and foot with the grandparents.
-playing webkinz, with mom sitting right next to me, smiling and laughing as I play games... I think she loves webkinz.
-Christmas singalongs.
-watching movies on the comfy couches.
-having lots of blankets to keep me warm.
-listening to The Rocket Summer as I play games on my computer.
-wireless internet.
-family scripture study.
-nobody coming to me crying with their problems.
-nobody coming to me in the middle of the night locked out of their apartment/bedroom.
-that every time I have put my iPod on shuffle it has played Dashboard Confessional... a lot.
-reading books that are not required for class.
-ham. au gratin potatoes. confetti jello. breakfast quiche. lasagna. garlic bread. honey nut scooters. v8 splash. martinellis.
-being woken up by mom instead of an annoying alarm clock.

This is why it has been a fabulous Christmas break... all of these things happened!

Missions

You'd think that since in the last 8 months most of my good friends have left on missions I would be fine saying goodbye to Joseph. After one of the funniest RA meetings of my life (it lasted an hour and a half, and it should've been about 20 minutes) Kourtney and I were off to our boys place to wish Jacob a Merry Christmas and to say goodbye to Joseph. Now. If you remember (or maybe I never put it on here) Joseph, Kourtney and I are each others favorites, so saying goodbye to him was like tearing out part of my soul. The three of us talk all the time and about everything. When something is bothering us, the others recognize it but they don't push for the info. We always know what is going on with each other. Kourt does haven't to say goodbye here, they live like 2 hours away from each other and they are getting together with Braedon over break, but tonight was my chance to say goodbye. We were in the kitchen, Kourt left, and Jacob was there, so Joseph and I started saying goodbye. It was pretty much the dumbest thing ever, and I hated it. The killer was that I've only known him for 3 1/2 months. What the crap?

I swore to myself before I moved into my building that I was not going to hang out with the freshman boys because of this very thing- I hate becoming really good friends with someone just to have him leave for two years. I love that my friends are serving missions, but now I've got to find someone else to talk to when things are going wrong. After we left, we texted each other and decided that we are going to talk tomorrow morning, so we can actually talk before he leaves. Neither of were ready to face the reality tonight that it could be the last time we see each other (he's probably not coming back to BYU after his mish, his program isn't the greatest here). I guess tomorrow we'll see if we can face it.

The good news... is that Kourt and I get to face it together, and without the rest of our roommates here. They all left today, and they have no clue how the two of us are going to feel when Joseph is gone.

More year in review...

I decided that the past year wouldn't have been what it was without a few other important things... music, movies, and friends. So... the list that follows are friends/music/movies that I was introduced to in the last year that have been a big part of my life.

Friends:
-Janelle (in my SFL 105 class, the reason I survived, and one of my favorite people in the world)
-Amy (in 105 with us)
-Kourt (roommate)
-Jacob, Joseph, Braedon (FHE boys)
-Evan (summer friend)
-Aaron, Allison, Dustin, Melanie, MICHAEL,Mindy, Rochelle (RAs)
-Megan (my Hall Advisor)I email her daily, talk to her on the phone nearly daily, and even talk to her on Facebook sometimes. Then you also add two days a week at RA class, our weekly one-on-one meeting, our weekly staff meeting... and other random times. If you looked through my email and my cell phone, you'd think she was my best friend, or mother, from the amount of time I spend talking with her.
-All of my summer Cultural Dinner girls: Molly, Carolyn, CHRISTI, Jenna, Cydney, Micah, Rachelle, Jessica (and I hope I didn't miss any)
-My residents from apartments 2,6,7,8,9 (they're my favorites, and they love me, so they count extra)
-VIC! (he's my boss... the manager of Heritage)

Music: (either introduced to, or stuff I fell in love with all over again)
-DASHBOARD CONFESSIONAL
-Ben Folds
-Metro Station
-The Rocket Summer
-Secondhand Serenade
-Relient K
-Mae
-Sherwood
-Taylor Swift
-Rascal Flatts
-High School Musical soundtracks (especially 3)

Movies:
-Enchanted
-The Notebook
-Zoolander (cannot tell you how many times I have watched this since my bday)
-Dark Knight
-Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure
-Win a Date with Tad Hamilton
-High School Musical 3

(Blogging has become a great form of procrastination for me. I have a final this afternoon, and instead of studying last night, I wrote my year in review, and today I have written this... Hopefully I know the material pretty well already)

Year in Review

Marci’s Highlights from 2008!

I decided that since I've been living on my own for the last... more than a year, it was time for me to write my own Christmas letter-ish thing. It turns out that I don't remember a lot that has happened in the last year, so I resorted to pulling favorite blog posts. For more details on any of these events (minus December, and a few other choice memories), see the posts from that month. This has been a pretty crazy year for me... I've lived in three different places, with different people, and have done a bunch of crazy things. I've realized that for me, life happens in 4 month chunks, winter semester, spring/summer, fall semester. These are three totally different times in my life, and it's been really intense. Here are the highlights from my months, although I'm pretty sure that January-April were a lot cooler than I blogged about... we always had crazy things going on in good 'ole 215. Also, my summer all kind of blended together, and for some reason I didn't blog much.

January: I was living the freshman dream at BYU, living in Heritage, apartment 215 with my 5 favorite people: Christie, Kelli, Sarah, Jenny, and Allison. I attempted to eat healthier than I had been the previous semester, and in my first attempt, I burned both of my thumbs in the oven. Thankfully it was snowing, so I just went and put my hands in the snow (following the advice of Brother Parent from my bishopric). I also interviewed in January for the position of Resident Assistant. Also. Troy and I broke up (not necessarily a highlight, but it happened).

February: Looking through my blog and pictures, I’m thinking that the exciting thing from February was… Aerobics Night. Kelli and I got all dressed up (I was in neons) and went to a crazy Aerobics night. Our apartment also attempted to make a human pyramid and take a picture of it. Our self-timer was great, but Jenny struggled getting her whole body in the picture (she was the top of our pyramid). It was a great struggle, and I believe it took about 35 pictures before we got one that we decided was good enough. At the end of the month I got my letter from Housing with a job offer! I was going to become an RA!

March: With the semester halfway over, my apartment started compiling lists of our favorite memories of the year. This was a sad thing to do. More exciting, Brendan and Nickolai from 204 got their mission calls! Nickolai was the first person I ever watched open their mission call, and Brendan was a close second, like an hour later. Christie, Kelli, Sarah and I trained for and ran in the Rex Lee Run, a 5K run to raise money for cancer research. I won the “60 and older” category, since they incorrectly entered my age as 99 years old, instead of 19. That was exciting!

April: The amazing DT prank happened… someone put flyers all over campus that DT was going to be imploded (they were tearing it down, so it could’ve been legit). Christie, Kelli and I went up to General Conference, on a bus. It was amazing, and we got to watch Sarah (our roommate) and Nickolai (basically our roommate) sing in the combined BYU choir. AMAZING! Tyler got his mission call—that was a crazy/emotional day. Finals happened, and so did saying goodbye to pretty much everyone. I helped mom move into her dorm for Spring Term, that was really funny, then I headed back up to Seattle to work at Napa Auto Parts

May: I was living in Seattle, working at Napa, and hanging out with Paul’s family all the time. I bought my favorite North Face jacket, The Denali. It’s proven to be one of the best purchase of my life… right up there with my North Face backpack, The Recon II, that I bought before my freshman year. Thank you The North Face! I met Evan in May, and hung out with him and Jenna all summer, that was crazy.

June: Paige and Katie had piano recitals, and I went to those. Ryan graduated from preschool (but maybe that was in May?) and I attended that as well. I continued hanging out with Evan and Jenna all throughout June. Tyler, Nickolai, and Brendan went into the MTC. Oh, that means that I had my last date with Tyler, which involved Dairy Queen, Teriyaki, Cribbage, MASH, Frog and Toad, and a lot of talking. It was ridiculously hard to say goodbye to him, but since we have been friends for oh… 15 years or so, it was slightly understandable.

July: I was told that I am “The Best Aunt in the Universe” by Ryan, only to have him take it back like two minutes later. For whatever reason (I think he had skinned his knee while riding his scooter at the park) I was helping him with something (I think I got him juice or something) and he told me that. He’s a funny kid. Maybe July was when I babysat the kids for a weekend (apparently that event didn’t make my blog, so I don’t know when it happened).

August: The OLYMPICS HAPPENED and I set my new goal: marrying Michael Phelps. That goal hasn’t been reached yet, but I’ve kind of given up on it. Also in August… I packed up my things and came back to school. I had two weeks of RA training, chilled with some of the other RAs, set up my apartment, and bought my textbooks. Residents started moving in at the end of August, and then the rest of my life began

September: Highlight of September was DEFINITELY flying home to Seattle for the BYU vs UW football game! Well, the flight wasn’t the highlight, although the cheerleaders were on my flight and did cool things in the airport. The highlight was being home and going to the game. I ate breakfast with Batman, and had an overall fabulous time being back with the people I love! School also started… we had our CRAZY ward prayer incident, with our cool dance and girls being mad at us.

October: Other BYU football games happened, and if they were at home, I was there. I saw High School Musical 3, definitely a highlight to the month of October. I enjoyed nightly Homework Parties with my roommates and our FHE brothers, and spending a bunch of time with those 7 other people in general.

November: I turned 20 and went on the one date I went on all semester (minus the one I went on with Bryan when we were home for Thanksgiving). I went out to eat meals at two different restaurants in Orem, Olive Garden with Aaron (my birthday date) and Zupas with Megan, my best friend. Jenna came up to Provo and cut my hair, and I still LOVE it! I went HOME for Thanksgiving and Katie's baptism. I got to sing with Paige, Katie and Aunt Rachel, which was awesome. We forgot to have a sing-along of Christmas songs/our songs... which was sad, but a lot was happening. I saw Quantum of Solace with Bryan at Lincoln Square and freak, that theatre is nice! My birthday as a whole was pretty good (you can just go back to my November posts to read about it if you don't remember).

December: I found out I am a useful engine, I went to Temple Square twice, and did a lot more. Cleaning checks were extra not fun this month, and some of my girls had attitudes. Finals happened again (and are still happening) and I got to do check outs for everyone before they could go home. We (my apartment) had Premie Paul’s apartment over for breakfast, and went to our boys place for Brick Oven for lunch one day. It started snowing, and I realized I was so sick of snow after day one. I started learning some good snow shoveling tricks, well… tricks for my front stairs at least. I got to say goodbye to Mike (one of the RAs I work with really closely) because he is leaving us to go serve his mission. After planning Back to School Week (a Heritage weeklong activity that will be in January) I talked with Dustin (another RA) for like an hour about all sorts of random things, found out he had a car, and we went to Wendy’s with Allison. Getting off-campus has never seemed so fun… being with three RAs who all just needed a break from constant check-out questions made the trip “off” campus so much better. Wendy’s is only across the street from campus, so it wasn’t too far… but it was far enough! OH! How could I forget… three apartments in my building let me know that they had mice in their kitchens, and all three are on my floor. That leaves my apartment as the one that doesn’t have mice. I spent about 3 hours cleaning our kitchen cupboards and vacuuming under the stove and fridge, trying to get rid of any crumbs that could attract animals. So far it has proven to be successful!

That was the highlights of 2008 in a nutshell. I’m sure I missed some things, my blogging hasn’t been very good throughout 2008. I have a ton of goals for 2009…

-Increased blogging (I want to really remember what happens)
-Hang out with more RAs
-Go on more dates than I went on this semester
-Do even better in school than I did this semester (even though I got 4 A’s and 2 grades I don’t know yet)
-Procrastinate less
-Open my building BY 8:00 each morning
-Shovel the snow in front of my building before someone else does…

Hopefully 2009 proves to be a slightly better year than 2008, although some pretty dang awesome stuff happened in 2008.

Much Love,
Marci

Snow.

I had forgotten that after I went and checked each apartment and did their first redo for cleaning checks, that the next step was to have the Hall Advisor go check it. So, I called her about something else and ended up not having to go do the rest of my redos! That was happy.

On another note. When I finally woke up today, it was to a phone call from another RA, asking if we were supposed to be doing something about the snow. After I jumped out of bed and looked out the window I wanted to cry.

GO AWAY SNOW!

Some of my roommates, and a lot of my residents, are so excited about the snow. I liked it. Before it started to stick. And before it was finals week. Walking to the testing center in the snow isn't going to be fun. It also won't be fun once you get to the testing center and take of your hat, gloves, scarf, coat, and you are still wet, and cold. Shoveling the snow infront of my building won't be fun either, and neither will going out at night and sprinkling ice melt on everything.

So snow, go away. I don't want you here right now. Go snow on someone else.

I was going to go study at the library today, but now I don't want to leave my apartment. Snow requires way more time getting ready to leave. UGH! PS. I need to buy boots. I just realized that.

Cleaning Checks...

What part of "You signed up for your cleaning check on the last spot of the last day. Because you are not giving yourselves the opportunity for redos, your cleaning needs to be perfect" do you not understand?

Or... what part of "scrub the splashboards, especially behind the stove and sink" do you not get?

My ultimate favorite this month... "make sure that you scrub the bottom of the soapdish (in the shower and bathtub) to remove the soap residue".

Fail. That describes 6/10 apartments. That explains why I am unhappy. Today is technically the last day I am supposed to work until checkouts start on Monday... but now I get to do redos in 6 apartments tomorrow morning by noon so I can still turn my cleaning check paperwork in on time.

Next month... there will be incentives for cleaning. Something really cool if everybody in your apartment passes cleaning checks. If the whole building passes on the first attempt maybe some great ice cream party or something.

More Pictures

Here are more of the pictures I like!
The first picture is me and Joseph. He's my brother that is leaving on a mission in January... headed up to Washington! To everyone up there still, watch out for him in about February!

A Great Weekend

This past weekend I went up to Temple Square twice. Saturday we went for a ward activity, and Sunday my apartment and 4 of our FHE brothers went up to the First Presidency Christmas Devotional and to take pictures. Here are some of my favorite pictures from Sunday. Blogger is being dumb and I'm not sure how to make it work... so sorry, you don't get captions for each picture.

The first picture is me and my FHE dad. Our mom wasn't at this family activity (we didn't invite the other girls apartment) otherwise I would've had one with "mom" and "dad".

In the second picture we have:
Top row, from left to right: Joseph, Jacob, Braedon, Callin
Front row: Me, Kourtney, Kiley, Courtney, Kelly

We're pretty much awesome. Our other brother (Tim) was missing for this activity. He's the RA in the boys building and it was his night to work, otherwise all ten of us would've been there. Pretend like these pictures say "From Our Family to Yours" and that you are getting it in the mail. It's my Christmas Card!

According to Valerie...

I am a "very useful engine." So. I want everyone else to know... that I am a useful engine. :)