Time to Stop the Bitchin

Well it has been a while again but it has been a good time this last month. My first semester of college ended and I got decent grades. I am still living with the same two peeps. And now we are doing it all over again this semester. I got to visit the biggest little city in the world for a week and that was awesome. Still spending a lot of time down in Salt Lake City and that has been great. I gave up church for lent and that was also a pretty liberating experience. haha. I think lent is over now unfortunately. Decorated easter eggs with some of my favorite people and ate lots and lots of good food. I am in a band now called the Harper's Harping. We kick ass not gonna lie. The band consists of two guitars, a bass, drums and me on the cello. I like it. I am also playing softball competitively at the school. Pretty much I am trying to fill my time so that this school doesn't seem as lame. Gotta give a shout out to my room mate Liz. She is literally the best. I mean she puts up with my shit so she's gotta be pretty legit. But honestly if it weren't for her being here... it would suck. Yep I have no better way to put it. I came to the realization recently that I need to be more thankful. I was a bit depressed at the beginning of this semester about things that were going on and just generally didn't want to be in my head anymore but I am learning to work with my overactive pondering and to make the best of it and stop bitchin as much. I am taking control of my mind and I will force it to wander in more positive directions. Starting.... now.  I am so grateful for all the amazing people in my life. I am grateful for my family in all of its forms. I am grateful for all those extra people that might as well be family. I am grateful for my health and my soon to be sexy body. Haha. I am grateful for a good head on my shoulders and for the talents that I have been blessed with and I regret not taking better advantage of things but am happy to be doing what I am doing right now, right here in this.... lovely place.... hmm. I am thankful for nonjudgmental and accepting people, you guys make all the other crap bearable. Ok thats enough deep shiz. On the final note I have begun gauging my ears.... Pics above of all random shiz. Oh and a p.s. I wanna get a really fancy camera soon and maybe take up photography of some sort. I love looking at cool pics so I want to start taking some of my own. :)

God says people with frayed jeans are going to hell...

Or at least will not be allowed to take a test. So hmm it has been a while again but thats ok cause now I have lots to talk about. Monday I had my final for philosophy. I had to start the test before 12. So I woke up studied for a bit then got dressed and headed across campus to the testing center. I got there at about 15 til noon ( I know I was cutting it a little close) but still I got there before noon. Walk up to the desk of the lady says that she cant allow me to take the test because theres a teeny tiny fray mark on the pocket of my jeans. So I have to book it back to my apt change my jeans and run literally run back to the testing center to take the test... I don't know that just seems really effed up to me. I mean I like honestly cannot figure out anywhere in my brain why they are so fricken strict in the testing center....or how they even notice the smallest shit. aww crazy people!!!! anyways on a different and brighter note I have been getting away to Salt Lake City on the weekends. Its been so nice. We all went to the festival of colors two weekends ago and that was epic. We went crowd surfing for the first time eva. So great. Plus it was just really cool to experience another religious belief and to be a part of it. Some people here thought that going was sacrilegious or blasphemous or something. I am not really sure. It seems strange to me that we want all these people to come check out our church and see what we believe but it is not okay for us to go worship in a different church or go see what other churches believe. Hmm something to ponder I guess. Sorry I don't have very many answers anymore... I have adopted partially the socratic method of just asking a lot of questions... I think however he did eventually try to answer his questions though. I am too lazy. My brain now doubts and questions everything. I mean it kind of did that before but now its just out of control!! haha but I think I am ok with that. I mean it stresses me out a lot and it means that I can never really just have a chillax moment cause my brain always has something to think about but overall I feel like this is an ok thing. Next thing to address is my sleep talking/ grabbing of other people... I know its scary. I am not sure if this is a new thing because I had been in a room by myself for about 8 years before I came here.... anyways ever since January when I got here I have been quite the sleep talker. At first it was not so bad but now it is almost every night which is probably why I feel so tired most of time... and it is definitely why my roomies feel so tired. Apparently I am pretty loud.. funny but loud. I am not sure what to do about this problem. I can imagine the crazy things I am saying because I usually remember my dreams... and they are not good. Any suggestions??

its a beautiful day in the neighborhood....

Not!! holy man this has been one of the longest weeks of my life!! we officially have the worst neighbors in the world. They've turned me in for smoking, tell us to be quite all the time and most recently have called the cops on us for playing bongos and guitars on a friday night. I then had the privileage of listening to one of my room mates super conservatve mormon parents go off about how bad of an influence I am and how immature I am and how they are concerned about the kind of person she becoming living here with me. Being at this school has got to be one of the most challenging things I have ever done... but hopefully it'll be rewarding in the end. fingers crossed. I find it super interesting and somewhat depressing that humans have such an ability to take really great and good things and make them really not so great. Like being at this school and being with a bunch of people who you share similar beliefs with should be a very exciting and strenthening time... yet I find myself disliking mormons more and more everyday. And given I am severely stereotyping and generalizing an entire group but still. For claiming to be such a Christ like people they are sure judgmental and confusing. Christs gospel was simple, love God, love yourself and love others. Honestly thats all it was and yet people insist on making it much more complicated. And then they go on to judge others because that is much easier than just looking in a mirror. But though they preach over and over again that people should not judge they justify their judgments under the veil of "saving" people. ok im gonna get off my own soap box now and just try to forgive.....so hard!! anyways on the bright side my grades are good, one of our room mates moved out which has made tensions much less, im applying to be a roadie for invisible children and we have got some epic vacations planned for the next couple weekends. the one which i am most excited for is the festival of colors down in utah at this sweet indian temple!! anyways the pics are of our late night adventures in the apt. fun times. 

So its been exactly a month...

so i have been wondering recently if anyone actually reads any of the things that i post... but then i realized that I don't particularly care. I just really enjoy writing out my thoughts every once and a while and having it on a blog kind of makes it seem like maybe the world acknowledges that i have thoughts. Its dumb i know. anyways soooo much has happened in the last month. just to fill everyone in the court let me off for the smoking charge so thats nice. hmm what else?? I have become close to one of my room mates liz. Shes great. i like her a lot... and for those of you who know me thats saying something. We have had a bunch of room mate drama recently which is fun i think... mostly because im never directly involved in any of the drama, it all goes on behind my back. which i find interesting. people seem scared or intimidated by me and so i rarely get confronted. which is good because im really bad with confrontation as most of you know. anyways its late and i have homework and this could possibly be the most boring post yet but at least its somewhat short.

A bad case of the mondays...

So its been a super interesting week. Its so great that God likes me enough to never let my life get boring. It is actually a huge blessing I think. Anyways I went to Grand Targhee this weekend which was amazing and thats what the pictures are of. The snow was perfect, everything actually was kind of perfect. And it was kind of nostalgic for me because that is the ski resort that my dad grew up skiing on. So today I got a taste of how naive and different some mormons are than me. Last monday this girl knocked on our door and I was the only one home and I happened to be burning incense in the kitchen ( bad idea I know but I missed the smell sooo much) anyways she wanted to borrow some games so I let her borrow some card games. Little did I know that she thought I was smoking. What?!? As you all hopefully know I don't smoke. Thats gross and I wouldnt do that to my poor lungs. Haha anyways Im kind of making a joke out of this but its kind of serious cause she turned me into the head resident who now has to turn me into the honor office. Righteous righteous!! I mean I expected to be in there sooner or later but I would at least like to be able to take credit for the reason Im there. Instead now I have been trying to convince everyone that I really dont smoke. The girl came over to talk to me about it.... talk about awkward. I cant handle those kind of situations. Even though I told her that I dont smoke she still was unsure cause she swears she saw me holding a cigarette. Oh bless her innocent soul. She probably doesnt even know what a cigarette looks like or smells like. Haha whatevs I would just like to remind the general universe that I really dont appreciate awkwardness and Im really horrible at handling those kind of situations. I pretty much avoided making eye contact with her and just listened until she would stop talking which took a while unfortunately. C'est le vie. It'll all work out Im sure. Wish me luck at the honor council place. On a different note I have made a new goal for my life... if I can lose 10lbs then I am getting my dreads back. World get ready!!!

Bad Day

K so pretty much today was a pretty sucky day. But aside from all that I just wanna comment on great humans are. Like that sounds weird but I generally have a pretty pessimistic view of mankind... which I think is valid given the amount of horrible things men have done. But recently I have gained an appreciation for just the small decent acts that people do. My room mate and I were playing our instruments the other day and all of a sudden there was a knock on our window. Not gonna lie I was expecting something about how we were playing too loud and to keep it down. Instead we found a note saying that the music we were playing rocked and so did our playing. It was a small thing but it kind of made my day. They have since commented on all of the music that we play in the apt and how they enjoy it. Then yesterday this girl came and knocked on our door in the middle of the day she came in and asked if my snowboard was the one outside the door. I said it was.... and then asked her if she was planning on stealing it. fortunately she was not but she said that she snowboards and shes been looking for people to go with. we exchanged numbers and we're gonna tear it up this weekend. i like her cause she seems like she could be from bellingham. :) anyways main point of this post ( yes it does have a point) is that even though a lot of bigger things can be going really shitty in life those small mostly irrelevent acts of just like human decency and kindness can really make up it. just having someone say I love you or Ive got your back can mean so much. Having room mates that will share a non alcoholic daquari in a coffee mug with you cause all the other cups are dirty while listening to "bottoms up" can make everything else seem trivial. Its amazing how life can suck the majority of the time but just that one time when it doesnt makes you forget about how effed everything is and somehow makes you willing to keep putting up with lifes shit because you know that another one of those moments will come along and everything will seem alright again. anyways i love you all and thanks for all the support always. you really dont know how much of a difference it makes.

my brain hurts

k so though its a bit early i think i have figured out what my favorite classes are.... philosophy and american foundations. this may change as the semester goes on but for now they are my favs. philosophy is great i love it... but it hurts my brain. its like i cant really grasp anything but i find it all so interesting at the same time. im cool with it. so far we've talked about socrates, plato ya know the basics.they're pretty legit dudes. i think the biggest thing that ive gotten from it so far is that justice is not subjective, it cant be. justice has to be objective and it is something that exists beyond the visible world. its real but nonphysical all at the same time. ok see thats one of those things that i agree with but i still cant quite grasp it. it gets even more interesting because in my american foundations class( pretty much a basic US history class) we're discussing right and wrong and agency and accountability and freedom. yeah i know its a lot. im discovering mostly that there is a great benefit in not being single minded. not that im flawless in this category but i think my moving to washington really helped me to become less single minded. im still working on it. but theres just soo many ways to look at things and to define things and although its not wrong to be concrete in things i think we always have to be open to molding these beliefs or at least accepting others beliefs also. i feel like sometimes as humans we use religion to excuse our single mindedness.... i mean we use religion to do a lot of things that its not particularly intended for. one kid mentioned that if you just follow the laws of the land.. no matter what they are that you'll be blessed... easy for him to say, hes a white male. if people never questioned the laws of the land nothing would ever change. the point of this life is to change and to question things. and even though we're this free nation lalalala there is still so much changing and molding that we can do. i think thats what is so great about the constitution, not that its always used correctly, but it is open to change. and i think we need to be open to change also. disclaimer it kind of sounds as if im quoting the obama campaign with all this change talk... im not. :) like i said i am still single minded in ways. anyways i could go on forever so i wont. quote of the week... "any exception to moral principle no matter how well reasoned or rationalized, poses a real danger to individuals, to the rule of law and to society." -Elder D. Todd Christofferson