More free food and off-roading

Remember how a few weeks ago, I stood in line for free breakfast at Denny's?  Well, it just so happens that Tuesday was free pancake day at iHop.  Free!  Pancakes!  Two of my favorite things.  So of course, I had to go.  I had plans to go with a couple of my athletic training buddies but that morning, I was trying to finalize contract signing so it was a little confusing (But yes, I HAVE a contract!!  More details on that in a later post when I have a good picture or two to go along with it).  But, it was my lucky day and I had plenty of time to make it to iHop.  Three free pancakes.  You just can't beat that.  I love life.  

Sorry, it's a bad picture.  I would have had the waitress snap another one, but I think I ruined her day just by asking her to take this one.  So I figured I wouldn't push my luck.  Dad, this is for you :)-- These are my friends Sam and Matt.  They are both in my program.  Sam works gymnastics with me so, I see her... a lot.

Tuesday was actually just a great day.  Do you mind if I tell you about it?  Well, I woke up and went for a run.  A great one.  And then I clocked it and found out it's farther than I thought it was, which means I've been running faster than I thought I was which is always good news.  I took a shower, put on chacos and no jacket, and went outside into the 55 degree weather.  It was sunny, with a light breeze...beautiful.  I drove to the management office, expecting bad/frustrating news about contracts.  Instead, I walked in, she looked up my application and happily announced, "You're first in line for the apartment!  Do you want to sign your contract now?"  Hallelujah!  I signed my contract, hopped in my car, rolled down the windows, blasted the music and drove to iHop.  I was greeted by two friends who were already there, a glass of

 chocolate milk, hash browns and FREE pancakes (give me a break, I hadn't eaten all day...).  We ate and then went to gymnastics which was just fine.  I came home, ate dinner that I'd been craving all day, went to institute, enjoyed the lesson, visited Jen and then went to the grocery store with Brian.  It was great.  Sorry.  That was long.

This picture didn't turn out super well either, but I thought it was pretty hysterical so I'm going to throw it in anyway.  After the gymnastics meet last Friday, one of the trainers drove the three of us student trainers home.  It was probably about 11:30.  When we started approaching my apartment, I tried to point out where to turn off into my parking lot, my friend got confused and somehow, decided to just drive through the parking lot, over the sidewalk and onto my front lawn to drop me off right by my front door.  Admittedly, not the best idea, but at the time, pretty dang funny.  And don't worry-- no grass was harmed.

My hair!

I know to most of you, the title of this post may just seem really unimaginative but when you say it in the right tone of voice, I'm actually quoting George Clooney in O Brother Where Art Thou.  "My hair!"  Good movie, sort of crazy, but good.  If you haven't seen it, you might consider watching it.  But in reality, this post is about my hair.  I got it cut!  And it needed it so badly.  I didn't originally have plans to chop it all off.  However, somewhere in between deciding to get my hair cut and actually getting it cut, I found pictures of myself from last summer when my hair was pretty short and remembered that I really loved it.  So...I cut it.  Well, someone else cut it for me.  Thank goodness.  Hair isn't exactly my specialty...  So here is the final product. I think it's the shortest I've ever had it but I really like it.  I find it very...refreshing.

 

This is precisely the picture that made me miss my short hair.  Why?  I have absolutely no idea. I look like a complete dufus.  

And this is my hair now! I like it a whole lot.  

Emotional Roller Coasters

I’ve decided that I make my own emotional roller coasters. Life is generally only hard because I insist on making it that way. I have experienced this most recently with racquetball. For those of you who may not know, I am on the BYU racquetball team. Trust me, it exists. Either that or it’s an extremely elaborate hoax… There are 24 members on the team—12 guys, 12 girls. At least we started with 12. After one pregnancy, one mission, and one hip injury, the girl’s team is now down to nine competing members. This entire semester, every day at practice has been part of a challenge ladder to assemble the nationals team. This team is comprised of the top six men and six women on the team who will compete in the intercollegiate nationals this April in Arizona. Basically, all this means is that I’ve been a nervous wreck all semester. It’s been a long couple of months, complete with drama, tears, wins, losses, and eventually my feeling certain that I was not going to nationals. To my complete and utter amazement, I checked my email on Friday afternoon, butterflies in my stomach, to see my name in the last slot on the roster for the girl’s nationals team. I seriously just sat there, at a kiosk in the Wilk, and stared at the screen, not really knowing what to think. So, I’m going to nationals. It’s crazy! I’m still a little confused how it all worked out and how on earth I managed to achieve something so wicked cool but it is what it is I suppose and now…I just have to get a lot better at racquetball before April. So that’s the update. I thought you might all appreciate knowing.

Hey that's what I look like playing racquetball!  Or...maybe not.  But--close. :)  Just for the record, I do have some pretty sweet dives to my name.

My Hero: The Piano Man

Four times I have seen Jon Schmidt in concert. And four times, it has been life-changing. When Brian told me that Mr. Schmidt would be gracing the BYU campus I was beside myself. So, we of course got tickets and invited a whole bunch of people to share in the experience with us. I think everyone enjoyed it. We were super close (the third row) but on the right side of the stage and couldn't see his hands. For anybody who's been to a Jon Schmidt concert, you know that seeing his hands is half of the amazingness. Maybe 75%. But it was still awesome. No pictures of the man himself, but one of us enjoying ourselves in his presence.
And as a sidenote (and because I don't want to start another post because I think people will already be upset that I have once again purged five posts all at once) we had a little superbowl get together with our now married friends Zach and Emily. They were gracious enough to invite us all over. The game was alright, but it really was just fun to be with everybody. And to eat the bean dip.

Did Somebody Say Free Breakfast?

Why so happy? Free breakfast.

Welcome to Things Alison Loves 101: BREAKFAST!!! Any kind of breakfast. The bigger the better obviously ( like pancakes, bacon, hash browns, French toast...), but I also love simple things like toast and cereal with a fiery passion. The only thing I can think of that I love more than breakfast, is free breakfast. And that is just what I got yesterday. My friends and I were watching the superbowl on Sunday, when up pops this Denny’s ad advertising free grand slams on Tuesday, February 3, 2009. I immediately thought that this was too good to be true. We looked it up later and not only was it too good, it was true!! So myself and two devoted friends showed up at Denny’s yesterday at 10 am to claim our free breakfast. This line greeted us upon our arrival. It was slightly discouraging but nothing I wasn’t expecting so we got in line and waited it out.

It took us a surprisingly short amount of time to get into the restaurant. I think we stood in line for about 50 minutes before getting to a table. And then, we got free grand slams. For any of you who aren’t very familiar with Denny’s, a grand slam is one of their breakfast platters that features two pancakes the size of your head, two strips of bacon, two pieces of sausage and eggs. Usually I like to substitute the eggs for hash browns (I mean, who isn’t skeptical of eggs from a restaurant?) but not surprisingly, they weren’t really down with substitutions yesterday. The whole experience was really awesome. We all splurged on drinks since the rest was free, and then left just in time to get to gymnastics practice. It worked out great. So thank you Denny’s. I don’t know what possessed you to do it, but I will never forget it.

Six Hours a Day

Gymnastics. That’s what I do for six hours every day. Probably most of you are thinking: Am I on the right blog? Because the Alison Spencer I know would make the world’s worst gymnast. Well, that is true. I would. That’s why I’m just an athletic trainer for the BYU women’s gymnastics team, which means I go to their practices everyday, which insanely enough, take up about six hours of my day. It’s fairly entertaining, I’m learning a lot and seeing a lot of injuries but there is a little bit of downtime. So the other day in some of that less than riveting time, I decided to take a picture of me being where I spend most of my time; Gym, Smith Fieldhouse, BYU, Provo, Utah. And there you have it.

Today's Revelation

While in the shower this morning, I realized something. Don’t worry, it’s appropriate. I realized as I stood there, soaking in the hot water, that I have the biggest loufa on the planet. And no, I have no idea how to spell loufa. But I took a picture to illustrate for you guys just how huge it is. Notice the cute little pink loufa on the left. That is normally-sized. See the off-white beast on the right? That’s mine. Did I buy it this big? Who knows. Maybe. Have I somehow just used it in a way that it is now twice as big as it originally was? Also very possible. I mean, it’s not that having a ginormous loufa is necessarily a problem. It’s just weird. And I decided that since I’m trying to avoid studying, I’d blog about it.

The end.

Scraps

This story is a little old but I neglected to blog about it before so I figured I better do it now. For Christmas, one of my good friends made me this! For those of you who don’t know, I sort of got on this kick when I was in high school, maybe even junior high, to start collecting a deck of cards from different places throughout the states mostly but the world as well. My friend, as I’m sure you can tell, is really good with wood. Knowing of my overabundance of face cards, he made me a shelf for them. Isn’t that just the neatest? He insisted that it was no big deal and that I not look too closely because it’s made of scraps. Scraps my eye. The thing looks perfect.