This is an airport

And I have spent more time than I really think necessary in an assortment of these the last month or so. The week before Thanksgiving I flew to Arizona. Then I flew to Chicago for Thanksgiving. Then this last weekend I flew back to Chicago for an interview. And I will once again fly to Chicago, for the third time this month in just a couple weeks. I guess that's not a lot of traveling for some of you frequent flyers out there, but I have about had my fill.

I'm feeling so overwhelmed with school right now that I might die. I haven't even had time to stop and think about how it's going to feel to be finished with my undergraduate education in one week from Friday. Weird.

Also, I heart Northwestern. I interviewed for their PA (physician assistant) program on Monday and I really just loved it there. And maybe, just maybe, they loved me too.

And last but not least, I got to see the one and only Brian Regan live tonight. It was amazing. And he was hilarious. Thanks to good friends with even better connections.

Sorry. That was probably a really boring post. Better luck next time.

Sara Bareilles

Until very recently I have been calling her Sara Borealis. You know, like aurora Borealis. Boy was I wrong. Anyway...last night some friends and I went to her concert in Salt Lake. It was fabulous! We learned from our experience at Ingrid's concert and got there to get in line at about 5pm. We had to wait in line for quite a while but it was totally worth it when we got in there and were on the second row! Success.

While in line we had some Costa Vida for dinner. Everybody was jealous.

The four of us. Just regular old concert-goers.

And...Sara! She really was great. Not quite as funny as Ingrid, but her voice is truly amazing. It was really hard to get over her outfit, however. I don't think you can tell in this picture, but she is basically wearing a black one-piece pant suit with a zipper and a belt. I don't know if I missed something but last time I checked, that really was not an attractive outfit.

And by the way--this is my 100th blog post! Holy smokes. I feel like google should give me some kind of a prize or something...

Preemptive Posting

So...my facebook's back. Yeah I don't get it either. I just decided to try one more time and there it was. So thank you everyone for your concern and prayers. It was felt. Crisis averted.

PS--Who keeps commenting on my blog and then deleting them?? It's kind of weirding me out.

Facebook?

So I had an interesting thing happen to me today. I logged onto my computer this morning to do my usual site checks: gmail, facebook, blogs. Yes, in that order. I put my email address and password into facebook, clicked log on and was met with a bright red message saying, "Your account has been disabled." I tried to figure out how this would have happened so suddenly and without my knowledge and all facebook gave me was this huge rant about how you can't make a facebook page for a fake person or with a fake name. At which point I wanted to yell out to the universe, "I'm real!! I promise!".

So as of right now, I have no facebook account. I have really mixed feelings about this. A part of me is relieved. I've almost gotten rid of my facebook account a bazillion times but I could never go through with it. Now that it's been done for me, an even larger part of myself is feeling lost, hurt and confused (just for the record--I am being purposefully over dramatic...). I've had facebook for five years. That's a long time. Do you have any idea what kind of a friend base I've built up?! Yeah, I don't know either. But a lot! And that's all gone now. And sure, I guess I could just start another one but...do I really want to do that? Would it be the same? Oh man, this news has really thrown a wrench into my day...so I just had to blog about it. Naturally.

And ps, last weekend we went to the hot springs up Spanish Fork canyon. Here is a picture to prove it. Well...I'm not sure it actually proves anything but trust me--we were there.

The Thanksgiving Push

Beginning with Halloween, we have officially entered a time that I have just at this very moment decided to refer to as the "Thanksgiving push". I've never really experienced this period of time from anything but a student's perspective so this may be a little off for the rest of the world. But I do believe that most people would agree with me. It is a well-known fact that Thanksgiving to New Years is the very best time of the year. People are happy, we get to sing Christmas songs, buy presents for people, think about Jesus, be with family, eat lots of food...all great things. And what is so great about the middle of November? It's the second round of midterms, fall is ending, leaves are falling, it's turning ugly outside and getting colder. So may I submit to you all--the Thanksgiving push. Just push through to Thanksgiving! Two weeks from today and we will all be on the brink of the best five weeks of the year. We can do it. Go fight win!

Identity Crisis

I got on my blog the other day and I realized that I really didn't like the way it looked. I liked the book background thing I had going on but it just wasn't looking good. So...I've got this up and...it's alright I guess. I don't know. I'm not sold yet. If you have any suggestions, or want to come on over and design my blog yourself, I'd be more than happy to let you do that. I'm not exactly what you'd call the creative type.

The biggest news of the week--it's Friday, and I'm alive!! It really is a miracle. Hopefully the next few weeks will be equally as miraculous. On that note, I pretty much have no time to be blogging right now so let's get right to it.

On Tuesday night, some friends and I went to an Ingrid Michaelson concert in Salt Lake. We got up there at about 7 and waited in a line four blocks long, in the snow, for about two hours. Definitely a great way to start the night. By the time we got in there, the viewing options for someone just over 5 feet tall (yours truly) were pretty limited. My roommate and I finally found some decent standing room over by the bar. I learned something that night. Smelling alcohol for long periods of time gives me a headache. Good thing those drinking days of mine are behind me.

At one point, the snow was pelting horizontally. That was neat.

The four of us waiting in line (Hilary, Lauren, Jenny, me).

Using my scarf as an umbrella. More effective than you might think.

When we walked out of the building at about 11pm, I was astonished to find a solid two inches of snow on the ground. And there was no sign of it stopping. Well, I don't know why after living in Utah for almost 5 years I haven't learned to keep my snowscraper close at hand starting in September, but after I used my hand to clear the car of snow we were good to go. Until we got on 215 (the freeway). The clincher was when, as I was going 25 down the one lane that had been carved out of the snow, the SUV in front of me somehow spun out across all four lanes of traffic. Luckily, there was almost no one on the road so they were fine. But, that's when we decided our life expectancy would increase dramatically if we stayed the night at Jenny's house, which we happened to be about 10 minutes away from.

So we got there at about midnight, decided we were starving and ate everything we could find (sorry Jenny's parents...) and tried to get some sleep.

Jenny let us borrow some great clothes. Which included

these Texas boxers that Hilary was only too happy to sport.

My car in the morning. I was clearly not amused. I knew there was a

reason I've been saving that Toy Story 3 coloring book in my car...

it made a stellar snow scraper.

So Ingrid? An adventure. But what's life without a little bit of that? You might not believe me, but I actually did have a good time. Ingrid is hilarious and sounds even better live than recorded. We're going up for another concert next month. So...better luck next time?

Another Ragnar

After we ran the good ole Wasatch Back in June, most of my team decided to sign up for the Las Vegas relay race in October. Having just spent about $100 to be in pain and run 18 miles and not get any sleep, I opted out of the Las Vegas race. But I still got pulled into it. Turns out they needed a driver, and I was available so I decided--what the heck. I'll go and drive.

For those of you who may not be familiar with the Ragnar Relay series, first of all--they are amazing. They have them all over the US and each one is a total of about 200 miles. You gather up a team of 12, and two vans and then run. Their tag line is very appropriately, "Run. Drive. Sleep? Repeat." And there you have it. So what did I do this weekend? I drove an Expedition full of 4 smelly boys and 2 slightly less smelly girls through the Las Vegas desert. For 29 hours. For future reference, if you have any plans to run one of these--don't pick Vegas. A couple of our runners got lost on the course in the middle of the night and...I can't vouch for any of the other ones but the Wasatch Back at least is way better. So pick a good one.

This is a picture of me at probably 2am, standing on the side of a road in the middle of the desert, wearing an orange reflective vest (that we found out wasn't actually reflective so we had to stick some reflective tape on it...) holding a bright orange flag and a bottle of water. This is also about the time I thought to myself--what on earth am I doing here?

Here's the whole team before we started running. Mike bought a purple bandanna. Then Ben bought one. And then Brad bought one. And then...suddenly, it was team uniform and we all had one.

The finish line was at the Red Rock Casino in Las Vegas. We were supposed to get a couple free rooms there but apparently they ran out and we ended up staying at the Venetian right on the strip! In these huge suites! So that was pretty darn cool. Although, I still had to sleep on the floor because there were 8 of us in there. Oh well, beats the driver's seat of a car (which is where I slept Friday night/Saturday morning). So, I guess the cool part of this race is supposed to be that in ends in Vegas but we got there and I suddenly remembered--I hate Vegas. I feel like it is the perfect embodiment of everything in the world I live my life trying to avoid. It's a dirty, sleazy and uncomfortable place. So what did we do there all night? Well, what any good group of Mormon kids would do:

Watched the Bellagio fountains.

And got our picture taken with the Coca-cola bear. Naturally.

Because what else do people come to Vegas to do?

When we thought we were all going to die of exhaustion (at about 10pm...), we wandered back to the hotel. We left to drive home at 5 the next morning and I was completely astonished at the number of people that were out and about. Way more than I expected. I guess the no clocks and windows in those casinos really does trick people...