wayfarers on

YOU GUYS GUESS WHAT.

My life is awesome. I’m pretty much famous.

Because something I wrote ended up on this blog. Holla!

The rest of my life is equally stellar. It’s included things like hot dog parties, birthday boys, and lots of time spent straightening my hair. At least, that’s what the pictures on my phone would indicate.

{Hot dogs can actually be good if you bury them with random combinations of sides and assorted toppings}

{This party was perfect—Party Rock Anthem and Soulja Boy on repeat. All night. It doesn’t get any better than that}

{There’s really no point to this picture…it was just in an effort to return to taking pictures of literally everything. I think I’m getting there.}

The pictures on my phone also indicate that my apartment building is slightly obnoxious. Don’t get me wrong—the apartment is fairly new and fairly inexpensive, which is a pretty rare combination. There are just a few drawbacks. For example. Someone decided once that it would be a good idea to paint the walls blinding shades of yellow and orange.

I mean I see how this idea could look good on paper; “let’s make the walls BRIGHT and FUN so that people are EXCITED JUST TO WALK DOWN THE STAIRS!!!”. But translated to real life…not so great.  

That’s the stairwell, kids. I’ll tell you what, I’ve come to HATE the color orange. Especially Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays at 7:30 am when I’m heading to school. I hate the color orange almost as much as I hate life. (I’m not a morning person, in case this was unclear)

Another exciting-yet-not-fun part of my life is the light in my bathroom. It’s broken. We’re waiting for the maintenance men to fix it, but it’s taking FOR.EVER.

{this is our light at its absolute brightest}

Which means that my roommate and I have two choices: shower in the dark or shower with the door open. We’ve taken to leaving the door open. I think it takes our friendship to a newer, more intimate level.

We’re at the point now where I can leave her love notes on the toilet paper. So I do:

{I think I’m going to start drawing these on random toilet paper rolls in bathrooms and gas stations. People just don’t understand how funny I am sometimes.}

Another awkward thing about my apartment building is the location of our mailbox.

[I don’t know why that bicycle is covered with a blanket. It has been since the day I moved in. I guess it’s a Utah thing?]

The mailbox is on the right, and on the left is a hot tub. I guess a hot tub is pretty sweet, but the location can be awkward. I usually check the mail at night, and the hot tub is usually occupied. Which is okay. But what’s not okay when it’s a group of guys in the hot tub and one of them [who happened to be wearing a Speedo] tries to persuade me {and every other girl that walks past} to join them. And let me tell you…homeboy doesn’t take no for an answer.

It’s also super awkward when I open the mailbox and it’s empty, and all the guys in the hot tub try to convince me that if I want to start getting mail, I need to hang out with them.

And I wanna be all “guys…no girl is that desperate for mail”. And then I stick my hands in my pocket and try to walk carefully across the icy pavement back to the warm building, silently praying that I don’t slip and fall. I’m sure homeboy in the Speedo would love that.

More things that make my life magnificent:

-Putting tiny kids into tiny lockers.

Which is only a fun experience until you shut the door and pretend to walk away and they start screaming bloody murder and kicking the door. I mean, that’s only hypothetical. I'd never actually try that…

-Brilliantly white buildings illuminated perfectly against a rich blue sky just after the sun has set.

-Men ice skating with babies on their feet

This experience is made twice as fun when you and your friend are trying to get a picture of the man and the baby. Pretty sure me and my friend totally looked like creepers—two twenty year old girls following a married man around an ice skating rink awkwardly bent over wielding our cell phones trying to get non blurry pictures. But it was worth it to capture this picture. [This is hard evidence of my argument that blogging can be awkward]

-Going behind the scenes {backstage/underground/floor seats} at a U of U basketball game.

Because I know cool people.

 

-This building, which makes me want to major in business just so that I can go to school here.

-Valentines Day. Not that I’m excited for the holiday, but I’m excited that our apartment is festive.

Someone who was really on the ball already sent me a killer Valentines Day care package {which I’ve already opened, even though it’s still January}.

And the best part is that it included a pair of warm, fuzzy socks, bringing my warm, fuzzy sock count up to three.

-My sweet kicks:

-And this:

 

Which really needs no explanation.    

[Title from Boys of Summer by the Ataris]

simpler days

It’s snowing outside. It’s so weird that I can say that and that I actually like it.

{The view from my window, including a Narnia style lamp post}

I’d anticipated snow creating in me the excitement that I’ve always seen in movies—that the sight of snow would bring high-spirited cheer, and that the sound of jingle bells and children laughing would follow me wherever I went. Gratefully that’s not been the case. Snow seems to fall slowly, gently blanketing the sidewalks, cars, and roof tops. The novelty of it hasn’t worn off yet and probably never will. I love waking up every morning and looking out the window to see the way my little world has changed overnight. I love excitedly scanning the outdoors for all the traces people unintentionally leave in the snow—the footprints, the dry ground where a car used to be, and sometimes big areas of disturbed snow where people have obviously fallen down. Ha. Everything about the snow is fascinating. From the delicately balanced piles of snow resting on the impossibly skinny branches of trees to the crunching sounds it makes when cars try to forage their way across. Today was an absolutely ideal snow day: I woke up around nine to a grey, overcast sky, observed my morning routine of snow-watching [sometimes referred to as staring out the window with naive wonder and fascination], and went about my day only to find that my class was cancelled. Of course, I was already dressed and on campus at the time…but it’s the thought that counts, right?

And trust me. Getting dressed and leaving my house when it’s cold outside is quite a feat. I really don’t know how to dress warmly. Evidently neither does my roommate, based on our mutual decision to use scarves as decoration rather than to keep our bodies warm and trendy.

There is one exception—my orange coat.

It made its debut in Paris where my mom and I spent the weekend scoping out the Eiffel tower, frog legs, and French boys {okay, that one was mostly me}.

That was its first and only appearance, as living in Florida and Hawaii doesn’t lend itself to cozy, down-filled coats. Luckily it’s freezing here and this coat has become my new best friend—complete with cozy pockets for my hands and my iPod and a fur lined hood to keep me looking like a lion.

My roommate and I had a glorious weekend. We found a vacuum on Saturday and were both equally delighted at the possibilities {I'm telling you, this was a match made in heaven}. We spent the majority of Saturday pushing furniture into new locations, finding mildly repulsive treasures both underneath and in the cushions. We filled up the vacuum multiple times with vomit inducing amounts of dirt and hair—I’m honestly not sure that our apartment or our bedroom has ever been vacuumed before. Later that night we collapsed on our finally clean floor, sweaty and exhausted and completely satisfied. Everything in our apartment had been rearranged and reorganized, and our carpets looked a completely different color. It was completely gratifying, the way unpacking or cooking {even when it’s all night long} always makes me feel at peace with my life.

All our efforts left our beds creatively pushed up against the window and the rest of the room empty and spacious.

[For the record, our beds are made in this picture. “Making the bed” consists of picking the blanket up off the floor and making sure our respective stuffed animals are on the appropriate bed. It’s efficient and functional. And we’re all about efficient and functional.]

{Angry Bird c/o Kenyan!}

The new arrangement leaves my bed next to the window, in the perfect position to spring up and clamber over to scope out the snow every morning.

It is also really convenient to lay there and stealthily scope out people as they’re unknowingly walking past my building being my entertainment. Yep, that’s right. I moved my bed for a better angle for people watching. Cuz that’s how I roll.

It’s been interesting to notice how the weather changes the way I perceive things. My life is blissfully unexciting right now; I wake up, go to school, study at the library, scope out the boys, come home, fall asleep, and do it all over again. On normal, semi-sunny days I sometimes struggle with needing to do more, needing to do more fulfilling or adventurous things. But when it’s dark and snowy my life feels quaint and cozy and it feels completely acceptable to do homework while watching TV with my roommates—as though it’s noble of us to sit around and try to figure out just why the Kardashians are so famous.

So naturally, I find myself joining the skiers and snowboarders as they hope for dropping temperatures, piles of fresh powder, and curse the sunny skies. It’s completely out of character for me, I know. We’ll see how long it lasts :)

[Title from Hollywood by Cute Is What We Aim For]

a thousand endings

Oh hey guys.

Let’s start with number one. You are all awesome. Every time someone new tells me they read the stuff I write it just makes my little heart all happy. Because blog readers are cool. And I LOVE cool stuff. That being said, I’m sorry for my absence. I’m a little bit embarrassed that it’s the 18^th of January and this is the first post of 2012. Whoops. I just had to figure out how I was going to handle getting thrown into an entirely different life…again.

Which leads me to number two. Usually the best way for me to write about my life is to take a step back and look at it from another perspective—objectively, even. Well, objectively, it’s completely not a life I thought I’d ever be living. I live in probably the most opposite place from Florida. No more baking in the sun and then diving into a perfectly chlorinated pool feeling sweet relief that water brings. Nope. Now it’s put-on-every-layer-possible-and-shiver-while-walking-from-your-house-to-your-car. Though I have to say, I have a completely new understanding of cold. . It is so cold here that I can see my breath when I’m walking to my 12:30 class. That’s right kids, even when the sun is directly overhead, it is still so cold that you look like you’re smoking when really all you’re doing is trying to stay alive. I understand now why people wear shoes—and that moccasins don’t actually count because they don’t keep your feet warm. I understand why people use lotion (dry air=lizard hands) and heavy coats (“painfully cold” is no longer an exaggeration) and hair dryers (hello, icicle head). These were all foreign concepts but I GET IT NOW. I’ve slipped on ice three times, gone ice skating twice, and fallen down the side of a snow covered mountain once. Oh glorious winter. If nothing else, it’s highly conducive to studying. Just what I always wanted.

I hate adjusting. Hate hate hate it. That’s not to say that I don’t like change. I love change. I love new, exciting things. I love anticipation and hope and how my mind can run wild constructing all possible outcomes of whatever situation I’m about to encounter. But my affinity towards new situations only lends itself to instances where I get to go home at the end of the day and sit in my comfortable, familiar surroundings and revel in the new things I saw. By my calculations, it’s about time for me to go home and reflect on the last few weeks.

Seriously though, my life isn’t bad. It’s not the most exciting it’s ever been (though I’m starting to think exciting is a little too extreme in my family), but it’s pleasantly simple. I go to sleep when I should. I have actually started studying (who knew that was what you’re supposed to do in college!). I’m trying to adjust to new types of beauty—buildings backed up to mountains, mountains backed up to a deeply overcast sky, churches and temples on every corner, girls with strange, strange ideas of what is a good hairstyle—it’s all strange to me. But I’m adjusting. And in the ultimate proof that there must be a God, I have absolutely wonderful roommates. They don’t bother me. They’re selfless and caring and empathetic. They clean up after themselves. They’re pleasant and nice and I could live with them forever.

And finally, speaking of wonderful people, there are new ones in my life. I thought maybe it would be done being my turn to be the recipient of so much assistance, so much generosity and so much love. Wrong. My kitchen and my heart are both full thanks to the selflessness of so many people out here. Once again, I’m humbled to receive so much help, offered willingly and without solicitation. I’d probably be having a harder time with it had someone wise not taught me something: what makes people good people is receiving help graciously and letting the generosity motivate you to do good for others, to pay it forward in a sense. To which my first thought was ‘dang. I’m gonna be paying it forward for the rest of my life’. And my second thought was that I am totally fine with that :)

[Title from Cinema by Benny Benassi ft. Gary Go {Skrillex Remix}]