Goal Setting.

Staying home sick on a Sunday means time for blogging.

This post is going to be a little different due to the complaints of my friend Bryce Hanks that I center allign all of my text, which apparently "interrupts the flow of the sentences." So here I am, writing this post in paragraph form with a left allignment, feeling ever-so-boring for complying to the requests of another human being.

I'm normally an "I do what I want" kind of girl.

However, as a writer I am working on accepting constructive criticism and not thinking everyone else is way dumber than me, and I imagine this goal must apply to my blog posts as well, so I'm taking one for the team (team members: my pride and me) and giving it a shot.

Speaking of goals, I finished setting my semester goals last night (being LDS means the necessity of goal-setting has been engrained in me since the age of birth). I realize that we are already four weeks into the semester, but things got a little crazy in the beginning there and I didn't have time for things like thinking and/or obsessive 30 Rock marathons that always inspire me to set goals for my life so I don't end up like Liz Lemon. I'm going to keep a majority of the list to myself, but I'll let you guys in on a few:

#1. Say Yes. I have been taught my whole life to say no. Say no to drugs, say no to strangers, say no to that creepy boy in my American Lit. class who writes "life" on his knuckles with sharpie and keeps asking me out for frozen yogurt (Provo's favorite pastime). But this semester, that is coming to an end. I am going to be a yes-girl. I have spent too many Saturday nights in the library sending texts that say "I can't. I have to study." Now, there are obvious exceptions to this rule (and there may be a few saturday nights I really do have to study). But, for the most part, I am going to say YES to any and all invites. Invite away.

#2. Plan Out my Summer Adventures. This is big. I am planning the ultimate summer ever that is going to end in the ultimate trip ever in August (if you haven't noticed by now I'm a big fan of superlatives.) I have no real clue what any of this is going to be, but come April I WILL be throwing a SUMMER ADVENTURES PLANNING PARTY. If you would like to be involved, and will be living in Provo, Utah this summer, please let me know.

***I just got bored with writing full paragraphs out about every goal of mine and this left allignment is making me grouchy so I'm moving into quick-list form.***

#3. Save $30 in change in my change jar on my desk.

#4. Walk in April's Graduation

#5. Finish off the ten packages of pasta I purchased at the beginning of the semester and then never eat pasta again.

#6. Train and run Provo's April half marathon.

#7. Leave my house before noon every day. (harder than it sounds)

#8. Make friends who aren't engaged. (It's bound to happen sometime)

#9. Find an excuse to wear the cool formal dress I made over Christmas break.

#10. Find out where my bike went to and start riding it again. (I seriously used to have a bike up here, and then I forgot about it, and who knows where it is now?)

#11. As always, win an Ipod. This is my goal every semester.

So the secrets are out. Now that I've told the blogging world, I'm really going to have to stick to these. If you would like to participate/help in any of these goals, I'm probably going to need it.

Love,

Katie

Part Two.

I know. I know.

I've changed the design of my blog like four times in the past two days and OMG I'm SUCH a girl for doing it.

Oh yeah? Well if I'm such a girl how come I just said "I hate pink and Twilight" out loud?

Think about it.

While you are, I am going to move on to my real post about Wednesday's game.

I thought waiting a couple days would help prevent me from drooling on my computer screen at the mere thought of the game but I'm salivating more now than I did in third grade when I got one of those fist-sized jawbreakers for passing off all of my times tables.

It was honestly just that magic.

And I saw Peter Pan on stage tonight so I'd say I'm in a pretty good position to place things on the "magic" scale.

I'm going to give you a little photo journey and then we'll talk aftermath:

First of all, BYU decided to do some weird things with student tickets for this game in an effort to prevent people from camping out.

Naturally, sleeping outside in tents is a horrifically unkosher idea to university administration.

This comes largely from their fear that boys and girls tents might be set up in the same general area, leaving room for the possibility that girls will hear boys snoring at night, come to the sudden realization that their lives will not suddenly be made perfect after marriage, remember that prospective marriage partners are the only reason they were faking their interest in sports, and leave to go sleep in their warm bed and watch Gossip Girl.

From this would spring the problem that the majority of our crowd would then be reduced to white, twenty-something males, making our school look painfully less diverse than it already does.

Or at least that was the only logical reason I could think of for their ridiculous system that involved me standing out in the snow for three hours while missing classes, to get a wristband that told me to stand in line for three more cold hours the next day.

The up-side was I got to do it with five thousand other students who were all as excited about seeing the team (Jimmer) as I was.

Here are the three sweet people I was waiting with.

Yes, both boys do have broken arms. Yes, this was really funny to me.
My favorite part was when, after numbering everyone off with specific seven-digit numbers, one through five-thousand, and thoroughly checking to ensure that everyone was in their correct spot in line, the crowd just simply broke through the doors, disregarding numbers, and sat wherever the heck they wanted.
I love mob mentality. And the 8th row seats I got hooked up with.


This picture above SCREAMS the theme of the night. It was the loudest...anything...I have ever been in. Nearly 23,000 people who all had a crush on Jimmer.

Storming the court after the game was also a trip. Everyone was sweaty-hugging everyone, which was kind of gross but in an I'm-cool-with-this-if-you-are kind of way.

So this morning I was watching an ESPN classic game.

It was a 1990 Georgetown vs. Villanova game and some tall kid was shooting free throws when I heard the announcer say "You know Jeff, I have a feeling we're going to see a lot more of this kid."

I looked up to see Alonzo Mourning running back down the court.

Interesting how right he was, and I have a sneaking feeling that man would say the same thing about Mr. Fredette.

In fact, I'm going to say it.

You know Jeff, I have a feeling we're going to see a lot more of this kid.

Fingers crossed.

Love,

Katie

You got Jimmered.

I just went through my facebook wall and deleted everything that didn't have to do with Jimmer Fredette for the pure joy of tricking myself into thinking, if only for a few minutes, that the world revolves around this beautiful man.

My #9 Cougars played #4 San Diego St. tonight in one of the most thrilling games I have ever witnessed.

I am going to blog more later about the whole process of waiting in line and all the events that went along with it, but tonight, I just want to let it all sink in.

I don't care who you are, how little you care about sports or how dumb you think it is that people can care so much about a game, what we saw tonight was art.

And Jimmer Fredette was the artist.

There is something so inhuman about the way he moves that orange ball around a court.

And there is something so human about what talent like that does for a community.

I love my school. I loved those stands full of people I didn't even know.

And we all loved Jimmer.

I'll have chills for days.

The game was beautiful.

What a night.

Love,

Katie

Hello, my name is Hitler.

Most days I have a fantastic job.

I supervise intramural sports for my school and since I'm a sports fanatic I can rarely complain.

Today, however, I am going to complain.

But only a little bit.

The thing about our intramural program that really gets everyone worked up is the fact that we have rules.

Most participants pay a lot of money to play these organized sports rather than their usual pick-up games, but don't be fooled, they don't really want them to be any different, excepting the fact that they now have officials to yell at.

One of our rules that most people see as irrelevant is the rule where you have to show up to your game on time.

It's the craziest thing to them that you can't just come halfway through your allotted hour time-slot and have our intramural staff jump up and worship your every lower-division-basketball demand.

(Whoops. Maybe I should have waited a few days to write about this when I wasn't so worked up about it.)

Anyways, day in and day out we have participants in a rage because even though they have been repeatedly told that they WILL forfeit if they don't show up on time, they are upset that consquences have suddenly become a real thing in their life.

This morning I had a boy get so upset with me about this that he legitimately yelled at me, with a serious face, his voice cracking:

"ARE YOU SERIOUS?? YOU ARE PERSECUTING ME!! THIS IS WORSE THAN THE JEWS HAD IT!! THIS IS JEWISH PERSECUTION!!!!!!!"

At that point everyone on the court looked at me like I was Hitler.

I probably didn't help the cause by laughing in the poor suffering boy's face.

Because Jewish persecution? Really??

So needless to say I was a little upset/hysterically laughing after that incident, and since it took place within the first five minutes of my shift I spent the rest of my shift letting my mind wander and trying not to think about the whole thing and get frustrated all over again.

Here are some of the things I thought about:

#1. Why is every television show currently on TV about some sort of doctor, lawyer, ghost hunter, or a combination of these? I wonder how long it is going to take for NBC to realize that they just released two shows with the exact same plot: a psychic goverment employee solving their local city's murders while saving lives and having an emotional affair with their co-worker who is in on their secret that they can hear dead people?

To be fair, I'm addicted to shows like this.

But that doesn't mean I'm happy about it.

Let's switch things up guys.

#2. A game Erin, me, and our too-young-to-know-better sisters played as children. We took turns going out of the room while everyone looked in the fridge for the grossest thing they could find to make them eat. Then, said person would come back into the room while everyone watched them eat it.

Why was this fun? It's questionable. But we loved it.

Things I remember eating: A spoonful of baking powder, an entire cup of ketchup, four month old shephards pie with mold on top, mayonaise with worchestershire sauce, brown sugar that everyone spit in...

The list goes on. We were really creative children.

I decided today that this game is the sole contributing factor to the fact that I have zero sense of germs (is that a sense? your sense of germs?), zero pickiness in my eating habits and had zero friends besides Erin from ages 4-14.

#3. THIS article. (Click on the word "this" mom.)

This guy is like a real-life Batman. SO cool.

I was a little confused as to why it was written and if it was supposed to expose, honor, or bash on him, but I really like the idea that something crazy is going on here that I don't quite know about.

I think the article meant more for this to guy to worry me than anything, but for some reason I feel like he has my back.

By the end I found myself less concerned about the fact that there is a man running his own CIA out of southern california, and more worried about how he felt being described as "bespectacled and doughy" by one of the nations largest newspapers.

Thats gotta hurt.

Kind of like when people call you a jew-persecutor.

That's right angry little kid with the spikey, anime-hair,

I'm talking to you.

Love,

Katie

Zoom. Zoom. Zoom.

I am a big fan of the future.

The main reason for this:

Spandex.

I love the stuff.

Particularly in the form of spandex pants. Who in their right mind would choose to wear stiff, low-rise jeans that are perpetually uncomfortable when you could just throw on some black spandex and dance around like Kevin Bacon in the 80's. Or Paula Abdul in the 80's.

Or anyone in the 80's really.

The 80's really knew what it was doing.

But so does the future.

I'm convinced that 2011 is finally the year when we will accept the futuristic practices found in Zennon: Girl of the 21st Century.

A few things I know I'm really going to like about the future, as indicated by this video:

1. When you live in the future, you mainly sing about living in the future. Everyone is really excited about it.

2. Everyone gets their children's names out of the glossary of their astronomy textbooks, which sounds much easier than those lengthy baby-name books.

3. The only thing that isn't different about society and our culture is the tambourine. That thing isn't going anywhere.

4. Spandex.

This post was inspired by the fact that I have quit jeans.

They are way too uncomfortable to me and I have made a new years resolution to only wear spandex and/or dresses from here on out.

Therefore, I am trying to convince everyone else to join me in embracing the future.

Here are a few fun facts to convince you:

1. The word spandex is actually an anagram from the word "expands."

........................................

Okay that's really all I've got, but I thought that was clever.

Let's start a spandex revolution.

Ready...go.

Love,

Katie

Susan.

I feel so boring lately. No new stories to tell. Nothing to blog about.

My bad guys.

So instead of telling you about how many wheat thins I ate watching Forest Gump last night (probably the most exciting thing I have to say), I am going to tell you my favorite funny story.

You're welcome:

My freshman year of high school my best friends Jenna and Jessie convinced me to try out for the basketball team.

I had never played basketball before outside the vicious games of speed we played in my driveway growing up, but I liked sports and trying new things so I went for it.

I had fun and after try-outs the coach pulled me aside and said that I had made the team based on "potential."

This is not a promising reason to be placed on the high school basketball team and in the end just meant that I could run fast and hit girls and they were hoping that would translate into me putting the ball in the basket.

Their assumptions proved to be wrong after all as I was a soccer player at heart and soccer players do not do well in sports where you can't hip-check the other girls.

However, me being terrible at basketball is not what this story is about.

This story is about Susan.

Susan was a large Native American senior from my high school whose real name is definitely not Susan, but whose name I changed based on the fact that this story still really freaks me out.

You'll understand by the end.

Susan was the biggest, meanest, roughest girl's basketball player in southern utah.

As a freshman girl what kept me up at night was the fear that one day coach would say "we're doing a shooting drill and Katie will be guarding Susan."

Ultimate panic.

It was our first weekend trip and we were taking all four grades of basketball girls up to northern utah on only one bus.

As a freshman this meant trippling up on a bus seat for seven hours,

and it just so happened that I was trippled up on a seat directly across from Susan who had somehow managed to obtain an entire seat for herself.

We drew straws and I was somehow designated to sit on the outside of the seat closest to Susan. I was nervous at first but after a while she fell asleep laying flat on the seat with her legs bent over the end that faced the aisle.

For Christmas that year my mother had made me a large, yellow, fleece pillow and I had brought it along with high hopes of sleeping through the worst parts of the trip. After awhile the two other girls and I had worked out a system where, if we all leaned on each other and I stacked enough bags between me and the seat in front of me, we could sleep for up to fifteen minutes at a time. However, it wasn't long after I fell asleep that I woke up disoriented, realizing that my pillow had gone missing. Still groggy-eyed I looked around, saw yellow fleece and grabbed it.

It just so happened that Susan had decided to wear yellow fleece pants that day.

I will never forget the look on her face when she sat up, eyes raging, to a hysterically panicked freshman girl who had just experienced accidentally groping the upper thigh of her worst nightmare.

I don't remember much of what happened after that, but I do remember vowing to burn that pillow, and all pillows ever, as soon as I got home.

That is, IF I made it home.

I slept the rest of the trip with one eye open, convinced that Susan and her yellow fleece pants were coming to take their revenge with every footstep outside the hotel door.

Ironically, Susan and I became friends a few years down the road and she turned out to be an incredibly nice girl.

But the moral of this story is not that everyone has some good in them once you get to know them.

Because no matter how true that may be, it still does not keep me from feeling a little queasy every time I see yellow fleece.

Life is funny.

That was not.

Love,

Katie

Condoleezza.

I'm so caught up in the business of graduate school applications and the first few weeks of the semester that even now, when I have a forty-minute break between class and work, I am struggling to just sit and relax.

So...I'll blog.

Condoleezza Rice came to my university today and spoke in a forum to over eighteen-thousand members of our student body.

I have heard mixed reviews on her coming, as well as on her speech.

From my thirteenth-row seat in that large auditorium, I found what she said inspiring.

By the time I left I felt validated in my efforts to pursue my chosen career, something I worry about often.

If I haven't told you, I want to be a writer.

I've tried many other career paths and this is simply what I want to do.

Problem: Unless you become a sell-out and write poorly composed books on vampires that appeal to large masses of average girls and women....the chances of making enough money as a writer to eat more than two meals a day are slim. (I usually go with five, I'm a hungry girl.)

And, since I base all of my decisions on how much food I will get out of the situation, this one is a tough call.

But good ol' Condie reminded me of something: Passion.

"Find your passion," she said. "And when you find it, worlds open to you, worlds you might never have imagined.

Things that seem impossible, in retrospect will see inevitable."

And she's right.

Writing is my passion.

It doesn't matter how illogical it sounds to the thousands of "pred-meds" here at BYU.

It's where I'm happiest.

The literary world is a tough crowd and right now it seems more than impossible.

All I can do is have faith in the fact that one day it might seem a little closer to inevitable.

Thank you Condoleezza Rice.

You were just what I needed.

And now blogging world, what do you want to be?

A better question: whats stopping you?

“I encourage you to find your passion while you’re here. Find what you’re passionate about, what will make you get up every day for the rest of your life…. You will find as I often did that I was more fulfilled in overcoming and mastering something difficult than something that came easy to me. When you overcome something that’s hard, you know you can meet life’s challenges, no matter how hard they are.”

-Condoleezza Rice

I don't mean to sound melodramatic here. I know this speech is something you hear a thousand times on the morning annoucements in middle school, "reach for the stars" and all that junk.

(My principle actually just breathed really heavily into the loudspeaker so nobody could understand him, while Kennen Warner threw spitwads into my hair)

All I know is somehow this message is important.

Somehow we really need to think about what we want to do and where we want to be.

I feel the weight of time lately, the fact that we never get it back.

So I'm going to do it. Now. Today.

Starting with graduate school applications.

Which I really should get back to.

Go do something cool yourself.

Love,

Katie

Computer Woes.

My laptop is on the brink of destruction.

The bottom right corner where it hinges is completely busted and if anyone in the room so much as breathes wrong, the whole screen falls flat, usually hitting the table rather hard, which can't be good for it.

This gimpy computer is my sixth computer in the last year. (Luckily the last five have been rental computers so they have been somewhat easy, albeit annoying, to replace.)

Allow me to introduce you to some of the others:

The Wuss: One day I noticed some dust on the screen. I blew on it, and the whole computer shut down and never started up again. What a baby.

The Epileptic: Every time I scrolled down the whole screen would shake like a high school dance during "Hey Ya."

The Dyslexic: Everything I typed in got entered in backwards. A small part of me wishes I would have kept this one long enough that I could learn to read backwards and be on one of those Tyra specials about having freaky talents.

The One That Reminds Me of my Dating Life: The charger was broken, the computer was exceptionally moody, its unreliability gave me major trust issues, I lost nearly everything I put into it and in the end it just couldn't commit.

It has been a long year of technological failures, which is why I have been living with the broken corner on this one for so long.

I have a feeling the day is coming when it will no longer be a choice. This screen can only hit my bedroom desktop so many times before the abuse gets to it.

The good news is, I won't have much use for it tonight.

Go Ducks.

Love,

Katie

The Walking Dead

A miracle has occured.
I have somehow managed to work out my schedule so I have no Friday classes.

I am convinced that the school uses the trick of scheduling classes with boring professors or lame subject-matter to be Monday-Wednesday or Tuesday-Thursday classes to rope in people like me who would rather take all the worst classes than have a class on Friday, and I am happy to admit that I have been willingly suckered in.

I now have my Fridays clear to do things like sleep in until 10:30, write blog posts and not go outside in the freezing cold.

My next item of business: Zombies.

I had the scariest, most real zombie dream of all time last night.

My family and Erin's family had set up camp in this mansion amidst the turmoil of a zombie apocalypse. We were busy bolting doors and covering our scent when another family showed up and tried to steal it from us. In the midst of our family feud (Erin and I still want to audition for Family Feud in California. We even called the studios about it once) a hand reached through the door, grabbed my sister Rachel and someone screamed....ZOMBIES!

I woke up shaking.

I decided I have GOT to stop watching Zombie shows.

In the meantime, however, I grabbed my roommates dream book and decided to interpret my dream.

Here's what I got:

1. Zombies:

"To dream about Zombies indicates that you are feeling dead inside."

Why yes, Winter is slowly suffocating my soul.

"Dreaming of creatures that feed on human bodies suggests that your negative ways are hindering your growth."

Again, I blame winter. I'm a happy person in the summertime. My real nightmares are about snow.

2. Family Feud:

There was nothing in the book about this, but I still really want to be on that TV show.

3. Sister getting attacked by Zombies:

"You may have a dream where your sister falls ill if you have an argument with her in waking life."

If this is true then I should have been having a dream like this every night from age 9-17.

I'm pretty sure all this dream was is my subconscious preparing me for the event of a Zombie apocalypse.

If Will Smith can handle it, I can too.

I mean, I've never even starred in a chick flick so I already have a leg-up on him as far as man-points go.

I just wish AMC could have seen me dominate those dream-zombies. It would have easily landed me a role in the next season of "The Walking Dead," my current favorite Zombie show.

Does YOUR family have a zombie infestation plan?

Mine does.

Or, at least my dream family does.

Love,

Katie

Okay FINE...

...I'll start blogging again.

From time to time I like to do something I call "quitting life."

This is officially done by me walking out into the living room in sweats and saying to my roommates "I quit life!," standing there for a second and then walking back into my room.

While this never really accomplishes much and nothing changes or is actually "quit" about my life when I'm done, but I usually feel a lot better after doing it.

I haven't been feeling very well today and have been very overwhelmed by grad school applications, new semester assignments, schedule issues, and the fact that there hasn't been a new 30 Rock episode in over 3 weeks.

So, because I don't have the energy to get out of bed, instead of walking out into the living room to say this to my roommates, I am saying it to you.

Hey blogging world,

I quit life.

I feel better already.

I could move on from here to telling you about the rest of my Christmas Break and my New Years Eve that I spent in Southern California as a groupie for a band called Straight Monday (true story, slightly exaggerated. The word "groupie" can only mean so much when you're mormon and your brother is in the band) but that sounds really boring to me.

And if it's boring to me, it would be waaay boring to you.

So I'm just going to call it quits right here and promise to be back shortly (tomorrow?) bearing gifts of bribery to bring me back into your good graces after leaving you alone for so long.

I would leave you with a joke but I only know one joke and I already wrote a blog post about it.

You can find that here.

TTYL

Love

Katie