Home comes to Provo.

It was the funniest night ever.

And by "it" I mean "last night."

I had a looong day yesterday, starting at 8 a.m. and ending when I got off work at 10 p.m.

I had plans to go to Harry Potter at the dollar theater with my friend Devin from home at 10:30 when I got a text from my friend Russ (also from home) who was creepily waiting at my apartment having just got in town for a wedding.

I swung by, picked him up, ran through the Del Taco drive-thru (spelling "through" like that is against everything in me that makes me an English major), threw all my food (including a full chocolate shake for Devin) into my purse and headed to the theater.

(***Disclaimer: I am always significantly more hyper/obnoxious around my friends from home. Growing up with people can easily create a loss of social awareness and last night I had a pretty bad case of that.)

List of events/Observations from the night:

1. Devin high-fiving the ticket lady in celebration of her telling us to go to theater "five." Then, us walking off chuckling until she yelled at us from down the hall that theater five is towards "our other left."

2. Me trying to eat a full Del Taco meal quietly during the movie while everyone around me kept commenting that they could smell food.

3. Using 76 ketchup packets to eat one serving of fries. It never makes sense to me why they make those packets so small. Nobody ever needs only that one small amount.

4. Noticing that one of the main themes in Harry Potter is making things look smaller than they are. The majority of the movie is Harry living in a huge tent that looks small on the outside and fits into a tiny bag that is actually large on the inside. I spent a good chunk of the movie thinking that if I was a wizard, the first thing I would do would be to figure out how to put a large amount of ketchup into those small packets. Talk about magic.

5. The man at the back of the theater who wouldn't stop laughing this insane, loud, cackling laugh at almost every part of the movie. It got to the point where the whole theater was laughing at him instead of the movie. At one point I was laughing so hard I couldn't stop crying and had to cover my head with my jacket and just focus on breathing.

6. Driving home from the movie at 1 a.m. in the snow and watching Devin stop at a red light, get out, run around both of our cars, get in on his passenger side, and take off before me all because Russ threw my car into neutral when I wasn't looking.

7. Our friend Ryan coming over at 2 a.m. Quote of the night:

Russ: "Hey Katie, have you ever seen Ryan when he gets super tired and crazy? Its hilarious. He lays on the floor and just talks to the ceiling fans."

Ryan: "Dude that was ONE time!"

Ah man. I haven't enjoyed myself so much since I was at home for the break.

They say that when you move away to college you make your real friends and you kind of forget about your high school friends.

I just don't think that is true in my case.

Because honestly, how could I ever forget about faces like this?

Final Word: This really has nothing to do with anything else, I just wanted to say that I made crepes with nutella this morning. And they were delicious.

R.I.P. Friedrichstrasse.

My sister and her freshman roommates took my car to St. George/Vegas for the weekend.

I am currently taking bets on whether or not it will come back in one piece.

I'll be praying all weekend.

Love,

Katie

Flirting 101

I wrote another article for The Academy Hill that can be found here.

This time around it was on flirting.

I, of course, was asked to write it based on my incredibly sucessful dating life which includes me thinking that a Saturday night not spent in the library is a total shame, as everyone knows that is when the library is quietest.

As an authority on the subject I think you should all read my article and do what I say.

And yes, I am typing this from the library.

Love,
Katie

Home Alone.

It has been a quiet day in Kensington #7.

The roomies are all off celebrating this Presidential holiday with "boys" (suckers) and I have become the neglected child left at home to ponder the fact that we haven't owned a working vacuum in over eight months.

I have been taking full advantage of this alone time by doing things like:

1. Dishes

2. Crocheting with my fingers because I can't find my crochet hook and want to make something with my weird amount of excess yarn.

3. Spilling water on the floor, cleaning it up and getting a new glass, then spilling it on the floor again. (Our floor may not be vacuumed but it is well scrubbed by now)

4. watching sports center

5. watching CNN

6. NOT watching Say Yes to the Dress

7. Blogging (Obvious)

This long weekend marks the renewal of my soccer obsession.

From November to February there usually isn't too much opportunity for me to play soccer. The main reason for this is the fact that I live in a place colder than the hearts of people who hate Jimmer Fredette. However, on Saturday I had a lot of forfeited games on the field I was supervising and had a chance to play a bit of pick-up soccer and remember why there is nothing better on this earth.

Except for maybe this. (which is also soccer, just a better form of it. That goal is incredible.)

Other things from the past few days:

My little brother with Beiber hair. According to my mother 8th grade girls at his school love it.

I'll fight them.

My incredible Grandparents at a BYU alumni banquet where my Grandpa was honored for his outstanding community service.

(Not the kind a judge gives you.
Cindy visiting. We had a good chat about how we don't want to date any boys except for Zac Efron.

Casey and I staying up until 3 a.m one night and 1:30 a.m. the next to make these face curtains.

Idea: Casey's.

Sewing Machine: Mine

We make a good team.
(Yes, that face is made from scraps of fabric. Not printed on there.)

Who doesn't want to wake up to some black angry-face curtains?

Happy President's Day.

God Bless America.

Love,

Katie

Jerry Pie.

This is Jerry Sloan when he was young...

This is Jerry now that he is old...
And this is the Jerry I have grown up with...

Nothing is sure. Nothing set in stone. But rumor is Jerry Sloan is resigning and it has a whole lot to do with Deron Williams.

DWill is good. He's a player, no doubt. But he's no Jerry.

This is not fair.

As life would have it, my Grandpa Kochevar is more or less a next-door neighbor to Jerry Sloan (give or take a large gate, a security code and a few hundred thousand dollars between them).

Once my grandpa took him a pie.

My Grandpa is a big, manly man (he was a high school principle) who also happens to make a mean pie, and one day he was sure that Jerry Sloan needed one of his pies.

He walked across the street, through the big gate, and up the long path to Mr. Sloan's front door.

Since I am writing this in my American Lit class and the bell is going to ring I'm going to go ahead and make the story short from here:

Jerry not only accepted the pie, but invited him in and listened to his Grandpa stories for about half an hour.

What a nice guy.

A nice guy who also happens to be one of the greatest coaches in NBA history and the staple of my life-long Jazz fandom.

The point of my story, the point of this post, is really to say one thing:

Life is unexpected. One day you are sitting in the Wilk eating a beefy crunch burrito from Taco Bell, the next you are getting a text about the loss of a loved one and you find yourself on the floor screaming "PLEASE. NOT JERRY. I'LL DO ANYTHING!"

Or maybe something less dramatic like "Man. That sucks. What happened?"

It's going to take some good pie to get over this one.

With all his new free time, maybe Jerry will share one with us.

I will miss you Jerry Sloan.

Love,

Katie

I posted this once and it got deleted so just be grateful its even here.

Oh dear.
It has been over a week since the best day of my life and I am barely blogging about it.

I go through days and weeks where I just don't feel clever at all. Weeks where I have five papers and three tests to take and blogging just somehow gets pushed to the end of the list.

That was last week.

And this is my blog post: (written to the tune of Casablanca, which I am currently watching with Jessica Marshall who got engaged this weekend and took a step towards being boring and married. ;) Congrats Marshie!)

This is my brother Jordan. A few of you may have met him.

He is my best friend and last weekend he also got engaged. (check the bling on his little finger) Last Friday I went with him to Salt Lake City to pick up this ring.

Best parts of the trip:

1. Having everyone at Shane Co. jewlers thinking I was the bride-to-be. Reminded me of high school when everyone thought we were either dating or twins (as if those were the only options) causing me to throw up in my mouth on a daily basis.

2. Getting stuck in Salt Lake because we couldn't leave with the ring because of a mix-up, and we couldn't leave without the ring because of Jordan not wanting to part from it. A little bit precious. A little bit annoying. A little bit my boss being really mad at me for being late for work.

3. Jordan yelling "I'VE. GOT. AN. ENGAGEMENT RIIIIING!!!!" all the way home.

**I would like to take the time now to point out that just because all major people in my life are either engaged, married or pregnant, does not mean that YOU should consider being one of these. Someone has to stick it out with me. Unless you are already one of these. In that case, carry on.

The next morning found Jessica Esplin and me standing in a line of 200 people (girls) outside of Plato's closet for their semi-annual Grab-bag Sale.
If you want to know what it was like being in a small space with such absurd levels of estrogen and discounts, take some vinegar and some baking soda, go outside...

...and blow them up using explosives. It was nuts.

We came out with over $70 worth of clothes for $10 even, and a few handfuls of missing hair from the cat fight.

If I'm being selfish, this next part was the best part of this day.

I could go into a long story about how I have had a sweepstakes e-mail account for this very reason for over two years now, or how I had almost a weird obession with accomplishing this goal, but I'm just going to go straight to the point.

I won an Ipod.

In front of 22,000 people. Including Jimmer. (Okay, maybe he was actually in the locker room but I know he heard me.)

Thanks to this dream being accomplished I now have a new mental complex that I have to add to a long list of personal quirks.

I now have the belief that I can, and should, get anything that I really want for free, as long as I am willing to wait long enough and make friends with people who can hook me up. (love you Kait!)

The question is, how do I make friends with someone who can hook me up with a decent trip back to Europe. Because that is next on the list. That or a good steak.

Part Three of the day: More Jimmer crossovers. More Jimmer obsession. Routine.

Still on a high from my Ipod snag, I headed over to Jordan's place after the game to set up for the big dinner.

This dinner was meant to fake her out so it had to look as proposal-esque as possible.

My tastes are a bit eclectic so it wasn't your traditional candlelit dinner, but with the help of his creative roommates I think it turned out alright.
After that it was off to decorate HER apartment with the actual BIG surprise: A giant diamond ring!
Who saw that coming?
(It IS gorgeous though...)

There was some knee bending, some tears, some toasts, and a lot of these kind of smiles...

We were proud sisters.

Though proposals are cheesy, there is something so sweet about planning to ask someone to spend the rest of forever with you.

At the risk of sounding like one of those "I blog for posterity" types of bloggers, I am going to say a few things.

I am glad he picked Laura.

I am glad she said yes.

And most of all, I am glad I won an Ipod.

I have priorities.

Love,

Katie

Cool Story.

I promise you the purpose of this blog is not to demonstrate how unfortunate I am at life.

I just want to say that I stayed up until 2:30 a.m. last night, then got up at 7 a.m., just to finish reading a book and writing the paper expected of me on said book. I finished at 9:13 a.m. Didn't shower (which really shouldn't be part of this story because that's not too different from most mornings I am required to wake up before 10.) Booked it up onto campus. Printed off my paper. Rushed to class.

Only to discover that I had read NEXT week's book and written NEXT week's paper.

Hilarious.

(Really it was. I couldn't stop laughing.)

On a brighter note, the rest of my classes were cancelled today, making this a five day weekend since I don't have class again until Monday evening.

A long weekend I'm going to need so I can catch up on this week's reading/paper that are now late.

Life is cool.

Love,

Katie

Fire Drill

Sitting on my bed this afternoon doing homework I heard a knock at the door.

I answered it to find our new landlord, a cute twenty-something local girl (I'm assuming) who informed me that the BYU inspector would be here shortly to inspect (naturally) our apartment. (Although it would have been really funny if she said he was just coming over to hang out. I'll have to remember that one if I'm ever a landlord and decide to be really funny, which I would.)

Once she came inside, however, I did get a little uncomfortable.

"Sorry," I said, "We haven't cleaned for a few days.(weeks)"

"Oh that's fine," she said, "he's mostly just here to check fire alarms and stuff."

I then glanced nervously at our fridge, on top of which sat all three fire alarms for our apartment that we have simply disabled when they wouldn't stop beeping and just left there to collect dust.

(Who knew the beeping meant they needed new batteries?)

Question from the audience: "But Katie, what were you going to do if there was a fire in your apartment?"

Katie: "That happened the other day. I just blew it out."

Audience: "That was a candle."

Katie: "Blah. Blah. Blah. Tell me something I don't know."

So I was about to mention this fire alarm issue to the landlord when there was another knock at the door. The inspector was early because, as a BYU graduate, he has been taught that if you are on time you are late, and if you are early you are on time.

(He has also been taught that the straighter the part in his hair, the hotter his spiritual, future wife will be, but that one doesn't really apply in this situation.)

Inspector: "Why have all your fire alarms been temporarily disabled?"

Katie: "Who said this was temporary?"

Inspector: (didn't think my joke was funny) "You have two days to get them fixed."

I was under the impression that we had already fixed them by making them stop beeping, but as my Landlord so kindly informed me after the inspector left, this is not the case.

And so, tomorrow she is dropping us off some new batteries and we are in charge of re-attaching the alarms before the return of Mr. Punctual-Hair-Part.

Being responsible. Who needs it?

Love,

Katie