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

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