Whoa...what happened last night?

I get that sort of feeling this time every year. That hangover feeling where I'm looking forward and everything that happened before is just a blur. What happened last year? How did I spend 2010, now that it's nearly over?

Thank goodness I have a blog, or I'd never know what I was up to!

Goings-on In 2010

1. Continued in my schooling despite the University's many attempts to squash me
2. Was accepted into Phi Eta Sigma National Honors Society
3. Lived with my roommates and had some good college-y fun
4. DIDN'T go on a single date (hmm, I feel a New Year's Resolution forming...)
5. Started some really awesome stories
6. Reached 100 blog posts
7. Moved back in with my parents to save money
8. Learned how to play racquetball and how to beat people up (in self defense, of course...)
9. Applied and was accepted into the International Language Program
10. Sent my best friend on a mission to Connecticutt (miss you, Eric...)
11. Wrote 100 blog posts in a row
12. Became a Primary Teacher and caretaker for an autistic five-year-old
13. Discovered a new favorite radio station (KLove)
14. Went to an Anime Convention
15. Went to Harry Potter 7 Part 1, at midnight, IN COSTUME!
16. Read lots of great books (Unwind, Hunger Games Series, etc)
17. Figured out that I'm not in high school any more and that I can't expect to be the same person that I was back then. Also, that my life is a heckofa lot harder now, but that I can handle it. I just have to handle it differently.
18. Reached 200 blog posts
19. Got to be the boss at work for two weeks while my superior officer was out of town
20. Turned 20 years old. (sick....)

Oh yeah! I remember that stuff. Good times, good times.

Except for the whole "not a single date in all of 2010" thing. I ought to get to work on that. And when am I ever going to get my first kiss?! That's it. This year, I'm shoving school to the side a bit and working on being more exciting.

Plans for 2011

1. Fly in an airplane for the first time ever!
2. Go to a foreign country for the first time ever! (RUSSIA, BABY!)
3. Apply and be accepted into the English Teaching Program so I can get on with my life
4. Watch at least 12 of my friends become married people (This is really just a bet I'm making: who will fall in 2011?)
5. Learn to juggle with four balls instead of just three.
6. Start actually going to social events at school and make some new friends already!
7. Turn 21 years old
8. Become the gorgeous, witty, talented adult-version of Jessica Grosland



This time next year, I hope to have a lot more to be looking back on than just "Well, I went to school a lot..."

Breakfast Meeting

I walked into the room last of everyone, having just come in from sweeping off the dock. I walked around the table to an open chair and sat myself down, leaning on the smooth surface and allowing my body to relax. Breakfast meetings, I thought. Gotta love 'em.

"Hey, Sicka, you can't sit there." I looked across the table to Mindy, who explained with a smile, "That's the boys' side. You can't sit over there."

I looked around. She was right. There were only seven of us staying for the holidays, and we had divided ourselves cleanly. Four girls on one side, two boys on the other side. And while I had been trying to balance out the numbers, I had inadvertantly sat down with the boys. Everyone was quiet, waiting for my answer. I looked back at Eryn. "I'm manly enough to sit over here," I said with a smirk.

"That's true," Alena said, laughing. She'd seen me beat up on her partner Damon a few times. Everyone else laughed too, and started debating whether I could justifiably sit where I was. The two boys next to me, David and Jordan, counseled together for a minute before turning to me with their verdict.

"Okay," David said, looking at me with a calculating stare, "let's quiz you. Are you afraid to punch things?"

I snorted. "No way. I've taken down lots of people. Here at work, even." Everyone at the table quieted down, watching the fun.

"Are you afraid to burp in public?"

"No."

"How many times a day do you change your clothes?"

I considered this. "Usually I change when I wake up, before I come in to work, you know. But sometimes I fell asleep in my jeans, so I just come as is."

This received an impressed muttering from those at the table. "Good enough," David said. "Does your current outfit match?"

I looked down, satisfied. I lifted my leg to the table. "Black shoes with a brown shirt. Clashes."

The girls giggled, but then Jordan interjected, "Can you tell if your clothes match?"

I laughed with the others, feeling cheated. "No fair! That was a tricky question!"

"Can you speak in a low voice," David asked, in his bass tones.

There was a pause, then I mumbled as deep as I could, "Yes."

That got a few chuckles, since it sounded so stupid coming from me. David smiled. "Okay, say this - " he lowered his voice further, "The engine in my Ford Lariat Truck needs -"

I cut him off before it became too obvious I had no idea what he was talking about. "I'm manly enough not to humiliate myself just because you told me to."  The girls at the table "ooh"ed at my clever answer. So did our boss, Glenn, who had just walked in. He asked what was going on. The girls explained about how I'd messed everything up by sitting on the wrong side of the table, and how we were debating whether or not I was qualified to sit on the boys' side. As they explained, a memory locked into place in my head. "Hey!" I shouted, interrupting everything. "I am totally qualified to sit here, and I have scientific proof!"

"What?" Glenn asked, grinning.

"I took a personality test a while back - Alena, you remember?" I asked, looking over at her, "I'm sure I must have told you this. Anyway, I took a personality test that was supposed to be 'What Barbie are you?' You know how there are different kinds of Barbies, right?"  They nodded.

"Well, I took a test to see, if I was a Barbie, which Barbie I would be," I explained. I slammed my palm down on the table. "And I got: Ken!"

Everyone exploded with laughter. "Wait, how many choices were there?" Eryn asked.

"There were seven or eight different Barbies, and one Ken," I said, smiling. "And I got the boy doll."

"Well, if you look at the new Toy Story movie, he's still really effeminate," David argued.

"Well, I never said I was a man," I argued back. "I only said I was manly enough to sit on this side of the table."

"And that you are," Glenn said, chuckling. "That you are."

And that is how we came to the conclusion that I am at least as manly

as a Ken doll.



Christmas Tree Shopping with the Groslands

Some Quotes from the Day


"I want this one!"
"It's all crooked, though."
"I know, so no one else is going to buy it. I don't want it to be sad."
"Honey, they're trees. They don't get sad."
"How do you know?"



"Hey, Jess. Do you think I could fit inside one of these dog houses?"
"Yeah, you're tiny. But do you think I could fit inside?"
(*much shuffling around inside teeny houses*)
"Take that, teeny house!"


"Help! Someone help me!"
"Hannah? What's wrong?"
"I'm trapped!"
"Where are you?" (*finds her in a clump of trees*) "Oh, there you are. Well, just come out."
"I can't! I'm trapped!"
"Go around the back."
"I can't!"
"Well, just go out the side."
"I can't!"
(*inspects the trees and can't find a way out*) "...How the heck did you get in there?"
"....I don't know."


"How about this one?"
"No way. It's fat."
"That's what I like about it!"


"Look at this footprint! It's full of flowers!"
"Cari, are those from your boots?"
(*she giggles conspiratorily*)


"Alright, this is the one.... Nik, come on! We can't buy ALL the trees."
"Hold on, I just want to say something." (*he looks out on the crowd of Christmas trees*) "My dear friends, it pains me that I must leave you here in the cold snow. But never fear! Some nice family will buy you, and take you to their home. You tall ones, someone will buy you soon. And you smaller ones...a family of dwarves might buy you."
"Nik! Come on!"
"Farewell, my tree friends! Merry Christmas!"

First Officer's Log: Stardate 42837.6

Captain Decker won't return from her away mission for another two weeks, and I've had my hands full trying to keep this ship together. I wanted this first command to run as smoothly as possible, especially because I knew we'd be getting a visit from Admiral Miller. Of course, things didn't go as planned.

Admiral Miller arrived promptly at 0600 this morning, and I hardly had time to show her to her quarters before we went into red alert. When I made it to the bridge, Lieutenant Giegy explained quickly that a Force-8 ion storm was headed our way. We attempted to alter course, but there wasn't time. It hit us full blast, and we just had to batten down the hatches and wait it out.

We made it through in one piece, but just barely. Lieutenant Barlowe managed to save the engines, but they'll still take at least four days to repair. The storm lasted more than six hours, and with the turbulence, I don't think a single crewman let go of his consol that entire time. The turbolifts stopped working as soon as the storm hit, so we had people crawling through the Jeffries tubes all day. After running down the corridors, clinging to walls, just trying to hold the ship together, when the storm finally passed everyone was exhausted.

I was impressed by Admiral Miller. She has a reputation for asking nothing less than unflinching excellence from the crews of the ships she visits, so I wasn't sure how she would react when her first impression of Jaifus consisted of a frantic crew and a bruised starship. But she was magnificent. She said she could see how hard we were all working and that we had managed to save more of the ship than a less-skilled crew could have done. "A Level-8 ion storm is nothing to joke about," she said. "But your crew handled it masterfully."

In fact, she was so pleased by our performance that she took the entire senior staff down to the Sick Bay, and then replicated hot chocolate for us and the wounded crewmen. "Nothing like hot chocolate during a storm, is there?" she said. It was a real boost for morale, and I expect her kind actions to be the reason why the repairs have been proceeding so quickly.

I look forward to reporting all of this to the Captain when she returns, but until then, I am happy to spend some more time with Admiral Miller, who will be staying with us while we complete repairs.

-

Commander Sicka

I'm Done Taking Tests; Now I'm Giving One

It's a drawing test. And you are invited to participate. You will need a piece of paper and a writing stick of some sort. (The application Paint works equally well. And I suppose drawing it in your own blood on the wall would work too, but it might say some weird things about your personality . . . ).

Are you ready? Okay, let's get started.

The rules are simple: Draw a picture that has these four things in it - 1) The sun; 2) A body of water; 3) A house; and 4) A snake. You can have other things in your picture too, you just have to make sure you include those four main things.

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Well, what are you waiting for? Draw!
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You finished? Good. Now on to the fun part: figuring out what it all means!

(Note: Skeptics may leave now, or they will be thrown out by my gorilla bouncer. I'm not pretending this is an exact science; psychology rarely is. But it has proven to show some really interesting insights in everyone I've tried it on so far. So let's just check it out and see what happens, okay?)

The House: The house represents you. It is the way you see yourself, or it shows things about yourself that you hadn't considered. If your house is big, or in the center of the picture, then you are the most important influence in your life. If you have lots of detail on your house, you may be someone who likes to get dressed up, or you may be a complicated person. If your house has lots of windows, you like other people to see what you're doing; if you have more than one door, you like to invite people in.

The Sun: The sun represents your father. If it is big, or close to the center, or close to your house, then your father is a huge influence on your life. If it has a smiley face, or is pointy, those say things about your dad's personality.

The Water: The body of water represents your mother. The location and size of the water obviously show her influence on you, and the sun's and water's relationship to each other and the house are representative of your parents' relationship with each other and with you. If there are details in the water, sort those out yourself. I can't see your picture.

The Snake: This is the funnest part. The snake represents your evil side! How big or sinister it is shows how much of an influence it has on you, of course. If it's in the water, you feel like your evil side comes from your mother. If it's off in the distance, you're evil side is barely noticeable. One guy I saw drew a snake coming out of the mouth of the sun, and he admitted afterward that he thinks his worst habits come directly from his dad. It's crazy cool.

Want to see my picture? Of course you do. You wouldn't be reading my blog if you didn't have an unhealthy obsession with my life. Very well, here it is.

See how my mother and father are almost exactly the same size, both rather large but not overwhelming my house? And I've put them on a separate hill from me, trying to distance myself from their influence as I'm getting older and trying to be more independent. My house has a bush and a flower, but that's all the decoration I can master. And the coolest part is my snake. HE'S INSIDE THE HOUSE!

whoa. the massive flow of personal insight here is eerie.

This felt completely perfect to me, once I was told what it was supposed to mean. Any of you who have read my depression posts know that I am fully aware that there is a darkness in me, and I clutch it to myself. I don't think of it as some evil thing that invades me on occasion, but simply as the shadowed depths of myself. That's why it made even more sense when I tried to explain - to my freaked out friends who were taking the test with me - why I had drawn the snake inside the house, unabashedly looking out the window. "It's the snake's house," I said, cheerfully.

Anyway, I hope this was fun for you and distracted you from more important and stressful things. I love personality tests! Now you can make everyone around you take the test, and you'll find out all sorts of secret-y things about them that even THEY didn't know!

Psychology is cool. :)

Don't give me that look; you're not studying either!

Monday

• Wake up (at 3:00am, as usual) with your heart pounding and sweat across your forehead. It takes you a minute to get out of the nightmare and realize that no one is throwing knives at you. At first, you're relieved. Then you remember it's Finals Week.
• Work from 4:00-7:30am. Everyone has a taut grin plastered to their face. Even when no one's talking about it, everyone is thinking about Finals. You try to shove it to the back of your mind and focus on the glitter embedded in the preschool carpet.
• After work, go to the library. You hurry and send off an email to your New Testament teacher that has your final essay attached to it, getting it sent 3 minutes before the deadline. Phew! Then you print off the copies of the midterms your teacher has posted online, hoping they'll help on the comprehensive final you're taking today.
• New Testament study group at 9:00. You get there and pick your way through the crowded room. Even though the study room only fits 11 students, over 30 desperate students have squeezed into spaces on the floor, some of them underneath the table. Some other group has reserved the room at 10:00, so you only have an hour to cram in a semester's worth of notes. Speed reading and scratchy handwriting dominate. You find that your loud voice and tendency to be bossy lead you to take charge the discussion unintentionally. But it's all for the best, since their answers were wrong and they needed to be told so.
• Kicked out of the study room at 10:00, you wander the library looking for a desk to study at. There are no spaces left. You end up hunkered down in an aisle full of Chinese books, waiting for your next study group to start.
• At 11:00, you're in a new room, studying for your Fundamentals of Literary Interpretation final. There are only four people at this study group, but collectively your notes still take up the entire table, an inch and a half thick. You have two hours here, but most of that time is spent in communal groaning. "Explain Barthes's reasoning when he argues that a writerly text is a text before the text is written," one student says, reading off the study guide. A girl at the end of the table interjects, "I don't know, but I'd like to punch him in the face." Everyone agrees loudly. It's the only thing we're sure about.
• After the study group, you head over to the CougarEat, because your mom told you that you had to have a full meal sometime today, and apparently Zesta crackers don't count. You find a table to yourself somehow, and shove food toward your face inattentively while trying to remember if it was Herod the Great or Herod Antipus who ordered infanticide to try to kill Jesus.
• Sometime around 1:50pm, you decide that you're as ready as you're ever going to be to take your New Testament final. You pack up your things and run over to take your test, feeling antsy now. But you run into a very long line, which you follow back for a few hundred yards before you find the end of it. Great. A lady walks past you, calling to the line in general, "Forty-five minutes from this point! Forty-five minutes!"
• Miraculously, it only takes you half an hour to get into the room to take your test. After wandering around looking for an empty seat for five minutes or so, you end up stuck on the end of the table by the door, so you can hear the proctors laughing in the other room. THAT'S not helpful.
• An hour later, you come out of the Testing room and hand your paper over to a proctor, who flings it around as if it's nothing, apparently not realizing that she holds your life and death in her hands. You cringe as you walk to the screen that will show your score. At first you can't look; you close your eyes and mutter one last, desperate prayer. When you open your eyes, you can't believe it. 99%! You gasp in surprise and won't move from that spot, holding onto the fantasy, waiting for the number to change to a low 80s score, like usual. But it doesn't. And soon you're skipping back past the line of students still waiting to take their test, and they look like they want to spit in your happy little face.
• You plan to study when you get home, but you pass out instead. When you wake up, it's almost six o'clock, and you still have to study for your British Literature final tomorrow morning. You find your notes and textbook and get to work.
• Four hours later, you still don't feel ready. Everyone else has gone to bed, and none of them have to be up at 3:00 the next morning. You sigh mournfully, looking down at your pile of materials, then decide you can't pass the final if you don't sleep. You consider going downstairs to your bedroom, but instead you collapse on the living room couch, falling asleep in your clothes.

Tuesday

• You wake up at 3:00, but you feel so lousy that you call your boss and tell him you can't come in to work today. That buys you three more hours' sleep, but you still have some more to study and have to be at school by 8:00 to take your final. You curl back into the cushions of the couch and you're out like a light.
• Your dad wakes you up at 5:55, worried that you've slept through work. You thank him for waking you up 5 minutes before your alarm was supposed to go off, and then growl some more until he leaves you alone. Eventually, you get up and study for another hour.
• It's 7:00. You've got to leave soon, or you'll risk being late for your final, but you haven't done anything but study. You pull your hair up into a sloppy ponytail while you're eating a banana, then rush into the bathroom to brush your teeth and put on some deodorant. You're glad you slept in your clothes, because now you don't have to get dressed. (You hope no one will realize you're wearing the same clothes that you wore yesterday.) You pull on your boots, grab your backpack, and run out the door, completely forgetting your flash drive.
• You get to the classroom early, which gives you some time to breathe and to really get nervous about the exam. It's a strange one, oral instead of written, but in groups, and you're not sure what to expect. Your professor gets there and gets you started. For two hours, you talk about Beowulf and Lanval and Shakespeare and Protestantism and George Herbert and Samuel Johnson and Queen Elizabeth and Jonathon Swift and Lady Montague and Metaphysical Poetry and The Royal Society and on and on and on until you think you're going to self-combust.  But the test ends, and you're allowed to leave. Even though you don't get your score immediately, you feel like you did your best and you're just SOOO glad to have that test over with.
• You find a free space on campus with an outlet, and you plug in your laptop. Two finals down, four to go. You want to take your biology final today, so you pull up the internet to start studying. But before you can start thinking about phytochemicals, you decide to visit your blog. Once there, your fingers hit the keys and you start spewing out words, a fountain of letters and phrases. It lets your stress fly away, people like to read it, and it keeps you from studying for a while. But soon, you've run out of things to say, and you know you've got to put that rubbed-raw nose of yours back to the grindstone.
• Ah well, it was nice while it lasted.

End of Semester Fun

Since I'm not willing to talk about Finals right now, I figure I'd focus on the slightly less-stressful topic of trying to sell your books back.

"Hey, I bought this book for $150."

"Great! The BYU Bookstore would love to buy it back! And we'll pay you exactly $18 for it."

"What?!"

This is really how it goes. IF you're lucky enough to sell you books back.

Anyway, the movie is by Divine Comedy, a group at BYU. They've made some other hilarious videos, including musical parodies called "Single Ladies," "Provo, UT Girls," and "Love Sac." You can find them on YouTube, and they're hilarious.

I've got to run now and find something else that I can do instead of studying.

I'm BAAAAAAAAAACK!

(*sinister music and lighting strike*)

Well, I'd say that a week's vacation from blogging was well-earned. I posted every day for 100 days! I needed a break from blogging, and you needed a break from me. Don't we all feel much better now, having had a bit of fresh air? Good.

Because I'm probably going to explode sometime in the next two weeks.

(Fair Warning: The Following Contains Graphic Gross-ness)

"Sir, we really need you to take a look at this," the student said anxiously, leading President Samuelson up the stairs of the Testing Center.

"A cheater?" Samuelson asked. "Those people make me sick. How can they live with themselves, knowing they've sacrificed their integrity for a grade?"

"No, sir. Not a cheater. We can handle those just fine."

"Oh, well then what's the matter?" Samuelson asked. His voice had been rising in irritation, but he grappled it into a whisper as they walked into the Testing room.

He froze. The room was silent as ever, but there was a marked difference still. Rather than huddling over their individual desks, alternating between sweating over a test and bowing their heads in desperate prayer, the students were all standing huddled near the center of the room. Some looked towards him as he entered, but most appeared transfixed by whatever they were staring at. Feeling very ill at ease, Samuelson walked forward toward the clump of students. They moved out of his way, stepping aside until he could see exactly what it was they were all staring at.

He clutched his mouth in horror.

A mess of green slime was splattered across four desks, with a huge glob sitting in the center. The glob was more than twelve inches deep, and several feet in diameter. Worse than that, however, it was chunky . . . with . . .

"Are those - " Samuelson squeaked the words through his fingers.

"Body parts. Yeah, we think so." The student said, flinching as he looked at the pile of filth on the carpet.

Fighting every instinct he had, Samuelson leaned toward the mess. There was no blood, inexplicably, but there were a few bones, scraps of cloth, and some few ends of limbs. A shoe, an arm. As Samuelson stared, the arm twitched.

He pulled back, his gasp one of a chorus as the students in the circle backed off hastily. But the arm wasn't done yet. Unable to tear his eyes away Samuelson watched as the muscles jumped, the hand flipping from side to side, feeling around in the muck. Finally it landed solidly, and the fingers searched for a moment underneath a collection of ribs. When it emerged, the fingers were clutched around - of all things - a test paper.

Samuelson was shocked and terrified, and no more so than when he heard the pile speak - SPEAK! - with no sign of a mouth anywhere. In a muffled, strained, female voice came the words:

"Did . . . did I pass?"