Saturday, September 22, 2007

FOOD STORAGE GALLORE

Has anyone else been feeling like food storage is the topic on the street? Maybe its because enrichment this month was about food storage and getting your 600 lbs of wheat. or it could be the super cool case lot sale that Macey's is having. At this point it seems like wheat is pointless to me because i don't even have a wheat grinder and i don't know how to make homemade bread. HMMM??? why get it? So, instead of wasting my money on wheat i went to the case lot sale (which really is a good bargain, even compared to Costco). I got a lot of essentials like mayonnaise, brownies, cakes, ketchup...the goods. Okay, i really got other stuff too like canned tomatoes, chili, noodles, sugar, flour, etc. My mom and i went and we filled up 4, yes 4 shopping carts of food! we looked so ridiculous, but we didn't really care. (we didn't have all the carts at once, we made 2 trips back to back). My moms jimmy was packed to the brim!!! i really don't know how we got it all in there. anyways, now we have some food storage and won't go starving for a while! i know i don't have anywhere near the 1 year supply we are asked to get, but come on, my externship isn't exactly paying me right now, so we really can't afford to get too much right now. I just have a nice mom who is willing to split the food and cost with me!

Friday, August 24, 2007

My Marriage Meme

Okay, so i have been very lacking in the area of blogging. i still will read a few new ones every once in a while, but i have decided i need to start blogging again. So, to start off i am going to take up compulsive writers tag to anyone for a marriage meme.

Where did you meet your husband?

Well, i guess i could say we met in elementary school...good ol' westridge. But i didn't actually know him. I still didn't know him in jr high, but i've tried to forget all my memories from dixon. I met him one time in the hallway at Provo High and i remember thinking that he was really cute. The next time i met him was after a couple of years going to school at BYU-Idaho. I was on break for winter semester 2006 and we ended up being in the same singles ward. I remembered him from high school and thought, " i would like to go on a date with him before i have to go back up to school." I met him officially at a ward activity.

What was the first thing you said to your husband?

The ward activity was ending and i saw that he was there so i was determined to talk to him because he was cute and i wanted to go on a date. The first thing i said to him went something like this..."do you want some help taking this stuff to the kitchen?" pretty eloquent. We made some small talk taking some pans to the kitchen and then i didn't talk to him again till a week or so later in church.

Where was your first kiss? First date?

Our first date was going to play tennis. I officially stink at tennis, just ask jarred and he will confirm. Something about the hand-eye coordination just doesn't quite register correctly in my head. He on the other hand is pretty good and used to be on the provo high tennis team. I made a fool of myself, but for some reason he liked me. We even tried to make conversation across the court, i'm sure everyone around us were a little annoyed. Afterwords he took me to jamba juice...this is really what got me hooked on him. We got our jambas and went for a drive just talking. it was a lot of fun.

Our first kiss was in the basement at his parents house after a movie. we were both so nervous, and it wasn't the best kiss in the world, but it is probably one of my favorite kisses because it was my last first kiss.

Did you have a long or short engagement/courtship?

We tried to have our relationship be a long courtship and a short engagement. we did pretty good. We started dating around april/may 2006 and got engaged on my birthday, september 10th then we got married that december on the 29th. So, its sounds like we got our goal, unfortunately we already new we were going to get married in july, so we ended up pretty much having a short 3 month courtship and a long 6 month engagement.

How did the reception go?

I was so happy, our reception went great!!! We got so much help from both our families and ward members! We just had fun visiting with everyone and being nervous about that night! If anything went wrong, we didn't hear about it. I was pretty surprised how unimportant it was to us when we were there...i always imagined that the reception would be a big deal, but it didn't seem to be.

How was the honeymoon?

Well, i have to say it was great! we stayed in provo the first night and then drove down to St. George the next day and stayed there for a few days. Then, we had a second honeymoon not too long ago. We decided to go cheap on our first one, so we went all out on our second one in Hawaii!!! we were with his family, but we still had a great time. someday when i figure out how to post pictures i'll post some from the trip.

Thursday, May 31, 2007

An "A" Paper!

Just Another Stiletto on My Foot

“I don’t like pointy toed shoes,” I thought, “Or as I’ve heard them called, squash-the-bug-in-the-corner shoes. They are absolutely hideous!” That is what went through my mind when I first saw the stiletto, power woman, shoes. “ How could anyone be remotely comfortable in something so….so….bleh?” Those were my thoughts about three years ago, before I began watching TLC’s What Not to Wear. I began to indulge myself a few times a week to watch Stacy and Clinton change the fashion of people, or should I say the lack thereof, forever. At first, I was not a fan of the shoes, then I began to be tolerant of them, finally, I gave in and bought my own pair because I had come to love these shoes! Stacy and Clinton thought they were fabulous, so I, of course, thought they were too. Stacy and Clinton are the masters of fashion, who would I be to go against them? Why would I want to try to conquer the world of fashion on my own when someone can tell me what’s hot and what’s not?

However, I have recently come to find that I have actually been another victim to advertising that comes across our televisions to create mindless slugs who cannot claim to have minds of their own because their original opinions are not original at all. They are merely copycats of those they see on TV. I did not think that this was bad because fashion is not the only thing in my life. But, as I pondered my existence and my so-called opinions, I realized that I rarely, if ever, have my very own opinions. This led me to wonder if anyone even had a mind of his or her own. The great American writer, Mark Twain, would agree with me when he said:

We know it is a matter of association and sympathy, not reasoning and examination; that hardly a man in the world has an opinion upon morals, politics, or religion which he got otherwise than through his associations and sympathies. Broadly speaking, there are none but corn-pone opinions. And broadly speaking, corn-pone stands for self-approval. Self-approval is acquired mainly from the approval of other people. The result is conformity. (221)

As an avid watcher of What Not to Wear, I began to look around and saw that many women were following the rules that were set forth by these highly acclaimed fashion artists. Thus, began my exhibition for “self-approval” or the admiration of the public (221). I was desperate to become consistent with the fashions of the world. I wanted to conform. As I have observed those around me I have concluded that people want to conform to others in their society, which can lead to mindless masses that can be controlled by whatever comes their way.

I am sure that some people would disagree with Twain about his depressed view point of the non-originality of the human race, yet let me further prove Twain’s point by giving an example that everyone can relate to: high school. This point in a person’s life is full of hormones, drama, classes, dating (is that redundant of hormones?), and clicks. When I refer to clicks, I am not talking about the remote to the TV. I am referring to the crowds of people that hang out together, dress similar, talk the same way, and even look like each other. The many different kinds of clicks in high school could lead a person to the deduction that these teens are not conforming, however, they are doing quite the contrary. These clicks are showing in a vivid way that people can conform to a variety of things. Typically, this conformity comes from the television. The “popular” crowds watch MTV or American Idol. The “emos” watch VH1. The “Goths” watch goth TV. The cowboys watch CMT. The nerds watch “Discovery.” The reason that television is used by so many to mimic others is because it is so entertaining. College professor, Neil Postman, has said, “The problem is not that TV presents the masses with entertaining subject matter, but that television presents all subject matter as entertaining” (182). This amusement is coming from the advertisements and programs that display the drivel that people conform to. These crowds are not making their own opinions. They are so lost that they have become mindless followers that cannot think for themselves.


Because the world is filled with people, it is justified to say that the world is thus full of conformers. Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World, described that the Nazis were in compliance to the system that Hitler enticed them with. However, Hitler made sure that the citizens were prepared before he helped the public correspond to his wishes. One way he did cause the people to become a mindless mass was to use the little technology they had to get his ideas to them. The people did not have television, like we do now, to get messages as to how they should act. Instead, Hitler coaxed the masses to become irrational crowds with the use of the loudspeaker. The use of the crowd was extremely important to Hitler because of the repercussions that can come from the large gatherings of people (75-77). As Huxley puts it “A crowd is chaotic, has no purpose of its own and is capable of anything except intelligent action and realistic thinking…they become very excitable, they lose all sense of individual or collective responsibility, they are subject to sudden accesses of rage, enthusiasm and panic” (77). It is as though crowds are what occupy our world today. People are not thinking for themselves, thus leading them to think what others are thinking. However, this can lead to a devastating fate, such as with Shakespeare’s character, Ophelia, in his play Hamlet. Ophelia did not make her own decisions and relied on those around her to make them. This eventually led to her insanity and suicide. Thomas G. Plummer, Brigham Young University professor, discusses Ophelia and her father Polonius, writing:

Ophelia does not know what she should think, and Polonius, reducing her to the stature of a baby, presumes to tell her. Polonius pontificates. He purports to know answers when he has none. He claims to have truth when he himself obscures it. He feigns expertise by virtue of his authority. (171)

This is precisely what is happening as people, such as What Not to Wear addicts, refer to the entertaining television to receive opinions. We are not doing our own abstract thinking, just as the Nazis never did as they were gathered in their crowds. We are relying on those that have the same or less knowledge than ourselves to make our minds up for us. Just as Ophelia relies on Polonius, we are relying on television to make up our own minds about what is popular, accepted, or worthy of our attention. The reason we do this is that we want so desperately to be a part of something. We wish for “self-approval,” yet, this is only obtained through our search for the admiration of the public eye (Twain, 221). Why are we giving up on the chance to have our own opinions and not just the opinions of those who have access to us through technology? We are people that want to conform, which means we may never separate from the world that tells us what to think.

Works Cited

Hartvigsen, M. Kip, ed. Thinking About Thinking. Mason, OH: Thomson Custom, 2001.
Huxley, Aldous. “Propaganda Under a Dictatorship.” Hartvigsen. 75-79.
Plummer, Thomas G. “Diagnosing and Treating the Ophelia Syndrome.” Hartvigsen. 171-179.
Postman, Neil A. “Amusing Ourselves to Death.” Hartvigsen. 181-185.
Twain, Mark. “Corn-pone Opinions.” Hartvigsen. 219-222.

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

i haven't written in a while...

i haven't written anything for quite a while. I don't know why. i obviously have plenty of time to write and i also have the internet in my apartment up here in idaho. i have no excuses. i even browse and comment on other peoples blogs. i guess i was just lazy. Or...i just wasn't busy enough to blog.

i know that sounds crazy. i wasn't busy enough to blog? yes, thats right. I have a theory about this. The less things you have to do throughout the day, the smaller percentage of those things get done. The more things you have to do throughout the day, the bigger percentage of those things get done.

i don't know why this is true in my life, but it is. for example...in high school i was extremely busy. i was on two dance teams. One was for the school and the other was a private studio. My responsibilities for the school team were to be to practices, which were sometimes at 6am (usually during the end of the semester when i had a lot of tests to study for), perform in assemblies and sports half-times, choreograph dances, and plan fun activities. Then for the private studio i was required to go to classes 4-5 days a week for an average of 3 hours each day. On top of that i was going to conventions, competitions, and performing in recitals or charity events. if that wasn't enough i was taking honors classes, teaching some dance classes, cleaning the dance studio (well, my dad helped a lot with this) to pay for tuition, playing the piano for church and for fun, going to girls camp or youth conference, and trying to fit a social life in. To say the least, i was a busy girl! yet, i was able to get everything done with only a couple breakdowns throughout the years. somehow i pulled off straight A's almost every term. i really don't know how i did it and how i functioned with such little sleep! (well, my mom did provide cliff's notes for me because she would always see me asleep with my english books on my face while i was in bed). My point is, is that i was so busy, yet i got just about everything done!

now...i am married and going to college and being a janitor. But, jarred is at work for long hours a few days a week. I only am taking 4 classes and my janitorial job only goes from 4am-6:30ish am 5 days a week. so i am left with all sorts of time to waste away. I am still doing fine in my classes, but with all of my free time, you'd think i'd be getting A's on all my tests. I'm not failing at all, but with the hours of free time i have you'd think i would at least spend more than about an hour studing for tests.

Also, with all this free time, i don't fit in the blogging that i used to. Last fall semester i was pretty busy because i was going back and forth between rexburg and provo just about every weekend to plan a wedding and taking 5 classes, plus trying to lose weight so i could look good in a wedding dress. I did a lot more blogging than i have now when i have plenty of time to do it! blogging would add more of the business to my life, which helped me be able to get everything done.

The reason i'm blogging now is because i have a 5 page english paper due on thursday and since blogging makes my day a little busier, its the best thing to do with my time right now so that i will get my paper done for thursday. make sense? not really, but it works for me!

Saturday, March 03, 2007

Kids do say the Darndist things!

I'm a reading tutor at an elementary school. I go around to different classrooms and pull certain kids out that need help with their reading. A lot of these kids are Hispanic who have only been in the country for a year or two. they do surprisingly well. Its been a lot of fun helping them with their reading skills.

One time I got a girl from her 4th grade class. The story we were reading mentioned the Alps. I was explaining to her that they are mountains in Europe kind of like we have the Rocky Mountains here in Utah.

Of course me being from Utah I said moun'ains when I was explaining this.

Then she said:

"My grandma says that people who say moun'ains and not mountains are lazy"

I tried to keep my cool about this and just said something about Utah accents. I'm trying to teach her how to read and here she is critiquing my speech!

Okay, so I have a Utah accent. Her grandmother can just sue me.

Thursday, February 15, 2007

Mommy can i please have a newspaper route?

so, i was reading Lyle's blog (i would make it a link but i don't know how to do it) and i was reminded of the crazy times I've had while delivering newspapers. This is what i think of when someone talks about delivering newspapers:

1. The Journal is a newspaper that nobody, especially college students, cares about. My brother once dumped a whole bag full of The Journal newspapers into a dumpster to win a race in delivering them and NONE OF THE CUSTOMERS CARED!!! i always wondered how he would deliver to 20 doors and beat me when i only had 8 doors to deliver to.

2. speaking of those 8 doors i delivered to, there was an old man that lived at one of the houses and he was always on his porch when i came by. When i would hand him the newspaper he would be kind enough to give me a quarter. well, this happened so much that i came to expect it. One day he wasn't on the porch, so i rang the doorbell and when he answered the door i gave him the newspaper and said, do you have my quarter? yes, I'm a selfish little girl, but who cares, i got my money!

3. Could the Journal even be considered to be a real newspaper?

4. Delivering the Daily Harold is way worse than delivering the Journal. I think i came to this conclusion because i didn't know that delivering newspapers was the worst job in the world when i was young and delivering the Journal.

5. black hands, black walls, and angry mom. we would fold the newspapers in the kitchen and by the time we finished folding them all our hands were as black as.....well, newspaper ink. then since we were kids, we had to touch all around the light switches to turn on and off lights. My mom would be mad because not only did she hate the newspaper routes, but I'm pretty sure she hated that we turned everything that we touched black.

6. Big brothers are mean. this isn't necessarily only related to newspaper routes, but i remember being teased relentlessly by my brothers whenever we had to deliver newspapers. i don't remember anything exactly, but i know it happened. i think I've blocked it from my memory subconsciously.

7. I wonder if a certain family noticed how often i accidentally threw the newspaper onto the roof and not onto the porch. oops! i wasn't ever strong enough to throw the newspapers overhand, especially Sunday editions, from the sidewalk to the porch. So, instead i would lob it underhanded. Now when someone does this, the newspaper makes a huge rainbow like arch on the way to its destination. a lot of the time, the roof above the porch was in the way of the path of the newspaper. I think at some point there were about 5 newspapers on the roof. Now these people are my next door neighbors. hehe.

8. Newspaper routes ruin every holiday! i remember having to deliver papers on thanksgiving and Christmas. what a way to ruin someones two favorite holidays. wake up at 6am to deliver papers. yuck! one year on Christmas when i had to deliver papers, i decided to peek downstairs at some of my presents. I saw an American Girl Doll i had wanted for a long time down there and no one was there to see my excitement. i was mad that the newspaper route made me lose out on the excitement of me finding it for the first time with everyone around. I still acted excited when we all went downstairs to find our gifts, but it just wasn't the same.

well, that's all that i can think of. now instead of naive kids delivering newspapers, it's ladies from down south driving their minivans delivering the newspapers. what has happened to our society?

Saturday, February 03, 2007

Sorry, I gotta go, the phone is ringing!

I have been pretty busy lately ever since I got married. I'm working two jobs, one at Westridge and the other at Brent Brown Chevrolet as the receptionist. Jarred works at Brent Brown too, except he works outside in the cold while I'm inside in the warmth with a space heater under my desk.

There are some pretty interesting people in the car business and there are customers that are just as "special". Anyways, during slow times some of the salesman will occasionally come up and talk to me. Normally I'm okay with this because a lot of the guys here are nice enough. But then there are also the ones everyone else tries to avoid. However, I have a hard time avoiding these types because I have to stay at my desk in case a phone call comes in.

so this means that I'm stuck in a five square foot area while some guy is chomping up and down on his gum as spit flies out while he drones on about how selling cars is all in the mind. First of all, what the heck is that supposed to mean? Second of all, your weird!!!

okay, so I never said that to his face because I'm just too nice to do that. I've tried many ways to tactfully show that I am busy and can't talk, such as vigorously studying my philosophy textbook, but how long can anyone pretend to do that? I've also just not contributed to the conversation by just saying, "uhhuh, yeah, that's funny" but they don't get the clue that I'm not interested in talking with them.

so, I have come up with a new plan that just might work to keep the annoyers from talking to me for too long. On the phone that I use there is a button for how loud the volume is for the ringer. Normally I have it set to "off" because that way it only makes one small ring instead of one that keeps ringing and ringing when there are multiple people calling in at the same time. Anyways, when I push the button to make the ringer volume go up one notch it rings once to display how loud the ring will be.

Well, this will come in very handy when a salesman is blabbing on and on to me about who knows what. All I will have to do is slide my finger up to that button and push it once and the phone will "ring". I have to answer all the phone calls, which means I have to stop talking to whoever I'm talking to and pick up the phone. Then I will just say my little line of introduction to a dial tone and "transfer" them to someone then that will be that. If they are still at my desk after I'm off the phone then I will just do it again.

I think this is a brilliant plan! Hopefully it isn't too cruel. Should I not be such a pansy and just tell the salesman that I don't want to talk to him? What would you do?

Friday, January 12, 2007

what the? i'm married!?

I still can't believe that I'm a married woman. it is 2 weeks to the day now of being married. that is so weird. there aren't a whole lot of new things, but heres a list of things I've noticed that are different now that I'm married:

1. my hubby is very clean and organized...I'm not always perfectly clean and organized. but I would like to be, so he's a good example.

2. having someone in the same bed as me makes it a little weird to sleep. i'm getting used to it now, but at first it was hard to get a good nights rest because when he would move then i would sort of wake up.

3. i'm living with a boy! i've been rooming with girls for the past 2 and a half years.

4. i am buying coffee creamer to help wake us up in the morning. just kidding, he is lactose intollerent, and he doesn't like soy dream, so he uses coffee creamer on his cereal. it doesn't have an extremely bad taste, but i'm definitely sticking to regular milk from the cow.

5. since he is so organized i see him folding his DIRTY laundry and putting it into the basket. i haven't exactly picked up that habit, but i have picked up his habit of separating the laundry into lights and darks as we put it into the dirty laundry basket. it really does make doing laundry easier.

6. i'm buying more food than normal. and whats with utah prices of food? milk costs $2.30? at least? i so like the rexburg prices better. milk $1.89. that was the good life i guess.

7. no internet in the apartment. i'm weeping inside.

8. old 70's furniture. not that its bad because i'd rather have a couch and chairs than nothing. but they just look funny.

9. i'm decorating my own place. i think i only decorated my own room a couple times growing up, so i'm pretty new at this. i'm trying to do cool stuff, but i haven't watched While You Were Out in a while, so i don't know if what i'm doing is cool or not.

10. last but not least, my new name is mrs. Brandt! thats so cool, but if you call that name while my back is turned i probably won't respond to it. i still need to get used to it.

so, do these things sound like normal things to get used to in a marriage? things will only get more different when we start having kids. but don't hold your breath, there is no honeymoon baby.