Probably I'm going to need to know what I did to tick July off.

I've finally realized something. The gods of the month of July hate me. I don't know why, but for the past few years, July has been out to get me. Don't get me wrong- occasionally something good happens. My family came home from Thailand on the 1st. That pretty much rocked. Notice, however- it was the first day of July. I think it was just trying to give me a false sense of security.

It has been one crazy long month. I'd give you a bit of a recap of my month, but... I don't want to. :) Besides, it would be nothing but an obnoxious venting post. (Which is something I'm trying to avoid, since this post isn't already obnoxious!)

On top of all the other great things July has brought, I've also got my birthday. Yes that's right. My birthday was a couple of days ago. You may ask if I'm really listing that as a negative, and my answer would have to be YES! I WANT to like my birthday. I've TRIED to like my birthday. It's just not do-able. I like other people's birthdays. Not mine. How old am I now? Twenty... one. 21, give or take.

Right now I'm just holding my breath and crossing my fingers, hoping I make it to August 1st.

And to the gods of the month of July: What are the odds we can work something out for next year???

Wahoo!

I have a new nephew! This picture (stolen lovingly from my sister's blog... hope you don't mind, Linds) is of my sister Lindsay and her new baby, Miles. I'm way excited! Only... they live in North Carolina, so I don't even get to see him super soon. Dang. They are coming to Utah in a few weeks, though, and I might even get to go out there before that. We'll see. Anyway. If you want more info or more pictures- check out my sister's blog. Love ya, Linds, and congrats again!!

Thanks for everything.

For the past few years my family has lived all over the world. Lindsay and her family have lived in North Carolina for... I don't even know how long. 5 years, maybe? My parents and Amber have lived in Thailand for three years. Brian lived in Illinois/Germany/Austria/Thailand for three years. Me? I've been in Utah. (Yes, I did go to Thailand for a bit, but I'm just talking majority here.) Sometimes being far apart has been no big deal, and sometimes it has been really tough. Last week was one of those weeks. Thank heavens Brian lives in Utah again. It would have been impossible without him. My amazing Grandma, Clara Dodge, passed away last week. She was 93 years old, and was one of the most remarkable people I've had the privilege of knowing.

I really wasn't planning on posting about it because I'm not a good writer, and could never do justice to what I want to say... but I keep thinking about her and how lucky I am to have had her in my life. I can only hope that someday I can be a bit more like her. The funeral on Monday went very well. It was very bitter-sweet to discuss and relive memories. My Grandparents have 8 kids (my dad being the youngest) so my extended family is quite large. There are something like 40 grand kids, and so far there are 59 great-grand kids (with 6 more coming in the near future). Although it was sad and hard to say good-bye to her, at least we have the knowledge that it isn't final. At least we know we can see her again.

She lived an amazing life. The gospel was always her number one priority and temple work was one of her passions. She has done more than 200 sessions in the temple each year for something like the last 20 years, and I'm sure right now she is simply carrying on the work she was doing in life... only in different ways.

Somehow the timing of this made the distance between my family feel a bit bigger. I'm grateful that the funeral was able to be broadcast on the internet so that my parents and sisters were able to see it. I wish I had the words to communicate how amazing my grandma was, but since I know that I don't... I'll just leave it at this-

I love you, Grandma, and thanks. Thanks for being such an amazing person and example. I'll miss you.

Baby steps... baby steps.

Alright, so a lot of you know that my parents come home in a month... and the rest of you? do now. The project at hand, therefore, is getting their home livable!

When my parents left they rented out their house, and we shoved EVERYTHING THEY OWN into three of the bedrooms in our house. Let me just tell you... dang. Those rooms... S.T.U.F.F.E.D. Our favorite way to explain it is this: ever played Tetris? Getting the furniture in those rooms was like the biggest real-life game of Tetris ever. Things were stacked to the ceiling. So. After the renters moved out... the next step was to get those rooms unpacked! Brian and I had a group of our guy friends (and Whit. :) ) come and help us get everything out. It was INSANE. It took us something like 7 hours to get everything out of the three rooms. That, however, was only the start!





One of the bedrooms (Lindsay's) had a little surprise for us. Ever heard of a little thing called "water damage"?? I have. Heard of it, I mean. And now- I get to DEAL with it! Wahoo!! Everything was going pretty well until I lifted a box on the floor, which resulted in both of my arms being COVERED in black mold. Yeah... that's probably gross. A year and a half ago the ceiling in my dad's office upstairs colapsed under the weight of the snow, and... NOW I'm thinking it MAY have affected the room beneath it, too. None of the walls or the ceiling show any damage, but the carpet through the ENTIRE room is full of mold. Unfortunately... there was furniture sitting on the carpet. Lots of furniture. There is mold growing up the legs/sides of several pieces of it. Tables, tvs, mattresses. Cool. That box I mentioned? It was a box of my high school things... and the stuff inside it was so gross! I had a few plaques in there, and they DOUBLED in thickness because there is so much mold inside the wood. Ugh. Good thing I've been graduated for a long time and just don't care about that stuff as much anymore.

Everyone left at about 8:30 pm, and then Brian and I realized that the moldy furniture had been taken around the house. Greaaaaaaat. So Brian and I went around and took all the moldy furniture that we could lift and put it BACK into the moldy room. The really big furniture got blankets put underneath them.

Here are some pics. I won't put them all up... I'll spare you that. :) It was hard to get good pics of it cause the mold wouldn't show up in the camera.









So now... we have to try and save the moldy stuff. (Not the mattresses. Those are gonners, man.) We've got to get someone in the house to rip the carpet out, and then check the insides of the walls.

Other than that, the house looks like a disaster zone! The furniture and boxes are no longer crammed into the three rooms, but distributed across the entire house! (It's actually progress... a TON of progress, but it sure looks like a step backwards!)


We went from this:







To THIS...






Good heavens. Still. Progress... I just have to keep telling myself that...

Too late??

Warning:  this post is about American Idol.  So all of you who are sick of the American Idol hype... turn back now.

I'm way excited for the finale this week!  However.  I'll be honest.  I don't particularly care who wins.  THAT'S RIGHT, I DID JUST SAY THAT!  I like Adam.  So sue me.  I know he screams too much.  I realize that.  He does have freakin' amazing skills, though.  I think Kris has a great voice, but I've never particularly cared about him either way.  Kris is humble... Adam knows he's great.  There are ups and downs to both, so whatever.  Not that it really matters, though.  I think Adam has it in the bag.

ANYWAY.  The real point of this post is that I want to know if any of you remember Ricky Braddy.  He was one of the wildcard options and didn't make it to the top 13.  HE WAS FREAKIN' AMAZING and I'll never forgive the judges for picking Jasmine Murray and Megan Joy (?!!?!?!) over him.  Although, even if he had been picked- he probably wouldn't have made it very far, since AI gave him absolutely zero screen time during Hollywood Week.

If you want to see him- just go to this website.  The contestants get better and better as the season goes on, so if he was this good during the Top 36, imagine where he'd be now.  That's all.  Over and out.

Think it's too late for me to vote for him now??

I have a love/hate relationship with technology.

Ready for some amazing news?  All of my technology has ganged up against me.   Let me introduce you to my technological things.

First:  my camera.

A Nikon Coolpix something or other.  Purchased in 2005.  Notice anything wrong with it?  Let me help you out.  The battery door is held together with duct tape!  Lucky for me, my awesome roommate Jenny gave me colored duct tape once upon a time, but still.  The duct tape resulted from it being dropped on the ground early in 2006 during one rockin' spring break trip.  It hasn't really given me anymore problems... until now.  About 6 months ago, it made a decision.  No more pictures outdoors.  Oh.  Okay.  Not like anyone ever needs to take pictures OUTSIDE!!  Anything taken outdoors just turns out super washed out and really ugly.  Great.

Second:  my phone.

A Samsung never-made-to-last-more-than-a-few-months.  Purchased in 2007.  Really... I mean 'purchased' in the loosest of terms because it was the free phone that came with the plan.  This is actually my second one.  The first one was dropped into the ocean in March of 2007 on... you guessed it... spring break.  The cons of this phone?  Well... it was the FREE PHONE THAT CAME WITH MY PHONE PLAN IN 2007!  What I mean by that... is that it works really well.  It's cute trick is that it likes to reset itself all of the time.  Sometimes I hear it resetting itself in the other room, but it's favorite time?  Whenever I'm texting.  Neat.  The other day I was in the middle of a text when it decided to reset itself, and somehow, it managed to take all the texts I had gotten in the previous 2 days, and delete them in the process.  Impressive.

Third:  my computer.

A cute Macbook.  Purchased in 2007.  I love this computer!  Except.  Except for it's... new friendship with my phone.  My computer worked perfectly, until... you guessed it.  It was dropped.  This sad event happened when I was sprinting through the airport trying to catch a layover after visiting my sister in NC in 2008.  My trustworthy backpack broke open and dumped it onto the hard airport floor!  Here are a couple of pictures of the damage.  

Here is the corner where it landed.  That part can't shut, and some... mechanics... inside are bent up, too.

There are three of these chips, but I  thought one picture would suffice.  Two of them (this one included) are along the bottom, below the keyboard, and one is up above the screen.

Since that... it has developed a few new habits.  Mostly it just makes funny noises occasionally.  I decided not to get it fixed because I found out how much it would cost.  Ouch.  It's a just-get-a-new-one sort of a cost.  Every so often it finds new noises to make, and always surprises me.  I can handle weird noises.  That's okay.  Chirp, whirr, gaffffunk, crank, and sigh all you want.  It's all been manageable, until this last Wednesday night.  Somehow my phone managed to teach my computer that cute little resetting trick.  Now, it does it all the time.  Wednesday night it reset itself 4 times in the hour I was trying to use it.  Lucky for me, it's only done it once while I've been writing this post.  Wonderful.  It's so cute when electronics work together.

So now what?  I can't buy new stuff right now, but as you can see... it's sort of time!!  Maybe I'll just find an Amish community and join them.  They don't have these problems.

Hmmm...

Well... I did it!  I finally chopped my hair off.  It's nothing like I expected it to be.  I'm not sure how I feel about it, cause I always feel like I made a huge mistake when I walk out of a salon.  Generally because I really hate how stylists actually style my hair.  It's pulled half-way up because it was... very fluffy earlier.  No thanks.  Maybe I'll post photos of it down if I like it when it's down.  If not... it'll never be down. :)

I tried to get some pics of the back so you could see the color.  They weren't terribly successful, but here they are, anyway.

So... there you are.  Done and done.  :)