The Worst Thing about Missions

The worst thing about missions isn't not being able to see or directly communicate with your best (male) friend for 2 years. The worst thing about missions not being able to see or directly communicate with your best friend for 2 years and then having them come home and realizing that your best friend is gone. That the hilarious, inappropriate guy who just two years ago was pushing your buttons and the envelope right along with you has been replaced by a shell of that same person. A person who can't even talk to you. A person who no longer laughs at your jokes. A person who is shocked when you say the same kind of things that used to have them on the ground laughing. A person who can make you feel more judged in one sentence then you ever did growing up in Utah county. Its hard to imagine lose a friend for two years while they go off and serve for something they feel is important, but you adjust. It's impossible for me me to think that I might never get to talk to that person again. It hurts to see them go, but it kills when they return. Sometimes the worst thing about a mission is the returned missionary.

Schooooools Back From Summer!

Ladies and gentlemen, it's that time of year again. The time of year when yellow buses once again block our driving paths. The time of year when school supplies go on super sale and my mom gets really excited about it. The time of year when I remember all the things I love about getting an education and all the things I hate. Since this time around I am not stuck in a moving-away-from-California funk I can really appreciate, and loathe all the little details of school being back. And since I have a blog I have a place to list all the things I love and hate. I think I'll alternate.

Thing that I love: New class schedule

Close your eyes everybody, my nerd is showing. I love confess I love putting together my schedule for the new semester. Trying to figure out how things will fit together, struggling to get the classes you want, without having 7 am classes or 8 hours on friday. It's a rush. And when you finally get everything perfect. It's a pretty great feeling.

Thing that I hate: New professors that are like all other professors.

I know that all professors are different. Some are men, some are women, some are young, some are old, some speak english, some really don't, but on one thing that most all professors have in common is that they seem to think that theirs is the only class you're taking. As such they feel justified in assigning insane amounts of homework from the get go. There is no easing into it, you have 3 physics assignments, 2 papers, and 200 pages of reading due by the end of week 1. Thanks guys.

Thing that I love: New classmates

New classes mean a whole new set of classmates to learn and grow with. Who knows you might actually meet some new friends. Or if you're me you might actually find some people whom you enjoy watching and eavesdropping with in order to creepily make up their life stories. Either way good times are had.

Thing that I hate: New classmates

No matter how many students are in the class I always end up sitting next to the worst ones. The two sorority girls who continue to giggle and talk even after lecture has started. Then when they finally quiet down one of them pulls out the worlds biggest Red Delicious and starts chowing down, with her mouth open and the sound of apple chewing mere inches from my ear while the other pulls out and starts texting on her phone that still has the sound on in the buttons whilst nibbling on crackers that crunch so loud children in Africa are getting even hungrier. Meanwhile instead of focusing on my professors explanation of the laws of physics I am focused on not going all Kill Bill on the Bobsy Twins' asses.

Things I love: Having a job

Haha suckers! I have a job! I can pay my rent! I don't have to add the stress of finding a way to financially support myself to the list of other stressful first week of school things! Ha!

Things I hate: Having a job

The first week of class is the busiest week at the campus store. This translates to me working 8-9 hours a day everyday of the first 2 weeks on top of class. That's too much work for Jessica. I go a little crazy, and get a little grumpy

I think that does it for my explanation of my love hate relationship with school. Let me know if I miss anything. And for all of you who are back in school yourselves, try and enjoy yourself.

My Social Demise

Today is Saturday. Thus far I have slept in, showered, gone to a dollar movie, seen ten minutes of said dollar movie, left the dollar movie with a voucher because the theater broke, studied for the GRE, cleaned my bathroom, gone to Target to get a hand towel. Yeah. That is my day, and I expect the rest of my night to go like this, study for the GRE and watch "Clueless." I don't feel like this is what I should be doing on a Saturday night, but its what I'm going to do. I think I have figured out what my social problem is and to validate my thoughts I'm going to break it down, and maybe come up with a solution. But probably not.

1. My first problem is I lack motivation. Sure I could call a friend and we could do something. But then I would have to know who I wanted to play with and what I wanted to do. I hate planning. Multiple years in the young woman's presidency and one year as IWA president at UCLA have basically ruined me. I never want to plan anything ever again. I am done feeling responsible for making sure everyone is having a good time. And if I call people and want to do something I feel like I have to make sure everyone has fun. It's just not worth it. Basically the only way to solve this is for me to get motivated; I don't think that is going to happen this late in life. Hopefully I used that semicolon right; I'm trying to practice semicolon use for the GRE.
2. A majority of my friends live at home in Sandy, or California, or Mapleton, and as such always want to do stuff in Sandy, or Murray or wherever. I'm not saying I'm unwilling to drive down there, but I always go to them, always. They never come up here,and gas is expensive,and I am not made of money. I mean sure I could drive 20 minutes to see a movie in Murray or I could see a movie closer to home and save money. Basically I need to move or find closer friends. Both could help me in the future, but neither of those help me tonight.
3. A lot of my friends have a significant others; it sucks. Because when someone gets an opposite-sex-friend they are no longer interested in spending time with their single friends. Or if they do invite you someplace its with the bf/gf. I get that you're in love but could you separate yourself for one night and just hang out with me? No? Ok well could you get me a boyfriend or something? No? Ok, well then this seems like an impossible problem then.

So as you can see because I am single, living in not Sandy and unwilling to plan something that makes everyone happy I am destined to be alone, with my roommates stack of movies tonight. Maybe one day I'll be social again, until then I have Paul Rudd movies to watch.

I LARP you

Every Wednesday at Sugarhouse Park a group of like minded individuals come together and spend an hour or so LARPing. For those of you who have been living under rocks LARP stands for Live Action Role Play. Basically it means that a bevy of people dress up in actual armor and beat on each other with fake swords. Every week, weather permitting, this happens, and every week I sit and watch. I don't watch them because I want to mock them or belittle there passion like so many passerby's who stop and gawk. I don't watch them because I secretly want to construct and then wear my own chain mail and whack others with a foam spear. I watch because I love watching; I think it's supremely interesting and quite cool. Not cool like Freddie Prince Jr. in any teen movie ever cool. Cool because I feel like if I asked any of them why they were there, in the 90 degree July weather every week their answers would be something like this.

"Well Jessica, we come out here and do this because this is what we love. Because for a few hours every week we get to connect with other people who share our interest. We get to connect with a time in history that is awesome but long since past. We come here because at this place in this time we can forget our worries and our day jobs and truly be ourselves. WE come here to embrace our passion instead of denying it. That is why we come here."

And to me the fact that they are willing to come, risk embarrassment, and bodily harm all to do something they really love doing is extremely cool.

Ben Folds and the Deathly Hallows part 2

Usually Thursdays aren't the highlight of my week. I mean to be honest Thursday is probably one of the most over looked days. Most weeks it's just the day before Friday. But not this week. This week Thursday was the highlight. This week on Thursday so many of my dreams came true. First I went to see Ben Folds live with my dad. It was awesome. Ben Folds is amazing live and he is witty and clever and he made a Ke$ha song classy. He also had a super hot bass player, with the moody hair and the slight awkwardness and musical skills and the yeah. All in all one of the best concerts I've been to. THEN I got to go see HP7.2 with my friends. Actually I wasn't actually with them because we bought our tickets separately and I ditched them to sit in the middle of the theater. Seriously I was in the exact middle of the theater. It was a thrilling experience. I laughed, I cried, I fell in love with Neville Longbottom. Basically my life is complete. And basically that was my Thursday. Feel Jealous that yours wasn't as cool as mine.

Bumps and bruises

Good news folks the upbeat piece promised after my last horribly depressing/long winded/soul searching crap-o-post is here. Thank heavens.

So I just impaled my second toe on a tooth pick. Yeah. I was trying to be all productive and clean my room, and I went to pick something up and BAM! Searing pain rushing through the pointer toe on my right foot. I look down to see half a toothpick looking up at me from said toe. WTF! I mean it's a tooth pick. And it wasn't even sharp end in, it was the splintered end of a broken toothpick. Who would have thought that possible? Yet here I am, a few minutes later bandaging my toe wondering if I still have remnants of tooth pick in my toe. That is when I realized that this is really just the latest in a recent string of bizarre self inflicted injuries. Seriously I don't know how I do it, and how my body has not just quit on me yet. Don't believe you, well here is a detailed list of all my the injuries I have acquired in the last month or two.

1. Burn on the inside of my right leg. I bumped the exhaust pipe on my dad's motorcycle, Stan, whilst trying not to spill milkshakes upon dismount. For the record I didn't spill a drop.
2. Parallel bruises on my left leg. The cause is still a mystery. I think it was from mowing the lawn, but I'm not entirely sure. How does one bruise ones thigh while mowing the lawn? What can I say, I guess I'm an aggressive mower.
3. Bruised shin. I know this doesn't sound that whacky, but I got it from tripping up the stairs. Yes, up them.
4. Scraped knee. I thought there was one more step in my basement and instead of just doing that weird trip thing like most people I ate it. Hard.
5. Scrapped up wrist. I found out my mirror had sharp edges the hard way.
6. Bruised cheek. I was bending into my car to get something and somehow rammed my face into the corner of the door with a large amount of force. People asked me if I was being abused, and if I won the fight. Yes, I am my cars bitch, and no my car won the fight won't let me forget it.
7. Thats all I can think of recently, but I also have scars on my leg from dropping an iron on my leg, on my elbows from tripping while playing fugitive and from trying long boarding. And am pretty much constantly discovering mystery bruises.

So the moral of this story is that I'm pretty sure that I'm either going to develop skin that can withstand bullets or I'm going to die young in a freak accident involving ice cubes, a very sharp spoon and an army of hummingbirds.

California, but sadder

*WARNING this blog goes from mild ridiculousness, to nostalgic wishfulness, to serious life appraisal. All those looking for witty banter about the worlds problems skip this post. If you don't care about my life's problems (which I don't expect you to) skip this post. Also it's all sort of stream of consciousness-y. Which is not the best or most understandable writing style, but the easiest for me to just do. So really don't feel that you have to read this. But you can. You have been warned*

If you're reading this I assume that you read my blog, which is weird to think about because apparently people do read this blog. However I'm going to keep pretending you don't read this blog so that I don't feel self conscious about ranting all the time and having the people who evidently read this blog think I'm an angry person, which I'm not, I just sometimes feel the need to rant about things that bug me and what better place to do it than on a blog that nobody reads. Right? Right. So back to my initial point, if you are reading this, which I'm assuming you're not, I'm assuming you've read my previous posts specifically the one about my spring break in California and its high levels of awesome. If you haven't read it do so now, or don't, I don't care. Anywho the moral of that story was that California is awesome and I had an epic time with no sadness involved.

This past weekish I went back to California for the marriage of Chris and Kristina. It was beautiful, but that's not the point. The point is that there was a lot more sadness this time around. Seriously even when I was happy I was sad. I really didn't understand it. I mean I was IN California, the state of my heart where I am meant to live forever. How could I be sad? I wasn't sad last time. Was Utah starting to brain wash me? There was some panic. Don't worry though I figured it out. Want to hear my conclusions? Well you get to. When I went back for Spring Break it was like a greatest hits reunion tour. Everyday was jam packed with awesomeness. Every waking hour was spent doing all the fun things that California has to offer. It was like a salve on my wounded Cali-sick heart. It showed me that all my friends still loved me, and that the state still loved me. It was perfect because thats what it was planned to be.

This time around it wasn't like that. Every minute wasn't planned. It was like I was living my old life again. Like I had spent the last year on pause and someone had finally gotten around to un-pausing me. I spent everyday just doing things that I did when I lived there. Going to campus, chilling with my old dorm buddies, chilling at an apartment, strolling through Westwood. And I realized that it felt so right doing all those things, but also kind of wrong. Because the thing about being paused for a year is that when the big hand from above hits play you don't feel like you missed anything, but you did. Everyone else has spent the last year living while you've been frozen. Things change, not drastically, but enough. Enough that I had to realize that LA California is not my life anymore. Everyone there who knew me still knows me, and loves me, and welcomes me back with open arms, and its great but not the same. I'm a visitor. To them I'm a temporary distraction and to me they're what I want my life to still be. It's no ones fault. It's just how life goes. I'm sure it's happened with some of my friends from high school. The difference is I don't care about my high school life. That ended, I was glad, I let go and moved on. I haven't moved on from California yet. My life in California is still something I want and crave. It's like that stupid ex you just can't get over because nothing else has measured up yet. You think you've gotten over it but everything is compared to that ideal. And then you realize that you're life has been in a holding pattern, but what can you do?

This weekend was the realization. And hopefully it will help me to get over California. Hopefully I will stop waiting for things to be just as good as they were in California. Things in Utah are always going to be different, but does that mean worse? Does that mean I have to just keep waiting for California style living? NO! No it does not. So from this day forward I start getting involved in my life. Or something like that. At the very least I hope that I can be ok with the fact that Utah is not California, and that California is not waiting for me.

Sorry that got a little heavy into the where my life is going, and all my problems and that. But this is something I had to work through, or some cheesy junk like that, and I promise that my next post will be both light and witty.