"you having a good day?"

I'm online at work all the time. Even if I'm not at my computer, I'm online. I sign in as soon as I get to work and only sign off if I'm trying focus, trying to get more accomplished, and am also choosing to be easily distracted.
Kennedy, my third-grade cousin, is always really excited to talk to me when she's online. Our conversations usually go something like this:

k: hi lyssa

k: :)

tomorrow is.........HALLOWEEN!!!!!!!!!!!

Lyssa: isn't that exciting?!

what are you going to be for halloween?

k: a devil

x-(

what are you going to be

Lyssa: haha that should be fun!

I'm going to a halloween party tonight

and I'm going to be a china doll

and then tomorrow night, for actual halloween, I'm going to be [something different]

k: WWWWWWOW

Lyssa: I'm pretty excited about it :)

k: ME TO

have you heard from jada yet

Lyssa: heard from Jada yet?

what do you mean?

k: like have she sended a email yet

to you

Lyssa: not today...

why?

did she email you?

or are you waiting for an email from her?

k: well no i just haven't heard from her

in a longgggg time

k: since school started

Lyssa: wow

that's a while

We talk about the nearest event, her school, her fam, which of my siblings have emailed her recently and what the emails have said and what I think of them. And then, at some point in the conversation, she always asks me if I'm having a good day. I love that question. She doesn't ask me how I'm doing. She gives me the chance to evaluate the day, and I answer her honestly. She's definitely caught me on days I haven't been thinking about how great they've been. She asked me one day that it seemed like everything had gone wrong, but she makes me think about it. She always gives me reasons to realize that I've had good things happen to me, even if I don't think the day is going so fantastically. It's really cool, and it makes me feel a lot better to know things just aren't that bad.

From the mouths of babes. Literally.

Curtis sent me this. He said, "Give me a break!"

This is crazy. Oh the signs of the times.


Proposition 8

you'd think it were Monday...

Man. I thought yesterday was actually pretty good for a Monday. FOR the love.

We were in the lab last night til 2:30. We had a huge project to get done (which we've been working on for the past week...), so we planned to meet at 7, thinking that we had the majority of it done, so we'd just be a couple of hours at most. A package of licorice, 8 phone calls, 3 hot pockets, 1 trip to the parking lot, and 7 1/2 hours later, we were done. And when I got home at 3, I was exhausted. I slept through my first class, raced to get to my second class, and ended up on the phone with my mom instead, bawling about how out of control my life feels. Sitting on the stairs in the Clyde, who should walk down but Bishop Beckstead, who starts to tell me how embarrassed he is that he hasn't emailed me back about a letter of recommendation. Mom heard him talking and said, "Call me later. Love you bye!" and I walked up to his office. I love chatting with Bishop. We talked about life, Guatemala, he and his wife, missions, all kinds of things in half an hour. Jose called, I called Joey to tell him I can't go salsa dancing, I ran into Asia, we got stuck in the elevator, we went to see A. Todd, he showed me his Ninja turtle costume, cookies and milk...

And work. Gosh, I can't wait to go home and sleep.

we think we're cool.

Bridian and I "conversed" today. This is how it went. I think it started because I sent her a text with her initials if she married her crush.

BMOR:




















AMOR:















BMOR:




















AMOR:















BMOR:




















AMOR:















The Poop Queen: Dang homz. You win.
[blood]: With which one?
The Poop Queen: The one with the computer and your hand. I coulda come up with a better one but I was pretty busy building a rocket.
[blood]: Wow. Rockets are cool. Thank you, thank you. But it was a good game. Let's play more often. Minus you actualz being mad at me.
The Poop Queen: Psh. I wouldn't exert so much effort if I were mad at you. Trust me.

the part us being more excited about our new ward?

yeah. that was a lie.

[edit]

I didn't get to finish this post.

We have had a lot of fun with our new ward. We've also had a lot of awkward situations with the same people that we called fun.

"Where did you serve your mission?"
"I.. haven't done that yet."
"Oh. that's cool."
"No, it's not really."

"How serious is this boyfriend?"
"We're pretty sure they're going to get engaged next week."
"So she probably wouldn't want to go on a date tomorrow night then."
...no answer.

"Oh, by the way, I'm your home teacher... Do you want to go to Sundance with me tomorrow night?"

"You shouldn't have flirted with me if you had such a serious boyfriend."
"I didn't flirt with you."

fun? :)

the art of not looking busy

Josiah and I go to lunch. Every week. Friday. Noon. Costco. We meet in front of the Wilk. No questions asked.

Well, except that Josiah always texts me "Costco? Same place?"
Just to make sure.

Today I almost didn't go. I've had six billion things to do all day everyday, and no matter what I accomplish, it seems the list never gets smaller! but I did go. I wanted the break. I realized I needed it.

Josiah brought up something he'd learned in a leadership meeting that his stake president called "the art of not looking busy," about how, as a stake president, the man is busy. He's always got a lot of places to be, a lot of things to be doing, etc., but how in between those meetings, he takes time to not look busy. He stands out in the foyer so that he appears approachable and church members can feel like they can actually talk to him. We talked about how we need to make time to talk to people. We've got busy lives, but people don't feel like we love them or care about them if we can never talk to them except while we're doing something else. I liked the opportunity to evaluate how I'm doing with that. I was pleasantly surprised to remember the day before, having an hour before we were headed to Salt Lake and walking over to talk to my neighbor, Kate. We talked about school. She's 3. I loved forgetting everything I was worrying about to listen to how much she loves joyschool. I was maybe there for 5-10 minutes, and then I headed back into the house to finish stuff before I took off. But I loved it! And realizing today that's what I needed yesterday, and I need to take that kind of time regularly.

And as for Salt Lake...


































sigh...

I think I should qualify this whole collection. I write as though no one else is reading.
Dangerous, I realize. But this is for me (and my mom, who calls about things later). And I don't write frequently anyway.
Amused readers... it's usually an accident. It's how my life goes, and I write it down. Period.

Laura and I have been going to our ward the past few weeks trying to be active and willing participants. Our Bishop has already labeled us the project of the ward and made home and visiting teaching assignments accordingly (Laura's companion is the Relief Society President, mine is her older sister, and the Elder's Quorum President is our home teacher). Somehow, we've already managed to meet the funnest people in the ward. Maybe they feel sorry for us, but they're a little too surprised by our reactions to things they say to not be genuinely interested in being our friends. The sad part is, we ususally meet them at the worst times possible. Usually during Sunday school.
This past Sunday, we went to "break the fast" and sat at a table by ourselves, eating the candy corn out of the center of the table. I don't know who's brilliant idea it was to make those center pieces and not expect them to be eaten, but several people weren't happy about it. (Not the fun people we've met, don't worry). We were soon joined by 4 or 5 other people who wanted to eat candy corn too. We started eating, we made lots of friends when we made a big deal about not letting anyone steal a piece of cake we were sharing that people proceeded to steal from us, and ended up leaving with plans to play scum... at a later date.
An hour or so later, the Elder's Quorum President and one of the kids we'd met with the candy corn showed up at our house, and Laura and I oh-so-cordially invited ourselves over to their apartment to play scum. Who knew scum could be a death match? Daniel and I watched Laura and other Daniel duke it out, not for who would be in the King's spot, but for who would be scum and vice scum.
The next night at FHE (both Daniels are in our FHE group) we carved pumpkins. Laura didn't come because she was at work, and I had to leave early to be back on campus. When I got home, my pumpkin was on the porch. Stabbed with a good 20 or 30 knives. "YOU SCUM" was written in large black letters on the side.

I think it was for Laura.

Needless to say, we're a little more enthusiastic about our ward. So far.

Idiosyncrasies. of an Idiot :)

I'm going to a concert on Wednesday because, even though I only know a few of the songs by the headliner, I love what I've heard. I was talking to Jeremy about which songs/albums I should focus on, and since I have two days, I need to get to work. So I popped in my headphones when I got to my next class and opened my laptop. I turned the music up, and kind of a ways because the volume is always different on my comp for when I'm using headphones versus listening to music without them, just on the computer's speakers. I wanted the volume up a little bit anyway because I only had one ear in. So I could attempt to listen to the lecture :) I'm always amazed by the headphone phenomenon of feeling like everyone in the room should be able to hear it but they can't! And "Breathe," the song I was listening to, is such a good song.
And then I noticed the kid in the row in front of me start looking around, and then he stared at me with kind of a funny expression.

The phenomenon was that everyone in the room COULD hear the music.
My headphones were plugged into the microphone jack.