The Day of Mishaps -- or Perhaps of Miracles

Have you ever had one of those days where everything you did went wrong? Or at least where one thing went wrong every hour? Well, that was my day on Wednesday of last week. And the funny thing is ... it seemed to have been the day that my mom and sister (Amy) had back in NC too.

My day started out at 6:00 with a phone call that woke me up. It's Branden letting me know that he was going to be at my place to pick me up in 5 minutes. Ideally I would have been up for a half hour already. Now I had to rush to get myself into my gym clothes and fed. Getting fed is my problem. I stuck my oatmeal in the microwave before I put my shoes on, just to run out of time and have to leave a full bowl of oatmeal. I have to say, oatmeal is the most difficult food to clean up! Even when it's fresh it doesn't want to leave the bowl.

Then post-gym and post-shower, I decided to check on the candle that I was burning and trying to get level. You know how nice it is to have a level candle. If you let it get out of hand, the wax suffocates the flame. The only issue with my plan was, I forgot that I hadn't blown it out. So as I tilted it towards me, I ended up with wax all down my side, all over my gym clothes (which were fortunately protecting part of my floor), and on the floor. I'm hoping that carpet cleaning will take care of it. Orange wax really looks horrible on green carpet.

After scraping wax off my body, I finally got out of my apartment 10 minutes late. I wasn't not too worried at this point--that is, until I got to the parking lot. After circling the lot for 5 minutes I finally found a spot, and that's when it dawned on me: today was the career fair! The career fair was my hope to find a decent internship, which I had to have to graduate. I had forgotten about it. Not only did that mean that I was wearing jeans and an ugly polo, or that I didn't have my resumé printed out, but I had to walk an extra 10 minutes to get to my class!

Even with all that, I got to my class about 3 minutes late and just barely made it in time to write my name on the "Quiz." I guess points for a name are better than nothing right? I was really stressed because I was a day behind on the reading. Fortunately, my professor is also a day behind. Not too bad after all--if only I didn't have the career fair lurking in the back of my mind.

I did mention that I MUST have an internship to graduate, right? After my Political Philosophy class I ran to my Religion class and pulled out my lap top to work on my resumé. We start every class with a quiz, and I made sure that I was ready for that on Sunday. Funny thing is -- although we had a quiz, she didn't give us questions on the reading because she was behind too. The rest of the class period I sat and was so busy with my resumé that I couldn't listen to the best New Testament teacher in the world.

Following my class I sat in the hall and looked over the career fair employers. They didn't seem too promising, but then again, I didn't really have time to look. While my lunch hour would be the best time to go to the career fair (due to the fact that it's the only hour that I don't have classes during the career fair), I had planned on using it to study for my linguistics test. By the time I walked to the building and sat down to study, I only had 20 minutes left. And the more I studied, the more unprepared I felt. Isn't it supposed to work the opposite way? I'm was still grasping to the hope that I might be able to get done with the test early, leave class, print my resume, and run to the career fair before my 2:00 class.

With the test in my hands I felt a wave of relief. It's was going to be easy, and I was not used to easy tests. Last semester one of my professors would hand out blank sheets of paper, and ask a question like, "compare and contrast these two authors and the literary elements they use in these poems." Those were hard tests. We had to fill up the space, and sound intelligent, without using books or notes or knowing ahead of time what authors we would have to know. By the time I finished my test, I was only 5 minutes early. Oh well. It just meant that the career fair would have to replace my 2:00 class.

I went to the career fair, walked in, looked around, and felt like crying. I had no clue where to even begin. I decided to do the research on the companies I should have done the night before. When I finished a half hour later, most of the companies I had marked as possibilities, don't offer a global component in an internship. I thought my best option would bee the cruise company, and their advertisement said that they're looking for people to fill their offices in various places of the world. I approached their booth. Other students walked past me in business suits and stacks of resumes stuck in portfolios. I was almost too shy to talk. I felt unprepared, and before long I realized, the company was not in the cruise industry, but is a retail company that has shops at major cruise destinations. As awesome as it sounds, I don't want to be a shop keeper and a foreign country for my international business internship.

I walked around a little more, and despair over the difficulty of finding a perfect fit filled my mind. I need to work on the management side of a company and I need to be dealing with international issues. This is a problem. The FDIC stopped me as I was making my final round and asked if I'm a business major. I replied by stating that it's my minor. They can't use me, but I did get a highlighter/sticky note dispenser out of it. I was walking around aimlessly with little confidence in my preparation for the day, realizing that it's a bit of a stretch to look for an internship 1 year in advance. How many of the companies are international? I don't even have the slightest idea.

Cakes and Things!

It's been forever since I posted, but I've been super busy! I've finished my first month of the semester and only have 3 to go. For those of you who don't know, I'm trying to get straight A's, begin my honors thesis, train for a triathlon, standardize sailing club procedures, and to improve my cake skills. I've broken tonight's post into subheadings--lame, I know, but I just have too many topics to over. School, Inaugural Day, Facebook, Hope, and Cakes.

1. School - I can't get through my International Business class, my Business Spanish teacher doesn't test us on what she says she is going to, I'm a day behind on my reading for my Political Philosophy Class, and I had a wake-up call in my Spanish Phonetics class. Today was the first day that I've heard myself speaking in Spanish. Wow. Recording myself speaking a foreign language is nerve-racking, but listening to it is a little disheartening as well.

2. Inaugural Address - It was actually pretty good. Full of promises and emotion, and of course the occasional contradictory statement. As far as speeches go, it was a wonderful one, though I don't know how much I believe him. I'm now itching to contrast it with Pericles' Funeral Oration and Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. That might just come later, if I ever get any time for cool analysis that isn't school related. (P.S. I must say, Aretha Franklin's bow caught me off guard. I almost laughed out loud. Man I wish I could pull something off like that. And I wish it was common to wear stuff like that every now and then. I felt kind of bad for laughing at it, but my mom's cousin has made me feel a bit better. Apparently I wasn't the only one entertained. She's been photoshopping that hat onto peoples heads. Everyone from Paris Hilton to OJ Simpson. It gives me smiles every day.)

3. Speaking of Facebook, I've recently added a glob of my extended family. It all started when my mom got Facebook. She added her cousins, and then I added them. Man it's been great. I almost feel like I'm somehow connected to them now. Not knowing them is probably the worst part about living out in UT. I miss NC!

4. Hope - I have some excellent news! Branden is starting a business in Las Vegas. He and his business partner have founded a rock chip repair company and have run the numbers. This should be profitable, and looks like a way to survive in the rough job market. (For those of you who don't know, Branden has been looking for a job for quite a while). In a way it's all we have to count on right now. If it goes well, it means that we'll be able to get engaged. If not, we'll have to figure out another way and probably wait a few more months. So, keep Branden and Kelly (his business partner who is a man by the way) and their company in your prayers. It could very well end up being the answer to ours. If you're ever in Vegas and need a rock chip repair, just look for the hot pink tent in the Walmart parking lot. (P.S. Branden's wearing the welding mask in this pic, not a top hat)

5. Cake - Someone very close to me is planning on getting married, and it's only since I stated this post that I learn that it's now official! My cousin Emily is engaged, and and I may just have the honor of baking her wedding cake. I'm really excited. I've learned how to make a tiered cake (though she told me she just wants one tier), and I've gotten the practice of getting the fondant on the cake smoothly, but I'm working on my piping and decoration skills. Here are a few of the cakes I've made since the summer:

#1 - My first cake. I know it's pretty bad. It ended up breaking (I've now figured out how to fix that problem) and I filled the middle in with butter cream frosting. I decided to try a bunch of different decorating styles, and now, I can't wait to begin perfecting it. I think I'm going to start making a cake every Sunday until the wedding.


#2 - This is the cake that I made for Halloween. I ran out of time to actually get the stem brown, and to get the cake a deep orange. I used a gel food coloring for the mouth and eyes, only it wasn't quite a gel when I first put it on there, so my pumpkin looks like he's drooling.



#3 - Here's my Thanksgiving cake. I figured that I had made enough regular cakes (notice the Boston eclair cake and the pumpkin trifle in the background) to last a while. And yes, it's a cake, and the only things that weren't edible were the dental floss I used to hold up the heavy tail feathers and head, and the skewers and toothpick I used to insert the tail feathers and head into my cake. It was really fun!


Well that's it for now. (except for the post from my crazy day two days ago!)

The Beginning of a New Semester

Well, with the start of a new semester, I've been drowning in homework. This semester I'm taking 17 credits of classes and starting to train for the Battle at Midway triathlon this summer. That means my days start at around 5:30 AM and on two days a week, I don't even get home until 7:00 PM. It's a little difficult to manage, but it ends up working out as long as I plan well. Today I even got some grocery shopping in and I filled up my windshield wiper fluid while holding the hood up with my head in the Walmart parking lot. I figured that was a blog-worthy tidbit. School is going really well, and I love my international business classes. I am happy to report that so far my grades are all in the A range. :-) What a goal huh? Straight A's this semester. I'm also doing pretty well on some of my other goals, and I'm really psyched about the triathlon in June. I've also started doing Yoga in the evenings with Alex Hopkins to stretch out my legs that are getting tight from all the training. It has actually been great and ended up getting rid of my knee pain! Yay!

Happy New Year!

So wow! The year that I may graduate is finally here (though.... don't get your hopes up, it'll probably be 2010). I'm exciting for what this year will hold, and I'm still trying to decide on my resolutions.

Last Year
So... I couldn't help but think about what it was that I was doing last year. 2008 was a pretty good year too. Last year for New Years I was hosting the Provo City First Night with the mayor. Let me say, it was a pretty embarrassing night, mainly because I misunderstood a question that the mayor asked me about my resolutions. But, the pictures are still cool.
I suppose the rest of January was pretty uneventful, though I did go to some sort of a charity dinner at Thanksgiving Point. The cool thing about that was that it was one of the first times that I got to meet some of the other Miss Utah girls. (And of course like Utah girls do, one of them ended up getting married, so I never saw her again).

Valentines
For valentines day last year, Branden and I went to The Pie in Salt Lake City. It's just a little college restaurant where they sell gigantic pizzas. I think we were originally going to go see a ballet, which is why I was wearing a dress, but we changed our minds. We also found a sign to pose by....

SPRING

I will say, Branden is a bonfire king! It looks like he and his roommates put one together early last spring. We had them all throughout the summer, and even went camping once.




I also had my big Miss Utah workshop in March, where I needed to turn in my photos, all of my paperwork, pay money for my hotel, draw my contestant number and meet the other girls. That also meant that I only saved myself about a week to get my photos. At the workshop I ended up drawing number 45. It was Jill Stevens Miss Utah's number the year before. It meant that at Miss Utah I would do swimsuit before any of my family got in town! Yay! It also meant that Arial Larsen, Miss Sandy would be my roommate. The main reason that was cool was because I had watched my roommate Megan crown her as Miss Sandy.






JUNE
In June I gave away my Miss Provo Title. It was a fun pageant, though I didn't get a final walk due to miscommunication. I had also found the dress that I wore a day before the pageant, so in these photos, it was actually taped to me because it was about 2 sizes too big!

The Last weekend in June, Branden and I went out to California to compete in Long Beach Race Week. We were on a J35. It was pretty dang fun! I've always wanted to race sailboats, and I was finally doing it (along with the dinghy series that we started in the BYU Sailing Club). Out in Cali, my dad got me my first pair of performance sailing shoes (and I'm sure that they have literally saved my life).

Being part of a team that was just thrown together was a little rough. We were racing against pros (and we even were racing around Dr. Laura). By the end we started getting our act together, and we were actually leading into the mark, but as we were getting the Spi up, Branden slipped and fell, and in order to save himself, he ended up grabbing for the release cord, and we lost the spinnaker. Though... we still have a really cool pic of us in that race before the oops. (Though, you can't see me and Branden in the photo. We were on the starboard side of the boat).


JULY - Miss Utah

Miss Utah was just so incredibly fun! And, believe it or not the girls are so nice! That week we were on the news, on Good things Utah (a morning show here), we competed every night (swimwear, evening gown, and talent) and we got to preform an opening dance number. It was like being in show biz and getting to preform every night! Here are a few photos!

My spot in the dressing room.

Me with a couple of the friends I made before Miss Utah.

Where I signed the wall at the Capitol Theatre.
One of the few pics of me and my fam.Almost everyone who came to support me.

He came every night. Can you believe it? I don't think I could have even done that.

The lovely ladies who came with me to the Miss Utah Brunch! Can you tell we're related?

Me with my group. These girls were my immediate competitors. And they were awesome!

The capitol building in Salt Lake. (not to be confused with the theatre)

My Little Miss who walked me out on stage in my evening gown

Me with Jill Stevens. She's an awesome woman. Miss Utah really was an unforgettable experience, and I'd try to do it again if it weren't for the money that it costs to compete in pageants. Although they're free, we have to raise money for charities, pay for photographers, and pay for our clothing. All for a scholarship. Though, if you make it all the way to Miss America, it's absolutely worth it.

AUGUST

I went home to get my wisdom teeth taken out. It was relatively painless, but the pain medication made me sick and my mouth actually got partially sewn together, so I lost a ton of weight. The good news though is that Amy and I went to the Kenny Chesney concert. It was great! I was so glad that we were able to go. (Kenny Chesney is my favorite). My family also flew Branden to NC to spend time with me and my grandparents at the coast. It was really a great vacation. (even with stitches in my mouth)

Since Then...
I competed in one other pageant, and then decided that I didn't have the time or the money to give. It was fun while it lasted, and I still get a few nights where I want to do it again, but I also know that now I'm moving forward with my life. I'm a Senior at BYU, with a major in Spanish, a minor in Business, (possibly honors), and a Global Management Certificate. I also just finished up the best semester of school that I've had in the past two years. Branden and I had a fun Thanksgiving in New York with his family, and a great Christmas with mine in Utah (you can read about those in my blog if you like).

I hope everyone has a wonderful wonderful year this year.