I (can) make good food

It's true. But sometimes I wish I had something more to eat than potatoes and bacon -no matter how delicious they are in all their various forms. (soup, fried, hashbrowns, mashed, etc) Thank you Matthew for always eating my potato soup. I know you've consumed about 3 gallons of it these past few weeks. When I have money again I will cook with vegetables and fruit (and not just the fruit that's in juice and popsicles).

I think together Matthew and I have consumed 15lbs of potatoes the past several weeks. That's kind of gross.

Unemployed

Thursday evening I got fired. The reason? Not following a rule I never knew about. Someone called in to complain, and instead of talking to me about the issue and telling me how we're supposed to do it, my boss sent in a spy to see if I was doing my job right. And of course, because I wasn't aware of the rule, I did it wrong. So the little spy trotted back to Big Brother and two days later I was fired. Big Brother claims I was informed of the rule, but I was not. It was never made clear to me. And now? Now I have no job.

sick ...again

This is me right now. Matthew did this to me (so I'm wiping my snot on his sweatshirt). I edited the color so you can't see how red and raw and sore my nose and upper lip is. And there's no way to convey through photo how my head feels like lead, I perpetually feel like i need to sneeze (but I don't until my body can't stand it and I rocket myself backwards in a superpowered thrust). The poor people who came into work tonight probably thought their food was going to be contaminated with my disease...Want to know the grossest part? I've been blowing my nose like crazy, every minute or so, but I can't seem to control the flow. Even when I was taking this picture I didn't feel anything and then a tear of snot ran down my upper lip. Disgusting. I know. I did the only thing I could do after a day of battling this: I guzzled some Nyquil and rubbed Vicks all over my chest and nose.

Why does Matthew get a measly baby cold and then when I get it it incapacitates me? Not fair.

Shoe Want

I'm copying Leslie. I love JCrew. I love shoes. I love these shoes from JCrew. I usually hate wearing shoes that are closed-toe in the summer or not ballet flats in the winter. But I love these.

Mosque

Yesterday was the day that I had planned for for weeks. Literally weeks. The plan was this:
530 go to Mosque in Salt Lake
They were having a special presentation and interfaith gathering.
8 when it finished up go to eat Middle Eastern Food to top of the experience.

My original plan was just to go with Matt but I thought it would be fun for all of the roommates. But we weren't out of Provo until 545... And because we left so late we hit rush hour traffic and it took us an hour and 15 minutes to make it to West Valley... (should have only taken us 45 at the most!)

We drove around for ages trying to find the Mosque, and we didn't find it. Even the people who had been there previously couldnt find it. It was dark, and we were lost and the car lights were blinding me, and it was so noisy in the car (with talking, laughing, gum popping, singing, and music) that I was beyond stressed. I actually had to ask for 2 minutes of silence to collect myself.

At 745 (when the Mosque event was far past being over) we gave up and went to eat. I had found this African restaurant online and we went there. It was two Ethiopian women running the place and the food was amazing. We thought we ordered two plates of the 'serves 3-4' (and we were stuffed by the end), but it turns out we only got two of the 'serves 2.' So it was barely 5 dollars for each of us and it was more than enough.

We ate the food with our hands. It was brought on a huge plate. There was what appeared to be a sourdough crepe on the plate and then it was piled with this beef in a delicious brown sauce, and two bits of this yellow probably some sort of cornmeal stuff, it tasted like really good split pea soup, and what tasted like spicy pickled cabbage. There were extra sourdough crepes for us all to grab food off the plate. Everything was so delicious and it was all of our first experience with African food.

The drive back was better. Matt drove and after being fueled with delicious food I was in a much better mood.

Matt told me that this Mosque night was my "Red Lobster" night. A night where good intentions and great plans fall flat.

It should have been fun, and it was. There was just some stress in the middle.

Internet Doubled

The price of internet doubled this month... I guess the starting service discount expired last month.

Life is too expensive for someone who has to pay for school and rent and food and gas and barely works 18 hours a week...

I cannot get ahead. It doesn't matter how hard I try to budget, something always comes up and my credit card bill slowly increases. I'm trying so hard to get it to zero, luckily rent will decrease by $100 a month starting in 2 months for the summer.

On top of worrying about school costs, I have actual school to worry about. I know life will never really slow down, but I'm really struggling trying to keep up with everything. I'm not getting good grades because my classes are really hard, and I barely have a spare minute. I skipped going to observe at Provo High today so I could have a minute to get everything done -or how about a minute to even eat?

I'm stressed about school. I'm stressed about money for school. I'm stressed about not having enough hours at work, and even if I could get more hours could I fit them in? What else would I have to cut out? I barely have time to sleep more than 6.5 hours a night. My face is breaking out like crazy (no amount of salt that I could cut out from my diet will remedy this, mom). I have to actually stop and do nothing every now and then to rebound.

Thank Goodness I have my roommates, and my wonderful boyfriend to keep me sane. Honestly there are extra hours that I could devote to studying, but I would definitely overload then. College is supposed to be like this, I'm told. I don't need to travel anywhere. I just need more money. And I'm lucky, I go to a relatively inexpensive university, but my goodness. I feel stretched very thin.

Thoughts on Relationships

"There's a lid for every pot"


"Every aspect of life involves relationships. Every aspect of science, geography, economics, history, art, math, existence is what it is because of relationships. Whether human, physical, ideological, theoretical or tangible -all of life is composed of relationships. Nothing is isolated."

Valentine's Weekend

these are my 7am eyes

Since Valentine's was on Sunday this year, it's like all weekend was Valentine's. How lovely.

Friday night Matt and I went out. He had this great evening planned. First we were going to eat at Red Lobster for free (with his gift certificates courtesy of Santa) and then a surprise that he wouldn't tell me about that started at 8p, then a movie or something after if we still had energy.

It was a great plan. Here's what really happened:

Matt cleaned his car prior to picking me up. He used the public car vacuum so when he picked me up his car kind of smelled like a hobo. We named him Tammy. (Tin-pan Tammy) Then we went to Red Lobster. The hostess said it would take no longer than 45 minutes. 30 minutes later they told us it would be another 20 minutes. At this point it was 10 to 7. They told us really no longer than 15 minutes. At 7:10 we were the next on the list but had to go so we wouldn't miss... Chris Merritt in concert at Velour. :)

We grabbed burgers from Burger Supreme on the way -they cost him $13... yikes. Then we went to Velour and well, the concert didn't start at 8, doors opened at 8 which meant that the concert started at 9, which means we could have had a better dinner for free if we had stayed at Red Lobster... Matt was a little put off. We had time to kill, however, so we went to Communal for dessert. We got a Quince Pandowdy (which is basically a coffee cake) and icecream. It was really good, but again cost Matt more money than he anticipated -especially when he anticipated free dinner... But the concert was great. The openers were really good, and Chris Merritt was amazing. We had a great time and saw Sophie there on a first date with a guy named Phil. <3 onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgP77G96LRSR75G3m8alubcivmt1CP5T8Mn1cmL5LS6ZBjSj41xv5U5ONYAkHQbiERvNV5Zte28_I14Z7yIsDj7bUZZ0qET0bIh2ESCwuGeqmnGGO4OhrjRhfsjzsPzwHySdPshyecKMVTQ/s1600-h/IMG_8050.jpg">

When he came over he told me he had hidden a valentine in my closet the night before -it was a cat valentine and a box of Ferrero Rochers. Wonderful.

We enjoyed breakfast and tons of terrible photos before I went back to sleep and didn't wake up for church.

Instead I spent the time I should have been worshiping serving my roommates. I cleaned the whole house, mopped, swept, vacuumed, made beds, did dishes, windexed, tidied, and Matt came over and cut out paper hearts for over an hour. We strung them all over the house. Then I made homemade macaroni and cheese and chicken for my roommates so they could eat upon arrival back home from Church. Boys came over in the evening and we all watched "While You Were Sleeping."

It was a wonderful weekend and first Valentine's Day with Matt. Have I ever mentioned that he is amazing? Nearly perfect. I adore him and I am so thankful for him. He makes everything better and we had a wonderful Valentine's Weekend.

New Glasses

No "Bag Over Head" Required.

"Sometimes the Best of Both Worlds Creates Hell in Your Mouth"

Sometimes the best of both worlds creates wonder.


Take for example:

Banana = Awesome Fruit


Chocolate = Best thing on Earth



Banana + Chocolate =


Best Snack ever

(chocolate fight not included but welcome)

And Sometimes the best of both worlds creates Hell in your mouth. This phrase was coined by a dear roommate after the testing of the very unsuccessful combination of Chocolate Lucky Charms (with the marshmallows). And I thought it was only fitting for tonight's disaster.

Mexican-Asian Fusion. Mexicasian? Asiexican? Whatever you want to call it, just don't eat it.

Shredded Chicken Breast, Sliced Onions, Shaved Ginger, Crushed Pineapple (so far so good), Chopped jalepeno, (uh, what?) Diced Tomato (No! Please stop!) all wrapped up in a tortilla... (Saints preserve us!)


Alone the filling was AWESOME! But combined with the jalepeno, tomato and swaddled in a tortilla it was just gross. I usually don't have time to experiment so my concoctions are usually more conservative and generally on the good side. This is what happens when you skip FHE to do Econ, realize your starving and build a Franken-Asiexican-Burrito.

After eating most of the "burrito" I decided the only thing to remedy this tragedy was to have a chocolate bar for dinner.

The perfect thing to wash your mouth clean...