I brake for red lights

The other day I had to run an errand on campus. I believe I was buying sticky notes and pens. I was driving along 9th East when the light at 9th North turned red. Being a law abiding citizen, I stopped for the red light. Being a complete ditz, I looked both ways, and continued on my way. Halfway through the intersection I realized in horror that the light was still red! I looked around and everyone at the light had a "what is she doing" look on their faces which probably matched my own "What am I doing" face. I figured I was halfway through, I might as well finish it off. So I just kept on going. I later told Dave about it after which he threatened to take my car keys away.

On Friday we had an interview for a "position" in an apartment complex. If we get it we will manage (collect rent, fix small maintenance stuff, advertize openings, etc) the 39 units in the complex. It will only be $100/month in rent plus utilities. It is in Provo so we would save money on gas too. On the way to our interview we stopped at a car place so Dave could ask intelligent questions about cars. As we pulled out onto State Street again we hit a red light at D.I. Dave stopped, and when the pedestrians were done crossing, he went, as I exclaimed "Dave...Dave...red...Dave...it's still red." He made the exact same mistake that I did. He kindly pointed out that he would have gotten 2 tickets if caught because he was on his phone: one for distracted driving. I wondered aloud if the cop would have been able to tell that I was mentally distracted without the cell phone prop.

Name Game

So you know how if you say a word often enough it starts sounding odd? Well on Tuesday, as I walked to the church for YW, I did this with my name. No I didn't walk down the street saying my name over and over and over and over, it was in my head. It is a very common name, and I've always thought of it as such, as well as plain and tall, and not as princess-y as it should. As I was saying it over and over to myself, I began to notice how odd it sounded (as is what happens) and started to wonder what it sounds like to other people, whether they've known me for a very long time, or as I introduce myself to them. Just a few thoughts I had walking down the street.

September - The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

I love September. It is probably my favorite month of the year. Here's why:

1. It's Birthday Month! Mine, of course, and it seems like a lot of other people have birthdays in September as well. I can think of 10 off the top of my head.
2. The weather is just right. (In the Rockies at least...poor Texas.) "It's not too hot, and not too cold, all you need is a light jacket." (name that movie?) It also isn't super windy like Spring time.
3. BYU FOOTBALL! Ok, so football season only starts in September, and goes til November and sometimes December, but it's still there! I listened to the game against UCLA today on the radio, and did my costco run at halftime. It was great! (59-0) I even wore my $5 football shirt: "The Quest"
4. Food. For me at least this year, my little garden is finally beginning to produce. I will have cucumbers galore, hopefully some tomatoes will turn red before it freezes, I found a pumpkin about the size of my head hidden in the middle of the patch, the lettuce is almost ready to be picked, I picked a whole 3 pods of peas from the plants that survived, and my carrots are starting to get bigger. Not to mention the random assortment of gourds that are growing.
5. School starts. Ok, so I'm not in school this semester, which is exciting, but when I was in school, I enjoyed the first month of a class a lot before I got bogged down with procrastinated homework.
6. The colors. The fall colors start to show in September all over the mountains. Bright red, orange, greens and golds (go toppers!).

What is your favorite thing about September?

Labor Day/1st Day of School

Yesterday was officially my first paid holiday. Granted, I got off early for graduation in August, but that was only 2 1/2 hours of paid time off. Yesterday I got to spend the whole day doing whatever I wanted, and I got paid for it! I started off by sleeping in until 10. Well, I slept until 8 or so, then just laid in bed until 10. Then I got up, poured myself some grape nuts, and watched Notting Hill until 12:30. After my oh-so-productive morning, I washed 4 loads of laundry, cleaned the bathroom counter/sinks and mirror, changed the fish water, moved the fish to the kitchen window sill (nestled among the leaves of a plant, so it's like it has its own jungle river niche!), and changed the bedsheets.

Today, however, I had to go to work again. Wo is me. Today was also the first day of school for Dave...but not for me. Usually at this time of the year I start having anxiety dreams about starting school. Not that I'm scared, it's just an exciting/stressful event. This is the first September since I was 4 years old that I haven't had school. One would think that the dreams would cease. Alas, they still come. I dream constantly that I actually DID sign up for a class, and I go and various odd things happen, as they tend to do in dreams. This morning, I woke up at 5:00am and couldn't go back to sleep until 6:00am. My alarm was set for 6:30am. In that half-hour early morning nap I had yet another dream. It wasn't about me starting school, but school starting was still present in that dream. Maybe I'm just nervous for Dave to be starting school. Best of luck to him and everyone else beginning the Fall 2008 semester.

Books from Chelsea

Chelsea put this in her blog, and I realized I had read quite a few of the books on the list, and so I decided to do this fun little thing about me:

The rules:

1. Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2. Italicize those you intend to read.
3. Star the books you LOVE.
4. Underline books you claimed to have read, but really just listened to your class discussions/oral reports
5. Books you started but didn't love and didn't finish = ^
6. "I've only seen the movie" = #

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen #
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling *
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien *
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald *
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams *
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky *
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens *
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (why is this separate from #33?)
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
45. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
46. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
47. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
48. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
49. Atonement - Ian McEwan
50. Dune - Frank Herbert
51. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
52. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen #
53. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
54. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
55. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
56. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
57. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
58. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
59. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
60. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
61. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
62. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
63. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas #
64. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
65. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
66. Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding #
67. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
68. Moby Dick - Herman Melville #
69. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
70. Dracula - Bram Stoker
71. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett #
72. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
73. Ulysses - James Joyce
74. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
75. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
76. Germinal - Emile Zola
77. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray #
78. Possession - AS Byatt
79. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens #
80. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
81. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
82. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
83. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
84. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
85. Charlotte’s Web - EB White
86. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
87. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle *# (not all of them...)
88. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
89. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
90. The Little Prince- Antoine De Saint-Exupery
91. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
92. Watership Down - Richard Adams
93. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
94. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
95. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
96. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
97. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl #
98. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Turns out I'm the opposite of Chelsea, when I start a book, I finish it. Even Charles Dickens!!! I can only think of two books that I've started but not finished, and they're not even on this list. Anyway, this was fun, I hope it wasn't too boring for readers.

New Job!

I applied for a new position at BYU I.S. and starting Monday I am the Course Maintenance and Product Testing Supervisor. I'm pretty excited about it. For one thing I was getting a little bit burned out about my current job. For another thing, I only had until mid-October to find a new job, or my "temporary staff" status would expire. Probably the best thing is instead of making $xx.xx/hr, I'll be making $xx,xxx/year, plus benefits!

I start on Monday, and Becky, the current C.M.&P.T. Supervisor will be training me. I also have to go to the employment office to get paperwork filled out and set up a time to talk about how the benefits work and everything. I've never had a "real" job, so I'm nervous and excited all at the same time! I'm excited to learn more about how I.S. works, and to be doing something different than what I have been doing for 2 years. It's something new.

Lazy bum whoopla

I've been in a funk lately where I don't feel like doing anything, and I'm always tired. I decided to fix that.

First of all, I decided that a constant bedtime would be logical, as well as a constant wake up time. So this month, it's my goal to go to bed at 10:00pm every night and get up at 6:00am every morning. Yes, that means Saturdays and Sundays too. Although I might allow myself 7:00am on those mornings. Hopefully this will help my productivity level. It is also said that people that have a regular sleeping pattern are less tired throughout the day. I could definitely use that.

Last night I think we made it to bed at 10:30. So close... But I couldn't go to sleep until about midnight. Amongst the crickets having a hay day outside the window, the dog running around upstairs, the TV on upstairs, and not being used to going to bed earlier, I couldn't sleep.

Another thing missing in my life is exercise. Every day I walk to either the car or the bus, and then from the car or bus to work, where I sit on my tush all day at a computer. I thought about my options:

• get up at 5:00am to run
• run in the evening after getting home from work
• go to the gym on the way to or from work
• ride my bike the 11.2 miles to work

I picked the last option. Well, sort of. I decided that I could ride the 7 miles 90% downhill to BYU, and I would catch the bus from there. So we left the house at 7:05. It was pretty windy because of the impending thunderstorms, and only when it was uphill ironically. Dave would push me slightly up the hills to lift the burden a little bit. My favorite part was going down the diagonal hill. When we got to the intersection of Avenue and Parkway some girl had just hit a pedestrian girl with her car! The girl wasn't severely hurt, just limping a little bit, and the other girl drove her to the medical center. It added a little bit of excitement to the ride. By the time we got to campus, my bus had for sure already come and gone and it only comes once an hour. So I decided to keep riding until the next bus came, if it took that long. Turns out it didn't take that long. Dave came with me all the way out to work. It was a fun bike ride, but I am definitely going to be sore after an hour and ten minutes of bike riding. 11.2 miles in an hour and 10 minutes turns out to be about average of about 9.65 miles per hour (so my coworker informed me).