sometimes i get unnecessary free stuff.

If you know me, and I'm assuming all seven of you do, you know I hate, hate, hate spending money. So much in fact that I've only eaten out like six times since I moved up here to Logan and I actually refused to buy groceries for a two week period a few months ago. Yes, I hate spending money that much. So, when I somehow I found the Facebook page  Freebies2Deal, I got all sorts of excited inside. They post different deals daily that help you save money on things you need, like groceries, or things you don't need, which you will see an example of soon. One such deal they had going on was you could get all sorts of free things for your company as part of a promotion through Vistaprint, and you only had to pay for shipping.
Oh yeah, I definitely took advantage of that. Being the smart alec that I am, I decided to write motivational things on each item that pertain to that items use.

Out of their list of free things you could order I got:

A personalized pen. 

And yes that definitely says "this pen is meant for writing. so use it. thank you."

A personalized notebook that says

 "This notebook is meant for writing in." Clever, I know.

A "ten points!" stamp. 

I was sooo excited for this one. Now I can give legit "Maria points" on paper. 

Business cards.

 I tried to actually take these seriously, so they say "M. Wilson Photography" on them. 

And a little fridge magnet. 

I think you can all read what that says. 

Because I order so many things online, I feel as though the mailman is sick of having to hand deliver packages to me, and he only pretends to knock on my door to let me know he's outside waiting with my package. So when I got home from school that fateful day I found the little "sorry we missed you, but not really because, honestly, you need to stop ordering things online. I thought you were a poor college student, start acting like it" card in our mailbox so I hopped in my car and soon enough I had the long awaited parcel in my hands. Now, normally I have enough patience to wait until I get back to my apartment before I start ripping things open, but I guess I was particularly impulsivity-challenged that day, so I used my car keys to pry it open on the spot. The first wrapped object I encountered was about 8x10 and for the life of me, I couldn't figure out what it was. I finally opened it up, and the second I saw what it was I laughed out loud. That "little" magnet I ordered turned out not to be so little.

Yes, that monstrosity on the second half of the fridge is my magnet. I frequently let this type of stuff happen to me. Yeah, so I guess when I was ordering this stuff I was so blinded by the free-ness of it that I didn't take the time to read the fine print. Kinda like when I find a shirt I'm in love with at a store, I'll grab the first one off the rack without even making sure it's my size. But I digress, That obnoxious magnet that says 

"THIS IS A MAGNET

meant for keeping stuff up on your fridge. 

You're Welcome." 

takes up the majority of our fridge. I am so ashamed. 

Even though the magnet wasn't what I expected the rest of the stuff was still pretty good. Even if they do have slightly condescending remarks on them. And I mean, who can really complain when they were all free.

nothing of consequence.

preface: i've had seven hours of free time today.

i've been listening to set fire to the rain, by adele 12 times in a row. 12 times 4 is 48. almost an entire unproductive hour of one song. and i'm still going strong.

i set fire to the rain, watch it burn as i touched your face. well, it burned when i cried cause i heard it screaming out your name. your name.


i'm sitting in my bed staring blankly at the mobile filled with high school "photography," handing in the corner across from me. i'm trying my best to coerce myself into writing my technical writing assignment that's due tomorrow, as the mobile slowly rotates due to the vent to it's right. the pictures are going in an unsure clockwise motion. they seem like they don't know how to move uniformly because they keep bumping into each other. kinda like people do when you put a bunch of them in a group and don't tell them which way to go but tell them they need to get there soon. every so often i blow as hard as i can to the left of it, just to see if i can make a bigger impact on them than the vent. i can't. that feels like a metaphor but i've been trying to do academic writing for so long today i can't be bothered to break it down.

and i threw us into the flames, when we fell, something died, cause i knew that, that was the last time... the last time. 


i've eaten nearly all the easter candy from my mother-sent care package. i never thought i was a stress eater, and then i got stressed. and now the candy is almost gone. my teeth are coated in bubble gum residue and my tongue tastes like a mixture of stale and chocolate.

i just spent twenty minutes writing and revising this. twenty minutes i could have been working on that school assignment that's due tomorrow. or i could have been reading; i have a book, one that i really want to read, and it's due back at the library tomorrow. i still have almost two hundred pages to go. lists and lists of things undone.

seven hours. that's longer than one day of high school. i set fire...ridiculous.

four petty complaints.

four pet peeves.
one: music on blogs. don't do it. we're already agreeing to read your words, we don't need to listen to something you love at the same time. plus i don't know anyone who's reading comprehention increases when they're trying to also thoroughly enjoy a popular song. it just doesn't happen.

two: cropping photography. there's a reason the photographer framed that picture the way they did. it's called "art" (i use that word loosely). you probably don't realize how much thought was spent setting up that picture. don't crop it. not even for your facebook profile picture. thank you from photographers everywhere.

three: talking during class lectures. i'm sorry that one of your most expensive life choices was to pay to be allowed sit in these mildly uncomfortable chairs and talk to your friend about last's nights undesirable conquests. i paid a stupid amount of money to come here and learn, i already have bad hearing, i don't need you complicating things.  please take it outside. (this pet peeve can also be applied to movie theaters. you paid $7.50 just to sit in a room for 2 hours and talk to people you see daily?! do you know how many sangria's $7.50 will get you? nearly ten! and that's plus tax.)

and for the ironic fourth: passive aggressive behavior. is what i'm doing bothering you? stop sending me cryptic messages via eye brow angles and just tell me.

thanks guys. it feels good to get that off my chest.

The day I hacked my brain and everything was perfect.

I've had full intentions to write this blog at least three times before this point, but as you all know, I'm contractually obligated to procrastinate, so you get a story about Saturday five days later. You're welcome. 

So, I was scheduled to work at 8 on Saturday morning, and if you know me, you see the problem here. On Friday I was planning on going to bed early, but not only had I had the privilege of sleeping in earlier that day, but it was my roommate Courtney's birthday. So after going to dinner at Costa Vita, we had a ridiculous amount of people in our apartment, eating cake, playing games and attempting to throw a dance party.  It was 2:30 by the time everything settled down, everyone left, and I was ready for bed. As I lay in bed all hopped up on chocolate birthday cake, carbonation, and too much sleep the night before, I started freaking out that I wasn't going to be able to wake up on time. In desperation I decided to do some "imagining exercises" I learned in one of my many strange classes I took at Dixie last year. I spent a solid ten minutes telling myself I was going to wake up on time, and imagining the clock when I woke up and exactly what I was going to do before work to get ready. I set my three alarms for 7, 7:15 and 7:30, as usual, and shot a few prayers towards heaven, figuring I could use all the help I could get. By 3:30 my brain had finally settled down and that's about when I fell asleep.
The next thing I remember being aware of was shooting up in my bed in a blind panic and reaching for my phone to see what time it was. 6:58. WHAT?! That's right. Somehow I managed to not only scare my brain into waking me up like a ninja before my alarm went off, but I also did it on 3 1/2 hours of sleep. That has never, ever happened to me before. And I was ecstatic. I managed to make it to work sans face pillow creases (you know what i'm talking about, those things you get on your face when you stay in the same position the entire night, but you wake up late for work so they don't have time to smooth out. oh, you don't have that problem? just me then.) and with food in my belly. Those two things on their own are a huge accomplishment.

The whole rest of the day was just as awesome. I thought about taking the time to literally tell you about all of the great things that happened in story form, but I'll spare you and create a simple list instead. Once again, you're welcome :)

List of Awesome:

*free things from Targt in the mail

*half a Costa Vita burrito at lunch

*getting May 16th through the 25th off from work so I can come to St.George!

*good friends

*v for vendetta

*a car mustache (which can be seen here)

*sangrias and oreos 

Ask anyone who had to deal with me on Saturday, everything was amazing. Seriously, such the best day.

p.s. just wanted to let you all know that you're totally allowed to comment on here. I know you all want me to believe that none of you read this but blogger tells me differently. So comment away. 

sleep vs school. sleep wins again.

So you know how sometimes you stress over something for a few weeks straight and you can't force yourself to do it until the day before? So it comes out all retarded and so obviously half baked? And then you don't get to bed until super late, and because you're so exhausted after having done a semester's worth of work in one night, you require more sleep than you've allowed yourself before you have to wake up. So your alarm goes off but you're having some super crazy dreams so you keep hitting snooze until your phone decides an hour and a half was long enough to tell you to get up and it stops trying. So you sleep in late and completely miss the class, which had mandatory attendance for that day, that the project, which can't be turned in late, was due in. You remember when that happened? Oooh that's just me? Yeah.
Speaking of bad days, that actually happened. But after two minutes of hyperventilation, five minute of frantic texting while tripping slash pacing, and fifteen minutes of surfing the usu's website to figure out the required GPA to maintain one's scholarship, I stopped freaking out. I realized I made certain decisions this morning, and now I have to live with them. This semester has been full of fun, quaint little life lessons like that.
In an attempt to recover at least a sliver of dignity to carry me through the remainder of the day I made myself take a short, unforgiving shower and put my socially acceptable face on. I made myself a healthy breakfast and started taking care of business just as if the day hadn't started out of sheer panic.

p.s. wanna hear what i've been listening to while writing this?



Peter Lee Johnson is amazing. He makes me regret decisions I made as an unmotivated 6th grader, that's how good he is. If you listen to his stuff and end up loving it as much as me he has it available to download for free!

Sometimes i get jealous of all the talent some people possess and then I realize they weren't just born like this, they've spent countless hours practicing and practicing. While I was adding to my already staggering total of hours spent staring at a computer screen he was playing for his fifth hour of the day on calloused fingers, honing his craft. So Hats off to you Mr. Johnson, may I someday become as motivated and able to create music as beautiful as you do.

A post in which Maria goes from complaining to story telling.

I can't help but wonder if I even want this thing. I'm spread so thin along so many useless sites on the internet, what makes this worth my time? Not enough of my friends spend time blogging so I find it to be very pretentious of me to expect my life to be important enough to people to create a whole website around it. At least that's how it seems tonight. But I'm pretty sure we can blame some of this optimistic attitude on the fact that I've spent 4 straight days trying to wear my procrastinating tenacity down enough to start writing my 10 page story for my fiction class. It's due on Tuesday. I've written 250 words.

Yeah.

And to add to the list I have a presentation due on Monday on the elements of webpage design that pertains to the, ever lacking, Beaver Mountain Ski Resort's webpage. It's supposed to be the product of a semester's worth of research, one that I've supposedly done with two other individuals in my class. I haven't even started on it yet.

Or maybe we can chalk all those feelings to the fact that I've decided to change my major after a year of very-not-free tuition. This whole semester my teachers have been telling me take notes, this is the type of menial, uneventful, and completely-void-of-any-personality writing you'll be doing for the rest of your life. Forget writing textbooks and memos. I don't care where the comma goes after an in-text citation as dictated by MLA formatting for scholarly papers. I'm planning on drawing pictures the rest of my life.

There. I said it.

I went and visited the advisor for the art department on Tuesday. I'm not going to lie and tell you that it was a pleasant experience. I can't tell you she had that friendly gleam in her eye, or that she took one look at me and proclaimed me the prodigal daughter and that I was finally home in the major I'd been searching for.

In fact, it was quite the opposite.

She looked at my credits, my ridiculously long list of completely unrelated credits, and told me I would be cutting it close to almost losing my scholarship and instate tuition before I graduate.  She had a bland, blunt hair cut that mirrored her appraisal of me. The graphic design program is very competitive, she said. So you might want to be prepared for when you're not accepted. (well she might as well have said for when you're not accepted) I asked how many were accepted

15.

Out of 16,000 students at USU, that's a frighteningly small number. I started trying to weigh all the competitiveness I could muster inside me, which my high school volleyball coach can attest isn't much at all, to see if I cared enough to be one of those 15. I swallowed and asked how many applied- 30.

Yeeeeah... I think I'll take my chances.

I actually said that to her. 50% acceptance rate. That's the flip of a coin. Writing dry text books vs designing graphicly the rest of my career.

Do I want to designate another year's tuition to the idea that I might win a coin flip?
It was on my walk back to the shuttle that I remembered my homework assignment for Eng 3410 that was due for the next day

Write a 250-500 word explanation of how US Mint proof coins are made for an audience of 4-6 graders that will use the material in both civics and science (metallurgy & industry) lessons.


That is one chance I am totally willing to take. Graphic design, here I come.