my second, first day of school.

5 months of being free from thinking critically, not having to manage my time wisely, or worry about being coherent at 8 AM, has sadly come to an end. school officially started today. even though i am thoroughly exhausted, which is partially due to it being 1 AM (my poor roommate, whom by the way has gone to sleep and i just so happen to have the loudest keyboard ever so i'm going to make this uncharacteristically short) and partially to me not being able to complete a few of those tasks, namely the coherent one, i am making myself write this now because i know if i wait it'll never happen (just like my blog post i have outlined from my rome trip... which is still unwritten.).

alright here is my list of things from my first day of school:

• my intro to american studies class is taught by the ghost of steve jobs. no joke. he's got the black turtle neck, glasses, and strange jeans down to a "t". 
• during the lecture people randomly got up and left, like a lot. and they weren't subtle about it either. every time someone left there was definitely a distraction. 
• we mentioned religion more than i thought possible in one class period, and  then i realized there isn't the separation of church and state over here. it's still weird though.
• after the lecture ended all the students started simultaneously knocking on their desks. it took me a good 10-15 seconds to realize what was going on.
• i totally scored points with pseudo-steve jobs by telling him i was an english foreign exchange student. for reasons unknown the professors here are almost enamored with students from america.

because my first two hours of human interaction were completely in english i think i upset the german to english ratio of language in my life, and therefore i think i made the foreign exchange student gods mad at me. after my two hour class i managed to encounter all of the non-english speakers working at every store i visited for the rest of the day. i'm getting really good at talking slow and doing a lot of pointing.

and for my closing paragraph i'll tell you something i probably shouldn't admit, but it's late and i don't really care. so, i like to play this game where i look at someone and try to tell what language they speak or where they're from. i realize how superficial this is, not to mention insanely inaccurate, however i just can't help myself. it was a lot more fun to while traveling.

speaking of traveling, i edited a few more pictures tonight. so i'm just going to leave this here...

the girl who cried wolf. repeatedly.

remember the boy who cried wolf? yeah, i've basically become that boy. except instead of crying wolf i'm crying "hey i'm moving today." five days in a row. this time though, i really am moving back. my car is completely packed and my room is not only devoid of any personality but it is also finally sold. halle-freaking-lujah. much to katrina's joy i sold my contract to a nice asian girl named sujan... sujin.... sewjan? i don't even know. but what i do know is she's pleasant and she also didn't know what 24/7 meant... so it wasn't until after i explained that to her that she wanted my contract.

my reason for not leaving today is not only a matter of $50 but it's also a matter of pride. when i turned my apartment key, laundry card and laundry room key back to the apartment's office i thought i was finally free and that i could stop worrying about loose ends here. one quick phone call from the office proved otherwise.

you see, there are these bracelets, kinda like live strong bracelets, they hand out at the beginning of the year. these bracelets are to be worn at all times inside the pool. super gay, i am aware. me being me and logan being freezing logan, i've never once had the desire to use that bracelet to swim in the pool. because of this i didn't even think twice about them needing that bracelet back, but they do. they need it back so badly that if i don't return it within a week, they're going to charge me $50.

this is a huge problem for two reasons:

A) i know i have that bracelet and i refuse to pay $50 for something i never even used or even wanted for that matter.

B) all of my stuff is currently tightly packed in boxes in one of two places. either it's sardine-d in my car in such a way that i'll never find it, or it's in the basement of my dad's company's office building in smithfield, which is 20 minutes away, which is locked up until business hours tomorrow.

either way i wasn't going to be able to find it tonight.

my solution to this problem? go to taco tuesday with katrina, aj, and ben. made sense at the time.

this time, for reals, i'm moving back home tomorrow.

lets play catch up: a week too late.

i've been collecting things to write down and tell you guys for over a week now, but i've just play playing too hard (bet you never thought i'd say that) to get myself to sit down and sort it all out into nice coherent sentences. and now it's gotten to the point where i have so much i want to share that i'm overwhelmed slash i waited too long on some things so their relevance is nearing zero, and if i bring them up now it's going to be slightly weird. but lets do it anyway:

last friday i was sporting my hot new red pants like the fashionably challenged child that i am. this was also the day i went to a free hypnotist show that my apartment complex was putting on. at one point in the show the hypnotist told the stage full of volunteers to find someone in the crowd wearing red and that the color red would smell better than anything they'd ever smelt before. i was in the second row, in the very center. within two seconds of him saying "go" i had four people groping my legs and pulling on my pants, smelling who knows what. most awkward two minutes of my life. after the show one of the guys, who had apparently found the smell equivalent of heaven on the pants of my left knee, came up and apologized to me. do you want to see a very small glimpse of me being publicly molested? click on this. it's at about 37:14 that i appear and you see the group of children hoovering around my pants. so awkward.

last saturday i survived a haunted corn maze. yes, masked, groaning, hobbling men chasing us and all. truly terrifying. i'm mostly just proud of myself for actually agreeing to go. i still hate being scared but at least i tried. we also carved pumpkins. i decided the most terrifying thing i could carve on it was the face of raggedy ann. wanna see?

wednesday i forced a few of the guys who live in my building to go play coed volleyball with me at the church. i had a bet going on with a guy on the other team that we would win. after completely losing in our first game, we actually won the second and gave up the third. i must say, i was pretty proud of my rag-tag team of goonies after that. i was honestly just happy to finally play.

at work the other day i was trusted enough to take pictures of a newborn without anyone there supervising me. now i feel like i'm nowhere near fully trained so i was basically terrified. after my manager came back from her lunch break she praised me for not having to call her once (apparently when she left the other girl who's training as well, the girl had to call her five times in one hour. ouch.). so proud.

well, i've now caught you up to the middle of last week. i'm too tired to continue. maybe if you get lucky i'll post another one tomorrow. maybe.

A complaintive tale of two classes.

So I was sitting in my 2D design class the other
day and I started getting really irritated (probably because my teacher decided
to go through all the colors of the rainbow in the form of a convoluted, twenty
minute powerpoint to tell us how those colors affect the human brain (I swear
he just copied it from a Wikipedia article though).  Here's one of his
informational jewels: did you know purple is seen as the most erotic color to
both women and men? No? Yeah judging from the chatter that, that little tidbit
incited from the class, neither did anyone else. When he said that we all just
kind of looked around like... no, that doesn't really apply to me. Gross.) so
in that frame of mind, I decided now is a good time to start writing a
gratitude entry.




Let’s begin: I'm weirdly grateful for good
friends and the sky. a week or so ago I convinced a few unsuspecting people,
who have the misfortune of living around me, that the northern lights would be
visible up in the mountains here in Logan (granted I did have a little bit of
internet research to back me up). We didn't see any northern lights but the
stars were amazing. At one point we saw a shooting star that was so bright that
the two people who were still in the cab of the truck thought we were taking pictures
with a camera. Yes, that bright. I guess for all it's faults, Logan sure does
have a gorgeous night sky. That is, when it isn't covered in angry grey clouds
that spend their days dumping precipitation of all horrible sorts on us all.
And there I go complaining again. Vicious cycle. 




Alright: wanna hear a fun story? Ok. So I'm in
an art history class, and the class itself isn't too bad. My professor makes
sure to take the time to not only explain to us what the artwork is about, but
also the whole story behind the culture of the time. Which is awesome because I
love learning about Greek mythology. Wanna hear a reason that class isn't
awesome? My professor is the most intimidating and high strung, 5'3 person I've
ever met. Our classroom is an amphitheater of sorts, there are three
sections of seating with rows in between them which sit on a gradual decline
that leads to the front of the classroom where one would normally choose to
reside when lecturing. But not her. No, when she's lecturing she walks around
the room, up and down those two isles staring down whomever is brave enough to
look her back in the eye. Now, normally I'm really, really bad
with eye contact but for some reason the very first day in that class I decided
I wasn't going to be the one who looked away from these impromptu staring
contests. And I've actually been pretty good at holding to that. *pats self on
back* Anyway, she's super high strung. This week our lectures have all been
filed under "classical antiquities" which apparently means we're
learning about the Greeks and their strange obsession with depicting naked
bodies in marble. So I'm in class and there's a glaring collage of large marble
statues baring... everything coming from the overhead projector which takes up
the entire wall. My professor was on the other side of the room, staring down
this hippie kid who is always late to class but he seems to know all the
answers, which doesn't appear to sit well with my professor. At about this time
the room was becoming a nice toasty temperature (the heater was on because it
was unbelievably cold outside. I could see my breath at 5 in the afternoon. Not
ok.) and I was doing my best to fight off sleep, so i decided to lean back in
my chair. The chairs in this room have this handy bendy mechanism on it's back
making stretching 110% more effective than normal hard boring chairs. Mid
perfect stretch something falls out from under me and I hear a nice, loud
snapping noise. My chair broke. Not only did I jerk back a little bit from
the break-away but my entire row, of two ultra artsy girls and my cousin
Ashley, shook as well. The two girls sitting a few seats down from me gasped
and started talking slash giggling which so perfectly interrupted my high
strung professor. She looked in our direction, stopped lecturing about the
naked man on the projector and asked what our problem was. The girls next to me
told her my chair broke at the same time that I, in my ever smooth state,
decided the best way to down play the situation was to wave her question off
and to tell her to keep on teaching and not worry about this. 




If I thought the room was toasty before my
little charade, boy was I wrong. The weirdest part of it all is, I wasn't
really that embarrassed by it.




Want to know something that I am a little
embarrassed by? I'm slowly becoming a Maroon 5 fan. I never thought I'd say
that. This is the third song by them I have gone out of my way to download
within the past month. Ugh. but here it is. And unfortunately, it's good.
 








Also, I tried really hard to use correct grammar in this post. Are you proud of me, Poppyseed?

procrastination casualties: art history paper number one.

so i'm supposed to be writing a 5-7 page essay on the greek sculpture "Locrian Pinax with a Goddess and a Boy Inside a Basket" from the first half of the 5th century B.C. that's due tomorrow.

yep, that's it right there. 

sounds thrilling, right? right. so of course, i'm writing a post. you're welcome, you and the-maria-who-is-going-to-be-up-until-three-am-finishing-this-i'm-so-sorry.

this week i've decided to be an adult and not miss any of my classes (no worries, mom. i haven't been missing any classes. at all. big smiles.). this is extremely difficult because i have an 8:30 am 2D design class. wanna know when i am the most creative? i can tell you it sure as heck isn't at eight freaking thirty in the morning. when i do make it to that class i've usually only snagged five hours of sleep, or less, so needless to say once i get there i need a massive wake-up slap in the face with a big side of an "attitude adjustment". today, on three and a half hours of sleep and two cookies for breakfast, i was in a particularly pleasant mood. (it's time i acknowledge the need a sarcastic font on this blog) we had an assignment due where we designed three separate monograms done in a business, wedding/flourished,and in our own creative fashion that we were critiquing in class. now, i've complained about this brilliant teacher before (he's the guy who thought my name was murry. and yes, it pains me to bring that up again.) and so today when he was supposed to be giving us "helpful" suggestions on how to make our monograms more concise and effective, i was a little put off when his suggestions were a little (or a lot) less than useful. by the time he was critiquing the fourth students work i was dumbfounded by the suggestions he was honestly trying to pass as "professor quality insights". naturally, i started writing taking notes of the most unhelpful critique suggestions he was giving out. are you ready for this? here we go, word for word.

-"i don't know what needs to be done but something's not right"
-"i might mess with it a little bit, but i don't know exactly how or something, i don't know, play around with it a little bit"
- (pointing to an obviously flawed and poorly executed design idea) "maybe just design this (motioning to the entire thing)... better.

i found myself sitting and staring at him with my mouth gaping open. his suggestions sounded like what would come out of my mouth if you stuck me in front of a white board full of scientific jargon and symbols explaining organic chemistry and asked me to critique it. completely amateur with zero insight, not something you'd expect to come from a university level professor. i'm pretty sure if i stood up on the spot i could think of loads more intelligent things to say about the projects, even in my current state of blind, tired anger.

anyway, on a related note: i've been slightly bitter and a little too complain-y lately. (as seen above and in the past few blog posts) and i kinda want to snap out of that. suggestions? pictures of kittens? anything?
maybe i'll start doing what a few other people do, dedicating a day to being thankful for things.
actually, i wanted to start a gratitude journal a while back and maybe this is just the excuse i need to get that done. alright, it's settled. i'll start doing that at least once a week.

wanna hear something else? so the other day i tried to remember all the dinners i'd made for myself over the past week and i couldn't think of a single meal. and then i realized i haven't been eating dinners. either i'm out and about where food is being served (crepe party on saturday night, anyone? ah it was SO good.) or i snack on stuff late enough at night that i don't quite get to that violent, empty pit feeling that my stomach usually sends my way once it starts eating itself. my most recent and favorite snack? ice. yes. i know i've already talked about my ice eating addiction but lately it's been substituting actual meals, which i really did not not see coming. but because of that guess who's lost another two pounds? the same girl who now has an even harder time keeper her pants from falling down. really though, that's five pounds this month in total. i'm now getting to the weight i was in high school, about five to six years ago. big smiles all around.

well, i've procrastinated my paper long enough, the Goddess and her boy in a basket are calling my name. it's time for me to go use my sparse english skills and uncanny word-vomit abilities in a productive way.

**paper update number one: it's now two hours after i posted this post aaand i've still yet to write a word of my essay. that is all.

i played russian rulette today with the bus system. and won.

so for some reason i waited way too long to write this post and i'm freaking exhausted so you're going to get the condensed version of my day, which is such a bummer because i actually have fun things to tell you.

*i had the pleasure of working from 9-2 this morning and during that time i got to help a sweet old couple pick out some glasses and i repaired another older man's frames. working with the elderly has helped me realize a few things: agility is a luxury we all take for granted, and a steady hand is priceless. the older gentleman who's frames i was fixing had such horrible shaky hands that when i wasn't having him take his glasses off and on, which seemed cruel but was necessary, he had his hands constantly resting on his face because it was the only way he could keep the steady. now, i don't know if it was because i was sleep deprived and my body didn't know how to handle itself being awake at such normal hours, but seeing that man struggle to control his own hands really stuck with me. there's something so unjust in seeing those who have lived three to four times as long as me, struggle to perform the most basic of functions like walking, talking, or even signing their names. but on to less serious things...

*i'm taking space exploration. after spending an hour and a half in that classroom i still can't even tell you what it's about but i can tell you a few things:

• first: i made the mistake of sitting way too far back in the classroom so i had the hardest time hearing (oh, didn't i tell you? i'm going deaf. yeah, this isn't a joke. yeah, i'm bummed. and yeah, it really interferes with my social life but that is a story for another time.). also, i just so happened to sit by two groups of friends who picked today from 3:00-4:15 to hold a friend reunion, which is exactly when that class was going. that is one of my all time biggest pet peeves! if you're in an area that people had to pay to get into with the sole purpose of listening, watching and learning something DON'T FREAKING TALK. so rude.)
• second: the air conditioning doesn't work in that room. it's amazing to me how hard it is to learn when you're sweating.
• third: the teacher is from germany and the whole time i had to fight the urge to raise my hand and tell him my brother was currently in germany and so me and him now had this special (and totally nonexistent) bond that would surely get me an A.
• fourth: speaking of my professor, he kinda looks like this guy and he most definitely says "NASA" just like Arnold Schwarzenegger would. i stifled a giggle every time he said it. 

• five: there's a girl who was in my creative arts class last year who, in a crowd of 800 students, laughed so distinctly and so annoyingly that everyone could hear her. that same girl is in my space exploration class. except now instead of being in a concert hall we're in a small classroom of 75 students. this is a huge problem. 
• six: my space exploration class is full of artists and english majors. my professor brought that up to assure us that there won't be any math in the class. he quickly realized what he was implying and tried his hardest to back out of the insult. it's a good thing all the considerate people around me were talking otherwise he probably would have been able to hear me laughing at him. and that would have made a poor first impression.
• seven: one of our class's course objectives is to be able to think more skeptically and question what we're told by the media and other "professionals". that point alone made me want to stand up and give him a good old fashioned slow clap.  

wow, i really did not mean to write so much about my space exploration class. i do have one more story for you though:
basically i played russian rulette today with the bus system. i get out of my art history class (which i'm still unsure if i like or not) at 5:45 and the shuttle that normally takes me home stops running at 5, which i totally forgot about. so i was sitting on the bench at the bus stop, contemplating whether i wanted to walk home (i had a miagrane at this point from boiling to death in my previous class and from being hungry. oh and i was wearing flip flops like the good college student that i am) or take the evening shuttle. now, i knew there was an evening shuttle than ran from 5-7:30 but i hadn't ever really paid attention to exactly where it went. tired, hungry and grumpy me decided to take the shuttle. as i got on we started taking a route i wasn't familiar with and i still wasn't convinced that it would ever take me home. i felt like i was gambling or something, the closer we got towards my apartment complex the more compelled i felt to get off at each stop because i didn't know if there was even another stop after that or if i'd be dragged back to campus, left to walk home like before only after losing half an hour. but being the brave soul that i am, i stuck it out. luckily, this was a gamble that totally paid off.
i learned a lot of things today: sitting in the front is essential, i never want to get old, and apparently, i'm really good at gambling.

wow, longest post ever. which is so weird because on a scale of one to ten, i am just plain tired. (because i have to wake up in 5 hours, i didn't proofread this post. so forgive me for any and all run on sentences and misspelled words. it's been a long day.)

so turns out i overreacted.

so, you guys. the semester has officially started and here are a few thoughts i had during the day.

one: i hate waking up at 7 AM. i feel like it's high school all over again.
two: it's fun seeing people from the english program around campus and getting to explain to them why i'm not in any of their classes anymore. i saw like five of them but only talked to two of them.
two part b: it's a pleasant surprise to me when people whom i think barely remember me end up recognizing me and deeming me worthy to sit and talk to for fifteen minutes in front of the tsc. like camille from my technical writing courses.
two part c: it's also fun to explain to people in all  my art classes that i'm technically not an art major yet. (i still hate saying art major out loud)
three: today in institute my teacher, brother allen, was going around the room asking everyone their name and where they were from. when he got to me and i told him my full name he said he had a story about me. my initial response? "oh yeah? *insert sarcastic smile*". his response, "yep, i used to have a huge crush on you." turns out he did. there was this girl who was writing him on his mission named maria wilson who he had a huge crush on but she married some other guy. so he's convinced i've been sent to his class to torment him... or something.
four: i was sitting in the shade and a random girl i don't know sat next to me and decided to become my friend. her name was ellie and she had impecable style and taste.
five: i met another girl today who is allergic to the cold. that's 3 people i've met allergic to cold and zero like me, who are allergic to heat. one in a million
six: is it bad of me to constantly be surprised when people are friendly or selfless? because i am.
six: i looove seeing all the new freshies freak out and not know how the shuttle works. yes children, we wait here in a LINE for our turns. no you may not huddle around the door to try and squeeze your way in first. yes, you're allowed to sit right next to a stranger. yes, squeeze back means you don't leave any breathing room between you and the two strangers around you. honestly.
SEVEN!: as most of you saw on facebook, because that's how you even got to this blog in the first place, my new glasses came. at first i was terrified of just how intense they are but they've now come to grow on me. and i'm already quite fond of them.

overall today was a success. i woke up on time. i found my classes easy enough. my teachers are relaxed. the classes are cake. everything is going to be ok.

facebook has started doing this thing where it posts your status updates from the year before in the left column to enhance your already self centered social network experience. these were the updates facebook showed me today:

On This Day In 2010

Maria Wilsonactual dinner attempt number one: failure. you win this round hunger.

34

Maria Wilsonis already missing the st.george heat. i am doomed.

153

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first, i would like to let you know dinner hasn't won since that first night when i tried to make noodles and it turned out as soup. ick. as proof of that: i spent $65 in groceries today, all of which i know how to successfully incorporate into a meal. yes, you may applaud now.
(speaking of me spending $65, me and katrina play this game every time we grocery shop to see who can spend the least amount of money. without fail, i win. even when i buy eye liner for $8 i still win. it's just one of my gifts. and it drives trina crazy)
second: i still miss the st.george heat. i don't think i will ever truly get over this.

my comforter.

a year ago today i was sitting on my bed, in my parent's basement, with all my belongings in boxes and piles all over the room. it was the day before i was moving to college and i was all sorts of confused. i'm normally not the biggest fan of change, and i wasn't looking forward to leaving my family. however, i knew how intensely unhappy i was in my current situation and instead of complaining about it, like i'm prone to do, i decided to add 400 miles and a few thousand dollars to the mix and change everything about it. that night as i sat in my bed full of dread and frantic anticipation i wrote the following words. i never really planned on anyone reading them before, but i figure it's been long enough now that i think i can share this:

Tonight is one of many lasts as I start this new chapter in my young adult life. I’ve spent the past two days packing up all my precious things from sweat shirts to old journals into brown boxes to take to college. I know college is supposed to be exciting but I can’t help but feel a little lost seeing my sanctuary in such a bare state. I’ve never seen my closet so empty, or my walls so bare and I’m not sure I approve. I’ve known for months that this day was coming. I made a promise to myself that I was going to move away to do some growing up but now that this day has come, I can’t help but feel saddened by it. 

For the past two years I’ve gone through some pretty good and pretty horrible times; I graduated from high school, I started college, I had my heart ripped out, I’ve felt more alone than I ever thought possible, and I’ve come back from it, slowly but surely healing each broken part of me.  There were times I felt like my pain would start to stitch itself up only to be ripped open, never to fully heal. But finally I feel like those wounds are no longer gaping and half-open, but healed completely with maybe a scar or two to remind me just how far I've come.

And through that painful healing process I've had one sure sanctuary, this room. I’ve spent ten years getting everything about it just right, from the pictures on the walls to the color of the sheets. I felt like my room was an extension of myself, my creativity. I've spent many mornings on my floor in front of my full length mirror following makeup tutorials to get my eyes just right. I’ve sat for countless hours in my Papasan chair with my laptop surfing the web and editing my photography. I’ve spent way too many hours in my perfect, oh, my famously comfortable bed reading thousands of pages, sleeping in way too late, and dreaming. I’ve had the most perfect dreams here, of love and loss and occasionally lucidity. I’ve spent many nights with my blinds open, staring at the moon and stars through my window only to fall asleep in the moon’s light, and eventually be woken up by that same open window and the morning sun’s heat upon my face.

Whenever I was asked where I’d want to be most, where I felt the most safe and comfortable, I would always think of my room. I know I’m moving on to hopefully better my life but I can’t help but feel a little bit of sorrow that my greatest comforter can’t come with me. 

(pretend you can't see me in that mirror- pre losing 20 lbs. yikes)

these are getting way too long. also, i moved and ate at IHOP.

today started very, very early for me at good old 7 AM. i woke up in probably the most heightened state of panic i've ever experienced. the explanation: the sleeping bag i had slept in had grabbed a hold of my braid with this small strip of velcro that someone had the inability to realize would be a bad idea to place RIGHT NEXT TO THE HEAD REST. so yeah. that was how the day started and it kinda set the pace for the rest of the day.

i spent the first two hours cleaning, running up and down stairs, and freaking out that time was going twice as fast as normal. the good news: we managed to do everything on time. the bad news: i didn't completely pass my clean check because there was some rogue dust on more than one surface of my room. hiring someone to come in and dust for a few minutes shouldn't cost me too much though, so i'm not too worried.
i spent the next two hours sitting on a couch waiting for $50 bucks to find it's way into my pocket. it didn't so i have no other choice but to become a nuisance about it. despite how much you probably don't care about this i will most likely keep you updated until it is resolved. you're welcome.

also, guys. i'm way dreading summer being over. i got to go on a mini bike ride today to relocate my bike from my apartment to my halfway house for the week and the whole time i couldn't help but imagine just how little time i have left before that perfect bike ride is going to be miserable. filled with things falling out of the sky, miserably cold temperatures, and ice. ugh.

i'm getting tired and this is getting long here is today in a series of bullet points:
*me and trina went to IHOP and were basically delirious with laughter the whole time. the pancakes were delicious but our waiter was sliiiightly creepy. he reminded me of the white version of antonio banderas. the cashier person took way too long coming to check us out that me and trineh took to coughing loudly to try and get their attention. eventually those coughs turned to giggles which turned to full blown laughter and even a snort or two. (wow, longest bullet point ever. the concept of short and sweet seems to have escaped me)
*we found every cute thing ever today at kohls and the mall. there was this light blue pleather jacket at buckle that was PERFECT. and expensive so we both had to close our eyes and move on.
*the sunset tonight was amazing. there wasn't a cloud in the sky but that didn't stop the deep orange and pink from saturating the sky near the horizon almost completely. the beautiful sky combined with the perfect temperature outside i was tempted to just pull my car over and enjoy.
*i shouldn't be telling you this but i'm SO sore. and it's in weird places too, like my forearms and my calves. moving apartments does weird things to me. actually moving in general does weird things too.
*also, i had a monster of a migraine tonight. it slowly subsided though, after three hours.
* oh! and i finished mockingjay. it only took.... three months. i'm a member of this site called goodreads where i keep a catalog of books i've read or hope to read. i posted my review of mockingjay over there, check it out if you'd like.

and with that, i'm headed to bed. it's late and i get to work early tomorrow. yay...

i packed, moved, and cleaned an apartment today.

sorry, this is going to be short because i have to get up in 4 hours to do more cleaning. i'm feeling like writing in paragraph form isn't working for me tonight. here are some bullet points:

• i'm currently sitting on the floor of my gutted bedroom. 
• i've been packing, moving, and cleaning for 16 hours, off and on. 
• i feel like super woman when i move all my everything-i've-ever-owned all by myself.
• i've spent forty minutes total on my knees scrubbing floors tonight.
• i spent too many hours today in a very frustrated mood because... 
• two of my roommates feel above cleaning and have consequently not done any. we'll see if they like that when want their deposit back. 
• i am SO over college apartment living. especially the whole roommate thing.
• i accidentally packed my pillow in storage :(
•  my back is angry, my hands are sore, and my whole body is exhausted.
• i took a shower at 2 AM and it was, without a doubt, the best shower i've had in a long time.
• i'm going to miss this place.

i feel bad complaining for 10 bullet points straight so here is something to cheer you up. my friend posted this song to his facebook and it made me happy. have a listen:

:)

lets be honest, society sucks and the media is vicious.

so, i wasn't planning on really writing much tonight. stress makes me zero fun to talk to slash read about and as you've probably gleaned from my previous post i'm slightly stressed. along with being zero fun to talk to i become a master procrastinator and as such i was going through my old facebook wall posts to reminisce of sorts tonight (it's way fun, highly recommend it). while doing this i ran into a picture of myself from about a year ago. 

warning: this picture is way unflattering. 

that picture was taken on june 23, 2010 when we dropped jesse off at the mtc. at the time i didn't really realize just how big i had slowly gotten over the past few years but the second i looked at the pictures my dad had so graciously taken of me i couldn't get the image out of my head. i had managed to gain almost 40 lbs since my sophomore year of high school. i was huge and i hated it. 

fast forward a few months: when i moved up to college i was scared to grow up. i was scared to make sure i woke up on time, i was scared to have to pay for everything on my own, and most of all i was terrified of the supposed freshman (or in my case the junior) fifteen. once i moved up here though, i realized my reluctance to spend money on food, my spread out classes all over campus, and my new found love for grapefruit were totally working on my side. by the time i visited home in october i could barely keep my jeans from falling off; i'd already lost ten pounds. 

it's now a little over a year since that first picture was taken and this is what i look like today (literally today):

(ignore the mess, i'm packing... kinda. that excuses it, right? not really? awesome)

i've lost almost 20 pounds, i'm back to wearing the ridiculous purple shorts i loved so much my senior year of high school. i'm finally comfortable in my own skin again. i don't want to say something shallow about how what you look like and how much you weigh should directly coincide with how you feel about yourself as a person, but lets be honest, society sucks and the media is vicious. living in today's world is hard enough without adding a few extra pounds to be carrying around. 

i'm just glad that i'm back to cringing at pictures of myself because of the faces i'm pulling, and not because of how many of my chins are showing. 

I'm pretentious. Lets watch a movie.

I'm afraid I've been ruined. All these English classes I've taken this year have turned me into that film-snob girl that everyone hates in the theater. You know, the one who turns up her nose and says something overly rhetorical about how the dialog is simplistic or how the symbolism is so blatant any idiot would pick up on it, or about how the main character is as static as Bella Swann or any other Kristin Stewart portrayal, for that matter. I can feel my friends cringe when I ask them what they thought about a movie.

But while we're on the topic of movies worth being pretentious over; I watched Brick ,a modern day film noir set in a high school, at the beginning of the summer. Luckily for me I learned about film noir in one of my many English classes last semester otherwise I think I would have been bored out of my mind. It got me thinking though, even though the first half of the movie was kind of very slow, and the dialog required close attention to understand what was being said due to the intense 50's-esque crime novel slang they all used, I still sat through it. There's something captivating enough in the idea of a promise of enjoyment at the very end of something that i'll willingly subject myself to two hours of blank stares and question marks. What quality is that in a person that makes them sit through something they don't enjoy because there's a small chance it'll be worth it in the end? Ha, I think I just answered my own question.
Aaaanyway, if any of the seven of you who read this have movie suggestions for me, please share below. I need a beautiful, intelligent film to watch.

Here's a small list of movies that I've found beautifully stimulating, visually or story wise.
Lets add to it, yes?

 

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.

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.