Thursday, September 29, 2011

Sometimes I Injure People When they Stand too Close

Today someone walked past me and I hit his stomach with my head because he was too close.

The best part of these stories I feel is those first words where people have no idea why I would do something like hit someone's stomach with my head and it just seems really weird and ridiculous. So here I am postponing the inevitable end to the funniness.

Well, it all started with a food science field trip. We drove an hour and a half up to Kaysville to see the church welfare milling. Our car had less people than usual, only five in a twelve passenger van whereas we usually have eight. Plus the car ride was an hour and a half each way.

Since there were fewer people talking and it was a longer drive, a few people decided to take naps. The guy I sat next to napped with his head just in front of him so he looked like a bobble head. It was pretty funny because if we had some larger bumps in the road, his head would pop back up.

I went to a food science presentation and afterwards was dinner in the Pen Court. I was sitting there with some friends and we were talking about how all of us were in different vans so we didn't have people to talk to and nobody in general talked.

I decided that telling them about the guy's bobblehead was a good idea. Well it was pretty funny, then I demonstrated right when someone walked behind me. It was really funny, I actually did it pretty hard so I like rammed my head into his stomach. He looked at me and was like, "I didn't realize I needed to let anyone know I was passing."

It was too perfect that he walked past when I was demonstrating throwing my head back. The next time he passed behind me, he made sure I knew not to injure him. Basically you should always beware when you walk past me.

Friday, September 23, 2011

September Quotes

"Think of all the things you can do while covered in fabric!!" -Anna

"DUMPER!" -Anna

"Facebook stalking can wait.... I guess." -Anna (said in a defeated tone)

"That's really catchy. Like pokemon!" -Laura

"For lunch you can have my.... salad (said in a ghost voice)." -Anna

"He's probably thinking those are the most ridiculous attempts at opening a door I have ever seen..." -Anna (about us)

"Laura's life revolves around me buying her smoothies." -Anna

"I have clearly underestimated this ward's facebook stalking abilities." -Anna

"What are you doing??" -Laura
"I'm smelling a paper towel... It smells gross." -Kara
"You can use my paper towel...?" -Laura
"Oh, I don't need one. I'm just smelling it." -Kara

"I LOST my money!!" -Anna

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Sometimes I Walk Around With Music Coming from my Pocket

Lately I picked up the habit of accidentally turning on the mp3 player on my phone and then unknowingly walking around. It is apparently a bit too easy to turn it on since it's happened like everyday for a week.

So to turn it on, I have to unlock my phone if it is in my pocket by pressing 'unlock' then 'ok'. The other way is if I go onto the music player right before I put it in my pocket and then the keypad doesn't lock so if I hit my pocket I start the music playing. The funny thing is that I have to push the left button like three times in a row to get into the music player so I'm not really sure how it's happening either way.

These incidents started happening last winter semester. One time I remember being in the bookstore and right when I came in I was like ''oh, I like this song!'' I kept walking towards Jamba Juice and stood there talking to a friend for a few minutes. Then I was really confused because I heard two songs playing, one from Jamba and one from somewhere unknown.

Unfortunately, the music was coming from my pocket, and it was loud, turned up all the way. After a minute I figured out it was my pocket blaring. Then I thought about how I had a whole conversation with a friend while my phone was blaring. I'm sure they realized it was actually me and thought I was stupid for not noticing and turning it off.

At least lately I have turned the music down so it is only on the lowest setting and isn't blaring.

Basically, if you walk past me and hear weird music, yes that is really me and I probably haven't noticed yet. So just laugh and walk away, or maybe you can be nice and tell me, that is if you're a good friend.

Sunday, September 18, 2011

Sometimes I go by Birdie

During my freshman year of college I had an interesting assortment of roommates. We all did weird things together. The list included posting pictures from Twilight on our FHE brother's doors, trying to put a giant snowball down the stairs to their apartment, running around with a roaring stuffed dinosaur and some even weirder things I didn't mention/forgot about.

One of the more interesting things that went on throughout our freshman year was the ever present "hacking" of our facebooks from Kara. Whenever anyone would leave their computers open, Kara would immediately go to it and get on their facebooks. Then she would post things to every roommate's facebook wall.

Things like "You look like a man with make-up on. ily." (Kara wrote this to herself from Amelia's facebook)

"I want to be King Kong. You can be Cinderella." (Kara wrote this to Brett from Sarah's facebook)

During Christmas break our freshman year, Amelia gave Kara her password so that Kara could continue to post weird things. So we get this one, "Hey, if you get back to the appartment before me, you might want to throw the pumpkin I left under my bed out. Thanks a big ton" (Kara wrote to Madeline on Amelia's wall). That one confused our RA, so that was pretty funny because usually people could tell that the posts were totally made up.

During one of these hacks of my facebook, Kara decided to do a little more than post weird things. She decided to change my name! Luckily, my name change was only added in parentheses. I became Laura Johnson (Laura Birdie Conrad). Kara then changed my status to say that I was going by Birdie.

In the couple weeks after that, winter semester ended and everyone was moving out of the dorms. Kara and I were going to live with each other in Regency, an off campus complex, during part of the summer.

Kara told me that I should go by Birdie to our new ward since it was such a fun nickname. I didn't really want to but I told her I would introduce myself as Birdie to at least one person.

Our first day in the ward we did a ward FHE in the park, playing kickball. Some of the people knew we were new to the ward and asked our names. As promised I introduced myself as Birdie, which people thought was funny, although nobody legitimately wanted to call me that, they would much rather call me Laura.

Well, except for one guy in our ward, Dan-o (I'm not sure how he spells his name but that's how it's pronounced). He was a weird kid. Anyone that goes by a name like that has some interesting quirks for sure. Anytime he would see me would call me Birdie. Except that it was more of a yell, BIRD-ie. Then I would look away embarrassed because by this time, everyone had forgotten I had ever told them about being called Birdie. 

One specific time, he came by my apartment to tell people about a movie his apartment was watching or some event. He didn't come in the apartment, but stayed right at our doorstep. I was sitting behind the door, at our table eating lunch, and was completely hidden from view. But clever Dan-o looked through the small vertical space in between the door and the wall and saw me. Then yelled BIRD-ie, probably one of the loudest he ever had. 

At that instant, I looked shocked and had on a terrified face. The whole situation was ridiculous and absurd and I couldn't figure out why he had to yell my weird nickname everytime he saw me. Luckily we moved out of the ward, and I never saw Dan-o again. 

In our new ward at Sparks, Kara decided that she was jealous of my nickname and so before the semester started we decided that hers could be Bunny. People would ask her why she wanted to be called Bunny. I explained that she gave me a nickname and then was jealous so I gave her one. So for a couple months, she went by Bunny before people too thought it was too weird and called her Kara.

A year and a half later, my name is still there as Laura Birdie Conrad.

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

It’s Tradition!

My extended family has a tradition of going to the restaurant Johnny Carinos every time we go to Utah. It kind of started because when my family lived in Texas we loved to go there but when we moved to Virginia we didn’t have any close by. There just happened to be one a few minutes away from where my grandparents lived so we could all meet up and go to lunch or dinner. It is really good because almost everyone in my family loves it, including the really picky cousins.

As it turns out, having around twenty people at one table to eat is really interesting. Don’t get me wrong, it is always fun but sometimes it doesn’t turn out as planned.

 One of the best things about Johnny Carinos is their bread. It is made at the restaurant and they have delicious olive oil with herbs and garlic in it to dip the bread in. When you have so many people, that bread goes FAST. They give us two or three baskets with a couple of small loaves at a time.  Basically as soon as the baskets touch the table they are emptied. Even when we have our dinner everyone still takes bread. I don’t know how many loaves we end up getting, but it turns out to be like thirteen or fourteen baskets. That means the adults end up eating almost one basket a piece, I know I eat that maybe even more, which is a whole lot of bread.

Another amazing thing about Johnny Carinos is their Italian sodas. They are delicious! They are mostly fruit flavors and they have cream at the top and are carbonated. They aren’t like orange or grape soda though; I think they have the actual fruit in it instead of a flavoring. I guess they are like cream sodas with the various flavors added or something like that.

We end up having multiple waiters to be able to cover the whole table to refill drinks, bring bread and grab anything else we need. One time these waiters were really on top of things. One came by and asked me if I needed a refill. One minute later a different waiter came by and asked the same question. I had said yes to the first, and yes to the second not realizing I would be brought a second refill I didn’t need yet. Instead of telling him my mistake, or just having an extra drink I made up a plan. As soon as the first came I drank it in like ten seconds flat. It was ridiculous, but I just wanted to avoid anything awkward. Anna, and my cousins watched me do this, and they too thought I was insane. As soon as the waiter came with my second refill all of us started giggling at him. Every time we go out to dinner there, Anna and I always remember this and start uncontrollably laughing. It’s not even hard to bring up this memory, all we have to say is “remember that one time at Johnny Carinos?” This experience just shows how I can turn anything normal into something ridiculous and completely laughable.

Two years ago when we went, it was pretty hilarious because my cousin Jayben brought in a suction cup and started putting it on people's foreheads. Luckily nobody had any permanent impressions on their heads from this but it was pretty funny. Another funny thing was some random creepy joke involving Clue. Anna, my cousins Tye and Brittany, and I kept giving each other secret signals of some sort. We kept doing weird eyebrow raising and staring until the person looked at us. At one point I wrote "Mrs. Peacock, the dining room, the knife" on a napkin and put it under Tye's plate. He saw me doing something weird but didn't know what, so after awhile I gave him another telling him to look under his plate. When he read it, he was pretty creeped out that I did that in the first place, and secondly that I had done it under his nose.

Jayben putting the suction cup on Brittany.

Sadly, nothing of interest happened last year that I can really remember. 

This past time, there was some random things that went on. Tye had a mad libs app on his phone and we did some before our food came. Now that was interesting. We had some crazy words going in there that sounded hilarious in the stories. There was something about a beautiful gordita (fat woman), and turning urine into blood that was somehow indistinguishable. Eww. Another interesting thing was Jayben sitting with Anna. Usually he can be contained, at least a little, but not that night. He was laughing up a storm and could not stop! He sat in Anna's lap giggling over absolutely nothing for ten minutes. Well, I think it might have been less than that, because we started tickling him. It was ridiculous how loud and crazy the scene was. Jayben was flailing and laughing and our whole table was chatting, which was too bad for all the people around us.

Maybe next time it will be even more crazy than it has been in the past.

Sunday, September 4, 2011

Sometimes I Beat up Little Kids

One time I beat up a ten year old. I was not an elementary school kid, I was a junior in high school.

With my school I volunteered for Beta Club, a national club that does service. Everyone was supposed to do so many hours and have good grades to be in it so yay, it was a great club.

It was the end of the year and I needed my last few hours to fulfill the requirement. So I went to sign up to volunteer at the River's Edge Carnival.

We weren't given anything specific to do until everything was set up. I was with my friend Ryan and we set up some of the stuff behind the track. Then we were set up specifically with the football throw.

The kids had three tries from a line to throw the football through an inflatable football player where there was a mesh to hold the ball. The football player was about six feet away so that most of the younger kids could get it in. So the game was pretty easy.

The carnival was on a Friday and it was at 5 or 6 at night. Probably because of the time of day the carnival was pretty empty, and most kids were not heading to where we were since the track was in the back.

A few kids noticed this and decided to take advantage of our game. They started out wanting to play and threw the ball a few times. After that, they got pretty bored and wanted to do something else. Instead of just throwing the ball they threw the ball and ran up to tackle the inflatable football player. We let it happen a couple of times but when it kept going I decided it was a problem that needed to be stopped

I'm not sure why but I decided the best way to solve this situation was to grab the kid from behind in a kind of tackle. I then took the kid's arm to pull him up and kind of shoved him away towards his friends.

I think that it scared the kids, and they were a little freaked out. They decided at that point that it would be best for them to leave and started to walk away. I followed them and started chasing them away, so we were all running. Halfway across the field I stopped and yelled at them that I would find and tell their parents if they came to do it again.

I'm a great leader right? Not so much.


On a similar note, I can make little kids cry. I am a very scary person, I don't even have to beat people up before they cry. The cause is my sneezing.

We went to the pool over the summer with Audrey, and Kelsey. We were just playing around by the steps when I sneezed.

Now my sneezes are a little bit loud. The first time people hear my sneezes they often have a sudden start then wonder about where the noise come from. Kara almost fell off her bed the first time I sneezed.

Well, this was a particularly loud sneeze. And I sneezed twice in a row. There was a little two or three year old who freaked out during the minute in between my sneezes. He looked all around for the source of the noise. Then I sneezed again and he started crying.

Some of the adults around us just started laughing, the poor kid was crying because of my sneeze!

Maybe next time you see me, if you are with a little kid, you will be a little more wary and alerted.