I Discovered Kara's Dead Fish

During our sophomore year, Kara got a beta fish named Chewy, short for Chewbacca. His fish tank consisted of an upturned pot with a fishbowl on top and a lid, which she bought at DI. It was painted to look like a gumball machine. He was a good fish swimming around. At times he didn’t like to eat his food and sometimes he would stay still long enough so that we honestly wondered if he were dead.

One week during winter semester, Kara was having a really bad day. Lots of stuff had occurred and she was stressed and at school really early. That morning I had gotten up and readied myself for the day. As I was walking past Kara’s desk where her fish was I noticed him looking dead and unmoving. It wasn’t an unusual thing, like I said, but he looked more dead-like than usual. I tapped the glass and he floated to the top. I didn’t know what to do since I had to go to school so I just left him.

I walked through the Wilk to one of my classes and interestingly enough, I saw Kara there. I knew she was stressing but I unduly added to it by asking her, “Kara did Chewy die?” I’m not really sure why I said it this way. It was apparent she would have no reason to know at the time. A look of confusion came across her face as she very questionably said no. I told her that he very much was dead now. And then I left to go to class. That was probably one of the weirdest conversations ever. Sorry Kara!

Scaring the Roommates

First, if you didn't see my facebook...

1. Do I own a Hannah Montana poster? Yes.
2. Did Anna and I move it into the back of her new roommates closet to scare her? Yes.
3. Did I put it at eye level so she can stare her down? Yes.
4. Did I cry from laughing, on the ground when this all occurred? Yes.

Well my sister's roommate moved in! When she saw the picture she said, "Are you a fan of Hilary Duff?" This for real happened. It blatantly says Hannah Montana on the poster. But whatevs not everyone can read.

Secondly, after this weekend I am now self-conscious about my hiccups. Thanks friends for pointing out how weird they are every time I hiccup. They come singularly and are strangely high pitched, almost like a chirp. Many people who haven’t heard them before say, “Bless you.” And after they realize what it really was, they act all awkward. So now every time I hiccup I cover my mouth, apologize and look around to see who heard it. Then people make fun of me for being self-conscious about it, so its a vicious cycle. I told my friends that they're lucky I didn't sneeze.

Internship Details

For anyone who doesn't know, I'm going to Pennsylvania for an internship! It will be sweet! The deal is I live in a long stay hotel by myself though. I'm living in a hotel!! No roommates for the first time ever! That is also somewhat of a problem. I move in on a Monday and will only know people at work for the first week until I go to church. That means I will have a lot of time my first week to do anything. I'll probably end up writing a lot on here and probably even after my first week. I highly doubt I will be doing things on a daily basis.

My internship is in Hummelstown, Pennsylvania which is actually ten minutes from Hershey, so yes I will go there and eat chocolate all the time. I will also hopefully travel to different sites around the north east. I really want to go to NYC again, I haven't been since eighth grade. Possibly I'll go to church history sites like Palmyra for the Pageant and the Sacred Grove. I'll be sure to put all the fun things I do on here. It's bound to be a fun exciting summer with lots of things going on! But we'll get to that ;) There's definitely a lot in store and I'm looking forward to it!

A few highlights for my internship:

• I will be working with a company named Dairiconcepts--check it out
• They make cheese products that other companies use
• The facility I'll be at makes super concentrated cheese powders
• Did I mention I will live in a hotel?
• They are paying for me to fly out, my hotel room, a rental car and I get $12/hour

I kind of feel like this is showing off a little but seriously, people have asked and I want people to know!

Goodbye Provo

Today I left Provo! It's been a sad, crazy, jam-packed 24 hours.

I'll just start with a picture. Do you see the funniest line?

Aislynn: IS DEEEAAADD
Rachel: Yes!!!!

Yesterday I spent the day cleaning. Then I went up the canyon to a barbecue! It was a bunch of my friends from Sparks. We had really delicious pulled pork sandwiches, accidental sugar free cornbread, chips, and some of my cookies. Then interestingly enough, we went up to Squaw Peak. If you don't know, Squaw Peak has this funny connotation, it's basically the place where couples go to make out. It's not so much a group activity, which made it a tiny bit strange for us to be surrounded with couples. We got there just as the sun set and we looked out over Provo. Then we watched Megamind, a really awesome movie. Lastly, we went back up the canyon and looked at the stars. It was slightly cold, but that just meant we got to snuggle up.

After all the fun, I went home and cleaned until 2 AM. I even slept on the couch just because my room and bed were a mess! I woke up at 6 AM and then cleaned the rest of everything up. Around noon, I went to my friend's house at Sparks. We chilled watching a movie, then went outside to read. A couple hours later I went back to Sparks to drive to a wedding reception. The reception was super fun, however I didn't even know the couple! Some of my friends were going and they did not want to say good bye to me any earlier which was okay with me. I got to eat amazing food and dance for a few hours. There were some incredible dancers there since the couple met swing dancing. They were a little intimidating, especially to my amateur steps. The weirdest part of the reception was that I was apart of a pseudo shared date. Some of my friends came with dates except for three of us, me and two guys. Although one of the guys has a girlfriend who wasn't present. So yes, really strange. At some point I'll get the picture of us, there's one that may be slightly creepy looking that I'm sure is hilarious. Now I am about to pass out because of lack of sleep.

It's been fun, Provo. It's been real. 'Til we meet again, whenever that may be.

Finals Scare

Finals are usually one of the most hectic, scariest parts of the semester. You realize that you have a ginormous amount of information to remember or learn if you didn't understand it the first time. Finals weeks is straight from the devil, and lucky for you, you get to experience it EIGHT times (more or less depending on how long you take to graduate). You think that nothing can make finals worse, but oh there are things that can.

Yesterday I was studying in the library. I took a two second break to pull out my computer charger and plug it in. I untangled the cord and wrapped the velcro around some of the cord that I condensed. It took awhile gathering the cord and when I turned around my friend Dustin was a few inches from my face! Apparently he had been waiting for me to turn around. As I turned he startled me and I jumped a little bit. Luckily I did not scream or anything since I was in the library, I was just startled and made a face. He went to sit down and I couldn't help but laugh and think of this hilarious video of people getting scared.

The rest of the day I was especially jumpy and I reacted to every little thing. Anytime someone walked past I turned around to make sure they wouldn't attack me. If I took a two second break I would involuntarily turn around and check to see if anyone was creeping on me. It kind of made studying a little less productive but every time I caught myself doing it, I would laugh at myself so I guess that's one good thing. Finals week is not the same to me anymore, a little scarier than before.

Tampons for Robert

Freshman year Kara and I got really into getting free stuff from online. I don't remember the website but they sent products in the hope that you would buy them. We looked through hundreds of items to find the best things for ourselves. As we looked we noticed a lot of weird things that were meant for very specific people like babies, the elderly etc. I decided it would be a good idea to prank our friends from this website using those awkward things (Kara refused to join in).

I put in my email and added our FHE brothers' address and names into the system. I did a few different things, like diapers, tampons and baby formula, and each would be sent to a different person. Most of the things were supposed to take 6-8 weeks so we had to wait patiently. In actuality it took longer for everything to come, some of which never came, except for the tampons.

The tampons came after about a month. At first it was a single sample and our FHE brother Robert thought it was a weird mistake. Then a couple weeks later he got a second one. Apparently we got him on a mailing list of some sort and he kept getting more.

Robert realized after a few tampon samples that someone had deliberately done this to him but he was not willing to admit it to anyone out of embarrassment. For the longest time, we had no idea he had gotten his sample or the extra ones. Somehow he managed to keep his roommates from telling us. Luckily he was really close to our roommate Sarah and told her to which she immediately told me and Kara. We had to live with our prank being a secret. But in the end, it was still hilarious knowing the outcome.

Awkward Things from This Week

1. I went to my friends' apartment complex on Saturday. They were having a barbecue and it was really awesome. I know a lot of people there and I even met some new people. We jumped in the pool and I sat around and watched as a bunch of guys showed off to everyone watching. I think it's hilarious because usually it's not all that impressive. They do the same two flips into the pool over and over. Or they try to dunk the basketball that someone throws to them, and usually miss.

After they finished showing off, we got a game of water basketball going. That was fun except so tiring. After the game we swam around for awhile and decided to start Categories. One person, who is it, picks a category and everyone picks something in that category. The person who is it guesses a bunch of things and then dives in if someone in the group chose one of those things and he hears them swimming. At one point I was it and dived in after someone. Diving into a pool with contacts in is something you shouldn't do. I lost my contacts and ended up walking home half-blind. I mean it wasn't dangerous... kind of. I could see the blobs of cars at least. And some creepy old man helped me cross 900 E. So, actually it was really awkward.

2. So I dyed my hair over the weekend. To chocolate brown! Here's a really awful webcam picture of it. Don't you just love webcam pictures.

Kara was the one to dye it and there were a few times that she just accidentally stuck her gloved hand in my ear. That's fine (jk it really is awkward to have fingers stuffed in your ear) minus the fact that she put dye in my ear! Luckily we have a technique to get rid of that, just add lotion and all the dye sticks to the lotion. I did not thoroughly wash the stuff out though, and I had what looked like a thick blob of dirt in my ear for the day. I didn't notice until I had spent the day with friends, so that's cool. They probably think I don't have good hygiene.

3. I just barely I used the phrase "I have to go get homework done." Awkward. Sometimes I really just don't speak clearly.

4. I have a post about how awkward I am. That's awkward.

I Just Hit that Kid with my Backpack

The best way to realize a friend is in your class is probably not how I did last week.

One of my friends, Sheilagh, is in my physics class. There's over a hundred people in our class so I don't usually find her to sit by. Last Tuesday I saw her walking into one of the aisles in the classroom to sit down. Our class is in the Clyde building and so the aisles are really small.  There were two seats where she was headed and I followed a few paces behind her and called her name. She turned around and was happy to see me.

When we got to the seats, the people next to them said they were saved. I had to turn around so that I could find another seat. I didn't realize that there wasn't enough room to turn around and I hit the guy in front of me with my backpack. I couldn't even turn around to apologize because I would hit someone else so I walked forward and found a seat.

I sat down and I looked to see who I had hit in the head. If they were looking I could hopefully mouth that I was sorry. He was turned around but I could still recognize him. It was news to me but my roommate's boyfriend is in my class. That's probably not the best way to find someone but it's just how I roll!

Happenings as of Late

So yesterday the BYU Alumni shared my BYU Bucket List Post.

Awesome right?! Well if you came to my blog from that, welcome! I just think it's hilarious that half of the things are inside jokes. Hopefully people can still take away something from it! As pointed out, the things I listed are more for the Provo area, which I realize. They're just things I want to do before I graduate from BYU hence it is still my BYU bucket list.

Yesterday was pretty interesting. I checked on here because I had posted something the day before. Interestingly enough, I noticed that over 300 people had come onto my blog in 12 hours. Crazy! It was funny because I had no idea where all the traffic came from! Nobody had asked (not that I mind) or told me they were linking to my post. I went on a mad hunt trying to figure it out. One of my friends told me who linked to it so all is good!

I also have a couple funny stories that happened yesterday to make this post entertaining.

First, I was in physics class. I kind of was bored because we were talking about chemistry and I had already learned everything about 5 times from various classes. I looked at the guy next to me who had a conversation going with a girl. She said it was her birthday and whatnot. He said something like, I know what I can get you for your birthday, if you can decode that message. I'm pretty sure he invited her to NCMO (non-commital make out)! Hahaha it's a huge joke at BYU but I've never known people who actually do it. But apparently it really happens!

Secondly, I saw Kara as I was walking home from the library yesterday. She was coming off work and was about twenty feet away from me. I walk with her to school Monday, Wednesday, Friday and half the time one of us yells something funny. Lately it's been, "Hey you weirdo!" I'm sure you can tell where this is going.

I stopped where I was and turned to her direction. Then I yelled, "HEY YOU WEIRDO!" However the first person to respond was a girl walking on campus with a guy. She turned around and noticed that I was not someone she knew. She started laughing, embarrassed and the guy she was with thought it was super hilarious. Kara and I busted out laughing for about 10 minutes. Even now I think it's hilarious.

It's a good rule to not respond when someone yells a strange thing out loud especially when walking with someone. It's like, oh hey I get called Weirdo all the time, pretty much my nickname. No, don't be that person.

Creeper or Creeped on?

This weekend was General Conference, which is an amazing experience. Some of the general authorities in the church talk and give guidance for the next 6 months for us to look to. Every time I listen to conference, they address the things I need to hear most. If you want to check out some of the videos from conference look here, you won't regret it! Some of my favorites included Elder O. Vincent Haleck about having vision in your life, President Monson about slowing down to think of the spiritual, important things of life, President Utchdorf about contention-STOP IT!, and President Eyring about faith and challenges.

The conference was spread between four sessions over two days. It went from 10-12pm, and from 2-4pm both Saturday and Sunday. Saturday there was another meeting, Priesthood Session for the men. Usually people fall asleep during the later sessions because you are sitting and listening for a long time that day. A good way to combat that is to take a nap and get it all out of you. I decided that would be a good idea.

After the morning session, the first thing I did was make delicious monkey bread. Then people came in and out of my friend's apartment so we all talked for awhile and some hilarious things were said. I realized I would only get a 10-15 minute nap in but waited around until less was going on around me.

I took my nap right at 1:40 and woke up five minutes before it started. When I woke up I stretched and noticed Stephen Black staring at me. We both kept looking at each other because it was just weird. I looked at him and asked if he had been watching me sleep. He had a similar thought and asked me if I had been staring at him. It was a really odd moment.

Apparently we had both looked at each other at the same time, but both of us thought the other had been creepily watching for a long time. When I stretched it caught his attention and he looked at me. He was sitting directly in front of me, so he was the first person I saw when I opened my eyes. How this all worked out I have no idea. Only weird stuff like this happens to me.

As a last thing, this funny picture that describes my life.