I'll be home for Christmas...

It's been 7 months since I've been home, and I fly into Washington Reagan airport tomorrow!

I absolutely cannot wait.

I don't think I've ever been this excited to get home before. I'm not homesick, exactly, there's just a constant, joyous thought in the back of my head that says "pretty soon you're going to be surrounded by people who love you and won't judge you. Pretty soon you'll be warm and safe and happy always... at least for the next two weeks." And there are so many things I want to do when I'm there!

• Play Christmas duets on the piano with Nathan
• Plan the garden and plant bulbs with my Daddy
• Scrapbook with Mom
• Sister date to see Twilight
• Long talk with Tanner about life and love...
• Gingerbread houses
• White Christmas
  
• Celebrate love and marriage with Katie, and Andrew&Erica
  
• Go on a lunch date with Mommy and Daddy and no one else is invited (a little selfish, I know, but sometimes you've got to take all of the Mom and Dad time you can get. Those other ones have seen them every day over the last 7 months)
• Sit under the Christmas tree lights listening to Amy Grant Christmas songs
• Tell my family all about my life and why it's wonderful!
• Eat yummy food
• Make yummy food
• Christmas carol (funny side note: I wrote a paper on carbon sequestration the other day. Apparently that word is stuck in my head. I typed the c-a-r for carol, and instead of finishing it -o-l, i automatically hit -b-o-n! Silliness!)
• Say goodbye for now to one of my dearest friends
• Talk on the phone to my Sissy!
• Laugh!
• Miss my Provo people
  
• Hug Mrs. Chiralo, and all the old ladies at church
• Play with babies

So, lots to do... It'll be the best Christmas ever!

Finals Fever

My roommate Stephanie has coined the phrase "Finals Fever" and I know what she's talking about.
I don't want to study today. And I especially don't want to write papers.

We're getting excessively silly around here these days. Dumb things are suddenly funny, and funny things are suddenly hilarious. And we complain about things much more loudly and long-winded-ly.

Stephanie is pretending to be Scottish at the moment. Tartan plaid scarf, you know?

Now she's a Kennedy.

I think I might go play in the snow. It's snowing.

I've spent the morning in my bed pretending to be motivated to get this paper done. Secret fact: I'm really about as unmotivated as possible.

I want to listen to Christmas music. And sing along. I think I might start singing without any real music in the background.

Yesterday I went on a wild goose chase for a Latin Christmas party.

Paul Newman and Robert Redford- Steph's possibly hottest combination alive. Or rather, dead and immortalized.

Ok. Enough nonsense. I'm going to go eat lunch. Or breakfast.

Spiders are like Boys- Icky yet Fascinating?

I feel like there are spiders on me. There aren't. I've checked. But I feel like they're there nonetheless.

Today was a really good day at work. I worked with just my boys- Mark, and Matthew and Joel and Benson. And so I had to pretend not to be super freaked out when a spider the size of a quarter (legs included) that was bright orange-red crawled onto me- yuck! But there were tons of spiders in that hedge, and I was basically sitting under the plants, so I probably had spiders all over me for a few hours.

Somehow, those nasty spiders are intriguing, though. They're really quite cool; the diversity between spiders is amazing. And the way they spin their webs and catch prey and even just the way they move is fascinating.

Spiders are like boys. Both are icky. And both are entirely fascinating. Lately I'm more inclined to think boys are a good thing, though. Mostly. Some of them are still pretty nasty- small and poisonous, petty and spiteful, forcing their venom out to destroy life and happiness. But that's the kind I'm trying to not think about. Most of the boys I know these days are fun, and nice and cheerful. And not venomous.

Realistically Thinking, Now...

Yesterday I wrote a life update. It was optimistic. Stepping down off of cloud 9, here's my life:

Finals are going to be super easy if all I want is to pass my classes. For A's? Well, that complicates things a bit. It might be impossible.

I have my Christmas music for choir down when I'm playing it alone. Get a choir singing behind me, though, and the whole world is thrown off balance. Yikes!

Really, it's a good job. Hardly any downsides that I ignored in my last post.

I think I've left one of my best friends with a bit of a broken heart by dating Mark. Maybe even two of my best friends. I can't tell. That's not enough reason to not be dating him, but I still feel sick and guilty about it all.

Life is hard. But I'm going to go live it, anyways. Love you all!

End-of-Semester Update

Fall semester 2008 is coming to an end, so I feel like I need to recap my life and all I've been up to.

I get to go home in a week and a half! But first I have to pass all of my classes, which could be a challenge. But not because my classes are hard- I've loved all of my them this semester. It'll be difficult because I am distracted and emotionally done with school. I really should focus hard, though. I need to do well next week.

I'm ward choir pianist. We have practice in 45 minutes or so, and I'm so ready. I've got those Christmas songs down pretty well. It's exciting.

I have a fabulous new job for next semester. I'll be moving to the BYU Greenhouses, which is super exciting because I can learn so many things there, and because Tegwyn (greenhouse manager) is super fun, but it's also sad. I'll miss my crew.

I've started dating Mark from my work crew. He's been one of my best friends for months, and so it's interesting to be dating him now. But interesting in a really good way.

Ok. Gotta go to choir. Love my life, though! It's great!

Communication

I've been thinking a lot about communication lately: why situations make communication more difficult, why we choose to communicate some things and not others, how things can be communicated without us intending for them to be, why some people are better communicators than others, how communication depends so much upon timing, how social conventions sometimes restrict effective communication, and what we can do to communicate effectively in spite of social barriers.

I'm in a Technical Communication class, and we've been doing presentations on research topics. I did mine yesterday, and I think it went pretty well, but I'm also quite sure that I talked too quickly and too quietly. Also, I probably said "um..." too many times. But it's hard to explain Carbon Sequestration well in only 8 minutes.

In other communications, I've been thinking lately about how much things are said without the use of words. Why and how we communicate without speaking is fascinating to me. It's amazing how much is said in facial expressions and body language, and in the signals we give off that somehow are almost universally understood. It's the almost part that gets tricky, though. Because what if signals are read incorrectly, or not read at all? Considering the great difficulty that comes in these situations, it's a shock that we bother to use signals at all. Why don't we just say what's on our minds? Probably because, like it or not, sometimes honest communication is frowned upon in our society. Social conventions say that it's somehow better to use vague, confusing signs and expressions than to state outright what we are thinking or feeling. So much for valuing honesty... or maybe not. Maybe we rely on physical communication so much because of how easy it can be to lie with your lips. Expressions are often more reliable than words. As I exhibited earlier today, for instance, it's easy to deny something out loud, but much harder to keep your face from going bright red as the corners of your lips sneak upward into a smile. And so, deny as I might, those silly people could not be kept from the truth.

In spite of the confusion that comes from relying so heavily on signals, it sometimes works out that people read the right signs in the right way, and act on them to make life quite more than bearable!