Home Sweet Home

Robert was playing in the Pizza Bowl this weekend for Mile High (lame... go granite!). Seeing that I’ve never seen him play football before, I decided to make a quick weekend trip home. 

First off, over Labor Day weekend the water heater by my parents bedroom broke and flooded half the house. The wood floor, carpet, and paint needed to be redone in all our bedrooms. Let’s just say that I’m very glad I wasn’t home for that ordeal. This work was going to be in progress while I was there, so I would be joining my family at a hotel. 

That's where my bed normally is

Now, on to the real adventure. Ogden is about 45 minutes from the airport, so I was going to ride the bus/train to get there. To get to the Ogden train station I’d have to ride a bus from my dorm. On my way to the bus stop a lady from church saw me and gave me a ride there. That saved me some time, and I was on the train an hour ahead of planned. Now that I was in Salt Lake, I would take a bus to the airport. A bus was at the station, so I was doing really well on time. So I was talking to my mom about getting an earlier flight. As soon as I hung up with her I heard the bus driver yell, “airport!” Naturally, I jumped off the bus. Well, I was definitely not at the airport. Once I realized this, the bus was already gone. So I sat on a bench and figured out where I was. The blind center. That would explain why the driver was yelling... the blind people can’t exactly see what bus is there. At this point I was furious. I called UTA to find out when the next bus would be coming. After 20 minutes the same bus came, and I realized that we weren’t going back to the airport but back to the Salt Lake train station that I just came from. Then I had to wait 15 minutes for the next airport bus to come. Now I was really furious because I wasn’t going to be making an earlier flight and I was on the bus to the airport at the time I originally planned before I got the ride to the station in Ogden. After about 5 minutes of brewing over my stupidity, I just laughed at myself. 

Luckily the rest of the trip went smoothly, and my mom picked me up in Phoenix. Robert was pretty much the only person in my family who didn’t know I was coming. We made it to the last 5 minutes of the PHS homecoming game. I just walked up next to him. “How long are you here for?” and “What the hell?” were the first things out of his mouth. Then he ran to go tell his friends I was there. The rest of the weekend was spent hanging out with family, and of course some real mexican food at gramma and grampa’s house. 

Most people say that when they go back home things are completely different. Well they were lying. Everything was exactly the same (aside from our house being empty). It didn’t feel like I’d been gone for two months when I was with my family. The only weird feeling I had was when I got back to Ogden. You know how you feel when you get back home after being on vacation for a while? That Ah, home. Now I can relax feeling? That’s what I experienced in my dorm. 

This is Home

And now after all my searching
After all my questions
I'm gonna call it home
I've got a brand new mindset
I can finally see the sunset
I'm gonna call it home

Shia is Coming to Ogden

Something is going on in this town with Transformers. I’ve only seen the movies once, so I don’t understand how it all works. All I know is that I wouldn’t mind if Louis Stevens aka Shia LaBeouf showed up looking for the All Spark. Which may have been destroyed in one of the movies, but I can’t remember. If it doesn’t exist anymore, then there is some other magical Transformers part here, and Ogden might appear in the third movie. Seriously though, I’ve seen at least fifteen cars with Autobot or Decepticon stickers on the windows. There’s people wearing shirts, hats, a backpacks all over the place. It’s weird. It comes up in conversation too. The professor in biomed mentioned watching bad movies, like Transformers. Then in IV small group we had a full blown conversation about it. We were talking about going out of our way to speak with the people that drive us crazy. One of the girls said that when she runs into that annoying person she just has to think, “Transform me Jesus!” Which is fantastic and we spent the rest of the night comparing God to the All Spark etc. Every day I’m on the lookout for robots and huge explosions, but alas, I haven’t seen any yet.

Where Were You When the World Stopped Turning?


9/11 was fascinating to me, and it still is. There are certain images that will forever be etched in my memory.

This morning I woke up and watched some of the live feed of names of the fallen being read at Ground Zero. There were links to different articles, and one was of political cartoons. The first was appropriate for today, but then the next three were something along this line...

The Never Forgive part really caught me off guard. Nine years later, people still are holding onto grudges and hate. Sadly, I feel that those are what people are harboring more than the Never Forget part. Our country hasn’t forgotten. Not even close. However, our pride has deteriorated slowly over the past couple years. People will proudly be flying their flags today, but why isn’t is like that every day? Why is the pre-game National Anthem at sporting events only televised on July 4th and 9/11? Why don’t sports teams still have flag patches on their jerseys like they did after the attacks?

It makes me so sad that today has become focused on politics and religion and war when it really should be about remembering the fallen and the heros who have stepped up for this great country we live in. God Bless America.

Matthew 6:14-15

If you forgive others their transgressions, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your transgressions.

What Paper?

College causes you to have a lot of things going through your mind at once. It’s amazing that your brain can process it all without exploding. A couple of my classes use an online program. Without boring you with the specifics, just know that there’s a lot of deadlines and work to keep track off. That’s nothing new, but having it all online seems to make it seem worse. 

Tuesday night, well really Wednesday morning, I woke up at about 3:30 in an absolute panic. The first test in biomed is coming up and for whatever reason I thought that we had to write a 3-4 page paper summarizing the whole first chapter which was to be turned in Friday. I was trying to remember if I saw the due date of the paper on the course’s website, but I couldn’t remember for certain that I did. So at this point, I was still convinced that this paper existed. 

Now as you know, I’m not the type of person to wait until the last minute to do something. Yes, on occasion I do, but there's no way I would in this type of situation. Keeping that in mind, you will understand the terror I was feeling at this ridiculous time of day. I was already planning out when I was going to work on the paper and how it would fit into my schedule. Just writing about it right now is getting me all worked up. 

So now it’s 4:00, and I knew that there was no way I was going to fall back asleep. On top of being stressed out of my mind I would also be exhausted when I was trying to write this paper. Trying to calm down, I started to listen to some music. After about ten minutes, it hit me. THERE IS NO PAPER TO WRITE. Where did the idea that there was a paper even come from? How could I worry about something that didn’t even exist? Then I proceeded to laugh at my stupid mind and fell back asleep.

Now that I am fully coherent, there’s a lot of different ways that I could analyze this whole thing. Maybe I need to make a more detailed schedule. Since things are starting to get crazy, maybe it's a reminder to completely trust God. Maybe I need to sleep some more, or increase the caffeine intake. It’s one or the other, but I haven’t decided which one it is yet. Or maybe I just need to slow down. In the end, it’s a combination of all these things.

So next time you’re freaking out about something, stop and think about it. You might discover that what you’re worrying about doesn’t even exist. 

Matthew 6:34

Do not worry about tomorrow; tomorrow will take care of itself. Sufficient for a day is its own evil.

Otown

Really looking forward to when the campus goes from looking like this...

to this...

       

It's well on it's way to getting there too. This was from this afternoon...

Close Your Eyes, Make a Wish, Blow the Candles Out...

Yesterday ranks up there as one of my top birthdays. Which is interesting considering I wasn’t even home, and only saw one family member.

My Nino (for all you gringos out there that’s mexican for godfather) was in Salt Lake for work, so he came up yesterday and the day before to check out Ogden and for lunch. It was great having somebody here to celebrate. It also gave me the chance to see that I actually have a clue how to navigate around this town. Other than that, nobody here was aware that it was my birthday. It’s not like I was making any announcements. 

Later that night I went to InterVarsity large group. The people who are there are some of the most loving and nice people I’ve ever met. No joke.

Short story for background information... Before going up to Weber I was checking out what the church situation was and InterVarsity is the one Christian group on campus. As I was investigating their website I found a small group that met in my building, so I called and left a message with the phone number that was listed. Nobody called back, but have no fear, because God comes through. Move-in day comes and my family and I start unloading the car. Up walks some of the InterVarsity crew to help. We unloaded both our cars into the dorm in about fifteen minutes. It probably would’ve taken the four of us an hour and a half. One of the girls who was helping was checking out my tattoo, and then I told her that I had actually called and left her a message earlier that week. Then she was all excited that I was Michelle and told someone else that I was the one who had called and there were hugs and high-fives all around.

Back to last night. As the night is getting started, the leader puts a picture of me up on the projector, and announces that it was my birthday. So about 80 people, of which I knew about 15, sang to me. The rest of the night was great and I’m looking forward to what this year has in store for us.

When I got home, my roomies surprised me with a birthday pizza slice complete with candles. They also stole some streamers from the hallways to put on my doorway. Fortunately we all like scary movies, so that’s how the night ended. 

Technically, this was the first birthday away from my family. But as it turns out, I have family in Ogden, Utah.

So it Begins...

There have been a few requests that I start a blog, or do something to keep people informed of what’s going on in my life. I was reluctant to start one because my life really isn’t that exciting, but it looks kinda fun so I’m going to give it a try. Honestly, I have no idea what it’s going to be about or if people are even going to read it. It’s probably going to be pretty random, because I’m just random sometimes. 

Oh where to start... I guess I’ll try and tell you about myself so you’ll understand where I’m coming from when I’m rambling on about whatever.

I love God, and I try to spread His love through my actions, not my words. I try to use the words “I” and “my” as little as possible. Sometimes that’s just impossible to do. Like when you’re describing yourself to other people. My family is HUGE, and I love every single person in it. My friends are like my family and I love them all dearly. Driving is a stress reliever, and I treat my car like a person. His name is Jasper, and he says hi. I feel really awkward if my hands are empty, especially when I’m talking to people. So I'll fidget with a cell phone, remote, pen, whatever is around. I write down quotes about life all the time. Writing things down helps me figure out what I’m trying to say. If I just try and talk, it doesn’t make any sense. I think a lot. A LOT. About deep things too. I’m a morning person. And a late night person. So that makes me a sleep-deprived person. I laugh weird. I love the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series. I play the guitar to de-stress too. I’ve never really played in front of anyone so I don’t know if I’m any good, but I hope I am. I have a tattoo. So that means I’m pretty much BA. I'm sarcastic. My short-term memory doesn’t always work 100% of the time, so please forgive me if I just met you and can't remember your name. I’m kind of a nerd. I like listening more than talking. I love scary movies. Slasher ones too. Oh and disney of course. Memory lane is my favorite place to travel. I’m so glad that I grew up in Prescott, and I’m probably going to live there after college. I was born with a heart defect. I used to hate talking about it because I thought people who think of me differently, and I don't want people to think I'm trying to get attention. Now I’ve figured out that they will think of me differently, but in a positive way. And I’m completely ok with that. I want to study cardiac ultrasound (huh I wonder why?). But pediatrics not old people. Most importantly I want to help kids like me. I can't dance, therefore I hate going to dances. I expect a lot out of myself. Mostly with school. It’s one of the only times when I can be the best. That sounds bad, but seriously, who wants to be “just alright” at everything? I don’t like people who drive like jerks. Especially right after they get out of church. Come on people. Just be nice. I like to learn about different religions. I enjoy being with people who are perfectly content if we don’t say anything to each other. 

That's all I can think of right now, and I'm sure that's all that you want to read too. I really hope that you enjoy my writing!