Note to Michael Arts, Ancient and Medieval Philosophy professor: You're going down. I'm not sure how or when right now, but trust me, the notes I'm taking aren't on Aristotle, they're on all the slips you make, all the weak spots you show, and most importantly, all the weak spots you think you're hiding. I will not tolerate such ignorance in a professor here at The BYU. And if I cannot root you out, I will transfer schools, get a proper philosophy education, write books, and defame you in your old age.

Sincerely yours,

Elizabeth [last name edited because there are some seriously scary people on the internet]

I Lose Things Impressively

THINGS I HAVE LOST IN THE PAST THREE DAYS:

-my razor

-my hairbrush

-my cell phone (twice -- no wait, three times)

-my brand new down comforter (I SWEAR it wasn't in the drawer the first time I checked)

-my mailbox (don't ask, just don't -- it had to do with a Preference response)

-my crutches

-the english muffin I was eating for breakfast

-a song on a CD I burned for myself

-yes, that's right: I lost a song on a CD I made. I listened to it, and it was there. Then I looked for it later, and IT WAS GONE. I finally found it, though, along with all of my other possessions.

Clearly, I need help.

The Things That Excite Me

I bought a journal today. It's incredibly pretty, but even better, it HAS A MAGNETIC COVER. That is all.

I Tear My Foot Open, I Sew Myself Shut

I'm going to do now what I was too tired to do last night. I am going to tell the story of my first full day in Provo.

I woke up, unpacked some things, tried to get the internet set up, got interrupted by a phone call, got interrupted by another phone call, and in the midst of calling my ISP, scheduled with Kristin to go with her and her mom and show them around campus.

Kristin declared she was hungry, so I thought a good place to go would be the Marketplace Cafe in the Tanner building: good food, and I know how to get there. Perfect combo! So we parked and walked in, and as I was opening the second set of doors, I wasn't paying attention to what I was doing and opened the door right over my foot. Wow, talk about hurting. Then I looked down and noticed I was bleeding. Aww man, I thought, I'm hungry, and now I have to find a bathroom in this place so I can clean myself up. A nice young man who was walking by directed Kristin and I to the nearest bathroom, but as I started walking, I noticed that my flip flop was actually filled with blood, and my foot was slipping around in it. "Wow, this is a lot of blood," I said, and I think I said it out loud, but it was a LOT of blood, so I could've been in shock and delirious and imagining who knows what. A girl who was there who later explained her mother was a nurse helped me walk over and sit down at the table, blood spilling out of my shoe with every step. I cannot emphasize enough that it was a LOT of blood, and fairly sickening. The nice young man walked over to a phone and called the BYU EMTs, promised they were coming soon, and departed with the young woman. Then. Well. See, it was the first day of Freshman Orientation, and so at that moment, as I was surrounded by bloody paper towels, tens of thousands (okay, only hundreds) of freshmen came pouring in through the doors. "Watch out for the doors!" I cried. "Welcome to BYU!"

When the BYU EMTs pulled up in their van, I wanted to make light of the situation (there was a LOT of blood), so I joked with Kristin how I wanted them to bring a stretcher. There was mass excitement when they opened up the back of the van, but alas, it was just to grab their bags. They cleaned up my foot a little and took my blood pressure and filled out some forms and encouraged me to wear a sock on it ("Do you know what gangrene is? Shall I describe its effects to you?" the one EMT asked me, the sicko). We even joked that BYU would modify the honor code to disallow the wearing of flip flops -- the Beth Amendment. I'd be a pariah. Then the one EMT looked at the actual slice; the door cut me from in between my third toe and pinkie toe and curved out over the base of my pinkie toe. She'd only seen the arcing, she hadn't looked to find where all the blood (there was a lot) was REALLY coming from. Then the grim news: stitches.

They loaded me onto a wheelchair and took me to BYU Student Health Services. All the while this was going on, of course, hundreds of freshmen were still coming through the doors of the Tanner Building. I was a celebrity. When we got to our destination, I had to fill out lots of forms. I was shaking a lot, but it was mostly from hunger. When I got to the examining room, I met The Nicest nurse's assistant, nurse, and doctor EVER. I'm glad I get to go back today and again in ten so I can talk with them again. They calmed me down (even though I appeared to be very calm and put-together, I WASN'T) after Kristin's wild exclamations of "Your toe is hanging off your foot!!" They x-rayed me. Part of the x-rays even involved taping the rest of my toes back onto the examining table and my injured toe forward so they could get a good picture of it. Ouch.

When they'd determined nothing was broken, they gave me some anesthetic. The doctor asked me if I felt anything sharp. I asked her if she'd done anything. Apparently, the anesthetic was working. She started stitching me up, and I was glad not to feel anything, especially because my understanding of stitches was that it was basically a whipstitch in the skin. I'm so glad it wasn't, because in a few minutes, the anesthetic had worn off, and she still had three stitches to go. Three stitches in betweeh my toes, where I was the most injured. Three stitches boring through where it had been scraped raw and bloody. I didn't say anything, because I didn't want to be rude and ask for more anesthetic. So I took it, and thanked them, and the nurse bandaged me up and gave me a Very Cool blue bootie thing and sent me away.

Kristin's laughter at the sight of my blue bootie made the entire ordeal worth it.

And also later that night when I got to ride an electric scooter all over Wal-Mart while shopping for food. Priceless.

Turns Out, I'm Not Made Of Ice

I've finally arrived back in Utah. It's a strange thing, coming back to this place -- it's so familiar to me that it should be home, and yet I shy away from the thought of making it something so permanent, so intimate, so favored. I cried when we flew away from the trees and the green and the tough crowds and the cultured audiences and the perfect fittingness of the East. I'm not a snob, I promise (okay, maybe I am a little), but sometimes a place just gets in your blood and stays there.

I'll be home soon.

Slowly But Steadily Descending Into Hypochondria

My knee makes a funny crackling sound when I unbend it. It's right next to my ear as I'm typing, and I keep moving my leg so I can hear it. Is this normal?

Hagrid Comes To Mind When Thinking About All Of This

Everything feels turned upside down right now and somewhat frightening. My clothes are all either sitting in a bag waiting to be folded or in the dryer, waiting to be dried. I'm in the process of transferring all the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of files I've somehow accumulated over the four months I've been here, storing them online so I can snag them and download them onto my computer at school. My friends are all going back to school; some have already left, and some I have to say goodbye to in the few days I have left. My older brother is moving to San Francisco. I have a new blog, a new screen name, and a new favorite brand of jeans.

I don't know what's ahead of me. All I know is that I eagerly await the adventure of it all.

Oh, and some passing words of advice: Don't eat the iguana. Just don't

Right Here Is Where We Need Ya

Welcome to the new blog! I was getting bored with the old look, so I decided to revamp just in time for the reinstantiation of daily posting -- enjoy.

(And if you can't see it, just hit the "refresh" button. It's quite a shocking change, and a lot of fun to see.)

The Only Thing That Could've Possibly Made It Better Is If We Had Some Theme Music

Last night was spent hangin' with the girls. We'd planned to do something as we were all sitting around a table at the coffee shop late Sunday night after I made it home from my week in Virginia, so we planned to meet at Jenny's house the next night. I knew there'd be some sort of complication with the plans, and as I pulled open the fridge Monday morning and spotted the roast sitting in it, waiting to be put in the oven, I knew the missionaries would be coming over for dinner. Missionaries are great and all, but there's no way to really communicate the awkwardness I always feel around them -- technically, they're boys who are my age, but missionaries aren't people, and they're not supposed to acknowledge that some random BYU co-ed is laughing right across the table from them... so I notice I'm always avoiding eye contact and making short replies. Oh, well. And then during dinner, it came out that my mom wanted to go grocery shopping that evening, which meant she needed "help," which meant me. Now, I like grocery shopping; I don't love it, but it's nice to go down the aisles with a cart and stock up on food. Except I'm so anal and I can't shop with most people, because they're always dithering in the aisle over which brand of stuffing mix they want or something silly like that, and it drives me up a wall. Jennifer and I have a system worked out where we get two separate carts and we meet when we're finished, and I think she rushes just for me, which is so sweet of her, but this is not so much the case with my mom. I asked Mom to divide and conquer with me anyway, and we met up in the bread aisle as she was being a spaz case and pulling loaves of bread in her cart even though that was on my list, so I had to put mine back. And then she double-checked everything I had, going so far as to poke through it. I refrained from screaming. Yes, it bothers me THAT MUCH when people spend unnecessary amounts of time shopping. Finally we got out of there, and my cell phone died, so I used Mom's to call Jenn and tell her I'd be on my way shortly, and she called Meg, and I dashed home and flung groceries all about getting them out of the car and into the kitchen, then plugged my phone in to recharge for a few minutes while I hunted for my bathing suit, couldn't find it, so conceded and grabbed the suit I wear to go wakeboarding, found some shorts, and clomped back down the stairs and out the door, mix CD in hand to blast Fall Out Boy and Nirvana all the way up Braddock Mountain and back down again on the slightly creepy nighttime path to Jenny's house.

Finally arrived, and oh my goodness, I love that house. SO many happy memories. Jenn and I flipped through the channels when I got there, waiting for Megann to arrive, and Aimee was there, looking gorgeous in her soccer shorts and pulled-back hair (I'm being completely serious here; she makes me jealous). There was some tension as the girls were on the phone with their mom... their aunt was in surgery for the second time that day, and we were all praying she'd be okay. When we were all assembled and comfy on the couch, Aimee put "Sense and Sensibility" in, and we laughed over the sheep ("Sheep! Sheeeep! Look, they're running! Ahahahaha!" I do believe is an actual quote from my very lips) and sighed (okay, I sighed, ish) over boys who can quote Shakespeare (Sidenote: There is nothing quite so nice as in saying "Alas" to someone and following it with "poor Yorick" and HAVING HIM CONTINUE with "I knew him, Horatio." NOTHING.) Okay, then Jenny grabbed some marshmallows from somewhere and offered them to us, and I got the idea for making s'mores, so Megann and I searched through the cabinets looking for stuff, couldn't find any graham crackers or suitable chocolate squares, so we all grabbed a Tootsie Pop each and headed to Jenny's car to run to Safeway. Now. No one but these girls will be able to exactly understand what happened next, but I tell you... something happens to us when we get together. No matter how mature and put-together we are, there is some kind of chemical/mechanical/nuclear strong force/whatever reaction that goes on, and we become So Cool, by which I mean giggling (in a tasteful way) blonde children. We were able to find everything, though, and make it out of the store with minimal carnage.

Got back, found some chopsticks in a drawer to skewer our marshmallows and dragged the propane grill out of the garage into the driveway so we could roast the marshmallows. I insist that we did it without any mishap. There were no scarily high flames. There was no scrolling through contact lists on cell phones to find an appropriate boy to call. None of that. We are Smart, Capable Girls, yes we are. And then Megann found the sidewalk chalk and all pretenses were gone.

After gorging ourselves and hoping we knew how to shut everything off correctly and inquiring after Jenny's homeowner's insurance and if it would cover the house mysteriously burning to the ground one night, we of course had to hit the brand new hot tub. One thing about the hot tub: it glows! There's a light under the water, and it changes colors, from green to purple to blue to magenta to scary red. It's so pretty. Another thing about the hot tub: it was frickin' hot. It had been out in the sun all day (that was Jenny's explanation), and when we stepped in, well, we had to convince ourselves to get in inch by inch. Finally we all made it in and were laughing like crazy and playing with the jets. When we got too hot, well, there's a pool right next to the hot tub, so we clambered out and ran down the stairs and jumped in the pool. I discovered I should've been a dolphin; I had way to much fun crouching under water and shooting up out of it. The clouds were beautiful, alto cumulus and wispy cirrus, not too heavy, and letting some stars glimmer through. We went from hot tub to pool to hot tub to pool a couple times, and decided we were just never leaving. I'm going to live under the pool table in the office, and I dunno where Megann's going to live, maybe in the guest bedroom, but it will be glorious. Because no one should be without a hot tub. And no one with a hot tub should be without a pool to cool off in. And none of these toys should be infected with Hepatitis C like in the Villa where I used to live.

So I was hangin' with the girls last night. We have plans to do it all again tonight. If I don't make it back to BYU, I know there are people in the East who'd love to have me and keep me forever, and that's a nice feeling.

Memories of Yesterdays

I was gone this weekend and I'm leaving in a few hours again. Maybe someday I'll come back and tell stories of my grand adventures, but until that day, I leave you with a memory of the moonlight flooding the white tips of the waves and sparking on the cold surf as it rushes over sand to grab at bare toes; a memory of shivery gull cries echoing over the grey-morning bay and hovering like saline in the air; and a memory of a tiny yellow light glowing in the darkness over a page, bringing into contrast the black print of a story spun by knowing hands, a story to "make you believe in God" as the jacket claims. These memories I leave you -- enjoy.

It's Almost Stream Of Consciousness, Really

So, Craig IMs me the other day, asks me if I wanna hang out with him and Meg (um, duh?). I answer in the affirmative, he picks me up and we go to get ice cream from Cold Stone. Well, we make a valiant attempt anyway, except the dang place is closed. So all three of us head over to Wal-Mart to pick up a couple pints. We spot and snag the last Ben & Jerry's chocolate fudge brownie goodness and prance around happily because, what luck. We go visit Bryan, who is Craig's Summer Roommate (I just recently discovered he's not the Real Roommate, which caused some confusion on my part, and I'm still not certain I entirely get it, as there's a lot of backstory I'm missing, but Bryan's there now, and Bryan is cool, period.) Bryan works at Wal-Mart, and what he does is stand at a counter and look very solemn and bored. Good thing we came by! And then Bryan and Craig disappeared, leaving Megann and I alone in Wal-Mart together, which is NOT a good idea, as we've a propensity for coming up with quite fun but illegal things to do. Fortunately, Craig and Bryan came back as we were in the pillow section, and what kind of trouble can you get in with some pillows? None. Well, maybe some, but I was too interested in experiencing the softness to really try.

But then we discovered we had no spoons, and were in much need. Um, apparently Wal-Mart doesn't sell plastic spoons. At least not this Wal-Mart, but this Wal-Mart also closes at 11 p.m. (what good is a Wal-Mart if you can't go at 3 a.m. is what I'm wondering), and so isn't reeally a Wal-Mart. We asked a very nice-looking young man for help, but he didn't know where to find plastic spoons. He tried to find us someone who did know, and at that point, Craig wandered off and left us again, so Meg and I tried looking for spoons. We found display upon display of colorful, plastic ice cream scoops, which we were voting to use, and some big ol' shiny basting spoons, which also would've been fun, and I called Craig's name a couple times to see if he would come back, but he didn't. And then, when we'd found some spoons that were each individually more expensive than the entire pint of ice cream, Craig came back with a packet of spoons in his hand and we were saved.

So we ate the ice cream and watched Family Guy (I think -- all the days are blending together now) and now Craig has spoons to use whenever he decides to throw ice cream parties in the future.