all is fair in love and war and funnel cake

This Saturday, Natal and I went to the FAIR!

And it was so much fun!

(caution: this post is picture heavy)

We met up at about 10 AM to head to Chabaar, a thai restaurant that, weirdly enough, serves the BEST breakfast. Seriously, their breakfast is so delicious. We were introduced to it last Sunday when we went out to brunch with a bunch of people there. At first we were skeptical, considering it's a thai restaurant, but we were blown away by the food. The other part we love about the restaurant is its menu.



There are three different fonts for the titles of each section: Papyrus, Curlz MT, and then some other medieval looking font for the omelettes section spelled Omelet's. I just love mixed berry served with simple syrup and whipping cream top.

Our food was amazing.





I got this delicious breakfast sandwich that is basically a grilled cheese with eggs, bacon, and tomato on it and Natal got french toast with eggs, hash browns, and bacon. SO GOOD. The wait for the food is ridiculous, but it's well worth it considering how yummy this food is.

After breakfast, we headed over to the fairgrounds. Once we bought our tickets, we found ourselves in the arts and crafts section where, it seems, EVERYONE WINS FIRST PRIZE. Seriously, there are about forty first prizers and then baby three second prizers. Wouldn't that just make it even worse to win second prize, if everyone and their mother won first prize but you didn't? Also it seems that the more hideous the project was, the more likely it was to win a prize. But then some really amazing pieces won nothing. So bizarre.



Someone made a Tardis! I forgot to check whether it won a prize or not. It probably didn't.



I had to include this because WHAT IS EVEN GOING ON? It won a prize. But to be fair, I think a six year old made it. I loved this particular art piece because, obviously, there is a party going on. Also a huge sponge had been hung on the wall that the kid had decorated as Spongebob and Natal asked, "Why is there a penis drawn on his side?" Well that's his arm. Duh.

The other best part about the arts and crafts exhibit was the scrapbooking section. Only in Utah would they have a scrapbooking section for the arts and crafts part of the fair. Apparently, the scrapbooking pages were separated based on technique: professional, advanced, basic, amateur, disabled, and senior citizen. How does one qualify for professional scrapbooking, do you think? I think they have to take a skill level exam before entering into the fair. We spent a good twenty minutes making fun of the scrapbooking pages because God were they amazing.

Also there was a sculpture made entirely out of butter.

After the arts and crafts, we headed over to the animal section where they had AUSTRALIAN ANIMALS!!! There is always some weird animal at the fair, this year it was kangaroos and sea lions.



An albino kangaroo!



Kookaburra!



They had little pouches hanging from the walls that the baby kangaroos could stuff themselves into. Sooo cuteeee <3

BABY AWWWWW!

After we'd had our fill of Australian creatures, we started heading toward the other, more traditional fair animals. On the way there, we met up with this guy and learned some amazing moves.



I wanted to be like Dee in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.



Goats!



We liked the feel of their horns (ooer). I taught Natal how to pet the goats the right way (she's still learning since, you know, she's only six...twenty six) and I gave them lots of chin rubs.



Natal petting the pack goat



The single greatest thing happened. This man, who looks like SANTA, came through herding his little family of geese. GEESE DRESSED UP LIKE PEOPLE! It's blurry because the lighting was weird in the barn, they were moving quickly, and I was really excited and thus spastic.



We both took pictures of ourselves with this huge hunk of cow. Natal tweeted that he was her new boyfriend. What a beefcake, right?



The most fabulous sheep I have ever seen. They ARE Sasha Fierce.

After the animals we went over to the market building where they had a bunch of vendors. One of them was selling pillow pets.



These would sort of make me want to cry if they were my pillow pet.

I realized that we'd missed the pigeons and rabbits so we went looking for them. We stepped over a ladder and through a fence opening and then found ourselves near the rabbits and pigeons. THE PIGEONS! MY FAVORITES!!!





This one was sooo cute!



After we were done looking at the animals we walked around some more







We went to the DNR building and looked at lots of dead animals, fish, and turned into bears for a couple of minutes.

We decided we reeeeally wanted to get our pictures taken with those baby kangaroos we saw when we first got to the fair, so we headed back over. A show was going on so we watched that first, Natal's friend showed up and joined us, and then we got to hold a baby kangaroo.



I was so ecstatic! We named her Matilda. The photo of both of us holding her is going to be our Christmas card this year.



We headed to the fair midway and checked out all the games we could play. Natal's friend Vijay played a shooting game while Natal and I tried to make balls into tiny jars to win goldfish. We both failed.





This penguin was wearing pasties...



Cobra PUNCH!

We got some philly cheesesteaks to eat and some lemonade and then scoped out what kinds of rides we wanted to ride. The drop was one of them.







We sung "You Are the One I Want" outside of this.

We got deep-fried oreos. It tasted like funnel cake with oreos inside of it.







More punching going on.





I thought this was really funny and cute. I liked all the different food stands they have at the fair.

We went on the drop, which was terrifying and exhilirating (to be able to see how high up you're going is really scary to me, which is why I'm okay with Terr Terr) and then the Pharaoh's Fury, which is one of those pirate ship rides. It's way better than the one at Lagoon since it's not actually up to code and stays at the steep point for way longer than it should. But SO MUCH FUN! After the rides we decided we were pretty tired after staying at the fair for seven hours so we headed home to make bracelets and watch movies.

The Utah vs. BYU game was last night as well and, even though I didn't get to watch the game, it was still glorious to know that WE WONNNN! We beat them 54 to 10 (I think) aka we kicked their asses. So awesome. Especially since we beat them on their own turf.

All in all, an amazing Saturday at the fair.

fill in fridays

A little project I stole from the little things we do.

1. You should always take time to be outside and force yourself to look at the things we take for granted. Like the slow changing of the leaves and how creepy a spider looks when it's spinning its web.

2. Less stress makes the world a happier place to be.

3. I can hardly wait for DISNEYLAND!!!

4. Friday is my favorite day of the week.

5. Something totally dumb and ridiculous that I love is making my own T-shirts with nerdy sayings on them.

6. If I could, I would drop everything and move to some great expanse of land where I live simply as a sheep herder. Hopefully with a horse and a dog and possibly a hawk.

7. I rather like Annie's white cheddar macaroni and cheese.

My plans for this overcast Friday are to read a scientific paper that I'm secondary author on (!!! big deal for a lil undergrad like me) so that I can make comments on it and perhaps have deep insights, to go to work for a little while and hopefully get shit done, to visit Sunny and her new puppy Bell, to make T-shirts with nerdy sayings on them (speak of the devil), to catch up on True Blood, and to play some more pokemon. Dream Friday night? I was going to go to Redfest, our school's back-to-school concert/party which I have free tickets to, but I think I'd rather spend this Friday with puppies and vampires.

Tomorrow is both the fair and the HOLY WAR (a football game against our greatest rival, BYU) so it will be extremely partyrific.

redesign

The redesign is complete. I like it, though I wish my tablet had not decided to freak out on me before I finished the title :( I sort of like the shadow effect though of the text behind the written title. If my tablet is broken I'm going to be upset though. Which is probably is. Joy.

I took that quiz I was studying for last week and got 100%, woo! I'm a master of chordate knowledge. Also Timpanogos was AMAZING! It warrants its own post though, I'm drawing stuff we saw and did so I'll post that as soon as it's done (by this weekend).

This week has been relatively uneventful. The only really BIG thing that happened was that I decided I'm going to DISNEYLAND for Fall Break. I'm so excited I could puke. I've already booked mine and Raphael's hotel room (I went to Disneyland with her last summer) and I bought my ticket last night. IT'S REALLY HAPPENING!!! Raphael's brother and sister are tagging along as well, so it will be like her family reunion and then Otter. But I'll be back in my ZONE so it will be amazing. I can. not. WAIT. I'll be able to wear by Indiana Jones hat with gay abandon (I also have to wear my decapitated Dale hat as well, since it is more obviously Disney), I'll be able to punch King Cobra in the nose again, I'll be able to ride Terr Terr over and over and over again, I'll be able to rave on the California Adventure main street with actual alcohol in hand this time, and the best part is that IT WILL BE OCTOBER. DO YOU KNOW WHAT HAPPENS IN OCTOBER??

JACK AND SALLY COME OUT AND PLAY!!!

I'll be able to meet them! The only characters I've ever really wanted to meet and fawn over! Also Haunted Mansion will be decorated to look like Nightmare Before Christmas. I AM FREAKING OUT I'M SO EXCITED! Nightmare Before Christmas is one of my absolute favorite movies, so I will be in heaven. I even got a little Zero stuffed animal from Terr Terr last time I was in Disneyland. So adorable.



(not my picture)



Maybe I'll get the little Jack to go with him when I'm there next.

Redfest is tomorrow and Cobra Starship is playing so hopefully I can find someone to come with me to that. On Saturday, Natal and I have plans to go to the UTAH STATE FAIR so be prepared for a post about that as well. Basically this weekend is going to be bomb.

update

I have the desire to re-design my blog.

Which I will get to at a later date, since right now I'm supposed to be studying for my quiz on chordates tomorrow. Which I really am failing at.

Timpanogos in two days!

goodbye summer

Here lies the remains of the 2011 summer. The summer of X-Files. The summer of first love. The summer of legal drinks. The summer of dune jumping. The summer of independent research. The summer of failed experiments. The summer of speaking my mind. The summer of emerging from my shell. The last summer before I graduate college and become a real adult. Goodbye summer 2011. I'll miss you.



Welcome Autumn.

stop

I read a blog post today about how to live a beautiful life.

http://galadarling.com/article/how-to-live-a-beautiful-life

And it really made me think. Basically, she says to STOP LIVING VICARIOUSLY THROUGH OTHERS!!! I myself take inspiration from things like pictures on tumblr and reading other people's blogs, but it's good to remember not to just pine for those things. Make them happen! It was amazing because I read this blog post after I was done making my regular rounds on the internet, and (as anyone who knows me has seen) I have been rather depressed for the past week and a half. I realized that this is exactly what I've been doing: I've been declining all of the awesome stuff people have invited me to do in order to mope in my room, watching Netflix and wishing I could live the lives of other people who seem like they're having way more fun than I am. I could have gone to Brewvies, I could have gone to Piper Down for a birthday party, I could have gone up to the canyons to look at the stars, I could have gone dancing. But instead I watched Roseanne and cried.

BUT NOW IS THE TIME TO STOP.

Yeah, I always say this. Yeah, I always have these ridiculous "pep myself up" talks where I resolve to be more positive, etc. But this isn't just about that. It's about what I'm going to DO to make this happen. I started today by closing my laptop after I read this blog post, picking up my guitar (which I haven't played in months), and retreating outside into the sun with it to relearn how to play. First I learned (via youtube...hey, I didn't say not to use the internet EVER) how to tune my guitar without the convenience of an electronic tuner (I have no clue where mine is), which I always thought was an absolute impossibility when I was a sophomore in high school and I first started playing. Then I went outside, sat down in the grass with my dusty binder full of sheet music for The Beatles, Jack Johnson, Bob Dylan, Simon and Garfunkle, Iron and Wine, Coldplay, and The Shins, and started to reacquaint myself with chords and finger picking. It took a few minutes to make my brain fit the patterns of strumming with the notes of the song and my singing, but soon I was playing like I used to. I spent two hours out in the backyard with the dogs laying around me in the shade while I played songs and serenaded them. It was amazing and now my fingers hurt like a bitch



Later we spent the day with family, where we went swimming. The last swimming of the season, as the pool closes after labor day. It's always my last ode to summer. We all played "dump the people on the floating swim mattress" game where everyone beat the crap out of each other (I kicked some people in the face, pulled some hair, got bit, got pinched, also got kicked in the face, etc.) and dove, somersaulted, and splashed until the sun started to set and the crickets came out. I love evening and night swimming.



Now it's time to make a list of everything I want to do now that fall is on its way. I have only had this blog since spring, so the people out there who may or may not read this new blog probably have no idea that I ADORE AUTUMN. I love everything about fall. The best part about fall though, is HALLOWEEN. It's still too early to be pining for October and to be so excited about it, but it is my favorite month with my FAVORITE FUCKING HOLIDAY IN THE WORLD, and everyone is starting to bring out their Halloween merchandise and decorations so it's got me excited. Here are some things I plan on doing/am going to do in the next few months (non-Halloween/October edition).

-Start swimming for exercise, because when I did that I was the healthiest I've ever been. I want to feel good about myself, so I need to start exercising and eating better. I think now is the perfect time to start working on me and making myself feel awesome.



-Go camping! I'm planning on going camping this weekend at Timpanogos, hopefully it's cool enough up there that the colors have started to turn. If not, I just need to go camping again! I failed at camping in any capacity during the summer (except for Arizona, which was still in the spring as far as I'm concerned), so fall camping is going to be the bomb. Campfires, drinking (legal) beers, telling ghost stories, watching the stars, going on hikes, playing in streams...I'm so excited! Maybe I'll even bring my guitar and force people to have a singalong.





I want to reenact this picture

-Go hiking. Spend more time outside. I want to force myself to do stuff in the great outdoors, considering I spent a lot of the summer inside watching X-Files. TIME WELL SPENT, but I still want to spend more time in the mountains since they're right there. Right there. And I take them for granted so often. No more!





-Learn more on my guitar, get better, rebuild my calluses and finger strength so I can play the opening bridge to Stairway to Heaven again.

-Make crafts, paint with watercolors, take pictures with my polaroid and digital camera, make more charms and put them up on Etsy again, write short stories based on pictures, BE AN ARTSY FARTSY PERSON.



Kitty and I see eye to eye on a lot of things.

This is my list for now. I'm going to stop living vicariously through other people and instead make my own experiences again. This is fairly dramatic, seeing as I've only been depressed for the past couple of days and only super lame this weekend, but it's true. I'm especially excited for camping this weekend. I'm going to try and go as often as possible until it snows.

ah, my old shool building

SCHOOL YOU GUYS

School is back in session. SENIOR YEAR. So it's a big deal. Weird. I always thought of college as a certainty, albeit a hazy one since I was also thought of it as so far ahead in the future that I didn't even need to worry about it. Well now I'm in the same position as I was in high school, only now college is going to be OVER and I have nothing left to fall on. I'll probably end up going to graduate school (and most assuredly some form of higher education after college), but right now it's open. I have room to do...sort of whatever I want. And that's terrifying. I have some choices that I've narrowed down to, and both of them seem awesome, but I'm still a little unsure about how to be a real adult. That's not what this post is really about though. This post I'm going to talk about my schedule, professors, and COLLEGE while I'm still here.



My schedule worked out really well this semester. When I first created my schedule back in the early spring, I made it so I only had class on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which was amazing to me since I had never had any days off of school before (bio degrees don't really let you do that. Or sleep in.) Then one class had to be rearranged so it fit into a Monday, Wednesday, Friday schedule and that was that. But it actually worked out to my benefit, because the old scary professor who used to teach comparative vertebrate morphology who people warned me about is gone, and a new awesome professor who spends a majority of his time running around with antelope is teaching it instead. It's an AWESOME class. Surprisingly enough, it's also my only biology class (this and a lab). It is right up my ally, however, and it feels good to be so confident in knowing and learning the material. We're talking about tetrapods right now and, since I took mammalogy and aced it, I am way ahead of the game as we start talking about different skull types and prototherians verses metatherians verses eutherians. The class itself is fun because so many of my friends are in it (which I was really worried about) and also I have made new friends as well! The lab section that goes along with it is also really cool. It's basically a bunch of stations set up around the room with a different skeleton at each one that we can visit on our own time (within the three hours we have) and take notes on. So we can use our time as wisely or as unwisely as we want (for instance, I left two hours early this past Thursday to go to the football game). This past lab we looked at skeletons of all kinds of mammals, birds, and herps and our lab professor brought in his pet tortoise who wandered around the classroom and bonked into our ankles. He was adorable. I picked him up and, looking at him straight on, he looked super cross-eyed and incredibly confused. AWWWWW.





Next class if fiction writing. I'm excited for this class because A) the professor is not full of shit and B) she encourages us to peer review each other's stuff by praising and then realizing what we ourselves should do based on things the author did in his or her own story. Instead of bashing about grammar, plot, etc. I wrote that story I posted a couple of days ago for this class and it's one of my favorite things I've ever written, despite how short it is.

Tuesday/Thursday classes are the ones that have really interesting professors. My first class is natural disasters, which is terrifying to me. My number one fear as a child was NATURAL DISASTERS. So when I told people I was taking this class, naturally they thought I was an idiot. The professor is AMAZING though. She's this super tall, badass woman who has a short bob, glasses, and a really deep, husky voice. Part of me wonders if she was once a man, because her voice breaks when she's excited (like a prepubescent boy). When we were talking about Hurricane Irene, she told us that she was secretly rooting for the hurricane to landfall, since it hadn't happened in awhile, but she hoped it wouldn't kill too many people. Haha what??? She is so excited about all things natural disasters, it's crazy. At the end of our first day of class, she told us what she imagined would be the worst case scenario for an earthquake in SLC and at the end of it the entire class was just shell-shocked. I immediately thought WE ARE ALL FUCKED and proceeded to tell everyone about it. The class itself seems like it will be a good way to get this QI credit out of the way, though I may remain willfully ignorant by the end of it.



Pop culture and media comes next, and the professor for this is HILARIOUS. I usually never sit up front in classes, but in this one I sit directly in front of him and look up him admiringly. He's probably super creeped out by this. It is really creepy, I'm basically a fangirl. I really don't stop laughing in his classes, he's just so funny. He has this witty, sarcastic, almost mean humor that I thrive off of (considering most people in my life have this kind of humor). On the first day of class he made a comment about a type of baby formula. He said, "Your mom probably mixed it up for you. Or your dad. Or the wolf family that raised you." THAT'S ME!!! Anyways, basically he's hilarious and super suspicious of all new technology sensations and this class is his outlet for telling us how terrible they all are. Also about how the media is trying to cover up everything we're doing to our environment. Like this situation, which I drunkenly ranted about that entire night at the bar.



This is so important, everyone should watch this



This semester should be both bomb and cake, in that it will be entertaining and I'll like what I learn whilst I also earn good grades. Hurray!

Now if I could only stop feeling so shitty all the time.