Sunday, February 28, 2010

Mmm.

Well the news has stopped the constant coverage of the Chile quakes, though I've heard there are numerous big aftershocks going on. I keep being told not to worry, but I just think about it constantly. I'm sure the mission home is taking care of all the missionaries though. Still here I sit in my comfy home, watching TV and stuff, knowing that there's quite a different situation going on down there. The church released a statement that said all the Chile missionaries (not just the ones from her mission) are accounted for and safe - really quite amazing! I'm so glad. I just couldn't imagine the devastation. Anyway. Now we just wait for her email tomorrow. My heart really goes out to those who are affected by this tragedy.

Been thinking about the fact that we live on a huge fault line here on the Wasatch front. Been hearing about the projected "big one" since I was little. I think we are pretty well prepared for an emergency, much thanks to Geoff's dad for sending us that huge Emergency Essentials kit; still the thought is scary.

Saturday, February 27, 2010

Chile

Geoff and I picked Friday as the kick-off to our nasal spray detox - so we weren't sleeping well last night. Geoff was actually awake, watching TV, about 3:30 in the morning, when he saw CNN coverage of the earthquake in Chile. He woke me up to tell me, and my heart just sank into my stomach as he said the words. We called mom and dad, and sat, glued to the TV and scouring the internet, for the next 5 hours. Mom and dad tried calling the mission home, and then Salt Lake. They were told they should know something around 9 a.m. So they called back at 9 a.m. and were told they'd heard from all of the missions in Chile except for three- one of which was Alison's. So we waited another five hours, until finally we got word from Salt Lake that Rancagua had called, and all of the missionaries were accounted for and safe. Oh my, such relief I've never known in my life.

I hoped that the missionaries were rounded up and gathered in one place, I couldn't stand to think of her just wandering around with her companion, not knowing where to go. Then we got this email from her around 5 p.m.: "Hey! I am okay, we all are okay... so don´t worry!! I will write you all monday to tell ya the juicy details... But DON´T worry about a thing, everything is alright :) I Love you!... send this to dad and cali, I can´t write them right now"

So I'm so glad she contacted us and is doing fine. I was so sick with worry all day long. The reports kept saying it's the last official week of summer there, so I'm glad that they don't have to deal with snow and cold, at the very least. And she is far enough inland that they shouldn't have to deal with the tsunami's either, so we are lucky in that regard. But we've been told that they don't have phones or water, and electricity is questionable. (I guess she was able to email, so there must be some electricity.) They are located about 60 miles south of Santiago, so right between Santiago and the quake's epicenter, not far from Talca, which was all over the news.

I'm sure there will be a lot to do, the rest of her mission will be spent doing humanitarian work, but I just hope that she'll be able to get food and water and whatever supplies they will need. But I'm so grateful that she is okay and let us know she's okay.

Thursday, February 25, 2010

No real victories to toast

I am slowly climbing out of the chaos that followed year-end. My office is getting cleaned up and lingering projects are being checked off. Also, our house is mostly clean. It feels nice.

I don't know though, something doesn't feel right. What am I doing with my life? I just don't know. I know what I'm going to do, I have a plan, and it's a good plan. I just somehow feel like it doesn't matter what I do though, because to what end. To what end, to what end. I don't know, so it doesn't matter.

But it does matter, that's just the way I'm feelin' right now.

I just googled "To what end" and this is a song I've never heard, but the lyrics

Thrice: To What End

To what end do we
proceed so boldly
if all we are is
chemical reactions
and what world have you
so deftly sold me
if you reduce me
if I have no soul to touch

no heart to love
no evil to rise up above
no angels and no ghosts
no real victories to toast
if you believe that this is true
then I must ask
to what end do you proceed?

NO FIRE IN OUR EYES
NO STEEL IN OUR HEARTS
NO MAGIC IN OUR SONGS
ARE WE JUST EMPTY VESSELS

and you tell me...
I have no soul to touch
no heart to love
no evil to rise up above
no angels and no ghosts
no real victories to toast
if you believe that this is true
then I must ask
to what end do you proceed?

Did I not feel your love?
Did I not feel your hate?
And did my heart not beat
and did MY HEART NOT BREAK?
And are these tears for naught
and are these worlds in vain
if this is all we are then what
HAVE WE TO GAIN!
What of all the art and books
music and poetry
What of all our memories
What of OUR HOPES AND DREAMS!
They hold no value then
We hold no faith but greed
So I must ask you
to what end do we proceed?

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Sleepy town

At home on lunch break. Sort of just sitting on me arse and fighting sleep. Yawn. :)

Remember that cartoon called Sleepy Town? Or was it Busy Town? (Chris Farley: "You, ya, ya 'member that? You 'member that? That was cool.)

So tired.

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

La de da

Yesterday was a little crazy - went to work, then went to my other work on my lunch break, then went back to work, then went back to my other work after work, then went to a 7:00 appointment. And all I ate all day long were cookies and pringles, since it was all I had with me. Was soooo sick by the time I got home, but all well. I prefer not to do the going back and forth thing, but it might have to be that way until I get more comfortable with stuff - which hopefully shouldn't be too much longer. It's not like it's every day, and my trainer at the new job has been soooooo awesome to work with me and my schedule weirdness.

Well I made three CS compilations for mom... more than one but better than seven. I split them into Christian rock, soft rock, and hard rock.

Decided to spend a little of that $$ on a new gym pass, and gym clothes/shoes which were needed. My friend totally hooked me up with a great deal too, it was nice of her. I went with mom and dad down in SF last weekend. Hope to go tonight.

I'm not complaining about my job - I know how lucky I am - I've just decided that dealing with other people's tax problems is not fun at all... just, for future reference...

But the sun is out, so it's a happy day.

My 5th grade teacher added me as a friend on facebook. My favoritest teacher I've ever had! My best friend, Kim, and I had the class together, and we were definitely the teacher's pets; that's just how we were. But that whole 5th grade experience lives on in my memory as good times - I even wrote a paper about it when I got a little older. That year/age was probably the highlight of our whole Pleasant Grove existence, I miss it sometimes.

Sunday, February 21, 2010

Collective Soul shares my initials! I am so special.

Last summer, mom and dad went to a Young Dubliners concert in Denver, and they loved it so much, they bought us tickets to the next concert so we could experience it too. (It's on March 6th - my dad asks every couple of weeks if we're still planning on going. :) So I've been listening up, getting familiar with them and they're pretty good. I mentioned to mom that they've opened for Collective Soul before, and she asked if I'd make a CD of my favorite CS songs for her, since she'd probably like them. !! I love to spread around Collective Soul joy. The only problem is, I may have a hard time not making like, seven CDs of favorite songs for her - since I seem to get lost in every song I hear, every time I hear it. Collective Soul makes me so happy.

Friday, February 19, 2010

The ramalama ding dong

I feel like the really shizzy parts of adulthood are happening and I can't do anything to stop it - I heard a song at the gas station that brought back childhood memories, specifically choir (who put the bomp in the bomp-ba-bomp-ba-bomp), and I missed being a kid. Gosh wouldn't it be great if I could just have no real troubles and cry about wanting donuts instead?

Though I'm sure everyone says that at whatever stage of life they may be. I should really just appreciate being young and having a functioning body and mind.

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Donuts: a life or death situation

Waiting at a red left turn tonight, a car pulled up behind me and I heard a little kid screaming at the top of his lungs, even though my windows were up. It alarmed me because I thought the kid was being kidnapped and was trying to alert someone to the situation. He was screaming the same thing over and over, and finally I was able to discern the words admidst the crying fit of rage:

"I WANT DONUTS!!"

Oh. Wow that kid really really really wanted donuts. Boy if I was that kid's mom I'd smack him. (child abuse!) Okay then I'd ground him hard. For a long long time. Unless he had some sort of mental disability wherin he was unable to control himself, then that would just be mean.

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

This cheese pizza ruined my life a lil

Recently, my sister in law posted this on facebook:

Apparently the cheese pizza at Olive Garden is not good cause Nicholas took a bite, made a face and stated "this cheese pizza ruined my life a lil."

Ha ha! Oh my gosh that cracked me up!!

Also, someone posted about mis-heard lyrics, and someone else's kids had thought the words to Alanis Morissette's song You Oughta Know were, "and the cross-eyed baby you gave to me." Ha ha!! It reminds me of when my friend thought the words to N*Sync's Bye Bye Bye were "shimney-himney." (I think it's like, "cuz you may need me" or something - it is hard to understand). Or another friend thought Macy Gray's I Try were "I blow bubbles when you are not near." So funny! I'm sure I've had a few of my own, just can't think of them now.

Monday, February 15, 2010

Worst Week Of My Entire Life. Don't know how much I should really say but I'll leave it at that.

Sunday, February 14, 2010

Hermana Jones

I miss my little sister!!! I'm sure home is the furthest thing from her mind, but we back here are missing her quite a lot! Only 2.5 more months and she'll be home!


Friday, February 12, 2010

I guess the night is mine

At the end of the workday today one of my bosses handed me a very generous graduation gift. Who does that? Especially when they helped pay for the schooling? They are so awesome. I'm really so blessed to work for them... I got so lucky 3.5 years ago when I applied for a little job there. (Well, no job is "little" but I mean to say the whole experience was unknown to me at the time). I'm really tempted to just go spend it on something cool, vs. putting it in savings. Hmm what would be the best decision? Part of me wants to be spontaneous and go buy a new car. The rest of me says that would be a mistake and would feel bad later. Hmmm... maybe a Nintendo Wii with the Mario Cart gettup. Hmmm...

So I am on my own this weekend. Do I clean the house? Do I take myself out for dinner? Go shopping? Tomorrow I'm meeting a girlfriend for a movie. Other than that, I am going to not be a mush puddle anymore, whatever else.

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Who's in second place now, eh?

Well, my tie for second junkiest car has gone and bought himself a brand new car, leaving the title all to me. He even bought one of the cars that I've been thinking I wouldn't mind driving, if we were in the mode of car-shopping. But my current car is still working great for now.
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Today on my lunch I met with the people who I'll be working very part-time for at their office. The system set up seems a little complicated to someone who has never seen it before (me) but I'm sure once I get going it will be fine.
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Bought a GMAT Quantitative study book - like a review on the basic Jr. High math skills... it's really sad.
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Dinner and back to bed tonight.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

:(

I'm so down today. All I want is bed.

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Schools

Tonight I drove an hour up to the University of Utah campus to go to a one-hour information session about David Eccles School of Business and the programs they offer, specifically the MAcc. While I was sitting there taking notes, a wave of warm fuzzies washed over me for a few moments. I don't get these feelings often, and I do believe they mean something. I really felt then and there that this school would be a good pursuit for me. There are still a lot of unknowns - for example, my GMAT score - but if I do get accepted there, I know it will be a good choice. The other big unknown besides my GMAT score is whether or not they will accept me even though I don't have all the prerequisites. The people at the presentation didn't know for sure if it was required, and suggested that I might be able to integrate them as part of the program, but I need to call the advisor to find out. So I will try to do that tomorrow. If it supposed to work out with that school, then it will.

While I obviously can't interpret the mind of the Lord, or even presume to know His thoughts, I wouldn't think that it would matter too much which school I choose, as long as my pursuit is of something good and wholesome. What does matter, I think, is the circumstance that it will place Geoff and I in. Because the other school on my radar right now is UNLV, and mainly because they don't have prerequisite requirements, you only need a bachelor's degree (and I would absolutely not complain about living in the lovely Las Vegas climate). But if I went to UNLV, Geoff and I would be living apart for at least 4 months... or longer, if he ends up not going to school down there. So that is very important to think about too. I think it could be doable, because I know someone who has been commuting between Utah County and Las Vegas for work for years. I also knew someone who stayed at our company to work while her husband did a 4-month internship in Arizona. She said she loved it because it was so exciting to go visit him every couple of weeks. But everyone is different.

Monday, February 8, 2010

Duh... it's the remote

I think we finally figured out what has been making that crackling noise in the bedroom all this time.
Geoff noticed that if you hold it in your hand and squeeze, it makes the noises. And since we don't have nightstands, we usually just drop it on the floor at night, which explains why we hear it coming from different parts of the room all the time. I don't know why it crackles when no one is touching it, but it doesn't seem that far-fetched to me. So anyway. I'm letting Nolan off the hook for this one. :)

Sunday, February 7, 2010

An ounce of patience is worth a bushel of brains

Well we have mostly lived up to our goal of being lazy except for laundry this weekend. We ventured out to the grocery store, to church, and to mom and dad's this evening for the superbowl. Mom, Danielle and I played Farkle while not really watching the game... and we visited of course. It was nice. I slept until noon on Saturday, which I can't even remember the last time I slept that late. Yay sleep!

Today I read a book called "Take Two Chocolates and Call Me in the Morning," by Emily Watts. It was an easy, entertaining read. It's been about a year since I've picked up a self-help book. I read that one person drinking in self-help books while the other has virtually no interest is evidence of codependency, so I've stopped worrying about it and then actually read lots of books that I really enjoyed; most of them I borrowed from a work friend, and mostly fiction, fun books.

But last week in our human-performance meeting we were asked to think of something about our job performance or the way other people perceive us that we'd like to change. I had noticed that I can become snappy and impatient when I'm very stressed or frustrated, which has been quite a lot in the last month. I don't think I've bitten anyone's head off or anything (well I might've done it to someone somewhere who I'll never speak to again, and should probably feel more bad about it than I do?), but I know that my tone can become harder, shorter, and generally less inviting. So that's what I wanted to change. Geoff announced he was heading to the library, so I asked him to find me a book on self-calming techniques or patience or something, and that's one of the books he brought back. I recommend it to anyone who is feeling stressed out with life in general because there's a lot of good stuff in it.

Anyway, I'm hoping to get a lot done this next week, and then I was given next Monday off, so it'll be an awesome three-day weekend. Very much looking forward to it.

Friday, February 5, 2010

Hi, this is me, is that you?

Some. tax. authorities. That's all I'm sayin'.


That person hasn't called me back to set up a meeting yet, regarding the part-time job. I hope she does... though I wondered a little, who gets this excited about doing extra work? Maybe I'm just happy to get outside of my payroll tax bubble again, and make a few extra bucks while doing it!
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For our date night tonight we're taking it easy and making rice krispie treats at home. I need a weekend of rest and staying home. I plan to do laundry and that's it. And make treats of course.

Thursday, February 4, 2010

Great-grandpa

I went down to grandma's after work today, to say hi and show her how to log in to my blog. I brought her and Donald some cake bites from the Sweet Tooth Fairy yummmmmm they are so good. It was great visiting with them, I love my grandma so much.

A local paper recently did a story on my grandma's parents and their influence on the city, and they also did one on Donald's family. Grandma showed them to me, and I learned that my great-grandpa, Heber Jones, was the mayor of Payson city and also had a beautiful bass singing voice. I didn't know that stuff! I was shocked I was to realize how little I know about him and great-grandma, Fannie. Grandma dug out a packet of paper for me, "A Personal History of William Heber Jones," written by himself at age 75. It's only 11 pages long and was typed on a type-writer by my mom a long time ago. I didn't know this booklet existed! Oh well, I really look forward to learning more about my great-grandpa. I'm sure he wrote it with that idea in mind.

I'm not much of a family-history person; the whole process of gathering info. just seems so ambiguous that I've never made much of an effort at it. This is really, really cool though.

Oh by the way, this "Jones" lineage comes from my mom's side. Yep, my grandma was a Jones who married a Boyack, then she had my mom who was a Boyack and married a Jones. So my grandma's on my mom's sides name is Alice Jones, and also I think I have a great-grandma on my dad's side whose name was Alice Jones. Also, on my dad's side, my grandma (who was married to a Jones of course, then married a Bingham some time later), had their kids who are Jones's, and my cousin, Sarah Jones, also married a Bingham, and they named their daughter Alice. I think there are more twists but that's all I know of.

Caffeinated kitty


New job

It looks like I might be getting a part-time job! I can pick my own hours so it will be evenings/weekends, since I'm keeping my current job too. I'm kind of excited for it! I'll be meeting with someone soon to find out for sure. Fun!

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

All the stars and bleeding hearts

I feel emo today.

Life is funny.

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Instant cold, my foot

We are private! Yay! I think I did it right, at least I know mom was able to get signed in! :) I know this blog is not much - I'm pretty sure most of the stuff in it is a serious DORK pronouncement, but thanks for sending me your emails!!! :)

I love this Vanilla Twilight song - it has a lot of warmth, I think.

Geoff twisted his ankle pretty badly today, so I went to buy some instant cold-packs at Wal-mart. It took us a half hour to get the damn things triggered! We squeezed until we were almost blue, ha! What wimps!

The last few days have brought some reflection. I think I might have a little more understanding now, of Geoff's need to be alone every once in awhile. I remember one Friday night when we'd known each other only months, I waited for him to call so we could go hang out and he never did. Later he said he'd gone to the movies, by himself. I took it pretty personally, thinking something was quite wrong with us. It did not make any sense to me. But I have enjoyed spending a little bit of alone time recently. It is kind of nice.

Monday, February 1, 2010

Going private Feb. 2nd or 3rd

Please send me your email address so I can add ya as a reader! I really hate that I'm going private - when other people go private, I usually stop reading their blogs, or checking them regularly anyway. So I don't blame anyone for doing the same with me, although I really hope to continue the same friendships even though it's a huge hassle to have to sign in!

In our staff meeting today, they introduced a new blogging policy, which would follow the same basic rules as the non-disclosure we sign. They said if we blog about the company, we have to include a disclaimer that we are not representing or speaking for the company in any way, even though that's not a complete catch-all. I've been very careful to never mention the name of the company I work for, the names or situations of our clients, and I rarely use any coworker's names unless they are readers and leave an occasional comment anyway. And 99% of what I post about work is positive. However, my job is a big part of my life and I don't want to give them any reason to get rid of me at this point. So that's why I'm going private.

Along the same lines, my job is a big part of my life, so I don't just want to stop blogging about it. In ten years, I want to look back and be able to see what fueled my decisions and what made me who I am and blah blah - and if I have to leave such things out of my blog then there's really no purpose in having one.

So anyway, it sucks, but I will do it until my employment there has ended. So, please send me your email address if you'd like to continue reading! If you don't want to post it online, my personal email address is calileo2002@hotmail.com.

Thanks!

PS - I meant to add that I totally understand where they're coming from, no hard feelings or anything. :)