A look at a classic

Comedy doesn't come better than this.

How to break the ice

Have you ever been in the situation where you need to get to know someone right away? When finding common ground is not only desired but absolutely essential?

Well, in my hunt for housing closer to work, I found a pair of sisters who needed a roommate to help offset the cost of an apartment they wanted to rent. Today we met one another for the first time when handing in our applications.

We stood around outside the apartment chatting for awhile about important things, like whether Twilight is stupid.

For some reason, when that book is mentioned, the next logical step in the pop culture discussion is to bring up Zac Efron. Because he just hotter than Rober Pattinson. These are the facts, people, and it's my civic and moral duty to defend the truth.

Well, a 26-year-old female college graduate with the beginnings of a career admitting to a significant crush on the kid who makes tweens swoon tends to have a polarizing outcome. These girls, who I just met, would think I was either truly insane or in posession of excellent taste.

The way their eyes lit up at the mere mention of Zac Efron and the ensuing squeals of "we do too!" meant that they thought the latter. Even better? From here on out, I can be totally confident in being myself.

The moral of this story? Part of my "going all in" philosophy on life includes putting myself out there, warts and all, so that people know what they're getting. And sharing something mildly embarrassing is the perfect way to break that ice.

http://www.meandorsonwellesthemovie.com/

I love my dad...he's my dad!

We used to say that a lot. There was some lame commercial with this little kid on it and the tagline was "I love my pediatrician...he's my dad!" Or maybe it was the other way around.

Anyway, I do love my dad. And after a scary bike accident, he still has a great smile on his face. (Trust me. That's a smile, not a grimace. At least, I think it is. He's been practicing distinguishing the two.)


Really though, I'm so relieved you'll be okay, Daddy! Just think of what the potential scars will do for your rugged good looks. Your brothers will be jealous.

I love you!

Filing made fun and fancy

There was this one time when I went to Staples to find a microphone headset for my computer, and found these instead:


These lovelies are part of the new (to me) M by Staples line from that one competitor of Dunder Mifflin.

To know me is to know that I have piles of stuff. All kinds of piles of all kinds of stuff. Well, some of that stuff is now tucked away into one of seven neatly labeled folders that I think are simply a pleasure to look at.

Also available through M by Staples: These houndstooth journals that I think are to die for.

Ukraine's got talent (and isn't at all weak)

Today's Movie Monday is brought to you by Mom (and is wicked, crazy, out of control).

Hey Smalls, you wanna S'more?

One of my favorite things about camping is delicious, fire roasted food. So, imagine my disappointment when my two most recent camping trips fell through. Well, on Monday, I stopped off at home to share the joy of my first day of work, and wouldn't you know, my parents had a fire in the fire pit out back, all prepped and ready to go for some tasty hot dog roasting.

Now, before I get to the next part, I have to explain something. I hope my mother doesn't get embarrassed, but for as long as I can remember, she has been supremely health-conscious. When it comes to restraint born out of sheer willpower, she is unsurpassed. I respect and admire her for this, and I'm sure I'm sometimes a source of frustration for her because I'm never as careful as I should be when it comes to food.

That being said, she deserves all credit for this masterpiece:


You're thinking, what? You believe your mother invented the s'more?

Of course she didn't.

Let me explain. A month or so ago, my mother wasn't a huge fan of s'mores. She liked marshmallows okay, the roastier the better. Then, one fateful evening, she had some women from her neighborhood over for a ladies night and they roasted marshmallows around the fire while chatting and laughing and thoroughly enjoying themselves.

My mother's fire pit (yes, it was a birthday present) is made up of a metal ring, with stacked bricks around it. It's really quite a lovely addition to the back yard. Well, in a fit of inspired brilliance, Mom discovered that if you set a graham cracker on the metal ring, and set your chunk o' chocolate on top of that, the chocolate gets deliciously melty while the 'mallow is roasting.

I regret not having a camera to capture the expression of sheer delight on her face when she was telling me about this later.

"Guess how many s'mores I had..."

"I dunno, one--"

"Three!!!"

So, on Monday, I tried out this new, patent-pending technique. You know how sometimes the chocolate is too hard or cold and you can't bite through all of the layers of a s'more without the whole thing crumbling? Problem solved. The tricky thing now is figuring out what do with all the melty goodness. I, for one, got chocolate all over me.

Not a problem I ever mind having.

Next week on Foodie Friday: Blaming my father for my salmon snobbery and love of goat cheese.

Thought(less) Thursday

So one time (like two months ago) my dad and sister were completely shocked to discover that "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" and "The ABC Song" were actually the same tune. Until that moment, they had gone their whole lives not knowing this.

I made fun of them.

Imagine my embarrassment when I wandered into Albertson's for some lunch yesterday and it dawned on me that "deli" is short for "delicatessen."

Don't worry, Pop and Sis, I made fun of myself.

What about you? Any sort of silly things you probably should have known a long time ago but for whatever reason just figured them out?

...Over an open field...

After a year in the "big city," I'm headed back to "small town" life.


Not too shabby, eh?

(I don't think one town is necessarily big, or the other necessarily small, but illustrated my point, no? Pictures were taken on that one road that leads to Utah Lake.)

Dress code, and other perks

Here is a list of my new job's pros and cons. Consider the pros "treats" if you will.

Pros:

• Wearing jeans to work is wonderful.
• Reading novels is part of my job description.
• Working on a Mac means I can have Firefox, InDesign, and iTunes running simultaneously without my computer crashing.
  
• Having my novel (which is yet to be written) published just became a real possibility.
• Relocating to a place filled with friends and family I have missed dearly will happen soon.

Cons:

• I left my house at 6:15 this morning. Seriously folks. To know me is to know that is crazy talk.
• Gone are the days of going home and watching a lunch-time episode of Gilmore Girls.
• My commute jumped from 3 minutes to over an hour.
• I must leave my lovely home and roommate next month, not to mention a city I adore.

Happy first day of work!

Today's movie is brought to you by Mallory, and it was brought to her by Aunt Debi.



I love grammar. And I love Al.

Me and Lorelei or, the BBC 100 Books Meme

I spent far too much time trying to rip a clip from the episode of Gilmore Girls that aired today. Lorelei pretends to be a book editor while making small talk with some guests at the world's most heinous bed and breakfast. So here's what they say:

Lorelai: I published Good Night Spoon... and the Horse that wanted to Bark.

Guest: Oh, I've read to my grandson! The horse really wanted to bark, and it finally does, and... (to Lorelai) How does it end?


Lorelai: It dies.


Rory: But... the horse learned to bark and achieved its goal, so it was really a happy ending!


Well, Lorelei Gilmore is merely a pretend person who pretended to be a book editor. I, on the other hand, am a real person who really is a book editor! This week I was offered a position at a tiny little publisher down in Springville, Utah. I'm so excited, and I feel so blessed to be able to work in my chosen profession.

However, since it is Thoughts for Thursday and I feel like I ought to prove to the world that I do more than watch Gilmore Girls, I will now try and prove that I am worth my salt as a reader.

I lifted this from a friend's blog, who in turn lifted it from a friend's blog. Also, my sister also did this on facebook.

"The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?”
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen X (So many times. Sooooo many times.)
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien X
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte X
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling X
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee X
6 The Bible X (I'm pretty sure I've read it all. I took Bible as Lit and went to seminary.)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte X
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell X (I'm really surprised that you haven't read this, Rachel.)
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman X
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens X
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott X
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy X
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien X
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot X
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell X
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald (My cousin's favorite book. I own it and it's on my list.)
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams X
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis X
34 Emma - Jane Austen X
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen X (Right now, it's tied with P&P for my favorite story.)
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis X
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini X
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden X
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown X
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery X
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding X (One of my least favorite books that I had to read every year from 8th to 10th grade.)
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan X
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel (I've borrowed it from one of my sisters. It is swimming in the sea of books next to my bed.)
52 Dune - Frank Herbert (I remember that one of my sisters used to LOVE this book.)
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen X
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens X (I think I did. I may of fudged my way through it in high school.)
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley X
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens X
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett X
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno – Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White X
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery X
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare X
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory X
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
TOTAL: 35. Now, I have a degree in English, but last I heard, 35 was more than 6. I think I'm in possession of at least 5 more, so I'll keep on going.

Sometimes, a girl has got to twirl.

For example, when a girl finds out SHE GOT THE JOB SHE ALWAYS WANTED, it's definitely one of those times.

Triple Treat Tuesday

I feel like I need to confess: sometimes, I miss a day. So I cheat, and under "post options" put the date it was supposed to show up. So before you blame your RSS reader, blame me.

Because I'm mildly late posting this, I decided to give you not one but three treats this week.

Here are a few of my favorite things:

1. My Pride & Prejudice bracelets from brookish.
2. My earrings from Jenna via Calla Lily Jewelry.
3. My earthenware jar from my visiting teachers in my Lehi branch.

Bonus Treat:
My damask drapery from my roommate, Maren via Target.

Movie Monday, part II (i.e. no video)

This weekend has been a bit of a whirlwind. Applying/interviewing for a job I really want, having my computer (in other words, my entire life) potentially crap out on me, preparing/teaching a Relief Society lesson, and a lot of back-and-forthing among Salt Lake City, Provo, Springville and Lehi.

However, there were great things that happened:

• Watching North & South with roommates (and might-as-well-have-been roommates) past, all while drinking delicious teas and eating scones, salads, cold sandwiches, sorbets and every good thing. Seriously. If you or someone you love has a Netflix account, steal the password and watch it On Demand. Right now.
• Watching Julie and Julia. I already blogged about it. In fact, it was so recent, I'm not even going to take the trouble of linking to the post.
• Watching Psych while eating delicious pineapple salsa and Pineapple Punch Bowl Surprise. You know, the kind where you mix pineapple juice and a soda of some sort and then dump pineapple sherbet in and then it all foams up and melts together? It was very popular on the LDS Wedding Reception Circuit circa 1990-1998. Anyway, fabulous.

Did you watch anything worthwhile this weekend?

Her Morning Elegance

I'll admit it: when I first thought of Movie Mondays, this was the video that came to mind. I don't remember if I've posted it on this blog, but I just think it's glorious.



P.S. The interview process for the book editor position is going well. So, those of you in support of me, keep doing what you're doing! Thank you!!

Foodie Fridays

Paul: What is it that you really love to do?
Julia: Eat!
Paul: And you are so good at it!
Meryl Streep and Stanley Tucci, Julie and Julia.
I was actually going to talk about something entirely different today, but when good ol' Mallory offered to treat me to a post-interview celebratory movie watch (I think the interview went really well), how could I talk about anything else on this, the First Foodie Friday?



Aside from the fact that watching Meryl Streep act is like looking at fine art, and that this movie also featured Stanley Tucci, Amy Adams, and a delightful cameo by Jane Lynch, the unsung character in the movie was all the delectable food. And Paris. I want to go to there.

Now, I don't know a lot about Julia Child, but the woman portrayed in the movie was one who finds joy in food, family, people, and life, and it was wonderful to see. Now, I'm trying to decide what I can go cook in three cubes of butter.

Answer? Anything.

Thoughts for Thursdays

Okay, Thursdays are going to be something slightly more academic: an article that I found interesting, an essay, perhaps a book review. However, today, it's only a link to an article I found interesting. It's an article about the sordid history of the Times New Roman font. Who knew such a boring and common font had such a potentially controversial history? I initially had more to say, but it got preempted by more exciting news:

I have an actual interview, with an actual publisher to be an actual editor.

I know! Who'd have thunk that the English major might actually get a job in her chosen field of study!

People say that you shouldn't get your hopes up. I say tosh to that. All of my hopes are so far up that it will be nothing short of a spectacular let down if things don't work out, but I've survived spectacular let downs in the past, with the help of my friends Ben and Jerry. I'm just the type of girl who goes all in, no matter what. It's a better way to live, if you ask me. Try it some time.

Anyway, wish me luck, pray for me, whatever you feel comfortable doing. Thanks!

Like father, like daughter

I can't believe it's Wednesday already! I can't believe I know it's Wednesday! So, the theme I'm playing with for Hump Day is Wordless Wednesday. My initial thinking was that I would post an original photograph or design to get us through the Midweek Blues. However, I'm only going to call it Wordless. It will very rarely actually be wordless. Let's face it. I love me some typography. I love to play with fonts and words play such a prominent role in my designs that it's difficult to not have them.

Also, since I'm such a budding artist, I'm afraid unless I label things "tree" and "apple" you'll wonder what those white blobby things are.

Anyway, Wednesdays won't be super Wordless on account of I will feel it necessary to explain myself every now and again. For example, today's image is brought to you by The Welton Family. My mother often reminds me that I am uncannily like my father. And when she does, I'm not always convinced she's talking about our stunning good looks, brilliant minds, quick wits and tender hearts (all of which I come by honestly from both my parents). Mostly it's how we both forget to turn off the stove/oven, and how we both come up with the same excuse: "You took the food out of the oven, Mom/Susan. You should have turned it off."

Lately, certain members of my family have taken to calling me "The Apple." They say it's because the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. I say it's because I'm the apple of my father's eye.

But either way, cool idea for Daddy/Daughter T-Shirts, no?

Damask! Fonts! Love!

Today's Treats for Tuesdays (My themed days are all alliterative. Go with it.) is brought to you by my dearest friend (the fact that she's also my cousin is just bonus-filled icing on the cake) Mallory. Read about her here and for a little while here. Anyway, Mallory knows of my love for all things damask. She knows about my special "damask gasp" and often convinces me to buy damask things from Target.

Mallory also loves fonts, I'd say even more than I do. She's my go-to gal who always has the answer to the question: "What font should I use for.....?"

Last week, she shared this with me.

For those of you who may have been too lazy/busy/scared of clicking on the link, it's a page on dafont.com. It's a DOWNLOADABLE DAMASK FONT! Don't worry, I won't resort to typing all damask-coded blog entries (though don't think I don't want to, because I DO) but this has opened all sorts of doors for designing delightful damask things.

Some examples of the font:


Image courtesy of dafont.com

What now?

A month ago, I went to work, because I had a job. Before the day was out, I didn't have a job. It happened just that fast.

And now a month has literally flown by. I've been writing cover letters and filling out applications like it's going out of style. I know I'm not alone in this situation, and I take comfort in the fact that people can honestly say they know how I feel. I would feel even better if we all were going out to our celebratory "WE FOUND JOBS" dinner.

Granted, it's easy to get cabin fever, or to spend the day watching tween shows on Disney Channel, or to sleep in much too late, or do similar less than worthwhile things.

Some days are harder than others.

Some days, I just ask, "What now?"

So, I decided I need a creative outlet. My mother tells me that I'm a passionate person. I truly love all sorts of different things: movies, treasures/trinkets (think anything damask), beautiful artwork, learning, food, the Gospel, people, etc. And until I find a livelihood that incorporates some or all of these things, I'm just going to use this blog. From now on, not only will I be posting EVERY DAY (and sometimes even twice!) I will be instituting themes for every day.

For example: Movie Mondays. I find that I post a lot of video on this blog. Movie trailers, TV clips, something viral that I saw on my Google Reader, etc. Now I will be posting these movies on Mondays.

Ahem.

I was catching up on one of my favorite blogs, Pop Candy, which led me to this article, which basically says that British people are funny, and here are ten British movies you ought to see.

One such movie is Son of Rambow, which is worth adding to your Netflix queue.



And there you have it. Movie Monday.