A Long Time Ago in a Galaxy Far, Far Away...

Last night, as my friend and I were unloading and loading my dishwasher, my StormTrooper spatula popped out of nowhere.

"oh no," I thought! "My friend is going to think I am ridiculous."

He asks, "Is that a stormtrooper? Is it yours?"

I respond sheepishly that it was, and I explain quickly how I came to receive it.

Then he asked, "Have you read all the books?"

I again, sheepishly, respond in the positive. And then,

he announces that he OWNS all of them!

ALL OF THEM! This is beyond amazing and rather spectacular. This somewhat magnificent connection led us to discuss and dive into our pasts, ... our rather nerdy pasts. It was a blast, and a definite positive boost to my weekend.

Star Wars is great.

The Extended Universe is grand.

And I am glad (and extremely proud) that Star Wars is a part of my life. It makes me smile.

I mean a quote from one of the latter books is my email signature, Hello! It's great.

the Slap in the Face

For the past few days I've been in a funk. Falling deeper and deeper into, as Anne Shirley would say, the "depths of despair." Simply put, I've not been myself and I needed a slap in the face to kick me out of this disgusting, vile, horrible, feeling of which I want no part of.

So I got one!

And it hurt.

One of my best friends looked me square in my eyes and demanded me to tell him 5 great things about my life in payment for the one horrible thing I let lose on him. And I couldn't tell him more than a couple.

This is when I realized something desperately needed to change immediately. This was not me. I'm the person who can find the tiniest bit of joy in the most uncomfortable, horrible situations. For example:

* The cold, dark months of winter?

I get to wear scarves! and the world is a beautiful, snowy wonderland.

* Saying goodbye to the summer?

The colors of fall, the smell of the Earth, the crunching of the leaves. Pumpkin!

* School?

Oh my gosh, freshly sharpened pencils!!

See!! So what the crap is wrong with me!!! Some not so pleasant things pollute my life right now, and I lose myself in despair? My life is sad--BUT it's not wholly sad!

I have great friends. Emily! Toni! Ricky! Maria! Travis! ... and the list

could go on.

My mom and dad are spectacular, letting me raid their food storage

and giving me fresh tomatoes and peppers.

My little sister, Shelbs, makes me laugh.

I played tennis with my brother and sisters Monday. It was hilarious.

The weather is glorious.

The sun is shining.

Fall is on its way (with all that it brings)!

My friend made Pumpkin Chocolate Chip cookies the other day as

I did homework.

I have a job (well two) that I love.

Football just started and, oh my heavens, I'm stoked.

Financial aid has kept me alive.

I just made Crock-pot pizza.

Speaking of food, cooking brings me great joy and I love it!

I mean, Gumbo!, Bacon-wrapped Meatloaf! Enchiladas! Gosh, it's

fun.

Pickles are one of God's greatest creations.

Rubios's salsa is magnificent and should be illegal, it's so good.

My calling brings me great joy.

I am loved by many, including and most importantly my Father in

Heaven.

The Atonement is Real and I'm feeling its power more and more in my

life as the days pass by.

Honestly, my life is GRAND!

not perfect but when is it ever.

It's gonna take a while, and a cup of effort, to fully get out of this funk and to reintroduce myself to ... myself!

I love Life!

So, to help, once a week I'll be blogging about the great parts of my week! A type of therapy really. Why? To remind me of how purely wonderful my life truly is--no matter the gigantic rocks (yeah a rather dramatic word, but deal :) ) in my path. But, That's what makes life interesting anyway right, the rocks and turns and twists in our path?!

So, friend, thanks for the slap in the face. It was absolutely necessary.

TRuNky

trunky |trǝ ng ki|

adverb; having the inability to do anything due to a desire to jump into the beautiful future where one will rest from responsibility they deal with at the moment

I have 3 days left of class, and 9 days before Winter 2011 is officially over. I still have a pile of math homework due Monday. I have a 400 pg book I need to read before my History Final. I have a writing assignment I haven't even started due Wednesday. I have a Calculus Final in a week. But alas, I am super trunky.

Any sort of desire to propel me forward to accomplish that which lies ahead of me is gone. I can taste the sweetness of being finished and it's paralyzing my ability to encourage myself to do what needs to be done, to finish the semester by giving my all.

I can see the end. I can feel the release of pressure. It's so close.

But, I have to finish strong.

But, I don't wanna.

Lucky Me.

Sunday was the beginning. I sat on my couch and listened to a young man sing a song while playing his guitar. Honestly, I could stop with that sentence. Any girl who gets to listen to this young man play his guitar is a lucky one, but to show just how lucky I am, I will continue.

The next day would be Valentine's Day. The night before, Denver and I had been making Valentines for random people. In my little head, I thought, "I wonder if I'm gonna get a Valentine tomorrow." I just wondered. As Valentine's Day came to an end though, Denver showed me that he had planned on making my Valentine's Day spectacular.

At 7:40 am, I walked outside and was bombarded with red and white hearts on my door, and a gigantic envelope addressed to me. When I say gigantic, I mean gigantic. I promptly closed my front door, sat on my couch and opened my ginormous valentine. Lo and behold, it was a gigantic pop-up Valentine, with a 3d heart and everything! It made my day. I raced over to Denver's apartment, and the moment he opened the door, I enveloped him with the greatest hug. Then we went to school.

Then he went to work. I fell asleep in two of my 5 classes. As I reached my last class though, I had no idea that I would be wide awake for the rest of the day. I had bought some CornNuts at the vending machine, which I promptly dropped on the floor as I sat down in my last class. This made me slightly bumbed. As I had left the basement of the JFSB, I had received 3 text messages. One of which was from Denver asking me if my last class was at 3, which by itself did not cause me to wonder. As I sat down in my class (slightly noticing a red heart on the wall), he sent me another text asking if I happened to be in 112 TMCB. At this text, I'm pretty positive my face went as red as a tomato. All sorts of crazy thoughts entered my head. I asked him what he was doing, and he said Nothing but chem homework. So my heart calmed down a little.

Mid-way through my Fundamentals class as my professor was discussing mathematical induction, my eyes caught sight of the red heart on the wall again. This time, I decided to read what was written on it, it read, "If I were a flower growing wild and free All I'd want is you to be my sweet honey bee." A smile erupted on my face, and the people near me probably were thinking, "Why is she finding so much joy in induction." But alas, that is not what I was finding joy in. My mind was far far away from induction. My mind was fixated on that heart with very very familiar lyrics of a song that Denver introduced to me on Thursday and has been singing ever since. I instantly texted Denver saying, "Oh my freakin goodness! Are you calling me your sweet honey bee?!" To which he replied, "It's about time you noticed! I didn't want to have to spell it out for you. Yep, I sure am." Oh my oblivious self. Anyways, I couldn't stop smiling. I felt so loved.

If his goal was to keep me smiling, he achieved it with that red paper heart, but that was not the end. Yesterday, I got my hair colored. And let me just say, I am super happy that my hair is one color again. It feels great. Getting back to the story though, Mr Denver knew I was going to get my hair colored today and it just so happened that he knew the girl who was doing the color. As I sat there smiling away with Miss Amanda chatting about how amazing my day had been, I noticed someone had received some roses during the day. They were absolutely gorgeous. I thought, someone is a lucky woman like me, with a man who cares tremendously. The roses were soon forgotten though as Amanda washed my hair out, and blew dried it. It was heavenly. As I got up to pay Miss Amanda, she got a little twinkle in her eye. She handed me my receipt and the previously admired roses, announcing that someone had delivered them earlier for me! I was in disbelief! Amanda started jumping up and down, telling me to read the card. What an amazing fella Denver 'Do you Wanna Be my Valentine' Erickson is!

I left the hair salon spectacularly happy. I didn't deserve all of this! I needed to see this fella as soon as I possibly could. He was on campus, I had to go to the store with Shelby, but then finally I got to squeeze him tight and thank him hard core for making my day super happy. It wasn't done though, he made us crepes which were superb. (Then we had to do some homework) BUT THAT was even bearable. Smiling all day released so many endorphins into my system that I was wide awake and happy.

I got to end my day, by being super selfish, and holding the very tired man in my arms! And kissing him hard. Life was good.

Lucky me.

(I just needed to explain that my luck has definitely changed)

Biographical Sketch

So tonight I sat down and decided (well kind of had no choice) to apply for scholarships. They needed a 300 word biographical sketch.

Denver wrote mine for me.

Hello my name is Melissa. I like long walks on the beach and warm fires with a book to read. I particularly like young men whose names rhyme with enver. My favorite movie is the Lord of the Rings but what most people don’t know is that I have an affinity for westerns. When I grow up, I would like to go to Budapest and milk a goat.

I wonder what kind of scholarship money is going to come my way to help me out with my dream of milking a Budapestian goat.

a Boy's idea of Fun.

I never really had thought about the doings of the male sex in their free time. It had never crossed my mind that their idea of fun would be any different than that of mine. It had never crossed my mind that they could be so easily amused as like a cat is easily amused with a laser pointer. It had never, in a million years, crossed my mind that at a Ward Activity where professionally-made games were amply available, four young men would spend a good half hour amused by a cellphone.

---

It all started (at least this is where I'm putting the beginning) the first time a certain young man watched Inception, which perhaps is one of the best movies I saw in 2010. This young man seemed to also have really enjoyed this movie. If we think back to the movie, the characters used totems to pull them back into reality. The totem of Cobb being the last image we see before the screen blacks and the movie is over. Well this certain young man, let's just name him Denver, has a phone. This phone happens to be pretty well balanced, which he likes to boast about as he constantly pretends it is his totem. Anywhere, anytime, if the phone is near and a hard surface is close, Denver spins his phone and watches it. It doesn't ever seem to stop.

Are we in a dream?

Well last night, we had a ward activity. We had so many games on each table to choose from: Apples to Apples, Mario Kart, etc. As we were all slowly becoming full off of CostCo Pizza (which is delicious by the way), Denver realized he had his phone and a nice round table was sitting in front of him. The phone starts to spin. One by one the boys on the table become entranced by the sheer beauty of this well-balanced phone. Then one of them has a bright idea to see exactly how long it spins for, because it is indeed an unnaturally long time.

Thus the games created by professionals were quickly pushed to the side and the real man fun began. First, they just wanted to find out how long the phone spun. Then it became a competition of who had the best technique and could make it spin the longest. For awhile, the phone never reached a minute. But then Mr. Brian Bean broke a minute with the time 1 min 14 sec.

A record to be beaten!!!

Then, amazingly so, Mr. Brian Zundel spins out 1 min and 18 sec.

No matter what anyone tried they could not beat this well-deserving record of phone-spin. What a guy game. I was entranced. It was amazing to see how easily amused these 4 young men were with this spinning contraption.

And we know that a certain young man will continue to try to beat that record spin time...even if he's behind in chemistry.

I mean it is his phone, he's had more practice. He should have been the reigning champion.

---

And girls, don't get any smart ideas, it is a man game. I thought I'd join in on the fun, but only got a measly 44 sec. I don't know what it was but it most definitely is a guy thing. Or, it could have been the fact a certain young man blew at. But I'll leave it to the men.