Remember?

i posted about State S&E last year, i think. my little blog is growing up. :)

Anyways, we went to State Solo & Ensemble this past weekend for X-Press in Lone Peak. i went with the group as a whole, also as part of a smaller group of four girls and we sang "Weep No More" by David N. Childs. Look it up... it's freaking sweet. We were accompanied by Mrs. Terry, because she's AWESOME and can do that! So we went up north on Friday night, got peed on by the bus (it was rainy and our bus was leaky... i happened to choose one of the 4 seats that got leaked on the worst.), then got to our bad-a hotel. See, we'd gotten rooms at the Fairfield Inn, but they overbooked and moved us to the Residence Inn, where we got like 2 room suites that had 2 flatscreens and nice, NICE beds. It was awesome! I roomed with Carley, Chelsea, and LaRisa, and we occupied ourselves by watching CSI:Miami and working on Extra Credit for our college class. Oh, and we'd planned on baking cookies in our hotel room, but here's the thing: there was no oven. So we ended up just eating the cookie dough, which was fine by me. :)
Saturday morning, the 4 of us got up at like 7:30 and headed down to breakfast makeup-less and shoeless. When we got back to our room, we discovered that our key was broken. We then lost 10 minutes while Carley and Chelsea ran to the front desk to get us a new one, which is why we ended up being 4 minutes late for the bus. (i didn't even do my makeup in the hotel, i did it on the bus and at the high school.) I did have an unfortunate incident on the way from the hotel to the bus. i was wearing flip flops and the parking lot was wet, when i felt something wet in my shoe. i said this out loud to Carley and Chelsea: "i think there's something wet in my shoe." Chelsea: "It's probably water." Me: "Nahhh, i'm pretty sure it's solid..." i checked, and there was a half-smashed worm on my shoe. Yucky yucky yucky. So due to the worm and the defective key, i was 4 minutes late to get on the bus and i had to give Mrs. Terry my very last dollar.
We did eventually get to the high school, but my little group wasn't scheduled to sing until like 1, and we got there at like... 9:30. So we all had to pass time by trying to watch a movie, going to Wal Mart, getting welts (it is Tuesday night, and i still have a mark from a welt i got on Saturday morning), etc. I was lucky enough to be able to have Keith and Rachelle come hear me sing! They got to hear me sing "Weep No More", and in X-Press as a whole. That was neat... plus, they brought me treats. :) At the end of the day, we found out that Weep No More got a 1- (music competition equivalent of an A-, which isn't bad considering it's State) and X-Press got a 2+ (or B+... meh.) with "Cantate Domino", "Ave Maria", and "Majesty and Glory of Your Name". i still think we deserved better than that, but what do i know? i'm just a lowly singer.
the trip home was relatively uneventful. i listened to Dane Cook with Chelsea on her iPod, and i literally almost peed my pants at one point, because i had to go to the bathroom anyways, plus there was water leaking everywhere, and we were listening to one thing by him about public restrooms that made us laugh so hard we couldn't breathe. "why is it in public bathrooms everything is wet? like, does a shaggy dog just go in there after a bath and shower the place? and heaven forbid you have to use the stall. it's like all stall doors have been kicked in by Van Damm. who just goes in a bathroom and says 'man i gotta go to the bathroom, but i can't do it in a perfect cube. BAM BAM BAM BAM oh that's better.'" bahahahahhaha i was dying. oh, and later on the way home, i was sitting at my seat at a rest stop when everyone got off to get treats, but i figured since i had no money, there was no point in getting off. but then Mrs. Terry came back and handed me $2. i asked her what for, and she said "Because you're poor and you never get treats." which is sad, but absolutely true. i about cried! i love that lady lots. haha
sorry if this is really scatterbrained, but i'm not very good at typing formal blogs about actual events... my favorites are the ones that come out of nowhere. but basically, i just wanted to fill you in on State Solo & Ensemble. State Large Group is coming up, which should also be an adventure. just do me a favor and pray that if it rains, we don't get bus #208. :(

ACT=Satan

and in case you were wondering, i got my ACT scores back from that time i took it on like 4 hours of sleep.

Composite score: 24
English: 28
Mathematics: 22
Reading: 24
Science: 21

and i personally think that science score is incredible, because by the time i reached that portion, i was way too tired (and confused) to even worry about reading the questions at all. i mean come on... each question took an entire page to explain... why would i spend time reading it when i could just make patterns on my bubble sheet? so anyways, yeah. those are my scores. obviously, i will be taking it again. and again. and maybe again.

WE LOVE ZIOM!

yeah yeah yeah... the shirts are supposed to say "ZION!" but apparently i write my "N"s retarded, so everyone was asking us what "ZIOM" is.

that, however, is not the point. this post is dedicated to... ready for it?...

SADIE HAWKIN'S '09!

oh the adventures we had... :) our day ("our" being the me, Risa, Chanelle, Carley, kind of Chelsea, Mark, and Tyrell) actually started at like 11:00 on Friday. we'd gotten home at like 10:15 from a softball game in Parowan, then i went to LaRisa's house to work on a college assignment that was due at midnight. i got it sent in at like 10:55, then i took Carley to Mark's house while Risa and Chanelle went to Tyrell's house. see, the deal with Sadie's is that you're not suppose to just ask a boy to go with you. you have to buy a piece of paper with a string on it, chase them around, and put it around their neck to "tag" them as your date. lame, i know. i tagged my date (Dason Ott) on the bus back from Parowan because i really wasn't up to chasing anyone. haha anyways, Carley and i had an especially awkward experience asking Mark (he's our English teacher's younger brother, so we showed up at his house at like 11:15 and just asked him to go to Sadie's with her because she forgot her tag.), then i took her back to Chelsea's house so she could finish the same assignment i'd just sent in. after that, i went to T-Buck's house, where Risa and Chanelle still were. they'd already snuck in through his younger sister's window, scared him crapless, then tagged him to be Chanelle's date. Chanelle, LaRisa, and i sat in his room with him and Misty (his cahooting sister) for like an hour just talking, then we finally decided at about midnight:30 that we should probably let him sleep.

when we got back to Risa's house, we made our group's shirts. due to a special request from Dason (he didn't think we'd take him seriously), they were bright, sunshine yellow. the front of all of them say "I ♥ ZION!" and as i said before, my "n"s were all retarded, so at the first glance, they all looked like they said "I ♥ ZIOM". shoot. anyways, Carley and Chelsea eventually came over (after sending in their Computer Literacy things) and we had a sleepover. when we were starting to go to sleep, LaRisa asked us what time we needed to get up to get ready, since the boys were coming over at 8:30. we thought about it and decided that instead of being ready when they came over, we'd let them be our wake up call. we were cool with that, and went to sleep.

The next morning...

we all heard the doorbell ring, but still didn't get up. a few minute later, T-Dub was quietly coming down the stairs and i could tell he had no idea what to do. wake us up and face our wrath? wait for the other guys to show up? leave? make noises until we woke up? do something very T-Dub and see if we reacted? needless to say, he chose the last option. he started doing this weird, creeper laugh, then went behind the couch and jumped up screaming. even though we all were awake and knew he was there, he still made us jump. before long, Dason, Rhees, Tyrell, Kade, and Mark had shown up and they got to see me, LaRisa, Chanelle, and Carley (Ashley didn't sleep over, she came with Kade) at our finest... not. we ended up not leaving until like 10, because all the girls had to get ready and then we made lunches. we piled into the Alldredge's 30 year old 'Burb and we were off!

Front seat: Rhees, Tyrell, Chanelle, and LaRisa.

Middle seat: T-Dub, Chelsea, Carley, and a very stunned-looking Mark.

Back seat: Dason, me, Ashley, and Kade.

Me trying (and failing miserably) to look cool in Dason's hat. haha


We saw like 5 bighorns at once on our way in! Later, on the way home, we saw about 9 and they were right by the road. One of the cars in front of us had to hit the brakes so he wouldn't hit one that was crossing the road.

first stop: dead deer. if you've never been to Zion, you go through this mile-long tunnel and come out on an exremely steep mountain. since builders couldn't exactly build a road going almost straight down, there are a bunch of switchbacks zig-zagging down the side of the mountain so you can get down. when we got to the last of the turns, we pulled over, took a group shot, then bushwhacked it down to the bottom of the hill. what we found was some big rocks, a little frog, a cute little creek, and a dead, 70% decayed deer... yummy.

Ashley+Kade--Chelsea+Tyler/T-Dub--LaRisa+Rhees--me+Dason--Carley+Mark--Chanelle+Tyrell/T-Buck

The girls on one of the rocks by the deer.

Me, T-Dub (who looks about ready to puke), Ashley, Kade, Carley, Rhees, Tyrell, and Dason admiring the...

Yucky dead deer.

second stop: the Zion museum for a picnic lunch. i wish i would've taken some pictures, because there were some crazy things going on. we shared Red Vines with the general public, fed some chocolate pudding to our frog buddy, and had dogpiles on random people in our group. after we cleaned up, we hopped on a shuttle and rode to Weeping Rock. while we were on there, we entertained the other passengers by singing "The Longest Time" by Billy Joel. since 10 out of 12 people in our group are in X-Press, we had all kinds of harmonies going on and we sounded awesome.

third stop: Weeping Rock. again, if you've never been to Zion National Park, Weeping Rock is a huge sandstone rock that has water dripping from it. the water is rain/springwater that hit it thousands of years ago and seeped through and hits you right in the eyeball when you're trying to look at a bird. it's not just a little bit of water, either. in some places, it's almost like a crappy shower in a cheap notel. we took some pictures, and Rhees drank some of the dripping water, from which he later claimed he was "payin' it."

Pretty!

Our "weeping" group.

Mmm... 2,000 year old water. Delicious and nutricious!

Sleepy on the way home.

once we got done there, we considered hiking the Court of the Patriarchs, then decided that none of us had the energy. so we drove back to Kanab (well, Tyrell drove back. me, him, and Mark were the only people who were awake the whole way back), then went to...

fourth stop: Junction for shakes. we all got shakes, then the girls sat down on the curb by the road. the boys then thought it'd be funny if they sat on the other curb, so there were 6 yellow people on each side of the road as people drove by. we also had a little war throwing rocks across the road at each other, but that ended when Risa threw a rock and it went right in front of a really nice car. well called it game at that point. it was about 5:00 by then, so we all went our seperate ways. i came home, took a shower, and got re-ready for the dance. the girls were planning on meeting at Risa's house at 8, so i was already about to leave at 7:15 when Ashley called me to say that there was a...

fifth stop: BBQ at LaRisa's house going on right then, so i headed on down. everyone in the group (minus Kade, for whatever reason) had hamburgers and all kinds of deliciousness, then at like 8:30 ish, someone hit someone else and said "YOU'RE IT!" we then proceeded to play tag spanning across like 4 blocks. we would've gone farther, but we stopped at Junction because there were people there that we wanted to talk to.

sixth stop: at 9, we finally decided we should probably go to the dance. we got there like 20 minutes late, and there were... 6 people there. not counting the DJ. you can probably guess that nothing was really happening, until Rhees had the bright idea to start a game of musical chairs. that's right, we played musical chairs in matching painfully yellow t-shirts at a high school dance. who just does that?! oh wait, i know... ZION CREW does that! bahaha

we did our best to get the dance going. all of us danced to all of the songs that came on, fast or slow. the fast ones were my favorite, because Dason is just an insane person. him and Tyrell were about to kill me with their dance moves. they played 2 slow songs in the whole first hour of the dance, and the first one was spent on our dates. the second one was much more interesting. me, Carley, T-Dub, Chelsea, Dason, and i think Tyrell all would join hands and skip in circles around other dancing couples to make them feel special. unfortunately, not enough people came by 10:30 to make the dance fun at all. by the time we left, there were still only like 15 other people there besides us. so the Zion Crew peaced out to have a dance party of our own! we piled into Chanelle's van (there were only 10 of us by now--Ashley and Kade didn't come to the dance) and drove around town, stopping at random places to jump out and dance to whatever song happened to be playing at the time. that, however, did not last long. we were so spent.

seventh and final stop: so in the end, we drove to Rhees's house and had smores in his backyard until it was time for everyone to go home. all in all, it was a pretty fun day. and by golly, i love Ziom.

P.S. the atrociously yellow shirts with the semi-gay phrase on it was actually a safety tool. none of us were willing to go anywhere alone while wearing "I ♥ ZION!" boldly stated on our front. so we did really well with the buddy system. good thinkin, Dason!

Have I explained this yet?

Not sure if I've explained this or not, but this is the inspiration of my title and subtitle:

Unfortunately, Jennifer

Got this from Sarah. What you do is go to Google, type in "Unfortunately, [your name]" (include the quotations in the search, but not the brackets) and see what comes up. This should be interesting...

• Unfortunately, Jennifer will have to fill out the paperwork again and stand in line because we both have been removed from the electronic renewal system.
  
• Unfortunately, Jennifer looks like she is stuck in a 1980’s time warp!
  
• Unfortunately, Jennifer is still recovering and she isn't ready to play tennis yet.
  
• Unfortunately, Jennifer missed my blog rant about including a call out to your cats within your bio, but she’ll learn.
  
• Unfortunately, Jennifer was not able to compile her thoughts for the Survivor.
  
• Unfortunately Jennifer became blinded by love and had some serious lapses in judgment.
  
• Unfortunately, Jennifer Crusie seems to be another victim of the current publishing craze of having a new book on the shelves every few months.
  
• Unfortunately, Jennifer also suffered a stroke at age 3 and partial paralysis on one side of her body.
  
• Unfortunately, Jennifer is not yet carrying any baby as of the moment. (hahahahahahahaha)

And the one that made me actually laught out loud:

• Unfortunately, Jennifer decided to wear a bra and hide the one good thing going for her.

ha. good one.

Going Private

yeah, i'm joining the private parade.  due to a ridiculous comment on one of my posts advertising a dating site (yeah... what the crap?), i'm going to officially go private within the next couple of weeks or so.  if you want to be able to read it, send me your e-mail address, okee doke?

thank you for your cooperation.

(and thanks to Todd for letting me play with his Mac.  bahaha)

It's only a matter of time.

Friday:
6:45 am--woke up.
7:15 am--drove 1/2 hour to town.
8:30 am--got on bus. Drove 7 hours to Monticello.
2:00 pm--sat in 30˚ weather for 5 hours.
7:00 pm--got back on bus, drove 7 more hours to Kanab.
1:45 am--drove 1/2 hour home.
2:45 am--slept for 4 hours.

Saturday:
7:00 am--woke up, put on zero make-up.
7:20 am--drove 1/2 hour to town.
8:00 am--ACT test for 4 hours. Bombed.
12:30 pm--drove 1/2 hour home.
1:30 pm--lost about 10 years off my lifespan due to stress (found out that 2 really good friends were in a pretty bad car accident, and one of them was in the hospital. i was told he was in pretty bad shape, but that was false information and they're both just bruised and sore.), then slept for 2 1/2 hours.
4:00 pm--drove 1 hour to St. George.
5:00 pm--shopped for 5 hours for clothes for wedding.
11:59 pm--typed blog like a nerd in order to publicly complain about my long hours of doing things i seriously hate, such as riding on a bus, freezing to death, testing, etc.

oh my days. they just kill me.

A visit to my Mantite!

that's what they call the people who live where she does. please tell me you find it hysterical, too? because goodness knows i about crapped a chicken when i first heard it. anyways, this last weekend, i had the chance to go up to Manti and spend a couple of days with my dear good bestest friend Nikiah! while i was up there, we...


ate cotton candy...


ate our magical movie mix...


chugged cream soda like it came from a tap...


slept (terrible, i know, but we were up SO late!)...


made oyster crackers...


and had generally the best weekend i could've hoped for!

and don't worry, we did to more than just eat and sleep... those were just the only things we found interesting to take pictures of. haha anyways, we played night games, i met some new people, we talked like best friends do, we stayed up late just laughing, we did stupid things, and we attempted to video ourselves making sparks with Lifesavers. (it didn't really work, or i'd put it on here. it's just black, and all you hear is a bunch of biting sounds.) i came away sad because i had to leave, but so so SO happy that i was able to go.

lately, things have just been changing so much and all i've wanted is to get my summer back. back when it was just me, Ashley, and Nikiah being idiots and best friends at the same time. when i talked to Nikiah about this, we both had to realize that it won't happen again. but one thing she said that made me feel better was this: "you can't recreate your old memories, and you can't bring them back. but you can always, always make new memories. don't ever stop doing that." and that's exactly what we did on this weekend excursion. we made memories that i won't ever forget, because these were a few days with one of the best friends i have ever had, and she still means the world to me. lucky me. :)