The Holiday

My holidays officially end on my birthday... which means the holidays end today. Tomorrow marks the start of studying season so I'll be somewhat of a hermit until April 21st.

In order to end the holidays with a bang I appropriately went and saw "The Holiday" today.
The Holiday = best movie ever!!! Love, love, loved it! There were too many parts to decide which part was my favorite but I was amazed with Iris' assessment of heartbreak and Miles' appropriate reaction:



IRIS
Listen, I know it's hard to believe people when they say, "I know how you feel." But, I actually know how you feel.
You see, I was, uhm, seeing someone back in London. We worked for the same newspaper. And then I found out that he was also seeing this other girl, Sarah, from the circulation department on the 19th floor. Turned out that he wasn't in love with me like I thought.
What I'm trying to say is I understand feeling as small and as insignificant as humanly possible. And how it can actually ache in places that you didn't know you had inside you. And it doesn't matter how many new haircuts you get, or gyms you join, or how many glasses of chardonnay you drink with your girlfriends. You still go to bed every night going over every detail and wonder what you did wrong, or how you could have misunderstood. And how in the hell, for that brief moment, you could think that you were that happy. And sometimes you can even convince yourself that he will see the light and show up at your door.
And after all that, however long all that may be, you'll go somewhere new and you'll meet people who make you feel worthwhile again. And little pieces of your soul will finally come back. And all that fuzzy stuff, those years of your life that you wasted, they'll eventually begin to fade.

MILES
Whew. Well f***, you need this more than I do.

Thanks everyone who offered well wishes today. Love to you all! You made it a great day. If any of y'all are in town on saturday we'll be partying it up at Gilley's for my official birthday celebration!!

From Astrologyzone.com

If your birthday falls on January 3, your whole year ahead will be one where you see a culmination of many efforts you made on several fronts in the years leading up to 2007. You may now end one chapter of your life and open the door on an exciting new one that is set to begin things YOU set in motion - it is unlikely that changes will be forced on you.

29 kinda feels like 28

I'm only half way through my birthday and aside from having to wake up and come to work it hasn't been half bad. But seriously, how can it be a bad day when your friend sends you cards like this?
Plans for the rest of the day include Lucky Pizza with the office crew, ice cream from danielle's and taking myself to go see 'The Holiday'.
The real celebration will be this weekend. I'm thinking Gilley's. Free dance lessons at 8:30pm and bikini bull riding at midnight. Who could say no to that?
Happy My Birthday, Y'all!!

DEUX MILLE SIX!

Different than I'd expected. That's how 2006 has turned out to be.

The bests:

• Duck Creek & Kolob Canyon trip (Aug)
• Santa Monica Parking Garage (Nov)
• LDSLinkup
• Seattle (Jan)
• X96, rfh
• Buying my house (Mar)
• BBQs
• Hawaii (Nov)
• My Ipod- George Michael
• The 5k (Jul)
• NFR (Dec)
• Mission Reunion (Sept)
• DDR
• LVDP
• Dodgers game (Sept)
• Laughlin (May)
• Mission Possible (Jul)
• World Cup (Jul)
• Stadium of Fire (Jul)
• Golfing
• Relief Society Ladies (Dec)
• Kayaking (Aug)
• Steelers game (Aug)
• The Office
• Arrested Development

Universe

Something in the universe has decided that, amongst the 30-someodd junk emails I get everyday at work, I need to be receiving the "Dorks.com News" daily email.

I recognize that I'm not the coolest person in the world but, c'mon! Dorks.com? Seriously.

RSL

I know some of you may be jealous that you weren't able to attend the Willow Springs Relief Society Enrichment Christmas Dinner and Program. So, for those of you who weren't blessed enough to be there this post is for you.

About a month ago I was informed by my dear friend and blogger buddy that she'd signed us up to do a musical number for the Enrichment Christmas dinner. No prob. It's not uncommon for us to have sing-a-longs and flute-a-longs when we're hanging at my place. So I knew we could pull off something great.

We take sharing our talents very seriously so we waited until the night before the performance to decide what we would do. Conkey came over and we ran through a few Christmas tunes, piano-flute duet style. Nothing seemed right... nothing. We were a little distraught. So, to clear our heads we had a spontaneous sing-a-long. And then, it happened.

Out of nowhere Conkey broke out into the Relief Society Lady voice. You know the one- the high pitched, uber-vibrato, old lady singing? Classic!

We laughed our way through a few songs and then it hit us. What if we were to sing like Relief Society Ladies for our musical number? The comedic value would be priceless! Yes! We would do it! Toss out the flute and the piano... We would share our vocal talents!

Now, in order to truly magnify our vocal talents we would need just the right costumes. (Un)Fortunately, I didn't have a denim jumper and a cheesy Christmas sweater in my wardrobe. My only hope was Goodwill.

With just an hour before the big debut of the RSLs I stopped at Goodwill. It must have been providence because the first thing I saw was a beautiful Christmas turtleneck. Now if only I could find a denim jumper. The gods were smiling that day because not only did I find a denim jumper, but it was 80% off dresses day! So, I got it for $2. I almost started jumping up and down with glee right in the checkout line. I also found a stunning sweater for Conkey. A fellow costume shopper at the store described it best: "It looks like someone spilled glitter on astroturf!"

I saved my jumping up and down with glee for when I got to Conkey's house and showed her my finds from Goodwill. She was as ecstatic as I was! In addition to the denim catastrophes we donned we also pinned on gigantic Christmas broaches (which were really just Christmas ornaments that I'd never actually put on a tree). It was all pretty brilliant. Naturally we needed stage names as well. We were totally on the same wavelength, that Conkey and I. She was Sister Johnson and I was Sister Anderson. It just felt so natural.

When we got to the shindig we suddenly questioned our judgment and both got a nervous knot in our stomachs. After 3 lovely and quite spiritual musical numbers it was our turn... there we were to totally kill the spirit of the evening. But we knew what we had prepared was just too good not to share.

So, we busted through the curtains and pulled out phrases like "we're just thrilled to be here" and "you sisters are treasures (trayzhurs) beyond measure (mayzhur)" all in our finest Utah accents.

We asked for audience participation as we sang "Carol of the Bells" in our most stunning Relief Society voices. It truly was the greatest gift we could have given!

I can say without hesitation that this was the most brilliant performance of my life. Rest assured that the Relief Society Ladies will return. Perhaps the next performance will be a pop medley at the next ward talent show. Any requests??

5:15 miracle

Mondays = no good. Cuz, ya know, work.

My secretary came into my office and asked me what was wrong because she could tell I had "the blues." At least she didn't say I had "a case of the mondays." So, instead of telling her what the problem really was I blamed it on being tired like I usually do.

Well, I'd been craving chocolate all day. Finally at 5:15pm I discovered a whole jar of not only chocolate but dang good chocolate- Dove Caramels- by the front door of the office. Heaven. The inside of the wrapper said "Smile before bed. You'll sleep better." Then started the debate in my head. My favorite part of the day is when I climb into my bed and inevitably I get a big childish grin on my face. So I'm wondering- do I sleep so well because I smile before I go to bed or do I smile before I go to bed because I know I get to sleep. Huh.

uncookedland

If you ever need to send me a greeting card please be sure to buy it here. Tears of laughter...

CC + MK

I'm in LOVE! I'm in LOVE! It finally happened...

Something big happened for me this last week. I fell in love with a boy named Mat Kearney. Okay, so I don't actually know if I love him as a person, because I have no idea about his person, but I do absolutely love, like IN LOVE, love his CD Nothing Left To Lose. So good.

A post at last...

I know you've all been waiting with bated breath for my next post. Well, here it is!
I've been a few places since we last met. I spent a week and a half in Hawaii. That wasn't half bad. See-
That's where I was. While I was there I slept, ate (like a ravenous carnivour), snorkeled, tanned, slept some more, ran, walked, drove, got an ipod, went to PCC, ate more, bought a hat, saw a waterfall, whistled like a frog, got some Vans, met some great people, slept more and watched the Office. It was pretty much amazing.

I came home refreshed and ready to get back to work.

Then, 4 days later I went to LA. Best ever. The worst part about the trip was having to come back to Vegas. That and I bought the wrong color lamp shades and broke a mirror on the way home. I really hope that 7 years of bad luck thing is just a joke.

This was my first year (aside from the mission) that I didn't go home for Thanksgiving. Thanks to the Hale clan for letting me be one of them for the whole weekend. The food was good but I'll be honest. I really missed the marshmallows on the yams.

Try sitting through 6 hours of church and meetings on sunday after having attended only 2 hours of church total in the past month. Not so easy. And now I find myself totally unable to concentrate at work after so much vacation. I think I need another vacation ;)