Ian Will Pump YOU Up!

As per my New Years Resolution I have joined a gym here in Rexburg. I realize that we have a gym on campus for free but it is always super crowded and the machines aren't really top notch. So a couple of my roommates and I drove down the hill to World Gym and signed up! We have been going for a couple weeks now and I am really enjoying it. (As much as you CAN enjoy exercise anyway. Let's face it, nothing beats sitting on your butt all day watching TV and eating.)

As part of our package we receive two free training sessions. Yippee! So I scheduled a time to meet with the trainer, Ian. He guided my roommates and I on our weight loss goals and how best to achieve them. Told us what we should be doing everyday and what our ideal heart rate range is. He was so informative!

On my next meeting with Ian, he took me on a walk-through of the gym. This was very helpful because many of the machines just looked like a bunch of twisted metal torture devices. It turns out that they are twisted metal torture devices but at least I now know how to properly use each one! Enemies beware!

After each new machine that Ian showed me, he would turn to me with a big smile (as if he had created the machine or something) and say, "How do you feel about this machine?" What the heck? What do you want me to say? I hate all the machines. I didn't put on a bunch of weight because I love to workout! But after every machine I would say, "I love this machine, Ian. Thank you for introducing us. You will definitely be invited to the wedding." Well, not those words exactly... but trust me those are better!

"I Am Damn Harry Potter!"

This morning I awoke in my bed in Rexburg. I laid there wishing that I did not have to get up quite yet. 7:45 am class is much to early... especially during a Rexburg winter! As I laid there, stretching, something began tugging at the corners of my mind. Suddenly it all came flooding back. One of the strangest dreams I have ever had and let me tell you, I have had some CRAZY ones!

The scene opens in a Costco. I am there, along with several of my friends and family. The Costco is closed yet we are all there playing around and shooting at each other with sniper rifles. I suddenly get this overwhelming urge that I need to hide and protect myself. I run over to the clothing section and begin burying myself down into the great masses of clothes.

My aunt comes over to me and begins uncovering me. "What the heck?" I say.

"Katie, you need to get over there and help them fight those aliens!"

"I can't! The aliens are here for me. I need to stay here and protect myself. They can handle themselves just fine but I cannot be sacrificed!" I exclaim.

"Katie, get over there now!" she yells. I extricate myself from the clothes and stomp off in a huff towards the fighting.

"FINE!" I scream. "But the aliens are going to kill me first because I am damn Harry Potter!" I begin running with reckless abandon towards the far end of Costco. As I am running, I turn to my left and begin running down a darkened aisle. I see shadowy figures running in the distance. I sped up and began chasing down these shadowy figures.

Once I catch up to them, I realize that these are the aliens that are trying to kill me... and I have nothing to defend myself. I turn tail and run as fast as I can in the opposite direction. The aliens were in hot pursuit. My fastest was not fast enough and they were soon gaining ground on me. I knew at any moment they were going to catch me and go through with their dastardly plan.

Just as I was about to lose all hope, the wall to my left slides open and bright white light beams down on me as fog billows out of the opening. A disembodied voice says, "Come to us, we can train you to fight them." I had no idea who they were but I was much more willing to take my chances with them.

I turn to go in and feel as if I am being sucked in by some kind of vacuum. As I was being pulled into the portal I can feel the enemy aliens' fingertips brush my ankles. I had just barely made it to safety. This next part of my dream is a white, foggy blur. All I remember is that the beings that trained me were of a rival alien sect.

I walked out of the portal triumphantly. The white light glaring from behind me as the fog billowed around me. I was ready to take down some aliens!

Then I was snuggling with some guy on a cloud watching the Mormon Tabernacle Choir perform on a larger nearby cloud. The End.

Dreams are so funny!

Rexburg or Bust!

It has come time to return to school for yet another semester. For the first time in a great while, I am not eager with the anticipation of returning to my beloved Rexburg. Usually at this time I can barely contain my excitement at returning to the 'Burg, as we so lovingly call it. I am just plain tired. This break seemed to fly by and I feel even more exhausted than I was before the break.

I am not looking forward to the LONG drive back to Idaho. I only hope that we have good weather the whole way and that there are no more semi-truck incidents. (Once was way too many times too many!) I am writing this from the floor of my bedroom at home, just wishing that I had another week to be here at home. There are so many other things that I wanted to do. I just ran out of time. I kept thinking, "I will do it later. I have plenty of time." Sadly, my time has come to an end.

I have put off the drive back as long as I dare. Kristi and I were supposed to leave this morning, but we hadn't packed and were just plain tired. So we pushed it back until tomorrow. I wish I could push it back another day but sadly, tomorrow is the day!

I am sure once I get back to Rexburg I will be fine. Although it is freezing and covered with snow, I have great friends there that make it all worth it. I hope this semester is as good as, or even better than those prior to it. My college career is ending and my life will change... hopefully for the better! I would like to leave having even more great memories. Something to look back on and laugh about with my future children. So ready or not Rexburg... here I come!

My Cat is Bulimic

I was just laying in bed staring at my computer trying to think of what I wanted to write today. I kept thinking and thinking and thinking... nothing came. As I was getting frustrated, my Mom calls me from the other room. "Katie, jsklfjaslkj fjflsfjlas sjlkajlf hj kasjdh and I can't do it." I had no idea what she had said... but I knew that it required me to get out of bed. I was more than a little bitter at having to get out of bed, but me being the amazing daughter that I am *wink* did just that.

"What did you need my dear, sweet mother?"

"Rascal ralphed in the other room and I need you to clean it up." For those of you who have been hiding under a rock the past 15 years, Rascal is my cat... and I may be a little obsessed with him. Keep checking my blog, there is bound to be a post all about him one of these days!

I walk into the kitchen expecting to see a big pile of nastiness and that Rascal (or Rascoliosis, as I like to call him) had fled the scene. Well the big pile of nastiness was there... but so was Rascal! I was surprised to find him still there. There he was chowing down some more autumn colored cat food not even 2 feet from where he had thrown up said autumn colored cat food. He just threw up, why the heck was he binging out again? The little freak!

"Rascal, what the heck?" I say to him. He just stares at me. "This is disgusting!" He just stares at me. "Why couldn't you at least throw up on Kristi's bed again?" He grins at me... not really... but I like to imagine that he did!

I throw down some paper towels on top of the mess to begin picking it up. It soaks through the paper towel and coats my hand... I legit almost ralphed myself. (Maybe then I could have called Kristi in to clean both messes... hmmm... an intriguing thought) Rascal just stares at me as clean up the nastiness he had expelled from his stomach. I love the guy, but he is as helpful as a bowl of oatmeal.

I am going to have to sit down with Rascal and talk to him about his Bulimia and skewed self image. All this throwing up is not good for him. He is already quite thin. He needs to focus on getting better and maybe someday he will see what I see; a freeloading sack of fleas. Just kidding, I love you Rascal!

New Years Resolutions

Tradition has it that at the beginning of each year we make goals. These goals can be anything from spiritual, physical or emotional. Everyone makes goals in the hopes that they will acheive them and have a better life. I, like many people, set these goals, work on them for a few weeks and then forget all about them until the following New Years.

This year, I have decided to do something a little different and use this blog to help. I will set a few goals that are important to me. Each month, on the first, I will write a post as an update on how I have been doing on accomplishing these goals. I figure this way my goals will be constantly on my mind. By posting how I am doing on these goals, it will make me accountable to myself, as well as to you. It will keep me on my toes!

My goals for 2010:
1. Read the Book of Mormon cover to cover
2. Exercise at least 4 times a week
3. Graduate college
4. Eat dinner at home at least 4 nights a week

These are only a handful of the goals that I would like to acheive but I know that the more goals I set the less I will be able to accomplish. I will focus my attentions and efforts on these four goals this year and add more in the coming years. I certainly hope that through this method I will actually be able to acheive my goals.

A new year is a fresh start. I hope that all of you will take advantage of this opportunity to set goals and make 2010 an even better year than 2009. I have greatly appreciated everyone's kindness and friendship this past year. I would not have been able to make it through with out you! I love you all and will see you next year!

"I'm Gonna Text Judy On My Zipit..."

A couple months ago I received a call from my Father. He was blabbing on, all excited about something he had seen on Hak 5. (some nerdy tech show) On this show, the people hacked a hand-held instant messaging device and converted it to a little mini computer. I asked my Dad what the name of the device was. He couldn't remember at first but I instantly thought Zipit. "Zipit?" I say. "Why yes!" he exclaims. I got excited at this point because one of my favorite YouTube personalities, Fred, has a Zipit and promotes it. Fred has many videos and YOU should watch them. So funny!



So today, I awake to the sound of my phone ringing. I groggily answer, "Hello?" "Katie, get out bed and get your butt in here!" My Dad had called to wake me up. I stumble into his room and he says, "Today is the day!" "What?" I say. He merely says "Zipit," and I know what he is thinking. I settle down on his bed and we start watching the episode so that I know what to do. I begin to follow along as I watch. I struggled to find the proper downloads to load on the miniSD card that I would put in the Zipit.

Everything was going swimmingly until I loaded the Linux image on the miniSD. The driver I had installed to allow me to access the Linux files from my Windows machine was not working properly. I could not open the card and put on the additional needed files.

The next step was to try and access them from a Linux machine. So we installed a Virtual Machine of Ubuntu Linux on my Dad's laptop. We tried opening the card on there but did not know all the proper commands to open the card. PAIN IN THE BUTT! My Dad kept going on about how great it was that I was getting this learning experience. Not so much. I was bitter that it wasn't working and may have sworn quite a few times.

We still have not gotten it working which is extremely frustrating because Hak 5 made it look so easy! I guess I will have to work on it some more tomorrow... lame! I hate the work portion. I just want to have a cool little mini computer. I mean, come on... who doesn't? Hopefully I will have it working tomorrow and can look SUPER cool on my Zipit... just like Fred!

SEX has a Price Tag

Today is my mother's birthday. She is an amazing woman whom I revere. I could wax eloquent on her many virtues but my sister had beat me to the punch. Rather than compete with her beautiful words, I will let her blog post stand as a representative for what I would have written. (To see Kristi's post on our wonderful mother click here.)

Instead I would like to describe the entertaining evening that we had celebrating the day my Mom deigned it time to come down and live among us lowly humans. (haha... now she sounds like an alien or something... maybe she is... but that is another blog post all together) Our neighbor Sara-Lynn came over, as well as my aunt Amy and cousin Heather. We had several games to choose from. (and snacks! SO many snacks!) We settled on Encore. A game that Heather had brought over.

I was very skeptical of Encore at first. The basic gist of the game is to be able to sing at least 6 words of a song that has to do with the topic or contains a specific word. The first team to run out of songs loses. Now I have a VERY difficult time remembering tunes of songs if it isn't playing at the time or if there is any other noise... and remembering lyrics? haha... yeah right! So lets just say when it came down to the other team choosing a player from our team for the player vs. player section... I was likely to be chosen for my poor lyrical skills. As Heather so kindly put it, "We need to pick their worst player. KATIE!" Thanks a bunch Heather, you couldn't even pretend to have a difficult time choosing?

The game continued on, my team making up many new lyrics and even new songs! Kristi forgot it wasn't her teams turn and started singing a song that she had worked so hard to remember... poor, poor Kristi. My team held no sympathy for her and stole her song. (Cool dance moves included.) I must admit though, the highlight of this game for me was when we all burst out singing "I am Proud to be an American" at the top of our lungs. We even stood up and threw our arms up in the air and danced around. We all got the chorus down just fine... however were unable to remember the part with the word that we actually needed... haha... oh well.

I am not really sure how we got on the topic, but then we started talking about this video that my Mom had shown for a Youth Fireside. It is entitled "SEX has a Price Tag" featuring Pam Stenzel. So of course we then put it in and watched the whole hour long video. It was very informative, if not somewhat terrifying. You should have seen the faces of these kids. They looked an awful lot like this.



That Pam Stenzel really knows her stuff. Either that or she is a great horror writer. Most of what she was saying was enough to turn anyone off from sex. Seriously, I survived scary movie month with only a few lingering scares but this video will haunt me forever. Don't believe me? Watch it yourself. I love this video, Pam is pretty funny, but don't count on the comedy to lesson the horrors to be heard. Make sure to have your blankie and favorite stuffed animal close at hand- and your boyfriend FAR FAR AWAY!