New Look, New Life

Okay maybe I'm being over-dramatic in that post title, but I'm still kind of excited right now. Jen has started up another blog-revamp kick (the last one resulted in my former page's header), and I was her first victim. Just the other night I was looking at my blog and I had the thought "I don't think I'll ever change my blog. I love how clean my page looks." But today when I was at her house to help her husband correct some tests (he's a junior high teacher), Jen proceeded to call my blog "masculine," "stock," and "boring". I'll admit that I was being difficult at first, refusing to accept any of her proposed designs, but I'm pretty much in love with the new look now. You'll have to tell me what you think.

The "New Life" just comes from some excitement I'm feeling while looking forward to the future. I got my LSAT score on Friday, and even though I didn't do wonderfully, I think it should be good enough to get me in somewhere, even with my pathetic GPA. Since Friday, I've been checking out law schools online and getting emails from places where I might match up with their admission standards. I really want to go back East, and when I came home tonight to an information booklet that arrived in the mail from a Boston school, I can't stop looking through it. Boston. Can you imagine? Fulfilling my life's dream right in such a rich center of American History...I can't even get to sleep now just thinking about all of this. I know that my whole law school journey is still new, and I don't even know where I might actually get accepted, but it's so nice knowing that I'm moving forward, and it's exciting to think that right now I have NO IDEA where I could be a year from now.

I have to get up early, so I really should call it a night, but I just wanted to post about my excitement.

http://www.vajoe.com/candidate_calculator.html

I don't want to get all political in this post, because I know we're all sick of the election already. But I just wanted to throw this out there for any of you that are still unsure who to vote for or who are maybe considering not voting. This is just a quick quiz you can take to figure out which candidate you match up with best on the main issues being talked about. I even took the test just to make sure I was confident about where I stood. Maybe you should check it out.

Barack Obama (Democrat) 61.90% match You are number 201,569 to use the Candidate Calculator.

Big Day

I'm watching a very loud BYU game right now and I'm realizing just what a big day it is for Brown family football. First, Utah doesn't play this week, so I don't have to deal with that. But more importantly, BYU needs to come up with a big win against UNLV to get back on track. And MOST importantly, Penn State needs to smother Ohio State. If we're serious about this National Championship idea, today is pivotal. We're at the home of the Buckeyes, which is big. If we keep our heads on straight, all should go well.

But as a side note, I just googled "Buckeyes" to make sure I was spelling it right, and the first result was a picture of the nittany lion head. Haha I think that's a good omen.

Let's go BLUE!

Going Well

Sometimes when I find myself with an unnecessarily negative attitude I find it helpful to remind myself of all the things going well in my life. So tonight you all will be subject to my creating such a list...

I'm glad that

*there will be new babies in our family this winter
*I talked to Matt on the phone last night
*there always seems to be another good book to read
*angel hair pasta, spaghetti sauce, and chicken patties can make such an easy and tasty dinner
*when David googled "Penn State vs. Illinois Game" he found my blog
*I have sisters who own sofa beds
*it's cold outside
*Nic's favorite movie is Goonies and not Ghostbusters
*I get to be in the YW presidency
*Penn State has continued its historic season
*I don't live with any Utah fans
*some musicians can still write personal and powerful songs
*I have money in my savings account again
*I get to go to sleep now!

Nineteen Minutes

I just finished the book Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult. Did I tell you we're doing a book club? Yeah, we are. Anyway, this is the second selection. It's a book I've been wanting to read for awhile and I was thrilled when Jessica chose it as October's book. I read another book by Picoult awhile back and was thoroughly impressed by her ability to broach controversial subjects while remaining unbiased and allowing her narrators to speak to the heart of the reader, making you really wonder what you feel about a particular issue.

Anyway, without saying too much by way of storyline (because I know fellow book clubbers read my blog), I'm kind of bugged. I know that I have slack standards when it comes to morality in the books I read, and I was able to overlook Picoult's too-often use of bad language and borderline pornographic descriptions, but I can't stop wondering why authors compromise literary achievement in order to pull a quick one over on their readers. Does an ending need to be a surprise to be considered good? Can't we just sometimes let the story speak for itself, let the readers glean what they may, and let that be that?

Perfection

I'm not really in the mood to rehash tonight's game. But I would like to make some commentary on the inclination to support winning teams.

I'm being honest when I say that I have little experience with supporting champions. You all know that I've grown up as a Penn State and BYU fan, both teams boasting their most recent national championships more than twenty years ago. Or how about my high school alma mater, whose last state championship was in the 1940's. I've long been a Utah Jazz fanatic...and we all know of their lack of a championship banner. The teams I support do well but are rarely the best. So this season has been something totally different for me.

To watch, week after week, as both BYU and Penn State beat their opponents and moved up in the polls, I started to develop dreams bigger than I'd dare entertain before. I felt confident that Penn State could pull out a national title and allow JoePa to retire in the glory he deserves. I felt sure that this could be the year that BYU becomes BCS busters. But here's the catch... when you're used to being good a single win or loss can only affect you minimally. But when you're trying to stay perfect one game can destroy everything.

I'm usually unrealistically optimistic regarding my team's abilities, but now I feel pretty down on the season. I guess I can hold on to the hope that Penn State can still make this their year, and BYU still has a shot at winning the conference, but it's not the same as the rush I felt for the first several weeks of the season, watching history in the making.

My family probably thinks I'm far to emotionally invested in these games after watching me tonight, but I can't really help it. I don't know how to accept the mediocrity I'd previously become accustomed to when for once in my life I felt so sure of greatness.

So who is the real boss? The dog or a fish?

I'm watching The Office, and that's what Michael just said, so it became the title of this post.

Today was awesome because it was absolutely pointless. :) This week was tiring and stressful and getting out of bed every day was a chore. My eye twitched almost constantly (that's what it likes to do when I'm stressed) and I decided that if I could make it through the week, I would let myself sleep in today until my body naturally decided it wanted to roll out of bed. That happened to be 1pm.

The rest of my day consisted of a few hours on iTunes looking for songs for competition, spending some time at Jessica's house, watching BYU beat New Mexico, watching Penn State beat Wisconsin, hanging out with Annie (a childhood friend I hadn't seen in far too long), and now blogging. Quite the nothingness and I loved it.

Hurt Feelings

Jeez, do you ever feel like you've reverted back a few years and without meaning to you're suddenly acting and responding to situations the same you way you would have when you were much younger? I'm currently in that spot. I'm going to give you more details than I normally would just because I need to vent. And in my opinion, the elusive world known as blogging is a great place to do that.

Background information: When I was in high school, the Homecoming game was a big deal (as I'm sure it is most anywhere). Halftime was a huge production, with Dance Company, Drill Team, and Cheerleaders coordinating on a theme, learning a big group routine together, and putting together routines for each individual group. Practices would start at the end of summer, and it was always just really fun and awesome.

Well, now that I've been coaching for a couple of years, I really wanted to try and organize a similar show. I spoke with the coaches of the other organizations and planned things out, scheduling practices for this week (since Homecoming is Friday) for the big group piece. It remained undecided who was choreographing the group routine, but I really wanted to be a part o f it just because I had some fun ideas. With all the craziness of trying to get my cheerleaders ready, any attempt to nail down the group details was derailed so I was kind of developing the impression that the group routine wasn't going to happen.

However, I found out today that the group routine had been taken care of and additionally, it was choreographed to the song I had suggested and that I had had a lot of ideas for. I know I shouldn't care, but my feelings are just really hurt right now. Really all I should care about is that my desire for the group production is coming to fruition, but that's not how I'm feeling right now. I feel robbed of the chance to help bring my plan to action. But more than that, I feel like my idea was stolen from me in a way. I don't really know how to explain what I mean by that, but at least I've gotten it out of my system.
Okay, Wendy. Time to grow up and move on.

Saturday of Studying and Sisters

Well this has been quite the weekend. Since Kearns played on Thursday this week, my Friday night was free to spend some time with Ash and Nic at the Bountiful game. Go Braves? Weird. But they did do a good job, even if their cheerleaders have stupid cheers. :)

Yesterday morning was the dreaded LSAT. Yes, I know some people take like a year off school just to study for the test, but that's not how I roll. Lol I figured I'd give it a few weeks and then see how it went. To be honest, I don't know how it went. I felt like the time for the individual tests sped by, but the test itself took an eternity. I probably did really poorly, but who really cares? At least I took it, and if my score is good enough to get me into law school somewhere, that's great. If it doesn't, I'll go a different path with my life.

The sad thing about taking the LSAT yesterday is that I missed the first session of General Conference. Hopefully I'll catch it on On Demand. Anyway, I listened to the session on the radio during my drive home (I took the test down at UVSC). Did anyone not LOVE Elder Holland's talk? He was speaking as I pulled up to the house, so I just stayed in my car until his talk was over. I was just so touched by his admonition to be other people's angels. I think I'll try and take that advice to heart.

One of the best parts of General Conference weekends is our family Girls' Night. We went out to dinner and then did some shopping. This year we let my niece come with us, figuring that 3 is old enough to be a part of the fun. Well she was more than just a part. She was the main attraction! Lol Spending the night with her was a hoot. She was just so energetic and funny, and I love watching her turn into a real person. After shopping some of us went to the store for some grocery shopping and my niece was stuck on this rhyming game. I guess she's just started rhyming words, and sometimes she can't think of a rhyme and so she'll just ask. One of the best was, "What rhymes with cereal?" My solution to such words is just to change the first letter. I mean, do you think the 3 year old cares if bereal isn't a word? :) Anyway, fun night!