Tag, I'm It

Two posts in one day after a long break! Here we go...

4th folder in My Photos, 4th picture...

This is a scanned image of me and my friend Tawni before prom in 2006.

Second, 16 Random Things About Me. I originally did this on Facebook, so I'll just copy it onto here.

1. I talk to myself when I'm alone, and have gotten caught many times.
2. I wish I was athletic.
3. One time I accidentally ate a bath fizzle. I looked like I had rabies for about ten minutes.
4. I'm a nervous nail-biter.
5. I am afraid of - get this - BED BUGS. They'll mess with your head long after they're gone.
6. I have a burning desire to go on America's Next Top Model.
7. I'm a weeper. I cry at nearly everything. I have the annoying spiritual "gift" of feeling other people's pain and happiness.
8. I'm an official member of the ASPCA (American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals). Long name, important cause.
9. It bothers me when people say "Man-aise" instead of "Mayo-naise"
10. I will do anything to avoid confrontation.
11. I'm a walking contradiction - a cynic looking for love.
12. The past many years, I have put up and decorated the Christmas tree at my house. The year I wasn't living here, we didn't have one.
13. I have a hard time ceasing laughter. When I find something funny, it sets itself on repeat in my head and I go on for so much longer than everyone else in the room.
14. I think getting ready is the most boring process ever. That's why I usually do the bare minimum at the last minute.
15. I DETEST Coldplay.
16. I don't know why, but I have really bad hearing, so speak up, young man!

8 Things:

8 Favorite Shows:

1. Gilmore Girls

2. America's Next Top Model

3. Scrubs

4. How I Met Your Mother

5. Malcom In The Middle

6. Sabrina The Teenage Witch

7. Home Improvement

8. The Office

8 Things I Did Yesterday:

1. Got a cavity filled.

2. Went to work.

3. Made 5 batches of ice cream.

4. Ate pizza with my mom.

5. Decorated 7 cakes and 2 pies.

6. Play The Sims 2

7. Hung Santa Claus in my car.

8. Made and decorated a little cake for a missionary whose birthday is on Thanksgiving.

I do not have a very eventful life right now.

8 Favorite Restaurants:

1. Costa Vida

2. Cheesecake Factory

3. Torreros

4. Brick Oven

5. Panda Express

6. Wendy's

7. Burger Supreme

8. Meal Time - for the fries.

8 Things I Am Looking Forward To:

1. Not having to work tomorrow!

2. Finishing my Christmas shopping.

3. Christmas itself.

4. Quitting Marble Slab and going back to school.

5. Taking art classes.

6. Turning 20, so I can stop saying, "I'm almost 20."

7. Being able to talk to my Elder again.

8. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince coming out!

8 Things On My Wish List:

1. Rock Band

2. To complete my Gilmore Girls collection with the last 4 seasons.

3. A Christmas miracle :)

4. A snow day.

5. Infinite knowledge.

6. To never, ever need glasses.

7. Perfect teeth.

8. Negative fifty pounds.

Now here are my 8 tags to complete all 3 tag-ful games!

Wendy, Kelly, Brennan, Ronda, 5, 6, 7, 8. If you read my blog, consider yourself tagged!

Thank God For Answered Prayers!

My job at the creamery requires me to complete all production: ice cream, cakes (including packing and decorating), and sometimes cones, if the Saturday lead doesn't get to them. There are certain professional cakes called DecoCakes that we also sell, but I have never been trained in decorating those. My boss has always done those herself.  Honestly, I don't know why we even sell these cakes. None of them ever turn out that pretty and we hardly have any of the supplies and sets that we advertise, because no one is a professional cake-decorater, but we do. 

This week has been busy. With half days at the schools, running out of over ten flavors the weekend prior, and 15 cake orders, I haven't been able to read or play on the computer like I usually do here. Today, I was planning on coming in, finishing what I didn't yesterday, and relaxing the rest of the time. 

Nope.

As I was opening the fridge to get stuff for another cake I was packing, I saw an order on the fridge for a DecoCake due. I looked at the date.

Wednesday, November 26.

I felt my nerves rise. Please be later, please be later, I prayed as I scanned the order.

Due at 12:00 PM.

I looked at my phone. 1:03 PM.

My nerves rose to a full panic. I began dropping things and running around the store, ranting to myself. "I don't know how to decorate this cake! Why didn't [my boss] do it?! She knew this order was due today! She's known about if for weeks! Oh crap, oh crap, oh crap." It went on as I prepped the cake for decorating with shaking hands. I ran around the store, still raving to myself, searching for the directions to the cake. To my luck, the directions were lost in the pile of mess that were my thoughts, because I was still panicking. I quickly grabbed a picture of what the cake should look like and tried my best to imitate the picture to the best of my ability.

As I barely started settling down, my thoughts became coherent again, and I was inspired to say a prayer. The entire hour it took me to decorate the cake, I never stopped praying and begging Heavenly Father to help me with the cake and to please, please, please, make those picking it up be late. 

As soon as I finished the cake, I went into a corner and thanked Heavenly Father that I was able to finish, and that my cake ended up looking semi-decent (I am aware that there are two Cinderellas on the cake, but Belle is MIA.). They picked it up at 3:15 PM. All I can feel right now is gratitude for a loving Heavenly Father.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Kitty Cat? "Oh No"!

Sigh. I've been tagged. Here are the 6 random things about me:

1) When I was in the 3rd grade, I won a literature contest with the following poem:

Kit-kitty cat
You are not fat
You are not fat
Cause you're a cat.

Kit-kitty poo
You are cute too
You are not fat
Cause you're a cat.

Kit-kitty sweet
You are so neat
You are not fat
Cause you're a cat.

Nice judges, right? Wrong. I was the only one who entered.

2) For a few years while we lived in Utah, a bunch of the families from our ward and close friends would take a summer trip down south. We would usually camp, but one year we stayed one night in a motel. The room the bishop and his family stayed in had a very bad case of bed bugs. Ever since, I have had a paranoia about bed bugs. The crazy side of me checks her mattress frequently.

3) I love the drums. I just love them. I admire good drummers - as well as thinking they're sexy, because most of them are - and if I had a drum set, I think I would play non-stop until I was good. I think that's one reason why my parents would never get me one. They had enough of my noise from my Bop-It. Speaking of that...

4) I am the Bop-It master. I have played Bop-It consistently until it had nothing left for me to Bop. I got so many in a row after about 30 minutes straight that it made a really annoying whistling noise for 10 minutes, letting the entire neighborhood in on my victory. After that, my mom made me put the Bop-It away.

5) I'm a nostalgic pack-rat. It's very hard for me to get rid of things that have even the slightest bit of sentimental value. For years, I kept every single note and letter ever written to me. I had 6 worn-out and over-flowing binders full of them, but when I got home from school, I decided it was time for at least them to go. Most of them were short "Hi Val, how are you? Me I'm fine. I'm in English and bored and thought I'd write to say hi, so hi! Bye!"s anyways.

6) I am on the OK Go "Oh No" special edition DVD. Seriously. No kidding. Only about 9 seconds, and you can't tell it's me. But it's me. This is the video featured:



Jessica, Kirsten, Katrina, and I put over 30 hours into that dance and video. We also all have trophies that say "I Lost the OK Go Dance Contest." What an honor.


OK, so there's my submission. My six people are Dad and Lani, because they're the only people who read my blog that haven't already been tagged.

Portfolio Addition

The following was a poem I wrote when I was 15 in my 10th grade English class. The assignment was to write about when we felt the happiest in our lives. It has no title.

Life was more than school and money at fourteen.

Papers glide contently through the hallway. 

I whiz by them, my eyes fixed on the double doors.

Three,

Two,

One,

I can breathe again.

Golden hair

always in my face and I cling to my stomach

The worried brick wall rushes to my side

As I double up in laughter 

The Clorox-dotted sky weighed us down to the grass,

The desperate blades tickling their way in our ears,

Wrapping their long, thin arms around our necks,

Gently caressing our clammy, bare feet.

Our busy lives seemingly smooth and endless

Lying together on the grass

Watching the branches tell their story with animation

I wasn't too old to climb it,

But old enough to recognize what pleasures I found

Just letting laughter clear my senses. 

Comment Courtesy

Hey people!!
I would really appreciate some comments every once in a while.
Although, thank you MOM and DAD for their comments.

Maybe Our Parents Were Wrong.

Here's another piece from my profile. It comes from the October 2006 issue of the Tahoma Times. As a quick clarification, I do not detest spinach anymore.

Maybe Our Parents Were Wrong.

As a child, I was commanded daily at the dinner table to eat my vegetables. I'd squirm in my high chair, my face purple from crying at a decibel that still holds its position in the Guinness Book of World Records. But no matter how true I made the stereotype of five year olds, my mother would not let me leave the table until I finished all my greens.

Greens have always disgusted me, especially spinach. There aren't many ways you can eat spinach, and of all of those ways, it's always going to be disgusting. My mom always steamed it, making the leaves feel like snot as they cleared a clean path to your stomach. She would let me coat them in salad dressing to cover up the taste, but no matter what I did, dinner always ended with the tragedy of the final swallow.

"See?" my mom would say as I gasped for air and continued to cry. "Spinach won't kill you." But new evidence proves that she could have been wrong every single time.

Investigators have tied over 183 E. coli cases to fresh packaged spinach, including the death of a 77-year old woman in Wisconsin. Washington and Oregon are some of the twenty-two states where cases have been reported. Stores everywhere are throwing spinach directly off the shelf because it isn't yet certain which brand has the deadly bacteria.

"In dealing with every fresh produce E. coli outbreak in the last five years around the country, this appears to be the largest one I've seen, and I'm very concerned," attorney Bill Marler tells Seattle King 5 News.

Children everywhere can rest in peace as grocery stores avoid selling packaged spinach. I, personally, can sleep at night knowing that my mom won't be force-feeding it to me the following day.

Annoyance of the Week: #1

Unnecessary reiterated conversations.

As a guilty pleasure, I do like to eavesdrop on select conversations. It gives me endless material to mock. In some situations, it's impossible not to eavesdrop on the particularly loud. But some forced phatic ends up being pointless and annoying.

The following is an actual conversation overheard during my shift at Hollywood Video:

XX: Have you seen this movie?
XY: No.
XX: Well, I have it. It was so funny. I bought it and my mom rented it and came home and I said, "Mom, did you rent that?" and she said "Yes." and I said "I have it." It was so funny.

The continual repetition of the story that her mom was oblivious to the fact that XX owned the movie she rented makes XX appear completely unintelligent. And I have to wonder for myself: was it really so funny?

The Sky-Scraper

This is another page from my portfolio. It's a poem I wrote when I was 16, inspired by the TV show Heroes.

Extravagant and towering with shiny, black glass,
it stands still as people rush past in their
exotic taxi cabs and on
high-heeled designer shoes,
oblivious to what it contains inside or
why
pin-striped business suits taper through the blurred
rotating doors.
To the man standing at the top,
they all mean
Nothing;
just pin-points and lifeless cars
driving the same
route
and never changing.
To the man standing at the top,
they all mean
Nothing
as he falls forward
and takes a different
route.

Fruitful Events

I am a nerd. Really. But I'll save you grief and pain by not giving you a list of reasons why - just one. I have a portfolio of nearly everything I've written. Most of the recent stuff hasn't been added for time reasons, but these are the pieces I am proud of. I thought it would be fun to share a few of them.

This is a fairy tale I wrote when I was 13. I titled it "Fruitful Events."

Carson Confident cheered as his name was selected for fairy godfather privileges. Imagine! Carson, a fairy godfather! His wings, half the size of his body, flapped quickly in all the excitement and he hovered above all the other twelve-million fairies in the over-crowded conference room.

Penelope Prideful, the leader of all fairies, clicked a button on her podium and revealed a picture of a little boy on the large white screen behind her. His short, blonde hair was extremely messy. His cheeks were round and airbrushed slightly pink. His lips and eyes were smiling, full of spirit.

"Easy!" Carson called out a little too loud.

"Easy?" Penelope asked with a surprised look on her face. "What do you mean by 'easy'?"

Carson blushed and flew up to the stage. "I bet this child is full of wishes! Judging by the look on his face, I bet he'll want really, really big ones!"

Penelope raised one of her perfect eyebrows and folded her arms. "Oh really!"

Carson stepped forward confidently and raised his chin. "Yes, I believe so!"

Sighing, Penelope handed him a map on how to reach this child. "You better get on it. Flying to Boston won't be easy. Of course, I bet I could do it..."

Carson walked out the doors and onto Fairy-way 79. "I bet I could do it," he mimicked, looking at the map. According to the large piece of paper in his tiny fairy hands, Boston was seven million and three miles away from Fairy World. He let out a low whistle and switched his wings into high-speed so he could get there within five weeks.

About two days into his journey, Carson came upon a grassy, jade planet. Sprouting from the round forest was a rainbow. It stretched across the sky and out of sight. Carson examined his map and found "St. Patrick's Paradise: 2,924 miles."

Carson began to slow down and sat on the rainbow for a short rest. It was a shiny, smooth structure. He admired how a rod only about a meter long could shine for miles and miles. His eyes felt droopy, so he laid down on its warm, hazy mist and closed his eyes. No sooner than he had dozed off, the rainbow began to curve. Before his wings could react, he was sliding down it swiftly. Trying not to yell and draw the whole planet's attention, he held his breath before he dove into the empty, black pot at the end. He landed with a loud gong and stood up, holding the vibrating edges.

When his head stopped ringing, he began to look around suspiciously. "Isn't the pot at the end of the rainbow supposed to be filled with gold?" he asked himself. He shook his head and flew out of the pot.

"What are you doing there?" a high, sharp voice shouted. Carson saw a short, fat leprechaun hopping over to him. His overcoat was green and stretched over his fat belly. A big, bronze buckle fastened his tan pants. There were two large purple patches at the knees. A green top hat sat atop his orange head. His shows reflected the rainbow above. Carson looked from the empty pot and back to the leprechaun and heard an alarm go off in his head. "You're not supposed to be near there!"

The leprechaun stood next to Carson and stared him bleakly in the face. From the corner of his eye, he saw that the precious pot of gold was as dry as the Sahara desert.

"Aye!" The leprechaun grabbed his top hat, revealing a bald head. "Saints and clovers!" He began yelling a bunch of mumbo-jumbo, jumping up and down, pointing to the pot. All of a sudden, he stopped jumping. His eyes shrunk to slits and he focused on Carson. "You took the gold..."

"I don't know what happened to it," Carson said quickly.

"You took the gold!" The leprechaun's eyes grew. "You took it all!" He flipped his hat upside down and pulled out a pinch of multicolored sand.

"I didn't take the gold!" Carson tried to argue. But the leprechaun softly blew the sand at Carson before he could convince him that it wasn't him.

Just then, Carson became surrounded by tall four-leaf clovers. Where am I? he thought. He tried to move his wings, but then he realized he didn't have wings...or legs...or arms! He rolled himself through the clovers and bumped into a giant shiny shoe. He took one good look into it. He didn't recognize himself; all he saw was a pear with eyes and a mouth. Wait a minute...I'm a piece of fruit!

He rolled onto his back (or what he thought was his back) and gazed up at the leprechaun. His face was completely shadowned as he gazed down upon the pear. A cackling laugh shook the earth, rolling Carson all over the place.

The leprechaun picked him up and carried him over to a tall, wide oak tree. In the center of the trunk was a circle with a knob. The leprechaun turned the knob, opened a door and set Carson in, closing it behind him.

Carson squeaked, "I didn't take your gold!" He turned around and saw about fifty more pieces of fruit gathered around him. There were apples, oranges, grapes; he was the only pear.

"Um, hello," Carson said as calmly as he possibly could.

"What were you?" A grapefruit in front asked him. "I mean, before the leprechaun got to you."

"A fairy," he gulped. "What were you?"

"A sphinx," said the grapefruit, "one of the rarest creatures in the universe. I came here to take a nap after taking a message to the Land of Bubbles. Let me guess, he accused you of stealing his gold?"

Carson nodded.

"He's at it again," said a lemon.

"Don't worry," cooed the grapefruit. "He does this to everyone. We just have to figure out a way to stop him."

"Why does he do it?" Carson asked.

There was a long pause, and then an apple chimed in. "He likes his fruit. Leprechauns are crazy, anyways."

Caron's eyes almost overtook his whole curvy body. All the juice rushed from his head, making his top feel large and light. "He eats us?"

"Well," said a grape, "yeah, if we don't go bad first."

All the air escaped Carson as he began banging himself on the door.

"Stop it!" said the grapefruit. "You'll bruise yourself and you might get a sliver! Fruits don't heal. We dry up."

Carson backed away from the door and felt a cold liquid running down his belly. He took a look and saw a clear juice slipping off his curve. "Do something! I'm bleeding!"

"Sorry," said an orange. "There's nothing we can do; we don't have hands."

"When's the next time Ol' patrick is coming for more of us?" asked the grapefruit.

"In twenty-two minutes," said the honeydew, who was once a psychic.

"Okay," said the grapefruit. "We'll be ready."

They planned their escape for what seemed close to hours. Just when they had their plan ready, the doorknob twisted. The grapefruit whispered to Carson, "Here we go!"

The door swung open and there stood the leprechaun. He reached in and grabbed a mango. Before he could bite into her, she let out of a boiling scream. Grapes, using their mouths, linked together onto the grapefruit like a long tail. The grapefruit jumped and hit the leprechaun smack on the eye. The grapes wrapped around the leprechaun's neck so they couldn't throw the grapefruit off so suddenly. He dropped the mango and tried to grab the grapefruit off his eye, but the the grapefruit opened his mouth and bit the leprechaun's nose. He yelped while squeezing the grapefruit.

"Now!" yelled an orange.

Carson jumped onto three oranges stacked up and bounced up to the leprechaun's head, pushing off his hat. The dust flew out of the hat, turning all the fruit back into what they were originally. Not only that, but it turned the leprechaun into a banana.

An elf, who was once the mango, picked up the banana, peeled it and shoved it in her mouth. Due to excessive gagging, she almost couldn't get him down. "Serves him right."

The dwarves, which were exremely good at healing, sealed up Carson's cut (which was as small as a paper cut). "Well," said Carson, "it was nice to meet you all, but I've got to get to my fairy godson."

The sphinx patted Carson on the back. "May your days be long and full of fruitful events." Cason nodded and began flying away, eager to meet his new godchild.

At Least Temporarily.

My two jobs say a lot about me. I mean, where else should a sugar addict with an ever-growing list of To-See Movies be placed in the employment field?

For starters, Hollywood Video. There are a few downers - there are some with every job - like the fact that all my hours are nightly-based and I've never been big in customer service or sales - being an unconditional recluse - but I do truly enjoy the job. I have a lot of fun with the people I work with, and the free rentals are a gigantic benefit. Occasionally we have a themed weekend - Hawaiian, Sports, etc - which are always fun, because I get a weekend to wear jeans. Before my second job, some weeks I would have the second most hours of the entire crew (the first being the manager). But now I'm just on for one night a week.

My second job satisfies another habit of mine. I am the new assistant manager at Marble Slab Creamery. It's the original Coldstone, except we make our own ice cream on the premises. Not only do I get free ice cream, but I work full-time morning hours mostly by myself. I'm not completely trained because I just started, but I think I'll like it a lot once I get the hang of things.

It makes a big difference when you actually like the job you're going to. I don't plan to stay with this routine for a long time, but for temporary positions, I can say I am enjoying myself.