The next best thing.... I guess

I was G-videoing J today and I told him to hold on because I had to leave my office for a few minutes. I returned to this.

Apparently I had left him hanging too long. Notice he even drew his missing tooth that just got pulled and is awaiting a bridge next month. Very detail oriented. I laughed forever.

2fresh's brilliant complaint letter to UVU.

This gave me the giggles. And yes, she actually sent it....
2fresh

Hello Academic Scheduling,
I am a returning student to UVU and am simply trying to add some classes for summer and fall term. This, however, is proving a ridiculously arduous task. While I agree that the "Dynamic Schedule" available online can be helpful when searching for specific courses, it is a poorly made program that does not allow for its user to go back one page, forcing its user to start from the very beginning any time an adjustment in the search needs to be made and cannot show multiple class listings, and therefore has the tendency to make its user pull out every strand of hair on his or her head (including eyebrows) before taking a running start and jumping off of the roof of a 10-story building. 

These frustrations could be easily relieved with an available link to the pdf files of each term's class schedule. I realize that the University Bookstore would most likely have this schedule available for purchase, but as I work during the week and live in downtown Salt Lake, it's not the simplest of tasks for me. Quite frankly, I am a little bit shocked that they are not readily available on the school's website. There is a Student timetable.... and a Course Catalog... so I thought that surely there must be a Class Schedule pdf that I just wasn't seeing. So I began my quest for this elusive file... but to no avail.

If it turns out that there is a pdf file link available on the University's website that I have somehow overlooked, I'd like to express my profoundest apologies. Futhermore, if this be the case, I'd like the whole Academic Scheduling department to accept a gift basket of their choosing upon the completion of my degree and subsequent degree-related job acquisition in 2022. 

I know that in a sea of undergraduate students, I am not even a blimp on your radar. Quite frankly, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if no one even reads this e-mail and nothing is done. It's just the simple plea of a lowly subject on the bottom of the academic food chain.

Regards,
Julie Calderon

A classic

One of my favorite homies came home from Ireland this month. He's a little bit skinnier, a tad more handsome and has a fun new accent where you can't tell if he is asking a question or making a statement. So to celebrate my broham's arrival/Father's Day/my mom's birthday we headed to Idaho for the weekend. 

I finally saw this little sassy princess, who I hadn't seen in almost a year.

I got to see my mother inexplicably attacked with silly string before she blew out her candles. (Is that a thing now?)

Then somehow this happened.....

And of course, things were shot.

A classic Idaho weekend.

On my jog this morning....

Granted it was like early in the morning and things were still fuzzy in my head, but the description of this place that came to mind at the time was "a gossamer forest".......

Now as the day has progressed, and my serotonin high has ebbed, it kind of just looks more like a bunch of cotton tree bi-product crap gumming up the place. Eh. Perspective.

New York

I had my cake and ate it too in New York. Figuratively and literally. And definitely too much cheesecake. When I imagine a dream vacation I generally have always thought of a beach and sun. So as we were planning this New York vacay/work conference trip, I underestimated what a blast it was going to be. J had never been so I thought it would be cool to show him the sights, and I had never stayed in Manhattan so I figured it would be a good time, but probably nothing to blow your hair back. I was mistaken.

First of all we began our trip with terror. We were taking the red eye, flying into JFK at 6 a.m., and were told that we wouldn't be able to check into our hotel til around 2 p.m. That would mean us wandering aimlessly for 8 hours exhausted and delirious because the 5 hours of sleep we planned to get on the plane didn't happen - not even a little bit. So when the lady at check in handed us our keys at 6:30 a.m. and said we had a room, I almost cried. Then I almost cried again when I saw it was the most beautiful perfect room looking right onto Time Square with the most comfortable bed with the most fluffy pillows....I probably would have burst into song but instead we blacked out the room and zonked out for 8 hours. But the good fortune of that morning alone was enough to know it was going to be one hell of a clambake.

We would walk out of our hotel to this. Every day and night. The first night I thought the over-stimulation would put me into a seizure. So later that week, when we were shamed by a local to get out of Midtown tourist circus to taste the native night life, we were more than willing. We did the hop on hop off double decker bus tour, which is becoming somewhat of a tradition, all over Manhattan and hit all the must dos. (the Empire State Building Sky Ride is not a must do, unless you want to fight barfing for 15 minutes. Yes I said 'barf.' I'm bringing it back.)

I got to further inform the Naked Cowboy about Mormons and that no we are not all voting for Romney. I am pretty sure I blew his mind. And I realized that the NBC store at 30 Rock is my Disneyland. We ended up doing the whole tour of the studios including SNL. Loved it. We tended to get a lot of attention from people. Maybe because we were giants or maybe because no one knows what a Samoan is out there. Either way people were definitely curious. J even became the center of attention, multiple times, at a comedy show - one comic apologizing for calling him gay after J admitted that he indeed knew what a duvet was. "I do apologize sir, I wouldn't want to make you mad, you look like you get up in the morning and stomp puppies." One just said out of the blue "What are you man? You're a big dude." 

Then we did the museum thing too.

I swear there are like a million museums there and no way to hit them all. But we spent the most time at the Natural History Museum. There is an entire section dedicated to rocks. Couldn't get enough.

But probably my fave of the whole week was Broadway.

I think it was back in high school when I put on my bucket list going to New York and seeing Broadway shows every night. It wasn't until the middle of the week that I realized I was actually doing that. Originally we had planned on just seeing Wicked and had bought the tickets in advance. But when there are theaters literally across the tiny street on either side of you and even one in your hotel, you really have no choice but to go nuts. Sure Wicked was great blah blah everyone knows that. Evita was also good pretty much because Ricky Martin carried it. But Ghost and Rock of Ages were amazingly brilliant. I cried through a sizable part of Ghost, when I wasn't whispering to J "How did they do that? Did you see that? How did they pull that off? I need to know!!!" And in Rock of Ages when I wasn't dying of laughter I was fighting the intense urge to throw my panties on stage. I am so glad we were willing to wait in a ridiculous line to get Rock of Ages tickets, especially since while waiting we got to experience being on this billboard. OK call me lame but I really got my giggles from it.  

Toward the end of the week we went turbo mode and we adopted the motto "we can sleep when we are dead." We started cramming everything in and even went to stuff that started past midnight. And as icing on the cake got to see my bestie Ange the last day at her figure competition. Of course she won.

 It was like putting all my faves into one week. Loved it.