on being late

as i was walking to school this morning at my customary time of 9:15, i had some thoughts (i seem to do a lot of thinking while walking to school).

what you need to know is that my first class begins at 9:00 and lasts only 50 minutes
what's more, i really enjoy that class.
it just has the misfortune of being my first class, and no matter how hard i try, i cannot seem to be on time.
i've struggled with this for as long as i've been responsible for my own arrival times.
my punctuality-loving photo teacher john has told us on many occasions "if you can't be on time, be early"
i've tried to implement this. i've tried waking up earlier, showering at night to save time in the morning, combining scripture-reading time with breakfast-eating time, setting a second alarm that rings twenty minutes before i need to be where i'm going (which is approximately a ten minute walk away) all to no avail.
this consistent lateness has caused some of my kinder teachers to applaud me when i manage to arrive less than five minutes late for class.

it seems i'm cursed.

now, if you're wondering what all this has to do with the beautiful lady in that picture up there, i'll tell you:
that is my grandmother's aunt (which i think makes her my great great aunt? not sure...juli, a little help?) in any case, her name was madeleine, and she was really close with my grandma. her first husband was killed at verdun during world war i, she re-married a veteran officer and left her dear lorraine (the region in easern france that was involved in a perpetual tug-o-war between germany and france from about 1870-1945, and where my paternal grandmother's lineage goes back centuries) to live in dakar, senegal, where he was the governor of french west africa. he was tried and imprisoned after opposing general de gaulle's invasion of dakar, and later died.
the point of all this is that madeleine faced alot of trials and losses, but from what i've gathered she was an incredible woman. i never knew her, but my grandma talks about her all the time (my grandma is the little girl in the photo), and i've always felt really close to her for some reason. i've been told we have alot in common, and a couple years ago i learned that one of those qualities is tardiness (there are some great stories about nearly missed trains and the like).


so it seems that being late is my heritage, and i suppose in that case, i'm proud of it.

seasons

this year marks my fourth fall in utah.

i have to admit, i really enjoy living somewhere with four seasons (you know...fall winter spring summer), although i do miss some of the seasons i grew up with in florida (hurricane season, jellyfish season, stingray season, rains every day from 4-6pm season, cold front season).

as i was walking to school this morning listening to my ipod (even though i gulp wish i had a zune-i know, i know, i'm a mac traitor...but seriously, who can beat unlimited music downloads for $15 a month and wireless access to download new stuff from the actual device?), i started thinking about how certain songs/musicians really embody the mood of each season for me.

here's the run down:

fall=the decemberists, regina spektor, band of horses, iron & wine, the shins
winter= modest mouse (especially the moon and antarctica), the killers, sufjan stevens, feist, bloc party
spring=neutral milk hotel, matt costa, beck, dan potthast
summer= ben kweller, bob marley, tribe called quest, sublime

rilo kiley=good for any season

yeah, so that's what i was thinking about while walking to school.
oh, i was also thinking that sometimes i whish provo were more like dickens' london, and that we could hop onto the backs of street carriages and trolleys to get places faster.
then maybe i wouldn't be late to class every day.

my poor, beautiful glasses

anyone who's known me for more than a few months has probably come to realize that delicate things don't do well with me. though i love them and try to be gentle with them, they always wind up broken or dilapidated long before their life expectancy would dictate. this is especially true of things i use regularly (clothes, shoes, books...computers). i'm the only person i know with a macbook pro that has dents in it and whose hardware innards seem to be trying to push themselves out of the lower left corner.

i'm beginning to see the effects of my (unintentional) brutality on one of my favorite wedding presents; my beautiful glasses. it seriously broke my heart when i shattered the first one a month or so ago, but today was even worse. it was the last dish i washed, and as i swirled the water around inside of it to rinse the soap out, my hand suddenly forgot that it was supposed to be holding onto the glass and just decided to let go mid swirl. the glass went flying into the right side sink where it shattered and a million glass shards flew all over the kitchen. it was certainly the most dramatic demise of a glass that i've ever experienced. i had to throw away a plate of cookies that was near the sink for fear of glass shards in the stomach, internal bleeding etc. so of my eight glasses, two are broken, one is chipped, and one has a tiny crack down the side that i assume came from something heavy laid on top of it in the dish drying rack thing. i wonder if i would break things less if we had a dishwasher.

at least the flatware is durable.

shower philosophies

while i was in the shower tonight, i did some deep philosophizing. alot of thinking goes on when you're in the shower, you know. or maybe it's just me and my occasional 45 minute extravaganzas (only on the days when i wash my hair and shave my legs).
so anyways, i was humming a dan potthast song to myself in the shower. i haven't listened to him for ages, so i'm not sure why the song popped into my head. i think it's called "how to suffer." i started thinking about a certain line that seems like it's supposed to be dialogue. i won't quote it, but my interpretation of it is that someone asks him what his regrets are, and he responds by saying he's not done yet, which to me means that he's not dead yet, so why would anyone assume that he has regrets (or at least regrets that can't be amended).

that got me thinking about how everyone has the possibility of living life entirely without regret. i'm referring to the haunt-you-on-your-deathbed kind of regret, not the regret you have for your most recent embarrassing moment or for having picked at that zit and turned it into a monster. but seriously. we all do stupid things, but what's glorious is that no matter how far from perfect we are, if we understand and take advantage of the atonement, we should never have to live with regret. that may seem kind of ironic since regret is a necessary step in the repentance process, but god forgives completely the minute you repent earnestly, so regret only has to last as long as you allow it to.

i firmly believe that every single experience you have contributes in a big way to who you are, and without those experiences you and your life might be totally different. in that sense, we'll always have to live with the memory and consequences of the things we've done, but we don't have to live in regret.

jesus is the best.

just some thoughts at the end of a long day...

fall

i've been storing up tons of thoughts and ideas over the past couple of weeks, and haven't quite gotten around to writing them down. but now fall seems to be here and school has begun, which means i now have a schedule, which means (unless i get crazy busy) i'll probably be blogging more often. i'm the kind of person who gets alot more done when i'm on a schedule and have to do productive and enjoyable things with the time i've got left over.

one of the biggest things i want to start posting is recipes. more on that soon.

so, andy and i started school this week. we both have some really interesting classes. it's going to be a busy semester, but we're both really excited.

oh, and to add to the fall feeling, the leaves outside the window above our bed are starting to turn, and the mornings have been freezing.

ps: the leaves here are not as colorful as in the photo yet, i took that one two years ago.