My Alien Encounters

My childhood world was populated by knights and princesses; cowboys and indians, even talking animals; not anywhere was there, not even once, an alien, or a spaceship, or an astronaut of any kind. Maybe it is because my dad wasn't into that kind of thing, and my only brother was 8 years younger than me, and was not into that either. So while I can be scared of mass-murders, non-alien-fantasy monsters, evil princes, ROUS even, I can't be scared by aliens. My suspension of disbelief cannot be breached with aliens! They just don't scare me because to me they just cannot exist on this earth.

This being said, Scully (wonderful friend!) invited me to have some fun with her and some friends this Pioneer weekend for an X-Files marathon, pre-the new movie. And much to my suprise I enjoyed myself! I don't think I will ever be a huge fan (primarily because of the alien thing), but the plots are intriguing, and D.D. is a very good-looking man. So, will I ever be scared, fasinated or intirigued by aliens? No, but I can enjoy some good entertainment. The second movie was good, I thought, but my lack of X-Files experience doesn't make me a good judge.

And I am going to try reading Stephanie Meyer's The Host, which consequently is about aliens, and try one more time to see if I can have suspension of disbelief.

Yes, I'm in the Ensign

Yes, I am in this month's Ensign Magazine. I have been getting lots of e-mails, love you guys! I am in the Ensign this month, in the article about the perpetually single! :D LOL. I have a friend who works for the Ensign and she edited that article and said it made her think of me so she gathered me with other of {her} friends for the photo. Yes, it is a staged photo! :D

I haven't seen the article or photo yet, so I don't yet know whether I need to be put in witness protection, but I have it on good word from my family that I don't need to have them disown me for my good looks; I warned them if I looked like a dog they are ordered to say "That is not Esperanza, wow that strangely looks like my sister/daughter, but it's not her! :D

Camping at Mt. Rainier!

I was able to go home for a few weeks and we went camping, yeah! We camped at Chinook Pass a few miles below the backside of Mt. Rainier and went hiking on the mountain, and hiked through the Grove of the Patriarchs and wore tye-dye t-shirts, (not mine) and ate yummy food and kept all the neighboring campers up with sounds of the guitar from my brother and lots of laughing coming from my sister and I's tent. I love camping! Tons of misquitos, swimming in glacier lakes, ect., Nice. Here is a few funny pics!

The Fade

Disclaimer: I have been 1200 miles away from my social life for three weeks now, and am not then obviously dating anyone here in the motherland so this is not about me.

I have watched and am currently watching friends get in and out of relationships and have had a few myself. And what I want to know is, what is worse--the pre-mature DTR or the FADE? They can be equally debilitating I am sure, and each situation has it's call for one or the other, although personally I try to avoid both either doing either or having either done to me, although in single life I suppose it is inescapable. I can't make a blanket statement as to which one is better than the other, although I would have to say "the fade," is much worse in my eys than a little open communication. I think guys are crazy to think girls don't know when they are being phased-out, but guys and girls both can feel equally slighted when they are not given a long enough chance to be-gotten-to-know, if you will. Again, I'm not referring to anything or anyone in particular, but sometimes I wonder if a little open communication wouldn't just change the world? So Fade or pre-mature DTR? You decide.

(P.S. For those of you who have read/seen Wives and Daughters, if those crazy people just had a little open communication in their relationships, a lot of people would have been a lot happier, a lot sooner!)

Don't Hate Me Because I'm Beautiful

Maybe I will have to vote for John McCain because of his wife! JK. Well, I do like him better now that I know more about his wife. I just hated her a little because she is beautiful. Tendency to do that as women don't we? Beautiful, and looks quite a bit younger than her husband.

Well, I saw a new special on Cindy McCain on GMA (Good Morning American)I only watch it because my mom does. Haha. Anyway, she runs marathons, runs Operation Smile out of Africa, has three kids of her own I think and adopted one severly birth defected child out of Malasia(?) and raised her kids in AZ while her husband was commuting to DC and back and home only on the weekends. I guess what I am saying is she is a tough broad. Good for her! And they showed a lot of pictures of her from over the years and she had lots of bad hair-dos too! She just still looks beautiful because she is thinner than ever and has had some face work done, but all in all, (and maybe I am just being indoctrinated by the news media) she is more than just a perfectly coiffered, formidable woman!

Sure she was born an heiress and seduced John McCain when he was only separated I think from his first wife and she is 15-ish years younger than him, but she seems really cool. I wouldn't mind having a laundry list of great accomplishments as well!

Viki's Isn't Going Anywhere.

(I'm home) and I found an old scrapbook (if you can call it that) of my senior year of high school. Wow, some scary pictures in there! Haha. My little sister and I were looking at them and she was like wow, you didn't wear any makeup back then! Well, I did, but not very much, and my bangs were like wow, way too short and well, you know. Mom assured me that I have beoome much more lovely now that I am older, and I was so cute back then, it was just the styles! Why we wore clothes that made us look like men I don't know. Why I had those ugly bangs, I don't know! But wow, you just have to laugh and not let yourself have that little moment of crazy and totally not normal or necessary fear that someday you will show pictures of yourself to your future husband or kids and they will be like whoa, girl, seriously, what were you thinking wearing that? My mom said we were all so cute then as we are now, styles have just changes. Well, all I have to say is there are a few things that are not ever leaving me, that are improvements I will not ever retract. Victoria Secret and eyebrow pencils and eyeliner, and foundation, ect.,ect.,ect,. Maybe those things help me look a little more than I really am, but I don't care! And just to prove I am a more self-assured adult than I sometimes feel like I am, I am going to post one of these photos (if I can figure out how) on my blog! So we can say, ah, those days! Look how (cute) we were! Ha ha.

Okay, here is a photo of a few of us at my friend's house right before Sweethearts (?)

"Because I Said So!"

Growing up, instead of hearing, "Because I said so!" We would hear, "Because you are a member of this family, and that is what we do!" If we thought we should get paid for our chores or be reimburshed somehow for anything, we were told what we were doing was our responsibility because we were a member of the family, and that is what we do in our family! This morning I woke up grateful for this philosophy.

My brother needed to move out of his apartment,but his car got hit. I have been carrying around his house in my car for over a week. He helped me move my classroom at school a couple of days ago, and all that loaded down weight + extreme heat = car problems. My car has been overheating, and probably my water pump is broken, not because of helping my brother, but just because my car is fastly becoming an old junker :D. My brother helped me fix my car twice as it broke down, and watched patiently as I bumped my head twice, swore, and then proceeded to cry over my life. What a good brother! And then he decided to delay his trip home a while to drive me home, so I don't die in my car somewhere in Oregon.

Last night we took his car to Les Mis down at the Tuachan Theatre in St. George, and had a super, super good time, the play is amazing! We did the trip in one night so we had to keep each other awake until 3:35 a.m. when we rolled back into Provo, laughing at old family stories, singing to the radio, and chomping on beef jerky. While we were doing this I was reminded that my family has a funny sense of humor, but we always find what anyone in the family says extremely halarious, which I love about my family because I dearly love to laugh.

The point of all this rambling? I love my family. Familes are there when you cry and when you laugh, when your car breaks down, and when you do crazy things together like drive back from St. George at midnight instead of camping out like normal people. I'm glad Heavenly Father put us into families because it is much better to go through the bumps and bruises as well as the good times, together. So I am grateful we stick together becuase "That's what we do in this family!"

The Dreaded Question

I hate being asked, "So what do you like to do?" Seems so canned, and is usually a pre-cursor to being asked out. But somehow when people ask you, "So what do you like to do?" You suddenly feel amazingly uninteresting and cannot think of a single thing you "do." It is like being asked the almost equally lame question, "What's new in your life?" And although your life seems amazingly interesting to you, you cannot think of an interesting thing to share that sounds interesting when you are about to say it. I think it's a mental thing.

Last night at a combined ward party a guy talked to me for about 45 minutes to an hour about life I guess. I had never met him before and he was acting engaged in the conversation, and then we got to point, that point we all know about, when it's time to ask, "So what do you like to do?" And I went blank. You see, I like to do everything! The only thing that I really said no to that was presented to me was rock climbing on a first and blind date, not in a practice quarry type place, but on the side of a mountain. My main, lame reason for not trying it, (not that I told him this) was harnesses make your backside look big, and I obviously didn't know him very well! :) But what do I actually do on a regular basis? I read, and scrapbook and go to the gym, and um yeah, that's what I spend my free time doing. Of course I socialize with friends at dinners and movies and concerts and hiking and those types of things, but yeah. Well, when I said I like to run and read he was like, "No, what do you like to do?" And I smiled lamely and said, I like to do those things, yes by choice, on my spare time. I think it must be time I come up with a new hobby like mountain biking or playing tennis. That's what I will try to work on this summer, something interesting to say to that dreaded question: What do you like to do?

Memoirs of a Geisha

I got a tag and I guess I will do it! Here are the instructions I followed:

1. Grab the nearest book. If you are currently reading something, that'll be fine too.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 4 sentences on your Blog along with these instructions.
5. Don't you dare dig for that "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet I know that is what you were thinking!
6. Tag 5 people.

'But within your okiya...Don't you find it odd that Mrs. Nitta has never adopted Hatsumomo as a daughter? The Nitta okiya must be the wealthiest in Gion without an heir. By adopting Hatsumomo, not only would Mrs. Nitta solve that problem, but all of Hatsumomo's earnings wold then be kept by the okiya, without a single sen of it paid out to Hatsumomo herself. And Hatsumomo is a very successful geisha!' (123)

This is from Memoirs of a Geisha which I just finished yesterday. It is a really good book! It has some adult content, obviously it is about a Japanese courtisan, but it moves you along so beautifully, 1-because you learn all about the Geisha culture, 2-it curiously does not sound like it is written by a man, 3-it curiously does not seem too much like it is written by a Westerner vs. someone imersed in the Asian cultures. 4-I've been picking up some good guy-getting tips; some good seductive eye-contact techniques! LOL. jk. Okay, it moves you along similarly to The Mercy of Thin Air, which it is not at all like, but similarly is able to talk about hard topics and still move you along as if you are floating along on a river or a cloud from the fist page to the last. This being said, I don't think I would like it if I was a man, nor would I recommend men read it. Somethings are just for the women, of course this being said as well, I probably shouldn't read it either? :D

There are some good jems though, this is what I would have posted if I could have chosen my passage. Good advice:

"I understood the danger of focusing only on what isn't there. What if I came to the end of my life and realized that I'd spent every day watching for a man who would never come to me? What an unbearable sorrow it would be, to realize I'd never really tasted the things I'd eaten, or seen the places I'd been, because I'd thought nothing but the Chairman even while my life was drifting away from me." (349

Good advice for me I guess! ;)

The Universe Has a Sense of Humor

Life requires a sense of humor, becuase the universe has one too. Most of you probably know without me having to say who it is, that there is a guy that I met several years ago at a party that I had the most embarassing experience of my life with, compounded by the fact he is very handsome, and how we have had random embarassing moments everytime I have run into him of the years. Well, yesterday again I ran into him for the first time in a very long time actually, and I am not obsessing over how handsome he is or anything, don't ever even think about him, so that is not the context of this story. But, luck would have it that I would run into him again yesterday just after stepping out of the dentist's office, having two cavities filled and my cheeks as puffy as they can get, with no ability to smile. My lips were so numb that putting on lipstick, which I think I can do in my sleep, became nearly impossible; I had to wipe it off the outer-reaches of my cheeks where it wanted to land instead of my numb, puffy lips. Anway, rambling! So I am walking down a street laden actually which a huge bag of groceries that I am carrying in my arms, when low and behold, who should I run into? And of course I said 'Hi, how are you,' as did he, and he gave me a huge smile, which I tried--attempted--willed--but could not quite get my puffy face, and numb cheeks and lips to return! Alas, I just had to laugh at the thought of how my face probably looked attempting to smile at him, I probably looked like some strange, grimacing, I-need-to-go-to-the-bathroom-really-bad, looking person! Again, no significance to this story other than life can just be funny sometimes, and I am determined to laugh with it!

"I'm just Sitting Right Here Having Another *Rootbeer* in Mexico" Cruise 2008

4-day cruise, 7-day Girls Night Out!

The first day we went to Las Vegas and walked around the strip and became alternately grossed out/fascinated at the body exhibit, if you haven't seen it you need to; they replace body fluids with polymer and so you see the "live" tissues coated in plastic, it is amazing.


Las Vegas.


My Mexican boyfriend; one of my favorite vacations photos! La Bufadora, Ensenada, Mexico.


Mexican markets are so fun and colorful! I bought a couple of vases and some silver jewlery~.


Wearing our life jackets, just in case we sink!


Mexico, obviously.


Sitting at an outdoor cantina on Catalina Island, post snorkeling experience.


"Give me two pina colatas, I gotta have one for each hand." Laying out by the pool was amazing, but yeah, I didn't wear quite enough sunscreen!


On our last day of the trip we got all dressed up and went to Wicked at the Pantages in LA! Such a fun show! It was fun to have occasion to wear a little black dress and heels, both for Wicked and the dress up night on the cruise!

We had a really great time, went to Las Vegas, then the cruise from Long Beach to Catalina to Ensenada and back to LA. In LA we went to the Getty art museum and to Wicked. I burned pretty bad, I should have had higher SPF than 30, but my face didn't burn which is good! I hate looking like a cherry-tomatoe! We did run into some Provo boys on the cruise and ate a lot, the food is amazing. Had a blast! Love governement money! ;) I'll be posting a whole photo album on facebook if anyone is interested in seeing more photos!

Desperate Times Call for Kissing Booths?

I promise to blog my trip to Mexico, but first, look what was left in my classroom for the summer! If anyone needs to borrow this to send a message to someone in particular that they want to kiss, just let me know! I'll try it out and see what good use I can put it to! JK.

I had a student do a research paper on displays of affection; whatever, he didn't write the paper, just did the presentation! But it was a pretty good one, I might add. Very creative, and apparently, he thought I could use the kissing booth over the summer!

I Feel Like A Dog

So, good thing my hair turned out looking alright, otherwise I think I would have literally killed the girl cutting my hair! But she thinned my hair without asking, and I know, it looks okay, as witnessed by these pictures, but wow. This was not the normally thinning with the little tooth-like sheering scissors, she grabbed chunks of my hair up along the crown of my head and just chopped! I have about 10 or so little globs of hair that are only 1/8th of an inch long! You can feel them through the top of my head, and the only comparison I can come up with is that my head feels like a recently clipped dog head! It is so bizarre I can't stop touching it! I am going to develope a really weird idiosyncrasy if my hair doesn't grow soon. People will think I am scratching for fleas! Great, now on my list of things to look for in a man I need to add, *doesn't like to touch female hair*, because my head feels like a dog on top! The worst thing is, I will have what my family affectionately calls a "Utah-Bomp" in a few months when the top of my head grows out and I will have a lot more volumne on top than on bottom! AHHHGHHGHGH!

I thought about trying to photograph one of the little bits of hair becuase you can see them! But that would have been going too far! Feel free to come feel my hair if you want to. *sigh*

Sibling Rivalry

It's a good thing I decided a long time ago it was futile to compete with my older sister! It is fairly common for siblings close in age to feel competitive with one another, and my sister is only about 16 months or so older than me. However, she left me behind almost 9 years ago when she got a husband, now she has four of the most adorable children I have ever seen, has lived in Europe for the last three years, and now she gets one of these! *sigh*



So, a little jealous, yeah, but not really. I feel so far behind her now that I have just stopped worrying about it! I am happy right where I am, doing exactly what I am doing. Although, it would sure be nice! Congrats to my sister and her family who are making the trek back to the United States. In the mean time, I will just keep living my single life and be spontaneous and go with some friends of mine in the ward to California on Saturday and spend a week doing nothing but soaking up the sun and forgetting about all of the papers I have graded this year!

My Announcement

So, I never tell my kids about dates I go on, or who I think is cute because it is none of their business. I think it is just because I am a young teacher that they are fascinated with my love life. They are constantly wanting to set me up with brothers, cousins, nephews, uncles, and the one single male teacher at the high school. So this "wedding announcement" I found on my white board this morning when I came to work, is not anything new per say, but just cute and funny. Apparently I need to be looking for a man who wears black short shorts and and carries an umbrella! I left it on the board to be funny and all morning my kids are asking about who my man is! :) Apparently his name is Herman? jk.

My Poor, Poor Students

So complicated being a woman! Hormones affect women is so many different ways! I was laughing with my sister yesterday becuase she says when she is hormonal she is annoyed by every man in sight, and I react just the opposite. All I want right now is to be held in somebody's arms instead of grading research papers on my prep-period. I get vulnerable feeling and just want to be taken care of and cuddled with.

But that is not the only thing that is wrong right now. My poor students! When I'm hormonal they seem to score a lot lower on tests and papers...My honor's class just received an average score of 78% on their To Kill A Mockingbird test I just graded. At moments like this I wonder if I should just give them all a little extra credit to make up the difference because I full well know why they all scored abnormally low on this test! Question is, how would I label that in the grade book? LOL.

My Layers are Sticking

To my body. It is living heck in my classroom. 87 degrees with the swamp cooler on. (They never put *water* in the swamp cooler) So sitting under the cooler is like sitting under a blow-dryer. We keep it on because it creates air flow. Who wants to learn about The Great Gatsby in this environment? NO ONE.

Suddenly I am onery too, reminiscent of the days in grade school when NO school I went to had an airconditioner, and all you could do is day-dream, talk out of turn, and stare out the windows. Only in my room there are only three litle windows, so the heat and the noise and the inevitable accompanying smell of 1 1/2 hour long classes of 36, 17 year olds, reverberate off of the faux-wood paneling and orange carpet. Misery.

Suddenly my classroom is the jungle. Choose your battles. I am just as miserable as the kids.

Thank you President Bush

All I can think about is summer vacation. It is always on my mind and only 2 1/2 weeks away now! How can I stand waiting until then! How can I keep my mind from running over all the possible summer schemes that I have and I don't have?! How can I keep my head in the game for 2 1/2 more weeks until delicious freedom? And now, thanks to President Bush I have a compounded problem. Now I want to think about the $600 from the government that I forgot I was getting--and now can think of 150 million ways to spend it. It will probably end up in my savings account, but for now, I am dreaming and schemeing of the wonder of unexpected money spending ability. Should I go somewhere? Buy something? Who knows! But it sure does give me one more thing to think about other than work! Oh, my. How are you going to spend yours?

Is David Archuleta for real?

Okay you American Idol fans, David Archuleta says he is not serving a mission. “Music” can be his mission. And I want to know what you think. We were discussing this last night with some friends and the situation was compared to the Osmonds, who apparently were told music could be their mission. My question is, is David Archuleta as “big” as the Osmonds? I don’t think so, at least not yet. Is 15 minutes of possible fame worth breaking a commandment? A million things jump into my mind like, well, think of all the “Mormons” who went into the media and lost their Mormonism, can David Archuleta stand it? What about Amy Adams from Enchanted, and Aaron Elkhart, and the very attractive Paul Walker, and other LDS people who are big-ish but not BIG; hardly anyone seems to be able to hold onto their LDS standards and pursue Hollywood.

People can justify and argue until the sun goes down on people like Steve Young who didn’t serve a mission, and Larry King’s millionth wife who is LDS and does not have a temple marriage, and on and on and on. I’m not trying to judge them per say, as much as wonder if David Archuleta is that good? I don’t think so. He is good, and gets a lot of fan base here in Utah because he is from Murray, but really? Does he have what it takes to make it big? I know that people can still be wonderful people even though they have never served a mission, like everyone else I have people in my extended family who are good Mormons and have never served a mission, I’m just afraid he is going to have to lose his good-boy appeal to make it big, but maybe I’m totally off the mark. And all of my high school girls who have crushes on him and are “so proud” of him for being in the media and a “good Mormon,” and a “great role model” are going to be sorely disappointed. I'm I too much of a skeptic?

Floaties

Apparently, the reason people all got sick in the swimming pools of Utah last summer was because moms didn’t buy the right size of swim diapers for their babies. Yeah. Do you think buying the right size is really going to keep little poopies from floating out of the diapers in public swimming pools? Lets be honest—any sort of paper-ish swim diaper is going to deteriorate and not hold waste-water after an hour in the swimming pool. Band-Aid sized solution I say.

KSL did a gross feature on the news last night where they actually filmed, FILMED pieces of poopies and filmy-brown water floating out of swim diapers and swimsuits of little kids. I was disturbed by the filming of it, and the “test-group” who were filmed in fish tanks, almost as much as by the fecal matter itself. Sadly, it’s always happened, it always will, and if you say you have never gone to the bathroom in a swimming pool in your life, face up to it, you are a liar. But should this stop fun summer memories of being a kid in the pool? No. So keep taking your kids to the public pools in the summer, but just don’t film the poopies. Ignorance is bliss right?