paperbacks and peaks

the HB prefers hardcover books because they last longer and still look nice. He would love to have shelves full of collections of hardback books someday. I prefer paperback books because you can bend them. And when you're done reading them they look used, but they also look loved. I like that things break down and decay. I like it when things get overgrown by other things. I like that species become extinct--not when sped by human action, but when it naturally occurs--and when new species or existing ones' population grows to fill the gap, thus altering the ecosystem again to create other extinctions and flourishes (I just finished reading “Cod” and the fictional “children of men”—both great stories of population growth and decline).

What's cool is that the HB and I both love old buildings. He's into history and I think the decay is plain romantic. This weekend we backpacked up to Emerald Lake with April and Bill and then summitted Mount Timpanogos. There’s an old shelter by the lake that’s been vandalized. I don’t think it gets used much now but I wish I could see it when it was thriving. When Tyler and I went to San Francisco in July we got to explore the ruins of an old bath house by the coast and then compare it to the poster picture of what it must have looked like. That was awesome.

Tyler is the shiz. He hiked up by himself to meet us at the lake Saturday night after his football team’s scrimmage. It was dark by then and a long hard hike with a pack, especially on a trail he’d never been on before. I was so worried about him and probably drove him crazy by continuously calling him on his way up. Then I hiked down a ways to meet him and show him our campsite. Bill built some chairs out of rocks and our site looked really awesome. In the morning I couldn’t wait to show Tyler the area and to get up to the top with him. It was cool to hike to the peak together and then all the way back down even though I thought the last mile or two was going to kill me. When we got down we both grabbed a 32-ouncer at the gas station, for me, a vanilla Diet Coke, woohoo!

Birthday incidents

I got the haircolor taken care of yesterday. Now I have a very defined stripe of red going up my hair from the bottom. It's cool.

Yesterday was April and I's birthday--Happy Birthday April! We went to the Macaroni Grill. Later last night when Tyler and Caiden got home from football and I got home from the hair salon they surprised me with a chocolate cake. They are the shiz.

This weekend we'll go camping for our birthday trip. This is a sort of informal, assumed tradition. We both love camping and go often during the summer, but dont' always do a "birthday camping trip." April and I have a bad history of having accidents or incidents every time we take a trip together. Two years ago on our birthday camping trip we went to the San Rafael Swell. We got my car stuck on a shrub and I spent some time (at least a good hour) laying in the dirt hacking at the shrub with a shovel. I also briefly got lost on that trip. It was awesome though.

Here's us at my parents on Sunday.

hair-steria

I get bored with my hair sometimes. I don't want to cut it short because I had it that way before and hated it. But this time I thought I'd put in a red streak for the HB's football team--he's coaching the East high freshmen and their jerseys are bright red. It was an excuse anyway to do something fun. So the pic on the left is what I got and the one on the right is a bad sketch of what I wanted.

It's not so much that I didn't get what I want, but that I didn't feel listened to. I get my hair done at the beauty school because it's cheaper and I'm not a perfectionist. But it drives me crazy how I can sit on my butt for 3 1/2 hours and pay $60 and still not get what I asked for! Sitting on my butt for that long is honestly painful for me. It's hard to make it through a movie, so anything less entertaining can seem hellish. And time is very valuable to me. I don't want to spend that kind of time and money again to get it re-done.

So I was frustrated. I don't think I come off as indecisive, so it bugs me when it seems I should have been more assertive in this case. And it's my own fault for not being adamant, and picky, but who wants to be a disliked customer? Is it possible to be very particular and still be nice about it so they don't hate you? I thought that was what I was doing.

Keen Newport H2's

April picked these sandals up for me yesterday. She called me first thing in the morning when she received the "dirt cheap" email from Out N Back. They were selling their remaining pairs for just $45 (regularly around $90).

They are the Keen Newport H2's and are sooooo comfortable and perfect for hiking in because they breathe, they hug your foot, they're waterproof, and they protect your toes from rocks. I wore them the rest of the night after I got home from work.

Much to the chagrin of the HB, they were out of his size.

Twin sisters are the shiz. April and Bill are the experts when it comes to getting the right camping gear and getting the right price for it. And Bill knows the San Rafael Swell like the back of his hand.

Here's April and I on our most recent camping trip.

Moby Dick

A few years ago I had a friend who started to read Moby Dick while he was staying or living by the beach. When he came back to Utah, he could never bring himself to read it again despite trying. I thought that was cool because for him it was being by the water that made reading the book meaningful. It wasn't about finishing the book.

I was sort of envious of his ability to really live in the moment. I like to think that I live that way too, but in the case of reading I'm the type of person that when only assigned certain chapters of a textbook for class feels so guilty for skipping the others that I usually try to read them too.

Then the other day I was telling the HB about the book Elizabeth. About how Queen Elizabeth's cousin Mary kept trying to kill her and Elizabeth would put her in prison and then eventually let her out and Mary kept trying to kill her. He asked if Elizabeth ever ended up deciding to kill her cousin or not and I couldn't even remember! The book was great, but isn't it weird that I couldn't even remember the resolution to the predominant conflict of the book? I felt proud of myself for not needing to remember how it all worked out in the end, but just that it did.

Worst dream in the world last night

How can I forget it? I feel devastated, but know it's not real. I feel weird.

Men's vs. Women's Health

I'm talking about the magazines here. Before I begin though, lest you get the wrong impression--I am not any kind of butch chic. I rarely lift weights, but keep my muscles toned through yoga and other exercises almost daily. I do however, take my cardio very seriously--I do about 45 minutes to an hour every single day of the week. I've been doing this for almost 8 years. Also, I get daily email tips on health, health foods, etc. I don't have any sort of degree in nutrition, but I can tell you what food to eat for which vitamins and benefits. I get stuck in routines like everyone one else, but still love new ideas and appreciate a magazine that takes this seriously. So now, on to my diatribe.

Men's health is the greatest magazine I've ever read. I have always been a sort of subscriber by proxy--that is through my boyfriends' or now, the HB's subscription. I was excited when Women's Health premiered because nothing else comes close to men's health for a girl serious about health. But the women's version too fall's short, not only did they dumb down some workouts, but the sex articles have titles like "how to get in the mood" versus the ones I like in Men's health such as "How to get what you want." Don't they know that the only thing keeping a healthy, active woman from being in the mood is an unhealthy relationship?

The funny thing is that I read the sex articles in the men's version, somewhat out of curiousity, but also to make sure the female sex is correctly being represented here. And for the most part it is correct and I applaud it for being so accurate and for recognizing that women do know what they want and do enjoy sex. I want to make sure the HB gets the right information, and though we talk openly about what we want, it's nice to have backup. You know, I won't use an explicit example, but let's say I suggested that sometime we go for a romantic walk. It's one thing for me to suggest that, but it's another thing if he's read it in a men's magazine, or if a friend of his suggests the same thing in a way that says "if you do that, she'll go crazy."

So now, all that's left for the magazine to work on is to get men to trust our suggestions as much as they do their friends' suggestions.

Half Nelson

I saw this movie at the Sundance Film Festival and I think it just opened in the big cities this weekend. It's not out in SLC yet, but I wanted to mention it because I heard the director on NPR for a quick interview yesterday. It's a great movie about the unlikely friendship of a teacher and student. He teaches history and seems to be quite good at it. He's into dialectics and I think that's cool. But he has an addiction to cocaine and so for audiences we have to see if this friendship is acceptable to us or not. I loved it. It's really light on plot, but the artistry and emotion is great, and the soundtrack is all done by the band Broken Social Scene.

you're only as loud as the noises you make

The thing about the picture is that it is so much more intimate than it looks. For me anyway, because the idea of my lover watching me tweeze my eyebrows or something would make me feel a little self-conscious I think. And I don't know why. Why are we so ashamed of our bodies? Why are there so many things that we don't talk about--bodily or not?

Today I had my first session of laser hair removal. Call me silly, but only the HB knew I was doing it. There are a lot of reasons I didn't tell anyone, but I like to pretend like they're not a big deal, I just didn't mention that I was having it done.

I guess first because I feel guilty about the amount of money it costs to have laser hair removal. Secondly, I think I may have been embarrassed about having hair. That sounds stupid, but girls think they shouldn't have hair anywhere except on their heads (maybe I shouldn't have read that book "the aquatic ape" by feminist Elaine Morgan in my college days).

Anyway, I have sensitive skin and get skin care updates in my email almost daily. One day I entered a contest to win laser hair removal and it turns out that I won $300 toward any treatment package. This is not a large amount considering the price of treatment, but enough to help if you want to start with a small area.

So that's what I did. After consulting about possible areas (bikini comes first to mind of course) I ended up deciding on my lip. NOT that the hair on my lip is so prominent, but it was affordable and a "good place to start."

The reason I talk about it is not that anyone cares about hair above my lip, but because why is it so damn hard to talk about?

I can only get as close to people as I allow, but I WANT to be close to people, so why do we stop ourselves by not sharing our silly insecurities?

50 things about me

random preferences and things that make me who I am today

1. I hate censorship.
2. I hate anything done half-heartedly and therefore often hate myself because half-hearted is all I can do sometimes.
3. My heart beats 44 beats per minute, as of age 27
4. I think I’m good at writing, but I rarely do it and am probably not so good because of that.
5. I LOVE live music.
6. I love dancing, but am not that good at it.
7. I cried the first time I got stitches, age 26.
8. I always worshipped my older brothers and wanted them to like me.
9. I was a great college roommate except that one time I borrowed one of my roommates’ skirts and it got a rip in it and I never told her.
10. I’ve always wished I was as happy and beautiful as my twin sister.
11. I love to travel alone. I love the idea of traveling with my lover.
12. I’m in love with Rachel Weisz.
13. I compulsively look for jobs, even when I’m happy in my current occupation.
14. I once rented a car to Fred Savage.
15. I loved doing karaoke when I was in Japan
16. I was a toe-head when I was a kid and continued to dye my hair blonde until I was 24.
17. I love black. My mom never let me wear it growing up. I don't know if that's why I love it, but I do.
18. I don’t like hot chocolate.
19. Summer is my favorite season with fall close on its heels.
20. I’ve never cared much about going to Hawaii or the Caribbean, but would love to go somewhere in Africa or South America or Siberia.
21. I find hearing the F-bomb really refreshing sometimes.
22. I made out with my next door neighbor the day after breaking off a 4 year relationship—it was so liberating!
23. I love being woken up for sex.
24. I love cemeteries and empty playgrounds—they are both so romantic because of the memories there.
25. After I saw the movie “road to perdition” I wished I could puke it up.
26. The healthiest I ever felt was during a summer I spent living in a tent showering once a week—covered in sweat, dirt, bug spray, and suncreen.
27. The thing I'm most proud of in my life is the baby boy I placed for adoption when I was 18.
28. I wish I didn’t work so hard sometimes so people wouldn’t expect so much of me
29. I love exploring abandoned or halfway built or halfway ruined buildings
30. I hate eating with my coat on.
31. I used to drive in just my underwear to visit my out-of-town boyfriend and then get dressed just before arrival—I didn’t have AC.
32. I love being bitten on the back of the neck.
33. Michael Ondaatje’s poem “the cinnamon peeler’s wife” is the sexiest I’ve ever heard.
34. I made a stained glass rendering of Dante's "The Inferno" for my high school senior English project. I'm not much of an artist so I'm really proud of it, I thought it was very interpretive.
35. I smoked cigarettes and joints in my dorm room during my first semester of college.
36. I am addicted to lotion, if my hands feel dry enough it will wake me up in the middle of the night for lotion.
37. At the Dead Sea I covered my whole body in mud and then washed it off and never felt so soft.
38. I love blood and passion, I mean Bible stories and mythical stories full of ferocity and characters so full of passion for their beliefs.
39. I can’t stand the feel of sleeves when I’m in bed.
40. My twin and I have had several “twin” experiences where we showed up wearing the same ankle bracelet or found out we’d both taken pregnancy tests the same day and were both negative.
41. I have a vampire slayer mole—it’s on my chest close to my left shoulder.
42. This American Life talk radio program is my favorite.
43. When I first graduated with my bachelor degree I got turned down for a job that pays nothing—the Americorps.
44. I love the magazine Wired even though I’m not a techie because the ads are so modern and they always have a new music recommendation.
45. My day hasn’t begun until I have broken a sweat.
46. I probably cry about 5 times a week.
47. I worked at Taco Bell for 30 minutes until on the verge of fainting I ran out of the door and vomited.
48. I'm a Mormon and it's a constant struggle to define what kind.
49. I can recite the Muslim call to prayer.
50. I’m recently graduated with my MBA and still wish I could get paid to explore ruins, go to concerts, and help impoverished and violated communities.

Let's reborn, I love Vivre!

Vivre was the name of the closest mall to where I lived in Japan. Right outside the mall was this billboard that said, in English: "Let's reborn, I love Vivre!"

It makes me smile whenever I think of it.