Racoons, Fire, 20 Miles, and a Crush

RACCOON Crossing!!! I swear every animal in Provo has been genetically mutated to tolerate people a lot more than animals in most places in the country/world. I see deer, ducks and now raccoons just hanging out at their pleasure no matter who is around.

This is fire. I went to a bonfire last night. It was fun. I made new friends and roasted starbursts.

This is me being weird and my new roommate Erika (notice the fire behind us, we worked hard for that).

So we look like dead people, but the funny part of this picture is the stranger in the background who is absolutely LOVING her chip.

This is what Jenny and I look like after running 20 MILES and eating french toast & egg sandwiches and Kneaders.

These are my new running shoes. Brooks Ravenna. The guy at Runner's Corner who sold them to me was real excited about them (they're a new shoe and he thinks they're awesome). So I may have left the store with a slight crush on him. Jenny said she has to go to Runner's Corner sometime this week to buy socks---needless to say, I'll be going with her :).

When the Runner's Corner guy was talking to me about my shoes he told me the best thing about Brooks is they give this special advertisement in every box of shoes. It is paper that you can plant that will turn into a flower. I think that's cool, and I think I'll give it a try.

Leaving a Legacy: A No Pictures Post

Having a career is kind of hard. It's taking me some time to get used to the longer than 9 hour work days with no lunch break. I love being busy and I love having a job. I really love getting to know the students and their parents and making our high school run smoothly. Teachers will send students to the front office for something, like a visitor pass, or a tardy slip and we don't already have those things in place, so right then and there I get to make something up. I created our visitor passes, mail system, tardy/check-out slips, payment contracts, and our student planners. That's pretty cool.

After feeling completely wasted at each day's end for the past 2 weeks, I have realized a couple things I need to change.

1. Stop complaining. This morning I woke up with a new attitude. I didn't care how long I had to stay at work--I was going to be happy about it. And I was.

2. My number one priority should always be my relationship with God. I can't allow myself to suffer spiritually because I'm tired or exhausted. I believe that if I will make a dedicated effort to continue studying my scriptures, serving, attending the temple and praying, that God will help everything else fall in to place. Spiritual things come first, then everything else.

When I tried these things out today I was surprised at how much time I had to spare. I was able to go running, go to the store, fix dinner, read a little bit of a book and catch up on the blogs--and I even stayed an hour late at work. I made sure to drink lots of water at work and I ate a real lunch as well. It's amazing how much of a difference those small things make.

The cool thing about my job is that when I no longer work at Merit Academy, what I have created will remain. They will always remember the first secretary they had who helped them get on their feet. I am creating a lasting legacy.

Stoplight Entertainment

Whhhhhhhheeeeeeeeewwwwwwwwwwwwwwww. That was me exhaling. I am the front desk secretary at a charter high school in Springville and our first day of school is tomorrow so we have been working hard to prepare. We got a new school building that we couldn't move in to until Wednesday of last week, and then we had a back to school night at the building the next day.

Yesterday I was stopped at a stop light and was surprised to enjoy some high quality entertainment. There was a woman (I think) holding a sign for Little Ceasar's pizza dancing around on the side walk. I have only seen cartoons dancing the way this woman could. She would shoot her legs out to the side really fast one after the other and then she shot them out a little higher. She was doing grapevine's and step-together-steps to the left and right. All of a sudden she shot her left leg back behind her and did this weird bend with it like a snake. All of her movements were short and fast and quite hilarious. The funny thing about this is she was just dancing to her own beat--there were NO headphones in her ears and no stereo system playing music. How did she DO that?

I spent some time in California with my oldest bro and his family. We did a little sword fighting and I did some rear-end-kicking. Mom caught our sweet action on camera which is what you enjoyed at the beginning of this post.