Colorado Diet

One of the greatest joys of going home to your parents' house is the ability to open a fully-stocked refrigerator, and eat whatever looks good. Most college students would attest to that statement. In Provo,  I eat a steady diet of Oatmeal Squares cereal and cheese sticks, so this semester, especially, I was looking forward to a healthy variety of fuel. However, this morning, as I was rummaging through my parents' pantry, I was hit with a bit of a predicament.


Let me tell you a little about my parents:
My parents go through phases.

They pick something and go ALL IN, whatever it is. They buy every book on the subject, read every article, go to every big site, join every club. They become decently good experts on any given subject, and then move on to the next phase.

I could write a book about the different phases, but some highlights include
-electric train modeling
-horseback riding
-fly-fishing
-rock tumbling/polishing
-motorcycling (mom wasn't thrilled about that one)
-bird watching (also probably not my mom's favorite thrill)
-have-a-heart squirrel hunting
-gardening
-barbecuing
-photography/underwater photography
-open water canoeing
-tennis playing
-scuba diving

Not to mention the many diets they have come in and out of:
-Gluten-free
-Dairy-free
-Sugar-free
-Vegetarian
-Vegan
-Paleo (i.e. basically veggies, nuts, and meat)

and various combinations of the six.

Which leads me to the point of this story.

I have no idea what this current diet phase is called, but when I opened the pantry door to look for breakfast, I was greeted with this:

My predicament was that I didn't even know how to consume any of this... 

I finally saw something that looked like cereal. And settled on pouring organic almond milk on top.

I'm going to eat my bowl of Veganic Sprouted Ancient Grain Flakes now.

not-so-pitch-perfect

Upon my return from my mission in Nauvoo in August, a friend and I decided on a new life motto: For the Adventure, for the Story. Ben and I agreed that if we were ever in a position to do something maybe a little out of the norm, we would seize the opportunity to have an adventure, or at least have an interesting story out of it.

Fast forward about a month. I was sitting on a full plane, and it had just been announced that we will have to wait on the landing strip for another hour until we get the clear to take off.  You can imagine everyone’s joy in hearing that news.

I hadn’t eaten all day, and my stomach was audibly rumbling. Trying to be as positive as possible to the steward, I asked for a cookie, or a cracker, or some pretzels, whatever they had. I could tell the man was frustrated, not everyone was trying as consciously as I to be kind. (The poor guy, it wasn’t his fault the plane was delayed. He was just the only person nearby on which the passengers could direct their anger). He told me he’d get me a cookie.

20 minutes later, I flagged him down—cheerfully and politely of course—and asked again, “I’m really sorry. I’m not upset, I’m just a little bit starving. Could you grab that cookie for me?”

“Sure”

Then he disappeared again.

“He’s probably not coming back with a cookie, is he?” I asked the nice couple sitting next to me.

“Nope” We all chuckled despairingly.

“So” I began, as is my custom on airplanes, “Are you going home, leaving home, or neither?”

We got to chatting. They asked me about my performance mission, and about my new singing group, and somehow my random vision of a musical flash mob on an airplane came up. 

The older woman said, “All those musically things, you must be great! OOO! Honey! You’ve gotta sing for us! For the plane!”

I laughed, “You’re too sweet. I’m not really.” She was cute.

But then I couldn’t get the idea out of my head.

Big bucket list check-off… when would I ever have a captive audience wherein anybreak from staring at the back of an unmoving seat would be welcome? The more I pushed the thought away the more it stood festering, growing until I couldn’t let it go. It’d be a great story, Ben.

I got up, the music to my vocal jazz group's arrangement of  “In My Life” by the Beatles in my hand. A song we had just barely started learning. (How silly would it have been for me to sing a song I actually knew? no. that would be ridiculous.)

“Hey everyone…” I looked back at the row I just crawled out of as they gave me two big smiles and thumbs ups, “I…uh… I have to have this song memorized before tomorrow for this group I’m in…” Every single eye was glued on this bizarre behavior of a girl standing in the isle, “Since we’ve all got nothing better to do, I was wondering if I could sing it for you?”

Immediately, what seemed like hundreds of phones were pointed in my direction, video recording mode on. I got a few encouraging nods and so I took a deep breath. For the story.

I lifted the music while the sheet had a seizure because my hands were shaking so much.

I started singing. About half way through the first verse, I realized this had been a very bad idea. What was coming from my mouth sounded a little off. That is because I learned the alto part of a jazz arrangement. So what I was singing didn’t even remotely sound like the original Beatles tune.

But it was too late. I couldn’t stop now. I just prayed that the sound was getting lost in the rafters of the plane. But I definitely saw some confused looks that said, “I think I’ve heard these lyrics before… but that sounds like a bunch of random notes”

When I finished the botched up rendition, there was polite but pitiful round of applause. I heard one “whoop!” then everyone turned back to his or her various devices. Probably sending the video to a friend with the caption: “look at this crazy lady on my plane!”

The darling couple welcomed me back to our row and said, "Oh you're so brave!"

Immediately after I sat down, the steward came rushing up the isle, handed me a cookie and with both awe and sympathy said, "You earned this."

Meeting the New Boss

This weekend I went to visit my brother in the beautiful city of Seattle. 

I had recently received an internship offer from a Seattle-based company, and I set up a time to meet some of the employees while I was in town.  Straight from the airport, I started toward the address that was given to me. One suitcase bouncing along the stones in one hand, and my backpack bouncing up and down, following the directions my phone gave me, I climbed up a ginormous hill to what was our determined meeting spot: 

Columbia Tower. 

I looked up in awe. My instructions said to go to the 75th floor. How many buildings have you been in that have 75 floors?   (I had to take 3 separate elevators.)

I hobbled into the front lobby, bedraggled from the flight, train, and hike. Wearing my trusty sneakers, jeans, a 5-year-old zip up hoodie, my makeup smudged and my hair disheveled from sleeping on the plane, I kept getting glances that said "what is that crazy homeless lady doing with such a nice suitcase?"

I decided to freshen up a little before my meeting. 

I went into a really small stall; suitcase and backpack followed. With some serious squirming to avoid an unusually space-consuming toilet, and with truly expert contortionist skills, I changed my outfit, shoes and all. I walked out of the stall and observed my now acceptable business casual outfit in the mirror: a light beige shirt and a simple blue skirt. 

I ran my fingers through my hair, touched up some mascara, and was about to leave when I noticed a mark on my shirt. 

An inch-long blue pen streak, right on my chest. 

Here I was, on the way to meeting a potential future employer on the 75th floor of the Columbia Tower, and there's a BLUE PEN MARK ON MY CHEST. 

I splashed some water on it, nothing happened so I added soap, which then added a large discolored circle surrounding that deplorable line of pen. 

I thought I'd make it better by making it worse: I tried to expand the discolored soap circle so it wasn't as noticeably concentrated.

As I leaned my torso awkwardly into the sink, and tried to scrub it out, a very friendly black woman stepped out of a stall and looked at me, appropriately questioning my stance. 

"I...uh...I got... there's pen on my shirt"

"Oh Honey! That's the worse" She said laughing as she walked out of the bathroom.

yes. it was the worst. 

It finally faded enough so that it wasn't so glaring an arrow to my bust. 

I made it up to the 75th floor eventually, the meeting went swimmingly well, and I got a glimpse of a pretty incredible view of the city.

While waiting for a friend thereafter at Starbucks, I bought a bright orange carrot juice.
I spilled it on my shirt.

Affordable Care Act: part-time employee kinks

Every citizen has access to quality health care—What a beautiful idea! Regardless of someone's income or situation, they have the same ability to receive quality health care.

I don't think anyone with half a heart would argue that people should NOT be allowed health care because of economic status. We're all on the same page as far as theoretical and moral benefits. 

We all agree it's a good idea in theory.

There are some really great advantages to this act:

Just a few include the fact that it Ends pre-existing condition exclusions. Huzzah! Everyone's happy about that, right?

And it Keeps young adults covered. I can stay on my parent's plan until I'm 26. That gives lots of young adults, like myself, the chance to get on their feet career-wise before having to pay for insurance.

It also Cuts costs for a lot of people who may otherwise not be able to afford health insurance (at least theoretically). 

And it Ensures that employers provide health benefits for their employees. 

There are so many controversial elements to this law that both positively and negatively affect many people, but in the employer clause is
Where I personally have seen the most direct effects and disadvantages:

In trying to implement this nice idea that every employee is covered, the employers are having a hard time finding the money to do so. Because they don't have to provide coverage for part-time employees, they are taking extra precautions to make sure part-time employees don’t work anywhere close to the full-time limit. So as a student employee on my campus, I can only work a MAXIMUM of 20 hours a week. I could have 3 different jobs, but combined I cannot work past 20 hours, or I will be fired from all three.

I’m not asking the university to cover my insurance. Quite frankly, I don’t really care right now if I have any (nor do most of my contemporaries), but I do care about my income—especially working only part-time—and the annoyance it is to be so restricted in my ability to work.

I’ve noticed many part-time faculty members are experiencing similar frustrations. They cannot even be in the building, working “off the clock,” or volunteering in any capacity on campus past X amount of hours a week. There’s another clause in the Affordable Care Act that says to go from full-time to part-time position, you must have a period of retirement. One of the head dance directors at my school had to cast and direct a show months in advance so that she could (begrudgingly) take the allotted time “in retirement.”

While the Affordable Care Act is a truly wonderful idea, I think the specificity of restrictions in practice has created some unforeseen disadvantages and unintentional, annoying consequences that should probably be addressed (if only to improve the current low approval rating of the act)

There’s a comprehensive plan that’ll be rolled out over four years, so maybe they’ll have ironed out some of these kinks by then…!

• If you are interested in reading the whole law click HERE

Ticket Booth Boy, or teebeesquared

There is this boy, Ticket Booth Boy. We shall refer to him as TBB.
Nay, teebeesquared.

Every girl in the theater/music department knew this boy. Whenever they lined up to buy tickets, they made sure to line up in front of his window for the chance to spend 4 glorious minutes with this darling cute boy.

About a year ago, I bought a ticket for a classical choir concert from this young man at the booth.

He asked, "just one? you're not bringing a date?"
"Nope." smile charmingly, "It's just me."
chit chat. he mentions he did choir in high school.
Me: "So are you going to go to the concert?"
Teebeesquared: "Well, I'm tempted to buy a seat next to yours"

Man, what a line. is he smooth or what?

"But unfortunately, I can't make it to the show tomorrow night"
"oh bummer." truly. "next time"

The following evening, imagine my surprise when I looked up from my program and he was shuffling down my row to come sit next to me!

How completely, adorably romantic. My face flushed with excitement at his sweet gesture--he had actually bought the ticket next to mine!

In the next few minutes before the concert began, we proceeded to discover that we had pretty much nothing in common, and couldn't fill up the space of ten minutes with remotely interesting conversation.


For the next few weeks I gawked and gossiped and giddily told my girlfriends what had happened, and they cooed with jealously, as was expected when I strategically left the gloriously awkward ending out of the retelling.

Every once in a while I'll still see him at the booth. I've done a pretty good job of avoiding his booth when purchasing tickets. Here and there, we'll share a head nod. The other day, he even said my name--correctly too! I wonder if he remembers where he learned it.

Serious Sleuthing

Yesterday, I was either the creepiest stalker in the universe, or a most brilliant detective. I'm going to go with the latter.

A very good friend of mine from high school--really a BEST friend--had been out on a mission. I haven't really seen him or talked to him since our freshman year, three years ago. 

A while ago, I thought, "Hmm... I should write Ben"(for the sake of this post, he shall be referred to as Benjamin, Ben, Benny, Benji, or any combination of the four).

I tried to find his address on facebook, but he no longer had one. I would have called his mother to get his address, but I didn't know how to reach his mom, but through his facebook. (I realize how pathetic this would sound to the generation before me... people do exist outside of fb, I just didn't know where). 

So then two nights ago, "Benny Boy Bingley" popped up on my "suggested friends" tab.

He's alive! 

I tried to call the number I had in my phone from years ago, but it'd been disconnected.

I sent him a message, "HEY! Is this you, Benji?! How was your mission?! Why didn't you call me?!"

No response. Granted, that might have been annoying, and I only waited until the next morning to see if he had responded, But now I was worried. Maybe he really didn't want to talk to me...? 

So I did what my generation does best: I creeped. 

I would rather deem it daring detective work. He was once my very best friend, I couldn't let him disappear! 

His new facebook had him attending a small school in some random state, but it had a link. I asked a classmate if there was a time difference in Nevada from Utah, no one knew. In the 4 minutes I had before my class started, I called the school. The front dest receptionist knew Benjamin Bingley personally, and assured me that he would know of my trying to get in touch with him in the next couple of minutes. The receptionist asked for my name and number. 

What if he Ben really didn't want to talk to me? Maybe he wanted a completely fresh start or something. If he knew it was me calling, maybe he wouldn't call me back...

"Here's the number. Just tell him it's an old friend, trying to reach him."

"Can I give him your name?"

"...um...nope..."

"Ok...?"

Fifteen minutes later, I get a call from an unknown number. Whoever called left a voicemail, so I was squirming in my classroom until the bell rang and I could check the message. It was 4-seconds of silence, then he hung up. I'm thinking, he must have heard me saying, "you've reached Averill's cell" then realized who was trying to get in contact with him, and hung up! 

"To return the message sender's call, press 8"

8.

It was a 303 number. As in colorado... (which is where we are both from you see). I was getting close on the trail! But the recorded voice message system I had reached was NOT my Benny's voice. He must have used someone else's phone to call back. wow. he really doesn't want to be found... I left a message saying I'm just trying to get ahold of Ben Bingley, and if he could tell him that I just really care about him, and want to find out how he is doing.

I might have googled the phone number...that didn't get me anywhere.

I got a text from that number saying: "I'm sorry I called the wrong number by mistake. I do not know a person with the name you described. Take care." Man, he really doesn't want me to keep this up...

Now a normal person at this point may have given up. But here's proof I'm not normal. I went back to his facebook and found a link to a website, which turned out to be a small business he's now running. There was a "contact" tab, and finally: a PHONE NUMBER! huzzah! He was going to have to talk to me, I would find a way. No best friend of mine is going to drop off the face of the earth without telling me!

I called him 2x, and left a long voice mail about how if he didn't want to be found, he shouldn't put his personal phone number on his public business website... etc. etc. :)

I got a text saying, "Hey! I'm in class. Can I call you back in 13 minutes?"

HOORAY!  We were very happy to hear from each other, though Benji was really confused why I didn't give the school my name... 

Turns out he got back and just started living life. All is well. Also, turns out that other 303 number really did just misdial. 

I hope he felt loved and not stalked. 

The moral of the story: you can rest easily my dear friends. Because if you are missing, I will find you!

Ukelele heartbreak

Over the break, my parents wanted to get me a ukelele for Christmas.  I went to pick it out. A very nice gentleman behind the counter helped me find the perfect one. For the sake of this blog, (because with my luck, someone probably knows him) and to protect the innocent, we shall call him Cal Griffin. He was gorgeous. Tall, thin, thick brown hair. Cute scruffy beard. We talked and flirted for probably an hour ish. On and off, because he had to help other costumers. I fantasized that he didn't want to leave my side, of course, but he was on the clock. What a responsible, honest, hard-working young man! ahhh. 

Did I mention he was gorgeous? 

 He was an English major. Musician. Budding novelist. Just working at this store until he became a successful author. I'll bet his writing would melt my heart. 

My dad joined us later to actually purchase the ukelele Cal helped me pick out. Cal made a point to tell us that if there's any problem with the insurance, or anything at all, to give him a call. He said that twice. And my dad liked Cal as much as I did. In the car, he said, "Why don't you call the store, and ask Cal to come to our ward Christmas party!"

So... I did. 

This is the conversation I had: 

"Guitar store. how can I help you?"

"Um..."I panicked. What if I was talking to him?! "Um.. To whom am I speaking?"

"Joe Bresh"

"Hey, Joe.  Do you know Cal Griffin?"

"Ya! Of course. He works in the north desk" 

"Ok, so don't laugh... but do you know if he's dating anyone?"

*Laugh*

"You weren't supposed to laugh!"

"I'm sorry. Cal's a cutie. I don't blame you!"

"Ok... so...?"

"Um... lemme find out!"

"Wait!..." Before I knew it I was on hold. 

"So... I've got some bad news..."

"Aw man. He's dating someone."

"Ya. sorry."

"Well at least he doesn't know who I am right? No harm done."

"Were you the girl in the grey dress?"

I was. 

"Maybe..."

"Ya, he knew who you were. He thought you might call."

"Oh man! that's embarrassing!"

"No! It's flattering to a guy! You're a cute girl."

"Aw thanks. Wait... did we meet...?"

"Ya... you walked into the keyboard section. You asked me where the books were."

"Oh."

I definitely didn't remember anyone besides Cal. 

"But hey, I'm no Cal, but if you're looking for someone to take out, I'm not dating anyone!"

oh dear. 

"Ha ha ha. Merry Christmas!"