July: Month of Action! 1st Weekend

For some reason, July has been incredibly busy. I seriously think it's been weeks since I got a full night's rest. I had made all these goals about finally being good at this blogging thing and keeping it up, but July kinda swept away in a frenzy of adventure! So I will try to quickly recap.

The first weekend of July, I took Kristan up to Rexburg to introduce her to the concept of BYU-Idaho. We got there on Friday night, too late to go to the play we planned on seeing because there was an insane traffic jam between Idaho Falls and Rigby (it took us an hour to go 3 miles). So instead we rounded up some of my friends, former roommate Laura Denton, former FHE brother Keith Rose, and favorite literature friend Remington Jarvie and went up to the sand dunes. We rustled up some random wood and bark and Laura, the wilderness survivor, made a fire. Laura and I analyzed everyone else's personalities, and it was quite delightful.

Saturday morning, we went with former FHE brother Travis Moffat and Remington to hike R mountain, a large hill with an R painted on the side. It was lovely fun, and Remington had a jolly old time throwing rocks down the side of the mountain.

After that I met up with former Jacob Lakers, Laurel and Alison Greathouse and Brianna Malone, along with Travis, and we went to Rexburg's new waterpark, Rexburg Rapids. Don't ask me why Rexburg has a water park. It's a good idea for 3 months of the year... (I didn't get pictures :( ).

Then we went to dinner with Travis and his roommate Cory, as well as some other friends, Daina Nielson and Maryna Polonska. After that we met back up with Remington, and we decided to do the most reckless and dangerous thing I've ever done in Rexburg! Let's just say I'm glad I'm not a student anymore, otherwise getting caught would've been a lot more terrifying. :)

On Sunday, we went to church with Laura and then to dinner at Remington's; he made us egg rolls. :) That night I met up with more former roommates/friends, Bethany Hirsh, "Dello" DelloStritto, Mike Wilson, and Michael McCormick and we played games.

The next morning was the 4th of July, and we went to the Rexburg parade with Laura and Remington, and Brianna met up with us. My favorite part of it was the little Phillipina woman who joined us, Early. She was so awesome. Also, I got a picture with Darth Vader. :)

After that, Kristan and I headed back to Utah to have fireworks in Morgan with our family and Aunt Sandi. Which is always lovely. I really like the fireworks in Morgan, because from Sandi's house you can see a lot of different people setting off their personal fireworks in every direction. So you get a pretty sweet show. I'm not the hugest firework fan, but this year was pretty spectacular.

So it's become clear to me that it's impossible to make this short. So there's my first weekend of July. I will break up the rest of July by weekends and continue this blog post in a moment. :)

Mowing the Lawn: A Romantic Take

I haven't mowed my parents' lawn in 6 years, since I graduated high school, but with my parents and my two youngest sisters out of town for 2 weeks (since one of them usually takes care of it), I had to mow it today. And I was quite surprised at how much I learned while pushing that ancient mechanical vegetarian around.

I hated mowing the lawn as a teenager. If my parent's hadn't paid me for it, I probably would've suffered a lot of nagging for my neglect of the chore. But today I learned lesson number one: Somewhere between now and then, I learned to love physical labor. I'm going to say this was at Jacob Lake, although it had probably been building up since Germany. Working in the bakery at Jacob Lake was the most physically intense job I've ever had, and nearly every other activity at Jacob Lake, that I engaged in, was physical as well. I went running 5-6 times a week, and on my days off I went hiking or swimming for hours almost every single week. Not to mention hiking across the Grand Canyon in one day, which I still need to blog about. After that experience, I can say that I am not afraid to use my body for work because I'm much more aware of what it can do. Karate is helping with that, too. I'm very glad that I changed from a soft, spoiled teenager into a hard-working, borderline-athletic adult. :)

Next lesson was more gradual over the course of 90 minutes of mowing.  See, the lawn hadn't been mowed in a while, and had grown quite tall because of all the rain we've been having here. To give you an idea, the dogs looked like lionesses on the hunt in the grasslands of Africa as they ran around the yard. I remembered as a kid begging my dad to let the grass grow that long at some point, because I just knew it would inspire something fantastic in me, not to mention be less itchy. He never let it grow that long, but I was right, it would inspire something fantastic in me, because it did today.

I had forgotten something very important: I super love nature. Being in the backyard for that long brought back a lot of memories (as a child, if I wasn't down the street at the Cards' house, I was in the backyard crawling around on my hands and knees), especially concerning the cherry tree we have growing on the hill, where I spent many hours reading books among the branches. Back then, it was much easier to just go outside and be happy, and I want to get back to that fundamental value. Whenever life is stressful, take a stroll through the park. Walk the dogs. Fall asleep in some grass. Admire some flowers. Even a few minutes of this is rejuvenating.

I think this is why Germany and Jacob Lake and Rexburg are such happy places in my life. All three of them are surrounded in wilderness. In Rexburg, I lived across the street from a park for most of my time there, plus there were the sand dunes, wide open fields, short hikes, caves, and abundant places for bonfires within half an hour of everywhere. In Germany, the cities are like little pockets of civilization contained in the vast recklessly majestic forest. And Jacob Lake was just a group of maybe ten buildings with 40 miles of forest in every direction before you hit any more buildings. I think I'm a country girl with better taste in music.

So, how is this Romantic? It's "big R Romantic," meaning from the philosophical era of Romanticism. Commune with nature, free yourself from inhibitions, dare to dream...

I've been having a lot of epiphanies around these kind of subjects lately. I guess I'm in a growing period. But I can't talk about them all now, so look for upcoming entries on Glee and Avatar: The Last Airbender. :)

Out of Business

The Hollywood Video in Rexburg is going out of business.
The Blockbuster went out of business a little over a year ago.

Actually, all around Rexburg there are empty buildings that have old, fading signs from their previous businesses peeling on them.

This I believe is because the community of Rexburg is too small to support so many businesses, and the other half of the population of Rexburg, the students, are too poor to support the businesses either.

However, we're not any more poor than college students in any other college town. So what I'm wondering is...why don't students in Rexburg ever spend money? Or what are they spending it on?

Granted, plain old groceries here are more expensive than they are in Utah at least, so that might be part of the problem. Another problem is gas is also more expensive here, and we tend to use it. We use it because there is one thing that students in Rexburg will spend money on: dates.

It is a common conception that if you want your date to be impressive or worthwhile, you have to drive half an hour to Idaho Falls and have your date there. Let's be honest, I enjoy the occasional date in Idaho Falls. I've ever heard of people who drive down to Salt Lake for dates (usually to propose :P).

What's funny about this is we have at least two concerts plus dances every week here, that are almost always less than $5/ticket. People complain that is too expensive, so instead they use that much in gas, (probably more) going to Idaho Falls, to the Texas Roadhouse then to the Idaho Museum of History (well, that at least would be my ideal date in Idaho Falls). Which costs probably $50 total. When a date in Rexburg would probably cost $20.

It must be the charm of escaping from Rexburg for one night...I'm not sure.

All I know is that I'm sick of passing empty buildings wherever I walk, and knowing that there is that many more unemployed people wandering around Rexburg competing with me for jobs.

The plus side is I will probably acquire a few more movies for very cheap today. :)