“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma–which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary” // Steve Jobs
Thanks for everything Steve!
(also known as “the best four days of our lives)
**So this post is a few months old but I figured if EJ could do it, so could I**
My lovely roommate Emma Jo decided to get married in Denver a few weeks ago on July 2nd so we got to go on a little vacation. Can I just say how great it was to get out of Provo for a few days? It was so much fun.
We left Provo around 10 am and after a super rainy 8 hour drive we finally arrived in Denver. Our first stop was a Chinese restaurant:
Then we hit up Safeway, one of the best grocery stores ever (seriously, if you haven’t been you should go as soon as possible), and bought some groceries for our stay.
Carissa likes to "try out" her beverages before she buys them
Safeway! Safeway! Safeway!
On the way back to where we were staying we came across our new favorite park:
It turned out to be just an overgrown field… not very exciting, but perhaps fitting.
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Friday.
The next day we woke up bright and early and went to the Red Rocks Amphitheater. It was pretty cool. We started out at the top of the theater and wanted to go to the gift shop. A sign said it was at the bottom of the stairs. We climbed down all of the stairs and didn’t see the gift shop. So back up we went, up all 400 stairs. It was a little intense.
Back at the top we all checked our heart rates at the monitor, per Jessa’s request, then went into the visitor’s center.
They had fun airplane chairs that we had to take advantage of
After the amphitheater we went to Elitch Gardens, a fun little amusement park complete with roller-coasters and a water park.
Today. We Play.
None of us remembered flip flops so Jeremy graciously went and got us some, he was the best!
Jessa was almost short enough to ride the fun looking bus ride... too bad
Most confusing slogan ever
After Elitch’s we went to Mimi’s Cafe and met Emma Jo, Jeff, and their families for dinner. After dinner we tried to find a place to play Jimmer Jammers before we had to pick up Emma Hirschy from the airport… no such luck. After we picked up Emma Hirschy we went to a Denny’s and played our game. It was pretty exciting.
Hanging her head in defeat
We learned Emma Hirschy is really good at impersonating objects
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Saturday.
We spent a leisurely morning getting ready for the wedding and got to the temple around 11:30. We lined up by the doors and waited for Emma Jo and Jeff to come out…
Ta-daa!
After the pictures we all went to Maggiano’s and had one of the best luncheons ever. It was super fancy.
After the wedding we met up with our friend Mike and he gave us a little tour of Denver. We walked around the capital building, the art museum, and a few other places.
too legit to quit.
Family Outing
After our downtown adventures, we headed to a firework show and celebrated America’s birthday, complete with firecracker popsicles. It was a lovely end to a wonderful day.
————
Sunday
We went to sacrament meeting and listened to a recently returned mission president and his wife talk about their experiences in Africa. It was really nice. It was interesting to hear the stories and see the impact Africa had on their lives.
After sacrament we packed up and started our journey back to Provo. It was relatively uneventful, though we did stop at Buffalo Bill’s grave (highlight of the trip):
Breaking in?
The buffalo whisperer
Overall, I’d say it was quite a successful trip. Thanks for getting married EJ! 
Today was an interesting day at the library…
Now that I’m working full time I get to deal with more of the research side of things, which can be really great and interesting. Or it can be a little sketch/weird. Today, unfortunately, it was the latter.
Around 10:00am the phone rang and I answered it in my usual fashion: “Hello, Government Documents How can I help you?”
An old man was on the line and he replied: “Consanguinity.”
Excuse me? “Um..”
Old Man: “It means same blood. Having same blood.”
Me: “Ok, what are you looking for?”
Old Man: ” Well, what relations are allowed? What is legal?”
Me: “Ok, Would you like me to search for the information and email you or give you a call back when I find something?”
Old Man: “I’ll call back in a half hour.”
Weirdest phone conversation of my life.
I looked up consanguinity and I found an article that said in most jurisdictions it is illegal to marry your second cousins or closer. When he called back I told him what I found and he sounded pretty disappointed. He went on to “hypothetically” ask if there may be jurisdictions where say, an aunt could marry her nephew or an uncle could marry his niece. I said I really didn’t know and asked if he wanted to narrow his search down to a certain state. He chose Utah and told me he would call back in another half hour.
In my search for specific state consanguinity information I came across this winner of a website. Apparently this is a pretty widespread concern. People are in love with their cousins all over the country, who knew? It turns out you can marry your cousin in Utah if you are both over 65 or you are over 55 and are confirmed sterile. So there you go.
Now for some pictures (chosen by Jessa) of couples who “look” like they are cousins:
You’re welcome.
Cover of the eBook
If you haven’t already you should check out the eBook my English 295 class wrote during spring term. For a book written and published in less than 3 weeks I think it is a pretty great achievement.
English 295 was one of the best classes I have ever taken at BYU. I learned a lot of valuable things, one of which was the importance, and fun, of daily blogging. My passion of blogging has been restored and I plan to blog much more often. So be ready.
In other news, my roommates and I are starting a new project entitled, The Summer of Color, and it’s going to be pretty cool. There will be more to come on that later, for now enjoy one of my new favorite youtube videos…
I had to make a “research” blog for my English 295 class and am required to post to that daily. That means I will be even worse at updating this blog than before until spring semester is over. I’ve decided to break from this blog and focus on the blog that impacts my grade. If you’re interested I’ll be around quite frequently at Letts Read, my English blog. See you in a few months!
I am told, by fairly reliable sources, that Spring is supposedly here. But in my experience it doesn’t snow at 7:45 in the morning when one is walking to class during the Spring. Is it too much to ask for the sun to be out every day? Someone should get on that.
In other news, I found a job! I now work at the Harold B. Lee Library, a place I affectionately call ‘Harold.’ It seems Harold and I will be spending lots of quality time together and I’m not complaining. My official title is a “Mentored Research Assistant” in the Government Documents Department but what that really means, as far as I can tell at the moment, is that I will be processing new documents, entering them into the system, and getting the collection ready to move over to the new shelves that are being installed. I met my supervisor and another guy they hired with me on Tuesday. They both seem pretty nice. I am excited to get trained and to learn about what I’m going to be doing.
This semester Carissa and I have made a resolution,complete with sticker charts, to go to the gym. a lot. We started this week and I have a pretty good record so far, don’t get too jealous. I am on my way to becoming an elliptical champion.
I’m excited for this semester. It’s going to be a lot of work but, I hope, a lot of fun as well. If I can safely dodge all the women around campus I’ll be golden.
-On a side note, Emma, Evan and I decorated eggs for Easter and they turned out great. Evan just gets a little confused sometimes…
As Carissa would say, “lit’rally.” haha
But seriously, basketball is definitely the best sport ever. Especially when you have Jimmer Fredette on your team. That guy is amazing. On Friday he scored 52 points! It was insane! (Abouo has a sweet pass around 1:00)
If the other players on the BYU basketball team would step up and actually play like they are capable of playing they would be unstoppable. As it is, they all depend solely on Jimmer so when Jimmer has an off game the rest of the team ends up having an off game, which equates to a loss, which is super lame.
For the last regular season home game a few friends and I were planning on camping out in line to get good seats (they’re first come first served in the student section), unfortunately we couldn’t find a tent so we decided to just get up early and get in line. We got in line at 8:30, the game didn’t start until 1:30, and we were still at the end of a super long line!
When we finally were allowed into the Marriott Center, we found some decent seats and waited for the practice run of the flashmob the student section put together. I think it turned out super cool. It was way fun to be in a flashmob and the crowd loved it.
I was the one in the white Jimmer shirt… haha
At the game against New Mexico we were losing terribly so all the lame fans were leaving early. My friend Diane spotted some seats in the second row so we went for them. It was so cool being that close to the game. I thought I got some pretty good pictures but when was looking at them at home I realized we sat behind a guy with a terrible combover and it made an appearance in nearly every one of my photos. Here it is in all it’s glory…
I tried to crop it out of the other ones
Get that ball Abouo!
And here’s Jimmer himself…. If you’re wondering how you can get to be as cool as Jimmer, join the rest of the country.
A few days ago Carissa, Emma Jo and I went to the top of the JFSB to check things out. I had never been up there before so it was cool.
We were a little scared…
The planters look pretty cool from up there
Sometimes the Y likes to play hide and seek, but I usually win
I like exploring and going new places. It’s exciting!
Thursday night Provo was graced with a lovely snowfall and the following night the snow continued to fall. Usually when this kind of weather visits Provo I stay inside as much as possible and fervently wish for the sun to come back to me. But this week I was super excited for it. Carissa and I decided we were severely overdue in the snowman making department. We’re both coasties (we live on a coast of the country, fl and ca) so we never got the chance to make a real snowman during our childhood. We decided Saturday was the day to check that off our bucket list.
Luckily Emma Jo lived in Ar-kansas for a while so she was able to instruct us in the mysterious ways of snowmen.
Here are the newbies:
In the process of building-
The finished product, I’d say we were quite successful
So I went to an art exhibit on Friday and it was pretty cool. There was free food and a local band also played some sweet music. There was a lot of really neat artwork. At one point, my friends and I came across a lovely painting of a mermaid. We stopped, contemplated its ‘real’ meaning, and moved on.
A few moments later a girl behind us yells “Ariel!” I turn around expecting it to be someone I know, who is apparently excited to see me… Here’s how the next minute went down:
Me: Hey!….. (I try to remember where/if I have seen her before)
Stranger: … (She just kind of looks at me)
Me: (Realization slowly works its way to my brain) Oh! haha Sorry, that’s my name… yeah, ok… bye.
I turn back and catch up with my friends, who continue, throughout the night, to periodically shout my name just to make sure I don’t forget the wonderfully awkward experience that occurred earlier.
Needless to say, being an Ariel is not fun and games all the time. Watch out for those mermaids.
