time to go to the grocery store

this is what our fridge looks like right now.

(this is actually how it looks most of the time.)

(milk, water, cheese, butter, eggs, tomato sauce, soup in a tupperware.)

it's kind of funny when i think about the full fridges at home that we're used to.

unfortunately, we probably aren't going to make it to the store before monday. good thing for canned goods.

also, tommy and i reading the old testament this year (one of those new year's resolutions in action), and reading the story of the exodus makes us sing songs from prince of egypt. "miracles" is my favorite.

at least we're past joseph and the technicolor dreamcoat (not that we ever stop singing joseph).

blah blah blah

why is it that papers do better at crushing my self-esteem and determination than any other object on the planet?

when i have a paper to work on, i spend most of my time ignoring it and brooding about it and the rest of my time staring at the computer screen wishing the darn paragraphs would just organize themselves. and no matter which of these things i am doing, i am grumpy and stressed and down on myself.

the worst thing about this paper is, i brought it on myself. this is a totally extracurricular paper and i am KICKING MYSELF IN THE FACE for signing up for this conference and leaving it till the week of to write the paper.

see you in a week.

(luckily, spring break is just around the corner. that will (hopefully) restore my spirits.)

judgmentality

do you ever meet someone and instantly think, "yeah, we're not going to be friends"?

there are several types of people who i think that about.

1. people who list "playing video games" as one of their main hobbies. if you really have nothing better to do than to world of warcraft all day long, i don't think i have much in common with you.

2. people who are obsessed with their pets. i JUST DON'T SEE THE POINT.

3. people who are violently anti-reading. (self-explanatory, i think.)

there are definitely more, but i can't think of any right at the moment.

i have recently met people who fall into all of these categories. like the girl in one of my classes who spends her time looking up pictures of "cute cats" on the internet as she sits at home with her own three cats. yeah, we're not going to hang out outside of class any time soon.

no offense if any of these describe you. i probably still like you. i just might doubt your sanity.

go cougars

probably at least once a week, when tommy and i get dressed to go exercise, we both end up wearing one of our hundreds of $5 byu football t-shirts. (on accident. we usually try not to match . . . but we have so many byu t-shirts it's really hard not to coincide a lot.)

and then once we're actually walking out the door, i always double up and put on my byu zip-up hoodie on our way over to the gym.

yeah, it's ridiculous. but we're not ashamed. (especially because the only thing 90% of the people here know about byu is jimmer.)

too much education, maybe?

when i was in high school (or maybe a freshman in college), i saw the dead poets society. being the english major that i am (even though i didn't know that's what i was for sure at the time), that movie SPOKE to me. robin williams opened those kids' minds! they love poets and shakespeare and he taught it to them! so much that neil is willing to sacrifice everything for art! exclamation point! i wanted to be a teacher like robin williams--electrifying my students into loving literature and loving writing and loving art.

then in one of my classes last semester, we were learning about teaching composition and the debates surrounding the field. we watched freedom writers (another movie i saw freshman year and loved) and discussed how teaching writing is portrayed in the media and film.

and during that discussion, we smashed dead poets society to bits as unrealistic, dramatized, and ridiculous. because it kind of is.

when i was a sophomore in college, i read extremely loud and incredibly close. and again, it opened my eyes to this incredible story about oskar trying to deal with his father's death during 9/11. the new techniques jonathan safran foer used! postmodern writing like i'd never seen before! and oskar searches the whole city of new york and ends up being okay at the end!

then in my senior seminar class at byu, we read that book and a lot of the critiques written about it after it was published. and we discussed how it was sentimental, annoying, and overall, all the techniques he used (like the pages full of nonsense words or random pictures thrown in everywhere) were gimmicky. and you know what? i kind of agreed.

i mean, i still like both dead poets society and extremely loud and incredibly close. but not like i used to, and not for the same reasons. but this just makes me wonder: can you really ever LOVE anything when you study it from an academic perspective? am i going to end up totally dissatisfied and disillusioned with the books and movies i currently love? if you know too much, can it ruin your ability to enjoy things for their emotional value instead of their academic correctness? i think you just have to be able to keep your emotional response and your intellectual response to things distinct from each other. but it's hard to keep liking something when you know that there are people out there rolling their eyes at how stupid it is. particularly when those people are better trained and more knowledgeable than you are.

this is why i would be afraid to name a child after a character in a book that i love. somebody who hates the book would hate me (and my poor child) for doing that.

maybe this is why people major in biochemistry: it won't affect their everyday pleasures so much. (i don't know why else anyone would want to study biochemistry.)

i'm an aunt!

it's funny that with the number of siblings that tommy and i have between us (thirteen) that only one of them has kids. (okay, several of our siblings still have single-digit ages, but still.) lindsay, tommy's older sister, has our only niece and nephews, and luckily, they're living in washington d.c. for the next six months. so we went up there for a really quick weekend trip to see the cutest niece and nephews you could ask for.

their twins are the stars of the leininger family right now. they've gotten so big and chunky and we're just a little bit obsessed with their adorable going-out outfits. i wanted to just eat them up. okay, be serious: you've never seen anything this cute.

and mayah and asher were pretty darn cute too.

and we went to see mount vernon. we love the original george w.

(do you like how tommy and travis are each carrying a baby? someone could get the wrong impression here.)

we LOVE having family so close! we're going to go up as often as we can to take advantage of having family that's only a 3.5 hour drive away. we plan to go up over our spring break for a good amount of time so we can play with those kids some more. and hopefully visit hundreds more historical sites.

i think i feel a research paper coming on!

i'm in a class about writing program administration this semester, and of course, we've got a 20-page final paper about--anything. having to do with writing program administration. that's one of the best things about upper-level education: all the papers you write, you can write about something that really and truly interests you. you can twist the prompt to make it be about what you want.

i've found that i'm really interested in investigating religion. and how it affects . . . everything. particularly my own religion, and how it affects culture and mindsets and actions. so last year, my final semester at byu, i wrote a paper about mormon mommy bloggers. it could have been a better paper, but that really is something fascinating to me: why is there this explosion of mormon mommy blogs? why are people so fascinated with them? why do they have some many common traits?

now i'm looking at investigating religion in a totally different sphere: the writing classroom. and writing program. (not exactly an original idea, by the way, but i'm still working on an angle. and hoping i get the okay on the project.)

for example. if you think about it--WHY are we so afraid to allow religion to be discussed in the classroom? or in papers students turn in? all other similarly formative issues of identity (such as race, gender, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation) are applauded and discussed continuously, especially in composition classrooms--but religion is shunned and ignored and discounted, because of the stigmas that come along with being religiously oriented, such as the stigma that religious thinking is incompatible with reasonable thinking. even at religious institutions such as byu, religion is not generally incorporated into the classrooms or accepted as general topics of discussion. and in such an environment, how are professors supposed to respond to a religious student who turns in a paper affirming their faith? shoot them down, discount them, ignore it?

really interesting stuff. i need to think a lot more about it and see if i can come up with anything original. but i've read a few articles so far and it's looking promising.

i don't care how good he is at basketball...

i still think that jimmer's a weird name.

new year's resolution: FAIL

well, it's been five weeks since the start of the new year (give or take) and i've already failed dramatically at my traditional eat-healthy-this-year resolution.

i resolved to (try to) eat only one dessert a week. (stupid idea, i know.)

it's impossible. really.

the first few weeks i tried to get by by just eating multiple packs of fruit snacks a day. those don't count as sweets, not in my book, but they kind of helped keep the edge off. that worked pretty well for a limited amount of time.

but i've baked three batches of cookies in the last three weeks. no matter what my high and mighty goals are, requests for desserts just come flowing in from all sides (i swear, it's because we're mormon) and tommy and i are left with the remnants of eighty delicious chocolate-chocolate chip cookies to work our way through.

and man, they are good.

(i don't even REALLY regret it.)

oh, well. it's a good thing it's a weekly goal--we can always try again next week. at least i'm keeping up on my goal of exercising every day to counteract it.

let me leave you with this lovely: a song tommy and i bought on itunes yesterday and that i've been singing in my head and ballerina-ing to all day. seriously. listen to it. seriously.

guess what?

tommy and i are the same blood type: B positive.

just one more sign that we were meant to be together. now if he ever needs a kidney, i can be first in line.

krispy kreme challenge

1 hour.

4 miles.

12 doughnuts.

2400 calories.

the krispy kreme challenge is one of the best traditions at nc state, hands down, even though it's only seven years old. it was even listed in sports illustrated's 102 things to do before you graduate. the basic premise of the race? start at the corner of nc state, run two miles to raleigh's krispy kreme, eat a dozen doughnuts, run two miles back. in under an hour. without throwing up.

and guess what? tommy DID IT. (i didn't even eat a single doughnut. i KNEW i would throw up.) he didn't even feel that nauseous while running back. he even BEAT ME by two minutes. he did the whole thing in 47 minutes. what a champion i married--he can eat a dozen doughnuts in five minutes and not even break a sweat. isn't he awesome?

it rained the whole time and was about 40 degrees. but that just makes the story even more exciting, right?

here we are, waiting in the rain for the race to start. (yep, i am wearing my northwood high school cross country jacket.)

there were over 7500 people registered for the race. it was MASSIVE.

just look at tommy downing those doughnuts! (i brought the camera along because i knew i would want to document this momentous occasion.)

and, the traditional post-race picture. with nc state's belltower in the background, of course.

we'd heard some horror stories about it beforehand--about people throwing up everywhere around you and such. but we saw no upchucking, fortunately--everyone around us seemed to be just fine. we are totally signing up for it again next year--and maybe i'll man up and actually attempt eating the doughnuts next time.

if you want to sing out, sing out

groundhog day

i just watched this. and i had no idea how much like the movie groundhog day the actual groundhog day is in punxsatawney, pennsylvania. old men with top hats, stroking the groundhog and all. i think i'm going to make it a life goal to be in punxsatawney one groundhog day, just for the experience.

thank you, phil, for an early spring. it's a lovely 63 degrees here--we'll take it.

in other news:

i'm in a social media class. my only projects for that class are a blog (about a product) and a twitter account (about the same product). i'm also doing a class presentation about how the lds church uses social media to spread its image (cool, huh? missionary work in class?). in other words--NO PAPERS ALL SEMESTER! my favorite class. hands down.

also, i'm reading robin hood right now. it's really good.

and i'm getting my first set of papers to grade on thursday. and i really like the new challenge of teaching--far more interesting than just taking classes.

and we discovered that we spent less than we made last month (!!).

and the krispy kreme challenge is on saturday. (don't worry, i'll post alllll about it, complete with vomitous pictures.)

AND we're trying to find a good weekend to go to d.c. and visit our niece and nephews (hopefully two weeks from now).

i think we just really like our lives around here. this nice weather must be having some effect on our psyches.