Another post with pictures!! You lucky ducks:)

For those of you that have just tuned in, I'm finally updating my blog with pictures! I did a MASSIVE post yesterday so make sure not to miss it:)

I'm realizing that posts covering multiple days and events are just overwhelming...so I'm just going to do one event at a time...so here's Utah!!!!

Dale took me to the Ben Fold's concert at the Deer Valley Ampitheatre as a graduation present. He played with the Utah Pops Symphony that I've seen a couple times, once while they backed up Gladys Knight. So good!!! Thanks, Dale!!!


So this guy kicked me a couple times and then seemed to always find his bum really close to our heads...so of course we captured the moment here....


and here.....


This is the theater. It's a temporary one because it's set up right on a ski hill. So gorgeous!! There are amazing condos to the east of the lodge and theatre that I'm sure you have to sell your first born to own. It's mostly retired people that worked for really impressive companies and now spend their summers vacationing in their condos and drinking wine. At one point in the concert Ben looked up at them and said hey to all the people in the condos, and then said "don't worry--when I'm done you can crank back up your Jimmy Buffett." I laughed. A lot.


He sang a song he wrote about a town he once drove through called Effingham--That's totally by my home town!!! I may or may not have yelled, loudly, 'I'm from there!!!'. It was awesome. The town really is hilarious. Besides the fact that it's called Effingham - seriously - their high school mascot is the Flaming Heart - seriously - and when I was in high school they were the only school in our entire division to have a guy cheerleader...and he was EXTREMELY homosexual. Your mascot is a flaming heart and you're their gay cheerleader?? You can't make that stuff up....





His voice was a little under the weather but overall it was still an awesome concert!!!!! He played some of my favorites that made me so happy. He likes him a little bit of colorful language which I think made some of the symphony members extremely uncomfortable. I don't support bad language at all....but some of their faces were a little funny to watch :)



More to come!!!

The moment you've all been waiting for...

I'M UPLOADING PICTURES!!!!!!

What's bogus is they may not be that exciting, but now everyone can know what's going on in my year of being twenty five and fabulous....

This will potentially be a really long post so I'll try to dispense with a lot of wordiness, though I make no promises :)

We'll start from oldest to newest...well, as old as the pictures on my camera get...which is around May. And actually this may not be truly chronological because I can't remember certain dates of when some stuff happened and I'm not sure why I'm even going into detail explaining this because none of you were really there....so it doesn't matter!!! N E WAY--

GRADUATION, June 14th commencement:

We had full cap and gown...I also had gold ropes to indicate I was graduating with honors....didn't get those at BYU :)
This is Julio the hairdresser. We both won special awards. His was for looking put together and saucy every day.....mine....was NOT. I got mine for highest GPA. There was no way on this green earth anyone was gonna give ME an award for getting ready for school. Just ask my sister Sarah. She saw me leave every morning...

This is Kim Vo. I LOVE him. He came and spoke at our commencement. For those of you that watch reality TV at all he has the show Shear Genius. He has 4 super high end salons throughout the west coast and his own product line and a bunch of other stuff and is genuinely a really nice person. He didn't toot his own horn at all during his speech and tried to give really helpful advice on job searching and all that. I walked up to him afterward and told him I was born in the west and would love to move back and if I move to the Bay area would he hire me?? :) I think he liked my boldness so he told me to come look him up because he would remember me. Woot woot!!!!

CLOCK OUT Jun15th, my official leaving of hair school:


This is Linda, my very first client. I love her!!!!! She came to me at least twice a week for 6 months. She is a flight attendant and likes her hair teased and stiff but doesn't like to do it herself. I totally respect that. I shampooed and styled her and colored and cut when she needed it. She was the funniest and super thoughtful. She appreciated that I was a responsible adult, or that I was at least trying to be. She tried to give me dating advice a lot. I think we had a few different opinions but I still was grateful :)



Linda brought me this cake as well as balloons and a gift certificate to New York and Co. because I love that store. She was wonderful.

Gina clocked out the same day as me. People bought us some swag to wear.

Clocking Out!!!!
Tradition is to run through streamers in the hallway. No, I don't run like that normally. I was just trying to make sure to get them all.

I got them all :)

This is my friend Jessica from the single's branch out here. I am so grateful for this girl!!!! She is really upbeat and we got to be pretty good friends. She started hair school a couple months after me and it was so nice having a friend there that didn't do crazy drugs or a million other uncomfortable things!

Jess (from above) and my buddy Jason decorated the entry way to my house while I was at the commencement ceremony to tell me congrats. I thought that was so nice of them! They didn't want me to come home to an empty house haha.


LADY ANTEBELLUM AND TIM MCGRAW CONCERT, June 26th (I think):

In the car on the way there!! Jason and Jess, the same friends that decorated my house. Great kids:)
This is the lead male singer for Lady A. You may not be able to tell in this picture, but this man is extremely attractive, tall, AND can sing. I support him.

Workin the crowd.

Up-close shot. Is it sad that I took a picture of the big screen? We had lawn seats that were actually pretty good but cameras don't do justice.

OK I know that this is probably a gross picture but I was laughing pretty hard. Lots of women come to these concert trying to look all foxy as if somehow Tim McGraw is going to leave his absolutely BEAUTIFUL and successful wife and be with them. Anyway, it was a really hot and humid day and these girls did not plan well. The chick on the left has crazy back sweat, and, well, it's obvious what's happening to the girl in the middle ahahahaha. Oh bless her heart.

The dramatic curtain drop on Tim.

And here's Timmy. I got in a discussion with a girl a few weeks before the concert about the attractivness of Tim McGraw. I just didn't see it and she was so convinced that he was super good looking. I thought she was crazy. I take it ALL back. He was doing just. fine.


Yay for concerts!! The two other people in here are my other good girlfriend from the branch, Emily and our friend Jake. I'm trying to take the picture and I'm lookin awkward.


FRONTIER DAYS, or actually it might have been prairie days...eh. July 3rd:


The significance of this?? We were listening to the lead singer of Stix. All the classy mid-west people were rocking out. It was awesome. I think his name is Dennis DeYoung. He was actually doing the robot to the Mr. Roboto song...maybe the worst robot I've ever seen. So funny.


FIREWORKS! July 4th:

So I hung out with Jess and Emily's families on the fourth of July and we walked to a park to watch fireworks. They were pretty good! This is more evidence of the fact that I'm just not very good at taking pictures of people when I'm trying to be in them...

Try again....
And I still fail....oh well!

And I think that gets everyone up to date on what's been happening...in Illinois. I haven't even touched my Utah and Philadelphia trips yet, but I've been on this thing FOREVER so I should probably try to go accomplish something else today...like a shower. More to come tomorrow!!!!

Up to my knees in mp3s

Who has two thumbs and stayed up till 3:30 in the morning attempting to clean up her itunes files???.........this guy!!!!

It has been about 5 years since I've attempted to clean up my itunes. I had started to once and then one of my roommates was using my computer and magically erased my itunes library. Luckily it was backed up, but the not-cleaned-up version....so I lost motivation and just let it go wild.

It. was. a. MESS.

I had the Braveheart soundtrack 4 times....FOUR TIMES....Seriously?

And I had the complete Star Wars soundtrack at least twice as well as Lord of the Rings and some other random stuff.....maybe my computer likes to make duplicates of epic film soundtracks??

I also have every R.E.M. song....ever....and plenty of other ridiculously random things.

I spent a little over 6 hours working on it yesterday and will spend a couple more today...but you know what's really sad? That's JUST the music in my itunes folder...which is about 12 gigs....

I have at least 20 more gigs of music on my computer/on DVDs Dale burned them to for me when my computer couldn't handle all of the files.....SO MUCH MUSIC.

So cleaning my itunes out is really a baby step....

Just keep swimming.

Just keep swimming.

Just keep swimming......

Frustration

So I was all pumped to actually upload some pictures up here for all you, my faithful fans...which is probably no one since I post something every few months...

So I get all excited and write my little blurb and go to upload the photo............

and it won't work. I don't know if it's just tonight that it won't work or what. It kept saying it was trying to send the info to the blogger website. I'm ticked. My computer won't connect to the internet at the house I'm staying at, so I took it on over to the public library and set up shop. So now I'm just sitting here....staring at all of the Indian people studying for various medical and law exams....and just staring at my computer hoping it will magically work as I go in and out of facebook.

Boo, archaic Dell computer. Boo.




*don't you all worry. I'll figure this thing out. But not tonight...because the library closes soon :)

My roommate is a WIZARD

Ok...can we talk about my roommate Catherine??

Now I know we aren't technically roommates anymore, but come on...we lived together for basically six years....she'll always be my roommate :)

ANYWAY, this girl is ridiculous...in a good way!!! She is just one of the most brilliant musicians I have ever met, on top of being a loyal friend and a beautiful woman.

She and I both struggle I think with being vulnerable...meaning we just don't like to do it. Who does??!! But I think we've both in our own ways been trying to open up more to different possibilities and directions in life...I know that's really vague...but I'm still working on being vulnerable :)

She has been able to really open up and expose herself through her music which is just so amazing to me. I only sing what's written for me and I've found that I am able to lightly tap into my experiences and emotions and I can portray that in what I do...but it's still through someone else's words or melodies. I never really put it all out there....ever. She has opened up her mind and even let people see into her heart through her art and I admire and respect that so much.

So at risk of just babbling on forever and ever about this girl, because I really can...ask anyone....I'm the best PR rep she has :)....I'll just stop right now and post a link to her blog. Some of her posts are really insightful to not just her, but I think a lot of people that read them...because you feel like she's writing things that you were feeling but didn't know how to think or say....AND you HAVE to listen to her music!!!!! The variety is endless, but I really love her latest full track she posted. It's called "trapeze"...

Listen and weep....I did!!!

http://catherinepapworth.blogspot.com/

I love you, Cat!!! I'll talk to you SO soon!!!

An announcement

I got a digital camera!!! That means more blog posts and there will actually be interesting pictures....well interesting to me:) I'm in Utah right now without the cord to upload the pictures...but they will come soon!!! Get excited....

Oh hey

Soooo...it's my twenty fifth birthday next friday....and I think that's a little weird....

One of my best friends and roommate of about six years and I were talking a couple months back and we were both thinking about the change from 18 yrs old to now. What was really funny is we both really thought that we would have everything figured out by 24. It just made sense and seemed like such a refined age. We would be done with school, at least moderately successful in our fields of study and we would meet great guys and be in functional relationships and then get married when in our twenty fourth year and everything was going to be great...a couple laughs later we both commented on how twenty for had come and was going....and it seems a lot of our plans didn't work out for us....

we both finished our majors though...so that counts for something....right?? :)


Cat and me at age twenty....we were just babies!!!! :)