The Mini-Resume

I’m going to Vegas next week for the Society of Professional Journalists National Convention, and when my professor sent us a list of things to pack, he included on it resumes. This made me excited because of an idea from one of our briefers in D.C. They said one of the coolest things they had seen was a girl who gave them a business card that was really a mini-resume. Ever since I’ve wanted to make one for myself. If you think about it, the idea makes a ton of sense, especially for those of us who theoretically should be starting to think about looking for a job. Or something.

This provided me an excellent excuse to play with InDesign, which I have been missing. I only ordered 20 cards because I really anticipate giving maybe one away, but it was still pretty fun playing grown-up. Maybe they’ll have one of those sweet business card raffle jars and I can stick one of these in.

You’ll have to let me know what you think, though, since this was an experiment. I couldn’t decide between super traditional and, well, something that would stand out but could be potentially tacky, so I tried to design something in between. During one of my summer jobs I literally went through stacks and stacks of resumes of people applying for teaching positions at PCC, and I saw a lot of over the top ones that turned me off (all pink floral with a scent? Is that necessary?), but also millions more that looked like they had used the same template in Word.

Which reminds me, I should probably work on my real resume because I definitely used one of those Word templates. My bad.

Front:

Back:

Flavor of Fall

For me, fall means pumpkin chocolate chip cookies.

Actually, I have been known to eat them year round. As anyone who went to Washington Seminar with me should know, since I made some for dinner group and then proceeded to feed the entire building.

But I especially crave them once it gets close to Halloween and Thanksgiving and the changing of leaves. For more on the reason why I am so obsessed, check out Annie’s blog entry from earlier this summer. Let’s just say that ever since London I have been especially appreciative of pumpkin goodness.

Today I made my first batch of the season. If you want some come and listen to this month’s SPJ speaker, Josh Awtry, who is the assistant managing editor of the Salt Lake Tribune and will speaking on the future of journalism and new media. Thursday at 11 a.m. in the Brimhall Atrium on campus (sorry friends not in Utah!). Nice people will be there.

Or I might let you cheat if you stop by my apartment. One batch = 59 glorious cookies. But you better come soon because they will go quick!

Belated Birthday Post x2

Apparently I am just unable to blog about birthdays when they actually happen. This time it isn’t for me though, it’s for my sister Amber. She had her 19th birthday two weeks ago tomorrow, and it was a lot of fun for me because it’s the first time in four years that we’ve been in the same state on her special day. So I appeared at her door bearing gifts after regional conference (which I feel must have been a birthday present in itself, because a bunch of general authorities including Elder Packer, Elder Holland and Sister Beck were there).

Pictures:

Amber and her friends.

Sneak peak at some of the cupcakes I picked up for her from The Sweet Tooth Fairy (in above box). I’ve never bought so many cupcakes at one time before in my life. It was exhilarating.

In other exciting Amber news, she blogged for the first time in forevers yesterday. I may have been bugging her about it. I never had a blog as a freshman, but I get bored sometimes and I’m pretty sure she’s supposed to be providing me entertainment.

Can I also just say one of the best things about having my sister at BYU (other than the obvious reasons, of course) is that she will come to the newsroom where I work with her magic money card (a.k.a. student dining plan) and buy me treats from the vending machine? Yeeesssssss.

I Found a Wallet

My wallet is bulging, and it’s not because it is full of money -- it’s full of treasures. In order to answer a money question for my mom I had to dive into the depths of my wallet, and along the way I found trove a lot of fun stuff. I think I have a habit of putting a few too many things in there… Annie and Sam (and my mom and sister and a ton of other people) can vouch for the fact that probably one out of every four times I get something out of my wallet I end up dropping all of my receipts on the floor in front of the cash register. People in line just love me. You’d think I’d learn my lesson, but all of my prizes do provide great entertainment when I’m bored! I may not always have a book on hand, but I do have my wallet full of memories.

Here are the highlights of the excursion. (Sorry the pictures are awful. I blame the night.)

The random collection. I feel like if you went through my whole wallet you could learn a ton about what I like and where I’ve been. And I’m discovering they’re mostly food places.

And movies. Plus some other entertainment!

Even some of the receipts were fun. Oh hey look, more food.

My favorite is this one from Good Stuff because you can see everything on it until the Milky Way shake, at which point the actual Milky Way shake covers up the rest.

P.S. Here’s a wallet song to accompany this post. Thanks for putting up with my crazy ramblings. I swear my wallet is cooler in person.

September Issue

I know it's over halfway through the month, but I just realized I never shared the last of my stories that got published in Where Washington for my internship. So here they are. There's one of a behind the scene tour of America's Most Wanted in the Crime and Punishment Museum, and one on farmers' markets in the district.

In case you're super interested (i.e. you're my mom), you can see the full PDFs of the magazine at wheretraveler.com/washington-dc

Georgetown in Provo

Apparently I wasn’t the only one having D.C. withdrawals, because a group of us got together and ordered a dozen cupcakes from Georgetown Cupcake and had them shipped here overnight… Don’t judge. Shipping isn’t that bad when you divide it by 12. And it was totally worth it.

Evidence:

Delicious Friday.

Daydream Travels

Today was a beautiful fall day in Provo, but as I was stuck in forever-long classes I found myself wishing I was somewhere else. That it was still this summer when I was in these cities.

Here are the top 5 places I would like to be back at now:

#1 Washington, D.C.

#2 New York City (fab photo stolen from Peter Carroll)

#3 Philadelphia (let’s admit it, this sandwich alone would be reason enough to go back and stay)

#4 Baltimore

#5 Ocean City, Md. (who doesn’t want to be at the beach?)

And of course, I always would love love love to go back here:

It’s crazy to think that exactly two years ago last Monday I arrived at 27 Palace Court. If anyone happens to invent a way to teleport before me, pretty please let me know?

Retro Tunes

I’ve been saving up rewards from my credit card for months, and it finally paid off. Yesterday my awesome new record player arrived in the mail.

My desire to own a record player began in earnest sophomore year when my then roommate Christy Witt entered my life. See below. She’s the gorgeous one on the far right.

She’s a sound recording technology major, and she had a beautiful record record player that sat on our kitchen table with endless stacks of records. I know I can play music on my computer or iPod, but this was different. It was a conversation piece, it was interactive, it was classic. And I wanted one of my own.

It’s a bigger purchase then I can usually justify, but with all of the gift cards I got from my credit card company it wasn’t bad at all. It’s at this point that I’m really wishing I bought more of those records I walked past all of the time in London, though. They were all over the place -- at markets and in music stores of all sizes. But I was paranoid they would break in my suitcase, and at the time the only thing I had to play them on was my parent’s old record player at home in Portland. So I just bought one for my dad for Christmas and left the rest sitting on the shelf. I guess I’ll just have to go back… somehow I am very ok with that idea. I’m always looking for excuses.

Right now I only have three records though, and they have absolutely nothing in common with each other: The Shins, Rick Springfield, and the Dark Knight Soundtrack. I’m sure I need to go to the store. One album I really want is this old Air Supply record below because we had some quality times with it in my old apartment. Let me know if you see it anywhere!

Here’s a glimpse of some of the excitement of opening my package up while I was “doing my homework,” because I know you are all just absolutely riveted by this blog post.

Just so you know, listening to the Dark Knight soundtrack while doing family finance homework makes it way more intense.

A couple more pictures because I’m a nerd and I can.

I can already tell we have some good times ahead of us.

Transportation Curse

My car is sick and needs to go to the car doctor, which is closed on Labor Day, and my bike has a flat tire. I think the world is telling me I need to stay put and actually do my homework for once.

I’m convinced it’s actually an apartment curse, because my roommate’s car died died for real the night before mine came down with the flu, and her bike needs air too. So beware.

Withdrawal

I may have become a little too addicted to cupcakes and frozen custard and sugary goodness in D.C. and now I’m having major cravings. I don’t think it was really my fault, with Georgetown Cupcake and Baked & Wired and Dickey’s a two second walk away. They even had cupcake trucks go around like ice cream trucks to the parks. Let’s just say I’m suffering the consequences now…

I mean, could you resist this?

Especially when you walked by this every day like four times because the shop was the next door over from your office?