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.

9:25 p.m.

Third location, third floor of Barnes and Noble in the philosophy/religion stacks where there is an outlet for my loyal computer. Somehow out of the gazillions of books in this place I ended up with “The Joseph Smith Papers” and “Mormon America” sitting directly in front of me.

596 words down, 2,000 more to go. But at least now there is some actual substance in my paper. B&N has been good to me.

7:58 p.m.

I’ve relocated and it’s much better. I’m on the second floor of the Georgetown Barnes and Noble next to a giant window where I can see lots o’ people shopping and there is free wi-fi. I also picked up a lemon-raspberry cupcake from Baked and Wired on the way. Just thought you’d want to know about this exciting development. I haven’t, however, got much more done on my paper. Maybe it would help if I stopped blogging…

5:39 p.m.

This is my life right now. I just got home from work, where I’ve been writing all day. I have a 8-12 page paper due at 8 a.m. tomorrow morning on how I’m going to change the world. At this moment, I have 400 words. This picture above is where I will be sitting until the end of time. Wish me luck.

Oxymoron

Since I don’t have time for a real post (ok, mostly I just don’t have an idea), I will leave you with this thought:

I have more going on than I ever have before and negative time to even think, but I’m still incredibly bored.

How in the world does that work?

P.S. If someone could make something funny happen so I can have more material for this blog that would be much appreciated. Thanks.

Perspective

So, I’ve hit another one of those weeks of pure insanity where all you want in life is to melt into a couch and eat sugary things. But, I just got back from an awesome Relief Society meeting for my stake where we got to have a Q&A session with Sister Beck, who is the current Relief Society General President for the Church. She answered any questions anyone had about life, and gave advice on how to handle various struggles. It was really just a beautiful couple of hours, and it really put things back into perspective. I think I needed that with all the stress from school right now. It can sometimes be a little too easy to lose track of the things that are important, and what our real goal in life is.

On a completely unrelated note I discovered a new place in Provo that I’m in love with. It’s a letterpress studio with some really awesome people called Rowley Press. You should check out the story I wrote about it for upp.

And on another happy note, we got a new microwave today. It’s a gift directly from heaven. Our last microwave I’ve been using for almost a year and a half was made circa 1984 and had dials and such. I feel like microwave popcorn didn't even exist when it was made. It’s so old I can’t even find a photo of it on the internet to share its hideousness with you. But now it’s ok, because we have a functional new one so I won’t have to feel like I’m going to die of microwave radiation every time I heat something up.

(Yet another side note, I took the picture above at Utah lake when I was trying to escape from the craziness that is Provo. I have some fun ones, but negative time to edit them. So maybe they’ll be posted sometime this year?)

Study Abroad-itis

One year ago today I was on top of the world, at the tip of the eiffel tower. Now the best I can claim is that I'm curently on top of my bed.

Paris was the cherry on top of my trip to Europe, an unexpected tasty surprise. This past week, full of awful stats midterms and 25 page law papers (no, I have not written it yet), stands in stark contrast of the same week last November when we were free to traipse through Paris wherever our whims carried us. Our whims often took us to places that had chocolate, crepes or amazing art.

The one thing they don't adequately warn you about when you leave for study abroad is not the dangers of pickpocketing or getting lost on trains, but how much the separation from the city you learn to love hurts once you get back. Or how many times you will look through the pictures you took, or visit the Web sites of stores you loved, or check what new plays are in the west end, or try to will yourself to teleport...

So many things bring me back to study abroad instantly, like hearing from my friends from home who are currently studying in Paris, Italy and Greece. Even all this talk about Twilight reminds me of watching the first movie with Sara in Stockholm and laughing through the entire thing.

Basically, the moral of the story is that you should savor the perfect moments (or in my case a perfect 4 months), because sooner or later it will be over and you'll be back in Provo dreaming about the glory days. However, luckily that doesn't mean you can't ever go back. Yesterday was payday and another drop into the travel fund! If I had it my way I would do study abroad pretty much every semester.

Here's a couple pictures of where I wish I was. If you want to see more of Paris you can go here, or read my attempt to write about everything we did that week here or here.