Moving and a bed question

Okay, so I've thought about moving out for awhile now, although since my parents have told me it's okay that I live at home, I've honestly thought about it less and less frequently. However, one of my old roomies from BYU-I wanted to move closer to her work and has been looking diligently for the past couple of months for a place for both of us to live, unlike lazy me.

About a week ago she wrote on my Facebook wall that she'd found a house with two openings and asked if I wanted to go see it with her. I said sure, and after wandering around 42nd South and 900 East in Holladay, found this amazingly cute little house. I was already kind of in love with it when I saw the outside, but then I went inside and fell in love with it further.

Jessica met me and Jesika in the foyer and welcomed us in. We walked into the kitchen, which was plenty roomy and decorated in red and black, through the rather small dining and living rooms, out to their deck. Yes, you read it right - a deck! It's not that useful/cool right now, but summer's not THAT far away. Okay, so it is, but I still liked the feature.

When we went into the living room, someone was watching Jon and Kate Plus 8 - yes! Not only do I love that show, but it means they have cable, which I'm going to admit I've missed in the past few months. :)

Then she briefly showed us the upstairs bedrooms and bathroom and led us downstairs to see the open room and bathroom, which both were acceptable. The shared room was a bit small, but honestly, when you've lived in Greenbrier where the beds are about a foot apart, you get hit by the door if you're sitting at your desk and you have a two-butt kitchen, it was plenty of room. :) Ah, the things one does for an awesome ward.

We also saw some random closet areas that are available for storage and such, and the downstairs living room and kitchen. Although the kitchen doesn't have anything to cook with, they want to get a microwave, and they have a second fridge down there - wa-hoo. It was also hard fitting 6 girls' food in one fridge, no matter how big it became when we got a new one.

While we were standing in the room, several of the roommates and one of their boyfriends came in to talk to us - which was a ton of fun. Jessica told us the ward was really good - not students, but not singles a ton older than us. Mostly working singles just starting out their careers. Score! All my roomies are active LDS. Also, at $200 for a shared room, it was a steal. The location was also prime for going to Park City (the joy!) being right by the 700 East entrance to I-80. According to Mapquest, it is 33 minutes away from work - but that's going the speed limit...;)

Jesika and I both almost agreed immediately that it was the perfect place for us to live and we needed to get this before it went to someone else- the horrible possibility we didn't want to think about.

I filled out a lease agreement, and now just need to drop off my deposit and first month's rent sometime soon...oh, and move in. I'm thinking I'll do it Jan. 1st or 3rd.

It's unfurnished, which presents a unique situation - I'm taking a twin bed frame and mattress and a dresser from my parents, along with a few other pieces of furniture, but since I've been sleeping on a water bed the past few months, I'm worried about being able to sleep, so I'm seriously considering getting a memory foam or Intelligel topper for the mattress. Anyone know any good deals? Which is better? Or is it just a preference thing? I've tried just looking it up online and I'm totally lost.

Also, anyone have any bedroom furniture they don't want? :)

Work Story Time

I was chatting with one of my old Scroll buddies, Kathryn Gaglione, and she was asking if any of my production work was available online. I told her I believed approximately none of it was available in PDF form on the internet.

But I did tell her I'd post a few of my favorites on my blog, so here I am.

Story time!


The coolest part of all the images I had in this layout was the x-ray of a knife not quite hitting anything important in this guy's neck. Apparently, if I got this right, it was the editor (Morgan Schenck) of a movie who got stabbed - he was doing an ongoing documentary project about a former Olympic gold medalist, Rick DeMont, whose medal was wrongfully rebuked because he tested positive for a banned substance in his asthma medication. It was DeMont's story that helped Schenck get past his stabbing experience. Oh, and apparently he was stabbed by a mentally disturbed homeless person without provocation.


I've found that I work really well when I have a bunch of pictures to work with - in this case, a few small ones, too. The Eccles Center (the new performing arts center in Park City) had just released their season and it just screamed spotlight to me - and there were enough vertical and horizontal pictures to keep it balanced.


Apparently Park City did a ghost tour during Halloween - and I couldn't resist going for a creepy, yellow, slightly transparent layout. People in old pictures don't smile much anyway, which helps.


This is another story of having lots of really cool picture - especially the rug pictures. This was a story about the Native American Rug Sale (although at one point it was mistakenly put on the calendar as Drug Sale...oh man. Good times). My boss of the office came and told me personally he liked the layout. Oh - the happiness that filled my soul.


Yay for Halloween! And the photographer, David Ryder, who took pictures of cute kids, up against the same background. It kind of meant I could squish quite a few good pictures altogether and the backgrounds didn't compete. I think this is one of the few times I've played around with these stand-alone picture clusters.


I love when people play with text for visual effect - that's what I tried doing here. Can you read what I'm saying the whole time? I learned some new text speak...


Because the bottom picture's in black and white it makes the dog look like he's floating - which is kind of cool, although they tell you with design to always anchor your pictures.


Yet another instance of fabulous photography by David that I merely placed on page in an appealing way. This story was about an advocate for access for people with disabilities. Apparently Park City stinks in this area.


Ah, the un-hokey family picture- a bunch of them put together, actually. It makes me happy.

As does going home - which is what I'm going to do right now.

Why you should not make a Christmas album

"Why shouldn't I make a Christmas album?" you might ask yourself.

I will tell you why in this easy-to-remember 5-step list:

1. Just because everyone else has one does NOT mean you should.

2. I believe you shouldn't change classic songs (Christmas or not) - even if they've been around for 100 billion years - UNLESS you change it enough to make it your own, but so it's still distinguishable as the song you're trying to connect it to. I know this is a tall order, but some people have been able to do it - see Kurt Bestor.

3. You probably can't meet the requirements from number 2. Just don't do it if you can't.

4. Getting a Christmas album out just because you can and that it could possibly be a hit is lame - especially with no truly original content. You should rethink your career in the music industry.

5. Because if you make one, BFFs or not, I would be extremely tempted to burn it in a trashcan, as this picture I made illustrates.

But, seriously, I was talking with the editor of the section I work with here at the Park Record newspaper, Greg Marshall, about how I hate that everyone has a Christmas album and almost none of them are any good.

He said it was probably because most of the songs weren't copyrighted, and when radio stations are playing Christmas music from Halloween to New Year's, they're desperate for content and draw from anyone.

Also, he said that most music artists who are successful might do it just because if people see their name attached to it they'll buy it.

To that I say, "Stay away from Christmas! Make a Halloween album then! Or a summer album! Summer lasts longer than Christmas anyway."

Yes - with that many exclamation points.

I feel passionately about this.

Maybe I'll write a song called "Stay Away From Christmas"...

P.S. If you DO decide to make a Christmas album anyway, please have enough creativity to call it something besides "__(Insert your name/group here)__ A Christmas Album". *snore

Stream of consciousness thoughts and epiphanies

I realized I've had quite a few epiphanies and other random thoughts about myself and life in general in the past few days and want to share some of them in a random, stream-of-consciousness kind of way.

I could live off of pie and biscuits - but would be happier if it were pumpkin pie and Pilsbury biscuits. I have eaten approximately 800 pounds of pie over Thanksgiving and could go on eating it forevermore. I only had one biscuit, but it's flaky goodness would never get old - or at least not for a long time.

Me and my friend Caryn are like a married couple - except we probably see each other more than some married couples. We hang out after work until like 10, or later usually, every day. Or mostly every day. Does that make me pathetic? Probably.

Hot, flirty types marry other hot, flirty types. Extremely nerdy, weird types marry other extremely nerdy, weird types. Since there are so few of each, they find each other. It reminds me of what a police officer in Rexburg told me one time: "Put two pot smokers on BYU-Idaho campus in the Hart auditorium (which seats about 7,000ish) on opposite sides and they'll eventually find each other." If you're even partially normal or just kind of cute, you're stuck in the middle with all the other 400 million people who are that way. Good luck finding a spouse in that mish mash. Plus, the percentage of guys I can tolerate who aren't extremely weird, hot or married is like .0001 of guys I'm around. Whoopee.

I am a newspaper nerd. Who else do you know gets an idea for what to put in their college newspaper? And then contacts the people at said newspaper to spin the idea? Yeah...other newspaper nerds.

Technology is really annoying sometimes. My phone's doing the white screen of death thing and it's starting to get to me. I ordered a phone from T-Mobile and kind of shopped around but ultimately got a free phone for a two year plan extension. It wasn't a flip phone - which is extremely weird. Guess I'll see how I like the whole slide phone thing. Let you know how that goes.

People who want practical gifts at Christmas weird me out. I mean, I guess everything in one sense or another is practical, in that they serve a purpose (whether it be entertainment or not) but some are jut weird practical - socks? Really? A Walmart gift card for buying groceries? Okay, I guess...I don't have the proper financial mindset, I guess.

I'm still weird in that I like buying personal gifts I think of myself for people. I'm almost done with my Christmas shopping. My list I originally wrote with ideas for people is almost all wrong to what I actually got for them. No danger in snooping kids or parents, I guess. :)

I thought Christmas would be more Christmasy now that I was at home with the real Christmas tree (which is actually a fake Christmas tree, but it's the right size and shape and has the lights and ornaments on it and everything) and kids with starry eyes and such...nope. Nothin' so far - not even when I try listening to Christmas music. I think this is because I spent so long fighting it, what with Christmas music and commercials touting Christmas between Halloween and Thanksgiving, when the holiday should NOT be celebrated. Does this make me a Scrooge or just older? Lame either way.

I drink a lot of water out of a plastic water bottle I got when I had my gall bladder surgery - this has elicited two comments at work: 1) I must be a mom 'cause these are the mugs they give mothers when they have their babies and 2) I'm eco-friendly because I refill it instead of using lots of plastic water bottles. Wow. Both were rather off the mark. I guess my water bottle says a lot about me, eh? A lot of false things.

Well, I hope you weren't all bored to death in this little trip into the inner workings of my mind.

Or more like the outer that I think of on the surface.