Hello Again!

I'm back....from no where really. My life is very uninteresting now. I am blissfully happy though....so I suppose that's all that matters. I don't miss the drama. We are poor. Shae answered my prayers and offered me a job. YAY! I start tomorrow. I'm so excited. Tomorrow is our two month anniversary. I'm going to be naked when he comes home. I started school...I'm taking a video production class that seems very promising. It should be fun. I miss you all and love reading your comments. I would love nothing more than to see you all again. But I know it will happen someday. :) Much love to everyone!!!!!!!
Ps. Jerilyn, Liesl is beautiful. I'm calling you today to find out when I can come see you!

To those who want a job . . .

Hey everyone, I have a job offer for you. Shae's dad's company (Parent Help) is establishing a small branch here in Logan, and they desperately need good writers. I work from home for them and the pay is good. I don't know about benefits, though, because I'm a contractor, but it's a pretty interesting job. I do a lot, from editing their billions of web pages to researching and writing articles. If you're interested, you should probably contact Shae. Her number at Parent Help (in Missouri) is 1-800-688-8706, extension 117, or email her at shae@parenthelpcenter.com. They also need a few phone reps, but I don't know who's in charge of hiring for those positions.

No news on the homefront for me, except that I've been depressed lately because I'm not going back to school. I love my little Liesl, but I may go crazy being at home so much.

To answer your spelling query, Mandy, we spell her name IE. This not only follows the English "i before e except after blah blah blah" rule, but it also follows German pronunciation rules. We were going to spell it EI, but in German that is pronounced "eye" as in "stein," and that's not what we wanted.

To hear more about Liesl, go head and check out my blog. It's in the link to the right, under JeriLynn. I tend to take up too much space here.

I'm glad to hear from you guys. Please talk to Shae if you want. Logan's not such a bad place to live, eh? You've all done it before. :)

Job related news

So I kind of have job related news, as you may have determined based on my title (Somewhere Dr McLaughlin is cheering, I've made you read the important part twice already). I got my first official rejection letter last week from a company I interviewed with on June 26. This was the first correspondence I've received from them even though I did the whole thank you email and then followed up a month later with a just wanted to check the progress email. As upset as I was that that was the first I heard from them, I was very impressed by their letterhead. The logo for the company is red and black and the back of the paper was completely red. The right hand corners were rounded. it was different without being weird or unprofessional and I bet some graphic designer got paid big money for saying "make the corners rounded and make the back red."

I also got a job offer today, however, before you start calling with congratulations, it was from my friend Emily who is changing jobs and needs someone to watch her six week old son until the daycare she is moving to has room for him. I went to 4 years of college and got a degree in tech writing so I can watch her baby sleep and change his diapers! He's a super sweet little boy, so good natured, and she calls me his "Aunt Mandy" which is cute but vaguely frightening. Really, there are lots of worse jobs I could do and I'm only agreeing to do it on the condition that I am free to leave should I find a "real job."

Networking is finally starting to work out as I am hearing about jobs that are opening up, but it took a long time to have very much of interest come up and my parents are no help. My mom got me volunteered to be a grant writer at her school and the teacher who had been doing it handed me half a ream of paper that was applications she'd printed out and a pamphlet on why art is important to schools and told me to have at it. She said that she wants money to buy musical instruments and have guest artists visit and I have NO idea what I'm really doing. My dad is even less help and told me yesterday that he is not encouraged by the fact that I'm still unemployed. He said it is further convincing him of his belief that editors are writers who didn't make and tech writers are any military personnel who can type.
That's about all for now; I haven't really had anything interesting to say so it's been a long time...

JeriLynn, I thought I cashed that check and I can't find it now so cancel it and consider your 3 dollars a baby gift ;D it's less than what I want to spend on you and Leisl/Liesl/I wish I could spell her name! Please remind me whether she follows the "i before e" rule or not. I think what I want to get you is a breast-feeding poncho. Do you already have one? Have you ever seen one before? Is it something you need and are interested in receiving? If not, please tell me what you want, and if it's something just for you, so much the better.

Pluto's demotion

Pluto was demoted today from planet to .... rocky annoyance? The International Astronomical Union (IAU) adopted a resolution on planet definition, and Pluto didn't make the cut.
There are people alive today who remember when Pluto was first discovered in 1930 ... can you imagine some old grandpa type saying to any young whippersnapper who comes along, "I remember when there were just 8 planets ... then there were 9 ... but it turns out we didn't define the term 'planet' sufficently enough so when we calrified it, it turns out there were 8 all along and just an imposter planet with its silly little moon that tried to come in as a sister planet for a while too. But we sure showed it. We defined the term planet and they never had a chance..."
Ok obviously my imagination has gone off the deep end. Pluto was my favorite planet ... in jr. high I managed to do two extra credit research papers on Pluto, even then there was a debate on if it was a planet or not. I wish they had managed to let Pluto keep its status. Now I don't know how to explain it. That extra bit of planetoidy rock with the satelite named Charon ... or Pluto the rock formerly known as a planet ...
The IAU now defines a planet as "a celestial body that is in orbit around the sun, has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a ... nearly round shape, and has cleared the neighborhood around its orbit."

Can't science make up it's mind? At least with English we embrace the fuzziness of it all ... science was suppossed to be the hard-nosed, one answer for everything subject.

a random insanity of my life

Okay so I'm totally doing this illegally...because I am sneaking around at work looking over my shoulder while I type so that nobody see's that I am not currently working on something.

I still miss Switzerland.

But life has gotten interesting within the last week. Excluding the usual insanities that occur in my day to day exisistance, something very random has happened. First...the back story.

Imagine me as a Junior in high school, confused and oppressed in the enviroment known as a public highschool. Towards the end of that year there was this cute guy named Steve Nelson who knew some of my friends....and there was some sort of romantic (maybe?) something going on between us. We hung out, talked on the phone for hours (literal hours), and went on a couple of dates, etc. Then because I didn't know how to deal with boys (still don't actually) it ended. Time progressed and I went away to college never really thinking about him.

During my freshman year of college, he randomly shows up at my doorstep. He was visiting my cousins roomate who was from snow college where he had attended and they somehow found the connection so he decided to come over. I had looked very cute that day...my hair was waved and everything had just worked....BUT I decided to take a shower. So when he shows up my hair is in wet moo-like bun on top of my head and I'm wearing ugly pajamas. NOT the way I want a high-school crush to remember me. So life continues...with one of my regrets being the...lack of resoultion I felt between us.

Fast forward to Wednesday, August 8th, 2006. I'm moving out of my apt and attempting to throw some things away when I find a old high school directory from my junior year...and his number is highlighted. Whitney gave me a small pep-talk and I called the number fully expecting his parents to have moved, or tell me that he is married or something like that. So it rings...and he answers the phone. HE ANSWERED THE PHONE! This moved out of the realm of my expectations. We talked on the phone for about an hour and he said that he was going to try and come up before he started school on the 23rd. I was reeling after this to say the least.

The next day I am moving things and I get a phone call...it's him saying that he helped somebody move to Park City and if it was okay with me he wanted to come up. So I said yes....and he came up...stuff happened....and didn't leave for nearly 24 hours. WHAAAT?? I'm still reeling about this. Apparently there is still something there. We have had some sort of contact (texts, phone, etc) everyday since then....and I really have no idea what's going on here or what I really feel about this. Oh and he lives down in lindon/pleasant grove my home town.

So that is one of the recent devopments in my life.

eleven oh five pm

alright, as you wish JeriLynn. i shall stay up an extra string of minutes and post something...

last week, a miracle happened.

one of those local girls came in and needed a program for her wedding.

she handed me a cd of pictures and asked my advice on which one of her three favourites would look best.
she emailed me a file with all the order of events and the massively long wedding party list, and

although the word document was entirely in all-caps comic sans

she gave me total free reign to pick fonts and format the program however i wanted.

this is how my job is supposed to work, right? i'm the designer. yeah? yeah.

anyway, it was amazing. i picked collona for the headings and used bernhard somethingorother for the main text.

and she loved it. and her mother loved it.

basically i rock.

in other news: next week my own dear sister is getting married. i'm very much looking forward to seeing my family. if anyone is not busy for a few hours on tuesday the 22nd, i have a three hour layover in salt lake from 10.07 til 1.21pm. it'd be cool to have lunch with somebody or something. any takers? i've got the same old phone number.

So where are you guys?

So why did everyone stop posting? Or do I just have no life? Okay, don't answer that.

Vanessa, how did your stupid math test go? What about an apartment? When are you moving to NY? When does school start, huh? Gosh. If you haven't already moved away, you should come see me and Liesl.

Wilson, have you found another job yet? Are you going back to school? If so, where? How did your move to Salt Lake go?

Chelsi, I hope Lake Powell treated you well. I bet you're glad to have time off before school. When will you come visit me?

Elsie, that last post was wonderful, but I expect to hear more about Switzerland. Gosh. At least come tell me about your trip and show me pictures. Put together a slide show for me.

Mandy, how's the job search going? Are you going to go back to school? When are you going to get married? (Ha ha, just kidding. I figured since I'm already asking all the other annoying questions, I'd better finish the job. Or whatever. ha.)

Hollie, I really liked the update. I'm jealous you went to the Oregon coast. Someday I will. Someday I'll also go to New York, Europe, and the Amazon Jungle. And China, and perhaps Australia or New Zealand. Or Polynesia. Oh, and Yellowstone.

By the way Hollie, do you think you could make Liesl a yellow bracelet to go with her blessing gown? I vill pay you. And, yes, I noticed you never cashed the $5 check I gave you for my necklace with the Schwartzenegger crystals. Punk. (And Mandy, I also noticed you never cashed the $3 I gave you for the CD labels. You weren't just being charitable, were you?)

Amelia, I chat with you almost every day. But I still love your posts. Very amusing they are.

If I've left any of the regular posters out, I'm sorry. Not really. Obviously you don't post often enough for me to think of you, so it's your own fault.

Well, I still think my little girl is great. She's starting to smile a little. That's nice. Regretfully, the relief society stopped bringing me meals a week ago, so Jay and I are starving because I'm too lazy to cook.

Christy Archuleta got married el Fridayo, and I knew of her receptiono through the lovely, marvelous, award-winning HERALD JOURNAL. So I went. SHE has seen my lovely daughter, but none of yous guys have. Oh, and she looked very beautiful. Her skin goes so well in white. And her dress was beautiful, too. The groom looked a little nervous.

So I'm sick of writing about myself all the time. I do it just to fill the awkward empty spaces. Save me, people-- come on. You guys all lead such interesting lives.

xo-J-L

I'm back from vacation

My family reunion (and by family I mean my siblings and parents) went to Arch Cape Oregon this year. It was a lot of fun. I missed the 100 degree heat wave ... I was in sunshine but the temp never got above 75... at the right is a picture of me on the beach at sunrise to make everyone wild with envy.
The only place that had cell phone reception was 5 minutes away at a leisurely pace ... but the beach had the best reception and that was only 8 minutes walking from the bungalow we rented (the picture is of the beach at sunset).
We went to Seaside, and Astoria (yes, I saw the Goonies House) we also went fishing in the Ocean, 16 miles out for salmon. Apparently it was one of the worst fishing days in history. The only fish we could keep had to be hatchery (not native) and big enough. My brother says he has never gone where no one has reached their limit (2) but on our trip, we caught a total of 4 keepers among the 6 of us. The only thing I caught was a silver that we had to throw back ... the fish was impressive anywhere else but too small to keep there. Which was dissapointing at first ... but then seeing my family clean and chop their salmons into filets made me actually glad I didn't catch anything ... I may never eat fish again. We split the fishing into two days so that Ryker wouldn't have to sit still on a boat in a life jacket for several hours. He doesn't sit still well.

Being that far out on the ocean, on a cloudy day along the Oregon/Washington coast is freezing. I have one picture of me on the boat, I'm wearing a levi jacket, and a hoodie, and still my lips are blue and it took days to warm up. With windchill it was around 30 degrees. I havn't managed to get it off the second digital camera chip (I can't find the second chip) but I've seen it before so I know its there

The highlight of my trip was hanging out with my nephew Ryker who will be 2 on the 13th of this month. He's talking and he's practicing his colors. He has a hard time saying the "r" sound so red he doesn't try ... the others sound like this: lello, onnnnnge, geen, boo, pp, and pinnnnnk. The easiest way to get him to say his colors is to bribe him with food.
The day his parents fished we took him out to lunch and he didn't want anything to do with my other brother and sister, he wanted me to hold him, me to cuddle with him, and me to smear ketchup all over while he was eating his french fries. He is the cutest in the world. If I have red-head kids, I want them to look just like him.

We did a lot of sight seeing when we were there. That's one of the things we do. We have a lot of cool scenic pictures. Here's one from Cape Meades ... which has the smalled light house in Oregon near it. The light house didn't get into this picture but its still fantastic anyway.

Hope everyone had fun this summer, and everyone who is looking has found a job.

Dreams, Reality, and Motherhood

Wouldn't it be nice if we could travel the world as often as we'd like? Ah, how I used to yearn to live in Europe, eating at a little, tucked-away cafe, just being on my own. Perhaps I would get a dog, and maybe I would have met some charming schmo over a cup of hot cocoa (since I don't drink coffee). Or, how much I wanted to go nanny in New York and teach English in China!

Ah, the dreams of a true dreamer! (Having my feet on the ground is something I learned from the more pessimistic people in my life, and that didn't come until after high school.)

Well, life goes on, that's for sure. And we don't always achieve all of our dreams. But reality isn't that bad. In many ways it's better, more satisfying. True love only exists in reality anyway, because it involves much work and sacrifice-- things few people ever wish for in their fantasies. Besides, I still hope to travel the romantic villages of distant lands. I may not do it alone, or, if I do go alone, I'd probably wish my loved ones were there sharing the experience.

Now I am a mother, and while I refuse to live my dreams through my daughter, she will have many dreams of her own that I hope to help her achieve. Like the most beautiful wedding dress we can afford. Motherhood is better than I thought, but I'm in the easy stage. She sleeps most of the time. I do not look into her eyes to see myself (although I do see my father-- she has his eyes), but rather I see her as Liesl. She will never be like me, but she will 'learn much more than I'll ever know.'

So ode to dreams and reality and love! May they be combined into one for all of you. I myself am living my dreams, even though they are not the girlish dreams I once used to have. But that's okay. I like it this way.

And Amelia, if I had an extra $600, I would gladly loan it. But, as it is, we need to start saving for a wedding dress.

xo jerilynn xo

i miss england.

does anybody have a spare $600 i could have, to go back?

on a sidenote, i feel rather guilty and confused about life, wanting to fly away to england when i know i'm saving all my pennies for a mission.

sometimes the things you know are just... meh.
while the things you dream are just... too far away.
and everything looks perfect from far away.

i want to kill math

everyone, pray for me because I'm taking a MATH FINAL tomorrow morning and I need all the divine powers to join forces at the hip and shoot this math beast down. it really, really sucks, people. I cannot even express the bitterness I will feel should I find out that I spent an entire summer of my youth toiling away at a finkless endeavor (finkless to me anyway) for nothing. I am in the Engineering computer lab, and there is this boy straddling a chair backwards and I wonder if he knows how suggestive he looks right now. It's not a turn on either, what the hell is he doing? If only I had my camera right now. now he's bouncing, like, riding the chair like a regular jockey. I think he's pretending it's not a lab chair, but Seabiscuit at the Kentucky derby. Go boy, go! this is Vanessa by the way....

shoelaces and what?

happy tuesday

jerilynn looks so beautiful as a mother, doesn't she?

mandy, i emailed you a long, rambly email about what i do for a living these days. hopefully it's useful to you.

it's been a busy day. i'm glad for lunch. sadly, xerox man (lovely superhero name, yes?) is going to arrive in a few minutes and disturb it. ah well.

a hypothetical question for you all:

so about two months ago you designed the wedding program for a sweet local methodist girl. 7 x 7 inch square, simple folded deal, the elegant Bickham Script Pro paired with stately little Copperplate. The finished proof got stuck in your massive Folder of Wedding Junk, which on occasion you drag out of the file cabinet to show to indecisive customers.

this month, yet another one of those sweet local (possibly methodist) girls comes in and needs a wedding program. She has a basic idea drawn up. Then she looks through your massive Folder of Wedding Junk and sees methodist-girl's program.

"Oh," she gushes, "do it like this."

Exactly like this?

"Yeah, here, just put my name in, and change all the other wording, and it'll be great."

Erm... but this wedding was only two months ago... are you sure you want to blatantly rip off the design? What if we make it less square, for a start, to match your invitations (which were 8.5 x 5.5 inch rectangles). What if we not include all the details exactly the same? I can make you your own custom layout too, how's that sound?

"I want it just like this one, dang it!"

Sigh.

Anyway, what would you have done?

The customer is always right, of course. But geez... local girl 2 even knew local girl 1 personally. local girl 1 might even get a chance to see these programs. What is local girl 2 thinking!?

Sigh.

To be sneaky and to make it at least a little bit original, i swapped out the Copperplate for Engravers.

Geez people are funny.