October 6th

I'm grateful for big brothers :) (and a mom with cake SKILLS)

"I am pretty tough,

for a girl" I said that at work the other night. Then after someone said "for a girl?" I realized what I had said. Whatever. But I'm so proud of myself... I just changed my very own headlight! I'm proud to be following in the Phillips tradition. There's the little broken filament. I had to document it... Because I'm a girl.

From My Phone

I moved last Monday and I haven't setup Internet in my new apartment, so I'm using the blogger app and it has limited formatting capability so all the pictures have to go at the end. The reason I'm telling you this is so that you don't assume I have become lazy or that I don't appreciate detail in the way a good blog post looks.
A couple exciting things: I now have my own bathroom (and my own closet, bedroom, and bed while I'm on the subject) and I ran in a big race Friday and Saturday. I think this race was the hardest I've ever done. Probably tougher than the handful of trail runs I followed the Jeffs on. I guess that wouldn't mean anything to you unless you went on the run, but whatever.
I was getting mentally prepared for my runs and the first one was a big boy. Then when I got to the race, I hear chatter about how it's the hardest leg on the course. My teammates joked after I finished that I proved myself tough enough, and I was now officially a man. And I got a belt buckle when I finished the leg. I ran 3 legs for a grand total of 19.4 miles. I feel like I was pretty well prepared for the race, so I think I performed better than I did in the Vegas Ragnar.
I also made new friends! Everyone in the van was married so I was a little nervous the married couple and other married man wouldn't talk to me for fear of flirting, but I was wrong. They were tons of fun. We all yelled when we saw BYU logos on other cars and shirts, and followed the football score on ksl.com on Friday night. We got real close because we're stuck in a van for 24+ hours, stinking, sweating, using port-a-potties, sleeping in weird places, and running our hearts out. It was super fun, and I can't walk now.

A Campaign Of Sorts

I would like to formally invite my adorable and stubborn sister in law to dress her children as follows for the upcoming spooky festivities. And if she decides not to, there is always next year for the rest of their lives. I suggest doing it as soon as possible though, because we'd hate for kids to tease them about sibling crushes/raging hormones. I think we all know how THAT feels... Well I do at least.

I always thought a verruca was a type of wart you got on the bottom of your foot.

What does the author of this blog and the little girl below have in common?

We're both brunettes. Like almost the exact same color. It's way weird.

Sometimes you have to eat humble pie. And I'm eating it right now. I kind of wish it was chocolate pie, but it's not. I had a huge helping yesterday, and the day before, and this pie is flippin huge. Living alone kind of turned me into this little girl/foot wart. And when I say kind of, I probably mean like 2x worse than this one... Luckily I have a crazy little roommate who can bring the crazy out of me and in doing so, has shown me some of those traits that are really me, not the fake/best self I can be me. And thankfully she's been very gracious when I had no other choice but to say sorry for being a real witch, today, and yesterday, and the day before, and this morning, and last night while I was sleep talking. And I'm grateful that we can change and that Heavenly Father keeps giving us chances every time we act like little Veruca Salt here.

The Weekend Update

I love surprising people. I don't think there is anything wrong with grooming well. I don't see how not doing my hair and putting on eyeliner, earrings and a decent outfit will do the world any good. "Just relax, be yourself" well I'm trying to get married and two) is this an ok version of myself? Lady GaGa said in an interview on 60 minutes that her fans deserved the best and she would rather die than have them see her without a pair of heels on. Yes girl. Now I don't exactly have the luxury (or the fans) to go quite that far, but I do my best. So I went to get a new checking account now that I have lived outside of Utah for a mere 9 months, and I semi-forgot the lessons Brian and Cath taught a stubborn girl about dressing professionally. I like to look cute remember. So I got dressed up as a pretty girl instead of a business girl. I had earrings and eyeliner and a dress from Calvin Klein on and maybe a long gold necklace and some gold and black flats on. While I was chit chatting it up with this banker lady (?) she asked me a bunch of questions about how I spend money to suggest what types of accounts I should have. Towards the end of the Q&A she asked where I worked/what I do or something like that.

"I'm a process engineer at Micron"

"Oh really?!"

"Haha yeah"

"... but you're so....cute."

Ha. Yes. Thank you for validating me. You said the one thing I live my life trying to get people to say. Seriously I do.

Mom and Dad

I should call you more. I'm going to call you more. Here's some stuff I've been doing (in no particular order):

Cooked lobsters with my friends (a little messy, but totally doable and super tasty)

Went running at the Manassas Battlefield (that's Stonewall Jackson)

I hiked White Oak Canyon in the Shenandoah Valley

A different run at the Battlefield

Went to Becky's wedding and wore this dress

Helped Becky with her bridals on the beach

Made this little linen pinboard

Took my first trip downtown and just found this picture on my phone :)

Came back for Alison's wedding... and went into the bathroom to take a selfy....

Went to DC for some stupid activity but I like the city

9 times a bridesmaid, but never

giving up hope. ;)

My April was ALL about love. Three more experiences were added to my resume this month bringing my total to 9, which is really triple the amount the old saying really allows for. I'm sure it's just a saying....

Eric and Ginia started us off and they started it right. I had so much fun at their wedding. Probably more fun than I've had at a wedding in years. Maybe it's because I have significantly more fun with my siblings now than I did growing up. Now I laugh with all of them instead of spend 99% of my time reporting legitimate cases of torture to Dub Dub. Gini hired a wedding planner who basically did all the grunt work the day of so we could just have fun. Thanks so much guys. Your reception did more for me than you know!

After the wedding, I worked for a week in DC then headed to LA for Becky's wedding. I had such a good week. I kind of felt like I was at home in a way. The Tuckers are so good to me I just feel right at home. I had so much fun helping and the best part was getting to "help" with the bridals. I held Becky's dress and was basically the peanut gallery but it was a fun night. And the reception was the bomb. I didn't find any love, but I did find candy and wontons and now I'm drooling again.

And last but not least Alison got married last Saturday. I loved her colors! And her adorable centerpieces and flowers. Just all the details were so good. And the most impressive part is that she did it all herself. Literally. She was still directing everything at the reception and looking like a million bucks doing it. Alison has been such a good friend to me since we became friends as roommates in apartment 48 at the Riv. I'm so glad I got to be part of her important day.

But now I need another reason to vacate Manassas to party with my favorite people. I'll let you know the instant I do.

The Village

that is raising me has come through again. I always have lots of question about life and myself and others. What should I do about this or that? How should I feel about him or her? Where am I failing and succeeding? The questions never go away with age. And it's always funny to realize I'm asking the same question I've asked before but now it's in a different U.S. state, different time, different friend, different feelings. But I have all these seemingly random people in my life who offer some outlandish perspective that when I take parts of all of them they answer my questions. I'm so blessed to know the wonderful, crazy, passionate, intelligent people I do.

Pleasant Surprise

Guess who showed up in DC? Sarah Standing! I know right. I love my little sister. We chatted about boys and our brothers and Utah and Mormons and DC and had an excellent time laughing and looking at historical crap between. It was so fun to see her out here.

Here she is in all her glory with the Hope Diamond. It has all sorts of significance, but we were still talking about boys at this point so the back story to this fatty rock was on the back burner.

Last weekend I went to the National Portrait Gallery. Once you pass the portraits of all the celebrities it gets good. I loved reading about people who influenced history. My personal favorites included the Founding Fathers, women's suffragettes, and my favorite shoutout:

My friend's first guess was "John Smith" then he immediately corrected himself "Joseph." His bio was pretty decent. Brigham's closed with something to the effect "he was famous for his many wives" which is always awkward.

I can't wait to come home on Saturday. I'm so ready.

So Live Your Life

Last Monday I visited Mike in Chapelle's Hill and it was lovely. While Mike worked like a responsible adult, contributing to the world, saving lives and making the world a better place, I went to the mall. And let me tell you, it was good for my soul. Mike and I ate some delicious sushi and steak and laughed our butts off to some Tosh.O. I visited him at the hospital and observed the female medical students flirtatious "Hi Dr. Phillips!" and tried not to snort diet coke everytime. It was fun.

(Panoramic of UNC hospital with my phone... I know right!)

And to make my life even better, I got to see Eric this week. I visited him at the Ritz-Carlton (between his phonecalls and skypes with Gini... they're so engaged) at Tyson's corner and really enjoyed sleeping in until 1, visiting Burberry and Ralph Lauren and when he was done with his interview, we ate some tasty Tuna. I love my life. Mainly because I have the absolute best family in the world.

The view after I finally dragged my butt out of bed.

I Saw God Today

One perk of working nights is that I get to see the sun rise every morning. And I don't know if it's a location thing but they are all really good out here. It's hard to capture it on a camera though. All that steam was a pretty pink this morning, I turned around in the parking lot to take this.

(thank you George Strait for the faith building lyrics/song)

Monday Adventure Series

I have made an executive decision (in order to remedy my intense longing for Utah) to enjoy this place that I'm living in. I'm sad to say I find it extremely difficult to get out of my pajamas on Monday through Wednesday. I just love sleeping in my darkened room, reading, or doing more than my fair share of online shopping and social networking research. (when I put it like that it sounds real nice huh, not like a fat waste of time). I figure if I tell you about my Monday adventures I may be guilted into following through with them. I'm planning on just going downtown (into the district, as everyone around here says) for a while until I get sick of it, which I think will take a long time. On Monday I went to the Air and Space Museum. It's right on the national mall. And instead of taking the metro, my friend Travis found some free parking by the Jefferson memorial so we took a little (ok it was kind of long) walk around the tidal pool and past the Washington monument to get there. Travis felt bad about the tons of walking, but I loved the crap out of it. It was cold so the city wasn't busy, which made it very nice. And I haven't been down there when it's been "busy" so right now I still have good thoughts about the whole city in my mind.

Becky does this blog where she takes a picture everyday and I love it because I get to see so much of her life so I may start copying her, but don't have high expectations just yet. I took this on my phone when we crossed the Potomac on our way to the museum.

And this was at like 11 am, but the sky looked like a sunrise for a few hours, which I did not complain about.

My heart skips a beat when I observe tributes to great minds of philosophy and science. In the museum my friend asked me if I believed in the big bang. I chuckled and said "what do you think?" then he laughed and said "I don't know" and then he made me think of something I'd never thought before. He said he could believe it if Divinity was behind it. And I liked thinking about those things for once instead of boys and my credit card balance. Even though, if you hadn't inferred, I didn't escape the first stress for long during my visit to the museum.

"It is difficult to say what is impossible, for the dream of yesterday is the hope of today and the reality of tomorrow." -Robert H. Goddard, Father of Modern Rocketry

Not Technically Insomnia

I've been working night shifts for 3 weeks now, and my sleep pattern is just weird. So I went to bed at 5 pm and woke up at 2 am so I thought I'd get to blogging. Last week I was thinking about how boring my life is. I sleep, run, eat, work then repeat. Then I read and catch up on sleep during the weekends. So in order to remind me to be grateful for the calm, Bambi and his mother decided to run in front of my car while I was driving at or around 40 mph, in the evening when the sun was setting and I had the least possible chance of seeing his stupid butt. My car is tore up. Every time I look at the crumpled hood I feel the tears welling up. Brand new baby all messed up.

But I'm safe. And my friend gave me his truck while he's in Boston for two weeks, which was nice to have something Monday and Tuesday. And last night, Captain Creepy who works at enterprise picked me up and gave me a brand new corolla. Check out my little fleet.

If you look closely at the car you can see a stupid deer profile on the hood in dirt and oil. His pretty ugly little face and ear are outlined when the car gets frosty. I'm not letting this get me too down though. It's just a thing. And even though I get upset sometimes, I can't help but feel grateful that I'm safe, and that I have so many blessings I can barely count them. At least someone didn't shoot my car right? ;)

Boys Give Me Stuff in Virginia

This post has been a long time coming and you all know it. I hope none of these boys find my blog...

Since my first acquisition from a nice (and weird/gross) boy, things have only been getting more and more out of hand. And it's borderline hilarious. Today I was pushed over the edge and into this blog. Let's start with my new computer:

My birthday lunch in Georgetown:

Beautiful flowers from an aspiring actor, that came with a shared entree at Maccaroni Grill for my birthday dinner, and a movie. (followed by a kiss that I actually had to dodge, which hasn't happened since high school) (And can I just say that I don't think anyone should ever have to dodge a kiss. You should know when someone wants a kiss. And don't try it until you know, you idiot) (I'm so sweet):

Now this is a sincere thank you, because my biggest brother Greg sent me these on my birthday and it was the sweetest part of my birthday: (I'm sort of combining birthday/creepy gifts from guys into one post)

A guy from work made his wife make me this cake in the shape of Utah. Isn't that cute?

And today I got a wii, fresh out of the box.

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. (I also got a watch, some cds and dvds, some tights from Ralph Lauren, and lots of free food) On the up side, I think I'm finally learning to stop feeling so bad about hurting a boy's feelings that I don't tell him how I feel. I've stopped answering their texts, and stopped flattering them because they mean business out here and that means they want me to be their girlfriend. No thank you. I have a daddy and 5 brothers and that's plenty of men for me.