The Bare Necessities

yes, its has been awhile since i've posted something on here, and for those of you (aka beth) who go blog hopping every day, i'm sorry for ALL those times you have gotten on here only to be disappointed by the very same post staring at you day after day. :P my sincere apologies!

but i'm repenting!!!

for those of you who are viewing my blog for the very first time, welcome!! i know my parents have given out my URL in a couple places...i'll try my best to keep this updated when i have a fragment of a spare moment (i can never get a whole one here...sigh!) so you all can know whats goin on in my life :) and you will hafta forgive my wordiness. thats just...me. haha

so! the theme of this post is, as the title says, the Bare Necessities of college life (more specifically, MY life!). lets start with the obvious...

meet agnes!!! she is my very quirky, very temperamental car. she has a built-in security device called "screaching horrifically every time you steer while breaking" so if anyone tries to steal her in the middle of the night, i will most DEFINITELY hear them trying to pull out. :) her hood is black, and the rest of her is a peeling, fading maroon. if you tap the break, she comes to a dead stand-still and ejects you out the windshield if you do not have your seatbelt on (another security feature...wear your seatbelt or else!!!) she also needs you to talk sweet to her if you wanna coax her up a steep hill. BUT!!! she gets me wehre i need to go, and she gets purty awesome gas mileage!(i think...i've only had to gas up twice since i've been here...thats good right?) so i love her!!!

and here is the newest addition to my life...my very own CELL PHONE!!! FINALLY!!!!!!!!! (thanks mom and dad!!) yes, this is most definitely a necessity. it keeps me in touch with the outside world, and now i have someone to call when poor agnes dies in the parking lot! (hasnt happened again...but still. this is me. who knows what WILL happen.) i have unlimited text (...fortunately...) so keep in touch! if you want my number just drop me an email at fuzziemunkee@hotmail.com and i'll get that to ya :)

This is my kitchen. it includes our fridge/freezer, our microwave, our TOASTER (also a new addition! woot!) and our stove. to sum up...this is the place where i eat. important? only a WHOLE LOT!!! me encanta comer comida :) ("i love to eat food :)")

my wallet and my debit card: need i say more?? my wallet carries my drivers license, my little tiny cash stash, my school ID which gives me access to two of my classes and is how i print things off at the library...yah anywhere i go, my wallet goes. and my debit card? its how i pay rent, buy groceries, buy books, gas up agnes, do ANYTHING. this little piece of plastic rules my LIFE.

and here is my computer :D without it, it would be utterly pointless for me to be in college. every assignment is typed up on this baby (and printed off on my roomie jordan's printer). and this is my means of internet access...and this is my shout out to dearest Joshua Lindblom!!! THANK YOU FOR MY INTERNET!!!!! while it was once a convenience, it truly is now a necessity, as 7/8 of life up at NAU (well any university i suppose) requires online access. no computer, no grades!!! and no purpose in me spending buckets of money on my education. (thanks again Josh!!!) <3>

so...these are my sunglasses. they may not seem like SUCH a huge necessity to y'all...but lemme tell ya what, walking 20 minutes at a time, like four times a day, can be a highly unpleasant experience if you have nothing to shield your eyes. even when its cloudy, cuz everything else is all bright and reflect-y still, like the sidewalk and the clouds. these are also something i never leave the house w/ unless its at night! (btw...flagstaff is one of the only places i know of where people habitually carry around sunglasses and an umbrella at the same time. gotta love arizona!)

aaaaand last but NOT least, my subway visor and a roll of quarters. clearly, my visor is important because it represents my awesome job (only downside: we close at 11 and i usually dont get home til after midnight. ah well, ya win some and lose some, yah?) which is HIGHLY critical to my survival up here for several reasons...it pays me first of all, second of all its like a free all-you-can-eat for me, and lastly...it gets me OUT of my apartment!! haha :) and the roll of quarters? essential. who knew how many quarters you would need in college?? parking meters, vending machines, and most importantly......the coin laundry at my apartment. $1.50 per wash and $1 per dry. crazy! cant live w/out quarters.

And that is my current life in a nutshell! questions? comments? stories? anything??? just let me know :)

urm . . .

so can i just say how much i love love love kylie and aubree and rachel and catey? (those are the girls who live in apartment 909, right down the parking lot from us!) (sorry catey, no pics of you on this post!)


so this is what happens when i walk away from my camera...which happens to be in rachel riding's reach: (thats an alliteration! :D )

aaaand this is what happens when aubree stradling and kylie hassell...well...uhhh this is just kylie and aubree :)

please note in the following photographs: kylie's face changes drastically. aubree's stays stone still.

and these are the people i spend my free time with :) gotta love 'em. <3

Formula for the Worst Day Ever:

*you get woken up early (is woken a word...?) by a call from your father saying he will be at your place in 10 minutes to help you move

*you rush frantically to get everything packed into your car while its raining outside

*the management from new apartment gets your rent wrong and you sit in the office for over an hour while he tries to get the lease taken care of

*your debit card gets denied because the deposit you put in isnt available til monday (so your roommate pays your part and you write her a check that she is absolutely not allowed to deposit til monday)

*you get exhausted from moving millions of boxes and realize....you are 10 min late for work (the closing shift, of course)

*it happens to be raining again, so you cant drive nearly as fast as you would like to

*its your fourth day of work and the only other person on your shift decides to tell you half an hour after closing that he doesnt know how to close out the register

*after going through 30 more min of grief finishing closing, you go out to the dark, empty parking lot at midnight...

*...and find your battery is utterly DEAD...cuz you left your lights on, in your rush to go clock in

*you no longer have a phone cuz you returned the loaner you were using that very morning

*you flag down a stranger miraculously going thru the parking lot and use his phone! <3

*your roommate doesnt answer....

*the girl a few doors down sends HER roommate to rescue you, but her battery isnt strong enough to jump yours

*so you leave your car in the parking lot overnight

*they drop you off at your apartment...and your key doesnt fit in your lock

*its still raining, by the way (your roommate eventually hears you futilely jamming your key in the lock and opens the door for you)

yah this was my saturday :) everythign worked out finally, and thanks to kylie/aubree/rachel's roommate, catey stroud, my battery is now sitting inside my frotn door waiting for me to take it down to checker and get it charged :P she is an AWESOME little mini mechanic! gotta love her.

whistle while you work!!! ...or eat, or text, or whatever the heck you wanna do.

"five dollar, five dollar, five dollar footlong!!!"

easiest job...EVER.

all you do is make the sub the way the customer tells you...and make sure you smile while doing it. the hardest part about working at subway...is mopping. not even kidding you! well that, and i guess figuring out what to do with yourself when no one comes in. we're allowed to eat whatever we want, use our phones whenever we want, do our homework (sweeeet!), WHATEVER, just as long as we do it away from the customers...and we arent IGNORING the customers. best job in the entire world :)

and its nice because i get free food! i'm NOT gonna starve my freshman year :D yay!


ohhhhh i'm SOOOOO EXTREMELY EXCITED! lauri, anne carroll, jordan walls (my three roommates) and kylie, aubree, rachel, and their roommate caty (spelling?) are moving up here tomorrow into the woodlands village apartment complex!!! i'm so pumped to see my friends again, and now i wont be sitting alone at church and firesides :) well i mean i always sat by other people, but now i wont feel like i'm inflicting my presence on anybody! haha

so this past monday for family home evening my ward went "hiking" through the lava tubes, it was AWESOME! if you ever go, make sure you have a good, nonbulky flashlight, and a jacket. and jeans :) and shoes that you dont feel every single little rock on the ground. haha but yah, it was two-ish miles worth of climbing over EXTREMELY uneven damp rocks, sometimes hunched cuz the caves got so low (some hunched less than others...bahaha, take that, all you people who mock my 5'1" height!!) and my quads were soooo sore the next couple days, but it was beautiful and incredible! my left knee is quite bruised and scraped, and at one point when i slipped, as every person who goes thru the caves slips, i kinda lightly hit my head on one of the rocks. no harm done, just felt a little bit like a moron klutz! (which...i am. so whatever!)


welp, i should get goin and pack up my stuff as much as possible since i'm moving into MY OWN APARTMENT tomorrow! o yah and i hafta go down to the apartment office since they're trying to screw us over for our rent, and i'm not as nice and meek as anne is, and she's been the one talking to the management lately. wish me luck :P

i love you all!!! and mom/dad/beth, i miss our ice cream freezer terribly. ice cream is a grand luxury i wont be enjoying for awhile unless handed to me for free :P

LSD, Crack, and Heroin

SUCCESS!!! the fruits of my job hunting labors have been brought forth unto me in the form of 7.25 an hour for 20-25 hrs a week at subway...a five minute walk away from my apartment (MY apartment, not the one i'm staying in for another week and a half!) and within walking distance of campus and institute! (plus there was this guy who works there who peaked my interest...maybe i'll get to know him and we can be friends and play!) so i am now officially EMPLOYED!!!!!!

....that is.....after i pass my drug screening. (which is what this post's title is referring to. *mischeivous, winky smile*) but hey, i'm a good girl with good clean blood! and this should be cake since peeing in cups is nothing new to me, what with all the pregnancy tests i've had to get. ("remember my motto," said dr. germaine to his new nurse assistant... "women always lie about pregnancy." well then....with all the times doctors have had to ask me whether or not i'm pregnant, apparently i've carried enough children to populate a small town by now!)

anyways...

the point is, i'm hired!!! (mostly.)

aaaand you should take time to check out the most incredible collection of songs pretty much EVER. as i'm sure you've noticed by now, i added a playlist to my blog, and it consists of 25 of my most FAVORITEST songs i have ever heard. some awesome ones you may not have heard of: she's got a way - billy joel
helplessly, hopelessly, recklessly - jessica andrews
beautiful disaster - jon mclaughlin

enjoy!

Flagstaff, AZ

it's BEAUTIFUL here!

for those of you who dont know, i moved in with my cousin alicia in flagstaff on july 31...it was hard to throw myself into the real world and even harder to leave my friends and family behind, but i am where i'm posta be! (yes kates, i just said posta. so shoot me ;))

its been purty uneventful here, i just settled right in and took up my allotted space in the apartment, and then immediately hit fry's so i could, y'know, EAT and stuff. (thank you a million times over for the food lisa!) i've already determined how much i hate the traffic and the drivers in flagstaff, there are the super courteous ones you find every once in awhile who you just want to get out of your car and kiss, because of all the other crazy idiots who scare the living snot out of you! BAH!

so i've already made friends with the LDS institute building and barnes and noble :) and i'm about to go make friends with cline library (the nau campus library) cuz i need to print off my resume (yah, that was dumb of me not to do before i left. woops!) and i think my roommates are getting a little weary of me using their comps for google maps for every little place i need to go :)

just around the corner from this apartment there is a place where i can sell plasma...so if they like my blood, i might sell myself to help get through college!

....urm....maybe i should word that differently :-/

well i better go chow down a cup o' noodles and head out again so i can officially start my jobhunt!(i've already applied online for cline library and barnes and noble, we'll see what happens with actually going out and collecting applications) wish me luck!!! o how desperately i need it :-

mi familia

so i've got pictures of most of my good friends up on the side, and i decided (once again at the request of lisa. . . she's slowly taking over my life!!!) to introduce you to my very, very psychotic family :) i'm even leaving all my neices and nephews out of this post...i'll put them up later, after my pregnant sister in law finally pops and i can put up a picture other than an ultrasound :P ok...starting from the oldest:

this is my brother jess and his wife cami, i had a hard time finding a picture of them without millions of kids jumping over all of them...and even here, you can see one and a half of them :P that should tell you a bit about them, they are both very laid back and fun people :) jess teaches spanish at mesa high and the only bad thing people have to say about him is that he works them to death :P cami is so good at scrapbooking that its intimidating. haha! she's awesome

this is my sister sarah and her husband james. sarah is the cute, health conscious one in the family :) she's always trying new healthy recipes (that she magically makes taste good) and she is very good with decorating and crafts. she's really fun to play curses with cuz she's so kooky and uninhibited! james likes to pretend he's stoic and unfeeling, lol. and while he makes fun of our family for bursting into random song, i have heard him on more than one occasion burst into even RANDOMER song than we do, such as the hokey pokey....and my personal favorite, "when i was a young warthoooog!" not so tough, are ya, james? ;)

christina and her husband troy...who are tirelessly trying to hook me up and get me married off :P christina is very perky, talkative, and understanding. when i get the chance to talk with her, i spill my guts and fill her in on every detail of my life. i reeeally appreciate it!!! troy is a HUGE tease, and fit the big brother roll very very naturally...ya gotta love him :) and he will drop everything he's doing in order to give someone a hand, he has such a big heart.

michael...argumentative, all too logical, but talented and hardworking. he likes to laugh...a lot. mostly AT me, but hey that's easy, yah? :) i think if there was any boy bothering me, michael would be one of the first ones to know. he is very deep and sensitive, and while he may appear to be awfully masculine and macho at first, he is the biggest baby and is the kind of guy you wanna take to a good romantic comedy. (but if its not funny, he'll hate it.)

my brother seth, his wife joyelle. seth is .... ah, i love him. i owe a lot to him, he's been my unofficial musical trainer my entire life. my relative pitch is his fault, the fact that i've made regionals and all state for four years is his fault, and passing algebra 2 (with an A!) is his fault. he's such a good teacher and just an incredible guy! i wish i knew joyelle better, she is the sweetest girl you can possibly imagine. her heart is so good, and every time i'm around her i just want to be a better person! she has very directly influenced our family for the better, because of her, we have a lot more unity and affection...idk what i would do without these two :)

my brother robert, his wife leigh. robert is....ummm complete sarcasm and silliness packaged into a person. he's the type that likes to indimidate my dates, and i'm not gonna lie, its funny and i dont mind it. bahaha...sorry guys :) but seriously, he is so willing to help out anybody and do whatever he can, and he is a bit of a peacemaker whenever we all get too prideful and argue-ish. he tells us we're ALL stupid and should shut up :) good ol' robert. leigh is a bundle of energy, she's spastic and ocd and creative like you wouldnt believe...and when she's good at something, she is GOOD at it. there is no halfway when it comes to her! it may stress her half to death, but it will be perfect.

so this isnt the best quality pic, but this is the infamous lisa (ya happy?) and her husband jared. btw, that is totally the wedding dress i am going to wear. keep it in good shape for me, alrighty lisa? it needs to last another five or six years. lol! so i chose this picture because its...the most accurate. these two are soooo extremely goofy! they have a very ...entertaining relationship, you wouldnt understand until you saw the two of them together. lisa is confident and extroverted and VERY outspoken, and she has the soul of a black woman. if you hear her sing, you'll agree! jared is a bit of a mad genius, he's brilliant and very business-minded, he's got his own company...check out his website, signsxtra.com! haha :) he is very blunt about his opinions, and he can talk about the most boring things and make you sit on the edge of your seat. aka politics, history, whatever! he is kooky and mildly insane, if you need a good laugh, just talk with him for a few minutes. not kidding :)

aaaand here's beth. she's a bit shy at first, she's my one and only little sister, altho for a lot of my childhood she was more like a little brother! she was a bit of a tomboy :) and even now, she thinks more like a guy than a girl, which is why i dont hate her. haha! altho, dont ever get her and michael in the same room. you will want to strangle them both because they refuse to admit the other is right, no matter how retarded the argument. for example, i think the silliest one was whether green is a "shade of yellow" or not. ohhhhmygosh. but beth is the only one in my family who actually appreciates how loopy and immature i can be, and while she doesnt express herself very well, i know how much she deeply loves me and the rest of our family! she has a lot of strength in her (but not physically! i can still pin her down and i always will! bwahaha) she's got a good head on her shoulders and i dont worry about her one bit.

some of you may have noticed i havent mentioned my parents...thats because if i did, this would be a mile and a half long and its already pretty long. i will introduce them at a later time. but until then, just know that i love my family and they are such a huge part of who i am!!!

sheep! lemming!!!!!!!

i caved. totally. i was resisting the whole blog craze...until the entire world, AND my sister lisa (the final straw) decided to pressure me into it. lisa's argument was "but we need to know whats going on in your life in college!!!" so yes, as this post's title implies, i am like some dumb animal being driven in the same direction as the rest of the dumb animals, and have succombed to the spirit of BLOGGING!!!

however: bradley pew is determined to retrieve me from the dark side. "I won't quit on you! I'll get you started on a 14 step program right away. Amy, friends don't let friends blog!"

there is hope for me yet!