a fire inside*

i'm starting this blog at 10:15 am and planning to post my most random of thoughts throughout the day until i get bored enough with myself and decide to just publish. the prospect of this type of post may be incredibly unappealing to some, but i feel like there hasn't been much original thought on here lately, and i kind of miss myself. anyway, as i've said before- it's my blog and i can do what i want.

yesterday i was in the worst of moods, for no particular reason. today i have that "world is my oyster" feeling i get sometimes when i realize how amazingly awesome my life is. sorry, world, for not treating you better yesterday.

there sure has been a lot of death and destruction throughout the world lately. myanmar, china, the better part of the middle east- honestly, what have i got to complain about? despite my bad moods and intermittent selfishness, humility and gratitude for my blessings are not completely lost on me.

the above thoughts were kind of heavy. on a lighter note, i think my new toothpaste has a mildly numbing effect. 3 hours later and i still can't taste anything.

does anyone think it's wrong to want to plan future housing based on proximity to a red box?

my roommate and i recently visited the edward gorey house museum on the cape, where i purchased one of my favorite posters of all time- a picture of the gashlycrumb tinies. this is a brilliant book about 26 children (each one representing a letter of the alphabet) who meet their demise through some seriously unfortunate circumstances. delightfully dark and creepy, just the way i like it. what? it helps kids learn the alphabet! don't judge me.

last night i had one of the best steaks of my life.

nat's sister, alaina, is an a-maz-ing photographer. this is not meant to be a plug (though it could be for all my utah friends out there!), i just can't get over how good she is. check her out: http://adigitaldarkroom.blogspot.com/

at 3:00 today i'm going to talk to my boss about my future here. it's going to be pretty intense and i'm fairly nervous. i'd say to wish me luck, but it will be over by the time you've read this. so thanks for nothing.

i've got family coming for 12 straight days in june. to say i'm excited would be the understatement of this fiscal year.

most people probably don't see the o.c.d. side of my personality as much as my roommates. funny enough, it's selective o.c.d.; filing away bills, cleaning up while cooking, hair in the sink, paintings hanging straight on the walls- these are a few things i'm completely nuts about. however, cleaning my room, the state of my desk at work, and letting laundry pile up for weeks have only the slightest affect on my psychie. what does this say about me??

my saturday schedule looks like this: powder-puff football game, followed by a finnish sauna experience, and topped off with salsa dancing. that almost sounds like a meal of some sort.

okay, well, i'm getting sick of this browser being up on my computer, so that's reason enough to publish. thanks for tuning in.

*10 points if you know what this is talking about

more at 10

thursday night in the midst of fine dining with seth, by that i mean costco of course, i received a text message from one of my roommates with a request for a texas cake that night. it's become somewhat of a tradition amongst my friends to forgo plates in the serving process and just eat straight from the pan- each person creating their own territory of sorts. some of us are a little too o.c.d. to appreciate the abstract art of others, but it's kind of a bonding experience. behold, our thursday night feast:

















on friday night i got my hair de-colored and cut. de-colored meaning getting the black removed. in truth, it's hard for the untrained eye to see the difference, but i can. rachel came in to get her hair done and brought me my favorite drink from starbucks. how i love her. later that night, kylee, nat, and i got a little bit fancified and went to a swanky soiree at the silver pearl. it was the mocktail party of the year hosted by the handsome young men pictured below.


















marie agreed to meet me at haymarket on saturday morning so that we could take flat stanley around to see the sights. we hit up the major important ones, and he even got a chance to slap some sense into a yankees fan. in the grand tradition of randomness that is mine and marie's fun, we found a ripped up note on the green line, which someone had dropped in a neat pile on the ground. we took it back to the criddles and put it back together, taped it, read it, then put it in an envelope and mailed it to the offender with a note from us reading: "please don't litter." i know that's creepy mccreeperson, but tell me- would you ever litter again with big brother watching so closely?
































the picture less portion of the weekend began on saturday night when we met up with laura and jason for dinner at joes and laughed hard enough to drown out the torrential rain outside. my favorite part was the impression that jason gave of a gay camel, as naturally as if he'd been practicing for that moment to arrive all his life. bravo.

sunday was more stake conference followed by the long awaited, much anticipated musical fireside "truth restored", which was organized by the wonderful and talented ms. shields. it was a fantastic event and the spirit was so strong that i could hardly stop crying the entire night- which was bad considering that i was dead center in the first row of the choir. big surprise though, when am i not crying?

all in all, a pretty great boston weekend.

blaaaaaahhhhhhhhggggggg

i can't think of anything good to blog about.

today i was told that i look like a high school student with my hair in a ponytail. i guess that's a...compliment...?

a girl at lunch said she liked my earrings. then she offered to buy them from me. she asked how much i wanted for them. whaaa?

i'm feeling nostalgic today from looking at pictures from the last three years. it's funny how quickly life can change. my life is pretty different today than it was when i first moved to boston a year and a half ago.

said pictures made me crave summer nights, my nephews and niece, and 4-wheeling in the country. too bad it's the dead of winter, i'm at least 2000 miles away, and i don't own any quads.

i wasn't crying over the pictures. my co-worker claims he heard sniffling. i wasn't crying. it was allergies.

i'm going to vermont this weekend. i like cheese.

vitamin water is good.

ok, i'm done now.

new name mcnamerson

for the past few nights i've started to again feel the luxury of having my nights free. the gmat is over, it didn't go as well as i'd have liked, but at least it's done and my after-work hours are no longer spent agonizing over why i can't remember how to find sin and cosine, or how to appropriately apply the pythagorean theorem. indeed, little parts of my soul are beginning to reappear.

to further boost the enjoyment of my evenings, mother nature decided to be kind and grant us some 60 degree days. accordingly, i've bypassed the first two stops on my redline commute home and have opted for walking all the way to charles mgh for the past few nights. it's not terribly far and it affords me a walk through the boston common and then down historic charles street- which is quickly becoming my favorite spot in boston. this thoroughfare spans only a few blocks but contains some of the most interesting shops, restaurants, and markets i've ever seen and perfectly embodies the quaintness of boston. every time i walk down the cobblestone street i can't help but feel like i've entered a different world. it's the perfect post-work mini vacation. anyway, check is out if you get a chance.

not much else going on in my world these days. 2008 has gotten off to a bit of a rough start with some health problems and subsequent useless medical advice, but i figure that means there's no where to go but up at this point. how could that not be the case when i'm going to ireland in a month?!?!

and now, since this post was so boring, i'll finish it with a random mix of pictures from 2007 that didn't get blogged, but should have.

well, it has been one helluva...

today is my birthday. my 25th birthday. i'm a quarter of a century old. 9,125 days old. 219,000 hours old. 13,140,000 minutes old. 7.9 billion seconds old (i think, but my calculator gave that wierd E in the corner, so i don't know what that means. shouldn't i know at least that by now?)

anyway, here's a look back at some of the momentous, um, moments of my 24th year...

as a 24 year old i:

• became a boston temple worker
• spent new years eve in the hospital and then at the movies
• saw holsts "the planets" performed by the b.s.o. and joshua bell
• took 5 trips to salt lake city,
• 4 trips to columbus
• waited in line to see guster
• sang a duet
• saw jewel for free at south station
• attended a live taping of "this american life" with ira glass
• sold the cheat
• became a youtube star
• went to the bahamas
• attended the marriage of my favorite peeps
• went to phoenix for my first time
• saw a fist fight at the boston pops
• quit my job
• started a new job
• dated a great guy
• went to seattle for my first time
• travelled to anchorage for the first time
• saw bears and porcupines in the wild
• stood on a glacier
• saw ben folds perform with the boston pops
• had a basement flood in my house
• saw muse by myself
• went to 3 red sox games
• saw owen plant live
• saw brian webb live
• participated in the great boston adventure, the great connecticut adventure, the great vermont adventure, and the great maine adventure
• joined a book club
• attended the the hill cummorah pageant
• went to sharon, vermont, palmyra, ny, and kirtland, ohio and all church history sites associated with each
• saw niagara falls
• watched the boston pops on the 4th of july
• went to the circus
• prepared a 72-hour kit
• shook hands with an apostle
• watched the red sox win the world series and celebrated in the streets of boston
• purchased a trip to europe
• became a celtics season ticket holder
• witnessed a family sealing
• got one new niece and one new nephew
• swam in walden
• got a speeding ticket
• threw a halloween party
• got rid of that shirt i've had since 7th grade
• read through an entire issue of the economist
• wrote a grad school essay*
• and many more...at 24...la la la la...

so it's been a pretty good year and based solely off the fact that the staff at bertucci's sang the entire happy birthday song to me (grossly off key) today, i can already tell that 25 is going to be even better!

*note: i did not watch goonies. i was sufficiently talked out of doing so by a true friend. friends don't let friends watch bad 80's movies.

a quarter of a century

i've started to compile a list of things i want to accomplish before i'm 25. i've only got a few days left. here's what i've got so far:

1. eat 3 square home-made meals at normal times, sitting at a table- all in the same day.
2. read through an entire issue of "the economist"
3. see Goonies
4. get rid of that shirt i've had since 7th grade

i'm sure there's more i can accomplish in that in the next few days. i need your suggestions...

i felt the pain of public transportation...and sheer stupidity

yesterday. was not my day.

after arriving home from the cape at 11:00 pm on tuesday night, i was a bit dazed wednesday morning. i left for work a bit late, waited at the bus stop outside my house for at least 10 minutes, then proceeded from the bus to the inbound train at alewife. the ride proceeded for another 25 minutes or so, when at the park street stop it hit me: i'd forgotten my computer.

off the train, cross the platform, the doors to the outbound train shut in my face and it pulls out of sight. i wait for 12 minutes for the next, which i hurry onto and arrive in 25 minutes back at alewife just in time to see my bus pulling away. i wait for another 30 minutes for the next bus, arrive home, get the computer and turn back around for my second commute of the day.

i get to work two hours past start time and realize, i've left my phone at home.

the end.

o to the hio

i've been holding off on a trip update because mary really has the gems of our weekend in ohio on her laptop, waiting to be pieced together into some kind of wonderful blog. (yes mary, this is my foot on your back.)

suffice it to say that we had a great time. somehow it just felt right to be spending columbus day in columbus. we embarked on the usually 12 hour (775 mile) journey on friday night around 7 pm and arrived at my parents doorstep at 9 am on saturday morning. in my opinion we made pretty good time considering we sat for a few hours on the mass pike in stop and go traffic, took a pizza break, stopped every 200 miles for more caffeine, and slept an hour and a half in a parking lot in buffalo. still, we arrived with plenty of time to stretch our legs and prepare to sit a few more hours (well, let's be honest i laid on my bed) and be nourished by the good word. speaking of, wasn't conference awesome?

the weekend continued in the same manner. we left the house only once to go to dsw, and that was subsequently the only time i changed out of my pajamas and into real clothes. it nearly did me in. otherwise, my time was spent sleeping in, lounging on the couches and floor (they have carpet...mmmmm....carpet), watching movies, and partaking of the wonderment that is my mothers cooking. my parents were a delight, grandma was her usual fun 92 year old self, and geoff wasn't around to bother me (jk weff, i loves ya).

on the drive home we stopped in kirtland for a quick tour of some church history sites. this was shortly after we made a completely necessary stop at the local hardees for some hamburgers and fries. what was it, like 10:30 am? but come on, it's hardees! how many times i played in the ball pit of our local hardees as a child i can't count. there was no ball pit, and no fried zucchini, but we did experience the best fast food service this side of the mississippi, not to mention a good look at some sweet mullets. ohio is weird. anyway, and yeah, kirtland was cool too. the best part, which i almost forgot and am sure mary won't mention, was the challenge i gave her to tell me a story about making a peanut butter sandwich. this story, however, had to last for 40 miles. she did it people. let it be known that just when you think things can't get any less interesting, they can. well done, mar.

back on the road after kirtland, we still had about 11 and a half hours to go. deep breath, deep drink from my coke and 90 east for another 600 miles. done up right, mar. done up right.

i've still got 90 East on my mind.

a random dump with hidden gems

i am a horrible life historian. these are the only two pictures i took from my weekend spent at camp joseph. it's a good thing that other people often blog my life for me.

on another note, i've been freaking my co-workers out all morning talking about my 72 hour kit. a few of them had never even heard of one before so they are taking the fact that our church leaders have asked us to have one by october 28th as a bad sign. i don't argue with them. one guy has promised me that he'll join the mormon church if anything happens on october 29th in anywhere in the world that would necessitate a 72 hour kit. i don't think he knows what he's promising...

i've been studying for the gmat lately and have been acing the practice tests so far, i'm hoping to stay consistent for the real deal. congrats to seth who just took the lsat on saturday! hooray for wannabe students!

last night i had my 4th ever voice lesson with mary. she's amazing and fun and i think i'd be more frustrated if we didn't spend half the lesson laughing. last night christy said, "hey, i could hear you doing a seal impression upstairs." (referring to the animal, not the singer) um, not encouraging. however, i think some things are starting to click in my brain, which is encouraging. anyway, if my singing profession fails i could always just become a marine biologist, right? thanks christy.

did i mention i'm going to ohio this weekend?

oh, and did i mention i'm going to salt lake in 3 weeks?

ok, lastly, welcome october! you are the best month by far because you house the best holiday of the year. and no, i'm not talking about columbus day.

never

i never wanted

to let you in
to keep you out
to cut you off

to be a page in your scrapbook
a note in your journal
or an unwelcome muse.

to fight
to cry
to lose

to learn this lesson
or that one
or that one again

i never knew better. i'll never know worse.

i never meant to love you

i never could have stopped

i never would have anyway.

not much to say

thanks to a good friend who blogs consistently, you can read about my last five weekends here, here, here, here, and here. suffice it to say i've had a lot of fun lately. i know that's kind of a cop-out, but really, i can't say it much better than she already did.

in other news, i woke up happy this morning. that hasn't happened in a while and i thought it was worth remembering.

today is the first day of the rest of my life

i hate that saying.

hello september! you're going to change my life, i've decided. starting today. starting in about 8 minutes.

this is going to be good. stay tuned.

gba recap

wow. my blog has really consisted of cop-out posts lately. not unlike this blog, this blog, or this blog (which has been so badly neglected that it can hardly be called a blog at this point), i might add. sorry to call ya'll out. no, no i'm not.

this weekend was pretty good. it was all started off with a beautiful night swim in walden pond, one of my most favorite summer activities. it was perfect, except to some people who thought it was too cold. but, thanks to the overexertion of having to swim much further than i anticipated, i slept well friday night, and awoke super duper early to prepare for the great boston adventure. a day to play the ultimate boston tourist. brian, mike, annie, tim, natalie, clayton, and i (without cyrus) headed downtown in the wee hours of the morning (ok, it was 8:30- but on a saturday morning in back bay, that may as well be 4 am) and over to the museum of science to catch an infamous duck tour. we missed our first opportunity, which left a few minutes to mill around the museum- long enough to see some chicks hatching from eggs (one of which was getting trampled on by the other satanic birds in the pen- i nearly cried) and to take a moment to stop and smell the…wildlife.

the duck tour-ed us around the great city of boston, past many national and local historic landmarks. turns out boston is the city of a lot of firsts for this country; first hotel, first subway system (no, the correct answer is not new york-try me), first place to see a fist fight at the symphony...some people didn’t like our tour guide, but i thought he gave plenty of useless trivia, which is the only thing my brain retains anyway. did you know that if you made a sidewalk out of all the concrete used in the big dig project, it would stretch from here to san francisco and back 3 times? 3 times people!

post duck tour, we ate lunch at fanueil hall. despite the 99 degree 80% humidity sweltering heat, most of us got clam chowder in a bread bowl, which was not smart, but delicious and very touristy. then we headed to the aquarium to view the fishies and the penguins, and the seals who couldn’t be coaxed to put anything but their noses out of the water. not that i blame them, did i mention it was 99 degrees?

when we’d had enough of the aquarium we boarded a yacht, or maybe just a boat, and set sail to sea to see whales. and see whales we did! i believe the grand total came to 9 or 10 whales spotted. the "marine biologist" claimed she could tell the difference between the whales, and even made up names for them, but i think some just swam under the boat and came up on the other side- a trick they’ve probably worked out to boost the numbers to ensure customer satisfaction. in fact, i'm not totally convinced those were real whales. whatev, it was pretty awesome. them’r big fish.

the weekend concluded much as it began. not as much with a swim in walden pond, but with a three and a half hour post-church nap, dinner at this person’s house, and a long restful nights sleep. ahhhhh.

well, the end. this weekend= the great connecticut adventure. i hope there will be penguins.

my house is a very very very fine house

today i will write about my house in salt lake city. why? oh, i don't know, maybe because i've become acutely aware of it as of late due to the busted waterline that's been filling my basement with water for the past 5-days, of which my renters failed to tell me about until yesterday.

anyway, so this is my house. it's located in the historic district of salt lake, is about 107 years old, and ugly as all get out from the outside. don't let the greek flag appearance throw you off, it's actually a pretty cool place. please, come inside with me...

this is the front room. it looks a little bare since this is post-move-to-boston photography. actually, it was always a little bare, but is my favorite room in the house at a certain time of day when the sun pours through the window and warms the couch perfectly. it made for a great reading room. i miss it.

this hallway connects the back bedroom to the front room, and there is a bathroom in-between. neither of those rooms are interesting enough to warrant their own picture, though i will mention that the shower in that bathroom has 3 different shower heads, one from the side, one from the front, and one from the back. so that's pretty cool. the yellow makes me happy. yellow=cheerful.

upstairs is the "master" bathroom with this huge jetted tub that seems to impress people. i hate baths. waste of time in my opinion, and the thought of soaking in my own grime just doesn't appeal. maybe i shouldn't admit that i'm grimy. oh well.

the best part of this room though is the view out the window. it looks out over the backyard of mine and the surrounding properties, and also onto my apple tree, which produces the best apples in the world. i miss that too.

back downstairs, the front room connects to the dining room, (and the knee bone connects to the shin bone) which is the first room you enter in the house. in the corner on the left you will note my beloved piano, and in the right, my amazingly resilient palm tree. i'm pretty sure i watered that thing, maybe, once every 3-4 months, but it's still going strong!

oh, and that's cafe rio on the table- my 9th love in life.

beyond that lies the kitchen. this is one view and below is another. it was here that i developed my love for cooking. maybe it happened here because the 5' x 7' apartment kitchens i'd been dealing with for years previous just didn't scream "hey! come spend time in here!" and my mom's kitchen growing up only represented dishes duty.

nevertheless, you can see how having two, count them, two ovens and loads of counter space might have increased my appetite (pun intended) for cooking.

and last, but definitely not least is my favorite room in the house- the laundry room. odd? yes, but the lime green soothes my soul and i love it. please take a moment to notice the shelf upon which a bunch of crap is piled. my brother installed said shelf so that we could put the tv there and watch it while doing laundry. subsequently, this room got the most attention.

anyway, this post is boring and i've got a flooded basement. better go.

originally untitled

for some reason it won't let me put a title on this. hmmm.

rachel requested a new post. and since i like to give rachel pretty much anything she wants, here we go.

i couldn't think of anything to blog about, so i'm going to blog about my blog. i looked up what i wrote about on this day last year, which can be found here, as well as one year prior to that which can be found here. both entries speak to some pretty significant experiences in my life and i'm feeling a little more ok about the fact that i found 3 journals last night that had all been started and quitted only a month or two later. is quitted a word?

i've been asked by a few people "why blog?". to those people i would say, "why not blog?" not necessarily because i think that is a valid answer, but because people tend to get stumped when you answer their questions with a question. while they're scratching their heads in search of a response, you can run away or stuff a candy bar in your mouth to prevent further discussion.

so to you my friends (and creepy person who googled "seagull procreation" and was sent to a previous post), tell me- why blog?

step 1: admitting you have a problem

and i do.

the problem is shoes.

i'm addicted to buying shoes. there, i've said it. as of yesterday, i've purchased 3 pairs this week, which my co-worker pointed out (unnecessarily and unsolicited, i might add) is an average of 1.5 pairs per day. i'm so ashamed.

but really, the problem is that i actually do need 2 very specific pairs of shoes (read: boring, boring work appropriate- one pair brown, one pair black, blah blah blah). can i help it if while combing the racks at dsw- actually looking for aforementioned specific and necessary shoes- a beautiful pair of nicole miller satin stiletto's jumps out at me, which just happen to be my size and happen to be marked down from $175 to $16? or perhaps i stumble upon a pair of vince camuto brown, studded, leather soled pumps at 80% off? can you blame me? yes? well, granted, i could choose to spend my lunch break in a more constructive and less expensive manner, but how can one bring themselves to choose that higher path knowing that somewhere amidst the rows and rows of leftovers, cast off's, and irregulars, lie that perfect pair of twolips red leather slingbacks?

oh, and did i mention that the dsw summer sale starts on thursday? triple points people! oh the shoemanity!

and we're back.

this blog is brought to you in part because it's just been a while, but mostly because i see that i'm quickly approaching colleens max time allowed for not blogging and staying linked to her page. so in honor of her birthday yesterday, and her one-year boston anniversary today, i blog...

so what's new? a lot. new job, new roommates, new perspective on life. new people, new shoes, new places to eat lunch, and new lunch mates. new gchat friends, new books, new glasses (eek),
new grass, and other new stuff too sacred for this blog. i'm loving it all so much. have i ever mentioned that my life rocks? well it does. remember when i went to alaska 2 weeks ago? yeah, that was awesome (pictures and a blog forthcoming). oh, oh, and remember when i went to seattle for preston and marie's wedding reception and it was fantastically amazing? yeah, i remember that (pictures and a blog forthcoming). my life is honestly chalk full of great stuff, due in part to the fact that i live in boston- pretty much one of the best cities in the entire world- but also because of my fantastic friends and family. now you know i love you all, but i have to highlight a few people in my life for just one sec. first, my mom. favorite moment of this week was when she called to see if carri and i want the 2 trench coats she found in the basement, which she plans to throw out. trench coats. anyway, there's also rachel, who makes me feel like every time i'm in her presence i'm the best thing since sliced bread. and also nat, who gchat battles with me better than anyone i know, and who's company i'm always a fan- no matter the circumstances. the point is, i freaking love my life and that's as much as i have to say right now.

before i go

some randomness before i pack up the computer and ship it back to the place from whence it came:

i'm a horrible blog friend. i realize i've not commented on any one's posts in weeks, but that doesn't mean i'm not reading them. i love you all. you rock my world, and please keep up the good work. i fear that my inability to check blogs and comment will only increase from here on out.

today is beautiful. i laid on my roof for nearly an hour before coming in to clean out my closet and put away all my winter clothes. just my luck, it will drop to negative 12 tonight and i'll be sorry.

speaking of cold, i'm headed to anchorage on sunday (after making a fantastic stop in seattle for preston and marie's wedding reception). apparently, however, it's not too cold there, so i won't need to unpack said winter clothes.

hummus is good.

kayaking on the charles is a splendid activity. i recommend doing it. i also recommend using the word "splendid".

i need a slurpee.

i need a car to get said slurpee.

maybe i'll ride the t into harvard square to get a slurpee.

ok. gotta go.

my life's mantra

"If everything seems under control, you're just not going fast enough." -- Mario Andretti

living deliberately

peggy would probably do this post more justice, but since she's on sabbatical, you'll have to put up with me.

let me just say that she and i took a lovely swim in walden pond today. first swim of the season, baby!

also, we met her new boyfriend harry, and she built them a pet pig named hubert (pictured below).

so there you go, about as boring a post as ever, but a monumental day of the year worth documenting.