Up

This is one of the best movies I have seen in a long time! It is so heart-warming and tender. In fact, it seems to me more like a movie for adults than a movie for kids. Sure, it's a fantastical tale about a man who takes his house up into the sky with balloons, but the back plot and all the lessons learned along the way make it just as much for adults. This movie reminded me to love life and to see it as an adventure. Even further, the movie also shows that everyday life is an adventure in and of itself. I don't want to give too much away, but the movie has a beautiful story.

Duck, Duck, Goose

A few days ago, Adam and I left the condo in the morning to head to work and such. As we walked down the flight of stairs, we saw this group of adorable ducklings. We ran back up to get our camera and take a picture. By that point, they were almost to the strem that runs behind our building. I ook the picture, and then Adam and I started walking to our car. Well.... he stepped in a fresh "present" that the ducks must have left for us!

I thought that story was really funny, but seriously... the poop is kinda annoying. Plus, there are also geese and they honk right outside the condo. Our bedroom is off the far side, so we don't really hear it unless we are out of the room, but I'm afraid the baby will be able to hear them outside his room.

I shouldn't complain too much though. The baby ducks were really cute. I love living near my family again. My midwife (and the hospital where I will deliver the baby) are less than 10 minutes away. Most of all, though, is the fact that we are living on our own again after 3+ years of living with family.

Now we just need to get all settled. My awesome brother-in-law David is hooking up our washer and dryer tonight while Adam is at work. One of my other awesome brothers-in-law (all 3 are great!) Andy helped Adam put up our kitchen table, plus he has helped us pick up our loveseat we got from my brother and carry it upstairs. Adam is still planning on painting the baby's room. Hopefully we can get to that soon, because the baby furniture we have so far is just spread out across the condo. I just need to be patient and know it will all get done eventually...

Mrs. Dalloway

I'm watching the film The Hours. I love this film and I love Virginia Woolf's novel Mrs. Dalloway. Neither of these are for everyone, but I absolutely adore them!

-I love the first line, which reads "Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself." Such simplicity to begin such a profound novel.

-I enjoy the free sentence style, though I know others do not.

-I appreciate the importance Woolf gives to the everyday life of women. In fact, I pulled out my book and was reminded of a quote my professor shared with our class when we read it: "This, perhaps, was her greatest feminism. By endowing her female characters, like Mrs. Ramsay and Clarissa Dalloway, with truly random drifting thought, she endowed them with a freedom which had generally been seen by society as an idleness, as nothing more than the irrelevant freedom of housebound women sitting around thinking about nothing... In this way, Woolf turns female absent-mindedness into the most searching philosophy of the self, and we suffer with her heroines, who are suspended between forgetfulness and remembrance, between their fulfillment and their irrelevance." -James Wood "Virginia Woolf's Forgetful Selves"

Of course, I enjoy the movie almost as much as the book. It is a beautiful tying together of three women's stories- Virginia Woolf herself, a 1950s housewife, and a modern woman. If you haven't read the book or seen the movies and can handle some randomness, I highly recommend both.

Nerdy Pet Peeve

I'm going to fill you all in on a pet peeve of mine, which will at the same time make clear what a nerd I can be, at least when it comes to books and reading.

I just finished Dead and Gone, the 9th book in the Sookie Stackhouse vampire series by Charlaine Harris. I love some series, but not others. And the line between the two is actually quite thin. I can almost guarantee that the majority of series that have more than 5 books in it (not including Harry Potter and I'm sure Chronicles of Narnia is I would ever finish it) is a series I will stop enjoying. It may be dumb, but it actually really upsets me. Usually the characters and the storylines start getting repetitive. I hate it when I start out really enjoying a series (the Sookie Stackhouse series, the Stephanie Plum series by Janet Evanovich, and the Georgia Nicolson series by Louise Rennison for example) and then give up on them because each book just seems like a recycled version of the original story. It's sad because I would recommend the first few books of all of these series. Not as great literature, but as fun reads. It upsets me because I feel like it is a waste of my time to keep reading the series, yet I eventually want to know how it ends. I feel like some authors (not just series authors, but also authors that put out a book a year or more) keep writing based on the formula that has proven successful just to make more money. They are taking advantage of their popularity. I know this proves I am nerdy, but it does really annoy me sometimes!

Library Showgirl

As I'm sure many of you now, closing on a property involves 45 minutes to an hour of signing and initialing form after form. Really, you don't even look at half of them and just trust that the employee at the title company is telling you what you are signing. Well, halfway through this big stack of forms is one where we are simply supposed to be confirming what the lender has listed as your occupation. Well, Adam signed and initialed and then passed the paper to me. Luckily, the spot where my occupation is typed is right above where I was to sign or else I might not have noticed. Our lender, which is also our credit union we have done business with since we got married, had my occupation listed as that of a library showgirl! I burst out laughing, and everyone there- Adam, our realtor (also Adam's aunt), and the man from the title company- all looked at me with a puzzled look. Once I showed everyone, we all had a good laugh and joked about "what really goes on at libraries" and how "there must be a secret room or basement." Seriously, my handwriting is usually pretty clear. I don't know how someone could mix up shelver with showgirl. My brother-in-law Andy theorized that maybe it was a boring day at the office and someone decided to liven it up by making the change. :) Who knows what really happened, but at least it gave us a moment of comic relief in the tense and nervous atmosphere of closing on a home.

In other news, we moved in on Saturday. We got really lucky when we went to Budget to pick up our moving truck. They didn't have the medium size truck we had reserved, so they gave us the small truck with a discount plus free miles. It all ended up costing $28 plus $5 to fill up the tank after we used it. Adam had some great help, since I couldn't lift much. My dad, my brothers, and Nicki's husband all helped us. We have a lot unpacked already, but still have a lot of organizing to do. However, we are in our own place and we love it!

Instincts

I think I finally learned a very important, but basic lesson (that I should have learned before now) today: to trust my instincts. A certain someone always tells me I worry too much, that I expect things to go wrong. Well, after two incidents where my "worrying," or instincts proved me right, I think I need to listen to what my instincts are telling me more. Of course, these two times I trusted myself still led to hours of time and effort for us (but mostly me) to make sure that one, Adam graduated on time, and two, that we will have the money we need available tomorrow for closing on our home loan. I'm glad I trusted and double-checked both of these things, but both times I delayed it long enough to cause problems because I was trying to "trust" that it would all just work out like Adam said it would.

Now, I love my husband very much. He and I are just very different in some ways. He is laid-back, and most of the time we balance each other out because I will admit that sometimes I worry too much. However, when it comes to big things like graduation, or money, I need to realize that it is not always a bad thing to double-check. That instinct has saved us twice now (well, it has yet to be seen if we will be able to close tomorrow like we planned, but at least it would only be delayed a day if at all rather than longer).

Vent over.

My time at the U

Before a class started one day, a few of my classmates and I were discussing a paper that was due soon on a novel we were all having a little bit of a hard time with. One of my co-students mentioned that they would probably just "BS it" and that truthfully, they sometimes felt like our degree could be described as "getting a BA in BS." We all laughed and agreed with him. It did feel like that at times, but I know it is so much more than that. My time at the University in a liberal arts, critical thinking major taught me to do just that- think critically and think for myself.

After you declare an English Literature major, the first class you take is Critical Intro to Literary Forms. I really enjoyed this class. We did sections on the usual literary forms- poetry, the novel, plays, etc. However, our teacher saw the graphic novel as an up and coming literary form, so we ended by reading the graphic novel Maus by Art Spiegelman. I know there is so much out there about the Holocaust, but it is definitely worth reading. Just a little tidbit that might interest you is that it's the story of the Holocaust in which Nazis are cats and the Jews are mice.

I also had to take the Intro to Literary History courses. Now the major only requires that you take one and then more electives, but I'm glad I was under the old major and took all three. It gave me a good basic overview of things I feel you might miss otherwise. In fact, I took all three classes with my friend Stephanie. We also took a Jane Austen class together, and it was obvious to us that some of the other students had not taken the second Literary History course in which Jane Austen's time period was covered. It's hard to pick a favorite from all three classes because we read and covered so much, but my favorite might just be Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf.

Out of my different major requirements/electives, I enjoyed these the most:
-Adolescent Literature- I didn't like every novel we read in this class, but I loved The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison.

Studies in the British Romantic Period- This was a 5-6 week intensive summer course in which we read four of Jane Austen's novels. At the time, I had only read two, so I really enjoyed it. I still need to read Mansfield Park and Sense and Sensibility.

Studies in Shakespeare- One of the best and most beloved professors in the department taught this, Mark Matheson. It was last fall during the election period, and so he taught it with a political spin. Professor Matheson was interesting. I swear, he has so much Shakespeare memorized. He would start quoting and his voice would be really quiet, and then as he came to the climax his voice would get really loud. I loved having the chance to finally read Hamlet and Othello.

And finally, we come to my favorite class of all. The one I was annoyed I even had to take at first. If you aren't declaring a minor, you have to take two Humanities classes that are not cross-listed with English. I took one in my time at SLCC, and then signed up for a Film class my first semester at the U. When I went to my advising appointment to apply for graduation, I found out that the Film class had been cross-listed as an English class, therefore it didn't count. At first, I was really annoyed that I had to find a Humanities class, rather than take another English elective. When I looked at the Humanities offerings, however, one class caught my eye. It was Gender and Other Contemporary Issues, taught by Kathryn Cowles. This class was amazing! It almost made me wish I had the time to declare a Gender Studies minor. Like the class name implies, we discussed and explored more than just gender. We basically had sections on any way a person could be oppressed and discriminated against- ageism, heterosexism, sexism, ableism, etc.

Anyways, if you have gotten this far, there are the highlights of my time spent at the University of Utah. I know my degree isn't worth much in the eyes of some because I can't immediately jump into a career with it, but my degree (and all of the teachers and literature involved) helped me become a stronger individual than I was without it.