Ode to a Miracle Product

How miraculous, you ask? Miraculous enough that I am taking my break between class and homework to share my news with you-- even after realizing I still haven't posted my summer trip pictures yet!

The story begins last weekend when I had a finger nail polish disaster. Disaster is an understatement because you're likely envisioning knocking over an open bottle. It was a fiasco. I'm talking I went to shake the bottle, but the lid was not screwed on, so nearly half the bottle flew out in a long stream of dark, dark purple/red. All over me, clothes, table, and the carpet (shhhh). In a panic, I tried the age-old trick of finger nail polish remover, but it really did nothing except smear the problem.

I turned to the internet for help and found a forum post about a product called Motsenbocker's Lift Off #3. It's usually available at hardware stores, so I looked up the closing time of Lowe's and was relieved I had 20 minutes before closing (for future reference, it closes at 10:00). I rushed there. No luck. Rushed to Wal-Mart. Again, no luck. My last chance was Home Depot, but it was closed by then, so I went there Monday after class and finally had some good luck-- they had it.

As summed by the title, it's a miracle in a bottle. It took the smeary mess right out of the carpet. The jury's still out on my jeans, but I'll let you know the results.

So here's to you, Motsenbocker! Thanks for a great product.

Why Didn't I Think of That?!?

First day of school and I'm avoiding homework and work by blogsurfing.... I'm just proud to be able to say it's not Facebook Tetris-- that addiction is so last year :) Anyway, whilst checking friends' blogs, I had on of those "No. Way. moments."

As a preface, for several of my former roommates or friends who hung out at my parents house while in high school, you may recall a mildly strange/bizarre habit I had/have of playing in melted candle wax. When I moved to BYU and my roommate, Amy, had a candle warmer, I thought I'd died and gone to heaven-- an invention that provides greater access to melted wax without the pesky, burning flame getting in the way!

Anyway, back to the story, Stephane's post includes a trip to San Antonio and a trip to (duh nuh nuh nuh) a place where you go to make wax molds of your hands!!! Seriously, why did I never think of the business opportunities stemming from my favorite pasttime?!

Now I have just one question: who wants to go on a roadtrip to San Antonio to fulfill with me a life dream I never knew I had? :)

Hold On To Your Seats...

This is going to be a whirlwind.... lots of catch up, but I gotta get through this to get to my favorite post :)

* Made it to the half-way point in grad school! Amazing how fast it goes. One more year to go...

* At the end of the semester, I participated in the Utah City Managers Association case competition. UCMA releases the case, your team has two weeks to do a crazy amount of work and prep and you present to the case Board and other city managers. The BYU MPA team was amazing! Lots of collaboration and contribution and the happy news....

We brought home the trophy!

* June brings graduation and my youngest sister Natalie made that big leap out of compulsory education. For the family party, I wanted to make cupcakes. I don't get creative bouts very often, but I love how they turned out. I felt like Rachel, Suzannah, and Martha Stewart all in one (these are the domestic divas I look to in my life)

* Memorial Day (guess that's out of order as May precedes June, oh well). I made a last minute trip to Vegas with my mom and Michelle. The purpose of the trip: get away for the long weekend, but primarily to see The Lion King which just opened at Mandalay Bay. It is spectacular! I'm also happy to report that I no longer hate Las Vegas-- it's growing on me.
* June also brought a visit from Grandma and Grandpa Selin. Someday I may learn my lesson that when Grandma is town, stay away from the Quilt Shops-- better for my time schedule and bank account. However, this was not that day. I went intending to find some cute flannels, and instead fell in love (again) with a new Moda line.... and a pattern. Seriously though, I love quilting with Grandma. I love learning from the best. Here's my quilt top (still needs a red border-- I'll get to it someday)

* Summer brings internships. I have been interning for the State at the Division of Housing and Community Development. I have certainly learned a lot about affordable housing initiatives and assistance programs the State provides. I will have to post later about the many lessons I've learned. I also continue to do administrative assistant work, too. With everything that's happened this summer in Utah politics, it's definitely been exciting.

Tribute to my Grandpa

I know I have a whole lot of catching up to do, but most importantly right now, I want to pay tribute to my Grandpa Ossmen who passed away Monday night. At President Hinckley's funeral, I remember one of his daughters saying that her dad was a pretty cute old man. I have to say the same for my Grandpa. He was a remarkable person. I see his immense strength in the fact that he lost all of his family by the time he was 24, yet went on to be happy and successful. I think as a result of this, family was everything to him and over the last week especially, I've realized just how close my extended family is. We are a great support for one another-- something I think is directly attributable to my grandparents. I admire him for hanging in there so long to take care of my Grandma. My favorite pictures of Grandpa are the ones when my grandparents were dating and in so many he is looking so lovingly at my Grandma. My Grandpa was a great example of love, service, great work ethic and had a strong testimony of prayer and tithing.


I am grateful for the support Grandpa was to me as he and Grandma were there at every piano recital, every singing group performance, graduations, and school programs. He was also so encouraging of me in my education (my fellow Cougar fan!!). My favorite memories will always be of our great family parties and Grandpa reading the Bible Christmas story every Christmas Eve. I'll also always remember when I was about 6 years old and he said I was stubborn. In my 6-year-old mind, I thought this was like calling someone a bad name and took offense (thus exhibiting said stubborness). Now as I look back, I like to think my stubborness came, at least in part, from Grandpa :) We're just strong-willed. Grandpa, I love you and will miss you, but am so happy for the opportunity you have to be reunited with your parents and brother.

Catching Up on my Life

So I'm doing a little catch up. What else is new? Since my last post...

I survived my first semester of grad school! Hooray! I'm told continually that the first semester is the hardest, so it feels like an accomplishment it's done. This semester I had the privilege to be part of team Trofast (shout out, guys). Sadly I don't have any pictures-- actually I'm realizing I really do not have pictures of anything from last semester-- guess I didn't do very well taking my camera with me. Anyway, it was a great team and while we had our rough patches, we made it through. And what's more, we aced our final Econ project! (if you had told me that was going to happen earlier this semester, I NEVER would have believed you) Other memorable projects were taking pictures for our "Junior's Day" montage and hammering out our IHC project-- both of them-- literally right before it was due. I think more than our academic conquests, I will more likely remember the fun meetings in the "bat cave" (Scott's basement) and being inducted as "one of the guys"-- I didn't grow up with brothers, so that was an adventure! I'll also remember the hilarity that was Scott's stories... that made me laugh uncontrollably :)

The holidays were wondeful. And welcome breaks from school. Thanksgiving I spent with my mom's family. I painted a picture of a turkey for a game of 'pin the feather on the turkey.' I wish I had a picture of it... oh well. That did make me decide I need more creative outlet projects as I really enjoyed painting it and loved my little Tom Turkey. Christmas break was even better because I didn't have to worry about final projects. I also have no pictures of Christmas Day. None. Seriously, that's slacking. Early Christmas morning I helped with a service project with my family and we got home, spent about an hour opening presents and all went back to bed. This year does mark a milestone in my life-- the first year my mom did not videotape my sisters and me coming down the stairs on Christmas morning to see what Santa brought us. For the record, I'm 22 years old.

I saw another musical! The Light in the Piazza at Pioneer Theater Company. It was wonderful and had such beautiful music. It definitely made me want to go to Italy! I had looked at show tickets for about two weeks. Then the second to last day of finals, I looked again, saw five fantastic seats (one for each of my family) available, bought them, studied/learned everything for my last final, packed for Christmas break, took my last final, got the best score of all my finals, and made it to Salt Lake-- all in the space of five hours! Seriously, I was impressed myself :)

So I'm now two weeks into a new semester. I was sitting in class last week and felt really excited about what I was learning. You know, that feeling where you're learning something that's not particularly exciting (in my case it was performance measurement) but it just makes you happy inside because in some weird way, it's like the coolest thing you've ever learned. I realized it had been a long time since I felt like that. So I'm happy to be in classes again that I can get excited about.

I'm looking forward to the start of a new Legislative session where I get to help again (seriously, has it been a year already?!). I'm also looking forward to days of warmth. Anyone else sick of winter? I know we're barely half way through January, but really, I'm ready for spring :)

What a Ride!!

It's Thursday night and I feel the most relaxed I have literally for weeks! I have a few pending assignments, but no pressing deadlines-- which hasn't happened since the beginning of October. I'm enjoying the break. I know another reason for my relative stress-free time is that elections are over!! Since interning at the Utah Legislature, I have worked for Rep. Greg Hughes doing administrative stuff; it has been a great few-hours-per-week job-- until the beginning of this month when trumped up ethics charges were brought against him (as an aside, I now think of the word "ethics" as profanity-- I seriously hate that word). Since the middle of October, this election has all but consumed my life. I don't know what I thought campaigning was, but I assure you it isn't what I've been doing for the past couple weeks. As a little glimpse, I have:

- Hand-addressed around 600 envelopes
- Stickered around 1,500 door hangers
- Walked 5 neighborhoods
- Stuffed and stamped hundreds of letters
- Gone 42 hours with getting only two hours of sleep (thank goodness for Diet Coke)
- Worked out of the back of a truck in a parking lot in West Valley at night to continue stuffing and stamping letters to be handed to the post man as he’s walking to the door so they would go out the next day (that was actually an adventure I will never forget…)

And I assure you my efforts significantly pale in comparison to those of many. Needless to say, this campaign has been a whirlwind education. I am so grateful for the opportunity, however. I met and worked with so many truly great people. I learned so much about what goes into a campaign-- both the good and bad. I gained a sincere appreciation for anyone who is willing to put their neck on the line and run for office. While it's been a great experience, I am glad it's over. It was nerve-racking on election night as we watched the numbers come in, but also the sweetest victory as we saw that all of that work payed off!!

Update

I will make this a combination of things I've been meaning to post on. First of all, I need to get this tag thing done that Linz made me do. It's actually been sitting in my email since I wrote it up during my summer job, but the one time I tried to post it, my computer literally died right before I went to hit the 'post' button. So here it is: (btw, these survey things are my favorite... yeah, not so much)

Joys:
(1) Learning. Be it by reading, lectures, travel, experience, example, personal relationships—I find learning invigorating and I love it.
(2) Nature. Especially looking at the stars. Which actually reminds me of a funny memory... looking at stars for Linz's astronomy(?) project at Rock Canyon Park and almost being run over by a giant tractor tire... sorry for the tangent, but good times :)
(3) Nielsen's Frozen Custard. If you haven't ever tried it, it is a must before you die. I recommend a concrete with cherries and almonds, but that's just a personal preference-- anything you choose would be delicious.

Fears:
(1) Failure. I would guess that this is not a unique fear, but succeeding and approval from others I think is one of my most motivating factors.
(2) Aliens. I have still never seen the movie ET because it freaks me out. Stories, shows, and movies involving extra terrestrials give me nightmares and still make it so that I have to fall asleep on my back so that I'll be able to see anything that could attack or something.
(3) Driving on Mountian Roads. When roads have a steep drop off to one side, I always feel like the car is going to fall off and roll down the mountain. Needless to say, I like it when DOT puts up guardrails.

Goals:
(1) Make it through grad school. While I am absolutely loving the MPA program so far, it is getting a lot more rigorous and crazy.
(2) To travel to all 50 United States. I think I've been to about 25 so far... so I'm like half way there.
(3) I have a terrible habit of always twirting my hair or playing with my earrings. I think it's becasue I always need to be fidgeting with something... but it is my goal to stop.

Obessions/Collections:
(1) Organization. Those who have lived with me will attest to this. I love organizing and getting rid of stuff—even other peoples' stuff. When I was in high school I semi-dreamed of being employed by the tv show Clean Sweep.
(2) Okay, I'll admit it. I love literary period dramas (usually BBC). Jane Austen, Elizabeth Gaskell, Charles Dickens, George Eliot—I love them all. It may be my feminine sensibilities shining through, but who wouldn't love great entertainment filled with romance, intrigues, and subtle (or not so subtle) critiques of social problems?
(3) I don't really have collections of anything [see first Obsession], but I guess you could say I collect charms as that's often what I buy from the places I visit to add to a charm bracelet my grandma gave me years ago.

Surprising Facts:
(1) I am not an outwardly confrontational person, in fact I generally avoid confrontation. But by nature I think I am very argumentative. While I don't usually don't engage in outward confrontation, inside my head is an entirely different story: I am always formulating debates, analyzing arguments, and rethinking conversations.
(2) I'm addicted to talk/news radio. I have been ever since I discovered the amazing radio feature on iTunes where you can listen to radio stations from all over the country. My favorite is the Washington Post channel. I'm not sure it's entirely helpful to hear the traffic reports from the beltway, but I love it!
(3) My latest topic of research has been food storage and survival. I have been reading a series of books, The Great and Terrible, that tell a story of the last days and some actually very plausible things that could happen in the US. The thing it makes me think of the most is how I would be prepared for such a situation. So if the US is ever attacked and terrorists knock out all power and computers in the country, stick with me. I can build a solar water still to purify drinking water cuz I learned how to by watching videos on YouTube :)

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The other thing I want to post about is my birthday. I know it was a little over a month ago, but look at this amazing cake Linz made for me. It's a fire! Seriously, how cool is that?!