Specificity....

Challenge Day 3:
A Picture of You and Your Friends

Frankly, this seems like a silly challenge.

In order to post just one picture of me and my friends, I need a little more specificity. (I Love that word).

What kind of picture?

Which friends??

In what kind of setting???

Serious or goofy????

I need those details.

So for today's challenge, I am putting up just one picture.

There is a day later in this 30 day challenge thing that calls for more pictures of friends.

I will get more creative then. (I promise.)

So, what picture to choose...?
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Of course.
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This one.
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It is the most current picture in my photobooth.
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You see, it is Premier Night.
We have tickets to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
in T-minus 7 hours and 29 minutes.

Naturally, we had to put on our Wizrding best. And take pictures of ourselves.








(swish and flick)Mischief Managed.

A Ballad of Ricky Bobby...

CHALLENGE DAY 2:
The Story Behind My Blog Name:
I'm Not Sure What to Do with My Hands...
(How creepy is this picture?...It is "Hand Soap". I think I just figured out what to get everyone on my Christmas list.)

Many years ago...(okay, about 4 and a half years ago) on the last night before my mom would leave me at college, she told me to invite my new friend to come to a movie with us

I think my exact words were, "No. That's weird. I don't even know that Gabby girl yet."

But in her infinite wisdom, she insisted that I call "that one girl that I sat next to at orientation".

So I did.

I told this new "friend" of mine that my mom and I were going to go get some dinner and go to a movie and that she was welcome to join us if she wanted to.

She kindly accepted.

So my mom and I drove her Purple Pontiac to the dorms and picked Gabby up.

We went to dinner and then to the Cedar City Stadium 8 Theater.

We bought tickets to Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby...(don't judge)

If you have seen this movie, you understand what I mean when I say it is completely stupid, utterly irreverent, and so funny at times that you are a little embarrassed to laugh.

Throughout the whole movie I was trying not to laugh...just in case that new girl that my mom made me bring along didn't think it was funny. I certainly didn't want her to get the wrong idea about me.

But, there were a couple of times when I couldn't help it. My laughs came in little spurts like unruly droplets from a broken drinking fountain.

This part produced quite a few laugh spurts:



Fast forward several weeks to when Gabby I had become best pals.

Talking about that fateful first movie "date", she admitted that she too was squelching her laughs as to not look a fool in front of her new pal. (Whew....)

We talked about the scene above and how the awkwardness made us laugh like fools.

The term "I'm not sure what to do with my hands" quickly became our saying of choice when placed in awkward situations.

When either one of us would utter these words, the other knew just exactly what was being implied...."this is awkward. Let's get out of here."

Soon it became such a part of our vocabulary that we needn't even utter the words. When in a group gathering or a social situation, I could raise my hands awkwardly up toward my face and Gabby, even from across a crowded room, would get my message loud and clear.

Now. In 2008 when I started my blog, I had one main purpose for doing so.

I seem to be a magnet for awkward.

I have more stories of awkward moments, awkward people and awkward situations than all of the stories in the average Brothers Grimm fairytale book.

They come to me like moths to a flame.

I wanted to use this blog to share some of the stories that made up "the awkwardness that is my life"

So naturally, the title couldn't be anything other than the infamous words of Mr. Ricky Bobby himself.

And the rest is history.

Shake....And. Bake.

Okay....Take 2.

Okay so maybe I didn't learn as much from Savage Garden as I thought I had. October was a crazy month that led into November, and even crazier month....thus, I am awful at blogging on a schedule. So I am going to try this one. I got the idea from my friend Mrs. Sharlene Romero nie Witt.

Maybe if I have a specific to blog about every day, I can do it. Maybe. I said maybe.

So here goes.

THE CHALLENGE


Day 1-Recent picture of you and 15 interesting facts about yourself
Day 2-The meaning behind your Blog name
Day 3-A picture of you and your friends
Day 4-A habit that you wish you didn't have
Day 5-A picture of somewhere you've been to
Day 6-Favorite super hero and why
Day 7-A picture of someone/something that has the biggest impact on you
Day 8-Short term goals for this month and when you'll accomplish them
Day 9-Something you're proud of in the past few days
Day 10-Songs you listen to when you're bored, happy, sad, mad, hyped
Day 11-Another picture of you and your friends
Day 12-How you found out about blogger and why you have one
Day 13-A letter to someone who has hurt you recently
Day 14-A picture of you and your family
Day 15-Put your ipod or shuffle on-first 10 songs that play
Day 16-Another picture of yourself
Day 17-Someone you would want to switch lives with for one day and why
Day 18-Plans/dreams/goals you have
Day 19-Nicknames you have and why you have them
Day 20-Someone you see yourself marrying or being with in the future
Day 21-A picture of something that makes you happy
Day 22-What makes you different from everyone else
Day 23-Something you crave for a lot
Day 24-A letter to your parents
Day 25-What I would find in your bag
Day 26-What do you think about your friends
Day 27-Why you are doing this 30 day challenge
Day 28-A picture of you from last year and now-how have you changed?
Day 29-In this past month, what have you learned?
Day 30-Your favorite song


I'm going to go ahead and just put Challenge #1 as part of this post:

Challenge #1: Recent picture of you and 15 :interesting" facts about yourself

And here are some facts you may or may not know about me.

1. My car is orange. Not bright traffic cone orange, but more of a coppery, pumpkin orange. When I first bought it I secretly thought it was hideous. I love it now. I have been asked if I knew the name of the color and what brand of autobody paint it was.....does ANYONE really know that about their car? I don't. I am assuming the blank stare at the man that asked me this in the Maverik Parking lot relayed the message.

2. I always feel like a little bit of a rebel when I use only one hand to pull the paper towels out of the dispensers that say in big letters "USE BOTH HANDS". It satisfies me to say that I can do it without doing it the way I was told to.

3. Right before I fall asleep, my thoughts make no sense at all. And I can tell. It is hard to explain, but just last night I was thinking about a paper I must write about Disney movies (yep, Disney movies) and then suddenly my thoughts went from Aladdin and Jasmine's lack of clothing to squirrels with glasses. Which of course immediately led to me thinking about waterfalls of milk. I told you. They make no sense. But I can tell that they make no sense and that sleep is encroaching.

4. One of my favorite things about winter is hugging people who have just come inside from the cold. I love that you can smell the chill and feel the frostiness in the air around them. So please feel free to take a walk in the bone chilling temps right over to my apartment for a hug. No charge.

5. I am a wizard. For real. Doubt if you must, but photographic evidence is below.


6. There are certain jokes, words and even just thoughts that will ALWAYS make me laugh. No matter how mature I grow to be or how sacred a moment I am in, they will never fail.

8. Today I did the USA Today Crossword puzzle in 23 minute and 14 seconds.

7. Today I woke up with "Ice, Ice Baby" stuck in my head....still looking for an explanation.

9. I have on my kitchen counter, Naked Eggs. They look like this:
A roommate had some eggs that were past their date of consumability (I don't think that is actually a word. It should be.) Naturally, I decided it was science experiment time. 2 days in a vinegar bath and we have some Nudist Eggs. No shell, just the membrane holding it all together. Now everytime I see them I have an urge to throw them at passersby...walk carefully past my apartment.

10. Every Tuesday and Every Thursday, I race Gabby at the SUU Newspaper's Sudoku puzzle. I always lose. Little does she know that I am training in secret to one day blow her out of the water. It's coming.

11. I love when people laugh and their entire face changes so they look like a different person. I used to have a friend who looked a little like Leonardo DiCaprio when he laughed really hard. It always made me smile to see. I love seeing people laugh so hard that they can't control it or try to be quiet about it...Laughter like that is reason for living!

12. I used to call Tattoos, Tootatts. It sounded silly to me to call them Tattoos.

13. My roommates and I have an affinity fr nicknames. Not for each other, but for people we see all the time but don't actually know the names of. Over the years these have included Baseball, Lana, Idaho, Grease Monkey, Fanny Pack, Mr. Fancypants, Blondie...the list goes on and on. We recently nicknamed a gentleman we see on campus frequently. We nicknamed him Luigi. Reason? If he had the blue suspenders and the green shirt, he would be the SPITTING image. Today, I saw a gentleman and nicknamed him Mario for the same reasons. I have set out to make sure they cross paths.

14. A friend recently told me that going around a roundabout more than 8 times is illegal in the Beehive State. The criminals that we are, we went around 9 times. We're now hiding from the law.

15. I have tickets so a certain movie in T-Minus 2 days, 4 hours and 28 minutes. Not that I'm counting.

Free-Ninety-Free...

I am a fan of free.



Anything free will do.



One time when I was a freshman in college, a wee naive babe, my roommates boyfriend worked at the local Shell Station. He always brought home huge bags of Beef Jerky or bucket loads of other gas station loot. When my roommate asked him how much it cost, his response was always:



"Don't worry babe...it was free-ninety-free."...Sounds kind of like $3.93....But as my little naive self soon learned, that is not what it meant.



Anyways, I can always go for something free-ninety-free.



As a poor college student, I have learned that if one tries hard enough, one can ALWAYS find free loot.



For instance, this website tells me at least 5 things i could get for free every day...Granted some of them are things like Depends Adult Diapers or subscriptions to "Nerd Weekly" magazine, but still it is free! And sometimes they come up with some really usable stuff. Just the other day I got a stack of sticky note labels in my mailbox...who couldn't use more sticky notes?



A friend blogger of mine recently posted this little gem...(pun intended).



www.diamondearrings.org sends out free pairs of "diamond earrings" by the bushel...



I am almost as big a fan of bling as I am a fan of free...



Combine the two, and what more could a girl ask for?!



So please, feel FREE (another pun intended) to get some free bling.

America's Next Top Models...

This weekend was one chock full of excitement....

Okay no it wasn't. But now that you are two sentences in, you can't just stop reading. That would be rude. Etiquette says that you can only quit after the first sentence.
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On Saturday, the roomies all headed up the canyon for our photo-shoot.

Some of us were much more ready for our close up than others...I'll let you guess who...

As we dabbed on makeup and perfected our ensembles, I asked Kylie, who had found the location for our shoot, if we would be doing some hiking to get to the beauty of nature...


Her reply was, and i quote:

"No no no. It is just right off the main road."



Oh good. Then my black satin flats that go with my outfit will be just fine.

I was deceived.

We pulled off the road to our "location".

Then we began repelling into the muddy ravine that was our real location...

Full of muddy and slippery rocks and branches that could give way underneath you only to end in tragic head bashing and death at the bottom, the location was beautiful.

My satin shoes have seen better days...but then again i bought them at Payless so I'm not completely heartbroken.

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Our dear friend Billy Jean (who is not my lover) took the pictures for us.

Some definitely came out better than others and we all promised that before any were published, they had to be photoshopped to make sure we were looking like we are winners of America's Next Top Model.


So, with a drum roll please....






I present to you....







The ladies of Apt. 41.


Oh and Tyra called...."We are still in the running for becoming America's Next Top Models."

Beatles Songs and Train Games

In my defense...it is still Sunday Night...meaning I am keeping my once a week promise.

Lately I have had this song stuck in my head...90% of the time.

Don't get me wrong. I love the Beatles as much as the next red-blooded human being.

(Well, except for a certain roommate with a name that starts with a G. She insists on calling the timeless musical gift we all know as The Beatles "The Bowl Cuts" and changing the song if one of their classics comes on the ipod. Yeah, they had bad haircuts. But the harmonies! The musical merit!)

Anyways, I digress.

This song is constantly going through my head.

I blame it on this:My name is Ashleigh and I am an addict.

Actually, I live in #41 and we are all addicts.
Except Abish.
She likes this game about as much as Gabby likes the Beatles.




The game looks something like this:

The object is to use your little colored trains to get from city to city across America.

I know, it sounds like a clever ploy a geography teacher would use to get her 3rd graders to learn the states.

But I assure you, it is fun for the whole family.

Unless Abish happens to be in your family.

We play this game at least 5 times a week, Usually multiple times in one sitting.

Sometimes we set alarms on our phones for "Train Game Time". We all take a break from the homework, the subway sandwich making, the athletic training and the library going and sit down as a family to play our favorite game.

And when the game is over, we knock all the trains over and scream and make crashing noises like you would hear at any massive train catastrophe, then we start all over again.

I would argue that it is just about the most wholesome thing you are going to find 5 college girls doing on a Friday night.

Addictions like that are okay, right?

Right.

Shocker...

So here's a shocker. I'm not very good at this whole blogging thing. In the year of 2010, I have only blogged....3 times. I bow my head in shame.

See I am an AVID reader of blogs. I have my favorites. If you look over there-------> you can see the people that I consistently blogstalk...some more religiously than others. But the whole blogging on my own blog thing seems to get away from me.

One of the blogs I avidly stalk, this one, made a promise to blog every day until Christmas. That's 92 posts....(that's right, only 92 days until Christmas...woah).

Now I am not going to even attempt to make this promise...I try not to make promises I know I cannot keep. Savage Garden taught me that many years ago with this song.

And as the song says, "You know time will be the thief and/Your fallen king will end up alone."

I don't really know what the "fallen king" part means, but I do know that "time will be the thief" and I will not live up to my promise....

SO. This is MY promise. I am going to blog at least once a week until Christmas. That is only 13 posts. I like that number much better than 92.

Oh and this post counts.

So I guess I will at least tell a story.

This semester I am living with 4 great girls.

Abish and Gabby have returned as Professional Seniors with me:

And our new roommates are super as well. Danielle and Kylie were in our ward for the past two years and we are privileged enough to live with them this year...

Pictures of them to come once my new camera comes...soon i hope.

It is only 5 weeks into the semester so as far as excitement goes, there isn't much to share. But here are a few interesting tidbits.
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I found this little guy in my room when i moved in. I thought it was going to be this exciting mystery of where David and all his Nakedness came from.
It was anticlimactic.
It was Danielle's.
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This is one of my textbooks this semester.
I love the Dark Knight.
I knew from day one that this would be my favorite class.
It is.
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Gabby and I are domestic goddesses.
We made these.
Yeah. Even the bowls and the little chocolate frill.

Hopefully some things of much more interest and excitement happen between now and Christmas. Otherwise I will be blogging about the kid that had the audacity to steal my usual table at the library or the cool rock I found by the education building that looks like William Shatner...

See. You should hope more exciting things come along too.

Things that are sexy...but actually not...

A while back, say three and a half years ago when I was a wee freshman in college...(Woah I am getting old.)...I developed a mini love interest for a man I saw across the room at my first day at SUU orientation...which they now call "Flight School". Some clever play on words about earning your "Thunderbird Wings"...LBALLG...which is code for Lame.

Anyways as I was saying before I interrupted myself, on my very first visit to the SUU campus, the Sharwan Smith Center Rotunda to be specific, I laid my eyes on a young man that for some reason struck my fancy. For whatever reason, he caught my attention and I developed a slight fascination with him.

He is a baseball player for the mighty SUU T-Birds and can often be spotted wearing one of these babies:
Yeah. I fell for a guy wearing a fanny-pack.

When I told my friends of this new found captivation I had for this gentleman, their responses were immediate and predictable..."You mean the guy who wears the fanny-pack?" Of course they followed with comments like,
"Does he know it is neither 1982 nor a family vacation to Disney World?"

and

"He is wearing a backpack, carrying a duffle bag AND wearing a fanny-pack....necessary?"

Now I am not one to judge ones luggage(?) needs. He seemed a busy man and I am sure he had a lot to carry and had a reason for the excess baggage. But nonetheless, my friends laughed at my "crush".

Although his fashion sense surely left something to be desired, I was irrevocably attracted to him...and the fanny-pack. Only a confident man can pull off such a faux-pas.

As the year progressed, I caught a glimpse of him a few times a week. Sometimes walking to class, sometimes eating lunch in the rotunda...it became a game. But because I had never actually met the man, nor did I know his name, I just fondly referred to him as "Fannypack". One word. His name was just Fannypack.

Periodically I would get texts that said things like,

"Fannypack sighting. Businesss Quad 1:32 pm"
or
"Hey. Have you seen Fannypack's new haircut?...Hideous."

It became sort of a game to spot this guy I had never met nor would ever formally meet.

One day sophomore year, my car was parked next to his in the PE student parking lot...

As he was getting out of his car, I was getting into mine.

He commented on the weather and how he wished it would warm up. He said he was from Hawaii and that sometimes he wonders why the heck he moved to the frigid cold of Utah....I smiled and giggled along. Then I got in my car and drove away.

The years have passed and I have since learned his actual name. I still just call him Fannypack. I like it more than his real name...It's not a very attractive name.

Today I was walking through the Rotunda in the student center and I saw out of the corner of my eye (in my peripherals), a man wearing one of these:

After some research, I found out these chains are called "Figaro Chains". So. Hot...Not.

Upon closer inspection, I noticed the head sitting just above the bling-clad neck. In the flesh.
Mr. Fannypack himself.

As I left the student center I laughed to myself. And a little bit out loud too. Just quietly.

I laughed because at one time I would have defended his fashion choice with a quick, "Maybe he's in the Maffia." Or a simple, "It was probably given to him by his great grandfather and he wears it in his memory."

But times have changed. I have changed. There was no defending that.

So here's to my years spent under the trance of a belt with a purse attached.
Good riddance.

It's time to find a new love.
Maybe a man with a love of bolo ties or parachute pants.
Or both.

Advertising...

My roommate Jessica is in a marketing class...I find it all very interesting. Sometimes I find all things of all other majors more interesting than my own major...But I digress.

My point is that marketing is a seriously intriguing industry. The advertising world is EVERWHERE. No joke. The way a store is arranged, the way a store smells (Hollister for example), is all a part of the multi-billion dollar industry that gets us to buy things, try things, look at things.

With technology growing, the internet is now a marketing cesspool. From the pop-up Netflix ads you have to click out of 14 times an hour, to the ingeniously chosen facebook ads, the internet is one big advertisement. And with tracking devices, most of the time ads are pretty well chosen for you and your interests. I once looked up some stuff about missing a birth control pill for a friend of mine using google and other internet sites. For months, Planned Parenthood and Babies-R-Us ads littered the right hand side of my facebook news feed....clever.

For the most part, I would say that the marketing industry is smart, very well researched, if not a little creepy and maybe even invasive...that is until today.

I checked my e-mail today and found this lovely on the right hand side of my iTunes receipt email...

I'm not sure who this gentleman is or why is so angry....or why he is concerned about my going back to school.

So to the marketing department of MSN...I think it's time for some new blood. This ad made me smile, but certainly didn't make me think any harder about my under $45,000 annual income or going back to school...Just sayin'.

Weinies...

The morning broke and the sun rose today just like every other day in Cedar City. But today. Today would be different.

Now you have to know that the humble town of Cedar City is generally a quiet one. Every once in a while something extra exciting happens.

Like the time some clever ladies put "Ur Mom" in the stadium seats...


Or the time there was a 4.1 Magnitude Earthquake to start off the Spring Semester 2010...
Who knew Southern Utah was on a Fault Line?!...


There was also that little incident with the criminals last year...

But in general, nothing too exciting goes on in our sleepy little town....Until today.

A war has begun.

This morning I woke up feeling illin'. No surprise. One roommate with Mono, one with a mysterious illness that she insists is killing her, and a schedule full of classes where I sit in a room with a bunch of people who are sneezing and coughing like they were raised by wolves. COVER YOUR MOUTH. Please....

Anyways. So I woke and texted the roommate that I would not be joining her for our 8:30am journey to school. I was going to take my sweet time getting ready.

After my sweet time was taken, I logged onto good ol' Facebook to do some daily stalking. (Let's be honest, everyone is both guilty of and a victim of Facebook stalking.)

I notice that a friend of mine, Danielle, who lives in my apartment complex, had updated her status to:
"My apartment has been hot-dogged! I blame #41..."

Now it is obvious that this raised my eyebrows! I live in #41. I also know that I certainly didn't "Hot-Dog" anything.

It made me laugh.

Made me wish I had though of it first.

Confused me as to why I was suddenly the suspect.

Eh. The day must go on. So I commented on Danielle's status defending myself and stating that I presumed my roommates were also innocent. I logged off and continued on my way to school.

As I opened the front door, I was greeted with this:

Sick.

And hilarious.

So the original victims of the "Hot-dogging" in apartment #28 had suspected the innocent and pure girls of #41 and decided to return the meat-sticks to us.

They are not our meat-sticks.

The day continued with an ongoing mystery of who the culprits were.

On my way home from school I found out.

So to the residents of Apartment #28 and #46...

Beware.

The war has begun.

And #41 has heavy artillery.