Pep Band Blues

I got to play with the high school pep band yesterday. It was a blast! However, we were pretty pitiful, because half the band were teachers and most of the students didn't even show up. :( But on the bright side, I got to play my groovy "new" saxaphone that my papa bought for my birthday. I had a lot of solos due to the lack of instrumentation, and I had only two days of practice. It was definitely interesting. And my E flat was a little out of tune. Enough so that the band instructor pointed it out. (I'm getting to the bright side.) I felt like I was back in high school again. I didn't realize how much I missed being a band nerd.

Watching the Tree Fall

So I spent the weekend with one of my good friends. It was a very entertaining weekend. The first evening we watched some rather interesting films, one of which we should have turned off because it was so...yeah, but we didn't and wasted our time for it. Earlier in the evening was the beginning of my friend Laura's "next friend" bit. It started with us not being able to make decisions about where to eat. So she procedes to say to me and another friend "My next friend will make decisions" since none of us really cares what we do as long as we do something.
My next friend will not refer to her next friend. ;)

Decisions

So I have always been indecisive. Well, not indecisive; I'm a second guesser or a deferer. If it comes picking a restaurant, I would rather defer the decision to someone who is a more picky eater than I am. When I make a decision about a job or course of action I must take, I usually have to think about it again and get the opinion of at least 5 more people before becoming more comfortable with the idea. However this hesitation probably comes from those moments that I rashly make a decision and embarass myself. I didn't do too much of that on my mission because I always had to run my decisions by my companion or we had to make them together. Now that I am again on my own (in the human perspective), I find myself blundering again. It is sometimes comical, and I can laugh at myself...eventually.

I got a job

After much stress and prayer, I have finally gotten a job. I'm still stressed, because I didn't accept an easy job. I accepted one that will challenge me. I admire all of you who go to places far from home where you know few or no people and start a life. I'm about two hours from home and I already know a few people and I'm a little stressed. I will also be working at a high school where almost the entire faculty is new. However, I'm excited by the aspect that everyone will be in a similar boat. I'm excited that I will get to work hard and prove myself. I'm excited that I will be a working adult again. I look forward to the good conversations I will have with my Heavenly Father, because I know I will need to in order to stay sane.

My Resume

So as I was reading Laura's blog and thinking about my current job search, I thought of all the different things I've done. And looking back, I wish there was something like sushi chef on an Alaskan cruise ship.
My first job was when I was eight or nine and our neighbor across the street asked me to watch her baby for 10 minutes while she ran to another neighbor's house. Her other son ends up distracting me and the baby rolls off the couch. This was the beginning of a blossoming babysitting career.
While I carried on with babysitting on into my college years, I also had the opportunity to be a scorekeeper. That was actually a fun job. My dad was in the navy and I ended up getting a job scorekeeping the military intramural teams. I watched basketball, volleyball, hockey, softball, soccer, and probably something else.
Well then , my dad retired from the navy and we moved to Missouri. Job opportunities kind of decreased. But I did manage to find a doozy the summer after I graduated high school; census enumerator. I went around in my Volkswagen Vanagon finding people (or not finding them as was the case) and making them fill out the 2000 census information. It was some fun times. I even got bit by this huge dalmation that broke his chain to chase me down. Yeah....
Well, I started college and worked at minimum wage as a library monitor, math tutor, physics tutor, language lab specialist. Throughout college I pretty much kept 2 or 3 part time jobs. I even worked at McDonalds for two years. Fast food is definitely a way to gain weight and lose sanity. :) I also served in the AmeriCorps during college. It's like the domestic Peace Corps. I worked at Ruby Tuesdays for a summer. Oh, and I graded standardized tests the summer before my mission. There are other various jobs that I can't remember, but all were fairly similar.
My last job was teaching at a high school. That definitely had its ups and downs. And sometimes I wonder if I'm crazy to try and do it again. I want to do something I love, but I'm not 100% sure this is it, but I hope so.

Victim of Internet Quizzes

I have become a victim of internet quizzes. I admit it. I take really uninteresting, time-consuming internet quizzes. Does anybody know emode.com? I must have taken about 200 quizzes on that site. Now I'm on facebook where they make even more ridiculous quizzes that don't even make sense. I don't understand my fascination. It's like I have some secret belief that somehow the results of that quiz will help me to understand the wonderfully unique person that I am.

When to Put on Sunscreen

There was this great song that came out the year before I graduate high school. It was some good music with this guy talking about all the stuff the graduating seniors should do. The thing I remember is "Wear sunscreen."
Now, I usually forget to put on sunscreen. In fact, before my mission I can probably count the times on one hand that I put it on because I remembered. And you know, it's kind of an important thing to remember. I don't want skin cancer.
So I was trying to think of the ways we could all remember.
One way I thought of was to just buy a huge bottle of it and stick it next to your toothbrush. (Don't buy a tube, you might mistake it for your toothpaste.)
For the girls, get some foundation with a little spf in there.

The easiest way to remember is to get a sunburn. After getting a sunburn, it is so much easier to look in the mirror and then grab for the sunscreen. And honestly, that is why I even thought to write this. I spent about 3 hours watching my sister at a track meet and realized my forehead was burning.

Now if you don't have the budget to buy sunscreen, invest in an umbrella. It can save you from the rain AND the sun. When I was in Korea, people had umbrellas and sun parasols. I don't think people would really distinguish between the two in America, so I would just invest in the umbrella. Also, I did recently see the movie "Martian Child" and it could become a trend.