Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Girls and Boys

This evening we had a Relief Society meeting at my house. Relief Society is the women's organization in my church. Anyhow, tonight was just a casual relax and get-to-know-each-other kind of night with food and games (including Rock Band). It was nice; like I said in last night's post, there are lots of nice girls.

It's weird because I prefer hanging out with the guys. Because of dating the boy before, I currently don't have many friends who are guys, so most of my socializing (which is not much) is with girls. It feels kind of weird, and I don't quite know what to make of it. It's nice to hang with girls and share in the things we girls can share in with each other, but it's kind of not fun to not have interactions with the boys. I definitely miss that sort of friendship/companionship.

Monday, September 26, 2011

Transitions

Yesterday was my last Sunday in my singles congregation. Once you turn 31, you are supposed to move back into the normal family ward. Have I already talked about this? Anyhow, it's kind of an interesting feeling. One of the counselors to my bishop heard that I'm out, and he was sweet and came and gave me a hug. Tonight, at our get together, he told me I don't have to stay away. It's sweet, and I think I may visit some of the activities to visit the girls. Many of them are just kind, sweet girls.

But on to my next adventure, I guess.

Sunday, September 18, 2011

Three Strikes

I had three strikes this weekend:
  1. Potential Date
  2. Friend Date
  3. Girl Friend Date
Notice, I tried from the greatest rejection potential to the least, and all three failed. There were good reasons for them all; previous plans, no longer lives in the area, headache. Sometimes life just doesn't quite work the way you want it to.

Before my failed Saturday night, however, I had a great Friday night involving a few friends, hamburgers, and Rock Band.

I also got to go to the temple and visit my sister and her family on Saturday, so it was still a good day.

Back to the strikes, though. I have a question for you. This is the second time the date didn't work out with this particular guy. Do I give it one more shot, or do I call it good? There's this great website I recently found - I'm not sure if I mentioned it on here yet. It is called The Art of Manliness, and I read about the Brad Pitt rule on it. In a nutshell, it points out that if you ask someone out, and they turn you down, it means they don't want to go out with you. I agree. If I legitimately can't go out with someone, but I want to, I think I ask for a rain check - I try to let them know that I really do want to go out. The guy has not suggested anything concrete; he just says, let me know when you're in town and we'll try again, or something like that.

Sunday, September 11, 2011

9/11

Today I did a couple of things that helped me think about the anniversary of the attacks. First, I watched the broadcast of Music and the Spoken Word. If you didn't see it and can access one of the re-broadcasts, I recommend it. The program was very nice. Some of the images got me teared up a little.

This afternoon my roommates and I went to a program at the university that involved a choir and our city's orchestra. The first half was Mozart's Requiem, which was beautiful, and the second half was a commissioned oratorio that was debuted today. It was also very nice. There were a few speakers, and I really enjoyed the words of one of them in particular.

I also recently watched a clip on Yahoo? about one of the passengers from Flight 93 (I think). From watching that, as well as some of the footage that was played on the broadcast this morning, I am reminded that there were many people who rose to the occasion that day, and I'm glad to be able to take something positive from that awful event. There were the people on Flight 93 who decided to act when they knew something was wrong (I was amazed to listen to calls from a mother to her son who was on the flight, encouraging him to do something to stop the hijackers), and there were so many people who helped at the towers. I was touched by footage of people covered in ash hugging others who made it out. It's easy to be cynical about mankind because there is so much selfishness, corruption, callousness, etc. I believe the 9/11 tragedy brought out the humanity in many people, though, and I think it's good to be reminded of that. It's good to remember what happened and to be reminded of what is really important - God, each other, our nation. I'm grateful for that reminder today.

The Hike

Yesterday was the birthday of one of my friends. Lu came to town for it. Friend wanted to go hiking; she knows that I am not a hiker, so I was assured that it would be a nice, Jamie-friendly sort of hike. I told the girls that as long as I was cool and hydrated I would be okay. I figured the hike would take a couple of hours; I purposely did not ask how far we were going, which I think was wise. My roommate and I met up with the girls a little after 10:00. We drove two vehicles so that we could leave one at each end of the trail - I'm glad that Friend had us do that.

Anyhow, we probably got hiking somewhere around 11:00 - we finished around 5:30. That's a lot longer than two hours. Fortunately, though, a) we were pretty high up on the mountain, so it wasn't hot, and b) I didn't run out of water. So, I was actually a pretty happy camper - or hiker, I should say. We picked raspberries towards the beginning of the hike. We saw lots of horny toads, as well as some butterflies. During the last couple of miles we got rained and hailed on twice, which made things kind of exciting. I was glad that Lu had a couple of ponchos with her and let me borrow one (I think I was already kind of wet by the time I got it on, though, so I wasn't dry for the rest of the hike). I'm also glad the girls were nice about taking breaks because the last part was up some switchbacks, which I'm not a fan of, and my lungs didn't like the altitude so much, either. There is debate about how far we hiked. Friend thought we were going around eight miles, but when we finally made it to the end, the sign said it was less than six. I really couldn't say, but it was kind of amazing to look back sometimes and realize how far we'd come.

So, maybe I'm not as not into hiking as I think I am - I think the key really was staying cool and having water.

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

5 Months

Another one by Sara Bareilles. And I feel better than that tonight, but I definitely relate to a lot of it.

Monday, September 5, 2011

Movies and Motorcycles

With tomorrow being a holiday, my roommate thought we could stay up late watching a movie, which we did. I hope I wasn't breaking the Sabbath. I noticed the sound of a loud vehicle outside at some point early on in the movie. I think such vehicles shouldn't be permitted in our neighborhood, at least not for a few months yet, especially during a wholesome, romantic movie.