Major Flashback

*This is slightly long but totally worth it.

Some of you know that my beloved laptop died a slow and painful death last April/May-ish. Thankfully she waited until after finals to die or I might have been the one to die instead. Yesterday I finally was able to look at the files that Corey recovered from my hard drive. I had so much stuff on there (the cause of death). Journal entries mostly from my freshman year, letters to friends on their missions and a certain soldier in Iraq mostly from my sophomore year and many assignments in varying degrees of quality from all my years. I even found my essays from my application to BYU. I'm actually still kind of proud of those, the quality is still pretty good while I'm slightly embarrassed at other essays I've turned in. The most exciting thing was that most of my pictures were recovered and the ones that weren't I can still get. Looking through my files and pictures was kind of an emotional experience. I laughed really hard at some and I also remembered some sad things but mostly I've realized how grateful I am for the ups and downs of the last five years because I've learned so much. (If I'm putting what I learned into practice is a whole other thing.)

I would like to share a few gems with you. There are some other pictures that have longer stories that I'm excited to share later but here are a few that are just fun.

Sophomore year sometime in the middle of February. It had been really cold for a while and we were tired of it so we got out like 4 Forman Grills, laid out beach towels, hung some Ali-made decoration and had ourselves a summer BBQ. Since we wanted it to seem as authentic as possible we all wore capri pants or shorts and cranked up the heat in our apartment.

Junior year sometime right before Thanksgiving. I had a guy "friend" who loved Martha Stewart and so a few friends and I pulled a little prank. You might be able to read the note that "Martha" wrote to him if you click on the picture to make it bigger.


Freshman year during finals but I'm not sure during what semester. Two cute girls lived next door to me in the dorms and one of them was really stressed out about her finals so the other one and I did a little decorating for her while she was at a late night library session. The best part was that we altered a picture of Gordon B. to say "Wear Your Best" instead of "Be Your Best."

Freshman year again in the fall sometime before Heath and Mal chopped their hair. And before it got cold. The windows in our dorms had a lock that prevented you from opening them more than a few inches. I'm sure there were several reasons for this, the main one being to limit your suicide options. We found out that on some windows you could knock the lock out from the outside so we fashioned a bed leg and a blow dryer into some sort of hammer and unsuccessfully tried to knock our lock out. The best part of this one? It was our RA's idea.

Freshman year. I have a vague memory of taking this but I don't remember when or where but I still love it.

Sophomore year in the fall. Just messing around with the roommates and the boys next door taking pictures. Ali decided to try and get her foot in every picture we took that night and mostly succeeded. I am NOT licking her foot.

First Senior Year. My roommate had been in a car accident and Reid decided to use her oxygen mask for... something.

First Senior year in the fall. We had a sweet longboarding gang called the Sniders and we would load up Reid's minivan and go. I think I can count 8 longboards in there. These nights also occasionally involved "ghost riding the whip."

Summer between Junior year and Senior year. Heather and I bought the most beautiful beta fish that I would take care of while she was in Hawaii and then she would take care of him while I was in Colorado. Our Korean roommate named him something that sounded like noonchi because she said he was lashy (lazy). Heath and I named him Petey for reasons that can't be mentioned. Petey also died which seems appropriate if you knew what his name meant.

Wow, this post began with the death of my computer and ended with the death of my fish. You can't just get that anywhere people.