People have been doing Facebook quizzes like it’s going out of style.  People does not include me.  So I figured I’d better get started.  Here we go.  

Harding Memories
1. Do you remember your campus mail box number?
12353.  I’d be a little worried if I didn’t.  I graduated last year, and I had it for four years straight.  Third aisle back.  

2. What was your favorite class?
Definitely every history class I had with Dr. Haney.  That man knows how to tell a story!  Close second is any class I had with Mrs. Haney.  They’re good teachers.  
3. Did you ever get dormed? What for?
Not sure what dormed means, so I guess “No.”
4. After leaving HU, how long before you got your first letter asking for donations?
They started piling up in my mailbox the day I graduated.
5. Did you truly fall in love at HU? Who?
Yep.  Sammers.
6. Were you ever caught making out?
*blushes* Yes.  
7. What was your favorite meal in the cafeteria?
I pretty much kept the cafeteria in business for the first three years I was there.  I didn’t have any favorites.  Everything was my favorite.  Unfortunately.  Thirty pounds later, I decided that wasn’t a good thing…..haha…

8. Were you in a Social Club?
No.
9. Did you ever sneak out after curfew or have others sneak in?
I think I snuck in to my friend’s dorm one time, but no.  I just signed out all the dang time.  Takes care of that problem.

10. Which dorm were you in?
Sears, Kendall, and Pryor.
11. Do you still have your notes from others?
Notes are so 90s.  (No, I lost them…)
12. Did you ever get in trouble for clothes you wore?
All the DANG TIME.  Teachers and employers didn’t seem to think I dressed appropriately AT ALL.  I tried to tell them that slutty is a personality trait, not an outfit.  I got in trouble for wearing shorts that didn’t brush my ankles and skirts that didn’t stay put when I sat down.  I also got yelled at for wearing tank tops and spaghetti strap shirts and shirts that were too low cut.  I know this makes me sound bad, but honestly, I dress modestly on a worldly standard.  People just didn’t get that people from Phoenix are completely comfortable doing their grocery shopping in a bathing suit.  It’s a very different world.
13. Is there a song that makes your remember a time at HU?
Pretty much all of my indie music collection reminds me of times at Harding, since that was when I was going through that phase.  Sufjan Stevens, Ray LaMontagne (still love him), Coldplay (not indie but reminiscent of the time), Old Crow Medicine Show – Those artists take me back.  To last year.

14. What did you major in?
English
15. Did you have a nickname?
No.

16. What is one of your fondest memories?
My favorite year was when Lauren, my little sister, was there with me, and I was rooming with my friend Sarah.  One night Sarah and I were doing facials and the facials were bright blue, so at like 10 pm, we raced over to Lauren’s dorm in our pajamas and scared the death out of her when she got out of the shower.  Then we did the Blue Man routine and danced and laughed, and it was fun.  That’s just one great memory of many that I have.  

17. Regrets?
Some, yes.

18. Who was your roommate?
Kristy (freshman), Elena (soph/jr), and Sarah (Sr.)
19. Circle of friends, all around social butterfly, or loner?
Loner who liked company….if that makes sense.  Usually I was really close with one or two people at the most.
20. Favorite chapel memory?
Seeing Lauren every morning 

21. Did you ever have a crush that you never shared or pursued?
Um, yeah a couple.

22. Did you play intramural sports?
Once, for like three games, I did basketball because my friend wanted to try it.  I quit pretty quickly.
23. Is there someone you’ve lost touch with and wish you could find?
No.

24. Is there someone you didn’t know well then, but now have grown close to?.
No.

25. How did it make you better? What life lessons did you learn?
That’s a pretty big question.  Ask me in fifty years.

gosh am I tired of being busy.  I’m working for the next four days and then heading off to Phoenix until monday, and I couldn’t be happier about that.  Not the working part, the Phoenix part.  Boston has been thawing out a little bit, and the birds are rejoicing outside my window.  At least three moms with strollers have jogged past our veranda in the past hour.  And I sit here in my pajama shorts, wondering who would be crazy enough to want to live here forever.  But I think I’ve exhausted that subject.

 

well, sam and toby are coming in from the park, so this post gets to be cut short.

I’m  a huge fan of this website called today’s big thing.  They post a video everyday, and it’s hit or miss.  But these are my favorites since I’ve been following it.  Be prepared to wet your pants.  

 

He can had too many cheezburgers.

Also, I took this picture last night as I was walking into the T.  I’m glad someone has decided to make light of our situation.

It’s no secret that Sam and I watch American Idol.  We don’t try to hide it anymore, especially since last year….it was really good.  That said, American Idol started a couple of weeks ago, and so far, there have been a couple of promising contestants, but I’ll tell you something that I’ve been telling Sam lately.  I keep asking Sam – “So when is David going to perform?”  The David I’m talking about is David Archuleta, the rightful winner of last year’s contest.  I don’t mean that I want him to come do a guest performance – I mean I want him to do the show all over again.  I’m saying I want him to start at the beginning and choose a song each week and act like he’s not sure if the judge’s like him or not and then blow the competition away.  Because man, he was really good at doing all those things.  He was just so dadgum entertaining!  With that, I’ll leave you with my favorite performance that he did.  

 

 

And by the way, I think it’s the biggest crime in the world that he lost to THIS GUY:

 

I’ve said my piece.

For those of you who haven’t been paying attention to entertainment news, or just news in general, Joaquin Phoenix has declared that he is done with his (quite successful) acting career and has decided to become a hip-hop artist.  Phoenix is known for starring in films such as Gladiator, Signs, and Walk the Line.  But not only has Phoenix abandoned his acting career; he has also abandoned shaving, showering, and apparently, smiling.  And just to answer your unspoken question, no, he has no reason to leave the acting business.  He is not a part of a scandal, he has not been going through a dry spell – in fact, he’s had a couple of excellent movies come out recently.  Couple this with the fact that Phoenix’s debut hip-hop gig in LA was a genuinely embarrassing failure that ended with him falling off of the stage and you can only come to three conclusions:

1.  Hide all the razors because Joaquin has gone off the deep end.

2.  It’s a prank (which he’s denied openly several times).

3.  He’s got the money (refer to two posts ago) and is acting out so that we’ll discover it.

After watching the following video, I have decided to go with #2 (and #3 – it might be both).  He can’t be serious.  He just can’t.  Joaquin is seriously one of my favorite actors, and I would be chagrined not only because I wouldn’t see him in movies anymore, but I would know that as an alternative, he was making truly horrible music.

 I might also mention that Phoenix’s cousin, and fellow famous actor, Casey Affleck, has been documenting Phoenix’s hip-hop journey, which is making me all the more convinced that this is a hoax.  But I’ll just be quiet now, and let you watch the video for yourself – and by the way, make sure to watch it all the way to the end.  It only gets better (or worse).

Alright, so let me know your thoughts!

P.S.  Also, is it just me, or does Letterman seem to be in on it, too?

I really miss the days of Xanga.  Boy, that was such an excellent outlet for me, and now it feels as though I cannot write in this thing as candidly as I could on Xanga.  Xanga wasn’t serious.  It wasn’t a big deal.  Just friends read it, and people on the Web couldn’t access it via google.  No biggie whatsoever.  No expectations.

Sigh.

Journalisming, as I like to call it, is hard.  Proving to be harder than I thought.  What happened to my writing skills?  Did I grow out of them?  Or did my millions of college term papers grind them out of me?  

Without really realizing it, I think I have started to keep a tab of my life regrets.  This doesn’t really coincide with how I have chosen to live my life, which is without much of a plan.  And I don’t have many regrets, just two that I really can look back on and honestly wish I had done differently.  One, really, to be honest.  And I can go on and say I don’t regret anything til I’m blue in the face, but that doesn’t erase this slowly-forming list in my head.  And it doesn’t make me not afraid of making more mistakes.  

I really want to go swimming.  I want to feel cold salt water drowning every inch of my body, and I want to move in it, slowly, twisting and feeling it.  For now, a bath will have to do.

Listen.

It’s about time this all stopped.

I just want the answer to one thing.  Who has taken all the money?  

If you took it, fine, just come and give everyone back their money and we’ll move on.  You’re causing a lot of trouble.  President Obama is very upset about this and has been looking VERY hard for the money.  I think he has been more than fair in requesting that you bring it back.  

 

It was funny at first, watching everybody running around, losing their houses, scared to death, not going out to eat.  But now the people of small town America are suffering.  It’s not funny anymore.

 

I understand it’s funny, and even kind of awesome, to find someone else’s money and keep it to yourself, but this is TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS we are talking about here.

 

If you spent it, that’s cool.  Just let us know.  It’s the not knowing that’s stressing us out, here.  Just tell us, where has all the money gone?

 

Now none of us believe this crap about liberal banks and not enough oversight on wall street.  That’s all just a cover-up, and we know it.  We know you have it.

 

Zac Efron, do you have it?  I think you might.  Please, just tell us. 

Stephenie Meyer, Twilight can’t be doing THAT well – are you taking our retirement?

George Clooney and the cast of Ocean’s Eleven, is it you guys?  Good heist, well done, now give it back.  We aren’t playing games here.  

Gary Busey, you’ve been hiding out for a couple of years.  Are you hiding with our money?

Michael Phelps might have been hiding a different kind of green from us lately.

Mark Paul Gossaler?  Tiffany Amber Thiessen?  Mario Lopez?  Dustin Diamond?  Are you all a part of this seedy scam?  Mr. Belding and I are working closely together and we WILL get you if you did it.

Switzerland, I know you’ll try to say you’re neutral about all of this, but I don’t believe it for one second.  Have you taken our money?

Bill O’Reilly?  I just don’t like you, I don’t really think you have the money.

Stacy Peters, I know you don’t have it, so don’t even try to take the credit.  

 

Just so you guys know, I’ve looked all over my apartment, and I can’t find it anywhere.  It’s not under the couch and it’s not in the refrigerator.  Sam keeps asking where I had it last, and I keep telling me that if I knew that, then I would have it, wouldn’t I?

Fess up.  If you turn yourself in now, we can walk away and forget this ever happened.

It’s a balmy 30 degrees today.  I shed my coat while walking down the street and listened to “Beautiful Day” by U2.  I think I’m finally becoming acclimated.

Sometimes I post

I’m not a martyr.  I’m really not.  I have a wonderful life and I’m very thankful.  

 

But lately I haven’t been posting a lot because nothing has really inspired the type of posts I like to, well, post.  I like to talk about the joys in my life and the unexpected twists my life takes, but lately it seems as though my life has a two-year path laid out inevitably and the path thus far has been fraught with suckiness, or what some might call “educational” experiences.

But I’m not being a martyr.  At least I’m not trying to be, and I’m also trying not to be…if that makes sense.

In the past six months that I’ve been married, the easiest thing I’ve had to do is be married to Sam.  Piece of cake.  I know things would be a whole lot suckier if he weren’t in my life.  But it feels like since that wonderful day in June, we’ve been standing back to back defending ourselves against things such as work, school, money, and worst of all, mean people.  Is there anywhere we can go where mean people can’t follow?  Because I’d be there in a second.  As would most nice people in the world, thus I think it might be quite the pleasant place.

So obviously, the fact that I’m posting shows that I’m coming up for air for some reason or another, and I have to say that undoubtedly that reason is the last two weeks Sam and I have been home in Phoenix for the holiday.  Sam has watched football and played on his computer nonstop.  I devoured the Twilight series (twice) and have spent some real healing time with my mom and sisters.  Ivy is growing up so fast, and we are both huge Twilight fans, which has been wonderful as we talk about it nonstop when we’re together.  I love that she’s gotten to the age where we can relate as friends now as well as sisters.  I really like her a lot.  I’m proud of her.  She’s so much cooler than I ever was at thirteen.  And she has way better hair.  Of course, these aren’t the reasons I love her most.  But I’ll keep those to myself.

It’s good to be with my mom again.  I don’t feel like crying again, so that’s all I’ll say about that.

I’ve decided to begin writing fiction again.  I told Sam the sooner I write my fabulous blockbuster novel the sooner we can be millionaires lounging poolside, so I’m not wasting any time.  Anyone with ideas on what that novel might be about, let me know.  (and I think “vampire love story” is pretty much out of the question.  crap.)

Nothing else to say, really, without being negative about Boston.  But I’m not going to try and be positive about it either, so that’s that.  Everybody please pray that this semester is a lot better than the last, and that maybe life gets a little easier for everybody.  

That said, I have nothing negative to say about Phoenix.  It’s no secret that I love my hometown, as I think it just might be the best place in the whole wide world to live.  But I might have a skewed perspective at the moment.  At any rate, I laid out to tan the day after Christmas.  It just doesn’t get any better than that, right?

Stay classy, 

Brooke