Day 609ish

I passed the year and a half mark of living in Virginia not too long ago. Let me tell you, it is STILL a constant surprise, one heck of an interesting and surreal experience, for this Vegas girl to be out East. It still feels like it's just some weird cultural stunt or experimental phase I'm going through, rather than my home, my landing spot. (Anyone else feel like that?) Weird. Good and bad. Crazy, frustrating, and curious. Occasionally blissful (particularly when there's food and friends involved!!).

This afternoon I was looking over my pictures from summer 2008 and reminiscing- my gosh that was probably the happiest, most serendipitous summer I've ever lived. I remembered so clearly random fun times like this:

and this:

And this:

And this:

^ That boy comes home in 5 weeksssssssssssssssssssssssssssss. :D Family is just about the most magical thing in the world! Seriously, every time I've noticed a frown on my face the last couple weeks I've just envisioned seeing Marcus at the airport and away goes the frown and up goes my mood. I even discovered that plotting out an epic prank for Marcus' first day home motivated me into keeping a record pace on my long run this weekend (Apparently the secret to successful sports therapy is playing the glad game. Who knew?).

After browsing around my pictures a little more, I got off my computer, grabbed my camera, and documented a little bit of today, Summer 2010. THIS is what's happening in my world currently (as promised to the parents and the BFFs). Let's hope this thing works, I don't do videos:

iTour of LINDSEY'S LONG-AWAITED NEW ROOM

Because I feel like I haven't talked about art in MONTHS, below is a print from Urban Outfitters (I am ashamed) that really struck a chord with me, which is a pretty big accomplishment for anything visual at the moment; I've been trying to fill that blank picture frame you saw in the video, and it's been so hard to decide on only one image! When you only have ONE shot, one frame, one place of exceeding importance and honor to put something visual, the pressure is INTENSE! Yikes. None of these former loves will do, but I think this print below may be the winner. Well, actually I've got a plan to create a digital print of my own in a  similar design, with a sketch out of the Las Vegas mountain range instead of these random mountains.  Any other suggestions, friends? What's on YOUR walls these days? Anything new?

This being a responsible citizen is just not working for me.

I have this list that's been building up in my head all summer of the mature, sensible things I suspect other youngsters my age and religious bent are doing that I'm not. They're all responsibile actions, the kind that benefit the doers' mental well-being, as well as their roommate relations, dating lives, future job opportunities, health, and probably their future spouse and kids's welfares and probably even impact their eternal salvation. Yet, I lack motivation (though not desire) to pqarticipate in the following actions/:

-Put money into a Roth IRA.

-Kick sugar back to its place at the TOP of the food pyramid where it belongs.

-Go on dates outside the ward boundaries.

-NOT go on Google reader 10x a day at work.

-Floss daily.

-Drive my own car or bike.

-Develop "hobbies." (Gol that is maybe the ugliest word in the English language, next to BLOG)
-"Networking."

I laugh in the face of flossing- hahahaha!


Instea, I get fired up abou an alternate set of goals. These are my heart's desires that probably not ONE of my sensible friends have considered doing, which ultimately makes them all the poorer (at least in spirit, in my opinion). Ahem.

Quirk list:


-Go on a date with a DC-area homeless man (Imagine the stories he could tell me!)
-Be a homeless woman (twelve moves in the space of two months- CHECK.)
-Earn a superfluous $40k degree.
-Go wading in a public fountain in every major metropolis in Europe.
-Donate the full value of a luxury car to charity before buying one (a tall order that I've had in place since I was 19. I figure it's a good way to check my pride whenever I start telling myself I DESERVE a $40k BMW).
-Jump off a bridge (a low one, into deep water, the East Coast version of cliff jumping. NOT suicide)
-Rock a pink streak in my hair like a high schooler.
-Get my yoga instructor license from some random school in Florida.
-Get married in the temple wearing Vans (used to be Chuck Taylors, but they're too popular now).
-Publish a blissfully nerdy scholarly article in some minisculely-subscribed academic journal.
-Date a collegiate Lacrosse player.
-NOT go sky diving (I have no desire to, ever. I know my limits.)
-Promote this event wherever possible: http://candlelightserenade.com/ If you live in Utah, GO to this awesome concert-- check out the A-list headliners! I'm so impressed with it, and I would be even IF my wonderful friend Genna weren't directing it! It's for an amazing cause, and it'll be a rocking summer jam session. If I were in Utah, I'd be there.

-And finally, cook the following. Ok I'm cheating, I've cooked all these already--I LOVE summertime recipes and I just wanted to share the bounty! Thank you, Pioneer Woman, for being my #2 distraction website after Google Reader. Click the pictures to get the recipes. Make #4, the roasted red pepper sauce, immediately. It might very well be the best thing you ever cook!

Bon appetite, to all you good citizens out there.

Who would have ever thought you could love something so much?

Grown-up purchase #1 (well, #2 I guess if you count my new bedspread):



.... I might have hugged it after my friend Ryan and I finished putting it together. Which process took 2 hours. %$#* IKEA instructions!

It's so beautiful!!!

"I LIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIVE!!!!!!!!" -Mooshu from Mulan

I am alive!

And I am writing to you from the comfort of my newish laptop that seems to be (knock on wood) newly virus free. I wrote a whole angry conspiracy-theory blog three weeks ago about how all computers secretly have it out for me, but as I neared the completion of said rant, my stupid computer froze me out and it was lost. Believe me, if I had published it, you'd have been in agreement- seriously my track record with technology BLOWS.

Computey and I have reconciled in the past two days, though, thanks to Kaspersky Virus Removal tool. And much, MUCH more importantly, I write to you tonight from my very own room, in my very own house!!!!! I haven't lived in a house in 7 years, and of those 7 years, I have always shared a room with various wonderful girls. But as you know from several posts back, I just turned 25. And like family, it was about.... time.

Time to move into a house, be close to the Pentagon City metro stop, and inhabit my own room so that I could study to my grad student heart's content without interruption. And also, just feel like a real adult. Yep, that's what I had decided on May 10th, when I sublet the (shoebox-sized) apartment spot I'd been renting since I first moved out here in January '09. I sublet it with one quick call to a girl at BYU coming out for the summer, and then I started walking up a hill to meet two friends and together sign a lease for the world's most gloriously refurbished townhouse, which we had found earlier that week. Halfway UP that hill, I recieved a call from one of these friends informing me, agitatedly, that our landlord had sold that townhome to someone else half an hour before, and we were officially out of luck. And I was out on the streets.

Thus began an epic 68-day chapter of my life known as "Homelessness." Some of you have heard all about it. Over the last two and a half months I have moved TWELVE times, staying with friends in the area who were gracious and wonderful enough to offer me their spare couch, bed, air mattress, etc, a week or so at a time, so that I might not literally be sharing my bed with the bums out on the street. I held out for the exact contract I wanted (single room, under $600/month, walking distance to metro, cool roommates, HOUSE), and happily, my friend Laney called me a month into my homelessness and let me know that, come July 17th, I could have her roommate's spot. It was a done deal and then i just had to wait out the final 5 weeks. Here is a visual flow chart of my itinerate wanderings up til last Saturday (I am LOVING having a computer to play on, let me tell you!!!):

True, it's a shoebox of a room I live in. BUT it has hardwood floors, windows on TWO sides, a tallish ceiling, and alllllllllllllllll of my stuff in it. It is mine all mine. My couch-surfing stint taught me the life lesson that it is only after you lose something that you truly realize the blessing it was in the first place. The sight of all my stuff, in one place, at my disposal, and four bare walls ripe for the decorating brought tears of gratitude and joy to my eyes that first night. And I am still squealing with delight over each new discovery in this house (today it was the rotating dinner schedule amongst the roommates and TIVO!!!!!!!!!! This place ROCKS!!)

I have absolutely no idea where in this mess my phone charger is (problem.), and it took me a solid 20 minutes to find my curling iron on Sunday.... and I have yet to buy a chest of drawers or a desk or shelves, which means that this whole living out of boxes thing is just gonna keep on going until I can locate and purchase such items. I am looking forward to the challenge, though, and the joy of DECORATING my little corner room had me totally unable to concentrate at work today. Look out world, I am about to be CRAFTY! Jayci Judd, you are going to be so proud of me. I am even planning to sew my own curtains! I took my first step today, retiring my wonderful stripey Target bedspread that I bought when I was 17, and purchasing a grown-up down-filled luxury number (for super cheap at Marshall's. My mom raised me well). My ultimate design scheme revolves around the following palatte:

Cornflower blue, Sunshiney Yellow, Silvery Grey, White and Black accents.

I am also hoping to add a touch of shiney, classy Emerald green if I can locate a suitable accent piece or material (pictured below is Kiera Knightly in Atonement; apparently this emerald dress beat out Scarlett O'Hara's scarlet ensemble to win best movie dress of all time, which I think is total bunk.)

I can't wait to begin! If you have any thoughts or websites or product suggestions, please, Please, PLEASE send them my way, I am absolutely clueless when it comes to decorating and design. I've looked at the coco+kelley blog (thanks Maggie), and boo, they don't seem to sell too much stuff. So I have to do this on my own. My visiting teachers and I have a trip to IKEA planned for Saturday... but I am kind of a whiney purist and want to stay away from their mass-produced trendy items as much as possible. What color should I paint the walls? It's a small, well-lit room that I don't want to feel any smaller. Hee hee hee...

GASP! Look at this couch! Anthropologie.com, why must you do everything so perfectly!?!?! You're like the Marion Cotillard of decorating. Everything I want to do and be, you have already been and done, flawlessly. Be French. Sing like Edith Piaf. Kiss Russell Crowe. Be some dream-hacker's haunting and stunning lover/muse (INCEPTION WAS AMAZING!)

K that's enough for now. Lindsey, signing out, and falling asleep in her little haven.

I'm in the New York TIMES!!!!

In a round-about way of course. :)

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/08/us/08hoover.html?ref=us

Wednesday, my museum held a press conference in a top-floor room at the super chic Pew Charitable Trust building in Penn Quarter (looked like the one at right but much bigger, and two of the walls were solid glass, looking out over the J. Edgar Hoover FBI Building and the National Archives). We four troopers who are stationed out at the NLEM's offsite storage facility had been preparing for this conference for about two weeks, selecting objects from the collection to display to reporters, and listening to/critiquing my boss as she practiced her speech.

The press conference was held to announce that the museum has acquired the estate of J. Edgar Hoover, who, in case you didn't know, is a BIG FREAKING DEAL. He was the Director of the FBI since it became the FBI (1924) all the way til 1972. Aka 48 years as the head of the nation's premiere crime fighting institution! John Dillinger and the other machine-gun slinging gangsters of the 20s? He cut his teeth on their arrests. WWII spies? He was all over them. Communists? He had them shaking in their boots. We at the museum have received everything in his home at his death and more, including his papers, photos, china, uniforms, and a crazy assortment of awards and curios presented to him by rich, famous, powerful, and grateful people all over the world (hundreds of items!!).

Please note how the article mentions the archival needs of the collection. That's ME who is fixing all that right now, as the graduate archival intern (We have a very small staff). Also note where it says, "Ms. Baty and other museum staff members are creating an inventory of all the items. The team has counted about 2,500 items, and Ms. Baty said there may be more than 4,000 items when all is said and done." Other Museum Staff Members = Me and the other intern, Elena. My friend Marissa of course read the article after I had posted it to my Gchat, and she remarked that the article made it sound like there were 20 of us hustling through this process. Nope. A total of four of us. :) I love my job, I'm getting to do so many things way above my pay grade! Oh, and the picture in the article? The photo of Hoover is cropped because my gloved hands are holding up the sides of that frame. I'm SO enjoying the closest I'll get to museum fame right now.

My workweek awesomeness didn't stop there: the next day, we four squealed to see our release written about in the NYTIMES, the Washington Post, the Washington Examiner, several notable law enforcement blogs and newspapers, and many other smaller interest group websites. So cool.

And after that (and after a free lunch at 5 Guys), Laurie introduced me to the historian at the FBI and he invited me to come visit him at FBI headquarters and do a little "shopping" in the FBI's Hoover files, to look and see if there's anything they have that I would like copies of for my archives.

I'm going shopping through the former Director of the FBI's official FBI files in a week and a half. Hehehehe. I'm so excited, I have ALWAYS wanted to go into the beautiful Hoover building. It's so striking (Brutalistic architecture- some people love to lambast it but I think it's very appropriate for its purpose and setting). Plus I just want to know what the freak is going down in there! So mysterious, so imposing. And so closed to visitors since last year. Hehehe but I'm going in!

K it is late and night and I've got to go. Sorry for the lack of posts lately; my computer unfortunately contracted a virus so I can only write when borrowing a machine, like now.

Vacation's All I Ever Wanted

So this will be brief.

My name is Lindsey, and I am going camping in five minutes. My sister Wee is awesome.

mY name is Wee i get 5 sentensces, i tired cause i wokeded up at 630 to write words. I ate a brownie. it was delectablej. I think my family is the best because we are cool and prety. Also, im in love with alex/twitch but ynni got to hug him, shes great ttoo.

Click me! Wee and Ynny Know You Wont Regret It- It's Alex and Twitch's SICK AWESOME hip-hop routine on So You Think You Can Dance, "Get Outta Yo Mind."

the turn. oh help.

FACT: I turn 25 in 20 days.

<- Normally I look like this on my birthdays. This is not a stance I adopted in a huff after graduating BYU unmarried, no. I can actually remember during the Young Women's entrance interview at age 12 looking up at my bishop with tears in my eyes and anguish filling my little voice as I whispered, "I don't want to grow up." My poor terrified tween soul. Like Peter Pan, I have never, ever heard a convincing argument for the act of growing up. It's just never appealed to me. Two months ago, I won't lie, tears filled my eyes again the first time I said the words "I'm almost 25" to my dad (the "5" part kind of died in my throat, that's how hard it was to say). But I've had a lot of time to contemplate life recently, couch surfing as I have been for one entire month now.

I have three things to say.

To my year 24: You were full of surprises, thank you so much. From day one, when best friend Jessica-Brothers-newly-Clayton sprinted through the SLC airport at 6 am to hug me at my gate, to the sunshine-soaked stint as a lifeguard in the woods, to the unforgettable night I was played Thrice's The Weight, you drove me to my knees, answered my prayers, and made me smile in ways I did not expect. I've gone on the very most and the very least romantic dates of my entire 9-year dating career this year. I've experienced record-setting snowpocalypses (two of them!). I'll not soon forget the triumph of that day-after-finals email from my professor a month ago, congratulating me on a successful final paper argument and admitting that he did not think I could pull off, given my sub-par midterm presentation. (BOOYAH.) I really appreciate the new friendship that was born on the upper deck of an Outer Banks mansion a few weeks ago, as HH and I discussed life and watched the moon rise. Kindred spirits are sprinkled out across every phase of life I think. Hallelujah!

To the next three weeks: Not much you can dish out can beat this weekend's awesomeness. You've got your work cut out for you. But I still believe you will be as great as the rest of 24.



Adam the lion defends us at the Law Officers Memorial Wall



We instigate a new yoga program in the middle of the Natural History Museum (Seen here: Downward dog and "The Splay-legged Giraffe")



God handed me a belt on the Mall, because I needed it. Here's to looking at life through Pollyanna eyes!



To year 25: you're a nice, well-rounded, silvery number. Bring it.

And I have Otis McIntire to thank for it...

It's Friday. Not just any Friday, but THE Friday. The first day in about the last 45 that I haven't had to wake up before my time and do necessary and pressing things every hour of the day until I drop into bed ("Honey tell me the truth: are you having to schedule in an hour a day where you can think?")

So why did my soul still feel the red-brown color of a hundred-year-old barfed-on Oriental rug today? (FYI my soul does not turn blue when sad. It turns murky vermilion.*)

I have the memory of squealing through Robin Hood last weekend to keep me warm.

I have sunshine to revel in, snowpocalypse blues being a thing of the past.

I have the anticipation of beating my racquetball partner soundly this afternoon and attending my first-ever Nats home game tonight.

I even had my favorite Iranian falafel sandwich by the C & O canal to turn up the corners of my mouth.



Still I spent most of today fighting the urge to take a hammer to or stuff a stick of dynamite in... something. BUT! I'm just writing right now to say that I think I'm over the worst of it. Guess why.

Sometimes, when sandwiches, friends, hopes, heat, sports, and Glee can't do it........ a big, possibly homeless, black guy comes around the corner of the canal in Georgetown wearing a bright pink, smiling, styrofoam cartoon whale on his head. No I am serious. The pink whale clashed horrifically with his artfully argyled jeans and baggy hoodie. I have no idea who he was, or why, WHY on earth he chose to wear the world's largest sea mammal on his noggin. But I'm pretty certain that this brave and potentially unhinged soul, who passed by me just as I felt my murky mood couldn't sink much deeper, tipped the scales. Life is still worth living. :)

GO NATS!

*When deliriously happy, my soul turns into a Jackson-Pollock-esque splattering of emerald green, royal blue, and bright yellow.