2011 is 1/12 Over.

Kind of depressing.  I can't believe how fast time goes by these days. 
This week has been average.  School, work, homework, sleep.  It seems like that's all I do.  And it is EXHAUSTING.  I am definitely not getting a lot of sleep, and it's finally catching up to me. 
Oh well.
As of tomorrow, I will officially be friend-less.  Emily lives in Texas now, and Jamie is leaving in the morning to go drive trucks.  It's crazy how everyone goes their separate ways after high school.  I've been thinking back to all my high school friends and where they are now.
Caitlin Jeppson is Caitlin Lee now.  She is married and living in Hawaii.
Kaitlyn Grant is on a mission in Oklahoma.
Sara Kitchen is on a mission in Florida.
Andrea Riley is up in Logan attending USU.
Amanda Berbert is going to school at BYU in Provo.
Ellen Seely is living in south Salt Lake.
Kalli Marshall is Kalli Julander.  She married her high school sweetheart and lives in Bountiful.
Jamie Graham is becoming a commercial truck driver.
Emily Adair is now Emily Cooper and just had her first baby.  They just moved to Texas.

These nine girls were my closest friends in high school.  I miss them! 
Enough of the sentimentality.  I will be okay.  I still have Cord.  He is my very best friend.
I am liking school still.  As much as it's possible to like school anyways.
I am still addicted to Harvest Moon.  It's all I do in my spare time. 
Oh and I'm trying to eat healthier this week.  I NEED to.  I am a horribly unhealthy eater.  I just don't have the time to eat healthy.  It's no excuse, I know.  But really.  The majority of what I consume is Mountain Dew.  1.  It tastes good  2.  It wakes me up and energizes me  3.  I am addicted to it.
Bad bad bad.  So this week I am going to go to bed no later than 11 each night, I'm gonna try to get some exercise in every day, and I'm going to replace Mountain Dew with water and dried fruits and nuts.  I'll see if it makes a difference.
Since it is the end of the month, I will tell you:
1.  My very favorite memory of January 2011
This a close tie between my Japanese spa treatment and Cord teaching me to snowboard.  The spa treatment was AMAZING!  The fact that this was one of my favorite memories of January 2011 makes me seem like a selfish, anti-social person.  But really. I can't tell you how awesome it was.
Don't worry, I am letting snowboarding win out.  Cord is a good snowboarding teacher, and we had a lot of fun together.  It's fun to learn new things.
2.  What I have been most grateful for in January 2011
My dad.  He is amazing.  He does so much for me and my family.  He gets up at 4:45 in the morning five days a week to go to work so he can take care of all of us.  Then he comes home and makes dinner and helps us with whatever any of us need help with.  He is the most unselfish person I know.  If it wasn't for him I wouldn't have a LOT of the privileges that I have now.  He's been sick from stress lately and it makes me feel so bad.  I love my daddy!
3.  The most important thing I've learned in January 2011
This is going to sound superficial and stupid, but it's not.  Ready for this?  Here it is.  BAD SHOWS AND BAD MUSIC LEAD TO BAD DECISIONS.  The church has been teaching this for a really long time now.  Every time I've sat through one of those talks, I would think to myself, 'Oh, what a nice talk.  I can't wait to get home and watch Gossip Girl.'  I would listen, and maybe some point even agree with what was being said.  I guess I didn't realize how true it is, and that it actually applies to me.  I recently had an experience that proved to me, in a pretty obvious way, that this is a true statement.  Bottom line?  No more R rated movies.  A lot of PG-13 movies are gone too.  No more Gossip Girl or 90210.  I'm still on the fence about Vampire Diaries.  It's not quite as um... risque as the other shows, but I guess we'll see.  And I am going through my iPod and getting rid of all the bad songs.

I Can't Believe January is Almost Over...

Time goes by way too fast. 
This last week has been good for me in some ways, bad in others.
I had Monday off because it was Martin Luther King Jr. Day.  In case you didn't know, that merits a bank holiday, as well as a day off from school.  I wanted to do a civil rights rally, but settled with going to Lava Hot Springs instead.  It was fun.  Except I feel like those places are kind of a rip-off.  You spend 20 minutes in a glorified hot tub and then you have to leave because you've started to feel light-headed and dizzy.  Those little tricksters.
After that it was a return to reality.  Back to school and work.  How is school going, you may ask?  Well, better than usual.  Meaning I'm still going.  I had my first test of the semester on Wednesday.  It was on the organ systems of the body and not to brag, but I ACED it.  Sometimes studying pays off.  Who knew? 
Work is good.  Same old ornery clients.  I've come up with a new saying to go along with my job and it's the most true thing I've ever said.  Ready?  Here it is.  "If people aren't getting mad, you're not doing it right."  It sounds mean, but it's not.  There are SO many regulations in banking and if you follow policies like you should, there are going to be a LOT of things that people want you to do that just aren't going to work.  Whatever.  This subject needs its own blog post.  It's going to get one soon.
You may be wondering, what does Jade do in her spare time?  Thanks for asking, I'll tell you.  I am OBSESSED with a video game.  No, not video games in general.  Just one.  Harvest Moon.  It is the greatest thing ever.  You get to create your own farm and plant stuff and raise animals and go fishing and mine and get married and make friends.  Cord calls it my second life.  So maybe it is.  I don't know.
Yeah, that's what I do for fun.
The end.

Oh Life.

Yep.  You gotta love it sometimes.  So I started school this last week.  Is it just me or is being a fully-functioning adult EXHAUSTING?  It wears me out to have that fine balance between waking up on time for classes, actually showering and getting ready, staying awake during said classes, rushing home to eat lunch, getting to work on time, putting my all into work, coming home and eating dinner, doing homework, and making time for my friends and my boyfriend, as well as all of life's other obligations.  Do all of this for one day and you'll be tired.  Try doing it for five days in a row and you want to kill yourself.  Am I being lazy?  Maybe.  But it's tiring.
Anyways, I actually like all my classes.  Crazy.  Maybe it's because none of them involve boring things like math.  I'm actually taking two science classes, but they are cool science classes.  Nutrition and Natural Disasters.  I'm also taking History of Rock and Roll and Mythology. 
I spent time with friends this last weekend.  Me and Cord and Jamie and Rigby and Paul went to Wendover.  Ha.  Cord gave me two dollars to spend and guess what happened?  I put it into a penny machine and won twenty bucks!  The way I was acting, you would have thought I'd won two grand.  But whatever, I'm poor.
Yesterday I went to lunch with my friend Emily.  She is moving to Texas in a week, which makes me sad. 
Ugh.  I can't believe it's only been one week of the semester and I'm already burned out.  Awesome.

Busy, Busy Life

I hope everyone has had an awesome start to the new year!  I have, sort of.  This past week I've been working a lot.  I'm not a huge fan of working with the general public.  I recently learned that this is largely my own fault.  Rather than people offending us, we allow ourselves to get offended.  Let's just say that I get offended A LOT.  Especially by clients that walk into the bank.  It's definitely something to work on! 
The plus side of so much working is that my last paycheck was pretty darn awesome.  Which is a very good thing for me.  I recently took out a loan so I could go to school this next semester, and if there's one thing I've learned in life lately, it's to NEVER TAKE OUT LOANS.  It's been controlling me.  You know that church talk that talks about how you become a slave to your debt?  Totally know what it's talking about now.  I am constantly stressing about how I am going to pay for everything.  Lesson learned.
So for Christmas Cord got me a really nice day-spa retreat at a place called The Kura Door.  It's in the Avenues in Salt Lake, and let me put it this way; if you ever have 200 extra dollars you don't know what to do with, GO HERE.  It was incredible.  I have been feeling very stressed out lately about a lot of things, and this was exactly what I needed.  It was one of those experiences where you feel like you've been there for days or months, rather than a few hours.  It was so nice to meditate and relax.  I swear it should be a law that everyone has to do that at least once a month.  It might fix the mean-people-at-the-bank problem too.... Ha ha.
And then the day after that I took the day off so Cord could finally take me snowboarding.  It's one of his favorite things to do, so he wanted to share it with me.  I had more fun than I thought I would.  It was pretty much my first time, and my first run down the mountain all I did was slide down on my butt.  Seriously.  But the last few runs, I could do it!  Kind of.  Learning new things is fun :)  The only downside is how sore it made me...
So yeah, all in all it was a good week.  I start school tomorrow and I'm telling everyone everywhere that it will be my number one priority.  It is coming before everyone.  Except for maybe God.

Sentimental...

So last night I was consolidating all my pictures from the last year that I've put on Facebook into one album of my favorite moments from 2010.  The only reason I did it was to clear up the clutter, but surprisingly I ended up reflecting on 2010 and how much fun it was!  I met new friends, got closer to old ones, and sadly, drifted further away from others. 
I went on some crazy awesome adventures with my friends.  Skinny dipping at Pineview... running out of gas 10 miles outside of Evanston in the middle of the night... tribal fire dances... we definitely had fun!
I also went on fun trips.  I went to Saint George with both family and friends and got to go hiking in Zion National Park, one of my favorite places in the world.  With my family I went to Tuacahn theater and saw Tarzan the musical. 
I got to visit Cord in Mississippi while he was at Tech school.  We had a lot of fun.  We went to New Orleans and saw Bourbon Street.  I've never been to the south before, so it was definitely interesting.
My friends and I drove to Disneyland for a weekend.  It was definitely an adventure!  I love Disneyland, it is one of my very very favorite places!
Anyways, this year has been awesome.  I can't wait to see what 2011 will bring!