Thankfully, I'm killing it on the elliptical this week...

...because complimentary hotel desserts are delicious.

Things My Mother Taught Me

It's Mother's Day, so in honor of my mom, who is awesome, I'm going to list a few things that my mom has taught me that make me significantly cooler than a lot of people.

1. Straighten your skirt when you sit down.  I'm baffled at the number of adult women who apparently never learned this rule and then end up sitting on their underwear and have wrinkled skirts for the rest of the day.
2. If you want something done right, do it yourself.  This is probably why I hate group projects:  I'm very possessive of my work.  I guess this is both a blessing and a curse in some respects.
3. Sometimes a woman just has to have a new dress.  Every time I am on the fence about buying something pretty, I call my mom, because I know she will talk me into it.  I try to be the sensible one, however, so I will usually walk away more often than she would.

This photo was about six years and countless hairstyles ago.

But my mom is cool.  Even though she doesn't know how to use computers or voicemail.

But Seriously Though...

All shoe- and mass engagement-related joking aside, a ton of stuff happened in April.  I got into BU; I decided to go to BU; I got to reject offers from three(!) other schools; Boston went crazy; General Conference happened; I had a huge wave of self-actualization (vague, I know); I committed to a place to live in Boston (more on that later); and I began the process of moving out of Hawaii.

Hard to believe that all of that happened in 30 days.  But now...

Things That Happened in April

1.  Eight of my Facebook friends got engaged.  Eight.  In one month.  Can you calculate a p-value for that?  If you can, I bet it's wicked low.

2.  I bought these shoes:

My sister is the only reason I own any 'relevant' music.

Fact:  my sister Gabi's CD collection will kick your CD collection's pasty non-comprehensive bum.  And not just because nobody buys CD's anymore.  She has hundreds of them.  Even the ones that are technically mine are hers; I'm just "leasing" them from her and she has the right to take any of them back at any time.

I, too, have awesome taste in music, but most of it is music that nobody's really heard of, or music that people associate with very specific things.  For instance, I told a guy that Sarah McLachlan is my favorite artist, and while I'll give him props for knowing that Sarah is the founder of Lilith Fair, I'm pretty sure he thinks I'm a lesbian now (I do wear Tevas, but that's irrelevant).  I don't really listen to the Top 40 radio stations very often, because very often, what they're playing is really the top eight or nine.  Gabi, however, is an expert in all radio stations, including the ones that play the new, hip music.

Because I have an iTunes account, Gabi regularly requests that I make mix CD's and gift them to her on special occasions.  For her coming birthday, she has requested one with a high concentration of modern pop music, and for this reason, I am now the owner of lots of songs that people can actually hear on the radio today!

Here's what's on her 31st Birthday Playlist:

1. Feel So Close - Calvin Harris
2. Look At Me Now - Karmin
3. No One - Alicia Keys (This one is actually for my Mom.  She decided that she likes Alicia Keys.) 
4. When I Was Your Man - Bruno Mars (Also a "for Mom" one:  she really likes his voice even though she didn't realize that he was a he until recently.  Same thing happened with me and Michael Jackson in the early 90s)
5. Girl On Fire - Alicia Keys
6. Wild Horses (Unplugged) - Alicia Keys featuring Adam Levine
7. Give Your Heart a Break - Demi Lovato 
8. Brokenhearted - Karmin
9. I Need Your Love - Calvin Harris featuring Ellie Goulding
10. Your Song - Ellie Goulding (This is one that I actually bought for myself.)
11. Why Am I the One - Fun. (Also this one I bought for myself.)
12. You've Got It (The Right Stuff) - New Kids On The Block (This song was 100% requested by Gabi.)
13. Ice Ice Baby - Vanilla Ice (Ditto.)
14. Little Talks - Of Monsters and Men (My sister discovered this one, but I also like it.)
15. Ho Hey - The Lumineers
16. I Will Wait - Mumford and Sons (This one is one that I bough for myself.)
17. Some Nights - Fun. (They have an edited version for sale now!!!  But it's cheaper on Amazon than on iTunes, so keep that in mind when you buy it for yourself.)
18. Somewhere Over the Rainbow/Wonderful World - Israel Kamakawio'ole (Because I live in Hawaii.  Also because it starts out saying "this one's for [Gabi]")

I'm surprisingly zen right now.

I shouldn't be.  Here are three reasons why I should be a bit stressed out:

1. I have to get my crap to Boston by the middle of June.*
2. I don't have a place to live yet when I move back to Boston.  I'm currently investigating a few sublet options, but I don't like that I don't have something confirmed yet.
3. More immediately, I don't have a place to live for two-three weeks when my lease expires at the end of May.  I'm currently investigating primo spots under the Ke'ehi Lagoon Bridge, because all the good street corners in Chinatown seem to be taken.

That I'm currently facing.

However, I'm feeling quite okay right now.  Perhaps here are a few reasons why:

1. I sold my bed to a person on Craigslist who turned out not to be a serial rapist (it's a real concern with Craigslist).  That was the biggest thing I had to get rid of, and now it's gone, and in its place is some lovely cash.
2. My bedroom is kind of awesome right now.  I moved the cable modem in here (I don't have wireless) and I'm typing on my air mattress with the windows open and the ceiling fan on.  It's very chill, in every sense of the word.
3. I get to go to D.C. (okay, College Park, MD, actually, but close enough) for work for two weeks, in two weeks.  It's a research trip wherein I will be pretending to be an historian.  Regardless, two weeks in a nice hotel on someone else's dime will be a nice break from having to deal with stuff.
4. Finally, regardless of how stressful the next few months are and how much I hate moving, It'll all be worth it when I'm finally settled into the best city ever getting ready to start an awesome grad program.

*George Carlin would agree that no matter how much one likes one's stuff, "stuff" becomes "crap" when it all has to be transported somewhere, somehow.

Hawaiian Church Dance (Take 2)

There were no promises of tacos.  I just thought this picture was hilarious.  Also Dance Moms  is terrible.

I went to another church dance tonight.  Here is why:

1. It was the last dance of the semester and therefore would probably be my last dance in Hawaii.
2. I found the above picture on the internet forever ago and thought it would be perfect for a post about church dances.  Also I knew it would be super lame and I love blogging about super lame things in Hawaii.
3. There would be food.  I tried these little mini pizza things for the first time.  They were kind of delicious, probably because I hadn't eaten dinner before I came.
4. To have a chance to wear out my Boston shirt.  Boston has had a crazy week, and I needed a chance to outwardly express my Beantown Pride.  I even played up the accent a bit, and when this guy told me he was a Yankees fan, I told him that he sucked.

The following are not reasons why I went to the dance tonight:

1. I love dancing to super awesome music.  The music at Hawaiian church dances is abysmal.  They played some of the same songs twice, and it was primarily hip-hop/rap/R&B (except for a painful reggae-fest toward the end because it's Hawaii and of course they're going to have a reggae-fest).  Would it kill them to play something slightly electronic?  I'm not asking for full-on trip-hop, but maybe some soft-core Ellie Goulding or something?  There was also some strange phenomenon that whenever a song that I knew started playing, people stopped dancing.  I then started to play a game that whenever a song I knew (e.g., "Hip Hop Hooray" by Naughty By Nature--released in 1993) started playing, I would look around the room and try to guess who wasn't alive when the song came out.  It was fun and also terribly depressing. 
2. To meet new people (who are men).  You can't meet people at these dances, I've decided.  For one thing, the crazy loud music precludes any possible conversation.  For another, nobody else comes to meet new people because everybody else knows each other.  And as for the "men" part?  This particular dance was a total [Spoiler Alert:  I'm going to use a word that might offend people] sausage-fest, which, at first, one might think is a good thing for a single lady such as myself; however, it's kind of super intimidating to have to dance in front of that many men with so few other ladies.  Despite the overabundance of the Y-chromosomes, there was little-to-no slow dancing, so very little opportunity for one-on-one mingling.  I did give my last name to a guy who intended to find me on Facebook, which, admittedly, is the least committal thing a person could possibly do when initiating some sort of contact, but hey, progress is progress!* 
3. I am a superb dancer.  Thankfully I am a woman and therefore can get away with Dorky Caucasian Dance Moves.  It's quirky and adorable.  If I were a man, I would look like this:

The White Man's Overbite

After the thing was over at freaking Midnight (yes, Midnight!  Longest dance ever!) I rode on a back of a moped a little bit, but then thankfully got a ride back the rest of the way in a car.  And then I continued to stay up super late for no good reason other than to write this post.  Overall, this dance didn't represent the worst night of my life.  I mean, at least I got some free food and a blog post out of it, right?

*I'm a bit embarrassed to admit that this guy was the Yankees fan.  If he ever does find me on Facebook (realistically, he won't), I will barrage his wall with pro-Boston sentiment.