oh what a beautiful day!

dearest and darlingest blog readers. all 4 of you...

hello! today was a wonderful day, and i simply have to write about it.
1) this morning i went to work ... well, this part wasn't wonderful now that i think about it. i put on khakis because we were getting our peer mentor picture taken today so i had to wear our "FA apparel", which includes khakis. i bent down and they split up the leg. ok... they didn't fit. i wore khaki capris which is kind of a no-no. so goes it.

2) i bought donuts last night at macey's because they were on sale. so today, i looked to give them out to people who did not eat breakfast. i actually could not find anyone in our office who did not eat breakfast (a bunch of responsible peer mentors doesn't make a likely candidate probable) so i gave them to our tech guy and a couple of friends.

3) i had our last rehearsal with the students for the play i had to write. in case i haven't mentioned this in detail before, our boss had our students read "Seedfolks" (a short novel by Paul Fleischman) and then asked me to write a play about it. i did. 13 characters, 25 minutes. done. we called students who lived in the area, asked them to participate, assigned parts, and then waited for the rehearsal to come. it came, and it went well.

4) we had the pre-NSO meeting. Freshman Academy this year was a little different than previous years. we were not involved in NSO (new student orientation) so we had a "pre-NSO" meeting with our students in each community. as previously alluded to, i got put in charge of the one for the theme-based communities (students in social science classes, looking at issues of poverty and strengthening families). this meeting included the play i mentioned in #3, and the movie i'm about to mention in #5.

5) i presented the video i made. at the beginning of the summer (or sometime in July), i was given 55 minutes of footage of interviews with the professors the students will be taking classes from. i was asked to edit the footage and make a video that could be shown at this pre-NSO meeting. i spent weeks editing and writing scripts and messing around with iMovie, and finally, it was done. it's 15 minutes, has background music, pictures, text, and cool movie transitions (like a cube, or swipe). anyway the point is, i did it. and it got shown to the students today.

6) as a summary of #3-5, the pre-NSO meeting went as well as i was hoping for. (there were some problems with a projector and microphones, but a very chivalrous boy from IT came and saved us at the last minute). the work i've been doing all summer came to fruition today, and it felt so good! everything went just fine!!! YIPPEEEEEEE!!!!

7) i got to meet my students today! because our program is smaller this year, i only have 10 students. (the last 2 years, i've had 40). it is going to be So Nice to get to know them well- i already know their names.

8) i found out my roommate m'lisa likes the west wing. oh. my. goodness.

9) i came home after a hard but very productive and satisfying day, and called dearest home teacher Ben (mentioned in a previous post somewhere). He came over shortly thereafter and our plan was for him to change the oil in my car because he used to work at Jiffy Lube and dad said the car needed an oil change. First, we went to Wal-Mart to buy the oil. Then we went over to Jesikaa (my old roommate's) house in Orem to drop off some bread I made for her. She was at institute, so I asked her to run out to meet us. But we couldn't find her and she couldn't find us (turns out we were about 1/8 mile away, in the wrong building's parking lot). Finally, we gave up and dropped the bread off on her doorstep, just a block away from where we thought she was.

Then we drove up to my grandma's house because mom said we could do it there, and that my uncle was at the house. No one was at the house. We started poking around in the back yard and storage shed, didn't find anything necessary for the oil changing job, and then Ben said we could go to a house he used to live in in Provo and get the stuff.

On our way, we were hungry, and stopped at Arby's (of course!) because it's the last Wednesday Freebie day of the summer! I paid for our drinks (in payment for changing the oil) and we got our sandwiches and french fries. Mmmmmm free Arby's.

We finally made it back to Provo to Ben's old house, when it was determined the oil was pretty clean as it was, and Ben didn't have whatever it was he needed to get the old oil out. i don't remember all the details- just that changing the oil was going to be a pain in the butt tonight, so we've postponed it till the weekend.

So... the original objective (changing the oil) did not even happen, and we basically spent 3 hours touring Provo and Orem. And it was lovely. I told him we'll have to do it again some time.

Anyway.

So, basically, this was a long post to say I had a wonderful day at work, and an entertaining time driving all over town with Ben, so I am going to bed happy. It's pretty great.

-mollie

p.s.- i imagine my happiness will last for a few more days, as tomorrow is an office bonfire like the one i documented last year (YAY!!!!! you know how i love bonfires!) and friday is a party with some old friends. the week before school starts is great for my social life :P i'm so excited!!! (i will try to take pictures...)