Saving Lives One Drop At A Time

A couple weeks ago I was called at the Ward Coordinator for the USU 1st Stake Blood Drives. The coolest part is that the Bishopric did not know me at the time. When they prayed though, they received the prompting I should be assigned to something medical. That shows the Lord knows me personally- where I would be able to serve and enjoy my experience the most. Anyway, that is not the point of this blog....

Today was the Stake Blood Drive here at USU. For several weeks now I had been collecting names, phone numbers, and times for when people could come in to donate. After much perseverance, I was able to completely fill up my schedule. After stressing about it this morning, making sure to fulfill my calling to the utmost all the while having class scheduled until 5:30, I was successful with the help of a couple friends and roommates. Abby and Megan were able to deliver the schedule at the start of the drive (I was in class, and had tried earlier, yet no one was there). I think the best part is my Chemistry lab lasted only one hour instead of the scheduled three hours it is supposed to take. That definitely relieved my worried mind.

I took my turn at the check-in table signing people in and giving them instructions for the first part (reading the book of information mainly). When four of my greatest friends came in to donate, I was there to be a support group. Tessa was donating for the first time and I promised to be there to hold her hand through it. My only favor I asked of them though was that they come be my support group as well. I absolutely hate needles. Just the thought creeps me out, so I figure the only time I will allow them into my body is if I need to be saved, or if I can save someone else.

Abby decided to play a mean prank on me though. The lady was about to insert the needle, I was freaking out, looking the other way and squeezing Abby's hand as hard as I could. Out of no where she screams, "OH MY GOSH!!!!" I wanted to take her blood right then. It was mine! That scared me, and the needle really hurt. After that though, my blood was just racing to get out of my body: the flow rate was a 9 the entire time, and I finished in only 5 minutes and 19 seconds. I felt pretty powerful. I laughed really hard after though- we all were, even the lady drawing my blood. I was pretty embarrassed.

Donating blood is a really awesome thing to do. I was thinking about it, and I was reminded of another service we are asked to give if we keep our bodies clean. It is a completely selfless act of service. You can provide something for someone that they cannot do for themself. I can save someone's life physically with a blood donation, but with going to the temple I can save someone spiritually. The body can accept or reject the service in each situation. Let's pray for only acceptance.

If I am this happy after donating a unit of blood, how euphoric will I be when I can go through the temple and perform other saving ordinances beside Baptisms? I bet it will be a lot better because I won't be scared, and nothing will cause me pain in the temple.

I don't know if my analogy made any sense, but I thought it was really cool :D Give Blood, Save Lives!

Apple Insomnia Film Festival

Today in my Creative Arts class my professor introduced us to the Apple Insomnia Film Festival and one of the student producers from Utah State. For those of you who have not heard of this film festival- I was once like you. The main idea: make a three minute film in only 24 hours. Teams of up to 5 students, high school or college age, are given a list of 8 elements from which they choose three or more to include into their film. This requirement helps restrict the creation time to the 24 hours in order to make sure they are met, or the entry is disqualified. I am not very good at explaining it, but the website has a ton of information on it.

What I request as a support for my school and for the team representing Logan is that you go to the site, watch the film, and rate it. You will need an Apple ID, but that is easily signed up for if you do not already have it.

Website: www.apple.com/go/insomnia

Go to Insomnia Film Gallery (on the right hand side of the page)

Search for either "Imagine" (name of the film) or "Utah State University"

Another one I like is "What the Devil." It is funny. If you find any funny, good, intriguing videos, you should share them as well!

Rate and enjoy! Rating ends November 9th. I hope you like it, and I think kids will like it too so share with everyone you know! Let's get Logan, UT on the map more!

Friday Night Fun

Anyone who knows my friends realizes that it is close to impossible for us to decide what we are going to do on Friday or Saturday nights. I think already we have watched every movie ever made (all the good ones, that is) and played "Scene It" until the questions were coming out of our ears. Last night was not an exception by any means. After Chad and Josh played a short introductory game of "Settlers of Catan" (I refused to play thanks to Sam's fabulous tactics) we were left sitting with nothing to do. The boys were discussing the stock market and most recent football games while Mykin, Chanel, and myself caught up on each others' individual college lives. One of the biggest problems we face right now is the lack of funding to spend. We really are all poor college students now, which is a huge change from the financial freedom we experienced during our senior year of high school. A corn maze would be fun, yet expensive at the same time when groceries are to be bought in addition to books, housing, and tuition.

Eventually, we came up with a fabulous plan! Make cookies someone said! It was exactly what we needed. So I called up Mommy to double check the use of our kitchen, made a quick stop at the store for some flour, and ran back to the house. In addition to our endeavors of making cookies, we decided to invest in some dry ice and make something really fun. No silly! Not dry ice bombs, even though the thought did cross our teenage minds. We actually bought some flavoring to make homemade root beer! None of us had made it before, luckily a recipe was included on the box of the flavoring. Chanel and Mykin dove into the making of the root beer while Chad, Josh, and myself worked on mixing the cookie dough. "Strong Josh" and Chad cracked the eggs, then criticized me for adding too much vanilla. I personally think that is near impossible to do, but I received plenty of guff for it last night.

A tray of dough finally made it into the oven and the root beer mixture was bubbling furiously from the addition of dry ice. Who knew that teenagers would still be as entertained by the gaseous carbon dioxide as elementary school kids are. We took turns playing with the plumes flowing over the side of the pot, watching the white bubbles for on the surface of the liquid, and trying to throw it at each other. I personally believe more dough was eaten than cookies. Everyone knows the dough is the best part! Who cares about raw eggs anyway? Sadly I forgot about the last tray of cookies in the oven and they got a bit more baked than the others. Nothing blackened, just crunchier. Mom even joined us for a time while we enjoyed our fairly flat root beer and cookies. She even brought out the small amount of vanilla ice cream and we made root beer floats! Yum yum!

Not too long later, we were all stuffed. As I said earlier, none of us had made root beer before so we were not sure how much dry ice we should buy. The guy in the meat department suggested 5 pounds, so that is how much we bought. Turns out that 5 pounds was more than enough to carbonate our draft, so we were left with blocks of dry ice and nothing to do. Now, what can be expected of four teens (Chad was asleep on the couch), lots of time, and a large supply of dry ice? I brought out a few quarters and we proceeded to dig the metal into the ice, thereby freezing the quarters, and our fingers if we held on too long. Spoons filled with water were pressed again the ice to watch in awe with how quickly the water would freeze, sometimes with quarters inside as well. Said frozen quarters and spoons were then meticulously placed on the bare necks of other unaware participants in the festivities. Needless to say, I am amazed Mom did not come out and tell us to be quiet.

Last night was so much fun! We didn't have to spend much money for something that would entertain us for several hours if it hadn't been so late. By the time everyone was going home, I still had four large blocks of ice left. Not wanting them to go to waste, I played for a little longer sticking my CTR ring in and admiring the imprint left in the ice, then seeing how long I could stand having the frozen metal on my finger. Before retiring to bed myself, I cleaned up the cookie mess (yes, I actually do clean up after myself now!) and dumped the remainder of the dry ice into the pot of root beer in hopes of adding a bit more carbonation to the brew. Sadly enough, none of us had a camera to take pictures, only our phones. I really need to invest in a camera to share visuals of my adventures, but I tried to get a couple pictures with my computer. I do hope though that I went into enough gory detail that you could get a good enough image without the use of pictures. If you have any other ideas of things we could do to keep us occupied on these cold fall and winter weekends, it would be greatly appreciated!

This is the effect of having my CTR ring touching a piece of dry ice for several minutes. The details are hard to see, but little crystals had formed all around it making it almost look like a snowflake. Cool stuff!

Fiddling

I do not know exactly what has come over me, but I am in love with my blog page now! I have convinced two of my best friends to either start their own blog on here or start writing more often. Something about this page has hooked me! I spent forever today trying out different colors for the words, backgrounds, links, everything pretty much. I decided to go with a fall color scheme and try and change it as the seasons come and go. And also, I included some of my favorite tunes so you should listen to them instead of just pausing them right away. I like the music and I think you might as well. Also I discoverd that I can record some video with my nifty little iSight camera so maybe I will be able to get more pictures/video of me instead of images I find online. I know you are all dying to see me even though you are all so far away! =D Give me some feedback on this new look. Is it me? Does it not work well? I want to make my blog the coolest page out there! Thanks for the comments! I love you all!

6 Facts

I have been tagged by Carrie!

1. Peanut M&Ms are my absolute favorite candy! And I normally do not just pop them in my mouth and chew. I have to bite the chocolate off the nut. Then I split the peanut down the middle, bite off the little root bump, then try and split the nut into as many halves as possible. If I do just eat a peanut M&M, realize that is a rare occurence.

2. In my junior year of high school and before I hated writing with pens. Pencils were the way to go because I would mess up and I hated having words scratched out on my papers. Erasers were my best friends. College rolls around and I now hate writing with pencils. They smudge. I only write with pencils if I absolutely have to. Even more odd. I used to only write with black pens in high school. The juicy ones too. College. No black, only blue, and no more juicy! Ball point all the way! I actually have a favorite pen that I take with me everywhere. What I will do when it runs out? Or I lose it like I think I have? Cry probably.

3. Falling is my greatest fear. I am terrified of falling and landing and feeling the pain that comes with landing. I can handle heights just fine, airplanes cause me no discomfort (other than motion sickness). If there is a railing or anything for me to hold on to. But once the thoughts creep in of me tripping and plummeting over the edge, getting paralyzed, or dying, I don't like it anymore. Give me a mountain to climb and I will. Give me a chance to skydive or parachute and you will have push me. Then I will dislike you very much for forever. =D

4. Serving a mission is my life goal right now. I get letters from my missionaries and I love reading their stories about investigators, the area they are in, and the Spirit which is always with them. Almost no one thinks I can stay off marriage for another three years to achieve mission age, but I really want to. Nothing would make me happier than to be out in the world sharing my testimony with others!

5. It is a rare occurence for me to drink soda pop any more. Water, milk, and lemonade are the drinks to have. Hot Chocolate if it is cold (I think it is going to become an even bigger staple in my diet this winter). Grandpa Deano gave me a Sprite before I came back up to school and I drank it with my lunch today. I almost couldn't handle it! The fizz just hurts my stomach now. One little sip of Coke or Dr. Pepper makes me go crazy. It is a good thing water is free. If I was constantly buying soda I would be completely broke!

6. Walking through crunchy falls leaves is my favorite thing to do in the fall. Normally I am depressed as the days start to get colder. Here at school though I love walking to class on mornings when it hasn't rained and kicking up the leaves on the sidewalk. Yesterday all the leaves were blown off the sidewalk and onto the grass. I had to go walk on the grass so I could kick up my leaves. There is just something about wearing a jacket yet still being a little chilled then walking through piles of leaves that is so comforting to me. I think it started when Mom and I visited Lincoln and Carrie in Indiana and we went to a park. I got to walk around in the leaves and I was addicted.

I tag Maren, Marisa, Jessica, Rachelle, Stephanie M, and Abby. Enjoy!

Family Day

My student ward held a special two hour sacrament meeting today and invited the families of all the students to come and visit, then have lunch afterward. At first I was somewhat excited to have Mom come up and visit. Everyone I asked said their families were not coming so I felt out of place. Gradually though I realized this would be really fun and I was WAY excited for her to come up. Then tragedy struck. Mom got sick. Really sick. I feel totally bad for her sick. Suddenly when Mom is unable to come, all of my friends said their families were coming. Great! How does that work? So today instead of sitting with Mom during sacrament meeting, I sat between my two friends and their moms'. I felt alone and sad. I know it is not Mom's choice to not be here. She would be here for sure if she wasn't so sick. And that is totally fine. I honestly don't want to get sick. But it would have been nice to sit there with Mom like always back at home. Yet something about being in Logan makes it different and more meaningful.

I guess what I am trying to get at is that I really do love my family. I say it all the time, but it is so true! I was so excited to have Mom meet my bishopric (who are awesome, by the way), see my apartment (and how clean I keep it), and maybe even get to know my roommates better since I know them now. I am homesick. I do not show it because I was so excited to be off on my own. Actually I do not think this is normal homesickness. I am more familysick it feels like. I need my brothers and sisters- my best friends. I need my adorable nieces and nephews to make me laugh, joy, and play like a little kid should. I need Mom to hold my hand, keep me paying attention to the speakers, and make sure I get enough to eat (and that it is real food). No, I am not a little kid still, but there is that part of me (which is in everyone I am sure) that just needs to snuggle when life is hard and the monsters in the closet never seem to go away.

Life is pretty good though.

I LOVE YOU! <3

Flowers

I am a Canna What Flower Are You?

"You stand up for what you believe in, even if it gets in the way of what other people think. You are proud of yourself and your accomplishments and you enjoy letting people know that."

I like flowers. They make me happy. They remind me of Spring. So far away....