I have no excuse....

Jessica told me the other week that she didn't look at my blog anymore because I never have anything new to say. So my reader following went down 50%. Then today Beckee emailed me about my severely neglected blog, so my following dropped another 50%. I hate to disappoint my fans, and I am hanging out by myself on a Friday night, so I've got lots of time! Prepare yourselves to get caught up on the happenings of 2008!

Alright, where did I leave you? Well let’s just start with work; I know it's what you all want to know about most anyway! Work is going well, I just got promoted to the active trader group, which means I get to talk to all those wackos that sit in front of multiple computer screens and watch stocks all day every day. It’s pretty exciting; I work on east coast time, getting there by 8:00 ET when you're living in MST is kind of hellish, but I survive. Basically work is over by lunch time. That's just about right.

My braces will be off before my birthday!!! I was actually having some problems with them last month; my jaw really hurt a lot so my orthodontist had me take off the rubber bands and all that for a month. Just to give you some idea of how much my jaw was hurting. I also had my first cavity filled last month. It's true, my first cavity. I really only noticed there was a problem when I woke up one morning to find myself spitting out about 1/4 of my back molar. So I called my dad in a panic, because that is what I do. Then I called Ashley and she looked at it," yup, you're missing part of your tooth, it looks like you have a cavity there too." then she got helpful and recommended some dentists. The dentist was equally helpful when he asked, "didn't this hurt before? Would you like me to try to fill it or should we just do a root canal?" Have I mentioned this is the first time I have been in a dentist's chair for anything other than a cleaning? Don't worry, so far the filling has been great and I am not yet experienced an abscessed tooth.
So I went to the Orthodontist 2 weeks ago and he's talking about all the progress my teeth have made and that I should be losing the braces soon. "How soon is soon?" less than three months. Now naturally he is concerned about making my jaw hurt again, but we have to get my teeth to line up correctly so he decides that I should wear 2 bands instead of 4 and if that doesn't work than we are going to have to rebracket next month to pull the teeth into the correct position. Screw that!!!! I can put up with anything for a couple months, so I am wearing the 4 bands, and I am switching them for new rubber bands every 4 hours (except at night) effectively wiring my mouth shut 90% of the day and we'll see how long it takes those teeth to get where they are supposed to be!

Ok moving on, let’s face it the only other thing worth mentioning in my life would be my church responsibilities... just kidding I couldn't help it!

Isn't my life all about the pursuit of a boy? It kind of feels that way and there has been some goings on in that realm. But this is not for the faint of heart, and once you start there is no going back. Now that I have cautioned discretion, let me begin.

You may recall my previous stupid boy stories. If for some reason they have slipped your mind... I think you can look down the page a bit and find them. :) So we'll start with the Australian. As I can't read my previous posts while I am writing I will hit the high points, Jason and I dated last fall, I wrote him off around November and stopped contact all together around the second week in January. Come to find out that week I ended all contact; he had to go to the hospital and have some fluid around his heart drained and was incapacitated for a month. So naturally I feel bad about abandoning him in his time of need. But in my defense he didn't tell me until after he was out of the hospital because "he didn't want to worry me." But this leaves me feeling bad so I started hanging out with him again.
So from February through the beginning of April I have been seeing Jason pretty regularly, he had chosen his spot on the living room furniture and we watched a lot of movies. The good news is he went to California for the summer which has uncomplicated things considerably.
Why are they complicated? Enter Boy 2, Jeremy.
Jeremy is awesome, but he is also an engineer... what is up with me and engineers? I don't know, they are infuriating! But let's not get ahead of ourselves; you will need some more background information. Jeremy is the typical tall, dark, and handsome I usually go for and he is brilliant, so that helps. Also he is not as socially awkward as most engineer-types are, but he does have the following of crazy girls that usually accompany very nice, nerdy guys, it's not his fault, but he is very patient with them, which I think if kind of cute. He is going to be graduating with his bachelor’s in biomedical engineering in December and just finished his senior research project two weeks ago. Teresa and Sue have been telling me for months that I should be dating Jeremy, and around mid January I decided they were right. But I have do come up with a plan.
The plan has been several months in the works, I started with the typical flirting at social functions, but I had to compete with the bizarre bazaar and I just don't do well with that. So I decided that I just needed to get him away from all those other girls as laying the smack down is not very becoming. So I started staying back, and letting him come to me, which he would do if he could break away from the gaggle of girls. After about a month of this, I decided I had to step it up, so I made dinner and invited a bunch of people over, you know trying to show interest but not be too forward. So we'll start with the dinner and the narrative can go from there.
Dinner consisted of about 16 people; I had to have my support group and enough guys there to justify the entire support group. And I can cook, so I made broccoli cheese soup for the first time ever and chili. So good, I haven't made any since but I will definitely have to do it again. Anyway, I am not sure how it happened but Jeremy and Jason ended up being there, but there were lots of other people so I was able to pretty much ignore Jason without actually ignoring him. My cute friend Marshall plays the guitar, so we had a show and it was great. Most importantly Jeremy was totally impressed with my cooking, and I'm cute, so that helps.
So we start talking more and texting more, but he still isn't asking me out. What I failed to take into consideration is that Jeremy is an engineering student, with a huge research project he is right in the middle of, as well as other classes. He really doesn't have time to date anyone or do anything outside of school.
What is a girl to do? After spending a couple of weeks in a quandary, I decided to ask Cody. Cody always has a plan. So I whine for like an hour, and then Cody tells me about a class he took at BYU. I don't remember the class, but the important thing is that in this class his teacher gave his students a method to accelerate the dating process. What the pursuer would do is make sure that he/she had contact with the pursuee every day for a week. Contact could be a phone call, but preferably would constitute some sort of face-to-face interaction. Each interaction would need to include at least one sincere complement. During the week it was also necessary for the pursuer to do one extraordinary thing for the pursuee. One of three things will occur:
1. The pursuee will get freaked out and tell the pursuer to back off
2. The two would become very good friends, with the pursuee reciprocating the thoughtfulness exhibited by the pursuer.
3. You're dating.
Now this theory is all well and good, but what if the pursuee is legitimately unavailable for face-to-face contact every day for several weeks and the pursuer is impatient? Well if the pursuer is me, and let’s face it... it is me... she takes this plan adapts it to her situation and hopes for the best. So this is what I decided I needed to do.
Instead of a week, I took the time frame of a month. I also have brought in some of my other theories and melded them into the greatest pursuit plan I have ever devised (Becker, I know you'll be impressed, Wes will think he's not worth my time and do girls really do this, and Jecca will just laugh at me).
Some aspects of Cody's original plan are solid, and need to be conserved. First, I have to make sure that I am doing something special for him every week, and within this month I have to do two extraordinary things. Contact needs to be made five out of seven days per week, this will include phone calls and face-to-face, seeing him at church only counts if I learn something new about him and physical contact is made. Texting does not count but should be incorporated into the overall communication aspect of the plan. Of these five contacts per week, 4 of them must have a sincere compliment. Lastly, I need to ask him to do something for me, not anything big or time consuming, but I must have something that causes him to help me in some way.

So I think all I need to recap on is the cute things I did for him. Week one, I made dinner and took it to him at school since he was just too busy to get dinner. Positive things, I didn't have to try to find the engineering building he met me at the institute... so eating on the lawn was a bit awkward but I didn't see anyone I knew. So he didn't have time to get dinner on his own but he found an hour and a half to spend with me. And the time was just with me, I didn't have to compete with other girls for attention. Also the fact that I thought to take him dinner at school makes me thoughtful, creative, and sets me apart from all those other weirdoes. I'm in a class of weirdness all by myself.
His thesis was due the next week, and I mentioned that I wanted to see the poster he had to make for his presentation. So the cute thing he did was he made a color copy of his poster and brought it to church so I could see it and be impressed. My nice thing for week two was I sent him a note to congratulate him, and to let him know how much I enjoyed going to dinner with him and that I appreciated he had made a special effort to make sure I saw his poster.
That weekend was conference weekend so he invited me to watch the Saturday morning session with him and some of his friends... yes they were all girls! So positive things for this experience include, he took me to a function that some other girl invited him to, the other girl made an ass of herself, and then she had to watch Jeremy take me home. That was good.
Week three I made ransom brownies, that means I made brownies, let him know they existed, and if he wanted them he'd have to come and get them. That weekend also turned out to be the weekend he had to do something for me. Beckee's aunt passed away so my Mom was flying out to Spokane so Rochelle could come back to be at the funeral. This wouldn't have been a problem, except my mom was supposed to pick up Lindsey from the airport the day after she left and therefore needed someone to fill that void. Happily I was able to do that, but with picking up Lindsey on Friday and a funeral to go to on Saturday, my very open weekend turned into a very busy weekend and I was pretty stressed. Jeremy put up with my crying to him multiple times. He did a good job too. Other positive things we discussed my migraine issue (it kind of came up when I had blondies for me a brownies for him) which I really haven't discussed with anyone outside my family and roommates. For me, that is huge!
Last week (Saturday) I made a finals week survival kit, for dead/finals weeks... this coming week being finals week. I used all my best scrapbooking skills to make it awesome! And in week three I found out that he really isn't a treat lover so I made sure I got him less treat like snacks (so jerky and granola bars instead of chocolate and gummy worms). I also included a stress ball and motivational note cards for each day of the two week process. It was a lot of fun to make and I want to thank all of you who were so supportive! I was very stealthy in dropping it off, right up until the motion sensor lights came on when I hit the porch. Wes, I just want the record to show... I'm fast enough. Jeremy loved it! But he felt bad because he only has one final, and I spent more time preparing that box than he was going to spend on studying for one test. I told him to give it back.
This week I have been laying low, he had his test today and he really did need to study for it. So I figure I am being supportive by not being distracting. But, he called me on Monday to ask me to go dancing next Tuesday... because he can... we'll see if he still likes after he finds out I don't dance well...