Education Week and Mt. Timp

When I got back to Utah, I noticed pamphlets of Education Week going around. The week was fun, full of motivation and a real spiritual boost. I figured it was time to start applying as many of the principles I learned as possible to make myself a better person.

One of the seminars I attended was about making college scholarship material that would be reusable on several applications and "wow" the panel/committee who decided who got money. One of the things the brother talked about was rephrasing to make accomplishments/roles sound impressive while keeping them honest and not puffed up.

For example, if you were a Laurel class president you could say:
"I was president of the local chapter of the largest organization in the United States for women ages sixteen to eighteen".

Sounds good huh?

I had been invited previous to that night to take a midnight hike up Mount Timpanogos-- one of the largest peaks in Utah-- and try to hit the summit to watch the sun rise. When I was sitting on my couch with a book in hand and a box of truffles in my lap this sounded plausible. Sure I could hike 18 miles, though I had never hiked that far and hadn't even done a short hike in about 6 years.

So off I went, thinking this would be so much fun. Let's just say this was a tall mountain. A very, very tall mountain. (Or as that brother would have put it, it was a high peak of a challenging distance.)
One of the guys in the group was very patient, coaching me along as everyone else went up ahead, to meet the other half of the group who had camped out for the night. I thought I was doing okay until we started to hit some rocky ground. "Okay, we have to go up this slide of rocks," he said, after scouting out where the trail picked up. As far as I was concerned it wasn't where it was supposed to be.

I started to implement the idea of rephrasing the comments. As I prepared myself for the steep climb up the loose rocks, I thought, "I will ascend the stony way."

Later, as we were getting closer to Emerald Lake and my feet felt like lead, my legs like rubber, I told myself, "I am unbalanced and at a loss for energy."

As everyone else went the last couple hours to the summit, I used someone's sleeping bag and slept in a little shed built by the glacier lake. Instead of worrying about the hard, concrete floor, I changed the content to "a quaint little one room cabin on the edge of an exotic body of water."
After a few hours of rest, I got a head start to where a couple of people were waiting for us to meet up with them. While giving me directions, one of the guys told me to walk along the edge of the cliff. I asked him politely if he would tell me to “take the path along the ledge,” instead.

Through this method of easing the terminology I was able to make it safely back to civilization with the knowledge that I probably shouldn’t have tried hiking Mt. Timp in the first place (what can I say… hindsight is 20/20).

Still, in the process I think I was able to prove that 1)what you learn can apply in all areas of your life and 2) It really does matter how you say things!

Cat and Dogs

No I didn't forget to pluralize the "cat" in the title. I have had a cat since my freshman year in high school. Her name is Sassy (though sometimes I call her Sassafrass... my brother used to call her the two year supply). My sister got a cat at about the same time along with the family dog we already had. Life was good for Sassy.

The dog eventually ran away and my sister's cat became feral. Sassy was promoted Queen of the castle and life was great.

Then came Cosby. I was on my mission when my mom went through empty nest syndrome and got herself a lhasa apso puppy. The first email from her after this purchase went something like this:

I got a new puppy. He's sooooooo cute! Your brother came home for a few weeks. My puppy is soooooooo cute!!! We hope you still have limbs after the mosquitos finish feasting on your flesh. I'll send pictures of the puppy soon because he's SOOOOOOOOOOOO CUTE!!!!!

I can't be held responsible for any abuse Queen Sassy edured, though she obviously held her own. The first thing I noticed when I came home was that my mom's puppy fought like a cat and steered clear of mine.

If this wasn't enough, my sister decided it would be fun to get a female Lhasa--which she named Belle-- and breed them at some point. Some point came unexpectedly this last December with a litter of 10 puppies. Though my mom cried at each parting, she consoled herself that she would get to keep one of them.

So we have three lhasa apsos in the house--Cosby, Belle, and Cooper. Cooper really likes Queen Sassy. He likes to think Sassy is his playmate. Sassy's lost her touch with training the beasts to leave her the heck alone. The following is a video of me trying to get her to fight back against the monster known as Cooper. I think she did a pretty good job:

Sassy Strikes Again

CATS RULE!

p.s. Because my sister pointed out it sounds like something not as nice, I'll clarify that I said "whop him sass"