Lucy and Ethel went to D.C.... in the rain.

My mom, my aunt, and my cousin came out to visit me in D.C. a little over a week ago. They happened to bring with them rain, sleet, wind and temperatures in the forties. Let's see, humidity + wind chill + temps in the 40s = DANG COLD.

We had many adventures and ended up losing/breaking/demagnetizing two umbrellas, a camera, two metro cards, and quite nearly our sanity.

But it was really great to see my family and show them around the city I love, even if it was colder than spit.

In the Capitol rotunda. Dayna inspecting her camera after a mishap with...dropping it on the floor.

Good ol' Brigham Young

The cool little train-ish thing we got to take under the Capitol. (We didn't want to walk outside, it was cold and wet!)

Trying to manage umbrellas, cameras, blankets in the wind and rain.

Confession: HSM

There I said it. It's out in the open. I like the High School Musical (HSM) movies.

No, you don't understand. I really like the HSM movies.

I like the energy, I like the dancing, I like the music, I like the cheesy jokes, I like the you-are-not-locked-into-your-stereotype theme, I like that it's fun, and I think Zac Efron* is dreamy.

For those of you scoffing right now, my defense is this:

• There are worse things to be obsessed with (e.g. Halo, Facebook, RPGs).

• High school IS overly dramatic, cheesy, contrived, fun and ridiculous, remember?

• If I lived my life solely to please others( i.e. pretend not to like HSM as much as I really do), I would deprive the world of the many refreshing quirks in my personality.

*For the record, Zac Efron is older than me.

Even I'm flabbergasted

I have 167.5 credits at BYU.

I still have three semesters left.

HOLY. COW.

On looking Scandinavian

A few weeks ago someone asked me where my family was from. After replying that I grew up in Utah, he asked where my ancestors were from. I told him my dad's side comes from Norway. He looked pleased and started nodding, "ah, that's where the eyes are from."

I was surprised by our conversation because I don't look tremendously like anyone in my family. How could I look like my great-grandpa was born in Norway?

Then, after weeks of arranging schedules and one random run-in on the metro, I found (or rather, re-found) a cousin who proved that I wasn't adopted from Norway and shipped to the U.S. as a child.

Ahem. I present to you--the nebulous, expansive internet--Jenna and Lynne, the floaters in the Gabrielsen gene pool:

Ice cream in Annapolis (bless the person who invented chocolate fudge)

Okay, I'm not related to this guy, but I was drawn to him all the same...

In front of the Nited States Aval Academy.

The little things

It's official: the starbursts (tropical, of course) that I keep at work have gone stale.

This is great news because it means I didn't consume the entire bag in 48 hours, like I did with my last candy purchase (mini-heath bars).

It's the little things in life that make you happy.

My favorite street performers

Like most big cities, D.C. has a few street performers. Some play jazz on a trumpet or saxophone with a back track, one guy plays his steel drum, and as you saw in a previous post, some play crystal glasses.

But these guys are my favorite. Everytime I come across them, I want to buy their album, but I never have any cash!

At least this time I had a camera. Here is a glimpse of their genius.

Older men hit on younger women here. And it's weird.

For your enjoyment, an anecdote to illustrate my small-town, Utah naivety:

It was my second week in D.C. I had just gone to my first hearing on the Hill and was riding home on the metro. I was wearing a fantastic suit from Calvin Klein and carrying my laptop, so I imagine I looked a few years older than 21.

I stood up because my stop was coming up, and as I did so, a man stood up to give me something. At first I thought he was just being nice and trying to give me his old metro pass, because he said, "I think you should take this." He had a weird look on his face. Enough to make me wonder if he was all the way "there" mentally, even though he looked well enough put together.

I realized that he was handing me a business card, not a metro pass.

I stupidly said something like, "are you sure don't need this?"

He replied, "take it if you ever need a contact in the military". And then smiled a weird smile. Yep, I thought, lost his marbles.

As I was riding the escalator up to the surface, staring at this business card, "Dept. of Defense, Saudi Arabia Program Director," I realized what had just happened and gasped out loud.

And then I laughed, because it's not every day that I get hit on by a military officer in his 40s.

Superman: Ride of Steel

At our half-priced, frightmares, Six Flags extravaganza on Saturday, my favorite ride was "Superman: Ride of Steel."

The only thing that was more unsettling than the sharp drops and completely horizontal loop-de-loops is the fact that the rollercoaster kept breaking down. Not what you want to hear whilst cheating death at 50 mph.

Oh, and the only thing cooler than this ride? Riding this ride at night! Zooming along the track with the g-forces pushing at your head and the wind pushing tears out of your eyes in the pitch black is like Space Mountain on steroids.


Needless to say, we went four times.

I also enjoyed "Batwing," a roller coaster where you are lying down and flying face down along the track.




It was AWESOME.

I was disappointed not to see a Spiderman ride, but Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne were definitely good to us at Six Flags America.

I met Jim Matheson

It was a Tuesday.

I sat there in a white plastic chair shivering in the Great Room of the Barlow Center. I did have on a pink cardigan, but every time I best the air conditioning machine by wearing appropriate clothing it has to show me up and turn itself a few degrees colder.

But nevermind, I looked around the crowded room. You could tell most people were students and you could tell most people were LDS. The few who didn't fit the mold were probably also people of religion, come to hear a Congressman discuss how his faith affects his public service.

The Congressman was late, as he was voting in the Capitol building moments before arriving.

He flashed a 100-watt, billboard-quality smile at everyone in the room and sat down in the front.

After a prayer, song, intro etc, the Congressman gave about a 20-minute address on the importance of giving back to the community, in whatever capacity possible.

He opened it up for questions. Within five seconds, someone asked him about the role of government in regards to health care. Later on, he would get questions about social issues (someone essentially asked how he could be a democrat and reconcile himself with the Church), gerrymandering, more health care, and the sensational partisanship that pervades elections. Someone even gave him a chance to publicly criticize the Obama administration. (He didn't take it.)

Being a skillful politician, he handled every question well. He answered intelligently, clearly, and with a minimal amount of corny jokes. He avoided the questions he didn't want to answer. He used charming anecdotes to support his points. He gave enlightening responses to the health care questions, expressed his frustration with the extreme talking heads on cable "political" shows, and suggested that we won't see truly moderate candidates (and he feels that most Americans are truly moderate) until state legislatures stop drawing mostly-partisan district lines in order to encourage real competition after the primary.

He seemed to understand that, being a politician, you can't please everyone, and that a lot of the people there walked into the room with their minds made up. He handled even the most provocative questions with grace. As I mentioned before, there were a few bad jokes, but as I've learned, politicians are very good at self-deprecating jokes even when they're yelling ar each other. They wouldn't get anywhere if they lost their marbles every time they disagreed with someone.

After the closing prayer, I aggressively went up to shake his hand and to ask for a picture before anyone else. (And I was the first.)

Being a politician, I knew he would agree.

Note: I didn't feel like this picture was particularly flattering, so I changed it to sepia. Everything looks better in sepia.

At the end of the night, I felt confident that Rep. Matheson was very smart, very articulate, and mostly a good guy.

I hope I can volunteer next fall to help him get re-elected. (Since I can't even vote for him--I'm not in his district!)

"Saying it looked good for a Communist building is like saying, 'you don't sweat much for a chubby girl"

I just got on facebook and saw that one of my most entertaining and engaging professors is retiring in December. I took an honors lit class from Prof. Alan Keele the semester after I got back from Jerusalem. I wish I had written down all of the things he said that made me laugh or that made me think. He is a different "breed" of professor at BYU, but because he is different, he is invaluable. I think BYU's students were lucky to learn from him over the past few decades.

Here are some of the quotes in the facebook group I just joined ("Alan Keele was my professor)

(Btw, there are many more where these came from, but I simply can't remember them! Just imagine every single class full of definitely biased commentary from a center-left professor at an extremely conservative school. It was fun.)

"The only thing [the TA] said that I disagree with is that the papers look pretty good."
"Here the logic slides sideways off the page."
"One time this actually made sense; forget about it now."
"My brother who is a retired religion professor and is suspicious of me gave me his usual lecture…"
"It’s actually a real accident of history that we aren’t all speaking Turkish right now."
"Can you see the problem with damning people to hell for old times?"
"Mormons need to be inoculated against believing the wrong things."
"There’s an infinite number of things you can do wrong in this class."
"My son and I spent two weeks in Spain randomly riding trains from one mosque to another and also admiring the beautiful women."

and my personal favorite...

"Saying it looked good for a communist building is like saying, 'You don't sweat much for a chubby girl.'"