the housing gods are on our side

So recently I have decided to extend my stay in P-town. Before this point, I had not planned on staying around, therefore I had not extended my contract at my current location. The place where I am currently living is great, very spacious and comfortable. But of course the management had sold my place to someone else back in March. My current roommate and I realized (a little late) that if we were both staying around that we should be looking for new housing. But with housing in this community...if you snooze, you loose. We started looking this last Sunday, and were not having much luck. Not only is it difficult to find a decent contract for one person, it is near impossible to find something for two people in the same apartment. Our rigorous search continued to no avail. We were soon realizing that the only building with vacancies just might be The Truman (see below).


This place is seriously straight out of a horror film. Honestly it is one of the most terrifying places I have ever been. I am sick now just thinking about it. But what made me really sick was the thought that I might be forced to house here.

But today we finally had some success. I had been emailing this complex who according to their message, had an available room for my roommate and I. It had been days and I had not heard anything back from them. Just as we were loosing all hope of normal and affordable housing, today they told me that the contracts were still for sell and that we could sign. I nearly fainted after reading this. These past few days have been very stressful because of this housing crisis. But it looks like the housing gods were looking down on us. What a relief. Sorry Truman, no haunting for us this year. But I should look into throwing my Halloween party there this year...


Just what I have always wanted...

My very own live in maid. My roommate Emily has kindly taken on the task of being my little Mexican maid or "criada".

Here she is at work




Please take note of the authentic Mexican shirt that she is wearing. Absolutely one of the best things to happen in my life. I am working on her english and perfecting her smoothie recipes.

The New Frontier of Pedicures

This morning as I was filling my water bottle at work, I watched as Fox ran this story on the TV.

http://www.foxnews.com/wires/2008Jul21/0,4670,FishPedicures,00.html


I could not contain my laughter over the thought of this. I came back to my cubicle, looked up this article, and continued to laugh for the next few minutes as I read on. Really, carp eating away at scaly feet...and 5,000 people have already tried this? I could not believe that this was real.

For anybody who has ever thought a pedi was ticklish, I can only imagine that this would be a million time worse.

Also, I hate to sound like a crazed animal activist, but how humane is it for these poor carp to be starved, then be forced to feed on dry skin off people's feet. I am starting to get very queasy at the thought...

Overall, I am not sure how I feel about this innovation in the health and beauty field.

Now Serving Dinner Mints


That's right you read it, McDonalds now serves after dinner mints.




I guess that they are really trying to up the classy factor, and of course Mickey D's knows that giving people mints with their meal is just the ticket. I am just waiting for the cloth napkins to show up.

I <3 Leslie Feist

At just over the year mark, I got to see my favorite artist perform again. And let me just say that she did not disappoint...

Several songs were from her sophomore album Let it Die. This was the album that introduced me to her so naturally I was very excited. "Secret Heart", "When I Was a Young Girl", and "Let it Die".

And of course she played the majority of her songs from The Reminder, her newest album.


This included songs like "My Moon My Man", "1, 2, 3, 4", "I Feel It All", and "Limit to Your Love".

She and her band do a great job of entertaining the crowd. Over all the concert was fantastic and made me love her even more. Here are some pics from the night.


my anchor



"This was no act of God. A person did this..."




On Saturday I found the most fabulous pair of earrings at the flower basket (a cute little boutique/flower shop). I wore them for a few hours that night and then decided to wear them on Sunday to church. And somewhere along the way, I lost it.
I lost one of my darling new earrings.

The saddest thing is that I only wore them for a total of 4 hours (at the most). I guess this lone earring will come in handy for dressing up as a pirate.

My Fave 5...

moments of the Heart and Journey Concert last Friday night.


#5. The performances

First Heart...



And then Journey...


#4. The bridging of the generation gap


The mother-daughter bonding


The group of twelve year old boys on the left and the group of 40 year old women in the background. (Also I would like to note the dude with his hands crossed on the right, clearly he realized that we were not trying to take pictures of ourselves.)


And Finally...


The "Daddy-Daughter" date behind us...No father and daughter should kiss like that! Too sketchy for words.


#3. The Lovin

This went on through all of Heart's performance, then they stepped out to do who knows what...


#2. "F off I'm Taken"
I guess her significant other should give her a shirt that says that, especially if she is going to be out dressed like that.

#1. Too much re-living of the good old days

we realized that these two had way too much to drink...this was very apparent for two reasons. First because they could not find a proper place to use the restroom (behind someones car does not equal appropriate) and secondly because they had a real hard time getting up the hill after.

see a penny pick it up...

Still no luck on fixing my blog...but don't worry I'll still be blogging away. I apologize for the difficulty in reading my posts.

night of the 3rd, morning of the 4th

A wise co-worker of mine once said, "I didn't know that I got tickets to Jackass-apolooza, but I definitely caught the show."(Thanks to Zeb for the best quotes ever!)



This is exactly how I would describe my night out on University Ave. This is my fourth summer in Provo and I have never seen such chaos on the night before the parade.

If you would like to read more about these events, go to my friend Michael's blog for more info/pics.

Dreams and Dodgeball

I have to start off by saying that I often remember my dreams. This is mostly due to the fact that my dreams are very vivid. I find myself hardly able to distinguish between what is real and what is not. With that said, Last night I dreamt that I got a tattoo.

The whole time I felt like this was all really happening. Not so much the pain of getting a tattoo, as I have never felt that in my life, but more of the emotion of getting the tattoo. There were several feelings that overcame me as I was preparing to get this tattoo. First of all, I was very excited about actually getting a tattoo. Also there was this rush that went through me...probably because I was doing something that I knew I shouldn't, Like I was breaking a major rule. It would be my greatest rebellion and I felt very good about it.

I decided that I wanted a small little number on the left side of my thigh. I don't know why exactly, but I thought that would be the most discrete place that I could place a tattoo. My memory of the actual design I had picked is fuzzy, but I do remember thinking that it was perfect and exactly what I wanted.

And there I was in the tattoo parlor, getting my tat done. I did not look until they had the first outline of it done, and at that first glace I was horrified. The tattoo was completely different from what I had previously chosen. What first set me off was the size of it. What I had chosen was probably only the size of a half dollar, what had actually been done took up almost the entire length of my thigh. Then I started to realize that the tattoo was nothing like the design that I had wanted. It was this circular shape with leaves coming off the top. But the weirdest thing was what was inside of the circle...and there they were, five aliens standing around. Immediately I thought "This is terrible, this is not what I wanted and this will have to be removed". I regretted ever having this done. I worried about how I would ever hide this on my leg when I wear skirts or shorts. I was ashamed of what I had done and realized that this was not worth breaking the rules for. I did not know what I was going to do, but I knew that I could not let them start on the next layer. Just as the tat artist came back to start I woke up. I woke up thinking that I had really gotten this tattoo done. I also felt the urgency in figuring out the removal process. It was about then that I realized that it was all just a dream and a very weird one at that. Like I said, my dreams are very real and this was no exception.

So now on to the dodge ball part...

Today at work we played dodge ball. I had decided that I was not going to really get involved. I thought that I would just kinda start at the back and be more of a support to the team. However, this attitude is not in the Kauvaka genetic make up. We are born competitors. Once the game started, I could not help but get really into it. I got 5 people out by catching balls that they had tried to throw at me. I felt pretty good and naturally my team was victorious. I think my favorite part was the bonding that occurred from dominating another team. You never know you could feel so close to coworkers until you play a round of dodge ball with them. Plus there is always the satisfaction of nailing that person at work that always drives you crazy...