December 16, 2012

• Christmas Lights

  I didn't get much sleep last night, I lost track of time and ended up going to bed WAY later than I wanted to. Needless to say when I woke up I felt like a certified zombie fresh out of the grave this morning. Six-thirty is not a good bed time for anyone. I guess I should expect to get a wake up call like I did today when my mom is around in the morning. She isn't here in the morning, so it is usually easier for me to sleep in. Today it was around 10:30am and I had turned off my first alarm an hour and a half earlier. I was so looking forward to getting at least 2 more hours of sleep, but my mom had other plans I guess. She opened my door and my eyes were assaulted by a sudden flood of bright light from the downstairs family room. I HATE being woken up this way, I end up being very grumpy for a half an hour every time someone disturbs my sleep like this. I was even more irritated because my second alarm just happens to go off a half an hour after she woke me up. I am not one to show my irritation to my family members unless if I need to though, so no one knew about my morning urges to practice kung-fu on everything in sight. Everything irritates me when I wake up like this, and I do mean everything.

  My dad made his famous home made buttermilk pancakes today, it made up for my not so great wake up call, big time. Everyone in my family absolutely adore his pancakes and waffles. We all grew up eating them, and he even makes the syrup himself, or gets it fresh and organic from Good Earth (it's the health food store my mom is a manager at).

  So the first few hours of my day were pretty boring, just listening to music, reading, surfing blogs on Xanga, doing some stretching, watching anime, and writing more stuff (I'll share my new poetry and stuff in a different post later). I don't feel the need to get into all that stuff, because I want to get into the good stuff now.

  So in the early afternoon I fell asleep with my towel on my head still after washing my hair. I didn't even think about it, I was such a zombie and everyone else had taken up the hot water, so it was like I had to shower outside in the North Pole. Anyway, that aside, I was lucky my towel was wet enough that my hair did not dry completely retarded.

  I was getting ready for the Tabernacle Choir Christmas Concert that is held every year in Salt Lake City. I didn't feel like messing around with my hair, I was still feeling a bit tired, so I just put it in a wet pony tail and got one of my headbands to keep the stray hair out of my face. I look better with my hair down, but today I didn't feel like thinking about it or caring that much. I cleaned out my purse, organized it, grabbed the 2nd book in Lisa Mangum's "Hourglass series" and put it in my purse. The book is called The Golden Spiral. I grabbed my cream colored fleece jacket out of the closet because it was really cold today with a fresh layer of snow, put on my boots and went upstairs. I ate something before I left, not much, just enough that i wouldn't get car sick on the way to SLC. I get the WORST car sickness on an empty stomach, it's horrid.

  My niece was in a horrible mood, and it took us a few minutes to get her and my other niece out of the door because of this. Everyone was kind of slow and in a bad mood today I think. We eventually got out the door and into our old 1999 Avalon (I know unreal). It seats 6 passengers, I am pretty sure that is why my parents bought it, because they hate vans and will avoid buying one if they can. I find it amusing that it can play cassette tapes. Natalie, my sister, and Ben were in the front. Kayla, Ben's mom and I were in the back. I plugged my earbuds into my iPhone and turned the sound up so I wouldn't have to listen to anything they were listening to or talking about the whole way there. Today's choice was 'Lady Gaga" radio on Pandora. Don't even ask me what possessed me to listen to that because I have no clue. All I cared about in the time we were driving to SLC is how badly I did not want to be stuck in the car with my sister's ex-husband and his stupid jokes. I usually don't mind stupid jokes, but his are just bad on another level and annoying as well.

  The sun illuminated the clouds and made them look very cool. There was a wall of dark clouds that were towards the west, but then the clouds suddenly got lighter towards the east and that caused a really cool effect the way the sun was shining. I had fun looking at that on our way to SLC.

  It took us a while to park the car, we made a few wrong turns on our way there. We eventually found our way, parked and then headed into the City Creek Mall. I have never been to the City Creek Mall before tonight, it was pretty cool. I didn't get a good look at it though, just the stuff on the way to the food court. I will have to visit there some other time I guess.

  This is pretty much the sight that we saw when we got in the 'Red Iguana' line at the food court. It was utter madness. We were in line for probably 15 minutes. Why they chose that I will never know.

  

  I'm not saying the food was bad, it's just there were so many other choices. I got a chicken enchilada, and a Dr. Pepper, and everyone else got similar stuff. We each got rice, and re-fried beans with our enchilada as well, it's just a standard thing I guess. Some nice couple was sweet enough to give us their table, it seated six and we had six people. We all enjoyed our food (it was spicy!), but ate pretty quickly because it was around 6:50pm and we had to be in our seats by 7:30pm.

  After eating we were all pretty much in a very big hurry. I wasn't too stressed or anything, I knew we would get there on time. I am not a very good night traveler so I was more preoccupied with not missing any drop offs or tripping over anything than I was with getting to the conference center.

  We got there, went through the line, showed our tickets, went through the metal detector, had our bags checked, and then went in and found our seats on the balcony. I was aware that since we didn't get there early we probably weren't going to get to sit on the edge of the balcony, but it was still a little disappointing somewhat. It was okay, but I wish we had been more careful about getting there early so we didn't have to sit all the way up where we sat.

  

  The concert is pretty much always cool. They have a guest singer, and a guest narrator every year. This year the narrator was Tom Brokaw, and the singer was a British singer by the name of Alfie Boe. The narrator narrates the story they have every year (every year it is different and always somehow tied to Christmas or giving), and also narrates the story of Jesus's birth. The guest singer does number with the choir, and some solos. Then there is always one organ solo that is always phenomenal, and also dancers, and other amazing stuff. The concert is always amazing and I am totally lucky to get to go every year and have both of my parents in the choir.

  We left right after it was done, the place was packed so it was crazy getting out. I asked my sister if we could go see the lights at temple square, and we all agreed to go and see them. The entrance to temple square was packed after the concert, it was so crazy, but we got in.

  Instead of describing the lights I took pictures.

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  
  

   

  A few people needed to use the restroom, so we decided to take a break from the lights and go take care of that. Here are some pictures of the building, we weren't there long. This used to be a hotel, but now it's the Joseph Smith Memorial building. My parents had their honeymoon here, it was a very nice hotel.

  

  

  

  

  Up on the 10th floor.

  

  The fountain and the view from each of the windows on the 10th floor. There were two fountains and two different windows, I only took a picture of one of the fountains though.

  

  The views from each of the two windows.

  

  

  After we were done we got a drink from the drinking fountain.

  

  Then we went back down the rather... fast elevator.

  
  

  We left the building soon after this and went towards the car. I took a few more pictures while we were walking.

  

  

  

  

  And a few when we were walking back through the mall.

  

  

  

  We got back to the car soon after the last photo was taken. I just sat there in the car looking out the window minding my own business. When we entered the parking lot earlier Ben couldn't get the drivers side window to open, so my sister had to get out of the car to get the ticket so we knew where to park. She accidentally dropped her cashmere scarf there at the entrance and didn't notice until a few minutes later. She thought she left it a the gas station back when we first left the house, but then remembered this. When we left the scarf was still there, and in good shape. This just shows you that there are a lot of good people still in the world that won't take other people's things. There were probably hundreds of people that went through the entrance of that parking lot and it is a valuable scarf, so that makes it even more amazing that it was still there.

  I was feeling kind of irritated and cranky from being around a large amount of people for hours, being an introvert my brain was starting to overload and get overstimulated and my tiredness was starting to catch up with me again. It didn't help that there were pretty talkative and noisy people in the car, I just wanted some peace, but they decided they wanted to sing Christmas songs in the car. I turned on Nightwish radio on my iPhone and cranked it up so most of it was drowned out. I was not in the mood for more Christmas songs, but apparently power metal was just fine.

  We were going to stop at McDonalds on our way back, but changed out minds when we got there. We just went straight home. When we got home (around 11:50pm) I kicked off my boots, put my stuff away, made myself a sandwich, and some tea and then went back downstairs. Anyway, here I am now just watching anime and I've been typing this for an hour and a half, just taking my sweet time.  It is around 2:30am now, I am going to change the date of this post though so it is in on the day I intended it to be on. I am rather picky about that apparently.

  It has been a crazy day, but fun at the same time. I would have loved to sleep more today, but I'm glad I chose to go to the concert instead. I am pretty sure I am going to sleep like the dead tonight. I wonder what kind of dreams I'll have tonight.

  • 1:59 AM
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