The open mouthed smile

Tonight I was looking through photos from my birthday earlier this year. You know, the one where I threw a freaking cake on the ground and then my friends and I all ate it. I came across this photo.

The lovely young fellow goes by the name of Jeff and he's one of the only friends I truly made sophomore year of college but that's a story for another day. Jeff really has nothing to do with this story either; he just also happens to be in the picture.

The point of this story is my smile. In all honesty, I didn't know I would be in this picture. I was just looking at my friend taking a picture of Jeff holding up a beautiful frosting flower. That makes it all the better. How often are real smiles ever captured on camera? We all know it's not that often. It's one of the reasons why I try to take lots of candid pictures.

I don't mean to get even more self-centered and narcissistic with this post, which isn't that much of a leap since this is a blog about my life, but looking at this picture again made me realize that was the night I found out I could pull off an open mouthed smile. My upper and lower teeth are not touching. And it works.

This leads me to believe that my true smile is not a teeth clenched together dealio like people seem to do so often. A great number of people can pull if off as well. Not everyone can pull off the open mouthed smile, though; I've seen my fair share of not so great pictures as evidence.

Reading back what I've just written makes me feel kind of weird. It was just one of those things I kind of noticed and wanted to point out to everyone else; when I look at this picture it's like you can feel how happy I was. That's not something you see with random pictures. Sure, engagement photos and wedding photos you get that, but not in photos you were unaware were being taken.

I should probably just go to sleep . . . But another thing I love about this picture is that Jeff and I are kind of matching. It was completely unplanned, I assure you, but we totally are.

In it to win it

Yeah, that's right. I'm feeling hardcore about blogging again. (Take that, Becca!) I will be blogging every day. Guaranteed. I figure now is a good time to explain that while I'm road tripping back home I might not have Internet for a few days, so even if I don't post anything by the end of those actual days, know that I have stuff written down in a journal from the specific day that will be posted to make up for it.

It was a pretty good day to say the least. I got free Hawaiian pizza and an apple. I had lunch w/ my fandom friend Hannah at which time she tried to convince me to go to LeakyCon. (It's a decision that's been killing me, though in the end I don't think I'll be able to make it happen.) I had my last Spanish class of the semester and I got a 93 on the test we took and corrected; class even ended early. Even with class ending early, it still took me until about 3:30 to finish my big geography project that's due tomorrow. We got to use this cool program call ArcMap that's basically a geography nerd's dream. When I got back to my apartment I decided to eat some German chocolate crunch ice cream; it was awesome.

And now here I am, bloggin' it up. I've watched a few videos while writing this, all by the lovely Matthew, aka booshoe37, who I am pretty much in "YouTube love" with, meaning I have to watch all his videos and sometimes we talk in comments and I tweet about stuff he does and sometimes he responds. It's a great relationship. (Honestly though, I like to think that Matt and I would be friends in real life.)

Can you guys even believe that we're already a week into BEDA? I've blogged seven days in a row! It feels great. Disregard last night's lameness.

And one last thing for today: I know I wrote an entire post about my birthday but I never showed you guys this epic video that explains how great the night REALLY was. Enjoy.

veinte

I'm twenty years old today. What an epic day it was, too.

I woke up at 5:50 to go to the temple w/ Bex and her roommate. It's become a great Thursday tradition to hit up the Provo Temple every morning. I would venture to say it's probably the best decision I've made this year. By the time we got back it was about 8:30, giving me just enough time to shower, watch some Rhett and Link, eat Cheerios and leave for my 10 o'clock class.

After class I met up with my freshman roommate, Sara, for lunch. We ate a lot of graham crackers.

I still had an hour until my next class so I hit up the library, sat in a comfy chair, listened to my iPod and read my Andre Agassi autobiography. It was a blissful hour of reading.

The best part of the day came when my Spanish class that usually runs from 1:00-2:20 got out FORTY MINUTES EARLY.

I came home and checked the mail, giving me a lovely little birthday package from home. My dad and mom are the best. I got some epic snacks, the greatest one being a caramel apple covered in cashews and dark chocolate. SO GOOD. With my roommate Hailey I got Taco Bell for lunch; while eating I caught myself up on Community and 30 Rock. I then spent hours and hours catching up on YouTube. I miss so many videos during the week! School is so crazy these days that I'm lucky to even look at the homepage.

Around 4 or 5 I decided it was time to film a video. A year ago I made a video about all the things I'd done in my 18th year of life. Since I have my fancy Flip cam, I made one for my 19th year of life as well. I think it turned out pretty well and I'm really happy with the music I used for the soundtrack. It's publishing to YouTube as I write this; there are 29 minutes left.

Once I filmed and edited, which took me quite a while, I finally decided it was time to eat some dinner. This was at almost 7 o'clock. My roommates and I got out the Oreo and mint ice cream cake and a few people came over from next door to eat it with us. It was awesome. Then I made real dinner: mostaccioli and roasted garlic tomato sauce.

And now I'm writing this blog while watching the Shaytards and waiting for 9 o'clock, at which time my friends will start coming over and we will be partying it up, doing things like THROWING A CAKE ON THE GROUND. Yeah, we are seriously doing that, a la Saturday Night Live and Andy Samberg.

What an epic birthday, probably one of the best in a while. I miss Matthew a lot, though that's nothing new. Last year he really made my birthday special. I'm sure it will be plenty special this year, just in a different way.