Photo wall 4.0

Today was spent on the beginning stages of my new photo wall, or as I like to call it Photo Wall 4.0 - it's a pretty original name, I know. Each year of college the wall has gotten slightly bigger and grander. Every summer I try to print out all the best pictures from the last year. Somehow this summer I missed doing that, though. It's a shame because I had some great adventures in the last year. (I'm sure I'll get them printed off in the next couple weeks or so.)

A photo wall has become integral to any room I stay in for a prolonged period of time. It's the perfect way to decorate, though it does take quite a long time. I spend hours every year assembling photo walls, usually accompanied by some TV show on Netflix or a bunch of different music. Today the shows were White Collar and Arrested Development. The music was by Jackson Browne, Good Old War, Jason Mraz, City & Colour, Of Monsters and Men, Gavin DeGraw, The Lumineers, Brandon Flowers, Luke Conard, Charlie McDonnell, James Vincent McMorrow, and Passion Pit.

When my photo wall is complete, my room is complete. This year I get to share its completeness w/ Becca. It's going to be one heck of a year.

Another interesting thing that happened today was getting to see my lovely friend Grant. He came over so I could help him get into his girlfriend's old apartment so he could get some of her stuff. Sadly, we couldn't get in but we spent a good hour or so devising ways to do so. (Okay, so essentially we were trying to "break in" but I don't know if it really counts as breaking in when you use a butter knife connected to some string shoved through the top of the door to try and lift the dead bolt. We tried it on my door a bunch and got it to work but the door to her apartment fit snugly into the frame, so all our hard work was for naught.) Though let's get real: Grant was devising ways to get in while I stood/sat there talking to him about his new job, his girlfriend, and the great many number of boys who are currently in my life. ("Great many number" being sarcasm and meaning basically zero but kind of one because I only talked to one boy all summer though that doesn't really count. Suffice it to say, it's complicated.) It was great to see Grant and catch up a little bit.

My day got even better when I checked the mail for the first time at my new apartment. Lo and behold, I had a letter from the amazing Katie! Thus far we have been excellent at writing each other. Now that I'm back in Utah, we're literally a mile from each other, though she's basically locked away in missionary training prison. Luckily that means letters will take literally a day to get to each other. I'll probably spend a bunch of time tomorrow replying to her.

That's all I've got for now. I'm feeling pretty great about BEDA this year. I've had a good number of varying topics and for the most part my posts have generally been of an acceptable length. I hope all you people out there reading, you know, all 2 or 3 of you, are enjoying what I have to say.

Last YouTube video I watched: Safe & Sound cover by Luke Conard & Alex Goot

Heading back to Utah

In just about one week I will be making the journey back to Utah for my junior year of college. It's incredible to think I've already done this twice before. I am an upperclassman. I will have more time in college than I have left in college. That's a very strange thought to process. In fact, it does not compute.

As I try to even wrap my head around returning to school, I think back to when I was doing it for the first time. It's gotten to the point where I can't imagine a life without college, most especially without the people I've met while attending. Do you guys go through that? You try to imagine what your life would be like without certain people, without having gone through certain events or trials . . . And you just can't. College is a time in which you meet the people who will be your friends for the rest of your life. It's an even more formative time than high school is. There are some friends from my childhood, from high school, who I will know for the rest of my life but when it comes down to it, the majority of my lifetime friends will have come from university days.

Perhaps my favorite part about preparing for school is getting all of my pictures together. I'm known in my group of friends as the one who has a gigantic photo wall. It's my pride and joy of decoration. I can spend hours putting pictures up, looking through my photo album, deciding the pattern and how things are arranged. I almost spend weeks doing it. I even change out photos during the school year. Tomorrow I'm picking up my prints for my new wall. I always make additions after each school year, inevitably making the wall bigger and bigger. I wouldn't have it any other way.

Here's my freshman year photo wall. This is nothing compared to what it was sophomore year.

Last YouTube video I watched: Gorilla eats girl