High School (I stole this from Jen)

Your High School's full name: Mountain Crest High School



High School Colors: Navy Blue and Orange



School Mascot: Mustangs



Did you date anyone from your school? Ha ha, need I be reminded of THAT mistake! Okay so through most of high school I dated a boy named Cameron (let's not talk about that again please...) and for the last few months I dated my friend Will and later (after High School) a friend named James.



It's Friday night where are you: Probably at a football or basketball game performing at halftime or hanging out with then boyfriend.



Were you a party animal: Ha ha, everone THOUGHT that the band members were such party animals because we always went "social drinking" after football games, competitions, performances, or just because. What they didn't know was that "social drinking" occurred at McDonald's and consisted of free water and icecream. Then we were told that we couldn't go to McDonald's anymore, so we moved our location to Arctic Circle for Junior and Senior year.



Were you considered a flirt: Apparantly I flirted without really knowing it. I just thought I was being nice, but other people thought I was always flirting.



Were you in band, orchestra, choir, or other group: I was in Band (clarinet! Yay!) and Colorguard. I loved them. Oh, and in Band I was on the Band Council as first the sophmore rep and then the Colorguard rep.



Were you in any clubs: Um, Band and Colorguard and Band Council?? (Can anyone say, geek?) ;)



Did you ever get expelled or suspended: Oh no, I played it safe. When I sluffed, I just told my mom and she would excuse me, or we would get our band director Mr. Bentley to write excuse notes for us (Thanks Mr. Bentley!)



Can you still sing the fight song: I could probably fumble my way through it, but mostly I know that I could probably still play it on the clarinet! Ha ha



Who were your favorite teachers: My band teachers, Mr. Bentley and Mr. Francis, then my colorguard instructors, Tiffany and then Bobbie Jo, and both AP Biology teachers, Mr. McMillan and the other one that I can't remember the name of...hmmm.



Where did you sit during lunch: At the band table, or when I sluffed band I would sit through both lunches with my bff Katie over by the al-a-carte line because the lunch ladies would give me the extra peanut butter squares! It's all in who you know...



Who was your prom date? As a sophmore I went with He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named or as my dad called him, "Speedbump", Junior year I didn't go because said bf didn't want to spend money on me, and Senior year I went with Will.



If you could go back and re-do high school would you: There's definitely things I would have done differently, like not date a certain someone ;), and I would love to be able to perform like I used to, I really miss that. Really though, I'm so happy now that I wouldn't want to go back and deal with all of that crap again.



Were you a nerd? Ha ha, please refer to the questions about what clubs I was in and you tell me if I was a nerd or not! ;)



Were you on any varsity teams? Varsity?? Hmm, Colorguard??



Where did you go senior skip day? I can't remember...I was probably either hanging out with my friends or at Will's apartment eating chips and salsa.



Have you gained some weight since then? LOL, why do you think I try not to post newer pictures!?!? Ha, yeah I've gained quite a bit of weight.



What do you remember about Graduation: Being pissed off that I had to play Pomp and Circumstance with the band because we only had 4 clarinets and 2 of us were graduating, then laughing because the drumline was sitting behind me making rude comments about all the people that were walking. Ha ha, it was awesome!



Are you planning on going to your 10 year reunion? Depends on how good I look. ;) Just kidding! I'll probably go. We'll see.

Intolerance

So, I really don't want anyone to get offended by anything I write here - just keep in mind that I'm trying to be fair and I'm talking in general, not pointing anyone out. Also, I'm not encouraging or discouraging who you vote for this November - as I myself have not decided who I will vote for myself, I don't want anyone to think that I am trying to convince you one way or the other in this very personal decision.

Now with the presidential election coming up, of course as always there are a lot of emails going around saying "Support him!" or "Vote for him because...". I really don't mind those - everyone has their opinions on the election and as long as they are promoting the good things in the election, then I'm all for it. However there seems to be a lot more of the emails in regards to "He's a bad person because..." "He's not a true American because..." "Can you believe that he believes in...". Up until now I've been quiet and frankly have just been deleting emails without reading them if I think that that's what they are going to be saying. That is until someone in my family decided to stand up to it. She wasn't harsh or demeaning, but she was realistic. Here's what she said:

"I found the e-mail about if Muslims can make good Americans completely offensive to me and to several friends that I have that are Islamic. Yes they are allowed to befriend others. What I learned from these people is how alike we are. I gave a talk from an Ensign Article about nine years ago in Smithfield called "On Islam" (I think). This was before 9/11. The foresight of the first presidency is incredible. The article pointed out how much we have in common and the values that we cherish. I will look the article up and forward it to everyone. Hopefully we can learn a little more understanding and tolerance before we leap to judgement and political rhetoric. Calling Barac Obama out for his religion is no different than say Mitt Romney would be subject to the Prophet's every whim if president or a Catholic would only answer to the Pope. Let's try not to be absurd."

I agree with this 100%, and frankly am so glad that it was said. As members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, or even just Christians or good people in general, how can we really support some of the slanderish emails that have been circulating? Deep down I'm sure everyone's thinking, "Well I just want to make sure that my rights are protected." That's just fine! By all means, send the emails saying "Look what this person is going to do for our country, rights and beliefs?" rather than resorting to prejudiced and bigotted opinions of people that we only hear from other ignorant closed-minded people? I'm just as guilty of this in the fact that I haven't said anything until now - just months before the election. I'm not saying that you have to vote for Obama or that you have to vote for McCain - this should be a very personal decision for everyone. Frankly I don't know who I'm going to vote for right now, but I can tell you that circulating emails that are prejudice or ignorant is not what's going to turn my vote one way or the other.

For those of you who are LDS, there have been countless talks on prejudice in the church. Here's some quotes that I found:

"In this gospel view there is no room for a contracted, narrow, or prejudicial"
-Howard W. Hunter The Gospel—A Global Faith

"It was George C. Marshall who wisely said, 'We must take the nations of the world as they are, the human passions and prejudices of people as they exist, and find some way to secure … a peaceful world.' Peace must be a triumph of principles."
-Marvin J. Ashton Peace—A Triumph of Principles

"We might deny ourselves a nearness to our Savior because of our prejudices of neighborhood or possessions or race—attitudes that Christ would surely condemn."
-David B. Haight Love All

"Prejudice is hardly new. But he also knew that until the surface features of habits and traits were accepted, prejudice would keep men apart."
-Victor L. Brown Jr. Minorities: A Latter-day Saint Definition

"President Spencer W. Kimball stated the Church’s position well: “We do wish that there would be no racial prejudice. Racial prejudice is of the devil."
-Alexander B. Morrison “No More Strangers”

These talks, while oftentimes are talking about prejudism within our own church, are just as meaningful to those not in our faith. Especially while looking at the history of the LDS church, and how our ancestors were treated when just trying to live and worship as they wanted. How can we then turn and speak of someone else in this manner?

Please, when voting this year for who will be our next president, all that I ask is that you don't vote for someone or not vote for someone based on the color of their skin, their religious beliefs, or any other petty argument. Remember when Obama first started running for president and there was a controversy over his middle name?!?!? That is just ridiculous! Don't let that sway your vote. Please Please Please Please, do your research! Vote for our next president based on his political views, not his religious. If you don't agree with either of them, then write in someone new!

Also remember that when the elections are over, regardless of who becomes our next president, that it is stated in Article of Faith #11 that, "We claim the privelege of worshiping the Almighty God according to the dictates of our own concience, and allow all men the same privilege, let them worship how, where or what they may."

Again, I just want to point out that this is not aimed at anyone directly, and that if you feel that I was aiming it at you then I wasn't. I hope I didn't offend anyone too much by this, and if so then I'm sorry, as this was not my intention. I just want to be fair.

If you want a post with pictures, then there's an update on my car below - much less heated post. :)

~M.

Welding

So Jon has been working night and day to get everything together for my car (sorry that my life is so boring that I have three posts about cars in a row!) Mostly he's been ordering parts and/or tools, which surprisingly has been really hard! Because it's such a new model we can't buy a lot of the part wholesale like we usually do. For example, we couldn't get the bumpers from our usual place (Intermountain AutoParts, I think it is), so we had to buy those from the manufacturer which was so expensive that Jon decided to just get a body kit for it. That was about $800! So yeah, it's been a job in and of itself just getting parts.



Last Monday we got the new quarterpanel, and yesterday Jon got his new welder! I'm thinking that he's enjoying getting new tools so much that he doesn't mind that I wrecked the car anymore! Ha ha! Anyway, we got up early this morning to start welding the quarterpanel onto the car. It was pretty interesting to watch, but I definitely am not a fan of sparks flying at me! Anyway, here's some pics:

So this is the quarterpanel before - Looks like someone crunched some tinfoil and then tried to lay it out flat again.

Jon had to cut the old quarterpanel off, and this is what it looked like afterwords - yikes!

The new quarterpanel after Jon glued it on - did you know that most of your car is actually GLUED together?? Jon says that the glue holds better than welds, but they usually do both for added hold - weld around the edges and glue for the bulk. I thought it was a little weird, personally...

Jon getting ready to weld! (BTW, he's wearing a jersey because he went to work right after and it's ESPN Gameplan day for DIRECTV)

This is Jon welding. It took a minute to figure out the new welder and then he went to town! He's not quite done - when he does I'll probably post those pictures too! :)

Anyway, that's all for now. I'm actually going to do another post almost immediately so you can read that in a minute. :) Bye!

New Car!!!

Hooray! Jon and I finally found a car that we can buy! It's a broken little car, but that's why I'm so glad that Jon is so talented when it comes to automotive repair. For those of you who didn't know, Jon used to work for an auto collision repair shop, so he is a professional autobody repairman! It's really come in handy, because the accidents that car-which-shall-not-be-named was is were all repaired by Jon! Plus we're getting a really nice car at a fraction of the price because it's broken and he's gonna fix it! :)
So the new car is a 2007 Mazda3. It's black with black leather seats (I know, sounds like a summertime sauna!), and it has the stereo controls on the steering wheel as well as seat warmers! It needs a bit of work - all on the passenger side of the car. It will need at least new front and rear bumpers, new passenger headlight and taillight, back windshield, passengerside quarterpanel, a new antenna, and some dents fixed. When we're done we'll have repainted the majority of the car (again, I'm so happy to have such a talented husband!) which means we can paint it any color we want. After painting El Diablo earlier this year, I'm not even nervous about helping!
Anyway, if you'd like to see it (for the time being), you can go to http://www.getwwa.com/vehicle_details/5216/MAZDA/MAZDA3. I just put the deposit down today, and we should be getting our loan approved within the next day or two (takes longer when you don't work the same schedule!) and then the car is ours! Once we get it I'll post some pictures, along with our progress as we fix it! :)
Well that's all for now!

R.I.P. El Diablo (aka: Monty the Cavelier)

In Memorium

So, some of you heard that I wrecked my car Monty (yes, that was his name even if you didn't know it). Well, it's true, I did. It was on the 18th of this month. Here's the story:

I was driving back from having dinner with my bff Katie, and I was heading west on hwy 201 at about 7:20pm. Some of you know that at this time the sun is directly in front of your face practically, so you don't see cars in front of you - you see a bright orange light and some shadows that you assume are cars or some sort of horrible monster. Usually they're cars. Anyway, it just so happens that there had been another accident that they police were still taking care of, so traffic was stop and go past there so everyone could "rubberneck" to see the damage. Once we passed the wreck, traffic started going faster. Thinking that we were done with the whole stop and go, I decide that I'm being completely blinded by the stupid sun, so I try to adjust my sun visor to cover it better. Well, because I was focusing on my visor and the sun, I didn't see the shadow cars in front of my come to a stop until it was too late. I had just enough time to see the cars, panic, slam on the breaks and then slam into the poor little Prius in front of me. Anyway, the people I hit yelled a lot - which I don't really blame them too much but I was afraid to talk to them because they were so angry - and one of the cops from the other accident came over and took care of us, but my car was leaking antifreeze and the driver's side headlight was dangling on the side of the car, so they had to tow it away and I had to call a neighbor to come to my rescue (thank you Lynsay!)

Now I didn't get a good look at the damage before it was towed away because frankly I didn't really want to know how bad it was - I was really upset about the whole thing and didn't want to make it worse. So the next day Jon and I (I got work off to take care of everything and see the doctor for whiplash) went down to the tow yard to look at it and the second I looked at it I decided that he - the car - was no longer Monty. No, now he was El Diablo. I'm convinced that this car is cursed and is not happy unless he's broken. Here's a rundown on his story:

1. When I bought him he had been a salvaged car from a front end accident, the damage reaching parts of the engine compartment as well as needing to replace the whole front end (fenders, hood and bumper).



2. After buying him, the air conditioning didn't work.



3. About a month after buying him, I was driving on Bangerter Hwy and after a stoplight was trying to shift from first to second and the clutch went down but didn't come back up. I had to drive from I-15 and Bangerter all the way to Redwood Rd in first gear because the clutch wasn't working. Apparantly a cable with clutch fluid had sprung a leak.



4. About a year after I bought him, while being polite at work and waiting for someone to pull out of their parking spot with plenty of room (keep in mind my car is in neutral and I'm just waiting), a Ford Explorer backs up into me. I saw him coming and blared my horn but he couldn't hear me over his music. He broke the bumper, the headlight, and dented the hood as well as the latch for the hood so it wouldn't catch on it's own - to close it you had to open the latch completely then shut the hood then close the latch. Then to top it off he gave me expired insurance and ran off, but because it happened on company property they couldn't even fine him for it!



5. A month (or less) after that, after Jon had bought a new replacement bumper and headlight (this is also when we found out that originally it had been replaced with 2002 parts instead of 2004), we were almost ready to paint the new bumper. We were at Jon's parents in Bluffdale (our house was still being revamped), so after wet sanding the bumper he told me to drive it out to our new house so we could paint it and that he would meet me there. Well, I got onto Bangerter Hwy and right about the time I hit 65mph, my hood flew up into my windshield, shattering the window inwards, wrapping the hood around the car and denting the top of my car in about 6 inches. Luckily there was about four inches under the hood that I could still see so I was able to pull over to the side safely. A cop drove by me and didn't even help, by the way.



6. Last winter - approximately 1 1/2 years after purchasing him - Jon is driving back from school. The car in front of him has to hit his breaks hard and is sliding a bit. Now even though there was more than 2 car lengths between him and the car in front of him, when Jon hit his breaks he slid all the way into the other car. He only needed about another foot to stop, and barely tapped the guy, but for some reason the other guys car didn't even have a scratch, but half of our bumper blew up/broke off. The cop just laughed at him for it because it looked so ridiculous.



And that brings us to the incident I first mentioned. So, it is with great happiness that I tell you that El Diablo has been declared a total loss. Hooray! Now, while this does mean that I have to buy a new car and I'm completely broke so that kind of sucks, I'm just glad that I'm not longer having to drive a kamikaze car anymore. I think Monty was just unhappy that he was yellow at first, and he had a trailer hitch that made absolutely no sense. Of course, we painted him black this year, and it didn't make a difference, so yeah. I love that Jon can paint and fix cars...Anyway, rest in peace El Diablo, your work is finished until they fix you and sell you to some other poor sap who can deal with your curse. :)