Laura 5.0

Isn’t it interesting the different paths our lives can take? I recently received an invitation to dinner from a girl I haven’t seen since I graduated college…the first time. We studied archaeology together. I know, right? There was more than one of us? For your information, there were at least 4 – four of us sitting around the dinner table taking cracks at dinosaurs so…yeah.

I was excited, though admittedly a little fearful – we all know how awkward these things can be. “So…uh…what have you been up to?” And there was plenty of that.

But in the interim of 6 years (though I maintain it’s only been 5), despite the fact that we’ve all moved on and have nothing to do with archaeology anymore, we haven’t changed that much. Sometimes you get together with people and realize why you were never really friends in the first place and other times you sit and talk and laugh and laugh and laugh. This was an other time. It’s nice to know that a passion for old buried things isn’t the only tie that binds.

But it wasn’t all goody goody gumdrops and licorice sticks…or chocolate puff pastries with delicious raspberry crème fraiche… … … Ahem, but I digress. I remembered something I had long forgotten – cast out of my memory, rather. I remembered that I had a chance to go to Italy. My last semester at BYU I took a classical archaeology class with the girl who invited me to dinner, shall we give her a name? Let’s call her Clare since that’s what her parents named her. The professor of this class was taking students to study and excavate in Italy...but there was a caveat. You had to be a student. Clare went. She went three times. So why didn’t I put off graduation? Why, why, why? I asked myself that a lot that night. Then I remembered…I had earned scholastic achievement. One I wasn’t sure would wait for me. Ah, Scholastica, nefarious supervillain!

So I graduated. I sat on the front podium, had a brief biography in the program, met Elder Hales, and then went home and lived with my parents for the summer (Why, why, why?). I have an additional sentence on my resume and a large medal collecting dust in a box (it almost sounds like I actually earned some noble distinction, doesn’t it? I think you may be disappointed to find out what it actually was) but I’ve since gone back to school…and I’m not even on a scholarship.

I also have yet to make it to Italy.

I'm still trying to convince myself it's better this way.

David Copperfield.

"Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born (as I have been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o'clock at night. It was remarked that the clock began to strike, and I began to cry, simultaneously."

Is it possible to love a book at the outset of its opening chapter? What if it were read to you in a sonorous British accent? Yep, that's what I thought - love.

I feel the same way about people. Give me your words in the dulcet tones of foreign islands and I will love you more.

As anyone who knows me knows...nose goes...I love reading. I've loved it since that sacrament meeting when, looking at my copy of the comic book scriptures, I heartily declared, "I can read!" But...admittedly, I haven't always appreciated the writing, the character development, THE WORDS. Oh, the words. Guys, I'm older now. I know better. I am a rehabilitated reader.

Give me your words and I will love you. Cross my heart.

The things I'm learning in school.

1 package of peppermint Mentos + 2 liters of Diet Coke = Awesome

...so maybe it was a little bit more impressive in person but that geyser is shooting like 12 feet!